//------------------------------//
// Mister Tickles' Day Out 
// Story: Tales of Canterlot Castle 
// by The Ponopticon 
//------------------------------//


-A Tale of Canterlot Castle-


-Mister Tickles’ Day Out-





Princess Luna was in her study again.  It was something of a joke amongst the serving staff that they would have to start calling it her bedroom since she slept there so often, typically passed out over a book.  This struck Luna as rather odd—surely, as the room in which her bed was found, her actual bedroom would still count as a “bed room” no matter where she slept.  She could understand possibly changing the name of the study to the “sleeping room,” but even that seemed inappropriate as she still used it primarily for reading and study, so…
Luna was interrupted in her pondering by a small but sustained creak.  She looked up from her copy of The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poeny, from which her mind had drifted in any case, and cast about for the source of the sound.  The big Prench doors leading from her study to a pleasant little balcony were propped open to let in the light evening breeze, but they were firmly secured and so could not have been the source of the creak.  The princess shifted her gaze across the room to the next most likely culprit, and indeed the interior door to the castle hallway had been left slightly ajar.  Even as Luna watched, the door moved almost imperceptibly in the breeze, emitting a quiet creak.
Hmm… The door was likely left open by one of the maids, most probably to allow for the better ventilation of a through-breeze, Luna thought.  She struck a triumphant pose.  Mystery solved!  Yet another successful case for C. Auguste Lupina!
Luna chuckled to herself.  “Mayhap I have been reading too much of Poeny’s detective stories,” she admitted ruefully.  “Dost thou think so, Mister Tickles?” the princess added as she turned to address her new pet.
Luna had found Mister Tickles wandering around in a dark corner of the castle earlier that week and had immediately taken the creature in.  She had always been somewhat jealous of her sister’s phoenix, Philomena, so it had become something of a habit of hers to bring home whatever animals she happened across; her long association with the bats that patrolled the skies around the castle at night had started with her caring for a lost, injured bat in this way, so despite Celestia’s occasional objections Luna considered it to be a good habit on the whole.
But when Luna turned to see Mister Tickles’ reaction she found his basket empty.  Her brow creased as the first hints of concern began to mar her otherwise good mood.
“Mister Tickles?  Art thou there?”
Luna looked all over her study, but there was no sign of her pet anywhere.  She glanced at the open balcony doors.
No, Mister Tickles knows better than to go outside without me, Luna thought.  Then her eyes widened, her irises narrowing to pinpricks, as a horrible idea occurred to her.
The door to the castle was left open…and nopony knows about Mister Tickles yet, not even Celestia, and Celestia HATES…
Luna shook her head roughly to clear her negative thoughts.
“No, I must not panic!” the princess declared aloud.  “I will find Mister Tickles before anything bad happens!  I shall just treat this as though it were one of Poeny’s detective stories and…”
Luna was interrupted by a shriek from the hallway.  Her ears perked up and she grinned.
“Aha!  A clue!”


OOO


Luna found the source of the scream, a young maid, in one of the corridors near her study.  The filly was visibly shaken; her eyes were still wide with fright and she had dropped the silver tea service she had been carrying.  Hot water and slightly dented teacups littered the floor around her—it was for precisely these types of emergencies that most of the royal tea sets had been commissioned to be durable and preferably metallic.  Luna had heard that the kitchens actually kept a silversmith on permanent retainer to pound the castle’s many teacups, saucers, and kettles back into shape.
“Which way did he go?” the princess asked the frightened filly.
The maid pointed a shaking hoof down the hall and Luna set off, her pace just short of a full gallop.  She paused for only the merest moment at a T-junction before she heard another scream nearby.  The alicorn raced towards it, finding another maid who was, if anything, in even worse condition than the first one.
“Which way?” Luna demanded, but was answered with nothing more than incoherent babbling and gesticulation.  Fortunately the princess was spared attempting to translate as a third shriek sounded from around the nearest corner and she once again took off at a run.
Rounding the corner, Luna had to pause for a second to take in the scene fully:  rather than another unfortunate maid, the only ponies in this particular section of corridor were a pair of Royal Guards, one of which was stamping his hooves in a mad little dance of sheer panic while the other looked on wryly.  Before Luna could even begin to hope that the sound hadn’t come from the panicking Guard he let out another shriek, even more high-pitched and effeminate than before.
“EEEEEEeeeEEEEeEEEEK!  GetitawaygetitawayGETITAWAY!”
Luna sighed.  “Just tell us which way he went.”
“‘He’, your Highness?” the still-coherent Guard asked, cocking an eyebrow questioningly.  When the princess simply continued staring irritably at him he cleared his throat.  “Ahem, I mean, ‘he’ went that way, Highness.”  The white pegasus thought for a moment before adding:  “And I’d just like to say that I’ve never met this stallion before in my life, your Majesty.”
Luna groaned, but suppressed her urge to chastise the two Guards and set off once again in pursuit of her escaped pet.  Behind her, she heard something that sounded suspiciously like a wing smacking the back side of a helmet and the calmer Guard’s voice saying “Come on, dude, you’re making us look bad.”
Ponies these days certainly seem rather more…high-strung than they were a thousand years ago, Luna thought with a sardonic smile as she ran.  There were no further screams to guide her this time, so the princess was running more or less blindly.  Mister Tickles must have finally decided to get out of sight—that’s either a good thing or very, very…
Luna’s thought process halted abruptly when she heard her sister’s voice from one of the many rooms lining the corridor.  Quickly identifying the room as Celestia’s solarium, Luna halted her forward momentum just as abruptly as her thoughts, her hooves skidding to a stop on the stone floor.
Oh, that would be the absolute WORST place he could go, she thought, chewing her lower lip with worry.  So with my luck, that will be exactly where he will be.
As Luna approached the partially-closed door to the solarium she could hear the duller sounds of other voices underneath the elder princess’s clear, melodious tones, and as the indigo alicorn nosed open the door she could see a small cluster of scribes and other bureaucrats surrounding her sister’s much larger form.  As Celestia dismissed the last of the hangers-on she looked up and her expression brightened as her eyes settled on Luna.
“Luna!  I wasn’t expecting to see you this early in the evening,” Celestia said, clearly cheered by her younger sister’s presence after a long day of dealing with the stresses and petty politicking involved in managing Equestria.  “I was just going to lower the sun in a half-hour or so—would you care to join me?”
“Oh, um, yes, of course, dear sister,” Luna replied distractedly as her eyes searched the solarium for any indication of her pet’s presence.  Celestia frowned slightly.
“Why Luna, is something wrong?  You seem worried about something.”
“What?  Me, worried?  No! No, everything is perfectly…” Luna began but stopped as a mare she recognised as the castle’s head maid silently approached Celestia and whispered something in the white alicorn’s ear before leaving just as silently as she had come.  The elder princess’s expression shifted to a delicate mix of exasperation, disappointment, and bemusement.
“Luna,” Celestia said flatly, “you’ve brought another of your strange ‘pets’ into the castle again, haven’t you?”
“Um, well, that is to say…”
Celestia sighed.  “What is it this time?  A rat?  Another snake?”
“I, uhh…” Luna offered lamely, but then something caught her attention and her mouth dropped open in shock.
“I tolerate the bats because they mostly keep to themselves and I understand that you use them to carry information—although they never once deigned to speak to me even during your, ahem, absence—but some of these creatures you bring home are downright dangerous, Luna.  Need I remind you of the cockatrice incident?”
But Luna was no longer listening; she was staring at a point several feet above Celestia with mute horror.
“It took almost a week to turn everypony back,” Celestia continued.  “It took the guards three whole days before they realised the gardener wasn’t just another part of the statuary, and… Luna, are you even paying attention?”
Suddenly, Luna leapt forward.  “Mister Tickles, NO!” she shouted.
“Who’s Mister Ti…?”
Celestia stopped as she felt something land on her back.  Time seemed to slow as she turned her head, Luna still in mid-leap trying desperately to prevent the inevitable.
And then Celestia was face to face with it.  It was the largest, hairiest spider she had ever seen, its body like two grapefruit stuck together, and it was sitting almost nonchalantly on her back.  It chittered cheerfully and rearranged its mandibles into something approaching a grin.  Celestia’s eyes widened, then glowed white.


OOO


The dull thump of the magical explosion could be heard as far away as Ponyville, and the resulting cloud of dust from the castle nearly obscured the setting sun.  Miles from Canterlot, a blue unicorn wearing a purple hat and cape stared with disbelief at the large chunk of familiar white marble that had crushed the garishly coloured cart she had been pulling.
“HOW DARE YOU ASSAULT THE GRREAT AND POWERFUL TRRRRIXIE IN THIS WAY!” the unicorn screeched, remembering to roll her ‘R’s dramatically even in her indignant rage.  She turned and shook a hoof menacingly in the direction of Canterlot Castle, just visible in the distance.  “CURSE YOU, CELESTIA!  YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS AFFRONT, SO-CALLED PRINCESS OF EQUESTRIA!”
Celestia hated spiders.


OOO


Princess Celestia’s laboured breathing was just beginning to slow down when Luna managed to pry herself out from under the rubble, Mister Tickles plastered across her face.  His eight beady little eyes somehow managed to spin dizzily.
“Um, Celestia?  Big sister?” Luna said hesitantly as she peeled her pet off and approached the still heaving older alicorn.
“Sp…spider…”
“Um…yes.”
“BIG spider!”
“Yes.”
“Mister Tickles is a big spider!” Celestia finally blurted, apparently capable of uttering full sentences again.
“I was going to tell thee about him, I swear!  Please, do not be angry with him!” Luna pleaded.  “Thou art not going to make me get rid of him, art thou?”
Celestia only stared at her younger sister, her eyes still twitching.
“Oh, please let me keep him, sister!” Luna nearly begged.  She held Mister Tickles up and the immense spider again gave Celestia a winning mandibular grin.  “How couldst thou say no to this cute little face?”
Celestia groaned and ran a hoof over her face.
“Fine, keep him,” she said grudgingly.  “But I don’t want to see the little monster anywhere around the castle without your supervision, understand?”
“Didst thou hear that, Mister Tickles?  Thou canst stay!  Huzzah!” Luna cried, picking up the spider in both front hooves and swinging him around gaily before setting him down on her head and moving to embrace Celestia.  “Oh, many, many, a thousand times many thanks, dear sister!”
“Wait, wait, Luna!” Celestia shouted in a panic.  “Don’t hug me!  Spider on your head!  Spider on your…!”


OOO


The blue unicorn tore her gaze from the second, smaller cloud of dust that had puffed from the side of Canterlot Castle and turned to stare dumbly at where her hat was lodged halfway through a nearby oak tree after it had been swept from her head by another piece of marble.  This piece had not been nearly as large as the first chunk was but it had been moving at a far more alarming velocity.  She turned stiffly back to the castle in the distance.
“THE MEEK AND HUMBLE TRIXIE APOLOGIZES FOR HER EARLIER THREATS!” the unicorn shouted, pointedly leaving out the rolled ‘R’s this time.  “LONG LIVE PRINCESS CELESTIA!”
And with that, she galloped off as fast as she could while dragging what was left of her pulverized cart.  She didn’t even stop to retrieve her hat.


-FIN-