Rivet's Tale: How We Got Here

by SilverEyedWolf

Chapter Three: The Transcript

R- Why don't we start with one of my mother's favorite stories? The one when she was bringing me home.

Now, I told you earlier that I didn't get any real control over my wings and horn until I got my cutie mark. That didn't stop me from trying, though, and my mom and dad got a real hoot out of watching me work my wings and legs.

We lived in Filly(delphia), and my mom didn't feel up to walking home on account of my being a thirty-pound foal that she'd spent twenty-plus hours birthing. Poor mare says that she's still tired from that, even after my two younger brothers.

T- Oh, you have brothers? The newspaper (Ponyville Express issue no. 11456) mentioned that your mom was an earth pony and that your dad was a pegasi, but nothing about your brothers.

R- Yeah, there's four of us total. One older, then me, then the twins popped out. Public Clover, my older bro(ther), he's been in construction since he was strong enough to fly with a hammer. He's just a pegasus, no horn. And the twins are both earth ponies, taking after mom. They're named Wrench and Works Clover. They're all actually a couple of booths down; they used to moonlight as taxi ponies, but they came on to the crew when I got enough bits to start paying my outfit well. I'm glad I got Pubs to move over; he's got a lot of know-how that I'm actually still learning.

T- Sorry, but to go back to the story your mom likes to tell?

R- Right, sorry. Yeah, so we're heading back to our apartment in a taxi, and it's one of those ones with the open-top because it's springtime, and dad's always liked the fresh air blowing past him. Of course, I'm laying there, and they're trying to keep me safe and bundled, and so I flap my wings to get the blanket off my back.

Right then, there's this real strong wind. It just goes right between the buildings and over the top of the cab, and there I am, not knowing not to have my wings out.

Up I go like a kite! Mom swears it was the scariest thing that ever happened to her, but dad always says my face was the funniest thing he's ever seen. All eyes and wings, he says, just looking down on top of all those buildings and roads.

T- You were flying!?

R- Miss Twilight, any pegasi can tell you the difference between flying and gliding. I caught air alright, and there's no doubt that I was above the city, but nocreature would call it flying. And considering how I was about three days old at that time, it wasn't long before my wings couldn't hold me anymore, and I wasn't gliding, either.

Luckily, my dad was there to meet me just as my wings let go, and I only fell about five hoof's worth. Giggling and wiggling too, according to dad, like he'd just tossed me up and caught me.

My older brother called me Kite for the next two years, and my mom called my dad a number of names I can't say in front of a princess for not bringing me right back down. She says he flew me all the way back home, but he says it was just a block. Might have been both as far as I cared, still being three days old at the time.

That was about all the sky I saw for a little bit, that wasn't out a window. My mom got a bit paranoid see, and she tried to keep me under a roof for months until my dad convinced her that I wasn't going to get pulled back up into the sky.

She still didn't care until I got a surge that teleported me outside a window. Lucky again, because it was on the ground floor, and I landed in my mom's patch of clover she keeps outside her sills.

After that, she realized that she couldn't keep me too cooped up, and we found a park that we went to every weekend in summer. I still go there sometimes, when I'm in Filly.

T- Do you still live there?

R- No. Well, yes and no. I still have a room in that apartment, same as my brothers, but as it is, I was always a traveling sort. But that comes after my cutie mark, so I think we should wait on those stories?

T- Oh, yes, please. Are there any more things that stand out about your foal-hood?

R- Not much, to be honest. I was always getting into predicaments like those, scaring my poor mom and getting my dad cackling. There was more and more of them as I got into school. Got into school a little later than normal too. I was busy getting myself to the minimum mark for all three races, studying magic and getting my wings working, stuff like that.

I got bullied a little bit in school, being called a freak and stuff like that. It usually got cleared up by my brother Pubs, or the school principal sometimes, but there was a couple times where I got into some tough situations before finding myself twenty hooves in the air on my wings or on top of the school after a surge and a teleport.

Then comes the day of my Cutie Mark.

See, all throughout my days of school, there's been this one bully, some arrogant little unicorn whose name I can't even remember. He was smart, but the wrong kind of smart, you know? The kind of smart that makes you think you're above all the rest of the creatures of the world.

He knew spells that would paralyze my wings or push me off of the school's roof, and he liked to do it right when I'm over a mud puddle or something else nice and gross.

One day he decides he's had enough of me and comes over with his little goons that every bully seems to have, and he tells me he's gonna stomp me into the ground once and for all.

First thing I do is try and flap away, so he hits me real quick with that stiff wing spell. Then I try and teleport over to the school roof, and that works, but he's already got his shoving spell warm, and he pushes me.

Now, at this point, it's been raining so hard, on and off, that there's this mud puddle going all along the side of the school building. The biggest, stinkiest, algae-growing-est puddle you ever did see. So now I'm plunging down through the air, my wings stiff and my horn still smoking a little from the teleport, and I look down and see that mud puddle. And I sort of give up.

But it's not like the regular kind of giving up, where your spirits sink, and you start feeling sorry and sunk.

It's the trusting kind of giving up, where you hand over the reins of your life to the universe, and you say, "Universe, I don't think I can get out of this, so I'm gonna trust you with it. Either you'll do something, or I'll be coated in mud. Either way it shakes out, I guess I'll be alive and be happy about that."

Do you know what I mean, Princess?

...Twilight?

T- Oh, uh, sorry. Yeah, actually, I know exactly what you mean. That sounds a lot like the trust I put in my friends.

R- You need a tissue, Miss Twilight?

T- Thank you.

Okay, uh, sorry about that. What happened?

R- Oh, well, like I said, I kind of gave up. I gave up on saving myself, and I trusted something to happen, one way or another.

And it did.

After I told my teacher what happened, he told me that it had something to do with the way my wings were splayed and maybe to do with my magical field still coming back from that teleport.

Whatever it was that did it, I opened my eyes after I felt that soft cushion of earth hit me again, and I saw that I was completely clean. All the mud and water in that puddle had splashed out, and all the algae and the bad smell with it, leaving me resting some new dirt, and all that filth splashed out and onto that smart unicorn.

Wow, I can still remember that stench! And so did all those other colts and fillies on that playground until we all graduated.

Anyways, I told the teacher what had happened and how, and he laughed and laughed before he called me a lucky son of a buck. Then he laughed a little more, but I was distracted by a tingling on my flank. I turned and peeked, and I found my best friend, the cutie mark I've had since then.

-The subject stands and motions at his cutie mark. It is a horseshoe, with the standard seven holes in the arch. Additionally, there is a clover inside the shoe, with four leaves.-

R- Nopony has ever been dead sure on what it means exactly, but everypony I know does agree that I'm one of the luckiest ponies they've ever met.

-Subject takes a large drink from the mug before them. Shivering, I copy the motions.-

T- Ugh. Bleh. Uhm, is there anything else about your childhood you think stands out?

R- That's the biggest thing, I think. I was a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to my cutie mark, so I got it maybe a couple of years before we graduated school.

T- I actually know a trio of fillies that are similar in that respect.

R- Oh yeah? Some kids take it harder than others, but I was pretty laid-back about it. Knew it would come at some point, and rushing wouldn't do much about it.

T- I would say that I wish you would talk to those fillies, but it would just end up with them trying to get a cutie mark in... It's luck, right? You're pretty lucky?

R- Yeah, I suppose I have been, looking back at it. Like I said a bit ago, once I graduated, I started roving around the country, and let me tell you, there were some near scrapes then. I got chased up a tree by some Timberwolves, had to make a deal with a Chimera for my freedom, even met some Breezies and helped them on their way.

T- It sounds exhilarating.

R- It was, in the beginning. It started to lose its shine, though, and I was sort of searching for myself for a few years there. Then I made it to a little burg called Los Pegasus.

I'd kept up with the family through the mail, right? Turns out my two little brothers, Wrench and Works, right, had made their way there and were gearing up to find their own luck, according to my mom. But then they were out there for two weeks, and mom hadn't heard from them, so she asked me to drop in and check up there.

I got into town, and it turns out that they'd gotten into some money troubles, surprise surprise. They'd gone under on the second day, then found some sleaze-ball that offered them a loan. They never looked at the contract, were too sure of themselves that they'd make up the money in a week. Three days later, they were under again, and they worked themselves to the bone trying to make up the loan for the next few days.

They scraped together just enough to cover it, right, when the SB (sleaze-ball, subject tells me) comes knocking and shows them the small print. They owed double, and the amount doubled again every week.

So when I get there, they're working their tails off for this SB, and he's laughing as they're killing themselves over a piece of paper.

So I make this SB an offer. I pay off my brother's loan in less than a day, and he retires for good.

He don't know me, so he takes the offer, but he says I have to win off of the random-est game in Los Pegasus. I got to make all of my money off the roulette.

I get in this casino, right, and turns out it's run by SB's cousin. He sends all of his debtors there, and he marks them for the staff, and they bleed them dry. So when I get in there, they're all chuckling and hooting and making a fool of me.

That all doubles when I show up at the counter with my entire savings; two bits.

They're all laughing and pointing at me as I go up to the roulette wheel with my two little chips.

Now, I knew better than to press my luck. That's how you lose it, after all. So I'd never gambled before. Didn't want to press whatever gives me my luck and lose it. But I closed my eyes, and I told the universe what was happening and why I was doing what I was doing, and I tossed my two chips onto the table.

When I opened my eyes, both them chips had rolled over and were sitting on the number one.

The owner himself, SB's cousin, walks over at this point and gives me this real understanding smile. He says, "Son, that's one of the worst odds I have in the house. I'll tell you what, now, if you promise to give yourself over to be one of my grunts, your brothers will go free."

Now, I look at him, and I say, "That doesn't sound like something a gambler would say. How about this. I lose, and I accept that deal. I win? You give me enough cash to let my brothers go, doubled for the work they've almost died for."

The whole room goes silent as this SB number two sits there and chews on his cigar, staring me down.

Then he laughs and nods. "Very well, son. Spin it."

That pony behind the table can't stop snickering as he starts that wheel going before he tosses in this little white marble.

Now it's spinning round and round, and it's looking real hit and miss, with the ball rattling around and bouncing in and out of number slots and going round and round. The wheel starts to slow, and it looks a whole lot like the ball is going to settle into fourteen, right across from my number one. SB number two is chuckling and shaking his hooves with his employees, looking smug.

And then the marble hits in between the two slots, real hard, and it splits in two. And those two pieces fly across the wheel, hit the wall, and they settle into slot one.

T- No!

R, chuckling- They did! Both pieces!

Now, everypony is real quiet, even SB two. Then he starts screaming and squalling and calling me a cheater and every other name under Celestia's sun. And he kicks up such a fuss that the guards come in.

So then he starts trying to get them out, and they just dig in harder, and then he starts trying to buy them out, and they get real firm and mad, and they call in back-up, and by the end of the day, they have the entire casino and loanshark in chains and my brothers free. When they ask me what I was doing, and I tell them, they laugh so hard they lose their helmets, and they get with their commanders, and he writes up bounties on the two ponies. Then he pays me out their bounties, which just happens to be twice what my brothers owed before he bans me from every casino in the town.

T- Wow. What happened from there?

R- Well, I got with my brothers, all three of them, and we put the money into equipment and horsepower, and we started taking on odd jobs for cities and working our way up. We started in a little village called Appleloosa, and we've worked our way up to Ponyville, and if your friend still wants it, it sounds like we'll be in Canterlot soon.