To make a long story short, my coronation sucked.

Well...to be more precise, it was the public after party that sucked.

Plus the party for friends and family and the family of friends after the first party sucked.

Not to mention all the stuff leading up to the coronation.

And, the time before that wasn’t all that great either.

Even the time before the day began sucked.

And it all started when I had sex with Celestia.

I mean…

Okay, look… Celestia is amazing in bed. Yeah, the only two girls I have to compare her to were virgins before they got involved with me, and later me and Twilight in the case of Rainbow Dash, but still... Tia’s had a lot of time to refine her technique to the point of perfection. So of course she’d be better at doing it than the girls in every measurable way. But, one must not forget all of this supremely sublime sexual skill she possesses…is of the pony style.

Now of course after we got back to the royal apartments, Tia took the three of us to nirvana. This was quickly followed by my own changing feeding habits that ended the whole thing in a series of blissful cries before I crawled back on top of Tia’s stomach with more magical energy than I ever had before. She wrapped her forelegs around me and her wings took care of cradling the other girls in the royal harem, and then we all fell asleep.

The night that followed that was even worse than the first time I found myself sharing a room with a butt-naked human Celestia that was twice as hot as any woman had a right to be. After what we had just done before going to bed, the only thing on my mind with the naked woman providing me company involved attempting to do more of our pre-siesta activities the way the last remnants of my humanity were screaming at me that they should be done.

But…a few things stopped me from just trying to get Tia to spread her legs. Things like the need for post-coitus conversation about the various things in our life and what happened in the day. Celestia also felt the need to go on about Sunset and how wonderful it was she was making friends outside of our little save the world circle…even if it was Trixie.

Not that Trixie was that bad a pony anymore. But…with the way the blue mare had talked Sunset’s head off about magic tricks and followed her around after dinner… I really hoped the stage magician wasn’t just milking my girl for her knowledge of how a race without any magic did their shows. I had actually started to like Trixie a bit, and taking advantage of Sunset’s knowledge just to advance her career was a good reason for me to put my Trixie-hater hat back on and maybe even take a few steps to ensure her return to the stage was met with abysmal failure. Considering my army of insect ponies that could look however I wanted them to, it wouldn’t even be that hard.

Aside from the talking about her daughter, which I could tell put Tia into a little bit of a melancholy for some odd reason I just couldn’t understand, the other reason I couldn’t just…you know, fuck the hot chick was…I had standards.

Not that Celestia didn’t surpass them in every way, shape and form. But my standards didn’t just apply to the girl I wanted to…well…do stuff with for the foreseeable future that might have included sex but also involved oh so much more. There were procedures for these things. Dates had to be gone on, romance had to be…done. Celestia wasn’t some loser you picked up at a bar for a night of fun that only cost a few beers, she was…well, Celestia!

She deserved the best. Better than the best even. At least when it came to the best that I could give her.

And about the time I was reminding myself that she was way out of my league, completely undeserving of someone like me that would drag her down and probably stain her image, the goddess’s hand came to wrap around mine and she whispered into my ear.

“So, are you ready to make love to me as a human now?” the goddess with the aurora-colored hair asked me gently.

When I looked up at her, I couldn’t help but notice where her eyes were looking, and I cleared my throat before looking away. My nerves about this whole thing reached a new high and… “Well…um…you know…if-if you…want…to. And it’s…uh, okay…with you, I mean. Like this.” We were bipeds at the moment after all. It would probably be weird for her.

One of Celestia’s arms snaked under my leg, and the goddess put her other behind my back. “I already told you being together as we are right now has me more than a little curious,” she said before kissing me lightly on the lips. “And…I now understand how hard it has been for you in Equestria, being as you are. But here, we are not ponies, nor are you a mare. And I want to love you as you are now, and I want you to love me in turn.”

I…didn’t really have much to follow that up with.

And like with my personal beliefs, pride and all that other stuff a guy is supposed to stand up for, my standards kind of just got shoved to the side when Celestia offered to do it with me.

“Okay,” I agreed in a bit of a squeak. At the very least I would be doing it as a guy again. My manliness would at least be able to get some recovery after the non-stop beating it had been taking for the past several weeks. I took comfort in that.

The comfort kind of decreased slightly when Celestia hefted me up into her arms like I was her bride to be carried across a threshold but…logic helped stem the pain the comparison caused me when it reminded me she had no idea about human customs, and there was no way in hell I would be carrying her around without a horn.

“Now let’s get going upstairs, shall we?” she asked. “As comfortable as our love seat has been, I think it’s a little small to follow through with the promise that its name entails.”

As my…girlfriend carried me up to one of the bedrooms, I simply focused on the fact that I was finally going to have sex as a guy, and a human guy on top of that.

But…you don’t have sex with a goddess.

Especially one that has no idea what she’s doing as a human while also being seven feet tall and about twice as strong as you are physically. Oh, and being an immortal creature that is older than most countries, she’s also pretty stubborn and likes to be on top.

So…after having this…thing that was technically sex…I had a new record for the worst time in bed that actually topped my first time with Twilight, as Flash Sentry, doing it before I even found ponies the least bit attractive in a body I only knew the technicalities of.

When it was all over, we cuddled and lay in the bed that was too small for Celestia and left her feet hanging over the edge even with a little bit of her body propped up on some pillows. Meanwhile I was once again feeling like the girl, or maybe a goddess’s stuffed animal as I laid my head on the shoulder of the arm that Celestia had wrapped around my body to let her hand dig into my rear with a strong grip.

And we just laid there in the bedroom of my old house, which wasn’t all that much to look at. No posters adorned the walls, and with the nothing outside the windows both off to my right and straight ahead that somehow still illuminated the place, there wasn’t much to distract me from the fact there was nothing look at either.

Except for the big naked woman holding me, I mean.

Hell, we weren’t under the blankets. There was no real need thanks to the temperature being a permanent comfortable heat and Tia providing me with plenty more in the way of body warmth on top of that.

So of course, we started talking. Or, Celestia did anyway.

“Hmm, so that’s how humans make love,” the goddess told me in an even tone before she gave my butt a squeeze.

“Yeah,” I replied just as evenly while doing my best not to comment on her…horribleness at it.

The silence stretched on for a few more moments, and Celestia sighed. “You’re disappointed.”

It was stuff like that that really put a crimp in the whole ‘mental landscape causes 100% honesty’ thing. Of course, the same thing also made me choose my next few words very carefully. “It’s…not really…your fault.”

Which it wasn’t, not entirely anyway. Sure Tia had turned out to be a disappointment in the sack but…I’ll admit, after what she did two times the previous day, anyone could have had high hopes for what was coming. Plus, it had been a long time since I had done it as a guy, not to mention as a human, and never with someone as beautiful as Celestia. All of those things combined made for some pretty impossible expectations.

“No,” she replied before I felt her lips on my head touch for a quick kiss. “You’ve been looking forward to this and I didn’t give a very good showing. I seem to do nothing but bring disappointment the ones I love lately.”

I knew I should have said something to cheer her up but…once again, I was stuck with the whole honesty thing. So even the whole ‘well that just means we’ll have to let you get plenty of practice’ line probably wouldn’t work all that well.

“Sorry,” Celestia apologized. “I shouldn’t be talking about such things now but…whenever I’m in this human form, I can’t help but think about Sunset if I don’t keep my mind on task.”

And with that, I felt even worse. Bad sex was bad enough without the woman you were doing it with saying she was thinking about her daughter when everything was said and done.

What made it worse was that from everything I could see, Sunset was actually doing better than she had been just a few weeks ago. Sure, the whole breezie instructional weekend had gotten her down after some stupid pony had thought she was Fluttershy’s pet, but…the human in Equestria had recovered and managed to make a home in Ponyville.

Which…she would have to leave once Twilight figured how the mirror worked and fixed her, but it wasn’t like Sunset was just going to stay in Canterlot after she got her horn back. At least not on a permanent basis. She could easily hitch a ride with Tia at the end of the day…if she wanted to.

“Can we just talk about something else?” I asked before I started to wonder if the future princess would even bother coming to visit us.

After a few seconds, Celestia nodded. “Very well. Are you nervous about what’s coming?”

“The coronation? No,” I told her. They had helped me get over all of that. “What comes after…maybe.”

“What do you mean, what comes after?” Celestia asked.

I tried to gather my thoughts to make sense of the creeping doubts that were running through my head, but all I ended up with was some big question marks. I didn’t like question marks where a clear path to the future should be. Even when I was freaking out about my inevitable break-up with Twilight, Rainbow and Tia, I at least knew what was coming and could prepare for the blow.

An unknown, not so much.

When I finally managed to put all of that into words, Celestia let out a little chuckle and held me all the tighter. “My love, thinking you know the future and trying to plan for it is one of the worst curses a pony can endure,” the goddess told me before she became a bit downcast. “After all, I knew my sister was returning one day, I knew that a confrontation between us was inevitable, and I knew if I were to face her in such a battle, neither of us would walk away. So I found a pony I thought could be my replacement. I trained her, I taught her everything I knew about magic and government, and as the date for Luna’s return neared, I continued to push her so hard I forgot to love her enough, and instead I cast my disappointment on her every day when she didn’t turn out to be exactly like me that she broke under the strain and disappeared for over a decade in a foolish move to try and earn her wings. All because I knew my sister was returning, and I needed somepony to raise the sun in my stead.”

I let that not so little tidbit of information wash over me and sink in. At first I had thought she was going on about where Twilight might have gotten some of her less than admirable qualities, but after that last line… “So wait…that’s what Sunset was supposed to do?” I asked for a little calefaction. “You wanted her to be the new you?”

It…did make a sort of sense. Whether it was her own precognition, some kind of seer pony, or just some very obvious stellar signs involving the position of the stars, Tia had known the exact time and probably place when Nightmare Moon was due to show up in Equestria. And all that had been long before Twilight had been born.

If Sunset had been around at the time, even decades before Luna was due to come home, Celestia would have made plans years in advance thanks to the alicorn’s long lifespan. Hell, she had been willing to do that after the first evening with the three of us!

And, a unicorn with a sunburst on her butt was a pretty obvious sign of what her destiny should be.

“Yes,” Celestia said in a sad whisper. “And I was…” The goddess stopped mid sentence, and frowned for a moment. “Oh, the awakening spell is becoming active.”

The sudden stop to our conversation had me do a quick mental reset to my emotions, and I went from getting ready to give the goddess some pitying reassurance to feeling a proper bit of indignation at getting cut off like that.

But before I could even start to tell her this wasn’t finished, she up and disappeared on me, letting most of my body just roll over and onto my face without the wall that was Celestia to stop it.

Despite the escape attempt that Celestia had made to get away from our conversation, she soon found such an action impossible thanks to the fact that changelings could also get up on command, and I had been snuggled up under her chin and using the goddess’s body as my personal bed while Twi and Dash were stuck with her being an oversized body pillow.

While I had gotten a little used to just laying around for a few minutes to let the rest of my body catch up with the awake status of my brain, stumbling around while I waited for my four legs to wake up didn’t put me too far behind Sunbutt. This was mostly because of the fact that she had to take a few moments to offer apologies to a complaining Rainbow Dash about the ungodly hour the little pegasus was forced to be up at now that she and Tia would be sharing a bed.

And then there was this…other…thing we became aware of.

“Aw seriously? Both of you?” Rainbow Dash demanded as she looked at the sticky evidence of our unconscious activity that Tia left on the bed and I…left on Tia.

Rainbow looked over to the two of us, and I might have actually been embarrassed enough to blush for some reason. “How in the hay do you even do that after we spent like, an hour doing it before you two knocked me out? Ugh, and why am I all…sticky down there now too?”

“Well we did spend all night smelling the aftereffect of their wet…dream,” Twilight supplied before she looked over to us with wide eyes before I could almost see the light bulb come on over her head. “Ohmygosh! The two of you, you…you had sex in your dreams!”

Although the purple alicorn didn’t seem the least bit angry or embarrassed about it, only happy that she suddenly had figured something like that out, Celestia looked a tiny bit annoyed for some reason. “Yes well, we are together for six hours straight. Did you honestly expect us not to?”

As for me, I blushed and looked away from Twilight. Sure she was happy about it. But I did just have sex with another girl while in the same bed as her...sort of. Which was really going to be a problem if Tia and I kept doing it.

The expression on Rainbow Dash’s face became a little hesitant. “Uh…I thought you turned into um…monkeys when Fae went to sleep.”

Celestia just shot Rainbow a warning smile before she returned fire verbally. “Yes we become humans. What’s wrong with that? I remember Fae saying something about you wanting to be a griffon several nights ago,” the goddess replied in her usual voice. “While I have yet to master the art of making love as a human, I have already discovered human digits are far more useful in loving interactions than griffon claws could ever be my little Rainbow. Would you like me to bring Sunset in so I could use her as a template and provide you with a personal demonstration? You do need to be taken care of this morning, correct?”

After her wings slowed down in their flapping intensity, Rainbow landed and…kept her wings up. “No that’s uh, fine! I’m uh-”

Before Rainbow Dash could say any more, Twilight trotted over and touched wings with her. It was a little odd for me to see them side by side like they were. Twilight’s looked so much bigger than Rainbow’s…I had to take in the rest of the purple pony’s body wonder if the purple alicorn would keep growing. The question that arose from that observation made me wonder. Were me and Rainbow going to end up being the little ladies of the relationship as Twilight and Tia towered over us in a couple of years? It was kid of a disturbing prospect, to be honest.

A little treacherous thought told me I could match Tia’s height and more if I would simply submit myself to a royal cocoon to really take my place as a changeling queen.

And then I found myself having to chose between thinking of the odd sex talk Celestia was giving Rainbow, or the three of us towering over Dash as her much smaller size reduced her to little more than a preteen in the comparison department. I actually found myself welcoming the human-on-pony images rather than the worries of how Rainbow might feel if she became the physically inferior pony in every measurable way to the rest of us.

“Then who’d take care of me Princess?” Twilight asked with a little smile. “Besides, you two have a mess to clean up.”

Celestia ignored the royal slip Twilight made with her title. I was just glad Tia went to using magic to de-sex gunk us and the room rather than continuing what had almost happened.

So after Twilight had taken Rainbow into the bathroom to take care of some of her morning alicorn urges that I had a pretty good feeling didn’t have anything to do with grooming or using the facilities, I followed the pony whose ass I was on eye level with out into the hall.

Of course the mention of Sunset had brought about a bit of a funk that I could pick up on, but the Smell just encouraged me to act all the more indignantly concerned rather than keep my distance. Being all pissed off at being left out of an explanation and wanting to help Celestia get whatever she was guilt tripping herself with out in the open so it could be taken care of, I went with the tough love option. Meaning that I flew up and over Sunbutt to get in her face, and after having to revert to changeling form because my wings were still asleep and insects could just plain hover better than every bit of my rational brain said pegasi should have been able to, I met the goddess eye to eye and frowned at her.

“Okay Tia spill, what’s with the dark cloud I’ve been picking up from you ever since I mentioned Sunset after we did it?” I asked in that demanding sort of way when giant solar powered pretty pony princesses were being all clammed up about something.

Celestia let out a little breath and frowned. “Omnifarious, while your previous species might give me some insight into the matter of what to do about Sunset, and I do wish to speak to you of this, I can not delay in raising the sun. It has always been on time since before Luna was banished, and I have no intention by causing a panic among my little ponies because the sun rose a minute late.”

While I was pretty sure she was exaggerating, I got out of the pony princess’s way to let her continue on. Not to mention landed and fell in step with Tia. “Okay then, we can walk and talk.”

“I would rather not hold a conversation of such importance in the middle of a hallway,” Tia countered in a slightly drier tone than I was used to hearing from her.

I groaned and quickened my trotting to keep up with her. “Tia, it’s pre-dawn hours,” I told her. “That’s when the late shift has either fallen asleep at the switch, or is swapping out for the new guys.”

While I wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure if pony guard times coincided with the norm for humans, they did have the same sleep schedules. So it stood to reason that they would nod off at the same times. Plus, the fact that we hadn’t actually seen a guard since getting up gave a bit of weight to the theory.

“Then I’d rather not talk about it right now!” she actually snapped back at me.

Celestia getting a little irritable actually made me pause for a second. Then that little bit of indignation reared its ugly head, and I flew up to look Celestia in the eye again as we went down the royal guest hallway and passed by the apartments leading to…some of Twilight‘s friends. I honestly didn’t know what room got assigned to what pony. “Okay Tia, tough love time,” I told her, glad that my voice was actually able to pull off the angry sound without a bit of sexiness added in. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but what’s going on with Sunset…whatever the problem that she’s got now, that quite frankly I don’t even see, it’s not your fault.”

To which she looked back at me with a glare. “Well of course you don’t see it. You weren’t raised as a pony.”

“Well for some pony with some big-time problem, she seems pretty happy to me!” I said, returning fire after Celestia’s opening barrage went completely over my head. “Okay, she’s a human…yeah. Is that what you’re beating yourself up about?”

When Celestia flinched just the tiniest bit, I landed in front of her again and turned on my emotion sensor picked up just a little bit of anger directed towards me, but for the most part Tia was just Smelled like she was swimming in depression and hopelessness.

“Because, I thought that was fixable,” I went on, a little hesitant. What can I say? If Celestia was getting unsure about things…I sure as hell wasn’t going to be unaffected by it.

The goddess let out a snort. “Of course it is,” she grumbled. “There isn’t a magical transformation that can’t be undone. I would have thought you of all…creatures would have known that. That isn’t what concerns me.”

“Then what is?” I demanded, the concern in my voice giving way to anger in response to Celestia’s. After taking a second for a little breath, I decided to try and approach things from another angle.

“You know, there’s a lot of things about us that are different, that are never going to be able to match up in a way for me to understand the way your mind works,” I told Celestia. “But…I also know you’re old, and you’ve got to have some real heavy baggage, and some way of dealing with it. I know you…distance from the stuff you can’t deal with. And now I think you’ve found something you can’t distance yourself from, but you can’t deal with either…at least not on your own. Sure, you can shove it to the side for while like I did. But you saw where that leads. So please, tell me what’s wrong.”

I knew she had commented about me being a former human might help her understand something about Sunset earlier, and we would talk later, but considering this was my coronation day the number of things we could all get sidetracked on was just too numerous to count. Since the only thing Tia was doing was the same thing she did every morning, I figured it was the perfect time to shove in some time for myself.

Celestia stared at me for a moment, and then hung her head and slumped her shoulders. “It’s not… It’s just something that occurred to me the other night when I was…bragging about her achievements. About all the great things she was planning to do when she regained her magic. She…” Celestia grit her teeth and her whole body shook for a few moments. “I think Sunset still thinks she’s going to be a princess.”

I had to actually let what Tia told me run through my head for a few seconds before I managed a response. “What do you mean, thinks?” I asked while trying to work through what Tia had said. Because it couldn’t have been what I was trying not to think.

But of course, I failed at that and…

The more I thought about what Tia had said, I found myself less able to concentrate on just why Celestia was saying such things, as my mind kept drifting to Sunset. We hadn’t really talked at all about her plans for the future once she became a unicorn again, but…it was pretty obvious just where she was supposed to be headed. Celestia had said she wanted to take her back to Canterlot, she had told Blueblood Sunny was ‘following Twilight and Cadence’. She had even adopted the girl as her official daughter! I knew Tia wasn’t just going to stick a pair of wings on her back, but…that didn’t mean Sunset’s dreams of finally fulfilling her potential were just wishful thinking, right?

If that was the case…it would crush her.

And the thought of that girl being disappointed…it might have made me just a bit panicky. “Okay yeah Sunset made a mistake, but…if messing with a bunch of humans’ minds disqualified a pony from being a princess, Twilight would have never gotten her wings.”

“That’s not it,” Celestia growled as she looked away while I went on a little bit faster than before.

“And hay…it’s better that she has made a mistake and learned from it, right?” I asked. “Ponies that have learned to pick themselves up, they’re so much better than a pony that’s never had a slip up because they know how to deal with failure rather than freak out about it!”

Tia looked back towards me before her words came out in anger. “That’s not it either!”

I looked up at the horse goddess as I managed to gather up enough of my spine to comfort Celestia directly. “Then what the hay is it then?” I demanded. “You’re saying that Sunset can’t become a princess, but you sure as hay haven’t given me a reason for it!”

“Because it’s not her destiny!” the princess practically yelled back in my face after another step from the giant pony filled my field of vision with her body.

With Tia’s explanation finally given, I…tilted my head in confusion for a few moments while my brain tried to wrap itself around that concept and came up with: does not compute.

I mean, it wasn’t like I didn’t believe in destiny. Anyone who lived in Equestria wouldn’t have much of a choice but to accept there was some vague force helping to guide things. If you didn’t…well, I was pretty sure the horse dimension would have tried to prove it to you at one point…or maybe bring about a fatal accident if you kept to the idea for too long.

But given that little tidbit of information, I decided to ask the next obvious question of the alicorn in front of me as her levels of irritation rose to match my own. “Well what the hay is then?” I asked in confusion as my memory reminded me of an odd fact.

If Sunset was never meant to be a princess, then why had Celestia snatched her up when she was a little kid to not just become an alicorn, but the replacement for Celestia herself? It seemed a little weird that Tia would have done something like that if Sunny wasn’t meant to get a pair of wings.

“I DON’T KNOW!” Celestia yelled right in my face loud enough to leave my ears ringing. A second later, her expression tensed, and she hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Whenever I look at a pony, I can see a glimmer, or maybe get a feel of the path their future will take, where their destiny will lead them. And when I first saw Sunset, I thought I could guide her towards a future that I would craft for her. A future where she would rule over Equestria in my stead. But that is no longer an option! Now when I look at her, I don’t see…when I try to discern what her destiny is… There’s no vision of her possibilities, no inkling of her future! I just…I look at her, and see NOTHING!”

“You what?” a new voice cut into our conversation, making Celestia’s head jerk up, and me in turn notice two little things as a shiver of recognition ran through my own body when the girl spoke. The first of which being that we had been yelling at each other pretty loudly. The second was that we had been yelling in the deserted hallway outside of the guest apartments of the Crystal Palace. A hallway that was no longer deserted.

AJ, Pinkie, and Trixie, along with Twilight and Rainbow had either come out of their apartment all the way, or simply stuck their heads out to see what the commotion was about. Fluttershy might have looked at what was going on as well, but as her door was only open a crack, I could only guess. And along with all the ponies stood the red headed girl that was the center of our conversation.

I looked past Tia to get Sunset in full view. There was a look of confusion on the teenage girl’s face so strong I could practically see the gears churning inside her head as she tried to work out what Celestia had just said, but didn’t seem to be able to work through it. “What do you mean…nothing?” she asked in a near-whisper. “What…I thought you brought me back here to…to be your student again. I thought you…you needed me to…”

Like me and Tia, Sunset seemed to become aware of the others in the hallway a few seconds later and took a look around. “I…” She said before pausing and looking back to her room. “I need to…” And with that, she ran back to the guest apartment Cadence had set her up with.

“Sunset wait!” the horse goddess called out before she followed after her adopted daughter, only to stop as the door slammed shut in front of her. Then Celestia took one look in my direction, and I had a few seconds of guilt wash over me before I realized that Tia was in fact looking over my head and towards the East-facing window. Where nice view of the lower-case sunset was supposed to be in view within a few seconds.

Then she opened the door to her daughter’s apartment and ran inside. “Sunset please listen, it could just be-” I heard Tia say before the shut the door behind her to muffle her words to the level of incoherence.

Silence filled the hallway for a few seconds before Twilight cleared her throat. “Um…I think I need to go tell Princess Luna she’s probably going to be the one to raise the sun today.”

As the minutes passed, all the ponies found somewhere they needed to be. Rainbow went with Twilight to track down Luna, who I guessed did end up raising the sun as it appeared in the sky when the time for dawn came around. Pinkie said something about needing something special to cheer Sunny up before she took off down the hallway along with Applejack. Fluttershy and Trixie gave Sunset’s door a sympathizing look before they headed off to do whatever it was they needed to, and as for me…I decided to stick around.

Sure it was the day of my coronation, but that mattered little in comparison to Sunset and Tia being where they were. So I shooed away some of the servants that Rarity had sent to get me with everything from polite refusals to attend breakfast to murderous glares that sent guards running away in fear.

I wasn’t sure how long it was until Pinkie came by again with a tray full of apple pastries and other non-crystal food that Sunset could eat, but I doubted it could have been more than an hour. She was uncharacteristically silent as she just left them by Sunset’s door, asked me if they were still inside, and then left when I replied.

Pinkie’s confusion I could understand. Despite being right on the other side of Sunset’s door, I couldn’t hear anything coming out into the hallway. And I knew the rooms weren’t soundproof. Me and Tia’s little shouting match had attracted a crowd after all.

It wasn’t until I heard some weird sounding clip clopping of hooves that I broke myself out of a dazed funk to wonder what was causing the odd noise. Silver horseshoes, or slip-on shoes as Tia liked to call them since they weren’t nailed on, sounded quite a bit different than normal hooves.

I looked over at the second biggest pony in Equestria as her midnight sky mane waved around in the non-existent breeze. While Luna had on her usual stoic mask that almost always accompanied any one of her public appearances, it was the first time I had been near the alicorn when her Scent matched her face. It was actually a little intimidating. “L-Luna.”

“Are they still within?”

I gulped and nodded.

The alicorn raised an eyebrow. “And yet you remain here?”

“Well um…you know,” I oh so eloquently replied through the nervousness before cutting off my emotional sensor. Sometimes it was good to go natural changeling. “I don’t really think it’s my place to intrude but…”

Before I could mention how I wanted to be there for both of them, the frown that formed on Luna’s face made it so I didn’t even need to Smell her disapproval. “And here I have believed you to be one of the foal’s parental figures.”

The comment left me feeling a little inadequate on so many levels. Maybe because…I kind of had been toying with the idea, even before Tia admitted her feelings. Sunset wasn’t just my responsibility because she lived at the castle Twilight and I slept in, I genuinely cared for the girl more than most of the ponies I knew.

It also made me feel a little ashamed for feeling that way. Sunset wasn’t my kid. And by all chronological rights, she was an adult. My ears flattened. “I’ve barely known her a few weeks Luna.” Even if my relationship with Tia became serious, it still wouldn’t make me Sunset’s father or anything.

Luna looked at me for a few more seconds, then shrugged and lit up her horn before the door beside me opened, and a little tingle in my own horn said a muffling spell was undone. Which probably explained why I hadn’t heard anything before.

And was assaulted by sound a second later. “OF COURSE I DON’T WANT THAT!” Sunset’s voice rang in my ears.

From outside, I saw Celestia look at the open door that had ended her spell with a frown that lessened when she saw me and Luna standing there. The redness in her eyes made me glad I was a in pure changeling mode at the moment. Smelling something that had Celestia of all ponies crying that much would have been…hard.

Sunset didn’t look much better. She was sitting on the bed hugging herself and…it was a lot easier to see the tear streaks on her cheeks than it was on a pony’s coat.

Silence just loomed over our little gathering until Luna walked past me and into Sunset’s apartment. “What seems to be the problem with the two of you now?”

As Luna looked back and forth between the two, Sunset drew in on herself and Celestia slumped into a sigh. “If you must know…if you must know sister, I told Sunset what I’ve…failed to see during our journey to the Empire, or the day before while we were spending time together organizing Canterlot,” she said in a voice that sounded almost hollow.

“When you said…” Sunset’s words died a few seconds after she raised her head up to speak them, and she just went back to sulking.

Celestia looked back over to Sunset. “Yes, your work in helping to make sure everypony was reunited with anypony that was lost in the shuffle of the evacuation as fast as possible was equal to anything Twilight Sparkle could do. I’m proud of it! I’m proud of every single thing you’ve done since coming home. More than you could ever imagine!” she told her daughter. “But that doesn’t change your...what is…”

While feeling a little out of place and in no way right to be a part of such a conversation, my indignation at hearing the unsaid ‘destiny’ word got an annoyed groan out of me when Celestia trailed off and looked away from her daughter.

“Yes Omnifarious?” Celestia asked.

Put on the spot like that, I flinched away from the alicorn for a few seconds, and then slowly walked into the room. Then I shut the door before someone else could be added to our little conversation. “Okay look…I know what you said before, but…I’m just not getting something. I mean…weren’t you planning on making Sunset a princess before? What’s changed?” If anything, the hardships Sunset had endured and changes she had undergone had only strengthened her royal candidacy. Sunset probably knew more about a dozen things that ponies could barely even dream of thanks to her experiences as a human.

“You know what I planned,” Celestia mumbled before she glanced at Sunset for a second, who flinched and quickly looked away. The goddess’s eyes widened in obvious pain, before she turned her attention back to me. “And why I can’t do it now.”

Luna let out a noise that might have been a hum, or a groan. It was hard to tell with her. “And what plan would that be that I have not been privy to?”

For a second, I could have sworn I saw Celestia flinch at the question. Then she hesitantly looked over to Luna. “Well sister, my first idea for…dealing with your return didn’t involve Twilight Sparkle…or the Elements of Harmony,” she said before repeating what I had heard a few hours earlier about how Celestia had planned to take Nightmare Moon out in a suicide run and leave Sunset in charge of Equestria before Twilight had become her student. “I saw Sunset’s cutie mark and the possibilities it held, so I decided to…influence the path her life would take.

“And it worked!” Celestia continued. “When she was just ten, I saw a future where Sunset would become ready for ascension and be able to take my place as the ruler of Equestria.” She sighed and shook her head. “But it was a less likely path, and in my foolishness to push her towards it, I only ended up diverting her from where I wanted her life to go.”

As Tia finished, Luna looked over to the teenager. “You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t feel too sympathetic to your plight of my sister’s first idea not working out.”

Sunset looked up from her huddle on the bed and outright glared at Luna. “Do you think that I would have wanted-even with how I was back then when I was her student-”

“You are my student!” Celestia insisted with an air of desperation to her voice.

“I would have NEVER wanted her to di-” Sunset stopped herself and took in a deep breath before she looked away from Luna and over to her mom. “And stop calling me that! What’s the point of you calling me that if I’m not going to do anything important?”

Celestia took a few steps towards Sunset. “What do you mean never do anything important?” she asked in a pained voice. “Just because being an alicorn isn’t in your future doesn’t mean you don’t have one! You…with your new way of looking at magic, you could be the next Starswirl!”

When Sunset didn’t immediately yell back at her, I thought Celestia might have struck a chord with the girl. But after a few more seconds, Sunset’s face just twisted into one of anger while her eyes still showed a great deal of pain. “I’m not…you just…Damnit! I’m not Twilight, and I don’t want to be! I want to be what you raised me to be, what you taught me to be every day we were together! A princess of Equestria!”

“Sunset, that is no longer the path you are meant to take,” Celestia told her without any of the usual calm I had come to know in the alicorn’s voice. If anything, she sounded just as pained as the redhead. “I’m not sure what the future holds for you, but if you’d just accept-”

“THEN WHY DID YOU BRING ME BACK HERE?” the human demanded as she stood up on her feet and glared at Celestia with her puffy eyes. “If-if you didn’t need me back to-to fulfill some great destiny, then why did you…if Equestria didn’t even notice I disappeared, why…”

“What’re you talking about?” Celestia asked as she started to breathe so much quicker. “Equestria noticing you…what’s that got to do with anything?”

Sunset balled her fists. “Twilight…if she had never shown up, or any of her friends, or fuck, even just a few other ponies in Ponyville. If they had disappeared a few years ago, all of Equestria would have just fallen apart by now! Twilight wouldn’t have learned something she needed to become an alicorn, or maybe one of the Element Bearers would have left that little town or…something would have changed and made it so Luna never stopped being Nightmare Moon, not to mention Discord and everything else!” Sunset exclaimed as she threw up her hands before she hugged herself. “But me? I can disappear, and Equestria just goes on like nothing ever happened. I thought you came to Earth to bring me back to Equestria because you needed me. Not-”

“I DID NEED YOU!” Celestia shouted before she let out a tiny sob. Her legs shook for a moment, and she bowed her head while her voice lowered. “I needed you. To be here…with me.” By the time she was finished talking, I could barely make out the horse goddess’s words. “Even before I knew it, I needed you here with me.”

From my inconspicuous little corner, I really felt like I didn’t belong in the room with the royal family. Sure I had peeked in on Celestia’s life every now and then, but…this was some private stuff. And not the accidental sex kind of stuff that Celestia and Rainbow had confessed to while Twilight had been a little too happy from the climax to care about that little incident of theirs the night before. This was really private stuff.

“Ah, so that’s what this is all about,” Luna spoke up, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. Then, she looked over to the human and continued. “You’ve realized the only purpose for your presence here in Equestria is to make my sister feel better about herself.”

The larger pony looked over to the smaller with a frown. “That’s not true Luna.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Of course it is sister,” she replied before her expression darkened just a little. “After all, you have made it my only true purpose as well.”

The anger on Celestia’s face slowly slipped into confusion while her words tumbled out. “You…wha...what?”

“I may raise the moon, but my thousand year absence has proven that you are capable of managing such a task by yourself. Any real rearranging of the night’s sky in these days would panic our citizens as it has been the same for a millennium when you began stewardship of it,” she went on in a almost bored tone before letting out an annoyed sigh. “Then there is my purpose as guardian of Equestria that has been supplanted by your larger platoons that were put in place after my banishment. And despite the four months of tutoring I received upon my return to get me caught up on the modern world, I have yet to fulfill any governmental duties besides rubber stamping decrees you have already drawn up. The only thing I’ve been allowed to do is visit the dreams of foals and quite their nightmares. A task any mother worth two bits should be more than capable of doing!”

As Luna went on with her dry destruction of Celestia’s worldview, the other goddess got more and more…well, horrified would be the best word to describe her expression. And by the time Luna was done and unable to hold in her little snip at the end, Tia looked just about ready to either cry, or crawl under a rock and die.

I…couldn’t really come to my girl’s defense. Mostly because I really had no idea just what Luna did in Equestria beyond visiting the dream of an upset kid if the situation called for it. I had heard from Tia that she was giving Luna some more responsibilities a while ago but…they apparently didn’t amount to much from the other woman’s point of view.

“Luna, that’s not true!” Celestia said in a voice that was about as unsure as a goddess could get. “Yours is a vital role in Equestria. You matter!” To be honest, it sounded a lot more like she was trying to convince herself more than Luna after the younger goddess’s rant.

For a moment I really debated turning on my emotional sensors, because the look Luna gave Celestia wasn’t…bad, but…it didn’t look all that friendly either. She didn’t frown or get angry, but just gave her sister a tired stare. “To you sister. And I will admit to the need for a great deal of education when I returned from the moon,” Luna replied in a voice that matcher her expression. “But when the Crystal Empire reappeared, it was Twilight Sparkle and not I that you sent to save it.”

“That was because I needed to see if she was ready for the responsibility of being a princess!” Celestia replied frantically. “You know that!”

“And when a dragon camped outside Ponyville, she was sent to treat with it instead of I,” Luna went on. “Even without knowing the modern vernacular and customs, I would have been suited to the task of dealing with the creature. Neigh, my archaic approach might have even been better than some soft touch offered by your student.”

Celestia gulped. “You were still recovering, I…didn’t want to burden you with a problem like that,” she added while looking away.

“And when Omnifarious had…” Luna paused and looked over to me for a moment. “Um…its…mental crises?” she sort of asked. To be fair, the whole changeling gender confused me too. “Whom filled your horseshoes during those days? Was it I? No, you simply ran to Twilight Sparkle again.”

A few more moments of silence followed, and I was amazed to see Celestia actually huddled in on herself just a little. “I didn’t…you hated it when I tricked you into taking my duties for a day!”

For a briefest of instants, I could have sworn Luna bristled at the comment before she looked over to Celestia again. “You left me full day’s work after I finished a patrol that actually had an incident,” the other alicorn connected before she became serene again with some effort. “And do I need to remind you that I performed both of our duties while you were off with the…double? As Equestria didn’t fall apart when you decided to disappear for a week, I would have thought-!”

Luna stopped, and took a deep breath before she simply let it out and ended the conversation right there. Then, she turned to Sunset. “As for you niece, I would suggest getting used to what you’re feeling right now. It’s what your mother does to her family members,” the goddess said before her sad expression. “But do not be angry with her. It is not out of malice that she does these things, but love. Misguided as it is. Do not hate her for it.”

On the other side of the room, Celestia tilted her head just a little, as if she were trying to understand the sight in front of her. For a moment I had to wonder if this was the same argument that had set Luna on her path to Nightmare Moon one thousand years ago, and if Celestia was thinking the same thing.

“Luna…” the larger goddess mumbled painfully.

The smaller alicorn let out a little groan that sounded more annoyed than pained. “I apologize for my abruptness sister, but expediency outweighs tact, and I need to get this coronation back on schedule since it is the single most important duty I have been tasked with in months,” she said before looking over to me with a frown. “Rarity is waiting for you in your dressing room with everything you’ll need. I’ll send Princess Twilight there to reapply your glamour.”

And with that, the obviously irritated alicorn turned to leave. While her clip clops got further and further down the hall, Celestia turned her hopeless expression to Sunset, and then back to the door where her sister had left. I could practically hear her mulling over the possibilities of what would happen if she just abandoned Sunset to run after Luna, or ignored what was a pretty big issue for Luna in favor of talking to the former unicorn.

Then, she looked over to me…and I got a very bad feeling.

“Omnifarious, you…talk to her!” Celestia ordered before she rushed out the door while calling for Luna to wait up with a few pleases added in.

Meanwhile, I turned my head to look back at the depressed teen and found my stomach starting to knot. Or whatever changelings had that passed for a stomach anyway. Which in turn led me to remember the tray of pink pony prepared pastries just outside Sunset’s door. “So um…are you hungry?”

It wasn’t that I couldn’t at least half-understand where Sunset was coming from. Like most people who went through college before they were ready for it, I totally failed. It wasn’t the aimless drifter fail that some kids experience either. I had found out that what I wanted to do years before, read and dreamed about it, and when the time came for me to get some semi-real world experience in it...I found just staring at computer code for hours on end looking for typos just wasn’t for me. So I ended up changing my major to what was basically a plan B for my whole life.

However, like I said, I could only half-symphonize with her. This was mainly because after Twilight showed up to pretty much drag me to Rarity’s dressing room with Sunset following along before she ditched her translation belt upon arrival so we could have a half-private conversation, she broke it down for me when she finally started talking after a long enough hiatus…

“I may look human, but I’m still a pony on the inside,” Sunset explained in English as Rarity helped me into the last dress I would ever wear. The unicorn had commented on how it was a little rude to talk in another language with her in the room like we were, but she hadn’t been willing to wait for me to get my heart-to-heart with Sunset over and done. At the very least, she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to what we were saying.

Considering how big a gossip she was, that made her best pony of the day. Even Twilight couldn’t stop her nerdiness. Although the comparison of the two made me wonder if I should ask the alicorn if she knew what was going on between Tia and Luna. I doubted the dark goddess found her without the lighter one trailing behind while going on and on about how they needed to talk or something.

“We don't get to just re-pick our majors. That’s what makes it different,” the human went on with a quiet tone I needed need an emo sensor to tell was there thanks to her depression. “Everything I did, everything she taught me… Celestia raised me to be a princess. I can’t…there isn’t anything else I want to do with my life, or do with the education she gave me. It wasn’t just magic and lectures about how I needed to make friends either you know. I know all the ins and outs of the government, and hell, after going to the human world, I’ve seen how half a dozen other governments work and…well democracy sucks but there’s plenty of human ideas we could use. As a princess, I could finally make those changes. I could use my magic to craft at least half a dozen new wondrous items to let ponies talk over miles and take care of those fucking parasprites and a dozen other things. And I could...I know the kind of trouble you girls get into. Another alicorn would let us keep every last one of them safe!”

The girls blinked away some forming tears. “And if I got to be an alicorn, I could…fly in the sky…with her.”

Okay ouch…unable to Smell Sunset’s human emotions or not in pseudo-alicorn form, that one made me hurt.

And that was on top of the normal level of crap she was probably feeling when it came to what happened when ponies failed at what they were supposed to do. Like, eternal night, chasing animals into a fancy party, turning a white cloud black and throwing a crazy party with turnips. When ponies failed at what they were supposed to do with their lives, bad shit happened inside their heads.

“And you know what really gets to me?” she mumbled. “If I could go back and trade what Celestia wanted me to do with how I am now, even if it turns out I’m stuck like this, I wouldn’t trade it for what she wanted to do.” A little chuckle escaped from her lips. “I don’t have my magic, and I’m like this but…if I had to choose between this and Celestia…dying…I’d choose to be a human in Equestria.” The statement was followed by a quick snort. “How messed up is that?”

For a second I actually thought Sunset was paying me lip service, but…I threw that thought away. I had come in at the end of Sunset’s shouting match with Tia, and I was pretty sure that the girl knew she could say anything she wanted to me without having to worry about it getting out if Sunset didn’t want it to.

No, Sunset wasn’t trying to play the part of the good girl. Considering how she had been when she had first arrived, there was probably still a bit of self-hate in the back of her mind next to the hopelessness, feelings of uselessness, and whatever the hell else was sloshing around in there.

The girl may have found a home in Ponyville, but…it was a pretty safe assumption that she had only considered her ‘not a princess’ problem a setback instead of a failure until Celestia had said something where everyone could overhear. Something I couldn’t even be mad a Tia for since she had just let the thing slip out thanks to my own big mouth.

Stupid mouth.

So, I considered my options while Rarity worked on my eyelashes, and…came up with nothing. The problem with this whole mess was: I had no idea just how Tia’s foresight worked.

While I could have encouraged Sunset to hyst let the whole thing go. That just wasn’t my style. Failures were only failures if you accepted them as such. If you didn’t, then they were just setbacks and obstacles to be overcome.

She said she could see the destiny of other ponies, but Celestia’s Tia Sense obviously had to have a few flaws in it that I could name just off the top of my head. I mean, she sure as hell didn’t see Chrysalis coming, or Discord, or all those…demons that Sombra’s leftovers spat …up…

“That’s it!” I exclaimed as an idea struck me. It was the kind that made me stand just a little taller. Which of course made Rarity let out a little shriek and backed away in a stumble since I was shouting in her face and all.

After the unicorn regained her sense of balance, she gave me an almost Stare level glare and I prepared myself for an assault when Rarity took in a deep breath. “Omnifarious, keep still!” she scolded me. “Honestly, its hard enough keeping myself out of your conversation, especially with Sunset acting like that!”

When the horse’s hoof pointed towards the human, Sunset’s eyes winded, and Rarity just went on. “I may not speak interdimensional monkey, but I can see when one of my friends is in pain! And you know how I feel about not being allowed to help them!”

“Thank you…Rarity,” Sunset spoke quietly after Rarity’s words hung in the air for a few seconds.

I looked back and forth between the two, and realized I needed to translate. “Oh, she said-”

“I got the gist of it,” Rarity cut in before she looked up to Sunset. “And I know you don’t want me interfering darling but…are you alright? Please, if there’s anything I can do for you, simply ask and I will gladly do it. I know we haven’t known each other very long Sunset, but you really are one of my dearest friends. And if there is anything I can do for you I…please, I beg of you to ask.”

Sunset looked down at the other pony with a lost expression, and then let out a sigh and shook her head. “I’m such an idiot. Belt.”

Once I had gotten up enough annoyance at the situation of me being in a dress, I focused my magic around the object that Sunset had thrown onto a bare pony mannequin and tossed it over to her. When she put it on, the human told Rarity what was going on.

I wanted to tell her my theory, but didn’t get a chance to before Sunset was done. And by the time she was, Rarity wasn’t in much of a happy mood. “Oh my, Sunset that must be so horrible for you.”

The human shook her head and sighed. “To be honest, it gets a little easier every time I got over it and…well, maybe I should face the truth. I never deserved to be a princess,” Sunset said in a low voice. “I’m a horrible person Rarity. Twilight never told you girls, but…when she and I met for the first time and I put on her crown…people almost died. I nearly killed Twilight.” Sunset took in a sharp breath through her teeth, as if the memory was enough to cause her physical pain. “Someone like me doesn’t dese-mmpth”

A faint flow of magic appeared around Sunset’s lips and held them shut. “The very first time I went to Cloudsdale, Twilight cast a spell to give me magical wings,” Rarity told her in a firm voice as a little glow surrounded Sunset’s mouth kept her from speaking. “I had gone there to support Rainbow Dash in a flying competition because I knew she was so nervous she could barely concentrate. But instead of cheering her on, I entered the competition with my magical wings that nopony in Cloudsdale had ever seen before, and midway through the competition my wings evaporated and I nearly fell to my death. I even nearly got three other ponies killed because of my actions. It is still the greatest shame of my life on every level you can imagine. So I know what its like to lose your head Sunset, and put other ponies at risk.”

Sunset shook her head and the movement was apparently enough to shake off Rarity’s magic, or at least signal her to let it go. “That’s not the same as-”

“I was conceited, egotistical, only thinking of myself, and I didn’t just ignore my friend’s needs, I cast them to the side and made things worse for her. All without the corrupted magic of a tiara pushing me like it did you,” Rarity told her. “But if I were to dwell on it and spent all my life looking at the past, then I would never have become what I am now. And…perhaps that is why Celestia can’t tell you of you your destiny now.”

I took my opening at that. “Actually, I’m pretty sure the reason Tia is having trouble with determining Sunset’s destiny is because right now, Sunset isn’t a pony.”

When she looked over to me with a quizzical frown, I rolled my eyes. “Oh come on guys. Remember all the stuff that’s happened with Discord, and Chrysalis and Sombra’s leftovers? I don’t remember her giving us any early warnings to any pony. And hay, Mom was wagging her plot right in Celestia’s face the whole time she was running around as not-Cadence.”

Why she could apparently predict my actions with any degree of certainty was still up for debate. Maybe it was because I was magically linked to her or something. Or she just knew me better than Mom. I was kind of a pony, if in a very weird way.

“W-What?” the girl asked in a whisper. “You mean, if I can become a unicorn again, then…maybe…Celestia will see a way to me becoming an alicorn without her needing to…die?”

I tensed with indecision. On one hand, I could just tell her yes and offer the girl a little hope for the future. But on the other, it could be very well like my magic lessons, which were nothing but a false hope to reverse her transformation.

False hope, or none at all.

It took my pansy ass about two whole seconds to decide just what route to take when it came to that question.

“Maybe,” I answered in a copout. “You’d have to ask Celestia about it to be sure. But it makes sense, right? She might have been able to plan out the whole Nightmare Moon thing, but all the other threats kind of took her by surprise. Even I walked in front of her without Tia shouting changeling when we first met. Or maybe it’s because even if you’re still a pony on the inside, being a human on the outside means you get too much free choice for some pony like her to see your path in life. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s got something to do with cutie marks, which you don’t have right now either. Just because Tia thinks things are a certain way doesn’t mean they really are.”

Hell, she once described me as altruistic. Which was about as far from the real me as you could get.

On the other side of the conversation, Sunset looked at me with hesitant eyes as she mulled over my theory. I could understand why she didn’t want to get her hopes up. She didn’t get her magic back after coming to Equestria, she wasn’t living with her mom like she had probably hoped to do upon returning, and she had just now found out that the single goal that her entire life had revolved around was all a big lie told to her by Celestia.

“Well…I suppose I could ask her…later,” the girl mumbled to herself.

The fact that I may have just held off Sunset’s onset of a whole new level of depression didn’t cheer me up any. Although next to that, the feelings that came with wearing a dress in public and being called a princess by everybody under the sun wasn’t looking so bad.

Unfortunately, later didn’t turn out to be before it was time for everyone to get in place for my crowning by Celestia. The second Rarity got everything done, she dragged us out of our room to get everything else set up, which turned out was a lot. So much so that the girls ended up skipping lunch to get everything ready.

Not that it did much good.

After all, my coronation sucked.

The whole thing was set up a bit different than Twilight’s had been. Whether this was because I didn’t have a cutie mark, and thus also lacked a banner, or my procession was made up of monsters I had ordered shipped here from Ponyville, I didn’t know. Changelings that were looking like their normal insect selves. And all but one of whom I only knew via hive mind since I insisted Sunset’s changelings needed to stay with her.

Well, that and I dealt with changelings face to face as little as possible. Being a mare for a few months had allowed me to distance myself from the changeling form mentally when it came to other changelings. Basically, they creeped me out again.

As for the one changeling I did know, we weren’t friends or anything. I doubted the bugs could really understand the concept beyond a textbook definition. But I did deal with #1 plenty when it came to the day to day needs of the castle.

So it was only natural to start a conversation with my changeling version of Spike while I waited for Celestia to give me my cue to enter. “So Number One, tell me, what does the rest of the hive think about all these recent developments?” Not that I needed to hear it from his mouth, but...there was time to kill and all that.

For a second I had to remember just what I was dealing with, and changed my voice to one of slight annoyance. “Are you disobeying my orders?”

If the drone became nervous, I couldn’t tell. “Merely following your previous instructions that the drones should question orders when a better path exists,” it told me before adding, “but if you wish me to be verbal...

“The hive has secured the section of the Everfree that we tricked the ponies into relinquishing and has continued work to subdue the local wildlife. Manticores continue to be of the easiest to deal with now that we have begun using mental magic upon them, while the parasprite population is the most time consuming. Numbers continue to decrease at a low rate, with no replacements as you have yet to enter a chrysalis to undergo royal maturation. However, the hive still has ample warriors and the act of enthralling the High Princess of Equestria means that the prey shall serve as a protection rather than a threat. Together, this more than offsets the failure to replace the drones as your conquest of Equestria apparently doesn’t require military action.”

I gave the damn bug the signal to stop before he could piss me off any more. I hated the way the Hive talked about Tia like that, like I had put her under some kind of spell. Even if I had, which was a BIG IF considering the mental rape that such an act was was actually worse than the physical kind, making the alicorn hook up with me would have been the last thing I would have done to her. Especially considering how I thought about her at the time when everything started.

“And now introducing for the first time,” Tia’s voice cut through the doors, signaling me to open them and get the act ready.

My official coronation ceremony started off with me walking into the crystal throne room where all the real princesses were waiting. I noticed the lack of any Harmony ponies besides Twilight up at the end but…I could kind of understand the absence. Twilight and the girls were practically a single unit when it came to most things. When she had thought they were drifting apart because of her new wings, the alicorn had nearly had a nervous breakdown in a Pony McDonalds.

I may have loved each and every one of the girls and was actually sleeping with two of them at the same time, but even now they would have a special connection that I would never be a part of. Although the term friendship was used to describe it, the truth was that what the girls had was a special connection that humans really didn’t have a name for. Despite the fact they called themselves friends, they loved each other as much as any wife loved her husband, sister loved her brother, or mother loved her child.

And so they just got front row seats to my humiliation.

Or as the changelings were probably thinking of it as, the day those idiot ponies we want to fucking eat were actually stupid enough to just hand over their kingdom to the thing that’s going to kill them all.

I walked up to the dais where the crystal throne sat behind four alicorns with my procession of changelings trailed behind me and some music played in the background. As I approached, I noticed the distinct lack of male authority figures standing there in various dresses, and had to wonder how Shining Armor felt about getting shoved to the side inside his own kingdom.

Which also made me wonder if their had ever been any male alicorns. All that research I had done on the subject had turned up only the casual mention of a few girls that got their wings like Twilight did. Which really had me wonder if Celestia was sexist?

Or was that feminist?

Sure, Equestria had a lot more girls than guys, but I hadn’t really seen anything approaching some sort of gender discrimination anywhere in the country. Ponies just seemed pretty ‘meh’ on the idea of gender roles in their society, and the only reason girls filled more leadership roles than guys was the law of averages worked in their favor.

But my Nose wouldn’t let my mind wander from the important stuff, like how the ponies in front of me Smelled. Tia still had plenty of lingering guilt and sadness perfume on while Luna was wearing some ode to anger and shame. Judging by their Scents, whatever beef had been raised was still going on beneath their smiles.

Not that they weren’t genuine smiles. I could smell some happiness and joy on the two oldest women in the room too. It was just that the lingering stench of the sisterly argument was what my mind focused on.

And then I realized my distraction coping mechanism of being the center of attention for large crowds that were probably judging me and whispering behind my back made me miss whatever the first part of Celestia’s speech.

“-she has proven herself a true friend and guardian of Equestria time and time again, never once hesitating to throw herself into danger to protect anypony in harms way,” the goddess spoke.

I…might have disagreed with her a little bit there.

But…it probably would have been a bad idea to do that in the middle of her speech.

“However, I am not here today to give Omnifarious the title of princess.”

Celestia’s words made me look up from the horse’s knees that I was level with, to her face in confusion. That hadn’t been part of the script. At least as far as I remembered when it came to Twilight’s coronation since these things didn’t actually have one. “Say what?”

For a few seconds, I thought…well…nothing. The announcement that Tia had made really threw my mind off kilter. So I could just stand there looking confused while wishing she had bothered to go through a rehearsal or something just once to avoid little moments like this.

I had to wonder what was going on.

Was this some way to placate Sunset? If so, it was a stupid one. The girl didn’t seem to care about me getting a stupid crown. Even after she learned about not getting her own. It was...pretty damn big of her actually.

Celestia just ignored my confusion. “That is a title she has held long before bringing her tribe into harmony with Equestria,” she went on. “As such, I cannot give her what she already possesses. Rather, I and all of my fellow princesses can only officially recognize her rightful place as a princess of Equestria.”

The telltale tingle in my horn telling me of magic in use around me made me look over to the side. Their my eyes caught sight of the crown Celestia and the girls had crafted for me. It had some disturbing similarities to the to the one Mom used to wear, just done up in good guy colors. In other words, the body was gold instead of black, and ended in pearls instead of high density polished cocoon resin shaped into little balls.

And I intended to follow Twilight’s example and throw the damn thing into a corner or…

Okay, I’d be putting it up on a nice little pedestal in the Everfree Castle somewhere, next to the mannequin that would hold Rarity’s dress for me. As girly as the stuff I had on me was, they were gifts from my friends that represented all the love and respect they had for me. I would give them the care they deserved.

Once again, I found my body had gone on autopilot while my mind had clashed with the idea of a pretty pony princess crown and dress decorating my man cave next to the complete collection of black magic bootleg My Little Pony vinyl figurines that actually had two cutie marks on each side of every pony’s butt and lacked the obvious seams that the first mold of the ponies had when it came to their necks…

Anyway, I found myself standing on a balcony overlooking the Crystal Empire…or maybe part of the Empire since I was pretty sure a whole empire couldn’t be seen from a balcony. And…

Um…

…I…

……sort of…

“Say something already!”

Celestia’s whisper jolted me out of my state of involuntary prettification and…okay look, while I usually didn’t have a problem with public speaking, I also wasn’t usually doing it in a dress while hundreds and hundreds of ponies were watching me and judging me and jealously glaring at me for getting a position that I didn’t really deserve no matter what Celestia and the rest of the royalty thought, while waiting for me to choke and…

I took a moment, closed my eyes, and took a breath before letting it out.

And waited for a second.

Then two.

When the third second came and no musical lyrics popped into my head, I…looked out down at all the nobles, or maybe they were commoners since they were out in the street instead of inside the palace. But I could still tell some of them wanted me to screw up royal.

Not only that, it seemed Equestria wanted it too. I mean, Celestia had said to just let inspiration strike me but...I wasn’t feeling anything coming to mind for my coronation speech. No ‘thank you’ lines. No musical numbers. Not a single damn thing.

Then I looked back and saw the crowd inside the throne room had shuffled around to look at me from where they were respectfully letting the princesses have their space. Or maybe they just couldn’t get past the line of national heroes who had taken up the front row by the door.

But...the presence of the girls wasn’t what got me going. It was the looks on all the other ponies back there. The ones with the sneers, the rolling eyes (aside from Derpy I mean), and that one jackass with the monocle. How the owner of Hasburro got into my pretty pony princess crowning ceremony, I’ll never know.

And to all the people who are just waiting for me to slip and fall, I said to myself before speaking in the out loud sort of way while mentally giving everyone who was grumbling about my princessness the middle finger. After all, anger and the want to screw over your enemies makes one strong.

So I looked out over to the crowd, and stomped my hoof. “Ponies of Equestria! Not very long ago, my tribe and yours were enemies.” Which wasn’t exactly true. You had to respect an enemy. Ponies were prey.

A small Whiff of the ponies around me said the princesses didn’t exactly like the fact that I had brought up that little point and…well, douche bags having a problem with me being their new insect overlord simply fueled my ability, but pretty pony princesses not liking me was actually pretty stifling when it came to my creativity and cut into my confidence.

“Um, however…this was not out of malice, but rather…” I gulped and screamed at my brain to come up with the right word. “Ignorance.”

Okay Equestria, I did the quick intro, so now would be a good time to hit me with some inspiration, I told the universe.

And then, something kind of occurred to me.

Although I was pretty sure the idea didn’t come from Equestria.

“In fact…”

Because it was an evil thought. One of those big ‘fuck you’ from your muse when it decides to hand you some really halfassed crap.

“You could say…”

But with the pressure building from Tia and the others needing me to make a nice little introduction to Equestria, I didn’t really have much of a choice. Oh God, am I really going to do this?

“I used to wonder what friendship could be,” I said, not sang. Just talked. As in released noises in the non-musical way.

Yes…yes I am, I told myself before continuing.

“Until you all shared its magic with me,” I went on slowly while waiting for…something better to pop into my head.

But of course, nothing came. Oh God damn it all, I’m actually doing it. Stupid brain and its lack of imagination. If ponies ever invented real alchohol, I would take my revenge one day.

“The adventures we shared,” I kept going while doing my best to translate what I remembered into something above the age of five would say. “The fun we had.”

And the thing that really got to me was that I could Smell the fact that all the alicorns behind me actually approved of the direction everything was going.

“You showed me the beauty in your hearts,” I continued. “Your faithfulness and strength of character. The kindness you shared with an outsider. It…made me feel complete in a way I hadn’t before. So…thank you, my little ponies.”

And then I looked back at the girls standing behind me, or standing in the crowd that was inside the throne room past the goddesses that had gathered behind me. “And thank you, to my very best friends.”

Then, with that little bastardization done, the crowd took that as their cue to cheer, and I raised my hoof in response to it all.

Tia leaned back down to whisper in my ear. “That was wonderful. See? I knew you would think of something.”

I choked back a smarmy retort and focused on the crowd looking up at me rather than the alicorn behind me. I kept my mind on the cheering, and didn’t let it wander to start questioning Tia and Lulu’s sisterly relationship status after basically hearing Luna was feeling just as unappreciated and underutilized as she had been one thousand years ago. Not to mention the whole lack of a princess destiny problem that Sunset was experiencing that was also causing a resurfacing of her feelings of worthlessness and that whole self-hatred thing she had going on for the first few days of her stay in Equestria.

All of that could wait until every eye in Equestria wasn’t on us. Like during the private after party Pinkie had scheduled in about an hour.

Until then…

Just smile and wave dumbass, I told myself while waving one of my hooves around while I wore a smile so wide that only the most brain addled idiot couldn’t tell it was fake. Smile and wave.