Accelerando
Chapter 9: Double Team
Ahem.
The next day, the ponies of Ponyville did their best to resume their daily habits, little suspecting that—
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Forgetting what, Pinkie?
“Forgetting that this is Ponyville Founder’s Day!”
Are you sure?
“The Best Young Musician’s Competition—assuming it’s on the same date as the real-life competition it’s replacing—is always on the seventh Canterday of Harvest, which in 7013 was the 50th. You said that the end of the competition was a week later, which would be the 57th. This is the day after that, and the day after the 57th of Harvest is—”
Ponyville Founder’s Day. I totally should stop being surprised that you’d remember something like that. Alright if you’re so smart, Pinkie, you tell me what’s going to happen today. Is it a party?
“No, silly! It’s a parade! And not just any parade, but a big giant ‘we survived almost certain doom and at the same time want to honor the memory of our fallen’ parade-apalooza! There were apple bobbing booths, and sweets and pastries and corn on the cob! And the Mayor was the grand mistress in a cart pulled by Applejack and Big MacIntosh, and then there was the band. Oh what a band! Seventy-six trombones led the big parade, with a hundred and ten cornets close at hand. They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuosos. The cream of every famous band.”
Uh, any drummers?
“No. Seventy-six trombones caught the morning sun—I was the fourth trombone by the way—with a hundred and ten cornets right behind. There were more than a thousand reeds, springing up like weeds. There were horns, of every shape and size!”
But what about timpani? Copper bottom timpani in horse platoons?
“No.”
Thundering, thundering all along the way?
“No! We sent an invitation to the best, most awesome drummer/band leader Equestria had ever known, but she had a prior commitment in Canterlot, and without her, any lesser talent would have been a letdown. So we played the ‘Zap Apple March’, and the ‘Canterlot Post’, and after the parade finished up, I organized a little swing band at the Town Square. I picked up my trombone, and I started to play Cloud Kicker’s favorite song.”
You didn’t!
“I did! Buppa-bum-pa-bom-pa! Buppa-bum-pa-pa!”
You played the theme from Haywaii Five-O?
“Yup!”
Without drums? Have you no sense of decency?
“Hey, is it my fault if Fire Boom didn’t want to be in this story? Buppa-bom-pa-bom-pa! Buppa-bom-pa-ta! Waugh! ...Hold on, this part is really high. La-la-la-la-la! Ahem. Wah—!”
The sounds of Pinkie Pie’s Firehouse Five Plus Two were just then supplemented by rhythm, bass and lead guitars and the all-important drums, as four pegasi descended from the sky in a blaze of glory.
“It’s Fire Boom and the Boomerangs!” exclaimed a breathless Scootaloo, who then fainted.
“From a lack of breath.”
The new additions loyally backed Pinkie’s band as the melody of “Haywaii Five-O” played out, but when it came time for the solos, the newcomers went all out! Fire Boom launched into a blistering journey through the music of Stungpetal, starting with “Big Bad Boom”, and then proceeding to...
“Alright, that should keep her busy for a while,” remarked Vinyl Scratch. She, Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle and Spike had gathered at the ‘Crater Library Memorial Site’ (as Pinkie had dubbed the spot) to plan their next move. “Thanks for getting her down here, Pinkie.”
“No problem-o!” Pinkie replied. “Also, I now have another item struck off of my ‘Ten Octillion Things to Do Before Kicking the Bucket’ List: See R.D. descend from the sky in a blaze of glory, all while playing a full set of timpani.”
“So all we have to do,” said Vinyl, “is get her to end the dream.”
Twilight stepped forward. “According to...a trustworthy source on the nature of dreams—”
“The Big Pop-Up Book of the Pony Mind,” Pinkie Pie said helpfully.
“Yes,” Twilight said with an embarrassed sigh, “that book with the less than serious title. According to it, all we have to do to wake a dreamer is make her fall.”
“Right,” said Spike in deadpan. “And that’s going to be so easy to do to her.”
“Oh,” said Twilight, wincing. “Right. Well in that case we need to convince her that she’s dreaming.”
“Correction,” said Vinyl. “One of us needs to convince her. She’s been reluctant to let herself be a part of the story so far, and if our first attempt doesn’t work, she might make herself completely inaccessible from then on.”
“Yeah,” said Spike. “I guess it would be a lot harder to convince an unseen and unheard narrator to stop a dream than a pony standing right in front of you. Plus, it could get really bad if we don’t stop things soon.”
“How bad?” asked Twilight.
“I think she’s starting a limited edition miniseries,” Spike told them. He pronounced the phrase like it described a particularly nasty type of fireball spell. When his audience failed to react appropriately to this revelation, he spelled it out for them: “That means that the next boss is going to be about ten times worse than Umbra.”
“Alright, so not good, then,” Vinyl summarized in a weak voice before perking up. “I know! I’ll use logic on her like I did in your dream, Twilight.”
Twilight looked at Vinyl like it was the dumbest thing she had ever heard in her entire life. “Please repeat that phrase and tell me what’s wrong with it,” she said dryly.
Vinyl sighed. “OK, so logic is out. What do you suggest, Twilight?”
“I’ve never been able to get through to Rai—” She stopped herself from saying Rainbow Dash’s name just in time to avoid attracting her attention. “I’ve never been the one to convince her of anything. What does our comic book expert have to suggest?”
“Uh, convince her that her readership has declined into the negative numbers? Surely she’ll stop the story then?”
Twilight gave Spike the same look she had just bestowed upon Vinyl. “Need I remind you of the serialized reading of Daring Do and the Weathermare’s Gambit, Spike? All 78 chapters of it?”
Spike facepalmed.
Vinyl looked over to Pinkie Pie, who was bouncing up and down and waving all four hooves around every time she became airborne. She knew exactly what she was going to say. “Pinkie Pie?” she asked wearily.
“Asparagus facial!”
That was not the answer Vinyl had predicted. “What?” she asked.
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, numbered or predicted!” Pinkie confidently declared. “My life is my own! But if the facial doesn’t work, I vote clown hammer.”
Bingo. “Yeah, I thought so,” said Vinyl. “I’m pretty sure that only works on you.”
“Aw, nuts!” Pinkie exclaimed.
“And that just leaves Pinkamena,” concluded Vinyl.
“No,” said Pinkie quickly, waving her forehooves. “You don’t want to hear her plan.”
“Nopony else has a plan that will work, Pinkie,” said Twilight.
“But her plan is mean,” replied Pinkie, biting her lip in worry. She then shot up to her hooves and directed her eyes down and to the left.
By the slight twitching of her lips, it looked like she was having a conversation with herself.
“But I’m over it!” she exclaimed to nopony in particular. “I was only scared for a moment. You don’t need to get revenge for my sake.”
“Are you planning to hurt her?” Vinyl asked.
Pinkie fell back into a seated position as Pinkamena took over. “Well that depends,” she said with a cruel smile. “Physically, or emotionally?”
“Vinyl,” Twilight said, stepping forward to put a leg around Pinkamena’s shoulder. “I trust my friend to do the right thing under the circumstances and not go too far. Right, Pinkamena?” She looked the magenta pony in the eyes as she asked this, with a smile that was equal parts warm and warning.
Pinkamena looked aside for a few seconds, then glanced at her lower left and sighed. “Agreed. Only enough to get her to stop,” she said.
...and after that we took a break.
I signed autographs for a few eager fillies, then whipped up a cloud to rest a bit on—making it low in case another fan wanted to come by, because I always have time for the fans.
Instead it’s Pinakamena. And she looks...well she’s using the Pinkamena Usual Scowl. Which means that somepony is in trouble.
Can’t be me, though—I just got here.
“Dashie...” she growls.
Uh, oh—it’s me. I decide to distract her. “So,” I say quickly, “I always meant to ask you: what’s it like sharing your brain with Pinkie?”
Pinkamena looks away for a second as she ponders how she’s going to answer the question. “There are no words in the Equine language,” she finally answers, then looks back at me. “Now, Dashie...”
The heat of her accusing glare is so hot, I could have sworn that a tree behind me suddenly ignited. New distraction, new distraction! “Hey, a little bird told me that you write fanfiction for Daring Do. And that’s really neat, because I do, too!”
“Oh, you write stories?” she asks me, with this really ominous grin.
Why do I get the feeling like I just walked right into a trap?
“I like to write stories about Ahuizotl,” Pinkamena says quietly to me, “because nopony else seems to respect him in their stories. They make him two-dimensional, or else use him as the butt of their jokes. I think you have to understand your characters when you write about them, or your story just...dies.”
I nod. “Yeah, I think that, too.”
“Really?” she asks with an arch in one brow. “What about Fluttershy?”
What about...I don’t believe it! I raise my cloud up a bit so I can lean down in her face. “Hey!” I exclaim. “You’re just a character! Don’t go questioning your part in my story!”
“What about Fluttershy?” she repeats calmly.
You know, I might be really mad at her for, like, smashing the fourth wall to splinters just now, but I’ve got to hoof it to her: she has a lot of guts to stand up to her creator like this. I mean, I could turn her into a slug right now if I felt like it.
And I have a perfect right to be mad. I work hard on my stories, but everypony thinks because I do nothing but r...play music (a-heh), that I don’t know how to put together a good plot with interesting characters. I can do that, easy!
“Fluttershy just had a character arc,” I tell Pinkamena, describing an arc with one hoof. “And it was moving and awesome and stuff. But now she can recover, because she won’t be in the next few chapters.”
“I figured you’d take the easy way out,” she replies, pointing accusingly at me with one hoof. “You don’t dare to show what’s going to happen to her.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to her!” I shout back, raising my cloud even more to show how far above her I am. “I would never do anything truly awful to Fluttershy, even if she’s just a character in my story. She lost her cutie mark, but she will recover here in the village, and then move on with her life.”
“No, she won’t!” Pinkamena yells, shaking her hoof in rage. “Don’t you know what you’ve done to her? She lost her cutie mark, which means she can’t understand animals anymore, and they no longer trust her.”
I hadn’t thought about the trust part, but that’s probably right. Ouch. Well I’ll...I’ll think of some way to make it up to her.
“So?” I ask, not wanting Pinkamena to know about that extremely brief moment of doubt. “She still has her friends. She can crash with them while she puts her life back together again.”
“But she won’t,” Pinkamena says, stamping her hoof. “She’s too kind to ever impose herself like that, especially since it seems like her new condition is permanent. She can’t support herself, and her crippling shyness means that she never will support herself. She’ll only have one choice.” She looks up at me, waiting for me to figure it out.
Wait, you don’t mean...no, I would never do anything that cruel to Fluttershy. It...it would break her.
But that’s what’s going to happen. You put Fluttershy in these circumstances, and there’s nothing else for her to do but—
But to move home...with her mother.
Thereby proving her right about us “dirt ponies”. Is that what you want? Is that what you really want to do to poor Fluttershy?
I...no...I’m sure there’s some way...oh, and you brought her over here? Low blow, guys, low blow.
Tell Fluttershy and me how you’re going to write your way out of this. How you are going to continue the story without doing that to Fluttershy.
I...well, she’ll just...
“Ooh, we’re going to just have so much fun together,” Parula told her daughter. “And by ‘fun’, I mean me telling you why your birth doomed the whole of Equestria. Or at least the atmospheric part. Because the part on the ground, including all of your friends in Ponyville, are the scum of the earth, and deserve everything that’s coming for them. And another thing, mudling—”
Aarrrgghhhh! Fine! Fine! I’ll admit it—I’m completely over my head! This story is running out of control, and it’s kinda making me sick. And if Fluttershy is going to, going to—I can’t even say it!
So, The End.
Okay?
Just, The End.
(I just don’t know what went wrong...)