Two Best Sisters Playby TheBoxfromMetalGearSolidChaptersPortal 2People's Choice: Slender1916: Ich Spreche Kein DeutschNightmare Fuel: THE KIDS WON'T GET IT!CancelledPortal 2As Luna was making her way through the castle, on her way to raise the moon for the night, she caught a glimpse of her sister sneaking around the corner of the next hallway with a look of pure glee plastered on her face. "What hath got thee so excited?" she inquired. Celestia, however, didn't hear her, as she was busy making a beeline for her room. Before she disappeared through the door, Luna saw something clutched tightly in her hooves. It was a small green case that said "Portal 2" on the front along with some pictures of robots. Luna sighed. When she had returned from the moon she had expected to spend a lot of quality time with Celestia to make up for her thousand year banishment. However, it turns out that during those thousand years, somepony somewhere had invented "video games", which Celestia promptly became obsessed with, spending many nights locked away in her chambers soaking in the pale light of her TV screen. In fact, it became so bad that whenever Celestia wasn't tending to her royal duties, you could almost be certain she was in her room. Well, enough was enough! Tonight was the night Luna was going to confront her sister and help rid her of this horrible addiction. She could see it now; "Oh Luna, thank you so much for saving me from my dreadful problem! How can I ever repay you?" Then they could finally spend some time together without relying on something like a wedding or gala being the excuse. Later, after she was done raising the moon, Luna marched to her sister's chambers and knocked on the door. She got no response. Feeling uneasy, she was about to knock again when the door ominously creaked open revealing a pitch black hallway. "Um, Celestia. art thou alright?" Luna called nervously. "Um, we will come back later," she said, turning to leave. Just as she was about to walk away, Luna noticed a slight glow coming from around the corner. Following it, she walked around the corner into Celestia's room, where she found her slouching in a very unprincessly manner in front of her television. "Tia, ar-" she started, before the princess interrupted her with a "shhh!" "Luna, I'm trying to enjoy the story here! I can't do that if you just barge in, now can I?" "Oh, we are sorry, sister. We did not mean to interrupt," she said, sitting down on the other end of the couch as quietly as possible so as not to disturb her sister. A few minutes later, Celestia pressed a button, bringing up the pause menu. "What would you like, Luna?" she asked kindly, straightening up on the couch. "Oh! Well, we are actually here to see if thou wouldst show us what you find so appealing about these 'video games'." "Of course, dear sister! In fact, I do need a co-op partner in order to unlock all of the achievements in this game anyway. I would be happy to play with you!" said the sun princess, grinning. "Um, what exactly is co-op?" asked Luna, giving a nervous grin. Celestia's smile drooped a little. This was going to be more difficult than she thought. "Well, Luna, it's where two people play together cooperatively, working towards a common goal." "Oh! That sounds like fun! So who goes first?" The ivory mare just barely repressed the urge to facehoof. "We go at the same time, Luna," she explained slowly, looking to make sure her sister got the message this time. After a few seconds, Luna's face dawned with realisation. Satisfied, Celestia reached for one of her extra controllers and gave it to Luna, quitting to the main menu while she did so. Celestia looked over to see her sister staring at the controller in confusion. "Alright, do you know how to use one of things?" she asked, silently hoping that the mare's confusion was some kind of joke. "Well... no." Her sister's head lowered in shame. The white mare sighed. "Okay, these sticks are for moving, the triggers are for shooting your portals, and you use the buttons to do actions. Got it?" "Wait, we can shoot portals in this game? How do they work?" Celestia gaped. "It's... it's the name of the game. The entire concept of this game revolves around the idea of portals. Wait, did you get any of what I just told you?" Luna gulped. "Well, we find that we learn better from experience rather than instruction, so, no." The master of the sun sighed as she picked the co-op option from the menu, hoping that Luna would pick up at least some of the game fairly quickly. Upon picking the option, a cut-scene showing two robots being built started playing and was abruptly cut short. "What happ-?! What did you do, Luna?!" She yelled. "We thought we found a smudge on one of the buttons. Sorry, were you watching that?" she asked sheepishly. "Just... just don't press anything until I say, okay?" said Celestia, receiving a nod in return. She watched as the two robots from the cut-scene flew through a pair of tubes then slammed to a stop. "Okay, it wants us to pick our favourite animal. Do you think you can handle that?" asked the older sister. "But it does not show our favourite animal on the board," stated Luna. Celestia's jaw dropped open. "Wh- it... it doesn't matter, just pick one." "But the game said to pick our favourite!" whined her sister. "IT DOESN'T MATTER! JUST PICK ONE!" yelled the white mare. "THE CHOICE MEANS NOTHING ANYWAY!" "Then why do they make us choose?" asked Luna timidly. She could practically see the steam coming out of her sister's ears. After a few seconds of staring, the blue princess turned away. "We will simply, uh, pick the wolf. Wolves are cool, right? Wait, how do we select it?" After a couple hours of Celestia teaching every single game mechanic to Luna, she finally gave up and went to get a cup of coffee. "Wait, Tia, what do we do now?" Celestia was about to snap something about 'them' not doing anything, but she realised her sister was still speaking using the royal 'we'. "I don't care, just... play single player or something." she said from the kitchen. "Um, right." Luna manipulated the menu for a few minutes until she finally got it to rest on single player. She was treated with a long opening sequence that she had no idea how to skip. Just then, her sister walked in seeing her mashing buttons at random. "Tia, how do we skip this thing?" "What? Why would you want to skip such a rich, compelling narrative? This game's story is awesome!" Luna huffed. "Well, 'tis boring, that is why." Celestia stared at her, wondering if she had just imagined those words coming out of her sister's mouth, or if she really did just call Portal 2 "boring". "Portal 2 is not boring. It's the hypest game out there! You know what? Y-your face is.. boring! Ha!" Luna snickered. "Great insult, sis. Did you learn it from Fluttershy?" "Just... just shut up and play the game, okay?" A few levels passed in silence, with Luna getting more and more bored until she came across a ball shaped robot with a Trottingham accent. As soon as it started talking Luna's eyes shone. "Hey, he sounds like Pip! Hey Pip, where do we acquire a weapon!" Her sister glared at her. "Okay, first of all, his name's Wheatley, not Pip. Not everyone from Trottingham is called Pip, that's just terrible. And second of all, why are you talking to a character in a game? HE CAN'T HEAR YOU THROUGH THE SCREEN, HE'S NOT REAL." The moon princess pouted. "Whatever. When do we receive a gun?" she asked, starting to get bored again. "Just walk over to that little stand." "But there is nothing on it," said Luna, confused. "Are we supposed to go through an invisible door or something? We cannot see anything." "Just go to the stand. I promise everything will be fine, just go to the stand." Luna eyed her sister nervously. "Wait, this is a trap, isn't it? Well, I'm not going to fall for it. Ha!" Celestia sighed, exasperated. "Just do it," she said. Her sister was still unsure though. "Just do it you wimp," she said again, not exactly encouragingly. Finally, Luna walked toward the stand and yelled as the floor collapsed out from under her. "You said it would be fine." she whined, glaring in betrayal at her sister who was laughing hysterically. "You should have seen the look on your face! Priceless!" she laughed, trying to catch her breath. "Well, you're not dead, are you? Just keep going through the hole," she said once she finally calmed down. As she watched, Luna finally found the portal gun. Unfortunately, it took about half an hour before Celestia could finally hammer the concept of portals into the moon princess's mind, and even then it was iffy. After being practically dragged through the first few tests, Luna finally seemed ready to tackle one on her own. By this point Celestia's patience was at an all time low, only matching her desire to see Luna humiliate herself playing the game. Upon entering the chamber, Luna glanced over at her sister for encouragement only to receive an icy glare in return. Swallowing her nervousness, she shot a portal under her feet that spit her out right next to a box she needed to complete the puzzle. She picked it up and smiled, then looked over at Celestia who was still just staring. She walked over to one of the buttons in the chamber and put the box down. "Goooood jooob," said Celestia, sarcastically. "Do you think you can figure out how to get the other one, too?" Luna blindly jumped back into her portal and looked around in confusion for a few seconds before glancing over at the opposite wall, where a second cube was sitting on a raised platform. Wait, I can do this! she thought. She fired a portal behind the box and turned around, walking back through the other portal. "Haha! I did it!" she exclaimed proudly. "Wow, you actually managed to complete a single test without me holding your hoof the whole way. Congratulations." The next few tests passed in generally the same way, with Luna stumbling around the map like a headless chicken and Celestia wishing she had brought her video camera. Eventually, they once again found 'Pip'. "Alright, now I'm about to do something very dangerous. They told me that if I detached myself from my management rail, I could die." Luna shot up. "Do not do it, Pip! You have ever so much to live for!" "He still can't hear you..." Celestia said halfheartedly, realising that no one was paying any attention. As she watched Luna panic when she dropped the robot, knowing it was a scripted event, she sighed and buried her face in the couch. When she heard him say 'turn around' for the twentieth time, she decided that enough was enough. She snatched the controller away from her sister. "Let me show you how it's done." Compared to Luna's slow, plodding pace, the sun goddess practically flew through several stages, leaving the blue mare to sit there gawking. "Tia, are you going to let us play any longer?" the princess of the moon asked, not quite whining. As she said this, Celestia tossed her the controller. "Try not to mess up this completely linear and scripted event, will you?" Luna picked up the controller just as the character was raised on a platform with the little ball-shaped robot. When it came to a stop, she wondered what the enormous thing on the ground in front of it was, and just barely managed to suppress a squeal as it started moving. She started mashing on the controls when the giant robot picked her and 'Pip' up, trying to find some way to escape. "Come on, Luna, I told you it was scripted! That means you can't do anything!" shouted her sister. Luna was about to respond when she saw her companion being crushed. "Pip! Nooooooo!" This outburst caused the princess of the sun to start slamming her head against the coffee table, knocking over her mug. "Luna! Look at what you made me do! Do you know how long it'll take me to get that out?!" Luna wasn't listening. Rather, she was focused on the fact that the evil robot had just dropped her through a long tunnel into an incinerator. "Wh-? What happened? Did I die? Everything is on fire!" Celestia snapped. "NOTHING IS ON FIRE! THE FLOOR IS JUST GLOWING! I TOLD YOU THIS WAS SCRIPTED, THAT MEANS IT HAS TO HAPPEN! SO OF COURSE YOU'RE NOT DEAD!" she shouted, nearly blowing out the windows in her room. Before she could continue on her rant, though, Luna interrupted her. "Oh, look! We found the portal gun again! Huzzah!" As she experimented with it, she realised she could now shoot two portals, something which seemed to inexplicably amuse her. "Two portals? Why, I believe the fun has been doubled!" She smiled and looked over to her sister, expecting her to join in her revelry. What she got, however, was a look that could curdle the blood of Discord. After a few minutes of staring, Luna finally picked up on the hint. "Well, sister, it is getting late, and I expect you would like to get some sleep. This has been very fun. Perhaps you would allow us to participate another time?" Still just the glare. "Um, right, have a nice sleep," she said, trotting quickly out of Celestia's room. When she was finally gone, Celestia breathed a sigh of relief and grabbed the controller from where her sister had put it down. "Right, sleep." People's Choice: SlenderDue to a landslide victory in the comment section below, your next chapter will be Slender! I would like to address a few things regarding the 'suggestions' element of this story, however. First, I will do a People's Choice chapter every 4 or 5 chapters, and it's unlikely that I will break that pattern. Second, if the top voted game just won't work with the story, or if I think it's inappropriate, then I will have ultimate veto power. Finally, if I see a suggestion that I think is a really good idea, and it doesn't get many votes, it will likely be turned into a regular chapter, rather than a People's Choice chapter. Thanks for your time, and please, sit back and enjoy; Slender. Luna walked slowly through the fog-shrouded forest and flashed her torch through the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was following her. The night was normally her domain, but there was something in this forest even more at home in the dark than she was. Once or twice she thought she had caught a glimpse of a tall dark figure, but it disappeared just as quickly as it had shown up. Her reasons for being in this forest were unclear, although she did know that it had something to do with the pages she kept finding taped onto landmarks in the forest. Perhaps when she found them all... something would happen. Maybe she would be shown how to get out of the forest, or would be given something to defend herself? While she was distracted by her thoughts, she rounded a corner and found what looked like some kind of bathroom complex. Feeling herself inexplicably drawn towards it and yet simultaneously repelled away, Luna passed through the door and into an empty tiled hallway. The building gave off a strange sense of foreboding, as well as a vague feeling that the princess found herself unable to put a hoof on. Walking through the building, Luna felt her heart sinking further and further into her stomach. Just as she was about to give into her growing sense of dread and run out of the building, she saw something glowing on one of the walls. On further inspection it turned out to be one of the pages she was looking for. As she was moving to grab it, something held her back. Yes, she needed all of these pages, but every time she took one the dark being following her seemed to get closer. Swallowing her fear, she walked up to the page on the wall and ripped it down. Immediately, the constant booming noise that had slipped her mind became much louder, almost sounding like it was coming from the next room. Looking at the only exit the room had, Luna accosted herself for falling into such a basic trap. If she was lucky, maybe the creature shadowing her wouldn't be waiting around the corner for her. Steeling herself, she ran out of the room, glancing up and down the hallway. Seeing nothing, she bolted for the exit. When she rounded the corner, her heart stopped. There, standing not two metres away, was the monster that had been following her through the woods, and now into the bathrooms. The princess screamed, just as she felt a hoof land on her shoulder. Slowly, she turned around, and was met with a blank white face. "Hey, sis, what're you playing?" asked Celestia. Breathing a sigh of relief, the moon princess took a moment to regain her composure before answering. "Why, hello sister! We were playing this 'Slender' game we heard so much about! Why do you ask?" Celestia stared awkwardly at her for a few seconds before replying. "Well, probably because you're playing it in my room, on my computer, at twelve o'clock at night. I was kind of trying to sleep, you know." "Oh, we are very sorry sister. 'Tis simply that we do not have a computer of our own, and we had been told by several of our guards to try this game out," said the moon princess sheepishly. Celestia sighed. "So, that means that you have to sneak into my room at midnight and use my computer? Couldn't you just get one yourself or something? You are royalty, after all." Luna just stared dumbly. "Uh, right. So, what made you think you could even play this game, anyway? Judging by your performance a few days ago, I didn't think you had it in you to have another go." "Well, you see, sister, we have been practicing!" She grinned. "We realised how awful our skill was the first time, so we decided to increase it while you were busy attending to royal functions and such." Celestia's jaw dropped. "So, you've been practicing on all my games?" the princess of the sun asked. Her sister smiled and nodded enthusiastically. "Overwriting all of my saved games?" she asked again, a bit more menacingly this time. Luna drew in a small breath and gave an uneasy smile. "Maybe?" Celestia's face went a deep red. She clenched her teeth, trying to force words out. "WH- I CAN'T- I MEAN, WHY WOULD YOU- FUUU- I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!" Luna cowered in fear, trying to get as low to the ground as possible so as not to be burned when her sister exploded. Suddenly, calm spread through her sister's face. Her eyes focused on the wall, and she began speaking in a low monotone. "No. It's okay, you didn't know what you were doing. Don't worry, everything is going to be okay." She sounded more like she was trying to reassure herself than Luna. A few more minutes passed in awkward silence before Luna spoke up. "Hey, you are really good at video games! Why don't your try this one?" Her sister snapped out of her funk and her eyes refocused. "Wha-? Oh, sure. Whatever. It didn't even look that scary, really. You're probably just a wimp," she said, taking the lunar princess's place in front of the keyboard. "See, this isn't so bad," she said confidently. "It's just a forest. A big, dark, foggy forest. Full of scary trees an- what was that?!" She thought she saw a tall, black figure through the trees, but when she looked again, she saw nothing. "See... not so bad," she said again, slightly less confident this time. Luna had to try hard to suppress a snicker. "Come on Tia, nothing's even happening yet, and you're already losing it." Celestia glared at her sister. "I'm not losing it! I just... wasn't ready!" She took a deep breath to calm herself down. "See, I'm ready now. Look at my ready face!" "You're just stalling. Eyes on the screen, sis," Luna laughed. The princess of the sun turned back to the screen, muttering under her breath. Finally, happened on a massive rock. As she was walking around it, she caught sight of a glowing piece of paper taped to one side. However, instead of taking it, she sat there staring. "Uh, Tia, you have to take the paper to progress," said her sister, looking over her shoulder with a grin. Celestia gulped. "Yeah, b-but, like, what if I take it, then I turn around, and there's some monster or something. What if I don't take the paper? Can't I just run out of the forest?" she asked, looking to her sister. Getting no reply, she waffled between taking the page, and just getting up and leaving. "What's the matter, Tia? Is this game to scary for you? I'm not cleaning the carpet if it is, you know." Celestia stared at her giggling sister, and, seeing no other option, took the paper. As soon as he did, a loud 'Boom. Boom. Boom.' started playing from the speakers, and the sun goddess froze. "What. In Equestria. Is that." She looked over to her sister, who was now rolling around on the floor with her hoof in her mouth, desperately holding back laughter. "What?! What's so funny?!" she almost yelled, getting more and more panicked by the minute. When Luna didn't answer, she returned her wide-eyed gaze to the monitor. Walking through the forest, she got the feeling that someone was watching her. Frantically, she jerked around. Finding nothing, she breathed a sigh of relief and turned back around. She was not prepared, however, for the enormous faceless figure standing there in front of her when she did. She gave a loud scream and mashed the keyboard, causing her character to run blindly into several trees before settling onto a clear path. breathing hard, she looked over to her sister, who was practically in hysterics by that point. "Shut up, Luna! That was terrifying! What if that thing, I don't know, kidnapped me and sold me into slavery?" Luna gawked. "Wait, what? You are afraid of being sold into slavery? What if it dragged you into the woods and tore you apart or something? I think that's a bit scarier!" Celestia waved her hoof dismissively. "Pfft. Shows what you know about scary." "What's that supposed to mean? I am the princess of the night! I have a whole holiday devoted to just how scary I am!" The sun goddess was about to reply when she looked back to the screen and saw that she had found another page. She ripped this one down a lot quicker than the first, knowing that time was of the essence. As she was booking to wherever the next page was, she got the feeling of being watched again, and stopped. Slowly, she turned around in a broad circle, making sure that there was nothing following her. When she found nothing, she felt slightly reassured. With a bounce in her virtual step, she walked around a tree and came face to blank face with the creature once again. She screamed and slammed her hooves down on the keyboard. Unfortunately, this caused her to walk towards the monster, and she just screamed louder when its face filled the screen in a wave of static and noise. While she was still in shock, Luna walked over and placed a comforting hoof on her back. "It's okay, Tia. Two pages isn't that bad." "Wh- how many did you get? Like, three or something?" she asked hopefully, still recovering from what she had seen. "Oh, just seven... out of eight," she replied smugly. Celestia glared at her. "Yeah, well... you probably cheated or something." She didn't want to believe that her sister could be better at something than her, let alone a video game. "Well, it's getting pretty late, Tia. We had better go do some royal... stuff," said the lunar princess. As she was about to leave the room, she looked back at her sister and gave a malicious grin. "Sweet dreams, sister." After she was sure that Luna was gone, Celestia ran through her room, locking all of her windows and doors, and drawing all the curtains. That night, the immortal master and goddess of the sun slept with the lights on for the first time in centuries. 1916: Ich Spreche Kein DeutschCelestia was ecstatic. But then, most ponies would be had their lifelong dreams finally come true. The princess of the day looked around in awe, her tongue lolling out, as she took in the incredible sights of a world tailored to her every desire. She laughed as she skipped through a marvelously beautiful meadow, stopping only to graze from the wonderful doughnut flowers. She cried out in joy as she swam through an ocean of pure flavour, doing backstrokes through a wave of indescribable sweetness, taking enormous mouthfuls as it washed over her head. She frolicked playfully through the herds of gummy bears, making sure to take the sick and the weak as her prey. Finally, after she had had her fill, she found a soft plateau of cotton candy and relaxed as she watched the permanent sunset in the distance. Just as she was drifting into a state of pure zen, she finally spotted it. It's grandiose bulk bore down on her from a nearby candy cane plain, almost blotting out half of the sky. What was it? It was the reason Celestia had created this world. It was the focus of all of her wild imaginings, and all of her most wonderful dreams. It was... the Cake. But, of course, it wan't just any cake. It was the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness (or the MMMM for short). Ever since the dessert competition in Canterlot, she had dreamed of the meringuey deliciousness that that evil, sugar obsessed pink pony had stolen right from under her nose. Since that day, she had spent many hours cooped up by herself, crying for her horrible loss. And now, here it was. A mountain of MMMM all to herself. As she galloped towards her target, the solar princess noticed that the Cake seemed to grow larger and larger. When she was but a few dozen metres away, the thing was practically a mountain, and blotted out the sun. When she finally reached it, Celestia threw herself on the MMMM with reckless abandon, wanting to take as much in on the first bite as equinely possible. She tossed her head back with tears in her eyes. The moment had finally come! Laughing, she plunged her face into the Cake... ... just as she heard a yell from her living room. The goddess of the sun sighed and opened her eyes. It seemed as though her sister had a magical ability to loudly make herself known any time Celestia started to have fun. Ah, well, she thought, sighing. Doubting that she would get any more sleep until Luna left, Celestia decided to pay her sister a little visit... Luna's breath quickened as she made her way through the trenches, jumping every time she heard a distant artillery shell go off. She didn't know why she was here, and more importantly, she didn't know how to get out. She'd been wandering through the grimy dugout for what seemed like hours, but could easily have been minutes. Several times she thought she'd caught a glimpse of something around one of the corners in the trench, but every time it slipped away just before she could make it out. What she had found, and in abundant numbers, were bodies. The muddy ground in the earthwork was quite literally lined with faceless, immobile corpses, which surprisingly did nothing to impede her progress. Once, she had reached down to see if one of them was still alive, but was disappointed to find that it most certainly was not. In fact, the moment she touched the body, it's skin practically disintegrated in her hooves, leaving her to recoil in disgust when she came back holding it's arm. After that initial adventure, Luna managed to ignore the multitude of carcasses lying along her path by staring steadfastly at the end of the trench. After a few more minutes of this, she caught another glimpse of a flash of silver around the corner. Having nothing better to do, she decided to follow the thing, fully expecting her efforts to end up in failure, just like the last however many times. As she approached the corner, though, she could feel that this time, something was different. Her suspicions were proved right when she heard a noise like breathing that seemed to come from around the bend. In preparation, Luna took a few deep breaths before jumping around the corner, ready to meet her fate. Except there wasn't anything there. Luna breathed a sigh of relief and let herself relax. Just as she did, though, she froze. Although the dugout seemed to be empty, she could still here the breathing. Only now, it sounded like it was coming from behind her. Before she could react, Luna felt a hoof land on her shoulder. Immediately, she launched backwards, away from the computer screen, and, once she regained her senses, found that she had collided with something tall, formerly white, and incredibly unimpressed. "AAAUUUGH!" Celestia screamed, as Luna launched away from the computer and slammed directly into the her hoof, which happened to be holding an unfortunately full mug of coffee, which was, of course, predictably hot. Surprisingly, the pain wore off just before Luna recovered her senses, allowing Celestia to get in a few extra seconds of glaring before she got up. "As I was trying to say, what are you doing on my computer again?" she asked, once that feat was finally accomplished. "Some of us actually have things to do that don't take place at ONE O' CLOCK IN THE BLOODY MORNING!" Ignoring her sister's fury, the moon goddess put on one of her patented oblivious grins. "Oh, hey sis!" she said happily. "I was just playing this pretty freaky game about trenches and stuff! At least, I think it was trenches. I don't know, all the text was in German." Seeing it was getting her nowhere, Celestia reluctantly stopped glaring at her sister. "So, what, you were downloading a bunch of German shareware onto my hard drive?" she said sarcastically, not expecting a response. Always one to disappoint, Luna responded. "Well, it's not a bunch. It's just one game. And I'm pretty sure it's in browser." Suddenly, the lunar princess grin doubled in size. "You should try it out! It's already loaded up and ready to go, and I couldn't really get past the first obstacle. You could show me your legendary gaming skills!" she said, without a trace of irony. The chance to show up her sister finally put Celestia over the edge. With a sigh of resignation, she sat herself down in front of the computer and grabbed the mouse. Turning around, she was slightly alarmed to see Luna sitting there snickering. "Hey, didn't you say this game was super freaky or something?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. Luna shoved her hoof in her mouth to stop another wave of snickering before answering. "Yeah, it's totally super scary. Trust me." Suspicious, Celestia slowly turned back to face the monitor. Just like Luna had said, all of the text in the game was German, and judging solely by the menu it looked at least partly scary. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that there was some kind of joke here that she didn't get or something. Shrugging, she clicked the start button. She was greeted with a visual implosion of grey-scales and bloom effects, along with what sounded like a distant artillery battle. After she took a few steps, the claustrophobic trenches started to feel a little too tight. As she rounded the corner, she saw that the next fifty metres of the dugout was absolutely covered in dead bodies. With no room to maneuver, Celestia hesitantly stepped over the bodies. After a few steps, she looked down, only to see her character's hoof raise up as her gaze passed over on of the corpses. Confused, she held a key, causing the hoof to lower. However, a few seconds later, the hoof came back up. Only this time, it was holding another, disembodied, hoof of it's very own. Celestia laughed. "Watch out! We got Hoofception! Oh man, where's Leonardo DiColtrio when you need him?" Behind her, Luna finally burst out laughing. "Don't get too many layers in!" she shouted between breaths. "You won't be able to let go!" Celestia's laughing was cut short, however, when she looked back at the screen and saw something flash around the corner of the trench. Slowly, she walked down to the end of the trench and looked around the corner. When she saw nothing, she kept going, getting tenser and tenser by the second. Finally, she reached a fork in the path. Before she could choose a direction, however, something enormous came barreling out of the trench on the right. As her character was ripped apart by the giant creature, Celestia blankly turned to her sister, who had both hooves stuffed inside her mouth to muffle her laughter. "Luna," she said quietly. "Was that a dinosaur?" Luna took a few heaving breaths to calm herself down before replying. "Eeyup." Celestia sat there for a few more seconds before a huge dumb grin grew on her face, matching her sister's. "That is, quite possibly, the most hilarious attempt at horror I've ever seen in my life!" she guffawed, almost knocking over the mostly empty mug of coffee she had completely forgot about in her laugh throes. Once the two princesses had finally calmed down, Celestia turned back to the game. After a few more tries, she discovered that if you threw one of the disembodied hooves at the dinosaur, it would leave you alone for a couple seconds. Using this bit of knowledge, she managed to get lost in the trenches and die in poisonous gas far more impressively and skillfully than Luna ever could have. A few seconds later, Luna piped up behind her. "You know, you always call me out on my suckage." Celestia looked away from the computer and stared at her. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, upset that someone could ever doubt her awesome skills as a gamer. "Oh, you know, nothing," replied Luna, suddenly finding something interesting to examine on the ceiling. "What? You think you could do better than me?" She laughed sarcastically. "I'd like to see you try to make it through that poison gas!" With that, she got up from her seat and dragged an unresistant Luna over to the controls. The moon princess sighed. "All I'm saying is that I'm not the one getting super flankhurt over some dumb game about velocirobots or whatever." After a few minutes of seemingly aimless wandering, Luna managed to stumble across a gas mask, and, for some reason, a bunch of flares lying on a table. To her right, Celestia gave a snort. "Yeah, whatever. I could have found those eventually," she grumbled, crossing her forelegs. Hiding a smirk, Luna made a quick getaway from a couple raptors and made her way to a trench full of mustard gas. Smiling innocently, she looked up at her sister as her character pulled on the gas mask. She laughed when she saw the look on Celestia's face. It reminded her of some sort of mixture between an awed gape and a furious scowl. It came out looking like she was in urgent need of a toilet. Her ego assuaged, Luna ran through the rest of the trench and found what she was looking for. The ladder out of the trench and into the less desirable, rage-inducing side of Celestia's heart. When the camera took control, she backed away from the controls and looked at her sister, letting the smug grin on her face do the talking for her. Celestia's eyes bulged as her brain tried to comprehend what had just happened. She opened her mouth to speak, but all she could get out was a few sputtering noises that sounded kind of like a dying raccoon. "Oh, by the way sis, you might want to take a shower. You smell like coffee," Luna would have said, had Celestia not teleported the coffee pot out from the kitchen and dumped it on her head, grinning like a maniac. As it were, the lunar goddess ran through the castle screaming, waking up the entire royal guard and most of the kitchen staff. That night, Celestia went to bed a very happy mare and dreamed a dream of sugary heaven. After a quick shower, of course. Please note: this is an actual game, dinosaurs and all. If you want to play it, check it out here. Nightmare Fuel: THE KIDS WON'T GET IT!Celestia was bored. This wasn't just regular boredom, though. This was the kind of boredom you get when you sign up for a free vacation, only to find that you have to sit through an 8 hour timeshare presentation once you get there. Of course, no one reached a state of boredom such as this for no reason. 2 hours earlier... Her royal duties finished for the day, Celestia walked to her chambers, whistling happily the whole way. Tonight was the night she was finally going to introduce Luna to online gaming, and watch as her sister crumbled into a steaming heap of frustration and rage. But which game would it be? Would it be Call of Duty, with its copious lag compensation? Would it be Halo, with its bounty of MLG tryhards? Or perhaps she would confound her with the steep learning curve of Battlefield. So many options! In the end, however, it didn't matter. When the sun princess pressed the on button for her Xbox, she was greeted with the single most horrifying sight a console gamer can experience. The Red Ring of Death. Upon seeing this, the sun goddess panicked. She spent half an hour attempting to coax the machine back to life, doing everything from coddling it like a baby and whispering promises of friendship and hope into its USB ports, to screaming death threats at it. When nothing worked, Celestia eventually flew into a rage and tossed it out the window, watching it bounce off the castle walls until it finally smashed to pieces on the head of Discord's statue. Once she realised what she'd done, she ran into the bathroom and locked herself inside for an hour, weeping hysterically in the empty tub. Eventually, it dawned on her that she was crying in the tub for a piece of machinery. What would Luna say if she saw her now? She got up and made a half-flanked effort to clean herself up in the mirror. After a few failed attempts, she finally gave up and stormed into the hallway, putting in her current pitiful state. Present After stomping up and down the hall a few more times, Celestia couldn't take her mounting boredom any longer. She decided she would pay Luna a visit and take revenge for all the times she had dropped in unannounced. As she turned around, though, she was surprised to see Luna coming at her down the hallway with a big dumb grin plastered on her face. "Hey Tia! You look like a wreck. How's it going?" she asked all in one breath, getting uncomfortably close before coming to a stop. While she was standing there, Celestia thought she caught a glimpse of something hovering behind her, but when she tried to get a closer look Luna floated it further behind her back, hiding it. Dismissing her sister's weirdness, Celestia finally replied. "I'm fine." It was a blatant lie, and judging by the look on her sister's face, it didn't exactly fly. After a few seconds of awkward staring, the princess of the sun gave in. "Alright, I'm not fine. You got me," she said. "I just threw my Xbox out a window. Do you have any idea what that can do to a pony?! I doubt I'll ever be sane again!" At this point her entire face was going red, and she felt torn between breaking into tears again, or just going on a destructive rampage through the castle. Starting with Luna, of course. Luna barely seemed to notice. "Well, that's quite a shame, sis," she said noncommittally. Immediately after saying that, her face lit up. "Well as much as I love to hear about your personal issues, I have something much more important to talk about!" The goddess of the sun seemed intrigued. "Oh yeah? What's that?" Luna's already giant grin threatened to split her head in half. "I found a great new game that we absolutely must try!" Celestia glared at her like she had sprouted a second head. "Uh, didn't you just hear me?" she said bitterly. "I don't have an Xbox anymore. We can't play anything." Luna laughed. When her sister just sat there looking dumbfounded, she laughed harder. All she got in return was an angry frown. The lunar princess sighed. "It's a Nintendo 64 game, Tia," she said, watching the comprehension fill her sister's face. "Nintendo 64?" asked Celestia, unable to contain the enthusiasm in her voice. "Oh boy, what game?" Luna laughed in response. "It's a surprise, Tia!" Her sneakiness did nothing to dampen the solar princess's excitement. Suddenly, Celestia's face darkened as she realised just who exactly chose the game. "So, wait. This is a surprise that you picked out?" asked the sun princess. Luna nodded happily. the sun goddess didn't seem happy at the confirmation. She crossed her forelegs and put on a frown that would put Gilda to shame. "Great. Because you know so much about video games," she said, her voice dripping with irony. "I'm sure this will be absolutely wonderful." Her sister gaped, offended. "Look, Tia, just because I'm new to this whole 'video game' thing doesn't mean I'm some kind of idiot or something," she replied haughtily. When Celestia said nothing, she sighed. "Look, I promise that if it sucks, I'll personally buy you a new Xbox." The solar princess frowned for a little while longer, then reluctantly accepted Luna's offer. "On one condition: you have to take care of all my royal duties for a week so the Xbox and I can have some quality alone time." Luna's eye twitched when she heard Celestia refer to her Xbox like it was her child or something. However, seeing no alternative, she decided to roll with it and accept her sister's condition. Reaching a resolution, the two sisters walked into Celestia's room and made to sit on the couch. Celestia, however, walked past it and opened a mysterious door in the same room. As Luna watched, her sister slowly, almost reverently, reached into the surprisingly disorganised closet and pulled out a cardboard box labeled 'N64' in black marker. Celestia held the box carefully, as if it was some sort of ancient treasure, and carried it over to the TV. While she was unpacking the box and plugging everything into the correct slots, a wave of nostalgia washed over her, bringing tears to her eyes and a gag to Luna's throat. When she heard this, the sun goddess whipped around and stared daggers at her sister. "Don't you ever gag at my Nintendo 64 again!" she yelled, flailing her forelegs around in anger, accidentally knocking a lamp off of a nearby end table, and flinging Luna over the back of the sofa. After the initial shock, the moon goddess picked herself up off the floor and brushed herself off. "I don't see what the problem is. I was just mocking your sentimentality over a hunk of plastic," she said, sticking her nose in the air. This only served to enrage Celestia even further, and it took her a good few minutes before she could even form coherent thoughts. When she could finally speak again, she was incredibly quiet, giving a disturbing contrast to her earlier outburst. "You know what, Luna? Just because you were trapped on the moon for a thousand years doesn't mean society stopped at your fancy. This hunk of plastic was what I spent my time on when I wasn't busy doing both my duties and yours while you were gone." Flabbergasted, Luna had nothing to say to that, so instead walked back to her spot on the couch and quietly took her seat. Celestia immediately brightened up and put on a big smile. "Great! Now that that's dealt with, where is this 'amazing game' we absolutely 'must' try?" Luna realised she was still staring at her sister in fear, and quickly focused on the situation at hand. "Oh yes!" she replied, forcing some happiness back into her voice. "Why, I have it just here- huh?" As she reached for it with her magic, she felt something pushing up from beneath the couch's cushion. She yelled in surprise and jumped off the couch with speed that would impress even Rainbow Dash. After the initial panic passed, she realised that the game cartridge she had been carrying must have fallen between the cushions of the couch. She levitated it out and showed it to Celestia. "Here is the game, Tia!" she exclaimed proudly. When Celestia's expression went blank, she turned the thing around and found out that the sticker on the front had been ripped off, likely by her sister's outburst. Huffing, she walked over to the Nintendo and was immediately struck dumb. She had no idea how it worked, and even less of an idea of where to put the cartridge. The sun princess sighed, silently judging her. Watching Luna's confusion, she snatched the game out of her grasp and stuck it in the top of the machine with lightning precision only acquired from night after night of playing and swapping cartridges. After she turned it on, they walked back to the couch and picked up their controllers. As the opening screens played, Celestia felt a vague feeling of fear deep in her gut. The screens seemed incredibly familiar, and not in a good, nostalgic way. As she was overcome with a growing sense of dread, she stared at the screen, unable to comprehend what was happening. Licensed by Nintendo... Titus Presents... Oh mother of me! She stared in horror as Luna manipulated the menu and eventually brought up the message she had been dreading the most. "If you want to save your friends, solve my maze!" "Luna! What have you done?! Nooooooooooooooo!" Hours later, Celestia was still stuck on the exact same pointless, banal, nonsensical flying ring puzzle. For the entire time, Luna had been sitting there on her side of the couch, laughing at the multitude of pained, horrified expressions crossing her sister's face. After failing the ring challenge for what must have been the three hundredth time, the sun princess finally lost it. "Luna, I don't know what sick, twisted game you're playing at here, but I refuse to play another minute of this terrible piece of so called 'entertainment'!" she shouted, before pitching the controller at her sister and huddling up into the fetal position. At first, Luna did about as badly as Celestia, failing repeatedly before even passing through the first ring. However, to the goddess of the sun's mounting horror, she actually seemed to get better and better each time she failed. Eventually, the lunar princess successfully navigated the first level of this eldritch horror that could barely even be called a game. "Yes! I have finally beaten the rings, Tia!" As Celestia gaped, she watched as Luna used her new found talent of playing Lovecraftian creations to complete several more incredibly repetitive and evil ring mazes. Each victory made her jaw hang lower and lower, until she was sure she could feel it scraping against the floor. These victories eventually brought Luna to a rooftop with 4 identical creatures standing on it, wielding what Celestia could only assume were guns. They looked like a bunch of black rectangles holding smaller, grey rectangles. After watching her sister dispatch each of them with the exact same move, which was, for lack of a better word, a punch, she finally reached her breaking point. "Luna! How can you be enjoying this disgusting spawn of Cthulu?" she asked, with a frenzied look in her eyes. "This game has crushed more childhoods than all of Michael Bay's movies put together!" Luna simply laughed. "Why, Tia, i didn't know it was possible to have this much fun playing a video game." Celestia's eye twitched. "This is so much more fun than Portal!" Again the eye twitch. Finally Luna glanced over at her and saw her twitching and trembling, unable to even understand what she was hearing. Of course, Luna completely misinterpreted her sister's condition. "Tia, if you wanted a turn, all you had to do was ask. You don't have to stare at me as if you're going to rip my head off." Finally, the sun princess reached her final straw. "Luna. I want you to leave, and I want you to take that abomination out of my Nintendo," she said, almost too low for her sister to hear. The look in her eyes was enough to tell Luna that if she didn't leave, she was probably going to end up going on another one way trip to the moon. Slowly, the blue mare got up and floated the offending cartridge out of the machine. As she was about to teleport it over to her own room, Celestia suddenly grabbed it with her magic. While she watched, the sun goddess slowly levitated a hammer in from another room and held it over the cartridge. Once it arrived, she smashed the thing to pieces, savouring every moment as her scary grin grew with every hammer blow. Finally, she levitated the pieces over to a garbage pail and dropped them in one by one. By this point, Luna's ears were plastered against the side of her head, and Celestia could practically smell the fear pouring off her. After staring at each other for a few more minutes, Luna decided to get out while she was still alive and made a break for the door. As she was crossing the threshold, she once again heard her sister's voice. "Luna. If you ever allow anything like that to touch my Nintendo again, or even consider buying another copy, just remember one thing." The moon princess turned back, trembling on the spot. "O-oh yeah? What's t-that?" she asked shakily. Celestia gave her the most evil grin she had ever seen. "I will send you to the bloody moon." Her greatest fears confirmed, Luna ran off to her room at a full gallop and locked herself in for the night, not even allowing her trusted night guard in for inspection. After she left, Celestia sighed and started getting ready to sleep. As she brushed her teeth, she thought seriously about the laws regarding exile and torture of close family, as well as royalty. "That one of my family could even be caught dead enjoying that..." she grumbled, leaning down to spit in the sink. When she raised her head, she froze. in the mirror, she could see a pristine copy of the very same obscene monstrosity that had occupied the last few hours of her life. Quickly she spun around and was consumed by blackness. "SUPERMAN 64!" The princess screamed as she shot up out of bed, her heart racing. After a few calming breaths, she looked around and sighed with relief. "it was all just a dream. A horrible, terrifying dream." As she sank back into the comfort of her sheets, however, something caught her eye. In the corner, could it be? It was! A brand new Xbox! The solar princess gasped with delight and shot over to the box. On top was a note that read: Lots of love, from your sister. P.S. I hope you enjoy it! After reading the note, he picked up the box and hugged it tightly. "Oh, Xbox. You're the best friend a mare could ever ask for!" she exclaimed happily. Something was off, though. The box seemed a bit to light, and when she shook it, she swore she could hear things shaking around. In a panic, Celestia put the box down on the floor and ripped it open, praying that she hadn't damaged anything with her violent hugs. Once it was open, she slowly peered over the edge of the box. Her heart stopped. She had expected to be greeted with a sleek, new Xbox. She never asked for this. The box was filled to the brim with copies of Superman 64. Believing herself to be hallucinating, or perhaps still dreaming, Celestia dug into the box and started flinging the horrible things away in an attempt to find something else, anything else inside. Her mind shattered when she reached the bottom. Sitting there, just the way she had seen it last, were the shattered remains of her old, destroyed Xbox. Slowly, her hooves shaking, she picked the destroyed box up and turned it over. Pinned to the bottom was another note. Unlike the first, this note simply read: SUCK IT, SIS. That night, for the first time in Equestrian history, Princess Celestia, immortal master of the sun and co-ruler of all Equestria, had an aneurysm. CancelledUnfortunately, due to the haphazard and spontaneous nature of this story, it is being cancelled. However, for those who would actually like to see it continued, there's still hope. Anyone who feels confident enough in their abilities as a writer may comment below declaring such. I will look over the stories of those who comment, searching for quality rather than popularity, and choose accordingly. Whoever the person is will have two choices: either start fresh on his/her end without these four chapters, which would likely be easier and more fun to read and write, or they could copy and paste the first four chapters over to his/her story and continue writing in the same style, i.e. rushed and bad. I hope that this decision will swing well with you the readers, and I also hope that at least a few of you will continue to read my stories now that I have put thought into their narrative construction and characterisation. Allons-y! Author's Note P.S. I'm looking for an editor, so if you're interested in reducing my level of suck, give me a shout (i.e. send me a P.M. rather than a comment).
Portal 2As Luna was making her way through the castle, on her way to raise the moon for the night, she caught a glimpse of her sister sneaking around the corner of the next hallway with a look of pure glee plastered on her face. "What hath got thee so excited?" she inquired. Celestia, however, didn't hear her, as she was busy making a beeline for her room. Before she disappeared through the door, Luna saw something clutched tightly in her hooves. It was a small green case that said "Portal 2" on the front along with some pictures of robots. Luna sighed. When she had returned from the moon she had expected to spend a lot of quality time with Celestia to make up for her thousand year banishment. However, it turns out that during those thousand years, somepony somewhere had invented "video games", which Celestia promptly became obsessed with, spending many nights locked away in her chambers soaking in the pale light of her TV screen. In fact, it became so bad that whenever Celestia wasn't tending to her royal duties, you could almost be certain she was in her room. Well, enough was enough! Tonight was the night Luna was going to confront her sister and help rid her of this horrible addiction. She could see it now; "Oh Luna, thank you so much for saving me from my dreadful problem! How can I ever repay you?" Then they could finally spend some time together without relying on something like a wedding or gala being the excuse. Later, after she was done raising the moon, Luna marched to her sister's chambers and knocked on the door. She got no response. Feeling uneasy, she was about to knock again when the door ominously creaked open revealing a pitch black hallway. "Um, Celestia. art thou alright?" Luna called nervously. "Um, we will come back later," she said, turning to leave. Just as she was about to walk away, Luna noticed a slight glow coming from around the corner. Following it, she walked around the corner into Celestia's room, where she found her slouching in a very unprincessly manner in front of her television. "Tia, ar-" she started, before the princess interrupted her with a "shhh!" "Luna, I'm trying to enjoy the story here! I can't do that if you just barge in, now can I?" "Oh, we are sorry, sister. We did not mean to interrupt," she said, sitting down on the other end of the couch as quietly as possible so as not to disturb her sister. A few minutes later, Celestia pressed a button, bringing up the pause menu. "What would you like, Luna?" she asked kindly, straightening up on the couch. "Oh! Well, we are actually here to see if thou wouldst show us what you find so appealing about these 'video games'." "Of course, dear sister! In fact, I do need a co-op partner in order to unlock all of the achievements in this game anyway. I would be happy to play with you!" said the sun princess, grinning. "Um, what exactly is co-op?" asked Luna, giving a nervous grin. Celestia's smile drooped a little. This was going to be more difficult than she thought. "Well, Luna, it's where two people play together cooperatively, working towards a common goal." "Oh! That sounds like fun! So who goes first?" The ivory mare just barely repressed the urge to facehoof. "We go at the same time, Luna," she explained slowly, looking to make sure her sister got the message this time. After a few seconds, Luna's face dawned with realisation. Satisfied, Celestia reached for one of her extra controllers and gave it to Luna, quitting to the main menu while she did so. Celestia looked over to see her sister staring at the controller in confusion. "Alright, do you know how to use one of things?" she asked, silently hoping that the mare's confusion was some kind of joke. "Well... no." Her sister's head lowered in shame. The white mare sighed. "Okay, these sticks are for moving, the triggers are for shooting your portals, and you use the buttons to do actions. Got it?" "Wait, we can shoot portals in this game? How do they work?" Celestia gaped. "It's... it's the name of the game. The entire concept of this game revolves around the idea of portals. Wait, did you get any of what I just told you?" Luna gulped. "Well, we find that we learn better from experience rather than instruction, so, no." The master of the sun sighed as she picked the co-op option from the menu, hoping that Luna would pick up at least some of the game fairly quickly. Upon picking the option, a cut-scene showing two robots being built started playing and was abruptly cut short. "What happ-?! What did you do, Luna?!" She yelled. "We thought we found a smudge on one of the buttons. Sorry, were you watching that?" she asked sheepishly. "Just... just don't press anything until I say, okay?" said Celestia, receiving a nod in return. She watched as the two robots from the cut-scene flew through a pair of tubes then slammed to a stop. "Okay, it wants us to pick our favourite animal. Do you think you can handle that?" asked the older sister. "But it does not show our favourite animal on the board," stated Luna. Celestia's jaw dropped open. "Wh- it... it doesn't matter, just pick one." "But the game said to pick our favourite!" whined her sister. "IT DOESN'T MATTER! JUST PICK ONE!" yelled the white mare. "THE CHOICE MEANS NOTHING ANYWAY!" "Then why do they make us choose?" asked Luna timidly. She could practically see the steam coming out of her sister's ears. After a few seconds of staring, the blue princess turned away. "We will simply, uh, pick the wolf. Wolves are cool, right? Wait, how do we select it?" After a couple hours of Celestia teaching every single game mechanic to Luna, she finally gave up and went to get a cup of coffee. "Wait, Tia, what do we do now?" Celestia was about to snap something about 'them' not doing anything, but she realised her sister was still speaking using the royal 'we'. "I don't care, just... play single player or something." she said from the kitchen. "Um, right." Luna manipulated the menu for a few minutes until she finally got it to rest on single player. She was treated with a long opening sequence that she had no idea how to skip. Just then, her sister walked in seeing her mashing buttons at random. "Tia, how do we skip this thing?" "What? Why would you want to skip such a rich, compelling narrative? This game's story is awesome!" Luna huffed. "Well, 'tis boring, that is why." Celestia stared at her, wondering if she had just imagined those words coming out of her sister's mouth, or if she really did just call Portal 2 "boring". "Portal 2 is not boring. It's the hypest game out there! You know what? Y-your face is.. boring! Ha!" Luna snickered. "Great insult, sis. Did you learn it from Fluttershy?" "Just... just shut up and play the game, okay?" A few levels passed in silence, with Luna getting more and more bored until she came across a ball shaped robot with a Trottingham accent. As soon as it started talking Luna's eyes shone. "Hey, he sounds like Pip! Hey Pip, where do we acquire a weapon!" Her sister glared at her. "Okay, first of all, his name's Wheatley, not Pip. Not everyone from Trottingham is called Pip, that's just terrible. And second of all, why are you talking to a character in a game? HE CAN'T HEAR YOU THROUGH THE SCREEN, HE'S NOT REAL." The moon princess pouted. "Whatever. When do we receive a gun?" she asked, starting to get bored again. "Just walk over to that little stand." "But there is nothing on it," said Luna, confused. "Are we supposed to go through an invisible door or something? We cannot see anything." "Just go to the stand. I promise everything will be fine, just go to the stand." Luna eyed her sister nervously. "Wait, this is a trap, isn't it? Well, I'm not going to fall for it. Ha!" Celestia sighed, exasperated. "Just do it," she said. Her sister was still unsure though. "Just do it you wimp," she said again, not exactly encouragingly. Finally, Luna walked toward the stand and yelled as the floor collapsed out from under her. "You said it would be fine." she whined, glaring in betrayal at her sister who was laughing hysterically. "You should have seen the look on your face! Priceless!" she laughed, trying to catch her breath. "Well, you're not dead, are you? Just keep going through the hole," she said once she finally calmed down. As she watched, Luna finally found the portal gun. Unfortunately, it took about half an hour before Celestia could finally hammer the concept of portals into the moon princess's mind, and even then it was iffy. After being practically dragged through the first few tests, Luna finally seemed ready to tackle one on her own. By this point Celestia's patience was at an all time low, only matching her desire to see Luna humiliate herself playing the game. Upon entering the chamber, Luna glanced over at her sister for encouragement only to receive an icy glare in return. Swallowing her nervousness, she shot a portal under her feet that spit her out right next to a box she needed to complete the puzzle. She picked it up and smiled, then looked over at Celestia who was still just staring. She walked over to one of the buttons in the chamber and put the box down. "Goooood jooob," said Celestia, sarcastically. "Do you think you can figure out how to get the other one, too?" Luna blindly jumped back into her portal and looked around in confusion for a few seconds before glancing over at the opposite wall, where a second cube was sitting on a raised platform. Wait, I can do this! she thought. She fired a portal behind the box and turned around, walking back through the other portal. "Haha! I did it!" she exclaimed proudly. "Wow, you actually managed to complete a single test without me holding your hoof the whole way. Congratulations." The next few tests passed in generally the same way, with Luna stumbling around the map like a headless chicken and Celestia wishing she had brought her video camera. Eventually, they once again found 'Pip'. "Alright, now I'm about to do something very dangerous. They told me that if I detached myself from my management rail, I could die." Luna shot up. "Do not do it, Pip! You have ever so much to live for!" "He still can't hear you..." Celestia said halfheartedly, realising that no one was paying any attention. As she watched Luna panic when she dropped the robot, knowing it was a scripted event, she sighed and buried her face in the couch. When she heard him say 'turn around' for the twentieth time, she decided that enough was enough. She snatched the controller away from her sister. "Let me show you how it's done." Compared to Luna's slow, plodding pace, the sun goddess practically flew through several stages, leaving the blue mare to sit there gawking. "Tia, are you going to let us play any longer?" the princess of the moon asked, not quite whining. As she said this, Celestia tossed her the controller. "Try not to mess up this completely linear and scripted event, will you?" Luna picked up the controller just as the character was raised on a platform with the little ball-shaped robot. When it came to a stop, she wondered what the enormous thing on the ground in front of it was, and just barely managed to suppress a squeal as it started moving. She started mashing on the controls when the giant robot picked her and 'Pip' up, trying to find some way to escape. "Come on, Luna, I told you it was scripted! That means you can't do anything!" shouted her sister. Luna was about to respond when she saw her companion being crushed. "Pip! Nooooooo!" This outburst caused the princess of the sun to start slamming her head against the coffee table, knocking over her mug. "Luna! Look at what you made me do! Do you know how long it'll take me to get that out?!" Luna wasn't listening. Rather, she was focused on the fact that the evil robot had just dropped her through a long tunnel into an incinerator. "Wh-? What happened? Did I die? Everything is on fire!" Celestia snapped. "NOTHING IS ON FIRE! THE FLOOR IS JUST GLOWING! I TOLD YOU THIS WAS SCRIPTED, THAT MEANS IT HAS TO HAPPEN! SO OF COURSE YOU'RE NOT DEAD!" she shouted, nearly blowing out the windows in her room. Before she could continue on her rant, though, Luna interrupted her. "Oh, look! We found the portal gun again! Huzzah!" As she experimented with it, she realised she could now shoot two portals, something which seemed to inexplicably amuse her. "Two portals? Why, I believe the fun has been doubled!" She smiled and looked over to her sister, expecting her to join in her revelry. What she got, however, was a look that could curdle the blood of Discord. After a few minutes of staring, Luna finally picked up on the hint. "Well, sister, it is getting late, and I expect you would like to get some sleep. This has been very fun. Perhaps you would allow us to participate another time?" Still just the glare. "Um, right, have a nice sleep," she said, trotting quickly out of Celestia's room. When she was finally gone, Celestia breathed a sigh of relief and grabbed the controller from where her sister had put it down. "Right, sleep."
People's Choice: SlenderDue to a landslide victory in the comment section below, your next chapter will be Slender! I would like to address a few things regarding the 'suggestions' element of this story, however. First, I will do a People's Choice chapter every 4 or 5 chapters, and it's unlikely that I will break that pattern. Second, if the top voted game just won't work with the story, or if I think it's inappropriate, then I will have ultimate veto power. Finally, if I see a suggestion that I think is a really good idea, and it doesn't get many votes, it will likely be turned into a regular chapter, rather than a People's Choice chapter. Thanks for your time, and please, sit back and enjoy; Slender. Luna walked slowly through the fog-shrouded forest and flashed her torch through the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was following her. The night was normally her domain, but there was something in this forest even more at home in the dark than she was. Once or twice she thought she had caught a glimpse of a tall dark figure, but it disappeared just as quickly as it had shown up. Her reasons for being in this forest were unclear, although she did know that it had something to do with the pages she kept finding taped onto landmarks in the forest. Perhaps when she found them all... something would happen. Maybe she would be shown how to get out of the forest, or would be given something to defend herself? While she was distracted by her thoughts, she rounded a corner and found what looked like some kind of bathroom complex. Feeling herself inexplicably drawn towards it and yet simultaneously repelled away, Luna passed through the door and into an empty tiled hallway. The building gave off a strange sense of foreboding, as well as a vague feeling that the princess found herself unable to put a hoof on. Walking through the building, Luna felt her heart sinking further and further into her stomach. Just as she was about to give into her growing sense of dread and run out of the building, she saw something glowing on one of the walls. On further inspection it turned out to be one of the pages she was looking for. As she was moving to grab it, something held her back. Yes, she needed all of these pages, but every time she took one the dark being following her seemed to get closer. Swallowing her fear, she walked up to the page on the wall and ripped it down. Immediately, the constant booming noise that had slipped her mind became much louder, almost sounding like it was coming from the next room. Looking at the only exit the room had, Luna accosted herself for falling into such a basic trap. If she was lucky, maybe the creature shadowing her wouldn't be waiting around the corner for her. Steeling herself, she ran out of the room, glancing up and down the hallway. Seeing nothing, she bolted for the exit. When she rounded the corner, her heart stopped. There, standing not two metres away, was the monster that had been following her through the woods, and now into the bathrooms. The princess screamed, just as she felt a hoof land on her shoulder. Slowly, she turned around, and was met with a blank white face. "Hey, sis, what're you playing?" asked Celestia. Breathing a sigh of relief, the moon princess took a moment to regain her composure before answering. "Why, hello sister! We were playing this 'Slender' game we heard so much about! Why do you ask?" Celestia stared awkwardly at her for a few seconds before replying. "Well, probably because you're playing it in my room, on my computer, at twelve o'clock at night. I was kind of trying to sleep, you know." "Oh, we are very sorry sister. 'Tis simply that we do not have a computer of our own, and we had been told by several of our guards to try this game out," said the moon princess sheepishly. Celestia sighed. "So, that means that you have to sneak into my room at midnight and use my computer? Couldn't you just get one yourself or something? You are royalty, after all." Luna just stared dumbly. "Uh, right. So, what made you think you could even play this game, anyway? Judging by your performance a few days ago, I didn't think you had it in you to have another go." "Well, you see, sister, we have been practicing!" She grinned. "We realised how awful our skill was the first time, so we decided to increase it while you were busy attending to royal functions and such." Celestia's jaw dropped. "So, you've been practicing on all my games?" the princess of the sun asked. Her sister smiled and nodded enthusiastically. "Overwriting all of my saved games?" she asked again, a bit more menacingly this time. Luna drew in a small breath and gave an uneasy smile. "Maybe?" Celestia's face went a deep red. She clenched her teeth, trying to force words out. "WH- I CAN'T- I MEAN, WHY WOULD YOU- FUUU- I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!" Luna cowered in fear, trying to get as low to the ground as possible so as not to be burned when her sister exploded. Suddenly, calm spread through her sister's face. Her eyes focused on the wall, and she began speaking in a low monotone. "No. It's okay, you didn't know what you were doing. Don't worry, everything is going to be okay." She sounded more like she was trying to reassure herself than Luna. A few more minutes passed in awkward silence before Luna spoke up. "Hey, you are really good at video games! Why don't your try this one?" Her sister snapped out of her funk and her eyes refocused. "Wha-? Oh, sure. Whatever. It didn't even look that scary, really. You're probably just a wimp," she said, taking the lunar princess's place in front of the keyboard. "See, this isn't so bad," she said confidently. "It's just a forest. A big, dark, foggy forest. Full of scary trees an- what was that?!" She thought she saw a tall, black figure through the trees, but when she looked again, she saw nothing. "See... not so bad," she said again, slightly less confident this time. Luna had to try hard to suppress a snicker. "Come on Tia, nothing's even happening yet, and you're already losing it." Celestia glared at her sister. "I'm not losing it! I just... wasn't ready!" She took a deep breath to calm herself down. "See, I'm ready now. Look at my ready face!" "You're just stalling. Eyes on the screen, sis," Luna laughed. The princess of the sun turned back to the screen, muttering under her breath. Finally, happened on a massive rock. As she was walking around it, she caught sight of a glowing piece of paper taped to one side. However, instead of taking it, she sat there staring. "Uh, Tia, you have to take the paper to progress," said her sister, looking over her shoulder with a grin. Celestia gulped. "Yeah, b-but, like, what if I take it, then I turn around, and there's some monster or something. What if I don't take the paper? Can't I just run out of the forest?" she asked, looking to her sister. Getting no reply, she waffled between taking the page, and just getting up and leaving. "What's the matter, Tia? Is this game to scary for you? I'm not cleaning the carpet if it is, you know." Celestia stared at her giggling sister, and, seeing no other option, took the paper. As soon as he did, a loud 'Boom. Boom. Boom.' started playing from the speakers, and the sun goddess froze. "What. In Equestria. Is that." She looked over to her sister, who was now rolling around on the floor with her hoof in her mouth, desperately holding back laughter. "What?! What's so funny?!" she almost yelled, getting more and more panicked by the minute. When Luna didn't answer, she returned her wide-eyed gaze to the monitor. Walking through the forest, she got the feeling that someone was watching her. Frantically, she jerked around. Finding nothing, she breathed a sigh of relief and turned back around. She was not prepared, however, for the enormous faceless figure standing there in front of her when she did. She gave a loud scream and mashed the keyboard, causing her character to run blindly into several trees before settling onto a clear path. breathing hard, she looked over to her sister, who was practically in hysterics by that point. "Shut up, Luna! That was terrifying! What if that thing, I don't know, kidnapped me and sold me into slavery?" Luna gawked. "Wait, what? You are afraid of being sold into slavery? What if it dragged you into the woods and tore you apart or something? I think that's a bit scarier!" Celestia waved her hoof dismissively. "Pfft. Shows what you know about scary." "What's that supposed to mean? I am the princess of the night! I have a whole holiday devoted to just how scary I am!" The sun goddess was about to reply when she looked back to the screen and saw that she had found another page. She ripped this one down a lot quicker than the first, knowing that time was of the essence. As she was booking to wherever the next page was, she got the feeling of being watched again, and stopped. Slowly, she turned around in a broad circle, making sure that there was nothing following her. When she found nothing, she felt slightly reassured. With a bounce in her virtual step, she walked around a tree and came face to blank face with the creature once again. She screamed and slammed her hooves down on the keyboard. Unfortunately, this caused her to walk towards the monster, and she just screamed louder when its face filled the screen in a wave of static and noise. While she was still in shock, Luna walked over and placed a comforting hoof on her back. "It's okay, Tia. Two pages isn't that bad." "Wh- how many did you get? Like, three or something?" she asked hopefully, still recovering from what she had seen. "Oh, just seven... out of eight," she replied smugly. Celestia glared at her. "Yeah, well... you probably cheated or something." She didn't want to believe that her sister could be better at something than her, let alone a video game. "Well, it's getting pretty late, Tia. We had better go do some royal... stuff," said the lunar princess. As she was about to leave the room, she looked back at her sister and gave a malicious grin. "Sweet dreams, sister." After she was sure that Luna was gone, Celestia ran through her room, locking all of her windows and doors, and drawing all the curtains. That night, the immortal master and goddess of the sun slept with the lights on for the first time in centuries.
1916: Ich Spreche Kein DeutschCelestia was ecstatic. But then, most ponies would be had their lifelong dreams finally come true. The princess of the day looked around in awe, her tongue lolling out, as she took in the incredible sights of a world tailored to her every desire. She laughed as she skipped through a marvelously beautiful meadow, stopping only to graze from the wonderful doughnut flowers. She cried out in joy as she swam through an ocean of pure flavour, doing backstrokes through a wave of indescribable sweetness, taking enormous mouthfuls as it washed over her head. She frolicked playfully through the herds of gummy bears, making sure to take the sick and the weak as her prey. Finally, after she had had her fill, she found a soft plateau of cotton candy and relaxed as she watched the permanent sunset in the distance. Just as she was drifting into a state of pure zen, she finally spotted it. It's grandiose bulk bore down on her from a nearby candy cane plain, almost blotting out half of the sky. What was it? It was the reason Celestia had created this world. It was the focus of all of her wild imaginings, and all of her most wonderful dreams. It was... the Cake. But, of course, it wan't just any cake. It was the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness (or the MMMM for short). Ever since the dessert competition in Canterlot, she had dreamed of the meringuey deliciousness that that evil, sugar obsessed pink pony had stolen right from under her nose. Since that day, she had spent many hours cooped up by herself, crying for her horrible loss. And now, here it was. A mountain of MMMM all to herself. As she galloped towards her target, the solar princess noticed that the Cake seemed to grow larger and larger. When she was but a few dozen metres away, the thing was practically a mountain, and blotted out the sun. When she finally reached it, Celestia threw herself on the MMMM with reckless abandon, wanting to take as much in on the first bite as equinely possible. She tossed her head back with tears in her eyes. The moment had finally come! Laughing, she plunged her face into the Cake... ... just as she heard a yell from her living room. The goddess of the sun sighed and opened her eyes. It seemed as though her sister had a magical ability to loudly make herself known any time Celestia started to have fun. Ah, well, she thought, sighing. Doubting that she would get any more sleep until Luna left, Celestia decided to pay her sister a little visit... Luna's breath quickened as she made her way through the trenches, jumping every time she heard a distant artillery shell go off. She didn't know why she was here, and more importantly, she didn't know how to get out. She'd been wandering through the grimy dugout for what seemed like hours, but could easily have been minutes. Several times she thought she'd caught a glimpse of something around one of the corners in the trench, but every time it slipped away just before she could make it out. What she had found, and in abundant numbers, were bodies. The muddy ground in the earthwork was quite literally lined with faceless, immobile corpses, which surprisingly did nothing to impede her progress. Once, she had reached down to see if one of them was still alive, but was disappointed to find that it most certainly was not. In fact, the moment she touched the body, it's skin practically disintegrated in her hooves, leaving her to recoil in disgust when she came back holding it's arm. After that initial adventure, Luna managed to ignore the multitude of carcasses lying along her path by staring steadfastly at the end of the trench. After a few more minutes of this, she caught another glimpse of a flash of silver around the corner. Having nothing better to do, she decided to follow the thing, fully expecting her efforts to end up in failure, just like the last however many times. As she approached the corner, though, she could feel that this time, something was different. Her suspicions were proved right when she heard a noise like breathing that seemed to come from around the bend. In preparation, Luna took a few deep breaths before jumping around the corner, ready to meet her fate. Except there wasn't anything there. Luna breathed a sigh of relief and let herself relax. Just as she did, though, she froze. Although the dugout seemed to be empty, she could still here the breathing. Only now, it sounded like it was coming from behind her. Before she could react, Luna felt a hoof land on her shoulder. Immediately, she launched backwards, away from the computer screen, and, once she regained her senses, found that she had collided with something tall, formerly white, and incredibly unimpressed. "AAAUUUGH!" Celestia screamed, as Luna launched away from the computer and slammed directly into the her hoof, which happened to be holding an unfortunately full mug of coffee, which was, of course, predictably hot. Surprisingly, the pain wore off just before Luna recovered her senses, allowing Celestia to get in a few extra seconds of glaring before she got up. "As I was trying to say, what are you doing on my computer again?" she asked, once that feat was finally accomplished. "Some of us actually have things to do that don't take place at ONE O' CLOCK IN THE BLOODY MORNING!" Ignoring her sister's fury, the moon goddess put on one of her patented oblivious grins. "Oh, hey sis!" she said happily. "I was just playing this pretty freaky game about trenches and stuff! At least, I think it was trenches. I don't know, all the text was in German." Seeing it was getting her nowhere, Celestia reluctantly stopped glaring at her sister. "So, what, you were downloading a bunch of German shareware onto my hard drive?" she said sarcastically, not expecting a response. Always one to disappoint, Luna responded. "Well, it's not a bunch. It's just one game. And I'm pretty sure it's in browser." Suddenly, the lunar princess grin doubled in size. "You should try it out! It's already loaded up and ready to go, and I couldn't really get past the first obstacle. You could show me your legendary gaming skills!" she said, without a trace of irony. The chance to show up her sister finally put Celestia over the edge. With a sigh of resignation, she sat herself down in front of the computer and grabbed the mouse. Turning around, she was slightly alarmed to see Luna sitting there snickering. "Hey, didn't you say this game was super freaky or something?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. Luna shoved her hoof in her mouth to stop another wave of snickering before answering. "Yeah, it's totally super scary. Trust me." Suspicious, Celestia slowly turned back to face the monitor. Just like Luna had said, all of the text in the game was German, and judging solely by the menu it looked at least partly scary. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that there was some kind of joke here that she didn't get or something. Shrugging, she clicked the start button. She was greeted with a visual implosion of grey-scales and bloom effects, along with what sounded like a distant artillery battle. After she took a few steps, the claustrophobic trenches started to feel a little too tight. As she rounded the corner, she saw that the next fifty metres of the dugout was absolutely covered in dead bodies. With no room to maneuver, Celestia hesitantly stepped over the bodies. After a few steps, she looked down, only to see her character's hoof raise up as her gaze passed over on of the corpses. Confused, she held a key, causing the hoof to lower. However, a few seconds later, the hoof came back up. Only this time, it was holding another, disembodied, hoof of it's very own. Celestia laughed. "Watch out! We got Hoofception! Oh man, where's Leonardo DiColtrio when you need him?" Behind her, Luna finally burst out laughing. "Don't get too many layers in!" she shouted between breaths. "You won't be able to let go!" Celestia's laughing was cut short, however, when she looked back at the screen and saw something flash around the corner of the trench. Slowly, she walked down to the end of the trench and looked around the corner. When she saw nothing, she kept going, getting tenser and tenser by the second. Finally, she reached a fork in the path. Before she could choose a direction, however, something enormous came barreling out of the trench on the right. As her character was ripped apart by the giant creature, Celestia blankly turned to her sister, who had both hooves stuffed inside her mouth to muffle her laughter. "Luna," she said quietly. "Was that a dinosaur?" Luna took a few heaving breaths to calm herself down before replying. "Eeyup." Celestia sat there for a few more seconds before a huge dumb grin grew on her face, matching her sister's. "That is, quite possibly, the most hilarious attempt at horror I've ever seen in my life!" she guffawed, almost knocking over the mostly empty mug of coffee she had completely forgot about in her laugh throes. Once the two princesses had finally calmed down, Celestia turned back to the game. After a few more tries, she discovered that if you threw one of the disembodied hooves at the dinosaur, it would leave you alone for a couple seconds. Using this bit of knowledge, she managed to get lost in the trenches and die in poisonous gas far more impressively and skillfully than Luna ever could have. A few seconds later, Luna piped up behind her. "You know, you always call me out on my suckage." Celestia looked away from the computer and stared at her. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, upset that someone could ever doubt her awesome skills as a gamer. "Oh, you know, nothing," replied Luna, suddenly finding something interesting to examine on the ceiling. "What? You think you could do better than me?" She laughed sarcastically. "I'd like to see you try to make it through that poison gas!" With that, she got up from her seat and dragged an unresistant Luna over to the controls. The moon princess sighed. "All I'm saying is that I'm not the one getting super flankhurt over some dumb game about velocirobots or whatever." After a few minutes of seemingly aimless wandering, Luna managed to stumble across a gas mask, and, for some reason, a bunch of flares lying on a table. To her right, Celestia gave a snort. "Yeah, whatever. I could have found those eventually," she grumbled, crossing her forelegs. Hiding a smirk, Luna made a quick getaway from a couple raptors and made her way to a trench full of mustard gas. Smiling innocently, she looked up at her sister as her character pulled on the gas mask. She laughed when she saw the look on Celestia's face. It reminded her of some sort of mixture between an awed gape and a furious scowl. It came out looking like she was in urgent need of a toilet. Her ego assuaged, Luna ran through the rest of the trench and found what she was looking for. The ladder out of the trench and into the less desirable, rage-inducing side of Celestia's heart. When the camera took control, she backed away from the controls and looked at her sister, letting the smug grin on her face do the talking for her. Celestia's eyes bulged as her brain tried to comprehend what had just happened. She opened her mouth to speak, but all she could get out was a few sputtering noises that sounded kind of like a dying raccoon. "Oh, by the way sis, you might want to take a shower. You smell like coffee," Luna would have said, had Celestia not teleported the coffee pot out from the kitchen and dumped it on her head, grinning like a maniac. As it were, the lunar goddess ran through the castle screaming, waking up the entire royal guard and most of the kitchen staff. That night, Celestia went to bed a very happy mare and dreamed a dream of sugary heaven. After a quick shower, of course. Please note: this is an actual game, dinosaurs and all. If you want to play it, check it out here.
Nightmare Fuel: THE KIDS WON'T GET IT!Celestia was bored. This wasn't just regular boredom, though. This was the kind of boredom you get when you sign up for a free vacation, only to find that you have to sit through an 8 hour timeshare presentation once you get there. Of course, no one reached a state of boredom such as this for no reason. 2 hours earlier... Her royal duties finished for the day, Celestia walked to her chambers, whistling happily the whole way. Tonight was the night she was finally going to introduce Luna to online gaming, and watch as her sister crumbled into a steaming heap of frustration and rage. But which game would it be? Would it be Call of Duty, with its copious lag compensation? Would it be Halo, with its bounty of MLG tryhards? Or perhaps she would confound her with the steep learning curve of Battlefield. So many options! In the end, however, it didn't matter. When the sun princess pressed the on button for her Xbox, she was greeted with the single most horrifying sight a console gamer can experience. The Red Ring of Death. Upon seeing this, the sun goddess panicked. She spent half an hour attempting to coax the machine back to life, doing everything from coddling it like a baby and whispering promises of friendship and hope into its USB ports, to screaming death threats at it. When nothing worked, Celestia eventually flew into a rage and tossed it out the window, watching it bounce off the castle walls until it finally smashed to pieces on the head of Discord's statue. Once she realised what she'd done, she ran into the bathroom and locked herself inside for an hour, weeping hysterically in the empty tub. Eventually, it dawned on her that she was crying in the tub for a piece of machinery. What would Luna say if she saw her now? She got up and made a half-flanked effort to clean herself up in the mirror. After a few failed attempts, she finally gave up and stormed into the hallway, putting in her current pitiful state. Present After stomping up and down the hall a few more times, Celestia couldn't take her mounting boredom any longer. She decided she would pay Luna a visit and take revenge for all the times she had dropped in unannounced. As she turned around, though, she was surprised to see Luna coming at her down the hallway with a big dumb grin plastered on her face. "Hey Tia! You look like a wreck. How's it going?" she asked all in one breath, getting uncomfortably close before coming to a stop. While she was standing there, Celestia thought she caught a glimpse of something hovering behind her, but when she tried to get a closer look Luna floated it further behind her back, hiding it. Dismissing her sister's weirdness, Celestia finally replied. "I'm fine." It was a blatant lie, and judging by the look on her sister's face, it didn't exactly fly. After a few seconds of awkward staring, the princess of the sun gave in. "Alright, I'm not fine. You got me," she said. "I just threw my Xbox out a window. Do you have any idea what that can do to a pony?! I doubt I'll ever be sane again!" At this point her entire face was going red, and she felt torn between breaking into tears again, or just going on a destructive rampage through the castle. Starting with Luna, of course. Luna barely seemed to notice. "Well, that's quite a shame, sis," she said noncommittally. Immediately after saying that, her face lit up. "Well as much as I love to hear about your personal issues, I have something much more important to talk about!" The goddess of the sun seemed intrigued. "Oh yeah? What's that?" Luna's already giant grin threatened to split her head in half. "I found a great new game that we absolutely must try!" Celestia glared at her like she had sprouted a second head. "Uh, didn't you just hear me?" she said bitterly. "I don't have an Xbox anymore. We can't play anything." Luna laughed. When her sister just sat there looking dumbfounded, she laughed harder. All she got in return was an angry frown. The lunar princess sighed. "It's a Nintendo 64 game, Tia," she said, watching the comprehension fill her sister's face. "Nintendo 64?" asked Celestia, unable to contain the enthusiasm in her voice. "Oh boy, what game?" Luna laughed in response. "It's a surprise, Tia!" Her sneakiness did nothing to dampen the solar princess's excitement. Suddenly, Celestia's face darkened as she realised just who exactly chose the game. "So, wait. This is a surprise that you picked out?" asked the sun princess. Luna nodded happily. the sun goddess didn't seem happy at the confirmation. She crossed her forelegs and put on a frown that would put Gilda to shame. "Great. Because you know so much about video games," she said, her voice dripping with irony. "I'm sure this will be absolutely wonderful." Her sister gaped, offended. "Look, Tia, just because I'm new to this whole 'video game' thing doesn't mean I'm some kind of idiot or something," she replied haughtily. When Celestia said nothing, she sighed. "Look, I promise that if it sucks, I'll personally buy you a new Xbox." The solar princess frowned for a little while longer, then reluctantly accepted Luna's offer. "On one condition: you have to take care of all my royal duties for a week so the Xbox and I can have some quality alone time." Luna's eye twitched when she heard Celestia refer to her Xbox like it was her child or something. However, seeing no alternative, she decided to roll with it and accept her sister's condition. Reaching a resolution, the two sisters walked into Celestia's room and made to sit on the couch. Celestia, however, walked past it and opened a mysterious door in the same room. As Luna watched, her sister slowly, almost reverently, reached into the surprisingly disorganised closet and pulled out a cardboard box labeled 'N64' in black marker. Celestia held the box carefully, as if it was some sort of ancient treasure, and carried it over to the TV. While she was unpacking the box and plugging everything into the correct slots, a wave of nostalgia washed over her, bringing tears to her eyes and a gag to Luna's throat. When she heard this, the sun goddess whipped around and stared daggers at her sister. "Don't you ever gag at my Nintendo 64 again!" she yelled, flailing her forelegs around in anger, accidentally knocking a lamp off of a nearby end table, and flinging Luna over the back of the sofa. After the initial shock, the moon goddess picked herself up off the floor and brushed herself off. "I don't see what the problem is. I was just mocking your sentimentality over a hunk of plastic," she said, sticking her nose in the air. This only served to enrage Celestia even further, and it took her a good few minutes before she could even form coherent thoughts. When she could finally speak again, she was incredibly quiet, giving a disturbing contrast to her earlier outburst. "You know what, Luna? Just because you were trapped on the moon for a thousand years doesn't mean society stopped at your fancy. This hunk of plastic was what I spent my time on when I wasn't busy doing both my duties and yours while you were gone." Flabbergasted, Luna had nothing to say to that, so instead walked back to her spot on the couch and quietly took her seat. Celestia immediately brightened up and put on a big smile. "Great! Now that that's dealt with, where is this 'amazing game' we absolutely 'must' try?" Luna realised she was still staring at her sister in fear, and quickly focused on the situation at hand. "Oh yes!" she replied, forcing some happiness back into her voice. "Why, I have it just here- huh?" As she reached for it with her magic, she felt something pushing up from beneath the couch's cushion. She yelled in surprise and jumped off the couch with speed that would impress even Rainbow Dash. After the initial panic passed, she realised that the game cartridge she had been carrying must have fallen between the cushions of the couch. She levitated it out and showed it to Celestia. "Here is the game, Tia!" she exclaimed proudly. When Celestia's expression went blank, she turned the thing around and found out that the sticker on the front had been ripped off, likely by her sister's outburst. Huffing, she walked over to the Nintendo and was immediately struck dumb. She had no idea how it worked, and even less of an idea of where to put the cartridge. The sun princess sighed, silently judging her. Watching Luna's confusion, she snatched the game out of her grasp and stuck it in the top of the machine with lightning precision only acquired from night after night of playing and swapping cartridges. After she turned it on, they walked back to the couch and picked up their controllers. As the opening screens played, Celestia felt a vague feeling of fear deep in her gut. The screens seemed incredibly familiar, and not in a good, nostalgic way. As she was overcome with a growing sense of dread, she stared at the screen, unable to comprehend what was happening. Licensed by Nintendo... Titus Presents... Oh mother of me! She stared in horror as Luna manipulated the menu and eventually brought up the message she had been dreading the most. "If you want to save your friends, solve my maze!" "Luna! What have you done?! Nooooooooooooooo!" Hours later, Celestia was still stuck on the exact same pointless, banal, nonsensical flying ring puzzle. For the entire time, Luna had been sitting there on her side of the couch, laughing at the multitude of pained, horrified expressions crossing her sister's face. After failing the ring challenge for what must have been the three hundredth time, the sun princess finally lost it. "Luna, I don't know what sick, twisted game you're playing at here, but I refuse to play another minute of this terrible piece of so called 'entertainment'!" she shouted, before pitching the controller at her sister and huddling up into the fetal position. At first, Luna did about as badly as Celestia, failing repeatedly before even passing through the first ring. However, to the goddess of the sun's mounting horror, she actually seemed to get better and better each time she failed. Eventually, the lunar princess successfully navigated the first level of this eldritch horror that could barely even be called a game. "Yes! I have finally beaten the rings, Tia!" As Celestia gaped, she watched as Luna used her new found talent of playing Lovecraftian creations to complete several more incredibly repetitive and evil ring mazes. Each victory made her jaw hang lower and lower, until she was sure she could feel it scraping against the floor. These victories eventually brought Luna to a rooftop with 4 identical creatures standing on it, wielding what Celestia could only assume were guns. They looked like a bunch of black rectangles holding smaller, grey rectangles. After watching her sister dispatch each of them with the exact same move, which was, for lack of a better word, a punch, she finally reached her breaking point. "Luna! How can you be enjoying this disgusting spawn of Cthulu?" she asked, with a frenzied look in her eyes. "This game has crushed more childhoods than all of Michael Bay's movies put together!" Luna simply laughed. "Why, Tia, i didn't know it was possible to have this much fun playing a video game." Celestia's eye twitched. "This is so much more fun than Portal!" Again the eye twitch. Finally Luna glanced over at her and saw her twitching and trembling, unable to even understand what she was hearing. Of course, Luna completely misinterpreted her sister's condition. "Tia, if you wanted a turn, all you had to do was ask. You don't have to stare at me as if you're going to rip my head off." Finally, the sun princess reached her final straw. "Luna. I want you to leave, and I want you to take that abomination out of my Nintendo," she said, almost too low for her sister to hear. The look in her eyes was enough to tell Luna that if she didn't leave, she was probably going to end up going on another one way trip to the moon. Slowly, the blue mare got up and floated the offending cartridge out of the machine. As she was about to teleport it over to her own room, Celestia suddenly grabbed it with her magic. While she watched, the sun goddess slowly levitated a hammer in from another room and held it over the cartridge. Once it arrived, she smashed the thing to pieces, savouring every moment as her scary grin grew with every hammer blow. Finally, she levitated the pieces over to a garbage pail and dropped them in one by one. By this point, Luna's ears were plastered against the side of her head, and Celestia could practically smell the fear pouring off her. After staring at each other for a few more minutes, Luna decided to get out while she was still alive and made a break for the door. As she was crossing the threshold, she once again heard her sister's voice. "Luna. If you ever allow anything like that to touch my Nintendo again, or even consider buying another copy, just remember one thing." The moon princess turned back, trembling on the spot. "O-oh yeah? What's t-that?" she asked shakily. Celestia gave her the most evil grin she had ever seen. "I will send you to the bloody moon." Her greatest fears confirmed, Luna ran off to her room at a full gallop and locked herself in for the night, not even allowing her trusted night guard in for inspection. After she left, Celestia sighed and started getting ready to sleep. As she brushed her teeth, she thought seriously about the laws regarding exile and torture of close family, as well as royalty. "That one of my family could even be caught dead enjoying that..." she grumbled, leaning down to spit in the sink. When she raised her head, she froze. in the mirror, she could see a pristine copy of the very same obscene monstrosity that had occupied the last few hours of her life. Quickly she spun around and was consumed by blackness. "SUPERMAN 64!" The princess screamed as she shot up out of bed, her heart racing. After a few calming breaths, she looked around and sighed with relief. "it was all just a dream. A horrible, terrifying dream." As she sank back into the comfort of her sheets, however, something caught her eye. In the corner, could it be? It was! A brand new Xbox! The solar princess gasped with delight and shot over to the box. On top was a note that read: Lots of love, from your sister. P.S. I hope you enjoy it! After reading the note, he picked up the box and hugged it tightly. "Oh, Xbox. You're the best friend a mare could ever ask for!" she exclaimed happily. Something was off, though. The box seemed a bit to light, and when she shook it, she swore she could hear things shaking around. In a panic, Celestia put the box down on the floor and ripped it open, praying that she hadn't damaged anything with her violent hugs. Once it was open, she slowly peered over the edge of the box. Her heart stopped. She had expected to be greeted with a sleek, new Xbox. She never asked for this. The box was filled to the brim with copies of Superman 64. Believing herself to be hallucinating, or perhaps still dreaming, Celestia dug into the box and started flinging the horrible things away in an attempt to find something else, anything else inside. Her mind shattered when she reached the bottom. Sitting there, just the way she had seen it last, were the shattered remains of her old, destroyed Xbox. Slowly, her hooves shaking, she picked the destroyed box up and turned it over. Pinned to the bottom was another note. Unlike the first, this note simply read: SUCK IT, SIS. That night, for the first time in Equestrian history, Princess Celestia, immortal master of the sun and co-ruler of all Equestria, had an aneurysm.
CancelledUnfortunately, due to the haphazard and spontaneous nature of this story, it is being cancelled. However, for those who would actually like to see it continued, there's still hope. Anyone who feels confident enough in their abilities as a writer may comment below declaring such. I will look over the stories of those who comment, searching for quality rather than popularity, and choose accordingly. Whoever the person is will have two choices: either start fresh on his/her end without these four chapters, which would likely be easier and more fun to read and write, or they could copy and paste the first four chapters over to his/her story and continue writing in the same style, i.e. rushed and bad. I hope that this decision will swing well with you the readers, and I also hope that at least a few of you will continue to read my stories now that I have put thought into their narrative construction and characterisation. Allons-y! Author's Note P.S. I'm looking for an editor, so if you're interested in reducing my level of suck, give me a shout (i.e. send me a P.M. rather than a comment).
