//------------------------------//
// #5 
// Story: Like Clockwork 
// by Cackling Moron 
//------------------------------//

Cozy was long-gone by the time Paul had finished his smoke break, to his complete lack of surprise. Idly, briefly, he hoped she was doing alright wherever she was and silently wished her luck in her endeavours malicious and benign and then put her out of his mind completely.

Not his problem.

And so he worked, he ate, he slept in the bath, and the next day he woke up with much the same in mind. As always. As he’d done most every day for however long he’d been here. How long now? Couldn’t remember, hadn’t ever bothered keeping track.

Did allow himself another quick smoke before the start of the day though. As a treat.

He was around the back this time, resting against a wall by a door and puffing quietly when movement caught his eye. Seeing Cozy round the corner he sighed and smoke billowed alarmingly from his nostrils.

“Again?” He asked.

Wrapped up in her cloak and grumbling to herself she came to a halt by his feet, dissatisfaction written across her face.

“Yeah yeah I’m not happy about it either. Can I come in or not?” She asked, pointing to the door.

“No,” Paul said. Cozy sputtered.

“Why not?!”

“Because I am smoking. Not smoke inside, not trust you inside on your own. So stay out here while I finish,” he said.

She stared at him, but it turned out he was serious.

“...what?!”

Paul waved his hand around his half-dead garden, the few clouds in the sky.

“Nice outside, talk outside.”

“But - !

“No but, not inside.”

Cozy let out a muted, frustrated growl and pulled the hood of her cloak up tighter, glancing around but not making any moves to leave or try to enter, though making sure to stay in the shadow the building was casting over the two of them. Paul just puffed a bit more.

“So. You try to destroy the world, yes? Or something?” He asked, out of nowhere.

“No! Not really! It was just - there was a plan!” Cozy said, annoyed at him and indeed at everything.

“I heard. Think they said your plan was, be boss? Of a school? Something?”

Close enough. Missing some important details, but who cared?

“Yes,” she said, sour, not seeing much point in engaging.

He nodded.

“Right. And this was to make friends, most friends. Friend school,” he tailed off here to mutter something Cozy didn’t understand before continuing: “Because more friends is more power. Magic, power. How it works here. Yes?”
.
“Yes. Yes!”

Maybe he wasn’t such a lost cause after all.

Hearing this from her he nodded again, puffed out some more smoke. What few whiffs of it drifted down to Cozy were not appreciated and she wafted them aside, having to use her hoof for this, her wings presently pinned beneath her cunning cloak.

“Stupid,” Paul said, at length.

Cozy’s face, which had been edging towards the triumphant on hearing him apparently starting to grasp it all, fell.

“What? Hey! You said I was advanced!” She protested.

“Yes yes, very advanced, very smart. But stupid, just child. Stupid plan.”

“What part of it was stupid?! It was perfect! And it was going to work, too!”

“Just whole thing. Wrong, all wrong. Friends is not numbers game. Not get most, win. No winning anyway. Man with a thousand friends but wants more, he happy? No. Man with three friends, good friends, is he happy? Yes. Which is better?”

Was this a trick question?

“The one with most. Duh.”

Paul shook his head.

“Stupid, tsch.”

“Stop calling me that!”

Paul glared down at her a second before taking a final, definitive drag and then flicking the stub away into the ditch he’d dug specifically to flick them into, then pointing down at Cozy.

“But you are stupid! Clever, yes, very clever, but stupid! Not know enough about life, yourself, others. Think you know but you do not understand, not really know. Think everything is piece, part, everything click together, like one of my toys, maybe. Or part of one big game. Life is not like that. Many systems, many rules, some real, some not. Only thing that runs through all is you. Always you, wherever you go. Are you happy? Yes, no? If you had won, what? If you make everyone in world your friend, what? Most powerful? Boss?”

She was unmoved by his outburst.

“Well, yeah, obviously,” she said, blithely.

“Good for you. Happy then? Then what? No magic, but biggest number. Good job. Boss of dead, empty world. Many friends, never enough, not even like you. King of the heap. Dung heap, Cozy sat on top, boss. Great. Good job, Cozy.”

Cozy’s jaw was set, a muscle in it twitching. She would have said something back, but what was the point? This was a stupid argument anyway, and wasn’t getting anywhere that mattered.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said instead.

“Know you are not happy. Know you won’t ever be, like this.”

“You don’t seem happy,” she shot back.

Paul pulled out and lit up another little tube, puffing briefly to get it going properly.

“I am not happy. But I am old, had chance. You are child, you have chance. Want to waste chance, but have chance.”

“You don’t even know me! You don’t know anything about me,” Cozy said. It was difficult to glare up at him given the height difference but she was doing her best.

“No. Do not want to. But know you are a child. Should be acting like a child. Not like this.”

“Stop calling me a kid!”

“Hmph.”

Times like this it was hard to keep from snarling.

“Well what would you do, smart guy?” Cozy asked, teeth bared.

“Not me, you. You should, Cozy, go away, far away. Somewhere they do not know you. Start over. Be child. Live. Make friends with no - ah - no plan, no goal. Grow up a little. Play. Play with toys, yes?” He said, pointing to the one he’d given her which had just started poking out from underneath where she’d secured it.

A quick adjustment of her cloak hid that.

“But what’s the point?” She asked, genuinely baffled. He just stared at her, sighed, puffed out some smoke and then grunted some more.

“Hmph. Yes. Shame. Oh well. Really, what you should do is turn yourself in,” he said, shifting his weight about and wincing.

“What?!”

“Turn yourself in,” he repeated. “Say you are sorry. Work to show you are sorry. Work to understand why you are sorry. Grow. Be better. You will not, but you should.”

She tried briefly to wrap her head around this but whatever brand of logic he was using was so utterly alien she couldn’t even work out a place to start.

“That’s insane, why would I do that?”

“Hmph.”

“Stop doing that! Use words!”

“Hmph,” he went again, only this time with a smirk.

“Augh!” Cozy squawked, throwing her hooves up in the air before collapsing onto her rump in the dirt. This had plainly all been an enormous, aggravating waste of time. Sullen, exhausted and starting to edge into hungry she stared angrily at the ground and felt - rightly - that the world was an unfair place and unfair quite specifically to her and her alone.

Paul looked down at her, impassive, smoking silently.

“What are you doing here, Cozy? Lots of guards. Thought you would be gone,” he said, after some lengthy period of silence.

Given that there were normally no guards in town, any would be enough to catch Paul’s attention. In the event, there were oodles of the buggers, guards coming out of every orifice. They patrolled the streets, stood sentinel over bridges and at crossroads and even flapped through the sky, keeping watch.

“I want to, but there’s lots of guards,” Cozy said, continuing to glare at the dirt.

Paul frowned.

“I do not tell them about you,” he said.

That got her to look up.

“No, no I know you didn’t. I know who did.”

She had indeed been planning on leaving and would have done, too, but something had come up, an opportunity she felt she couldn’t let slip away. A birthday party.

A rich vein of friends, yes, normally, but not this time, they’d be on the lookout for her. Rather, this time it was instead a rich vein of food and treats, right there in the open!

Better by far than whatever Paul had served her, that was for sure. And so she’d done the bare minimum to make herself not look so much like herself, folded the cloak into something less suspicious that she could just casually drape to hide her Cutie Mark and snuck on in amidst the frivolity. 

Her logic being that at a birthday party one extra foal wouldn’t attract any particular attention and she could just slip in, grab something, slip out. A pretty solid plan, all told. 

But some aggravating colt had noticed her and had told his parents who’d told the other parents and it had turned into a whole thing. She’d beaten it as soon as she’d seen him give her that dawning look of recognition, but that didn’t help.

Word had spread in next-to no time at all to every adult around and they had fanned out throughout the village in minutes, doing an adequate enough job of stopping her from getting away until the guard had shown up - in scarily good time, too - at which point pretty much every part of the whole area had been locked down tight. All roads, everything. Even the air, as Paul had seen. 

Nothing was getting in or out without being spotted. It was ridiculous.

“So what is your plan?” Paul asked, out of nowhere.

“Plan?”

“Planning is your thing, yes? I hear. So you must have plan.”

“Well…” She started, drawing little circles in the dirt with her hoof.

Paul cut her off there.

“You cannot stay here,” he said.

His continued ability to keep up with her was really starting to get on her nerves. What did they do to humans to make them this suspicious?!

“Why not!”

“Because you are dangerous, tiny criminal, hah. Also because you are child, I am old man. Weird. Uncomfortable. No, not staying here.”

Why did nothing ever go her way?!

“Well what am I supposed to do?!”

“Turn yourself in,” he said, totally straight-faced, only cracking up when Cozy stomped a hoof at him, unable to keep from laughing to himself.

“Be serious!” She said, seething.

“Okay, okay. Serious? Hmm,” he stared into middle distance for a few seconds. “Could sneak you out. Smuggle. You know?” He suggested. Cozy stomped again, snorting.

“I said be serious!”

“I am serious. Could do that. Not hard. You are little,” he said.

She stared at him, turning her considerable talents towards sniffing out the merest trace of insincerity. As alien as he was and inscrutable as he was she still felt she would have been able to pick up on some hint that he was still messing with her. But no, nothing. He seemed completely serious.

“Why would you do that?” She asked.

Paul shrugged.

“Get you out of here. Stop being my problem. Here, my problem. Away, someone else problem. Also, funny.” he said and Cozy cocked her head at him.

“Funny?”

“Yes. Funny thinking of them looking for you. Funny making their life difficult. The, uh, the in-charge horses.”

Paul personally had absolutely no idea who was in charge of anything in Equestria but, generally, he was averse to authority and pro whatever it was that would frustrate them. 

Cozy looked at him oddly, head still cocked.

“You have a weird sense of humour,” she said.

Taking a particularly deep drag Paul let out an alarmingly big cloud of smoke straight up before dropping and stepping on what he had left.

“I am not a nice man,” he said.

Cozy saw no reason to disagree with this and stroked her chin as she considered what he’d said.

“So basically you just want to get rid of me?” She asked, just to confirm the obvious.

“Yes. You prefer I want to keep you?”

Now there was a sobering thought.

“Smuggling it is! And in return I could teach you how to speak properly,” she said, not unkindly though hoping at least to puncture some of that aggravating attitude he had. It kind of worked, too.

“Or I could teach you English,” Paul said.

“Ooh! Yes! That too! Writing especially. Please.”

Please was important.

She’d meant it as well. Being able to speak - and, importantly, write - in an alien language only she and some singular other, random, grumpy, isolated individual could understand could be quite practical for somepony with things who they might not want others knowing. Another useful tool, and another handy piece. 

Would also make Paul a bit of a loose end if it came to that, but all things in time.

Her answer evidently surprised Paul, who was at a momentary loss for words.

“Oh. Okay. Yes,” he said.

“Great! So how are you going to do this? The smuggling? Can it happen soon? No pressure or anything just, you know! Sooner the better.”

“I have wagon,” he said, gesturing to an outbuilding in the corner of his garden. Presumably there was a wagon inside.

“They’ll search a wagon,” Cozy pointed out.

“I know. So I have crate, see? Will make special crate. Not take long. Look like full of toys, but not. Special part, hidden, for you. Will have air holes, do not worry.”

This last part, if meant to be reassuring, wasn’t.

“You want me to get in a box?” Cozy asked with much incredulity.

“Crate. And yes. Better idea?”

“Call me crazy, Pall, but I’m not super-peachy-keen on the idea of letting you put me in a box. Seems like kind of a silly thing to let someone do. I don’t know who else you made fall for this but I’m just a little reluctant. Just saying.”

“Crate. And I do not hurt children. Not on purpose, not now. You want to stay, stay. But not here. Or else smuggle. Up to you, Cozy.”

At this a trio of guards passed overhead a good distance up and Cozy instantly flung herself flat against the wall of Paul’s house, pressing in tight and making sure that he was also blocking her from view as much as possible. In the even the guards didn’t even look down anyway.

Once they’d passed out of sight Cozy licked her lips and asked:

“How - how quickly can you make this crate? Paul? Friend?”