“Nervous?” Bolt asked.
I glanced down to him. Bolt was one of Princess Celestia’s personal guards, currently decked out in glimmering armor alongside a spear; still not much of a threat in my mind, though, as he was still hardly half my height.
“Why would I be nervous? I’ve met the Princesses before. Loads of times.”
I glanced at the set of double doors before us. Beyond them was the castle’s lavish ballroom.
“Unless there are some rules I don’t know about.”
Bolt coughed into a hoof. “Actually, there is one rule you should know about. Never—and I mean never—boop a Princess. Doing so sets off some ancient mechanism inside their brains that—”
“Boop?” I cut in bluntly. “What does that even mean? You mean like… to boop a Princess in bed or something? Because I don’t do that, remember? I think I’ve made myself quite clear about that kind of stuff. First with Fluttershy and then with Starlight Glimmer—”
Bolt shook his head. “No, to boop a pony is to lightly tap a finger against their nose.”
I snorted. “Oh. That? But I do that all the time! Honestly, I thought you ponies liked that kind of stuff.”
Before Bolt had a chance to react, I reached down and quickly tapped him on the nose. As if struck by lightning, Bolt fell to the floor, giggling and grabbing at his snout until tears of joy rolled down his face.
After a good thirty seconds of that, Bolt awkwardly collected both himself and his spear and got back to his hooves. He glanced behind us to make sure no one had been watching.
“Please, Anthony!” he hissed at me. “Not while I’m at work! Although, speaking of fingers and hands, I did have something I sort of wanted to talk to you about. Something you could help me with. Something… hooves can’t really do as well as hands.”
“Oh?” Anxiously, I scratched at the back of my neck.
Sure, I liked Bolt. He was a friend. We had a poker night each Friday with some of the other castle guards. But whatever he was asking sounded ominous.
“Need me to reach something down off the top shelf?”
Bolt didn’t meet my eyes. “Not… exactly.”
“Help you tie some shoelaces? Thread a needle?”
“We’ll talk about it later. Remember now: no booping!”
The doors in front of us parted and Bolt led me inside.
What I viewed was basically what I’d expected to find at one of Celestia’s big get-togethers: dozens upon dozens of fancy looking ponies; food plates too small and dainty to be fully enjoyed; a classical music band that knew one song and one song only, and would go on to play it the rest of the night.
At least there was Prince Blueblood to annoy.
As I stood in line to greet Celestia (with my party gift in tow—a book titled 1001 Pictures of Thrones Throughout the Ages), I kept my eyes on Blueblood until he caught sight of me and I ushered him over.
A running gag of mine was that the “human” way of greeting someone was by holding my hand up and making him jump to smack it with his hoof—basically, a rather sloppy high-five. I know for a fact the only reason he even humors me anymore is strictly due to the “strong diplomatic relations” between Earth and Equestria. All lies on my part.
“Anthony,” Blueblood greeted me coolly. “Glad to see you could attend.”
I grinned. “The President of Earth sent me here specifically; more pony research and all that.”
“Super.” Blueblood somehow extended the word into a full sentence. “President Mean must trust you quite a bit, Anthony, being the only human in Equestria and all.”
I actually did name the fictional President of Earth Mr. Mean.
Sounded more sinister that way.
“Oh! Almost forgot the official greeting!” I happily raised my hand.
Blueblood stared at it as if he wanted to bite it. “And here I thought we were done with this.”
“Nope!”
Blueblood reached up… and up… and up… and eventually onto his back legs in search of my hand. And, like a jerk, I just kept it slightly out of his reach.
I snickered to myself. It would be my last snicker for some time.
“Anthony, are you and my nephew getting along—”
While toying with Blueblood, I hadn’t noticed Celestia standing behind me. When I turned, I didn’t bother lowering my hand, meaning that my fingers landed directly on her snout.
I didn't mean to do it, but I did it anyways.
I’d officially booped the Princess.
By accident, of course.
Gasps instantly filled the room. Alongside one girlish shriek from Prince Blueblood.
Celestia took a step back, wrinkling her nose as if about to sneeze. It looked as if she might laugh it all off until an audible click could be heard from somewhere deep inside her head. After that, I very nearly soiled my arguably best pair of jeans.
“BOOP PROTOCOL ENGAGED!” Celestia shouted, steadily rising into the air.
Very soon, her eyes filled with a haunting red glow; an alarm sound blared as if nuclear fallout was about to commence. Then the countdown began.
“TEE MINUS TWENTY! NINETEEN! EIGHTEEN!”
Far across the room, Bolt put two hooves to his head. “What did you do, Anthony!? There was only one rule! One!” He panicked, galloping in a circle. “Oh, someone please save his hands! I have plans for them!”
“FIFTEEN! FOURTEEN!”
Something was revving up inside Celestia. Something machine-like.
A heavy hoof fell to my shoulder.
“You have made a rather heinous mistake here today,” Princess Luna informed me. “Come. There is not a moment to lose.”
“ELEVEN! TEN!”
A bright flash of white light, and Luna and I teleported outside; only instead of standing, I was on her back and she was rushing away from the castle. I could still hear Celestia’s blaring countdown from within.
“It was an accident! I swear!”
Luna didn’t bother turning to me. “Accident or not, you have put yourself in grave danger, Anthony. Once a Princess has been officially booped, there is very little that can stop them from accomplishing their goal.”
“Okay,” I said. “So what’s Celestia’s goal?”
“To hunt you down. And not stop until she claims you.”
After that alarming fact, I shuddered. “Then what am I even supposed to do? Can you even hide from someone as powerful as Celestia?”
“Perhaps.”
There was an explosion behind us and I turned. The top half of the castle had been blown clear off and now Celestia was rocketing into the air—a mixture of alicorn, fire, and cold machine all rolled into one.
“ANTHONY!” she roared. “YOU SHALL BE FOUND!”
It was odd. I know I should’ve been a lot more terrified at the moment than I was, yet I still held the smallest smile. Everyone was getting my name right that day.
Only took them eight years.
“Prepare yourself!” Luna warned.
***
It was clear I’d been teleported inside a submarine, somewhere deep down in the ocean. If the curving metal walls and bleeping instruments all around us didn’t make this evident enough, Luna’s silly captain's hat surely did.
Honestly. It was like the first thing she grabbed once we boarded the sub.
These ponies love any excuse to dress up.
Luna marched to the sub’s control panel and took a seat. She busily fiddled with some knobs. “Welcome to the S.S. Wet Luna, Anthony; twenty thousand leagues under the sea.”
I wanted to laugh. I chewed on a knuckle instead. “The S.S. Wet Luna? A little… suggestive isn’t it?”
She turned to me. “Why? It is my sub. I am piloting it. It is in the water. Water is wet. Therefore my sub is wet. Therefore… Wet Luna.” She furrowed her brows. “I really don’t understand why everyone keeps laughing at that.”
I let it slide. There were more important matters at hand.
“Would you care for some food, Anthony?” Luna asked. “The sub’s pantry should be well-stocked.”
Exiting the control room, I found the kitchen area fast. I opened the fridge and suddenly felt a headache on the horizon.
Inside the fridge was nothing but submarine sandwiches. Stacked right to the top.
Sure, I might’ve been hungry, having not eaten a single thing at the dinner, but that didn’t mean I was actually about to eat subs while stuck in a sub. Dr. Seuss logic be damned.
That was when the entire sub (not the sandwich) was violently rocked to its side along with the sound of twisting and breaking metal. I rushed back to the control room.
“What was that!?” I yelped.
Behind the controls, Luna gritted her teeth. “There is only one other working submarine in all of Equestria. And that one belongs to my sister. She has found us.”
Just to be sure, I used the sub’s periscope to check. Also, because I’d always wanted to use one. And, yep, there was Celestia in her very own little submarine—one with a glass front for some reason. Perhaps just so I could tell that Celestia, too, had her very own captain’s hat on.
I muttered out, “Damn ponies dressing up and trying to kill me.”
A torpedo shot out of Celestia’s sub. It had her very own cutie mark on it.
Luna roughly pulled me away from the periscope. “The S.S. Moist Celestia is much too powerful for the S.S. Wet Luna. We must find somewhere else to hide.”
“Moist Celestia? Now you two are just doing this on purpose.”
“Hold your breath, Anthony.”
***
I must admit, it was pretty neat. I was on the Moon—actually standing on it and everything! But sadly, since there was no oxygen on the Moon, I was about to die.
Great view, though.
“Hold on a second, Anthony,” Luna reassured me, as I painfully clawed at my throat. “I am trying to remember that bubble spell from many years ago. Okay, I believe I have it. Either this will place a bubble around your head so you will be able to breathe, or you will burp until you pass out.”
Luna did her spell, and since I never ended up belching in her face, it must’ve been the right one.
I took in some much needed oxygen before I asked, “So the Moon, huh? You think that will keep Celestia away?”
Luna exhaled dourly. “Truly, I do not know. At the time, it seemed like the best option available. And since I have been here before, I am able to fast travel here whenever I wish.”
I nodded. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but I nodded regardless.
“You spent a lot of time up here.”
“Yes,” Luna answered, with a hint of sadness. “A very, very long time.”
She pointed a hoof at a nearby boulder with a gaping hole at its front.
“That was my Cave of Sadness. I recall spending countless nights in there, writing poetry and songs.”
I pointed at a similar looking cave next to it. “And that one?”
“My Cave of Even More Sadness. Right next to my Cave of Infinite Sadness.” She rolled her eyes and huffed. “Years ago, I was quite the drama princess.”
I pointed at yet another Moon cave. “Is that also another sadness cave?”
She shook her head. “Neigh. That one holds my immense rock collection. You might not know this, Anthony, but there are an awful lot of rocks on the Moon.”
“I had no idea.”
“Yes. My egg shaped rock collection is quite vast.”
“Indeed.”
For a time we stood in silence. Until Luna strolled away from me.
“Where are you going?”
“To the prophecy, of course,” was her bizarre reply.
I ran behind her as she marched up a short hill. She went on to explain, “Being a creator of dreams, I rarely have many of my own. While banished on the Moon, I had but one single dream—night after night after night.”
She held out a hoof, indicating the large expanse of land below us.
“I believed it to be a prophecy. Not of anything as grand as saving or destroying Equestria, but rather a personal prophecy; one detailing the only other soul in the universe that would grant me never-ending happiness and bliss.”
I was in shock by what I saw. Etched into the very surface of the Moon was a picture, hundreds of feet wide and tall. And there was no mistaking what is was meant to depict:
Me.
In the picture, I was even wearing my favorite Dunkin Donuts shirt and giving a thumbs-up to the viewer. My horrifically dumb trademark pose from a few years back.
“In my dream,” Luna continued on softly, “the figure below and I live a wonderful life together, full of laughter and adventure. With endless—limitless—amounts of love.” She turned to me, a faint blush on her cheeks. “Do you think that perhaps you were the one my dreams were telling me about?”
I thought about that for a while. If Luna really had been having dreams about me for years, then there really wasn’t much I could refute. I mean, heck. There was a giant picture of me on the surface of the Moon for Celestia’s sake!
Then I saw the name etched at the very bottom of the picture.
All thoughts of never-ending-Luna-love slipped away from me. “Anon-thony? You wrote Anon-thony?”
“That is the name from my dreams,” Luna explained. “Are you not the same person?”
I told her thickly, “No. No, I am not. Anthony and Anon-thony are two very different names.”
Then a rather enraged sounding voice.
“YOU CAN’T HIDE FOREVER, ANTHONY!”
Oh, poo. Celestia was back. Somehow.
Together, Luna and I rushed to the bottom of the hill. I searched for Celestia and found her headed straight for us in the vast emptiness of space. Piloting a… oh, come on now.
“Is that Celestia in a rowboat?” I asked. “Angrily paddling toward us in the vast emptiness of space?”
Luna didn’t stop to stare. “Canterlot’s space program has a very limited budget. All of our extra funds go to rebuilding cities and towns once villains have destroyed them. And into the manufacturing of solid gold crowns and trinkets.”
“STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!” Celestia cried, each harsh row of her wooden paddles getting her another yard across space. “GIVE ME FIVE MORE MINUTES AND I WILL BE THERE TO DEAL WITH YOU PERSONALLY!”
Oddly enough, we didn’t stick around to greet her.
***
The next place we ended up was dark. As dark as could be.
My thoughts whirled aimlessly. “Where are we now? In the middle of the Earth? In another dimension? On the back of some giant turtle? In the forgotten suitcase of some ancient God?”
“Hush, Anthony,” Luna said somewhere close. “We are back in Canterlot.”
“What! Why? That really doesn’t seem like the best place for me right now.”
“I’m afraid I ran out of places to go. At the moment, we are underneath my bed in my bedroom. This is also a place I tend to hide when Celestia gets mad.”
I heard a faint crunching sound.
“What was that?”
“I found a cracker on the floor I must have dropped earlier.”
And, suddenly, there was light.
Celestia had ripped the bed right from overtop of us, throwing it directly into a wall. Never in all my years in Equestria had I seen her so enraged: teeth clenched, veins popping, mane and tail literally made of fire.
“YOU DARE BOOP A PRINCESS!?”
“Umm… about that. You see… it was sort of an accident—”
“WITHOUT ASKING IF SHE’S A GOOD PONY AND SCRATCHING HER BEHIND THE EARS!?”
“Uhh… what?”
“FOR YOUR CRIMES AGAINST EQUESTRIA, WE HEREBY SENTENCE YOU TO TWO WEEKS CUDDLE DUNGEON!”
I could hear Luna munching on another cracker beside me. “It is actually not as bad as it sounds. Truth be told, it’s more of a basement than a dungeon.”
I sighed what remained of my soul out onto the carpet.
I was really started to hate this place.
TWO CURIOUS WEEKS LATER
“You promise you won’t tell anyone?” I asked.
Bolt nodded. He wouldn’t take his eyes off my hands. “I promise! Honest!”
I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingertips. I couldn’t believe I’d actually agreed to this. “Okay. But just this once. And super quick.”
“You got it!” Bolt spread out along his bed, jamming two hooves inside his mouth to keep from squealing.
Steeling myself as best I could, I took a breath and did the nasty deed.
Yes, I actually did it.
I rubbed Bolt’s soft, round belly until he was nothing more than a puddle of giggling, twitching pony parts. All in all, it took less than twenty seconds.
“T-t-tha-nk-s,” Bolt whimpered out, close to dozing off. “I really n-needed that.”
“Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t mention it.”
I headed for the door.
“You know if you ch-charged for bits, y-you could make a lot of money for doing stuff like that.”
I lowered my head. “Please don’t go making this any more awkward than it needs to be.”
“See you at poker on Friday?”
“Whatever, Bolt.”
Author's Note
The "epic conclusion" part in the description is basically due to the ridiculous marketing of the third "Hobbit" film. While that trilogy isn't the worst thing ever made, it definitely didn't deserve tag lines like: "The epic conclusion of the Hobbit trilogy" or even worse "The defining chapter of the Middle-Earth saga".
Got to feel bad for marketing people. Make this crap look like gold, damn it! 
... okay, sir. 
