# To Boldly Hoof It Ch 11. The Princess's Offer

Author: BluebloodFan91
Tags: Adventure, Blueblood, Celestia, Character Development, Clean, Doctor Whooves, Equine, Fantasy, Flam, Flim, Friendship is magic, Griffin, Gryphon, Hoops, Horse, Humor, Iron Will, Jet Set, Lightning Dust, MLP, Mare, Minotaur, My Little Pony, Pegasus, Plot Development, Pony, Prince Blueblood, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Sci-Fi, Stallion, Story Progression, Story Series, Sunset shimmer, To Boldly Flee, Trixie, Unicorn, Upper Crust, alicorn, dumbbell, gilda, luna, parody, score, space, surprise

Ch 11. The Princess's Offer


Everything started to come back to Lightning Dust
while she sat up on the bed in the unknown fancy, looking around at her
surroundings. She had been on a space station trying to shut down the
tractor beam so she and her friends could escape, but she had gotten
caught by royal guards, and then she had blacked out.I have to get out of here, she thought to herself.Looking
around, she saw a door on her right and leaped off the bed, gliding
through the air on her wings over to it. She landed in front of the door
and grabbed the knob in her hooves. She tried to open it, but found it
was locked.She began banging on the door with her hooves. "HEY! LET ME OUT OF HERE!" she shouted angrily.No
one answered her cries, however. She turned around and started bucking
against the door with her hind legs, but the door must have been
enchanted or something because it held fast against her bucks.After
a minute, she finally gave up and looked around the room. She spotted
the closed curtains on the far end of the large room next to a set of
fancy couches and chairs.A window! Perfect!She
flapped her wings and flew into the air over to the curtains. Upon
landing, she reached up and pulled the curtains aside with her hooves,
but then her smile quickly fell into a frown of helplessness when she
saw what was behind them. She had indeed found a window, but on the
other side of it was the vast vacuum of space!Darn it! I must still be on the space station! she thought to herself.Lightning Dust slowly backed away from the window, her mind reeling as she tried to figure out a way out of this situation.Suddenly,
she heard the sound of a doorknob behind her. She turned her head to
look behind her, just as the door to the room opened up. Lightning Dust
gasped when she saw who was standing there in the doorway.It
was the great white alicorn, Princess Celestia, herself; her ethereal
mane and tail flowing magically out behind her like they were in some
sort of nonexistent breeze.Lightning
Dust, after getting over her initial shock of being in the presence of
the Princess of the sun, remembered the dire situation she was in and
decided to act on this chance. She flared her wings and leaped into the
air towards the open door.Lightning Dust
only just noticed a golden yellow glow around the large alicorn's horn
when she suddenly found herself frozen in mid air."HEY!
WHAT THE...?" Sunset tried to squirm in the air, but found she couldn't
move her body. Moving her eyes to look at her body, she saw she was
glowing with the same color glow that Princess Celestia's horn was.Celestia
spoke. "Exactly what was your plan after you got out of this room?
Where would you have gone then? We're in space, remember?"Lightning
Dust grumbled angrily to herself. She figured she would have tried to
find her friends. But then it occurred to her that she didn't know what
had happened to her friends. She looked at Celestia. "Where are my
friends?" she demanded."Your friends managed to get away... with my sister!" Celestia said that second part with anger in her voice.Lightning
Dust's initial reaction to this information was anger that her so
called 'friends' would leave her behind. But then she couldn't help but
consider the possibility that they hadn't had any choice. She
remembered, before she had blacked out, she had seen Prince Blueblood
and Dumbbell in the corridor ahead of her with an unconscious royal
guard on Dumbbell's back who looked an awful lot like Princess Luna. She
had been surrounded by guards at the moment, and escaping, as it was,
was already going to be super risky for them. So maybe there had been
nothing they could have done at the moment to help her, so they had been
forced to retreat. After all, its what she would have done, wasn't it? What she didn't know was if they would come back to rescue her soon. They'd better, or I'm gonna invent a whole new kind of pain for them! she thought to herself bitterly.She
looked back at Celestia angrily. "Why am I here?" she demanded, still
trying to get out of the magical hold Celestia had her in.Celestia's
expression softened. "You don't need to be afraid. All I want to do is
talk with you." She walked into the room, revealing two royal pegasus
guards standing behind her in the doorway at attention. Celestia tuned
her head to look back at the two guards. "Leave us," she said to them
with a reassuring smile.The two guards
bowed their heads and then stepped back out of the room, closing the
door behind them. Lightning Dust then heard a locking sound coming from
it.Celestia turned her head back to
Lightning Dust. "I can release you from my magic if you promise to
behave yourself," she said in her usual sweet, motherly voice. "Would
you like that?"Lightning Dust didn't want
to give Celestia the satisfaction. However, she also didn't want to be
stuck in the Princess's magic anymore. Reluctantly, she grumbled an
angry "Fine. I promise," under her breath."What was that?" Celestia asked her, leaning an ear in towards her. "Well?""I promise!" Lightning Dust growled louder.Celestia
smiled sweetly and gently lowered Lightning Dust to the floor, and then
released her from her magic. Lightning Dust, now able to move her body
again, stood to face the princess, glaring at her angrily.Celestia's
gentle expression didn't change as she spoke to Lightning Dust again.
"Would you like to sit down, Lightning Dust?" she gestured over to the
chairs near the window with her hoof."I'd rather stand," Lightning Dust responded stubbornly.Celestia
closed her eyes. "Very well," she said. She then walked past Lightning
Dust over to a sofa next to the window. She sat down on the sofa and
turned back to face Lightning Dust. "Ah, that's much better. I've been
on my hooves all day, working on completing this space station. Its nice
to get a chance to rest for a moment."Lightning
Dust continued to glare at Celestia. If the Princess was trying to loll
her into a false sense of security with chitchat, it wasn't going to
work.Celestia continued. "I haven't seen
you since I awarded you and your friends metals for saving the world
from King Sombra and Queen Chrysalis.""No
offense, your highness," began Lightning Dust, "but I'm not in the mood
for chitchat! I want to know what the heck this is all about! Why are
you locking up ponies who know about the plot hole? Why don't you want
to stop the plot hole? It's going to destroy the universe! Why do you
have space ships and a space station shaped like a giant bucking heart?"Celestia's smile remained. "All your questions will be answered. I assure you, everything I'm doing is for a good reason.""A
good reason?!" laughed Lightning Dust. "Ha! How is locking up ponies
just for knowing about a hole in space, and letting the universe be
destroyed, good?""I promise, I won't let the universe be destroyed. The plot hole will be taken care of, but for now, I need it to remain open.""What the heck for?" asked Lightning Dust. "What could you possibly want to keep the plot hole around for?""Let
me explain," said Celestia. "The plot hole is giving off massive
amounts of powerful temporal energy. I require that energy for something
extremely important. So I built this space station to absorb the excess
temporal energy coming from the plot hole."Lightning
Dust raised her eyebrow at that. She hadn't been expecting anything so...
sci-fi. Then again, she wasn't sure what she had been expecting. "And
what exactly do you need that energy for?" she asked, curious.Celestia's
smile got bigger. "For centuries, I have been trying to make this world
a better place for everyone. A paradise, where every creature, not just
ponies, can live together in peace and harmony and happiness. And now, I
am about to see my dream come to fruition. I need the massive amounts
of energy coming from the plot hole to power a special spell I've been
preparing for a long time now, that will turn Equestria, and the rest of
the world with it, into a paradise! Only with the energy coming from
the plot hole will the spell be strong enough to effect the entire
world."Lightning Dust's eyes widened in
surprise. "That's what this is all about?" she asked. That didn't sound
too bad. However, that still left some other questions. "But if that's
all you want, then why are you keeping all this a secret? And why are
you locking up anypony who finds out about the plot hole?"Celestia
took a slightly more serious tone. "If knowledge of the plot hole got
out, there would be panic among ponies! And when ponies panic, injuries
can occur. I simply don't want to cause a panic. Also, unfortunately,
there are some out there, like the dragons, and the diamond dogs, and
the changelings, who just wouldn't understand the good that I'm trying
to do. They would see it as a threat to them, or completely despise the
thought of change, and might try to stop me, even though all I'm trying
to do is help them. All I want is too see everyone able to live good,
happy lives, and get along with each other, and love each other."Even though what the princess just said kind of made her want to puke, Lightning Dust had to admit the explanation did make sense. But there was still one more thing that didn't add up."But
then what does Princess Luna have to do with all this?" Lightning
asked. "For some reason, she has Starswirl the Bearded and the plot hole
on the mind, and she was saying..." she tried to remember what Blueblood
had told them Princess Luna had said to him when she had broken into his
house, "... that you weren't supposed to find out about something."Celestia's
smile faltered for a moment as her eyes widened, and Lightning Dust
could have sworn the big white alicorn looked worried for a second,
before Celestia's calm demeanor returned, and a sad frown appeared on
her face and she closed her eyes."My
sister... is very ill. Her mind is... slipping, I'm afraid. She's suffering
from hallucinations, and paranoia!" She looked at Lightning Dust, tears
welling up in her eyes. "I just want my little sister back. She needs my
care, and I've already lost her for a thousand years, and I only just
got her back. I don't want to lose her again!"Lightning
Dust narrowed her eyes at Celestia suspiciously. That explanation
sounded extremely fishy. This was the first time she was ever hearing
about Luna having any illness. She supposed it wasn't something Celestia
wouldn't want to just go around telling everypony, but it was still
very unlikely.However, Lightning Dust
felt awkward standing before the big weeping alicorn princess, so she
decided to try changing the subject. "Well, okay," she said. "But what
did you want to talk to me about? Why was I lying on that bed in this
room instead of in a cell?"Celestia
sniffed and wiped her eyes with her hoof. Then she looked back at
Lightning Dust. "For two reasons," she said. "One, I wanted to show you
that you can trust me. And two, I require your help.""My
help?" Lightning Dust was surprised, and also a tiny bit honored, that
Princess Celestia herself wanted her help with something.Celestia
nodded. "Yes. I want you to help me get my sister back, tell me
everything you know about where your friends might have taken her and
what your ship is capable of, as well as help me complete my task of
creating a perfect world for everypony to live in. Since you have used
the Elements of Harmony in the past when you and your friends saved
Equestria from Queen Chrysalis and King Sombra, that makes you an
honorary Element Bearer.""Hey, I guess it does," Lightning Dust said, holding her head up proudly."Then can I rely on your help?"Lightning
Dust flapped her wings and hovered up into the air several feet so that
she was above Princess Celestia. She crossed her forelegs and looked
down at Celestia, considering. She was still suspicious of the princess.
She still wasn't entirety sure she believed Celestia's story. "I don't
know. I still don't know if I can trust you."Celestia
let out a sigh. "I'm glad you're trying to do what you think is right,
but I'm not your enemy, Lightning Dust. I'm your Princess. All I want,
all I've ever wanted, is to help all my little ponies to live good,
happy lives. If you're worried that you'll be betraying your friends,
don't be. Don't think of it as betraying them, because you wont be.
You're saving them from themselves. They're just confused. They don't
understand how wrong what their doing is, or why its wrong. By helping
me, you'll be helping them as well." Lightning still didn't respond. She just kept looking down at Celestia skeptically.Celestia sighed again. Then after a few moments, she looked up at Lightning Dust again, a small smile appearing on her face."Lightning Dust, I've heard you're trying to become a Wonderbolt. Am I correct?"Lightning Dust snorted. Is she trying to use chitchat again? she thought to herself. "Yeah. So?"Celestia
continued. "My dearest friend, and the Element of Loyalty, Rainbow
Dash, also had the same dream. If you'd like, I could help you."That
got Lightning Dust's attention. The Pegasus uncrossed her forelegs and
turned to fully face Celestia, her eyes wide with interest. "WHAT?!" she
asked.Princess Celestia's smile got
bigger; glad to see she now had the pegasus mare's full attention. "I
could pull some strings that would help you out in becoming a
Wonderbolt.""Y... you can do that?" Lightning Dust asked, still staring at Celestia with her mouth agape."Of course! I do favors like that for the Element Bearers all the time. I help them with their dreams because they help me
out so much. Like I said before, all I want is to see all my little
ponies be happy, including you, Lightning Dust. Help me, and I won't let
your good deed go unrewarded. What do you say? Will you except my
friendship?"Lightning Dust dropped down
to the floor as she thought hard to herself. She really wanted to be a
Wonderbolt! She wanted it more than anything else in the world! But
could she truly trust Celestia?"What happens if I refuse?" she asked the princess. "Do I get pushed out an airlock or something?"Celestia's
eyes widened in shock. "Of course not! I would never do such a thing to
anypony! If you decline my offer, that will be fine. You will be taken
to a holding room and will have to wait until after my mission is
complete to be released, along with the rest of the ponies who are being
held for the time being. I assure you, you will not be harmed in any
way, and will be treated with every courtesy."Lightning Dust rapidly thought to herself about what she should do. "I... um...""Oh, I'd think twice before answering, if I were you."Celestia
and Lightning Dust both turned their heads at the sudden male voice in
the room. Over near the fireplace, a brown earth pony stallion was
standing, looking at them with an unreadable expression.Lightning Dust recognized him immediately. It was Doctor Whooves!........................"Blueblood! Wake up!"Blueblood
opened his eyes to see Iron Will leaning over him with his hand shaking
his shoulder. Blueblood was in his command chair on the bridge.He'd just had that same dream he'd had before, where he was in space, and a voice was telling him to come into the plot hole.Iron
Will spoke again. "Trixie and Sun- I mean, Winry, are in the rec room.
They want to show us all something they say might help us."Blueblood nodded groggily and got up out of his chair. He followed Iron Will off the bridge, down the hall to the rec room, or billiard room, depending on what you wanted to call it.After
they had used the improbability drive to escape from being destroyed by
Celestia's ships, Flim and Flam had told them they had been sent only
one light-year away this time.Also, they
had inadvertently brought along three extra passengers when they had
escaped the space station. The three guards they had knocked out and
stolen their armor. No sure what to do with them, they had left them
tied up and locked them in a spare bedroom.Since
one of the guards had been a unicorn, Trixie had placed an anti-magic
seal spell on the room she had learned to make no magic able to be used
in the room. It was the same kind of seal spell used in pony prisons for
unicorn prisoners.Inside the rec room,
the whole crew had gathered. The pool table had been moved against a
wall and a magic circle had been drawn on the floor in the middle of the
room. And Princess Luna was lying inside of it.Blueblood
noticed Gilda glare at him with an angry expression on her face when he
entered the room. She was obviously still upset about what had happened
with Lightning Dust.Blueblood looked
over at Trixie and Sunset, who were standing on the other side of
circle, opposite where the rest of them were standing."Okay, so what do you two have here?" Blueblood asked Trixie and Sunset.Trixie
spoke. "Okay, Trixie knows this is going to sound strange, but Trixie
and Su... Winry have both had very similar dreams, showing part of this
magic circle, and half of a list of instructions. When we drew our
dreams down on paper, and put the drawings on top of each other..." She
levitated out two pieces of paper, taped together, and then lit up her
horn so that the light shown through the two papers, showing the two
drawings overlapping on top of each other to create a whole. "...The two
halves created a whole spell.""Wait! You got this from your dreams?" said Jet Set, looking skeptic."We
both had half of the same dream!" said Trixie. "How many times have you
ever heard of something like that happening? This cannot just be a
coincidence! Its like this was sent to us from... somewhere!" Trixie
looked off into space for a few seconds before looking back at them.They all considered this for a moment. She did have a point."Okay. Do you know what the spell does?" asked Blueblood."From
what Trixie can tell, it seems to be a spell that can let you go inside
another pony's dream or mind. So since you say Princess Luna knows
something that we need to know, and she's currently in a coma, Trixie
figures we can use this spell to go into her head and look for the
answer ourselves.""Hey, that sounds like a great idea!" said Flim."I
also invented these!" said Sunset suddenly, levitating up a very large,
odd looking gun from off the floor. "I call it a rail gun! It fires
electrified projectiles at mach 7! Wanna see how it works?""No!" said Blueblood, then he looked back at Trixie. "How do you know this spell will work?""Trixie already tested it," she said. "Trixie went into your head while you were napping just now." Then she smirked. "It was pretty empty in there."Blueblood's
jaw dropped what Trixie had just said. "YOU WENT INSIDE MY HEAD WHILE I
WAS ASLEEP!" he exclaimed, shocked. He felt violated, even if it was by
his own marefriend."Well, don't fall asleep then," chuckled Trixie. "Besides, Trixie needed a way to test the spell.""I feel violated," Blueblood groaned, shifting uncomfortably on his hooves."Oh, get over it, you big baby," said Trixie."Alright, I'm convinced," said Flam. "I say lets try it!""Yeah! What do you say, Blueblood? Luna is your aunt, after all," said Dumbbell.Blueblood
looked at him, "What," he said, snapping out of his thoughts about
Trixie going in his head. "Oh, right. Yes. I say we do it. If Luna knows
something important that we need to know, this sounds like the best way
to find it out.""Alright," Trixie said. "Everypony gather around the outside of the circle."They all did as she said and gathered around the circle on the floor.It
was then that Blueblood suddenly noticed they were missing a couple of
ponies from their group. "Hold on! Where are Upper Crust and Surprise?""Upper Crust said she had to use the bathroom," said Jet Set."Oh," said Blueblood, figuring she had gotten sick again.Jet Set continued. "I don't know where Surprise is-""Here I am!" Surprise said as she suddenly came galloping into the room. "I was... occupied. What have I missed?""Were going into Princess Luna's head with a spell Trixie and Sunset whipped up," said Hoops."I keep telling you, MY NAME IS WINRY!" Sunset shouted angrily."Very well," Surprise said in response to Hoops."Well,
I'm not going to wait for Upper Crust to finish being sick," said
Blueblood impatiently. "I say lets just proceed without her."Jet Set gave Blueblood a disapproving look, but said nothing."Alright," said Trixie. "Trixie will begin the spell!""Wait!" said Flam suddenly. "Are we all
going in? Shouldn't at least one of us stay out to look after things,
in case something happens, and to let Upper Crust know what's going on
when she stops being sick?""Good thinking," said Flim to his brother."I'll do it," said Surprise. "I'll stay behind while you all go into Luna's head."Blueblood smiled at the pegasus mare. "Oh, thank you, Surprise," he said. "You're so helpful.""I know," said Surprise with a sinister smile on her face as she stepped back away from the magic circle."May we begin now?"
Trixie asked in an annoyed voice. They all nodded to her, and she
proceeded to start the spell. Trixie closed her eyes and her horn lit up
with purple light. The circle on the floor then also began to glow with
the same purple light."How do we know when its wor..." Blueblood didn't finish his question when he suddenly blacked out......................The
next thing Blueblood knew, he, and the rest of the group, were all
standing in a dimly lit, and new location. Looking around them, they
stood in utter aw at their surroundings.They
appeared to be in some sort of labyrinth dungeon, with stone lain
passageways and staircases and doors all around them as far as the eye
could see, going off in all sorts of different directions, some of which
didn't even make any sense. They could see doors and staircases that
were sideways from where they were, or upside down all together. It was
like they were in one of those optical allusion staircase paintings."Where the heck are we?" growled Gilda."We're inside Luna's mind," said Trixie."This is what the inside of a pony's mind looks like?" asked Hoops in utter bewilderment."Actually,
this is more like a visual representation of her mind," said Trixie.
"This way, we can explore it in a way we can comprehend.""This place is enormous!" exclaimed Flim."And it's giving me a headache!" said Jet Set, rubbing his hoof against his forehead."Well, Princess Luna is thousands of years old," said Trixie. "Its no surprise she has a lot of stuff in her head."Blueblood
felt overwhelmed by all that he was seeing. The passageways in this
labyrinth of Princess Luna's mind looked like they went on forever. "How
the blazes are we ever going to find what we're looking for in here?"Trixie
shrugged. "Trixie guesses we should just start looking. Everypony stick
together, though. It looks like it would be very easy to get lost in
this place, and only Trixie knows the spell to get us out of here.".....................Surprise
looked at the unconscious bodies of the others lying on the floor. From
how they had all just collapsed when Trixie had activated the spell,
she guessed it had worked.She smiled to
herself evilly. "They're all unconscious. I couldn't ask for a better
opportunity now. Its time for me to finally get my revenge!"

Source: https://sofurry.com/view/791809

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