It was fairly easy to peel the Alicorn from Blueblood. I was able to completely ignore the insinuations he made about the rumors of something between Luna and me, since I now had a pony I was actually spending time with. My blase reaction put the Prince off his stride, so when I pointed out that he hadn't put the Alicorn through a test flight since it was repaired, he was quite willing to let me take the risk for him.
Safe Guard had been mildly annoyed that I hadn't taken him with me to Ponyville, and mildly pleased that I'd kept up with his exercise schedule. Red was almost as eager as the Crusaders for me to dish on my Almost Very Special Somepony - and her, I was a lot more willing to talk to about it than with the fillies. For the first time in my life - either of my lives, come to think of it - I actually had something to talk about in a gossip session.
After both Safeguard and I searched through the Alicorn for anything suspicious, and neither of us found anything, we finished preparations for launch that evening, and headed out on a night flight, to arrive at Hoofington in the morning. I spent some of the evening puttering around with a small telescope, and an amateur astronomy guide. While Luna had told me some things about the night sky, and I assumed she believe them, that didn't necessarily mean they were true; though they did provide a good starting place to look into it. Despite the existence of telescopes, local astronomy was closer to the classical Greek model - the star-like lights which moved around, such as the ones that had lined up for Nightmare Moon's release, were just called 'moving stars'; there were at least a few constellations that were familiar, such as Orion; and everyone around me was completely convinced that the sun and moon revolved around the world. The annoying part was, they could very well be right. I wasn't expecting to solve the mysteries of the cosmos that night - but I was at least getting more familiar with the local equipment. And without any significant city-glow, I was getting to see the sorts of vistas I'd had to go camping in the backwoods back on Earth to get even close to.
"What's with the red light?", Red asked, as I was working out when a particular nebula would re-appear from behind the Alicorn's balloon.
Looking up, I smiled. "It doesn't interfere with night-vision as much as white light," I explained.
She settled down next to me, and poked one hoof at the telescope. "And what's all this business?"
"The bottom half helps stabilize a telescope - to keep it pointed in the same direction, even when the airship rocks or turns. This part here," I poked my hoof at another bit, "is an 'equatorial mount' - it's only useful for astronomy, not for looking at the ground. It helps line up the telescope with the way the stars turn overhead. Do you want to take a look?"
"Sure," she agreed, and bent her head to focus on the eyepiece. "Wait, were you looking at a big blur?"
"Whoops - sorry. My glasses were getting in the way, so I set the telescope's focus so I could see without them. Here, let me fix that." I put my glasses back on, looked through the eyepiece, and got things squared away. "There we go - try again."
"Wow - so what I was looking at before, that's how bad your vision is without your glasses?"
"'Fraid so."
"I think I'd be afraid to get off the ground, if my eyes were that bad - if I had glasses and they fell off, I'd be a sitting duck. Flying sitting duck. You know what I mean."
"It's not that bad - unless you were zooming at a zillion miles an hour, I guess."
"Still. So, what am I looking at?"
"One of the moving stars - sometimes it's the evening star, sometimes it's the morning star, depending on which side of the sun it's on that season."
"Mm."
"There's a joke running around the Canterlot astronomers - Celestia has the sun, and Luna has the moon, and if Twilight Sparkle ever turns into an alicorn, this is what she'll take control of." Red pulled herself from the telescope to look at me, and I shrugged. "Maybe it's funnier if you've met her."
"Mm." She looked away, over the railing; the low, red light making both her white coat and red mane look almost the same color. "You're good at keeping secrets, right?"
"You haven't heard me spill any, have you?"
"... I suppose that's close enough. I think I've figured out who set off that explosion in the staterooms." We'd stopped calling them Blueblood's rooms, since he wasn't using them.
"And who have you focused in on?"
"Prince Blueblood."
"Oh, reeeally, now? That would be... fascinating, if true. What brought you to this conclusion?"
"A few things. Before, when you were, um, after drinking the love potion..."
"I believe the technical term for my state of mind then is 'twitterpated'."
"Okay. So, while you were twitterpated with me, and I was, well, dealing with that, Blueblood tried to get into your luggage, and I think he did open some of it."
"Remind me to invent better locks. But go on."
"And he knew about the medicine you invented, and later on he saw you head out and come back with all those... animals for the dragon..."
"Ah, I think I see where you're going - that he wanted that weapon for himself?"
"Something like that."
"Hm... well, one of the problems with trying to take shortcuts to knowledge, is that if you don't understand the underlying principles, then you could end up in a world of hurt. ... If he was the culprit, then he's lucky that all he lost was some furniture, and not some essential body parts."
"What will you do?"
"Right now? Nothing. In the morning, send a message back to The Dairy to have someone try to see if Blueblood has a secret lab or something like that somewhere. And whether or not one's found, keep your theory in mind whenever I'm dealing with him."
"I thought you might say something like that." She shifted position, and turned my shoulder into a pillow. I raised a brow - we'd been kind of careful to avoid anything resembling a possible romantic gesture towards each other, since my temporary twitterpating. But if she felt comfortable enough around me now to relax - well, I wasn't going to complain. "Always got two plans ready, and three tricks up your sleeve."
"That's hardly accurate," I said. "Those are only the plans and tricks I've let you see." That got a giggle from her.
After a companionable silence, I spoke up, "You should probably get some sleep - somebody should be up to tell Safe Guard that I'm not going to be joining him for exercise at dawn."
"Mm-hm." She snuggled up a bit. I - carefully avoided shrugging, but there seemed no harm in letting her stay on deck with me, and I'd even be able to get to sleep myself with her next to me... and so the eve passed, with the gentle rocking of the airship, the creaking of the rigging, an acquaintance-and-employee-turning-friend dozing beside me, and the stars in my eyes.
The next morning, Safe Guard armored up, I suited up, and Red fluffed up. While she could just glide to the ground, Safe and I had to be lowered down. He was able to use his magic to stabilize himself, but I pretty much had to dangle in the breeze, trying not to think about what a good idea it would have been to invent parachutes already.
Safe was our ticket to the local Guard outpost, where we interviewed the white pegasus who had directly encountered our persons-of-interest. The official report was that two days ago, a snake-like creature had been hang-gliding, carrying a pony; the hang-glider had collapsed, dropping them in a local lake; and the guard had escorted them to the local hospital. That pony, one Violet Melody, and several others, had recently been abducted by diamond dogs; hearsay implied that the remaining ponies had escaped and were expected to arrive, or be found, shortly.
The hospital's Doctor Morphine (What sort of name was that for a colt, I wondered) seemed to be big on doctor-patient confidentiality, but Safe's status as a Royal Guard and my Inspector's badge managed to pry from him that Violet's injury had been at least several days old by the time he treated it, and that she'd been discharged to return home. Her file had been forwarded to a city called Coltogne - which, I was told, was famed for its perfumes. I managed to avoid face-hoofing.
Checking the local transportation stations soon revealed that, yes, a 'green and white slithery thing' had purchased a ticket for Coltogne - and maybe a pony had bought a ticket for the same place at the same time, who knew?
And so we got ourselves hauled up to the Alicorn, to follow the trail to Coltogne - depending on wind and weather, we'd likely arrive in late afternoon, or early evening.
Coltogne's city hall had a directory, in which there was a single 'Violet Melody' listed, so the three of us made our way to the indicated address.
I knocked on the door, which was soon answered by an earth-pony mare, with a near-white coat and a violet mane. "Miss Violet Melody?" I inquired. At her hesitant nod, I pulled my badge-holder from my dark suit, and held it up to her. "I'm Missy, an Inspector, and this is Safe Guard of the Royal Guard, and this is Red Pepper, my assistant. I'm given to understand that you were recently abducted by diamond dogs?" She nodded again, so I said, "I'm hoping that I can ask you a few questions about that incident - is now a good time?"
She nodded a third time, and led us to a back room with a large window facing the evening sun, and waved us to seats. As Red took down notes, Safe and I asked her to describe what had happened, and when she brought up her serpentine rescuer, we asked leading questions about him. While she was talking about how he'd made some shackles fall apart, in walked - er, slithered - the very subject of our discussion.
He was built a little like a centaur - from the waist down, he had a long, bright green snaky body, but from the waist up was more of a whitish color, and fairly humanoid, though his face had a definite reptilian cast to it. He wore a sort of kilt - which I wasn't sure how he kept up - and a tunic. He called out, “Hey Violet, who are your friends?”
She answered, “Hey Marty, these are someponys... err, some folks who are new to town, and they were curious about our strangest new resident, no offense.”
“None taken, I’m decidedly strange compared to most folks around here.”
I interrupted the light banter with, “Hello, Mister … Stewart was it? I am called Missy, and I was hoping that you could answer some questions.”
He looked at me - a cow in a suit - and looked rather unhappy. I supposed that I did rather resemble an Equestrian version of an MIB. His expression flattened out, and he said, “What’s your business here, and why are you packing heat?
I was somewhat curious about the 'packing heat' phrase - while I was wearing my gun Chekov, it was holstered inside my suit. I made a guess that my pepper-spray was leaking, and that Marty had a nose sensitive enough to pick it up. I responded, “To answer your second question: it’s a dangerous world out there. Some stallions already tried to rape me once, and I have no intention of allowing anything of the sort to happen again.”
“It is indeed. I don’t blame you for carrying a little heat. I would too, if I were in your situation. Your statement implies that they failed. What happened to them?”
I grimaced at the recollection. “They lost their stallionhoods, their inheritances, their titles, and their good names.”
“They got off lightly. Had I been around, they would have lost their lives.” The three ponies in the room all tensed up at that statement, presumably at the fact that he was quite willing to kill. I was unhappy as well - when a functioning justice system is available, taking the law into your own hands is a recipe for all sorts of disaster.
I tried to steer the conversation onto something less traumatizing. “Going back to your question: My business is to look into ways to improve Equestria, such as by locating threats and figuring out ways to deal with them... such as slave-raids by diamond-dogs, and individuals who are able to deal with large numbers of such raiders without any help.” I had a thought on how to keep things even calmer, so added, “Safe Guard, Red, why don’t you go talk with Violet, while I talk with Mister Stewart here?”
Once we'd split up, I took another look up and down at Marty, and said, “I’m afraid that I don’t believe I’ve seen anyone of your species before. I am guessing, like most sentient reptiles, you are one of the groups descending from dragons, rather than alicorns or cynogriffons?”
“I have absolutely no idea. I’m the first of my kind I’ve ever seen. Me being related to dragons? Completely possible. I doubt I’m related to an alicorn, and what is a cynogriffon?"
“They resemble wolves with wings, and seem to have gone extinct after creating the more well-known griffons, and the more canine races such as the Diamond Dogs.”
“That makes no sense taxonomically. Winged creatures don’t devolve into true bipeds, at least in my experience.”
I muttered, “Guess he’s never seen Spike.” In a normal tone: “I’m not a true expert on biology - I’m just going by what the specialists who’ve studied such things have said.”
“That makes sense.”
I tried to recover my science-cred. “Of course, with magic involved, then the ‘natural selection’ part of ‘evolution by natural selection’ can take some otherwise completely implausible turns. But perhaps we are straying from the main point...”
“Ah magic, truly the wonder explanation for what we don’t understand. Magic really makes science its plaything, but yes, we are straying from the point.” He took a sip of his tea.
I thought, 'Just give me a bit of time, and I’ll get science to make magic sit up, roll over, and beg...'
After some light conversation, I bit the bullet and asked what I really wanted to know. “Do you know anything about... The Game?”
He answered, “What game?"
I sighed. “... Nevermind.”
We talked further, as he gave his side of the slave-rescue thing, I tried to figure out whether he posed any sort of threat to Equestria, and I tried not to give away anything that would hint that I hadn't been born a female bovine.
Eventually, I got enough of a feel for him, or at least for what he wanted to present of himself, to ask, “Mister Stewart - was your rescue of Violet and the other ponies a mere whim of the moment, or do you bear a particular dislike for slavers?”
“Ma’am, my feelings on slavers borders between hatred and psychopathic rage. I would have done what I did to those slavers without a second thought where the situations reversed, or an inverse of said situation.”
Pleased, I continued, “There is a, I’ll call it a network, of people working to improve Equestria from the inside. Finding ways to deal with enslavement raids and attacks is a particular concern. Assistance of several sorts would be valuable - anything from your passing on word of a situation which could be dealt with by other members, to passing word to you of situations in your own field, to, depending on a lot of specifics, more material support. Even if you wish to avoid making any specific promises, it would cost the network nearly nothing to send you a note of something happening in your area - giving you the option of doing, or not doing, whatever you see fit.”
“I would be more than happy to help. I don’t know how much field work I could do, but if you need muscle I’m more than capable.”
“Muscle would be helpful. One of the emphases of this network is in rapid reaction - in learning what’s going on in Equestria as soon as possible, and if possible or necessary, dealing with it before the Royal Guard has pulled their armor on... but given the peaceful nature of most ponies, there are many more who are willing to just look and talk rather than act.”
Marty shrugged. “Trust me, I am very willing to act. I could in fact facilitate the moving of information and material very quickly. I can make a gateway that allows for instantaneous transportation, and can enter the world of dreams to send out information.”
I perked up. “I have a particular interest in improving communications and transportation. Would it be possible for me to convince you to allow these abilities to be studied more closely, to see if they can be applied more generally?”
“As far as I can tell, I am the only one on this planet who can create gateways and travel the world of dreams both. Princess Luna, with her status as ruler of the night, might be able to travel the dreamworld as well, but I can’t see asking a princess to be a messenger boy to end well. As for application, assuming you are willing to risk someone being cut in two, I can travel instantaneously to any point on the map. Well, instantaneously assuming I know my current area well. I can skim to that same point, but it’s not as quick or as efficient.”
“Hrm. I will... keep the limitations of your ‘gateways’ in mind - perhaps they might be better suited for sending non-living resources and materiel to a site, so that whoever is dealing with an incident can travel light and fast.”
Marty looked a little confused. “Why would it... Oh, you think that the gateway might cut someone who would go through it in two. When I make a gateway, I more or less poke a small hole in the fabric of space-time that allows me to travel instantaneously between two points. The space occupied by the hole at those two points will cut anything that is currently there. Well, almost anything. It won’t cut heartstone, but that’s the only thing it won’t cut. Sending material and personnel through after the gateway is woven is completely safe, assuming I don’t stop channeling the gateway.”
“So a gateway is essentially a magical wormhole?”
“Yes, that sums it up perfectly.”
“Is your control precise enough to open the other end at a specific location, or, say, ten feet above ground level, to avoid any such unfortunate accidents?”
“That is a possibility, and I can also create a chiming sound to warn of imminent opening of a gateway. If you have people on the ground who know what the random chime means, I won’t need to do a three-meter drop.”
I took a few seconds to consider what he'd said so far, then said, “I will also admit that after having thought on it for a few moments, I have a mild concern about your dream... thing. I do not wish to offer you any offense, but you do not, yet, have the clearance for some of the information known by various members of the network - information that could cost lives if spread. Is there some way you could demonstrate what the limitations of this oneiric mental connection might be?”
“I can tell you, and I can visit your dreams tonight if you so desire.”
“Tell me what you can do, and then I’ll decide on whether or not I want you to visit my dreams.”
“Alright, if I so desire, I can send my consciousness or my body into the world of dreams, or what some cultures call Tel’aran’rhiod. While in this world when sleeping, your conscious willpower decides a lot of things about you; clothing, or a lack thereof, what you look like, all sorts of things like that. Most people accidentally visit Tel’aran’rhiod at some point in their dreams throughout their lives. People like me, who consciously visit Tel’aran’rhiod, can affect a lot of different things. I could go to a forbidden section of a library and read classified knowledge, read through the Princesses’ paperwork, or figure out what I’d look like if I was pink.” He looked amused at the ponies' reactions to that last phrase. “I can also skim the surface of someone’s dreams who doesn’t ward them, and see what they are dreaming about. If they have knowledge of dreams, they might note my presence, but most would not. I can also drag people into Tel’aran’rhiod, but I’d rather not, as the world of dreams is a dangerous place.”
“Dangerous? How?”
“In a normal dream, you get a cut on your hand, you wake up and might remember the cut from the dream and the pain, but there is no physical evidence that it happened. Do that in the world of dreams, and you’ll wake up with the cut, and all the bleeding that might have occurred with it. Same with dieing, you die in Tel’aran’rhiod, and you die for real.”
“You mention ‘warding’ - is that something anyone can do?”
“I’m not a unicorn, so I can’t say whether or not they could ward their dreams, but close proximity to me while sleeping does transfer the protection of my own wards. I’ve known of powerful unicorns in the past, so it might be possible by unicorns that know a specific spell or have a specific talent for dreams.”
We continued talking for a bit, but that covered the most significant points. Even when the ponies rejoined us and described their own conversation, I was still trying to determine how I could figure out how truthful Marty was being, whether he had any abilities at all, and how those abilities would affect my various plans. I'd already taken into account that some unicorns could teleport short distances - but Marty was describing an alternate method for much longer-distance travel... and, even if it turned out not to be useful logistically, his description of slicing things at the far side of the gate as it opened offered some interesting tactical options. Or, if he ever decided he didn't like me and what I was doing, some rather frightening ones. And while I may not have ever heard the word "Tel’aran’rhiod" before - but if he was telling the truth about even a part of what he could do, it was an absolute security nightmare. Once I got back to Canterlot, I was going to have to open a whole new project to research anything the ponies knew about dream-warding.
At this point, it was starting to get late, so I borrowed Red's notepad long enough to write down some initial contact procedures, and tore the page out to hand it to Marty. We profusely thanked Violet for her cooperation, and made our farewells.
That night, I had an odd dream - possibly spurred by the talk I’d had about other people visiting my dreams. A man came up to me, who looked like a less snaky version of Marty, asked "What would you do-o-o-o, for a Klondike bar?", and looked at me expectantly.
I countered with “Where’s the beef?”
There was a quick flurry of “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”, “This is your brain on drugs”, “Just do it”, “Got milk?”, “Tastes great, less filling”, “Don’t leave home without it”, and a half-dozen other taglines from Earthly commercials.
Like I said, odd.
When I got back to Canterlot, I put everything I could think of into Marty Stu’s new file - and put a big gold star on it, just like the one on Griffin the Griffin’s file.
(Author’s Note: This chapter is a crossover with Keairan’s story, A Marty Stu invades the Multiverse.