“I blame you, brother.”
Trixie dragged herself a few inches forward on the wet sand with her hooves, and coughed. “Personally, Trixie blames all stallions.”
Two unicorns crept up the stairs, listening intently. The deck onto which they emerged was dark, quiet, empty.
“I say, it felt like we were down there for months. I thought you knew your way around steerage?”
“Apparently not Whinny Star steerage,” Trixie muttered back at Fancypants. Any edge on the spy she had hoped to gain by escaping the leg irons had probably been thwarted by the sheer maze that had been the underbelly of the ship. “And at least Trixie was aware of the existence of steerage. You’d have trot right out a cargo hatch and never been the wiser.”
“Was only meaning to ask, young filly, not to demean. Where is everypony?”
Halfway from aft to fore through this deck of the ship, through quite a few crew-only corridors, and not a soul had appeared to challenge them.
“Do…do you think that he killed everypony? But why leave us alive, then?”
Trixie silenced the stallion with a ‘shh’, and put her ear up to a wall. They had arrived in a block of staterooms, and she thought she heard something over the ambient noise of the ship’s passage through the night sky.
After a long moment in which she realized what she was hearing, a blush overtook her face, and she pulled away from the wall.
“Well?”
“The good news is that at least two ponies in there are quite alive.”
“Implying there is bad news?”
“Those ponies would be quite unwilling to stop and answer any questions.”
He nodded, picking up on the innuendo. “If two are alive, more may be.”
Five minutes later, they met back up, having listened at every door on the deck.
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
Trixie’s eyes widened. “The dinner service…the potion.”
“Miss Rarity…”
“Flim and Flam…”
A wave of anger overtook them both simultaneously, as they advanced on each other, accusatory growls overlapping.
“They had better not take advantage of her – ”
“If she were to seduce them then so help Trixie – ”
Eyeball to eyeball, they glared for a long moment.
“This…blast, this is just what the changeling wants, isn’t it? To sow discord. Apologies, dear filly; we must continue to work together if we are to save the day.”
“Our rooms are on the next deck. We might as well…”
Fancypants nodded in response, and they continued to tread across the floor. Now that they knew what some of the ship’s ambient noises in fact were, things did not seem so quiet as before – no one was talking, no, but ponies could make noises other than by speaking, and once one accounted for muffling by the ship’s walls, suddenly the ship actually seemed, in fact, disconcertingly noisy.
Hoof by hoof, they advanced towards Fancypants’ stateroom. Perhaps some evidence of the spy’s plan could be found there –
“Did you say something?”
“What?”
Eyes scanning left, right, and center, they neglected to look up.
With a whomph, Fancypants let out a squeak of a grunt as four sharp hooves drove his body and face into the deck. Trixie had barely time to jump in surprise before the figure in a midnight blue ninja suit clobbered Fancypants twice more in the head with each of her forehooves.
“I’ll destroy you!” Rarity cried, before Trixie slammed against the other mare, pushing her against the wall, trying to pin her with her forelegs. The two struggled against each other. “You take the face of my beau, and then use it to seduce her? I’ll make an end to you, changeling!”
“Rarity!” Trixie yelled. “He’s the real one!”
The alabaster mare calmed for a moment. “Oh. Oh, well - ” Trixie saw the rage reassert itself in time to push back and keep Rarity pinned. “ – cheating, unfaithful – ”
“Rarity! Rarity! Trixie is not interested in a rich playboy! There is nothing going on!”
She calmed down again. Then she screwed her face in confusion. “How would you characterize the Flimflams, then?”
“Poor playboys – oh, shut up. The changeling jumped us, and we’ve been out since before dinner. What’s been going on?”
Rarity gestured, and Trixie relented with her grip, allowing the mares to get back on all fours while Fancypants continued to groan and rub his head.
“Dinner was what you’d call an average affair, not particularly haute cuisine, but shortly afterwards most of the passengers and officers dashed off to secluded areas. Some time later, probably after the low-level crew had leftovers, the rest of the crew too, disappeared. Only I was unaffected.”
Trixie glared. “Why?”
“It was probably in the plum sauce. I was wearing a very fine ensemble, the product of my own hooves, and so I could not bear to risk staining it. Everypony else partook of the sauce, and everypony else seemed affected.”
“And the brothers?” she asked, as the two mares helped Fancypants to his hooves, using what little magic they had that might serve to straighten his senses.
“Flim and Flam?”
“…they were supposed to be in disguise.”
“It wasn’t a terribly good one, dear. But I let them carry on because I was curious to see where they were going with it. In any event…” Rarity gestured with a hoof down the hallway. “It affected them, I believe, differently.”
Trixie peered, noting the long line of fresh stain on the wall and carpets – stains the staff had been too distracted to see to cleaning. “Damn foals forgot that they’re allergic to plums.”
She tested the handle, and then rapped on the door of the stateroom she shared with the brothers. Flim’s weak voice called back: “Who…ergh…who is it?”
“Trixie. Open the door.”
There was a hesitation, and then a reply: “Listen, old girl, whatever you’re feeling right now, it’s – it’s not real, it’s what – ”
“Trixie is not under the influence of the changeling’s potion, foals. Open the damn door, before Trixie adds ‘new lock’ to our end-of-voyage bill.”
The three outside listened to somepony inside stagger towards the door, and after a minute, it swung open, Flam’s eyes rolling in their sockets and his grip barely able to hold himself up off the floor by hanging onto the handle.
“Pretty sure we’re already getting billed, old girl.”
The unicorns of some greater dignity stared in horror, while Trixie merely shook her head in disgust.
“How could you forget you were allergic to plums?”
“How did you remember?”
“How could Trixie forget how you two ruined her tenth birthday party!”
Fancypants’ question was, while equally unhelpful, more on-point for the uninformed observer. “How could anypony get vomit inside a light fixture?”
Flim coughed, from his position on the far side of the stateroom, perched over a bucket. “Fancypants, good sir.” He heaved. “Do we still owe you money?”
“…rather a lot of it, but, ah, I’ll wait for you to clean up a bit. I prefer my coinage with a bit less in the way of emesis on it.”
“Oh, we don’t have the money.” Flim stood, weakly. “Just wanted to make sure you were the real Fancypants.”
“…it’s that out of character for me to forgive a debt?”
“Just to forget one.”
A few minutes more passed, as with the aid of some magic they settled the brothers’ stomachs and with the aid of some water they cleaned the brothers’ faces of remaining disguise and vomit. Fancypants proved a surprisingly adroit hoof at the task, but on reflection, the brothers realized this made sense, too: even stallions of wealth and taste sometimes went to those sort of parties.
“Well, the five of us ought to be able to tackle one changeling, don’t you think?”
Everypony turned to look at Rarity for confirmation. She shrugged. “The girls and I tackled a hundred on our own during the invasion. But…well, none of you are Twilight Sparkle. Or Rainbow Dash. Or Applejack. Or even Pinkie Pie.”
Trixie rolled her eyes. “We’re also not Fluttershy.”
“That’s…well, that’s not usually a terrific disadvantage. But we ought to be able to manage a simple melee with only the one of them, yes. Shall we go save the day?”
An instinct for narrative thread, more than any actual evidence, led them to the bridge of the ship, where a single pony worked the helm – a pony still dressed as a chef. Fancypants cleared his throat, and the pony turned around, startled. His eyes moved quickly across the five unicorns staring him down.
Flam spoke first. “Well, since you’ve beaten us, why not tell us your plan?”
The pony blinked. “What.”
“You’ve clearly bested us, and have us at your mercy; don’t force us to die without knowing what was going on here.”
“I – I haven’t beaten you! You outnumber me!”
Flim laughed. “Yes, but we’re simple unicorns of no particular talent, while you are a master changeling spy. Anypony can see the chips fall.”
Rarity nodded sagely. “Flim is correct. One must face death with a bit of dignity, but still the curiosity ravages. For do changelings not feed on love? Lust is not quite the same thing, is it?”
The pony faded into a changeling, black and marked with holes and bearing both horn and wings, keeping his back to the wheel. “Love is meat, lust is sugar. Sometimes easier to come by, good for a quick burst of energy, but not healthy for a long-term food supply.” He cast an eye to his flanks, as the five unicorns began to spread out around him.
Flam raised a brow. “And what do you need all this energy for?”
“The RMS Moon’s Proud Glow is going to make a very special delivery to the Griffon Kingdom.”
Fancypants frowned. “You’re going to start a war?”
“War increases urgency. Beings act on their feelings faster, more decisively. And then separation between soldiers and families makes many opportunities of its own – look, you’re plainly not beaten – beaten ponies don’t surround the victor!”
“Well, if you insist,” Rarity said, and then pounced, the first in the dog pile.
Five wrestled with one, and then, at the end, two wearing Trixie’s face were pulled up.
“…dammit.” Flam rubbed his face with his hoof. “Trixie, how do you feel about Twilight Sparkle?”
One Trixie froze.
The other scowled. “That pathetic little foal! I am ten times the magician she – ”
Flim gave a savage buck, slamming her into a control console, limbs entangled with levers and rods.
She moaned, tears streaming down her face. “Flim…how could you…”
“Wrong answer, changeling! Trixie has gotten over her Twilight issues. Tie it down.”
Fancypants and Rarity stepped forward, a length of rope magically suspended.
“Please, Flim, no, don’t do this – I was just saying what you needed to hear, I was just thinking of what would prove to you the fastest, please, Flim – ” She writhed, as the unicorns wove rope and tied her securely. “Please, Flim, I…I love you – ”
A savage punch from his foreleg left her head lolling.
Flim spat. “Pronoun trouble.”
Rarity stared for a moment. “I must confess as to being a bit surprised you found it that easy to strike somepony wearing her face.”
Flam laughed. “Are you kidding? After the time she held our heads down and made us eat rocks while the whole orphanage watched?”
The real Trixie, for her part, was already at another set of consoles, reading the instruments, paying no more heed to her double. “He said he was going to deliver us to the Griffon Kingdom? That’s strange – if we were on this heading, then that would mean – ”
Fireworks exploded outside the bridge’s windows, sending in a torrent of shattered glass.
“ – that we were already almost there.”
“ATTENTION UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT! YOU ARE NOW IN GRIFFON AIRSPACE! YOU SHALL TURN BACK AT ONCE, OR FACE DESTRUCTION!” The voice boomed in from all sides, in a way that suggested magical transmission, rather than somepony – or some griffon – being nearby with a megaphone.
“Well, horse apples,” Flam said, setting himself on the helm. “Let’s get to the turning-back-at-once bit, shall we?” His hooves rolled the wheel hard right.
Nothing happened.
He rolled the wheel hard left.
Nothing happened.
He looked back to the others, helplessly. “The rudder chain’s been severed.”
“So what now?” Trixie asked.
Fancypants shook his head. “We die, dear filly. That’s all there is to it.” His dour pronouncement attracted four stares. “Well, it’s not so bad, is it? We’ll all have time to say our goodbyes, and everypony else on the ship will have been, ah, ‘getting some’, for the past few hours – there are worse ways to make one’s exit.”
His words hung in the air.
“Yeah, screw that,” Flim said, grabbing a few levers at the console. “Rarity, disable those safeties over by where you’re standing. We’re going to drop below their sensor altitude and avoid the next barrage.”
The alabaster unicorn pulled a pair of levers. “And how shall we accomplish that?”
“By doing something remarkably stupid.”
One could question why an airship would even have a lever marked “emergency gasbag disengage”, there being almost no circumstances in which using it was a good idea. But Flim’s was not to reason why, his was to do and to die – or to live, as was here his objective.
Five ponies on the bridge, and a hundred-odd more on the other decks, felt a lurch in their stomachs as the Moon’s Proud Glow suddenly felt the cruel whip of that most harsh mistress, gravity.
Pierre Grande, Commandant de l'Armée de l'Air des Uni Griffon, peered at the large map table in front of him with a predator’s eye, while underlings pushed around tokens representing sensor contacts with long sticks.
“Commandant,” one of his flyers reported over a magical communicator, “we have examined Sector 49. It is the wreckage of an Equestrian civilian airship.”
The commandant spat. “Merde! We have downed a pony vessel? With warning shots?”
“It appears so, Commandant. There are many survivors amongst the wreck.”
“Well, help them, imbecile! We shall send more assistance at once!” He waved a talon at his underlings, who began contacting other patrols. “A war with Celestia is not to start on my watch!”
Far from the rescue operation, carried far on their particular piece of driftwood by their position on the ship, five particular unicorn ponies pulled themselves onto cold wet sandy shores.
“I blame you, brother.”
Trixie dragged herself a few inches forward on the wet sand with her hooves, and coughed. “Personally, Trixie blames all stallions.”
Rarity, too, pulled herself along, trying to get her mud-glommed coat out of the seawater. “Trixie has the right of it. If somepony hadn’t been all manly and stoic and provoked somepony else….”
“Then we would’ve been hit by griffon artillery and died.”
“They would’ve done a fly-by first, to see who we were! We could’ve flagged them down, responded, advised them of our troubles!”
Flam, the furthest up on the beach, turned himself and let the sun dry him for a bit. “Would have been wonderful to have heard some of those ideas then.”
A few more minutes of bickering, gasping, and heaving, and eventually all five were standing, somewhat dry, on the beach.
“To get the obvious question out of the way,” Fancypants started, “where are we? Island?”
Flim wrung the last of the water out of his hat, and put it back on his head, resolutely. “We fan out, walk for a bit, and meet back here in…shall we say half an hour? One along each direction on the shore, the rest of us in straight lines inland? We’ll get the lay of the land, and – ”
Ten minutes later, all five had met up again – two along the shore coming at each other, three along the island.
“It’s not a terribly large island, is it?”
They sat, and mused.
“I found some luggage,” Fancypants offered helpfully. “A lot, actually, think some of it is yours.”
“Oh,” Flim replied, distractedly. “Good.”
“There are trees,” Rarity said, “and…a natural spring, for water, that is a lucky thing. It’ll be like one of those survival stories.”
“These are all evergreen trees,” Trixie observed. “None of these bear fruit or berries worth the eating.”
Rarity nodded, with determination. “Well, then we had best be about it and resort to cannibalism now, while the eating is still good. It makes most sense to eat one of the Flimflam brothers – being twins they offer less in the way of genetic diversity and are therefore redundant. Trixie, since you will be mating with the survivor, the decision of which one we shall eat is up to you.”
Everypony stared in horror.
The alabaster unicorn rolled her eyes. “Or, you know, we could eat the grass. I know it’s not civilized, but really now. This is survival, we can lower ourselves to earth pony standards for a bit.”
“Oh. Right.” Flim chuckled.
Over a long day, they chopped wood with magically wielded sharp stones, gathered material for a fire, collected water in magically-woven watertight baskets, and built a camp.
Sitting down at the fire come the evening, each had the same question for each other: “Okay, I know why I can do this, but how are you doing this?” (Trixie of course substituted out certain pronouns.)
“A fellow can’t go on safari with important clients?” was Fancypants’ explanation.
“Trixie knows camping and squatting quite well, thank you.”
“When you tag along with a bachelor herd going overland, you pull your weight.”
Eyes turned to Rarity.
“I read a lot of adventure stories.”
“No offense, Rarity,” Flim started, and Flam knew that offense was to follow, “but I had a picture of you as the sort who would insist on a two-story floral-print tent on a camp-out.”
She smiled. “Of course. If it all possible, and especially if it were for pleasure, a lady should insist on the best. But our goal now is to survive. When Rainbow Dash stranded Pinkie Pie and me in the desert and left the two of us to find our way back to civilization on a handcar, I did not quibble about coordination.”
Flam scratched the top of his head, while they waited for the pot of herbs to brew into some kind of drink on the fire. “Wait…that happened? But I thought she was…Rainbow Dash is ‘loyalty’, right?”
“That is the title Twilight Sparkle gave her, yes, after knowing her for less than two days. I would have disputed that, but the universe seemed to take Twilight’s side, seeing as how she made it work, so …bravo to her insight, I suppose.”
The pot whistled, and Fancypants lifted it with his magic, pouring it into tea cups they had found in a piece of lost luggage.
“So when do you suppose we will be rescued?” he asked, as he passed around the herbal brew.
On the one hoof, they agreed, there had been a shipwreck, and therefore patrols would be out looking for survivors. On the other hoof, though, they would be much quicker to assume that any missing souls had perished, unless they were somehow led to this island.
“So it’s more a question of who has incentive to look extra hard for us. I’d think we’re fine there,” Flam said, “seeing as we have a major corporate figure and one of the Elements of Harmony here.”
Rarity and Fancypants looked at each other, and then back at Flam, guiltily.
“Well…”
“I did not notify my company of this trip.”
“And I didn’t tell my friends.”
Trixie stared. “You were eloping?”
“What? No! It was just a little weekend getaway – no need to bother my friends with the details….”
“You were eloping!”
“We were not eloping,” Fancypants said, sternly. “Do not carried away.”
“You shared a stateroom!”
“As did you, with two stallions.”
“Yes, but that’s different. We’re broke.”
Flam waved it all aside. “So you’re saying that your friends and your company don’t realize you’re missing, and don’t know where to start looking for you? Until somepony finds the passenger manifest, sees that you aren’t among the recovered survivors, and puts two and two together?”
“And then assumes we perished.”
They mulled on this.
“Well,” Rarity asked, “is anypony looking for you three?”
Flim nodded with pride. “Of course! We have a long list of ponies looking for us. We make enemies in every town we visit, just for this purpose.”
Fancypants frowned. “Wouldn’t most of them also just assume you died, and be happy with that?”
“Not our lawyer! We owe him far too much money for the grave to keep him at bay.”
“Your lawyer.”
“Right, the brown earth pony who thinks he’s dating Twilight Sparkle.”
“He does?” Rarity looked skeptical. “Oh, my, he’s in for some disappointment.”
“That is his lot in life, but between him looking for us, and Twilight looking for you, we might just get rescued yet.”
“Has he considered Applejack instead?”
Flim winced. “I try not to think about his love life except where it directly advances my interests. But knowing him, he probably has.”
A day passed, and then another, and then ten more.
“I suppose that’s it, then,” Rarity sighed, playing tic-tac-toe against herself in the dust, trying to work out a winning strategy. “Your lawyer realized there are more important things than money, and Twilight wrote a very moving letter to the Princess about how one should deal with the loss of a treasured friend. And the Princess is quietly moving to find a replacement Element of Generosity. Shouldn’t be hard – if I qualify, most ponies could. Now, perhaps if the Element were of Fabulosity….”
“Not to keep harping upon the whole ‘we’re going to die’ thing,” Fancypants added, “but I’ve been estimating the rate at which we deplete the forage and the rate at which it regrows. This island really is much too small; we’ll be out of food in a month.”
Trixie stared into space. “So…the decision of whom to eat…that falls to Trixie after all, yes?”
“No,” Flim said.
“…because you’re going to offer yourself as the sacrifice?”
“What? No!” Flim shuddered. “I have a plan. It’s a…a very last-resort plan. Flam…walk with me, we need to talk this over.”
“You mean…?”
“Carriage Callow’s last lesson, Flam. The Elder Con.”
The brothers nodded solemnly, and trotted away from the evening’s campfire.
Rarity and Fancypants regarded Trixie with curiosity.
“What was that about?”
“You’re sure about this, Flim?”
“If anypony can make this work…this might be all that’s left to try.”
Trixie frowned. “…don’t know. Carriage Callow spent more time with the boys than with the girls.”
“Some sort of secret unicorn magic? But why would they keep it under their hats until now?”
“You know you might not come back from this.”
“If I don’t, you can date Trixie.”
“…don’t be like that.”
“Just do it, Flam. Now.”
“We’ve been in tight spots before. Trixie can’t see what they would only try…oh no. Oh no no no no!”
Flam trotted back towards the clearing, and behind him was…Flim, but not Flim. Flim covered with pink coat dye taken from the recovered luggage, Flim with a wide manic grin on his face, Flim bouncing with energy.
Flim with a squeaky voice.
“Hi! I’m Bubble Berry!”