INTERMISSION 2—A Few Minutes With Jerks
The Grand Hall of Gearlotte was like a castle built inside a robot. Spike estimated that the entirety of Celestia’s castle probably could have fit in this one hall. The walls were all a gigantic mosaic painting depicting what Spike guessed to be the history of the Machina: scenes of war, peace, merrymaking, war, famous speeches, past leaders, more war… he had no idea that there was THIS much history in Gearlotte.
His past few days were spent in the mansion of the Judge (Which, by the way, was under the ocean, more on that later). Apparently, he was made one of the Judge’s own personal attendants. While there, he had learned much from the Judge and his subjects and disciples on his current environment: its name, people, current political climate. And now he was on his way to meet its current Governor, Rip-Roar.
He walked alongside the Judge, his feet a timid plip-plip-plip amongst the Judge’s confident clop-clop-clop. They were flanked by Shine Brightest (whom Spike seemed to get along well with) and her brother Sunset (who gave Spike a hard time, like… always). Robot guards, tall and powerfully built, stood alongside the walls, shimmering in their chrome armor. Spike tried to look into their eyes, but they seemed to be perfectly disciplined—not unlike Celestia’s own troops, or the guards in the Judge’s mansion.
It took them all of close-to-twenty minutes to cross the entire hall, beginning to end. (Like I said, the place was HUGE.) When they reached the two story-tall door at the end, two of the robot guards saw the Judge approaching and opened the door for him. He breathed a sigh of relief. “I hate that hallway,” Spike heard Sunset mutter. “It’s like a never-ending linoleum desert.” The Judge politely shushed him.
Unlike the rest of Gearlotte, which was mostly metal and fumes, this chamber felt far more exotic and regal. Purple linen embroidered with the Gearlotte national flag (A Gear surrounded by a Clock, a Pipe, and a Wheel, all connected together to signify a unity that was strangely absent in the hearts of modern Machina) decorated each window, which looked down to Gearlotte below. The chandelier in the ceiling was like a majestic golden god, keeping sentry over his gorgeous kingdom. The pillars on either side of the room were stocky, solid structures, and the red carpet on the floor weaved beautifully throughout the floor. And on his throne, sat Rip-Roar himself.
It was a hideously gaudy chair that looked like random parts put together and painted over in gold. Spike looked a little more closely… those were parts… Clockwork parts. He had already learned enough in the past couple of weeks to know the plight of the Clockworks, and this display both disgusted and angered him. How could the ruler of Gearlotte starve his own people of the parts they needed just to live?
Spike never met anyone who angered him just by looking in his direction before, but just by looking at him, Spike could tell Rip-Roar was not at all a decent Machina. His general shape was large, about as big as the Judge; he was rather top-heavy, with arms almost as long as his body, and covered in chrome like all Diesels. However, his was painted black, with designs of fire tattooed on his arms, and white silhouettes of shapely female Machina on his shoulders. A pair of exhaust pipes shot from his brow, which reminded Spike of those pictures Twilight had shown him once—pictures that depicted a supposedly mythological creature called “Satan.” His five eyes (two on each side of his head, with a large one in the middle) burned with a sickening yellow light. Strangely attractive Machina females draped themselves over him while the guards nearby stood watching.
“Ah, Judge Star Swirl! Mah-main-poh-nayyy,” he greeted, pointing his fingers in the Judge’s direction and making a clicking sound with his mouth. Spike pursed his lips. Rip-Roar spoke and behaved like a teenager.
“That’s Judge Star Fall,” the Judge corrected. Spike noticed that Shine Brightest was almost completely behind the Judge at this point, as if trying not to be noticed. Spike heard a purr come from Rip-Roar’s mouth. “Ooh, hey, who’s that pretty young thaaang?” Rip-Roar reclined a little. “Thoughtful of ya to offer me another concubine, but as you can see—” he stroked the face of the girl on his right—“I’ve already got a few of my own.”
The Judge stepped forward, looking into Rip-Roar’s eyes. Spike had learned that the Judge, despite being scary, powerful, and possibly evil, loved his subordinates, and protected them as if they were his own foals. Evidently, he didn’t appreciate his benefactor hitting on his attendant.
“With all due respect, my Governor, may we keep this meeting professional?”
“Aw, loosen up, Star Bowl! Live a little!”
The Judge did not move, and did not smile.
“OK, fine,” Rip-Roar grumbled. With a point of his finger and a flick of the wrist, he ordered his lady-servants to leave. One particularly energetic member of their troupe cart-wheeled out of the room. Spike was shocked when one of them brushed the Judge’s rump with her hand as she suggestively slinked away. The Judge looked at her the same way a grandmother would look at a loose young mare.
“So,” Rip-Roar continued, lazily lounging in his throne of gold-painted Clockwork parts, “You wanted to talk about the Deal, right?”
“Indeed. It seems your part of the funding of our little project never arrived.”
The Governor feigned ignorance. If Spike could see it, then so could the Judge. “Whudda-Whuuuuuhhhh? No way, I already signed your check, Judge-Pony. It should be in the mail!” From the corner of his eye, Spike noticed Sunset rolling his eyes at such a corny performance.
“Our deal was struck months ago.” Here, the Judge stood right in front of the Governor. The guards drew their guns—the Judge was undeterred. “We have not seen so much as one bit from your pocket. Many of our other benefactors have already paid their dues for the project, but you—”
Rip-Roar’s face became more bored-looking. He began to “snore”. The Judge stopped in the middle of his sentence, and made an exasperated sound. “Dude, details are, like, boring,” Rip-Roar chided. He added an obnoxious little chuckle. “You’ll see your money after I start seeing some results.”
The Judge scowled, but didn’t back down. Spike hadn’t seen the Judge this visibly angry before. “Happiness showed you—the results,” he said sternly.
Rip-Roar, ever the mature one, copycatted the Judge’s sentence in a whiny voice. He ended it with a rude noise from his exhaust-horns (which Spike guessed was a Machina form of passing gas). “Our boy Happy Meal didn’t show me jack-diddly-doo-dah.”
The Judge seemed to think this over. Spike had only met Happiness once before—and let me tell you, this Clown was anything BUT “happiness”, you already saw him in a previous chapter. It seemed Happiness hadn’t shown Rip-Roar the results of the “enchanted arms” project, as the Judge had commanded him to do.
“Oh, really.”
“YEAH, really! You think I like being stood up, Star Pole?” Rip-Roar got off his throne and began to get up in the Judge’s face. Spike had underestimated before Rip-Roar’s size, likely because he was sitting down—he was easily bigger than the Judge. “You think I like getting pulled around? HUH?!” He pushed against the Judge, only managing to force him back a little (And likely only because the Judge was going to take a step back anyway).
“Where’s my money goin’ huh?! You said you could make metal do MAGIC, but I don’t see it! My parts aren’t doin’ any hocus-pocus, J-Money!”
Spike had had enough of Rip-Roar’s childish crap. He got between Rip-Roar and the Judge. “Hey,” he interrupted.
“And just who do you think YOU are?!” Rip-Roar demanded.
The Judge’s attendants quickly grabbed Spike and pulled him back. “What are you doing?!” hissed Sunset. “Please, don’t!” Shine Brightest warned.
“Who is this little creep?! You think you can just DO this to me, Star Ball?!”
“You haven’t even paid for anything yet,” Spike pointed out. “Why are you complaining?”
An awkward silence befell the room as Rip-Roar felt his argument derail.
The Judge’s attendants pulled Spike back more and hid him behind themselves. “Please don’t mind him,” the Judge told Rip-Roar. “He is only a young dragon. But he DOES have a point.” The Judge’s eyes met Rip-Roar’s. “You have paid my group a grand total of absolutely nothing. While all my other benefactors have paid me at least half my fee to produce the desired results, you haven’t paid a cent for what you wanted.”
Rip-Roar stopped his rampaging for a moment.
The Judge began to be more confrontational. “If you really want to see the technology we offered you, you’ll need to show me the money. I have reminded you time and again to pay on your investment, but so far I’m beginning to think that besides the laboratories you provided for us, you don’t really care. If you can’t pay the price, then we cannot do business.”
“Oh, what, my lab isn’t good enough? Star Pool, I’m hurt. Where did our love go?”
The Judge retained his posture throughout Rip-Roar’s theatrics. “Oh no, your laboratories have served us surprisingly well… considering they were already abandoned for many years when you gave them to us to use, and it took my group several weeks of nonstop labor to get the place back up and running—repairs which, by the way, I and a few of my disciples personally ended up having to pay for, ourselves. So we were down some money and several weeks behind schedule.”
After he explained all this, the Judge took a more-reclined position. “And it should please you to know that I will personally punish Happiness for failing to show you the results of our experiments in the first place.”
They stared down each other. After a while, Rip-Roar sat back down in his throne. He snapped his finger and one of the guards came to his side. He whispered something into the “ear” of his guard, and the guard left the room. He turned his attention back to the Judge. “All right,” he conceded, “All right. You’ll get your money.”
“When can I expect it?”
Rip-Roar seemed tired of this whole affair—the same way a child loses interest in a game because he isn’t winning. “You can expect it, like whenever—tomorrow.” He folded his arms behind his head and leaned in his throne. “All I know is, if I don’t see The Tech by this time next week…” He grinned. Spike was never comfortable with the way Machina smiled, but the way Rip-Roar smiled was somehow even worse. “Well, I’ll know where to find you.”
He snapped his fingers again, and this time a little Clockwork boy ran to him. Rip-Roar took a pen from Spike didn’t see where, and motioned for the Clockwork boy to bend over. “All right,” he said, “I’ll put this down as a schedule note.”
He began to scribble on the boy’s back. The boy began to make faces as Rip-Roar pressed down hard enough on his back to create loud and ungodly scraping noises. Spike winced. He felt sorry for that poor kid, and looking at Shine Brightest and Sunset, it seemed he earned their pity too.
Rip-Roar looked up. “Hey, how do you spell ‘irreverent’? Like, three ‘r’s or two?”
“Three 'r’s,” the Judge answered.
Rip-Roar nodded, and scraped harder against the boy’s back, evidently crossing out his mistake. After he had finished, he motioned for the boy to turn around. He handed him the pen, and told him to walk down the Grand Hall and throughout all the castle’s quarters so that everyone would know about the upcoming project results.
The boy nodded, excited at the prospect of being the bearer of good news. As he walked away, Spike breathed a sigh. The Clockwork boy had not noticed that all Rip-Roar did was engrave something horrendously obscene on his back.
“Well, there we go,” Rip-Roar said, apparently wishing to see this case closed. “Come by next week, show me the tech you promised, and I’ll give you all the money you’re owed.”
Tired from all this, the Judge merely nodded, thanking Rip-Roar for his audience and patronage (To which he received a “hey, no prob”). The Judge gathered all his present subjects, and left, back out into the annoyingly long Grand Hall.
Spike harrumphed. After the bizarre and confounding direction this meeting had taken, he had become disconcerted. He looked up at the Judge, and from the look on his face, he knew the Judge was upset with him. Spike quietly said, “I’m sorry, I should have just said nothing.”
The Judge, silent, continued to look at Spike as the dragon continued. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that nasty before. I just wasn’t thinking, and…” he looked forward. “And I got you in trouble. That guy has some serious political power, and I should have respected that about him.”
“So, you are fine with going without dinner tonight?”
Spike closed his eyes and sighed. He nodded.
“His Esteemed Governance is a royal sot, no doubt,” the Judge continued, his deep voice in a whisper. “But we must respect his power and his position, if not him directly. I am sorry for not warning you sooner; it is my fault you were unprepared to deal with his childishness.”
Spike smiled at the Judge to reassure him he understood. The Judge grinned back.
Spike noticed he was walking closer to the Judge. That’s when he realized something. He was actually beginning to like having him for a boss. He shuddered, and reminded himself he was going to escape and rescue Twilight when the opportunity presented itself. There was no way he was going to allow her to stay in this town while that psycho was in charge.
*****
That night, while he was in bed, he took out the “sighted” diamond the Judge had given him. He whispered Twilight Sparkle’s name, and inside the diamond, he saw her alongside a bizarre-looking Machina—a Clockwork made of mismatching parts. They seemed to be living together in a shabby apartment. He breathed more easily, seeing her provided for… and by a complete stranger, no less.
Spike smiled, holding the diamond to his chest, wishing he could be with Twilight right now. As he did most nights since being kidnapped, he would speak to this diamond, pretending it was Twilight. And he’d tell her all about his day and his experiences.
Tonight, he ended his session by telling her how badly he missed her and wanted to be by her side again. He yawned, and before long, he had fallen asleep with the diamond still in his hands. Before the image inside faded, anyone who looked into it would have seen a young purple unicorn curled up and asleep in a washtub.
They would have also seen her smile in her sleep.