Login

On the Very Silly Origins of Alicorns

by GroaningGreyAgony

Chapter 3: The Even-Laster Chapter: Arrivederci, Luna (Part 1)

Previous Chapter

Crack!

Twilight winced as she sat on the grand balcony of Luna’s private tower. As the cool evening air rolled over her and the streets of Canterlot far below, she pondered her next move in the game of Unicorn Chess. Luna had played her Minotaur to hex C7, which strengthened her power in the central hexes, but weakened her control of her underpowered Queenside. Was this an exploitable flaw in her defenses, or a trap? If Twilight were to move her Gryphon to B3–

Crack!

Twilight winced again. She was now regretting having brought the bowl of cherries. In any case, her Gryphon was certainly doing no good on its home square…

Luna popped another cherry into her mouth as she awaited Twilight’s move. She rolled the luscious fruit around with her tongue, then broke the skin against her teeth and let the biting sweetness of the fresh juicy cherry flood her mouth. Swallowing the flesh, she rolled the hard woody pit up to the front of her mouth and parked it delicately between her front teeth, just visible between her lips.

Twilight looked up from the chessboard just as she was expecting another crack, and caught Luna’s eyes. Luna’s expression was as flat as the lunar plains, her eyes as impassive as twin moonlets, and the cherry pit was poised between the solid white walls of her teeth, red stained with cherry juice. Twilight got the sense that the first to look away or make a sound would lose this little subgame.

This is so ridiculous, so immature–

Part of her brain kept churning on the game as she kept her eyes locked upon Luna’s. If she moved her Gryphon to B3, it would follow good development principles and help to resist Luna’s strength in the center. On the other hand, If Luna countered with G4, the game might then follow the lines of Konskiy’s Opening, which had limited prospects for the Black player in the midgame. On the other hand–

Luna hadn’t bitten down yet. The silence was about as bad as the act itself.

Twilight drew breath as if to sigh, but then the words slipped out. “Luna, this–”

**CRACK!**

Wooden bits of cherry pit flew from Luna’s mouth and skittered across the board.

“–This is getting… uhm, well, perhaps we can take a little break and talk a bit about your past..?”

Luna smiled, slowly masticating the shattered cherry stone with an ear-grating crunch. She then swallowed the bits, making Twilight wince twice as hard as before.

“Ah, Twilight, ‘tis good that you are taking such an interest in times long gone,” said Luna. “‘Tia did relate that she told you something of how She came to be, taking her corporeal form from three of the heroes told of in the Hearth’s Warming pageant. And thus you may surmise my origin as well.”

“So you were born of Commander Hurricane, Chancellor Puddinghead, and Clover–” Twilight took a deep breath.

She had always dreamed of somehow traveling into the past and meeting the legendary Clover the Clever, one of the most learned mages of the classic era, and now Clover in a sense was sitting before her… playing chess in the most annoying manner Twilight had ever encountered. It was much as if Luna were employing childish psychological distraction games to unnerve her opponent, and while Twilight was reluctant to suspect a Princess and Goddess of the Moon of such a scurrilous level of play, she was forced to consider the possibility. Perhaps Luna was playing at a level that made sense from her perspective, but just came across as unbearable rudeness? Perhaps the insides of cherry stones were tasty to Alicorns?

Twilight shelved that idea for later testing, and met Luna’s eyes again. “What was it like for you, before you Ascended?”

Luna smiled serenely, “I do remember much of what things were like, before the Merging and our Ascendance. Did you know, by the way, that this in truth is the origin of the ‘Royal We?’ As in ‘It is Our desire that all kneel before Us?’ This custom arose from the confusion ‘Tia and I suffered as we tried to make sense of our conjoined selves. Even today, our separate personalities betimes assert themselves, none truly lost or entirely overcast.

“I do remember how we resisted Ascension on the terms in which it was presented to us. But ‘Tia, bless her heart, did guide us in a manner not clear at the time, but which showed much wisdom in hindsight…”


There was silence in the throne room, as the three heroes–Clover the Clever, Commander Hurricane, and Chancellor Puddinghead, stared in surprise at the newly-crowned Princess Celestia, a being who combined in one the powers and persons of Princess Platinum, Smart Cookie, and Private Pansy. This had occurred in a magical accident in which Pansy, in a burst of uncontrolled flatulence without parallel in history, had flown through the air and struck first Platinum and then Cookie, the three of them becoming catastrophically merged into one being after smashing into the side of Mount Canter.

The crown of the former Princess Platinum, which had been hastily split in the back and formed into a tiara to fit Celestia’s enlarged head, nearly brushed the ceiling as she rested delicately upon the old throne, which would have to be entirely reforged to match her new dimensions. At present, she was not so much sitting upon the throne as wearing it on her rump.

Celestia had just explained, in slow logical steps, that just as there was now an All-in-one-icorn, or All-icorn, whose powers controlled the day, so it must be obvious that there should be one who controlled the night as well, and that Capital-D Destiny, as spelled out in the glowing scrawls that she had inscribed in her crater while calculating, was making its call to the three heroes who now stood before her.

“Princess…?” said Clover slowly. “What happened to you–to all of you–seems to be the very rarest of magical accidents. You want us to try to replicate it? Who would ever agree to risk their lives attempting to do it?”

“There are only three in the land who are powerful enough to have even a chance to survive the process,” said Celestia. “To come directly to the point, it is the three of you.”

The three ponies present gasped in varying levels of dismay.

“What!” shouted Commander Hurricane. “You want me to mush up my awesome brains and rock-hard body with Little Miss Wabble-Gut Egghead and Chancellor Random? No. Bucking. way!” She stood, preparing to storm literally out of the room, but found her gaze transfixed by Celestia’s deep magenta eyes.

“I never thought you would back down so easily from the greatest challenge of your life, Commander,” said Celestia quietly.

“I don’t back down from challenges, but I’d never send any of my troops on a suicide mission, and I’m not gonna fly one myself! Particularly when it’s so lame and gross!”

“But this is the very opposite of suicide. Your consciousness will enter into a new and powerful body, and you will gain an extremely long lifespan in which to perform amazing deeds. At present, you know only a hint of how awesome you can be.” Celestia stared the Commander in the eye. There was a hint of Private Pansy there, which grew stronger, which only made it more horrifying when those terrible eyes suddenly opened wide and locked on and bored a hole straight through the Commander’s soul. Celestia’s gaze had become the eye of Hurricane’s inner storm.

“I—Uh—” fumbled Commander Hurricane, aware that she was losing the moral advantage. “But—”

“This will be the very bravest of the bold deeds you have performed to preserve the lives of those under you.” Celestia held her gaze as if the two were chained together by the eyes. “You will surely have the courage to heed the call.”

Hurricane finally tore her eyes away and stared at the floor, shuddering. “Alright. Alright. Just… give me some time, okay?” She shook her head and jumped out a nearby window, leaving a foggy contrail of defeat behind her.

Celestia turned her head to face the Chancellor, and smiled. “And surely our brave Chancellor Puddinghead is willing to serve the cause…?”

Puddinghead, who was halfway to the door, suddenly barked forth a hysterical laugh. “Oh, you’re the best joker ever, Your Highness! But I’ve got a Tingle Ear that made it hard for me to hear you, and a Tappy Hoof that tells me I left a dozen buns in the oven—!” She slowly, step by step, backed further away.

Celestia’s expression did not change, but her mane flared out like an afro-supernova, bathing the room in harsh and deadly light. Puddinghead froze in her tracks like an escaping prisoner dazzled by a searchlight beam. “Uhm… Uh, what’s that happening around your head, Your Highness?”

“It’s a HorrAurora,” said Celestia in complete deadly calm. “I get one when something disastrous will happen in the future because some very foolish ponies won’t do a certain thing now, like heroically transcending their mortal bodies for the sake of the nascent land of Equestria.”

Puddinghead’s face fell, and her hair followed after. Her body twitched, buzzed, poofed, and crackled with a huge discharge of Fun Energy that zapped spontaneous black balloons into the air. She slumped to the floor.

“Okey-dokie, Loki,” said Puddinghead. “I’ll… I’ll try. Let me just… notify my next of kin and write down all my recipes.” She slunk out the door.

Celestia turned to Clover, who was skimming frantically through enormous scrolls that described the various punishments mandated by law for failing to obey a capital-P Princess. Aware of Celestia’s gaze, her head suddenly snapped up, her mouth twisted in a horrible grin and her eyes squinting due to the brightness of the HorrAurora. “Your Highness, I’m afraid that, due to losing a rather large bet recently, I have almost no funds for continued testing—”

Celestia smiled patiently. “You need have no worries there, Clover. The treasury will cover the expense. Additional taxes will be fixed upon the populace if necessary. I cannot stress enough how important it is for this event to be made to happen.”

“Ahahaha! Yes. Well, I for one would never shirk from saving Equestria from certain disaster, certainly. But… I am concerned about the certainty of it. I am curious as to how you arrived at these conclusions, and wonder if you could show me your calculations, with a suitable period reserved for peer review and study…”

Celestia sighed, but still smiled gently. “My dear Clover, I would be happy to show you my calculations. We would have to adjourn to my crater for a period of several weeks, as the runes I used cannot readily be transcribed onto two dimensional surfaces. But I fear that you will find that certain steps in my calculations, while plain enough to me, and very true, will escape your present understanding. Your traditional logic and reasoning skills are simply not up to the task.”

Clover snorted slightly, and stood up to her maximum height. “I beg your pardon? I can’t quite believe that, Your Highness. Logic and reason are the bedrock that underlie all magic and mathematics!”

“Ah, Clover. It’s nice that you have such confidence. But surely you must have realized by now that for every sufficiently-powerful formal system of reasoning, there are facts that nonetheless cannot be expressed within that system…?”

“I—what? How can that possibly be? Leafscuff and Snowpate have been successfully reducing all of mathematics to its logical foundations for the past ten years! They’re almost ready to publish their third volume of the Principles—”

Celestia’s eyes twinkled. “Well, let us start with a smaller example. What about your research into set theory…?”

“Oh, it’s going very well, if I do say so myself—”

“I see. Now, Clover dear, please consider a certain set—the set of all sets that do not contain themselves. Does this set contain itself?”

“Huh? Well, no, such a set could not have itself as a member, except… that then it would have to… Oh. Oh, no.” The color drained from her face; her breaths grew short and rapid. “No, no NO!” She wailed in anguish and suddenly vanished in a very noisy teleport.

Alone in the throne room, Princess Celestia permitted herself a small smile as the HorrAurora slowly deflated like a whoopie cushion that had successfully delivered its payload. She stood up and stretched, the throne remaining attached to her rump like a butt-helmet, and walked slowly to the window, keeping her horn pointed forward so as not to ram it into the low ceiling. She looked out upon the rolling green landscape, and in her mind saw an overlay of things that would, could, or should be. So far, things were going according to plan.

It would be inconvenient to have to fly back to Mount Canter all the time, to the crater that had spawned her. It made sense to set up a temporary meditation and calculation room here in the present castle. She’d see to that later today.

She did a barely perceptible little dance of excitement as she sensed the potentialities in the temporal chains that stretched away into the unseen dimensions around her. Her little sister was on the way. She could hardly wait!


The three Equestrian Heroes met upon the Pegasus parade grounds the next day, Clover with masses of charts and graphs, Puddinghead with a cartload of baked bean casseroles, and Hurricane with a massive hangover and a trio of attendant guards. Clover and Puddinghead were each equipped with a cloudwalking spell, and the cart was supported by repurposed party balloons.

Clover, her bloodshot eyes squinting against the daylight, referred to her clipboard. “So, to reconstruct the original incident, you, Commander Hurricane, made Private Pansy obstruct her… ahem… anus with an enormous cork, utterly disregarding any rules of medical hygiene, or indeed common Equine dignity…”

“But she liked–” began one of the guards before Hurricane elbowed him in the ribs.

“…and then,” continued Clover, “in further violation of all sensible research on healthy nutrition, you made her subsist on a diet of beans for a week and a half…”

Hurricane rolled her eyes. “We had a lot of beans, Clover,” she said. “And a lot of bits were riding on it, as you know. Speaking of which, we should talk about your next installment–”

“And then!” said Clover. “And then, you applied a flaming torch to her posterior regions, and removed the cork…

“Hey! Don’t give me that look!” said Hurricane. “You were the one who made that bet with me, that I couldn’t light a fart. Well, I did it!”

“That’s very nice for you, but it places us in an awkward position. Three awkward positions, to fully state the problem. Because Pansy then sailed off over the horizon, according to your account, and then her head contacted, and became lodged within, the prominently presented posterior of Princess Platinum as she bowed to greet the sun. The results I can only surmise, but it looked exquisitely painful. The two then sailed away at an estimated thirty-one to thirty-three miles an hour–”

“And that’s when I got the tickle-tail feeling!” said Puddinghead. “I knew something earth-shattering was going to happen and Smart Cookie thought that maybe we should try to make it happen faster and get it over with and boy did she ever get gotten over with! You should have seen her eyes bug out when–”

“Right,” said Clover. “We’ve established that Princess Platinum’s horn struck the earth at some point, and that she and Pansy tunneled under the ground for five thousand and ninety-three feet until they emerged under Smart Cookie, whom you had doing a sort of pose–”

“The Duck Hat Bath dance, and I gotta tell you she was a natural.” said Puddinghead. “It was almost as if she wanted a divine force to burst out of the ground and bury itself up her poo-pucker, ‘cause that’s just what she got. Her tail stuck out straight and she pulled her hat down over her ears and yelled–”

“Yes, that’s all in the report, in copious and even nauseating detail.” Clover sighed, and tapped her clipboard. “They then sailed into the sky, describing a parabolic path until, as you so bluntly put it, ‘Pansy ran outta gas’ and they plunged down into the side of Mount Canter. It wasn’t until later that Hurricane’s patrols discovered the crater they’d made on impact, and the astonishing fact that they were not all stricken dead in some last ditch moment of respect for physical law and common sense, but had been combined into a new organism–the All-in-one-icorn.

“And now, we are tasked with recreating this event, to bring forth an All-icorn of the Moon. Using our own bodies. And I must tell you all frankly, I am not looking forward to this experience. The prospects are not at all pleasant, and even with the promise of immortality, the deadly risks we face seem incommensurate with the payoff.

“On the other hoof,” Clover continued, “I have spent the last night under… great emotional distress.” She had in fact been under a blanket, hugging a small stuffed animal companion named Mr. Tough Shirt and rocking back and forth in great mental pain at having the foundation of her faith in mathematics yanked away from her. “And I find today, at least in my present frame of mind, that I do not much care if I smush my body into a paste while trying to achieve the revolting and impossible. So let’s get started. Hurricane, is this cork of the proper dimensions?” Clover produced a tapered object that looked as if it were meant to mute a tuba.

Hurricane cocked her head and gave Clover a nasty stare. “Is this supposed to be a joke?” she said. “If so, you can take that thing and ram it up your–”

“Right, you’re supposed to insert it rectally. We need to try to replicate the conditions of the initial occurrence as precisely as possible for the best chance of success. Puddinghead is prepared to provide the beans, making them as palatable as possible, and will spend the next week and a half practicing her Duck Hat Dance. I will practice bowing to the sun and conduct research into the most effective available varieties of, uhm, protective unguents, creams and lubricants. We’ll reconvene here in a week and a half for the first attempt. Any questions?”

“Yes,” said Puddinghead. “Is life under the Windigoes really that bad?”

“Huh?” chorused Clover and Hurricane.

Puddinghead’s voice dropped low as she approached them. “I mean, I know that people think I’m crazy ‘cause I’m all random and I love surprise parties for no discernable occasion and I use inflatable pants in case the Gemsboks ever launch a surprise invasion… but I’m not this crazy. You suss what I mean? Maybe we should just play along a bit, hush hush, make our preparations, and just bug out and let this new Princess cool down about this whole thing, and come back here in a few years? We can set up in a cave in the old country and I can dig up Nanna’s old mud pie recipe and you two can just flex your pecs or invent a new school of math while we wait–”

“Yeah. Yeah! Go on!” said Hurricane.

“This is actually promising!” said Clover. “Please continue!”

“I certainly would like to hear more!” said Princess Celestia.

The three ponies froze as still as statues. In the center of her fear, Clover was impressed. It was no easy task to teleport in complete silence, particularly when bearing so much mass.

“It’s nice that you care so much about each other to be proposing a relaxing vacation,” she said. “Perhaps once our little project succeeds, there will be time for such a thing! But until then, I do prefer that you remain close at hand, and entirely focused upon this exceedingly important task, with no distractions. Oh, you needn’t try to bow! This is just an informal visit to see how things are getting along. I’ll leave you to it!” She vanished, much as if she were not an All-icorn of flesh and blood, but a horrid specter that could read the innermost secrets of your heart and pluck the whole thing out, if she so desired.

“If there are no f–further questions,” said Clover, “we’ll reconvene next week.” She fainted, and her body fell through the cloud cover, leaving her four enchanted hooves protruding from the surface like sad little purple hockey pucks.

[To be continued in the very lastest chapter ever!]

Return to Story Description

Login

Facebook
Login with
Facebook:
FiMFetch