Author's Notes:

Hello again all, thank you for taking time to read Chapter 2!

Again, be ruthless in your critiques, and I hope the story makes you chuckle at least!

The Usual Disclaimer:

The following is a work of parody, and is protected as Fair Use under section 17 U.S. Code § 107 of US Copyright Law. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and all affiliated characters are property of Hasbro Inc.

I own nothing. All characters, settings and other belong to their respective owners. This is purely a fan-work with no intent towards profit, slander or harm towards the characters, settings or other, or their respective owners. If the respective owners feel that this fan-work in any way, shape or form threatens or besmirches their property, please let me know so that it be can be removed asap.

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Chapter 2

Despite everything that had occurred during the past three weeks, Celestia's return was quiet and barely noticed, much to the horror of the Castle's staff, as the Eldest Princess teleported herself directly to her chambers in the middle of the night, magically levitated everypony out of her private quarters and didn't appear till two hours later, still dripping wet from a hot shower as she fixed a stern look at the crowd of nervous Guards and staff clustered around her door.

"Bring me Luna and Twilight, immediately." She had supposedly said in a very even and calm, but very firm voice, and the Guards had scrambled to obey.

And so, Luna and Twilight found themselves being gently, politely and respectfully hustled to Princess Celestia's private quarters by grim-faced Guards, with a gaggle of whispering castle-staff following after them.

"Oh, like this isn't going to be in the papers tomorrow. We're doooooooomed!" Twilight groaned their 'escorts' pushed them into the room, and then shut the door so fast both Alicorns nearly lost several tail-hairs as the heavy cherry-wood doors slammed shut behind them.

"Twilight, I fear we may have more pressing matters than the gossip-ponies." Luna muttered, her wings clenched tightly to her barrel in irritation and nervousness. Celestia was supposed to be sharing power with Luna, but now it was obvious who the Ponies truly respected.

Not that Luna locking up the newest Princess for the better part of a week with only 'there was a problem with her studies, she needs solitude to work on them' as an excuse would have done much to make Celestia feel confident about Luna's state of mind.

For her part, Twilight Sparkle could only assume that somehow this was all her fault, that whatever she'd done to offend Luna so much had also offended Princess Celestia.

For several awkward moments, the two Alicorns stared at each other, then their hooves, then at the door they had just been shoved through, unable to find the words to talk to each other, to break through the wall of awkwardness that had built up between them, when the wooden doors to Princess Celestia's study opened silently, the faintly golden glow of the Solar Princess's magic outlining them in the process.

"Luna, Twilight, please come in." Her voice was pleasant but ... firm. Warm and gentle, yet there was an obvious command embedded in those words.

"Ponyfeathers..." Luna and Twilight muttered at the same time, before shakily entering the den of Princess Celestia.

Yet curiously, when they stepped across the threshold, the fur on both the Alicorns stood on end, and both felt static cling to their horns, wings and tails for a brief moment before they passed into the room. The room appeared to have been warded with a spell of some kind, a rather potent one at that.

"Luna, Twilight, on my way back from the Everfree Forest, Spike came to me with news that all was not well in Canterlot." Princess Celestia spoke from behind her desk, one gilded hoof trailing over a series of pieces of yellow paper, folded in half, that Twilight recognised as her letters to her friends, before her 'confinement' had begun. "That Twilight had been the victim of the gossip-ponies of Canterlot, that Twilight was about to start her studies in Dream-Walking .... and then the letters just stopped, no explanation given at all, and despite several attempts, not one of the letter that Twilight's friends sent was ever responded to after that."

Looking up to the ceiling, Princess Celestia gave a deep, heaving sigh and turned her focus to Luna entirely. "Little sister, I trust you, and I love you, but this makes no sense to me. Can you explain to me why you have placed my student under house arrest and blocked her from having any contact with her friends?"

"I did not block any mail going to or from Twilight Sparkle, I assure you, Tia! All I did was forbid Twilight from speaking about the ... incident that made it necessary to isolate Twilight from the Court ... and myself, until you returned." Luna replied, bristling at the implications. "I would never isolate another Pony from her friends, I know full well the pain that such loneliness brings!"

"Your highness, Luna is telling the truth, I wasn't forbidden from sending letters to my friends, just ... Pri ... sorry, Luna, now that Princess Celestia is here, can I please know what I've done to upset you? I don't know what it was that I did, and I hope I didn't hurt you, I just didn't ..." Twilight piped up, then turned to Luna and began to babble nervously.

"I ... was not offended, Twilight, just shocked. It is not something friends do to each other. It startled me, and I was worried that you would think less of me, but it seems you didn't understand just what happened between us that night." The Lunar Princess sighed and awkwardly, nervously held out a fore-hoof, to which Twilight Sparkle eagerly put her own out to touch to, the two Princesses pressing hoof to hoof. "Tia ... I am afraid I cannot teach Twilight Sparkle how to Dream-Walk after all ..."

"But Luna, I thought we could ..." Twilight wailed before Celestia's magic formed a muzzle-shaped shield of golden sun-magic over her mouth.

"Luna, what do you mean you 'cannot' teach Twilight Sparkle? She is an excellent student, of this you know. And what is this 'incident' that has set you two to walking on egg-shells around each other?" Celestia murmured softly, dropping the shield around Twilight's muzzle when she was convinced her former student was in no danger of having a 'Twilight Attack'.

One 'Need it Want it' rampage was quite enough, thank you very much!

"Oooooh, this is so embarrassing ..." Luna blushed, and then began to haltingly spit out the tale, of how both Twilight and herself had been run ragged by the more ambitious Nobles who sought to turn Celestia's absence into a power-play for their own schemes, and in fatigue, the two Alicorns had started to drift off to sleep, their horns still bearing unfocused magic ...

"...A-and then, we s-s-s-sp-sparked each other, Tia!" Luna finished, her face beet red and on the verge of tears from embarrassment. "Right there, in Mother's room, with my first real friend in a thousand years!"

Twilight, sheltered, bookish Twilight, having never heard this term before, turned to ask Celestia just what it meant, when the new Princess did a double-take at her former Mentor's face.

Celestia's jaw appeared to have come unhinged, hanging at an angle under her head, with her eyes wide open and her eyebrows raised up as high as they could go, slouched forwards onto her desk in shock.

"You ... and Twilight ... Sparked?" Princess Celestia whispered in a broken voice, her eyes flicking from Luna to Twilight and back again. "Sparked? Luna ... I knew you and Twilight shared a high degree of magical affinity, but I didn’t think you two were … uhm … compatible in that fashion!"

Twilight Sparkle, for her part, moved from hoof to hoof with nervous energy, terrified she's upset the two Princesses, before finally she could stand it no more, and blurted out "WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SPARKING?"

In the silence that followed, Twilight blushed and found now both Luna and Celesita had turned to her with that same open-mouthed expression of shock.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to shout, I just don't understand, what do you mean by 'sparking'? Didn't I make a mistake with the Dream-Walking spell? Or was it something to do with being an Alicorn!" Twilight cringed as the two Princesses eyebrows rose even higher. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, for whatever it was I did! I'll go back to Ponyville, and I swear you'll never see or hear from me again!"

Sobbing weakly, ashamed and afraid, Twilight spun back to the door that lead back to the rest of the castle and ran to it, her horn glowing with magic ... and found that no matter how hard she focused her magic, the handles were ... slippery, as if coated with a magical lubricant that prevented her telekinesis spell from gripping them.

Then the room became painfully bright as Celestia’s magic bloomed behind Twilight, coating the room in glowing sunlight from every angle, leaving not a single shadow in its wake for a painful instant of total light.

And then she found herself floating backwards into Celestia's study, unable to fly or run back to the doors at all.

"Alright, before anypony decides to do something drastic ... I have just added a second barrier to my rooms, adding my strength to the warding spell I had cast before you arrived, to block other ponies from listening to us through the walls, or using scrying spells upon these rooms, so what we speak of here shall not leave the room, unless we ourselves speak of it outside them." Celestia sighed, rubbing at her muzzle with one hoof as the other reached into a drawer on her side of the expansive desk and produced a bottle of black-label Apple-family cider. "Now Twilight, and I know this is difficult for you, but please do not panic. We are not going to kick you out of Canterlot, send you back to magic kindergarten, or banish you and lock you away in a prison for something beyond anypony's control. Luna was correct to maintain a certain distance between you two until I returned, because ... well ...."

Taking a deep breath, Celestia turned her full attention to Twilight, plopping the new Alicorn onto the thickly carpeted floor and removing her levitation spell in the process. "What we call 'Sparking' is actually a form of deep magical communion two Unicorns can engage in to share their magic with each other, usually two Unicorns who are emotionally close, or possess a high affinity for similar forms of magic, although there are other, cruder ways to achieve the communion. These days, sadly, the process is used for … sexual stimulation, rather than the original, noble purpose."

"For example, Shining Armor and Princess Cadence were able to 'Spark' together, despite having different magical resonances, due to their high emotional rapport, and it was that Sparking that enabled Shining Armor to recast his Shield-spell using Cadence’s magic, a shield strong enough to drive the Changelings to the borders of Equestria once again." Celestia paused to take a long swig, straight from the bottle, of the black-label cider before continuing. "However, I must say that while I expected you both to have a high magical affinity, what with you both being bearers of the Element of Magic, as well as being Alicorns with Cutie Marks tied to the night sky, I did not expect you to be able to ... 'Spark' just by contact. I suppose we should be lucky that contact was broken almost immediately. Continued contact after Sparking has some ... interesting side-effects."

As Celestia took another swig, both Luna and Twilight flicked a glance towards each other, blushing furiously as their eyes met before finding the patterns in the carpet absolutely fascinating once again, prompting Celestia to sigh and remove two large glass tumblers from a drawer in her desk, filling each generously with the black-label cider and levitating it to both of the other Alicorns. "Drink. I have a feeling it will be a long night before we can work this out."

So that's what the girls at the Academy meant by 'sparks flying'. Ohmigaaaaaaaawsh, that means Luna and I were ... were ... aauuuuuuuu! Twilight screamed internally, holding her glass tumbler in one hoof while she clapped a wing over her face and tried to not to burst into hysterical laughter.

Interesting side-effects? INTERESTING SIDE-EFFECTS? Tia, are you mad? I've had a thousand-year dry spell, I would have shouted all of Canterlot to rubble if we'd .... oooh! For her part, Luna fumed even as a rebellious corner of her mind wondered if the wards woven into the royal quarters would have been able to hold together under such a sonic assault.

It was going to be a long, awkward night.

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Many hours and several trays of sweets later, Luna and Twilight sat on thick, plush cushions on the floor with Celestia, giggling and chatting, much more relaxed thanks to the seemingly endless reserves of ‘special’ cider in Celestia's bottle, discussing the past three weeks of their lives.

"And then ... no, wait, don't say anything, this is the funny part, the Sergeant says 'But we can't find the mother', as he's standing on this big brown rock ... and it’s the Hydra, it's just asleep on the bottom of the river ..." Celestia said in an excited and slightly slurred voice, then burst into laughter again. "And he's getting so worked up he's trotting in place, then the Hydra wakes up and panics, and goes swimming away with the Sergeant clinging to its back, screaming at it to stop 'In the name of Celestia!' "

"Wait wait wait ... isn't Sergeant Stormbrow a pegasus?" Luna chuckled, reaching for the last donut with a hoof, Twilight nibbling on an éclair beside her with wide eyes as she listened to her teacher's story.

"That's the funny part. He could have flown away, but he was so terrified that he forgot he had wings! It was priceless, but I felt so bad for him, so I covered for him in front of his men by praising him for holding on to the Hydra so we could follow it, but the poor stallion could barely walk by the time we managed to track the Hydra to her lair." Celestia chuckled as she finished her story, then stared at the crumb-covered tray and sighed. "I think the kitchen-staff will have a collective fit if we ask for another tray."

"I ... dun' think I can muuuuv ..." Twilight groaned, more than a little drunk and sleepy from all the cider and food, flapping her wings sluggishly for emphasis.

"We've all had a little too much, I admit." Luna added, trying to stand before dropping down to her cushion as her vision swum. "Would it be ... improper to stay the night, Tia? I don't think either Twilight or myself will make it back to our rooms in this state."

Celestia looked from Luna, to the nearly comatose Twilight and back again, smiling warmly.

"Of course, but first ... come here, both of you." Celestia said softly, extending both of her massive white wings to the two tipsy Alicorns. "My sister, my student, I am just happy that you are both safe and sound. We will find a way to make this work, I promise you."

Shakily, both Alicorns came forwards, sharing bashful glances, before Celestia's wings enfolded them both, bringing both Luna and Twilight up against Celestia's shoulders and neck in a hug.

For Luna, it was both a blessing and forgiveness, all rolled up in one, to be embraced like this. Celestia meant the world to her, and Luna's only memory of their long-vanished mother was being held as a tiny foal in just such an embrace.

For Twilight, it was a dream come true, to be enfolded in white wings and forgiven by the Pony she respected most in the whole world, a fondest wish from her childhood realised.

When Celestia stepped back from the embrace, both Luna and Twilight took a half step towards her, unwilling to break the contact before sheepishly glancing at each other, and then Celestia, who was looking at a space between and behind them in puzzlement.

"Now ... how did you get in here?" Celestia asked in puzzlement, and in a panic at being caught in such an intimate display, both Luna and Twilight turned their heads to see who the Solar Princess was talking to ...

Luna turned her head left, and Twilight turned hers right, both of them looking at the space that Celestia had been staring at, and in their tipsy state, did not notice how close they were to each other, or the angle of their horns.

"Tia, there is no-pony the-eeeiiihh!"

"Princess, whu' are yo-oooooh!"

Clack!

Celestia stood there, trying desperately not to smile, as the two Alicorns stood there, faces rigid with shock and mouths open in surprise as the tips of their horns touched.

Squeaking and round-eyed, both Twilight and Luna stared at the point of contact as arcs of purple and blue-black lighting snapped back and forth between their horns for several seconds before the alcohol, the 'sparking' and shock proved too much for them to handle, the ponies collapsing down onto the carpet in a tangle of legs, inarticulately squeaking mouths, quivering wings and still-touching horns.

"Gotcha ..." The Solar Princess tittered drunkenly as the two Alicorns twitched together in unconsciousness on the thick carpet of her study.

Of course, when she couldn't pull them apart, that was when Celestia decided that now would be a good time to panic ...

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