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// Won't Somebody Think of the Children? 
// Story: Norrath, Earth, Equestria. A Construct's Journey 
// by Nimnul 
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Landshark had been in Ponyville for a few days without truly settling down. She had initially felt it was too early to commit to the place, even though it had come recommended by the diarchs. On the other hand, having made two friends here did make the town seem more attractive. She'd wandered town, conversed with any ponies who gave her the time of day, performed some odd jobs here and there to earn local currency and generally got a feel for the location. 

Without any physical needs, she hadn't had to spend much money, and she was just fine sleeping sitting up on benches. Still, she knew her appearance had suffered. She'd spent a few hours hauling sacks of grain and flour around a mill today, and it showed. Sure, she had briefly considered and dismissed the idea of taking a dip in the river or lake, but she was slightly worried about leaving her few possessions out of her sight.

Landshark was an adaptable creature and thought she had developed a solid understanding of the proper way to interact in this town – but sometimes it did not hurt to act the clueless foreigner or otherwise as a being with a poor grasp of etiquette. Her arrival had been recent enough that she could still count on ponies overlooking any perceived lack of tact.

That considered, it made complete sense for Landshark to accept Lyra's help in formulating a plan to meet another friend. Bon Bon had suggested that the couple simply introduce her to Berry, but she hadn't been very invested in over-ruling Lyra's suggestion. 

So Landshark knocked on the door of a small, slightly shabby two story residence one fine mid-afternoon. The door was opened by a pinkish mare with a raspberry colored mane. Or was it mulberry and cerise? Some ponies were particular about their colors, and it wasn't a field of expertise for the construct. Pinkie Pie was pink and the one she was facing now was differently pink. The mare at least seemed more surprised than suspicious.

"Oh. You're the new ... thingy in town. How can I help you?"

Landshark nodded. "Good afternoon to you, ma'am. I'd like it if I could use your washroom, and, if available, your mane care products. I'm afraid my wig is rather filthy. I'm carrying baked goods and apples I can offer in exchange."

Berry Punch frowned as she looked the bald biped over. The visitor was wearing a simple jacket, a long skirt of some coarse fabric, a large backpack, and a belt pouch. She'd fuzzily recalled seeing her about town, although at those times the being had been sporting a mane. Apparently artificial, and now in need of cleaning.

"Sure, I guess. Saves me thinking about dinner in any case. Come on in. No funny business though!" She stepped back to let the visitor in. Berry Punch nearly regretted her choice when Landshark snapped her jaws shut noisily, but ultimately, she thought she could take her on. She was an earth pony, and everything about the biped seemed quite flimsy. A good buck to her legs and she'd go down. The texture of her face and skull made her think of unglazed pottery.

Berry Punch shook her head at her own thoughts. She wasn't exactly a paragon of harmony, but she remembered how foalish she'd felt about the initial Zecora fiasco. Time to be a better host. "I'll introduce you to my daughter. PINCHY! Get on down here, we got a dinner guest. Just put your stuff somewhere I won't trip over...lady? I'm Berry Punch, by the way. Ruby Pinch is my daughter."

Landshark extended a hand and shook Berry's hoof. "Landshark. Don't worry, I do not eat anything. It's a joke name." Landshark was mildly surprised that the mare had invited her in so readily, but perhaps ponies really were better people than what she was used to? She mentally shrugged and headed into the home. Her first impressions were that the family seemed financially comfortable, but that Berry Punch was perhaps not as diligent about housekeeping as other ponies. The last several house-cleaning jobs had been superficial to anyone with an eye for detail. 

As Landshark was setting down the food she brought, a small unicorn came cantering down the stairs, slowing down when the filly spotted their guest. She was slightly wary, knowing that her mother sometimes made choices that didn't turn out so good in hindsight. Still, she was a curious filly. "Hi! I'm Ruby Pinch. It's okay, I heard you introduce yourself. So can you explain what you are? That's going to come up when I tell the others about meeting you!" Ruby Pinch was pragmatic like that.

Landshark squatted down before responding to Ruby Pinch. "Well, it's pretty complicated. But think of it like building a very fancy puppet or large toy and then using magic to turn it into a real thinking being." She extended a hand, palm upwards, for Ruby Pinch to inspect. "I'm mostly made of clay, and some metal for my bones. It's very magical clay, though." 

The filly did, with a brief moment of hesitation, inspect the offered hand before giggling. "You feel like a flowerpot, Miss Landshark. And these moving parts look really interesting. Dirty, though. You need to wash up before dinner!"

"I will. I don't need to eat but I'm not going to sit at your table being all dirty. Care to show me the way? And please, there's no need to call me Miss. Just Landshark or Shark are fine." She stood up and then, too late to avoid dragging dirt into the residence, quickly returned to the entrance and took off her boots there. Then she followed Pinchy, who winked knowingly and grinned. Her mother hadn't appeared to notice yet.

"Oh, do you really need to wear all that stuff? I know you don't have fur but do you even get cold? Or do you just try and keep dirt off yourself?" Ruby Pinch fairly bounced ahead of Landshark for the few steps it took to get to the bathroom. 

Landshark opened her jaws a little wider before answering. "Well, where I'm from, it was common to wear clothing. But you're right- it keeps dirt off me. You saw my hands. Just between you and me, my major joints," she touched her shoulders and hips, "can end up looking really dirty too. So I cover up. And pockets are useful." There was a pause. "And sometimes I just like to wear a pretty dress."

She happily chatted some more with the filly who, after her initial curiosity about Landshark's construction, treated her like she might any other adult, talking about school and friends and sleepovers while the construct carefully washed the synthetic wig, then hung it up to dry. It wasn't a perfect job, but good enough given the circumstances.

Berry Punch hadn't done much more beyond placing muffins and apples into bowls and placing them onto the table. As everyone sat down to eat (or just chat), she herself enjoyed a glass of wine. Eventually, the visitor turned to Berry and inquired about her cutie mark and/or her day job.

"Well, I bottle and sell fruit-based beverages. Both alcoholic and none. Although I stick to red fruits, no sense competing with the Apple family, right? Anyway, I've got my setup spread over the shack out back and the basement. Pays the bills and leaves me reasonable free time." Berry omitted the fact that she had a bit of a weakness for her own product. 

"Mom's drinks taste the best," Ruby Pinch declared firmly, "the ones I'm allowed to try. When I'm having a sleepover with friends, I get to bring enough for my friends too, and they agree." The filly nodded with conviction.

"I'll take your word for it, Pinchy," Landshark responded before continuing to talk to Berry. "I'd like to see your setup some time. I've not seen professional equipment up close in a good long while. Certainly not in this world. I remember one time we were fermenting fruits into alcohol and we couldn't find a clean enough container to do it so we poured the whole mess into a watertight bag, tied it up and let it sit. I was in charge of letting the gas out every so often. Then when it was done we put that bag into a fabric bag, held it over a tub and popped the inner bag so the liquid would come through into the tub and the leftover pulp was caught in the bag. Terrible mess. Absolute travesty of a drink, or so I was told, but it got the lads buzzed alright." 

Landshark didn't move her jaws as she generated the sound of laughter. "We bottled the stuff, but it kept, well, working. One of the guys forgot to let the gas out every couple hours and it blew up all over his gear."

"Been there, done that." The admission slipped out before Berry could think better of it, but she just forged on. "I'll let you take a look later. Maybe you could even help me out sometime. Say, do you have a place to sleep?"

Landshark shook her head. "No. I don't need much sleep. My body doesn't need rest, and I haven't been under a lot of stress to need to rest my mind much. I'll spend the night if you're offering, though."

Berry Punch looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, we were planning a mare's night out but I haven't managed to get a sitter or set up a sleepover for Pinchy, so ... I could pay you the usual foalsitter's rate to keep an eye on things here?"

The request had given Landshark pause. She knew, intellectually, that hiring young adults or teenagers to look after your children was common, but this was the first time she had been asked to do this. She leaned forward. "Isn't that very trusting? You've only met me today."

Berry Punch nodded. "That's true, but didn't you arrive here with a letter of recommendation from Princess Celestia so people would give you a chance? That's all I'm doing." She didn't mention that she was beginning to have mild doubts about the idea herself. "Besides, it'll be nice to have a foalsitter who won't raid the fridge!"

Landshark nodded, then turned to Pinchy. "Hey, would you mind checking if my wig is dry?" As the filly responded in the affirmative and cantered towards the bathroom, the construct whispered to her mother. "I realize that it's a normal thing to let trusted peers watch over your child for a night, but I can't help but consider it an enormous gesture of trust. I'll defend your home and your daughter with all the force I can muster. Anyone you want me to allow into the house, should they show up? I'm not sure who your friends are. Except Lyra and Bon Bon. I met those."

Berry Punch quickly rattled off some names and cutie marks of local ponies and was about to point out that she was mostly looking for someone to make sure her daughter went to bed on time and with all her homework completed, not someone to fend off a home invasion, when the filly in question appeared at the top of the stairs, wearing a damp wig of stringy black hair, reaching nearly to the floor. "Aha! Bow down to the queen of the changelings, fools!" It was an imperfect disguise, but Berry had to admit that the limp mass of dark hair on her daughter did bear a faint semblance to pictures of the changeling queen she had seen in newspapers.

Although Landshark did humor the filly and dropped to her knees, she also could not help but ask a pressing question. "Is the queen dragging my hair all over the floor after I just washed it?"





The hair piece had been more or less fine, although Pinchy's mother hadn't been particularly happy about the damp thing being carried around the house. They hung it up once more to dry in the bathroom. Landshark helped wipe the moisture off the hallway floor while Berry Punch prepared for a night on the town.

Landshark's experience with the etiquette of being a foalsitter was rather limited, yet she was in a sense saved by the fact that the filly she was looking after hadn't completed her homework yet. Helping out with that wasn't difficult and allowed time to think of things to entertain Pinchy with.

Landshark bought another handful of minutes through shadow puppetry, but in truth she was very inexperienced at it beyond forming the most basic of shadow animals with her fingers, so the novelty wore off rather quickly for Pinchy. The construct suspected that the filly might also be a little old to be impressed by anything but the most skilled shadow puppetry. She had barely been able to judge ages on humanoid children, after all.

Eventually, Ruby Pinch ended up putting her sitter on the spot with a question about her past. "So, what did you do before you got to Ponyville? Are you really an alien robot?" The filly settled down on the floor and looked at Landshark expectantly.

Landshark laughed quietly and shook her head. "Look, I already explained to you what I am, but I guess you can say I'm an alien. I'm trapped on your world! So I'm trying to get settled in. Maybe here, maybe elsewhere. I used to be a soldier. We hunted monsters and aliens. Only the nasty ones, though. Nice ones, like me, could either hire on or settle down somewhere quiet where people wouldn't freak out. Maybe that kind of idea is why Princess Celestia told me Ponyville is good?" As she talked, Landshark knelt down on the floor near Pinchy and scratched her behind the ears.

"Well, a lot of strange things happen in Ponyville, so I guess you fit in. And you really can't go home anymore?" Landshark just shook her head, no sense elaborating on the point. Pinchy continued, sounding subdued. "I'm really sorry to hear that. I hope things work out." She quickly cheered up again, however. "So what was being a monster hunter like? Did you get cool gadgets?"

"We did get some useful stuff. But the work was often very dangerous. We lost some good friends. Almost nobody had any magic, and most of us aren't very strong, or can fly." She paused. "I should pour one out for them next time I get the chance."

Ruby Pinch lowered her ears and decided to sidle closer to the kneeling biped. "I'm sorry you lost your friends. I didn't mean to make you sad."

Landshark awkwardly reached out to hug Pinchy. "Don't feel too bad. We all just thought that fillies and their mothers have enough to worry about without having to be scared of monsters too. We all knew what we were getting into. Some just have to fight so the others won't have to be scared." Landshark was experiencing a mounting feeling that this was kind of a poor choice of topic for conversation with a young filly. Still, she felt she had to be honest. "Well I suppose one or two of the guys and girls were in more for the pay or even the fighting. Still, most of them were nice folk!"

"You want to see something secret? No one ... nopony has seen that except for Celestia, Luna and some other important folks in Canterlot. It was a gift from a friend." When Pinchy nodded, appearing interested, Landshark quickly retrieved her large backpack and started digging through it. In truth she had been badgered into buying the weapon by a friend, but with very little use for her wages, she supposed she considered the suggestion to buy it the gift. She'd certainly be remembering them by it from now on. 

What she retrieved appeared to be a small lock box. Unlocking it, Landshark pulled out a blued steel revolver, albeit lacking grips and a cylinder. It was further adorned with a sizable padlock that would prevent re-assembly. "Now, I told you magic is real rare, so we got these things. Guns! This specific type is old technology now, but still works."

Ruby Pinch listened surprisingly intently to Landshark's explanation. She also retrieved her crayons and some paper so Landshark could explain to her how a bullet was put together and how a single action revolver would operate. Pinchy was a responsible filly for her age so she felt she had some appreciation for the severity of this knowledge. The gun was similar to the bows some unicorns in the Royal Guard carried, except much smaller and lighter. She'd been told that it took strong magic to use a bow. Or strong limbs. On the other hand, she could probably pull that trigger herself! But Landshark had kept a vice grip on the weapon the whole time and only allowed her to touch it without actually taking it.

"You always pretend like it's fully put together and has a bullet loaded. You think it's silly now with the cylinder missing but that one got drilled into my head the most when I got introduced to guns. You wouldn't want to make a mistake you can't take back. That's why you never point it at anyone either unless you're in a fight and about to shoot 'em."

Ruby Pinch was a little uneasy, but she couldn't deny the thrill of learning something that almost nopony else knew anything about. "So did you hunt monsters with that?"

Landshark shook her head and answered while simultaneously screwing the wooden grips back onto her weapon. "No, I had a better gun for that. Too bad I wasn't on the job when I got stranded here! They probably assigned my gear to someone else by now. This here gun uses pretty reasonable bullets, but most folks use em to plink practice targets for fun, or carry them for defense, I guess, they're not often used for serious fighting as far as I know." Landshark snapped her jaws shut once before continuing. "Now mind you, these are still extremely dangerous, but shoot an angry monster with it and it'll probably still find time to twist your head off before it notices that it's hurt. And a timber wolf might not even notice these." She also decided to not explain about hunting game. She was on thin ice already, no sense talking about shooting the type of critter little fillies probably loved.

Ruby Pinch was sure by this point that she was having a conversation that most grown-ups in Ponyville would declare completely inappropriate for a child. She wasn't sure she disagreed all the way, but she also didn't want Landshark to stop talking. "You said that thing is really outdated, what did you mean by that? Looks shiny as new to me."

Landshark started to explain that the technology was out-dated, the item itself was recently made, a replica of a historical model. Then she continued on to explain more advanced types of fire-arms, although she had some difficulty attempting to draw the 'lockwork' of a 'double action' revolver. She blamed the crayons, claiming that with a nice quill she could even sketch the 'recoil-operated' mechanism of the gun she had used to hunt monsters.

Eventually though, it was time to go to bed. Landshark diplomatically allowed an extra ten minutes beyond bed time to burn her sketches in the fireplace – mostly to add to the conspiratorial air Pinchy had seemed to appreciate. While the little filly brushed her teeth, the construct reassembled her revolver, a weapon chambered for .45 Long Colt rounds. She'd never heard of short colt rounds, but she was an enthusiast, not an expert. 

Before her displacement, she'd never fired the replica at anything more dangerous than a sharp edged tin can, and it was hard to tell how sturdy ponies were, but she still felt better with the gun back in one piece. Not that it had helped much with the Manticore that one time. Sure, maybe the beast had died to internal injuries later on, but that idea had failed to comfort Landshark while she was being nearly torn apart.

After a moment's consideration, she left the chamber under the hammer empty as she was reloading the gun. With the first chamber empty, Landshark was confident she could quickly get a solid grip on the cylinder and/or hammer before a real discharge could be forced by a hostile unicorn. She was operating with no real idea of how dexterous unicorn telekinesis could get, being careful seemed advisable.

'Assume that like a third of the population can discharge your gun from afar.' That was a bit of fire-arms safety she could have happily lived without. She'd certainly never be tempted to carry the gun openly.

"Are you going to be okay, Pinchy? Do you need a lullaby or a story?" She thought that the filly was already too old for lullabies, but wasn't sure. She experienced faint worry about Pinchy's ability to sleep soundly – she really did not know much of anything about children of any species, so she had no way to predict how the filly would deal with her stories of killing monsters, losing friends, and talking about weapons a lot.

Ruby Pinch wasn't naive. She knew that sometimes people died. They hadn't brought it up and Landshark hadn't seemed to notice, but her mother had a problem with her alcoholic drinks. And Dinky's mother was poor. The world wasn't always a nice place and certainly some ponies were barely ever nice. She looked at the construct. Not a pony, but seemingly nice. 

"You're dangerous, aren't you?"

Landshark regarded the filly with that doll-like face of hers before nodding. "I'm a trained soldier. I've got weapons you ponies don't have, and I'm not afraid to use my teeth." The construct opened her jaw wider than Pinchy had ever seen before snapping them shut. "I'm not too strong, but I'm tough.  I'm moderately dangerous for someone without magic. But never to children, or to any nice people like your mother. I swear." Landshark wasn't sure she would be all that dangerous to a determined and careful pony if she didn't have her guns, but her bite would be nasty. Depended on the pony's reflexes. The construct could move fast when she actively willed it but had poor reflexes.

Ruby Pinch offered a small smile.  She'd been disturbed by some of what Landshark had said, but told herself that in a land without Princesses or Elements of Harmony, people like her had to exist, even if their job was dangerous. If they didn't have magic, and their place was half as dangerous as everypony said the Everfree was, it was no wonder they had to invent guns and get good at using them! And somehow, she really felt that she could trust the strange biped. Not really to not hurt anyone, but trust her to be what she was ... what she appeared to be. She was sure there was a proper adult word for that odd sense of personal unity she got from Landshark. She would try to ask Miss Cherilee.

Landshark had waited patiently as Pinchy appeared deep in thought. Eventually, the filly spoke up.

"It's okay. I trust you. Will you stay with me until mom comes back?"

Landshark stared at Pinchy for a few heartbeats longer before abruptly nodding and sitting down on a chair by the bed before speaking. "Thank you, Ruby Pinch. Hearing that means a lot to me. I will not disappoint you." The words came out with real emotion. "Now sleep tight." A lot of ponies seemed to see her as some kind of curiosity, an automaton, but Pinchy had treated her with the same earnestness that Landshark had shown towards the filly. It was good.

'I guess I'll be settling down in Ponyville after all.'

With that thought, Landshark settled in for her silent vigil, sweeping her eyes slowly between the door and the window. Not nervously or furtively, but rather like the always identical sweep of a security camera or search light.