Chapters Princess Mi Amore Cadenza peered frantically over her shoulder as she half ran and half flew toward the gates. With her wings helping her along she managed just enough speed to stay ahead of the trailing pack of monsters. She took a deep breath before turning forward again to her destination and its surprised sentries.
“Open the gates! For the love of Celestia, open the gates!”
It was just what the guards needed to pull them out of their stupor.
The two unicorns had managed to crack the gates open just enough for her to squeeze through by the time she got to them, landing in an upside down heap on the other side.
“Close the gates! Close the gates!” she shrieked.
The guards bid as they were told, and the princess let out a grateful sigh.
Immediately she felt horrible. Though they were oath-bound to protect the Royal Family, they were also a part of that same extended family. Given whom her father was, for her even more so.
Duty compelled her to peek through the doors at the carnage on the other side. What she saw gave her hope, as the guards seemed capable of holding back the monsters. That could not last.
“There she is! That’s her eye looking through that hole!”
The monsters pushed but the guards held. Luckily, none of them were of the same heft as the guards, so the princess held out hope that they could hold for long enough.
She needed to end this. She had the power, she just needed the space to concentrate.
Gathering what wits she had about her, Mi Amore Cadenza, Cadance to those that knew her personally, focused her magic on a spell that she had very little practice with, particularly with such large groups.
This has to work. If it doesn’t, I’m in sooo much trouble.
As she finally put the finishing touches on the spell and cast it, her effort was rewarded with an ebbing of the monsters’ cries of, “I love you’s!” getting replaced by confused questions of what was going on. That faded out as the guards ordered them to head home.
When Cadance saw through the spy-hole that the colts had gone, she cautiously opened one of the doors.
The two guards stared at her. She immediately started to fidget.
“So, uh, you couldn’t possibly, uh, you know, not tell anypony about what just happened…hehe?
“Because, it’s just a teeny-tiny misunderstanding…and I, well I…ummm.”
Cadance considered it unfair that two guards staring emotionlessly at a young princess could have such an unsettling effect. But her stomach dropped into her hooves when they both raised their eyes and started staring over her head.
Please don’t let it be the Princess, please don’t let it be the Princess…
Slowed by trepidation, the young princess nonetheless turned around.
It was not her aunt. It was something far, far worse.
“Oh hehe, uh…hi Daddy!”
Explaining why a mob of colts had been after her to her father, who happened to be the Commander of the Pegasus guard, had been one of the more difficult endeavors Cadance had the misfortune of undertaking. Worrying that he might try to have them all arrested and her aunt finding out she had misused her magic was only part of the problem. The other, greater worry was that he might try to ‘help’.
It’s not like I did it on purpose. At least not totally on purpose. How was I supposed to know the spell would work like it did? Well, OK, I probably should have figured it out, but I wanted a date for the dance!
She was uncertain as to what went wrong precisely. The plan, after all, had been simple. As she had imagined it, all she had to do was find a colt who had a crush on her but who, because of her station, and because she was a winged unicorn, might have a teeny bit of hesitation to ask her out. She would use her magic to enhance that crush enough to help him overcome his fear, and she would then get a date. Simple.
And if it were not for two problems which Cadance had decided to ignore, she might have been successful.
The first was that she had never done anything like it before. This she justified in that there were plenty of things she had never done before, and therefore she would someday have to do it anyway. So it might as well be in time for the dance.
The second was that she was not sure who might have a crush on her in class. And although she liked joking around with the boys in her senior year, she had no preference aside from avoiding her cousin Blueblood, who she found insufferable.
So it was that when she snuck off to the park where the senior class colts gathered to play hoofball, she had only a vague idea of what she wanted to do. She watched and waited.
What she had not known, what she could not know, was that most of the colts had at some point held a crush on the pretty, somewhat reserved but often outgoing winged unicorn. And although her magic usually would not rekindle those feelings, she had made the mistake of thinking that, if the spell did not work properly the first time, it was because of the large number of colts she was trying to use the spell on. So she recast it again, only this time pushing more power into it.
And when that still did not work, she cast it again.
The only observation she could make was that her classmates were not very good. In fact, they were playing far worse than the one other time she had bothered to attend.
By the end of the game not one of the colts had yet to show any interest in her, so Cadance decided that, as the dance was the following week, she needed to do something more drastic.
She stomped in applause.
“Wooo! Wooo! You guys were great out there! Awesome! Just AWESOME!”
A nearby filly looked over to her friend, “She knows they lost, right?”
The colts however, heard nothing but Cadance. For the last hour she had cast love magic on them with her as the focus. It had completely ruined their ability to play, but the distraction of losing no matter how hard they tried had been enough to keep them from noticing the filly in the stands.
That was no longer the case.
The entire summer stuck in the palace! It's not fair!
Not only was she stuck in the palace for the entire summer, but she had also been forbidden from attending last week's dance.
But on top of it all, she had had an embarrassing, drawn out talk with Princess Celestia about what she had done. That had turned into an impromptu lesson about appropriate use of her special magic. Not a stiff lesson, but Cadance could feel the Princess's disappointment in her very being. She had never felt so horrible, small and ugly.
When she started crying, it came unexpectedly for her. She was too old for that. But she could not control herself with the Princess there. There was just something about the Princess that pulled at a pony's heartstrings and made it impossible to hide a pony's feelings. Cadance could not imagine what it would be like to be openly rebuked by her, but the thought sent shivers up and down her spine.
Luckily, it seemed the Princess understood what to do with a filly crying stupidly, as Cadance found her spirits lifted soon after by the Princess' gentle words.
But that did not absolve her from punishment. She had been confined to palace grounds, and before that, she had had to give a very embarrassing apology to the class, even if she did not have to give any specifics beyond how a spell she was working on had gone very, very wrong.
Worse, she never did get to go to her last middle school dance.
Then again, she was away from the campus the day after the dance when somepony decided to feed a baby dragon magical gems or something that had made it grow so big it caused a hole in the roof of one of the outlying buildings of the gifted school. Dealing with the ensuing panic had kept Princess Celestia busy all week reassuring everypony.
The only saving grace to the entire misadventure was being given the job of Princess Celestia's official Page while confined to palace grounds. Although it was to be a punishment, not only did she get to do interesting things for the Princess every so often in between taking a reassuring note to this or that self-important pony, but working for the Princess meant she also had some small clout that she could hang over the head of her not-enough-times-removed cousin Prince "I take extra lessons in obnoxious" Blueblood.
She would always remember him screeching about how it was stupid that she had wings when he deserved wings a hundred times more the first time they met, and how he should have her wings for now until he could get proper ones. Her father had brought the whole thing to a halt as he explained to the young colt exactly what would happen to a unicorn, prince or no prince, that tried to take a pegasus', or pegacorn's, wings. He'd been graphic enough that the princeling was uncharacteristically quiet about how special he was for almost three whole weeks.
Her mother often joked that Captain Star Spear's performance that day earned him the promotion to Commander of the Guard.
So it was that Cadance, though somewhat tired after a whole day of running around, was in perfect position to overhear her father visiting Princess Celestia on the fifth afternoon of her punishment and employment both.
"Commander Star Spear, what a pleasant surprise! Are you here to visit your daughter Princess Cadance? She has been a most dutiful Page, and I am glad to have her."
"Princess Celestia, as much as it pleases me to hear you say that, I'm here on more urgent business." There was a snick and paper shuffling as her father took some papers out of the military saddlebag he always carried since his promotion.
"I have just gone over the security memos for tomorrow and see that you personally made a few changes. Were you going to inform me about those, Princess, or were you maybe hoping I wouldn't notice?"
Cadance's eyes widened. She had never heard a pony take that tone with the Princess. To think that Daddy would be so...so...rude?
"If you would be more specific, Commander Star Spear? I wish to be certain we are talking about the same issue."
"You know perfectly darn well what, or rather who, I'm talking about, Princess! And she's to have complete run of the Palace? She's dangerous! She shouldn't come anywhere near here!"
"I see. Perhaps you would like her to be confined to the rest of Canterlot instead? That way we here in the palace will no doubt be safe. Of course, I will have a harder time teaching her to control and focus her magic, but I'm sure that a little uncontrolled magical wildfire remodeling large swathes of the city would be a small price to pay for your convenience."
"What? No! Yes, I mean no! Wait, she can do that?"
There was a pause. Cadance imagined Princess Celestia raising an eyebrow.
"I...I apologize for my outburst, Princess. But you saw what she did, and know better than I what she is capable of. That kind of power needs to be confined, not let loose at the heart of Equestria's government. At your doorstep.
"Princess, as head of your security, and by extension that of Equestria, I must protest most sternly against this decision of yours. We cannot know what this unicorn will do, or even what she's capable of. No pony has ever shown that kind of ability. She needs to be controlled, not coddled."
"What would you have have me do, Commander? Manacles, perhaps? A spell that completely cuts her off from her magic? And if that should be impossible, how about a spell to put her to sleep until she is an old and feeble mare?"
There was silence as Commander Star Spear seemed to know better than to answer the questions.
"Did you have these objections when I had you set the security detail for her? You did not possibly provide Captain Griffinbait with instructions I am unaware of?"
"Of course not, Princess! I had not had time to learn what she did. I was just..."
C'mon! Gimme a name for the mystery mare!
"Enough, Commander. You may be in charge of Palace security, but you forget that it is I that am in charge of the security of all of Equestria. I have watched over this land for more generations that you can fathom. So if you find my instructions objectionable, perhaps you had best recuse yourself from the palace grounds for the summer. Instead, we can have Captain Griffinbait report to me directly."
Silence reigned. Does Princess Celestia sound mad? Yeep, Princess Celestia is mad at Daddy!
"I...Princess, I apologize again. I was out of line. I will carry out your orders with utmost care and alacrity. I will see to it that your new student is welcomed to the Palace tomorrow as per your wishes."
"Very well. Was there anything else?"
"I...I was wondering if you know where Cadance has gone off to."
Cadance's eyes widened in horror. The Princess knows I'm here. Does she know I'm awake. Well, this is the Princess...
"She went to the side room to rest after a long day. As I mentioned earlier, she has proven herself a worthy Page during this somewhat hectic time. You can go visit her in a moment. But one last thing, Commander.
"If it gives you any relief, she will only be here for the summer. Before then we should work out any problems she might have in control, at which point she can start lessons and boarding at the school. But, I must make myself clear, she is to be treated as my pupil, an honored guest of the castle, a member of the Extended Royal Family. Not a prisoner. And further, any dispute she may have with anypony is to be brought to my immediate attention and I will settle it myself. I will not tolerate any deviation from these instructions."
The Princess' voice held a level of authority that Cadance had never heard before.
"Am I understood, Commander?"
"Perfectly, Princess."
Her father's voice had never seemed so meek.
Bored.
The next morning found Cadance waiting around in a secondary courtyard just in case the Princess summoned her, with nothing else to do. By mid-morning she was hidden behind some bushes, amusing herself with commentaries on the various ponies that came through. Unfortunately for her, the flower blooming schedules meant that particular courtyard rarely saw traffic in the early summer.
"Pretty Princess Priceless, who can always be counted on to let you know the exact price needed to buy her affections," she tittered, remembering something scandalous her mother had once whispered to her father at a gala event.
Several minutes passed and Cadance wondered if she should change hiding spots when one of the gates opened to reveal...
"Faithful Captain Griffinbait. Who could always be re...wait, isn't he supposed to be escorting the Mysterious Malevolent Magical Mare?"
He was going on in years, his mane and tail sprinkled with more gray than her father's, visible as he never wore his helm. An old war injury to one of his wings kept him grounded. Otherwise, he had the white and blue coloring of any other Pegasus Guard.
Her curiosity piqued, Cadance tried to look beyond the old captain. She saw nothing and was wondering if he was alone when a lavender filly, burdened with books, bounded out from between his front fetlocks. He looked down at her and gave her a warm smile, saying something that made her turn around and give the courtyard a more thorough examination. Cadance hoped she would go unnoticed in her hiding spot, as she preferred not to be caught staring.
Apparently her hiding spot was good enough, as the filly turned back to the Captain to exchange a few more words. Then the Captain deposited some previously unnoticed books, gave a the filly a pat on the head, and left through the same gate they had come in.
The filly herself just stood there a moment before taking a breath and dragging her load to a bench. After looking around the courtyard again, she unpacked the books until she found a particular one, which she proceeded to half carry, half levitate and half drag across the marble walkway to some nearby plants. She seemed to be going from plant to plant, dragging the large book after her, as if consulting it.
Cadance stayed hidden, contemplating the filly. She was somewhat disappointed as the young pony did not even have a cutie mark, obviously too young to have access to any kind of scary magical abilities. The previous night she had tried to imagine what kind of mare might have actually frightened her father so much. The best she could come up with was that the Magically Mysterious Mare of Malevolence had to be two Celestia's big, breath fire and eat gems. Which would make it a dragon. Which would be dumb, because Daddy once arrested a dragon for burning pony's crops. He was more annoyed about the loss of the crops than scared of the dragon.
Cadance decided it had to be a coincidence. Most likely she was a filly of one of the guards or servants, and old Griffinbait, maybe even knowing she was waiting around here, had offered to find a safe, out of the way place for her to play in. They sometimes came to the Castle and Cadance was always happy to look after them.
A somewhat malicious grin spread across Cadances snout as she realized the best way to introduce herself.
It was a few minutes before the filly was close enough and turned away long enough for Cadance to sneak out of her hiding spot and upon the filly. Mischief danced in her eyes as she sneaked up right behind the lavender bookworm, who seemed to be particularly interested in the plant right before her, leaned in and...
"Boo!"
"Eyahahahha!" The filly somersaulted over both herself and her book in surprise, letting out an adorable shriek. She looked at Cadance upside-down and with eyes crossed.
And then Cadance's heart fell into her hooves as she read the instant and absolute fear on the filly's face. A scared, quickly dampening, face.
"Princess Celestia!" The young unicorn tripped again trying to right herself before Cadance had a chance to apologize. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to not see you! I was just looking over the plants and I...why are you pink? Not that there's anything wrong with pink! And your mane? Is this a test?
"I didn't pass, did I? I'm sorry, Princess, please let me try again! I'll do better, I promise! Please don't send me back to magic kindergarten. I hate it there and all the other ponies always call me names and I, I, I..."
The filly unicorn was cut short as Cadance hugged her, whispering, "It's alright. Everything's fine. Calm down," again and again. And again.
"Nopony's going to magic kindergarten."
Stupid Cadance, stupid Cadance, stupid Cadance.
"I'm sorry for startling you like that."
Stupid Cadance, stupid Cadance, stupid Cadance.
"It was more fun in my head."
Stupid Cadance, Stupid Cadance, Stu...
Her self-flagulation was interrupted early.
"Umm, excuse me, but is a Stu-id Cadence somehow related to an Inverted Cadence? And why would that be more fun in your head?"
Oh, music theory stuff. Bleh.
"Bluuuuh," Cadance stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes.
"Oh! You're not Princess Celestia, are you?"
Cadance looked herself over.
"Oh no, what gave it away? Was it the pink? It was the pink, wasn't it? There's no way Princess Celestia would go around looking pink!"
"Uhuh. That and your mane."
Cadance looked at the floppiness that was her mane. "Oh, it's not floaty enough, right? I bet I can fix that! I'll do it the way the Princess does it!"
She spread out her legs for better balance, took a deep breath, and before the filly could correct her about it not being so much the floatiness of the hair as much as the color, Cadance shook her head every which way like a mad-mare. When she stopped her eyes kept on going, rolling around independently.
Then her balance went, and she found herself looking upside down at the filly, giggling to herself.
"See, and now my mane is exactly like the Princess's," she said in a reasonable tone to the stunned filly.
"No...no it's not! It's, umm..."
"Wanna try it? It'll make your mane look just like her's!"
Glumly, skeptically, "I...I'll try, but I don't think it'll work. It didn't for you."
With that both ponies took stances and counted to three. Longer and shorter manes flew around everywhere, followed by googly eyes. Then came the swaying, until finally both ponies lost balance and upended on their backs.
Cadance waited.
It took a moment, and Cadance had to both stick out her tongue and cross her eyes, but eventually the lavender filly let out a meep, followed by a snicker, until she was finally giggling. She was soon joined by the older pony. Now they were both giggling as they lay upside down.
"You look silly!" Guffaw. Giggle.
Cadance was grateful the filly was no longer upset. She stopped giggling for a moment.
"Hi there! I'm Cadance. What's your name?"
The filly quieted down for a moment. "Oh! I'm sorry!" She got on all hooves. "That was really rude of me. I'm Twilight Sparkle."
She let out a snicker.
"And you're pretty silly for a princess."
As far as Cadance could tell, when Twilight Sparkle had been studying the plants, she had turned out to be doing preventative studying. Which made no sense to the teenage mare, but it did make the young filly different enough to be interesting.
It also meant the filly was sharper than most.
"So are you sure you're a princess?"
That came after Cadance had proven she could stand on her head for almost two seconds. She had blamed her horn.
"Last time I checked," Cadance replied calmly as she got herself straightened out. "It's from my mother's side, so I'm extra princessy that way."
Cadance had liked that joke since she was a filly. Especially when she pointed out to her cousin Blueblood that he was only a prince from a princess, which made him only half a prince. The mathematics of childhood meant that it made perfect--or in Blueblood's case horrific--sense.
Twilight, however, was not your average filly.
"That doesn't make any sense!"
"Well, it did to me when I was your age," Cadance answered defensively.
"But you're not even in the book of Palace Ponies, Politics, Princes, Princesses and Pastries, in order of least to most important I took out of the library when I found out I was coming here! And it's the most recent edition!" Twilight retorted with exasperation.
The meek filly that had first come into the garden was gone. It was a very self-assured filly that confronted her now.
"Do they still list the chocolate-filled-banana-glazed don...err, I meant biscuits as number one? Because those are absolutely the best "
"Err, I'm not sure; I skipped the pastry section. Anyway, you're not answering my question: if you're a princess, how come you're not in the book?"
A self-assured filly was perfectly fine with Cadance. Still...
"What book was that again?"
"Palace Ponies, Politics, Princes, Princesses and Pastries, in order of least to most important!"
Beat.
"Although I'm not sure why it's named that way. Princess Celestia is on the first page, but on the last page there's a picture of a cake...*"
"Ohhhh! That book! That's simple!" Cadance answered with feigned innocence. She paused before going on. Wait for it...
"Well?" Sub-zero temperatures imminent, Captain. "Why?" There we go.
"That's because those books never include foals, fillies or colts. Princess Celestia is very strict about it." Cadance gave the most prim look she could manage. Which, being an unnatural expression for her, was not terribly prim.
For a moment Twilight Sparkle looked like she would explode. Her face turned red, her ears started to steam, and she looked on the verge of apoplexy. Cadance started wondering if she had gone too far. Just wait for it, she reassured herself, making sure her hooves were at the ready.
"Aurgh!" The crisis passed as quickly as it came on, and the lavender filly deflated, falling on her back with a final exclamation, hooves splayed every which way.
Now!
Cadance moved in for the attack, her hooves deft weapons. She aimed for the most vulnerable belly, unopposed. Twilight had no defense.
"Gotcha!"
In seconds Twilight was giggling fiercely, and in a minute she was laughing so much she was running out of breath.
Cadance was a merciless tickler, as any pony she had foal-sat could attest.
It was the better part of two hours later that Mi Amore Cadenza wondered if she should not, perhaps, take a nap. Just a quick one. Twilight Sparkle, after all, looked quite happy snoozing under her wing.
Plus skimming through all the books the little filly had brought with her had made her eyes wobble and her brain protest in the form of a headache. Luckily a palace servant passing through a half hour earlier had been kind enough to bring a carafe of water and some glasses when asked, or she would have been far worse off. As it stood, the dull pounding she felt behind her eyes made her question if Twilight Sparkle had actually read any of the books.
She shook the thought away. She had spent over an hour with the filly, and Twilight seemed far too knowledgeable for anypony that young. They had spent much of that time simply verifying her knowledge on the plants in the garden, with Twilight walking up to a shrub, bush or flower and listing off name, genus, gestation, pollination method, and so on. Cadance had then looked it up in the botany text Twilight had brought with her, only to find that the filly remembered everything correctly. The single problem had occurred when Cadance had mistaken biannual for diurnal blossoming on one of the shrubs, and Twilight had fallen into despair that she had made such a trivial mistake. When they finally worked out the truth, Cadance apologized profusely, but Twilight had been dismissive.
"It's okay. I was just really worried that not getting any sleep last night was making me make mistakes."
It turned out after a little bit of careful prodding that the blank flanked filly was running purely on nerves, anticipating that she would be meeting Princess Celestia that day. It appeared the Princess had decided to teach all sorts now, first a mystically mad magical maven and now a perfect pony prodigy . Having been run ragged over the past two weeks on the Princess's errands as one of her official Pages, Cadance wondered where the ruler of Equestria could possibly find the time.
Twilight admitting having not slept and insisting she didn't need a nap was when Cadance hatched her foal-proof plan to get the filly napping. She had been resistant, claiming -- even after all the tickle-induced laughing -- that she needed to make sure she could be ready for her lessons, but had finally succumbed to the joy of laughter and temporary oxygen deprivation. Which was just as well; Cadance knew from personal experience that nervous energy always deserted a pony just when she needed it most.
None of that helped her with the quadratic equations she was looking over right then. She had never been too interested in math -- even though both her teachers and tutors had insisted that a strong handle on math was very important to a princess, and it was an integral subject for any pegasus that wanted to fly over the horizon and not get lost. It was also the one subject, aside from preening and feeling self-important, at which she could never hope to match her cousin Blueblood.
She took a drink from her glass, only to realize that there was no more water in it. Looking to the carafe, that too looked empty, although that did not prevent her from pouring the last few drops into her glass, which she then tilted into her mouth. The feel of a few drops of water reminded her that there was a drinking fountain in the garden, somewhere to her right. She looked in that direction, hoping to find that the fountain was closer than she suspected it to be, but if anything it was further. Which meant that it was unlikely should could manage to levitate the carafe all the way there and back.
Cadance looked to her left and the sleeping Twilight Sparkle. The filly had tried to poke her nose into the space where the young pegacorn's wing was attached to her body several times. She seemed to share that with about every foal that had ever napped at Cadance's side. After some fussing, Twilight had finally settled on poking her nose into the youthful princess's side instead.
It was only then that she noticed that there was a very large white pony lying down on the other side of Twilight.
"Don't mind me, dear, I'm just enjoying the sun."
The Princess of Equestria then looked straight up into the sun's rays, acting like she had not a care in the world.
* In fact Palace Ponies, Politics, Princes, Princesses and Pastries, in order of least to most important had a cake not just on the last page, but also as a footer on every page. It also had Princess Celestia as the header on every page. And on the last page it had The Princess grinning widely. This led to sharp-eyed pastry chefs starting baking contests across Equestria within days of the book's publishing, all of them insisting that they could not possibly know if they were the best unless Princess Celestia herself approved. Princess Celestia accepted demurely, albeit quickly, and became a very happy monarch. She also made the author, Clever, her Chief of Public Affairs. Within a week he insisted that he should denounce his name and scrub off his cutie mark. It also led to the common wisdom that being a very clever pony was not always a good thing.
It should be noted that Public Affairs is heavily involved in spreading common wisdom.
