When she was a filly, Twilight Sparkle loved nothing so much as her precious tea time with the one and only Princess Celestia. It was the one time of day the two could relax and talk without the social barriers that naturally existed between a student and teacher, a servant and a royal. While often Twilight would bring up her current reading assignments, as a notorious bookworm is wont to do, even she would keep their talk light and breezy, with nary a hint of the academic to interfere in Celestia and her time alone.
Later, when Twilight herself became a Princess, this tea time was even more precious to her, it being the one time of the week that the two could truly catch up with each other, neither having to worry about matters of state. Celestia would wax nostalgic about things Twilight had said or done, and Twilight would relate to her former teacher all the lovely gossip and glad tidings of her beloved Ponyville.
And now that Twilight was the sole ruler of Equestria, its Queen (minus the title), this once in a month visit between the two dear friends was worth more than any treasure trove or rare collectible book… assuming you weren’t talking about a real First Edition Daring Do and the Windigo’s Curse.
Twilight loved Celestia, but even she had her limits!
“More sugar, Twilight?” Celestia inquired.
“Yes, please!” Twilight replied with a beaming smile. Two plops later, and she was sipping a form of liquid heaven.
The two sat across from one another, with only a tea set atop a small table between them. The rather tiny, intimate private apartments Twilight kept in the northernmost tower of Canterlot Palace was the most ideal, comfiest place for the two to meet. The pillowed chairs were plush, the bookshelves were stacked with old classics, and the deep purple curtains were thrown back to let in a bright and happy sun.
It was almost like a dream. It was actually so perfect, Twilight pinched herself. Then, satisfied she’d actually managed to make this appointment stick in real life, she relaxed a bit more.
“So, have you made any new friends since last we talked?” she asked, eyes smiling over the rim of her teacup.
Celestia smiled, and nodded. “While I am set in my ways, dear Twilight, I’m not one of your students. In fact, I made a new friend just this week!”
Twilight tittered, and said, placatingly, “Oh, I didn’t mean to sound that serious! But Luna did send me a letter mentioning you’d ended up at a party or two down in Silver Shoals?”
“Well, if you must pry…”
Celestia paused. Then, oddly, she frowned.
Then, oddly-er still, she stuck out her tongue like she was trying to catch a wayward snowflake.
Twilight blinked, and stared at her old teacher.
“Um…?” she um’d. “Prince– I mean, Celestia? What are you…?”
The ancient alicorn’s eyes widened, and her pupils dilated down to mere specks.
“Oh… shit.”
“Celestia! Language…!”
But before Twilight could further voice her shock at Celestia’s vulgarity, she began to feel it too. A feeling like a static charge ran up and down her spine, and a familiar taste began to build at the tip of her tongue. It was a flavor she remembered only when jumping through the Mirror to the human world.
Black licorice.
The precise taste of a dimensional rift!
It opened in the air above the little veranda. A hole in reality roared, and both Alicorns rose to face whatever came through.
First came a wave of rainbow light, falling from the rift like a spectral waterfall.
Then came more rainbow lights, flowing like a river.
Twilight figured she had a few moments to glance up to Celestia, questioningly.
A third, then fourth wave of rainbows came forth next, and even Twilight, who knew she had no room to talk, was starting to wonder if this was just some elaborate prank or…
Suddenly, a blur of yellow and blue dropped out of the hole, and crashed into the floor, before it rolled straight through the veranda doors and into the tea room. It rolled across the floor, and crashed heavily against the lounge chair Celestia had been occupying just a moment before.
The portal finally closed, leaving the two princesses with the intruder.
Who appeared to be a young mare, or maybe just a filly. Twilight stood over the slightly concussed pony, and wondered madly at whatever had just happened. Whoever she was, she was small, with a yellow coat and a deep blue mane and tail both tied up into braids.
Her eyes slowly swam into focus, and she groaned in pain.
“Um… are you alright?” Twilight asked. Celestia stood several paces back, seemingly content to let her successor handle this.
The mysterious pony groaned again, and slowly rolled over onto her front.
“Oh…” She rubbed her head with a hoof, and looked up at the alicorns before her. “Oh… Majesty!”
Twilight nodded. “Of course, my little pony. Now, tell me what…”
“You’re Majesty!” The pony cried, leaping happily to her hooves.
Twilight bit down on her cheek. Her grammatical senses had just lit up like a house on fire, but she wasn’t certain as to why.
“Uh, yes,” she repeated. “Hello. Now, how can I…?”
She paused, realizing something was off. The pony, who had so rudely interrupted her precious private tea time, wasn’t looking at her. She was almost emphatically not looking at her.
She was looking at Celestia, who more and more had started turning a shade of red as the excited filly hopped up and down before them.
“Oh! Majesty! It really is you!” She squeed with delight and spun around in place. “I knew I’d find you! Meghan said I was crazy, but I knew!”
Slowly, Twilight turned around to stare more squarely at her predecessor.
“Celestia? What is this pony talking about?”
The ancient alicorn princess stood stock still. If not for her ethereal mane blowing about her, Twilight would have thought she was a statue.
That sort of silence never bode well.
“Celestia?”
The new pony finally stopped bouncing, and frowned. “Celestia? Don’t be a silly filly! That’s Majesty!”
Then she tilted her head quizzically, and stared at Celestia even more intensely.
“Huh… Majesty? When did you grow wings?”
Finally, under the unendurable awkward silence that followed, Celestia seemed to find her breath again. She sighed, a long and weary exhalation, and lowered her head in resignation.
“Hello Bubbles,” she said, staring at the floor. “It’s… wonderful to see you again.”
Bubbles rushed past a rather gobsmacked Princess Twilight and threw herself at Celestia, wrapping her forelegs around the much taller pony in a hug.
Celestia herself… did not return it.
“I didn’t think it would work!” Bubbles laughed. “After Tirac hit you with the Rainbow of Darkness, everyone else had given up hope!”
Twilight, still stuck in a mini-fugue state, twitched as Bubbles mentioned ‘Tirac’, but could not for the life of her think why.
Bubbles stepped back and gave Celestia a beaming smile.
“But now? We can head back to Dreamland and save everyone!”
Twilight finally snapped out of it with a gasp.
“Dream what?!”
“Dreamland, Twilight,” Celestia sighed. “Please, keep up.”
The Princess of Friendship’s jaw hit the floor. Bubbles, not noticing, merely pulled a small rainbow-colored gem from her mane.
“If we hurry, there’s still time to stop and pick up cupcakes for the victorious after-party!”
Celestia drew her lips into a thin line.
“Mmmmmm… no,” she said at last. “No, I’m good. Thank you.”
Bubbles blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Honestly, I’m good,” Celestia repeated. Then, she poured a cup of tea with her magic and passed it to Bubbles. “But we can catch up, if you’d like. Honestly, I’d almost forgotten about all the drama going on back home…”
“FORGOT!?” Bubbles cried.
“HOME?!?” Twilight did likewise.
Celestia sipped her tea, and settled into a settee. “Well, yes. But while for you, Bubbles, all that Rainbow business was very recent…”
“It was yesterday!!!”
“… for me, it’s been thousands of years!” Celestia took a dainty bite of one of the tea sandwiches Twilight had specially prepared, the kind that were secretly cakes under an illusion spell to look like tea sandwiches. “When I was hit by the Rainbow of Shadows, Tirek…”
“Tirac.”
Celestia snorted. “Don’t interrupt. When Tirek attacked me, I was reduced to the subatomic level and scattered into the Void. And while there…”
Celestia appeared almost pensive as she stared into her tea.
“Well. You know how I was before?”
Twilight looked at Bubbles. “How was Celestia… I mean, Majesty?”
Bubbles… blushed.
“Um…”
She folded her ears back.
“She wasn’t… nice.”
“I was awful!” Celestia sighed. “I was cruel, vindictive… I turned ponies and other creatures to stone just for looking at me the wrong way!”
“You still do that…”
“And spending an eternity recomposing my physical form gave me plenty of time to reflect,” Celestia said, pointedly ignoring the jab. “I decided to start fresh! Start again where I could be the best pony I could be!”
“Start without a rap sheet?”
“Twilight, I will go full Majesty on you if you interrupt again.”
Twilight smirked, playfully. “Try it. I’m basically you, but better.”
“But… but…” Bubbles sputtered. “But you have to come back!”
Celestia shrugged, and ate another ‘sandwich’. “I don’t see why I do. You all had Tirek down for the count, last I saw.
“And besides…” She sipped her tea for what Twilight considered an obnoxiously long time. “… as I recall, none of you actually liked me all that much. With good reason, sure. But it seems like everypony got what they wanted out of this little hiccup.”
Twilight frowned. “You consider getting disintegrated a hiccup?”
“I don’t get out of bed for disintegrations.”
“Oh my goodness!” Twilight gasped, suddenly. “What about Luna!?”
“Luna?” Bubbles asked.
“Her sister!” Twilight waved her hooves about. “How do you explain her?”
Celestia raised an eyebrow at her successor. “Um… adoption, Twilight. She’s like my Spike.”
Bubbles frowned. “But… you already have a Spike.”
“Spikes are like gumdrops, Bubbles,” Celestia sighed. “You can’t have just one!”
Twilight opened her mouth to protest this… possibly.
But instead, she paused.
“Um… does anypony else taste…?”
The room once again became a garish haze of rainbow light as another hole appeared in the air. The swirling array pulsed and frothed as before, but only elicited mild interest and curiosity from Celestia and Twilight this time.
“Oooo…” Bubbles’ eyes glazed over with swirls. “Pretty.”
Twilight’s own mild interest suddenly swelled, however. For instead of a pony plopping down onto her floor, a very different shape emerged. One she had only seen in one other place.
“Meghan?” Celestia asked, startled out of her eternal calm.
A human girl had appeared before them, dressed in a pair of overalls. She was quite tall, almost as tall as Celestia, and topped with a long braid of golden hair.
And in one of her human hands, she held a gun.
“Majesty!” she cried out. “Your crimes will no longer go unpunished!”
Bubbles huffed, and glared at the sudden arrival.
“I had things perfectly under control,” she whispered to herself.
“You had one job, Bubbles!” said Meghan, brandishing her weapon at Celestia, who appeared more intrigued than worried. “Get her to come back so we could arrest her. But you couldn’t even do that!”
“I feel a little hurt you felt the need to lie to me,” Celestia sniffed. “I would have come to answer any charges…”
Meghan pulled back the hammer on her weapon, creating an audible click. “It’s too late for that! I’m not waiting any longer! Now you’ll answer for what you did to Snuzzle!”
Celestia frowned, and hissed darkly, “Snuzzle was a bitch who got what was coming to her…”
Meghan let out a piercing warcry, and readied her aim. She held the former Princess in her sights, and began to squeeze the trigger.
There was a crack, and a flash of light.
But no gunshot.
Meghan froze. She literally froze, her skin and hair and clothes all turned to stone in an instant.
Bubbles and Celestia, jaws agape, stared in mutual shock. Then, they turned, and looked back towards the one who’d fired the fateful shot.
Twilight Sparkle casually blew the wafting smoke from her horn, and gave both ponies a proud grin.
Bubbles’ eyes widened. “But, that…”
“Ah, good!” Celestia tittered. “You really were listening to my lessons!”
“I learned from the best,” said Twilight, who struck a regal pose. “And she taught me that no matter what rules were broken, you don’t let anypony tell you to suck eggs in your own house.
“And all of Equestria is my house!”
The two laughed, and laughed. Then, Celestia’s horn lit up with golden light.
“Eep!” said Bubbles, as Celestia’s magical grip caught her before she could activate her escape-gem.
Celestia finally stopped laughing, and let out a contented sigh.
“Ah, still…” she said, eyebrows raised in hope towards Twilight. “I suppose I’m not getting off that easy?”
“Not a chance,” said Twilight. “But I am a merciful sovereign. I’ll just lash you to a rock and let griffons eat your liver or something.”
Celestia hummed. “Bit of a slap on the wrist, isn’t it?”
“I’m no Majesty, no.”
“Touche.”
“W-what are you gonna do to me?”
Both princesses looked up to the little filly trapped in the air.
Then, they looked at each other.
“Well,” Twilight said with a mischievous smile, “since we’re using your playbook today…”
Dear Princess Twilight:
So, I got your message. And yes, I think I can make room for two more ‘humans’ who need a little time to reflect and reform. It’s not a problem.
Sincerely, Sunset Shimmer
PS: Hey, so we got Bubbles. But now there’s a horse in overalls calling herself ‘Meghan’ over here. Let me guess: Majesty business?
