Or Is It a Two-Person Shooter Game?
“Hearts and Hooves Day is like the day before a meeting with my nephew: the meeting itself can last five hours or five minutes, but the time you spend waiting seems like five months in Tartarus. I’ve done that, by the way. You never look at chew toys the same way again.”
The hot tub to her left replied with a series of insistent gargles.
“To put it bluntly,” Luna said while wrapping her starry mane in a towel, “Sister believes Hearts and Hooves Day sucks.”
“Thank you ever so much for your pertinent use of modern vernacular, sister dearest,” Celestia deadpanned before turning to the spa attendant at her side. “One of those wing massages would be—“
The rest of Celestia’s request was cut off by a loud gurgling from the hot tub, the bubbles rising and rising to soon give way to a sopping wet Princess Cadence, staring at Celestia in disbelief. “But Auntie, Hearts and Hooves Day is a wonderful holiday, filled with loving couples getting to celebrate their feelings with all of Equestria! Besides that, it’s also the one day of the year when students can get away with PDA, candy is sold at a discount, unhappily single ponies can finally realize how entertaining it is to watch the romantic drama of others…”
“So this is a princess summit,” said Twilight Sparkle, yanking out the cucumbers over her eyes in favor of retrieving a notepad and quill. Luna just gave her a look.
“…and everypony in the end has enough comfort candy stockpiled to start working on their taxes,” Celestia finished. “Yes, Cadence, I realize just how dear this holiday is to my little ponies, and I would not take it away from them for any selfish reason.”
“Then I don’t understand,” replied Cadence. “This is your first Hearts and Hooves Day in a relationship… I think… I hope, because Shiny claims the rumors about you and your guards aren’t true…. You should be looking forward to tomorrow!”
“And thus the pink one ‘hits the nail on the head!’” Luna declared proudly.
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me,” Celestia said as she unfurled her wings for the masseurs. “Discord is certainly an enjoyable romantic partner… minus the actual romance.”
“Oh, come on, it can't be that bad.”
Celestia’s eyes pierced Cadence’s with their fiercest gaze. “Five months in Tartarus? Literally our first date.”
“Oh,” said Cadence. “That’s pretty bad.”
Luna chuckled as she watched Twilight’s eyes widen into saucers. “Sister, have magical bookworms been known to spontaneously combust in the past thousand years? If so, I’d like buttered popcorn. If not…” Turning to the attendant, she said, “still buttered popcorn.”
Twilight, meanwhile, was left speechless. “I… What… How…”
“Alleged ‘most powerful chaos spirit in existence’ somehow failed to bring the map. He also ended up failing to keep his right fang.”
“It was just a little scrap of paper!” the young draconequus insisted. “I packed live circuses and gummy bears and possibly an entire supernova somewhere at the bottom. How can a silly little map compare to all of that?”
All Discord got in response was a tiny hmpf from a certain blob-shaped figure in the darkness.
Discord set down his little knapsack on a nearby boulder. “Hey, it’s not all that bad,” he said, arms open in friendship. “You don’t have to be afraid of anything down here. Like I said before, I’ll never leave you alone, and I guess I could share one or two gummy bears with you. Plus,” he added, waggling his eyebrows, “there’s nopony to chaperone us down here….”
Little known fact about Tartarus: it was dark. Very dark. Very, very dark. So dark that Discord could hardly see anything. Not his paw in front of his face, or the face of his marefriend wanting to slap his face with that paw. And definitely, definitely not a tiny little knapsack until the full weight of a supernova collided with his jaw.
“Sister, I think you broke the purple one,” Luna said, pointing to Twilight’s unresponsive face.
“No, she’s just rewriting all the major history books,” said Celestia with a wave of her hoof. “She’ll come around after a day or two. Usually.”
“But that was over a thousand years ago,” said Cadence, climbing out of the hot tub. “And besides, it was just an accident. I don’t think you can expect a catastrophe like that one.”
Celestia only smiled and rolled her eyes. “Our wedding night. I was trapped on the surface of the sun.”
Luna, popcorn in hoof, trotted over the massage table next to Celestia’s. “Ooh, this is a new one! Do I need to cover Twilight’s ears?”
Celestia glanced at the half dozen attendants flocking with smelling salts to the unresponsive alicorn. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Luna. Besides, the night never did get that far…”
“Long live the princess! Long live the… wait, did we just put him in government?”
“Ah, it’s a wonderful night, isn’t it, Celestia?” asked Discord.
“Rare as such nights are with nobility involved, I will have to agree with you this once,” replied Celestia, slipping out of her poofy wedding gown. She threw open the balcony curtains with a flicker of golden magic, letting silver moonlight stream into the bedroom.
Discord’s eyes had to widen to take it all in. Her radiant white fur reduced to an ethereal glow in the dimness, her shimmering mane falling perfectly around her delicate face, her eyes reflecting the light of a thousand stars. For that shining second, she looked too beautiful to be real.
Discord pressed a mangled claw to his cheek and found it flushed red with an emotion he didn’t care to place.
Celestia’s bare hooves glided soundlessly upon the balcony floor. Placing one hoof on the golden railing, she smiled down fondly on the lights more numerous than the stars as the celebratory cheers of Equestria’s citizens could be heard in the streets below. “They’re happy, Discord,” she whispered. “Actually happy for us.”
The princess shuddered in the cool nighttime air, only to feel a pair of fuzzy arms wrap around her barrel. “Just wait until one of them figures out what their new national anthem is,” Discord replied with an impish grin.
“They’ll never agree to cheer your name for two hours straight,” said Celestia, eyes alight with the same spark as Discord’s.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You certainly didn’t seem to mind last night.”
Celestia’s laughter was like pealing bells. “If you show up to Day Court tomorrow with that excuse, I will banish you to the Everfree with all the loving tenderness a fireball can manage.”
“Then how about Moonbutt banishes you, and we call it a vacation?”
Celestia tore her eyes away from the shining night sky to look at Discord. Smirking, she asked, “Did my ears deceive me, or were you trying to be romantic just then?”
Aghast, Discord placed his claw over his heart. “You wound me, Celestia! I can do far better than that!” His paw cupped her chin, lifting it to face the sky once more. “What do you say we go and see the night sky up close? All of Equestria below us, nothing but imagination above. My love, we can dance among the stars.”
“Impressive,” Celestia admitted, nuzzling his cheek. “Alright, let’s go.” She stood and stretched her wings.
“Oh, there’s no need to fly, Celestia,” said Discord. “Watch this! Ooh, I’ve been meaning to try out this spell for a while!”
Celestia’s eyes widened. “Discord, that doesn’t sound like a good id—“
With a burst of chaos magic, Discord snapped his fingers.
Where his wife once stood, now laid a pile of ashes.
Discord glanced around the deserted balcony, as if expecting Celestia to be hiding under a potted plant. “You know what,” he said to himself, placing a claw on the silk curtains, “maybe nopony will notice…”
“I counted. It took him seven hours and forty-two minutes to teleport me back,” said Celestia, now elevating her front hooves for a hooficure, “and a whole lot longer for his charred remains to heal.”
Luna snorted. “LOL, sister! You could say he ‘needed some ice for that burn!’”
Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight caught a glimpse of microscopic notes about modern language scrawled on the back of Luna’s front hooves. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Just no.”
“Oh, and you haven’t even heard what we did on Hearth’s Warming Eve,” Celestia said.
“Ooh, is this the one with the threesome?” Luna asked eagerly.
“Er… define the word ‘three.’” When she was met with blank stares all around, she added, “It’s the one where I lost my favorite quill.”
“Oh. Well, that doesn’t sound too bad,” said Cadence.
Celestia sighed. “After he tore a hole in the time-space continuum.”
“How in the wide, wide world of Equestria was this supposed to be romantic?!” Celestia screamed over the howling winds of the time vortex in her bedchambers.
Discord scratched the back of his head with his paw, while his claw started dumping tea and fezzes into the vortex’s ravenous maw. “It was, I swear! You know, go to an alternate universe and… er, it was about how you’ll always be the only one for me, and star-crossed lovers being united, and—“
“Admit it, you wanted a threesome!”
By this point, Discord was wedged in the middle of two raging storms: the tear in the fabric of time, and his wife. Naturally, he chose to tackle the more immediate threat. “Now, now, Tia, even I’m not that dense. If I really did want a threesome, why would I bring back sixty of you?”
“Because your brain won’t know the difference between three and sixty million once I crack it open, you maniac!”
“But hey, look on the bright side!” he shouted just before he was drowned out by the wailing of souls damned to wander the Void between dimensions. “In the end, I was able to find the real you! Doesn’t that show how much I love you?”
“You just try and run through that vortex,” Celestia screamed, “and I’m sure my ‘love’ will help me find which one of you to brutally murder!”
Discord chuckled nervously as he began conjuring kiddie swimming pools in an attempt to fill the vortex. “You know, you’re pretty cute when you’re angry.”
Celestia sighed. “Discord, look at me!”
“Little busy here, in case you haven’t noticed!” barked Discord, now plugging the hole with stacks of pancakes.
“Discord!” she cried louder. “In… i-in case we don’t make it, I… I just want you to look at me!”
With a small shrug, Discord turned his face to Celestia.
Then with a loud war cry, she embedded the tip of her favorite quill in the center of his eye.
For a moment, the spa was silent.
“Remind me why you two got married again?” Cadance asked while absentmindedly applying facial cream to Twilight’s stupefied face.
“Like I said, Discord’s an enjoyable romantic partner. He’s shown me that there’s more to life than itineraries and royal meetings—“
“Come now, sister, you just wanted him to help you prank the nobles,” Luna said with a smirk.
“Only on days ending in y, Luna,” she replied evenly. “Still,” she added, “for all his good intentions, on big occasions he always feels the need to… goodness, I don’t even know, really. Prove himself? Harmony only knows what he’s thinking. At any rate, if I don’t survive the festivities, Twilight, do make sure Luna doesn’t figure out the passcode for the Xbox One, otherwise Equestria will fall into an anarchy beyond even Discord’s imagination.”
“Oh, come now, Auntie!” said Cadence, draping a wing over the taller alicorn. “Don’t think like that! Shiny has messed up on Hearts and Hooves Day, but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on him. It just means I have no faith in his abilities, so I’ve developed a bunch of strategies to counteract anything he screws up.”
Celestia just smiled down at her niece. “Thank you for the support, Cadence, but I believe Discord’s blunders hold a tad more gravitas than Shining Armor accidently having you slip and fall into a wishing fountain in Canterlot Square.”
“Point taken. Alright then, thirty-nine rolls of duct tape,” said Cadence as she levitated a calculator in front of her. “Twilight, can I borrow your notepad? Thanks,” she said, enveloping the notepad in her sky blue aura before turning her attention back to her aunt. “Like I always say, true love is like a meeting with Blueblood. There’s nowhere to hide, so you might as well brace yourself for when things start hitting the fan. Or is that what I say about flame wars? Anyway, you’ll want to start gathering supplies immediately. By my calculations, you’ll need two hundred rolls of bubble wrap, fifteen boxes of comfort chocolate, four chainsaws, a demon summoner (I know a great guy), twenty bottles of flame-resistant shampoo…”
Twilight’s eyes widened in tandem with Celestia’s as she watched the smug Alicorn of Love lead the dumbfounded sun princess out of the castle spa.
Luna simply chuckled and pulled out her Neightendo 3DS. “Thank my sister I’m single!”
