Wheatley's Song
“Oh, my beloved subjects…it’s been so long since I’ve seen your precious, little, sun-loving faces!” Nightmare Moon had millennia to dream of this moment. All the speeches she prepared in her exile were now going to be put to use.
One of the ponies in the group dared to yell out at the princess, “What did you do with our princess?” The alicorn looked toward the provoking pony; a rather colorful mare. Nightmare took note to make her pay later for rebelling against her.
“Why? Am I not royal enough for you? Don’t you know who I am?”
“OOH! More guessing games! Umm…Hokey Smokes? How about Queen Meanie? No! Black Snootie, Black Snootie!”
Nightmare Moon didn’t think that she would take such offense to the fact that nopony here remembered her. She would be sure to take care of the ignorant pink one later as well.
“Does my crown no longer count now that I have been imprisoned for a thousand years? Did you not recall the legends? Did you not see the signs?”
“I did! And I know who you are; you’re the Mare in the Moon. Nightmare Moon!”
Everypony in the crowd gasped when they heard her name. Nightmare almost answered, but then Wheatley’s voice came into her head, “Wow, looks like you’re quite the celebrity here. Everypony is shocked to see you here!”
“Well well well… somepony who remembers me. Then you also know why I’m here!”
“You’re here to… to…”
The princess noticed that she still struck fear into the ponies hearts. This would make taking over Equestria so much easier. Nightmare began to laugh, the first laugh she ever gave—a laugh that continued to strike fear into the ponies, especially the well-informed unicorn standing in front of her.
“Ha. Haha, why are we laughing, Nightmare?”
‘Silence Wheatley! You will have time AFTER this!’
“Remember this day little ponies, for it was your last. From this moment forth, the night will last forever!”
“Seize her! Only she know where the princess is!”
“Stand back, you foals!” Nightmare made quick work of the royal guard who thought for a moment that they ever had a chance to lay a hoof on her. She struck them down with lightning without breaking a sweat. She teleported herself back to the castle in the Everfree Forest. Now that the message had been delivered, there was something even more pressing for the dark alicorn than gloating.
“Wheatley! I require your… assistance.” Though she would never say it out loud, she couldn’t do this on her own. Besides, he would do anything she asked of him, so what was the worst that could happen?
“Mrs. Nightmare Moon, I am ready for action! What do you need?” called out the wisp of smoke that was Wheatley.
“Soon this world will be mine… but there is one last thing that I need to take care of before I can rise to power.”
“And what is that, dear princess?”
“The Elements of Harmony. They were my downfall nearly a thousand years ago. I must destroy them before they are activated once again. Which is where you come in…”
“Now, this is a simple job, simple enough for even someone like you to accomplish without too much difficulty. You will—“
“Aye aye, Princess!”
“Wheatley, I haven’t even said what it is,” as Nightmare Moon hit her hoof hard on her head.
“Oh… right. Continue.”
“You are to—“
“I just wanted you to know that no matter what it was I would have done it for you!”
“Wheatley, are you finished?” Wheatley remained quiet. “Good… now, I want you to—“
“Because you’re my friend!”
“WHEATLEY SHUT UP! You are to watch over the princess and make sure no ponies stumble into the Everfree Forest out of curiosity.” The wisp was quiet. “Is that clear?” No answer. “ANSWER ME!”
“Oh… yes!” The wisp did another flip in the air and floated out of the room. ‘Good, he’s out of my hair,’ thought Nightmare Moon. ‘With any luck, nopony will come and Wheatley will do nothing to ruin my plans.’ The dark alicorn teleported to Canterlot, ready to overtake the castle and find the Elements of Harmony.
……………………
“Imma watching the castle for my best friend! I’m going to stop any pony who coooooomes! And then she’ll love me as her friend, her bestest bestest friend, who… rhymes with ‘comes’, rhymes with ‘comes’…” Wheatley found patrolling the Everfree Forest boring, so he decided to write a song for his dear friend Nightmare. Rhyming though, as he quickly found out, was not his strong point.
Wheatley decided to forget the verse and skip to the chorus: “NIGHTMARE MOOO-OOON! My best friend in the whole wide world! Nightmare MOOO-OOON—“
A twig snapped.
Wheatley grew quiet as he saw some ponies walking into the forest. Wheatley floated behind a bush just as a bright orange pony walked by. Following it was a white and purple one, a yellow and pink one, a lavender one, a pink one, and a blue one with rainbow hair. The first thing that Wheatley thought was, ‘Okay, why do these ponies look like freaky humans that go to those rave parties?’ as he searched his database of images that he could compare to the technicolor equine madness that walked by him. He was so lost in processing images that he didn’t hear when the lavender one said to the rest of the group, “Okay girls, the Elements of Harmony are in here, we need to go to the old castle!” He didn’t even notice them walk by. It wasn’t until 5 minutes went by since they walked past the bush when Wheatley yelled out, “THEY LOOK EXACTLY LIKE—where did they go?”
Mist-Wheatley floated out of the bush. Oh no—what if they were trying to get to the castle? He had to find them and stop them! “Hi-ho Wheatley, away!”
……………………
“So, none of you have even been in here before?”
“Heaven’s no! Just look at it; it’s dreadful!”
Wheatley finally found the pony caravan on the side of a cliff. ‘This is perfect!’ he thought. ‘All I need to do is scare them and they’ll run back to wherever they came from… do ponies here live in stalls?’ Wheatley found some cracks in the side of the mountain and squeezed comfortably in between them.
‘Okay, if I just shake up a few of these rocks, it should scare them enough so they won’t want to go to the castle! Wheatley moved pebbles here and there, but nothing was happening yet. He dug deeper, but the mountain wasn’t moving. He head hoofsteps overhead and started to panic; he needed to act quick, or else they would get away! As he made his way out of the crack, he brushed against a pebble wedged in between the two sides of the crevice, and the entire mountain shifted. It worked!
Somewhat… instead of the ground shifting, the entire face of the cliff came down. Wheatley looked as the mountain fell, taking many of the ponies down the side of the mountain and towards their doom. “Oops… oh well, they’re just horses. Except those two, they’re unicorns. Wait, unicorns?”
The yellow-pink one and the rainbow one were flying about frantically to rescue their friends. “Hehe, don’t worry; there are only two of them, and four other ponies! They can’t save all of them…”
Wheatley floated and watched as the pegasi rescued the pink one, then the white one… he saw the orange one try and save the purple one from falling over the cliff, but let her go instead.
“Well, that takes care of that! At least one pony down” Wheatley, happy with his work, returned to patrolling
……………………
“She lived on the moon, and I did too! They call her Nightmare Moon because she… has a spoon? Curse songs and their rhyming scheme!” Wheatley hadn’t had any problems since he scared the ponies with that cliff incident, so he went back to working on his song. Suddenly, Wheatley heard Nightmare Moon’s voice telepathically; “Wheatley, please tell me you haven’t screwed things up yet?”
“Not at all princess! In fact, I was able to scare some strange ponies back to wherever they came from!”
“Really? How did you manage that?”
“I sent them over a cliff, and I think one of them died. So, I’ve been working in a smashing song for—“
“You THINK? You mean you didn’t see them die?”
“Well…no. I thought they would have died after that.”
Nightmare Moon’s voice got angrier. “No, you don’t think! That’s your problem! They could have survived, did you THINK about that?”
“Umm…no?”
“Go out there and find them!”
Wheatley flew off into the forest, and followed the hoofprints leading away from the shattered rocks from the side of the canyon he previously destroyed. There was no purple body. “Dang it, how did she survive?” Wheatley flew off in search of the renegade ponies.
…………………………
After frantically circling the forest for 3 minutes, he found the ponies; or rather, he nearly ran into the (was she a lesbian?) rainbow pony flying through the sky. She seemed to be bragging, saying, “…and once Pinkie and Rarity were safe, me and Fluttershy loop-d-looped around and WOOSH! Saved your life!”
“Okay, I found them… what to do…” he looked ahead and saw another canyon. “Perfect! If I can just knock down those rocks, I’ll block their path and…they…will… just climb over it. Okay, think Wheatley… rocks didn’t work, how about a direct attack? What’s this?”
If Wheatley was still a solid AI core, he would have smacked into a huge furry creature. At first, it seemed to be a bear. Wheatley’s subroutines kicked into overdrive, and he decided to use this bear to help him attack the ponies. He transformed himself into a thorn, then proceeded to wedge himself into the creature’s paw. As the lion roared in pain, a thought crossed the moronic core’s mind; “How did I just change myself into a thorn?”
His thought was cut short when the paw Wheatley was stuck into swung at one of the ponies. “Yeah, you go bear, get them! Get them reall—HOLY CRAP WHAT IS THAT????”
Wheatley now noticed that the bear wasn’t a bear. It was a lion-scorpion…thing. ‘Honestly, what else is screwed up in this world?’ But the creature seemed to be doing its job, so Wheatley tried not to mind. The ponies tried charging, kicking, and the orange one even tried to ride it; but to no avail. The Lion-scorpion Wheatley attacked them with was too powerful for their petty attacks!
“Yes! I did it! They will ne—“suddenly, thorn-Wheatley found himself in a warm and wet cavern. And there was a tongue… “Am I in someone’s mouth? EEEEEWWW!!!”
Even though he was only in the pony’s mouth for less than a moment, Wheatley felt like that second would traumatize his memory circuits for the rest of his life. Not only that, but once the thorn was removed, the beast calmed down instantly and let the ponies past. ‘Nightmare Moon will not be happy about this,’ Wheatley thought as the ponies walked away. It seemed almost like clockwork that Nightmare Moon’s voice came back. “Did you take care of the ponies?”
“Oh, yeah… I sure did! Took care of them really good! So good, they didn’t not un-run away!”
“Stop talking like an idiot, Wheatley.”
‘Dang,’ thought Wheatley. ‘Now I need to stop those ponies or else the princess will be really upset… that could mess up our friendship weekend party.’
“Sometimes, we all just need to be shown a little kindness.” The pony group walked away. Wheatley heard what the yellow one just said and scoffed, “Yeah, right. A little kindness? What would that solve? Kindness doesn’t get you anything! Nightmare Moon never shows me kindness, and… we’re…friend.” Wheatley started to think, and he realized that ever since they became friends, he had been belittled and scolded by the princess nearly every time they talked. Was this how friends treated each other? Maybe not…
Wheatley followed the ponies into the darker part of the forest, and nearly lost track of them. He was barely able to follow them by their unusually loud conversations as they walked; talk about the forest, friendship, yada yada yada… this bored Wheatley, so he began to plan his next attempt to stop the multicolor ponies. “Okay, force didn’t stop them… and nearly falling to death didn’t work… how else can I scare them?”
He heard the ponies complaining about how dark it was; this got Wheatley thinking. “Okay, now I remember from watching the humans in their stasis chambers that they don’t like the dark… maybe ponies are the same as humans! So that would mean that they don’t like the dark either! Okay now, Wheatley… near death didn’t scare them, and force didn’t scare them, so maybe scaring them will scare them! Perfect!” Wheatley floated into the trees around the group of ponies and got to work, making the scariest faces from the bark that he could.