Bippity Boppity, I can't think of a clever chapter titleoppity
The Cutie Mark Crusaders huddled together under the wrathful gaze of Princess Celestia as she approached them. "Ah told ya that 'Cutie Mark Crusaders Royal Manestylists' wouldn't be a good idea," Apple Bloom whispered fearfully.
"My little ponies," Celestia murmured, blowing a piece of mane-turned-seaweed from her eyes, "I simply can't take your antics around the castle anymore. I'd have thought you'd learn your lesson after trying to give Discord a manicure, or maybe, just maybe, after pumping Cadance and Chrysalis full of Love Poison." The alicorn shivered as the memories of that little clusterfuck invaded her mind. That had been a bad, bad day.
However, that's irrelevant to this story, a mere unimportant detail designed with the sole purpose of boosting this story's word count. Plus, you've gotta admit, that would be pretty damn funny. But let's circle back to the mane event, shall we?
"But this..." Celestia fumed, smoke coming from her ears. "Why, I... you have finally crossed the line. I think you know what that means..."
The fillies exchanged glances, then looked back up at her, a hopeful expression on each of their faces. "You're gonna calmly let us go with a warning and a hug to show you still love us?" Scootaloo suggested.
"And then not send us to the moon because you assured Twilight that you don't actually do that?" Sweetie Belle literally butted in, her marshmallowy white blank flank shoving the pegasus aside. It was at that moment that Scootaloo learned she had the ability to send all the blood in her body rushing to her face whenever she felt like it. And boy, did she feel like it. She also felt like extending her wings for some reason.
Apple Bloom tapped her chin while she thought. "Um, it means... we won the race?"
"It means... TO THE MOON WITH YOU!" Then Celestia teleported them to the moon, because she's a bitchy, cake-eating dictator warm, lovable princess who cares deeply about her subjects and knows that this punishment was entirely appropriate. Also, she definitely doesn't have fourth-wall-breaking powers that allow her to rewrite anything the author says that could be considered slander.
Right.
"Hmm. Perhaps that was a little harsh."
...
"Nah." Celesita skipped out of the palace and went on a trot through the castle gardens, humming a jovial tune to herself. "Ah, crap," she muttered suddenly. "They'll probably just end up destroying the moon, won't they?"
They would indeed.
"I'd better send Luna to keep an eye on them." Sunbutt lit her horn and searched for her sister's location, then cast a teleportation spell. Remote teleportation was usually a risky business, but she was the bucking princess of the sun and stars and all that bullshit. Surely the spell would reach the alicorn without any complications.
Welp, that would be a big fat "nope."
Sitting on the bed in her chambers, Princess Luna was just powering up her Xbox 360 in preparation for a Call of Pony: Black Ops 2 marathon. "Time for some quickscope rage... Oh, my little fanboys, your tears are ever so delicious." She withdrew the disc from its case, noticing with a start that a bright white aura had suddenly surrounded her. "Oh, for the love of--"
Aaaaand with a poof, she and the disc were gone.
A mile or so away, Celestia smiled as she felt that her spell had finally reached its target and the magic around her horn dissipated. "I'm the best princess ever."
On the surface of the moon, three figures made their way through the shadows. They nodded to each other as they climbed a small ridge, picking out the best footholds on their way to the top. It was hard to see, but they could manage. Their ears pricked simultaneously, and with a synchronized leap, the figures pounced onto a small unsuspecting creature, which cried out as it was torn to shreds. The predators grinned, a transparent mix of blood and saliva oozing from their lips.
Meanwhile, on the exact opposite end of the moon, the Cutie Mark Crusaders were most definitely not hunting tiny innocent creatures, as they just so happened to be tiny innocent creatures themselves. Instead, they were playing shuffleboard.
No, really.
"Ah, jolly good show," Sweetie Belle commended Apple Bloom's well-executed puck slide in a stereotypically British accent.
"I say," Scootaloo agreed. She then picked up her own puck sliding stick, and slid her own puck down the puck sliding thing. On an unrelated note, the author of this story may or may not know absolutely nothing about shuffleboard, as he or she may or may not have never played it before in his or her life.
Scootaloo's puck landed on the really good puck score space, and Sweetie Belle stroked her moustache, which she had borrowed from Pinkie Pie a few days prior. "Well done, old chap!"
"Indeed," said Apple Bloom as she sipped her tea. "Exquisite."
They waited expectantly for a few minutes, their faces gradually falling into scowls. "Well, looks like 'Cutie Mark Crusaders Snobby Douchebag Impressionists' is a bust," Apple Bloom sighed. "What're we gonna do now?"
In a flash of light, they were graced with the sight of a sleek, shiny, navy-and-white moon buggy.
They stared at it for a few moments, and then the other two Crusaders turned to Sweetie Belle. "Did you do that?"
"...Yes."
"BEEP!" The three jumped back a few billion nanometers in fright. "BEE--BEEP?! BOOP, BWEE?" The buggy spun in a circle, appearing somewhat confused and panicked. Of course, it was just an inanimate object, a machine, so it couldn't possibly be experiencing these actual emotions.
Apple Bloom straightened up upon hearing the strange noises coming from the machine. "Hey, I know that voice! Is that you, Princess Luna?"
The mysterious vehicle waved one of its antennae in greeting. "BEEBEEP."
"It is Princess Luna!" Scootaloo exclaimed.
"Oh hello, Princess!" Sweetie Belle bowed respectfully, as is only natural when confronted with such a beautiful vehicle, which just so happened to be a princess as well. "I must say, you look lovely today." The other two fillies voiced their agreement, and Luna emitted a small boop, lowering her headlights shyly.
"So Princess, what happened to ya?" Apple Bloom asked.
"BEEP, BZZT!" Luna replied irritably, scuffing the dirt with one of her tires.
"Oh, yer sister, huh?" Apple Bloom nodded. "Yeah, they can be a real pain in the rump sometimes." And no, she did not intend that as a euphemism.
...I'm about 90% sure she did not intend that as a euphemism. Actually, just to be safe, let's say 65%.
"Oh, by the way, guess what?" Scootaloo blurted out suddenly. "The moon really is made of cheese!" She scooped up a hooffull of... well, apparently cheese, from the moon and gobble-gobble-gobbled it down like the chicken turkey she was.
"Um, she lived here for like, a thousand years, remember?" Apple Bloom reminded her. "I think she'd know that."
Luna did know that. She knew it quite well. But being a mere machine, she was now unable to feast on the delicious moon dirt. She soon realized that she couldn't even cry, because I guess machines can't do that either. She tried as hard as she could, only succeeding in leaking a small trickle of transmission fluid from her underside.
Yeah.
"Aw, Luna, ew!" Apple Bloom stepped away from her, looking disdainfully at the puddle underneath. Luna click-clicked in embarrassment.
"What happened?"
"The Princess's gettin' all hot over the moon cheese..."
"Oh, ew." The Crusaders finished off their helpings of cheese, and Apple Bloom only just managed to restrain herself from lapping up Luna's transmission fluid. Because that's exactly what it was: transmission fluid. Nothing sexual about that.
Anyway, after pondering the situation presented to them for a few moments, Apple Bloom piped up. "So, now what?"
"Hey, maybe the Princess could help us get our cutie marks!" Scootaloo suggested.
"That's a great idea! Princess Luna, would you help us? Please, pretty please?" Sweetie Belle pleaded. Luna considered the idea for a few seconds, really letting it bounce around inside her engine for awhile, before she finally agreed.
"BEEP, BOOOWEEEP!" Luna bellowed, doing an enthusiastic wheelie. The Crusaders cheered, and once Luna quieted down, they began cranking out ideas.
"Hmm... 'Cutie Mark Crusaders Astrologists'?" Sweetie Belle offered, and Apple Bloom made a face. That sounded hard. Like, even harder than that Discord statue's huge di--
"Nah... how about 'Cutie Mark Crusaders Auto Mechanics'?" Apple Bloom suggested, and Luna warily put herself into reverse, backing up a bit. There was no telling what would become of her if she let the Cutie Mark Crusaders take her apart and put her back together again. With her luck, she'd probably end up as a toaster oven.
"I got it!" Scootaloo yelled suddenly. "'Cutie Mark Crusaders Moon Buggy Racers!'" Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom perked up at this idea, and even Luna had to admit it sounded like a much better alternative to their previous ones.
"That sounds like fun, Scoots!" Apple Bloom agreed. "How about it, SB?"
"I'm fine with it, but what about you, Princess?" The three turned to the rover, eagerness written all over their faces. How they'd managed to write the word so quickly, and in permanent marker no less, was beyond her.
"BEEEEEEP!" Luna honked excitedly, spinning her tires in anticipation. She motioned with an antenna for the fillies to climb aboard, and her seats were soon occupied. They examined her thoroughly--a bit too thoroughly, Luna thought with a warm blush of antifreeze--and soon became curious about her various features.
"Hey, what's this button do?" Scootaloo slammed her hoof down on a red button that read "DO NOT PRESS," because obviously every piece of machinery ever made just has to have some kind of mysterious button that you aren't supposed to press. Luna promptly dropped to the ground as her wheels gave way, and she collapsed into a pile of disconnected parts. "Oops."
"Princess!" Apple Bloom gasped, sifting through the lifeless parts frantically. "Are ya okay? Speak ta me, please! Buy some apples! Anything!"
Sweetie Belle calmly raised a hoof, and the entire moonscape lapsed into silence. "Ctrl-Z," she stated robotically, and Luna's form fizzled out, immediately being replaced by a fully-intact one.
"Yay, she's okay!"
"Well, I definitely won't try that aga--hey, what's this button do?" Scootaloo pressed a small silver button, and a small chime rang out from somewhere inside Luna as her dashboard lit up with a glowing green X. Several varieties of weapons reminiscent of those from Black Ops 2 unfolded from her sides, and she became linked to a complicated array of radars, targeting systems, and heat vision. "Whoaaa..." Scootaloo grinned widely. "Best. Buggy. Princess. Ever."
"RATATATA," Luna whispered with a quiet burst of M8A1 fire. Her headlights pulsed brightly as a fucking shitload of red blips appeared on her radar.
"What?!" Sweetie Belle shrieked. "What aliens? Are they dangerous?"
"BEEP BOOP." Luna fired off a single shot, then rolled over on her side, powering off all her systems. Had she been in her usual, vastly inferior pony form, one might have identified the action as 'playing dead.'
"Oh dear," Sweetie Belle whimpered, and Scootaloo was immediately at her side, resting a comforting wing over her back.
"We can take 'em!" She yelled confidently. "'Specially when we've got Luna the tank on our side!"
"No, no, Fluttershy was the tank, remember?"
"Oh yeah. What's Luna then?" Luna, now turned back on and rightside-up once again, blinked her headlights as all three fixed their gazes on her.
"Overpowered badass super-killer goddess?"
Scootaloo nodded. "Overpowered badass super-killer goddess."
"BEEP BEEP! WWWRRRREEEEE!" Luna suddenly made a siren-like wail, announcing the arrival of several hundred fearsome creatures that swarmed into the area. They were big, ugly, scary... but mostly just ugly. Like, seriously, we're talking worse than Predator here. Pink, furless bipedals with a short mane, and strange fabrics draped over their bodies--for what reason, none of the ponies knew. Creepy, huh?
Luna held out a selection of weapons, and the Crusaders each took their weapon-of-choice: Apple Bloom selected an RPG, Sweetie Belle took an M27 assault rifle, and Scootaloo, for some reason, went with a mere combat knife. The group formed a tight circle, staring down the countless pairs of beady eyes that watched them closely.
"Stay behind me, Sweetie," Scootaloo whispered bravely.
Sweetie Belle eyed the pegasuseses'ses tiny knife doubtfully. "Uh-huh. Sure."
A strange gleam appeared in Scootaloo's eyes, and before anypony could realize what was happening, she had darted forward with the speed of a thousand chickens and relieved a baker's dozen aliens of their heads. No one moved a muscle, save for Scootaloo's eyes snapping back and forth, daring any other to make an advance. The rest of the pony/decepticon clan watched her, rendered speechless.
"W... Whoa." Apple Bloom finally stuttered out. Her mouth hung wide open, and Luna let out a long, awestruck booooooooooweeep.
Sweetie Belle swallowed, fanning herself with a hoof. "My, that mare... sure is something, huh?"
Luna slowly turned her satellite dish to observe the unicorn skeptically, then turned her attention to Apple Bloom. "BEEP! Click click?"
The earth pony shook her head. "Naw, they ain't. Not yet, at least."
Sweetie Belle spun to face them, her cheeks flushed with anger and definitely not because she was embarrassed. "Stop talking about us behind our backs!"
Apple Bloom and Luna glanced at each other, and Apple Bloom nodded. "Alright, we won't."
"Thank you."
"We'll talk about you to your face. You two like each other. Don't even try to deny it," she dismissed Sweetie Belle's sputtering with a wave of her hoof. "It's painfully obvious to everypony, and ah do mean everypony."
Luna bobbed her antennae up and down, and added, "BOOP BWEE!"
"We do not make a cute couple!" Sweetie Belle gasped, taking a step back. "What even--"
"Um, girls?" Scootaloo called. She, along with all the aliens, were watching the conversation unfold with the special awkwardness one only feels when caught in the middle of an argument. "Yeah, reeeeeeally not the best time to have this little talk."
"Yeah, okay, whatever," Sweetie said, ignoring her. "Apple Bloom, I don't appreciate you trying to fix me up with one of my friends! I mean, not that I--"
"Ah am not tryin' to fix you up! Ah'm sayin you already--"
"Um, hello? Big pony-versus-aliens showdown about to take place? Remember that?"
The pair of mares looked around to see they were surrounded by a large crowd of uneasy-looking aliens. "Oh, yeah," Apple Bloom muttered, grinning sheepishly. "Sorry to put y'all through that."
"No biggie," one of the aliens said. "It's not often we get to see another species besides our own bicker like a couple of crows." This earned a round of chuckles from the rest of the aliens, as well as an indignant squawk from a passing crow.
"Ex-cuse me?" Sweetie Belle yelled, glaring daggers--or, more appropriately, bullets--at the aliens, who shrank back nervously. "Just who do you think you're calling a crow?!"
"BEEP, BOO-BRRR!" Luna screeched angrily, followed by a series of clicks that made it clear she was desperately trying to unfreeze her CPU. "BRRR," she sighed in annoyance, as a blinking "Not responding" message appeared on her screen. She restarted herself, and once she was booted up again, she tossed the three fillies into her seats and sped towards a relatively large cluster of aliens, running them down without mercy. The Cutie Mark Crusaders gave a unified battle cry as they raised their weapons threateningly, and the slaughter began.
The aliens, with their soft bodies and complete lack of weapons, were no match for the devastating power of Apple Bloom's RPG. She kept up a constant rain of blood and body parts, destroying dozens of enemies with each shot. Meanwhile, Luna drove close enough to the wall of aliens for Scootaloo to reach most of them with the wide strokes of her knife, and any whom she missed was quickly taken care of by a few rounds from Sweetie Belle's M27. Luna kept up a near-constant volley of bullets, grenades, and lasers; anyone agile enough to dive under the powerful barrage was swiftly flattened by half a ton of pain.
For the next few hours, the crew continued shooting, dicing, blowing up, crushing, and generally kicking some serious alien butt. The last one falling still under her massively-increased weight, Luna put it in park. "BEEP," she confirmed tiredly.
"We... we did it," Sweetie Belle rasped, scanning the massive piles of dead alien scum around them. "We made it."
"Is everypony okay?" Apple Bloom asked, checking herself over for injuries. The rest followed suit, feeling relieved to not find anything serious.
"I'm fine," Scootaloo cheered. Her face then grew serious. "But I'm more worried about you, Sweetie." She grabbed the unicorn's shoulders, gazing at her questioningly. "Are you alright?"
"Yep," the unicorn whispered, her cheeks tinting a light red magenta burgundy scarlet You know what? No, they were fucking pink. The group began to recount the tale, each adding in their own moments of glory, until they eventually caught up to the present. They then proceeded to have a long, meaningful discussion about what life really means and the purposes of survival and the betterment of one's self, which the author is, at this moment, far too lazy to detail. Perhaps he or she will get back to it later, but we all know that's probably not going to happen.
"Holy mother of Rainbow Dash!" Scootaloo cried suddenly. "Look!" The other two ponies and one rover followed her gaze to Sweetie Belle's flank, which she totally hadn't been staring at because it was attractive or anything. Luna adjusted her camera to get a closer look--again, not that she was staring at it because it was extremely plump and perfectly round and glowed softly against the light of the sun. The lens fogged up slightly, and she had to avert her view to prevent her systems from overheating. One could only handle so many wonderful megapixels of plot, you know.
"My cutie mark!" Squeaky Belle sweeted, bouncing in circles. "Oh my gosh! You girls got yours, too! Look!"
Apple Bloom immediately spun to stare at her own flank, as did Scootaloo after getting over the fact that Sweetie Belle had noticed hers. They had, indeed, gotten their cutie marks. And to their amazement, they all seemed to have a matching theme: each with their own specialized weapon, depicted ruthlessly murdering a helpless alien.
"Girls, do y'all know what this means?" Apple Bloom yelled excitedly, her face alight with glee. The other Crusaders wore similar expressions as they all chorused,
"CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS ALIEN SLAYERS! *YAY!*"
"BEEEEEEEEEP!" Luna honked, driving around ecstatically in circles until the Crusaders finally calmed themselves (and her) down.
"You're the best princess ever, Luna!" All three fillies cried, hugging Luna's satellite dish tightly.
None of them heard the enraged voice screaming from far away. "ME FUCKING DAMMIT, LUNA! I'M THE BEST ME-DAMNED PRINCESS!"
thenscootalooandsweetiebellefinallykissedtheend
