The sisters generally didn't think of themselves as old, and sometimes found themselves having to maintain this opinion in the face of overwhelming counter-evidence. When it's possible to hear the name of the pony generally agreed to have been the nation's greatest explorer, somepony whose death had come more than eleven hundred years ago, a figure whose deeds had been distorted into legend by the flow of time -- when you can hear that name and your first thought is along the lines of And he had the worst breath ever, it's usually safe to presume you've been around for a while. But they generally didn't think of themselves as being old, because the most important thing was to gallop in pace with the times and as long as they could still welcome new ideas, their minds would be forever young.
Celestia and Luna generally didn't think of themselves as old.
They saw the palace as ancient.
There were many ways to verify the age of a building: tracking changes in construction techniques was helpful for archaeologists, and of course it didn't hurt to spot the original permit issuing date at the top of any surviving blueprints. In the case of the palace, the sisters measured the years through the size of the maintenance budget.
The rough majority of the surfaces were marble, which included just about all of the flooring. You really wouldn't expect marble to wear away or rather, you wouldn't unless you'd seen the evidence: something which made the follow-up research redundant and, somehow, retroactive. On the Mérens scale of material hardness, the ratings of one to ten found marble showing up at three. It was something which made the mineral easy to carve, it created a certain vulnerability when it was put up against anything denser, and you'd still think that hooves wouldn't be able to do much against it because for density, the average pony hoof came in at 2.5. The problem came from a single word: average. Earth pony hooves were harder than that. So were those of alicorns. Add in Guards moving around in armor, those who just had to wear shoes at all times and after a while, any glance at a heavily-trafficked hallway would discover ponies were mostly following trails of shallow divots. Resurfacing had to be done before the potholes showed up.
Spells wore off. Some little-used areas had the overhead lighting forever on the verge of losing its charge. Every hinge seemed to be waiting for its chance to produce a sound more appropriate to a Nightmare Night haunted house and even when ghosts weren't real, ponies were all too ready to believe that the one place they could exist was the palace. Mycologists occasionally asked for access to long-abandoned rooms, just in case. The palace had remained standing after so many centuries, and the main reason it continued to do so was because the sisters kept fusing bits into fresh props. Some portions were renovated, others had to be outright replaced, and they never talked about what had happened to so much of the original library because after they'd seen the last of the pages consumed, the glowing fanged book had somehow acquired the ability to teleport and they didn't know where it had wound up.
Maintenance. Repairs. Replacements. They accepted that as the price of keeping an ancient building standing and for similar reasons, both had recently agreed that the plumbing needed to die.
The elder had been at war with the water system for more than twelve centuries. because the palace needed a lot of water. It wasn't just the sisters' bathing areas (and Luna had a full indoor pool, something large enough to swim in): there were restrooms for the staff, the kitchens drew their share, a few emergency showers were set up near the smithy, repair shop, and anywhere magic was stored, plus there was a huge group bath in the barracks and somepony might need it again one day...
If it had been possible to gather examples of every system the palace had ever used, then the pony managing the feat would have just about assembled The History Of Plumbing In Thousands Of Very Small Pieces: nothing more comprehensive was available because a frustrated Celestia had kicked most of it to death. Or rather, rendered the corpses into ever-smaller pieces, because the palace plumbing was always failing -- and neither sibling had ever worked out the why. There had been endless upgrades, changes of materials, completely new systems, they'd tried a few spells here and there, part of the hunt for seaponies had arguably been so they could learn whether a mythical species which supposedly lived in water was any better at managing the stuff, and still there was forever another leak from one more broken pipe.
It was endless war, the best they'd ever done was to lose a little more slowly, and they were both sick of it. There were pipes running through the majority of the spaces between walls, and one thing marble occasionally did very well was conduct sound. It was hard to call a structure one of the most magnificent in the nation when the Solar and Lunar wings kept putting on impromptu concerts of liquid moans. It was possible to schedule a few of them for the off-hours, but you could never be sure of just when somepony might want to rinse off their hooves.
The palace, like the sisters, had to maintain a certain level of dignity. And so, because their minds had remained young, they were trying something new.
Or rather, they were trying something old. It just hadn't been available for a while.
The plumber grumbled to himself as he dismantled the first of the old pipes, and that emotion also expressed itself as an irritated ruffling of his fur. From most ponies, it would have represented nothing more than a minor emotional display: with Fluorite, the light coming off the light blue refractive coat created the impression of some very annoyed rainbows.
It did add something to the lighting in the subbasement. Most of the glow from devices was blocked by the pipes and, much to the sisters' ongoing annoyance, some of what did get through wound up having to pass through dripping water. But they were still watching him work, because they had both been hoping to see this particular renovation for a very long time.
Most of the reasons they had for hating Sombra were shared and, if each had been asked to submit a list, 'stuck us with faulty flanged joints for centuries' would have been near the top.
"Weird stress lines on this one," Fluorite decided, at least after the siblings remembered how to translate the accent. "Same thing I'm seeing on some of the others."
"It's just the pipes," Celestia sighed. "We've been trying to get good pipes for -- a while. They always go bad." She slowly shook her head, and tried to do so while restricting the total range of movement available for expressing her frustration. The Solar alicorn was standing in the one safe place available to a mare of her height in a room crisscrossed with pipes: mostly in the doorway. It still meant any major expression of negation had a good chance to spear up the next leak.
"That's not it," their far-traveled hire grumbled. "Stress is coming from the inside. I haven't seen water make this pattern." Another little shrug sent annoyed indigo chasing itself across wet metal. "But maybe that's part of the risks in an Equestrian system. I wouldn't know."
"And you can replace it with your own?" Luna carefully inquired. (She had the relative luxury of standing in the room, and was trying very hard not to jump whenever a stray drop splashed into her fur. The real effort came from not forcing it to fall away as ice.) "All of it?"
The plumber thought about it.
"Gonna take some time," he decided. "Building this size? Weeks. Could be a couple of moons. Maybe even a season."
"We're paying you for the full duration," Celestia assured him. "Every last bit of the work, plus compensation for your travel time and, since you didn't want to stay in the palace, we're also covering your hotel bill. All we're asking for is your help, Fluorite. Please?"
The stallion looked at the faulty pipe again, and all of his fur drooped back into its natural grain.
"Sorry for being late to the job." It was just barely above a whisper, and the room's drips added extra punctuation to every syllable. "I've never been this late."
"Hardly your fault," Luna quietly stated as dark eyes briefly closed. "Or your desire."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Want to see the new pipes?"
They both nodded, although one had to stop herself before the top of the arc. Fluorite's head turned back towards his right saddlebag, and teeth expertly rummaged. Eventually, a small metal circle was placed on the floor.
"Seed base," he told them. "Easier to start on something, since I'm this far from home. Gonna need a few of these every so often along the route."
They nodded, and he rummaged again. Something small and sparkling was deposited on the rim of the circle.
"Seed."
And as far as their senses were concerned, all he did was look at it. They concentrated, they focused, they tried to listen with their very souls -- but they possessed the capabilities of unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies. It left a category out, and so nothing reached them. To their souls, nothing had taken place.
In sight, there was something small and sparkling. Then it widened. Began to curve, smoothly flowed around the rim until it met and merged into itself at the starting point, and then fresh rainbows began to appear as the light reflected and refracted through the new facets of material which were slowly building upright, adding layer after layer as the hollow tube grew...
"It's beautiful," Celestia quietly said.
"The plumber's art," Luna added, and there was a touch of reverence in the younger's tones. "As art. Simply to see it at last..."
The crystal pony shrugged.
"You hired the best," he placidly announced. "Anyway, weeks. Not gonna rush this, especially when the parts are this specific and there's so much to do. But I'll finish the channels to your personal bathing areas first."
They both smiled.
"One more thing," Fluorite added. "Draw is a problem. From what I saw of the system, some areas have heavier pulls than others. And you're pretty much on your own water system, right? At least for the inlets. You're pulling off the lakes in the gardens. That's messing with the pressure, because you can't draw extra from the city when you need to."
Reverence vanished, and a rather chill defensiveness took the floor and most of the available interior space. "When one has a great need to relax after a long night," Luna firmly stated, "having a pool of one's own becomes something of a necessity --"
"-- so I'm going to rig some valves and turn joints," the plumber evenly cut in, and did so where just about no native would have dared. "They can be operated directly if you need them. I could even do some of it from here, with what you've got already. But after I'm done, the pressure will turn them. The whole system will just pick up on the extra flow and draw some more water out of the source. Send it to where it's needed, without hurting the rest of the building."
"...oh," Luna eventually finished.
The pipe continued to grow. The facets weren't entirely even, and a few reflected more strongly than others -- but the construct was becoming increasingly solid.
"So you can finally fill your pool without shutting down half the toilet trenches. Which is what's been happening. Right?"
The smaller alicorn used the moment after the announcement to examine a nearby pipe. It was her palace, therefore it was also her pipe, it needed examination, and turning away made it all the easier to ignore her sibling's repressed snicker.
"We leave you to it, Fluorite," Celestia finally smiled. "Let us know which walls you need dismantled on any given day, and we'll reroute traffic around those areas. We'd appreciate at least two days of warning on each, just in case there's any palace functions which have to be hosted elsewhere. And we'll need to clear some classified areas before you reach them. But otherwise -- you just about have the run of the place."
He nodded again. "Can do. Will do."
The stallion lifted his head. Some careful jaw work applied to specialized tools freed another length of old pipe before placing it on the floor, and he peered inside.
"Something in here," he announced. Took the old metal in his jaw again, tilted...
It slid out easily enough: the coating of slime helped with that. The strands were tangled into the sort of knot which laughed at descending blades, and it might have actually laughed because anything that large and complex was arguably on the verge of developing sapience.
The mass, if examined closely, might have been seen to have two distinct shades. However, determining that would have required trying to see past the coating of pipe dirt and scum: something which seemed to leave the sisters out, because both of them were rather pointedly not looking at it.
"Weird," Fluorite decided. "Usually don't get them that large. Anyway, you two can clear out. Got a lot of work to do."
They nodded again, with just a touch of haste from each. Began to withdraw, until the younger turned back to face him for three final, almost gentle words.
"Welcome to Equestria."
It was a rather slow breath from the stallion, especially on the exhale. It had too much time to force out.
"Thanks," Fluorite told them, once his fur was back to its normal lie again. "I... kept hoping I'd get here."
They often bathed together, and they always helped to clean each other.
It was something they'd been doing since their youth. Both had grown up in an era of chaos, and washing created a period of vulnerability. It was best to bathe in groups because that way, there was always somepony on lookout. Some echo of that had reached the modern day -- but the passage of time had allowed the fear to fade, and so ponies simply had bathhouses and warm pools and, whenever possible, splash fights.
For the sisters who were standing in the huge room, feeling the hot spray from multiple carefully-angled (and extra-elevated) showerheads hit their bodies, the fear was something they merely remembered. To some degree, they bathed together because it was simply that much more time they could spend in each other's company. But there were other factors. For starters, one of the other reasons ponies sometimes bathed in groups was because washing up was complicated. You could build panels of soaked sponge into the walls, create specialized brushes, centuries had been spent refining tools -- and after all of that, even those with unicorn capabilities had trouble scrubbing any place they couldn't directly see. Working with a partner meant having somepony around who could go for the spot you'd missed or, more often, just couldn't reach.
"Just about done," Celestia announced as water ran through the saturated fur of her jaw: any liquid which contacted the semi-tangible mane simply went through. "I'm down to... the last step. You?"
The younger twisted this way and that under multiple sprays, lifted her wings to let a few select jets rinse the areas underneath while the water which phased through her tail failed to extinguish a single star. "Yes." Wet feathers failed to rustle. "Incidentally, it is a pleasure to do this and actually hear you."
"It was just about at shouting, wasn't it?" The white form shook a little liquid away: more flowed in. "But he did this area first. Just so we'd have more comfort."
"While I still await my pool's full renovation," Luna grumbled -- then, a little more quickly, "Which I do understand, sister. More inlets, extra pipes. Still... since we are both here, I also feel the need for a -- final touch. Are you ready?"
The wince was just about automatic, and well-practiced.
"Yes," was the half-lie. "On three..."
They both concentrated. Making the effort towards temporary suppression.
The siblings had a number of things in common. For starters, each was carrying considerably more magic than the average pony, it had to express itself somewhere, both suspected a degree of wish fulfillment had offered direction --
Pastels vanished. Stars winked out. Long twin falls of light blue and dingy brown collapsed against necks and buttocks.
-- and each was just about the only one the other trusted to see their actual hair.
Two horns lit. Coronas projected towards bottles on opposing shelves, and the mutual shampooing began.
"It's funny," Celestia eventually said as she carefully worked the foam down the back of Luna's neck. "Even after all this time. I know they strictly don't need cleaning, but if I don't push back to normal every so often, the flow starts to feel -- well, dingy."
Luna nodded: her own energies were at work around the tip of Celestia's tail. "The tangles are worse than usual."
"The other reason," the elder sighed. "Sun and Moon, I hate my hair..."
The younger said nothing, because the argument was so old as to make her feel there was nothing new to say. Each simply helped to clean the other and as they did so, a number of strands silently fell away. Flowed along the natural routes of water, streaming towards the drains.
It wasn't that they didn't know. They were alicorns -- but they were also ponies, and when they made themselves assume the state required for true cleaning, they were as close to normal as they ever came. A normal pony was always shedding mane and tail hairs: a number would drop during the course of a normal day, others would be rinsed off when they bathed, and new hairs would grow to replace them. The same applied to fur. It was something perfectly normal and, for the sisters, the little losses were thus something they could perfectly ignore.
They didn't watch the long hairs as the lost strands wriggled within the little currents. There was no reason to do so. They simply talked, continued to wash each other, and enjoyed a shower in which most of the sounds were once again produced by speech and splashing water.
Neither saw brown and blue slip down into the new pipes as the repression effect on the detached hairs began to wear off. And so neither saw the momentary light which reflected up from hidden crystal.
Time passed. Walls were dismantled so Fluorite could get at the pipes within, reassembled when he was done. (There were never any leaks during such work, because he shut down the flow to those areas before starting.) More than a few staffers found their usual route to work obstructed by blocks of marble, and a few even finally began to read their employee briefing sheets.
The sisters continued to use the main dual shower instead of resorting to their personal ones, because it was time together. Besides, even with the plumbing for Luna's pool renovated, one dismantling had seemed to suggest another and so most of the tiles were being replaced. The younger grumbled about that every so often, then went back to making sure she washed the back of her ears. The back of the ears was a sore spot with most supervising pony parents, and even those who had grown up long ago suspected it was mostly just to give the previous generation something they could always complain about.
There was an event which was scheduled to have omnivore dignitaries in attendance, and so a blood-red unicorn proudly opened the scentproof storage locker and extracted the raw material for a roast: something which was just as fresh and dripping as the day he'd put it there, because his magic ensured that it would be so. And because Sizzler was extraordinary within the realm of his mark (and a little dim everywhere else), he put the rendered tissue in a draining pan directly over the meat station's sink: there was such a thing as too many juices. It was left there while he went back for some chops and when he came back to it, rotating the roast within his corona for inspection, he noticed the little burn mark and, after quite a bit of thought, started to wonder where it had come from. But the griffon butcher was his friend, everyone made mistakes sometimes, he never would have insulted Gerald by complaining about something so minor, and he simply trimmed it away before he went back to creating an expert centerpiece. Something which brought the praise of every omnivore at the table, while making most of the attending ponies look for a quiet, shielded place in which to throw up.
Glimmerglow, who had long felt that it was best to wrap up toiletries before her shift as a Solar Guard started, trotted into that half-hidden section of the locker room and found one of the stall doors hanging from a single hinge. A quick examination found that the metal seemed to have been knocked away from the wood through blunt impact: something which simply made the pretty pegasus shrug to herself, because sometimes doors were closed with a little too much force by kicking hind hooves and hinge failures happened. She chose another stall and made sure to drop by Maintenance before starting her shift, because the proper thing to do was adding it to their schedule. The only annoying thing was almost being late, because she wound up losing that much time to standing in the reporting line.
A face-splashing trough had a crack. Then there were two.
Nopony ever really looked down at the intake and outlet for the continual-flow trenches in the stalls unless something went wrong, and so nopony really noticed the cracks.
Throughout the palace, marble was taken apart and put back together. Wherever that happened, the moans and creaks of old pipes went away. Ponies rejoiced at the loss of something much less than background music, a number brought Fluorite around to the Canterlot bars for celebratory drinks, and a few wondered if there was any way to get crystal piping for their own homes.
The creaks and moans were going away. But there was a new, softer sound in the finished areas. Something which marble still conducted, but... you would have needed to have an ear pressed against the walls, and who went around doing that? Certainly not the ponies from Maintenance, which found itself with an ever-increasing number of things to fix, almost always somewhere in the rough vicinity of a faucet or drain.
Nopony listened to the walls. But if they had, they would have heard something new. Something very much like a little... zap.
Time passed. More pipes were replaced. There were showers, and hairs fell away.
There was another zapping sound.
Followed by yet another.
And then they started to get louder.
They often trotted through the halls together in the earliest part of the morning, when one was fresh and the other was considering what still needed to be done before she took to her bed. But they trotted together when nopony else was present to overhear, because there were always things to discuss. Or given the current subject, to complain about.
"...and did you see the latest request from Maintenance? Extra supplies! Each staff is requesting backup from the other! Solar ponies want the Lunars to lend them some extra jaw grips, and that's right on top of the Lunars asking --" with a soft groan "-- but you saw that."
"In triplicate," Luna confirmed. "Which may have simply been their means of attempting to impress the desperation of their need upon me through extra ink. Small repairs, for the most part -- but so many, and in such a short time..."
This groan was somewhat louder: the half-echo almost muffled the sound of hooves coming down on half-divoted marble. "I swear this whole place is just falling apart. It's just too old," declared the mare who frequently devoted quite a bit of subconscious effort to ignoring the fact that she was older still. "Sometimes when I look at the costs of keeping this place standing, I start to think it would be easier to just start building an entirely new palace..."
"If the palace budget is having difficulty in accounting for repairs," Luna imperiously stated, "then I suspect it is not currently capable of accommodating a separate structure. We would need to wait until the next annual distribution of our nation's taxes, and I can already imagine the reaction when we tell our citizens about the potential need for a new home. Especially when as everypony who neither lives nor works here knows, the current one is still perfectly serviceable." With more than a hint of fresh grumble, "And its current occupants might remember that, some time after this period of increased repairs ends."
"I know," the elder sighed. "It's a good place. Still. Most of the time. But when it goes bad, it always seems to have multiple things going wrong at once." Her pace was accelerating, as if trying to get ahead of the next demand. "And then we have to figure out how many ponies we need for the extra hours, Fluorite still has to get access to his own space, and --"
There would have been words to come after the conjunction. They would have concerned the number of ponies who had been asking her if the plumber had any intention of immigration, and they were lost at the moment purple eyes furiously narrowed, focusing on the newest offense.
"-- and there's a crack in that wall!"
The younger had to raise her head somewhat: the damage was only readily apparent on Celestia's eye level until anypony else looked up and after that, it was rather hard to look away.
It was as if a little cave mouth had been set into the wall. There was a dark recess, one little piece of weakly-attached stone served as a stalactite, and shadows hinted at the depths within.
"That's a hoofwidth across!" Celestia fumed. "How long has that been there? It wasn't on any of the requests!"
Luna was now examining the floor. "Very recent," she declared. "As some of the lost material is still here. Simply at a much lower level. You very nearly stepped through it." Thoughtfully, "But why would it be in the center of the hallway? Did somepony kick it? The natural drop would have had the debris at the base of the damaged area --"
"Let me just see how deep it goes," the elder sighed. "Since it's also big enough to look into." Long legs carefully approached.
"-- and that would mean whoever kicked it would have needed to trot with one flank brushing the wall at all times. Hardly a standard route, even when the hallway is crowded -- and this is one of the wider specimens --" which was when she finally noticed what her sibling was doing. "Tia?"
"Hang on." The long neck was being carefully angled. "I'm almost lined up."
"Of the two of us, which can see in the dark? You are peering into --"
The white horn ignited, and sunlight streamed into the tiny cave.
"-- showoff," Luna muttered. "Very well. What do you see?" Coming closer, still looking around.
Celestia squinted.
"One of the new pipes."
Not without a touch of being darkly impressed, "The crack is that deep as to reach the hollow between walls? Is anything else visible?"
"No. Just the pipe. And I can make out the water flowing through it. And..." The squint narrowed a little more. "...what was that?"
"Sister, as you have the lone viewing port to yourself..." The younger continued to inspect the area.
"I thought I saw something go by in the pipe."
"Dirt?" Without hesitation, "Something you might prefer to describe as dirt?"
It was, as unknowing pronouncements of doom went, one of the odder specimens.
"Dirt doesn't glow."
Luna blinked. Came closer still.
"Truly?"
"It was like a thin luminescent snake. It just flashed through. I couldn't make out the exact color, because my corona is masking some of it and the crystal isn't helping. Maybe you do need to look --"
She was the only one in position, and so Celestia alone saw the next glowing line twist by, as the flow of the water brought one end into contact with a particularly large facet.
The crystal flashed.
Celestia pulled back. It was an automatic reaction to a burst of light, even for a pony who could not be blinded by any amount of brightness. She pulled back, lost the alignment, and so when the zap lanced from the cave, it did so into the base of her neck. It went into her.
And then she was flying.
It was a very brief burst of flight, it didn't have wings involved in any way, and the trajectory resulting from having been knocked off her hooves would have normally resulted in the white form rebounding off the opposing wall. It was just that there happened to be something in the way.
The crash echoed for a while, until the fake stalactite surrendered at the last.
"I didn't -- I didn't mean -- I just --" and now wings were flaring. "-- are you okay? Tell me you're --"
Somewhat muffled, from floor level, "-- you are not hurt? There are no injuries?"
"It just knocked me back! Are you --"
"-- then get off me!"
Six limbs scrambled. A few seconds later, the younger made it twelve.
"What was that?" were Celestia's first words as she regained her hooves, standing to the right of the hole. "There wasn't any pain! Just force! It went into me, not through, and I don't feel any different!"
"I have no way to know," Luna replied from her new place on the left. "As it happened to you. But to be safe, we should seek out the Royal Physicians immediately --"
The next zap came through the hole, passed roughly between their snouts, and hit the wall exactly where the first pieces of broken marble had impacted. It even came close to bouncing the same way.
The sisters stared at the fresh gouge in the floor.
Then they heard stone cracking. Behind them. Up ahead. Somewhere out of sight.
And then they were galloping.
There were holes in the walls. There were scorch marks near drains. They were moving too fast to truly recognize the little patch of fast-melting ice which coated one impact zone. There were zapping sounds and sundered marble falling away and so much of that was lost in the sound of pounding hooves and hard-flapping wings because there was also an evacuation in progress.
The evacuation had been the first thing sounded. You didn't keep control of a country during a crisis unless you had some very well-defined plans for getting innocents out of harm's way and when it came to the palace, those plans were run through a drill every moon. Or, during those periods which threatened to go full Bearer, had an actuality every other day.
"Is it the plumbing?" Celestia called out over her left shoulder: the bulk of her attention was being used to herd most of Accounting towards the Solar Courtyard. "We've got to find Fluorite! If the pipes are doing this...!"
"How?" Luna shouted back as the winged members of Public Relations were sent out the nearest window. "His constructs are standard for the Empire! Given that it has not fallen from within --"
"Crystal pipes in crystal buildings! Maybe because they're inside stone walls?"
"Meaning the very world resents our desire to bathe in peace," the younger half-snarled. "Do you recall which part of the palace he happens to be working in today? As his shift begins during your hours --"
Celestia blinked. Fifteen desperate ponies used the opportunity to go around her.
"Yes. And he works alone, and he's isolated. He might not have even heard the alarm, and he hasn't run the drills! We've got to find him!"
He was back in the subbasement, because there were still dying pieces of metal on the lowest level and the flow from fresh crystal had the chance to stress them. They needed to be checked regularly, and so the plumber was turning valves here and there, stopping the water so sections could be removed and inspected.
Fluorite frowned: an act made somewhat more difficult by the object in his mouth. Shook his head, ignored the sound of fast-approaching heavy hooves, repeated the movement with more force --
-- something came flying out of the little piece of tube.
The sisters arrived at the same moment as the splat, and so three heads automatically turned towards where something coated in slime, scum, corrosion, and glow was slowly sliding down the wall.
It was glow which came in two colors, entangled with each other. One was pastel pink, the other midnight blue and as they all watched, the light went out.
The knotted mass of tail hair rested against the base of the wall. Slimy, dirty, and also brown, except for where it was possible to make out that some of it had once been light blue.
The plumber slowly looked up. Away from the sodden mass, to a pair of shocked alicorns whose manes were flowing with what were now rather familiar colors.
"Explain," Fluorite softly said.
"We..." The sentence was interrupted by two things: another crack of stone from somewhere overhead, and what felt like a much louder gulp moving down Celestia's throat. "...I'm not sure we can..."
"...there are -- certain complications..." Luna tried.
With a citizen, it probably would have worked. There were things which Equestrians didn't ask the sisters, simply because it was the sisters and if they didn't want to tell you, then the average pony would quickly decide they were better off not knowing. But this was a resident of the Empire.
"EXPLAIN! I've seen hair clogs! Ponies lose hair every day! Hair clogs are normal! But I've been getting huge ones this whole time, and --- they're from you, aren't they? Both of you! So why are they glowing? Why did they stop?" His ears finally twisted. "And what's all that noise upstairs? What's going on?"
"We're evacuating!" The elder was mostly making an attempt to get him away from danger, added to the hope that such would make him stop talking about it. "We'll get you out! Just give us a --"
"-- magic hair."
Luna had already been trying to get past the larger form, moving into position to teleport the plumber out. The words almost completely froze her, but for dark blue eyes which frantically sought out purple ones and found a sort of repressed terror staring back.
"You've got magic in your hair," Fluorite declared. "Living things hold magic. Except for the roots, hair's dead. So when your hairs drop away, and the root dies... eventually, the magic gets discharged."
A pair of mare jaws dropped.
The crystal pony's eyes widened with realization, and then the words became louder. Faster. "That's what damaged all your old pipes! Stressed from within! That's why you've had so many leaks, why you were trying to get somepony like me for more than a thousand years! You thought crystal was the solution! And the crystal is holding, because it lets energy go through! I didn't try to proof the pipes against your magic, because I didn't know there was going to be any magic going through them! It touches the right facet, and..."
That was where he had to stop, because he'd run out of practical knowledge of Equestrian magic at the same moment he'd run out of breath. But the sisters had heard it all, they knew more, and it made them stare at each other in horror.
"Dead hairs," Luna breathed. "Outside of our control. If we touch enchanted crystal with our manes, nothing happens, because the magic is still part of our living bodies. But fallen away -- a moment of contact, and the interaction might force discharge all the sooner. It is not like the samples we provide to the doctors for study, where we must negate the magic entirely. We have been shedding charged hairs into crystal pipes for weeks."
"And when one discharges," Celestia desperately theorized, "it's not necessarily all in a straight line. Some of that magic might travel through the pipes as a shockwave. Finds another hair, destabilizes it that much faster --"
"-- the metal pipes encourage contact with the sides, because the flow is not as smooth," Luna pushed out. "If it is contact, then metal means hairs go off all the time, in too small a quantity to do much damage. But with crystal... the hairs might stay centered for longer. But if your shockwave theory is correct, sister, then --"
"-- critical mass," the elder frantically postulated. "Building up for weeks. And if there's enough in there, if they're all in range of each other --"
The plumber's gaze was shifting from left to right. Staring from one to the other and back again.
"-- the palace," Luna's hollow voice finished, "is now a bomb. Not enough so to bring down the structure, but we may be on the verge of a chain reaction. Even with the staff brought to safety, there will still be pieces missing from walls. The oldest of art destroyed." With something which would not allow itself to be a sob, "The pipes flow everywhere. Some pass through the walls for those rooms where we store the most personal of our possessions -- Tia, what do we do --"
There was one more moment when the fear was in charge. With all three simply looking at each other. Lost.
But the elder had been in charge for a long time. Trying to look after a nation which was always attempting to find new and creative ways of destroying itself. When it came to a crisis, that level of experience encouraged a certain speed of thought.
"There's explosions," Celestia stated. "We may not be able to stop them. But we can decide where they go off. We can't flush the system into the city --"
"-- my pool," Luna quickly declared, and the dark body began to turn. "It has the most inlets, it draws the most water! Fluorite, you can still redirect at least some of the flow from here? Send it to my personal bath, as much as you can!"
Which gave the plumber what he'd needed most: something within the realm of mark and magic, a subject he could control. "On it!" He was already moving towards a valve. "Give me about three minutes if you can, and then open every tap in there!"
And they were on the gallop, because there wasn't enough room on the sublevel for flight, not with their respective wingspans in close proximity. Teleporting was too much of a risk when there might still be stragglers in the corridors trying to evacuate, and it was a risk to those left behind. Direct transport to the pool cost them the chance to get the last ponies out.
"We won't have enough time for shield bubbles," Celestia shouted as her hooves pounded against the floor, still accelerating. "Not as fast as the hairs are going to be flowing in, and some of them might collide with the pipe edges before they reach us! All we're doing is choosing where to take the damage, and if the pipes go out before it's over -- no, wait: the magic went through, the pipes might hold up --"
"-- and we will be in the same area as multiple detonations, unable to project our coronas through any personal shield domes!" Luna pointed out. "Except that the magic hit you, and -- Tia, you were not hurt? You are sure?"
"I don't feel any different! I just wasn't braced for it! There was power, but it was --"
There was just enough time for one gasp of breath.
"-- normal!" the elder finished. "It didn't feel different because it was normal! My own magic, Luna, just coming back...!"
Dark eyes widened, and this was followed by a smile. It was a familiar smile for the elder, something she had longed to see for centuries. It was an expression of understanding, and it was also the last thing so many monsters saw before they died.
It was a plan.
They moved.
Eight hooves slammed into new tile of the indoor swimming pool , and some of the ceramics split.
Luna barely noticed. Her corona was flaring in multiple directions, twisting every tap. "Get into position! The back of the pool, in the space between inlets! I shall take the left, you the right! We call off colors as they emerge from the flow, and then we each move to intercept only our own hairs! Neither should attempt to absorb the power of the other!"
The sides of the pool were already beginning to rumble.
"And if we get one of those tangles?" The elder was already trying to watch everything at once.
"Duck! Here it comes, Tia, I can hear it --"
And then there was water.
Some of it was splashing in from behind them, surrounding their flanks. There were huge jets from the sides, waterfalls coming in at the front, it was hot and steaming because Luna refused to ever have a cold bath and the first thin glowing tendril shot out of the gushing liquid --
"Blue!" Celestia yelped. "Luna --"
Who had already moved, leaping forward to intercept. The hair touched the fur of her right flank, she jerked slightly to the side, landed in water which was already beginning to cover her hooves --
"-- green!" the younger shouted.
Celestia shifted position, took the magic back. But there were more hairs coming in, more with every moment and the first tangle appeared, they got clear as quickly as they could and the jet hit the back wall of the sunken pool, more tiles cracked and the water just kept flowing, it was up to the younger's knees now and it wouldn't be all that long before the mass of the liquid would be fighting them, slowing them --
"-- we're idiots!" Even for Celestia, it was a rather open declaration. "Work from the rim, looking down! It'll be easier from there!"
Four wings flared in a mix of desperation and embarrassment.
The water kept coming. Hairs streamed in, and they could hear detonations around the huge room as some of them didn't quite make it. Glowing tangles cascaded into the fast-filling pool, and all they could do was try to keep those masses from touching anything, pushing with their coronas against the chaotic waves of water, claiming back what they could, isolating what they could not, and they missed a few because there was no way to get them all, one of the taps was in pieces, then another, the little rim-resting tray which Luna used as a floating soap dispensary got jolted into the heaving waters just before the next hair sank it, there were glowing tendrils everywhere and they were snatching and pushing and trying to make contact and avoid contact as the explosions continued to go off, both longing for the mere creaks and moans of old pipes...
...ten seconds passed with no charged hairs.
A stray flowed in. One of Luna's, with a little bit of extra glow near the tip.
Twenty-three more seconds.
A minute...
And finally, the sisters exhaled.
"I will not say we have them all," Luna reluctantly admitted as the water lapped over her hooves. "But that is likely the majority."
Celestia managed a nod. "Enough that we don't have to worry as much about shockwaves on the rest. Besides, there's nowhere left to put everything. We'll have to turn off the taps and drain the pool --"
"-- Tia?"
"What?"
The warmth crept up their legs.
"...several of the taps are broken."
The sisters looked at each other.
There had been water pulled from that which was within the castle. Just about all of that was already present, and climbing. They were now drawing from the garden lakes.
But there was only so high it could rise before physics took over. Eventually, the liquid drained.
Technically, it drained. The hallways counted. So did the ramps. However, anything absorbed by carpets, wall draperies, and any paperwork which had the misfortune to still be in the way was just as technically still around.
"...Luna?"
Eventually, because being waterlogged had a way of slowing ponies down, "Yes?"
"Do you want to go look for the seaponies again?"
"...yes. When?"
"In five minutes?"
The evacuated ponies were still outside. The sisters were back on the sublevel. Quite a bit of the water had beaten them down there, and Fluorite stood quietly in a knee-depth cooling pool, listening.
"...so we're sorry," Celestia finished. "We never thought..."
Luna did no more than nod, just once. And they waited.
The crystal pony's lips twisted a little.
"So here's how we can do this," he eventually said. "All water from your baths, showers, and the pool goes to a storage area. I can rework the pipes to prevent discharge. You two need to figure out the shielding on the storage. Every so often, you'll have to go down and clean it out. Should be safe once we all get our heads together. And then I can finish the job."
The sisters exhaled.
"We had believed you would simply leave on the spot," Luna admitted. "That you have expressed your intent to see it through -- we are grateful."
"Been waiting too long for this to stop now," the plumber told them. "But we can't really start until we're sure all the hairs are out of the system. I can guarantee some of them didn't make it to the pool. You've gotta take everything apart and inspect. And until that's done, you two wash up in a lake."
They abashedly nodded.
"So how many more weeks for you to disassemble --" and Celestia winced "-- it's going to be the whole palace, isn't it? We're sorry --"
He was looking at them. Just... looking at them, because he was a citizen of the Empire alone, and it gave him a head start. The very few Equestrians to look at the sisters in that fashion generally had to realize they were dealing with ponies first.
"I think," Fluorite decided, "all those explosions might have made it a little harder to hear. Missed a word there."
"...sorry?" both asked and for the younger, that was a rare event indeed.
"Came here for a unique job. To finish it. Still gonna do that. But this is Equestrian magic, alicorn stuff," the plumber clarified. "And I said you."
The sisters were resting with their bellies and barrels against the bottom of the still-damp pool. They were about two body lengths apart: the elder on the left, the younger on the right, with both surrounded by pieces of pipe. Most were metal, a few were crystal, and they had been gathered here because if anything was going to explode, it might as well do so in an area where so much damage had already been done.
A dark corona flowed forward. Levitated a length of hollow cylinder, held it well away from the mare's left eye.
"Empty," Luna declared, and set it aside. Energy took up another.
"There's something in this one," Celestia morbidly announced.
"A hair?"
"I'm not sure." The pipe tilted a few times. "I can't see it past the blockage. Let me just..."
Sunlight probed. Slowly, a tangle of gunk and ancient hairs slid down the incline, hung on the rim for an agonizing second, and then splashed down in front of Celestia's sternum.
On the bright side, only a portion of the results went into the white fur.
Again.
"You could simply try to hook it with your horn," the younger suggested.
"...shut up."
The work proceeded in silence for a while.
"You could just grab it with your corona," Celestia eventually countered.
"And experience that texture in my mind? I believe I shall pass."
More labor. They were devoting an hour per day to this, whenever they could spare the time. An hour per day for what they expected to be at least a moon.
"If a certain somepony," Luna softly muttered, "had simply used her additional centuries of activity to surpass some of her personal appearance issues..."
The white head slowly, slowly turned to the right.
"Excuse me?"
Just a little bit louder, "I believe you heard --"
"-- what was that, Luna 'I refuse to be seen in public if my constellations aren't perfect' Invictus?"
They looked at one another. Each sibling caught the other giving the extracted bundles of slime and rot the kind of side-eye evaluation which typically suggested thoughts of going through a full moon of disgust and revulsion at fresh discoveries, but was currently being used to consider the nature of potential ammunition.
The palace, like the sisters, needed to maintain a certain level of dignity. And for the palace, with enough maintenance added to a certain amount of care, that was possible.
*!SPLAT!*
The sisters were still trying to work that part out.
