March - 2012 (T.W.G.)

by The Writer's Group

Tic-Tac-Toe - Owlor

Author: Owlor

Prompt: What did Luna do on the moon?

Title: Tic-Tac-Toe

---

If you look up to the sky with a telescope, try to locate Clop-ernicus, a large crater on the left side of the moon. Now, hold the telescope still, but let your eyes follow the ridges past Mare Imbrium to the place where mare imbrium and Mare Serenitatis meet. There you would find an expectantly waiting, and rather bored Alicorn. Well, you wouldn't actually SEE her, unless you had a really good telescope, but at least now you know she's there. Right now she's sitting on a rock, looking out towards the blue and green marble in front of her.

I'm guessing you've never seen the world from space? It’s a pretty wonderful sight and it certainly is cool being able to feel like you could hold the entire word in your hoofs. It gets pretty boring after the first couple of hundred years though.

The alicorn looks down again. In front of her, there's a line... no, it's more of a trail, a thick, deep trail, shaped after decades of deliberately walking back and forth on it. This trail intersects with a number of other trails to form a large checkered pattern. If your eyesight is keen enough, you might even see it in your telescope.

She's still waiting. She's long ago lost her sense of time, minutes, years, it’s all the same. Suddenly, there's a small flash coming from the small marble world above her. Her ears twitch slightly and she forces herself back into a mindset where time exists.

1.36 seconds later, and there's a beam of light shining down to somewhere in the vast empty sea in front of her. The light is dim, barely visible even to her magically enhanced vision. She immediately rushes out, but takes great pain to follow the trails she's already laid down to the square on which the light point.

Wasting no time, she starts running around in a circle. The minutes turn into hours, and the hours turn into days, all the while she's running around. Eventually it’s done, an almost perfect circle, carved into the dust.
She sits down again, but this time for just a moment, while she's thinking. With a sudden flash, something reaches her and she runs out onto the large grid in front of her...

***

Pinkie Pie was lying in a field with a lantern beside her. She was looking up into the sky, just taking it all in, the entire vast size of the cosmos. Eventually, something catches her eye, a tiny, but noticeable difference in the structure of the moon.

The large grid on mare serenitatis had suddenly gained a new feature, a large, rather irregular "X". Pinkie Pie smiled. "Ha, sucker!" she said to herself "you fell into my trap, I got you now, moon!". She shook her lantern three times and it emitted a blinding ray of light.

She placed it on the ground, carefully angling it towards the moon and then she went to her tent to sleep. She'd return to this place eventually, maybe in a few months, maybe in a year, she didn't know yet, but eventually, victory would be hers.

She never told anyone about her game of "Tic-Tac-Toe" against the moon, '’cause she knew nopony would believe her...

Comments

[BaconHazard]

Oh my...

[Isopod]

Loved it, except I haven't understood the ending of the last story. Call me stupid, what can I say.
Also, did nopony write a story of pizza eating Discord? Too bad.

Otherwise, these made me giggle so much!

You earnned yourself a moustache.

[Melon Of Honour]

Ah, these were a jolly good laugh. But if i might have some input, change the story name to something like TWG Shorts Compilation and have each chapter dedicated to a different challenge... Probably easier than making a new story each time we do this.

[Owlor]

384724
Wouldnt that make it hard to search for? I mean, eventually, we'd have to tag it with all genres and every character, and that'd just look cluttered. Doing it this way means we have a logical place to put the prompts where people can see them, and I just think the page will look nicer with multible stories up rather than just one mega-story.

[Melon Of Honour]

384901 You have a point...
But i'm not sure, i mean, i think that we could just have this pinned to TWG front page and update it after each challenge goes by... But i'm no expert. Just voicing my opinion.

[Owlor]

390560
Its a challenge, not a competition, the point isn't to be the best, but to entertain people with amusing stories and to have fun. You could also count the recognition you get by having your fic here and in the group as a "prize" as well, I guess.

My favorite was your "what's wrong with Applejack" actually, I'm a sucker for good build-ups, and it spoofs the fandoms tendency towards the... Sapphic.

[Path_of_cloud]

And spike scores not once but twice (side note he writes all the letters his penmenship is probly amazing plus hes the only one with hands and fingers so hes already got all the none unicorns beat)
amusing cute funny stuff so all around