In the life of a Canterlot Princess, there was one enemy that was constant, one enemy that was as persistent and everlasting as Equestria itself. It was an undefeatable enemy, one who could never be broken by swords or spears, and while magic could make it go away for a time it would always resurface, stronger and more insatiable than ever. As Celestia sat upon her golden throne the horrid menace showed its face to her, and she scowled at it.
Paperwork. The very bane of the solar monarch’s existence sat in a large pile before her, mocking and taunting her with its ink and parchment, scorning her with the dark, evil magic known as bureaucratic red tape. She hated paperwork with every bit of her being, and some of the issues she had to review were absurd and ridiculous.
Ban the sale of turnips in Trottingham? Vetoed.
Rescind the water rights of Lower Manehatten and redirect flow to Upper Manehatten? Thrown away.
Wage a war of attrition against the Griffon Tribal Coalition over the price of imported cheese? Celestia took care to crumple that one up, light it on fire and permanently revoke Blueblood’s ability to start petitions and bills.
Such was the pattern for the next hour or so with only a few that genuinely seemed worth her notice. Eventually she got to the ones that were more along the lines of edits to current laws and bills. Again, most were just things she could shrug off, ignore, or simply have sent to her sister but again a few caught her interest. Especially the one in which the first line read “Bill to Transfer the Location of Toxic Waste from the Changeling Transformation Spell Development Program.”
For starters, Celestia couldn’t actually believe there had been a program devoted to figuring out the changeling transformation spells, and secondly there was apparently a toxic waste dump in Equestria! It was downright unacceptable, and what's worse was that nopony had thought about doing anything about it! “LUNA!” Celestia shouted. “I REQUIRE YOUR PRESENCE IN THE THRONE ROOM!”
Within seconds the younger princess had descended into the throne room, her royal vestments out of order and her star studded mane looking like it had undergone a supernova. “Sister, I hope you have a good reason for having pulled me away from my duties.”
Celestia shook her head. “Whichever young stud you have chained up in your chambers can wait, Luna. Come, you need to see this.” The younger sister put aside her blushing to peek at the paper and rolled her eyes.
“Correcting one of Blueblood’s mistakes?”
“Oh yes.”
Luna carefully read through the paper, taking in the entirety of the situation before sighing. “Sister, I have remedied this already.” She said with a smile. “The monsters of the toxic waste have been taken care off, and I saw to its disposal.”
Celestia was less than satisfied. “And how exactly did you resolve this problem?”
“I used a gate spell.” Luna said. After a moment of awkward silence she felt the urge to add, “I moved the waste and brought in a specialist to deal with the mutated creatures. Was that wrong?”
“Luna, was this the same gate spell that caused the great human migration of the era of classic blunders?”
“Yes, why do you... Oh.”
“Luna, at least tell me what you pulled through.” Celestia said with a sigh. Luna didn’t respond for a moment, so the eldest sister looked up and found the princess of the night with an uncomfortably large grin on her face.
“Something Wonderful.” Luna said, “Something truly wonderful.”
Four legs augmented with the finest of cybernetic technology, a pair of mechanical hands so dextrous and agile that if they were larger they could pick every individual frond from a daffodil head, and body armor to allow him to survive impacts that would kill a normal bug. He was four-hundred milligrams of purely deadly insect, and he knew he had a job to do. Save London from the herd, take out their forces and logistics, and generally buck some junk up.
He was willing to admit that the area he was currently in was almost nothing like London, and that there was almost no fog, and that the most dangerous thing he had run into was a praying mantis that seemed to have mutated into a horrendous thing with way too many legs. The insects were far from being genuinely threatening, and he hadn’t received any orders from HQ. In short, he was the worlds greatest cyberbee, the only hope for peace in the Insect Kingdom (although given that he had already smashed the hive queen, there weren’t many more threats aside from kids with magnifying glasses) and he was stuck without anybeetle to defend or fight.
A warrior without a war, he considered his predicament as a type of poetry. He was alone in the world; what good, exterminator fearing bee would seek him as a friend or partner, and where else in the insect kingdom could a bumblebee who was fifty percent metal fit in? It was the greatest tragedy of war, he thought to himself, that so often the veterans of such conflicts could never truly rejoin society, at least not without a glance cast their way, or a glare in their direction. He assumed that if insects could shout there would be some of that too, but given that their language generally revolved around clicks, hums and buzzes he didn’t expect that would be a problem.
He also became aware that the sky had grown very dark. Very very dark and in a very specific area. He stopped his pondering and cast a mechanical eye to the sky in time to spot a hoof rapidly descending towards him at a speed he was more than willing to guess wouldn’t allow him the time to escape.
Buck was a bug of few words, but luckily it was only a few that came to his mind. Also, for some reason he could not comprehend, he was able to say the words, albeit in a high pitched buzz-based voice.
“Oh buck me with a rose stem.”
Fluttershy’s day had been off to a good start. She’d woken up at six o'clock, had a nice cup of tea, fed her animals and seen to it that angel bunny wasn’t harassing the ferret twins who had recently moved in for treatment. She had a spa session with Rarity coming up in the afternoon, and all in all things were shaping up for a nice midday, afternoon, and evening, at least until there was a heavy, fast knock at her door.
She stood up and plodded over, wondering who could be visiting her this early in the day. Opening the door she found a familiar face awaiting her. Magenta eyes and cyan fur awaited her, and fluttershy smiled. “Oh, hello Rainbow Dash.” she said.
Dash didn’t return the smile, instead giving a weird stare. “Hey Shy, are bees secretly all robots?”
“I... huh?” Dash pushed past Fluttershy as the yellow mare struggled to comprehend the question given to her. “What do you mean?”
In an instant Dash was lying on the coach, giving one of her by now infamous retellings of her daily events. “Okay, so I was in the western woods practicing my landings, cause what do awesome aerial stunts count for if you can’t stick the landing. But yeah, anyways, I was practicing my landings and I may have landed on a bee WHO SURVIVED,” she quickly added after seeing Fluttershy’s worried expression, “But yeah, I kinda jammed a hoof on the little guy, and a second later he starts screaming these weird little curses at me while shooting me with this little laser thing. Oh yeah, he had a laser thing. So yeah, I need to know if bumblebees are robots.”
Fluttershy was dumbstruck, confused by the seemingly impossible situation. “Umm, no, bumblebees aren’t exactly robots. I mean, not usually. But... um, Dash, what exactly happened to this bee?”
“He’s right here in this jar. He kinda melted the holes in it with his laser.” she replied, and she pulled out a jar that had a shocking amount of holes and an angry looking bumblebee who did indeed look somewhat mechanical.
“Let me out of here you bloody twit! I’ll smack you around and leave you in a dung beetle’s nest!” the little bee shouted, and after hearing his tone of voice Fluttershy let out a single quiet giggle.
“I’m sorry, little bee friend. I’ll let you out.” she said, and a second later the bee had perched himself on a nearby table. “Now then, do you have a name little guy?”
The bee stared silently at her for a moment, sizing her up carefully. “Name’s Buck. Buck Bumble. Where am I?”
Dash craned her neck over and stared at the bee as well. “Uh, listen little dude, first I wanna say sorry about stepping on you... ”
“Go suck bug spray!” he interrupted.
“And second, you’re in Equestria.”
Buck took a moment to contemplate that before glancing up at them. “Equestria?”
“Yep.” Dash replied.
“Not London?”
“I’ve never even heard of London.” Fluttershy said.
“Are there even any herd outposts here?”
“Uh, you mean like a club?” Dash asked.
Again Buck paused to consider what was happening for a moment, and the two ponies watched him curiously.
Eventually he gave a sigh, and the two leaned in to hear his next words.
“Swat me with a fashion magazine,” was not what they expected to hear.
Author's Note
Hooray for spontaneous writing! Comments and Concerns are welcome!
“Now what have we learned, Luna?”
The princess of the night sighed and rolled her eyes. “I learned not to...”
“Ah ah ah, do it properly.” Celestia chimed. Luna gave a long sigh and then continued, her tone undeniably sarcastic.
“Dear Elder Sister, Today I learned that one should not abuse ancient and mystical energies in order to solve problems that could just as easily be solved with the use of disintegration magic and a dustpan, especially when it involves bringing vastly superior technology into Equestria without your consent.”
“Sign it,” Celestia cooed.
Luna sighed again. “Signed Princess Luna.”
“Theeere we go. Now then, I assume you put a proper tracking spell on the bee so we could track him down?” Celestia said. A second passed, then two, and finally three. At last Luna let out a fourth sigh.
“Dear Elder Sister, Today I learned...”
Perched high above the ground, Buck Bumble stared at the creatures beneath them. Each was at least a dozen times his size and able to tear a normal bug limb from limb. Even he, the cybernetic wonderbug would be hard pressed to fight them off. One in particular was an easily spotted menace, a towering figure with soulless black eyes, eyes that sent chills down his exoskeleton. The white fur may have fooled the ponies, but he wasn’t so easily tricked. He took to the sky and began to descend towards the creature, blaster in hand and buzzing loudly.
The foul critter looked up with no time to react, no time to respond or stop the inevitable. Buck leveled the blaster and pulled the trigger. A beam of red energy crossed the gap and burned the giant right between the eyes.
“Mr. Bumble, stop! You're hurting Angel!” Fluttershy cried out, and Buck pulled away. “I understand you’re antsy, but that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to go around zapping poor defenseless animals!”
Buck glanced down at the angry little rabbit who was now shaking a little paw at him. Next time, the bee thought to himself. “Well, since there aren’t any evil bugs to shoot, I haven’t got much to bloody do, now do I? I’m a soldier without a war, and I need something to do.”
“Well even so, you shouldn’t go around causing trouble. Can’t you just pollinate some flowers?” she asked.
“I could, but what hive would accept a cyborg’s nector? Blasted portals through space and time...”
“We could always go flying.” Dash said. “That’s always cool.”
Buck gave a nod. “That sounds alright, as long as you’re not stomping on my head again.”
“I said that was an accident!”
“And I can say a rose is the same as a weed, but that doesn’t make it true.” Buck replied. “I’ll fly with you, but I’m not standing by and getting stepped on again. I’ll burn a hole in your wings first”
With threats out of the way, the two of them took off out the door, Dash checking her speed so Buck could keep up with her. After making the journey to the front door Buck decided to play with her by speeding up and slowing down at random, his bee-like flying ability allowing him to switch in a second and then shout for her to slow down or keep up. He thrived on her annoyance, taking some joy in the fact that he could easily annoy anyone with a level of skill that would make a fly’s eyes go wider.
Eventually though Dash caught on. Instead of getting mad or trying to cram him back into the bottle, she actually began to make a game of it, watching him carefully and trying to anticipate his every move and match him. As they goofed around it went from a game to a training exercise.
“Look, if you want the level of control I’ve got, you’re going to need to flap your wings a lot faster than you’re going.” Buck explained, buzzing his own wings to demonstrate. “If you flap fast enough you’re like a helicopter, floating about and able to change direction at a moments notice.”
Dash tried to match his tempo, but her wings simply weren’t able to mimic the technique. “That’s really cool, but my wings are more like bird wings than, y’know, bug wings.”
“C’mon now, that’s quitter talk! Just focus on moving your wings faster than insectly possible, and if you’re lucky you’ll hit the right speed.”
“I don’t think wings work like that...”
“Who's the amazing cyberbee here, me or you?” Buck said a bit more forcefully than he had meant to. Dash gave a scowl and ground her teeth together.
“Look, I don’t need to be able to hover around like some little bug. I bet you can’t do a sonic rainboom!” she shouted. Buck simply narrowed his mechanical eyes at her.
“What the bloody flytrap is a sonic rainboom?”
“... and that’s why I didn’t think that it was vastly important that I put a tracking spell on the bumblebee.” Luna concluded, finishing her detailed excuse for an irritated Celestia.
“Luna, We’ve been through this; I’m sure someone will step on it before it causes trouble is not a solution, and neither is dropping frogs in the general area you left him in.” Celestia said. “I can’t believe that you would use such a dangerous spell without any sort of contingency. Luna, this is that Prench Masquerade all over again. You do remember that, don’t you? With the mayonaise?”
“Sister, you always bring up the masquerade ball. Why do think I’ve forbidden the cooks to allow me into the kitchens? I swear...”
Any further rebuttal was silenced when the sound of a sonic boom echoed from the distance and a rainbow wave crossed through the sky. The two princesses stared at it for a moment, silently gawking at the obvious signs of a sonic rainboom. After a minute Celestia turned to her younger sister and shook her head. “This. This is why we can’t have nice things Luna.”
When Buck was a lad, only just past being a larva, he had the misfortune of being caught in the horrid winds of a leaf blower. The winds had knocked him around, sent him spinning through grass and plants until he had been plastered against an immense brick. His wing had been scuffed, but in time he wound up flying normally.
This was nothing like that. This was more like the leafblower had been multiplied a thousand times over and been combined with the visions he had from the time he’d been flying around that british stoner. In short, it was insane. He was shaken up, and it took everything he had to keep from dropping his blaster or crashing into anything. In the end he finally regained control and found himself floating around inside of a building. Lots of blue, lots of purples and pinks as well as numerous things that were coated in jewels. Dresses of every shape and size fitted for pony bodies adorned mannequins as far as his little eyes could see.
It was then he noticed that once more it was growing darker in a very specific area just like it had when he met Rainbow Dash. This time he was buzzing and drawing his blaster as it passed harmlessly by him. A fashion magazine, one of the thick ones with ads and perfume samples all throughout, passed by where he had been buzzing. Supported by what looked like an energy field it slammed into the counter below with an antenna rattling slam.
“Oh, you disgusting little creature! Begone from my shop!” a pony shouted, and Buck turned with his blaster drawn, ready to take down whatever horrific monster he was confronted with.
He did not expect a marshmallow with a purple mane and a levitating fashion magazine. He stared at the monumental pony in front of him with wide eyes, trying to comprehend the sight presented to him. He sighed and smacked his face with a palm. “Oh Bucking Flytraps.”
