“You’re not coming to the wedding?”

Two sisters sat at the dining table, enjoying a meal together for the first time in a while; one eating dinner, the other eating breakfast. Two sisters, polar opposites, they rarely got to dine together, thanks to the nature of their schedules. They hadn’t always gotten on together, but that was to be expected -- there was no such thing as a sibling relationship that didn’t get rocky at some point, and in any case, conflict was the spice of life. And these two sisters needed that spice, for theirs was the longest one.

“I wish I could, Celly,” Luna said. “But I’ve been up all night, and I simply wouldn’t be in any condition to attend. I’d look awful, and I’d be yawning, and...”

“Okay, okay,” Celestia said, pouting. “You know it’s the only chance you’ll have to see our niece get married for at least a hundred years and probably more, right?”

“I’m sorry,” reiterated Luna, spooning some salad into her mouth. “But I fear I’d only put a damper on proceedings. Not to mention I’m sure most ponies still harbor fear for me.”

Celestia’s lips pursed. “I wish they’d let Nightmare Moon go. I have.”

“Give it time,” Luna muttered. “It’s only been two years. Mortals are slow to forgive and forget; strange, since their time is so limited.”

“Chalk it up to our experience regarding grudges,” Celestia smiled. “Well, the celebration will continue until well after sunset, so you’re free to join us at any time.”

“I shall,” Luna said, nodding and getting up, stifling a yawn. “I think I shall retire at this point. I forgot how tiring it is to cast spells of scrying all night.”

Celestia nodded. “Sleep well, sister.”

“See you tonight.”

======

They came for her while she slept.

Luna slumbered fitfully, roused from sleep by a number of clues that all was not well. For one, she was over-warm. A window was perhaps open, which led neatly to problem number two, the sunlight beating on her closed eyelids, not something that would normally happen. Maker knew she loved her sister, but Celly could be a great big bag of parasprites sometimes with how bright she made the sun shine. She often wondered if it was just to wind her up, a practical joke on a cosmic scale.

And thirdly, the step of hooves. Nopony employed by the Castle was foolish enough to intrude on the Princesses’ bedchambers uninvited, much less when they were asleep, and Celly had better things to do than rustle Luna’s breakfast cereal. Which meant these intruders were not Luna’s loyal subjects, nor her sister, which was the second guess.

Her eyes snapped open, bloodshot from interrupted sleep, and the insect-like creature leaning over her let out a small noise of surprise.

With a blast of magic, the creature was flung across the room at high speed, plowing through the wall in a cascade of rubble. Luna sat up, eyes watering at exposure to sunlight, and saw that her assailant hadn’t been alone; a trio of the creatures stood nearby, alternating alarmed looks between the hole in the wall and their friend under the rubble, and Luna herself. They stepped back, chittering amongst themselves as they slowly made their way to the door, trying not to draw her attention and failing miserably.

Luna watched them go with a steely eye, before her other eye noticed something lying in the middle of the floor near where the creatures had been standing, a dear friend who should not have been lying there so... broken. She dived forward, leaping to it’s side, cradling it in her hooves.

“Abacus!” She raised the primitive mathematical aid in her hooves, alarmed. “Abacus, speak to me!”

The abacus did not respond, as inanimate objects are wont to do, save to rattle slightly as a bead fell off a broken strut. Luna closed her eyes, and reverentially laid the item down on the ground, before standing up straight, at her full height. A set of sunglasses resting on a peg were enveloped in a magical glow and pulled across the room to land on her face, allowing her to open her night-adjusted eyes without pain.

The creatures saw the expression on her face, and knew that they were in so much trouble, being buried under half a tonne of rubble was sounding more like an infinitely less painful option with every second that passed.

Luna gritted her teeth. “You changeling parasprites are going to pay for messing up my abacus.”

======

Changelings. Nasty little creatures.

Luna swung a silver-shod hoof through the air, and chitin cracked as the changeling had no choice but to obey the laws of physics and fly out the window, at speed.

Devious creatures, they fed off emotions directed at the pony they were imitating. Love was their preferred sustenance, although Luna vaguely recalled they were able to feed off any sufficiently strong emotion. The only one they couldn’t handle was raw hatred.

Luna grabbed a fleeing changeling by the neck with telekinesis, and used the changeling like a bat to smash three of his comrades into a marble pillar.

It was a pity they couldn’t feel the hatred she had for them right now. Abacus was- had been- a good mathematical aid, just two days from retirement, which was when Luna would finally pick up one of those new-fangled “calculators”. Luna gritted her jaw. When this was all over, she had a difficult letter to write to Mrs. Sexton.

Moonlight danced around the crowded hallway, and ice encrusted everything it touched; mostly changelings. The frost of the coldest night in winter, not something Luna got to play with much outside of the longest night of the year, which was a pity, because the patterns it formed were so very pretty.

Luna kicked out, and one of the changelingsicles was smashed into a million pieces almost as an afterthought, as Luna considered the situation. Why were they here in Canterlot of all places? She looked out the window, as she flung a hoof out, clotheslining a changeling going the other way, and saw it.

Or rather, she didn’t see it. Shining Armor’s dome had vanished, and the sky was thick with chitinous invaders. The answer: Something had happened to Shining Armor, and possibly the wedding itself.

This all ran through Luna’s analytical, scientific mind, which, deep down, was always watching, always thinking. Unfortunately for the changelings, it was staying deep-down, and between that and the world at large was a Luna who was, at best, intolerant of being woken up early and at present, emotionally distraught at the demise of her abacus.

“WHO WANTS SOME?” Luna boomed, shamelessly using the Royal Canterlot Voice exactly where she’d been told not to use it -- indoors. The resulting wave of sound blew several frozen changelings into small, frosty fragments, and sent others flying backwards down the hallway, clutching the sides of their heads in agony. The hallway cleared, Luna cantered at a brisk pace down the hallway, taking care to step heavily on any changeling that didn’t look like a pile of broken chitin at this point.

Luna stepped outside, onto a castle rampart, and let out a low growl when she saw what had happened to Canterlot. First she was woken up early, and then her abacus was broken, and then, just to add insult to injury, her little ponies were in mortal peril. She saw clusters of resinous goop in the streets below, and encased within, ponies struggling to escape.

“Nopony threatens my little ponies and gets away with it!” she growled.

The sounds of commotion within the castle got her attention;; she  turned and saw a pair of larger changelings walking through a doorway with confidence all but oozing out of every pore; they were about her size and thrice as heavy-set thanks to chitin that was thicker than the average Canterlot noble -- they were insectoid juggernauts.

Luna didn’t give much for her chances of breaking that heavy shell without help. She could just freeze her way through it and be efficient; but right now, the irritation of being woken up early,  along with grief and taking the attack on Canterlot as a personal insult, it all formed into a single call for cathartic, primitive, primal, unyielding violence.

Luna’s eye spotted a red-trimmed, glass-fronted cabinet on the wall; a plaque read “Emergency Use Only” (thus meaning, use it every day), and within, a sturdy axe rested on two pegs, never used. (Direct violation of plaque instructions.) Luna ran over to the cabinet, and after a cursory search for a proper way to open it (which proved fruitless), she simply reared back, and slammed her forehead into the cabinet.

With a tinkle of glass, Luna ripped the fire axe free, blood trickling down her face as she stared down the approaching behemoths, twirling the axe in her telekinetic grip.

“Come hither,” she said, beckoning. “I’ve got some questions to axe you.”

The Behemoths charged as one, heavy steps causing the very ground to shake with their approach. Luna leapt, twirled, and swung her axe in a vicious uppercut.

With a crash, one of the behemoths was brought to a terrifyingly abrupt halt,chin rising into the air and even moving backwards with the force of the impact. The axe made a loud metallic clang, and the wood fragments flew through the air as the axe itself exploded, the head reduced to a vaguely axe-shaped lump of steel.

Luna regarded the broken tool with contempt. “Shoddy modern tools...”

The changeling she’d backflipped with the axe wasn’t really in a condition to regard anything, much less with contempt, since the impact had done a solid job of rattling whatever it had for a brain. The behemoth landed on it’s back with a whud, and Luna cast aside the axe-handle irritably.

Then she was hit by a freight train in the form of a four-legged changeling behemoth, the one that she hadn’t knocked out cold. The beast carried her across the room, and without pausing to slow down, through the wall with a crash of masonry and stone.

It didn’t stop, carrying her through wall after wall, even as Luna swore and pounded on the creature’s back and spine with a hoof. It took an extended period where Luna was not being used as a battering ram for the princess to get free and escape her place on the front of the behemoth.

She landed on the carpet runner with a quiet impact, and looked around. Next to the wall, a familiar shape rested -- one of Pinkie Pie’s party cannons. Luna picked it up, and after a moment’s thought, emptied out the party-specific payload, replacing it with magically-sifted lumps of stone and rubble.

She felt the tremors of the approaching Behemoth, and spun around, dropping into her back and kicking up as she fired the cannon.

With a loud BLAM, stone and rubble became shrapnel, and the behemoth’s head exploded, the rest of the corpse completing it’s forced aerial arc to land on it’s ragged stump of a neck before rolling to a halt. Luna, covered in blood, got up and discarded the spent charge, levitating a belt of party cannon charges over her shoulder and around her neck as she reloaded her improvised weapon.

She sensed trouble, and still shoving debris down the barrel, turned around to see a trio of behemoths, none of them looking terribly impressed with her antics thus far.

“It is time for me to kick flank and masticate rubbery gum candy,” Luna said coldly, adjusting her sunglasses to sit better on her face as she wiped some gore off the lens. “And Pinkie Pie hath beaten me to the gum.”

======

The doors to the throne room flew open, and what was left of a behemoth landed on the carpet, to muffled cries of horror. Following it was a depleted, smoking party cannon, and one rather upset night princess.

Luna looked upwards, and saw wedding guests suspended in cocoons or stuck to the ceiling by adhesive resin. She noted several rather handsome stallions among them and sighed wistfully.

“Why is it always the hot ones?”

“Princess Luna,” a buzzing voice hailed. “So good of you to join us for the reception!”

Luna looked to the altar; above the altar, Celestia had been suspended in a cocoon of her own, unconscious and upside-down. Where her sister would have stood during the ceremony, a twisted, black creature stood in a mockery of a wedding ceremony, the couple-to-be bound by resin to the floor at her sides.

“I am Queen Chrysalis,” the Changeling Queen declared. “I’ll cut to the chase. Canterlot is now mine, and it’s only a matter of time before I have all of Equestria. I have absorbed enough love to overpower even Celestia, and the elements of harmony aren’t going to be able to stop me. The day is going exactly according to plan, and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted. What about you?”

“I’ve lost a dear friend,” Luna said flatly. “I’ve been woken up early. My subjects are in danger. My sister has been assaulted by you and yours, and I’ll just assume you’re to blame for ruining the wedding as well.” Luna pointed an accusatory hoof at the changeling queen. “I’m having a really bad day -- allow me to show you just how bad.”

“I think not,” Chrysalis chuckled darkly, tapping a chitinous hoof. “Grig. Step forward.”

A small changeling fluttered through the window, and circling around, landed in front of Chrysalis, facing Luna as if he was going to defend Chrysalis with his life.

Luna snorted derisively. “That weak little thing’s going to fight your battle for you, is he?”

“Don’t be so hasty,” Chrysalis said, “This is my bodyguard. This,” Chrysalis said as a warm glow enveloped her horn and a lance of energy shot into Grig’s back, “is Grig when he’s on one hundred percent, undistilled love.”

Luna’s face was fixed in a disbelieving sneer. A sneer that rapidly fell from her face as Grig bucked and bulged, chitin tearing as it made way for progressively newer, larger layers. Luna’s gaze slowly moved from below her height, to straight ahead, and eventually, above her, a shadow being cast across her and the carpet around her, Luna’s sunglass-clad face reflecting the hulking new form of Grig in front of her, his skin a roiling expanse of jagged and splintered chitin.

“Oh, hay no.”

There was a sweep of a pockmarked hoof, moving far faster than anything that size had a right to be moving, and Luna found the tables turned, herself being the one thrown through the air, leaving her tiara spinning in the air comically. Luckily for her, it was straight over the edge of the balcony, with no glass to prove an obstacle.

Unluckily for her, she was dazed by the sledgehammer hit, and by the time she could see just one oversized behemoth diving off the balcony towards her, she was far too close to the ground to be gliding out of trouble.

Flagstones smashed as Luna wrapped herself in otherworldly energies and reinforced her body to endure the impact; ponies nearby that hadn’t been imprisoned by changelings screamed loudly at the impact, relaxing a little when they saw it was just their friendly, not-evil Princess of the Night and oh sweet Celestia what is that thing landing on top of her-

With a heavy slam of raw mass on cobblestones, Grig landed on top of the princess, legs splayed out as he went for a bodyslam. Ponies shrieked, and many lost their nerve, fleeing into the street where changelings swooped down and plucked them up into the air. Those that did remain, either out of willpower or blind terror, were able to bear witness to a rare sight -- something not seen in a little over a thousand years now.

Luna got mad.

There was a creak of overloaded chitin, and Grig’s eyes went wide as his splayed-out posture slowly rose into the air. Underneath him, Luna stood on her rear legs, forehooves high above her head as one exposed, bloodshot eye glared out into space through the broken lens of her sunglasses, as if daring the universe to test her temper one more time.

With a scream of passion, fury and grief, she threw Grig, and the oversized changeling flew into  a storefront, demolishing it almost completely, along with a good portion of the second floor. Luna returned to all fours, and swept the broken sunglasses off her face so Grig could feel the twin barrels of hatred glaring at him.

The oversized changeling rolled onto his hooves, and roared, galloping into a charge. Luna stood her ground, unflinching, until the last moment, when she spun, and lashed out with a kick of the gods.

The Equestrian Royal Guard undertook matters of personal defense for the Princesses on the basis that expecting a princess to defend herself simply wasn’t okay, even if they were gods and quite capable of dealing with any mundane and most supernatural threats to the crown. The truth was, any male watching the princesses really go to town on anything just made them feel inadequate by comparison. It wasn’t unknown for guardsponies to observe the power of the princesses, and abruptly resign from the guard in order to go on a journey of self-discovery or enlightenment out of sheer emasculation, and that was when the princesses weren’t trying to utterly decimate the target.

The charging Grig weighed just a little on the heavy side -- some three tons, and he’d managed to hit a scorching pace in his short run-up. A lesser pony, even a certain masked superhero from Ponyville, would have simply failed to even phase the changeling, pitched forward and eaten flagstone before falling over and getting trampled to death in the face of Grig’s strength.

Luna managed to not only stop Grig cold, but with a swift wind-up and second sharp delivery, delivered a second hit that staggered the titan-class changeling. It stumbled into a lamp post, causing the civic property to squeal alarmingly as it bent, and the changeling used it to stand up properly, feeling his cheek and the twin hoofprints stamped firmly into the chitin. Luna grinned, and with shakes of her hooves, dislodged her now-ruined shoes, beckoning Grig forward with a come-hither curl of her forehoof.

“Come on, big colt. Show me thy moves,” she taunted.

Grig growled a feral growl, and launched himself forward once more; rather than go for a blind charge this time, though, he kept a far slower pace, and when Luna went for a second buck, he slipped to the side, ducked under her attack, and swept under her, swinging upwards with a foreleg in a swift uppercut. There was a whud, and Luna went flying into the air, spinning about as she flapped her wings, trying to right herself.

She’d barely spun a third, eye-watering revolution when she managed to stop it, going from a spinning, uncontrolled rise into a sharp, directed drop, rear hooves outstretched for a flying kick. Grig’s hoof flicked up like a rattlesnake, and quick as lightning, swung her groundwards like a flail.

Luna hit the cobblestones once more with a smash, and Grig didn’t stop there, bringing Luna back to his other side to slam into the cobblestones again. The display of power and aggression didn’t stop until Grig was standing in between two vaguely equine-shaped craters. The dust slowly cleared, and Grig puffed heavily with the effort -- being huge wasn’t easy, but it had helped today. He’d be surprised if the pony princess was anything more than a fleshy, bruised sack of broken cal-

A midnight-blue hoof reached around, and twisted into a firm grip, making use of Grig’s hole-riddled legs for a better hold. Luna grinned at Grig from the end of the gripping leg, spitting teeth.

“My turn.”

Grig’s eyes went wide as he was lifted off the ground, and with a deep cry of terror, he was subjected to the same treatment that he’d just taken pride in giving to Luna. The impacts on the ground were like the hoofstomps of the gods, the ground shaking and juddering with each impact, as Luna used Grig as a living hammer to hit nails that didn’t exist. Ponies and now changelings alike winced as Luna brutalized the bigger creature, and breathed a collective sigh of relief when she finally got bored of it.

Grig wasn’t in a condition to hold much of an opinion of anything, eyes addled and mouth missing more than a few fangs, his chitin broken clean through in places, exposing slightly translucent, somewhat pink flesh.

And still, Luna was not done, lifting the changeling titan up and balancing him on his legs unsteadily. Grig cooperated, a bit of a mistake when he realized Luna was rearing back, brandishing her forehooves.

With a crushingly painful series of strikes, Luna demonstrated the true art that was hoof-to-hoof combat, an endless stream of straight rights and left hooks serving as an example of form in the noble, centuries-old sport. Grig stumbled backwards, his face cracking, splintering and bleeding as it was pummeled into a chitinous pancake.

Eventually, the punch-drunk Grig realized he wasn’t being hit any more, and that’s because Luna, in her eternal grace, had her hooves up in the air, slowly turning around and shouting her superiority int othe air as the growing crowd began to roar in anticipation -- even the changelings were excited, forgoing care for their comrade in favor of the excitement of a good, old-fashioned beat-down.

Grig coughed up a few more fangs as Luna stopped showboating, and gripped him firmly by the shoulders, and spun him around. His eyes went wide as he was pulled onto his hind legs, and gripped firmly about the midsection by two hooves that were so tight, he didn’t have a chance of escaping.

With a roar of fury, Luna lifted, and arched her back, throwing herself backwards with all her might. Grig had little option but to follow, a trail of spittle marking his crescent path through the air, before Luna’s back became a perfect arch, and Grig was exposed to that most iconic of wrestling maneuvers: The Germane Suplex.

His head and shoulders hit the ground hard, and the audience could hear the crumpling of chitin against the forces being put to work. Stone splintered, and Grig gasped in pain as his neck was forced into his shoulders by the power of the blow. And it was here that Luna finally let go, leaving Grig free to do what all squishy things did when hitting the ground that hard.

He bounced, skipping across the devastated street like a cast pebble, eventually sliding to a halt against the other side of the street. Luna straightened, and posed once more for the crowd, showing off her bicep.

“I still got it,” she declared, fond memories of a physical disagreement with the Dragon Lord of the Ruby Expanse some thousand-plus years ago running through her mind, even as she hooked a hoof into the broken chitin of Grig’s chest.

The Changeling Titan groaned as he was hoisted into the air again, his head brought level with Luna’s face.

“Don’t ever let me catch you in my Equestria again,” she growled.

Grig just nodded weakly, before dribbling some more blood and passing out. Luna dropped the body without ceremony, and turned to face the changelings, who suddenly thought of better places to be, fleeing into the air before they could be made an example of.

Luna nodded in satisfaction, before the ground was shaken by a second tremor, this time the air filling with a rosy glow of power.

“Cadance,” Luna muttered, before she felt a stiff wind being driven past her. Above her, she saw changelings flying through the air by the hundreds, chief among them a larger, lankier changling. Luna took the opportunity to show the airborne Chrysalis the back of her hoof, before a wave of pink light washed over her.

The ambient energy was stunning -- powerful enough to just pick up and throw changelings like they were ragdolls, but controlled enough to be discreet and only pick up and throw changelings. Powerful enough that it bled enough magical energy to make simply passing through the barrier was like a week at the spa, and discriminating enough to only give that power to ponies and not changelings.

The wave passed on, and Luna watched the dome race out to the limits of Canterlot and stop, fading into a gentle mist of light.

“That’s love, baby,” she muttered, before picking up what was left of her shoes, and with a beat of her wings, lifting off into the air.

======

By the time the sun had set, Canterlot had changed drastically. The remains of the failed invasion had been swept under the city’s collective rug, to be dealt with another day, the wedding had been done once more (properly, this time) and Luna had woken up with a hangover, an empty bottle of cider resting in the crook of her leg, teething pains where new teeth had grown to replace lost ones, and four dented and scuffed platinum horseshoes scattered across the midnight carpet of her room.

And in the corner, a white cloth covered what had once been a noble, calculating abacus. Luna regarded it solemnly, before thumping a hoof to her chest and making a small salute, before focusing her attention on the mare in the mirror.

Her exploits earlier in the day were a hazy blur, adrenaline and rage obfuscating the details of her rampage. Oh, Faust. She’d lost her temper, and after all that progress with the psychiatrist...

What if I just pretended it never happened, she mused as she combed out her mane and set the moon on an upwards arc almost absent-mindedly. As fuzzy as her memories were, she didn’t think anypony actually saw her.

Which is good, she decided, as she fished a fresh set of regalia out of her wardrobe. There was a list of things she needed, and “psychiatrist on her case” was not one of them. All she had to do was play it cool, pretend that she’d been asleep the whole time, and it’d all go quietly.

She could always blame what was left of the changelingsicles on somepony in the guard. She wasn’t the only pony that could freeze things solid, right? Yeah, that sounded like a plan.

She walked over to her balcony, and looked down at the party going on in the palace gardens, and flaring her wings, swooped down to join them.

Just play it cool, Luna. Act natural, act natural...

She touched down next to Celestia and Twilight and friends, and flashed them a (thankfully intact) smile.

“Hello, everypony. Did I miss anything?”