Act 3 Chapter 39: Or, How I Learned To Love The Cliffhanger
"Mayor Snifter isn't a disease. He's a symptom.
I ask you, why isn't government composed entirely of the cleverest ponies available? The answer is because government is a nasty, dirty, unpleasant business. It's climbing your way to a top you can never reach, then, if you ever find yourself on top you don't even get to enjoy it; you've got to keep everyone below you from pulling you down. There is no 'win' condition. To want to involve yourself in that is to either be absurdly ambitious and ego-maniacal or easily bored.
Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, our kind, benevolent diarchs, play politics because it's the only game in town they haven't already owned. Knowing what we know about our city government, what do you think drives that bunch of clowns?
- commentary from Spilled Ink in the New Chronicle Detrot Gazette Observer.
“So you just threw some of the most powerful people in the city out of the room? Just like that?”
“More or less. There’s a reason I never climbed beyond the rank of ‘detective’ when I was on the force, despite how many years I’d been working. I have no particular care for big egos or social ladders. Besides, my friends here aren’t fragile politicians. People who’ve survived the Eclipse lived because they knew when to duck.”
“But you need these people! Couldn’t you have been slightly more polite?”
“Think about my last twenty-four hours. Think about where I was and what I was doing.”
“Right. My apologies. You still haven’t told me how this all led to you making the exchange for the Helm. What is stopping them from just...removing all of you?”
“You mean killing us. For the moment, it’s mutually assured destruction and their assumption that I don’t know the whole shape of their long term plans. Which is - to be fair - completely true. They’d lose much more on attacking us than we’d lose on defending ourselves. By the same token, they’re dug in deep. We go after them, it’s going to be expensive and there will be considerable bloodshed.”
“They don’t seem to have a problem spending lives.”
“No, but if everything else that’s happened is any indication, they have a timeline and they’re sticking to it. Even dealing for the Helm was an act of desperation. Once their timeline is up, if we aren’t ready, then they’ll swoop down and slaughter us.”
“Which means you have to be ready before that happens, right?”
“And that’s where things got complicated…”
----
For all that talk of getting down to business, I’m pretty sure we could all agree that we needed to stop for something a little more substantial than tea. Since Wisteria had to go feed her little sister and most of the rest had duties to attend to - though we did have to shoo Venture Capital and the Lunar Passage out along with the rest - Stella’s grand hall felt empty without all the flacks, flappers, and hangers-on of the various important persons. That left a hoof-full of people standing around, munching on pimento cheese sandwiches and trying not to stare too obviously at the stranger members of our little council.
Bones was taking a certain amount of glee in eating, sucking each bit of pimento off his toes. I’d no idea where it was going, but the food wasn’t dropping out between his ribs in an obvious fashion, so it was a question best left to minds more inquiring than mine. Sykes had Mags in his lap and was animatedly lying to her about some great battle he’d fought in his youth while she smeared her meal all over her face.
Stella was applying a fresh coat of lipstick in front of his vanity, kindly trying to avoid frightening poor Firebrand any further. The young dragoness was, meanwhile, attempting not to look like she wanted to cry and hide every time her uncle so much glanced in her direction. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie were even deeper in their cups than they had been when they’d set up the projector; Scootaloo was down to drinking straight from the wine bottle and Bloom had herself a glass of something clear that caused a face like she’d swallowed raw sewage with every sip.
I could almost feel the dirty looks Iris Jade kept shooting me as she flicked through one of Limerence’s clipboards, assessing the tactical situation. Taxi sat beside her, working through her third sandwich as Limerence continued studying his dusty book and Swift stared into space, lips moving and wingtips twitching, like a weird little feathery gremlin.
Leaning my back against the podium, I stroked Scarlet’s messy, disheveled mane, listening to the gentle lapping of the water against the pylons that held up the platform and feeding him bites of one of my sandwiches.
When had I become okay with this invasion of my personal space? Not a clue. It was nice, though. Maybe some broken little part of me thought I wouldn’t get many more chances to hold someone and was making up for all that lost time I’d spent being the toughest pony in the room. Or I could just have gone insane and this was all a fever dream. Probably that.
Mmm, pimento. Yum.
“So, there Oi was, me weapon wi’ only the one bullet lef’, but if Oi was gonna go, Oi was gonna take’m wi’ me! Thought sure Oi were dead!” Sykes cackled, clutching his claws together with one talon extended to mime a gun.
“What be happenin’ then?” Mags asked, licking her beak.
“What happened then, my dear, was that Sykes attempted to shoot out the warehouse light and tore open a bag of flour above the suspect’s head. The flour ignited off the flame spell the suspect was attempting to cast and almost killed all of them,” Jade interjected, sourly as she slapped the clipboard down on the catwalk. “It being the third major explosion with property damage he’d been party to, I took his gun and issued him a can of silly string.”
Taxi snorted, slinging her braid over her neck. “That didn’t stop him from hitting a Beam distribution hub with a flashbang two months later.”
“Oi! Ladies!” Sykes protested. “Oo’s tellin’ this story, eh?”
“And a good story it was,” Stella murmured, dabbing a bit of color off the edge of his lip with a kerchief I could have used for a blanket. “However, I do believe it is time we got down to...what is it ponies say? Brass tacks? Miss Iris Jade, if I may, what is your opinion of our situation?”
Iris grunted, reaching up to stroke a lapel of the pants suit she hadn’t actually managed to replace yet. Realizing it wasn’t there, she let her hoof drop. “My opinion? Eh, you’re either in excellent condition or screwed. Hard to say which, really.”
“That...is not comforting,” Stella murmured.
“You’re asking me to apply some educated guesses to a world-ending scenario here,” Jade grumbled, slapping down the clipboard on the floor. “You’ve got good horse power, good weapons, and good positions, but limited food, limited medical supplies, limited long-term prospects, and the planet will freeze sooner rather than later. Also, your enemies know your every move and are behind an impenetrable magical shield which is powered by a system which absorbs pain and chaos in a country full of pain and chaos.”
Swift’s eyes popped open and her pupils rolled around until they were focused on us. “That’s not totally true, actually. Tourniquet and I have been analyzing this!” Reaching into her front pocket, she pulled out the keyring we’d appropriated from the Family’s mansion.
“Yer analyzin’ a magical artifact without a horn?” Apple Bloom asked, blearily setting her drink on a table at her side which vanished the second it was out of her hoof.
Unzipping her armor, Swift revealed the red crescent on her chest which was glowing brilliantly like she had a lightbulb trapped in her ribcage. “I’m the Warden of Supermax. I can totally analyze magical artifacts without a horn. Maybe, one day, I’ll figure out how to levitate stuff!”
“Great,” Scootaloo groaned, tossing her wine bottle over her shoulder. “Some kid gets better toys than I ever had. Apple Bloom, why couldn’t you make a thinking machine that takes over cities?”
“Because Princess Luna told me Ah couldn’t!” Bloom replied, huffily, before turning back to my partner who was carefully zipping herself up again. “So, what’s that do?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a key to the Shield pylons,” Swift answered, tucking the keys away again. “It opened one back at the Family mansion. I don’t know if it’ll work on the ones in the city, but if we can get inside one, we might be able to do something to them!”
Bones, who’d been sitting silently enjoying his meal, raised a leg. “There must be redundancy built into the system. Shield pylons are taken offline from time to time for maintenance. If we are to disrupt the system, it will require hitting several, disabling whatever controls them from a central point, or doing something to one which sabotages many at once. With only one key, I don’t see how that could be done.”
“What’d he say?” Scootaloo asked, cocking her head at Bones as we all turned in his direction.
“He says we have only the one key and that the Shield has redundancy built in,” Limerence replied, pulling his forelegs under himself. “I will study the artifact and attempt to replicate it when we have a spare moment. If I may, what are our plans for this ‘Office’?”
“I am afraid, if you intend to assault The Office, that we can offer little in the way of tactical advice,” Sweetie Belle murmured, rocking her seat back. “We largely used it for weapons testing, since it is a relatively indestructible location whose interior cannot be destroyed by any known magic or weapon. It may have changed in the last thirty years since it was sealed.”
“That and Ah never had time to figure the whole place out,” Apple Bloom added. “Whatever bunch made it, they weren’t ponies. There was lots of things in there we never touched.”
“Wait, didn’t you Crusaders build this place?” I asked.
“Hah! Nope! Ah wish! Yer gonna have good fun with this’un,” she answered, chuckling to herself.
“Oh Bloom, stop being silly and tell him,” Sweetie admonished.
Her friend stuck her tongue out, then turned back to me. “Yer goin’ inta a dimensional rift, babe. Yah know the File Cloud at the Castle? It’s like that, but a whole heap more stable. Scary stable. On the other side, yah got the Office. Maybe every office. Ah can’t exactly describe it, but it sorta explains itself once yer in there.”
“Alright, standard weapons, then?” I asked, cautiously. “I’ve done enough fiddling with ‘dimensional’ crap lately and I don’t think I want my gun trying to eat my head.”
“Should do, sure,” she replied, then added as an afterthought, “Mebbe take some grenades. Real trick is gittin’ in. The place the rift is on only had two ways to reach it: the roof, and a secured service elevator on the fifth floor. No stairs. There’s no good way of knowin’ how many tangos yer gonna hafta fight between them two spots.”
“Targets, darling, not ‘tangos’,” Sweetie corrected. “We’re not in the war anymore, and these are civilians.”
Firebrand raised her chin. “P-pardon my impertinence Lord Stellatrix-”
“Firebrand, your mother would box your ears if she heard you call me that,” Stella rumbled, delicately plucking at one of his eyebrows. “You’re a dragon lady, and I’m only a royal in the loosest sense of the word. Please, just Stella or Miss Stella.”
The dragoness swallowed, and a gout of blue flame spilled out of one side of her mouth. She looked like she desperately wished she hadn’t sent the rest of her little band off to get dinner. “Yes, Miss...Miss Stella. I wish to ask a thing. We have Crusaders here. The Demolisher was an army unto herself--” Scootaloo puffed up a little and preened one of her wings. “--and if I heard correctly, the bony creature is the one the Usurper’s troops called ‘Erebus, The Mist That Kills’. He assassinated the old Dragon King. Why do we not simply take the center of the city, or destroy these Shield Pylons outright?”
“Hard Boiled, would you like to field this one, my dear? I suspect you can give a more succinct answer than I,” Stella requested, splashing back beneath the water then springing back into his throne.
“Eh, a mix of reasons, really,” I explained. “We’ve got weapons, but nowhere to point them. We take Uptown by force, we’re risking slaughtering a bunch of civilians as collateral. Worse, there’s a shield around the middle of the city that seems to repel damn near everything. We might have trained fighters, but our opponents have the P.A.C.T. and no fear of collateral. Also, the other dragons have yet to show themselves and our opponents have information superiority.”
“This ‘magical tracking’ your orange friend with the un-pony teeth, spoke of?” Firebrand asked.
“The ‘Scry’ is a magic of some kind that lets them track most of the ponies in the city. Until we’ve eliminated it, we can’t launch any major attacks. Thankfully, I’m immune.” Pulling my sleeve back, I tapped my revolver.
“The Crusader weapon,” she whispered, reverently. “Is that also why you do not die when killed?”
“If only. That would be simpler,” I chuckled. “What it does mean is that my team is the only one that can move around the city freely. We’re going to hit the Office. If we can disable the Scry, we’ll need ponies to move on Uptown. That means you, Iris Jade, and Bones here are going to get training the forces we have. We’ve only got a few days, at most--”
“Sir!” Swift yelped, bouncing out of her seat onto all fours. Her eyes were riveted on the ceiling as she danced in a little circle. “We’ve got movement, Sir!”
“What kind of movement?” I asked, cautiously freeing my trigger bit.
“Six signals, incoming. They’re approaching one of the boundary illusions! Sir, they’re not even pretending to hide!”
“Who are they, Cuddles?” Iris Jade demanded, her horn bursting to light.
“Blackcoats! Six of them!”
“Aw, piss,” I cussed. “Arm up!”
Sykes drew his shotgun as Firebrand loosed her swords from their sheaths.
“Sir, Tourniquet needs orders!” Swift gasped, her gaze still fixed on the roof of the cavern. “She can’t direct ponies who aren’t guards of Supermax!”
There was a sudden logjam of voices all more or less shouting ‘Move in, hold position, and observe’ or some variation thereof; Sykes included ‘And shoot’em!’, but over it all, Stella’s voice was like a hammer blow in the giant cave.
“Be silent!” he thundered, loud enough to send me back on my haunches, hooves over my ears. After a few seconds, and once we’d recovered, he nestled deeper into the giant cushion on his throne. “Now, then. Hard Boiled, you are Miss Cuddles’s superior officer. Do, please, give her orders, and the rest of you… keep in mind that you are my guests.”
Cautiously, I pulled my toes out of my ears and stood. “Eh...Kid...tell Tourniquet to move some Stilettos into the area. Let a few of them be seen, but try to get us a good crossfire setup. If they’re hostile, I want enough forces available on the adjacent streets to turn them into a soup, then get back underground.”
Swift nodded, and a slight glow suffused her eyes. “I’m moving the Prince of Detrot into the area with his squad--”
“Wait, Precious is out there?” I asked, incredulously.
After Glow smirked. “Yahknow, colt, the Prince didn’t git to be that age by bein’ soft. He hears better’n anyone Ah ever met and he don’t have no compunction about killin’ to save lives.”
“The Prince is in position,” Swift went on, her eyes darting back and forth. “They’re just...standing there, Sir. No, wait! One of them is saying something!”
“I need a ladybug. Somepony, give me a ladybug!” I snapped, and Limerence offered me his hoof. The tiny insect fluttered off his fetlock, then alighted on my muzzle. I dropped onto my stomach and shut my eyes. “Sunshine, sunshine and all that crap! Come on! I need to see this!”
The world shrank to a point, then winked out, leaving me hanging in darkness.
----
The ladybug network felt strange, or rather, stranger than usual; I could hear a soft buzz flowing through the entire thing that was at once distant and very familiar.
‘Tourniquet? Is that you?’ I thought.
“Who else would it be, Detective?” a voice in the darkness replied, and then a pair of vibrantly glittering eyes resolved in the air in front of my ‘face’. “Oh, don’t worry about what’s going on out there. I’m slowing time in here so we can talk for a minute.”
‘Where’s Queenie? Don’t tell me you ate the ladybug collective.’
Musical laughter rang in my head. “Oh Hardy! Come on, I like Queenie! Right now, though, I figured we might need a quiet spot to chat for a moment before I show you what’s going on outside.”
‘Well, I’m here. We’re talking.’
Tourniquet’s eyes flashed, and a gentle smile appeared below them, full of white, perfectly formed teeth. “You didn’t tell them about the Princess.”
‘You mean Sparkle? They don’t need to know about her.’
“Maybe. And...the dead pony?”
For a long moment, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Juniper is a figment of my imagination. He’s been dead for years.’
“No doubt, but I think we both know that doesn’t matter as much as most people seem to think it does,” Tourniquet laughed, merrily. “I’ve been dead since that dragon seared the flesh off my body, then again when Sparkle buried my chamber and left me powerless, rotting, and empty. Now, I am a city.”
‘Are you going to go on being a city when this is all over?’ I asked. ‘Or are you aiming for godhood?’
“Oh, Hardy...don’t you think the title would suit me?” Tourniquet replied, tittering like a bluebird. After a moment, she sobered. “Gypsy thinks I should keep control of the city infrastructure, if only because I’m better at running it than ponies are, but I don’t really care one way or the other. So long as nopony tries to turn me off again, I think I’ll be fine just being a safe place for people to live. For the first time in my life, I have friends. I have a pony who loves me. I can feel it, whenever Swift thinks about me or I think about her. I have children who run in my halls. I have a family. What does power matter, if you are alone?”
‘What does that have to do with Juniper?’
“Because, you...are powerful,” she said, softly. “I have examined your heart. The combination of immense love from your friends and regular power from the electrical grid have improved its efficiency considerably. I can hear the one you call ‘Gale’, too. He’s a sweet boy...but he’s not alone. There is another voice, distance, and difficult to make out.”
‘And what is this ‘other voice’ saying?’
“They simply call your name, again and again, begging to be heard…”
‘You’re...telling me Juniper isn’t all in my head?’
The rest of Tourniquet’s body flickered into being. She was tall, taller than me, and her legs were no longer the stumpy, misshapen bits of metal; they looked more like flesh made steel. The tethering wires spreading out from her back looked like a pair of giant wings. She was beautiful.
‘You’re looking...adult.’
“Having enough to eat grows a filly,” she replied, a bit of purple coloring her crystalline eyes. It looked like a blush in entirely the wrong place. “I can’t tell you one way or the other what Juniper is. I’m not a psychologist; I’m a building who just so happens to moonlight as a city. You should ask him, the next time you see him. I suspect that will be soon. What’s important is that everything is coming to an end. I can feel it.”
‘Do I dare ask what that means?’
Tourniquet gave me a coy smile, even going so far as to project a little crackle from her voice box.
“Not if you were smart. But then, if you were smart, I’m pretty sure you’d already be dead. You’re dumb lucky, Hardy.”
‘My dumb luck is telling me I’m too curious to let that lie.’
“Mmm...it’ll keep you up at night, but I don’t think you’ll be satisfied unless you know.” She hesitated, as though thinking of exactly how to frame her reply. “Ahem...Can you imagine being a city, just for a moment?”
‘No, Ma’am, I don’t think I can…’
Her ears tucked back against her head, and she sat on the ‘nothing’ we were floating in. Even on her haunches, I got the feeling she’d tower over me a good head worth of height.
“Think of having many, many thousands of eyes and skin that stretches for miles. Instead of seeing a cloud from just two perspectives, you see it from a hundred perspectives. That’s totally not what it’s like, but...it’d give you more information. You’d start to see things in terms of trends, traffic, and movement rather than just your own experiences.”
‘And...the traffic is telling you the end is nigh?’
“An ending, yes. Maybe not the end. That will be up to you, Mister Hard Boiled. You are the crux this all turns on, and you have no fate. Take comfort in that.”
A little shiver wormed through my mind. Who had said those words to me last?
‘We’re going into what I strongly suspect is battle, and you’re telling me my dead partner is leaving me messages? Tourniquet, have Swift explain ‘timing’ to you.’
“I don’t think this is a battle you can win, Hardy,” Tourniquet said, wrinkling her muzzle. “At least, not yet.”
‘What are you basing that assessment on?’
“Part of me is a structure called Supermax, but part of me is now the city of Detrot. There are hundreds of Blackcoats...but I have seen more of the creatures than were ever members of the P.A.C.T.”
My brain jammed as I tried to fit that with what I already knew and failed spectacularly.
‘Wait...how is that possible?!’
Tourniquet’s body faded until she was just a pair of shining eyes hanging in the inky black. “I think it’s time you saw what their messenger has to say.”
----
When the lights returned, I had a momentary jolt as I tried to figure out what the big orange thing sticking out of my face was, followed by a terror stricken second spent wondering where my stallion-bits had run off to.
‘Ah...a griffin. I’m inside a female griffin. This is new. Oh Celestia, that tail feels weird! Queenie, couldn’t you have put me in the same species?!’
My host was perched on the facade of a brick wall, her wings spread out for balance, peering through the zoomed sights of a repeating rifle at a group of six ponies waiting not twenty meters away in the alley between two buildings. They must have been able to see her, but none were reacting to her presence.
Off to her left, more people of various species were tucked into windows or creeping behind old stone gargoyles to get good positions to rain down hellfire if the troopers turned hostile. Even with magical augmentations, I doubted our friends down there would be able to survive the weight of metal flying in their direction. Still, the troopers weren’t moving; just standing, waiting, letting us study them.
Their vanguard was a short, yellow stallion with a waifish air about him, but something in the way he moved set my fur standing on end; he was a predator, born and bred. The rest were a heavily built group, everyone wearing thick masks and body armor covering everything but their lower jaws. Even at that range - by dint of my host’s griffin eyesight - I could see pointed teeth jutting over their lips.
Raising his head, the messenger shouted with a voice far louder than a pony without magical amplification could have managed, “I come to parlay with Detective Hard Boiled. If he is here, let him speak! Otherwise, send a representative! It matters not, so long as the message gets back to him! If it does not, all herein will die within three hours!”
His message delivered the stallion sat, waiting patiently, seemingly bored by the whole affair.
After a few seconds, a pony detached himself from one of the adjoining buildings, a pony no one in Detrot could mistake. Precious, decked out in his spangly white jumpsuit with his cane attached to his leg, was tapping at the ground as he slowly made his way across the small courtyard, taking cautious steps as he picked his way over to the stallion. He stopped a couple of meters away, ears twitching back and forth.
My host unfolded her wings and clambered across the side of the building to get into a better position where she could hear what was being said.
“Ya want to parlay, friend?” Precious said, loud enough to be heard even at that distance. “Ah says, Ah’ll be glad to speak for Mister Hard Boiled. He knows me well enough.”
“Then you will speak,” the trooper replied. Shutting his eyes, the stallion exhaled, then opened them again. His irises and whites had gone, leaving only a black emptiness, as though somepony had drilled two holes in his face.
The trooper’s expression changed to one of gentle amusement. When he spoke, it wasn’t his voice; the speaker sounded much older, more powerful, and had a confidence that brooked no disagreement. “The Prince of Detrot! Excellent! It is an honor, Sir.”
‘That’s it!’ I thought. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew. ‘That’s...the voice of D.W! The bastard finally shows himself!’
“Well, Ah’m tickled pink to be heard of, but Ah’m thinkin’ the honor’s all ya own there,” Precious murmured, his cane still tapping at the pavement. “Who am Ah talking to, perzactly? Sure isn’t the pony Ah was jawin’ with just a minute ago.”
“Mmm, my name is completely irrelevant, and one that many have held before. However, I didn’t come here to talk about me. I came to talk about you and yours. Most specifically, about Mister Hard Boiled. He is the one I am interested in. I suspect that he is watching, considering the Essy office records indicate he has made use of the Ladybug Collective. Very clever. I would have wished he and I not be enemies, but that was inevitable, considering what I intend.”
“And what is that, if ya don’t mind mah asking real polite-like?” the Prince asked, his demeanor still friendly.
The stallion chuckled, running a hoof through his mane in a move that looked too practiced to have been unintentional; it was an action designed to make him look more equine and put the viewer at ease. On a beast with no eyes, it had the opposite effect.
“Too many things, though the long and short of it is that I intend to right a few great wrongs, rebuild equinekind into something better, save the world, and generally act the villain you all expect of me. To be sure, I don’t enjoy what must be done, and do please believe that if I...if we had encountered other options during our long vigil, we would probably have taken them.”
‘Good,’ I thought. ‘He’s a talker. Keep him going, Precious.’
“Ya got somethin’ ya need from us, Mister No-Name?” Precious asked, running a toe around his collar. “Ah’ve got a show in an hour. Ya want to put the sun and moon back where they oughta be, Ah could see mah way to giving ya some tickets. Sounds like ya might enjoy that more’n all the twaddle ya were jus’ going on about.”
“A part of me would, yes,” the P.A.C.T. pony replied, sweeping a leg sideways at the buildings and the heavily armed audience. “Sad to say, I have long since learned that the moment is often the price we pay for a future of infinite horizons, and much as I would like to have a bit more bonamie, I am on a schedule. Hard Boiled has the helm. He knows which helm I am referring to. He will bring it to my representative, who will meet him at...mmm… Ah! The only place he has ever felt safe.”
“And where’s that?” Precious inquired, resting his weight on his cane. “Ya sound like ya know the boy. If ya do, ya know he don’t much care for riddles.”
The voice was full of amusement as it replied, “And yet, he spends his life solving them, hate them as he may. By the same token, I spend my life in pursuits that were ordained before you were born, and you will all spend what remains of your lives in resistance.”
“Now, Ah’m a little careworn, Mister No-Name, but Ah’m a pony who prefers people talk straight, shoot straight, and not beat around the bush. Get to it.”
“Yes, of course. Much as I might like to stay for another of your very fine shows, this is my message. I will grant Hard Boiled free movement throughout the city for three hours to retrieve the helm from wherever he has secreted it away. If he does this, my forces shan’t darken your doorsteps, nor kill more of those who keep themselves out of the unclaimed sections of the city and away from Uptown.” The stallion laid a leg across his chest. “This is my promise.”
Precious cocked his ears backwards at the army clinging to the walls and sitting in the alleys with enough guns pointed in his direction to scour the little courtyard clean.
“Now, just so we’re clear…” the Prince said, that warm smile he always wore still in place. “Ah know there’s just the six of ya hereabouts and Ah can hear your critters coming a long ways off. They ain’t comin’. Ah’ve heard a fair number of ya beasties in the skies and Ah can tell the differences between’em. Ah went through the war, and Ah can say right as rain, ya’ll don’t have enough to take us. Not unless ya got an army stashed away somewhere.”
D.W.’s lips twitched and he turned to the horizon where could be seen the soft glow of the shield around Uptown, mirrored against the clouds.
“That was a clever little play, Mister Precious. You question my abilities and trick me into revealing my hand, yes? Would that the world had more ponies like you. What is coming might never have been necessary.”
Precious clicked his tongue, then said, “If we’re threatenin’ each other, Ah supposed Ah’d like to hear how ya intend to push us out of this hole in three hours’ time.”
“Unfortunately, the only means I have available to me involves civilian deaths on a scale not seen since the war,” D.W. replied, with a carefully choreographed spin on his back heels. “I am aware you cannot see what is behind me, but allow me to describe it for you. It’s the least I can do for a stallion whose records have brought me so many hours of enjoyment.”
My host shifted her eyes up toward the horizon, where lay Uptown. Griffin vision is something pony brains aren’t set up to process, but the nearest sensation I can compare it to is putting on a pair of binoculars, then slipping a much more powerful set on top. Thankfully, my stomach wasn’t there to share the experience.
“The sky above Uptown is full of thick clouds. I have kept the weather factories operating, to a degree. They are lit from below by my shield. Now...”
----
“What are you doing? I can hear you scratching at something.”
“I’m taking notes! This is important!”
“Tell me you’re not using a quill for that. It sounds like you’re using a quill. You make a funny noise whenever the feather hits your nose.”
“I do not! Besides, some of us happen to enjoy tactile notetaking, and a written record of this fiasco might survive if we fail. I should probably carve it into stone so nopony could possibly forget.”
“If you’re joking, I feel it behooves me to tell you that’s not funny.”
“Never mind! What did D.W. say next?”
“Give me a minute. Been sitting here talking for an hour. I need something to drink.”
“Hey...Hey, get back here and keep talking, you big jerk!”
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"ego-maniacal"
"egomaniacal"?
I'm starting to think that the biographer taking down Hardy's story is none other than the illustrious Purple Smart... but on the other hand, the whole 'using a quill' thing implies that they're an Earth Pony or Pegasus, so. And of course Hardy chased the whole crowd out with nary a concern. It's what Hardy does!
Aww, too, Hardy and Scarlet. Not really a romance, but still adorable.
I find myself unable to complain about the cliffhanger; to do so would be the height of hypocrisy. But damn!
God Dammit! If only I could give this fic 109 thumb ups!!!
argleblargledamncliffhangers
Most unworthy: I seem to have forgotten who D.W. is.
8394165 That's okay. D.W. is the 'mysterious figure' who controls everything. His name was mentioned in the papers going back many centuries at the Family's Mansion.
-Chessie
Accurate chapter title is accurate.
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Well, it's not likely a pegasus or an earth pony because they would hold the quill in their mouth.
The scribe may be a species with hands. Another thing that we've learnt is that they cannot see each other.
I know what you're referring to, and it's correct usage, but your choice of words just makes that sounds so wrong. :P
8395619 This is me we're talking about. Are you sure I don't mean it exactly like that?
-Chessie
Well holy crap that was definitely interesting and btw screw you and all your cliffhangers and all the cliffhanger's cliffhangers. Kidding I love your story and can't wait to see it to the end. Just keep writing.
i.ytimg.com/vi/p_b7x1knWmg/hqdefault.jpg
Fuck.
*looks over towards Wanderer D's Sweetie Belle Chronicles*
"It was an accident, Hardy! I was yawning, and she flew in my mouth, and I swallowed!"
I like your viewpoint, Tourney, but there's plenty of beings who have all those things you mentioned and would happily sacrifice all of them for the tinest erg more power.
I can't go back through the chapters to search right now, so I hope someone left a refresher in the comments.
Sounds like maybe you should have taken him out before all this started with Ruby Blue.
Actually, Precious, I'm pretty sure he does have an army stashed away.
When dealing with redundant designs, its better, if wanting to affect them, to not cause permanent node failiure if you dont know exactly how to take the system out, but to destabilise nodes. This is not only often far easier than a total shut down, but you have a chance of the random behaviour causing out of bounds signaling. That is, you put the system into Chaos mode, then play ball.
Otherwise, if there was time, Id have had a go at finding out just how deep those spires foundations go, and any available cavity geology or old mining, and either drop them or blow the caverns to drop them, or anything else to cause perturbation, misalignment etc.
A really nasty trick is right out the manual. hack the shield at one node to cause a modulation that attracts Rifts. Then you get the trick of a dimentional rift trying to swallow a dimentional shield. then again, the last time I accidentally rolled that Critical 1, the GM did a roll back and let the group kill my character off before the rift collapse swallowed the planet, and used that energy to create a new Eye.
I keep thinking DW is Howard The Ducks relative.
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Whenever I read those letters, I think back to Launchpad McQuack referring to Darkwing Duck as DW.
I'm finally free to pick this up again.
It feels both so long ago yet so recently I was last reading about Hardy and Swift and Jade and Lily assaulting the creepy mansion in a modified APC. Some details are still clear in my memory.
It's given me...well not very much, but some, time to think. DW being the big baddie is something we've all seen coming in some form, I suppose. Tourniquet's conversation has brought up some interesting things, though.
They know everything, or almost everything. Which is, well, a shitty situation. Knowledge is power, especially in cities, and they know that. But his ultimatum is interesting. What does intend to leverage by threatening the civilians in exchange for the helm and 3 hours of free movement? Is he appealing to Hardy's nature, or hoping he'll be pressured out? I'd think he's got too much loyalty for the latter though. But desperate times make for rash decisions. And we still don't know their endgame, not truly. What the heck is DW even wanting to accomplish? "Perfection in equinekind" in some form, I guess. But then why bother locking the sun in stasis? It's not necessarily a NMM worshipper kind of motivation. If he plans to "undo what made ponies weak" or whatever he'll say in his rant I can only guess. Time travel? To prevent certain events making things the way they are? Preventing the peace treaty with the dragons leading to their eradication as a nation? It one way I'd do it.
And it looks like Hardy's heart isn't so electric as I thought it was. He runs off love and electricity. Thats interesting. Love from his friends, and some link to Juniper is still with him, going by the implications. That's actually kind of sweet. I'm expecting Hardy to "die" once more semi-permanently when this is over, just saying. (Might have said that before, can't remember)
I agree with some of the comments, it points to Twilight as Hardy's captivated audience member, going by the tone of the comments. Could still be someone else entirely, though. I wanna ask, Chessie, how long will this go on for? Till the ending? Epilogue it out as Twilight playing historian and taking notes? It could fit, seeing how calm the dialogue is. It means the plot will end relatively soon, in story terms.
I like to imagine the scene as Hardy walking around talking serious business while absent mindedly patting Scarlet's head with the other hoof like a pet cat.
8399000 Hardy would totally pet Scarlet's head like a pet cat. And Scarlet would be ecstatic.
-Chessie
Awesome! The pieces are moving into place, and I see several ways the plot may go...
I swear, I was waiting for this all. I binged the other day on all the recent chapters I had left to read. And oh my god. The wait, was so worth it. It saved me from extreme boredom.
You Chesse, are a life safer! These chapters were so amazing!
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Awww...thank you so much. You guys have really kept me going here. The story will be done in a few months and then there will be epilogues. I promise to tie everything up.
-Chessie
La la la la la la la la la la la la woo~
Come and get your love !
Love the cover art! Anyway, I'm gonna start reading now. Hopefully I can finish soon. Not likely though.
8416283 Feel free to leave comments! Comments power this magic!
-Chessie
love this quote and do i detect swift x tourniquet shipping if so i wholeheartedly approve they deserve to be happy
I think somebody's a total asshat here with a few millennia worth of brain rot. Nobody wants what he's selling. Pity he's not handy to shoot with some crystal bullets... Of course it'd be such a shame not to have his bones for a nice display skeleton afterwards...
I hope the Princesses' are doing something besides sitting on their haunches watching the show, provided they aren't completely incapacitated.
Leaders are the clever ponies. Politicians exist to draw attention away from the true source of power...
Like a tree full of screeching monkeys: those at the top look sown and see a sea of smiling faces; those at the bottom look up and see arseholes defecating all over everything...
No SHODAN, no it would not suit you...
Has anyone ever stopped and asked why "she" insisted that Tourniquet be disabled? I get the feeling this is going to come back and bite everyone.
Given events that had happened around the time of this chapter's posting, this sounds very ominous...
If Tourniquet is correct, then that means I absolutely fuckin called it. Go back through my comments and you’ll see me doing it.
uh oh, its the backrooms
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Hahaha