Happy SPECTRUMVERSARY, HUMPADUMPS! · 4:29am May 27th, 2018
What a year this has been!
Since this time last year, I cosplayed - well, crossplayed, but that's not important right now - for the first time. I graduated after a semester abroad in Ireland, I got a job, I drew the best wolf puppy ever, Red quit Spectrum, and we decided to keep him out, and undertake the process of redoing Spectrum with all the changes we wished we could've made from the beginning. Also I nearly died in a ski accident about 6 weeks ago, breaking my T1 through T10 spinous processes, both scapulas, (especially the right one) three ribs, and puncturing a lung, and suffering a concussion, but I'm better now. No brain injuries, I ain't dead, and nothing's paralyzed! Everything still works.
And before you even ask, yes. YES IT DOES!
If there's anything I've learned from Hardcore Henry, it's that details like that are the most important thing.
ANYWAY. Last year, this day - or at least yesterday - the reboot of Spectrum was first underway. I had planned to make three separate updates for Light, Snowbound, and Slow Mutants, but it was not to be. So I decided I'd just updort Light Despondent. Because I can. I have a large number of future plans for all three stories, and I hope you enjoy all of them. Except that one guy who's a dick, but that's not important right now. HE KNOWS WHO HE IS.
While you're waiting for more updates, I figured I'd include some previews of what's coming next. So, without further ado, BEHOLD
Light Despondent Preview
“Oh, it will be gone soon enough!” chirped a forest-green newfoal mare, balanced on the gunwale like a sprite. Kraber whipped out his .45, ready to shoot it in the face, only to find that-
“Oh, what the shit is this fresh hell...” Kraber sighed.
That’s how you react to me? The inexplicable newfoal mare asked. Wow, you’re jaded!
She was covered in blood, one eye a mashed and jellied mass, pulped against a bullethole in her skull. Kraber could see her mane visible through the hole in her skull. A little hair actually appeared to have gotten stuck in there, waving out the empty eye socket.... her smile appeared to be held open with rusty hooks, blood oozing out from where they pierced the skin, the fur and skin underneath discolored by both blood and rust. Maybe she had once been beautiful, or as much as a pony could be nowadays… but there looked to be lines through her face, around her eyes. She looked like a porcelain doll, a decayed piece of Victorian automata, steadily cracking and unwinding...
“Isn’t that just wonderful?” she giggled.
‘Fok me, another hallucination?’ Kraber groaned inwardly. “Who are you?” He thought, doing his best to think at it. He was on a tug with the Thenardiers, after all. He had to… he couldn’t get shot too early into the mission.
“I’m you, silly! I’m Victory, your Pretty Private!”
FOK! It even sounded like Pinkie Pie.
“Or at least, I’m what you will be…”
“FOK…” Kraber was about to tell, but he stifled that. Looked down. Forced it into a whisper. “Fok... JOU! I’ll never… EVER take the FOKKING POTION!”
“Oh, don’t be so defeatist! Who knows what the future holds? I don’t, but it looks wonderful…”
“Hou jou fokkin bek…” Kraber gritted his teeth.
“Now, now. Don’t be that way! You’re so grumpy aaalll the time. I miss your smile, Viktor!”
“Well, what the fok is there to smile about?!”
“As a human, there’s nothing,” the newfoal said. “But if you become me, you’ll be happy all the time! Just like us! Just like us! Wheee!”
She jumps down off the gunwale onto the deck, trailing a string from her back that’d gotten stuck in a scupper…
… A pullstring, like you’d see on a child’s toy. As she hits the deck it comes taught, and she moans lewdly.
“You’ll be happeeeeeee, nice and happeeeeeee…beyond measure, purest pleasure. Sexy, sexy pleasure!” she giggled, sounding like she was on the verge of an orgasm.
“Okay,” Kraber said, “Why does so much of your dialogue sound like it was ripped from a fetish comic?”
Victory froze. “What.”
“I mean,” Kraber said, “‘You’ll be happy all the time! Just like us! Just like us! Wheee!’ sounds like fetish comic dialogue. Like, there was some comic that Nny couldn’t get enough of, even went and got himself a costume based on it… I know I fokkin’ remember that from it.”
Victory’s face slid into a frown, and she facehoofed. “Darn it, it totally does sound like it’s from that fetish comic that Cherry Blossom used to read when she was human! I totally forgot about that!”
She froze for a moment.
“Argh! Now I’m angry because of reasons!” Victory groaned. Then paused. “Hey, wait a minute! Why are you telling me this? I’m probably just a figment of your imagination, I’m supposed to be the one destroying your perception of reality!”
She paused again, watching Kraber as he looked out over the ocean.
“You know what’ll stop me from doing this? The free ponification plan! Now with free steak knives that never need sharpening, because you’ll never eat steak again, you sick, dirty carnivore! You’re bad and you should feel bad, which is why you should join up with us!”
‘Are they Ginsu knives?’ Kraber thought. ‘As knives go, I prefer a Cygnetic.’
Victory sighed. ‘You know, you’re really not any fun right now. I’m gonna hide until this all inevitably fails and you have to confront that you could have stopped all the murder and death at any time, but you’ll never be able to unless you take the potion!’
Wait, wha- Kraber thought.
‘Oh? You want to hear more? I thought you didn’t want more of me! I’ve seen this happen before, you know,’ Victory said, matter-of-factly. ‘With a you very much like this you, except he was born in 1994. I don’t know why you’re a year older than that you-’
‘Because the writers are hacks?’ asked a newfoal that looked like Kate, visible in the reflections on the water below, standing next to Kraber.
‘Oh, most assuredly! But anyway. It was in a world much like this, except it was… well, let’s say a lot of its so-called-heroes deserved what they got…
And then Viktor’s mind comes unbound. One minute, he’s on the Arctic Warrior, and the next...
(Where does his mind go? You'll have to find out soon (Tm))
Slow Mutants Preview
How am I supposed to know what time this is
“Well,” I say, “this is a weird change of pace.”
I don’t know what made me say that. I don’t know where I am, either. I look around, and see Shieldwall standing above me. He looks like he’s changed - his fur is a darker blue, and he has a black pompadour with streaks of green through it.
How strange. I could’ve sworn I remember him being piebald or an albino. And all the while, his massive, terrifying visage is grinning at me. His mouth is opening ever so slightly.
‘NO!’ I scramble back on my hands and knees, and run.
I sprint away from the massive poster. I’m running down an alleyway, past trashcans. I can see bulletholes in the walls, burn marks on the pavement. I’m left to think:
‘There must’ve been a war here.’
I make a right, and as I turn the corner, I see that the massive grinning Shieldwall head was just a poster. This whole time. And it wasn’t as realistic as I thought, either.
‘Am I in Equestria?’ I think. I look around, and I see the scale of everything. The tall, thin doors, the windows. ‘No, I think. This is a human city. This is all built to my sc–’
Wait a minute.
I stand up. I feel taller. I feel… strangely off balance, but… I look down, and I see…
I place my hands together and feel the satisfying cracks. I run my hands (‘Oh, fuck, how I’ve missed having hands’) over what I see. Over my breasts, my skin. And it feels. So. GOOD!
And I’m wearing clothes! Looks like… brown shearling
“Oh, thank the Lord,” I whisper, “I have fucking hands! I’m human!”
It’s rare that I even dream about being human, nowadays. But here I am, with hands! And breasts! And legs! And FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK ASS BITCH SHIT BUTT NAZI ASS PUBIC HAIR BASTARD FUCK TRIPLE ASS SUCK C–
Oh, I missed that. I can swear!
“Thank fuck,” I say.
It’s then that I hear music. It’s a jaunty, upbeat tune, with trumpets and drums. Parade music. I’m curious about it, but something keeps me from going out into the open.
The best thing to do, it would seem, is find a good vantage point. So I look at a fire escape. Definitely built for humans, what with its handrails and steep, ladderlike incline. Yes, this is definitely a human city.
Right?
As I’m clambering up the fire escape, looking through windows, I’m not too sure. There’s furniture scaled to human size in one apartment, but through another, I see couches and chairs that are clearly built for ponies.
The more optimistic part of my mind wants to think this is a grand statement of human-pony unity. The more realistic part of my mind would kick it in the balls. If, y’know, personifications of my mind can have balls.
When I see another apartment, one that has human and pony-scaled furniture, I stop dead in my tracks. Something is very wrong here.
There’s a poster of Celestia, all yellow, black, and white, a grin that is supposed to look loving but definitely isn’t. In an apartment shared by humans and ponies?
No.
No no no. This can’t be right.
I have a sudden sense of mounting fear, and I rocket up the fire escape towards the roof. And it’s only then that I see the city.
I don’t recognize the skyline, if only because so much of it looks destroyed. Massive hulks of skyscrapers, broken beyond repair, stab up into the skyline like the ribs of a long-dead carcass. Cranes and what look to be small potioneer ships – the little, nimble bombers dropped from Solar Empire carriers – hover around them, slowly, methodically disassembling them.
‘No.’
Hanging lazily in the sky is a great metal… thing. I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but I know it’s massive. It has a gasbag like a Solar Empire ship, but it bears more resemblance to a human-made battleship, except exponentially bigger. It’s long enough to look like a skyscraper laid on its side. On its underside are a set of pylons, a purplish rip in space held between them.
A portal!
I stand and watch as, before my eyes, the portal shudders, the air just puckering around it like the skin around a scab. And a Solar Empire skyliner slides out from this rip in space.
I can only guess at what’s happened here. But going from the fact that this is a human city, with Solar Empire ships dotting the skies, I can draw my own conclusions.
I walk to the edge of the roof and look down, suspicious. And below me is a massive parade. Ponies with assault saddles march in formation below, with humans carrying weapons with wooden stocks that look strange, alien, too smooth to be real. Whatever they are, they reek of Potion.
Behind them trot massive tanklike ponies with a greater resemblance to rhinos than horses - the newcalves. Each wears a howdah, protected by a lightly glowing thaumic shield, ahd each howdah has a crew of ponies armed to the teeth with potion crossbows, paintball guns, and even, ridiculously, what looks to be a giant machinegun decorated in intricate golden filligree, loaded with purple-tipped ammo. Probably grenades. Then, ponies with massive horns the size of railroad spikes, wood-and-metal braces around their legs. The rank and file appear to be humans with those guns, ponies with similar weaponry in their assault saddles, and ponies with spears. Ceremonial spears? Probably.
Another set of ponies on howdahs passes me by, and I see that they’re pulling a carriage. A parade float of some kind. And, sitting on it contentedly, with a self-satisfied smirk, is Shieldwall. One of his hindlegs has been replaced with a pegleg just beneath the knee.
‘Look at me,’ he seems to be saying. ‘Look at what I’ve made.’
There are no grand speeches, but the meaning here is clear. Maybe it’s the invaded city. Maybe it’s the PER and Solar Empire forces parading openly.
Or maybe it’s the banner on Shieldwall’s carriage that says:
“CELEBRATING V-C DAY.”
Victory day? In where?
And at his side is a green unicorn mare with a mane in earthy browns and greens, and orange eyes. She’s levitating a machinegun that is very much human.
A Newfoal, definitely.
For a moment, I think that this has to be a dream. Because it all seems so illogical, but it all seems to make so much sense in context, despite the fact that absolutely none of it does.
Something crackles, and I reach for the radio at my hip. Which is strange, because I don’t remember having a radio at my hip.
“You see him?”
“I do,” I confirm. And then, for no reason I can nail down: “He’s almost there.”
I cast a glance over to a gap between two buildings. A gap through which I can see the rebuilt Victoria Bridge, now renamed the Fluttershy Bridge to curry favor with the Solar Empire. The glint of an outbound train, to the very outskirts of the Solar Empire territory that Shieldwall administrates.
I know that somewhere, Eva Nilsdottir is going to be making the shot. This territory - the Shieldwall Province, they call it - is his foal. I know that nobody could hope to administrate it like he does, and that whoever they have to replace him will run this fucking tumor of a puppet state into the ground. And maybe, just maybe, what little resistance is left east of the Mississippi and what’s left of the PHL have some breathing room.
I don’t know where Eva is. All I know is she’s found somewhere to make the shot.
Shieldwall’s parade float passes near that gap through which I can see the train, and then I think I see the slightest little glint.
She’s not going to–
I hear a sound like distant thunder.
She is.
I think for a moment that Eva’s not going to make the shot, not in a million years. It’s like everything has stopped for one incredible moment, and then I see it.
The bullet, glowing blue, hangs in midair against something vaguely pinkish-tinted. Shieldwall’s mouth hangs open for a few seconds, and then…
The pinkish-tinted something flashes, and a smaller round half the size of my pinky explodes forward. And then, suddenly, it hits Shieldwall just above his right foreleg.
He wheezes for a fraction of a second, but he barely looks even winded. And even then, looking winded looks like more of a performance than anything.
The crowd gasps in unison. Screams ring out. There is a flurry of curses.
Shieldwall limps away at as fast a pace as he can muster, which isn’t too fast what with one pegleg, and one foreleg shot. And probably a few old war wounds.
Another bullet hits the shield, but even then, Shieldwall’s already far from the impossibly thin gap. That last one is a hail mary and everyone knows it.
“Find the shooter!” Shieldwall yells. “FIND THE CELESTIA-DAMNED SHOOTER!”
But I know he won’t. Eva’s on a train speeding out of the city, her attempt at an impossible shot failed.
“There!” someone yells, pointing up to a rooftop. Towards me, even though I know they shouldn’t be able to see me, I was just observing, goddammit, plenty of people-
Fuck
FUCK FUCK FUCK FU–
* * *
Morning
Dew Glow wakes up and walks out of her room for breakfast. She’s very happy to help with whatever Shieldwall is doing.
Always a happy one, that Dew Glow! A credit to all Newfoals.
She heads up to the breakfast table with Shieldwall, and sees the PER all around him. And she’s so happy to be around them. So happy to help out. Oh yes.
As she sits at the table, a wood-and-metal picnic table looted from a campground somewhere, she smiles as she eats the scrambled eggs. She watches, barely comprehending, BARELY UNDERSTANDING WHY DON’T YOU/I SAY SOMETHING, as Shieldwall and Fairbairn talk. Staring at her.
I look forward to all these updates! Plus congratulations on getting a job! I hope everything is going your way.