THE ALL-POWERFUL BALL OF TENNIS.
"So. As you may know, your existence has only become known to the public in the past week. Do you have anything to say about that, Miss Izzy?"
Izzy shook her head, keeping mind not to shake the tennis ball off of her horn. Now that would be bad.
"And you are aware that nopony knows who you are, where you're from, what you need, as long as you--"
Twilight got smacked upside the head by the invisible hand of the always-watching copyright ninjas. She rubbed her cheek. "Ahem. as I was saying, nopony knows what your personality is. Not even me! Not even you! Not even the sleep-deprived author writing this story that really should be getting some good night's sleep before his midterms tomorrow!"
Izzy raised a brow.
"Do you know what that means, my student?"
Izzy shook her head.
"It means that you are a blank slate. Do you know what we do to blank slates around here?"
Izzy shook her head... slower.
"We make them not blank."
"Uh--" Izzy's hooves flew over her mouth. "Oh, wow, I can talk now!"
Twilight smiled, holding back what she was about to say about brainwashing. "Yes, you can talk now. It means you're growing as a character! And we already know why we wear tennis balls on our horns, right?"
Izzy nodded, more enthusiastically this time. Unfortunately, the tennis ball on her horn bumped off, resulting in her horn letting loose a solid beam of complete and utter destruction, aimed directly at Twilight.
Unfortunately, our dear former protagonist was caught in the blast and subsequently banished to a black hole.
That left Izzy. And her horn.
There was a reason why unicorns wore tennis balls. Over the past decades, it'd been learntededed-ed that unicorns have steadily been gaining magical strength generation-over-generation, and Izzy's? Well, Izzy's generation was the first one where this strength had become a problem. Not even traditional magic limiter rings could stop those out-of-control horns! Not even the Slicer-Dicer-Horn-Cutter-Offer 9000, offered by Flam Industries for the low, low cost of the horn that it cuts off of you! Buy one now, and pay with your horn later! Side-effects may include: Becoming edgy, running away from those you know and love, joining the ranks of an airheaded evildoer who wants to take over the world, becoming edgy, betraying said evildoer who wants to take over the world, and returning to society a changed pony but folks will still be scared of you because of your scars, both physical and mental.
We do not speak of what happened to Flim, by the way.
Oh wait, this story's supposed to be a comedy? Well, by all means, let's get the ball rolling!
Izzy gasped, looking out the hole in the wall where Twilight once stood. Out there, amidst the fallen rubble that was once the upper floors of Canterlot Castle, were other unicorns!
Worse yet, none of them wore tennis balls! Why didn't they, when it was mentioned mere moments ago that unicorns wore tennis balls?
Because they don't know yet.
Yet.
"CITIZENS OF EQUESTRIA." Izzy screeched through her megaphone. "I HAVE NO IDEA WHO I AM, NOR DO I KNOW WHO ANY OF YOU ARE, BUT IF YOU ARE A UNICORN, BY ROYAL DECREE YOU MUST NOW WEAR TENNIS BALLS FOR SAFETY."
man. I should go to sleep. I spent like three hours working on study guides and stuff leading up to this.
"Like this?" A stallion asked, every inch of his mortal coil being thoroughly coated in tennis balls. Except for his horn.
"No, not like--"
Another death-laser shot from the stallion's horn, immediately vaporizing Kween Crispalist just before she could invade with her army of changetato chiplings.
Izzy glared at the stallion. And then she realized her tennis ball wasn't over her horn.
Meanwhile, in the middle of a nondescript black hole...
"Hey kid," Twilight didn't bother turning her head. "What are you in for?"
"I have no idea, but I once ate glue."
Twilight shrieked, backing as far away as possible from the stallion. "Y-you monster! Get away from me!"
Y'know, this story doesn't actually feel as off-the-walls insane as my fics normally do.
Weird.
So anyway, with Twilight now gone, the only known current threat to Equestria vanquished, and a random citizen also banished to the same place Twilight went, that left Izzy as the sole ruler of Equestria.
Luster Dawn the pony-turned-human raged on the other side of the mirror portal that she was banished into by Twilight. Principal Sunset Shimmer facepalmed.
Now then, let's get back to the character we've got on that cover art of ours that so far might actually have appeared less often than advertisements for Flam's OnlyFlams account.
"Ahem." Izzy tapped on the conveniently-placed microphone in front of her. She replaced the tennis ball on her horn. "Now, as you may know, you have just witnessed not one, but two instances of unicorn magic getting out of hoof. How many of you unicorns down there wear limiter rings around your horns?"
A good number of hooves shot up.
"And how well do they work?"
A small pop sounded off from somewhere near the back of the crowd. The force of the resulting laser beam thrust the unfortunate mare straight into the ground, where she emerged on the other side of the planet and is now rapidly accelerating toward the speed of light.
"Exactly my point." Izzy pointed a hoof at the tennis ball on your horn. "While I am unaware of the whys or hows of it, I achieved sentience less than a week ago, and almost from the beginning, I've had a tennis ball on my horn. Princess Twilight Sparkle had one as well, warning me that these are the only devices standing between us and total annihilation. I think it has something to do with the composition of--"
"Okay, geez, just because you're purple doesn't mean you get to ramble like Twilight Sparkle!"
Izzy ignored the screams as she 'accidentally' let loose Barney the Purple Dinosaur into the crowd.
And now, because the author has run bone-dry of ideas at the moment and only has midterms on his mind, he shall now detonate this story universe.
...
...
Every single tennis ball in the plane of reality in which this story resides in spontaneously vanished, along with limiter rings, totems, boat anchors, voodoo dolls, etc. that could possibly be used for the purpose of limiting magic. Izzy's eyes widened at the charge building on the tip of her now-exposed horn.
and then everything go boom lol.
Author's Note
Folks only see to know about OnlyFlams, but what happened to FlimTok, a business started by Flim, brother of Flam and the resident newly-minted eldritch god? Well, to explain that, we'll have to take a trip back in time... to the before days.
Back in the before days, Flim and Flam were two simple brothers, doing honest work for not very much money. They were street sweepers, you see, sweeping streets for the wealthy Apple Family. Sweep, sweep, sweep, was all they knew, but it was enough.
But as time moved on, so did they. Eventually, the profession of street sweeping was no longer enough to sustain the two brothers. They had to do something; be something.
And so, the brothers turned to technology.
Flim, the slightly older of the two, decided to look into the rapid rise in interconnected networks, known now as the "conworks". He had little knowledge in the operations of conworks sites, but nevertheless pushed on. Eventually, he'd cobbled together a simple video-sharing platform that allowed short "FlimToks" to be shared, each one being a short, often comedic video. He knew that he'd struck gold.
Unfortunately, the next day he transmutated into Cthulhu 2: Electric Boogaloo and vanished from the mortal realm. Only Flam, his hard-working and courageous brother (who is, by the way, strikingly handsome), was left.
Naturally, being handsome as he was and surrounded by equally-stunning mares and stallions of all shapes and sizes thanks to his intense charisma and dealings with clients for the Apple Family, Flam would decide to build on the work of his brother, creating OnlyFlams--a conworks site dedicated solely to the posting images of Flam and his fellow ponies... viewing these images came at a price, however.
~~please help my brain cells have collapsed in on themselves~~
