//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: A Glimmer of a chance // Story: The Equestrian Heavyweight Prankster Championship // by ThePinkedWonder //------------------------------// “You want my magic’s help?!” Starlight Glimmer asked, sitting on her bed in her room. Being asked to use her magic for once, she dropped a kite she held in her magic from shock. “Yeah! I hate to admit it, but I can’t match Discord’s–uh, the Stone’s pranks thanks to his magic. Your magic is my only hope!” “But I'm not even competing in your prank-off! Wouldn’t I fall under ‘outside help’?” “Sorta, but Twilight said that I have complete freedom in how I prank. As long as I come up with the prank, it won’t break any rules if you help with them.” “Oh. Still, did you forget about the magic ‘hangover’ I gave you a few months ago?” Starlight’s ears wilted and she slid her hoof in circles on her mattress. “I don’t want Twilight to yell at me if my magic makes a mess of things, again.” Odds-beater flew to the uncertain unicorn and wrapped a comforting foreleg around her neck. “No worries! For one thing, you won’t have to cast anything like mind-control spells.” “But–” “And two, even if things go wrong but nopony is hurt, even Twilight ‘Sourpony’ Sparkle can’t yell at or punish you thanks to prank-off rules! So no pressure, right?” “I gue–” “Cool, so let’s go and take down the Stone! I have a prank in mind that even he won’t be able to outdo, so the Equestrian Heavyweight Prankster Championship is as good as mine!” Starlight giggled, which leaked uncertainty. A cyan streak zipped across Ponyville, leaving small red balls by buildings, trees, bushes, and even under rocks large enough to fit them under. With all the balls set, the streak stopped beside Starlight, revealing none other than Odds-beater. Not that the streak’s identity was some grand mystery, but whatever. “Okay, that should be the last one. You ready?” Starlight answered with an unsure frown, “Sorta.” “Sorta?” “Sorta. I quadruple-checked the spell needed for your prank, but ever since I took Twilight's hoof in the past, nearly every time I think one of my spells won’t backfire, it does.” Starlight turned her head and looked at her Cutie Mark. “Sometimes I wonder how my Cutie Mark stealing spell didn’t backfire by making me lose my own Cutie Mark.”   “Even if it does go wrong, as I said, we’re protected from consequences. But how about this: if this prank doesn’t win the prank-off, I will give up and let the Stone be champion. Feel better?” “You’re going to pester me even if I say ‘no’, won’t you?" “Yep!” Odds-beater answered bluntly, yet cheerfully. “Fine. Let’s do it.” Starlight sighed in acquiescence. “I just hope I won’t hate myself in the morning.” “You won’t. Oh, before we start the fun, I better go find Twilight so she can see the prank in action–” “You don’t have to get me; I’m here,” Twilight said as she moped to Odds-beater and Starlight. Her frown and half-closed eyes oozed that of a mare who was just done. “Let’s get this over with and hope Ponyville doesn’t end up underground.” *Poof!* “I’m here too,” the Stone said, wearing a smug smirk, as the smoke from his “poof” faded. “Let’s see what prank ‘ol Odds-beater cooked up this time before I blow it away with mine.” “And, Twilight? For the record, I don’t want to do this, but Rainbow–uh, Odds-beater begged me to help with my magic.” “Wait,” Twilight spoke in alarm as her eyes enlarged, “you’re going to use magic to help with Odds-beater’s prank?” Starlight shrank away, pawing the ground with a forehoof. “Mayyyybe?” Twilight blinked twice. As if her sense of dread wasn’t already earning overtime pay. ‘I’m glad I warmed up my magic. I might have to save somepony with it soon.’ Starlight’s horn glowed turquoise; a stream of magic flooded out of it and floated throughout Ponyville. The hidden balls exploded all at once, unleashing waves of red paint that doused Twilight, Starlight, the two prank-off battlers, and the entirety of Ponyville in paint. Save for a cottage owned by a certain yellow pegasus that was intentionally spared. A few ponies caught in the paint storm started wondering if they might have been better off if Lord Tirek had defeated Princess Twilight and her friends. Most, however, just muttered strong words that ponies normally don’t speak, of the four-letter word variety. “Ha ha ha!” Rainbow raised her forelegs, admiring her impromptu makeover of Ponyville. “Beautiful! I literally painted the town red!” Stone said, “Okay, that’s cute, but I al–” “Hold it, buddy! It’s not finished yet. Give it one more minute.” After a minute passed, another explosion of paint covered everything in a second coat of paint. “What?!” Twilight exclaimed, wiping some paint off her head. “How did that happen?!” “Starlight’s spell happened! Unless she cancels it, paint will fly every minute, so that championship is mine! How could even the Stone one-up a prank that has the potential to never end?!” Blue bursts of paint erupted from the ground, whipping up a new storm of paint to attack Ponyville and any pony outside. Now everything/everypony found themselves coated in not just red paint, but dotted with blue paint. “Wait, that’s not part of my prank. What’s going on? Starlight?” “I don’t know.” Starlight laid a hoof on her cheek and looked down. “Even if my spell backfired, the paint shouldn’t be blue.” “Oh, so you were going to make Ponyville into Paintville with an endless paint-powered prank too, huh?” the Stone said, then added in a softer, sincere tone, “Amazing. I might have underst–” Red and blue paint erupted, but with far more force than before, forcing the Stone and every pony to wobble on their hooves/feet and fall over. Fissures branched out in the ground. Windows cracked. All of Ponyville sank into the ground by about an average building's height. Luckily, nopony around seemed to be hurt. At least, not yet. “Uh-oh. I must have added too much paint underground,” the Stone said as he stood up and surveyed the area. “And something must have gone wrong with my half of this mess,” Odds-beater said while remaining on her stomach, her lips falling into a frown. “I think this has gotten out of hoof.” “You think?!” Twilight sprung to her hooves and glared at Odds-beater and Stone. “See what you just did to Ponyville?! This is why I was such a ‘sourpony’ about this ridiculous prank-off!” She let out a blaring, pent-up yell that even Canterlot heard. With her princess mode activated, Princess Twilight bellowed, “You know what?! I don’t care if I'm forbidden from stopping prank-offs or from yelling at you due to a prank, because I have had enough! I'm not done with you two, but this prank-off is ov–” A distant feminine scream echoed through the air. “Hold on to your rant, Twi. Was that Fluttershy screaming?!” Odds-beater asked as she pushed herself to her hooves and stared in the direction of the scream. “I think so!” Twilight answered. “We better go to her! I can finish yelling at you once I know she’s okay!” The Stone snapped his claw. He, Twilight, Starlight, and Odds-beater vanished in a poof. The quartet popped in front of Fluttershy's cottage. Said cottage was covered in a mix of red and blue paint. Fluttershy sat near Angel; the latter was lying on the ground while clutching his ankle. Rainbow gazed at the unexpectedly painted cottage. “I don't get it! This area should have been safe!” "You took the words out of my mouth!" the Stone chimed in as he also gazed at Fluttershy's cottage. "Maybe I should have snapped with my paw to set up my paint spell, not my claw." “You two can wonder what went wrong later!” Twilight flew to Fluttershy and asked, “Fluttershy, is everything all right?!” “I’m all right, but Angel’s not. He slipped on this paint that just came out of nowhere and hurt his ankle. Then, when the ground just fell, I think he hurt it even more.” She pointed at one of Angel’s ankles as Angel lifted his paws off it, revealing a huge, nasty red bump swelling from it. A blast of red and blue paint erupted right from under Angel. He flipped into the air, then fell and slammed on his back. In bunny speech, he moaned, “Ow.” Fluttershy growled and glared at Stone and Odds-beater. “May I ask who was responsible for this prank that injured my little bunny?” Starlight gulped, canceled her unlimited paint spell, and teleported away. Smart pony. Rainbow and Stone pointed at each other in unison. They would not dare say that the bunny probably had this coming to him. Instead, they shouted something that might have been the best, and yet the worst thing they could have said. “It was his prank!” “It was her prank!” Fluttershy's eyelids lowered in a deadpan fashion. “Really?” Odds-beater answered, “Okay, it’s both our pranks, but I think we learned that being the best in pranks or winning championships isn’t important.” “And that even I should be much, much, much more careful to make sure others don’t get hurt in pranks. Even back in the old days, I didn't like hurting ponies! I just liked picking on them!” Another blast of paint, this time just blue, knocked Angel upward and onto his butt. The Stone snapped his paw and canceled his version of the spell that nearly destroyed Ponyville. Probably too little, too late. ‘I guess I deserve this for the time I threw Fluttershy out of her own home,’ Angel thought. Being oblivious to Angel’s internal heel realization, but not oblivious to her anger, Fluttershy gritted her teeth and scowled. Her eyes turned green. The pegasus’s inner Hulk ordered her gentler Bruce Banner-type side to sit this one out. With the prank-off consequences clause null and void due to Angel’s injury, Flutterhulk was free to show who is the strongest there is, and deliver some SMASHING “consequences.” “Can we at least have a three-second head start?” Odds-beater timidly asked. “You may have five.” Odds-beater turned and flew off, with the Stone grabbing and holding on to her tail. After the allowed five seconds, Flutterhulk shot up into the sky. With vicious flaps of her wings, she launched herself toward the fleeing pegasus and draconequus. “Faster, Odds-beater! Faster! Didn’t you see her eyes turn green?!” “I’m going as fast as I can!” “Then go faster! She’s already gaining on us!” “Since both their pranks resulted in Angel getting hurt, I will disqualify them and call this prank-off a draw.” Twilight watched the three fly away. She should consider stepping in, but part of her wanted to see what Fluttershy, in her rare Flutterhulk state, would do if the shrinking gap between her and her targets closed completely. Thus, the prank-off-hating alicorn chose to keep watching, for “science.” Angel also watched on with a proud smirk. ‘I love seeing this side of her go off, just not on me.’ “Hehe, Discord teased me about how I tend to forget about teleportation when I’m in danger, and now he forgets! But why does it feel like I’m forgetting something? Maybe reading a book can help–” The reason Twilight had sensed flashed in her head. During the earlier living room-swap prank, one of the ponies said books, as if they came from a library, were inside their house. If that was the case... “Oh, no.” Twilight’s ears and the corners of her lips drooped. “If Lyra found that book and showed it to others, I will never be looked at as an ‘innocent’ mare again! But on the bright side, at least that prank-off is over and Ponyville is still in one piece.” After witnessing – and flinching from – a certain…heated event between friends in the sky and took two of them away to recover, Twilight made her way to Lyra’s house to fetch her books. Getting her books back was higher on her priority list than cleaning up Ponyville and restoring it to its original sea level. However, while Lyra wasn’t around, Bon Bon was there to allow her to retrieve her books, as well as her portal since that got swapped too. The next day… “...and there!” Princess Twilight laid down her quill. She smiled proudly at a stroll holding her new law, lying in front of her on a table. “Once I make this an official law, prank-offs will be a thing of the past! Hehe!” “You sound like you’re in a good mood,” Starlight said as she walked into Twilight’s library. Her new black and white dress was reminiscent of a maid’s dress. “Better than ‘good’! Princess Celestia told me I have the authority to ban prank-offs, so that’s what I’m doing!” Twilight rolled up her law. “We were lucky things ultimately ended the worst for Rainbow and Discord, but I’m not taking any chances.” “And I’m glad Fluttershy isn’t still mad at them or me.” “Yeah, Fluttershy really isn’t one to hold grudges, so I knew she’d go on to forgive you all. I told her that you only helped with Rainbow’s prank because she begged you to, so she couldn’t get too mad at you.” “Hee hee. Still, I better keep my word to be Angel’s maid for three days as my apology to him.” Pinkie Pie hopped into the library, wearing a blue belt around her forehead. “Hey! Who won the Equestrian Heavyweight Prankster Championship? I want to challenge the winner for the title!” “Nopony did. Twilight disqualified Rainbow and Discord for violating the prank-off's injury clause when their pranks made Angel hurt his ankle.” “What?!” Pinkie asked, her eyes bulging. “You mean my day of secret training to be the next challenger was for nothing?!” Her head hung in disappointment. “Aww.” “Tell you what, Pinkie.” Twilight trotted to Pinkie with a supportive smile. “Since your prankster skills rival Rainbow’s but you usually showed restraint with pranks, I can name you the unofficial Equestrian Heavyweight Prankster Champion. You can even have the belt, if you don’t mind that I threw it in the trash. Just don’t tell anypony about this, okay?” Pinkie tapped her cheek, rolling her eyes in internal debate. “Well…I’d rather win my championships, but I’ll take what I can get. At least it would mean that my training didn’t go to waste.” Twilight victoriously raised Pinkie’s hoof. “Then I declare that you, Pinkamena Diane Pie, are the unofficial Equestrian Heavyweight Prankster Champion!” The new Champion hopped and squeed. She does that. She yanked out a podium out of nowhere – she also does that – set it in front of her, and said, “I would like to thank my friends, my sisters, especially Maud who helped train me over the last day, and–” “Sorry to interrupt your speech, Pinkie, but I want to ask Twilight something.” Starlight turned to Twilight, a smirk growing on her lips. “When will you finally tell me what Fluttershy did to Rainbow and Discord after I teleported away? It must have been bad if you thought them suffering further consequences would have been too cruel.”  “Uh, I-I’m running late, so I need to hurry and turn in my law. Bye!” Twilight dashed out of the library; Starlight chased from behind. “Come on, Twilight, stop hiding it! How bad was the carnage?! Tell meeeeeee!” “No! You’re too innocent!” “Me?! ‘Innocent?!’ I stole Cutie Marks and even accidentally destroyed Equestria before I took your hoof!” “I meant your current personality, not your actions prior to becoming my student! All you need to know is that Rainbow and Discord are in the hospital!” Partly thanks to seriously lucking out, things ended surprisingly okay for Ponyville’s ponies, save for one. The damage to Ponyville was mostly fixed and even its original elevation was restored, thanks to magic from the town’s friendly neighborhood alicorn and one of Equestria’s strongest unicorns. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view,  the one pony – and draconequus – whose things didn’t end okay for…hoo boy. Let’s just say that their blood-curdling screams would go on to be legendary. One hour after Twilight fled her castle, a special journal in her bedroom glowed. Words materialized on its pages. Dear Princess Twilight Could you come and do something about the Lyra from Equestria who’s over here? Even you–that is, the human version of you–is getting fed up with her questions about humans! How did she even find the portal anyway?! She was so happy to meet humans and even said it was her dream, I was going to stay quiet and let her stick around for a while, but she’s becoming too much.  Please hurry and get her out of here, before Rainbow finally punches her for asking one too many questions. Your friend, Sunset Shimmer.