Second glance at Farmer Bruener Has Some Ponies - First Violence Scene · 3:53am Jul 6th, 2018
I promised that if somebody came up with a better name for Big Brick's construction company that I'd give a peek into the inevitable result of having aliens land in Kansas and conduct a press conference. Well, thanks to Midknight Defender, I got one. My promised glimpse into the pony news conference crashers of the Felts family (name changed to prevent lawsuits) follows:
- - - - ⧖ - - - -
Time: 10:48 A.M. Central Standard Time, Saturday June 20, 2015
Location: Randolph, KS Main street entrance
- - - - ⧖ - - - -
The radio by Captain Samantha Rietz’s side gave out a short noise, followed by a precise, “Randolph Main Gate, this is First Flight. We will be landing in two minutes.”
“Roger, Grace,” said Sam with a squeeze to the shoulder microphone. “We’ll clear a space for you.” She looked up at the car full of sincere family members who seemed so much like the stereotypical ‘We want to see the ponies, Daddy’ cars they had been turning back all morning. This one had three young girls in the back seat, who all gave a subdued squeal when Corporal Rose floated three pieces of paper in through the open window while giving the same speech she had given an infinite number of times this morning.
“I’m sorry, sir. Access to Randolph is restricted to recognized members of the press and residents until Tuesday. Please turn your car around here and follow the officer’s directions to get back onto K-77.”
The rose-pink unicorn in the dark armor sat down on her ‘booster box’ that brought her up to eye level with the drivers and added a little wave to the three girls in the back seat of the car, who were snapping cell phone pictures like crazy. Then the father turned the car around in the indicated space and went back in the direction of the highway, leaving Sam to gesture the next car ahead.
“You’re just encouraging them,” said Sam to her equine partner. “Giving them a souvenir sheet and a picture is like spraying for ants using sugar water.”
“They’ve been in the car for over an hour,” said Rose, looking sideways at the taller police officer. The box gave her a much more comfortable position to talk to the drivers in line, and having a pony give the speech made the line travel so much faster that Sam was considering drafting a few members of the pony populi to carry out the task when the police officers took a break.
“They’re tired and cranky, and all they want is to get a look at us before we go.” Rose looked at the proffered credentials of the next vehicle, a rental car with the back stuffed full of camera equipment, and waved it through to where the rest of the press were setting up around the stage. “Besides,” she added once the car had passed, “don’t you see how adorable those children are? I wish we could take one home—” The next car had pulled up, but Rose was looking past it, at a series of three vans several back in line.
“Trouble?” asked Sam.
“Nothing. Yes, move on,” she added to the driver, floating a paper flier to him as he began to pull away. “Just a moment, Samantha.”
The unicorn guard put a hoof to the side of her head and spoke a few quiet words in their musical language, then paused as whoever on the other side of their pony communication equipment talked back to her.
“Captain Rietz, do you have any habitual troublemakers who show up at media announcements,” asked the quiet pink police pony in a flatter tone of voice than Sam had heard from her so far.
“A few protesters at times,” said Sam. “When George W did his Landon Lecture, we got about a hundred of them, but they stayed mostly peaceful. Waved their banners and kept in the security area. Why?”
“Just nerves. Hello, sir. May I see your identification.” Rose glanced down at the driver’s license, then back up at the reddinging face of the overheated chubby man. Before he could say anything, she waved a hoof to have the deputy open the barricade and gave him a nod. “There’s ice water at the other end of the park, sir. Tell them Corporal Rose said to give you a cold bottle and let you sit down for a while in the shade. I’ll send one of the townsponies down to talk with you shortly.”
The car had barely rolled out of reach when Rose reached up to the shoulder pauldron of her armor and squeezed the terrestrial microphone she had on loan from the RCPD spares. “Any medical unit in Randolph, we’re needing medical assistance at the north end of the park. Possible heatstroke. Look for an overweight man driving a—” The unicorn officer gave Sam a sideways look.
“A periwinkle blue Buick Regal with Sedgwick county plates,” said Samantha into her microphone. She nodded and watched as Rose dealt with another car, then looked up as the newest pegasus carriage on Earth swept in to land in the open turnaround spot, dropping almost straight down and rolling less than a foot on the bicycle tires that made up the wheels.
The rest of the odd vehicle was similarly themed, from the expanded aluminum mesh making up the floor to the five lawn chairs welded to it, and the thin tubing that made a ‘fence’ around the outside edge. Both preening pegasi in the minimal traces were obviously enjoying the sudden attention from all of the news crews by the nearby park and the near-universal photography taking place from every single stopped car in the line.
Specialist Grace wobbled cautiously off the skeletal rig, looking much as if the dark green unicorn wanted to kiss the ground instead of walking over to their traffic station and giving a sketchy salute.
“Brought you some cold water,” managed Grace, looking greener than her regular colors. The case of dripping plastic bottles took flight off the pegasus cart in Rose’s magic while Grace simply stood in place with her legs spraddled for stability.
Rose shook her head and nuzzled up to her fellow unicorn, giving her a pat on the back and a kiss on the cheek. “Sorry about that, hun.”
“Don’t like to fly?” asked Sam while opening one of the new chilly bottles and suppressing an overwhelming urge to just fling herself into one of the chariot’s lawn chairs and see what flying was like.
“They did a loop,” said Grace. She reached out with an unsteady hoof and grabbed her own bottle of water, sitting down on her rump and literally biting the lid off the bottle. After a good drink, she added, “In Canterlot, I’d have them on charges for violating restricted airspace norms and they’d spend a month peeling carrots.”
Out of her sight, the two pegasi exchanged glances and a high-hoof, although their happy faces abruptly settled into serious when Rose put a hoof to the side of her helmet and said some more horsey words over their private communication channel. Where the landing had been an exercise in delicacy and grace, the takeoff now was almost the exact opposite. One moment the two pegasi were standing there, and the next there were only a few swirls of dust, with the aluminum craft exhibiting a perfect chandelle vertical climb and vanishing into the distance.
“They’re going to get Specialist Titan,” explained Rose while gesturing the next vehicle forward, one of the vans that Sam was starting to suspect. “If there’s any shooting, get behind me. The guard armor should be able to stop any of your projectile weapons.”
“Shooting?” One hand drifted to her waist where her duty issue Glock 22 was secured in a retention holster, but Sam forced herself to take a deep breath and act instead of reacting. She was not some trigger-happy rookie over her head. The Equestrians were armored soldiers, after all, and from the informal discussions she had with her hooved counterparts yesterday, the female ones had extensive experience in their civilian police force before becoming royal guardians, somewhat like the Secret Service, with spears.
Of course, when the van stopped and the people inside flooded out, waving ‘God Hates Fags’ signs, Sam forced herself to move her hand away from her pistol. All three of the vans had been filled with members of the Felts family, young and old, who lined up and began to shout and scream their usual slogans while the television cameras that had been arrayed to cover the upcoming Equestrian announcement all turned in their direction. Both Rose and Grace looked puzzled at the commotion and the line of screaming that seemed to imply they were extraterrestrial gay lovers from the earlier kiss. Sam kept her back to the majority of the cameras as she bent down and tried to explain Topeka’s most irritating family to the extraterrestrial ponies.
It probably would have gone better if the Felts family had not been only a few feet away, arrayed around the security checkpost and screaming their lungs out. Sam made several attempts at an explanation while trying not to let the shouted vitriol get to her, but the sheer volume of the family’s chants made communication impossible.
At least until Grace’s horn glowed a light green and their voices cut off as if she had hit the ‘Mute’ button on an obnoxious television set.
“—bunch of assholes,” said Sam into Rose’s ear, although thankfully not loud enough to be caught by the legions of television cameras and cell phones pointed in their direction. “What happened?”
All of the family protesters were still screaming and shaking their placards, but in complete and total silence. The rest of the people in the more distant crowd were still perfectly audible, including one grateful person (not a police officer, thankfully) who shouted, “Thank God” before being hushed by his nearby companions.
“Mute spell,” said Grace in her usual flat delivery with her horn still glowing a faint green. “It doesn’t actually affect the target, but the space immediately surrounding them, so it is not a violation of Article 14 of the Equestrian Civil Rights code. They can still hear us perfectly fine.” Grace looked at an overweight, middle-aged woman with reddening face as she tried to out-scream the spell to no avail. “You can stop at any time, Ma’am.”
“Actually, you are all blocking traffic,” announced Rose, who had stepped up to the ‘booster box’ that brought her up to the window height of the cars she had been processing. “Please proceed back into your vehicles, and the Riley County Police Department will guide you to the designated protesting area set up behind the gas station a quarter-furlong to the north. If anybody needs a bottle of water for the heat, I’d be glad to provide them.”
The middle-aged mare lifted her bottle of water in her magic and took a sip, giving a pleasant smile to the woman who had worked herself into a such a screeching frenzy that Sam expected foam to start coming out of her mouth, or for her to start speaking in tongues. Very silent tongues.
The RCPD, much like all other police departments, had been well trained on what to do with protestors: remain in control of the situation, keep the protesters away from counter-protesters, and never escalate force inappropriately. In most cases, a protester was much like a peacock, spreading its tail and displaying for the cameras, with no real intent of physical violence. In special cases, fairly rare in Kansas outside of the occasional Aggieville celebration after a football game, individual protesters were violent, and needed to be picked out of a crowd and detained fairly rapidly before they triggered their companions to similar acts, like fire spreading in dry grass.
The Felts family were anything but ordinary protesters. In fact, they had turned protesting into a profitable business model. After all, they were lawyers. The only violence that would occur at a Felts demonstration would be against one of their own by some poor sucker who was so incensed by their signs and rhetoric that they would throw the first punch, and then be sued through the courts for the rest of their lives, as well as anybody else the Felts could include in the suit. Property owners, random passers-by, police, or anybody who dared ‘libel’ them in print, they all were fiscal grist for the mill. The Felts never threw the first or second punch.
Which was why Patrol Captain Samantha Rietz was caught flat-footed when the chubby Felts family member lifted her sign and clubbed the pink unicorn soldier like a baby seal.
The moment of stunned inaction did not last. When the stunned unicorn dropped off her platform with all the grace of a sack of potatoes and the middle-aged woman lifted the stick to strike again, this time stripped of its offensive message by the impact against Corporal Rose’s helmet, Sam launched herself forward in a tackle fully worthy of a Nebraska Cornhusker linebacker.
Cameras! Cameras! I’m on camera!
The two of them hit the pavement with Sam grabbing for one clawed hand that was trying to scratch her eyes out and heaving it up behind the woman’s back. She wanted to dislocate it, but not on national television or anywhere else where the action would come back to haunt her.
“You have the right to be silent,” she growled, reaching behind her back for the cuffs. Something behind her crunched like broken bones, but she focused on her task like no arrest she had ever done before. This one was going to stick, damnit. By the time Sam had finished with her Miranda warning and cuffed the cursing woman, she looked up and saw…
Well, it took her a moment to get her mind wrapped around what was going on. She had to break what she saw into sections, and even then it did not make individual sense.
Every adult member of the Felt family was flat on their bellies, and the ones who were looking in any direction, were not looking at her.
The children, which Sam had never really understood the logic of the Felps dragging along to their profanity-laced protests, had jumped forward and were huddled around the dazed pink unicorn, alternately crying and casting dagger-like looks at their adult family members.
Corporal Rose was lying sprawled out on the pavement and did not appear severely injured other than her helmet being knocked a little askew, but it was hard to see for all the worried little children huddled around her.
Specialist Grace was taking another sip of water, just watching as if this kind of thing happened every day.
And… there was a new pony crouched just a few feet away, with the splintered remains of a protest sign stick scattered around him and a look that made Sam want to flatten down on the ground too. Sam had confronted some violent individuals during her career, some of which had been so hopped up on drugs they had no idea of pain or danger, but this dark pegasus had murder in his eyes, and from his sharp bared teeth with a few small wooden splinters still sticking out, was considering just who to disembowel first.
Oddly enough, Sam had never felt safer.
Things began to move a little faster after that, and it was not until many hours later when Sam looked up the video clip on YouTube that the whole story became clearer. The dragon-winged pegasus guard, Pumpernickel, had just dropped into the growing fray, plucking a stick out of the hand of one of the Felps men who seemed as if he were about to take a swing at Sam’s back. It was difficult to tell, although from the dozen or so video clips on YouTube, some of which were set to music, a jury would be looking at a full 3-D reconstruction of the events during the trial. Which would blow another few months out of Sam’s useful life.
Specialist Titan, a grey unicorn with a body-builder body type, used his magic to carry the three unoccupied vans across the highway and deposited them in the ‘Tow field’ for later removal, while the RCPD collected the prisoners. They all got taken to Manhattan for processing, a task which Sam regrettably considered would be a huge fraction of her life for the next few months.
She was just standing around with the pony officers, watching their replacements start the process of making the ‘Randolph visitors line’ start moving again, when the older pony officer came walking up to their positions. Both Rose and Pumpernickel tensed when they saw him approach, but Grace looked up at her with an apologetic expression.
“Allow me to apologize in advance, Patrol Captain Rietz. Sergeant Hardhooves tends to more… descriptive language when he’s angry.”
And the snow-white pony stomping his way in their direction did look angry. Furious, even. The tips of his ears were red, and Sam could swear she saw steam wafting out of them.
“Corporal Rose Thorn!” he bellowed once he was within firing range. “Am I to understand that a civilian struck you?”
“Yes, sir!” responded Rose, who was drawn up into a stiff salute.
“A human civilian?” he continued, coming to a halt just a few steps away. “One of these slow, ungainly, awkward, unbalanced, humans managed to hit one of Luna’s elite guard?”
“She had a stick,” volunteered Pumpernickel, who promptly seemed to melt into the ground like a scoop of chocolate ice-cream in the Kansas heat when Hardhooves turned a fierce glare in his direction.
“A stick,” he managed with great effort. “Was it a pointed stick, perchance?”
Pumpernickel returned to his rigid, eyes-forward pose. “Sir, no sir!”
Hardhooves slowly turned back to Rose, much like a cannon moving to a new field of fire. “Corporal Rose Thorn, you are officially relieved of duty pending the outcome of the investigation, and also reduced in rank one grade. You will report to the command post at Farmer Bruener’s house for a full debriefing, which will be sent to your Divine Sovereign, Princess Luna, for her close examination to see if you are worthy of remaining in her service. During this time, it is my job to see what can be done with your disobedient, incompetent, idiotic self! Grace!”
“Yes, sir?” Grace remained exactly as she had been, in a perfect ‘attention’ pose that Sam suspected she could have remained in for weeks, without showing a single hair out of place.
“Escort Specialist Rose to the human paramedics and have her injury examined. Dismissed.”
“One moment, sir.” Grace turned to Pumpernickel, who seemed ready to flee into the sky at the slightest provocation. “Stick out your tongue, Optio.”
Pumpernickel shook his head and kept his mouth closed.
Grace turned to look at Hardhooves. Hardhooves turned to look at Pumpernickel. The dark bat-winged pegasus opened his mouth and stuck out his oddly-orange tongue.
“I see,” said Grace after moving closer to examine the damp digit. “Splinters.” She turned back to Hardhooves and continued in her regular measured speech, as if she were lecturing at a classroom. “Optio Pumpernickel has been on duty since our arrival, an estimated two full days counting the Equestrian period pre-portal. Once he has been treated, I would suggest that he be ordered to bed until this evening, when he can resume his duties.”
“There’s too much—” started the dark pegasus, only to cringe back at the looks he received.
“Agreed, Grace. Take both of our injured children over to the aid station so their wounds can be treated. I expect to see your report by this evening, just in time to upset my dinner plans.”
The Felts family in this story bear no resemblance to any other Kansas family in Topeka, so please don't use their names because they have a Google alert and no sense of humor.
Im intrigued
more?
4895695
I’m glad you said Felts, because I see a few “Felps” in there and my mind (even knowing it is spelled differently) can’t help but think “The Olympic swimmer’s family?” Lol
I'm going to guess the protesters were really carrying "God Hates Nags" signs.
Because elite royal guards could totally be mistaken for swaybacked old broken-down horses by someone that ignorant and that closed-minded.
Really, they see the bright colors and the glitz and glam and magicks and instantly hate, and never look further.
Ok....why is Hard(ass)hooves reading the Corporal the riot act? Her taking that little bop to the noggin just saved them all a massive PR headache.
Rose, Grace and Pumpernickel... colour me intrigued already.
Ah, irony.
Whenever I see "RCPD," my mind immediately goes to zombies and the Umbrella Corporation. Thankfully, the mass of groaning, mindless humanoids here is a lot easier to deal with.
And speaking from experience, there's no sucker punch quite like the one you get when you're trying to help the person who's about to punch you. Hopefully Luna will extract the stick lodged so firmly in Hardhooves's rear end that Pumpernickel isn't the only one with splinters on his tongue.
The reason they take their children with them is so tehy can indoctrinate them into their way of thinking and life. Written as it is in the Old testament I think?
As for vocal protesting because it isnt physical violence?
Research, which needs definitely verifying, suggests that due to mind over matter works more than one way, vocal offence causes physiological reponses in the body on apar with the side effects of physical trauma. Sort of like waterboarding is in no way like drowning.
So all those vocal protestors are psychologically damaging observers, especially accidental ones.
Then again, things occuring silently also cause stress due to the toxin injestion, hallucination, disorientation models, as in doing one thing and saying another or nothing, gives a sensory mismatch.
Pumpernickle is stressed, when they get back, send them for a weeks RnR in the Everfree where they can eat all the Timberwolves allowed on their permit?
Nice to see the kids breaking their programming though. The Family is goign to have real trouble with those from now on. Thought Im wondering what teh distribution of sizes and capabilities is, enough Snowflakes to run a tournament or legue if most were not in Special Operations?
Then again, given the Mane 6 and associates, what would Celestias Grey/Black Clerks look like, or her Special Circumstances?
Is this a story in progress or has it been posted? I've been unable to find it through the title posted.
Any reply appreciated.
Is this a story in progress or has it been posted? I've been unable to find it through the title posted.
Any reply appreciated.
4895864 I don't actually start the posting process until I'm done with the story. It makes for a much better end product. (found that out a long time ago)
This one, however, is going to be open-ended enough I may consider starting posting at the Chapter 20 mark. Particularly since I *started* it in 2015, and if I want to get it out before 2020....
This sounds interesting...
Oh Georg, you are such a fantastic tease.
Looking forward to whatever the next thing you release is, and there's quite a list of possibilities there.
Oh, gods. That was awesome. As an adopted Kansan, I need to read this.
Well, this sounds like fun, especially since I spent some time in Kansas recently. Just don't expect much in the way of comments from me since my schedule means I mostly read things on my Nook when I'm out these days.
4895845 Yeah.... Never become a lawyer. Please.
You've got a point in basic terms, but never try to use that in the real world to slug somebody who said something offensive to you, or you'll find yourself in front of a judge. The Felts knew this exhaustively, and avoid using Fighting Words. And if you do slug somebody who mouths off, Don't Talk to the Police