…

…

…

“Wake up.”

Twilight Sparkle awoke to find her eyes full of dark.

The formless dark of the Between.

She wanted to snap to attention, but she was of course unable to move, unable to go through the motions of bolting upright from her slumber. The mental approximation of a disgruntled sigh ran through her brain.

There was no sign of Celestia or Luna from what she could see. She could not even sense their presence, and given how bright and unmistakable they were that lent the impression that they were either so distant from her as to be beyond notice or they were simply not present here. The notion of where else they could be eluded her.

“I saved them…we saved them…they should be fine.”

A flurry of doubts proceeded to assail her, a school of piranhas making an earnest effort to tear that idea to shreds. She managed to keep all but a scant few from chewing through her armor. This was not the time to worry about such matters.

Heaviness pervaded her senses. She knew that she was unable to move because there was no span of time within which such movement was possible, and yet it was a distinct feeling of languidness that was holding her down. The limited view she had of herself suggested nothing amiss, nothing rising past her muzzle, no flabby sleeves on her arms. Her nerves, however, tingled with the ghostly remains of the sensation of flesh, of skin bulging and pressing together, of additional anatomy, of inflamed loins. She recalled that ponies who lost limbs would sometimes experience phantom sensations of the parts that were gone, itches that could not be scratched. Was this what it would feel like to be rid of the baleful changes which the corruption had afflicted her with?

It seemed like such a hassle. It would be better if she just—

“No.”

The black was forming. It swirled around her, a shark circling its prey. Twilight Sparkle tried to squirm, still to no avail, not to escape but to attempt to stand firm, to tense her muscles, to channel magic. She had come too far to give up so easily, to be taken while she was lying down. She wished nothing more than to be able to bare her teeth in a snarl of defiance.

The corruption poised itself to crash over her like a tidal wave.

And then, from the smoky murk, something emerged.

The alicorn only saw it for a scant few seconds, enough to burn it into her mind while also offering little distinct information for her to latch onto. It was an impossible shape, so vast in its scale that she couldn’t see its beginning or end, like a wall that came out from the void. A seam parted, opening up in a gaping abyss, and it snapped forward and enveloped the cloud of corruption. Then it was gone, receding into the gloom, but she could still detect its presence, and it promptly defused her bluster and prompted a chill along her already-frozen spine.

“Twilight Sparkle.”

The voice boomed through her. She remembered it. The distant words that boomed in the depths of her subconscious.

“Hello?” she asked, without thinking about moving her mouth, and then promptly being surprised about being able to do so. Some semblance of reality was washing over her. Almost literally—it felt like a warm bath placing itself around her. She found herself drifting slowly downward until her hooves landed on something that could approximately be called a floor. There was resistance to her movement, and she felt her mane and tail billowing faintly, as if she were submerged in water, though there was no sensation of wetness, her fur completely dry.

She looked around herself, and she thought she could dimly discern shapes within the dust of the Between. Corners, edges, the formations of walls and columns surrounding her. A grand hall cast in shadow. And there before her was the vast dark, no less immense in its proportions, imposingly monolithic even as it stood at the other end of the hall.

It approached. It glided soundlessly across the floor, undulating and twisting through the air. As it came closer, though, instead of only seeming all the more massive, it shrank, compressing to sizes that were more manageable, until finally she could discern a figure closer to that of an equine. The silence was broken by the punctuated clacks of steps across the ethereal floor.

“Or do you prefer simply Twilight?” said a voice from the gloom, smooth in its cadence but deep in its tone, leaning just slightly toward masculine.

He emerged from the gloom. The pony’s first thought was that he most closely resembled a dragon, and she was more than a little reminded of Spike’s corrupted form. His reptilian face bore white scales and was surrounded by frills, fleshy membranes colored dark purple and teal, a crooked horn emerging from the center of his forehead. Fin-like wings emerged from behind him, held dramatically out toward the sides, a long tail trailing in his wake. He wore long robes that obscured much of his form, deep amethyst with white tassels draping over the front. She could just see the feet underneath the hem of the segmented skirt, tipped with curved talons.

The loose cloth also made it impossible to ignore the way it draped over his prominent breasts, globes easily as large as his head, the broad slopes of his hips and thighs, and the promiscuous bulging shape of the groin, to say nothing of the plump glossy lips at the end of his snout. Twilight Sparkle couldn’t keep herself from being on edge by the sight of another oversized bimbo. It didn’t help matters that, though he was no longer a gigantic shadow, it was apparent as he came stand a few paces from her that he still towered over her, nearly twice her height.

He stared at her with his dark eyes, sea-green irises with narrow pupils swimming in pools of black, and then he sighed through his nostrils. “My apologies, I’m sure you must have had more than your fill of hyper proportions this past night,” he said, and he gestured to himself with one clawed hand, “this is simply how I feel most comfortable. I can tone it down if you prefer.”

“I…” She blinked in confusion. “What?”

“My size. I can tone it down.” The white dragon then placed his hand against his chest and pressed in, and all at once his breasts and the rest of his form compressed inward.

“Th-that’s…” She couldn’t keep herself from staring, dumbfounded, her hesitancy quickly becoming forgotten. “No, it’s…it’s fine, I don’t mind that much.”

He nodded his head. “If you say so.” The shrinking undid itself with a slight bounce as the flesh settled. There was no trace of a magical aura around him to suggest that there were spells being cast, no light from his horn.

“H-how’re you doing that?” she stammered, the question tumbling out of her mouth as curiosity got the better of her. “It requires a monumental skill to cast spells that alter somepony’s body! And I…I can’t even sense any magic from you!”

“Well, I can cast spells like that,” he replied, and his stoic demeanor was broken by his lips spreading into a faint smirk. He held out one of his hands and the air around it rippled with plumes of violet light. “When it comes to myself, though, it’s far more effortless. This form is actually a construct, so I can alter it with nothing more than a thought.”

“What?! So…does that mean that you’re—!” She cut herself off. Her inquisitive nature was getting the better of her. These were not the important questions that needed to be answered. “H-hang on, wait, back up,” she said, recomposing herself, “so…are you…” She reached into her brain, expecting to have difficulty finding the information that she needed, but this time the name that had eluded her showed itself immediately. “…Non?”

“Yes,” he said plainly with another nod, “I take it that means you got my message after all.” A moment later his gaze drifted slightly, and he raised a finger to stroke at his chin and muttered, “Then again, I suppose if you hadn’t gotten the message, you might not have even been here at all…”

“How did all of this happen?” Twilight Sparkle interjected, unable to keep her urgency and frustration from getting the better of her, however briefly. “Where did the corruption come from?”

Non’s eyes focused on her again. Despite his hypersexual appearance, a form that was presumably meant to seem alluring, there was clear weariness in his features. His shoulders heaved with another long sigh. “Perhaps we should take a seat for this.” He then reached behind him while leaning back in what seemed to be miming the motions of taking a chair, but as he did so the dark of Between shifted, and there was the shadow of a chair for him to rest upon. He gestured to her, suggesting, it would seem, to do the same. Twilight Sparkle looked behind herself, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, but when her hand clasped at the open air it was abruptly as if a chair had come into being. She stifled the urge to ask about this and simply sat. Upon turning back, she now found that there was also the faint impression of a table between the two of them, obscuring Non’s lower body. Even though there should have still been a fairly considerable disparity in elevation between them, she found that she could see his face with greater ease now, hardly even craning her neck upward. She saw that the neckline of his robes was cut low over his chest, exposing a fair amount of cleavage but also a series of dark markings centered over the sternum.

“What have you learned about how the corruption works?” he asked, his gaze now fixing her with an analytical sternness. It was the way that a teacher would ask a student a question. Celestia had assumed this manner with her many a time. She was only now finding herself conscious of the fact that she was naked, deprived even of the decency of underwear. By now, she was too desensitized to even be alarmed that she was desensitized to this.

Twilight Sparkle drummed her fingers on the table for a few seconds before she replied. “It…it has something to do with pain…trauma, regret, things like that. It latches onto those memories and…makes you forget them.” Thinking about it, just saying it, made her stomach lurch. “And it replaces that with…pleasure, by…making your body…” Then her lips locked together, and the only way she could illustrate her point was by spreading her arms out to the sides and shaking them emphatically.

Non hummed thoughtfully, raising his brows. “That’s just about the gist of it,” he said, now tapping a finger of his own on the table, “though it’s not quite as clear-cut as making you want to feel nothing but pleasure.”

“What do you mean?”

“It makes things simpler. It makes life…uncomplicated. It makes it so that you no longer have to be concerned with anything. If you were to need something, you would find that you simply have it. If an obstacle were to stand in your way, it would suddenly remove itself. If you were to become injured, no matter how severe, the damage would heal itself automatically.”

Twilight Sparkle found herself remembering the battle with Celunastia, how they shrugged off her and her friends’ efforts to hold them back. She also remembered when Spike had appeared to be knocked out, or worse, only to return to consciousness moments later. She even remembered when Pinkie Pie had turned off her magic, for lack of a better way of describing it.

“Your faculties are still exactly as they were before,” Non continued, pointing to his head, “you simply no longer have any need to make use of them beyond what’s deemed critical. The corruption is actually harmless at the end of the day, its only desire is to make people’s lives better, albeit in a narrowminded, perverse sense. If allowed to run rampant, the real danger comes from the panic of those around the afflicted. That is, unless there is the potential for a singularity to form, which can alter the very fabric of the world that the corruption arrived on. Yours is not the first world where something of this nature has happened”—his countenance turned grave—“and it also would not have been the first time I arrived too late to stop it.”

A heavy silence fell over them for several seconds before Non then said, still serious but with a hint of something lighter, something like hope, “What you do represent, however, is the first time that anyone has been able to stave off the corruption, let alone a singularity, without my intervention.”

Her eyes widened further. “What? But…the first?”

“Not every world in the cosmos has access to magic or things of that sort, Twilight,” Non said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “What you or I might consider a natural part of life would to them be mere flights of fancy. Frightfully dull places, I must say. They had no chance of fending off an ethereal presence. Sometimes a person may be able to resist the corruption if their wills are strong enough, but that only prompts it to double down and increase its effects, and it’s only a matter of time before anyone gives in.” He leaned forward, and if Twilight Sparkle didn’t know any better she’d think that he was looking into her. She briefly considered that this must be what it felt like for somepony else when they were the subject of her own curiosity. “Never before, though, have I seen someone outright free themselves of the corruption.”

“Well…only partially,” the alicorn admitted sheepishly, crossing her arms over her front. “It seems I could only shake off the mental aspect of it. I…we were still…big.”

“I feel that you might have figured it out eventually if you had the opportunity for it.” He offered her an encouraging smile before he hummed again. “I really must know, though: what was it that allowed you to have this breakthrough? This is something that could have enormous ramifications for my efforts to contain the corruption.”

She stared back at him for several seconds, blinking. She wasn’t sure what to say, not because the answer was unclear but because it seemed so clearly obvious. So she said plainly, “It was Harmony.”

Non’s brows furrowed. “What, like musical harmony? You used song to wake yourselves up?”

“N-no, I mean like…Harmony.” She said it as emphatically as she could to really indicate the proper-nounness of it. “It’s the bond between ponies. Or…other creatures.” She may still not know what exactly Non was but he certainly served well to remind her of dragons and by extension the myriad other lifeforms that inhabited Equestria. “My friends and I, we…we were once the bearers of something called the Elements of Harmony. It signified us as being the paragons of those particular virtues that made up Harmony. It was because of this, I think, because we were so close to each other, that we were able to maintain our consciousness. They all worked together to help me wake up, and then I did the same thing for them. And…well, Spike, my brother, he wasn’t a bearer but he’s…close to us too.”

Non stared back at her. Incredulous. Disbelieving. She was expecting the question before she even heard it. She had gotten very used to ponies who couldn’t entirely swallow the idea of something so absurd, no matter how many times it had led to the saving of the country. “So what you’re saying is…” he asked, tapping a finger against the table, “you were using…the magic of friendship?”

“Yes, basically,” she said plainly and without hesitation.

He kept staring for several seconds longer before finally he gave a snort of laughter and his lips parted in a grin. “Well, shit, I guess I was making the solution out to be way harder than it needed to be.”

Twilight Sparkle managed to smile back and chuckle weakly. She found herself able to speak more easily as the hypothesizing side of her brain kicked into high gear. “I guess it’s still not really easy. You’d need to have a group of friends who are close enough for their resonance to bond together. That’s not something you come across every day, probably. I’m also not sure it would have worked if we hadn’t all…become corrupted beforehand. Even despite…what it did…I think it was also important for bringing us together.”

“Perhaps, but it might still be possible to harness that energy in some manner,” Non mused, his own posture seeming to relax as well. “If I could provide my agents with more means to contain the corruption and protect themselves, it would make it a lot more feasible to send them out into the field on their own.” His gaze shifted downward. His expression faded somewhat as he nodded his head. “Friendship…it sounds so obvious now that I think about it.”

Twilight Sparkle remained quiet, watching him, before she eventually said, “Non, you still haven’t answered my other question.”

He looked toward her. Wariness flashed in his dark eyes. “What question?”

“Where did the corruption come from?” she reiterated, and she spoke with a pointedness that turned the tone of the conversation firmly on its head.

And she watched as Non slowly but surely deflated. His posture slackened and his face turned away, eyes closed. She almost thought even his breasts started to sag, just slightly. The confident demeanor he had demonstrated up until that moment evaporated all at once. It spoke to her of many things at once before he even opened his mouth again. Regret. Shame. Anguish.

“There was a time when I was…in a lot of pain, Twilight,” he said quietly. He seemed to shrink as he clasped his hands in front of himself, over his stomach. “I had lost a lot, and…I was worried that I might lose everything else. I went a little mad. A lot mad, honestly. I got better from that, but…the pain never really went away. It continued to fester. So I decided…I would make it go away.” His hand reached toward his chest, brushing at the markings there. “I changed myself. I turned off my ability to be inconvenienced by anything, so that way I didn’t have to think about pain. It worked…for a while. No matter what I did, the pain kept leaking back in. I just…” He covered his face in his hands next. “I just wanted to forget. I made the alterations to my psyche and body more and more potent to combat it and…eventually I just…stopped thinking. I had become…corrupted.”

Twilight Sparkle listened, her ears drooping, feeling her breath catch in her throat. “So…that makes you…patient zero?”

“In a sense, perhaps,” he said quietly before turning to her again, “but that would imply that I was a victim of the virus that is the corruption. The reality, Twilight, is that I am the corruption—or, rather, the corruption is me. Remember when I told you that this body is only a construct?” She thought she understood, but she was not prepared for when he held up a finger and dug it into the corner of his eye, and she couldn’t suppress a flinch and a startled gasp. He pulled, and the surface of his face distorted, the bone structure warping, like a rubber mask, and through the straining eyehole what she saw underneath was only a shapeless roiling darkness. “I am not a physical creature, Twilight. My body died years ago. All that remains is the essence of my spirit. And while I was in that corrupted state, a…a piece of my essence split off, and it escaped through the fabric of my universe and into the realms beyond. By the time I came to my senses again, it had propagated and multiplied and spread its influence to countless worlds, infecting their inhabitants and spawning its own proxies.”

His face snapped back into place, and he resumed his stoic posture, leaning forward with elbows resting on the counter, albeit now with a visible heaviness in the way he hung his head, wings wilting at his sides. “I’ve been trying to correct that mistake ever since.”

And in the end, Twilight Sparkle could only stare. In the silence, the pounding of her heartbeat was deafening. There was a turmoil of emotions within her, and she couldn’t ignore the part that was bristling with indignation. She had never really expected that she would find the source of the corruption, what had caused all of these terrible things that had happened to her and her friends and who knows how many others along the way. And now, here it was. This was her opportunity to voice her displeasure.

She closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, her posture relaxing as she let it go.

“You said you were afraid of…losing things,” she said softly, “did you lose any of them in the end?”

“No,” Non replied. “They’re still with me.”

“So, you’re not alone?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “No…but it doesn’t feel that way sometimes. I’ve tried…I’ve really tried, but…I can’t stop feeling alone.”

Twilight Sparkle leaned forward. The shadowy table between them seemed to constrict, shrinking the distance between them. She looked up at Non, and a faint smell of lilac and licorice emanated from him. He was strange and alien and bizarre and she still had to question the idea that he found this kind of blatantly sexualized appearance preferable.

She extended her hand toward him.

He hesitated momentarily before showing movement, slowly reaching with his own hand to meet hers. His was far larger, almost enveloping hers, but they clasped together all the same, warmth flowing from one to the other.

“It’s hard to be alone,” she murmured, “but even when you’re all by yourself and there’s nopony by your side, you still hold on to the memories of everypony you used to know. They may not physically still be with you, but they will always be a part of you.”

Non slowly smiled and nodded his head. “Yeah…you’re right.”

With a gentle tug from the mare to urge him forward, he leaned in as well. The table vanished entirely, leaving room for the two to share a quiet embrace, arms and wings both wrapped around each other. Twilight Sparkle found that she couldn’t even mind the cushy warmth of his bosom pressing against her chest or the fact that she was still naked.

“Well,” Non eventually said, “are you ready to wake up?”

And Twilight Sparkle faltered, confused. “I’m not awake? I thought this was…” She wasn’t really even sure what she had thought before.

“The lot of you were in a fugue state when we found you,” he said with a chortle, “a sort of pleasure coma. It’s a very common occurrence for those who have gone through multiple cycles of corruption. I’ve been working on fixing you up while we talked; this is simply what your unconscious mind created, something easier for you to compare with. You were in really deep; you got a number done on you.”

“O-oh. Then…then everypony else is…?”

“They’re fine. They’re all crowding around me as we speak, in fact. You’ll be able to see them right about—”

Twilight Sparkle suddenly felt like something was being pulled from within the center of her brain, yanking hard before snapping, and then everything went white.

“—now.”

Light filled her eyes. Not the ambient sourceless unlight of the Between. Genuine light, bright and more than a little blinding.

She raised a hand over her face and sputtered. “What—?”

“TWILIGHT!”

She was promptly pulled into a crushing embrace as someone practically threw themselves on top of her. She was still discombobulated, but she felt scales against her cheek as she was nuzzled. “You’re okay!” Spike exclaimed, almost hysterically, laughing and sobbing all at once.

“Sp-Spike, what…you’re…!” she gasped back between choked breaths.

“Now back up a moment there, sugarcube, I know you’re rarin’ to go for this, but you can’t go crushin’ her.” It was a voice with the harsh twang of a southern accent—not a melodic southern belle accent—speaking. “‘Sides, we all want a chance too.”

“Yeah, we all need to hug Twilight too!” There was another voice, high-pitched and bubbling with overflowing delight, not restrained in the slightest.

“Applejack? Pinkie Pie?” Twilight Sparkle asked, still blinking her eyes at the rush of illumination flooding into her.

“Don’t forget the rest of us, dear!”

“Oh, it’s so good to see you’re okay, Twilight!”

“You really had us worried there for a few minutes! Not me, though, I knew you were gonna be fine.”

And there was a distinct lack of any babbling commentary from a talking sentient phallus.

At Applejack’s urging, Spike relaxed his grip on her, letting her ease herself into a sitting posture. She felt a hard floor underneath her, and she never would’ve thought she’d be so happy to feel the soreness of her rear in place of the overwhelming pliancy of flab keeping her cushioned. Her vision started to clear, and the first thing she saw was not a glossy purple mound rising past her muzzle but Spike’s face, grinning wide despite the tears in his eyes, while he kneeled before her. She saw Applejack and Pinkie Pie standing on one side, and Rarity and Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash on the other, all smiling and relieved in their own ways. The dragon and ponies she knew, in the way that she knew them, no face-obscuring lips, no eclipsing breasts and penises, no extra appendages, no inexplicable anatomy. “Spike…girls…!” she whispered blearily, unable to hold back her own smile and her own tears welling up in her eyes.

That was all the signal they needed. Twilight Sparkle and Spike embraced again, mutually squeezing with all their might, and the other mares knelt down around them to do the same, tighter and tighter as more arms and bodies were added to the mix. They laughed and cried and giggled and sobbed, incoherent syllables bleeding into each other. The alicorn didn’t even care that she, at the epicenter of the hug, was being nearly crushed, even as they all toppled as one and were back on the hard floor all over again.

She couldn’t entirely suppress that one part of her psyche that was just a little disappointed at the lack of softness, the lack of flesh pressing together. That was something she could unpack later when she had the focus and capacity for it.

All that mattered for the time being was that it was over.

It was finally over.

“I’m…I’m so glad to see you all again,” she whispered, her vision clouding up all over again from her tears.

“We’re here thanks to you, Twilight,” Spike said in response.

“No.” She pulled back enough to look at each of them in turn. “It’s thanks to all of us. We brought each other here.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything about that,” Rainbow Dash said with a smug air, pushing out her chest, “but if you’re going to insist, I do have to admit that I was quite awesome today, even if it was in a weird way.”

“Rainbow,” Fluttershy remarked teasingly, reaching to prod the other pegasus in the side, “I seem to recall you nearly falling asleep on the job.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault that it takes a lot out of me to cum somepony into submission!”

“Anyhow,” Rarity interjected with a grimace before that topic could go any further, “we all were glad to do whatever we had to do to stop this dreadful catastrophe from taking place.”

“‘Tweren’t nothin’, Princess,” Applejack said, starting to move her hand in a gesture that might’ve been meant to be a tip of a hat before she remembered she wasn’t wearing one, “all in a day’s work ‘round these parts, I reckon.”

“I dunno, I feel like this is gonna be the peak for us as far as big meanie threats go,” Pinkie Pie mused, tapping at her chin, “it’s gonna be kinda tame if Sombra comes back again and he doesn’t at least have a big penis.”

“Oh please, don’t even joke about that.”

“It’d be a pretty big target to kick at least!”

Twilight Sparkle could still only laugh, and she held on as tight as she could. “Oh, Celestia, I missed all of you so much.”

“You weren’t out for that long, Twilight,” Spike said with a chuckle.

“And we were still with you, in a way, weren’t we?” Fluttershy asked.

“I don’t think I entirely understand it,” Applejack added, “but even while I was under I still…felt you, and everypony.”

“I know, it’s true,” the alicorn said, nodding her head, still smiling and giggling, “we were still connected to each other. We were together, spiritually. But it’s just…being with you, I can’t get enough of it. I love the way you act. I love the way you…” She faltered as she looked at each one of them in turn, more closely than before, and her brow furrowed. “…What are you wearing?”

It only now occurred to Twilight Sparkle that each of them was clothed in—actually, “clothed” seemed like a severe overstatement. It was more like haphazard wraps of fabric that swaddled each of them, a style that was most akin to togas. She couldn’t have imagined that Rarity would ever allow any of them to wear such gaudy improvised garb in public unless it was an emergency and there was no other option. Then again, she figured that was exactly what the circumstances had been.

Speaking of Rarity, the unicorn gasped. “Oh, goodness, that’s right, we can’t have you naked! Quick, quick!” She broke off from the hug and scampered away, and the others steadily separated as well. Ironically, this had the effect of making Twilight Sparkle’s nudity more apparent as she stood up, clasping her hands anxiously over her genitals. Spike blushed and turned away while the others huddled close to her. Despite the circumstances, she was most alarmed that she wasn’t particularly alarmed at all, having gotten so used to being hopelessly uncovered for the past indeterminate span of time. At the same time, it seemed far more real now that it was her original, proper body, not some exaggerated parody thereof.

“Here, darling, quick!” Rarity came back, dragging a bag that was nearly as tall as she was, and from it she telekinetically fished out a bundle of cloth which she then threw at Twilight Sparkle.

The lavender mare, in turn, was taken by surprise, and nearly fell back with a muffled yelp when the mass hit her in the face. After recovering, she held it up before herself, finding it to be silky magenta fabric. “What is this?” she asked aloud.

“It’s clothes!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed while pointing to the sky blue drapes which covered her own body. “Only, you know, the kind that big bimbo ponies would wear!”

With her magic, Twilight Sparkle held out the cloth in front of her. It turned out to actually be two separate articles, two big loops of fabric which she realized were probably supposed to be a tube top and a skirt. Of course, they were each of a span that was nearly as broad across as her height, which suggested that either they were supposed to be worn by a giant or just by a pony who was outrageously broad. She noticed that there were no forms of undergarments, and she was mortified at the idea that she would’ve still been walking around with her swollen labia presented for all to see.

“Can you believe that I just had these all this time and forgot about them?!” Rarity said exasperatedly, shaking the now-presumably-empty bag before letting it fall over and throwing her hands up in the air. Only now did Twilight Sparkle recognize it as well, remembering that the unicorn had been carrying it with her when she arrived at the Castle of Friendship earlier, only to be interrupted before she could reveal its contents. “We could’ve had at least some sense of decency instead of gallivanting around Equestria in the nude!”

“Well, they probably would’ve gotten ruined when we got, um…extra big,” Fluttershy murmured, shrinking into herself with a faint rosy tint on her cheeks.

“I’m still thankful for it, Rarity,” Spike said with a smile, holding his palm gently over the mottled green and purple that covered his chest. “I kinda wish we could’ve worn them earlier, just so we could appreciate the way they were supposed to look.”

“I suppose so.” Rarity sighed, melodramatically holding a hand over the side of her face. “I don’t want to think about how much fabric went into these.”

The amount of fabric at least meant that, while the clothes wouldn’t fit as they had been intended, there was plenty that could be used to cover oneself. Twilight Sparkle took the top and skirt and wrapped them around her chest and waist, which provided more than enough to garb her torso and thighs. She just had to hope that nopony had an opportunity to look up her makeshift skirt.

And while she did so, she also took the time to properly observe their surroundings.

She recognized the throne room of Canterlot Castle, both for what it should and shouldn’t be. The floor was now largely as it was meant to be, tiled marble with the long carpet leading up to the dais upon which the thrones stood. Patches, however, were still cracked and distended, in increasing severity up along the walls toward the ceiling, though the gaps in the stone no longer showed seething wisps of corruption. Sunlight filtered through stained glass windows, those that were intact and those that were still broken, fragments sending scattered beams of light.

But what really caught her attention were the strangers who were scattered across the chamber. More than a dozen of them, they were tall figures, most certainly not ponies, wearing obscuring robes like Non’s, but with the addition of hoods and masks that covered their faces, even their long tails completely covered. Also much like Non, most of them were of a rather exaggeratedly voluptuous persuasion, clothes bulging and draping over their frames, though by the standards of what she had seen before now she had to suppose they were of a relatively reasonable standard, none having to push their genitals across the floor with every step. She watched as a group of them stood by a wall, their hands raised toward it, and the seams in the surface mended themselves, reality reasserting itself at their command.

And she saw Non himself standing a few paces away from their group, conversing with a couple of the hooded figures, seemingly giving instructions. As if sensing her eyes upon him, though, he promptly glanced in her direction. His features had been calm and stern, but as their gazes met he softened slightly and offered a sympathetic smile.

“Non, what’re—”

“Twilight Sparkle.”

They both turned in the direction of the new voice and the approaching hoofsteps that accompanied it. Princess Luna was striding purposefully across the room toward them, clad in a blue bathrobe. Princess Luna, with her sparkling mane full of stars, bright and vibrant once more, and her face regally composed. The hooded figures, despite their stature and whatever magic they might have possessed, seemed aware that she was not the sort to take kindly to interruptions, and those who were nearby gave her a wide berth as she went past. She came to a stop, and her eyes flitted about. First to Non, her expression hard and inscrutable. Then a consolatory glance around the group before finally settling on Twilight Sparkle. “Celestia wishes to speak with you,” she said tersely, and, before anyone could get another word in on the matter, she had already started to turn around and walk back the way she came.

“Wh—! But—!” she sputtered, looking back and forth between the departing alicorn and the others.

A hand was gently placed on her shoulder. “Go on, Twi,” Applejack said reassuringly, “you’ve been worried sick about her, ain’t you? Everythin’s fine here, we can hold down the fort.”

“O-okay,” the lavender mare replied, offering a hasty smile before she started off.

“And we’ll be sure to keep an eye out for any fishy business going on!” Rainbow Dash added with boisterous confidence.

And before she had gotten too far away, she heard Non snickering and muttering under his breath, “Fishy, huh?”

Twilight Sparkle crossed the room, following in Luna’s steps, out into a hall that joined with the throne room. She was close to catching up when she passed by a balcony that looked out over the sprawling slopes of Mount Canter, and she couldn’t resist stopping to spare a glance. There was no sign of the storm of violet energy that had surrounded the castle before, and the night had gone with it, giving way to a pleasant sunny day. She felt like she would have hoped to catch the sunrise, a visual that would have been more thematically appropriate for the end of the night’s torments, but it occurred to her that it was probably well past morning by now and it had been necessary to catch up to what the celestial positions were meant to be.

“Tia once told me that the last time she missed a sunrise was about seven centuries ago,” Luna declared abruptly, now standing beside Twilight Sparkle and taking in the same view.

“How did that happen?” she asked, just a tad wary.

“Oh, I believe it was the aftermath of some peace meetings with the hippogriffs,” she replied with a scoff and the faintest of smirks to suggest something more, but the younger alicorn chose not to pry further. “Regardless, she slept in, not even more than an hour, and the ponies of Canterlot were threatening a riot at the castle gates. How I wish I could have been there to see her reaction when she awoke.” She chuckled briefly before her expression sobered again. “I suppose they would have been doing the same thing by now if they were not doubtlessly already occupied with more pressing matters. I do not wish to think about how many ponies were tainted by this…corruption.”

Twilight Sparkle bit her lip anxiously. There had been enough of a panic in Ponyville, a relatively small country town, how bad could it have gotten in larger cities like Manehatten? “It’s only supposed to affect creatures who have deep-seated trauma and regrets,” she said hopefully, “how many like that can—”

“I do not believe you want to know the answer to that question, Twilight,” Luna sternly interjected, bitterness etched across her face. “I watch the dreams of all of Equestria, I know better than anypony what tortures the minds of mortals. Just here in Canterlot, how many ponies do you suppose still wake up in a cold sweat because they imagined themselves being controlled by King Sombra, or that somepony they loved was actually a changeling in disguise?”

She felt herself blanch, and her ears and wings drooped. She had gotten so used to the task of saving Equestria, to the effect upon herself and those immediately close to her, the notion of the ramifications of so many disasters upon the commonponies of the land rarely occurred to her. She certainly knew that it wasn’t something she was above either; she still had nightmares of numerous scenarios in which her dear friends threatened to abandon her. That was on top of whatever personal problems kept any of them up at night, a violent cocktail of emotional turmoil.

“That Non creature informed us that he already has agents across the country working on repairing the damage that has been done, so that means the immediate dilemma is resolved,” Luna then said after a long breath, an unhurried sigh, “but I have no doubt that we are going to see a rise in ponies demanding answers or action from the capitol. The calamity may be behind us, but this is only the beginning, Twilight Sparkle, mark my words. We are going to have a long road to rebuilding our sense of normalcy after this.”

“…Yes, I know,” Twilight Sparkle said quietly. She was well aware of the heaviness within her heart, even if it was now slighter than it had once been. She understood her pain, and she had accepted it, but that didn’t mean that it was healed. She was still anxious about the inevitability of her ascension in the coming months, and all that it would entail, all that it represented for her life and the lives of those around her. Her friends were all in much the same position, and she was even less sure about how to approach those problems. Someday…the pain would come for her.

And yet, paradoxically in spite of the apprehension which came from the greater volume of the burden facing her, she felt hopeful, because she knew that with all seven of them—and more—working together, they would figure out a solution sooner or later.

Then, with a quiet sigh, she said aloud, “Well, don’t want to keep Celestia waiting any longer than we already have.” She was anxious to see her, both to be sure that she was safe, and in anticipation of the reason for which she had been called on.

But after walking several paces, it became apparent to her that there was only one set of hoofsteps walking down the corridor. She turned back, and she saw Princess Luna still standing at the balcony opening, leaning against a column. Her posture was tired, reminiscent of one who had been physically exerting themselves and needed to stop to catch their breath, but her breathing was normal. Her eyes were glassy, staring off into the middle distance.

“Princess?” she called back, now much more than merely a tad wary, knowing what this kind of listless behavior could be indicative of.

Luna did not immediately snap back to attention, but she did give a twitch, as if jolted out of a trance. While still leaning against the pillar, she bowed her head and rubbed at her brow. Her eyes were momentarily covered, but the way her jaw clenched was plain to see.

“Luna?” Twilight Sparkle approached her again, started to reach for her but stopped and pulled her hand back, instead clasping at the cloth wrapped around her front. Being clothed, however rudimentarily, and being around other clothed ponies, may have been the greatest relief of all. “Do you…want to talk about anything?”

The blue alicorn remained quiet for several long seconds before she spoke again. “I…I thought it was over, Twilight.” The imposing regality of her voice was diminished, leaving only a mare who was forlorn and very, very tired.

“Thought what was over?” she repeated, taking a step closer.

“My…” Now Luna held her hand over her chest, against the beating of her heart. “My g-guilt. I had come to accept all these things that I had done. My resentment for Tia. Nightmare Moon. The war. The…the ponies I…” Her words choked themselves into silence and she carried on. “I thought I was…better…but it would appear I was wrong.”

“Luna…” Only now did Twilight Sparkle reach for the other mare, to take her wrist.

And Luna responded with a flinch, nearly jerking out of her grasp, and she stared back wide-eyed. “It is still there, Twilight, beneath the surface, and at any time it could come out and—”

But she couldn’t get away, and that left her open for Twilight Sparkle to pull her in closer. She was sufficiently taken aback that she couldn’t put up any other resistance, and soon she was brought into an embrace, arms wrapped tightly, but comfortingly, around her. She held still, confused, before she leaned in to do the same, wings unfurling and largely covering the smaller alicorn, shielding them from the world while the princess of the night whimpered and shuddered.

“Accepting your problem is the first step in getting over it, Luna,” Twilight Sparkle whispered to her, “but you can’t stay quiet about it, either. If you bottle it up, it’s just going to blow up in your face sooner or later.”

Luna continued to sniffle a few moments longer before she managed to chuckle. “Did not that exact thing happen to your friend Starlight Glimmer a while ago?”

She laughed as well. “Yeah, kind of, actually.” And then she paused. “Wait, how did you know about that?”

“Because she has had dreams about it, Twilight.”

“Oh. Right.”

They stayed that way a while longer, reveling in each other’s warmth, before they separated and continued on their way. They walked side by side, almost even in their strides. Twilight Sparkle offered to hold Luna’s hand, but she insisted that she was comfortable for the time being. A shame, because it was almost more for her own solace. She had her suspicions about the meeting that was awaiting her. It made her heart feel heavy, but that wasn’t going to stop her.

They finally stepped through another door, and they found themselves in Celestia’s personal office space. Amidst cabinets and shelves of papers and supplies and a modest collection of pictures and assorted trophies around the walls, at the center of it all was the princess’s desk. There were bins marked In and Out on the desk, the latter of which was notably empty while the former was home to a pile of scrolls. They walked in right in time to see a puff of smoke as another materialized out of thin air and landed on the pile, nearly falling off. The pony sitting behind the desk didn’t seem especially concerned with this.

Twilight Sparkle’s breath hitched in her throat momentarily.

Princess Celestia definitely didn’t appear to be corrupted anymore. Nor, however, did she much resemble the princess that she knew. There was no purple in her mane and tail, but they were not a billowing aurora of rainbow color either. Instead, she bore a simple mane of vivid scarlet hair that cascaded past her shoulders and was more than a little unkempt.

Much like Luna, she was wearing a gilded bathrobe of her own. Set on the desk in front of her were two plates, one host to a fried egg (sunny-side up, of course) and the other to a slice of cake. These were what seemed to bear the brunt of her attention, but she wasn’t putting much effort into eating either of them either, turning the egg around and around on its plate while the cake had a fork stabbed into it like it was a fresh kill. The princess’s golden, amethyst-studded tiara sat off to the side.

Most of all, however, it was her expression that prompted alarm. Not merely listless but actively dejected and morose. Twilight Sparkle had never seen the princess in such a manner. Even in the direst of circumstances, she had always stood at the ready to face whatever threat to her and her subjects was presented, no matter what the cost might be.

Fingers clasped around hers, Luna giving her hand a gentle squeeze, just briefly before letting go, and then she said firmly, “Sister.”

Celestia only barely looked up at them in response, and Twilight Sparkle nearly flinched when those dull violet eyes focused on her. “Good, you’re here,” she muttered. Her words were steady, but there was no life to them. “Please, take a seat.”

Luna moved to stand next to one of the two chairs that had been placed in front of the desk but did not sit down. Twilight Sparkle didn’t even do that much. “Princess Celestia, what’s wrong?” she promptly asked, almost demanded, unable to bear another moment of this behavior.

With a sighing groan, Celestia gave up the pretense of playing with her food and leaned back in her chair. “Nothing is wrong, Twilight,” she said flatly, “in fact I believe that I am thinking more clearly about everything than I have in a long time.”

The younger mare remained frustrated with this behavior, but she elected not to pursue it any further, at least in so direct of a manner. Despite having known her for most of her life, and more intimately than most Equestrians could claim to, Princess Celestia remained an enigmatic figure to her, a pony who guarded her secrets closely. She suspected that she might need to relay the same message to her that she had given to Luna. Instead, she asked, “And what is it that you’ve been thinking about?”

“Myself,” Celestia replied curtly, “and…” Her eyes flicked upward again. “You, Twilight.”

“Me?” She blinked, taken aback.

Luna’s gaze turned toward her momentarily as well. It was a look that communicated a wordless message: “Prepare yourself.”

“You have performed exceedingly well in the time since I accepted you into my tutelage, Twilight,” Celestia said, her voice never rising above a neutral volume. “You have far surpassed the accomplishments of any other student of mine. And the events of this past night might have been the greatest accomplishment of them all. You saved the world—”

“We,” Twilight Sparkle interrupted.

Celestia looked up at her, momentarily broken out of her reverie. “What?”

“We saved the world,” she stated firmly, “I couldn’t have done it without Spike and my friends.”

There was a twinge of something across the white mare’s face, a glimmer in her eyes. Then she resumed speaking like nothing had happened. “All of you, yes. You saved the world from a threat that none of us anticipated. We were grossly unprepared for what awaited us.” She steepled her fingers together and bowed her head forward. “It is…frankly inexcusable of me.”

“Princess, you can’t really—”

But this time Twilight Sparkle was the one who was interrupted.

“I am abdicating from the throne, Twilight.”

“…What?” she asked slowly, blinking dumbly. “I…I know that. We’ve been planning for that for months now, my ascension is just a few weeks away and—”

“Not in a few weeks,” Celestia snapped with a hard edge in her tone, “now.”

A heavy, oppressive silence settled over the office. Twilight Sparkle could only stare, feeling her heart beating madly in her chest. She turned to Luna, silently begging for answers, for reassurance, but the alicorn could only offer faint solace with her gaze. Back to Celestia, who remained as impassive as before.

“You…you can’t mean that,” she asserted desperately, words nearly catching in her throat.

“It has already been decided,” Celestia said bitterly, her eyes now focused on the desk again. “The announcement went out less than an hour ago. What did you think all of these were for?” She gestured to the pile of scrolls occupying the In bin, right as two more popped into existence on top of it. “Outrage and alarm, no doubt. You needn’t be worried, Twilight, I am not asking you to move up your ascension before you are ready. Luna will be glad to assume the roles which I had governed for the time being.”

A low hum of dubious contentment came from the mare in question.

“I have spent so long focusing on whether or not you would be a worthy and capable ruler,” she concluded, “that I did not consider whether I was myself.”

“But you are, Celestia!” Twilight Sparkle insisted, only now stepping up to the desk, slamming her palms on the wooden counter. “Ponies have followed your rule for centuries! Who else could have as much experience and wisdom as you?!”

“Experience? Wisdom?” Celestia scoffed back with a scowl, but still she wouldn’t meet anypony’s gaze. “Only as far as lying goes, Twilight. My reign has been a web of deceit since the very beginning. And there have been no greater lies than the ones which I told to you.”

“Wh-what?!” The young alicorn’s wings puffed out as her eyes widened. “What…what do you mean?!”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” Now Celestia stood, arms folded over her stomach. “I’ve already done enough damage. Equestria will be better off with me as far away from the crown as possible.” And then she said words that the mare would’ve hoped to never hear come from her again: “It is better this way.”

Twilight Sparkle immediately felt the preliminary emanations of a spell being cast. She could recognize a teleportation spell instantly. She desperately reached across the desk. “Princess, please—!”

“CELESTIA!”

Everything froze at Luna’s outburst, accompanied by a slam of her hoof against the floor. The furniture rattled, and the pile of scrolls collapsed, rolling across the desk and over onto the floor. She glared pointedly at her sister, wings flared out behind her, silvery light glowing around her horn. “Don’t you dare run away from this!” she shouted vehemently, fury scarcely restrained.

Twilight Sparkle now saw Celestia in another manner that was foreign to her: a Celestia who was profoundly and utterly terrified. Her composure had broken entirely, leaving her shaking like a leaf in an autumn breeze. She seemed to earnestly try to hide behind her mane. There was fear and anguish in her quavering eyes, but the worst part of it was how she started to look toward the lavender mare, only to abruptly snap away. And that prompted a terrible realization in her before anything else was even spoken, that the princess wasn’t merely afraid, she was afraid of her.

“But…b-but I…” she stammered, showing the beginnings of tears.

“If you are truly cognizant of your failings,” Luna declared, firmly enunciating and punctuating her words, making her intent impossible to misunderstand, “then you will tell her the truth.”

Celestia remained standing a while longer. She looked pleadingly to her sister, but there was no relenting. Eventually, she sat down once more, hands clasped over her lap, and Luna gestured to one of the seats in front of the desk, which Twilight Sparkle now took. Luna herself continued to remain standing. The silence still continued for nearly a minute after that as Celestia contemplated her untouched breakfast and dessert, shuddering all the while, only slowly becoming still.

“You…” She spoke slowly, wetting her lips. “You were in my mind, Twilight. I…in the past, I had requested that Luna never come into my dreams. Even she had never seen the state of my mind before now.”

“We became intimately familiar with each other while we were merged,” Luna commented plainly.

“And now…you have seen it too, my dear pupil.” Celestia slowly, hesitantly looked toward Twilight Sparkle, still slightly askew. “Tell me, what did you learn about me?”

She, in turn, hesitated before responding, sorting through her words with care. “I can’t be entirely sure how much of it was you and how much was Luna, but…what seemed clear most of all to me was that you were…lonely.”

Celestia nodded slowly, and there was another long pause before she spoke again. “I have lived a long…long life, Twilight. I knew the very first ponies of the Sparkle family, your ancestors, when they first rose to prominence in Canterlot. I have seen countless other families rise and fall over the centuries. I have seen so many ponies…die.” She closed her eyes and breathed in heavily. “It was hard on me at first, after we first became alicorns. Both of us, me and Luna too, but me especially. I had to watch my grandparents die, and then my parents, and then my children…”

“You had—” But Luna gently shushed Twilight Sparkle before she could finish the question.

“It was painful for me, whenever I had to watch a friend or advisor or comrade succumb to the passage of time. But…” She glanced at Luna, and there was only the faintest glimpse of something hopeful and happy beneath the surface of her discomfort, something which Luna returned with a smile. “As long as we were together, I didn’t mind, because that meant I always knew there was somepony I could turn to.” The optimistic moment ended as quickly as it had begun, the dour atmosphere returning. “And then Nightmare Moon happened, and suddenly even Luna was taken from me.”

“Celestia…” Twilight Sparkle murmured.

“I then had to spend the next thousand years unable to feel truly connected to anypony,” the white alicorn continued, “but of course, at the time, I had no way of knowing that Luna would ever be coming back. I had no reason to hope for that. Mortals came and went in practically the blink of an eye. I tried to make friends the way I had before, but…it felt so empty. I was always painfully aware that one day any of them could just…leave me.”

She then looked toward Twilight Sparkle. Pain and fear were in her eyes. “So, I…I decided to start looking for a solution. I could not make myself back into a normal pony again. Then, I would have to…to…” Her mouth sealed itself shut, her eyes watering.

And so, Twilight Sparkle finished for her, however breathless she might have been herself: “You wanted there to be other alicorns. You were going to make ponies into alicorns.”

Slowly, shamefully, Celestia nodded.

She felt her stomach fall out from under her, her blood running cold.

All the same, she balled her hands into fists and clenched her jaw, maintaining the steadiness of her outward appearance.

“I told myself that…it was for their benefit.” Celestia leaned forward and buried her face in her hands, but it wasn’t enough to hide when she started crying, her body shuddering, breath hitching in sobbing whimpers. “The lessons on friendship were to help them become better ponies. It would help them achieve their destinies. They would spread that knowledge across Equestria. And I think…I started to really believe that. But…but really…it was all just for me. Because I couldn’t stand being alone. And every time, all that happened was I would pour my heart into somepony, only for them to eventually die anyway, never having reached their ascension. I thought it was never going to work. Until…”

“Me.” Twilight Sparkle spoke quietly and calmly.

“Until you.” Now Celestia removed her hands and stared at her with puffy reddened eyes. “You did so much more than any of my students in such a short span of time. You brightened the lives of everypony around you. You reawakened the Elements of Harmony. You brought my Lulu back to me. I…” She clammed up and sobbed, unable to speak for several long seconds. “I could have stopped there. I could have let you go back to your life. But I…I loved you too much. I couldn’t have stood to see you go. So…I let it…I let it keep going until you were ready…until you could join me…and…” Tears streaked uncontrollably across her face, trails of grey on her snowy fur, violet eyes misting over. “And it’s f-fine if you d-don’t forg-give me, Twilight. It’s fine if…if you h-hate me. I just…e-ev-verything w-w-was—”

Twilight Sparkle stood up, and Celestia immediately went starkly silent. She looked down at the mare she had revered and respected for all her life, the mare who now stared back at her pitiably, pleading simultaneously for absolution and for admonition. Luna looked on, observing them to see who would take action. Then the young alicorn walked around the desk, coming to stand beside the chair. Celestia shrank away from her, as far as she could squeeze into the corner of her seat. She mouthed the words “I’m sorry” with only the hoarse hush of a voice issuing from her throat. She said nothing in response, only extended her hand, and the other mare slowly did the same, allowing them to clasp their fingers together. She normally bore the heat of a summer day, but now her warmth was meager and tepid. The idea that she could have fallen so far was even more upsetting than the idea that she had become twisted into a bimbo monster by the corruption.

“I’ve relied on your support for so long, Celestia,” Twilight Sparkle said languidly, taking the mare’s hand in both of hers, clutching her as she trembled. “I’m supposed to be coming to you for answers, not the other way around.” She exhaled heavily and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to feel about any of this right now. Maybe it’s true that you changed aspects of my life for the worse…but I also don’t know where I would be right now—where any of us, my friends, or the whole world, would be right now—if it weren’t for your intervention. I’m going to need time to think about this.”

Celestia didn’t seem especially placated by this, continuing to sniffle quietly, but she nodded her head.

“But—” Her grasp grew firmer as she knelt down so they could look each other directly in the eye. “That doesn’t mean it was wrong of you to feel lonely for all those years, or for you to desire companionship. However…just because none of those ponies are still alive today doesn’t mean that they weren’t important for you. They still left their impact on you, as you surely did the same for them.”

The white alicorn once again nodded her head. Her fervent sorrow might have been steadily calming, but not by much. “I want to remember them, Twilight,” she murmured, “but it’s…it’s so hard…just trying to imagine their faces, I…I just…”

“I know it’s not easy, Celestia, but…well, we can’t always avoid doing things just because they’re difficult. We have to face hardship.” One of her hands moved to settle on her shoulder instead. “You don’t have to do it by yourself.”

“I…I know, Twilight, it’s…it…” She bowed her head and her bangs fell over her face again as she clenched her jaw. Frustration was showing through the cracks of her sadness. “It hurts so much…I can’t bear it…”

Twilight Sparkle was silent and still for several seconds before she let go of Celestia. She looked to the desk, and her eyes settled on the golden tiara. She picked it up, tracing over it with her fingers. “Well…I may not be the ruling princess of Equestria yet.” And there was a thin smirk curling across her muzzle as she put the crown on top of her head. “But I am still a princess.”

Celestia’s eyes snapped up toward her, taken by shock.

“And if you truly have abdicated, then that means you have no royal authority to oppose any decisions that I make.”

“Wh-what…you…you can’t…!”

“Therefore, I, Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equestria,” the lavender mare declared in a stately manner, “hereby make a formal decree that the recently deposed Celestia shall partake of a vitally important assignment for the good of her nation—”

“Stop!” Celestia shakily rose to her hooves and snatched for the crown, but Twilight Sparkle effortlessly slipped away from her.

“—to chronicle the lives of the ponies she knew through her many long years, and how very important each of them was to her.” Twilight Sparkle turned to face her with sincere warmth in her smile despite the mischievous glint in her eyes.

Any response Celestia might have had was preemptively cut off by Luna bursting into a fit of raucous laughter. “Luna, you…you can’t just let this happen!” Celestia insisted desperately as she turned her attention to the other alicorn.

“Oh?” she replied with a grin of her own, leaning forward over the desk. “Quite on the contrary, Sister, I believe that it is a marvelous idea. I, in fact, shall do everything in my power to get it through the legislation process in as timely a manner as I can!”

Celestia gasped and sputtered incoherent syllables, seemingly so taken aback that she couldn’t form any response. This turn of events at least seemed to have the effect of forcibly dragging her out of her funk as her melancholy shifted into indignation. Her wings extended and shuddered behind her, and flashes of color ran through her mane.

“Come on, Celestia.” Twilight Sparkle stood beside her and took her hand again. The princess was about a head taller than her while standing, something she had always thought of as fitting of her position, but in this moment it didn’t feel as if the disparity between the two of them was so significant. “If you wanted to be a part of my life, then I ought to know more about you. I’m already immortal, it’s not like we don’t have plenty of time to talk about it. And…” Her horn lit up, and the tiara lifted up from her head and deposited itself on Celestia’s. “If you really don’t feel like being a princess anymore, that’s fine. But I don’t think anypony will complain about you staying either.”

The mare stood quietly. Her eyes still shimmered like sunlight on a pool, but there were no more tears coming forth. She reached up and removed the crown from her head, holding it before herself, turning it over and over, her grip tense, looking as if she might throw it away or crush it at a moment’s notice. But in the end, she finally said under her breath, “I’ll think about it.”

“Take as much time as you need,” Twilight Sparkle said with a smile, and then a moment later she added, “Well, maybe not too long, it would be a little silly if you decided to take up the crown again only to have to give it up to me the next day for my coronation.”

“Not to worry, Twilight,” Luna joined in while she walked over to them, “I shall be sure to hold on to everything addressed to her, and when she does decide to return it will all be waiting for her.”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough, don’t you think?” Celestia groaned in reply, but still she was starting to show an amused smile.

“We can never have enough of you, Celestia,” Twilight Sparkle said and laughed.

Celestia chuckled quietly as she welcomed the younger mare into her embrace, and shortly after Luna stepped closer to meet with them. Twilight Sparkle relaxed in the waves of gentle warmth that came from the two of them, the nostalgic feeling assuring her, in spite of everything that lay ahead of them, that hope still remained.

Author's Note

We're over the hump, but we're still not over.

Oh look, thirteen chapters in and we're finally getting the explicit crossover element. I didn't want to put a Pokemon tag on this so we're using Non's leviathan form and all the agents are wearing full body-concealing clothes. Also Non's getup this time is supposed to be based on the asynchronous suit worn by esseJ in Control because we didn't have enough Control allusions yet. Also also talking about Non backstory that I've never bothered to put to words and in all likelihood will never get around to.

The bag of stuff Rarity was carrying around was originally going to have some charms she had made which would stifle arousal so the group could have an easier time going around, but I came to decide that this didn't really add anything and it would have taken too much effort to explain how she knew to make them, but then in looking at the section mentioning it in Chapter 8 I felt it would have removed too much to completely cut the mention of the bag, so I had to just leave it floating around in the back of your mind for these past five chapters.

No Celestia and Luna totally wouldn't have had time to put real clothes on, shut up.

I may have let some Celestia lore from other AU ideas bleed into this.

It only occurred to me after this was done how similar Twilight's interactions with Non, Luna, and Celestia all were. Oh well.

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