//------------------------------// // Going to Seed // Story: Guarded Emotions: The Final Season // by Alabenson //------------------------------// “You really mean it? You’ll actually join our next Ogres and Oubliettes session?” Spike asked with a massive grin. “I’m willing to give it a chance, at the very least,” Moonwhisper replied. “I can’t promise that I’ll become a regular participant, but we’ll see how it goes.” “Still, this is great. We’ve been hoping that we could find more players ever since Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie decided it wasn’t really their thing. And besides,” Spike added conspiratorially, “it wouldn’t really be as much of a guy’s night if we had a bunch of girls around. Just don’t tell them I said that, alright?” “I’ll consider it to be classified information,” Moonwhisper assured him. “With all that said, when do you anticipate the next ‘guy’s night’ to take place?” “I don’t know. Honestly, it probably won’t be a for a while, though. Big Macintosh has been super busy-lately with something going on at Sweet Apple Acres. I think he called it the congruence –” “Confluence,” Moonwhisper corrected. “Gesundheit. Anyway, because of that Big Mac’s way too busy for anything that doesn’t involve harvesting apples. He hasn’t even had time to spend with Sugar Belle, and you know that’s serious!” “And so, the next ‘guy’s night’ will have to be postponed until after this whole Great Confluence business is resolved. If nothing else, that gives me more time to focus on finishing organizing my leftover incident reports,” Moonwhisper said. “Oh, can I help?” Spike asked. “I’m great at organizing stuff. I mean, I am Twilight’s number one assistant, after all,” Spike added as he nonchalantly buffed his claws on his chest. “If you really want to then I suppose it would be fine, although there isn’t all that much left to do. At this point the only files I haven’t sorted through yet are the ones pertaining to low-priority uncontained anomalous entities, and there aren’t exactly all that many of those,” Moonwhisper added. Spiked blinked a few times as he tried to parse what Moonwhisper had just said. “Low priority what now?” “Low priority uncontained anomalous entities. Do you remember what I told you my previous posting was involved with?” Moonwhisper asked. “Yeah, I think so. You gathered dangerous magical artifacts and stuff and kept them all locked up so they couldn’t hurt anypony,” Spike replied. “That’s accurate enough. Now, every so often we encountered objects or entities that for one reason or another we were unable to properly place into containment. When an instance like that occurred, we would instead do our best to keep the subject under observation as best we could. If the subject was actually dangerous then we’d do everything in our power to keep it isolated, but otherwise it would just be monitored and reported on,” Moonwhisper said. “And so now you need to go through all the reports you’ve got about the ones that aren’t dangerous,” Spike concluded. “So, what sort of things are these, anyway?” “Well, it’s a little hard to make any general statements about the uncontained subjects,” Moonwhisper said as he led Spike to the small room he used as an office. “Mostly they tend to be either places that are too large or remote to build a facility around or living creatures that haven’t actually done anything that would warrant imprisonment, assuming they could even be imprisoned to begin with. For instance, we have…” Moonwhisper paused as he levitated the topmost folder from a small pile on his desk. “Hmm, this is an interesting one. Its an unidentifiable magical entity which has exhibited exceptionally remarkable levels of floramancy.” Spike tilted his head to the side as he waited for Moonwhisper to provide a translation in common Ponish. “It uses plant magic,” Moonwhisper clarified. “Essentially it’s the same sort of magic earth ponies use to grow crops, but substantially more powerful.” “How much more powerful?” Spike asked. “Its hard to say exactly what its limits are, all we have to go on there is an old incident report we have from a particularly remote corner of eastern Equestria.” Moonwhisper shuffled through the papers inside of the file until he located the paper he wanted. “The report is a bit dry, but it explains everything well enough. Essentially, all the trees in the oldest section of the orchard go from bud to flower to fruit within 24 hours each day.” “Whoa, seriously? Man, can you imagine if Applejack had trees like that in Sweet Apple Acres?” Spike said. “Ponyville would be the apple capital of Equestria! And just think of all the cider!” ********* Meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of Ponyville, Rainbow Dash abruptly shot up from her nap and glance around as though she had heard something that demanded her attention. After a few seconds, however, Rainbow Dash eventually concluded that it was a false alarm and went back to sleep. ********* Back in Twilight’s castle, Moonwhisper shook his head at Spike’s response. “I understand what you’re saying, but the situation did come with some notable downsides, particularly the difficulty in disposing of all those peaches. The family who owned the orchard could only eat or sell so much of the harvest, resulting in a significant portion of the harvest being essentially left to rot.” “Yeah, I didn’t really think about that,” Spike admitted. “To be fair, the impression I have is that most ponies who’ve heard rumors about the creature haven’t either. It, or at least a being inspired by it, apparently shows up in a great deal of earth pony folklore, with the focus inevitably revolving around the riches that can be obtained by capturing it.” Moonwhisper shrugged as he placed the folder back on the pile. “I imagine Applejack, at least, would be able to foresee the downsides though. After all, she’s never struck me as the sort of pony who’d give in to the allure of gains without corresponding effort.”