• Published 5th Dec 2013
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My Overbearing Aunt - Sketchy Changeling



It's tough being an art school student AND having to live with Princess Celestia. This is my story.

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Chapter 13: The Dates - Part One [Know Your History]

“I’m not wearing a tie!”

“Come on, Marcus! Stop being so stubborn! You want to impress the ladies, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like I’m taking either them to a five-star restaurant!”

“Would it kill you to take some pride in your appearance?”

“I take plenty of pride in my appearance!”

It was Friday night, the night before I was supposed to go out with Rarity and Octavia on separate… dates, for lack of a better word. Auntie Celeste offered to help me pick out some clothes for the occasion, and I figured that having her with me to provide a second opinion would help a little.

As you can tell, I was sorely mistaken.

Celeste insisted that I wear a tie, but I objected to the idea, and we’ve been going back and forth about it for about three minutes.

“Come on, Marcus. You’re being ridiculous. They already know that you like them, so it’s not like you’ll look bad for going the extra mile.”

“I thought you told me that I needed to make my own choices,” I retorted.

“I never said that!” Celeste objected.

“Well, you said something along those lines!”

Celeste let out a frustrated grunt. “You know what? I give. You win, Marcus. Don’t wear the tie.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” I said in exasperation, and resumed picking out my clothes.

I decided on an orange, long-sleeved T-shirt with a dark blue down jacket to be worn over it, along with bluish-black jeans and dark blue sneakers.

“What do you think?” I asked Celeste.

“Eh, it’s decent enough. You’ll need something to top it off, though.”

“Like what?”

“Hang on. I’ve got just the thing.”

Celeste lit up her horn, and a small box appeared in her hands.

“I’ve had this for a while,” she explained. “This was going to be one of your Hearth’s Warming gifts from me, but I think you need it now more than ever.”

“What’s ‘it’?”

“Here, open the box.”

Eh, what the hell. I took the box from Celeste and opened it to see what was inside.

“A bottle of cologne?” I asked in confusion. “It’s not enchanted, is it? I don’t want to involve magic into this.”

“Love is magic, Marcus,” she playfully swooned and I rolled my eyes at her cliché remark, “but to answer your question, no. This isn’t enchanted, it’s just really expensive. The commercials said that it practically turns the user into a mare magnet.”

“You have no idea how advertising works, do you? Haven’t you heard of a little something called embellishment?”

“Well, I thought it smelled nice. Besides, it won’t hurt to use a little spritz of it.”

I looked at the bottle with an unsure face. “I guess...” I put the bottle on my nightstand and hung up my clothes.

“Do you want those clothes ironed for you by one of the maids?” Celeste asked.

“Can you guarantee that Honey Pot won’t end up being the maid ironing them?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll iron them myself.”

“I thought you were going to try and be nicer to Honey.”

“I’m working on it. I’m not gonna turn into her best friend overnight.”

Celeste rolled her eyes. “Well, you seem to be all set, so I’ll let you get some sleep before your big day tomorrow.”

“Yeesh, you make it sound like I’m getting married.”

My aunt looked back at me with a sly expression on her face. “You never know. Maybe that’s what it’ll eventually come to, if you get lucky.”

I froze when I heard that. The thought of marrying one of the mares I liked never crossed my mind. Not that I found it unappealing, mind you. I just never thought about it until Auntie Celeste brought it up.

“Helooooo~” she said as she snapped her fingers in front of my face. “I was only kidding. I wasn’t expecting you to fall into deep thought about it.”

“Sorry. You know I do that sometimes.”

“I know, but you do it at the most unexpected of times. Well, I’ll get out of your hair, for now. Goodnight!”

“’Night.”

With Celeste out of my room, I jumped into my bed and drifted off to sleep.


“Marcus?”

“Luna? Is that you?”

“Who were you expecting?”

“No one in particular. Anyway, would you mind showing yourself? I’d like to see who I’m talking to.”

“I suppose so.”

A familiar blue smoke appeared and a tall silhouette appeared inside of it, which was obviously Luna. I rolled my eyes at her bravado.

“I know we’re in the dream world, but is all this really necessary?”

“I guess not,” Luna said, and the smoke immediately disappeared, leaving behind the tall, dark blue-coated alicorn princess. “You sure do know how to spoil a mare’s fun.”

“It’s a gift. Anyway, what brings you here?”

“Well, I have a proposition for you,” Luna explained. “I know you have feelings for your friends Rarity and Octavia, and I also know that you’re going out with them tomorrow, so I-”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up! How do you know that? You can’t just zoom past that like it was no big deal.”

Luna sighed. “Okay, I maaaaay have looked into your dreams for the past few nights.”

“What!? Why!?”

“I was… curious,” she mumbled sheepishly. “Besides, it’s my responsibility to watch over the dreams of all the citizens of Equestria, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“Then where is it?” I asked with a stupid smile.

After giving me the “are you serious” look, Luna continued to speak. “As I was trying to say, once you return home from your outings, I was wondering if you’d like to go dreamwalking with me that night.”

“Dreamwalking?”

“That’s how I look into the dreams of others. Well, that’s my name for it, at least.”

“And you can take me with you?”

“Yes, and it’s quite simple, actually, but I’ll spare you the explanation. So, is it a date?”

“A… date?” I asked in disbelief.


“Yeah, a date,” she answered with a determined smirk. “I don’t want to lose you to one of those college mares.”

I’ve never seen such a competitive side of Luna before. “Wait, does this mean you… have feelings for me?”

The princess tilted her head to one side. “Was that not clear before?”

“Before?”

“When we were talking about the significance of marriage, remember? I told you that I simply wanted a steady romantic relationship, and I told you that my ideal relationship would be like the one we had.”

I blinked, "That was not clear in any sense of the word, Luna. I didn’t really catch the implication that you liked me that way.”

Luna gave a frustrated sigh. “I suppose I need some more help with modern courtship. In any case, do you accept my offer, Marcus?”

“Sure. It’s a date, Luna,” I nodded.

“Perfect!” the princess said happily. “Meet me in my room tomorrow night, okay?”

“Sure.”

Luna gave me a smile and disappeared with a poof, and then everything went white.


I woke up the next morning well rested and ready to take on the day. I looked at the clock on my nightstand, which read six-thirty AM. I was supposed to meet Rarity in the city square at eight, so that gave me an hour and a half to get ready and go meet her. I already had my clothes picked out, so that gave me plenty of time to eat my breakfast, brush my teeth, shower, get dressed, and get to the town square. By the time I was ready to leave the castle, it was quarter after seven.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to head to the square a little early,” I thought. “Who knows what traffic is gonna be like.”

I started to walk towards the door, but then I got this nagging feeling that I was forgetting something. I turned around and the first thing that caught my eye was the bottle of cologne that Auntie Celeste gave me the night before. I walked back to the table that the bottle was sitting on and picked the bottle up, using two sprays of the cologne on my neck. I figured that that would suffice for today. With that done, and nothing else to do, I left my room and began my walk down the hallway. On my way to the castle entrance, I ran into Auntie Celeste.

“Marcus!” she greeted happily. “There you are! I was just heading to your room to see you before you left. It’s a good thing I caught you.” She then took a whiff of the air around me and sighed contently. “Ahh, you smell heavenly. I told you that cologne was a good idea.”

“Just because you like it doesn’t mean that Rarity and Octavia will,” I remind her.

“Marcus, would it kill you to be at least a little bit optimistic? I’m sure they’ll love it!”

“If you say so…”

“Oh! Before I forget, I’ve got something for you.” Celeste lit up her horn, and a small card appeared in her hand. When she handed it to me, I saw that it was a credit card.

“I’ve decided to give you this to use for today only,” she explained. “Use the opportunity to treat the mares to something nice, okay? I’ll pay for everything.”

“Really?” I asked in disbelief. “Are you sure?”

“Of course! Just don’t tell Blueblood that I gave this to you. He’ll throw a fit if you do, and that’s one headache I’d rather not have.”

“You got it, Auntie.”

Celeste smiled and pulled me into yet another one of her infamous vicegrip hugs, and then she gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Good luck today, sweetie. Hopefully I won’t be the only mare that’s kissed you by the time you come home.”

“I hope so, too,” I chuckled.

“Go get ‘em, ladykiller.”

Auntie Celeste and I had another laugh and parted ways, with me heading out the castle and with her going… wherever the hell she was going.

What? I never bothered to ask.

After I left the castle, I caught a taxi carriage to the city square, which was where I was supposed to meet Rarity. It turned out that I made a good choice in going early, because there was quite a bit of traffic. In spite of that, I still made it to my destination with fifteen minutes to spare.

I decided to wait for Rarity by the fountain, and I sat right on its edge as I contemplated what I had planned for today. Since Auntie Celeste had given me a credit card to use, and since she was paying for everything, I could take Rarity to a nicer restaurant rather than the modest diner I originally planned to take her to. Then I thought of Octavia. After Rarity and I finished our date at two-o-clock this afternoon, I was to meet Octavia in this exact location at two-fifteen so that I could start my date with her.

Just then, I was pulled out of my thoughts by the sound of somepony calling me.

“Marcus! Yoo-hoo!”

I looked in the direction that the voice was coming from, and I smiled when I saw Rarity approaching me.

She was wearing a dark purple autumn dress with a black jacket over it. Her jacket had purple-furred cuffs and her hat was a matching purple. She also wore black stockings and purple boots, which struck me as weird, since ponies always walked on their bare hooves, save for special occasions like the Grand Galloping Gala. Oddly enough, this type of ensemble only served to excite me as I looked her over from head to toe. The dress covered most of her body, but it hugged her curves perfectly and pretty much complimented her figure. The whole waist and hips area made itself quite noticeable with its magnitude and so did the small elliptic hole, which grabbed my attention with its subtle cleavage area, and the whole stocking/boots combo gave her a classy yet badass presence.

To put it in layman's terms, she looked like one hot babe right now! Total knock-out!

I couldn’t help but smile at the realization that Rarity considered this to be a special occasion.

“How are you, Marcus?” she asked, and then she took a whiff of the air around me. "Wow… you smell very… fragrant today."

“I’m doing well,” I answered, "and thanks for the compliment."

Okay, I'll give this one to Celeste. She was right about the cologne.

I continued to look at Rarity's outfit, still captivated by its beauty.

“Oh, so you like my ensemble?” she asked, noticing what my gaze was directed at. “I was worried that it made my hips look too big.”

I smirked. I had gotten good at knowing when Rarity was fishing for compliments.

“They look great, Rarity,” I said, humoring her. I figured that I should give what she was so obviously asking for.

“So, where are you taking me, if I may ask?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and I figured that I could take you to the Royal Canterlot Gardens.”

“Really? That sounds great, darling!”

“Have you ever been there before?”

“Well, when I was a filly, I went there on a class field trip, but I haven’t been there since. I probably won’t even recognize anything there.”

“That’s good enough for me,” I said, content that going to the Royal Gardens would be somewhat of a new experience for her.

Rarity and I caught a taxi to the castle, and we walked around back to where the gardens were.

“So, Rarity,” I said as we walked. “My aunt tells me that you’re somewhat of a heroine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t be coy,” I chuckled. “I’m talking about the fact that you bear one of the… what are they called again?”

The unicorn giggled amusedly. “The Elements of Harmony,” she told me.

“Right. That’s what they’re called. So, tell me about that.”

Instead of answering me, Rarity looked at our surroundings, and she located the east entrance to the castle. “If we go through there, I can show you.”

Curious as to what she meant by that, I took her up on her offer, and we approached the entrance, where two guards were stationed.

The guard on the right was the first to greet me. “Good morning, Sir Marc- I mean, young human that I’ve never met before.”

I chuckled. “It’s alright, Iron Javelin. This mare knows that I’m in the royal family. You don’t mind if we enter, do you?”

“Not at all, sir!” he said as he let me and Rarity in. As she and I walked down the hall, we could hear the guards bickering outside.

“Nice going, dumbass! What if she didn’t know that Sir Marcus was a royal!?”

“It just slipped my mind for a second! Don’t throw a fit over it!”

Rarity giggled at their banter. “And here I thought the royal guards had no personalities.”

“Those are only the elites that accompany Celestia when she goes out on royal business,” I explained. “The rest of them are a lot more… lively, for lack of a better word. Anyway, what was it that you wanted to show me? I don’t think I’ve ever been to this part of the castle.”

“Haven’t you lived here since August?”

“As long as I know where the dining room is, where my room is, and where all the bathrooms are, I’m good.”

Rarity giggled again, which satisfied me since I loved making her giggle. She made the cutest sounds when she did so.

“Well, the thing I want to show you is in one of these hallways… here it is!”

We had reached a narrow hallway adorned with stained glass windows on either side.

“The windows depict important moments in Equestrian history. The window that I want to show you is about halfway down the hall.”

Once we reached said window, I looked at it, and was surprised to see that Rarity was in the picture depicted on it. She was wearing some sort of necklace with a diamond-shaped gem on it, and she was in a circle with five other mares, with a larger mare in the center of the circle. After further examination, I realized that the large mare was…

“Nightmare Moon?” I said in awe.

“Yes, that’s her,” Rarity answered. “It was two years ago. The six mares surrounding her are me and my friends. We used the Elements of Harmony to purify her and turn her back into Princess Luna. There was even a nice celebration in Ponyville afterward. You should have been there.”

I chuckled. “Actually, I was there. It was the only time I had ever been to Equestria before moving here. I actually met Luna at that party.”

“Oh really? I wonder why we didn’t at least run into each other… Then again, we didn’t know each other back then, so maybe we did see each other and didn’t even know it.”

“Maybe. So, are you in any of these other windows?”

“Just one,” she answered, and she took me to the next window. “This was when my friends and I used the Elements to turn Discord to stone.”

“Wow, who knew that you were such an important historical figure.”

“I know sarcasm when I hear it, Marcus.”

“I was only being half-sarcastic. I do think it’s cool that you’re somewhat of a hero. It’s like something out of a TV show.”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “I don’t know about all that. Let’s get back to the gardens, shall we?”

I smiled. “We shall.”

When we reached the entrance, we saw that one guard was stationed there. “Go on in, Rarity,” I tell the mare beside me. “I’ll catch up.”

“Um… okay,” she obliged hesitantly. When she walked in, I approached the guard with a serious face.

“You know Honey Pot, right?” I asked him.

“Short mare, big boobs, has a thing for humans? Yeah, I know her.”

“Make sure she doesn’t come within fifty yards of this place. I can’t have her messing this up. Got it?”

“Yessir!” the guard said with a salute.

“Good,” I said, and I walked into the gardens to catch up with Rarity.

“What kept you, darling?” she asked.

“I was just asking the guard to do a small favor for me,” I sort-of lied. “Nothing major.”

“If you say so, sweetness,” she said.

Rarity and I walked through the garden, admiring the different statues and looking at the flowers. As we walked, Rarity was captivated by a statue of the royal sisters, and while she was distracted, I snuck away and found a flower that caught my eye a while ago.

It was a beautiful yellow lotus flower, and it had just bloomed, too. I knew that it was against the rules to pick the flowers in the garden, but I’m sure that rule only applies to visitors, not royals.

And if I was wrong, I was sure the consequences wouldn’t be that severe. It was just a flower, after all.

With the lotus in hand, I quietly snuck behind Rarity, who was still admiring the statue. I kept moving until I was directly behind her, and I placed the flower onto the brim of her hat. Somehow, she felt her hat move ever so slightly, and she turned around in surprise.

“Marcus? What did you do?” she asked.

“Do you have a mirror?” I asked back.

“Pfft! ‘Do I have a mirror?’ Of course I do.” Rarity dug into her purse and pulled out a hand mirror, and she took a look at herself. She gasped when she saw the flower in her hat. “Aww, Marcus! It’s beautiful! Thank you so much, darling!”

“No problem, Rarity. Come on, I want to show you something.”

I led Rarity to the deepest part of the garden, and we approached a large wooden door.

“Wow…” the unicorn said in awe. “I certainly don’t remember being in this part of the gardens. Wait… the door has no handle.”

I chuckled. “Celestia showed this to me when she gave me a tour of the castle back when I first moved here. It’s an area of the gardens that’s closed off to those that don’t know how to get in. If you press a certain number of wooden planks in the right order, the door will open on its own.”

I pressed on the planks in the sequence that Auntie Celeste told me, and the door slowly opened to reveal a small hill with a large tree growing out of the top of it.

“Just wait till you get to the top of the hill,” I told her.

Rarity smiled at me, took my hand, and I led her up the hill to the trunk of the tree, where a blanket was already laid out for us to sit on.

“I see you were prepared for this,” said the unicorn.

“A little,” I replied. “Have a seat.”

“Why thank you, darling.”

Rarity sat down on the blanket and I sat down soon after, sitting right next to her. “Look out and tell me what you see,” I told her.

The unicorn obliged, and then she gasped in awe. “My goodness, there’s a view of the entire garden from here!”

“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

“It’s… unexplainable. I mean, how is it that we have a view of the whole garden from this hill and not see the hill from the outside?”

“There’s a magic field surrounding this area of the gardens which keeps it invisible from the outside.”

Rarity chuckled to herself. “Have we really come to the point where a human is explaining magic to a unicorn?”

“I guess so. Humans and ponies have come a long way, haven’t they?”

“They sure have, although they never taught us what the very first contact was like. They just skip to the part where Princess Celestia meets with the human world leaders.”

I smiled to myself. “What if I told you that I knew what the first contact was like?”

“Didn’t it happen before you were born?”

“Yep. I was born a month after first contact was made.”

Rarity raised a suspicious eyebrow at me. “How do you know that?”

I looked at the unicorn with a smirk. “I know because the first humans that Celestia’s ever met were my parents, and my mom was pregnant with me at the time.”

“No way!”

“Yes way. That’s how Celestia knows my parents, and it’s why she knew me well enough to want to adopt me.”

Rarity continued to gape at me, her astonishment painted clearly on her face. “That’s amazing, but… Why was this never recorded in history?”

“My parents didn’t want to draw too much attention to themselves,” I explained. “I guess I take more after them than I realized, considering how I wanted my adoption to be kept a secret.”

“Do you think that you’ll ever make it public, maybe even become a prince?”

I thought about that for a moment. Did I really want to do that? It took me a few moments to answer.

“I don’t know,” I finally responded. “Definitely not anytime soon, though. The title of prince would just be too much of a burden to bear right now.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Rarity admitted. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy that likes a lot of attention. That can only end badly.” She paused before speaking again. “Wasn’t there a princess from your world that died in a car crash trying to avoid paparazzi? Her name was… Diana, right?”

“Please don’t jinx it.”

Rarity made those cute giggling sounds of hers again and decided to lie down on her back. She then looked up at me and motioned for me to do the same, and I obliged.

So we both laid there on the grass, and eventually we both started to doze off. I don’t know how long we were asleep, but we were both awakened by a rumbling sound. Both our eyes shot open in surprise, and we looked around to see what made the sound, until we heard it again.

Rarity blushed and pulled her hat down a little.

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I guess I’m a little hungry.”

I checked my watch and saw that it was five after noon. “It’s cool,” I assure her. “I was planning on taking you to lunch anyway. Let’s get out of here.”

Rarity and I got off the blanket and walked down the hill together. As we made our way out, I took out my wallet and looked at the credit card that Auntie Celeste gave me.

It was time to put this baby to work.

Author's Note:

Another chapter taken care of. I want to thank Naughty_Ranko for the idea to set the date at Canterlot Castle, and I also want to thank TheGreatPandaKing and Alternate Madness for suggesting the walk through the garden. Also, the scene where Celestia gives Marcus a credit card was a shout-out to everyone that suggested that Marcus should use his royal status to his advantage, because you guys did have a point there.

So Marcus is halfway done with his date with Rarity, and he has one with Octavia in the same afternoon. On top of that, Luna's taking Marcus dreamwalking that night. Looks like our boy's got a full schedule, huh.

On a side note, school has been piling up a little due to midterms coming up next week, so I won't have as much time to write. I'll still write when I can, but I won't have as much spare time as I used to, just so you all know.

So, as usual, attack that comment section, and I'll see you next chapter!

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