After a long night of work Luna exits the dreamscape of the last pony on her route, and prepares herself once more to tackle the beast. As the mind of Anonymous stood imposingly before her she deliberated on how to reach her goal of unlocking the truth. Perhaps she pushed too hard last time and his subconscious mind reacted in self-defense, something she was not at all used to with her pony subjects. Granted, she had never needed to do so with anypony else but she just knew from how easy her job was with them that it would be nowhere near as difficult.

Luna could not help but feel some trepidation however, it appears that Anon’s mind is strong enough to negate her magic should she become too aggressive with her actions and it may have been luck that helped her be spit back out into the real world. But she quickly shakes this thought from her mind, the safety of her subjects is paramount to any damage she may incur, and as she steps inside his mind once more she steels herself for what is to come.

Bitter cold whips against your face as you crest the top of the hill, and for how much you try to muff your ears and tuck your mittened hands into your hoodie pockets it still managed to sink into your bones. You were tasked with knocking snow off the roofs of buildings around town before somepony from the Nature team said that Fluttershy needed your help urgently, so you made your way there. Before you stood Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash.

“Are you sure you can’t spare just a few other ponies from the weather team to help out?” The demure Fluttershy asks Rainbow as you enter the conversation.

“Sorry ‘Shy,” Rainbow says, “All this hot air blowing up from the south made a lot more rain clouds this year, and the weather team is just too busy getting it all moved away from Ponyville.”

“Oh…” Fluttershy says disappointed as she paws the snow with her hooves, “Okay, we’ll try our best as is.”

Rainbow takes flight to rejoin her team, “If we get ahead of schedule I’ll send some guys down to help, but we need all hooves on deck right now. I believe in you guys though!”

“What are we doing anyway?” You ask the dejected pegasus.

“Oh, well, like Rainbow said all of these extra clouds this year made a lot more snow than usual, and all the burrowing animals made their homes at the base of these hills. If all that snow melts they’ll all be flooded out of their little holes and end up homeless!”

You frown at this, “Sounds like a pretty important job, and everyo--everypony else is too wrapped up to help?” Your little pun elicits a giggle from Pinkie.

“Everypony just seems to be extra busy this year, and using the rest of the Nature team for this kind of job would cut back on our schedule by a lot,” Fluttershy says refusing to meet either of your eyes, “I’m really sorry I couldn’t get anypony else to help.”

“Aw don’t sweat it Flutters!” Pinkie Pie says, trying to lift her friend’s spirit, “Nonny and I are all you need to get all this nasty snow scooped up! We’re Super Scoopers, aren’t we Nonny?”

“No,” You say bluntly, causing Pinkie to look shocked and Fluttershy to cower slightly.

Putting your fists on your hips you strike a heroic pose, “We’re Super Duper Scoopers!”

Pinkie Pie laughs heartily with delight at your declaration, and Fluttershy seems to immediately become more chipper in mood as she gives a soft laugh as well.

“Well Pinkie, let’s get to work!”

The labor was a lot more demanding than you anticipated to the point where you had to abandon your hoodie to not boil on the inside out. Ponies don’t exactly use shovels like people do either, they used plows; and pushing heavy snow uphill was no walk in the park inside the awkward device. It’s easy for Pinkie to do her side since she’s Earth Pony strong, in fact she gets done so quick that by the time you finish she’s already built several Snow Pinkies, an extra large Snow Gummy, and she was halfway through what you can only assume was a Snow Anon.

Plowing the last pile of snow over the hill you stumble out of the frame and flop backwards into a snow pile, you were so worked up that steam billowed thickly from your body into the brisk afternoon air.

Suddenly, a Pinkie appears blocking the rest of the world from view.

“Tuckered out already, Nonners? I thought you said you were super duper!”

“I’m really trying Pinkie,” You say weakly, “You did the other two while you were waiting for me to be done, right?”

Pinkie looks around and hums to herself, “Oh that’s right, there were two more weren’t there?”

You give a long groan in response to her answer, and she strokes your sweaty head with a hoof to try and make you feel better.

“Cheer up Nonny! You know Pinkie Pie once said that hard work is just a game you gotta get good at! Then it becomes easy peasy Nonny squeezy!” She says emphasizing her point by squishing your cheeks together.

“Aren’t you Pinkie Pie though?”

“Oh! That was another Pinkie Pie who told me that when I jumped in this pool and everytime I did another Pinkie Pie came out and it was a whole big thing that turned into there being too many Pinkie Pies and that was a whole big thing lemme tell ya.”

Woof, a very small part of you feels kind of glad you missed out on that disaster.

“What are you doing Pinkie?” You ask as she continues stroking your head absentmindedly.

“Oh! Uh-- I just figured you were like a doggy or a kitty or a Gummy and that being petted made you feel better!” She says quickly as her cheeks become rosier. Must be cold even for the ponies too, Anon thinks to himself. Doesn’t make too much sense seeing as they’re covered in fur, though.

“D-do you not like it?” She asks nervously.

“No, it’s nice actually,” You say peacefully, “Just not something that’s commonly done where I’m from.”

Pinkie gives a soft sigh of relief to herself at this, and as an idea strikes her she bounds over you and out of sight for just a moment. The next moment your vision is completely obscured by snow as the party pony dumps a load of it over your face.

You quickly sit up from the shock of it, spitting snow out of your mouth, “What the hay Pinkie?”

Her winter muffs have been replaced by a white military-style cap, and the mare’s face beneath it has become a playful glare.

“I am not Pinkie Pie to you mister, I am Commander Pie of the Imperial Granite Empire! Your snow has been encroaching on our territory for too long and the only option left is war! What say you, Emperor Anonymous?”

Your past woes about the rest of the hard labor you had to do seemed to melt away in light of Pinkie’s fictitious declaration of war. Making a game of hard work always seemed like a half-assed thing parents told their kids to do when they needed to clean their rooms, but when Pinkie Pie ropes you into a game of any kind, it means business. A newfound vigor heats up your frozen and tired muscles for battle.

“Emperor?” You scoff, “That’s God Emperor to you Commander Pie! You heretics have spit in the face of our snowy doctrine for too long and must be taken out once and for all!”

Pinkie Pie dances giddily in place at your acceptance of your game, but mushes her face back into an even more menacing stare with her hooves.

“Your blind belief in your snow will not serve you in the coming battle Nonny--I mean Emperor Anonymous! You had best prepare!”

“Oh yeah? Let’s see how far your science--hey! No fair!” You say as you see her already plowing her snow up her side of the hill.

“All’s fair in l-love and war!” Pinkie says cheerfully.

The imposing challenge seemed to quicken your pace, and the two of you each paved your individual hillsides immaculate by yourselves in the time it took the two of you working on the first one. On the other side of the hills the giant piles of snow you two had accumulated had become your ammunition, and it needed to be spent wisely.

As you were in the middle of prepping snowballs, a foreign one slaps against the back of your head. It seems the first blood goes to Pinkie.

“Haha! If you can get hit that easy you don’t stand a chance Nonny!” Pinkie jeers from her hill.

“Cheap shots aren’t going to get you far, Pie!” You yell back. Ducking behind your humble snowy fortification your aim is near impeccable with each throw. Pinkie can only just barely bob and weave millimeters away from your tightly packed snowballs, luckily you played Galaga enough as a kid to know that you had to change tactics.

You take a snowball in each hand and fire the first one off from your bad arm, and just as you anticipated she dodges to the left allowing you to hit her where she was going to be dead on with your good arm. You blink and the Pinkie you hit was… a snow Pinkie? The poor icy mare’s head comes off as a result of your hit, and the real Pinkie pokes her head up from her own shielding with a smug grin.

“Hey I know I hit you!” You shout at her.

“Almost! But my ever-loyal Snow Pinkie sacrificed herself to protect her leader and for that she will be honored in all the history books!”

“Then I’ll just have to kick it up a notch!” You declare.

The exchange only became more heated as the two of you traded blows with one another, Pinkie managed to land a solid hit to your stomach causing snow to fall into your pants. One good throw from you hits her square in the cutie mark causing an explosion of confetti from her mane and a furious blush to adorn her face, the latter of which you don’t manage to catch.

Fluttershy trots to your position with a saddlebag filled with thermoses, “You two did such a good job cleaning away all the snow, I brought you some hot cocoa for--”

“Get down!” You shout as you grab her around the waist and pull her against your chest just as a snowball whizzes through where she was a second ago, and a sharp “EEP!” escapes the pegasus’ startled lips.

Peeking over your wall with Fluttershy still absentmindedly clutched to you you shout, “Firing on civilians now huh? Have you no shame?”

Being too far away from her to notice finer details Pinkie Pie frowns especially hard at you holding the demure yellow pony, and as her face heats up once more steam escapes her ears with a high pitched whistle.

Pinkie shouts back, “Anypony on your territory is officially an enemy! And I won’t stop until you’re both snowponies!”

She sounds actually angry, Anon thinks to himself as he lets Fluttershy go, she’s really getting into this bit.

Suddenly a colossal THUD shakes the area behind you, and turning to see what happened you see a boulder-sized pile of snow made an impact with the earth just a few feet from you. From your position you see Pinkie’s Party Cannon smoking from its barrel seated at the crest of her hill.

“Wh-what’s going on!?” Fluttershy asks in a panic as she cowers under your crouched form as Pinkie gathers snow to reload her cannon with.

“It seems Pinkie kicked it up several notches, think you can help out ‘Shy?” You ask the quivering pegasus.

“Oh, um, I’m not too… good at these kinds of things Anon, but I can see if I can get some help.” She says nervously.

“Go do that Flutters, I’ll give you cover!” And as she quickly trots off to get the cavalry you pelt Pinkie’s position to impede her reloading progress. Unbeknownst to you, your pitches were going much farther than you thought, and your flank-seeking snowballs nail a particular Rainbow pegasus as she’s leading her team to the opposite end of Ponyville where they were working.

Looking down on your skirmish from the skies she yells angrily down at you, “Hey, who did that!? Which one of you wants to be hit with a real snowball?”

“It was Nonny!” Pinkie shouts up at her, “And Fluttershy is coming back with backup soon, I need your help Dashie!”

Regardless of how high up she was, you could see her menacing stare even if she were a mile away with how many daggers were being fired your way.

“Cloud Trotter!” She says beckoning a navy blue pegasus over to her.

“Y-yes ma’am?” He asks nervously.

“Lead the squad over to the South quadrant, I have to… take care of some other business real quick.”

“Yes ma’am!” He says zooming off to round up the other pegasi.

Uh oh. Pinkie was dangerous enough on her own, but now she has the most competitive pony in town on her side. There was no time to be afraid though as another cannon blast goes off and slams into the ground, much closer than the last one. Rainbow Dash already has a pyramid of snowballs prepared on either side of her, and using her powerful wings as snowball pitching machines to fling snowballs at breakneck speed at your position. One snowball breaks clean through your fortifications inches from where you were.

Just as all hope seems lost, unicorn magic molds the snow on your left into a thicker, sturdier formation and a grizzly bear pushes a large mound of snow into a cruder yet much more powerful wall on your right. The cavalry has arrived! Well, if by cavalry you mean Twilight, Fluttershy, the bear, and some other smaller woodland creatures. But hey, any help was more than welcome against these insurmountable odds.

Twilight surveys the area and gives you a puzzled look, “Why are Pinkie and Rainbow Dash trying to flatten you?” and as she asks she magically stops a snowball from Rainbow and returns it to its sender.

“Uhh, Pinkie and I were playing a game, and it kinda got out of hand,” you chuckle nervously.

“Oh my, it’s g-gotten a lot more intense since I left, hasn’t it?” Fluttershy asks.

“It’s a Code-Pink huh?” Twilight asks, “I assume you know what this means Anonymous.”

“Yeah,” you reply, “The Nuclear Option.”

“The what?” Twilight asks.

“Oh, uhh, a really big move that will completely lay waste to them in one move.” You correct yourself. Damn, Twilight’s going to pester you about this later. No time to think about how to turn a horrible war crime into a nice pony-friendly lie though.

As the pressure is on, you wrack your brain as you try to think of a way to take them out in one shot. Pinkie and Rainbow aren’t alternating their rate of fire so they have to reload at the same time, and the gap between hills is parabolic…

You get a sense of nostalgia from the situation weirdly, a faint memory of something from an old television show you watched as a kid. A move that combines the effort of multiple people--or ponies in this case--into one attack that can take out any opponent in one fell swoop…

“I’ve got it!” You say excitedly as the epiphany hits you.

As Twilight and the animals get to work on your finishing move, you fire off rounds as best as you can while Fluttershy daintily feeds you a steady supply of ammo. It’s all you can do to hinder the assault while your comrades focus on their work.

A small crowd of ponies who spotted the show have abandoned their Winter Wrap Up duties and gathered to watch the spectacle unfold. Bits were even starting to change hooves on who would win as the crowd grew, most went in favor of Pinkie’s side due to the unholy assault they were giving to Anon’s side.

A reprieve falls upon the battlefield as Pinkie and Dash both run out of ammo and have to reload, and Anon’s barrier was a crumbling mess on the brink of collapse. The climax was fast approaching, and things looked dire for the human and his friends.

The silence among the crowd was broken with gasps of shock as Anon’s fortifications were blown away from within the structure by Twilight’s magic. Pinkie and Dash look on with jaws agape at the superweapon their foes had produced.

Held above your figure by Twilight’s magic was the most massive snowball anypony had ever seen in their lives. It was too big to be even referred to as a snowball anymore. Too big, too thick, too heavy, and too rough, it was more like a large hunk of a glacier pulled straight from the arctic.

“It’s ready!” You declare triumphantly, holding your arms up to the sky as if you were holding it up yourself. Pinkie and Dash back up trepidatiously at the size of the thing, nothing they could produce would even stand a chance against this monster.

“Take this!” You shout pointing your finger at the enemies you have sentenced to perish.

Twilight groaned from the strain it took on her to hold up the beast, and in the moment she slips up, the ball drops directly on top of you. If it were tightly packed it would have really hurt you most likely, but screaming in fear you barrel down the hill trapped inside the monster you created. The crowd watches on the edge of their seats as the monster rides the arc and breaches the side of Pinkie’s hill at high speed like a whale out of the ocean. A pin could be heard hitting the snow in the moment Pinkie and Dash watched the snow fall on top of them from the sky.

Dash was quick enough to get out of the way, but Pinkie and her cannon were devoured by the monster as you were, the behemoth boulder of snow crashing into the earth and shaking the ground so much that any tree branches holding snow within thirty feet of them were now bare.

The crowd disperses quickly to not be called on to clean up the mess, most bitter that their bits had gone to the lucky few who bet on your victory. But Twilight, Fluttershy, and Dash dig at the mountain of snow to get you two free. They found you two dazed, yet unharmed.

“What is the meaning of this!?” Mayor Mare shouts at you and the others.

You and Pinkie give an embarrassed blush to the fuming mare upon realizing how out of hand your game had gotten. The mayor glares at Fluttershy and Dash, who each quickly become scarce to go back to work.

“All you had to do was clean the snow off the hills,” she growls turning back to the two of you, “Instead you make a spectacle that will surely put us behind this year, and we’ve only been on time once since last year! We can’t even get a streak going until next year now!”

“Sorry Mayor Mare,” the two of you say shamefully.

“Actually Mayor,” Twilight says pulling a checklist from her saddlebag, “According to this we’ve been going 34% faster than last year by my calculations, everypony’s been working so hard that I think this break was well needed.”

“Wh-what?” The Mayor stammers.

“If we go at the same rate next year, we could even make a tradition of it! There are three hills after all, we could have a teamwide snowball fight every year!” Twilight says giddily.

“I--Well--Oh well,” she sighs, “You are the Coordinator after all. I’ll look into this matter later, but you two are still going back to work, understand? Get this snow out of here!”

“Yes, Mayor!” You two say giving a mock salute to her.

Twilight leaves with the Mayor, and she smiles as the two of you shoot a thankful look at her for sticking up for you.

You and Pinkie meet each other’s eyes. Pinkie stares deep into your eyes for a moment, then lets rip the loudest snort you’ve ever heard from her before she devolves into a fit of giggles. You chuckle at this, and then you’re full on laughing with her at the hilarious situation you put yourselves in.

You don’t know what made you do it, but you wrapped your arm around her tightly and pulled her close to you as you shared each other’s mirth. The smell of her strawberry hair, the way she taps her hoof against your chest as she struggles to breath from laughing so hard, it makes your heart skip a beat. This mare was in fact the epitome of fun, and you were glad to share that fun with her today. It seemed anytime you were with her your day became a blast.

Your laughter as you make to get out of the snow makes you stumble into Pinkie’s Party Cannon, and it fires off a volley that to your horror heads straight for poor Fluttershy.

It was as if the sky itself had ripped open.

You weren’t Anon anymore, you were Luna once more. And to Luna’s shock she found herself rooted in place, unable to move, unable to use her magic once more. How did this happen!? She lingered in his mind too long and it’s fighting her once more somehow!

The snowy landscape of Ponyville had been replaced with a fiery, desolate wasteland with lava spitting violently from the earth. In the distance a pillar of pure green energy radiated from the earth, and as the deafening sound of the destruction this light wrought bellowed in her ears Luna spots a figure rising from the center of the column of energy.

“RRRRRRAAAAAAAGHHHH!” The beast bellows in pure fury, a hulking abomination of muscle and power that looked… like Flutershy?

Whizzing past either side of her at breakneck speed were two blue streaks of light speeding towards the monster Fluttershy had become, and they were none other than Anon and Rainbow Dash! But their manes were a brilliant spiky blue, and they bore the tattered remains of a gi and armor, respectively.

The two traded titanic blows with the monster, and try as they might she demolished the two at every turn.

Managing to blow the beast backwards some distance they press their backs to one another, and a blinding energy enveloped their forms.

“GALICK--”

“KAMEHAME--”

“HAAAAAAAAA!”

The beam rips across the sky lighting its surroundings as if a small sun had entered the setting, but to Luna’s amazement the monster repels the attack with near ease as it goes to assail the two once more.

The two make a hasty retreat, Luna had no clue how they were to escape with the beast tailing them so closely. Why did Anonymous’ mind show her this battle?

Luna realizes why far too late as Anon and Rainbow blow past her, and in that moment Luna and Anon lock eyes as he gives a smug smile to her.

“Have fun Luna!” He yells as he and Rainbow fly quickly past.

The last thing Luna sees is this Fluttershy rear back her hoof and connect with her face.

“Good morning sis--Oh my! You look terrible!” Celestia says concerned as she rushes to the side of her stumbling and haggard sister.

“It’s nothing sister… I’ve just come down with a terrible migraine.” Luna says dismissively as she slumps her head next to her breakfast.

Despite her horribly aching mind she is lost in thought about her past experiences with Anon’s mind. The first time, she acted too forcefully, and was punished. But this time, she didn’t act at all, and was punished anyway? A sneaking suspicion arises within her that he's been consciously aware of her actions this whole time, and has been toying with her. But that’s impossible! No pony has ever shown awareness of her presence unless she made herself known!

Luna does not bother trying to bring this matter down to a science. The next time she and Anon cross paths, she is getting to the bottom of this, once and for all!

Author's Note

I am actually really surprised I knocked out this chapter in one night! I just hit a really good groove and kept going till 3am I suppose lmao
This is by far the most fun I've had writing a chapter so far, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did!