Viva la Princesa Pinkie Pie!
By A Random Guy
Twilight Sparkle wasn’t the kind of pony to have traveling on the forefront of her mind. She did get excited over visiting new places as much as the next pony, but those trips were usually arranged by her friends, or by disasters of comical proportions, and where always set somewhere in Equestria.
Visiting places outside of the nation of Equestria was an idea she partook in solely with her books. She would enjoy a good story of the adventures of some world traveler, then share the book with her friends if it was decent enough. If a foreign place entranced her enough, she would incorporate it with whatever she was studying, such as studying the geology of Zebrica or investigating the environmental symbiosis of Seaponies. Being an herbivore, studying the science of cooking and a few adventures in the Griffon Kingdom in the same week wasn’t pleasing for her stomach.
After reading about the adventures of Rocinante, she had been entranced with Bronxican literature, even if some was poorly translated. Following that, she asked Celestia for access to family records of different countries, specifically for Bronxico. Celestia had abided, but warned that the Bronxicans had a very long history, and reading though the family lineages would not be a lighthearted task.
Spike was learning just how massive its family history was. He could tell you that it was at least a half a metric ton in scrolls. He estimated that each batch of scrolls sent through him had about ten pounds to a stack. He also estimated that he ran up and down the stairs around a hundred times to bring each stack downstairs. Spike felt like Celestia was going to send the second half of the metric ton soon.
Twilight was also learning about the sizes of foreign families, but based measurements on content instead of mass. Several scrolls flew around Twilight in a swarm. A purple glow shone on her face as pages passed by her eyes. Her mind was forming mental connections between the walls of written names soaring around. A vision of branches of pony families formed. The branches merged with twigs as families married into each other and common links between ancestors were found. There were the occasional twigs that would reconnect with themselves, indicating some ponies really liked their siblings.
As she spun the web of surnames and descendants in her head, Twilight wondered what else could be intertwined with all of these branches. Specifically, how broad were the standards of royalty?
“Spike, where’s the scroll for the Bronxican Royal Family lineage? It’s the white scroll with their flag seal.”
Spike looked around as he finished handling the latest ten pound stack of scrolls. “I think that was in pile #56. It’s by the olives I left out.”
Twilight reached out with her magic to retrieve the scroll. But her magic dropped as she turned her gaze to the library’s horsehead centerpiece table, where a bowl of green olives was placed for the convenience of those who liked olives, which was Spike for the most part.
“Could you get it for me? I really don’t want to go near those nasty little things.” Her gaze didn’t waver from the menace that filled the bowl to the brim.
Spike looked at what Twilight was referring to, and looked back to raise an eyebrow at her flatly. “The olives? Seriously? You hate them so much that you can’t even go near them?”
“It’s just they look too much like eyes. They stare at me knowing that I’m going to eat them, but I can’t with their little creepy stares looking at me!”
“Fine, I’ll get the scroll for you.” His eyes rolled as he went to do what Twilight wouldn’t.
He plucked a stylized scroll from the top of a ten pound stack. As he returned to pass on the scroll, Spike waved his hand in front of the bowl of olives. His feeble attempt of provoking them, however, didn’t elicit a response from the fruits. When they failed to show signs of sentience, all Spike could do was shrug and continue on.
“Thanks, Spike.” Twilight’s magic took the scroll from the little dragon’s hands and opened it to reveal its contents. “Let’s see. This family tree starts with Pastel Corta de Fresa, the first Bronxican queen, descending from the Establia Royal Family line. She gave birth to Limon Pastel, the next in line…” Twilight skimmed down the parchment, occasionally making a remark how a current day lineage related to a name in the middle of the paper. Spike tried reading over Twilight’s shoulder as she went down the list, but he couldn’t make out the language on the paper.
“… That leads us to Pastel de Carne, the last king before the revolt sixty years ago.”
“There was a revolt?”
“Yes. The entire continent was in revolt. All the countries in the region overthrew their rulers. Most are still in turmoil with corrupt governments. Bronxico was one of the lucky ones. They somewhat stabilized after they elected a president.”
“Why didn’t Equestria help any them?”
“We did, or so the public was told. There was an agency that instilled dictators for their own purposes. They did all sorts of horrible things just to hold power, like bribery, assassinations, brainwashing even. I’ll tell you more about it later. But now, back on track.”
Twilight continued commentating on the manuscript. “The line continues with Pastel Helado, who took the presidency for three terms. She had a daughter named Uva Pastel, who’s the current president.”
“A family ruling a country even after the king is gone. I’d say they’re a new breed of pony that feeds off of political power.”
“There are stranger things in this world.” Twilight’s eyes read back up through the scroll. “The lineage branches off from Pastel de Carne. His daughter, Piedra Pastel, moved to Equestria. She had kids here, named…” Twilight’s eyes went wide as they looked at a particular word. “Well that’s interesting.”
“What?” Spike jumped behind Twilight to try to see what she was talking about. “Is it somepony famous?”
“No.” She blinked several times, scrunched up her face, and shoved her nose against the parchment just to make sure the ink wasn’t smudged, although she may have been doing some smudging of her own.
“Piedra Pastel’s daughter… is Pinkie Pie.”
Spike’s jaw made an unhinging sound before metaphorically dropping to the ground. “What? No way! Pinkie is a princess?”
“I’m actually a queen!” The olive bowl, which had mysteriously ended up between Twilight and Spike during their conversation, gave birth to the pink pony Pinkie Pie with an explosion of green olives. “Queen of Parties, that is! I thought I told you that before.”
Twilight froze as olives rained down upon her. Every olive that splatted on her coat enticed a shrill squeak from the regal alicorn princes.
Pinkie gave an inquisitive look at her unicorn friend’s suffering. “She hasn’t recovered from the Griffon cookbook thing, has she?”
Spike tossed an olive into his mouth as he watched a spectacle that even he thought was overly quirky for Twilight. “She still has the nightmares about the spleen. So, you’re Bronxican royalty?”
“Sí, señor. Mi prima es la reya verdad de Bronxíco, si Bronxíco tiene reyes y reyas. ¡Maldiga la democracia!” Pinkie Pie rearranged her hair into a pink fluffy crown and took a heroic pose in the olive bowl. “¡Viva la reya!”
“Eh, what?”
Pinkie slumped back into the bowl; the hair crown popped back into conformation with her other fluffy locks. “I’m technically royalty, but my mama cut us off from that part of the family. She says there are too many plots and coups to raise children properly. Or maybe it was about too many ponies checking if you didn’t do your taxes. I don’t remember.”
Spike contemplated how he could use his friend’s title of royalty to his advantage. The thought crossed his mind of how the ladies love a guy in a suit of armor, and how knights were guys who wore suits of armor. He didn’t need to swoon all the ladies with armor, just one in particular. “So, can you knight ponies? Or maybe knight a dragon?”
“Sure! I just need an innuendo or a sword like thing to swing around and you’ll be un caballero de Bronxíco!”
“Cool, let me go get the broom.”
With Spike off on a quest to acquire the tools for knighthood, Pinkie directed her attention to the other member of royalty in the room. Twilight had calmed down considerably, but tensed up every time she tried to pull olive goop out of her mane with magic.
Twilight noticed that the room had gone awfully silent, and decided it needed to be rectified. She looked down at Pinkie, still in her bowl, and smiled. “So, Bronxican Queen of Parties?”
“Yep”
Twilight magically flicked a full olive from her hair. She felt shivers crawl up as the green olive stared at her for a brief moment, asking her to spare it from the inevitable doom of consumption, before splattering against the oakwood floor.
“You know, with two figures of authority living in Ponyville, tourism might double.”
“Silly Twilight, three more ponies aren’t going to come from hearing about me being a queen.”
“I got the broom!” Spike ran back into the room with the aforementioned objected clenched in his hand. “I don’t know if there’s anything else sword-like in the library, or ino-windows, whatever they are.”
“This will do. Let the ceremony begin!” Pinkie grabbed the broom from the little dragon. “It’s been a while since I did this, so I’ll need a refresher.” She swiveled the bowl towards Twilight. “Would you kindly kneel for the refresher?”
Twilight felt like questioning why a refresher was needed, but decided against it just to humor the two and their shenanigans. Twilight knelt before Pinkie, flaring out her wings and barely touching her horn against the base of the olive bowl.
“Twilight Sparkle, Alicorn Princess of Equestria” – Pinky tapped Twilight’s right shoulder with the broom handle – “By the power invested in me, I grant you the title of Knight of Bronxíco!” Pinkie raised the broomstick and tapped Twilight’s left shoulder.
“Viva la caballera.”
Twilight began to rise with grace. She knew she was just playing along with her friends, but she wanted to look the part of a newly knighted princess. She flapped her wings a bit for flare and raised her horn for th-
-WHACK-
Her world turned to black. Twilight hit the floor with a thud and her limbs sprawled out across the oakwood. A nice big broomstick mark was left across her forehead precisely where Pinkie whacked her.
Spike gave a horrified look. “What in Equestria was that?”
“That was a Bronxican knighting. It has a little more oomph to it than an Equestrian knighting.”
“That was completely uncalled for, Pinkie! What were you-“
“Now I knight you, Sir Spike!”
“Oh cr-“
-WHACK-
Spike found himself laying on the ground. The ground felt warm and cozy, and he felt sleepy. “Nighty night, ducky.” His vision went dark.
Pinkie twirled the broom above her in a nonchalant manner as she spun around in the olive bowl. Her friends looked so peaceful lying on the floor, unconscious and with possible concussions.
“You both should come see me give a Bronxican baptism. I’m great with the body cleansing.”
Twilight floated through an empty void. There was nothing to observe, yet she felt like she should be feeling something. She tried reaching out with her senses, but couldn’t find anything to grasp. Twilight just floated, only able to observe emptiness.
Then, out of the darkness, she heard trumpets.
It wasn’t the kind of trumpet that she heard all the time at royal ceremonies. They were playing too fast. They were playing a beat that one would dance to instead of opening a grand gala. The trumpets we accompanied by a wide range of instruments, from bongos to cowbells to maracas, accented by a piano, that all joined together to make a tropical sound.
Light soon joined the trumpets in the void as Twilight’s eyelids stretched apart. The light formed an archway in her vision, which seemed to be the gateway to more palpable sensations. Her nose filled to the brim with air that was tinged with the flavors of fruits that numbered by the thousands. She could taste a fruit salad with each breeze that came though the archway, yet only discern a fraction of what she tasted.
When Twilight’s vision finally cleared up, she saw that the archway was a gap in between the bricks of a stone wall. A cloudless sky shone through the window, and beamed across Twilights face. The trumpets’ tropical sounds poured through and engulfed her in energetic warmth.
She reached out with a hoof to try to feel the unfamiliar air, but all she could feel was cold hard restraint. She looked at her hoof to see that it didn’t even have the capability of reaching out. It was encased in a steel cuff, which was connected to the floor by links of chains.
Each of her hooves was cuffed to the floor, as well. She was pinned down against cold stonework. The warmth she felt before seemed to drain a bit. She tried pulling at the shackles, but didn’t do more than break the trumpets’ musical flow with an orchestra of clanking.
Feeling that struggling wouldn’t break her out anytime soon, Twilight decided the next best thing would suffice. “Hello! Anypony out there?” She couldn’t tell if she could be overheard over the trumpets. “I’m sure this was a great joke when you thought it out, but I’m not laughing, so let me out!”
In response to Twilight’s outcry, her vision was suddenly filled with a Cheshire smile and a rather pink face looking down at the unicorn.
“Bienvenido, Twilight!”
“Pinkie, thank Celestia, I was getting worried for a second. Can you let me go?”
“I can’t do that Twilight.”
“Pinkie, this isn’t funny. Let me go. I need to get stuff done.”
“Well, we need to do stuff here, so we have an itsy bit of a conflict of interests.”
Twilight looked around where she was, which was in a dinky stone room with one window to the outside world. “I’m sure here is a lovely spot to do… stuff. Where is here, exactly?”
“Why Twilight, couldn’t you tell?” Pinkie stood back on her hind legs and spread out her hoofs as if she was embracing the entire world. “We’re in El Catedral de el Cuidad de Bronxíco, the biggest Bronxican cathedral built in history!”
“Wait, we’re in Bronxico? How’d we get here?”
Pinkie went back to all-fours to give Twilight a face-full of her happy face. “We took the train, silly, straight to el ciudad! Ironically, it’s easier to smuggle bodies than cupcakes across the border.”
“And why did you chain me to the ground?”
“Uva felt like it was easier to talk to you like this.”
“Uva? As in Uva Pastel, the current president Uva?”
“¡Sí, y mi prima!”
“She could have invited me for tea or something instead of taking me hostage.”
“Don’t think of it as being a hostage. Think of it as the foundation for understanding a controversial topic.”
A lavender hoof pushed Pinkie’s head out of the way. It was replaced by a grape purple pony, smiling similar to Pinkie Pie, that was dressed to rule a country. “Welcome to mi nación modesto, Princesa Twilgiht Sparkle. How are you enjoying your stay?”
“You must be Uva Pastel.”
Uva gave a curtsy over Twilight. “Glad to make your acquaintance. Is there anything I can do to make you’re visit más placentero? Frutas o café? How about olives, do olives sound bueno?”
The previously fruity air turned sour as Twilight contemplated the taste of olives. “I would like to be unchained, if that wouldn’t be much trouble.”
“Venga, that’s an excellent request that, unfortunamente, I can’t fulfil.”
“And why not?”
“Isn’t it obvioso? I need you for an evil plot.”
“And what would that be?”
Uva’s smile twisted into a grin that only appears on the scheming type of ponies when they talk about evil plots. “It’s quite simple. You’re a pony in power. I need ponies in power. But alas, I only have so much coin to slip under la mesa.”
“Well, joke’s on you! I’m not going to take a bribe from kidnappers!”
“I wasn’t going to bribe you.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Why chiquita, you’re here to be…” Uva flung her forelegs into the air, but stopped in mid fling. She dropped her grin as her face scrunched up as she tried to figure a way past a language barrier.
“Head cleaning? No… Pinkie, ¿Cómo se dice ‘lavar el cerebro’? ¿No es head cleaning, sí?”
“Creo que hables sobre ‘brainwashing’.”
“Gracias.” She flung her arms back into the air as her face contorted for an evil laugh.
“Brainwashing!” Her cackle was punctuated by a crack of thunder outside in the clear sky.
“And what is this all for?”
“¡Aye, los equestriaños y su exposición! ¿Por qué hágalo? Pinkie, tell her!”
Pinkie’s face took back Twilight’s field of vision. “She’s planning to take over the world! It’s her birthright! Apparently…”
Uva pushed back Pinkie to retake her position over Twilight. “I had enough of these elections. Have you ever heard of a president ruling a world? Of course you haven’t! It’s always a king or a queen! And Bronxíco has the world’s first queen, right here, chiquita!”
Twilight thrashed at her, but the shackles restrained her against the ground. “You’ll fail, Uva! Celestia will stop you!”
“Chiquita, come on. Who do you think if funding my operation? Pinkie, bring in the ferret!”
The Bronxican president slid out of Twilight’s sight. In her place, a pair of pink hooves holding a ferret in a sombrero slid into view. The ferret fell as the pink hooves let go, landing on top of Twilight’s face.
The ferret greeted Twilight by sniffing her facial features, taking note of anything that seemed to have a prudent odor. “What’s the ferret for?”
The ferret stood on its hind legs and looked Twilight dead in the eye. “What’s the ferret for, señora asks.” Its paw skimmed the brim of its sombrero. “Señora, soy el… The Ferret! What is there to question?”
She continued to stare at the lengthy rodent scurrying across her face. “Again, what’s the fe-aaaaahh” –
The ferret kicked a paw into her mouth, keeping it from closing and finishing her sentence. “Silencio. Señora talks too much! I must work. Señora will be my clay to work with.”
“Get off me you little rat! I am not going to be” –
The ferret started kneading her forehead “I’ll mold my clay into whatever pleases me. Señora doesn’t like her veggies? I’ll make her the veggi queen! Señora avoids the color yellow everywhere she goes? Her one true love will be the color of yellow! Silencio ahora!”
“Listen you little weasel, if you don’t” -
-WHACK-
Two weeks later…
The Royal Dining Room of Canterlot Castle was fully set. Maids and waiters floated around, touching up anything that would otherwise offend royalty if it wasn’t properly tweaked. One particular waiter was pushing a cart filled to the brim with foods of all kinds. He parked the cart by the far end of the main table, where he began to place trays of cuisine for the current masters of the hall.
“Thank you.” Princess Celestia’s magic embraced a small platter of vegetables and began plucking them off into her mouth.
“Celestia, have you ever been to Bronxico?” Twilight threw a grape into her mouth as she looked over the itinerary she made for the special guest of the day. “I’ve always wanted to go, but never had the time.”
Celestia swallowed the meal contents she had partook in. “I haven’t had a chance to visit after they shifted to democracy. But when I was there, it was a wonderful experience. They’re a rather festive folk. They even know how to make a funeral a celebration.”
“I’m half tempted to visit if somepony dies over there, in that case. How does this sound? Bienvenido y buenos tardes. ¿Cómo está?”
Celestia slurped down a noodle in response. “That sounds almost perfect. You may want to put emphasis on the accents when you say it. And you only say tarde in the afternoon. You should say buenos días, since we’re meeting her in the… morning.”
“Is something wrong?”
“We’re meeting her in the morning, but it’s almost noon.”
Twilight looked around at her surroundings. She knew that if their guest arrived now, she would be directed into the dining room, where two Equestrian princesses were scarfing down on a late breakfast. She mentally calculated how fast a messenger could redirect the guest while the princesses got cleaned up and meet her in the throne room. If she sent the messenger now, he may be able to meet up with her in the entrance, where-
A pair of royal guards pushed open the large doors that were the main entrance to the dining room. “We present to the Princesses of Equestria, Uva Pastel, Presidente of Bronxico.”
A grape purple mare walked past the guards with her nose held high. The guards closed the door behind her as she made her way to the table.
Celestia was the first to stand to greet the guest. “Welcome to Canterlot Castle, ma’am.”
Twilight follow suit, but put in her own flare to her greeting. “Bienvenido y buenos días. ¿Cómo está?”
“Bien, bien, gracias. I thank you both for playing host for my charity tour for Equestria.”
Celestia pulled out a seat for the presidente’s posterior. “We couldn’t be any happier to have you in our kingdom. Tell me, what progress has been made in your country from this charity?”
“Pues, we have managed to make some of the ciudades near the border profitable for the first time since the revolution. Pero, other progress has been slow, though.” She took her seat at the table and directed her attention to Twilight. “I’m rather interested about the new alicorn princess of Equestria. How has your journey been going from rags to riches?”
“It wasn’t a story of rags to riches as much as it was a journey of friendship. Why don’t you dig in, we have plenty of food to go around.”
“Oh, I would, but I had desayuno before arriving. But…” She gave Twilight a sly look. “I wouldn’t mind having a small plato of green olives. You wouldn’t happen to have any olives around, would you?”
Twilight’s eyes widened at the mere word of olives. “Olives? Of course we have olives. Waiter! We must have olives! Bring them in by the barrel! In fact…”
Twilight jumped on the table, almost taking the table down with her weight. “I want you to bring in an entire grove of olive trees! We can’t have enough olives! I don’t care how much it costs! Just bring them in!”
Celestia scooted into earshot of Uva. “I don’t know what it is, but she’s been obsessed with olives recently. Her obsession’s been creeping me out. It’s like she’s been brainwashed.”
Uva’s mouth curled at the corners as she watched the crazed alicorn demand the tiny fruits by the boatload. “I think she’ll curb that enthusiasm into more practical uses. Don’t worry. Olive’em do at some point.”