If the J’adore headquarters was a noble’s wet dream, then the Equinox district could perhaps be considered their veritable utopia.

Everypony who stepped hoof in this place was a somepony. Be it famous theater stars, musicians, supermodels, notorious high-rollers who made their fortune in Las Pegasus, or just plain old nobles who wore their disposable income over their perfectly maintained coats in the form of expensive clothes and jewellery. It was this exclusivity that really got a noble’s ego-juice flowing.

Because of this, Fleur got considerably more attention here than in any other part of the city. If there was one thing nobles loved, it was to be associated with immensely more successful nobles.

“Ah, Fleur de Lis! How are you this fine day?” projected a haughty-looking beige-coated mare with a golden horseshoe for a cutie mark. Her horn was poking through a hat of the same colour with several large black feathers sticking out if it, her white mane tied up in a tight bun. It kind of looked like a crow had started building a nest on the top of her head, then realised it was a really shit place to build a nest.

Fleur merely smiled and gave the pony a nod. She opened her mouth to say something, but four more ponies had already materialised from the outdoor seating area of a nearby cafe, one of them wasting no time in whipping out a camera.

“Excusez-moi, we are just passing through, thank you,” Fleur politely informed them, but she would have had more luck trying to convince a bugbear to play the trombone.

A few of them finally noticed she wasn’t alone, their gleeful expressions swiftly being replaced with the look a pony might’ve got when discovering a fresh dog-turd on the underside of their hoof.

“Um… Fleur, the alien is following you,” the beige mare crudely whisper-shouted, pointing a golden-horseshoe clad hoof at Luke. Here we go…

Luke was about to fire a well-deserved dig at the travesty on her head, but Fleur had already taken a step closer to the mare, their difference in height glaringly apparent. “Golden Shoe, am I correct?” Fleur barked, glaring down at the shorter unicorn.

“You know my name?” the mare squeaked, a rather stupid grin chasing away the worry that had crept onto her face in an instant.

Fleur’s voice gained a sickeningly sweet quality to it that gave Luke the same feeling of unease he sometimes got when he looked at her sapphire. “Oh, I know who you are, ma chère. I ‘ave ‘eard the tale of ‘ow you sent your subordinates to sabotage nearly every other farrier in this city for your own personal gain. Now you can charge everypony your ridiculous prices for their shoes—after all, why wouldn’t you? Now that they have no alternative.”

Much to Luke’s immense satisfaction, Golden Shoe’s face deflated like a collapsed souffle. Fleur hadn’t lifted a hoof, or cast an aura. She simply hadn’t needed to. The disapproving, judging expressions of her peers were the ultimate bitch-slap for a status-seeking pony such as this.

“As for your jibe at my colleague, are you really suggesting that I lack the perception to notice that there is a man accompanying me?” Fleur continued, her eyes piercing. “I, witness of over ten thousand moons, target of several assassination attempts, fail to realise I am being followed by a being as tall as Celestia herself?" Fleur took a step back, and Luke nearly had a mini heart attack when she reached up and gently touched a hoof to his chest. "Do you not perhaps see my cutie mark upon 'is chest?" She took a step towards Golden once more, lowering her voice to a whisper that could barely be heard over the idle chatter of the street. “Did you not perhaps think to put two and two togezzer, and come to the conclusion that ‘ee is my friend?”

Golden Shoe cowered under Fleur’s gaze, her head whipping to the curious looks of several more bystanders that had noticed the juicy scene unfolding before their eyes. Nobles did love their gossip, after all.

“Eheh… Excuse me, I have to go…” Golden Shoe squeaked, the solid-gold horseshoes the were her namesake clip-clopping on cobbled lime as she trotted away, slowly at first, but soon breaking out into a canter as ponies continued to nudge each other’s shoulders, point, and whisper.

“Nice hat,” Luke called after her, but she didn’t look back.

“Come, Luc,” Fleur sighed, striding by the the group of ponies still trying to get her attention. A few more cameras had joined the first, and her tail was perhaps slightly lower than usual. “Once upon a time, being a noble used to mean something. It saddens me that our once great aristocracy has devolved into nothing more than a group of mindless socialites,” she muttered, but Luke was too busy giving himself a mental bitch-slap for noticing the precise angle of her fucking tail. Seriously? “Of course, we are not all zis way. There are still some true ‘noble’ ponies.”

Taking a few longer than usual strides, he caught up. There was something she’d said earlier that had struck him as a little odd. “Have ponies really tried to kill you?”

They rounded a corner onto the gleaming white-paved street leading up to the castle gates. Luke had plenty of memories of this place. None of them were particularly pleasant. Though, it didn’t seem quite as bad with Fleur by his side.

“It ‘appens, from time to time,” Fleur replied, though she seemed a little… distracted. Her tongue flicked over her lips, almost too quickly to see, and her eyes appeared fixed on a small group of street performers playing a jazzy-sounding number. One of them—a cute little yellow pegasus playing a tambourine—shot Luke a smile. That was all the warning he got before Fleur started to sing.

The performers didn’t miss a beat, not that anypony would have noticed if they’d stopped playing. The rapt, undivided attention of every soul in the busy street was suddenly glued to the Prench supermodel as though their continued existence depended on it.

Holy shit. Luke felt his jaw practically drop to the floor. If an orgasm could be conveyed as a collection of soundwaves, then it would surely take the form of the heavenly tones gracefully slipping from her lips. He had no idea what she was singing—it was all in Prench—but it didn’t matter. Every fibre of his being was instantly, irrevocably enthralled.

Her sapphire glinted at him in the sunlight as she deftly stepped around him, her eyes mimicking the beautiful deep blue hue of the gem as her serenade twined itself around his heart. There was no escape. He didn’t want to escape. His only desire was to hold her. He felt his knees impact the ground, his arms reached out. He needed to feel that beautiful coat pressed against his bare skin, needed to sate himself inside her—wait… what?

Where the fuck did that come from?

Luke was suddenly aware Fleur was no longer singing, and that he was kneeling in front of her with his arms outstretched like some sort of weirdo. He grimaced, dropping them to his sides. Fleur looked… unstable. Yeah, unstable was probably the best word to describe her. Her mane was whipping back and forth in a non-existent whirlwind, her eyes were glowing like high-powered xenon spotlights and she was surrounded by a subtle blue haze that was slowly but surely being consumed by the gem in her collar. Her expression was strained, almost as if she was having an internal battle with herself over what she was supposed to be doing.

A blink, and with a grimace that mirrored his own, she appeared to remember.

“Merde.”

CRACK.

The street imploded in a haze of colour and pressure. Not a split second later, Luke’s feet slammed down to the floor quite a bit harder than they had after the first teleport. He promptly lost his balance, and fell right over onto a middle aged unicorn that had been wafting herself with a paper fan.

She screamed, as did several other ponies occupying the courtroom Fleur had just teleported them to. Celestia was sat behind a large judge box-thingy, or whatever the hell it was called, watching the scene unfold with a slightly puzzled expression.

“I must speak with you at once, mon amie. Zis cannot wait!” Fleur demanded, with a look that suggested it would be very unwise for the Princess to refuse.

“Order, order,” Celestia began, the room full of nobles screaming curses at Luke as though he had just murdered several of their children. “Such language, Mrs Constance—he barely touched you. Calm down, for pony’s sake.”

When the nobles continued to scream regardless, Celestia simply let out a sigh. “Court is temporarily adjourned,” she muttered, though no pony seemed to hear her. “Follow me please,” she added to Fleur and Luke with a wave of a large, perfectly preened white wing.

Celestia led them out of the courtroom and along a myriad of corridors until they reached a familiar royal dining hall. Luke had spent many a meal time in this room, mainly because it was one of those blessed areas of Canterlot Castle that was off limits to non-royal nobles. A long dining table sat in the center of the room, most of the chairs accompanying it tucked neatly underneath, bar the one at the very end, where there was a rolled up newspaper sitting on the table next to a half-drank cup of coffee.

“I see my sister had another late morning,” Celestia commented. The hopeful attempt at lightening the mood was not lost on Fleur, it seemed.

“I need to speak with you,” she insisted, throwing a worried glance at Luke. “Alone.”

Luke scowled. Yeah, she was his boss and everything, but she damn well owed him an explanation for dragging him back to the castle. “Hold on a second, Fleur. I have several questions,” Luke began, torn between getting his point across and wanting to keep his job. Just what the hell had that impromptu sing-song in the street been about?

Fleur gave him a wide-eyed forlorn look. For a split second, she was a mere shadow of the mare he’d first met in the studio, looking more like a little lost filly than the big, important CEO of a fashion empire. “Luc, I…” she whispered, and her horn gained a familiar glow. “I shall explain… later.”

CRACK.

Luke twitched, bracing for yet another impact with the ground, but it never came. He was still in the dining hall.

Alone.

He scowled. “Oh, I’ll just wait here then, shall I?” he yelled, his voice echoing around the empty hall.

Thirty seconds of silence passed. A minute. Two.

“She isn’t coming back,” he muttered, resigning himself to sitting in Luna’s abandoned chair, his elbows on the table. Just what the hell was her problem, anyway? The day had started off great. But then she’d started acting all weird. Ponies weren’t supposed to have god damned fangs, or glowing eyes. Or even be able to sing like… Hell, there wasn’t an adjective adequate enough to describe what had went on in that street. It was almost as if she had opened a gateway to his soul with nothing but her voice. And he hadn’t even tried to resist. Shit was fucked.

With a long, drawn out sigh, he cracked his knuckles, half wondering if he still had a job or not. These thoughts were forcefully punted out of his mind, however, when he caught a glimpse of his own face staring up at him from the news paper. “...The fuck?”

Quickly grabbing it, he unrolled it to find a photograph of himself, Vert and Fleur talking on top of the skydock. He wasn’t wearing his uniform. This must have been taken on his first day. Just above the photograph was a headline that read:

J’ADORE TAKING EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES TOO FAR?

Modeling empire J’adore, considered by many to be the ultimate in photography and fashion consultancy, wowed the city of Canterlot last week by being the first company worldwide to hire an alien being. Yes, that’s right folks, you heard it here first at the Canterlot Herald. Some say this is yet another attempt by their notorious Pony Resources department to convince everypony that their Equal Opportunities policy is unmatched.

While this certainly fits their profile, I can in fact reveal that in this case it was not the griffin, zebra and hippogriff-loving fanatics of that department that facilitated this particular appointment. No, it was none other than Fleur de Lis herself that hired the alien—to be the new pilot of her private airship, no less. Several city officials have already condemned the move, voicing their legitimate concern that it is perhaps unwise to allow an as-yet completely unknown entity control of a decommissioned warship that is cleared to fly in close proximity to the city, given the location of the company’s dock.

We took to the streets of the illustrious Equinox district to try and gain some insight into this creature. Acclaimed noblestallion Top Hat Tootington the Third, had this to say: ‘I have no idea why Princess Celestia even let it within a thousand hooves of the Equinox district, let alone give it room and board in the royal castle! The way that thing strut around acting like we ponies owed it something was simply abhorrent. Not that I’m doubting her methods, mind you. Sometimes I just think she’s too generous for her own good.’

It appears the Princess’ hospitality eventually did run out, as the creature, ‘Look Nona’ moved out of the Castle and began claiming welfare some time ago, up until his recent employment at J’adore.

“Fucking liar!” Luke yelled to the empty dining hall, holding the paper at arm’s length as though he might catch tabloiditis. As if he needed more reason for ponies to hate him—now there was the Shitrag Herald just plain making up lies.

And Top Hat! Fucking Top Hat Tootingington the Turd. Luke knew this pony on a first name basis, having had a couple of run-ins with the wealthy stallion the few times he had ventured outside of the castle.

You could call the guy a slimeball, but that would be an insult to slimeballs. Top Hat was one of the few ponies that had went as far as to sign the ‘Evict the Alien’ petition that had been making the rounds amongst the hardcore elitist in the Equinox district. Thankfully, Celestia put her hoof down on that one pretty quickly. Like, literally stomped on it outside of the Castle gates and told everypony to stop being bigoted assholes.

She hadn’t used that exact phrasing, but most ponies got the message. Things had actually been a bit better since then. Luke didn’t know what he’d do if he didn’t have Celestia on his side.

Throwing the paper back on the table, Luke resigned himself to dreading the bi-weekly meetings with Gilded Scroll he was probably going to be having again very shortly. After all—Fleur would have to be crazy to keep him on the payroll after this.

CRACK.

The soft, spongy texture of the lone midday Canterlot cloud met Fleur’s hooves, courtesy of the cloudwalk spell that was all but second nature to her at this point. Fleur loved walking the clouds—the great blue yonder resembled the sea enough to placate her darker half.

Alas, that wasn’t the case this time.

VEUX LUC!

“-never thought anypony would be quite so bold as to teleport me from my Castle against my will, but I suppose you certainly fit the bill,” Celestia chuckled, letting her wings fan out in the slight breeze.

Well, she’s not angry. Let’s see how long that lasts. “I should 'ave never done zis favour for you!” Fleur growled, taking several hoofsteps toward the sun goddess, the siren still wailing in her head.

Annoyingly, Celestia’s cheery expression remained. Fleur may well have complemented her regalia for all the reaction she got. She snapped her jaws, pointing an accusatory forehoof as her fangs snipped together like razor blades. “You… You, with your knowledge and power and unfathomable foresight. You knew zis would 'appen. You got to know ‘im, seen ‘ow wonderful ‘ee was and you knew.”

Celestia lounged on the cloud as though it were a duvet made of the finest fabrics money could buy. She still had that stupid grin on her face. “Do you not like him? I can find him another place of work if need be-”

“You know that eez no longer an option!” Fleur growled, the whining, pining siren in her head demanding she teleport back to Luke at once. “I… I ‘ave lived for so long, in peace-”

“Peace,” Celestia chuckled, smiling fondly at a sparrow that had just alighted on her hoof. “Is that what you’re calling it?” The bitter derision in her tone was subtle, but Fleur didn’t miss it.

Some of the venom escaped Fleur, but she still stared the Princess down with a slightly blue-tinted, steely gaze. “Yes, peace, and more importantly—control. Isn’t zat what you want? A tame beast, living peacefully amongst your unknowing subjects?”

“What I want, is for you to be happy,” Celestia sighed, casting a forlorn look at the sparrow being carried away by the breeze. “I’d give up the crown to be a siren... to have a chance to spend the rest of eternity with someone to call my own. Here you are, with the opportunity of your endless life, and you’re just too scared to admit you’ve found your consort.”

Fleur flinched as though somepony had just hit her with a shock spell. “Do not use that word.”

Ears flat to her mane and her tail between her legs—the dreaded confirmation coursed through her with every beat of her heart. It was irrefutable. Every siren found her consort eventually. All it took, was time—a resource that was of course, an inexhaustible commodity.

Ruthless inevitability would of course dictate that she pursue Luke with an irrational determination. What if he rejected her? Would she end up enslaving him, as others of her kind have done in the past? The thought made her sick to her stomach. And that wasn’t even the worst possibility…

“Bit for your thoughts, my old friend?”

Celestia had barely spoke, but Fleur still nearly jumped out of her coat. She cleared her throat. “Everything… eez going to change now, wezzer I like eet or not.”

Celestia smiled, a true smile this time, not a smirk. Her horn began to glow. “Now, that’s a healthy mindset. If I were you, I’d be doing everything in my power to guarantee a favourable outcome for everypony.”

With a flash of dazzling sunlight, the cloud was empty once more.

I was originally working on a (completely unrelated) Marble Pie clopshot to release with this chapter, but I couldn't finish it time. I've decided to wait until JimboTex finally gets around to finishing the Shimmy fic that he's been working on for over two years instead. (If that ever actually happens of course :-P)

As usual, let me know if you spot any typos/editing errors.