XXIX. In The Mills Of God
XXIX
In the Mills of God
ICC Permanent Premises
Office Tower 2
24. November, 2015
8:14 am CET
“Now listen here, Missus Pierman,” the voice of Justice Suruma sighed, “I understand that you are frustrated, but these are the facts.”
The small African woman shivered and clutched the office phone by her ear even harder.
“My colleagues and I have discussed the state of the evidence in great length over the last hours,” Suruma said, trying - yet decidedly failing - to sound calm and empathetic.
“And...” Pierman breathed, in turn failing to sound diplomatic, “And ‘insufficient’ is the only conclusion that you could reach?”
“The defence of Her Royal Highness has pointed out - quite rightfully - some very perceptible flaws concerning the scope and validity of the evidence surrounding Timbucktu.”
“I’m sorry, but...” Pierman breathed. “I don’t think I can accept that.”
“Be that as it may, Missus Pierman-”
“The evidence clearly places Queen Chrysalis at the scene of the crime,” Pierman insisted, and used her well-worn handkerchief to rub the sweat off her forehead.
There was a calculated pause at the other end of the line.
“Now then, you know as well as I that I am not authorised to issue a final evaluation on the state of evidence until the date of the Confirmation of Charges hearing.”
Pierman could hear her smacking her lips.
“However, I can already tell you that there is no way in which this state of evidence could be described as ‘surefire’. Where is the solid bed on which to indict the Queen under the Rome Statute?”
“Missus Suruma, I beg of you.”
“My dear…” Suruma countered, her tone shifting to a stern grandmotherly one, ”I know that this is your first investigation. You are the youngest person to ever hold your office in this institution’s history. So I understand that you might not… have gathered all the practical experience necessary to appreciate the extent of our conventions on procedure and evidence.”
“With all due respect...” Pierman whispered. Her swollen nose flared. “With all due respect! This is not my first investigation. I have already done my part in two others before this. I did Libya. I did Ivory Coast.”
“Then why do you not see the shortcomings of the material that you supplied?”
Shortcomings.
Pierman pressed her eyes shut with her trembling fingers.
“If your evidence on Timbucktu were a little more dense and varied, a solid case might yet be be built against the Queen. And your deadline has - quite sensibly, I should think - been extended. I suggest that you use the time to double down your research, and strengthen your case.”
“I will. I will!” Pierman yelped, the desperation in her voice laid bare.
“And should some stronger links of the Queen to the Timbucktu siege really be uncovered, we will be more then willing to take another look at it.”
“I will find a stronger link,” Pierman swore. “Anything it takes!”
“Not anything, I hope.”
The phone was suddenly filled with shaking and scrambling sounds, as though the tube was being passed around frantically.
“Uh, excuse me,” Suruma excused herself awkwardly, “I have the Magistrate for you.”
In an instant, a second, younger, higher-pitched voice took over.
“Sera? Sera, is it you?”
Pierman hesitated and confusedly confirmed.
“Uh, oh yes. Hello there, Lexy. How are you?”
“Hi!” Lexy Fori squeed amicably, “Listen; I can’t talk for long, Sera, but I wanted to say that I believe in you! Good luck, and happy hunting!”
“I… Thank you, Lexy,” Pierman said, finding herself forced into a smile at the young Equestrian magistrate’s antics, “I hope I won’t need it.”
Again, there was the sound of the phone being passed around.
“Okay, enough of that,” Suruma could be heard sighing, “I wish you good luck for today, Missus Pierman. And, ehm… get well soon.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
And then it was over.
The connection flatlined.
Serafina slowly led the phone away from her ear and gazed at it forlornly.
She tried to put it back on her desk, but then she realised she was standing - had been standing all along, in fact - in the middle of her office, with her glass desk a few short steps away.
Absent-mindedly sticking the phone into the pocket of her suit pants, she crossed over to the window wall and stared out.
The dismal Dutch dunelands looked back at her, giving her something of an uninterested glare.
She didn’t like the Netherlands.
It was wet. It was windy. And everyone here seemed to speak this horribly mangled bootleg Afrikaans.
Not that there was anything wrong with that. Her own husband was an Afrikaner, after all.
But still.
Ever since she accepted the position of Prosecutor in the Hague, her new work had brought her nought but pain.
It hurt.
All the labour. All the sifting. Struggling through all the awful, twisted accounts of crime and atrocity. She had the distinct feeling that it had left her a lesser woman.
But then there also was all the joy and happiness of digging gold nuggets out of literal tons of files and documents, and assembling them into something remotely resembling a criminal case to put those monsters to the sword.
These were the small, unripe fruits of hard, terrifying, gut-wrenching work.
At least in this matter, the Timbucktu matter, all of it had been for nought.
As of now, Chrysalis, the Queen of all Changelings, was not a single step closer to as much as being on trial than a month and a half ago - the day she was first seized by equine and human special forces.
“Find more...” Pierman repeated, scornful at her own words. “Find more! Wena hlanyaan!”
Averting her stare from the window, she abruptly found herself confronted with the hungry stare and leering smile of none other than the Queen of all Changelings herself.
There she hung, on the south wall, on one of the file drawers, defiantly sneering at the prosecutor.
At some point, someone had stuck the blown-up photograph on there for identification purposes. Now, it just hang there, in Pierman’s own office, as a constant reminder of who this whole deal was down to.
Indigo Beam and some other of her assistants had even suggested that Pierman turn that poster into a dart board.
Pierman had, of course, vetoed the idea on principle.
But… she had to admit - a craving was there.
Her eyes. That look.
Suddenly, there it was again, Pierman’s flashing headache.
Her doctor told her that a woman of her age shouldn’t be susceptible to migraine.
But now, her relatively healthy body had found its match in the Netherlands.
She, who had grown up in the broad shade of marula trees and baked under hot tin roofs while, above her, the blazing south equatorial sun burned away, did not take well to the freezing salt-filled fog of the North Sea coast.
And now it had closed her ears and caked her eyes and inflamed her nose.
And every morning that she woke up, her throat sore and aching, she wondered what it was going to do to her next.
She trudged back to her desk, plopped down on the mesh chair and immediately went for her special drawer.
The apothecary.
As she reached forward to pull it open, her fingers found themselves entangled by something light slipping off her tabletop.
Gazing down, she realised that a string of deep-chestnut wooden pearls was holding her hand hostage, vying for her attention. What particularly caught her attention was the miniature crucifix that clattered around with every move her hand made.
She was holding her rosary. Or was it the other way around?
“If my head wasn’t attached to my shoulders...” she mumbled, and pulled the beads off the table and into her pocket.
Perhaps she would have to use them.
Driving the thoughts from her head, she looked over a vast selection of sprays, drops, lozenges and pills.
As she tried to decide which combination would alleviate her suffering the most before the hearing would begin that morning, she stumbled across a little piece of paper, stuck into the drawer with sticky tape.
On it were words, reading:, there were words. They read,
'It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished... unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.’
Voltaire.
That was one human she could always depend on telling her what’s what.
She went over the words two or three more times, drawing them in and absorbing their meaning.
She was glad she had placed it in there.
For every time she went for this drawer - full of doubt and misery about her current situation - this little note was a good reminder of why she came here. And it was a good reminder of why she would stay here until the day she died.
Silently, she reaffirmed her subscribing to this grim fate, and then sheepishly picked out some anti-inflammatory spray, an aspirin and two throat lozenges.
“Well, I really hope that’s ‘non-drowsy’,” a voice commented.
Shocked, Pierman looked up - and found herself staring into the eyes of her assistant.
Indigo Beam, the pegasus with the spiky yellow mane, stood in front of her desk, awkwardly holding on to a stack of paper with one of his wings, and glanced at the selection of medication she had taken out.
“You’re scared the living daylights out of me,” Pierman whimpered.
“I’m so sorry, Ser.”
“Beam...” she sighed, “I told you to call me Sera. Everyone else calls me Sera.”
“No can do, Ser,” he replied cheekily, and stepped closer to the desk to unload his stack.
“How is it that I can never hear you coming in, anyway?”
He shrugged.
“Dunno. I’m a pegasus. I’m light.”
“Right. Perhaps a cowbell would be a good investment.”
Smiling, Indigo crept closer and held his massive pony head - crown-first - into his superior’s lap.
Succumbing almost immediately to the gesture, Pierman stretched out a hand and started patting him on that unruly mane of his.
The way he behaved whenever she was around and nobody else, Pierman could not believe that this stallion was a Equestrian Royal Guard. A file clerk, yes, but a Royal Guard file clerk all the same.
Silently, the two watched the red winter sun rise out of the horizon, brightly cutting through the thick fog that lay over the flat land, and peeking forth from behind distant estates and greenhouses, fields and forests, the countryside growing more rural and untamed with every mile it stretched into the distance.
Beam shuddered as he bathed in the creeping light.
“What have you been so upset about just now?” he asked, his voice swooning under the kneading of Pierman’s massaging hand.
Pierman sighed.
“I tried calling Suruma again.”
“You reached them?”
“Yeah.”
“What did Lady Suruma say?”
“She said... it’s… it’s not gonna be enough after all. They’re not going to put her on the stand with evidence this shaky.”
“Horse apples,” he moaned, and politely retracted his head so he could look at her. “Sometimes I don’t know those human judges do know what they’re doing.”
Painfully, she nodded.
“Agreed. Sometimes it seems like Lexy is the most level-headed among them.”
“It’s just not fair,” he concluded. “We found such good material at what was going on back then. And what to our judges do? They just dismiss it out of hoof! Just like that.”
“Yeah.”
She gave Chrysalis’ poster an ugly glare. “She does not deserve the luck that she gets. She didn’t even bother covering anything up. She presented herself to us on a silver platter. And yet, here we all are, stumbling over ourselves.”
Indigo followed her line of sight.
“She has no friends, no allies,” Pierman continued. “There is only one entity in the universe that’s on her side.”
“Who is that?”
She giggled cynically.
“Time. She knows that she is only in danger of retribution until the last of her victims has died away and the last paper keeping the knowledge about her crimes has crumbled into dust and mold. All she has to do is wait and stay alive.”
She shook the defeat out of her head and symbolically slapped on her tabletop. “But enough of that. Today’s a new day. A new incident. A new set of evidence. Trot is where it’s going to be at.”
“Yeah.” Indigo nodded. “Then again, do you know what I think?”
“I don’t know. What?”
Theatrically, he leaned in closer.
“I think the Changeling queen isn't the problem here. The judges are. I think they’re all crooked. Every last one of them.”
She sighed.
She didn’t know if she was qualified to agree, but neither was she qualified to say that it was not so.
He sauntered over to one of the two guest chairs that stood in front of her desk and climbed into it.
“I never told you, didn’t I?”
She looked up.
“What?”
“Well, on the night of that hotel gala last week ago, the one where you held that awesome speech...”
“Well…” she mumbled, “I thought it became a bit long-winded, quite honestly...”
“Well, on that night, I decided to stretch my wings a little, on my way to the little foal’s room.”
Grinning, he ‘galloped’ his hoof over the tabletop. “And as I crept through the corridors, stealthy as I am, I suddenly stumbled across none other than Lord Mullan.”
“Okay.”
“And guess who he was with!” His grin spread, “None other than our nemesis: Defence Counsel Estermann.”
Pierman’s eyes widened.
“...Nemesis?”
“Well… antagonist, more like. Though he’s still a major pain in the flank.”
Pierman blew her lips at the mention of that idiot’s name.
“No argument there. Estermann is a complete lunatic.”
Thinking, she sat up. “Anyway, what are you getting at? Mullan and Estermann are old friends. The whole court knows that.”
“Well… yeah.”
Indigo had to think for a moment. “But those two old friends stood, all by themselves, in a hotel corridor, discussing our case.”
She shook her head in disbelief.
The gall of some people.
“So I decided to follow them.”
He shrugs, “‘Wouldn’t hurt,’ I thought to myself. They headed into one of the business rooms and shut the door.” There suddenly appeared a smarmy expression on his muzzle.
“Anyway, I didn’t let that stop me. I prowled closer, and catch what else they’re talking about.”
Pierman just gave him an incredulous stare.
“Really? You… were eavesdropping on them?”
“Hey... ” Indigo snapped, just as incredulous, “Those guys were whispering about our case. Wind and whirlwind and stuff, you know?”
Pierman shook her head at her loyal assistant’s spy antics and made ready to down her first dose of pills.
“So what did they say?”
“They were talking to Covalent Bond.”
That, on the other hand, surprised her greatly.
“Covalent Bond? You mean… Doctor Covalent Bond? Our Doctor Covalent Bond? The one I had on the phone not three days ago?”
“The one and only. Equinological Department of the Royal Canterlotian.”
“And… what did they discuss?”
A cruel smile lit up on his face.
“Ways to reach a dismissal of the case, on the grounds of a distinct lack of intelligence.”
PiermanPortman drew a sharp breath and buried her face in her hands.
“Queen Chrysalis, or this court?”
Indigo smiled and nodded.
“I tell you. This whole trial is rigged. Judge panel, defence, they all play under one hat.”
Pained, Pierman tore at her hair.
“I swear. If this case gets dismissed, I will bring every last of them before the disciplinary board.”
Suddenly, she felt his hoof stroking her cramped hands.
“But it won't get dismissed. We won't let it get dismissed. The only way Chrysalis will get out of the Hague is wrapped in chains. Okay, now… stop ripping out your mane, please. What did it ever do to you?”
The moment his lips closed, the office was filled with the distinctive sound of a ringing phone.
Instinctively, Pierman went for the charging station, only to find it empty.
Both she and her pegasus assistant looked around the table, trying to find out where the phone was hiding.
It took Pierman a few seconds to jump up from her chair, reach into her pocket, and pull the absconded phone out.
“God, I should stop doing this.”
“Who is it?”
Pierman looked at the display.
“I suppose it'll be Miss Harshwhinny, with our witness.”
“Oh good! I hope they're on their way now.”
Pierman answered, but before she could get a single word of greeting out, she was interrupted by cacophony.
“Hello, I… ugh, how do you operate this thing?”
There were some random button noises. “Hello? Hello!”
“Miss Harshwhinny? I can hear you.”
“Oh.” the mare’s prim nasal voice remarked. “Very well. How are you this morning, Prosecutor?”
“Uh… good, Ma'am,” she answered.
Harshwhinny, the Senior Solicitor for the Victims from the Council of Harmony, had the privilege of being the only one in the team whom Pierman could yet only address with her title.
It still tripped Pierman up every time. “I hope you and Missus Floret Oats are all ready and set for today?”
“Well… no, we are not.” Harshwhinny sighed.
“What… is it?” Pierman asked, carefully.
There was a short, perturbed silence.
“We have a problem with our witness.”
A chill ran down Pierman's back.
Instinctively, she lifted her hand and took a peek at the dial of her watch.
“What problem? I hope you and the witness are on their way already.”
“We are… not.”
“Where are you?”
“Still in the Kurhaus Hotel.”
Nervously, she scraped at her forehead.
“Ma'am, perhaps it'd be best if you came down and have a look in person.“
“Came down?” Pierman breathed, “Miss Harshwhinny, what are you talking about? It’s twenty past, the trial starts in forty minutes! I was about to put on my robe! You need to get moving now!”
“We can't!” Harshwhinny snapped back, clearly at the end of her tether herself.
“Why not?!”
“Because Missus Floret Oats’ suite door is locked, and she is not opening up!”
Pierman and Indigo raced down the steps of their court tower and sprinted out onto the great plaza to the front.
Thinking quickly, Indigo spread his wings and swept into the air, flying forward to the road to hail down a minivan taxi.
After the driver had gotten over his shock of seeing the gigantic creature swooping down on him and stopped, Indigo landed and motioned Portman to catch up.
Within minutes, they were chasing down the lanes of Scheveningen upwards to the seaside, where they could see the Kurhaus’ pompous architecture coming from miles away.
With half an hour to spare, the kicked the door of the taxi open in the hotel driveway, and hurried up the hotel’s grand staircase to the storey rented out by the prosecution.
After undergoing a short frisk by the guards positioned by the stairs and lifts, they crossed into the East wing and marched towards Room 228, the suite they had placed Floret Oats in.
Already from afar, they could hear the increasingly desperate pleas of Harshwhinny echoing through the corridors.
“Missus Oats. You need to open up! We are running dangerously short on time!”
She was leaning against the door to Room 228, while a clueless-looking human concierge standing beside her.
“Ma’am, there are guests above and below you. Please moderate your voice a little,” the concierge groaned, in a surprisingly annoyed tone.
Harshwhinny gasped as she turned to see Pierman and her assistant arriving, ignoring the concierge’s concerns. “Oh. Prosecutor! You’ve come!”
“What’s going on?” Pierman inquired, not bothering to catch her breath.
Harshwhinny tried had to keep her composure as she explained. However, she just ended up pawing at her own rose blazer.
“I knocked at her door today at seven-thirty sharp. And there was not a sound of her. So I assumed she was sleeping in. I… came back at eight. And there still was no reaction.”
Pierman wiped her nose with her kerchief.
“Is she even in there?”
Her breaths quickening, Harshwhinny’s eyes travelled to the door.
“I… I’m positive. I am almost certain that I could hear her sighing.”
Pierman briefly glanced at the door, then took a jolt at the knob. Naturally, it rattled a lot, but didn’t budge in any meaningful way.
Below, she found a keycard lock.
She turned to the young human concierge who nervously cowered behind Harshwhinny.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am. Do you have a key to this door?”
She looked confused.
“This door has been locked from the inside.”
Pierman involuntarily let a nerve-wracking hiss fly. The unsettling situation almost killed her.
“Well, we need to open that door.”
Indigo Beam had by far the shortest fuse of the prosecuting trio. He put on his most martial face and glanced around the small assembly in the corridor.
“Who here has a key? Lockpicks? A crowbar? Something to get through this thing!”
“Meneer...” the concierge mumbled at the pegasus with very evident arrogance.
“You can’t just have the doors of our other guests’ rooms opened.”
Pierman threw a pointing hand towards the door.
“Excuse me, but this guest has a court appointment in less than thirty minutes.”
“I… I’ll have to speak with my manager,” the concierge shrugged, “This hotel has a policy when it comes to our guests’ privacy. Even those who are hosted by a court. Or whatever you ladies call yourselves.”
Pierman’s glare turned increasingly hateful. What was that supposed to mean?
“She… she is elderly. She might require medical assistance, for all we know!”
The concierge shrugged.
“Then perhaps you would like to call an ambulance. We can wait for them to arrive. At that point I would be legally obliged to open that door, and not a moment sooner.”
Pierman was nearly shaking with anger.
But like so many times before, it was at that moment that her lips refused to part for a bark that would have set that jumped-up concierge straight.
“Indigo,” she hissed, “Do something.”
“Yes, Ser.”
As though on a drill command, he jumped into the air and flapped his wings until he floated at the concierge’s eye level.
“I don’t think I’ve made myself clear. If that door is not open by the count of three, I am going to open it with this.”
He held up a hoof. “How will you explain that to your manager?”
Menaced, and her clothes blowing in the gusts of his wings, she took a step back.
“Threats are not going to get you anywhere. We are in the Netherlands. We have the rule of law here. That also goes for your kind.”
‘His kind?’ Pierman wondered.
What kind of people were working here, anyway?
“Oh, you’re gonna tell me about the rule of law now, you monkey?” Indigo snapped back.
“Madam....” Harshwhinny finally chimed in.
“Perhaps now would be a good time to mention that this gentlecolt has diplomatic immunity.”
“And?” she shrugged.
Indigo snarled, and led his hoof closer.
“Do not make me invoke it, lady.”
The concierge huffed.
“If you don’t like our laws, why don’t you go back to your island?”
Then she performed an about-face and stomped away.
“Hey-” Indigo began, before being calmed by Pierman’s hand.
“I think she is fetching the master key now.”
“She better be.”
As the concierge rounded the corner, the sound of her footsteps was replaced by the piercing sound of a creaking lever.
“What’s all this ruckus!” a scrapy, curmudgeonly, equine voice asked.
The prosecuting trio looked around, and found a familiar face looking up at them from the spartan comfort of his wheelchair.
“Major Bodkin,” Harshwhinny gasped, before noticing the spindly grandfather-like pony pushing the wheelchair. “And Captain Malty Water. I hope we didn’t wake you.”
“Evening, Madam,” Malty Water smiled, looking a little confused and tired, “Don’t mind us, we are just getting ready.”
“Ready? For what?” Pierman sighed pleasantly to mask her anxiety. “Your testimony isn’t needed until the 30th. Today’s hearing is on Trot.”
“Oh we know that,” Malty Water laughed, “Don’t worry about us. Old Bodkin and I were on our way for a little refreshing seaside walk post-breakfast. It’ll help us wake up a little bit. We just swerved by to say hello. Isn’t that right, old sport?”
Bodkin glanced up at Pierman, his toupée slipping around on his scalp awkwardly, and nodded with a barely audible huff.
“Wasn’t there something else you wanted to say to the prosecutor?” Malty asked.
Bodkin grumbled and let out a sigh.
“Ma’am...” he began, “May I speak to you... in private?”
Pierman looked at the two elderly stallions and winced nervously,
“Actually, I am… I am waiting for Missus Oats to open her door. We are late for the trial.”
“It won’t take long,” Bodkin grumbled.
Hesitantly, Pierman obliged and stepped aside with her two witnesses.
As long as the master key hadn’t arrived, they had a little time to spare.
As soon as they were out of earshot of Indigo and Harshwhinny, Bodkin immediately began to mumble up at her,
“It’s about… that evening at the cafe, three days ago. The one we spent with the Princess.”
He seemed genuinely uneasy addressing the topic, and hid his eyes under his bushy eyebrows.
“Oh… that, yes.” Pierman nodded, “I assure you. Next time, we’ll find a location where we won’t be disturbed by any-”
“No. No, it’s not that,” he cut her off, and sourly took a breath. “I… Confound it, I wish to offer you an apology, Ma’am.”
Pierman was confused. “What… why?”
He gritted his teeth.
“My behaviour that evening… was quite vile. It was unbecoming of an officer in Her Majesty’s Royal Guard.”
Pierman began to catch on.
“Oh... no, that’s… quite alright. It was a very emotional evening, for everyone.”
“That is no excuse,” he concluded, his voice hushed. “I acted the goat. Not only did I lash out at that… filly from the defence, I even lashed out at one of my sovereigns. If that wasn’t stooping low enough, I lashed out at you.”
Nervously, Pierman clutched her handkerchief.
“I wish I had not referred to you as a ‘monkey’, yet I did.” He winced.
“Well...”
“And I presented your work as... worthless.”
Pierman harrumphed.
Bodkin shut his eyes.
“I was... caught in the heat of the moment. It had been a particularly grueling day. Twelve hours trapped in that flying tube, two hours of being dragged through the local rain and mud, and then… then being insulted by that… half-baked brat of a unicorn?”
He shook his head. “It was quite frankly more than I could bear. And so I lost my head.”
“To be fair, that defence staffer's words weren’t exactly called for.”
“But that was not all.” Bodkin added with welling emotion, “I’ve been feeling this... frustration. Though really, it’s been with me all my life. It had centuries to ripen. The years I spent living in disgrace for all my personal failures on the field of Kiger, mourning over the loss of my friends and comrades… They were decades upon decades I wasted waiting for justice for this cowardly slaughter that cur Chrysalis hosted!”
“I understand.”
“Justice is all that I wanted!” he spat, punching the handle of his wheelchair so hard that his toupée shuddered. “And we almost got it, too! After eight hundred years of waiting and biding and hoping, with insults and defeats and disgraces at the hooves of the changeling mounting, there she finally was! Served to the ponies of Equestria on a silver platter. Ready for the carving. We were so close… You couldn’t imagine the ecstasy that old Malty and I felt!”
The wheelchair pusher nodded.
“And then… like the strawberry snatched from our jaw, it was denied to us once again! They shipped her off, over mountains and forests and deserts and seas… here. All as part of that… stupid… foalish rapprochement scheme that’s been going on between our sovereigns’ governments.”
His teeth clattered, “I would have lied if I said that I placed much faith in the human justice. Or any faith at all. We didn’t know the first thing about it. None of us knew how it would end, or when it would end, or if.”
Pierman placed a shivering hand over her heart.
“Major, I can assure you, as the Prosecutor in charge of this indictment, that I will give my all so that Chrysalis will be brought to justice. Come what may, she will pay.”
He whipped out a hoof.
Pierman recoiled instinctively.
But Bodkin kept his hoof out expectantly.
“Can you promise that?”
She nodded lightly.
“Of course I can.”
“Do not make promises you can’t keep,” he warned her. “As you already know, I once made promises I couldn’t keep. And they have been with me ‘till this very day, dragging at my legs.”
She clasped his old hoof and gave it a firm shake faster than he was ready.
Awkwardly, her other hand disappeared inside her trouser pocket.
There, she once again came across her rosary. Almost instinctively, her fingers dug in-between the beads and clutched them tightly.
“‘Though the mills of God grind slowly, Yet they grind exceeding small. Though with patience He stands waiting, With exactness grinds He all,’” she recited, in a threateningly hushed voice. “Believe me. She will pay.”
Bodkin leaned forward, his muzzle flaring in excitement.
“And… well… I think I believe you. And for once, I am not too blinded by hatred and frustration to see it! Only a foal would earnestly believe that you wouldn’t to see a monster like her through.”
He straightened his muzzle. “Will you accept an officer’s humble apology?”
“I… That really isn’t necessary.”
“For Celestia’s sake, I beg you.”
She surrendered with a pout and gave his hoof an extra squeeze.
“All is forgiven, Major, if you can put faith in me.”
“May the Sun and the Moon be with you today,” he bid.
“And with you. Thank you.”
The gruff old military pony sat back and grunted as though a massive load had been taken off his back.
“Well… Now then… With all that nonsense out of the way...” He looked up in expectation at Malty. “What in Equestria is the matter with Missus Oats?”
“Well...” Malty wondered, leaning against the wheelchair in thought. “She did seem a little perturbed during yesterday’s dinner. Do you remember? This is why she retired to her room a bit earlier.”
Pierman’s concern grew.
“Was there something wrong?”
“Oh, I couldn’t say,” Malty answered. “She seemed a little nervous. Frustrated even. Without doubt over her testimony, the poor thing.”
Thinking, Bodkin shifted around on his mobile seat.
“You know what, Malty?”
“What is it, old sport?”
“Cancel the stroll!” he with an unfailing smirk, “Call it intuition, but I have the creeping feeling that today, a better use might be found for this thing.”
He glanced back up at Pierman. “Ma’am, as a sign for my faith, I would like to... offer you my wheelchair, for today. Just in case that Missus Oats would need… a faster means of transportation.”
Even through the cloud of worry, Pierman’s heart warmed at the gesture.
The janitor twisted the bulky key and pulled it out of the lock’s hidden opening.
The lock retracted with a punctuating clacking sound.
Pierman, Indigo and Harshwhinny stumbled into the room almost simultaneously.
They need a couple of seconds to peer around the small, but luxurious seaside room to find any trace of the elderly earth pony Floret Oats.
She lay right before them, in her single bed, curled up and wrapped into her blanket from ear to tail.
Harrowed, Pierman took a step forward.
“Missus… Oats?”
The bundle didn’t move.
Concerned, Pierman closed in on the pony on the bed, and probingly laid a hand on her shoulder.
Much to her relief, the bundled-up pony began shift and squirm lethargically at the sudden sensation.
“Is everything alright?” Pierman asked, gently coaxing the creature to turn towards her, until she did, letting out a hoarse, weak moan in the process.
One of Floret’s big yellow eyes fluttered open, and glanced up at the prosecutor.
“Missus Oats. You need to get up. The hearing starts in little more than twenty minutes.”
Her eye blinked, slowly and heavily.
Then it closed again.
Pierman’s hands briefly cramped into fists of frustration.
Again, she placed a hand on Floret’s back, and shook her, harder.
“What is wrong with her?” she wheezed.
She heard a hollow glassy sound ring out behind her.
She turned to see Harshwhinny standing at the foot end of the bed, clutching a fairly large, empty glass pitcher in her hooves.
“I… ehm...” Harshwhinny began, before hovering her nose above the opening and sniffing it.
Pierman followed suit, and carefully leaned her face closer to let Floret’s breaths wash over her.
Though Pierman couldn’t smell anything, she could still feel the pungent fermentation emanating from her.
Floret was completely drunk.
Recoining from the smell, Harshwhinny placed the mug back on the floor, and gleaned forth a fairly large cork from under the bed.
Pierman was sure that thing could hold at least five litres.
“Equinox cider. I have no idea how she managed to smuggle this into the country.”
“I do...” Indigo mumbled. “She’s owns a tavern, doesn’t she? But you’d think an innkeeper would know better than to sip from her own stash.”
Getting increasingly desperate, she tried lifting Floret’s head, only for it to plop right back on her pillow right away.
“Miss Harshwhinny. we need something to wake her up. Call room service. Order… I don’t know… coffee. Extra strong.”
“No, none of that stuff!” Harshwhinny gasped. “It’s toxic to us.”
“Okay…” Pierman hesitated. ”Then order some fruit juice. Orange juice, apple, mango, anything they’ve got.”
Harshwhinny nodded frantically and bowed out of the room, in search of any - helpful - hotel staff.
“Oh, and ask Major Bodkin for his wheelchair! We are going to need it!”
Pierman wiped her runny nose and slipped out of her blazer, and rolled up her sleeves a couple of inches before plunging her hands under her blanket.
“Indigo! Help me carry Missus Oats into the bathroom.”
He cantered over immediately, though not without asking, “You… don’t want to dump her in the shower now, do you?”
“No no, I just want to dab her face clean with water.”
The elderly earth mare was surprisingly heavy.
Like two assassins trying to lead away a drugged mark, the prosecutor and her much craftier pegasus assistant dragged Floret onto her hind legs and walked her to the comparatively tiny and cramped bathroom, where they awkwardly sat the time-worn mare down atop the toilet.
Her hands shivering from the hassle, Pierman held them under the tap for a few seconds to try and clean her bed-bound witness’ odour off her. When Pierman had gotten ahold of her reflexes, she moistened a towel and knelt down to be closer to Floret Oats’ drooping head, and inspected her wrinkly equine countenance from up close.
As out of it as Floret seemed to be, she let out a raspy moan when she felt the warm, moist towel sweep over her closed eyes and slightly open muzzle. Almost reflexively, she led a hoof towards Pierman’s face, and tried to stroke her cheek.
“Missus Oats, please.” she sighed, and politely led her hoof back where it came from. “You have to wake up now. The court needs to hear your story.”
Still bereft of most of her senses, Floret nodded.
“Yes, dear...”
Throwing the spent towel into the shower cell, Pierman picked up a hairbrush and took it to her mane.
“You are so kind...”
“It’s nothing.”
“Oh… for an old bag like me...”
Pierman shook her head incredulously.
“Don’t say that.”
“I will blow it today.”
Pierman looked up.
“What? What makes you think that?”
“I… I realised something… Yesterday evening...”
“What was it...”
Floret slowly revealed her bleary eyes.
“I cannot remember my parents’ faces…” She gulped. “I tried. But there just wasn’t anything there.”
“It...” Pierman stuttered, trying to sound more uplifting and reassuring than she could be, “it can happen.”
“It’s been so long...”
Floret chuckled hoarsely, “Nine hundred years… and already, I have forgotten my own parents’ faces. But you… you expect me to tell a hundred million people today... about a pony I’ve only seen once, and then never seen again?”
Pierman sighed involuntarily.
“Missus Oats, I heard your story. You told it to me yourself. It was incredible.”
“Maybe...”
“The world needs to hear it.” She glanced up to look in her eyes, “Your words could bring a tyrant to heel.”
“You know when to use which words, dear...” Floret nodded, still drowsy, “I enjoy to hear you speak. It’s always so uplifting…” She chewed on her measly yellow stumps that had been buckteeth a few centuries in the past. “Do you think that if I try to put my mind to it… I might remember how mum and dad used to look?”
“What?” Pierman mumbled. “Well… yes. Yes, of course. Things like that don’t just go away.”
There was an awkward pause.
Floret’s melancholic smile faded away.
“It won’t bring them back. Mama and Papa. Not really. Nothing I might say to that is going to make them whole again.”
“How… how can you be so sure?” Pierman asked, not quite thinking her words through before she said them, “I mean… they’ll never be entirely gone. They exist on elsewhere, you can hope.”
“But they’ve been destroyed, dearie.”
She shook her head, as though she was only now digesting the shock of the revelation. “All those ponies that have been destroyed… our neighbours… our uncles and nieces and cousins… My words are not going to bring them back either.”
“It’s not about that. I mean… you know that,” Pierman stammered. “This is why you stepped forward in the first place. This is why you offered to share your account on the siege.”
“I… I only sent a letter. I only wanted to let the Princesses know that I did see the changeling queen once when I was a filly… but… that was it. I wasn’t ready to… step in front of an assembly of creatures and let them interrogate me.”
“But you did see the queen.”
“...Well yes.”
“Then that’s what matters!”
Pierman placed the brush back into the sink and hobbled closer. “It is not as much about saving those that have already suffered. It is about saving those that might yet!”
Confused, Floret tried to say something, but couldn’t formulate it properly.
“You told me about your family, Missus Oats. Tell me about them again.”
“I…” Floret began, needing an agonisingly long time to sort her thoughts, “I have… two daughters... And one son. My daughters have two children each… and my son one.”
“And? Is that it?”
She shook her head.
“No… My grandchildren have kids of their own now… the youngest is… about fifty?”
She chuckled to herself, “I’m sorry. Sometimes, I can’t even keep count anymore...”
“Do you love your children? And your children’s children?”
“Why… of course I love them.”
Pierman tapped a finger against Floret’s unkempt chest.
“I also have two daughters at home. It is for them that we are doing it. It is so they can live and grow old in a world that is nothing like yours or mine.”
She sniffed, her nose twitching painfully, “The things you have suffered. The cataclysms that you were forced to live through… they must have been... agony. But they can happen again. Easily.”
Pierman’s chest heaved. “But they don’t have to. Don’t you want those horrors banished from our lives? Stomped out of our destiny wholesale?”
She nodded.
Pierman clasped Floret’s hoof tightly.
Her hand pulled the rosary from her pocket and twisted it around her ten clenched fingers like the holiest of knuckledusters.
Her voice wavered as she tried to continue.
“And don’t you want the monsters responsible for it all stomped out right with them?”
Floret looked at Pierman long and hard.
Harshwhinny looked as the human servant with the saucer of glasses filled with colourful fruit juices rushed into the room and past her, knocking on the closed bathroom door.
“And here come the juices.”
Sighing in relief, the middle-aged earth mare edged closer away from the corner of Floret Oats’ bed and leaned back, relaxing her legs a little.
“Sweet Celestia,” she groaned, “what an absolute hassle. Thank goodness we got to her in time.”
Indigo Beam sat only a few inches away, by the other corner of the bed, hunched over, intensely peering at the still-closed bathroom.
“I know, right?” he asked, and momentary glanced over to her end, “Did that kind of thing ever happen to you?”
Harshwhinny blew up her lips as she shook her head.
“Never! I had a few ‘stragglers’ in my time, but… I never had to rouse them out of sleep myself.”
“What is it exactly that you did before… you know...” he raised his hooves towards heaven in a grandiose gesture, “...their arrival?”
Harshwhinny chuckled dryly and folded her hooves.
“I was… well, am... the President of the Equestria Games Committee, but I also pulled shifts as a presiding judge in the Fillydelphia Sports Arbitration Tribunal.”
“You must have had quite a rogues gallery of your own.”
“Please. It was magically amped racing pegasi every time. Once in a while I’d even get a magically enhanced carriage and pair. Those two absolutely dominated the crime statistics. If you could even call it a ‘crime’.”
“Ever did any sports yourself, Ma’am?”
“Well, not to brag...” she mumbled, subtly puffing out her chest, “But I am rather adept with the old bow and ice arrow.”
“Nice. So how did a committee-president-stroke-sports-judge-stroke-bowpony ever become a Senior Solicitor in a Council of Harmony trial?”
She shrugged.
“Princely appointment. Just like you, I’d imagine... Corporal.”
Indigo nodded unsurely. “Yeah, but… it was never just an appointment to me. I’m a clerk. I can type anywhere, about anything. But… there is no place I’d rather type right now. We… are doing something... very important here. Something greater than us.”
“Well put.”
He glanced back at the door, as finally Pierman opened it and relieved the hotel porter of the juice plate. “What do you think they’re discussing in there?”
“Well, I certainly hope something rousing.” Harshwhinny sighed. “Or else Floret Oats will end up falling into the witness box.”
Indigo grit his teeth.
“Did you get a look at her?”
“Of course. She is a complete trainwreck. I doubt this was the first pitcher she emptied.”
“I mean Ser.”
“Who?”
“Prosecutor Pierman.”
“Oh...”
Harshwhinny shrugged. “She doesn’t scrub up too well either, by the looks of it. She has her face buried in a kerchief more often than not.”
“She’s sick.”
“Oh well, I’d be sick of it all too if this is the stuff I’d have to deal with day in, day out.”
Indigo glanced at her.
“No, I mean… literally sick. She’s sitting inside that bathroom with fever. She tried to hide it but… I saw her playing with a thermometer the other day.”
Harshwhinny stiffened her lips, though her face couldn’t muster any visible emotion.
“Poor thing. She shouldn’t be on her hooves at all then.”
“Well… she is.”
Indigo sighed. His eyes glistened. “It’s painful to see her like this. It’s been five days now, and every morning, there’s slightly less of her there.”
There was a laden pause.
Then Indigo’s head shrunk down his neck.
“How do you think this whole thing will end?”
“With Prosecutor Pierman or this trial?”
He shook his head.
“By the looks of it… either.”
Unsurely, Harshwhinny eyed the chandelier swinging above them.
“Well… Ideally, it will end with Chrysalis swept into the darkest, dankest dungeon known to mare. There are no two ways about that. One ought to hope for the best. ”
“And worst case?”
She let out a heavy sigh.
“...Not.”
“Right...”
He began chewing on the edges of his lips. “And what if not?”
“Oh, don’t say that,” she muttered, “or else you’ll just jinx it.”
Indigo did not stop staring.
“That didn’t sound optimistic. What do you think our odds are?”
Again, she sighed heavily.
“If the human judicial machine runs as tightly wound as ours, that should not be too much of a-”
“But does it?” Indigo asked, “Like, honestly?”
Harshwhinny, shook her head.
“Well, I’m sure the humans have their oddities….”
“They’re laughing at us,” Indigo hissed, leaning closer. “We amuse them. It’s like we’re dolls to them. Toys. They think our whole fight is one big joke.”
“Perhaps they do. Perhaps they don’t,” Harshwhinny cautiously admitted.
“Professionalism is evidently not one of their strong suits, I’ll give you that. But if they do tussle, then it surely is not about letting Chrysalis loose on our worlds. Let me assure you, they’re not mad.”
“What if I told you that this is exactly what they’re all hoping for? That this is exactly what they’re steering at?”
She shook her head.
“For what possible reason?”
“I have no idea,” Indigo hissed, with strangely indefatigable conviction in his voice. “Maybe they think that she can be... controlled. Convinced. Maybe they want to see if Chrysalis has anything to offer before they lock her away. Perhaps they think they’ve got a thing or two to learn from her.”
Harshwhinny chuckled incredulously.
“That does not sound like you have placed a lot of faith in our human friends.”
“You want to know my opinion about our human ‘friends’?” Indigo asked challengingly. “They’re wheeling, dealing, meat-eating creeps. They’ve got so little moral fibre among them they have to pass it around!”
“Really now, Corporal...”
“Have you taken a peek in the humans’ history books lately?” he inquired, narrowing his eyes, “I have. Ser gave me a guided tour. But you didn’t miss much, it’s ten thousand years of strife, destruction and misery. Total wars, civil wars, world wars, colonial wars, attrition wars, people’s wars, fault-line wars… Do they ever have peacetime? No, they’ve got ‘cold wars’ and ‘trade wars’ and ‘police actions’ to pass their time. I need a thesaurus to even talk about it! Mankind has dabbled in so much duplicity and hatred and brutality until now that... how they could possibly consider Chrysalis anything other than a role model is totally beyond me!”
Caught in the moment, he tipped his hoof into Harshwhinny’s shoulder, “If they didn’t know Her Majesty, our Princess Celestia, had her all-seeing eyes on her, they’d plunge themselves into Chrysalis’ cell and plant a big old smacker right on her lips.”
Harshwhinny shuddered at the mental image.
“Well, not as long as our dear Prosecutor Pierman has anything to say about it.”
“Look at her!” he hissed.
He hissed with such vigour that Harshwhinny couldn’t help but recoil.
“That poor...” Indigo winced, his chest heaving intensely, “Ser is... different from the world. She is decent. She’s courageous, she’s respectable... she’s more pony than human, is what I’m saying. And she’s had it. She wants to get out. Away from all this... mindless, careless cruelty and depravity. Action for action. Case for case.”
He slipped off the bed, and flailed his legs around aggressively.
“And… you know… I’m tired of seeing her fail, again and again. She tries so hard, works day and night on building up this stupid case from nothing. But what difference does it make? None! Here, her wars and her battles, they amount to holding a match into a tempest!”
But Harshwhinny stayed cautiously optimistic.
“Strong seeds grow strong trees.”
Defiantly, he shook his head.
“Not here! We’ve stumbled into the desert of the universe. Our strong seeds coat their streets like pebbles!”
“Alright, enough of that.” Harshwhinny sighed, and looked him square in the eyes.
“Why enough?” he panted, “I’ve only just gotten started!”
“Corporal, are you calling Celestia a foal?”
“I… what?”
Indigo’s eyes became ostrich eggs.
He gazed back at Harshwhinny with unbridled shock and confusion.
“No, I… absolutely not.”
“There. Do you really think somepony as wise and as clever as Her Majesty, Princess Celestia could be so stupid as to hoof away Chrysalis for judgement to a place where she would inevitably be surrounded by potential allies?”
He needed a few seconds of uncomfortable and suppressed nodding before finally squeezing out a meek, “Maybe she just doesn’t know.”
“You are calling her stupid then!”
“No...”
Harshwhinny sighed.
“You were right about one thing in particular. This affair is greater than us.”
Mystified, he peered over to her.
“You are, just like me, here to be a servant to our nation and to our Princesses. Our role is not to ask, but to do and dare and fulfil our duty.”
“And which would that be?”
“...Help this Court and the Council to the best of our abilities. No more and no less. This has been our Princess’ request.”
“I know, but… is that it? Like, really?” he stammered, “After yesterday - and the time before yesterday - I’m getting the feeling that… sifting through dusty records is never going to get Chrysalis locked up in the long run. If even pon- people like Ser can’t make a splash around this place, what could we possibly do?”
He shivered nervously. “I mean... Are you just not bothered by this situation in the slightest?”
“Of course it bothers me... In measure,” she stated, matter-of-factly. “Stay professional, Corporal. And think. What does Princess Celestia expect from us?”
Still shivering, he straightened up.
“...‘Help this Court and the Council to the best of our abilities’?”
She tapped the side of her head in a thinking motion.
“Doing what?”
“Uh… take down Queen Chrysalis, naturally.”
She nodded. “Precisely.”
“Yes, okay, but what if the humans don’t sit in on this? What if this human court lets itself get bewitched by that changeling queen?“
Her eyebrows lifted meaningfully.
“We will know that at least we will have done our duty. No more and no less than what was expected of us.”
“Yeah, yeah... But what? I mean… You’ve got any suggestions? What are we gonna do, worst case scenario? Burn the place to the ground with Chrysalis inside?”
“Corporal!” She drew a sharp breath. “We want to help the court, remember?”
“Right.”
She sighed tiredly and smacked her lips.
“Did I ever mention my father was a Guard?”
Confused, he shook his head.
“You… no. Really? What unit?”
Harshwhinny rubbed her hooves together, her eyes once again trailing over the ceilings and out the corridor.
“He was an officer of the Royal Guard Police. And he had a… firm, intricate sense of right and wrong. He used to tell me that there is one particular edge that those who refuse to do wrong have over those who refuse to do right.”
“Oh? ...Which one was that?”
She smirked.
“Those who are virtuous and principled gallop over the estuary of truth on a stalwart stone bridge. Wrongdoers, on the other hoof, scramble over a beaver dam.”
“And that means... what, exactly?” Indigo again asked, still not as wised up to her words as he wanted to be.
“You cannot trip a virtuous mare. If she falls, she can get right back up and carry on the gallop. She can’t be undermined, she can’t be destroyed, as she is beyond reproach. The truth will not harm her.
She drew a breath “But wrongdoers? Wrongdoers must beware that their own sins and vices will not one day jump them and bite them in the rump and make them drink.”
“Okay.”
“Indeed, it does not take a great effort to trip a wrongdoer. It lies in a wrongdoer’s nature to do most of the work themselves.”
Indigo tried to slow her down with a wave of his hoof.
“Look, I get what you’re saying, but what does this have to do with our duties, or this court, or Chrysalis?”
Harshwhinny pouted, and gave him yet another meaningful glance.
Something struck Indigo’s emergency brake. His stream of of words came to a screeching halt.
Epiphany bloomed inside him.
“Oh.”
In the distant end of the corridor, the two ponies could hear wheels creaking and tinny metallic banging.
“Ah.” Harshwhinny noted. “And here comes the wheelchair.”
Having found new vigour, Indigo took off towards the bathroom door.
“Ser! We’re ready and set!”
Pierman gazed at her watch.
They had exactly twelve minutes until nine.
ETA? Seven minutes.
They could make it work.
The momentum pressed her into her seat as the taxi took off and discharged onto the promenade street.
She folded her hands, burying her watch-hand under the baggy cloth of her winter coat, and sat back, trying to squeeze the anxiety out of her system.
Only then did she feel her nose slowly beginning to trickle.
Awkwardly, she fished a handkerchief out of her trouser pocket and wiped away.
Across from her sat the ever-weary Floret Oats, barely kept upright by Senior Solicitor Harshwhinny, who was sitting next to her.
Awkwardly, Pierman peered over to Indigo, who was sitting next to her, and he gave her a strangely mournful glance back.
“This was close.” Pierman finally concluded. “Really close. This must not happen again. It cannot. We might not be so lucky next time.”
Indigo nodded.
“You got it, Ser.”
A moment of oppressing silence ensued.
Hopefully, so Pierman hoped, spent digesting the shock and ingesting the message.
“Say, Prosecutor...” Harshwhinny suddenly began in an apropos tone, “Is it true that the prosecution and defence have to share a kitchenette?”
“Uh…” Pierman mumbled, the query taking her by surprise. “I think so, yes.”
Harshwhinny nodded, and gave her vis-à-vis some kind of meaningful look.
“Why do you ask?” Pierman made sure
“It’s nothing, Prosecutor. I’m just suddenly feeling a little thirsty.”
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Well, actually...
Nederlandse nationalisme tot de max!
Now im waiting for the ponies to try something shady and get the whole case dismissed because of it. Followed by Celestia trying to throw her weight around only to find out how small and insignificant her and her ponies are.
The Dutch weather culls the weak.
So everyone is up to shady shit then.
Alright, Shameless Self-Promotion Time:
You like the chapter header? Feel free to thank me. You want to see the chapter header with nine times the pixels, yeah, you read that right, nine times the pixels? Well aren't you lucky, because I have the link for you!
That's right, for a limited time only,¹ you can view, and download, the full-resolution version of the Chapter XXIX header from me, N4, for absolutely free!
What are you waiting for? Click now!²
¹ This statement assumes that DeviantArt will not last until the heat death of the universe or the Apocalypse, whichever comes first.
² Unless you skipped the chapter entirely and headed straight to the comments, in which case you should read the chapter first, you bastard.
9032525
That accually would be somehow fitting, Bug Queen doesn’t have to do anything, the ponies attempt to rig the court and cause a massive scandal infront of the whole world. Celestia would no doubt try to remain pristine and try to say it was all a misunderstanding. But in the end Bug Queen gets sympathy and ponies get shafted by the international community.
9033894
Yeah the ponies have already proven that their understanding of a real justice system is skewed, and more often than not it seems that anything that doesn't conform to their "harmony" is wrong and therefore unjust.
9033958
Big horse isn’t a hero, she’s a villain but I do love stories where the “Hero’s” actions end up costing them because they are so focused on winning, they end up losing in the process. Besides I would like to see her taunt the ponies a bit.
9033967
Not saying Chrysalis is a hero but the ponies have proven repeatedly throughout the story that they see human as one step above wild beasts so the ponies probably wouldn't be above using what they see as "reasonable means" to guarantee the end they want for this trial.
9034158
Citation? And I have gotten the feeling from their actions myself, so it would be interesting to see the rule of law to come crashing down on their heads because of it. Ponies failing at what they are supposed to represent is always entertaining and believable to me.
I wonder, does Celestia see what we as readers see and is standing back so things can play as they play so she can come down with a hammer and re-forge the whole Pony Society as it involves non-ponies?
Then again why she did not do it before when she was the leader for a long time is a mystery. But, still an option.
There are four events under discussion. One down three to go. No matter what happens with the next two, it's going to be incredibly difficult to dismiss the wedding invasion when they have three princesses of Equestria, several national heroes, and a wedding party full of guards and civilians all alive and well who personally witnessed Chrysalis at the event.
The obvious tack for the defense to take would be to argue that it was a lawful military action. After all, there was "a threat on Canterlot." That sounds like an official declaration of war. But I suspect that mind control of Armor and releasing her army on the civilian population will not be deemed lawful acts.
9037585
Indeed, it'll be interesting to see how Estermann* is going to spin that mess.
*And if he is going to ge the chance because, you know, he's been enthralled by Chrysalis.
Is this some newfangled slang you kids are using? I swear, first 'guesstimate', and now this
9038373
I wish I could say yes.
9080523
I can accept that, it's fair. But the fact this takes place in a conversion berou universe has me on edge, they always do, with all the anti-human bullshit, I'm worried about what direction the story will go, so I'm hesitant to read further. For the time being.
9081069
Well, as much as I love it, this story actually doesn't take place in the Conversion Bureau universe.
If that's any consolation.
9082156
Wait wait wait, WHAT!!? I could've sworn I read that in the description somewhere!
...huh, now I can't find anything on it. Well this is embarrassing.
My apologies, I honestly dont know how that happened.
9082582
I don't blame you.
The TCB verse probably was my single biggest inspiration when writing this story.
Well... some of it was. The good stuff.
Peace is a lie, Corporal Indigo Beam, there is only passion.
Good God, the ponies are like the worst aspects of the Jedi order cranked up to eleven.
9180275
9205173
Understand the feeling.
9205284
This makes sense but we'll see what happens.
9082607
Out of curiosity, how does Equestria plan to deal with changelings once Chryssy is out of the picture? Is genocide on the picture?