//------------------------------// // Chapter 13 // Story: Down With the Pastryarchy // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// The bathroom tiles felt remarkably cool against her hot, almost feverish skin, and Twilight shivered a bit as she spread out over the floor. So much had happened in such a short span of time. If Twilight had a bit more presence of mind, she might have realised that she was experiencing time again and felt better about it, but this fact escaped her notice. The ennui, the crushing, crippling sense of boredom that was the bane of her existence had returned, only now, she was somewhat more aware of the fact that it wasn’t boredom at all—but it sure felt that way. Tribalism—actual honest-to-alicorns tribalism—had just taken place and she had failed to notice right up to the point where it was impossible to ignore. She, Twilight Sparkle, with her fine mind, had been stupid and utterly oblivious; at least, it sure felt that way. Even worse, it felt as though she had let her friends down. At a moment when she should have been protecting them, standing up for them, she hadn’t even known that there was trouble. Even worse, she had fled the scene and this complicated things in the most horrendous way. Now, she had to work through hundreds of imagined scenarios in her head before she could face her friends again, and doing so would be torture. Tears flowed, leaving her cheeks moistened and the tiles damp. As bad as everything was, she wasn’t exactly crying or sobbing—which was terrible. The slow leak of tears did nothing, it brought no satisfaction, no catharsis, and she desperately needed some means of release. But the sobs, no matter how much she desired them, would not come. She felt too pathetic, too weary to sob, and so everything remained bottled up inside, trapped by some dreadful mental cork that she could not pop. When her barrel began to hitch in an unbearable way, and the sobs would not come, she wished that Spike was with her. Rolling over onto her back, her legs all askew, she thought of Spike, she thought of C.H.O.M.P., and she wondered if she was oblivious to some terrible suffering that Spike endured as a dragon living in pony society. The thought was almost too much to bear. Why did Spike need a support group? Was she not supporting him? It was possible. She was that oblivious and there was undeniable proof. Suddenly, there was a paper pony looking down at her, and Twilight blinked a few times, startled to see herself. What did one say to one’s self during a moment like this? She had shown up unannounced, unwanted, and Twilight was in no mood to talk to herself. Yet here she was, facing herself down, a pony with two distinct parts. Twilight sniffled and tried to make her barrel stop hitching, all while blinking up at herself. “I sent you away. You’re the sum of my experiences when I wasn’t me, but somepony else. In this body, I want my experiences to be my own. There are things I want to feel and have happen on my own. As me. Go away!” The paper pony’s face crinkled and the rustle-crackle of stiff, dry paper filled the bathroom. Paper wings with paper feathers twitched against hard paper sides. The faint hint of ink could be seen flowing through a paper horn and two eyes made of bright, glossy black ink blinked down at Twilight on the floor. “But I have information… I have knowledge that is relevant to the situation and I—” “It doesn’t matter,” Twilight said to herself, “it’s not my knowledge. It’s not my wisdom. That’s why you are you and I am me. We’re not the same pony, you and I. Now go away!” “Thousands of years of knowledge, the sum of which is immeasurable—” “Not my knowledge.” Twilight cut herself off for a moment and considered. “Well, maybe it is, I was there after all, but this body wasn’t. Now go away! We spent thousands of years together, you and I, and now I want some time to be me again! Just me! Not us, not you, not Eternity, just me! Little confused Twilight who is still trying to figure out this awful, terrible, horrible, no-good world!” “Twilight, you can’t just trim off thousands of years of experience, knowledge, and wisdom. You need to learn to accept me—” “No!” Twilight shrieked while her body spasmed. “You’re a book I haven’t read yet! I haven’t looked ahead! As a book, you will remain closed! If I let too much of you into my head, I’ll never be normal again! Now go away and leave me alone!” With the rustle of parchment, the paper pony vanished, leaving flesh and blood Twilight to wallow in her misery. Twilight’s body seemed determined to burn up from within. She was hot all over, with an itchy prickle that was almost too much to bear. So hot was she in fact, that she had to keep rolling over the tile floor to find new cool spots, because if she lay in one spot for too long, the floor turned too warm for comfort. There were moments when she had tried to get in touch with her inner earth pony. All that time spent with Maud and learning how to tap into earth pony magic, how to reach deep into the earth and touch the fiery places—but that was magic. It was easier, in some ways, to try and explore magic, but there was some fundamental aspect of herself that she had neglected. She had learned how to tap into vast reserves of colossal strength—but other, more vital aspects were still unknown. As was often the case in times of trouble, Twilight thought of Discord. Once, long ago, when they weren’t quite friends yet, Discord had done terrible things. He had stolen her horn—not just her horn, but Rarity’s as well. From Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, he took their wings. But from Applejack and Pinkie Pie? Nothing was taken. Nothing within them was seen as threatening enough to take—and so it was with earth ponies at large. Overlooked and uninteresting. It was bad enough that Discord held this position—but far, far worse that Twilight operated under similar principles. Upon gaining wings, that was all that she had focused upon, all that she recognised, the visual, external change that had been done to her body. Her friend, Tarnish, was essentially an earth pony with a horn. To anypony looking at him, he was a freakishly tall, gangly, dark chocolate-brown unicorn—all neck and legs. But to anypony who studied magic, to anypony who understood the ebb and flow of magic itself, Tarnish was no unicorn, not even in the slightest. Alas, poor Tarnish was not well liked by his fellow unicorns and Twilight could not help but wonder if he would have spotted trouble in the diner. Of course he would, she determined, and then he would have said something devastating, because that was the sort of pony he was. Tarnish, like so many of her friends, no longer fit the behavioural patterns of the common equine. His experiences had turned him into something else entirely. He wasn’t alone. Moondancer too, shared this extreme transformation. In fact, most of Twilight’s inner circle had been altered to some degree, though not all to such extremes. Just as Twilight was getting into the groove of castigating herself, the bathroom door opened and Seville sauntered in. She resented him for his intrusion, but was also relieved to see him. Sprawled on the floor, her legs all askew, she did nothing to preserve her modesty. At this point, she couldn’t be bothered and wanted to feel as uncomfortable as possible, because she deserved it. “Nice to see your mother raised you right,” she grumbled and her words caused his ears to twitch. “Just barge in while a mare is in the bathroom, why don’t ya?” “Look, I got picked to come up here and look after you, and Pinkie Pie made me Pinkie Pie swear that I would let myself into the bathroom. She didn’t want me getting stuck on the other side of the door due to my noble intentions.” Twilight started to retort, but the words died on the tip of her tongue. Poor Seville had no choice but to face an awkward situation. Pinkie Pie had a way of pressuring others to do her bidding. What of Applejack? What was her part in this? What might she have said to Seville? She was sprawled out on the bathroom floor, wallowing in her own self-pity, and here he was, the noble reporter-errant come to check up on her. With no words to be said, Twilight whinnied and got one in return from Seville. He sat down beside her, close enough so that Twilight could feel the heat from his body. Squirming, she thought about wiggling away and was just about to do so when Seville grabbed her. There was a scramble as he tried to pull her closer and Twilight remembered to be as gentle as possible in her efforts to escape. Her halfhearted attempts to wriggle free only served to somehow make her seem even more pathetic and after a brief struggle, she gave up so Seville could hold her. After a few seconds, she realised the heat between them was not unpleasant. In fact, far from it. It was not the torturous experience she expected and she found herself settling against him, as awkward as it was. And it was awkward—make no mistake. The struggle to reach this point replayed in her head and she was all-too aware of the fact that parts of him had brushed up against her—troubling parts with implications that set her mind racing. For a brief moment, all Twilight could think about was Seville having cooties. As Seville began to stroke her neck, she shivered. Now, she felt cold; her damp, sweaty places felt chilly and clammy. Much to her own shock, she found that she wanted to rub those parts against him so she could feel his warmth. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, and her nostrils filled with his scent—a sensory experience that robbed her of willpower. An almost sleepy sensation overcame her, leaving her eyelids heavy, and pressing her hoof against his body, she allowed it to wander, touching him, feeling him with her frog. He wasn’t like Pinkie in the slightest. Lightly muscled and of lean build, Seville had both a hardness and a softness to him. The sound of his breathing was mesmerising and his scent—his scent was growing stronger. Feeling a hard ridge of flesh, her hoof paused and she pressed her frog against the lumpy-bumpy place. “There’s a scar,” she murmured to him, her lips every bit as thick and heavy as her eyelids. “I got on a train with Goose,” he replied while his own hooves began to wander. “I’ve bled for what I believe in.” “I have scars too…” For some unknown reason, this exchange was reassuring, it was comforting like nothing else. “All my friends have scars. Even Rarity. She uses makeup to hide them. Reaching out with her magic, she guided Seville’s hoof to a place just beneath her right wing where a raised crescent could be found and she felt him rubbing it. “I used to think our scars took away from us. Normal ponies, they stay safe in their cosy little towers—or houses for some… I guess. Horrific injuries are avoided. And normal ponies eschew those with scars because they are dangerous. When bad things happen, it changes a pony.” When her hoof wandered a bit more, she found other scars, other puckers of skin. Seville had endured much for the sake of friendship, and his scars were proof. He had even thrown himself in between Gosling and a would-be assassin—taking a blow that would have most certainly been fatal to a pegasus, but as an earth pony, Seville had survived. Durable creatures, earth ponies. Stocky, hardy little equines with stout hearts. For some reason, she thought of Maud. “My friends and I would go out on adventures… that seemed like so long ago… we would go out and find trouble… or trouble would find us…” Twilight breathed deep of Seville’s scent and enjoyed the sensation of lightheadedness that resulted. “We’d get beaten bloody… battered… swollen noses, black eyes, contusions, lacerations, and punctures. Rarity learned how to sew us back together and she was better at stitching than any surgeon or doctor I know. But we’d come home after an adventure and we… we were the dangerous ponies that others avoided. We had scars. We left the safety of our houses and ventured into the wilds.” “I’m a timid creature—” “Seville, how can you say that?” Twilight pulled away so she could look Seville in the eye. “You’ve been in actual wars. You’ve been in conflicts armed with nothing but a camera. You were there when the Grittish Isles were reclaimed. The Straits of Griffonstone… how can you say that you’re timid?” “Because I am, that’s why. It’s because I’ve been in those places that I appreciate home and never want to leave it. The world is dangerous and I’ve had bullets whizzing around me and things exploding and everything was on fire and airships were exploding and I was pretty sure the ship I was on was going to go sink too. It’s a long, long ways down to the ground when you’re that high up and there’s nowhere to run when the ship’s on fire.” Squeezing her eyes shut, she pulled Seville into an embrace, knowing that she had almost lost him before even having him. He was a bit smaller than she was, lighter, she was heavier and bulkier by far, but he was strong enough to support her. Now, it no longer mattered what might be touching between them, the awkwardness had lost its potency. For the first time, Twilight allowed it to happen without her mind running away with the implications. Slipping her foreleg around his neck, she found another scar, a place where a bullet had exited. Closing her eyes, she rubbed her cheek against the hard angle of his jaw while allowing her underside to come completely to rest against him. No more awkward friendship hugs where she left her entire lower half a respectful, comfortable distance away. As the embrace intensified, Twilight had a troubling thought enter her mind unbidden. As the Princess of Friendship, was love difficult for her? Friendship was easy, but the transition into something more than friendship, love proved to be quite difficult. Was she doomed to friendship? She was aware of the jokes behind her back about her being Princess Friendzone. The knowledge stung, but there wasn’t much she could do about it, given the current state of affairs. Moving forward had been extraordinarily difficult. Listening to the static crackle that occured between them, she murmured the words, “I don’t wanna be Princess Friendzone no more.” Seville did not respond. “Why haven’t you been more aggressive with me?” Twilight asked. “I don’t follow,” he replied, confused. “Right now, you could probably take me right here on the bathroom floor, and I’m not sure that I’d stop you.” “Am I being blamed for something?” Now it was Twilight’s turn to be confused. “Huh?” “About this difficulty we seem to have in connecting… am I being blamed?” “No!” Twilight’s eyes fluttered open and she could feel Seville’s heart thudding against his ribs. “It’s just… a lot of ponies do blame me for not being, uh, assertive enough.” Twilight’s own heart hammered against her ribs. “Don’t get the wrong idea, Twilight. Nopony is telling me to, uh, well, you know. Even your mother told me to be bolder.” Heaving a sigh, Twilight slouched against Seville. “So why haven’t you been bolder? Like right now. This is almost fronking. I mean, we’re exchanging cooties right now.” “Well,” Seville began, “I could probably take you right now… I mean, let’s be honest. That smell—” There was a smell? Twilight sniffed but tried to make it appear that she was not doing so. “—says yes. And right now, I really, really want to fronk you. Won’t lie.” “So if you want to fronk me right now, why haven’t you? Why not be more aggressive?” “Physically, I’m sure you’d be glad to go. But emotionally? Yes, I could probably fronk you silly right now and you might even enjoy it, but I’m pretty sure I would only ever fronk you once if that happened. Logically speaking, I can’t fronk you silly because that would hurt my long term goals.” Brows furrowing, Twilight’s mind drew a blank. “I don’t understand. How could not fronking me right now be beneficial?” Seville drew in a deep breath, his barrel expanded greatly, and he replied, “Because I want to keep fronking you. Over and over. Without end. I want to spend the rest of my life mattress dancing with you. I want to have my dirty, dirty way with you, repeatedly, and I want you to have your dirty, dirty way with me. If I took you right now, I could have you, but I would also lose you… probably. So I am going to continue to be the timid, cautious pony I am, until I can have what I want without consequences.” The sheer brazenness of it all caused Twilight’s ears to burn like candles. At least Seville was honest and there was comfort in that. He had plans—of course he did—and while she was certain that he had planned more than just fronking her, she could not help but feel distressed that the seeming focus of his plan revolved around… repeated insertion. A part of her felt flattered; she was the object of sexual desire. Another part felt alarmed; she was the desired target of biological imperatives and this… this was complicated. Too complicated for words or thoughts, even. This went beyond mere friendship and Twilight peered ahead into the vast gulf of the future. Seville had his own wants, needs, and desires. So did Pinkie. And Twilight… she had her own vision of what she wanted the future to be. Joining with Seville and Pinkie would mean… a change to her plans. Of course, it would also mean a real change to their plans as well. Everypony involved would have to play a difficult game of give and take. Yes, this most certainly went beyond mere common, simple friendship. This involved a commitment greater than any friendship demanded and she was mystified by the sheer scope of it all. So this is what the Princess of Love dealt with every day. Twilight found that she was quite terrified by all of this. Friendship allowed her to keep free agency and her individuality; she was free to come and go, to determine her own future as a lone, singular individual. Love required more than that, demanded more of her. Friendship was comfortable (even when it was not) because it never asked more from her than she was willing to give. But love—love meant giving up a part of herself. Clinging to Seville, Twilight wrestled with deep thoughts. If friendship was an agreement, then love was a contract. A contract written on paper, in ink. Maybe she’d been wrong to send herself away. She’d already made a sacrifice. A rather big one all things considered. As the Princess of Friendship, she’d felt obligated to do so. She’d taken one for the team. It was either her or Sumac, and she had cast aside her own future without so much as a second thought for his sake. Perhaps this love thing wasn’t so complicated after all. She had been the one to boop him on his nose and seal his fate, preserving him from a future where he had no choice. It all seemed like such simple decisions at the time. Making sacrifices for those you loved wasn’t so hard. Feeling as though she had accomplished something, that she had achieved some new plateau of understanding, Twilight Sparkle changed the subject to something she didn’t understand. “Seville… that waitress… I feel so blind and stupid. I had no idea what was going on until… until everything just felt so wrong.” Seville grunted out a wordless response. “All of you were making a joke about it.” “Well, we can’t get angry about it.” “Why not?” Twilight asked, feeling vulnerable for exposing her ignorance. “Because, if we get angry about it and demand better treatment, we get called tribalists.” “How does that work?” Twilight’s ear twitched against Seville’s sturdy jaw, slapping him against his cheek. “Because we get accused of being aggressive… of having a chip on our shoulder. For looking for trouble where there is none. For disrupting tribal unity with our angry, baseless outbursts. We see problems that aren’t really there, because we earth ponies secretly hate unicorns and pegasus ponies. Because we’re earth ponies. Because we’re jealous. The moment we make a fuss about our lousy treatment, we’re the tribalists. Because the moment we mention unicorn supremacy, we’re bigots that won’t let go of the mistakes of the past and being the bigots that we are, we want all unicorns to be deeply ashamed of what they did… and the pegasus ponies too.” Twilight realised that she did not—could not—understand. “So we can’t protest our treatment… our abuse. We can’t complain about our position in society. Not without bringing a shitstorm of accusations down upon our own heads. So most of us have taken up a passive-aggressive position… and we make jokes about it. We can’t bring up the past… that pegasus ponies and unicorn ponies kept us as slaves and that we grew food in exchange for their protection. Sure, Equestrian feudalism came along and made life better… but I don’t see how or why we’re supposed to be grateful, because we still ended up on the bottom. I suppose being a peasant is a pretty big step up from being a slave. Maybe we should be grateful for what we were given… but most of us are pretty disillusioned.” No matter how she swallowed, Twilight could not get rid of the lump in her throat. “Applejack and I saw that waitress coming from a mile away. We knew exactly what sort of pony she was.” Feeling queasy, Twilight thought of Pinkie Pie… the Element of Laughter. What motivated Pinkie Pie to be funny? A life downtrodden? In context with everything that Seville had just said, unsettling implications manifested. Tail twitching, back muscles spasming, Twilight began feeling hot and prickly again. “You’ve met my mother, Twilight. That shook you up pretty good, didn’t it?” Indeed, it had. The constant kowtowing, the bowing, the scraping, the constant, never-ending genuflecting, Twilight found out what it felt like to be Princess Celestia. It was a miserable, grating experience and now, she saw it with totally different eyes. Seville’s mother made constant reminders to her son; don’t be arrogant, don’t be aggressive, keep your eyes down, keep those ears down, don’t disturb the princess, do everything you are bidden, obey every command of the princess… Don’t be uppity, Twilight’s own voice said within her head. She winced. “How can I be a good friend to you if I can’t even see the trouble when it happens?” In response, she felt Seville squeeze her. It was an aggressive squeeze that caused their bodies to shift together in the most intimate of ways, and as close as she had been to him just a while ago, she found that she could be closer still. This felt right though, but it also felt wrong. She couldn’t get close enough; she wanted to be a part of him, to share his skin, to get inside of his head, his thoughts, to be of one body and mind. “Everything I need from you, I’m getting right now,” Seville replied. “I’m starving.” Twilight blurted out the words without thinking and her whole body tensed as she feared sounding insensitive. “We ditched the diner, it was a bad scene. Want to join the others?” Twilight sniffled a few times before nodding and saying, “Yeah.” She rubbed her cheek against him once more, but then his body shifted; first her cheek brushed up against his jaw, then his muzzle, then she felt his lips. When she turned her head, her own lips touched his and then before she knew what was going on, she was kissing him. Who had been the kisser and the kissee? Hard to say. It happened so fast. A cautious advance was made with her tongue; Twilight felt odd being the aggressor, but it happened this way sometimes. She never quite knew when it was appropriate. There, on the gleaming white tile of the bathroom of the Princess Suite, Twilight Sparkle enjoyed one of the most fantastic, most fulfilling kisses of her life. She threw her forelegs around his neck with reckless abandon and then did her level best to somehow merge with him, conscious the whole time of what rose to attention between them. For the very first time, she found that she did not mind, at least for now.