//------------------------------//
// Chapter 12- Zebras and Irony 
// Story: Building Walls, Burning Bridges 
// by MonolithiuM 
//------------------------------//

	Prince Blueblood had just finished his breakfast of hayfries and eggs, and he felt absolutely grand. 

A pungent, heavy stink floated through the air of Blueblood's room, causing him to sniff and look about. He recognized that stench.

"The last time those horrible griffons were here they cooked up that most rancid dish! It couldn't be…"

Blueblood hung his barrel out the window, swiveling his head to and fro to find the source of the most disgusting meal ever conceived. Within seconds, he found the source. 

There was Mono, or rather the back of his extraordinarily-sized head, at the head of a stove. He was cooking something, but what it was Blueblood had no clue. 

"Mono," the Prince called. "Mono!"

Mono did not turn around, simply rocking his head from one side to the next. Gritting his teeth, Blueblood opened his jaws and bellowed as loudly as he could.

"MONOOOOOOO!"

Mono's head perked up, stayed stock still, turned to the left slightly…

And he sneezed. The human then went back to cooking whatever was on the stove ahead of him, his head bobbing from left to right once again.

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After yesterday's breakdown, Twilight let me get anything I wanted. I had been in Equestria for about a week, so I figured, "Why not something tasty?"

After asking for it, I got it, and now I was cooking the most delicious dish ever to be concocted. And with some Queens of the Stone Age, it was an absolutely perfect morning. 

Some debris from the open window tickled my nose, which caused me to sneeze. It was a good thing I had turned away from the food, too. After shaking my head, I got back to getting the tasty morsel to a delicate golden-brown. 

Whatever had tickled my nose rested on the tip of it, so I crossed my eyes to examine the culprit. 

"Chewed hay…?" 

No sooner had I crossed my eyes than the door to my room exploded open. Standing there was Fancy Pants, I huge smile across his face. His smile faltered and his nose crinkled. 

Shaking his head as if clearing it, he poked a hoof at me and his lips moved. I reached up and removed one earbud, cutting off the flow of music. 

"What's that, Fancy?"

"What are you cooking?" His brows pulled down in confusion and some slight disgust. I looked at the pan in front of me, thinking how I should treat the situation. With tact, of course. 

"Bacon. Meat from pigs. I know it's not exactly you ponies' thing, but I could really not give less than one shit."

I shrugged at his nauseous expression, and flipped some more strips onto the frier. "Anyways, what were you so excited about before my breakfast bitch-slapped you?"

"Well, Princess Celestia caved in after a solid two hours of begging from Twilight, and the factory building is ours! All we have to do now is begin hiring and advertising."

I kept tending to my tender pig tenders. I suddenly craved tenderloin. ANYWAY, I frowned a bit. "Any word on Flim and Flam?"

Fancy's face fell. "It's so strange, it's as if the two of them have simply fallen off the map! I checked every city for two traveling salescolts, contacting all of my business partners from Fillydelphia to Los Pegasus. Not a word."

I sighed a little. "That's most likely because Applejack showed the two of them up in Ponyville a while ago. After that, I assume that they haven't been doing so well. News travels quickly in Equestria, like E. coli." I paused. "Or stupid."

I looked back at my pan and resumed my cooking. Fancy pondered what I had said while leaning against my doorframe with an immaculately groomed hoof.

"Perhaps the shelters and soup-kitchens?"

"That's our best bet. Do it."

Fancy nodded and turned aside, trotting away from my room. 

\\\\||||////

I finished cooking my bacon and was positively bored. So I went for a stroll through the palace… 

…with a plate of bacon.

Yes, many ponies keeled over and vomited. Several guards collapsed. I continued to not give a fuck while I munched on my perfectly-toasted strips of pig meat. I had a friend in second grade, and when she told me she couldn't eat pig, and thus no bacon, I left her presents every day. 

Small things like crayons or pictures, sometimes a little keychain teddy bear. She was mighty confused, but I honestly pitied her. For someone to have never tasted bacon is just- just… I'm sorry this is getting very emotional for me… We'll touch on this subject later.

So I was aimlessly wandering around when I heard Princess Celestia behind some doors that were decidedly not the throne room's. 

Putting my ear against the door, I listened closely.

"I would like to thank you for taking your time to visit Equestria," she said politely.

"I would like to thank you for taking your time to visit Equestria," a stallion repeated. 

"Huh?" I listened more intently. 

"Thank you, dearest Princess. It is with great importance that I am here. I wish to speak with you on matters concerning the Harmonious Sports Tournament." This other stallion's voice was accented, almost like… "a Native African's?" 

Then it hit me. "Zebras! Ah-ha!" 

"Thank you, dearest Princess. It is-" 

"Okay, so there's a mare repeating the same thing in the same language…? What in the fu-" 

I leaned too far forward, and the doors swung in, dumping me on the floor but mercifully leaving my bacon to rest at the doorway. The doors swung closed and pushed the plate out of sight. 	

Before I could race off to get it, Celestia had called my name angrily. 

"Mono! Leave immediately, this meeting between the zebras and I is of the utmost importance!"

I groaned and stood up. "Calm your nipples, princess pastel, just let me get my bearings."

The zebras, one female with dreads and a male with a strikingly styled mohawk and robes, gaped at me. The stallion dropped his hoof solidly onto the floor and wore a scowl. "How dare he react to the sight of royalty in such a way! In my country, he would be imprisoned on the spot!"

The mare winced and cleared her throat. "How dare he react-"

"Yeah yeah, chief! I caught your high and mighty royal speech. And may I just say, bravo, you really blew me away, your assness. Just let me tell you that back in my country royalty doesn't exist." I bowed obnoxiously and rose back up to stare into everyone's shocked faces. 

"Y- you can understand me?" The mohawked zebra gaped at me. 

"Oh no, I'm just guessing what you're saying and responding based on my mood. Of course I can understand you, jackass. How else would I speak to you? Even zebras are plum fucking retarded."

Celestia and her stallion counterpart's jaws dropped, and silence reigned the room.

"I'm leaving, I'm leaving…" I opened the doors and found… nothing. My bacon was gone.

"WHO THE FUCK STOLE MY MEAT!"

Fancy Zebra fainted behind me, collapsing upon the floor to the shock of everyone there. Gritting my teeth, I spun back around. 

"Alright, the bacon is gone, everybody can chill out," I said, spreading my arms wide in the international 'chill out' symbol. 

"Mono! Do you have any idea what you just did?" Celestia was practically screaming at me by now. Her mane had taken on a fiery form that blasted against the ceiling. 

"I lost my bacon and insulted a foreign dignitary. So?"

Celestia reigned in her nigh-apocalyptic violent reaction and stooped down to look me in my eyes. "Mono," she said. 

"Yes?" I responded, my expression detached and disinterested. 

"Keep this up, and to Ponyville you go."

\\\\||||////

Celestia blinked. "Where… where did he go?"

She turned to find everyone in the room seated at a beautiful mahogany table with plates of steaming vegetables laid out in front of them. Wound about their necks were napkins made of golden lace and silk frill. 

The Zebra dignitary was propped in a bubbling jacuzzi with cucumbers over his eyes and a malt drink in his right hoof. He was still fast asleep. The two translators stood from their seats, looking at everything around them in shock. 

A small note balanced at the end of Celestia's nose. 

I'll kiss your ass, just don't send me to Ponyville.

"Well. It seems he will not be bothering us again. Shall we eat?"

\\\\||||////

I trudged away from the room with my hands stuffed in my coat pockets. As I made my way through the halls of the castle, I remembered Luna's reaction to being told she and her entire world was fake. 

The two of them had reacted quite negatively to the revelation, as expected. But if I was here, that should at least give Luna some hope in her being real. "Of course I'm real, how could I not be? The very notion is ridiculous. I know for I fact that I truly exist in the physical realm." 

Maybe I was having some kind of effect on these ponies that not even they themselves were aware of. 

I slipped my earphones in and began humming loudly. 

Everyday...

This continued for at least two hours, and in my distracted state, I had stepped outside of the castle, into the streets, and found my way blocked by a severely angry mob of prismatic equines. 

"Hmm. I wonder what time it is?" I pulled out my iPod and clicked the button, thumbing through the options until I found the time. "Four o' clock, huh?" 

I turned around and began walking in the opposite direction of the crowd. "What're they all gathered up for?" I pondered. 

"It's the alien! It's Mono! Get him!"

I turned my head to face them. "Eh?"

Immediately I began running through the streets, screaming expletives at the already-pissed crowd. "We make gelatin out of hooves on my planet!"

A roar of horror and anger. "Delicious." 

"When an equine's leg is too damaged, we kill the poor fucker and let it rot!" 

They had begun throwing things at me, shattering windows and in some cases hurting bystanders. It had started to get out of hand. So out of hand, in fact, that they didn't see the approaching school tour. 

"Ah crap, it's Cheerilee!" I pushed ahead of the crowd and ground to a halt in front of the kids. "And this is the ancient art of…"

I faced down the crowd and powered forward, my abilities allowing me to reach incredible speeds. I pulled back my right hand in a gloved fist and jumped to stare their leader right in the eyes. 

"Lyra?"

Without a moment's hesitation, I socked her right in the snout, and the speed effect disappeared instantaneously. I was left, absolutely stock-still, in the air. 

Everything physically stopped, then the ground buckled, windows cracked, and Lyra turned into a bio-missile. 

Her entire group scattered from the force, and the shockwave blew the manes of the kids into disarray. Lyra shot down the street, taking out several of her cronies. She crashed through the window of a mattress shop; which was hysterical because she still got injured, and soon enough they were all gone. 

"Well, that takes care of that," I said, removing the fur from my mittens nonchalantly. I heard a squeal behind me, as if its owner was bathing in the radiation of my fisticuffs' swagger.

"That was so cool!" I turned to come face to face with Scootaloo and the Cutie Mark Crusaders. "How'd you do that, huh?"

I groaned and put a hand over my face. "Listen, I don't have time to explain, so I'll just leave it like this: I have superpowers." 

The looks of awe on their faces was pretty fulfilling, but I seriously needed to get back to the castle and inform my compatriots of this latest development. The fact that there was a group of ponies that wanted me out of Equestria was concerning. Ponies are herd animals after all. 

"You're a superhero!" Sweetie Belle stared up at me with childish wonder and excitement. As adorable as she was, her friends had gotten even closer than her. And when I say friends, I mean her entire class, including Cheerilee. 

"No I'm not. Also, when is that Sports Championship thingy again?"

Cheerilee looked very surprised. "You're competing?" she asked. I nodded.

"Ah, so you're the Mono my girls have been talking about? Well, if you want to compete on the Ponyville team, then you need to be a student at Ponyville." That smile. I wanted to punch her in the face. 

"Oh really?" I glared at the CMC, who shrugged collectively. "Well then, I guess that I really won't be able to help you guys. To make up the entire school year that fast…" 

"But my sis told me that Twilight told her that you can read and learn really really fast! Like, crazy fast! He took his linens-and-things test after only twenty minutes of studying!"

I stared at Sweetie Bell with one eyebrow cocked. "Linens-and-things? Don't you mean citizenship?" 

She blushed and rubbed the back of her head. "Eh he he, yeah."

Cheerilee smiled brightly. "Well then, I'll admit you to the class and you'll start your Ponyville education in two days! Have a great day, Mono!" 

The group trotted away, with some of the kids waving good-bye to me. Once they were out of range of my vision, I dropped to my knees. Trembling with barely controlled anger, I scrunched my body up in a mass of gray and black. 

And I screamed to the heavens with unrestrained rage at the situational irony.