For Coordinator, there was nothing quite like receiving the credit for something he'd intended to do anyway.
His recruitment into what so many called The Great Work had come fairly late in the process of that madness, during what had been just about the earliest part of his career. Oh, he'd had an idea that something might have been going on: ponies getting together who had no normal reason for associating, conversations between those with nothing in common... well, he supposed some might have called that the connections of friendship, and the description was only slightly less laughable than the actual concept. But once he'd realized that none of it surprisingly had anything to do with him (for he always tried to keep an eye on any such interactions, just in case anypony was plotting behind his tail), he'd initially just kept an eye on it from a distance, as best he could -- and when that gaze was blocked by the intervention of some rather surprising bodies, he'd stepped up his efforts, trying to bring some of his usual skills into play. Doing so had led him directly to the heart of everything.
Yes, there would probably be some who would describe the exact path as unusual. But when you were trying to get some idea of what was going on around town and whether that activity might be illegal -- or rather, a level of illegality which he could personally exploit -- then naturally the first pony to start putting pressure on would logically be the chief of police. Having that pressure tracked back to him... somewhat unexpected, but he'd learned from it and adjusted certain tactics since. And it wasn't as if anything bad had happened, because the ultimate result had been to place him into a position where he could expand his power while pretending it was in the service of a so-called greater cause -- well, no: that last part was true. Giving Coordinator additional control over an expanding population was as great a cause as anypony could ever work towards, while what would have been the best possible outcome of the supposed Great Work could have been accomplished on the very first day through the simple and just action of repeatedly kicking a skull.
(Perhaps he'd even slipped up purposefully, planning even that action on a deeper level of thought, knowing they would have to recruit him. That certainly seemed possible, especially after having told himself so over several years.)
The recruitment itself had been rather basic, at least once a pony of sanity took a moment to disregard what had so clearly been Chief Copper's completely empty threats. He had eventually been told what that lie of a Great Work was about, and Gentle Arrival had delivered the joke of a speech personally. Coordinator had managed not to laugh, mostly because plotting out what he could do with knowledge of that secret added to the proof of a public figure's obvious dementia had been taking up much of his time. The false physician had been chasing cure, when any who were truly among the pure would have exacted that simple justice.
But then the speech had gone on for a little longer. Not just the master experiment (he only thought of it as an experiment now, one which still needed perfecting, but just might have produced some level of reproducible result), but the... other things. The actions which had produced the warped.
(After he'd gotten out of there -- once he'd agreed to become part of the whole thing, after he'd gotten out of sight, hearing, smell and feel... well, the vomiting hadn't stopped for some time, and the profound sense of relief which settled in once it finally ended had never gone away. For on the day he'd been born, Gentle Arrival had not been in Trotter's Falls, completely unable to attend or assist. Coordinator was not one of his, not in any way for which the word could apply and never for the truest definition. It meant he was still pure. He would always be pure. He was safe.)
And as it turned out, the creation of the unnatural came with certain... expenses.
So he'd been recruited, and it had given him the chance to receive credit for something he would have done anyway. The Great Work had a number of willing donors: those who had been just as delusional, stupid enough to believe there was even a chance that justice needed to be postponed. (He held to that opinion of their intelligence, even now. There was no way anypony could have guessed the idiocy would do something.) But after so much time, they weren't enough. An open invitation had been issued for him to pull the strings of ponies he wasn't planning on tugging for years to come. To speed up the process of expanding his power base, all in the name of what they thought was their cause. As a sane pony, he'd let them think he was going along with that, and so the number of pictures on his wall had increased faster than ever. It was reaching the point where he was thinking about having somepony else move a few filing cabinets in order to clear extra space, although he had yet to decide where they were going to be moved to. The small details also needed full control.
He'd done work he would have done anyway, received what often seemed to be insufficient and, occasionally, what he felt was perilously close to backhoofed praise for it. (He had plans on how to make certain ponies pay for that, and some of them were now very close to being put into unstoppable action.) Records had been presented to Gentle Arrival, along with what the elder foolishly believed to be the complete results of those efforts, and Coordinator was certain nopony had worked through the multiple layers of security he'd used to get his hidden bank account. In return, he'd been given updates on how things were proceeding, managed not to laugh at any of those either, occasionally took time out after such meetings so the nausea could subside, and once his skills had been proven, once he was trusted...
Coordinator usually didn't think about that day. Surprisingly, if given the choice, he might not have scrubbed it from his memory entirely, for the pure needed to be aware that sin existed, along with those weak enough to allow it any freedom to breathe. But for what had happened... well, that usually wasn't worth thinking about, because he had only seen her once, and once would have been the ultimate limit. Coordinator's lies had been believed over any truth she might have tried to present: the midwife wasn't so far gone as to not dismiss anything which came from taint. Ultimately, all it had done was reinforce his place in the conspiracy, for he had been believed, not her, and so he'd left her halls at a speed which years of lying to himself had turned into a slow, dignified trot. Never to return. Never to look upon that walking sin again.
Except that now, there was going to be a presentation, with the party used as the excuse for gathering those who would attend. There was something which could be presented...
Coordinator was rather involved in the planning of the party, and not just in the little ways in which he was using it to remind the powerless local Lord of just which pony truly made everything work. For starters, he was the ultimate arbitrator -- and gatherer -- of the true guest list, and that was an exercise so complicated that he frankly didn't trust it to anypony else. There was just too much to do there, and he was the sole pony who could get it done. The deadline (and why was Gentle Arrival in such a ludicrous hurry? It wasn't as if he had anything to fear from the still-lurking press, nothing except for everything) had put a certain amount of pressure on his office, and that started with the need to send things via same-day delivery -- not just within Trotter's Falls, but all over Equestria.
It was a complex process. News typically traveled at the speed of ponies and when sufficient vocal relays between fresh, speedy pegasi got involved, a story could go from one coast to the other in something over a day. But there were times when things had to go faster than that and when the need truly called for it, ponies turned, as they always should, to their superiors.
Gentle Arrival's idea for maintaining a series of safe spaces at the limits of his range had hardly been an original one: even the palace maintained hollow structures called gatehouses across most of Equestria in case the thrones' own teleporters needed to be dispersed in an emergency, and Coordinator had recently managed to get the one for Trotter's Falls dismantled due to a minor and completely fictitious conflict of zoning laws. However, when it came to private operations... if it was truly necessary to get a physical missive from one major settled zone to another within a matter of hours, you paid a teleporter, who would bring it to the limits of their range, pass it off to another unicorn who would repeat the process, and after the required number of jumps had done their damage to your budget, the letter would be delivered. Or in this case, the invitation, which was the best way to mask what Coordinator saw as the order.
The bare majority of those invited were within Trotter's Falls: sending out underlings on the gallop sufficed. But Gentle Arrival had, over the course of the years, spread things across Equestria. Coordinator had amplified that web, added fresh strands while thickening a few established ones into choking ropes whenever a pony seemed to be on the verge of coming to their senses. And if everypony needed to be contacted in one day -- well, there was an expense built into that, and it wasn't a small one. But it was a cost many operations dealt with as part of their yearly operating expenses, and Coordinator had funds put aside for such occasions, none of which were actually his.
Issuing same-day orders was a fairly standard procedure, especially for a pony of his skills. The trouble came when everypony who'd been given those orders needed to respond through showing up. Because those ponies were still all over the continent, they would need to attend the party -- and that meant another requirement for load-relaying teleporters, those who could escort, bringing the living through the between. When Canterlot had a true legislative emergency, putting all of those casters to work on the same goal would gather the full representative population of the Day and Night Courts in a matter of hours -- and should that requirement dictate the use of more than the palace's own capable unicorns, it would happen at government expense. In this case... well, just about everypony paid, and other ponies collected. Which excepted Coordinator, who had never perceived a need to blackmail his way into the travel network and had no way to make up for lost time. Ten of thousands of bits would be spent for such speed of journey, and no percentage of that would skim its way to him. If he hadn't been boosted by his current joy, it actually would have been somewhat depressing.
But he was happy as he worked in his office, writing the true invitations before sending the summons out into the network for delivery to those attendees, and there were many reasons for that. He had pretended to dedicate himself to the Great Delusion and much to his surprise, that insanity had produced results. Not ideal ones, from what little Gentle Arrival had told him prior to departure, but -- results. There was a chance that one day, that type and level of power could be his, and Coordinator was more than willing to pledge himself to a cause which might support him, especially when he had the means to control it.
But that was something for the long-term (although the direct control would need to begin very soon). For now, he had been told that the time had come to control the Bearers. He would receive all the credit for that within the conspiracy, along with the potential for increased influence and an easier seizure of the lead role. And it had been something he'd been planning to do anyway.
The weather coordinator's manuscript had inflicted multiple levels of pain. Unless research was involved, Coordinator didn't read about pony's lives: he wrote about them and then let those ponies know that he had the means to publish. But going through the multicolored text had certainly qualified as research, just as much as trying to get all the way through the results had more than established its credentials as migraine.
But it had been worth it. The pegasus might have treated the placement of apostrophes as something very much like bursts of lightning produced while blindfolded (just jump on the base material enough times and eventually, something would be randomly shocked into agony), but there had been nothing wrong with her memory. Normally, he would have taken a little more time to verify some finer details of such accounts, but he'd been reading the reports of an eyewitness and had, somewhere around the third dose of pain medicine, learned to translate from the ego. In a very real way, she'd become one of his favorite authors, and he almost considered it a pity that her desires to create future volumes were about to be completely derailed.
Still, it didn't matter. Very soon, he'd be getting everything he needed to know from the pony's mouth. All six of them -- but with a special focus on one. Twilight Sparkle had gotten away once with nothing more than a lack of friends as inadequate punishment for that escape -- something she'd certainly managed to change since graduation. It was long-past time to collect his true due.
Coordinator would finally be her friend. Her best friend, the one who kept her shielded from all the things which could hurt her. And weren't there more of those things than anypony could have possibly imagined?
He would speak for a Princess, just as he'd once dreamed. Not the Princess he'd originally intended, yes, but in time... well, who knew how far Twilight might go with a few proper words of advice helping to clear the way? After all, that was the sort of thing friends did for each other. He would make the path for her -- and she would keep him in her shadow, stepping aside whenever he wished true power to flow.
Control over a Princess: the best day of his life. (He could see that as a seventh Element: Control. It was certainly the only one which mattered.) The chance to take over a conspiracy which might actually be able to do something, potentially provide the opportunity to replace Princess with Prince, a glory found only in the nightscape given the chance to manifest in reality -- well, really, was there any way this day could possibly improve any further? And yet it would be surpassed at the party, the gathering he was looking forward to more than any other moment of his life, as the time when Twilight would realize what a good friend he would be. Given that level of shining guarantee as a beacon to steer by, he could even deal with having to see her --
-- he was going to see her.
(His field winked out. The quill dropped. No part of him was capable of noticing.)
She had -- attacked him. Attacked him simply for telling the truth, telling her what she was and what should have been done with her. They were words somepony should have told her at birth, assuming any of the truly pure could have been bothered to pause long enough in their kicking for speech. She had clearly never heard those words before, and so they had been more than overdue. And she had responded by attacking.
They were words he had relished and in part, that had been due to their fundamental truth -- but some of the rest was because under normal circumstances, he just didn't get to say them. As her inferior intelligence had naturally failed to perceive during her failed lesson, there was generally a need to maintain a shielding barrier for purposes of plausible deniability and so under most circumstances, he simply wrote the words and made sure they would be found by those just barely capable of reading them. There were certain problems with saying them in person, starting with the loss of that layer and ending with -- attack.
But he had said them. He had been forced to spend time in the presence of taint and worse, it was taint which thought it could become something far worse than the usual delusions of equality. She had believed there was the chance to become superior. Nopony of sanity could have stayed in that room without having said something and as it had turned out, there had been no consequence at all. He'd left, knowing he would never see her again.
Except that... he would see her again. Very soon now.
He would be expected at the party. He would need to be there, for that was the time to seize control of Twilight and the other Bearers, with the others believing he was doing it on their behalf. And afterwards, at the gathering... yes, he would be expected there too, and he'd been told that there might be certain precautions in place, depending on whether he had succeeded. Because if he somehow didn't (utter nonsense), there was a next step, and --
-- he would succeed. Of course he would. But after that happened...
There was a chance to avoid the gathering itself, although it would be a regrettable one: he would have to postpone some portion of his power transferal for later, and getting just about everypony together a second time in the same fashion would be extremely difficult. But when he did take over... she would be there. She might always be there.
Gentle Arrival hadn't said that much in telling him what the presentation might contain. Hardly anything, now that he thought about it, and he hadn't seen a need to ask because he'd assumed it would be a modified form of the recruitment speech: the same stupid words just about everypony had already heard. But she would certainly be in the room, he might have some trouble avoiding it, and --
-- there were things which could be done. She wasn't essential. She could be disposed of at the sign of first perfection (unless that was her -- Sun and Moon, what if that turned out to be her?) or second partial success. Maybe -- maybe he could get rid of her immediately, or rather, have somepony do it for him. But then there would be nothing to present, it was essential that there be something to present or things would stop. And even if he waited until the minute after she left the stage...
Would she have forgotten him? She had only seen him once and under most circumstances, that would provide hope for a lapse of memory, especially when dealing with the inferior. But it wasn't as if he hadn't done something rather memorable.
It took nearly half a minute to force his corona into ignition, and then he slid open the hidden drawer of his desk.
There was a bottle there. He'd kept a bottle in the concealed compartment ever since taking the office, although it occasionally had to be replaced after the contents aged past any hope for use. This one was fairly fresh. It had been hard to get, just as hard as some of the others, because sources had a way of vanishing. But he had to have the bottle, because the bottle was power. More power than he'd ever had, at least for the kind of power he... didn't have. It would not provide the level of power which only fantasy, and now perhaps the Great Work, could truly offer. But to a smaller degree, the bottle was still power, and so he'd had to have it. Just in case.
Gentle Arrival hadn't told him much, not compared to what he now wished he'd been told. But one detail stood out.
She had broken an Eastern Red Giant. Casually.
He had to get back to issuing the summons, and so he closed that hidden drawer -- only to find himself opening it again and again, looking at the bottle. And all the while, the same five words kept echoing in his inner ear.
He had been justified. He had been right. Nothing about that had changed, or even should. But she had changed. And he had...
I called her a clod.
"'She remembered the first time she had visited the Museum Of Minotaur History in Polis, the capital city. The heavy stone around the entrance halls, taken from the remnants of overseer tunnels. The bloodstains which had been perfectly preserved through requested magics, with the intent that those who stepped through would be reminded, and so never forget. And just beyond the last remnants of Ancient lives stolen by force, she had found the whips. Thousands of them, the largest collection in all of Mazein. There were times when a young, bold, and rather dismissive minotaur would be found snidely looking at those whips, having somehow decided that they meant nothing, and one of those had occurred right in front of Daring. Her tour guide had spotted that look, gone to the teenager, and asked if he felt his strength was enough to withstand what others had not. The youth had started to boast of his power and in his bragging, he hadn't seen the guide's big hands move. He only felt the sudden pull of the metal cord as the end clamp snapped onto his nose ring. He had started, instinctively tried to pull it away, felt the surge of pain from his snout. And then he had screamed, over and over as the guide calmly resumed the tour's opening lecture, timing the words through the bellows of fear, ignoring the youth for five full minutes before coming back to grant him his right of freedom once again. Daring remembered all that and wished for that teen's fate because for her, it had been so much more than five minutes...'"
Twilight listened, ears rotated to catch the sound from a great distance. For she had been in Mazein for a moment, and then she had returned to the dungeon to sit at Daring's side, helpless to assist the pegasus as she struggled against the chains, trying to find a route to freedom which had already been located through the flip of thousands of pages, and yet was still in doubt until the next one turned --
"-- your... pardon?"
Ahuizotl's dungeon vanished. Quiet's library returned. A library where they were sharing a reading couch, she had been listening to him, and everything had been perfectly fine as long as his voice had continued to advance through the pages. (He had such a good reading voice, at least until he tried to vary the tones for some of the secondary mares). She'd... lost track of time. There hadn't been time, other than that which was passing in the story. No time, no mission, and perhaps even no wings. It had been something very much like a little miracle, and it all shattered at the moment she saw Rarity standing within the doorway.
Quiet blinked. Twilight was in a perfect position to see it, at least once she glanced up a little.
"Rarity?" Quiet asked and to Twilight, his tones seemed to be slightly off. "Is something wrong?"
"No," the designer too-quickly said, just as Twilight spotted the tide of red surging beneath the white coat. "I simply need to borrow Twilight for a short time. I have been working on her onsom for the party, and... well, the problem is this, Quiet: I have all of her..." with a very strange awkwardness "...measurements memorized, of course, and they tended to hold true at all times, excepting when she pushed herself too far in her studies and neglected to notice Spike trying to shove food beneath her snout. But those are the... old measurements. I have nothing for her as..." It triggered a little swallow. "Very well, put bluntly: I need to get her wingspan. Also, I must check to see if the necessary change to the muscles around her ribs has altered that number. And then there are other considerations..." More hastily, "Quiet, I am under something of a deadline here, there are multiple dresses to complete along with a tuxedo for Spike, I have only now realized that there is a possibility that nothing I have for Twilight will work, I will already have to do a certain number of adjustments and I now owe you a set of curtains. So before my inevitable nervous breakdown decides to save everypony some time through happening now, would it be possible for me to borrow Twilight?"
They both stared at her for a few seconds, and Twilight wondered if there was a subtle way to tell Quiet that the eye twitching was, at worst, in a mere Phase Two and there was actually nothing to truly worry about until the recently-restored mane began to fray.
"I think you'd better," Quiet replied. "Quickly. And for that matter --" with a small sigh "-- the duties of setting up for the party call. Again. Twilight, I'm sorry, but -- I do have a lot of things which still need arranging and if I don't get back to them soon, I probably will need a professional planner's assistance. And since Pinkie happens to be here --"
Twilight's imagination quickly pulled up the rather recent file which contained the images of a Pinkie-arranged, castle-hosted party.
"-- how do you feel about balloons?"
After a long moment, "...I think I'm missing some information which would be required to answer that. Balloons?"
"And cakes flying through the air. And collapsing statues. Plus some columns. There's a chance for columns to collapse too."
Carefully, "I think I'm... against it? Well, maybe not the flying cake, depending on where it lands. Or the statue if it's an ugly one. But I'm pretty sure I need every last one of my columns."
"Then you'd better get back to work," Twilight said, pushing her way off the couch. "I'll see you later, Quiet."
He nodded, started to get up -- paused. "Do you want me to bookmark it?"
"Please. Spotting the bookmark will save me time in searching before the theft."
It triggered a smile. "Until we see each other at the trial, then."
Teasingly, "You would press charges? Against a Princess?"
"The world," Quiet solemnly stated, "does not need a Princess of Crime. Best to stop her now before that career truly takes off."
Twilight shrugged. "Oh, fine... come on, Rarity, let's get me wrapped and quantified. Again..."
She wanted to take a last glance back, see if he'd been amused by that. But Rarity's tail swished as she stepped aside to clear the exit, did so again as they began to make their way down the hall, and the air currents seemed to suggest it was being held somewhat higher than usual.
Twilight put up with it until they were most of the way back to Rarity's guest quarters. "What are you doing?"
Half-whisper, half-hiss. "Recovering you. Because I do need to put you under the tape, Twilight, or you will look something other than your best when the party begins. But other things must be discussed, and it would seem that some of them should come in the form of a reminder. An immediate one."
She had no idea what Rarity was talking about.
Then she knew exactly what Rarity was talking about, and decided it was in her best interests not to.
"I don't understand," Twilight lied.
"You. And Quiet." Three-quarters hiss now. "Together --"
"I told him," Twilight cut her off.
Slowly, the hoofstep rate dropping accordingly, "Really."
"I told him I thought we were friends," Twilight stated. "He didn't say no. So we're friends, Rarity, we are friends, and my new friend had a bad day. The head researcher who's been working on curing the weakness in his blood told him there was a setback, and... he was down, Rarity, he was just starting to get depressed thinking he'd never have anypony he could read to -- so I let him read to me for a while, and he felt better." Not without pride in three years of lessons both well-learned and recently applied, "That's what friends do for each other."
Rarity's next breath somehow came across as forced. As did the next, and the next...
"...Rarity?"
"Friends," the designer softly said.
"Yes," Twilight tried stating again. "We're friends."
"So when a friend reads to you," Rarity quietly continued, "your natural listening position is to lie down so that your head is resting on his forelegs?"
Twilight hesitated, searched for a response, then wondered how visible that hunt had been.
"I don't know," she replied, and also wondered if the words sounded just as defensive to Rarity's rotated ears. "None of you ever read to me. So I guess any position I use during my first time would be my natural one."
Rarity's breaths were now being pulled in between her teeth. The door to her quarters was right in front of them.
"Twilight." Flavorless. Neutral. Almost completely free of accent.
"What?"
Rarity's horn ignited. The field-coated doors opened to reveal nopony else waiting within, and the designer went inside. Twilight followed, and the doors quickly closed themselves.
The purple tail whipped as Rarity spun, blue eyes fully open, nostrils wide and tail now starting to lash --
"-- we cannot stay here," Rarity hissed. "Not in the castle, not for much longer. Our excuse will only hold for so long. We are expected to remain until the party, and I suspect that many within this settled zone might feel we are only staying for that amount of time as a courtesy to our host. But within a day or so after that, ponies will begin to question why the Bearers need to remain in Trotter's Falls, when Doctor Gentle is safe and we all have duties awaiting us in Ponyville. We all have lives which were put on hold, no matter how many ponies fail to see that and in time, those lives would be expected to resume. The mission -- that goes on for as long as it must: I doubt we would even be permitted to leave the area until it was completed. Simply attempting to depart on the train might lead to a flash of light and rather unexpected fresh view of the ravine. We may wind up camping in the wild zone rather soon, unless we can make progress. And this means we need to search for her, as soon as we possibly can. Or rather, you must, along with as much company as can be managed, as I am expected to stay behind and work on those dresses. And the tuxedo. Spike is somewhat more fit in the limbs than he was the last time I designed for him and the tuxedo shall require additional effort. We have all been distracted by things, from the town itself to the library and poor Rainbow's lost manuscript. But tomorrow morning must be for the search, to find her. We will lose at least the entire evening to the party, and there is nothing to be done about that, not without creating questions. Even if we somehow managed to locate her, help her, everything before Sun was lowered tomorrow, we should attend the party. But the castle is not our first priority. She is. I have trapped myself, through my declarations and neuroses. The rest of us cannot do the same. You know that, Twilight. Help her. Think of her. And tomorrow, search."
She had listened to all of it, as such had seemed essential to finding the best place for an interruption and countering argument for whatever Rarity had meant to say. It meant Twilight had heard every word and in doing so, realized no counter existed. For Rarity was right. The mission had to be resumed. They had to find her and very soon, they would have to leave the castle.
It... hurt.
She didn't know why it hurt, and that made the pain surge all the more.
"We'll get back out there," Twilight softly promised. "We will, Rarity. But I don't know how we're going to find her. She's been coming to us and I was hoping that -- once the resonance bomb wore off, she'd come out again. I don't even know where to start looking. We lost the trail going out of the orchard, and without feel to track..."
"You will think of something," Rarity quietly answered. "You usually do, Twilight, and if not you, then one of us shall. We also have -- a resource we did not previously possess, at least knowingly. Perhaps that can be of some use. Just find her if you can, and begin planning for what must happen if we cannot locate her and convince her to come with us within a day or two of the party."
She nodded. It was all she wanted to do.
"And -- Twilight?" Rarity added.
It felt as if the next thing her friend said would hurt her. Twilight didn't know why it felt like that, nor did she understand why she was so certain of it. But she also knew there was no way of stopping the words.
"Lies," Rarity softly said, "can have their place. Despite what Applejack might believe, there are times when they are necessary. To save social graces, to prevent public embarrassment and sometimes... to save lives. A well-placed lie can do much when it enters the world with good intent and careful crafting, Twilight. But... there are times when the truth is what saves us. And either way, it does not mean I appreciate it when you lie to me."
She didn't understand.
Or she did, and no longer wished to.
Every one of Rarity's gentle words kicked her. Lashed, blasted, bit. "Can you accept that you can only be his friend?"
Twilight closed her eyes, left them that way.
"Yes."
It meant she didn't have to see Rarity's face.
"I suppose you feel some good has come from saying that," Rarity sadly replied. "Because there are times when a lie helps, does it not? So I will take your new measurements now, because that is part of our latest lie, and so it must be the part which provides evidence, along with a proper fit. But Twilight..."
The pause felt far too long.
"...no good ever comes from lying to oneself."
And the little sigh took forever.
"Spread your wings, please," Rarity said. Twilight did. And the rest took place in silence.
He had told her what they needed to do, and she had agreed. It was for the Great Work, and so it was something which had to be done. Yet another consequence of her failure. But she didn't want to do it. And that... didn't matter. Whether she wanted to be presented was immaterial. She had failed. Her desires were no longer relevant, if they had ever meant anything at all. It had been his Great Work, and she had failed him, failed all the others, failed everypony. She had done something wrong and the fault had to be hers, for it could never be his. Not when he was...
...he was there.
She was a horror. A monster. Something which never should have existed, a status which had been present on that very first day. And yet he had accepted her. He had tried to fix her. And all she had done was find a way of becoming the most broken pony who had ever lived, defective beyond all hope of repair.
But he still had hope, and he was still there.
He was watching her eyes now, as their color slowly began to phase. She tried not to squint against the pain. He needed to see it, see everything, no matter how much she wished for nopony to ever look at her again.
"This is the first trial," he said, and the only truly familiar voice she knew was calm. "This is -- powerful. Under normal circumstances, it's more potent than anypony would normally consume. And I have no way of knowing how your new body will react to it, so I'm going to stay with you and monitor things for as long as I can. If something happens after I have to leave --" and she could hear the regret in that "-- you know where the passage is. Use it if you can. And I'll come back during every chance I have. If I don't find you here, I'll look there."
She nodded, felt the grinding within her neck, fought back the scream.
"Are you ready?"
Another nod. She could deny him nothing, not after having cost him everything. And should something happen, then he would only have to look at her one more time.
"All right," he softly said, and silver floated a vial of liquid up to her. "Swallow." His field tipped the contents into her open mouth, and she let them burn their way down her throat.
"How..." Her tongue constricted, and she waited until the next momentary ebb before trying again. "How. Long before. We know?"
"With a broken pony, a few minutes. But for you -- I don't know," he admitted. "I'm sorry for that, but we have only one way to learn. We have to wait."
"Is it. Safe? For -- anypony?"
It seemed as he hesitated too long before he spoke.
"It's what I could find for you," he finally said. "So it's what we have to try."
They waited. She did everything she could to bury the spasms, counter the twitches, keep the gasps silent while only permitting the screams to sound within her mind. She frequently failed. But he had told her to listen to her horror of a body, tell him everything she experienced as the liquid tried to do its work. And so while the miracle, when it began, was small, she knew.
"It's..."
He leaned forward, ears rotating towards her.
"...moving."
"Keep talking," he told her. "Where is it going?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "It's like it's -- shifting away. Like it's. Still there, but... I'm over here. There and not-there. It's..."
It was fading. The pain was fading.
"...going --" The hesitation of disbelief, somepony beholding the impossible taking place on their behalf and afraid to accept it because that recognition might somehow ruin everything. "-- away. It's going... away. I know where it is. I know it's here, inside me, but it's like -- it doesn't know..."
The thought struck her as funny, to have pain as something capable of ignorance, and so she giggled. The sound only rasped at her throat.
"Think," he said, and she could hear the hope rising. "Is your memory any clearer?"
She hadn't felt there was anything wrong with her memory, at least not until he had found her. The pain could disrupt thoughts, break them up in waves of agony, but she could remember. But he had told her that she was remembering things as they were not: confusion from twisting senses added to the delirium of pain, and that had sounded wrong --
-- but he knew best. He always did.
Perhaps she had become confused, when she was out there in the world. It was certainly possible, because he had said so. And with the pain so distant now (still there, but mostly ignoring her, muttering to itself, only bothering to send occasional flurries of spikes into her eyes), she tried to remember again, for the things he felt she had to remember.
It was surprisingly hard to do. Thinking about anything felt like she was pushing herself against a formless mass of cotton wool. It was like the night her first quilt had torn and the stuffing had gone everywhere, she'd tried to pile it back up and push it through the gap, fill the cloth envelope again, but it had squished around her hooves and up her ankles, soft and giggle-inducing right up until she'd remembered that he could have just looked at it and made it all go back inside, she was broken and only his Great Work would ever make it right --
-- she... couldn't seem to make her thoughts go where she needed them to. She needed a guide.
"I need my memories," she said.
He blinked, looked worried. "Do your best to focus," he told her. "This is a -- powerful drug, and you may have some trouble concentrating. Start from when you appeared outside."
"I don't have a memory for that," she admitted. "I haven't made one yet."
Under normal circumstances -- under just about any circumstances -- to truly hear those words would have had her jamming an imaginary forehoof into her mouth, hoping onto everything there was that he wouldn't think about them. But she had already made the mistake, her thoughts didn't seem to be interested in doing anything other than getting some welcome rest without the pain battering them all the time, and so all she did was look in a certain direction.
She had, in the time since he'd found her, caught him looking in that same direction. She had done it too, when the pain broke her focus on not letting it happen. Neither of them had discussed it in any way. There had been many words between them, and none had concerned what was there.
He sighed.
"Too strong," he half-muttered, half-whispered, and while she heard the words, she was no longer capable of truly caring about what they meant. "Strong enough to affect the brain, as it would for other ponies. Impairment of thought. Still, it may do for the presentation, should it last, if the dosage is properly timed and it holds through the change. But we will have to be so careful..." Back to normal tones. "Where is the pain now?"
She tried to think about that. "It's there." She glanced down at her right flank, noticed the bulging of the skin as bones grew beneath it. "It's just not paying attention to me right now. I'm afraid to bother it. It might get mad."
"And that is as far as it has moved or changed?"
She nodded.
"Very well," he said. "And you are still willing to try?"
Her failure. His time. His life. "Yes."
A slow nod, and then he stood, crossed the short distance to where she rested on the stone floor, dropped down and nuzzled her before he said the words, with a few new ones added. They reached deep into her, ignored cotton and pain, touched what was still present of her thoughts, because the start consisted of the first words she could remember being said to her at all. The thing he had been saying to her for all of her life, when she had never deserved any of it.
"I love you," he told her. "In spite of what you did, I loved you. I love you still."
She tried to smile, and even with the pain uninterested in interruption, it wouldn't come.
"Now," he stated. "Faster."
Wait, what?
Coordinator's starting to realize how in over his head he is. And it's delicious.
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Really? I think he's trying to bury it under rationalization, and he's stupid enough to potentially succeed.
A couple of things I noticed:
"provide the level[ of power which"
Stray bracket?
"I have her all of..."
"all of her"?
7912752 - Could be burning down his house, could be being born or killing her mother in childbirth? Could be many things, and I doubt any of them are actually bad.
All 3 of the principal antagonists are quickly loosing it. The strings are fraying and the center can not hold. It would probably be much more secure if Coordinator had no role in this, as he's treacherous by nature, but he will no doubt be a key piece of the ruin which will come to them all. I almost don't even see them Mane 6+1 having any role in the horror show that is to come.
Still curious what Discord's gift will be used for. Remove 1 thing... her mark? Assuming that it's the reason for the change... her magic? Her Pain? Her? Something Else?
I do hope we see Twilight and/or Spike rip Coordinator into twain... and I'm not even sure if I care if it's not metaphorically.
It's kind of funny that Coordinator is looking at a booster drug, as if an extra % of next to nothing is anything significant. He'll walk in with black eyes and grandiose statements and then people will simply laugh. Oohh... I can now lift a couple of quills at once, fear my ability to write nasty words about you.
Okay, it seems Taint is the Earth Pony mixing with Unicorns, which explains why she doesn't know any kind of magic, starting as Earth, but not getting taught, and getting Unicorn a long while after?
... What's going on here?
First you made me feel like I needed a long shower, then you broke my heart, and you topped it all off with a heaping helping of quiet rage. Especially that comment about "broken ponies." Really says it all, doesn't it?
Still, all the pieces are coming together. And if Applejack ends up in the same room as her during the unveiling, pandemonium will ensue. Assuming none of the other Bearers blurt it out either. This is going to be one heck of a party.
Also, I can't help but wonder just how potent that booster drug is. Normally, I'd assume Coordinator would never use something that might put his life at risk, but in pursuit of power? Especially when the boost is proportional to how much you have to begin with? He might just risk it...
I just realized something kinda important: The only way to become an Alicorn is some kind of combination of Starswirl the Bearded's spell and the Elements of Harmony. The Elements of Harmony require six ponies to wield properly. There are two teams of ponies capable of wielding them that have been confirmed as cannon, and the only solo usage of the Elements did not work as intended. So where the heck did Cadance come from?
Gods, when is someone going to smother Coordinator and put him out of our misery?
I sort of thought The Failure was Quiet's wife & that's why she's missing. This seems to imply she has some sort of birth defect, & was one of Gentle's Special Ponies. That's the problem with this, it's taking so long I read so much other stuff, my memory gets scrambled. ICR if Quiet's wife was a Pegasus.
Well, I shall reread this again & refresh my recollection. (Doesn't help that I've apparently got the sort of recollection that needs a GREAT DEAL of refreshing)
However, I do see where you are going with some of this Discord expects Fluttershy to vanish the Cutie Mark. This should be done at the top of the Pegasus cycle & may return the original. Twilight's memory spell from MMC should do it
I can't believe The Coordinator could read Dash's memoirs & still be stupid enough to stand where Dash could get at him while he attempts to blackmail her. I've said it before & I'll say it again. The Mane 6 don't live in the same time zone as common sense. Dash will tear his lungs loose from his liver & consequences be damned.
Jesus. Really intense. I love Twilight and Rarity's tense scene, where she tries to get Twilight to admit that she's lying to her and herself. A true friend's job isn't just to go along with whatever you want but to help you see those painful truths so you're spared even greater pain later. It's really stellar writing here.
Gentle Arrival. In spite of what she "did", you loved her? He's so despicable that even what could be heartwarming is just wretched instead. Way to reinforce her feelings of self-loathing and low sense of self-worth. She makes Fluttershy look egotistical in comparison.
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My assumption here is his wife died in childbirth
Somewhere in that first scene, Coordinator seemed to confirm that Gentle Arrival has been doing something to all the ponies he's delivered, as part of the Great Work
It will be interesting to see what happens at the party. I still think that a lot of readers are going to be very disappointed when Coordinator seems at first to be succeeding, if not in actually gaining control over Twilight, then at causing her great pain and getting away without his comeuppance.
7913050 Some kind of harmonic rock...
Buddy, that is why you weren't destined to be a bearer. In fact, I'm pretty sure if you did try and use the elements they'd either backfire or amplify whatever was about to hurt you rather than help. Or just do absolutely squat infront of everyone and paint you as worthless, because that's what you are
Wow. He really is delusional, isn't he? I think the most satisfying moment in this story is going to be when his plan backfires horribly on him. Granted you could go another way and have him either be successful or a karma houdini, but I must admit that would be woefully unsatisfying.
Well, I suspect shit is going to royally hit the fan, Twilight is still being rather delusional regarding Quiet (which on rereading their stuff still doesn't hit me as the greatest of chemistry, but perhaps she's simply desperate for male company who doesn't bend ass backwards for her title), and a party is approaching with multiple fronts happening all wanting their own thing.
I do know one thing, however. Big, official, non-Pinkie Pie sponsored parties inevitably end horribly when the mane 6 are involved. So yay, I suppose.
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Personally, I always saw the Great Work as being a rather heavy-handed way of fighting the tribalism that's still a huge problem in this setting - don't forget, beyond the blatant tribalism that the earth ponies have displayed against the other tribes, there's a known unicorn supremacist movement that shows up in two other stories ("Sonic Rainbigot" and "Naked Lunch"), and someone with more word-perfect memories can probably call up moments of pegasus supremacist thinking.
Essentially, the Great Work is about ending tribalism by ending tribes; if all ponies are turned into alicorns, then there's no need to fight over differences in magic, because everypony will have the same kind of magic. No more earth ponies smugly hiding their true connection to the earth, no more envying the flight of pegasi, no more unicorns holding themselves up as the only "truly" magical tribe - equality for all by the uplifiting of all to a new pinnacle.
Incidentally, chapter 30 here seems to confirm two Wild Mass Guesses: that Gentle Arrival has been experimenting on at least some of the foals he delivers, and that those experiments produce what can only be called "transtribals" - ponies with the bodies of one tribe but the magic of another.
I mean, why else would Coordinator, clearly established as a unicorn supremacist in this chapter, make those disparaging comments about "the warped"?
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It makes Fluttershy disturbingly understandable in this case- not only is she a very Earth-oriented talent as a cutie mark, but her very nature seems to be prone to bending under the right magic with ease (ie, Flutterbat) if not outright protean like the current result of the Great Work.
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Yeah, in fact, Fluttershy is practically "Exhibit A" in the WMG that Gentle Arrival is experimenting with creating transtribals from some of his deliveries. I mean, here's a short list of characters we've grown to know over the Continuum:
Fluttershy: Weak flyer, honestly doesn't like to fly, subconsciously creeped out when standing on clouds, surprising amount of strength for her frame, ability to communicate with animals, and immense stamina that means she needs little sleep and she's quite resistant to disease. All of this practically screams "Earth Pony in a Pegasus body", wouldn't you say?
Pinkie Pie: Has no Earth Pony magic whatsoever. However, a lot of the tricks she's pulled off, like offscreen teleportation, pulling random items out of her hair (I don't recall if item teleporting is a thing in the Continuum), even that infamous "slow gravity to gently fall into a spring" thing from canon (self-levitation), all of that looks like stuff you'd expect an Earth Pony with Unicorn magic to pull off. More notably, in "Pinkie Pie vs. The Souffle", Pinkie is able to sense Twilight igniting her corona and, in "Triptych", picking up the emotional resonance left by Her Unicorn magic, something that has been established elsewhere is part and parcel of the Unicornian "magic sense", but which is impossible for the other tribes.
Snowflake: This one's traits are obscured by the fact his wings are amputated, but he has been called out as having weak Pegasus magic, a talent for "physical determination" that is implied to be more common for Earth Ponies, and here's something particularly telling: like Fluttershy, he finds being on clouds unnerving, as he feels like he's sinking through them. More importantly, he has absolutely no claustrophobia, and that's called out as practically universal to Pegasi.
Ratchette: This Pegasus has a talent for devices, which is explicitly called out as something that should be Unicorn-only, as devices are rooted in Unicorn spell-casting methods and so are based on Unicorn magic. Furthermore, like Pinkie, she has the ability to sense the activation of a corona.
All four of these characters delivered by Gentle Arrival. All four of them display unnatural magical talents based on their physical tribe. Coincidence? I think not. Especially given Coordinator's bigoted ramblings about "The Warped" in chapter 30.
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I'm curious what leverage he thinks Dash's fanfic will provide over her. It may just be that he doesn't understand what he's dealing with.
This will also be very interesting from a 'verse point of view. Twilight is, so far as we have seen, actually the most passive of the Princesses right up until she alters the local geography. Gentle will be very, very lucky if he survives the arrival of the Sisters assuming everything being revealed does not destroy him.
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Toy designer fiat?
I don't think Estee's ever specified.
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Personally, I'm not sure that Pegasi think that Pegasi are the best- I think that each individual Pegasus think of his or herself as the best, and that everypony that isn't them is on a (lower) equal plane.
7914855 Interesting you should bring this up.
One thing I've contemplated regarding the three races is that they all share the same DNA, and that only a particular race's genes are activated in a given pony (except alicorns). That is, the reason why a pegusus can have offspring with an earth pony or a unicorn is because fundamentally they all have the same compatible species DNA, it's just two out of the three races genes are left dormant. When two different members of the tribe have offspring, their own makeup and DNA determines what tribe the offspring would be, but it is never an alicorn.
Why? That requires a catalyst similar to what Twilight experienced, or possibly to what Gentle Arrival mentioned.
The reason I bring this up is two parts.
Assuming DNA is a thing in this verse (I think it is-Mark of appeal made references to some fairly developed biological sciences and medicine), then tribalism fundamentally doesn't make sense at all, because everypony has the DNA of the other tribes in them, the genes are just dormant.
Heh, imagining Coordinator's reaction to reading an article on this would be...amusing.
I have to wonder how the princesses would react to this development, though. Alarm? It might paint the path to alicornhood as possible through genetic manipulation.
Secondly, Gentles continuing attempts to create an alicorn...I'm not certain as to what his exact methods exactly are, but they're probably geared in the wrong direction.
Eh, this is all just a theory anyway. For all I know alicorns are created when the cheese god gets a headshop with his alicorn gun and it's just been coincidentally timed with dramatic destiny so far.
7913050 Aftershock? Depending on how canon Estee is taking her origin story, it could be that her ascension happened to take place at just the right time for residuals to affect her and cause her to transform. Then again, if she existed for the purpose of being a link to the Crystal Heart, it's possible that it is something like the elements. Given that Friendship will often evolve into Love and the heart is the symbol of that... (Clearly no one pressed B in time.)
Coordinator might succeed. Against Twilight alone, might. But against all the Bearers? I don't really fancy his chances. Applejack alone is enough to outstubborn him. Rainbow is liable to laugh off any of his threats. Rarity is definitely Silk hiding Steel. Pinkie... let's just say we've seen where she ends up when her buttons get pushed too far. Fluttershy is much like a willow. She bends but simply will not break. And eventually hits you in the face.
Can't quite get a handle on Estee's version of Twilight. Then again, a lecture on Star-Swirl might turn the trick. And Spike? Spike isn't the dragon he once was. Sir Spike the Great and Noble does not find your antics amusing.
7914855 I didn't know Ratchette was one of Gentle's. But it's true that she fits the profile. Though they all still have some aspects of their base phisiology. Pinkie is still quite strong even if she doesn't have the earth song. The pegasi are still able to fly if not very well, but any flight would require some amount of pegasi magic, even if not much. Warped is indeed an accurate description.
7914438 alicorns may indeed be his endgame but he's happy with unicorn too. He may even be happy with pegasi. I think Gentle is a tribalist of a different sort. He may be attempting to help the poor magic less earth ponies or he could simply have long buried resentments towards the tribe. I assume is She had been born a unicorn he may have gotten over his grief.
The Warped ponies he's delivered often seem to share markers from two tribes at once.
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I don't think he's trying to create transtribal ponies, rather the exception cares a cost to the unborn foal in the shape of robbing them of something, and presumably placing that part of them in one of those stones. For Fluttershy and Pinkie, it was their magic, but for Quiet, it's his health.
So the current status is that Gentle is creepier by the chapter, and Coordinator really, really needs to get punched in the taint. By a professional minotaur wrestler.
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Yeah, I kind of suspect that Coordinator is going to succeed in getting control over all the Bearers... except Fluttershy. Who happens to be carrying a one-shot "make something go away" button.
This again is Ensemble. You need a competent editor.
Also, on the topic of teleporters, it's Dispersed. Disbursed is handing out funds.
Fixed the second, and thankee. However, 'onsom' is just meant to be Rarity's chosen accent, and so it's been left alone. (You can hear the word spoken that way in the right area.)
this is a really clever play on words that REALLY bugged me until it was finally explained: (BIG spoiler)
she's an artist, but she calls her paintings "memories" for some reason. when she "made a memory" of Pinkie in an earlier chapter, she was painting!
oh, this made me think of a comic book where Tempest says that Equestria is too peaceful, and should have a "princess of military air superiority" or a "princess of explosions". Princess Cadence laughs and then says Flurry Heart would make a good "princess of explosions!"
It’s getting harder to read the chapters written from Coordinator’s POV or focusing on Gentle, because they are just such well drawn monsters, each in their own way.