Chapter 33: Hostage
Cloudsdale
Near the southern edge of Cloudsdale, a hotel towered seven stories into the air. The balconies gave a good view of the cloud city to the north side, and on the south side, a view far down to Equestria below. With its old shag carpets, small tepid pool, and grouchy bellhops, it wasn’t the nicest place in in Cloudsdale, but if a traveler was looking for a reasonably-priced room with a view, it was perfect.
Inside of a conference room, a group of about two dozen pegasi sat around at tables, murmuring quietly amongst themselves. Some ponies gazed off into space; others read books or twiddled their hooves. Several minutes passed until finally, the door burst open. In flew a panting, sweaty Rainbow Dash.
“Hello, everypony,” she huffed, stopping to catch her breath as she set down her saddlebag at one of the tables. She walked over towards the podium at the front of the room.
“Ugh, how is the fastest pony in Equestria always late?” a stallion in the audience groaned as he glanced at his hoofwatch. He was a caramel-coated pegasus stallion with a brown mane and bangs covering his eyes, and a basketball for a cutie mark.
“Yeah, way to go, Rainbow Crash,” said his friend, a chocolate coated stallion seated next to him.
Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Hoops, Dumbbell, can we keep it quiet, please? I was facing a strong wind on my way.”
“Sorry,” said Hoops, chuckling slightly as Dumbbell patted him on the back and grinned.
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, and then got out a sheet of paper and placed it on the podium, where she spoke.
“Thank you all for coming to the monthly meeting of the Equestrian Loyalist Committee. I’m Rainbow Dash, the chairmare.”
“Uh, I think we all know who you are by now, Rainbow Dash,” said Raindrops, a maize-coated pegasus with a tiffany blue mane. “It’s pretty much the same thirty pegasi at all of these meetings, and—”
Rainbow Dash put her hoof to her face, sighing. “Look, can we get down to business, or what?”
The ponies in the conference room quieted down.
“Anyway,” said Rainbow Dash, glancing down at a sheet of paper that she placed on the podium, “the first item on the agenda is the new Gallop opinion poll.”
All of the ponies in the room immediately focused their attention at Rainbow Dash. She grinned. “Thought that would get your attention. Yes, it’s on ‘Buyers’ Remorse Sentiment of Cloud Confederacy Pegasi…’”
The members in the audience all leaned forward in their seats, their eyes widening.
Rainbow Dash blushed as she looked at the page. “Now, keep in mind that there’s a five point margin of error, here…”
The small group remained tense.
“...Our poll numbers are still at thirty percent who want to reunite with Equestria, while fifty-five percent are glad the Confederacy is independent, and the other fifteen percent is undecided. I’m sorry, you guys. Most ponies in Cloudsdale and Las Pegasus don’t want to be part of Equestria again.”
The crowd sighed.
“But how could they want independence?” asked Raindrops. “President Lightning Dust is so corrupt! Her officials are all embezzling money. All of the police take bribes, and you have to pay them just to get out of a routine stop. The visa regime between us and Equestria is terrible; there’s too much paperwork. Dust’s foreign policy is just idiotic. Why should be allies with the zebras? Why give them most favored nation status? They’re the enemies of the griffons!”
There were murmurs of approval from the crowd.
“I understand, Raindrops,” said Rainbow Dash. “But this poll isn’t about the President. Her approval numbers are in the high 30’s, but even still, most ponies would rather have a bad leader and be independent, than—”
“Have to fight a war with Equestria.”
The crowd turned to the door, where Pound Cake stood.
“Ugh,” Rainbow Dash moaned, shaking her head as she threw her hooves in the air. “Can I at least give my speech without ponies butting in every five seconds… wait, Pound Cake? Is that you?”
Pound Cake nodded and grinned.
An uproar of applause and shouts of approval erupted from all of the pegasi in the room.
“YEAAAH!” yelled a muscular, white pegasus stallion with stubby wings named Bulky Biceps.
“Sonic Rainboom! You go, Pound!” screamed Foggy Fleece, an elderly, white-haired mare wearing a hard-hat.
“Thanks, everyone,” said Pound Cake, taking a bow at the front of the room.
“This is a nice surprise,” said Rainbow Dash. “What brings you to Cloudsdale?”
“I’ll only tell you if I can stand at the podium and say it,” said Pound Cake.
Rainbow Dash glanced hesitantly at the group. They all cheered, and she reluctantly nodded. She took her paper and sat down in one of the chairs in the audience.
“After hearing you cheer, I’m guessing you’ve all read my interview in the Tall Tale Times by now,” said Pound Cake.
“The Manehattan Monitor and the Cloudsdale Courier picked up the story, too,” said Rainbow Dash, smiling. “You’re quite the celebrity now, Pound Cake. Congrats on being the second pony ever to do a sonic rainboom. And what a great way you did it!”
The crowd cheered.
“I’m your biggest fan!” said one of the mares, waving a rainbow pennant with Pound Cake’s face on it.
“Oh yeah?” Hoops shouted over at the mare. “Well I thought Pound was awesome back when he and Pumpkin did that armory raid!”
The rest of the crowd muttered in confusion, and Hoops shook his head. “Posers,” he scoffed. “True Pound Cake fans would know about that.”
Pound Cake smiled. “Glad to see some of my long-time fans here. I figured that, of all ponies, the Equestrian loyalists in Cloudsdale would lend me an ear. Looks like I was right!”
The crowd cheered. However, a single hoof went up in the back of the room. It was from a rather small, cream-coated young stallion with a brown mane and bangs that almost covered his bespectacled face.
“Go on,” said Pound Cake. “You have the floor.”
“My name’s Featherweight, and this ultimatum that you’ve given in the paper, holding the SK’s crops hostage to make them surrender, well… it makes no strategic sense. How would you destroy all those crops by yourself? Sonic rainboom or no, that’s still a huge commitment. You would suffer severe brain damage from the repeated G-forces, and you’d die long before even destroying a tenth of those crops.”
Pound nodded. “Yeah, you’ve called my bluff. The rainboom is a taxing move. That’s why I need willing members of the Equestrian Loyalist Committee to go on a mission with me… to help me sabotage the Second Kingdom’s crops so that they’ll surrender!”
The crowd started to cheer, until Rainbow Dash held up her hoof.
“I dig your style, Pound, and we’re all ready to go out and actually do something concrete instead of just sitting around whining about our poll numbers, but Featherweight has a point,” said Rainbow Dash. “I served in the Wonderbolts. I’m a bit too old to go on crazy flying missions like that now, but I still remember strategy. The Equestrians have been sabotaging SK farming for years, but we still haven’t ended the war. What makes you think that you can do it any better, even with all of us helping you? There’s only thirty of us.”
“I’m open to ideas from the audience,” said Pound Cake. “What about burning all the crops, instead of attacking their farming equipment?”
“It’s been tried,” said Rainbow Dash. “They have pyrokinetic unicorns who can control fire through magic and put out whatever blaze we start.”
“Then we’ll just create a snowstorm to freeze all of their crops,” said Foggy Fleece. “I’m a manager at the weather factory, so I’ll go over there and start—”
“The unicorns can control the weather, too, with their magic and planes. They’ll just counter whatever we do,” said Raindrops. “Why don’t we send in a bunch of locusts to eat their crops?”
“Where would we get that many?” asked a stallion in the crowd. “Even if we did, they use pesticides up there.”
“So we just poison the crops!” said Hoops. “We can just air drop the poison all over the place.”
“There isn’t enough poison in all of Equestria for those crops,” said a mare.
“How about dragons? They could blow smoke all over the fields and block out the sunlight!” said Dumb Bell.
“That smoke would blow all over Equestria and give us all lung cancer! Besides, dragons are neutral; they don’t get involved in pony affairs unless their own interests are threatened. Equestria’s civil war doesn’t concern them.”
It went on like this for about an hour, with various members of the crowd proposing ideas, but with other members shooting them down. The group even took an idea from Derpy Hooves, who came into the hotel on her mail route.
“Maybe Derpy has an idea about how to kill the crops,” said Pound.
Derpy blushed, and scratched her head with her hoof. “Oh, I don’t know; I’m neutral. I just deliver the mail, you know…”
“You must have seen something in your travels that could help us,” said Rainbow Dash.
Derpy’s eyes crossed as she stared off into space and down at the floor at the same time. Finally, she raised a hoof and smiled.
“Oh, I got it! Why don’t you all fly up there, and stretch out a giant wad of bubblegum over the land, so that it blocks out the crops’ sunlight?”
All of the pegasi in the room laughed. Rainbow Dash grinned. “That sounds like an idea Pinkie Pie would come up with.”
“Well, you asked,” said Derpy.
Featherweight sighed, digging his hoof into his face. “So now that we’ve exhausted all of the food-based ideas, can we finally concede that this mission is doomed from—”
He stopped himself mid-sentence. The committee waited a few moments, and then Pound Cake said, “What is it, Featherweight?”
Featherweight grinned. “I have an idea.”
The night skies over the Flatlands: June 2025
Veins popped and bulged in Bulky Biceps’ muscles as he pulled a giant, wooden cart behind him through the air. Featherweight flew beside him, not pulling nearly his share. The cart was filled with dozens of burlap bags, each the size of a pony. Behind Featherweight and Biceps, ten pairs of pegasi ponies pulled identical cartfulls of bags.
“This stuff is so heav—” Hoops started.
“Shaddup!” his cart-pulling partner Dumb Bell queitly implored, elbowing him with a hoof. “You don’t wanna give away our position.”
They looked ahead, as Rainbow Dash and Pound Cake came to a stop. Rainbow Dash held up a reflective red stop sign that shimmered in the moonlight. The convoy halted.
After all ten carts had stopped, Rainbow Dash turned her stop sign around to a green side. The carts made a tight circle formation around Rainbow Dash and Pound Cake. The pegasi were flying shoulder-to-shoulder and were all now within speaking distance.
“Alright. Everypony ready?” Rainbow Dash whispered.
They all nodded.
“Dump your cargo on my mark,” she said.
One of the two pegasi from each pair unhitched himself from the cart and flew around to the back of the cart, unlatching the latches, while his stronger partner was left strapped to the harness.
“Three, two, one… drop!” Rainbow commanded.
The cart carriers flew straight up into the air, and the backs of their carts tilted back, letting all of the burlap sacks plummet from the carts, through the air below. Half a minute passed, and then Featherweight glanced up from the stopwatch on his hoof.
“Alright, Pound Cake, the bags should’ve descended to the correct altitude by now. You’re up!”
Pound nodded, and then he turned downward towards the ground, flapped his wings, and went into a nose-dive. The committee members rushed back towards Cloudsdale as fast as they could.
It was too dark to see the bags below, and Pound could only see the expansive wheatfields illuminated by the half-moon. However, he trusted that Featherweight did the math right, and that the bags would be falling at the right speed. The wind increased at his sides as it blistered his mane.
Reaching both hooves out, Pound braced himself as the white cone started to form around him. The dark shadows of the burlap bags came into his vision, just as Featherweight had calculated. At the last possible second, when he was exactly level with the skydiving bags, the luminous explosion issued forth from his outstretched hooves, searing the burlap of the many sacks apart like a hot knife through butter.
A few moments later, once he was at a safe distance, Pound turned around to observe his handiwork. The usual hues of the sonic rainboom were complemented by a dusty, milky powder. The specks were as numerous as the stars above, glinting off the light from the rainboom.
He furiously blinked as his eyes were stung by hundreds of falling particles. He coughed as they got into his nose and mouth. As he dashed back towards Cloudsdale, the salty taste was on his tongue.
It tasted like success.
Cloudsdale: Two weeks earlier
Featherweight stood at the front of the conference room with a whiteboard illustration of the plan, codenamed “Sonic Saltshaker.”
“...then, after we’ve all dumped our cargo, Pound Cake will fly down and use the sonic rainboom, and the explosion will distribute all of the salt evenly. From several miles up, it will have a dispersal radius of two hundred square miles once it finally falls to the ground. When their irrigation system turns on to water the crops overnight, the salt will dissolve into the soil. Poisoning all of their crops will take about twenty trips, perhaps more, but as long as we do it at night, fly high, and avoid detection, we’ll have minimal losses. If we get the salt concentration high enough, nothing will grow there,” said Featherweight.
“How are you even getting all this salt?” asked Dumb Bell.
Featherweight smiled. “That’s one of the perks of managing a desalination plant in Las Pegasus. The city is in an arid climate, and we don’t have enough freshwater to meet the city’s needs. So, we fly up huge tanks of saltwater from the ocean and desalinate it, turning it into freshwater. But that leaves us with a byproduct: sea salt. We sell some of it to factories that make salt licks, table salt, or potato chips, but we have a lot left over. Usually, we just dump it back into the ocean. But now it’s coming here instead, so that we have enough salt to poison the crops.”
The crowd applauded at Featherweight’s plan.
Canterlot, July 2025
King Blueblood tapped his hoof on the concrete floor of his top-secret bunker as he sat at the new conference room, deep underground. He sighed as he looked at the clock on the metal-plated wall. It was almost five minutes to go until the meeting was supposed to start. Didn’t his ministers know that coming in at the last second was tacky?
He shook his head, hoping his ministers would come to give him some good news. The past few months had brought nothing but disappointment. First, Flim and Flam had died. Then, Emperor Zaporizhia demanded a hundred more warplanes that Canterlot’s factories were incapable of producing; they were already at peak capacity. Finally, the crops had been sabotaged, first in Appleloosa, then Ponyville, and then the Flatlands. He only hoped that the attacks weren’t as successful as he feared, but had been in the dark without an agricultural minister to even tell him.
The unicorn race depends on the strength of our defenses, army, and leaders, Blueblood thought. But all my ministers are running late!
Finally, the blast doors lit up green with magic as one of the guards opened it. In stepped Fancy Pants.
“Ah, Fancy Pants! Good to see that at least one of my ministers understands punctuality,” said Blueblood, smiling. “Please, take a seat.”
Fancy Pants smiled back, sitting down in the chair next to Blueblood. “Yes, and I would have been here even sooner, but your security is rather strict. They kept asking me questions to ensure I wasn’t a changeling.”
Blueblood chuckled. “After the attempts on my life by RISK, I’m not taking any chances, so we’re meeting in this bunker.”
Fancy Pants nodded.
“Speaking of,” said Bluebood, “I’ve named a new agricultural minister to replace Flam. She seems promising, but she is brand new, so I’m not willing to have her be third in line for the presidency. She’ll go at the end of the line, while you’ll still be second, behind Trixie. But you may actually be moved up to first sometime in the next few months, even in front of Trixie.”
Fancy Pants’ heart skipped a beat, but he didn’t show it. Instead, he chuckled. “Is it because Trixie is late?” he joked.
Blueblood sighed. “I suppose you could say that, yes, but I must discuss that with her privately. You and I will speak no more of it until the time comes.”
The bunker door opened again, and in walked General Top Brass and Trixie Lulamoon. They were joined by a new unicorn mare. She was in her early thirties and had a very light lime-colored coat, almost white. Her mane was amber and brown-striped, and her eyes were grass green. Her cutie mark was a picture of a half-eaten peach. The ponies all sat down around the table.
“Thank you all for coming,” said Blueblood, his smile and straight face hiding the bundle of frayed nerves within. “I apologize if my security made you tardy; they’re just trying to do their jobs.”
The ministers all silently nodded.
“Today’s meeting is about the group of pegasi, led by teenage pegasus Pound Cake, which has poisoned our fields with salt. Princess Sparkle claims to have no knowledge or any control over this, but since her troops have attacked our farms before, it wouldn’t surprise me if she was involved. General Top Brass tells me that they’ve dodged our military defenses. We’ve covered some of the farmland with force-fields to protect the crops from falling salt, but we only have enough unicorns to cover a small amount of land. Our meeting today is to find where we stand as a country, before taking action to stop the genocide of our race by starvation.
“Now, before we begin, introductions are in order. Ever since the tragic deaths of our Economic and Agricultural ministers Flim and Flam, the council has been short two ministers. After a long search through many applicants, I have appointed Mrs. Peachy Pitt as our new Minister of Agriculture.”
“Hello, everypony,” said Peachy Pitt, a smile crossing her face. “Glad to be here.”
“Please tell the group a bit about yourself,” said Blueblood.
“Sure. I’m from Ponyville originally; I lived there most of my life. I got my bachelors’ in agriculture with a minor in business from the University of Neighbraska. I have a successful career in farm management and agribusiness, helping earth ponies in Ponyville to plan irrigation lines, rotate crops, and genetically modify crops for higher yields. I worked for a big agribusiness firm in Manehattan in my twenties, but went back to Ponyville since I liked the small town better. Less traffic, nicer ponies.
“I’ve always loved being a unicorn, and love magic as much as I love farming. I don’t hate earth ponies, though; in fact, a lot of my relatives are earth ponies. My clients in Ponyville were all earth ponies. I just think that each race deserves its own nation if it wants to set its own course. The pegasi, crystal ponies, zebras, and changelings all have their own countries, so why not unicorns? It’s only fair.”
The group nodded.
Peachy Pitt sighed. “Despite my tolerance, I faced a lot of prejudice and racist remarks from earth ponies who thought that just because I was a unicorn, I had no business being in the ‘earth pony job’ of farming. I had to have special permission just to get into U of N’s agriculture program, and my professors were always dismissive of me, though my grades proved them wrong. Then, back in Ponyville, Mayor Mare denied me a contract to manage the Running of the Leaves, instead giving it to an earth pony farmer with no degree. Discrimination surely played a role.”
The group shook their heads. Fancy Pants had to keep from chuckling at the irony, given the Second Kingdom’s treatment of earth ponies in Ponyville. Hate begets hate, he thought.
Peachy Pitt concluded, “So when the Second Kingdom liberated Ponyville from the princesses, I saw an opportunity to do what I had always wanted to: manage agriculture on a giant scale, to be judged on my talents instead of my race. I applied for this job, and I’m happy I got it over every other unicorn applicant, and I know that I’m the right pony. Once you see my work, I think you’ll agree. Thank you.”
The ministers and Blueblood clapped.
“And thank you for giving your talents to the unicorn race,” said Blueblood. “I apologize that you’ve come aboard at such a hard time, as our crops are under siege by a rogue group of pegasi. Now I understand that you are new here, and that you might not have an understanding of how we operate...”
“Way ahead of you. I’ve been doing research and calculations since last week,” said Peachy Pitt, grinning. Her horn lit up and projected many line graphs, pie graphs, and bar graphs onto the bunker wall behind them.
Peachy Pitt explained the graphs.
“The Second Kingdom has six million residents: five million in Canterlot and one million in Mareicopa. At minimum, each adult pony needs 2,500 calories a day to live. Ideally, they should eat a balanced diet of fruit and vegetables as well as grains. Per year, the Second Kingdom needs to grow about five and a half trillion calories worth of food to stay afloat.”
The other ministers blinked. Peachy Pitt chuckled. “That seems like a lot, but it really isn’t. In fact, until this year, we have been meeting our food needs, with nopony dying of starvation. Granted, there were rations, and a higher rate of nutritional deficiency diseases like scurvy, but it’s always been workable. That’s because we’ve farmed 1.3 million acres, and each acre of wheat yields 3.5 million calories, giving us four and a half trillion. Add in the apples of Appleloosa and Ponyville and the winter lettuce of Mareicopa, and that gave us another trillion, to bring us to the needed five and a half trillion.”
The ministers nodded.
“But since last month, a quarter of the flatlands has been made barren due to salt poisoning,” she said, pointing to a pie chart. “Given that, you can easily see that we won’t be able to feed everypony. They’ll either starve, or flee to Equestria to find food.”
Blueblood blinked. Fancy Pants shook his head. Trixie simply stared at the ceiling.
“The pegasi will continue their attack until we stop them, or until all the crops are dead. This line graph shows the number of ponies who will eventually starve or become famine refugees, if the attacks continue at the rate they’ve been going. For every month it goes on, we will eventually lose one million ponies. By this winter, the SK population will taper off at about one million ponies, including our army as well as others who would refuse to evacuate or be unable to. They’d live off of the limited food that we can grow under the force-fields, or imports we can sneak past Equestria from the Zebra Empire or Cloudsdale.”
The ministers were silent for several minutes. Peachy Pitt remained silent, too, until finally saying, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but at least now you know just how bad it really is. Here is the good news, though: we might have a military solution. If we can capture some more of Equestria’s farmland, such as in Neighbraska, Manesas, or Whinnsylvania, then we can live off of that food and be just fine. Equestria grows far more food than they eat. But I’m not the general here.”
Blueblood and the ministers turned towards General Top Brass, but he shook his head.
“We’ve been dug into trenches behind solid front lines that might budge a meter a week if we’re lucky,” said Top Brass. “The second that our guys go out into no-mane’s-land, they get blown to bits. We do the same to their guys if they try to cross, so at least we’re holding our own lines. It’s been this way for a year, with the exception of Appleloosa, but that town was the last easy, undefended pickings. The Equestrians have fortified their front lines and moved in far more forces than we can overwhelm. The current Second Kingdom Armed Forces number around 100,000, but Equestria has 500,000. It’s only been by magical supremacy and the zebras’ campaign in the west that we’ve held them off. We can’t take more farmland without more troops or some other breakthrough.
“As for Zaporizhia’s siege on Tall Tale and Vanhoover, those cities have somehow managed to hold, despite his saboteurs and bombing campaign. And now, he’s demanding we give him more of our limited warplanes for some extermination run he wants to do against the griffons. And of course, we can’t pull that moon trick again that we did with Cloudsdale, since the Equestrians have had time to train their own telekinetic unicorns to counteract it.”
King Blueblood shook his head. “We must find a magical solution. Minister Lulamoon, surely you have a promising lead for new magic spells?”
Trixie smiled. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I am busy studying intangibility magic, which would allow a pony to become like a phantom. He could walk straight over a minefield, or walk right into enemy trenches, all without being harmed. It would radically alter the nature of warfare, and we are close to a breakthrough any day now!”
Trixie’s words lingered in the air for a few moments like a vile stench as Blueblood sighed. She blinked, looking at him puzzlingly. But he did not speak to her; rather, he turned to Fancy Pants, ignoring Trixie.
“How goes the situation among our citizenry, Fancy Pants? Any talk of revolts or dissatisfaction? What about Mareicopa?”
Fancy Pants put his reading glasses over his eyes, and read from a sheet of paper. “You’ll be pleased to know that I have good news on that front. My poll shows that 52% of Canterlot’s unicorns are still approve of you as their leader, and over 70% express pride in the Second Kingdom. Though that will surely go down if the famines get as bad as Peachy Pitt has predicted.
“As for Mareicopa, we have arrested dozens of partisan ponies planning sabotage acts against strategic targets. Most of them are earth ponies or pegasi, of whom half a million still live in the city and have yet to self-relocate. But the good news is that enlistment to the SKAF among Mareicopa unicorns is up. The daily pro-unicorn pep rallies in the town square are getting bigger, as more and more unicorns in former Equestria become race-conscious and learn unicorn pride, like Peachy Pitt here.”
“You know it!” said Peachy Pitt, smiling.
Fancy Pants continued, “We’re holding free remedial magic classes for unicorns of all ages, to make up for the years of paltry public education under Celestia and Luna. Many unicorns in Mareicopa are shocked to discover the diverse spells they can cast with only a few weeks of dedicated training. As I remind the students, the princesses never allowed such instruction in Equestrian public schools due to their fear of a magically-competent unicorn populace.”
Fancy Pants set down his paper.
Blueblood nodded and said, “The partisans in Mareicopa are discouraging, since we could have avoided that by removing the earth ponies and pegasi when we took that city, as I wanted. But right now, we have larger issues to focus on than purifying the city. Good work on the enlistment and pep rallies, Fancy Pants. I see you’re molding Mareicopa into another proud unicorn city like Canterlot, just as you promised. I’m glad that I can count on at least one of my ministers to follow through on his word.”
Trixie jolted ever so slightly in her chair.
“This meeting is adjourned,” Blueblood concluded. “I’ll be discussing further strategies with General Top Brass separately as to how we can put a military stop to the pegasi. At our next meeting on Friday, we will implement these strategies. Good day.”
The ministers got out of their chairs, pushing them in, and filed one by one towards the door. Trixie breathed a deep sigh as she stood up, but her heart skipped a beat when Blueblood spoke.
“Trixie, please see me in my office.”
Like his office above ground, King Blueblood’s bunker office was absolutely exquisite. An old grandfather clock hung up on the wall, crafted in Stirrup by artisan clockmakers. A fine rug covered up the concrete floor, with intricate designs of crimson, saffron, and ochre patterns. A portrait of Blueblood hung from the wall. He was smiling, his golden hair was flowing, and he held a gorgeous rose in his teeth. His desk was large and mahogany, with monogrammed pens sitting atop it.
Blueblood sat behind the desk on a swiveling leather chair. Trixie sat on a small, wooden chair in front of the desk.
“We need to discuss your work, Miss Lulamoon,” said Blueblood. “Now, as you said today, you’re working on studying intangibility magic, yes?”
“Yes,” said Trixie. “Very soon, we hope to find out exactly how to do it.”
“Of course, ‘soon,’” said Blueblood, sighing. He buried his face in his hooves and then looked back up at Trixie once more. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s always ‘soon’ with you, Trixie. It’s never today or tomorrow or the fifth of next month; it’s far off in the future. It’s some nebulous, distant thing that never comes. Our kingdom is in trouble, and I need to know that I have competent, capable ponies supporting me. General Top Brass captured Mareicopa and has defended our current front lines successfully, even facing a five-to-one disadvantage. Fancy Pants has kept me popular. Flim and Flam were incompetent drunks, but Peachy Pitt at least has given me cold, hard facts. But you? You have a productivity problem, Miss Lulamoon.”
She flinched.
Blueblood continued, “You’ve been my Magical Research Minister for five years, and all that you have to show for it have been buffalo lightning cannons. These were hard to manufacture on a large scale. Lightning is also a useless way to take out someone in an underground trench. And those killer wasps are impractical and indiscriminate. So, please, name one practical advancement that you have made in the last five years that has given our army any sort of lasting edge.”
“Uh… well…” Trixie stammered. “Nothing yet, but these things take time! And we’re really close to intangibility. That’s huge. We broke the subject and got her to cooperate; now we’re just waiting to get the results back. I don’t know when exactly, but it will be—”
Blueblood slammed his hoof on the table. “If you say ‘soon’ to me one more time, I will terminate you, Miss Lulamoon! Give me an exact, fixed date when it will be done. I’m tired of your obfuscation and lack of results. It’s time to hold you accountable!”
Trixie gazed to the floor and gulped. Blueblood had finally snapped about her lack of results. She had dreaded this day. But what could she do?
“I’ll have it done…” she started.
“Yes?” Blueblood asked, tapping his hoof on the ground.
“...By October thirt—”
“It’ll be too late by then. Sooner, please.”
“—September. I’ll have it done by September 15th,” said Trixie.
Blueblood’s eyes narrowed. “More specific, please.”
Trixie nodded. “After I find out exactly how the subject does it, I will present you with instructions on how our soldiers, too, can cast the intangibility spell.”
“Or what?” asked Blueblood.
Trixie gazed to the floor. “Or I’ll resign my post.”
Blueblood smiled. “There. That’s more like it! A specific, measurable, concrete goal. You will give me instructions as to how our soldiers can cast the intangibility spell by September 15th, or you will resign your post, and I’ll replace you with somepony more capable. Thank you, Trixie.”
Blueblood extended a hoof, and Trixie shook it. Then, she got to her hooves, turned around, and headed for the door.
“Oh, and one more thing I want you to do while you’re with Miss Cake, Trixie,” said Blueblood.
Pumpkin Cake sat inside of the observation room, a book held in her magic as her eyes scanned across the page. It was a detective dime novel: not the best read, but something to keep her entertained.
Ever since Pumpkin Cake had first cast the intangibility spell on the water tank, Trixie and Stekton’s treatment of her had entirely changed. They had started giving her small creature comforts like books to read, dandelion sandwiches, and an actual bed to sleep on instead of the floor. They even gave her ice cream one time. The best part was, they had kept the anti-magic field off, so Pumpkin now could cast magic whenever she wanted, though they warned her that she was still constantly monitored and any attempts to escape would result in them revoking her privileges.
Pumpkin was sure that they were trying to make her feel at ease so that she would get complacent and be more cooperative. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book. In fact, it was even in the book that she was reading, where Detective Cold Case started schmoozing the suspect until he sang like a birdie and gave up his accomplices. Trixie and Stekton had even pulled the good cop, bad cop routine, with Stekton donning the role of objective, calculating scientist who would always keep a stone cold face and would never refer to Pumpkin by name (it was always ‘the subject’), while Trixie was a bit more polite, smiling and referring to her as ‘Miss Cake.’
Their methods of studying her had changed, too. Rather than getting her to cast the spell on a sensor, they instead made her wear a bizarre-looking metal helmet with wires and lights on it, to scan her brain. She tried wrenching it off with telekinesis, but the lock was too strong. Teleportation wouldn’t work since the helmet would end up just teleporting along with her. She wanted to phase it off, but she realized that doing this may actually give them data.
There was always a delay between her or any other unicorn deciding to cast any spell and then actually doing it. If certain areas of her brain lit up before the helmet was off, and the helmet detected it, then they would get data. But of course, they used the water tank trick again in short order, so they must have gotten some data from the helmet. She wasn’t sure how much, but wanted to make it sure it was as little data as possible, so she endured the extreme thirst when she had to. Which thankfully, was only about once a week. Otherwise, they gave her all the water she wanted and didn’t make her wear the helmet.
As for her self-taught studies in magic, Pumpkin had come up mostly empty-horned. She’d tried energy beams, but had cast little more than a minor ball of light that bounced off the walls until petering out. She’d have tried making it stronger, but didn’t want to make too much noise, lest the observers catch onto what she was doing. Training hypnosis and mind control spells wouldn’t work, since she didn’t have anypony to try them on.
So Pumpkin put the most time into learning shape-shifting spells, since those only required herself to train on. After all, if she could sneak out during the night disguised as a small critter, she might be able to scamper past the security guards in the hall. Unfortunately, all she had come up with was a spell that could change her coat and mane color. She had actually first learned it quite by accident a week prior, and used it at a bad time, since the first time she did it, Trixie Lulamoon had been secretly watching through the window.
“Looks like somepony is tired of being a redhead,” said Trixie over the loudspeaker, making Pumpkin jolt. “You know, I used a hair color change spell on a pony once. Turned her hair green, and she wailed like a baby. But why the new hair? You had such a nice coat and mane before, Miss Cake.”
“Oh, uh…” the blue-coated Pumpkin stammered, “Just liked a change.”
Trixie chuckled. “Perhaps somepony is developing Stockhorse syndrome and is imitating yours truly. I’m quite flattered. Blue is such a lovely color.”
Pumpkin shuddered in disgust at the idea of resembling Trixie, and instantly changed back to her regular coloring. After that, she made sure that she only attempted shape-shifting spells at night when they dimmed the lights.
“Hey, Pumpkin Cake. Say cheese. Mmm… cheese...”
Startled, she glanced up from the dime novel over at Snails, who stood with a camera. Her eyes were blinded by the sudden burst of the flashbulb, as out popped a photograph of her.
She raised an eyebrow. “What’s the picture for?”
Snails chuckled. “Oh, you know. Documentation.”
He rushed out the security door.
Pumpkin Cake set down the book. She had been here for months and they had never taken any pictures of her before. Why would they start now?
Were they indeed putting it in their file, or was that a lie? Perhaps they would show it to somepony, but who wanted to see a picture of Pumpkin? Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Twilight Sparkle already knew what she looked like. Maybe Pound Cake would want to see it to know she was still alive, but Pound Cake was dead.
Or is he? she thought. Perhaps Trixie had been lying to break her spirits, and Pound was still out there. But why would Trixie be telling him about her? Why tell him that they had her, so that he could just try to rescue her? It didn’t make any sense. It was better for them if he thought she was dead, so that he wouldn’t cause trouble.
Get Detective Cold Case on it, she thought.
“And then… boom! Salt everywhere! It’s like a pretzel down there now. We’ve probably killed half of their crops, and we won’t stop ‘til they give up!”
Applejack, Big Macintosh, and Granny Smith all hooted and hollered as Pound Cake finished up his story. Aunt and Uncle Orange both rolled their eyes at the unrefined display of table etiquette.
“Quite a feat,” said Uncle Orange, an orange-coated earth pony with a green, well-groomed mane. He motioned for his waiter, a tuxedoed unicorn with a bow-tie, to come refill his wine glass.
“Indeed,” said Aunt Orange, a bejeweled earth mare with a fancy orange hairdo. She trailed off for a few seconds before continuing. “You know, salt poisoning is quite a problem for our orange groves down in Tallahorsey. We lost five million bits after the big hurricanes last summer, so now, we’ve genetically modified the species to be salt-resistant.”
“Salt is probably even worse for wheat since it grows inland, and the species isn’t acclimatized to it,” said Uncle Orange. “Though with our wheat plantations in Manesas, we’re more worried about early freezes than salt.”
Pound Cake chuckled. “Too bad most of the pegasi are in the Cloud Confederacy now. Our weather was nicer when Cloudsdale did it. But we’ll bring them back to Equestria soon.”
Aunt Orange said, “This war has made Orange Incorporated lose a fair deal of money. It was much better when the Second Kingdom and Equestria were at peace.”
Pound scoffed. “It was better when the Second Kingdom didn’t exist at all, and Canterlot was part of Equestria. But soon they’ll be back with us, too.”
“Got that right,” said Applejack.
There were a few moments of silence. Then, Uncle Orange said, “Let us not talk politics at the table; it isn’t proper dinnertime discussion.”
“Hear hear,” said Aunt Orange.
Pound Cake raised an eyebrow. He had eaten at the Oranges’ penthouse a few times since the Apple Family had been staying with them, but they’d never shushed him like that before. But as a guest in their home, he was respectful. The awkward silence was soon broken, as there was a knock at the door.
“Who is it, Winston?” asked Uncle Orange.
The tuxedoed unicorn butler walked to the door, gazed through the peephole, and turned back.
“A grey pegasus with odd eyes, sir,” Winston said in a refined Trottish accent.
“Derpy the mailmare,” said Pound Cake.
“She may enter,” said Aunt Orange. The butler’s horn lit up, and in walked Derpy Hooves.
“Oh, hey, Pound Cake. Took me a while to find you!” Derpy exclaimed. She pulled a plain white envelope from her saddlebag.
Pound raised an eyebrow as he took it in his hoof. “Who is this from?”
“King Blueblood. He told me to give it to you directly. Paid me pretty well to rush deliver it to you, too.”
Pound Cake chuckled. “Blueblood trusts you with his mail?”
Derpy grinned. “I’ve told you, Pound Cake; I’m neutral in the war. Everypony trusts me! When I’m not delivering the mail, I’m a diplomatic messenger between Twilight and Blueblood.”
“Well you’re the best messenger we know,” said Applejack, smiling.
“If I wanted to get bad news, it would be from you,” said Granny Smith.
“Eeyup,” said Big Macintosh.
“Now wait a minute, Derpy,” said Pound Cake. “This letter isn’t, like, full of ricin or anthrax, is it?”
Derpy chuckled. “Blue thought you’d suspect poison, so he dictated the letter to me and had me write it on my own stationery and put it in my own envelope. They’ve never left my hooves or my sight.”
“And you ain’t a changelin’?” asked Granny Smith, her eyes leery.
“The changelings are neutral in the war, too. But just in case, ask me something that only I would know,” Derpy suggested.
“I got it,” said Applejack. “What’s the biggest favor anypony has ever done for you?”
Without hesitation, Derpy said, “You, Applejack, when you gave your prize money to fix the town hall that I wrecked. I was so worried that I would have to pay for the damage all by myself, but you really stepped up at that rodeo. I watched the whole thing. Great performance! Oh, and so was the stallion in the ring next to you at the same time, but you were better.”
Her eyes gazed both to the left and right.
“I can tell who’s a liar and who ain’t, and that’s honest-to-goodness the real Derpy!” said Applejack.
“I guess I can open the letter, then,” said Pound Cake. “Let’s see what Blueblood has to say. I’ll bet he’s begging for mercy!”
He used one of the feathers on his wing tip as a letter opener, breaking the seal. He turned the envelope upside-down, and the contents fell onto the table.
There was a single, brief note inside, and it said, “We have Pumpkin Cake. No more salt, or she dies.”
Attached was a photograph of a rather fearful-looking Pumpkin Cake, her pupils wide as she sat on a bed with a book held in her magic. Pound Cake blinked. The Apple family’s jaws dropped.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw it, either,” said Derpy. “But I think he’s serious, Pound Cake. He sure sounded serious when he said it.”
“Forgery!” Granny Smith cried, pointing her hoof at the photograph.
“I’ve seen many business documents and photographs at Orange Incorporated, and this one appears genuine,” said Uncle Orange. Aunt Orange nodded.
Pound Cake took the photograph in his hooves, examining it closely. He shook his head.
“This doesn’t make any sense to me, though. I looked for Pumpkin Cake for weeks. You guys helped,” he said, looking at Applejack and Big Macintosh, who nodded. “I’m sure she died in the Siege of Appleloosa. If she had been in the desert, we would have found her.”
“Maybe she got taken as a PO dubya,” said Applejack.
“But how, though? How could they have captured her alive, without her escaping with magic?” asked Pound.
“Maybe they cut off her horn,” said Derpy.
“But she’s using magic in the picture, right here!” Pound Cake exclaimed, pointing at the floating book in front of Pumpkin.
“Oh,” said Derpy, blushing. “I forgot about that.”
“It sure is fishy,” said Granny Smith.
“Why would they have captured her, anyway? To get her to farm again? To hold for ransom against me? But then how, if she can use magic? This makes no damn sense!” Pound Cake shouted, slamming his hoof against the table. Aunt and Uncle Orange jolted.
A few seconds later, Aunt Orange said, “You’re assuming that she was captured, but perhaps she switched sides voluntarily. I never met the girl, so I don’t know her politics, but maybe she’s willingly working for Blueblood now. She may not even know she’s a hostage. Why would a captive have books to read and a nice bed to sleep on?”
Pound Cake put his chin on his hoof. “Hmm. Pumpkin did sometimes complain about unicorns being treated like garbage in Appleloosa, but they kinda were treated like garbage. Pumpkin badmouthed Princess Twilight sometimes, but that doesn’t make her a traitor. I don’t agree with Twilight 100%, either; look at Hollow Shades. And for all the bad things she had to say about Equestria, she had twice as much to say against the Second Kingdom. She was enslaved by them once, you know.”
“And look at her face in the picture. That’s a look of horror and defeat if ever I saw it,” said Applejack, pointing at Pumpkin’s wide eyes and shocked face. “She ain’t no turncoat.”
“So many different idears about this,” said Granny Smith.
Pound looked over at Derpy. “Please tell me that Blueblood said more than what’s in the note, Derpy. We need more to work with.”
Derpy shrugged. “Nope, that was all he told me. Pretty cryptic.”
“Hmm,” said Applejack. “Maybe they’re lyin’ and she ain’t with them at all. Maybe she’s livin’ in an apartment someplace, and they just snapped a picture of her through the window of wherever she’s stayin’. But they’ll shoot more than just a picture next time. I’ll bet they got snipers trained on her.”
Pound Cake shook his head. “If she’s still alive and walking free, why hasn’t she come to find me, or at least written me a letter? I mean, I’m famous now, so it’s not like I’m hard to find. She’s probably seen all of the newspaper reports about me, unless she’s living under a rock, or underground.”
“But she is,” said Big Macintosh.
They all looked over at him, puzzled.
He pointed with his hoof towards the concrete wall in the background. Then, he pointed towards the concrete floor under the bed.
“Bomb shelter,” he clarified.
Pound Cake’s jaw dropped. Then, he smiled. “Of course! They captured her to study her! Trixie’s the magic research minister, right? And the intangibility spell is so rare, it’s like the sonic rainboom of magic. So Trixie must’ve found a way to capture Pumpkin, then they dropped her into some bomb shelter, magic-proofed the exits, and now they’re seeing how she casts the spell so they can learn it themselves! Which they haven’t yet, or they would’ve gained some major ground in the war.”
“That’s a tall tale if ever I heard one,” said Granny Smith, rolling her eyes.
Applejack looked around the room at the ponies seated around the table and said, “Well, can any of y’all think of a better explanation?”
Nopony spoke.
Pound Cake chuckled. “You know what this means, right? They’re bluffing! They won’t kill the golden goose. I mean, if they do, then I’ll just keep salting the crops anyway, so they have nothing to gain by killing her, because it won’t stop me. But they have to keep her alive and keep studying her in case they learn that spell.”
“If that is indeed what they’re doing, which it very well may not be,” said Aunt Orange.
“What else could it be? We ruled out defection. Even if she’s on their side, they still wouldn’t kill her, because she knows that spell,” said Pound.
Aunt Orange remained silent.
“Beats me, too,” said Derpy, her characteristic grin disappearing for a few seconds. “But Blueblood said I should report back. I just hope that for your sake, you’re right, or your sister could die.”
“Family first,” said Big Macintosh.
Pound shook his head. “I know I’m right. He’s bluffing, and she’s not in danger. Even if she was, she could hold her own. Good bye, Derpy. Tell Blueblood to get bent. The next letter from him had better have a white flag in it.”
Derpy nodded as she turned back around to deliver the news back to Blueblood.
Aunt and Uncle Orange walked into the pitch-black master bedroom of their penthouse, as the Apples and Pound Cake were in the dining room eating dessert. The Oranges shut the door behind them, speaking into the darkness.
“He didn’t fall for it,” said Aunt Orange.
“He saw right through Blueblood’s ruse,” said Uncle Orange.
“What? But how?”
“You should have seen it. He and the Apples guessed correctly from little details in the photograph, along with logical deduction into Blueblood’s motivations, and then sent the mailmare on her way,” said Aunt Orange.
“Heh. Smart kid.”
Uncle Orange shook his head. “Yes, Pound Cake is both intelligent and reckless: a dangerous combination. I would think that, of all things, the love of his own sister would make him stop. How would he have known for certain that he was right about Miss Cake being a valuable test subject that they’d never kill? He wouldn’t. Indeed, he just so happens to be correct, but he didn’t know for sure. Even the slightest lingering doubt would stop any normal pony from taking an action that could potentially kill his own twin sister, the country be damned.”
“Maybe Pound’s not a normal pony.”
“You should hear him. His patriotism is sickeningly strong,” Aunt Orange scoffed. “Your uncle and I have each other, our family, and our business. All three are now in danger from Pound Cake’s wanton destruction of the Flatlands.”
“Well then, Auntie,” said Peachy Pitt, her smiling face finally visible as her horn lit up, “we’ll just have to try harsher measures to stop him.”
This is a picture of Peachy Pitt. She appears in the episode "Pinkie Pride."
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I have a theory, when blueblood hears that Pound think he is bluffing he will ask Trixie to use the coat changing spell on a dead mare unicorn to make it look like that Pumpkin was killed.
5336467 That would change nothing. He would gain nothing from that because his blackmail would be non-existent and it would actually make Pound's attacks on them even worse.
What a twist! Looks like assassinating Flim & Flam actually did the Second Kingdom a service by allowing a much more competent pony rise to prominence... Nice job breaking it, hero(es)...
What a great chapter. First, I love that Dumbbell and Hoops are in the loyalists, it makes the scene feel more gritty and nuanced than if it was just Rainbow and her buddies. I also love all the defenses the unicorns have protecting their crops, and Featherweight's ingenious solution.
Everything about that meeting with Blueblood's cabinet was awesome. Peachy Pitt has a great background, and the stuff she explains about food and famine makes sense. This feels like late 1943 Germany, but with food replacing oil as the critical shortage. The trenches freezing in place makes a lot of sense, clearly there are no pony Pattons. That scene wher Blueblood asked Trixie for progress and everypony just rolled their eyes was hilarious.
I'm ashamed to say this, but when Blueblood threatened to terminate Trixie, I actually felt bad. I know she's a total monster in this story, but I couldn't help thinking of this: iambrony.dget.cc/mlp/gif/191921__UNOPT__safe_animated_trixie_sad_artist-pinkkirbz.gif
glad she is just getting fired. Was Blueblood's portrait based on the fantasy Rarity had of him in Ticket Master?
The final scene with Pound and the Apples was interesting. Pound processes that his sister is alive and a hostage remarkably quickly, though he is able to make a lot of guesses based on stuff in the photo. (Trixie can't even take a proof-of-life right)! From what Peachy said, even if Pound stopped today, they've passed the threshold for a major famine anyway, without a massive victory the 2nd Kingdom will be forced to surrender come winter.
It's a cool twist that Peachy is related to the Oranges, I knew she had to have earth pony blood. Why the Oranges are willing to help her is less clear, they're also related to the Apples.
Finally, I'm surprised the 2nd Kingdom doesn't just sue for peace, at least temporarily, recognizing existing territories and importing foods from Equestria.
I think the Oranges want to make their own earth pony nation, the reason why I would think that is because what other reasons why the Oranges would be helping the Second Kingdom. The only other reason why I think is because maybe they do not like Twilight 's leadership. Or maybe the second kingdom is giving them bits.
5338262
Glad you like the chapter! You are correct that there aren't any pony Pattons. This is the first major pony-versus-pony war that Equestria has ever fought, at least in modern times with modern weaponry. They've fought minor skirmishes with changelings and dragons before, and maybe given token support to a few conflicts in Stirrup, but never anything like this. All of the generals are pretty new at what they're doing.
I kind of feel bad for Trixie, too, but then I remember that a lot of the bad things that happen to her, she brings on herself. In the show, she always makes these grand, boastful claims like being the "most magical unicorn ever" or having "the best magic amulet ever" but can never live up to those claims. In this story, she claims she will discover this great new magic, but it turns out to be a lot harder than she thinks. If Trixie only just understood her own limitations and wasn't afraid to admit them, she'd get farther.
And yes, the portrait on the wall is of this. http://peachspices.deviantart.com/art/Prince-Blueblood-Gala-227552672 Blueblood just seems like the type who's vain enough to have a self-portrait hanging in his own office. Just like Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica!
As for your questions about the Oranges, and your question as to why there hasn't been a truce yet, that will be answered in the next chapter.
5338418
Hmm, good guesses, and we'll find out in the next chapter.
Not to criticize, but is there an end to this? So far, nothing is getting done and if both sides become pals again, they will destroy themselves in the progress. I also don't like the idea of Celestia being bigoted against unicorns. There has to be a better reason.
Poor Twilight, she will lose all of her friends if this keeps up.
5339009 Your comments are quite welcome and encouraged. Criticism is the only way that I will grow as an author, so please feel free to tear the story a new one if you so desire.
Regarding the length of the story:
I actually have the entire plot planned out from start to finish, and have had it all planned since I started writing it. Believe it or not, we're about three-quarters of the way there in terms of major events that I want to have happen. 3/4 of the major events have already happened. In total, I plan on having fewer than fifty chapters in this story. I, too, don't like that Brother Against Sister has gone on so long, and planned it to be shorter from the start, but when I actually set out and write the story it comes out longer than I imagined it would.
Don't worry, it does eventually have an end.
For instance, before I started writing the scenes in Chapter 33: Hostage, I budgeted about 6,000 words for it. At the end, though, I ended up with over 9,000 words. (Thanks, Vegeta!), But then I went back and I trimmed it down to its present length. And I cut a *lot* out, too. But what you see in this chapter is what I truly believe that I need to tell the story. There might be a little fluff in there, but I scrubbed the chapter about five times before posting it, removing as much as I could each time without taking away from the story.
And then other chapters, such as Chapter 27: The Spy Who Wasn't, were never even intended to exist! The entire plot line with Agent Sparkler was actually my response to one of my readers who kept asking me why Equestria hadn't tried to assassinate Blueblood yet. (His name is Bronywriter and you can see my back-and-forth with him all throughout the comments) But I modified my original blueprint to make it work, and thought Sparkler as a secret agent was a cool idea, so I added it in.
Regarding Celestia and unicorns:
Princess Celestia doesn't hate unicorns and she's not a bigot. She simply placed the most scrutiny on unicorns because they had the potential to cause the most trouble. I mean, look at Sombra. He's a single unicorn who took over a whole empire by himself. Look at Trixie who is a single unicorn with an amulet who took over Ponyville. Look at when Twilight panicked and cast the want-it-need-it spell and threw the whole town into chaos. So Celestia passed laws meant to restrict the number of ponies who could cast such dangerous magic, such as locking certain spells in the Canterlot archives, or taking over magical education and limiting it to a few schools like her school for gifted unicorns. Celestia felt that, given the potential for destruction, these were reasonable laws. Imagine if there were a bunch of Sombras running around? It would be a disaster for Equestria.
This story has a prequel called The Trouble With Unicorns which delves a bit more into Celestia's reasoning behind her magic restriction laws. I have actually had several readers of that story agree with her rationale, likening it to gun control laws, for instance. TTWU also details exactly how Blueblood carved the Second Kingdom out from Canterlot, and goes into some of the other grievances that the unicorns had that made them want to secede, such as the high taxes that Canterlot paid relative to the rest of the country.
Regarding Twilight Sparkle
Twilight Sparkle had obviously been groomed from the start to eventually succeed Princess Celestia. I mean, ever since her birth, she was the princess' own personal student. But unfortunately, Celestia fell ill and died before she finished teaching Twilight Sparkle everything that she needed to know about being a good leader. So Twilight is quite green and still comparably young, and Luna was never really the best leader in that sense, so instead of trying to do everything herself, what does Twilight do? She gets assistants, just like Spike, except ones who she can delegate more tasks to besides just cleaning. Every leader has a cabinet and close advisers, after all.
General Spitfire manages the military, Fluttershy is mentioned to be managing the public lands, and then she has the members of the Equestrian Economic Council to give her advice on the economy, like Jet Set, Upper Crust, and Filthy Rich. (There are others on that council who we have yet to see).
Unfortunately, these ponies might not always have Equestria's best interests in mind, and some of them are manipulating Twilight into doing the wrong things. But believe it or not, these are all based on real things that real governments, mainly the United States, have done. And Twilight Sparkle has a very utilitarian philosophy; she believes that it's okay for a few ponies to suffer as long as everybody else ends up better off. That's why she's willing to sign off on things like destroying the barn of unicorn children, using eminent domain in Hollow Shades, or interning the zebras. But you are very correct that her philosophy might come back to bite her. We already know she's lost Zecora and Pumpkin Cake as allies, for instance.
Pound Cake and the Equestrian Loyalists in Cloudsdale are probably her strongest allies at this point.
5339180
Yeah, you all made some good points. Now back to Celestia, I find it suspicious that she became ill all of the sudden...and suddenly made bad remarks against unicorns yet you said otherwise. Also, Discord became bad again?
I have a theory: someone poisoned Celestia in a plot for the civil war thing to happen. The reason for her sudden bigot ways is because she was delusional....or maybe someone dubbed the tapes. Twilight probably agree with her just because of her illness.
Some of my suspects could be Blueblood (some of his actions in the prequel, which I read BTW) as well as here are proof, especially when he decided to invaded Equestria. Or it could be someone else in his regime. It could be an unknown foe that wasn't seen for all we know!
Also, whose side is the Crystal Empire on? Equestria? The Second Kingdom? Or are they being neutral?
5339354 I'm glad you read the prequel! I don't have it marked as a prequel because it's not really required reading to understand Brother Against Sister; it just deepens your understanding of the history behind the Second Kingdom. Also, I've become a better writer since I wrote that story, and it's honestly not up to my standards nowadays. There's awkward phrasing, telly language, and unneeded sentences, to name a few problems of that story. I will go back and re-write it someday to be up to my current level.
You're right that Discord *definitely* deepened the divisions between Canterlot and the rest of Equestria on purpose. His actions were coldly calculated to do as much, since, well, that's what he does. It was intentional. Though whether or not he poisoned Celestia, we'll never know. Interesting theory, though, and I like it
The tape was deliberately edited by Discord to make Celestia sound racist, without being actually in context of what the conversation was about. The idea that the tape was a fake was floated by some of the unicorns, but by that point Blueblood saw all of the pieces fall into place, so to him, it wouldn't even have mattered if the tape was fake or if Celestia was a racist or not. It was bigger than her by that point.
The Crystal Empire is on Equestria's side, and has been contributing troops to the war effort. They just aren't mentioned very much in the story since their population is about three million whereas Equestria's is about thirty million, so their contribution to the war effort is minimal. But yeah, they know full well what it is to be ruled by a unicorn tyrant and don't want that to happen again, so they're more than happy to help out.
Good chapter, keep it up!
5135560
...As of right now.
Previously on "This review is brought to you by that one chap with the work ethic of a paraplegic sloth…" (That's Zero Punctation Reviews)
Well, fuck. I meant to get this out earlier, but you know just how powerful intentions are, right? Here's the part where I make my tardiness excuse that will convince all of no one, so let's just say that 3 weeks of the 8 weeks since OP were spent trying to fix my computer since I'm too ashamed to visit this website at my local library, 4 of 8 were spent bathing in delicious toffee and the last week of 8 was spent cleaning all that toffee out of my butthole - seriously, 0/10, would not recommend.
But, in between my toffee butthole sessions, I managed to read five more chapters of "Brother Against Sister", meaning I am now pretty familiar with ~27% of the story, but that's also 34,814 vaguely interesting words, so I fell pretty confident in my ability to finish up my critique, which is pretty much "CartsBeforeHorses is a pretty nice person who deserves nice things to be said to him about his story, but I don't really have any nice things to say to him about his story." I do genuinely feel bad about not liking it, but then again I am a slightly transgender-phobic murderer who spent the last five weeks bathing in toffee, so maybe taking my word on that isn't the best approach.
If you're new to this whole "Zero Punctuation" thing and are patiently waiting for me to back up my opinion with tangible, valid points and don't understand why I'm babbling on about toffee and don't understand why I'm typing so many run-on sentences and wondering if your girlfriend will ever find out about that time you watched gay porn, there are three reasons - firstly, she knows. Use private browsing, dipshit; secondly, making these reviews longer makes my balls feel big and; thirdly, the substance to my opinion was pretty much covered in OP.
Well, that's not completely true. What I have to truly add is thus: This is my least favorite kind of review to write. Yes, we all have fun with the butthole toffee, but the reality is that I really want to like "Brother Against Sister" but I just don't. Maybe this is the penance I deserve for all those people I murdered. While it does get better later, the biggest fault I can find in "Bro v. Ho" is that it fails to live up to its own title. I thought such a title suggested those two characters would be the central focus of the narrative, but they're just not.
You see, I thought Pound Cake would be hanging out with the Equestrian survivors that have the moral high ground and the initial audience support before circumstance, stressed wills and dwindling time and resources force them to make harsh, cold decision that gray the morality and suddenly the audience isn't so sure Equestria's the good guys anymore. And Pumpkin Cake would be captured by the Second Kingdom that are dicks and the audience hates them, but time goes on and they actually improve some facets of life, and they're clean and prosperous and have pet the dog moments, and Pumpkin Cake, who resisted initially, would actually start to see things their way and suddenly the audience isn't so sure Second Kingdom's the bad guys anymore. Then Pound and Pumpkin meet again and are too different to get along and have an epic three-part battle and the audience clasps its head in its hands because it's not sure who it wants to win.
And while certain parts of the narrative seem to be headed that direction, the story spends most of its runtime going on and on about a war I don't care about because I don't see how its consequences affect characters I care about - those characters being Twilight Sparkle, Spike, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Discord, Luna and Celestia, who are all suspiciously absent. I mean, I'm told about how this war thing is affecting people, but I never got to see it.
And all the POV characters I did see have enough personality traits between them for maybe one character and a wacky crime solving dog. I recall "Hungry" having a similar problem of TooManyPOVs date raping KeenFocusAndPacing, but I also recall not apologetically slamming "Hungry"'s face into the putrid mire of butthole metaphors, so what's different this time? Well, scale, I suppose. A well-meant prick on your finger is easy to over look, but when that well-meant prick of 34,814 words aims for your toffee filled butthole, ignore it you cannot.
So the final verdict is that "Bros v. Hos" has too much going on at the surface and didn't really flesh out the too much going during the 34,814 words that I read for me to really get into it. It's willy-shriveling size and the fact that what I read was written well over a year ago give me hope that it gets even better as it goes on, but I probably won't be reading any more of it. It bores me, but I don't hate it - if it cleaned up it's act and focused more on Pound and Pumpkin Cake (who were starting to get fleshed out and more intriguing) while leaving that nasty war business more of a background thing, then this review would've been nothing but lust filled drool in word form.
Well, that's the review then! A well-meaning, decently written and ambitious piece of fiction that failed me miserably. Read it if you want, I won't stop you. In fact, you'll probably have more fun with this than another fucking Octavia clopfic, and the author probably deserves more credit because of the aforementioned written-a-year-ago thing, but it didn't met my unreasonable standards so I pulled my little lever and watched it fall into the gaping pit of "Meh" right along side "Left for Friendship", "The Maze Runner", "Advent Children", the Obama Administration and the universe's response to my hopes and dreams. Well, I hope it was worth the wait, but keep in mind that disappointing my parents has never bothered me, and I've known them a lot longer than I've known you.
5360039 Thank you very much for reading my story and doing such an in-depth review of it. I apologize that you found it to be lackluster, and that it didn't live up to your expectations.
The first dozen or so chapters are mostly setup, and don't focus on Pound and Pumpkin as much as later chapters do, since they're not even ten years old yet. By the time they are teenagers, though, in chapters 15 and onwards, the story does focus a lot more heavily on them. Also, it focuses a lot less on the overall war going on elsewhere and does focus on what they are doing from their point of view, which is a specific battle in Appleloosa that they are in. At that point, they fight on the same side, and we get to see them develop their special talents. (that they will later use in the smack-down when they fight each other, that you correctly anticipated, rather easily since it's only the cover art, lol.)
The conflict between Pound and Pumpkin Cake will eventually happen, though most of the story is spent building up to it. In fact, I am not even there yet in the chapters that you see published. The conflict between the two of them will be the climax of the story and take up perhaps a quarter of the story's total length. False advertising? Maybe, but I'd like to think that when the time comes, it will indeed deliver in an unexpected way...
Perhaps your idea with Pumpkin joining the SK right from the start would have worked to more quickly deliver on the title of the story, though I wanted to take it in a bit of a different direction and keep people wondering if that was what would indeed happen. It does not, and she never fights for the Second Kingdom, but rather for a third column. I certainly think that my readers will be pleased with the twist that I have planned. I also expect that I will see people split on the issue with some rooting for Pound and others for Pumpkin, assuming that I do a good enough job of explaining the rationale behind each of twin and the side they join.
Though you are correct that I tend to spend a lot more time worldbuilding than most authors, and more than most readers would be willing to invest time into. The fact that this story is over 150K and doesn't even have 100 likes yet would sort of speak to that. Though, it might also speak to the fact that I have chosen characters to portray who aren't as popular as some others, like the Mane Six. (BTW, they are focused on later, but it takes a while to get to that point). The only popular stories starring Pound and Pumpkin Cake on this site are incest clop, or foalcon. I didn't ever realistically expect to break the mold with this story and have the first successful teen rated story about the twins. It would have been nice, but popularity is a fickle mistress.
You're also correct in assuming that what I wrote a year ago isn't indicative of my quality as a writer now. I used to be a lot wordier. One of these days, I do plan to go back and trim some of my earlier, more verbose chapters and cut them down to size.
Anyway, thanks for your review quite a lot. The next time that I write a story like this, I'll go a bit easier on the worldbuilding, and focus primarily on the main characters instead of having a dozen different POV's.