"EXTRA EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! COFFEE INDUSTRY IN DISARRAY THANKS TO SUN PRINCESS!"
Few things caused Princess Celestia's jaw to drop these days. She had seen many things in her time as Princess of Equestria, ranging from things so small that it shocked modern ponies all the way to world shaking events like invasions and chaos incarnate's escape from his prison. Empires had disappeared and reappeared during her reign, great friends and foes alike had left their marks on the world and a certain small purple filly managed to hatch a dragon egg and even make him grow.
Still, sometimes there were things in the world that even she couldn't believe. Ponies that weren't crowding around her were over at a small papercolt, shouting at the top of his lungs. Most of the time, the ponies that surrounded her when she stepped out of the castle were wearing wide grins and sparkling eyes, a sign of their respect and admiration for her. Today, however, a mix of teary eyes, angry glares and puffy bottom lips greeted her, even as her loyal guards fought to keep them at bay.
"Why, Princess?" One mare whimpered, "I like coffee."
"What do you have against coffee drinkers?!" A stallion shouted in the distance.
"I know you like tea, but you don't have to destroy the coffee industry for it!"
Celestia was at a complete loss for words as she stood there, utterly dumbfounded by her beloved little ponies comments. What on Equestria were they rambling about? She was told there was an unease in the town square today, but certainly never expected to be the epicenter of it. Hundreds of ponies were already in the square, each standing defiantly and some even holding up empty coffee cups at her as if it was a form of protest.
"I, uh, I --er," she managed to stammer before the volume of the voices rose in unison. Everypony in the square eventually started shouting at her, vying for Celestia's attention. Her wonderful magenta eyes swept back and forth as she tried to find some escape from the crowd in the form of a smiling face, but to her dismay, none could be found. The crowd seethed with sadness and anger as ponies kept pouring into the square, filling it past its capacity.
Princess Celestia had never felt so lost in a crowd before. Here were hundreds of her beloved subjects, each shouting something at her about something that made no sense. She was trying to destroy the coffee industry? How? No seriously, how? All she had done in the past day was raise the sun, eat breakfast, go out for a cup of tea before meeting with the dignitaries from Minotarus and then lower the sun. She had done absolutely nothing to the coffee industry as a whole in the almost three hundred years since it had been discovered.
Masking her anger, she willed her horn to glow as a newspaper lifted away from the newscolt shouting to keep up with the crowd. A couple of bits materialized in his pouch, since Celestia was an honest pony, and she narrowed her eyes as the newsprint neared her face.
EXTRA! COFFEE INDUSTRY IN TURMOIL!
Sun Princess goes to coffee shop and orders tea! Entire chain in complete chaos!Princess Celestia, the royal ruler if all Equestria, was seen yesterday heading over to a local coffee chain to sip on a quick drink. Her smile and wonderful demeanor, however, hid her darker motives well. In a shop that is known for selling coffee, she made the drastic move to challenge the chain's foundations by ordering a drink that wasn't on the menu: tea. Stunning the crew beyond words, she had set her wicked plan in motion. Once the poor crew had made her the drink, the owner promptly started a radical change, the removal of coffee from the menu and, quite possibly, all of Equestria.
"We need to move on with the times!" He boldly proclaimed to the store once the Princess had left, "If the Princess has moved on from coffee, then so should we! If she requests tea be the drink of choice, we need to do our best to make sure everypony drinks tea!"
In a radical move, the owner reportedly threw out all of his former customers who came by for their usual cup of coffee, claiming that they needed to keep up with the times or live in the stone age. Outrage quickly formed and soon, your very own prolific reporter got to ask the owner how this all started.
"What I heard was that, after taking a sip of the tea we brewed for her, the Princess remarked that if only all ponies would drink that over coffee. I took the measures I thought were appropriate for her---"
A cry of disgust erupted from Celestia as she crumpled the newspaper in a barely concealed irritation, wadding it up into a ball of incoherent ramblings. She had never said that! What in Equestria were all these ponies thinking, claiming that she had remarked that coffee needed to be done away with?!
Frustrated, Celestia willed the newspaper to disappear with a soft pop and eyed the same coffee shop she had visited yesterday. Ponies lined the glass walls of the establishment, clambering over each other to get in as if they were giving away free drinks. She ground her teeth in anger and soon started to march towards the place, wanting nothing more than to have a few stern words with the owner.
She had barely made it a few steps before the crowd of ponies stacked in front of her, shouting incoherently at Celestia for accusations that were wholly untrue. Her stern gaze melted into one of her most friendly faces she could muster at that point, but it had little effect on the caffeine addled ponies before her. Most of them wore horribly colored plaid scarves along with heavy rimmed glasses and a silly pointed hat, but she made her best effort to smile reassuringly to them.
Things only dissolved further from there as the shouting became more coherent, forming a saying all the ponies were calling in unison. Even for Celestia, it was kind of impressive when they did that.
"Coffee is good, tea is bad! Give back what we had!" The crowd rumbled at her, causing Celestia's sweet smile to vanish.
A look of utter horror crept across her features as her pupils shrunk to pinpricks and her mouth became little more than a frown. Her ponies were rioting at her? The ponies she cared for all her life were chanting slogans at her all because a coffee shop owner had heard a rumor about what she had said? Shaking the shock from her head, Celestia straightened herself up and tried to march to the coffee shop again, only to have the crowd grow more agitated.
"Traitor!" one pony shouted to her before somepony behind him gave a nice shove to reach the line of guards surrounding her. The pony felt his side move involuntarily and his cup of coffee flew at the guard, the steaming black liquid reaching out to him as if it was going to take it's own revenge on him. The guard's pupils shrunk to an incredibly small size as he prepared for the scalding liquid to hit against his face.
The blistering pain from the liquid never came, though. A shimmering blue aura of magic surrounded his face, protecting his features from a horrible disfigurement by a sludge-like cup of hours old coffee. His eyes twitched as the brown substance rolled down the magical aura protecting him and, with a shaking turn of his head, spun to see Princess Celestia looking at him with worry and her horn glowing.
"Fall back!" The lead guard shouted to the rest of her bodyguards, each one inching back towards the castle.
Celestia's aura disappeared, along with the coffee, and she turned to the guard, shouting over the crowd, "No! I need to reach that shop!"
"It's too dangerous here, my Princess!" He roared back as he pushed another protester back, "Get her to safety!"
As one, the guards tried to inch farther back even as Princess Celestia protested to no avail. The space in front of her collapsed as more ponies poured in, defending the coffee shop from her tea-drinking onslaught. With a final cry of protest, Celestia and her guards were wrapped in a blue aura before disappearing into thin air, leaving the crowd cheering in her wake.
Inside her royal chambers, Celestia fumed quietly onto a scrap of parchment she had addressed to the newspaper itself. Her feelings of anger poured out in what she deemed to be a letter of the highest rebuke, one that most ponies would quiver in fear of. Line after line brought down heavy words of condemnation, forceful sayings of stern correction and, finally, her first dirty word in a letter.
After about three more minutes of her quill etching into the letter, she leaned back and sneered into it, quite pleased with herself.
To the establishment owner,
I am quite disappointed by your actions against a rumor that has circulated regarding me and your coffee. I hold the upmost respect for the wonderful drink distilled from the magical coffee bean and believe that you may have overreacted to some mere words. I do implore you to please rethink your actions as they have caused me quite a bit of distress, so much that it pains me to leave my castle. I do not wish any harm onto your establishment and do wish to continue business there and not at some lower class establishment. Please take my words to heart as I do wish to see you and your industry prosper.
Her Royal Highness,
Princess Celestia
Celestia held her head up, feeling as proud as Philomena did after she groomed herself. The letter had been a wonderful outlet for her feelings of anger and frustration, a pointed one she expected to strike fear into the foolish heart of the troublemaker. Her revelry was broken, though, by a short knock before a sleepy blue pony teleported in wearing some pink pajamas covered in silvery crescent moons. She also wore a cute fuzzy nightcap that ended on a pink fluffy ball, which somehow didn't get lost in her starry mane.
"Sister," Luna spoke through a yawn, "Please inform us as to what that infernal racket is outside."
"It is the sound of foolishness, dear sister," Celestia replied in a matter-of-fact tone, "One that I will soon have quelled."
Luna, half-asleep and eyelids drooping, turned to the open window where the noise from Canterlot Square came through faintly. Her face remained expressionless as she stared out to the sky beyond before returning her tired gaze back to her older sibling.
"What are they calling about?" she asked in a dazed tone.
Celestia let out a miffed snort before she answered, "They think I'm trying to overthrow the coffee industry because I went there yesterday to get a cup of tea. I just stopped by because I thought it was--"
"Wait, what?" Luna asked in confusion, "They think you're what?"
"Overthrowing the coffee industry." Celestia answered quickly, "Anyway, that's not the point. What I was saying was--"
"You're what?"
"It's nothing, Luna. Just silliness on--"
"Overthrowing the coffee industry?"
"No, I'm not. Somepony took my words out of context and--"
"You're overthrowing the COFFEE INDUSTRY?"
Celestia sighed deeply before answering, "Luna, I don't think you're--"
"WHY?!" Luna demanded in the Royal Canterlot Voice, waking from her dreamy stupor, "WHAT HATH THE INNOCENT BEAN OF THE COFFEE PLANT DONE TO YOU THIS TIME?!"
"Nothing, Luna! I just went there and--"
"WHY DID YOU DESECRATE THE SACRED BREWERY OF THE MAGIC MORNING DRINK WITH YOUR TEA?!"
"Luna, it's called--"
"AND WHY DID YOU DO THIS WHILE THOU KNEW WE WOULD BE ASLEEP?! WHY, IF MOTHER WAS HERE..."
"She'd hear me out first before jumping to conclusions," Celestia answered pointedly.
Luna narrowed her eyes at her and tried to look as menacing as she could before a super squishy blue pillow materialized behind her and she planted her royal rump on it.
"Speak quickly, sister, as we have not had our morning coffee yet, thanks to thee."
Celestia pressed a hoof to her forehead and sighed deeply before a soft pop echoed in the room and the crumpled newspaper reappeared. Luna eyed it cautiously before uncrumpling it herself and peered over the headlines, her sapphire eyes chugging along like a locomotive. In mere seconds, she had finished the whole article and brought her gaze back to Celestia.
"So, thou thought it wise to make such a comment in the midst of others?" she asked monotonously.
"But I didn't say such things!" Celestia protested, her eyes flaring dangerously, "I just said that the tea was delicious and left!"
Luna's gaze refused to soften, but her body language spoke volumes. She brought the newspaper back to her tired eyes, scanned it again and then crumpled it up with her own magic much the same way Celestia had earlier. The heap of cheap newsprint sailed through the air behind her and disappeared into the rest of the room.
"So, what does thou have planned to quell the unrest?"
A smug smile that Luna had not seen in a long time graced Celestia's muzzle as her horn glowed. A small piece of parchment levitated from the floor and hovered its way over to Luna, who took it with a confused look. She scanned it over just as fast as she had with the newspaper and turned her unimpressed eyes towards her sister.
"Doth thou really think this is the best idea to handle this situation?" she asked, her voice laced with ancient sarcasm, "Because we can already tell the instigator will be trembling when he reads this."
"I think the letter is fine the way it is," Celestia stated proudly, "It coveys all my anger and feelings on the matter. Plus, I even went as far as to use a dirty word in it."
Celestia cooed at the feeling of rebelousness that flowed through her then, shivering in excitement, Luna, however, peered over the letter again, trying to decipher what her sister was playing at.
"Is the dirty word 'establishment'?" she asked.
"Well yes!" Celestia answered proudly, "The last time I used that word was in the Gryphon Kingdom where I used it to impress the king."
Luna stared at her sister through half-lidded eyes and was about to say something when the door to Celestia's chambers burst open. The two Princesses turned with curiosity to see an out of breath guard panting heavily. He wheezed for several seconds before he attempted a sloppy salute.
"My *pant* My Princess. The uprising has *wheeze* gotten out of hoof!"
Celestia rose to her hooves and stood there, a shocked expression on her face. Her ponies wouldn't do anything drastic, would they?
"What happened?" she asked tentatively.
The guard heaved a few more breaths before answering.
"They've... they've started throwing tea into the bay!"