//------------------------------// // Mister Jar Catcher // Story: Grief is the Price We Pay // by Scyphi //------------------------------// Whenever Thorax and Spike visited the local game shop, it was usually for differing reasons between them. Spike was usually there to look at the Ogres and Oubliettes merchandise they sold there, and lately, occasionally buying parts of it for the game set he kept trying (and failing) to teach Thorax how to play. Thorax, meanwhile, was usually there to visit the game shop’s attached arcade, fascinated as he was at the cabinet arcade machines and the colorful graphics they were able to display, and often thrilled by the chance to play any of the games. When the arcade introduced a new and state-of-the-art game that caught both Spike and Thorax’s attention though, they eagerly began to visit the arcade in their free time so to play it as often as they could in the days following its induction. It was here that Spike and Thorax were spending some of that free time one Saturday, the two taking turns playing the game and trying to reach the end of the game’s actually quite in-depth storyline before getting a game over. Currently, it was Thorax’s turn to play at the game, and he had already gotten about halfway (or so they estimated, as neither of them had yet to reach the actual end of the game), but he wasn’t doing so well in the game presently, and it seemed another game over would be eminent. “Augh, this boss fight!” Thorax bemoaned as the cutscene heralding said fight began on the screen. “I hate this boss fight! It’s so hard! But if I can just get past it to the next level where I know where I can get an extra life, I just might have a chance…” Meanwhile, Spike was watching the cutscene unfold on the screen and chuckled as he listened to the voices. “You know, that character sounds a little bit like you Thorax,” he observed aloud, pointing a claw at the character in question. Thorax harrumphed at this as the cutscene ended and he focused his attention on playing the following boss fight. “Considering I have the capability of emulating any voice I choose, that’s not saying much, Spike…” “No, no, I mean your normal voice, without any emulating at all, sounds a lot like the voice of that guy there,” Spike explained. “I mean, just listen to his taunts for a second!” Thorax did, and hummed to himself. “I suppose there is some similarity…” he admitted. “Bet you could do a great impression of him without even trying,” Spike reasoned. Thorax considered it for a second as he continued to play the game. As the boss fight wasn’t going well anyway, he decided to give it a go. “I’ve been looking for you!” he said aloud, repeating lines they had heard the character speak, doing so with increasing volume and passion as he did so. “But that’s impossible! I can’t lose! Your actions will condemn us all! For the future of the world, I will destroy you! Take this! How about this? IT’S NO USE!” This got Spike howling with laughter, finding the similarity uncanny. It got Thorax caught in the middle of chuckling and lapping at the infectious emotion hanging in the air at the same time, to the point that he forgot to pay attention to what he was doing in the game, resulting in the game over he was trying to avoid. “Oops, sorry!” Spike apologized, trying to stifle his laughter. “Nah, it’s okay, I wasn’t doing good anyway,” Thorax replied, shrugging it off and stepping aside to permit the dragon at the controls next. “I guess it’s your turn to have another go at it. Maybe you’ll have better luck.” Spike pulled out his stash of coins from his pockets and started to sift through them, only to quickly find all the coins he had left were denominations too big for the arcade machine to accept. “I would, but looks like I don’t have any quarter-bits left. You got any?” Thorax pulled out some his own coins from the pocket of his jacket, shifting through them with his magic. “No, looks like I’m out too,” he admitted. “All I’ve got is a half-bit or bigger…nothing the machine will accept, at least.” “Then I guess that was our last game for now, until we can go grab some more quarter-bits from our stash back at Fly’s,” Spike reasoned with a shrug. “Oh well, it’s probably for the better anyway. No need to waste all of our money on that one game.” He started for the arcade’s exit. “Well, while we’re here, I’m going to look to see if they’ve released that new edition of the Ogres and Oubliettes player guide yet. You wanna come with?” Thorax was looking at the clock. “Actually, while I’ve got the moment, I think I’m going to run to the store real quick. Since I still haven’t found the right sort of cheese for my tastes at Monterey’s shop yet, I thought I might try making my own equivalent of changeling cheese. I’ve been reading up on cheese making…it shouldn’t be too hard once I have the right materials.” Spike paused at the door that divided the arcade from the rest of the game shop. “…What are you going to use for the milk?” he asked hesitantly, knowing what sort of milk the cheese Thorax longed for required. “The same sort of milk ponies use, of course,” Thorax said, like it was no big deal, and indeed gave Spike an odd look for his hesitation to broach the subject. “It should do well enough as a substitute, and it’s not like I could get my hooves on any of the real milk that I would want to use anyway, right?” “I should hope not,” Spike muttered under his breath, but then turned to Thorax and grinned. “In that case I have no problem with it. Best of luck, then. Seeing it’ll be lunchtime soon, I’ll probably meet you back at the shop.” They gave their farewells and then parted ways. The walk to the store was unremarkable for Thorax, and he arrived there without event, finding the store only moderately busy given the hour. Levitating a shopping basket over to himself with his magic as he stepped through the doors, he pulled out a list of supplies he would need from his jacket pocket. “Let’s see,” he murmured to himself as he proceeded to navigate the store. “I’ll need milk, salt, thermophilic culture, liquid rennet, butter muslin, annatto, cheese wax…” he skimmed through the whole list, worrying slightly. “I hope I’ve got everything I need written down here…since I’m trying to recreate a cheese no pony would be familiar with, I suppose there will be a certain amount of guesswork involved here.” Regardless, he knew from his research that these supplies would at least get him started, so he shrugged. “Well, won’t know until we try, so…let’s start by getting the milk.” He proceeded to go about the store, gathering the items he would need and placing them in his basket. He had gotten about halfway and was busy consulting his list—not paying too close attention to what was ahead of him—to see what he needed to get next when he proceeded to turn into the next aisle and promptly collided with a unicorn mare heading the other way, busy consulting a shopping list of her own and also not paying close attention to where she was walking. Startled and dazed, the two stumbled backwards from each other, their respective shopping baskets tumbling to the floor and spilling their contents as their magical grips on them vanished. The mare staggered into the store shelving beside her and promptly had to scramble to make sure she didn’t knock anything off onto the floor. Thorax faced a similar problem as he likewise toppled into the shelves on the other side of the aisle, and in the process sent a fragile trio of jars filled with green olives plummeting towards the hard tile floor. Quickly, Thorax lit his horn again and grabbed all three jars with his magic, saving them from getting shattered just centimeters from striking the floor. “Ooh, nice reflexes!” the mare declared, impressed by Thorax’s use of magic as she proceeded to right herself. “Thanks,” Thorax said sheepishly as he returned the jars to their proper spots. “You’re okay, right?” the mare then cautiously asked. “I didn’t hurt you in that collision or anything?” Thorax felt physically unhurt, but despite that, he still checked himself over quickly to ensure the collision hadn’t created any holes in his disguise. “Yeah…yeah, I think I’m good.” He looked at the mare. “You?” “Equally unhurt,” the mare replied smugly, but then she promptly turned to their spilled baskets, stooping down worriedly to start picking up the mess. “Hopefully the same can be said about your groceries.” “Yours too,” Thorax said, joining her as the two began helping each other pick up their items off the floor. “Sorry about that by the way, I should’ve been paying more attention…” “No, no, it’s my fault, I wasn’t watching where I was going,” the mare assured as she placed the carton of milk Thorax had collected (thankfully unharmed in the tumble) back in his basket. “That’s no excuse, I still should be alert for precisely this very reason,” Thorax persisted as he handed the mare her fallen jar of peanut butter (also unscathed). “Hey, stop ruining my attempts to so modestly take the blame here,” the mare quipped with a grin as she handed Thorax his dropped carton of heavy cream. “Sorry,” Thorax apologized as he stopped to take stock of righted shopping basket, ensuring he had retrieved everything. He then glanced at the mare with a suggestion. “I guess we’d better just agree not to do it again.” “Sounds like a plan,” the mare agreed as she slipped a box of crackers back into her basket. She gave Thorax an approving grin. “Besides, I’d hate to make an enemy of a fellow magician such as yourself.” “Oh, you mean with my catching the jars?” Thorax asked, sheepishly pointing one of his disguised hooves back at the shelf they were displayed on. “That was nothing, really…I’m no magician.” “Well, to tell you a secret, I’m not that special of a magician either,” the mare said, leaning closer to whisper conspiratorially to Thorax. She gave him a sly smirk. “The trick is to hide it with the right presentation so to make it look like you are.” Thorax gave her a nonplussed look. “That’s sounds like it would require a lot of planning in advance…what I did with those jars was just dumb luck.” “Which brings us to tip number two,” the mare continued as she scooped up her basket in her magenta aura. She winked at him. “Always take credit for it anyway, even when it is just dumb luck.” The two shared a chuckle briefly before the mare began to scan the aisle floor again. “Anyway…where did that pesky shopping list of mine get off to?” “I think this must be it over here,” Thorax said, picking up a slip of paper off the tile floor with his magic and levitating it over to the mare. “Then what’s this?” the mare asked as she picked up another slip of paper lying face down near the shelves. “Is this one yours?” She started to turn it over in her magic so to read, but knowing it was written entirely in his native changeling language, Thorax quickly but gently took it from her magic before she could get the chance to. “Yeah, yeah it is, thank you,” he said quickly. “Well, at any rate,” the mare said with a grin and a shrug. “It’s been nice bumping into you…literally.” Thorax chuckled weakly. “Yeah, sorry again for that, miss.” “I thought we agreed we were just going to promise to not do it again?” “Oh yeah…uh…I promise to…always watch where I’m going now?” The mare laughed in good humor at Thorax’s hurried promise. “Right back ‘atcha,” she said, before walking around him and proceeding on her way. “Toodle-oo!” “Bye,” Thorax replied, and turned to depart himself. Cheered by the chance encounter, he resumed the task he was originally in the store for and consulted his shopping list, double checking with what was in his shopping basket to see what he had already gotten and needed to get still. It wasn’t long before he realized that he had two cartons of heavy cream in his basket when he only needed one, and distinctly recalled only grabbing one off the shelf earlier. Pulling out the second carton of cream, he saw it wasn’t even the same brand as the carton he knew he had selected, although it was a similar color. He realized it must have been the mare’s and gotten mixed up and put into Thorax’s basket by mistake after they had bumped into each other. He promptly turned around and backtracked to the spot where he had last seen the mare walking off only to find she was now nowhere in sight within that area of the store. Thorax searched around quickly to be sure, but he could not see her. She had either wandered off to some other part of the moderately-sized store, or had already left entirely. If she had though, Thorax worried she may have left without realizing she was missing the carton of cream she clearly had intended to buy, and if so, felt responsible. As such, because of this, even when Thorax resumed his own shopping after finding no sign of the mare, he still kept an eye out for her in case he managed to cross paths with her again, hoping he could still return the carton of cream to her before she left the store. As he finished with his own shopping and proceeding to the front of the store to checkout, he was beginning to lose hope he would find her. But at last, he finally spied the azure unicorn standing at the back of the line for one of the checkout lanes, realizing he was finding her just in time. “Hey!” he called as he galloped towards her. “You! Miss!” The mare turned, and blinked in surprise as Thorax hurried up to her. “Well!” she declared with a surprised grin, “If it isn’t Mister Jar Catcher!” “Thornton,” Thorax replied, offering her his alias name, before reaching into his shopping basket and pulling out the second carton of heavy cream. “Here, I think this is yours. It must have gotten mixed up and put into my basket by mistake earlier.” The mare took it in her magic and glanced into her own basket, eyebrows raised. “Well, what do you know,” she said, confirming she was indeed missing a carton of cream from its contents and proceeded to place the returned carton back where it belonged. “I thought I was missing something from my basket. Thanks.” “You’re welcome,” Thorax said with a nod, pleased he was able to complete this task as he joined her in line for the checkout. “I was looking all over the store for you, hoping I’d find you again so I could return it.” “Oh, you really didn’t need to do that,” the mare assured him with the wave of her hoof. “Not for something that really wasn’t that important at least. I only buy it because I like a little bit of cream with my oatmeal in the mornings after all. I could’ve easily just gotten another off the shelf.” “Well, I guess I saved you the trip back to do that,” Thorax reasoned simply. “I guess you did,” the mare conceded and put on a pleased expression. “That really was nice of you, actually…I certainly wouldn’t have done that if I was in your horseshoes, but I guess that goes to show what I personally need to improve upon.” She sighed to herself, but was quickly grinned again. “You know, just for doing all of that, I feel like I should make it up to you somehow...” “Oh no, no, no,” Thorax assured back, waving his hooves. “You don’t need to do that. Just knowing I helped out was reward enough.” The mare grinned, but relented. “If you insist,” she said. “Still, I don’t want to just let it go unacknowledged. You’re certainly a more humble pony than I am.” Thorax shrugged nonchalantly. “Everyone has that one thing that they’re good at,” he pointed out. He then tapped a hoof on the mare’s basket. “Speaking of, this must be your own shopping basket isn’t it?” “Yeah, I travel a bit, so it was just more practical to get one of my own that I could take in and out of all the stores I visit,” the mare replied, glancing down at the basket. “But what does that have to do with things ponies are good at?” “Well, I notice you seem to have an actually crafty illusion spell on it that makes it appear less filled than it actually is.” The mare’s eyes widened in surprise and her gaze bounced between her basket and Thorax repeatedly for a moment, flabbergasted. “Now how did you figure that out?” she asked, amused and impressed by the disguised changeling’s observational skills. “No pony has ever noticed that in the whole time I’ve had this thing!” Thorax allowed himself a smirk. “I have something of an interest and an eye for all types of illusion magic,” he explained simply. Obviously because he was a changeling, for whom illusions were second nature, but she wasn’t to know that. “Basically I just noticed the little discrepancies that give it away. You know, things like conflicting dimensions, weight, depth…” The mare tilted her head at him, one eyebrow raised as she continued to regard him in surprise. “I’m just stunned you even stopped to think about it,” she admitted. “It takes a trained eye to catch things like that.” Thorax shrugged. “I guess I have a talent at it then,” he admitted. “At any rate, I’ve always had an interest in illusions and their various applications since I was young.” He pointed again at the unicorn’s basket. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen a content illusion like that one be used in so casual a manner though, so that’s what stood out to me about it. It’s clever, really, so I’d hazard to guess that’s something you’re good at.” The mare laughed and regarded her basket again. “Well you got me,” she admitted, shaking the basket in her magic a little. “But I admit I use the spell so to kind of…cheat…at looking a little more humble than I actually am. It’s…a habit I probably should break.” She smirked as she glanced back up at Thorax. “It does make it easier to hide all the junk food I buy from the eyes of passing ponies though.” Thorax smirked back knowingly. “Got a bit of a sweet tooth, huh?” The mare nodded, turning to face the checkout stand they were gradually approaching as they continued to wait in line. “Among other things. It doesn’t help that I tend to get a bit snacky right before I perform.” Thorax’s eyebrows went up. “You’re a performer?” “Yup.” The mare then blinked and turned to face him, looking like she had an idea. “Actually…you said you like seeing illusion magic, right?” When Thorax nodded, she smirked. “You wanna see a whole show featuring nothing but?” So soon Thorax was racing back for Fly’s shop, needed groceries in tow, but with a few things extra than planned. Fly Leaf looked up from the inventory she was taking on the shop’s stock when Thorax all but burst into the shop, then watched with amusement as he then skidded to a stop so to politely close and latch the door behind him. “Well, somebody’s excited,” Fly noted aloud with a smirk. “Miss Fly, where’s Spike?” Thorax asked his employer eagerly, hurrying up to her. Fly pointed a hoof behind her at the batwing doors leading into the back. “Spark? In the kitchen getting lunch, I think,” she replied. “Why, what’s—?” “Thank you!” Thorax interrupted and hurried on for the kitchen without stopping to listen further. “Spike!” he called as he did so, flinging open the batwing doors. “Spike!” He found the dragon sitting at the kitchen table, putting the finishing touches on a tomato sandwich for his lunch, with a tall glass of orange juice sitting beside him. He looked blankly up at the disguised changeling when he sped into the room. “Hey,” he greeted. “What’s got you all riled up? Did you get the stuff you needed for your cheese making thing?” “Huh?” Thorax said, slowing briefly to glance back at the saddlebags on his back neatly packed with said items. “Oh! Yes, yes I did! But never mind that for now!” He idled up to the table until he was placed directly beside his dragon friend, still bubbling in excitement. “You’ll never guess what happened while I was at the store!” “Well, I can guess that whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t a bad thing to get you this excited,” Spike remarked, pulling back a little when Thorax leaned a little too close. “What’s going on?” “Okay, so while I was at the store, I met this mare, and we crashed into each other at one point, but I helped her recollect all her things and such and helped made sure she still had everything in time to leave, and so on, and…” “The point of all this being?” Spike asked, glancing eagerly at the sandwich he made. “I’ve got lunch waiting on this, bud.” “Right, right,” Thorax said, chuckling at himself slightly as he cut to the chase. “To repay the favor, she’s given me two free tickets to see her show she’s putting on tonight!” Empathizing this point, he loudly slapped the two tickets he had been given onto the tabletop beside Spike then eagerly turned back to his friend. “Can we go? Please, please, please, please?” “All right, all right, we can go!” Spike agreed, trying not to laugh at Thorax’s barely contained excitement. “It must be quite a show to get you this riled up for it.” He picked his glass of orange juice to drink from it. “But just what is this show and who is this pony that’s putting it on anyway?” “It’s a magic show,” Thorax explained, now pulling out a poster advertising it he had also been given and unrolled it for Spike to see, “Featuring spectacular feats of magic! She’s a magician see, calling herself the Great and Powerful Trixie.” He grinned at the poster, enjoying the bright colors and designs it used to promote the show. That is until Spike’s spit take got orange juice all over it.