She should know better
“Okay, the source of excess love has got to be in here somewhere. I need to suppress it before the love becomes a danger.”
Her horn pulsating turquoise, Princess Cadance wandered through the aisles of Canterlot Library. No pony was around, making the bookshelf-packed lobby feel eerily quiet.
As the Princess of Love, Cadance normally promotes the emotion, but very rare occasions require her to restrain or seal some away. At its purest, love is Equestria’s single most powerful force, and if too much built up, an Equestria-threatening “love overload” could ensue.
Princess Twilight Sparkle has intensely insisted that friendship is Equestria’s strongest force, but how could she understand love’s full power? She’s yet to land her first boyfriend!
At any rate, Cadance searched through the library for a clue on the unstable love. No clue presented itself. She stared at her glowing horn and moaned dejectedly.
“Maybe there’s just something wrong with my horn. I knew I should have listened to Twilight and not skip my yearly horn examination, but it’s usually mares over 40 who develop horn issues! Huh?”
Her horn flashed faster and brighter. A collection of love had to be nearby, but where?
“Wait, is there something behind that picture?”
Cadance peered at a picture of Princess Luna reading a book with a crescent moon as its cover. The picture slightly bulged in its center, imploring her to reach out her hoof and push it. She submitted to the urge.
Upon contact, a narrow rectangular hole swallowed a section of the wall holding the photo, and held it in place just below the floor. A new, compact room spread out in front of Cadance with a single bookshelf, a round table, and a chair in its center.
“Could this be the forbidden archives I heard rumors of? Why did Celestia never tell me it exists?” Cadance trotted inside the unlocked room and to its lone bookshelf. She peered at one of the books, curiously rubbing her cheek.
"‘Lyra and Bon Bon Get Married'? I don’t know who wrote this story, but there’s just something about it calling out to me.” She picked up the book with her magic, sat at the nearby table, and read through the passion-packed pages. As the mare did, her deep, limited memories of the mares Lyra and Bon Bon grew stronger, and burst to being able to be summoned at will.
“Amazing. Those two could make a great couple. Ooh, what’s that story? ‘Pinkie and Rainbow Dash’s Romantic Mischief’? That one’s named ’Twilight and Big Macintosh’s Magical Garden’...that’s ’Rarity’s Heartfelt Confession to a Princess of Friendship’...’Twilight and The Shy Pegasus’...wow. There are a lot of stories of Twilight matched up with somepony!”
While she was unsure why Twilight was such a popular choice for whoever wrote the stories, even if she is friendly and attractive, Cadance nonetheless spent the next several hours reading story after story. She grinned goofily while reading the more “mature” ones, only muttering “oh my” three times.
After Cadance’s thirst for romance was finally satiated, she managed to reset the wall, re-concealing the secret area. She concluded that she somehow sensed love coming from the stories, but as long as it remained in the pages, there was no danger. How her horn no longer flashed as she left the library suggested she could rest easy for now, although it could have also been satisfied with the stories. It is by nature horny.
However, Cadance returned to Canterlot Library every other day, until she had read every single story.
Five times.
After the fifth re-read, an idea emerged in Cadance’s head. An awful idea.
Seriously, it’s awful. As a grown mare, she should know better.
But it’s kinda wonderful.
And fine, that ‘horny’ joke was a corny joke.
In Ponyville…
Cadance traversed through Ponyville’s roads, surveying her surroundings. A few ponies trotted about, but none were Cadance’s targets.
“Okay, where are Pinkie and Rainbow Dash? I think Pinkie works at the Sugarcube Corner bakery, so maybe she’s th–”
Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash emerged into view, heading Cadance’s way. Rainbow hovered just over the ground, and Pinkie cheerfully bounced on her hooves beside Rainbow.
“Ooh, there they are! Now, how to encourage them to become a couple? I could use my magic and give them a push, but Celestia will take away my horn if I do it again. Uh…”
“Oh, hi, Princess Cadance,” Pinkie greeted, still hopping.
Rainbow said, “Twilight didn’t say you were visiting. You look like there’s something on your mind.”
“It’s a...surprise visit, and I guess you could say something is on my mind. I, uh, wanted to talk to you two for a second.”
“Okay,” Rainbow said, landing on her hooves. Pinkie stopped hopping.
“Now, I read–I mean, I heard you two get along very well. In fact, I think...uh…” Cadance’s pupils restricted as her mind blanked. ‘Oh no, what do I do?! I’ve only helped ponies with already established romantic relationships! Why didn’t I plan my words?!’
Locked in a mental battle, Cadance struggled to power through her malfunctioning mind to conceive of a subtle but effective plan.
No dice.
Fortunately(?), an idea powered back up the Princess’s mind. The method wasn’t subtle, but it had proved to be effective.
“Okay, this may sound forward, but you two should try to date.”
“What?!” Pinkie and Rainbow shouted with their eyes enlarged.
“Yeah! You two are fun-loving, energetic, and love pranks! You would be great together, so why not try?”
“Well, Pinkie and I are awesome, but we, uh…” Rainbow slowly turned her head to Pinkie, her eyelids twitching. “Pinkie? You remember that...thing we have to do?”
“What thing?”
“You know, that…” Rainbow leaned her head closer to Pinkie’s and whispered, “There’s no ‘thing’, but Princess Cadance is out of her mind! Just play along!”
“Oh, I gotcha,” Pinkie whispered back, but spoke out loud, “Yep, there is that thing! A big, huge, whopper of a thing, so, bye, Princess Cadance!”
The two still-single ponies dashed off into the distance.
“Darn. That approach worked on Shining and me when our parents thought we should go out.” Cadance shrugged her shoulders in an “oh well” manner. “Whatever. Oh, I think those two by that table are Lyra and Bon Bon! Hmm…” She stroked her cheek, searching for a different idea to utilize. One flashed in her mind, and while she at first denied it, she shook her head at further mental resistance.
“You know what, I’ll cast a very weak spell to ‘speed’ things along, and Celestia will never know. I’ll even come back to cancel it after a few days to ensure they are together by their own choice.”
A smoke of turquoise magic flooded from the tip of Cadance’s horn, and seeped into the alicorn’s victims from behind. It managed to stay out of their sight as it approached.
With the magic from desperate royalty pulsing through their veins and invigorating her pheromones, Lyra pounced from her chair and into Bon Bon’s chest. The pair threw onto the ground, and rolled about in heated kissing.
“Whoops, that was too much magic,” Cadance said as she laid a hoof on her cheek. “It wasn’t supposed to have that strong an effect!” She watched the sudden love-stricken ponies roll and kiss, and considered canceling her spell. “Uh…no, it’ll be fine. They should cool down even if I do nothing else.”
Bad decision made, Cadance left the new lovers alone and resumed her search for additional (in her opinion) romance-compatible ponies. After a few minutes in her hunt, she stopped walking and asked, “Oh, is that Starlight and Sunburst over there?”
Cadance tightened her focus toward a bench sitting beside a dirt road. Indeed, Starlight Glimmer and Sunburst sat there, both wistfully gazing toward the clear sky.
“I thought they would be good for each other even before I read ‘I Dream of Starlight’,” she remarked with a grin. A fainter, more transparent stream of magic leaked from her horn and seeped into the unsuspecting unicorns.
Starlight and Sunburst stared at each other. They spread out their forelegs, embraced each other, and kissed. And they kept kissing.
A blue unicorn, Trixie, stomped to the kissing ponies. She shouted at them, causing them to unlock their lips.
“Is that Trixie?” Cadance asked herself. She squinted her eyes, followed by a nod of her head. “Yes, that’s her. I almost didn’t recognize her without her cape.”
Trixie kept up her screaming, but Sunburst hopped to his hooves and argued back.
A heavy left hook from Trixie’s hoof knocked Sunburst on his flank, followed by a pounce on the stallion.
“Uh-oh. I think the spell indirectly affected Trixie. I better reverse it before Sunburst gets killed.”
Wondering to herself if she should have paired Trixie with Starlight instead, Cadance released magic from her horn and it floated into Sunburst, with traces of it entering the other two unicorns. Trixie hopped off Sunburst, and the pair nodded to each other. They swung to Starlight and took turns kissing her.
“Whoops again. I meant to cancel it. Well, they look...happy, so it should be fine to let them share each other for a bit, but who knew Trixie had such a strong left hook?” She giggled to herself and added, “She could teach my guards a thing or two. Now, who’s next?”
Cadance gazed to the sky. A few seconds later, she beamed. “I know! Celestia and Discord! Celestia’s been in love with Discord for years, so she’ll thank me instead of turning me back into a pegasus.”
With that, Cadance closed her eyes and sent a massive cloud of magic into the air–a ton of magic would be required to affect Discord. It vanished from view in a poof; some warped to Celestia while the rest seeped all the way to Discord’s chaotic realm.
“I can’t risk helping too many more ponies get together or I might cause love overload, and I’m low on magic anyway. I’ll just pair up Twilight with somepony before I call it quits, for now.”
The in-universe shipper racked her brain for Twilight’s best match. Unfortunately, there were so many different ponies – even changelings – paired with Twilight in the stories she read, choosing merely one proved too taxing. Thus she chose to mull it over and returned to the Crystal Empire.
The next day in the Crystal Empire, in the Crystal Castle’s throne room…
“Hmm. Maybe I could set up Twilight with Applejack’s brother, uh, Big Mac?” Cadance asked herself while sitting on her throne. “Or maybe Rarity, because that could be an amazing pairing? Or if not her brother, perhaps Applejack hers–”
A guard peeked his head through the throne room’s doors. “Princess Cadance, a pony from Canterlot wants to speak to you. She said it’s urgent.”
“It is? Okay, let her come in.”
The guard left. After roughly ten seconds, a unicorn mare, wearing glasses, trotted inside.
“Princess Cadance, I am in a pickle. Canterlot has many matters that need to be addressed or approved immediately, such as raising taxes for middle-class citizens. However, Princess Celestia has apparently been very busy, and we can’t even talk to her. Princess Luna is currently asleep, and the guards in Canterlot won’t wake her up.” The mare straightened her glasses. “They claimed that the last time they tried, it went badly.”
“I see, but why are you coming to me?”
“Well, help from a princess would be most ideal, and you have more experience than Princess Twilight.”
‘At least it’s nice for some ponies to run to me first during crises instead of running to Twilight like I’m useless.’ Cadance thought. She shook herself out of thought and spoke out loud, ’“Um, I’m sorry to say, but without Princess Celestia’s okay, my authority is limited to matters dealing with the Crystal Empire, unless it is love-related. However, I can go and try to get Princess Celestia to grant you an audience, but I highly doubt she will approve of raising taxes to the middle-class. Even princesses hate raising taxes to anypony but the rich. They we don't mind taxing.”
“Just allowing me to speak to her will be fine.” The mare bowed her head. “Thank you so much, Princess.”
Wearing a gentle, almost motherly smile, Cadance gave the grateful mare an approving nod, and the latter trotted from the room.
Alone again, Cadance leaned forward and pushed her hooves against her cheeks in deep thought.
“Hmm. The only time Celestia has ever been unavailable is either when she had been captured or when she had a new boyfriend, so it’s probably ‘new boyfriend’ this time since I’m still free. I should reverse the spell I cast; it should be unnecessary by now anyway.”
She took a slow, calming breath and focused her magic, but only a weak turquoise spark cracked from her horn’s tip. She gritted her teeth and raised her focus, but it merely resulted in more harmless sparks. Afterward, Cadance’s mouth widened.
“Oh no! I haven’t regained enough magic to cancel the spell!” The Princess pushed herself off her throne. “I better go to Ponyville at once and ask Twilight to loan me some of her magic.” Cadance shook her head, suddenly aware of how she was talking to herself more than normal. “I also have got to stop talking to myself so much, like I’m explaining myself to an audience I can’t see.”
In Ponyville, again…
Flying in order to get there faster, Princess Cadance reached Princess Twilight’s castle. Its royal owner, her horn glowing magenta, and Spike stood at its front doors. A magenta sphere of magic surrounded and sealed off the castle.
“Twilight, Spike?” Cadance asked as she landed. “Is something wrong?”
“Kinda,” Spike answered.
“We want to go in the castle, but Starlight is…” Twilight glanced at her castle and shuddered. “Busy in there with Sunburst and Trixie.”
“So she kicked you out?!” Cadance pointed a hoof at the castle. “That's your castle, Twilight! I know you want to be an approachable princess and don’t like throwing around orders, but–”
“No! It’s not that! It’s just…well…” Twilight stared down, scraping a hoof against the ground. “We would rather stay out here until she’s finished.”
Cadance tilted her head sideways, frowning. “I don’t understand.”
“Spike? Cover your ears.”
“Uh, I don’t have ears.”
A blush grew in Twilight’s cheeks. “Oops. I forgot, but you know what I mean.”
Spike covered his “ears”, or aural spines to be more accurate, and Twilight’s horn ceased its illumination. The barrier around the castle vanished. Intense, passionate moaning immediately assaulted the air.
“AHH!” Cadance’s eyes puffed up as she covered her ears. ”Okay, okay, I understand now! Make it stop!” ‘And the guards say Shining Armor and I are loud in the bedroom!’
Twilight’s magical barrier reformed around the castle, and sweet silence marked its return. Cadance uncovered her ears and blew a relief-filled exhale. She may enjoy reading about mature elements of romance, but it didn’t mean she liked hearing it. “You poor things. I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” Spike asked.
“Spike’s right; none of this is your fault. I just don’t know what made Star–”
The edges of Cadance’s lips rose into a sheepish smile. “Actually, it kinda is my fault. Princess Celestia might take away my horn, even if she’s ‘happy’ right now, but you see—”
“Why might Princess Celestia take away your horn?” a soft feminine voice from behind Cadance asked.
The ship-happy Princess turned around. Fluttershy stood behind her, wearing a puzzled frown.
Cadance explained her un-princess-like epic screw-up and why she came to Ponyville. Fluttershy’s eyes briefly lit green during a certain part of the story, though she stayed quiet. Deadly quiet.
“...that’s why I’m here. Twilight, since I’m still too weak to cancel my spells, could you loan me some of your magic?”
Twilight nodded. “Sure. I need to cast the same spell that you, Celestia, and Luna used to give me your magic, right?”
“Yes.”
Twilight’s horn glowed, and a stream of magic floated from her horn and into Cadance’s body. The elder alicorn’s horn immediately fired a blast of magic straight into the air, which broke apart and flickered away in multiple directions.
“Okay, that should end the spells I cast. You can have your magic back.”
Cadance’s horn oozed magic from it and it seeped into Twilight.
Spike crept forward and asked, “So, is everypony back to normal?”
Starlight, Sunburst, and Trixie stumbled out of the castle’s doors. Starlight and Sunburst were frowning, seemingly in confusion, but Trixie was blushing.
“I take that as a ‘yes’,” Spike commented.
“I…don’t know what we were thinking,” Starlight said, staring at nothing in particular.
Also gawking at nothing, Sunburst asked, “What made us want to get together, let alone form a threesome?”
Trixie stuttered, “Y-yeah, what was u-up with that? I mean, of course I don’t like you that way, S-Starlight, but I was trying to, uh–”
“I can explain,” Cadance said preemptively, then went on to, well, explain.
“...and I am so sorry.” Cadance sunk her head in shame. “I promise that I meant no harm. I just didn’t think things through.”
“Oof, I know that feeling.” Starlight dismissively waved her hoof, smiling in understanding. “But it’s cool. You were just trying to help.”
Sunburst looked down and rubbed the ground. “And at least today wasn’t…boring.”
Trixie wiped her forehead. ‘Whew! Now I can just pretend that I was only kissing Starlight because of Cadance’s spell.’
“Anyway, I should go apologize to Ly–”
Cadance’s horn ignited in a bright blue. It shone more intensely than at Canterlot’s Library.
Trixie pointed to Cadance’s horn. “Princess Cadance? What’s go–”
The earth trembled. Spike and the ponies wobbled on their feet/hooves under the earth’s attack.
“No!” Cadance’s pupils shrank, the corners of her lips sinking. “What have I done?!”
“W-what’s going on?!” Spike asked, waving his arms, still struggling to keep his balance.
“Love overload,” Cadance answered.
“Love overload?!” the rest of the group shouted with huge eyes.
Sunburst’s glasses dropped from the shaking. “I thought you were tasked to prevent that!”
“I am, but I miscalculated severely. Ponies affected by my spells produced more love than I anticipated, and they released just enough to reach critical mass before I canceled the spells. It’s too late for even me to stop it, so you all might want to brace yourselves.”
A sudden, more powerful jolt rocked the ground. Trixie yelped, fell to the ground on her stomach, then levitated Starlight onto her back.
“Trixie?! What are you doing with me?!”
“I’m sorry, but you gotta protect me! I’m too young to die!”
“You’re five months older than me!”
“But I’m younger at heart!”
“Ugh! With a friend like you, I don’t–”
Magic exploded from the ground, tearing open small fissures. Pieces of Ponyville’s building were blown off while windows cracked. Trixie screamed in terror under Starlight as Twilight, Spike, Fluttershy, Sunburst, and Cadance dropped to the ground; Twilight protectively tucked Spike beside her with a foreleg and sheltered him with a wing.
Despite being forced to be Trixie’s unwitting pony shield, Starlight instinctively wrapped her forelegs around the panicking mare as best she could.
The ground continued to rock and tear. Then, it abruptly ceased, leaving behind fissures and minor to moderate damage to roughly half of Ponyville’s buildings. A chilling silence followed, save for a brief bout of Trixie’s post-terror panting.
Luckily, or unluckily if you yearned for the place to be gone, the raging magic avoided Twilight’s tree-castle. Its strong roots anchoring it blocked any vibration-caused damage to it.
With the area seemingly safe, Twilight uncovered Spike. “Are you all okay?”
“I’m fine,” Cadance answered.
“Me too,” Spike echoed.
“Same here.” Sunburst levitated his glasses back onto his face.
“Ditto, and sorry about that, Starlight. I panicked.”
“And I’m okay.” Fluttershy glanced toward the nearest upturned earth. “I hope the others aren’t hurt.”
“Also fine.” Starlight rolled off Trixie’s back and glared at her. ”And as I was saying, Trixie, with a friend like you, I don’t need Chrysalis as an enemy!”
Trixie countered with a shameless smile, and flinched away. Afterward, the group pushed themselves up to stand.
Knowing they were truly safe, Twilight and her friends (and I guess she counts Trixie as a friend too) could focus on who inadvertently triggered love overload: a pink alicorn. They scowled at the aforementioned alicorn, whose ears flopped as she nervously smiled.
“Uh...hehe, well, Twilight, I told you love is the strongest force in Equestria. Friendship overloads can’t inflict this much damage.”
Twilight facehoofed. “Seriously, Cadance? You want to brag that you were right now?”
Spike surveyed the surrounding damage, then at the undamaged castle. “Well, Twi, at least the cast–”
A burst of magic erupted up the tree, through the castle lying on top, and shattered the structures into pieces and larger chunks, which careened every which way. Some smaller debris showered onto the figures still standing near it. It was as if the magic had thought “Whoops, I forgot something” before returning to finish the job.
But more importantly, that group of seven dodged a magical bullet by not taking cover in the castle during love overload!
Starlight’s jaw lowered, her chest tightening. “No! The castle!”
“It’ll be okay, Starlight,” Twilight calmly said. “After the Golden Oaks Library was blown up by Tirek, I thought ahead and got insurance for the castle, the Map, my books, and even Ponyville’s ho–”
“It’s not that the castle was blown up! I’m upset because MY KITES GOT BLOWN UP!! They...they...my babies…” Starlight teetered on her hooves, her eyelids drooping. She emitted a feeble whimper, as she collapsed to the ground with a thud.
Spike stared at the unconscious unicorn and muttered, “Let’s hope she handles losing her kites better than how she handled losing Sunburst as a filly, or we are in big trouble.”
A figure fell from the sky, covered in bruises, and weakly bounced on impact. Its identity: Discord.
Fluttershy gasped and sprinted to Discord. “Discord! Are you okay?!”
“No,” Discord flatly answered. “The power of love must hate me, because I was the only one it hit.” He coughed weakly, mixed with wheezes.
“Don’t worry, I will nurse you back to health in my cottage. But first…” Fluttershy slightly lowered her head and crept to Cadance. She inhaled a nerves-soothing breath, lifted her head to look the Princess in her eyes, and shyly said, “Um, Princess Cadance? I may be out of character by saying this, but–” Fluttershy yanked Cadance to her and gripped her neck “–don’t you ever try to put Discord in a romantic relationship with anypony other than me again,” she seethed, her voice and piercing scowl shooting venom. “He is mine. Is that clear?”
The accidental world-wrecker wisely nodded in obedience. “Crystal, just like my home.”
In the partially blown-up Canterlot castle’s throne room…
With tiny debris from the cracked ceiling resting in her flowing mane, a freshly awoken Luna asked, “Sister, was that the phenomenon ‘love overload’?”
“I believe so,” Celestia answered, her own mane riddled with debris. “It was fortunately weak for a love overload, but it was still too strong to be a friendship overload.”
“I was afraid of that. Going by how some of my stories in Canterlot Library’s forbidden archives weren’t in the same place as before, Cadance must have stumbled across them.”
“See?! I’m going to temporarily strip Cadance of her horn for this, but I tried to tell you not to use ponies’ real names in your stories! But noooo–” Celestia shoved a frustrated hoof onto Luna’s chest “–you thought she would never come across them!”
“Well…*gulp*...you know what they say: live and learn.”
Celestia sharply exhaled, lifting her hoof from her sister’s chest. “I suppose, so you can ‘learn’ by being the one to use their magic and repair what’s left of Equestria.”