//------------------------------// // Hydra/Ice-cream // Story: The Adventures of Spectrum Slash // by CCC //------------------------------// The hydra lay down on a field, flat on its back. All five heads relaxed, resting on a pile of leaves shaped like a pillow. "Grooooowr," said the second head. "Greeeeer. Groar." "Is that so?" asked Fluttershy, hovering nearby. She made a note in her notebook with a pen gripped in her teeth. "And how did that make you feel?" "Grooooeeeeeeer," said the fourth head. "I'm sorry, Harriet," said Fluttershy, sternly, "but it's not your turn to talk yet. It's Henry's turn. You will get your turn later." She turned to face the second head. "Now, Henry. How did that make you feel?" "Gre-" began the fourth head, stopping abruptly when Fluttershy glared at it. It glared back for a moment, then whimpered, burying itself in its leafy pillow. "Graaaaaaaar," said the second head. "Gre-he-he-he-he-heeeeee." "Henry!" said Fluttershy, folding her forelegs and frowning. "That's not very polite! You know as well as I do that you're all going to have to live with each other, and you all owe it to each other not to make that any harder than it has to be!" ~~~~~ "Now, now," said Discord, patting Celestia awkwardly on the head. "Why don't you have some ice cream? I'm told that's good for crying mares." He snapped his claws, and a large tub labelled 'Blueberry Icecream' appeared in front of Celestia. "I hope you don't mind," he added, "but I put in a little something for flavour. Nothing that'll injure an alicorn, of course, even if you eat the entire tub, but given that the only thing around here with any flavour seems to be poison..." Celestia grabbed the spoon and started shovelling icecream into her mouth, sobbing as she did so. ~~~~~ "Twilight, darling?" Rarity stepped cautiously into the library, dodging around the rainbows still flowing through the air (though the best efforts of Spike with a sponge and a bucket of water had at least made a few pony-sized gaps here and there). "Right here, Rarity," said Twilight, from inside the library. Rarity trotted in, to see Twilight relaxing on the floor, with a book propped open in front of her. "What can I do for you?" she asked. Rarity blinked. This wasn't the research-binging Twilight she'd expected. "Do you mind if I ask what you're reading, darling?" "Daring Do and the Griffin's Goblet," said Twilight, promptly. "...ah," said Rarity. "Well, I was on my way to meet Fluttershy for our regular spa visit, when I met the most startling individual -" "Oh," said Twilight. "Spectrum Slash." "Quite, darling. And so I was just wondering what..." "...was going on." said Twilight. "Discord." "Discord?" Twilight nodded, and took a deep breath. "Spectrum Slash," she explained, "is a character invented by Rainbow Dash for her completely ridiculous and over-the-top fanfic. Total Mare-Sue character. Discord decided to get involved and, with a mix of shape-shifting and illusion magic, made it look like he'd pulled Spectrum Slash out of Rainbow Dash's story. Which would be completely ridiculous if true, of course, ha-ha, writing a book can't create a universe, so therefore Discord has to have faked it all..." There was a sproing as one of the hairs in Twilight's mane spontaneously sprang out of position. "I... see, darling," said Rarity, cautiously backing away about half a step. "So I'm sure that Spectrum can't do anything Discord wouldn't do," finished Twilight. "I'm just waiting for him to decide the prank's gone on long enough and give up, myself." "...and is this the story in question?" asked Rarity, pointing at a pile of papers on the table. Twilight nodded. "That's it," she said. "I wouldn't recommend reading it, Dash - needs a lot of work as an author." Rarity picked up the manuscript and glanced over it. "Is it... supposed to be writing itself at the end?" she asked. "What?" asked Twilight. ~~~~~ Discord opened up his lion paw, looking at what he had pulled from the storm. "Doing-ness," he said. "I don't know if there's a proper name, made up by stuffy unicorns somewhere, probably 'volition' or some such, but I always called it 'doing-ness'. Whenever you create something, it's got a little bit of yourself in it - or sometimes a lot. You can tell who did something by looking at the doing-ness of it." He lay back, leaning his head on Celestia's barrel, and looked up at the sky, ignoring the sounds of rapid ice-cream consumption. "Do you know whose doing-ness was in that storm?" "Mmmmmrph," said Celestia, around another mouthful of ice cream. She shook her head. "Hrm mmmmmph." "Mine," said Discord. "The doing-ness I put into creating that house was also the cause of the storm." "Hrrrrrmmm mph-mph." mumbled Celestia. "And it's creating things that gets you into trouble here," said Discord. "Anything that lasts. Creating a future. Creating a legacy. Creating, well, a house. Anything, as long as it lasts. Which means that ice cream is about the safe limit - it's either eaten, or it melts, and either way it doesn't last." "Hmmmmph." said Celestia. "You've always been good at keeping secrets, Celestia." asked Discord, still looking up at the sky. "The perfect poker face. Not a word, not a gesture that's not perfectly controlled. You don't tell ponies the truth, you tell them what they need to hear." "Hrmph?" asked Celestia, surprised at the abrupt subject change. "Until you come into contact with poison joke," continued Discord. "It makes you unable to lie, and unable to avoid a direct question, and also turns your tongue a very pleasant shade of blue." Celestia dropped the spoon, and gave the blue ice-cream a very suspicious look. "Right now," said Discord, grinning widely, "I have a lot of questions." ~~~~~ "But that's just not right!" said Spectrum Slash, pointing both forehooves at the recumbant hydra. "You don't defeat a hydra by just talking at it! The way to deal with a hydra is to kick it in all its heads, then kick it so hard that it flies up in the air, then grab one head and spin it around and around several times, and finally throw it so far away that is never comes back!" "Hey, different ponies have different methods," said Rainbow, with a shrug. "What Flutters is doing is working, right?" "It shouldn't be!" objected Spectrum Slash. "She didn't even kick it once! She should have accidentally destroyed half of Ponyville by now, doing things herself like that!" "...she should have what?" asked Rainbow Dash. "This is stupid!" said Spectrum Slash, taking to the air in a burst of rainbows. Dash promptly followed. Neither of them noticed that the grass where Spectrum had taken off was no longer as it had been. It no longer rustled in the wind, and would never again glint with morning dew; it was a single shade of green, with no variation, no shadows or shading, and above all, neither smell nor taste. It was grass in name only, devoid of almost all that made it grasslike.