In Which Twilight Does Not Look Out the Window
Twilight Sparkle vs. April Foals Day
Ponyville’s first day in April began, as so many do, with screaming.
Of course, what this bodes for the rest of the day can vary widely depending on the tone, as longtime veterans of Ponyville’s ways have learned. For instance, a dramatic glass-shattering squeal meant that it was wise to avoid approaching Carousel Boutique until a certain fashionista restored the shop to its pre-Cutie-Mark-Crusaders state; cries of “the horror!” meant that it would be mildly uncomfortable to go outside; boisterous yelling meant there was something awesome to watch in the sky; ten or more screeching ponies meant that one should take another look at their house insurance plan.
For those few who could actually find insurance, of course. Most insurance companies treated Ponyville in much the same way that arachnophobes treat two-foot tall spiders waiting outside their windows.
As such, Twilight Sparkle was not surprised by the shriek that woke her. Unhappy, to be sure, but not surprised.
Incoherent nonsense that may or may not have been blasphemous pooled out of her mouth to soak her pillow—wait, no. That was the drool. But there were some murmured ramblings mixed in there!
After telling the morning what she thought about it, its mother, and mornings in general, Twilight forced herself to sit up and brain. That had been a shriek of disgust, which meant…
…
After a short period of time she came to the conclusion that she did not brain well without caffeine.
Twilight stumbled over to her caffeine-maker and nudged his bed. “Spiiiiiiiiiiiike. Spiiiiiiiiiiiike. Spike.”
To her shock, there was no answer to her wording. She nudged the basket a bit harder, but received no response.
Twilight frowned. Her methyltheobromine-maker was not there. How was she supposed to make it on her own? Maybe she should just give it a try. How hard could it be?
She tried to remember the steps of how to morning, but could not. She thought she had everything she needed, but what was she supposed to do with it?
Twilight hesitantly grabbed hold of a jar of camellia sinensis var. caelestis leaves. After staring at it for an indeterminate period of time, she took a spoonful of the cured leaves and dumped them into a cup.
Huh. That didn’t look like caffeine.
Twilight dumped some coffea arabic var. caelestis beans into the cup after it. Nothing happened, which she assumed was a bad thing.
Truly perplexed, she sat down on the chair and tried to brain her way through the problem (which was very difficult, considering the circumstances). A light went off above her head as she realized what was wrong.
After she finished being overcome with shame by letting her horn light (what was she, an excited schoolfoal?), Twilight poured creamer, sugar, creamer, honey, and creamer into the cup. The result looked like… uh…
Meh. It was close enough.
“Cheers,” Twilight tried to word to nopony in particular, although in her current state it sounded rather more like, “Jeeauhs,” which sounded frankly awful. Then she poured the unholy concoction into her mouth and chewed.
And then she woke up like nopony had ever awoken before.
Songs could be told of the intensity of her wakefulness and her hyperawareness of just about everything, of only anypony knew about it. Legends would be forged from her boundless energy, if only she could last the day without crashing.
But mostly, it gave her the presence of mind to consider that morning’s waking scream. Which lead her to check the date. Which, in the logical course of events, lead her to panic.
It was April 1st. April Foals Day. The bitter thought made her shudder.
“Spike! I need—” Twilight began, only to facehoof at her own stupidity. She sent him off on a sleepover at Rarity’s place for a reason, after all. He’d be planning to get her, too. She couldn’t trust him.
She couldn’t trust anypony.
Especially not Princess Celestia. April Foals Day made monsters out of even the nicest ponies. But she would not be taken unawares this year! Not Twilight Sparkle!
Twilight began her careful inspection of the library to ensure that nopony had set any traps or pranks up inside her home overnight. Each inch had to be double-checked for safety
“Hey, Twilight! I’m going after Rarity with this great prank, but I need your magic—woah!”
Rainbow’s no doubt deceitful greeting was met with the grasp of Twilight’s telekinesis. “Out! Out out out out out!”
The nervous smile on Rainbow’s face was a far cry from her usual confidence. “Just hold on a moment, would you? Don’t worry, I’m not going to—”
Twilight would not listen to this lying liar’s lies. “No! I’m not falling for it this year—for once, I am going to have a perfectly enjoyable day today. So get out!”
“No seriously, I won’t—”
Twilight did not permit Rainbow Dash to finish any sentences, which would no doubt be used to fool her into behaving like the foal everypony always made of her today. Well hah! Jokes on you, Rainbow Dash!
That isn’t exactly what was going through Twilight Sparkle’s mind when she threw Rainbow out of the library, slammed the door closed, and erected a bubble shield around her treehouse. But it was pretty close.
__________________________________________________________________
From all observations ponies have been able to make of the universe, astronomers have long ago come to the conclusion that the universe is shaped like an unimaginably massive wing with a single feather extended. The precise meaning of this is unknown, but it is unanimously agreed that it is supposed to be insulting somehow.
Because the universe is a sick bastard.
Twilight Sparkle studiously ignored the screams that sounded through the town on that most dreadful of days. Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, the Crusaders, Lyra Heartstrings… there was no shortage of ponies dying to play tricks on others out there, and today was the time for them to let loose.
Understandably, this resulted in quite the ruckus as ponies found themselves soaked in cold water, got coated in flour, found frogs slipped under their hats, were playfully deceived, or suffered the other tortures of the day.
This meant that when the sky ripped open above Ponyville and an █████ dragged itself from the tear in reality, Twilight Sparkle paid the resulting screams no heed.
Terrified shrieks now echoed across the village as the entity known to some as Aelfax the Beneficent extended his appendages to gift the ponies with his presence. This was, of course, not his name, but it is the closest thing to it.
The first thing for anypony to do when encountering a horrific abomination is to run away; the best method of running away is to run towards somepony who was probably strong enough to stop said abomination. This, of course, meant that Twilight Sparkle was the one the ponies turned to in their time of need.
“Twilight! TWILIGHT! Did you die in there or something?! We need you!” Rainbow Dash shouted as loudly as she could as she banged on the library’s barrier.
“No! My shampoo and conditioner will be free of glue, dye, and/or hair loss cream this time. I’m not opening this door.”
“Darling, I don’t like it any more than you do—but Ponyville is under attack!”
Indeed, even as they tried to get Twilight to hear them over the roar of the crowd, the immense mass that was Aelfax was picking ponies out of the group with no seeming pattern.
“You’d like me to think that, wouldn’t you, Rarity? But then once I open the door to solve your ‘attack’, you sneak in here to put ants and honey in my bed sheets!”
Twilight’s response actually rocked Dash back a bit. Just a bit, though. “Seriously? Somepony did that to you?”
“Other students at School for Gifted Unicorns, yeah.”
The █████ extended itself like a great machine made of flesh, its gears and wires breaking off to engulf ponies in the █████’s beauty. The screaming intensified.
“We need you out here, Twilight. I get that you’ve had problems with meanie-weenie pants before, but you have to trust us! Giant monsters are a lot worse than pranks!”
An angry huff came from inside the tree. “Hah! So you say, but today is the day you’re actually supposed to lie to ponies, especially your friends! But my refrigerator is not going to be booby trapped with fireworks this year, and my deserts shall not be dosed with habañero powder!”
Aelfax coated the earth in ██████████ formed from the bodies of ponies as it raised houses and trees into is five maws, crunching and devouring them with terrible teeth, each a fractal expanding in more directions than physics permitted.
“You know Ah ain’t one for tellin’ lies, Twi! Just come out. Please.”
The crimson flowed in innumerable rivulets as a circle that encompassed the whole of Ponyville, thick tracks going straight through the town to form a rough star.
They heard the sound of a hoof on wood and the turning of tumblers in a lock.
“You promise?”
“‘Course Ah do.”
An eardrum-shattering battle cry sounded over the ruins of Ponyville as a princess wrapped in stars descended from the sky to crash into Aelfax the Beneficent, rocking the █████ with the force of her blow.
“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!”
Celestia descended at a slower pace as solar flame streamed past her to slam into the Beneficent being that had come to give Equestria his blessing. Despite her distance, her Royal Canterlot Voice bordered on the painful.
“THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO TAKE ACTION! USE THE ELEMENTS OF HARMONY!”
“You brought the Princess?! Why would you do that? She’s the worst of all! I can’t believe I almost fell for that. I didn’t expect you to lie too, Applejack,” came her panicking voice, accompanied by the distinct sound of a lock clicking into place.
Flailing heart-tentacles lashed through the streets as Luna unleashed heavy strikes upon the █████’s flesh; but other than this movement, Aelfax gave no sign of being injured by her attacks. The ██████████ rose from the ground in time to the movements of these extremities, the dance nauseating in its alien and visceral way.
“B-But it’s Princess Celestia! You’re, like, super-duper devoted to her, and she needs you!”
“That’s what she said last year! And then she… she’s the worst of all of them. The absolute worst,” Twilight wailed as the sounds of screaming ponies finally began dying off.
“I don’t believe that the Princess, of all ponies, would be so rude as to—”
“But when I got back to my room, I saw that she… she…” Twilight broke off into tears. “She replaced my magic texts with pun books!”
“Mother of Celestia…”
Twilight nodded along, not realizing that the exclamation was not, in fact, due to the commiserating with the terrible crime the Princess had committed against her. Seeing the Princess of the Night shed her mortal body to become a thing of stars and moon and darkness was not something anypony could watch in silence.
“BUT YOUR ESSAYS WERE SO BEAUTIFULLY WORDED. YOU OBVIOUSLY DIDN’T NEED BOOKS ON HOW TO SPELL!” It turned out that alicorns had really good hearing. Who knew?
The surviving ponies stopped. The Night That Embraces stopped. Aelfax the Beneficent stopped.
Everypony stopped to stare at Celestia.
“IT WAS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD! YOU WOULD NEVER RANGE FROM YOUR ROOM OR SCHOOL, AND YOU COULDN’T FUNCTION OUTSIDE OF YOUR DOMAIN. I THOUGHT THAT SINE WAS CLEAR ENOUGH, BUT APPARENTLY I WAS BEING IRRATIONAL!”
“What.”
Twilight Sparkle put up a barrier to block sound.
The Darkness That Safeguards the Dreams of Foals tried to pretend she was an only child—which she almost-sort-of was, at that point—and dove to engage the Beneficent One. He gargled in incomprehensible pain from Celestia’s heartless dirty trick, but strove on to give this world his gifts. The ████████████ that the quadrupeds had become sung for him and his victory.
“No, seriously—what the buck was that?”
“Isn’t it obvious, silly? It means that Princess Celestia’s sense of humor is pasture prime!”
Then Aelfax the Beneficent ate Pinkie Pie.
Author's Note
I almost never write this much in a day, and I never get off an entire story in one. But I somehow managed to finish this before the 2nd.
It's rather rushed, but I wanted to get it out while it's still April Fool's.
Edit: Entered the Popular Box 4/2/2015. Thank you, guys!
