Breakdown

by McPoodle


Chapter 17: Nathancrantz and Gildastern Are Not Dead

Breakdown

Chapter 17: Nathancrantz and Gildastern Are Not Dead


“This tale is finished.”

This tale is finished?

No. No, little man, I will not allow you to give up so easily.

Oh, you don’t mind if I take over the narration at this point, do you? I mean, did anyone like the story ending like this? This is FIMFiction, for crying out loud, not Oedipus Rex Presents!

The esteemed Dr. Franklin got to tell you how he died. Now let your gentle host Discord tell you how he lived.


Now I suppose if I’m writing a proper chapter of “Breakdown”, this would be the point where I go off on a pointless but erudite and yet completely unhinged diatribe on a pop culture subject that will never be brought up again. Feel free to skip to the next little divider if you’d like to get straight to the plot of this chapter.

So, for the miniscule number of people still reading this section, tell me if you’ve heard this one before:

The American movie adaptation of Matilda was a complete betrayal of the source work. And in doing so, it demonstrates precisely why the British are better than the Americans.

Matilda, the original children’s novel, was written by Roald Dahl in 1988, with illustrations by Quentin Blake. Surely you’ve heard of Roald Dahl? Practically every British children’s story without “Alice”, “Peter Pan” or “Lion-Jesus” in the title was written by the guy. Anyway, the story’s about this miserable little girl, not surprisingly named Matilda, who has the worst parents ever (and no, this is not Harry Potter). Her one joy in life is reading. And then she goes to public school, and learns of a whole new level of Tartarus. She meets a really nice teacher named Miss Honey (yeah, as if a character named “Miss Honey” is ever going to be the villain...), but her main enemy is the monstrous headmistress, Miss Trunchbull. The stresses of her parents (who want to take her books away because they’re a pair of Luddites) and Miss Trunchbull (who wants to beat the tiny little girl for the crime of having opinions) cause Matilda to suddenly develop psychic powers. She uses these powers to get light-hearted revenge on her enemies without them ever being the wiser (because they’re so incredibly stupid), she manages to get herself adopted by Miss Honey, and then her powers go away and she lives happily ever after.

Let me rephrase that last part, in case you missed it: Once Matilda’s life goes back to normal, she loses her powers, and grows up to be a perfectly happy young intellectual.

Then Danny DeVito had to go and make it into a movie.

Now don’t get me wrong—I just love the humorous little dwarf. I don’t think I ever not laughed any time his character on Taxi opened his mouth. And Ruthless People is a complete masterpiece in the realm of dark comedy. He produced Erin Brockovich and Gattaca, so the man knows how to make a good movie.

That being said, Matilda (1996) is not a good movie. Oh, it follows the outline of the book. And despite the fact that DeVito and his wife Rhea Perlman take the parts of Matilda’s parents in the film, they don’t blow those parts too far out of proportion. Trunchbull isn’t too bad. Miss Honey is one-dimensional, but she wasn’t much better in the book.

No, I’ll tell you what went wrong with this movie: they cast Mara Wilson as Matilda, and they curb-stomped the ending. Mara Wilson, in case you didn’t know, is an agent of the Dark Powers—check out the Nostalgia Critic’s review of A Simple Wish if you don’t believe me.

And then there’s the ending. So get this: Matilda defeats her enemies with her psychic powers, she moves in with Miss Honey, her life is now perfect. And at the last second, Matilda shows the audience that she still has her powers, and she winks at the audience to keep her little secret.

No! Wrong! You just ruined the whole point of the story! Why, Danny? Why???

Don’t you know what having powers does to you? It messes with your mind, giving you the temptation to do horrible things to your fellow humans, because you can get away with it. This is why Superman isn’t real, why humans don’t have incredible powers like alicorns or draconequii—because I’ve seen what you’ve done with no power, and you haven’t yet proved that you deserve to eat at the adults’ table.

Putting it another way, the British had an empire, and they lost it. And they’ve managed to handle it pretty well, I’d say. All the good children’s literature came out of them while they had that empire, and all the good comedy came out of them in the decades after they lost it.

Now look at you Americans. You never had an empire, so you can’t stop dreaming about getting one. And you’re always obsessed about what the rest of the world thinks about you, that you always have to be in the right. So you couldn’t handle a girl with powers losing them, because that would make her a loser, and everybody hates a loser.

The British make Matilda (1988), and Doctor Who, a show about a guy who keeps messing with authority figures. And the Americans make Matilda (1996), and Star Trek, a show about a bunch of guys enforcing their authority everywhere they go.

There. My point’s made, however pointless it might be. I will laugh at all of your comments attempting to prove me wrong.


Alright, with that bit of rhetorical idiocy out of the way, let’s get back to the madman in the pit. I gave him the tiniest little smidge of power, and he couldn’t handle it.

I knew instantly what happened, but I was...slightly tied down at the moment. I’d tell you the details, but well, you know...spoilers. You’ll have to wait until the Pastel Pony Posse tell their versions of what happened. All I can say is that it was very urban, very gritty, and very wet—we were in the middle of a hurricane, after all.

No, I’m sorry. I’ve been given a sheet of paper saying it was a “tropical depression”. Tropical depression, my tail...

So I couldn’t save the poor wretch from his own stupidity. But I knew who could...


Gilda the griffon was off sulking in a corner when I grabbed her. She jumped up and looked around at her new surroundings: she was now stuck floating inside a large ball constructed out of many square mirrors attached to each other. Multiple pieces of disco music drifted through her ears, works like “Jungle Boogie”, “That’s the Way (I Like It)”, and “Do the Hustle”. And it was incredibly hot. So hot that it felt like her surroundings could burst into an inferno at any moment.

...It was almost like the author was trying to use the setting to subconsciously promote one of his other stories.

“Hey there,” a bored voice called out to Gilda. “Long time, no see.” A bored voice, belonging to yours truly.

Gilda shut her eyes. She’s so cute when she’s in denial. “...Yeah,” she finally muttered. “Same to you.”

“Sorry about the noise. And the heat,” I told her. (Stupid author.) “I don’t have much control over things at the moment.”

“Oh?” asked Gilda, apparently surprised that the fact that I did in fact have limitations.

“The short of it is, I’m about to be defeated.”

That’s a spoiler by the way. Breaking news: Good triumphs over Evil. Don’t tell anyone.

“Err...” Gilda hemmed.

I smiled. “You weren’t going to sell me out, were you?”

Gilda put on a guilty expression. “You sort of caught Cale and I making a break for it. We didn’t want to be around when everything got all mushy.”

Huh. Didn’t think of it that way. I always end up getting blasted, or petrified, or thrown in Bad Guy Prison. That’s what happens to the Big Bad. I guess the fate of a Not-so Bad is to be hugged to death.

How gruesome.

“That’s alright,” I said with a forgiving smile. After all, she really didn’t matter when it came to what was going to happen to me. “But I do have a task for you. One little last mission, and then we’re done. A clean slate. And nobody has to know where you went after that.”

The whole ball shook as one of those Bee Gees hit a note that a soprano would have trouble with. My teeth felt like they were being attacked by a metal file.

Gilda looked reluctant. Who could blame her? She hadn’t exactly had the best experience at the hooves of the ponies.

“For Doctor Franklin,” I explained.

Gilda’s whole expression changed. If there’s anybody on this planet that she felt any sort of connection to, it was him. “Yeah?” she asked. “What’s up with the Doc?”

“He went and fell into a dark wet place,” I told her. “Somewhere to the west of where I’m going to drop you off. It might be a few hundred feet, might be a couple of miles...”

Gilda glared at me.

I raised my forelimbs in a mea culpa with a weak smile. “I’m a chaos god,” I told her. “It’s not like I have a choice.” I then continued with my instructions. “You’ll know the place when you see it, I made a trail for you to follow. It’s probably a good thing that I can’t go with you—my appearance would probably make his condition worse.”

I sighed in defeat. Why can’t things ever go the way I imagine them?

“His...condition?” Gilda asked.

She’s better off learning that part for herself, so I said nothing.

“Right,” she said, finally, turning away. “Good luck with being stuck in stone again...”

I smiled, more grimly this time. “I don’t think my punishment will be so...temporary this time,” I confided to her. “All according to plan.”

I realized that she was it: my last faithful servant, being sent off into the wilderness (and the ponies—they’re practically the same thing). “Farewell,” I said with a bow. “And good luck, in all that you do.”

Gilda looked at me in shock. I could practically hear Cale in her head shouting obscenities at me. “G...good luck to you too,” she finally choked out.

A click of the ol’ talons, and...


Gilda suddenly appeared at the edge of town. She was standing on a sidewalk. In fact, she was standing on the same sidewalk she had been taken from.

From the corner of her eye, she spotted some movement. A homeless man, dressed in rags, his face covered with hair, backed away, his eyes wide. Behind him was a wall of cardboard, adorned with stick figures with pointy teeth, a stick-figure Doberman with glowing red eyes, a stick-figure Hitler, a stick-figure Gandhi armed with a flamethrower, and a stick-figure President Obama armed with his Nobel Prize. It was a collection of all the people and things out to get him. He turned around, pulled a sharpie out of nowhere, and added a stick-figure Gilda to the set.

Gilda’s eye twitched. With a roar, she turned and rushed the man, pinning him against his wall. From one of his pockets, a foil-wrapped glow stick fell out.

“My precious!” he screamed.

“Give me all your glow sticks or I will shank you!” the griffon cried.

The man screamed an obscenity in fear as he ran away.

Following his escape, Gilda spotted a glowing blue trail heading due west, out of town. She let the man live as she decided to follow it.


A hurricane tropical depression had been through this area. Trees were toppled, pools of water were everywhere, and floating in those pools were things that had no business floating, like cows. And helicopters. Somewhere off in the distance, the storm was still raging, and there was no way of knowing if it would be coming back, if this area was outside of the storm, or merely in the eye.

But amidst all that wreckage, the road was still there. Gotta say that about you humans: you sure know how to build good roads.

One, or possibly two, individuals were walking down that road. In a world of shared bodies, it was very hard to be completely alone.

I’ve got a good feeling that the Doc’s not dead.

“Are you sure, Cale?”

Positive. You know, I can’t believe we’re working for the bad guy as the good guys.

The griffon stopped to think. “You know, I can’t, either. What the hell is wrong with this world? People fusing together, and nobody in our group seemed to mind it all that much. I’m glad we left them...I had the feeling that Pinkie wanted to hit us with a car for some reason.”

Probably to advance our ‘story arcs’, or something.” That last bit might have been Cale, might have been me. “Where are we?

“We’re in the middle of a storm, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”

Did you just say ‘we’ve’ never seen?” asked Cale. “Now you see why I retreated to the back of your head for a few days!

“Ugh, shut up, Cale. Tell you what, after this is over and we are separate again, want to punch Pinkie in the face with me?”

Sounds like a smashing good time,” the human replied grimly.

Gilda sighed as she looked around her. This is messed up, she thought to herself. It looks like Fluttershy is at the heart of everything, instead of Twilight. At least, I think Twilight’s usually the one in charge—I only got through four episodes before hitting my one and giving up.

So how was this supposed to end? Fluttershy gets kidnapped...the shit beaten out of her, and then she gets rescued—were we supposed to call that a victory?

Whoa, whoa, stop right there. You’re leaking into me. Cut that out, or I’ll take over. Focus on the task at hand.

Is that you?

I dunno. Are you me?

...Are we?

Where are we, anyway?

There you go with that WE business again.

“Ugh, whatever.” Gilda tried to figure out where she was supposed to go. Hey, how was I to know that glow stick paint is water-soluble? Or at the very least, not storm-proof? “What did he say? A ‘dark and wet place’? Isn’t that, like, everything right now?”

I can’t believe we’re outside in a hurricane.

I wished at that moment that I had a fairy-sized Twilight Sparkle at my command, so I could summon it up to shout the words “tropical depression!” in their ear.

“Will you relax? You’re talking to the apex predator of the whole world.”

Wait, that would be the human, right? I was using italics for Cale and regular text for Gilda, so that line should go to...

You know what? Just forget it.

Not really talking,” said...whoever didn’t say the last line.

So I shouldn’t have been using quotes this whole time?

“Shut up.”

No, you shut up!

At that point, the storm inserted itself into the conversation, in the form of a lightning bolt striking a nearby tree.

Let’s step back for a minute to consider the lowly tree. There were an awful lot of them in this area. This was a forest, which had lived for centuries without the knowledge of humanity. Now it was taking over what remained of the human road. A canopy of trees hung over the road like a predatory bird, just waiting to snatch up an errant car when nobody was looking.

No, I suppose that would never happen. But wouldn’t it be awesome if it did?

So awesome, in fact, that it actually happened. I mean, how else would you explain that wreck on the side of the road, its windows deliberately smashed in? The car lay cradled in the loving embrace of a tree trunk, curled around it like it wanted a hug.

Gilda shivered.

Okay, I take it back,” thought Cale. “The Doc’s probably been eaten by a wild animal by now.

And that was when the storm caught up with the pair, as sheets of rain descended upon them, making it impossible to see one’s claw in front of one’s face.

...Are you there?

Where?

A flying start.

Is that you?

Yes.

...Or do you know?

Oh for God’s sake!

...We’re not finished, then?

Well, we’re here, aren’t we?

Another bolt of lightning, followed almost instantly by a near-deafening boom of thunder—it was like the storm itself knew that they were close, and was trying to stop them.

...Brother!” a new, hoarse voice could be heard calling out.

It was a few yards behind them.

...Tartarus, or Erishkigal’s Kingdom!” It was almost nothing like the voice of the calmly rational psychologist they were seeking. This sounded raw—the sound of a street preacher desperate to save someone’s soul, or the voice of a madman ranting from his padded cell.

Another strike of lighting. This one briefly illuminated where all the water around them was draining. Like a river falling into the Underworld, there was a chasm.

A drainage hole.

Whatever. It was a chasm, lined with cement. The water had filled it to nearly waist-level on a human. And what do you know? There was a human right there to prove the truth of my statement. Gilda crawled to the edge of the chasm to look down at the hunched-over figure.

“...Doc?” she asked incredulously.

The skeletal figure looked up. “G...Gilda?” he asked in confusion. He reached a shaky hand up towards her waiting claw...

This tale, is finished!” another voice cried out. It was identical to the doctor’s, but he wasn’t saying it. Suddenly Dr. Franklin was yanked backwards by an unseen force, submerging him completely in the slimy waters.

Gilda spent only a moment contemplating the strange sight she had seen, before jumping down into the pit. “Doc?!” she cried out, in a mixture of confusion and rage.

It was hard to tell through the murky waters, but it appeared that the man was drowning...and that he was being held down by an invisible weight.

Now this, this moment, is why I’m so very proud of myself for picking Gilda for this job. (Not that I had any possible alternatives to pick from, but still...) Somebody like Twilight Sparkle would have tried to reason this out. But not Gilda. Gilda saw something she almost certainly classified as “weird magic shit”, and her immediate response was: I’m gonna beat the crap out of it!

Turns out, this was the correct response. Of course, it helped that Gilda was 300 pounds of nearly-always pissed-off muscle. And this particular poltergeist couldn’t lift 200 on a good day.

When Gilda leapt down into that water, her claws stopped not on the doctor’s chest, but on a man-sized invisible mass sitting atop that chest. The unknown something moved to the side, tossing the griffon off of her. This allowed the doctor to raise his head above the surface.

“Looks like you’re the one who’s down in the dumps, Doc,” Gilda quipped as she got up, looking rather cool and collected for being in a small wet hole during a thunderstorm.

Die!” the not-Franklin voice called out, as the mass collided once again with Gilda’s side. Two strong but unseen hands closed around her throat. “Death to fantasy! Death to imagination!” it bellowed.

The griffon tensed up for a moment, then went stiff. She flailed out with her talons, her tail whipping back and forth, spattering water everywhere, but she was unable to throw off her assailant. “Doc...” she wheezed, “help me out here!”

The doctor finished coughing up the gallon or two of water he had inhaled during his near-fatal drowning. “Stop this at once!” he cried out in a rapidly-strengthening voice. “You loved nature.” He rose to his full height as he continued to address the invisible being. “You took your life because the human world was not the natural world. You! You are not my brother. You are not George! You are some demon of my mind, made real somehow by Discord’s powers. Begone!”

In an instant, the phantom being vanished.

And right after that, Nathan Franklin fainted from weakness, falling back under the waters.

Gilda’s eyes boggled. She pulled the man out of the water, looked at the pit she was in, looked at her drenched wings, and swore violently. “Shards!”

Trapped like a rat in a cage! sang the human voice in her head.

“SHUT THE HELL UP, CALE.” Gilda began to shake the doctor. “Giggle at the ghosties,” she sang nervously to herself, “...come on, wake up!”

Nate’s eyelids flickered. “So tired...” he murmured.

“I swear, if you die in my arms, I will shank your soul,” Gilda threatened, her eagle beak almost pressing against his forehead. Her wet wings flicked on her back, scattering water and slime.

Good argument...” he whispered, before opening his eyes. “Oh hi, Gilda. What brings you around these parts?”

“Saving your life,” Gilda said in a conversational tone. “You know, I think you’re the only sane person I’ve met since I left the fores—no, wait, none of the people in there were sane, either.” She huffed. The position she was holding Nate in might look great on the cover of a romance novel, but it was murder on one’s back, regardless of species. “You know, since Dissy is about to meet his end and all, I’m gonna need your help dealing with the vegetable in my head.”

I AM NOT A VEGETABLE!

“Shut up, Cale. The adults are talking.”

Nate moaned, putting a hand to his head. “I am going crazy, aren’t I? I’m not supposed to be able to hear him.”

Gilda paused mid-thought, her train of thought visibly derailing. “...Eh?”

“Never mind,” Nate said as he finally regained his own balance. “We need to get out of here before the water rises much further.”

The only griffon on earth gave out a bit of a sigh. “Yeah...about that...” She flicked her wings. “These things don’t work well when wet.” The rain kept pouring down, making any attempt to dry them useless.

Nate looked up at the storm clouds above them. “There’s no way out!” he exclaimed. “You’re going to be stuck here until we both drown. Or until Pinkie Pie shows up out of nowhere and—”

“For the love of all that’s holy, don’t say her name like that!” Gilda snarled, reminding the human that she could kill him long before the water did. She looked around her furtively, as if scared that the pink menace could materialize at any moment.

You know, the wall’s only six feet up. You could probably let him climb on you to safety.

Nate nodded to himself. “Yeah, that could probably work, Cale.”

Gilda grabbed the doctor by the waist. “Heads up!” she cried, as she tossed him out of the hole.

You know, that was not what I had in mind AT ALL.

A bedraggled Nate peeked over the edge of the pit. “Okay, you two stay tight, and I’ll find some rope.” He stood up and looked around him. “Somewhere...”

You know, I think we were supposed to go through some character development from that.

“Yeah, like we were supposed to stay down here and learn something,” Gilda muttered.

“Character development is for heroes,” Nate replied, sitting down on the edge of the pit. “We go around looting corpses. Speaking of which, did you happen to pass the corpse of some legendary Equestrian hero on the way here, complete with a shit-ton of rope? A pony Indiana Jones, a dragon Alan Quartermain?”

Hasbro should seriously hire this guy. He could practically write Season Whatever-They’re-Up-To all by himself!

Naw, they went to fight the raid boss, replied Cale.

“...What the hell is wrong with your two?” asked Gilda. “Your car was metaphorically eaten by a tree. How about trying there.”

“I drove here?” Nate asked, getting back up. “I thought I just spirit-walked a couple hundred miles. Huh. Well in that case, I think I had a survival kit in the trunk. Where did you see it?”

“Walk to the...” she began, before second-guessing herself. “Shit. You can’t see the sun in this mess.”

You know where the water is pouring into the hole? Go away from that until you see the road.

“I knew there was a reason why I kept you around!” proclaimed the griffon.

“OK,” the receding voice of the human called out.

“Did you find it?” Gilda called out after a few moments.

“I’m not going to get my deposit back on the rental car, am I?”

“No...you think?”

How did we get here, anyway?

“Shut up, Cale. I don’t quite remember, either.”


And that’s when I took Nate’s dream powers away, when he was distracted lowering a rope to Gilda (and Cale). Because humans are happier without powers, and because he apparently used them to drive himself crazy. Because humans are messed up like that.

Oh look, that diatribe from earlier actually wound up mattering anyway! I guess when I told you different, I was lying. Just shows that you can’t trust a villain.