//------------------------------// // Both sisters // Story: Harbinger, randomness of George // by LucidTech //------------------------------//         The celestial court was being held with Luna taking the place of her absent sister on the raised seat at the front of the room. It had been a relatively slow day, until a few moments ago, when the ponies who were only awake during the day realized they could ask questions of the, usually silent, lunar sister. After that news, the court was quickly flooded with new ponies to come and ask questions that bore no relevance to Canterlot as a whole. The air was stifling when it hadn’t before, and Luna found herself restraining the urge to kick all of them out of the building when a flash of white and a spray of cotton candy ended the verbal flood.         All the ponies in the room turned away from the flash and blinked a few times to remove the searing color of red that had been imprinted by the light, only to find cotton candy on their faces or bodies. After they cleared their eyes, the gathered ponies all returned their gazes to the middle of the room and saw something quite strange. Gathered in the middle of the room, the previous occupiers of the space having been teleported away, stood a biped with several plates and teacups spinning around him. To his right stood Celestia, her ethereal mane blowing in the non-existent wind. Behind them stood the Elements, and behind them stood two very confused guards and a sky carriage.         The man spread his arms wide with a grin, matching his hats devious smile. “Luna!” he shouted, the plates falling to the ground but remaining perfectly fine. George’s hands were no longer giving off the red sparks that had danced across his fingers only seconds before, the magic having been consumed by the mass group teleport. He smiled warmly at the blue alicorn from his distance away while she tried to figure out what just happened.         After a moment, George started sinking into the ground. Worried looks crossed the ponies’ faces, but the man smiled warmly to reassure them before suddenly plummeting underneath the stone. Then, a brief moment having passed, he fell out of the ceiling and landed directly in front of Luna.         “How are you Lulu? It’s been a while!” the biped said as he started to swing his arms around to hug her. The mare’s horn glowed with magic and the man felt an energy bubble stop his momentum. George looked to Luna and saw her face covered in confusion.         “Dost I know thee?” Luna said as she looked the biped over from head to toe.         “You don’t remember me?” the chaotic being said as he looked at the princess. She shook her head in response and George paused for a moment as he reached inside of his coat. “Not even,” he said as he pulled a blue teacup from within his heavy coat, its sides displaying a full moon and new moon upon the dark blue backdrop. “All the times we had tea?”         The princess looked at George and then at the tea cup, then back to George. A silent second slowly slipped slyly by as the princess studied both the man and the cup before a look of revelation crossed her face, followed shortly by a look of elation. “George!” she shouted as she went to hug the biped as well. She was met halfway by her target as he too leaned in for a hug.         In the moment, Luna barely noticed the whisper that was quietly spoken into her ear. “I’m sorry, so very sorry,” he said before pulling away from the lunar princess. Then, he turned around to face the group he had teleported to the castle. “Pinkie Pie!” he shouted as he pointed to the earth pony, a collection of small fish shooting out of his finger before disappearing when they hit the floor. “I assume you are the party planner here?”         The pony nodded and a manic grin crossed George’s face. “I want you to dream up the best party that you can possibly imagine!” The party pony smiled widely and closed her eyes tight as she dreamt up the perfect party. “Could you lend me some Order magic for this Celestia? I’d rather the cakes didn’t explode from my Chaos. Unless Pinkie dreams them up to, I mean.” The white alicorn nodded and her horn flashed a pure white. Sparks of the same color started to shoot from his fingertips just as the chaos magic had before. With a slight grimace of pain, the biped turned away from the alicorn and faced the pink earth pony whose mouth continued to expand in a grin. “You ready Pinkie Pie?” came the question as the man brought together two fingers on each of his hands once again. “Yup!” Pinkie shouted, barely containing her enthusiasm. Without a word, George slowly brought his hands over his head once again as his legs began to shake from some invisible weight. This time, as he brought his fingers down into a snap, the sound was not that of a tearing cloth, but rather that of chimes. A flash once more issued from the cast of the spell and when everypony could see again, they were able to witness the immense party that had been set up around them. “Wow, that was amazing!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, managing to take her eyes away from the perfect party to see the biped laying on the ground with his hat covering his face. “You okay Georgie?” the party pony inquired as she bounced up to the man. “He merely overexerted himself is all. I give you my word that he will be just fine,” Entropy said as he looked to the mare. “He does, however, wish for you and your friends to enjoy the party to its best.” “Oh, tell him thank you for me,” The pink pony said with a grin. “The very moment he awakens, I shall,” Entropy responded as the man lay still underneath his brim. The pink pony bounced happily away to join her friends in the party of her dreams, leaving behind the man and his talking headgear. After she was gone, a muffled voice issued from underneath the leather cap. “Are they having fun?” “Ah, you’re awake. Pinkie Pie would like you to know that she is very thankful for this act of yours,” the hat said. “But to answer your question,” Entropy paused for a moment, looking around the room at all the ponies who were quickly joining in on the party activities, some going outside to find that the entire castle had been decorated for the party, and that a large gathering of ponies outside the castle had taken to the punch bowls at the entrance as well. “Yes, I think they find it just wonderful George. That was quite selfless of you to do.” “Indeed it was,” came the refined voice of Celetia. The man shot up from his laying position, his hat somehow orienting itself to move onto the top of his head as he rose, and found a table placed in front of him. “Would you be up for some tea, George? You said so yourself, it has been quite a while.” George smiled and snapped his fingers, only to have a frog appear on his face. He grabbed the amphibian and placed it to the side of him as embarrassment covered his features. With a shake of his head, the man reached inside his coat and retrieved the small blue teacup once again and handed to Luna. She grasped it with her magic and placed it on the table in front of her. Celestia placed her own white cup on the table as well. Meanwhile, George reached into his coat once more, withdrawing two odd cups. One was a light blue color, while the other was shifting through the entire visible light spectrum erratically. George placed both teacups on his own side of the table and waited for Celestia to fill them up. As the heat of the tea filled his own cup, the color shifted to a steady red color and the biped smiled sadly to himself as he looked at the abandoned cup that sat to his side. A silent second passed before he shook his gaze from the cup and looked once more to the alicorns that sat opposite him on the table. The group enjoyed a few sips of their tea in silence before Luna spoke up. “How hast thou been these past two thousand years?” “I’ve been good, made friends with a piece of headwear. You know, the usual stuff,” George said nonchalantly as he took a drink of his tea. The taste of chocolate milk spread through his mouth and George grinned. “That was quite rude of you. You never even introduced me to the princess and now your just pacing me off like some rubbish you found on the sidewalk? Hardly proper. If you are going to talk about me at least talk about me like I’m here,” Entropy said from his position atop George’s head. Luna blinked a few times in bemusement before she passed off the shock of the talking hat as being just the kind of thing that George would end up with. “Well, if you’re gonna be so rude about it, then you can tell the story of how we met while I sip tea,” George said in response. “And Luna, this is Entropy, my talking hat.” “It is nice to meetest thee, Entropy,” Luna said as she bobbed her head to the hat. “The pleasure is all mine, Princess,” the hat responded, attempting a bow as it did so.         After an appropriate period of silence, Celestia spoke up. “Now that we are all acquainted, I think that we should hear this story of how you and George met up. You don’t really see a talking hat every day.”         “Indeed,” the hat agreed before pausing, “Well, it all started about one hundred years ago, I suppose. I was quite a curious unicorn stallion and I remember there was a rumor of a witch haunting the forest to the north of my small town. Being the stubborn male that I was, I decided that I could kick that witch right out of the forest and away from our town.         “Little did I know, she was quite a bit stronger than the rumors said, and I soon found myself outmatched by her magical skill. She could have killed me easily, but instead, she opted for a better punishment. She trapped my soul inside of a hat and tossed me away into the forest. The surface of the hat formed into this wicked display of a face that you see now, but I was completely motionless. “It was about ten years later that the strangest creature I had ever seen came waltzing right through the forest. And I mean, he was literally waltzing, dance and all, right through the middle of this haunted forest. The witch had lengthened her life through some dark magic and was still living there as well. “Well, just as I thought this odd biped would pass me by, he stopped and picked me up off the ground where I had more or less rested for the past decade. Upon contact, his eyes widened for a moment before his face fell into a scowl and he looked about the woods for something. After not seeing what he was looking for, he looked to me and flooded me with magic. It wasn’t the normal unicorn magic I was used to though, it was pure energy. “I gasped at the sudden flow of power before I realized I could talk. Before I could start blathering on about my new found freedom, he looked me in the eyes and, in what I can only describe as a quiet yell, he asked me where the unicorn was who cursed me so. “I described the lair of the witch and told him that it had been about a decade since I had been there. I was quite overcome when he started marching directly to the lair. I tried to warn him of her immense power, but he ignored me, telling me that he knew of her strength and that he had come to clear her out in the first place. “He continued on to the lair and soon found himself standing in front of the witch. She wheeled around to face the intruder and started to cast spells at him. This odd creature batted the magic to the side, like it was absolutely nothing. The witch was scared stiff of the power that this man held and began to back away from him. Much to my eternal regret, I remember shouting at him to kill her, that the world would be better without her on it. “He immediately removed the magic from me so I couldn’t talk anymore and approached the witch. I still remember what he said in the finest of details. He said ‘I have come to give you the chance to leave this place, no ill will. If you accept my offer, I expect you to leave and never practice dark magic again, because if you do, I will come back and you will die.’ “The witch was stunned before hurriedly leaving the lair. The man paused and placed me on a hat rack nearby before sitting down on one of the small chairs and looking at me. He said one simple phrase to me that day, one that I hold to my non-existent heart even now. ‘Death has never solved anything, and it never will.’ And then he left, just exited the lair and left me on that hat rack. “I thought he was so mad at me that he was just going to leave me there, and by the next morning, I had convinced myself that he had left me for good. So it was quite to my astonishment  when the door swung open and he stepped into the room. He grabbed me from the hat rack and placed me on his own head before walking out of the town. It wasn’t long after that, I learned he had put enough magic into me that I could talk. So I did the first thing that came to mind, I apologized. I said I was sorry for telling him to kill and voiced my fear of him leaving me behind. “He grinned a wicked grin then that put mine to shame and said ‘Leave you behind? Why would I do that? You're the coolest looking hat that I’ve ever seen. And you can talk to boot!’ and then he broke into a loud laugh that I slowly joined him in. He was quite insane, and I was quite the basket case myself, but at least neither of us were alone after that.” “Dang man, you make me sound like a hero. That was such a cheesy story.” “Well, if you weren’t so cheezy then perhaps the story wouldn’t have been as good,” Entropy countered before the quartet started laughing in good fun and sipped their tea. The party around them began to come to an end as the various ponies started to leave, but even then, the four old beings merely laughed in mutual understanding and let their worries slide away in good company.