The Three Sisters: Like Fudge
By Wanderer D
Chapter 8: Totally Not Cool
“Dude, this is totally not cool,” Shining Armor declared, looking at what his Minister of Foreign Affairs had arranged for the unexpected visit of Queen Chrysalis’ daughter.
“I assure you, sir” a tall, lanky crystal pony gentlecolt with an unusually obsequious intonation to his words immediately responded, “That this is the deepest dungeon we could find, commissioned by Sombra himself to ensure any Balrogs were well taken care of.”
This information gave Shining Armor pause. “Wait, Balrogs?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“As in made of shadows and fire, whips and—”
“Yes sir, the whole shebang as they say, sir. King Sombra was quite fond of requesting their presence and organizing huge, violent gore-fests with them in the dungeons. The Balrogs would party with his majesty for days, while slaves were brought down for entertainment and food.”
Shining Armor’s eyes had widened and he looked around at the dungeon in a completely new light. “Cool!”
“Quite, sir.”
“We need to have them over, have that kid… uh… Sentry. Whatever his first name is, be the messenger. He said something about being fast as a flash or something. We need a totally awesome, tubular experience! We can teach them about friendship and have endless beer!”
“I shall inform recruit Flash Sentry to perform this highly dangerous request, sir. Anything else, sir?”
“Nah! Just… get a room ready upstairs for Princess Acari. I don’t care which one. I think there was a totally rad one right across from mine and Cadance’s. Give her that one. We have a totally rad party to organize!”
“Quite right, sir.”
“It will be gnarly!”
“Exquisitely Gnarly, sir.”
Cadance considered the scroll she was writing down for Twilight to read. With Shining Armor taking care of accommodations for their unexpected visitors. Hopefully he would place them somewhere politely far from their own rooms. After all, she didn’t really look forward to spending time with the daughter of the mare that had touched her Shiny. Repeatedly.
She absently fanned herself before her thoughts went back to the letter. “What to write?”
“Mistress, the chefs have requested a menu for her royal majesty and the Hero Twilight Sparkle’s visit.”
Cadance blinked and looked deep into her secretary’s eyes, trying to ignore the fact that she was made of crystal. It wouldn’t do for her subjects to realize their Empress was deathly afraid of the material they were made of, after all.
Quartz Quill, however, felt suddenly self-conscious. Her Royal Empress Cadance always looked deep into her eyes, with such... intensity… she felt herself blush. Could her Magnificence like her? What was going on behind those purple irises when she stared so deeply into her soul? Was she thinking of inviting her to join their majesties in depraved—
“Fruit Bats.”
Quartz Quill blinked. “I—what?”
“Fruit Bats,” Cadance repeated, unrelenting in holding Quill’s eyes in place with the intensity of her gaze. “Changelings love eating Fruit Bats. Delicious, juicy Fruit Bats.”
Quartz Quill drew a shuddering breath, feeling herself blush under the spell of Cadance’s irises. She leaned forward, just a bit. “J-juicy… a-and delicious.” She gulped.
“Fruit Bats, yes.” Cadance nodded.
Quartz Quill’s lips felt dry as she leaned forward a bit more until all she could see were the purple gems of iridescent beauty that belonged to her Mistress and Empress. “It shall be done,” she whispered. Then, a fleeting thought crossed her mind. “Oh, deer.”
This had the unfortunate effect of breaking eye contact.
“What? Oh dear what?”
Clearing her throat, Quartz Quill took a regretful step back. “Not ‘Oh dear’, your Supreme Highness; Deer. The Deerfolk delegation are scheduled for arrival in the next few days to honor the peace agreement forged with them after the destruction of Sombra.”
“Of course!” Cadance sighed, rubbing her forehead with a hoof. “How could I forget? Isn’t the date of their arrival symbolic, too? Something to do with…”
“Their greatest battle and victory against their hated enemies, the Balrogs, yes,” Quartz Quill nodded. “Their days-long procession through their haunted woods, lead by their ancient leader Cúthalion Autumleaves symbolizes the gladness that they have for our kingdom to be freed from the alliance of King Sombra and Lord Bloodborn Aleguzzler of the Balrogs. It is a gesture indicating that the wait was worth the reward.”
“I can see that,” Cadance sighed. “Well, at least Twilight will be here, and I hear Princess Acari is a scholar herself. I am sure that they will both be fascinated by talking to another being as ancient as Celestia.”
Suddenly, Quartz Quill was once more held in place by the amazingly focused look Her Sublime Joy, Empress Cadance gave her. “Meep?”
“Quartz, have the chefs research the proper procedure to cook Fruit Bats, and make sure that they absolutely understand Deerfolk cousine. I know Lord Cúthalion will have brought his own experts, but if we can impress them with something simple, yet significant, we will have made the right move.”
“A-at once my beloved!”
Cadance blinked. “What?”
“M-my B-beloved Empress! Queen of Hearts and Light of the Crystal Heart!”
Cadance sighed. “How many times do I have to ask you to stop adding titles?”
“J-just one more time, y-your Crystalline Magnificience, a-as always!”
Cadance watched the crystal pony scamper out of her office.
"Sir, the Balrogs have accepted the invitation and declared your sacrificial offering suitable, they will be arriving sometime during the week."
"Wow. That Sentry dude was fast! I didn’t expect them to answer so soon! He left what, an hour ago?”
“Indeed, sir. But the Balrogs have magical fires that immediately transport unprepared interlopers straight into their torture cham—”
“Whoa, hold on, bro. Offering? Did you have Flash Sentry carry something over to them?"
"...not quite, sir."
Shining's eyes locked on him.
"They did say they would bring several wagons full of beer, sir."
"Ace!"
o.0.o End Chapter 8 o.0.o
Oh my god this is going to be a train wreck.
This is gonna be hilarious.
OH god, this, is not gonna end well at all. Not, at, all.
WOO! Your sacrifice shall not be forgotten, ... Umm... ... Something Sentry! So long as there is beer shall we remember your name! Or until the Hangover hits. Whatever.
... So is this supposed to be a joke chapter or something?
Cadence's part seemed... at least somewhat sane. Somewhat being the operative word... but Shining? Wth is with his fratboy mentality?
Taking all bets on how screwed(literally?) shining might be in the coming chapters. The pot starts at 15 bits.
Jesus fuck is Shining a complete dudebro in this.
24.media.tumblr.com/8535a906fb81c0687cf1d53f24e9f1c1/tumblr_n0hxvvtJkZ1sqry8zo1_500.png
Alas, poor Flash Sentry, we knew ye not at all. Records of your noble sacrifice will be forever mislaid by a lazy intern, and your paycheck mailed to an empty PO Box in Appleloosa.
There is nothing cool about balrogs. Too much fire.
I am 5000% certain that a changeling is replacing shining.
well i hope flash is okay and that something bad happens to shining, cause sending one of your guys as a sacrifice is just plain fucked up
4969381 Yeppers.
Seriously, stories that just plain shit on Flash aren't very funny.
4969287
50 (magical) bits on Civil War between the beloved Empress Cadence and Prince Bro of Shining Armor
Is...is shining high?
Uhh, wow, you sure made Shinning Armor seem like a complete and utter moron
Is this the version of Shining and Cadence we are getting for this story? Really?
I'll hang out for a couple more chapters to see where you are taking this, but bro Shining is a near absolute deal killer for me.
4969345 Not all of them i27.servimg.com/u/f27/11/27/80/45/minota12.jpg
4969435
4969432
Its called jock syndrome combined with Guardidus. He has the combined iq of both a stereotypical guard, which is -1, and a jock, which is - 10, so he is not a moron, hes just really really stupid.
no words
4969283 Surfer dude accent + crack fic, I dunno.
4969475 4969450 4969435 4969432 So little faith in good ol' Shining.
4969404 I didn't shit on him. I don't really care enough for him to shit on him. He'll be fine.
4969416 i bet 100 bits that Quartz Quill will kiss Cadence
RIght from the start, this story hasn't had much of a direction, but neither has it been completely random. It's in a sort of no-pony's-land between the two. It's all a bunch of wibbly-wobbly plotty-wotty stuff. It's one of this story's weaknesses.
Maybe I'm just being emotional and what I'm seeing as mistakes are actually just this chapter being one of your less impressive ones. Every creative presenter has occasional flops. Either way, this is still worth staying for at least another chapter or two to see if it picks up.
Now that I think of it, the upcoming balrog-deer thing would make a great noodle incident, or a series of them. Increasingly ridiculous shenanigans happening off-screen getting reported to the royalty. However, if that's not what you had in mind, I'm sure whatever you do have in mind would work, too.
..... One this is going to end badly..
Two you don't like flash do you?
And third you kinda made shining Armour out of character...
This whole chapter seems like you just wanted to mess around....
And that is the end of Flash Sentry
This will not end well.
4969511 from them yes, me no. I said he was stupid. I didn't say he fudged it though. Heck, if all goes right then the Balrogs and Deer nations will be allies at the end of this. I mean, judging from what has been mentioned, the Balrogs aren't really evil, their more like a nation filled with beings who love beer, a certain form of act involving the letters b d s and m, and a whole variety of other things that I would suspect from a specific genre of fiction novels involving a female german interrogator and a captured american soldier.
4969704 Nah, he just won't be twilys hubby anymore.
4969345 Oh really!?! Say that to my face sucker!!!!!
media.eventhubs.com/artwork/balrog/sf4_02.jpg
4969511
Ignore the fanboys of one-dimensional characters. ._. Nothing there to shit on, after all.
4969372
I am 10,000% certain that I fucking love Shining Corndogs. Surfer Armor is easily my favorite Shiny. It's like what, people expect him to be all stately and noble when he's not in public? Fuck that, he's married to the Princess of Love, and owns an empire. I'd be rocking out as soon as the doors closed and slinging beer kegs about the palace halls. Party on, Shiny - and party on Garth.
4969857 Because he life now in the belly of the balrogs
4969511
I'm 50/50 on it. On the one hand, Shinning seems to have succumb to his inner bro; on the other hand, he may be obfuscating stupidity as part of some genius, long term plan to help his wife/bring peace to the Deer and Balrogs/punish Flash for looking at his little sister funny.
This isn't going to end well.
4969909 Or, the fans could make him into a 3-dimensional character, like they've done with literally every background character in the show.
Somehow, Flash has become an exception. He's no more bland than what we've seen in-universe of many fan favorite background characters. I don't recall ever hearing people complain that Bon Bon was bland even back in S1 when she didn't even have her voice-changing status yet. Hell, all Octavia ever did was stand up and play an instrument, but that was enough for people to create whole backstories for her, give her a name, and create a relationship with Vinyl for the character, something the show creators never would have done.
What has Shining been smoking/drinking/eating and where can I get some????? Oh wait, Crystal Empire... so Crystal Meth????
4969959 I like this theory, got to love the Big Brother Instinct. Plus, I can totally see Cadance entertaining the Deer, Shining in the Dungeons with the Balrogs, and Twilight finding out what is going on and trying to keep the two groups from meeting... only for a Balrog child and a deer foal of opposite genders to get lost, meet up, become friends, and set of a peace conference before things regress to Romeo and Juliet situation. You know if anyone can make two races stop fighting it's the Princesses of Love and Friendship.
This has become utter madness and I can't take the story seriously in any way whatsoever anymore
Hate to be that guy but...
I think you're one of the authors who I could trust to write some variant of Dudebro Armor and not make it totally retarded by the end. I want to see what happens next.
Not really feeling it for this chapter. I get that characters in this series tend on the more comedic fandom side, but I felt the exaggerations on Armor were a bit too much and Cadence's scene came off as a so-so joke just on the edge of draging.
That was kind of strange. I mean, I can certainly see O&O player Shining Armor getting excited about Balrogs, but freely sending a subordinate off to apparently die to them and not even caring seems a bit off kilter for someone with a history of being in the guard.
4970143
Ye gods, there's another one. Abandon thread!
4970143 that's probably because as the forced in love interest for twilight, he has become the symbol for equestria girls and everything people hate about it.
most other characters that have been built up from scratch at least hadn't any negative backgrounds attached to them.
This is going to be a bloodbath
4970931 Another one? I'm not a fan of him, but I don't think he deserves such poor treatment by bronies. All I've stated is that he's no worse in-universe than any of the multitude of other background characters the fandom(and myself) loves so much.
I honestly don't understand the hate for him. I thought he was boring, but not near bad enough for the amount of hate the fandom throws at him.
4970970
Humour, friend. There's this thing where people make unfunny jokes ironically. All in good fun.
That aside. He reeks of Gary Stu. Which would be fine because we could just ignore him.
However, then his fans popped up. Just like with Luna or Spike they're practically frothing zealots, and refuse to admit it's for selfish and personal reasons. Either a teeming mass of idiots spouting "Flish da bes pone fuk u if u no liek!" three times a minute, or pseudo-intellectuals trying to reason out why he's amazing and soulful despite the fact there's not even enough on the character to extrapolate from. It's literally all headcanon but they act like he's canonically some sort of treasured saint who should shack up with one of the main characters.
Yet the same people will be the first ones to line up on a Gary Stu-centric story and tear it to bits. You can say the fans can make more of the character, but many of us dislike him simply because the fans have tried to make more of him than there is, to the point of near-insanity. That sort of zealotry they show reminds me too much of the NLRs and the Spikefans. For the same reasons, I mentioned I'm not a fan of Spike due to the people who go around to every story without him in it and demand Spike be written in, or become sort of harem-collecting pimp or whatnot. I received a death threat for that.
I could go on, but I think you can deduce generally how I and honestly a good deal/majority of the fandom vocal on the Flash issue feels. Also to point out, he's a character created for EQG, and we were told that EQG and the show would always remain separate. Then Flash shows up in the show - which is when Flash started getting his attention, both from those who would become fangirls (of either gender) and the massive outpouring of hate for his appearance.
In the end, as long as you have your reasons for disliking a character, no one should question it so long as your reasons aren't objectively incorrect. But mention you're not a fan of Flash and you get down-vote bombed or attacked by squealing fools. That does a lot to keep you from warming up to a character - the rabid fans.
Now that I've actually read the chapter, why is Shining acting like a "surfer dude"? I'll stick with it because I like the changeling sisters, but this is reminding me way too much of FiW's Shining, and I hated that version of him with a passion. I've never liked the whole surfer dude archetype to begin with, but having a Captain act like it is especially jarring.
Now yer hammin it up.
4969324 What'd you expect? He's an acolyte of Brosiedon, god of the Brocean.
Also Shining got so hung up on the Balrogs that he forgot that Acari is still slated for the dungeon. That has to come back to bit him in the flank.
So Shining flipped from his usual self of a chapter ago to his alternate personality Surfer Armor?
Okay, this is definitely going to explode in so many ways that I will prepare popcorn for the next chapter