A Dream

by totallynotabrony

Horse Play

A small butterfly landed on my tequila bottle. The way it didn’t keel over and die immediately told me I was drunker than I thought and possibly hallucinating. Still, when it said to me, “invade Seaquestria,” in its tiny little voice, I still thought it was a pretty good idea.

And so we went to war.

It was a pretty short war. I was in command of a nuclear submarine with a crew who liked explosions. The opponents were fish.

That’s an oversimplification, but small children do like seeing things explode.

Anyway, we claimed Seaquestria in the name of the friendship school and I helped reunite Silverstream’s family. All in all, a nice afternoon extracurricular.

That river serpent Rarity knew, Steven, came by. We’d called him since he was one of the few people we knew who was experienced living under water. I met him at the moonpool in the belly of the submarine that let us look down into the water.

“Well, it looks like you need to rebuild,” he said, putting his hands on his hips. Or whatever passed for a serpent’s hips.

The place had kind of been reduced to a smoking crater. Yes underwater.

“Yeah, for all intents and purposes we pretty much leveled it,” I said.

“‘Intents and porpoises,’” he said. “That’s how they talk underwater.”

“Part of the reason I liberated them,” I said. “So we don’t have to do puns anymore.”

Before he could argue in favor of puns, I changed the subject. “I think this undersea territory should be a dry county. Maybe that will inspire certain types of people to live here.”

I wasn’t worried that that it would hurt my bottom line. There weren’t any people here anymore, after all. Certain types would be better than zero.

“But before you introduced alcohol to Equestria, wasn’t everywhere dry?” he asked.

“Not that kind of dry.”

Before he could reply, I went on. “That’ll be a lot of work. Can I ask you to serve as a real estate agent for the In Need of Beaning school of friendship occupation and rebuilding team?”

“Well, I was thinking about a change of scenery,” he said. “Maybe raise a little family or something.” He frowned, twirling his moustache. “It’s hard enough to find a decent date in my own river. I’m not sure what these ladies in the open ocean are like.”

“Actually, I meant to ask,” I said. “If you’re a freshwater serpent, are you good out here?”

“It’s no problem.” He grinned and held up his arms, flexing impressively. “Water retention really works out well for me.”

He relaxed. “It still doesn’t help if there isn’t anyone to impress.”

“I might be able to find you a date,” I said.

My next stop was The Fifth, the submarine’s onboard bar.

“I just promised a sea monster that I would get him laid,” I grumbled into my beer.

“Surely there are plenty of sea monsters in Equestria. What with all the mythology crossover, they probably have their own version of Scylla the sea monster.”

“I don’t know how to find any of them. But maybe we could import one from Earth, like a mail order bride.”

Guinness chuckled. “I wonder if you could set him up with Nessie?”

“Eh...I don’t know how to find her. But I had another idea.”

“Oh?”

“Kind of lower budget,” I admitted.

“Um, the Lake Champlain monster? Champ, was it?”

“Lower.”

He shrugged.

I turned over a napkin and began writing directions. “I never thought I’d have to stoop to this. Then again, I never thought I’d have to get a sea monster laid.”

“Stoop to what?”

“The lowest budget aqueous monster there is.”

“How low budget are we talking?”

I showed him the napkin. “It’s not a sea monster, or a river monster. Not even a lake monster. We’re talking about the creature that lives in a pond inChurubusco, Indiana.”

Guinness stared, and then shook his head. “You don’t know where to find a legendary, probably-exists-in-Equestria monster, but you know about a local legend that was probably started by a drunk hobo from a one-stoplight town in the middle of nowhere.”

“Do they have a stoplight? I’ve never been there. But it sounds like you know about it, so good, thanks for taking care of this for me.”

I left, needing to get to doing other things. No specific things, just other things.

To my surprise and displeasure, one presented itself. A dragonfire scroll popped into the air in front of me.

Worse, it wasn’t even addressed to me, it was just a CC. The letter was from Twilight to Celestia, expressing regret that her duties in Silent Hill would keep her from attending the ones-versary play that she herself had written.

Needing context, I couldn’t help but read on. Apparently, it was the 1,111 year anniversary of Celestia first raising the sun. Twilight had written a play about it, and wanted the schoolchildren to perform it.

And I’d found out because she’d CC’d me on a letter to Celestia telling her that.

Oh, but it got worse. The play was in two days. In Ponyville. And Twilight wanted to cast Celestia to play herself.

Even Spike thought this was a bad idea. I could tell his writing on the letter was sarcastic.

But then, I realized the potential. A play about history presented to a wide public audience? Excellent, this would be the perfect opportunity to drive sales of the history book I was writing.

I just had to figure out how to expand the script to include the beginning of the universe, including my own personal theories on it. I wondered if I could get Merry May to play a very particular part, with her very particular parts.

Naturally, this was one of those “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” moments.

However, I discovered that it wasn’t up to me and the script had already been written. In fact, Twilight threatened to come back from Silent Hill early if I deviated from it at all.

At least I had some control, by having the play hosted by the Richard Nixon Multipurpose Community Auditorium.

Since the others would probably want to see it, I had Tin Mare lift us to Ponyville. Applejack and her meat puppets got started building sets. Rarity made the costumes.

Pinkie Pie rolled in an enormous new party cannon. “If the Princess is going to be here, I’m going to need Big Bertha!”

It reminded me of a particular WWII railway gun. Krupp didn’t make just coffee machines.

Reading through the script, I learned a few new things. Apparently before Celestia rolled in like a baller to take over raising the sun, it took six of the strongest unicorns to do it every day. Wait, then who did it before them? Did it also take the same amount of magic to put up the moon? Furthermore, how did the sun originally develop?

Not that it really mattered since this was all a synthetic universe anyway, but a little knowledge of the lore could go a long way. I decided I needed to do some research. Fortunately, the library was just down the street.

I walked in and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened. Huh, I was pretty sure the power bill was paid. It was being paid to Valiantco® after all.

Well, I’m nothing if not prepared. I pulled out a small flashlight. As the beam turned on, it lit up a cloaked pony standing in the shadows.

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

She pulled back her hood, revealing a middle-aged mare with a conservative haircut and large glasses. “I am Mrs. Clay Tablet, of the Equestrian Education Association. I was sent here to stop this business with the rogue school through any means necessary.”

“Uh huh,” I said, losing interest halfway through her introduction and turning to look for a book about the sun. My flashlight left her in the dark.

“I’m a member of the Seven School Superintendents,” she said anyway. “You will obey my decrees and immediately end this silly nonsense.”

“No.”

“In that case, I shall be forced to discipline you.”

I sighed and turned to face her. “Do you think a book about the sun would be in the space section or the Princess Celestia section?”

“Did you not hear what I just said?”

“Are you going to stop somebody from learning just to be a bitch?”

“Yes,” she said.

I switched the flashlight to my other hoof and pulled out my Desert Eagle. Just then, the door opened.

“Hey Valiant,” said Josephine Jokester. “Is this library the tallest building in Ponyville because it has the most stories?”

I stared at her as I blew out Clay Tablet’s brains. Some blood splashed as far as JoJo’s face.

“I get it,” I said to her. “I’m not laughing, but I get it.”

“Z-zonks,” she said, quietly backing out of the library.

I stared at the mess on the floor. Learning was always a pain in the ass.

After a quick cleanup, I wasn’t able to find a relevant book, but I was out of time. I headed back to the theater.

The play went off without a hitch. What, did you think I would let it? It’s not that hard to direct a children’s play. Especially not when your lead actress has a thousand years of public speaking experience. Celestia initially tried to play dumb for some reason, but she knew that I knew, and stopped that shit promptly.

Nobody actually came to the play, but that was okay, because the sun made of fireworks we got from Trixie exploded everywhere. I mean, that’s kind of what fireworks were supposed to do. We probably could have made the sun out of something else.

Anyway, we did the play. Nobody saw it, but we had technically met Twilight’s requirement.

As I was leaving the theater, a shadow dropped from the rooftop and landed in front of me.

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded for the second time that day.

And for the second time, a dramatic hood pull revealed an older pony with a haughty look. “I am Mr. Kick Ball. I’m here to stop you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Are you the second of the Seven School Superintendents?”

“The very same. I know what you did to the lovely administrator, Clay Tablet. But you’ll find that I’m a much harder mark.”

“And what do you teach? Wait, don’t tell me...PE?”

“That’s right.”

“I never liked gym.”

“It doesn’t matter what students like, it’s what we tell them is best for them.”

I shook my head and turned to walk away. “Whatever.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him move and began to turn for defense. From beneath his cloak he pulled out a dodgeball and cocked his hoof back to throw it.

I was already grabbing for my gun and managed to get a shot off, bursting the ball in the air between us. However, it was a distraction and he tackled me.

He went for a single leg takedown, a classic wrestling move, and lifted me, slamming me on my back on the ground. He grappled up my body, grasping whatever he could reach and making it real difficult to move.

I spit my switchblade at him, which was probably an illegal wrestling move, and cut his throat.

This time, it was me getting covered in blood.

Grumbling, I pushed his body off. The second of the Seven School Superintendents was definitely more of a threat than the first. This was the worst thing since the Nazi SS. It was the SSS.

With that on my mind, it was time to go back to the sub.

Back aboard, I took a walk through the spaces. The toilet paper was going well. Apparently the lab was also starting to make plushies, too.

I knocked on Rarity’s door, but it moved, not being quite closed. Not that I expected any sort of problem, but I pushed it open. It was my sub, after all.

Rarity wasn’t there. However, on a small table near the door I found a plain business card. The front simply said SCP.

Curious, I picked it up, just as Rarity arrived.

“Put that down,” she ordered.

“Why?” I said. “What’s so important?”

“It’s...a very exclusive group,” she said. “None of your concern.”

“Are you sure? I could totally go for some very exclusive group right now.”

“Valiant,” she said in a warning tone. “Don’t get involved.”

“You aren’t my mom.” I turned the card over. Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t this. I frowned. “Scat, Crap, and Poop?”

Rarity sighed. “Scat, like the shoo-bop-a-doo jazz singing. If you look closer, that second one actually says ‘Craps,’ the card game.”

I looked closer. So it did. “But what about Poop?”

She let out a longer sigh. “A small but politically powerful subsect of the group forced us to include that in the name to accommodate their sexual fetish.”

“So it’s like some sort of weird social club?”

“Yes. Are you satisfied?”

“And these people dictate certain rules to sell clothes?” I said, remembering something Rarity had said ealier.

“They do a lot of things, not just limited to their literal name. Now, could you leave my room?”

“Sure, whatever.”

I left, somehow even more confused than before.

I shook my head. Back to business.

We got the sub going again, not going for any particular place. I hoped that wasn’t a metaphor for the school.

I checked the time. Lunchtime.

Blowing the hell out of an underwater city sure left us with a lot of seafood. We’d discovered a couple more of the magic clams that had the magic seapony-transforming pearls. But more importantly,

“Who wants some clamato soup?” I asked.

Comments

[Lithl]

they probably have their own version of Scylla the sea monster

But Scylla wasn't a sea monster. She lived in cliffs, and attacked ships from there, without getting in the water. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the nymph Scylla is even repulsed by the fish body of Glaucus the sea god, and she flees to where he cannot follow. (She's later turned into the monster appearing in Homer's Odyssey by the witch Circe.)

Scylla's counterpart Charibdis was the sea monster.

[Sir Budginton]

But you don’t see the explosions in a nuclear submarine, it’s all made of metal, and good luck seeing through that. Unless there was a glass window installed, but that would be a huge weakness. The children must have been very disappointed.

[frostfiresnow]

8906100
A series of cameras could be used.

[Amos Anon]

“You aren’t my mom.” I turned the card over. Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t this. I frowned. “Scat, Crap, and Poop?”

Ugh. I've come across a few of those stories. You know the ones. I "Noped" out of there faster than you can say "Virgin Mobile"