Princesses Don't Potty
Chapter 6
By CDRW
Twilight didn't enjoy cooking per se. In truth, she was just as content to down a bowl of instant noodles as a plate of lasagna, and since instant noodles were infinitely more convenient, they usually won out unless Spike made something. However, if there was one thing she enjoyed, it was correctly doing whatever task was at hoof, and an early morning meeting where she sat down with two of her friends to hammer out plans for the most important research project she would ever undertake needed food that reflected the gravity of the situation. That's why she made omelets.
She was just putting the plates out on a card table she'd set up in the main room of the library when those very friends arrived at the front door. Pinkie Pie came in first, singing a catchy tune and pronking all over the place. Rainbow Dash walked in behind her with a thoroughly bemused look on her face. When Twilight caught her eye and shot a meaningful glance at Pinkie, she seemed at a loss for words. Dash opened her mouth, shook her head, and then finally said, "Pinkie says there's a doozy on the way."
The ice-odermic needle that stabbed right through Twilight's heart and pumped liquid nitrogen into her bloodstream was purely metaphorical. Said metaphorical liquid nitrogen, in addition to freezing her arteries and blood solid, vaporized as it took up her body heat, the over-pressurization sending shards of bloody ice tearing throughout the unfrozen parts of her body and causing metaphorical internal hemorrhaging on the verge of becoming massively metaphorical external hemorrhaging. All this happened so fast that the metaphorical air embolism and stroke never even had a chance to get off the ground.
"A-a doozy? What kind of doozy?"
"I don't know!" Pinkie Pie chirped from right behind her. "Ooh! Omelets!"
***
Princess Celestia sat her royal pink plot down on her throne in front of a room full of gawking ponies, wondering as she did so why it never occurred to her to take a sick day until just then. Now that she thought about it, she could have also just shaved her mane, tail, and coat right off. Naked was still better than pink, right?
As she gazed out over the crowd with well-hidden dismay, she noticed that there were even more ponies than usual this morning, no doubt due to prince Blueblood's hissy fit after she'd been thirteen minutes late bringing up the sun. What was he even doing up in the first place? Self-absorbed twats aren't supposed to be morning people!
In spite of, or perhaps because of her unfortunate condition, the throne room was as silent as a librarian's tomb. Celestia's guards were too well trained to react with anything but stoicism. The nobles didn't say a word because they were too busy trying to figure out what their princess's sudden change in style meant for the well-being, stability, and continued future of the fashion industry. The journalists were all in the middle of being tied up, beaten, and told they were bad little colts by their respective muses as they tried to come up with creative new ways to convey the concept of pink through the woefully inadequate medium of printed words. The photographers were smirking.
With the utmost of aplomb, Celestia cleared her throat. The only effect it had was to buy her a few seconds, because every single eye in the room was already gazing up at her with rapt attention, bursting at the seams with curiosity about what she was going to say. Would she explain her new look? Tell them why she had been late raising the sun? Conspicuously ignore those questions and proceed with business as usual?
As Celestia took in the silence, her path suddenly became clear to her. It was too late to save her own image, but she still had options. If she had to be a pretty pink pony princess for the puerile paparazzi and the prudish postulants packing the place, then she wasn't going to do it alone. For the first time in centuries, she simpered and batted her eyelashes, then she gave the sixth most quoted speech she would ever give in her long, long life.
"Don't you think my hair looks beautiful? My sister did it for me."
And thus, princess Celestia cheerfully threw her own sister beneath the wheels of the biggest, frilliest, and soon-to-be-pinkest bus in all of Equestria; the Canterlot Fashion Industry. The smile she gave for the cameras showed a few more teeth than usual.
***
"Okay," Twilight said after she was finally able to resume breathing. "This could be anything. Just because there's a doozy coming that doesn't mean that it's about this. Who knows? Maybe Fluttershy is about to find her very special somepony. That would be a doozy. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with us scooping princess Celestia's deepest, darkest secrets right out of her toilet." She shot a glare at Pinkie Pie, daring her friend to say something that would give her the last little push she needed to go over the edge.
To Twilight's great surprise, it didn't come. Instead, Pinkie Pie smiled and said, "That's the idea, Twilight! It could be anything! Maybe Rainbow Dash is the one who makes those yellow rainclouds. Or, I know! Maybe Macintosh doesn't actually like stallions! That would be a huge doozy!"
"I haven't wet the bed since I was fourteen!"
"There's no evidence that Macintosh is gay!"
"The Cakes aren't a lie!"
Twilight and Rainbow Dash both stared at Pinkie Pie, who shrugged and said, "I wanted to join in the fun too."
Twilight's right ear twitched in irritation. She really wanted to say something about that. She wasn't entirely sure what, but something. They had already wasted too much time as it was though, and the meeting was rapidly approaching complete derailment before they'd even begun. With a herculean effort of willpower, she wrestled her curiosity into line and said, "Okay. Some of us have said some things here that bring up a few questions, but right now we have more pressing issues to deal with. What do you say we just let it all go and start planning?"
"Okie-dokie!" Pinkie said around a mouthful of omelet, having somehow sat down at the table and begun to eat without ever moving.
Rainbow Dash shuffled her feet and stretched her wings before sitting back down and poking at her omelet. "Yeah, let's do that."
"In that case," Twilight said as she magicked in a blackboard in from the other room. "I'm sure you're wondering why I asked you two specifically to help me." She grabbed a piece of chalk with her magic and wrote on the blackboard in big bold letters 'Operation Floodwaters', underscoring it with three horizontal lines. "It's because you're the best pranksters I know."
***
Fluttershy sat on the opposite end of the couch from princess Luna, wondering what to do next as the conversation drowned a slow, glubbing death. The sun was just barely coming up outside, but it was still too early to do any of her chores, and she had at least an hour before any good reason to excuse herself would crop up.
"Thank you for hiding me, Fluttershy," Luna said for the third time in the last five minutes. "It means a great deal that you would risk my sister's wrath for my sake."
Fluttershy didn't leave off staring intently at her hooves as she tried not to imagine an angry Celestia and replied, "Um, you're welcome, I guess."
The level of awkwardness was approaching critical mass before Luna cleared her throat and made another attempt at conversation. "So, what exactly is your job in Ponyville? Forgive me if it should be clear, but I haven't been able to discern what it is that you do."
"Oh..." Fluttershy shrunk down into her couch cushion. In all honesty, she would have preferred the awkward silence over that question.
"I... don't really have a job. Not a steady one at least. I keep some animals so that if anypony wants to buy a pet they can get one from me, and I have a part time position helping out at the veterinary clinic with the more stubborn or dangerous animals. Sometimes I help Rarity with her projects when they get too big for one pony to handle, and I conduct the bird choir at special events in town."
Fluttershy rubbed her leg self consciously. "So yeah, I don't really have a real job."
Even to her ears, that sounded pathetic, but Luna was looking at her, so she cast around for anything else she could add. "I did some modeling for a little bit too, but I stopped because I didn't like it."
She cringed, waiting for princess Luna to start laughing, or for the awkward silence to come back even worse than before.
"That is wonderful!"
Fluttershy flinched and told herself it was oka—
"Wait, what?" she asked, startled enough to look up at Luna, who was smiling broadly at her.
"To do all that, and I am sure that you left a great deal out, is an exceedingly admirable accomplishment."
"I... don't understand." Fluttershy ventured. "Most ponies don't th—"
"Most ponies," Luna cut her off. "Go into a profession related to their cutie-mark, is that not so?"
Fluttershy wasn't entirely sure where this was going, but she was starting to get nervous. "Umm, Yes? I guess? That's sort of what I do, but it's a little harder because my special talent isn't really the kind that makes a lot of money."
Princess Luna paused for half a second before she got up off the couch and whirled to face her. "That is no shameful thing, for a pony's special talent is sacred. This generation has become soft though. That is all that most ponies do now. They get a job related to their one talent, collect their pay, and then buy whatever else they want to make their life comfortable. A pony is more than just her cutie mark though, more than a specialist who only has one thing to offer to the world. If your special talent doesn't lend itself easily to one job then that is all the better, for it motivates you to do more with yourself than you would have otherwise."
Fluttershy watched in amazement and a little apprehension at the change that had come over the princess. Uncomfortable memories of Nightmare Night and the other night when Luna had gotten tipsy started bubbling up.
Luna paced back and forth, flexing her wings in and out, and occasionally waving her right hoof in the air. Her voice grew more and more passionate as she continued her speech. "A pony should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, keep a garden, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, create a fair tax code, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly." Luna punctuated her final sentence with a stomp of her hoof. "Specialization is for insects!"
Fluttershy would have responded to Luna's speech with a nice, soft "yay", but she was too busy hiding under the couch.
"Oh," Luna said, folding her wings to her sides with an embarrassed look on her face. "Too loud?"
***
Rainbow Dash put her fork down and stared at Twilight, who was busy writing something on the chalkboard underneath the heading. "Wait a second. You want to prank princess Celestia? Who are you and what have you done with Twilight?"
"What? No!" Twilight yelped, dropping her piece of chalk. "I... Well... No! That's the opposite of what I want to do. If princess Celestia actually finds out about this..."
The unicorn shuddered at the thought before gathering herself and continuing on.
"This research is likely to require stealth, creativity, misdirection, and the ability to set up a precise sequence of events without arousing suspicion. Since none of my friends are professional spies..." She gave them both a long look, which they returned with wide, innocent eyes. "Experienced pranksters are my best source of advice. You have, between the two of you, thousands of hours of experience planning and executing stuff just like this, albeit normally on a smaller scale."
Rainbow Dash looked at her skeptically, and even Pinkie Pie paused shoveling food down her throat to give Twilight a concerned look. "Are you sure you've thought this through?"
Twilight stomped her hoof. "Of course I have! Or, I will. That's what we're here for! It's really simple, actually. You can't prove a negative, and while you can establish reasonable doubt of a negative through prolonged observation, that would take entirely too much time and effort when we can simply take the opposite course and test for a positive result."
"Huh?"
Twilight massaged her forehead before picking up her chalk and finishing what she'd started. "Step One: Make princess Celestia use the toilet under controlled conditions."
Rainbow Dash's wings popped open as she finally understood. "Oh! Why didn't you say so? That's easy, you just put eyedrops in her tea."
"Actually," Pinkie Pie broke in. "Eyedrops are a big no-no. They don't work, and if you use too much it can make them sick."
"Oh. I didn't know that." Dash frowned, watching as Twilight carefully began to write something underneath Step One.
"Glad to see you're already coming up with ideas though," Twilight said. "However, Step One is just the preparation work. I'm going to need both of you to bring your A game for Step Two."
Twilight put down her chalk and stepped aside to reveal the second thing she'd written. "Step Two: Prove that princess Celestia used the toilet."
Leaning over, Pinkie Pie whispered into Rainbow Dash's ear, "Let's stay away from anything that would make the princess go number two. I don’t think Twilight can handle another doozy."