Chapter 31 (Estimations)
Chapter 31
Allen, Rune Chisel, and a large earth pony stallion named Steel Girder were standing in Allen’s barn staring at the large-sized hoof print embedded in the concrete floor.
“Yep, just as I thought, low quality concrete, see how far the cracks spread?” stated Steel, his gravelly voice full of disapproval. “Honestly, it’s a wonder your barn is still standing Mr. Ross,” he complained, “whoever put this concrete floor in was an idiot. I can already tell that the ground underneath wasn’t packed and leveled right, and this shoddy workponyship would never fly on one of my job sites.”
Allen just mutely nodded his expressionless face still staring at the hoofprint that Steel Girder had made just a minute ago to test the resilience of his concrete floor, needless to say, it hadn’t passed muster.
Note to self, never make Steel angry, actually, I should probably not make any pony angry, thought Allen quietly, a drop of nervous sweat rolling down his cheek.
This was the first time that Allen had really met somepony of Steel’s stature up close. True, he had heard that there were several stallions in Ponyville who were pretty tall and strong, such as Applejack’s brother Big Macintosh, and Allen had briefly run into Big Mac a couple of weeks ago when he had been in town. He was a pretty large pony, being easily a head taller than most ponies in town, and he was built like a brick shithouse.
But Steel Girder was built like a brick fortress. Currently, he was the only pony that had been able to nearly look Allen in the eye, and Allen wasn’t short, being six feet and four inches tall, just about everypony around Ponyville was either eye level with his belly button, his midchest, or fell somewhere between those two points. Big Mac on the other hand was eye level with Allen’s chin, and unlike many of the other ponies he had seen, had a more draft horse-like build, including the feathering around his hooves. So Allen figured this guy was strong, but when Steel had casually stomped his metal shod hoof into the cement floor and the floor had splintered into a spider web of cracks, Allen had felt like his asshole could turn coal into diamonds.
Clearing his throat nervously, Allen remarked, “Is that so?”
Still frowning his blue eyes staring intensely at the floor as if it had just grievously insulted his mother, and he was deciding how best to hide its remains, Steel said, “Yep, you were right to recommend this be torn up Rune, it would never have supported any kind of enchantments for long.”
Rune nodded, a disapproving frown of his own marring his features. “I figured as much, and seeing the results of your hoof strike test, I’m glad I decided to ask for a second opinion.”
Rolling his toothpick around in his mouth, Steel removed his orange construction helmet and idly scratched his dark brown mane for a moment as he ran some numbers in his head. Finally, after a minute he nodded and turning to Allen said, “Mr. Ross, I can’t let something like this slide, it's an insult to my profession. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to take a look at the rest of your buildings. If the foundations are as bad as this one, we might need to do all of them or risk them falling down. I can give you a discount if you decide to do them all at once.”
Allen grimaced. I do not need to spend any more money than I’m already about to. The rest of the foundations should be fine. Truth be told, dad did go with the lowest bidder on this barn, so I guess it isn’t a surprise they half-assed it like they did, but... he sighed and shook his head. Motioning for the ponies to follow him he led them over to the machine sheds.
Pulling the sliding doors open he waved them in and said, “You can take a look around, but please try not to put a giant hoofprint in my floor again.”
Steel Girder gave a nod and trotted deeper into the shed. He walked around for several minutes inspecting everything, from the floor to the walls and ceiling and even the door frames. His final act was to do another hoof stomp, which caused Allen to winch, but other than a slight indentation mark in the shape of a hoof, the concrete held.
Allen let loose a sigh of relief, while Steel Girder gave a satisfied nod. “That’s better, not great, but it’ll do for now, and don’t worry, I’ll have my boys patch that hoofprint for you later, free of charge. I’d still feel better if we could redo the foundation, but everything seems to be in decent shape, so I’ll leave it up to you on this shed.”
“I’ll think about it,” was Allen’s reply.
Giving a nod of his head, Steel and Rune followed Allen to the machine shed next door, and repeated the process, with the same results, much to Allen’s relief. The same however could not be said for the animal barn as Steel didn’t even bother going inside before rendering his verdict.
“Needs to be torn all the way down to the ground and redone,” he stated, a disappointed frown on his face. “I’ll give credit where it is due, whoever built this barn did a good job, but even the best-built building will fall without a good maintenance schedule, and that’s what we have here. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s still standing, and if I were you, I would look at getting your animals out of there pronto.”
“You haven’t even gone inside yet,” said Allen, a hint of frustration in his voice.
“Don’t need to, see there?” replied Steel, pointing his hoof at an exposed section of the concrete foundation that made up the lower portion of the barn. “You don’t see large cracks like that unless the foundation has shifted, plus chunks of the outer layer of concrete have fallen away. Your barn is on borrowed time, Mr. Ross, that’s just one crack, but I bet there are more and with each crack water can get into the foundation, this can rust away any exposed rebar which will cause the metal bars to swell and make the cracks worse, that’s also not taking into account water freezing in those cracks causing them to get bigger. Meanwhile, you’ve got holes in the roof and walls of your barn, which naturally lets water in and causes the support beams to rot away, and if I can see the holes from this far away and outside, then you know they are bad.”
Sighing in frustration, Allen kicked a rock and mumbled, “Tell me something I don’t already know. You think I like having buildings that are one good windstorm away from falling down? I’d love nothing more than to tear that old eyesore down and build a new one, but I doubt I’ll have the money to cover both the hay shed and the animal barn at the same time.”
Steel gave Allen a weird look and asked, “Well how many bits do you have in your budget?”
Allen rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “I don’t know, a hundred thousand I guess?”
Steel felt one of his eyebrows try to ascend to low Equus orbit. “One hundred thousand? That’s your budget?”
Feeling his face heat up in embarrassment, Allen kicked another rock and stuck his hands in his pockets grumbling, “I don’t have a lot of money right now, okay? Prince Blueblood only gave me one hundred thousand bits, and The Crown only gave me another forty thousand, so I’m kind of working on a shoestring budget here, if that’s not enough to cover things, then I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
“Uh, Mr. Ross, I get the feeling that you misunderstood me when I commented on your budget. One hundred thousand bits is a pretty substantial budget for remodeling your hay barn.”
Allen blinked in confusion. “It is?”
Steel nodded, a smile slowly forming on his face. “It sure is, with a budget that big, we could remodel all three sheds, tear down your old animal barn and build you a new one that is twice as big as the old one, throw in all the bells and whistles too, and still have money left over.”
“B-but, Bon Bon said it cost her forty thousand bits just to have her shop warded,” replied Allen hesitantly, not fully understanding what was going on.
Rune Chisel tapped his chin thoughtfully as the name sounded familiar, after a few moments he stomped a hoof as he recalled where he’d heard the name. “Ah yes, I remember now. Cream-colored earth pony mare, runs a candy shop in town, has a trio of blue and yellow striped candies on her flank?”
“That’s her,” confirmed Allen with a nod.
“Yeah, I remember that job, the thing you need to understand Allen, is that she had that shop built from the ground up, plus she had me put in just about every damn rune in my catalog, not sure why, but I’m not complaining, it was a very lucrative job.”
Steel Girder nodded along too as he recalled the candy maker. “Yeah, come to think of it, she had us put in a pretty stout two-story basement with a simple elevator that could travel between the two lower floors and the ground floor. Claimed she wanted plenty of storage space and that she didn’t want to carry stuff up several flights of stairs. Though why she didn’t just have us add an additional storeroom to the back of her shop puzzles me, I mean she had plenty of land, guess she wanted a big yard or something, whatever, the money was good, so we did what she wanted.”
“Alright...” began Allen, unsure of what to make of the two craftponies revelations, he decided to tuck that line of questioning away for another day and instead asked, “So what do you think it’ll cost me to have you remodel my hay barn and the animal barn then?”
“Well, for the wards it’ll only cost about three thousand I would think, maybe as much as five depending on what you have Steel here do,” replied Rune thoughtfully as he consulted his worn notepad.
“If you just need us to redo the foundation, patch the holes in the roof, and plug up the ingress points for the animals, shouldn’t be more than three maybe four thousand bits on my end. That’s assuming we save as much of the material as we can during the demolition phase, otherwise, it’ll probably double in cost, but that’s still not bad all things considered,” commented Steel idly as he picked some concrete chunks out of the feathering around his hooves.
“And for the animal barn?”
“Now that I don’t know off hoof,” replied Steel, as he eyeballed the aforementioned structure, “If we go on the assumption that we can’t recover any usable material and that you keep the dimensions of the barn the same, it’ll probably run you about twenty thousand bits, though if you want my opinion, you should consider expanding it, you’ll need the extra storage space for hay. Plus there’s always the milk market to consider, adding in a milking barn can help bring in some easy revenue.”
Allen nodded. “I’d already considered that, and since my current milking parlor doesn’t meet DOTI regulations, I’ll need to have a new one built anyways. What about the grain silo in the back, do you think it can be salvaged?”
Trotting closer so that he could get a better look at it, Steel snorted and shook his head. “Be better off tearing it down and building a new one, a silo that size will run you about two grand I reckon, maybe a bit more.”
“Well, that can wait then, not like I can do grain crops right now anyways, though if we do tear the animal barn down, we might as well pull that silo down too,” replied Allen as he stared up at the decrepit building. Turning to look at Steel he asked, “Alright, so let’s assume that we go ahead and remodel the hay barn, tear down and rebuild the animal barn and remove the silo, what kind of price range are we looking at?”
Both Rune and Steel quickly put their heads together and began comparing notes and figures. After a few minutes, they turned back to Allen and Steel said, “Well for construction, if we just remodel the hay barn and rebuild the animal barn to its current dimensions, I think we could do it for around thirty thousand bits in total, that includes the cost to demo the silo as well. If you wanted to expand the animal barn we could be tacking on an additional ten to twenty thousand depending on how big you want to make it. This is just a rough estimate, but I could get you a more detailed quote by Monday.”
“As for me, it’ll depend on what runes you want to put in, the standard package that’ll make you compliant with DOTI regulations will run you about three to four grand for the hay barn, if you’re willing, there are a couple of additional runes I can add that I think you might like to have, they are purely optional, but the cost will go up by an additional grand or two. For the animal barn, it’ll be somewhere between eight to ten thousand at its current size for the standard package and ten to twelve thousand for the quality of life package. If you expand it, then we might end up tacking on an additional two to four thousand depending on the size of the new dimensions,” said Rune as he consulted his notepad and made a few additional calculations.
“So if my math is right, if I go with the expansion and the quality of life package for everything, it’ll probably be somewhere around seventy thousand bits?” guessed Allen.
“And around fifty thousand if you go with the basics,” replied Rune with a nod.
Allen quietly nodded as he mulled over his options, finally, he said, “I’d like three quotes, one for the basic, just remodel and rebuild with the bare minimum needed to pass DOTI requirements. A middle package, with all of the basics, plus a slightly expanded animal barn, specifically a bigger milking parlor that can comfortably fit six cows at a time, while the runes are unchanged save for adding in any that makes keeping the milking parlor clean easier. Finally, I want the last quote to have the fully expanded animal barn with all the bells and whistles for both it and the hay shed’s runes and whatnot.”
Both Steel and Rune looked at each other and sharing a smile they turned back to Allen, stuck out their hooves, and replied, “You’ve got a deal, Mr. Ross.”
“We’ll have a detailed list for you by Tuesday, since you want three options, it’ll take us an extra day,” said Steel, while Rune nodded in agreement.
Allen shook both their hooves, though Steel was a little confused when Allen didn’t hoof bump him like he expected and instead wrapped his hand around his fetlock and gave it a couple of pumps. “That’ll be fine,” replied Allen without missing a beat, ignoring Steel’s confused look at Rune who just went along with the strange greeting without batting an eye. “I’m probably going to be busy most of Monday anyways, so Tuesday will work better for me. Of course, I’ll need some time to go over the plans and pricing with my business manager, but that shouldn’t take too long. I reckon I can give you guys an answer by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest.”
“That will be fine, I expected to be in Ponyville for a few days anyways, so I can take the opportunity to check up on some of my older customers who are due for their annual inspection soon,” replied Rune as he, Steel, and Allen started walking back towards the hay shed and where they had left their carts.
With their business concluded, both Rune and Steel quickly hitched themselves to their respective carts and after bidding Allen goodbye, they set a quick pace for Ponyville. Allen waved and watched them go for a bit before heading inside to have something to eat and to contemplate what he wanted to do next. While he was eating, he decided to start getting his upcoming Q&A session at the schoolhouse organized, and so after he was finished eating, he set to work. The first thing he did was go and dig up the old TV and VHS player in the attic to make sure they both still worked. After confirming that both were still functional, he moved them downstairs, cleaned them up, and set them aside for later.
Next, he searched the house for any old, age-appropriate, VHS tapes that he could take with him to show the foals on Monday. This took several hours, mainly because his parents just kind of put the old tapes wherever there was room, and thus he found random boxes full of them in all parts of the house, oftentimes intermixed with ones that were not age-appropriate.
Something tells me that Ms. Cheerilee would not be too happy with me if I traumatized her class by having them watch Jurassic Park. Thought Allen as he set aside the Steven Spielberg classic, memories of when he’d had nightmares after watching it as a young child flitted through his mind.
Digging further in the box, he finally hit paydirt, a VHS tape of The Magic School Bus. Flipping it over, he saw that it was part of the second season. “Revving Up, huh?” he muttered to himself as he looked over the short synopsis on the back of the box. “Oh, this is the episode where Ms. Frizzle and the class learn how an engine works. That could be a good one.” Setting the tape aside, he continued his search. By the time that Penny returned that evening, Allen had amassed a large collection of items that he was considering showing to the class on the dining room table and was carefully sorting through them.
Looking over the cluttered table, Penny picked up a VHS tape box in her azure aura, and carefully read the title. “Schoolhouse Rock, America Rock, Knowledge is Power,” flipping the box over she pointed at it with a hoof and asked, “What is this Allen?”
Looking up from a book, Allen glanced at the tape box and replied, “Oh that’s just an educational kids show from the 70s. That one talks about American government and some basic American history in the form of songs. I’ve got more, some of them cover grammar and mathematics along with science and health. I’m trying to decide which of these I should bring along to potentially show the kids during the presentation on Monday if I have time. I was going to show them an episode or two of The Magic School Bus, but the episodes are nearly thirty minutes long, so unless Ms. Cheerilee wants me to take up an entire school day, then I can’t really show them except as examples of children’s programming from my world. The nice thing about Schoolhouse Rock is that it’s broken up into smaller lessons within the video on different topics. So it’ll be easier to show and take up less time.”
Setting the video down, she looked over the rest of the table which was covered in all sorts of books, pictures, VHS tapes, and small circular disks with a small hole in the center that was shiny on one side with a rainbow hue when she titled the disks and caught the light from overhead. Setting it down carefully, she pulled up a seat and asked, “So did Rune Chisel come out today?”
Allen nodded in confirmation. “He did, and he brought the biggest pony I’ve ever seen with him too, the guy could nearly look me right in the eyes, he was that tall, and the dude was built like a fucking tank,” explained Allen, throwing his arms wide to emphasize how big the earth pony had been.
“Oh, and what was his name?” asked Penny, an intrigued look on her face, as though even though she didn’t quite know what a ‘tank’ was, she figured it meant something big and imposing the way Allen was talking.
“Steel Girder, he’s a khaki-colored earth pony that runs a local construction company here in town, has a steel I-beam for a cutie mark” replied Allen.
Penny nodded, a flash of recognition flitting across her face as she said, “Ah yes, now I know who you’re talking about now. I’ve heard ponies talk about him around town, and I caught a glimpse of him at one of the local construction sites. Didn’t know he was in charge though.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what, that dude is scary, he freaking pulverized the cement floor in my hay shed just by stomping it!”
Penny giggled. “That doesn’t surprise me, draft ponies like Steel Girder are very strong, and with him being an earth pony on top of that makes him even stronger.”
“Draft pony? What is that, some kind of different breed or something?” asked Allen as he set aside the book he was looking at to turn his full attention to Penny.
“Well it’s what Steel Girder is obviously, not all of us ponies are small and cute like me,” replied Penny as she batted her eyelashes at Allen and made a cute face.
Rolling his eyes, Allen shot back, “Yeah, I kind of figured, what I wanted to know was what’s the difference between a regular pony and a draft pony.”
Giggling, Penny gave Allen’s arm a playful shove and said, “I was only teasing you Allen, but to answer your question, there are several types of ponies that you can run into here in Equestria. There are your regular ponies, such as myself, we make up the majority of the population and are generally on the shorter side in comparison to other races, but we’re still plenty strong where it counts, so most other species have learned not to mess with us. Anyways, the other type are those who are called draft ponies, these are ponies that are both bigger and stronger in physical and magical aspects. Tell me, have you had a chance to meet Big Macintosh yet, Applejack’s older brother?”
Allen nodded. “I’ve run into him a couple of times, we haven’t really talked much beyond a casual greeting, that guy is pretty big too, not as big as Steel Girder, but still plenty big.”
“Well, Big Mac would still be classified as a draft pony, though he’s on the smaller end of the spectrum, while Steel would be on the upper end. Earth ponies tend to have a higher chance of producing offspring that exhibit draft pony traits, though unicorns and pegasi to a much lesser extent have also been known to sire foals who have those traits as well.”
“So it’s a genetic trait then?”
Penny nodded, pleased that Allen was catching on so quickly. “Exactly, I had a colt friend in college who was studying to be a doctor and he liked to talk about this sort of thing from time to time. In any case, draft ponies are larger and stronger than the average pony, and they also tend to have feathered hooves, which many consider a holdover from our primordial past when ponies were larger and lived in cooler and wetter climates than we do now.”
“Interesting, are there any other types of ponies out there, besides regular and draft?” asked Allen, a curious look on his face.
“Well, if you want, you could count alicorns as a third type, though, most ponies don’t really do that as there are only three known alicorns in existence and so far no one has been able to identify an ‘alicorn gene’,” explained Penny.
“And I’m assuming that those three would be the princesses?” guessed Allen.
“Yep, Princess Celestia, her sister Princess Luna, and their niece, Princess Cadence, from my understanding, there are no known alicorns that have been born, all current alicorns started off as a different race and ‘ascended’ to alicornhood, though nopony knows how, and the princesses can’t or won’t say,” replied Penny.
“Interesting, I remember learning about how alicorns were a combination of all three tribes into one while I was in the hospital, well that and how magic works,” commented Allen.
“Did they also teach you about the Unicorn Power Scale?” asked Penny.
“Not really? I think Nurse Redheart commented about how Twilight was an Upper Beta unicorn, whatever that means,” replied Allen.
Penny gave a low whistle. “Wow, I’d heard from Prince Blueblood that Twilight was pretty strong magically, but I didn’t realize she was that strong. Did she say what number she was?”
“Number? What are you talking about?” asked Allen confused.
Running a hoof through her mane, Penny sighed and said, “Alright, how best to put this?” she asked herself as she gently tapped her chin looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling as if it would have the answers she sought. Finally, she said, “Alright, so you said that you got the basics on how ponies use magic here in Equestria while at the hospital, right?”
Nodding, Allen said, “Yeah, they gave me the basics while I was laid up. Ponies consume mana from the environment in the form of food and water and the body processes the mana into usable energy that is transferred through the body by thaumic pathways.”
Penny nodded at Allen’s bare-bones explanation, pleased she wouldn’t have to start from square one. “Right, well in some cases, there are ponies who are better able to utilize that mana than others, meaning they can absorb more of it from their food, store more of it in their bodies, and for longer periods of time, and their thaumic pathways are able to handle more energy flowing through them at a given time. What this means, is that in unicorns at least, they are able to cast more complicated, energy-intensive spells.”
“Okay, and I’m guessing that’s where this grading system comes in,” guessed Allen.
“That’s correct,” replied Penny, slipping into lecture mode as old memories of when she was in magic kindergarten rose to the surface of her mind, “we use this scale to determine the range of power a unicorn possesses. The Unicorn Power Scale is broken up into three parts, the first part is the broad power category that a unicorn could fall into. There are seven levels, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, and the weakest is Eta. These levels are broken down into three parts, Lower, Middle and Upper, and are then further broken down into a number scale from one to ten, with one being the weakest and ten the strongest. For the average unicorn, they will usually just focus on the first two parts of the grading scale, however, if you have a unicorn that is very powerful, such as Twilight, then other ponies might pay close attention to the number scale as well. Most unicorns tend to fall into the middle three levels, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, those that fall into the two lowest tend to either have some sort of medical condition or are permanently injured from magical burnout or from damage to their horn or head.”
“So what level are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Penny shook her head with a smile and replied, “I don’t mind at all Allen. I’m rated as an Upper Delta Level 8 unicorn, meaning I’m pretty average when it comes to magical power. I can levitate multiple objects, so long as I have a line of sight of them at the time I cast my levitation spell or I can pick up twice my own weight with my magic and hold it steady for an hour. I can cast basic spells such as illumination and small fire spells, along with minor freezing and cooling spells. Repair spells are kind of tricky for me at times, but I can mend simple rips, tears, cracks, and holes.”
“I see, so what’s the reason behind the grading system, other than bragging rights?” asked Allen with a good-natured chuckle.
Penny returned the chuckle with one of her own and replied, “Oh there are a lot of reasons. As I mentioned before, the scale allows a pony to know at a glance how magically powerful a particular unicorn is, this can help with things in regards to employment, law enforcement, medical procedures, and mental health, to name a few. That last one is probably the most important though.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, generally speaking, when a unicorn is above a certain power level, they tend to develop... quirks,” explained Penny, an uncomfortable look on her face, as if she were having to explain why a family member acted weird to someone else.
“What kind of ‘quirks?” pressed Allen.
Penny sighed and said, “Usually mental quirks, OCD is a fairly common symptom among high-level unicorns. However, other more... dangerous quirks can also occur, such as megalomania, lack of empathy for others, lack of self-preservation instincts, and so on. When it comes to magic, as a general concept we understand it fairly well. We know where it comes from, how our bodies acquire and use it, and how to mold it into something that can impact the world around us. However, it’s the details that are still a little fuzzy at times.”
“So what causes these problems then?”
“Nopony is really sure why higher-level unicorns tend to turn out this way. The prevailing theory is that it's because the higher levels of energy flowing around the brain to the horn during spell casting can disrupt or damage neural pathway formation, leading to changes in behavior or outright brain damage. This is why growing unicorns that display high power levels for their age group are closely monitored, and receive specialized training during their formative years. The more powerful foals are also made to wear special horn rings that limit the amount of energy they can draw at any given time and are placed on strict diets so as to control the amount of mana that they ingest at any given time. As they get older, these restrictions are lessened or removed. However these restrictions can have their own negative effects, and some families can take things too far, especially if they are unfamiliar with powerful unicorn foals. Thankfully, unicorns with that level of power are fairly rare and there hasn’t been a top-tier Alpha unicorn in nearly two hundred years.”
“I can’t imagine that sort of regimen is very cheap or easy to follow,” commented Allen dryly.
Penny shook her head. “It’s not, however, the government usually steps in to help as they find it is cheaper and easier, in the long run, to make sure magically powerful foals don’t grow up to become psychopaths or genocidal despots... or on the other side of the spectrum, magically burn themselves out or die from an uncontrollable magic surge.”
Allen winched. “Yeah, I can imagine that preventing a bunch of crazy magically strong unicorns from overthrowing the government or causing widespread chaos would be in everyone’s best interest. Though I bet all of those restrictions are tough on young foals.”
Penny nodded in agreement, and replied quietly, “A lot of unicorn foals who display prodigious amounts of power are usually handled very carefully and as such are often ostracized by their peers due to perceived favoritism or just because they are different.”
“Seems as though no matter what you guys do, those foals are still gonna develop mental issues, either from frying their brains from too much magic, or from getting bullied because of said magic,” finished Allen with a sad sigh.
“It’s not as bad as it seems Allen,” remarked Penny, “I know I’ve given you a lot of information, and a lot of it paints the system in a less than stellar light. However, we are getting better at treating foals with overly strong magic for their age, and things are getting better for them. Plus there are plenty of support networks and resources available for adult unicorns who went through a tough foalhood because of their magic.”
“Still makes me a little worried that somepony like say, Twilight might go crazy at the drop of a hat or something,” grumbled Allen.
Penny rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a drama queen Allen, while I can’t say for one hundred percent certain Twilight is playing with a full deck of cards, so to speak, I doubt somepony such as Princess Celestia would let her out of her sight if she thought Twilight posed a risk to others. I mean, Twilight is the personal student of Princess Celestia after all, and she’s been living in Ponyville for nearly a year now, and the town is still standing, so I’d say everything should be fine.”
Uncrossing his arms and leaning forward in his chair, Allen rested his elbows on the table and said, “Alright, I’ll take your word for it, but if she goes crazy, I’m gonna reserve the right to say, I told you so.”
Penny rolled her eyes again, though this time she had a small smirk on her face. “Whatever you say, Allen.”
“Anyways,” said Allen, as he moved to steer the conversation in a less gloomy direction, “I’ve noticed something kind of odd since I’ve been here, and I wanted to ask you about it.”
Cocking her head slightly, Penny said, “Oh? And what would that be?”
“You guys seem to have a lot of human influence in your culture, specifically Greek and Roman, and it’s been kind of bugging me, though I can’t figure out why,” explained Allen, a frustrated look on his face.
“Are those countries back in your world?”
Allen nodded. “Yeah, though the Roman Empire hasn’t been around for well over a thousand years, Greece is still around, but it’s not as powerful as it used to be. But what’s odd is that I’ve noticed that your guards have Roman-style legionnaire armor and some of your buildings have the same architectural style as the Romans and Greeks did, and earlier, you used Greek letters to describe your Unicorn Power Scale system. Plus let's not forget that the days of the week and the months of the year are the same as back home, I’m still trying to figure out how that all works. Finally, there are the city names being horse puns of human cities. Canterlot instead of Camelot, Manehattan instead of Manhattan, Vanhoover instead of Vancouver,” he rubbed his face with a hand in frustration, “it’s just bugging me, so many coincidences. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if you guys had pony versions of pop culture figures such as Batman, Spiderman, or Superman at this point,” though when he looked up at Penny, he saw that she had a sheepish look on her face, and sighing, he asked with a resigned tone, “Alright, what are they called here?”
“Well, I was always partial to the Batmare comics, but Spidercolt and Supermane were fun to read sometimes as well. My friend was super into the Power Ponies, though I could never really get into them,” explained Penny.
Allen groaned and decided to change the topic, again. “Alright, so you told me about how unicorns measure their power, do pegasi and earth ponies have a system like that too?”
Penny tapped her chin with a hoof thoughtfully as she tried to recall her middle school lessons on the other two tribes. “Well if I remember correctly, pegasi use wing power to determine how powerful somepony is, while earth ponies use... uh, draft power, I think or was it leg power?” she scrunched up her muzzle as she tried to recall the details, but for the life of her, the memory stubbornly refused to resurface. Grunting in frustration, she shook her head and continued, “Ah I can’t remember, all I know is that it has something to do with how physically strong they are and a couple of other things related to their school of magic. Though I don’t know the specifics of each system, you’d need to ask a member of that respective tribe to learn more, either that or a medical professional. We never really covered those measuring systems while I was in school, save for a single lesson in middle school, as Canterlot is predominantly made up of unicorns, and the few non-unicorns that we had in our class learned about their power measuring systems elsewhere.”
Allen nodded. “Guess that makes sense, you can’t fly so learning how to measure someponies wing power probably isn’t really that important, though I would assume if you had to work with them it might be important to know.”
“Naturally, and most companies will test for that during the hiring process if you are going to be working regularly with the other tribes in a line of work that requires that knowledge, though...” she trailed off, a thought suddenly flitting through her mind like a drunk pegasus, “considering that I’m going to be helping you run your farm and that we might need to hire and work with non-unicorns in the future, I should probably work on correcting that lack of knowledge sooner rather than later.”
“I should probably do that too, now that you mention it,” remarked Allen in agreement. “Oh,” he said, pounding a fist into an open palm as he remembered something. “I almost forgot to mention that Rune and Steel were going to draw up three quotes for me by Tuesday on building renovations. It’s going to take them a bit longer than they originally thought because Steel wants to tear down my current animal barn in addition to rebuilding my hay barn. He said the foundation was bad for both buildings, and that the animal barn was in danger of falling down due to its poor condition.”
Penny sighed. “I was afraid of that, did they give you a rough estimate?”
“Yeah,” nodded Allen, “it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it’s still pretty pricey. If we do both barns, and just go with the basics, then they figured it’ll be around fifty thousand bits, while if we went all out, they think it’ll be seventy thousand. Personally, I think they might be lowballing me, and it’ll end up being closer to ninety or a hundred thousand if we went with all the bells and whistles, but maybe I’m just being pessimistic,” he finished with a shrug.
“Well, regardless, we’ll want to look over those numbers carefully and see if we can’t find somepony else who can give us a second quote. I know Ponyville doesn’t have many construction companies, but there are a few independent contractors around who might be able to do it cheaper. I’ll see what I can turn up next week, it wouldn’t do to lock ourselves in with the first group we see after all.”
Allen nodded in agreement. Truthfully, he was thinking the same thing, and his hay fields wouldn’t be ready to cut for a couple more weeks anyway. Though from the looks of it, the grass field across from his farm looked like it might be ready to go. He shook his head, I’ll take a closer look at it tomorrow.
Suppressing a sudden yawn, he glanced up at the nearby wall clock and noticed that it was well past ten o'clock, and shaking his head he said, “Damn, where has the time gone?”
Craning her neck to look up at the clock, Penny gave a quiet hum of agreement and said, “Well you know what they say, ‘time flies when you’re having fun'.”
“That they do,” replied Allen as he stood up and stretched, his back making several satisfying popping sounds before he began cleaning up the table for the night. “Guess I’ll work on this some more tomorrow then.”
Lighting her horn, Penny moved to help him organize everything. “Here let me give you a hoof real quick.”
Muttering a ‘thank you', the pair of them made quick work in tidying up and before long their task was finished. Turning the kitchen lights off, Allen and Penny made their way to bed, and after saying their goodnights, they each retired to their rooms for the night.
As he was brushing his teeth, Allen quietly mulled over the day and what the next few weeks promised to bring. If everything goes right, I might be able to start cutting hay by the end of this month or the beginning of next month. Though I still don’t have anyone to sell the hay to... here’s hoping Penny can drum up some business real soon.
Spitting into the sink, he rinsed out his mouth and headed to bed. Slipping under the covers, he turned out the lights and let sleep slowly take him away to dreamland.
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Allen learns the value of a bit versus labor ...
Inb4 Allen becomes the One Punch Man if he gets some magic
Another excellent chapter. Eager for more.:D
10832861
Either that or he turns into a spark...
40.000 bits for essentially a paramilitary site? Sounds cheap, Bon Bon lucked out.
For those that didn't understand, remember Slice of Life. If we're to take that into account, Sweetie Drops is basically a detachment of Equestria's equivalent of Epsilon-6. And I don't mean the unicorn power scale here
10833039
More likely develops a healing factor and a boost to all physical stats, some mental powers like telepathy, and spell casting.
I feel like if he shows School House Rock, he's gonna end up causing a musical in the school. Them's are catchy songs after all.
(Sunset escapes to CH through portal)
"Oh well, not my problem anymore."
10833139
Well she was an alpha-level unicorn (assumption mine) with a penchant for fire magic. Plainly a cooldown period in a mana-desert makes for a nice alternative to certain other options, yes?
10833223
Nah, it's just the standard pony solution to problems: banish them somewhere else.
I wonder where Sunset, Starlight, and Twilight are on this scale? Because I am willing to bet certain ponies have their numbers adjusted down by order of the crown.
10833401
Twilight is currently rated as an Upper Beta level 8, as was mentioned in the chapter, Starlight and Sunset are currently unknown.
Hopefully, ponies don't realize that they could easily force him physically, it's the only real defense he has against them all
10833526 He can always use the one fighting technique that no pony can defend against. Under its assault, MILLIONS have perished!
Allen learns the technique, and goes up to Celestia. His hand rises and one extended finger pokes the Princess in the snout, "Boop."
Celestia is defeated instantly and Allen become Supreme Overlord.
10833857
Ear scratches and belly rubs are also valid.
10833932
I’m just joking around about how American the god damn thing is don’t get all triggered bro
10834077
Not my fault your ‘joke’ was bad, in poor taste, and lacked any humor. And it wasn’t a joke, even structurally. There was no setup or punchline. At best it was an observation. You weren’t joking at all, I just think you were being a prick. And I’m not triggered by your stupidity. I just find that commenting on this website is amusing, and when I see stupid, unfunny, or just plain ignorant comments, I like to call people out on them because it’s fun to me. I’m really only ever on this cite starting at half past midnight while laying in bed anyway. It’s not like I’m doing anything else.
10834486
Hmm
10832861
I seriously doubt he's going to develop much, if any, magical OP powers being tossed around the comments lately. Heh. But since it's playful conjecture right now, humans tend to be rather willful and one of magic's basic tenants is willpower; that is, bending reality to your will. Human's don't seem to have much of anything in regards to thaumic pathways so it's not like sparks are going to shoot from his fingertips any time soon. However, it seems to me it's far more likely he could (re)shape existing magic through force of guided will. Who knows, Humans might be able to become magic foci like a lense, turning a unicorn's, or multiple unicorns, sloppily wavering cast into a laser focused beam of [formerly] impossible strength. The opposite would be actively turning, shielding, to outright nullifying magic dead in its tracks.
But that's with years, many years, of dedicated learning and experience. For an average Joe like him it's best to just stand back and watch the experts from afar as he tends to the fields. You are not a wizard.
Go with Magic School Bus, leave the Schoolhouse Rocks. With the political system that equestria uses being based on nobles and royals, introducing democratic ideas like creating a bill when a society might not have a house of commons and only a house of lords and without the three sided government we have, could disrupt their society. If nothing else have Cheerilee and yourself watch them prior to showing the children.
10834077 You could tell it was written by an American because it's superior to all other stories.
(Alondro stars in the new action series: "Troll Hard" and "Troll Harder", followed by "Troll Another Day".)
10836428
YKnow I don’t actually care and it was just an off hand joke
10833476
Starlight is clearly a Beyond Omega 10, since she can overpower both Celestia, and Luna, at the exact same time, casting magic through their personal alicorn level defenses, and able to 1v1 Twilight and win 200% of the time.
10841572
I thought you were a fucko based on reading that bit in your profile about history teachers "indoctrinating" people. Thanks for confirming it.
10841598
Lol.
10841281
God the comment sections on this site never cease to entertain me. Dude, he’s clearly from America, so if his story is more based on America, that’s because he knows it better. Yes there’s definitely a lot development of the socioeconomic nature of the fictional pony country in this fictional story, but that’s because that’s the type of story this is. It’s a slow burn world builder sort of deal. I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with his or your perspective but it’s his fuckin fanfic dude. It’s his make believe pony world based on a make believe pony world. Get fuckin real man, there’s hundreds of other stories on this cite. You’re gonna get nothing out of writing a paragraph shitting on his fictional story. I on the other hand, quite enjoy making people annoyed while sleep deprived so please feel free to angrily respond and I’ll get back to you at 3 to 4 AM my time tomorrow.
10842208
Well, some of my complaint may be more subjective than objective, I will admit. I find this fic to be nearly propaganda for Capitalism, and personally I don't like that. From an objective point of view, I maintain that the way the author has gone about this story is flawed. Having characters constantly lecture each other is not an interesting way to build a world. It's literally telling instead of showing. I guess some people might enjoy a story where a human gets transported to a magical land and then proceeds to talk almost exclusively about finance, but I just find these themes to be too incompatible. I think the story would be more interesting if he would at least break up all this dialogue with some more action. I was plugging along because I wanted to see how he'd interact with the characters, and those moments were so few and far between that I just lost interest.
Also, like, the whole point of posting one's story on this site is to get people to comment on it. I find it funny when people complain about others "writing a whole paragraph" because like, that's the point. The author should be happy that his story is drawing attention, I would assume that's what he wanted when he uploaded it to the site. If you can't handle people not liking your story, you shouldn't share it.
EDIT: The economics thing could probably work if he wasn't just recreating America. If Equestria's economy actually felt unique I may have been more interested.
Allan raised some good points with Penny. This was an interesting chapter.
10842607
Propaganda is a bit much don’t you think? This is a fanfiction on a website full of stories about fictional horses. Propaganda is actually damaging. I don’t think one guy’s MLP fanfic will damage the world in any meaningful way. And what you don’t seem to get is that the reason it’s more American is because he’s from there. Would you rather him try to create an economic system that wasn’t similar to the one he’s familiar with? And don’t give me anything about how ‘he should focus on it less,’ because clearly the economics of this story is a major focal point, and it’s what he wants to write about, so he’s gonna focus on it regardless. Like I said, that’s the kind of story this is. It’s a system similar to America with a few differences, and thus far from what I’m through, Allen is like ‘Well would ya look at that, that’s pretty neat, here’s how it works for me,’ and then they’d talk about the next thing. And of course they’re gonna talk about the intricacies of it, that’s a major point of this particular story. If you don’t enjoy it, that’s fine, but bitching at him about it isn’t gonna do you any good.
Critiquing something is fine, and yeah, that’s the point of the comments and it’s how things get better. What you did wasn’t a critique though. It was a rant about how aggravated you were with how capitalist the story is, which makes you look like a total fool. And haphazardly throwing in a couple of suggestions at the end of your rant doesn’t make it any less of a rant. It’s a little too late for him to change any of it now as he’s 30 plus chapters in, so just move on to the next story if you don’t enjoy it. There’s clearly a market for this kind of story, as it has nearly 900 likes and a ton of views. You’re obviously not the target audience, so keep your rant to yourself and move on. And to your point about how he should be ‘happy his story is getting traction,’ I don’t think a rant from some random like you or me is something he should be honored to get below his story. And from the way he responded to you, I think he’s handling it just fine. Seems like he’s doing what I’m doing, just with way fewer words. I’m not fighting his battle for him if that’s what you think, there’s no battle to fight. I’m simply pointing out how stupid you look by ranting on a story you’re not going to read anymore, and accusing him of making ‘capitalist propaganda’ in his fanfiction, which is about the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen anyone suggest on this website, and I’ve been using it for nearly 10 years. In those years, I’ve dropped plenty of stories I started to dislike without ranting below them. I have a whole folder full of them in case I ever wanna pick them back up. Ignore the join date on my account, I had a different one.
And again, it’s late at night where I’m at, so I’ve got nothing else better to do as you can no doubt tell by my mini essay here. So if you’ve made it this far, congratulations. I sure wouldn’t. Feel free to respond and I’ll get back to you at 3 to 4 AM my time.
Wow. He deleted it before I even had the chance to look it over thoroughly and construct another rebuttal, which makes me think he posted it before reading my essay in full, and said something I’d already addressed. Be sure to read responses in full before saying shit. My response took about 30 minutes to construct since I needed to go back and check my source material. It could’ve also been a stupid insult that I’d just laugh at. I guess we’ll never know now will we. If you do see this sir, because I feel no need to reply to you directly for this, feel free to let me know if I’m right and I’ll get back to you at 3 to 4 AM my time.
Lol. Prick DM’d me to tell me he blocked me, saying he was being the ‘bigger man,’ which may be true, but I made it very clear that I was trying to annoy him from the outset. Clearly it worked. If he was really the bigger man, he would’ve ignored me rather then entertain my provocation by responding. He’s just as, if not more childish than me. That’s what I do on this site. I bug people, and it’s stunningly easy to do here. He then had the gaul to tell me I couldn’t take criticism, told me to get a life which I made very clear by the 3 to 4 AM part of my comments there’s nothing better for me to do other than watch videos and fuck around, and he didn’t even give me the chance to respond since he blocked me. Just though I’d drop it here since I can’t tell it to him directly, just so everyone who sees this knows what a spineless fool Jayellow is. Clearly I got in his head, which was the point, and I made that abundantly clear, but he got annoyed anyway.
10844787
The bio fits the person!
Good man!
10845462
It do be what I do here. I’m very clear about that
there has to be some kind of runs that can be put on Allen's fuel tank for auto replenishing or something of the like??
Good chapter, on a side note talking about Dreamland I'm wondering if in your universe humans can enter the dreamscape