Matters of the Bureaucracy
Celestia was freaking out.
She didn't show it, of course: she had had much practice hiding and containing her emotions, feelings and thoughts, making sure that none of them leaked through the armor that was her demeanor of the calm and composed ruler of Equestria. The only time she had let her emotions affect her actions in the last decade was when she had been at least a little rude to Twilight, merely a few days before. Truthfully, she had not meant to come off as dismissive of Twilight, when her student had brought the stories detailing the return of Nightmare Moon before her: no, she had been terrified, and had let just the tiniest bit of that emotion leak through.
The time before that, during her last true emotional outburst, she had decked a griffon royal. It had been extremely satisfying.
Luna, on the other hand, had had little such practice, and was currently shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Thankfully, this was taken as a result of the strain of throwing off a dark being of cosmic proportions, and none of the guards divined the true source of the reaction. If they had... Celestia didn't even want to think about it. However, while her body resisted restraint, her voice was tightly controlled as the two sisters greeted each-other emotionally, speaking about little things and reminiscing. The conversation was somewhere at the halfway point between being fluff for the benefit of the Solar Guard and of being an actual heartfelt conversation between two siblings that had not seen each-other in far too long. Even through her abject terror, some part of Celestia enjoyed being able to speak with her sister openly again.
Well, not completely openly: that part would have to wait for her private chambers.
The slightly awkward conversation, and the nigh-undetectable air of tension, lasted until the carriage had landed in Canterlot, on the grounds of the castle itself. Celestia vaguely recalled that Luna had never actually seen the castle, though the blueprints were probably hanging somewhere on the lunar surface. Still, blueprints were nothing when compared to the original, and at the sight, at least Luna had stopped shaking quite so hard. Celestia had gratefully latched onto the clear awe and interest her sister had exhibited to distract them from the crisis at hand, if but for a moment. Of course, she may or may not have attempted to make the distraction last a little bit longer by purposefully taking the longer and more winding route to her private bedchambers, but such a trip could not delay the inevitable, and eventually the siblings found themselves before the rich wooden doors that led into the room.
They glanced at each-other, apprehension written all over their faces. Neither really wanted to continue through the doors, mainly due to the fact that both knew what the main topic of conversation would have to be once they were behind the thick, complex privacy and warding enchantments that Celestia had placed in layers around the room. After a moment's more hesitation, however- and a long series of 'no, after you'- the sisters two took a deep breath and stepped through the aperture, one after the other.
Celestia went first, with Luna following directly in her hoofsteps. The shaking had returned slowly to her form, and now that they were through the door and out of excuses, it only intensified. The second that the door had closed behind the smaller sister, Celestia spun in place and gripped her with both hooves.
"What are we going to do, Luna?" She began shaking her sister vigorously, panic and fear written all over her face and throughout her intonation. "What are we going to do!?"
Luna was just as deep in panic as her sister, and this wasn't helping matters at all.
"We-we do not know!" Desperately, Luna's mind raced for a solution: there must be one. There had to be one. The Princess of the Night would not give in so easily. "Perhaps a replacement? We do not know- is there one that may fill thine requirements?"
Celestia's hooves flew to the sides of her head, and she let out a slightly demented laugh. "NONE! Not a single one! Twilight is the closest to a viable candidate, or perhaps Fancy Pants, but neither are applicable!" The laugh devolved into a sob, and Celestia fell onto her side, curling up and shivering.
Luna, for her part, began to pace, her mind working frantically and her mouth spouting ideas and possibilities as fast as her mind could spit them out.
"Perhaps another noble?"
"Have you seen the last hundred generations of nobles?" Celestia whimpered, her thoughts immediately flying to that simpering whelp Blueblood. "they're worthless."
"Have thee any other proteges? Students?"
"None."
"Trusted advisors?"
"Advisors for what, exactly?" Celestia muttered. "I'm the supreme judge, not a- a- president."
"... Long-lost relatives?"
Celestia's mind flicked briefly to Cadence, but almost immediately dismissed her. The mare was near and dear to the Solar Princess' heart, but was far too innocent and trusting in the good of ponies everywhere. She would be rent limb from limb by the red tape that coated every surface of the Equestrian government, a tangle of traps and barbed wire that only one being, and one being alone, could navigate without risk to life and limb: namely, the being that engineered its creation.
Nightmare Moon.
It had begun three years after Celestia had wielded the Elements against the darkness that had taken control of her sister. After the Moon Princess' banishment, the entire weight of the country's governance had fallen on Celestia, and it had worn on her body and soul. The crushing stacks of paperwork of all kinds, the constant tip-hoofing around the political land mines that were planted all over: it had sand-blasted her composure in the worst ways, breaking her down slowly. In a fit of rage and frustration, she had used a long-range teleportation spell- which she had invented just then, her pure anger bending and breaking magic itself to create the incantation- to banish a particularly large and maze-like stack of paperwork to the same destination she had sent her sister.
To her infinite and joyous surprise, the entire stack had turned up a few hours later: laws rewritten, corrections made, proper seals and signatures in place.
It appeared that, after her banishment, Nightmare Moon had spent one year raging and cursing Celestia's name before she had grown exceptionally bored of that. She had then cataloged many of the moon's geological features, but her connection with it and understanding of it had made short work of that job. She had built a charming cottage on the lunar wastes, but without plants to care for or weathering to prepare against and repair the effects of afterwards, the cottage needed no maintenance. So she built a mansion. And an entire underground bunker system. And so many more things besides.
In a word, she had been bored. Desperately so.
So, when a stack of papers, obviously official government documents, had shown up at her doorstep- the cottage doorstep, of course: she liked the cottage considerably more than any of her other creations- she had completed them and sent them off just to break the boredom. Then another stack of papers had shown up, then another, then another.
Things got to the point where all red tape and anything to do with the bureaucracy and functioning of the government of Equestria was simply dumped into a large bin, which was set to automagically teleport the stacks of papers to an "in" box located in a mid-sized, but charming, office in Nightmare's cottage. The Nightmare then did what was necessary with the paperwork, making the necessary modifications to protocol, procedure and lawmaking before transferring the resulting reams of paper into the "out" box, which shipped it back to Equestria for sorting and delivery.
Thus, Nightmare Moon had designed and run the government of Equestria for the last thousand years. And nopony knew, save for the sisters.
Now, the Nightmare was gone, and it was only a matter of time before the government imploded.
"We could just run..." Celestia intoned weakly. Her sister considered this for a moment, then shook her head slowly.
"Nopony can outrace bureaucracy, sister." She said, her tone devoid of hope. "Nopony."
Celestia's hooves released her head as they flopped to the floor, her pupils almost non-existent. "What was the Nightmare thinking, taking on Twilight and her friends like that? She knew they had the Elements, she should've known it wouldn't turn out well for her!"
Luna cocked her head, chewing her lip slightly. "Well..."
Celestia tore her attention away from her own despair and leveled it at her sister. Seeing this, Luna braced herself ever so slightly before continuing.
"We think..." She paused, then swallowed. "We think that she hath never considered that the Elements might function for thine student." Now that she was saying it out loud, she began considering the idea seriously, her eyebrows drawn together. "Really, the Nightmare did not try particularly hard to prevent them from reaching the castle, and did not even mount a true defense when they arrived. Mostly, her acts were mere mischievous little things, when she could have rendered all six to cinders where they stood, or frozen them, or simply utilized brute force. Instead, she all but let them take the Elements." Now the idea was really picking up steam. It made more sense the more she thought about it. "In fact, we felt that she was rather bored and impatient with the goings-on. Perhaps the Nightmare had formulated a plan to smoothly integrate herself with thee and the governance in a more direct capacity?"
Celestia paused for a moment, then sighed and made to get back onto her hooves. Really, all she wanted to do was lie down on her bed, pull the covers over her head, and wait out the manure storm that was to come: however, as High Judge of Equestria- which was her actual capacity and placement in the government, as princess was simply a combination of title and honorific- it was her responsibility to ensure that the nation survived in the face of any crisis, including this one. Especially this one.
"Well," she said, her voice flat and her head bowed, "I suppose there is only one thing for it."
Celestia raised her head.
"We must bring back Nightmare Moon."
Author's Note
I don't know what's happening. This story idea put a gun to my head and forced me to write this my address is 123 help.
In all seriousness, I came up with this idea while reading about Trump in a newspaper in a KFC.
I'm serious.
Doubt me all you want, but that's what happened.
I really don't know at all.