//------------------------------// // Episode 2: Elements of Frends [part 3: Twilight's Salty Birth ["Christmas"]] // Story: My Little Pony: Lernin' 'Bout Frends // by FenDingo //------------------------------// The woods got darker and Twilight got paler. She was scared of the dark but would never care to admit it. Unknown to all the ponies, Luna Armstrong had assumed her smoke form and had been absorbed by the local trees, leaving a yellowish stain on each. All of their tree-faces frowned spookily. Twilight was being dragged by Applejack spookily. Fluttershy was wearing a white tablecloth over her head with two eye-holes cut out near the top; she was under the impression that it was an invisibility cloak. “Twilight?” 'Twilight'-ed Applejack. Twilight 'hmm?'-ed. Applejack continued: “Why did you tell Fluttershy that sheet was an invisibility cloak?”. Twilight laughed faintly. Pinkie would have spent the walk ruining the joke had the sheet not blocked Fluttershy's peripheral vision of her [Pinkie] staring overtly at her [Fluttershy] as if she'd seen a ghost. Because of this, she missed her song cue. “Erm, Pinkie?” Rarity inquired, “Pinkie? It's your song. Err... anypony?”. Everypony, however, was looking at the sad trees and were in no mood. Rarity rolled her eyes. She tried rolling Rainbow Dash's eyes but they stayed firmly fixed on the foliage. “Well then! Only one thing to do: I must sing the Song of Laughter,” and sing she did, to the tune licensed under Creative Commons by her pink friend [no derivative works]:: When I was but a wee-pony and trees went really gnarly... The leaves would tea-bag my plushies, I'd ride off on my Harley... I'd open up my stocking, Under the Christmas Tree, But it was the middle of July, The damn thing was emp-ty... The tree said: Hey gurl, you have to make your own, Your own Christmas Spirit, Just fertilize potatoes, Drink 'til problems disappear... Chug! Chug! Chug! So sip all the Sangria, Glug all of the Gordon's, Neck a nip of Brandy, Vanquish a vase of Vodka, Chug Tequila Chasers, Imbibe a Jägermeister... Err, try to convince the trees you're dry now and you only drank to fill the void left by your father who left you at birth and tried to come back into your life on Christmas day fifteen years later holding a card and a box of chocolates as if everything would be juuust fiiiine... … :: At this, Applejack shot an annoyed glance towards Rarity; she disliked it when Rarity made joke songs about her father and her drinking problems. “Rarity, that wasn't funny. I'm still getting over that,” reprimanded Applejack. This set Pinkie off. She hopped like a jack-hammer around the ponies and the trees of sadness, laughing like a pink lunatic. The trees were really embarrassed for her and attempted to suck their faces back into the wood. Their attempts went successfully. The ponies were also embarrassed for her and attempted to do the same. Rainbow Dash's attempt went successfully. When composure had been collected, the ponies went on their merry way. Rarity's song had left most of them in the Christmas spirit. They jingled all the way. After a time, they came across a very wide stream. Twilight looked completely unimpressed. She laughed in hubris, boasting to her friends: “I think the Dictator Armstrong is losing her way. I'd have gone for lava, personally. I mean, I was born at sea! My parents' speedboat capsized during a heavy storm. My mother had just gone into labour that morning and they decided to celebrate with a quick fishing trip. The doctor had advised heavily against it but saw the 'Gone Fishing' sign on the door once he'd gone round to make sure they hadn't done anything rash. My parents were clinging to each other in the freezing cold waters when my mother's contractions started. They grabbed onto a piece of driftwood and she started to push. 'PUSH' my father was shouting, and push she did. I eventually came out to a cold, salty world and was laid out on the driftwood to warm up. My father was going into hypothermia and told my mother 'She's so beautiful. I just wish I could live to see her grow up. It's over for me. You have to let go.' My mother was defiant 'I'll never let go.' However, I was getting too cold so she had to wrap her arms around me to keep me going. My father's last words were 'Please... name her Twilight. Twilight Sparkle. Do it for me. Ha ha ha ha......' My father floated into the freezing green void, his colourless green ideas slept furiously. My mother was proper mad that his last request was to give me such a stupid name. He was always pulling shit like this. This was his last practical joke and she knew she'd been checkmated. A few minutes later, the doctor rode up in his hovercraft- he'd gone out to find us after seeing the sign on the door. He pulled us to safety and my mother lay there on a warm bed of eels, sheltering me from the elements as the doctor turned the hovercraft around and headed for shore. We made a swift recovery back at the hospital. The name on my birth-certificate is written in awful handwriting because the doctor was giggling at my mother's naming debacle.” said Twilight. The assorted ponies stood aghast at the wall of text. Rainbow's face had popped back out. Applejack broke the silence. “I really hope you don't think Luna made the river, sugarcube... You do know these things happen by themselves, right?” she said. Twilight was about to reply when, aoas (all of a sudden), a massive Chinese Dragon extended from the water. The dragon was wailing. It was horrendous. Fluttershy felt this was sorta her thing, so she walked up to the river bank and opened a river account to benefit from nautical-interest on her water-coins and precious sea-silks. “My dear, please tell me what happened!” she addressed the dragon. “Oh my!” the dragon responded, “It's my dragstache. Just look at it! Some twat-lord has ripped half of it clean off! I look like an asymmetrically-hirsute Chinese Dragon!” “But you are an asymmetrically-hirsute Chinese Dragon!” interrupted Rainbow Dash, unhelpfully. This caused another bout of wailing to erupt from the asymmetrically-hirsute Chinese Dragon. Meanwhile; Rarity had been overcome by the Spirit of Christmas-Pinkie-Pie's-Future. He looked suspiciously like the Grim Reaper. Rarity stood there, blank-faced, as the spirit took her on a mental journey through seasons one, two, three and four. She witnessed Pinkie's character-health declining steadily until she was just a gibbering wreck of bad puns and non-sequiturs. “You see. Without sufficient attention, in the form of pony-interaction and physical gift-objects, your friend's character-health is destined to fail.” said the spirit, gravely [the only manner in which he could say anything, really]. “I... I can't let this happen. The bad puns... The random plot interruptions... the constant fourth-wall-breaking... she looks exactly like My Little Pony: Lernin' 'Bout Frends! I... I promise I'll be more generous in future! Starting from today, I'm gonna be the most generous pony Equestria has ever known!” said Rarity. The spirit shrugged as Rarity's world distorted itself back to the current river-situation. “I'd best be going, then.” said the spirit, gravely, “You have a job to do.” “I won't let you down...” said Rarity to the fast-fading spirit, “very frequently.” She looked up to the dragon with his silly-looking moustache. She legitimately felt sorry for the poor guy. Her friends were just staring at the thing, hoping it would all blow over so they could get back to contemplating Twilight's terrifying nativity. Rarity 'ahem'-ed super-audibly. Her friends rubbernecked at her, angry that she'd drawn more attention to their little group. Rarity ignored them and walked over to join Fluttershy on the bank. “Excuse me, good dragon.” she began. The dragon bent down theatrically, like a sunflower that hasn't been watered enough and also has a dragon on top of it. The dragon wiped tears from its auricles [it was all ears]. Rarity continued on forward ahead with what she was going to say: “Oh lovely dragon, oh dragon, my love, what a beautiful dragon you are, you are, you are. What a beautiful dragon you are,” she leared. This seemed to cheer the dragon up a little bit. “Why, thank you my dear pony! However; I really must disagree, for, as you can see, I've been completely semi-emasculated. Ma Topiaire de Visage has been shorn to the scale of its dexter to leave the sinister proud but lone on my draconian lip!” he threw a woe-is-me arm over his brow as he finished incorrectly guessing the adjective-form of 'dragon'. Rarity had a look of genuine concern on her face. She thought she'd been following but got lost somewhere around 'dexter' and ended up with the theme-tune to 'Dexter's Laboratory' blocking out any cohesive thought she might have been able to muster. She hazarded, “I know dear... There's always gloom and doom while things go boom.” The dragon had a look of genuine concern on his face. Pinkie was trying to mimic the expression, you know, for something to do. She could completely not get it right and it ended up as the same mixture of confusion and embarrassment she'd performed [facially] upon entering the Apple Ranch one midwinter morning and finding Applejack putting on Big-Mac's clothes with her mane gelled into a neat side-parting and at least three Golden-Delicious apples stuffed down the trousers. The dragon watched on haplessly as Pinkie aimed her unique expression towards Applejack who, after a few moments' thought, remembered where she'd seen that expression before and involuntarily crinkled her own face into the same one. Fluttershy turned round to see what the dragon was looking at and immediately recognized the face that had launched her thousand Rule-63 shipping fan-arts; she fought hard to purge it from her mind in case Twilight realized why she'd be having such a strong sense of déjà-vu. Needless to say, this caused Fluttershy's face to strain into the exact same shape as that of the other ponies. Twilight was trying to work out what the hell was going on when, aoas (still 'all of a sudden'), she remembered that moment during the Sundance Film Festival her yellow friend had drunkenly decided to let her in on her IRL shipping-art-hobby [to which she'd been rather averse]. She saw the look of pure 'I hope Twilight doesn't remember those crude drawings I did' look on Fluttershy's face and performed the same one in empathy. Rainbow Dash, upon seeing the situation unfold, tried to follow the crowd and ended up looking completely and utterly delighted at the whole affair. Rarity watched on haplessly as the dragon watched on haplessly. I narrated carelessly as this happened; it's really not my problem. Rarity felt she should clear up the confusion for her poor 'draconian' friend: “Erm... I'm sorry if my friends are making you feel awkward. It's just because of this thing that Applejack did a while back... it's complicated. Anyway, I think I can fix your lopsided moustache if that'll help...” The dragon snapped out of his reverie and said, “Oh, yeah. Yes please. I would really love to see the other side of this wonderful 'stache again... erm... the... blue one? What's she..?” “Oh, yeah... Rainbow Dash... I don't know; I'm just as lost as you are... sorry.” Rarity replied, “But yeah, just a second!” She walked over to the temporarily disabled Pinkie Pie and chewed off a large chunk of tail-hair. She used her mouth to quickly slick it into a moustache-shape and levitated it under the right nostril of the dragon. Bang! A full moustache! The dragon pulled out a hand-mirror from nowhere of interest particularly. Upon admiring his new mismatched facial hair, he squealed in delight. Rarity squealed in delight- he'd bought it! “Oh my dear pony! You can't know what a delight it has been to come across one as Generous as you! Please let me repay the favour. What would you wish of me?”delighted the dragon. At this point, Twilight stepped up to the mark and addressed the dragon in an authoritative tone, “Oh, great Dragon. I wish you to bring back from the Land of the Dead our dear friend Goku. He is Namek's only hope.” Rarity face-hoofed [it looked pretty painful] and spoke up, “I'm really sorry for my friend; she doesn't get out enough. Could you help us get across this river?” “Why, of course I can!” said the dragon. He set about systematically pick-up-and-placing the ponies, two-by-two, on the opposite bank. When his task was done, he bid them farewell and cheerily made his way down the river, whistling all the way. About a mile downstream [approximately the range of Rarity's telekinesis] his moustache gave up the ghost. It plopped into the river with a very disappointing sound.