Immortals: Book One – Immortal High
Chapter 3 – Advisory
Advisor stared intently at the drywall in front of him, finding himself being impressed by the simple craftsmanship of the standard building material. His mind wandered about the gypsum of the wall, and where it had originally been located. Maybe it came from a bed in boring ol’ Equestria. Or perhaps it hailed from a griffon island in the far reaches in the east. Advisor attained a sudden urge to investigate and find out for himself; his curiosity was eating at him. He regrettably had to shove his interest down in order to focus at what was at hand…
…Only to have it reemerge when he noticed the sturdy build of the table he was leaning his elbows on. He brought his hooves down at the table and gently pushed, testing the durability of the wooden slab. He wondered what tree it was made of and where it had been cut down, where it had been processed, and where it had been sold…
“Are you quite finished?” Josephner finally interrupted. The pony before him had been staring at random objects in the room for the past three hours. He seemed like he found everyday items were the most thought-provoking things in the world- he would sometimes get up to examine things more closely. He would test their weight, put pressure on them, and sometimes even taste them. He was pitch black, just like Josephner himself. He wore cool rectangle-shaped glasses that covered intelligent looking, dark-blue eyes, which were never fully opened. His mane was midnight blue (like Luna’s, Josephner took care to note) and was kind of puffy. The front of his hair twisted off and looped, making his mane kind of look like blue ice cream. Josephner noticed he was about the size of Celestia, though a little smaller. The most noted feature, however, was obvious. He had a pair of wings, and a single horn protruding out of his forehead.
An alicorn.
Advisor turned towards the royal stallion. Although Josephner’s figure was quite menacing, his face was soft and caring, like a father’s would be towards a child of his own. “Yes, I’m sorry; I find interest in the most insignificant of things.” Advisor’s voice flowed like mercury, and he had a peculiar accent. English, Josephner identified. He’s also very charismatic…
“…How long have you been standing there?” Advisor asked as he retained a pokerface.
“About three hours,” Josephner deadpanned.
Advisor finally broke out of his blank face and softly smiled with a blush. “My, you have quite the attention span.”
“Being a couple thousand years old helps.” He replied as he trotted into the room and sat in front of the strange alicorn.
“I would imagine so,” he added thoughtfully.
“So,” Josephner began. “I hear you’re immortal.”
Blunt; to the point. “That’s what I think.”
“You do know that being an alicorn doesn’t automatically make you immortal, correct?”
“I am aware. That is not the only reason I believe I am an everlasting individual.”
“Then what are your reasons behind your deduction?”
Advisor leaned back in his seat and began to explain. “Well, being an alicorn was my first hint, but since I had no immortal or royal relatives my family I thought nothing of it.” Josephner leaned closer; he was incredibly interested. It wasn’t that the story was particularly exciting, but this pony seemed… intelligent. And the way he talked was admittedly alluring. If he were a mare, Josephner would’ve been a bit more than just interested. “But then I found that my IQ far surpassed that of my father’s at the age of three. Keep in mind my father is a theoretical physicist.”
“The exception…” Josephner whispered. There was something that the pony tribes liked to refer to as ‘the exception’ when they were still around. All immortals had one, for whatever reason. It was a special talent completely unrelated to a cutie mark. Chaos’ was having a vast amount of stamina and an extreme tolerance of pain and physical fatigue. It was not fun for Josephner when she kept making innuendoes because of that particular talent. Josephner’s exception was the ability to completely suppress any emotion of his choice, though the only one he had ever suppressed was anger, and that was only a couple of times, and only for the reason of keeping his discretion rational and unbiased. Celestia’s was the ability to devise incredibly complex and intricate gambits that would almost never fail, although it would only work if she worked on it for quite a while. They had not found Luna’s yet.
“Well, not quite. My IQ was incredibly high, but outside of base knowledge I do not have the ability to create or invent. All it made me was a very reliable trivia source.” Josephner contemplated reassuring him that he was just being modest, but Advisor phrased it as if he were proud of it. “It turns out that that attribute contributed to a different talent, my ‘exception’.”
“And what is that?” Josephner asked, his eyebrow rising.
“I have the ability to sense the outcome of all possible choices in any given situation. Although the limit of my gift is being that I can only sense how good the outcome will turn up, not the details in between. I can only clarify the ending result of the scenario, not how good the ride is, so I wouldn’t be able to tell if a bad ending would be worth the ride. Understand?”
“I think…” Josephner sifted through his brain to comprehend the strange ability, and thought up an analogy. “So, let’s say I’m contemplating going into a cave. You say if I go in, the result would be very bad, but if I were to ignore it, the result would be okay.” Josephner racked his brain a little more and continued, “But potentially the cave could be filled with priceless treasure, and the bad ending you predicted was just me accidentally getting a splinter when I left the cave with my bags filled with gems.”
“Exactly. That was an apt example, Your Highness.”
“How do you know this isn’t just your special talent for a cutie mark?”
Advisor smiled, impressed at his attention to detail. “Because, milord, my cutie mark is that of eyeglasses.” He got up and showed Josephner his flank. It showed an ordinary pair of glasses. “I have the potential of being an ophthalmologist. In fact, I made the glasses I’m wearing right now myself.”
“Impressive,” Josephner complimented. “But how do you know all of this is just not a coincident?”
“That’s what I considered at first as well, although my recent discovery has left me ‘being an immortal’ as the only possible explanation.”
“And what is that?”
Advisor wore a somewhat arrogant smile, and asked Josephner, “Sir, you’d say that I look somewhat young, handsome maybe?”
Josephner laughed, “Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a little green. Why?”
“Well it may come as a shock, but I am seventy years old.”
Josephner’s eyes widened.
“Frozen burritos?!” Celestia breathed between gasps of laughter.
Luna gave a short chuckle. “Yeah, I know it’s silly, but he seemed to actually believe it.” The three friends had been sitting in a table at the local coffee shop, Starbucks, for the past half hour. Both Luna and Discord got caramel iced coffees, while Celestia stuck with decaf, as always. “Did that… actually happen?”
“Not really, it’s based on another story that involved wax candles and a hard hat, but I’ll get into that later,” Celestia said after taking another calm sip of her recently brewed coffee.
“…What?” Luna spat flatly.
“By the way Discord, who was that chick you were talking to in Computers?” Celestia asked through another long sip.
“Celestia, my last threat still stands you over-sized albino.” Discord snapped casually.
“I know!” she shot back defensively through a blush. “I’m just asking ‘cause I’m curious.”
“Look, I already told you, her name is Velocity, and she just started talking to me in first hour.” He moved in his chair a little. “I don’t know anything else about her, to be honest.”
“Well it’s pretty obvious she wants your body.” Discord narrowed his eyes. Celestia quickly sat up. “Honestly, though! I’m not just sayin’ that to tease you.” Discord sighed and waved his hand, excusing her.
“I don’t think she’s attracted to him, rather she just likes his personality,” Luna pitched in. “No offense, but she might be slightly insane like you; she sounds like it.”
“Or she could just be a friendly person, and you guys are just looking too much into it,” Discord replied angrily. “Look, I’m the god of chaos; I’m an interesting person. Of course some brave ponies are gonna want to talk to me.”
“Careful, Discord. If you’re too modest your self-esteem may drop,” Luna mused sarcastically.
“AHHH,” Celestia breathed as she slammed her third decaf latte down on the table. “Should I get another coffee?!”
“Tia, you do know those things are damned expensive, right?” Luna said as she reached to calm the princess down. “I seriously don’t understand your addiction to those things.”
“I don’t know, they’re decaf, I think you should drink ‘til you drop!” Vel hollered as she slammed her hooves into the table.
“Y’see, this girl has the right idea!” Celestia yelled back in response.
It was Discords turn to speak. “Tia, curb your enthusiasm; you’re gonna pop a vain or some-“ Discord cut himself off and froze. Luna’s jaw was agape as she stared at the mint green pony. Celestia looked around puzzled.
“What’s wrong with you guys? Is there something- OH MY GOD!” Celestia shouted and jumped back, nearly falling out of her chair.
“Hehe, you guys are funny!” Vel giggled as she took a sip of coffee that the three immortals could have sworn wasn’t there a second ago.
“H-how long have you been sitting there?” Tia asked awkwardly.
“Oh, about five minutes,” Vel responded cheerfully.
“Did you follow us?” Discord asked, the initial shock gone. Discord had been constantly checking behind his back the entire walk to Starbucks. Celestia had said that he was just being paranoid, but lo and behold there was a hyperactive green pony sitting in front of them.
“Follow? Of course not! I’m not a creeper keeper!” The mint green pony picked up her cup of coffee with her mouth and tilted her head back. She took a few large gulps of the beverage without spilling anything in an amazing show of dexterity and then slammed it back down on the table… with her mouth. “So what’s your name, moon girl?”
Luna flinched back, surprised at the change of conversation with the question directed to her. “Uhh… Luna.”
“You’re pretty hot!” she bellowed as soon as Luna pronounced the last syllable of her name. “I’d totally ask you out if I knew you better!”
“Eh, wh-eha,“ Luna stammered through a burning blush.
“O’course you’re probably not like I am, OH WELL!” She got up abruptly, nearly tipping the table over. “MAN, I GOTTA GO PEE!” she yelled as she nonchalantly started strolling towards the latrine. “Be back in two minutes and forty-seven seconds everypony and draconequus.”
“…What just happened?” asked the somewhat embarrassed midnight blue alicorn.
“What did she call me?” Discord asked as he held back laughter from the whole fiasco.
“Hehe, this is pretty fun,” Tia said as she took another sip of coffee.
“A draconequus is what you are, silly willy!” Vel cheerily answered back, somehow calmed by the coffee she was drinking.
“I have never had anyone call me that though,” He added. “How do you know?”
“Well when I went home, I started doing a little research. After some digital diggin’, I found a mythological creature by the name of a draconequus. The wiki described it as ‘a creature with a body part of every sentient species on Equestria’. It fit you so well!”
“Oh,” he said flatly. “…How long did it take you to figure that out?”
Vel’s normally happy face fell into a bored, jaded face. “It took SO LONG. I’d say after everything, about three and a half minutes.”
“Seiously?” Discord asked in disbelief. Thanks, mom. You could have figured out what I was by internet exploring for five minutes. But I guess you were too lazy, huh?
Luna’s thought about what Vel said before she ran to the restroom. “So, Vel,” Luna spoke up. “Not that I have anything against it, but are you… uhh…”
“Are you a fag?” Celestia interjected with a friendly smile.
“TIA!” Luna scolded, but Vel cut her off.
“O-ho, not exclusively. My sexuality swings around like a barn door in a tornado.”
Huh? Luna searched her mind for possible explanations for the colorful metaphor but gave up. She finally voiced her confusion.
“It means she’s bisexual, Luna,” Celestia answered. Luna’s face became red hot once again as she turned away.
“Oh,” she squeaked.
“Oh, god, that was the most hilarious forty-five minutes of my life.” Celestia had been reliving their time at the Starbucks for the past hour, much to the alicorn’s distress. The most the draconequus did was laugh hysterically whenever Velocity’s attraction to Luna was mentioned. He’s just happy that he’s not being teased anymore, Luna thought with malign.
Luna’s heart had been in her throat ever since she spoke with Vel. She was cute. Luna hadn’t told anyone yet, but she had recently found that she was bisexual as well. It’s not that I don’t find guys to be attractive, I just like the girls too. She would never dare to tell Celestia or Discord, not that they would be particularly disturbed by it, but she had a feeling Tia would never let her live it down. It’s not this changes anything, I’d act the same way if a handsome guy did the same thing…
They were riding home in Chaos’ car, since she was nice enough to offer. “Your dad’s talking to this REALLY boring guy.” She said as she lowered her sunglasses and motioned to her large van she was driving. Luna was about to notify her that wording it like that made it sound like she was their mother, but Tia elbowed her incredibly hard as soon as she started speaking. It was a little weird, Chaos being the queen but not Josephner’s wife, but mostly everyone took it in stride considering she was a griffon and he was a pony. After Marlabel died, Josephner wasn’t in much mood for anything, so he had asked Chaos to be his queen (making it sound as less of a proposal as possible.) Nobody thought that the pure and gentle king would sexually associate with a dirty and uncouth race such as the griffons. It wasn’t entirely untrue, but it wasn’t because he found the griffons to be less of a species, he’s just shy and didn’t want a relationship right after his wife died. After all, they were just friends.
…right? Chaos asked herself that every day.
Luna also thought about mentioning that Chaos’ ride looked like a pedo van, but another blow from Tia would have broken her ribs.
Luna looked outside the window of the large van, trying to control her thoughts of all the good looking ponies she kept seeing everywhere. Stupid hormones, Luna thought with a sigh. And high school… Luna glanced at the analog clock attached to Chaos’ dashboard. It’s six already? Where has the day gone? Through the silence (that was surprisingly not awkward) Celestia bounced up to Chaos’ seat.
“Thanks for the ride Ms. Chaos!” she chirped in her usual cheerful tone.
Instead of freaking out, like any normal driver would do, Chaos patted the princes on the head and smiled. “Sure thing, Tia. Just don’t call me Ms., it makes me feel old.”
Discord raised his… talon thing. “Well, mom, you ARE like, five hundred years old.”
“Hey,” the griffon snapped through a smile. “Four hundred and sixty eight; get it right.”
Everyone gave a healthy chuckle, except for Luna who was still moping. After a bit of the ride, however, Luna finally voiced her opinion about the van they were driving in. “Chaos… why do you use this van? No offense, but it’s like, really ugly.” Chaos’ van was a very large, five row family vehicle. While the outside had white, chipping paint, Chaos had replaced nearly every internal component in that van to the most expensive and efficient parts her country could afford. But, she never tried to make the outside look at all better.
“It has… sentimental value,” she responded while gripping the wheel tighter, a smile etching across her face as she dreamily gazed forward, her eyes filled with nostalgia.
Luna raised an eyebrow and inspected the vehicle further. “…How?” she asked bluntly. “You’ve only had one kid, you couldn’t have possibly had bought this van for practical reasons,” Luna stated as-a-matter-of-factly. “And if I recall, you didn’t drive this thing for like, five years at one point. You just flew everywhere.”
“Memories and family aren’t the only ways for something to have sentimental value, little Luna.” Chaos leaned back with her elbow on the edge of her seat and one talon still gripping the steering wheel. “Maybe I’ll tell ya when you’re older.”
Luna tossed this in her mind before coming to a horrible realization. “Eww, you didn’t have sex in this car, did you?” At this, Celestia bellowed out laughing hysterically, while Discord sat quietly with his paw over his face, repeatedly hitting his head on the window.
Chaos blushed a little, and had to actually stifle a laugh, but she yelled at Luna in feign embarrassment. “NO! Look, the story is more… serious than you perceive, little Luna.” Luna ceased with her look of disgust and actually leaned in closer. Now she was REALLY interested.
The funny thing was, she actually has had sex in this van, but that wasn’t the reason she loved it. She could still remember that old pony’s voice. ’All this griffon shit? I hate it. I remember when ponies were good, unbiased people. They would see things how they really were. Then Josephner changed it. Listen, Josephner is a good pony. He isn’t stupid, and he’s fair, and I really think he loves us. There were wars going on outside, and Josephner basically cut off routes to our fine country here until those outside races learned to behave like reasonable folk. He was like a father shielding his sons’ eyes from the horrors of war. Now we got global peace, and, of course, Josephner opened the roads again pretending like nothing happened. When you isolate a society for that long, they gonna have prejudices against anyone different. And now we have all this bullshit goin’ down just cause folk can’t handle our eagle-pony-cat friends moving into our home…’ Chaos gripped the steering wheel tighter as her mood gloomed up. It wasn’t something that happened often. ’If you don’t mind me sayin’, you’re a very pretty bird, Miss.’ Chaos smiled.
“Sister, if you don’t mind us asking…”
Celestia looked up from her student’s letter, which she had been reading for nearly half an hour. Though she acted annoyed whenever she got a long letter from Twilight, truthfully she was almost ecstatic with glee. It did get boring at the palace at times. Now with Luna here, she did have more fun, but that also meant she had to split responsibilities with her, so now she spent significantly less time actually doing anything. “What is it, sister?” Celestia caught herself in the weird speech pattern and immediately corrected herself. “Er, I mean, yes Luna?”
“Why is prince Blueblood such a dick?” Luna had a look of aggravation and frustration on her face.
Celestia had instantaneously zoomed toward her sister and shoved her golden-covered hoof into Luna’s mouth, who’s eyes widened in astonishment. “SHHHHHHH!” Celestia looked from side to side, before closing up the space between the two mares’ muzzles. “We don’t use that word anymore!” she whispered violently.
“Pbthhhh!” Luna spat out Celestia’s hoof and asked angrily, “Why?”
“It’s a bad word now…” Celestia rubbed the back of her mane with a wide grin. Luna rolled her eyes.
“Again?” Luna remembered her days in high school when it was considered profanity. She had hoped that, in a thousand years, ponies would get past the whole ‘forbidden vocabulary’ thing. It was foalish. “Anyways, why is he such…” Luna searched for the right word. “… a jerk?”
Celestia accepted this choice of adjective. “I don’t really know. Just a bad egg I guess.” Celestia remembered the blood line. She had told everyone he was her cousin. But that wasn’t true.
He was her nephew.
Celestia and her sister got home almost immediately after their father, though he got home quickly enough for neither to see each other outside their quiet suburban home. Celestia yelled out a great “Goodnight guys!” before heading off to bed as soon as the front door had shut behind her. It was early, almost 6:30, but to be fair, she had stayed up last night very late. Until 2:30 A.M.
“Welcome home, girls,” was Josephner’s response. He didn’t look up from the afternoon newspaper he was reading. “I thought you two were out somewhere, you weren’t here when I got home.”
Celestia was already upstairs, so Luna was alone with her dad. She took a place next to him on the couch. He always sat in an awkward upright position, mimicking Discord. He saw the draconequus (I guess we’re calling him that now) sitting like that one day, tried the position himself, and found it much more versatile and comfortable than sitting normally. Luna leaned on the black stallion, finding comfort on his warm black coat. “Yeah, we hung out with Discord and this other girl at the coffee shop afterschool.” Luna closed her eyes and flared her eyebrows. “It was… interesting to say the least.”
Josephner rested a hoof on his daughter’s and gently stroked her mane. “So how’s the glory of high school?” Luna kept her eyes closed.
“Weird,” was all that escaped Luna’s mouth.
“Seventy years…” It was the truth. Advisor was immortal. “So… Squada.”
“Sir, I mean no disrespect, but could you call me Advisor?” Josephner raised an eyebrow. That caught him off-guard. “It’s not that I wouldn’t like us to use personal names with each other, but I really like my last name better.”
Josephner smiled. “Of course, Advisor.” Josephner leaned his hooves on the table. “Now… what do you want to do with this newfound knowledge? You are not the kind of pony who craves power, that I can tell.”
“No I am not…” Advisor began to actually look apprehensive. “I wanted… to… er… offer myself, sir.”
“…” Josephner didn’t know how to respond to that. “…Umm.”
“Let me rephrase that, sir!” Advisor flailed his hooves in front of his face with a blush. The last thing he needed was to have the king to think he was a homosexual male-whore. “I meant… I want a job.”
That didn’t help the accidental innuendo, but Josephner decided to spare the pony the embarrassment. “Elaborate, please.”
“Well, at first, being an immortal sounded pretty good to me, sir.” He lowered his eyes and his tone turned somber. “But everyone I’ve known is now dead…”
Josephner felt a pang of sympathy for the poor alicorn in front of him. He remembered Marlabel. Advisor continued. “I don’t want to just… live forever. At least, not a normal life. That sounds boring, sir.” Josephner raised an eyebrow again, this time at the foreshadowing that Advisor was giving him. “I want to, well… advise you, sir.” Advisor had been hoping he could avoid that pun. “I want to stick by your side and help you. I want to do well for this country. For you, for Chaos, and for…”
He choked up a bit, and looked away. He finally sighed. “For the griffons.”
Josephner widened his eyes. That certainly wasn’t the purpose he was expecting. “Griffons?”
“Sir, I was around when the whole racism thing went on with the griffons. I don’t mean to be rude, but you could have handled that a lot better.”
Instead of being vaporized by some magic beam from the disrespect that Advisor was expecting, Josephner leaned forward in shock. “Really?! How?” He asked with genuine intrigue, which isn’t how Advisor had imagined him asking him that.
Advisor took a deep breath. “Well for one, you opened the roads too quickly. Second, you should have opened only the roads to foreign pony and zebra lands. Third, you should have enacted a passport requirement and background check for any and all outsiders. Finally, you should have became…” Advisor cleared his throat, which caught Josephner off-guard. “…Friends with a griffon sooner. If they saw you trusting a griffon, so would they. Like Chaos.”
Josephner thought about this. He had made Chaos queen thirteen years ago… that was about when the prejudices against griffons really softened. Josephner had not realized that until now. He looked at the strange Alicorn before him. “All right then… you got a deal.”
Advisor released a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. He smiled and gratefully said, “Thanks, sir. You shouldn’t be disappointed.”
When I make impressions, I make ponies remember me.
To be continued… Chapter 4: Immoral Lows