• Published 20th May 2019
  • 7,604 Views, 566 Comments

A Pony Named Nope - Nyerguds



In an unremarkable city, in an unremarkable hospital, to two unremarkable ponies, a filly was born. A filly who was all too remarkable. A filly who radiated Destiny, and Adventure. Her parents did not approve.

  • ...
15
 566
 7,604

Nope 05: Nope and the Reluctant Princess

When Nope neared the apartment where she and her dad lived, she was greeted by the familiar sound of her dad having a shouting match with someone.

It must be noted, at this point, that Nope's dad was a very calm and reasonable person, who dealt with high-stress situations on a daily basis without batting an eye. Hearing him shout like this always meant that he was confronted with the one thing he could absolutely not stand: unwelcome visitors who refused to leave.

She turned a corner and saw him yelling at a Guard. Correction: a Royal Guard. A bit further, Spike the Dragon was sitting on the porch with a tub of popcorn with the occasional gem mixed in. The Alicorn Princess Twilight Sparkle was standing next to all this, in a state of bewildered embarassment.

"Please, can you two—" she tried, but the two stallions ignored her and kept shouting. "Really now, there's no n—" she made another attempt, but to no avail. "You're supposed to be my guard!" she wailed. "Come onn!"

Nope sat down beside Spike, floated out a popcorn kernel from his tub, and gave him a short nod as she popped it into her mouth. "Any good lines so far?" she asked, leaning over to the notebook Spike had lying next to him.

"Well, this one made Twilight turn beet red, so, that's probably a keeper," Spike said, tapping a line in the notebook with the back of his pencil. "I'll just have to look it up, first."

Nope nodded. Spike was a sensible young dragon. He knew that you should never use military-grade or dad-grade bad language without knowing what you were saying. And hey, it was educational.

Spike looked up. "I wonder when they'll notice you're here."

"Twilight, my dad, or the guard?" Nope asked.

"Well, those two will keep shouting until their voices give out," he said, nodding at the two stallions. "So just Twilight, I guess."

Nope gave a short nod. "I give it another minute."

Twilight Sparkle sighed and sat down on the porch on Spike's other side. "Why does this always happen? I didn't even want an escort! And now he's not even listening to me."

"Oh, you can take your royal orders and stuff them—" Nope's dad continued. Spike grinned, grabbed his notebook and started writing down the magnificently colourful euphemism that followed.

"I never even gave any royal orders!" Twilight lamented. "Oh, hi, Nope."

"Hey," Nope said. She started mentally counting down. Three... two... one...

Twilight looked up. "Wait, you're here!"

"Hm. Barely thirty seconds," Spike said.

Nope nodded. "She's getting better at this."

Twilight slumped down. "That's not funny..."

"So, what brings you—" Nope started, but the shouting match interrupted her. She rolled her eyes. "Let's go inside. The walls have sound insulation."

Twilight nodded. "Coming, Spike?"

Spike shook his head and grabbed the notebook. "Naah, I'll come up later," he said, grinning, and wrote down another literary gutter-gem.

"Spike!" she hissed. The young dragon sighed, grabbed his notebook and popcorn bucket, and reluctantly followed the two towards the apartment building.


Nope never really knew what to make of the Alicorn Princess Twilight Sparkle.

The other princesses were easy. Celestia would pretend to leave them to their own affairs, but was always subtly trying to manipulate stuff. Nope's dad had a knack for spotting her schemes, though, and had nipped every single one he found in the bud. Which of course meant there had to be some larger schemes still going on. But Celestia's meddling was usually benign, and subtle enough so you only realised later that she had done something nice for you. Nope's dad grudgingly accepted these small favours; even he knew better than to truly spar with the multimillennial intellect of someone who had an entire country to do her bidding.

Luna was far less subtle, often trying to urge them to move to a more protected environment where a budding alicorn could grow up safely. Nope's dad would dryly throw in her face that getting whisked away to some kind of royal sheltered life was just as bad as all the other stuff trying to nab her, and had slammed the door into her face on several occasions.

Cadance was the chillest alicorn around. She came over every now and then, to give her now-eleven-year-old alicorn daughter the chance to play with someone on her own magical level. Apparently she'd turned one too many of her classmates into potted plants, and had been banned from the playground in the Crystal Empire Elementary School. Nope didn't mind. Flurry Heart was like the little cousin you only saw occasionally but who was always fun to play with. Nope's dad grudgingly allowed it, as long as they didn't use magical portals to come over. Portals made him twitchy.

Twilight, though...

The problem with Twilight, as far as Nope could see, was that she had no control over her life. She'd get dragged from one world-ending situation into the next with no clue how to handle things, and if it hadn't been for her friends, Nope was certain she would've been admitted into some kind of mental hospital years ago. She just woke up one day, after some magic mishap, to find she was suddenly a princess, and even now, years later, she still had no clue what that really meant.

Nope sympathised with her. Unlike the others, Twilight never felt very princess-y. She had the castle, but always felt it was too large, and she had the guards, somehow, but as demonstrated by the scene in front of the apartment building, she had no idea how to handle these, either. And she didn't rule any land; Nope knew ponies made "Princess of Books" jokes when talking about her.


Nope closed the door behind Twilight and walked to the dinner table. "So, Princess Twilight Sparkle, to what do I owe the honour of your Royal Visitation?" she asked while getting a seat.

Twilight squirmed. "Could you... please not?" She glanced at the window, from which could very faintly be heard that the shouting match four floors below showed no signs of slowing. "This is embarassing enough as it is. Ugh, I shouldn't have come here; I know you don't like us bumping into your life. I just... need your help."

Nope gave her a dry look. "You know the answer to that one, Twilight."

"No, no, no! Nothing like that! You don't even have to go anywhere! It's purely, well... academical, I guess?"

Nope raised an eyebrow. In the past, Twilight had come over several times in a half-panicked state, frantically urging her to come on some world-saving mission. That had only netted her the Standard Answer, forcing the bewildered princess to go look for allies elsewhere. But Twilight had the worst poker face in the world. If she was trying to ask for help on dangerous matters she never managed to hide it. This was clearly different.

Twilight grabbed a chair and took a spot at the table. "It's about portals."

"Oh," Nope replied with a nod. As much as she loathed those things, that actually made sense.

"I, um, heard about... what happened to you a few weeks ago." Twilight seemed uncomfortable about the source of her information, meaning it was most likely a certain meddlesome white alicorn.

"I get nabbed by portals all the time, Twilight," Nope said with a shake of her mane. "I've had a student from Celestia's School who did his thesis on portals by hanging around me for a week."

Twilight nodded. "Oh, that was a very interesting paper! Fourteen new types discovered, in only a week! Are those void monsters really that common? I never saw any of them so far!" She sat straight up and blinked. "Uh. That's..." She slumped down again. "...not at all what I wanted to talk about. Sorry."

"So what did you want to talk about?" Nope asked. She was getting slightly annoyed at Twilight's tendency to get distracted at the drop of a hat.

"I heard you came into possession of a universal portal-nullifying spell." She sighed. "And... I got a portal I can't close."

Nope cocked her head slightly. There was something she wasn't telling her. "Where did it come from?"

Twilight squirmed.

"Did you make it?"

Twilight meekly shook her head.

Nope sighed. "But you know who did make it, don't you?"

Twilight practically whimpered. It was rather undignified to see on an alicorn.

Nope finally connected all the dots in her head, and made an educated guess. "Twilight, if you are having issues with Discord, that's not a portals problem. It's a friendship problem! That's your area of expertise!"

"I'm sorry! It's just been driving me mad! I'm in a critical phase of my research, and he opens random portals to some dimension of bunnies in my study! They chew on everything, and they poop everywhere!"

"So what did Flut—"

"She thought it was cute!" Twilight wailed. "He knows her too well, Nope! When he gets really serious about his pranking, he just does things that distract her to the point where she's completely unhelpful!"

"And why is he so serious about his pranking?"

Twilight blinked. "I, uh. I have no idea."

Nope's head hit the table. "This is my life, now," she mumbled. "The Princess of Freaking Friendship comes to a hormonal teenager for advice on how to deal with others."

"I didn't!" Twilight protested. "I came here to ask for advice on portals!"

"What am I, now, Princess of Portals?" Nope shook her head and gave Twilight a dry look. "No, Twilight. This is a friendship problem."

"He's not really my friend, you know," Twilight grumbled. "He's more like, that annoying neighbour who keeps playing loud music in his back yard, and is just waiting for you to finally snap and tell him to shut it off, just so he can say 'nah'." She squinted at Nope. "He's Fluttershy's friend."

"So ask her what might be bothering him, then, instead of just showing her the cute bunny result!" Nope shouted in annoyance.

Twilight looked away uncomfortably. "I'm sorry. You're right."

"Seriously," Nope said, "why am I the one who has to tell you that magic isn't the solution to all of life's problems?"

Twilight opened her mouth to reply, stopped, then opened it again. "Ah... hmm." She frowned. "But... well..."

Nope slowly backed away. "It isn't, Twilight," she insisted.

"Are you sure? Because most problems can be—"

"Including friendship problems?" Nope interjected.

Twilight slumped down. "Starlight Glimmer seems to think so," she mumbled. She quickly sat upright. "Not that I agree with that! I just mean, technically..." She squirmed uncomfortably. "...yeah, no."

She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths, and then looked at Nope again. "I'm sorry to have bothered you with this. I was just at my wit's end, and... I guess I just needed some distance." She got up from the table. "Thanks for hearing me out, at least." She looked around the room. "Spike?"

Nope smirked. "Oh, he didn't actually follow us when we went upstairs. He's still down there making notes."

Author's Note:

So, yea. Another chapter, answering a few things about Nope's relationships to the princesses.

And yes, Evil Overlord Nope totally taught her the anti-portal spell :moustache: