//------------------------------//
// Episode 1: Friendathon 5000 [part 5: "Sundance Juno Festival"] 
// Story: My Little Pony: Lernin' 'Bout Frends 
// by FenDingo 
//------------------------------//

96, 97, 98... Bang! went none of the mines. Eighty seconds; it was unreal! The four ponies and the baby dragon had all piled into the ticket booth and had been watching the adolescent ticket-mare blaze through round after round of expert-level for the last half an hour. The Great Minesweeper Wizard of the West certainly lived up to her title.
Twilight was overcome by nerdspect. She could feel it welling up in her chest. She vomited on the Great Wizard and left to set up the projector in embarrassment. The Minesweeping continued unabated as the Wizard dried herself off with her other hoof. With Spike.
The other ponies were glued to it for another ten minutes before Applejack and Giggler crested the horizon. Rarity snapped out of the Pre-installed-game-induced trance when they came into her peripheral vision [“What? No! Why would I mean it like that?!” I ejaculate as you make a tenuous 'they came' joke [ha! [Ok, I'll stop [that's what she said! [I'm really sorry about that one! I'll stop now, I promise! [Excuse me while I count the brackets... … … okay]]]]]].
“Wait,” said Rarity, “Stop, guys, I think something quite vile happened like ten minutes ago. Also, Applejack and Hopper are here.”
“Hey, pony-dudes,” greeted Applejack, popping two more codeinae, “What the hell smells like Twilight's stomach contents in here?” Rainbow Dash answered, “Spike, technically.” Jumper giggled. Rarity noticed a bulge in Applejack's abdomen, “What's in your pouch?” she asked. Applejack raised her eyebrows, “Long story... Chucklenuts?” she addressed the pink pony, who revved up. Clocking in at a max speed of 450 bits per second, the story was transmitted in no time!
“Wait. Hold your horses,” started Rarity. Applejack cut in, “I would but Fluttershy's too heavy.” Rarity continued, “You made two-thousand pounds question-mark-exclamation-mark-unquote
“Yeah. We finally have enough money to keep the old Quidditch pitch open! However; I have been considering a morphine dependency, recently.” answered Applejack.
“Where's Twilight?!” jumped Giggler, “And who's this?” She pointed against the Great Wizard, hoof pressing against the side of her muzzle, causing no loss of Minesweeping speed. Fluttershy spoke up, “Well, Twilight's on the pitch, setting up the projector like I damn well asked her,” she mentally banked the line for her erotic-poetry club [every Friday, 9pm], “And this is the G.M.W. of the W.” The pink pony didn't ask about the initialism; She'd already guessed what it stood for- very badly; I assure you the outcome of this was as hilarious as it was offensive.
The ponies made their way inside, leaving the ticket-mare alone to stare eternally into the be-sunglasses'd eyes of her smiley-faced deity. They found Twilight at the top of the bleachers [...the stadium seating-area... seriously, guys, go outside once in a while!]. She was balancing the old projector precariously on a one-metre-high stack of books. “That'll do the trick!” she said, accomplishedfully [if you're wondering how to say it, I'd put the secondary-stress on the first syllable and the primary-stress on 'plished']. She fed the end of the film-reel into the mouth of the projector and hit the start button – I narrated, revealing the extent of my knowledge of projectors.
The air was filled with a soft humming noise as the projector started eating the film; sucking it off the reel like a caricature-Italian sucking spaghetti off an unrealistically circular fork. Twilight had aimed to focus the image on one of the two opposing score-tracking big-screens. She got a direct hit! The projector had shot a laser-point straight through the oversized piece of technology. The ponies learned two valuable lessons that day- One: Liquid Crystal was, indeed, flammable. Two: Boy was Liquid Crystal flammable! There was a mighty bang and the big-screen was gone. No mess, no incendiaries, no nothing; just gone.
“Well that could'a gone a lot worse!” Applejack shouted up to Twilight.
“Yeah,” she shouted back, “I always forget to adjust the lens before setting these things off. This is why I was never allowed to take pictures at our family weddings.” The gang helped her move the equipment over to the other side of the pitch and she made sure the lens was set correctly before turning it back on. The ponies started cheering as the other screen exploded. No, of course not! It went just fine. That's why the ponies were cheering.

The gang were sat outside Starbucks, smoking, sipping cappuccinos and watching the rest of Ponyville scramble around, setting up decorations and banners ready for the night ahead. Everypony seemed to be abuzz with a mixture of excitement and terror. Our little horses had finished the preparations. There had been a minor panic over not having acquired a suitable seating for the princess before Rainbow Dash had spotted the ex-big-screen lying behind the Quidditch pitch. It hadn't been vaporized, just bent into a perfect throne shape with some of the Liquid Crystal having semi-solidified on its surface- performing the task of a workable upholstery in the Platonic occurrence of furniture-ex-machina.
Applejack spotted her big brother, New-York, pulling a large wagon filled with banquet-food in the direction of the transformed Quidditch pitch. Applejack had left the food to defrost in an extended pile down the long dirt-road to the Apple Ranch and her brother had spent the last few hours walking back and forth to ferry it to the banquet tables. “Hey, En-Wye!” she shouted over to him from the café. “Ee-yup!” he replied, seeming to have buried the last trace of his fragile sanity beneath a mountain of apple-based goods. Applejack smiled warmly to herself; she loved her big brother- he was as Sisyphus-the-Bearded-Gnome. The other ponies watched this interaction, completely not understanding a word they said.

The gang had suited-up for the big night-on-the-town. They were sat outside Sugarcube Corner, smoking, sipping cappuccinos and watching the rest of Ponyville scramble around, unsure of what to do. A beep came from Twilight's face. She stood up [on two legs], extinguishing her cigarette in her half-finished coffee, and turned to face the sunsetty sky, one hoof to the side of her head. “My Scouter's picking up on a huge power-level. It's headed this way. And Fast!” she exclaimed [hence the punctuation].
“Twilight, please take that thing off,” said Rarity, “You're making us all look like bigger dorks than Fluttershy in her Wolf-Suit.” Twilight ignored this in order to shout, “Princess Celestia is coming! SCRAMBLE THE PONIES!” The ponies scrambled adequately and happened, through random chance and Brownian Motion, to end up in two neat lines along the main road to Ponyville just as the aforementioned princess was touching down along the main road to Ponyville. Trumpets blared out an almost unrecognisable rendition of 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' [Fluttershy had finally conceded that birds couldn't learn, so had delegated the task to the Ponyville Brass Band- half an hour previously].
The princess rocked up to Twilight and the gang in her slave-drawn carriage. Her stereo system was blaring out Jon Bon Jovi's 'Livin' on a Prayer', so she hadn't heard the awful brass band music. She got out of the carriage and stood up on her hind-legs, stamping out the butt of her large cigar. She looked down at Twilight through her false moustache-glasses-n-eyebrows and said, “I thought I told you this was a costume thing!” Twilight looked around nervously, replying, “Err, yeah, you did, but... we decided that yours would be the best costume anyway so we didn't bother!” Princess Celestia looked unconvinced for a second before beaming, “Excellent!! Can you guess who I came as?”
Rainbow Dash saved Twilight the embarrassment of having no answer, by providing “Groucho Marx?” Thankfully, it was right! Celestia jumped up and down on the spot, clapping her front hooves. Luckily, Rainbow had been studying Film Classification Theory so she could rise to the position of 'Big-Cheese' at the FCC.
Rarity spoke, “Your Royal Marx-Brother, it's an honour to make your acquaintance! Please, allow us all to show you to your throne.”
“Excellent. I do hope they'll be playing 'Juno',” boomed the princess, “They must know what a royal perv I am for that dorky indie pretty-boy I've heard they cast as the potential father!”

At that, they all made their way to the Quidditch pitch. Once everypony had drunk enough to forget the potential hostage-situation they were in, an announcement came over the loudspeakers: “Dear assorted wildlife of Ponyville, please make your way to your allotted horse-seats for the screening of the first feature-length presentation of our evening hosting the Sundance Film Festival. At the request of our guest-of-honour, we shall be presenting Jason Reitman's 'Juno', starring Ellen Page and Michael Cera!” There was an uproarious cheer from the princess as she scrambled in childlike excitement to the burnt plasticky wreck which was her throne. When she was comfortably seated, the rest of Ponyville filed into their seats, our gang taking the ones which flanked the royal personage. It was all going perfectly to plan. Too perfectly, thought Twilight. However; she, like everyone else, settled in to enjoy the delightfully-indie antics of Ellen and Michael on the big screen. The whole stadium was quiet except for Princess Celestia who was still clapping rigorously, twenty minutes into the film.

Everything was perfect until thirty minutes into the film. That's when Celestia's lunar sister... Luna, decided to gate-crash the pre-seedings.

…..................

Stay tuned for Episode 2, folks!