[CT]: Sneezes, Sunflowers and Magic Sun Powers

>The first warning you get that you might be leaning in a little too close to Daisy’s sunflowers is a jet of water shot straight into your face.
>Spluttering, you step backwards, hands up and trying to push the stream away.
>”Shtay awhay fhroom miy fhlowhers, Ahnonimous!”
“I’m away, I’m away! Jesus, turn it off, woman!”
>Hand rubbing water from your eyes, you look down to see a small pink horse aggressively shaking a mouth-held hose pipe at you.
>The glare in her eyes could make a griffon balk, and it has just as great an effect on you: you step even further backwards, putting a good three feet between you and the angry, hose-wielding mare.
>The frown lessens a tad, but only a small tad, and she spits the hose onto the ground.
>”I would say I’m sorry, Anonymous, but I’m not! For all I know, you might well be on Rose’s payroll as some sort of flower-picking thug sent here to ruin my chances in the Flower Festival!”
>You’ve got a hand up and rubbing through your hair, shaking water out of it and trying to get it back into some semblance of styled.
>Not that you style your hair: only faggots and ponies style their hair, and you, sir, are no pony.
“You could have just, y’know, asked. I would’ve gotten out of the way. Hoses were not needed here.”
>She shakes her head, walking between you and her plants. “Couldn’t risk it. What with Her Royal Highness, Princess Celestia herself judging the entries this year. A single petal out of place and my family would never forgive me. I’d be ostracised! Ruined! Oh, the scandal if a flower girl didn’t win the flower show!”
>And then, an aside: “And even worse if my no-good, two-timing sister Rose beat me.”

“Princess Celestia’s judging them this year?”
>She nods at you, and even sodden and mildly pissed, you still feel the satisfied glow of a mystery solved.
“So that’s why half the bloody town’s entered sunflowers! You’re all trying to game the competition!”
>”I-Hah! Sunflowers! How dare you rope me in with all the common cultivars everypony else has entered into the Festival! I think you’ll find that I have entered a true specimen more than worthy of the Princess’s attention: Helianthus Anuus Royal!”
>You blink at her, and then look at the flowers behind her back. Then take a look at the sunflowers behind your back – or left, or right ‘cause, seriously, there are sunflowers fucking everywhere.
>Daisy’s seething by the time you look back round to her.
“Yeah, see, that’s why I was trying to get a closer look in the first place. I thought that there might be a difference between them, but I couldn’t really tell.”
>Her face darkens further into red; her eyes cut into slits.
“I, erm, I… guess it looks like a… slightly different shade of yellow?”
>Daisy dives for the hose.
>You sprint out of there as fast as your flabby legs can carry you.

>You finally come to a stop when you’re sure you’re out of firing range.
>There’s a few stalls set up round you: a petunia stand to your right and some weird foreign thing with too many stalks to your left.
>Everything else is sunflowers.
>Predictably, the pony behind every single one of the sunflower stands – not the owners of the petunia stand or foreign one, though; they seem far more interested in each other – is glaring at you like you’re a member of the flower mafia.
>Small-town xenophobia makes living in Equestria hard.
“Just practicing for the Running of the Leaves, Mares and Gentlecolts.”
>”That’s tomorrow,” a mare you don’t recognise says. Her eyes sink to your gut; you suck it in.
“All the more reason for practice, then.”
>They’re not buying it. A unicorn to your left starts shaking a watering can menacingly towards you.
“Okay, look, I’m – I’m just going.”
>You walk away, hands held up and palms flat in what you hope’s a gesture that’ll breach the culture gap.
>Ten steps away from them, though, you no longer really care.
>’Cause you just spotted the main mare of the hour.
“Princess! Hi!”

>Princess Celestia is up ahead of you, bent over a stall of purple geraniums, either inspecting them, sniffing them or eating them. There are no guards about her for once – which must be a sign of just how much she trusts the Ponyville ponies or something – and her wings are stretched out in that ‘yes, I own this place, bitch’ pose.
>She lifts her head up and looks over to you as you call, smiling as she recognises you.
>“Ah, well if it isn’t my favourite human! How are you Ah–”
>Her head jolts up at that last one and her eyes slam closed. You slow a little in your walk towards her, and then hurry it up, concerned.
>”Ah!”
>Her head jerks higher, mouth now in a small O border by row after row of pearly whites. There are stress-lines spidering across her face and her nose is twitching up a storm.
>”AH!”
>You decide to help her.
“...Nonymous. Ah-nonymous. Or just Anon if you wanna be a bit more friendly.”
>Her head’s vertical now, pointed straight up at the sky, and her lower jaw wobbles back and forth as her face scrunches into a ball.
>Then she stops and looks back down, blinking and sniffling loudly.
>”I’m so sorry about that, Anon. That sneeze has been trying to come out ever since I got here, and it was simply poor timing that it tried once more whilst I was talking to you.

“Sneeze? Was that what that was?”
>She nods and then frowns. “Well, both yes and no. The parts leading up to a sneeze come and go sporadically throughout my life, but the actual sneeze itself is something I haven’t experienced in centuries now. They’re more a nuisance than anything else, to tell the truth. I’d be fine with just sneezing, but constantly having to go through that spectacle is… trying.”
>She straightens up a little and tosses out her mane behind, billowing it back behind her in a rainbow ribbon of hair. “But enough about my peculiarities. Just why are you all wet.”
>This is not a conversation you want to have: being chased off like a cat by a small, pink pony is hardly your finest hour.
“That would be, err, most ungentlemanly of me. Your inability to sneeze is obviously giving you great problems, my lady, and if it is within my power to fix it, I most certainly should.”
>You straighten a little out of the natural slouch that is your standing position. If there was a fedora nearby to tip, it would be over and upside-down upon the street.
>”As flattered as I am by the offer of help, Anon, I have lived for over a thousand years. Don’t you think I might have tried everything there is to try by now?”
”Yeah, everything a pony might think of! Human ingenuity, Princess! Thinking so far outside the box it’s outside another box the first box was stored in! Cheese in a bottle? That was us. Plastic flowers to trick the bees? One of our finest accomplishments. I can guarantee you will not have approached it for the angle we are capable of.”
>”I… suppose that is correct. And it would hardly hurt to try. Alright, Anon – I give you permission to try and sort my sneeze.”
>As if trying to be a devil, her face scrunches up and the cutest series of adorable noises comes out of her mouth.

>And as quick as you can, you jump into action.
>You need something to tickle her with, quick!
>You spin round as quickly as you can, trying to find a pegasus pony dorky enough to attend a Flower Festival of all things.
>There’s not one of them around – not even Rainbow Dash, which is a surprise – but your spin does carry your gaze right on to Celestia’s wings, still stuck out proudly from her sides as she matles all the world.
“Perfect.”
>Grabbing a long feather in your fingers, you pluck it out and then start tickling her nose in one smooth, wiggling motion.
>Celestia does not respond satisfactorily.
>That is to say, she carries on making “ah!” noises and her mouth still looks like she grimacing in the cutest way possible.
>This only makes you tickle her harder, feather tip dancing along her nostrils, slipping in and out and brushing her in the most irritating ways you know how.
>Her foreleg lifts up and starts batting at the air, like it’s trying to wave something off.
>It’s gotta be a signal that you’re doing good work or something; that is the only gesture that would make sense in this situation.
>”Just what do you think you’re doing to the Princess?!”
>You glance behind you, feather still tickling Celestia’s face. The ponies who’d spoken to you earlier – the sunflower bunch –  have gathered into a crowd that’s shortly to become unruly.
>”He’s trying to ruin the Festival!”
>”It’s one of his weird, human mating rituals!”
>”He’s distracting her from MY sunflowers!”
>As one, the crowd steps forwards, glaring.
>You whimper, and return to tickling royalty in the hopes of sneezes as quickly as you are able.

>But it’s too late.
>The window of opportunity has ended: turning away distracted you enough that your feather has stopped tickling the Princess and has instead been tickling mid-air for the past precious few seconds.
>And Celestia is no longer making “ah!” noises; her mouth is no longer held cutely open.
>She is instead looking down at you quite grumpily.
>”Tickling me? Anonymous, I have lived for over a thousand long, lonely years with only this infuriating sneeze as my sole companion, and you truly thought that I hadn’t yet tried to tickle it out of me?”
>”Princess!” Ponies are suddenly wrapped around your legs and arms, holding you in place. A trowel is pressed into your throat, where it starts to dribble dirt down through your shirt. “The human! He was doing things to you with the aim of ruining the Festival!”
>Celestia sighs. “What he was doing, however misguided and foolish it may have been, was with my permission, My Little Ponies. He has done no wrong here today; let him go.”
>Grumbling, they do so, each pony returning to their respective stalls.
>”I’m sorry about that. I’m afraid any situation in which there’s a chance to win my approval tends to bring out the more… competitive sides of my subjects.”
>Massaging your throat, you wave it off.
“No problem, Princess – no problem at all. On one condition.”
>”Let me guess: you would like to try again to fix my sneezing problem?”
“Bingo.”

>She purses her lips as she mulls it over.
>”And you promise that your thinking will be a bit more… unorthodox this time around?”
>”It will be so far out that there is not a house I could not see.”
>She nods, and your noggin flips into overdrive.
>You messed up, you admit it. Tickling? That was stupid, and you’re not stupid. No, by gum, you’re Anonymous, and you have certificates from the Equestrian board of animal sciences saying you’re more than capable of looking after yourself and do not require a pony handler.
>Griffins don’t get that privilege. Suck it, Cat-birds.
>Okay, proper thinking time.
>You close your eyes and concentrate.
>Sneezes.
>Sunbutt sneezes.
>Sunbutt abortive sneezes.
>Why do people sneeze?
>Irritation, boredom, allergies, tickling…
>Allergies: hayfever: flowers.
>You open your mouth to say it when your brain slaps you, hard.
>Too obvious, idiot. She’ll have thought of that.
>Okay, ‘reasons why’ is not a thing that’s working out well. Maybe it’s something to do with Celestia?
>Cake. Smiles. Kindness. Princess. Wings and horn and big round bum.
>Oh, and sun stamp on bum. Sun. She raises the sun.
>Sun. Flowers. Sunflowers?
>You peak open one eye.
“Are you allergic to Sunflowers? Not a solution, by the way, just a question.”
>She shakes her head. “A lot smarter than your first attempt, but no. All the tests came back negative.”
>You sigh and turn your attention back inwards.
>Back to the drawing board.
>No. Wait. Screw the drawing board.
>SUNflowers. Sunbutt magic powers control the sun. Sun is a big yellow thing we call the sun; sunflowers are yellow things we also call the sun.
>You snap your fingers and open your eyes.
“Your sun-raising powers are getting confused by all the sunflowers around and that’s what’s making you nearly sneeze all the time.”

>She just gapes at you for a few seconds.
>You have clearly stunned her with your genius.
>”I suppose I can’t be too surprised. I did ask for the most outlandish ideas possible.”
“Outlandish? Princess, we are talking about magic – the very definition of “I have no idea how the process works”. And if you don’t know how the process works, how can you be so sure you’ll know all the ins and outs of how it’ll function.”
>Her mouth opens and then closes. She frowns, prettily confused.
“Plus, like, you said earlier you took tests to see if you were allergic to sunflowers or not. Kinda specific, no? You’ve got to have noticed that there was a correlation between the number of times you nearly sneezed and your proximity to a large amount of sunflowers.
“And it would have to be large – not small. If it was small, you’d get that shit all the time, but if it needed a large body to cross the threshold or some bullshit, you’d only get it in places like this, where sunflowers are freaking everywhere.”
>”I… that’s.” She shakes her head. “I’m not sure whether that’s brilliant or insane.”
>You grin. "Wouldn’t hurt to try, would it? All we’d have to do is destroy every sunflower around to see whether or not it works. You in?”
>”I suppose if it’s only a test…”
>She closes her eyes and concentrates. Her horn starts glowing under an aura of soft-yellow.
>Then suddenly, her nostrils flare and her eyes shoot wide open.
>”Ah-non! You were -Ah!- right! I can -Ah!- feel them! -Ah-ll!- of them!”
>You grin with righteous satisfaction as Celestia closes her eyes once more.

>Three things follow this.
>The first is a blinding light blazing from Celestia’s horn as a spell with a thousand years of pent up hate driving it is flung into the world.
>The second is a sneeze louder than if thunder and dynamite had a baby booming out after it.
>And the third is every sunflower in a two mile radius bursting into a roaring pillar of flame whilst, up above in the cloudless sky, the sun, without much fuss, vanishes from sight.

>For a moment, all is just blackness lit only by the light of burning flowers.
>Then all is screaming, overturned tables and the mangled cries of freaked out horses.
>”My sunflowers! They’re burning, burning!”
>”I knew touching myself at night was a bad idea!”
>”The sun’s gone! I liked the sun! Bring it b-a-ah-a-ck!”
>Very quickly, the population of unpanicked people is limited to just Celestia and you.
“You forgot to take the actual sun out of the spell, didn’t you.”
>”I’m sorry! I was distracted by the sneeze. Speaking of which…”
>She pauses, and then grins.
>”It’s gone! Gone, gone, gone! Oh, thank you, Anon! I will create two – no, three stained glass windows in your honour!”
“Yeah, great but, erm…”
>You point up at the sky, and then circle your finger round in a sweeping arc at the scene of pandemonium around you.
>”Don’t worry. I used to accidently put the sun out all the time when I was a filly. Putting it back up there will be a breeze.”
>Her horn lights up.
>You wait.
>Population unpanicked diminishes by one.
>”I-I can’t feel the magic anymore! It’s gone, I…”
>Both her eyes and yours bulge as the same thought hits you simultaneously.
>“The Sneeze!”

“Okay, okay, okay, so: the sneeze was actually your magic powers going on the fritz because of all the interference of a bunch of false suns. And we accidentally got rid of it.”
>”Yes! We need to put the sneeze back into me!”
“How do we do that? How the hell do you put a sneeze back into someone?”
>”Well, what is a sneeze but an involuntary exhalation? What I need right now is an voluntary inhalation! I need someone to push air into me with my express permission, Anonymous!”
“... That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
>”Says the man who told me not ten minutes ago my sneezing was being caused by my cutie mark mistaking sunflowers for the sun. You do not get to critique my logical leaps of fancy here, Anonymous! Now blow into me!”
>Oh god.
>You don’t want to do this.
>But you also really, really, really want the sun to come back.
>You like the sun.
>You summon up the courage, screw it to the sticking place, grab Celestia by the head and lock your lips with hers.
>And blow.
>Blow for all you’re worth.
>You pump air into her like she’s a balloon speckled with punctures, a blow-up doll after your final date gone wrong. You blow until you’re red in the face and don’t think you have much else left in you.
>And up ahead, the sky starts getting brighter.
>It’s working!
>Fuck this world and fuck the logic that makes this okay, but gods above, it’s working!
>With one final push of all your reserve capacity, you pull away from her and start heaving for breath.
>The light goes nowhere.
>The sun has returned.

“Princess! Was the Human… kissing you?”
>Oh god, was that what it looked like?
>That was totally what it looked like, wasn’t it.
>You start spitting on the ground and trying to clean your tongue off on your shirt.
>”I told you! I told you! It was a human mating ritual all right! He seduced the Princess, stole the sun and burnt up all our sunflowers!”
>Things are not going well around you.
>Unfortunately, any air you’d use to refute these charges is no longer in your body.
>Fortunately, you’ve got a defender out there with more than enough air inside her.
>She shouts out some calming words you’re too winded to hear properly.
>The crowd disperses, muttering and mumbling to themselves. The sound of the Festival pulling itself back together around you filters into your ears. Your breath starts to come back to you.
>A shadow crosses in front of you, and you look over to see Celestia’s calming smile and gentle eyes.
“Sneezes gone?”
>She wrinkles her nose. “I think so… Hold on… -Ah-   -Ah!-   Atchoo!”
>Celestia performs a complete sneeze for the first time in her life.
>It is the cutest thing you have ever seen.
>It is the cutest thing anyone’s ever seen.
>You and ten other ponies unfortunate enough to be watching suffer cardiac arrest and die.
>This is what you have unleashed upon the world.
>Good job, Anonymous.