Don't Worry, It's Just the Apocalypse

A/N: This fic is bad. No, not so bad it's good. No, not I'm saying it's bad because I'm self-deprecating. No, not deliberately bad because I'm trolling. Not even, "lolrandomstupid" bad. It is just BAD. I keep it around because (1) I need to keep myself humble, (2) it reminds me not to make the same mistakes, and (3) I refuse to unpublish anything I've written.

This is my old shame (as they say on the vile website). If you read below this warning, it is your own fault, but I warned you.

If you're going to pick one place to tell a group of magical equines that you don't give a fuck about them, it should be a fancy garden party at Canterlot, because you want them to be nicely dressed for the occasion.

As Twilight levitated the microphone, she coughed quietly and the little squeal of feedback sent a shiver of no anticipation through the crowd. Instead of anticipation they were shivering because it was winter and they were all standing around in the cold eating small things. The things didn't look much like food and tasted pretty awful, but somepony had put them on plates, so they were probably food. As much as mud soup and charcoal arugula had been food last week when it was all the rage.

Twilight's horn glowed a little brighter as she sucked in her breath, preparing to unleash a verbal barrage the likes of which had never been seen in ponydom. A barrage that would have been capped off with Rainbow Dash leaving a glittering trail in the sky spelling out the central premise of her argument, “I truly don't give a fuck about you. I never have and I never will.”

This would have been a nice cap to a career that included the completely uncompensated saving of the world than a pony could remember, and more unpunished endangerings of the same world than a pony would like to remember. It would have been the sort of moment that gets revisited time and again after retirement. It would have been perfect.

It would have been perfect, except for earth splicing under her hooves, turning her perfect “Fuck” of disgust at a world with the memory and attention span of a goldfish into an undignified “Fuck” at falling into a suddenly appearing vortex. Rainbow Dash, seeing her friend vanish, wasted no time in diving after her.

She wasted quite a bit of time in coming out. So much time that the assembled guests started to suspect that this wasn't so much a controlled part of the demonstration as it was a complete disaster. As the first row of ponies were sucked howling into the void, the remainder of Canterlot's elite and hangers-on decided this was a good time to panic.

From a distance, the vortex looked kind of pretty. The twisting and, no doubt painfully, warping bodies of the ponies became dull streaks of color: spotted and stretched like streaks of light in an expressionist painting. I would definitely give it a hoof up, if I were a famous art critic. Or paint it, if I were an artist. Or sing about it, or write a news report about it, or … well, anything really.

If I had a special talent that was any good, this was the sort of moment that would trill it, I'm sure.

“You've got to take a look at this,” I turned to Gin and Vodka, the Martini brothers sharing the quiet rooftop with me.

“I don't think I want to,” Vodka Martini replied. Vodka had a light orange coat. He shaved his mane and tail and had “Pink Mane” and “Purple Tail” tattooed in the appropriate places, but I was pretty sure those were lies. Lies just like the naught sign he drew over the mixed drink on his flank.

Vodka was staying away from the edge of the rooftop because he was afraid of flying. This was a normal and healthy feeling for an earth pony, and I only mentioned it so you'll forget it later.

“It looks like a mess,” Gin said. Gin Martini was simply brown on brown. Gin Martini was simply a bartender. Gin Martini was simple and content. I hated Gin Martini, and I was certain he didn't like me either, but he was here to look after his little brother.

He'd been spending a lot of time watching over his brother since Vodka and I met through a support group for ponies who dislike their special talents. Vodka could drink anypony under the table, which would be useful if he weren't rabidly straight edge. He believed alcohol was an irremediable blight on society.

“It looks like change! Or at least an opportunity for it.” I was trying to get Vodka worked up about this. Vodka would have liked to be a social reformer, just as I would like to be anything other than me, but the only way he could get a group of ponies together is by serving alcohol, and then they only wasted the whole evening getting drunk and trying to get one another in the sack.

I needed Vodka excited about this because he was my only friend. We fell in with each other at the support group as we were the only ones who weren't interested in molding ourselves to fit our cutie marks. They said you should embrace who you are, but who is to say that my discontentment isn't more who I was than the tattoo on my butt?

“Not really. Like any other disaster, it will be wrapped up in 30 minutes, an hour at most.” Gin responded cynically to the question no one asked.

“I'm not so sure about this one.”

“Well you can be sure about whatever you choose, but I assure you that the Princesses will get right on this … whatever it is and it will be wrapped up in a matter of minutes. Maybe even seconds.”

The princesses, however, would be of no help, and why they would be of no help was ...

Celestia rapped gently on Luna's door. After a long moment with no response she gently slammer her hoof against the door and howled, “I know you're in there, sister.”

Still nothing.

Sighing, she lowered her horn and gently blasted the door off of its hinges and into the darkness beyond. Pieces of shrapnel, smoldering demurely, came to rest gently through the flank of the Princess of the Night, breaking her feeble grip on slumber.

“Luna,” the Goddess of the Sun and Sometimes Property Destruction chirped.

“Wha?” Luna slowly began uncurling from the ball in the center of her bed, gradually coming to realize that her corporal form had been damaged.

“Luna, my dear sister,” the Voice of Radiance dripped with something not so radiant, “remember when Discord got loose?”

“Yes,” several desperate thoughts started winging their way through Luna's skull.

“You excused yourself from involvement because you were afraid Nightmare would take over in the heat of the moment. You also said the same thing about Changeling attack.”

“A fight, any sort of fight-” she started to respond as she finished picking door fragments from her skin.

“What about the Grand Galloping Gala? Or holding court with me? Basically, what about any fucking thing other than moving the moon, hiding in your room, and peeping into the bedrooms of my subjects with that telescope?”

“But Night-”

“You have used that excuse 389 times since returning, and it hasn't even been a full year yet.” Eyes of fire stabbed through the gloom.

“Well, it seems like the sort of thing that could happen,” Luna replied, shuffling her hooves against her lightly singed bed.

“No, Luna, no, it does not. And I am tired of hearing it. An enormous vortex has just appeared in the Canterlot Gardens. I am not going to put off my scheduled vacation.”

“Wait, you're,” Luna stuttered as her eyes widened in horror at the thought of responsibility. She did not remember any warning about a scheduled vacation nor, for that matter, did she remember an enormous vortex being scheduled, “what are you trying to say?”

“Tag, you're it.” And with that the Sun Goddess was gone. Luna looked at her hooves and thought, not for the first time, that the moon hadn't been such a bad place. A lot of rocks, a lot of loneliness, and the moon people were always trying to watch you undress, but there was definitely something to be said for infinite nap time and not being tagged by your elder sister.