Horse Play
On-Stage: Let’s try viz-yoo-a-liz-ay-see-awn!
Spike: and then let’s try not talking like that. seriously, why?
On-Stage: And…you’re skiing!
Raspberry Beret: Whoosh! Whoosh! Oh, it’s so snowy today! Brr. I’m getting chilly, ha ha!
Celestia: Should I get you a blanket?
Raspberry Beret: I fear it would catch the wind and slow me d-
On-Stage: All abooooOOOArd!
Raspberry Beret: or you go, that’s fine too…
On-Stage: The Ponyville Express is leaving the station! (train sounds)
Spike: so, he does know how ‘-ation’ is supposed to be pronounced. pretentious git.
Celestia: It is? I don’t see anything.
Raspberry Beret: Let’s be weeping willows in the wind! We are strong in the face of adversity, yet supple as we bow to fate.
On-Stage: Well? What do you feel?
Celestia: mmmm, nothing. Oh! The classroom floor under my hooves! Does that count?
Raspberry Beret: I think I see what’s going on, if I might… it’s for a good cause, it’s for a good cause… break character?
On-Stage: Gasp! Outr-r-r-r-r-r-r-rageous! …proceed.
Raspberry Beret: Princess Celestia, with all due respect and just a touch more, what do you think acting is?
Celestia: Fr-friendship?
Raspberry Beret: While that can certainly be a part of it (looks at On-Stage) or not, (back to Celestia) acting is, in its essence, a deception!
Celestia: What!? But why can’t we be honest with our audience?
Raspberry Beret: Because The Illusion demands it! You will be playing yourself in the upcoming performance, but your co-stars don’t have that luxury… and that curse! The story is of how you raised the sun for the first time, an event I believe Starswirl the Bearded witnessed. Will he be playing himself?
Twilight: No, he refused to do anything that wouldn’t allow him to be stuffy at ponies. One of my students, Sandbar, is playing him.
Raspberry Beret: And should this young actor simply come out onstage…
On-Stage: Whassat?
Raspberry Beret: …and announce that he is not really Starswirl, what would happen to the authenticity of the play?
Spike: (makes a fart sound while giving a thumbs-down)
Celestia: So acting is friendship…and pretending?
Raspberry Beret: In a sense.
Celestia: …Oooooh! So you were pretending to be skiing and in a box and on a train! You’d think a millennia-old princess with actor friends would know something like that. Okay, let’s try again, and this time, I will…act!
(she gets better. but she still bad, play’s in trouble.)
Spike: Good luck. Nopony’s gonna volunteer to try to tame that.
Rarity: No pony, indeed.
Spike: You’re really gonna make me go out there because of the pronoun I used?
Pinkie Pie: It’s current year, silly. Pronouns are serious business!
Spike: hm topical. Fine. But I’ll need a few things. Pinkie, AJ and Rainbow, I’ll need that box of bowling pins from the prop area. Starlight and Rarity, a couple pieces of the broken sun from under the stage.
all: On it! (they leave to gather the things. Spike isn’t there when they get back)
Applejack: In hindsight, we should’a figured he might do that.
Rarity: Don’t fret, I’ll get him back. (ahem) Oh, no, I’m being slightly inconvenienced on the stage! If only some short dragon could help me!
(Spike rushes onto the stage, finds no Rarity in trouble and frowns)
Spike: i’m starting to think this crush that’s gone unrequited for years is more trouble than it’s worth. H-hey, everyone! I’m your opening act, Spike! So, a family of four walks into a talent agent’s office…
(audience boos)
Spike: Good news: free food! (he eats a tomato) Bad news, they’re booing a kid who was clearly scared to be on-stage.
On-Stage: Whassat?
Spike: Get outta heeeeere!
Celestia: Pinkie, Rarity, Twilight and…
Applejack: Hat Rack.
Celestia: Of course, Hat Rack. Go calm the audience. That’s a four-pony job, probably. (they go to do just that, Applejack muttering “ah knew she didn’t know mah name!”) Starlight, do you have a copy of the script? (she dooooo) Spike, you narrate.
Spike: Oh sure, that’s totally a thing I’m prepared to do.
Celestia: Fluttershy will be playing the lead role. (Fluttershy panics) Visualize with me. You’re a princess. You’re regal and wise and all the stallions think you’re the hottest mare ever. But you’ll never let them touch you. Because you don’t have time for all that. You’re a career mare and that life gives you fulfillment. You’re a better princess than your sister, but too modest to remind her, except when she needs it. You have a lovely singing voice. You’re shipped with a green guy and it caught on for some reason. You just got your first you-centered episode.
Spike, from the episode as it actually went: Where the hay was this during the acting class!?!
Spike: Once upon a time, before ‘Celes-cha’…sorry, ‘Celestia’… Equestria was suffering terrible hardship.
Luna: heh-heh-heh. he said ‘hardship’.
Spike: Raising the sun was so hard…
audience: How hard was it?
Spike: …th-that it took five unicorn sorcerers, and Starswirl the Bearded…
Starswirl: Whoooo, Starswirl rocks!!
Spike: …to do it.
(audience laughs)
some mare: You call those ‘great sorcerers’!?
Twilight: Oh no. The audience is being rump-holes to children, or at best, young teens! What do we do?
Celestia: Spike! Improvise! (Spike glares at her)
Spike: Thanks, that’s super-helpful. (sighs) Well, historically, it was great sorcerers. But since Twilight hasn’t found the spell to bring the real ones back, along with a world-threatening evil yet, we’ll be using actors. You know. Because it’s a play. Put on by students who took time out of their lives to entertain you and celebrate princess Celestia. I mean, you knew what this was, right? What were you expecting? Did you think we cloned the real ancient sorcerers who went to a farm upstate over a thousand years before anyone you know was born?
mare: n-no…
Spike: And yet here you are, disrupting a play because the costumes, made to look like the tattered rags ancients often wore…by the way…don’t look perfect from where you’re sitting. Like a yak! Like a yak would do! Is that what you wanna be? A yak? Huh?
Smolder: hey, yona, you gonna take that?
Yona: no, dragon has fair point. yak do kinda suck.
Ocellus: i wonder why i didn’t shape-shift into my character.
Spike: You feel good about what you did here tonight? Because you shouldn’t!
mare: i-it was just an obser-…vation…
Spike: Yes, it was. Here’s another observation: your plot is flabby and awful!
mare: i-ve been too tired to…i mean, i was just saying…
Spike: No, shut up! All of you! This whole thing has been one disaster after another, and I’m sick of it! I’ve been dealing with Twilight’s stress, the rest of the crew’s stress, Rarity’s stress because I love her…
all of Equestria: We know!
Spike: …Fluttershy’s stress at having to be in a play, despite being friggin’ FLUTTERSHY!! Not to mention the students’ stresses about performing! Six!! Six students, all with anxieties about tonight! And you! Heckled them! Worse than that, you weren’t even funny about it! Now Maud, she was a heckler worth pausing a show for. What you said, though? That was just dumb and boring and you all should be ashamed for laughing at it. (the crowd hangs their heads) …twits. Anyway, on with the show!
Starlight: i think spike needs a break.
Twilight: he hates those.
Spike: No, I don’t!
Twilight: In all the commotion, I forgot we don’t have a sun!
Celestia: We’ll play charades (makes it look like Fluttershy raised the sun)
audience: Whooo, it’s that thing we see every single day!
Thunderlane: Fluttershy can raise the sun!
Noteworthy: We no longer need Celestia!
some mare: Fluttershy for new princess!
Shoeshine: Depose the old princess! Revolution!!
Celestia: Oh, dear.
Twilight: Also, that’s not what playing charades is.
Celestia: Judging by how many flowers the audience threw after I quelled their pitiful excuse for a revolution, it seems our play was a success.
Fluttershy: i’m just sorry you never got a chance to be in it.
Celestia: you’re so kissable when you’re me…! I mean, you shouldn’t. I never felt I had to be on-stage to b-
On-Stage: Whassat?
Spike: I thought I told you to get outta here!!
Celestia: I just wanted to bond with you all over artistry. And I did, so…that’s pretty neat.
Twilight: Thank you for saving our play, princess Celestia.
Spike: (grumbles)
Celestia: Of course. But from now on, none of you will have to call me ‘princess’ anymore.
all: Huh?
Celestia: No. Because I’m giving up the throne to become an actress, full-time!
Luna: The hay, you are! I am not becoming the princess of all time so you may pursue your hobby, at which you were said to be very bad! In fact, should you give up your status as princess, I will do the same. Perhaps Cadance is not yet ready to rule all of Equestria, but nor am I! I…I cannot cope with such stress! It is too much, I tell you!! Too much!!!
Celestia: …I was going for a ‘gotcha’ moment.
Luna: Oh.
Starlight: Wow, the government is a lot more fragile than I thought.
Celestia: But since I convinced all of you I was giving up the crown, perhaps I’m not such a bad actress after all.
Twilight: …what?
Celestia: In fact, a thousand years ago, I was quite an accomplished actress. Acting like I was bad at it was perhaps my greatest performance yet!
Twilight/Spike: You could act this whole time!?! (scream of profound frustration)
(the others laugh, a curtain closes on the episode)
Rarity: Where did that red curtain come from? Who drew it? Is… is our reality a play!?
(ending theme plays. the cast credits appear)
Raspberry Beret: Wait, wait, wait. The students are listed in the credits, but I’m not? They didn’t even say anything! Get my agent on the phone!
On-Stage: Here you go.
Raspberry Beret: *Not a pantomime phone!!*
