A Particular Incident

by little big pony

Four

Along with the frame and mattress, the sheets and covers could not be moved by magical means. None of the guards had any idea why that was, though, to be frank, there weren’t a whole lot of eggheads wearing the gold. After some experimentation, they all discovered that while magic couldn’t move anything on the bed, things they had on their persons could.

Each guard was issued a piece of cloth. It was a long and thick scarf that they used to wrap around their necks so that their armor wouldn’t rub and cause sores when worn for any length of time. Raven had acquired four of these scarves, and four unicorns. Said unicorns held their scarves with magic, and were using them to hold onto the edges of the creature’s bedsheets. They held the sheet as taut as possible, lifting all those lying upon the bed enough to allow four more scarves to slip underneath the sheets. These were pressed underneath the alicorns and creature for support. Raven trotted around the bed, checking all angles, making sure that everything was perfect. Then, with a deep breath, she nodded to Maxim.

The Colonel saluted, then signaled all the unicorns in the room with a wave of her hoof. Slowly, the sheets were lifted into the air. The scarves below were unfurled, spreading out along the sheet as much as possible, ensuring that there was no dip. If the bed’s occupants were smooshed together, or jostled too harshly, things could end very poorly for all of them.

They rose by inches. One of the unicorns licked her lips. Another wiped a bead of sweat from her brow. Inches turned into a foot, then two feet, then three. There, Maxim gave another signal. A trio of earth ponies surged forward. One hurried to the foot of the bed, the other two trotted to the back. With a quiet and quick count, they lifted the bed and carried it to the other side of the room.

Everypony waited for several nerve-wracking seconds, expecting something to happen. The creature waking up. The bed itself turning into a monster. Discord appearing with a bag of popcorn. Thankfully, none of that happened. It looked like, mercifully, that they were in the clear.

With one last gesture from the Colonel, the unicorns lowered the alicorns and creature down onto the great plush rug in the center of the room. It was only when they touched down did Raven release that held breath.

“Huh. I can’t believe that worked,” Maxim said, moving toward Raven’s side.

“Honestly, I didn’t know if it was going to work either,” Raven said, giving the mare a smile of relief. “They’re still together, but at least now we can get to them easier.”

“Yeah, them being on that bed was a real pain in the flank,” Maxim agreed.

She made her way over to the still sleeping trio, stopping just short of the bedsheet. Looking down at them, she frowned.

“Alright, somepony get a spear.”

“A spear?! What in Equestria are you talking about?” Raven demanded. “I didn’t help just so you could STAB somepony!”

“We’ll only stab it a little bit,” Maxim offered. “Just enough to get it away from the princesses.”

“I’d really rather you not stab it at all. Why don’t we just walk over and wake them up?”

“Because it might kill us. Better to stab first and ask questions when the royalty is out of the room.”

“Why can’t this end peacefully, Colonel? Why do you need to stab the creature?”

“Because peace is for babies, and this thing has been a pain in my flank for the whole morning.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to STAB it!”

“Says who?”

“Common sense and reason for one!”

“Ha! Jokes on you; nopony in the guard has either of those!”

As the two began shouting at each other yet again, Princess Luna began to squirm. The rug underneath her, while comfortable, was not the mattress she had been sleeping on just a few moments before. She rubbed her snout against the creature’s chest, a frown coming to her face. While she could sleep through an invasion with little effort, one thing that she couldn’t weather was a change in sleeping space.

No. This would not do at all.

Maxim, who had been mid-rant about how Raven’s father was a yellow-bellied gryphon and she should just keep her trap shut and let the professionals handle this, trailed off. She watched as the rug that the creature and two princesses were lying on was engulfed with a dark purple aura and was lifted into the air. The guard, who had been trying to pass her a spear for the last two minutes, was watching the trio float with an open-mouthed expression.

“Oh no you don’t,” she spat, snatching the spear and leveling it at the slowly rising bedsheets. “Not this time!”

The Colonel let out a mighty warcry. Lunging forward, she drove the tip of the spear into the creature’s back. Or tried to.

When the speartip touched Luna’s aura there was a sound like thunder. The spear, without any warning whatsoever, crumbled into dust. Maxim looked down into her hooves, ears flat against her skull as the princesses and creature floated over her head. The other ponies, Rave included, were quick to scramble out of the way as the rug was levitated to the other side of the room, where Luna’s bed sat.

“Colonel, are you alright, ma’am?” A Private asked, as the rug was gently lowered onto the bed. “What the heck happened?”

“Magical backlash,” a unicorn Sergeant said, making a face. “It looked like the princess’s magic overwhelmed the rune in the spear. We’re lucky it only disintegrated, as powerful as alicorns are.”

Raven couldn’t decide whether to feel smug or horrified that someone disastrous had almost happened in one of the princesses’ personal chambers. So, instead, she took a deep breath and walked over to the statue-still Colonel. Reaching out, she placed a hoof on her shoulder.

“Maxim, are you alright?” she asked.

Very slowly, Maxim’s eyes began to narrow. She could feel something building up in her chest. For most commanders, it might have been a sense of hopelessness or panic. Not her. What she felt, as she looked up in her highness’s bed, was anger.

“Ladies, get those gosh darn emotional support cannons.”

Raven attempted to say something. The Colonel quickly placed a hoof over her mouth, glaring daggers at the critter that had so thoroughly ruined her day.

The guards looked at each other.

“Which emotional support cannons were you thinking, ma’am?” one asked.

By this point, Maxim’s eyes were so narrowed nopony could tell whether she even had her eyes open or not. “All of them. Get as much gunpowder as you can too. This mare isn’t messing around anymore. We’re BLOWING. THIS. THING. UP.”

“Wait a second!” Raven said, wheeling around in front of her. “Nopony is blowing anything up.”

“That. Is. Where. You’re. Wrong. Filly,” Maxim said, her eye twitching as she poked Raven’s chest with each empathized word.

“You’re going to hurt the princesses!”

“We’ll shoot around them.”

“Shoot around?!”

“What are you, a parrot? Yes. Shoot around. That stupid thing is big enough that we can hit it without too much collateral damage.”

“I--”

“Shut it. I’ve humored you way too much today. No more. I’m not gonna be a Mrs.Nice Mare while that stupid thing is laughing at us!”

Raven let out an angry snort. She drew herself to her full height--which wasn’t all that impressive--ramming her muzzle against the Colonel’s.

“Don’t you tell me to shut it! I’m not going to just stand here and--”

Without thinking, Maxim shoved the smaller mare. It wasn’t a hard shove, but it was enough to cause Raven to stumble backwards a few steps. The earth pony just stared at the soldier with widened eyes, as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened. Maxim just stared back, jaw set, eyes narrowed, so angry that she wanted to kick her helmet through a wall.

The room became deadly silent and still. Even Princess Celestia’s snoring disappeared as the two mares glared at each other. Raven took a step, then another. She shoved the Colonel right back. While not a soldier, Raven was still an earth pony; one used to the back breaking labor of keeping this entire castle clean to boot. Maxim was sent tail over snout into the air for a good five feet before landing in a clatter of armor on her belly.

“Oh… OH IT’S ON!”

Maxim leapt to her hooves. With a warcry, she charged Raven with her head lowered. The other mare let out a yelp of surprise before she was knocked off her hoof and through an expensive looking coffee table.

“Oh, you feather biter!”

“Hit me will you?!”

“YOU STARTED IT!”

“YEAH, AND I’M FINISHING IT!”

The two mares became a flurry of punching, headbutting, cursing, and bucking as they rolled around on Princess Luna’s fine floor. The guards, always excited for a good scrap, quickly crowded around.

“I got ten bits on glasses.”

“I got fifty.”

“Five for me.”

“I got twenty on the Colonel.”

“Kiss up.”

“You keep running that mouth I’ll smack it right off.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

With a yawn, Princess Celestia rose into a sitting position, stopping any further brawls from breaking out. The guards watched as she smacked her lips, looking around the room. She appeared tired, but those few hours she had been with the creature had perked her right up. Rubbing an eye with her hoof, she looked down at her sister and the creature that had held the two of them captive for the entire morning. The princesses’ head cocked to the side as she stared at the large creature. Reaching over it, she nudged her sister.

It took a minute or so of constant prodding, but Luna was also awake, though far less lively than her sister. She had appeared to be ready to blow a gasket at being woken up so early, when Celestia pointed out the alien being that had an arm slung over her barrel.

“...Huh,” the guards heard her say, before reaching down to boop the creature’s tiny button nose with a hoof.

Both mares began poking the creature until, very slowly it opened its eyes and sat up. It said something in a low, tired voice, pulling out an earplug. A confused Luna replied after a moment’s hesitation. A back and forth conversation went on between the alicorns and the creature for a few minutes before the creature, though obviously confused, nodded. The guards watched as all three rose out of the bed. Celestia grabbed the creature’s one hand with her mouth, and Luna grabbed the other, and both led it out of the room.

The guards looked at each other, then at Raven and Maxim, who, it had seemed, had stopped fighting like animals and began fighting like gentlemares. Both mares were currently in sitting positions, forelegs holding each others’ shoulders so that they could headbutt the other mare as hard as they could. Maxim’s hair was in disarray, and blood was freely leaking down her nose. Meanwhile, Raven’s glasses were broken, and a black eye was beginning to form. Both ponies were growling at each other like a pair of angry timberwolves in between headbutts.

“Um, Colonel… ma’am?” one soldier said, taking a step forward.

Maxim replied with a neigh so furious that it caused the mare to fall back on her rump.

“I got fifty on the Colonel,” she immediately squeaked.

And, as if a switch was flicked, the betting once again started up.

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_

“--So, forgive me for asking once again, dear, but these are called waffles, yes?”

Celestia poked at the food that had been set on her plate. It almost looked like the pancakes that she made herself and Luna every morning, though these were square in shape. She had watched the nice young stallion before her, seated in a chair far too small for him, use an iron casting that the cooks used to make pastries to make these “waffles”. It really was a delightful delicacy; she had no idea why her little ponies had never thought of it.

To her left was Luna, who had a plate stacked high with the treats. Her little sister was eating as if she had entirely forgotten her table manners, or any manners at all for that matter. She was tearing into her food with muzzle and hooves, stuffing her face as quickly as she could without choking. Bits of waffle and syrup were ruining the nice clean tablecloth. And the floor. And the ceiling. There also appeared to be a waffle impaled upon her horn.

Celestia’s muzzle scrunched up at the sight, before she turned her attention toward the creature. A “human”, he called himself. Bob was his name. A lovely name; rolled right off the tongue.

“Um, yes ma’am,” Bob said with a nod, staring at Luna with a mixture of wonder and horror. “Thanks again for not being the kind of aliens that want to steal my brain or something.”

“Oh, we might pick your mind, but there'll be no brain stealing. You have my word,” Celestia said with a chuckle. “We’ll have breakfast then we’ll see about the situation you find yourself in. I’m sure we can get you back home by sunset.”

“Thank you very much,” Bob said with a smile.

He then frowned, and a look flashed across his face as if he remembered something.

“Hey, that whole thing I woke up to that we walked around. I don’t need to be worried about that or anything, do I?”

“Oh, I’m sure everything’s fine,” Celestia said with a wave of her hoof.

A thunderous neigh, so loud and filled with rage tore through the halls of the castle with such force that it sent birds for a half mile around into the air in flight. Luna, so wrapped up eating all but the table itself, was obvious to the noise. It made Bob’s head whip up, his brow furrowing. Celestia’s ear twitched, and her confidence cracked.

“...Oh second thought, It may behoove us if I perhaps went to see what was going on. After breakfast of course.

Author's Note:

A dumb idea I wrote last year that I haven't gotten around to posting till now. Hope you all enjoyed it.

Comments

[Bigjump3300]

This was a fun read. Thanks

[Theresa]

Celestia might want to get someone less bloodthirsty in charge of the guards. Considering they spent the whole night arguing over what to do with the alien and his bed and the fact the princesses were in said bed.

[WhatAWonderfulUsername]

This reminds me of a greentext I read

[Canned Pone]

This was fun and refreshing.

10/10 would read again

[SCPinkamena]

11604141
Yeah, I remember this one. By LaP, pretty sure.

[Elitrino]

Every time you write something it turns out amazing, thanks littlebig!

[Theresa]

11604323
Yeah it is really good but it so needs a sequel because this is too good to a one shot.

[HorseWordFan]

A dumb idea I wrote last year that I haven't gotten around to posting till now. Hope you all enjoyed it.

Well if this what your dumb ideas produce, then you definitely need to have more of those .

[River Babble]

“That doesn’t give you the right to STAB it!”

“Says who?”

“Common sense and reason for one!”

“Ha! Jokes on you; nopony in the guard has either of those!”

This explains SO MUCH

Oh my word I love how this ended. XD Poor Bob, but at least he doesn't know how he was almost, y'know, murdered. Honestly I am now deeply curious about his continued adventures, he seems very nice and a kindred spirit for the princesses. And the waffle on Luna's horn, FABULOUS! Loved this, thanks for sharing! :D

[Tranquility_Soul]

Needs a “Royal Guard” tag since they are heavily featured in this story.

[CrimsonWolf360]

This was great. I just wish we could have read what Celestia and Luna said to him when they all woke up lol

Just a lovely, silly story. Great work

[NmB]

Loved the story, light hearted, funny and relaxed

[NaviNautical]

This was fun and refreshing to read! The scenes of them in bed were absolutey adorable and hilarious compared to the sheer panic and chaos with the guards and Raven and everyone else. Loved it!

[Poparakelis]

Just this? Disappointing

[Pony4Koma]

Took me awhile to get back to read this, but I couldn't be happier I did. This was so much fun!

I actually thinking this could work as an episode of the show. It's got a "Sparkle's Seven" or "Between Dark and Dawn" feel to it