Little Deceptions
Celestia smiled as she walked towards the court for the day, thinking about her little ponies.
It had been a long day, yesterday, hearing more and more complaints about the thefts in the city, but as with many long days there was that sparkling moment that made it all worthwhile. Little talks like that, one on one with her ponies, letting off a bit of steam without the pomp and circumstance… and the look on his face…
It was perhaps a bit of a dirty trick, but when you were thousands of years old with a nation to run, sometimes a few dirty tricks were called for, especially when she needed to get something like that off her barrel.
And even after all these centuries, she never got tired of the look of shock she got when she called her little ponies by name. The idea that their princess cared enough to know who they were… to care about them that much… she always tried to make time to talk to them, because it made them all the more proud and happy to do their job.
So maybe the spell she had designed a few centuries back which told her the name of anypony she spoke to… maybe that was cheating a little, but it was better than mistaking somepony for a centuries-dead ancestor…
She felt a little guilty about it occasionally, but sometimes little deceptions like that could make all the difference, and if it made her ponies happy…
She’d have to keep an eye out for that guard she’d spoken to last night. She didn’t think she’d seen him before, but he certainly seemed dedicated, if a little easily flustered… but most ponies were when the Princess appeared beside them. He’d do fine… What was his name again?
Eh. She’d remember when she saw him.
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..........Ha ha ha ha ha
4989388 O.o Spelling errors? I have an editor full of doom to such things! Plus that's usually the one thing I don't mess up.
Could you PM me an example or two?
Remember I'm Australian, so errant 'u's and '-ise' instead of '-ize' are part of your complete breakfast :)
But glad you otherwise liked it!
4989415 Glad you enjoyed! Thanks for commenting :)
That twist---brilliant. You flipped the "Celestia is scary when saying nice things" trope on its head, superbly.
Well done. :)
4989876 Well, let's face it, she is.
Whether she intends to be or not.
Glad you enjoyed it!
4989919 Hah! Heaven knows I've had more than a couple ideas fall into THAT little bottomless pit before XD Still, write it! Just find a nice twist to work into it!
Glad you enjoyed. :)
Ah, this was nice. The narrative was a little wordy, but that lent itself very well to the smug nature of ... I don't know what to call him for fear of spoilers. Is he the protagonist or the antagonist here?
Great, now I'm just confused!
My reaction after reading Chapter 1: "I liked this. Great idea!"
My reaction after reading this chapter: i.imgur.com/bhKp2.gif
...Now I get that Blank Slate is named that in a reference to his special talent, but did you name Cuckoo Cloud after a cloudcuckoolander? Because he doesn't seem to be one. I don't even know how that name matches up with his talent OR his cutie mark...
4990266 Just consider him to be the main character, and you're set.
4990266 Protagonist, of course! He's the good guy here! Now, anyway. Totally reformed. :)
4990842 That's the effect I was going for!
Glad you enjoyed.
4990969 The name was basically a reference to his nature - Cuckoos are known to lay their eggs in other birds' nests to make the other birds raise their eggs as their own, so it's simply a much more subtle reference to his talent for disguising himself. Originally it was "Cuckoo Song", I honestly don't remember why I changed it - but I'm trying to move more towards names that don't actually necessarily flow as one whole concept. (Most names you see in the fandom are 'adjective' 'noun' or similar, or at least make sense outside naming conventions; a lot of the ones you see in the actual show are much less so - "Fluttershy" "Thunderlane" etc - so yeah.)
But no, I hadn't even considered that link.
Pffft...I did NOT consider that ending.
That was funny as hell
Celestia didnt even KNOW "Blank Slate" was a thief, he turned himself in for no reason
4991062
4991068
Of course, then you have to imagine the guards coming up to Celestia after the fact to let her know that the jewel thief has turned himself in, just as she planned all along.
What is she going to do, tell them it was all a huge mistake?
(Luna is not going to let her hear the end of this for decades.)
And you know what the funniest part of this would be. When Celestia hears about this case (which she will cause they'll want to confirm his story) She'll just smile and say that convincing him to turn himself in was her plan all along. And everypony will believe her too. Ha!
Hmm Celestia could possibly use Blank Slate as an Infiltrator and or spy in her service
... the spell, oddly enough, also seemed to show the date when they were meant to die... hovering over their heads with their names in slanted crimson script.
And if she happened to rewrite that date with their name in a strange little black journal which had dropped out of the sky in front of her hooves one day (it had some weird language on it which they could only make out spelled something like 'Morte Message' according to the translation spells, whatever that meant), why the pony would die at that time, by any method she chose to write in!
It was sooooo much fun playing god!
This was hilarious!
Beautiful, beautiful twist. Well done.
Part of me wants to call bullshit on Celestia, but now I can't help but think that she doesn't even remember the names of Twilight's friends without help. All those years of not committing something to memory probably makes a bad habit.
4991349
What if you make the date a thousand years from now?
Brilliant.
I love how the second chapter thoroughly changes the meaning of the first.
And now I have to wonder how Celestia would react to reading the transcript of the interview...
I really liked this story. It reminded me of an accidental version of The Interrogation by Zamairiac and the unofficial fan sequel The Interrogation: Spared Change by Post Script. (Both very good stories)
Huzzah and well done! This was a really fun story, and I was quite moved by the exchange between Celestia and Cuckoo Cloud. I didn't suspect at all that it was an 'accident', and that made what she said to him very powerful.
That it turned out to have nothing directly to do with him thus became quite funny
and I can totally see an immortal (or nigh-immortal) entity needing something like that spell.
Thanks for posting this quite entertaining caper tale!
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote
4991085 That's the way a real mastermind does it. No matter what happens, or how far shit has come off the rails, EVERYTHING is exactly according to plan.
Well played...
A spell that could reveal any ponies name? I could use something like that. But wanting aside, there's one thing I can't figure out. How exactly did she figure out what he was about to attempt and that it was him stealing everything? Was it just a lucky guess or did she exactly what was going on?
4991816 I think the whole point of this chapter is that it turned out she didn't know what he was up to and it was the Knowing Names spell that inadvertently scuppered the thief's plan.
I need closure.
So Celestia didn't know that he was the thief.
Will she still punish him when she finds out, or will she give him a second chance?
4991816
Lesson time.
Good comedy works with a buildup and a twist. The buildup sets expectations, and the twist subverts them. Classic example "Man walks into a bar, the next one ducks."
'Man walks into a bar' is the set up for a bar joke, expectations are set.
'the next one ducks.' subverts the expectation, changing the entire meaning of the set up.
Setup: Celestia thwarts a thief by appearing at the last possible second and showing him that she knows exactly what he's about to do.
Twist: She had no idea what was really going on.
4991942 I would take you more seriously if you hadn't blotted out all but one of your sentences and sound like a condescending ass.
4992002
Sorry.
Nice to know who the next chief of security in Canterlot is.
4991116 She might not even say that, instead just murmuring something about how every pony deserves a second chance, and letting everyone just assume she was (a) omniscient, (b) benevolent, and (c) didn't want to make a big deal out of tracking down and reforming a notorious thief with only a few casual words.
*Applauds* Well done! Well done. I'm going to take my time to check out the rest of what you've written after this.
…Hahahahaha! Oh my! :)
4991289 It isn't that kind of powder plus he was wet when applying it so to allow it to set this works really well when trying to get a quick sold color and remove it soon after it is used as a stage technique very often to make a character have graying hair and swap between the two
That was brilliant. Fantastic story.
Wubs it.
Oh, this is rich.
God I would love to hear more of this Cuckoo Cloud life.
I implore you to continue writing this story, it would be awesome reading the adventures of Cuckoo Cloud, Celestia's top spy. I vote his code name be OOC
Ignoring the fact that the first thing I thought of when I read his real name was "Cloud Cuckoo Land" from The Lego Movie, that twist was amazing. I finished the first chapter and thought: "yeah, that's just like Celestia to do that kind of thing." and then finished the second and started laughing. Brilliant.
wonder what will happen if discords finds out how she dose it
Okay that was rich.
Nicely done.
The first part of the story really had me going. How cool, calm and collective the thief is. His ability to predict the situation, his wit and willingness to go through with everything. When I got to the end of this, I just, felt put off. He just turns himself in, I felt that something was just missing here. A nice short story and I hope I get to read more of Cuckoo Cloud. Maybe some of his earlier heists?
That is simply adorable. I can only imagine what Celestia would say when she found out about it, hah! Wonder if her porcelain mask would crack or if she'd pass it off as nothing.
4992023 4992002
It's to avoid spoilers, for those checking out the comments. It's actually a really considerate and awesome idea when it comes to stories that have lots of chapters and someone wants to leave a note and has to go to the bottom of the page.
Maaaan, okay, last night here I am thinking "Well, looks like everyone who read the story enjoyed it (except that one thumbs down guy) but it's just not getting the exposure my other fics do. Nothing we can do about that. Looks like it'll just end up with my other less-noticed stories - and I don't mind that, it was just a little idea after all."
And then I wake up to a couple hundred new notifications and spot two on the feature box.
Thank you everyone! Glad you enjoyed it! =D
Time to do some commentary!
4991200 What are you talking about? Celestia clearly does not have spies or infiltrators in her service. Everypony knows that. On a completely unrelated note, please look into the tip of my horn - don't worry about the sunglasses, they're just because we're stylish, ordinary civilians...
4991636 4991476 4991530 Thank you! Glad you enjoyed, and thanks for taking the time to comment. =D
4991556 Or even Twilight herself. XD And one day, Celestia is caught in an antimagic field with Twilight, and has to carefully avoid referring to her by name because she totally can't remember...
4991588 Serene calmness with an enigmatic smile, naturally. On the outside, anyway. Because everything went just as planned :)
4991614 I won't lie, those stories may have influenced the direction of this one quite a bit. I had the overall idea before reading them - though as I mentioned, the original idea was for a conspiracy or cult more than a thief. That just wouldn't have made quite as good a one-shot.
4991726 No, no, almost right. Everything is going according to plan as long as everything's turning out right. If things are going badly, it's
Luna'sDiscord's plan. Up until you manage to twist everything back into being in your favour again, then it turns out it was your plan all along.The best trick is that she doesn't even need to say it - these days, everypony is totally happy to make those assumptions for her.
Amazing story ending
4991816 Because she is a wizard. o.o
But no, she was just letting off some steam and inspiring a guard she didn't remember seing before.
4991932 How could she punish him? Didn't she already say that she would give him a second chance? She's all but pardoned him before he even turned himself in!
And that's the problem with "Everything according to plan." =D Sometimes you just gotta roll with it.
4992128 Exactly. (And then you note the implication that this sort of thing has happened before. Bloody princesses, no wonder everyone thinks the guard is incompetant...)
4992071 There is probably some well-established hiring policy with legal precedent along these lines.
4992232 Yeeeessss... everything is going according to plan. =D I hope you enjoy!
4991765 4992334 4992428 4992460 4992514 Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment! Glad you enjoyed it :)