//------------------------------// // Harmony Stories V: The Shark, The Swan, and The Goose // Story: Sometimes They Call Me Super // by KorenCZ11 //------------------------------// Applejack     After dinner, the three of us left Champagne and went back ta the boutique. Ah picked up my bike and then Ah drove Goose ta the castle. We parked, said hi ta the girls and then he led me ta his room. Now that he’d moved halls and ‘officially’ become part of Harmony, he decided ta really move in and brought a good amount of his stuff here, some of it Ah even recognized from when we were kids. A particular little green robot lookin’ figure caught my eye and brought a smile ta my face. “Well. If that ain’t somethin’ Ah never thought Ah’d see again.” A little green build-it-yerself figure made outta about sixty parts if Ah remember correctly, and one we played with all the time. There were six in total fer each wave that came out and they all had their own story ta go with ‘em. The heroes that come from the goddess ta save the land when the evil mastermind threatens it. Goose always wanted the green one, and Ah of course wanted the red one. However, when the time came, Ah let those toys go. The memories hurt too much, and with all the death that surrounded me, Ah couldn’t bring myself ta look at ‘em anymore. And eventually, Ah forgot.     “Heh. I thought you might like that. Aside from the stuff I wanted, I picked up a few relics while I was at uh… home, I suppose. That bin in the corner has all the pony bots from way back when, and I even found my Ponystation in working condition, however I was blackmailed into letting Fluttershy have it for a while. I’m probably pretty rusty, but I managed to pick up a copy of Marevel versus Comcap.” He picked out the red pony bot from the bin and looked past it, like there were memories just beneath its mask. Ah set the pony bot down on his bookshelf where there was empty space and took a seat on a couch he’d managed ta get in here. The room wasn’t little, but the door frame was certainly not big enough fer this ta fit through it. It must be nice ta be able ta warp everywhere.     His walls were covered in pictures, most of which Ah didn’t recognize, save for one that was on an end table next ta his bed. Ah’d seen it before, in Ms. Song’s house, oh so long ago. It was Goose, or really Catchy as Ah remembered him, his mother and a Stallion Ah’d never seen before. Based on the blue and white skin and the teeth, Ah could only guess that this was his dad. Ah sighed.     “Goose, what happened? So much time has passed since then, Ah don’t even know what all we missed. When does Catchy become Goose? Why did it happen in the first place? Ah just… Ah don’t know why thin’s had ta go and change so much.” Ah haven’t cried in years. The tears had all but dried up fer twelve long years, and that… that changed today. Goose scratched at his clean little facial hair, then took off his suit jacket. He took a seat next ta me on the couch and let out a deep breath.     “So… I thought I would be ready to tell you everything and… I honestly don’t think I am just yet. I’m sure you’ve figured out that I was playing up the whole playboy shtick when we first met by now, but not everything I said was untrue. I… maybe I’m not the pony you thought I am, so-” This time Ah was the one ta put a hoof on his lips.     “Goose. Ah’d like ta think that three weeks of ya, and a whole week without ya leavin’ my side is enough fer me ta know that Ah trust ya. Ah’m sure Ah haven’t told ya about some of my own problems, and even Ah’m ashamed of some of the thin’s Ah’ve done. But a few days ago, some asshat told me ta let somepony in, and after Ah talked, Ah got over some of my issues. Take yer own advice. Tell me what happened.” Goose rolled his eyes and leaned back till he was starin’ at the ceilin’.     “Open mouth, insert hoof am I right?” He said with a dull laugh. He sat up straight and pulled his back legs under him on the couch ta face me. “So you want to hear a story huh? Let me tell you a tale of a colt who grew into a stallion at a young age. A colt who wanted so desperately to not become his father, that in the end, he did exactly that.” Goose Fang     To start, we’ll have to go back where we left off. The year is 2014. When I was still Catchy, I knew what my dad did for a living. How he had all the money he did, the horrible things I saw him do. Shortly before I met you, I witnessed my dad… at work. He killed a couple of officers with his own hooves and then destroyed a building set for demolition to cover it up. He bashed their skulls in, letting all the blood and leftovers tremble and writhe on the floor. I was terrified. When I ran, his men caught me and I cowered at the sight of him.     The next day, I was sent to live with my mother. A completely different side of town, away from him and anything to do with him. I swore I would never do anything like that, never become a monster like he was. After I met you and your brother and started making friends, things were normal for me for a while. I managed three years without even seeing him. And then in May of that year, he showed up again. Bloody and half beaten to death, he crashed into the door and mom brought him in and treated him. I was entirely against it. I didn’t want him in my house, and I would’ve just left him on the doorstep to bleed to death. Mom though… she was too kind for that. He would be there for a week recovering. Even with his increased regeneration abilities, he was an inch away from death’s door when he showed up and several of his bones were smashed to splinters. It wasn’t a pretty sight.     For most of that week, I avoided him. When he could finally limp around, he tried his hardest to interact with me, and I wouldn’t have it. It wasn’t until mom had to leave for a performance was I finally forced to be alone with him. I was playing Marevel versus Comcap on arcade mode, and he sat in the living room watching me. Eventually, I got to the point where I couldn’t progress and I threw the controller.     “Hey now, why all the anger? It's just a game, little goose,” he said.     “Go away! You shouldn’t even be here, just leave me alone!” I was mad and wasn’t in the mood, so I attempted to storm off to my room. This was of course all before my powers showed up, so I wasn’t anything more than an earth pony foal at the time either, so there really wasn’t much of a contest when he grabbed me by the tail.     “Come back here little goose, I want to talk to you,” he said, easily pulling me back and holding me in place.     “No! Let me go!” I struggled in vain. He sighed. I was still pretty small at the time, especially compared to the giant that was my father, so he was literally holding my in the air. In my tiny fury, I curled up and tried to bite into his foreleg with mixed results. He did let me go, but then he grabbed me by the face and forced my mouth open. Ya see, sharks constantly lose and regrow teeth. They have rows and rows of them for the sole purpose of tearing through flesh and bone in the event one falls out, or they lose one trying to capture prey. That was about the time my baby teeth started to fall out, and the ones that grew in their place… weren’t adult pony teeth.     I had one, just one adult tooth at the age of ten. As you know, it’s weird for foals to not already be in their adult teeth by the time they’re nine, so for me to still have what I had was strange, and when I did finally lose them, these grew in their place within hours of making room. To this day, I don’t know if he had his own plans for me, or what, but when he saw my tooth, he looked disappointed. Instead of reprimanding me for what I did, he picked up the controller himself and beat the fighter I was struggling with. He did things I could never do with whatever character it was, and he even used real combos instead of just violently smashing buttons.     I was furious. I made him play me, and when he throttled me, I demanded that he teach me how to do it. If there’s one thing I will never deny, it’s that my dad was a smart guy. He knew how to get me to react the way he wanted, and just by playing my game, he got me to open up to him again after not seeing him for almost three years. Dad was with us for two more days, until he and mom got in a fight, and he left. At the time, I couldn’t hear what he said or what they were arguing about, and I wouldn’t know until long after mom was gone. This was on the 19th.     When the day came for my father to pick me up, I honestly believed for the longest time that he was the one who had her killed. I yelled and accused him of it every time I had the chance, saying ‘It was your fault! You’re the reason she died!’ He never said anything against it, and eventually, he just sent me away to live with a maid in an apartment in the southern Manehattan. Most of dad’s work was done in the east, so here I was far away from it, and with the maid around me everywhere I went, I was sure to never run into anything involving him.     Time passed, and with new friends, I started to recover. But a day didn’t go by where I didn’t think about it all. My old friends, you, my mom, what happened. I had a hole I didn’t know how to fill, so I started acting out, playing the bad kid because I could. I got everything I wanted as soon as I wanted it and nopony would tell me otherwise. Except, none of that stuff was enough to replace my mother.     Then we move a year later to October. The Mirror event killed tens of thousands. From the Trade Center, to the Manehattan Bugle, offices and apartments, all of it so suddenly and without so much warning as the toll of a bell, destroyed. The apartment I lived in, Red Hoof actually crashed into. Honestly, now that I think about it, I was probably one of the last ponies to see him alive. I was friends with a lot of the kids in that complex. We all went to school together, and they were part of the reason I never fell into depression. And in a day, they were all gone. Crushed and buried alive in their own homes.     Dad didn’t think it was safer anywhere than right next to him anymore, so from then on, I was with him twenty-four seven. I hated it. I hated him. I can’t remember a day for the next year that I was ever anything but angry. I didn’t go to school, I never met new ponies, I was always with him, smoldering as I watched him work. I wanted him to screw up, get killed just like he killed her. He was someone I could vent all my anger on, so that’s what I did. He started to teach me how to fight, using his own derivative of that silver tongue to manipulate me into what he wanted me to do. A whole year went by like that, and when I got my powers in the middle of it, I decided I would plan to take him on. Finally, we had our falling out and I tried my damnedest to kill him.     “Tell me the truth! It was you wasn’t it!? You were the one who had her killed! It was you!” I screamed at him as he had me pinned on the floor. With his ‘shark skin’ being as tough as it was, he was pretty hard to cut in any way, but I was a special case. I had the one natural weapon that his skin was weak to, his own teeth. I’d made a few small cuts on him, nothing major or really anything more than a paper cut to him, but it was enough for me to outright attack him to rattle his cage.     “You dare insult me like that little goose!?” He yelled back in my face. That was the first time I’d ever seen him really angry at me, and he made sure to show it too. He followed that up by tossing me into a wall and nearly breaking me even after I’d initially gotten my powers, and then rushing up to pull me out and hold me by the neck. “You look at me, little goose! Be angry, that’s fine, I am to blame! Her death was my fault, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t regret what happened. But if you think I would kill the only mare I ever loved on purpose… you’re no better than I am.” I’d never seen my father so much as tear up before that point, and I would never see it again after.     The rage I’d built up toward him just… evaporated after that. I couldn’t be angry at him, he felt just as bad or worse than I did about mom two years later, and all this time he just let me take out all my hatred on him. I was hollow for a long time. Nothing but a husk that quietly followed orders and slowly but surely made my way up in the gang. After several months, dad made the decision to put me in school again. I had my powers and I was tougher than most of the adults in his gang, so he wasn’t as worried about me getting hurt. As a matter of fact, he was actually more worried about me hurting other ponies instead. So, he assigned me an equally young pony he had control over to be at my side while I was at school, and her name was Dark Pulse.     We’d met while I was still a little ball of rage, but she was more like my shadow back then. Just another gang member I didn’t care about. School went on for about a month, and I was still… broken. I only spoke when spoken too, I did all my work and made the grades I could and I avoided contact with other ponies entirely because… I didn’t know what to do with myself. While I was mad, I had a goal. I just wanted revenge, and that’s what I worked for, only to have it fall apart in the end.     It wasn’t until one of my classmates asked me whether or not Pulse was my sister did I even realize she was there all this time. It was like a switch in my head had finally turned back on and suddenly I was interested in something again. It was around this time that I finally got my cutiemark and picked up another piece of my father to add to everything else. After finding out that my cutiemark doesn’t work on everypony, I finally got her to talk to me, and I eventually opened up to her. She was my first real friend since I’d lost everything.     A while went by and an idea started to form in my head. I didn’t even know if you were still alive after the Mirror incident, and I wanted to find out. I’d lost a lot of friends, but I didn’t know if the first one I ever made, and the same one I made… that promise to, was still around. A lot happened in two years, and with the third one about to pass, I wanted to do something.     The promise I made in mind, and finally a purpose to work toward, I started to gather my own group and thus came to be the Boneheads, a nickname that Pulse referred to me as in the early stages of our friendship. See, while I was a smart kid, I was by no means an academic prodigy. Unless it was math, I was kinda shit outta luck in school without help. Um, I’m getting distracted, where was I?     Oh right. So uh… for a few years, I gathered ponies and started looking for you. The only problem was, I could never find you. I didn’t know where you moved to, if you were still alive, who you were living with, anything. Since your old house had been sold, I tried to get information from the new owner but they didn’t have anything since the land was apparently bought by a private retailer. With no leads, I would spend the next seven years slowly losing hope. In the middle of it all, dad started to get sick.     He ran the gang for a long time, but after getting captured by a hero for the second time around when I was fourteen, he started getting a whole lot more careful. The stallion known as ‘Shark Tooth’ disappeared and a new guy took the role of Shark Tooth. In reality, he was still the gang leader, but he did so from the shadows, announcing to his upper leadership that he was giving the spot to his trusted underling who was nothing more than his puppet.     By the time I was getting close to graduating college, dad’s health took a turn for the worse. we’d known there was something wrong with him for the longest time, but when he collapsed while we were out one day, I finally forced him to check into a hospital. Stage four terminal lymph cancer. It was already to a point where there was nothing that magic or medicine could do anything for him. He lasted for about two months. Just long enough to see me graduate. In a weird way, it was like he wanted it to happen. Like he was just tired of the life he’d created. Seeing me succeed where he failed was the last thing he wanted to do.     On his deathbed, he finally told me what it was he and my mom argued about that day. He wanted her to escape from Manehattan. He wanted her to just drop everything and leave, taking me with her. He didn’t think it was safe at home anymore, and if anypony from one of his rivals saw him here, either of us would be their next target. And she wouldn’t have it. She’d finally achieved her dream of being a singer, and she wasn’t willing to throw it all away just to be safe. He couldn’t bring himself to force her to do it, so he left.     When he finally lost to his cancer, an old emotion I thought had gone away rekindled itself in my heart. The unrelenting rage of my childhood returned in full force now I knew that there was somepony out there still breathing that gunned down my mother. As it turned out, Dad already knew who it was and where they were, but never managed to do anything because he didn’t have the power. He’d grown too weak by the time he found them, so in the end, he just tried to hide it all away and forget. I however was not. Three years ago, I would make the greatest mistake of my life, and to this day I still regret what I did. The Boneheads went from being a group of strays I took in to a weaponized gang in full force in just a month.     The leader was an old villain who was put away numerous times, but there weren’t any facilities capable of holding him, and since Manehattan has outlawed the death penalty, he kept getting away with every atrocity he committed. The more I learned, the more my anger burned. This was the stallion that had my mother killed, and she was only one of many. If the state wouldn’t put him down, then I would. I’d assembled about half my main force at the time, and with Me, Pulse, Aurora and Heat, it was more than enough to… kill a few ponies.     When it finally came down to it, I had all the ones I wanted to hurt myself rounded up and brought in front of me. When it was said and done, I’d realized that I’d become my father. I bashed their skulls in with my own hooves, even destroyed the abandoned building to cover it all up. The stallion I promised myself as a child that I would never become stared me back in the mirror every day. Once again, I was broken. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I’d given up on going back to school, I still had ponies that relied on me, and in some twisted turn of fate, I’d become the gang leader I never wanted to be.     My goal of finding you was forgotten and suddenly I had to be the boss. After a while I’d just resigned to it. It was fate, this was destiny, mocking my childhood ideals. It wasn’t until we picked up Synchro did I finally start to regain myself. The gang liked my playboy personality, and just about everypony but Pulse knew me that way. Synchro on the other hoof, saw through that pretty easily. She forced me to come back to reality and slowly regain the self I’d lost when the anger took over.     Then… we got the job about those goddess damned mirrors. I knew it was sketchy from the get go, but it was supposed to be easy. All we had to do was steal a briefcase with information in it for hundreds of thousands of bits. Had we never opened the damn thing, then Quiet and Synchro would probably still be around today. But… that’s just not how things went. So, the rest you know. Fate finds itself constantly laughing in my face, I ended up having to kill my first real marefriend and now I’m back here with you trying to make up for all those years lost. My ‘gang’ is no longer that but just a big family up north now, and the only thing left to tie me to my dad’s name is that I’m the current owner of the Carcha company. Applejack     When Goose finally finished, Ah honestly felt kinda relieved.     “Whew. And here Ah thought ya did somethin’ really terrible,” Ah said with a sigh. He blinked and shook his head.     “Excuse me? I had like, twenty ponies killed out of hollow revenge, how is that not ‘really terrible?’” Ah shook my head and patted him on the shoulder.     “Ah’m not sayin’ it isn’t. Ah am sayin’ that yer kill count isn’t the highest around here though, and at least ya had a... twisted sense of justice fer it. Out of the six of us, Rarity and Twilight are the only two Ah really consider truly innocent. Ya probably don’t know it, but there ain’t a pony around here who doesn’t have blood on their hooves, be it by accident or not.” Goose just stared at me.     “You’re kidding me right? You’ve got to be kidding me. This is just a prank, and the others are going to burst through that door right now to point and laugh, right?” He turned his attention ta the door waitin' fer somepony ta bust through and laugh, but nopony came. Ah pulled his head back my way.     “Afraid not.” He just stared at me with a blank look on his face.     “So… all of you?”     “Yep”     “Each of you, the squeaky clean super heroes that run around saving ponies?”     “Ah don’t figure any of us are ‘squeaky clean’ but Ah think y’all would fit in that category too at this point.” Goose put his hooves ta his head and started ta rub his temples.     “I’m sorry, I think I’m just having trouble processing this. So, not only do you not care that I’m a murderer, but you’re telling me that everypony in this crazy place, including yourself, the hero of Manehattan, are also… killers?”     “Well… in a sense. What happened with Rarity and Twilight were really outta their control and Ah wouldn’t say it was their fault that what happened happened, even if they blame themselves fer it. But the rest of us are still guilty of somethin’ we regret. Thin’s that were really our fault. Ya called yerself a bad guy earlier, and in all honesty, Ah don’t believe that. Ya made a mistake once, and ya regret it with all yer heart. Somepony who didn’t care wouldn’t take homeless kids off the street and give ‘em a job, would they?” He scratched at his head.     “I… I mean, I guess not…” he mumbled.     “And on top of that, ya tried ta keep the mirrors from gettin’ in the city again after ya found out what they could do. Somepony like that probably cares about the lives of others just a little bit more than the average slasher on the streets, don’t ya think?” He sighed and laughed to himself.     “You know, you’re making it really hard for me wallow in my self loathing.” Ah gave him a playful punch in the shoulder.     “Good, let’s keep it that way. Ah had a good time tonight, and Ah’m glad we finally got ta catch up.” Ah said. He rubbed at his shoulder and smiled. “Hey now, you can’t just make me talk and not tell me what happened with you. I pour my heart out and you just up and tell me that you’ve killed before like it’s nothing. The suspense is killing me, I'm dying to know.” Ah let out a breath and checked my phone.     “Well, Ah guess Ah’ve got time. It’s a long one, so ya might as well get comfortable.” He laughed and nodded.     “Maybe you haven’t noticed this yet, but us here together with nopony throwing punches or trying to kill me is about all I’ve wanted for the past twelve years. I think I’m plenty comfortable right now.” Ah nodded and smiled myself.     “Fine, have it yer way. It all starts sixteen years ago. A single dad moved inta his brother’s apartment with his three kids. He’s unemployed, got maybe a gold bit ta his name, and he starts off by lookin’ fer a job.”