I sat in the chair, gown draped over me, while Rainbow cut my mane.
“Well, at least I had a job to fall back on when the teaching thing fell through,” she remarked.
“How did you get into hairstyling, anyway?” I asked.
“Well, after being known as the fastest pegasus in Equestria, the windblown look got really popular. That, combined with me being pretty decent at sculpting clouds kind of turned into sculpting manes.” She shrugged. “Being fast is great, but having a job pays the bills.”
“How’s Skyla?” I asked.
“She’s doing great.” I saw Rainbow smiling in the mirror as she worked on my head.
Holy shit. This universe reset had really changed things.
“Did you know about the deal I made with Twilight that ended up with me running the school?” I said.
“You said something about it.”
“Well, I screwed it up and now she’ll know I’m actually her friend and she’ll come back to Ponyville.”
“Well, you have other Twilight.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the same. She’s off doing superhero stuff and not learning friendship like Twilight probably would have wanted.”
Rainbow paused. “Superhero stuff?”
“Tough to explain, but take my word for it.”
“No, that’s not it, look!”
I glanced out the window. Sure enough, there was Twilight in a superhero costume running somewhere over the rooftops. And with her was…
I blinked. Yep, I saw it correctly. There was Yona the yak in costume with her. I mean, okay, it was across the street and she was masked, but I knew it was her. A young female yak shows up in town on the same week as a young female yak superhero? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, folks. Even though I am one.
As I was distracted, Rainbow made a few more snips. “There, you’re finished.”
I glanced in the mirror. “Thanks, it actually looks good.”
“What’s with all the backhoofed compliments lately?” she said.
“Um, sorry, the last Rainbow Dash I knew was a real bitch.”
“What do you mean ‘the last one?’”
“Don’t worry about it, different universe. Well, same universe, different timeline. I guess.”
I paid her and left the salon.
With the school shut down, I suddenly had a lot of free time. Twilight apparently hadn’t learned yet that the school had closed. She had Spike with her, so she could mail me easily enough, but to get a message back to her I had to send it through snail mail. Given the quality of the local mailponies, I’m sure you can imagine how well it went trying to get them to deliver to a country that didn’t exist anymore in the middle of a barren wasteland.
I headed over to Rarity’s. As I got closer, I began to hear music. Outside the boutique, I could clearly tell someone was shredding a guitar. Be still my heart.
I walked in, getting blasted by extra noise as the door opened. Rarity was in her apparently new-usual outfit, the vest, the spikes, the hair. She stopped playing when she saw me. “Hello Valiant, what brings you here today?”
“Well, now that I’ve heard you play, I guess we should get a band together. Why didn’t you tell me you’re awesome at the guitar?” I really could have used her for my cover band while we were cleaning up dead celebrities from Gabby’s rampage.
“It never came up in conversation before, I suppose,” said Rarity. “Who else would be in this band?”
“I don’t know if I could get Trixie. She’s about to have her hands full with a kid. Guinness would probably be in.”
“Well, clearly I would be the lead singer,” said Rarity.
I nodded.
“And, no offense, but I think having myself as a frontmare would really boost the image of the band.”
Again, I nodded. “But-”
“But we can’t have two guitars and Guinness playing his bass,” she finished for me.
“I guess I could learn how to play the drums,” I said. “Trixie could probably teach me.”
“Excellent.” She put a hoof to her chin. “We’ll need a band name.”
“I’ll work on it.”
The door opened and Maud came in. She looked exactly the same as she had before and I couldn’t imagine how the universe changing could have changed her.
“I found these common diamonds,” Maud said in her voice, showing a hoofful of stones to Rarity.
“Lovely, dear. I have a dress in mind that could really use these” Rarity gave Maud a small box gift wrapped. “And I got this for you.”
“Should I open it?”
“Go ahead, darling.”
Maud opened the box to reveal several dull grey rocks. “Wow.”
Holy shit, they must have been some really impressive rocks.
“Thank you so much,” said Maud. “I’ve rarely seen specimens so interesting.”
She took a step forward and kissed Rarity on the lips.
Maud turned around. “Good to see you, Valiant.” She walked out of the store.
Rarity looked at me. “Oh dear, your nose!”
“It’s nothing,” I said, wiping blood away with my fetlock. “What’s the deal with you and Maud?”
“She’s only interested in me for my rocks, but I accept that.” Rarity paused thoughtfully. “I suppose being a public lesbian could bring more male interest to the band.”
Rarity, always thinking of the big picture..
I left the boutique and headed for my place. I’d only made it a few steps before a sudden chill went up my spine and I could feel the hair on my neck involuntarily lifting.
Damn, it must have been a really good haircut.
Either that, or it was a feeling of impending doom. I turned around slowly.
Cheerilee stood there, glaring not just daggers but entire spears and pikes at me. “I heard what you did to that school.”
“First of all, I was the principal, so it’s not like I did anything at all,” I said. “Second of all, the curriculum was written by Twilight. Third, the EEA is racist.”
Cheerilee paused for a long moment. “You’re wrong, I didn’t know that, and you’re correct.”
“Ssssso we cool?”
She glared at me, flaming gundam swords this time.
“I mean, does the school need to be accredited?” I said. “What are they going to do if we just run an unlicensed pirate school?”
“The EEA has more power than the princesses,” Cheerilee reminded me.
“I’ve killed gods. I don’t care.”
“No you haven’t.”
“I mean, not technically, but I used to be a god, so it’s like my statement is literal word of god and therefore unflappable.”
“Those words don’t mean what you think they mean,” she said.
“I mean, I’ve got a lot of good words,” I said. “I’ve written a history book. Believe me, I didn’t expect to be a teacher, but I kind of resigned myself to it after a little while. It wasn’t my intention to get it shut down.”
“Just your incompetence?”
“That’s a strong word.”
“You didn’t deny it.”
I shook my head. “Look, you want the school open? Then please help.”
She considered it. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll decide depending on the quality of your history book. What did you write about?”
“Well, I started out with the big wang theory-”
Cheerilee did not want to help.
I went back to the library. Twilight was there. The new one. She looked up as I came in. “This scroll arrived for you.”
I glanced at it. It was sealed with the royal crest. Opening it, I saw that Princess Celestia wanted to know what I had done to get six simultaneous declarations of war placed on Equestria.
I thought about my responses. Maybe on behalf of the United States I could make it seven.
Wait, I was missing the point there.
I read back through the letter. Apparently the students had all liked the school so much before it was shut down that they’d run away from home and their grief-stricken parents had held Equestria responsible. Well, except for Yona the yak, but I assumed that being a yak she’d sent the declaration of war herself.
“Bad news?” Twilight asked.
“Yeah, I think you could say that. Now we have to put together a rescue mission in addition to finding a way to get the school running again.”
I tapped my earpiece. “Tin Mare, go through the saved satellite feeds since the school closed down and figure out where all the kids went. I’m looking for stragglers that might have gotten lost.”
“Is this thing on?” a voice screeched in my ear.
I smacked the earpiece out in pain and it fell on the floor. “What the hell?”
“LIBB interfered with the channel,” said Tin Mare’s voice from the nearby radio. I’ve squelched her.”
“I really need to get Libby fixed,” I said.
“What’s this about fixing someone?” asked Sir Win, opening the door. He came into the library on a unicycle.
“My drone is whacked out,” I said. “Also, what’s this?”
“The bicycle was a little too unwieldy for inside buildings,” he explained, balancing deftly in the middle of the floor.
“I’m not sure why you need to have a unicycle in buildings.”
“Nopony has a policy against it. I find it helps reduce the feelings of impending doom among others,” he said. “It’s a compromise, because I’m not going to dress up in clown makeup. I have my standards.”
Doom unicycle aside, that was an excellent reason. Ponies weren’t afraid of clowns, the freaks.
“Doom Unicycle would make a pretty good band name, come to think of it.” Which reminded me, I needed to come up with a band name.
Sir Win agreed. He picked out a book and I checked it out for him. After he left, I turned to find Twilight pondering something with her hoof on her chin. “I was thinking about a superhero name.”
Great, another thing I needed to name. This, on top of Trixie and Daring’s kid on the way.
I walked over to my earpiece and put it back in. After a few minutes, Tin Mare called me. She had found the missing students.
“All right, let’s go,” I said. Twilight followed me out. I paused to flip the library sign to closed.
Tin Mare flew us out to the Everfree Forest, to the old castle of the pony sisters. When we arrived, the hippogriff was freaking out about stairs. Apparently in her experience of having either wings or fins, she’d never really had a problem moving three dimensionally. I guess it spoke well of Twilight’s school design if we were so handicap accessible that there weren’t any stairs there, either.
I was also kind of unclear about the wings/fins thing. I guess hippogriffs were seaponies, or vice versa? This whole universe changeup thing had really done a number on my understanding of the world.
“You kids shouldn’t be out here alone,” I said as we flew back. “These woods are dangerous.”
“I mean, we got a day of fun off school,” said Gallus the griffon.
“And a ride in this sweet ride!” added Silverstream the hippogriff.
Well, I guess they weren’t wrong.
I told Tin Mare to head for Canterlot.
“What’s this, Valiant?” Celestia asked as Tin Mare hovered outside her bedroom window.
“War’s off, you owe me,” I shouted over Tin Mare’s engines. I threw the six kids off the tailgate and through the open window.
“But what about school?” asked Ocellus, the young changeling, putting her hooves on the windowsill.
“I’ll figure it out.”
I made a phone call. It rang five or six times before a shaky voice said, “Hello?”
“This is Rhumba Rhymes, am I speaking to Merry May?”
“Yes. What...what is this thing?”
“It’s our dance-a-ma-phone, mailed to you free with every dance school enrollment. I’m calling to tell you your application to the Equestria School of Dance has been approved.”
“Oh, that’s great!” I’d rarely heard such enthusiasm from Merry May.
“All right, we can begin now. Bring the phone and meet us in front of the school by the waterfall in Ponyville.”
I headed for the school myself and set up a high table in front of the door, draping a long tablecloth over it that reached the ground. I went underneath the table, hidden from view.
Based on the directions on the EAA business card, I drew a pentagram and sacrificed a first edition ethics textbook to summon Chancellor Neighsay.
I’m kidding. I used a comic book, just to see if it would work. It did, and he was pissed. He was also kind of pissed about being under a table with me, but I figured he would be pissed to see me again anyway, so it didn’t matter.
I asked him to reopen the school.
“No,” he said.
“What do I have to do?”
“You are unfit to be a teacher, and I will never allow such a multispecies friendship school to exist.”
I sidled closer to him. “What if we open our own school, with our own rules?”
“You can’t. There are no other rules.”
I could write to Twilight to ask for help and I’m sure she would would come back with a rulebook of her own for the new school format that would totally be bigger than Neighsay’s rulebook and win the verbosity dick measuring contest. But I had other dick measuring contests in mind.
“But what if we did make our own school with our own rules?
“I would not permit it to be EEA accredited.”
“So we’ll have a pirate school.”
“That would not be allowed!”
I leaned forward. “What are you going to do about it?”
He glared at me. “I will take every measure available to the Equestrian Education Association.”
“Um, hello?” I heard a voice call. Merry May had arrived.
I got on the phone. “Take a couple of steps forward, forehooves up on the table.”
“Okay...”
She did so, and her gigantic hermaphrodite equipment poked through the folded tablecloth and under the table. Neighsay’s eyes bugged out.
“Open the school,” I said to him quietly.
“No.”
Into the phone, I said, “We’re going to do a little admissions test. Wiggle your hips to the right.”
Slap. It knocked Neighsay’s head to the side so hard I heard his neck pop.
“Open the school,” I said.
“No!”
To Merry May: “Wiggle your hips left.”
Slap.
“Open the school.”
“N...no!”
“Okay, now work your hips back and for-”
Neighsay burst out from under the table, screaming and running. “You haven’t heard the last from the EEA!”
“Uh...okay,” Merry said. “I’ll, uh, wait for your call.”
When she was gone, I got out from under the table and headed back to my place to get hammered.
I needed it.
The next morning I got up, fighting a hangover. I weaved my way down to the school to find it burned to the ground.
Well shit, there went my efforts from the previous day. I’d gotten blackout drunk for nothing.
I mean, I usually did, but I thought yesterday was special.
I looked at the ashes. I didn’t even need Tin Mare to play back the overhead footage to know this was no accident.
Fine. We’d have a pirate school, then.
But ships could burn, too.
Fine. We’d have a pirate school submarine, then.
Good thing I knew how to build submarines. I got Tin Mare started on lifting pieces into place for the pressure hull. I would still need to do the delicate work inside, but until then I had a little time to kill.
So I went to have a drink at the pub.
I invited Rarity and she, Guiness, and I had a little brainstorming session about the band.
“I’m not sure I want to be in a punk band,” said Guinness.
“Come on, with Rarity leading, no one will even notice you,” I said.
He considered it, and shrugged.
“So what shall we call ourselves?” said Rarity.
“If we’re going to go full-on punk, we should be headline-grabbing offensive. What’s the worst thing you can think of?”
We were all silent for a moment.
“This is hard,” I said.
I instinctively had a look around to see if Pinkie would pick up the joke, but she wasn’t there.
“Let’s go ask Pinkie,” I said.
The others nodded agreeably.
We found her at Sugarcube Corner. She was busy making cakes, but took the time to talk to us over her shoulder.
“Oh, a band name, huh? That’s a toughie.”
“Oh, and a submarine name,” I said. “While we’re at it.”
“Huh, a submarine?” said Pinkie. “Das boot. Booty. Booty McBootface.”
“Okay,” I said, “Das Booty could be worse. What about the band?”
“‘In Need of Beaning’ is the most disgusting, uncomfortable thing I can think of,” she said.
“What?” I asked, but Guinness winced.
“What?” I said, turning to him.
“It’s…” He shook his head. “If you don’t know what it is, you’re lucky.”
“Okay,” I said. “Offensive and an inside joke. I can live with that.”
“I’ll make the naming celebration cakes!” said Pinkie.
I went to check on the submarine. It was quite a ways because we had to build it at the ocean, see.
Tin Mare had gotten the big pieces into place, so I got liquored up and spent all night welding. Real party animal.
I figured whatever didn’t get finished could be a student project later. Of course, they were going to have to clean up the slag from where I fell asleep with the welder still sparking.
I came awake in the morning with a hangover. I glanced out the hatch to see that a stage had been set up and the outside of the sub had been hung with streamers and bunting. It must have been Pinkie.
That was about all the sunlight my eyes could stand after being inside the sub all night and also being hungover. I put on my tinted welding helmet and popped back up.
A crowd had begun to gather. I saw Pinkie step up to the microphone on stage. “Hey everypony! It’s a super special event today! We’re going to commission a new submarine, In Need of Beaning, and here to celebrate the occasion with their inaugural performance is Equestria’s hottest new band Das Booty!”
My drunken mind took a second to process that. Wait, no…
I paused to think about it, though, and then shrugged. Whatever.