//------------------------------// // In Which the Smooze is Summoned // Story: Twilight Sparkle Summons the Smooze // by Snake Staff //------------------------------// Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria, Princess Twilight Sparkle was pacing up and down her crystal tree fort’s private library, deep in thought. For you see, Princess Twilight had a problem. Several problems, actually: One: The godless heathens of Ponyville had had the audacity to borrow books from her restocked personal library, and then return them late! Or put them on the wrong shelf! Or even worse, sell them over the internet as genuine princess possessions to collectors and/or creepy fetishists. Twilight knew because she had bought several of the tomes herself. Never you mind why. Anyway, her useless castle didn’t even have a single dungeon or torture chamber to throw the offenders in! Two: This casual treatment of her sacred tomes of knowledge was symptomatic of the utter ingratitude the citizens of Equestria had shown her. She had saved the world several times, had even ascended to godhood, and still she couldn't get so much as a motherbucking Manehatten taxi! She still had to stand in lines, pay full price at her favorite burger joint, and deal with the Equestrian Revenue Service, same as always! After she had put her neck on the line for these ponies! Three: Twilight was at the time feeling the mighty primal urge to seek a mate. But the stallion she had her eye on, a pegasus recruit in the Royal Guard by the name of Flash Sentry, was currently taken by two other mares. Worse, those two mares happened to be Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, which ruled out simply banishing her romantic rivals to the moon, as she’d originally planned on doing. Four: Most importantly, Discord had recently been up to his old antics again, tormenting Twilight in the guise of the narrator. It had been horrible experience, and not one Twilight enjoyed talking about. Unfortunately, nopony had helped her. Indeed, when she finally found a way to shrink Spike back to normal size after his little tryst with Rarity, he had done nothing but complain about it. And Discord’s innocent act had fooled everypony else, to the point of even erasing their memories of the whole incident - Twilight alone knew that anything had happened at all. She certainly wasn’t buying his ridiculous excuse that he’d been with Fluttershy the whole day, or that she had passed out of a witchweed potion overdose. “I’ll get you yet, Discord,” muttered Twilight vengefully, taking another swig of witchweed and savoring the rush of clarity and insight it brought. The princess had been pacing for a long time – she wasn’t sure exactly how long, but she knew that her pile of used potion bottles had grown quite large. She hadn’t slept in some time, but thanks to all the chemicals pumping through her bloodstream she felt more awake than ever. Obviously she should have taken up this habit years ago. Just imagine how much studying she could have achieved if she hadn’t wasted all that time sleeping! It was enough to make a mare’s heart bleed. “Uh, Twilight?” came the annoying voice of the fat purple traitor lizard, Spike. He stuck his head into the doorway of the room Twilight was pacing in. “You ok?” “I’m fine,” she growled irritably. “Why?” “You haven’t left this room in three weeks. You haven’t come out to eat or sleep or… go to the bathroom or... anything! Everypony’s getting worried.” “Nonsense!” Twilight declared, guzzling the last of her bottle of witchweed potion and tossing it aside carelessly. “I’ve never been better!” Spike ducked under the glass bottle, which shattered on the wall behind him. “Uh…” he looked around the room. “How much of that stuff have you had?” “Oh, I stopped counting after the first fifty,” Twilight answered in a suddenly cheerful tone. “But don’t worry; I don’t have an addictive personality!” Having so declared, the alicorn princess reached out and plucked a random crystal poking out of the wall, crushing it to powder between her hooves. She proceeded to snort the powder up her nose while the baby dragon watched. After a moment, Twilight sighed contentedly. “Man,” she declared with a vacant-eyed shudder. “That is some good shit right there.” Nervously, Spike backed out of the room to write a letter to Princess Celestia, leaving his alicorn friend alone in her library again. Twilight, her senses definitely not clouded by the ludicrous amounts of chemicals in her bloodstream, honest, chose a random direction in which to resume her pacing. Unfortunately for her, that direction happened to carry her straight into a bookshelf. Her frazzled and extremely messy head collided with the furniture, which angrily dumped a book directly atop her head in retaliation. “Ow!” Twilight sat back on the floor, rubbing her noggin and wishing that she had more potion in her hooves. “Stupid bookcase,” she glared up at it. “Throwing a fuckin’ book at a princess! Why I oughta have banished to the sun and…” Twilight’s voice trailed off as she noticed what book had fallen in front of her. On the floor was an old tome the nerd and/or scholar in her recognized for Legendary Monsters of Equestria and Their Feeding Habits, by a certain author whose name was lost to the mists of time on account of her being devoured alive by one of her observational subjects. Honestly, going into the hellish bowls of the earth by herself to spy on ravenous supernatural monstrosities probably wasn’t the smartest career choice. Anyway, the book was, by some coincidence, open to a certain page. As Twilight stared down at the page, she got an idea. An awful idea. An awful, terrible idea. An awful, terrible, fucking brilliant idea. She grinned widely. “Heh heh. Borrow my books? Make me wait in line? Steal my boytoy?" she growled in anger at the offenses. "Narrate my life, will they? I’ll show them. I’ll show them all! Heh heh heh heh heh! Aha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” Spike was in the middle of composing his letter to Princess Celestia, warning her that her old student was driving herself insane again, when suddenly the entire tree castle began to shake and rattle. It continued to do so for several minutes, getting more and more powerful before coming to a sudden halt. The dragon paused from his frantic scribbling and looked up. “What was that?” he asked no one in particular. Receiving the expected answer – which is to say, none at all – Spike set aside his quill and paper and tiptoed quietly down the hall, towards Twilight’s library. He hoped that she wasn’t doing anything horribly dangerous that he’d have to try to stop and/or run for his life from. Unfortunately for Spike, some demented sadistic god hates him. When he gently pried open the door, he had just enough time to take in the sight before him and formulate an appropriate reaction. “What the fu-” At which point he was buried in a tide of purple goo, while a certain lavender alicorn perched upon a bookshelf raft laughed manically. “The Smooze has returned!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “LET THE WORLD DROWN IN HIS OOZE!!! BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!” Princess Celestia, who was using her magical telescope to spy on her citizenry for... reasons, happened to turn the device towards Ponyville at that moment. Deciding to peek in on the newest alicorn princess, she gazed down at Twilight's crystal castle. Just in time to see a very familiar purple goo covered in faces pour out of every opening in the building. "Well..." the regal white alicorn said to herself. "Shit."