//------------------------------//
// In The End 
// Story: A New King 
// by spectrobe18 
//------------------------------//

	Its been five years since I came to Equestria and in this time I’ve tried to be the best king possible. Of course I needed help a lot of help, but thanks to Shade’s advice and the princesses experience I can run my kingdom efficiently. I’m obviously not the only one to change after all these years.
Twilight became a princess and an alicorn. She had just as many troubles as I did when I started, but she got a good grip on it after her first year. Another kingdom was made for her on the other side of Ponyville. After it was finished Ponyville became one of the largest cities in Equstria.
Rarity’s business is now massive due to all the residents that live here. She had to hire others to keep up with the wants of everyone. She’s become a well-known clothes designer and often meets with famous ponies to talk about what they would like to wear. 
Rainbow Dash achieved her dream of being a wonderbolt. I’ve seen some of their shows and they were great. I even get to see Skycatcher again and Rainy Day is normally with him because they are now a happily married couple. 
Apple Jack is doing what she’s always has, but on a larger scale. The population grew; so more people are buying her apple products. With all the money they’ve acquired they made a bigger barn.
Pinkie Pie has been a big help. With two kingdoms there are multiple events and she plans most of them out for us. Half of the time we don’t ask she just appears with the plans ready. I swear she must have a cabinet full of preplanned parties.
Fluttershy and Iron Hoof are married now. Two years afterwards they had a kid that looks like Futtershy, but has the colors of Iron Hoof. Today she is turning three and I going to be stuck with watching her while everyone sets up her party. It also just happens that I have to go meet with the princesses at the same time.
I leave the castle and start to make my way to Fluttershy’s house, but I run into the Sweetie Belle. She is now a preteen and she’s finally got her cutie mark. The same goes with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo. 
“Hey brother.”
“Hi Sweetie. What are doing here?”
“I came to bring you something.”
She steps to the side and there’s Fluttershy’s kid. Well that makes things easier because now I’ll be on time with my meeting. Sweetie turns and leaves, but calls back.
“I will come get you when were finished.”
I look down to the kid who was poking at a rock she found. It was perfectly fine until she tried to put it in her mouth. I snatch it from her then pick her up and put her under my arm. 
“If you’re hungry we can go to the dining hall.”
I walk back into the castle while she squirms trying to get away, but she quickly gives up when she figured out she’s having no effect. We go to the dining hall then into the kitchen. I put her down and let her wander around until she found what she wanted to eat. She found some strawberries so I take them and she follows me back into the dining room. I pull out a chair for her and I put them down. She hops onto the chair before digging in. When she finished I picked her up before heading to meeting room. 
The room is empty other than a table, chairs, some papers, and a tiny box. I put her down again and she immediately went for the papers and the box. I move them out of the way.
“Oh no these are important. If you want to play with something play with this.”
I take off my crown and drop it on her head. She moves to the corner of the room before taking it off and fidgeting with it. A few minutes later there was knock on the door and I go to open it. Standing there was Shining Armor, Cadence, Luna, Celestia, and Twilight. They come in and find a spot around the table. Cadence was the first to notice the kid.
“Aww is little Nightshade going to help us with our meeting?”
“Yep just until her p-a-r-t-y is ready.”
Nightshade has gotten bored with my crown and started looking around to see who’s here. When she spotted Twilight she jumped up and ran over to hug her legs.
“Auntie.”
Twilight gives a soft laugh. She takes all of her papers out of her saddlebag before dropping the bag on her back.
“Go play with that. Auntie and her friends need to work.”
The first thing she does is going around the table to see what she could have and surprisingly everyone gave her something. She goes back into the corner where she left my crown to play with everything. 
“Ok now that she’s busy lets gets down business. How do we want to set up the summer games?”
We started these a little after Twilight got her kingdom. It was meant to be kingdom vs. kingdom and as a requirement Twilight and me entered. It was popular as, so many planned to enter or watch the events. It was so popular we held another one in the winter, but this time Luna, Cadence and Celestia decided to join. Again its popularity grew and now it’s held every season. After the second year of holding these events we added team vs. team events. They’re held after the kingdom events and in them you’re placed in a random team of five from there you would have to decide who would be best for what event. I’ve joined all of these and they’re great. 
This meeting is to decide what games will be played, but they are the ones who do most of the planning since I can’t match their sports with the name. I end up listening to them while I watch Nightshade. She plays with everything a good ten minutes before she couldn’t sit still anymore. She gets up and walks awkwardly to me. I already had a good idea why.
“Need to use the bathroom?”
She nods. 
“Ok let me show you where it is.”
I get up and we leave the room. 
“Alright we’re going to turn left head down the stairs.”
Before I could finish telling her where it was she took off running. Apparently she really has to go. I take off after her and it was easy to keep, but she caught me off guard when we reached the stairs. She jumps from the top spreads her wings and quickly glides down. I have to rush down to meet her.
“Now go right down that hall. It’s the third door on the left.”
She runs down the hall and takes a right, but then she realizes it wasn’t the right room. She darts over into the correct room. After a while she comes out and we go back to the meeting room to find out no one realized we left. Nightshade goes back to playing while I actively participate in the meeting now that they came to the conclusion of what games will be played. For the next hour we planned where, when, how long, and effectively getting the news out. 
Now the meeting is over and everyone was collecting their things. Nightshade was however a little reluctant to give us our stuff back. They just started to say goodbye when Nightshade had the idea to play a game. She goes over to Celestia and pokes her leg.
“Tag!”
Celestia smiles then gently pokes her back.
“Tag your it.”
Nightshade immediately tags her back. Celestia then tags Cadence who tags Shining then Twilight then Luna. I step out of the circle, so I won’t be dragged into anything that’s about to happen. They are all continuously poking at one another until Cadence darted out of the room giggling. They all run out after her running in all directions. I sigh before stepping out of the room.
“My castle isn’t a playground!”
I can’t believe I have to state that to adults and royals at that. I go down to the main entrance where they’re playing and I stood to side while they chased one another. They kept this game going a good half hour before Sweetie came in and the only time I interfered was to trip Shining Armor so Nightshade could tag him. 
“Hey Sweetie please tell me your finished setting up. I’ve grown tired of their racket.”
“Yea we are.”
“Good. Hey Nightshade it’s time to take you back home!”
Nightshade runs over to us and we leave without saying anything to anyone because as soon as they realize the game is over they’ll come join us at the party. On our way to Fluttershy’s house Nightshade started to fall behind so I pick her up and we finish the walk to the house. Knowing that Pinkie set the party up I can assume this is supposed to be a surprise. Sweetie opens the door and no one in sight confirmed my thought. Sweetie goes in first then Nightshade and me. As soon as I step through the door everyone jumps out. 
“Surprise!”
There was absolutely no response from Nightshade. I look down at her and I start laughing.
“She’s fallen asleep.”
Fluttershy comes over to me and I put Nightshade on her back. She goes upstairs to put her daughter in her bed. While she was doing that I looked around to see who was here. There was obviously Fluttershy and Sweetie then there’s Iron Hoof, Pinkie, A.j., Dash, Rarity, Applebloom, Scootaloo, Eclipso, Moondancer, Skycatcher, Rainy Day, and lastly my beloved Starr.  She is treated and acts like a great queen, however the queen part is more of a title because we aren’t married. 
Fluttershy comes down stairs and informs us that Nightshade will probably be asleep for the next hour or so. We were going to have to surprise her once she’s woken up and comes down stairs. Everyone starts conversations with each other, but me. I go lay down on Fluttershy’s couch which I have to say is more comfortable than my bed. A few minutes later the princesses show up with Shining Armor and they were relived when they found out they didn’t miss the surprise. They quickly mingle with everyone else.
A little later Starr comes over and gives me a look that tells me to move over. I refused to move by making myself more comfortable, so she responds by sitting on my chest. 
“Do you have to sit on me?”
“I gave you a chance to move, but you didn’t therefor you deserve this.”
“Fine then take this.”
I poked her sides and she lets out a squeak. Her hands immediately go up to cover her mouth. She then playfully swings at my head, but I hold my arms up grinning at her attempt to get me back. She then crosses her arms and makes a pouting face while I’m still smiling like a fool. Then Rainy Day bumps into the couch while she was heading over to her husband. Since it was Rainy Day the legs of the couch decide to give out. It was unexpected, so I ended up gripping the couch and Starr fell on top of me. We’re face to face and I must have had a face of pure shock because she starts to laugh at me. I really hate karma, but I can deal with this.
I reach up and put my hand on the side of her face. She’s smiling now and puts her hand upon mine before leaning in. We share a kiss then we hear an aww from half the ponies in the room. That caused us to blush, get up, and do something to work off the embarrassment. She goes into the other room while I start fixing the couch. When I was doing this Iron Hoof came over to tease me.
“Well that was a nice little show. Maybe next time you should remember that there are others in the room.”
“Hey need I remind everyone of your first kiss with your beloved wife because I certainly remember it in great detail as I’m the one forced it upon you two.”
That shut him up. After a while I finished fixing the couch and then we hear footsteps from upstairs. Pinkie quickly starts to direct us to our hiding spots. I was told to hide on the ceiling and she knows I can do this as I’ve used it to play a prank on her once. I jump up and touch the ceiling freezing my hands to it then swinging my legs up to do the same. With what Pinkie wants us to do I’m afraid that we’re going to make Nightshade cry rather than just surprise her. 
We can now hear Nightshade coming down the stairs and once she reached the bottom everyone except me jumped out. She was certainly surprised as she jumped, her eyes grew wide, then the tears started to well up. Now I’m going to have to fix this before she starts to cry and it’s going to hurt. I quickly heat the ice then I plummet the short distance to the floor. I land on my back, but it was worth it as she started to giggle at my pain. Pinkie then gathers everyone into the other room, so they can cut the cake while I just lay here on the floor. A minute later Starr comes into the room to help me up.
The rest of the party goes on without any problems as she enjoyed the cake, loved her presents, and won Pinkie’s idea of a board game tournament. With the amount of people here this took hours to finish, but it was fun. It’s now dark out, so Starr and me say goodbye to everyone before leaving. The sky was clear of any clouds and you could clearly see the moon and stars. It would be a waste to go back to the castle on this beautiful night. 
“Hey Starr you think we can take a detour before going back to the castle?”
“Sure, but where are we going to go?”
“You’ll find out once we get there.”
After a few minutes we’re at the park. I find a bench to sit on that has a clear view of the sky and then Starr comes to join me. She leans her head onto my shoulder and takes my hand. We stay like this awhile gazing off into the night sky. Then I decided this would be the best time. I stand up in front of her and take a deep breath. 
“I know what I’m about to say will seem to come out of no where, but as you know I love you dearly and I’ll do anything for. You’re my motivation and support without you I would fall apart and I wouldn’t be here. You’re one of the few people who I’m truly happy with and because of that I’ll do whatever I need to keep you happy as it tears me up to see you sad. I know in the past when you’ve been upset while I was around and I’ve helped you, but I feel that I never did enough and I regret that. Today however I’ll fix that and hopefully make us happy the rest of our lives.”
I kneel down and pulled out the box. I open it revealing an obsidian ring embedded with emeralds.
“Will you marry me?”
She let out an exited squeal before jumping onto me. I was bounded by a hug and surprised with a kiss. I’ll take that as a yes. When she let me go I returned her answer with my own hug and kiss. We then get up and walk hand in hand back to the castle. The news spread like wild fire because by noon the next day everyone knew. It seemed that the messenger I saved years ago was flying by after a late night trip to the store for some muffins when she overheard the whole thing.
Our wedding was planned for next week and for as long as I’ve been king this has to be by far the hardest thing to plan for. It was going to be a public wedding and I needed all my friends to help with every little detail. The week was chaos, but today is the day and it will all be worth it. 
I’m nervously standing at the makeshift alter in front of the population of Ponyville while waiting for my bride. She now appears and makes her way up the aisle. I do have to say that Rarity outdid herself as Starr is already beautiful, but the dress amplified her beauty and I’m just standing here in a normal suit. She reaches the alter and I see that she’s blushing madly and it’s adorable. Celestia is up hear as well as she is the giving us our vows. Now we officially begin. Celestia starts with an opening statement, it moves on to the significance of our vows, the actual exchanging of the vows, the exchanging of the rings, and then what everyone been waiting for the kiss. 
The big wedding is over. My lovely wife and I quickly retreat back to our castle before the crowd could get to us. Now as a married couple we’ll be together no matter what. We will enjoy the good times and work through the tough for ourselves and now for our kingdom.