Chapter 7
It was still dark out when Blueblood, Twilight, Lyra, and Ash Fall trotted back into the pony’s base camp at Sweet Apple Acres. Both Twilight and Lyra were showing signs of tiredness, as evident by their drooping eyelids and shambling gait, and while Prince Blueblood and Ranger Ash Fall hid it better than the mares, they were also beginning to show signs of exhaustion.
Coming to a stop outside of one of the barns that had been commandeered as a temporary command post, much to the Apple family’s irritation, Blueblood took a deep breath, and using his magic, straightened his tie and mane before striding confidently inside, the others following close behind. Inside, it was controlled chaos, with ponies talking, giving, and receiving orders, and rushing around to complete tasks unknown. Through it all, Blueblood strode towards the center of it, a single table with a map spread out over it, and several ponies clustered around it talking.
“...And you are sure that this report is accurate?” asked Lieutenant Palisade.
The guard he was talking to nodded and replied crisply, saying, “Yes sir, as far as we can tell, the hoomun is still inside the house.”
“Has anypony looked inside any of the other buildings yet?”
The guard shook his head in reply. “No sir, it was felt by the NCO’s that it was too risky to perform a night recon.”
Palisade nodded absently, before dismissing the guard with a distracted wave of his hoof, as his attention was now solely focused on the map in front of him. In fact, so lost in thought was he that he didn’t notice the return of Prince Blueblood until said prince noisily cleared his throat behind him.
Blinking tired eyes, Palisade turned around to see who wanted his attention now, but when he saw Blueblood standing behind him, his eyes shot wide open and he came to attention.
“Forgive me, Your Grace, I didn’t realize that you had returned yet! Was your mission successful, sir?”
Blueblood absently nodded in reply, his eyes focused on the map in front of him. It was a local map of Ponyville and the surrounding area, and in particular, this map had been recently updated to include the human’s newly appeared homestead as well.
Turning away from the map, Blueblood motioned to Lyra with a hoof and said, “Lieutenant Palisade, may I introduce to you, Ms. Lyra Heartstrings, the pony who will be helping us resolve this little issue with, hopefully, minimal fuss.”
Palisade inclined his head respectfully, “Ma’am.”
Lyra giggled and gave a friendly wave of her hoof.
Blueblood had meanwhile found himself a chair and settled himself, before clearing his throat to regain everyone’s attention.
“Now that we are all here, I’d like to get started with our discussion on how to resolve this problem. So if you all could take a seat, we’ll get started.”
Several minutes later saw everypony seated around the map table. Blueblood, seeing everyone was as ready as they were going to be decided to get the ball rolling.
“Now that everyone is here and ready, let’s get started.” Turning to address Palisade, who was seated to his left, he asked, “Lieutenant, can you fill us in with the details of what has been happening since we left? We’ve already given Ms. Heartstrings a basic rundown of what occurred between the time the human showed up yesterday, and the time we left to acquire her services.”
Palisade gave Blueblood a confused look, “Human?”
“Yes, human,” replied Blueblood, “apparently the original word was mistranslated.”
A look of sudden comprehension blossomed on Palisade’s face, “Oh! Well, alright then, as far as we know the human is still inside its home.”
“Excellent,” replied Blueblood, a pleased smile on his face, “Were there any other new developments since we’ve been gone?”
Palisade shook his head, “No sir, there hasn’t.”
“I see.” Turning to Lyra, Blueblood continued, “Now, Ms. Heartstrings, we did not have much time earlier to go over what you know about humans, and seeing as we are all here, would you kindly inform us of what you know?”
Lyra gave a happy smile and nod, “Sure thing, Your Grace!” Standing up, she quickly trotted over to a nearby chalkboard, and, grabbing it with her magic, pulled it over in front of the table. Levitating up a piece of chalk, Lyra began to write, all previous signs of tiredness dissipating as she began.
“Now, I know that I went over a couple of things with Prince Blueblood, Twilight, and Ranger Fall on the way over, but for the sake of the new ponies, I’ll just go ahead and start at the beginning. Now, first of all, humans are very intelligent, easily as intelligent as ponies, and maybe even smarter in some areas.”
“I’m sensing a but in there,” commented Blueblood dryly.
Lyra gave a happy nod in return, much like a teacher would with a clever foal who quickly figured out a problem on the board.
“Very observant of you, Your Grace!” Turning back to the board, she continued writing and speaking, “Now, while humans are very intelligent, according to the records, they appeared to have difficulty making friends with other members of their own species, let alone other species entirely. The records characterized humans as seemingly distant, mistrustful, and aloof from those that they did not consider their friends, which were very few in general.”
“So what are you saying here?” asked Blueblood patiently.
Lyra paused for a moment to collect her thoughts before saying, “I guess what I’m saying is that, humans didn’t tend to have a very large circle of friends. In most cases, humans seemed to consider friendship as little more than a convenient, and temporary, condition. Often times, it was observed that humans would casually discard these relationships after they had served their purpose.”
“That’s terrible!” cried Twilight, horrified at the thought of someone so casually tossing aside their friendship like a used juice box, “Friendships shouldn’t be something that one just tosses away like that!”
Lyra gave a shrug, “Well, from a pony’s perspective I suppose that would be true, however, from a human perspective I suppose it was just what it was.”
“So what does this mean in regards to how we should approach this human?” inquired Blueblood.
Lyra rubbed the back of her neck, an unsure look on her face.
“I’m...not entirely sure. In our case, it probably means that it’s going to very hard to gain this human's full trust. That in human culture is something more valuable than gold or precious gems. Which I guess kind of explains how odd human friendships seem to be to us.”
“What do you mean?” asked Palisade curiously.
Lyra began pacing back and forth in front of the blackboard as she slipped fully into lecture mode.
“Well, simply put, we ponies are fairly trusting of others in general, or at least other ponies, thus we tend to make friends easily. However, with humans, it’s the opposite. Because they are mistrustful of those who they are not familiar with, building friendships is often times more difficult. Therefore, when a human finally does earn the full trust of another, that makes it all the more special, and thus something worth keeping, and fighting for.”
A stray thought suddenly struck her as she was pacing in front of the board, and turning to fully look at the other ponies, Lyra said, “You know, I’m suddenly reminded of a small saying in an old record that I read, about humans and friendship.”
“What did it say?” asked Palisade curiously.
Lyra scrunched up her face as she tried to remember the exact words, but in the end she couldn’t fully recall and said, “I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was something like, ‘The pony who secures a human's true friendship is very blessed indeed, but the pony who betrays that friendship shall be cursed, and pay a price so very steep.’ Or something to that effect anyways. I’m not one-hundred percent sure.”
“I think we get the general idea,” replied Blueblood dryly, “In any case, do you think that we will have to worry about anything this human can do, does it possess dangerous abilities?”
Lyra shrugged.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘dangerous abilities’. Humans, by their nature, are creatures that were capable of great acts of kindness, but also great acts of cruelty, especially against those who they felt wronged them in some way. Moreover, there were several records that indicated that humans fought with, and against ponies on several occasions, however, they’re incomplete, so I can’t really tell you what happened to cause these wars or how well the humans did in relation to ponies on the battlefield.”
“So what you are saying is that you have no idea what physical or magical abilities this human may have?” asked Palisade, a worried look quickly forming on his face at the thought of having to fight a human whose abilities he had no knowledge of.
Lyra shook her head.
“Not quite. While the records are incomplete, they do provide some indicators of what these ancient humans were capable of.”
“Such as?” asked Blueblood when Lyra failed to continue quickly enough for him.
Lyra gave another shrug, replying, “Like I said, the records were hopelessly incomplete, some went into great detail about certain aspects of humans, such as their intelligence, while others just provided vague generalities about their physical abilities. As of right now, I can only really give you three definitive traits that these humans possessed in these records. The first,” she paused for a moment to turn around and write her thoughts down on the board, “was that they had excellent stamina. Ancient pony scholars seemed to believe that they had better stamina than earth ponies. Though, I should make mention that these Earth Ponies were both smaller and weaker than modern day earth ponies, so this trait might be less evident today.”
“Fascinating,” mumbled Twilight as she furiously copied down Lyra’s words on parchment before looking back up and asking, “did the records say how much stamina these humans had and how far they could go before needing to stop and rest?”
Lyra shook her head sadly.
“No, unfortunately, they did not,” when she saw Twilight's disappointed look, she gave the other mare a sympathetic smile and continued saying, “yeah, I was real disappointed too when I found that there was no more information on it either, but I digress.”
Turning back to the board, she quickly wrote down the second trait.
“The second trait should be fairly obvious because of their well-developed hands, but humans are extremely adept at manipulating things in their environment and their craftsponyship was exceedingly fine. The ancient scholars indicated that a human’s hand was superior to a unicorn’s telekinesis when it came to fine manipulation and control."
Lyra paused once more in her lecture to organize her final thoughts. However, the silence was quickly filled in by the mumblings and quill scratchings of Twilight, who by this point was completely hidden from view behind her parchment, which had grown considerably longer in the few minutes that Lyra had been talking.
Blinking at the somewhat comical sight of seeing a floating piece of parchment obscuring her friend from view, with only the tip of a furiously wiggling quill jutting up from behind it, Lyra turned her attention back to the board.
“So that brings us to the final commonly attributed characteristic that I could find, and that was that humans possessed a rudimentary form of magic.”
Twilight’s quill came to a screeching halt, and she slowly lowered her parchment so that she could look at Lyra. Though, Lyra wished that she had kept the parchment up, as Twilight’s face had contorted into a creepy looking expression, with a smile that was just a little too wide, and too excited looking for her tastes, like she was high on sugar or something.
“Did you say that they had magic?” asked Twilight giddily.
Lyra gave a hesitant nod, wondering if Twilight was going to be okay, especially when she saw her friend begin to vibrate in place with excitement, much like a certain pink party pony that she knew.
Glancing over at Blueblood, and Palisade, Lyra could see that Palisade was equally...concerned by Twilight’s reaction, while Blueblood simply rolled his eyes and sighed, before motioning for Lyra to continue.
Swallowing, Lyra turned her attention back to the board and hesitantly continued.
"R-right, well as I was saying,” she flinched slightly when she heard Twilight resume writing, though it sounded as if Twilight had doubled her writing speed. Giving herself a mental shake, Lyra continued on, “humans possessed a rudimentary form of magic, and from what I’ve been able to glean, their magic was similar in nature to that of earth ponies and pegasi, in that, because they didn’t have a focal point, i.e. a horn, their magic was generally diffused through their whole bodies. Though, a unicorn researcher by the name of Sharp Wit, hypothesized that humans could focus their magic like a unicorn's to cast spells if they had a means to channel it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to verify if his assumptions were true or not.”
Twilight’s quill scratching has grown louder, as had her mumblings, which seemed to keep including the words, “fascinating”, and “this is so exciting” over and over again.
Blueblood cleared his throat to bring Lyra’s attention back to him as he asked, “So this human is able to cast magic?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” replied Lyra with yet another shrug, “As I said, most of these records are incomplete and only referred to humans that lived in our world at that time. With this human? Anything might be possible, in fact, for all we know, it might not even be a human in the first place.”
“Right,” said Blueblood tiredly as he massaged his temple with a hoof in an attempt to quell a rising headache. “Well, is there anything else that you can think of that can help us when we make formal contact with it, Ms. Heartstring?”
Lyra set her chalk piece down and quietly rubbed her chin in thought. Finally, after several moments she said, “Well after what happened yesterday, I doubt you’ll just be able to waltz right up to its front door and without issue.”
“Thank you for pointing out the obvious, Ms. Heartstrings,” replied Blueblood, an unamused look on his face.
Pretending not to notice his sarcastic response, Lyra continued on saying, “Probably the easiest way to defuse the situation would be to simply back off and to offer an apology in someway. Though if the human is hostile, it might not be a bad idea to have ponies who are capable of defending themselves along for protection.”
*“How do you think we should approach this then if we went with this option?” asked Blueblood.
“Well, first, we have to show that we mean it no harm,” replied Lyra simply.
“Yes, but how would we do that?”
Lyra opened her mouth to respond, but found that she didn’t actually know the best way to show the human that they didn’t want trouble. So, she pulled up a nearby stool with her magic and sat down, a thoughtful frown creasing her muzzle, as she tried to figure out a way to do exactly that. Everypony else, seeing that Lyra didn’t know what to do either, also adopted thoughtful looks to one degree or another as they too tried to figure something out. Finally, after several minutes, Twilight jumped up exclaiming, “I’ve got!”
Startled, Palisade fell out of his chair, while the others merely gave a start.
“Got what?” asked Lyra, equal parts curious and hopeful.
Striding from her seat to the chalkboard, Twilight gave an inquiring look at Lyra, who, upon realizing what she wanted to do, gave a ‘go ahead motion’ with her hoof. Seeing that she had permission, Twilight quickly wiped the board clean and began writing.
“Now, we know that approaching the human physically would be difficult at best, and dangerous at worst. Especially seeing as how we don’t know what it has inside its home or to what degree it feels threatened by us. So, what if we built a large sign saying that we’re sorry, and that yesterday was just a big misunderstanding, and that we just want to talk with it? That way we can show that we want to talk, without having to risk anypony getting too close initially!”
Blueblood stroked his chin thoughtfully, and said, “Well...I guess that’s one way. What do you think Ranger Fall?”
Ranger Fall twitched his wings in the pegasi equivalent of a shrug, and said, “Well it’s either this or we go in their after it, and I’d rather not risk pony lives doing that if I don’t have to, so I suppose we can try it out and see if it works; if not, then at least we tried.”
“But how will we know if the human even sees the sign?” asked Palisade.
“Simple, we put it out front, next to the road and we make it so that it can’t miss it; after that, I suppose we just wait and see what it does. Oh!” she said, a sudden thought hitting her, “I can go and grab my telescope from the library and we can use that to observe the house from a discreet distance for any signs that it’s moving around inside.”
“Fine, but what if it does miss it? Then what do we do, and furthermore, what if it can’t read Equestrian, what then?” asked Blueblood, a bit of impatience coloring his voice.
“Well, as for the first part of your question, if the human doesn’t respond to the sign, then I suppose we can get a couple of ponies to go up to the house and knock on the front door,” said Lyra simply. “As for the second part, we might try a pictograph in conjunction with the words just in case it can’t read our language.”
“That’s all well and good ladies, but I think you’re forgetting something,” interjected Palisade suddenly.
“What’s that?” asked Lyra confused.
Palisade sighed, and not liking what he was about to bring up hesitantly said, “That the human may, in fact, turn out to be hostile, and that we’ll have to find a way to deal with it.”
Both Blueblood and Ash nodded in grim agreement, their faces showing their unhappiness at the thought.
Twilight and Lyra each winced at the unpleasant turn the conversation had suddenly taken.
“A-are you sure we need to discuss this?” asked Lyra hesitantly, her discomfort obvious to all present.
“As much as I’d rather not, I’m afraid we must,” replied Blueblood somberly, “if our initial efforts fail we’ll need to at least have some kind of backup plan ready to go.”
“So then what would you suggest we do, if the peaceful approach doesn’t work?” asked Lyra, a scowl darkening her face.
“Well, I’d think we should attempt to subdue it through non-harmful means, a sleep spell, for instance, failing that, we’d naturally have to move on to more...violent methods.”
Lyra’s face darkened further, the hairs on her neck bristling at the casual way in which Blueblood discussed the potential harming of another being that had so far proven not a threat, even if it was just a hypothetical scenario.
Twilight, seeing her friend’s anger, quickly stepped over to her and laid a calming hoof across her withers, and said, “Please Lyra, calm down, I don’t like the idea any more than you do, but...His Grace has a point, if the human does turn out to be dangerous, we wouldn’t want ponies getting hurt because we didn’t think of a fall back plan ahead of time.”
Lyra took a deep breath, and held it for a moment, before letting it out in an explosive snort. Turning away from Blueblood and the others, she said, “I’m going to go and wait outside, let me know when you’re done,” and with that, she quickly trotted out of the room.
Blueblood feeling a headache coming on, massaged a temple with his hoof and said, “Well, that could have gone better, but in any case,” he paused, and turned his full attention to Twilight, “Ms. Sparkle, we’ll do the sign first and see what happens; since this is your idea, I’ll leave this in your capable hooves. While you are doing that, Lieutenant Palisade, Ranger Ash Fall, and myself will go ahead and formulate a contingency plan or two in case things go south, though I pray that they don’t.”
Twilight gave a squee in happiness, and feeling herself relax slightly, quickly ran out of the barn, a quill and parchment suddenly popping into being and floating along in her wake as she quickly began organizing her list, as she quickly set off to complete her mission, leaving the three stallions behind in the command post, both Palisade and Ash Fall looked confused, while Blueblood just looked tired.
~oOo~
“I must say Ms. Sparkle, I am somewhat impressed,” remarked Blueblood several hours later, upon seeing the hastily erected sign outside the human’s property. It was at least two stories tall, and large enough to write, ‘We’re sorry, can we talk?’ on it in large bold letters, with a pair of pictures underneath that showed several ponies offering gifts to the human, and another one showing the human and pony exchanging hoof bumps, that would, hopefully, be visible from the house.
“Why thank you, Your Grace! I’m glad it meets your approval! I must say though, that I couldn’t have done it without the help of Applejack and Big Macintosh; without them being willing to lend us the materials, and provide the necessary labor and building expertise, we wouldn’t have been able to get it done so quickly!” exclaimed Twilight happily.
“I see, well then, thank you very much then for your help Ms. Applejack, and Mr. Macintosh,” said Blueblood, giving a slight bow of his head in thanks to the two Apple siblings who were just now finishing putting away their tools.
Hitching himself up to the cart, Big Mac gave a silent nod in return and quietly headed home, Applejack also gave a nod, but as she passed by the Prince, she hoofed him a piece of paper.
Looking down at it in confusion, he asked, “What’s this?”
“Yer bill,”replied Applejack simply, as she walked away.
"Right,” sighed Blueblood, as he gave it a quick once over, before sending it away with a burst of magic, “I’ll see that it gets taken care of promptly then, even if it is a rather large sum for just building a sign,” he said tiredly, slightly irked at the amount, but at the same time, he didn’t feel like trying to haggle her down. After all, it wasn’t like it was his money being used to pay the bill after all. That’s what the taxpayers were for.
Applejack tipped her hat to the Prince and replied over her shoulder, “Oh, the majority of that bill is fer the use of our barns and property, and fer yer guardponies running around and keepin’ us up all night too.”
“Of course,” was his deadpan reply, “we are so sorry to have inconvenienced you and your family with all the noise last night.”
“Apology accepted, now,” she turned her attention to Twilight, “looks like I ain’t the only pony round here who’s had a long night. You doing alright there sugarcube?”
“Oh I’m fine Applejack,” replied Twilight with a tired smile as she set up her telescope, “hopefully this will all be over soon and I can get some rest.”
“Yeah, me too, speakin’ of which, what is going on ‘round here anyways?” she asked, pushing the brim of her hat back and looking at the strange looking buildings not far away.
“I’ll tell you and the rest of the girls about it later, but the short version is that Discord left us a little something to remember him by when we turned him back to stone again.”
Applejack gave an irritated huff, “Figures that varmint would leave us something nasty in case he lost.”
Twilight felt her ears pin themselves flat against her skull as an unsure look settled over her face, “I’m...not sure if I would call ‘nasty’, but it’s definitely...an issue, one that should hopefully be taken care of soon.”
Applejack gave a single nod, “With you on the case Twi, I reckon you’ll have this problem whipped lickity split! Anyways, I better git going, see ya around Twilight!”
Twilight gave a friendly wave good-bye in reply, though inside she felt a ball of nervousness settling in her gut, I sure hope you’re right Applejack, and that we can take care of this problem. I’d hate to see what would happen if we couldn’t.
With Applejack now gone, Blueblood trotted up next to Twilight and remarked casually, after noticing that there was little else to do but wait, “Well, I suppose all we have to do now is wait for daylight and hope our guest is willing to come and talk with us.”
“Guess so,” replied Twilight as she turned her attention back to her telescope. Fiddling with the knobs, she said, “You know, I really hope this works, I’d hate for things to turn violent.”
Blueblood merely grunted in reply, as he settled in next to Twilight to wait for the human to make its next move, whatever it may be.
I'm getting a serious "Gulliver's Travels" vibe from this. Are the ponies about to be Lilliputians tying down the giant that washed in from the sea?
I hope somepony will point out that it may not be wise to secure the hoomun by knocking him out. I know that they are looking for the non violent way of dealing with this and everything is very by the book. Hopefully they will realize this and will plan on finding a way to make sure that if and when he wakes up he will be put at ease with what has happened to him. Great chapter and looking forward to the next installment!
*facepalm* Yes, let's de-escalate the situation by knocking the guy out so that there's no way he can trust you. I kind of hope he has an old WW gas mask from his family or something in there. Then again, I'm having trouble placing this story a bit, no offense, but it's been a while since I've read this.
This was pretty good, but I wish we could've seen more of Allen in this.
What can go wrong!
Besides everything
Oh boy, this will not end well. Not only is this the first field test of it [1], but there's also the fact that they don't know anything about our biology so they cannot accurately predict the effects on us [2], they have no idea about our own experiences with gas-weapons [3][4], and they're assuming that he won't be able to get out of the house before the gas spreads [5].
Definitely looking forward to the next chapter and seeing how you plan for this to go down.[6]
[1] I know they've done lab testing, but testing under controlled conditions is MUCH different from a field test
[2] We have difficulty predicting the effects of gas on ourselves, that's part of the reason why a knockout gas doesn't technically exist in weaponized form. The one time it [possibly] has, it ended in disaster. That's why anesthesiologist have to go through a significant amount of training before being allowed to use anesthetics even in the controlled conditions of a doctor's office/hospital.
[3] I don't know about Ross's education, but I do know that when I studied WWI in school we went over gas masks in depth. Which included the jerry-rigged ones which were just piss-soaked cloth.
[4] Of course it could also be played the other way since the use of any gas-weapons on a foreign combatant is considered a war-crime; which is part of the reason why tear-gas isn't used on the battlefield. The other reason being is that using it pretty much guarantees that the other side will pull out even worse chemical weapons.
[5] Even with a modern delivery system, it would seconds for it to spread throughout the house. If he hears it go off or smells it, since most of those gasses have some distinct smell, he could theoretically bolt out the door he inhales enough to KO him.
[6] Were the annotations too much? I get the feeling they might have been.
Like a few people have pointed out, this plan is terrible in several ways.
What really throws me off is that no-one, not even Lyra, took a moment to think how the situation would look like from Allen's point of view. I don't care how sleep deprived they are, if they are trying to earn a sapient creature's trust, then you need to stop and imagine how things will look from their perspective.
This sedation and abduction plan is not gonna go well. Allen is at a high stress level already, when he wakes up and finds himself in a hazard containment cell he is gonna flip.
Sure, this may seem like a somewhat sound plan for the Equestrians, but Lyra's studies haven't been said to cover the scenario of a human stressed out to the point of insane self-preservation with unwitting self-destructive tendencies. They're gonna have to reconsider the situation from the ground up when he does something like claw at the door until his fingernails get torn off.
ADDENDUM: And that is not even taking into account that their predictions could be way off given that Allen is extradimensional. The gas could not have an effect, only wooze him, make him hallucinate, or worst of all, be toxic.
7497431 I don't think they can truly comprehend how dirty this tactic is for a highly distrustful species like ours, and how bad it'll make ponies look.
7497396 Loved that analysis. It made me think of a lot of aspects that didn't so much as glance through my mind.
7497449 I wouldn't mind if they tried to think from Allen's PoV and underestimated/mistaken how he would react, but they didn't even try to do that.
Thank you, always happy to help.
“You’re guess is as good as mine,” replied Lyra
You mean 'Your guess' there.;) Still, good to see another chapter. Now, back to reading for me.^^
Well, first off, I should say that I'm finding this story quite entertaining, so keep up the good work!
Having said that, Twilight seems a bit, I don't know, passive in this story. I know she's not the 'Princess of Friendship' yet, but I think she (and Lyra) would have a bit more input, and displeasure, with this plan. And while I really don't mind your interesting and divergent take on Blueblood (a significant improvement over his usual portrayal,) everyone seems to be unusually deferential regarding his decisions.
And after Lyra just explained that what little she knows of humans indicates that they are very slow to trust, they decide the optimal solution is to, in their own words, engage in breaking and entering and kidnapping... And if it's harmless they'll just 'make it up' to him. And it never seems to occur to them that attempting to 'subdue' the 'creature' may cause it to go from 'harmless' to 'pretty-damned-harmful.'
Really, I rather surprised by just how little token resistant Twilight and Lyra put up against this plan. Though I suppose some of that can be attributable to sleep deprivation and having just come out from under the effects of Discordification.
But this also brings up another oddity... Where are the rest of the Mane 6? Once again I suppose that their absence can be explained away as them being off recovering from the effects of Discord... It's only been a day, after all. But still, I would have expected them to rally around Twilight once they heard word of something strange going on. And it's not like nobody else has heard about this... There's an army parked on AJ's farm after all! And I imagine that if Fluttershy was around, she'd have a few choice words to say about this plan... Like mentioning how even the kindest creatures can become violent when backed into a corner...
I also heartily agree with 7497396 's analysis. Everything he said is 100% true. Of course, for all we know this 'sleeping gas' is some sort of magical mixture itself, but still. Using it against an unknown creature in anything but a life and death situation seems quite unwise. I can't help but wonder how they'd react if they severely injured or even killed Allan with their concoction. Not that I'd want to see that...
From an earlier chapter, it would appear that Allan's father has at least a few firearms... And that Allan lacks the combination to the safe. I find myself wondering if / hoping that his parents lean towards the prepper/survivalist side of things... Even a crappy old gasmask would serve him in good stead right now. And I should point out that most modern gun safes are not exceptionally secure. They're designed to keep out the casual burglar, who doesn't have time to hang around and work at opening it. And/or can't afford to make much noise or use power tools. Even a good fireproof gun safe can be opened in an hour or two with a sharp axe or other hand tools and some elbow grease. And I imagine Allan is finding himself pretty motivated right about now.
I look forward to the next chapter!
I think the reason why previous readers (including myself to be one of them) became annoyed to certain parts of your story, was how you portrayed the characters, that many have come to know quite well, seen in a light that conflicts with certain views we have of them. The large majority of the story I find quite entertaining, but when you write twilight, who has faced threats to not only the diarchy but to the whole world (threats that others failed to overcome), to be a stammering, low self esteem filly.. Now, according to the situation and the company twilight is in, this side of twilight can be perfectly understood and perhaps even expected (example: talking to a pony she greatly admires such as starswirl the bearded), but to a character that we have little information on and who's only defining attribute from the show is a level of vanity just below the Greek god Narcissis, I think you can understand why we may be a little peeved. Everything we have up until now (in the story) of blue blood is a character that has little to no respect for others around him to the point of near contempt, ranger fall being the exception. I do not see any reason to accept blue blood's command over the situation, but I am willing to continue reading to see if there are any noble attributes he may hold, but for the time being he is only seen as someone who is there not because of merit but position.
You are a capable writer, no doubt about that, but you need to show the characters for who they are, when you dumb down situations and personalities just to make the story move the way you want it to it can be dangerous, as you have experienced from previous chapters. The Rangers are an interesting concept, but unless they can prove themselves useful in action and some backstory as to why they were not partaking in world threatening events, they'll just be seen as a supposed "badass elite unit" that you decided to add to the story just for convenience.
In short, give us a reason for accepting the way things are, help me to understand your world and characters while working with the characters that we know and love, I'd rather read a slow story that makes sense (as much sense as a fictional world can make anyway), rather than a story that makes the reader confused/annoyed when reading it.
Lastly, the "if you don't like the story, you may quietly leave" I have actually done that with a few stories already, one I even left with a small tribute akin to the Dolphins from hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, but they were extreme cases, unfortunely you know a swell as I you will always get people who s**tpost on your story just for the hell of it, but I hope it won't get you down.
If I make little or no sense or if you want to clarify my own reasoning (admittedly the first paragraph I wrote was based more on emotion rather than logic) just ask me and will try my best.
"fun" story so far can't wait for the next chapter(only saying that i am enjoying it so far) Nice work
Okay I know you said not to comment on characters acting stupid but some of them were. If the gassing plan was their backup or a Plan B if Lyra's plan didn't work, sure I could get behind it and that would make sense.
But the fact that they have an obviously scared individual and their first act is to assault it makes no sense. Seriously what did they think would happen if this actually worked and he woke up in a prison cell? Would they actually think he would be cooperative at that point? Hell no he wouldn't. I just can't see Lyra and Twilight to just go along with it, the military and Blue yeah they would especially Blue since he came off as kind of an idiot in the show anyway. But I'm disappointed in Lyra and Twilight in this chapter by the end of it. At lest if they objected to the use of force at the end it would feel a bit better I think.
I really hope you have Celestia chew them out for this plan when she hears about it, they really do deserve it and it wouldn't make sense if she was okay with something like this. In fact why aren't they reporting this directly to her? They have a hotline right to her with Spike after all I would think she would want to be kept informed on what exactly is going on.
Plus what I don't get is that you had Lyra explain about humans and trust and they want to gain that trust by...kidnapping...what? That makes no sense and how come she didn't point that out? Or someone like Twilight pointing out that just because that gas was used on other species it wasn't tested on humans and they have no idea how it could react. For all they know it could cause an allergic reaction and kill it but don't even think about that or bring it up. Honestly there was no reason NOT to use Lyra's plan at first, at least that way if it didn't work they can say they tried a peaceful way of dealing with it instead of going straight to violence.
While I am glad for another chapter, I'm a bit disappointed in their course of actions.
I kind of feel like you don't give humanity enough credit when I read this chapter or at least what Lyra knew about them. Yeah people can be scumbags at times but there is more to it. I'm remembered something someone said about humanity and it stuck with me. It went like "Their ability to sacrifice anything for the ones that they love. Their unrelenting hope for the future even when the universe has none to offer. Their magnificent strength to topple obstacles larger than themselves. Their hunger for knowledge and their pursuit of the ultimate truth. Their ability to get knocked down time and again only to stand up and fight once more." That always stuck with me. Plus we've seen ponies in the shows that aren't very friendly or nice either and hell even downright evil.
I did like the fact that you did know that humans can outlast pretty much most animal life on this world, yeah mostly everything is faster but we can outlast them all.
Overall, very nice chapter.^_^
And humans supposedly having magic, eh? Well, I've experienced enough of the supernatural in my life to be a believer. In fact, when I was still fit and in college, I actually could do minor self-levitation, though I could only get down the dorm hall before I had to stop, breathing hard, so it wasn't exactly something useful.:\ And back then, I was fit enough to fit in 300 sit-ups and 100 push-ups every morning. *sigh* Those were the days. No where near that fit any more.:\
I get the feeling that the human will react adversely to the chemicals in the sleep gas, and awake in critical condition with an ever-stronger distrust (and possible hatred) of the ponies. The best option is always the simplest: talk it out.
I just did some research because I was wondering why sleepy gas isn't actually used in real life, turns out there are very good reasons for it. In an open space it's useless unless it's very potent but that can actually cause death. In an enclosed space it's just as iffy, I found this story on when a hostage situation happened in Russia they gassed the place with a type of 'sleeping gas' but not all the hostage takers were effected and some of the hostages were over exposed and died from the gas.
That's why military/riot police use tear gas, it stings and the tears blind you but it can't kill you. Sleeping gas if the dosage is wrong will kill someone. You might want to rethink the use of that in this chapter. Maybe edit it for tear gas or change up their plans because at the moment...yeah this can actually kill him. I know you most likely didn't know but that's what the internet is for and that was just from 15 minutes of research.
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I'm not sure why you all think I'm a good writer, I'm actually quite bad, as can be seen by all the comments so far not liking how the story is progressing, again. True my grammar is decent, and I have good moments, but overall, I'm pretty terrible, and it's mostly luck that's kept this story afloat. My stories seem to suffer from the problem of, good idea, terrible execution. Coupled with the fact that I don't have any proofreaders, or editors, and it's a recipe for disaster.
I was originally going to go with the whole, "let's talk it out" plan, but then thought, "It's cliched, everybody does it, the readers won't like it," so I canned it and tried something different, guess that was a mistake, since everybody, once again, doesn't seem to like it...sigh. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.
And the reason we don't see the mane six, is because, once again, I was trying to avoid the cliche of the mane six going everywhere with Twilight and solving Equestria's problems because no pony else is remotely competent enough to do so. As for the Rangers, no they are not some elite badass unit, they serve a different purpose to the Royal Guard and police forces in Equestria, i.e. they tend to stick to the countryside/wild areas, such as the Everfree. The Royal Guard handles stuff in and around the cities, and the Ranger's take care of stuff in the country, though both groups will work together on occasion. Plus, there isn't a lot of Rangers, as their scope of operation is a tad smaller than that of the Royal Guard and police forces, so, they need less ponies for the Rangers.
So, I guess since people don't seem to like this chapter, and where I'm taking the story, I'm just going to have to take it down, can it, and try again.
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I appreciate your desire to avoid having a cliched reaction but keep in mind that the scenario has been done from both angles in several different ways already, and this would be cliched no matter what.
Stories that have an hostile reaction to the human in Equestria, unfairly or not, tend to either write themselves into a bad corner that limits interactions in order to be believable or have the story feature the protagonist being far too forgiving, which is really grating, especially after the spiel about trust.
Plus, with how incompetent the guard is so far, I'd expect it to blow up in their face. It could bog the story down, so I wouldn't recommend it. Besides, the protagonist isn't a fortress and would need to interact with the outside world off his farm eventually if he wanted to survive long-term. I think if you wanted to do something new, that angle would work. Zecora was in a similar position and kept coming to town.
Well that was... Different.
And I'm still irked they refer to a Prince as "your Grace" and not "your Highness", "your Grace" is for a duke not a Prince!
Nice to see the chapter back! Now it begs the question for the next chapter how will our human react to the sign?
7519364 Guess you'll find out when I send it to you for proof reading eh?
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Hooray update! No Allen this chapter,but it looks like first contact will happen sometime soon.
Glad to see this update again
Do you think it's bad that I'm itching for the next chapter? I don't, I think it's bad that I haven't had the next chapter to read yet!
Lyra hummed thoughtfully, "While some could run over 26 miles non-stop, I recall hearing about a subspecies in a place called North A-mare-ica that were so easily winded, they started sweating and heaving after about a single city block's worth of attention. I believe they were called Fanboias basementdwellia. They had one strange ability to subsist entirely on nutrient-poor chemically-manufactured snack foods."
Twilight raised an eyebrow, "Lyra, you really need to learn to discriminate between fact and OBVIOUS fiction! Nothing could survive like that!"
Who wouldn't want to fistbump a hard, bumpy, probably in a painful way, hoof?
8887954 It's no worse than punching concrete pillars for fun.
Which is a thing I do.
Yu know, you were offly non Pacific when it came down to what would happen if a creature were to piss of a human…
Like a staff or a wand?
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"Piss us off, and see what we build." - Christopher Titus.