Strange how I couldn’t find ponies when I really needed them. This was at least partially why I had built such a sophisticated surveillance system in the other universe.
I’d been trying to find and talk to Doctor Whooves since I’d seen him at Trivia Night, but most ponies seemed to think his name was Time Turner and still couldn’t find him. Maybe they would sometimes see him in the background, but nobody I’d consulted had even ever heard him speak.
I’d tried searching from the air. The B1R wasn’t really great for that, though. In an attempt to justify the locomotive engine, I’d put on a fitting propeller that wound up being about a hundred feet across. Roll stability was a problem.
In the middle of this - “this” being severe longitudinal axis rotation - Twilight teleported in. I had her seatbelts, though, so I stayed perfectly in place while she went flying off.
She teleported back in, this time hovering inside a bubble of magic, gyro-stabilized. “Valiant, we have a problem!”
“You’re telling me! I have to balance running a hair-cutting business, perfecting an errant airship, running from my job at the castle, trying to un-marry Lemon Pledge without admitting we were married in the first place, getting to the moon to figure out the source of a mysterious radio signal, and on top of all that I have no idea what this little key is for.” I showed her the small key the mysterious mare had given me in the strip club. It had seemed important, so I’d hung it on a string around my neck.
“Fluttershy and Angel swapped bodies!”
I have to admit, I was surprised, but it was still a bullshit little problem compared to my own. “So?”
“What do you mean ‘so!?’ How is that not important!?”
“What do you want me to do about it? See, Twilight, that’s your problem. You always bring me your bullshit and then expect me to just figure it out. Granted, I usually do, but you could at least offer a suggestion so I can immediately shoot it down and get on to doing whatever I’m going to actually do. It’s like that time Sombra attacked and you said I shouldn’t kill him, so I didn’t and then you put him in prison and then he escaped. I should have just not listened to you and ended him.”
Twilight winced. “It’s not like we knew-”
“You knew damn well the castle prison wasn’t secure! When I was in there, I broke out by literally opening the door in your face! I literally told you that I was saving up an ‘I told you so’ for when he escaped! I told you so! I told you that, too!”
“At least we haven’t seen any evidence that he’s collaborating with the other villains.”
“Oh, the other villians that escaped. Yes, from the other prison.”
“Tartarus was even more secure. It’s not like we knew-”
“And you only found out because Applejack went and looked after I told her to! ‘Hey guys, you remember that place you take all your dangerous creatures and bad guys? Have you recently confirmed that they’re still there?’ Cozy Glow escaped, and a filly matching her description was described as being one of the causes of commotion during the Summer Sun Celebration.”
I paused, and then added, “Also, really? Locking up a teenager on her first offense in your nation’s most severe prison for a life sentence? My solution in the other universe of blowing her brains out almost sounds more humane.”
Swinging back to the topic, I went on. “Tirek also escaped, and we saw his magic-stealing at work at the Summer Sun Celebration. So he and Cozy are working together. Even if we haven't seen evidence that Sombra is with them, villains are apparently capable of working together so it remains a possibility.” I shook my head. “I don’t cannot even often, but I literally cannot.”
“That’s not good grammar.”
“You’re not a good Princess.”
After saying that, I wondered if I had been too harsh. The way Twilight took it, the look on her face, I think I completely shattered whatever small amount of self-confidence that she still had after dealing with me.
Not that I cared, but it would be inconvenient if she was too depressed and people might even think it was my fault. It technically was, but I didn’t want them to think so.
After getting shook so hard, Twilight would either never recover or take it in and use it as a lesson to get better. I begrudgingly decided to give her a push. “Anyway, this Fluttershy thing - I’m going to go ahead and say this is your problem, Twilight.”
“P-please,” she whispered, lowering her head.
Oh shit, it was worse than I thought. I let out a long sigh and stopped the B1R’s engine. The high compression immediately halted the propeller, which immediately halted the airship’s roll.
Twilight in her magic bubble kept going.
It took her another revolution or two before she caught up. She stopped, and de-bubbled, stepping down onto the airship’s deck. She seemed a little unsteady, even despite the magic. She looked at me. “How are you not dizzy?”
“I am, but I have the sine waves of my dizzy gyrations perfectly balanced against the swaying I would be doing drunk, so it cancels out.”
“How could you possibly do that!?”
“I’m always drunk.”
“I...don’t know how you keep managing things like this with no magic at all.”
“I’m that good.” I put my hoof on my nose, closed my eyes, and sighed, reluctantly stepping forward to deal with the next problem. “Okay, so Fluttershy bodyswapped with Angel. Was it a potion or something?”
“Yes, how did you-”
“A potion from Zecora?”
Twilight blinked. “Yes, how did you-”
“As smart and helpful as Zecora is, I’m not sure I know of a time when she made a potion that was...well, good. She’s made some effective ones. She’s been at no fault when they accidentally got swapped in place of other potions. But whenever she makes potions, they’re either bad with the good, used incorrectly, or just messed up. And don’t forget, she taught potions to the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”
Twilight made a face. “I hate to say it, but you’re right.”
“And all this would be solved if Zecora just labeled the bottles. That’s all it would take.”
Twilight shook her head. “I still can’t understand how you can be so insightful while shunning royal responsibility, being a generally unpleasant pony, and apparently intoxicated.”
“But are you listening?”
“I...can’t condone a lot of the things you do. I will never accept your willingness to end a life. But…” Twilight looked away for a long moment, swallowed, and raised her head. “Yes, Valiant, I will listen to you.”
Jesus Christ, did I neg her so hard that it actually worked and she...well, not liked me but was willing to tolerate me?
“Okay, do you understand what you need to do?”
Twilight straightened. “I need to go have Fluttershy and Angel learn whatever friendship lesson they need, and if that doesn’t work and this wasn’t a friendship problem, go get a counterpotion from Zecora.”
“Right. See, this isn’t so hard.”
She started to turn away, but stopped, and said, “Thank you.”
I was still standing there considering that for a few minutes after she was gone. I couldn’t remember the last time Twilight had thanked me for anything, if she ever had.
Oh shit. I’d accidentally proved that negging worked on females and I’d done it to Twilight of all people.
I immediately started the engine again to go to Fluttershy’s place and try to mitigate the impending disaster.
When I arrived, it was a mess. Apparently the chaos caused by the bodyswap hadn’t been localized.
I’d never really figured out how animals worked in Equestria. Fluttershy had gotten predators to not eat prey somehow. Despite animals being apparently sapient, they were held to the double standard of not being actual people yet not being allowed to let nature take its course. Then you had Angel, who's apparently gained the ability to speak when in Fluttershy’s body.
Somehow, giraffes and pigs were considered animals, despite being ungelates like “citizens” such as ponies and cows, to say nothing of elephants. Was it just an ability to speak? Did that mean mute ponies were animals and not people? Did that make Angel effectively a handicapped pony? If Fluttershy could literally talk to animals, that meant they did have some ability to communicate, further calling the people/not people issue into question.
And what about fish? Fluttershy fed fish to some animals, and I’d seen ponies with fishing poles, so were fish not even considered sapient animals? How sapient did you have to be to vote? Wait, nevermind, voting was never an issue in Equestria.
Damn, I got distracted there. Thank God for democracy to get me back on track.
Wait a second-
I blinked. How did I get in deepest, darkest Manehattan?
I sighed. Goddamn it, at least usually when I lost time my unconscious body had the courtesy to leave me back roughly where I started. How did I get here?
I started to leave the alley, but a thug roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle emerged from behind a dumpster. “Huh, I could have sworn I saw somepony else walk in here.”
Could this be a clue? “Like who?”
“Don’t matter,” he said. “You’ll do.” He grinned and pulled out a knife. “I’ll be having whatever money you’ve got on you.”
“Oh?” I took a step forward. “What are you going to do, make me?”
He took a step forward. “Yeah, I think I might.”
I took a step forward. The blade was right in my face now. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I slowly ran my tongue over the tip of the knife. Leaning forward and taking the blade into my mouth, I gently lowered my head until my lips touched the hilt. At that point, I rolled my eyes upward to look at him and began to work the blade in and out, bobbing my head and occasionally pausing for a long lick the length of the blade.
I knew carrying a switchblade in my mouth for so long would come in handy when I had to fellatiate a knife in some alley.
At any rate, it had the intended effect of creeping him out so much that he dropped it, at which point I stabbed him repeatedly until he died.
I thought about using my own knife, the obsidian one that was holstered on my hip that hadn’t seen much action lately and the thug had apparently completely overlooked, but precision cuts would be too good for him, and anyway, plausible deniability.
That turned out to be an incredible boon, when, moments later, Twilight landed beside me in the alley, folding her wings and looking horrified at the bloodshed.
“I can explain,” I said. “You see, I was just walking by and I found-”
“I was so worried!” she cried. “I thought something horrible must have happened to you and I’ve been searching ever since you disappeared.”
That wasn’t the reaction I had expected, but I rolled with it. “Well, if you’ll just let me tell you my version of events-”
She barely spared a glance at the bloody body on the ground and turned, teary-eyed to me, burying her face in my chest and hugging me tightly.
My eyes went wide. Oh no. Oh no.