Proud Graduate Of The Twilight Sparkle School Of Not Thinking This Through

With five minutes left to go in the budget meeting, the entire affair had essentially turned into a game, and Cadance was scoring the match participants as having tallied fifteen zeroes, all counted by one increasingly-desperate referee. Currently, the contest would go to the first crystal pony with the courage to actually play, the prize was her everlasting respect, and the competitors were apparently determined to spend the rest of their lives in refusing to get anywhere near the imported rounders pitch.

She gripped the virtual ball in metaphorical field, weakly pushed it in the general direction of an imaginary home plate, a moronic mistake of a floater which nopony of talent would be able to resist lunging at. And hoped.

"So," she cautiously said, "looking at what we're going to be putting into education for the coming year... I'm starting to think we're allotting a few too many bits -- pardon me, Crystakes -- in that direction. After all, we're clearly going to need road maintenance very soon, because those enchantments can't possibly hold forever even if they're showing every sign of trying to do so. So I was thinking that in order to free up funds towards a little polishing and checking for cracks, we could simply request that the parents do their part."

She waited.

"Do their part... in what sense, Princess?" the eldest mare at the low-set table nervously asked. A tiny bead of moisture was hanging from her snout, and the light passing through it added three extra rainbows to the myriad filling the room. There was a luminous symphony in progress, and every last bit of it had been composed from flop sweat.

"Well," Cadance carefully tried, "parents go over homework with their children, yes?"

From around the table:

"Yes!"

"Always!"

"Every night!"

"No, but... I don't have any foals yet... do you want me to have some right now? I'd need to get married first -- unless you don't want me to... I guess I could just... did you have somepony in mind, Princess? Because anypony you pick out for me is just fine, really they would be, I trust your judgment -- more than I trust my own..."

A little patter bounced off the table. It sounded like raindrops hitting crystal. It was not.

"Then... um..." Cadance took a deep breath. "Maybe if every parent in the Empire got home a few hours early from work and used that time to teach their children? Without pay, of course. Just to make a... um... contribution. And sure, I know it sounds like we'd be losing a lot of work hours and hurting the economy while we're still trying to rebuild and reconnect to the rest of the world, not to mention the really minor detail of paying the teachers so much less..." She was trying to hold her own sweat back. Surely this had to be stupid enough to work. "...but it's not as if teachers could ever be important, right? In fact, now that I think about it, teachers aren't important! Only education is! And you don't have to be a teacher to educate! Why, parents teach their foals everything for the first few years of their lives! We're just asking them to -- keep it up a little longer. And when you think of the benefits for road maintenance..."

It was, in her opinion, fantastically idiotic. The sheer non-brilliance of her moronic proposal outshone every coat in the room and at any moment, somepony would scream out 'My eyes!' or better yet, 'My brain!' and tell her --

"-- that makes perfect sense, Princess!"

"It's your best idea yet!"

"How many hours did you want them to give up? Three? Four? How about they skip lunch and run tutorial drills during that time? Think of the additional savings to food budgets! And if you wanted to raise taxes and take some more of that for the roads..."

"...and really, gender doesn't matter... I mean, you might have overheard me talking about some dates before this, but if you really have my perfect partner picked out for me which of course you do because you're all about love and you'd know so much better than I do concerning what I truly need, just consider me to have already adjusted...?"

Her eyes closed. Her body slumped as low as it could, which nearly required having all four legs splay out, and several ponies helpfully shifted even further away just in case she wound up needing the extra space. A soft peal of bell tones rang through the conference room as her chin hit the table.

Several eternal seconds passed. Somewhere around the fourth epoch of self-imposed darkness, she heard somepony get up and trot out of the room.

Offended by her idiocy to the point of departure? Was it possible? Had somepony just won?

More hoofsteps, coming back...

...something nudged against the left side of her head. It was soft. It was cool. It wouldn't dream of being insistent, because there was a chance that might turn out to be Bad.

"Clearly..." A pause while the most junior cabinet member swallowed. "Clearly we've been at this too long, Princess. You're tired." The pillow made its presence known again. "Rest now, Princess, just rest... or we could carry you to your bedroom, that might be best..."

Which started the first argument of the session.

"We can't carry her! That's presumptuous! Only her husband should touch her!"

"But what if there's a crisis?" a mare voice asked, speaking up for the first time all day. "We can't just let her suffer because we're afraid to make contact! We won't always be able to find Captain Armor within seconds!"

"Well," a middle-aged stallion proudly proposed, "there's an obvious, simple solution. I'm surprised none of you have seen it yet."

She kept her eyes closed. Hearing it was bad enough: she didn't have to look at it.

"And what's that?" somepony asked.

"We can bring the Royal Bed right here! We don't touch her, she gets to properly rest, and all of us together are certainly more than capable of balancing it on our backs!"

"But... we'd have to go into the Royal Bedroom... that's practically... treason..."

"It's for the Princess," somepony insisted. "We have cause. I'm sure she'll be lenient at the trial... I mean... our grandfoals might be forgiven..."

"But it's wider than the doorway," a young voice noted. "A lot wider."

A senior mare hastily cut in with "Not that we're saying you need the extra space, Princess, your proportions are so elegant... much more so than everypony else's..."

"Our ruler is tired! Nothing is more important than taking care of her during this hour of need! We'll just take out the wall!"

Murmurs of excitement. A third pillow nudge, just in case that plan had any chance of working out.

Thoughtfully, "What do you think we should do with the shards?"

Cadance sighed. She heard all fifteen ponies pull back from the table. Hooves scuffed at crystal, and the floor played a song of panic.

"Everypony..." she wearily said. "I am tired. I know we have to get this budget passed soon, but... I'm calling the end of the session. We'll pick it up at eleven in the morning tomorrow. I'd appreciate it if everypony would go home and think about --"

The next words would have been '-- a more feasible way to educate our fillies and colts.' But she had already given the first part of the order, and so nopony was still present to hear the suggestion.

Cadance slowly opened her eyes, looked at the little puddles of sweat spaced around the conference table. At least it was just sweat.

This time.

Celestia had been right. This just might be the worst part of being a ruling Princess.

"Somepony," she asked the air, "please tell me when I'm being stupid..."

[/hr]

She waited until they were in bed before she told him. Part of it was because her husband had problems of his own, needed their dinner meetings for proper venting so none of the pain and frustration plus the occasional bout of all-out anguish which came from trying to integrate crystal forces into Equestrian standards would reach their sanctuary. The bedroom was supposed to be for them and once they were both inside, the Empire was to be left whimpering outside the doorway, begging for attention which would only come during a crisis, which meant one night out of three anyway and would continue to do so until some of her staff adjusted to the new definition of 'crisis' and realized 'The bath water was slightly tepid: who's going to prison?' was no longer it.

Once they were together... while she was spooning him and he was muttering about how surprisingly heavy her legs were, how his entire body fell asleep starting from the limbs in because the mass of an alicorn body was mostly good for cutting off circulation, a complaint he'd been making since their second night together...

(He still occasionally faked having to wake up each leg in turn when morning came, and she loved him for that.)

...that was when they were supposed to be nothing more than wife and husband. Partners. Bond-mates. Soul-linked. They had made that agreement early on, well before coming to the Empire, and that was why it made her proud that there could be so much as a single night in five when they did not break it.

He listened to all of it, and did not complain about the disruption of their quiet time. She loved him for that too.

"...and I swear it's getting worse," she sighed. "It's like... they think I've been happy with them for too long, and when it breaks, it'll be so much worse for the duration before it happened at all, so they'll do anything to keep me happy, Shining, anything. Nopony argues with me. Nopony debates. No matter how stupid my proposals truly are, whatever I say is brilliant, the most brilliant thing ever just because I said it, at least until we get to the next words and if those contradict the first ones, then not only am I even more right than before, but they start apologizing for not being intelligent enough to reconcile the difference. Or they would if they weren't terrified to bring it up at all. At first, I just thought they were happy about being free and it was all being directed at me in thanks for what happened... Spike really should have stayed around to get some more of it... but now... it's like they're pretending they're happy. Because they're..."

She couldn't say it.

"...I could be screwing everything up," Cadance softly said instead. "And nopony will ever tell me."

"I will," Shining quietly answered. "Every time."

"You haven't said anything about the Empire's budget," she miserably challenged.

"Because you haven't done anything wrong. Why am I supposed to criticize errors which aren't there?" A pause. "Besides, I'm military. Somepony tells me how much I can spend and then I try to figure out how to make it gallop three times further than it was ever meant to go. I don't set the funds: I just figure out how we're supposed to use them. If you showed me your current draft, I'd just decide the commas and columns were trying to prevent the numbers from getting into a proper defensive formation and start working on how to take them out. You know how to set everything up, love: I don't. You've had training. The Princess spent years and years with you, getting you ready for these kinds of moments. I remember when you took over the Day Court --"

"-- I didn't." Misery was too weak a word, especially for so helpless a ruler.

"I was there, Katydid. You were on her bench, directing the arguments, cutting them off, getting things on track..."

"I was on her bench," Cadance sadly agreed. "And that's why the Day Court paid attention to me -- or at least in my general direction, because she was standing on my left, listening to all of it, supervising... They let me run things because they knew it was acting. Roleplaying. That as soon as I got something wrong, she'd step in and set everything back on track, Shining. They only paid attention to me as an extension of her, and one which was still attached to her flank. I never ran anything, not once in my whole life after she took me in, not until I came here..."

She pressed her barrel against his back, felt the vibrations of his breathing as he searched for the words which could make everything better. Words which didn't exist.

"She never took over once that day," Shining finally said. "It was all you."

"Because they wouldn't act up with her there. Because they were afraid. Just like --" and the words still would not come.

"You've made up budgets before," her soul-link told her. "Lots of practice ones. You're written concept laws. Even if they never had force, they were real. You're not going to get anything wrong."

Almost a cry of despair. "It was just acting, all of it! Scripts she had me write, where the play never went on the road and the curtain would be dropped on the first flubbed line! Nothing which meant anything, ever, nothing real! How can you know that I won't screw up, especially when nopony will tell me --"

"Because I love you."

A tiny smile quirked its way across her lips. "It makes you a lousy judge."

"Another reason I'm just military." She pressed her legs against him more tightly: he grunted a little. "Katydid... you studied world politics. Do you remember the term 'honeymoon period?'"

Another, sadder smile. "What we never really got to have?"

He sighed, shifted in her grip. "Try again."

"It's -- when a new ruler comes in and everypony goes a little easier on them for a while because they're letting them get used to the office," Cadance semi-quoted. "Or they get away with mistakes because at least for a little bit of time, they look good just for not being the -- the last ruler..." Honeymoon periods were most common in Mazein and Protocera. The minotaurs generally granted a moon or so for the victor to settle in: after all, she'd proven she could take on all comers and none of the still-aching defeated wanted to test that before their own renewed training periods had wrapped up. With griffons, it was generally considered polite to hold back the first impeachment proposal until the new officeholder actually finished taking their oath.

He nodded. "And in this case, love, the last ruler was Sombra. They're giving you a honeymoon, and it's going to be a long one because every single day, they wake up and you're still not him. They trot to work without fear of punishment because an off-hoof sounded the wrong note from the street and broke up his favorite lockstep composition. They sleep because the terror of having the shadows in their bedroom creep towards their necks is starting to fade. Everything which happened to them under what he claimed as his right... they don't remember every last moment of it because the enchantment took enough with it on departure to give them a chance at healing, and I'm thankful for that every day. But there are echoes, and those will take time to fade. They love you for not being him... but if you give them enough time, they'll love you for being you."

They were still for a time, if you ignored Shining's continued (and ignored) shifting.

"You left something out," Cadance whispered.

"The part where I got there first and they can't have you?"

She closed her eyes. "The part where they were afraid of him, they still are, I see some of them look at every shadow as if it's about to become his. They had so much time where they were ordered to love, more time than I can even make myself think about. They were told to make fear look like love... and now if they love me at all..."

Of the three alicorns, she was smallest. Least proficient, with the smallest amount of power and a trick she spent her life trying not to use. Weakest. But she could be strong enough for this.

"...it's because they're afraid of me," she whispered. "The longer I'm in charge, the more they think of me not as a savior, but as their ruler. They only know one kind of rulership, Shining... the rule of fear. Every way they dealt with Sombra... it's being transferred, a tenth-bit at a time, to me. Disagree with me and they're not showing love. Speak against something I've proposed and the adoration isn't there. Do anything other than treating me as perfect and they've convinced themselves it's the prison, or the mines, or -- the laboratory."

They had burned most of the laboratory, and buried everything they'd been able to identify.

"They remember enough," Cadance told her love. "Too much. And every day, they come that much closer to making me into that memory. Shining, how do I stop it? I've tried to be so careful! I don't give orders unless I absolutely have to, I haven't issued a single Princess Decree, I let them write most of the budget and just fixed a few things which they didn't know how to account for because those elements didn't exist when they last got to plan for themselves... and I don't know if I did any of it right, nopony will check my work..."

"The Princess?" he offered, because the time of last resort seemed to have arrived.

"She sent it back unopened," Cadance miserably sighed. "With a note that said I was in charge, not her, and it wasn't her place to advise another nation on their financial policies. And even if the budget is right... how am I supposed to deal with the rest? How do I fix it?"

More shifting from the stallion body. "Katydid... I wish I had an answer for you. But I love you -- and I love you too much to give you false advice which I'm weaving from the edge of my mane when I don't know the answer. I know how to make the freshest of armor-wearing hay stalks nervous enough around and about me that they'll obey my orders, and how to reconnect when they've earned trust. I know how to scare, how to be the most fearful thing a new Guard's ever seen -- but getting ponies who'll question a truly stupid order is the job of the recruiters, and that was never my field. You don't want them afraid of you, because you feel they already are and acting scary will just make things worse. Other than by stealing their favorite bath soap, I sure don't know how to make somepony not love me. And if I did... you'd be the last pony I'd ever tell."

He was outright wriggling now.

"I love you too much to lie up an answer," he said. "And enough to hate myself for not having a real one."

She pressed her snout into his mane, breathed in his scent, tried to let it take the weight of an Empire away. It didn't happen, and she simply held him tighter, taking strength from his presence if nothing else.

Strength... but not answers.

"Katydid?"

Hopefully, "What is it?"

"...you're... breaking... my... hips..."

[/hr]

She tried to pay attention during the morning briefing. It wasn't easy. The rhythmic nature of the unwanted praise could easily put her to sleep, especially after she'd already missed so much of it.

"...and for tourism, Princess, we're finally starting to see a few arrivals from the South," Lapis nervously said. "Of course, they would have been here sooner if they just understood how wonderful you are, they would have rushed from their homes and moved here outright..." The slender young mare was beginning to sweat. "I'm expecting a tidal wave of immigration soon, we all are! Ponies and -- other things -- changing their citizenship just to be closer to you! It'll happen! Just you wait!"

Cadance tried not to sigh. "How many tourist arrivals are we talking about, Lapis?"

"...six," her junior secretary eventually admitted. "Seven, actually, but -- six ponies and... the other thing... But that's encouraging! We've only been under your most enlightened rulership for a mere two moons! Yes, we've had the Equestrian delegations helping us to -- update things -- but these are ponies coming of their own free will! They were asking after hotels! Six whole ponies, Princess! I just know we'll get more, especially once you submit your Games host site proposal!" Almost sotto voce, "And I know you'll win..."

Not 'we'll'. 'You'll'. Cadance managed to keep from closing her eyes: the nearest pillow was far too close. "And the hotels are reopened?" The delegation members had been staying with crystal hosts, in the name of helping all parties acclimate all the faster.

"...one," Lapis made herself say as the first small trickle of salt began to flow across the crystal floor. "It was a low-priority item -- initially! We can rechannel resources, provide a choice for the six and the -- other thing..."

"One hotel is enough for six ponies," Cadance wearily not-quite-decreed. "Keep the restoration crews on their current assignments..." Wait. "Lapis... what did you mean by 'other thing'?"

The slim mare was starting to dance in place now, as if she was trying to avoid racing off to a bathroom -- or simply moving in order to keep from fainting on the spot. "It's..." Helplessly, "Well, it talks, so we're hoping it respects the Treaty Of Menagerie... Princess, it's scary, it's too tall, it stands all wrong and speaks too loudly, it has these things where its forehooves should be and it was wandering around the city most of the night putting up posters, but we knew that if it was dangerous, you would have taken care of it already..."

As gently as she could manage what was almost an order, "Describe 'it'?"

Lapis did. It took four attempts, mostly because each of the first three ended with her trying not to pass out.

Cadance asked to see a poster. Half the castle emptied out in a collective attempt to find her one. The remainder learned about the order after the fact and spent a trembling collective hour awaiting summary judgment regarding their lack of love. And when the one-sheet finally came back, their ruler spent some time reading it over before announcing she was leaving the castle, that she did not want a Guard complement following her, and everypony was to please stay at their stations and just treat the day as if it was perfectly normal until she came back for the budget meeting.

She left. It took a mere thirty seconds for the palace medics to flood the throne room and begin treating the stressed-out staff.

[/hr]

Cadance was still learning the nooks and crannies of the capital, didn't have every street memorized yet and couldn't even begin to take a flight at the majority of the alleys. (She had done most of her initial surveys from overhead, and had kept right on doing so until she noticed that most of those below reacted to her shadow crossing them as a mouse whose Sun-lit body had just been dimmed by a passing hawk.) But there were certain features you just couldn't miss, and Geode Park was one of them.

The city's central repository for mostly-greenery was one of the few things which had required no restoration whatsoever. Say what you would about Sombra in the dubious comfort that whatever horror wasn't fully accurate was simply understated, but he'd had an eye for beauty. Plants and crystal wove around each other in perfect harmony, because any such display of art which wasn't perfect meant the artist didn't love him quite enough and... well, it had encouraged a certain level of perfection to go with the heart-stopping terror. Mineral and vegetable worked and grew together in a way she'd never seen before, one which had forced every member of the Equestrian delegations to freeze in awe as they stared at what had been wrought. Sometimes the entrancement was so complete that it would take a full minute before their gazes reached the rusty discolorations which would forever mar the base, for Sombra's laboratory had also produced a rather unique method of initially watering the creations, and nothing anypony had tried got the blood out.

As with other gardens across the continent, there was a maze. That had also required no restoration, although they'd needed three weeks before the center had been completely disarmed.

She found the minotaur in the heart of it, standing directly where one absent trap would have taken his right hoof off. He was setting up the most uncomfortable-looking folding benches Cadance had ever seen, grumbling to himself all the way.

"...and this one's gonna be empty, and we'll sort of make enough room between this row and the next for all the little refractors who ain't gonna show up to not pass down the middle, but not too much space because they've gotta be a little uncomfortable, or they would be if anypony actually came, which they ain't gonna because..."

He did not look up as her shadow fell across him. The big muscles along arms and chest tensed, and that was only natural for a minotaur who'd just been surprised -- but it faded with surprising speed.

"Heya, Princess," he said, still not bothering to look up: a particularly stubborn bench was refusing to unfold and so had priority. "Don't suppose you're buying a ticket? Not that I could probably charge ya and get away with it, for any meaning of 'charge' you wanna go with, but I'm getting kind of desperate to break the ice here..."

She blinked. "How -- how did you know it was me?" She began to drop, looking for a good place to touch down.

He chuckled. "Six ponies on the train with me. Three earthers, three horned. So unless somepony's hiding away from the hotel -- nice, by the way, little cramped but I kinda had to expect that -- it's one Empire -- two wings. Figured there was a chance you'd check me out once the customs officials got back to you. So how are you doin'?"

She landed behind the last (current) row of benches. (It normally would have been a touchdown in an aisle, but he'd made them all so narrow...) "I'm a little curious, Mr. Will. I saw your poster..." She trailed off. How was she going to say the next part? Ask about motivations? Celestia would have voiced the question already, or gotten him to talk without ever having to say a word of her own...

"You might have been the only one," Iron Will shrugged. Veins pulsed: the bench resisted. "Horns of the Ancients, come on already... I usually get a few scouts by this point. Checking out the site. Seeing if anypony else is gonna show up, anypony they know. My assistants would normally be beating the bushes already, but I couldn't bring them this far north: they don't do well on trains and it's the only way to get here. Special discount for a personal session? I won't be able to cover anything close to my expenses and I wasn't gonna make a profit on this gig no matter what, but a Crystake or two and I won't --" pulling at the locked metal joint "-- feel so --" his biceps were visibly swelling "-- red-tinged useless...!"

The bench fully opened, which was another way to describe the thing completely coming apart in his hands.

For a moment, they both stared at the pieces, and both gazes were equally helpless.

Finally, he shrugged. "Got more," he said, and casually tossed the metal into a corner. "So you saw my poster. Any questions about it? I thought I had it translated right and I ran off copies in both languages just in case, but I don't know on the first and I'm looking for any no-shows excuse I can get."

The sheer casualness of his manner was making her smile. "I was just curious about why you were bringing your business into the Empire," she honestly admitted. "You're the first minotaur we've had since the border reopened, Mr. Will, and I know Sombra made a real attempt to keep all of your people out. I'm not sure anypony here has seen someone from your species before this. They're having a little trouble -- getting used to you, and I know I'll have to explain that you're a herbivore. But you're the first to make the journey, and it's for a business venture..."

"They need me," Iron Will simply said, and focused on a less stubborn bench. "They need me bad, Princess -- more than anypony I've ever seen or heard of. Need me so badly that they won't show up to find out just how strong that need is..."

He put the unfolded result down, far too close to the bench in front of it. Stepped back, regarded the placement for a moment, then nudged it a hoofwidth closer.

"You're an assertiveness trainer."

"That's what it says on the poster."

"And they need you." It was not a question.

He briefly straightened up. Looked down at her. She almost took off on the spot just to make the eye contact level.

"I study," he said. "I read. I listen to the stories, and some of ours are older than yours. I've got a little idea of what it was like up here. And..."

Two more benches, and the aisle narrowed further.

"...you know your history, right, Princess? Weren't around for anywhere near as much of it as the other two, but you know a lot of minotaurs got enslaved once. Hard to keep us, risky for anyone who tried... but they found their handle, and it happened. A long, long time ago. It's why we have a Senate... to make sure everyone gets a vote, a voice. That no one ever goes unheard."

All she could do was nod, and so that was all that happened.

"The crystal ponies..." Iron Will continued, "with the old guy in charge, I think I can call them slaves. Just-freed ones. And the first thing a former slave has to learn is how to say no. Disagree. Tell people to, you'll forgive my language here, go buck themselves. And how to do all of that only when it's right. Some ponies keep too much of themselves on lockdown and when the gates open, too much comes out: they pick the wrong targets, and those targets work out to everypony around them. Had that happen last year. Had to give a refund and didn't work out why until I talked to some ponies on my way out of town. But they've still got to learn how to argue, disagree, criticize -- but only when it's right."

He straightened up again, quietly looked at her.

"The crystals need that more than anypony in the whole charging world right now," he softly said. "So I came up here, cut my prices, hoped it would lure some ponies in. Make a start and if I just broke even, it was my good deed for a lifetime. All the while, thinking there was a good chance they'd be so scared of me, they wouldn't even show up. And so far..." He spread his hands. "...wish I was wrong. More than anything. But can't change my looks, horns, or hands. Can't order them to come. You can't --"

But the last word which had fully registered had been the one she'd been longing to hear.

"-- criticize," she half-whispered, and her eyes went wide with hope.

"Huh?"

"When you open the gates... make them feel like they have permission to truly speak their minds for the first time... it starts?"

"...yeah," he cautiously replied. "But like I said, some ponies can go too far. Some other people, too. And they have to take that first hoofstep on their --"

"-- and they haven't had the freedom, there's been consequences for speaking their minds before this, it's got to be a dam with the water building up behind it..."

"Princess, I'm not sure what you're looking at right now, but I really don't think it's me."

"...and if you just turn one valve..."

His gaze was now laced with caution. She didn't notice.

"Yeah," he eventually said. "For some of them. But all I do is show them where the valve is. Admittedly, I kinda force a little pressure. See these benches? New trick of mine. Nopony can really rest on them: little ridges in the metal, working against the coat -- it's an irritant. Aisles too narrow, gotta shove to get through, assert yourself a little... put it together, then stall my entrance about five minutes, and it makes 'em prickly, They're in the mood to go off on something, and in the end, I tell 'em they were set up, and they laugh... but before that..."

"Turn the valve," Cadance whispered, and resisted the urge to dance on the spot. "All I have to do..."

She had never seen a minotaur worried before, and so didn't recognize the expression. Not that it would have gotten through anyway. "Princess?"

"Mr. Will... what were your expenses to come up here? Travel, lodging, and food." The number was named quickly, albeit with a confusion she completely missed. "Good. Submit that to the palace on an official invoice and I'll meet your costs, plus a profit margin. Don't worry about getting it through: I write the budget. Or will tomorrow. Please stay at least that long. I want you to see what you've wrought."

"Princess, I appreciate the thought, but unless I get somepony in here, I'm not gonna change anything, and you can't order --"

But she was already in the air, and the song in her heart blocked out the actual words.

[/hr]

She flew in through the throne room's main window, galloped the rest of the way to Lapis, who was still trying to get some hydration back. "Lapis! I need your help!" Quickly, "Please? It's just two things."

Her secretary didn't quite go down. "Of course, Princess... what do you need from me? Did I do something -- wrong? Is there... something I have to fix... before anypony..."

"No, no," Cadance hastily smiled. "They're simple things. First, tell the cabinet that the budget meeting is postponed until three in the afternoon tomorrow. You can send couriers for that one. Let them know --" as if they would ever ask for a reason "-- that it's the new schedule, and I won't postpone again. Will you do that?"

"Of course," the too-agreeable assistant replied. "And your second order?"

She tried and failed to ignore the word: the irony from what was coming next simply sent it deeper into her ears. The lightness in her heart pushed it back. This was necessary. "I need to make my first Princess Decree. And everypony in the Empire needs to hear it as soon as possible. Immediately would be ideal."

"You... have an order for us?"

"A decree. And everypony must know about it and follow it to the letter. Is there a messenger system we use? Notice boards? More couriers? Town criers? I've never done this before, Lapis... help me, please..."

[/hr]

She looked at the ear-shaped piece of crystal. It was five times the size of the real thing, bright and sparkling and humming with a magic she could already feel, the power gathering for use. It was almost enough to let her ignore the rust-hued stains at the base.

"It only works for the recognized ruler of the Empire," Lapis shakily told her. "When you touch it, Princess... whatever you say next will ring out in every home, business, and street throughout your land. It's how -- he -- used to give us orders in a hurry. He said it was the only one like it anywhere, and -- there can never be another, there should never, not with what he did to..."

Cadance stretched out her right foreleg, ready to make contact, hoping it would stop the shivering. But it only grew worse as her hoof came closer, and so she pulled back.

It'll end. It'll end starting tomorrow.

"All I have to do is touch it?"

"That's... that's all."

So she did.

She felt the resonance before the magic, experienced a fraction of the final emotions from all those who had been ordered to make the sacrifice necessary for this wonder out of their love. It took several seconds and a hard head shake to get the screams out of her ears, and she knew they would return at the first moment of distraction. She wasn't going to use this thing unless she absolutely had to, and the ideal number of future uses was never again.

But this was for the ponies who were under her care. For them, she would do it as many times as necessary.

"Um..."

The single hesitant syllable took over the world.

Every surface echoed with her voice. Every piece of crystal acted as a channel, excepting those which simply magnified. Her vocal presence rang from the streets, filled homes, interrupted transactions, made the trains vibrate and knocked uncomfortable benches that much closer together.

An Empire listened, and held its breath.

"...this is Princess Cadance... but you all knew that... and I just wanted to speak to you -- to all of you at once, and I was told this was the fastest way. I won't do it again unless I absolutely have to. But this is -- a Princess Decree, my first one, and everypony in the Empire must follow it to the letter." Hastily, "It's short-term, though, I promise. Just a few hours, really. And... um... this is what I want you to do."

She took a deep breath, which didn't make up for the ones her subjects weren't taking.

"Starting from nine in the morning tomorrow, through nine in the evening that same night -- nopony in the Empire is to speak to me unless they do so with criticism. Honest, constructive criticism. If I ask you what I'm doing wrong, you tell me. If I'm being stupid, you are mandated to let me know. If my manestyle offends you, better let me know to cut it out!"

Perhaps Celestia would have heard Lapis' eyes rolling back. Cadance did not.

"In other words..." another joke seemed best "...if you can only say something nice, don't say anything at all. Twelve hours, starting tomorrow morning at nine. Thank you."

She removed her hoof from the crystal ear, tried to shed the final echoes of agony with a smile. It didn't work, but she could pretend it did.

"There," she said. "That should give everypony warning and enough time to think of what they need to say, Lapis... Lapis?"

The blue field caught her secretary in mid-faint.

Author's Notes:

Inspired by Windlife. This concept was originally proposed in a blog post, and story idea contributions were made by Georg, Daedelean, and Dusty The Royal Janitor.

Because It's Not As If Anything Could Possibly Go Wrong

She watched as nimble teeth snatched the plate away from her and did her best not to sigh, for that was the guaranteed way to take out the entire table in one go.

Cadance often had trouble finishing her meals, or at least in finishing the same dish. Enchanted one-way windows set within the official dining room allowed nervous chefs to watch as she tasted, chewed, considered the flavors she had just been presented -- or gave off any appearance of same, because if she was talking to Shining and made the basic mistake of briefly frowning at something he'd just said while she had a mouthful of what was no longer about to be her dinner, they would notice. And inevitably, they would assume it was something they had done -- or rather, prepared -- and rush forth to snatch the offending plate out from under her snout before it could do any more damage. There were times when it was genuinely difficult not to bolt her food, at least until she remembered what had happened the first (and so far, only) time she'd had a coughing fit from eating too fast, and it had taken hours to talk all of the trembling cooks out of their hiding places. The two who had preemptively locked themselves in the dungeon had eventually been left there until morning, mostly because all parties involved had finally fallen asleep.

She'd started sneaking into the kitchens before the staff could arrive, snatching enough portable snacks to get through the day. She suspected this wasn't making them feel any better about things either.

In this case, her mistake had been basic: a questioning look which had been meant for her husband -- but she'd been regarding her fourth serving of the evening at the time, offhoofedly wondering exactly what was happening to all the removed portions, and hadn't brought her gaze fully up in time. But the desperate waiters had a knack for quickly getting out of the room, and so by the time she did look up, the view was clear.

"Multiple attempts to get into the palace?"

He nodded. "Nothing forced or invasive, from what they said, and... honestly, they didn't say much beyond that we had multiple attempts. Every one happened when we had nothing but locals on the gate, and... they're nervous today, more so than usual. It wasn't hard to guess why. They're thinking about tomorrow. But it's the first time that's happened: somepony just kept coming by, trying to get in to see you, and by the time I found out..." He carefully looked away from his food, and only then risked the sigh. "They're not used to the idea of a ruler who would want to see visitors. With Sombra, there were always ponies who'd been -- summoned, yes." And they both knew that in many cases, he meant dragged. "The concept of somepony voluntarily trying to come in... that's new, and the only way they could think to react was by blocking access, over and over. Looking back, they probably thought they were saving that pony from themselves. I'll have a talk with them about proper visiting hours first thing tomorrow and see if I can get a few actual details about who kept dropping by, after they've had a good night's sleep to calm down a little. They were so shaken, they kept losing their nouns. Half the words out of their mouths were 'thing.'"

And with her focus still on the brightest of all possible futures, she primarily paid attention to what she felt were the important parts. "Thinking about tomorrow?" That with a small smile.

"Yes," Shining cautiously said. "And I know what you want to happen, but -- I don't know what's going to."

"You give yours a place to vent," she pointed out. "Being able to complain is a crucial part of training. You've always said that." The fifth dish arrived.

"Yeah," he eventually agreed. "And that place is with each other. They all complain about me in the barracks, where it's safe, and that's just another part of the bonding experience. It doesn't happen to my snout."

She frowned. The fifth dish vanished, and the fast-departing aroma told her it had been kumquats. She loved kumquats. "It still applies, doesn't it? I'm giving them a safe place, when they never had one before."

"But they always had each other," he pointed out.

"And now they have me," she smiled.

"I still got there first," was his automatic response, and then they both worked on their food, while it was still there.

After they each managed to get through most of a plate, and Cadance had finished her coffee (because the kitchen staff had quickly figured out that no matter what happened, nopony touched Cadance's coffee -- or really wanted to), he grinned at her. "At least I'm out of it."

Her eyes twinkled. "Out of what?" she teased in that special tone, the one which let him know just who the joke was truly on.

He was starting to pale a little: always hard to pick up under his fur, but they'd known each other for a long time. "The criticism," he reluctantly tried. "I mean, I'm not a crystal pony." He spotted her smile: speech accelerated. "The Decree was meant for the citizens of the Empire, and I'm still legally an Equestrian -- Katydid, seriously, you can't expect, there's no way you can possibly be asking me to --"

"-- I'm sorry, Captain," she teased, planting her left forehoof under her chin, "but when it came to a direct Decree from your Princess, exactly which part of 'everypony in the Empire' did you not understand?"

His eyes went down, mostly because his neck had joined his knees in harmonic involuntary bend. Two plates vanished.

"Oh," he said, and the accompanying expression took out the drink he very badly needed.

"Exactly," Cadance smiled. "Tomorrow's going to be very interesting, don't you think?"

"...yes."

Merrily, "I might just make sure to be right next to you when the chimes go off. I'm sure you've been saving up things for years. There may even be a few lingering bits of unvoiced honesty from our very first date, especially remembering how that went..."

He was staring directly at his plate, or at least where plates were now phasing in and out in a continual panicked stream. "Starting at nine tomorrow, you said?"

"Oh, so you did hear some of it..."

He took a deep breath. "I'll be ready."

[/hr]

Cadance woke up, yawned, instinctively stretched out all four legs and both wings in the practiced gesture of somepony who both liked to get the kinks out of her muscles first thing in the morning and still wasn't quite used to having another pony in the bed, one who frequently got pushed around by her casual efforts.

No limb hit anything. Or anypony.

It didn't fully sink in until the end of the stretch. And then she got up, checked the bathroom, wandered down to the kitchens as crystal ponies who seemed even more nervous than usual (occupied with thoughts of their upcoming words, most likely) did their best not to look at her, eventually flew out over the training area, peeked into the barracks...

And after she'd burnt off most of an hour in exercising that portion of futility, she called for a secretary, and somehow wound up with Lapis again. She was starting to believe the mare was sleeping in one of the closets.

I should have checked the closets.

"What... what is your desire, Princess?" the shivering pony said, sending blue-tinged rainbows all over the throne room. "It may be early, but please know that we all stand ready to serve you at any hour, any at all, even -- after nine..."

Cadance sighed -- then spotted the instant increase in the vibration rate. "It's not you, Lapis. Please, take a breath -- no, more slowly than that -- yes, you can take more than one... all right. I need you to send some of the Guards out. They are to do their best to find and bring a pony back to the castle, without hurting him in any way." She immediately reconsidered that last part. "At least no more than anypony would get hurt during a normal training exercise." Because it wasn't as if the target wouldn't resist, and forbidding her Guards to strike back at all would just about guarantee a loss.

The little secretary swallowed back most of the gasp. "What -- what did he do? Do you need... I know the laboratory is gone, but if there's anything you -- any rooms you were thinking about, we got the garlic scent out of the dungeon, or homes, we could clear out a home if you need the extra space --"

Nine. It ends starting at nine.

"No, none of that, " Cadance hastily tried (and failed) to reassure the mare. "They're just bringing him in." Which would admittedly be the single biggest test of their training to date, but when she figured for sheer numbers... "So yes, they're looking for a stallion. Equestrian. I can't give you mane and coat colors because he'll have changed those already, but it hasn't been that long since he did that, so he's going to reek of fresh fur dye -- right, you have no idea what that smells like: I'll find some so the Guards can get a sample. Also, he's likely going to be wearing a hat. Which gives them an advantage, because he'll have to get it off before he can try casting anything, and that should give them a chance to get a restraint on him -- do they know what a restraint is?" Actually, it wasn't as if Sombra would have wanted his subjects to know about means of stopping unicorn magic, so if the newest Guards hadn't reached that point in their training... "I'll go find a restraint... Also, he'll definitely be wearing pants, to cover his mark, because the dye would have evaporated from that at the moment he tried to hide it. So that leaves him with pants to cover his very recognizable mark, which, in the event that you catch him with his pants down, is a shield with three stars above it --"

Lapis gasped. "-- we're looking for -- your spouse? What did -- what did he do?"

"-- and if all else fails, look for his luggage, because he'll have taken supplies and there's only one thing he would try to carry them in. It's an olive-green double saddlebag, four worn brown back straps, and the carrying portions are more of a duffel shape than anything else. I know he took it with him. He takes it everywhere he goes and hides it after arrival, mostly because he's afraid that if I get too much time to look for it without him interrupting, I'm going to destroy it, or wash it, which just might have the same effect once the dirt finally stops holding it together. They should always be able to find him by that stupid luggage. And since they know his workings and tricks by now, it'll be a good way to find out if they can get around them, plus it'll challenge them on tactical aspects..." She sighed. "He really couldn't have assigned them a better test himself. And he may wind up being proud of the results. After he stops cursing. So yes. You're sending them out to find my husband. Immediately. And while a few of them are checking the closets, have several others gallop directly to the train station and if he's not there, keep at least two Guards posted in that area for the rest of the day."

"But --" Lapis looked as if she was on the verge of another faint. "-- why?"

Cadance allowed herself the brief indulgence of closing her eyes, sighed again.

"Because in the face of what he's seeing as a temporary threat which he can't combat, my husband," she wearily said, "is very predictably military."

There's no point in scouting.

He's afraid to attack.

And that just leaves retreat.

[/hr]

Shining hadn't been hauled in yet -- but it didn't matter. She could glare at her husband any time she wanted to, especially if he made the mistake of sounding a false internal all clear at one second past nine in the evening. It didn't matter because nine in the morning was less than a minute away, and she was pacing away the final near-eternal bit of wait in the royal bedroom. Less than a minute until the crystal ponies would be honest with her.

She'd done some things to prepare, and was more or less confident that all of them could be undone with a few hours of work.

Cadance smiled to herself, and briefly, dearly wished she had been able to direct it at another. But... it didn't matter, other than in the little fight -- it would only be a little one -- they were assuredly going to have later. It was all about the Empire now, about the ponies of the Empire, and the release that would come when the valve was finally turned.

A glance at the clock was quickly followed by fighting the urge to have her field force the smallest sweep line ahead.

Ten. Nine. Eight...

They had freed the Empire, all of them together.

Five. Four. Three.

And now it was time to free the ponies.

Zero.

The chimes went off.

Her field coated the bedroom door, pushed it open, and Cadance stepped out.

Jasper, the native Guard-in-training who had been posted into the hallway with explicit orders to stay there until ten, jumped.

He looked at her. Then he saw her.

"Princess!" and the word was instantly accompanied by sweat. "I --"

His jaw slammed shut. Muscles tightened, trembled. Eyes sought the nearest wall and found only her reflection, which didn't help.

She smiled at him. "Was there something you wanted to say, Jasper?"

"I..." It was like watching a colt during that first trip to the dentist, only the battle was being waged to stop anything from exiting his mouth. "I..."

Carefully, "...yes?"

"I... have a status update on the search for the Captain..."

"Oh, of course," Cadance smiled. Well, it's not as if every possible sentence can be critical -- or can it? "And given that my orders both created the search and directed the means by which it would be conducted -- what do you think of it so far?"

"...well..." He seemed to be experiencing certain difficulties in his lifestyle, especially the parts which centered around breathing. "...since we haven't found him yet, our... ability to interpret your orders... might be lacking... but I'm just a rookie, I'm not even good enough to join the search, I probably wouldn't be here at all if the strong candidates hadn't gone out to look for the Captain --"

She was trying not to groan, and it took an effort to make her words gentle. "Jasper?"

"...Princess?"

"What are you doing?"

"...speaking to you. Honestly. And critically." The sweat was coming faster now. "About myself. Because I'm no good as a Guard, I know it, the Captain keeps me for extra lessons after all the others have gone back to the barracks and I know that's nothing to do with any potential, it's because I'm just that bad at my job. I'm not suitable to stand in your palace, in this hallway, in the Empire. I -- I should just leave. Immediately. I'm sorry, Princess..."

And with that, he demonstrated some of that personally-unperceived potential, because it was a rare pony who could instantly transition from being a vibrating near-statue in heavy armor to moving in full gallop (also in heavy armor), sounding a one-pony orchestra of panic all the way down the hall --

-- right up until the moment the blue field surrounded him, raised him a few crucial hoof-heights from the crystal floor, performed a half-rotation, and gently brought him back.

She kept him at that height as he floated in front of her. She wanted him to have eye contact, along with easier sight lines for what had a chance to turn into a literal critical mass.

"Jasper," she gently said. "That's not really how I meant the Decree." Was another trip to the Ear necessary? No -- well, maybe. But not unless she absolutely had to. There was a chance he would be an isolated case. "This is about talking to me. About me. And I'd appreciate it if you would talk to me now. Please? And to make it easier at the start, I'm giving you a one-sentence Decree exemption for the answer to my next question: how is the search going?"

It took him a while to muster himself for that one, long enough that Cadance began to question her initial decision on having things run for a mere twelve hours. "We haven't found him yet, and I'm sorry about that, and I'm sure the fault is in the way we're following orders and not the orders themselves in any way, and I know that once we truly apply ourselves to the directives you've given, which would have worked instantly if more trained ponies were following them, but that lack is in our own ability to learn and not any teaching the Captain has given us, and we're very sorry, all of us are, even and especially the ponies who aren't here right now, and we'll all try to do better --"

She let it go on until the commas began to look like the shovels which were digging Jasper in deeper with every run-on clause. "Jasper."

He stopped. She decided to treat that as the end of the sentence, if only because letting it go on any longer would have meant losing additional minutes to checking the record books.

"You're looking at me right now, right?" she politely inquired.

He risked a nod.

"So... what do you think of the way I look today?"

Visible, fearful thought.

"You're..."

Hopefully, "Yes?"

"...pink."

Some of the frustration made it through. "Pink."

And in a surge of words, "Yes! You're pink! You're the pinkest thing imaginable! And that's bad, because after seeing you, nothing else can truly look pink in my eyes again! You've ruined all other experiences of pink for me, because the only place I can go to see the real and true and finest pink in all the world is right here in the palace, so I'm very glad I work here even though I really shouldn't be a Guard at all, just... because..."

He'd finally noticed the way she was looking at him.

"...it... means there's still one chance in all the world for me to appreciate the only pony in the world whose fur is the shade all pink... should be?"

I will not stomp a forehoof. I won't.

Well, at the very least, she wasn't Luna. Cadance firmly believed that if Luna had been on the receiving end of this, there already would have been thunder, and it would have served as the opening bell for all the future rounds. But Cadance was still exactly herself, and that meant she took a patient breath, levitated the rookie Guard a little higher, then politely said "So what do you think of my mane?"

He instantly tried to look away. She gently adjusted the position of his neck.

"Your... mane."

"Yes."

Terrified eyes slowly went over every last tangle, knot, splay, twist, and capital-letter-almost-required nightmare which she'd spent forty minutes carefully working into her hair.

"You shouldn't go outside with it."

Cadance's eyes went wide and bright. "Go on!"

"Because after seeing that, no mare would ever be able to live with her own mane again. And an Empire full of bald mares... actually, that could be a look, couldn't it? Is there something you wanted to do with the shaved hair? If the budget is still looking for something new we could all sell as an export, we could start weaving it into wigs, and of course it's a self-renewing supply..."

[/hr]

Her right forehoof slammed into the Ear, and the ringing from the impact was almost enough to block out the echoes of centuries-distant screams.

"Pardon me, everypony," Cadance carefully said, setting off a barrage of apologetic interruption from every wall in the Empire. "I'm sorry to interrupt your day, especially two days running. But I feel I have to clarify yesterday's Decree. I didn't mean that anypony was supposed to use any chance they had to speak with me for criticizing themselves. If that's what any of you were thinking of, then please discard those speeches immediately. I've heard them. Twelve of them, which I think is more than enough for the day." Jasper hadn't been enough of a representative sample. The cleaning, polishing, repair, and facet maintenance ponies had wound up being overkill, especially in the myriad ways they verbally tried to take themselves out. "Also, I'm not looking for hindkicked compliments. I don't want to hear anything else about how I'm too beautiful for the Empire, or too perfect for the world, or any other superlative which might somehow go beyond that." And it wasn't as if the staff she'd encountered while she moved towards the broadcast room hadn't tried. "This is about honest criticism, directed towards me, and nothing more. Everypony needs to understand that. I just wanted to offer you all the opportunity to --"

-- and how many other ponies are going to have a chance to express themselves?

They avoid the palace. That's what the remnants of their memories tell them to do. If you don't work here, then if you're summoned, it's because you did something wrong. And if you do work here, then... you just have more to be afraid of, because any mistake is that much easier to spot. Ponies are afraid to approach the palace: it's why we wound up having to do most of the hiring at the main library. They're afraid to approach...

...me.

Whoever tried to come and see me yesterday was the first.

Maybe -- somepony getting an early start?

Somepony out there can do this. They have to. This has to work. I've turned the valve and somewhere at the other end, there's a pony waiting to vent...

She realized she'd been silent for too long. That the Empire was waiting on her next word, and would do nothing else until it came.

"-- you'll see," she quietly concluded, and took her hoof away from the Ear.

If I stay in here, it's just going to be the staff, and the Cabinet at the budget meeting later. Nopony else. Certainly not her husband if he managed to stay ahead of his own rookies for the entire crucial period. There's too much to fear from approaching the palace: even with the chance to vent waiting within, a lot of ponies might not be able to do it.

Which leaves one easy answer, doesn't it?

Then there would be no looming palace to revive lingering terrors within immobile shadows. And no Guards either: they were just something else for the crystal ponies to be nervous around. (And she went through a single moment of internal dark humor, considering that anypony who saw her alone and yelled a battle cry before attacking her would be offering the most honest criticism of all.)

The Empire won't come to the Princess. And as the title sounded in her mind, her horn ignited, her field's corona reached out and surrounded crown and regalia, lifted them away from her body before flinging them into the nearest corner.

So I'll just go to the Empire.

Ensuing Results Are Not Necessarily Hilarity

Was it normal, for the streets to be so empty?

Under Sombra's rule... there had been an exact time and place assigned to everypony. A time to work, a time to shop. A time to teach and a time to learn. A time to sing their praise towards the palace and another which took place in the evenings, which had apparently been more of a lullaby. And with that schedule drawn up and fully understood, just about everypony would always be found in their designated place at the ordered time, excepting the ones who'd been a little bit late and thus effectively reassigned themselves to the laboratory.

She hadn't been able to get rid of all of it, for some of the set hours had a basis in common sense, with only the punishments emerging from cruelty. Work hours, shopping hours, school hours: most of that had survived, along with the desperate surge of fear which hit whenever a crystal pony realized they were on the verge of being late, with the secondary meaning of that last word not quite forgotten. So right now, flying over the light-scattering roads... yes, there was a chance the streets had originally been meant to be so empty, because it was work time for many, along with learning time for the youngest. (And she was still working on getting rid of the texts Sombra had dictated, with the exception of copies she was saving for the library and Canterlot Archives, because even crimes against history needed to be on the court record.)

But there were more shops opening every week, and with the tightest time restraints lifted, a few of the crystal ponies were beginning to venture out with the intent of at least finding out what it was like to consider using them, although she was now starting to wonder if that was because the restoration of that portion of the capital had created something which had come across as a virtual order. But still... it meant that even if there weren't ponies visibly heading towards the shops, she was guaranteed to find a number working within.

So she flew over the capital, heading for the central shopping district, keeping her focus on the empty streets. And there were times when it seemed as if she heard things from below: little gasps which preceded the closure of a window or the slamming of a door. When she'd originally sped away from the palace, almost fleeing from desperate praise wearing the constantly-slipping mask of honesty, she could have sworn she'd heard a brief explosion of sound at the main gate, something like a snort of surprise exhaled with six times the normal force -- but she'd been moving at speed, it hadn't registered as a threat, and so by the time instinct allowed knowledge to fully pass through, she'd already been too far ahead to truly consider doubling back. She'd probably just startled a few Guards, armored mice reacting to the shadow of a crownless hawk.

And if that had been it, their reaction wasn't unique.

[/hr]

"Hello!" Cadance beamed as her field carefully closed the sparkling door. She was keeping her voice pleasant, with her volume low enough that it wouldn't drown out the little crystal bell set just above the top of the frame, still ringing its tiny alert of her presence. "Oh, isn't this just a beautiful little shop! What do you sell here -- oh, cordials!" So many crystal decanters, with a full spectrum of liquids adding their own shifts to the rainbow-filled light. "Yes, that's right, I did say production could begin again! And you're already back in business, just a mere two moons later. It's quite impressive, really, especially given the variety you've already got in stock. I suppose there must have been a true demand motivating such a fast revival, Miss -- Mister -- um... excuse me..."

She looked around again. A complete lack of ponies met her gaze in every way.

"...does... anypony work here?"

Silence proudly stepped in and tried to provide an equal opportunity answer.

"...hello?"

Consistency seized the throne, and Cadance went through a brief moment where as far as she was concerned, consistency could have it. But she rallied quickly.

"I... um... just wanted to talk. To whoever runs this beautiful shop. Somepony must work here, right? Or maybe -- you just stepped out and left the door unlocked, because... well, it's not like anypony ever stole..." Not under Sombra's rule, at least not more than once. "So maybe I should just wait... until you come back, and..."

...if there's nopony here, then who am I talking to?

Cadence repressed most of the sigh, then looked around again. There was a closed door behind the sales counter, presumably leading to a storage room. And while the display cases and shelves were, at most, translucent, the door and counter were mostly opaque, which meant --

-- actually, now that she was looking directly towards the counter...

She carefully trotted forward, being exceptionally cautious in her movements and keeping a constant proprioceptionary eye on her wings: crystal ponies were, on average, a little smaller than those from Equestria's three main races and even with that size difference factored in, the aisles were still exceptionally narrow ones. It took ten precise hoofsteps against tone-sounding floor, with a pause to let the music fade from each, before she began to hear the too-fast breathing.

It was hard to glance down behind the mostly-opaque sales counter in a gentle manner. But she tried.

"Hello?"

The iridescent green fetal position ball of pony trembling against the rose base, finally visible as more than a shadow, said something. Between the near-whisper, vibration, and the fact that the mouth was tucked into the body, she couldn't figure out any of the content. It could have been a greeting. It could have been a gasp. She was desperately hoping it hadn't been a prayer.

"...please look up?"

Reluctantly, the body uncurled just enough to let her see the jawline: a stallion, and an exceptionally small one.

"Princ --" and he stopped.

He was breathing far too quickly, and she -- seemed to be on the verge of matching him. She hadn't felt her own pace shifting, didn't know why it was happening. But the sudden urge to weep... that she understood all too well, and far too much time passed as she fought it off. Sparkling grey eyes watched the process without blinking, or comprehension. But fear... fear stocked every shelf, and there weren't enough cordials in the Empire to make it go away.

"Talk to me," Cadance said. It had not been an order. To her own ears, it had sounded like a plea.

The little head shook, almost tucked back in.

"You heard the Decree," she helplessly said. "Everypony did, didn't they? I hate the Ear, I hate just touching it, but it works. You know what I asked for. There has to be something you want to say about -- well..." Her volume was dropping. "...you're affected by the new laws more than a lot of ponies. Your product was banned for... a long time. You wouldn't have this shop under Sombra. You wouldn't..." Be. "...have this new opportunity. But it's hard to make a perfect change. Maybe I made the taxes too high. A minimum age requirement for purchase could have been the wrong idea, or that age is too low, or I should have added more years... I don't know, and part of that is just because I've never sold this sort of thing. But -- this is your business. You must have some ideas about what the government should and shouldn't do with it, just because it is yours. When it comes to the new policies, it puts you in a position to offer --" and it was so hard not to swallow before saying the words, it was becoming so hard to talk at all "-- honest criticism."

He breathed, and just barely.

"So -- please..." And with that, pleading had become begging. "Talk to me. About those policies, which I know you're aware of, or you wouldn't have been able to open at all. What could I have done better? Is business good just on word of mouth, or should the palace be doing more to let ponies know you're out here? Does your tax burden feel too high? You -- you have to have an opinion..."

And based on what resulted, his only expressed opinion was that breathing was becoming harder by the moment.

Her next move -- the last move it felt like she could make at all -- was done on instinct, and she didn't realize it had been a mistake until much later. She trotted around the counter. She slowly lowered herself to the floor, about half a body length away. And she tucked herself into the smallest bundle of life she could manage to become -- which, even as the smallest of the alicorns, left her too much larger than he was, something which blocked out the symphony of rainbows to cast a looming shadow...

But in that moment, all she felt was that it was the last thing she could do to make herself into less of a threat. Wings still at her sides, head low, facing partially away from him, with her horn partially covered by an awkwardly-positioned foreleg.

"...please?"

Silence, but for that too-fast breathing.

"I..."

No, there was one thing she could say, the thing which had worked with Jasper, if only for a moment. "...I give you an exemption from the Decree. Long enough to tell me why you won't use it, because... there have to be things you wanted to say, you must have wanted to say some of them when he was still here and... he's gone, he's dead, and..."

...I'm not him.

Please... please don't make me into him...

The words were a whisper. But they were words.

"You -- you said --"

Her head came up. Eyes which had begun to brighten due to freshly-coating moisture started to lighten from within. "Yes?"

"...that if we could only say something nice... not to say anything at all..."

Feathers trembled, her tail vibrated, her entire body seemed to be trying to collapse in on itself --

"-- and I... I obey..."

She had never learned how to teleport, despite all of Celestia's attempts at instruction. Never managed to master the feel, and part of that had been from a subconscious refusal to surrender sky and ground for even the most momentary experience of the nothing that was the between. But she found herself outside the cordial shop without being entirely sure how she'd gotten there, with no memory of the transition, and for the briefest of moments, she thought she'd done it. Right up until she heard the final crash from the impacted display cases she'd pushed aside during her gallop.

She stood in place, trying only to breathe, letting the tears come to their own natural conclusion. It took some time. And then she moved towards another shop.

Then another.

And another...

[/hr]

It was an old joke, and one she'd never found particularly funny, let alone seen any truth lurking within. But Celestia had been the one to casually mention it, during a talk about bad assumptions, battle tactics, and the disasters which came when the two combined. Cadance had asked her if she had any which came to mind immediately, and after an extremely visible sorting period, the eldest of the alicorns -- no, elder, for at the time, there had been but two -- had said the words.

'Well... for starters, I thought there was no way a minotaur could be faster on the ground than a pony. And it turned out they are. Over a very short distance.'

She'd been surprised, and more than a little disbelieving: it was the latter which had gotten into her response. 'How?'

And Celestia had ruefully smiled. 'They... have less legs to sort out.'

Over a very short distance: she'd never been able to picture that. Two legs versus four: it didn't make any sense to have two win.

And over a very long one...

He was in excellent shape: that had been obvious at the very first glance. Muscles everywhere, with many of them being used to support more muscles. But that was in the upper body. The lower had visible strength, but not as much of it -- and during anything approaching an extended run, had the task of carrying all that muscle mass around for the duration.

He wasn't panting when he came around the corner, hand using a newly-placed street sign (written in Equestrian, planted for the benefit of those six -- seven tourists) for a pivot point, swinging his entire body around without losing speed. But he was close to it, and the sweat flowed down his body, outlining those muscles in rivers of frustration.

"Found you!" His pace began to drop as he approached the fountain, desperate (and, to her, low-speed) run starting to slow into a more normal walk, at least once she took the strangely hard hoof impacts out. (The road held against them, and threatened to do so forever.) "One set of wings in the whole red-tinged Empire, one alicorn out of three in the world -- the only thing easier to spot than you should be a red cape, and I've still been chasing you down the whole damn morning! Couldn't get in to see you yesterday, couldn't make your Guards understand that anyone would want to see you, and then you went right over my horns..."

She slowly pushed herself upright. The crystal fountain was... actually, she didn't want to think about what must have gone into that beauty right now, much less the orders required to bring it forth. But the water had been pure, and tears needed recharging.

Her face was dry now, but for a damp snout. But the tracks were still worn into her fur, they made her reluctant to fully face him -- and so she turned away.

Or it could have been something else.

Still... certain things remained visible from the back.

"...what the buck happened to your mane?"

She almost smiled. Instead, she quietly said "You're not the one I wanted to notice," and refused to turn.

He was getting closer. His breathing was somewhat labored. "Most of yesterday, part of the morning, trying to get to you without charging the palace. Doing it the right way because I figured that somewhere, you had to have a Guard who'd at least wonder why I wanted to see you so badly. To stop you -- and it's too late, it's way past noon by now and it's too red-tinged late..."

The fountain... was one of many, each beautiful in its own different way: the only thing they had in common was the horror which had inspired them. Every distinct district in the capital had a central fountain, and all of them had seeming rust at the base. (It didn't change the taste of the water, at least after she told herself that for the sixth time.) Cadance hadn't gone far for this one, had remained in the primary shopping district, the only pony on the streets at all. Because...

"...do you know what you did?" Iron Will demanded, and the words kicked against her flanks.

It felt as if it was taking an effort to keep her eyes open. "They're hiding," she softly replied. "They're all staying out of sight, as best they can. So if the Guards try to find them, summon them to the palace so they can speak with me, they might have a chance. Some of them are better at it than others. Maybe a few have secret cellars or cubbyholes from his days, hiding places which -- never worked. But they also felt they had to go to work, or school, so they went, and... maybe there's a channel of communication, something I don't know about. The magic for the Ear might not have come from nowhere. Lesser spells, passing the word from building to building, or just a single brave pony, trying to gallop ahead..."

He charged.

He had been behind her. And then he was in front of her, before she could truly reconcile the movement, recognize that movement had even taken place. But two legs had moved at a short-burst speed which four could not match, and now he was standing there, great breaths going in and out through widely-flared nostrils, hands clenched into fists. And she couldn't move.

Lost within his shadow.

"YOU -- BUCKING -- IDIOT!"

Muscles gleaming. Arms motionless at his sides. But hands vibrating, and eyes focused into an anger she'd never seen...

"...what?"

"Do you know how I found you?" Another shout, but not as loud this time: there was enough room left in her hearing for echoes, and some of them almost resembled the sounds of hooves moving across crystal floors, muffled by walls. "I followed the trail of fear, Princess! Every little refractor you made collapse in their own store, that one mare who was still shaking behind the tree in her garden, and I don't even want to think about what would have happened if you'd gone into a school! I told you! You can't give them an --"

She... had meant to try a school next. The instinctive honesty of children --

"-- it takes one pony!" She didn't know where the volume had come from. She could only hope there was more of it. "One pony to talk, one pony who honestly criticizes me and has nothing happen! One so that everypony else can see it's safe! That pony is somewhere in the Empire, they have to be, maybe galloping ahead to -- warn... They can't all be -- somewhere, one pony, Mr. Will, one pony who isn't -- isn't..."

"...broken?"

His knuckles were going white.

" -- I... I didn't say..."

He stared at her. Stared down. She wasn't used to that, not from anypony -- anyone -- other than Celestia. And it felt like his height was the least of it.

There was silence for a time, and it seemed as if there were more hoofsteps within it. Approaching walls, and perhaps even windows. There might have even been a quartet nervously proceeding down the road, but she decided that was probably somepony in that general direction who'd just left a window open.

"No," the minotaur finally said. Back to a normal speaking level, at least for now, and his hands were beginning to relax. "Maybe that wasn't what you were going for, at least verbally. Afraid, that could have been it. Scared, sure. But broken was somewhere in there, at least for your mind. Princess, I know what you want to do. I can't be mad at you for that, and -- I'm not, whether you wanna believe it or not. But I've been charging around for hours, following your trail, seeing all the little refractors who dropped in your wake. I know you hate that, I know you're trying to stop it, and that's what all this is supposed to be about. But you made the wrong decision, and you're following up on bad with worse."

"I'm their Princess." It was the only protest she seemed to have. "I have to be the one who --"

And he cut her off. With a raised hand, a snort, and a stomp of his left hoof.

"Yeah, maybe it could happen that way," he shrugged. "One pony says something and nothing happens, so all the others feel they could try to speak. Or... they figure that pony's working with you. Being a, I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the term, stalking horse. They don't talk, they read off a script, and the boldest ones, they'll see it and talk -- and that's how we identify and get rid of the boldest, ain't it?"

The gasp went into her wings, straightened her tail. "I -- I wouldn't! He would have, but --"

"-- they don't know! But it's what they're thinking about, Princess! Because they were slaves, they were slaves up until two moons ago, and slaves learn every trick the masters have to find the ones who might rally the rest into trying for freedom! Sombra was pretty damn good at what he did, wasn't he? Held off the other two, even beat them back if you believe some of the oldest stories, forced a thousand-year stalemate because there was a chance that when he showed up again, he wouldn't have to worry about them any more. One Tartarus-freed expert at being a dictator, along with being a bucking master. They've got a lot of reasons to be afraid, Princess, and yeah, they're putting it on you. He ain't around, so it's going to you, isn't it? And you don't want that, because you aren't him. But they can't see it, and they can't hear it, because you talked yesterday and do you know what those words were?"

Her wings flapped, brought her up to his eye level and maintained the hover. "They were freedom! To speak! The most fundamental freedom, the deepest right there is!"

He was staring at her again. She did her best to give it right back, and found it more difficult than she ever could have imagined.

"This is kind of a longshot here," and the tone was conversational. "But hey, there's a chance, so why not? So -- you ever met a mare named Fluttershy? Yellow fur, pink mane, three butterflies on each flank, probably a really pretty pony if you've got the eyes to see that sort of thing and I can't get the hang of it full-time, name's kind of what you might call indicative of her personality, at least what I got to see of it --"

She blinked. "Fluttershy? How do you know --"

It got a deep, bitter laugh out of him. "Seriously? Small continent we've got here, huh? No matter what the geography tries to say. But I know she's never told you about me, because you didn't know me at all in the garden. So... she's the pony I had to give a refund to. Because she showed up at my little session, listened to my words, and -- she took the wrong thing from it. One thing, and just kept flying with it. Now, I've reworked my lecture since. Done what I could to keep it from happening again. And because I gave the wrong words to the wrong pony at exactly the wrong moment, and they were my words, part of what happened with her is my fault. I'm not gonna deny that. And I'm thinkin' the same thing happened with you."

Fluttershy -- attending an assertiveness training seminar? She had known the mare exactly long enough not to see it.

"But y'know something? I ain't taking the whole blame on that one." He spread his arms as his eyes rolled slightly: an injured air of deliberately false innocence. "Because yeah, it was my words that triggered her mistake. But she's the one who kept making it. I talked to some ponies on my way out of town, I told you that yesterday. They said her friends were trying to warn her. Trying to pull her back. But she had her words, even if they started as mine, and they just kept going around and around in her head because she'd convinced herself they were the only solution. Taking up more and more space until there was pretty much nothing else left. My fault for giving her something bad she could listen to -- but hers for not listening to anypony else. And I rework my material, come all the way into the North to do my good deed for a lifetime, and guess what?"

He leaned closer. His voice dropped. The oddly-silly tie fell away from his broad chest.

"The Ancients felt like doing a little goring today, because the first part happens again!"

She wanted to pull back. She would not.

"I heard what you said, yes," Cadance told him. "And I found some inspiration in it, because you're right. They were slaves, and in their hearts, they still are. But if I just find that one pony --"

"And now we've got the second part!"

Those couldn't be hoofsteps, could they? Perhaps his own two were just tapping, so fast and so close...

"You listened to me once, and you got the wrong words, somehow," he snorted with frustration. "Plus those words are all you wanna hear. But you listened to me once -- so let's go for twice and see if something else sinks in. Princess -- Cadance -- you tried to solve a problem with the problem. You gave them an --"

And from well below both their eye levels, "...Princess?"

They both glanced down.

Cadance had never seen Lapis trembling so fast, and that was being compared against a depressingly large collection of experience. The blue coat was breaking up light in vibrating waves, sending assaults of fearful prisms into the water. "It's... it's going on three now... the Cabinet... your budget meeting... I had to... I'm sorry, I am, but I..." She risked the briefest of glances at the other party. "...um... I know that if you want to speak to... to... that's your choice, and I don't want to make it seem like I would ever... or interrupt... but it's nearly three, and the Cabinet... they...

"Lapis..." There were no words which would calm the little secretary. There never were. And yet she still tried. "...you did the right thing in coming out to find me. The budget meeting is important." Because there was a chance that her one brave pony was there, although that required a wince hard enough to let the force shove aside a lot of prior sessions. And as far as interruptions went...

"Mr. Will?" Cadance continued. "You may have noticed my having spoken to you. Face to face. Eye to eye. With both eyes. And that, along with several other, more physical clues, might suggest that I'm not Fluttershy. Now if you truly want to pick up this discussion later, feel free to drop by the palace. We may have dinner. In fact, we might start having it up to nine times. For now, I have a budget meeting to attend. One where I'm hoping my Cabinet will be honest with me, and criticize the proposals. Lapis, I'm going to put you in a field bubble and fly you back with me: it'll be quicker, please don't be afraid of it. Good day, Mr. Will. Until we can call it a good evening --"

"-- what are you so afraid of?"

The words had been oddly soft, as gentle as her own, far too careful to have emerged from such a rough body...

The question went in. It went deep. And it landed in a place where if she was very lucky, she would never have to think about it again.

"--or you could just get on the train. Your choice, really. Please don't forget to submit your invoice. Good day, Mr. Will."

She took Lapis into her field, blue on blue, trying to ignore the soft gasp. Got a little altitude, turned towards the castle...

The minotaur spoke, one last time. She mostly ignored it, and flew.

"...Princess?"

"What is it, Lapis?" There was no point in confronting her about having spoken without criticism, either, although Cadance supposed somepony could have said something about the lack of attention to detail in nearly missing the crucial meeting.

"...he... he just..."

She waited.

"...you heard him... didn't you?"

"Yes," she calmly said, and dodged a thermal.

"...he just said you were being stupid..."

"I know."

"...and you just... you..." She heard the little mare swallow. "...the Cabinet meeting... you're..."

"We'll get there on time."

"...you're not going to like this..."

[/hr]

The light reflected off the conference table, scattered throughout the meeting room without hitting a single refractive coat.

"So they're all sick," Cadence repeated. The words were calm. They had to be.

"...that's what they said. And that they'd be happy... to try and reach a make-up meeting tomorrow... or even late tonight..."

Let me guess. Steadily, "After nine?"

"...but they didn't want to get you sick."

The twelve-hour crystal flu. There could have been a medical journal article in that, if the disease had just actually existed.

"One pony," Cadance evenly said. And that pony hadn't been in her own Cabinet.

"...Princess? Is there... one pony you want me to... summon?"

"No," Cadance said, and tried to keep the weight out of her words. "Not a one." Because they won't come to me of their own will, and they're afraid when I come to them, when it's one on one, when they don't have numbers or any way to support each other, when the one who might speak is isolated...

No. I'm not beaten yet. Sombra's not going to win. Because there's the strength of one, and there's so little of that left, after everything he did --

-- but there's another kind of pony strength...

[/hr]

She looked at the Ear, and desperately hoped it would be for the last time. Reared up, brought both forehooves down on it.

"I'm sorry, everypony," an entire Empire announced on her behalf, "because I know this is going to disrupt everypony's evenings, and dinners, and the late work shifts, and -- everything. But this is an emergency, and that means I have to issue one more..." The words seemed oddly bitter in her mouth. "...Princess Decree."

The roads took a deep breath.

"Everypony in the capital is to gather in front of the palace by seven tonight. Everypony."

A long pause.

"The first Decree will still be in effect."

She dropped back to floor level, and waited for the last scream to fade away. It seemed to take far longer than it should.

And now...

...now, it'll be the herd.

The Only Constant Is Change

The Empire was painted in rose.

It was approaching seven in the evening now, and sunset was coming along with it. Sunset over the Empire did interesting things as the variable hues of the darkening sky interacted with buildings and streets, changed hues and coated the land in new shades. Tonight, the atmosphere was rendered in soft oranges and yellows, and when that light reached the surface... the world itself became rose.

Except for where there were shadows. There, it changed into blood.

Cadance looked out through the space created by the open doors which led to the palace's main balcony, three stories up, and saw so many of those shadows being cast over the central approach road. Most of them were from buildings, right up until the edge of the open space which surrounded the palace -- and after that, they were being cast by ponies. So many ponies, slowly shuffling forward, every movement sounding a note from the crystal road. No part of that song sounded anything like Sombra's compositions. It was a music she hadn't heard before, stretched-out beats, reluctant bars...

It was something very much like a dirge.

She took a slow breath, looked behind her, and saw only Equestrians -- and Lapis, of course, shivering and trembling and forever waiting for that next order. Her staff, and the rookie Guards, were already in front of the palace, directing the arriving crowd into their waiting positions.

Back to watching the funeral march.

One pony. It just takes one pony, and this is -- everypony in the capital. Parents silently escorting their children, elders being helped along by the younger generation, foals gently carried in saddlebags. There has to be one...

And then there was the sound of hooves behind her, sounding something much less than music.

"Princess?" An Equestrian accent: she glanced back.

The four Guards -- two Equestrian, two crystal -- snout-nudged a frustrated, somewhat battered, slightly proud (in spite of himself), and very nervous-looking stallion out in front of them. Her husband raised his head a little, making an extra effort against the weight of the restraint which covered his horn -- but didn't quite manage to meet her eyes.

"I --" he said, and that was all she felt like letting him get away with.

"-- we'll talk later, Captain." For what might be a very long time. "You come second." (Lapis' trembling increased.) "The Empire has priority. Everypony, thank you for bringing him in --" and the two natives were already galloping away, racing to join the swelling herd before the deadline arrived "-- oh..."

Her head dipped, and a member of the Equestrian delegation used it as an excuse to approach. "Princess? We found these... we're not sure how they got into that room, but... this is an official gathering, and we thought..."

She looked at her crown and regalia, suspended inside the mare's rust-hued field. Several seconds passed while she kept looking.

"Thank you," she finally said, and the edge of the bubble receded, exposing a portion for her to initially field-grip. The transfer was made, and the weight was back. It was funny, really, just how heavy it was.

One of the Equestrian guards -- the youngest in the group, the one her husband spent the most time complaining about, the personal curse placed on Shining's existence for which no counter existed -- looked out across the crowd. "That... is a lot of ponies," he swallowed.

"I know," Cadance quietly said.

"Princess -- if something happened -- I know the Captain can get a shield up quickly, but there's barely any clear space to anchor the base --" which was drastically overestimating the actual amount of clear space "-- and with that many bodies around, pressing against it before it can harden... I don't know... if we could stop..."

"I know," Cadance evenly repeated. "That's the idea."

She heard the blink. "...Princess?"

"It's called a herd," she said, and heard Celestia echoing inside her next words. "It's the power of numbers, Mr. Sentry. It's a weakness for us, much of the time: that under the wrong circumstances, we can so easily fall into moving as one, with reacting as a single entity being so much worse. But there's also a strength in it. You have to try and introduce a new concept into the group, and that's seldom easy -- but if it works, then the herd may move as one. In the direction they need to move. They just need..."

me?

"...somepony strong enough to guide them."

He swallowed.

"What if they all move the wrong way?"

"Such as?"

"...straight ahead?"

And Shining answered for her. "Then it's going to be one Tartartus of a training exercise. Cadance --"

She had meant to cut him off again. The chimes of the clock did it first.

"-- get ready to do your job, Captain."

She stepped out onto the balcony and looked out across -- no, not the Empire, not as a whole, for those outside the capital had been exempted by the wording of her Decree. But...

...thousands? Easily. They had yet to conduct a full census, but it was at least thousands just in the capital, the ones who had survived Sombra's reign to reach this day. Some homes hadn't needed to empty out for their residents to reach this point. Some had been empty for a very long time.

There were so many ponies. And in that moment, it felt as if every last one of them was standing upon her back.

The sound fetching-and-projecting spell, the one Celestia had taught her, generally used at festivals and huge gatherings (this huge?) and the largest press conferences, not that the Empire had a press... she had cast that before anypony approached. Her own words would easily reach the crowd -- but when a pony spoke at all, the spell would focus upon them and carry those words to every ear within. The range was limited, as was the duration -- but with Cadance performing the working, it had covered the grounds around the palace, and would last for what should be long enough.

She took a breath. The Empire heard it, and held its own.

Cadance looked out over the crowd, every possible part of a shivering spectrum tinged in rose and blood.

"Hello," she began, and immediately decided it had been the wrong word. "I... know you're all wondering why I called everypony here tonight..."

The spell only focused on words. She could not truly hear the sound of so much sweat falling from trembling bodies, could she? Even when there were so many...

"...I -- wanted to talk to you. To all of you, without the -- " it was so hard not to spit the word "-- Ear. But more than that... I wanted all of you to have a chance at speaking to me. Because... there's so many of you, and... there's just me up here, only me, and... look around, everypony. Please. Look at your friends and family and neighbors, all here together, all standing together. Can you see how many of you there truly are? Can you see that --"

you've been gathered into a single area where everypony could be attacked at once

She blinked. Her front knees went weak.

The thought had been her own -- and yet it had not.

The herd was gathered. The herd was afraid. And with so many ponies below her, the scent of terror was rising up from them in a great invisible cloud. With every breath, she took it in. And for a single second, it had overridden her, forced her brain into thinking the same way they were, every action she took perceived through a veil of purest pain...

There's too many.

It's too strong at the ground level.

Whichever way one goes, they could all go.

And any who somehow hold onto their own will might be trampled in the stampede.

She could hear the Equestrians behind her, how their breathing had quickened. Shining, with his personal fight audible in the repeated impact of his tail against his flanks, using the sting of the little whip to shock himself into focus...

This was a mistake.

This was... another mistake.

I can't do this.

I shouldn't...

But there was nopony else.

She had been silent too long. The crystal ponies knew it. Everypony did. And even those who weren't ponies, because in her desperate survey of the herd, looking for any signs of turning, of breaking, she had just spotted rays of descending Sun glinting off a pair of bent horns.

"-- you're stronger than me." It had been too weak, and she knew it. "All of you put together. And... you heard the first Decree. It... it wasn't a trap, it wasn't trying to hurt you or trick you. It was trying to let you know that... you can speak. That's your right. It's... the deepest right there is, maybe even the first. You can tell me... anything. And with all of you here together, everypony will see that... anypony who talks, who says anything to me, even the most critical things... nothing will happen to them. Ever. Not for words."

They were staring at her.

"...please," and she fought their terror back as her wings threatened to spread, every awakened instinct seeking the quickest route to escape. "It's been so long for all of you... there must be things you've wanted to say. Honesty. Criticism. Questions. I -- tried to dictate the form of your speech, the way the words could emerge. That was wrong, and I'm sorry, I am. It was a mistake. But... I'm new at this, I'm going to make mistakes, and -- somepony has to tell me. You're all here now, all of you, and you can say anything to me, anything at all, any piece of honesty, any criticism, any question --"

They were waiting for the culling to begin.

Begging. Pleading. And there was still a place beyond that to go, as the horrible weight of their old lives soaked into her fur, as every feather trembled, as she realized that so many mistakes along the path of her life had been hers, and that included every decision which had brought her to her horn. "-- please... it just takes one pony --"

"-- why are you still here?"

The spell gathered up the words, sent them to every ear on the grounds. And but for two ponies, the world froze.

Cadance's body turned, fast, too fast, faster than she should have let herself move in front of other ponies, but there had been a voice, one she knew by heart, every tremble and quaver and shake...

...and Lapis was stepping out onto the balcony, illuminated by rose and blood in the last seconds of Sun.

She was just barely moving. Every knee threatened to give out, and her hooves touched the crystal as if any impact would make the world crack. But still, she moved. Forcing herself, hoofstep after hoofstep.

"You... you said you came to save us. To -- free us. And you -- you killed him, and... we thought... we thought there was a chance, but... you stayed. You moved into the palace, where he was, and..."

The little secretary's breaths were too fast, too shallow. Every word brought her that much closer to a faint. And yet she approached.

"...you -- never asked. Maybe... there was some kind of prophecy, and there's a mark, but... those aren't us. They should never speak for us. You said you came to free us... but then you stayed, and you never asked, you never asked what anypony thought or wanted, and... if you stay... if you come from nowhere and say you're just here to change our lives for the better, but then you just take over and you stay..."

There was a new scent rising from the herd, and it too was flush with terror. But it seemed like an older one, somehow. The scent of memory.

Lapis stopped, less than a body length away from Cadance. Too close to get away from anything, anything at all, every possible way an alicorn might be able to bring death.

"...what makes you any different from him?"

They stood together, in the single moment between Sun having been lowered and Moon being raised, with history waiting.

Cadance felt her body pull back, her legs arcing away, the moisture beginning to coat her eyes, her own control starting to slip as the fear of generations soaked in and --

-- one thought.

One thought and you love me.

I look out over the crowd. I spread the casting as far it might be able to go. And then they might all love me.

Gather them every night at sunset, and they will love me.

Forever.

'-- what are you so afraid of?'

Myself.

She forced herself to look down, met the trembling blue gaze, and gave her answer to the voice of an Empire.

"This."

She tossed her head back, twisted her body as hard as she could, for she did not want to ignite her corona for any reason. Threw all her strength into the movement --

-- the regalia skidded across crystal, came to a stop against a little column, sounding one final screeching note. The crown flew out over the crowd, and where it landed, she neither saw nor cared. And her final words to an Empire were soft, gentle, and true.

"I abdicate."

She trotted past a slumping Lapis with her eyes closed, feeling the tears flow, the stares from the Equestrians, and everything coming up from the herd...

"...Katydid?" The voice cared about her. The voice loved her. The voice didn't understand.

She couldn't seem to open her eyes. "Get your things, Shining. Just enough to get through a few days of travel. You've probably already got half of that in your luggage. I'll... take just enough for the same amount of time. Only what's ours: make sure to leave everything else behind. They can send the rest after us, if they want to. Everypony else -- these are my final orders: all of the delegation Equestrians in the Empire are to depart, as soon as they can. No more than two days, and the ones who are living with the crystal ponies should try to leave faster, because... nopony wants an overseer in their house. But Shining and I will be on the last train out tonight. There should be just enough time to catch it. And there's a cordial shop on Clarity Avenue. I accidentally broke most of the owner's stock. Please repay him. That's... that's it, I think. So..."

And from that youngest of Guards, "...Princess?"

It got her eyes open.

"Don't call me that," Cadance said. "Ever again."

The spell was still going. The crowd was beginning to talk, and her own working carried a few of those words to her ears. She recognized the voices: they belonged to her former and not-at-all-sick Cabinet members.

"...what do we do?"

"I -- guess we... finalize the budget? And then... um... what was next on the old schedule? Inviting the other nations to set up their embassies again?"

"I think that was it. We should -- I think we -- what should -- Mustangia? They were always good allies, before he broke the ties. They should be the first nation we invite back!"

"...does Mustangia still exist?"

" -- I -- don't know..."

She dismissed the working, listened to the silence, and went to pack.

It hadn't taken long. There hadn't seemed to be very much which was hers. Just about nothing, really. And then she'd flown to the train station, carrying a silent Shining with her in a field bubble, they'd been just in time, and... there had been a few crystal ponies at the station. Not many: only the fastest, the ones who could get from the palace to the tracks during that little time span. And they had quietly watched her board the train.

Minutes. Silent minutes moving through the mostly-empty train, finding a suitable vacant compartment, and then Cadance had stared out the window as what had never been her land passed before her eyes, until they crossed the border and all which remained to be seen was fast-blowing snow.

"Chartreuse," she said.

Her husband was often eloquent in the face of pressure. "Huh?"

"You dyed yourself chartreuse. You hate chartreuse."

"I -- kind of figured that if I didn't want to look at myself, then maybe nopony else would either."

And back to silence.

"Katydid? What... what are we doing?"

"I thought... Vanhoover for a few days. Just try to rest together. And then maybe Ponyville. We should see Twilight: you really do owe her more than a few visits, even if the military stallion in you is nervous about intruding on her command area -- and I mean the library. After that... well, the news will have reached Celestia by then, I'm sure, probably right after the first delegation members get back to Canterlot. And maybe she'll wait for me to reach her, or she might just come out to find me, and... but... that's why we're going to stay in Vanhoover for a while. Because then she can find me, if she wants to. And..."

So much snow. Everything isolated by the cold.

She leaned her face against the window, felt the chill soak in through her snout.

"...I'll tell her what happened. About the mistakes. About all the mistakes. And whatever she says after that, she -- says. Eventually, she'll run out of things to say. And then it's Ponyville, and... the rest of our lives. Whatever those can be."

He was staring at her.

"I should take that restraint off," she said. Because that one rookie had still been fumbling with it when everything had... happened. "Hold still for a second --"

"-- so this is real?"

She nodded.

"We're not going back? This isn't a bluff, or some kind of plan? We're really just -- leaving?"

"I abdicated," she softly told him. "I'm the only pony who could do that, and I did it. It's over, Shining. Because... Lapis was right."

"You're not him," he insisted. "You were never him --"

"-- because I did something he would never do." It felt as if the ice outside was beginning to coat the compartment. "Shining... you always tell me you're military. It's a joke sometimes. But it also influences the way you act, and how you see the world. You hate a permanent retreat, and that's part of why you're reacting like this. But I want you to look at what we did in the Empire from that perspective, just for a second, add that to the way the crystal ponies think and feel and everything they've been through -- and then tell me whether the nation we entered would think we came in conquest."

And now the cold had frozen his tongue.

"I made a mistake," Cadance told her soul-link. "I made just about every mistake possible, and Celestia... she made a big one, just sending us up there and assuming we could just -- move in. She might yell at me, but I think I can yell back. A lot. It's going to be hard... it's always been hard to call her out, but... she needs her share, this time. But so many mistakes were mine, and -- the Decrees, Shining." It was her first laugh since the whole thing had started, and it was hollow. "Isn't that a stupid word? Decree? I know what it really is now..."

There was a knock at the compartment door. They both glanced towards it, and saw the big hand waving behind the little window. And somehow, the motion came across as -- shy.

"Come in," Cadance said, and wasn't sure why.

The door opened and the minotaur, still in the half-crouch required to use the window, entered. He looked at the occupants, then glanced at the two benches they were occupying. "Mind if I sit on the floor?"

"Go ahead," Cadance told him, and he folded his legs carefully. "Shining Armor, Iron Will. I don't believe the two of you ever met, unless my husband ran past you while fleeing from his own rookies."

Iron Will said the only thing he probably could have said. "Huh?"

Cadance sighed. "We haven't discussed it yet, but I think he decided honest criticism wasn't good for a marriage. He was probably right. Are you on your way home, Mr. Will?"

The minotaur hesitated. "I'm -- on the train with you, Cadance."

"Princess," Shining Armor automatically insisted.

"Shining?" Cadance gently said.

"-- yes?"

"Shut up. What do you mean, Mr. Will?"

Another pause. "After what happened, I kinda thought you'd need someone you could talk to. Someone who didn't work for you, and wasn't in love with you. Someone you just -- knew. A little. Someone neutral, you know? And I heard some of what you two were saying, while I was coming down the hall. You're not that loud, but the train's really quiet when it's this empty, and I don't know if you closed the door all the way, and... I heard that last bit. So you know what a decree is now, huh?"

She sighed, and found she couldn't meet the minotaur's quiet eyes. "Trying to solve a problem with the problem. I was giving them orders. And I didn't want to see it. Everything I said was wrong, everything I did --"

"-- nah."

She looked at him then, and was surprised to see him grinning.

"You think I did something right?"

"Yeah. The last thing."

Without sarcasm, "I agree. My abdication was really the best thing I ever could have done for anypony."

"Not what I meant, Cadance -- and not how it came across to these ears. The last thing you did was give them an order. The only order you can ever try to give a slave."

And now she was staring at him. "What's that?"

The smile was smaller now, which concentrated the sincerity. "'Be free'." And before she could even begin to recover from that, he added, "You did screw up one other thing, though, at least in my opinion. You said speaking's the biggest right. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that's how it works. Just about anyone can find their voice. What counts is having someone listen. The little blue refractor talked: you found your one pony after all. But you heard her, and..."

He shrugged, leaned back against the door. It creaked under his weight.

"You gave them their voices," he told her. "Let's see what they say."

On their second day in Vanhoover, the last of the Equestrian delegation got off the train. Some of them only did so briefly, intending to stretch out their legs and sample a little local cuisine before heading back out. Of that number, a percentage asked around, were told which hotel Cadance was staying at (for it wasn't as if she was particularly hard to miss), and a few of those decided to take their own rest before going home. But others would ride the rail in a more-or-less straight line, heading for Canterlot, the press which wasn't in the Empire was in Vanhoover (and she still wasn't particularly hard to miss) and had presumably sent notice of a rather unexpected presence...

Celestia would know. Any day, any hour, she would know. And Cadance moved about the settled zone, sometimes with Shining, sometimes without, toured the sights without seeing them, shopped without caring about the purchases, and prepared her words.

Some of them were shared. She talked to Shining about what she planned to say, and it could almost approach the comedic, watching his face as she prepared to verbally enter the realm of what so many ponies would have considered to be blasphemy. And she talked to Iron Will, for the minotaur had decided to stay for a day or two, perhaps longer. "Just while things shake out in the Empire," he'd said. "They still need me, and I might go up and give it one more try, while I'm this close. But they don't need any outsiders this minute, so... well, my assistants will be okay for a little longer. I can wait it out. For a while." She didn't openly question his reasons, for they were his, and... he was someone to talk to who wasn't Shining, for Shining loved her, would do anything to support her -- and that meant that when criticism was truly needed, his first instinct remained retreat.

On the third day, minotaur and pony wandered through a public park, with the former curious to check out the local maze, and discussed assertiveness.

"So it's not so much about yelling at everypony else?"

"It's more about yelling at yourself until you get the courage to act on the words -- hey..."

"What is it?"

He was peering through low branches: greater height meant he often had to duck or risk being scratched by evergreen needles, and it had taken him a moment to find a safe place for straightening up. "Thought I saw a little rainbow there."

"Not in this weather. Trust me on that. We'd need some rain first, and then --"

"-- not what I meant. Like a reflection off somepony's coat."

"A crystal?"

"Maybe..."

Both looked. Neither found anypony.

On the fourth day, there was a knock on the hotel room door, where the couple was packing again. And with that, they found Cadance.

"Princess?" said the most senior mare member of her former Cabinet as she shivered within the doorway.

Cadance blinked. Stared. Sighed. "Don't -- it's just Cadance, Tanza. Please come in. What brings you into Equestria? I'm guessing it's something my husband packed by accident. If you need to go through his luggage, and I'm glad you didn't arrive any later --"

"-- it's you, Princ -- miss -- I... can we talk? Please? I'm here on behalf of the Cabinet, and... we just need to talk. It's..." The deep blue-black mare was dancing in place a little, and that sight was familiar, if somewhat -- slowed. "...important."

She mentally reviewed the train schedule. Plenty of time before they had to start on the journey to Ponyville, where the inevitable argument with Celestia could take place a little closer to home. They'd both agreed that they'd waited in Vanhoover long enough, although Shining's newest source of personal terror was having the inevitable fight take place in front of his sister. "Just give me a few minutes. There's -- someone else who should hear this."

The mare blinked at her. "Some -- someone?"

Cadance nodded, trotted past her, and within minutes, Iron Will had joined the group, suitcase still clutched in his left hand.

"Did something go wrong after I left?" was Cadance's first automatic question. "We didn't hear any stampede or riot, but --"

"-- no," Tanza said. "Everypony was confused. But they just talked a lot, and -- eventually, they went home, and they kept talking there, and... the Cabinet met the next day, a lot of ponies came to our homes before we had a chance to get together, they all wanted to know who was in charge, and some of them wanted to know how we'd decided that, and..." She stopped, with her face assuming the horribly awkward expression of somepony who was still searching for a workable title. "...miss? We met, and..."

A slow, trembling breath.

"...what happened to Mustangia?"

Cadance gently let the words come. "The ponies are still there. But it's part of Saddle Arabia now. It's been... a long time, Tanza. I'm sorry." And the final word had to cover so much...

The mare stared at her own forehooves for a while.

"...come back."

Shining Armor nearly jumped from a sitting start. Iron Will's mouth opened, very slightly. And Cadance --

"-- what?"

"...we know the Empire. We remember what it was... and we know what it could be again. But we don't know the world. What's out there. What it thinks about us, how it wants to deal with us or might take advantage, and... by the time we learn, it might be too late. So the Cabinet talked, and -- we talked to a lot of ponies, and -- we want you to come back."

It took time, to get her feathers back into place, to wipe the shock away and bring her tail back down to the floor.

"Tanza... I'm not a good leader. I'm pretty sure everypony saw that --"

"-- you're new. Like we are. New and old, all at the same time..."

And softly, "I don't want to lead."

Tanza was looking at her. Directly. A first time for everything.

"I don't know if I ever did," Cadance quietly said. "I was expected to. But... it's not me, it's not the heart of me. I don't want power, Tanza."

"We know," the mare steadily responded. "And that's why... you should have it back. Because we talked to everypony, just about everypony there is after we asked them to gather again, and they nearly all agreed... that the best ones to have power should be the ones who would... give it up. But -- it can't be like it was before. We think we need... something new. And the first new thing we need is to say, with me here asking for everypony, after the vote..."

Several deep breaths, until she could assert the words.

"...please help us. But -- not forever. In a new way. And to help us figure out what that new way is. Just until we're ready to take over ourselves. We'll... try to say something if we think -- you're getting it wrong..."

Cadance instinctively looked to her love.

"Wherever you go, Katydid," Shining Armor told her. "Always. But -- you can say no if you want to. You know that."

And then she looked at Iron Will.

Who blinked. "What?"

"Come with us," Cadance softly asked.

All the long moment managed to produce was a very sincere "...huh?"

"Because the Empire does need you, Mr. Will. Because... I need someone to tell me when I'm being stupid, and I'm pretty sure you've more than adequately established your qualifications there. So I'm offering you a job, for as long as you want it. Assertiveness trainer and advisor to the Empire. You can say no too, and I know you're more than capable of it. And even if you say yes now, you can leave later, when you think it's time, and I won't think any less of you for it. Either way, I still owe you an invoice. But -- I am asking you. As --" and she smiled at the words "-- a friend."

His eyes closed, and several seconds passed before she saw the yellow again.

"My assistants... they're -- I didn't tell you before, they're goats. I've got them well-trained, but..."

Cadance slowly nodded. Goats existed on the blade edge between animal and sapient: often smarter than anypony ever expected, but -- not smart enough. "They can't live on their own."

"Not without going wild again, and they'd have a hard time with that, after being with me for so long. I put them up with somepony good while I was up here, but... they need to be with me. And they don't do well on trains..."

"We'll find a way." Cadance smiled. "I happen to know a very powerful long-distance teleporter. Two, actually. And given her usual timing, one of them will probably show up just as we're about to get on the train. So -- will you come?"

Two weeks had passed. (It had taken five days just to agree on the final draft.) And now the Cabinet was assembled in front of the palace, with an Empire surrounding them, in the form of just about every pony within it. Cadance had brought in movie cameras to record the occasion, wound up taking half an hour to explain just what they did, and upon seeing the reaction, realized that the very first truly new business would have to be a cinema.

"So here it is," and the recast spell carried her words to all. "We studied every form of government there is, along with a few that failed, so we'd know what to avoid. And at the end of all of it -- is our Constitution. The laws of power which keep that power distributed between government and the ponies it's meant to help, along with making sure the government doesn't have too much in the first place. Rulership by the consent of the governed. And my current part in this... is to lead your Cabinet, with the understanding that they can override me by majority, at need, until you no longer need me. Oh, and since so many ponies seemed to need a form of address, 'Princess' is now nothing more than the title given to the pony in that position, if you personally feel the need to use one at all. But once a year, the Empire will vote on whether you all still feel I'm needed. And when enough of you say it's time -- I'll step down."

Because that day will come.

And I don't have to do the same thing forever.

There was no spontaneous full outburst of hoof-stomping applause, no total explosion of cheers. But here and there, a few ponies expressed themselves, some of their neighbors followed, and in time...

Their voices would come. Their voices would be heard.

"Copies will be made and sent to every home in the Empire," a crownless Cadance told them all: regalia would be reserved for greeting dignitaries and ambassadors, along with anypony else who might not understand just yet. "Everypony will always know what the laws are, what their rights are, with nothing ever hidden by shadow. But before that can happen -- we need to sign this thing."

Her field fetched a quill -- one of her own feathers, plucked for the occasion as a token of sacrifice -- dipped it in ink, and presented it to the newest, youngest member of the Cabinet, the one who had both proposed and organized the vote which had brought Cadance back.

With a smile, "I think you need to go first."

Lapis took quill between steady teeth and put an extravagant signature on the parchment.

And then still more hooves stomped against crystal, as spontaneous music sounded the beat of freedom.

Cadance liked to fly over Geode Park early in the mornings. Not too early, and being mindful of where her shadow might fall, because healing took time. But still... it was fun to listen.

"AND WHAT DO WE SAY?"

"...hello?"

"...I'm -- happy to be here?"

"...thank you sir, may I please have another?"

"...um... errr... no?"

His face said he'd instantly seized on that last, but Iron still had to wait for the bleats to fade before he could continue. "AND WHEN DO WE SAY IT?"

"...after you tell us to?"

"...if there's a sign somewhere, or a list, or..."

"...in chorus with somepony else?"

"...when it's -- personally and culturally appropriate?"

"I'LL TAKE IT!"

It was a start.

Author's Notes:

This concept originated in a blog post and as such, Daedalus Aegle and Georg made contributions to its structure.

Also, special thanks to Windlife, for without him, this story would not exist.

...no, seriously.