"This Can't Possibly Be That Hard, Right?"
A First Time For Everything
XIXIXIXIXIXIXIXIX
A one-shot My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfiction written by
ShadowWeaver
XIXIXIXIXIXIXIXIX
"This Can't Possibly Be That Hard, Right?"
'Twas a fine afternoon in the majestic and royal mountainside castle town known as Canterlot.
As per usual, a plethora of ponies went about their daily businesses, selling the fruits of their labour, be it actual and literal fruits grown straight from the gardens and farms, or well-tailored clothes for the many nobleponies of Canterlot. Many of the ponies chatted amongst one another, either to boast about their social status and wealth, discuss the current politics of the Equestrian continent, or to simply catch up on old times, ready to whittle away that wooden block known as time to get to the memories that lay beneath.
But for our dear Princess Celestia?
"OH SWEET MERCIFUL... ME! I'M SOOOOO BOOOOOORRRRED...."
...'Twas a day that was more mundane than dirt, or bad coffee... or dirt.
The Princess of the Sun was, as always, buried ten leagues underneath a Pangaea-sized mound of paperwork, each and every leaflet droning on and on about taxes, and health care, and new laws that require her approval to be passed, et cetera, et cetera, so on and so bloody forth; most of the documents were from last night itself, the time that Princess Luna, Princess of the Moon, could have finished at least half of the paperwork, if not all.
But instead, she chose to shirk her responsibilities and leave it all to her big sister so she could play more of her "video-games".
Princess Celestia sighed, slightly agitated that her younger sister had not even bothered with the long, monotonous duties she was reluctantly assigned.
*KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!*
...Even worse, the several Royal Guards that constantly intruded upon her in her study room did no help in completing the tedious work before her.
"Enter." The pony on the other side of the door must have heard Princess Celestia's meek groan, for the door was then sent ajar. Celestia glanced over to see her young alicorn niece, Princess Cadance of the Crystal Kingdom, step inside the study with a worried look on her face.
"Aunt Celestia?" The niece began. "Are you alright? You seem a bit... disheveled."
Ohoho, Cadance. 'Disheveled' is quite the understatement. If anything, Princess Celestia was far beyond disheveled. She was near her breaking point.
"Really?" The monarch of Equestria started, her bland and placid tone shrouding the thick and oozing sarcasm underneath it. "I had no idea."
"I think you should take a break, Auntie," Cadance suggested to her aunt.
"I'm afraid that's out of the question, Cadance," Celestia responded. "I still have much paperwork to get done."
"Surely a ten-minute break couldn't really hurt, right? Besides, you do look like you need it," Cadance informed her, a sincere and warm smile upon her muzzle. The Sun Princess churned her niece's words over in her head. While there was indeed logic laced within the sentence, Celestia still had to care for the many ponies of her proud continent of Equestria. She could not afford to pull a Luna and disregard her duties entirely.
...Oh, but why not? Like Cadance said, ten minutes couldn't possibly be that detrimental to her responsibilities, now could they?
"Very well." With mixed feelings about getting up and leaving, which she felt grateful and joyous about, and leaving her responsibilities behind, which she felt slight pangs of guilt, Celestia vacated her study room with her niece and entered the Princess's master bedroom. The very room was styled to be incredibly large and even more incredibly high, thus allowing Celestia to fly and give her wings their necessary exercise without having to alert the Guards.
The room was as grandeur as ever: large circular bed on one side of the even more circular room, dresser drawer with mirror across the bed, large beanbag cushion in the middle of the rug that holds her Cutie Mark, and a dark brown coffee table next to the beanbag chair.
But Celestia raised her eyebrows at the sight of what was on the coffee table.
A large gray object sat atop the table, with a large portion of it being as black as night, and in front of it seemed to be both a slab of gray plastic with strange square buttons on it and a little oval-shaped object, flat on the bottom, yet rounded on the top, with a little wheel in the middle of one side. Underneath the table was a small gray rectangular prism with a few more buttons on it. Trailing out of each of the gray objects were a multitude of strange black shiny rope, each rope being as thick as Celestia's horn. The ropes connected to a strange khaki-hued object with holes in it, each rope plugging into each hole. The khaki object also had rope of its color coming out of it and connecting a plastic-guarded hole in the wall.
"Cadance?" Celestia began. "Wha... what is that?
Cadance turned her head and saw the array of items that Celestia was talking about. "Oh! That's known as a 'computer', auntie."
"Com... computer?" Celestia turned her head and cocked her brow up in confusion. "What is a 'computer?' More importantly, how did it get here? It wasn't here last night."
"Well, a computer is basically an intricately-built machine. It is mainly used to take information, do some work on or make changes to the information, to make new information. Nowadays, they are very powerful machines that are able to do billions of calculations every second. Most ponies have used a personal computer in their home or at work. Computers are useful for many different jobs where automatic functions are useful," Cadance explained. "As for how it got there, it seems your sister, Princess Luna, brought it to you, maybe to apologize for shirking the paperwork and leaving it to you."
"Oh...." Celestia's wise and powerful brain began making sense of the information Cadance had given her. 'So to make amends for her mistake, Luna gave me one of her 'computers'....'
"May I... use this computer?" she asked.
At the question, Cadance turned her head towards the white alicorn, her eyes raised in surprise.. "You? Use a computer?" She said questioningly. "This I gotta see."
"What do you mean by that?" She asks.
"Well, Auntie, it's just that you're a bit...." Cadance's eyes shifted back and forth. "old."
"Old? I take offense to that, dear niece. You make it seem like I can't use it."
"I never said that... I said that it's rather hard to see you use a computer."
"I see..." Celestia huffed, downtrodden by her own niece's words. The pink alicorn, sensing her mistake, walked over to Celestia in an attempt to remedy the fault she had created.
"Please don't take that the wrong way," she coaxed. "Er... how about this?" She then suggested: "I'll go and get us some lunch, and you figure out how to use that computer. Does that sound okay?" When Celestia's mood did not lift, Cadance then added, "I'll bring you your favorite~"
The sing-songy voice, along with the promise of her choicest of luncheons caused Celestia to perk her ears up and smile rather hopefully. "You mean... the last of the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness?" She asked. At the nod from her niece, the pure-white alicorn felt instantly giddy on the inside: that very cake from the Sugarcube Corner sweet shop of Ponyville was critically acclaimed by ponies who had laid their eyes upon its sweet and delicious glory. Just simply thinking about it had Celestia struggling to keep her mouth from watering profusely.
Apparently, our princess really loves cake... not that anypony could blame her.
"Very well," Celestia said. "I'll figure out how to use this machine in the meantime."
"Alright! I'll be back with our lunch!" Cadance cried as she left the Princess's bedroom and headed for the kitchens...
...which was about twenty-three flights of stairs below.
'That'll give me just enough time to figure out how to use this contraption,' Celestia thought coyly. She walked over to the computer and placed her royal flank upon the beanbag chair in the room. She slowly scooted closer to the computer and started examining it with the keenest of eyes.
"I don't care what Cadance says; I can learn how to use a computer, even if I am over a thousand years old. This can't possibly be that hard, right?"
My my my, Princess. You have not the foggiest of what you are in for....
Celestia bent low and saw a strange button on the small rectangular gray box beneath the table. The button was square, with a circle on it. The circle was incomplete, the open end pointing upward and having a vertical line in it. Celestia tentatively pressed the button with a hoof, and the sound of a small whirring engine emitted from the device.
"Gah!" She exclaimed as she recoiled slightly from the sudden sounds of the gray box. Her eyes soon discovered a glow from the gray glass screen on her table. She saw that the glow was a small button with the same symbol as the box beneath her. The screen lights up, and a small jingle rings out from the box-object next to the screen, which soon reveals two square-shaped pictures in the middle of it. The right, obviously, read "Luna", and the picture depicted the lunar sister's Cutie Mark.
The left one read "Celestia", and the picture above the title showed the aforementioned pony's Cutie Mark. "Interesting," Celestia commented. She looked at the little white arrow on the screen. It remained motionless. Celestia, in a slight sign of desperation, started experimenting with the controls for the computer, trying to figure out how to move the arrow onto her picture. After accidentally nudging the oval object on her right, the arrow moved a bit to the right, the same direction Celestia nudged the object in. Celestia noticed this and started glancing back and forth between oval object and arrow. After a second or two, she made the connection. She nudged the object until the arrow was pointing at her Cutie Mark. Her hoof accidentally slipped on the object due to its sleekness, and the top-left side of the object descends a tad with a small click. The two pictures disappeared, and revealed the word "Welcome".
"Interesting..." Celestia hummed again as the screen vanished to reveal another screen, this one with a plain black background. On the left of the screen were several icons, each one adorned with a pony that symbolized what each items stood for: one icon dubbed "iTunes" had a picture of the legendary DJ pony, Vinyl Scratch; another icon called "Google Chrome" has a white pegasus pony with a sleek light blue mane styled in a bowlcut, and a red, yellow, green, and blue orb for a Cutie Mark.
Celestia noticed a letter on the side of the computer. The note was full to the brim with small words. Judging by the formality, it seemed to be a letter, and from Princess Luna, no less. Celestia magicked the note over to her eye level and read the sequence of words:
'Dearest sister,
If thou hath gotten this far, congratulations; we were rather expecting thee to giveth up the second thou saweth thy home screen and wouldst cometh to us for help. But apparently, thou hath prevailed.
The screen beforeth thee is known as the account screen, and thou art capable of customizing it with the picture or artwork of thy preference. The previous screen, the one with the two square pictures, is known as the home screen, as we have mentioned before. The three icons known as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer art called "browsers", and they are used to browseth and maketh use of the Internet, the very thing that holdeth music, movies, videos, chat forums, and games, all whilst bringing ponies together, no matter what the distance.
Oh, and on a side note: We suggesteth that thou refraineth from using Internet Explorer: 'tis pure mule dung, in our honest opinion.
Now, for the basic tutorial of thy brand-new computer, the HP Pavilion p7-1370t Desktop PC.
The large rectangular object on the table beforeth thee is knowneth as a screen. This is the general display of what thou art doing on thy new computer. The screen is connected to the box beneath the table. That box is known as a "computer engine" 'Tis what projects the image upon the screen.
The small oval object is known as a "mouse": its main function is to selecteth objects and gaineth access to said selected object by double-clicking it with the small chuck of space at the upper-left side of the object known as the left mouse button. The right mouse button brings up several more options for thou to selecteh from, depending on the object thou hath "right-clicked" upon. The middle mouse button, or "mouse wheel", is used to scrolleth down to alloweth thee to readeth a long block of text that cannot fit upon thy screen.
The two small boxes next to thy screen art called speakers. They blasteth sound upon thy eardrums, be it music, sound, or vocals. Thou can adjust thy speakers' volume with the little knob on the left speaker. Turneth clockwise to increaseth the volume, and turneth counter-clockwise to decreaseth the volume.
The long tablet-like item is called a "keyboard". Upon it is a swarm of keys that are designed for thee to typeth with. Most of the left side of the keyboard has letters of the Equestrian alphabet, whilst the right side consists of the number pad, as well as thy arrow keys and basic commands, such as "delete", home", "end", et cetera. The "Shift" and "Caps Lock" keys art able to changeth the letters from lowercase to uppercase:
RATHER LIKE THIS!
'
Celestia felt a very slight shiver traverse up her spine; it was like those three words had literally been shouted directly into her ears by Princess Luna herself. Regardless of the eerie feel she got from those words, she pressed on.
'With this basic tutorial now complete, we hopeth that thou enjoyeth thy new personal computer, dear sister!
Most sincerely,
~Princess Luna
P.S.: Do NOT go on the website of Ponychan. At all. Ever.'
Celestia raised a brow. 'Why would she be telling about this "website", saying that I shouldn't be allowed on it? I'm the Sun Princess and her older sister, for pony's sake! I bloody well ought to have the right to go on this site!'
Regardless of the issue, Celestia's horn started to glow its brilliant golden light. The keyboard and mouse, now encased in the same glow, began to hover slightly in front of the Princess of the Sun. Celestia placed the mouse down upon the mat it was resting upon and moved it over to the "Google Chrome" icon, clicking it once. When nothing happened. She clicked again. Same result.
"Come on!" She howled, her telekinesis slamming down on the left mouse button multiple times at a rapid pace. A large white window with the word "Google", written in blue, green, red, and yellow letters, soon appeared upon the screen.
However...
"WHAT THE HAY?! WHY ARE THERE, LIKE, SEVENTEEN OF THEM?!"
She soon saw that that large white window was soon accompanied by a multitude of more large white windows.
Celestia moved the pointer on the screen over to the "X" and clicked it, closing one of the windows. She grinned. "Ha-hah! Taste my click-tastic wrath, puny windows!" she said maliciously as she clicked the "X"s on each and every window until one and only one remained. "Finally!" She cried in rejoice.
She looked at the white bar at the top of the screen. the left side of the bar had a magnifying glass, while the right side had a blank star. Inside that white bar was the string of letters "". Underneath the colorful word "Google" was a search bar with the buttons "Google Search" and "I'm feeling lucky" beneath it. With her magic, Celestia moved the mouse pointer towards the Google search and clicked it once. A blinking black vertical bar appeared. With a smirk, Celestia typed in "Ponychan" and clicked the "Google Search" button.
Within a millisecond, the results for the word appeared. Celestia clicked the blue result at the top.
Silly Lu-Lu, You can't tell me what to do.... Celestia thought as the Ponychan webpage appeared. At the top read:
"What is Ponychan?
Ponychan is a simple image-based bulletin board where anypony can post comments and share images. There are boards dedicated to a variety of topics, from Neighpanese animation and culture to video-games, music, and photography. Users do not need to register an account before participating in the community. Feel free to click on a board that interests you and jump right in!"
As Celestia browsed the front page, she saw that there were indeed several forums before her, with all of them labeled differently. One had /h/, others were titled /mlh/, /w/, /a/, and-
"/b/?"muttered Celestia questioningly. "What could it be...?" A sudden look of happiness came upon her face. "Maybe the 'b' stands for bananas?" She rubbed her chin with a hoof as she contemplated the possibilities, grinning as the thought of that yellow, narrow, and delicious fruit entered her mind. "Well, I'll never know unless I find out."
She hovered the mouse pointer over "/b/" and clicked it once.
ELSEWHERE
"How... many... more... STEPS?!"
Princess Cadance was sapped of all her energy of having to walk all the way downstairs to get the last of the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness to her aunt Celestia; after Pinkie Pie had swallowed the cake in one massive bite, the Cakes, Cup and Carrot, compensated for their employee's mistake by making another one... and refraining Pinkie Pie from going.
If the alicorn of love was not exhausted from the several flights of stairs, she would have giggled a bit about how the two store owners told her of their worker's ludicrous and upset behavior about how she "Pinkie Promised" that she wouldn't eat it...
...all while ravenously devouring a small stack of cupcakes that were her height...
...in one gargantuan swallow.
"Oh, Pinkie," Cadance huffed as she walked down the large spiraling staircase towards the kitchen. At last - at long last - she reached the bottom of the staircase. She looked behind her and smirked at her spiraling enemy's defeat...
...only to gulp when she remembered that she had to go back up those stairs.
She looked down and took notice of the wings folded upon her sides. She facehoofed at her foolishness. "Of course... I could've just flown here... silly me..." she self-admonished.
With a beat of her wings, Cadance flew down the hallway towards the kitchen. After a minute or two of flying through the castle, with warnings of being careful from the guards that patrolled the halls, Cadance finally made it to the kitchen of the castle.
It was an impressive sight: the kitchen was as large as a house. One wall as lined with silver stove ovens, another wall was lined with silver refrigerators, and the other wall was lined with kitchen sinks. In the center of the room was a counter that was shaped like a cross, the granite counter tops polished to perfection. The linoleum floors were also polished to shine like diamonds. However, Cadance wasn't alone: the only current occupants of the large kitchen were her, the chefs preparing the usually scheduled luncheon of salads and daffodil and daisy sandwiches, and-
"Aunt Luna?" Cadance raised a brow at the sight as she got closer. Indeed, Princess Luna, princess of the moon and second oldest royal sister, was in the kitchen as well, rummaging through one of the refrigerators for whatever delicious confectionery she was looking for.
At least... she was... before Cadance startled her.
"G'ah!" exclaimed Luna, her look of surprise quickly morphing to defensive anger, then calm at who had spoken. "Ah, niece Cadance! How art thou?"
"I'm doing well. What about you?"
"The feeling is mutual for us as well," declared Luna with a smile, disregarding that she was still using Equestrian old speak. "What art thou doing in the kitchens?"
"Getting some cake for Aunt Celestia," answered Cadance. "And might I ask what you're doing in the kitchen as well?"
"Looking for a certain cake as well." Luna's eyes widened a bit before she popped the question: "Doth Tia liketh the new computer we hath given her?"
"Well, I don't know. I think she might be using it. Either that, or she's back to working," replied Cadance, opening up each of the refrigerators in her proximity with her light-azure magic before she found the last slice of the Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness sitting in one of the cooling metal boxes.
"That was we hath been searching for!" hollered Luna. "We thanketh thee, Cadance!"
Cadance's eyes went wide for a few seconds before she said "Oh! You were looking for this as well? I was getting this for Aunt Celestia." The look of sadness on Luna's face made Cadance feel rather guilty. Until an idea struck her like lightning....
"Hey, why not split it in half?" she suggested. "It'd be nice if you two shared the cake!"
"But what about thee? Wouldst thou liketh some cake as well?"
"No." Cadance shook her head as her horn glowed a tad brighter, the cake soon being cleaved cleanly in twain by her magic. "I'm not hungry for cake at the moment."
"Very well," concluded Luna, who brought out two small plates and two forks, one for her and one for her older sister. "Art thou taking the cake up to Celestia?" At Cadance's nod, Luna pressed on, "Shall we cometh with thee so that we may checketh on her and seeith how she is doing?"
Just when Cadance was about to answer positively, a scream from above rang out like a cannon shot.
"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
"What was that?!" asked Cadance, her heart pounding like a blacksmith hammering away at ingot. The sudden shriek made her magic falter, causing her to drop the two plates of Marzipan Mascarpone Meringue Madness, the china shattering into a myriad of pieces as the all-too delicious cake splattered onto the linoleum ground.
So much for that, she thought flatly as a chef immediately cleaned up the mess Cadance had inadvertently created.
"'Twas Celestia!" declared Luna. "Come with us, dear niece!" At the nod and grunt of assent from the princess of love, Luna and Cadance charged out of the kitchen and started flying throughout the labyrinth of hallways to Celestia's royal bedroom.
After the many flights of stairs were flown up until the duo of alicorns reached the solar princess's room, Luna knocked viciously upon Celestia's door. "Tia!" she cried through the door. "Art thou alright?!"
No response.
"Cadance! Open the door, please," asked Luna of her niece, who nodded as she directed her horn at the door. The pink amplifier of magic was pulsating a sky blue, sparkling aura as the doors were flung open by Cadance's magic.
However, after seeing what had become of Celestia's room, they wish they hadn't even bothered.
Cadance and Luna shivered in disgust at what had occurred to the solar princess's master bedroom. The pillows were severely torn, their feathery contents spilled upon the also-torn carpet. The beanbag chair in the middle of the room was also ripped. One of the candles had toppled over, the hot wax pouring onto the ground.
The only other unscathed thing besides the computer was-
"Tia!/Auntie!" cried Luna and Cadance in unison. Celestia was in the (figurative) corner of her circular room, curled up in a fetal position and shuddering violently like she had been caught in a blizzard. She was muttering incoherently, her small eyes darting around the room in either paranoia or madness. Her iridescent, flowing mane and tail were flat and straight, as well as appearing as a dull pink hue.
"Auntie, are you alright?!" pleaded Cadance, who quickly galloped over to her aunt and held her in her arms alongside Luna.
"Bad website... not bananas... should'a listened to Luna.... need... cake..." murmured Celestia crazily, pointing a very shaky gold-clad hoof at the computer.
At last, Cadance and Luna saw what Celestia was pointing at, and gasped.
Everywhere upon the screen was nothing but incredibly obscene and unsafe materials and pictures that the author is too afraid to go into detail about for fear of this story losing its (not-so) sacred "E for Everyone" rating.
"We have warnedeth thee not to vieweth that accursed website!" bellowed Luna at her sister, who was slowly leaking tears out of her fuchsia-colored eyes.
"I know... I'm so sorry," whimpered Celestia, who was being cradled by her own niece as the princess of the moon deleted the browsing history and closed the Google Chrome browser.
"Thou art going to be okay, Celestia..." promised Luna as she shut off the computer. "It shall be alright. This we swear by. Just... do not do it again, okay?" she then implored.
"Mh-mmm," Celestia hummed in assent.
"Very well... now let us take you to bed." With that, she and Cadance levitated Celestia into the air and into her bed, their horns glowing a royal blue and a bright blue simultaneously to lift Celestia altogether. They carefully plopped her onto her bed in the other room and closed the blinds. While Celestia was not remotely sleepy, she closed her eyes and began getting as much rest as her body would allow.
Cadance turned to exit the room, leaving Luna with Celestia. 'I need to tell Shining Armor about this little predicament...' she mentally said.
Luna turned to leave as well... however... she spotted the huge mound of paper that she had shirked last night.
And with Celestia out of commission at the moment, that left only one pony to do it....
"Oh, buck my life...."
Shadow: I'm so sorry for what I've done to you all.
