In Which Applejack Becomes A Princess
Across Equestria, a new day dawned. A day that was going to be a lot different from all the ones that had come before it...
Twilight Sparkle rubbed her eyes and looked blearily around her room... something wasn't quite right. She blinked, did she have too much cider the day before? Was she dreaming? She pinched herself. OW! Definitely not! Cautiously she made her way across her room, why was everything so red? And that SMELL what was it? She dreaded what she was going to see when she reached the window. Had Discord turned evil again? Was Chrysalis back? Some time-bomb curse of Sombra's?
What she hadn't expected to see was a vast apple that occupied most of the sky. Equestria's familiar yellow sun was gone, and instead it had a new, red celestial body, complete with stalk. It radiated an alarming red light and somehow managed to fill the air with a chokingly sweet smell.
"Y'hoo diggity haw dang ol' tractors, Twahlaht!"
Slowly Twilight turned around as she heard the voice behind her. She hadn't seen this alicorn before, had she? Leather accoutrements, orange, blonde hair and... an apple cutie mark.
"Applejack?! Why are you an alicorn?!"
"G'yawh hum dang goldurn zim bippity apples!" Applejack explained.
"...I'm going to need Rainbow Dash to translate this."
A few minutes later, Rainbow Dash was listening intently to Applejack.
"-zop boop cousins banjos h'yuck bipple!"
Rainbow Dash nodded, "She says Princess Celestia got tired of being in charge and handed rulership over to her, and she apparently has a lot of plans for changes to make around here."
"Yippity zop." Applejack said, and nodded, before she cast a spell, turning all of Twilight's books into apples.
"Applejack!" Twilight cried out, "You can't abuse your powers like this! You're drunk! You're mad because of magic and wings and a horn!"
"Glip gloop hippity booble," Applejack disagreed, and zapped Rainbow Dash, turning her into an apple tree. She also threw a bolt of magic outside that hit Vinyl and Octavia as they were marvelling at the strange new sun, causing them to lose all knowledge of music that wasn't country.
Twilight sat down heavily and sighed, "At least when night falls, Princess Luna can fix some of this damage."
"Zop boop jim-bob apples." Applejack said, and grinned.
Twilight looked up, "What do you mean Princess Luna quit, too? Who's HER replacement?"
Just then, night fell.
In the sky, a single giant cake rose.
Twilight spent a few moments taking it all in, then summarized the situation succinctly: "Well, we're fucked."
Alicorns Pinkie Pie and Applejack had barely been in power for a day before tensions between the two were reaching a breaking point.
"Yip bap y'all tractors!" Applejack yelled at Pinkie Pie angrily, in the middle of the Ponyville town square, as they stood below the new moon, a giant, ornately-glazed cake that somehow managed to shine pinkish light all over the countryside. She was pointing a hoof at the sky.
"But cakes are waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than apple pies~," Pinkie Pie retorted, and did a cartwheel, leaving a trail of glazing in her wake.
"H'yuckitty zap bipple!" Applejack threatened.
Pinkie Pie stopped in her tracks, "You're going to banish me to the MOON?!" Her eyes grew wide and suddenly she was on her knees, clutching at Applejack's regalia with her hooves, "YES YES YES PLEASE PLEASE!" She licked her lips and looked upwards at the cake in the sky, hungrily. Applejack followed her gaze and reconsidered her policy.
"Zim dup hoople gumdrops." She sniffed haughtily, and Pinkie Pie burst into tears.
"...this is just too weird." Twilight said, as she watched, along with a crowd of curious and mildly terrified ponies. Rainbow Dash would've replied that she agreed, but she had been turned into an apple tree by Applejack's uncontrolled and irrational powers. Instead it was Rarity who nodded, "Really! I can't believe Princess Celestia would just abandon us to those two like that! Do you think she really abdicated her powers? It hardly seems like her!"
Twilight rubbed her chin with a hoof, "Only one way to find out. You try to keep those two from levelling all of Ponyville, I'm going to find the Princesses."
And then because the author needed a plot device, Twilight cast a "Finding Princesses And Teleport To Them"-spell.
There was a flash of purple light, and instantly Twilight found herself choking on a dark and smokey atmosphere. All around her, towering shapes were lit by hazy lights, and gouts of smoke were belched forth at irregular intervals. The noise level was somewhere around painful, seeming to consist mostly of the clinking of glasses and loud cheering and jeering.
After a few seconds of disorientation, Twilight got off the sticky strip club floor and on to her hooves.
There were, indeed, a lot of smoking and drinking stallions there, but they hardly seemed to notice her. Instead their attention was constantly focused on whatever scantily-clad mare was currently on stage, performing vaguely lewd motions with a metal pole.
Not for an instant considering her magic to be fallible, Twilight looked around for the Princesses and, indeed, after a few seconds of scouting, she spotted a long horn and tiara rising above the crowd near the stage. It took her stressful and strained minutes to struggle past the stallions to reach Luna and Celestia who were sitting at a table right in front of the stage, it was overflowing with empty bottles and dirty glasses, and Celestia was cheering the current stripper.
"Awsh yeah..." she slurred, "Tak'it off! Show momma whatcha princess gave ya!"
Luna had passed out from drinking some time ago, by the look of it, and her chin was flat against their sticky table, halfway into an ashtray, and she was snoring loudly.
"Celestia!" Twilight gasped, and leapt on to the empty chair next to Celestia, "What's gotten into you?!"
"Twah?" Celestia turned and tried to blearily focus on Twilight, then burst into tears and gave her a sobbing hug, "Twah! It's all so meshed up!" She sniffled and snorted, getting snot and tears on Twilight's hair.
"Princess..." Twilight returned the hug as best as she could, unsettled by seeing her mentor in such a state, but willing to render whatever help she could, "Princess, tell me, what is it? Can I help?"
Celestia continued to sniffle for a few moments and then, very solemnly, told Twilight.
"Now why would she have gone in HERE?" Rarity asked Fluttershy, whose bloodhounds had followed Twilight's trail to the front door of a seedy Canterlot strip club. Fluttershy just shrugged and hid herself behind Rarity as they entered the club. Almost instantly they, like Twilight had, spotted Celestia near the stage(except by now a piece of stripper's lingerie also adorned the princess' horn), and made their way there.
"TAKE IT ALL OFF YOU LITTLE WHORE!" Twilight yelled, sitting next to Celestia, as Rarity and Fluttershy arrived.
"Twilight!" Rarity's eyes widened, "What has gotten into you?!"
"I'M DRUNK AND I DON'T GIVE A SHIT!" Twilight giggled, "IT'S ALL MESSED UP ANYWAY!"
"Um. What's messed up?" Fluttershy asked, "Besides this place."
Twilight fixed them with a look like they were utter idiots. "You mean you two haven't noticed? I mean, I didn't notice until Celestia told me either. But I can't believe none of us did."
"Notice what, darling?"
Twilight leaned forward, grabbing Rarity by her shoulders.
"Rarity. We don't have any fucking genitals."
Solemnly, Rarity ordered a martini. That stripper was starting to look pretty good.
And so, since the rest of the Mane Six, and the two prime princesses of Equestria, were either drunk out of their gourds or turned into an apple tree, Equestria entered a new age under the princesses Applejack and Pinkie Pie.
It lasted for exactly two hours and fifty-seven minutes before they both banished each other to their respective celestial bodies and left Equestria ruler-less.
After talking it over, the remaining ponies decided that leaving such power and magical ability in the hands of a few irrational horses was wildly irresponsible and instituted a bicameral parliamentary system and representative democracy.
Eventually Queen Chrysalis became the first Prime Minister of Equestria.
And that's the story of how changelings got voting rights.
The end.
