“Mom, I’m home!”
The teal-colored foal was climbing the stairs when his mom called from the kitchen, “How was Junior Press Club?”
He stuck his face between the banisters and called back, “It was great! I snapped a lot of good photos!”
“That’s good to hear! Dinner will be ready in a bit, you should show them to me when we eat.”
“Cool!”
He scampered up the steps, DSLR bouncing against his chest. Running into his bedroom, he shut the door behind him.
Hopping onto the chair at his desk, he ejected the SD card from the camera and stuck it in a slot on his CPU. He waited for a few minutes for the images to finish uploading onto his computer before double-clicking on an icon that read Friendly Space.
The browser opened and the Friendly Space logo appeared with some text beneath it.
Calibrating Incognito Sphere
Whatever that meant.
The browser finished loading. Going to his friends list, he scrolled until he found who he was looking for. He sent a message.
NieR Gestalt Today at 9:02 PM
Got something you’ll be interested in. Have time to chat?
After a few minutes, they responded.
Summers Today at 9:07 PM
👍
He hovered over the video call icon and clicked it. After a few seconds of ringing, a pink mare with an unkempt purple mane appeared on the screen.
“You look tired,” he said.
Trot Summers yawned and struggled to keep her eyes open. “Long day yesterday. I guess the others let me sleep in. How about you? Aurora told me you’re on Jr. Press Club at Maretropolis Daily now?”
He nodded. “Yep! Snagged a few pics you might be interested in. I’m sending them to you now.”
“I’m sure they’re good photos, but can it wait until—” She stopped and examined each picture carefully. “These are all real?”
“That weird demon hybrid… thing crashed through the building and made a good mess of the place. I left the flash on by mistake and it noticed me. I thought it’d attack me, but surprisingly it let me take more.”
Summers rubbed her temple as she looked over the pictures. “Weird. Normally, demon hybrids are volatile on site. And who’s this green mare she’s fighting?”
“Dunno. I know they were fighting each other, that’s for sure.”
“Do you have any idea what they were fighting about?”
“Don’t know that either, but I was in the office when I heard an explosion. I ran up to the window in time to see her emerging from the Freshly Squeezed building. There was a grey earth pony mare there as well. They tried to fight each other, but the green one had an unfair advantage since she was a unicorn. Strangely enough, she managed to get away by running into the burning building. I think she had the help of one of those wisps you told me about. Shortly after, the fire went away and that demon emerged.”
“Did you catch any photos of the mare?”
He shook his head again. “Unfortunately not. After the demon emerged I ran to go grab my camera from the Jr. Press Club, and it crashed into the building just as I got back. But lucky for you, I’m a computer wiz, and I was able to create an engine that’d be able to recreate ponies as realistically as possible. Sketch artists will be using this baby five years from now.”
Summers nodded for him to continue.
He sent the pictures.
Summer jabbed a hoof at the screen. “Why is she wearing a scarf in that last one?”
“I thought she’d look cool in it.”
Summer nodded in agreement. “Continue.”
The foal sent one more. "And this last one, she's a pirate cowboy."
“These are good,” Summers said. Then, concern seeped into her eyes. “You said the demon crashed through the office. Were you hurt by any of the debris?”
He scoffed. “You should know by now to not worry about me!”
“I know, I know, it’s just—”
“I’m okay, okay? Nopony else was hurt so far as I know. But it got back up as if nothing happened. It didn’t even look dizzy. I think it has a high pain tolerance.”
“So the unicorn blew up the building, and the demon was fighting her…” she mumbled to herself. “Do you think it was a good guy?”
“Possibly. There was no way of telling. It had no issues with destroying stuff. It knocked a giant robot through a building.”
Summers’s eyes widened. “A robot?”
“Or I think a mech of sorts. There was someone inside it. I couldn’t get a good read on who or what it was. But not long after a filly climbed out, and the robot started to act on its own.”
“It must have an AI chip installed. Did you get some pictures of the filly?”
“I did!” He sent the photos. “It looked like she was friends with the unicorn. My guess a sidekick… hey, can I—”
“You’ll get a mech suit when it’s in our budget.”
“Drat. Anyways, the robot absolutely demolished the demon. And when I say demolished, I mean turned to dust. Just as I was about to leave to send the photos, though, the demon reformed from the dust. It was kinda like a phoenix. It looked pretty pissed.”
“Language.”
He groaned. “Peeved. It looked peeved. I could hear it shouting something about the ice cream parlor being closed.”
“So what did it do after?”
“It turned to smoke. My guess is some kind of apper…apparashion…”
“Apparation ability?”
“Yeah!”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s it.”
For a few long moments, Summer scanned the images sent to her, tapping her chin. “Okay, I’m going to tell the others to keep an eye out all over the city. Finding out who the filly is should be easy, but the unicorn might take some time. The robot doesn’t appear to be military-grade, so that will also take some work. As for the demon, we don’t know which side they’re on, so steer clear. Should you run into it again, I’ll outfit you with a tracking beacon so that one of us can come find you. Good work, Humdrum.”
Humdrum saluted and ended the call.
to be continued…
Best riff on comics I've yet seen. I love how you simultaneously rip on villain motivations while leaving them just ambiguous enough to be sympathetic down the line.
The battles are ridiculously absurd and over the top, just the way I like it.
The social relationships lean enough away from feel good cliches to avoid becoming trite. And of course, the jabs at shippers were both deeply cathartic and hilarious.
I'm not lying when I say I would love a sequel to this.
^^^ I second this! It's an utterly captivating story you've cooked up for us, here. The character work in particular, I feel, is exquisite. I want to know more about everypony's backstories! How did Claire and Winter meet? Why did Pulp and Namaste's dad become a demon, as is hinted at? Will Pink Scorch ever meet her match in battle?
The intrigue! I crave more!
That was a lot of fun! Goofy and over the top, loved the way you wrote out the fight sequence. Could definitely see myself reading more.
GASP what a twist
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What's interesting is my intention wasn't to create a meta narrative about comic books. One of my editors pointed out how they liked the subversion of tropes as well, and it wasn't even anything I considered. The story was inspired by animes like Chainsaw Man, One Punch Man, and Mob Psycho, and I set out to make some that wasn't binded down by the restraints of common comic book tropes. It wasn't until after writing it that I realized that by avoiding writing a comic book story, I had inadvertently written a a subversion of comics instead.
The jab at shippers was intentional tho, lmao.
As for the social relationships, I planned from the beginning to make that the sole focus of the entire series. Since I first conceptualized Winter and Claire, I knew I wanted them to have a close relationship and to explore that. After giving Juice Mare a sister, I decided I want that to be the running theme of the series. I have a lot of creative ideas flowing, I just have to decide which one to write first.
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That's all stuff I plan on exploring! I have a lot of other neat villain ideas and want to explore them as well, but I want to give Pulp her own sequel since I think it would be really interesting to explore the relationship between her and her sister.
I'm also considering writing a longform fic that lacks a definite end. That'll allow me to approach the narrative any way I want without the readers having to comb through dozens of stories.
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Glad you liked it! Wish the story garnered more traction, but hey, people really seemed to enjoy it.
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The mech suit isn't a minotaur. It was described to be as tall as minotaur. Also, it's their dad.
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Yeah, it was bad that they lied, but as someone in their twenties and living on their own, when it comes to responsibility you want your parents to believe you have everything together out of fear of being scolded. It's very for people around that age.
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I usually hate subversion of any kind but this sits pretty comfortably on the boundary between comedic and taking things seriously, which I appreciate.
And well deserved.
I do love my character studies.
Sounds promising. I eagerly await your future work.
This was by far one of the best fics I've read these past three months. Action! Drama! Riveting Characters!
This had all the parts of an amazing story, I can not express how smooth and well kept the narrative was whilst allowing the ultra violence be kept streamlined. While most of the story was fighting you were able to captivate me with the dialogue whilst keeping a consistent flow that did not become a detriment to it all. This is fucking amazing, all good elements with no downsides.
The only thing I could criticize in the fact is the length and world building you created. Like this is comedy so no need for such serious drabs of real world constraints but I felt things were a little too loose in consequences. Yes there was those images of the sister which was a great show of intrigue, the thing is it only came as an afterthought. While the fighting and characters didn't need the room to breathe in new suspense, I felt like it was more ambiguous how good Winter Heart was. Yes she's an anit-hero but also how willing was she to be better?
Maybe I'm just making it more complicated, either way I loved it!
Also I'm more of a root beer guy myself-
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When I wad writing the story I didn't have a plan I'm action. So, I went with my favorite of, "If a character says something little, maybe I can connect the dots to something bigger."
Originally, Juice Mare's backstory meant nothing when I wrote it. It was mostly there to show how crazy she was. Upon rereading it, I noticed certain details that'd make for a more interesting character dynamic. Her mom's depression and career choice, her dad's death, the fact that he was a technician and the implication that his brain was artificially uploaded into a mech suit, etc. All this came together in a way where I felt compelled to dig deeper into her character and explore her in a way where her motives actually start to make sense.
I plan on covering more in sequels.
As for Winter Heat being an anti-hero, that's complicated. I heavily implied that Pink Scorch is basically her own consciences. Both Winter and Claire have to work in tandem so that the form doesn’t break, and that means following through on the form's compulsions.
Winter's unwillingness to be a super hero comes from the simple fact that super hero work is stressful. Look at most Spider-Man comics. Winter is in her early twenties and is struggling to figure things out, and dedicating herself to super hero work wouldn't give her time for that. She only does it when she feels obligated (Like how she happened to cross paths with Juice Mare) to or just when she's bored.
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Well I think you've done amazing, I caught onto them but I wasn't thinking of them particularly during it. I retract my complaints
Please tell me Juice Mare gets to have a happy ending tho-
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I'm not sure. I've had ideas on how it will end with her, but it all depends on how much of it is built up naturally. I do want to explore Pulp in her own dedicated story tho.
Looks like all of the images are broken. Really fun story by the way, enjoying every second lol