The Second Dimension by AusFlick

I suppose it's that time again, and what better way to start the story off than the protagonist being subjected to pure, unadulterated pain? Throughout the course of this narrative, Jason Colby must endure situation after situation where he is beaten, electrocuted, shot. Hell, he was sent through a freaking building. And not just one, but three! You know, the use of Jason in this kind of setting reminds me, oddly enough of the Jason Bourne series. I mean, that guy must have gone through hell and back by this point in the series.

We start off with Jason being interrogated in a pretty brutal fashion. Argo, this story's antagonist, is a menacing alicorn ruler of the dimension that Jason lives in. They live in a cruel society where Earth ponies are running on the brink of extinction. Argo's line of reasoning for enacting on his decisions to eradicate them is fairly plausible too, for in his mind there is nothing that an Earth pony can do that a Unicorn or a Pegasus couldn't do better. This essentially paints him as their world's version of our own history's Hitler. His idealistic vision, as delusional as it is, leaves Jason and his companions with little other recourse besides resisting him, sometimes futile.

I found the world building in this story to be particularly strong. Not all the puzzle pieces were available for the reader to get a complete picture of what was happening at the start, but at no point did I feel any of the plot points being convoluted or hard to follow. We're given just enough information to keep us engaged, but not too much to cause us to lose interest. It's a tough balancing act to pull off, and there were a lot of points in this narrative where it might not have. Thankfully, that is not the case, and I can walk away from it satisfied.

The mechanical aspects of this story were fairly strong as well. It was by no means perfect, for I noticed a few instances of extraneous words, a few formatting issues, a few comma misplacements, but it was by no means widespread enough to be a significant detractor. There were very few, if any, times where I was confused by the grammar, and I applaud the editing that went into this project.

I feel there could be some more concision with some of the dialogue tags, particularly in the beginning portions. I recall reading, more than once, where somepony said why Jason couldn't do something and then explain the same thing again.

"Well," he finally said. "I could keep my word and kill you for not telling me, but what good would that do? I'd be killing the only pony who has the information that I want, and lo and behold, I'm not an idiot. So I have the next best thing. Clearly, you're willing to give your own life to keep the location of the device a secret, but what happens when your life isn't the only one in jeopardy?"

I feel like the verbiage in Argo's dialogue here somewhat undercuts his threat. Essentially, it's one of those situations where "I can't kill you, so I'll threaten your friends." And not a whole lot more information can be derived from that. Now, I do note that this does give Argo some character that the standard threat against someone's relative or friend wouldn't give (lord knows how many times I've heard the generic threats in action films), but perhaps we could squeeze a little bit more background information into dialogue tags like the above to stave off the sensation of it being too verbose.

Some of Ethan's lines seemed a bit verbose as well, but I'm not sure how much of that is just his personality.

One particular area of the narrative that I found myself wishing to see more of was the struggle leading up to the discovery and retrieval of the T.S.D. What I am most interested in seeing is the development of the supporting characters' posse am able to get behind more on their achievements and failures. As it stands, Ethan's capture, while slightly sad to hear for Jason's sake, ultimately doesn't have any stakes for me. Perhaps I'm not meant to feel attachment, and thereby pain, of his capture, but going that extra mile might have done wonders for Jason's subsequent breakdown. I could see myself crying alongside him given the right circumstances.

I'm sure there are more things that I could nitpick about this story, but none of this changes the fact that it was a blast to read. After finishing it, I think this is a story that is sorely underappreciated. I do suspect some of it might be due to the long chapters, ranging from 30-50 pages per, by my estimate. But I digress. I fully recommend this piece, and I welcome it to the Cafe.

Verdict: Accept (8/10)