“Pandora, darling! I do believe you’re ready!”
After Celestia knew how long, the iridescent blue of Madam Rarity’s magic finally stopped dancing through Pandora’s mane. The draconequus began to raise a paw to pat at the hair and see what horrors had been wrought on it, but Rarity just shook her head and levitated a mirror.
“There’s no need to disturb perfection, my dear. Just take a look.”
Pandora looked into the mirror, and couldn’t help but smile as she saw what the stylist had wrought. The alternating stripes of white, magenta and indigo in her mane had been woven intricately and expertly together, in a style reminiscent of the Crystal Empire ceremonial headdress. It was far better than the adolescent draconequus had been expecting, and far more than she had ever given the aging unicorn credit for.
“Well, darling? Say something.” Behind the mirror, Rarity had an expectant look on her face, and she also seemed tempered for an insult to be hurled her way. A part of Pandora wanted to hurl some backhanded compliment, but then she reminded herself why she was here, in this room, sitting patiently for two whole hours while her hair was played with.
“It’s absolutely regal, madam.” It was a princess’s response, each word carefully measured out, topped with heaping teaspoons of respect, and served in a passable imitation of a High Canterlot accent. Judging from Rarity’s astonished smile, Pandora had nailed it. “Now, can I please get up and move around a little?”
“Of course, dear.” At that, Pandora all but exploded out of her seat, writhing about and coiling her serpentine body around anything within reach. Random limbs detached and spun in the air, though Pandora was at least able to keep her head from pinwheeling across the room and ruining her hair.
Rarity did her admirable best not to be affected by all of this, ducking beneath the hooves and paws that came so very close to smacking her in the face. “I trust you can get into your dress by yourself, Pandora dearest?”
As an answer, the mannequin the dress had been set out on was suddenly replaced by an intact Pandora, striking a pose and fanning herself with her tail. Rarity rolled her eyes, and started to pack up her hairstyling supplies. She was just about to slip out of the room when she felt Pandora’s paw on her shoulder.
“Be honest, Rares. How do I look?”
Rarity turned and smiled at Pandora, letting her eyes take in the elaborate dress that she had spent months preparing for this occasion. Every fold of fabric was perfectly tailored for the unique form of the draconequus, and every color had been carefully chosen to accent her mane and fur. A more perfect outfit, there could not have been.
“You look absolutely divine, Pandora. I can’t wait to see you and that marvellous ensemble sitting on your very own throne.”
That got a big smile from the draconequus, and Rarity slipped out of the dressing room without another word. Alone for a few moments, Pandora undulated through the air and reflected on the past few years.
As she matured out of childhood and into adolescence, Pandora had found herself caring about what people thought. She had finally felt those baleful stares of judgement, heard the contemptuous whispers when she walked down the lane. Then she would look at her mother, the dignified and respected Princess Twilight Sparkle, and envy her for everything that was right in her world. It wasn’t long before Pandora got it into her head that being a princess would make everything better; ponies would stop judging her, and they would love her just as much as they loved her mother.
Ever since her fifteenth birthday, Pandora had tirelessly poured herself into the study of how to be a princess. She had spent more time reading ancient and dusty tomes than she ever had on a scheme to spread harmless chaos, had attended more classes on etiquette than she did Arsonists Anonymous meetings, and had fantasized more about a royal tiara than a night alone with Cupcake, although that last one was a very close call.
And now at last, the day had arrived. In a few short minutes, someone would step into this room, and ask Pandora to please follow him. She would stand before the Canterlot elite, and they would behold the ascension of their newest princess, and the very foundations of Equestria would shake with the applause from their hooves. The thought of her destiny being so close made a few butterflies fly up through Pandora’s throat and out her mouth, and the princess-to-be very nearly gagged at the sensation.
“My lady Pandora?”
The butterflies were crumbled to ash by a quick spell from Pandora, and she turned on a dime to greet her escort, a painfully fake smile plastered hurriedly across her snout. When she saw who it was, Pandora threw away her fake smile for an adorably genuine grin.
Most casual observers would see nothing out of the ordinary with the unicorn who now stood in the middle of Pandora’s dressing room. His coat was a modest grey-brown, his mane and beard equal parts black and grey, and the waistcoat he wore was hardly atypical of a pony about Canterlot. Those who knew him a little better would recognize Chaos Theory, the Head of Physics at the Canterlot University.
Those who knew him extremely well, though, knew that Chaos Theory was merely an inconspicuous second skin that a certain draconequus was fond of wearing.
Pandora beamed at her father Discord, and his cutie mark flickered as the Master of Chaos struggled to contain his form. The ‘=/=’ sign on his flank became a whirling tornado.
“Look at you, all grown up and ready to embrace harmony.” A few joyous tears peaked out of Discord’s eyes, although they were chocolate milk rather than the traditional salty eye water. “Your mother and I are so proud.”
“You sure?” Pandora snapped her fingers, summoning a shoulder to nudge Discord in the stomach from across the room. “Wouldn’t you rather have me take over for you?”
Discord’s ersatz horn glowed gold with magic, and Pandora’s magic shoulder was dismantled into its individual atoms. “There’s a few more centuries left until I discontinue, my dear. Time enough for you to take after your mother.”
Pandora harrumphed at that, having expected her father to be a little more resistant to the idea. It would have at least been good for a few laughs.
“Now come along, young lady.” Discord turned to the door, nudging it open with magic. “That pretty little head of yours isn’t going to crown itself.”
Pandora considered making a quick joke out of that, but her father had already left the room, and if there was one thing masquerading as a university student had taught her, it was that Chaos Theory waited for exactly nothing. She hurried after him as fast as she could, while still trying to remain dignified and fancy.
~
There was only a curtain separating Pandora from her future now. She could practically taste all of the waiting ponies just beyond the yards of silk, and could smell the rare gems that made up her royal tiara. It was a bouquet that would make a dragon water at the mouth, and probably was at this exact moment.
On stage, Pandora’s mother Twilight was giving a passionate speech that had something to do with Pandora and the idea of being a princess. Pandora wasn’t paying attention to a single word of it, occupied only with waiting for her rehearsed queue. Suddenly, the curtains glowed with purple magic, and as they drew back, Pandora assumed her most regal position and strutted out onto the stage.
For the first time in three years, she paid no heed to the disapproving stares that swept over her. The judgemental whispers fell on deaf ears, and Pandora didn’t even look at ponies in their ridiculous clothes. She just stared straight ahead at the tiara on its pedestal, and focused her thoughts on the proper way to walk, to talk, even to think.
This was it. She was going to be a princess. And everything was going to get better.
Pandora walked out past the pedestal, passing her mother Twilight. The alicorn couldn’t have been more full of pride, and it was spilling out of her eyes in delicious droplets. It had been far too long since Pandora had seen her mother like this, and she wanted to savor this precious moment.
Reaching the edge of the stage, Pandora finally dared to stare out at the audience, taking it all in. The assorted nobleponies of Equestria were all gathered under this roof, from the upper crust of Canterlot to the duke and duchess of Maretonia, and they were all here to see her. Tucked away among the aristocrats were some more familiar faces, from the fatherly figure of Chaos Theory squeezing in among the Canterlot jetsetters, to Pandora’s best friend Cupcake, guarding a side door as was her duty. Those two were the only smiles in this massive crowd, a statistic Pandora hoped would change very soon.
“Are you ready?” Twilight asked from behind. Pandora grinned, then turned away from the crowd and bowed. Her mother’s magic enveloped the tiara, and Pandora closed her eyes in anticipation. For what seemed like an eternity, the draconequus waited, waited for the burden to fall upon her shoulders, waited for the first of many changes.
Finally, the tiara settled on her brow. Pandora’s heart soared with pride, and images of regal splendor and adoring ponies flashed through her mind. It was beautiful, it was amazing, it was...
It was just a very heavy hat, really.
Pandora had expected some kind of mystical thunderclap, some flash of divine lightning, perhaps a sudden understanding of life’s mysteries. Instead, she felt the same as she always had, except now she had a tiara. It was deeply underwhelming, but Pandora did her best to put on a brave face as she opened her eyes. Maybe it was a delayed reaction.
“Rise, Pandora Eris Sparkle,” her mother’s words washed over her like a rolling tide of change, “henceforth a princess of Equestria.”
Pride filled every cell of Pandora’s body, and she stood up as tall as she could, rearing up on her hind legs and turning to face the audience. Her smile was so wide it threatened to unhinge her jaw, and the newly crowned princess pulled off the most elaborate bow she could, brimming over with confidence and pride in herself. She was a princess now. Everything was about to change for the better. Any second now, the cheering would start...
But there was no cheering. There were no jubilant cries of celebration, not even a golf clap. Instead, Pandora’s ears picked up on those same hushed, disapproving whispers that she had heard all her life. Except this time, they cut far deeper than they ever had, deeper even than the words on her fifteenth birthday.
“She’s not someone I’d put in charge...”
“Takes after her father, that’s the trouble...”
“Don’t know if I’ll ever wear magenta again...”
“Hardly even a proper princess...”
That last one felt like a slap in the face to poor Pandora, and her blood boiled as she recognized the voice. How dare she say something like that? What right did that pink pastel pegasus have to debate Pandora’s merits as a princess?
She began searching the crowd with her eyes, looking desperately for someone who didn’t look disappointed, or disgusted, or downright furious. But she found nothing; her father was slipping out of the room as inconspicuously as he could, and Twilight was in the middle of some flowery speech about a princess’s responsibility that Pandora had already heard a thousand times. Cupcake was staring at the crowd, a hint of revulsion playing across her stoic, unchanging face. And all the while, the whispers kept up.
The final straw was when a unicorn in a tuxedo, with a faded azure mane and a cutie mark of three crowns, silently took off his monocle, looked Pandora straight in the eye, and just shook his head.
She had been wrong. Being a princess wasn’t going to change anything. Things had just been made worse.
Pandora didn’t want to cry. She was desperate not to lose even more face in front of these ponies. She had to hold it in, had to try and be a princess regardless of what they said, had to...
Part of Pandora shattered under the strain. At last, a lifetime of hearing those damned whispers came crashing down on her shoulders, and she couldn’t take it. Reality splintered and cracked before Pandora’s eyes, and she heard terrified screams from the onlookers. But she cared no more for the cries of these neighsayers, and without looking back, Pandora dove into the nearest crack.
She ran. She ran without thinking, without looking, without caring. Chaos bubbled up through her veins, and Pandora was hurled from the presentation chamber in Canterlot to the sky over Yakyakistan. She tore across the sky like a comet before another crack enveloped her, and the draconequus was suddenly barreling through a river in the depths of the Everfree. Another crack, and Pandora was in the midst of a buffalo stampede on the outskirts of Appleloosa. Space and time folded in on each other and jumped through endless hoops, delivering Pandora to places and moments she had no business visiting. But she didn’t care, barely even registered what was happening. All that was important was getting away, getting away from those horrible whispers.
Finally, there was no more strength for Pandora to run, and she collapsed on the first solid surface she felt beneath her paws. As dumb luck would have it, it was a balcony on the upper spires of Canterlot Castle, barely seventeen feet from the place of her coronation.
“Coronation...” Pandora reached up to the tiara on her head, holding it in her paws and staring at her twisted reflection in a ruby. Tears fell on the tiara, some of them turning acidic and melting away a few gems. “Some princess I turned out to be, huh?”
“There’s been worse,” a familiar voice spoke up from the shadows. “How you holding up, boss?”
Pandora turned to stare at Cupcake, outlined in the door by the light from within. She just as quickly averted her eyes.
“I’m fine,” she lied. “I just... don’t like crowds.”
“Sir, you’re a horrible liar.” Cupcake stepped through the door, closing it with a kick and walking over to Pandora’s prone form. “It was the whispers, wasn’t it?”
Pandora started to nod, but caught herself and shook her head passionately. “It’s nothing. I can get past it.” Her voice started shaking, and she tried in vain to hold back her tears. “I have to be a good princess, and good princesses don’t let whispers control their life.”
Cupcake laid down beside Pandora, staring at the tiara with her. They were quiet for a few minutes, during which Pandora did her best to lose herself in the warmth of her friend against her. Then Cupcake said something.
“Pardon?”
“I said, maybe you don’t have to be a good princess.” Cupcake looked into Pandora’s eyes. “Maybe you don’t have to be a princess at all.”
Pandora gaped at her friend, utterly astonished by what she was saying.
“How the buck can you say something like that?” she babbled, staring at Cupcake as though the earth pony had suddenly grown wings. “Everything we’ve worked for, all of these years, and you want me to throw it all away because things aren’t the way I want? What about you? You’ve wanted to join the Royal Guard, worked so hard at it, I can’t just take that away...”
Cupcake lifted a hoof to her friend’s snout, shutting Pandora up faster than if she had stuffed the draconequus’s mouth full of peanut butter.
“I didn’t spend three years breaking my back and everypony else’s,” she explained, her hoof never leaving Pandora’s lips, “to serve under a princess. The one I want to work for, the boss I had in mind during all those drills, was Pandora.” Cupcake smiled one of her far-too-rare smiles, which would have made Pandora weak at the knees if she had been standing. “And Pandora is mischievous. Pandora is always cooking up some zany scheme. Pandora gets into trouble, and doesn’t listen to lectures. Pandora doesn’t care what anypony says or thinks, and Pandora doesn’t cry because somepony doesn’t like her.” Cupcake finally withdrew the hoof. “And maybe, just maybe, Pandora doesn’t have to be a princess.”
Pandora didn’t speak up right away. There was a lot on her mind, and though her thoughts were fast-paced, they were also hard to organize. “I don’t have to be a princess,” she said at last.
Cupcake silently nodded, and looked expectantly at her boss.
“And you... you’ll stay with me?”
The earth pony smiled again, and leaned into Pandora a little more. “Always,” she promised. “I’ll follow you anywhere you ask me to, to the ends of Equestria and beyond. Someone has to keep chaos on a leash.”
Pandora considered cracking a joke about collars and leashes, but stopped herself just in time. Instead, she just grinned at Cupcake, and rose to her full height with renewed purpose in life. She took one last look at the tiara in her paw, then snapped her fingers and made it disappear. In a few hours, Twilight Sparkle would find the tiara on her pillow, adorned with a note that read ‘Disrespectfully yours, the Lady of Chaos’.
“Let the games begin,” Pandora cackled. Cupcake nodded stoically, and tried to remember where she had stored her distress flares. They would probably be needing them in about seventeen seconds.
