Lucifer dropped onto his favorite stool in the dingiest bar in Hell with a tired sigh. It had been a long day, what with all those graduating teenagers to tempt in America. He didn’t do much tempting himself anymore; over the millennia he had trained enough demons to do the job for him, but he still liked to oversee. These days it hardly took a prod in the wrong direction for some of those wayward teens to sin.
On the other end of the spectrum, some of them were positively exhausting, adamantly refusing to give in. They usually cracked under the influence of twenty or thirty demons, though others simply would not cave. Those most righteous souls were assigned a number of Sentinel Devils, a long and tedious process. He tapped on the counter with a long, clawed finger, startling the bony bartender on its other side.
“Your Wretchedness!” the worker bumbled, bowing awkwardly over his arrangement of shot glasses.
“Save it, Moistturd,” Lucifer grumbled, resting his head on his fist as he leaned halfway across the bar. “Just gimme the usual.”
“Yes, Your Travesty,” the old soul obeyed, pouring his Father Below a tall glass of fermented magma. The Devil took a long swig of the stuff, letting its warmth sear his icy innards. He shuddered involuntarily.
“Thanks, Colonel,” he muttered, setting his drink on the counter with a clink.
The bartender grinned sheepishly. “Colonel? Heh. Haven’t held that title in more than a hundred years.”
“Yeah, well, you lived a colonel, you died a colonel, and you’re still a colonel to me,” the Devil rattled off with a friendly smirk. Colonel Moistturd’s widened.
“Thank you, Your Wretchedness,” he said sincerely. “You sure know how to brighten up somebody’s day.”
“Least I can do.” He took another flaming drink.
The bar was nearly empty, aside from a few slumped customers chatting quietly at booths along the back wall. No doubt remembering old times, back when they had names that didn’t inspire a sickened flinch, back when they could watch the sun swirl around their little world, back when colors brought to life the most mundane of things.
There was no color in Hell. None of the bright, vibrant hues of Earth, anyway, and nothing near the glorious shades of Heaven. Lucifer sighed, remembering old times of his own.
The door to the bar swung open, bringing in a noisy gust of wind and a huge, cloaked customer. The newcomer’s robe flapped theatrically around his person for a moment before he stepped inside and gently shut the door behind him. Lucifer was glad for the wind: it meant there was a flurry of damned souls on their way down. Maybe a group of partying high school graduates had died in an explosion, or maybe an unfortunate batch of drunkards had caused a fatal accident on a major highway.
His attention was refocused by the towering figure who stepped slowly across the room. Though the long bar's stools were empty of patrons other than the Devil, the hooded mammoth of a soul took the seat directly to his left.
Lucifer was not easily intimidated. Despite his scrawny, hollow appearance and just-below-average height, his supernatural powers of darkness and deception were forces to be reckoned with. Unlike many portrayals in human art, the Devil did not have wings, or a tail, and he couldn’t remember ever using a pitchfork. In fact, in his natural form, he looked rather like a human. The only significant differences were his uncanny thinness, his dry, grey skin, the pair of short horns protruding from his scalp, and his long, taloned fingers with infinitely opposable joints.
The cloaked customer was nearly three times as wide as Lucifer and more than a head taller. Only his massive, work-calloused hands were left uncovered by the charcoal robe. For one reason or another, Lucifer felt a growing sense of uneasiness as the stranger sat in total silence. Moistturd paid the pair no mind, moving to another corner of his workspace to continue shining cups.
Finally, the stranger spoke in a deep, resonant voice that made the vessels in Lucifer’s eyeballs swell with freezing blood.
“Hello, Lucy." The tone was jovial.
The Devil groaned.
“Hi, Dad.”
Another minute of silence passed as both waited for the other to begin a conversation. In the end, it was God who began it all. As always.
“This place hasn’t changed a bit,” He acknowledged, turning this way and that as he surveyed the tiny tavern.
“Never does,” Lucifer agreed. “Haven’t seen you here in ages.”
God nodded. “Everybody has those days.”
Lucifer quirked an eyebrow skeptically. “Not you.”
“True,” God admitted, leaning back a bit on his stool. It creaked beneath his healthy weight. “Though I wouldn’t mind a drink right about now.”
Moistturd perked up, turning unknowingly to the Forger of his soul. “What can I get you, sir?”
“How much for a glass of water?” He asked.
Moistturd blinked once. “Uh… nothing, sir.”
“Then I’ll take one.”
With a slightly bemused smile, Moistturd fulfilled the order, setting a tall glass of clear water in front of the enormous figure. With a wave of his burly hand, the liquid changed to a deep red color. Lucifer rolled his eyes.
The bartender’s throat closed as he realized the implications of the miracle. “You… y-y-you’re…” he attempted. God held up a preventive palm.
“It’s all right,” He comforted. “Go back to work. I’m just here on a little business.”
The ex-colonel nodded frantically, turning away from his Maker with terrified haste.
“A little business?” Lucifer repeated.
His Father chuckled. “Indeed, I’m afraid I didn’t come here for the weather. Or the scenery.”
The Devil growled. “Then get on with it.”
“Actually, I’m here to pick a bone with you—”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“—on behalf of your brother.”
Lucifer’s abdomen clenched painfully. “Is that so?” he asked through gritted teeth. “Was it while He was teaching you that one?”
He pointed at the ignored glass of wine in front of his Father. God laughed, rumbling the entire building.
“Other way around, Lucy,” He quipped. “But no, this was a recent request. It has come to His attention that, once again, you’ve specifically corrupted one of His most precious gifts to humanity.”
“Specifically corrupted, eh?” the Devil asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you have taken something meant to inspire Good and warped it into something that reeks of Evil.”
“Oh!” Lucifer chirped. “Like, uh... television and the internet.”
“Yes, but even more specific. In fact, this particular corruption has a lot to do with the internet.”
The Devil raised a patchy eyebrow. “Is it the changes I made to Facebook?”
God took a deep breath. "Well, it's hard to explain without using human terms, so I’ll resort to the words they’ve given the phenomenon on Earth.” He leaned closer to His estranged son and lowered his voice seriously. “They call it… Rule Thirty Four.”
In seconds, Lucifer had broken down, cackling delightedly and pounding his twisted fist against the countertop. The cups of wine and cooling magma rattled with every slam, accompanying the devilish laughter with interspersed buzzes of glass against glass.
“Oh, that is too much!” he gasped with his cheek against the bar. “That is just too much! The Big Guy had a little run-in with Rule Thirty-Four, did He? Hhhhhhaaa-ha-ha-ha!”
He wiped a chilly tear from his eye, sitting bolt upright with a malevolent sneer around his pointed teeth.
“What did He see, huh? Was it something of Him? Oh my badness, that is too funny…”
“As I’ve said,” God continued tranquilly, “it was a specific corruption of one of His most beloved and recent attempts to spread love in first-world countries.”
Still smirking, the Devil shrugged.
“A television show, Lucifer,” God expounded as seriously as before. “A cartoon. A prime target for your abhorrent Rule: while a majority of its characters are strong females, designed to be visually and emotionally attractive, its most devoted audience is vastly comprised of young adult males who—”
“No freaking way!” the Devil shouted. “Are you talking about My Little Pony?”
Beneath his hood, God stifled a smile. “So you are familiar.”
“Familiar?” Lucifer guffawed. “Dad, that show has been a goldmine for me! It attracts the most innocent little viewers seeking all that is virtuous, lovely, of good report, and praiseworthy—you know the type—and they get absorbed in the Brony Movement and the online culture, and before too long they start Googling images of their favorite characters and delving into the more obscure fanfictions and BAM! I get one of my boys to throw a nice appetizer of Rule Thirty-Four in their faces. More often than not, they fall like flies.”
“I am well aware,” God said sadly, “as is a rather flustered member of our family.”
“Yeah, well, up His,” Lucifer profaned. His Father’s shoulders seemed to broaden, if even possible.
All things are possible with—
Yeah, yeah, I know, he interrupted his own mind.
“Lucifer, you were once a Son of the Morning,” He said in a voice the Devil mentally described as a hushed bellow. “It would be wise for someone with your understanding of His sacrifice and position to show some respect.”
The exile cringed. “Sorry,” he whispered quickly.
God seemed to relax a little. “I will waste no more of our time.” The Devil snorted at the ridiculous notion of wasting an Eternal Being’s “time,” but listened as his Father continued. “My Son asks that you remove all Friendship is Magic-related pornography from the internet.”
“No way,” the Devil said.
“As He expected,” God continued, “so I am now going to offer you a challenge.”
Lucifer’s eyelid twitched. “A… challenge?” He slid his right hand over his sunken face. “Dad, we did this last time you came down here, remember? What was that guy’s name… the super righteous one I called a tool.”
“Job.”
“Yeah, him. Look, I learned my lesson, okay? There are people up there who actually love you no matter what. I don’t really get it, but I accept it. But I’m not accepting another challenge from the Creator of the Universe.”
“I think you might want to hear it out, Lucy,” God said. “It’s quite an interesting prospect.”
Arguing was fruitless. Lucifer knew that from the get-go. Moaning impatiently, he swiveled on his stool to face his Father and waited for the terms with a disinterested squint.
“My Son is under the impression that you still have some Good in you,” He began. “I’m not sure if I agree. In any case, He suggests that if you only experienced the sincerity and craft of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, even you would be disgusted by the idea of its corruption.”
Lucifer tilted his head down, staring incredulously into the shadowy space beneath his Father’s hood.
“You’re saying Jesus is daring me to be a Brony?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” God clarified. “He’s 'daring' you to be a pony.”
For the first time in several minutes, a desperately uncomfortable silence hung humidly around the pair.
“Wha… huh?”
“It is proposed that I place you inside the world of the show,” He explained with a hint of amusement in his rich voice. “Your brother believes that if you spend a sufficient amount of time among the ponies in an exact replica of Equestria—”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“—that you will come to appreciate and respect them as much as He does.”
“You have got to be kidding me!”
"You will live among them for one week. If, in that amount of time, you can manage not to befriend any of them, you will win the challenge and may leave the internet as it stands.”
“What? Is this some sort of sick joke? I'm the one who invented sick jokes!”
"However, if you do befriend any of the ponies during those seven days, you will fail and be required to remove all pony pornography."
"I literally do not believe this."
“Do you accept the challenge?”
“You're just gonna snap your big, beefy fingers and send me into someplace called Equestria? Are you even listening to yourself? What kind of stupid pun is Equestria, anyway!?"
“Do you accept the challenge?”
“… Yes.”
And with a snap of His big, beefy fingers—along with an almost giddy smile—God sent the Devil into a prepared dimension that perfectly mirrored the universe of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic up to the end of its fourth season.
As the gloomy bar disappeared from around him, Lucifer wondered why he had accepted. Was it simply his pride? That seemed to be the root of most of his problems. Did he just want to prove to his All-Powerful Father and Self-Righteous Big Brother that he could spend forever among those pathetic pastel ponies without changing his ways? Did he want to rub his success in Their glorious faces while thousands of corrupted souls linked their own chains of damnation with every clopfic and NSFW image that poisoned their precious minds?
Or did he just really, really, really want to piss off Twilight Sparkle?