My Little Pony: Lernin' 'Bout Frends

by FenDingo

Episode 2: Elements of Frends [part 1: Beethooven's 14th- The Moonlight Sultana]

In a world where sunlight ruled. A world unblighted by the touch of human hand. A world unenlightened by the love of Jesus Christ. A world where everyone was ponies; All the time. A world of hope. A world of joy. For every little girl and boy. But most of all: In a world where friendship was actually a type of boat, there was only one pony who could bring order to the chaos. That pony was Luna Armstrong. Luna Armstrong was the sister of the Archangle of Light: The Princess Celestia Buzz Armstrong-Turing. The Princess Celestia reigned over the land of Ponyville-in-the-Wider-Scheme-of-Equestria with an iron fist. The fist was mostly used to rearrange faces. The Princess Celestia at one time spent most of her average day pulling the Sun across the sky. These days, she just tended to drag it along the ground. It was a time of a great many fires. At one point, Luna Armstrong reigned over Bed-Time. She was incredibly lonely with everyone being asleep all thyme. She got so lonely that she'd taken to sneaking into the bedrooms of the sleeping miniature horses and softly playing them to hypersleep with jazz-piano. She also read their diaries in order to proofread them. It was a proper shame for her, is what I'm saying.

One day she rebelled by pulling the sun and the moon across Equestria at the same time, causing half the land to fall into eclipse and the other half to fall into reverse-eclipse [moon behind sun]. It was a catastrophe; almost a third of the population of Equestria stopped suspending disbelief! It was a grave crime which called for a grave punishment; She was stripped of her Queendom [no, it's not a contraceptive- stop smirking] and sentenced to one thousand years on the moon to write Fan-Fics which received terrible like to dislike ratios on FIMFiction [and if that isn't meta, I don't know what is!]. One thousand years later, Celestia had completely forgotten about her. So she bailed from her lunar-prison and headed straight back to Ponyville-in-the-Wider-Scheme-of-Equestria to go for the high score: Her plan was to knock down every fourth wall in the land. We join her now at the Ponyville Sundance Film Festival.

She lasered her way through the big-screen, causing the volatile Liquid Crystal inside it to go off violently. As the ex-screen fell away in a perfect throne-shape, she pulled up mid-flight and frowned down upon the assorted buffoons and morons of the town and wider area. Nobody moved except to continue eating popcorn. She noticed her sister, Celestia Buzz Armstrong-Turing sat in the middle of six relevant-looking ponies.

She addressed the masses, “Good evening, assorted wildlife; this is your captain speaking, the buffet is now open.” the ponies continued grazing as they waited for her to make more sense, “My name is Nightmare Moonmillennium. I have returned from being banished for 1-k-years on our desolate natural satellite. My banisher is sat among you today. Stand up, Tyrant Celestia! Show yourself!”

Celestia rose from her technologically-defunct royal seating to stand on her two hind legs. She looked up to her little sister through a pair of Groucho glasses. She shouted up to her, “I don't know who you are or what you came here to do but if you don't put Juno back on this instant I'm going to banish you to the moon for One Thousand Years!”

Luna hovered dumbfoundedly. “I... I'm your sister... You know- Luna? You already did that to me? No?” Celestia's facial expression hadn't changed. Luna's brain attempted to wrap itself around the sheer logistics of shipping two metric fucktons of stupid in the space of one sentence. Her brain didn't compute. She continued, “At any rate, I'm here to take over the Glorious Dictatorship of Equestria. As my first act of dictatorshiphood, I shall be banishing your precious 'sun' to the moon for One Thousand Years!” every pony gasped, “I decree there shall be one millennia of Bed-Time across the entire continent!” there was a stunned silence from the gathered crowd; everypony had collectively forgotten about their snack foods. A small voice rang out from next to Princess Celestia, “One millenni-UM! I think you'll find.” The hovering lunar dictator squinted at a small purple pony seated directly on the side of her princestral big sister. “You dare to correct the dictatorial grammatical-case usage?!”

“What if I do!” the purple pony had risen to stand on her hind legs. She was holding a Starbucks Neck-'er-on-the-Move Cup and had a cigarette loosely hanging from her horse-lips. Dictator Luna Armstrong floated down towards the bleachers and Twilight could see she was wearing some kind of Lucha Libre wrestling-mask decked out with a moon motif.

“S”, began the masked dictator, continuing, “o, you're the one they call Twilight Envoi of Spellcraeft and Alkhemie.”

“If this is about my mission, you had better take it up with Celestia. I'm but a simple pawn in the greater plan. Go! Find her! It is she with whom you must make counsel, not me!” Twilight sipped her coffee dramatically, but gently as it had been well-insulated. Nightmare Moonmillennium sneered, “Fine! I will seek out this one you call Celestia. However, I will return to finish this as soon as our counsel is at rest.” she turned 8 degrees to the right and continued, addressing the princess, “So you're the one with whom I am to hold parlance.” The gathered crowd had started eating and drinking again; It was widely agreed that this was a damn sight more entertaining than Juno.

“What do you want, Dictator Moonmillennium?” asked the princess.

“You know what I want, 'Princess'. I want you and your 'government' out of my continent immediately. I should also like to look upon your true face; please remove those stupid novelty-glasses.” replied Luna.

“Only if you remove your mask.” the princess retorted. An impasse had been reached. The sisters each waited for the other to let down their respective head-wear. Rarity decided to take it upon herself to ameliorate the situation, “Princess Celestia! Dictator Armstrong! As Minister of Fashion for Ponyville-in-the-Wider-Scheme, I must bring an end to this Mexican Stand-off. Now, on the count of three, I would like the Dictator Armstrong to take her Mexican mask off. At the same time, I would like the Princess Celestia to take her comedy get-up off. One. Two... Three!” The two sisters did as commanded. The assorted crowd gasped; it appeared that half of them hadn't been following and had only just discovered that the two confronting Alicorns were, in fact, their commanding Princess and her until-recently banished sister [who had been the source of pretty much every tabloid headline in the land, given nothing of note ever really happened]. Twilight rolled her eyes and threw her cigarette [which landed in the soda of a background pony a few rows below]. The sisters had fallen silent, each looking at the face of the other. A loud “Ee-yup!” was heard from somewhere in the stadium stands. Applejack looked fondly towards the source of the catchphrase, “That's my big brother! Always so stoic and manly; I don't know how I'm ever gonna reveal my true feelings to him, Fluttershy.” she was too stoned to realise how loud she'd bellowed this into the silence of the stadium. Fluttershy had turned completely red, cursing Applejack for having left her name echoing into the oppressive tranquillity, appended to this most embarrassing of statements, for no conceivable reason. Rainbow Dash, along with everyone else, had seen this situation unfold and was attempting to suppress a giggle at the horror hewn into the yellow pony's features. She rotated the camera she'd been using to pirate Juno and made sure to get a good view of it for later hilarity. The assorted citizens followed suit, retrieving cameras and smart-phones to snap their very own mementos of the occasion. Celestia also turned her Juno-pirating-device towards the rapidly-reddening pony and hazed-looking cowpony, laughing openly at the happening. Dictator Luna had a notepad out and was taking notes for her first dictatorial slash-fic.

After the giggles and talk had quietened down, Luna bid her sister adieu and turned 8 degrees to her left to deal with the unfinished business pertaining to the purple pony. “I said I'd return.” she introduced.

“I knew you would,” replied Twilight, “What do you expect of me?”

“The only thing I respect of you and your little cohort is to expect my future commands and dictatorly orders.” replied Luna, mixing up her 'pect' words. Twilight noticed, but was too busy drinking coffee to care to correct her. Luna continued, “Furthermore, there will be hell to pay if you continue your pathetic search for the fabled 'Elements of Frends'; The Everytree Forest is no place for little girls such as yourselves.”

“I... what elements?” discontinued Twilight.

“The Elements of Frends? You know- the six ancient cursed jewelleries left by Frends herself after her mythical Health and Safety Transgression?” Luna enlightened.

“I'm sorry, lady, I wasn't told about any elements. Or about Frends, for that matter. I'm here because your sister wanted me to make some girl-pals... I think she ideally wanted me to have an army at my disposal?” said Twilight, unsure.

“You know, the word is 'gal-pals',” Celestia cut in, unhelpfully, “It sounds weird when you say it like that.”

Luna shook her head. She'd started to feel sorry for this little purple pony who'd been strung along on a half-baked ride by a princess who only had a vague idea of the plot. This was going to take all day, so she decided to make it easy for her. In her best evil voice, she bombastically sarcasmed, “You simple little ponies. I doubt you'll ever find the,” looking pointedly and theatrically at each hereafter-parenthesised pony in turn, “Honesty (Applejack), Kindness (Fluttershy), Laughter (Pinkie Pie), Generosity (Rarity), Loyalty (Rainbow Dash) and Character-Trait-as-yet-Unestablished (Twilight) you need between you in order to wield the Elements of Frends located within the Castle of Everytree at the centre of the eponymous forest.”

Twilight looked towards Celestia for confirmation. The princess had her video-camera out and appeared to be re-watching the first half an hour of the interrupted feature film; she would clearly be of no use at this time. She looked back at the new dictator, trying to work out if she'd actually make a better leader of Equestria than Celestia had. Luna had started to rub one foreleg with the other in an endearing display of awkwardness. Aww thought Twilight, deciding that she'd better take Luna's thinly-concealed plot advancement and run with it.

“Did you just 'Aww' me?” asked Luna, worriedly.

“Oh god, did I say that out loud?” replied Twilight. After ten seconds, Luna said “Err, I asked if you just 'Aww'-ed me?”

“Oh,” said Twilight, surprised, “I thought I said that out loud. Must've just thought it. I said “Oh god, did I say that out loud?””

“Ah, I see,” Luna pretended to see, “Well, this is... getting weird.”

“Yeah.” Twilight buried her face in her coffee while Luna self-conscioused herself into a fine shade of red. Very suddenly, the volume on Celestia's camera went up as she accidentally skipped to the end of the tape. It blasted out, “I don't know how I'm ever gonna reveal my true feelings to him, Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy re-melted into her seat as the tension was dissolved in a semi-hysterical fit of laughter from the gathered ponies.

After Luna had left to make the Bed-Time preparations, making sure she'd be referred to as 'Dictator Nightmare Moonmillennium' in her absence and not as 'Luna' or 'That awkward small-ish Alicorn that Twilight may or may not have a 'thing' for', the gang huddled together around Celestia to work out a plan of action. After many surprisingly convincing words from the princess on the merits of leaving the Quest for the Elements of Frends till morning when they were rested up and not half so drunk, they'd made an executive decision to carry on with the film festival. A heavy wooden board was hoisted up and nailed to the now-empty big-screen fittings, courtesy of Solid-Oak Roberts [the local furniture expert] and the projector was set back up. The night consisted of drunken dancing and eating punctuated by the occasional showing of Juno [which the princess had insisted on burning into the collective retinas of every citizen]. By the time of the last showing, the night air was filled with the drunken saying-along-verbatim of each and every line of the film by each and every one of the 400 or so ponies filling the half of the Quidditch stadium. From the outside it must've looked and sounded like some kind of massive religious rite. To the princess, it may have been one of the greatest nights of her life.

The next day, Pony-Pirate-Bay had managed to gain 250 shaky-handed copies of Juno.

Author's Note:

Sorry this took so long, I've had a busy weekend! Episode 2!! I did it!!!

If you've just started reading this 'story' from this very chapter, I'd recommend starting at the beginning. However; the current followers of the series [I assure you] will be just as lost as you are. All of you, in fact, probably have a better idea of what's going on than I do!

Cheers -FenDingo [emphasis on the 'nDi'!]