When compared to the other nations, Eeyorus had a few claims to fame. Most of those were based in its majority population, because the native home of the donkeys ran thriving export businesses in Cynicism, Worst-Case Scenarios, and Teaching Others To Prepare For The Inevitable: the annoying part was that they were usually right. But if someone from outside the borders were to consider what the land itself had to offer...
'Weather' probably wasn't on the list. Eeyorus tended towards heavily-overcast dreary skies. Spring brought with it a constant threat of drizzle, winter loved to unleash snow without warning or ceasefire, and summer was mostly seen as the moons where hail really wanted to get a word in. Quite a bit of their nation had been established on a relatively narrow peninsula, and the frequent precipitation meant hoof-based travel to the capital spent a lot of time trotting across the decks of a ship. There was one low-lying access portion for the Tail Of Eeyorus, and it was forever being flooded out. And outside of a life-threatening emergency, the donkeys steadfastly refused to ask their few native pegasi to modify any of it, nor would they request the International Stormbreaker Team to be dispatched from the pony nation for anything less than potential catastrophe. Being a donkey was about survival, and the default species response to anything which didn't promise to immediately kill them was to lower their head a little more and continue plodding forward. Because most of the time, that would be the way through everything. (Truly major emergencies might require diverting slightly to the left.) Their philosophy stated that existence was suffering and as a corollary, recognized life was what happened when you came out the other side.
'Stunning architecture' was... debatable. Donkeys understood that just about every building was going to fall eventually, and had turned their collective design philosophy towards multi-century stall tactics. The results were exceptionally solid, possessed most of the charm for the average prison while subtracting half the comfort, could generally be described as 'colorful' in that grey was a color and there were numerous shades of it, plus they had been known to stun a few visitors. Anyone who accidentally collided with an Eeyorian building was, at a minimum, going to be stunned. The designer generally turned up one day later to make repairs and mutter about how having those tiny bits of fur embedded on impact was going to take at least six moons off the total lifespan. For the building, not whoever had recently gone into it. Whatever was happening to the less sturdy side of the meeting wasn't the designer's problem.
'Beautiful vistas' did apply, here and there. Every so often, the weather would clear just enough for Sun and Moon to shine down upon the sprawling greenery of the land, possibly as a means of reminding themselves that it was still present. The average donkey might respond to such a vision by glancing up slightly, feeling grateful for that cosmic presence, and immediately refining their ongoing plan regarding actions to take on the day when the orbs didn't show up. Just. In. Case.
Besides, there had already been that one incident. A wise donkey didn't rely on the numbers stopping there.
But when it came to specific things to see, appreciate, and experience in the capital city of Millacre... there were always the streets. And it wasn't just the many clubs which lined the major thoroughfares. A donkey knew how to have a good time, because how could you appreciate everything suffering taught you if you couldn't isolate the moments which weren't it? And they loved comedy. 'A pony flew into a building. Ow.' Classic.
The deep red pegasus, whose wings had been bound to her sides, with fore and hind legs roped in ways which forced her to hop along or fall as she was dragged through the rainy night, was currently getting some time to think about the actual street.
"This isn't fair!" screamed the mare.
The words had something of a liquid quality. Part of that was because they were moving through what was now a fairly steady rainfall: something which had droplets streaming down immobilized feathers. The rest came because every syllable had needed to force its way past what was, for a pegasus, a rather impressive amount of alcohol.
There were a few reasons for travelers to visit the donkey nation. Some of the vistas were beautiful, on the rare days when it became possible to clearly see them. Those who didn't like their current living conditions often found their mood improved after a few days of paying hotel prices for worse. And donkeys were very, very good at brewing alcohol. A substance which both served as a depressant and made everything worse after it wore off? Bring it.
The mare had already been through several drinks, and that was just on this night. She'd even found a way to make others pay for just about all of them. And then the large jack had entered the bar, roped her, bound...
He still had the rope's far end in his mouth. Plodding with his head down, moving forward because that was the way out of everything. Pulling her along without an earth pony's strength: just a donkey's endless endurance and insistence on moving forward, forcing her to hop or fall. And on some level, she understood why the rope was there. A metal cone over a unicorn's horn, a rope to bind wings. It was the same principle. For a pegasus, if you took away movement, you stopped the magic. So that was exactly what law enforcement had done.
She knew she was being arrested.
She didn't understand why.
The most she'd done was lie. Just a little one, the same lie she'd been telling for most of her time in the capital, and it wasn't as if anyone had gotten hurt! That couldn't be the reason why the law had come after her! Who could possibly get that upset about free drinks?
"HELP ME!" she shouted to the shaggy, dripping jacks and jennies who were moving along one of the capital's main thoroughfares. Placid eyes glanced at her, noted her suffering, collectively decided that meant life was normal, and then went on with their evening.
The rain came down faster.
I have to get out of this...
It had to be a mistake. There was no chance for her perfect little lie to be responsible for her situation. But...
Her drunken mind could find no way in which the falsehood had gotten her into this. But maybe it could get her out.
"DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" she demanded of the grey, moistened world. "I'M --"
Her hooves began to skid.
Donkeys didn't favor cobblestone. The national weather trends had led them to emphasize drainage above all else, creating mildly-humpbacked road surfaces which could stand up to the slow erosion from water (for a few centuries, anyway) while diverting the flow towards drains. The results were oddly smooth, had a strange way of retaining heat and, when the rain got heavy enough, couldn't quite send all of it into the sewers in time.
The mare had only been in Eeyorus for a few days: long enough for the lie to have taken her through multiple bars. She hadn't spent a lot of time on the streets themselves and since her wings had been free at the time, she'd preferred 'over'.
"-- oh no, oh no -- I'm sliding, I'm -- why am I sliding? How can I -- stop pulling me! I didn't do anything!"
Accordingly, it was her first introduction to hydroplaning.
"You can't arrest me when I didn't --"
But he just kept plodding onwards through the rainfall. He was a donkey, he had a destination, and mere assertions of reality weren't going to stop him from reaching it. And she could see lights up ahead, something stronger than the underpowered streetlamps (and that was part of what made it so easy to go into buildings), with a distant one shining on a dripping cloth banner of sky-blue with multiple white stars --
-- oh no.
He wasn't taking her to the police station.
The mare began to thrash, tested her wings against the strength of rope and knots, lost again and again. And the jack just kept pulling her along, because Millacre was the capital and if there was a capital city in a nation which was less than fully hostile to the outside world, that was going to be where you found the local version of Embassy Row.
She shouted. She screamed. Her foulest curses were reserved for the moment when they passed Mazein's flag, because she was fully willing to accept a minotaur charging to the rescue. But none of it did any good. The donkey pulled her past a partial map of the world writ large in windows and cornices, got up to the gate, a stern (and rather wet) earth pony opened it for him, and then he dragged her onto what passed for home soil. Heading directly for a large, hollow-seeming structure off to the side of the main building, as the earth pony followed, got ahead, opened the door --
-- it was hollow. Four walls, a ceiling, the floor had been claimed from the option list and when you were dealing with the teleport depart/receive buildings known as gatehouses, having a frustrated-looking black unicorn (whose horn was already lit, with frustrated spikes of cerise moving across its length) was just about mandatory.
"NO!" she tried one last time, as the donkey finally let go of the rope and the earth pony's hard head shoved inside. "YOU CAN'T! I'M --"
The lit horn touched her forehead.
There was a flash.
Donkey and earth pony were gone. The black unicorn stepped aside. And before she could do anything, the door to a different gatehouse opened, a green pony rushed inside, the horn touched her and --
-- she lost count after a while. The disorientation built up as, stage by stage, she was moved across borders until the final jump placed her within a cube which had been carved out of solid stone. And before she could regain any focus, force a thought to focus through a sea of drink, the door to that cube opened.
Which was when she got her minotaur. Just a little too late.
The ageláda gruffly reached out. Picked the pegasus up, draped her across the right sweater-clad shouder until the wet head was dripping down the back, then walked out of the stone room.
They went down busy hallways which looked like nothing so much as an office building which had gone multispecies. There were plenty of ponies, but zebras were sorting paperwork (and the writing told the pegasus she was back in Equestria), one yak pushed by and that one needed a lot of room, everyone was just ignoring everything the pegasus screamed as the female minotaur did nothing more than carry her along. All the way to the heavy door. The one which led into an occupied room with only three walls, because heavy iron bars substituted nicely for the fourth.
The last "NO!" was ignored.
The minotaur got the door open with her free hand. Carefully put the pegasus inside the room, turned the deep red body to face forward, and then closed the door in the mare's face.
The pegasus stared at the place where a keyhole wasn't, at least for her side. Thought about the indignity of the world, all of the suffering inflicted upon somepony who hadn't done anything wrong. Several consumed mugs briefly considered that the donkey worldview might have a point. And then she marshaled herself, fought past a blood alcohol level which could be accurately measured as Mistake, then decided once again that the lie had in no way gotten her into this and furthermore, might just be what she needed to get her out.
The pegasus took a breath.
"YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! I'M THE SEV --"
"-- seventh Element of Harmony?" asked a vaguely bemused female voice from somewhere behind her.
"What a coincidence, dear!" declared an older-sounding mare. "So are we!"
The pegasus froze.
Slowly, the deep red body turned. With the ropes in place, it was an action which required a lot of hopping.
There were three other mares in the cell. One was a steel-blue pegasus, and she probably hadn't said anything because she had been somewhat more professionally-bound: the jaw was available, but it would be understandable if it didn't want to do much. The other two were a dark brown unicorn with a horn restraint, and a bright green, fairly overweight earth pony wearing an elaborate golden necklace. Or at least, some of it looked elaborate. The majority of the neck band was hidden by bulging folds of pained-looking flesh.
"Will you look at that?" the bemused unicorn smiled. "Four Elements in the same room! And yet, each of us is still the seventh."
"I don't think that's right," the earth pony decided. "One of you should be the eighth." Rather more quickly, "If there were eight. There aren't. There's seven. And I'm the real seventh."
"Oh, really," the unicorn considered. (The immobile pegasus managed to roll her eyes.) "And what's your proof of that?"
The earth pony raised her left foreleg, nearly slumped to that side before managing to touch the necklace.
"I've got this," she said. "You can't be a proper Element without a necklace. So I had this one made. I think it matches very nicely, don't you?"
Nopony said anything.
"Except it's a little tight around the neck," she added. "Which is okay, because some of the other Bearers are svelte and naturally we should all match!"
She swayed a little. Lowered the foreleg.
"I do get dizzy sometimes," the earth pony admitted. "But that obviously comes from thinking about the dizzying scope of my duties to Equestria." Brightly, "But I'm a generous spirit, just like one of my dearest friends! And so I generously welcome the latest liar to our little abode. So how should we all pass the time? Since it may be a while before my true companions come to release me, and the rest of you are just waiting for the psychiatric evaluation."
The silence maintained. The earth pony frowned.
"It should be something we can all do," she considered as dark eyes regarded the two bound pegasi with open sympathy. "Eyebrow-raising contest?"
"...oh, shut up, Cosma..." grumbled the unicorn mare.
Eventually, they played a few rounds to keep her happy. The steel-blue pegasus won every time.
The newest arrival was kept in the cell until the alcohol had passed out of her system. Then she was granted two hours for the worst of the hangover to go away, because donkeys didn't believe it was a good night of drinking unless you got the full morning-after experience with it.
A cornflower pegasus trotted up to the cell door. Food was offered, and most of it stayed down.
"You," she told the deep red mare. "You're lucky."
"...I am," a considerably more sober pony failed to evaluate.
"The boss is going to speak with you personally. Because you're a first-timer. And maybe he can talk you out of visiting us again." Intelligent eyes took a long look at the rope bindings. "I'm going to free up your legs. Not the wings. I'd advise against galloping."
The mare managed a nod.
I didn't do anything...
The cell door was opened. Select ropes were removed. She was told to follow, and she did.
It was possible that Sun had been raised. She was led past what had to be offices, and there seemed to be somewhat more glow visible behind the window glass.
One room, where the door hadn't quite closed, had a kind-looking unicorn behind a paperwork-laden desk, and a shaken earth pony colt on the other side of it.
"...so I just decided," the youth forced out, "that if all the fillies in my class just thought I was... special... they'd look at me differently. They'd -- actually look..."
The unicorn gently nodded. "You know," the adult said, "Neighpon ponies have a word for that."
Hopefully, "Really?"
"Chūnibyō."
"What does it mean?"
Not without kindness, "'Moron'."
The pegasus mare was led past that. A colorful logo adorned one wall, and she dedicated herself to not working out what it meant. Her head hurt enough already.
Then she heard a tapping sound, coming through the open doorway up ahead on the left. Small, hard surfaces repeatedly hitting wood. Something which was counterpointed by a sort of -- clacking.
"That you, Accu?" It was a male voice.
The tapping didn't stop. The clacking existed as something between syllables --
"-- it's me, boss," the cornflower pegasus said. "With the import."
With a soft sigh (which had two embedded clacks), "Then let's honor her point of origin and make my day worse. Send her in."
The deep red pegasus was put through the door. It closed behind her, and talons drummed on the edge of the desk.
"Take a bench," the boss said. "There's water if you need it. A lot of it, given the state you were in when you arrived. Now. Your name is -- Carmina? Am I pronouncing that correctly? It's the first time I've come across it, so I wanted to be sure --"
"-- you're a griffon."
The tapping stopped.
An oversized bobcat body shifted somewhat on a non-standard bench. Talons were carefully raised in front of near-luminescent yellow owl eyes, and the twin feather ridges which rose from each side of the head vibrated with faint amusement.
"Huh," the boss considered. "Will you look at that? I am a griffon." With a faint shrug of feline shoulders, "I guess if I ever have any sudden urges to swoop down on ponies, that still won't explain it. But it does say something about why I can't get a hoof-smoothing cream to work for me. Anyway, thank you for telling me. I find that if ponies don't tell me every hour or so, I just lose track. So --"
"-- how can a griffon be in charge?"
She blinked. Her wings pushed against the rope, failed to break through, and thus prevented her feathers from slamming a protective shield in front of her blushing face.
"I travel," Carmina hastily said. "I like traveling. I'm not -- I mean, I'm just not used to -- this is Equestria, and I wouldn't expect --"
The yellow eyes didn't blink back. A griffon's body could display any combination of cat and hunting bird: the ones whose avian features came from great horned owls weren't going to blink much.
"Through getting hired," the griffon male calmly said. "Having birth citizenship helped there, at least in cutting down on the paperwork. And then I worked my way up the chain. I'm an Equestrian griffon, Carmina. We exist. I was born in Percheron, and that's most of what you need to know about me. The rest? My name is Septimus Venator. You can call me Sept, up until I tell you not to. I'm the head of Division Seven. And I thought, she's a first-time offender -- that we know of -- and maybe if she has a nice, long talk with someone reasonable --" the talons dipped below desk level, and the sleek body settled in "-- there just might be a chance of preventing her from reaching two and beyond --"
"I want a lawyer," felt like a somewhat more intelligent thing to say.
Peacefully, "You can't have one."
"I was just in a cell," Carmina frantically pushed. "I have rights! I want an attorney --"
"-- an attorney can represent you once charges are brought in," Septimus peacefully said. "There aren't any yet."
"But I was in a cell --"
"-- you were drunk and needed a safe place to sober up." Another shrug. "As for your legal status... right now, you're back in Equestria. After having been, let's say, 'aggressively deported'. That creates a certain obligation for your own government to find out the 'why'. Which gives me the right to interview you."
She tried to keep the fuming down to feather twitches. The rope helped.
"And we're still waiting on most of Eeyorus' paperwork," the griffon added. "Because they sent you back in such a hurry as to teleport you without it. So all I've really got is what the witnesses relayed to the embassy before Millacre's police went to fetch you. To keep it from getting any worse."
The pegasus carefully took stock.
"Deported," she said. "All of my luggage is still in --"
"-- it'll be sent back."
"I don't even know what this so-called 'Division Seven' is --"
"-- and you can't take a guess?" the griffon asked. "You've had a night with your cellmates. Didn't that give you a clue? Or -- seven?"
oh no
The griffon's forelegs came up, moved towards each other. Sharp claw tips steepled.
"Right now," he softly said, "you are what Division Seven calls an OC."
"A --"
"Offending Counterfeit." And his volume dropped a little more. "Go ahead, Carmina. Tell me why Eeyorus kicked you out. Why you're here."
She managed a shallow breath.
"It was just getting free drinks."
"I'd say," the griffon countered, "that the price might be on the high side."
"There's no crime in saying I'm a Bearer!"
The claws were now tapping against each other. "EQ 18:371:1, Carmina. Falsely claiming status as government personnel."
"I --" Which was when she realized that the hangover was clearing, and Logic was back. "-- I was in Eeyorus! Equestrian laws wouldn't apply!"
"Division Seven," its head told her, "is an international effort. It has to be, because some ponies decide their odds of selling the lie go up with increasing distance. And so every nation which participates has put similar laws on their own books. They apply to anyone who claims to be a Bearer and if there's any fight over jurisdiction, it gets resolved in international court. You said you like to travel? Have you ever been to the Beastriality? Because if you keep pretending --"
"-- there's an entire division of Equestrian law," she cut him off, "with international help -- dedicated to finding ponies who claim to be Bearers -- and arresting them?"
"No," the griffon calmly said.
"...no..." felt oddly like a lifeline.
"We've brought in sapients from just about every species when they falsely claimed to be Bearers," he shrugged, and the huge yellow eyes remained fixed on her features. "I did say 'anyone' back there."
"And there's an entire division," she softly said. "Just for that."
The griffon sighed.
"I know, right?" the beak clacked around and between the syllables. "You'd think there wouldn't have to be. That we wouldn't be getting at least a dozen offenders in every moon claiming that there's one more virtue than most ponies ever believed. Even if they can't agree on what it is. Unfortunately..."
The forelegs went down again, and he leaned forward as the fixed predatory stare continued to lance across the desk.
"-- the evidence proves you wrong. We had about two quiet weeks after Princess Luna came back, or at least two weeks where nopony thought to say anything in front of law enforcement. But once word of the Return fully spread... well, most of what everyone had picked out of the rumors was that there had been a group involved. Possibly six. And without knowing who those six were, pretending to be one of them felt -- chancy, I guess. Even when it came to the usual reasons for trying --"
Carmina wondered if the half-parted beak represented a smile. She really didn't want it to.
"-- it was so much easier for our first crop to set themselves up as seventh. Because if nopony knew exactly how it had happened, then maybe they had the count wrong too. And they all had their reasons for lying, Carmina. Free drinks, that was popular." The wings rustled. "Sex? In so many ways, it's almost always about sex -- oh, don't feel you have to blush for me: I'm Equestrian, but you are not my type. And there were those who tried for more. More and worse, Carmina." So much more softly, "Impersonation of government personnel. Fraud. Claiming power they didn't have, in order to get whatever they wanted. It went up from there. And it didn't take long before it was bad enough to require its own division. One which needed a little extra help from the rest of the world -- and because the lies had spread across the borders, we got it."
"I..." almost felt like all she had.
"They don't like having fake Bearers around, the other nations," he quietly told her. "Some of them have had a hard enough time dealing with the real ones. So when the ersatz drops by..."
"...free drinks," she just barely voiced. "I was... I was trying to save some money, and... they were talking about something which had happened here, they didn't have the whole story, and I thought --"
The tiny nod cut her off.
"As far as we know, you were just after free drinks last night." This time, the yellow eyes blinked, and the beak was briefly half-parted again. "And possibly sex. I'm told that a well-groomed donkey can have a lot of appeal -- hey, there's that blush again! And maybe you were planning to do more with it, but -- I can only work with the evidence I have. So let's say it was for free drinks, Carmina. And leave your sex life out of it. So we're going to talk. Talking helps me decide how to treat any possible charges. Whether to follow through, or seal them away. And maybe, after we're done, you'll never do this again."
I could get out of this...
The griffon nodded to the nearest guest bench. After a moment, she climbed up.
"A whole division," she said. "Just for this."
"It's necessary."
"Ponies lie about things all the time," Carmina reasonably pointed out.
"And I," the bemused griffon began, "was raised to treat honesty as a virtue. Did everypony else miss that part?"
"Especially when drinks and sex are involved," she pushed on. "And you're treating them all equally? Even when the lie isn't for anything more than that, it's a crime?"
"Lying to get sex," the griffon quietly said, "has its own problems. Most of which say a lot about the pony who told the tale. But we don't have a choice, Carmina. We have to bring in everyone we find. Because there's consequences if we don't."
"You won't make your monthly hunt quota?" suggested that some of the alcohol was still in play, and did so a mere two seconds before "I'm sorry! I have a headache, I get sarcastic when --"
"-- consequences for the Sevenths," he replied. "Bad ones."
"Worse than jail time?" still felt sardonic.
"Depends on your perspective," the griffon told her. "But if you need a little more perspective..."
The talons came up. Tapped out the beat.
"Want a story?" he offered. "Maybe a few stories, because that's what we do here. Gather Sevenths and stories. Maybe you'll learn something from the latter. I would have hoped on a few overnight cell tales from our most frequent visitor, but... until we bring in a professional metalworker to cut this latest necklace off, Cosma's mostly going to be good for Bearer trivia."
I could get out of this.
"Please." As many stories as it took, to let her fly free.
Claws steepled again. The beak half-parted.
"So let's see," the griffon considered. "A basic one, to start. About why claiming to be a Seventh is a bad idea, even without the potential jail time. Because honestly, Carmina -- you do remember about Honesty, don't you? Honestly, so much of the time, we just want to save them from themselves. Or the consequences. Because our Sevenths -- they don't always get there first..."