To Woo a Princess Chapter 1: Pipsqueak, a my little pony fanfic

To Woo a Princess

D. G. D. Davidson

Chapter 1: Pipsqueak

You can call me Pipsqueak, so long as it's not to my face. I may be short, but I'm a mean son of a nag, and most of the other ponies know it.

Mind you, I'm not claiming that's a good thing. About a year ago, I discovered I needed a crash course in polite manners.

I'm smaller than most ponies because I have short cannons, but short cannons have their advantages: I can jump well, run a long time, and I'm not prone to leg injuries. For my height, I have thick bones and big hooves with good cups, too. I'm not pretty or graceful, but I'm tough. I come from a long line of almost pureblood Earth Ponies: my grandsire once bragged that there hadn't been a Unicorn or Pegasus in our family for fifteen generations. When I was a colt, I never understood why that mattered to him, and, come to think of it, I still don't, but I guess an unbroken record is always something somepony will take pride in.

To me, however, unmixed Earth Pony blood proved a liability, especially when I was little. Most ponies have coats of only one colour, but with all that endogamy in the family, I ended up with some recessive trait that made me the only pinto - white with brown spots - in Trottingham. That made me a target for bullies, and being unusually small didn't help, either. I spent my early years getting knocked around.

Purebred Earth Ponies that they were, my parents were farmhooves, so when a Pegasus screw-up put Trottingham through a drought at the same time news arrived of bumper apple crops in Ponyville, we packed up and moved. My sire hoped to find a steady job with good pay, and I hoped a new town and a new school might mean a chance to make friends and to meet colts who wouldn't beat me up or tell me I looked like a dog.

My hopes were dashed after I enrolled in school and found myself under the hoof of a jackass - no offense to actual jackasses, some of whom are decent folk - named Snips. Looking back, I think Snips, who was runtish himself, just took advantage of the opportunity to pick on somepony smaller than he was. Still, he made my early months in Ponyville a living Tartarus.

Aside from getting beat up, my clearest memory from early foalhood is my first Nightmare Night.

Nightmare Night wasn't a big deal in Trottingham, and my family never celebrated it there: Grandsire didn't approve of the holiday, saying Night Mare Moon was just an old mare's tale, not the sort of thing to fill an impressionable colt's head with. My dam gently pointed out to him that Night Mare Moon had in fact returned from her thousand years' imprisonment and was once again Princess Luna, and that it had been in all the papers. In reply, Grandsire simply snorted and said he didn't much believe what he read in the papers.

Because I couldn't make friends among the colts at my new school, I hung out with the fillies instead, which of course meant the colts teased me even more. About a week before Nightmare Night rolled around, my filly friends told me Granny Smith and Pinkie Pie were taking them door to door for sweets, and that I should come along.

I begged my dam until she gave in. She bought me a cheap pirate costume complete with a plastic eye patch and a rubber cutlass. I'm sure I must have looked absurd, but at that age, when I put on that outfit and pranced around and made faces at myself in front of a mirror, I thought I looked like the scourge of the seven seas, and I imagined Snips would think twice before picking on me if he saw me in that getup.

Nightmare Night was fantastic. It didn't take us long to get buzzed on sugar, and then we played carnival games, pulled pranks, and let a zebra named Zecora scare the hay out of us while telling the legend of Night Mare Moon, the evil princess who roamed forth once a year to gobble up little ponies. But it was fantastic most especially because Princess Luna herself showed up. She was frightening and powerful, even better than the legend. She flew overhead in a black chariot, and thunderclouds rolled in behind her. My first glimpse of her was of her hooded head and fierce, glowing eyes. She landed in the middle of town, transformed her cloak into a cloud of bats, and announced herself with a deafening voice that made a strong wind like a hurricane. Pinkie Pie, who was something like an overgrown filly, encouraged all of us to scream and run away from her. It was a lot of fun, we loved it, and we were too young to realize we were enjoying ourselves at Luna's expense. We were just children, so of course we took any opportunity to scream and run around.

Young as I was, I didn't understand most of what happened that night, though I could piece it together when I grew older. Wounded by our antics, Luna declared that she would abolish Nightmare Night forever, an announcement that left us all deflated. Some foals cried. Nonetheless, we still went to the statue of Nightmare Moon at the edge of the Everfree Forest and poured out some of the sweets from our bags, following the tradition.

The princess appeared at the statue and yelled at us. We weren't sure if she was angry because we were still celebrating after she told us not to, or perhaps because she had decided she really did want to gobble us up after all. We ran like mad and jumped in a bush to hide.

In the bushes, Piña Colada, who was dressed as a ladybug, told me to ask Luna not to ban Nightmare Night. 'Go do it, Pip!' she hissed. 'Go talk to her! Now's your chance!'

Luna had just scared me half to death, so I had no intention of getting anywhere near her. 'You go do it!' I hissed back.

'You're the only boy here,' said Alula, who was dressed as an astronaut, 'so you have to do it.'

'I won't,' I answered. 'She's well scary, you know. She could gobble us up, and she nearly got me at the apple-bobbing.'

'I dare you,' said Piña Colada.

'I double-pony dare you,' said Alula.

I couldn't turn down a double-pony dare unless I wanted to be an even bigger laughingstock than I already was, so I ponied up, drew on as much courage as I could muster, walked out of those bushes, and tugged on Luna's mane with my teeth.

Yes, yes, I know. Every time I tell this story, somepony points out that you should never tug the royal mane. Did I already mention that I don't have the best manners? Anyway, I was just a foal at the time, so lay off.

Fortunately for me, Luna refrained from giving me what I deserved for grabbing her attention by literally grabbing her, and I asked her if perhaps she could come back to Ponyville next year and scare us again, even if there would be no Nightmare Night. That wasn't what I meant to say, but I was nervous as Tartarus, so the words didn't come out quite right.

In a voice so loud she nearly blew me across the meadow, she told me she would reinstate the holiday. I yelled, 'You're my favourite princess ever!' Then I ran to her and hugged her hooves - yes, I grabbed the royal hooves, too - and after that, I trotted back to my friends and shouted, 'She said yes, guys!'

I spent the rest of the evening receiving congratulations for my bravery, and Luna really got into the spirit of things, scaring all the villagers and joining the carnival games. I tugged her tail - I know what you're going to say, so shut up - and poured an entire bag of sweets in front of her, as my offering to Night Mare Moon. By that point, I had a tummy ache from too many sweets, so it wasn't much of a sacrifice.

I had thought that by personally saving Nightmare Night, I would at last receive the admiration and love of my classmates. I was wrong. Alula and Piña Colada were nice to me, of course, but they'd been nice to me already. The colts, and Snips especially, were still jerks.

But Princess Luna had inspired me, though perhaps not in the right way. I decided I wasn't going to take it anymore. I was going to get tough. I started by taking exercise in the afternoons after school, running and jumping and kicking, just to build some muscle. One evening, my dam caught me leaping back and forth over a fence and warned me I'd end up with a 'jumper's bump' if I worked myself too hard at such a young age. I didn't understand then what that meant or how serious it was, but I had short loins and good coupling, so what she predicted never happened anyway.

After a few months, I started getting noticeably stronger, though I was still smaller than my classmates. Once, when Snips hit me, I got up the courage to hit him back. I spun and gave him a solid kick to the nose, cracking his muzzle. He cried and bled all over the schoolyard, and the other children started bawling. Our teacher, Miss Cheerilee, grabbed one of my ears in her teeth and dragged me into the schoolhouse for a long lecture. She sent notice to my parents, so when I got home, my sire gave me a sound horsewhipping and my dam sent me to bed without supper.

I didn't learn my lesson, though, not by a longshot. I had found out I could stand up for myself. At that age, I couldn't see a difference between being strong and being a bully, so I decided that, from then on, I was going to be the bully. Instead of being a weakling, I was going to be the one picking on the weaklings.

Shortly after that incident, I discovered that the local weather manager, a Pegasus mare named Rainbow Dash, had a black belt in Karate. I begged her for lessons, and, unaware of my impure motives, she gave them to me. She was a tough, uncompromising teacher: to put it mildly, she totally kicked my dock. I took my lessons in the evening, and afterwards I dragged myself home, barely able to walk, and fell into bed. My dam was concerned, but she didn't try to stop the lessons; I think she hoped I'd found a constructive use for the violent energy I had used on Snips.

By the time Nightmare Night rolled around again, I was the badhaunch of the school, a holy terror. Nopony wanted to mess with me, though, of course, nopony wanted to be my friend, either. Even the fillies wouldn't hang out with me anymore, so I became a loner.

To my joy, Princess Luna came back for my second Nightmare Night. I dressed as a ninja, thinking the costume would go well with my martial arts training. Everypony else still acted scared of her, but not me. I thought she was awesome, so I followed her around the whole night. Besides, I didn't exactly have any friends to hang out with.

Sometime during that night, I got into an argument with some other colts. I don't remember what we were fighting about, but somehow or other the topic of marriage or something similar came up, and I yelled, 'Nuh uh! I'm going to marry Princess Luna when I grow up, so there!'

Children say things like that, and they don't mean anything. One of my classmates, for example, claimed he was going to marry Miss Cheerilee when he grew up, which of course he didn't. But Luna was an immortal goddess; she would be much the same when I was a full-grown stallion as she was when I was a child.

I met her a few more times over the next several years. Every Nightmare Night, she visited a different town or city in Equestria, and when I was old enough to travel on my own, I started following her, going to each community where I knew she'd be. Most of the time, especially in the big cities, I only managed to catch a glimpse of her from a distance, after which I travelled home in a stew of melancholy and frustration.

When I was in my teens, she came to Ponyville again. Ponyville was so small, it was easy to get close to her and to get a chance to talk to her. I didn't tug her mane this time, but walked right up to her, bowed low, and paid my respects.

'Your Highness,' I said.

She had a coat of the darkest blue. At the ends of her long, slender legs, ornately etched silver bell boots adorned her hooves. Around her neck, she wore a breastplate of ebony inlaid in silver, displaying in its centre a crescent moon carved from mother of pearl. Her mane was a waving mist the rich colour of an empurpled evening sky glittering with stars. Behind her long, elegant horn, she wore, almost buried in her hair, a silver tiara encrusted with black onyx. Her face was solemn and regal, but her eyes were large and strikingly bright; one after the other in slow succession, emotions passed through them like clouds scudding across the moon: gravity followed by amusement followed by sadness followed by a flash of anger.

She was tall, taller than I'd remembered. She gazed down her muzzle at me for a moment, and then wordlessly turned and walked away.

I didn't know what that meant, but I didn't much like it, so I followed her down the street. 'Excuse me, Your Highness. My name is - '

'Pipsqueak,' she said.

'I prefer Pip.'

'It matters not to us what thou wouldst prefer. Tis not meet that a princess should address a mere commoner by his name as if he were an equal.'

'Oh? Since when?'

'Thou wert but a foal when we first graced Ponyville with our presence, wert thou not?'

'That's right. I asked you not to cancel Nightmare Night.'

'We remember. We remember all our subjects, and thou art difficult to forget: we do not recall encountering another pinto since our return from exile.'

I didn't know how to take that. I felt my usual anger rising up, but I suppressed it.

'A shadow lieth on thy countenance, commoner. Art thou troubled?'

'Well, I'd rather not be called "commoner."'

Luna laughed, a wild laugh like the night wind. 'Art thou not common? Verily, with a snap of our hoof, we could have a dozen like thee.'

'You just told me I was the only one like me you'd met.'

She laughed again, and her mane of flowing mist whipped across her face. 'Prettily said. But thou wilt not have thy name, and thou wilt not have thy title. Prithee, what may one call thee?'

'Pip,' I said. 'Just Pip.'

'Pip, then. We grant thee this privilege, but no more. Tell us, young Pip, what is thine occupation?'

I shrugged. 'I'll graduate from school soon.'

'Truly? How time doth fly. We thought thee younger. Perhaps it is thy height.'

Again, I felt anger rising. Again, I pushed it down. 'I work a farm on weekends,' I added.

'Tis a worthy occupation,' she answered. 'In olden days, a king might sit upon a throne in the evening and pull a plough in the morning, and lose no honour thereby.'

'I'm not exactly a king.'

'"Every home a castle, every stallion a king." An honest saying, is it not?'

'Nopony can be a king without subjects.'

'Ah! Thou speakest truly. Thou hast no courtly wit, yet we see thou art more than a rude knave. Very good. Thy conversation pleaseth us, so we shall allow it to continue a moment longer.'

She looked at me expectantly, and all at once, I was tongue-tied.

A small smile appeared on her face. 'Hast thou nothing more to say to thy princess? Thou didst call for her attention, and thou didst demand courtesy above thy station. Hast thou naught to say? Naught of import?'

'Nothing,' I said. I could barely squeeze the word out around the lump in my throat.

Luna stopped walking, turned away from me, and lifted her muzzle into the air. 'Our time is valuable, and thou hast wasted it. Fare thee well, commoner." She spread her wings and leapt into the dark sky. For a moment, I saw her silhouetted against the orange harvest moon hanging overhead, and then, with a flash, she was gone.

I sucked in my breath. My heart hammered in my ears. Feeling dizzy, I leaned against a wall. It had been a silly conversation, and parts of it had annoyed me, but her poise, her haughty glances, her tone of voice, her affected speech, and her wild and magical hair - all had fused together and stabbed at my heart like a lance. I was smitten.

A moment after I realized that, I realized, too, that I had been smitten since the moment I first met her. It had simply taken me years upon years to realize it. I was in love with Princess Luna. I had always been in love with her. I loved a goddess, a literal goddess. I walked to the middle of the street and stared up into the sky where she had gone, up at that full, glorious moon.

'Oh, dammit,' I said aloud.

When I was a full-grown stallion, I became a farmhoof like my sire. I spent my days bucking hay, my evenings downing sarsaparillas in the pub, and my nights alone. I was still shorter than most other ponies, and I still tried to make up for it by being meaner. I got thrown out of the pub more than once for starting brawls, and I spent more than a few nights in a detention stall for public fighting or public drunkenness. I had a couple of ponies I called friends, a Pegasus named Rumble and an Earth Pony named Strike. They were happy to spend time with me as long as I bought the sarsaparilla and salt, though they disappeared when my money ran out.

Strike and I were sitting in the pub one spring evening a year ago. I had just gotten off work and smelled like hay and sweat. Strike had just come from a bowling tournament, which he'd won, so he generously bought the first round. We were already getting rowdy and making a nuisance of ourselves when Rumble buzzed in, dropped himself on the stool next to mine, and said, 'Hey, Pip. How're the spots?'

'Shut up,' I answered.

'Don't get your tack in a twist. I'm just being polite.'

'You have a problem with my spots?' I demanded.

'Sheesh, are you drunk already, shorty? You are one mean drunk.' He slapped a paper onto the bar in front of me. 'Thought you'd like to see this. Seems your girl is starting a little contest.'

'What girl? I don't have a girl.'

'Read it before you're too drunk to read, idiot.'

I read it. It was a flyer, and in a curving, feminine script, it announced:

Hear ye! Hear ye!

Her Royal Highness,

PRINCESS LUNA,

Mistress of the Moon,
Princess of the Night,
and
COREGENT OF ALL EQUESTRIA,
doth declare,

ROYAL GAMES!

All Unicorn stallions are invited
to participate, in two weeks' time, in

STALLIONLY COMPETITIONS
of martial sort,

including

PONY WRESTLING,
JOUSTING,
and

HORN FENCING.

The grand prize winner of these games
will compete horn-to-horn against

PRINCESS LUNA HERSELF

and may, should he win, ask her hoof
in marriage and become
PRINCE OF ALL EQUESTRIA.

When I finished reading, I felt a knot tighten in my stomach, and it refused to let go.

'Isn't that precious?' said Strike, who was reading over my shoulder. 'You probably couldn't pay some poor slob to marry that scary witch. What makes her think anypony's going to fight for her?'

'Shut up,' I answered.

'Ah, c'mon, Pip,' Rumble said. 'So you had a crush on her when you were in, what, kindergarten? Shouldn't you have grown out of that by now? Besides, it says Unicorns. Fancy, rich Unicorns, no doubt. Everypony knows only Unicorns get to marry princesses. You, on the other hoof, are an Earth Pony and a farm worker. What's more, you never got your cutie mark. You know a princess isn't gonna marry a poor, angry, Earth Pony blank-flanker like you. You should have always known that.'

I slid off my stool and headed for the door.

'Hey, where you goin'?' Strike called. 'Aren't we drinking?'

'I'm not thirsty,' I replied, and left.

I spent most of the night aimlessly wandering around town. The moon hung overhead, big, white, and cold, reminding me of things I didn't want to think about. I couldn't help but imagine that Luna was up in Canterlot right then, using her magic to move that moon across the sky.

I stood on the bridge over the river and stared down at my reflection. The moon was right behind my head, and by its light, I could see my heavy, spotted coat, my ridiculously short forelimbs leaning on the railing, my prematurely lined face. I looked angry, bitter. I knew why I had no cutie mark, and I knew why I was alone: I had wasted my life.

I took a deep breath and let it out through my nostrils. I watched it float on the cool night air.

'She wants fighters, does she?' I muttered. 'Well, if there's one thing I know how to do, it's fight.'

The next morning, I called in sick to the farm, and then I headed to the spa. I'd never set hoof inside the place before, but I walked right up to the desk and demanded, 'Do you dye coats?'

The mare behind the desk looked me up and down as if deciding whether I was a hopeless case. 'Yes,' she said tentatively.

'I want white fur. Bright white, all over, like one of those namby-pamby Canterlot Unicorns. My mane, too. And I want my coat shorter. Can you do that?'

'I think so,' she said, though the tone of her voice suggested that she didn't like the sound of it.

'Then get to it,' I ordered. 'I'm a busy pony.'

A few hours later, I walked out of the spa. For the first time in my life, I was spotless. Ignoring the stares from other ponies, I trotted straight to the Ponyville Library.

Sometime before my family moved to Ponyville, Princess Celestia started a tradition of teaching especially gifted Unicorns personally, and of sending them, for their final years of advanced training, to Ponyville, where they lived in the library, a sprawling structure inside a hollow but living tree. After her return, Luna had joined Celestia in this habit of selecting personal students. Their protégés at the moment were Whisper Breeze, a thin and sickly mare with a cream-coloured coat, and the deep purple Starfire, who from a distance looked almost like a miniature version of Luna herself.

I banged on the door. 'Hey, students! You home?'

Whisper Breeze opened the door a crack and nickered softly. 'We're studying,' she whispered.

'I'm sure you are,' I answered.

As discreetly as I could, I stepped to one side so she couldn't point her horn directly at me. Whisper Breeze didn't look like much, but she had powerful magic she sometimes couldn't control; in particular, she sent out magical blasts strong enough to destroy walls every time she sneezed. That wasn't so awful in itself, but she had bad allergies.

'Can I come in?' I asked. 'How's your hay fever?'

'Oh, it's fine,' she whispered. 'I mean, ah . . . ah . . . ah . . .'

I rolled out of the way as Whisper Breeze sneezed and the door exploded from its hinges. When I snapped back to my feet, I found her standing in the empty doorway surrounded by splinters of wood, sniffling and wiping her nose with a hoof.

'Sorry,' she whispered.

Starfire leaned around the shattered remains of the doorframe. 'Woo, nice one, Whisper Breeze. You launched it thirty feet at least, which I believe is a new record. Izzat you, Pip? What in Tartarus happened to your coat?'

'Yes, it's me. I need a favour.'

'Let me guess, you lost your spots and want to find them?'

'That's really funny, Starfire,' I said, not laughing. 'I had my coat bleached, for your information, not that it's any of your business.'

'If you're looking for opinions, I'd say you look ridiculous.'

'I wasn't, but thanks anyway. Can I come in, or am I likely to get killed by a rogue sneeze?'

'You never know in this place, but I have so far survived four months with the walking time bomb here and all my limbs are intact. Come on in. I'd offer you tea, but Whisper Breeze blew up the kitchen this morning.'

'Wonderful.' I walked inside, making sure to walk beside and slightly behind Whisper Breeze so I'd be hard to hit if she got the sniffles again.

'Since I know you don't make social calls, let's get down to brass tack,' Starfire said over her shoulder. 'What do you need?'

'A fake horn,' I answered, 'and a crash course in Unicorn horn fencing.'

Starfire fell to the floor, laughing.

Whisper Breeze turned and looked at me. I jumped out of the way.

'Really?' Whisper Breeze asked.

'Yes, really,' I said.

She ducked her head and pawed at the floor with a consternated look on her face.

Starfire rose to her hooves, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. 'Okay, short stuff. I don't know what you're up to, but it sounds hilarious. I'm all in, and you're in luck: I fence. Luna taught me. She's crazy about the sport.'

I nodded. 'I know.'

Starfire tapped a hoof against my bare forehead. 'This will be an interesting challenge. Let's get to work.'

Next: Fighting for Love

Shameless plug: This story can be read on its own, but don't miss the tale from which it vaguely derives, "Shadow of the Dragon Lords," at:

.net/s/7822204/1/Shadow_of_the_Dragon_Lords