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                     Year of the Horse                     
                       -by Severine-                       
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       Now you're a rat and you can't sleep at night       
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Now you're a rat and you can't sleep at night
Mars, fourth planet from the sun, lying above Spica in Virgo, reaches opposition on April 8th.
Princess Celestia soared high above Canterlot in the afternoon sunshine. All her official duties had been finished for the particularly long day, and while out on her balcony she had spotted the perfect reward for her day of drudgery. An unsuspecting ice cream vendor out in the park.
She dropped out of the sky in front of his cart with her two Royal Guard pegasi landing behind. “Yes, hello. I'll have two scoops of vanilla. Sprinkles, please.”
The chunky earth pony running the cart did not even seem to notice the Royal Princess, but looked inside the freezer and noticed a lack of creamy white sugary goodness. “Eh, come back later. It’s all gone, the ice cream is missing. I think somepony stole it.” The raspberry coat of the vendor paled as he suddenly realized who was standing in front of him. “I mean Your Highness!”
“That’s perfectly fine,” she chuckled as she imagined her intrinsic essence composed of ice cream, hers to define and impart meaning. “Mmmm. Marvelous. Let me just get—” The small compartment in her brain where she kept awareness of surroundings was empty, and a quick search of the rest of her revealed there was no ice cream to be found.
“Pardon me for a moment.” She turned to her pegasus guards who suddenly looked nervous. “Did he say there is a thief running amuck?”
“Sorry, Your Highness. He seems to be all out of ice cream.”
“Ah.” She grunted. “My ice cream… stolen.”
“Sorry, Your Highness. We can’t chase after anypony in this armor.”
“Oh, crabapples.” She turned back to the vendor with a very royal smile. “Do you think I could find your last customer and pay—”
“I’m really sorry, Princess. The rules say I’m supposed to keep secret the names of those to whom I hoof out the ice cream. Vendor-Customer privilege.”
“Fuck.” She thought briefly about trying to return later for the ice cream, but threw out that idea with a sucking in of her drool. “Suppose the problem is to find the construction of a pentagon...”
“No. That doesn’t make sense.”
She addressed her guards next. “Can one of you fly back and get my accountant, please? And tell him to bring some of my personal funds so I can pay this handsome vendor.” She soaked in the sunshine while imagining ice cream on her tongue, feeling as if all the warm fuzzies of the afternoon had just dried up and blown away.
It was amazing how quickly the guard returned with her accountant, an older brown pegasus with green eyeshades and a look of perpetual anxiety. But one thing he did not have, was any of her bits.
“Actually, Your Highness, there are no bits for you.”
Celestia blinked in the afternoon sunlight. “None? But Scribescroll, how am I going to pay for this ice cream?”
“You don’t have any ice cream yet. You don’t have any bits to pay for any ice cream with.”
The vendor spoke, “There’s no ice cream. It’s all gone. Who knows.”
When someone says there must be a law for the distribution of primes despite the fact that neither the law nor how to go about finding it is known, we feel that the person is right. Well Princess Celestia was on the threshold of informing him just what he could do with those ethics regulations when she became aware of the substantial crowd they had gathered in the park, all looking at them. And listening. She turned back to the berry ice cream vendor and cleared her throat.
“Ahem. Fruityfudge, that is correct?" Fruityfudge nodded. “As you can see, we are currently experiencing some difficulty procuring my purchase of ice cream.”
“I mean Your Highness. There’s no ice cream. If I let you slide on saying there is, nobody is going to believe that. I am looking in my freezer and there is no ice cream. I think some criminal took it and then how am I going to make a living?”
“Enough.” Celestia turned to the crowd and shouted, “There is no ice cream in his freezer! Until we find this thief, I am declaring Martian law!”
A mixture of oohs and aahs responded. The vendor smiled but was not sure why.
Scribescroll at her side coughed. “Uh, your highness, I believe it’s martial law.”
“Do not offend the red planet!” Then she whispered to the accountant, “Under Martian law, what are my powers exactly?”
“Well... under martial law, you could suspend habeas corpus, empower a posse comitatus, and execute military justice. You can already do these things, you’re already the Princess.”
“That’s crap. Mars is wild, untamed!” Celestia exclaimed. “We’ll catch that damn thief, there will be outer space justice. I am forming a cadre of Martian knights!”
The royal guards looked at each other.
“You already have a legion of royal guards. There are two right next to you.”
“Your Highness,” said one.
“Silence! You, kneel!” She pointed at Fruityfudge and the ice cream pony quickly did so. Celestia tapped him once on each shoulder. “I dub thee, Sir Phobos. You are now charged with enforcing Martian law.”
“I can’t accept this gift from you,” he whispered back.
“It’s not a gift,” she replied. “It’s a loan. If I give you a gift, that’s peculation, and I would be fired for it.” Then her face brightened. “But together we will find that criminal and hunt him down.”
Suppose someone laid off the points on a circle in order to show, as he imagined, the trisection of an angle. We would not be satisfied, which means that he did not have our idea of trisection when he spoke. Except that in the city of Canterlot, no sound goes unnoticed by the Princess.
“I heard the Princess just knighted an ice cream vendor in the park.”
“Yeah, I was there. I heard he was out of vanilla.”
“The Princess has no vanilla? But I have business in the castle! Are you sure I’m going to get paid?”
“Do you think the government will be ran by Martians now too?”
“If the government is made of Martians, maybe Luna can introduce them to some moonponies!”
“How do you think she’s going to react when she finds out Equestria is under Martian law?”
Celestia heard enough. “Alright, good Sir, it’s time to—”
Scribescroll put his hoof down. “You’re not doing things right. It’s not Martian law—”
“We must satisfy the needs of the red planet. It is for the pleasure of Ares!” Celestia interjected.
“For Mars!”
“You can’t—”
“Phobos, teach this traitor what Mars does to those who contradict its stern ways.”
“You said Mars was wild!”
The newly knighted stallion seemed to be enjoying it. “Yes! Ares must have sacrifice,” he said, approaching Scribescroll with an oversized ice cream scoop. He held it high.
The civil servant's cries soon filled the air. The guards silently stood watch as he learned the Mars way, likely glad it was not them.
Celestia looked out into the sky and watched clouds go by. But there was no sign of Mars. Too bright… she had seen the best of ponies go past, and she didn’t want to be the last. “Hey, Scribescroll, can I marry ponies?”
“You,” he gasped, “you can do anything you want.”
“Excellent. Sir Phobos, you are now wed to Prim Hemline. I am sending you on a quest!”
So Sir Fruitfudge Phobos left grumbling after being ordered to take a full census of the city’s subjects from Princess Celestia (with temporary exception to the ethics rules), and Celestia held vigilance in front of his cart. If the ice cream burglar returned to the scene of the crime she would be sure to spot him.
Morning in Canterlot dawned slowly, the sun climbing up into the sky with the slow plod of somepony who had spent the entire night clinging to an ice cream cart, attempting to make sense of a world where all the ice cream was gone.
At breakfast time, Princess Celestia ordered a guard to fetch yet another uncounted cup of bitter black coffee from where ever as she paged through the encyclopedia page on Mars. She’d reread it several times and each time learned something new.
“Good morning, my sister! How art thou this glorious morning?” Luna’s voice danced through the air as she approached.
Celestia spared her sister a peeled look. “Somepony stole my ice cream. Mars has the tallest mountain in the solar system and we should drop him from it.”
“What?” Luna gasped. “What portion of thine anatomy hast thou injured? Should you not be seeing a chirurgeon instead of laying about at the scene?”
“No one touched me. I never even got any. So I had to order Martian law and now Sir Phobos is shaking up some ponies. Soon we will have the culprit.”
Luna’s mouth made a little “o” of surprise as Celestia flipped through her book again. “Martian law? But certainly you have other methods? I remember—”
“No, no, no. Under Martian law, doctors and other wizards are forbidden.”
“But I… Well,” said Luna, scooping up the book. “This is craziness. We can’t have this. You are from Earth and have always and must always act as such. Thou cannot go around declaring laws from other planets and expecting that to mean anything.”
“Oh yes,” said Celestia, rolling her eyes. “The princess can’t rule her country. That is what Scribescroll said, and now he’s in the hospital.”
A series of nervous banters at the perimeter established by her guards indicated several servants with questions. During the evening Celestia had summoned more royal guards and a ring of them kept her clear a large space around the ice cream cart. The guards rejections grew louder.
“Get back—” Guards were knocked aside as a half-dozen servants and court functionaries threw themselves forward and all talked at once.
“Princess it’s just horrible!”
“You have to do something! Anything!”
“The situation has gotten out of control!
“Mars won’t be visible until the eighth!”
“Mobs are marching through the block!”
“There’s talk of Martian spies!”
“My taxes are going to be late!”
“Silence!” Both royal pony sisters glared at the cowering crowd before Celestia pointed at one of them at random. “Only one may speak. You first!”
“This guy Flubbyfudge said I have to bake him a cake or the red planet will—”
“Silence! Go to your kitchen and bake a cake. Now you!”
The royal aid got nervously to his hooves. “Your Highness, there have been all kinds of troubles floating about the city this morning. Ponies are running amuck performing citizen’s arrests on each other and there is a group invading houses and taking ice cream ‘for the Martian lords’. The lines at the banks for withdrawal of savings are around the block, and the banks don’t have any space money. The party shops are sold out of alien costumes. There’s talk that on the eighth Mars will shoot down from the sky and crush all those who spurn its children!”
It is the hour in which even your happiness becomes loathsome unto you, and so also your reason and virtue. Princess Celestia grinned and tapped her hooves together. “It is Martian law.”
Dragged by the ear, Celestia stumbled to follow Princess Luna and together they mounted the platform erected in the Canterlot Plaza, a wide space near the main roads. Their passage through the plaza was uneventful, the ponies single-mindedly ignored the rulers of the entire country while frantically screaming “Angry Martians! They demand ice cream!” to each other as the sisters climbed to the stage.
“Citizens and faithful adherents, hear me!” announced Princess Celestia to the square.
The compulsion of Martian law was too great. Not even one eye looked up at her, all the ponies on the street continued their hollering and some trying to arrest each other. In only a few days the red planet will be in view.
Princess Luna screamed. “Your Princess of the Night commands you! Heed my sister or I’ll feed you to a Martian!” Luna nodded at the sea of sudden shocked faces and turned to her sister. “Get on with it, Celestia.”
“Ahem. Yeah, thanks.” Princess Celestia cautiously looked down at the sea of attentive faces. She rubbed her ear. “Citizens of Canterlot. I wanted to address an incident that happened yesterday. You may have heard of it. My ice cream was stolen, and I declared Martian law… My sister says I am not allowed to do that. There is no Martian Law. No ponies are inquisitors of Ares. Please return to your jobs and do not let the threat of alien invasion tarnish your day. Thanks.”
There was a long silence, broken only by a few hoof-claps, then chanting: “No aliens! We beat them off!” and “We won!” Within moments, the entire plaza had turned into furious applause and back-patting. Ponies all around hugged each other and cried. It was the mood of the victorious.
Princess Celestia turned to her sister, who appeared to be looking intently out onto the plaza. “There, I was a good girl. Now can I go get some ice cream?”
“I do not think you deserve that.”