Two Princesses, Too Tender

Hickory, that was the scent that filled the hall leading down to the Princess of the Sun's royal chambers, and filled the flaring nostrils of Tempest Shadow. Not because she was avidly watching and taking in every small and immaculate detail of the Palace she found herself in. Oh no, the tough and chiseled body of the former General of the Storm King's Armies was not stomping through the halls with powerful and confident strides like one would expect given the show she'd put on the last time she was in Canterlot. On that day she had completely overwhelmed not only the defenses of the city, but all four of the gathered Alicorns of Equestria and encased three in stone within seconds. Nor was said muscular body contained within the iconic black armor that had been burned into the minds of so many ponies a year ago when she brought Canterlot to its knees. It was a memory that made even the two Solar Guards that she was coming upon shiver in fear whenever they remembered their total defeat.

No, the reason that the scent of Hickory stood out so strongly to Tempest Shadow, was because she was desperately searching for anything to calm her brain that was doing its absolute best impression of the first half of her name. Her bright pink mane rested upon the left side of her neck with a tightly corded and simple braid that her tail mirrored. Said braids were the only reason that her hair wasn't an absolute frazzled mess from nerves, although the bold cobalt-blue dress that left tantalizing swathes of her toned chest and succulent legs bare didn't quite have such a safety net from wrinkles and creases. She'd tried staring in awe at the great white sheets of granite that made up the palace's walls, only to find that her eyes darted away from anything after nothing more than a few seconds at a time. She'd tried to focus on the clacks of her hooves on the bright orange carpet beneath her, but found the soft fabric muffled her shaky hoof steps to much for her constantly flicking ears to focus on.

What about the Hickory's scent that kept her attention, was the fact that her lungs were demanding oxygen in increasing amounts in rushing quick breaths as she got closer and closer to the dreaded golden doors that lead into Celestia's room. This particular smell was something she could actively focus on while her mind seemed determined to give her a bloody heart attack before she even stepped hoof inside the Princess' personal chambers. Her only saving grace was that the difference between a nervous glare at everything around her, and an angry glare of primal confidence was outside the observational skill for the general staff of the Palace.

'You can do this, you can.. no, no I can't. Why would they want me here, what could they possibly want to talk to ME about right after I got back?' Screamed Tempest's brain for the millionth time since receiving that dammed forsaken scroll of Royal Summons from the Princesses on her train ride back from the edges of the Storm King's former empire. Please come at your earliest convenience. Celestia had written just above her and Luna's signatures, likely an attempt at assuring the purple pony that there was no rush, that this wasn't an emergency summons. But, to have it delivered the moment she started her way back to an unknown future in Equestria, with no details of what it was all about? Nah, totally not a great way to make her nervous as all Tartarus, totally not making her feel that she was being judged about how quickly she'd be able to answer the summons. Certainly it didn't drive her mind to run through a million different reasons of why she was being called, most of which involved capital punishment or banishment...

So it was that she didn't consciously register her surroundings for some time, until she'd already made it into the Princess' extravagant chambers and laid down upon a way to soft satin pillow. And she was even still lost as she was sipping a cup of otherwise soothing green tea in front of the huge crackling fire place that was the source of the scent of Hickory that had been her one stable guiding force. The dark oakwood furniture that filled the room was an absolutely jaw dropping contrast to the golds and oranges that silk bedsheets, polished granite walls, and innumerable other bank-shattering valuable items all shared as a color scheme. For Tempest, it all just was a blurry background. And in the foreground of her vision was that which had drawn her back to reality, the endless starry mare of the Princess of the Night, Luna, whom was partly into an explanation of the reason for the summons that had caused her such worry.

"... It is with humble regret that we recognize we are far from able to defend our citizens, let alone ourselves from the many threats that Equestria has had to face over the past several years. On a personal level, I must admit that it has become a rather shameful display by myself to have once been known as a source of fear as Nightmare Moon to even our enemies abroad, only to have either missed or outright flicked aside in every case of battle or threat to Equestria since my return. While I have been consoled on my issues regarding my guilt over my actions as Nightmare Moon, I cannot honestly deny a sense of being, as the ponies today would say, 'dead weight', in such matters." The voice of Luna was imperialistic and confident to a sharp point. However, it was the fact that such a sharp point, like a honed dagger, was being aimed and twisted at herself, rather than Tempest of whom she was speaking to, that had caught Tempest's attention. Said point of feeling useless and unneeded was something she'd been digging at herself with the entire past year of traveling.

The golden glow of royal magic snapped Tempest's attention to the so far rather quiet Solar Princess. Celestia spoke up finally as her magic carried an immaculate porcelain tea pot around, refilling their drinks as she spoke, "And, while I do not quite feel as strongly as my sister in regards to my impact on these troubling years, I must admit I have felt that my capability of caring for my little ponies has progressively declined more sharply each year. There was a time where I directly engaged in tackling the problems of Equestria whenever they reared themselves in front of us. Such as my duel with Queen Chrysalis at Princess Cadence's and Shining Armor's wedding. Which admittedly...." Celestia paused, and in a surprisingly timid manner, drew a small circle with a hoof on the ground as she stared down at her tea, "was a loss, in regards to the duel, and it was nary a couple years later that Chrysalis managed to capture me without a single bit of resistance while I slept right in my own chambers..." The patient and clam voice that every pony knew Celestia by trailed off into an unsure and near whimper at the quite frankly embarrassing memories.

"Um, ah, heh... Soo that's why you two summoned me? To...." With ears nearly pinned flat on the back of her head, Tempest put out a mostly coherent question, trying to put just enough into the conversation to get the Princesses to fill in the blank for her without showing to much how she'd blanked out from nervousness already. She gathered that the impression she'd made on the Princesses her first time around meeting them had something to do with why she was here by their explanations. But the fact they were being so open and erstwhile with her about their own insecurities was entirely new waters she was treading here. They were former prisoners of hers, and now they were sharing personal insecurities with her? This friendship thing was weirder than she ever thought it would be.

"We wish you to teach us the methods you used to best us on the day of the Storm King's invasion. So that we nay fall to such threats in the future." Luna sharply spoke, picking up from where Tempest left off without a moment's hesitation. She spoke with her head raised high and a resolute stomp of a hoof. However, the physical emphasis she was using made it unclear whether she'd noticed Tempest's nervousness, or had a bit of her own she was trying to cover up.

The crack of Luna's hoof had Tempest's ears perking up again, with a few confused blinks joining them as her brain processed the information. She had barely opened her mouth to reply, before she was cut off by Celestia, whom swiftly added, "A private tutorship, if possible. While we treasure the effort our loyal guard ponies put into seeing to our safety, we'd rather not burden them with the stress of seeing us undergo a risky endeavor such as this. They do so pride themselves in their roles to keep us safe. It wouldn't be fair to them you see." Ok, now -that- was a lie that even Tempest could catch while a nervous wreck. In fact, it actually drew her more out of her shell more than anything else.

A rather serious purse of her lips came, and the mare stared at the two Princesses with a sharp glare that matched the quick snap of a tone she suddenly took on, "You just don't want anypony to see you if your completely helpless in front of me again while your learning, don't you? Those guards are absolutely useless in keeping you two safe, we all know that Princesses." And within two seconds of those words leaving her mouth, Tempest's eyes as went wide as saucers and she clamped a hoof in desperation over her fat mouth. Her pride and ability to cut through bullshit when it was thrown at her had just dropped by to bite her in the flank extra hard today.

However, the fact that the two Princesses were suddenly sporting a flush of pink rolling across their cheeks bright enough to show up even on Luna's dark blue coat, sadly just confirmed her suspicions. The way that Celestia was trying desperately to hide her face behind a far to small tea cup she was sipping, and Luna's pointed turn of head and long stare into a random part the room brought the dial of Tempest's nerves right back up to 10 again. Something that she refused to let crush her again. The two royal sisters had just flubbed up their own attempt to save their egos, in front of the pony they were asking to teach them how not to be beat up and look utterly useless.

Tempest let out a deep sigh as her shoulders drooped in the universal sign of 'well, fuck it' Equestria over. It was clear the two Princesses were trying to buy time to figure out how to dance around the rather blunt truth she'd thrown back at them instead of chastising her. So with that fact in mind, she may as well dive head first into the grave she'd dug for herself. All that nervousness had finally run its course and in its place creeped in an anger and frustration that had been building over the past two weeks, whether it was justified or not, had taken its place.

"Look, Princesses, I don't do half-truths, dressed up bucking lies, sneaking slimy intentions, and back-hoofed compliments. I know you have to deal with that all the time, but I answer all that shit with a swift kick to the muzzle. You started with honesty, and I'm honestly surprised, but happy to be asked to teach the Leaders of Equestria how to beat down assholes. But, if your going to be dodgy and two faced about your intentions and what you want while asking for my help, i'm not interested." Tempest said with a half growl as she threw he frustrations at that Princesses. Although, everything she siad was true, she didn't put up with this kind of shit in any fashion, from anypony.

She affixed a steely gaze upon the two mares and put on a stone-faced expression to put the pressure on them to understand that she was quite serious about her concerns. Although, the fact that she was holding her breath in anticipation of being screamed at or having the guards she'd just insulted called on her helped in keeping that stone face up.

Luna and Celestia in response to this verbal smack, had come to turn their faces back to Tempest again, but this time with the same exact expression on both sisters: Slack-jawed shock and surprise.

"Ah, buah.. well I.." Celestia started and then fumbled with a confused and stuttering tone of voice, very much the one least used to having someone just smack her upside the face so bluntly. Especially by so thoroughly seeing through one of her own applications of twisted truths, and making her out to be a totoal jerk for trying such an underhanded social tool.

Luna for her part, had some actual movement going on besides her face, with her elegantly preened wings flaring up a few inches from her sides and fluttering for a couple flaps as she took in the surprising rush that someone standing up to her so thoroughly sent through her. It was a heat with a source somewhere between indignation and a growing respect for this steel-hard mare, having been blind to Tempest's shifting levels of nervousness this entire time. The Princess of the Night bit her bottom lip, eyes roaming over the resolute face of the pon- No, the Warrior before her, and found that the blunt honesty was something that she and her sister needed. A proof, in her mind, that this was indeed the pony right for the job.

So, through slightly gritted teeth and a bit of her pride that refused to be fully shoved in a corner, Luna bowed her head and spoke slow and with a slight quiver, "You have my apologies, Lady Shadow. We will make sure to be clear and without agenda besides that which our words convey in the future." An eye opened to look at her sister, in a side-long glance that strongly encouraged her sister to follow along with her next words, "As you have rightly declared we should be, don't you agree, dear sister?"

Celestia and Tempest both fixed a questioning and surprised raised brow at Luna, though Tempest remained otherwise stone faced, Celestia's lips pursed in concentration. In her millennia of life, there were so very few times she'd been put on the spot in such a thorough manner. Called out by the one that she'd invited to ask to be her Mentor in something, an act she'd not had to do in quite the long while, and subtly thrown under the bus by her own sister if she tried most of her normal stately or 'calm and wise' tricks of saving face. It wasn't the fact she was on the back hoof, so much as having the dance of polite conversation and personal requests, along with what was supposed to be her social back up in said dance utterly turned on her in the manner of just a few sentences of rebuttal.

In other words, whether intentionally or by fluke, Tempest Shadow had completely one upped the Princess of the Sun without even trying! Let alone, that steel sword of a mare as far as Celestia was now concerned, was even turning her own brow raise on her, and it actually was appropriate. How did things just collapse under her hooves so quickly?

Celestia barely managed to masquerade what was in truth defeated sigh, as a long and contemplative exhale, before she bowed her head as Luna had. "You have my apologies for not being entirely honest with you from the start Lady Shadow." The title given a touch of emphasis to show she was on board with her sister, but it was also a veiled question towards Luna of why she'd implemented such a title for Tempest all of a sudden in the first place. "Would you still consider training my Sister and I, if we've not put you off the idea to far?" Though backed into such a corner, she still maintained that kind and regal tone of voice she was famous for as she apologized.

Outwardly, Tempest maintained an iron resolve of showing no emotion, staring down the two Princesses, as if giving serious debate over whether or not she felt the apologies were enough. Inside, however, Tempest's mind was a complete chaotic mess, along the lines of: Buck, they're bowing to me? I would have killed to get this a year ago, but, holy buck. This is completely off track, I have no bucking idea....!! And a flurry of other such thoughts for a growing length of awkward silence. However, as the Princesses remained with their heads bowed, eyes flicking to one another with a touch of nervousness of their own, Tempest's stubborn streak kicked itself to the front of her mind. She'd been made to freak out for weeks now over this summons, and now that she was here, the Princesses that ruled Equestria were getting a taste of that. So, she let the quiet drag on for a solid minute, letting them stew as her mind settled on a course of action.

"I'm not sure." Tempest said curtly with her head tilted upwards, eyes canted to look down on the two mares in front of her.

"What?" Exclaimed Luna and Celestia in unison with a look of confusion, that only grew as the purple mare stood up and brushed some 'dust' off her forelegs.

"I'm not sure simple apologies prove you understand why this is such a significant issue." Tempest turned away from the Princesses, imperiously stepping off the pillow she'd been resting on. As she walked, her voice dropped into the commanding and unwavering tone she'd first greeted them with her first time in Canterlot. "Your asking me to teach you how to hurt, and potentially kill some creature. There is a discipline needed that your guards do not honestly have, and that has no room for anything, except pure and crystal clear communication. Otherwise some creature gets seriously hurt, as you've learned after years of getting your flanks whipped." As she made her way towards the big Golden Doors at the entrance of Celestia's chambers, she turned her head to regard the Princesses.

Even though she was not clad in that imperialistic plate armor she was known for, the solid cobalt dress she wore was imposing in its own distinctly domineering way. Her electric blue eyes glared with an intensity that made them almost seem like they could blast the Princesses with just as much raw lightning magic as that jagged broken horn of hers. And with how her nostrils flared in deep and slow inhales, she had the aura of a predator catching the sweet scent of the sweat of its nervous prey, and was prowling towards it.

Tempest Shadow, a broken horned unicorn whom had walked in here as a mass of shivering nerves, was now somehow more intimidating to the two Princesses than when she'd had an army behind her. And it made the two millennia old mares visibly quiver from snout to tail tip in both a primal and subconscious fear all prey species had deep within them, sentient or not. And with that fear came a jolt of indescribable excitement that had the Princesses fighting to keep their wing feathers from standing on end.

"When you ask me to train you, your asking me to take your lives into my hooves. I am a General of Soldiers, Princesses, not a Captain of Inept Guards. Come to me when you can show me you properly understand the difference, and can treat that difference with the respect and seriousness it, and I, deserve." The mare's tone was resolute and final in its severity, complete with her sharply turning her head forwards, shoving the Golden Doors to the Princess of the Sun's private chambers wide open, and striding down the hall with sharp and proud steps.

Behind her, Tempest Shadow left behind two startled guards and a pair huge doors that swung back shut with a slam that reverberated and echoed through the palace far beyond the hall they lead into. And behind those doors, she also left two slacked-jawed Princesses of Equestria. Their bodies were frozen in place long after the echoing slam faded away, both their heads bowed, jaws on the floor, wings flared wide open in a confused arousal neither'd seen coming, and eyes glued on the space that had last held the chiseled, bold, and glorious mare that had just put them in their place.