“Oohh,” Twilight Sparkle moans, hugging herself as she rocks back and forth. Her mane starts to frazzle, loose ends splitting off and curling up. “Did we do enough? What will they think? I’ve never written a speech for an election before. Did we talk about the right topics? Did we talk about the wrong topics?”

Cadance and Shining Armor look entirely nonplussed, having seen this routine more than once before, and that’s not even counting when Twilight was just a filly. Doug drops down, his friendly smile ignored by the hyperventilating alicorn.

“But there’s so much to tell!” Twilight looks up at Doug as he starts massaging her withers, then at her old foalsitter. “You’re kind, caring, and amazing! And it doesn’t hurt that you’re beautiful!” Cadance grins at the compliments, nuzzling her husband. “There was a lot we had to pack in, but-”

“You ran on for five pages,” Chrysalis states sourly. “After the first page I just read every other word.” She casually flips her cobalt locks back as Twilight gapes. “No need to thank me.”

“Thank you?!” Twilight bellows, leaping to her hooves and knocking Doug back. She fumes, clenches her teeth and stamps a hoof.

“You’re welcome,” Chrysalis says with a self-satisfied smile and slight nod of her head, ignoring the outburst.

“But, but, but, you could have ruined everything!” Twilight spins to Cadance, the pink alicorn attempting to hide her chuckle with a hoof. “You might not become the ruler of the Crystal Empire! Even though your very flank shows that’s what you’re meant to do! How are you so flippant about this?”

“Twily,” Shining Armor cuts in, shaking his head with a wide grin. “You listened to Chrysalis read your statement. Did it sound like she skipped any words?”

“Um,” Twilight starts, recalling how the changeling recited each creature’s statement to the changeling assigned to maintain the railroad to the Crystal Empire. She hunkers down a little, her anger fading. “No?”

“She was just teasing you. A joke.” Shining Armor ruffles his little sister’s mane, smirking at her contrite expression. Chrysalis looks confused as Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash offer her a hoof to bump, eventually catching on and lightly tapping them.

“Speaking of jokes,” Tempest Shadow mutters as she reads the Storm King’s statement. Her eyes narrow further and further until mere pinpricks of black are visible. Sparks fly from her horn, uncontained, as her fury builds. She doesn’t flinch when the paper ignites, nopony sure whether from her burning gaze or from the sparks from her horn, and she hurls the flaming debris to the floor before stomping it out.

“My liege,” she barely gets out through gritted teeth, doing her best to repeat the spontaneous combustion with a furious glare at the reclining Storm King. He doesn’t seem to care, or be paying any attention to her at all. She takes a deep breath, burying the anger under what must double as the blast shielding around a warship’s reactor room. “Did you… did you not even attempt to persuade the Crystal Ponies of your… superiority?” She can’t help but spit out the last word, as much as she made it through the rest without being overtly insulting.

“What?” the Storm King replies, either oblivious or unconcerned with Tempest’s fury. “That?” He motions to the ashes underneath her hoof. “That doesn’t matter.” He returns to scratching his back with the Staff of Sacanas, the wooden shaft able to slip inside his dark gray cuirass. He grunts in pleasure, back arching to expose more of his white fur.

“How can you say it doesn’t matter?!” Tempest scowls, stomping up to the relaxing Storm King. “If we win this election, not only will we have one more ally, the Equestrians will have one less! And you think that saying ‘I’m ready to power up, crash and bash, and be the biggest, baddest, boogaloo’ would do that!?”

With a powerful kick the Storm King launches himself up, going from laying on his back to performing some of the absolute worst dance moves imaginable. He flails about, whipping his arms forward and back, and mimicking scratching a record player by raking the staff against the floor, all while he belts out,

“Party creatures in the place to be!
This is what you’ve all been waitin’ to see!
Electric boogaloo! The ultimate show!”

Twilight Sparkle snorts as the Storm King drops to the floor, one arm holding out the staff while the other props himself up, spinning in circles with his legs suspended in the air. She elbows Pinkie Pie in the side, barely able to hold in her laughter as she remarks, “Gee, I think I dance better than that!”

“Um,” Pinkie Pie says, raising an eyebrow and gently removing Twilight’s elbow from her. She goes back to swaying to the beat of his hooves against the floor as he swaps to a series of rapid spins and jumps. “He’s doing that dance perfectly. And that’s a dance for ponies. It takes some serious skill to be that bad.”

“Wait, really?” Twilight asks, perplexed. She goes back to watching the Storm King perform what is possibly the wackiest exercise routine she has ever seen. He looks utterly ridiculous, and yet at the same time with such a lack of self-consciousness. And, now that she thinks about it, for a creature of his mass and wearing armor? You would have to be quite strong and dexterous to balance on one arm like that, or kick your legs that high. She almost envies the foal-like joy he radiates, almost only because she would have to be so silly in order to claim it herself.

“Your Excellency,” Tempest Shadow says, interrupting a seemingly never-ending interlude of ‘I believe in the beat!’ that he punctuates with beating the staff against the floor. “As much as I share your love of pony dance numbers from twenty years ago, it is not something the Crystal Empire would respond to! And I don’t see how any of this will help me get my horn back!”

Raikou stops in a heartbeat, the only motion in the room Pinkie Pie doing some sort of worm dance along the floor. “Temp,” he starts, one hand on the Staff while the other drapes across her back. “Can I call you that?” Before she can respond he goes on, “You see, it doesn’t matter if I win or lose. And it’s the same reason that none of the ponies here respect you.”

“What did you just say?” Tempest Shadow demands, suddenly on edge, ignoring Twilight’s muffled objection.

He musses her mane, his hand slipping lower along her neck. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

In an instant the Storm King’s large hand wraps around her throat, fingers hooking just under her jaw. He casually lifts her off the ground with one arm, his friendly smile boring into her. She can still breathe, if barely, his hand not crushing her windpipe like he easily could. Her fury never dies, even smothered under his iron grasp, forelegs clutching at his bracers as she struggles to break his grip.

“I could repair your horn right now,” Raikou says brightly, his cheerful tone not disguising the ruthlessness behind his words. At Tempest’s disbelieving stare he casually maneuvers the Staff of Sacanas inside her muzzle. Her body jerks, her mouth opening wide as she tries to evade, then freezes as he presses the sharp tip against the roof of her mouth. It doesn’t stop her from glaring daggers at him, her horn sparking.

The ponies are similarly shell-shocked as a faint trickle of red runs down the blue crystal. Twilight can barely raise her hoof, much less open her mouth and shout at him to stop.

“Is that what you want?” he demands, now as harsh as when he summarily executed Strife after his previous second-in-command betrayed him. “A new horn, made of crystal? You know, I could even get it to come out of your old one. That’d be a pretty good look, don’t you think?”

Tempest can barely shake her head no, cutting herself against the tip lodged in her mouth to do so.

With one smooth motion he pulls the Staff away and roughly casts her to the ground. She skids along until coming to an abrupt stop at Twilight’s hooves.

She lays there, crumpled, as he towers over her, calculating exactly how close he would need to step before she could lash out and take down a leg, and then clamber on top of him. Yet he never steps close enough.

“That’s the first reason.” He smiles, but it’s a cold, harsh smile, devoid of happiness. “The ponies of the Crystal Empire, and everywhere else for that matter, will never respect somecreature unless that creature proves themselves. You think winning an election will be enough? Hah!” He sneers, shaking his head. “As soon as you try to get them to do something they don’t want, they will find somepony new. That’s why the shock-and-awe armada is so important. And why you just accepting the Princesses’ ‘surrender’ will never work. Because they haven’t seen your power. They haven’t seen how far you will go. They need that demonstration, if only to prove how serious you are.” He cocks his head as he stares down at her. “Are you serious, Temp?”

“Yes,” she growls out, wishing he would drop half a hoof length closer.

Except he just straightens up. “Good. And the other reason?” He smirks, a bit of light returning to his eyes and smile. He turns and winks at the alicorns. “I have a plan.”

And with that he returns to his seat, lounging as if nothing happened.

Twilight Sparkle tentatively crouches down, staring at the broken-horned unicorn still laying on the ground. She hesitates, unable to speak. This… this is what the Princess of Friendship does, right? The doubt builds inside her, every second spent waiting making it harder and harder to stretch her hoof forward.

What would Celestia do? She would reach her hoof forward in Friendship, not to a pony who wants to be friends, but to an enemy. And how much harder is it to do so, but how much more worthwhile!

And when she finally does reach forward with a friendly smile, Tempest bats it away with a scowl.

“I need neither your help nor your pity,” she rasps out, spitting out a glob of blood as she gets to her hooves. She rubs at her throat, massaging for a brief moment as she swallows. “He taught me a lesson, and one I needed to hear.” She regards Twilight with naked hatred before leaving.

“Wait!” Twilight calls as Tempest storms off. The unicorn turns, regarding her dubiously as Twilight formulates her thoughts. Her fellow Equestrians murmuring about the Storm King’s outburst doesn’t help matters either, making it difficult to concentrate. “Y-your horn. Can we help?”

Tempest fixes her with such vitriol that Twilight momentarily shies away. She shifts her gaze to Celestia, her venom doubling. “You had your chance.”

Twilight can only stare as Tempest Shadow leaves without a backwards glance. She… she failed? She barely notices when Celestia steps next to her and drapes a comforting wing over her side.

“It is alright, Twilight,” Celestia lilts, her voice a soothing balm. The younger alicorn merely sniffs. “Some merely take longer than others. That does not mean we stop trying, or never start trying in the first place.”

“I just wish there was more I could do to help.” Twilight sighs heavily, running over the brief encounters she has had with Tempest and wondering what would be the best way to win over the prodigal unicorn.

She is broken from her musing by Doug coming up between them. “Are we going to do nothing about him?” He doesn’t need to point for them to know exactly who he is talking about.

“For assault? Battery?” Celestia grimly shakes her head. “He chose a harsh method to teach a valuable lesson. One Tempest will not easily forget. While we may treat all others with politeness and deference to their preferences, true respect is reserved for those who deserve it. What is he doing?”

Twilight considers for a long moment. Sometimes she wishes Celestia would just explain her intuitions. But she knows the lessons better, they get ingrained deeper, if it is her figuring it out. She finally ventures, “He believes that deep respect should be afforded to those with strength and power.”

“And?”

Twilight frowns. “He is displaying that power to us, in the same way that we show others love in the way that we wish to be loved. The question is, how shall we respond?”

“That question will have to wait,” Chrysalis announces from a glowing hologram of the lime green changeling. “The results are in!”

“Already?” Doug asks, joining the other creatures. He chuckles to himself. “Well, I guess you didn’t have to wait two weeks for all the mail-in votes.” He glances at Radiant Hope and Amethyst Maresbury. “You two voted, right?”

They nod, watching as Alira reads off the results.

“In last place, with a single vote. The Storm King.”

Raikou absently twirls a finger in the air.

“Better’n Ah thought,” Applejack remarks to Rainbow Dash, getting a snicker in return.

“With less than five votes each, for sixth and fifth place, Prince Rutherford of the Yaks and Ember of the Dragons.”

“What?” Ember bellows, swiping at the air. “I knew this was a waste of time!” Behind her Garble nods, crossing his arms and snorting twin jets of flame. Prince Rutherford has a similar reaction, if a bit more stomp-intensive.

Alira offers Radiant Hope a placating smile. “In fourth, we have Radiant Hope.”

The unicorn sighs, disappointed.

“In third, we have a write-in for Twilight Sparkle.”

“Hey, that’s pretty good!” Spike congratulates, shooting her a thumbs-up.

“Thanks, Spike,” Twilight says, leaning down to nuzzle his spiky fronds. She can’t help but smile as Cadance and Chrysalis size each other up.

“Well,” Shining Armor says, puffing his chest out. “Looks like no matter which of you wins, I get to be Emperor Armor.”

“Sorry, love,” Cadance says, tittering. “But I think I’ll keep my title of Princess, thank you.”

“Not me,” Chrysalis retorts. “I would be an Empress.” She crouches down slightly to rub her head against his, drawing a low moan. “Which would you want to be? Emperor or Prince?”

“Um,” Shining Armor says, clearly conflicted as Cadance comes up on his other side. He tries giving them each wide smiles, but their expressions turn sour every time he looks away from them. “I, uh…”

“The winner,” Alira announces, saving Shining Armor’s flank, “beating out Princess Cadance to become the Crystal Empire’s choice for their next leader, is-”

“What?” Cadance exclaims, wide eyes going past Shining Armor to stare at the exultant changeling. She cannot believe the results, that this imposter could have defeated her in winning the hearts of the Crystal Ponies!

“Yes!” Chrysalis screams in victory, throwing her hooves in the air. “Soon, I will unlock the power of the Crystal Heart, and all of its love will be mine!”

She blinks, noticing that she is not in fact alone, as she always is when communicating with her brood in this manner, but surrounded by a good number of creatures who look entirely less than thrilled at this revelation.

“I-I mean, to study!” Chrysalis offers Twilight a fangy grin. It nearly gets the lavender alicorn to break and join her in smiling. “You know! So we can, um, make… more?”

“The winner,” Alira repeats, turning and looking down, “with a clear majority of votes, is the Brave and Glorious Spike!”

Spike locks in place, his mind running in every direction at once. Him?! How could they have chosen him? He’s just a glorified mail-pony! Sure, he likes to pretend that he is the one coming up with the words and phrases that Twilight dictates to him. But can he actually do as good a job as a Princess?

“Hah!” Rainbow Dash exclaims, the first pony to break from their astonishment. “Looks like having a giant statue of you in their city helped out, huh?” She claps the stunned dragon on the back, then has to catch him when he topples over. She nervously rights him, having to keep him steady with a hoof.

“Indeed!” Rarity says, appraising Spike in a way she rarely has before. She can barely keep from doing a tittering dance as examples of miniature suits race through her mind. “You’ll be adorable, all sparkly and beautiful! Just don’t get too large from chewing all the scenery, yes?”

Garble rubs a claw against his chin, appraising the still-stunned Spike. “You know, I did say I wanted a dragon in charge.”

“The Griffons are happy to support the dragon,” Gruff says, flipping a bit to himself.

“If that is the case,” Alira says, getting a flippant hand wave from the Storm King, a shrug from Iron Grip, and an infuriated stomp from Prince Rutherford. “Effective immediately, the Brave and Glorious Spike shall be the ruler of the Crystal Empire!”

“All hail Emperor Spike!” chorus the ponies, the other creatures joining in. All Spike can do is stare at his claws, dumbfounded.

Next Chapter: Ch. 30 - Izaro's Turmoil, Part One Estimated time remaining: 27 Hours, 22 Minutes