Lunatic Fringe and I walked in silence, the flickering light from the edges of the black spot in the sky casting odd shadows over the world around us.
I stopped walking. "Lunatic?"
"Yes, Derrick?"
"What's the plan?"
"We shall walk to Dark Shimmer's house and get information about your lodgings from her. Then we will meet each of her friends in turn and get you acquainted with the rest of the town. Once you've had time to settle in, perhaps a few weeks or so, we might discuss some minor tasks you could do for us. But there is no pressure."
I fidgeted, shifting my body weight from side to side. "What if I don't want to do that?" I asked.
Lunatic looked at me uncertainly. "Well, I suppose you don't have to work if you don't want to, but the success of our town requires that every pony do their part."
I shook my head. "That's not what I meant," I said. "Think about it. One of the two rulers of Equestria and her personal student were both acting very out of character the last time I saw them. I don't know how much you remember about them from your time as Luna, but attempting to kill or imprison me, an innocent human, because of the actions of my species, without even giving me a chance to defend myself, goes contrary to almost everything I know about them."
I took a deep breath. "I don't know exactly what it is, but I'm afraid there may be something very wrong in Equestria."
Lunatic sighed. "I fear you may be right," she said, "but if there is something wrong, is it truly in your best interests to get involved? They have threatened you, attacked you, tried to kill and imprison you, and if you get involved again you may not be able to survive."
She placed her hoof on my shoulder and looked into my eyes.
"You might die. I would do my best to protect you, but there is only so much I can do against such power."
"Stay here with me," she continued. "Help me with my new kingdom. Be a pillar of strength for the ponies who would look to you for guidance."
Lunatic blushed, her hoof still on my shoulder. I was suddenly very aware of how close her face was to mine.
"...for all of the ponies who look up to you. Even the ones that aren't so little."
I felt my face flush as I stared into her eyes. I understood what she was implying, but...
I took her hoof off my shoulder but didn't move away from her. "I appreciate the offer, and once this is taken care of I may take you up on that. But right now? Something is wrong, and my friends are right in the middle of it. There's no way I could do any less."
Lunatic smiled weakly. "Of course. Well, in that case let us travel to the Castle of the Third Sister. It is where I live when I spend time here, and there are some scrying magics there that may be useful to us."
Lunatic kneeled and allowed me to get on her before she leaped into the air and took flight towards where the Everfree Forest would have been in Equestria.
I had had time to think about it in the Everfree Forest and while walking with Lunatic to the Kingdom of Darkness, but it was only during this conversation with Lunatic that my thoughts crystallized. Something was wrong with Celestia and Twilight, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. Why had they acted the way they had? Was humanity truly so repulsive that simply being human was enough to scare them senseless? Was it something I had done?
Perhaps most importantly, would I ever get my friends back?
---------------------------------------------
Meanwhile:
Two ponies ran down the grey stone castle hallways, yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs. One was a pegasus, the other was a unicorn. Both of them were covered in jungle camouflage and wearing pink earmuffs. The unicorn swung a rubber chicken in his telekinetic grip while the pegasus screamed, "AIR EH NAMBLIES BE KEEPIN' ME WEE MEN!?"
Hrm. Maybe we should step back a few days.
---------------------------------------------
One week ago:
The two armored guards took the train back to Canterlot in silence. Eventually the white pegasus spoke up.
"Hey..."
"Yeah?"
"Actually, I was going to call you by your name, but I realized I don't know what it is."
The grey unicorn grunted. "It's Flashbang."
"Flashbang?"
"Yeah."
"And that spell you cast was a...?"
"Flashbang."
"And your cutie mark is of a..."
"Flashbang. Look, is there anywhere you're going with this?"
The white pegasus shifted uncomfortably. "Erm, not really. Look, did anything about that encounter seem... off... to you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, think about it. The only human in Equestria shows up, claiming that some unknown entity has brainwashed all the other guards, and that we should ignore anything they try to tell us. We know he was running from the guards."
"Yeah. So?"
"What if he lied to us? What if that was just an excuse to keep away from the rest of the guards who were trying to detain him for perfectly legitimate reasons? What if that whole brainwashing story was just to keep us from finding out we were supposed to stop him?"
The pegasus continued frantically, "What if we were supposed to stop him, and he helped him instead? Oh, Celestia, we might have just aided a figutive from the law! You know what that makes us? Traitors!"
Flashbang said, "Calm yourself. Let's look at this rationally. We're two intelligent ponies, right?"
"Well, yeah."
"It's a well-known fact that the smarter a pony is, the harder he is to fool. And there are the two of us here dealing with the one human, which means that, relatively speaking, we're twice as smart as he is."
The pegasus smiled. "Oh, yeah."
"So you see, it's very unlikely that the human fooled us."
A long silence, then:
"So then what are we going to do about the brainwashing? As far as we know, whoever was brainwashing the guards is still there. What if... what if he got to Celestia?"
"Stow that talk! Princess Celestia is our leader and the pillar of our community. She's a paragon of mental strength and there's no way she would have fallen victim to some cheap voodoo mind tricks. She's just too strong for that!"
"But what if she did? Think about it. What should we do?"
There was a pause as Flashbang considered this before responding, "Whoever's doing this mustn't know that we're on to them. Whatever we do, it will have to be sneaky. It will have to be subtle, and it will have to be cunning."
One week later the two guards stormed the castle wearing pink earmuffs and jungle camouflage, swinging a rubber chicken and yelling at the top of their lungs.
5437770
Sorry about the delay. I decided to take the plot in a different direction from Seasons of Darkness, which meant more work for me. New chapter's up now, though. So that's cool.
Hmm... They become tropes and help lunatic in the end still thinking that celestia and the guards have been brain washed and throughout the entire story they do not believe that celestia and guards are not brainwashed no matter how much lunatic and others try to tell them otherwise
Also their encounters become a side story that add comedic relief
THIS IS MY PREDICTION SO IT HATH BEEN PROCLAIMED!
...or something else
When plans need to be wrecked, call Old Man Henderson.
Props for finding a legitimate way to work that into a serious story.
5466382
There's a reason Celestia and Twilight have been acting out of character. It'll probably be several more chapters before I can address it in-story, but trust me: this isn't just poor characterization on my part.
EDIT: aaand he deleted his post five minutes later. Great.
Well the two guards are acting just how I would expect RPG player characters to act
AKA In no way sane or even practical but funny
Hell three days I'm surprised they are still in one piece
5466575
"Don't worry, I have a plan."
"Oh God, no."
EDIT:
"Is this going to be like your underwater scuba-diving plan?"
"I still maintain that the plan was theoretically sound. You just left before you were supposed to."
"Yeah, because the cave was filling with water!"
"So?"
"I didn't have any scuba gear!"
"Man, you could bitch about anything."
If you intend for anymore of these moments, then you should add a comedy tag. That moment was enough to make me laugh, not just mentally...
5466595 Well I have once roll played an insane metal tree doctor skeleton (Started as a skeleton then progressed) and did medicine on my team mates namely replacing stuff like limbs and heads that kept getting lopped off by mages
generally the response is OH GOD NO STOP HELPING ME.
It got to the point that I was casually catching fish and sacrificing there souls to demons and noone cared because I wasnt making monsters that would give slender pause
That was a really fun game especially the floating octopus dress and eleven limbed dragon (Till the guy complaned and I took his limbs away )
EDIT with your coment it would go
"I can heal you"
"NO I'm fine... arms grow back"
Heh, I see I am not the only one who knows about Old Man Henderson.
For those unaware of what is going on, and who Old Man Henderson is, go here, and read the glory that is Old Man Henderson
5466701
Funny you should mention that. I was playing a game of Numenera and one of my companions was tied up, so I used my sword to cut him loose.
The GM made me roll for it.
I critically failed the roll.
Slice.
Fortunately for the other player, he was some sort of plant-creature with regeneration so his arm literally grew back.
5467731 Well thats not the worst fail I've heard of one guy failed his sanity roll twice in a row killed his friend then got gutted and took the guy who killed him with him.
There was another time where Derm made a uniorat by summoning a giant rat and accidentally merged it with a unicorn on the top of a giant elves resort that was on fire because he set it on fire earlier then climbed it
this is after all the other atrocity like boiling people in there armor, accidentally blowing up a plot important NPC before he could say a word by trying to dramatically enter the room (His teammates in the room took one look at him as the doors opened and leapt out the window...of a mountain) and summoned himself to a ship without his bones. Here is the link to the whole story
That author's note made my day.
....Hm..................................
Right. That does it. Even if this hadn't already warranted one, it would get an upvote from me just for the Old Man Henderson reference.