Secret Santa: The Tale of The Solar Eclipse

This will make the most sense if you’ve read our Tales from the Staff Canteen, but it isn’t required.

If you don’t want to read it, all you really need to know is that Midnight, Hyde, and Nines shot themselves out of a cannon on the moon aboard a paper mache cannon ball made of mooned fanfics in order to get back to Equestria. Everything else gets at least a cursory explanation.

Prompt: Write a story starring someone elses OC

-I’m so sorry Vimbert I’m actually not sorry at all

        The room was dark and sparse as the unicorn walked in, his horn lighting the way ahead of him. He hummed to himself as he strolled through the archway, a large dolly rolling behind him noisily. He stopped in front of two heavy iron doors laying at an angle to the ground, like storm shutters that had accidentally been placed inside the basement.

        The unicorn shrugged as he set to work unlocking the many latches securing the doors. They actually had been built inside a basement of course, or rather the basement had been built over them. The offices of Equestria Daily were primely situated in a number of ways. Outside the sprawling building, the only neighbors within hearing range had long since grown used to the screams. Above them, the sky had easily been secured as a no-fly zone for pegasi, giving their roof cannon a straight shot to the moon. And below them, in the darkest room of the lowest sub-basement, they had a never ending supply of new material to review, organize, and print.

        The last bolt slid off of the iron doors. The unicorn let his magic fade as a rumble began, the doors beginning to shake on their own. With a blast like thunder, the doors were suddenly flung wide as flame and heat poured out in a torrent of flame, making the air roar as oxygen rushed to feed to billowing fireball.

The unicorn yawned as the display continued. It looked impressive, to be sure, but even the literal fires of hell got boring after seeing them for the second year in a row. Every morning it was his job to go down and fish out the days workload, and other than some singed eyebrows and unwelcome manecuts, it really wasn’t very spectacular.

The fireball died down as the furnace finished releasing its pent up energy, the flames resolving to flicker from within the confines of the metal doors. The unicorn knew better than to try looking through the flames into the nether itself, and instead closed his eyes as he fished around with his magic.

He averted his face from the flames as he pulled something out, carefully opening one eye to examine it. It was a stack of papers, completely unharmed by the flames. He brought the first page into the light, skimming the top.

...to help them. Twilight rushed ahead towards the noise, her mind racing to think of a solution. With a sudden crash, the doorway in front of her exploded forward, the dark form of Ant Agonist standing in the rubble with a victorious smile.

The unicorn shrugged. Nothing exciting, but it wasn’t littered with errors either. He placed the accompanying pages on the dolly, moving on to another in the stack. Like the last, he yawned and placed it behind him.

In time, the stack on the dolly grew to alarming heights and the heat in the room became unbearable. Resolving to fish for just one more story for the day, the unicorn pulled another fanfiction out of the flames.

He read the title, but it seemed generic. The author was probably going for some double entendre that he wouldn’t get until the end of the piece anyway, which he had no intention of reading. All he had to do was make sure they read well and at least stood a chance of avoiding the moon. But as he read further, he couldn’t help but smile. Every now and then, he stumbled on a fic that he actually enjoyed, and on those rare occasions it was normal to read it for pleasure before carrying on with work. As he reached the crux of the story though, he froze in fear. Oh no, he thought. You can’t do that. You can’t be a good story and do that. Oh crap.

He looked back towards the fires of hell behind him. The story was certainly good, but he knew he’d avoid a huge headache by throwing it back. He’d get in trouble if anypony found out though, and he knew that there was something distinctly unethical about not giving it a chance.

He looked down at the fanfiction again, floating before him in a cloud of magic. With a sigh, he made up his mind. “Luna is going to kill me,” he said as he placed it on the dolly.

_____________________

        Above the unknown depths of the basements, a sprawling office complex lay in the morning sunlight. Above that, the sun shone bright and cheerful above a clear Equestrian sky. Above that, the lower stratosphere remained icy cold despite the warming rays of the sun. And far above that, in the cold emptiness of space, something large, fiery, and wet hurtled screaming end over end.

        “Put it out put it out putitout!”a blue colt yelled, frantically swatting his hooves and wings at the flames flickering across the wet paper.

        “I can barely hold on as it is, Nines!” a green unicorn yelled. His legs were airborn behind him as he gripped the soggy asteroid with his front hooves, the stars around him seeming to spin like a kaleidoscope. “Midnight, use your magic!”

        “Mrmpfph!” Another voice called out. Slowly sinking into the paper mache ball, the upper half of a blue horn began to glow. The soggy paper around Midnight’s face cleared as he coughed for air. “Stop complaining, at least you aren’t drowning in bad fanfiction.”

“No guys really the fire is spreading oh Celestia it’s hot.”

“I’m about to be flung out into space and you want to play the victim here, Mids? I can feel the paper ripping.”

“Ohgodit’sinmymaneit’sinmymanesomponeyHELPME”

“Oh my Celestia will both of you shut up! We aren’t spinning nearly fast enough for the inertia to throw you off and wet paper can’t burn, especially in space where there is no air.”

With an embarassed expression, Hyde pulled himself towards the soggy mess and planted all four hooves with a wet plop, reaching a hoof into the wet paper. A few grunts and muffled curses later, and Midnight Shadow stood tall and proud on top of the dashed hopes and dreams of authors everywhere, mucus-like slime dripping from every inch.

“Guys I know it doesn’t make any logical sense but I AM LITERALLY ON FIRE OVER HERE.”

Midnight sighed and let his horn light up, turning to face the muffled screams. His eyes widened as he saw the blue pegasus up to his waist in paper mache, a circle of flame surrounding him and more than a few embers sizzling in his mane.

“W-what?” Mids blinked, making sure his eyes weren’t lying to him. “That’s not- I mean, how did you-”

“IT WAS MAGIC NOW HELP ME PLEASE”

“I’ll save you Nines!” came a yell from behind Midnight.

“Hyde, No!” Mids shouted. But it was too late as a green blur came hurtling past him, kicking up sentence fragments and questionable grammar in its wake. With a battlecry that would embarrass even the most novice of warriors, he flung himself into the flames and flailing hooves of his friend.

With a wet sucking sound, the momentum of the charge pulled Nines free of the clod of failure. In fact, the charge was so effective that after coming loose, both ponies continued to float right over and past the edge of the asteroid. As they tumbled screaming into space, Hyde opened one eye long enough to realize that Midnight was glaring at him from only a few feet away.

        “AAAAAAAAAaaaaahhhh... whaaaa?” He muttered with all the cleverness he could muster.

        Mids shook his head as the two ponies floated out of sight, hugging each other tightly. A moment later, they reappeared from behind him, floating overhead before disappearing again.

        “Alright Midnight, I know what you’re going to say.” Hyde started on the next rotation, pausing to let himself float around the far side of the asteroid. As he came back into Midnight’s hemisphere, he said “You’re going to lecture me about gravity and moon orbits-” he faded as he passed out of sight, and Midnight turned to face him on his next orbit. “-and other things I don’t know about. But let’s skip that and help-”

        Midnight didn’t bother to wait for the two ponies to come back around, instead turning towards the slowly spreading fire. He ignored the incessant chattering of his new orbital bodies, instead focusing on the problem at hoof. He couldn’t just conjure water out of thin air, that wasn’t how unicorn magic worked. He could try leaching moisture from the paper to make some, but that could also just make the paper dryer and therefore burn faster. With a spark of inspiration, he smiled and cleared his throat.

Hwptoof!

In slow motion from lack of gravity, his glob of spit hurtled toward the slowly growing fire, extinguishing a patch. He smiled as his brain continued to tune out the protests above him. His genius had saved them all once again. If he was being fair, he deserved some peace and quiet from Hyde and Nines for that alone, if nothing else.

“I’ll just let them stay up there a little longer,“ he chuckled to himself as he went about extinguishing the fire.

______________________________

“But Vimmy, you said we could have lunch together today.”

        “And we will, I promise. I have a thirty minute lunch break at noon.”

        “But you said today was your day off”

        “It is sugarlumps. Kind of. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll see you for lunch okay?”

“Alright, but don’t you dare cancel on me again. I know how crazy things get over there, but that’s no excuse to ignore me.”

“How could I ever ignore you, you are far too beautiful. I’ll see you for lunch, darling.”

        Vimbert hung up to the sound of giggles, making his way through to empty corridors of the EQD office complex. He was grateful for the solitude and tried not to contemplate the whereabouts of everypony for fear of jinxing his good luck.

        It was a well known fact that Equestria Daily was a very busy place. It stood to reason that, logically, the ponies inside were very studious. However, it was also a well known fact that no individual pony at the office ever  did any  work, which created a sort of contradiction. In reality, what really happened was that there was a sort of round robin for which staff member would actually work in any given day. Today, it was Vimbert who arrived at his cubicle precisely on time, turned up his shirt collar to hide the questionable marks on his neck, and set down his cup of coffee. In front of him, an empty wire basket with the word “INBOX” sat silent and empty.

        Some ponies may think that having to work when everypony else was having fun was somehow a bad thing, but Vimbert knew differently. All too often, “having fun” around the office meant dodging and weaving between all kinds of blunt, sharp, and magically charged objects. It was exhausting to say the least, and having a day to simply kick back, sip coffee, and ruthelessly judge others was the only thing keeping him sane. Besides, Polecat and Noble Cause were both out there today, which meant that he was probably safer in here anyway.

        A dolly rounded the corner with a familiar squeak, carrying atop it stacks and stacks of papers. Behind the trolly came a quietly humming red unicorn, his mane bouncing in front of his face. “Morning, Vim,” the unicorn said as he lifted a stack of papers. “Your turn to take a day off, huh?”

        “Morning Cray, and yes” Vim smiled as he sipped his coffee, leaning back in his chair. “Looks like the realm of the damned was very industrious today.”

        “Don’t worry about all this, it’s just fluff. The others guys will take care of it, but you’ve got some work ahead of you.” As Cray pulled a select few pages from the stack, his smile faded. He carefully lowered them into Vimbert’s inbox before returning the rest of the stack to his dolly.

        “Wait what? Just one fic?” Vim placed his coffee down as he leaned forward, every alarm bell going off at once. “This is my entire workload for today?”

        Cray stopped in the doorway, carefully avoiding Vimbert’s gaze. “I uh, gave that one a read already. This is more than your fair share.”

        “Well how is it? What is it?”

        Cray shook his head and pushed the trolly out with his magic, disappearing around the corner. “Sorry, don’t want to color your opinion,” he called back “but I’d try to get that sorted before Luna wakes up”.

        Vimbert looked down at the fanfiction. It wasn’t even that long, and if Cray had brought it up from the basement then it wasn’t automoon material. So why did it have the unicorn so worried?

        Suddenly, Vimbert had the feeling that today wouldn’t be relaxing at all.

__________________________

Inside the break room, not a living soul stirred. Despite this, the air was filled with loud cranks, buzzes, and pops. While most the the room was filled with tables and furniture, some of which was still standing, one entire wall was bare except for a single coffee machine and a door.

The door stood agape, letting the sounds of construction spill from within. Inside, a network of pipes, valves, and boilers churned and sputtered, all of them funneling into the coffee machine in the next room. It was a complex and genius piece of machinery, and Mechanic’s pride and joy.

Mechanic pushed himself out from underneath a duct, trying to find a clean spot on his arm to wipe his face. Lowering his standards, he drew a greasy limb across his brow, standing up to survey his work. The coffee machine required regular maintenance, something he was glad to do. After all, if Luna didn’t get her coffee it would mean indefinite mooning for the first pony to cross her path. After enough days of sending ponies to space, the odds of him being the unlucky winner started to get pretty high. He had long since decided that it was better to just keep her happy.

He walked out of the dark maintenance room and closed the door, admiring the empty break room. Despite its name, it was rare for any EQD staffer to relax here. Usually, it was the first place anypony checked for somepony who wasn’t busy to come help them with whatever they didn’t want to do. Mechanic liked to think of it instead as a room where things just got broken.

As if his presence inside the break room had been sensed, the door to the hallway flew open and nearly splintered from the force. Mechanic whipped his head around and saw a crazed Vimbert standing in the door, his eyes wide and chest heaving with every breath. “You!” he yelled, stepping forward.

“Nope!” Mechanic yelled back, sure he didn’t want to be a part of whatever was happening this time. He made a break for the maintenance hall door, but whatever panic had possessed Vimbert gave him to speed to catch up. The Mechanic despaired as he felt hooves wrap around his waist and pull him to the ground.

“You!” Vimbert yelled as he clambered atop the white earth pony, “You’ve got to help me!”

“But I don’t want to!” Mech yelled, trying to shake the brown unicorn off of him.

Mech’s vision was suddenly filled with pages of paper, and he stopped struggling long enough to gather them up. “Wait, what’s this?” he said. “You need help with a fic? That’s it?”

“No, I need you to fix something. You fix things, right?”

Mechanic looked around the pony on top of him to his flank, where two wrenches were clearly visible. “Yes?” he answered tentatively. “But we aren’t editors,” he quickly clarified.

“No, the story is fine. In fact, that’s the whole problem. The story is great, but...”

“But?” Mech asked, interested despite his reservations.

Vimbert averted his gaze as he straddled the pony. “It’s a shipfic.”

Mechanic blinked. “So what?”

Vimbert sighed and shoved the papers back into Mech’s face. “Just read the title.”

“The Solar Eclipse? So what? Something to do with the sun and the moon-”

Mech froze as realization struck him. “Oh no. Vim, we can’t run that. A shipfic between the princesses? Luna would actually send us to the sun.”

“I know!” Vimbert threw his hooves up, rolling off of Mechanic and onto the floor. “That’s the problem! The story is good, great even, and it doesn’t have anything that we ban. But if we don’t moon it, Luna is going to go on a rampage.”

“Forget mooning it, we’d have to sun it. If this story ever comes back, we’ll be in the same situation. And if it comes back even better than before-”

“You’re right,” Vimbert cut him off. “Either this fic goes to the sun, or we go to the sun. So what do we do? I can’t sun it without some sort of reason, and ‘I want to stay alive’ will just make readers blog about our lack of ethics in the face of occupational commitment.”

“They do have a knack for locking onto that sort of thing,” Mechanic agreed.

Vimbert tapped his chin as he sat up. “We need to sun this, and we need to do it before anypony else realizes it was even here. Do you have access to the cannon?

Mechanic shook his head. “Only Alex, Midnight, and Daffodil do. Midnight is on the moon right now, but maybe Alex and Daff can help.”

Vimbert lept to his hooves, stowing the fic in his saddlebags as he ran towards the door. “Then we’ve got to hurry! If we don’t get rid of this by the time Luna wakes up, we’re all dead!”

________________________

        “We’re all going to die.” Nines stated flatly.

        “No, Nines, we aren’t.” Hyde said, rolling over in mid air so that he didn’t have to face the pegasus.

        “Yes we are. Midnight said that if you pull us back down, it might mess up our trajectory. But we keep orbiting further and further away. Eventually, we’re all going to die.”

        “Eventually, everypony dies.”

        Nines brought a hoof to his chin, rotating slowly in the air from the movement. “You know, I don’t think that makes me feel any better.”

        “I wasn’t trying to.” Hyde grunted. As much as he wanted to push himself back down to the fanfiction ball, or at least push Nines into deep space, Midnight was right. Any adjustment to their collective momentum might land them in the sea or a desert, and Hyde really didn’t want to have to walk a thousand miles with either of his two companions. Better to just grin and bear it.

        “We’re all going to die.” Nines reiterated.

        Hyde sighed. Well, maybe not the grinning part.

        “Alright guys, I think I’ve got our trajectory mapped out!”

        Hyde looked below him where the grinning form of Midnight was fading out of view. As the world shifted around him, the smiling colt presently came back into sight. “Alright,” Hyde ventured, “does that mean you can pull us down now?”

        “Soon,” Midnight said.

        “Well what’s the hold up?” Nines yelled down, making Hyde wince.

        Midnight averted his gaze for a moment, but then shrugged the shrug of apathy. “I just want to enjoy my solitude a little longer.

        “I hate you,” Hyde hissed down.

        “If it’s any consolation, I think you two are actually giving us a speed boost. We should hit Equestria’s atmosphere any minute now.”

        “That sounds dangerous,” Nines suggested helpfully.

        “Oh it totally is,” Midnight confirmed without a smidge of humor. “In fact, we are probably all going to die.”

______________________

        “Viiiiiimmyyy, where are you? You were supposed to be at Sugarcube Corner ten minutes ago!”

Vimbert swore under his breath, trying to hold the cellphone to his face with one hoof while running through the halls with the other three. “I’m sorry darling, I kind of have a situation. I have to reschedule for after work.”

“Ughh, you are lucky I’m so understanding. When will you be home sweetie?”

“Honey I’m just trying to live long enough for that to be an option.”

“So shall we say six o’ clock?”

“Sure, fine, whatever. Look, I really gotta run, kinda in a life or death situation here.”

“Alright sweetiepoo, hugs and kisses.”

Vimbert hung up the cellphone without returning the goodbye, thankful to finally stow it in his saddlebags. The offices of EQD were gigantic, but Vimbert knew Daffodil well enough to know where he was. If he and Alex were together, there was only one possible place.

        Mechanic pulled to a stop just ahead of Vimbert, nearly causing them to collide. Vimbert swerved and caught himself from falling over, gasping for breath as he stared at the wall in front of them. On the plain wooden door, a placard had been posted.

EQAD

Definitely not porn in here

        Underneath the word porn, someone had cleverly scrawled a graphic horsecock.

        “The worst kept secret in the office,” Mechanic broke the silence.

        “I’ve never actually been in here,” Vimbert admitted. “Never really cared for clop material.”

        “Oh it’s horrible,” Mechanic nodded sagely, staring blankly at the door. “There’s an entire room dedicated to the word ‘moist’. pictures, gifs, spilled milk, you name it. Alex says it’s to inspire aspiring artists, called it a muse, but I mostly just think it smells like spoiled milk.”

        Vimbert looked sideways at his companion. “You, uh, come here often Mech?”

        Mechanic stiffened instantly, his head snapping around. “W-what? No! I just heard stories. Worst kept secret in the office and all that.”

        Vimbert snorted. “Let’s just get this over with,” he said as he pushed the door open.

        The inside was dark, but Vimbert’s horn flared to life. It was completely bare except for a portion of wall that stood separate from the corner, revealing a secret passage downwards.

        “This is a joke, right?” Vimbert asked.

        “Just wait until you get to the trapdoor.” Mechanic replied.

        Vimbert stepped into the secret passage, which was constructed of the same eternally-damp stone as most of the basement, and picked his way down the stairs. It wasn’t long before he found himself in front of another door, this one with a grate the size of a small table underneath.

        “Let me guess,” Vimbert started. “When I turn the handle, the grate opens and plunges me to my death?”

        Mechanic shifted, twiddling his front hooves. “Uhm, I heard it was probably more like four feet, but yeah.”

        Vimbert sighed and turned the handle from a safe distance with his magic, stepping effortlessly into the doorway. He nearly fell backward in shock, however, when he saw the interior of the new room.

        He had expected clop. He had expected a lot of clop. He had even expected some stalion-centered clop. He was okay with it and tried not to judge, but even he had to admit that covering every inch of every surface with explicit detailed cutouts, printouts, and photoshopped pictures of erect horsecocks was simply excessive.

        “What... the fuck...” Vimbert simply did not know what to say.

        “It’s just a scare tactic man, gotta plow through it!” Mechanic said from behind him, pushing him forward down the corridor.

        Vimbert walked numbly forward, doing his best to ignore the horsecocks all around him. Details kept creeping into his awareness however, like that some had been captured mid-ejaculation while some were hardly poking out of their sheaths. Some centered on the entire pony, while others were just zoomed up shots of male genitalia. Some twisted part of his mind had to admit it was pretty varied.

        “They say that every time one of us says the word ‘horsecock’, this room grows.” Mechanic whispered into Vimbert’s ear.”

        “How does that even-”

        Before Vimbert could finish his question, a pristine picture of a glistening horsecock floating softly down from the ceiling, coming to rest on the floor. Suddenly, Vimbert was aware that he had been walking on horesecock for several steps.

        “Magic.” Mechanic shrugged, making his way forward. “Now come on, we have to find Alex and Daffodil.”

        “Well, this is the main room isn’t it? Where else could they be?

        Mechanic pulled a horsecock-detailed chair away from a cock-plastered monitor, ripping some of the equine dongs off the screen. “Yea, this definitely looks like the master computer for EQAD,” he mused after a moment. “Perhaps there’s another secret door around here?”

        Vimbert lifted one hoof tentatively, but dreaded placing it back down again. “How are we supposed to find it with all this horsecock in the way?” He asked. A fresh new picture draped itself over his shoulder.

        “It must be password activated, since that’s the only other possible option.”

        “I agree, anything else would be too roundabout for this situation.” Vimbert nodded sagely.

        “Alright, so we’re probably looking for a word that has something to do with horsecocks.”

        “Or their opposites. If horsecocks just clutter the room up, whatever we’re looking for is something to reveal a secret. So kinda the opposite, right?”

        “Very clever Vim. Yes, the opposite of horsecock...”

        “Alright, we really need to stop saying that word.”

        Mechanic turned around to see the last of the new pictures flutter to the floor. Vimbert had at least one flaccid cock stuck in his mane with a handful of others balanced on his back. His expression was as carefully straight as the horsecocks surrounding him, and Mechanic coudln’t help but snicker.

        “Alright, the opposite of HC.” Vimbert said once Mechanic had collected himself. “So... horsevagina?”

Nothing happened.

“Marepussy!” Mech supplied.

“Uh, fillyslit?”

“Plothole!”

“Okay Mech, wait a minute. This is just getting vulgar. I think we’re going in the wrong direction.”

Mechanic remained sitting in his dong-covered chair, seemingly unphased by his surroundings. “Alright, have any other ideas?”

Vimbert turned all around him. The room wasn’t large to begin with, but the looming pictures of penises that seemed to point down at him made it feel even smaller. “Some common theme, he mused as he paced along the walls. “Some inherent hint, something undeniably clever that snooping ponies like us would never guess.”

“Nicolas Cage?” Mechanic offered.

Immediately, there was a click as a portion of the right wall swung forward, revealing the hinges behind it. Vimbert stood dumbstruck as he looked back and forth between the wall and his friend. “What... how did you guess...”

Mechanic shrugged. “You said it yourself. It was something we’d never guess.”

“But it had nothing to do with horsecocks!”

“Well, maybe they weren’t dumb enough to make a password that you could guess by just examining the room for five minutes.” Mechanic shrugged and leapt to his feet. “Come on! I want to see what’s down that passageway!”

Vimbert shook his head as he fell into stride with Mechanic. The new tunnel was at least well lit, but ended quickly in heavy iron doors that seemed out of place in the comically secured office.

“Hey Mechanic,” Vimbert said as he stopped in front of the doors, “We already “discovered” the secret of EQAD. Why do they need another secret passage?”

“You think there’s another secret down here?” Mechanic’s ears perked at the thought, “I suppose that would make sense. EQAD existing is a lousy secret-”

“But it might be a front for a real secret.” Vimbert finished, his brow knotting in thought. “Mech, there could be something really serious behind this door.”

“I seriously doubt it,” Mechanic replied. With that, he grabbed the two heavy doorknobs and pulled, swinging the doors open with all his might.

Vimbert looked in and blinked. Like the previous room, this one was covered in posters and pictures. Unlike the cramped horsecock room however, they had been decorated and pinned along the far wall of the sprawling chamber in seeming reverance.

Vimbert could accept that EQAD was a front for something else. He could accept that the room was bare except for the posters, a small table shrine with trinkets, and a sprawling four poster bed. He wasn’t even that surprised when a startled Alex shot bolt upright in the bed, throwing a bewildered Daffodil off of him.

The thing that left him absolutely speechless was that every poster was adorned with the face of Nicolas Cage.

_________________________

        “Entering Equestrian atmosphere in three, two, one...”

        There was a sudden shift below Midnight, like an elevator as it starts to slow down. Next to him, Hyde grunted and Nines threw out his wings to catch his balance. Midnight himself simply shifted his center of gravity, adjusting for the slowly building spin of their makeshift rocket.

        “Now,” he started as he turned away from the steadily growing planet ahead of them, “We are going to need to to this flawlessly if we are to survive. We’ve already established that paper mache is not as resistant to fire we we originally hoped it would be, so that will be our main concern. In addition, because of the friction of us hurtling through the air, we’ll want to stay as much on the far side of the fanfiction ball as possible. There should be enough room for us all if we don’t mind getting cozy. Any questions? Good.”

        Pointedly ignoring the flurry of question from his companions, Midnight turned back to his planet. Soon he would be back, this time not at the whim of Luna. After spending so much time being whisked back and forth like a toy out of it’s cupboard, he would finally prove that he was better than that. He was his own pony, not just a plaything for royalty. Maid outfit notwithstanding, of course.

___________________

Inside the break room, the only sound was the eternal churning of the coffee machine. Two mostly intact couches had been dragged to either side of a small table, on which rested the problematic paper. On one couch, Vimbert and Mechanic tried to look anywhere except directly across from them. Directly across from them, Daff and Alex tried to look anywhere but each other.

“So we have a deal,” Vimbert said across the table. To his side, Mechanic did his best to look very serious indeed.

“We agree to launch your fic, unquestioningly, into the sun.” Alex said, carefully not exchanging glances with Daff to his side.

“And in return,” Mech said, “We agree to never tell a living soul about... that.”

“And do our best to forget it,” Vimbert added.

“Deal.” Daffodil and Alex said in unison, both extending their hoofs.

Vimbert extended his own hoof, but before he could shake there was a rumbling beneath him. “Now what are you four up to?” it said.

“Who the hell?” Alex exclaimed, pulling back.

“Oh crap!” Mechanic exclaimed. “It’s Couch Crusader!”

Vimbert stood hurriedly as the couch beneath him began to move and shift, knocking the  nearby table over as he jumped back. The pages of The Solar Eclipse scattered across the floor, but Vimbert and Mech were too paralyzed to go after them.

Vimbert refocused his eyes on the couch they had been sitting on. It began to move and stand up, and at some point he realized that it was not a couch but rather a brown pony. He gulped, having fallen for one of Couch Crusader’s oldest tricks.

Couch leaned down and picked up a page from the ground, skimming it quickly. “Hey, this doesn’t look so bad, why are you trying to sun it?”

Vimbert opened his mouth to explain, but at that moment the door to the break room opened. His stomach dropped as he saw three ponies filing in, talking and giggling to themselves as they made towards the break machine.

“Hey, what’s this?” Kits said as she stooped downward, bringing up a ruffled page in her mouth.

“Looks like a fanfiction,” Drakmire stated with little interest. “I’m not looking at it until I’ve had my evening coffee.

“Hey, this is pretty funny,” Seattle added, pushing his way around Kits and into the room.

“They were about to sun it for some reason,” Couch said as he pointed to the panicked Vimbert and Co. “They were just about to explain why they were going behind everypony’s backs, right?”

“What?!” Exclaimed Kits, smiling as she read. “You can’t sun this, this is gold!”

“No, you don’t understand!” Vimbert said, trying to snatch the paper out of Kit’s hoof. Kit’s simply turned to the side and did her best to keep reading over his protest.

“It’s a shipfic about Luna and Celestia,” Mechanic explained as he gathered pieces off the floor.

“And we were just leaving,” Daff and Alex said in unison as they stood.

Kit’s froze. “Oh crap,” she muttered. “Well, we could sun it for being incest.”

“No, wait,” Drak interrupted, pointing to a line on his page. “It looks like they aren’t actually sisters in this story, just beings of comparable power.”

“Well we need a reason to sun it so that the author doesn’t come back,” Seattle said and he shuffled through scattered pages. “Quick, everyone look for an error!

“Well, I guess you could Mars it,” Seattle said as he tapped a hoof to his chin. “They used an incorrect interrobang here. The question mark has to come before the exclamation point.”

“That’s pretty minor though,” Drakmire said as he leaned over Seattle’s shoulder. “As long as they use it correctly in the sentence.”

Vimbert was about to interrupt when his phone decided to go off. He slapped a hoof up against his saddlebags to silence it, but he already knew who was calling him.

If that’s my girlfriend, that must mean I’m late again, which also means...

“OH FUCK!” He yelled, eyes darting around the room. “What time is it?!”

“Yea, see, that’s a correct interrobang.” Seattle muttered as he skimmed the pages.

“Well we’re here for our evening coffee,” Drakmire said. “So around six, right?”

“Oh no,” Vimbert said as he began to twitch. “Luna will be waking up any minute.”

___________________

        “Oh no,” Nines wailed between frantic spits. “We’re going to burn up any minute.”

        “Shut up and spit harder!” Midnight yelled over the roar of fiery air around them.

        All three ponies stood back to back to back on the rear end of the fanfiction cannonball, a wall of fire surrounding them on every side as the atmostphere slowly burned up their transport. Flames inevitabley began to lick at the paper mache, and for the last few minutes they had been spitting frantically at the ground around them.

        “I... I can’t go on...” Hyde gasped, coughing dryly. “I have no more spit to give.”

        “I’m tapped out too,” Midnight sai with a croak. He looked around him, imagining the sweet cubicle of home that waited for him below. “No! We’ve come too far to fail now! We need something to stimulate our saliva glands.

        “We could make out.” Nines offered dryly.

        All three ponies froze.

        “No.” Midnight said simply.

        Nines whirled around, his face serious for the first time Midnight could remember. “Midnight, if we can’t keep these fires at bay then we’ll never make it. The only way we’ll survive is if the three of us all make out.

        Midnight could only stare in horror as Hyde grabbed Nines and whirled him around, the two pausing to lock gazes.

        “This never leaves the fanfiction!” Midnight demanded as he closed his eyes.

______________________

        Kit’s sighed and put down the paper in front of her, rubbing her temples with two hooves “Question marks in particular indicate a shift in tone. If one lets it fade, or is cut off, the shift remains. I won't say it should always be used, but I personally have zero issues with it. Especially given that proper use of elipses is only for elided text from a quote.”

“‘...?’ is the only one I can logically muster defense for.” Seattle replied. “I can see fading off with a question inflected, but exclamation? I just canna see that.”

“Guys, we have to focus. I think I hear hoofsteps coming-”

“I like this discussion, I'd like to see a consensus build towards a uniform and progressive understanding between PR's on the matter.” Seattle added calmly.

“My stance has been to be permissive of wacky punctuation within dialogue as long as it doesn't hinder readability.” Kits added. “I do occasionally bring up and point out parts that look odd to me, but i seldom will reject based on just the provided examples.”

“Guys, we are literally all going to die if you don’t stop talking about punctuation-”

“I don't personally agree with ‘—?’ or ‘—!’ as valid formatting, and will suggest that the author change it,” Drak responded in total ignorance of Vimbert. “But I won't mark it against them in a publish/not publish decision.”

There was a slow creak as the door to the break room opened again, and Vimbert froze in panic as he saw Luna in her pink bathrobe of rage. The alicorn’s gaze was firmly locked on the coffee machine ahead of her, and without a care for the ponies in her way she made a bee line towards it.

The ponies in the room were silent as she moved past them, their eyes roaming over the fanfction pages scattered everywhere. Once the moon goddess could think about anything but her coffee, there was no question about how dead they would all be.

“Maybe the sun isn’t actually that hot,” Mechanic whispered to Vimbert.

“Maybe it will just kill us instantly and we won’t even feel it,” Vimbert whispered back. Despite his optimistic words, not a shred of hope honestly lingered in his soul.

Vimbert imagined himself screaming as he slowly sank into fiery plasma, his body turning from a vortex of pain into blissful numbness as it was burned away. Gradually, he began to imagine the screams of three ponies-

Wait, he thought as he shook his head. He wasn’t imagining that! He could actually hear three ponies screaming in the distance, growing quickly louder. Just as he opened his mouth to say something, there was a sound like the cannon on their roof going off multiplied by a hundred, followed swiftly by a crash, pop, and rumble that shook everypony in the room to the ground.

Vimbert scrambled to his hooves and looked around in panic. Nothing in the room seemed to have changed, except that Luna’s rage suddenly had a very palpable presence in the air. She slowly stood and faced the coffee machine again, reaching out a hoof to sate her addiction.

With a pathetic whir and clank, the coffee machine fell forward and tumbled off the counter. Through the hole in the wall that it had filled, Vimbert could see the singed and groaning face of Midnight Shadow. Behind the barely conscious pony, the light of the setting sun streamed in from the new sunroof, clearly displaying the obliterated pipes and valves that once fuelled the coffee machine.

“You.” Luna said with a voice like a dying star. “No coffee. Your fault.”

Somewhere in the deep recesses of Midnight’s mind, his consciousness panicked enough for his eyes to widen before he disappeared with a loud pop.

“Starbucks,” Luna said simply as she turned around. Everypony remained frozen as she strode out of the room. Once she had disappeared, Vimbert dared to breathe again.

“Okay,” Kit’s said with a nod. “We can sun it.”

Epilogue

___________________________

Just as fire cannot burn in space, sound cannot travel. The empty air makes the entire void of space utterly mute, and the thin atmosphere of the moon is hardly much better.

As Midnight came to his senses and beheld his new surroundings, this didn’t keep him from stamping his hoof. “FfffffffFFFFFUUUUU-”

Somehow, perhaps through magic, a string of obscenities continued to echo from the lunar surface like radio waves for several hours. This also answered the age old question of whether a tree that falls when nobody is around makes a sound. As it turns out, Midnight’s curses echoed throughout the emptiness of space, making very graphic and poignant sounds while giving precisely no fucks about philosophy or physics.

____________________________

Vimbert pushed open the door to his girlfriend’s house, carefully balancing the take-out dinner on his back. The dresses and mannequins around him weren’t much to his tastes, but the white unicorn seated at the workdesk certainly was.

“Oh Vimmy!” She yelled as she ran up to him, nuzzling him affectionately. “I was so worried when you didn’t call back. I know how dangerous your job can be, and after what you said at lunch-”

“Shh, it’s okay Rarity,” Vimbert said as he brushed a strand of purple mane out of Rarity’s face. “I’m still alive, and I brought dinner. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

They sat down to enjoy a wonderful meal and then Vimbert and Rarity had all the sex.