I'm Going to Take Over the World
It was a dark and stormy night. Flies was sitting at her desk, holding her phone to an ear with one hoof, and tapping half-heartedly at her laptop’s keyboard with the other. She had the vague idea that she was treating this doctor’s office like most ponies treat tech support, but she dismissed that thought as cute as she waited to finish being transferred for the third time.
“Hello?” Came a voice from the other end of the line. “This is Nurse Redheart from Ponyville Hospital. How can I help you?”
Flies’ ears perked up when she heard the voice and sat up straighter in her chair. They had been playing Celine Deon all night while she was on hold, which filled her mind with images of a blazing inferno and ponies screaming. She didn’t like Celine Deon.
“Yes, Hi. My name’s Flies, and I’m sick. How much would it cost me to get better?”
The nurse on the other end of the line paused for a moment. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m sick,” Flies reiterated, “And I want to get better. How much would that cost?”
“Well,” Nurse Redheart said, “What exactly is the matter?”
“I don’t feel well,” Flies moaned and flopped her head onto the table for emphasis.
“You don’t feel well? What’s wrong?”
Flies wracked her brain for some kind of credential that would give her any skill in making such a diagnosis. She came up with nothing. “How should I know? You’re the doctor!”
“Uhh, well… we can’t exactly tell you what’s wrong without doing some kind of checkup.”
“Well how much would that be?” Flies glared at the computer screen in front of her as if it were the culprit.
“A normal checkup would be around 150 bits, plus any additional tests we’d need to run.”
“What! 150 bits?!? I’m not gonna pay that!” Flies exclaimed. “What if it’s just a normal headache?”
“Do you have a headache?” The nurse asked.
“How should I know if I have a headache?” Flies asked.
“Well, does your head hurt?”
Flies paused for a moment. “I dunno. Where’s my head?”
* * *
Flies stared at the ladybug. The mare was sitting on her front porch, legs sprawled out, about two feet away from the creature. She stared at the curvature of the ladybug’s back, how it was perfectly smooth, how each wing segment cover thing was a bright, vibrant red with three black dots. She noted the large false eyes on the front, and the much smaller face just underneath. She watched as it carefully picked up each leg and set it in front of the other without so much as tripping. She stared at the ladybug.
“Ladybugs are cute,” She said. The bug paid her no heed, continuing to crawl across the concrete porch. It stopped to gingerly examine a small crumb it ran across, waving its antenna around in the air as it brought its face close. Satisfied with the existence of said crumb, it gingerly stepped around it and continued walking.
“Why aren’t you flying?” She asked the ladybug. “I mean, it doesn’t make all that much sense to have wings and walk around all over the place. It’s literally the dumbest thing you could possibly do. Why do you even have legs? Rip them off and fly all over the place, you idiot. Are you really that much of a dolt that you walk around when you have wings?”
A pegasus stallion who had been walking down the street past Flies’ house stopped for a moment and stared at Flies before flapping his wings and quickly flying away.
“I mean, that’s just outright idiotic. What sort of moron would even walk if you could fly? There’s no legitimate reason you should even have legs. What kind of idiot gave you legs? Seriously, that’s just the dumbest thing ever. You must have no brain at all. I mean, you’re small and stupid, and you obviously don’t have much mental capacity anyway, but those legs are just siphoning muscle strength, blood, and power that should otherwise be going to your wings. I mean, seriously, you having legs means there’s less blood going to your brain, and that probably means you’re stupider as a result of it. I’m asking you as a creature with a higher percentage of blood going to my brain to rip your legs off because you’ll be smarter for it. I mean, imagine the DNA complexity that could go to developing your brain and making you smarter, and you’ve wasted it by having legs. You’re an idiot. You’re dumber than every other creature out there, just because you have wings.”
Somepony behind Flies cleared their throat. “Um…”
“CREATURES WITH WINGS ARE STUPID MORONS!” She roared as she jumped up and turned to face the pony behind her.
The yellow pegasus mare with a pink mane behind her blinked a couple of times, took a couple of steps backwards, made a strange noise in her throat, and flew off as fast as she could.
Flies stared after her for a moment. “Huh, I wonder if I said something that made her upset.” She pondered this possibility for several moments before shrugging. “Nah, nothing I can think of.” The ladybug beside her flapped its wings a bit, sputtering, before taking off into the air. It buzzed in a wide arc around her before soaring gracefully into the sky. Flies watched as a bird swooped down and ate it in a single bite. “Hah, that’s life for ya,” Flies said. “I told you to rip your legs off so you would be smarter.” She walked back inside.
* * *
On any other day, Flies would consider herself a very patient pony.
“And then I told him ‘Oh no you di-int!’ but he was all ‘Oh yah I di-id!’ And I slapped him but then he said-“
Today, however, she was unable to make that claim.
“And I said that was boring, but she really wanted to go, and I couldn’t say no, y’know? So then I said-“
Flies tried to make eye contact with the pony talking. She really tried. It wasn’t her fault that her eyes kept closing of their own accord, or threatening to roll to prove her displeasure. It wasn’t her fault. Honest.
“But then Flash told Windwalker that Bulk said he liked Swirl, and I said that-“
Under any other circumstance, Flies would have just screamed at the other pony to shut the cute up and stop blathering on and on. But in this particular situation, there was just nothing she could do.
“...Y’know? So then I was all ‘Aaah,’ and he was all ‘Eeek,’ but we still accidentally ran into each other and-“
Resigned to her fate, Flies’ mind wandered back to when she was a filly. Happy and carefree, she could freely run away from such conversations. Nopony would give her a second thought, nopony would mind if she just left…
“…oatmeal! And I said, ‘Oatmeal? Are you craz-‘”
But there was nothing to be done. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. All Flies could do was wait.
“…explosions started and everypony died and then…”
Flies briefly wondered how much emotion the other mare could read on her face. She was trying her best to not give away the fact that every muscle in her body was screaming at her to just up and run away. Nothing too terrible could come of it all, right?
“…attacking! Everypony run for your lives…”
She briefly considered why she was here in the first place. It’s not that she didn’t want to hurt anypony else’s feelings by betraying her own emotions, because she generally was very open and honest with other ponies about what she really felt. But this… this was just different. She regretted every decision she had made this far that got her to this point.
Finally, the screen turned black, and the loading icon appeared in the lower right corner. Flies breathed a sigh of relief and raised the controller closer to her face as the next level started. “I hate unskippable cutscenes.”
* * *
“Can anypony tell me what they want to be when they grow up?”
Several hooves shot up around the schoolhouse. “Ooh, ooh, memememe!” A young unicorn filly in the middle of the room shouted, waving her forehoof in the air excitedly. Several other young ponies in the room waved their forelegs and called out, as well.
The teacher paused for a moment before gesturing to a colt in the front row. “Yes, Trenderhoof.”
The filly sighed a bit in frustration but kept her hoof aloft as the young colt spoke. “I wanna be an astropony! I’d get to fly around in space, shooting bad ponies, and saving the good ones from the clutches of evil aliens!”
Some of the other ponies in the room stifled giggles, but the teacher smiled calmly at the colt. “That’s great! What do you think an astropony cutie mark would look like?”
“Like the awesome-looking ship in Gallopga!”
The teacher paused for a moment, as if making a mental note to look up later what that even was. “Ok, then. Anypony else?”
Another chorus of young voices called out, and this time the teacher singled out the excited young filly. “Yes, Fancy Butterflies. What would you like to be when you grow up?”
“The supreme overlord over all of Equestria!”
The outside of the principal’s office wasn’t the most fun place on the planet to be. As the young filly Flies sat on the bench outside, legs dangling above the floor, she vaguely considered how often she sat in this very spot. Anytime any other pony was in this room when she came in, they would scoot to a seat as far away as possible from the one in which she now sat. They knew which chair was hers, just like she knew that there were 69,105 floor tiles in the room. The florescent light above her flickered at just the right frequency to annoy and terrify young ponies, the water cooler across from her bubbled involuntarily every now and then, and Flies just sat, swinging her hind legs back and forth as she waited. She didn’t even have to look around the room to know its contents. A bookshelf beside her held different books and magazines, all of them boring. A potted plant sat on top, drooping long leaves over the edge of the shelf like spider legs reaching for some hapless prey underneath. Occasionally, somepony would walk past in the hallway to her right, and she would get a brief glimpse of them as they passed the glass wall and door. But the frosted glass door on her left gave her no indication of what the principal was doing inside.
Finally, the door opened, and the stallion beckoned her inside. “Miss Butterflies.”
Flies slowly dropped down off the bench and slowly trudged towards the giant door, ears and head drooping so much they nearly dragged on the ground. She shuffled in the door into the principal’s office. It was a fairly boring room. Shelves held more books that looked boring, odd doo-dads were shoved into various corners of the bookshelves and desk, and windows overlooked the mostly empty parking lot outside, blinds covering most of the view. Flies jumped up into the chair on her side of the desk and curled up into a small ball, staring at the desk in front of her.
The principal shut the door, walked behind the desk, and sat in his large chair. A giant, thick computer monitor sat to his left, almost reaching as tall as the stallion himself. He pushed his glasses farther up his snout, propped his front legs on the desk, and regarded the note in front of him. He cleared his throat. “Inciting anarchy?” He asked.
Flies just stared at the desk in front of her rather than the stallion behind it. She knew that Princess Celestia technically was immortal, and thus her chances of being dictator over all of Equestria were slim, but a girl can dream, right? “On an annoying technicality, yes,” She replied.
The principal sighed. “The fact that we already have a perfectly fine benevolent ruler already?”
This was the largest hurdle in Flies’ path, and she was well aware of it. She had stayed awake many a night, silently pondering how to knock off or otherwise dispose of an immortal, powerful being that everypony loves in order to start a tyrannical dictatorship of her own. After this, the important question was how to stay in power, since the ponies underneath her would likely revolt at this major change. And if she couldn’t outright kill an immortal goddess, how could she imprison her long enough to have a long, fulfilling reign?
“I’ll deal with such problems when I come to them,” Flies said.
The principal sighed and rested one hoof against his face. “There are just certain things you can’t do. Without Celestia, the sun and moon would move across the sky. Without them moving, one side of the planet would burn up, and the other would freeze.”
Flies scowled. “That’s just because nopony’s intelligent enough to think of a creative solution.”
The principal blinked at her. “Come again?”
Flies sat upright in her chair and pointed at the principal for emphasis. “Remember last month when Celestia’s student escaped?”
“Princess Celestia’s student, but yes,” The principal corrected.
“Right, yeah. That Sunset Shimmer chick. She got out through a portal that only opens once every twenty moons, and nopony managed to follow her in time before the portal closed again.”
The principal scratched the side of his head with one hoof and frowned slightly. “I don’t see what that has to do with-“
Flies cut him off. “And Princess Celestia was all heartbroken and stuff, and everypony in the newspapers was talking about how they wish they had noticed that she left in time. But nopony thought of the obvious solution.”
“Which was?”
She leaned forward for emphasis. “Celestia controls the sun and moon. All she would have to do is move them backwards a bit, and the portal would open again.” Flies smiled triumphantly at her school principal, while the latter just stared forward and acted like he was trying to form words without quite knowing what to say.
Flies hopped down from her chair and strode to the door with her head high and chest puffed out. “I like you. When I become supreme overlord dictator and conquer all of Equestria, I won’t murder you and your family.” She opened the door and stepped outside.
“Miss Butterflies?”
She poked her head back into the room. “Yes?”
The principal smirked at her and pointed back at the seat. “I’m not done.”
Flies sighed and let her shoulders sag once more as she wearily dragged herself back up onto the chair and curled up into a little ball again. This principal just didn’t confuse easily enough.
“Now about your behavior in class today…”
* * *
It wasn’t her fault, Flies eventually decided. Other ponies just didn’t get it.
The young mare sat in the school cafeteria, one table entirely to herself. Other ponies who came by and noticed her sitting at the table would quickly walk away again. Some of them had restraining orders on her, and other ones were just too lazy to get their own. It was fine, really. It gave Flies time to think without interruptions. She chewed thoughtfully on her salad as she stared in no direction in particular.
“Um, excuse me?” Said a voice. Flies glanced up to see a yellow pegasus with a long, flowing pink mane that was covering half her face. She was turned at just the right angle that Flies could see a cutie mark of three pink butterflies on her side. The mare smiled weakly, showing off a shiny pair of braces. “I just noticed that um, you were sitting by yourself and I just thought…”
“I have personally analyzed the chairs at this table and have come to the conclusion that they are unsafe,” Flies said. “This table is older than the others, and I managed to find the owner’s manual for it in the school’s archives. Based on strength test ratings conducted on this model of table, with stereotypical material wear-and-tear, I have come to the conclusion that this table will not properly support the weight of ponies who are particularly fat. It is therefore my duty to sit here and warn fat ponies not to sit here, as doing so would endanger their personal health and safety as well as my own. This I have done for the past six months while I await the stupidity of bureaucracy to catch up to my intellect and replace the table, as I have asked them several times to do.” Flies gave the other mare a cursory inspection. “But you don’t look all that fat, so you’re probably fine sitting here.” She took another bite of salad.
“Um… thanks I guess…” The mare hesitated a bit, half looking like she was about to bolt away, but eventually made up her mind and sat down across from Flies. “Um, hi. My name is…”
“Slyfutter. Yeah, I know.” Flies prided herself with having an eidetic memory for names. “You’re the one who likes animals, right?”
The other mare paused for a moment and muttered under her breath. “Um, if that’s what you want to call me, that’s ok I guess.” She spoke up a little louder. “Yes, I love animals. They’re so cute and fluffy and I have this pet bunny who-”
“That’s great,” Flies said. “But aren’t you supposed to smell terrible if you’re living with animals and such?”
“Well, not really,” Slyfutter said brightly, “My bunny Angel is house trained, and he’s so well-behaved that-“
“Cause I had this one idiot who thought I was her friend, and she lived in this pig pen, and she had this dog. And the dog was super smelly, and the girl was, too. And one day I told her that. I said ‘You smell and your face is ugly.’ And we didn’t really talk all that much after that. But anyway, the point is that the dog smelled and so did she.”
“Wouldn’t that be because she was living in a pig pe-“ Slyfutter began.
“And I knew this other stallion, and he had all these hamsters. He was obsessed with them, really. He had these funny plants in his basement with all these grow lights and stuff. I never actually saw the hamsters, but he would process the plants in this certain way and do something where he was inhaling some kinda smoke, and after doing that he would go on and on about the hamsters and how much he loved them and how they would all beam down from their ships and visit him at night. And he would talk about the giant hamster in the sky that they all served and how that hamster was going to come and try to take over the world one day. And that guy smelled too. He smelled kinda funny.”
Slyfutter frowned a bit and glanced to one side. Her voice got even quieter, which Flies thought was impossible. “Wouldn’t the smell be because he was taking dru-“
“Anyway,” Flies continued, “The point is that you don’t smell nearly as much as I thought you would from living with so many animals. It’s a compliment. You’re not that fat and you don’t smell too bad. So I kinda like you I guess.”
Slyfutter sank lower and lower into her seat as Flies continued. “What else do I kinda like about you? Your braces don’t look terribly dorky, so that’s a bonus. I generally can’t stand hanging around other ponies with braces, because they look like complete dweebs, and I can’t stand dweebs. You know, cause they look dweeby. In fact, just the other day I punched this one guy in the face because he was so ugly. You know, braces, thick glasses, the whole works. And I thought that the world would be a better place if I just punched him in the ugly face. Nopony else seemed to think that was such a good idea, though, and some of the other ponies started trying to attack me, saying something about ‘bullying’ or something crazy like that, which is just ridiculous, so I told them. I said ‘You all are a bunch of morons and I’ll beat you into a pulp for being so stupid. And you all smell.’ I don’t think it went over very well, though, because a bunch of them attacked me. I punched this one blue pegasus mare really good, though; he had to be sent to the clinic…”
Slyfutter’s eyes were about level with the top of the table by this point. Suddenly, the class bell rang, and she bolted out of her seat into the air, hovering in the air for a second as she grabbed her meal tray. “Nice talking to you bye,” She hurriedly blurted and flew off.
Flies stood up from her seat and stretched. “She was nice,” she muttered to herself. “I’ll probably let her live when I take over all of Equestria.” She levitated her tray up, broke it in half over her head, and crammed it into a trash bin. “I don’t know why those trash cans aren’t big enough to fit the entire tray in. Some dumb stallion who doesn’t know a thing about engineering must have designed them.” She levitated her saddlebags onto her back and joined the throng of students lined up to leave the room.