Malodorous Development

by kudzuhaiku


Progress, at a price

With a pair of tweezers, Vinyl Scratch lifted up a tiny crystal and held it just in front of her apprentice’s nose. Naturally, Sumac fixated on it with no small amount of nerdy glee, and she could see the reflection of rainbow hues from the crystal in his green glass lenses. She had his rapt attention. He was her eager student. She was trusted with his education, his refinement, and his development as a pony. It was her sworn duty to turn the world into a classroom and instill into her apprentice a love of learning.

“What is this, Sumac?”

“Uh, it’s cubical in nature, so I am going to say bismuth.”

“Very good.” She put down the rainbow-hued bismuth and then, with her tweezers, she picked up another crystal, this one the size of a grain of rice. “And this?”

“Synth-crystal. That’s easy. We grow those.”

She nodded and then, her lips pressed tight together. The tiny sliver of crystal had a faint reflexive glow about it due to the proximity of her magic, which gripped the long-handled prong tweezers. Her face relaxed a bit as she held the crystal right up to Sumac’s nose, and she rested her left front foreleg against the rough wood of her workbench.

“This… this right here, this is the most important thing in the world, Sumac.”

“That?”

“Don’t get smart.” Like a magic trick, a wide grin appeared from out of nowhere. “You and your generation will see unparalleled technological advancement and growth, Sumac, and it is all because of crystalline tech. This crystal”—she took a moment to shake it before his nose—“and what it represents, this is the most important thing going forward.”

“There’s a lesson here—”

“Yes there is, Sumac.” Vinyl put the tiny crystal back into a container where dozens of others just like it were kept. “A bit of context, my dear apprentice. You know those projection games that we spend hours playing, and everypony keeps telling us that we’ll rot our brains?”

“Yeah.” The colt nodded, and there was no hint of sloshy brain-rot. “Can we make our own cabinet?”

As was often the case, Vinyl was taken by surprise. Sumac was so eager to just tackle the impossible. He barely understood the impossible and with his go-to attitude, the impossible became rather probable. Without realising what she was committing herself to, she offered up an absent-minded nod.

“We’ll make a project of it some time.” Then, she leaned forward, and did her best to be serious. “You don’t realise what those projection games represent, Sumac. Or how just a generation ago, those would be impossible. We’ve had a crystal revolution, Sumac.”

“We read about this in school. Just a little bit.”

“Good.” Reaching out with her right front hoof, she brushed Sumac’s mane away from his face so that nothing would come between them and cause distraction. “Crystals were required for thaumaturgical augmentation. Most natural crystals were unsuitable for this task. Flaws, imperfections, bad resonance. When good crystals were found, they were so expensive and so rare that the common tinkerer could never afford them, and this bottlenecked technological advancement.”

She watched as Sumac nodded.

“Since these crystals were so rare, only the most important, most meaningful, most beneficial augmentations were added, and artifacts were created. These benefited only the very wealthy, the powerful, those privileged few that had the ways and means to have access.” Pausing for a moment, Vinyl thought herself to be the ideal teacher, as her voice never became tired.

“Do you know what changed, Sumac?”

“The introduction of synthetic mineral production?”

“Correct.” Reaching out, she booped her apprentice on the snoot, and heard him giggle. “I consider that one of the single most important technological advancements of the modern era. Suddenly, anypony could grow crystals… good ones too. We tweaked and tinkered with magical resonance, thaumaturgical properties, and in the span of one generation or so, we perfected the process to what it is today. Because of this, technology exploded.”

“Kaboom.”

“That’s right, Sumac. Kaboom.” Needing something to do, she picked up a screwdriver and began twirling it around with absent-minded abandon. “Which brings us to projection games. Those cabinets are filled with hundreds, sometimes thousands of crystals. Each one of them perfect. Flawless. A king’s ransom made cheap by mass production and modern manufacturing. Every one of those crystals represents a spell, a function, a process. Some of them project an image of illusion on the frosted glass, while others determine input so we can interact with the projected image. All of them are sequenced, synchronised, and organised by even more crystals, which make these games playable. Sumac, there is unbelievable complexity at work there, impossible complexity, and for you and your generation, this is commonplace. You stuff coins into these projection game cabinets and have hours of fun.”

“I suppose I never gave it much thought.” Reaching up with one slight hoof, the colt began to rub his chin.

“Ponies like Maud have their own part in all of this,” Vinyl said, continuing her lesson. “Maud has quietly changed the world with her theories on mineral structure. Because of ponies like her, we’re going to have even better synthetic crystals. Well, they’re already happening, but we’re only at the beginning. Microcrystalline latticework, microcrystalline structures, we’re undergoing a revolution of miniaturisation that is so mind-bogglingly complex that I can’t even imagine where it takes us. We stand on the precipice of something great… and it is you and your generation that will take us there.”

Vinyl watched as her apprentice shrank away and went still.

“With this crystalline revolution, the gates of invention were thrown open to the common pony. No longer was magical invention the hobby of the extremely wealthy. New ideas happen every day. Ponies like you and me, we’re making cameras like that one”—she pointed her screwdriver at the partially finished camera sitting on the workbench— “and we’re doing our part to progress our great society. We have a sworn duty, Sumac. We’re obligated to give the world the best we’ve got. The only thing holding us back now are the limits of imagination.”

The colt nodded.

“Our imaginations have no limits, Sumac. You ready to get back to work?”

Again, Sumac nodded, but this time with far more enthusiasm.

“Great. Now let’s do science!”


White Tail Woods, the abandoned alchemist’s shack…


A harpy and a changeling drone were typically the cause for quite some alarm, but this particular harpy and her changeling companion were celebrated Equestrian heroes. She was perched on a bare, exposed rafter and he was busy making repairs to the dilapidated shack that would be their home for a while. The harpy was not at all disgusted by her companion’s method of work, which is to say that he continuously puked out gobbets of sticky glue to hold the stacked stones together.

This harpy was immaculately clean—a stunning opposite to the rest of her species—and she sat on the exposed, roofless rafter grooming herself. Occasionally, she twisted her goatlike head around to check for danger, but she was, for the most part, quite relaxed. Danger was but a minor concern, because her companion tended to cause danger to run away.

Stinkbug might very well be the stinkiest, smelliest creature in all of Equestria.

Celaeno rather liked how he smelled. He was mouth-wateringly delightful. But Celaeno was a harpy, and she knew that she and her fellow harpies were quite enamoured with stink. Which posed quite a weakness for Stinkbug. But against almost everything else, Stinkbug was an unstoppable force of nostril-raping smelliness. That was his nature, his magic, the very thing that had made Queen Chrysalis cut him off from the hive mind and exile him. She had sent him out hoping that his stink might destroy the world.

Once, he had been deployed to stop an army, and the war ended before it started.

Celaeno was proud of her companion, her boon friend, the love of her life. He wasn’t the violent sort and she knew that he treasured a quiet, peaceful existence. They had been through so much together, both hardships and good times. Their romance was storied, celebrated, and maybe just a teensy-weensy bit tragic, as both of them were thoroughly sterile creatures. Nothing would ever come of their odd, inexplicable love, except perhaps inspiration for others.

“We have something of a house now,” she said rather casually while her companion gagged up a glob of glue and used his tongue to slather up a stone. A sweet, terrifying smile parted her face, revealing pointed flesh-rending teeth. Loving thoughts filled her mind, and this was good, because Stinkbug needed loving thoughts to sustain him while he was working.

Without loving thoughts, Stinky got himself a bad case of the stupids.

“Ponyville is under our protection,” she continued. “No sneaky spies will make it through these woods. Too bad this posting is temporary.”

The stone wall rapidly took form as her companion stacked one gluey stone atop another gluey stone. When the glue hardened, it would be almost unbreakable, and this humble shack would no doubt stand for centuries. Having a home—any home—satisfied some deep itch within Celaeno, and it was her secret desire to settle down somewhere so she could build a nest, even if she couldn’t fill it.

“Stinky… do you think we could adopt?” She dared to ask the question that she knew would give her companion pause, and sure enough, she no longer heard anything down below her. “I think we would make great parents. You’d make a great dad, Stinky. Just think about it… you’re not bothered by gross things, like diapers, or throw up.”

There was nothing but silence from Stinkbug.

“I mean, we’re trusted right? You and I, we’re scouts for the Princesses. We’re trusted with the safety and security of all those souls in Ponyville, or whatever place we’re posted. Do you think they’d trust us with adoption? I keep wanting to ask, but I’m afraid of the answer. Stinky, I want to be like them. To have all of the same things that they have. As a harpy, I dared to dream of other things. Bigger things. Better things. Things that no harpy would ever dream of. I have most of what I wanted… but I still dream of lullabies and little wooden cradles and soft, warm blankets wrapped around tiny, impossibly precious little bundles of joy.”

Something intruded upon the edges of her perception, and it left her feathers ruffled. She paused, straining to hear, knowing that whatever it was would soon be running. Or if not running, screaming. Perhaps it was a bear. Or a wolf. Wolves roamed these woods, but she wasn’t the least bit afraid of them. She was armed with highly explosive eggs and had a keen sense of aim. It wasn’t something she felt good about, but she was a living, breathing weapon, and already, she was filled with a curious, overwhelming need to defend her new home.

Beneath her, she heard a familiar sizzling, and knew that her companion was drooling acid. From the sounds of it, it wasn’t even the dangerous acid, but the weak stuff that he used to clean his carapace and keep himself tidy. More sizzling could be heard and Celaeno shuffled back and forth on her perch. She heard no birdsong, no sound of animals. Sure, Stinkbug kept the birds away, but beyond the stink-radius, birds would sing, because that was what birds did.

The woods were remarkably quiet at the moment, and quiet meant danger.

There was violence in the silence.

Whatever was coming was about to get shelled. She had her explosive eggs, and Stinkbug had his alchemical artillery. Years of conflict and military service had left them hardened veterans, powerful peacekeepers who preferred peace—but were ready for war. Equestria was something worth fighting for, and fight they would.

Something unseen and unclean came close. Celaeno sensed it—she smelled it—and she didn’t like it. Normally, she was immune to bad smells, but this… this was no regular stink. Just the merest whiff of it left her feeling unclean. Sullied. Soiled. As the first hints of something foul assailed her nostrils, she felt as though she needed a bath.

Then, like a storm, it descended upon her, and she could feel some malevolent magic swirling all around her. Her eyes watered, her nose snotted over, and she was utterly powerless to do anything but think most unsettling thoughts. Is this… was this what others experienced when smelling Stinkbug? Below her, she could hear chitinous chittering and she knew that Stinkbug too, was suffering from the stench.

Celaeno, who had never really smelled anything bad before, was completely unprepared to deal with this kind of malodorous miasma. This was the first, and this was the worst. Her sensitive nose could smell all manner of things, things that, by themselves, she might have enjoyed smelling. Hot garbage was delightful—there was food to be found in hot garbage. Something that was vaguely like skunks, but skunks had nothing on Stinkbug and overall, skunks were rather pleasant and had a soothing, calming aroma.

It was as if something had taken every horrible smelly thing and then had exaggerated the very worst aspects about it. Ridiculously so. Magically so. And whatever it was, this ruinous stench-spirit, it was here now, no doubt sampling Stinkbug’s gloriously wretched stink. Celaeno’s talons dug into the old, dry rotted wood, and she held on as the swirling stink around her transformed.

Her nose, the helpful organ that it was, informed her that yes, indeed, her worst fears had come to pass. She smelled Stinkbug’s signature aroma, but in a whole new way. It transformed, becoming something greater, something worse. Something unspeakably foul as the worst aspects of it were given strength.

Why, this was quite possibly the worst smell in all of existence now, and Celaeno was not immune to it. She wrapped her wings around her head, a vain attempt to protect herself, her senses, but it was useless. Below, she could hear her companion coughing and gagging, choked by his own stench. This was a stench symphony, with every significant note and highlight from Stinkbug’s miasma given orchestral attention.

Celaeno struggled to retain her consciousness. Surely, this had to be the work of Grogar. Who else would have such malodorous, malevolent machinations? No creature in existence could be this evil, this foul. Grogar had come for them, just as he had promised, and had found a way to turn Stinkbug’s own stink against him. All of Ponyville was surely in danger and Celaeno knew that she and Stinkbug had to save them.

Somehow.

But first, they had to survive the stench storm that swirled all around them, still drinking in Stinkbug’s essence.