Family Reunion

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            Pinkie felt a tingling flutter arcing through her racing pony heart as her lips pressed firm against the Princess.

            This time I'll do it.  This time I'll save her.  I will pull you from the abyss and into the light.  I'll make you enjoy life and nothing will stop me.

            She felt but didn't see the explosion of glitter and balloons.  She appreciated the support but she didn't turn her attention from pouring everything she had into this kiss.  She knew it was her last chance to catch a tenuous hold.

            Luna's shock was fading and she started to return the kiss, betraying an edge of hunger.  Her wings started to rise.

            She's just like Dash.

            And then the Pinkie heard that sound.

            The telltale sound of barrier of reality being torn asunder to create a pony sized hole and then being closed again after admitting a pony sized object from it.

            Eyes widened, pupils contracted to pinpoints, mouth slack.  Pinkie turned, the kiss fractured.

            It was a light pink earth pony with a blue mane stripped with a darker pink.  Her legs shook and her eyes danced.  On her lips was a pathetic parody of a smile.

            She was just as Pinkie remembered.  

            "Mom?"  Asked the party pony.

            The purposeless crazed eyes focused upon her and recognized her daughter.  They cleared and for a brief moment Pinkie thought it might be okay.

            The mad pony stood up on two legs and brought her hooves to her own face as Pinkie tackled her to the ground.

            Pink ponies wrestled as the party pony desperately struggled to pin her mothers hooves to the ground.

            She was a hard working earth pony in her prime who had the demented strength of somepony who had looked into the darkness and seen it looking back.  But so was her mother.

            A hard hoof to the ribs reminded her that one of them wasn't worried about hurting the other.

            Pinkie looked at Luna.  She saw the alarm and the panic.

            She was loosing them.  If this kept up she would fail both of them.

            What do I do?  I can't leave her.  I can only save one at a time.  I can't loose one. I...  don't know how to fix this.  But it has to be fixed I need...

            "Help!"  Pinkie managed as her mother suddenly shoved her hoof into her mouth.

                        *            *            *

            The dungeon beneath the Palace of the Royal Pony Sisters was old.  It had molded until the mold had died and turned to the dust that filled every breath.  The generator hummed in the back ground and uncertain lights flickered over head.

            A rosy coloured pony with a blue mane rested in magical slumber, twitching her limbs and rattling the chains that held her in time to dreams wild and undomesticated.

            "I'm sorry, this isn't what I had planned for our first date."  Pinkie said around the broom in her mouth.  Her curls looked less curled.  "There's a lot less cake and punch then I had imagined."

            "It is pretty unique, though."  Luna consoled as she swept the skull of a long forgotten inmate into the rubbish pile.  Actually it wasn't that unique for Luna.  She'd had to sneak her first dozen suitors here for some privacy.  What was unique was that Pinkie was handling the dungeon pretty well.  "So... Your Mother...  How did she become so... ?"

            "Oh, I only met her once when my Granny Pie brought me to see her...  As soon as she saw me she just started screaming horrible things at me and tore out her eyes with her hooves.  But they made her new eyes and I guess they didn't give her anymore time after that so she couldn't do that again."  Pinkie sneezed causing one of Luna's exes, exiled and imprisoned in the place he was exiled too many eons past, to break up into dust.  "But now she's here.  I don't have Granny Pie, there's no one here who can make new eyes and she has all the time she could want.

            But silly me I just totally dodged your question.  She probably just had a bad relationship with my Father."

            "So what was your Father like?"

            "I never met him myself.  He was a great lord and deeply envied by all.  He conquered stuff and stole time.  But nopony ever notices stolen time.  'Cause it doesn't matter if a day here takes a year somewhere else.  'Cause for us a day still takes a day, 'cause we have no concept of time, you see.  So it doesn't matter that Equestria was conquered.  Well it means we can't use those high pressure time chambers but those where a bad idea even for them."

            "Somepony stole time, and now time moves slower but no pony notices?"  Luna's right ear flattened and her brows knit together as she tried to comprehend this nonsensical information.

            "Ya, all of Equestria, no, our entire universe is now a low pressure time zone.  And when Father was stealing all the time, that's when he met Mom.  He really liked her.  But the rest of them used it as an excuse for the adjustment.  But Granny Pie saved me and then I met the Rocks and they took me in."

            New eyes, them, adjustment, Equestria conquered, time as a mutable commodity, multiple universes.  Luna considered the myriad questions in her mind till she found the important one.

            "Will any of them come looking for you or your mother?  Or come back at all?"

            "Oh, no they're done here.  They won't step here.  They'd fall behind."

            "Are they ponies?  If he was your father..."

            "No.  Not ponies at all.  I don't take after my father though.  Well, not much."  Pinkie Pie started to blush.

            "How?"  Luna had to ask.  Curiosity getting the better of her.

            Slithering and wet it jumped forth. Sliding over Luna's shoulder, under her left wing, across her belly and finally stopping to rest across her right flank.  The Princess froze in the surprisingly strong grip of the pink tentacle.

            Pinkie raised her eyebrows in query, her blush burning bright red.  The tip inched slowly and purposefully around the curve of Luna's haunch.

            "S-second date,"  decreed the violet alicorn.

            The party pony released the Princess and retracted her tongue.

            Luna busied herself with sweeping while she struggled to get her wings to fold properly.