Cadance took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the crisp air. Summer was ending, and Autumn was taking its place. The trees began to shift their hues and the air was cooling faster than she would have liked. Still, there was a strange liveliness to the cold, and it filled her with a primal energy - and from the tug on her arm, she wasn’t alone. Cadance had to pick up her pace as Flurry bounded forward, the steel and plastic kingdom peeking over the horizon.
 
The Fall Semester was starting soon, and though it had been a long and arduous decision, Shining and Cadance had agreed to send Flurry to an actual school. They could have had any private tutor they wished - even Twilight had volunteered to help - but they declined. If Flurry was to take the throne one day, they wanted her to know her people personally and to be grounded in reality. The last thing anyone wanted was another Blueblood in the family. So, it was off to academia for the little alicorn.
 
But that wasn’t for another week, and while the last bits of Summer still shone, Cadance had taken Flurry out for a bit of mother-daughter bonding. And what better way to do so than to go to the park? As they stepped through the painted iron gate, Cadance couldn’t help but feel some of Flurry’s contagious excitement. The pair made their tour of the playground, swinging on the swings, sliding on the slides, and monkeying about on the monkey bars. Cadance soaked it all in. After all these years, the park looked almost exactly the same as it had in her memory. There were a few new coats of paint and the trees had grown larger, but beyond that, it was picture-perfect. Like everything else in Canterlot, the park’s upkeep was meticulous, not a flake of rust nor a chip of paint to be seen anywhere.
 
Flurry scampered through the playground with that seemingly bottomless energy only a child can have, finally rushing over to one particular structure. She bounced up in down in excitement, her head swiveling back and forth between her prize and her mother, trying to get the message across. “Mama! Mama! Can you push me? Please? Please please please please please!?” She emphasized each ‘please’ with a hop, every fiber of her being thrumming with anticipation. Cadance chuckled softly to herself as she strode over to the tire swing, lifting Flurry up to stand on it and cautioning her to ‘hold on tight.’ Flurry happily obeyed, gripping the chains so tightly they began to shake with her. Her smile beamed as brightly as her aunt’s sun, and with a heave, Cadance pushed on her back, sending the tire a-swinging.
 
As she pushed, Cadance took a stroll down Memory Lane. Like her daughter, she too had loved this swing. As a filly she vividly remembered riding in it, letting the twists and turns send her imagination running wild. She pretended to be flying high in the air, higher and faster than her own wings could carry her through the heavens, or perhaps sailing on a great ship in the middle of the ocean, captaining in through a ferocious hurricane no pegasus could hope to calm. As she grew older she again returned to this place, now pushing it for a purple unicorn, Twilight’s own squeals of delight filling the air as Cadance spun her crazily in the tire.
 

 
Flurry was keeping the proud family tradition going, for she was no longer Flurry Heart, but Agent Flint Jaguar, the world’s top secret-agent-doctor-princess-scientist. She rode her airboard high in the sky, gliding across the surface of the evil Emperor Doctor Wickedevilbaddude’s air ship, dodging lasers, missiles, angry geese, and pants-seeking homing coat-hangers as she got closer and closer to the cockpit. The Imperial PhD holder would never win, for he never had (except the time Aunt Luna played him, but she cheated. No real magic for pretend, was that so hard to understand?), and he wouldn’t win this time! She was getting closer, closer…
 
And then something hit her butt.
 
The swing- er, airboard lurched forward sharply. Flint’s foothold slipped, and she scrambled to keep her balance. If things weren’t dire enough, a trio of rocket-powered coat-hangers flew straight at her, determined to add insult to… insult. She felt the devious devices latch on and pull, though she was helpless to fight them off.
 
Against all her agent training, Flint dropped her persona, and returned to Flurry in the most undignified way she could imagine.
 

 
A shrill squeak filled the air, and Cadance was jerked back to reality. As she was reminiscing, she hadn’t seen where she was aiming, pushing Flurry’s backside rather than her back, knocking the filly off-balance. Time seemed to freeze as Cadance could only watch the disaster she had wrought. Flurry’s legs were knocked from under her, and though she scrambled to regain her stance, she failed and fell into the tire’s hole. As her knees dropped below the rim, the hooks at the end of the swing’s chains snagged her skirt like little harpoons, clutching onto the hem as its wearer fell through.
 
Flurry mercifully caught the edge of the tire, but that wasn’t the end of her troubles. She had stopped her fall at her chest, and to her horror so had her skirt. It was bunched up at the top of the tire, held firmly by both the hooks and the rim. On the lower side the little princess’s legs kicked the air wildly, her pink-trimmed panties on full display for anyone to see, little hearts and all. Generally she wasn’t too concerned with someone seeing them, but then again that someone was usually her parents or her aunts. At home. This was rather different.
 
If Flurry was embarrassed, Cadance was absolutely mortified. One of her seemingly endless battles as a mom was to try and keep her little princess decent, which certainly wasn’t helped by Flurry’s own wild side nor Shining’s roughhousing. Even Celestia and Luna were happy to join in the ‘fun’, to the crystal princess’ endless annoyance. But here, now, in the middle of Canterlot, she had just shown off her daughter’s unmentionables to anyone who cared to see, while her daughter was trapped swinging around helplessly. In a panic, Cadance dived for the swing, dropping to her knees to stop in as an emergency brake. She stood up and brushed the sand off her legs, her brow wrinkled in concern as she looked down at the filly. Flurry’s cheeks were bright red, and her head was nodding back and forth, dizzy from the sudden stop. Wasting no more time, Cadance grabbed Flurry under her shoulders and lifted up.
 
And then things went from bad, to worse.
 
Cadance’s heart dropped as she heard a noise. Three noises, in fact. Although Flurry certainly noticed, Cadance had not seen the hooks wrapped around her daughter’s skirt, and as she pulled up, they held their ground, ripping three long gashes in the fabric. By the time Cadance realized this, it was far too late, and Flurry was free. With a nervous sigh, Cadance set the filly on the ground and looked her over. There were no cuts or bruises that she could see - thank Faust - but although Flurry had escaped injury, her outfit was not so lucky. Her pleated skirt had turned into a grass skirt, and practically any movement on her part caused her panties to flash through.
 
For a minute, the two stood in silence, faces equally flushed. At last Cadance spoke up, trying to regain control.
 
“I think we should call it a day, sweetheart.”
 
Flurry only nodded, and allowed Cadance to scoop her up, careful to try and keep the ruined skirt in tact.
 
Well, Cadance could say one thing: the park had certainly remained memorable.