//------------------------------// // Nightmare Fuel: THE KIDS WON'T GET IT! // Story: Two Best Sisters Play // by TheBoxfromMetalGearSolid //------------------------------// Celestia was bored. This wasn't just regular boredom, though. This was the kind of boredom you get when you sign up for a free vacation, only to find that you have to sit through an 8 hour timeshare presentation once you get there. Of course, no one reached a state of boredom such as this for no reason. 2 hours earlier... Her royal duties finished for the day, Celestia walked to her chambers, whistling happily the whole way. Tonight was the night she was finally going to introduce Luna to online gaming, and watch as her sister crumbled into a steaming heap of frustration and rage. But which game would it be? Would it be Call of Duty, with its copious lag compensation? Would it be Halo, with its bounty of MLG tryhards? Or perhaps she would confound her with the steep learning curve of Battlefield. So many options! In the end, however, it didn't matter. When the sun princess pressed the on button for her Xbox, she was greeted with the single most horrifying sight a console gamer can experience. The Red Ring of Death. Upon seeing this, the sun goddess panicked. She spent half an hour attempting to coax the machine back to life, doing everything from coddling it like a baby and whispering promises of friendship and hope into its USB ports, to screaming death threats at it. When nothing worked, Celestia eventually flew into a rage and tossed it out the window, watching it bounce off the castle walls until it finally smashed to pieces on the head of Discord's statue. Once she realised what she'd done, she ran into the bathroom and locked herself inside for an hour, weeping hysterically in the empty tub. Eventually, it dawned on her that she was crying in the tub for a piece of machinery. What would Luna say if she saw her now? She got up and made a half-flanked effort to clean herself up in the mirror. After a few failed attempts, she finally gave up and stormed into the hallway, putting in her current pitiful state. Present After stomping up and down the hall a few more times, Celestia couldn't take her mounting boredom any longer. She decided she would pay Luna a visit and take revenge for all the times she had dropped in unannounced. As she turned around, though, she was surprised to see Luna coming at her down the hallway with a big dumb grin plastered on her face. "Hey Tia! You look like a wreck. How's it going?" she asked all in one breath, getting uncomfortably close before coming to a stop. While she was standing there, Celestia thought she caught a glimpse of something hovering behind her, but when she tried to get a closer look Luna floated it further behind her back, hiding it. Dismissing her sister's weirdness, Celestia finally replied. "I'm fine." It was a blatant lie, and judging by the look on her sister's face, it didn't exactly fly. After a few seconds of awkward staring, the princess of the sun gave in. "Alright, I'm not fine. You got me," she said. "I just threw my Xbox out a window. Do you have any idea what that can do to a pony?! I doubt I'll ever be sane again!" At this point her entire face was going red, and she felt torn between breaking into tears again, or just going on a destructive rampage through the castle. Starting with Luna, of course. Luna barely seemed to notice. "Well, that's quite a shame, sis," she said noncommittally. Immediately after saying that, her face lit up. "Well as much as I love to hear about your personal issues, I have something much more important to talk about!" The goddess of the sun seemed intrigued. "Oh yeah? What's that?" Luna's already giant grin threatened to split her head in half. "I found a great new game that we absolutely must try!" Celestia glared at her like she had sprouted a second head. "Uh, didn't you just hear me?" she said bitterly. "I don't have an Xbox anymore. We can't play anything." Luna laughed. When her sister just sat there looking dumbfounded, she laughed harder. All she got in return was an angry frown. The lunar princess sighed. "It's a Nintendo 64 game, Tia," she said, watching the comprehension fill her sister's face. "Nintendo 64?" asked Celestia, unable to contain the enthusiasm in her voice. "Oh boy, what game?" Luna laughed in response. "It's a surprise, Tia!" Her sneakiness did nothing to dampen the solar princess's excitement. Suddenly, Celestia's face darkened as she realised just who exactly chose the game. "So, wait. This is a surprise that you picked out?" asked the sun princess. Luna nodded happily. the sun goddess didn't seem happy at the confirmation. She crossed her forelegs and put on a frown that would put Gilda to shame. "Great. Because you know so much about video games," she said, her voice dripping with irony. "I'm sure this will be absolutely wonderful." Her sister gaped, offended. "Look, Tia, just because I'm new to this whole 'video game' thing doesn't mean I'm some kind of idiot or something," she replied haughtily. When Celestia said nothing, she sighed. "Look, I promise that if it sucks, I'll personally buy you a new Xbox." The solar princess frowned for a little while longer, then reluctantly accepted Luna's offer. "On one condition: you have to take care of all my royal duties for a week so the Xbox and I can have some quality alone time." Luna's eye twitched when she heard Celestia refer to her Xbox like it was her child or something. However, seeing no alternative, she decided to roll with it and accept her sister's condition. Reaching a resolution, the two sisters walked into Celestia's room and made to sit on the couch. Celestia, however, walked past it and opened a mysterious door in the same room. As Luna watched, her sister slowly, almost reverently, reached into the surprisingly disorganised closet and pulled out a cardboard box labeled 'N64' in black marker. Celestia held the box carefully, as if it was some sort of ancient treasure, and carried it over to the TV. While she was unpacking the box and plugging everything into the correct slots, a wave of nostalgia washed over her, bringing tears to her eyes and a gag to Luna's throat. When she heard this, the sun goddess whipped around and stared daggers at her sister. "Don't you ever gag at my Nintendo 64 again!" she yelled, flailing her forelegs around in anger, accidentally knocking a lamp off of a nearby end table, and flinging Luna over the back of the sofa. After the initial shock, the moon goddess picked herself up off the floor and brushed herself off. "I don't see what the problem is. I was just mocking your sentimentality over a hunk of plastic," she said, sticking her nose in the air. This only served to enrage Celestia even further, and it took her a good few minutes before she could even form coherent thoughts. When she could finally speak again, she was incredibly quiet, giving a disturbing contrast to her earlier outburst. "You know what, Luna? Just because you were trapped on the moon for a thousand years doesn't mean society stopped at your fancy. This hunk of plastic was what I spent my time on when I wasn't busy doing both my duties and yours while you were gone." Flabbergasted, Luna had nothing to say to that, so instead walked back to her spot on the couch and quietly took her seat. Celestia immediately brightened up and put on a big smile. "Great! Now that that's dealt with, where is this 'amazing game' we absolutely 'must' try?" Luna realised she was still staring at her sister in fear, and quickly focused on the situation at hand. "Oh yes!" she replied, forcing some happiness back into her voice. "Why, I have it just here- huh?" As she reached for it with her magic, she felt something pushing up from beneath the couch's cushion. She yelled in surprise and jumped off the couch with speed that would impress even Rainbow Dash. After the initial panic passed, she realised that the game cartridge she had been carrying must have fallen between the cushions of the couch. She levitated it out and showed it to Celestia. "Here is the game, Tia!" she exclaimed proudly. When Celestia's expression went blank, she turned the thing around and found out that the sticker on the front had been ripped off, likely by her sister's outburst. Huffing, she walked over to the Nintendo and was immediately struck dumb. She had no idea how it worked, and even less of an idea of where to put the cartridge. The sun princess sighed, silently judging her. Watching Luna's confusion, she snatched the game out of her grasp and stuck it in the top of the machine with lightning precision only acquired from night after night of playing and swapping cartridges. After she turned it on, they walked back to the couch and picked up their controllers. As the opening screens played, Celestia felt a vague feeling of fear deep in her gut. The screens seemed incredibly familiar, and not in a good, nostalgic way. As she was overcome with a growing sense of dread, she stared at the screen, unable to comprehend what was happening. Licensed by Nintendo... Titus Presents... Oh mother of me! She stared in horror as Luna manipulated the menu and eventually brought up the message she had been dreading the most. "If you want to save your friends, solve my maze!" "Luna! What have you done?! Nooooooooooooooo!" Hours later, Celestia was still stuck on the exact same pointless, banal, nonsensical flying ring puzzle. For the entire time, Luna had been sitting there on her side of the couch, laughing at the multitude of pained, horrified expressions crossing her sister's face. After failing the ring challenge for what must have been the three hundredth time, the sun princess finally lost it. "Luna, I don't know what sick, twisted game you're playing at here, but I refuse to play another minute of this terrible piece of so called 'entertainment'!" she shouted, before pitching the controller at her sister and huddling up into the fetal position. At first, Luna did about as badly as Celestia, failing repeatedly before even passing through the first ring. However, to the goddess of the sun's mounting horror, she actually seemed to get better and better each time she failed. Eventually, the lunar princess successfully navigated the first level of this eldritch horror that could barely even be called a game. "Yes! I have finally beaten the rings, Tia!" As Celestia gaped, she watched as Luna used her new found talent of playing Lovecraftian creations to complete several more incredibly repetitive and evil ring mazes. Each victory made her jaw hang lower and lower, until she was sure she could feel it scraping against the floor. These victories eventually brought Luna to a rooftop with 4 identical creatures standing on it, wielding what Celestia could only assume were guns. They looked like a bunch of black rectangles holding smaller, grey rectangles. After watching her sister dispatch each of them with the exact same move, which was, for lack of a better word, a punch, she finally reached her breaking point. "Luna! How can you be enjoying this disgusting spawn of Cthulu?" she asked, with a frenzied look in her eyes. "This game has crushed more childhoods than all of Michael Bay's movies put together!" Luna simply laughed. "Why, Tia, i didn't know it was possible to have this much fun playing a video game." Celestia's eye twitched. "This is so much more fun than Portal!" Again the eye twitch. Finally Luna glanced over at her and saw her twitching and trembling, unable to even understand what she was hearing. Of course, Luna completely misinterpreted her sister's condition. "Tia, if you wanted a turn, all you had to do was ask. You don't have to stare at me as if you're going to rip my head off." Finally, the sun princess reached her final straw. "Luna. I want you to leave, and I want you to take that abomination out of my Nintendo," she said, almost too low for her sister to hear. The look in her eyes was enough to tell Luna that if she didn't leave, she was probably going to end up going on another one way trip to the moon. Slowly, the blue mare got up and floated the offending cartridge out of the machine. As she was about to teleport it over to her own room, Celestia suddenly grabbed it with her magic. While she watched, the sun goddess slowly levitated a hammer in from another room and held it over the cartridge. Once it arrived, she smashed the thing to pieces, savouring every moment as her scary grin grew with every hammer blow. Finally, she levitated the pieces over to a garbage pail and dropped them in one by one. By this point, Luna's ears were plastered against the side of her head, and Celestia could practically smell the fear pouring off her. After staring at each other for a few more minutes, Luna decided to get out while she was still alive and made a break for the door. As she was crossing the threshold, she once again heard her sister's voice. "Luna. If you ever allow anything like that to touch my Nintendo again, or even consider buying another copy, just remember one thing." The moon princess turned back, trembling on the spot. "O-oh yeah? What's t-that?" she asked shakily. Celestia gave her the most evil grin she had ever seen. "I will send you to the bloody moon." Her greatest fears confirmed, Luna ran off to her room at a full gallop and locked herself in for the night, not even allowing her trusted night guard in for inspection. After she left, Celestia sighed and started getting ready to sleep. As she brushed her teeth, she thought seriously about the laws regarding exile and torture of close family, as well as royalty. "That one of my family could even be caught dead enjoying that..." she grumbled, leaning down to spit in the sink. When she raised her head, she froze. in the mirror, she could see a pristine copy of the very same obscene monstrosity that had occupied the last few hours of her life. Quickly she spun around and was consumed by blackness. "SUPERMAN 64!" The princess screamed as she shot up out of bed, her heart racing. After a few calming breaths, she looked around and sighed with relief. "it was all just a dream. A horrible, terrifying dream." As she sank back into the comfort of her sheets, however, something caught her eye. In the corner, could it be? It was! A brand new Xbox! The solar princess gasped with delight and shot over to the box. On top was a note that read: Lots of love, from your sister. P.S. I hope you enjoy it! After reading the note, he picked up the box and hugged it tightly. "Oh, Xbox. You're the best friend a mare could ever ask for!" she exclaimed happily. Something was off, though. The box seemed a bit to light, and when she shook it, she swore she could hear things shaking around. In a panic, Celestia put the box down on the floor and ripped it open, praying that she hadn't damaged anything with her violent hugs. Once it was open, she slowly peered over the edge of the box. Her heart stopped. She had expected to be greeted with a sleek, new Xbox. She never asked for this. The box was filled to the brim with copies of Superman 64. Believing herself to be hallucinating, or perhaps still dreaming, Celestia dug into the box and started flinging the horrible things away in an attempt to find something else, anything else inside. Her mind shattered when she reached the bottom. Sitting there, just the way she had seen it last, were the shattered remains of her old, destroyed Xbox. Slowly, her hooves shaking, she picked the destroyed box up and turned it over. Pinned to the bottom was another note. Unlike the first, this note simply read: SUCK IT, SIS. That night, for the first time in Equestrian history, Princess Celestia, immortal master of the sun and co-ruler of all Equestria, had an aneurysm.