I think that the first time that I honestly, truly started to see the full picture of who I was as a person was the day Rarity lent me her camera. Ironically, that development had absolutely nothing to do with the camera itself; I only made this revelation while I was holding it.
On a completely unrelated note, the first thing I noticed with Rarity’s camera was that it looked positively ancient. Not in the sense that it was damaged and worn out — no, it was actually fairly new looking in terms of wear and tear — but it looked like a camera from almost a hundred years before the Other was born. It had film but no built-in flash, and there was a crank to advance the film.
And with the minor revelation that I had absolutely no idea what sort of technology was available, I graciously accepted the Camera from Rarity’s magical grasp. "You just need a few shots?"
"Yes, one from each side. Make sure you hold up that measuring stick so that I can gauge your size correctly," She explained.
"This would be much easier if you could do it yourself," I commented.
"But I can't. I would have taken your measurements yesterday, had it all worked out." She paused, giving me a scrutinizing look. "Jack, about yesterday... Applejack told me something rather troubling about your behavior. About you uprooting your own child?"
"Pragmatism," I answered honestly, recalling the times before my burning where I had killed other pups, and once when I was a pup and nearly executed for almost ruining a hunt. "Cull the problem individuals at the root before they can harm the pack. Preserving the pack exceeds the value of any one person."
Apparently, I did nothing to assuage her worries; if anything, judging by her troubled expression, I only made her fears worse. "Is it not the same with ponies?"
"Of course it isn't! That's barbaric!" Rarity shouted back, quite aghast from my insinuation.
"Then would you prefer the death of one, or the death of many?"
"I would prefer to find a way end it with no deaths at all!" Rarity yelled.
"And if there really was no other option?" I counter.
Rarity gritted her teeth, her expression one of great frustration. "Then make one."
My puppet sighs while my leaves rustle in a nonexistent breeze. "Then, I shall try... I make no promises."
That seemed to placate her enough for now. A breath, far deeper than usual, passed through her lips as the rest of her face resumed a more "ladylike" expression. The seed of distrust was still there, but I could see in her eyes that she was giving me the benefit of the doubt and trying to bury her feelings.
Or at least, that's what I think. I'm still new to this whole "facial expressions" thing, and I based all the knowledge I have on an entirely separate species, so I could be wildly inaccurate. Only time will tell.
"I suppose that is all I can ask for. And, I'm sorry if I offended you; I should not be so short-tempered with a client, after all."
"It's not a problem," I replied.
The trees of the Everfree raced past my puppet as it ran. I found that by focusing all of my magic and attention on a single puppet, its speed and agility increased dramatically. The boost was never enough to fully compensate for the temporary loss of my other puppets in tactical terms, but when I needed to get one somewhere fast, there was no better option.
But, in cutting off all but one of my puppets, I found myself lacking mental stimulation, and so my thoughts began to wander. Thoughts about the conversation I had just had with Rarity were nowhere to be found in my mind; instead, I fixated on my plan to upgrade my Lycan into a mechanical construct.
I would need woodcarving tools and metal joints. A bit of paint wouldn't hurt either. And with an artificially crafted puppet, I could hide tools and weapons in it. Perhaps I could even add poisons, if Zecora was willing to teach me.
A name drifted up from the Other's memory: Sasori. I had no idea what it means, or how it related to my current train of thought. I filed it away for later pondering.
The Other's memories were extremely sparse on personal details. While I knew how to do a lot of things because of the Other, I barely knew who they were. I had no name, no gender, and no physical description. How old were they? What happened to them? Did they have family?
I don't know. It would be interesting to learn, but I'm in no rush at all to find out. If I never do, then there is nothing lost.
But I do have clues. The Other knew how to make moving mechanisms and they had a good understanding of motion and physics — it's where I cobbled together my trap-making skills from. And, when I cut open my prey, I seemed to know generally what every organ was. I suspected that they were something of an intellectual.
My musing was quite suddenly interrupted as I sense something pony-sized approaching my grove; the network of our roots below the ground detected its weight. My Lycan was approaching from the opposite direction, so I slowed it down and instead awakened the wolves nearer to my tree.
The entity is moving slowly between my ally trees. I feel the vibrations in my roots, but I cannot yet sense him directly with that strange hybrid-magical sense. Magiception?
I hated not having a word for something.
Regardless of what word I used, I couldn't yet "see" whatever it is in my grove, so I did the logical thing and sent a wolf to spy on it.
I quickly noticed the scent of fresh blood. The second thing I observed was that there was only one "set" of scents on the creature, which informed me that the blood was its own. Instantly, my blood lust spiked.
What a poor place for a weak and injured creature to wind up.
My whole grove was a trap. The scent of my lure flowers and the promise of food both from my branches and from the branches of the zap apple trees was too tempting for the woodland creatures to ignore. And since I rarely sprung my trap on the smaller creatures, they felt comfortable coming in. The larger creatures — the predators — were doubly lured in by both the plants and the smaller animals.
Occasionally, I'd get something as big as the injured animal, and I would spring the trap. An impulse passed down my roots and into the ring of trees around me. The wind picked up, guided by their magic to carry the scent of my flowers directly towards the spot where we felt our prey's weight on our roots.
The wind blew, and the creature stopped a second later. Inward it turned, heading deeper into my grove.
I finally caught sight of it, and what I saw further confirmed that this world was definitely not the Other's world. Walking through the trees of my grove was a creature that could only be described as a centaur, save for the fact that its face was more ape-like than the Other's depictions.
Quickly, my predatory instincts highlighted three key details: the large gash on its side and many smaller cuts across its body; the frail, malnourished form of its body; and the haggard, aged look in its face. Wounded, starving, and old: it was the hunter's trifecta. I grinned like a piranha.
And then the centaur finally came into range of my magiception, and its appearance to my senses blew me away. If Rarity made me hungry, this creature made me absolutely ravenous.
And yet I didn't strike at once. The idea that intelligence and power went together gave me pause.
Why hesitate? My allies asked. Kill it. Feed us. It took our fruit. Kill it. Feed us.
Yes, I had told them to activate the first stage of the trap; my allies were now just as ravenous now as I was. Lovable parasites, the lot of them. But it didn't matter if they egged me on or not; it entered my grove uninvited, I was already hungry from dealing with Rarity, and it was different enough from the people I knew and interacted with that I didn't have as much interest in preserving it. I was planning on eating it anyway.
Still, my curiosity made me continue to pause. If it really was intelligent, why did it not seek out a town to get aid and food? Why did it not graze in the forest? I'd seen Zecora eat plants she found, so why didn't it?
Maybe it wasn't as intelligent as I first thought. A pity...
An idea popped into my mind. With just a little magic, I plucked a zap apple from an ally and tossed it next to where the centaur had sat down. It rolled a bit and bumped into my trunk. The centaur looked down at the polychromatic fruit, and then at its point of origin. Not spotting me, it — or should I say he — shouted, "Who's there?"
"A denizen of the forest, and an inhabitant of this particular grove," I answered. "I don't particularly like you eating this fruit, but you look hungry. Eat, relax, and rest."
He relaxed a bit. "Thank you."
"I'm curious," I asked, "why did you not seek the forest's edge? A pony village lies not far beyond; they would have tended to your wounds and filled your stomach with more than just wild fruits and dank grass."
"Ponies are my enemies." He scowled. "I seek my vengeance against them for imprisoning me."
Well, that just sealed the deal, didn't it? I said I had learned something about myself that day, and it was at this moment that I did. In that moment, all my qualms about killing a sapient person vanished. Instead, I felt the protective instincts of a Pack Leader willingly give way to the murderous instincts of the beast that I am; in that moment, the Pack Leader in me agreed with the beast: he would be food.
I'll kill anything that threatens what's mine; that was a fact.
"What's your name, my guest?" I asked coyly.
"I am Lord Tirek."
"Lord Tirek... Interesting." It was then that I stepped out of the shadows with all twelve of my bodies, each speaking in unison. In Lycan's grip was his spear, the camera having been set down elsewhere. "I am Pack Leader Lumber Jack."
I readied my spear.
"Get Tirecked."
Perhaps that wasn't my best pun, but the sound the spear made a solid thump as it impacted my hard bark, easily satisfied me more. To clarify a little, the spear made that sound after having passed straight through the centaur's chest and the apple he was holding.
What a shot, I thought proudly. For it to have gone completely through, it must have just missed the centaur’s rib cage, where instead it cut through only soft tissue.
I walked my puppet up to the dying centaur and finished the deed. Blood pooled on the ground as I let it run from the corpse, but as it did, I noticed something very peculiar. The pierced zap apple, having been discarded, was touching the puddle of muddy blood and sparking significantly — I had never seen one of my allies’ picked fruit do that before. With every spark, more and more of the blood took on a mesmerizing rainbow coloration.
The rainbow blood trickled down to my largest root, which greedily drank the delicious treat. Like with the chicken-lizard and the manticore, I could feel magic in its blood seeping into my body, bolstering my magic. It was like liquid fire in my trunk, save for the fact that it was a pleasurable burn instead of agony, a sensation like what the Other felt after vigorous exercise.
And then it hit me quite like a blast of lightning. Actually, scratch that; it was lightning. A massive bolt of electrical magic shot out from my allies and struck the exposed knot of my root that was gorging itself on the rainbow blood.
And for the first time ever, in all of my memory, I fell unconscious.
Timberwolves don't sleep, period. We slow down at night to conserve energy, but we never really stop. That made the experience of waking up something rather unusual.
I didn't ache, as I had half-expected. Instead, I just gradually "rebooted" until I was fully aware again.
That's odd... As I took stock of my surroundings, I noticed that my entire grove seemed smaller. It took me a few seconds to realize that my grove hadn't grown smaller; I had grown bigger.
Again.
Seriously, I now towered over my fellow trees, where I knew for a fact that we were all about the same height before my burning. But even so, this level of growth was ridiculous. I'd just been growing faster than normal after my burning, not instantaneously like this.
I shoved the thoughts aside for now. With barely any effort, I cast out my magic to my thirteen transmission seeds and commanded them to hoist their bodies together. I needed their eyes to really see what's happened here.
They all come together, except for one, which was apparently gathering more wood from the surrounding area.
My mind freezes. "...ten, eleven, twelve... thirteen. I have thirteen transmission seeds now," I mutter through Lycan's mouth. So distracted was I by my extra seed that I almost didn’t notice that I was vocalizing my thoughts.
Thirteen finished gathering its wood and constructing itself, leaving me impressed with what I saw. Its form was that of Tirek's body hybridized with my wolves', but its size was that of both Lycan and a wolf joined together. The limbs were also burlier looking than any of my other puppets' or Tirek's own limbs. Composed of many branches and twigs, the limbs of my puppet gave the impression of dense, toned musculature, rather than that of a body slowly wasting away.
Speaking of Tirek, one of my puppets spotted a black pile of ash where Tirek once was. Quite suddenly, my whole mood plummeted. I can't say why, exactly, but the whole situation left a bitter taste on my roots.
And yet, I wasn't all that concerned over the fact that I had essentially just committed my first murder. Every part of me that was the Other screamed at me, saying I should feel guilty, disgusted, or something, but I don't.
During our design talk, Rarity kindly showed me the developed photos. I must say, in the light of the sunset, as fast as it always was, I had managed to take some excellent pictures, a fact with which Rarity seemed to agree. The fact that she wanted to make a whole line of clothes based upon my "wild beauty," as she put it, only served to inflate my ego.
I carefully omitted that I had hastily covered Tirek's scorch mark with dirt, and that I had hidden the bones of my prey.
"Rarity, something has come up," I said. "I know that Zecora gave you an idea of my budget, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to reduce that. I need to get some hardware tools — a saw, a hammer, nails, some sand paper, and the like. If you know anyone who would be willing to sell me some, that would be great."
"Perish the thought, dear. I'll loan you mine. I hardly ever use them, so it is no trouble for me," Rarity said.
My Lycan smiled. "Really? Thank you, Rarity. I'd love to get my own set, but this will do for now."
"You're welcome," she replied. "Now, if that's everything, I believe I'll be on my way."
"Rarity!"
We both turned to look at the source of the new voice. My Lycan's "ear" branches splayed back and it bared its teeth, but, upon noticing that there was no threat, I made it relax.
I'm actually ashamed that I didn't notice the pony until she was close enough to yell. I should have smelled her or heard her walking far sooner; she has no grace, as her hooves plod loudly on the ground.
Unlike the ponies or zebra I've seen, she has a pair of wings folded by her side, as well as a horn like Rarity's. I ponder how many varieties of pony there are, especially since this one is purple, like fruit.
I've never seen a purple animal, save for those stupid little ball-bugs.
I doubt that she'd like that I just compared her to a stupid little ball-bug.
Mercifully ignorant of my inner musing, the new pony cantered up to Rarity, who seems to recognize the newcomer. "Twilight, darling, how good to see you. What brings you out here?"
"Well, Applejack told me that you were meeting with an intelligent timberwolf, and I decided that I wanted-" Her gaze shifted to me. "-to meet him. You're Lumber Jack, right?"
Why do they always think of me as male? I would have thought that with no physical gender, they would have disagreed on which pronouns to use, but I'm always he.
Strange.
"Yes, I am," I said while shoving linguistic mysteries aside. "And you are?"
"Twilight Sparkle," she introduced.
"Princess Twilight Sparkle," Rarity correct. "Twilight, you're royalty now. You should at least acknowledge it."
A princess? So she was the heir to the throne? "So you're the Beta to your Pack Leader?"
She hesitated a second, apparently processing my question. "Sort of. Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Princess Cadance would be the Alphas, and though I'm technically the same rank, I don't have the same authority," Twilight Sparkle explained.
"A Beta among Alphas. Interesting," I replied. "I do hope you can forgive my lack of tribute, though. I was not expecting to meet a Pack Leader today, so I carried no offering with me." I ripped one of my Lycan’s ear branches off and handed it to her. "Please, take this as my token of peace."
She took the stick in her magic. It seemed to instantly dry up a bit, wilting the leaves, as it left the control of my magic. "Umm... thank you?"
She set it on the ground next to her hooves. I’d half expected her to attach it to herself, like any other Pack Leader would have done, but then I remembered that she was a pony and not a timberwolf.
It was at this point that Rarity excused herself, citing that she needed to get back to her own work. Naturally, since that work involved the clothing I had requested from her, I let her go without complaint, and the princess did the same.
"Well then, if you wanted to meet me after just hearing about me, you must want something from me," I observed aloud.
"I have so many questions!" she exclaimed.
"And I have answers," I replied, "but they aren't free. For every question you ask me, you’ll have to answer a question I consider of equal value, and if I run out of questions, you’ll run out of answers, unless you pay some other way. Deal?"
"That sounds reasonable," the princess replied. "Here’s my first question: when and how did you become sapient, unless you were born that way?"
"How I became this way is as much a mystery to me as it is to you, though Zecora, a friend of mine, theorizes that it had something to do with the pulse of harmony magic that happened several months ago. The timing fits." After a second to phrase my question, I asked in return, "How much do you know about magic in general, not just pony magic?"
She smiled. "Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I know a good bit. My special talent is magic after all. Why do you ask?"
"With my intelligence boost came the understanding of just how little I know about how my body works; I want to find out more," I answered. "Now, to return the question, why do you ask? To clarify, what do you hope to gain from me?"
Her smile didn’t waver; if anything, it only grew wider. "It’s simple: I want to know why you are the way you are. An intelligent timberwolf is completely unprecedented! If we can find out how we came to be, we could learn so much about the nature of life, magic, and the soul!"
"Fascinating." A harmless lie, really. All I cared about was understand how my magic worked, and how I could exploit it to my benefit. If this princess wanted to try to unravel the mysteries of the universe while studying me, well, more power to her.
I doubt that she would get much. I wouldn't be letting her close to my real body anytime soon. And yet, by the same token, I knew that I wouldn't get much either.
What was that phrase? Ah, yes: c'est la vie.
Taur, as I had taken to calling my latest puppet, galloped through the forest as fast as I could make it go. Despite its size and strange center of gravity, it was surprisingly agile.
The sheer size would make hunting with it a challenge, if not a downright impossibility, but as a last-defense puppet to guard me, it would be fine.
There was something else that I noticed as I made it run. Normally, there was a measurable strain that comes with distance. My Lycan was near the edge of my range right now with Twilight Sparkle, and I could feel it. Yet, at the same time, Taur had run for a while now and yet I only felt a fraction of the strain I should have been at this distance.
I pushed forwards. If this puppet had a longer range than my other puppets, I needed to know that. Why it would be that way eluded me, but I suspected that it had something to do with what my allies and that centaur's blood did to me.
That too was a mystery. What exactly had that done to me? I got a new puppet, but I lost consciousness. As much as the prospect of gaining power thrilled me, the risk to my mind was something I wasn't willing to gamble on. Maybe Twilight Sparkle or someone she knew could help me figure it out.
Well atleast your protaganist ain't a goody two-shoe.
*puts on shades*
YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAH!
New life goal: don't let the last words I hear be a pun. Especially a pun based around my name.
6495226
This is the end of your EPOCH
"Grit" is present tense, not past, which is "gritted." The same goes with verbs like "pet" vs "petted" and "pat" vs "patted."
6495226 So, you don't want your end to be an epoch failure?
Aw hell yes! New Chapter!
I think Lumber Jack just got a major fork, which is to say, a body that can hold more of his consciousness than any of his other 'puppets,' something he can use to actually interact with the world outside of his grove.
Because no one else has said it yet.
Welcome to the... Corpse(?) Lord Treerek
6495239
For some reason, and I don't know why, I kept switching tense while writing this. I tried to get it all fixed, but apparently I missed that one.
So he found a jumbo can of protein powder just wandering the woods. Some trees just have all the luck.
\OoO/
I like this one. It's very alien in thought. Still I laugh at the idea of Celestia with a alpha branch in her mane. And alas Tirek we hardly ye. Still Purple Smart gets to keep her library, but Starlight Glimmer's little cult may not be found till it's too late cause of this.
Oh my. Tirek came and went with nary a moment's passing. What an unceremonious end. I'm not sure whether to be upset about this or not. It seems like a waste of a character, and an end unbefitting of him, but at the same time, I can't really imagine him ever having a larger role than that in a story like this, and the brief moment he was here was certainly very memorable and impactful for it... Hmm. I wouldn't like to see this become a trend... but I think it works fine just this once, so I'll give it a pass. Though, I think an AU tag is in order now, since we're decidingly branching off from canon.
So… a werewolf body, eleven wolf bodies, and a centaur body. To summarize the benefits I have observed:
-Lycan is most controlling, acting almost as a 'transmission unit'. It also has opposable thumbs, which, in this world, is a godsend.
-The wolves are numerous, and deadly. Basic zerg rush.
-Taur seems to have the speciality of distance and speed. An ideal scouting unit. But I wonder what his combat prowess may extend to…
I hope I got that all about right. Now, onto some theories on what can come after this…
-He acquired Tirek's magic-eating power, which means he can grow without killing and using blood.
-He's able to command lightning.
-He may gain the ability to directly influence other timber wolf trees, adding them onto himself, becoming a hive mind of sorts.
Now, here's what I really, really, want to happen:
-He gets a winged puppet, presumably from a pegasus he may happen to murder
-He gains a burrowing puppet from a tatzlwurm.
-He acquires a magic-oriented puppet from a unicorn
-He gets a large, bulky puppet from a minotaur.
-He gets a multiarmed puppet to go ORAORAORA with.
I also like how Jack's not one of those 'emahgerd, technology's evil and it kills trees hur dur' characters. He realizes the benefits of machinery, and is willing to use it to enhance himself and his puppets.
By the way, my usual policy if a character is gender-neutral is to use masculine pronouns until I get a definitive response. And since Jack the Ripper here (heh, puns) hasn't claimed to swing for either team, then… Yeah. You get the picture.
And his very pragmatic 'kill one to save ten' ideology reminds me of Kiritsugu Emiya.
Excuse me, I need a minute to cry my eyes out...
Does anyone else get the feeling that Timberwolf trees are distant cousins to Xanthian tangle trees?
Tirek gets murdered in all of your stories.
6495494
I would be lying if I said that there wasn't some inspiration from them.
6495462
You're right about Lycan and the wolves, but Taur also will serve the role of mage (as Tirek was a mage of sorts).
Let's see...
The magic-eating power is a (NOPE!) > That power died with Tirek.
The lightning power is part of the Zap Apple trees, not him.
He's Pack Leader, not Hive Controller. Go take your changeling headcanons elsewhere.
Jack can steal form, not function (at least at first), meaning that a pegasus-shaped puppet couldn't fly. However, his puppets can levitate wood, which they are also made out of. One puppet stays on the ground, and...
Hypothetical: Dragon blood puppet? Guess what happens ('cause I already know).
As for Jack and machines, while I really (and intentionally) haven't put much thought into the Other, I always imagined the Other as an Otaku that graduated from a school like Georgia Tech or MIT, someone who is both genre- and tech-savvy.
6495607
Map not to scale.
Interesting. The main character, that may or may not be something we can consider 'good' by most standards, amoral really, outside of recognizing cause and effect of how intelligent minds will see Lumber Jack, is interesting to observe. Consuming Tirek (eating the magic eater for his magic is morbidly funny) has also revealed something. On some level, the Timberwolf trees are souleaters. At least some part of the Other, and now Tirek, have become part of Lumber Jack. This is evidenced in the transmission seeds and how they manifest their forms. It is reasonable to assume further dynamics would play out that upon consuming another sapient being, another non-wolf transmission seed would form.
It is also something to consider that Lumber Jack could give into natural predation instincts with some very bad results after learning how to utilize the natural Timberwolf magic expression.
And continuing the prior insinuation of strangest ship possible...the Tree of Harmony could play a feminine calming touch to Lumber Jack's masculine predatory urges. Neither is male or female, but their tendencies have a preferential bias from our own perspectives. I can see the Tree of Harmony reaching out and touching Lumber Jack, making changes that allow peaceful coexistence with ponies. I can also see Lumber Jack stretching a root to the Tree of Harmony and slowly drinking it's magic. Such could end the Tree of Harmony and turn Lumber Jack into something unstoppable, or place Lumber Jack into a state of permanent satiation, ending Lumber Jack's need to feed from that point on.
The whole thing could be nice or dark really fast from here.
that I wanted-" Her gaze shifted to me. "-meet him.
well, more power too her
1. Forgot your To in the second part.
2. To.
Huh... A more practical way to get pony blood albeit kinda... One time? I'm not sure what to say about that. Now you hint at dragon blood. Man, you really like to Dragon your cliff hangers don't you?
Damnit, tree.
6495667 Your pun is bad i.ytimg.com/vi/WUCywwNza3M/hqdefault.jpg And you should feel bad!
So, Lumber Jack was able to restrain himself enough to not kill Tirek instantly, which means his bloodlust is, well, controllable, and he shouldn't have much of a problem allowing other sapient beings near his tree.
I find it a bit TOO pony-biased that Lumber Jack chose to kill a sapient creature because the sapient creature wanted 'vengeance' on ponies for imprisoning him. Vengeance doesn't constitute murder, for all Lumber Jack seems to know of social stuff it could've involved pranks. Also, the way Tirek put it, the ponies had imprisoned him, so he may have been justified.
This would've made much more sense to me if he had just instantly killed Tirek. It bothers me that Lumber Jack is so pro-pony that he'll kill any sapient being that doesn't like ponies. By that admonition, he would've killed Gilda if she went in the Everfree in Tirek's condition, and said she wanted revenge on the Ponyville ponies. Would she have deserved it? No. But because Tirek isn't a pony, and because he's evil, Lumber Jack just happens to kill him AFTER deliberating about it (yet not deliberating enough to think about why, except that he dislikes ponies/wants vengeance for them IMPRISONING him)
Well, nothing wrong with writing your story on your phone.
I read your story on mine.
Your protagonist are more realistics for that reason so Good Work!
hope you keep writing this story, id like to see what Jack continues to do.
Heh.
Bad luck Tirek. Escapes from Tartarus, finds a sapient carnivorous tree and gets eaten.
6495462
A certain speedy Pegasus being dismissed from the academy just might happen to crash in the grove during a tough storm...
Maybe even a tornado.
Please, more sentient timberwolves.
6495904 THink about it this way, ponies and Zebra's are the first sapient species that Lumberjack has been able to properly communicate with on an intelligent level, and has semi formed a bond of pack like respect with them, especially Zecora. Now here comes this new sapient creature into your grove and give him the benefit of the doubt since he is ignorant to the danger's of your presence, then he goes and threatens your semi pack mates with his hatred.
Note: This is another reason for Tyrek to not like trees.
6496483 See, the thing is, is that this is a fellow sapient being, who looks pony-like, and didn't outright THREATEN the ponies. He simply said he wanted vengeance for their IMPRISONING him. Additionally, Tirek didn't say he hated the ponies or anything - this is something you know because you know of Tirek from the show. As this is a fanfiction, without it being explicitly said, the main character does NOT know that Tirek is 'evil', and thus, should KNOW that he DEFINITELY isn't supposed to kill Tirek.
The whole interaction with Tirek seemed forced to me. I'd find it much more likely that either Lumber Jack instantly ate Tirek, without communicating with him (which would make it more understandable that he can't have fellow sapient beings near him without trying to kill them), or he lets Tirek go after some sort of MEANINGFUL conversation occurs between them (not just, I want vengeance against ponies, because that is open to many interpretations).
It's fascinating to see a newly sapient creature deal with moral choices. Now, if he keeps Mega Manning things, things are going to get risky.
6496870 Right and wrong would be immaterial in this instance, Tyrek said he was imprisoned by the ponies. so obviously a former prisoner of some sort, knowledge from his past life would probably tell him something like Prisons are where bad people go. Bad for ponies would be the next leap of logic for him. remember he is very simple and animalistic, complex thinking on a social scale is not really something he's developed. Your trying to put at least 5 Years of sociological development and intuitive thinking on a creature that has only awakened to his sentience within the past 8 Months. His methods of seeing friend and Foe would be A bit simplistic or black and white in some cases. Think of him as a child, a ravenous and violent child.
6497319 that first part made me laugh sooo much
So Tirek is gone and Jack finds himself with some interesting new situations...
Loved the Sasori reference by the way.
Nice chapter good work.
Not to toot my own horn or anything
Coming from a unicorn, that just sounds WRONG.
6495226
Admirable goal there. Bet his last thought was a facepalm.
Also really loved how confused Twilight was at Jack's offering, but just went along with it.
Gauge*
6498430
Thanks.
I don't think Tirek is as dead as he seems.....
Lol, that's a hilarious mental image.
6495608 … Okay, now for my next question… Will we get Kamina glasses on Lycan? Or maybe Jack's body itself?
I'm not sorry.
6499466
No, that is not his style, nor the style for Lycan.
But it's a hilarious mental image anyway, and one of his last puppets might get something similar...
i.imgur.com/1TdHj1y.gif
Now he almost looks like Ysengrin.
static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/The_Very_Nice_Man_481.png
I'm sorry but that is an amazing pun!
Just thought you should know, that technology isn't a century old from post modern humans. That was the early 1990's. In fact, the famed work of Ansel Adams isn't even a hundred years old and he had to carry plate negatives. Then again humans are scary when it comes to engineering... all we have to do is imagine something will be available in 300 years and somebody with the resources will make it available in one tenth that amount of time.
6495494
I was getting more of an Edge Chronicle Bloodoak vibe, then again I haven't read anything Xanth-related, so you're probably closer.
6501019
Imagine a weeping willow where all of the dangling branches are prehensile and it's an obligate carnivore.
That's a fairly concise way to sum up the concept of a tangle tree.