Celestia perked an ear as magic gathered before her and took on the shape of a scroll. Something from Twilight?! Dare she dream? Her horn glowed as she unfurled the scroll quickly, eyes scanning over Star Swirl's words, her moment of cheer cracking and shattering almost instantly. "Oh..."

It felt so... insufficient. Her sister could have just died. Was 'oh' all that she could say.

"Oh..." There it was again. She couldn't see. The words of the scroll were lost. A loud sound startled her. Oh, that was just a teardrop, a quiet thing, but it felt as loud as thunder. Luna was gone, maybe dead, maybe... Maybe not?

Maybe she was being held by the invaders cruelly perhaps...

Luna had tried so hard to be a defender of the realm, while Celestia just sat there... Just... sat there.

She drove a hoof down with the force to splinter the stone beneath her. She was huffing for breath despite having spent most of the hour not moving.

"Your Highness?" A guard was peeking in from the door of the sitting room. "Is everything..." He saw her tears and fell silent.

Celestia clenched her teeth, trying to control herself as she slowly stood up. "There is... vital business calling me away."

"But, um... You have a guest com--"

"--Send them away!" shrieked Celestia, losing her composure a moment. "I... I apologize. You did not deserve that." She raised the same hoof that had struck the floor to her chest, measuring her breaths by the thundering of her heart. "I must be off. There are other, more... pressing issues that require my personal touch. Inform Raven that I will not be available for the foreseeable future."

She spread her wings wide and began moving for the balcony. "Do not prepare dinner for me."

"Your highness!" But she was already gone, leaving the guard thrusting a hoof at an empty room. "This is not good..." He went to go find Raven Inkwell, her secretary.

The secret service arrived as quickly as cars could travel, meeting the president as he walked from the elevators towards the front door. "Good to see you again, gentlemen."

"Sorry for the trouble..." The leader of them looked slightly awkward. "I'm afraid, at the moment, you are not the president."

"Come again? I haven't been gone that long."

"No, Sir, but the decision to have you evaluated has not been challenged. Your VP is acting president until you are given a fresh clearance for security purposes."

"I never had it to begin with," snapped Crane with a scowl. "Presidents don't get cleared."

"Presidents are not typically kidnapped, and certainly not by enemy agents that can do... whatever they want, pending investigation. This isn't my decision, Mr. Crane. I hope it passes quickly, but I do have to follow orders."

He let out a loud sigh of irritation. "Well, alright. What are you here for, if I'm not the president?"

"To see you to clearing, of course. We do presume you want to be president, correct?"

"I never thought I'd stop it until the people voted me out, eight years finished, or I died, and none of those things have happened yet." He crossed his arms, gesturing ahead with one hand. "Lead the way. Let's get this circus over with."

He was stuffed into the back seat of the luxury car, a serviceman at either side. It was as secure as it usually was, but he was a high-profile politician, not the president, for the moment.

Twilight landed, Rainbow touching down next to her. She smiled at her following friend, but her focus went forward as she hurried into the castle. "He's returned."

Cadance was there, speaking with some guards. The moment Twilight came into view, she sent them off and hurried towards her. "He's back? Good. Did he seem... angry?"

"Not at all, thankfully. I really think we're making progress." She shook her head. "Can you ca--"

Cadance put a hoof to Twilight's lips. "I need this right now..." She brought her hoof back and hunkered down a little. "Sunshine Sunshine?"

Twilight blinked, baffled a moment before it clicked. "Ladybugs awake!"

The ritual started, they did their little dance for one another, the tension of the moment disrupted with relieved smiles on both of their faces.

Rainbow snorted out a laugh at the sight. "You two are super cute sometimes. So, anyway, mind if I give her some details?"

"Go ahead. I'll speak after you." Cadance gestured for Rainbow to continue, sitting on her haunches

Rainbow gestured grandly towards the west. "So you went off doing whatever you were doing, and I was helping out with project 'Show them we can fight', and we were kicking all the rumps!" She clopped her hooves together smartly. "At least until Shining called us back to sit around doing nothing. That was lame. By the time we got back, you were gone."

"I did ask him to wait while I made my attempt at diplomacy. I'm glad he listened. Speaking of that, what have the yaks been going? Are they also pausing their counter-attacks?" Twilight looked to Cadance for answers.

Cadance shook her head. "The yaks can be difficult to communicate with at the best of times. I don't entirely know their condition..."

"That isn't good..." Twilight scowled at the thought. "They could be making trouble and ruining these peace efforts while we speak."

Rainbow cleared her throat loudly. "I wasn't finished, Twi. So anyway! When I woke up--"

"--Woke up?" Twilight hiked a brow high. "Was this in the morning?"

"I was a little banged up, alright." Twilight huffed softly. "Nothing Rainbow "Danger" Dash couldn't handle. Anyway! Sheesh, you keep interrupting me! So I woke up in a tent full of injured ponies and dragons and griffons and maybe a few yaks? I wasn't counting."

Cadance raised a hoof. "I feel I should explain this part. You were not awake during it."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, guess that's true. Have at, Kay Kay."

"I will, but never use that name again." Cadance smiled gently at Twilight, but it was a haunted expression. "I was with Shining Armor. The guards were training with their weapons, new and old. It was a perfectly fine day, until we heard it. It was one of their metal dragons, soaring in quickly."

She looked off in the direction it had come from. "We paused. Most of the guards paused. It was loud, and coming in fast. We'd seen such things fly overhead before. Just another one, another flyby, and then back to work. No big deal... We were so wrong... We heard whistling." She made a whistle, an up-scaling octave in a sharp short noise. "Then the world ended. Everything was reduced to fire and holes. The entire training field was just.... gone... Shining protected me, most others didn't have that benefit... So many died. So many were terribly hurt..."

Twilight reached out an unsure hoof, resting it on Cadance's shoulder. "I'm so... sorry."

Cadance twisted her lost expression to a bitter little smile. "I thought Sombra would be the greatest fear I would ever face... I learned a horrible lesson that day. True monsters do not always make themselves known until it is far too late to even think... Twilight, please tell me we will never face something like that again."

Twilight shook her head. "I can't really do that, but I'm trying."

"I know you are." Cadance looked to Rainbow. "You may continue."

"Huh? Right! So anyway, we did get 'em back! Luna and her warlocks marched over there and wrecked their metal dragons, bam!" She clopped her hooves for emphasis. "Took a bunch of their weapons too."

Cadance shook her head. "I was not made aware of this until after they had already returned, or I would have tried to stop them, as you asked me, Twilight."

Rainbow scoffed. "Well, whatever, they didn't send any other metal dragons this way, so I think it worked."

Twilight looked pensive a moment. "Wait, is Luna here then? Where is she?" Everyone in the room looked suddenly more sullen. "Was that... a bad question?"

Cadance let out the breath in her in a slow deflation. "Entirely reasonable, but we don't know... Apparently she and her warlocks attempted another mission and it did not go nearly as well."

"Remember Star Swirl? He's in it. We should ask him what's up."

Cadance's expression hardened. "He has spoken enough that I wish to hear in one day. They attacked the largest metal dragon we ever saw, became separated, and only he returned, with their leader. He has no idea where Luna or any of his peers are at this point... He did send a letter to Celestia, informing her."

Twilight went tense. "Oh..."

Rainbow squinted at the mental image. "There is no way Celestia's gonna be happy hearing her sister's in trouble. Think she'll send more reinforcements?"

Cadance shook her head in an uneven fashion, her head shaking along its tracks. "I... don't know. It has been... so many moons since Equestria knew a proper war, and this has... taken its toll much like one." She suddenly smiled a little. "Though it has had precious little property damage, comparatively. No sacked cities. No looted and burned libraries... No mass enslavement that I have been made aware of. This is a new sort of war, just as horrible."

Twilight wrinkled her nose. "Their leader seemed to agree that the... miscommunications that led up to this must be stopped. Neither of our people want this war, so we shouldn't have it, period. I tried to make it clear that I'm entirely ready to keep talking, but he had to get things under control. Having your leader go missing like that isn't good."

Rainbow scowled at that. "Yeah, but when Luna goes missing, we should just... forget that?"

"I didn't say that!" Twilight's wings shot out in either direction.

"I didn't hear any bold plans to see what happened to her and save her."

"Bold plans are what got her in this situation to start." Twilight turned away towards the doors that lead out of the castle. "Let's take some calm and measured steps instead. It is quite possible that, if we wait, their leader will contact me, we can finish making peace, and then any prisoners each side has can be returned with an apology cake to take home with them." Her voice got more strained towards the end of her little speech, left huffing a bit.

Cadance smiled thinly. "We do have a prisoner. We caught him sneaking around the weapon's factory... He hasn--"

The ground beneath them lurched with a muffled explosion. "What was that?"

Twilight sucked in a sharp breath. "I'll go find out."

"With me!" Rainbow advanced quickly. "We go together."

"Fine, now." They promptly vanished.

They appeared in a smoky room. The jails were filled with debris and the air was choked with dust. Twilight heard a soft groan in the fog and pushed through to find Flash slumped against a wall, a great length of metal gone right through him, skewering him from cutie mark to cutie mark. He seemed to notice her presence, faintly, looking towards her with eyes that didn't see, lost in the agony of his existence.

"Don't move!" hissed Twilight, not that Flash had much chance of moving in his condition. "We're here! We'll help. Just... stay calm."

"What the..." Rainbow saw the scene, eyes darting from one gorey bit to the next. Flash was impaled on one solid metal pipe going through both hind legs and his torso. "That... oh... man..."

He wasn't dead yet. Twilight's horn glowed brightly, whisking him and her away suddenly, teleporting away without a thought, or Rainbow Dash.

"Huh... fine, be... that way." She couldn't fully muster the will to be angry in the situation. "What happened?" She began prodding at the debris, looking around with wide eyes, even if they stung in the smoke. "What could do this?"

Author's Notes:

Someone makes a mess in the jails. I bet you can guess who that was.

What is Celestia planning?