Nobility and Royalty

Shining Armor smiled as Cadance cuddled into him on their lunchtime cloud, something that might end up being a little tradition between the three of them if this distance between Shining and his friends continued to expand. Up in the clouds, away from prying eyes, he didn’t feel nearly as much pressure for being with a princess as he did everywhere else. Nopony to judge him or make him feel guilty about getting two princesses instead of just the one.

Cadance let out a sigh. “Guess Sunset’s not going to make it for the end of lunch.”

“That really so bad?” he asked.

After a few more seconds, Cadance gave him a disgruntled moan. “It’s just...something tells me that moments with the three of us getting to be alone outside of the palace are going to be getting harder to come by as things continue on and-you know what?” she said as the conversation obviously veered left in a very hard way. “We should do something after school.”

Cadance’s words made Shining Armor jump a bit as they cut into the peacefulness of the moment. “Huh?” he asked before looking back down to her. “Um...like, do something as in b-bedroom stuff?”

A tiny giggle came from Cadance. “Not that silly,” she said before kissing Shining Armor on the nose. “Tonight is human night and Sunset’s still in her punishment phase. The first thing I need to do is help clear away all of that guilt she’s pushed back down inside of her. But when we’re done with that and she’s really let go of it rather than just ignore the problem, I think you coming in and giving her some positive experiences as a human with that nice new rod of yours would help her finally move past it all,” she said with a smile.

After some untangling of Cadance’s words, Shining Armor thought he had an idea of what Cadance was proposing, which was...erotically confusing. Because it sounded like Cadance was talking about having sex with Sunset when she was a naked ape. And as weird as it was, thinking back to the time he had seen Sunset like that...the idea had Shining Armor’s lower horn threatening to push out the more he thought about it.

It wasn’t that he found her that attractive, it was just...something about that memory he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around made him almost...giddy.

He also hoped the conversation veered off that particular path before they would need to do something about it. Because while his mind was a little confused, his body didn’t seem to have a problem getting ready. “Oh...kay?”

The sound of a teleporting pony put their conversation on hold. The next thing Shining knew, an amber blur zoomed up past them like a rocket before he looked up to see Sunset gliding her way down in an uneasy manner before another teleport brought her onto the cloud. She stumbled forward a bit, barely managing to stop herself from falling off the edge.

Sunset stood there for a moment, tensely staring off towards the South before she let out an annoyed snort and fell onto her belly, next to Shiny and Cadance. “Ooof. Sorry I’m late guys, Mom wanted to go for lunch and...well...stuff happened.” Then, she flipped around to completely pin Shining Armor to the cloud before pressing her body against his and nuzzling his chest. “Mmmm, it’s been forever since I got to cuddle my...colt.”

There was a sudden drop in the pressure being applied by Sunset as she went limp. Cadance giggled from her place on the cloud beside them. “It’s only been a few hours, Sunset.”

To which, after looking down at herself with a thoughtful frown, the amber alicorn looked back to the pink princess to give a faux Canterlot upturn of her head. “Well it feels like forever, and when you’re a princess, that’s what matters,” she said before looking back to Shining Armor with a thinking frown and tiny bit of hesitation in her eyes. “Mmmm...maybe later.” Then Sunset rolled off the unicorn and looked over to the two other ponies sharing the cloud. “So, what’d I miss?”

Before Shining Armor could speak, Cadance answered. “Fleur told me Shiny’s old friends tried to start something this morning, then at lunch, they glared at us until we left from the corner of the room.”

The small amount of happiness Sunset had on her face since landing disappeared as her expression became a frown. “So, what you’re saying is, I should turn them into mice, then dangle them over a hungry cat.”

Even though he was pretty sure she was joking, Shining Armor frowned at her. “Sunset!”

“Shiny, when somepony tries to bully you, you crush them under your hoof,” the alicorn told him before brightening up. “Oh, what about if I-”

“No,” Shining Armor told her firmly.

Sunset tried talking again. “But I didn’t even say what-”

“Don’t care, don’t want you doing it,” he said with an absolute authority in his voice before she could finish. When it seemed Sunset finally gave up on arguing with him, Shining Armor took in a deep breath. “Look, I know that you want to help and you’re probably joking, but...I got to handle this one on my own. Okay?”

The amber alicorn looked at him with an unreadable expression before her eyes lit up in a way that screamed light-bulb. “Oh! This is one of those growing as a pony things!” Sunset exclaimed before she snuggled in closer and kissed Shining Armor on the cheek. “Say no more, Shiny. I’ll let you deal with those idiots.”

Cadance picked her head up and looked over to Sunset. “Am I missing something?”

“Hm? Oh, well...this is one of those stallion things,” Sunset replied as she looked back to Cadance. “So, we just need to stand to the side and let the boys go at it until Shiny shows them he’s got a bigger penis than the rest of them.”

With Sunset’s explanation making absolutely no sense, Shining Armor blinked. “Huh?”

However, Cadance seemed to get something from it. “Oh! I see now, it’s a territorial thing. Okay, yeah,” she said before resting her head back onto Shining Armor. “Don’t worry, Shiny. We’ll let you show them who’s in charge.”

Sunset cleared her throat. “No, we don’t let Shiny do anything. We’ll abide by his decision to handle this problem on his own, Cadance. By the way, uh...speaking of problems...I need to go see my Mom after school,” she said a little uneasily. “It’s uh...family thing. I know we were all supposed to go out to dinner, but...um…”

“Well...I think the two of you have gotten past the point where you needed me to keep the peace or cause a distraction so...oh, Sunset, can you freeze time real quick?” Cadance asked.

The question got an annoyed groan. “Cadance, you know I’m not really freezing time, I’m-”

“Sunset,” Cadance said before she could finish.

“Alright. Alright,” Sunset said before her horn lit up. Shining Armor was a little put off by how the alicorn next to him suddenly began producing more magic that all the unicorns in Canterlot combined, but experience let him keep a straight face as Sunset blasted a great stream of magic skyward that changed color as it reached its highest point and exploded in several directions to come down as a giant shield spell more complex than anything Shining Armor had ever seen produced by a non-alicorn. The purple dome that covered the top of the school’s roof a few moments later gave everything a slightly darker vibe. “Okay, so...now what?”

With the extra time and Cadance snuggled up to him, Shining could guess where this was going. “You want to have sex, right?” he asked.

Cadance’s lips met his in a light kiss. “Well, not yet,” she told him. “I want to discuss what you and I are going to do after school. If Sunset’s going to be with Celestia, then I think the two of us should be doing something. Like a date, but not romantic. A play date,” Cadance decided as she rolled around so they were belly to belly. Cadance’s forward barrel to Shining’s more rear-middle to be precise. Her end ended up spooning his a tiny bit. “We’ll eat out, too. But I want to do something you enjoy. Something nerdy. Something like a Card Wars game. But new, you know?”

With the offer given, Shining Armor ran through the list of nerdy things that he knew of before coming up with a little problem. “Uh, Cadance...have we ever done something you wanted?” he asked. “Let’s do something you want to, tonight. I...come to think of it, I don’t even know what you really like to do, besides exercise and stuff. What are your hobbies?”

Cadance blinked and pulled her head away from Shining Armor. “You mean besides whatching you and Sunset have sex and planning dates?”

Sunset frowned from her place beside them. “Cadance, I really don’t think we can count your voyeurism as a hobby.”

“I like getting ponies together. Back home, I liked using my talent to find matches. But that was also my job. It was everything that I really had,” Cadance explained as her face fell for a fraction of a second before it perked up and she looked directly at Shining Armor. “And I’m still doing that, I’m doing it with us. The three of us, I’m living my interests every moment of every day. But I’m doing so much more since I met the two of you, I’m growing so much more as I get to experience all these things I never even dreamed about before I met you and Sunset. I want to do something you like, because so far, I’ve liked it too. And I want to keep liking new things. I want to keep growing closer to everything you are.”

Shining Armor blinked at the pony laying on top of him and her impossibility. “You really don’t have any hobbies? None at all?”

A roll of the eyes and a sigh came from Cadance. “Oh please, I lived in a farming village. We didn’t have many choices for recreation outside of things like a knitting circle. I gossiped and I set ponies up on dates. That was it,” Cadance said before she became thoughtful for a moment. “Okay, I’ve become a lot more interested in sex since I came to Canterlot, thanks a lot to Sunset, but that’s still part of the relationship stuff.”

“What uh, does Sunset have to do with it?” he asked cautiously before glancing over to the amber alicorn. She looked equally confused and interested at the same time.

Cadance gave him a reassuring smile. “Nothing as far as attractiveness or anything like that, but…” She paused to think for several seconds before rolling over on top of him. “Okay, so you know how being close to Sunset has basically given me a pair of balls, proverbially speaking, I mean?”

The question made Shining Armor become aware of his own sperm production centers, pressed up against the bare skin of Cadance’s body. They felt a little...stifled. “Uh...yeah?”

“Well, because of that courage Sunset’s inspired in me, I’m exploring the physical desire part of our relationship in ways I never would have dreamed of before,” Cadance told him in an excited voice. “If you had gotten together with the old me, which is actually a distinct possibly after I saw how you were outside of the theater, still get wet just thinking about that by the way, I would have been boring as fuck.”

With the memories that brought to mind, Shining Armor had the decency to blush. “You’re not b-boring.”

Sunset frowned. “Cadance, you’re making it sound like I corrupted you.”

The comment made the pink princess look over to Sunset. “It’s called inspiring me!” Cadance snapped before she scooted around to sit up on her haunches and look down at the two of them. “Shiny, if you would have gotten together with me without Sunset, I probably would have just let you plow me once a week. And even then, I would have just laid there and taken it like a sack of grain or something. But now, we experiment and explore our carnal desires with reckless abandon!”

“Uh, I wouldn’t call that a good thing,” Sunset told her nervously.

Cadance glared down at the other alicorn. “Yes it is!” she insisted vehemently. It took a second to recover herself. “Okay, so I’ve gone a little sex crazy compared to when I wasn’t getting banged, but so what? And the two of you have no idea just how much I’m holding back. Sunset, the crazy inter-species stuff we’ve got planned for later tonight? That’s nothing compared to what I want us to do when we’re really comfortable with each other!”

Both of the ponies laying on their backs shared a nervous look. Unable to stop himself, Shining Armor recalled the multiple times Cadance pulled Sunset down to cover her face with the big alicorn’s rear end. “You mean like when you have Sunset, um...sit on you?”

“Right!” Cadance agreed happily before becoming wistful. “And like I said, that’s already tame compared to everything else we do, compared to everything else I want to do with the two of you! Just thinking about it makes me-squeeeee! I just can’t wait to try some of it out!”

Despite his common sense saying that he was approaching dangerous territory, Shining Armor gulped and soldered on. “Come on Cadance, just how freaky can you be?” he asked.

All of sudden, Shining Armor wished that he had decided to use a different set of words, because judging by the smile on Cadance’s face, she took that as a challenge. “Well, since you asked,” she said. “Tonight, I plan to turn Sunset into a naked ape, make her drink a potion that was cause her to lactate at a rate possible only with magic, then take a riding crop to her bare plot for several minutes before throwing her on the bed, and after putting on special leg covering clothing so I don’t hurt her, pin Sunset down as I slowly make my way up to those over-sized teats she has, then suckle them both until their dry before I move down and do the same to her reproductive area before I make her please me sexually with those fing-hers she has as a human while making sure she calls me High Princess Cadance every single time she address me or smack her on the plot if she doesn’t.”

“...okay, I’ll say it, that does sound kind of hot,” Sunset admitted. A second later, she blinked and frowned. “A uh, riding crop?”

Cadance shrugged. “Pretty sure I’m less likely to really hurt you with that than an ordinary paddle.”

A few seconds passed as Sunset looked down at her own barrel in thought. “Yeah. I can see that.”

Shining Armor...blinked. “...oh, that’s...um…” he said before deciding discretion was the better part of valor and promptly threw the whole conversation into a vault deeply hidden in the back of his mind where it would never see the light of day. “S-So! Tonight! You want to play Card Wars after school or s-something else?”

“Well,” Cadance said before she frowned in thought. “It’s not that I want to play anything, not yet, anyway. I wanna go...nerd shopping.”

The unfamiliar term made Shining Armor frown. “I don’t follow.”

Cadance dropped back onto Shining Armor and snuggled up to him some more. “Shiny, I want to go exploring in your world. I love playing O&O and while Card Wars is fun, even if you did let me win, I know there’s got to be a million more things nerdy to do and I want to experience them all. Or at least another one.”

“Oh...that’s...um, okay,” Shining Armor said, unsure how to process the beautiful pony on top of him not screaming ‘ew’ at the things that usually made mares run away from ponies like him in droves. Although, it did make him a little worried as to what he could introduce her to.

He had a hesitant idea. Maybe a board game?

But, board games were for...normies. The type of ponies that were mainstream. Ponies that didn’t fully put themselves in the mindset of what it meant to actually be the characters they were playing.

Did they even have board games in the village Cadance came from?

Come to think of it, he didn’t even know the name of the village Cadance was from.

Lips pressing up against the side of his face drew Shining Armor out of his thoughts and made him look over to Sunset before she also joined in on the cuddling. “So...sex now?” she asked.

“Mmmm, sounds good to me,” Cadance replied before looking back at the unicorn. “Unless, you have something you want to talk about, Shiny.”

Unable to think of anything to really talk about that couldn’t wait until after school, Shining Armor sighed. “Not really. Plus, it’ll be good to let my uh...ahem, male parts breathe. Getting a little stuffy down there.” He could feel himself getting pretty damp in his male area with Cadance’s body pressed up against his own and adding her body heat on top of his own.

Sunset giggled. “Shiny, you can say balls. You’re a...big...” Hesitation entered her voice again as she trailed off.

Cadance’s smile turned wicked. “Oh, my big strong Shiny, why do you think I did it?”

As Shining Armor’s eyes went wide, Sunset moved her lips closer. “Mmmm, don’t you want to just fill that silly little pink filly’s tight pussy up and pound her plot hard to punish her for being so dirty?”

“Or maybe you want to take your big, bouncy sunny buns and-”

“Uh, Cadance?” Sunset spoke up. “I’d um...rather watch the two of you go at it. No offense, but got some stuff on my mind right now.”

After giving Sunset a considering look, Cadance snuggled on top of Shining Armor, rubbing her fuzzy belly up against his hard penis. “You heard our mare, Shiny. Now, let’s give our big strong alicorn a show, and fill your little princess up all the way. Unless...you don’t feel up for it either.”

“Oh, I’m up for it,” Shining Armor told her uneasily. “It's just, uh…clouds are kind of...an odd place to be banging each other, you know?”

A bright smile crossed Sunset’s face as her horn lit up. “Okay Shiny, I can fix that easy!” she said before the world disappeared in a flash a moment before the color returned and they found themselves in Sunset’s bedroom.

As he was still recovering from the vertigo caused by the teleportation, Cadance nipped his ear before whispering into it. “Now, you just sit up there on the bed, and let your royal mare take care of her big, strong, virile stallion.”

The rest of the school day passed by at a relaxed pace for Cadance. Not slow, but not the level of hecticness she hadn’t been able to adjust to since coming to Canterlot either. She didn't want to attribute it to what happened at lunch, but...it wasn't as if anything else major happened.

The young stallion's reluctance to plow them on the cloud was a little upsetting though, Cadance hoped it was just something like an unease with cloud walking spells. Another possibility, one she didn't like considering very much, was that she was starting to get a little too casual about sex. The only counter to which would be going back into 24/7 seduction mode, but Cadance didn’t know how Shining Armor would feel about that kind of stuff. Plus, Sunset would have to start it up again too. The mares in a 3 pony relationship needed to present a united front.

There was also Sunset’s sudden reluctance. That...was new, and Cadance would have to ask her about it tonight when they were alone. Then again, she is meeting with Celestia again today. Might just be her worrying over nothing.

She caught Shining Armor in the hall and galloped over to him. Deciding to show at least a little respect for the rules about PDA, Cadance restrained herself from outright kissing the colt and went with a little nuzzle. “Hey Shiny, you ready to go?” she asked before moving around to stand next to her stallion and putting a wing across his back.

The few of the older pegasi teachers that gave her an uneasy look, which made Cadance stand up a little straighter. She was proud of her feelings towards Shining Armor and after living with Sunset, Cadance knew that doing anything short of flying around Canterlot with a banner behind her proclaiming her love was simply cowardice. “Oh, and did you figure out what we’re doing?”

“Well,” he said in an uneasy tone. “I think we’ll just go to the game shop and pick up another tablet. And have a look around there to see if anything intrigues you. I know it’s not really anything special, but…”

Cadance rubbed a cheek up against her stallion. “It’s exactly what I asked for in the most forward way possible. Nice and honest,” she told him with several nods of approval. She understood that Shiny probably felt uneasy planning a date since she had been the one to schedule all of their group activities. But if he was ever going to get past the unease that permeated several of their interactions, then Shining Armor needed to be some confidence in his decision making abilities. “And where’re we going to eat when we’re done?”

A tiny blush formed on the stallion’s cheeks. “Uh, about that. Since you’re still new to Canterlot, I’m pretty sure you haven’t heard about it, but there’s this one street that’s supposed to have the best places to eat in town. I was thinking we could go there and you could pick.”

After making a show of thinking about it for a few seconds, Cadance smiled at Shiny. “That’s so considerate of you!” she exclaimed before the memory of an earlier date came to mind. “So, it’s on the same street as the one place Sunset took us?”

Shining Armor blinked in confusion. “You mean the Golden Truffle?” he asked before taking another second to become thoughtful. “Actually, it’s nowhere near that place at all. That place was made for diplomats. The stuff on Restaurant Row is pure pony cuisine.”

“Sounds good then,” Cadance replied before leaning into her coltfriend as he led them outside. She had to fight the urge to try and just sink into Shining Armor’s presence. It was foalish, but just being around him made her feel wonderful. If Sunset hadn’t brought them back into the normal flow of time once they were done with Shiny’s lower horn, Cadance would have been happy to spend the rest of her life in a comfortable bed with her mare and stallion.

Once they passed the doors, Cadance blinked at the oddity that waited for them down on the street. While she had seen plenty of carriages in Canterlot since coming to town and even ridden in a few, finding one just standing in the middle of the road was unexpected. Especially since the lack of a sun emblem on the side of the carriage meant it wasn’t from the palace.

She wasn’t the only pony who found the presence of the carriage puzzling. Several of the students had stopped and were looking confused at the unexpected sign of a noble’s conveyance. Then Cadance’s ears picked up the sound of hooves coming up behind her, closer than most other ponies would dare, before a familiar voice groaned. “Oh no, what’s Fancy doing here?”

Cadance looked back to see Fleur standing there with a pained look on her face a second before Sassy came trotting out. The other young mare’s expression turned to a frown. “Ugh. What’s he doing here?” she grumbled at a volume a pony without pegasus hearing probably didn’t have a prayer of catching.

Not a moment later, the door to the carriage opened and the white unicorn stepped out. Dressed in the most expensive clothes, Fancy Pants made most of the young mares that had gathered around the school’s courtyard swoon, regardless of the proximity they had to their own stallions as the driver of the carriage leaped down to shoo them aside for Fancy to come up to the stairs.

The sight was a disturbing one for Cadance. Several days of being with Sunset in the palace had allowed the pink princess to see a good bit of Equestria through Sunset’s eyes, especially how the amber alicorn thought of the nobility. Thanks to that, she couldn’t stop herself from imagining some kind of invisible bubble around Fancy made by his servant that kept him from behind ‘contaminated’ by the commoners. Cadance knew it was wrong of her to think in such a way, especially since Fancy Pants hadn’t really done anything wrong aside from worry Sassy and possibly upset Fleur about some mysterious thing. But Cadance’s time with Sunset made her follow the alpha mare’s lead.

As etiquette dictated, he stopped one step from behind on equal level with Cadance and bowed his head; the proper greeting for a minor royal. “Ah, Princess Cadance, you are looking as radiant as ever. I am honored just to be in your presence.”

The minor tug of irritation in the back of Cadance’s mind made the young mare want to give him a remark that would have turned the compliment into an insult, which would have probably turned the colt into an incoherent mess as he tried to keep from collapsing, was pushed aside. She needed to handle things with this stallion cordially until Fleur decided to ditch him. “Fancy Pants.”

Fancy Pants moved towards Fleur, who retreated a step before he got to her. “There you are, my dear. I brought the carriage to take us to the house. I’m sure my parents will be ever so pleased to hear about your day.”

Fleur sunk in on herself a little. “Oh, you didn't tell me we’re going to see your-”

The hesitation in Fleur's words made Cadance step forward on instinct more than anything else. “Oh dear, I’m sorry, Fancy. But I’ve already made plans to do some things with Fleur today. I’m afraid your parents will have to wait for another time.” It was rude, not to mention a total abuse of her social standing, but seeing Fleur standing there, unable to even put on a fake smile, Cadance hadn't been able to simply let him take her off where she didn’t want to go. “If I had known you and she had made plans, I wouldn't have included her in mine.”

The older pony blinked. “Oh…” Fancy stood there for several seconds before finally nodding. “Yes, well I suppose it can't be helped then. Perhaps next time.”

After the blue-maned stallion took his leave, Fleur turned to look over at Cadance. “Ummm, we have plans, Princess?”

Cadance stiffened. Crap! She had wanted to stay out of things with Fleur until the mare came to her for help. Interfering ahead of time, before Fleur was ready to cut ties, had a very good chance of dragging things out.

Quickly recovering, Cadance gave Fleur a nervous smile. “Oh, well...uh,” she managed.

“Well, we could take Sassy and Fleur to the game shop too,” Shining Armor spoke up before becoming thoughtful. “The faster they get introduced to O&O, the more time they have to look through the rules and learn them.”

Sassy quickly trotted into the conversation. “Right! That game...thing,” she said before looking to Fleur. “And we still need dresses if we’re going to Shining’s party. We can go shopping for those tomorrow. Something I can use as a base and alter a bit to make them worthy of a noble’s house. Of course, that means I would need you for the rest of the week…”

Which meant all of her time would be taken up by ponies other than Fancy. Cadance could see what Sassy was doing and felt conflicted. All the blue unicorn would be able to accomplish was delay the inevitable choice Fleur would have to make. But, seeing Fleur together with Fancy didn’t sit well with Cadance either.

Fancy wasn’t a bad pony. He just seemed much too aloof and...snooty? Like he just expected Fleur to fall in line with what he wanted while not really caring about her desires. It wasn’t really a good relationship, which made the part of Cadance’s brain that protested such things grab a bullhorn and start shouting in her ear.But if she just galloped in now to declare their agreements over and done, what happened the next time she spotted a bad relationship? Would she spend the rest of her life roaming Equestria, breaking up mismatched couples? That was hardly what she became an alicorn for.

I'm supposed to be bringing ponies together, not breaking them up, Cadance told herself.

How did this happen to me?

Even though she was grateful for the help, Fleur couldn’t stop herself from feeling shame over how far she had fallen. Fleur De Lis, the wingless princess of Canterlot Academy, the mare that could get any colt to do what she wanted and make him thank her as she took the bits from his wallet, reduced to something that was little more than a dog. Fancy Pants had appeared and Fleur had been ready to just meekly do as she was told.

Because...she had to. Their families had agreed on it, after all.

She looked up to the rest of their group as Princess Cadance and Shining Armor walked in front of her. Things had changed so much since meeting them. Although she was even more of a hanger on with Princess Cadance than she ever was with Upper Crust, Fleur had found herself to be much more free as well. And Shining Armor, he had gotten so...

Fleur squashed that thought before it could continue.

Shining Armor was her friend. Even if he had gotten hot in the past couple of days, not to mention rich, and politically powerful. Much more than Fancy Pants could ever hope to be.... well, all that didn’t mean anything. Even if Fleur could have rewound time, she knew that they wouldn’t have ever been more than friends.

Just like how she and Sassy were friends.

Only, without the sleepovers, heated or otherwise.

No matter how... attractive Shining was getting.

Not to mention rich and… Fleur felt her mind stumble at that thought. Her growing sense of moral decency reared up to plant a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach while her head went on to also point a horn at the fact that Shining Armor also outranked Fancy Pants on the social scale.

Oh buck, I really am pathetic, Fleur told herself as she tried to keep herself from continuing down the train of thought that kept trying to pull her back onto it.

“Something wrong?”

The question coming from behind her made a jolt of electricity run through Fleur’s body. She turned to face the speaker, the mental image of an angry amber alicorn towering over her that could somehow peer into Fleur’s mind was shattered by the reality of Sassy’s concerned face.

“Oh!” the pink-maned unicorn exclaimed before calming down a little. “Sassy! You um…just...startled me, that’s all!”

The blue unicorn raised an eyebrow. “I’m quite sure me asking you a question isn’t why we’re falling so far behind the love birds over there even before I asked it,” Sassy said as she pointed to the couple trotting ahead of them as Cadance, with a wing across Shiny’s back, looked like she was trying to just melt into her coltfriend.

“I was just…” Fleur said as she tried to think up an excuse.

“Falling deeper into a pit of endless black as you consider your future married to a pony that sees you as nothing more than an attractive foal factory?” Sassy asked evenly.

Fleur grit her teeth. For a moment, she thought about denying it, but Sassy had been there to see everything with Fancy a few minutes prior. “I’m not...I knew what I was getting into from day one, Sassy,” she said before the memory of Fancy looking down on her played out in her head again. “It’s just...he just…”

Instead of waiting for Fleur to find the right words to describe how being humiliated in front of everypony as she was told to come along like a dog made her feel, Sassy looked over to the ponies in front of them. “Well, it’s not as if you know where some very powerful and rich ponies that could easily solve this problem for you are. Oh wait, there’s some right now!”

As soon as Sassy took a single step, a confused panic ran through Fleur’s mind. “No stop!” she said before grabbing her friend’s ear in an aura of magic.

“Ow! Wha-Fleur! What?” she asked before shaking off the spell.

“You can’t tell Cadance!” Fleur begged.

Sassy blinked a second before her face was twisted into a mass of confusion. “Say what?” she asked. “And why is it that we can’t do the perfectly reasonable thing to get you out of some stupid betrothal agreement that is now not only completely unnecessary, but also unwanted?”

Confused thoughts flowed through Fleur’s mind in a chaotic mess. Why didn’t she want to tell Princess Cadance about her problems with Fancy? That had been her idea just yesterday! To ask Cadance for a little assistance.

Only, it wasn’t going to be asking for a little assist. After what Cadance had just seen, she would know the truth and anything Fleur asked of her would be like running to Cadance and...begging for help.

And that was why she couldn’t do it.

She was Fleur De Lis, the uncrowned Princess of Canterlot Academy!

The only ponies she needed to save her were the ones she strung along to use for that purpose before she cut them loose! She had been going out with Fancy since the Fall Formal and even after coming to the conclusion that she wanted more than just some money out of a relationship, she hadn’t broken it off by running to the Princesses because if she did, Fleur wouldn't be herself anymore!

Instead, she would be nothing but a pathetic filly who couldn’t do anything on her own at all. She was nearly an adult, which meant she either had to honor her agreements or find her own way out of them. “Because...I can take care of things myself, Sassy,” Fleur assured her.

“Yes,” Sassy agreed, at least before she pointed at the pink alicorn who had stopped at the shop in front of them. “By going to the Princess that’s supposed to take care of problems like yours and have her help you!”

Since it seemed Sassy just didn't get it, Fleur had to hold back a sigh. “No Sassy, I can’t. I…I’ll handle this...on my own.”

The other mare’s breathing slowed down as she took in several measured breaths. “Okay, you’re my friend. I respect your decisions,” she said before stepping up into Fleur's face. “But if you just flounder around like a fish out of water instead of doing anything on your own, I will go running back to the princesses and tell them something that will make them get involved, understand?”

Sunset appeared in Celestia’s secluded garden on the opposite side of the mountain from Canterlot with a bang. The arrival of the filly didn’t help settle the butterflies that had been rampaging throughout Celestia’s stomach for the past hour. She had thought calling the day early would give her time to calm down and focus on the task at hoof. But, it didn’t. The long wait had given her mind plenty of time to fester on her fears and only hundreds of years in court let her keep the unease hidden.

“Hello, Sunset. I brought your favorite,” she said as her filly trotted over before levitating the tea set up to pour her a cup. Once Celestia had everything perfect, a worry flashed through her mind. “I hope your tastes haven’t changed too much since your time away.”

Which was another touchy subject that Celestia realized that she should have avoided at all cost. Burn it all, she told herself. Usually, it was everypony else that tried to avoid hurting Celestia’s feelings. Which made her wonder just how many of her little ponies stepped on eggshells when she was in the room without her even knowing.

But she also knew that Sunset’s tastes had changed, and substantially at that! Where her little filly had only wanted the most expensive treats prepared by the most skilled cooks just months ago, Celestia had seen her daughter’s pallet devolve into something that was satisfied by street vendors. It was just another harsh reminder of how hard her life in that other world must have been.

Sunset looked down at the tea with an uneasy expression that said she was wrestling with her own thoughts as she took the cup in her magic. “Actually, I never really thought this stuff was all that great. I just ordered it because it was hard to get and expensive,” she said before smacking her lips, like she was trying to taste something. “And I’m still getting used to the differences between pony and human taste buds.”

Although Celestia could tell Sunset was upset by her reasons for choosing the tea, they needed to focus on other things to talk about. No dwelling on the negative. Take a bigger interest in your daughter’s thoughts and feelings. “You mentioned that before, but don’t talk about it very much. How many things are you having to adjust to?” If the reason for her change in the quality of food she liked was because of something biological rather than situational, there was a chance Celestia didn’t have to keep kicking herself...as hard.

Sunset looked down at the tea as she became thoughtful. Seconds passed, which slowly became a minute as Celestia became worried she had made another critical error. “I’m sorry, you probably don't want to even think about such things,” she said as she lowered the pot back to the tray. “I can’t even do something like this right, it seems.”

Or ever, really, since it seemed she had always been feeding her daughter bad tea.

“What?” Sunset blurted out as she pulled her teacup towards herself. “No! Mom, this is fine. I was just thinking and it’s a pretty long list.” She paused for a moment and gave Celestia a careful look. “Are you okay?”

Right as the question was asked, Celestia felt the metaphorical weight begin to weigh her down. “I’m…” She stopped. When anypony ever asked that question, she always lied or just downplayed her problems. But if she tried that with Sunset, Celestia knew it wouldn’t end well. So, she hung her head and sighed. “To be honest, I’m frightened. I don’t want to mess this up.”

Sunset looked back down at her tea. “Yeah, I can see why you would be worried. I seem to blow up at nearly everything these days.”

“You’ve gotten much better about that, actually,” Celestia complemented before realizing one of the reasons why. “Not that I can blame you for being so on edge when you first came back. The life you have lived for so long was gone and you had a whole new body to get used to again. I...could have been more accommodating after reading my journal and finding out, well...the last few years of your life weren’t some magical delusion like I had originally hoped.”

Which had been another mishandling of the situation. Celestia hadn’t wanted to think what she was reading was real, or that Sunset had accepted her explanation about everything she experienced on Earth being a magical delusion, or...anything other than the reality of the situation. She had just wanted to toss the whole thing aside with Sunset able to go on with her life.

She didn’t want to think of herself as such a failure.

The attempt to help relieve Sunset of some of her guilt for more recent actions was met by a shake of the amber alicorn's head. “No, I am the one who did all the exploding. Being emotional is no excuse for all the damage I caused.”

Celestia leaned in towards her daughter. “No, Sunset I…” Before she could explain why everything that had happened between them was all her fault, the big white alicorn froze. “We’re doing it again, aren’t we? Playing the blame game and just chasing our tails.”

“Uh, well-”

Before Sunset could agree, or do something worse like just keep going, Celestia decided to try and forge ahead to some other subject. “Let’s try and talk about what I tried to start a conversation over before we got into this spiral. Tell me, what was the biggest thing you had to readjust to, once you were a pony again. And don’t say wings, you didn’t have them the first time.”

Sunset paused for a moment before drawing in on herself a little. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

Celestia took a moment to consider the question. “No,” she finally said as she kept a straight face while Sunset's expression became annoyed. Before things could fall apart, she quickly added, “but I will promise not to mention it in company, or even to Cadance, if that's what you want.”

Seemingly taking that as good enough, Sunset took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It's my vagina,” she said with some difficulty, as if she expected something horrible to happen if she admitted it. “I’d talk to Cadance about it, but well... it’s Cadance. Just saying the word gets her wet.”

“...I see,” Celestia replied as she thought of how to probe deeper into the subject of Sunset’s sex.

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “That’s it? I was expecting at least a giggle.”

“I didn’t say I would laugh,” Celestia told her as she kept her face smooth before she took a moment to breathe. “So, I take it this is going to involve some talk about sex?” Some of the books on dealing with foals she had read after Sunset arrived covered things like that. Although...with Sunset being as experienced as she was on the subject, Celestia didn’t think a speech about birds, bees, and being careful in heat would do much more than annoy her.

A tiny smirk appeared on Sunset’s lips. “Hey, there's more stuff that goes on back there than just that! I still miss having underwear, sometimes. And going to the bathroom is different. After my first day, I'm still holding my tail out of my way because I'm afraid I might pee on it.” Then, she became a little hesitant. “And um...it uh...feels different.”

Celestia cocked her head. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“My pussy feels a lot duller as a pony than it did as a human!” Sunset got out in a rush. “I mean-okay, I enjoy the sex stuff more with Shiny than I did with any of the stupid apes that stuck their dicks in me, but it still feels so different! And I don’t know if it’s because there’s something wrong with me now or if it’s just a species thing!”

As the slight panic ran its course, Celestia opened her mouth to tell Sunset that she wished she could tell her daughter that she had nothing to worry about, but she couldn’t. She had never actually been a human, so she didn’t have any experience to draw from.

Although, there was a way to remedy that…

“Say, Sunset you still have the human species parameters saved in your transformation spell, right?”

The nerd shop was just like Shining Armor expected it to be: completely empty.

The new hot mares walked into the store and looked around with expressions of curiosity as they went from self to shelf as they perused some of the board games and deck builders before looking through the O&O manuals. Cadance did too, but her wanderings had more of a purpose to them. She went to the comics, passed the cards, then after giving the board games a once-over, she came to a collection of small figurines. “Oh! How cute!” she said before looking to the young stallion trotting after her. “Shiny, what’s with all of these little er...action figures.”

Shining Armor frowned a little at hearing the default name most mares galloped to when trying to describe collectible figurines and trotted up to see what Cadance had found. When he saw what she was looking at in one of the display cases, Shining Armor frowned a little. “Oh, that’s Warhorse 40K.”

Hearing the disinterest in his voice made Cadance’s ears tilt back in apprehension. “Is it not any good?” she asked as the jingle of the bell above the door rang out.

“I wouldn’t know,” Shining Armor replied. “Warhorse 40k is one of those games that takes a lot of bits to play since you need to buy a lot of the figures, landscapes, books, intractable enchantment interface and-” Before he could finish, Cadance had zoomed over to the counter to slam her hooves down in front of the comic book pony. “I want to buy all of your Warhorse 40K merchandise and other paraphernalia!”

“YOU CAN'T DO THAT!”

Shining Armor’s ears perked up at the familiar voice, and he looked over to the door to see his new tormentors. Although, unlike with Buck, Shining Armor didn’t experience an overwhelming feeling of dread at their appearance. Rather, an intense weight settled on his back, coupled with the desire to be somewhere else. “Hello Gaffer,” Shining Armor said in an annoyed, yet tired tone.

He really wished his old friends would hurry up and get over whatever had crawled up inside their plots. Confrontation really wasn’t Shining Armor’s thing. But if they kept going like this, he knew he would be learning less towards the ‘get over it’ side of things and more towards the ‘buck off and never talk to me again’ side. It wasn’t like he had done anything wrong after all.

Flanked by the other two ponies Shining Armor used to play O&O with, the pony that Shining Armor probably would have called his best friend a few weeks ago trotted into the spacious room with a frown on his face. “It’s bad enough you’re bringing girls into the sacred ground that is O&O, but Warhorse is only for the truly devout, not some...casuals like the ponies you’re hanging out with now,” said, spitting out the most vile word in the gamers language in obvious reference to the princess standing next to him.

Pointdexter looked over to the young mares flipping through the O&O players guide. “Uh, what are you girls doing here?” he asked after a moment.

Seemingly annoyed by the question, Fleur put on an expression that Shining had remembered her wearing before he joined the cool kids. It was the one that made it seem as if she was looking down her nose at another pony, even when the stallion was just as tall as her. “We are discussing which class would be best to play as,” she said before using her magic to snag a flashy cape and rather large hat with a green feather in it from a conveniently placed rack of elaborate costumes meant for playacting to wrap herself up in. “And I will play a bard! A traveling troubadour of great renown for her skill at the flute and extreme acting ability!”

“...I’m still considering what I want to be,” Sassy added after a moment of looking at Fleur in cosplay.

After a few twitches in his lower right eye, Gaffer let out an exacerbated yell. “Gaaaaah!” he screamed before pointing a hoof at the two tall unicorns. “You two can’t play O&O! You...you’re...girls!”

“Um,” Cadance said before she turned away from the store owner and trotted towards Gabbard. “So am I, and I seem to remember me, Sunset and Twily playing O&O with the lot of you not that long ago.” A rather smug expression appeared on the Princess’s face and she raised her head just a bit. “In fact, I remember a certain mare defeating your super monster with one kick.”

If anything, Cadance’s smug declaration of Sunset’s feat only seemed to make Gabbard more livid. “That just proves my point. Mares have no place in the realm of stallions! O&O and nerd stuff should be for guys only! When mares show up, you ruin it.”

Despite not being a weather pony, or even possessing wings, Shining Armor felt a distinct change in the air of the room as Cadance looked back over to Gabbard. Gone was the merriment of moments past and in the depths of Cadance’s eyes dwelt something that sent a shiver down Shining Armor’s spine as the pink pony glared at the nerd in front of her. “Run that by me again, please?” Cadance said in a way that in no possible way could be construed as a question, but a royal decree. “Because it sounded like you just said I shouldn’t be allowed to indulge in my special sompony’s recreational activities!”

“Because that’s precisely what I just said! Mares have no place in things like O&O and especially in games like Warhorse!” Gaffer declared, not only repeating his previous statement, but actually upping the ante. Behind the stallion, both of his backup ponies quickly did just what their positions implied and backed up.

Before whatever doom Cadance was planning to unleash could be let loose, Shining Armor leaned into the mare. “Uh, Cady...sweetie,” he said, trying to up the closeness between them to hopefully draw the pink pony away from the precipice she was standing on. “Maybe we should just make our purchases and go.”

Cadance slowly turned her head to look at the young stallion, then wrapped a wing over his back so tightly he couldn’t stop her from carrying him back with her for a little side conversation. “Shiny, shnookums, snuggle bunny,” she said after a moment. “While I would normally do anything you want at the drop of a hat, this is the one, or rather, one of the super rare times that I’m afraid I have to ignore your concerns. So, please just give me a moment to put this pony in his proper place, okay?”

“Ca-” was all Shining Armor could say before Cadance zoomed back over to Gaffer and put on her dark aura of authority.

“Okay...Gaffer, a name I am only using because I can’t think of an insult that wouldn’t reflect badly on my Shiny since you both share the same interests,” she quickly added before becoming deathly serious again. “Since you think that mares have no place in this entertainment niche, I’ll play you in a game of Warhorse 40k just to prove you wrong.”

The unicorn was quick to find an opening to interject his terms. “Okay, and if I win-”

“I’m not going to so something stupid, like say I’ll stop playing with or break up with Shiny over any bet,” Cadance quickly told him evenly.

After a second of thought Gaffer nodded. “Okay then, if I win, then you and Shining Armor will have to leave the real role play to the true enthusiasts and stick to playing,” he said before pausing, his demeanor taking on its own dark tint before revealing the last part of his dastardly wager. “Board games!”

Everypony in the shop except Cadance gasped in horror at the condition. Even Fleur and Sassy appeared to know the absolute mediocracy such travesties were. Only the most basic of players, with the odd criminally insane pony thrown in every now and then, would play such games for any length of time.

“And when I win, you will eat your words,” Cadance told him.

Gaffer and his friends looked confused at the demand, but shook in agreement on the wager. Once that was done, Cadance turned towards the shopkeep. “Oh, Comic Book Guy.”

The tubby stallion cleared his throat. “Actually Princess, my name is-”

“IF YOU TRY AND PULL ANY OF THAT SUPER NERD ‘actually the real fact of the matter is’ PLOP, I WILL USE MY AUTHORITY AS PRINCESS TO LEGALLY CHANGE YOUR NAME TO COMIC BOOK GUY!” the irritated pink princess told the stallion in a booming voice before he could get another word out. Then, she cleared her throat and regained her royal demeanor. “Ahem! Now, I’ll take all of the Warhorse stuff you have.”

As most of the other ponies in the room were silent and the girls went on about their business, Poindexter looked over to the head stallion of their group. “Gaffer, did you consider the fact that you’re challenging a pony with unlimited money to a game that favors ponies with deep pockets, while you only have the starter set for a single army?”

“Uh...I...have a plan?”

Seeing his old friends nervously back out of the store while Cadance quite literally prepared for war, Shining Armor wondered what Sunset was up to with Princess Celestia. It couldn’t possibly be weirder than what he was going through.

“HOW HAVE I BEEN ABLE TO LIVE WITHOUT THESE THINGS?”

Sunset did her best to look in any direction other than the one Celestia was in as she heard the human with the freakishly long horn continue to crawl around on the garden floor with her hands and knees, feeling the grass beneath her as she amazed herself with the much better tactile responses of human fingers after having nothing but hooves to feel with for over a thousand years. It probably would have been a nice sight to see, if Sunset’s mother wasn’t butt naked and completely uncaring about the display she was putting on.

And the impossible hotness of Celestia’s body made it a very sexual display. While the naturally human Celestia from Earth had long legs and a slender figure that would probably send human males to the showers to take care of some plumbing problems, the equine Celestia in human form put her to shame. The enormous woman stood seven feet tall with legs that were even longer than the other Celestia and enough meat on them to consider the things pillars. Which she needed to support the rest of her body since it came with extra deluxe padding in the back and breasts that were almost as big as Sunset’s pony head. In short, for some reason Sunset just couldn’t fathom beyond some strange side effect caused by her link to the sun, Princess Celestia was a sex bomb that teenagers could only fantasize about ever meeting, because the transformed pony’s proportions were absolutely impossible.

Which...made an odd sort of sense, because pony-Celestia was the same way.

“Sunset, this is amazing! They’re even more sensitive than a nose and-oh! Come here, let Momma feel her little filly-AH!”

The amber alicorn winced when her mother reached out with her new arms and discovered that humans on their hands and knees weren’t nearly as good at balancing things as ponies were when they reached out with their forehooves. Plus, Sunset thought as she looked at Celestia land on her boobs before her face hit the ground. She’s got those things. They have got to weigh twenty pounds each!

Sunset knew it was a gross overestimation on her part. But being a teenage girl for several years that could make the boys drool with relative ease and now finding out her mother put her to shame in every measurable category gave the easily irritable alicorn something to get on edge about.

“Okay...one second...this...I got this,” Celestia said as she picked herself back up, then rolled over onto her back and repositioned her arms like she was trying to crab-walk, and failing at it as she looked at Sunset with an upside down head. “Wait...this can’t be right.”

Caught between the urge to laugh at her mother’s fish out of water routine as she looked at Sunset upside down or just feel embarrassed by the whole thing, Sunset settled on wrapping the woman in her own magic to sit her upright, then gave her a bit of extra support by conjuring a bra around Celestia’s ample chest. “How’s that?”

“My, this is much better,” the human-corn said as she reached up to feel her newly acquired top and test the support it provided. “What ever do humans use these things for?”

Feeling somewhat embarrassed by the question, Sunset slunk in on herself a bit before she answered. “Those are their teats.” Hadn’t I already explained all of this to her? she asked herself. Or had it just been Cadance, Sunset couldn’t remember. “When they have foals, humans-”

“I know what teats are, Sunset,” Celestia assured the other pony before she looked down at her breasts. “Strange that they’re this big.” After a few seconds of curiously staring at her chest, she worked her left breast out of the bra and gave it a little squeeze for some reason, then moved her head down towards the nipple and-“MOM!” Sunset shouted in embarrassment, stopping the woman.

Celestia looked back up at her adopted daughter. “Yes?”

Not even caring about the rudeness of her own actions, Sunset wrapped Celestia in her magic and forced her mother to release her own body, then trotted closer as she stuffed Celestia’s boobs back in her bra before undoing the magic. “Don’t do stuff like that in front of-no, don’t do stuff like that, period!”

After giving her daughter a cautious look, Celestia let out a long sigh, “Sorry.”

Sunset took in a deep breath...and felt her whole body shiver when her nose picked up the most alluring scent. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced before, a musky mix of earthy aromas that made her whole body both tingle with anticipation and relax at the same time. Almost in a trance, Sunset took another whiff as she moved closer to the source of the smell...to put her muzzle directly on her mother’s chest as she inhaled.

“Uh...Sunset?” a voice spoke before she felt someone the side of her head.

For the briefest of moments, Sunset didn’t care about the touch and was about to inhale more of the mind boggling perfume, then she remembered where she was and jerked away before taking a few steps backwards. “That was-I just...um...one second!” she quickly said before spinning around to look away from her mother and hopefully get some fresh air.

Holy shit, is THAT what humans smell like to ponies? Sunset asked herself as she shook her head quickly and blew as much air out of her nostrils as she could to get rid of the remnants that filled her nose. If her own human body gave off something like she had just experienced, it was a wonder how Cadance hadn’t been humping her within seconds of seeing her transform.

And if a human ever made it to Equestria, every single pony would be seeking to get him in bed.

Once she had gotten hold of herself, Sunset turned around. “Okay Maaaaa...” ...and went completely stiff when she saw what her mother was doing.

Celestia looked up from her crotch, but kept both of her hands down there as she looked back up at her daughter. “Yes, Sunset?”

“It...you...that...STOP TOUCHING YOURSELF!”

Cadance found herself less than blissfully happy as she made her way down the street with her stallion and two best friends. Which was a good thing. If she kept things somewhere between eighty-five to ninety percent happy, Shiny would have a good time, but think that it could be better if the mare they were missing was a part of the party.

Of course, she did have to take care of what might be a growing relationship problem that had been nagging Cadance since they left the store. “Okay...um...I overstepped my bounds back there, didn’t I?” she asked her coltfriend hesitantly as they walked down the street with their friends behind them, Fleur keeping Sassy from running into anypony as the blue mare read from her O&O instruction book.

The only solace Cadance could take from it all was that she hadn’t just turned around and done the exact thing she and Sunset promised not to do. She came close, but there was a difference between letting Shining Armor sort his friends out, if they could still be called that at this point, and Cadance doing it for him. This was about her showing both Shiny and herself that she could thrive in the niche community that he enjoyed.

Shining Armor raised an eyebrow. “You mean when you bet any chance of the two of us doing anything nerdy together on the outcome of a miniatures game without a single word from me?” he asked. “Yeah, I think that was over the line.”

The assessment made Cadance moan pathetically. “I’m sorry!” she apologized. “It’s just...those three show up and they get all indignant. And over what? That ponies actually like you now? It’s insane! Whatever happened to being happy for your friends?”

“I just wish they would hurry up and get over it,” he said in response. “No offense, but the six-to-one ratio of our group makes it pretty heavy on the estrogen.”

Sassy looked up from the rulebook she had her muzzle in. “I hate to say this Shining, but that’s probably not going to happen.” The other three ponies turned their heads to face the blue unicorn, prompting her to go on. “From what I’ve seen, it’s the same thing Fleur and I had going with Upper Crust.”

The extremely bad comparison stopped Cadance in her tracks and made her look back at the other pony to make sure Sassy hadn’t sprung a leak in her head. “Sassy, Shiny is nothing like Upper Crust.”

“Really? You mean he didn’t consider himself part of a group that was different than everypony else and special in their own particular way?” she asked with an honest curiosity that kept Cadance from getting angry at the obvious and general question that could have fit anypony’s social circle long enough for her to go on. “Then, some new ponies show up and come into their group. Not exactly taking it over, but let’s be honest, we could all tell who was calling the shots before you and Sunset showed up. Now, Gaffer’s little gang doesn’t really belong to Gaffer anymore, and the things that made him unique are being done by ponies he probably looked down on much in the way Upper Crust looked down on anypony that passed her in the street.”

Fleur snorted. “I just think they’re jealous.”

“Well, that too,” Sassy agreed before looking back at Cadance. “There was a reason it was just me, Crusty and Fleur in our little social circle and it didn’t have anything to do with the exclusivity. It was because she had a hold on us and didn’t want to risk losing control of the reins.”

Shining Armor made a sound of protest. “Come on guys, it’s not like that. They’re just…”

When her coltfriend couldn’t come up with anything, Cadance stepped in close and nuzzled him. It was sweet that he didn’t want to think anything bad about his friends. “Okay, girls, enough of those kinds of conversations,” she told them. If the two of them were allowed to keep going, Gaffer and his cronies would be turned into foal-eating nightmare cultists by the end of the day. “Now, let me see…”

Cadance looked around the street that was lined with restaurants that hung signs of three hooves above the entryway. Aside from the different names spelled out in elegant script, there seemed to be no difference between them at all. Even the interiors were almost mirrors of one another, with the only difference being the color of the wallpaper. Did Celestia complement one of these places on its decor and it just spread like the plague or something? Cadance wondered before picking one with a bit of pink in it.

Unfortunately, the hostess made a big deal of seating a mare with both wings and a horn, making Cadance feel a little self-conscious. She had been at the school long enough for her presence to be normal, but it looked like the rest of Canterlot still thought a princess that hadn’t done anything since getting her crown aside from some basic removal of academic corruption was still worth bending over backwards for. Then they were given the menus, and things just got worse.

“Buttons and bobbins, are these the names of the dishes, or the instructions they use to cook them?” Sassy asked, making Cadance look up when she was only halfway through the description of something called a tofu square with a crown of grated celery and some kind of sauce. “Um, we aren’t actually going to cook these things ourselves, right?”

“I don’t think these are menus, I don’t see any prices,” Shining Armor commented.

“You’d think they would have a picture or two so we could see what we’re ordering,” Fleur mumbled.

After another ten minutes of reading through the menu, the group finally ordered and did their best to make smalltalk while they waited for their orders. Sassy had a dozen questions about the O&O game in regards to rules and half a dozen about the experience that was the simulation. Most of them were answered by Shiny, but Cadance ended up having to take the last one.

“Well, I’ve never done anything like it in real life, so I can’t tell you how authentic the combat is, but I didn’t find it frightening,” the pink princess explained. “There’s some sort of...how did Sunset put it? Altered perception, that’s it! Things slow down so you can think normally and you don’t really get hurt in fights. It’s like somepony touches you and you know they’re touching you, but it doesn’t hurt. I’m sorry, I’ve only experienced it once myself.”

Sassy nodded. “I see...I think,” she added after a few seconds. “To be honest, it’s a little unnerving. The idea of designing the wardrobe for my ah...character, is it? That part sounds exciting, but I’m not really an adventurous pony.”

Which earned her a little snort from Fleur. “That’s kind of the point, Sassy. Come on, take a trip outside of your comfort zone. I’m sure Shining Armor will keep us fair damsels from being harmed, right Shiny?”

“Unless Sunset just powers through everything again. She kind of does that,” he said before frowning down at himself. “Come to think of it, O&O is probably going to be more like her real life than anything going on in school.”

For a brief second, a warning started to sound in Cadance’s mind as she watched Shiny and Fleur have some back and forth. But that quickly ended when the waiter arrived with their orders. The unicorn brought out four covered saucers and made a show of opening them up before putting the four little dishes they were covering onto the table.

Each one of the group looked down at their respective...well...Cadance didn’t know what to call the dish sitting on the plates in front of each of them. It wasn’t a meal. It wasn’t even an appetizer! “Um…” she managed to say while trying to think what went wrong.

“I think they forgot mine,” Shiny muttered.

“No wonder there weren’t any calories listed. I don’t think this thing has any,” Sassy said to herself.

Fleur looked up from her plate. “We ordered food, didn’t we?” she asked. “I distinctly remember ordering food.”

Inspiration as to the explanation for what was going on finally Struck Cadance. “Oh! I know what this is,” she said happily. “Sunset told me that during long banquets and multi-course meals, they give you little bits of food to cleanse your pallet or help the digestive process. This must be a little gimmick the restaurant uses to imitate that.”

The sensible explanation as to why they were given enough food to barely fill a gerbil’s stomach realized, the ponies of the group ate the little bites of food that all tasted like gray mush, then got back to talking while they waited for their actual meal to arrive.

Two hours later, hungry and feeling cheated, they went to a Burger Princess.

After taking a sip of her tea, Celestia looked back to Sunset. With her daughter so uncomfortable about Celestia’s human body, the white pony had reluctantly undone the spell and the two of them had gone back to drinking tea. After a few minutes, with Sunset’s breathing slowing down, Celestia felt it was safe to talk again. “So, how are things going with Shining Armor?” Then, her eyes widened a bit and she held up a hoof. “I’m not asking about what the two of you do in bed! Just...general things.”

“Well…” Sunset thought for a second before she started talking. “Things are going well enough, I guess. But…” There was another long pause before she continued, her tone more worried than before. “Okay, there are some things that have been cropping up in my mind recently. And I try to tell myself they don’t matter, but...ah...the feeling that I’m getting just doesn’t go away no matter how much I tell myself nothing’s wrong.”

“Things like?” Celestia urged when Sunset didn’t continue. It was better than trying to have her talk about a nebulous feeling. Things were specific. Feelings weren’t.

“Okay so... it’s things like how Shiny’s old friends are mad at him because he’s better off than them now and I want to just pound their faces in but I can’t because he’s the one that needs to deal with it instead of me because he needs to learn how to take care of situations like this,” Sunset said in a rush that had Celestia fighting to keep up and reason things out. Something she might have been able to do if not for the rest of Sunset’s super fast explanation about what was bothering her. “Not to mention all the feelings of inadequacy that I am making Shiny feel because I’m some kind of freakish super alicorn that has to walk around inside of a kinetic dampening field to stop from causing earthquakes. Yeah, Cadance said he dealt with those, but I don’t see it! Before I came around, he wanted to be some kind of big hero that saved the princess, not follow her around like a beta male footstool! I want him to be the hero and be all dashing when he saves me. But I also like the idea of me being the big strong all-powerful princess that can do anything with a flick of her horn!”

As Sunset took a breath that didn't last nearly long enough, which was soon followed by another, Celestia did her best to try and piece together a response to help her daughter. “Well, wanting to fawn over your colt and see him succeed is normal for anyp-” she stopped when Sunset cringed before she could stop speaking, as if seeing her impending doom rushing towards her and she needed to brace for the end.

“And there’s that.”

Celestia put on a nervously hopeful smile. “That what you feel is normal?” Sometimes ponies just needed somepony else to point the simple facts out to them.

Yet sometimes, they took those simple facts and galloped in the completely wrong direction. As was made evident by Sunset’s expression became much more horrified. “No! Shining Armor is a colt!”

Not following her daughter at all, Celestia raised an eyebrow while doing her best not to giggle. She needed to stay calm and collected. “Sunset, I admit that your anatomy instruction under me was lacking, but I know you're aware of Shining Armor’s gender. You would have to be at this point.”

Sunset shot Celestia a glower. “Not...that,” she said with some difficulty. “Shining Armor, he is way too young to be dating me. I mean, he’s sixteen or seventeen, and Cadance is...uh…”

“Seventeen,” Celestia supplied. “She’ll be eighteen in six months by the way.”

Then Sunset went back to thinking. “And I’m...um...maybe...twenty?” she asked, looking to Celestia for conformation.

Celestia sighed and nodded her head as she thought back to the through physical her daughter had undergone back when she first arrived from the future. She knew that giving Sunset her physical age would only make matters worse in the short term, but lying to her daughter about anything when Sunset asked about it was no longer an option for her.

“I’m twenty and he’s almost sixteen!” she repeated. “At this point, I belong in jail, not on a date with him!”

The expression on Celestia's face became disagreeable. Shining Armor was closer to seventeen than he was to sixteen, from what she had gained after having her ponies dig into his background a little. It might have been a little intrusive, but being the ruler of a kingdom had to come with some privileges. “According to whom, exactly?”

“Everybody!” Sunset exclaimed as her wings shot apart to blow her mother’s mane around with the wind they generated. The magic she had learned to lessen her outbursts of strength did little to temper the tempests she could create on the fly.

Celestia frowned a little at the use of Sunset’s terminology. “But not, every pony?”

With the emphasis put on the end of the word, Sunset found herself stopping and reconsidering her words at a much slower pace than she had when she said them. “Okay, this is one of those times where you’ve got something introspective to say to me, isn’t it?”

Since it looked like being a little assertive had put the break on Sunset’s little panic attack, Celestia kept her face firm as she looked down at her daughter. If Sunset’s mental health needed her to be less gentle than she was used to at the moment, then that was what she would be. There could be no uncertainty in her voice this time if she wanted to keep Sunset from sliding further into her panic. “So,” Celestia said evenly as she took up the conversation again in a no nonsense tone. “You’re making this judgement about yourself based on the regulations of another culture, from another world, populated by a completely different species. Sunset, do you have any idea how foolish that is?”

Put like that, Sunset couldn’t help but slump under the weight of Celestia’s argument, despite her impossible strength. “Well…” she said, trying to think of something to counter the point.

To keep Sunset’s mind unfocused Celestia quickly added, “I take it that this age difference problem you’ve cooked up is based on human cultural norms?”

Sunset only nodded a few seconds after the question was asked.

“Sunset, do you feel bad about your relationships with Cadance and Shining Armor?” Celestia asked her daughter when the other alicorn didn’t continue.

Fighting through the confusion that was threatening to choke her, Sunset shook her head. “No.”

“Then just what is the problem?” her mother prompted.

Sunset groaned as she failed to come up with a response that suited her right away. Instead she sat down and looked down at herself, like when she usually had to focus inward and really think about the question. “I... I’m afraid...and angry, and...ugh! A lot of things,” she grumbled. And when that wasn't enough for Celestia, Sunset snorted and went on. “Look, everything I learned when I was a human told me that sixteen is the age you're supposed to experiment and make all kinds of mistakes. For social stuff, that means you go on dates, get girlfriends, break up with girlfriends, and get over it before finding new ones. That’s what I...okay, well I didn’t do it, I was too busy becoming an evil bitch that wanted to take over the world but it’s what Shining Armor should do, it’s what he needs to do to grow into a fully adjusted pony.” Sunset raised her hoof and put it up against her chest. “But I don’t want to break up with him. I want...well, okay... I'm not going to say marry, that would be a little creepy seeing how long we’ve known each other, but...um…”

Seeing the conflict in Sunset’s mind, Celestia sat down on her stomach. “So, do you think you should break up with him, then?”

“Well...maybe?” Sunset asked in fear. “I...even Cadance said it would be good for him to go out with somepony else, before he...uh, went on a date with her. And now we’re...all together. Ghaaa! That's what I mean! Normal ponies would have just picked one or the other. But we’re doing this! And I’m too old for this. I’m way, way too old for this.”

As Sunset became more animated in her displeasure towards the end, sitting down to wave her forelegs around, Celestia decided to add something to that last part. “Says the humans.”

That was one of the biggest jumbles of problems and blessings since Sunset had come back. Although she was very tight lipped on the matter most of the time, the mornings when she did talk about humanity made them seem like creatures only Discord could find agreeable with all the contradictions they had as a species. While some of the scientific knowledge that she had learned would be useful, there were several of their mannerisms Sunset had learned that Celestia thought she could be better off without.

Sunset looked back at her and blinked. “Come again?”

“Oh, I’m just pointing out that most, if not all of your social development only came in the last few years and because of all your time spent studying,” Celestia said before pausing and moving herself closer to Sunset so she filled the amber alicorn’s vision. “You have some rather stupid ideas on the way ponies should behave.”

In less than a second, Sunset’s attitude did a complete turn around as she detected the attack and counted with a harsh frown. “You mean like how all of Equestria thought it was okay to use magic to force someone to love them until I saw a problem with that idea?”

Celestia had to force herself not to flinch at the jab as she berated herself for resorting to becoming too confrontational. Still, it hurt less than seeing her daughter in a distraught state. “Well, until then, I hadn’t even considered the possibility of a pony doing such a thing,” she admitted before setting her mind back on task. “But, shall we get back to speaking of what's bothering you about your relationship with Shining Armor?”

Sunset winced and broke eye contact with Celestia. “Uh...okay,” she said after a moment.

“Now, how long has this been bothering you?” the bigger pony asked.

Seeing Sunset pull in on herself and tap her hooves together, Celestia didn’t need to know that it hadn’t been that long. If anything, Sunset was exacerbating the problem beyond what it should have been because that was what Sunset did these days.

“...maybe...since this morning,” she finally said.

“Well, I’m not Cadance. So my approach to this question is going to be a bit different,” Celestia said before she began to slowly walk in a circle around Sunset. “You already said that you love Shining Armor, but the problem is that you think that being a little less than four years older than him makes you too old for the c-young stallion. Except we’ve already been over this, haven’t we? When you went through the portal, you became the normal age for the humans in the area. Which made you live a few of your ages over twice, that really didn’t seem to do much to the level of maturity you have aside from some things you were lacking before that were a bit stunted.”

Which was putting it nicely. Sunset had acted more like a ten-year-old brat long into her teens.

“Yeah...but…”

Celestia held up a hoof and took in a deep breath. “Sunset, you’re sabotaging yourself again,” she said. “It’s just like when you came back. You’re just doing it in a different way, looking at some minor little thing in your current life and focusing on it instead of the bigger picture. You have two ponies who love you more than anything else out there. You’ve got a pony who looks up to you more than anypony else.”

Before Celestia could continue on, Sunset sighed. “You’re right. I can’t fall apart, I’ve too many ponies depending on me and I’ll bring them all down with me if I do.”

With her message completely misconstrued, Celestia frowned down at her daughter. “That’s not what I’m saying at all,” she said before taking another deep breath and trying to clear her thoughts. “Okay, you want to be an adult about things, then let’s be adults about this. No getting overly emotional, no running off, no exploding. We sit here and we work through this. Now, You’ve already realized this minor age difference between the two of you and dealt with it. Why is it an issue for you again, all of a sudden? As in the last two minutes that we’ve been talking.”

When Sunset said nothing, Celestia just went on. “Is it about what happened at the Princess Fair? Did seeing him as a younger version of himself make you reconsider things?” Celestia asked.

“...no,” Sunset said after several seconds of moaning and groaning in thought.

“Was it something he did?” she asked. “Did you...I don’t know...catch him doing something unbelievably immature for his age?”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “No,” she said before frowning up at her mother. “And I’ve been doing everything he’s been doing for the past few weeks. I just…” She turned her head away and groaned. “Okay, so maybe it’s not Shiny’s age that I’m upset about.”

“But you are upset about something,” Celestia reaffirmed.

After letting out a little groan, Sunset looked back up to her mother. “Yes.”

“Which is?” Celestia prompted as she tried to coax out what her daughter was trying to get at. Pulling teeth probably would have been easier.

“I don’t know!” Sunset practically yelled as she threw up her front hooves before going on a tirade. “I woke up this morning with this weird feeling in the back of my head. You know, like when you’ve forgotten something, something you know is important, but just can’t quite remember what it is or why it’s important? And it just stays there and keeps eating at you as the day goes on? Well that’s what’s happening to me, and Shining Armor wasn’t with me this morning, so I’m thinking it’s something to do with Shining Armor. What’s the biggest problem between me and Shining Armor that I can think of? Our age difference, that’s what! Except it’s not about Shining Armor’s age, because that was never really a problem for me to begin with and now I can’t think of anything else that’s bothering me. But I’ve still got this dread in the back of my mind that just isn’t going away!”

The way she explained it tickled something in the back of Celestia’s memory. It almost sounded like a budding premonition. But Sunset was far too young an alicorn for that. She thought about explaining that to her daughter, but telling a pony they were going to see a vision of the future too soon would have them finding meaning in every little goosebump on the back of her neck.

After Sunset stopped, or at least ran out of breath before she fell back on all fours to begin panting like she had just run a marathon, Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure what’s bothering you has anything to do with Shining Armor at all, then?”

“Well what else could it be?” she asked with wide eyes. “Shiny’s become a noble since that whole mess at the coronation, adding even more to his plate of stuff to deal with. Okay sure, I can help him out with most of it. You raised me to take care of nobles and go to parties and to deal with these things, so as long as I’m around, there shouldn’t be a problem. In fact, it’ll probably help him build his confidence. Which is actually really great. So...okay, now that I actually think about it, that can’t be it.”

Hoping to guide the conversation to another topic, Celestia mentioned the other pony in Sunset’s life. “What about Cadance? Everything okay there?”

Sunset snorted and rolled her eyes. “Of course everything’s fine with Cadance,” she said before becoming a little hesitant. “Okay, maybe I’m a bit nervous about our inter-species sexcapades she has planned for tonight since she actually has a plan, but it’s Cadance.”

“Yes, your...um...punishment for being a…” Celestia took a moment to think of the correct phrase. “Slightly annoying disturbance in a school where you were all alone and hurt with nopony to turn to.”

Sunset frowned back at her. “Mom, I was a monster.”

The unfair comparison made Celestia frown at her daughter. Hearing that from Sunset’s mouth made Celestia bite her tongue to keep from shouting at the filly about how she had just been unloved and misunderstood. But, the white pony understood Sunset still wasn’t ready to hear that yet, so she would let Cadance’s rather insane way of helping Sunset to manage her guilt continue.

Celestia gulped down the retort any decent mother would have used and went with one that would start a fight. “But you’re better now,” she said. “So, let’s focus on the present, shall we? Did Shining Armor’s parents agree to the social gathering?”

“Yeah,” Sunset mumbled as she looked away from the bigger mare and towards Ponyville. “I was thinking-oh crap!”

Unable to resist, Celestia smirked at her daughter’s sudden change in demeanor. “Well...that does seem to be your default mode these days.”

“No!” Sunset said as she suddenly stood up in a rush and looked around wildly. “The party. I forgot about the Apples. I was planning to have Sassy measure them for some formalwear, but then Twily’s mom said we had to have tea and I completely forgot to ask her because I was worried about all of this!”

All of a sudden, Sunset stopped and blinked. “Hey, maybe that’s what’s bothering me lately!”

“Well-” Celestia said hesitantly as her daughter jumped to conclusions once again in order to snatch the nearest quick fix for something that very well might be completely unrelated to her current mood. At best, it was a distraction for her mind.

“Okay, I need a fancy schmancy dress maker-”

“Fancy Schmancy retired two years ago,” Celestia reminded her daughter to try and stop her from going out of control. “Now, can we-”

“STOP TELLING ME FACTS!” Sunset shouted in a panic before her eyes widened and her whole body drooped. “Sorry.”

This time, Celestia forced herself to giggle at Sunset’s challenging outburst and retreat into herself. If she thought that Celestia had been hurt by the yelling, things would only get worse. And if she tried to pull Sunset away from the problem she had just galloped towards, it would just cause more difficulty between them.

So, she kept her smile on as she focused on the task at hand. “Okay Sunset, deep breath. Now, let’s focus on the solution to the problem. We can find a tailor for your friends’ family easily enough. Although, it would probably be best to delay it by a day. That still gives the pony we hire plenty of time to do their work. What’s next on the list?” she asked.

Unfortunately, even if they worked though things fast enough, Celestia doubted she would be able to get Sunset back on task to what was really bothering her. It looked like she would need to broach the subject tomorrow at breakfast.

Sunset blinked. “Um, about that. I could use some advice on something.”

Cadance looked down at the game’s rules as the last box of figurines was being brought up and into her room by ponies in palace livery. While Shiny had to head home because his family would be moving out soon and the female unicorns of their group needed to study their O&O manuals to design their characters so that Cheerilee could use them after school to take care of her own adventure persona, Cadance still had one other pony to help her with what looked like an extremely complicated system of rules that governed the miniature conflict that would be playing out on the table in front of her.

“Okay, so, there’s three general groupings,” Hidden Figures half-read, haf-explained to Cadance as the tall black pony with the dark green mane went through the game guide. “There’s ponies, non-ponies, and the discorded, with each having several different factions for each of the three...huh, they have changelings.”

Cadance looked over to the stack of boxes that bore the name of the most dark of creatures and frowned. “So they would be on the evil side.”

Figures looked back down at the book. “I don’t think they have the stuff broken down along a good and evil dynamic. It looks more like it’s ponies, and...not ponies.”

“Like I said, good and evil,” Cadance said with a nod.

“...yeah,” Hidden figures replied after several seconds. “So...the rules are…” she began before going into an overly long description of complicated terms before explaining how the dice worked with the spells laced into the game’s special table to create a realistic experience that still had absolute rules that were determined by chance.

Cadance found herself completely lost after all of five minutes. “Look, let’s just try playing the game, and I’ll figure it out as we go,” she said before looking through the various boxes. “I...think I’ll go with the Crystal Mareines.”

After taking a moment to look at all the other boxes that held dozens of characters important to each faction and several add-ons that went with the main group, Hidden Figures made her selection. “Guess I’ll be the changelings, then.”

“WHAT?” Cadance cried out in surprise before she flapped her wings to fly over the table. “Why would you want to be the most sneaky, dirty, evil and underhanded thing out there? I get not wanting to be a pony since I’m going to be using a pony army, you could be...look! You could be the yaks!” Cadance held up the box with the big hairy mammal on the cover proclaiming ‘YAKS DA BEST!’.

Hidden Figures didn’t even seem to acknowledge the princess as the glow of her dark green magic carried the changeling set and its two expansion boxes over to the table that was holding up the game mat. After opening the box, she picked up the figure of the changeling queen in one of her dark black hooves and blew a strand of dark cyan hair out of her face before frowning at the little figurine. “I don’t think they got the horn right, and the holes in the legs are in all the wrong places.”

As Cadance watched Hidden Figures carefully study the figure of the changeling queen, she had a sudden realization that hit her like a freight train and made the bottom drop out of her stomach. With her trepidation rising quickly, Cadance raised a hoof while Hidden Figures turned the Chrysalis figurine around and grumbled angrily something about the plot being too big. “Hidden Figures...you…” she said as she moved her hoof just a little bit over to point at the game piece.

“Hm?” Hidden Figures replied as the extra tall black unicorn with the dark green mane and sickly magical aura turned her attention to the pink princess.

Cadance gulped. “You’re one of those anal retentive ponies that has to have everything perfectly right, aren’t you?”

After putting the Chrysalis figure down on the board, Hidden Figures raised an eyebrow. “Well yeah. That’s part of the reason why you hired me.”

“Great. You, Twily, Sunset...kind of...I’m officially surrounded,” she mumbled before beginning to unpack her army of miniatures and place them in their starting positions.

Once they had set everything up, and Hidden Figures had activated the tables’s advanced Come to Life spell, causing all the miniatures to begin moving on their own while shouting at each other in their tiny voices, Cadance ordered her troops forward to engage the horrid monstrosities that her aide had chosen to command.

“So, Princess...is it true that your...ahem, Princess Sunset is completely indestructible and as close as you can get to all powerful?” Hidden Figures asked before she ordered her troops to split into three groups, going left and right as a much smaller force left behind to guard her Chrysalis stood back.

Seeing the foolish mistake, Cadance became excited and sent the vast majority of her army forward in the hopes of removing the changeling queen from play. “Yes and no. I mean, I don’t actually think anything can hurt Sunset in a straight up fight. But, there are ways around her invulnerability.”

All of a sudden, certain victory turned to dust as the changelings Hidden had sent off to the sides turned around to trap Cadance’s forces between them in a dastardly move. As the princess’s forces fell, Hidden Figures smiled at what was going to be a quick victory. “Oh? Like what, pray tell?”

“Well for starters,” Cadance began as the evil army finished off her troops and moved towards her commander.

Despite being an all-powerful alicorn with an earth pony part that could completely demolish Canterlot if she put her hoof down too hard, Sunset felt worn out. After meeting with some Hoity Toity stallion to arrange an on site fitting for the Apple family, she had to go see Corporal Punishment and inform him that they were taking a day off from training, which was followed by another meeting with Velvet’s family that Sunset had to bring Kibitz to so that they could pick out invitations as well as be introduced to the temp captain of the guard that would have to handle security arrangements for the party since Celestia would be attending.

She was so tired and fed up with the whole administration thing, Cadance’s plans for their night together actually sounded like a preferable option to having to get up the next morning and do it all again after school.

The idea of simply testing out of most classes ran through her head again, and Sunset had to give it a good shake to clean it out. While everything but History could be taken care of easily, what with her time in the human world giving her a better grounding in science and math, Sunset didn’t really go to school for the education experience. She went to be with her friends.

And keep Celestia from giving her a real job.

“PLEEEEEEASE? I need to try again!” Cadance’s voice resounded through the hallway, making Sunset blink when she realized it wasn’t coming from the direction of her own royal apartment, but down the hall that led to Cadance’s quarters. “You don’t know what’s at stake!”

Sunset poked her head into Cadance’s living room and blinked at the sight. A magical game had been set up in the center of the room on a very large table that could have doubled as one of Celestia’s desks. On it, little changeling miniatures stood victorious over dozens of inanimate pony figurines that had been captured and had their movements shut off. But the real draw for Sunset’s eyes was Hidden Figures holding a cringe stance while a pink pony princess was glomped onto her back leg as the big black unicorn tried to get away.

“I said no! I was supposed to go off duty two hours ago!” Hidden Figures told her as she tried to get away from Cadance. “You lost eight times with every army you tried!”

Cadance failed to dislodge herself. Instead of giving up, she floated over one of the boxes. “Let me try the Marecanicus again!” she said while holding up the box that showed pictures of ponies wrapped in what Sunset would have called cybernetic augmentation, if not for the fact they were in Equestria. “I did pretty good with those!”

A groan escaped from Hidden Figures’s mouth. “Six turns is not pretty good,” she explained. “And I felt sorry for you, which should really tell you something about just how bad you are when it comes to playing this game! Now get off! And look, there’s the pony to help you with that!”

“Uh...what’s going on?” Sunset asked as she watched Hidden Figures try and dislodge herself from Cadance’s grip without using her magic.

A second later, Cadance was only inches from the amber alicorn’s nose and in a complete panic. “Sunset help! I bet one of those stupid nerds that I could beat them at a stupid nerd game, but I totally suck at it!” she cried. “And if I lose to Gaffer, I’ll have to stop playing O&O with Shiiiiiinyyyy!”

Sunset raised an eyebrow while Cadance grabbed onto her and cried. “Why would you do something like that?”

“BECAUSE I’M AN IDIOT, OKAY?” she yelled between tears.

Hidden Figures cleared her throat. “Apparently, it has something to do with indirectly showing Shining Armor won’t...bring down his game, or something to that effect. But I do have to agree with her assessment in regards to her decision making.”

Dragging Cadance along with her, as the pink pony didn’t let go of her neck, Sunset took a look at the game setup before getting an explanation of the game from Hidden Figures while Cadance continued to give her a fearful pout. Once she had gotten her head wrapped around how the game worked by each player having to buy their own pieces, Sunset looked over to Cadance and suggested a solution.

Which made Cadance calm down a little as she considered it. “Can I really do that?”

“It’s very underhanded and a complete misuse of your authority as High Princess,” Hidden Figures told her. “But I’m pretty sure it falls within the current legal structure of Equestria. And even if it doesn’t, you can just change the laws.”

Sunset tensed. “Now that I actually think about it-”

Before she could finish, Cadance moaned and kissed her on the nose, stopping her from talking before she pulled herself up a little more to whisper in Sunset’s ear. “Mmmm, I just love it when you’re a naughty girl. Giving me such wicked ideas. Somepony deserves a spanking,” she said in a seductive voice before biting Sunset’s ear.

The amber alicorn shivered at the touch to a sensitive area. “Ah-ha! C-Cadance! There’s still somepony here,” Sunset said desperately as the pink pony moved a hoof down to begin stroking Sunset’s wings in all the right places.

As the bigger pony’s wings floofed out, Cadance actually flung herself around onto Sunset’s back and pulled herself up close as she wrapped her forehooves around the amber alicorn’s neck. “Mmmm, now there’s an idea,” she said as she continued to talk in a voice that was a bit deeper than normal. “Maybe I’ll let her stay and watch. Let somepony see how I train my little pony to be a good girl.”

Sunset’s mind raced at the thought of what Cadance was saying, in not in a good way. The idea of actually being put on display, something she thought Cadance might actually do, got her heart racing. Which was quickly followed by her body following suit. “Nope!” she yelled before galloping out of the room as fast as she could.

“Oh-hoho Sunset, letting everypony see me ride you in the hallway! You’re such an exhibitionist!” Cadance laughed as the bigger alicorn carried her across the carpet.

Which made Sunset even more panicky before she locked onto the saved teleportation point in her room and took them there. As soon as she landed, the amber alicorn looked back at the door and hastily threw up the wards Cadance always insisted on. The rush job was a little sloppy, making them a little less gentle than normal, but Sunset didn’t care. After Cadance’s comments, she didn’t want anypony walking in on them.

The weight on Sunset’s back disappeared as Cadance flew over to their bed and turned around to lay down on her belly “Seriously Cadance, did you turn that sex switch you got in your head all the way to twelve?” she demanded.

Cadance stood up on their bed and leaned forward until her nose was nearly touching Sunset, and the added height meant that she was looking down on the more powerful pony for once. “It got your heart pumping, didn’t it?” she asked before giving her fillyfriend a light kiss. “And I know how you like your ears treated and wings rubbed. Now, let’s get you looking like the species that might just make you sexier than you are right now.”

Adrenaline mixed with endorphins in Sunset’s body and she felt herself start to get wet. It was almost annoying how easy Cadance could get her turned on at the drop of a hat. “Okay fine,” she said with a blush before she lit up her horn.

Although, Cadance wasn’t exactly right when she said Sunset was changing species. Because she had used the spell on Celestia not long ago, the amber alicorn had been able to watch the spell’s matrix at a distance as well as make a comparison to how it worked on Celestia as opposed to herself. Despite the alterations to the biology of a pony, it didn’t turn them completely human. It was more like they were reshaped using all the available materials while safety constraints were still applied to keep the horn and cutie mark around.

Still, Sunset felt her whole body change as she went from quad to simply bi before fingers sprouted on her hand and her mane rearranged itself into a more acceptable human fashion. After the experience ended, Sunset felt a chill in the air and reached up to cover her breasts with her hands, the globs of flesh barely coverable by her non-pony appendages.

On the bed, Cadance had taken the time to make some changes of her own. Four thick socks covered most of her legs. She frowned before she began trotting forward, the socks that promised Sunset some protection from her hooves when Cadance decided to get frisky muting her steps. “None of that now, let me see all of you,” she said before a rough surge of magic pulled Sunset’s hands away while she spread her knees apart on her own. “Hmm, the bit of coat you have between your legs is a different color than your mane. Didn’t notice that before. And no magic unless I give you permission to use it.”

Embarrassment began to color Sunset’s cheeks as she didn’t even consider not doing as she was told. Being naked, really naked, again made her feel exposed in front of Cadance as the pink pony licked her lips while circling Sunset, like a shark taunting its prey.

Without her natural coat or resistance to the cold pegasi had naturally, Sunset felt the chill in the air quickly sap away her body's heat. She moved to cover herself again, but stopped. “H-Hey, Cadance? Could you light a fire in here? Ponies are a lot better in cold weather than humans.”

“Punishments aren’t meant to be comfortable, Sunset,” she said in a very business-like tone before reaching under the bed to pull out a hoof bag. After opening it with her magic, she levitated out a piece of parchment to float it over to Sunset. “Are any of these substances harmful to humans?”

A second of reading later, Sunset looked back to Cadance. “No, but some of these plants didn’t even exist back on Earth. What’s this for, anyway?”

Cadance levitated a vial filled with half a pint of milky white liquid out of the bag. “Those are the ingredients for the lactation potion. I’ve also got a cleansing and enchantment removal potion in case anything bad happens. It’s naturally accelerated production, so drink it now. I want your teats to be full when I…” the pink pony gulped before licking her lips. “Ahem! Now, drink the potion.”

“Wait a second, don’t we need to set some rules or something?” Sunset said.

There was a flash of movement that came from Cadance’s bag that Sunset barely caught out of the corner of her eye before a sharp pain made itself known on her butt, accompanied by the sounds of leather on flesh. “OW! What the fuck was-” Sunset cut herself off as she looked back to see a riding crop floating in Cadance’s magic before she began to rub her stinging butt.

Concern flooded Cadance’s face. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” she asked as she floated the riding crop up next to her head to glance at it. “I thought about it and this seems better than a paddle. There’s more give, so I don’t have to worry about breaking anything, but we can use something else if it’s too dangerous.”

“Spankings are supposed to hurt, Cadance,” Sunset said as she rubbed her stinging. “And I think you’ll stop before you flay my skin off.”

Cadance got even more worried at that. “Of course I will!” she agreed before taking in a breath through her nose. “N-Now, um…” The pony came and put her nose in Sunset’s crotch.

“H-Hey! What’re you-” Sunset demanded before Cadance took a deep whiff so loud even Sunset’s horrible human hearing could pick it up.

“Buck, you smell good,” Cadance said before shaking herself out of whatever daze Sunset’s scent had put her into. “I, um...gah! Sexy funtime later, right now, drink the potion.”

Sunset looked down at the vial in her hand with trepidation. Was she really going to do this? Drinking a potion that would make her lactate was odd, but having Cadance actually drink the milk straight from the breast was a whole other story. She looked over to the pony. “Um-”

“Sunset,” Cadance said in a tone that broke no argument. “I gave you and order. Now. Drink.”

With her fillyfriend being so commanding, Sunset’s hesitation vanished. She uncorked the vial and did as told.

The effect was immediate. There was a growing weight in her chest before something started to push her breasts outward, making them swell in size. Sunset cried out in discomfort before she reached up to touch the handfuls of human flesh as she could slowly but steadily swell outwards.

“Are you okay?” Cadance asked in concern.

“Y-Yeah,” Sunset stuttered before looking back to her breasts. “It’s just, uh...taking a bit longer for my body to adapt to the extra stuff than I would have liked. And to be honest, being a human again feels...strange.”

Cadance studied Sunset’s chest. “Well, I didn’t plan on feeding until afterwards. Now, we’re going to cover the rules,” she said as she began to walk around Sunset at a slow pace while her expression took on a more hardened veneer. “I’ve had some time to think about this. You did a lot of awful things when you were a human, Sunset. I’ll admit that you made up for them when you saved the human world not once, but twice. However, doing good and being punished for doing wrong are two very different things, aren’t they?”

The question had Sunset blinking. “Yeah,” she agreed before she felt the riding crop strike her in the butt again.

“And you will refer to me by my proper title when speaking to me!” Cadance announced in an angry tone. “You looked down on me for years and you will be making up for that tonight as well! Understand?!”

Sunset did her best not to stammer. “Y-Yes, Princess Cadance!”

The riding crop struck her again before Cadance flew up into Sunset’s face. “That’s High Princess Mi Amore Cadenza! UNDERSTAND?” she demanded loudly.

“Yes High Princess Mi Amore Cadenza!” Sunset repeated as fast as she could as her body began to shiver just a little.

“Now, from what I understand, there are two things involved in the rehabilitation of a pony. Punishment and restitution,” Cadance said as she continued to circle Sunset while in the air. “Since I have no desire to punish you for anything you did while you were a unicorn, I will count the time you spent in the human world without your horn as the punishment for not giving me proper respect and the times you saved Earth as your restitution towards the humans. However, this means that you must still be punished for your actions while a human, and you must restitution to me for your actions in Equestria through tonight and every other Tuesday night’s activities by being my little plaything until I decide that you’ve done enough. Understood?”

“Y-Yes, High Princess Mi Amore Cadenza,” Sunset stuttered as what Cadance had really just said ran through the redhead’s mind. Cadance planned to turn Sunset into her weekly sexual plaything. The horned human honestly didn’t know where to be excited, or nervous.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a word where you were both.

Cadance floated the crop in close to touch Sunset’s skin. “Good,” she said. “Now, you will confess to me everything bad you did at Canterlot High, and I will ensure you are properly punished for it. Then, when you can’t take any more of that tonight, we’ll move to the bed, break out the chocolate syrup and whipped cream, and you can make up for all those bad things you did to me. So, start talking.”

“W-Well, I guess the first thing bad I did-” was All Sunset could say before she felt the sting of the riding crop again. “W-What was that for?”

The question was followed up by another smack to her ass before she remembered the rules. “H-High Princess Mi Amore Cadenza!”

Cadance slowly landed beside her and made Sunset turn to face her before the pink pony pointed at the ground. “Get on your hands and those midsection joints, I won’t have a lowly human bully looking down at me. And please remember, what I’m about to do is for you.”

Such an expected command coming from Cadance made Sunset pause. “S-Say what?”

The crop in Cadance’s magic lashed out and struck Sunset in the rear once again, making the human girl jump with a yelp before she reached back to rub her sore butt. However, Cadance didn’t give her any respite. “GET ON THE FLOOR, YOU DAMN DIRTY APE!”

Leading a cult of outcasts and unwanted foals was hard enough when you didn’t have to do it through an intermediary that was barely clinging to life thanks to years of inactivity. Nightmare Moon decided that the first thing she did after returning to Equestria would be to ensure that her truly loyal followers created a system of attracting some fresh blood that was actually competent and devout.

Despite the resources Strong Withers and the outcast noble provided in the way of funds, neither of them would live long after her return. They had betrayed Celestia, and while one of her followers stabbing the white pony in the back wasn’t in and of itself a bad thing, a traitor was still a traitor.

Gathering her magic, Nightmare Moon entered the dream domain that was her realm and sought out a familiar dream. Unlike Luna, she didn’t enter the point of light. Her magic crept out and ensnared the pony’s dream, bending it to her will as she poured more of it into the pony’s mind. The magic spread from the subconscious into what could be called the waking mind and Nightmare Moon seized control of the body to have it turn its head and carry her voice. “Have the new pawns provided the...cat birds, they promised would serve for bits?” she demanded through her vessel.

The idea of griffons being allowed to make their way through Equestria sickened Nightmare Moon, but with the times being such as they were, certain allowances had to be made. She would just have to cleanse the world of them upon her return to make up for it.

“No Mistress,” she, or rather, her vessel heard the faithful stallion speak before it was relayed back to her via the dream Nightmare Moon held. “They claim the mercenaries to still be many days away.”

Nightmare Moon wanted to punish them for making promises of assistance without delivering fast enough, but restrained herself for the moment. Their time would come. “Very well, take note then my faithful one. When they arrive, they are to locate a very select group of ponies for me of the following description.”

Although known as the Mistress of Dreams, another one of Luna’s, and thus Nightmare Moon’s abilities, enabled her to look into the mind of anypony she touched with her magic. Despite the fact that she was no longer able to delve within the mind of Sunset Shimmer thanks to the agreement with Celestia, Nightmare Moon had long since taken all the information she needed from the young mare’s head.

A barely remembered newspaper article giving vague tales concerning the exploits of one Twilight Sparkle.

The image of a purple pony princess who would come to possess the Element of Magic.

And most importantly, a brief glance in a darkened hallway that revealed to Nightmare Moon who would wield the other Elements of Harmony that still existed in this time. Of course, the memory showed them as adults, but ponies barely changed in looks since the day they were foaled and several of them possessed very distinct features.