The Things Princess Luna Can Do While Waiting for Helldivers 2 Servers to Become Available
“What do you MEAN the ‘servers are at capacity?’ You’re a AAA game! I paid 40 bits for you!”
Princess Luna, with her mane in a ponytail and a sweaty, unwashed hoodie reading “GAMARE” worn crookedly where her regalia should be, stares angrily at her computer monitor. Her eyes are bloodshot, her room is dark, and she hasn’t slept in days.
“Sister? Are you alright?”
Luna turns around at the sound of a familiar, gentle-sounding voice and the creaking of her bedroom door. Her horn glows with magic as she removes her headset that makes her mare ears look vaguely like cat ears for some reason.
“What?”
“Are you doing okay? You’ve barely left your room in days, and you were yelling at nothing.” Celestia scrunches up her nose before waving her hoof in front of her face as if to clear the air. “Also, it reeks in here.”
“Well, I am TRYING to play the hit new video game, Helldivers 2™. Unfortunately, the game seems adamant about not letting me actually start. You know, the one thing a video game is expected to do?!”
“And why is that?”
“Apparently, there are too many other ponies playing. The servers are full.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about these ‘servers’ of yours, but it sounds to me like you just need to be patient.”
“I’ve been patient! I’ve been trying to play for hours!”
“Then perhaps it’s time to get up from your desk and take a break. There are countless things you could be doing instead of–”
“Whatever, mom.”
“I am not asking you to not play the game. I’m simply suggesting that you do something more worthwhile while waiting than yelling at a screen.”
For a while, Luna says nothing. After staring at her sister with annoyance for an uncomfortable amount of time, she closes her tired eyes and sighs.
“Fine. I suppose I shall try to complete some of my royal duties while other ponies have their fun.” She stands from her Secretlab TITAN Evo 2022 Stealth Gaming Chair™ and mumbles something beneath her breath as she trudges towards her bathroom. “But mark my words, sister. As soon as that queue pops, I’m gonna save Super Equestria from those darn Terminids.”
“I think the community should be focusing on the Automatons, actually.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing!”
First and foremost, Luna takes some time to get cleaned up. Throwing her hoodie into a hamper filled with weeks of unwashed clothes, she hesitantly climbs into her luxurious shower fit for a princess. Using her four-in-one body wash, shampoo, conditioner and toothpaste made for the dedicated gamers of Equestria, she manages to clean herself all at once.
Unfortunately, drying is much harder than washing for most ponies. Having a fur coat does that to a mare. Thankfully, she’s an alicorn princess with enough magical prowess to dry herself in seconds. Less thankfully, she forgot that doing so makes her coat puff up beyond control. With a sigh, she decides to just roll with it.
The next thing on her agenda is to clean her bedroom. She could technically get a member of the castle staff to do it for her, but then they might see something they shouldn’t. With a defeated sigh, she gets to work thoroughly cleaning the dark, disgusting mare cave.
Her bed is the first thing on her list of things to clean. Despite being the “Princess of the Night,” she prefers having a smaller bed. Unfortunately, a younger Luna decided a crescent-moon-shaped bed frame would be cool and fitting for a mare like her. An older Luna wishes said younger Luna would have shut up.
She should really get that thing replaced.
Well, with the bed made and the sheets replaced, she supposes she may as well start picking up her trash. Cans of G Fuel™ and half-eaten bowls of ramen litter her bedroom, and despite thinking that she’s used to it, she ends up gagging while throwing it all into a garbage bag. Perhaps she should take her sister’s advice and work on her hygiene.
With the floor cleared off, why not vacuum? The floor sure as heck needed it, if the rapidly filling vacuum bag is anything to go by. She even discovered a few previously unknown stains here and there on the floor.
Might as well clean those up, too.
With both her room and herself fully cleaned off and a sufficient amount of time killed, Luna excitedly looks back to her screen. Unfortunately, there appears to be no change in how full the servers are.
With an aggravated shake of her head, she decides to do the unthinkable: leave her bedroom. After hesitating for longer than a princess probably should, she dons her regalia and steps out into the castle hallway.
It’s time to do her nightly duties.
With a determined gait, she trots through the halls of the castle, hanging lavender like she used to do before deciding to become a gamer. With that done, she makes her way to the kitchen to give the chefs a helping hoof. They don’t really need it, but she wanted to learn how to cook a while ago and only really stopped trying when she got her PC.
After making a full sixty-two-course meal, she thanks the (extremely confused) chefs for their time and sets out into the castle halls once more.
Next stop, the dream realm.
She’s glad she decided to pay it a visit, as a few dozen children seem to be having nightmares pertaining to major life changes. As the self-proclaimed guardian of the dream realm, it’s her responsibility to protect these children and guide them towards a proper path during their waking lives. Maybe if they’d all stayed at home playing Mareio™ instead of trying to have slice-of-life-style adventures every Saturday for approximately twenty minutes they wouldn’t have these sorts of issues.
Kids these days.
With the dream realm secured, Luna decides to keep up the momentum.
“Why stop with the dream realm?” she asks herself. “I might as well keep doing my princess duties while I’m up and dressed for it.”
With a determined, somewhat cocky smile on her face, Luna departs from the castle, ready to face Equestria as a whole in the dead of her glorious night. She knows exactly what she wants to do.
With minimal effort, Luna accomplishes a few things. She fixes the broken plumbing in Canterlot’s sixth district. She solves a border dispute between the Crystal Empire and Yakyakistan. She ends all war and establishes world peace. She solves world hunger. She eliminates all known diseases, leading Equestria to the greatest golden age it’s ever known. She makes a new set of Elements of Harmony just to prove that she can.
She goes to some place called Maretime Bay and befriends six ponies that are weirdly disliked for some reason. She survives some sort of fallout, sees the rise and fall of an unnecessary factory in Cloudsdale, raises a young Rainbow Dash to adulthood before tearfully letting her go to live her own life, becomes Nightmare Moon again and then heals herself, invents the Internet 2, and most importantly, touches grass.
Once she’s finally done with all of that, she realizes just how tired she is. Perhaps it’s finally time to go home and get some sleep.
With a content smile, she lazily opens her bedroom door. Before she can turn on the light, she realizes that the room is already lit by a screen on her desk. Her eyes sparkle as she realizes that she forgot her purpose for leaving her room in the first place.
With joyous laughter, she rushes to her desk and throws herself into her chair, ready to finally kick some alien flank.
“Servers at capacity. Please try again later.”
Luna sits silently while staring at the screen. The silence is eventually broken by the creaking of her door.
“Sister? Is everything okay?”
Seeing the look on Luna’s face as she slowly turns around, Celestia decides to gently close the door and walk away. She barely takes two steps before the sound of a computer being thrown violently against a wall rings out through the castle.
Author's Note
I came up with the idea for, drafted, and edited this story all while waiting for the Helldivers 2 servers to become available. Even now, as I write this author's note and prepare to hit the publish button, I still haven't gotten into the game. 
As always, I appreciate any and all feedback!
