For the first time in longer than anyone could remember, one deal had the full attention of everyone at the table. Clive sat at his end of the table, smiling sweetly at Celestia and Chysalis, both of whom were doing their level best to appear as calm and collected as before. At least, for Chrysalis it was all just keeping face; Celestia honestly didn’t seem any more worried than before. She simply returned his smile, and a few seats over her sister looked like she was trying to strangle down a laugh. Everyone else was in something between alarm and flat-out dread, particularly the three younger ponies at the table. Twilight looked like she was about to have an accident, and her elder siblings looked more insulted and pissed off than anything. Ultimately, Celestia glanced over at Luna and shrugged a little.

“You know, sister, I have a couple of centuries of vacation time saved up anyway...”

“NO. Either you shoot him down now or I shall.” Celestia rolled her eyes and shrugged, lazing back in her chair.

“Much as I appreciate the offer of a stress-free lifestyle, I’m afraid Equestria still needs me. I’ll have to decline, then.” Clive nodded, and then reached into a small case he had brought with him, presumably for paperwork, and pulled out a small ruby etched with arcane symbols. Before he could do anything with it, though, a wave of neon green gel slammed into him, plastering him and his chair against the pillar behind him. Chrysalis was standing on her chair, one arm outstretched and her eyes wide with confusion.

“Seriously, you were just going to let him pull out something to play with immediately after he declared war on you?! How, exactly, did you beat me when I tried to invade?” She walked across the table and kicked the gem aside, the intricate runes scratching as it bounced along the floor. She melted the goo away from Clive’s face to let him breathe and talk, which he thanked her for by spewing a stream of curses against her kind and Celestia until she kicked him in the face. That shut him up quite nicely, and she settled down on the edge of the table facing him with a smile.

“All right, so you want to negotiate with us for our surrender. Here’s my counter-offer: you surrender everything you own and command to us and live as our slave for the rest of your life or I will go find a rock and hit you with it until you do.” The goat scowled and spit in her face, which she neatly dodged and let land on the table behind her.

“Your threats mean nothing to me, worm. My life is insignificant; my kind will tear your heart out for this offense.” Chrysalis nodded along, and when he was done she glanced back at Celestia. Give the princess her due, she picked up her cue quite nicely and her horn lit up as the sun slowly drifted off-course.

“All right, we’ll try it your way. The sun is now drifting closer towards your nation, and it’s going to just get hotter and hotter until you break. You have maybe thirty seconds before the nearest icecap breaks and destroys half your capitol.” Chysalis leaned in towards the goat, who had gone pale at Celestia’s threat.

“Let’s make this completely clear, okay? We don’t need your nation, and we can rebuild it if we decide we want to. You can not, and you will have nothing if we so choose. Accept my most generous offer that doesn’t involve killing you anyway for your idiocy and your family can live on in peace. From what my changelings have told me about your reign, they’d probably be happier living homeless under us than staying under you any longer.” Behind her, Celestia was counting him down on her fingers, and the sun was sliding sideways along the horizon outside the window. As she got down to one hand, he finally broke.

“Fine, fine. You win, you monster. Just don’t destroy my nation.” Celestia smiled and the sun suddenly jumped back onto its normal course while Chrysalis rubbed the goat’s head.

“There, was that so hard?” The goat growled and tried to bite her fingers, but she just flicked his nose and released him from her goo, which promptly led to him falling on his face and re-bloodying his nose from earlier. Two guards walked up at Celestia’s gesture and grabbed Clive by both arms, dragging him out of the conference room as he continued screaming obscenities at everyone in attendance. The door slammed shut behind him with a very final-sounding bang, and Chrysalis walked back to her seat with a slight smile on her face even as the other council members all watched and muttered among themselves.

“Is she even allowed to do that?”

“I mean, he did basically declare war on them.”

“Make a note to never do anything like that to Equestria.”

“Think I overdid it?” Chrysalis sat down and leaned over to Celestia with a slightly worried frown, and the sight of everyone else in the room watching her warily was not helping.

“Are you kidding? I probably would’ve just hurled him off the side of the city and called it a day. What are you planning on doing with him, anyway?” Honestly, she hadn’t actually thought that far ahead, and so she just shrugged with a slight chuckle that she immediately regretted.

“We’ll think of something, I figure.” Celestia finally followed Chrysalis’s gaze around the room at everyone else and figured out what was running through her head. She spun back around in her seat to face the table and gestured around at everyone.

“Given the way today is going, I don’t feel it would be inappropriate to move that we adjourn here and reconvene in two days time to let everyone reconsider their options now that Clive is no longer a member of the council. All in favor?” There was an immediate round of assent from all parties, and the speed at which most of the B-list monarchs packed up and got out of the room was a little astonishing. Even among the heavyweights of the world there were a few slightly worried glances from beings that were more powerful than Chrysalis herself. She had made quite an impression, it seemed, and within five minutes she and Celestia were alone in their chairs.

“Well, you’re probably never going to hear the end of this, but I don’t expect anyone is going to try to change it.” The princess kicked her shoes off and put her feet up on the table with a slight smile. “I haven’t seen them that afraid in years, not since the Nightmare incident. Negotiations are going to be super easy for the next couple decades, though. I figure I should probably thank you for that.” Chrysalis chuckled at the thought of everyone scared stiff when the meeting reconvened, but that still wasn’t addressing the biggest issue they had now.

“What do we do with Clive now? I mean, he’s probably not going to be the happiest slave. Or willing. He’ll probably try to kill us in our sleep, really.” Celestia shrugged and fiddled with the hem of her dress a little, all the while keeping a bored expression on her face.

“We can go see him in a bit, and if he is unhappy we can always toss him in the dungeon for a while. He’ll probably break easily, too. Maybe a month down there, stripped, chained, and a vibrating egg up his ass. Once he’s docile we can put him through the same school most of the serving staff goes to, with a focus on anal and oral. Sound fair?” Chrysalis honestly wasn’t particularly surprised Celestia had an entire school dedicated to what was essentially whoring, but the fact that she was being so casual about stripping a young stallion of his rights and turning him into a completely submissive servant was a little disturbing to her. The entire idea was disturbing, really, and it took her a long moment just to process it. Clearly, it wasn’t hard to read her expressions from her face, because Celestia took one look at her and shook her head with a slight sigh.

“It’s either that or we chain him to the bed and rape him for the rest of his life. Believe me, Pyralis wouldn’t give him the chance to enjoy it, or anyone else interested in taking pets. Either we do this or we just slit his throat and break our word.” Right... Taking him as a slave was something of a position they had to honor, given the circumstances. Chrysalis didn’t really see anything for it except to deprive the poor guy of his entire life.

“Well, or we could set him up with a little two-bed suite on the edge of the grounds where I put everyone I don’t really like but can’t set loose on the world. Blueblood could use a roommate, I’m sure.” Well, um. Yeah, that would work. Chrysalis had met the pompous idiot once while she was posing as Cadance for the wedding, and for a brief moment she figured he would quickly come to prefer the ritualistic assrape over trying to share a kitchen with him. Given the smirk Celestia was wearing at thought, she was likely thinking the same thing.

“Or we could do that. Security is tight enough there to handle him, I imagine?” Celestia waved a hand dismissively and got up from her seat before offering Chrysalis a hand. She took it and rose with grace, and the pair of them made the long walk around the enormous table together towards the door.

“Of course. Blueblood doesn’t even realize he’s essentially under house arrest, and the guards are stripping Clive of anything interesting he might have on him as well as neutralizing his natural abilities.” When she saw Chrysalis’s shocked face, she quickly added, “Indefinitely but not permanently, don’t worry. We’re not in the horn and wing-cutting business here. We have a team of biomages tasked with determining any and all of his powers and placing mental blocks around them. He still has them to be reconnected, he’s just incapable of knowing how to use them until we say otherwise.” That was tough but fair in Chrysalis’s eyes, although she still considered heading down to the dungeons to make sure he was being treated properly. Then again, he was a genocidal asshole, so she wasn’t entirely sure what ‘proper’ was in his case.

At any rate, Chrysalis figured there wasn’t anything she could do for the goat, and she wasn’t particularly inclined to try, and so she stayed dutifully at Celestia’s side as they left the meeting room behind. Given the way things had gone she imagined she was going to need to learn her part a little better if she wanted to be more than set dressing and actually get something done, but part of her was telling her that she already had everyone’s respect after her little show.

“So, how about tonight, then?” She glanced over at Celestia, who was now chewing on her upper lip adorably and waggled her eyebrows at Chrysalis. The queenling smiled back and bared her fangs, looking more like a wolf than an insect.

“I’m hungry. You’re hungry?” Celestia nodded, and the princess paused a moment right there in the hallway to pull loose the large knot at the back of her neck that had been holding her dress up, and the entire garment obligingly fell to her feet. She stepped out of it and a maid scurried out of nowhere and gathered the garment up, letting Celestia walk around without such inconveniences as bending over to pick it up or carry it to the proper receptacle.

By her standards, Celestia was still surprisingly modest; she was wearing full-coverage panties made of shimmering golden silk and a matching bra, and around her supermodel stomach was an unstained white corset. She wore no stockings, and she had left her shoes in the conference room earlier. They would probably turn up the same time as her dress, given the staff. For anyone normal, walking around in public in such attire would be scandalous indeed, but Chrysalis had come to accept that in the modern Equestria panties were the new black. She had gone a long time only checking in with the changelings she had working directly for her, but now that she was connecting to the entire hive mind she could see that nearly everyone in Equestria, stallion and mare alike, had adopted Celestia’s loose fashion sense and looser inhibitions. There was a world of smut outside the door, and she didn’t even pretend to understand it. All she knew was she had a princess to satisfy, and so far that was taking all of her attention and then some.

With a smile on her face and a song in her heart Chrysalis followed after her scantily-dressed mistress up to the bedroom. After all that had happened and all that was likely to come in the future negotiations, both immortals were in dire need of some relaxation and very little rest. There would be time to sleep when they were dead, and for the moment they had something much more important on their minds. The next round of meetings wasn’t scheduled for two days, after all.

Author's Note

So, after writing the first version of this chapter it was made extremely clear that I'm terrible at fight scenes. I still have a copy if anyone wants it, though.