The Best of All Possible Worlds
Chapter 38
With the sound of a thunderbolt, the goddess Genevieve landed upon the streets of Canterlot, accompanied by a small entourage. There was Her father, still reeling days after Her apparent return from the dead. There was the silent human girl Jenny, her wide eyes taking in everything around her. And there was Her “consort” Zody, who was busy drooling onto the pavement because he didn’t have enough of a mind left to know how to close his mouth.
With Her arrival, equines fled in every direction, but Genevieve’s attention was focused squarely on the blasphemer defiling Her sacred cathedral. With the slightest glint of Her eyes, everything that wasn’t nailed down in the building was teleported to Her presence.
Yup, I still got it, Voltaire thought to himself smugly, before he realized the change in his surroundings. He looked around him to see that a couple of folding chairs, the table, and the floating ring had accompanied them on their journey through the Horrifying Dimension That Shall Not Be Spoken of Again.
The holy book that he had been skimming dropped to the ground with a loud “thump!”, causing Voltaire to jump. With a sigh, he turned to face the Celestia-sized donkey before him. “So, is somebody unwilling to take a little honest criticism?”
Genevieve’s reply was a lightning bolt to the face.
Celestia and Blueblood rushed over to examine Voltaire’s twitching form.
“He’ll live, in case you’re wondering,” Genevieve replied, her voice amplified and deepened.
Celestia looked up to examine her adversary. The goddess Genevieve had the long legs of an alicorn, but the brown color and facial structure of a fully-grown donkey mare. Instead of irises, Her eyes glowed a pure white. Seeing how She could do by pure willpower anything that a horn or wings might do, She didn’t bother with either.
“Were you even listening to a word he was saying?” Celestia asked. “Those were legitimate complaints, by and large.”
“The opinions of humans I have found are completely worthless,” the goddess replied. “Present company excluded,” She added, waving a hoof at Algarotti.
“You make a poor choice in advisers,” said Blue Belle, “as you would see if you ever bothered to examine his ‘lying stick’.” She used her telekinesis to snatch the staff away from Algarotti and throw it at the donkey.
“You dare to use unicorn magic against me?!” Genevieve caught the stick easily with Her magic and brought it to rest at Her hooves. Then, wondering at the name that Blue Belle had given it, She rested one hoof lightly on its bronze surface and looked up in shock and betrayal. “Francesco, why am I unable to hear My own thoughts when I am touching your staff?”
“Ahhh....” the human stalled.
With a toss of the head, Genevieve laid Algarotti out with the same spell She had just used on Voltaire, blasting him back against a nearby wall. “I’ll deal with you later,” She said, before turning Her attention towards Celestia. “Sun Princess, I hold you personally responsible for allowing the corruption and discrimination that marked My mortal life to take hold. Having already taken away your power over the Sun, why should I stay your punishment for a single moment longer?”
Celestia looked down at the prone Voltaire for a moment before standing up, fixing Genevieve with a defiant stare. “Because you could actually learn how to govern from somepony with the proper experience.” She gestured around her with a hoof. “These are elementary mistakes, the kind I made in abundance when I first became princess. But I learned from my mistakes, and while You are right that there was much wrong in my Equestria, it was better than it had been, and it was on its way to getting much better in the future. Voltaire here had made me aware of the problems that made Your life so awful, and I was working on some solutions when—”
“Too little, too late,” Genevieve said curtly. “You had three quarters of a millennium after you banished Nightmare Moon. And in that time you failed to come up with a long-term solution to the dragons, and created a slow-motion disaster with the griffons.” It was clear that Genevieve had at least skimmed Equestria’s history, both public and secret, since Her apotheosis. “All while throwing dozens of ponies into the past in a vain attempt to save your sister.”
Celestia’s fur visibly bristled. “You are mistaken, My Lady,” she said coldly. “All of those poor ponies sacrificed themselves by their own choice, not mine.” She looked at the ground in sadness. “It appears that the corruption and banishment of Luna are two fixed points in time, incapable of being altered.”
Genevieve formed a dark smile on her lips. “Yes, and every time traveler who visited the era had a greater and greater adverse effect on both of your minds, making the tragedy more and more impossible to prevent!” She thought for a few moments, as both Voltaire and Algarotti began to stir. “I could prevent that tragedy, you know. You deserve a proper reward for saving this land from Discord, and ‘fixed points’ are no obstacle to one such as I. How would you feel if I caused you and your sister to revert back to your mortal forms immediately after that victory? You could live out the remainder of your lives as national heroes, while the unicorns would be forced to take back their responsibility to govern the heavens. Perhaps with that responsibility, they wouldn’t become quite so loathsome.”
Celestia shook her head, not allowing herself to be tempted for even a moment by this offer. “We would be back at Hearth’s Warming Eve again, but without the happy ending,” she said. “And besides, you could never give up your hatred for Blue Belle. Not after you’ve redefined your life around it.”
The alicorn gave a sad guilty look at the unicorn, who recognized it as her cue. “I just know it would be wasting your time to try to convince you that I am no longer the same unicorn who hurt you,” Blue Belle said gently as she approached the divine donkey. “But I have changed, and I’m willing to do anything to make amends.”
“Will you die for me?” Genevieve asked, a spark in her otherwise expressionless eyes. “Slowly and painfully? And will you bring back My Zody to the way that I remember him?”
The zombie-like Zody flopped his head to one side on hearing his name.
A look of utter despair came over Blue Belle at this sight, followed by determination. “So be it,” she said with a steely tone. “I will give You Your vengeance, and show You what Your vaunted ‘system’ has done to Your fellow equines.”
Having said this, she reached up a hoof and ripped the time pendant off of her neck.
“No!” cried Blueblood, who tried to rise to his hooves. He looked down to see Voltaire’s hand grasped around his neck.
“Don’t look,” the human whispered, employing all of his enfeebled strength to keep the unicorn from seeing what was happening to his daughter. “For God’s sake, don’t look!”
Blue Belle spread her legs and gritted her teeth as the bruises began to spontaneously appear all over her body, rapidly turning her pure white coat into a purple and blue mess.
Then her legs broke, and she collapsed to the ground.
Genevieve crept forward with a gleeful smile. “Yes, yes...”
Blue Belle’s legs reset themselves in twisted angles. Then her ribs were methodically broken.
The unicorn’s cries of pain began gradually to change into whimpers and then hoots of joy.
“My Lady!” Blue Belle cried out in a disturbingly happy tone as her face was caved in by the blows of invisible hooves. “How can I suffer for My Lady?”
The donkey’s jaw dropped. “What’s happening?”
“She’s undergoing a lifetime of growing up in Your Equestria, all in a manner of moments,” Celestia told Genevieve calmly. “Not only physically, but also mentally—she’s turning into Your Blue Belle, the pony responsible for this entire world of suffering.”
“There is no suffering in my—”
“What pony would possibly tell You that in Your face?”
“Their thoughts—”
“Thoughts can be hidden, especially when such a thought is so demoralizing all by itself that it’s best to pretend you never thought it.”
The crunching and squishing of Blue Belle’s injuries continued to build up.
“No...” Genevieve moaned, trying to look away.
“Yesssh...” Blue Belle hissed. Or a sound that could be construed as “yes”, as she lacked most of the apparatus for intelligible speech by this point.
An angry Celestia reached out with her magic to wrench the goddess’ head back around. “Face Your lesson like the superior being You are,” she lectured. “See how she still lives despite no longer even looking like a boned creature anymore. There is a talent in inflicting as much pain as possible in a pony without killing them. Discord was a master of it, but it became a lost art with His defeat. It appears that under Your ‘benevolent’ rule that Your subjects have recovered this knowledge. You’ve found the one way to get around the windigos’ ban on violence, by making the victims embrace their punishment!”
“It’s too much, too much!” Genevieve cried out. She tried to use Her magic to heal Blue Belle, but for every fix, another five wounds would be inflicted. And when She tried to reach out to the unicorn’s mind, She discovered it to be even more horrifying than her body.
“Ssssuuuffferrrriiinng!” Blue Belle burbled out blissfully.
“Take her away!” Genevieve wailed.
“But I thought this is what You wanted,” Celestia said in mock confusion. “She took away Your love, Your art and Your dignity. You probably also thought that she took away my love for You as a loyal subject. Is this not fair recompense? That she willingly sacrifice herself to You as an eternal monument of pain?”
Genevieve looked at Her upraised hooves and then around Her at the curious ponies and other equines who had gathered around them. In the unicorns’ eyes She saw nothing but fear and self-loathing, and in the others saw only hate for the unicorns and simpering worship of Herself, a worship devoid of any genuine adoration, only fear that She would turn them into unicorns if they crossed whatever arbitrary laws She might come up with next. “What have I done?” She asked Herself, tears running down Her face.
“You have taken advantage of their nature,” Celestia calmly informed Her. “They are herd animals. They picked up Your worst traits and amplified them to make You happy.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t want it!” the goddess proclaimed to the crowd.
They didn’t believe Her.
“Hurt Blue Belle more!” a watching pegasus urged. “Make her beg for mercy, and then deny it! Give us our justice!”
“Justice!” screamed the blood-thirsty crowd in unison. “JUSTICE!”
Genevieve hung Her head. “You win,” She said quietly to Celestia. “I’ll make you the Princess again. I’ll put everything back the way it was.”
The way it was?! Algarotti cried out to himself in outrage. Back to the old injustices? Back to when I was going to get arrested by that arse of a prince? No, no You will do no such thing, you mud-wallowing farmyard animal. I will preserve this reality, at any cost. Climbing to his feet with the help of the wall he had landed against, he pulled out the pistol loaded with the silver bullet, and pointed it squarely at Genevieve’s heart.
With a grimace, Voltaire tried to get up, only to find out that his legs were still paralyzed. He put his fingers to his lips and tried to whistle, but only a feeble sound emerged, causing the rubber ring to wobble slightly.
Algarotti quickly cocked the pistol, and fired.
At the same instant, a shrill whistle split the air from a spot on the other side of Genevieve from Algarotti.
The rubber ring zipped forward at incredible speed, striking the human in the back of one leg and causing him to fire wildly.
The pegasus who had been urging Genevieve to carry out Her vengeance was struck in the wing by the bullet, and plunged to the earth. (Being a pegasus, she survived.)
Voltaire and Genevieve both looked in shock at the source of the whistle, which revealed itself with a shimmer as being a unicorn colt.
“You’re welcome,” he said to his goddess, fixing Her eyes with a look of utter contempt.
Well that explains all the ponies with Hourglass cutie marks.
They aren't all just various incarnations of the Doctor, they're a bunch of different Time Lords that Celestia kept dragging in to try and fix the Nightmare Moon incident in her grief. Not just the Doctor, but Romana, any other Time Lords, and definitely the Meddling Monk(screwing around with what the New Series would define as fixed points in time was basically his entire gimmick) as well.
And if that blond one is the Master, he probably made it worse on purpose rather than by accident like the others, because that stuff's hilarious.
That was pretty fucking epic.
Lesson learned. Horribly, yes, but lesson learned. Now to set right what has gone so horribly wrong.
But I thought you wanted grovelling!?
It seems Chekhov's gun has misfired.
What a nice Kirk Summation from Celestia. Even beats the one from Voltaire in the previous chapter. Yep, she's definitely done this before.
Speaking of Voltaire, his line at the beginning of the chapter about still having it was brilliant and made me crack up.
cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/35180859.jpg
2154666
Aw, was that made just for me? I'm touched.
2154666
Also, who is this colt? He deserves... something. I dunno, a medal? An award? A kiss from
ZeldaGuinevere?I'm also going to assume the story's going to end in either chapter 40, or 42.
curiouser and curiouser just WHO is this colt?
2154744 2155013
It's the colt from Chapter 36 that I forgot to name (because I didn't know at the time how I'd end up using him). It isn't supposed to be a mystery or anything. It's just that Blue Belle's probably the only one would would really remember what he looks like and she....
I'd rather not finish that sentence.
Wait a sec that colt....... The resistance movement???? its all coming together.
on a complete and total tangent thought (Starswirl???)
2155136
I've said all I've wanted to say about Starswirl in Chapter 30.
Although...you're giving me ideas on who exactly this colt is, and who I'll end up assigning as his descendant (there aren't that many prominent unicorns left by this point).
2155170 Ah Starswirl was tortured for centuries meaning he had a touch of immortality of some sort. Knowing how powerful he is he could have taken or borrowed the bodies of other ponies in order to extend his life. He didn't disappear the body he was in died and he move to another.(shaky because there would need to be an empty or deficient body (Zody) for him to take over.)
The scene where Blue Belle took off the pendant was abjectly terrifying, and you are both a brilliant and twisted individual for having devised it.
Bravo.
2154461
Some people say the blond one is the Fifth Doctor, not The Master. Both sides make some pretty convincing arguments.
Blue Belle!
Here's hoping that Genevieve finds her way back home, her real home, happy... and Algorotti gets reworked into a decent human being (which might explain why yours is diferent from the historic man!).
Wait, what?! Genevieve got the hint the first time around?! Wha-!? But I brought my "Get a clue" stick!
i4.photobucket.com/albums/y139/nefix/kanabo.png
That... that scene becomes more horrifying the more I think about it. What sort of tortures would she have to go through to become that? The fact that you never describe any of it just makes it all the more horrible. Ah crud, I'm going to be dwelling on this for days now. Hurry up and fix it!
Sorry for the double post, but I found something odd.
Are the last three words supposed to be non-italic, because without them it melds right into the rest of the paragraph.
You know, this chapter might justify a dark tag.
I like it anyhow! But I'm really confused by the unicorn colt. However will you make him not a deus ex machina?
Just finished of reading this true masterpiece of fic, only comparable with shortskirtsandexplosions´ Background Pony and End of Ponies in quality.
Question: did you read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" of Ursula K. Le Guin before writting this chapter?
Damn this is such a good fic.
2155106 ahh, i see. I thought it was one of those people you forget in early chapters and then is revealed tobe more important.
thanks for the clarification!
Odd to see Celestia being the one to talk down Genevieve. I was expecting that to be Voltaire's job.
I fucking love this fic
Seeing as I have spent my entire night completely enraptured by this discourse, I have only one thing to say:
Well done you magnificent bastard!
Temporal stuff makes my head hurt...
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Genieveve has changed past too, but the scenes in stained glass in church are idealised versions of those from original past, right?
2155874
It's part of his thoughts, but emphasized, which reverses the italics.
Kind of confusing, I know.
2156015
My impression is that at least on this site, the "Dark" tag is tied to an unhappy ending.
You could argue for a "Sad" tag, but as I see it the outlook of the story is fundamentally optimistic rather than pessimistic (despite all the rampant snarking going on). We are currently in a temporal dead end, and it's about to be literally erased from existence.
2156015
But he is a deus ex machina--Celestia was the one who made him invisible, after all!
2156035
What? What?? I am most certainly not in SS&E territory.
As for your reference, I've certainly read a bit of Le Guin, but not that piece in particular. It is the culmination of a lot of thinking about the nature vs. perception of justice, and the various ways that individuals have twisted religious doctrine for their own purposes over the years.
2157138
Oh, no. I had always intended this scene to be Celestia's "final exam", her way of showing how much she's learned from Voltaire. This will be made more clear in the next chapter.
2158487
She has quite deliberately re-written her own life so it would have purpose, so that everything bad that ever happened to her would have a single source, which could then be punished.
She missed the memo about "revenge never really makes you feel better", though.
2159615
The dark tag is to indicate that a story has dark content, like gore for example, or indeed, that torture scene. I think it needs to be a significant part of the story to warrant it though, rather than just appearing in one chapter towards the end. And stories with an unhappy ending would usually warrant a tragedy tag instead, if there was hope and lighter moments in the story preceding it, or a sad tag if it's just crushingly depressing throughout. At least, that's how Wanderer D explained it.
2159615 The downside is it looks like his thoughts cut off at the very end.
In fairness she did kind of deserve a "look of contempt" after all the fuck she filled Zody's mind with.
2159681
You forget, this site doesn't have a...hey wait a second, there is a "Tragedy" tag on FIMFiction.net! How come I never noticed it before?
And yeah, I'm referring to the same Wanderer D blog as you are, but obviously my memory of it is full of holes.
What I do remember is that the tag should reflect the majority feel of the story, like you said.
I am of the opinion, though, that we really need a "Drama" tag. I wouldn't apply it here, but I know a couple of stories I could write that would be tagless because of its lack.
2160253
Interesting idea. You should message Knighty about possibly implementing it. The admins listen to suggestions if they're good and you can justify the changes.
2163981
I don't think I've ever actually read it. Certainly not in high school. Just general polymath stuff, I guess....
...
Wow. I didn't realise mixing 'realism' and 'talking technicolour ponies' could have quite such a horrific result.
A question, though (and I do apologise if it has already been covered somewhere) - why is Genevieve acting like the foal she really is? I thought she replaced herself with the Queen of Prussia.
2159846
Yeah, alright--I employed the rare and beautiful und...er...line tag (I think I spelled that right--it is after all so very rare ) to do the same thing I was doing with not italicizing.
2171809
Algarotti is manipulating Her left and right with how he's getting Her re-written by the magic pencil. She was mature as a queen, because that's how the pencil had re-written her memories. As a goddess, She got a new set of memories, which resulted in yet another personality change.
Wow. Ugh. Damn. That was... INCREDIBLY CELESTIA-AND-LUNA-DAMNED DISTURBING. I suppose I should congratulate you for writing something that evokes such a reaction of HORROR, while being relevant and important to the story and not simply for shock value, but... damn.
2314513
You have summed up all of my thoughts on this chapter in a, frankly, amusing manner. No less true, though.
Whoo, that was extremely disturbing.
Someone's a Doctor Who fan
4206522
Read my other stories--I think I'm the first writer on this site to use Hartnell's Doctor in a fanfic.
I believe you want "vaunted" here.
Good climax.
8651241
Fixed.