Episode 1: Friendathon 5000 [part 1]

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In the beginning was the ponies; and the ponies was with god; and the ponies was god. They was in the beginning with god.

[Yes, we're starting like this.]

The ponies were two and were called 'Celestia' [yep, like the stars] and 'Luna' [that's Latin for moon-horse]. Respectively, they pulled the sun and the moon across the sky respectively through the day and the night.

The ponies didn't do anything else, like make the planet or the sea. They weren't actually in the beginning... nor were they with god. Actually, come to think of it, there might not have been a god at all; we don't really know at this point... so... yeah. Anyway, this is where the story begins: with Luna being mad and alone due to everyone being asleep at night. All the time. What? No, there were never any late night parties! No, you couldn't stay up all night to finish an essay you should've done at least two weeks ago! This is Equestria; when it gets dark you go to damn well bed! No exceptions.

Luna will soon rebel. But first, lets visit Twilight Sparkle, who is on her way to 'Poney Island'.

“Well Spike, my purple, green hair and mane'd, 2 ft 1 baby dragon, we're on our way to Poney Island! Aren't you excited?!” exclaimed Twilight descriptively as they soared through the air in one of Celestia's slave-drawn magic sleighs.

“I thought you said we were going to PonyWorld- Equestria's only horse-themed amusement park. You know it's my favourite because I can relate to it.” dejected Spike.

“Wow, really?” sarcasmed Twilight, “I can't believe I honestly got away with that, I mean, why did you think I took all my stuff?” she laughed [at Spike].

“I... I thought- well, hoped we... might be living at the amusement park(?)” Spike trailed off.

“Haha, nah, we're living in Poney Island. Celestia told me it has an awesome beach. Funny I never heard about it before!” said Twilight, “As I've always said; I'll never move anywhere that's not close to a beach”.

The sleigh flew low over a little village. It was in the middle of nowhere; just fields as far as the eye could see. It started to slow and descend.

“What are you doing..? We don't stop here.” quoted Twilight. The petrified slave ponies said nothing but continued to lose altitude and speed. In the town of Ponyville, all the fillies looked up at once, sure it was the second coming of Santa Hooves. Above [but not by much] the town of Ponyville, Twilight's blank expression slowly resolved to horror as she realised that this was the final destination. Where was the beach?! She repeated her quote, louder and slower, in case the driving ponies hadn't heard, or hadn't seen the David Lynch film. They came to land on a wide road at the edge of the village.

“Where's Poney Island? Where's my beach? How will I study magic without my beach?!” Twilight panicked to Spike, who coughed up a parchment from Celestia. He read the letter:

Deer Twiliht,

Im sry 4 lieing 2u bout poney island. Ive snet u to poneyvil 2 studdy frendship. My sisters reterning and their isnt much tiem. U need 2 lvl up ur madjic by lernin bout frends so u can fite her off with the frends youll maek.

Senseerly,
Celetsia

“How did you manage to read that?” Twilight asked Spike, looking at the parchment over his shoulder, “and, more importantly, how the hell am I going to make friends? I only have time for studying and World of Warcraft.”

Spike replied, “Well; you're gonna have to go outside. And make friends. Which reminds me: why do you want to live near a beach? You're a shut-in!”

“Well... I can change- start anew- be who I want to be!”

“A level 80 Wizard?” interjected Spike.

“What? Well, yeah... I suppose.” Twilight looked genuinely sad but before Spike could comfort her, a pink pony came skipping down the road, freezing as it saw the massive pony-drawn sleigh. Twilight was standing a few metres away, staring at her staring at the massive sleigh. All of a sudden, the pink pony went off:

It bounced, it screamed, it fired out sentences like a machine gun. It whistled, it sang, it pranced, it laughed and it cried. Twilight looked on in horror as the pink pony assumed every possible state. It jumped and rolled and stopped and darted; circling Twilight and Spike along with their sleigh. They were trapped. Twilight threw four-letter words into the air- directed at Celestia; with her lies and her stupid, atrocious spelling.

After 10 minutes, Twilight was in fetal position. Spike was semi-conscious lying in a pool of his own and Twilight's vomit. An orange pony had seen the scene and was rushing over to it. She was shouting “Pinkie! Hey, Pinkie!!”. The jiving pink pony stopped circling. As the pony jove on the spot, the orange pony leaned in to inform Pinkie in a hushed and suspicious tone: “It's a good size. But do you have it in blue.” And the horror stopped. Twilight got up; fine, apparently, and asked “What was that? How did you stop it? Some sort of code?”

The orange pony replied, “Code? Nah, you can say anything really, so long as it sounds clandestine and premeditated. I don't know how it works or how I found out, so don't go askin' me!”
Twilight looked at both ponies, ill at ease. The orange one broke the silence, “Well anyways, my name's Applejack! How do ya do?”

“Oh... I'm Twilight Sparkle, and I run this place.” she replied, apropos of nothing.

“Well, you look a might bit shook up, Twilight Sparkle, what do ya say we head on over to the Apple Ranch and fix ya a bite to eat?” said Spike. Not really, it was Applejack of course; that's why I shoe-horned in all the southern-US idioms and colloquialisms. Nah, Spike was still lying in the pool of assorted vomits, waiting for someone to remember him. It didn't happen and he was left to ride over to the Apple Ranch alone in the sleigh, wiping himself clean with Twilight's books.

When he got there, he had the captive pulling-ponies dump Twilight's stuff in a pile before dismissing them and heading in. He found Twilight at the head of a line of what was certainly Applejack's entire family; one by one taking a swing at twilight with an array of comically chosen weapons, increasing in hilarity as the line went on. When the last pony [funniest of all: an elderly green pony with a working example of the Fat Man] had finished her loud and explosive business, Spike asked what was going on; through tears of laughter. Twilight scowled at him from under a cartoonish dusting of soot but replied, “I'm being introduced to Applejack's family; I thought they would be good, honest folk but when all 40 of them piled out of a tiny car, I knew they'd be nothing but trouble.”

“Hey, now don't ya go saying anything bad about my family, Twilight. They're helping me through my rough patch. Ya see, a new business has just set up shop right next to my stall at the Ponyville market. The stinkin' 'Windows Bros.' are running me outta business!” Applejack said.

Twilight looked bemused. “I... don't get it...”

“Why not?”

“I... just don't see why a Windows business would be bad for your Apple business.”

“Well,” explained Applejack, “We sell a very similar product- why would you buy an apple when you could buy windows?”

“Err...” Twilight decided to leave it for now. She was just happy that the pink nightmare was still out of action. Twilight and Spike ended up staying for some apple-based food. Twilight was feeling ill due to the maniacal stares from each of Applejack's extended-family members. She tried downing a glass of gin to calm her nerves but Applejack took it as a competition, drinking way too much; covering spike in a shower of vomit.

Twilight laughed; this had put her in better spirits and she felt more at ease. “You know, we could be friends,” she hazarded. Applejack nodded while Twilight proffered a clipboard: on the document was written at the top: 'I certify that I consider Twilight Sparkle a friend' and had 5 blank lines underneath. Applejack glanced at it quickly before signing; the Amity Agreement Forms were standard protocol in Ponyville, as they were everywhere within the Greater Dictatorship of Equestria. After a meaning-pregnant string of nonsense from Applejack, Pinkie Pie also signed. Twilight had a look on her face reminiscent of a Pokémon Trainer who had just, by dumb luck, managed to catch 2 Abras on full health with standard Pokéballs.

Episode 1: Friendathon 5000 [part 2: now longer and with less suck!]

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Two friends! I already have two friends thought Twilight as she and the two friends she mentioned earlier in this run-away sentence were headed out of Apple Ranch and along their way to find Twilight's new home. At the gate to the ranch, Twilight spotted the pile of her possessions in the same way a flood victim spots water: inevitably and with great anger. “Where the hell did the chariot go?” She great-angered [at Spike]. [Who replied] “I'm sure it was a sleigh, for one thing; for another, I sent it away- 'cause you and Applejack vomited on me!”

“I'm sure you just broke continuity at least two times there.” said Twilight, submerging and becoming one with the sea of personal effects.

“I only broke it once. We never had a chariot.” said Spike. Applejack spoke up, “He's right. It was definitely a sleigh. Applebloom ran inside when she saw it; she hid her favourite toy so Santa wouldn't take it away as a sacrifice to Mane-erva- the goddess of wisdom and of making shit figurines out of empty yoghurt-pots instead of just throwing the damn things away like a normal pony.”

Twilight's horn glowed radioactively [and retrospectively] as she caused the bundle of possessions to levitate and form into a giant cube of 12 metres cubed. The cube glowed radioactively.

The inhabitants stared in grotesque fascination as three ponies and a baby dragon sailed their way through Ponyville atop a glowing and dangerous-looking giant cube of books and knick knacks. Twilight had assumed a beanie hat, dark blue raincoat and pipe and was standing at the bow of the cube. Pinkie Pie spoke up in a distant and sleepy tone, “How long till we get there? Do you have any more of that nice candy?” Applejack had resorted to codeine to calm her down after she'd witnessed Twilight doing magic and had literally managed to sing her into post traumatic stress disorder. “Um... I don't think you should have any more of that candy, Pinkie, it's really bad for your stomach. I mean, ulcer bad.” said Applejack.

“But you got to have like five” Pinkie replied.
“I know, dear, and Twilight had six. But you drove us to it.” Applejack slurred. Twilight was slurring something about a great white whale to the citizens of Ponyville, who only looked on in terror and childish wonder. That's when things got cataclysmic. The skies were a pale and sunny blue before a frontier of clouds stormed their way across it [get it? 'stormed'?.. just me?.. ok]. Twilight shouted, “Run, citizens! The cumulonimbi are opening!”. A young filly from the motley crowd shouted back, “Please speak English! If I wanted to learn Latin, I'd have stayed in school!” Twilight leapt backwards as a tightly directed shower of rain battered the cube not 20 centimetres from her front hooves. “Holy, that could'a killed me!” Panted Twilight to Applejack, Pinkie and Spike [all still aboard the cube]. Palely, she looked towards the bow. Luckily, it was mostly intact, but for a word which had been blasted into it. The word, upon closer inspection, was actually very legible; it was two words: 'Rainob Dash'. Twilight looked up to the skies and shouted, “So the legends were true! A message from the whale; the great white whale!”

“You really shouldn't have given her six of those pills.” Spike directed towards Applejack, “The last time I saw her drunk, she was exactly the same; completely derailed the Canterlot Ball.”

In the meantime, the rain had turned to snow and hail, battering the nearby buildings with the word 'Ranebow Dahs'. The villagers ran amok in panic, some taking shelter in the storm bunker under the café. “Run, you cowards!” Offered Twilight; loudly. In the space of two seconds, the clouds evaporated [sorry physics] and the sun shone down with an angry glare, burning 'Raynbo Das' into a nearby field of corn, just visible over the houses from atop the still-glowing cube. All of a sudden, the plasmatic sun-glow abated, leaving a stark silence. The cube faltered and started to disintegrate, Twilight shouting “We're hit! She's going down!”. Her eyelids fluttered and she keeled over, causing the cube's last infrastructures to break and the radioactive glow to cut off. The three friends, and Spike, tumbled ungracefully to the ground, Applejack running over to make sure Twilight was alright. Once she'd ascertained that she was just exhausted from the drugs and the magic, she started pocketing jewellery and silks from the sea of junk.

When Twilight awoke, half an hour later, she was greeted by the sight of three ponies. Spike had been stuffed under her head to act as a pillow. “Where... where am I? I had the strangest dream. You were there, and you and... who the hell are you?” Twilight squinted at the mysterious sickly-blue pony. “I'm Rainbow Dash!” The newcomer boasted, chest puffed out. “R... Rainbow Dash?” Twilight said, coming back round a little, “So that's what that word was. Your spelling's atrocious; I mean, it's your own damn name! Did none of you go to school!?”

“My little Applebloom does!” Applejack replied proudly. “She does the learnin' for all of us!”

“Gah... wha... …no! Why?! What's wrong with all of you?!” Twilight spluttered. The assorted ponies laughed. Rainbow Dash spoke up, non-sequiturially, “I'm the greatest pony in all of Equestria; one day I hope to join the Blue Man Group!”. The assorted ponies laughed again; Twilight was very unhappy with how happy they all seemed to be. Spike continued to pillow. From seeing what this terrifying new potential friend could do, Twilight assumed this Blue Man Group was some sort of terrorist organization and decided not to ask about it. Instead, she once again proffered the Amity Agreement Form, which Rainbow Dash smiled at; emptily. After Applejack quickly explained what it said, Rainbow Dash marked a messy 'x' shape on one of the lines with Twilight signifying her name in brackets next to it. Three down and only two more to go!

The gang quickly found their way to Twilight and Spike's new tree-house. Twilight pushed the re-formed giant cube against the open doorway. It wouldn't go through, so she pushed harder. An explosion was heard coming from within the house as the last few cubic metres crashed inside.

They stood in the doorway looking at the daunting mess Twilight had just committed. “Well,” she piped up, “You'd better hop to it or we'll be here all day!” She started to leave but was cut short by Pinkie Pie, slurring “But I'm too tired. Why do we have to! It's boooring.”

Twilight schemed momentarily. “Just... a.... spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!” she started singing, the other ponies joining in delightedly. They all started picking up junk while singing louder and louder. After ninety seconds, Twilight sheepishly checked the state of the other ponies before grabbing Spike and bailing. They were halfway across Ponyville before the others even noticed.

They'd found their way to a secluded little patch of trees. Safe! They collapsed under one of the aforementioned trees; it had been a long day so far, and was only about to get longer. A sound... no, a song, starting quietly but getting louder with each passing second, was making its way towards them. Twilight rolled her eyed then noticed that the song- which seemed to be bird-song- was starting to sound like a pretty out of tune rendition of 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'.

A yellow blur crested a nearby hill, followed by a hoard of flapping birds, murdering a classic song from a beloved family movie. When it got closer, Twilight discovered it was a new pony- yellow and with an awfully pastel-coloured pink mane. The pony approached Twilight and Spike. “Err, hi.” Introduced Twilight, “Did you manage to pull the old Mary Poppins on somepony, too?”

“What? No. I'd never do such a thing. I'm teaching these birds to sing for the second coming of Princess Celestia, the Archangle of Light.” The yellow pony replied.

“Don't you mean 'archangel'?” Twilight said.

“Well, her letters are always signed 'angle', so I think that's right.”

An understanding look came across Twilight's face, “Ah, I see. Hold on, 'Archangle of Light'? That's what she's been calling herself? She's mental. I knew she was mental. Spike, are you hearing this? What did I tell ya!?”

“Princess Celestia is never just plain old deluded; she's literally mental. All the time.” Answered Spike, speaking it in a well-rehearsed manner.

“All the time.” Echoed Twilight to the yellow pony. “Please don't respond to any more letters; you can't know how deep the rabbit-hole goes. You're probably already in too far.” She referenced 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' by way of 'The Matrix'.

“Oh... I... I didn't know. I'm still going to train these birds to sing; it may be the only way we have right now of appeasing the tyrant Celestia.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and handed the clipboard to this new pony- it was worth a shot. This pony seemed to be a little timid, but at least she wasn't crazy like the other ones. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. As my new best friend, would you be so kind as to sign the lasting covenant of our friendship?”

“M... my name is Fluttershy and... and that... sounds...” She burst out crying. Twilight watched on in horror as the yellow pony collapsed, losing all her shit not a metre from her and Spike. “I'm really sorry Twilight,” Fluttershy started, “It's just... I've never had a true friend before! All the... the... other ponies... they avoid me! They just don't understand me! They don't know what it means to be Otherkin in a mundane world!!” She shouted through the sobs.

Twilight despaired... despore?.. Twilight despore. Her new best friend thought she was born in the body of the wrong species. Not only that, but she was still the most normal of all the new friends she'd made. Twilight curled back up into the fetal position to wait out the storm constantly breaking around her. There was also a real storm. It broke suddenly and heavily, causing Spike to scream like a young girl-filly and Fluttershy to scream like a large and elderly man who'd spent the best part of fifty years behind a pipe. They ran for the nearest house, Amity Agreement Form disintegrating in the heavy rain along the way. Fluttershy shoulder-barged her way through the ornate oak panelling of the door and the three of them spilled out onto a well-tended wooden floor and in front of a silently terrified white pony with well-coiffed mane.

“Holy scrotum, are you two alright?” The white pony asked, sounding genuinely concerned, but still managing to ignore Spike, who lay in a pool of Fluttershy's and the white pony's vomit.

“Yeah, we seem to be ok,” Twilight replied, concussed. The white pony then noticed the baby dragon. “Gah! your gargoyle threw up all over my pristine floorboards!” She shouted, Twilight noticing her affected Transatlantic drawl.

“Spike picked himself up, coughing and looking amorously at the white pony,” Twilight narrated as spike picked himself up, coughing and looking amorously at the white pony. The others didn't seem to hear Twilight's witty fourth-wall-breaker. I did, though. And at least I found it funny, but then again, I did write the thing. Spike was handed a mop and bucket and was commanded to mop-and-bucket up the mess while introductions were made. “My name is Rarity and I'm a Fashion-Bender.” The new pony spoke up.

“My name's Twilight Sparkle.” said Spike, sparking an impromptu lying-about of names to the white pony.

“Well, I'm very pleased to meet you all.” Responded Rarity. Twilight then decided to ask, “So... what's a Fashion-Bender?”

“Oh, you've never heard of one before, Fluttershy? Well, my dear [deeah... you get the ideeah; I'm not writing like this!] a Fashion-Bender is one of a very special group of ponies who are able to perform telekinesis on items of clothing as well as making them materialize and disappear!” said Rarity.

“But... what use is that?” asked Fluttershy, confused.

“Bitch, I'll bend the clothes right offa ya!” Rarity snapped at who she thought was Spike.

“I'm s... sorry, I didn't mean to offend! I was just... legitimately curious. It... came out wrong.” Fluttershy apologised profusely.

“I'm sorry for snapping, I've been working my finger... hooves to the bone, trying to get these dresses ready for the Second Coming! I'm just a little on edge is all.” explained Rarity, almost coming out of character but pulling it back again just in time.

“That's ok, I completely understand.” Fluttershy smiled, “I've been trying to teach a popular children's movie song to an army of off-key avians all morning. It's not easy, especially when you're a majestic wolf in the body of a pony!” The lot of them laughed heartily; Twilight, through the dying giggles saying “I lied about our names.” And wiping the tears from her face.

Episode 1: Friendathon 5000 [part 3: once mare into the breach]

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Rarity had taken it upon herself to give the ponies and baby dragon the guided tour of her wardrobe.
They all looked on as Rarity walked over to a previously-unmentioned animal-powered mill wheel in the centre of the room. “Look, a mill wheel! I wonder why she has that?” said the two ponies and Spike paraphrasedly. Rarity bit into one of the arms coming from the wheel and started to push it around. Fluttershy, Twilight and Spike looked up to see the white pony's complex machinations starting to turn steadily. “I wonder how we missed that!” said Spike sarcastically, disbelief rapidly unsuspending. Fluttershy answered “We probably didn't see it, before.” Twilight had a nosebleed. A loud, rocky groan was emitted as the floor to Rarity's house began to crack open down the middle. The assorted ponies of Ponyville looked over in their direction as they heard a piercing fog-horn and the low rumble of rock grinding past rock; for the third time that day, most feared the Black Gates of Mordor were finally opening.

The floor to Rarity's house had cracked open, revealing what could only be described as a chasm. “I still don't understand why you needed the horn.” Twilight said. In reply, Rarity hit her old-fashioned jukebox with a hoof and Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries blasted out, shaking the foundations of the building while her horn glowed violently as a roll of red cloth unwound itself from an oversized spool and shot over the edge, rippling into darkness. I'm presuming the noises now coming from the house had calmed the spirits of the villagers because none of them came to have a look and none of them will be making an appearance if I can help it.

Suddenly, the cloth [still attached to the spool] snapped taut and creased itself into a red, health-and-safety-defying staircase into the darkness. Just at that moment, Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie crashed into the expensive oak panelling of the door. Rarity covered her ears as unacceptable words erupted from behind it. The door was unbolted and the three walked in, deflated [but not literally; I'll be using that one later!]. Spike had fallen down the chasm in all the excitement.

“Holy hell, what is that thing?” exclaimed Rainbow Dash. Applejack responded, “It looks like a rift in the space-time continuity.”

Pinkie Pie, having recovered from her heavy dose of medication, had taken it upon herself to jump back and forth across the chasm, singing Carl Orff's arrangement of 'O Fortuna' as if it were a campfire song. The other ponies stared at her before Rarity joined in, too: “Egestatem, Potestatem, Dissolvit ut glaciem.” Before long, all ponies present were singing along.

Fluttershy then noticed the missing Spike, addressing Twilight, “I think you're gargoyle fell in.” Twilight couldn't be sure, but she had a sixth sense for telling when someone would use the wrong 'your' in writing. “Well, you're the one with wings, here; go get him!” she replied.

“Well, actually,” interrupted Rainbow Dash, “I'm the fastest Pegasus in the west, but I still need practice at speed-rescues if I ever wanna have a hope in hell at being invited to join the Freemasons!”

The other ponies looked at her like she was mental. She grinned back at them all like she was mental. “Just go!!” Twilight shouted. Rainbow Dash dove into the rift, disappearing into the darkness like a horse diving into a rift and disappearing into darkness.

“I really hope your gremlin's ok!” Pinkie fast-spoke at Twilight. Rarity cut in, “Oh, don't worry about him. There should be a pile of fabrics at least 15 metres deep at the bottom; it's where I throw all my rejected garments. And boy can I reject garments when I get going... That, or it's lava.” Twilight would have corrected her on the lava/magma issue, had she legitimately given a shit.

Meanwhile; Rainbow Dash was blazing down the giant hole in creation. Relativistic effects had to be taken into account, causing time to appear to slow down around her. “What the hell's going on?” she cried out to herself for the benefit of the audience, “Every time I get faster, I get slower.” She was starting to suspect that Physics at large would prevent her from becoming a first-class Freemason. Below, she started to make out some kind of circus tent? Oh no! Was it too late? She ground to a halt over the space of three kilometres, two perimeters and a thermometer. The pressure-column caused by her rapid descent had scorched the sides of the chasm and had set alight what she now saw to be a gaudy collection of clothing laid out at the bottom. Spike was jumping up and down atop the technicoloured catastrophe. Rainbow Dash swooped in and grabbed him, just before the expensive heap of grotesque attire burst into lava. “I did it! I'm number 1!” shouted Rainbow Dash as she blistered back up the chasm with Spike nestled safely, clinging to her lower legs. “I almost died!” shouted Spike in a terrified and high-pitched tone [his usual voice]. “You're right,” the speeding pony replied, chirpily, “It's a good thing that white pony's so wasteful, we could really learn a thing or two! In fact; Spike, take a letter!”

By the time they reached the mouth of the chasm, Spike had somehow managed to keep hold of Rainbow Dash's rear hooves while penning a messy letter to Princess Celestia on the value of throwing unwanted clothing into the abyss. He'd have made it more generalized and applicable to the day-to-day life of the common Equestrian citizen's condition if he'd truly believed the princess could read.

The other ponies had started to descend the red staircase into the abyssal wardrobe. As they walked past various holes and niches in the side of the chasm, Rarity explained what various 'Collections' and 'Fashion-Lines' lay within. After a time, Rainbow Dash reappeared, Spike wrapped around a back hoof like a novelty Leg Warmer, looking exceedingly pleased with herself. She dumped him on the red carpet and stood stock still, head raised high and eyes closed, waiting for validation. No one had noticed so she and Spike followed and got to see the rest of the tour. Of which there was, luckily, only one stop remaining: the one pertinent to the plot.

“And this is where I'm storing my latest work!” Rarity exclaimed, hopping into one of the caves coming off the main rift. The others followed as she explained. “I've been working on the most fabulous dresses for our night at Celestia's Sundance Festival! We shall look simply stunning!”

Pony brain-cogs turned as they tried to work out how Rarity had known she'd need six dresses in appropriate colours for herself and five ponies who had just burst through her door twenty minutes ago. They chose to withhold their comments, however, as these items were just... well... fabulous and infinitely re-saleable . It looked like she'd spent months on them. “I spent months on them!” Rainbow Dash informed the jaw-dropped ponies, trying to make up for lost attention. Rarity glared at her briefly before continuing, “It took weeks of blood, sweat and Sweetie-Belle tears. I simply had to get the colours and themes just right if you weren't to show up in a seemingly cobbled-together array of clothing for the festival tonight!”

“What?!” Twilight ejaculated [no, not like that], “The festival's tonight?!”

“Well of course, dear! Princess Celestia isn't travelling all this way not to watch an assortment of delightfully quirky indie films.” Rarity answered with a condescending look on her face. Pinkie, meanwhile, seemed to have had a stroke at the mention of festivals, “A... a... party?” she hazarded. Rarity turned her condescension-display-unit towards the pink pony. “I think you mean Film Festival? A little something the French like to call 'Une Soirée des Filmes Indépendants'.”

Rarity's murdered French pronunciation hung in the air as she and Twilight [morbidly curious] looked from pony to pony to see how they'd react to a foreign language. Needless to say, half a minute later, Rarity was was strung up by her hooves over a pile of firewood which Applejack had somehow managed to gather from below the surface of the planet. Twilight was strung up next to her, having not displayed enough shock at the 'devil's tongue' to be out of suspicion. The rite was interrupted suddenly by Spike exorcising a rolled up piece of parchment from one nostril. Everypony stopped what they were doing to hear what the parchment said.

“Dear Twilight,” Spike started. Seeing Fluttershy's confusion, he elucidated “... the purple witch.” Fluttershy nodded in understanding. Spike continued, “As you now?.. know?.. the Sundance Film Festival is being held in Ponyville tonight. I forgot to mention that you will be in charge of preparing the precipitation [err, preparations?] for the Ball which is take place(?) around the screaming(?) of the latest interdependent films from across the glorious land of Equestria. Please inshore that the food, dress, music, entertainment and Freemasons are in place for the preseedings. Yours sinfully, Prince's Sellestria.” Spike rolled the parchment back up, none the more enlightened for having read it. There was an awful silence while no one reacted to it. Spike paraphrased as best as he understood, “I think Princess Celestia says 'keep doing what you're doing!'.” he summed up. He then added as an afterthought, “She also wants you to untie Rarity and Twilight. She says they're not witches.”

The ponies seemed to be appeased by this and began undoing the impromptu cleansing ceremony.

Episode 1: Friendathon 5000 [part 4: "Sistine Chapel Horror Zone"]

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Once everypony was untied, Twilight felt the time was right for her next line, “Tonight! The Film Festival is tonight and I've gotta make sure everything's ready! I can't believe I've been here less than one day and already that unpredictable and off-character princess has just dumped a tight- bastard- deadline on me!” she'd begun to pace up and down the thin red carpet, edging past the line of ponies and the baby dragon, making them fear for their respective healthes -n-safeties. When they breached the outside world inside Rarity's house, Spike spoke up, “Hey, It's not so bad. I mean, we already know we can trust Applejack with the food! Rarity's dresses are excellent and Pinkie will make sure no pony leaves without cocaine and Electronic-Euro-Trance-induced heat exhaustion.” This seemed to cheer Twilight up a little; she felt hope [a pony from next door, who promptly left again- feeling violated].

However, there was still no projector for the delightful indie films. There weren't enough horse-seats for everyone. Nobody had, as of yet, even contacted the Freemasons. There was still so much to do! said Twilight Sparkle quotation-marklessly and using the wrong tense.

Well, said Rarity [joining in], If we had split up into three groups we will have been each already gotten done with having found a projector while the other groups obtained the seats fit for horses and the last group will see if the Freemasons could want to came.

As everyone stood there untangling this punctuationless knot of tenses, aspects and moods, Fluttershy spoke up, “Well, I'll group us into teams. I'm great at organizing barnyard animals: Twilight and Rainbow Dash can set up the projector, Applejack and Pinkie Pie can visit the Freemasons'... Guild(?) and Rarity and I will gather seats for everyone in Ponyville.”

Rarity then said, “That reminds me; we'll need to acquire royal seating for the princess. I'm sure we all agree we want her to be up all night on the throne.” The other ponies stifled giggles while Rarity tried to work out what she'd said.

“Why didn't you ask if you could help invite the Freemasons, Rainbow?” asked Twilight as they went to get the as-yet-unmentioned projector from her tree-house library. “Free..? Masons?” puzzled Rainbow Dash, her face then lighting up in remembrance, “Oh, no, I'm not looking to join or anything. As I was saying earlier, I've been brushing up on my building blocks and colouring-in so I can finally pass the test to join MENSA! I'm gonna be super fast!”

Twilight didn't get it; she got the projector instead.

Meanwhile, Rarity and Fluttershy were consulting the local furniture expert, Solid-Oak Roberts, on where best to locate maybe 400 fold-up chairs and one throne. “Well, ya could try the Ponyville Quidditch Stadium; they have chairs for the thousands. Could seat the whole Roman army, should they be interested in watching a bad attempt at reconstructing a magical sport from a children's book!” said Roberts, happy to share his knowledge. “What's a Roman army?” asked Fluttershy. “Ha! Damned if I know, dear,” replied Roberts, “It's just something my grandma used to say.” Rarity then cut in, “What's a grandma?” shifting the paradigm of her character. Fluttershy took another line, “How did Ponyville afford to run something as frivolous as a Quidditch pitch?”

“Well, when they commissioned” Roberts began, continuing thus, “ it, there was a big fanfare and everypony showed up for the opening. However, the mayor forgot that nobody plays any actual sports in Ponyville, so they gave it to the local Quidditch Fan-Club. They're now legally obligated to play their funny game every Saturday whether anyone turns up or not! Poor little fillies.” Rarity laughed at the image. By which I mean an actual photo that Roberts produced of the six little Qudditchers, looks of stoic but disappointed acceptance on their faces, playing a game they'd stopped liking two years previously to a seemingly empty stadium.

Also happening contemporaneously and tautologically at the same time; Applejack and Pinkie Pie were trying to locate the Freemasons' Guild. All signs pointed towards it being somewhere near the town hall. As Applejack's drug-addled stare fixed uncomprehendingly on the fifteenth 'Freemason's Lodge' signpost pointing towards the town hall, Pinkie Pie shouted towards her. “I found it! I found it! Applejack, I found it!!”.

“Pinkie, please stop shouting, I can't take it anymore!” shouted Pinkie right down Applejack's ear, “Is what I know you're gonna say. But please hear me out!” Applejack was zoned out on codeine, it was the only way she'd found to cope. She barely heard Pinkie at all. “This very kind mare just pointed the way!” she continued, pointing towards the mare in question who'd been able to point out the way, given they were standing right by the sign. “It's right by the town hall! We've been, like, ten metres from it this entire time!” Applejack would have cried had she been able to feel her tear ducts.

Pinkie Pie walked up to the door of the Lodge, pulling Applejack and the unfortunate stranger-mare with her. She knocked vigorously on the expensive mahogany panelling with her 'door-knocking gloves' [what appeared to be knuckle-dusters] and waited for an answer. “You know, it's illegal to wear those things in public.” said the stranger-mare, “Also, can I go now?”

“Sure. If you wanna miss the Freemasons!” Pinkie Pie tried to convince her. To which the stranger shrugged and walked off; looking back worriedly in case the pink threat was coming after her to rearrange her face with the door-knocking gloves.

The door was opened by a middle-aged and rotund gentle-pony who stared at the two ponies on the doorstep. Applejack stared through him. Pinkie Pie stared through both of them. Nothing changes for fifteen minutes, so let's skip back to Rarity and Fluttershy.

The two aforementioned ponies were on their way towards the Quidditch pitch when they bumped into Twilight and Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash had a pencil behind her ear. Twilight had a bag over her shoulder and Spike was riding the bag. “Ah, so you found the projector!” Rarity presumed. Twilight replied, “As my grandma always said: Never presume; it'll make a 'Pres' out of 'U' and 'Me'.”

“What's a 'Pres'?” asked Fluttershy.

“Seriously, what's a 'grandma'?” Rarity interrupted the non-answer Twilight was about to give, “I keep hearing that today and no pony's answering me!”

“I'll take it from here,” chipped in Spike, “When a mummy and a daddy love each other very much...” Twilight looked up at him, genuinely curious about where this was going, “... They each inevitably have their own sets of parents, the respective females of which would be your grandmas.” Twilight looked away again, nodding. Yep, nothing to see here.

“Thank you,” said Rarity, “My parents told me they hatched from magic eggs, it's forever crippled my abilities of inductive reasoning.”

“Anyway; yeah, I got the projector. However, I really don't know where we'll set it up.” said Twilight, “Not that I bothered looking. We could literally project it onto a tree and Princess Celestia wouldn't notice the whole affair's been cobbled together at the last second.”

“Well, I may just have a plan. It might be great. I might be brilliant. They might be giants.” said Fluttershy proudly [like the majestic wolf], “We're on our way to the Ponyville Quidditch Pitch to see if we could use their seats. Instead of moving like 400 chairs, we could just ask if we could use the pitch for the festival!”

“Fluttershy, that's an excellent idea!” said Twilight, “What the hell's a Quidditch Pitch?” Rarity produced a photocopied picture of the six young Quidditch players atop household brooms. Twilight giggled, “It's funny because their eyes are dead.”

On the way to the pitch, the four ponies and Spike passed by the town hall [given I've conveniently left out any vestiges of geography from this story]. A small crowd had gathered around one of the little annexes jutting off from the main hall. Spike, from his viewpoint on top of the projector on Twilight's back, could see three ponies standing still as a glass of mineral water in the centre of the crowd, blocking access to the annexe. Someone had had the courtesy to drop an upturned flat-cap on the floor by one of the inanimate pony'ses feet [err, hooves- Spike quickly re-thunk to himself, narrowly avoiding a potential thought-crime]. The cap had already been filled with pennies and precious silks and more were being thrown into an overflow-fedora. Spike would have asked if they could go over to gawk with the other ponies if he hadn't have embarrassedly recognized two of the three exhibits on display. He kept quiet and let his pack-mule carry him towards the next major plot point.

At the entrance to the stadium, they found a solitary adolescent pony counting down minutes in the ticket-booth in front of a knackered-looking computer, still unsure what she was being paid to do. At some point in the last eight months, she'd decided that it most likely involved becoming the Great Minesweeper Wizard of Western Equestria. The gang approached tentatively. “Pay no attention to the mare behind the ticket-booth.” the mare behind the ticket-booth said in an unexpectedly booming voice, without looking up from the computer. At this, Twilight looked around at the other ponies with one eyebrow cocked; the ponies nodded back, each looking at the others. “Wa-hey!” they cheered simultaneously, their faces lighting up and Fluttershy pulling out her 'drink to forget' whiskey and five shot-glasses from nowhere relevant to the plot. “Well guys, we did it! Our first Wizard of Oz reference!” beamed Twilight.

“Oh, I'm ever so glad we didn't pull the old 'not in Kansas anymore'!” Rarity chipped in. Rainbow Dash necked her shot, “Yeah, we're gonna need that one later. Ya know, for when we're officially out of jokes!” They giggled uncontrollably as the ticket-mare continued to beat expert-level in under ninety seconds.

Back at the town hall, the Freemason Elder had found himself wrapped up in an incredible psychological phenomenon. Unfortunately, most of the residents of Ponyville had found it just as incredible. When he'd answered the door, he hadn't expected to find himself confronted with an obviously drugged-up pony in full cowboy-getup along with a vacantly-smiling pink one wearing what appeared to be knuckle-dusters. He'd failed to say anything within the first ten seconds, expecting one of them to announce why they'd knuckle-dusted sizeable dents in the expensive mahogany of the front door. By the time an answer failed to come, he felt he'd lost his chance and could do nothing more but stand there until something happened. After five minutes he'd felt embarrassed to even make a move. After ten, a good crowd had gathered to see what was happening. Along the way, someone had put down a hat which had been quickly filled with donations. Photos had been taken. Another hat. More money. What was happening? How long had it been? How much sweat could one lose before being pronounced medically and clinically 'Dry as a Zealously Reformed Alcoholic'?

At the fifteen minute mark [precisely fifteen, through whatever diabolic mechanisms] the cowgirlpony held out a leaflet. Slow as continental drift he moved. It felt as if his whole life had been leading up to this moment. Every pony was on edge. Some were on their back. Some were on other ponies' backs trying to get a better view. The situation held with the Freemason reaching down, almost hoof to hoof with the cowgirl. It was a perfect pastiche of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Fresco; an enterprising young stallion took the initiative and started a preliminary sketch, I'm having that!, he thought to himself.

Once the Masonic Elder had finally read the leaflet to which his whole life had pertained, he simply nodded- tears streaming down his face. Applejack was overcome with emotion and began to sob uncontrollably as she gathered up the hats, pulling Pinkie Pie behind her as they made their way back down the streets of Ponyville. She didn't know how she knew to head towards the old Quidditch Pitch, only that there she'd find her Gethsemane.

They made at least £2000.

Episode 1: Friendathon 5000 [part 5: "Sundance Juno Festival"]

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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!

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

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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.

Episode 2: Elements of Frends [part 2: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"]

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Twilight opened her eyes a little and winced as a bolt of pain shot through her brain just behind them. “Ponyville... ...shit.” she croaked, rolling over and on top of a curled up Spike, who let out a protesting groan. She tumbled out of bed and slipped into her dressing gown, slipping out of bed and tumbling into her dressing gown. She tried to put the kettle on but it malfunctioned loudly.

She was too hungover to find a proper pan, so she heated a wok-ful of water and tipped it gently into her coffee percolator. After preparing two cups of coffee strong enough to kill a guy, she sat down on her leather armchair with the drink and her signature pipe, reading through her latest writing as she waited for the baby dragon to appear. Appear he did; to be on the verge of death. Alcohol didn't mix well with him, Twilight noted [accidentally on the manuscript in front of her, so she had to scribble it out]. Spike slumped on the opposite chair and let out a long, feeble “Aaaauuurrghhh”. Twilight looked up from her draft manuscript [The Hobbit, or There and Back Again- by Jeyerrar Tolkein [working title]] and took pity on her little guy, magicking a Crazy Straw into the hot beverage so he could ingest it without having to move. Half of it was gone within five seconds; three quarters in ten; seven eighths in fifteen... Twilight watched as the coffee tended towards the limit of being completely imbibed. In that moment calculus would have arrived in Equestria had half the beer-supply of Ponyville not passed through the purple pony the night before.

Twilight put down the papers and her pipe, smiling warmly at Spike, “How you feelin', little dragon-dude?”.

“Much better after that. Thank you.” inferred Twilight from the marginally less catatonic look on Spike's face.

“I feel like death.” supplied the baby dragon, with effort, “Every time, I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle,” he non-sequitured, Apocalyptically Now, continuing the theme.

After about an hour, and one Toast-Marathon, the two of them were feeling more or less back to their usual selves. There was a tremendous knock at the door; Twilight looked through the peep-hole to see five diverse-looking ponies fish-eyed into an almost perfect sphere of things she could do not to be dealing with right now. She sighed, making sure it was loud enough for the intruders to hear the subtle 'you're making my life a misery' tones before opening the door.

Pinkie Pie bounced in first. She was wearing knuckle-dusters and a maniacally stupid grin. The others filed in behind her.

“My gosh, Twilight, I hope you don't feel as bad as Spike looks!” said Rarity, who had covered her own hangover in a 2.5 metre deep coating of make-up.

“Nah, don't worry about me!” Twilight replied to the misshapen block of rouge-ing which counted for the white pony's face today. Rainbow Dash spoke up, “So, are we ever actually getting to this 'Castle of Everytree' thing or what?”

“Of course we are,” assured Twilight, “I'd never be able to hold power over an entire Queendom without some kind of cursed artefacts. I completely could do with the Elements of Frends. Who's with me!”

The gathered ponies cheered in hubristic synergy. Well, Twilight did. The others didn't know what to think of Twilight as queen of Equestria and somehow knew it would be more trouble than having Celestia as the head honcho. Twilight still had a despotic beam across her face. Not an actual beam- just a smile, really. However; a few of her new friends would have put a beam across her face, in that moment, to knock off the current one. Luckily, there was not even so much as a girder in sight. The gathered synergy cheered in hubristic ponies and colourless green ideas slept furiously without even so much as a despotic honcho across the sight trouble beam. A few cursed duster coating made-up my own 2.something metre [meter?] castle of kind misshapen dressing groan with misery pipe warmly passed through leather-eyed magicking tones.

Erm... give me a minute... no... hold on, I seem to have dropped the story... wait for it... yeah, this ain't right... this looks like a mixture of nonsense and that one thing Chomsky said...

Erm... I absolutely can't get this in order. I think this should- no. no. nonono. No this isn't good. I think this is probably irreparable. It could sort itself out soon, though...

Err...

You wanna just power through? You can feel free to look at someone else's story while I sort this one out. Yeah, do that! This one's not very good anyway! Have you read 'Anthropology' yet? My gosh, that guy must be like a professional writer or something.

… …
…

Have you ever considered that the useless jumble of corrupted text was, perhaps, in some way more of a story than the actual one I'm trying to save? You know?.. Meaning from nothing and nothing in meaning? Are you still even reading? I can never tell, you know. I'd be looking at that Lyra one I just mentioned. Not to get too meta or anything, but the view-counter is counter-intuitive [get it!] and I don't really know if it's really just me- writing into the void... Too many 'really's? I bet JasonTheHuman never really repeated himself really half as much as I do; actually.

… …

…

Well, if you're still here, the only way forward is forwards. I think we can break through if we just push hard enough. If we don't make it, tell your mother I love you.

Quidditch and over, “It's gonna horn, you contire justed from at I know from the keel her. ike staircase have out, Applejack runk. After Luna' or so pointo contire some to the magic, shouse nearby fill-ish All of them carry oned it. The wilight by eards ent, Appling into had left the dark out plejack running whilence of two snapped ascertaircase near, “Is what and to the sound of drugs and-safety-defying infrash Alicorn, you're religious radioactive off. To the the some kind shot alrights of the villagers because none of the half of them came to have been able to have cried had she been, like some taking shelter in the edge, pulling over the spirits of her horn glowed violently as a roll of red cloth. Making through Ponyville to the edge green forest of Everytree...

Hey hey, what did I tell you! We're getting there! In fact... yes! Wa-hey! It's making sense!... We appear to have skipped an uneventful walk through Ponyville and it looks like they're just about at the Everytree forest. We haven't missed anything important [or worse, anything funny] and it seems to be back on track! Anyway, I'll just sit back down and let y'all get back to reading...

The Forest was expansive. “The forest is expensive” commented Applejack, still recovering from her first Codeine of the day. “I think you mean 'expansive'?” corrected herself as the other ponies looked at her worriedly. “Applejack, are you alright? You're... scaring us a bit...” said Applejack, verbalising the fears of her friends as they watched on, unable to do anything about this. “Dahling, I do wish you'd stop taking all those pills, I mean, it seriously can't be good for your health!” said Rarity [well, her voice- as played by Applejack]. Rarity wished AJ would stop mimicking her. Applejack wished she could stop doing Rarity's voice, but it was addictive; she had a low tolerance for addictive things.

Fluttershy gave Applejack a big hug, whispering in her ear, “I... I'm worried about you.”

“Aww shucks, Fluttershy, I'm sorry. I'm just not feeling myself today... I'm gonna stop with the drugs already- I know that stuff's just no good.”

“Th... thank you,” said Fluttershy, one manly tear rolling down her cheek. They all looked towards the massive wall of trees ahead. It was dark, scary and presumably full of monsters. There was a wide path leading into the forest from Ponyville. It continued from the path they'd just taken through the village, the path on which nothing of note had happened since leaving Twilight's tree-house. This foresticular pavement looked to be completely straight but went over the horizon, obscuring the view of any potential destination-castle along it.

“Well, let's get on it!” said Twilight, motivationally. They got on it!

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” intoned Rainbow Dash with Pinkie Pie singing over the line, “The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.”

“But I have promises to keep”, Rarity continued [Twilight taking up “The woods are lovely...”]. Fluttershy finished, “and miles to go before I sleep.” [Applejack providing “But I have promises...”]. They all joined in simultaneously for the final line: “And miles to go before I sleep!”

The ponies laughed their way down the dark forest path as they finished their rendition of Robert Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' mangled into a singing-round.

“Haha,” laughed Twilight, onomatopoeiacally, “You're right, Fluttershy, it doesn't work at all!”

At that moment, the woods on one side of them dropped off into a steep cliffside as the other side elevated to form a large wall of rock. Twilight, by now, had just come to accept the nonsensical geography of Ponyville-in-the-Wider-Scheme and took it upon herself to laugh wildly, triggering the next plot-point.

The point came in the form of a deep rumble. The ponies stopped what they were doing [walking, namely] and stared upwards at the ominous cliff with its boulders crashing down fast towards the protagonistic ponies. “D'you think that could pose a problem?” asked Rarity.

“Well, I don't see why it wouldn't,” answered Applejack, “We should probably scramble a little. Ya know... put in an effort?” The assorted ponies shrugged to each other and each made their half-hearted leaps-out-of-the-way, putting in a few 'Aagh's and 'watch out!'s. It all went rather well until Twilight took it a bit too far, inserting herself over the edge of the cliff, hanging on by her front hooves. She shouted, “Look, guys, I almost went off!”

“Twilight!” Applejack shouted, annoyed by the purple pony's enthusiasm mixed with her Codeine-comedown, “You get back up here this instant or I swear to Frends herself I'm coming over with the Apple-Family-Mallet and playing Whack-a-Mole with your fingers!”

Twilight shrugged precariously, “Well, at least she's honest!” she admitted to the oncoming boulder oncoming towards her. At that, she expertly dodged the solid geological menace and pulled herself back onto the path with a flourish. Applejack punched her in the tail, “You could have died!”

Twilight welled up a little at Applejack's concern for her health and safety, dodging boulders left, right and centre. “AJ... I didn't know you cared so much,” tears were filling her eyes.

“Twilight, this is not the time!” responded Applejack, “Now, run!!” In a neat and orderly line, and as fast as they could manage, they efficiently fucked off. Soon, they were back in a normal-looking part of the woods; trees to the left of her, jokers to the right, Twilight felt the adventure was getting back on track.

“Well, I'm glad that's over!” sighed Rarity, walking on her hind legs so she could rearrange her hair with with her front ones and a vanity-mirror. The make-up had been violently, but mildly, knocked off by a falling rock; it was a close call and a good thing the white pony hadn't seen it, otherwise it could have posed a mental health problem later on down the line. She continued, “at least it's not a nautical adventure, or else my hair might never have made it.”

Due to the laws of Dramatic Ironing, it turned out she had spoken too soon: All of a suddenly, a huge Manta Ray jumped out from behind a nearby tree. It was huge! It had the head of a lion, the tail of a scorpion and the wings of a dragon; all dangling from a gaudy gold necklace around its Manta-Ray-neck. Every pony gasped, gasping at the Manta Ray. Rainbow Dash jumped on top of it, grabbing at its pectoral fins and attempting to rip them clean off. The triangular fins stretched comically for at least fifty metres as Rainbow flew off with the ends in her teeth. She let go and watched them snap back into place, doing nothing. Applejack performed a flying kick but her stomach lurched like she'd expected one more step at the top of the staircase while walking upstairs in the dark as she fell straight through the thing. It had been awfully clipped. Twilight provided, “You didn't even do the Bruce Lee noises! Go on! Once more, with feeling.”

“STOP!!” screamed Fluttershy, causing the assorted horses and the sea-creature to stop. They all waited on a reason for the outburst. Fluttershy was miles away.

“Err, Fluttershy?” prompted the Manta Ray, forgetting which names he was and wasn't supposed to know by this point.

“What?” said Fluttershy, distractedly, “Oh, yeah. I meant to say: 'please stop fighting, I think I know what's going on here', but Rarity was doing this thing with her teeth and it threw me right off.” She cleared her throat and walked straight up the the Manta Ray, “I think I know why you're so angry and disillusioned. I've felt it myself and I see it in you now. You are Otherkin.”

“W... what?” confused the Ray.

“Otherkin, silly!” Giggled Fluttershy as Twilight rolled her eyes, “You were born in the body of the wrong animal; I can tell because you have that Spirit-Necklace. You want to be a... Scor... Lio... err, Dragon... You want to be a Scorpliodrag!”

“Manticore,” whispered Rainbow Dash, who had decided recently that her dream was to be an adventuring Cryptozoologist [it's going well so far, if I do say so myself!].

“You want to be a Manticore!” continued Fluttershy, “But you were born in the body of an alien.” Twilight continued to roll her eyes, achieving a max angular velocity of 4-Pi Radians/Second. “I think you should Google 'Otherkin' and take a look. You'll find the answers you're looking for! There are many out there who are exactly like you. Take me for example; I am a majestic wolf, tragically born in the body of a pastel-coloured pony. I've come to terms with this and now live every day like the wolf I really am!”

The Manta Ray broke down and lost all his shit in front of the six ponies. Twilight climbed into the nearest tree, unable to deal. When the Manta Ray had finished glomping the yellow 'wolf', he left, shouting his thanks and looking for the nearest Wi-Fi connection. He just needed to be shown an element of kindness. [Ha!]

Twilight got down from the tree and they continued on their way, each wondering what 'to Google' meant but each suspecting it was some dirty sex-trick that their yellow friend had invented one rainy night.

Episode 2: Elements of Frends [part 3: Twilight's Salty Birth ["Christmas"]]

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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.

Episode 2: Elements of Frends [part 4: Learning about Friends [A Tale of Two Halves]]

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[[ The First Part : The Part Where You Get a Brief Break from the Silly Way I Tend to Write ]]

“Good news, everyone!” Twilight farnsworthed as you helplessly continued to read her dialogue in the appropriate voice, “According to my official Prima Walkthrough Guide, we're almost at the Castle of Everytree! We just have to make our way across the infamous Rope-Bridge of the Somepony 'Zcutit Downs!”

Fluttershy made sort of a squeaking noise, elaborating, “Oh my... I've heard that the Somepony 'Zcutit Downs can be some of the most treacherous downs in the whole of the Everytree Forest!”

Rainbow Dash embellished, “Nobody knows who 'Zcutit was, or even her first name, but she's said to have died in a tragic unicycling incident while looking for her long-lost forbidden love interest!”

Rarity's eyes glazed over, “Ooh, a love story! How romantic! Why was her love interest forbidden?”

“She was in love with a forbidden tree.” - Rainbow Dash, 2014.

Rarity's eyes glazed over further [Twilight was worried she was in need of a cataract operation], “Ooh, a tree story! How arboreal! Why was the tree forbidden?”

At this, Applejack decided to intervene, “I think we should probably get to goin', ya know, before it gets dark?”

Pinkie was in agreement, “I conk her! I don't know how it works under Luna, but Celestia introduced legislation to forbid unicycling after dark.” The ponies looked to Twilight for confirmation. It was an unwritten rule that anything semi-intelligible Pinkie said would have to be confirmed by another present pony of present mind.

“She's right.” said Twilight, “The Equestrian Health and Safety Act of 1988, covering Vehicles Bearing an Odd Number of Devices of Rotation [covering all forms of Wheel, Squeel and Rectanguwheel] and also covering Coverings and General Upholstery of Firnitcher [hereafter assumed to be 'Furniture'] states that the former not be commandeered or operated after sundown from the point of reference of the would-be driver and states that the latter not be setonfireable by ondropping and leave-it-being of Objects of Ongoing Combustion [such as Lit Matches, Half-Finished Cigarettes [including Dog-Ends] and Those Last Bits of a Candle that are Really of No Use to Anyone].” The ponies were all quite impressed by Pinkie's confirmed outburst of usefulness. Rarity remembered what the Spirit of Christmas-Pinkie-Pie's-Future had said and was satisfied that she was doing a good job so far in saving Pinkie's character-health.

At this, the ponies continued towards the Somepony 'Zcutit Downs. After a couple of minutes, the trees thinned out into just a few stray articles dotted here and there. Rainbow Dash, who was flying just ahead of the group, spotted the unicycle-stand which marked the boundary of the Downs. There was a very long barbed-wire fence which also helped to delimit the questionable area of grassland. There were bays for ten comical-transportations, of which one was empty. The ponies stared for a number of seconds at the poignant lack of unicycle. Somepony 'Zcutit, whoever she was, was not coming back. They each grabbed a cycle and mounted up. Helmets were provided. The empty bay still bore its helmet, swinging gently in the late afternoon breeze; it didn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out what manner of Health and Safety Transgression had been committed by the daring Somepony. Twilight opened the gate and they rode off into the hills without a second thought [in Rainbow's case, without a thought in the first place].

They'd covered most of the distance to the rope bridge before someone worked out that they didn't actually have to use the unicycles. They dismounted and took a quick cigarette-break. Fluttershy had brought along a flask of coffee and poured everyone a cup. They continued on foot, sipping coffee and, for the first time that day, genuinely having a nice day. The grass was shining and the sun was green. Pinkie was quiet and Applejack clean. Rarity had chance to reapply the make-up she'd made a mess of during the intense unicycling. Rainbow Dash was stretching her wings [by pulling on the ends of them]. Fluttershy was chasing rabbits like the wolf she felt she was. Twilight was walking on two legs so she could both hold her coffee and chain-smoke; she felt she should be saving up her magic for something but wasn't sure what.

There it was! The Rope Bridge of the Somepony 'Zcutit Downs! Everypony cheered simultaneously. It was weird. They legged it towards the giant nature-crack, the other side of which the bridge granted access to. No, I'm not sure that the previous sentence was grammatically correct and no, I'm not going back to check it! I do have a life you know... Okay, please stop laughing... p-please? I promise I go out on the weekends- clubbing and such... no? Ok, you got me. I don't go out. Ever. My sad existence aside, the ponies sprinted towards the canyon-thing. Their little horse faces deflated upon seeing what they had to deal with.

Twilight was furious. She chucked her fag into the canyon, “Somepony's cut it down!” There was a groan and a moan. Twilight continued, “Argh... what are we supposed to do now. If only someone could fly...” The six friends looked proper sad as they proper looked over the edge of the canyon where the rope bridge hung proper uselessly against their side.

Rarity hazarded that Twilight was upset because liquid had started to escape from the edge of her eyes. She'd read somewhere that they only do that in the wake of intense sadness or intense infection. She went over to check, just in case it was the latter, “Erm... dahling? Are you ok? I'm sure Applejack has some antibiotics if it itches...”

“If... if what itches?” sobbed Twilight. Rarity had ruled out infection and proceeded to treat for Hurt Feelings. She took the flask from Fluttershy and poured her another coffee. They all sat down and Rarity wrapped her horse arm around Twilight's shoulder. “Don't worry, dahling, we'll get around this. I know it's been a long day and I know how much you abhor physical exercise but it's almost over now. We'll do this, I promise. Drink your coffee.”

Rarity felt she'd started to get a good grasp on pony-feelings, something she always struggled with. The Christmas spirit was flowing strong within her. It was all going rather well until Applejack grabbed at her free arm and yanked an expensive gold ring off her hoof. Rarity looked around and her heart sunk as she saw the vacant expression in the cowpony's eyes: Applejack was high.

“Applejack!” Rarity shouted, taking her arm from around Twilight's shoulders and standing up on her hind legs, arms akimbo, to face the drugged-up friend pony, “What the hell do you think you're doing with that!?”

Applejack beamed and shouted, “DEAR PIG, ARE YOU WILLING TO SELL FOR ONE SHILLING YOUR RING? SAID THE PIGGY 'I WILL'.”

Rarity walked towards her as she staggered away and shouted, “I thought you threw your last Codeine away! Don't tell me you had something else! What is it? LSD? Shrooms? PHP?” Twilight was too worried to inform Rarity that she'd meant 'PCP' and that PHP was a programming language.

Applejack was still staggering and shouting, “SO THEY TOOK IT AWAY AND WERE MARRIED NEXT DAY BY THE TURKEY WHO LIVES ON THE HILL.” As she reached the edge of the rift, she stopped. Everyone looked on in terror as she teetered on the edge before falling flat on her arse. Everypony had stopped stark still, waiting on Applejack's next move. Applejack once more broke the silence, shouting, “THE RING. THE ONE RING. CURSED RING, I CAST THEE INTO THE FIRES OF THE CRACK OF DOOM. NO LONGER SHALL YOU HOLD SWAY OVER MY PARTY AND CORRUPT THAT WHICH ONCE WAS GOOD.” She chucked the gold ring over the edge and Rarity shouted something as she leapt in after it. Rainbow Dash saw her chance to steal Applejack's thunder and shouted “I'll save her!”. She jumped in after Rarity and emerged after a number of seconds, holding the pony in question who, in turn, was holding the ring in question. Twilight, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy cheered. Rainbow Dash basked in all the attention she was receiving- you could almost see her starting to tan!

Twilight jumped to her feet, “Rainbow Dash, you can fly!”

After a minute or two, Applejack was back to normal. It turned out she'd taken a hit of Salvia, a potent psychoactive herb which wore out its effects within five to ten minutes. She was looking slightly ashamed of herself though her friends had decided to forgive her. Applejack always had a tough old time and couldn't be blamed for resorting to psychoactive medicines; her friends loved her just the way she was, even if she did do some stupid shit now and then.

With it having been re-ascertained that Rainbow Dash [and Fluttershy] had the ability to fly, and with Applejack no longer under the drug-fuelled assumption that she possessed the same ability, it was no problem for Rainbow to fly over to the other side of the rift with the loose end of the rope bridge firmly clenched between her strong horse-teeth. She landed by the support posts and began to tie the bridge back into place.

Rainbow Dash had just finished tying the first support when she heard an 'ahem' over her shoulder. She looked around, confused. Three ponies were standing behind her. They were wearing impeccable suits and each had a briefcase under one arm; they looked super important. Applejack shouted over from the other side of the rift, “If that's the FBI, tell them I got rid of the questionable indoor-garden weeks ago.”

One of the suited ponies spoke up, she appeared to be the leader of the three, “Don't worry, we're not the FBI. We've actually come here to find you, Rainbow Dash.”

“Me? What do you want with me?” she said.

“We've come to make you an offer, actually,” the well-tailored pony continued, “You have been selected as a very special pony, destined to join us on our secret mission. Your friends, however, can't know about this. You must leave them behind and come with us. We will only offer this choice once.” Rainbow dash looked conflicted. She couldn't stand the thought of a secret mission going on without her taking part. However; she couldn't just leave her friends part-way through their very own mission. Twilight shouted over, “Hey! What's happening over there? Who are the suits?”

Rainbow knew she couldn't give too much away for fear of losing out on the secret mission. She replied, “Erm, it's nothing really. Sort of a Red-Pill Blue-Pill thing.”

“Take both pills,” advised Applejack at the top of her lungs.

The suited pony continued, “If you choose to come with us, there'll be a Secret Clubhouse. The only catch is that this Secret Mission could be all you've ever dreamed of or it could be nothing at all. Will you take the gamble? Are you brave enough?” Rainbow Dash's well-honed sense of pretence was getting the better of her. A Secret Clubhouse! Capital letters and all! She was almost ready to make her decision. She asked once more for confirmation.

“It's sort of a gamble. Should I risk it?” she shouted over to her friends. The reply came back almost immediately, from Applejack again, “Do it. Gamble like I'm not allowed to any more!” It wasn't a very good case. Rainbow Dash turned back to the stranger-ponies and made up her mind.

“This all sounds most excellent, but I'm afraid I'll have to decline. You see, I'm already on a secret mission. The fate of Equestria hangs in the balance and I have to stay loyal to my cause. The way we're going, I could have my very own full-sized Stained-Glass Window at Canterlot Castle by the end of the week!” she said.

At that, the suited ponies snarled in anger and collapsed into three piles of anger-ash. Rainbow Dash saw a ghostly wisp escape from the limp suits. She opened one of the briefcases to see what they had been carrying [precious silks, she hoped]. It was full of what appeared to be fanfiction. Ream after ream of fanfiction! Each page had a badly-drawn copyright logo on it next to the name of the author: Luna Armstrong!

Rainbow felt better knowing that it was all a trick [well, she felt better knowing she'd won]. She finished tying the bridge and laughed every time her friends squealed in horror as she pretended to go to cut the rope with a pair of scissors while they were crossing. Once everyone was present and safe, she began to explain her heroic tale of loyalty while Fluttershy collected up the precious fanfiction and stored it in her abdominal-pouch.

It wasn't long after setting off that they reached the ruins of the Castle of Everytree.

[[ The Second Part : The Part Where it Gets Sillier and a Fair Bit Harder to Read ]]

The Castle of Everytree. The Everytree of Castle. Every of the Treecastle. Stevey the Ref O' Treacle. Taste hot E-celery fever... Twilight was staring at the plaque attached to the wall of the castle in question. She was making anagrams of it for lack of anything better to do. The doors had been firmly bolted shut and the six ponies had initially assumed that the power of friendship would be the key to unlock it [There was also a real key, left under the doormat, but the ponies hadn't thought to check]. The door hadn't budged for any amount of amity they'd conjured up, so they'd resorted to Pinkie's bolt-cutters to get the job done. It was taking a while as all the ponies lacked upper-body strength; they essentially had to spend half an hour filing away at the budgeless bolt before they burst into the bastle.

“Boom!” exclamation-marked Rainbow Dash as she flang open the castle doors. They were in!

“Taste hot E-celery fever!” boasted Twilight [to the empty foyer]. The foyer didn't respond except to echo.

“This darned castle's tryin' to steal your joke,” annoyanced Applejack at the echo, “Why, I aughta buck it into the middle of next week!”

“Come now, Applejack, we have jewellery to steal,” said Rarity, “We don't have time to fight inanimates.”

“She's right,” gave-her-two-cents Twilight, “We have to find those Elements, even if it kills Pinkie. Let's split up and look for scoobies.”

And so the gang splat up. Twilight, Fluttershy and Rarity went right; Pinkie Pie and Applejack went straight on; and Rainbow Dash hung slightly to the left. This went on for some time until Twilight & co stumbled across an impressive circular room. There was a circular plinth in the centre, bearing six stone orbs.

“What's a plinth?” asked Fluttershy, happily giving away my narrative to the other two present characters.

“Err... where did you get that word, Fluttershy?” asked Twilight. Goddamnit, Fluttershy! I'd expect this sort of shit from Pinkie, but you? I thought you'd know better than to break the forth wall.

“I'm really sorry... I...” she tried to explain to me before I interrupted [as the other ponies watched on, silently worrying about the mental health of their yellow friend as she apologised to thin air], No! You know what? If you think you're so good at this, why don't you narrate for a while? I'll go get another coffee. Good luck, man! [I'm not really angry; I just want to see what she does!]

…

… “Fluttershy's... Fluttershy's friends were looking at her as if she was crazy. They didn't know about the... the narrator and she couldn't just tell them. Err, what do I?.. Oh my... Err:

Twilight said, [Oh gosh, I really don't want to...] “F... Fluttershy, what are you doing? Are you feeling ok?”

Err, then she said, “Fluttershy, I don't know if this is some sort of joke but could you please stop copying what I'm saying!”

R... Rarity walked over to Fluttershy and put her arm around her shoulder as Fluttershy's voice lowered to just a mumble because she didn't really want Rarity to hear her.

“Fluttershy...” said Rarity, “What? Why are you mimicking me? It's really hard to talk w... wit... with you talking over m... over me with everything I j... just finished saying... Goddamnit Fluttershy, stop it!”

Twilight seems to have taken pity on me... err, on Fluttershy... err... I mean: Twilight seemed to have taken pity on Fluttershy, realizing that her yellow friend was unable to explain the task she'd been charged with. Twilight walked over to her friend and put her arm around her free shoulder. Fluttershy was trapped in a sandwich of love, tolerance and friendship and she suddenly felt very safe. Fluttershy wanted to assure her friends that she was sorry about not letting them talk without interrupting but she felt she was not allowed to break narration.

“It's ok, Fluttershy, Applejack went way more crazy just before,” reassured Twilight, battling well through Fluttershy's constant echolalia, “We'll let you have your moment. We can go get the others while you play it out.” And... and, at that, Rarity and Twilight went to walk out of the room to go call the others. F... oh dear... Fluttershy couldn't help but stare at their perfectly-rounded behinds as they walked away. Err, Rarity and Twilight looked back at their best friend worriedly as Fluttershy desperately wanted to convince them that she wasn't a royal perv and that she had just gone temporarily insane... Err, they suddenly seemed to be convinced and smiled sincerely at Fluttershy as they exited stage-left... … … Fluttershy was alone and feeling very sorry for herself. She wondered what she had done to deserve this and hoped that she hadn't revealed too much of her rampant sexual deviancy to the only friends she ever had. She didn't want to be alone again...”

…

That'll do, Fluttershy; That'll do. I said to the yellow pony as I came back into the room with my fresh cup of coffee. Give me a second and I'll see how you scored out of ten! I rolled a cigarette as I looked over Fluttershy's brief moment in the spotlight. After a quick fit of laughter, I addressed her again:: Not bad! Not bad at all! Better than I'd have done! You used 'suddenly' a couple of times, which is generally frowned upon and you almost switched tenses that one time but, overall, really not bad! I'd give you a nine out of ten. Mostly for the line about Rarity's and Twilight's “Perfectly-rounded behinds”, but still... You can feel free to take my job if ya want.

“I... I really don't think I...” she mumbled. I laughed and reassured her that she could explain everything to her friends when they came back in. Don't worry, Fluttershy, you won't be alone. I won't let that happen; not even for a joke. And that's saying a lot because I'd do virtually anything for a joke. Seriously; I'd kill my own grandmother if I thought it would elicit a laugh! Aww, cheer up! Here, have a cigar. I can do anything, you know.

“Could you turn me into a wolf? As an Otherkin, it would be the manifestation of my density... err, my destiny.” she asked [then stated]. Sure thing! I mean, not for long- it would get in the way of the plot but... eh, we'll talk about it.

Twilight and Rarity had managed to find their other friends, most of them in compromising positions, and were on their way back to the circular chamber. Twilight magicked the door to said chamber open. The five ponies stopped simultaneously and lo' and beheld an unusual sight. In front of them sat a large yellow wolf with butterflies tattooed on the sides of its arse. It was smoking a cigar. It took them a number of seconds to work out what had happened but, when enlightenment arrived, they performed the seldom-seen Mexican-Facehoof.

“Fluttershy! What the hell did you manage to do?” said Twilight questionly.

“Well, it looks like she's over her weird echoing thing at least,” chipped-in Rarity.

Twilight looked like she was internally doubting herself. I don't know what that actually looks like but you can probably imagine better than I can. She said, “When you said you were Otherkin, I didn't take you seriously... I thought you were just doing it for the attention. I'm... I'm sorry for doubting you. No wonder you've been acting so strange.”

“That's ok, Twilight. I know I must have sounded crazy but Otherkin is a serious thing.” growled Fluttershy meekly, “I finally feel like my true self.”

“That's all that matters, sugarcube,” said Applejack. They all glomped (a sort of jump-hug according to deviantArt) Fluttershy. Their friendship was starting to shine through...

…But everything changed when the Lunar Nation attacked. The large skylight smashed as Princestral Dictator Luna Armstrong fell gracelessly to the floor of the circular room. The six friends looked worriedly at her limp body as I corrected the word 'friends' from 'firends' for the billionth time today... I just can't stop doing that for some reason, although it's not as bad as my 'optino'/'option' problem [seriously, by now I've had approximately one trillion 'optinos' for every choice!]. Anyway, the friends approached the royal sack-of-potatoes to ask her if she was ok.

“I'm fine!” she assured them, getting to her feet unsteadily, “Just need a minute...” She burst into her first dictatorial coughing-fit. She was proper winded. Twilight slapped her on the back a few times, which seemed to help. “Thank you,” she continued, blushing slightly at the act of kindness, “As I meant to say...” She flew into the air and began to laugh maniacally, “Foolish little ponies. You thought you could just waltz in here and commandeer the Elements of Frends just like that?!” The ponies didn't feel especially threatened considering she'd just managed to knock herself out. “I'll have you know that... why's Fluttershy a wolf?”

“Oh...” said Twilight, “Err, she's Otherkin.”

“Ah, I see,” said Luna, “Umm, where did she get that cigar?”

“I, err...” Fluttershy began, “... had it,” she finished, lamely.

“Oh, ok,” said Luna, “Well, anyway, I'll be taking the Elements for myself. Little do you know.” They waited for her to continue. She didn't. Apparently that was what she wanted to say. After realizing [read: Twilight telling her that...] Luna had insulted her intelligence, Rainbow Dash went in for an aerial kick. Luna blocked it with her night-time magic, a pulse of energy knocking Rainbow back to the ground, right next to the shattered window-shards. It was a Health and Safety nightmare.

Luna laughed, “As I'm sure even you worked out, Rainbow Dash, It was I who made your journey here today so difficult. I brought those trees to life [… well, to face] and manifested those Secret Agent ponies... I've been following you every step of the way!”

Twilight saw her opportunity and magicked the stone orbs towards her and her friends. One orb landed at the foot of each pony [and wolf]. She shouted, “All right girls! Let's do this!”

Each pony concentrated super hard. Luna watched on, helplessly, as groans and grunts were emitted from each of them. She didn't really know what to do but was getting really tired of all this.

“Look,” she said, annoyed now, “Stop that! You're going to give yourselves a hernia!”

They didn't stop. She decided to intervene. She zapped Fluttershy with a bolt of magic and the yellow wolf turned back into a yellow pony- it looked super unpleasant. “There!” Luna said, “Your yellow friend is doomed to remain a pony for the rest of her mortal life!”

The ponies stopped. Luna was pleased. Twilight wasn't. In fact, Twilight was livid. “You fuckin' wot mate?” she said in an eerily calm voice. Before Luna could answer, Twilight was enveloped in a retina-destroying aura of screen-glare. She floated up to the same altitude as the Princestral Dictator. Her voice boomed out, “What did Fluttershy ever do to you? Why did you have to destroy her dream? All she ever wanted was to be the wolf she truly felt like.”

Her the other five friends joined the light-display. They put in a real effort. It was impressive. The orbs glowed white-hot and morphed dramatically into necklaces. Twilight got a tiara, though. Each Element of Frends found its way to its respective owner.

Luna was worried, “Erm... I was only joking... I didn't actually curse her... err... guys?”

Twilight continued, “I used to wonder what friendship could be; Until these five shared its magic with me.”

She listed, pointing to each parenthesised pony in turn:

“Kindness” (Fluttershy),
“Generosity” (Rarity),
“Loyalty” (Rainbow Dash),
“Honesty” (Applejack),
“and [most important of all] Laughter” (Pinkie Pie).

She went on, “And I'm the element of Magic. That's right: Magic. Because you can't spell Friendship without Magic. Not that you'd know, Luna- you can't spell at all. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Friendship is Magic!”

A mushroom-cloud of pure white light galloped across the whole of Equestria, turning the Gloaming, momentarily, into the nicest of Summer Days. After a few seconds, the sky faded back into Twilight [the light-level, not the pony].

Twilight [the pony, not the light-level] fell to the ground, along with her friends. They were still wearing their pilfered jewelleries. Luna was sat on the circular plinth looking quite sorry for herself. She'd been comprehensively defeated. Twilight felt sorry for her and walked over to offer the proper condolences and GGs. Luna smiled weakly.

“Well, I guess we won,” said Twilight.

“Yeah,” said the no-longer-dictatorial-but-probably-still-princestral Luna, “I guess you did. I'm sorry for pretending to curse your Fluttershy. I promise it's reversible... or re-do-able... whatever she did to herself...”

“That's ok,” said Twilight, “I forgive you.” The five friends were getting to their feet, happy to be alive.

“Erm... there's just... one thing... I ...” Luna was stuttering. She'd started to blush slightly.

Without pausing to let her finish, Twilight leaned forward and they locked lips. The other ponies watched in horror at what was happening. Twilight smiled wryly, “I knew you had a thing for me.” Luna didn't have a chance to respond before a herald of trumpets [from somewhere or other- possibly from Pinkie] heralded the arrival of Princess Celestia. She fell in through the skylight, badly winding herself.

Rainbow Dash helped Princess Celestia to her feet. Princess Celestia helped herself to a bag of potato chips she'd brought with her. She addressed the room at large:

“My vertically-challenged horses. Today you've saved my wonderful dictatorship of the Sun from my evil, but inept, sister of the Moon.” she said, spraying particles of potato-snack over the awed audience, “Err... cheers for that.”

The ponies replied, unceremoniously, with their “You're welcome”s and their “No problem”s.

Celestia addressed her sister, “And as for you. I like the cut of your jib. You can be Co-Dictator. Together, we will rule once more as an unholy duality of Moon and Sun. That will be all.”

“Princess,” said Twilight, “What do we do with the Elements of Frends?”

“I think you should hang onto them,” Luna answered, “Honestly, I wouldn't leave my toilet paper with Celestia. She's really not to be trusted.”

“Fair enough,” said Twilight, “I'm going home. I need a cigarette and a coffee and a bed and a newspaper or something.”

“Cool,” said Luna, “I'll... I'll call you about a date... if you feel like it?”

“Sure thing, toots,” Twilight replied, winking. The blushing Luna flew up to join Princess Celestia. They both headed towards the skylight but, before they flew off, Celestia turned back to Twilight.

“Say, This 'Friendship' thing isn't half bad. Twilight, I want you to write me something nice about it to read every weekend. A report of sorts. Lord knows I could do with some more warm 'n fuzzies in my life.” said the Princess to Twilight Sparkle, who replied, “Aye aye, Captain!”

At that, the two Princesses... Princessi? The two Princi flew off into the sunset. Applejack walked up and put a hoof on Twilight's shoulder.

“You know, she's probably going to read those reports on the John,” she informed the purple pony.

Twilight laughed, “Yeah, I know. I'm just surprised she can actually read. Anyway, let's go home; I've got a date to prepare for.”

Episode 3: The GalaGate Scandal [Part 1: Twilight and Luna's Date]

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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.

Episode 3: The GalaGate Scandal [Part 2: Dejectedly, but Lightly!]

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“Twilight!” affected Rarity at the gate to the town park, “What a contrive-cidence meeting you here!”

“Yeah,” said Twilight, “must be Density. What're ya doin' with Spike?” Rarity blinked at Twilight. Rarity blinked at Spike. Rarity blinked at Twilight. Rarity asked:

“What'wr ya doin' with Luna?”

“Luna? Surely I told you we were going on a date?” rhetoricalled Twilight.

“A date? Like the fruit?” asked Rarity.

“What fruit?” asked Twilight.

“The one where two people who think they like each other do something fun together for the purpose of bonding,” explained Rarity, invalidating the conversation thus far.

“Umm, that's a date,” Twilight once more took up arms against a sea of 'almost-correct-but-not-quite'-semantic-distinctions-in-a-'so-near-yet-so-far'-configuration-a-bit-like-a-Rubik's-Cube-completed-but-for-that-one-last-centre-edge-piece-which-is-still-bastard-flipped-and-won't-play-nice-like-the-other-pieces and against those hyphenated-phrases-that-go-on-way-too-long-and-of-which-there-is-only-one-example-I'm-sure-about-and-I'm-the-one-who-just-wrote-it-,-y'know-,-for-shits-and-giggles.

“But, I thought a date was...” Rarity trailed off, now unsure of what both types of 'date' were and fast heading towards being unsure of what the purple pony's name was.

“Anyway,” continued Twilight, putting in an effort towards the general goal of staying on-plot, “You never answered my question: What did you want in the first place, and why is Spike with you?”

“Well, Tywin,” [“Twilight”, supplied Twilight], Rarity: “Twilight... err, I forgot where I was going with this...”

Spike spoke up, “I was being a model!” Twilight waited for an answer.

“Spike was being a model,” said Rarity. Twilight 'Ahh'-ed in cognition.

“So, you're making a new line of clothing?” she asked.

“Of course. I mean, Spike's outfit will need to match perfectly if we're to look our best for... err... such a great Tuesday eveternoon... if you'd buy that...” Rarity tried not to look suspicious. Twilight wasn't helping by throwing suspicious glances at her.

“So, you're making us nice dresses... for shits and giggles? S'that what you're saying?” s'what Twilight said.

Rarity giggled nervously, “Say, let's walk.” And walk they did. To Rarity's house. She asked questions about Twilight's date along the way.

“So, Twilight...” sheepishlied Rarity, “Does this mean you're... you know... a Thespian?”

Twilight theatrically rolled her eyes, adopting her best Shakesponian intonation:

“Methinks thou meanest 'Lesbian' my droog.”

“A Lesbian? Pray tell what's wrong with dudes?” said Rarity.

“Five chicks a guy; mine eye doth wander so,” continued Twi.

“I find it all a little creepy though,

Yet if it's what thee wants I shan't be rude,” concluded Rare, yet Twi was not done yet:

“Say thee it's creepy, little pony dear,

Say I your tiny brain is filled with fear,

Use well thy head of huge diameter,

Or I'll Iambic your Pentameters!” schooled Twilight Sparkle.

“Bitch, you wouldn't!” shouted Rarity [too loud], breaking meter. By this time, they had arrived at the door to Rarity's pad. On opening the door, Twilight was greeted by an unusual sight: Rarity's furniture had all been pushed to the edge of the room and in its centre stood a small clothes rack holding 3 clothings which stood beside a long mirror. Rarity pushed past Twilight and Spike and started rummaging through the piled boxes and underneath the assorted couches and futons, speaking to herself something along the lines of 'I know I left them here somewhere...'.

Twilight looked worriedly at Spike before speaking up, “Rarity? If you're looking for those dresses you prepared..? They're not the ones, y'know, on the rack?”

Rarity looked over at them, “The rack?”

“Yeah. The one standing in the middle? By itself?” she hazarded.

“The one standing..?” Rarity looked around slowly before fixing on the central clothes rack, “Oh! There they are. Thank you, dear. I knew I put them somewhere stupid.”

“Rarity, why did you push all your crap against the walls? What the hell were you doing?” said Twilight.

“I... well, there's this spell's been... floating around the internet... of recent. I was trying it out. It didn't really work...” Rarity elucidated, “It was supposed to consume the spirits of half the offerings against the wall in order to summon three Eldritch Enochian Armour-Plated Eveningwear. It involved angles, triggernomiktree and clackulus and stuff so I just sort of guessed, for the most part. In the end, I had to make the dresses by hand... hoof [I said hoof [you all heard hoof]].”

Twilight was exceptionally a bit concerned; Rarity had tried to use math. She briefly wondered what it meant for an inanimate object to lose its 'spirit' but decided to stick to more important matters, “Rarity, what the hell are you doing trying math?! It's the most addictive and the most dangerous of all our worldly [and slightly camp] majicks. Math is the language of the Fallen Archangel Hoofifer- holder of the title of World's Clunkiest yet Most Believable Portmanteau. To misuse it is to unleash chaos into our little horse-themed universe!”

“Oh dear...” Rarity tried turning white. She was already white, so she tried tanning. Rarity turned slightly olive-brown, “I... I'm so sorry, Twi... I didn't know. I wouldn't've attempted anything had I known; especially not with how much I've been drinking this afternoon. Tell you the truth, I'm slightly wasted.” Rarity was swaying heavily on the spot. Twilight was completely and extremely barely alarmed- she turned slightly olive-brown.

“Of all the stupid things you've ever done in, like, the week I've actually known you for, this has to be the most stupid thing I've ever seen you do. And as soon as I've finished taking advantage of you, we're going to have a serious talk about mixing alcohol and math.” she said sternly.

Fluttershy was hovering gently towards Rarity's house. She was after talking to Twilight about some tickets and knew she would find her at Rarity's house because she whatever. She got to the front door and decided to just go in instead of knocking; such was the nature of her Thug Life. Upon opening the door, she was greeted by the sight of a slightly out-of-breath but pleased-looking pair of ponies and one diminutive dragon who looked like he had a number of questions to ask about what he'd just witnessed. She decided not to ask unless one of them didn't tell her what was going on. They didn't say anything.

“Umm, what happened here, guys?” proposed Fluttershy. Spike went on to explain what had just occurred. He got five and a half words in before Twilight took it upon herself to talk over him: “Well, Fluttershy, Rarity, Spike's would-be Modeller, thought it would be a good idea to dabble in the lesser-known art of Numeromancy... wasted. I know for damn sure she won't have done the spell even halfway properly, so now I'm left trying to figure out what fresh hell she's unleashed.”

“That, and Twilight did some stuff to me 'n junk,” supplied Rarity, lispingly. Spike nodded and pointed a thumb casually at his white horse-friend in the universal sign of 'yeah, what she said'.

Fluttershy looked satisfied to fill in the blanks in the story in her mind on a paper under the title 'Twirity's Drunken Escapades'. Needles-to-hay, it wasn't very good; finding a correctly-spelt word was like trying to find a needless in a saystack. By the time she'd finished her fan-fic [in all of twenty seconds- the average amount of time taken to write an awful fan-fic] she'd remembered the other thing she'd wanted to ask Twilight:

“I remembered the other thing she'd wanted to ask Twilight,” verbatimmed Fluttershy, apparently having abandoned the job of thinking up her own lines, “I wanted to find you to ask about some of the stuff back at my house; it... I might sound crazy, but when I was ironing my Dark-Elf Cosplay War Costume, well... the iron sorta... I dunno, just sorta felt a bit dead in my hooves... err, whaddaya s'pose..?”

Twilight looked at Confused fluttershyly before saying, “What? So the iron stopped working? Did the cable go loose or something?”

“Err, no, it was working just fine,” continued Fluttershy, “it's just that... it felt different... deflated. Like it was just going through the motions.”

Twilight had a flash of inspiration [she'd forgotten to take her medication], “Rarity! That's what happened to your spell! It required the spirits of a number of inanimate objects to work. You must have used the wrong co-ordinates; it ended up targeting Fluttershy's shit instead of yours!”

“My god,” melodrama-ed Rarity, “I've managed to turn Fluttershy's possessions and effects into a bigger pile of soulless shite than Justin Bieber's discography! I'm really sorry, Fluttershy. I promise I'll replace anything that was damaged.” A promise made in a drunken stupor that would, of course, go unrealised. And, speaking of things that go unrealised: Spike [our survey says... *ding* 40 points!]. Family Feud. Family Fortunes for our British audience [me included]- because 'Feud' just ain't family-friendly enough for us!

“That's ok, Rarity,” said Fluttershy. She then remembered the other thing she'd come to see Twilight about, “Oh, Twilight, I meant to ask you... I heard that you'd been sent a couple of tickets for the Gala... I was just, sorta, wondering if it was true? It's just because, well, I know your brother, Heavymetal Chestplate Sparkle, will be there and I wrote a romantic story about him and I want him to see it but I need to give it to him in person so I can see his reaction and judge how much of a chance I have, realistically speaking.”

“Well, Fluttershy, I never tell a lie, and I can tell you that I honestly know nothing about these tickets,” said Twilight.

“Wait a minute,” said Rarity, “So I'm not allowed to do magic I know nothing about but you're allowed to give away a spare ticket to the Gala you know nothing about? You're such a hippopot...” - “-crit,” jumped in Twilight, “Hypocrite. A hippopotamus is an animal.” - “You're such a hypocrite,” continued Rarity, briefly, “And so quick to 'correct' others, too! I feel sorry for Spike for having to live with you!”

“Well, you know,” said Twilight, with a little pride [the emotion, not the group of lions], “That may have been my fastest ever grammar 'n usage correction- I don't think I've ever gotten it within one syllable before! I deserve a medal or something. Either way, the lesson is to always 'be prepared'.” Twilight subtly referenced the pride thing. Y'hear that, Fluttershy? Subtlety. That's the sound of subtlety.

“So you do have tickets to the Gala,” said Fluttershy, “That's great news. It means I didn't clean Twilight's entire house for nothing!”

“Fluttershy!” Spoke Rarity, “Twilight's right here. You said that to her. That series of mouth noises just straight-up hit Twilight's eardrums and produced the facial expression you are looking at right now which is somewhere between fatigue and incredulity.”

“I'm sorry, Rarity,” said Fluttershy, “But I'm actually drunker than you are right now.”

Twilight said, “Ok, so is everyone here drunk? Is that a thing? I had a few with Luna on the park... Spike?” Spike hiccuped meaningfully, “Cool,” continued Twilight, “Well, there you go, then. We all know Applejack will have had her mid-afternoon vodka [at the very least], and alcohol would actually make Rainbow Dash act more sober. We're all pretty much incapacitated.”

“So... what now?” asked Spike.

Twilight looked at her friends [she thought it would be rude to address the wall] and said, “Well, I suppose the only thing we really need to wrap up is this issue with the tickets. I'm sure the whole process would be a lot easier if we all just sat down and talked about it. Y'know; over another drink.”

“I'm all out of wine,” said Rarity, a little too fast, “Maybe we should go see Applejack? I'm sure she'll have something.”

“That would be really nice,” said Fluttershy, “We could just sit around on the ol' porch; rocking-chair, gin, tonic, cigars...”

Rarity continued, “Moonshine, shotguns; big ol' Confedequine flag waving gently in the breeze...”

Twilight decided to put an end to the increasingly offensive joke-nostalgia by walking out of the room and heading towards the Apple Ranch which, for the purpose of convenience, found itself located directly behind Rarity's house. Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie happened to already be there because Twilight knocked on the door to the Apple Ranch and waited for an answer, looking over her shoulder at Rarity, Fluttershy and Spike before they heard a voice come from inside: “Come in!” It sounded like Applejack.

After a brief explanation, the seven friends found themselves on Applejack's front porch, each nursing a cold beer and a fine Dominican Cigar [Applejack didn't have the money for Cubans].

Spike had what looked like a small birdhouse on his lap. The ponies were sitting pensively in their rocking-chairs, each with a slip of paper and a ballpoint pen. They had decided to cast a vote to decide who got the spare ticket. They were, of course, not allowed to vote for themselves. In fact, they weren't even allowed to vote for each other. They had to each choose their favourite background character to offer the ticket to. Nobody was happy about this, but at least they would all be as unhappy as each other, thought Twilight on the matter.

“Twilight,” Rainbow Dash spoke up, “I think I know who I'm choosing but I don't really know her name...”

“Just describe her, then,” slurred Twilight. She'd had a little too much gin but it had cheered her up a bit. Rainbow Dash nodded and, after a few seconds of scribbling, folded her paper and went to put it in Spike's birdhouse. The other ponies followed suit as they made their final choices.

“Ok, Spike,” began Applejack, “I think it's about time you opened the box so we can finally put this whole mess behind us.”

“Wait,” Pinkie Pie spoke up, “What if we've all chosen different characters?” Everyone looked towards Twilight, waiting for an answer.

“It,” Twilight deliberated, “is not a very good system.” She didn't look set to be offering anything else any time soon so the other ponies shrugged and looked towards Spike to get the ball rolling. The ball refused to roll because there was no actual way into the solid pinewood birdhouse. Applejack took it off him and put it on the floor. She stepped off the porch and came back a moment later with a small-ish hatchet. Needless to say that this worried all present. She held the axe's handle between her teeth and made a sharp downward jab with it. Her neck made a gnarly sound as the blade clonked straight through the little wooden birdhouse and lodged itself into the deck of the porch.

“There ya go,” she said, “Now get to countin'!”

Spike said, “Sorry about your birdhouse, Applejack. I thought we'd be able to open it afterwards...”

“Nah, don't worry about that, little'un,” reassured Applejack, “It wasn't made very well anyway. Applebloom made it for my birthday and, one thing's fer shure, she ain't gonna be gettin' her Cutie-Mark in carpentry!”

Spike collected the bits of paper and went to sit back down on his rocking-chair. The other ponies took their seats and waited to hear the results.

“Ok, the first vote,” he began, “is for... Laura... Hearthstone?.. Laura Hearthstone.”

Rarity spoke up, “D'you think it's meant to be 'Lyra Heartstrings'?”

Twilight said, “Yeah, that's the one. Couldn't remember the name...”

“Ok,” Spike continued, “Next vote... Lara Hearsthings. We'll just take that as Lyra again.

Next up, is... light green pony who's friends with the pony with the sweets- Lyra, then.

And... light blue pony who sits funny. I think I'm noticing a pattern.

I think we can all guess... yep: gurl ponie with harp on leg.

And finally, but predictably... err... Solid-Oak Roberts?” Everyone looked around until, at some point, Fluttershy spoke up:

“He's cute.” The others nodded to each other.

“So,” said Spike [and “Right” said Fred], “It looks like Lyra's certainly been making a name for herself. Anyway, she's the winner, for whatever reason, so who's gonna go tell her?”

Twilight said, “Well, you're the least drunk of all of us...”

Spike hove a sigh. He knew there was no point in arguing, “Fine. I'll be back soon.” He hopped dejectedly, but lightly, to his feet and walked off to find Lyra. The other ponies had another cigar and opened some fresh whisky.

It didn't take Spike long to find the light-greenish pony. She was sitting on the park bench, by herself, at half seven in the evening. It looked a proper shame. Spike walked over to her, awkwardly. It wasn't the warmest evening so they were near enough the only ones in the whole place. He hoped she didn't think he was here to mug her.

“Umm, Lyra?” he said. Lyra hopped off the bench dejectedly, but lightly, and greeted him:

“Err, hey... Spoke?”

“Spike.” Spiked Spike.

“Spike!” Spiked Lyra, “Spike. I knew it was Spike. Hey, Spike.”

“Hi,” said Spike, “Anyway, I was just wondering... Twilight has a spare ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala and she was wondering if you might want it.”

“Oh,” said Lyra, “Yeah, that sounds wonderful. I've not been feeling too good recently, so a night out would be just the ticket- pardon the pun.”

Spike laughed, “I'll tell Twilight that one. She collects puns.”

“Cool,” said Lyra, who had no answer for that.

“... and alliterations,” continued Spike, unexpectedly, “Rhymes. The occasional limerick. She has a whole notebook filled with anagrams. An archive of spelling mistakes and malapropisms other people have made in her presence [in her own words: she'll never forget]. I've seen a pamphlet of her own incorrect-usages floating around, come to think of it. Oh, and she has a special bookshelf above her bed for journals of words she's made up that she thinks should be real words.”

“Cool,” said Lyra.

Spike was only gone for about ten minutes. When he got back, he found his six friends gathered around a piece of parchment.

“Hey guys, what you looking at?” he introduced.

“Oh, hey Spike,” said Twilight, “Erm... we sorta had an idea while you were gone. We just sent Dear Leader Celestia another letter... asking for three more tickets to the Gala...”

“Oh,” said Spike, “... Ok, well, at least you guys all have your tickets now. Plus, Lyra got a ticket- it really cheered her up.” Spike felt relieved that the whole mess was sorted out. He considered another drink but then had another thought, “Hold on, wait. Three tickets?”

“Yeah?” said Twilight.

“But...” said Spike, “That only makes five tickets. There are six of you.”

Twilight looked blank for a few seconds before her face dropped for a few seconds before her face lit up slightly for a few seconds, “...Spike? Do you think you could just... y'know... go ask Lyra for the ticket back?”

“Why don't you just write to Celestia again and ask for another one,” said Spike dejectedly, but lightly.

“It's just,” Twilight began, “The Dear Leader has ordered us not to send her any more letters while she's trying to sleep.”

“Trying to...” Spike was livid, “It's eight o'bastard clock! What's wrong with her?! She has literally no sleep cycle. Why's she in charge of the sun?!” He sighed heavily and started to walk off the porch dejectedly, but lightly.

“Fuck's sake.”

Episode 4: The Tiredth of Applejack [Part 1: The Manufacturement of an Award]

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The sun was cresting the barntops of the Apple Ranch, knocking off rooftiles and roasting the cattle gently but unevenly. Applejack was standing on a hilllet, listening to her big brother, NewYork, who'd recently stopped putting a space in his name. Applejack was swaying subtly. They were looking out at a relative crowd of disappointed-looking background ponies wandering aimlessly through the apple orchard.

“Applejack,” said NY, “Could you tell me why we have a slight crowd of Ponyvillians pissing about around our orchard?”

She played it straight, “I kinda told them we had a Tree Kingdom.”

He had to ask, “What's a Tree Kingdom?”

“This is. It's a large apple orchard implied to be filled with fantasy creatures, like dragons, dwarves and the Dal-Eyed Llama,” said Applejack charmingly, then slightly offensively, then euphoniously but apropos of nothing.

“Applejack, I really hope you didn't take these nice ponies' money for this,” said NY.

One of the villagers walked over to the siblings, “Excuse me, but you said there'd be roses. Is it possible to get a refund?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Applejack, “I never promised you a rose garden.” She stared the pony down catatonically, causing her to give in. NewYork watched the pony's Tree Kingdom Exodus disapprovingly.

“Applejack, let these ponies go,” said NY, “Give them their money back and tell them you lied and we can all go back to what we were doing.”

“This is what I was doing,” said Applejack.

“Well, it doesn't look very good for the Element of Honesty to go around lying all the time just to make a quick buck,” said NY, “Anyway, you were supposed to be harvesting these trees before the apples go bad. Remember what Granny Smith told you about apples? You leave 'em too long and they turn into pears.”

“And pears are just apples when nobody cares,” finished Applejack, “I know what she said, big brother, so why aren't you gettin' out there and helping?”

“Applejack, you know I can't,” explained NY, “I'm still aching from yesterday; don't try to get out of this.”

“Then don't get kicked in the dick,” said Applejack.

“Ee-yep,” confirmed NY wholeheartedly.

The humble cowpony threw back another pill and turned the volume up on her MLP-3 player. Her forty-eight hour, drug-fuelled apple-buck marathon [playset available in most irresponsible toy stores] was going swimmingly. NewYork would see what a productive worker she was, come rain or shine. And come they did; in abundance, but Applejack didn't feel a thing.

At some point, she kicked blindly, connecting with something that was definitely not wood. She felt a bovine crunch underfoot.

Applejack looked slowly over her shoulder. She saw a bovine cow underfoot. She'd bucked it right in the teeth. One by one, the cow's teeth fell to the ground. They looked like little white cigars, only shinier. And there's only half a cigar. One by one, the cow itself fell to the ground; it landed with an awkward 'snap'. Applejack pulled out her earphones and looked dejectedly, but lightly, at the limp cow.

“All I ever wanted to do was to please my brother,” said Applejack to the cow, which continued to be in a bad way and didn't really react, “And all I got was this lousy Animal Rights violation.” She stared at the unconscious mammal through eyes as red as Twilight's weird new scarf, trying to think of a way to cheer herself up which wouldn't interact fatally with a strong hit of MDMA and a dime-bag of weed.

Inspiration hit her like a hoof to the teeth. She surveyed the surrounding area carefully to make sure she was definitely alone. The coast was clear, but that's irrelevant. The orchard was clear. Applejack scrunched up her face. After a few seconds, though no one could see, Applejack's left kidney began to glow in fits and starts. Magic crackled through the air as the cow began to glow fiercely. The cow levitated up to head height then creaked forward, starting slow but gaining a bit of speed as it went. Applejack jumped on board and whistled for her faithful hound- Winstdog Churchill. {Earth-Ponies were, of course, forbidden from using Madjick in the Princestral Dictatorship of Equestria except in cases of preventing another Earth-Pony from using the Divine and Plotholean Faculties and, even then, it still incurred the death penalty in most cases [after knighthood, of course].}

An exceptionally polite dust-cloud was thundering towards Ponyville-in-the-Wider-Scheme-of-Equestria. The nucleus of the cloud consisted of an orange pony and a bloodied cow, held together by the strong mooclear force. A small dog was zipping around the epicentre of the dust-cloud, keeping at bay a barrage of beefy concern. Applejack's plan was working perfectly. She'd ridden the malfortunate creature through a large gathering of its peers, appealing to their overdeveloped need to help. Cows are a very polite animal, meaning they all gave chase in a storm of 'are you alright?'s and 'is there anything I can do?'s. Applejack would have felt bad for exploiting this gentle creature's natural tendency to care had she not already taken medication for that before executing the plan.

A crowd had gathered at the edge of the village. The crowd was seemingly in the process of staring death in the face. There was a discussion afoot about which Horsepony of the Apocalypse had come to visit their little home; most assumed War.

“Well, it could be worse,” said Gee-Gee Seinfeld, most decorated jokesmith in Ponyville, “It could be my wife's cooking!” The ponies around her took a brief break from Terminal Contemplation to have a quick giggle at Gee-Gee's zinger.

As the dust-cloud got closer, the crowd could make out the inoffensive, yet violently loud, politeness of cow.

“Well, it could be worse,” said Gee-Gee Seinfeld, most decorated jokesmith in Ponyville, “It could be airline food!” Another laugh well earned.

As the dust-cloud got closer, the crowd could make out the inoffensive, yet violently loud, Stetson hat of Applejack.

“Well, it could be worse,” said Gee-Gee Seinfeld, most decorated jokesmith in Ponyville, “It could be Rainbow Dash.” The assorted ponies made noises of agreement.

Applejack had jumped off the cow and had assumed her position just ahead of the pack. As they neared the border of Ponyville, she swerved left and made it look like she was furiously herding cows with the help of her trusty hound, Winstdog Churchill. The villagers cheered as the tail of the pack passed harmlessly by, leaving Applejack standing in a billowing of settling ground-powder.

“Well, it could be worse,” said Strawberry Swimmingpool, local toaster entrepreneur, 100-meter athlete and unofficial public pool owner, “We could have been stamped into the fucking topsoil.” The gathered ponies didn't laugh; nobody could tell a joke quite like Gee-Gee.

Applejack's brightly-coloured set of friends had front-row seats for her reward. They were listening to the enthusiastic preamble of Boris Johnstallion, Mayor of Ponyville-in-the-Wider-Scheme.

“This brave pony managed to stop a disaster from devastating the west side of our little village. She managed to save the lives of at least two citizens; of course, the Rap wars still wage on, but if the West side doesn't represent, then who will? Still, this pony has rendered us a noble service, and, today, I'd like to present her with the coveted Olympic Bronze Medal, for Services to the Community. Come forward, Applejack...”

There was half a minute's silence before come forward Applejack did; mostly on roller skates; unsubtly, but brightly. Her terrifying speed parted the sea of hue-diverse horses. Gee-Gee Seinfeld, most decorated jokesmith in Ponyville started to say “what's the deal with roller..” before she met with a terminal health-and-safety malfunction. She had only come in the first place to avoid her wife's dodgy 'special lasagne'. Applejack tumbled onto the makeshift award-giving stage while Gee-Gee briefly test drove the idea of living with an Applejack-shaped hole down her centre as a lifestyle choice. Hoof-clapping ensued. it probably sounded like coconuts rolling down a shingled roof or something.

Applejack shuffled, dazed and confused, up to the lectern, softly nudging the mayor to one side. She stared blankly out at the expectant faces of her home village and didn't know what to say. She decided to start with the usual stock speech-opening:

“Four score and seven years ago, I had a dream; a dream of being presented with the coveted Ponyville-in-the-Wider-Scheme-of-Equestria's Olympic Bronze Medal for Services to the Community. Today, I have achieved that dream. The road was long and tough but I pulled through. It took sweat, tears, determination and magic.. … uhh.. the Gathering,” Applejack had aoas {eternally “all of a sudden”} become exceptionally tired; forty-eight hours of drugs, tree-denting and stampede-manifesting had finally caught up with her, “I'd like to dedicate this award to my big brother, who always believes in me. He's the real hero. Brave, strong, tall, handsome- that's why I call him my 'forbidden apple'.”

Every pony in the village square continued to not change their facial expressions. Most hoped Mayor Johnstallion would put an end to this right about now. He didn't need to, as it turned out. Applejack, as slow and fatigued as the plot itself, made her way down to the empty seat between Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy.

“Way to go Applejack!” said Rainbow Dash, loud as her character-design, stabbing at the oppressive silence of the population of Ponyville. The silence, however, didn't break; it was waiting to see if anyone would elaborate on Applejack's weird family thing. Fluttershy offered her coffee, thinking Applejack wouldn't take it- but she did. The yellow pony lit a cigarette as consolation. Applejack stole it from her. Well, she wished she hadn't offered it to her, anyway- but she had.

Ponyville watched on as Applejack drank and smoked. The mayor decided to call an end to the pre-seedings. As was customary, he turned the lectern upside down to signal the end of the presentation [it didn't really stand up as the top was sloped and, as was traditional [and physically necessary], it fell forwards off the stage and clattered into four planks of wood which were to be collected by Solid-Oak Roberts [local furniture expert] and reassembled for next time]. The mayor took his traditional, ceremonial leave by rifling through the crowd and taking his favourite wrist-watch as mayoral appeasement.

The rest of the ponies filed out of the town square [this all happened at the town square- bonus points if you guessed right!] leaving our six ponies and the usual dragon. Rainbow Dash took this as a good time to ask Applejack about help with her new slingshot.

The slingshot in question turned out to be a rubber band of great length. Rainbow Dash had bought it online and intended to wrap it around 'maybe two trees or that statue in the park?'. The statue turned out to be a good shape for it, depicting an ice-skating scene featuring Dictator Celestia about to leap into the unready arms of her sister, Luna, who looked like she was expecting death or serious spinal injuries. The rubber band was hooked over the Dear Leader's neck and the defensive night-princess' fore-hooves. Rainbow Dash was ploughing backwards, stretching the band to its capacity with the help of Applejack pushing against her.

“Are you sure this is safe?” asked Applejack.

“It doesn't look safe,” said Rainbow Dash.

“That's a shame,” said Applejack, gazing pensively into Rainbow Dash's navel before adding “I'm sure Twilight won't be too happy about all of this.” RD gave her best snort of derision [it sounded more like she was attempting to reclaim a drip of snot which had attempted to abseil to freedom from her nostril], she said “Yeah, well, Twilight isn't happy about anything, and she has her own Dragon Butler!” Applejack laughed in sleepy delirium; RD was right; Twilight was neurotic. Applejack's legs started to give way just as a pony pushing a baby-carriage tentatively chanced to pass by the un-safety-conscious affair. RD started to say something just as Applejack's fatigued members gave up the ghost.

THWIP

The rubber band propelled the two ponies at Mach speed, into the baby-carriage, taking it with them, to infinity and beyond. The disembabied pony stared in incomprehension at her now empty fore-hooves. She walked slowly over to the statue and sat on its base, lit a smoke and began to re-evaluate her new existence.

Meanwhile; at the treehouse, Twilight was finishing up her dusting – she only had her bed-area to do. She threw open the curtains to shed light on the extent; watched blankly as two ponies, a fragile-looking filly, and a battered stroller flew past her window at orbital velocity; closed the curtains again and, dropping her duster, sat on the edge of her bed, lit a smoke and began to re-evaluate the stupidity of her friends.