//------------------------------// // "I Want to Jump!" // Story: Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell // by scifipony //------------------------------// Regarding Grimoire, I should have thought, Too dangerous too associate with. I finally met Sunset Shimmer when my plans came together.  I do wish they had all been my plans.  It took until that autumn, and I had to coerce Grimoire a bit to do it.  Even though circumstance left her sharing Sunset Shimmer's ivory tower (and according to servant gossip, her bed) on the Castle grounds, and Grimoire unwittingly managed to introduce Celestia's first protégé to one of my highest priced products called nettle-ewe, Grimoire had an ethical compass that prevented her from being completely coerced into anything.  She represented perhaps the hardest subject for my special talent, the pinnacle of its application against its grain—and ultimately my greatest failure—but I get ahead of myself. In grade school, I wasn't much of a student.  I had sports on my mind, hoofball mostly, though I was big, graceless, and a poor athlete.  I also liked to take things apart, though I wasn't so good at putting them back together, even something as simple as grandma's wagonette. The love of taking apart stuff extended to bucking trees in the city parks, digging holes, and pranking.  That extended to the Hooflyn street maintenance works and sometimes the constabulary, or the coppers as we called them because of the copper badges they wore on their hats.   Did I say we and my colts were original thinkers?  And in our group, I was the least of such.  I was there because as a half Clydesdale pony through my dad, I was the most imposing of our lot.  We wimps were definitely not into fighting; I helped prevent that by being a wall if anypony wanted to give us guff.  I was part of the gang because of that big something else. Though our objectives were fun pranks, games, and questionable horse play, we were particularly good at it when I was around.  I'm not boasting.  I'm observing.   I got my first lesson in the part I played one day when we gathered on the corner of Flatbush Street and Myrtle Avenue, beside that gray building designed with the weird crushed walls that looked like somepony had stomped down on it. We studied a constable with a powdered sugar donut cutie mark in his blue uniform as he watched the traffic of wagons and lorries rolling by the brownstone across the way.  It was hot, humid, and noisy—a typical sunny Hooflyn summer day.   Buster, our tiny white-maned golden palomino friend, said, "I want that guy's baton." He was referring to the wood tube hung on a hook by a cord on the constable's hip belt.  The orange stallion sweated visibly and looked exhausted.  Being as this was after school, it was probably the end of his shift. I was too busy to contribute, eating a heavenly Nathan's Famous smothered in onions and horseradish mustard (nopony in Canterlot understands how to make a Hooflyn carrot dog, even the Hooflyn Delicatessen), but when Haul suggested I stumble before the copper while Buster replaced his baton with a stick on a loop of twine, I thought it sounded as close to genius as anypony amongst us was capable, but then Lair started talking about tripping the stallion, which was stupid.   It was all stupid, but still, I told Buster with as much emphasis as I could, and a bit of wheedling, "You can have that baton if you go with Haul's plan.  Just find a stick with a loop and we can do it."  I wasn't very loud, but I spoke into his ear, which flicked against my face.  Afterward, I popped the last of the carrot bun in my mouth and chewed with satisfaction.  I felt like I'd just lifted a weight I'd never succeed with before.  It felt good.  It felt right.  Just the right amount of push to rack the bar. He blinked, his blue eyes unfocused.  I'd say he looked dazed, but his voice sounded decisive.  "Haul, I think your plan is great!  Let's—" I won't go into the particulars other than to say Buster's levitation spell was less up to snuff than mine.  And the pipe we ended up replacing the wood baton with was too cold. The copper rounded on my buddies, the four of them, his horn alight, both his baton and the improvised pipe replacement instantly menacingly above them.  They froze and I walked on.  I could have gotten away, but the copper just looked disgusted not angry, and tired.  "So much fo-ah me getting off shift oily." I'd guessed right!  And I couldn't leave my friends, but charging in would make things worse.  Moreover, while I might be a wall, this fellow with a tattered cauliflower right ear was the entire building up close.  A few well healed scars despite him maybe being only twenty implied he was a bit of a bruiser himself, certainly a boxer off-duty, and no stranger to roughhousing growing up. Intuition said he wanted to send us away, but Buster's big mouth was about to to nix that.   "Constable, oh Constable!" I said, limping with my right front leg, as I approached.  "I think I may have sprained my ankle."  As his hard green eyes focused on me and narrowed, I touched his shoulder to steady myself and said, "Those colts were just pranking you.  You can help me, can't you?" He blinked.  His irises grew larger and he got this crooked smile. I added, "Like you were at their age." Bam.  And there was that tingle like I'd pushed something in place where it wanted to be, like a shower door onto the track. The constable chuckled and pushed up his cap with his baton and dropped the pipe, kicking over the curb.  He chuckled.  In his thick accent, he said.  "Haw haw.  Gooda one.  Some pranks can get yo hurt, son.  I'm letting yous go wit a warning—" Well, that was that.  They bolted, going from cowering to a gallop in a second.  I endured a slow stroll toward the nearby hospital, thinking about what had occurred as the constable prattled on about pranks he'd done that I must never do under any circumstance.  I realized in both cases, I'd hit on what each pony wanted to do and somehow given them permission to do it.  It was like my dad when he was all upset about the sales force he managed at a Manehatten insurance company and unwilling to do anything when he got home.  Mom knew what to do, though.  A glass of his honey wine, Trottenham 8 Mead, usually did the trick.  Loosened him up, made him fun again.   I remembered Dad's eyes and had an epiphany (though I didn't know the word at the time).  My words, telling ponies they could do what they wanted had made them drunk. Giving ponies what they wanted made them feel drunk. Wow! I stumbled and fell to the pavement for real this time.  And I too felt drunk.  (I didn't like Dad's mead; it was too sweet, but I understood what drunk felt like.)  The way things had felt right when I'd spoken to Buster now felt that way again.  Revelation enveloped me in a supernatural glow of warmth and knowledge.   "Son, son!  Ar-a you o-kay?"  The constable shook me, breaking the effect, finally stopping to say, "Woah.  Whata'd we do?" A crowd gathered, as will happen in Brooklyn anytime anything happens to anypony, from getting run over by a bus to getting splashed with paint.  Some mare with a whiny Queens accent said, "Oy, he just goyt hes cutie mauk!" I looked at my brown behind.  A spilt mug of gold liquid seemed to gleam with incredible newness.  Spilled mead.  I could make ponies feel drunk?   What the—?  What had just happened? My audience began to stomp the sidewalk and clap.  I managed to escape the constable with no mention of sprained ankles.  Dad wasn't amused at the allusion to his favorite drink; all bottles of which disappeared from the flat to the detriment of the family peace.  Mom was disappointed that I didn't get a useful talent.  My last year as a teenager at home wasn't as easygoing as when their dumb-flank colt had had a possibility of a talent to make up for none in school. I had so weirded-out out my friends, having handled the constable so deftly that I got my cutie mark out of it, that they called me a freak and wouldn't talk to me.  I did do a bit better in school as a result.  Still, my parents' reaction made me think I might have to take care of myself soon.  About the only thing I was good at was with numbers—most unicorns are—and I thought maybe accounting or statistics could open a career path.  I learned that with a cutie mark and a polite demeanor, you could ask for help and your classmates would often take you seriously even if you were a big lug nut like me. That's how I met Creme Puff and Sea Foam, and other ponies who did things like study their books, sell lemonade at sidewalk tables, and put together swap meets so they could earn spending money.  Junior entrepreneural ponies.  I could fetch and carry, and nopony bullied them when they had a "wall" around.  I soon discovered I could learn things by watching and paying attention. Sea Foam was always gung-ho and can-do for any endeavor, until it proved very important to her personally.  Her pale-blue color with a dirty-white curly mane was a perfect metaphor for her way of being, and one day when she had senior exams that put her entrance to Canterlot University at stake, she made like that last wave of the seven retreating way down the beach, leaving it bare.  I heard crying in the library and found her on her head-down on her notebook, surrounded by books, unable to lift her pencil. She heard me, looked up with her washed-out looking blue eyes, and turned to hide her face against a bookcase.  "I can't do it," she moaned.  "It's too hard!" "That's my line," I said. I got a chuckle between sobs.  Her mane looked tangled from pulling and was wet by tears.  This is where a confident stallion could step in to comfort his mare, but I wasn't confident and didn't know how to comfort, really, and wasn't going to touch a filly for fear of frightening her away.  I did reach out with my wimpy magic to squeeze her shoulder as I said, "You're going to ace the tests and you know it.  It's going to be so easy, and you're going to do so well, you're going to earn a scholarship, too." She quieted.  She sniffed loudly and squared her shoulders.  I stepped back as she stood and looked around at the library, as if surprised to see herself there.  She blinked and looked a bit dazed.  She said to herself, "I need to review my notes."  With her gray magic, she slapped on her white saddlebags and inserted her notebook before trotting out of the library. I'd turned invisible.  Obviously. Oh, and she did get that scholarship because she earned the highest test score at Hooflyn Equestria High, well, because she really was that smart when she didn't make herself crazy—and I'd used my sweet talk to remind her she could be confident. She never said thank you. It was a common theme.  Whomever I helped.  Nopony remembered I'd helped them.  Perhaps because they appeared dazed or drunk or living in a dream.  Some special talent I had!  I could watch all the ponies I helped get what they wanted, but that was all I got.  It felt good, for awhile, and then not so much. But finally there was Creme Puff.  He could imagine things.  Sometimes he built Ruby Gold Iceberg machines from welding wires, hamster wheels, and propellers through which ball bearings could wander for minutes.  Or painted murals, like the one out behind the gym of Celestia rearing, mane waving, in her triumphant battle against the Timberwolves.  An engineering-artistic type, but sensitive beyond belief.  He lived with foster parents who were only a step better than his own crazy ones.  Anything could rile him and make him feel like he had been shot with a dozen arrows.  He'd been sighing more than usual one day, gesturing as he worked something through in his head until he spilt a bottle of ink over a machine he had been drafting on his desk.  He'd cried, "Ugh!" and just walked out of history class.  I followed him, first out of the school where the proctor at the door didn't stop him because, well, he was one of the good students and not a truant so it was probably okay.  I followed him, trying to get him to return to school, but he pretty much ignored me… until we got to the Hooflyn Bridge and he started talking about not being able to take it any more, which began to worry me, but then he often blew things way out of proportion in convoluted but always imaginative ways.  I couldn't tell when he was serious, though I could tell he was as distressed as ever I had seen him. He stopped suddenly when we had ascended the span of the bridge.  It was big, with flagstone siding, huge gray suspension cables, and brick arched footings.  Wagons and busses thronged the roadway.  A big clipper ship sailed underneath in the stiff sea breeze.   I ran into him, and, without bucking me off, he said, "I want to jump." I said, with a bit of frustration but, yes, earnestness, "If that's what you want to do, maybe it would be the best thing you could do." That may sound crass, but this is the Hooflyn Bridge.  It's got fencing to make jumping pretty much impossible except for a pegasus.  Sure, I'd given him a push with my special talent, but I figured the impossibility of him trying would scare him back to his senses. The lime-green earth pony reached his head into his book bags, pulled out a set of weird hook-spiked horseshoes and jumped into them.  I stood blinking, not quite comprehending what they were until he reached up and hooked himself on to the links with his right front leg, then dragged himself up the fence and hooked his left on, then with his earth pony strength started to ratchet the rest of himself up. I tackled him. He was badly bruised and I was bloodied, cut and stabbed—admittedly because Creme Puff had lost it and the horseshoes he'd engineered were sharp—by the time the constables came galloping and helped me out.  When they had him pinned to the sidewalk, he snapped out of it.   He was surprised I was even there, as if he'd woken from a nightmare.  He did realize what his horseshoes had wrought on my hide and thanked me.  He did say he hadn't wanted to jump—he was clearly lying to himself.  He said that building them had just been a way to scare away his demons. I never saw him again. I realized something.  Not everything I suggested had to be something good for a pony.  It was just something they could be convinced into wanting, or something that deep down they wanted but wouldn't admit.  While I didn't want what happened to Creme Puff, I soon discovered that if I stated it properly, my talent could get ponies to do stuff I wanted, too. As happened after I met Carne Asada when she was trying to become one of her boss' lieutenants.  I helped out and made sure that she knew that I'd helped her with her confidence and goals (which we shared).  She helped me and I learned many things.