“Princess, you move so magnificently!”

“That there was the most fanciest flying Ah ever did see!”

The white alicorn beamed under the praise of the two ponies as she stood tall while Rarity and Applejack looked up at her in amazement. While she knew it was good manners and junk to congratulate the winners, Dash just couldn’t find the energy to move from where she landed. Despite the fact that she was used to losing to older ponies and Princess Celestia was the oldest pony of them all, Rainbow still felt pretty lousy about the outcome of their race.

A shadow covered the grass she was looking down at. When she looked up, Rainbow saw Princess Cadance standing there with that dorky pony Twilight beside her. “Hey Rainbow Dash. You...flew really fast?” the purple pony said like she was asking a question before looking over to Cadance.

Cadance took a step forward and got down on her belly before running a fetlock over Dash’s head to hook it behind the filly’s head. “You did great, Rainbow. I couldn’t fly half as good when I was your age.”

“Yeah, that unpredictable updraft at the finish line that knocked you off the track and dissipated in the nick of time for Princess Celestia to fly though was just an almost impossible fluke that nopony could have predicted,” Twilight added before she pressed her lips together tightly and frowned up at the sky for a moment while rubbing her chin. “Especially since Canterlot is supposed to have the most regulated weather in all of Equestria and Princess Sunset said that the weather team was supposed to be working extra hard today so everything would be perfect.”

Cadance’s grip became as strong as iron and Rainbow’s breath caught when she saw the princess look up and the warmth go out of her eyes. “Yeah,” the alicorn said in a cold voice before she stood back up. “Twilight, play with Rainbow Dash while I go have a word with Celestia.”

As Rainbow Dash looked back at Twilight, she found the purple filly was giving her an intense once-over while muttering to herself. “Let’s see...loves action, good flier, probably adventurous….do you wanna play Daring Do?”

“What’s Daring Do?” Rainbow Dash asked in confusion.

“Whaaaaa!”

Both the fillies looked over to where the surprised cry had come from to see Princess Cadance holding Celestia upside down by the tail in her magic. “You and me need to have a word in private,” the bigger alicorn said in a tone that sent a shiver across Rainbow Dash’s spine.

“Ummm….o-kay?” Celestia nervously agreed as she gave Cadance a nervous grin that died two seconds later when the pink pony’s frown only deepened.

As Princess Cadance turned to leave, she started talking a lot about her old home for some reason. “Did you know that the maximum amount of pegasi in my village never numbered more than five in its entire history?” she asked sweetly. “I know, my official duty was matchmaker, but since it was just a small village I had to fill in a ton of odd jobs to help others out, and more often than not, they were weather related. And the funny thing is…I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gust of wind that strong just come out of nowhere like we just did!”

Meeting her in Cloudsdale had been awesome enough. And the fact that she got Princess Sunset to bring her to Canterlot for the Princess Fair was pretty radical too. Not to mention how she showed Rainbow the way she needed to behave if she wanted to be a hero like the Wonderbolts would want to join them someday. But seeing her just step in and take charge of the situation clenched it. Princess Cadance was the most awesome pony ever.

Thanks to the massive amount of physical activity that followed their late lunch, the day passed very quickly for Twilight. After Dashie and Princess Celestia got done with their race, the girls had a nice big meal in the palace before finding themselves at a loss on what to do. So, they ended up playing games under the supervision of the princesses, with the exception of Princess Celestia. She played with all of the girls until it was time for bed.

Because Shiny and Twillight’s formal dress was back at the house, they needed to go back home so they could get ready in time come tomorrow morning. But first, they needed to make Shiny as old as he was before, so after Princess Sunset turned her mother back into her scary form, they went to a room with furniture that was twice as big as normal. Once there, Princess Celestia poured half of a green potion into an empty beaker before the two of them huddled over it with great interest.

“Do we have to change him back?” Twilight whined as she watched Princess Celestia and Princess Sunset add another drop of green liquid to the glass held in a golden magical glow. Or tried to, it was getting hard to keep her eyes open. “I like Shiny the way he is!” To emphasize that fact, Twilight held onto her not-big brother as tight as she could.

Shiny patted his same sized sister’s back before Cadance broke the hug up and set them both on the large couch in Princess Celestia’s living room. “Sorry, Twily. We all gotta grow up sometime,” Shiny said as Cadance sat down between them.

Another drop fell into the vial and Princess Sunset turned towards her. “As cute as Shiny is right now Twily, I miss my boyfriend,” she said before looking at her mom. “And you’re sure that the measurements are right on this? We’re not getting a second go at this.”

Princess Celestia looked up from the bottle with a tiny frown. “I checked the calculations ten times over, Sunset. You saw them yourself. Shining Armor will be within a week of his true age when were done.”

From her spot next to Twilight, Cadance cocked her head to the side. “What’s with the eye dropper? If Shiny gets too old you can just magic him young again, right?”

Both the solar alicorns looked up at each other for a few seconds the way Twilight’s parents did sometimes. She still didn’t understand how getting older let ponies develop telepathy or why there weren’t books on the subject. But after what must have been a lengthy debate conducted at speeds too great for verbal communication to suffice, Princess Sunset turned her head to look at Princess Cadance. “Uh, not really.”

The reply got a frown from Princess Cadance. “Sunset, you’re talking to the pony who put your foal of a mother across her hind legs to give the little filly a spanking for beating around the bush. So don’t think I won’t do the same to you.”

Princess Celestia groaned and reached back with a hoof to rub her rump. “Still can’t believe you did that.”

“What did you expect? You cheated to win a race against a little filly!” Princess Cadance exclaimed.

The accusation got a ruffle from Princess Celestia. “Hey, we never discussed rules. The use of magic to boost my acceleration and control other influences was never disallowed. Besides, Dashie didn’t seem to mind. She says she loses all the time.”

Princess Cadance sat up a little straighter. “That’s because she races against fillies twice her age! And of course nopony forbade magic, it’s implied! Using something that another pony isn’t able to isn’t a fair contest,” the pink princess proclaimed, restating her position from the earlier debate.

“By that logic, ponies with sports-related cutie marks shouldn’t be allowed in the Equestria Games,” Celestia countered.

“Can we please get back on the task at hand, so I can kiss my coltfriend tomorrow without everypony thinking I need to be put on a special kind of list?” Princess Sunset suddenly asked before she looked over to Princess Cadance. “And to answer your question in depth, no I can’t just regress Shiny’s age if we mess this up. The spell that altered Mom is very imprecise, she spent hours on the calculations and even then, there was a three year margin of error. Plus, it’s an unnatural form, not a permanent change. All I had to do was unlock the magic to restore her. The potion will accelerate Shiny’s natural aging process as well as provide muscle and magical pathway stimulation to make sure his body doesn’t atrophy while we’re making him nearly a decade older inside of a minute.”

Princess Cadance blinked a few times. “Oh...okay.”

“So, any other questions?” Princess Sunset asked.

Twily raised a hoof and waited until the amber alicorn gestured for her to speak. “What’s a hand?”

“...that’s a good question Twily,” Princess Sunset said before she grabbed the draught in her magic and poured it down Shiny’s throat as Twilight beamed at the compliment. “Don’t worry about getting every drop, Shiny. The liquid is just the conductor of the magic stored inside. Long as you swallow the majority of the potion, your body will suck up all the enchantment.”

Twilight blinked as Shiny jumped down from the couch and drank the potion as instructed. She didn’t answer my question, the little unicorn thought to herself when her joy at being praised by an alicorn dissipated.

“Hey, I don’t feel any-aaaaaah!” Shining Armor said as his body began to rapidly change. Twilight watched the odd sight as her brother began to age rapidly in front of her eyes. Legs, barrel, muzzle, horn and everything else quickly expanded to their old proportions.

However, there was a great deal of growth that Twilight hadn’t been counting on, nor any of the princesses, from the looks of Princess Sunset’s frown and Princess Cadance’s amused smirk. On top of the eight years of leg, bone, muscle and horn growth, Shiny also had eight years of mane, coat and hoof growth as well. Twilight giggled and ran around to glomp onto her brother’s front leg. “You’re so fluffy!”

Princess Sunset giggled before she poked Shiny with a hoof. “We going to need to change your name to Poofy Armor?” she asked with a little smile that disappeared when she looked down at his hooves. “Okay, yeah. Six years of keratin growth. Sorry Shiny, but I can’t make fun of that. It’s just just gross.”

The older colt looked down at his hooves and winced. “Can I even trot with these?”

“One moment, Shining Armor. Please step away from the colt,” Princess Celestia said. When Princess Sunset grabbed Twilight, the big princess’s horn lit up. There was a bright flash of golden light and when Twilight’s eyes cleared, she saw Shiny was standing in a circle made from his own hoof clippings and hair from his coat.

Two parts of his body remained untouched though. The blue mess that was Shiny’s mane and tail were as overgrown as they had been before Princess Celestia worked her magic. “Princess Celestia, you forgot some stuff.”

Princess Sunset cleared her throat uneasily. “Uh, it’s not a good idea to use magic on a pony’s mane and tail,” she said. “No matter how powerful she is.”

“Ah yes. Remind me to tell you what happened to Sunset when she tried to make her mane like mine one day,” Princess Celestia said with a little giggle.

Princess Sunset looked up to her mother with a little frown. “Do it and you’ll be Twilight’s new pet hamster,” she threatened. To which Celestia simply rolled her eyes and laughed.

As the close family members engaged in some sort of non-verbal communication, Princess Cadance circles Shining Armor with a calculating eye. “Shiny, are you feeling okay? You look...different,” she said in concern.

“I thought it best to leave a margin of error,” Princess Celestia told everypony. “So he’s still a bit fuzzier than yesterday and...I’ll have a full team here in the morning to take care of your coat, give your hooves a pedicure and style your mane and tail any way you want.”

Princess Sunset let Twilight go and the little filly galloped over to hug Shiny’ leg again. “Can I pick your new mane and tail, Shiny?” she asked before noticing something. It was minor, but Shiny leg did feel a bit different; harder.

Part of Twilight’s mind wanted to place the reason for the oddity on Shiny’s thicker coat, but she was unable to categorize the cause as such. A thicker coat meant Shiny should have felt softer. It was a puzzle that had Twilight taking a step back from her brother in confusion. “Hey Shiny,” she said before looking up and finding another oddity. Instead of her original question Twilight asked the one that just popped into her head. “Are you taller?”

“WHAT?” Princess Sunset yelled before she galloped over to give Shining Armor a through visual examination. After her initial movement, she slowed down and frowned. “You don’t look taller.”

“Says the five foot six and still growing alicorn,” Princess Cadance snarked before trotting up to Sunset and looking back to Shiny for a few moments. “Uh...yeah. You definitely look a little taller, Shiny. And a bit more filled out.”

As Shining Armor took a step back from Princess Cadance’s more intrusive studies, Princess Sunset spun around to shoot a look that would have probably killed a non-alicorn pony. “Mom! You said Shiny was going to go back to his old age!”

Princess Celestia’s normally controlled expression collapsed. “What? He is!” she replied. “Do an intensive scan on him yourself. Shining Armor is a healthy sixteen year, eight month two week and three day old pony.”

Instead of continuing the argument, Princess Sunset spun back around pointed her horn at Shining Armor. “Shiny, hold still while I probe you,” she said before she frowned, blinked and then blanched. “Ugh...can’t believe I just said that. Just...don't move too much.”

As a glow surrounded Shiny, he looked around nervously with his eyes. “Uh, Sunset, what’re you doing?”

“I made sure to keep the information from the magical check-up I gave you after that jackass Buck was stupid enough to try and pick on you in front of me. It’s not as in depth as this one, but I can still-huh,” Princess Sunset before the light went out and she picked her head up to frown. “That’s odd.”

Cadance moved closer to Shiny and wrapped her forelegs around his neck before her wings also came out to cover his back and front protectively. “What’s wrong, Sunset? Did Shiny end up older? Younger?” she asked before becoming slightly thoughtful. “Although, I don’t suppose it would be so bad if he lost a year.”

Shiny’s face become stressed and he looked over to the pink pony surrounding him. “How is that not bad?”

Princess Cadance ignored the question and began to feel Shiny’s body with her wings as she frowned. “You know, I can’t really tell what it is thanks to all this fuzz your coat is right now, but you do feel a bit different, Shiny.”

“No, Shiny’s basically the same age as before. Eight hours older, actually,” Princess Sunset told her before she looked over to her mother. “But everything else is way off! Just what the buck does that potion do when it ages a pony?”

After taking a step back from her daughter’s verbal assault, Princess Celestia frowned a little. “What do you mean, everything else is off?”

Princess Sunset rolled her eyes and lit up her horn. As she talked, her eyes moved back and forth, as if she was reading something only she could see. “His muscle mass has increased by the better part of fifteen percent while while body fat has gone down by more than ten! Mystic pathways have been strengthened by twenty, and his bone density has even gone up a little bit. And that’s not going into hoof and hair follicle strength, which I’m pretty sure has also gone up, but since the normal medical scan spell doesn’t cover that stuff, that’s just a guess.”

“Hmmm,” Princess Cadance said as she looked over the old colt’s neck. “You know, you are looking a bit shinier than usual. And Sunset, really don’t think you need to be so hostile over our coltfriend getting a little upgrade.”

After making a annoyed groan, Princess Sunset turned her head back to Princess Cadance. “I’m not being hostile!” she snapped. Her eyes quickly widened before she closed them and sighed while hanging her head. “Sorry. I’m just worried.” She looked back up to Princess Celestia. “If this happened to him, what else might have gone wrong?”

Princess Celestia smiled down at the amber alicorn. “It’s alright, Sunset. I’ve had a few of these moments myself over the years when it came to you.”

“So…” Princess Sunset took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Okay, so...you made the potion. Do you think somepony might have slipped something into it while it was in your rooms?”

Taking a moment to nod in the negative, Princess Celestia answered when she was done. “No. I made it in my private lab. The only ponies that know it even exists are the four of you.”

Twilight’s ears perked up as she detached herself from Shiny and trotted closer to Princess Celestia. “You have a private lab, Princess?”

“Um,” Princess Celestia said as she blinked a couple of times and looked down at Twilight. “You saw me go into it to get the potion, Twily.”

Disappointment set in as a vision of a state of the art laboratory with all the latest equipment was shattered by the reality that Princess Celestia’s private lab was barely bigger than a janitor’s closet by her scale of things. “...oh.”

Princess Sunset gave her mother a sound of displeasure. “So if nopony messed with it, then you had to have done something wrong,” she told Celestia angrily before she took in a deep breath again.

Before she could continue, Princess Celestia stepped forward. “No I didn’t, Sunset. I examined it before I gave it to Shining Armor. The potion did exactly what it was supposed to do.”

After letting her breath out, Princess Sunset touched her forehead with a hoof. “Which was what, exactly?”

“You saw it yourself, it aged Shining Armor back into a teenager,” said Princess Celestia.

Princess Sunset took in another breath, this time from her nose. “Yeah, but how?” she asked before sighing again. “Okay, look. I’m asking for the mechanics here, Mom. I’m no expert in biology, but I do know if any living organism aged eight-plus years in ten seconds, the body would literally eat itself trying to find the fuel for that amount of growth. And even if you solved that problem, his body would be so pitifully developed he wouldn’t be able to stand thanks to years of inaction.”

The explanation brought a brightened look to Princess Celestia’s face. “Oh, that’s what you mean. I must say Sunset, you certainly have changed, and not just in attitude,” she said with a smile. “You used to just jump into your magical studies and figure out how to work your spells, not bothering to learn how they worked.”

“Yeah well, that way of thinking doesn’t really cut it when your bike needs fixing and you can’t afford a mechanic,” Princess Sunset said a she looked away from her mother and blushed a bit. “And you don’t want them to run the license plate.”

Although Twilight didn’t understand what Princess Sunset was talking about, Princess Celestia quickly recovered from her own bout of confusion and went to speaking. “Well, while the pony is aging, the magic of the elixir provides the equivalent of three healthy meals a day along with a fair amount of physical activity.”

With her mind trying to work out a problem and eager to show the princesses her intelligence, Twilight quickly absorbed the information and worked it into an explanation as to what brought about Shiny’s differences. “So Shiny’s bigger and everything because Princess Celestia’s potion made him eat healthy and get some exercise this time around?” she asked before frowning a little. “Because I don’t remember him doing either of those things before.”

“Say what?” Princess Sunset asked.

“Twily, I exercise...um, sometimes,” he said before looking away. “When I can.”

The purple unicorn looked over to her brother. “Yeah, now you go with Princess Sunset. But you didn’t use to, and you don’t work out every day like Princess Celestia implied the potion does to your body,”she said before raising a hoof to signal her second point. “Plus, she said it gives you the equivalent of three healthy meals a day. Sometimes you eat a lot of junk food and there were other times when Sunset came along that mean stallion Buck took your lunch money at school.”

The room began to shake ever so slightly and Twilight blinked before she heard a slight growl that drew her attention. The little lavender unicorn turned in that direction and saw Princess Sunset standing there with an angry look on her face and a foreleg that was trembling in anger.

Princess Cadance detached herself from Shiny and trotted over to Princess Sunset to place a wing across her shoulders. “Yeah, the memory of that puts me in a sour mood too, but we have more important things to do right now,” she told the bigger alicorn before smiling at Princess Sunset with an expression Twilight’s father called bedroom eyes. “Like finding out just how much Shiny’s grown thanks to that change in nutrition.”

The room stopped shaking and Princess Sunset looked over to Princess Cadance. “Uh, I already know Shiny’s new measurements thanks to my check-up.”

Princess Cadance’s vision became half-lidded. “I meant we should,” she said before stopping suddenly and glancing at Twilight out of the corner of her eye. Then she stepped in closer and whispered into the amber alicorn’s ear.

Princess Sunset’s eyes widened. “Oh! Yeah...that,” she said before rushing over to Twilight’s brother. “Come on, Shiny. We gotta check a few more things out real quick before we let you go home for the night.”

“Yes, just one more thing and you can go,” Princess Cadance agreed as the two of them led Shining Armor to the door on the far side of the room to pull him inside it.

Princess Celestia became a little flustered. “Hey! That’s my bedroom!”

To which Princess Sunset turned and replied, “Yeah well... daughters always do it in their parents beds at least once so... something, something, family bonding. Bye now!”

Twilight became a little bit more worried when Princess Celestia’s eye began twitching. “Princess Celestia?” Twily asked. “What’re they doing with Shiny?”

“Urk!” the Princess exclaimed before she looked down at the curious filly with an uneasy expression. “Um...that’s...well,” Princess Celestia said before just gave her a nervous smile. “Say, Twily. What’re you doing next weekend?”

As soon as they were in Celestia’s bedroom, Sunset shut the door with a final word to her mother and Cadance led Shining Armor back towards the bed to set him up on the mattress. Although, with her mother just outside the door with Twilight, second thoughts began to creep into Sunset’s mind. While she was perfectly fine getting rutted by Shiny on her mother’s bed while she had Cadance beneath her, doing it with Twilight on the other side of the door to actually hear them when she needed to go to bed did make her stop.

Then she realized the solution to their problem and quickly enveloped the room in a temporal bubble that moved a thousand times faster than normal. Once she was done, Sunset looked to her lovers. “Okay, we don’t have to worry about being interrupted. Or...Twilight hearing what we’re doing. If she does, it’ll just be a quickly fading sound that she won’t be able to make sense of.”

For some reason Sunset couldn’t discern, Cadance turned to give her a little frown. “One of these days, somepony’s going to blink and you’re going to freeze time, and fuck Shiny right in front of them before they can open their eyes,” she told Sunset.

Sunset gave her a blank stare. “Well I wasn’t gonna before you said that, but now?” she said before smirking. “I am definitely going to try that out.” The question was, who? Twilight was out of the question and Sunset was already getting revenge on her mother for her actions as a filly with this bit of teenage antics. Everypony else she knew either didn’t deserve that, or needed much worse.

“Well, as happy as I am to see some of the old you rearing her head, I’m much more interested in getting Shiny to get his up,” Cadance said before she spun around and reared up so she was even with Shining Armor’s chest, if he had been a human, that is. “So, what do you think we should do, Shiny? Lip wrestling? Soft petting? Or how about...oral stimulation of of the important area?”

The odd comment got Sunset thinking. What’s that supposed to mean? Sunset asked herself as she looked down at the floor. And which one of us is going to get him first? Whenever they had sex with Shining Armor before, Cadance made sure to get across who got him first and what they were doing. Of course, she had insisted that Sunset be the first to be with him.

Wait a second! Sunset said to herself as a sudden realization shot through her mind. If Shining Armor got reduced in age and then restored in a new and improved body. Would that also mean his virginity has been restored?

While Shiny was hardly a human girl, Sunset supposed that he had hit a reset button...of sorts. And since that was the case, Sunset could even kick out the one big imbalances of their relationship that was impossible to even out. “Hey Cadance, why don’t you…”

Sunset stopped talking and blinked at what she saw. Although all her eyes could take in was the back of Cadance head and the front of Shiny’s, the vacant smile on the colt’s face told her everything. “Cadance! What’re you doing?”

All doubt about her actions were taken away when Cadance raised her head to the sound of wet flesh detaching before she even spoke. “Playing with Shiny’s balls. We did drag him in here pretty fast, so a little extra stimulation is required to help get him in the mood,” she said before she began to step aside. “He’s already started to unsheathe. Se-”

Sunset quickly looked back to the ground. “That’s okay!” she told them.

But her mind had already seen Shiny at full mast plenty of times, so Sunset found her brain already constructing the worst case scenario.

Sunset’s face was positioned right between Shining Armor’s legs. Her nose filled with his overpowering scent as she looked to see his-

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Sunset mentally screamed at herself before shattering the image in her mind. Stupid imagination! Cut that out! It wasn’t right that her mind could rebel against her like that sometimes.

“Sunset?” Cadance asked as she took a step forward. “Are you alright?”

The amber alicorn gave her pink lover that was still close enough to Shiny that she kept Sunset from seeing anything that would put thoughts in her head a big smile. “Yep! Just fine! Perfectly, absolutely, fine!” Sunset assured her before waving Cadance off. “You just go on back to doing what you were doing before.”

Cadance gave Sunset an even look. “No, you’re gonna tell me what’s bothering you, right now.”

Embarrassment the likes of which she hadn’t felt in weeks flooded Sunset’s mind to the point where she was afraid of dying from blood loss with the way it was all rushing to her cheeks. “I-I,” she said before looking back down at the ground. “Look! I told you how I feel about s-sucking...ahem! You know.”

“Oh. Right,” Cadance said. “Sorry. I forget about that in the rush. Since social and romantic interaction was out of the question in this particular setting, I went with oral stimulation of the unmeasured region in order to bring it to full height.”

The way Cadance was trying to sound scientific made Sunset snort in laughter. She didn’t make the mistake of looking up though. That would mean seeing Shiny and putting all kinds of mental images. “Okay, whatever. Just...make as big a mess on my mom’s bed as you can.”

Thanks to the fact she was staring at the ground, Sunset didn’t see Cadance get close until the pink princess ran her tongue along the inside of Sunset’s ear. The feeling made the amber alicorn’s head shoot up in surprise. Cadance didn’t let it stop there, though. She placed her legs beneath Sunset and flipped the bigger pony onto her back in a way that brought her own body down on top of Sunset’s. “C-Cadance?”

“Shhhh,” the pink princess replied as she put her hoof on Sunset’s lips and her muzzle in the amber alicorn’s ear. “That look. That blush. I’ve never seen you look so cute, so you’re not going to ruin it by talking.”

Sunset gulped before she felt Cadance’s tongue touching her ear again, which made her shiver right before the pink princess started whispering. “That look on your face told me everything I needed to know,” Cadance whispered softly into Sunset’s ear. “You want to do it, don’t you? You want to put your lips on Shiny’s stallionhood and have him thrust it deeper, and deeper, and deeper inside of your mouth.” With every mention of the d-word, Sunset felt Cadance slide herself back and forth across the bigger alicorn’s belly.

“I-I-!” Sunset’s eyes went wide when Cadance stopped her from talking with a powerful kiss. The bigger, stronger, older and more magical alicorn was at a complete loss as Cadance had her way with Sunset’s mouth before letting out a moan and breaking their kiss, with the exception of some splittle that connected their mouths even as Cadance sat up to her full height.

The pink princess licked her lips as Sunset fought for breath that had been stolen. “Not tonight though,” Cadance told her before looking down at Sunset with a calculating expression that made it seem she was the one with the limitless magic power and extra six inches of height or more advantage. “That can wait a little bit. Tonight, I’m going to get Shiny ready, and you’re going to give him a ride. Now just sit back and listen in, I’ll try and give you an accurate measurement.”

As Cadance got up and turned around to walk back to Shining Armor, Sunset tried to say something to stop Cadance. This was their chance to even the score card! She opened her mouth and...stayed silent as her mind produced the image of Cadance eyes looking down at her a moment before.

Cadance had been strong, confident and commanding. Absolutely everything that Sunset had dreamed her of being like during those passionate nights. So, Sunset couldn’t help but obey her. She laid back and looked back up at the ceiling.

“Is there anything wrong?” Shining Armor asked.

Sunset heard Cadance smack her lips. “No. Just needed to get Sunset ready to take you when you’re good to go. Don’t want you plunging into a dry cavern,” the pink princess said. “Now, let me get those wonderfully musky balls of yours warmed up again and then we'll move on to the part that’s peeking out.”

Over the next few minutes, Sunset discovered how evil her girlfriend really was.

Cadance sniffed so deeply that Sunset’s newfound enhanced hearing from her pegasus third could pick it up. “Mmmmm, Shiny. You smell so good.”

Every word, every sound, every action...Sunset could tell exactly what was going on despite looking in a different direction. In fact, it became quite evident that Cadance was making sure to telegraph the whole thing when she complimented his taste!

But the worst part of it was…

Sunset kept picturing herself in Cadance’s position and...it...didn’t seem all that bad.

At least, not until Cadance suddenly started coughing and stepped back. Concern made Sunset spin around and…

“Cadance! Are you oh-kay,” Sunset said as her mind broke down when she saw her boyfriend sitting there, giving their girlfriend a worried look. That’s um...that’s...yeah. That’s definitely...bigger.

Celestia looked up from the little filly slumbering on her belly when she heard her door open. After hearing the rapid thumping, it wasn’t hard to figure out what had transpired. “It’s been a good four minutes, Sunset. Haste makes sloppy spell-” she stopped talking when she saw the three ponies leaving the room.

Sunset had the type of smile that some of the palace’s little ponies possessed after they thought they had gotten away with some passionate actions inside the castle between working hours. Shining Armor looked a tiny bit distraught, making Celestia want to ask him if anything was wrong. As for Cadance, she...

“Ah, Cadance, you have some...evidence,” Celestia said as she lifted a foreleg to point. “On your muzzle, dear.”

The pink pony blinked. “Eh?” she said before rubbing her nose with the back of her hoof. “Oh! Oh dear. Um…”

Celestia looked back at the tiny pony sleeping on her belly before gently wrapping her in a levitation spell and moved her to the couch while adding a minor sleeping charm to make sure Twilight didn’t wake up earlier than the sunrise. “While I don’t mind the three of you being a little promiscuous, please don’t walk around the palace with the evidence on your muzzle,” she said before turning her attention back to Shining Armor. Once of the ways for Celestia to get deeper into her daughter’s good graces was to take a bigger interest in her friends after all. “And, is something wrong, young Armor?”

When Shining Armor slunk down a little bit at the question, Celestia feared that she had erred, until Sunset threw a wing across the colt’s back and kissed him on the cheek. “Just some premature...uh,” she paused and looked back to Celestia before clearing her throat. “Stuff that I really don’t want to talk to my mom about.”

After taking another look at Cadance, the solar alicorn could guess what had happened. “Shiny went off early and you had to finish up?”

“Mom! That’s not something...uh,” Sunset said as her quick flash of anger gave way to uncertainty and embarrassment. “Can we please not talk about sex? You’re my mom now, and sex talk with parents is bad.”

Cadance giggled and leaned over to muzzle Shining Armor. “Well you’re not my mom, so...yes. Although, I did spend a little bit too long getting him ready,” she said before kissing him on the cheek and leaning in close to whisper in the colt’s ear. “Not that I’m complaining about getting to taste my two favorite ponies at the same time.”

“No talking sex with my mom either!” Sunset snapped in embarrassment at the filly across the colt. She looked around and then settled on Twilight. The flush in her cheeks declined. “We should get her home.”

The opportunity presented to her made Celestia grab for it. “Cadance, could you escort Shining Armor and Twilight to the carriage in the courtyard?” Celestia asked. “I want to speak with my daughter in private.”

Cadance looked over to Sunset, who nodded for her to leave before releasing Shin. As soon as they had kissed their goodbyes and were gone, Celestia closed the door and looked back to Sunset.

“Okay, what did I do wrong this time?” the amber alicorn asked as she refused to meet her mother’s eyes.

Her daughter’s words made Celestia suppress a pang of distress. Even after all this time, the first thought that came to Sunset’s mind when she was alone with her mother was that she thought Celestia was going to scold her. Celestia didn’t waste time dwelling on the thought, she needed to dissuade the big filly’s fear. After a second, she decided to go with laughing the question away in an attempt to show Sunset that such fears were ridiculous. “Oh my silly little filly, you were everything I had always hoped you could be today,” she said before Celestia felt her trepidation rise.

With Sunset’s fears brushed away, Celestia’s mind could only focus on the thing she really want to talk to her daughter about. And having it in the forefront of her mind made Celestia feel...embarrassed.

"Ah, so…” Celestia thought for a second about how best to lead into what she wanted to talk about. “Did you have fun today?”

Sunset blinked a few times at the question, having obviously been caught off guard. “Uh...yeah,” she said before lifting a leg to rub the back of her head. “Look, I know you’re probably going to lay into me for it. They’re not the people I used to know. I shouldn’t try and recreate the past using fillies nearly ten years younger than the other species counterparts I used to know. I’ll cut off contact with them after tomorrow.”

The suggestion made Celestia frown down at her daughter. “You do that and I’ll be the one giving you a spanking,” she told Sunset. “I told you, those girls are very special and I want to make sure the five of them don’t separate.” The idea of giving each of them journals that were all connected so they could exchange messages was something Celestia had already set in her mind. “You will be the one to guide and teach them. And if you have an objection that, I will drag you kicking and screaming to their houses.”

“Oh...um...okay,” Sunset said uneasily. “But if not that, then...what do you want to talk about?”

Celestia paused. She took in a deep breath and held it to help calm herself down. “I...had fun today,” she said before sighing and laying down on her barrel. “More fun than I ever remember having, actually. I was able to just let go of everything that’s always on my mind and play with the others like a regular filly.”

The confession had Sunset giving her mother a calculating look. “Well, I guess…” She paused in thought for a second. “It’s probably because of the regression your mind experienced. You were still you, but your brain just wasn’t mature to the point that it liked to think things through.”

“Or think about what I’d have to deal with the day after tomorrow, or the day after that and so on,” Celestia added. “It’s been centuries since I was able to just live in the moment.”

When Sunset didn’t follow Celestia’s comment with one of her own, the solar alicorn knew it was time to begin the discussion. “So... I was wondering if...well…” Celestia’s face reddened and she broke eye contact with her daughter. “We could see some of those fillies again, this weekend?”

“Why’re you asking me?”

Celestia looked back to her daughter’s confused face and saw that Sunset didn’t understand just what she was asking. The anxiety in her gut increased even further. “Because I need you to cast the aging spell.”

It took a second for realization to dawn in Sunset’s eyes. The frown on her face slowly gave way, with the eyebrows lifting as far as they could. “You mean you want to…”

The fact that Sunset didn’t finish just made it worse for Celestia. It was stupid, really. She was stupid. Asking her daughter to regress her age so she could have some kind of weekly vacation wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve a vacation from her responsibilities, her worries, her guilt. Luna didn’t get to leave her captivity, Sunset hadn’t been able to hop back to Equestria whenever she wanted to back when she was trapped on Earth, alone and crippled without her magic!

Celestia closed her eyes again and pushed herself up into a sitting position. She took in a breath to help center herself and...

“Okay.”

...nearly collapsed in relief when Sunset spoke. Celestia looked over to her daughter and blinked. “R-Really?” the solar alicorn asked.

Sunset got an uneasy look on her face. “Well, I don’t really get it. But, if it’s what you say you need…” she took a moment to sigh and shrug. “Sure, I can give you a hand.”

The relief Celestia felt flooding her body was short-lived when Sunset’s expression turned into a dark smirk. “Of course, this means that you’ll have to give Dash a rematch where you don’t cheat.”

Celestia flushed and cleared her throat. “It’s not cheating if you don’t say its not allowed before the contest begins.”

Cadance shifted on the bed but held tightly to the plush doll Sunset had created in her own image when the genuine article entered their room. After looking at the doll for a moment, Cadance set it on the nightstand nearby. She sat up and smiled at the pony she loved the most in the world. “Hey Sunset. Have a good talk with your mom?”

“Little disturbing, but overall, good,” she said before frowning a little and lifting a hoof to spin it in a circle at the fetlock. “Hey, could you get on your barrel real quick?”

Although Cadance didn’t understand why, she rooted around underneath the bed sheets until she was resting on her stomach and facing the headboard. “This good?”

Sunset didn’t reply before she lifted the fabrics covering Cadance’s body into the air along with the pink princess’s tail. By the time Cadance looked back to see what was going on, Sunset already had her face up close and frowning at something between the pink princess’s cheeks.

Cadance smirked at her. “If you wanted to see under my tail, all you had to do was say so.”

“Huh. Don’t smell anything and your coat’s dry. So, no bath or washcloth. You didn’t do it with Shiny after you left?” Sunset asked as she brought her head back up and dropped the sheets.

The question got a cocked eyebrow from Cadance. “You do remember that Twilight was with us, right?” she countered. “She may have been asleep, but I’m not going to make love to a pony when his baby sister is less than ten feet away.”

Sunset gave Cadance a worried frown. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Cadance told her before she began to become a little concerned. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you just watched Shining Armor plow me with a double digit penis that belongs on an earth pony,” Sunset told her. “Then you stuck your nose in my pussy and made me whinny like an inexperienced foal. But you’re not the least bit wet in any sense of the word!” She paused and gulped. “Are you, uh...having second thoughts with this, um...three of us...thing?”

A stampede of terror galloped through Cadance’s whole body, knocking around in her head until the pressure made her think it was going to split open while another tied her stomach in knots. “No!” the pink princess assured Sunset as she rose halfway to her hooves, then got closer to the edge of the bed and reached forward to gently cup Sunset’s cheeks. “Sunset, I love you. I love Shining Armor. Nothing is ever going to change that. I’m sorry. I just...you know, I’m not as... casual about sex as you and Shiny, you know that.”

“...oh. Um...okay,” Sunset replied uneasily before she looked down and started playing with her hoof. “Uh, sorry for doubting you.”

With Sunset acting all hesitant, Cadance’s mind jumped to the most logical conclusion and she gave the amber alicorn a sour look. “What’d your mom do now?”

Sunset blinked in confusion. “Why’re you asking about her?” she asked before getting a little embarrassed. “Although, she did have something to ask me. She ah...wants me to turn her into a filly again so she could play with Twilight.”

“That’s…” Cadance’s mouth went upwards into a smile. “Okay, I’ll say it. That’s adorable.”

After rolling her eyes, Sunset motioned for Cadance to make room. Once she got into bed next to her girlfriend, the amber alicorn sighed. “You know, before I went to Earth, all I wanted was to do was become an alicorn. I come back as one, I get more power than I ever thought possible, but all it does is make me miserable. So I look at my mom thinking, she’s got it figured out. Sure, there was all that junk she told Fleur and Sassy, but I thought she was just being dramatic,” Sunset said before sighing. “Now, I think she really is just as miserable as I am.”

Cadance reached out and hooked fetlocks with Sunset. “Is it really that bad for you?”

“Well...okay, maybe I am being a bit maudlin,” Sunset admitted with a smirk. She scooted closer and gave Cadance a kiss on the lips that lasted well beyond a second. “She doesn’t have you, after all.”

Cadance let herself be pulled into Sunset’s embrace as the bigger alicorn gave her two more kisses. She rested her head on Sunset’s neck and closed her eyes to wait for sleep to come.

She listened to Sunset’s heartbeat as she waited.

She reminded herself that the wards Sunset had around their room protected her from any changelings that were prowling the halls.

She held herself tighter to Sunset, the pony with so much power that Celestia Herself was less than a foal in comparison, the pony that could swat the entire changeling army that threatened Canterlot as if they were flies.

“...you having trouble getting to sleep too?”

Cadance opened her eyes and raised her head at the question to be met by Sunset’s tired face. “Yeah,” she said. The events of tomorrow loomed over Cadance and made her feel afraid. While Sunset’s coronation was nothing but a happy event, the dark things that threatened to come with it worried Cadance to no end. “I’m nervous about tomorrow.”

“What do you have to be worried about?” Sunset asked.

The question got an annoyed frown when Cadance realized that Sunset wasn’t joking. “You do remember the part about the secret army of shapeshifting insect ponies that are going to try and infiltrate your coronation, right?”

Sunset’s eyes widened. “Oh!” she exclaimed before looking away from Cadance. “Uh, right, the changelings. I...um, remember.”

Not buying Sunset’s lie for a second, Cadance stretched her neck up as high as it would go to try for at least a little height advantage over the bigger pony. “I can’t believe you forgot about the changelings!”

“Well it’s not like they’re a big topic of conversation, you know,” Sunset whined weakly as she drew in on herself under Cadance’s stern gaze.

This is supposed to be the unstoppable goddess of infinite power that’s going to protect me from an entire race that’s predisposed towards eating me, Cadance told herself in annoyance before sighing and shaking her head. “I can’t believe this junk.”

“I’m sorry Cadance,” she apologized. “I know this stuff is important to you, and I know what it’s like to live with this massive fear in the back of your mind.”

Cadance rolled away from Sunset and looked up at the dull ceiling above them. “Really don’t want to hear from you right now.”

Sunset rested her head back on her pillow. “Oh...sorry.”

The second apology got an annoyed groan from Cadance, but she kept herself from lashing out at her omnipotent lover’s impotence. “You want to make it up to me?”

“Uh, doesn’t true forgiveness have to come from within a part of you that is untouched by any acts done on the part of the other person as proof of their regret and desire to do good?” Sunset asked in an uneasy manner.

Cadance sighed. “Just get on top of me.”

When Sunset did as ordered, Cadance felt a little better when the weight of the bigger pony pressed down on her. Thick Earth pony muscles pressed her down into the mattress and Cadance reached up to run her hooves along the side of Sunset’s powerfully built body.

“You really are one sexy pony, you know that, Sunset?” Cadance asked her before kissing the amber alicorn on the side of her neck. “The perfect amount of muscle with a light layer of fat over it to even things out. Except where some extra fat is of use, that is.” She reached back and smacked Sunset’s plump plot to watch it jiggle just a bit. The sight brought a smile to her face.

Sunset blushed at the attention and turned her eyes away from Cadance. “I-I um, you know, I never really cared when I got compliments before. Especially when it was from humans,” she said before blushing even more. “But...I really like it when you compliment me.”

Okay, got to step up my game here, Cadance told herself. While the bashful Sunset was adorable, it wasn’t the facet of the complicated mare that she wanted to see at the moment. “You know, I really did enjoy seeing you and Shiny together. And I’m talking in more than just the way how happy it made me to see the two of you enjoying each other. I loved watching him mount you, how he pounded your plot over and over again,” she said before closing her eyes and replaying the image in her head with a moan. “I enjoyed Shiny’s hips smacking into your plot so hard I could hear it.” When she opened her eyes, Cadance kissed Sunset on the lips as sensually as she could while she worked herself into the proper mood.

She laid down on the bigger alicorn and nuzzled her as hard as she could, took in her scent and did everything she could to drown herself in Sunset’s presence. It didn’t do anything to push the anxiety out of her mind. The problem was...working oneself into a proper mood when he threat of death hung overhead tended to be...impossible.

“Sunset, can you do something for me?” Cadance asked.

After a second of silence, Sunset gave her a tiny laugh. “You know, my mom taught me to never agree to something before I knew what it was in negotiations with the ruler of a country.”

It took a second for Cadance to realize that Sunset was talking about her. It was strange that she was the High Princess of Equestria considering that she had less education and political experience than either of the others, but Celestia had abdicated the throne for that weekend and despite the fact that everypony treated Sunset like royalty since she became an alicorn, her official authority wouldn’t be given until tomorrow. But since she was the highest authority in Equestria… “ Well since I am the big princess now, I could just order you to do it.”

Cadance could almost hear Sunset roll her eyes. “Don’t be silly, of course I’m going to agree. What does my princess want?”

“I want you to make love to me,” Cadance told her.

A snort came from Sunset’s nose. “And here I was wondering what all the kissing was about,” she snarked.

Since she saw that Sunset didn’t understand, Cadance pushed herself up until she was sitting on the amber alicorn's barrel. “I love you, Sunset. I love making love to you. You’re gentle and kind, but steadfast and strong,” she said with a smile before frowning down at her. “But that’s not what I need from you tonight.”

The sudden change shattered the lazy smile on Sunset’s face and left a mess of confusion where it had been. “Uh...okay?”

“I want you to ravish me,” Cadance told her. “As soon as I stop talking, I want you to throw me off of the bed and onto the floor, then pull me back up rear first and plunder my pussy. Then I want you to do everything that you’ve thought about doing to me since the day we met. I’ll put up some resistance, but nothing major. What I’m saying is, I want you to dominate me.”

Sunset tensed up beneath her and broke eye contact. “Cadance…I…”

Instead of letting it drop, Cadance grabbed onto the topic with her teeth and bit down hard. “You’ll what? Enjoy it?” Cadance asked her as she pinned Sunset down. “That’s the whole point of me wanting you to do it!”

“Cadance…”

When Sunset gulped, Cadance took the opening. “Well let me tell you something, you are going to enjoy it, because that’s the type of pony you are,” she told her bigger lover. “I’ve seen you practice magic and exercise, sweetheart. You like throwing your weight around. You like putting those muscles of yours to use, and you absolutely love using your magic. Having a gentle you is nice, but I told you when you first got back, I want all of you, Sunset.”

The amber alicorn looked away completely. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I want you to act like the old you,” Cadance told her in no uncertain terms. When Sunset looked back at her with wide eyes, the pink princess rolled the pair that was in her head. “Sunset, you need to get over this fear of you turning into this corrupt monster if you should happen to cut loose.”

Sunset gulped again. “Okay, so maybe you do know what you’re talking about.”

Cadance sighed and collapsed onto the amber alicorn as she began to despair that Sunset wouldn’t go through with it. “Please, Sunset. I...I need this from you tonight. Just tonight. Please.”

“Why?” Sunset asked in a whisper.

The question split Cadance’s mind in two. Half of it looked to a selfless reason as to why she wanted Sunset to be the overwhelmingly dominant partner in bed. The other half galloped full speed and grabbed onto the selfish reason. It was the full speed explanation that came out first. “Because I need you to make me feel safe,” she whimpered.

“...I’m not throwing you onto the floor,” Sunset said in an even tone.

Cadance blinked in confusion at the statement before the dull lighting for the room flared up with the flame of several candles. She gave a startled cry when a field of magic enveloped her body to quickly pull her up into the air to have her hang upside down with her muzzle inches from the mattress.

Unable to budge an inch, Cadance felt her tail move aside of its own accord before she felt Sunset’s breath on her private parts. “You are so going to give me an explanation for this when I’m done.”

The magic holding Cadance’s mouth dissipated and she tried to look up at Sunset’s face to no avail. So she just spoke happily. “Yes ma’am!” The idea of what Sunset was about to do to her made Cadance’s whole body shiver with anticipation.

“And don’t think I’m just going to handle you the way you want,” Sunset told her firmly before taking in a deep breath and getting right up under Cadance’s tail. “You want me to do it with you like the old me would have? Fine, I’ll do it. Just this once.”

The way Sunset talked, letting out more and more air with every word right at the entrance to her sex made Cadance’s need grow more and more. She bit her lips in anticipation and took a moment to center herself. “Yes. Yes, thank you Sun-ah!” Cadance cried out when Sunset dropped the pink princess onto her back.

Sunset smiled down at Cadance the way she used to back in the day whenever she had something nasty in store for her. “Now, I’ll get around to getting you off in a bit. But, I think you need to show me that you’re serious about this whole thing, so…” Sunset extended one of her rear hooves. “Now, kiss.”

It took a moment for the confusion to clear out of Cadance’s mind so she could gain some insight on what was happening in front of her. Oh, so that’s how she’s playing it then, the pink princess thought to herself.

Debasement. Sunset was attempting to make Cadance regret her decision by making her be overly submissive in humiliating ways. But the joke was on Sunset, because Cadance had offered to do such things from day one of their sexual relationship as a boost to the amber alicorn’s non-existent ego. The fact that she was finally going through with it just made Cadance jump at the chance.

So, Cadance placed her lips on the amber alicorn’s hoof and looked up at Sunset before stepping up her game considerably.

Sunset swished the mix of water and toothpaste around in her mouth before she leaned over and spit it into the bathroom sink. Then she looked up into the mirror and made sure there wasn’t anything clinging to the fuzz on the end of her muzzle. Considering how deep she had gone into Cadance a bit earlier and the four times Cadance had climaxed, Sunset was surprised she had gotten it all. The smell still lingered in her nose though, much to the amber alicorn’s annoyance

She looked over to the pony standing next to her. Her coat and mane were still ruffled from all the ways Sunset had manhandled her while she was playing with Cadance’s body, but she still looked absolutely beautiful to the amber alicorn. However, the question of why Cadance had insisted on being handled so roughly during their latest sexual encounter still filled Sunset’s mind. “So, you gonna tell me what that was all about?”

Cadance stretched her neck out and spit the mouthwash she was using out. “Don’t see why I have to clean my teeth again. You’re way too much of a hygiene horse these days.”

“Cadance, I sat on your face and had you dip your tongue as deep as it would go into my butt less than five minutes ago,” Sunset deadpanned. The memory of the experience made Sunset fight off a blush. It had been the first time that they had done such a thing without Cadance pulling Sunset down on her and Sunset felt embarrassed over how much more she enjoyed being the one in charge of the bedroom.

“After you cast a cleansing spell on yourself,” she pointed out.

The mention of the magic made Sunset’s rear tingle with the uncomfortable memory of having every foreign particle inside her rear exterminated. She looked back and shook her butt a bit before turning her head to face Cadance again. “Can we go back to talking about why you wanted me to have my way with you?” she asked pointedly.

Cadance gave Sunset a playful moan. “But I like talking about your butt,” she said before stepping over to kiss Sunset’s cutie mark and nuzzling her plump plot. “And kissing it, and being surrounded by it. Hmmm, you want me to do it again?”

Cadance’s words got a blush from Sunset as she felt the pink pony move from her cutie mark to nuzzle the spot beneath their tail. She looked back at the mirror as she felt Cadance kiss the edge of her sex. “Explanations please,” Sunset said before remembering her tail was for more than just looks and swiped at the pink pony with it.

“Bah! You’re no fun,” the pink princess said as she detached herself from Sunset’s rear, then reared up and leaped to completely straddle the bigger alicorn with her hind legs while her front ones wrapped around Sunset’s neck. “Take me to our bed. I’ll tell you there.”

The sudden application of weight made Sunset’s legs buckle for a second before whatever magic made her stronger than anything else alive adjusted to it and the presence of the pink princess on her back became negligible in terms of pressure. Then Sunset took one more look in the mirror before Cadance reached forward to take the amber alicorn’s ear in her mouth and begin sucking on it. “Okay,” she agreed before pulling her ear away from Cadance’s mouth. ”If you’d stop trying to pop my wings up again. We just got them down.”

A childish cry of displease came from Cadance’s mouth. “No fun pony.”

“I’m just not the nymphomaniac you are,” Sunset deadpanned.

Cadance looked up to the ceiling in thought before shrugging the comment off. “If that’s an insult, you should probably pick words that I know the meaning of, it works better.”

With Cadance giving her a bright smile, Sunset rolled her eyes. “It means you’re sex crazy.”

“Thank you!” the pink pony replied before they reached the bed. Cadance fluttered off of Sunset’s back and onto the bed. Then she laid down on her back with her wings closed in tight near the far edge.

Sunset put a sour look on her face. “That wasn’t a compliment,” she said before getting into bed. Like Cadance, she laid on her back, but spread her wings out.

As soon as she was fully spread out, Cadance rolled over to lay on Sunset’s chest. “Hold me?” she asked softly. After she had wrapped her pony-arms and wings around the smaller alicorn, Cadance kissed Sunset on her neck before laying her head on the amber alicorn’s body. “Sunset, I don’t want you to mess around tomorrow.”

“Say what?” Sunset asked.

After a few seconds of silence, Cadance pushed herself up to look down at Sunset in the candlelight. Pegasus eyes made it easy to see her just fine. “I know how powerful you are. And I’m not talking the casual, I can make Canterlot shake with a stomp of my hoof and have more power in the tip of my horn than Celestia does in her entire body. I’m talking about when your eyes get all glowy, mane starts moving on its own and you grow extra parts on your cutie mark. The type of powerful that makes other alicorns look like we’re fleas jumping on your back. Understand?”

“Yeah,” Sunset said hesitantly thanks to how intense Cadance was getting.

“When the changelings are revealed tomorrow,” Cadance said slowly. “Or if anything goes wrong. The second something happens, that’s the level of power you will react with.”

As her fillyfriend’s expression became more and more worried, Sunset gulped. “Cadance-”

“Listen to me,” Cadance told Sunset before she could really begin talking. “The idea of an entire race of creatures that can look like anypony they want and eat love scares the bucking hay out of me. The only reason I have been able to keep the fear from consuming me is that I have you. But I know you’re not perfect. Something could go wrong, you could react too slowly, or they changelings could have something we’re not expecting. If something happens tomorrow. You don’t hesitate, you don’t hold back, you use your magic to gather up every single one of those insects under your hoof and you crush them flat. Understood?”

The fear Sunset could see in Cadance’s eyes had the amber alicorn nodding before she could speak. “Okay, Cadance. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you tomorrow,” she said before reaching up to pull the pink princess back into her embrace. “No. I’ll never let anything happen to you.”

Cadance gulped. “Thank you, Sunset. I love you.”

“I love you too,” she replied before loosening her grip a little and closing her eyes after snuffing out the lights.

…

…

…

“...still having trouble sleeping?” Cadance asked.

Sunset sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah,” she said.

Instead of prodding her on what was wrong, like Sunset was thinking she would do, Cadance just reached up and kissed a spot beneath Sunset’s ear before she settled back on top of the amber alicorn. “You know, I’m really jumping the bell here, but after playing with those fillies today...I want one.”

The thoughts that brought to mind made Sunset smirk. “Cadance, I know princesses have absolute authority and ponies fall over themselves to kiss our butts, but I’m pretty sure you might cause a few problems if you decide to just abduct a foal.”

“That’s why I want to make one,” Cadance told her. Strangely though, she sounded melancholy about it. “With you.”

Sunset gulped. “Okay….that’s...uh…” She frowned and lit up her horn with a soft light before she looked down at the pink pony. “Cadance, do I need to go into details about how many ways that’s not going to happen? Like, we’re both still in high school. Our private maid had to give up her education because of her pregnancy before I stepped in. That’s one of those example things ponies are supposed to learn from. Not to mention, we’re both girls, just in case that wasn’t apparent.”

“Really?” she asked in mock surprise before sighing. “I know my love sense makes you feel uneasy. And I’m not saying I want a foal right now. Like you said, we’re still in highschool. Hay, we don’t even have a stable enough relationship to survive having babies for years. It’s just...after today, I really, really want one.”

The simple idea of babies made Sunset feel uneasy. She had never wanted foals, they had never been in any long term plans while she had been a pony and trying to make any long term plans as a human usually ended in tears when Sunset realized how hopeless her future really was on Earth. Plus, the biological stuff involved was...unpleasant. “Uh, you know what’s involved in foaling, right?” Sunset asked hesitantly.

Cadance gave her a little rapturous giggle. “Feeling another pony, a life growing inside of me? Having another pony suck on my teats, depending on you, me and Shiny for everything?”

“Yeah, think I’ll leave that to the nursemaid,” Sunset told her.

The comment got a little snort from Cadance. “No, you’ll dote on yours almost as much as I’ll obsess over mine,” she said before sighing. “And that’s why we’re going to have to wait more than ten years to have foals. Not to mention get pregnant at the same time.”

Sunset tired to just put Cadance’s words into the back of her mind, but with the Princess of Love saying even she could fail to hold a relationship together, it made what her lover said impossible to dismiss. “How...um…does something like that happen?”

Cadance looked at her in confusion for a moment before she smirked. “Well, one of those days when your feeling super hot and wet under your tail, Shiny sticks his penis really deep inside you and leaves behind a load-”

“I’m well aware of that part,” Sunset deadpanned. “What I meant was, how in the hell do our foals make us break up?”

The question was answered by an uncomfortable silence from Cadance before she cleared a disturbed look off of her face. “I’m not really sure. It may be that the foals put a strain on our relationship that we’re not mature enough to handle without years of interaction and strengthening our ties, not to mention all the other stuff that’ll probably factor in as well.”

Sunset blinked as she finished digesting the news. “Huh, that’s...well...damn.”

“Yeah, you’re not the only one with the depressing thoughts,” Cadance told her before adjusting herself on top of Sunset a little. “You know, there’s so much stuff going on tomorrow that we’re both terrified about I doubt either of us is going to get much sleep tonight. Three hours at the most.”

“Probably,” Sunset agreed. “If not less.”

Cadance let out a long sigh and slumped down in relief. “So let’s put that time to good use,” she said before taking a deep breath and sitting back up. “You being nervous about the Princess thing. Let’s deal with that. What’s the problem? Something about the ceremony or just more of the same about the position in general?”

Hearing Cadance put it like that a half-annoyed, half-embarrassed blush on Sunset’s cheeks. “Hey, it’s not...that’s not-”

“Is it your usual junk?” Cadance asked before getting overly dramatic and speaking in a bad imitation on Sunset’s voice. “Oh! I don’t think I can be a princess, despite the fact that it exactly what my mother, Princess Celestia, raised me to be since the day she took me in. I won’t be able to protect Equestria, even if I am more powerful than every other single living creature on this planet by several times. I shouldn’t ever be allowed to make any decisions at all, just because it’s more inexperience than anything else that makes me trip up over the stupidest of things that nopony else in my position would never see coming. And whatever you do, don’t praise me, because my self-esteem is so messed up that I’ll actually become more insecure if you give me compliments.”

As Sunset found herself blinking at Cadance’s bad imitation of her, the pink princess's expression changed of one from wide-eyed to half-lidded before she looked back down at the bigger pony. “That about cover it?”

The amber alicorn blushed and looked away. “You don’t have to be so...that about it.”

Cadance fell down onto Sunset and gave her a tiny poke on the nose before she put on a tiny smile. “Yeah well, I may prefer caring and gentle, but sometimes harsh and rough just works better with you,” she said before kissing Sunset where she had booped her. “Now, out with the specifics, or I’m gonna...do...something.”

As her fillyfriend just trailed off, Sunset frowned. “You really need to work on your threats,” Sunset told Cadance.

“Yeah, yeah. Confess now, coach later,” Cadance ordered.

Sunset took in a deep breath, unsure of where to start. “Okay, yeah. I am nervous about the princess thing. For all those reasons and more,” she admitted to Cadance. “But come on, that’s...normal. There’s a super important event with an invasion threat looming overhead. I’m allowed to be nervous.”

Her argument didn’t remove the harsh look from Cadance’s face. “Over the event, yes. But be honest, Sunset. This is more than about one little thing with you,” she said before sighing and nuzzling Sunset’s neck. “But I’m here for you. So share some specifics with me, and I’ll help you.”

“Okay,” Sunset reluctantly agreed before she mentally compiled a list of the billions of worries that were going through her mind. Well, might as well start with the most recent addition. She took in a deep breath and… “I think I know what I’m going to do about Upper Crust.”

Cadance pushed herself up and looked down at Sunset with an encouraging smile. “That’s good,” she said before her expression became more hesitant. “Which is, what? Exactly?”

The thought of actually telling Cadance in a private setting, where she could explain to Sunset how stupid she was being as opposed to announcing it at Upper Crust’s sentencing where the public venue would have made it impossible to argue with her decision, which still wouldn’t have made the decision a good one, didn’t make things easy. Ignoring the fact that she was the most horribly stupid pony to ever be offered a crown and not go into things would have been a lot easier.

“Can we have sex again?” Sunset asked. “I wanna have sex again.”

Cadance frowned. “Sunset.”

“I’ll suck your horn, or tickle your pussy, or oh!” Sunset exclaimed. “I haven’t given you rimjobs yet! Let me at that love butt of yours.”

The pink princess growled. “Sunset.”

“Or we could take this opportunity to come up with something to do with Shiny!” Sunset exclaimed. “Now, I’ve been hesitant in even thinking about this, but after seeing how happy the unfinished blowjob made him, maybe we could-”

“SUNSET!” Cadance exclaimed in anger before glaring at her. “While I admit I’m more interested in the fact that you’d be willing to tongue my plot and suck Shiny’s penis than talk about a royal decision you’ve got baking in your brain, I care a hay of a lot more about you than my personal interests,” she said before sitting up straight to cross her pony-arms. “So, what is it you have planned for our old brown noser?”

“Well…” Sunset gulped and looked away from Cadance. “I was thinking about... petrification.”

She glanced back to see Cadance was giving her a calculating frown. “And I suppose that you’ll put the statue right outside our window, so you can trot out and look at her every day?” she asked.

Sunset made a pensive sound. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. Although, the amber alicorn admitted that she probably would have paid a visit to the mare from time to time. “Maybe not...every day.”

“Well, as long as you’re not gonna use her to beat yourself up, I don’t see any problems with the idea,” she admitted. “If you are going to outlaw emotional affecting magics, you need to set a strong example to the ponies that use it.”

The way Cadance phrased it made Sunset give a considering moan. “I know it’s a big change,” she said. Ponies had been using potions and spells to affect emotions for years. Sunset probably wouldn’t have thought anything about what Upper Crust had done if not for her time on Earth. She would have just rolled her eyes at the mare ‘getting herself pregnant’ before Jet Set tossed her aside.

Of course, it wouldn't have happened if not for the laws Sunset put into effect. Which, aside from making it partly the amber alicorn's fault for giving Upper Crust the opportunity, meant she needed to make sure it didn’t happen again. Which made her mind go back to the fact that ponies had been using emotional magic for years without problems and outlawing it was a major change put in overnight.

“Cadance, you’re the love pony. Am I making the right decision here?” Sunset asked. “Or am I going too far?”

After a few seconds of thinking, Cadance spoke. “Well, I can certainly agree with the idea that...forcing pony to lay with anypony is abhorrent,” she said as if spitting out something that tasted horrible. “But...a blanket ban on all compulsive magic does make it seem like you’re just kicking at something that tugged your tail without looking behind you first.”

Sunset sighed. “Yeah I know the humans I lived with had a big hard on for deciding their own destinies while we’ve got cutie marks,” she replied. “But can you honestly give me a situation where being put under a spell that even influences you to do something is a good idea?”

“Shining Armor,” Cadance replied without hesitation.

When Cadance didn’t say anything else, Sunset started to get very worried. “Uh...please tell me you didn’t do anything to Shiny when you were...coaching him.”

Cadance rolled her eyes. “Of course not,” she assured her fillyfriend. “You know my philosophy is that if the stallion doesn’t have the balls to ask a mare out under his own power, he doesn’t deserve to be in love. I’m just using his name to grab your attention, but the situation is one I’ve seen plenty of times before.

“Let’s say that Shiny never met me, he just got walked home by you that night and you decided to play O&O with him the following weekend. But instead of going through the scenario I gave, you ended up playing that other scenario we ran through, meaning that you would have been trapped alone with Shiny. It would have been the perfect chance for the two of you to talk and even share a few kisses. However, Shiny can’t even form a single word because he's so nervous and ends up just annoying you to know end, which...let’s be honest, you would be in that situation. You go home unsatisfied and even if you remain friendly with Shiny, he’s shown that he's definitely not coltfriend material, putting him squarely in the friend zone.”

After thinking over it for several seconds, Sunset gave Cadance a nod of agreement. “Yeah, I could see that happening.”

“Or,” the pink princess went on. “Another option, Shiny drank a love potion before you showed up. Then, while the two of you are alone, he makes a complete fool of himself trying to get a kiss with you to the point you quit the game and go home early in a bad mood. The next day, the need to apologise makes him actually talk to you and you decided to go to a replay because you’re into second chances. That’s when the two of you hit it off.”

Sunset frowned at the other pony. “You don’t have one where he just hits it off with me from the get go, huh?”

Cadance shrugged. “I’m a romantic, not completely detached from reality,” she said before adopting a serious expression. “Look, I’m not saying that I like love magic all that much, but it does have some uses if used in the proper way to help create those moments that some ponies need to build their foundation on. Not to mention that completely doing away with something that’s been around since before Equestria because of a single incident is way too reactionary.”

The argument made Sunset want to counter by saying that Upper Crust was just the only instance that they knew about. But, making decisions on the supposed actions that the amber alicorn knew she wouldn’t even be considering if not for her time on Earth also made her hesitant.

Another fact popped into her mind. “Hey Cadance, you didn’t even consider you, me and Shiny dating, right?”

Cadance groaned and rolled her eyes. “No Sunset. You know nopony’s ever done a three pony relationship before,” she said.

“Just like nopony’s ever used a love potion like Upper Crust did,” Sunset said. That we know of, she could help but think.

But what if trying to preempt other actions with a blanket ban just gave ponies who were willing to do something awful despite the laws the inspiration they needed to think of the crimes Sunset wanted to prevent from happening? Cadance was the Princess of Love, but never once thought beyond a two pony relationship before Sunset.

“So how about...a law revolving around forcing or tricking a pony to take a love potion or casting a spell that affects a pony’s thought process without permission,” Sunset mused. “It’ll mean taking a few extra steps to prove any accusations aren’t lies, but it’s better than just taking any accusation as truth.”

Cadance looked back over to her. “Do you really think anypony would actually do that?”

“Well...not ponies, but…” Sunset sighed. “Look, I spent the better part of three years on a planet populated by creatures that had a whole set of professions whose entire purpose was to find ways to skirt laws. If I’m going to be the one making the laws, then I’m going to be making them in a way that can’t happen.”

After a few seconds, Cadance snuggled back up to Sunset. “Well, I suppose it’s best to be safe,” she said. “So, what about the foal?”

Sunset blinked. “...what foal?”

Cadance groaned. “The foal Upper Crust has growing inside of her,” she reminded the bigger pony.

“Oh...that’s...um...well, crap,” Sunset mumbled. “I was so intent on punishing Upper Crust in a way that would stop this sort of thing from happening again, I completely forgot about the pregnancy.”

Once she gave Sunset a few seconds to digest that thought, Cadance gave a little shrug to show how much worry Sunset should have over this. She opened her mouth right as something occurred to her. “What about Celestia’s potion?”

Sunset looked down to Cadance. “Celestia’s potion?”

“That potion Celestia made for Shiny,” Cadance pointed out. “What if Upper Crust drank some of it? Like, just a drop or two. If it aged her and the foal eleven months, she could have the baby and we could find somepony to take care of her or him. That’s what we’re doing, by the way. I’m not just going to pass it off to the local orphanage.”

After running what she knew about potions through her mind, Sunset sighed. “That may work. Truth is, I was more into horn magic than alchemy. Too much bookwork for my taste.” She would have to ask Celestia.

And keep the whole thing secret. Sunset could already see the problems that would spring from a short-cut to childbirth. If parents couldn’t put up with the burdens of labor, then they honestly didn’t deserve to be parents in Sunset’s mind. Like her own genetic donors, who dropped her off at Celestia’s because they didn’t want the inconvenience of…

Sunset let that line of thought trial off into nothing. She knew that her biological mom and dad had the best in mind for her when they placed her in Canterlot for her education. That was how things worked in Celestia’s school for unicorns who didn’t live in the city. Some even had houses on the mountain, but still lived at the dorms. But the fact that Sunset’s parents had left her behind when she wasn’t even old enough to clearly remember their faces still hurt, no matter how much logic she threw at it.

“But it is a possibility?” Cadance asked.

Sunset thought about it a little more before sighing over her lack of expertise on the subject. “Honestly, your guess is about as good as mine,” she told her fillyfriend. “What’s with the big interest in getting Upper Crust into the statue garden so quickly, anyway?”

Cadance shifted around a little on top of Sunset before she sighed. “Well, it’s just...the other option, keeping her locked up for nearly a year before going through with her punishment because we don’t want to hurt a foal, it seems cruel to me.”

“I’m sure everything will work out,” Sunset told her before kissing the pink pony behind her horn before deactivating the illumination in her own. “Good night Cadance.”

“Good night, Sunset.”

…

…

…

“Hey Sunset?”

The second the words were out of her mouth, Cadance knew they were a mistake. The big pony she was sleeping on jerked in a motion that made Cadance hold on tight to keep from being thrown into or possibly through the ceiling from the unconscious motion.

“Hujawha?” Sunset asked as she brought her head up and looked around.

Cadance winced. “Sorry. I thought you were still awake.”

After opening her mouth to let out one of the longest yawns Cadance had ever heard, Sunset lit her horn back up. “No, I was...um, you know that moment when your whole body shut down and you’re just about to go unconscious, the one where if a pony interrupts you it triggers a surge of adrenaline that will keep you up for hours more?” Sunset asked. “That’s where I was.”

“Sorry,” Cadance apologized as she winced.

Sunset let out a long sigh and tried to pat Cadance’s head, but ended up smacking her with a hoof on the back that promised to keep the pink princess away with a oncoming headache. “It’s fine. What do you need?”

After running the back of her head a little, Cadance lit her own horn with the level of brilliance Sunset was using. “Well, um...I thought were were taking turns, me telling you a fear and then you telling me and so, it’s um...my turn, again.”

Sunset ran a foreleg along the back of Cadance’s neck and the pink pony took in a breath. She had wanted to ask Princess Celestia about it more in-depth before bringing the possibility up with Sunset, but since they were talking about mind alteration magics now, it seemed like a good a time as any. “Sunset...are you still you?”

“Okay, Cadance. I’m about seventy-four percent asleep here. You’re going to have to make more sense than usual,” Sunset told her.

The half-insult made Cadance puff her cheeks out in annoyance. It almost just made her reconsider her position right then and there. Sunset was still capable of being a jerk, a definite sign that Cadance’s fears were unfounded.

But, she had to know for sure.

“When you talk about your time on the other side of the mirror, you say that you were a huge jerk until Twilight blasted you with the magic of her crown,” Cadance said.

She felt Sunset tense beneath her. “Yeah,” she agreed cautiously.

“And then you had this huge change of heart,”Cadance went on. “You decided you wanted to be a better pony.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say it was that simple,” Sunset told her. “But...yeah. I got to take a good look at myself when I put on Twilight’s crown. I got to see all the darkness inside of me, what I was really like and I didn’t like what I-”

“Stop talking right now,” Cadance told her. “That! That is what I’m talking about! What you’re really like? You’re not really like that. You’re not evil! You were angry and hurt, and alone.”

Sunset looked away from Cadance. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you had seen me when I had that crown on.”

“And you wouldn’t be saying this if you were thinking clearly,” Cadance said. “Yes, you’ve made improvements, I’m not going to ignore that. But...you...it’s like there’s something else inside of you screaming at you, telling you these stupid things making you feel guilt and doubt at unnatural levels. It’s like there’s a spell on you and I’m just trying to understand what it is so I can fix it!”

“...you think that Twilight did something to me?” Sunset asked carefully. “Something that made me...the way I am right now?”

With the question out there in the open, Cadance grabbed onto Sunset as tightly as she could. “I don’t want to,” she said. “But we’re talking about mind magic...and for the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking back to the way you were before and the way you are now. I think about how you acted when you came back to us and how if it wasn’t for some apocalyptic event, you would have stayed in that horrible world! And all I can do is wonder if the pony who just left you there to suffer would have done something to make sure you stayed, or went to far as to completely erase the pony I used to know and replaced her with somepony more obedient.”

Sunset gave Cadance a confused frown. “Are you honestly telling me that you would have wanted the old me to come through the portal with all the power I have now?”

“You’re avoiding the issue!” Cadance accused her before she stood up and looked down at Sunset. “And do you want to know what would have happened if you had come back with your old bad attitude and the kind of power you have now? You would have taken over Equestria, no question about that. You would have done something humiliating to Princess Celestia but in a way that would have been able to show off and-oh! You would have…

“Servent! Servent come here!” Sunset called out before knocking her hooves together.

Dressed in her palace maid outfit, Cadance galloped through the court that had changed the dress code to better comply with Sunset’s colors before coming to the foot of the dais and entering a respectful bow that had her nose touching the floor.

Without raising her head, Cadance looked up towards the throne. The enormous alicorn that radiated so much power her eyes, mane and cutie mark were constantly aglow lounged in a throne that barely contained her bulging plot. She would have been half-again the size of Celestia.

That is, if Celestia wasn’t sitting beside her in a birdcage, about equal in mass to the average pigeon. Rather than stick Celestia in some dark dungeon, or banish her to a celestial body that Sunset now controlled, the giant alicorn kept her mother on full display for all to see in an attempt to both show her power and show off in front of Celestia, or at least prove to the powerless pony how much better Sunset was as a ruler than she was.

“Wait, hold on just a second,” Sunset said, cutting Cadance off before she could get to the good parts. The big alicorn looked at her with a disbelieving expression. “If the old me got the power I have now, you think I would have put you in a maid outfit and Mom in a bird cage? You remember when I told you the parts about turning into a she-demon when I put on the crown, right?”

Cadance rolled her eyes. “I’m not talking about evil you, I’m talking about old you. And yes. You would have taken over and done something to me and Celestia to show everypony how much more powerful you were while keeping us around because you probably would have had this need for Celestia to tell you that you were a better princess than her and-”

“A perverted desire to see you in a maid outfit?” Sunset asked with her eyes half-closed.

“No, but I’ll gladly wear one if you want after our next date,” Cadance assured her. Before Sunset could object, the pink pony kept talking. “Anyway, long story short, you would have ruled Equestria with an iron hoof...for about two weeks. Then you would have let your mom out of her cage, named her your representative on the throne then gone back to your apartments to lay around and do nothing because by then the novelty of being a princess would have worn off and let’s face it, the old you wouldn’t have liked doing all the other work that comes with a crown.

“As for me,” Cadance went on. “I would have been kept on as your maid and we’d eventually get on speaking terms because let’s face it, everypony else would have been too frightened to talk to you and you wouldn’t have considered them worth your time anyway. Within the third week of you being back, we would have moved past awkward conversations, by the fourth week, you would have been meeting me after school to hang out before just decreeing that princesses didn’t need to go to school and getting me out of there. Of course by then I would have gotten used to your temper tantrums and gone to school anyway for the education. Which would have led to you going to school like you are now to fight sheer boredom. I’m pretty sure Shiny would just be some pony in the background you barely paid attention to and while I don’t think I’d be in a physical relationship with you, although there would have been a pretty good chance of you trying something since I would have been your closet equine contact and I would have gone with it out of pity and maybe a little bit of fear. But you wouldn’t have been some evil despot or anything.”

Sunset stared at Cadance for several seconds as if she had grown a second head. “Just how long did it take you to dream that up?”

“Two minutes,” Cadance told her with a little shrug. When Sunset continued to stare at her like she no longer made sense, Cadance rolled her eyes. “I’m the relationship princess, remember? I understand how ponies interact with each other.”

Sunset laid her head back on her pillow and sighed. When she didn’t talk after several seconds, Cadance began to get a little worried, but after getting a better look at her face, the pink princess calmed down. Whenever Sunset got really deep in thought, she put on a particular expression that was a combination of a frown and pressed together in a cute way that Cadance felt the urge to kiss them just to see if Sunset even noticed her coming.

“Okay, you want an explanation as to why I’ve changed so much?” Sunset asked. “Real, in-depth psycho-analyze and all that? Okay, fine. I haven’t really thought about it in awhile, but subconscious problem solving and all that…”

The fear that she was about to deflect the blame away from Princess Twilight Sparkle made Cadance frown. “Sunset, the amount of guilt you’re feeling is unnatural!”

“Cadance, I spent three years in a completely different culture, as a completely different species. I wasn’t just surrounded by different philosophies, way my brain worked was different than the way it works now,” Sunset told her. “And one of the main forces driving human civilization is guilt. Consciously, I know it’s stupid, but I was surrounded by an entire society that told me every day I needed to not only feel bad for things I did, but for what my mother and my mother’s mother did too. Maybe something I heard there got stuck in my subconscious.”

“And that’s why you never came home?” Cadance asked hesitantly. “Because even then, you were punishing yourself?” She remembered all the time that Sunset said how much being without magic hurt her.

Sunset took in a deep breath and let it out. “And...well, as much as I hate to admit it...I was happier back on Earth than I was on Equestria. That little example you talked about earlier? You were right in thinking that all I cared about was power, but power doesn’t make you happy, I’ve learned that the hard way. So if you’re wondering why I never really came home, it was probably a little bit of guilt over what I had done, some fear of what I thought Celestia would do to me, and...even though I hated living on that world and knew I had no future there, I had friends that filled some need I never knew I had before,” she explaining before giving Cadance a tired look. “Why’re you're so instant that I stayed on Earth because of some weird geas?”

The question posed to her made Cadance freeze. Although she had personal reasons, they weren’t the main ones. When Princess Celestia told Cadance about Nightmare Moon, she had explained her plans for the future, or lack thereof. But that had been before Sunset had shown what her true power was. If Celestia’s sister had truly been taken over by darkness, as Sunset had been according to her own recollections, then Sunset's magic could be the way that Luna was freed from the power of that evil without anypony dying. However, if exposure to said power also caused Celestia’s sister to torture herself on a daily basis because of some unnatural guilt, she needed to know before anything was done to make sure Luna could be properly cared for.

Unfortunately, if Cadance even began to tell Sunset that, there was no doubt in her mind that Sunset would teleport to the moon, smash Nightmare Moon’s face in before ripping the darkness out of her, then pop back to earth with the defeated mare in her hooves to drop her right on top of Celestia and demanding they make up. All of which would probably take less than ten seconds.

So, Cadance cleared her head of such thoughts and focused on the personal reasons. “Because it doesn’t make sense!” she exclaimed. “Okay, you made friends and didn’t want to lose them. I can understand that. But you also told me that just weeks after you saved their world and their lives, they turned on you because their little sisters galloped around, posting information and blaming it on you! They didn’t believe you when you said you were innocent, they didn’t try to look into things for themselves, so why? I just can’t understand it.”

“Because you’re a good pony. Because you’ve always had friends. And because they were my first friends, something I’m probably always going to use to measure-wait,” she said before stopping suddenly and giving Cadance a once-over. “Are you bringing all of this up because we messed around with filly versions of the humans that I used to know?”

Even though Cadance’s reasoning had nothing to do with that initially, with Sunset posing her question, she had to admit that the amber alicorn might have had a point. “You have to admit that it is pretty weird for you to invite four immature pony versions of beings that threw you away like you were trash at the first excuse they got.”

Sunset let out a tired sigh. “You remember the part where I talked about how we all made up, right?”

“They hurt the mare I love most in the world,” Cadance told her with a cold voice and even expression. “There are three things I can’t ever forgive, and that one is tied for first place with hurting the stallion I love most in the world. I know, you’re going to talk about how I should let it go, but I’m the Princess of Love, Sunset. It’s not going to happen, ever.”

Love had its dark side after all.

A nervous laugh came from from the pony beneath Cadance. “Okay, new topic, need a new topic,” Sunset said nervously before letting out a couple of nervous laughs. “Sex! let’s have sex, Cadance. Good ol’ relaxing sex! Let’s just bury our muzzles in each other’s backsides and go crazy.”

Seeing that her beloved pony was getting nervous, Cadance sighed and did her best to clear her mind. “I’m sorry, Sunny,” she apologized before kissing Sunset lightly on the lips and shifting herself around just a bit to better rub the bottom of her barrel up against Sunset’s so they could get in the mood that much faster.

She leaned in close and spoke into Sunset’s ear. “I adore those fillies. They make me want to have two of our own. I want a foal inside of me, Sunset.”

“Yeah, not sure how we’re gonna role play that one, Cadance,” she said before giving the pink pony a devilish smile. “That is, unless you want to pop into Shiny’s bedroom in the middle of the night all hot and horny and ask him to mount the two of us.”

It took Cadance all of one second to think up the correct answer. “Yes. Yes I do.”

Hard Line stood resolute as he watched what was surely the end of Equestria. Upon the dais above him sat the lowborn gutter trash Sunset Shimmer, daring to wear a crown as she sat upon the throne of Canterlot. Beside her, Princess Celestia sat with a collar around her neck that only Hard Line could see, a victim of Sunset’s dark magics and lies that clouded her vision to the truth of things.

In front of him, the line to swear fealty moved forward as yet another pony that was ten steps above Sunset’s proper station finished.

All around the room, dark shapes moved like predators in the night, the buzzing of their insectoid wings filling the chamber.

“Look at her up there,” a sensual voice tickled the brave stallion’s ear. “She doesn’t belong on that throne.”

The line moved forward, and Hard Line moved with it.

“She is an insult to everything you are,” the voice told him again in a mirror of his own thoughts.

Another movement brought him closer to the steps leading to the throne. The place where she would force him to bow to her in a show of loyalty.

“This can not be allowed.”

Hard Line got to the edge of the dais as the pony in front of him swore to Sunset. He looked down at the sword at his hip, then to the darkness where a thousand predatory eyes glared back at him.

Something forced Hard Line to look forward. “That’s not important.”

He moved within striking distance of the amber alicorn.

“You know what you have to do.”

Nightmare Moon withdrew herself from the stallion’s dream, sparing a moment to watch two weeks of her suggestions come to fruition in her pawn’s mind. The sight of such a thing brought her no pleasure, but she had tried other methods of removing the threat to her rule that was Sunset Shimmer to no avail. When opportunity presented itself, rulers took action.

The familiar tug of a particular consciousness drew Nightmare Moon’s attention for a moment. Celestia’s mind floated in the darkness, surrounded by the pathetic protective spell she thought kept her and all the ponies around her safe. The ego that made that mare think she could match the mistress of the night was astounding.

Still, being the caster of such magic, it was enough to let Celestia know if her own dreams were intruded upon. So the happy images she had of proudly looking up at her adopted daughter as Sunset shone even brighter than Celestia herself up on the lone golden throne were left alone.

Despite the fact that it was all a lie! Celestia would NEVER let anypony outshine her! She was a selfish, self-absorbed horse that only cared about herself!

Nightmare Moon stopped herself when she felt a familiar tingle alerting her to the presence of the project she had spent the most time on for over a month. She turned and looked into the dream window of her niece, Sunset Shimmer. In it, she and the colt she had been spending time with recently along with Princess Cadance were playing a game Princess Sunset had learned from her time in the bipedal world.

Just looking at the young mare sent a chill of fear along Nightmare Moon’s back. Sunset’s power was absolutely terrifying. The tiny bit she had felt when the growing princess had forced Nightmare Moon from her dream had made her hesitant to come close to it again out of fear of being undone. If it ever came down to a direct confrontation, Nightmare Moon had about as much chance as a flea did against a dragon lord. The amber alicorn could flick her horn and crush the night mare in an instant.

She had tried to talk the filly into leaving, to get her out of the way to no avail. So, more drastic measures were required.

It was a pity to do such a thing. She too was a victim of Celestia. In all of Equestria, Sunset Shimmer was the one pony that could truly understand her. If she had remained a unicorn, or at least become an alicorn without unimaginable power, Nightmare Moon knew that she could have been an ally against Celestia come the day of her release.

But, now she was too much of a threat and needed to be dealt with, regardless of any other possibilities.

So, Nightmare Moon touched the edge of Sunset’s dream with her magic. She didn’t do much, she didn’t have to. The fears and worries in the back of that mare’s mind were more than enough to send Sunset into a panicked dream where every decision she made as a princess ended in absolute disaster, resulting in the absolute destruction of Equestria.

Sunset would receive no rest tonight and come the morrow, she would be slow and ponderous, her mind balanced on a razor’s edge. The perfect position to provide ample opportunity for Nightmare Moon’s pawn to...fulfill his task.