Who's Terrible at Takeovers
“Are you going to take your turn, or-“
“We’re thinking!”
Celestia sighed to herself. Her sister wasn’t exactly the best chess player, and playing with her was never much fun for either of them. But it's sister bonding night, and the Princesses of Equestria were spending it alone in their throne room, a chess board sitting in from of them as they took part in this battle of the minds.
Or they would be, if Luna would just take her darn turn.
“Luna-“
“Give us a minute!”
Celestia rolled her eyes and leaned back in her throne. Perhaps if somepony hadn’t broken their projector, they could be watching a film, but instead they were limited to a long game of chess. Celestia would give anything just to make this night more interesting.
Celestia’s ears suddenly perked up. There was a very quiet, very low sound that was slowly growing louder and louder, and it was coming to the throne room.
“Chaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggeeeeeeeee-oof!”
The throne room door emitted a hollow sound as it was struck from the outside.
“Did you hear that?” Celestia asked her sister.
“All we hear is the sound of your impending defeat…as soon as we figure out which of these pieces moves in the shape of an ‘L’.”
Her curiosity unsated, Celestia used her magic to open the door to the throne room from a far. Immediately, a small magenta shape entered her vision, and became exponentially larger as it flew up to the thrones.
“Ah hah!” the shape yelled, sounding somewhat woozy from bashing its head into a door. “You have made the foolish mistake of allowing me to enter your throne room!”
Luna finally looked up from the chessboard and squinted at the creature. Both she and her sister were surprised to see that a Breezie was floating right in front of them.
The Breezie was lithe, tiny, and feminine in physical appearance, as was customary for all of his kind. The only reason the princess’s even knew it was a he was from his voice, one of a rather deep and monotonous timbre with no distinguishable accent. His hair was short, spiky, and pitch black. His skin was light magenta, and his eyes were large…relatively…and bright yellow. These foreboding and furious eyes had been used to strike fear into his subjects, and to order their unwavering respect.
They were slightly less effective at ordering respect and striking fear once put up against six foot tall horse goddesses. Not that he cared to notice.
“Princesses of Equestria!” he yelled, pointing at their position. “I, Estak Inklew Fliessnert, Monarch of the Breezies, demand that we…um…” He dropped his appendage and placed it to his chin, glancing about awkwardly. “…You know, I’m sure there’s a word for it…uh…it’s on the tip of my tongue…”
The throne room became painfully silent as Fliessnert searched for a word. Perhaps it would have been less painfully silent had he prepared for this encounter before rushing in blindly, but hey, you know what they say about hindsight.
“Have dinner?” Celestia suggested, miffed by this intrusion yet curious all the same.
“I just ate, but thanks…” Fliessnert shook his head and regained his imposing expression. “And no, that’s not it!”
“Kick you out of our throne room?” Luna deadpanned.
“Oh!” Fliessnert lightly hit himself upside the head. “I just remembered. Sorry about that.” He cleared his throat and buzzed right up to where the princesses sat, glaring straight into Celestia’s eyes.
“I demand that we discuss the terms of Equestria’s surrender.”
“…What.” Celestia replied, furrowing her brow.
“I demand that we-“
“She heard you, Monarch,” Luna interrupted. “It’s just that this is…well…sudden, ridiculous, unannounced, downright foolhardy, interrupting sister night, take your pick.”
Fliessnert narrowed his eyes and flew up right in front of Luna’s muzzle, causing the mare’s eyes to widen in surprise.
“Foolhardy? Foolhardy!?” Fliessnert asked menacingly. “I don’t think you realize who you’re dealing with, Princess. I am Fliessnert, Monarch of the Breezies, champion of his kind, speaker of the righteous, strength of the people!”
“Duly noted,” Luna said before lightly exhaling from her nostrils, causing Fliessnert to flail in a panic as he was flung a foot away from the princess before halting himself with his thin wings.
“Ha! An act of war!” Fliessnert declared, raising an arm. “Breezies, attack!”
A deafening silence ruled to room. After a few moments, the princesses glanced around, but the only Breezie in the throne room was the one directly before them, who was still floating in the air with his arm raised.
Finally, Fliessnert adopted a look of confusion. For some reason, his enemies had not been ravaged by his Breezie army. He twisted around, looking to the door he had bashed into not ten minutes before.
“Um...guys?” he called. “That was the signal. You know, for you to attack. Hence the signal being, ‘Breezies, attack.’ I thought that was a pretty clear signal.”
Silence. He twisted back around and gave the princesses a sheepish smile.
“Eh heh, uh…one moment,” he said before rushing past the door.
As soon as they were alone, Celestia turned to her sister.
“Luna,” she said sternly, “what are you doing?”
“What are you talking about?” Luna replied, shocked. Celestia put a hoof to her temple, closed her eyes, and sighed.
“You can’t act this way to the leader of a foreign nation,” Celestia explained while methodically rubbing her temple. “You must have a bit more tact when it comes to diplomacy.”
“Diplomacy!?” Luna exclaimed. She pointed a hoof at the door. “That insolent whelp just flew in unannounced and demanded us of our land! We fail to see why we must act civil in this situation!”
“What if we offend them and they start an attack on Equestria that could have been prevented?”
“Sister, they’re barely a hoof tall. We don’t think they could do much damage.”
“Well, what if they have allies?” Celestia countered. “They could call on them to attack us. What then?”
“Then…wait…” Luna paused, then shot a glare at her sister. “What do you mean ‘what if they have allies’?”
“…I’m not very well read on Breezies.”
“Celestia!”
“Well, we don’t interact with them very often!” Celestia said in a huff. “They’re not a threat to us, we don’t trade with them, they never show up to the United Council meetings-“
“You’re the leader of a country! You need to know!”
“What?! You rule beside me, so why don’t you know?”
“....Touché.”
Celestia sighed, tired of bickering. It’s not as if it was getting them anywhere.
“Look, just act civil until we can get an explanation out of him, and then we’ll put our heads together to plan a course of action. Alright?”
“Hmph…fine. But maybe you should do the talking for now. We don’t trust our own tongue with such insolent a creature.”
Fliessnert suddenly poked his head around the door, panic clear on his face.
“Alright, so, there maaaay have been a tiny bit of a breeze outside, and it may or may not have blown my entire army several miles away,” he explained regretfully. “But, er, no matter! I will take you over myself!”
“Why did you bother telling us your army wasn’t with you?” Celestia inquired. “You could have just said nothing and leave us jumping at shadows, expecting an ambush.”
Fliessnert raised an arm and opened his mouth, but said nothing. After a moment, he finally closed his mouth and lowered his arm.
“Fair point,” he conceded. He sighed and floated down to the ground before the sisters. “Alright, come on.”
“…Excuse me?” Celestia asked, baffled.
“We’re fighting now. I’m going to fight you for Equestria. Prepare to lose, or something,” Fliessnert said, all of the energy and bravado in his voice replaced by sadness.
Without a word, Luna walked up to him casually and poked him with a hoof. He fell onto his side, and didn’t bother getting up.
“Ow,” he said in his depressed monotone. “I guess that went as well as I should have expected.”
Luna walked back to her throne and leaned over to her sister’s ear.
“What’s with him?” she whispered. “He was positively gung ho a moment ago.”
“I suppose he only just realized how futile it would be for him to attempt to overtake us and our country,” Celestia whispered back. Both sisters looked back at the defeated Breezie, who was busying himself with slamming his head into the ground whist repeating ‘stupid’ under his breath.
“Er, Monarch?” Luna said hesitantly. “Are you alright?” Fleissnert ceased berating himself, but didn’t look to the princess.
“No, I'm not alright. The Council of Wind demanded for me to overtake a foreign nation in order to obtain land for our own, and I’ve failed,” he said depressingly, holding out a small piece of paper. Luna gingerly picked it up with her magic, cleared her throat, squinted at the small text, and read it out loud.
“I shall claim the sovereign nation on the great name of Breezonia, lest I be stripped of rank, power, and wealth. Signed, Estak Inklew Fliessnert.” Luna looked up from the paper and tilted her head. “Your name is rather odd.”
“And you’d never find a Breezie on this planet by the name of ‘Luna’,” Fliessnert shot back. He cringed before lowering his head. “Sorry. As you can see, I’m a bit out of sorts at the prospect of losing everything I’ve worked for because of my inability to mount the takeover of a country.”
Celestia and Luna were at a loss for words. They’d no idea that so much hinged on Fliessnert’s mission of takeover.
“Why don’t you try another nation?” Celestia suggested. “Perhaps they would prove to be less of a challenge to you.”
“Princess, it has to be Equestria. It’s in writing.”
Celestia pondered for a moment before picking up the contract with her own magic. She read it over several times, trying to find something.
“Monarch?” she called. Fliessnert grunted sadly in response. “You could take any foreign nation and it wouldn’t appease your nation’s council unless it was Equestria, am I correct?
“Yes…why do you ask?”
The corners of Celestia’s lips slowly turned up, a smile growing on her face.
“What is this?”
Fliessnert was looking down at a sandbox that the princesses had placed in the corner of the throne room. The box was barely five hooves long on each side, and even by sandbox standards, was pretty pathetic looking.
Celestia, instead of answering him, merely placed a sign in the center of the sign. The sign was a simple horizontal piece of wood nailed to a stake, with large red letters painted onto it:
Equestria
“It’s Equestria,” Luna said, standing beside her sister.
“…I’m sorry,” Fliessnert began, confused, “I’m not understanding, so I’m just going to go ahead and repeat myself: What is this?”
“Equestria,” Celestia said. “Luna and I used to play in this sandbox all the time when we were just little fillies. We pretended it was Equestria. It was rather childish, but what else would you expect of a one hundred year old?”
“Well…not much, I suppose,” Fliessnert hesitantly answered, the alicorn-humor lost on him. “But I fail to see how bringing this out solves anything.”
“It doesn’t,” Celestia said, her horn glowing. “But this will.” With that, a stack of papers twenty hooves high teleported into the room and fell in front of her, the sound of the impact causing Fliessnert to cringe.
“And what’s that?” Fliessnert asked.
“Paperwork,” Luna said distastefully. “And quite a bit of it, too.” Seeing his confusion, Celestia stepped in to explain.
“We created a micro nation,” Celestia said. “It took some effort, but we managed to get it approved by the United Council. You are now the proud owner of an eighteen square hoof plot of land.”
“Which happens to be named ‘Equestria,’” Luna added.
Fliessnert thought deeply for a moment, looking between Equestria, Luna, and Celestia.
“…Did you just save me with a loophole?” he whispered disbelievingly.
Celestia grinned. “Maaaaayyyybeeeee~.”
Fliessnert slowly grew a grin in turn, and zipped right up to Celestia. He hugged her ear before flying over to Luna’s and hugging it as well.
“Thank you, both of you!” he said gratefully, looking positively ecstatic. “I-I have to get back to the Council of Wind and tell them the good news!” He gave them both a quick salute before rushing through the door, an elated yawp escaping his throat as he soared through the castle.
Celestia and Luna smiled at where he had exited, standing still and saying nothing for a moment.
“…You know he’s going to be sent back as soon as the Council of Wind learns that he’s taken over a sandbox, right?” Luna said, her smile unwavering.
“Of course.”
“And what do we do then?”
“Uh…we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it?”
“Works for us.”
