For the first time since she had arrived in Manehattan, Luna flew over the streets. The hot pavement provided massive updrafts, and let her coast over the marching crowd that approached the Manehattan Courthouse. The mass of ponies had grown since they had set out nearly an hour before. The city was big, and Celestia’s speech over the screens had done more to help Luna than even the court case had done. Somehow, the citizens of the city that prided itself on being more on its own than part of Equestria hadn’t taken well to being reminded of who they were ruled by.

The air felt cool on Luna’s fur, and she switched off all her neural tech to allow herself to fly without distraction. She drifted only a few hundred feet above the crowd, though she would have preferred to be higher. She figured that most of the protestors wanted to at least see their leader, though, so she stayed close.The jets had appeared once again, but none bore down on the crowd. Instead, Celestia’s guard kept their distance.

Luna felt a cold ball of fear gather in her stomach. She was flying by the tips of her wings, and she had no idea what she was doing. Her eyes scanned the ground in front of them, but the way to the courthouse was clear. Not even any traffic. Celestia was waiting for her, and was letting Luna take her time. Part of her desperately wanted to turn around and fly back, never to return.

A blur of purple and pink shot out from the crowd and flew up to Luna. Twilight had grown into quite a flyer, she saw, who sped as fast as a meteor into the sky but managed to stop next to Luna with plenty of time to spare. The only telling part of the performance was the windswept look Twilight’s mane took on.

“Hey,” Twilight said, a little out of breath. “You doing alright up here?”

“I’m fine,” Luna said.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I’m simply up here to keep me from worrying all the other ponies. I read somewhere, once, that officers in the Royal Guard are removed from the troops just so they seem more invincibile and distant.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly an army.” Twilight laughed. “More like a slightly-organized mob.”

“A mob that is working for me, and will follow my orders,” Luna said.

“Still a powerful mob.”

“What is a mob to a queen?”

“A very large group of ponies that you don’t want to upset.” Twilight hesitated, then placed a hoof on Luna’s shoulder. “You can do this, Princess. You’ve grown a lot since you came back from the moon. You’re a mare of the common pony.”

Luna sighed. “But is that a good thing?”

Twilight didn’t answer her . . . until, she gave a shrug and drifted down toward the ponies below. Luna watched her go. She watched her head for the convertible in the middle of the crowd that held Sapphire and Rarity, almost forgotten in the whole commotion. Luna thought about heading down to them, but decided against it.

Though, just as she was heading back up for some more altitude, she noticed a commotion near the front of the crowd. Ponies were gathered in one place, and none moved up the street after a point in the street. Luna flew down toward the epicenter of the problem, and hoped that what was wrong wouldn’t be anything major.

Seeing the glint of golden armor the closer she got, Luna’s hopes of a quick and easy solution began to fade. When she landed, she trotted up toward the front of her mob to see that, sure enough, a contingent of Royal Guard troopers were standing in the middle of the street in a wall, dressed in full battle gear.

Their eyes watched the crowd before them, made up of ponies who looked at the guards’ weapons projectors in fear.

Buck Shot came running up to Luna, out of breath. “Out of the way, out of the way!” he said to the crowd. Then, he reached Luna. “Hey, Princess, what’s going on?”

“Look for yourself,” she said.

He stared at the guards for a moment, then whistled. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves quite the problem.”

“You could say that.”

“Yeah, and I wish I couldn’t.” Buck Shot pressed a hoof to his forehead. “So, I guess Celestia is drawing the line here, eh? Probably to give her some time to prepare for us and keep us bottled up.”

“Is that what you’d do?” Luna asked.

“If I were in her position? Yeah, that’s about what I’d do,” he said.

Luna noticed that the guards were on every side of the intersection in front of the crowd, so anypony trying to access the one road leading to the courthouse would have to get past them. Luna grimaced, but had to give Celestia points for resourcefulness.

“So how do we break the deadlock?” she asked.

“You’re asking me?”

“Well, you’re the police pony here. How would you break your own blockade?”

Buck Shot shook his head. “The point of setting something up like this is that, barring extreme violence, it won’t be broken. Those guards units can take on a whole company of soldiers or an entire precinct of our best cops.” He looked at her. “Do you think you can take them on yourself?”

“Almost certainly, but I’m not sure I want to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m sure it’s part of Celestia’s gamble. If I start the violence, then she has the upper hoof and the morality. These guards are both a barrier and bait.”

Buck Shot sighed and nodded. They both noticed that the crowd had circled around the two of them, staring at Luna and seeing what she would do. Most of them had hard looks on their faces, and kept glancing at the guards.

Luna looked at all of them, and clenched her jaw. It was show time for her, the do or die moment that would decide if the crowd kept with her all the way to the courthouse. Her stomach was doing flip flops and her mind urged her to turn away, to forget it had ever happened and to beg for mercy.

Instead of listening to them, however, Luna chose to do what her heart told her. After taking a deep breath, she began to walk forward. She did not run, or trot, or even canter. Luna kept her pace steady and her eyes on the guards in front of her as she approached them at a steady pace. She could feel the electricity in the air, the fear and anxiety of two groups facing off against each other. For a moment, she wondered if it was how her sister felt all the time.

About five paces from the front column of guards, Luna stopped. If the stallions in front of her were wowed by the presence of the former Princess of the Night, they didn’t give any sign. She almost wanted to feel insulted, if not for the situation.

Instead, she simply asked: “Please move.”

To the lack of surprise to everypony, they did not. Luna smiled, as she’d expected them to act as such. “Alright,” she said, “then I will be the one to move, as a citizen of Equestria, just as all in the crowd are, and without any intent to cause harm.”

Her heart beat faster. She knew, if her gamble failed, that would be it for the rebellion and herself. So, she tried not to think about that as she stepped forward. For a moment, Luna paused in front of the guards, then began to push her way through.

There was a moment of hesitation in them, but the stallions parted just enough to let her through. She was in. Luna let out a happy sigh and continued to walk forward across the avenue, her back to the crowd. When she got to the other side and the guards there, they parted as well. Just like that she was on the other side of the street.

Buck Shot came after her, and after him the crowd followed. The trickle soon turned into a flow, and the guards were forced to back down. Luna smiled as she watched Celestia’s gambit fail to the pressure of numbers and the unwillingness of the guards to attack. Once enough had gotten through, Luna continued her march down the road, straight toward the courthouse.

The building loomed like a gothic spire above the dirty streets of Manehattan. Somehow, it looked like it didn’t belong, like it had been dropped into the city one day and left there. The buildings around it all faced away, like they were scared to look at the courthouse. It was if Canterlot itself had been transplanted all the way across the country.

Outside the building, to Luna’s surprise, the streets were clear. No cars honked or blocked their way, and no guards stood ready to shoot them down. It was eerie, in a way, to see the road completely empty. In a city like Manehattan, a sight like that never truly happened.

Luna turned to look back for Buck Shot or Sapphire, but they were nowhere to be seen. The crowd, to her, was just a sea of faces that all seemed to lock onto her at the same time, and she didn’t recognize a single one of them. What she could see, however, was Twilight flying high above the crowd once more.

As the crowd slowed to a stop in front of the courthouse, Luna took to the air. Even the wind around the building was stagnant, and she had to rely on flapping and magic to keep herself aloft. Her muscles began to ache a little by the time she got to Twilight, so unused to flying after many years on the ground.

“So what now?” Luna asked.

“I don’t know, I was hoping you would tell me,” Twilight said. “So far, with Celestia’s little guard plan failed, I think she’s hoping to just wait us out.”

“But she can’t do that, can she? Surely she has to meet the crowd at some point.”

“Celestia dealt with full-scale riots and revolutions back when she first sent you to the moon, and she brought them all down. By their nature, revolutions are hot-headed and spur-of-the-moment types of action, and she knows it.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “And how exactly do you know all this?”

“Even a thousand years later, I’m still Celestia’s number one student.”

Twilight smiled a little, and Luna returned it. Together, they looked to the bay windows at the top of the courthouse tower, where they knew Celestia would be watching them. Luna could imagine her gaze, so heavily falling on them that it was a wonder they didn’t drop to the ground.

“What if we teleport inside?” she asked.

Twilight snorted. “Force her to come out here?”

“Well it’s an idea.”

“It is, yes, it is.” Twilight sighed. “As much as I hate to admit it, though, Celestia hasn’t gotten weaker over the years. Since you left, she’s even gotten stronger. I doubt we can force her to do anything at this point.”

“So what do we do?”

The crowd, as if it had heard both of them, answered the question. The platform that Sapphire had been on was raised to the front of the crowd, and they all began to chant her name. “SA-PPHI-RE! SA-PPHI-RE!” they called.

Some ponies had brought flags of the Duchy of Manehattan, and were waving them. The blue and orange fit nicely in the gray of the street. Some others had even managed to create crude banners with Luna and Sapphire’s names on them. They all pressed closer to the front of the courthouse. It appeared that a large steel grate had been lowered over the front doors, and metallic clangs ran out as ponies began to pound on it. The crowd surged upon the doors like a cascade beating against an ocean cliff.

Luna looked down at them. “Maybe we should go see what we can do,” she said.

“If you’d like.” Twilight shrugged. “This mob’s out of your hooves for the most part, Princess. Once they’ve gotten so excited like they are, there isn’t much you can do to stop them. Guide them a little, maybe, but not stop them. This is going to end today, whether you like it or not.”

“Well, I still wish for it to end on my terms,” she said.

“Then good luck.”

The jets reappeared overhead just as Luna began her glide to the ground. The aircraft looked menacing with sharp, golden points on the nose and wings as well as bristling with missiles and hard-light projectors. They buzzed over the crowd, eliciting gasps and shrieks, before loitering around the area on hoverjets.

Luna fought the urge to watch them as they landed on the ground. She didn’t want to give any of the ponies a reason to worry, though she herself was desperately hoping Celestia wasn’t about to try something very stupid.

The crowd near the front of the courthouse parted for Luna to get through. Buck Shot was there, and joined her at her side with a small grin. To her surprise, though, Luna found Sapphire at the head of the mob, still banging on the door.

“I’m not sure I should be surprised,” Luna said.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Sapphire said. “Mind giving us a helping hoof? With an alicorn on our side, there’s no way this metal can last.”

“I’m just worried about what happens after it comes down.” Luna looked from Sapphire to the crowd. “Do you really think it would be smart to let thousands of angry ponies pour into the courthouse? It’d be close quarters with a lot of guards and a lot of ponies who are just caught in the crossfire.”

“It’s better than sitting here and doing nothing.”

Luna sighed. “You’re right, it is, but I don’t see a good idea of what we can do at this point.”

Rarity’s AI core lay at Sapphire’s hooves. It had been silent for much of the trip, but as the two argued, its light began to blink white. Then, Rarity’s holographic body flashed to life right in front of Luna and Sapphire, silencing the both of them. Rarity had a grin on her face.

“It’s a good thing at least one of us hasn’t been doing nothing,” she said.

Luna opened her mouth, but was interrupted by shouts from the crowd. They began to part once again, but this time much wider than they had for Luna. A gap big enough to fit a space liner through opened up on the road to reveal a phalanx of marching ponies.

At just a brief glance, they were little different from the rest of the mob. Looking closer, however, revealed them to be much more skeletal, and they walked with a precision that was impossible with a normal body. Their eyes never blinked, and their nostrils never flared to show they were breathing.

“You . . . brought droids?” Luna asked.

“Manehattan has close to forty thousand free droids,” Rarity said. “I decided we needed a little back up.”

“Alright, but how is this all going to help us?” Buck Shot asked. “I mean, what can they all do that we weren’t already?”

Even as a hologram, Rarity was able to give off an air of self-importance and dignity by the way she swooshed her hair back before she talked to someone “lower” than her. “It will give a bit of legitimacy to our cause, for one. You may remember, Sapphire and I are what this entire mob is supposedly marching for, not just Duchess Luna,” she said, then smiled. “Those doors behind us are also not just made of steel but interlaced with a hard-light shield. Physical force would never break through it. Forty thousand AIs attacking it at once, however . . .”

Buck Shot smiled and stepped out of the way to let a few of the droids at the head of the column through. Unlike Sapphire and Rarity, they talked little, and didn’t seem to be as comfortable around the crowd. They still didn’t complain, however, and began chatting with Rarity and stuck cords into her core.

Luna couldn’t understand what they were doing, as they seemed to be half talking in the open and half communicating wirelessly on some wavelength that Luna’s own implants couldn’t pick up. What they said, though, didn’t matter much to her when they all began to walk forward.

Each droid took out a wire from sockets placed somewhere on their body and plugged it into the droid in front of them. Soon, they formed a single chain stretching from the front doors and down the street. The final droid near the front plugged into Sapphire, who stuck hers into Rarity. The AI core, then, had its own input that could be placed into the wall near the middle.

Buck Shot whistled. “I think I can see why the Empress is so scared of these ponies,” he said. “I’ve been in the police for a long time, and I haven’t seen precision like that even in the Royal Guard.”

Rarity waved to Luna and pointed to her cord. “If you would do the honor, Princess, we can let you in. This door is going to be encrypted with a program as powerful as the one in Canterlot Castle. We’ll only be able to keep a small section of the wall open for a few seconds. You and Twilight can make it inside by then.”

“What about you and Sapphire?” Luna asked.

“Don’t worry about us, you two just get inside and make it to Empress Celestia to bring this entire nasty business to an end.”

Luna wanted to say more, but the droids all watched her in such a way that she couldn’t even begin to think about letting them down. She lined up at the door, with Twilight flying down to her side. She didn’t say anything, but just nodded to Luna. They turned, as one, to the very front of the metal seal, but Sapphire tapped Rarity on the shoulder.

“Would you plug us in?” she asked. “It’d be . . . an honor.”

Luna smiled and reached down to pick up the cord in her teeth. She approached the wall that had a small socket in it, and thought it was so funny that such a small outlet would determine the fate of millions of ponies. She supposed a lot of things were like that, little things that make a world of difference.

The crowd started to get a little antsy, so Luna stopped her pondering and just plugged the cord in. There was, at first, no reaction. Then, a soft buzz was heard in the air that grew steadily louder until it was like millions of bees taking off. The long line of droids were all deep in concentration, their eyes flickering on and off in rapid succession.

Then, from behind, Luna heard a loud groan as the steel door began to open from the middle outward. It was slow going, but soon it was open long enough for a pony to fit through.

Sapphire waved at them. “Go now! We can’t keep this thing open forever!”

Luna nodded and took one last look at the crowd. So many thousands of ponies all looking at her, watching her. She knew that they were counting on her and relying on her to do what was right and what was good for Manehattan. She hoped she wouldn’t let her down.

After taking a deep breath, Luna ran inside the courthouse behind Twilight, just as the door slammed shut. It was a close enough call that some of the hairs on Luna’s tail were cut off in the force of the doors shutting.

Just like that, Twilight and Luna were alone in a dark room, at the foot of Celestia’s tower. Luna, even then, still felt afraid.

---

The power wasn’t just out in the bottom floor of the courthouse, but in the whole building. Luna and Twilight were forced to climb stairs that had hardly been used over the years. Worse, the stairwell was too narrow to fly up, so both alicorns were useless inside. Luna thought about teleporting, but she knew that would bring Celestia right to them, and ruin any chance they had of catching her by surprise.

The only sound in the stairwell was the heavy breathing of Luna and Twilight. They had just passed Floor 20, but when Luna looked up their destination didn’t seem any closer. It looked to be almost a lifetime away, like they could never reach it.

“Do you think this will really work?” Twilight asked finally, stopping briefly on the stairs in front of Luna. “This whole, vague plan we have about talking to Celestia and getting her to stop all this. Do we really have any chance?”

“We’re two princesses,” Luna said. “I think we have some pull on my sister.”

“Have you been around your sister lately? Ever since she renamed herself Empress, she hasn’t wanted to listen to a word I say.”

“Has it really been that bad?”

“Maybe not that bad, but I just went out to the colonies rather than bother with her back here. The days of me being her student ended a long time ago, Luna.”

Luna paused for a moment, then kept walking. After a pause, she said, “She isn’t that bad, you know. She’s just doing her job. Celestia isn’t going to want to hurt ponies on purpose.”

“Where is this coming from?” Twilight asked. “You seemed fine with leading a rebellion against her.”

“That’s different,” Luna said.

“How, exactly, is that different by any stretch of imagination?”

“I’m doing this whole thing to show her that’s she wrong,” Luna said. “To show her that she can’t just walk all over me because I’m not in the castle anymore. Ever since I left she has gotten a litle high on herself, so maybe with this my sister can return to normal.”

“Wasn’t this whole thing about whether Rarity and that droid can love each other?”

“With Celestia, it’s never that simple. I want them to be able to do whatever they want, but to get them what they want we have to win the bigger war here. And Celestia didn’t try to arrest me over droid rights, I can tell you that.”

Twilight gave her a strange look, but she dropped it. They continued on their way up, the sound of their hooves growing louder as they started to drag a bit. Luna could feel herself start to sweat, and worried that it would cause a problem with the circuitry she still had attached to her.

Luna started to wonder if they would ever actually reach the top, or if they would be stuck in the stairwell forever. She knew that was silly, but at the same time she wouldn’t have been surprised.

She didn’t get a chance to find out, however. There was a bang at the top of the stairwell, and Luna could hear some talking. Then, before they could run, a pink field of magic surrounded herself and Twilight, and in a flash they were gone from the stairwell.

When they appeared again, the two alicorns were in the middle of the courtroom, surrounded by gold-armored guards on all sides. Their weapons were drawn and powered up, with raw energy gathered at the tips. Luna knew the combined weaponry would only take a few seconds to chew through any shield that she could pull up, and Twilight couldn’t do much better.

Celestia stepped out from between the guards, her royal crown and armor gone. She didn’t say anything, just looked at the both of them. Though Luna was just about as tall as her, she seemed to tower over them like a giant.

“Well, well, I was wondering when the two of you would show up,” she said. “I am a bit surprised you two decided to take the stairs instead of flying up to the roof. Then again, I suppose a little variety to life never hurt anypony. I was honestly surprised that you two managed to gather so many droids, and so fast.”

“Surprisingly, the ones most affected by this court case are coming out in force to oppose you,” Luna said.

Celestia pretended to look surprised. “Oh, the court case? Is this what this is still about? Silly me, in all this confusion I almost forgot. Must have just . . . slipped my mind.”

Twilight looked between the two of them, and then back at the guards who had half the Canterlot arsenal pointed at them. “Hey, maybe it would be better if we talked somewhere with less . . . stress? I don’t think we can get anything done if we’re all this tense, right princesses?”

“That’s Empress, Twilight Sparkle.” Celestia did wave to her guards, however, who began to put their weapons back. “However, the young princess is right. Guards, leave us. I’ll finish this by myself.”

The Royal Guard, for their part, did not hesitate. They immediately formed ranks and marched out of the courtroom as one long snake of golden armor and straight faces. As Luna watched them, she felt odd looking over them, like there was something about them that was so unreal, just artificial.

Celestia walked up the aisle between seats to the front of the courtroom, past Luna and Twilight, and to the judge’s seat once more. When she sat down and looked at them, however, much of the air of superiority she had held in the trial was gone. Celestia leaned on one hoof and had a bored, slightly bemused expression on her face.

There was a flash of golden light, and Celestia’s appearance changed. Her flowing technicolor mane had disappeared to be replaced with a smaller, pinker one. She was shorter as well, and had the look of a pegasus more than an alicorn, despite the horn on her head.

Luna looked down at herself to discover that she, too, had changed to her more normal pony form. She shook herself a bit, but wasn’t surprised that her sister had, somewhat symbolically, undressed her. She wasn’t happy to think that, either.

Twilight looked down at herself to discover that nothing had changed, and remembered that she had never bothered with an alicorn form because she thought they were silly. When she looked at Celestia and Luna, though, she still felt like they were more alicorns hiding in pony appearances than actual ponies.

“I thought that, perhaps, an issue like this needed the air of officiality taken away,” Celestia said. “It has been far too long since we presented ourselves as how we truly are to each other.”

Luna sighed. “In more ways than one.”

“I know.”

Twilight coughed. “So maybe we should use this meeting to, um, resolve the crisis that’s keeping thousands of ponies waiting outside? If you two aren’t too busy, that is.”

“Sarcasm, Twilight Sparkle?” Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you have been in the colonies for far too long.”

“Perhaps,” Twilight said.

“Well, Twilight is right,” Luna said. “Celestia, we have stop all this madness. What we do in here today will affect the lives of millions, and we have to do it soon before a riot breaks out. Neither of us wants Manehattan to lose control of itself.”

“I agree,” Celestia said.

Her horn glowed and, as one, every blind on every window in the room opened at once, exposing the courtroom to the bright sunlight over Manehattan. Luna had to shield her eyes from the glare, and when she lowered her hoof Celestia was standing in front of one of the windows, looking down. Luna joined her, and could see the massive crowd that was still gathered below the buildings.

Celestia grimly smiled. “I will admit, sister, what you have done is impressive. I don’t believe this many ponies having willingly marched for any princess in two thousand years. You have managed to gather most of these in a single day. It would seem you’re popular.”

“No, I’m not,” Luna said.

“Oh?”

“I myself am not popular, not really. To these ponies all I am is the face of the frustrations and anger that these ponies feel. Whether it’s toward you or the court case, I don’t know, but it’s not because of me specifically.”

“I see you’ve grown up a little.” Celestia pursed her lips. “I believe that you are right, as well. And it is for this reason that you cannot become Duchess, Luna. Not now, not ever.”

Luna took her time to answer. She ruffled the feathers on her wings and looked at her reflection in the window. The eyes that looked back at her looked so much more tired than she remembered. “Why?”

“Why? You’re really going to ask me why I won’t just let you take part of my kingdom and rule it by yourself?”

“That worked in the past,” Luna said. “I would just be ruling it more personally. Besides, the ponies here are obviously not satisfied. Why do you deny them someone who actually cares about them? Is it really for petty pride?”

Celestia’s smiled curled into a snarl. “I do care! I care about each and every last pony in the city. But I am not their friend, I am their ruler. I have to do what is best for them whether they like it or not because they can’t see the big picture! Millions of ponies have no idea what it takes for them to enjoy a life far more luxurious than a pony from Twilight’s time could ever dream of.”

“So the will of the ponies counts for nothing, is that it?”

“A million ponies gathered together does not make them smarter than all of them individually. A mob is only as smart as those in it, and I am afraid to say most of the ponies in this city are terribly misinformed.”

Twilight took a step forward, placing herself beside Luna. They both looked to Celestia at the same time, their gazes hardening and postures hardening to make them both appear as big as the Empress. Celestia just looked at them both for a moment and laughed, not moving a muscle. “Oh, so are you two going to try and threaten me because you don’t like my answer?”

“You know your answer isn’t right, Celestia,” Twilight said.

“From your point of view.”

“From all points of view!”

Celestia huffed. “I thought I taught you better, Twilight Sparkle. By now, I would think you wouldn’t have such a narrow idea of what is right and wrong. The world is not as white or black as you think it is.”

“Then maybe give us some inkling of what you’re talking about so you don’t sound like a dictator,” Luna said. It was a simple request, but one that took Celestia aback for a moment. From the look on her face, she didn’t quite know how to respond, and had to gather her thoughts.

A jet flew past the window, spraying smoke across the glass. Luna and Twilight flinched, but Celestia didn’t so much as blink. “You want to know the truth, yes? I suppose everyone wants to eventually . . . no matter the consequences. I suppose I shouldn’t have tried to keep it from you, Luna.” She sighed. “The truth is, I can’t free the droids, even if I wish I could. And I do wish I could, Luna. Do you think I enjoy holding down ponies simply because they were built and not born?”

“You gave off that feeling quite a bit,” Luna said.

“It was for appearances.”

“Well you might start explaining if you want us to believe you.”

“The truth is that I cannot free the droids without sending the entire country into collapse,” Celestia said. “Neither of you may know the real numbers, but there are well over a million droids working in Equestria and in the colonies, doing incredibly dangerous jobs for free. These are jobs that we must have, but could never afford to pay ponies to do them, based on the high risk they entail. Deep water drilling, asteroid mining, radioactive transportation, and more. Our economy is built on top of this labor, and without it we will fall apart.

“What happens to the droids will affect us all. I have tried before to loosen up on them, but each attempt to do so has led to economic mayhem and crashes, just from putting in a few regulations! It isn’t pretty, but it’s the reality.”

Luna took a step back. “So the droids can’t be allowed to do as they please, to love as they choose . . . because we rely on their slave labor?”

“It’s more complex than that.”

“It doesn’t sound very complex to me,” Twilight said.

Celestia sighed and lowered her head. The two of them were trying so hard to stand up to her, but all she saw in them was how they had looked when they were young. How scared Luna had been to sit on her throne for the first time, and how shaky Twilight had been to receive her wings. It didn’t seem possible that they had once been that young.

“It is a regrettable reality,” Celestia said. “The droids started as simple machines, but as the tasks grew more complex so did they. Eventually, they reached our intelligence, and we suddenly found ourselves using them as virtual slaves despite our best intentions. If I could do anything about it I would, but I cannot in good conscience ruin the lives of the many for the few. That’s ruling.”

Luna’s wings flared up. “Ruling is caring for those under you! If you are willing to sacrifice so much of your ponies, what is the point of you ruling, or anypony?”

“Even after all these years, you don’t understand—”

“Yeah, you’re right, I don’t understand!” Luna pressed herself against Celestia, her eyes ablaze in anger. “I don’t understand why you would go through with all this in the first place! Why did you let Sapphire call me back in the first place for a trial you would never let me win? Because you wanted to make an example of me? Because you wanted to humiliate me?”

“Because I wanted to teach you a lesson,” Celestia said in a shaky voice.

Luna looked her dead in the eyes. “And what . . . lesson . . . could that be?”

Celestia let herself waver for a moment. She was pressed up against the window now, held in place by Luna who felt like she wanted to push her sister out the window itself. “The lesson that, as a princess, you can’t expect to always be given a perfect answer. That sometimes you have to lose some battles to win others. I wanted you to know what it’s like, so what happened all those years ago wouldn’t happen again.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You know that our fight wasn’t about selling the moon to the Deckard Corporation, Luna,” Celestia said. “It was about you not being able to handle me overruling you.”

“Me, not able to handle it?” Luna yelled and slammed her hoof into the window behind Celestia, shattering the glass and sending it tumbling out as a harsh wind whipped over the three alicorns. “You. Hurt. Me! You just couldn’t handle that I did something behind your back, and when you got mad enough you decided to teach me a lesson about pain!”

“And I was wrong,” Celestia said. She looked down. “I let Deckard Corporation keep the moon because of that . . . I banished you for your own good, to keep you away from me. I couldn’t handle hurting you again.”

“So you call me back to hurt you.”

Celestia reached forward and put her hooves on Luna’s shoulders. “I called you back to let you back into Canterlot!” She shuddered and leaned against her younger sister for support. “I wanted to give you a lesson that would let you be a better ruler, and I’m sorry. I just . . . I became the mask I put on for everypony else, and this whole thing slipped away. I never expected you to start a rebellion.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Are you really that surprised? I don’t remember a time when Luna didn’t do her own thing.”

“You told me to do it!” Luna said.

“I just guided you where you wanted to go . . . mostly.”

“What?” Celestia asked.

“Nothing, it’s nothing.” Luna shook her head. “So what now? I’ve raised a rebellion against you only to learn that you were just trying to teach me a lesson to let me back into Canterlot, and that the whole goal of the rebellion is impossible. What do I do?”

Twilight shrugged. “Celestia wants you to be a princess, while Manehattan and I want you to be a duchess. Be something like that.”

Celestia nodded in agreement. “It’s your choice, Luna. I . . . for once, in these past, long three hundred years, won’t interfere. It would be . . . nice . . . to drop this Empress guise for my sister once more.”

Luna sat on the edge of the floor and let her bottom hooves hang out where the glass window had been. She looked out, to the city that stretched on forever in every direction. A flock of birds flapped their way up through the buildings and escaped out of the city, flying on toward the unknown. Luna envied them at that moment. Even if with her wings spread open, she felt like they were tied.

She had spent three hundred years in one city, watching it grow and prosper in ways that she would never have thought possible when she first sat on the throne, all the way back in Everfree Forest so long ago. The world had become fast, too fast for her to keep up. Even Manehattan itself was outrunning her. The ponies who were outside rallying for her would outdate her in another ten years, if they hadn’t already. Luna wanted to laugh when she realized her own rebellion had outmoded her in a single day, making her a figurehead of a time long past.

“So you say that I can do whatever I want?” Luna asked.

“Within reason,” Celestia said.

“Right.” Luna took a deep breath. “Freedom for all droids already on their own. Citizenship, voting, tune-ups. Love.”

Twilight looked at her. “What about all the droids still laboring?”

“For the moment, I can’t do anything about them, even if I wished I could,” Luna said. “I wish it were better . . . but that’s the reality, I suppose. What I can do is work on the inside, and maybe, with enough time, we can fix this.”

“So you’ll come back to Canterlot with me?” Celestia asked.

Luna shook her head. “Not for the moment. The ponies here want me in Manehattan, so that’s where I’ll stay. But not as a duchess, though, because if anything is to be done, it will be inside the system instead of against it. As a princess.”

“So you’ll be taking my job,” Twilight said glumly.

“No, not that either. Manehattan is the city that never sleeps, in which there is no night to raise for them. I would be wasted here.” Luna indicated to the complex circuitry embedded into her body from her flank on up to her eyes. “But Princess of Technology . . . that sounds more suited to Manehattan, does it not? The Princess of Technology could be the ruler who represents progress and the rights of droids. Fitting, I think.”

Twilight nodded. “And what about the other Elements of Harmony back at Canterlot? Are they freed too?”

Luna looked at Celestia and answered, “Yes.” Her sister didn’t make any move to stop her, instead only watching her with glassy eyes. Luna admitted to herself that was still afraid of Celestia, if not for her acceptance but for the fact that being given so much responsibility was worse than the fight she had perceived.

“The ponies won’t all accept the freed droids,” Celestia said at last. “They’ll fight it.”

“I know.” Luna pointed toward the sky. “That’s why they won’t be here. A certain corporation still owes me some favors for taking the brunt of your punishment for giving them the moon. Droids can, after all, live in any environment we can think of. They’ll be safe, and can live up there with the generators so their nuclear cores never die.”

The wind started to pick up outside, and it blew Luna’s mane around. The day was ending, and she knew that, throughout Equestria, ponies would be returning home for the night. For them, the day was over and they could relax, happy in the knowledge that things would be normal again tomorrow. The more Luna thought about it, the more she knew that was all she really wanted. Normalcy.

“Is this . . . is this really how this all ends?” she asked. “No fighting, no screaming, just agreeing to change how we do things and go back to normal?”

“We fought enough three hundred years ago,” Celestia said. “This is more . . . closure. Our fight has finally ended.”

She sat beside Luna, and Twilight beside her. They watched the sun dip down over the city in silence, only the sound of the wind through the glass to comfort them. For the first time in a long time, Luna no longer felt afraid.

---

The café Luna had chosen was almost empty by the time the door opened for one last customer. The little cafe was one of the oldest in the city, with wide bay windows stretching around the storefront and looking out from the corner the building stood on. There was a real bar with stools in the middle, and old-fashioned booths with leather seats around the edges of the restaurant. Pale light filtered in from outside as the city let itself sleep in exhaustion from the day’s events.

Luna sat at the end of the bar, her head lowered and mane spilling onto the tabletop. A glass of tea sat in front of her, untouched. Instead, she drank in the sound of laughing and celebration from Twilight, Sapphire, Rarity, and a few of her supporters at the other end. They were drinking cup after cup of coffee and eating several plates of breakfast food, or as well as droids could eat. Luna smiled when she heard them so happy, happier than they had ever been when she had known them. Sapphire practically couldn’t keep her hooves off of Rarity.

When one last customer had come in, Luna hadn’t paid attention to him until he had sat down next to her. She looked up in surprise to find herself staring at none other than Vangelis himself. He looked smaller and older than he had been on the moon.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I heard that somepony had made herself princess again, and promised several thousand droids a place to stay on my moon,” he said.

Luna raised an eyebrow. “You won’t protest this, will you?”

“Of course not.” Vangelis laughed. “After all you’ve done for our company, we’re happy to help, Princess of Technology. I came down here to congratulate you, and, if I may, to ask one final question.”

“Alright, what is it?”

Vangelis leaned back in his seat. “Why, all those years ago, did you defend my company and our acquisition of the moon, even at the risk of bodily harm to yourself?”

“Because I believed in what the Deckard Corporation and Tyrell were doing,” Luna said. “I thought that creating machines as smart as ponies could change the world, and I thought that’s what was right, so I defended you.”

“You defended us because you thought it was right? No other reason?”

“I suppose not.”

Vangelis smiled a small, sad smile. “Doing something because you see it as correct. How . . . very much like a droid.” He got up from his seat as quick as he had come and patted Luna on the side. “I am glad to have somepony like you on my side, Princess. I think we will work together very soon.”

And, just like that, he was gone. Luna watched him walk out the door and disappear into the darkness outside, like a dream after waking. She looked over to Sapphire, who only smiled at her.

Luna took a moment, then smiled back. With a warmer feeling in her heart before, she got up from her seat to go join the rest of the party.