Earlier that day…

‘No matter how many times I do this, I will never understand how Celestia does it day in and day out.’ Cadance thought as she was called to the meeting almost as soon as she got up. ‘Look on the bright side. At least they were able to make some good coffee.’ She took a sip from her mug. ‘Vanilla hazelnut with a double shot of espresso. It’s a shame they can’t make this kind of stuff back in the Empire, though they do make some nice crystal berry tea.’

Apparently the big emergency that she was needed for was a mare from one of the charities that Cadance ran had been embezzled out of a significant amount of bits by another worker. She even had her own evidence and the suspect here as well. “...that this scoundrel is the one who embezzled our organization!” the mare cried out.

“Objection, your highness!” the suspected stallion shouted back, “I would do no such thing! I have been a loyal worker ready to serve since I first joined!”

The mare snorted, “Yeah, serve yourself! Thanks to you we won’t have enough funds for the festival!” Back and forth, words and accusations flew. Cadance was tempted to hit them with some love magic to get them to shut up and make up, but unfortunately that wasn’t allowed, much to her disdain. Maybe if she was lucky, this would just be a case of getting rid of a lot of pent up stress between the mare and the stallion.

As Cadance thought how to diffuse the situation, she saw her bracelet flash yellow. Her eyes widened slightly as she realized that Chrysalis had arrived, ‘Surely she would have noticed that the light would signal that I’m not there, unless…’ Cadance felt a lump of ice drop into her stomach, ‘Shining is still there. Ohh that’s not good. I need to get back up there before they try to kill each other.’ Luckily for her, the mare and stallion were starting to exchange threats as if the princess wasn’t in the room, giving her a perfect opportunity to wrap things up.

“Enough!” Cadance yelled, just above the other’s volume. When it was quiet with all eyes on her, she stared at the two bickering ponies who were still glaring daggers at each other out of the corner of their eyes, “I have other business to attend to so I’ll make this quick.” she glanced at the mare, “Ms. Pennyfeather, I suggest you gather more evidence to support your claim.” Before the mare could protest, she added, “I’m not saying what you’ve brought isn’t noteworthy, I would like you to at least double check your numbers and find more concrete evidence.”

The mare looked crestfallen, “I understand your Highness.” She still gave a dirty look at the smug stallion, but he wasn’t out of the fire yet. Cadance almost enjoyed the look on his face when she spoke to him. Almost.

“As for you, Mr. Stockpile, I’m placing you on probation until Miss. Pennyfeather can resolve this. Both of you are dismissed.” The two ponies bowed and left the room. After the doors closed, she gave a sigh of relief before remembering why she had to finish it so quick. “Pony feathers.” She almost jumped out of her chair as she started to quickly walk down the hallways, not wanting to alarm anypony by running and making a scene. She was about halfway to her rooms when she heard her name called out by the last unicorn she wanted to deal with at the moment.

“Hey, Cadance!” Twilight said as she stepped out of an adjacent hallway. Out of habit and need to buy time to think, Cadance stopped and greeted her favorite mare with their old tradition.

“Sunshine, Sunshine, Ladybugs awake. Clap your hands and do a little shake!” they said in unison as they did the practiced routine.

Twilight giggled as Cadance’s mind was thinking a mile a minute. ‘Of all the ponies to show up, why did it have to be the one I can’t say no to? Think positive. All I have to do is indulge her for a little bit and she’ll go away none the wiser. Yeah, and Celestia will pass up a slice of cake. Gotta think of something…’ Cadance said the first thing that came to her mind, “ Twilight, what are you doing here?” Her usual smile was rather strained this time, “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but what’s the occasion?”

Twilight shrugged and said, “Oh you know, I was picking up some books to take back to Ponyville, and I heard that you two were still around. I figured that since I’ve got some time to spare before the train leaves, I thought I could squeeze in a quick visit to see you and Shining.” She beamed, oblivious to Cadance’s nervous twitches.

“I see,” Cadance said calmly despite her mental screaming, “Well Shining and I have been really busy as of late. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s in a meeting with some important ambassadors right now.” It wasn’t untrue, technically speaking.

“Oh,” Twilight frowned in disappointment, then asked, “What about you? Are you busy right now?”

Cadance automatically replied, “No, not really. I just got out of a meeting.” She had to bite her tongue to stop herself from screaming. ‘Why did I say that? Aw, ponyfeathers!’

“You wanna go to Donut Joe’s?” Twilight asked, “Searching for all those books really worked up an appetite.”

“I dunno, Twi,” Cadance said with a smirk, “It looked like you were losing weight from all the world saving you’ve been doing.” She pinched Twilight’s sides for emphasis, eliciting an embarrassed squeak from the unicorn.

“Cadance!”

“I’m just teasing you, Twilight. I could use a couple donuts,” Cadance then said with a smirk, “I know Shining wouldn’t mind helping me burn off the calories.” That got a full blush from Twilight.

“Cadance!”

After a bit more teasing, the two of them teleported to the street of the store. They went in and ordered some glazed donuts, eclairs, a variety of others, and some coffee before sitting in one of the booths off to the side. Twilight devoured her donuts like it was the first thing she had to eat in days. Cadance took small bites of her eclair, not wishing to further embarrass her sister-in-law and saved the others for later. It had been a while since she tried food play and she hadn’t used donuts yet, her mind formulating ideas in the back of her head. Still at the forefront was her worry for Shining and Chrysalis. She could only hope that nothing happened between them until she got there.

Speaking of which, perhaps it was for the best that she took this time to talk with Twilight. After all, wasn’t this a friendship problem? Maybe Twilight could give her some answers that could help them get along better. She would have to phrase it carefully though. One wrong word or phrase and Twilight will start asking a lot of questions.

Cadance wiped the crumbs off her cheeks before asking, “Hey, Twilight, you're good with friendship problems, right? Can you answer a sorta hypothetical question for me?”

Twilight looked up, her mouth still full of donut. She swallowed her food before replying, “Uh, sure. Although if it's something your love can't fix, then I don't know how much I can help.”

“No, it's just a friendship problem between two close friends of mine. Besides, this isn’t something that can be easily fixed with a love spell. It would probably have the opposite effect,” Cadance said.

“A hate spell?” Twilight chirped, “Could a spell do such a thing? Maybe if you applied an Inverse Spell Matrix while casting-” Twilight summoned up a notepad and quill with her magic and began writing until Cadance raised her hand.

“No, Twilight, I meant it would make the friendship problem worse.”

Twilight chuckled sheepishly, “Right. Hehe. I knew that.”

Cadance smiled and continued while Twilight eagerly jotted down notes, “Alright, I won’t say any names but these two friends of mine really don’t like each other. They find every reason they can to insult each other and argue about. How would you get them to become friends?”

“Hmm,” Twilight tapped her quill against her cheek, “Well, do they have anything in common?”

“Aside from me?” Cadance pointed at herself and shrugged, “Not much that I know of.”

“Uh-huh. What about their personalities?”

“One is chivalrous with a strong sense of justice,” Cadance said after some serious thought, “While the other is...less so. Sh-They have a tendency to get under other ponies’ skins,” Quite literally sometimes, “And they’ve had a bit of a rough past that tends to rub ponies the wrong way more often than not. Both of them are also a bit stubborn at times. Individually, they’re nice ponies, but when they’re in the same room they always bicker like foals.”

“I see,” Twilight wrote down some more notes and when she finished, she looked up, “I think I may have a few solutions for you. I was able to draw a few analogies to my friends Applejack and Rarity, and here’s what I’ve come up with.” Twilight sat up straighter, taking on her role as lecturer, “Solution one, arrange a group event that all members can enjoy. You could have a sleepover! That seems to work most of the time.”

Cadance pursed her lips, “That was the first thing I tried. It...didn’t end as well as I hoped.” Granted, it didn't help when one didn't know their enemy was there until the end, but that's besides the point.

Twilight swished her quill to cross out some words on her notepad. “Well, how about trying other activities? You could take them to the park for a picnic or maybe go to the fairgrounds. I hear the Wonderbolts are doing a show sometime in the coming weeks.”

“I suppose the fairgrounds is a possibility, but getting schedules to align will be very difficult.” Chrysalis didn’t exactly notify her when she would show up, something Cadance would have to remedy now that she thought about it. It would certainly help to avoid situations like right now. Not to mention planning future meetups.

Twilight offered a few more suggestions, but Cadance had to turn them all down for one reason or another. Either it was too risky, the schedule conflicted, or it just flat out wouldn’t hold up. Cadance had begun to regret asking Twilight such a loaded question. After the fifth or so suggestion was turned down, Twilight sighed loudly.

“Y’know, this would be a lot easier if you told me who these ponies were,” Twilight deadpanned, her hand dropping to the table, “If I knew who they were I could probably find a better solution for your problem.”

Cadance gulped and tried to keep eye contact while her brain was trying to search for a way out of this conversation, “I -uh- wanted to respect their privacy. Didn’t want to make a big deal about it,” she explained as smoothly as she could, “Besides, you never know if there’s any paparazzi lurking around.”

Twilight blinked and looked around the store to see a distinct lack of reporter ponies, or ponies near them in fact. “I don’t think we have to worry about that,” She then looked back at her noted with narrowed eyes for a few moments before looking Cadance in the eye, “Does this have something to do with Shining?”

“...Yes,” Cadance admitted. She could have tried to lie, or even dodge the question, but that would have brought more trouble than it was worth. “A noble was stirring up trouble with him lately and I didn’t want to worry you.” Again, not a total lie.

“Who’s the noble?” Twilight asked, then added with a glower, “It’s not Blueblood, is it?”

“Chrysss-um-Crystal Clear,” Cadance congratulated herself for the quick thinking, “She’s been, uh, questioning his capabilities lately. Probably because of our anniversary. Kinda refreshes the memory of the invasion for some ponies.” After seeing the look on Twilight’s face, Cadance felt like she put her foot in her mouth.

“Excuse me?” Twilight nearly shouted, “Cadance, you should have told me this was happening!”

Cadance put her hands up to calm Twilight down, “It’s not that big a deal. She’s just another royal pest. It’ll pass soon, especially after we leave for the Empire.” Oh how she wished she kept her big mouth shut.

“Cadance, that’s exactly why we need to settle this,” Twilight said, her voice determined, “If you leave without trying to make peace with her, then it might breed resentment and she might try to become a bigger nuisance later on.”

“Really, Twilight. It’s not-”

Twilight snapped her fingers, “In fact, I think we should do it right now. We can wait for Shining in your room and when he’s done with the diplomats, we can discuss this Crystal Clear pony,” she said, “Your room is still in the east wing of the castle, right?”

“Yes, but-”

“Great! Let’s go!” And with a flash, Twilight was gone.

Cadance had to stop herself from screaming in frustration before performing a following teleport of her own. She appeared right next to Twilight outside the doors of their room. Of course, the room itself had anti-teleport wards due to the Castle’s security, but it was also rude to teleport into a personal room without permission. Cadance was going to protest Twilight’s efforts, but a crash from behind the door grabbed their attention.

“What the-?” Twilight started, but they soon heard voices, one of them certainly familiar.

“...how about you bend over...”

Twilight and Cadance’s faces both turned pink and they glanced at each other. Cadance didn’t know what Twilight was thinking, but she knew something was wrong. Either Shining and Chrysalis were fighting, or they somehow forgave each other and proceeded to have wild sex in the past hour she was gone. As much as she wanted the latter, Cadance knew she had better chances trying to make Celestia give up cake for a millennia.

‘Celestia damn it, Shining.’

“Uh, was that Shining?” Twilight asked, glancing at the door.

“Yes. Yes it is him,” Cadance answered, keeping her face still.

“I guess he’s done with the diplomats then.” More noises came through the door, sounded like shifting furniture. “Is this a, uh…thing you two do?” Twilight asked, and then added, “Not that I’m judging what a married couple does behind closed doors, but uh…”

“How about this then? You like that?” Shining’s voice sounded through the wood.

Twilight’s face turned bright red, “YouknowwhatIthinkI’lljustmeetupwithyoutwolaterokaybye!” She didn’t get far before another voice came through the door.

“Ha! Is that all you got?”

Twilight froze for a second and slowly turned back to the door. “Wait, was that…?” Cadance watched in growing horror as Twilight reached for the door and opened it.

“Well there’s more where that came from!” Shining cried out from his position atop Chrysalis.

“What in Celestia’s name is going on here?” Twilight demanded.

Cadance thought the same question. It certainly looked like they were roughhousing with the bumps and scrapes to prove it, however their current positioning was suggesting quite the opposite. Either way, she was going to have to have a serious talk with them after this. For now, Cadance quietly put down a soundproofing spell just in case things got loud.

“This isn’t what it looks like.” they said in unison.

“Chrysalis! What are you doing here?” Twilight asked as she charged her horn, “Are you trying to brainwash my brother again?”

Chrysalis' eyes darted around for a second before she answered with a straight face, “Yes. I was doing that thing because Shining is a jerk,” Her tone was much like a parent who was caught in the act of something naughty by their child and had to play it off, “Curse you, Shining for resisting so much!”

“Is this true?” Twilight asked her brother.

Shining nodded, “Yup, totally true. She tried to get the jump on me but she missed and now I caught her.” He put on a fake smile.

Twilight sighed in relief, “Thank Celestia, because for a second there it sounded like… Um, never mind,” She shook her head to clear her blush, and then spoke as her magic bound Chrysalis to the floor, “These should hold her long enough while I go to inform Princess Celestia of what happened here.” She kept going on, but she didn't notice the cold sweat that everypony else broke out into.

“Twilight, are you sure that's necessary?” Cadance asked, “Shining and I can handle her, we don't need to bother Celestia with this.”

“Of course it's necessary,” Twilight said sternly, “With you two watching her, Chrysalis won’t be able to escape this time and we’ll be able to properly punish her for what she’s done.”

Cadance nodded, “Alright then. I'm sorry for this.”

“Sorry for wha-” CRASH! Thump!

“Sorry, Twilight.” Cadance said, standing above her with a part of said vase in her hands. She used her magic to clean up the pieces and then turned to the others, “You know, Chrysalis, if you wanted to share Shining with me, all you had to do was ask.”

Chrysalis, who was now free of her bonds, spluttered and scrambled away from Shining, who was doing the same, “I was doing no such thing!”

“Then why were you two at each other’s throats?” Cadance inquired, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the both of you were having angry sex or something.”

Shining gave a derisive snort, “As if. I was just protecting myself when she attacked me.” He slowly got up and nursed his bruises.

“‘Attacked’? Ha! You started it!” Chrysalis shouted, jumping up to yell in his face, “I was trying to have a civil conversation, which is apparently beyond your capabilities!”

“ENOUGH!” Cadance bellowed, her lessons with Luna showing off. She gave both of them a fierce glare, causing them to shrink away, “I don’t care who started it. You both are to blame and I don’t want to hear a word otherwise.”

“But he-”

“But she-”

“NOT A WORD!” Cadance set Twilight on the couch and started a spell to clean up the room. She then pulled Shining and Chrysalis together within arm’s reach of each other, “Now I want you both to apologize to each other and mean it or so help me, I will break out the paddle and spank you both!” Any form of protest was shot down by her intimidating gaze.

Shining and Chrysalis’ faces scrunched up as they stared each other down, daring the other to make the first move. Shining’s stalwart stare pushed against Chrysalis’ sharp glare, neither one giving ground to the other. Moment’s passed in silence, until Cadance coughed to remind them to hurry up.

Chrysalis groaned, “Fine. I’m sorry for my justified attack on you, even though you totally deserved it.”

Shining was going to protest that until he caught his wife’s eye and decided to leave it. “I’m sorry I teased you, even if the look on your face was hilarious.”

“Good, good. Now hug it out.” Cadance said. She summoned a pink, wooden paddle with a heart pattern cut out when the two tried to protest. Needless to say, they held each other quite closely.

“Can we let go now?” Chrysalis asked when the hug went on for too long.

Cadance smirked and said, “I don’t know. I'm not sure if you two really mean it though. How about you two kiss?”

“Cadance!” they shouted.

“You two are no fun.” Cadance said with a pout.

“So now what?” Chrysalis asked, looking over to where Twilight slept, “I don’t suppose you’d be okay with replacing her with a changeling?” Seeing Shining’s glare she added, “I’m kidding.”

“You better be,” he said.

“Stop it,” Cadance warned as she shook the paddle threateningly, “I still have half a mind to use this on you both.” She then followed Chrysalis’ gaze and thought to herself, tapping the paddle against her chin, ‘Hmm, even if we could erase her memory of it, it'd still be suspicious and she might remember later. I doubt she’d believe this was all a dream. What if...no, she wouldn’t, right? But if she did… it might be worth a shot.’ She turned back and snapped her fingers to get their attention, “Alright, I have an idea and I need you both to play along.”

Shining and Chrysalis shared a questioning look.

“Last time you had an idea, I ended up with his dick in my butt,” Chrysalis said, pointing at Shining.

“I...have to agree with her on this one,” Shining admitted, “This isn’t going to end up in an orgy will it?”

Cadance gave them both a disbelieving look, “No. Just because I’m the Princess of Love doesn’t mean all my ideas have to end in sex. Now help me clean this place up. I’ll explain as we work.” She strode past the two of them, her magic already trying to repair the broken furniture. As she passed them, she gave each a swat on their backside with the paddle, eliciting a yelp and a squeak from Shining and Chrysalis respectively.

“She is going to be the end of us,” Shining commented, rubbing his butt.

“Tell me about it,” Chrysalis said, doing the same.

*****

“Owww, can somepony get the Dewhoof decimal of that book?” Twilight groaned out as she came to, “I really shouldn’t stack books so high up.” She tried to stretch, but found that she couldn’t move at all. Frowning, she blinked her eyes open and looked down at herself. Her arms were pinned to her sides and her legs bound together by pink bands of magic. She tried to cast a spell to break her bonds, but found her magic blocked.

“Huh?” Twilight looked up and saw a strange green substance coating her horn, “What the-?”

“Nice of you to join us.” A voice in front of her said, causing Twilight to jump. What she saw made her eyes widen in fright.

Sitting in front of her was Cadance with Shining and Chrysalis on her right and left respectively. Cadance had a look of patience on her face, much like Princess Celestia would when trying to explain something difficult. She sat up straight with her hands in her lap, ready to answer any question asked. Shining had his arms crossed with a petulant frown on his face, directing his glare to anywhere but the other ponies in the room. Chrysalis, on the other hand, had propped her head on the armrest and had a few fingers twirling some stray strands of her mane. She too had an unenthused look on her face, a mix of boredom and frustration. All in all, it looked like a babysitter who had to deal with two unruly foals and neither one was pleased with the outcome.

“Cadance, what’s going on?” Twilight asked. Her eyes darted between the three of them as she tried to piece together something to answer the flood of questions in her mind. “Why am I tied up? Why is Chrysalis here? Is she trying to take over Canterlot again? Why aren’t you doing anything? Did she mind control you? Why-?”

“Twilight! Calm down!” Cadance shouted, “Everything is fine-”

“Fine?” Twilight asked incredulously, “This is not fine! This is exact opposite of ‘fine’, Cadance! I’m tied up here and you and Shining are sitting next to one of your biggest enemies! How is this fine?”

Cadance just gave her a stern glare, “Well, if you’d let me explain, then you’ll know.” Once she confirmed that Twilight would listen, she continued, “As I was saying, Chrysalis here is not our enemy. Yes, we’ve had some issues and though we had a bit of a clash when she returned, we’ve since settled our differences and become good friends.

“Now, the reason we had to subdue you is that we didn’t want news of her return getting out. I’m serious, Twilight. Just going by your reaction, the Canterlot ponies will have a fit. Not to mention the field day that the nobles and press will have with us. We’re not in the best of positions right now to deal with the politics of it.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes at the three of them, “How do I know you’re not all brainwashed to say all that? You could be Chrysalis’ puppet for all I know!”

Chrysalis rolled her eyes, “Save your breath, egghead. If it was up to me, you’d be in a cocoon and a gatherer drone would have taken your place, but somepony,” she shot a dirty look across at Shining, “didn’t like that idea.”

“Gee, I wonder why?” Shining retorted.

Cadance held up her hands between them like a barrier, “Quit it, you two. I swear, foals are better tempered.”

“Whatever,” Chrysalis said, “Point is, Sparkle, I’m hanging out with Cadance in my spare time instead of trying to capture her. It’s at the very least a mutually beneficial relationship...most of the time. I get love and not imprisoned, and she gets one less enemy to deal with. Friends with benefits basically.”

“Uh, I don’t think that’s-” Twilight started, but fell silent when she saw Cadance’s subtle shake of the head. Twilight coughed and said, “Well, since Shining and Cadance aren’t exhibiting common symptoms of mind control, I suppose it’s safe to say that their minds are their own. Though I still have a hard time believing that you happened to become friends after all that’s happened.”

“Welcome to the club,” Shining muttered.

“I mean, what sort of fight did you have that suddenly made you friends?” Twilight didn’t catch the sudden blushes on their faces, nor their averted eyes and the awkward silence. She just waited for a reasonable answer to appear.

“...Wrestling,” Cadance answered, “We wrestled. A lot.”

Twilight gave her a disbelieving look, “Wrestling?”

“Wrestling.”

“Hmmm, well Applejack and Rainbow do wrestle a lot and they’re still friends. I may have to look into this as a possible friendship solution. This will require some testing and research to fully understand though. I’ll need to find some books on wrestling in the library though.” It was then she noticed Chrysalis’ snickering, “What’s so funny?”

“Hehehe, oh nothing. I’m just suddenly eager to watch you work,” she said, still laughing.

“Huh? Why would you be watching me work? Cadance, what’s she talking about?” Twilight asked, a confused look on her face. She noticed the nervous look Cadance was giving her.

“Yeeahh, I have a bit of a request to ask of you,” she said, “Just hear me out on this.” Cadance told Twilight her plan and the favor she requested. Twilight gave herself credit for not saying anything, but when Cadance was done, she voiced her objections.

“You want me to what?”

Author's Note

Changelog: Everything except Cadance's meeting.

Oh, and this (now non-canon) little bit that inspired these pictures. 1. 2.

Back in the living room, Chrysalis was sitting in a chair with a bowl of chips and a jar of salsa that Cadance had given her when she went off to talk to Twilight about something. She used a shovel-like chip to scoop as much of the slightly spicy salsa before stuffing her face. Not that she would admit it to anyone, but she loved salsa, mostly because it was one of the appetizers usually served at almost all the events she attended on her love gathering missions. Her favorite so far was the Sun Siesta Salsa made by Bean Dip. That was a satisfying session of love gathering. However, her nostalgia was cut short as a booming yell almost caused her to drop the dish.

“YOU WANT ME TO WHAT?!”

Good times. I hope I can inspire more art or something.

Okay, I am sorry that this is a day late, but in my defense, I was kinda distracted with helping Gilda make Skyrim her bitch. I'm just playing vanilla until the proper modding tools come out for SE, especially since i have to redo my mod list for the original and that takes a weekend and a half to do.

Now this will be the last pre-rewritten chapter for a while. I had naively thought that I would be able to rewrite another chapter or two by now, but weeks of writing lab reports, discussions, and workshop stories tend to make me want to play video games for a bit. Luckily, winter break is around the corner and i should be able to focus more on writing then. I didn't come this far to give up now.