I’ve had just about enough of this. Actually, no. Scratch that.
I really, really have had enough of this.
I thought things had normalized. I thought we had reached an agreement. A mutual understanding. A peace treaty of sorts. I would continue to provide strawberry Fanta and snuggles in exchange for Celestia’s promise to refrain from commandeering any more household staples, or conjuring unannounced teleports of government employees. Cindy, for her part, agreed to ‘live with’ the entire situation in exchange for immunity from future teleportations, and a guaranteed date night with me every week.
I originally had demanded clean, breathable air at all times as well, but I had to drop my ban on access to my computer to get it. In my own defense, I really didn’t want to give in on that, but it’s really hard to argue with a creature who can literally bring the sun down on your head. But, the deal was made, and for the next three months, things had mostly returned to normal. Well, as normal as it can be with a magical alicorn from another universe living in your place, anyway.
But then today happened.
Woke up late, rushed to work without my morning coffee, and was immediately dragged into hours and hours of useless meetings that accomplished less than nothing. All of that sucked, of course, but it was nothing compared to the scene that greeted me when I walked in the door.
My home was flooded. With bubbles.
Not just a few, but tons of them. And they were everywhere. Everywhere.
I stood there for a moment, just taking it all in. I almost couldn’t process it, as if my brain refused to accept the input it was receiving from my eyes and nose. But no, that was definitely a sea of bubbles crawling across the living room floor, and that was definitely the smell of soap flooding my nose.
After what felt like an eternity, my brain clicked into gear again, and the reality of the situation hit me all at once. Where there were bubbles, there had to be water too, and if it wasn’t stopped soon, the apartment would be totally flooded out.
I slung my work bag onto one of the coat hooks attached to the adjacent wall and began wading my way through the living room. Mounds of bubbles exploded around me like piles of freshly raked leaves as I high-stepped across the room.
“Hey! Anyone here? Hello?”
I continued picking my way through the room, calling out in between muttered curses at the soggy mess that my shoes and pants legs were becoming. Anything I could reach was moved to higher ground, or unplugged for the time being. Wayne was going to freak out as it was, but he’d go nuclear if he came home to find his new 4K TV covered in suds.
The sea of bubbles seemed to stretch in every direction, and showed no signs of slowing down either. Couch cushions become temporary walls, throw blankets became shields for electronics, and every towel in the linen closet became a makeshift levy against the sudsy menace.
“Hey! Is anyone he—” A loud thump nearly made me jump. “Huh?”
Another couple of thumps. “The hell? Is that…?” A pause, then a few more thumps, these more evenly spaced than the last. The pattern was unmistakable now.
“Shoot! The washer!”
I dropped the towel I had been holding and sprinted as best I could across the house. I nearly lost it once I reached the kitchen. I flailed around, my well-worn shoes sliding everywhere while I fought for any kind of traction on the sud-covered linoleum. Finally, after nearly flopping on my face twice, I managed to grab onto the edge of the countertop and regain some level of balance.
The rhythmic thumping noise finally stopped, only to be replaced by the sound of running water… and a voice.
“...you loved me, now baby I´m sure…”
I shook my head a few times, and almost lost my balance again. Did I just hear… singing?
“Whoa yeah!”
Yep, singing. In my laundry room. There were only two possible reasons for this. One, Wayne came home early, mixed all of his Red Bulls with the Ketel One I bought last week and downed it while doing his laundry. Two, Celestia got it in her head to try and do my laundry as a ploy to squeeze more Fanta out of me.
As it turned out, I was wrong. So very, very wrong.
Princess Celestia was in my washing machine.
And she was singing. Not that my brain really cared at that point. It was still stuck on the whole ‘alicorn princess is literally inside the washer’ part. Water, suds, and off-key notes from Walking On Sunshine were flying in every direction while a trio of brushes hovered in the air around her. She launched into the chorus with gusto while her magic danced over the small control panel, pushing one button after another as the machine continued to churn away.
I stood in the doorway and put on my best ‘angry Steve’ face. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this explanation.”
Her left ear twitched a fraction of an inch. Yep, she heard me. She insists she has a perfect poker face, but I’m not about to offer up proof to the contrary. Especially not when I’m standing in a good few feet of soap suds.
She stopped singing, but continued to hum along as if nothing was amiss. A scrub brush whisked around into view and began scrubbing at the base of a wing. “Last time somepony walked in on my bathing time, the entire city got to see what a pony looks like with no fur on its rump. It wasn’t pretty either.”
I cleared my throat very loudly and rapped my fingers on the doorframe. A few more seconds passed before Celestia finally turned enough to glance back toward me.
“Well. Barge in on a mare’s privacy and you didn’t even bring any Fanta. And here I thought you knew how to treat a girl, Steve.”
I just stood there gawking. Did she really just say that?
“If you stare too much longer, I might have to start charging you,” she added with a smirk.
That did it.
“Wh— Really, Celestia? Really? I should be charging you for flooding half of the house! There’s soap and water everywhere!”
Celestia looked past me into the kitchen and frowned a bit before looking back up. “Oh, come now. It’s not that bad.”
“Are you joking?” I yelled. “There’s water up to the front door. In the hallway. Nearly in the bedrooms!” I darted forward and very crudely turned the washer’s cycle knob to ‘off’. “If I hadn’t have gotten home when I did, that XBox you love so much would be floating right now, and I’m pretty sure even a magical alicorn from another dimension knows what happens when water and electricity mix.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but shut it without a word. Now her left ear caught the slightest bit of droop at the tip. “Okay, fine. I will admit that perhaps I should not have used whatever is in that blue bottle over there.”
I followed her eyes to a tall blue bottle that lay on its side on the nearby shelf. Celestia had apparently found the old bottle of ‘super suds’ bath soap that my mom had sent in one of her many care packages. And by the looks of the empty, absurdly squeezed to the point of being crushed bottle, she had put every last drop into the washer.
“Great, just great,” I said as I buried my face in the palms of my hands for a moment. “Having our clothes smell like jasmine and lavender for the next six months will be perfect.”
“Well, you’re always complaining about Wayne not laundering his clothing properly, so see, I did you a favor!” Celestia clapped her hooves together, sending a puff of bubbles flying in my direction. “Though really, I don’t see why you humans can’t just walk around without them. You already have skin, and some layers of fur in places, so what’s the big deal?”
“We’ve had this conversation a hundred times, Princess. It’s just the way humans are, ok? That’s just the way it is.”
Celestia smiled again. “That’s what you said about pillows and bedsheets too, and look at you now. Pony pillows have taken over the world, and you don’t even have to waste money on those… what do you call them, ‘dakis’? Yes, those. Quite a useless thing now.” Celestia raised a soap covered hoof from the water and flicked a few droplets at me. “One of these days, you humans might yet learn to just enjoy how nature made you.”
“Hey! I only bought that one! One. At a con. From a friend who needed the sales to fund his art schooling.”
“Yes, I know. You’ve told me before, Steve. Though I have to admit, your friend’s art was quite… interesting. Upon my return, I’ll have to inquire to Luna about the flexibility of her Dusk Guards.”
“I—” my voice croaked, caught between a laugh and a frustrated groan all at once “Speaking of returns, Wayne’s going to be home soon, and we, or rather, you have to clean this place up.”
Celestia shrugged and floated the scrub brush onto the counter alongside the empty bottle of suds. “Yes, I suppose so. But I need to rinse first.” She turned her magic to the control panel, cranked the cycle knob to ‘rinse and spin’, and tapped the power button with a hoof.
It was then that a blazingly obvious question came up and slapped me in the back of the head. “Um, how did you do that?”
“What, that?” Celestia said as the washer’s tub began to fill with water. “I flipped the knob to the proper mode and turned it on.”
I huffed and glared at her. “You know what I mean. I’ve only let you in here once to show you what’s in here. So how’d you figure out how to use the washer? And how’d you even get in there anyway?”
The water flow stopped for a second, and after some very unusual clunking sounds from the drive motor, it began a slow oscillation back-and-forth. “Quite easily, actually.” Celestia paused to quickly dunk her head in and out of the churning water, which temporarily turned her insanely long mane into a sprinkler of sorts.
“I was, what do you say in human words, channel surfing the other day when I found a channel that was airing some older program over and over again. A ‘marathon’, if I recall the term correctly.” She paused again to plop first her rump and then her wings into the water. “Anyway, one of the characters was a servant of some kind, and she routinely found herself doing the rich person’s laundry, using something called a ‘Maytag’. Once I realized what they did, it was a simple matter of watching that television show enough to figure out the basics of what she did to make the Maytag run.
“Oh, and as for how I got in here. Let’s just say that I’m limber for an alicorn.”
Sure, I’ll just roll with that. I stopped questioning these things a long time ago.
Finally, the water began to drain out of the tub, though not without a lot of extra gurgling that it normally didn’t do. Celestia stood up in the washing machine, somehow, and began tying her mane in a loose knot with her magic.
“There, much better! Really, Steve, I really must see what I can do to introduce machines like this to Equestria. Sure, we bathe regularly already, but this would be a revolution in terms of equine hygiene.”
I shook my head at the thought of the Maytag guy opening a shop in Canterlot. At least he wouldn’t be bored there. But, the sloshing water around my feet reminded me that there was still a huge mess to cleanup. A cotton levy of towels wouldn’t hold out forever.
“Well, that’s great, and I’m sure we’ll be discussing proper use of human technologies later. But we still have a ton of water to get rid of. To say nothing of mopping the floors, drying the carpets…”
“Steve, you wound me,” Celestia replied. “When have I not picked up after myself, hmm?”
“Do the words ‘Fanta bottle fort’ ring any bells?”
She stuck out her tongue. “I picked it up.”
“After a week.”
“It was a good fort. Twilight would have loved it.”
“Okay, whatever!” I huffed. “Let’s get this cleaned up. Wayne will be home soon.”
Celestia sighed and wrung out her mane with a bit of magic. “Since you asked so nicely—”
Her horn blazed to life and the kitchen was soon filled with a radiant glow. The water lifted into the air and began flowing backwards, coalescing into a ball of pure fluid. A wave of heat followed behind, drying out floors, carpets, and even the piles of soaked towels in seconds. By the time the last of the water had been collected, the pulsing orb had grown to be the size of two dodge balls put together. “Alright, off with this then.”
A flash burst from the tip of her horn, and the orb disappeared completely. I just looked at her slack-jawed.
“Um… dare I ask where you just sent all of that water?”
Celestia looked at me and grinned. “I was meaning to reach out to Lulu today, to see if she’s gotten over the little tiff we had a while back.”
“And?”
“So I did.”
Just then, a purple light flashed a few feet away, and what I can only describe as a hole in the air appeared for the briefest of moments… just long enough for a large platter to come flying through it. I ducked to one side out of sheer instinct, but Celestia effortlessly caught it in her magic and set it down on top of the stove.
“Ouch. She ate the last slices of Rainbow Cloud Cake. It’ll be another year before Cloudsdale has enough leftover Rainbow extract to lend it out to bakers and chefs.”
I got up from my crouch and looked at her. “So, you’re saying…?”
“Another month at least. Probably more.”
I threw my hands up in the air and began stalking towards the front door.
“Where are you going, Steve?” Celestia asked.
“To get a Costco membership. I’m buying Fanta in bulk from now on.”
Author's Note
This is my first attempt at writing a comedy piece of any kind, so I'm sure I have plenty more to learn about this genre. But, the cover art made me think of the wild universe that Ocalhoun spawned with his 'Princess Celestia is in your bed', so I decided to just run with it. I hope you all enjoyed the story, and feel free to leave comments and criticisms so I can improve my comedy! :)
Also, big thanks to Admiral Biscuit, NeonGreenTiger, and Majin Syeekoh for their time and assistance! I owe you guys!
