Not This Again
Vice-Principal Luna knew it was going to be one of these days. For starters, some student stole her parking place again and it took her a while before she realised that she’d forgotten to turn the cameras off before going to his car with an ice pick.
Considering this situation, it came to her as no surprise when her sister called her, asking her to come to her office. Vice-Principal Luna sighed, hiding the stack of her paperwork in her desk, and walked to Principal Celestia’s office.
“I know what happened to this kid’s tyres,” she said, opening the door. “A sudden rise of the temperature caused the air in them to expand and cheap rubber from Chi–”
“I don’t care about some kid’s broken rubber,” Principal Celestia replied. She was sitting at her desk, staring at some papers. As Luna noticed, the file included a couple of photos; one of them undoubtedly depicted Twilight Sparkle in a swimsuit.
“Then what’s the problem?” Luna asked. “I hope it’s not another great idea, like fixing the school’s budget by selling questionable photos of our students?”
“No, it’s more of a safety issue,” Celestia replied. “Have you heard about our student called Wallflower Blush? She’s the head of the gardening club.”
“Can’t say I remember her, no.” Luna shrugged. “Gardening club? I was in one, back at school. We were growing weed and stuff. Does she grow weed too? I’d have to report that and confiscate, umm… the crops.”
“Ah, so that’s why I don’t remember most of the eighties,” Celestia muttered. “No, she’s not growing weed, sadly. The thing is, she brought a magical artifact to school and nearly caused everyone to lose their memories of Sunset Shimmer.” She looked at Luna, as if expecting a reaction.
“So?” Luna asked. “We’ve been through this before. Every second day someone brings something magical to school, or turns into a demon, or starts controlling the minds of everyone at school… Hell, we even had an invasion of fairies…”
“Nah, that was you after inhaling fumes of that substance Ms. Muffins produced in the school lab.” Celestia sighed. “The thing is, the wave of magic-related violence in our school is on the rise. We have to do something to prevent that.”
Luna shrugged. “Sunset Shimmer and her friends are doing quite well.”
“Yes, but we can’t keep her around forever,” Celestia replied. “We need some more permanent and well-organised solution.”
“Hmm, ban all the magical items from school?” Luna asked.
Celestia covered her face with her hand. “And leave us vulnerable? If we do that, someone will bring something magical to school precisely because we won’t have any means of magically defend ourselves.”
Luna shuddered. It was already one of these days. It could only go in one direction – the one she called “full retard”, absolutely disregarding any guidelines of non-offensive language. “What do you propose?” she asked.
Celestia smirked. “You’ll see…”
“Excuse me, Ms. Sparkle!” Vice-Principal Luna exclaimed, chasing Twilight across the corridor. “What is that grimoire in your backpack?”
“Oh, this?” Twilight looked at her backpack—made of transparent plastic—and produced an old book with a leather cover. There was no title on it and the dusty leather looked like it was made of human skin. “I found it in the school’s attic and wanted to examine it.”
“I’d better confiscate it,” Luna replied, taking the book. “Also, what about that geode on your neck?”
“The principal said that I can keep it,” Twilight replied. “Sure, it’s magical, but I use it to fight other magical things, so it’s fine.”
“Okay then…” Luna looked around and saw Rainbow Dash walking down the hall. “Ms. Dash! Could you come here for a moment?”
“I don’t have anything magical with me,” Rainbow Dash replied, trying to cover her transparent bag with her jacket.
“Well, I do see some interesting drawing…” Luna walked to Rainbow Dash and moved her jacket aside. “It depicts my sister as well as a male reproductive organ.”
Rainbow Dash smiled sheepishly. “It’s a biology homework, I swear.”
“Well-drawn except of the size.” Luna muttered. “You either have unrealistic expectations or you’re much luckier than I am.” She sighed. “Okay, I’ll talk to your biology teacher about your homework.” She shook her head and let Rainbow Dash go, looking at other students’ bags. Most of them didn’t have anything magical in them; some of them contained pieces of paper with various slogans or drawings.
Luna looked at Twilight’s grimoire and put it in her box with other confiscated items: a ring that was making people invisible which Luna had taken from Snips, Sandalwood’s unmarked VHS tape, Drama Letter’s cymbal-banging monkey, two copies of Necronomicon (as Luna noted, one of them was most definitely fake), a shrunken head, a voodoo doll, and a couple of smoke bombs, courtesy of The Great and Powerful Trixie. At first Luna didn’t find anything wrong with them, but after trying to throw one, she suddenly found herself hanging upside-down in the bathroom on the third floor.
Suddenly, her eyes focused on another backpack. She darted towards it across the hall, narrowly avoiding colliding with a couple of other students on her way.
The rucksack in question turned out to belong to a green-skinned girl called Sophisticata. Luna remembered that she was the head of the school’s drama club; she learned that after several students complained about dangerous practices and unprofessional attitude during rehearsals and plays. After a few of them left the drama club, Sophisticata immediately landed on Celestia and Luna’s list of students that should be immediately incapacitated in case Something went down. What was Something, Celestia and Luna preferred not to discuss.
“Excuse me, Ms.–” Luna paused, trying to remember what was Sophisticata’s surname. As far as she recalled, she didn’t have one. “Why are you carrying a crucifix in your backpack?”
Sophisticata furrowed her eyebrows. “Well, I don’t see you asking Fluttershy about a veil on her head…”
“Mostly because she doesn’t wear one.” Luna rolled her eyes. “I’m only asking if that crucifix is magical.”
“MAGIC!?” Sophisticata exclaimed. “Not in my school!” She opened a backpack and grabbed a crucifix, along with a spray bottle full of holy water and a torch Luna somehow missed when looking at her backpack. “Magic is heresy! And I fight heresy the old, traditional way! Nobody expects that! Deus vult!” she cried, running down the corridor.
Luna sighed and shook her head. “I wonder how my sister is doing...”
Celestia smirked. Everything was going as she had foreseen. Now she could see what was in the backpacks and was sure that nothing magical would enter the school without her knowledge.
She took a sip of coffee. She’d confiscated the mug from one of the students after noticing that the coffee somehow wasn’t spilling, despite the mug being placed between the books. The additional examination showed that the coffee was always hot and never ended. Also, it was just as sweet as Celestia liked.
With magical caffeine circling in her veins, she walked across the hallway and stood in front of two students who were apparently complimenting the design of their new backpacks.
“Good morning, Ms. Heartstrings,” Celestia said. “And you, Ms. Bon Bon.”
Lyra Heartstrings smiled in a way that everyone in the world but Celestia would label as ‘dishonest’. “We were totally not discussing how the new policy sucks.”
“I hope so..” Celestia turned to Bon Bon. “Did I notice a gun in your backpack?”
“Yes,” Bon Bon replied. “Beretta 92 FS, three-dot sighting system, ambidextrous safety, non-reflective black brunition finish, combat trigger guard, reliable open slide design, loaded chamber indicator. The magazine holds fifteen bullets. 9x19mm Parabellum. Great for unarmoured, fast-moving targets.”
“Mhm.” Celestia nodded. “It’s not magical in any way, right?”
“No, it’s just a regular gun,” Bon Bon replied. “I got some additional magazines and a really cheap flashlight.”
“Good for you.” Celestia turned to Lyra. “Do you have anything magical?”
Lyra smirked. “I have a magical vibrator,” she replied. “But it’s not in my bag, you know. Should I show it to you?”
Celestia rolled her eyes. “Luna!” she exclaimed. “Get the rubber gloves!”
Finally, the afternoon came. The last students went home; Celestia could finally sit in her office and look at all the items she confiscated. However, before she could take a peek at the contents of her box, the door opened and Luna walked in, dropping on the seat in front of Celestia’s desk.
“I swear, if I end up with another love potion, moving skeleton, or a magic wand that never runs out of batteries, I’m gonna flip,” she muttered, producing a plastic bag with some dry, green leaves. “Hmm, this isn’t actually magical, it’s just regular weed.” She turned to to Celestia. “Did you find anything interesting?”
“A copy of The Communist Manifesto haunted by the actual spectre of communism,” Celestia replied. “Guess someone would pay a few bucks for that, but when you open it, you immediately want to give it away for free. Also, apparently Ginger Owlseye found a stone that can raise the dead in her garden. I let her keep it.”
“Who is Ginger Owlseye?” Luna asked. “And isn’t that dangerous? If she leads to the zombie apocalypse...”
“She moved from Crystal Prep recently.” Celestia shrugged as if it was something unusual. “Also, it raises only the dead that are in her garden and since it’s unlikely for the dead to be found in her garden, I guess it’s fine.”
“We should take it away. What’s the problem in bringing the dead to your garden?” Luna shrugged. “Or having them come to your garden and then kill them. At least that’s what I’d do.”
Celestia sighed. “Did you ever grow out of your goth phase?”
Luna rolled her eyes. “It’s not a phase, sister.”
“Surely.” Celestia took a sip from the cup of the neverending coffee. “Anyway, we didn’t find anything particularly dangerous. Do you know what that means?”
“That we can stop doing that?” Luna asked. “Well, unless we want more students protesting or making us pull stuff out of their orifices.”
“No!” Celestia exclaimed. “It means they’re hiding the most dangerous items from us!”
Luna facepalmed. “One of the students asked me why I work for the Ministry of Love. Not to mention Rainbow Dash and her penis.”
“Rainbow Dash has a penis?” Celestia winced. “Also, Ministry of Love?” she nodded. “Pretty impressive, considering the fact that we had to ban 1984 from the school’s library after the parents complained about the depictions of a totalitarian society.”
Luna coughed a few times, retching and resting herself against the desk. Celestia raised her eyebrows, looking at her sister with mild disgust. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I choked,” Luna replied.
“On Rainbow Dash’s penis?”
“No,” Luna said. “The irony.”
Celestia let out a sigh. “Anyway, we need to go deeper if we want to find the truly dangerous items. Since tomorrow–”
“Actually, I found something.” Luna put on rubber gloves, opened her box, and grabbed a book she’d confiscated from Twilight. “At first I thought it was just a regular grimoire with a cover made of human hide, but then the pages started bleeding.” She passed Celestia the box with rubber gloves. “You’d better put those on. It may have hepatitis or other HIV…”
“Interesting.” Celestia looked at the grimoire. “Did you read it?”
“Do I look like I’m crazy?” Luna asked. “I’d rather not–”
“Worry not, it’s just words.” Celestia opened the book on the random page. “Sticks and stones can–” Suddenly, her expression froze in terror older than time itself. The veins in her eyes suddenly widened and exploded, flooding the desk with blood and vitreous fluid. Despite that, Celestia didn’t make a sound, sitting still in her armchair, staring at the book with empty eye sockets.
“– have my eyeballs explode,” Luna muttered, backpedalling when a piece of optic nerve fell on the floor next to her. Suddenly, she heard the sound of the roof cracking, as if something heavy sat on it. The sky turned dark, even though it was still too early for that. Lightning tore the sky, illuminating Celestia’s motionless body.
Luna looked around, slowly advancing towards the door. Before she reached it, she saw something sliding down the wall on the ground below. A massive tentacle raised from the shapeless mold and knocked on the window.
“Shit,” Luna muttered. “Not this again…”
Sunset Shimmer knew it was going to be one of these days. Nothing actually seemed to be a sign of the incoming apocalypse; the day was bright and warm, with only a large circle of burnt grass in front of the school reminding her of what had happened just a few days before. However, when she heard that Principal Celestia told all the students to gather in front of the school, she immediately knew it was going to be bad.
“Greetings, students!” Celestia said. She still wore a purple eyepatch over her left eye, but Sunset heard that it was healing pretty well. “Once again, I want to thank Sunset Shimmer for helping us with yet another magic-related mishap…”
“Yeah,” Sunset muttered. “And my therapist said that my PTSD is not that bad.”
“Of course, we’ll take further steps to prevent such events from occurring in the future,” Celestia said, looking briefly at Luna, who was sitting in a wheelchair with a rather sour expression. “We managed to identify the source of most of those phenomena…”
“More like, Twilight told you when you said you’d forgive her those Farmville requests.” Sunset whispered with the most innocent expression she could muster.
Celestia continued, unperturbed, “So, I’d like to announce that soon, we’ll build the wall around this pedestal.” She pointed at the pedestal that, due to another magic-related mishap, no longer had a horse statue on the top. “And whatever comes out of it, we’ll make it pay for it!”
The students cheered; Sunset rolled her eyes, seeing several construction workers already walking around the portal with shovels.
“Shit,” she muttered. “Not this again…”