Foxtrot looked over his assembled masses.
Diamond dogs of every size, shape and color had gathered here in a place that seemed so sacred to the humans. A place where one could find food, warm things to drink, and respite from the nearly tortuously long shifts that wore the dogs down to miserable piles of sooty fur. A special place -an almost holy room- in their factory called "the break room".
Most of the Stoneclaw pack was nearly eight hours into their shift. And since most of the humans had taken a break to get some lunch in the market, the foreman begrudgingly said that the dogs could use the break room, for once. Nearly a hundred dogs, a pitiful remnant of a pack that once claimed hundreds of members, one of the richest lodes of ore in the northland, and one of the greatest symbols of wealth in a diamond dog pack: seven of the rock-eating stoneworms. It was those titanic, sixty foot long worms that chewed out the bigger chambers and deeper tunnels in their dens, and unknown to most surface dwellers, the greater mass of surface level gems came from the excretions of the stoneworm, giving them that 'pre-cut' look.
But of course, the stoneworms had been highly sensitive to vibration, and when the people of the Republic claimed the dog's iron mine as their own, the dynamite used to blow the warrens of the dogs had startled the worms so badly that they had dived down several miles into the Earth's crust. With most of their leaders killed in the blast, and their stoneworms far beyond any hope of recovery, the Stoneclaws had given up any vestiges of greatness as a pack.
Glory through numbers and strength were no longer an option to the once mighty pack, and Foxtrot knew this to be true. Only through adaptation could they ever survive, and even here, where they had roofs over their heads and a stability almost unheard of in their society, the diamond dogs still faced a bleak future. Some had even been talking amongst themselves, saying that they should gather up their meager supplies and what was left of their dignity and strike out into the wild lands again. Maybe they should never have come crawling up to the gates of Lazarus in the first place.
But Foxtrot knew better than that. Out in the wilderness, they were only going to find greater despair and most likely their deaths. He knew that the future of his people lay here, in the civilization that the humans had built from the brilliance of their minds and not the brute strength of the alpha dog.
"Good to see that so many have come!" Foxtrot called out across the crowd. The cacophony of dog voices died down as they all turned their attention to their superior. A few cringed in their spots; back in the old days of the pack, the dogs were only assembled when punishment was going to be meted out, or when the pack was preparing for war. But Foxtrot's friendly tone and posture, combined with the odd gathering he had called, only served to confuse most of the pack.
Foxtrot hopped up on top of a cafeteria table, folding his arms behind his back and pacing up and down the length of the table, like he had seen some human commanders do around their troops. He hoped it made him look even more important, despite his lack of shiny medals and a spiffy uniform, other than the trademark vest and collar.
"I brought you all here today to talk about something big," Foxtrot assured his pack. The fact that he wasn't going to thrash them brought relief to those who cringed in fear, but only deepened the permeating confusion. Diamond dogs weren't too keen on the concept of talking things out. "We are oppressed!" he declared, grinning at the chance to use such a word.
"Diamond dogs like us work, and work, and work for the humans. We come in before the sun rises, and only get to leave when the foreman is too tired to shout orders!" Many sad faces throughout the crowd gave knowing nods. The long hours and sometimes dangerous conditions in the steel foundry had taken their toll on the hardy Stoneclaws, and some nights they had to carry the most exhausted in their number back to their communal houses. "They leave hours before we do, they get to leave for doctors when they get hurt, and they get paid more for less!"
Foxtrot pointed a paw to a grizzled old dog with the face and fur of a wolfhound. "Poor Salty too old to be working so much. I tell this to the boss, and he laugh! He says that Salty's experience make up for it!" Foxtrot turned to another member of the pack near the front, a younger female with the yellow fur over her belly swollen. "Roxxy going to be a mother, she shouldn't be working like this! I tell this to the boss, and again he laugh! More pups means more workers when they grow up!"
The more indiscretions that Foxtrot listed, the more the Stoneclaws growled their agreement. A few of the younger, more brash members of the pack cracked their knuckles, eager to enact the eye for an eye policy that was diamond dog law. The older hounds silenced them, wondering how Foxtrot intended to change all of this.
He had their full, undivided attention now, as well as their unswayable loyalty. "I myself was a victim of all this." He spun on his hindpaws, intentionally showing the jagged scar on his right leg to the crowd, one he had earned when a cart of ore had spilled and a jagged stone had torn through his leg. "But a few days ago, I met a pony. A pony named Heartstrings. And she told me that the humans are treating us like this because our ancestors fought them, and they remember it. Humans don't trust us, humans oppress us, because they holding a grudge! But Heartstrings, she told me that she doing something about it. She not going to fight humans, she going to argue and debate to make them treat her fair!"
At the mention of Lyra's tactics, many dogs cocked their heads. Argue? Diamond dog packs didn't argue! Whenever a dispute between packs, or even cliques inside of packs, became evident, they fought it out. Might was right. Dominance always succeeded over logic.
"Heartstrings tell me that to argue with the humans, we need to think more like humans! And to think more like humans, we need to leave behind the old ways!" And with that declaration, gasps rang out through the room. Tradition was what held a pack together, other than the ever present hierarchy of dominance. "We need to leave behind the pack," Foxtrot continued, "We live in human land now, and we are citizens here. It is time to make something new, something that is more like what the humans and the ponies do. The Stoneclaws were a great and powerful pack, but we not great and powerful anymore. And I say we move forward instead of dwelling in the past! We will make something better than a pack!"
The dogs panted in anticipation, at the edge of their seats. Something that was better than a pack! The very idea tickled their imaginations, and thoughts of becoming greater than any of the wild packs raced through their heads.
"Something better than a pack!" Foxtrot declared again. "Where we vote for leader. Where we decide as a group who will lead! Where old age means rest, and hard work means just rewards! Something that will make sure that no dog sleeps in the gutters or passes out from exhaustion in the mill!"
The entire room of diamond dogs leapt to their feet, clapping and barking their excitement about this new concept of chosen leadership, ensured health and safety, and happiness for all people.
But with one sentence, one fell blow, all of Foxtrot's force and verve was smashed.
"What we call it?" some dog in the back shouted to the front.
Foxtrot raised a finger as if to make a grand and glorious declaration, but found that he had no fancy words left in his repertoire. He slouched over, tapping his chin with a claw. Indeed, what to call it?
"Anyone have idea?" Foxtrot said to the crowd, looking for any single word that would properly encompass their new group.
Every dog in the group soon lost himself in deep thought, scratching their heads and trying to recall any fancy words that might work.
"Oh, oh, how about 'party'!" a young hound with the face of a pug suggested.
"No, not serious enough," Foxtrot retorted, scratching his chin in deep thought. He sat down on the edge of the table, wracking his brain for anything that might work. "Something....where people that work in same place....come together, to make things better," he thought out loud, meshing his thick fingers to demonstrate.
"Meeting?" someone else suggested.
Foxtrot scowled at the dog, feeling that to be completely obvious. "No, that's what we're doing right now."
"Oh, how about 'clan'!" a long haired fellow eagerly said.
"Nope," Foxtrot flatly denied. For some reason, he felt like the humans wouldn't be so glad hearing about a clan of dogs in their city.
"Crew!"
"Crews small, we need something bigger!" Foxtrot said back.
"Syndicate!" one of the more well read (and one of the few that actually knew how to read) suggested.
That word, though fancy enough to hopefully impress the humans, was unappealing. "No, that makes us sound like criminals."
"Get-together-to-make-things-better...group?"
Foxtrot just stared incredulously at the dog who had suggested that. "That's just stupid! We need a good name for when people like us join together for common goal! How hard can this be?! We built entire underground dens with tunnels held up by one column, but we too stupid to figure this out!" The coyote faced dog wanted to smash his head against the table. Here he had planted the seed of a grand and glorious idea, and now they couldn't get past square one because because they couldn't think of a name!
But for some reason, Foxtrot's mind drifted to human industry, more specifically, pipe fitting. Sure, diamond dogs in the past had never needed plumbing or pipes for anything. But when they had been introduced to plumbing, the inner engineer in every dog took a shine to it. But what was niggling at his mind was what humans called it when two pipes came together. When two pipes came together to make a flow, one joined it with a ....
"Union," Foxtrot said aloud. The front row of dogs all looked up from their deep thoughts, utterly awestruck at the simplicity, yet absolute perfect fit of the word. "Union!" Foxtrot repeated loud enough for the whole room to hear. "We will call it: a union!"
And over in the offices, the next building over, Chester Mackenzie, president of the steel company, felt a cold chill run down his spine for no discernible reason at all. Feeling as though the ghosts of a thousand conservative statesmen had suddenly cried out in agony, he shrugged it off.
***********************************************
Across the city, far from the centers of industry, another meeting of the movers and shakers was underway. Lyra stood proudly before her assembled mass of ponies, but unlike Foxtrot and his dogs, Lyra and her group were beyond the problem of simple nomenclature. For now, the problem was organization, and an ultimate plan of action.
But conveniently having a civil rights lawyer always present had neatly taken care of the need to form her own plan, and the only way it could have been better was to have Martin Luther King Jr himself at her side.
"To change a society, we have to be a part of it, whether you like it or not, and whether the humans like it or not!" Lyra proclaimed to her followers. "And to change human society, we have to work our way in. We have to prove that we can play their game, and play by the rules that they made."
The minty mare levitated a book in her magical aura, showing the cover to all the assembled ponies. The 1960's and the Civil Rights Movement elicited a small gasp from all the ponies, and their worries as to how they would stage this societal revolution quickly evaporated. Aside from a few minor scuffles in the days of the tribal division, there had been no real civil movements in the past. The ponies of Equestria just didn't know how to stage a protest or get a petition going, not in any way that would work here.
"This book details how groups of people in the ancient human nations fought for freedom and equality. Now, I want everypony to skim through it, and pass it along. If you can get to a library, or can just get more books like this, do it!" Lyra passed the heavy history book to a pony in the first row, who immediately started perusing a chapter on sit-ins. He excitedly whispered to his friend next to him, and already Lyra could see something hitting the headlines in a few days.
Clearing her throat, Lyra launched into Mr Darrow's grand plan.
"Now, if we're going to change this society for the better, we're going to have to split up our efforts." Again her horn flared to life with her yellow magic, and a large sheaf of paper levitated into the air, along with a bold marker. "The best way to go about this is a five-pronged plan of action on both the government and on the population. The first three steps are to get the government, the last two are going right into their homes and hearts."
She marked down a big number one, along with a quick drawing of judicial scales. "First, we need to hit the judiciary. Challenge the laws that hold us down, bring 'em to court and fight tooth and nail. That's my turf, I've got that covered."
A big two quickly joined it, along with several little stick figure humans. "Second, the legislation. This is the most important place we have to hit. If we fail here, it could take another century before we can build up the guts to try again. That's why most of your efforts will be dedicated to this flank."
A number three was quickly scrawled on another piece of paper, along with a single human stick figure, but with a stick figure phoenix above his head. "Third, the executive. I don't know how we're going to hit the presidency, but we've got to figure out a way to make sure that President McGoff won't veto anything that the Senate passes on to him. So, we're taking a rain check on McGoff."
Separate from the government flank of the great pony civil rights plan, Lyra scrawled a four onto another paper, along with a stick pony and a stick human shaking hands/hooves. "This one is going to be the hardest one to do. This part of the plan is to improve our public image with the humans. I know, it's going to be hard since we're their oldest enemies and we'll also be staging protests all over. But this is something everypony needs to do, this is something that should have been done the moment you got here from Equestria, and it's the ultimate goal of what we're trying to accomplish here. This step is to make some human friends. And not just political allies or supporters, I mean friends!"
The crowd murmured to themselves about how the humans had always put up too much of a stone wall to let them be their friends.
Lyra sighed, sitting on the edge of the desk. "I know that seems like a difficult thing to do, because it will be. But our goal here isn't to bully them into treating us fair. What we're trying to do is prove to them that we aren't so different, and that we can help each other if we try. We're trying to prove that we aren't enemies anymore." Lyra's thoughts drifted back, back to certain time in Ponyville, when she had first learned the nature of human beings, and the reason for ponykind's existence.
"Have any of you ever talked to a human as anything but a coworker, or just as a courtesy?" Most of the crowd shook their heads. Earning the trust of a human being was a hard thing to do. And there were so few in the world that could truly say they empathized with humanity. But, there were a few. Lyra took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Does anypony know any crystal ponies?"
A few hooves tentatively rose, and more than one pony murmured that they had visited the Crystal Empire in their more prosperous days. Back when they had the time and money to take such trips.
"Have you ever talked to a crystal pony? Have you ever asked them what it was like to live during such a horrible time? When everything they knew turned against them and tortured them? Have any of you ever wondered what it felt like to lose centuries of time, and wake up in a strange world? If anypony in Equestria understands what the humans are going through, it's the crystal ponies. And if any of you know any crystal ponies, you'll know how they feel when they are confronted with their past and their future. They're frightened, uncertain, and doubting whether they'll even live to see another year. A lot of them lost friends and family because they just couldn't help them. Now think for a moment, the human race went through twice the absence of the Crystal Empire, and they weren't enslaved by a dark wizard, their entire species was wiped off the face of the Earth by Discord."
Waves of guilt ran through the crowd, and many ponies were reminded of why they had not taken action in the first place. The humans were in a fragile state of mind, and they had every right to be angry with ponykind and the world in general. So what was the point of deepening the wounds, throwing salt onto the fresh cut slashed into their racial memory?
"And you know what?" Lyra continued, gaining a little volume. "They need us to help them. They need us to offer our hearts to them in friendship, no matter how much they deny us. I know many of you came out here to look for new opportunities, but some of you came here to make amends, to make their lives better. And we can do that by lending a hoof in support, by being there as a shoulder to cry on, a friendly smile to lift up their day. We're not here for us, we're here because we need to be there for them."
A mist of tears entered Lyra's eye, and she thought about her reason for being here. To be a caring, loving mother to a lovable little human being who needed someone to be there.
"We have to become the ponies that they need us to be, the kind and loving people that makes Equestria the model of a tolerating society to the rest of the world. And here we are, bitter, callous and acting like whipped mules. And I say, shame on us! We need to focus on this stage because it doesn't just help the humans, it'll help all of us. So, if you have any questions on how to make human friends, all I can tell you is to be your real self."
Lyra slid off the desk, looking over the crowd of ponies with a smile. They were just a tiny fraction of the number that she would need, but they were a damned good start. "So, any questions?"
A hoof rose only a few rows in, and Lyra nodded to the questioner.
"Yes, um, you said there were five prongs to your plan, but you only gave four. What's the fifth?" he asked curiously, rubbing his neck with a hoof and shrugging.
"The fifth flank," Lyra replied calmly, "is a last resort. But step five is easily the most effective. Step five is to hit them where it hurts, right in their wallets. If the politicians won't listen to us, they have no choice except to listen to the complaints of their businessmen. And the Stoneclaw pack are the ones who can help us the most with that area. Now everypony gather into groups of about five or ten, and discuss the ways we can organize protests, stage sit ins, and make some human friends. We'll all reconvene tonight at the Watering Hole."
Outside the study, leaning quietly to the wall with his ear to the door, Aaron listened to Lyra's big plan. He knew something was up when sixty ponies had shown up at his door looking for Lyra. So, he had walked down the street and waited a few minutes, then looped back around and snuck back in to his house.
Leaning back from the door, he grinned and chuckled quietly to himself, walking back out to the street.
"I knew she was up to something. And I can't help but feel that you're in on this too, as much as you want to deny it," he calmly said through his spirit link to the other realm. Almost immediately, he felt the chuckles of a ghostly presence in response.
I've spent enough time around the human race to know when they need a push in the right direction. Besides, this happens more than you think, in ways too subtle for the material mind to readily pick up on. I am not a being of instant gratification, but this will be good for your kind in the long run.
"Lyra Heartstrings, civil rights leader," he mused aloud. "Hm, maybe they'll give her a statue in the park with her own inspiring quote at the bottom. By the way, I noticed a huge change after she made a little trip to the Crystal." He said nothing more, and nothing more needed to be said. For the goddess seemed to have gone unnaturally quiet, possibly even fleeing momentarily into some kind of extradimensional safe haven to avoid further conversation. With a grin he knew his passive accusation to be entirely correct, but frankly he didn't care.
*********************************************************
Another day, another stack of papers.
Anita was working the desk today, and in fact for the rest of the week. There were seven registered social workers in the government run TSS, the Terran Social Services. And any given day only two or three, if any, were needed to go out into the field and do home inspections, counsel new parents, make sure that each newborn child in the city had been properly immunized and had readily available health care, etc.
But today was a desk day. So that meant that like every other bureaucratic government worker in the nation, she had to spend the entire day under two hundred feet of solid rock in a tiny little room that made a twenty-first century office building seem like a magical fantasy land. Funny really, how actually living in some kind of a magical fantasy land put things into a weird perspective.
Scrawling her cursive name at the bottom of a form and quickly throwing a stamp of approval on it, the social worker leaned back in her desk, folding her delicate fingers behind her head. The wall in front of her was just a blank slab of concrete, and she strongly considered getting maybe a motivational poster or a landscape poster, just to liven it up a little.
"Hey Janet," she called over the cubicle divider. "You didn't happen to get the Hildeberg baby's case, did you?"
A woman with curly brown hair and a homely figure peeked over the divider. "No, I think Juan has that one, said it's another magi."
"So where does that go on a form? Birth marks? Deformities?"
"I don't know," Janet replied. "Mr Hinkley just said to write it in at the bottom. But I don't think the Hildeberg file is any news. It's the Appleton file." The brunette lady folded her arms, leaning over the divider and resting her chin on her forearms. "You read the papers, right? God, Hinkley had a fit when he heard that Sanders caused all that! He's thinking about firing him!"
"Alex deserves it. He should be flipping patties at some burger joint, but here he is shoving his nose where it doesn't belong." The two gals fell silent, Anita absently tapping a pencil on her desk in boredom.
"So," Janet started again, "Why couldn't you come over yesterday?"
Kind of a personal question, and she was trying to keep her relationship sort of quiet until it went further. But, what the hell, she'd snagged a good one, and she had every right to brag about it. "Since you're my friend, I can tell you." She motioned her closer, and Janet leaned over the cubicle divider excitedly. "I've been seeing someone," Anita whispered to her friend.
Janet let out a small gasp. "Oh my god, good for you! Who is it? Wait, don't tell me, it's the guy over in Immigration Services. Jeff?"
Anita bit her lip, wondering if she should just say it, or go through Janet's favored method of interrogation, twenty questions style. "It's not Jeff," she admitted. "He's important, and he knows a lot of important people."
Janet tapped her chin with a painted fingernail. "Who do we know....that's important?" Her eyes grew wide, a little bit of disgust seeping into her expression. "Don't say you're going out with Mr Hinkley, please god don't say that!"
"I'm not going out with our boss!" she snapped back, just as disgusted. "He's in his forties, he's already married with kids on the way! I wouldn't touch Hinkley with a ten foot pole."
"I'm gonna go out on a limb here, ummmmmmmmmmm...... President McGoff? You manage to steal the title of First Lady from Ms Mcentyre? Everybody knows those two should get it over with and screw," Janet said offhandedly. It was true, every time those two were in the same room, the sexual tension could be cut with a knife. And Dr Mcentyre was always the one who flirted with him.
Anita gagged a little. "Okay, if I said no to Hinkley, I would say hell no to the President. But, you're on the right track."
Janet bounced up and down in her chair, wanting to know so she could gossip like a hen. "Come on, tell me! The suspense is killing me! Annie, you don't want to be a murderer, just tell me!"
Anita leaned close to her friend, whispering it right to her ear. "Aaron Patterson," she whispered so quietly that a mouse's sneeze could drown it out.
Janet leaned back in her chair, eyes wide open in shock and both hands covering her mouth. "No," she finally said after a minute of disbelief.
"Yes," Anita said back, nodding in truth.
"No!" she denied again.
"Yes!"
"Ann, you're telling me you bagged the Aaron Patterson. The guy who promenades with princesses and knows every important person from here to Kingdom Come? The guy who's on a first name basis with all of our top level superiors, not to mention every military commander. Somehow, I think that's impossible. Guys like him don't date regular girls like us. No, they get arranged marriages with the Duchess of Toad Hall or some crap like that!" She leaned back in her chair, folding her arms under her breasts and taking on look of skepticism. "I think you're pulling my leg here. You crumbled, went out with Alex, and now your mind is in some kind of super state of denial and convinced you that you're sweet with a dignitary."
"Okay, you want proof? He's taking me out to lunch today. And he'll be here any minute," Anita said smugly, quickly checking the clock on the wall. A tiny bit of concern leapt into her mind. Aaron was ten minutes late already, she knew he was a very important person who had to be on call every minute of the day, but this kind of put her on the spot. "Any minute now," she said again, drumming her fingers on the desk.
....... Aaron better not let her down this fucking time!
But she waited, and Janet soon grew bored, slipping back down over the divider to work on her forms and files. But not all was well within the kingdom, no sir. And soon Anita felt a repulsive, creepy tingle run down her spine. Like a huge, hairy tarantula was giving her a back massage.
"Hey Annie," a man's voice said behind her. Very slowly spinning around in her chair, she beheld the man who had nearly caused a political breakdown, as well as made the bile rise in her throat.
"Hello, Alex," she said with a bite of venom. "Didn't Hinkley fire you yesterday?" She had to press the offensive here, the concept of 'no' meaning 'get the fuck out of my face' apparently didn't click with this guy.
"Probation," he responded calmly. "Hinkley and I are like that, son!" He twined his index and middle fingers to show how apparently "close" he was with the boss. "So, what's a pretty little thing like yourself doing tonight? How's about you and me go find some nice little place in the market to get a steak? Or, we could just head back to my place and skip straight to dessert." His big, creeper smile made her shiver with disgust.
"Alex," she said as calmly as she could, holding back the urge to vomit, "If you were the last man on Earth, I'd take one for the team and let humanity go extinct. In fact, I would rather date a pony than be in your bedroom, or even within a hundred feet of your apartment. I would rather have my teeth pulled with a pair of rusty pliers and no anesthetic, rather than kiss you."
He held onto that dumb grin and laughed like she was joking, and the only thing Anita could truly espouse for the guy was his determination. "That's alright, baby. We can head back to your place, or we can find a nice place in the park. Annie, baby, you and I, it's like fate brought us together!"
She growled lightly in frustration. He just wouldn't give up! Anita felt like calling security, maybe getting a few of her friends in the Terran Marines to whup this guy's ass and teach him a lesson.
But a beacon of light came along, and her heart set aflutter as her knight in shining armor came to sweep her off her feet, or at least rescue her from this damned thick-skulled monster. Aaron walked down the hall, hands in his pockets and a certain bounce in his step knowing he was about to spend time with his best gal. Stopping at her cubicle, he leaned on the wall and smiled. "Hey sweetheart, sorry if I'm interrupting some important work stuff here, and I'm really sorry that I'm late." Aaron raised an eyebrow at Alex, wondering if it was just work, or if this guy was giving his gal trouble.
Anita instantly perked right back up. "No! Not at all, Aaron!" she said in an overly loud tone, hoping that Janet would hear it over the divider. And the other social worker did seem to catch on, slowly peeking over the cubicle wall. Janet's eyes grew wide when she saw the all-important man leaning so casually beside her friend's cubicle. "Come on, sweetie," Anita said with extreme emphasis, glaring at Alex, "let's get out of here, I'm starving."
She stood from her chair, looping her arm around his offered arm and walking away, glancing back to wink at Janet, and raise her middle finger to Alex. After Janet overcame her shock and disbelief, she held up her right hand, pointing at her ring finger. "Slap a ring on him!" she shouted across the offices, damning subtlety.
Alex scowled at having his dream girl swept away by some guy like that. He didn't know who he was exactly, having never seen Patterson up close before, but he was a competitor, and that was all he needed to know.
***************************************************
After their break was over, the diamond dogs returned to work in the steel mill, a smug look adorning each of their faces. The human foreman was more than a little uneasy, seeing the normally docile and broken dogs grinning to each other like madmen.
They each returned to their stations, and the man at the controls flipped on the machinery. With a heavy hum and the typical crashing of ore into a crucible, the steel mill returned to its normal dealings. The human workers warily eyed the diamond dogs, wondering what the hell they were up to. It was an odd thing, normally they followed instructions without question and did their jobs almost robotically. But today, after leaving that break room, they all seemed overly confident. Even going so far as to shirk their jobs and chat with each other in their low, growling voices.
Over in a carbon scoop station, next to one of the white-hot crucibles filled to the brim with fresh iron ore that needed the carbon to be converted to steel, a few human workers shook their heads as the dogs went about their lackadaisical doings.
One worker, who went by the name of Jimmy, grunted as he scooped up another load of black carbon and tossed it into the crucible. Jimmy was a wiry young man, still just a boy by some of the other men's view. He had come to Fort Greenewell as a part of the Lazarus Initiative at the age of twenty, and now he worked side by side with hugely muscled men like his close friend Joe.
Joe was a far cry from Jimmy, being a well muscled, tall man who preferred to work the mill with a tank top shirt, his dark and dusky skin streaked with lines of sweat. Joe was an older man, relative to the rest of the work force, having a few speckles of early grey at his temples, and a wife back at home pregnant with their second child. Joe considered Jimmy to be an impressionable kid, and he treated him like a man treated his adult son.
A heavy hand clapped on Jimmy's shoulder, and he looked up to see Joe wiping the sweat from his head. "Take it easy, Jimmy. Don't need another man workin' himself to heatstroke." Joe passed a small canteen of water to the younger man, and Jimmy took a grateful swig.
"Thanks," Jimmy said to him, handing back the canteen. Leaning on his shovel, the wiry young steel worker looked over at a pair of diamond dogs as they halfheartedly loaded another cart of ore into a crusher. "What are they up to?" he asked nobody in particular.
Joe leaned on his own scoop, tilting back his hard hat and regarding the dogs with scorn. "Lazy bastards. One of them could easily handle that entire cart, but now they're doing it at half the speed with twice the labor. Stupid animals." Joe worked his tongue around his mouth, and spat a disgusting wad of chew straight for the pair working the carts, landing it squarely on one dog's chest. The dog yelped in surprise, lowering its ears in shame as it wiped off the disgusting blob.
"Heh, all the damn dogs are good for is filling empty space, taking up oxygen that the rest of us could be using," Joe commented to Jimmy, nudging the younger steel worker.
Jimmy shook his head, scooping up a load of carbon and dumping it into the crucible. "You don't really like them, do you?"
Joe started shoveling like Jimmy, his heavier muscles doing twice the labor of the younger man. "That'd be an understatement."
"Well, why?"
Joe stopped shoveling, leaning back and placing a hand in the small of his back. "My cousin was stationed at Fort Leavenworth. Good guy, had a pregnant girlfriend back in Seattle. Never raised a hand against anyone who didn't deserve it. But one day, after that damn wall of magic took us off our feet, we hear on the radio that most of Fort Leavenworth was leveled after the second Surge. I asked some guys who had been in that region, they said it was a dragon that did most of the damage, but the main force was a bunch of upright dogs."
Jimmy winced, knowing that nothing more needed to be said. Joe thoroughly believed that the diamond dogs had murdered his cousin, even though about half the garrison of Fort Leavenworth had escaped unharmed. Joe's cousin could have easily survived, he just didn't hear about it. But it still didn't change the fact that over two millenia ago, a force of mostly diamond dogs attacked his family.
Jimmy had never had a magical creature personally attack him or anyone he knew, and he thought back to the War. It had been so strange, all the monsters seemed unnaturally focused on crippling industry and attacking soldiers. Entire brigades would be engaged and destroyed, but the defenseless town only a mile away would remain unharmed. Sometimes a single house would get attacked and a single person would get dragged away. But the next day, they'd typically find something horrible and incriminating about that person.
But, Joe was his closest friend, and if Joe had a reason to hate the dogs, then so did he. And besides, he didn't actually have a reason to like the dogs. They were a bunch of shifty creatures, living in some big communal house at the edge of the city, way past the slum-like pony neighborhoods. He wouldn't doubt the idea that they spent all their money on drugs or something.
So, it couldn't harm him to hold some mysterious grudge against the dogs. It was always safer to err on the side of caution, especially with these creatures. Jimmy absently returned to his work, shoveling in the carbon to chemically remove any oxygen and purify the metal down to its elemental state. And when the purity sampler came along in his shiny thermal suit, Jimmy got to take a short break.
Working near a 2800 degree crucible sucked the moisture out of a worker faster than standing in the desert sun, and so the foremen always encouraged their boys to take regular breaks to get water. Jimmy tossed down his shovel, wiping the quickly evaporating sweat his from forehead with the back of his filthy hand. Iron work was a dirty job, but with the booming industry and the apparent popularity of Terran steel in Equestria and Kali'Gryph, it was worth it.
Walking along the production line towards the break room, the deafening din of the ore crusher drowned out the danger that Jimmy had suddenly put himself in.
Somewhere, at some stage in the construction of the Slagworks, someone had made a grave mistake. Up above the heads of all the workers, a rail hung from the ceiling. Structurally, the rail itself was incredibly sound, and it could easily bear the several ton loads of hot iron that moved along that rail in huge crucibles. Each crucible came with an arm that hung over the melting pots and attached to the rail. From there, a mechanism could move it anywhere in the factory in a matter of minutes, far faster and safer than moving it across the ground.
But a fatal error had been made when they built that rail. A single bolt, attaching one section of the rail to another, had been cast from a different batch than all the others, and it was comprised of a different alloy. A mix that was far less resilient against the constant high heat of the steel mill.
And with hundreds of hot pots of molten iron passing under it each day, they had exacted their toll on the bolt, and weakened it to the point of snapping. And just when it decided to give way, Jimmy decided to take his break, and walked right under it.
The young man couldn't hear the sudden metallic creak as the rail buckled. And when he looked at his coworker's faces, he could not understand why they all started shouting at him. Naturally, he froze in place, wondering what he had done wrong this time. Only when the screech of the tortured steel rail above him reached his ears did he look up. And his whole world seemed to slow down to a crawl.
The rail snapped, and a vat of molten iron came crashing down, straight for him. The young man's mind flashed through all the important events of his life, and he was filled with regrets that he did not live more fully and love more completely. He regretted yelling at his mother as a young teen, he regretted not asking out Patty Williamson in his junior year of high school. He regretted not attending his granddad's funeral, and not paying more attention when the people around him needed him. And for a brief moment, his mind prayed to God, and hoped that Patterson was right when he said that everybody went to a loving afterlife.
Jimmy closed his eyes, and awaited fate.
But fate had a funny way of not being what is expected. Before the crucible could come crashing down on his head, Jimmy felt a furry paw land on his shoulder, and shove him out of the course of the falling vat of molten iron. The young man flew away from the disaster zone, landing heavily on the filthy floor of the factory. He bounced off his shoulder, and a searing pain overcame his world and his left arm became numb.
But when he opened his eyes, the world began to come back to regular speed. The crucible fell to the ground with a thunderous crash that shook the entire factory. And Jimmy saw his savior, an old, grizzled diamond dog with the fur and muzzle of a wolfhound. The dog screamed as hot slag spilled from the crucible, splashing onto its chest and arms.
From there, it all became foggy as the blinding pain in his arm took over Jimmy's vision. A crew of his human coworkers rushed to his side, getting him off the factory floor as quickly as they could and yelling for somebody to shut down the entire production line. The entire Slagworks ground to a halt, a team of emergency responders rushing in to assess the damage and prevent any further damage.
And the entire time, while a pair of military medics summoned from the street bore him out on a stretcher, Jimmy looked for his savior, and saw that the only attention the diamond dog was getting was from his fellow dogs. All the fur on his arms and his upper chest was burned away, and only the extreme resilience and natural toughness of the diamond dog kept his wounds from being life threatening. But the scars would be there to the end of his days.
And with that thought, Jimmy let the morphine that the MP medic injected him with to lull him to unconsciousness.
*******************************************
That night, Jimmy was released from a short stay at Lazarus General Hospital in the Undercity, his only damage being a few bruises and a dislocated shoulder. His arm would be in a sling for a few days, but the true damage could not be counted in scrapes and bumps. That day, that moment in the factory when a creature he wouldn't trust with his garbage risked its own life to save his, the young man's very beliefs had been shaken to the core. A diamond dog, a creature that many people said should be neutered and kicked out of the city, had done something for him that no other person had ever done.
It could have been the pain medication, it could have been the constant badgering by reporters from both the radio and newspaper that had been forced on him in his hospital bed, but Jimmy felt that a stiff drink would help to ease his mind. And so, his arm wrapped up like a pound of beef from the butcher shop, he trudged up from his apartment, through the quiet evening streets of Lazarus, and into Abraham's Pub.
His eyes downcast, and his young face bearing more confusion than it ever had before, he was stunned when his entrance was met with cheers.
"There's the man of the hour!" the hefty barkeeper called to him. All around the establishment, men whistled and raised a glass to him.
"Huh?" Jimmy stammered. "What did I do?"
To his surprise, his friend and mentor Joe laid a hand on his good shoulder, shepherding the young man to a table. "You survived, that's what. Most folks thought you were a dead man when that pot of slag decided your head wasn't flat enough as it is." He gave Jimmy's hair a joking tousle, seating the young steel worker next to a bottle of good whiskey. Joe plopped down in the seat across from him, pouring himself a shot to help alleviate the aches of the tumultuous day.
Slugging down the burning gryphon distillate, Joe flashed a grin. "Truth be told, folks are just glad you're alive kid. And I guess it's a bonus that you're mostly in one piece. Can't afford to lose ya, none of us can," Joe said, his last words escaping in a much more somber tone.
The barkeeper appeared by the table, spinning around a chair and dropping into it. "Hey kid!" He slapped a hand on Jimmy's sore shoulder, and the young man winced. But the bartender didn't seem to notice his pain. "Which rumors are true, the ones where you leapt out of the way with your cat-like reflexes, or the ones where you used your herculean strength to lift the pot off yourself?"
"Well-" Jimmy started, but Joe interrupted him.
"Neither of 'em, Charlie. Boy just got lucky is all. Only caught him a glancing blow."
Charlie waved him off, not wanting to believe in anything less than superhuman heroics. "Eh, the way you tell it makes it sound like crap. Jimmy, as soon as the paper gets printed out tomorrow, I'm clippin' your story and hanging it on the wall. Right up there next to those boys in blue."
To any patron of Abraham's, getting placed up on Charlie's wall was a great honor, one that typically awarded a free drink to the person getting honored. Limit one per day or per act of heroism. But Jimmy just couldn't be excited about such a "great honor", because he knew it was all a lie.
"Charlie, I...I don't deserve that. I was just a dumb kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. There's nothing heroic about just being an idiot." He wanted to say it all, to just lay the truth bare about the diamond dog that had taken the blow for him. But, though his beliefs in the idea that the dogs were just dumb animals were shaky at best right now, he still couldn't wrap his mind around it. "So what happened after they took me out?" he said to Joe.
Joe quaffed another shot of whiskey, working his tongue around his mouth. "Well, after all that spilled slag cooled down, the boss sent in the clean up team, and some Corp of Engineers guys from Greenewell came along to see what caused it all. Turns out it was a bad bolt. Damn thing was all warped from overheating too much. Mackenzie came over from the offices, said that everyone on shift could head out early." Joe filled his shot glass full again, gulping it down. "Rail should be fixed by tomorrow, and we go back to work."
Jimmy absently ran a finger around the rim of his glass, staring down at the amber liquid. His conscience couldn't take it anymore, and he asked the question that was plaguing his mind with guilt. "What about the dogs?"
Joe raised an eyebrow. "The diamond dogs? Who do you think is cleaning up the slag?"
Charlie nearly spat at the mention of the diamond dogs. "Oh yeah, I forgot you boys worked with a bunch of those mutts. Speakin' of talkin' animals, did I tell you guys about that pony that walked in here last week and wanted to get a drink? I told her to buzz off, but they apparently don't speak English over there in magical Ponyland."
Joe kicked back in his seat, folding his hands behind his head. "Yeah, I don't know what's worse. A bunch of talking dogs that smell like trash, or a bunch of horses that think they own the place! And don't get me started on those damn fools out there in the Park, prancing around after dark, doing all sorts of witchcraft. You hear one of them ponies sued us?"
Charlie's eyes widened in both shock and horror. "No way! What for?"
"Some red-blooded human being was doing his duty, preventing her from adopting one of our kids. So she throws a hissy fit and slaps the government with a writ."
Charlie and Joe laughed loud enough to shake the table. But Jimmy stayed quiet, his white knuckled fingers clenched around his untouched glass.
"And you know what I heard when we were gettin' dismissed by the boss? The damn diamond dogs all gathered up today, and Elliot Hardy, the guy that works in the loading dock, remember? Anyways, he said that he overheard the dogs talking about unionizing! You heard me right, a dog union!"
Both Charle and Joe hooted and howled at the absurd notion. To them, the diamond dogs would forever be idiotic creatures that were barely above animals. But today Jimmy had learned a different set of ideas about the creatures that shared Lazarus with humanity.
"Why don't you lay off of them!" Jimmy snapped. Breathing heavily, he looked around himself, and saw that the entire crowd had gone silent. "You don't know a damn thing about the dogs, or the ponies! You want to know the truth, Charlie? I didn't do a damn thing when that crucible came down on me! One of the diamond dogs pushed me out of the way, and he got burned all to hell for it! That's right, a diamond dog saved my life!"
And with that confession, that veil of uncertainty lifted from his heart. Jimmy could see clearly now, and his confession had stunned himself more than anyone else in the room. It was as if everything he had been told was a lie, only to see that the real truth had always been much simpler. "If it hadn't been for that dog, I'd be a greasy smear. He risked his life to save mine, and the least you could do is to show some goddamned gratefulness."
Jimmy stood from his chair, grabbing the bottle of whiskey and storming out the door. He didn't know what to do now, but his conscience prodded him on, moving him down the street to a place he knew where he might be welcomed. Coming to the lonesome little street where all the ponies had set up shop (and many had miserably failed), he found himself just outside a ramshackle little establishment.
The Watering Hole was different than what he'd heard about it. The lights were bright, the smell wasn't all that bad, and from what he could hear the conversation was flowing as freely as the liquor. Of course, few humans, if any, ever went into the Watering Hole, and Jimmy had to mentally brace himself and take a few encouraging breaths before he opened the door.
Most of the crowd turned to cheerily welcome the new arrival, but fell silent at the sight of the young human man. Jimmy could feel the eyes of hundreds of ponies on him as he walked to the bar, and dozens of whispers hissed like a swarm of locusts. What was a human doing here? The only humans that ever went to the Watering Hole were a few drunks that were too cheap to buy drinks at Abraham's. And even then, they only showed up at the back door, paid for a keg and went on their merry way.
Settling down in a barstool, Jimmy tapped his knuckle on the bar. A pony wiping down a glass meandered over his direction, trying as hard as he could to look as normal as possible around such an odd patron.
"Uh, what can I do ye for, sir?" the pony asked him.
"I'm looking for someone. A diamond dog, tall for a dog, with curly gray fur, kind of a pointy muzzle?"
The bartender set down his clean glass, nodding over to the corner. "The only dog I can think of like that is old Salty. Should be right over there with the rest of them. And, uh, if you need anything, just holler."
Jimmy nodded to the bartender, rising from his stool and wandering over to the corner where the dogs normally sat. And even from across the room, it wasn't hard to spot Salty. The old hound looked terrible. Ratty bandages, probably made from torn apart bedsheets, covered both his forearms and his entire upper torso. He was hunched over in pain, and he whimpered like a little puppy whenever his burns would twinge. Several times he leaned down to lick at his wounds, but each time a younger dog would tell that it would only make it worse.
Jimmy's pangs of guilt gushed straight out from his heart, and leapt straight into his throat when he stopped only a few feet from the old dog. "Um, hey," he said nervously.
All the dogs at the table looked up, a few wincing at the sight of the injured human. Jimmy could see it in their eyes, a sense of concern for his injuries, and it comforted him enough to say what needed to be said. "Uh, Salty, right?" The old hound nodded. "I uh, I.... I came to say a few things. When you... did what you did, out there, in the Slagworks, you did me the greatest favor anyone ever has. Nobody ever asked you to be a hero, but you decided to be one. I've um, never been good at this, so.... well, thanks. You saved my ass out there today. Thank you," he said with a sense of finality.
Salty seemed speechless, but a smile spread across the old dog's face. Salty reached up with one of his thick arms and gently patted Jimmy on his good shoulder. "Any day," the old dog said in a voice that seemed as grateful as any. "You, you good boy. Make good Stoneclaw." Salty reached over to another table, pulling over another chair, and he smiled again as he indicated for Jimmy to take a seat.
A half grin formed on the young man's face, and he slowly sank down into the chair. All around him, dogs and ponies bore wide grins as they returned to their business. "So, Salty, I'm really sorry about the burns. I have some pain pills back at my apartment if you need them," Jimmy remarked to the old hound.
Salty chuckled, and waved it off like it was nothing. "This nothing bad. One time, we dig a new tunnel in old mine, stoneworm chewed into an empty cavern, and we found a stone giant in there! I killed it, but he broke both of my legs!" The old dog laughed at he apparently fond memory of his youth.
Jimmy was shocked at the thought of a diamond dog laughing away the painful memory of such a disfigurement. But, who didn't remember long since healed injuries without a touch of reminiscent fondness? "What's a stone giant?" Jimmy asked nobody in particular.
"Earth elemental," a dog with the sharp muzzle and dusty coat of a coyote answered for him. "Big magical creature made out of rocks. Very common in caves and tunnels. Dangerous to fight, but far from the worst thing to find in our tunnels."
"Wow," Jimmy murmured under his breath. Rock monsters, warring packs, the threat of starvation, not to mention the needful expansion of a more powerful nation would have whipped any other race. But he found himself admiring the diamond dogs for their tenacity and their indomitable will to survive. And he thought with a smile that a race as iron willed as the diamond dogs would be a good complement to the clever minds and sharp wit of humankind.
All they needed was a little bit of guidance to thrive.
"So, I heard that you guys were going to unionize," Jimmy said, throwing it out there.
The dusty-coated coyote dog perked up, glancing over at Jimmy with a rabid curiosity. "How did you know?"
Jimmy shrugged, as he himself had only heard it third-hand at best. "Just a hunch. But, um, if you guys were thinking about making it serious, I think I can help you out. My dad was a union rep from a electrician's union, and he liked to bore to me to sleep every night by telling me about his meetings," the young man said with a reminiscent grin.
Foxtrot smiled eagerly, a certain sparkle shining in his eyes. Jimmy launched into stories about how the old unions would form up from workers of a common profession. And he told them how the workers always held the true power in an economy, and in every business. The diamond dogs remained thoroughly enthralled throughout his little lesson, believing so much in these new ideas that they had Jimmy draft up a rough draft of a union charter on a bar napkin.
And over in the other corner, overseeing the discussions and plans of the pony business owners and workers, a certain mint green mare watched the unfolding events with a smile. For that night in the Watering Hole, the civil movement had gained its first human.
Hopefully, he would only be the first of many.