The Spy Who Hugged Me
by GaPJaxie
First published
A collection of short stories, based on ten prompts given to me by FiMFiction.
A collection of short stories, based on ten prompts given to me by FiMFiction.
The Evil League of Evil
A request by KMCA:
Changelings, Sirens and Windigo's have been in a shadow war for the ability to feed on Equestria, a pony discovers one of their battlegrounds.
Inside a shadowy conference room, inside a menacing corporate skyscraper, which was itself inside a black arcane spire, which was itself built within the borders of an evil empire, nine figures sat.
“Ruining friendships is not enough,” Chrysalis said, pounding her hoof on the dramatically lit onyx table. “The ponies must adore us so that we may feast on their love!”
“Love? Don’t me laugh,” Adagio Dazzle, still in her human form, let out a dismissive breath, and flicked her fingers as though to brush Chrysalis away. “Love is unstable. Inconsistent. Rare. Chaos and disharmony on the other hand… sorry,” she chuckled, “the other hoof, are easy to come by and persistent. A far better source of power. We should turn the ponies against each other.”
“Yeah!” said Sonata Dusk. Adding, “Evil music is the worst, which means it’s the best.” The purple one was there too, whatever her name was. She didn’t say anything, but the shadowy room did make her look very sinister.
“This proposal is not aggressive enough for the windigos,” said Aanakamigishkaang, the Windigo Queen, one of three. “I say, we invade Canterlot and Manehatten. The changelings can suck out their love until only hate remains, and with that hate, we cast them into eternal frost!”
“And ruin three years of good public relations?” Thorax asked. “We’ve got the ponies tricked into thinking I’m a nice changeling. Did you know that in some of their polls, I’m voted Best Princess?”
“You’re a stallion,” Adagio said, with a long sigh. “How are you a princess?”
“That’s none of your business,” Thorax said, with an upturned muzzle.
“He takes it like a mare,” Chrysalis said, with a slow drawl.
“Mom!” Thorax blushed bright, his wings buzzing. Outraged, he snapped: “I told you to respect my lifestyle.”
“And I told you to get a job.”
“I have a job,” he shouted, as the changelings and windigos cooed and jeered. “It’s being your assistant, because without me you kept sending telegrams to Celestia warning her of our evil plans. Threats against Canterlot, remember that?”
“Hey, don’t be embarrassed,” Adagio Dazzle said, her voice a sultry purr. “If you take it like a mare, I’ll give it like a stallion.”
The two nearly came to blows then and there, until two massive fists hit the table, and the resulting thunderclap cowed them all into silence. They all turned to look at the ninth figure in the room, the one at the head of the table, the only one who had not yet spoken.
“Gentlebeings,” Tirek said, “this infighting is getting us nowhere. If we are to accomplish anything today, we must come up with one act of supreme villainy. One evil scheme to show the world that Equestria, the nation of friendship and magic, is nothing more than a nation of prey. A weak nation, with weak friendships. A nation that has lost the will to fight!”
Then he said, “Don’t you agree, random changeling drone who has been in the background the whole time?”
And the random drone, who had been there the whole time, pulled off her mask to reveal that she had been Princess Twilight Sparkle all along. “Nobody suspects the changeling of being a secret pony!” she shouted.
Then she kicked Tirek in the groin.
As the room stood frozen in shock, Twilight, the action hero, lept into heroic action! She flipped over the table and crushed Chrysalis under it, then punched Throax so hard he flew back into the Windigoes and scattered them like bowling pins. Hooves flying, punches and kicks going every which way, she knocked down the sirens, flipping the purple one right over her shoulder and into the wall.
“Don’t ever let me catch you playing hookey on high school again!” she said to the purple siren, whose name was still unclear. “An education is the most valuable gift a young creature can receive.”
Then, in through the door, burst Twilight’s nosey neighbors from Ponyville, who kept filing Homeowners Association complaints about her crystal palace. “I knew you were evil!” Twilight shouted, dropkicking the first mare right though…
Twilight awoke midway through snoring. Her head bobbed like a lure on a fishing line, and a sharp gurgle escaped her throat.
She was in her throne room, sitting on the chair itself, two royal guards on either side of her. She’d nodded off in the middle of the day, and, she noted, drooled on herself a little. She attempted to brush it off with a hoof before anyone noticed.
“I was meditating,” she told one of the royal guards, who had not asked. “So uh… anything happen while I was… reflecting on the secrets of the universe?”
“Just paperwork, Your Highness.”
“No villains or anything?”
“No,” the guard said. “Just more paperwork. And I believe you have some meetings scheduled.”
“Meetings about anything important?”
“I don’t think so, Your Highness. Would you like me to summon your secretary to be sure?”
“No,” Twilight said. “If it was important she would have woken me.” After a moment she added. “No news is good news I suppose.”
Silence hung in the throne room. The guards continued to stare straight ahead.
Once she was sure the guards weren’t looking her way, Twilight mock-punched the air and whispered under her breath: “And don’t let me catch any of you in Equestria again!”
That's the Tooth
A request by Boneywings:
Unicorn Horns: Unicorns don't technically have horns. Like narwhals, they have a tooth that grows out of their heads.
Maybe unicorns can actually channel magic through all of their teeth, but don't because casting magic with your mouth wide open makes you look silly. Maybe unicorns go to the dentist for "horn" care, have to brush their horn, etc. Maybe this could be a sort of secret to non-unicorns, not because unicorns are trying to keep it a secret, but because unicorns assume it is common knowledge..
One day, Rarity slipped and fell down the stairs of her boutique, and landed on her horn. She stumbled outside, called for help, and her neighbors whisked her to the Ponyville Hospital, where she was diagnosed with a linear horn fracture.
When the news got out among her friends, panic set in. “What do you mean, Rarity’s horn is cracked?” Fluttershy asked, her hoof flying to cover her mouth. “Will she ever cast spells again? Is she crippled?” Applejack took off her hat when she got the news, her expression grave, saying only, “Tell it like it is, doc.” Rainbow and Pinkie Pie both cried, then later denied it.
Rarity, for her part, laughed. “Oh, you poor dears, I’m touched, but I don’t know where you got this notion that a unicorn cracking their horn was serious, or even life threatening. With modern medicine, it’s no more severe than a broken leg. I’ll have my horn in a cast for a few weeks and be right as rain.”
“But…” Pinkie Pie asked. “With your horn covered, how will you, you know. Open doors? Sew dresses? Pour tea into your overly fancy teacups?”
“You all seem to manage,” Rarity said, a light mirth to her words to disperse her friends' gloom. “Oh, don’t make a fuss. I’ll use my teeth, I’ll be fine.”
Despite her insistances, her friends did make a fuss, and insisted on one of them walking her home from the hospital. Rarity immediately selected Fluttershy as the party in question, and only a few hours after the news broke, the two were walking side by side, with Rarity’s horn in a large and vaguely cylindrical cast.
“Oh, but it really isn’t very flattering,” Rarity said, pointing at the frankly enormous thing on her forehead. “I suppose I shall simply have to live with it in the meanwhile.”
“It seems like it might get in the way,” Fluttershy replied, and when they reached the Boutique, she was quick to hold open the door for Rarity. “If you tried to use your teeth the earth pony way, I mean.”
“I suppose it would,” Rarity only reluctantly agreed. “So inelegant.”
The inside of the Boutique was chilly and damp, and undisturbed from the way Rarity left it when she rushed outside that morning. “Oof!” Fluttershy said. “The autumn air is really getting in. Would you like to start a fire?”
“That would be lovely,” Rarity said, moving towards the fireplace in the back of the shop.
Only when Fluttershy saw the logs stacked in the fireplace did it occur to her that Rarity, being a unicorn, might not have a mechanical lighter, or matches, or any other sort of firestarter that a pegasus could use. She would be used to having her horn, and so might have no way to warm her house. “Oh,” she said. “Do you want me to run to town for some matches, or-”
Rarity craned open her mouth like a snake, her teeth glowed, and with a deep rumbling sound, she belched a stream of red-hot fire directly onto the hearth, setting the logs ablaze.
Fluttershy blinked once, then again, and into the stillness that had come over the room, she asked: “What the f-”
Family Matters
A request by Jake the Army Guy:
The first time Big Mac brought Sugar Belle to the farmhouse.
Imagine an invisible line, draw along the ground.
On one side of that line are Big Mac and Sugar Belle, who have come to Sweet Apple Acres so that Sugar Belle can meet the Apple Clan, and come to know the family into which she will soon be wed. Both are nervous, yet both are smiling, pressed into each other's shoulders, their joy overflowing into the world around them.
One the other side of the line are Granny Smith, Applebloom, Applejack, and approximately 237 other earth ponies, all of whom are part of the extended apple family. All eyes are on Sugar Belle, hundreds of them boring in, the gazes of the young, the old, the wise and the foolish, the welcoming and the hostile. All of them watch.
“So,” Granny Smith said, “you pregnant? Because the wedding was kind of short notice.”
“Granny!” Big Mac shouted, his face flush. “How dare you?”
“We’re not sure,” Sugar Belle said, her tone bright and untroubled. “But I did throw up, so we figured, better safe than sorry.”
“Sugar Belle!” Big Mac turned, his mouth hanging open.
“That’s a good sensible mare you got there, Big Mac,” Granny said, with an approving nod. “You want an apple family apple fritter?”
“Only if you eat some of this pie I brought!” Sugar Belle produced the treat with a flourish. “I heard there was a baking contest, and I mean to hold my own.”
“She’s one of us!” A pony in the back shouted, and the whole apple clan applauded as one.
That night, as they lay in bed side by side, Sugar Belle said to Big Mac: “I think your family likes me.”
Silence. He rolled over away from her.
“You’re mad, aren’t you?” she asked.
Writer's Block
A request by Equestrian Sen:
Rarity discovers The Writer's Block, also known as The Writer's Cube. It is a large, metallic cube of mysterious origin.
“It’s terrible,” Rarity groaned. “Simply terrible. I’ve been trying to write my memoirs, to immortalize my story, my many adventures. But I have…” She held a hoof to her head, as though she might faint. “Writer's block!”
“Oh,” Fluttershy said, after a hesitant pause. “What… part are you getting stuck on?”
“Well,” Rarity demurred, “it’s not so much that I’m getting stuck on it as that the front face prevents me from reaching my typewriter. You see?”
She gestured to her desk, where an enormous metal cube -- at least eight feet on a side -- rested on top of the remains of her desk. The word remains bares emphasis, for of course neither her desk nor any of its contents were capable of supporting what must easily have been more than ten tons of metal.
Ink, the blood from her slain pens, ran in rivulets over the wooden splinters, the broken shards. A single, solidary typewriter key rested on the floor before the carnage, miraculously face up, and correctly oriented. It was “S.”
“Oh!” Fluttershy’s eyes and wings alike went wide. “Oh, uh. Oh, uh. Oh.”
“Uh,” Rarity supplied on Fluttershy’s behalf, her voice dry. “Indeed.”
“Have you, um…” Fluttershy stared at the crushed desk. “Uh. Actually. What… how did. Where did this come from?”
“Writers block? Nopony really knows.” Rarity shrugged, her tone so light it was almost whimsical. “It simply arrives when it wishes, and writing may not continue until it departs.”
“You can’t just… write somewhere else?”
“Well.” Rarity’s voice was soft, and she gave a helpless half-shrug. “Some writers do find that a change of venue spurs the creative process, but I regret that I am not one of them. No, my writers block follows me wherever I go.”
“Like…”
“Through the wall, dear.” Rarity mimicked a penetrating motion with two hooves. “Once, I attempted to write at the local coffee shop, and it took out two laundromats on its way to intercept me. Not to mention, when it actually landed in the coffee shop itself, it crushed a hipster who was in the seat across from me. But he was hogging all the electrical outlets, so nopony made a fuss over it.”
“Goodness,” Fluttershy said. “I had no idea being a creative pony was so difficult.”
“It is a great burden,” Rarity agreed. “To bring true creativity into this world is a tremendeous undertaking.”
“Is that why you write so much fanfiction instead?”
Rarity froze. She blinked. Then she rose from her seat, and pointed at the door. “Get out.”
“But I just-”
“You heard me!” Rarity snapped, again indicating the door. “Out. Out! It’s an art form, Fluttershy! It’s an artform and I won’t have it mocked in my store.”
“It’s making the cartoon character kiss,” Fluttershy muttered, stalking out of Rarity’s boutique. The door bell jangled behind her, and the door itself swung back and forth several times before finally coming to rest.
Rarity sat back down, with a sharp hiss of breath. “The absolute nerve.”