Anything for My Princess

Luna did not feel the need to talk to Pipsqueak about last night's dream. He was wrong. He admitted that he was wrong, and he accepted his punishment. He had not learned his lesson, but he was in the process of learning. It wasn't great, but it was something, at the very least. There was no need to correct behaviour that was already in the process of correcting itself.

For once, she was glad to have breakfast with Celestia. This time, she was well-rested, and felt that she'd had a decent night. She didn't even care that Celestia had slipped a pancake into her waffles by cooking it in a rectangular mould. Today was going to be a good day, regardless.

"How's your boyfriend?" asked Celestia. "Still having trouble figuring out what "no" means?"

"If you must pry..."

"I must, I must."

Luna snorted. "If you must pry, he and I played a board game last night, and he apologized for touching himself to thoughts of me."

"Gross, I'm eating."

"Then you shouldn't have brought it up," teased Luna, chuckling.

"Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking," teased Celestia back. "Here I was, hoping for a steamy night of hot stallion-on-mare action, and you tell me about a disgusting board game. Yuck!"

They shared a chuckle.

"What board game?"

Luna shook her head. "The awful one. The one every diplomat says is their favourite."

"Race to a Hundred?" scoffed Celestia. "I was right to call it gross, then."

"I mean, what's the point?"

"To score a hundred points, of course."

"Tia..."

"You know every diplomat says it's their favourite game because the likelihood of being bested by somepony is a matter of chance, not of skill. It doesn't matter if they're terrible at their jobs, the likelihood that they can best you is about even."

"Which is precisely why I hate it. Everypony who wins thinks themselves superior, and everypony who loses claims that my set contains loaded dice. It's an unwinnable meta. Is it really so bad if they lose a hoof of blackjack? It's not in the cards. Or if they win, it's good planning and skill. If they have twelve points, seven and five, they can't be faulted for thinking that's a bad hand and trying for better, only for them to draw a ten and bust by one. At least then, there's no fault in their strategy, but they still had one."

"Yeah, but then they could hit on eighteen, and everypony would see them as the fools they are."

Luna let out a sigh. "At least this one had an excuse."

Celestia clapped her hooves. "Aha! He's one of our diplomats!"

"Hm?" Luna looked up from her breakfast. "No, not at all."

"But you just said he had a good reason for wanting to play Race to a Hundred," smirked Celestia.

"And I also said the diplomats have the worst reason for it. There's no strategy."

"Then what was his reason?"

Luna swallowed hard. She cursed herself for speaking without thinking. Here she was, praising games of strategy, and Celestia had caught her by the tail. How could she tell her that he was just a colt, and a young one, at that? She couldn't. Celestia would either laugh at her for failing to stop the advances of a foal, berate her for letting herself have intercourse with one, or make good on her promise to have him beheaded.

In the end, she opted for a diplomatic answer. "He didn't know what games I like, and was trying to bridge a blind gap."

"I'm going to find out who it is, Luna," smirked Celestia, narrowing her eyes. "Whether you bring me along or not."

"Well, then, I suppose there's no point in bringing you along, now, is there?"

The smirk drained away from Celestia's face. "Well-played..."

Luna shrugged. "You had me on the ropes for a minute, but you left yourself open. And that's why nopony will play against me in any skill-based game."

"Burn on you?" shrugged Celestia. "Is it then your fault that you keep having to play that awful game?"

Luna chuckled and shook her head. "Touché..."

After a well-structured and productive day, Luna settled into bed. Pipsqueak had apologized and recognized the error of his ways, and she could deal with a few small cases while keeping an ear out for him. She managed to tackle three of them, with the first being Equestria being invaded by spiders, which she turned into giant snakes, because herpetologists are much less afraid of snakes than spiders. She then saved a mare from a cart collision in the dream of somepony that was sleeping in the same bed as her, and pulled a baby chimpanzee out of a burning building. Ponies had weird dreams, sometimes.

It was just as the hoses were turned on the brick structure that she felt the familiar pull of Pip's desire. It had come along often enough recently that she was considering teaching him a distinguishing call to make it clear who was calling out to her. She had taught Celestia, but without a strong need of it, she never used it. Luna always answered a call, regardless of who was asking for help. Such was her love for Equestria.

When she arrived, Pip's room was not as she remembered it. The layout was the same, but the patterned blue walls had been replaced with cobbled stone, with bricks on the bottom, rough-hewn stone leading up, and capped off with more flat bricks. The bed was a flat slab of wood with cuffs, and the bookshelf was now covered with instruments of torture.

Pip clapped a wooden paddle in his hooves as he walked in from the closet door. "My, my, my... I never thought I would see the day that you would come down here."

"Please, forgive, me, Master Pip. He tortured me!"

"You had better return the information you stole, or I shall have to do even worse."

Luna bent over the bed and raised her tail. She had no idea what was going on, or what had happened to Pip to create this change, but it was something she had not considered him capable of. Was he really going to torture her?"

"What did you tell him?" asked Pip.

"We're having mashed potatoes for lunch!"

Luna could barely fathom the words coming out of her mouth before the paddle struck her flank. It wasn't hard. It didn't hurt at all. In fact, it kind of tickled.

"Did you tell him anything else?"

"I told him about the schnitzel, too!"

Another spanking. Was this his revenge for her spanking him? And why did it tickle?

"What else?!"

"The green beans!"

Another spanking. Was dinner such a big secret, or was he looking for something to make into a secret, and dinner was the first thing that came to his mind.

"Did you just spill all of our plans to him?! Was there anything you didn't tell him?!"

Luna sniffled and turned around. "We still have the gravy."

Pip took a deep breath and dropped the paddle, rubbing her butt. "I'm sorry I yelled. I would love some gravy."