Eclipsed

"Ideas?"

"No."

"Anything?"

"Fresh out."

"Come on, we gotta help aunt Celly!"

"Can't she deal with it herself?"

   A purple, with gold trimmings to be exact, pillow soared in an arc across the room, squarely smacking Aura in the face.

"OW! Okay! Okay! Just lay off!"

"Any ideas yet?"

"Yeah."

"What?"

"Let's drag her into a pillowfight!"

   Another purple and gold pillow learned how to fly, again hitting its target, more specifically Aura, perfectly and nearly impaling itself on her grey horn.

"OW! Lay off!"

"We need ideas!"

"Ugh." Aura flopped face down on her queen-sized bed, her grey fur splaying along the ridge in her covers as the two brushed. Odd, she happened to be a princess.

     "Come on!" She was prodded, somewhat rudely, by a black hoof. As it just so happened, the applied pressure of the hoof was just enough to knock her off the bed.

    Aura's face hit the floor with a painful noise evident to the blushing Prisma, who was currently hiding behind a billowing wave of red, orange, and yellow.

     "Really?" Aura peeled her grey face off the marble floor, un-muffling the last few letters of the word. Peeling the rest of her body off the floor, she got back up onto the bed, sitting a bit farther away from the edge this time.

    "Oops. Sorry." Prisma tried to go for a sheepish smile, but it didn't last more than a half a second before she had to push her flowing mood-mane out of her face. Since she was worried, her mane was red, orange and yellow, lacking its normal double-rainbow coloration.

    "But at least I got an idea on how to he-" she was cut off as her sister pounced on her with the consistency of a wolf pinning down an injured hare. "Really? What?"

    "First, get off me." Aura's chest heaved as she gasped air back into her deflated lungs, comically re-inflating the rest of her body. "Second, I think I know....." she trailed off with an evil smirk. Then she lifted her muzzle to her sister's black ear, careful not to let their horns hit anything.That hurt, contrary to popular belief that unicorns had no feeling in their horns.

   After a few minutes of whispering into each others' ears and grinning sinisterly, the sisters left the room. As they left, however, they didn't notice one of the new security cameras swivel to keep its  glistening black lens trained on the pair of alicorns as they walked away.

_________

   "...They're leaving.....they're turning the corner....Yes!" murmured an indigo alicorn, hunched over a rather large control panel inlaid into a table. The panel in question contained a number of joysticks and approximately forty-seven buttons of various colors and sizes, some sporting labels. Chrome and steel made up the panel, as well as the table.

     A navy alicorn peered over her shoulder at the flickering screen, watching the two moving figures-their targets-move across it, but blinked when his sister pivoted whichever camera she had trained on them to keep them in sight.

     Prince Orion and Princess Andromeda eagerly tracked their sisters across half the palace, before they came muzzle-to-camera with a problem. The end of where the cameras were installed.

    Sighing, Orion prodded his sister, asking "Now what?"

    Andromeda turned around slowly, doing a complete circle before stopping and marching towards a hatch that led down a maze of tunnels into Andromeda's room.  If the lighting wasn't so bad, anyone present could've seen an evil grin slide across Andromeda's face as she addressed her brother.

    "We're gonna follow 'em, Orion."

    A very smart sounding "Oh." was the only answer.

______________

    Prisma lifted one black, silver-clad forehoof, and introduced it to the door.

     "Yes?" their mother answered the door, but only met two bellies, one grey and one black, as they rolled around on the floor.

   "BWAHAHAHHAHHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA!"

     The lunar diarch looked up to notice her mane sticking out in five directions and knotted and tangled in various places. She turned around to see her husband and the girls' father trying to contain a laugh. He was failing miserably.

     She did a one-eighty and slammed the door, the cyan glow around the doorknob fading as the magic was repurposed elsewhere. When the two young alicorns were finished laughing, they could hear wingbeats, hoofsteps, and things like "Honey....wait, I can explain!" "AAHHH!" and things flying around. After a particularly painful sounding crash, they heard their mother's voice:

     "You let me answer the door like this?!"

     Then their father's voice. "Umm........yes?"

     More sounds of the painful variety emanated from their parents room while the girls listened.

    "OW!" "HELP!" "Sweetie, OUCH!" " Wait, please, I OWWW!"

   After a few more minutes of this type of noise, their mother answered the door again, this time shoving their father, Rainbow Blitz, out the door before her in a cardboard box labeled: 104 COUCH LANE, CANTERLOT, EQUESTRIA. The destination for the box was very clear. As was the purpose of use.

   Then she answered her daughters again. "Now, what did you girls want?"

   "Well mom, we're kinda worried about aunt Celly..."

_________________________

    In another room, a towertop made of white marble, a similarly white alicorn was making revisions and redrafts of a rather large, rather long, scroll. She sighed quite frequently, and made to put the paper away a few times but stopped. She was clearly at war with herself.

    She trotted to the window. If anypony had seen Princess Celestia, they would've immediately known what was wrong. Most ponies could probably tell her about their experiences with it, as nopony save an insane one lived their entire life happy.

     This was Princess Celestia, co-ruler of all of Equestria, and she was depressed. Normally, the only rank above 'ruler of my homeworld' is 'creator of the world' and above that 'creator of the universe'.

     She sighed again, muttering so it was just barely audible, "Lulu, I hope you don't take this the wrong way and that you'll know what to do...." She trailed off and returned to the large mass of papers cluttering her desk.

     And so went an afternoon in Canterlot Castle.