//------------------------------//
// Episode 3: The GalaGate Scandal [Part 1: Twilight and Luna's Date] 
// Story: My Little Pony: Lernin' 'Bout Frends 
// by FenDingo 
//------------------------------//

The sun was cresting the barntops of the Apple Ranch, knocking off rooftiles and roasting the cattle gently but unevenly. Celestia was doing a better job than usual; the ranch often had to be rebuilt, of the late morning. Applejack had woken up completely exhausted from the escapades of the day before and, not feeling up for dealing with the maternal- err... matin-al?.. ok, the morning catastrophe, had called upon Twilight's help to throw the rooftiles back up from whence they came.
Twilight hadn't been up for it either. She decided to bring Spike along. With him riding on her back and doing all the scoop-n-throwing, it looked an awful lot like she was helping while doing nothing much at all. Twilight felt that the events of her first few days in Ponyville-in-the-Wider-Scheme-of-Equestria had been enough for one or two lifetimes and was now quite happy to coast uneventfully through the rest of her own. This, as we all know, was never going to happen. Density [the mysterious force which orchestrates all life-events and which is measured in kilograms per cubic metre] would make sure she never had a moment's peace. Little did little Twilight know that she would be plagued by an armada of drama- a drama armada. Today's drama would emanate mostly from her five new friends.
“Thanks for helping me tidy this place up, Twilight,” said Applejack.
“No problem. It's not like I had anything better to do,” said Twilight.
Spike made an exasperated noise, saying something along the lines of, “What about me? I'm the one doing all the work here!”, but it might not have been; I wasn't really listening. Celestia had just about made it past the ranch with her giant ball of fusioning hydrogen in tow. She was singing 'Here Comes the Sun' by The Beatles; needless to say, this song had taken on a much more sinister tone for the citizens of Equestria. The princess was writing as she went along and, as soon as she'd finished, the parchment went up in a magical blaze of glory. On the ground below, a scroll started to slowly eject itself from Spike's nose, making the sound of an old fax machine. Spike looked pale as this happened to him. Celestia chose a different orifice every time and he felt he'd gotten off lightly. He jumped down off Twilight's back and handed her the scroll; it made a worrying 'snap' when he pulled it from his nostril. Twilight opened it up and watched two Chekhov's Tickets fall out before she began to read out loud.
“Deer Twiglet Sparkall [oh dear], I am cummishonig [commissioning?] a frendship leter to be rittan toniyt. As payment, you can heav too tickets for the Grand Galopeing Gala. Are oyu realy going on a date with my sisster? Thats pritty weerd, man. Well, whaetver floats yor frend-ship. Yours Sunceiling [sincerely?], Pences Sallatrio.”
Applejack picked up the tickets with her mouth and gave them to Spike. He didn't really want to touch them but felt obliged.
“Wow! The Grand Galloping Gala! It would be mighty financially beneficial if I could go. Just imagine all the apple-peddling I could do... men, women, children, manchildren... everypony would want a piece!” said Applejack.
“I thought your sales were doing just fine here,” said Twilight, “Why do you need the extra income? You don't... owe anyone anything..? Right?”
Applejack looked a bit shocked, “Owe? What? You mean for drugs?” Twilight didn't answer but raised one eyebrow [which promptly became tangled in her hair]. “Come on, Twi! I'm not doing that anymore. Anyways, I never bought anything. You never know what shit them mothertruckers gon' cut it with. I cooked it all myself- well, anything I couldn't buy at the pharmacy with my fake prescription system.” Twilight's brow continued to raise, untangling itself from her hair to float a few centimetres above her head. Applejack was watching it with a slightly alarmed expression. It's hard to describe what it looked like so I'll have to introduce my secret weapon: the Punctuation Diagram!



^                 < - Eyebrow
(\==/)           < - Ears 'n Hair
lo ô l            < - Sides of Head and Eyes [Her left one with its Eyebrow]
\''__                   < - Side of Muzzle, Nostrils and Mouth    
\___                < - Side and Bottom Line of the Chin


I'm afraid Twilight looks more like a mouse than a pony but I assure you I went through the whole UTF-8 chart and there was no character used in any supported language that could perfectly render a Friendship is Magic Pony Punctuation Diagram.
Spike said, “Well, I don't really want anything to do with this Gala. I'm really small and could spend the whole night being stamped on. Applejack can have my ticket.” Twilight shrugged; fine by her! Applejack looked delighted [not happy; just not very well-lit... she looked very pleased, too, though].
“Oh, thank you Twilight! I promise I'll split all my prophets with you!” said Applejack, with Twilight suppressing a giggle at the image of her friend ripping the late Jesus Christ in half so they could each take a piece home. Twilight's special ability was the power to hear spelling mistakes and incorrect usage. So it was sorted! Twilight could now get to worrying about her date that afternoon!
Of course, it could never be so simple. Ironically, the lack of simplicity was kicked off by the simplest thing in the world: Rainbow Dash. She cartwheeled in from the sky and landed between the two ponies. She just about managed to miss Spike, who was then left cowering between Rainbow's legs with the ground cracked all around him.
“The Grand Galloping Gala!?” questclamationmarked the blue pony.
“Err, yeah,” non-committed Twilight.
“Oh man! I have to be there!” she reached down and snatched a ticket from Spike. Nobody did anything of note as Rainbow Dash stared at the thing with a distant smile. Twilight didn't want to interfere and kinda hoped the situation would sort itself out when Rainbow realized there were only two tickets. “Oh man! There's another ticket!” she snatched the second one and stared disbelievingly at them both. Spike felt his use was spent and crawled out from beneath the blue pony to cower behind his preferred purple one. Nothing of note once more happened while Twilight tried to work out why Rainbow Dash would want two tickets to this thing. She felt an explanation wouldn't be on its way for a while and looked apologetically towards Applejack. No one said anything, so Twilight played diplomat.
“So, Rainbow Dash, why exactly is it so important for you to go to the Gala?” she said. Her blue friend put her hooves on her hips and puffed out her chest. She failed to look impressive.
“Come on, Twilight! You must know that the entertainment's being provided this year by the Cirque du Soleil?!” she explained. Twilight nodded in defeated acceptance. Rainbow was mental. She'd pronounced it 'sir queue doo sull eel' and Twilight wasn't even sure she knew what it was. She was morbidly curious and asked, receiving the answer.
“Well, no. All I know is it sounds superfast. And it's French! You can't spell 'French' without 'Fast'!” she said, eyes closed and arms crossed across her chest with an arrogant smile on her face.
“But you can spell 'French' without 'Fast'. You just get 'Rench', which sounds like a tool.” answered Twilight.
“You sound like a tool!” said Rainbow Dash, providing the wittiest statement she'd ever made. Twilight was actually impressed. She started laughing.
“Ok, RD. I see this is important to you. I'll think about it.” she giggled, “Either way, I've got a date to get ready for. I'm going to lunch with Luna in about an hour and I've got to put my face on.”
“You already have it on,” informed Rainbow Dash, “I can tell because I haven't been talking to a smooth round ball of purple fur with a silly hair-style.”
“You know she's talking about make-up, right?” supplied Applejack [who had a knack for supplying]. Twilight giggled and snatched the tickets from Rainbow Dash. She bid her farewells as Spike jumped onto her back.

Twilight was sat in front of the mirror in her bedroom, applying eye-shadow. She managed to achieve the not-slept-in-forty-eight-hours look that was all the rage. She finished off her eyes by applying mascara; some of it to her sclera, which she had to wipe off with saline solution while she cursed wildly. I can't really repeat what she said but mostly because I don't have a supply of words as offensive as those she managed to conjure in that moment. Once she'd wiped clean the white of her eye, she powdered on a bit of foundation. There was significantly less of the white powder than she'd remembered there being and she suspected that Applejack had had something to do with it. She managed to achieve the looks-like-she's-just-seen-a-ghost look that was all the rage.
She inspected her face in the mirror and nodded to herself. She felt she looked significantly like she'd had a harrowing spectral encounter precisely two days from when she'd last slept. Perfect! She just hoped Luna would like it.

Twilight stepped out of her house and took a deep breath. She still had to work out who to give the ticket to. She decided that worrying about it before her lunch date wouldn't help so she took a second deep breath and pushed the problem out of her mind. It fell to the ground with an audible metallic 'thunk'. Unfortunately, this caused a wild Pinkie Pie to appear. She inspected the problem without saying a word to Twilight before looking up to her and beaming maniacally.
“You... have an extra ticket... to the Gala?” she said. This was a make or break moment. Twilight couldn't lie about it as the evidence was sitting on the doorstep, on its side, defying description. There had to be something she could say which wouldn't set off the pink bomb. Before she could react, Pinkie Pie spoke up, “What's a Gala?!”
Like a fish resigned to having a permanently bifurcated upper lip, Twilight was off the hook. “Well, Pinkie,” she connived, “Although Day Trading is a valid way of succeeding on the Stock Exchange, it's always wise to diversify your portfolio. In fact, I'll go grab my latest figures; the GALA 100 presents a very interesting- and long-winded- case study in...” At this point, Twilight was talking to the opposite end of the pink horse, which quickly appeared to be very interested in nothing at all. Luckily, nothing at all was located in the opposite direction to Sugarcube Corner- the chosen date-stination for the... err... dest with Luna.

After briefly portmanteauing myself into a corner, I continued to narrate the journey to the aforementioned restaurant, making solid joke after solid joke along the way. Twilight arrived at Sugarcube Corner before Twilight did, which was weird considering it was only early afternoon. She could already tell this wasn't going to go smoothly. Luna hadn't yet turned up so she sat at one of the outside tables, smoking and doing Sudoku by Zippo-light. After about five minutes, her Princess in Shining-Armour made an appearance.
“What's with the get-up?” asked Twilight.
“Titanium Breastplate or Glow-Sticks?” Luna asked for clarification.
“Both?” asked Twilight.
“Well, it kinda got super-cloudy kinda fast. I wasn't sure if it was a harbinger of death, so I came prepared.” said the one who didn't say the last thing. Twilight looked her up and down.
“You look like a dork,” she concluded.
“Oh...” threedotted Luna, “I... well, I just... wanted to be sure... y'know..?”
“I like dorks,” said Twilight, popping a lean against the back of the chair and wishing she'd fetched her fetching leather jacket. “So. Shall we begin?” she continued, breaking standard date protocol of not making the whole affair sound like a business meeting. The rabbit-in-headlights look from Luna made Twilight quickly rethink her strategy, so she retconned it to “D'you wanna grab a coffee and a Chicken McNugget or something?”
Luna regained her composure [J. Surebastian Bach, to be precise] in time to reply, “Sounds good. What's a micknuggat?”
After collecting their respective caffeinated beverages and trademarked chicken pieces, they went back outside to admire the apocalyptically dark afternoon, y'know, as an icebreaker. Twilight got to it first, securing her very first piece of social-eptitude.
“So, how about those clouds, huh? Pretty ominous,” she ice-brokewith.
2yeah, i wonder what's going on2 replied luna as i lost the will to use the shift-key.
The conversation petered out and left the two ponies trying not to make eye-contact. The icebreaker wasn't as strong a special-attack as Twilight had hoped. She was glad she hadn't fetched that jacket as it would have looked pretty silly wrapped around such a purple piece of ineptitude as herself, she thought.
As her gaze burnt gently, yet explosively, through the solid-oak table, an oversized hailstone swooped in [vertically; so I suppose it fell, really] and almost killed a guy! The two ponies chair-jumped back in horror, wide-eyed [not from fear; they were just drawn in the traditional Japanese style of Moë]. The hailstone had a note taped to it at such an angle as Twilight could read it: 'Talk about the whether'. The bad spelling narrowed down the potential Deus ex Nimbus to virtually everyone she'd met in Ponyville and beyond [barring Luna, whose main superpower was the ability to spell for shit [and perv on people's dreams, but that was secondary in Twilight's opinion]]. For lack of anything better to say, she took the note's self-fulfilling advice:
“Funny whether we're having,” she offered. Luna waited for her to finish the sentence. When she didn't, Luna prompted “Whether we're having what?”.
“Oh,” put out Twilight, “I don't... think I understand...” She'd parsed the sentence incorrectly. Luna's eyes pleaded with her to just fuckin' start again. She just fuckin' started again:
“Funny weather we're having, eh?” she relaunched.
“Oh!” Luna understood loudly, “Yeah, it's hailstoning cats and dogs. Well... dog, anyway. But it is a big dog.”
Twilight giggled. It was a big ol' puppy was that there stone. Luna giggled, as if by Autocue. It could be told that she was nervous, had ya been there, but you'll just have to take my word for it that she was nervous but, at the same time, madly in love with this purple horse. She just wished she could talk. Hell, she just wished she could understand better by this point.
The hailstone-apropos-of-nothing had missed their coffees and McNuggets so they dug in, thankful that the shockwaves of the kilogram-weight monstrosity had, somehow and miraculously, not spilt anything. Twilight watched Luna eat. She didn't chew a thing! At one point she set up a toy-sized basketball hoop over her mouth, head turned skyward, and slam-dunked McDonal... Sugarcube Corner's Chicken McNuggets down her throat, one after the other, racking up a high score of 52,000 and setting the player name to 'ASS'. Twilight nodded in respect; it was a classic.
After this, Twilight felt more comfortable and started to pick up in conversational intensity. More coffees were ordered [by Dewey-Decimal, naturally] and they were soon thick as thieves. Luna was literally thick- having not chewed anything properly, nothing had aligned in her stomach so she couldn't clear a line- let alone a board [… Tetris? Just me? Probably not even me...].
It was all going so well until another hailstone appeared on the table [once again from directly above, so, again, it fell, really]. The hailstone was Rainbow Dash.

“Oh, hey guys!” said Rainbow Dash with an apologetic smile, “Err... I just came by to.... err... help you out. Y'know, with the date...” Twilight looked completely unimpressed. Luna looked completely at the ground. Twilight looked completely at Luna looking completely at the ground. Rainbow Dash looked completely on top of a table. Rainbow Dash stood up and cleared her throat before shooting skywards and hole-punching a didcot out of the thick black clouds. The hole let through a beam of purest Rainbow Dash-shaped light directly onto Twilight and Luna's table. Rainbow dropped gracelessly back through the whole and landed next to the couple, looking pleased as a pony about to get a ticket to something she wanted to go to. Twilight looked completely unimpressed. Rainbow dash hazarded, “So... about those tickets..?”.
“RAINBOW DASH! PISS OFF! WHO TOLD YOU YOU COULD F***ING COME TO MY SH**TING DATE?! DON'T YOU HAVE ANY C*NTING SELF-B*STARD-AWARENESS?! I FUCK*NG CAN'T HAVE ANY**ING CAN I?!! ALL I BALLS-ING WANTED WAS A NICE QUIET AFTER***N WITH B*S*A*D LUNA BUT I C*N'T EVEN HAVE T*AT, CAN I?!? FECKING PISS OFF AND WE'LL TALK ABOUT THOSE T*****S L***R!! JESUS BITCHING CHRIST ON A BIKE.” said Twilight.
Rainbow Dash giggled, “I'll leave you two lovebirds alone.”
Twilight was incandescent with disappointment. She really wanted this to go well but Rainbow just had to ruin it. Luna would surely never get over this. She'd now made a scene at the only restaurant in the town. It was brutal. As Rainbow Dash giggled into the distance, Twilight sheepishly looked over to Luna to assess the damage. To her surprise, Luna was still there.
“Luna, I'm really sorry about this,” Twilight was on the verge of tears [eye-water- not, like, rips], “I've just had to deal with this s-asterisk-asterisk-t all day... I didn't mean to make a scene. It's just... that fucking pony, man... she doesn't know when to quit. In fact, I don't think she knows anything at all. I just wanted this to be a special day... for you. I wanted you to know I lost my shit over her for you. I promise, in future, I'll try not to take Rainbow Dash to the fuckin' cleaners in public... err, d'you want to go someplace else?”
Luna was smiling coyly, “Twilight-kun... you're so tsundere...”
Twilight was shocked, “Luna-chan... boku wa...”

The rest of the date went smoothly. Twilight picked up her leather jacket [which, by this point, she'd earned] from the treehouse on the way to the park, where they had an actual meaningful conversation. Luna laughed as Twilight made snide comments about the other ponies' children and Twilight laughed as Luna showed her the latest fanfic she'd been working on; it was meant to be a drama, so she didn't quite know how to take that. At some point, it was pushing on four pee em and Luna had a royal conference to attend back at the palace-castle-playset. At the entrance to the park, an awkward end-of-date occurred of itself.
“So,” so-ed Luna.
“Yeah, so,” 'Yeah, so,'-ed Twilight. They both looked at the ground and shuffled their feet... err, hooves. Twilight looked at Luna and shuffled her cards. Ace of Spades. Go for it! Twilight took the plunge and kissed Luna passionately- right in front of the children, whose parents covered their eyes and lead them away, looking back disapprovingly at the display. Twilight started to undo Luna's breastplate...
“No,” said Luna breathily, “not here...”
Someone in the park was already in the process of filing a complaint; about which nothing would be done, given there was no actual police force in Ponyville-in-the-Wider-Scheme. The two ponies broke apart and looked at each other.
“Call me,” said Luna.
“You call me. I don't have any minutes left,” said Twilight, romantically, but practically.
“Sure thing,” said Luna, smiling as she flew off into the mid-afternoon sunset.
Twilight smiled and spoke to herself, “Princess Celestia does not do a very good job.”

Twilight saw Rarity coming down the road, straight towards her- followed by Spike, and an obvious ulterior motive.