//------------------------------// // 1916: Ich Spreche Kein Deutsch // Story: Two Best Sisters Play // by TheBoxfromMetalGearSolid //------------------------------// Celestia was ecstatic. But then, most ponies would be had their lifelong dreams finally come true. The princess of the day looked around in awe, her tongue lolling out, as she took in the incredible sights of a world tailored to her every desire. She laughed as she skipped through a marvelously beautiful meadow, stopping only to graze from the wonderful doughnut flowers. She cried out in joy as she swam through an ocean of pure flavour, doing backstrokes through a wave of indescribable sweetness, taking enormous mouthfuls as it washed over her head. She frolicked playfully through the herds of gummy bears, making sure to take the sick and the weak as her prey. Finally, after she had had her fill, she found a soft plateau of cotton candy and relaxed as she watched the permanent sunset in the distance. Just as she was drifting into a state of pure zen, she finally spotted it. It's grandiose bulk bore down on her from a nearby candy cane plain, almost blotting out half of the sky. What was it? It was the reason Celestia had created this world. It was the focus of all of her wild imaginings, and all of her most wonderful dreams. It was... the Cake. But, of course, it wan't just any cake. It was the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness (or the MMMM for short). Ever since the dessert competition in Canterlot, she had dreamed of the meringuey deliciousness that that evil, sugar obsessed pink pony had stolen right from under her nose. Since that day, she had spent many hours cooped up by herself, crying for her horrible loss. And now, here it was. A mountain of MMMM all to herself. As she galloped towards her target, the solar princess noticed that the Cake seemed to grow larger and larger. When she was but a few dozen metres away, the thing was practically a mountain, and blotted out the sun. When she finally reached it, Celestia threw herself on the MMMM with reckless abandon, wanting to take as much in on the first bite as equinely possible. She tossed her head back with tears in her eyes. The moment had finally come! Laughing, she plunged her face into the Cake... ... just as she heard a yell from her living room. The goddess of the sun sighed and opened her eyes. It seemed as though her sister had a magical ability to loudly make herself known any time Celestia started to have fun. Ah, well, she thought, sighing. Doubting that she would get any more sleep until Luna left, Celestia decided to pay her sister a little visit... Luna's breath quickened as she made her way through the trenches, jumping every time she heard a distant artillery shell go off. She didn't know why she was here, and more importantly, she didn't know how to get out. She'd been wandering through the grimy dugout for what seemed like hours, but could easily have been minutes. Several times she thought she'd caught a glimpse of something around one of the corners in the trench, but every time it slipped away just before she could make it out. What she had found, and in abundant numbers, were bodies. The muddy ground in the earthwork was quite literally lined with faceless, immobile corpses, which surprisingly did nothing to impede her progress. Once, she had reached down to see if one of them was still alive, but was disappointed to find that it most certainly was not. In fact, the moment she touched the body, it's skin practically disintegrated in her hooves, leaving her to recoil in disgust when she came back holding it's arm. After that initial adventure, Luna managed to ignore the multitude of carcasses lying along her path by staring steadfastly at the end of the trench. After a few more minutes of this, she caught another glimpse of a flash of silver around the corner. Having nothing better to do, she decided to follow the thing, fully expecting her efforts to end up in failure, just like the last however many times. As she approached the corner, though, she could feel that this time, something was different. Her suspicions were proved right when she heard a noise like breathing that seemed to come from around the bend. In preparation, Luna took a few deep breaths before jumping around the corner, ready to meet her fate. Except there wasn't anything there. Luna breathed a sigh of relief and let herself relax. Just as she did, though, she froze. Although the dugout seemed to be empty, she could still here the breathing. Only now, it sounded like it was coming from behind her. Before she could react, Luna felt a hoof land on her shoulder. Immediately, she launched backwards, away from the computer screen, and, once she regained her senses, found that she had collided with something tall, formerly white, and incredibly unimpressed. "AAAUUUGH!" Celestia screamed, as Luna launched away from the computer and slammed directly into the her hoof, which happened to be holding an unfortunately full mug of coffee, which was, of course, predictably hot. Surprisingly, the pain wore off just before Luna recovered her senses, allowing Celestia to get in a few extra seconds of glaring before she got up. "As I was trying to say, what are you doing on my computer again?" she asked, once that feat was finally accomplished. "Some of us actually have things to do that don't take place at ONE O' CLOCK IN THE BLOODY MORNING!" Ignoring her sister's fury, the moon goddess put on one of her patented oblivious grins. "Oh, hey sis!" she said happily. "I was just playing this pretty freaky game about trenches and stuff! At least, I think it was trenches. I don't know, all the text was in German." Seeing it was getting her nowhere, Celestia reluctantly stopped glaring at her sister. "So, what, you were downloading a bunch of German shareware onto my hard drive?" she said sarcastically, not expecting a response. Always one to disappoint, Luna responded. "Well, it's not a bunch. It's just one game. And I'm pretty sure it's in browser." Suddenly, the lunar princess grin doubled in size. "You should try it out! It's already loaded up and ready to go, and I couldn't really get past the first obstacle. You could show me your legendary gaming skills!" she said, without a trace of irony. The chance to show up her sister finally put Celestia over the edge. With a sigh of resignation, she sat herself down in front of the computer and grabbed the mouse. Turning around, she was slightly alarmed to see Luna sitting there snickering. "Hey, didn't you say this game was super freaky or something?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. Luna shoved her hoof in her mouth to stop another wave of snickering before answering. "Yeah, it's totally super scary. Trust me." Suspicious, Celestia slowly turned back to face the monitor. Just like Luna had said, all of the text in the game was German, and judging solely by the menu it looked at least partly scary. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that there was some kind of joke here that she didn't get or something. Shrugging, she clicked the start button. She was greeted with a visual implosion of grey-scales and bloom effects, along with what sounded like a distant artillery battle. After she took a few steps, the claustrophobic trenches started to feel a little too tight. As she rounded the corner, she saw that the next fifty metres of the dugout was absolutely covered in dead bodies. With no room to maneuver, Celestia hesitantly stepped over the bodies. After a few steps, she looked down, only to see her character's hoof raise up as her gaze passed over on of the corpses. Confused, she held a key, causing the hoof to lower. However, a few seconds later, the hoof came back up. Only this time, it was holding another, disembodied, hoof of it's very own. Celestia laughed. "Watch out! We got Hoofception! Oh man, where's Leonardo DiColtrio when you need him?" Behind her, Luna finally burst out laughing. "Don't get too many layers in!" she shouted between breaths. "You won't be able to let go!" Celestia's laughing was cut short, however, when she looked back at the screen and saw something flash around the corner of the trench. Slowly, she walked down to the end of the trench and looked around the corner. When she saw nothing, she kept going, getting tenser and tenser by the second. Finally, she reached a fork in the path. Before she could choose a direction, however, something enormous came barreling out of the trench on the right. As her character was ripped apart by the giant creature, Celestia blankly turned to her sister, who had both hooves stuffed inside her mouth to muffle her laughter. "Luna," she said quietly. "Was that a dinosaur?" Luna took a few heaving breaths to calm herself down before replying. "Eeyup." Celestia sat there for a few more seconds before a huge dumb grin grew on her face, matching her sister's. "That is, quite possibly, the most hilarious attempt at horror I've ever seen in my life!" she guffawed, almost knocking over the mostly empty mug of coffee she had completely forgot about in her laugh throes. Once the two princesses had finally calmed down, Celestia turned back to the game. After a few more tries, she discovered that if you threw one of the disembodied hooves at the dinosaur, it would leave you alone for a couple seconds. Using this bit of knowledge, she managed to get lost in the trenches and die in poisonous gas far more impressively and skillfully than Luna ever could have. A few seconds later, Luna piped up behind her. "You know, you always call me out on my suckage." Celestia looked away from the computer and stared at her. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, upset that someone could ever doubt her awesome skills as a gamer. "Oh, you know, nothing," replied Luna, suddenly finding something interesting to examine on the ceiling. "What? You think you could do better than me?" She laughed sarcastically. "I'd like to see you try to make it through that poison gas!" With that, she got up from her seat and dragged an unresistant Luna over to the controls. The moon princess sighed. "All I'm saying is that I'm not the one getting super flankhurt over some dumb game about velocirobots or whatever." After a few minutes of seemingly aimless wandering, Luna managed to stumble across a gas mask, and, for some reason, a bunch of flares lying on a table. To her right, Celestia gave a snort. "Yeah, whatever. I could have found those eventually," she grumbled, crossing her forelegs. Hiding a smirk, Luna made a quick getaway from a couple raptors and made her way to a trench full of mustard gas. Smiling innocently, she looked up at her sister as her character pulled on the gas mask. She laughed when she saw the look on Celestia's face. It reminded her of some sort of mixture between an awed gape and a furious scowl. It came out looking like she was in urgent need of a toilet. Her ego assuaged, Luna ran through the rest of the trench and found what she was looking for. The ladder out of the trench and into the less desirable, rage-inducing side of Celestia's heart. When the camera took control, she backed away from the controls and looked at her sister, letting the smug grin on her face do the talking for her. Celestia's eyes bulged as her brain tried to comprehend what had just happened. She opened her mouth to speak, but all she could get out was a few sputtering noises that sounded kind of like a dying raccoon. "Oh, by the way sis, you might want to take a shower. You smell like coffee," Luna would have said, had Celestia not teleported the coffee pot out from the kitchen and dumped it on her head, grinning like a maniac. As it were, the lunar goddess ran through the castle screaming, waking up the entire royal guard and most of the kitchen staff. That night, Celestia went to bed a very happy mare and dreamed a dream of sugary heaven. After a quick shower, of course. Please note: this is an actual game, dinosaurs and all. If you want to play it, check it out here.