My Little Reality Show

by Miss Earl Grey

First HOH Competition!

- Chapter Two -

Tick...tock...tick...tock...

The clock on the wall seemed to be moving with increasing sluggishness. Luna couldn’t believe how boring these meetings had become. A thousand years ago, meetings had delegates and the common ponies from Equestria coming in and offering opinions on current crises. Nowadays, they were simply a bunch of old stallions sitting around telling her how wonderfully things were going in all the different regions. The Appaloosa settlement had been founded perfectly, the apples in Ponyville were currently being harvested, and the textile mills at Trottingham were at top capacity...

It was all very dull.

Luna straightened her spine and resisted the urge to adjourn the meeting. What would happen, she wondered to herself, if she just started preening her wings in front of the whole Council? The expressions on their faces would be priceless, but it would be yet another stodgy conversation with Celestia explaining how differently things were done now. The Princess of the Night nodded approvingly when yet another chart was whisked away and replaced with another graph. More numbers and statistics, which meant more things to remember.

She glanced furtively at the clock again. “Gentlecolts,” she finally said, interrupting Councilcolt Bar Graph, “Thank you very much for this extremely...enlightening evening. But unfortunately, I have a previous engagement which must be attended to.”

Way down at the opposite end of the table, Councilcolt Discord jerked awake. Princess Luna was breaking the meeting off early? His large yellow eyes narrowed and scanned Luna’s expression. She seemed anxious and kept glancing at the clock—did the regal little princess have a date somewhere? A quick smile spread over his face. The draconequus stretched his long, slender body and cracked the knuckles on his lion’s paw. “I don’t think I’m the only one here wondering where you’re running off to in such a hurry, Princess,” Discord said loudly.

Normally, whenever the Spirit of Chaos opened his mouth, somepony would chastise him. But tonight, most of the council was thinking the same thing. Luna blushed.

“My engagement is with my sister, and it is of utmost importance,” Luna said, hesitating only slightly. “And I will appreciate thy holding thy tongue, Councilcolt Discord. My sister only knows how rarely you contribute to these meetings, and they run much smoother because of it.”

Discord let the jibe pass, and instead snapped his fingers. “Whatever. Personally, I could do without these meetings.”

“Yes,” Luna said distractedly. She bowed her head to the Council and hurried outside, hooves echoing loudly in the empty stone corridors.

Discord watched her go. Where was she going, then? Surely not just to a meeting. He twirled his beard and then followed Luna, shrinking down to the size of a mouse in order not to be seen. This...would be very interesting.

________________________________________

“Welcome to Big Brother!”

Celestia watched the screen intently, wondering where on earth Luna was. Just when she was about to get up and break up the council meeting, the door flew open. The regal white princess settled back on the bed and graced her younger sister with a smile. “Luna! I was wondering where you were. Did the meeting really go on that long?”

“Yes, my sister,” Luna panted. “I was wondering if those old geezers would...eep!” The dark alicorn whinnied in alarm and brought her front hooves down smashing on something small. “A mouse!” Luna said, scrunching her nose. “How horrid.”

“Sweep it down the stairs then, Luna, the cats will find it,” Celestia urged. “And hurry, it’s starting!”

Luna kicked the small draconequus-shaped mouse down the stairs. At the bottom, Discord poofed back to his normal size and lay there, stars twirling in his vision. “Ow,” he mumbled.

Both princess snuggled on the bed and Luna took the opportunity to settle the bowl of popcorn closer to her this time. Celestia took the remote and upped the volume—but not too loudly, otherwise the guards would hear.

All sixteen of the houseguests were lined up in the backyard dressed in the customary Big Brother vests. As usual, the Big Brother sets were large and elaborate—the backyard had been transformed into an icy winter wonderland. Large drifts of fake snow were everywhere, and big plastic snowflakes were suspended on the walls. Eight irregularly formed icebergs, mostly in sloped conical shapes, were placed evenly across the backyard. In front of each iceberg was a small stool. Overhead, little flakes of fake snow drifted down, and the pool had a film of “ice” over it.

They milled around excitedly, chattering to one another, until Flim and Flam’s voices came over the loudspeaker. “Goooood evening, Houseguests!” Flim said. “Now, in order to compete in this next competition, you will be paired up! You now have thirty seconds to find your partner and pick an iceberg.”

Back in the diary room, Mrs. Cake tittered. “Since Big Brother usually goes for endurance, I wanted my partner to be a little stronger than I was, don’cha know. That way, at least one of us could have a good chance of winning.”

“I absolutely do not want to win the first Head of Household competition!” Octavia said in the diary room. “Putting that big of a target on my back would be simple asinine.”

Lightning Dust headed straight for Spitfire. “Wanna be partners?” she grinned. Spitfire arched an eyebrow, looking at the athletic turquoise pony in front of her.

“Sure, why not,” she grinned.

Octavia latched onto Derpy, who seemed pleased to have been chosen at all. Mrs. Cake giggled and asked Big Macintosh, which left the rest of them to scramble for Pony Joe. Fleur seemed quite content with Thunderlane, who was fussing over his Mohawk in the reflective surface of the plastic snowflakes.

“C’mon!” Vinyl Scratch said, dragging Cloud Chaser away from Trixie. “Everypony knows Pegasus’s are better at endurance competitions,” she said confidently.

“Ooh,” Celestia said, munching popcorn. “That sounds vaguely racist.”

“I would honestly put my money on Earth ponies,” Luna said truthfully. “Although she is right, a unicorn seldom wins.”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie desires a strong stallion!” Trixie said, seizing Pony Joe.

“I can help you with that,” Braeburn winked cheekily, and the rest of the ponies laughed good-naturedly.

“No, darling, you can help me,” Rarity said coyly, and snatched his cowboy hat playfully from between his ears. The two of them teamed up fairly naturally, which left Cheerilee and Twilight together awkwardly. They shared small smiles, and the eight pairs settled themselves on top of the icebergs.

Spitfire, Derpy, Big Mac, Thunderlane, Cloud Chaser, Pony Joe, Braeburn, and Twilight took the icebergs, while their partners sat on the stools. The icebergs were chilly and made of rather slippery plastic; just getting onto them was a challenge, and the downward sloping angles made it difficult to stay on. Big Mac and Pony Joe eased their large bulks onto the icebergs with a minimum of difficulty, while lightweights like Derpy and Cloud Chaser struggled to stay still.

Derpy struggled to stay on simply because she was Derpy. Octavia looked at Derpy’s difficulties and breathed an inward sigh of relief.

“Twilight looks ridiculous!” Celestia laughed, watching her student flop uneasily on the iceberg, her small hooves clattering against the low-friction surface.

“I don’t think she'll do very well,” Luna ventured, probing the bowl for more popcorn.

“Nonsense,” Celestia said, licking her hoof and swirling it inside the popcorn bowl to catch the last bit of butter, “I’ve taught her plenty of self-adhesive spells. She’ll be up there for hours.”

Flam’s voice came over the loudspeakers again. “This competition is fairly simple,” he said. “The Houseguests sitting on the stools will be asked true or false questions about the Houseguests they have just met. With each wrong answer, the icebergs their partners now sit atop will begin spinning. You unicorns, you cannot use any spells to keep you up on the icebergs.”

“Drat,” Celestia pouted.

“The last contestant to hang on will be the new HOH!” Flim finished delightedly. “This competition begins...now!”

The icebergs started spinning very slowly, and Twilight squeaked in a bit of alarm.

“True or false: at least nine Houseguests have admitted that they would not donate any of the prize money to charity?” Flim asked.

Lightning Dust snorted, and held up her white ‘True’ card. Octavia, Rarity, Vinyl Scratch and Fleur followed suit, while Cheerilee, Mrs. Cake and Trixie all held up their black ‘False’ cards. “The correct answer is ‘True’. I’m sorry, Pony Joe, Twilight, and Big Macintosh, your icebergs will begin spinning faster.”

Twilight began to feel nauseous, and gritted her teeth. “Hang in there!” Cheerilee called encouragingly.

Shut up and answer questions correctly! she wanted to shriek back, but the unicorn was afraid if she opened her mouth she would throw up.

“True or false: three Houseguests are currently unemployed?” Flam questioned over the loudspeakers.

True cards went up all across the board.

“I’m sorry, Houseguests, the correct answer is ‘False’. All of your icebergs will begin spinning faster.”

As soon as the speed increased, Derpy tumbled off the iceberg. “Oops,” she muttered, wallowing in the fake snow. “Sorry, Octavia,” she said morosely. The gray filly looked genuinely upset.

“That’s quite alright,” Octavia said, helping her partner out of the snow. She was beginning to like the cross-eyed little pony. It was hard to see her as a mother, she seemed quite young. “To be perfectly truthful, I didn’t want to win the competition,” Octavia whispered in her ear. Derpy’s wings flapped, and she looked a bit more cheerful.

“True or false: five Houseguests obtained their cutie marks at a very young age?”

Only Rarity and Fleur held up ‘False’ cards, while the rest held up ‘True’. “I’m sorry, Fleur and Rarity, but you are incorrect. The correct answer is ‘True’.”

Braeburn fell off dizzily, and he dry-retched into the fake snow. He looked pale and quite sick, but fumbled out of the snow woozily. “That’s all right, darling,” Rarity said, taking a seat on the bench next to Octavia and Derpy. “You tried your best.”

Big Macintosh closed his eyes and relaxed—before Flim and Flam could call the next question, he deliberately toppled off his iceberg. Mrs. Cake raised her eyebrows, very surprised, but comforted him nonetheless.

“I didn’t want the responsibility of the first HOH,” Big Macintosh said in the Diary Room. He shrugged. “So I just threw it.”

“True or false, Houseguests: four of you have significant others outside of the Big Brother House?”

True cards shot up across the backyard.

“All of you are correct, all of your icebergs will stay the same speed,” Flim said cheerfully.

However, the same speed wasn’t enough for Cloud Chaser, who fell off and smacked into the back wall as though she’d fallen off a treadmill. The thin Pegasus stumbled out of the snow and fell over, breathing hard and squeezing her eyes shut tightly. Vinyl Scratch helped her to her feet and the two of them slowly made their way to the bench.

“True or false: half of you have applied for Big Brother in earlier seasons?” Flam queried.

The competition dragged on. Pony Joe didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and neither did Spitfire. Twilight and Thunderlane, however, looked as though they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Literally. Thunderlane had sunk his teeth into his plastic iceberg and was hanging on tightly. Spitfire was the only pony who had some experience in rapid spinning. It was something she used on new recruits for an academy she ran, which specialized in daring aerial stunts. Still, winning HOH didn’t appeal to her right off the bat.

Her powerful yellow wings flared out and she released, gaining air as her wings caught her safely. Hovering unsteadily above the iceberg, Spitfire landed with surprising smoothness, although she toppled over and had to be rescued by Lightning Dust when her hooves touched the ground.

Pony Joe followed Spitfire’s example, choosing to drop out of the competition willingly. Trixie looked sorely disappointed, and she eyed the broad back of the donut baker with serious distaste. Her ample flank took up more than her allotted room on the bench, although Braeburn, whom she was pressed against, didn’t seem to mind. He had, after all, Rarity on one side and Trixie on the other.

Thunderlane had been eyeing Twilight, who was looking green around the gills. “Twilight!” he called out. The sound of her name nearly upset her, and she lost a few inches on the slippery iceberg.

“That’s cheating!” Celestia bellowed, hurling the popcorn bowl to the floor as she sat up indignantly. “He was trying to distract her!”

“What?” Twilight snapped back through clenched teeth.

“Let go, it’s okay—I won’t put you up!”

“Swear?” she called.

“Swear! I like you!”

Twilight hesitated, and Cheerilee worried her bottom lip. Fleur looked as though Christmas had come early, which made Twilight hang on even longer. Still, it was hard to try and make a decision while spinning frantically on a slippery iceberg. Her hoof hit a smooth patch, and she slid off ungracefully.

“She should have stayed on,” Celestia said unhappily.

“The first Head of Household paints an enormous target on them, ‘Tia,” Luna said, half-underneath the bed in search for the popcorn bowl.

“Congratulations, Fleur and Thunderlane!” Flim and Flam said in unison. “You have won the first Head of Household competition!”

Thunderlane’s iceberg didn’t slow down, but stopped abruptly. He got flung far through the air and landed directly in the pool with a splash, breaking the fake ice on it. Spitting out water and playing amid the fake ice blocks, he splashed Fleur playfully when she came over to help him.

“Nicely done,” she purred in his ear as he clambered out. Thunderlane looked absurdly pleased with himself.

“Fleur and Thunderlane, the two of you must decide who will be HOH,” Flim informed them.

They evaluated each other. “Go ahead, take it,” Thunderlane said, conceding first.

“You were the one who hung on the iceberg,” Fleur said, although not protesting very hard.

“Go on, take it, I want you to have it,” Thunderlane said.

Fleur beamed and accepted the key to the HOH room from Thunderlane, who put it around her neck. His wings stroked her back in an overly friendly manner, and she arched, prancing as she went back to meet the rest of the Houseguests. They crowed congratulations, although some of them looked distinctly unhappy. Vinyl’s smile looked especially brittle.

Back in the diary room, Vinyl Scratch rolled her eyes. “Puh-leeze. The first Head of Household is that frilly skinny model? Gimmie a break.”

________________________________________

The next morning, Rarity cornered Twilight in the kitchen. “Darling, do you think I could speak with you for a moment?”

Twilight was honestly surprised by Rarity’s friendliness. The white unicorn had been extremely bubbly and had even made dinner for them the previous night. She had an apparently never-ending stream of compliments for every filly and flirted shamelessly with every colt, but this morning there was a serious expression on her face. Still, this was exciting! In all of her research, the first alliances usually didn’t last, but the fact that somepony was approaching her was a good sign! It meant she was playing the game well. Hah-hah! And Spike had laughed at her for doing all of that studying!

“Of course, Rarity, what’s up?” Twilight asked, putting down the bowl of oats she had been preparing.

“See, I’ve been thinking—there really needs to be an all-fillies alliance,” Rarity said quietly. “The colts are too boorish and Thunderlane’s frankly too obsessed with himself to be of any use, so I’ve been going around the house looking for fillies who would help. I’m thinking you, me, Fleur, and Cheerilee would make a sort of...final four alliance, if you will.”

Final Four? Twilight thought to herself, wondering if it was at all too early to be thinking about that. But if she could have picked three ponies to be allied with, those would have been the three...

“So, I was wondering if you would like to join. I still need to speak with Fleur and Cheerilee, naturally, but if you came with me it would make things all the more easy.” Rarity said, tossing her perfectly coiffed purple mane out of her eyes.

“Yes!” Twilight said, deciding on the spot. “Yes, yes, yes, I would love to be allied with you guys!”

“Shh, darling, do keep your voice down,” Rarity urged, but with a smile on her face. “Come on, let’s go see if we can speak to Fleur.”

________________________________________

Across the house, Lightning Dust was relaxing next to the pool while Spitfire preened in the hot tub. The orange aerial stuntpony moved closer to the edge. “Hey, Lighting,” Spitfire said quietly. “I’ve been watching you. You’re a pretty cool kid, you know that?”

Lightning Dust felt her heart beat a little faster. “Well, uh, yeah, thanks. You’re pretty cool yourself, you know,” Lightning replied, adjusting her shades.

“Thanks. And I’ve been looking around, we seem like...the only two ponies who really wanna win, you know? I mean, we’re the strongest, we’re the most competitive, and we can play the best social game. So I’ve been trying to think of ponies to put together for an alliance, and right away, I thought of you.” Spitfire told her frankly.

Truth be told, Spitfire wasn’t overtly fond of Lightning Dust. Yes, the filly was bright and strong, but she was also much too loud and didn’t know how to keep her opinions to herself. Her social skills were poor and would probably cost her the game, but Spitfire knew that she wasn’t as young or as fast as she needed to be to win this competition. That’s where Lighting Dust would come in handy. The two of them could play an excellent game, but she would have to put up with Lightning Dust’s attitude for a while. After all, she was rather used to it; young ponies who came to her academy were always boasting. Lightning Dust would be nothing new.

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Lightning Dust said, grinning. “But, like, have you thought of any others? I was thinking maybe Fleur, since she’s HOH right now...”

“Fleur might work,” Spitfire said tentatively, “except she’d only be looking out for herself. I was thinking more along the lines of Derpy, Thunderlane and Trixie.”

“Derpy?” Lightning Dust said incredulously. “She’s useless. Look at those eyes, look how horribly she did in the competition!”

“She’s still a vote,” Spitfire pointed out. “And you gotta remember kid, she’s also a mom. There could be a lot more goin’ on in that head of hers than we give her credit for.”

“I guess...” Lightning Dust said.

________________________________________

Celestia narrowed her eyes. “Twilight’s getting into an alliance already. I don’t like that.”

“’Tia, she has to make some alliances,” Luna pointed out. “And I am quite sure that thy little student shall play a most excellent game.”

Discord stayed in the shadows, biting his knuckle to keep from bursting out laughing. Oh, the Princesses were addicted to a reality show! And a horrible one at that! What in Equestria could he do with this delicious information?

Author's Note:

Ugh. I feel as though there's a heck of a lot of 'telling' and not a lot of 'showing'. This is hard, trying to translate a reality show into text! I had no idea how difficult it would be!

Also, I proofread it as best I could, but if there are any grammar/spelling/continuity errors, point 'em out I can fix them. I'm especially concerned about continuity errors, there are still a LOT of ponies in the game and I'm having a hard time keeping them all straight, lol.

Comments

[Batbrony]

Oh Earlie, this is AWESOME!!! Oh, if Derpy wins over the hearts and minds of the readers/some of the house guests, that'd be SO AWESOME!!! The competition segment was very fun, and don't worry about the showing vs. telling. After all, there's a lot of narrative going on, plus, as you mentioned, in a reality show format the diary room is a normal part of the show; we're supposed to be able to know exactly what's going on in these competitors heads.

One thing you'll need to go back and fix; at the beginning of the chapter, when Luna leaves and Discord goes to follow her, you wrote that he left to follow "Celestia", not "Luna". Little oversight, but I thought you'd want to know. Other than that, I didn't see anything else that needs editing.

Keep up the great work Earlie, I'm loving every minute of this!!!

[Gleaming]

So awesome, Earlie!

[zyr1987]

But if she could have picked four ponies to be allied with, those would have been the four...

Um, only three other names were mentioned at this part, aside form Twilight, who was considering the alliance with them.

[nightmaster0]

Great chapter. Nice to see Discord in the mix. I look forward to seeing what kind of chaos he stir's up.

[Elusive Belle]

Totally called it with Fleur, that's half of my guess down!

With how it's going I believe she'll now put up Braeburn and Thunderlane or Braeburn and Macintosh.

[Mysterious Stranger]

Favorite paragraph in this chapter.

“Nonsense,” Celestia said, licking her hoof and swirling it inside the popcorn bowl to catch the last bit of butter, “I’ve taught her plenty of self-adhesive spells. She’ll be up there for hours.”

[articunos bitch]

An upcoming chapter needs to have 'Uncle Discord' appear in the house. Every time he breaks the fourth wall (can you do that in a reality show?) he talks to his to favorite girls, Celly and Lulu.

[Solar Caesar]

Continue the story please! What are you waiting for?

[FicLab]

I am finding so many old fanfictions today...
Please update soon! This was good. Unless you've died...