//------------------------------// // Meanwhile... // Story: Discord Writes a Ship Fic // by Phoenix Quill //------------------------------// It didn't take too long for things to get settled between Discord and Celestia. Stella would work for him to learn more about Equestria's government system, while earning a few bits on the side for food and a place to stay. Celestia meanwhile, was going to put forward funding for her to get better educated on government matters by a private tutor. Naturally, Celestia picked the smartest, most well educated mare she knew. "And you see, that's why the bit crisis a few months ago nearly bankrupted the world," Twilight said with a chipper smile, only to receive silence in return. She turned around from the blackboard to look on at the lonely library inside Canterlot castle and gave a sigh. "I don't understand why Celestia didn't accept my request to educate that gryphon yesterday." "Aww, cheer up Twilight, at least you'll get to sit in on Luna's classes once in a while to help. Isn't that something?" Twilight gave off a small groan as she folded one of her books shut and placed it back into it's spot on the shelves. "I suppose so," she said as she turned around to face him with a frown. "It's just that Luna's been away for so long, that she's just now got to the point where she doesn't have to have somepony tell her that the things she brings up in court are no longer valid." She picked up a set of old saddlebags and nodded a signal for Spike to climb up for a ride. "I think she should be helping me teach, not the other way around." Spike was just about to say something, it was quite possibly meaningful, and quite heartfelt. However, we will never get to know that for sure, for at just that moment, the door to the room she was in opened with a hard slam. "Behold, the smartest pony in Equestria hath graced your tiny mind's presence!" Twilight felt a slight throbbing in her temples, and gently applied pressure with a hoof. "Hello Luna," "Ah-ah-ah," she interrupted sharply before Twilight could continue. "That's genius professor Luna to you, teacher's assistant Twilight!" It was in that very moment that Twilight felt a very strong urge to commit a very slight amount of regicide. Not a complete destruction of the system, just one very annoying blue one. "If you only came here to gloat, would you kindly submit all remarks in writing, thank you for playing." "Aww, somepony woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morrow." Luna jumped over a small stack of books to get closer to the pair and held a hoof up. "I shall, what is it my sister calls it, boop your nose to make you better, yes?" Twilight grabbed a few books with her magic, and stuffed them into a bag as she, and by proxy, Spike made way for the exit. "I'm really not in the mood for this Luna. Now, let's go meet up with Stella before she winds up doing something rash." Luna waved a hoof dismissively at the thought as she followed Twilight out of the room. "She is perfectly fine waiting for our arrival. Surely she can not do anything too problematic waiting in our chambers." "Wait," Spike said as things began to click in his mind surprisingly fast. "Are you telling me that you left your new student alone in your room, where you keep several personal things, including dangerous magical items. With no supervision at all?!" The two alicorns looked at each other, then away from each other. Luna caught on a little slower than Twilight, but both reached the same conclusion. "Pony feathers!" Meanwhile, at a part of the castle, Celestia was having a quiet chat with her assistant. "So, you see, that's why I always wear amethyst stones in my regalia." "Wow, I never would have guessed that was the reason," Raven said with a shake of her head. "Yes, hardly anypony would to tell the truth. But, you see, the thing is that nopony ever asked before you did." She took a small sip of her tea, and nearly felt green from it's taste. However, she kept her best smile and gently lowered the cup. "Hmm, needs more sugar," she muttered to herself before adding several heaping spoons of the fine granules to the light brown brew. Raven nodded slightly to herself, unsure of how to take in such information. She instead opted to shrug it off and have a sip of her own drink, orange juice. "So, I hear that you decided to have Stella go through a tutelage as well as her job with Discord? Celestia felt the beginnings of a headache at the thought of all the paperwork she had only finished filing through a few hours before bed last night. "Yes, I did think it would be best for her in the long run." She looked idly out the window at a squirrel as it ran on a low wall in the garden. "I know she's determined, but I don't think she should just be given the keys to the kingdom, to use a phrase. " She sipped on the tea, and was now satisfied with it. "After all, it takes years of education to become an assistant around here. Right Raven?" Raven simply nodded in consent as she looked over a few sheets of paper. "Yes, about seven years of schooling to get where I was when I started. Everything else, well, you learn at the job." She smiled in a tired manner before sipping from her juice and continuing to read the papers. Suddenly she raised an eyebrow and looked over at Celestia in curriousity. "How unusual, that you turned down Twilight's offer to tutor the gryphon, and instead chose your own sister. Any particular reason?" Celestia smiled as she dipped a cookie into her tea a few times before giving it a bite. "Well yes, Twilight's going to be very busy for the next few days, what with her new castle, and the paperwork involved in that of course." "Of course," Raven echoed before taking a sip of her juice. "Anyhow," Celestia continued, "Not to mention the furniture she'll be needing, and all those problems that will be brought to her as a princess. Besides, Luna's probably more qualified. After all, she's been apart of Equestria just as long as me." "Excluding that thousand year gap of course," Raven said with a sip of her drink before unfolding the news paper, and giving a precursory glance to the want adds. Celestia nodded to Raven, and the mare watched Celestia and began to count down from ten. When she hit five, she suddenly saw a slight shift in Celestia's features, followed by three more before she reached the number two. Finally Celestia's face settled on horror when she reached one, and Celestia jumped out of her seat and spilled her tea everywhere as Raven reached one in her mind. "What is wrong with me?!" Celestia screamed as she began to make a dash for the door out of the tea room "Luna barely is able to get through a session in court without wondering if she could just behead somepony a little bit!" She began to nervously bounce on her hooves as she quickly grabbed her regalia and threw it on. "We've got to hurry, where do you think they are right now?" "Probably Luna's room, she seems to enjoy having company there," Raven said as she began to sop up the spill with some napkins. With that information in mind, Celestia quickly rushed out of the room, and made a mad dash for Luna's chambers, on the far end of the castle. Meanwhile, in yet another part of the castle, Discord was bored out of his skull. It was after all, his day off, and he just wanted to do anything other than try to figure out the work he'd brought home. So instead, he'd opted to stare at the emptiest wall he had in his room, and hold up a sign that simply read as follows, Anypony else remember when I wrote fiction? Meanwhile, in yet another part of the castle, Stella was standing in the middle of the room she'd been told to wait in. It was rather a strange combination of styles found in this area of the castle, and most definitely not something she would have expected one of the co-rulers of Equestria to live in. Granted, there were several artifacts that were quite possibly several millennia old, and the furniture was quite befitting somepony of her station. There were star and moon charts, and several books and sheets of paper dedicated to mathematics, and even some evidence that the younger princess enjoyed painting in her spare time. But what it was that seemed strange to her, was the shear number of items dedicated to music that seemed to over take the room. And while that wouldn't seem to be such a problem to most ponies to assume that Luna enjoyed an orchestra now and then, it did put things into perspective when she had posters lining the walls of several heavy metal bands in such a way, that Stella was unsure what color the wall was behind all of them. Stella closely leaned into the wall and examined some of the stallions, and a few mares that had adorned the walls. The posters included groups such as Carriage Stepper, Blended Brother, Iron Dirigible and Rockellica, just to name a few. But it didn't end there, but rather continued as images spilled into the mirror frame, where the princess posed with band members and even managed to stuff a few guitar picks into the gaps of the frame. It wasn't until the small figure of a mare with bat wings screaming into a microphone surrounded with what appeared to be offerings of dried flower petals surrounding it, did Stella suddenly get the idea in her head that Luna's obsession was slightly creepy. She turned away from the wall with the vanity and too many posters to count, and instead turned her eye to a buero. "Odd, I don't recall ever seeing either of the princesses wearing clothes before." Currious, she edged closer to the drawer and carefully gripped one of the handles. She gently started to slide it out, only to stop, suddenly feeling a twinge of guilt for going through someone elses drawers. Silence danced it's way through the room, and nopony seemed to be coming, so she shurgged with her wings and pulled the drawer the rest of the way out, and her beak dropped slightly at the sight. "Oh my..." Meanwhile, at the ministry of practical chaos, Steam Shine, Button Stitch, Wordsmith, Random Thought and Screwball were all sitting around one of the cafeteria tables. "So, how do you like working here?" Random said with a half smile at the three ponies that were brought in a few weeks ago. "Err," Steam Shine said with a frown. "I don't think I've done anything here yet. In fact, I still work in Cloudsdale last I checked." Button Stitch gave a small nod with her head and violently stabbed at the carrots on her plate. "I still have no idea why I'm not allowed to go home, I mean, I've got a business to run." "No," Screwball said with a very serious face. "Not until you admit that I'm your daughter." "But you're not!" The mare screamed in frustration. "You're a part of my altered ego brought on by Discord when he infected me with your, whatever you are that's been purged from my body!" "So," Wordsmith said as he pointed his hoof lazily at the pair of mares. "What you're saying is, that you're the mother, and Discord's the father?" The only real response to that question was a slap to the face that resulted in an instant knock out from one of the two mares at the table. And five bits say you can figure out whom was the responsible party member. Random Thought was leaning with his chin on his hoof during the last half hour of this conversation, and was continuing to not pay any mind to everything going on around him. Not because he was actually not paying attention, but rather, because he had been busy wishing that he was either any where else on earth right now, or they would just change the subject already. As Button and Screwball continued to go back and forth about the logistics of weather or not she is Button's daughter, and the reasons why they should and should not have a relationship, Random decided to shake things up a bit and lean over to Steam Shine. "Hey, can I ask you something?" "Yeah," Steam Shine said with a bored droop to his eyes. "What's up?" "Do you ever think that we're only characters in a story, but not the important ones, so the author only uses us as filler between important scenes?" Steam Shine did his best to look shocked at the question, but in truth he only came off as amused. "What makes you say that?" "Well, I mean, isn't it strange that we haven't come together in weeks, and our lives haven't been anything unusual at all, and suddenly here we all are together trying to hash out some last minute details, after months of never bringing it up?" Steam Shine then leaned away from the unicorn as he took a bite of his sandwich. "Okay, I'm not talking to you." He then tried to get back into the conversation between the mares, only to find that he'd seemed to have missed something important. "Alright, so I'll visit, but you have to warn me if you do the same for me," Button said as she pointed at Screwball with a hoof. "Fine, but only if I get to call you mom." "Only when nopony else is around." "Done." "Done." And with that, the two mares shook hooves, and Screwball pulled off her beany to pull out a rather ornate door. Once again defying logic as known by anypony beside Discord. "I suppose that will take me home then?" "Yeppers," Screwball said with an energetic nod. Button Stitch nodded back and entered the door without comment. "Just walk through the door and you'll be entering your back door. Just, you might want to use your front door to leave home from now on." "Wait what?" Was all she managed to get out before the door slammed shut behind her, and disappeared into nothingness. "Well, that's one more plot hole filled in," Screwball said with a smile. "So, what's next on the agenda?" "Well, we have the issue on weather or not we should keep calling him Wordsmith or Phoenix," Random said with a bored look on his face. "Nope, nopony cares about such meta details," Steam Shine said with a frown. "How about we do something different?" "What if we just make some sort of reference to a piece of pop culture and call it a night," Wordsmith said as he came out of his short forceful snooze. There was a round of agreement to the idea, and they all sat quietly for a few moments as they thought of what to say next. Finally, it was Random who finally said, "I never wanted to work in the ministry." "If you say you wanted to be a lumberjack, I'll turn you into an Ex-parrot." Screwball said with a steely glint in her eye. Silence reigned at the table for a few moments. Nopony was sure of what to say to that at all. Finally, Wordsmith looked over to the wall on his right and commented, "And now for something, completely different." Meanwhile, back at the castle, Princess Celestia and her assistant were busy running through the castle, and Raven was beginning to run out of breath. "Your majesty, why can't we simply teleport to her room?" Celestia was also starting to become short of breath as she continued to run on through the halls. "Because, there's a spell cast over the," she stopped to breathe for a second as she kept running. Once she felt able to continue, she picked up the talk where she left off. "Castle, it prevents teleportation within castle grounds, except in key points." Luna and Twilight meanwhile, have just now reached the same conclusion, after trying to teleport and finding themselves appearing in the dungeons office several times in a row. "Blast it all, we'll never get there at this rate!" "Calm down Luna, maybe there's some kind of secret passage way we didn't think of?" Luna took Twilight's idea, and ran with it. "Brilliant idea, perchance in one of these cells?" "I don't think that's such a good idea," Twilight started before she was pulled along with Luna's magic to a nearby cell. Luna scoured the room for a few moments with her eyes and magic, hoping to find something that would trip off a doorway or tunnel hidden in the walls. "There's always something like that in those books I read," she said to herself. That was when the door to the cell slammed shut without warning, leaving the two trapped within. Twilight tried to push the door open with a hoof, only for her to find that it was, of course, locked. "Great, now what?" Meanwhile, at the barracks of the lunar guard, Hearthstone was sleeping. Since nothing exciting is happening here, let's move on to someone else. Meanwhile at Discord's private chambers, he was now busy holding a sign that read, If anyone wants to read a story from me, send me a note saying you like stinky cheese in your breakfast cereal.