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."
Yeeeah... I dunno. This happened. Because, princesses.
Oh spike
It figures that the youngest three alicorns would be the best to be meeting with nope. Still I would love to see Nope and Flurry Heart together as some nut tries to foalnap Flurry and then sees who is watching her.
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Please let it happen again, it's hilarious. Nope's not-adventures are always a joy to read
Funny. Wonder if she’ll meet the rest of the main six and others.
Hilarious!!! I hope more Nope is going to be written.
And she didn't share the portal-nullification spell after all that? Cold blooded.
I'm sure she would even sympathise with that title.
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That's all the reason we need.
Good work!
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Come now. Do you want her to adopt a Starlight Glimmer attitude to solving problems? It's a slippery slope.
Also, better to just not give her the chance to choose that easy way out. The last thing we need is Discord going ballistic again; she should figure out what's the matter with him.
Yay, another chapter! And as amazing as always! Thank you for your work!
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They used to say "Princess of the Ponyville Library", but... I guess it's a bit mean to bring that up nowadays
But yea, I doubt Twilight will mind being called Princess of Books
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There is actually much material about this.
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"Nope could use a friend who gets her in a somewhat more intrinsic way than most ponies."
Just found it on the feature box and couldn't resist it with that hilarious premise. Really loved it!
Better keep this is tracking in case you decide to continue it.
It was nice to clarify the relationship between the five other Alicorn.
m8 this made me smile, cheers :)
I can tell from the description I'll enjoy this already~!
Poor Nope. Not even the author can leave her in peace. j/k
I'd like to read about her mirror portal counterpart.
...Huh. Well this is an interesting story. Hope it continues. Also, think I’d get a Dazzle Numero Twoo to hang with if I stick around the story long enough? I’m kinda hoping for it.
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Can we make it more formal and call her ‘Princess Of Tome-orrow’?
so wait is your story complete or was that just a glitch?
More nope?! YES!
Probably means she only deals with portals every other week.
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Please read the very first comment I posted on this story. I originally just dumped four old chapters here that had been lying on my disk for 5 years, and left it at that.
Since it's not really a concept I have any kind of direction or end goal for, it can indeed be considered "finished". But chapters could still be added in the future, if I happen to have inspiration. There's no real status to reflect that, so it's just marked as Complete ever since I published all four original chapters.
Edit: I put this information in the first chapter's Author's Note now. Hopefully that will clear up confusion for future readers.
This chapter was actually started right after I finished cleaning up the original four chapters to post them here. I was strongly considering making this a full complete story at that point, but again, I had no clue where to take it, and only managed to write the opening scene in front of the apartment building at that time. I had no idea what Twilight's reason for visiting would even be. So in the end I decided to just post the completed stuff I had and left it at that. But yesterday I got some inspiration, and actually finished this fifth one.
Don't have anything more written up now though, not even partial stuff. A few ideas in my main ideas doc, but most of those honestly suck. I might play around with the changelings mentioned a couple of times in the comments, though; that's a fun concept.
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Maybe if Twilight had, we wouldn't have Starlight, so yeah, definitely.
Hm
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....good "hm" or bad "hm"? C'mon, don't leave an author hanging like that!
Nope eventually meets that one boring pony who only liked tea and crackers and had lots of social phobias... and who clearly should be suffering from some lethal nutritional deficits by now, I should note. Pones cannot live on tea and crackers alone!
I for some reason just got the twisted desire to see Nope meet Shadenfreude. That would be a hilarious interaction.
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Because Celestia is a schemer but Celestia is also good and kind, and cares about people. And also she would have been alone for nearly a thousand years by the time Nope came to her attention and know how much that sucks.
Plus...it’s possible that Celestia and Luna and Cadance are also all Main Characters, and Twilight certainly is and Flurry will probably be, so Celestia may have a bit of sympathy for Nope. She’s been there.
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She's accepted it now, she might not have originally.
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It’s a ‘the tone of this chapter is very different’-hm.
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It might be, yea. I just write whatever comes to me. It is rarely consistent in tone; these characters just end up doing whatever the heck they want anyway. Sometimes that ends up being funny, other times it's more introspective, or something.
Heck, maybe this whole chapter is really just an infodump on Nope vs The Princesses wrapped around a silly joke about Spike learning bad language.
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Consistency is overrated.
Wow, this is great stuff.
Nice, very productive environment for Spike
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Stop making serious rationalisations for my silly story idea!
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But it’s fun...
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Given that they once spent an entire chapter with Schaden just fixing their magical BS because he's BORED? XD
Thoroughly enjoyed this short little slice of life. Absolutely no pressure but here's hoping that perhaps someday we can see some more nope.
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Welp. we'll see, I guess. I'll write if/when inspiration strikes again...
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As I said no pressure whatsoever. If you do, great and if not, so be it, either way it was a fun one-shot slice of life. Come to think of it, I have a good idea of how you feel when it comes to working under inspiration, I have close to a dozen stories that I have started but never actually finished on account of my "lightbulb" going out so to speak.
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Clearly you have never met a Brit.
Wow, Nope seems kinda selfish.
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She's a kid. A teen. She's allowed to be selfish if the alternative is getting mixed up in affairs she's far too young to handle.
Absolutely PRICELESS humor, deep topics and damn fine character building!
Funny how this story can pretty mutch play inside 50%+ storys in Fimfiction