Trade Ya!
I heard Sunset come into my room. Her hooves on the canvas floor of the tent were quiet, but it couldn’t have been anyone else. I would have heard them unzip the tent’s front door flap.
I rolled off the bed and reached for the battery powered lantern; I didn’t trust the firefly ones. However, it didn’t turn on as I flipped the switch. I said, “Sunset, give me some light, will you?”
She stopped awkwardly and after a moment her horn lit up with the teal glow of her magic. She was just steps from my bed.
“Thanks,” I said, sitting upright. “What’s up?”
“I, um, was just thinking about you,” she said.
“Understandable. I mean, it’s not every day that you have to spend a night in a tent with me because of a wild party at the library.” I shrugged, but then stopped. “Unless there was some other reason?”
Sunset looked uncertain for a moment but then nodded resolutely. “Yes.”
“Oh really?” I said, my attention distracted.
She took a step closer. “That’s right.”
And then we screwed the battery cover back onto the lantern, after replacing the batteries.
“So why were you thinking about me?” I asked, setting the lantern down as I turned it on. “Hang on, wait.” I frowned. “Pinkie might not have even thrown a party. It could have been a plan to get the two of us together.” I jumped up and laughed triumphantly. “And now that I’ve figured it out, it won’t work! Pinkie, you think you’re so clever!”
From somewhere out in the darkness I thought I heard someone faintly reply, “Curses! Foiled again!”
“Anyway,” I said, turning back to Sunset, “thanks for the help.”
“Um, right,” she said.
I checked the time on the wall clock. “Hmm, maybe I should go back to sleep or maybe I should work on my gadgets. Actually, is that even a choice?”
I promptly started tinkering with my extendo boxing glove, getting that nice sproing noise from it.
Sunset sat and watched me, looking glum but occasionally making conversation. “So that magic converter I was talking about. I think it can be adapted for weaponry.”
She was trying hard to get my attention, I could tell, but if it was important I would either remember it or she would bring it up again. I was in the zone, so to speak.
In the morning, we packed up the tent and went back to Ponyville. It was time to take a train or something. As we walked, Sunset told me about a fashion show Rarity was going to be holding later.
“I’m going to be in it,” she said. “You should come.”
“Why?”
“Um, free snacks?”
“Cool. I’m in.”
Sunset went back to the library and I met up with the group who was going to Rainbow Falls. Pinkie was excited. Granted, that was a given for just about any situation you could think of, but the fact that I’m pointing it out should give extra emphasis to the fact that excited Pinkie is goddamn annoying. She’s a great baker and she really does love her some Fluttershy lovin’, but Jesus Christ on a chicken’s ass, Pinkie can be annoying.
This is the shit I had to put up with on the train to Rainbow Falls.
“Yes! Best day ever!” Pinkie squealed. “We’re all going to the Rainbow Falls Traders Exchange! And not just going – we’re accompanying a princess on an official royal duty!”
“Shut up!” I demanded. “We already know!”
“There always has to be a princess at the Exchange,” Twilight explained, perhaps trying to get a word in edgewise. “Last year was Princess Cadance, this year it’s me. It's just a formality. I'm sure none of the other ponies will even notice I'm here.”
“I can…guarantee they won’t notice,” I offered.
Twilight stared at me for a second and then shook her head. “I think I’ll take my chances.”
We continued on into the Exchange. Fluttershy found a small statuette of a bunny to fawn over. “Oh, my goodness!”
“You said it,” Rarity replied. The Rainbow Falls Traders Exchange is simply divine. You can get anything you want here!”
“Don’t I know it,” I said happily.
They all threw me suspicious looks, which I ignored. I noticed that I had been doing a lot of that lately. Maybe I had been giving less and less of a damn lately. Perhaps at this late stage in the game I knew my plans were going to come to fruition and had begun to relax and rest on my laurels. The game was still on, but the ball was in my court. I had basically constructed the most elaborate game of all from the ruins of the universe and was just about to score the winning move. It was the greatest game.
And you just lost the game. Lulz.
Anyway, at the Exchange I split off from the main group and went looking for stuff. A young filly wearing a headscarf and sunglasses waved me over.
I stopped at her stall. She lowered her sunglasses. “Hey Valiant. It’s me.”
I nodded to Sweetie Belle. “How’s it going?”
“I set up in the Crystal Empire under an assumed name.” She shrugged. “It’s not the best, but I’m making do.”
“Good to hear that. Oh, and I have a tip for you. Don’t drink the water there.”
Sweetie looked confused, but nodded. “Okay. Good to see you.”
“You too, kid.”
I moved away, looking for things that I wanted from other vendor stalls. I happened on a pony with a vat of thallium to trade.
I squinted at the label and asked, “What’s pony thallium? Is it any different than the regular stuff?”
“Well, I mean, it’s nothing like dragon thallium or buffalo thallium,” he said.
“Yes, but what’s the difference?”
“Um, I’m not sure.” He shrugged. “I got this stuff in trade myself.”
“So if I take this pony thallium and use it to make electronics for a T-1000 liquid metal terminator robot, will it come out pony shaped by default?”
“Um…”
I shook my head. “I guess I don’t really care. I mean, a T-1000 liquid metal terminator could easily reshape either way so it doesn’t really matter. Good enough for me.”
I rejoined with Twilight as Pinkie was trying to auction off her books. I arrived dragging my newly acquired pony thallium vat. Twilight glanced at it. “Where did you get that?”
“I traded for it. That’s what everyone is supposed to do here, right?”
“I didn’t see you carrying anything to trade.” Twilight facehoofed. “Oh, you were probably carrying it in your hammerspace, right?” Her face took a harder expression. “I swear, Valiant, one of these days you’re going to drive me mad and I think we all know how that turns out.”
“No, I didn’t trade anything for it. I bought it.”
Twilight frowned. “As the Princess on duty to make sure trades are fair, I don’t think I can allow that.”
“Why not? Buying things is just trading money for goods and services.”
Twilight did not have a snappy comeback to that. Both of us tuned back in to whatever it was Pinkie was saying just in time to catch, “-double Princess!”
“I think I’m going to get out of here,” I said.
“Wait, before you go,” Twilight said, “What do you need that much thallium for?”
“This pony thallium vat?” I asked. “Well, I could certainly use it for advanced electronics. I was thinking about getting into quantum circuitry and computing.”
Me with a quantum supercomputer clearly was a troubling thought to Twilight. She knew I was a hardware guy, and maybe guessed that once I conquered software I would be unstoppable.
I dragged the pony thallium vat away, humming under my breath. “I’ve got a lovely pony thallium vat, dum dee dum. A twist of the wrist, a flick of the stick, and that’s all right with that.”
I spotted Fluttershy and Rainbow at the In-N-Oat burger stand harassing a handicapped pony. But then they made him lunch, which totally didn’t excuse their earlier actions but was a nice gesture, I guess.
I wandered around a little more, taking in the Discord-lamp stand, the chicken statue stand, and a few other oddities that I couldn’t see why anyone would trade for. Along the way I found a bear call that someone had dropped. “Hey, neat.”
It worked pretty well. I hadn’t intended for bears to maul several ponies, but it’s not like I wanted it to happen.
The Exchange after that was a huge mess. Twilight got called to clean it up. Princess duties can be a pain.
I saw an orthrus running free with a chain dangling from its collars. A big two-headed dog causes quite a stir.
Somewhere in all that commotion, Fluttershy got traded into slavery. I swear, the situation kept getting more and more ridiculous.
Fortunately, through copious magic and probably a little brainwashing, Twilight got things sorted out. It took some bartering to get Fluttershy back since the trade had been legal and all, but Rainbow Dash eventually had to give up her prized special edition Daring Do book.
I knew Equestria was an evil diarchy, but I hadn’t realized it was the kind of society where you could get a slave for the price of one book. Sigh. I really should talk to Luna about this and maybe go threaten Celestia.
“Well, I was only supposed to stay with that pony until the orthrus was properly trained,” Fluttershy said as we rode the train back to Ponyville. “Really, it was more like an indentured servitude than slavery.”
“Ugh, worse than that, I’m stuck with this stupid dog!” Rainbow complained. The orthrus gave her two sloppy licks. Pets were not normally allowed on the train, but no conductor was brave enough to throw the dog off. Or the orthrus, either.
“At least you finally have a pet of your own so you can come to our pet meetups,” Fluttershy reminded her.
“But I didn’t get the book I wanted!” Rainbow whined.
“Well, what do you know?” said Twilight, digging through her stash. “I found my copy of Daring Do and the Sapphire Statue.”
“I’ll give you five bits for it,” I said. “It’s a long train trip and I’m bored.”
“What?” Rainbow demanded. “I want that book, even if it’s not a special first edition!”
“Valiant makes a very reasonable argument,” Twilight replied. “He has need of it and has proposed a worthwhile exchange.”
“Great,” I said with a grin. “We’ll convert you to capitalism yet, Twilight.”
Twilight stared at me for a long moment and then tossed the book out the window. “Oops.”
We rode the rest of the way back in relative silence, arriving in Ponyville after the moon had come up. Getting off the train, Rarity invited us to the fashion show she had set up. It was apparently going to be lacking something because she hadn’t managed to find anything suitable at the Exchange. Neither had Applejack. The bear incident had kind of put a damper on trading.
“I have to figure out what to do with this thing,” Rainbow grumbled, tugging at the orthrus’ leash.
“Hey, where’s Spike?” Twilight asked. “I hope the bears didn’t get him.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” I said.
Rainbow had to take care of the orthrus and Twilight hurried away to make sure Spike hadn’t been eaten or something. The rest of us followed Rarity to the show.
Most of the models were just locals. It wasn’t one of Rarity’s super fancy shows. Then Sunset appeared.
She was wearing a dress that was similar to the little black one I had seen her in previously but cut more elegantly and more revealing. It was accented with complementary accessories and carefully crafted jewelry.
As she walked the runway, a stallion standing near the stage grinned and eyed her up lustily. It was clear that he had practically popped a stiffy at the mere sight of her. Sproing!
That, by the way, is the sound of someone getting knocked the hell out by an extendo boxing glove.
Sunset blinked in surprise but then looked down at me from the stage with a smile.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t control this thing.”
Far out on the eastern ocean, well out of sight of land it waited. It paid the waves and moonlight no heed. Small ocean creatures approached curiously, but knew not what to make of it. The seaponies kept their distance, fearful of the consequences to sapient beings of meddling in the affairs of things they did not understand.
It waited there, giving no indication of its purpose. Time would tell, but how many days or weeks would pass were unknown. It simply waited. It would wait until the time was right. Nopony knew it was there.
Of course I knew about it. I knew everything.
Hahahaha, no, of course that statement won’t come back to bite me in the ass.
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I see what you did there
~Dash The Stampede
So I have "Trixie If Her Father" on my dumbphone, and I read two or three pages a day while at work. It's starting to grow on me, to my everlasting horror. Guess I might as well do this one too.
Jesus valiant, no terminators please. I have enough trouble stopping android 17 and Maja from wrecking their corner of the multiverse! No hunterkiller robots and no shapeshifters allowed!
No Maja you can't just eat his planet.
4282161 Oh my, this should be interesting.
I don't know why, but Valiant preventing Pinkie from hooking him up with Sunset constantly makes me laugh.
So T-1000's are made from thallium, and Valiant bought a large quantity, thallium also sounds like valium, viagra also starts with a v; therefore Valiant is a T-1000 powered by viagra.
4282674 That makes perfect sense. In addition, Valiant and Viagra also share a first letter with van de Graaf generator, so Valiant's T-1000 must also be able to shoot lightning!
Valiant got defensive about Sunset. His no-human-x-pony wall is breaking. It's only a matter of time.
Sweetie could probably come back and no one would be the wiser now. Like, really. Ponies can be pretty thick.
4224993 Wait until he gets reality bending powers.
alas
babylon
4283362 I aim to please. Or something.
Looks like it needs a little more adjustment to get the desired 'sproing!' noise.
4283438 Fixed. Embarassing.
4283864 If you want. Mostly it's about the show with that guy added to it.
4283438 How about this?
>>>I promptly started tinkering with my extendo boxing glove, getting that nice spooging noise from it.>>>
Is that the warship that fell through?
4284634
used often in the comments. people should use 
more often. do you agree?
I find it amusing that you are commenting on something I posted more then 3 months ago.
also, thank you for the applause
hmmm, i don't see
(Reply with an Eeyup or a Eenope)
4284752 Why not?
4284862 Yeah, sure, why not?
4284852 Eeyup and thats why I feel much respect for her, althou I wouldn't use "Dictator" to descibe her even if its true. Thats just a personal preference however.
Btw, this a crackfic on a steroids with a massive dose of self-insert. I recommend using the jarhead method for further reading.
4283150 There's a Percy Jackson book called The Lightning Thief, so that means Valiant is a greek god!
(WTF)
4284118 Very interesting. That actually makes sense.
4286318 No, I can't read anymore.
It ceased to be amusing at all, and just became annoying. Randomness is only funny when there is a frame of reference for it.
The character was at least amusing when he was dimwittedly going with the flow... but now he's a super-genius who can build anything from anything with technology he shouldn't even be famililar with... and yet still somehow believes he's in a dream after months and after experiencing situations vastly beyond his range of experiences (YOU CAN ONLY DREAM ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW).
Emotional tone has begun to swing wildly and unpredictably by chapter 26, nonsense such as Terminator Twilight is thrown in later... implying suddenly that this might be a dream... but it can't be. And it can't be a coma. Because that was a lame twist the first time it was ever used in any fiction and it hasn't gotten better in any iteration since. And comas don't work that way anyway.
It's become random for the sake of randomness, with a general psychopathy thrown in to boot now and then. The character has lost his 'stranger in a strange land/Everyman' appeal and become a typical, uninteresting Gary Stu who displays an incomprehensible level of irrationality while yet managing to build complicated machines... even when the technology he uses is factually wrong and would blow up in his face were it actually built that way.
Random comedy is only 'comedy' when there's context, self-referential humor, some puns thrown in perhaps... at least SOME structural elements of comedy. I'm not seeing any at all by chapter 33. It's little more than hastily scribbled nonsense with no clear purpose or focus.
4286830 (That's how you make comedy.)
4287433 ...yeah, you wouldn't like the rest of it; the advanced gunship, vampire Cheerilee, the fabulous gay demon, cyborg Braeburn, the Panzerfaust (both of them), M.A. Larson getting shot in the head, and outer space.
4287488 I read a bit of it. As much as I could stand.
For someone who claims to know everything, Valiant is a blithering idiot who gets stupider with every chapter. I suppose I should be impressed that a level of negative intelligence is even attainable.
Why, it's as if he's gaining his 'knowledge' from randomly glancing at Wikipedia articles on numerous topics without having the slightest deeper comprehension of anything he's reading.
4287576 The part about travelling between dimensions and violating physics...isn't that canon? I would be more worried about the consequence free equinicide and magical radiation.
With every new chapter I try to have a new story description. One of them was even composed of nothing but negative comments people had made. In an effort to appease, please, or merely compensate for your lost time, I would be happy to post a description written by you containing any words that you wanted.
4284378 Reminds me of the Battleship [USS Wisconsin] from TNAB's very first story ever
Also, this chapter: Sexual tension, foiled by apathy!
4288344
You don't seem to grasp the issue. All of these things are being thrown about randomly, introduced awkwardly, and there is NO HUMOR to any of it. It's simply stupid. It can't even be labelled as surreal, since it's not actually twisting something of reality into something eerily recognizable and yet foreign. There's nothing but a slap-dash, vomiting-paint-on-a-canvas approach to it.
All while still attempting to follow the episodes, which only become more painful with each passing chapter.
I am of the opinion that the presence of vampires, radical Celestia hatred, and a ludicrously OP hypercompetent human who doesn't know a damned thing about anything but succeeds because of sheer self-insertedness are the only reasons this story has so many likes. Those themes seem to resonate with a segment of the fandom, no matter how badly they're presented.
Since about chapter 20, this increasingly sloppy writing has led me to wonder if this was indeed an incarnation of a troll idea I'd had a while back: to include all the awful fanfic tropes in a single abomination of a fanfic to draw in drooling morons, and write my story progressively worse and worse until I wasn't even bothering with grammar anymore.
Then, in the very last chapter mock all the followers with vitriolic scorn.
If anything, I applaude that you've managed to keep writing this for so long. I would have grown bored with the empty praise long ago.
Whether or not that is the secret diabolical intent, this fic does prove conclusively that throwing in a bunch of popular crap randomly into a story guarantees a sizeable following in today's market.
I lament the fact that this almost assuredly means "A Haunted House: 3" will be produced.
4289250 Thanks. That was too long to include as the description, so I just used selected sentences.
4289758 Yup.
4289797 It came from FURRIES.
4290571 I prefer "The Spiderses".
Now THAT'S a classic trollfic!
Creating good troll is an artform. One must master the art of being utterly stupid, and yet maintaining some bare bones cohesion.
The Monty Python crew were the gods of this skill.
4284977 And Greek gods are known for being head-explodingly good in bed, so Valiant must be a master of the tantric arts!
4294633 I already am! It is a great story, isn't it?
4295016 So does that mean the ponies will all have their weiners flopping all over the place?
4300089 EXACTLY!
4299777 I would happily put in a character called Alondro. It's not like I have a set plot.
4297087 well, I think with that one chapter involving copious quantities of HLS and Wierd Al, that's already been covered.
also, pinkie pie. yeah.
4282674 Viagra and Crack and Valiant. Those don't go well together. any of them.
It's the U.S.S. Mississippi!
4289250 I think that you dislike Totallynotbony, since you are still continuing to gripe about his story on his story. You should be ashamed of yourself, you big meany!
If you dislike any story, stop reading it. That's what I do.
4300767 ...he did stop reading it. Besides, comments aren't for picking on other commenters.
4301262 Oh. His comment was just so recent (yes, I count 18 hours recent) that I thought he might have been continuing to read.
You had to fucking jinx it didn't you?
ALRIGHTY THEN PEOPLE CLEAR OUT THE AREA, SOMEONES ABOUT TO BE BIT IN THE ASS, BETTER HOPE ITS NOT YOU TOTALLYNOTABRONY (it is gonna be you, cover your ass) THIS MIGHT GET A LITTLE BLOODY!
4299777 I read a bit more, since some were saying it had a plot that explained things.
So I found the 'explanation'... and head-desked so hard my forehead erupted in China and destroyed the Communist regime!
So... I guess some good came from it.
4302416 head-desked so hard my forehead erupted in China and destroyed the Communist regime
You know, for not liking the story, you're sure providing a lot of material for me.
4302740 Well, I'd hoped that maybe you'd realize at some point, "Hey, this is getting ridiculous. Maybe I should start trying to be silly and stop powergaming my already absurd self-insert."
But that didn't happen. As with L. Ron Hubbard and his creation of Scientology, it seems that you began to take your own admittedly ridiculous character seriously.
Unfortunately, also like Scientology, you've attracted a horde of followers (who are likely setting up a not-for-profit religious institution as I type here).
I, however, am akin to Matt Stone and Trey Parker... and shall troll fearlessly no matter how many lawyers you attack with!