Twilight Struggle

by Twiface


Cleaning Up: Sweeping it Under the Rug

--Cleaning Up: Sweeping it Under the Rug--

“I die so that Democracy may live!”


After power washing the entire castle, scrubbing their battle axes, and burying two dozen angel corpses in the backyard, Twilight and Spike set about to clean up the board game.

“It’s a miracle that we didn’t get any blood on the gameboard,” said Twilight, “Especially after all the hacking and slashing we’ve been doing.”

They took all the markers off the board, put them into their bags, then organized the cards back into their appropriate decks and placed them inside the box. Spike laid the player aids and the gameboard on top and Twilight placed the lid.

“Seriously though,” said Twilight. “This is probably the most dangerous boardgame I’ve ever played. I feel like I’ve been directly responsible for the deaths of millions of ponies.”

“Awww, you’re just overreacting,” said Spike. “Do you honestly believe all that bullshit about us playing the game for ten years straight and never leaving the house?”

“I guess,” said Twilight. “I mean, the radio said so… and so did the newspaper—”

“Nonsense!” said Spike. “Really, think about it. When was the last time you remember going outside? Was it really ten years ago?”
Twilight thought for a moment. The last time she remembered actually going anywhere was a quick shopping trip on the morning of the day Princess Celestia gave her the board game, but it didn’t feel that long ago…

“It was… about ten days ago, I think,” said Twilight. “At least… I think it was ten days ago. I’m not sure. I honestly haven’t been keeping track of time… but then how does that explain the radio? And the newspaper? And the big gaping hole in my ceiling?”

“Just our imaginations,” said Spike. “None of that stuff really happened. I’ve never heard of a radio DJ named ‘Tree Dog’ and I’m sure the big gaping hole is leftover from that one time we asked Pinkie to rewire our built-in stereo system. And if we had really been inside here for ten years straight, how are we still alive? Where would we get our food?”

“Pizza deliveries, perhaps?” suggested Twilight. “I’m sure that if we look around, we’ll probably find some leftover boxes. Also, I had a lot of junk food in the pantry—”

“Nopony can survive for ten years straight only eating pizza and junk food!” said Spike. “Besides, even if a pony could survive one year on just that, they’d have already gone insane and couldn’t think clearly. You executed a well thought-out plan that won the game.”

“But Nightmare Moon gave us those well thought-out puzzles after a thousand years of eating nothing but moon cheese,” protested Twilight. “And Littlepip came up with that plan to defeat the Goddess after just a month of eating nothing but junk food and iguana bits!”

“Wait--whaa?” asked Spike, confused. “’Moon Cheese?’ ‘Littlepip?’ “Iguana Bits?’ You’re obviously stir-crazy. Come on, let’s go for a walk.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” admitted Twilight. “I’m probably just imagining things. Even ten days is a lot to stay indoors. Let’s go outside.”



Twilight and Spike left the castle and began walking down Twilight’s driveway, oblivious to the neck-high grass and foal-sized weeds which had devoured her lawn, or the giant grey clouds which covered the sky. They only began to take notice of their surroundings when Twilight’s hooves began to clip-clop against a hard surface.
Twilight looked down at the ground.

“Spike?” she asked. “Um… why is there a road here?”

“There’s always been a road here, Twilight,” said Spike.

“But it’s not supposed to be paved.”

They looked down at the ground and saw a long black strip of pavement running perpendicular to Twilight’s driveway. Its faded grey color and plethora of wide cracks indicated that it had been there for quite some time.

Then they looked around and observed that overnight the neighboring thatched roof cottages had all morphed into brick housing projects and all the neatly-trimmed hedges had grown into graffiti-laden concrete walls.

“What happened to Ponyville?” asked Spike.

“I don’t know,” said Twilight. “We should ask somepony.”
Just to their luck, the spotted Carrot Top on the other side of the street.

“Hey, Carrot Top!” called Twilight. “Carrot Top!”
Carrot Top stopped and turned.

“How did you know my name?” she asked, surprised. “Who are you?”

“It’s Me, Twilight!” said Twilight. “What the hell happened here?”

“Twilight who?” asked Carrot Top.

“Twilight Sparkle!” said Twilight. “You know, the Princess of Friendship?”

“Never heard of you,” said Carrot Top, who then turned her head and walked away.

“I saved this fucking town from an Ursa Minor, goddamnit!” cried Twilight after her. Then, turning to Spike, she asked, “How could she have forgotten me?”

“Ponies can forget a lot in ten days,” said Spike. “I don’t even remember what I had for dinner last night.”

“Pizza,” said Twilight. “Pizza and snack cakes.”

“I swear I had a gem cake,” said Spike. “What about the night before?”

“Pizza and snack cakes.”

“And the night before?”

“Pizza and snack cakes.”

“What about… the night before?”

“Pizza and a gem cake.”

“Yes!” said Spike. “I knew we couldn’t have been in there for ten years straight! Otherwise, I would have eaten all of our gems during the first few weeks. ”

“Still, I swear we were in there for ten years,” said Twilight. “I always keep track of the date… until you stole my calendar!”

“We ran out of toilet paper!” said Spike. “I didn’t have any choice!”

“Oh,well,” said Twilight. “We can get another calendar, and some more toilet paper, at this store.”
Twilight pointed to a new-ish looking store they had encountered. The two of them went in, finding it strange that the doors magically opened by themselves. They also noticed that this store was a lot larger than Ponyville’s usual stores, which only had a few rows of prouducts. This store had thousands of rows of products, although many of these rows were devoted to displaying the same brands.
Twilight began thumbing through the office supplies aisle when Spike grabbed hear ear and dragged her to the electronics section.

“Come over here, Twilight!” he said. Then he pointed to a row of TVs and said, “Look!”
The TVs were much bigger and flatter than the ones that Twilight remembered, but more important than the TVs themselves was what was on them. All of the TVs were tuned to a news channel, which featured clips of zebras pulling down statues and walls.

“Facing severe economic stagnation and increasing domestic upheaval,” said the news reporter, “Zebrica is finally putting an end to the decade-long cold war against the western world. As the nation turns its focus to preserving the rapidly deteriorating regime of the ruling party, foreign policy analysts are concerned that the conflict between the activists and the coup will deteriorate into a bloody and full-scale revolution, leaving in its wake an enormous power vacuum that…”
Twilight and Spike looked at each other and blinked.

“Told ya,” said Twilight. “I told you it was ten years.”

“Wow,” said Spike, astounded. “I never thought that playing some silly board game would affect the conditions of the real world… though that still doesn’t explain all these sudden changes in Ponyville, though.”

“Since I was right,” said Twilight, “I want you to buy me a Sparkle Cola. I’m thirsty.”

“But we didn’t make a bet,” said Spike. “I don’t have to pay you anything.”

“Can you do it as a friend?” asked Twilight.

“Fine, whatever,” said Spike. “I’ll do it for you. But why do you need me to buy it? Did you forget your wallet?”

“No, I have my wallet,” said Twilight, taking her wallet out of hammerspace. “I always carry my wallet. I just don’t want to pay for it. Have you seen how much the prices have inflated?”






“587,621, 587,622, 587,623…” counted the voice of a very familiar mare. “587,624! There were 587,624 grains of sand stuck in my shoe!”

Princess Celestia stopped counting grains of sand and laid back in her beach chair. She held out her hoof and Philomena gloriously perched upon it like the phoenix she was.

“Ugh, I’m sooooo bored!” she griped to the phoenix. “I never thought that I could be this bored the beach after only ten years! Maybe I should consider going back to Canterlot…”

She thought about it for a moment, and then broke out into laughter.

“Oh, not a chance!” she said. “Not a chance. Still, I’m pretty bored. Maybe I should break out one of the random books I threw in by bag. Hopefully I brought along some interesting reads…”
Princess Celestia reached into her bag and pulled out a small booklet. She glanced over the cover, then flipped through it, then glanced at the cover again.

“Shit!” she said. “I forgot to give Twilight the rule book! I know how much Twilight relies on rulebooks. Well, I sure do hope for Celestia’s sake that she can at least do well without it. So far the world hasn’t ended, so that’s a fairly good sign.”
Then Princess Celestia looked into her glorious setting sun.

“You know, Philomena,” Celestia said to the phoenix, “If the war ended peacefully, without everypony blowing each other to bits, I get this odd feeling that, even though most ponies of the world would survive and continue to fulfil their destinies, I feel like, by ending the war, there are some ponies out there whose destinies might not be realized. Like, imagine if 200 years from now, there was somepony who was an absolute failure in civilized pre-apocalyptic life, but, upon entering the a postwar post-apocalyptic wasteland, finds that she not only survives, but also thrives, to the point where she is able to use some of the most powerful magic known to ponykind to change the world for the better. You know? Like making some goddamn fucking miracles, however they work. But if they couldn’t do that because there never was a wasteland to begin with, then what would happen to them, and what would they do with their life?"

Philomena, who had been fiddling on Celestia’s iPad during her soliloquy, stopped and showed the iPad’s screen to Celestia. Princess Celestia looked at the screen, which showed just one object:

A broken toaster.



The End???