88. Tripartite - Part Six
Letters From a Little Princess Monster
Tripartite - Part Six
Monster woke with a twitch, feeling like her chitin was turning to butter and her wings were melting. The wind blowing past and the astonishing amount of magic she was holding could have caused another disaster since her first impression was that she was falling again, but she was in control of the situation, and in the company of her new friends for support.
Still, even the comforting looks she received from Fizzy and the batponies were underlaid by fear. She wished with all of her heart that her five precious friends and their friends could be with her, but Trixie needed them far more if the tiny threads of the future she had seen were any indication.
“Better?” asked Fizzy. “Because we were getting worried.”
There was something about adults that required them to state the obvious when they did not want to ask about something they really wanted to know. All of the ponies on the oversized chariot wanted to know where she had been and what she had done, but without knowing where Discord was looking at the moment, Monster really did not want to say.
“Not yet,” she managed, accepting the canteen that Laminia passed over and taking a deep drink. “Lemonade,” she managed when she broke for air. “Good.”
“Some little fillies were selling it by the palace gate.” Laminia shook the canteen when it was passed back, giving a brief frown before tucking it away and looking straight into Monster’s eyes. “Did you win?”
“No,” admitted Monster with a long look at the floor of the chariot. “Didn’t make friends. She hates me. Betrayed her.”
Laminia nodded. “Been there, done that, you dragged me into your life and made me a friend anyway.” She shuddered and looked up at the distant mountains, shrouded by clouds with the occasional burst of lightning. “You turned all that hate of mine into something useful. It might get me killed, but at least I’m going into this with a friend. Or two,” she added when Pumpernickel nudged her from behind.
After a few brief stretches, Monster moved cautiously up to where Fizzy was leaning over the forward rail, leaving her short mane blow in the slipstream. They stood there for a time, small alicorn and disloyal lieutenant watching the mountain grow nearer, until Fizzy spoke.
“I don’t think you’re going to be able to make friends out of the Windigo. If their Wingmaster has gone over to the frost side, I’m going to have to kill him. If I can.”
Monster could not say the words, but Fizzy could. “And you’ll have to kill him if I can’t. Reminds me of something I read once.”
Despite her growing gloom, Monster’s ears perked up, and Fizzy gave a low chuckle.
“Thought that would get your attention. Tell me, Twilight Sparkle. Have you ever heard of Moosashi, the minotaur samurai who started an entire string of griffon sushi restaurants?”
Watching Monster’s slow shake of her head and the shimmer of her flowing mane, Fizzy continued, “After I lost my horn, I tried everything to get it back. Anything, no matter how dangerous or stupid. Studied with the Mystic Yaks. Joined an acid rock band. Drank, ate, smoked, or otherwise consumed anything anycreature said could help. Sold vacuum cleaners door to door. Trained with an alcoholic griffon who claimed he was as old as Celestia. Finally, I went to Old Stormy. Should have been terrified. He hates ponies. Thing is, I read a marketing book on the trip there, and one thing stuck in my mind.”
“Moosashi?” asked Monster.
“Exactly.” Fizzy swept one hoof across the upcoming stormclouds, now stretching across their path. “To win any battle, you must fight as if you are already dead. You plan for every contingency, but you move in the direction of success. Even if you fail, your path should move around your obstacle and immediately return to accomplishing your goal. Your honor should accept nothing less than your best effort at every step along your journey.”
“Like our lemonade stand,” said Monster, seeing in her mind how their summer project had grown into such a success for her friends and so many other young children of other species around Equestria. It lifted her gloomy spirits at the thought of so many other children who learned how much fun a project with their friends could be. “We kept to our goals. Never gave up. Passed it to others when it got too big. Controlled it, not let it control us. Did not fear failure. Focused on success.”
“I certainly was focused,” said Fizzy. “I’ve been with him ever since, focused on the one thing he wasn’t going to give me. Focused on a lie that I knew was a lie inside, but I lied to myself just like he lies to everycreature. I ignored Moosashi’s first rule, ‘Perceive that which cannot be seen with the eye.’ What do you see in front of us, Twilight.”
“Clouds.” Monster looked around, terribly worried that she was not seeing something very important, because Fizzy seemed far too calm. “Mountain. Valley. Farms.”
“What do you not see?”
Like a bolt of lightning from the clouds in front of them, it hit Monster. “Griffons. There should be griffons in those stormclouds, unless… They’re not clouds. They’re a distraction, just like—”
Monster closed her mouth with a snap, thinking of Canterlot. Celestia and Luna were so brave to provide a distraction for Discord, so she did not want to goof it up by saying anything that might cause the chaotic creature to take her there instead.
Facing Windigo would be far preferable.
* * *
“Fillies and gentlecolts of the press.” Princess Celestia tapped one hoof against the podium while Doctor Horsenpfeffer stood in her assigned spot as Official Spokespony Who Was Destined To Never Say a Word. It was far preferable than trying to explain pregnancy to a group of blithering idiots… that is respected members of the press across several species and countries. Individually, the members of the press were intelligent creatures who Horsenpfeffer had interviewed, spoken with on important issues, and on occasion seen in her office for otherwise commonplace medical conditions.
Put together in large groups, their average intelligence rapidly approached zero.
How in the world Princess Celestia managed to deal with them on a weekly basis was beyond the doctor. She was vaguely aware that Princess Luna had conducted several news conferences so far during her short term in the modern office, but had not heard much more than nopony had been seriously injured and that volume did not help some of the reporters understand even the simplest of explanations.
While Celestia pounded on the podium and Luna stood as an enigmatic shadow to her side, Horsenpfeffer considered her short stack of visual aids. The plan was to silently pass them over to Celestia as needed, using her physician position as an authority even above two Princesses of Equestria.
Ponies argued with either princess on a regular basis. Nopony argued with a doctor, other than billing.
“Fillies and gentlecolts!” announced Celestia, allowing the faintest tinge of irritation to touch her voice. “If you do not settle down and remain quiet, my sister and I will leave.”
It did reduce the volume greatly, only to allow an overweight reporter from the oddly named Las Pegasus Permafrost to bellow above the lessened noise, “Then it’s true! You are preparing Princess Twilight Sparkle to take your positions when you both retire!”
That calmed down the excited nattering of nitwitted nabobs like nothing before, and a hush much like a spring morning settled over the conference room, leaving Celestia at the podium with her jaw slightly agape, and the cascade of dull pink mane over her shoulders unmoved by even breathing.
“No,” she finally managed. “Although the concept is tempting, I fear it would take several years to make the appropriate preparations, and she has many tasks to complete first.”
“Is there any truth to the rumor that Twilight Sparkle is your sister’s child, brought back from the moon?” added a second reporter.
“No again,” said Celestia, picking up speed and starting to babble, a mental state which brought great concern to Doctor Horsenpfeffer. “And we are not here to dispel foolish rumors that we have previously denied. Involving children. Although there are some child-related elements to the new conference, but that’s not the real focus. Focus is good. We need to stay focused. We’re here for two purposes, actually. Totally unrelated to each other, or so we’ve been told. Other than both of them happening at the same time. Well, not both, exactly. Technically, three things, four if you count Discord.”
“Discord!” gasped every reporter in the newsroom. There was a short pause, then one of the reporters in the back row asked quite plainly into the resulting silence, “Who is Discord?”
Both Celestia and Luna hesitated for some reason, leaving some of the reporters looking in Doctor Horsenpfeffer’s direction to her sudden sensation of upcoming dread.
“I really thought he’d pop in right there,” admitted Princess Luna, who gently nudged her sister away from the podium. “We actually have a fairly simple announcement. The context thereof requires some explaining for it to make sense, though. Perhaps some visual aids would help.”
That was Doctor Horsenpfeffer’s cue, and she floated over a diagram of an earth pony mare, slightly rounded in the middle. It was self-explanatory, so naturally every single reporter went off the wrong end with variants of one question.
“Is this the surrogate mare who carried your foal Twilight Sparkle in secret?”
It took some time, hammering on the podium and glaring at the more noisy reporters, but eventually Luna got them all calmed down and stated with unmistakable certainty, “This news conference will not be addressing any questions about Twilight Sparkle! We have information to impart to our citizens about us.”
The reporters were just settling down when the same overweight reporter that interrupted the first time opened his mouth to ask another question, only to give off a vaguely ‘oomph’ noise when a dark magical aura appeared around his face.
“Moving right along,” said Luna with only a slight grinding of her teeth. “Since you already know that we are pregnant—”
From the immediate response, it appeared the press corps did not know, and all began shouting frantically.
Luna could shout louder.
“CAN NONE OF YOU READ?” Luna used her magic to pluck a newspaper from the closest reporter and ripped it open to point at a column. “OUR ANNOUNCEMENT WAS PLACED INTO EVERY SINGLE NEWSPAPER IN THE COUNTRY!”
* * *
School had been so chaotic lately that Cheerilee could not help but peek out of her house door before closing it, looking for perhaps a giant comet out to demolish the town, or a rampaging monster out of the Everfree Forest. She fed her fish, watered her plants, and made a small cup of tea before sitting down at her kitchen table and getting out the most recent copy of the Foal Free Press.
And a red pencil, because teacher, duh.
“Pipsqueak runs a tight paper,” she murmured, making only the occasional red mark as she worked her way down the fresh newsprint. A sip of tea, a small mark, another sip of tea, a teacher in her natural habitat, until she reached the Announcements section.
The resulting spray of tea reached the opposite wall.
* * *
Monster could not believe her eyes at first. Huge creatures like whales drifted down out of the stormclouds, spreading out across the sky until she could identify a platform like a large chariot under each of them, with other smaller creatures looking in their direction.
“Airships,” she breathed at the memories of putting together complicated plastic models with her family. So many words for the lines and devices were confusing her mind that she almost could not move, but one thing stood out among the rest: griffons did not believe in small airships like these.
“Warships!” snarled Commander Ironbound. “You had this planned! You were going to attack Canterlot!”
With a shrug, Fizzy turned away from the front of the chariot and addressed her pegasus subordinate directly. “There were four alicorns there. I wanted my horn back.”
Ironbound fluffed his wings, giving a short glance between the immobile batponies and Fizzy before growling, “And now?”
Lips peeling back in a grin, Fizzy leaned forward until she was nose-to-nose with the angry Royal Guard and resting her restored horn on the top of his helmet. “We’re going to save the world together, or die in the process. Pull us up to the biggest ship over there, and signal the rest of our army to stand by.”
Landing a chariot on an airship’s deck was fascinating, and a short-term problem that kept Monster distracted from thinking about the longer-term problem of the Windigo too much. The question of the missing griffon sentries was answered by the sight of a long rope dangling from the airship they were boarding, and at the other end of the rope was a furious griffon wrapped entirely in entangling nets.
“Webber,” explained Fizzy. “Seems to work as well on curious griffons as it was supposed to work on Royal Guards. Now, Ironskull. You remember what I told you?”
The guard commander nodded and stepped off the chariot, followed by the rest of their group. Fizzy walked right up to a creature who looked a little like one of Fluttershy’s fuzzy badgers, only stunned.
“Tempest!” he gasped. “Your horn! What… How…”
“There’s no time to explain, Grubber,” said Fizzy. “The Windigo are returning, and I’m going to need all of the Storm King’s forces and the Equestrian Royal Guard to stop them, but before that, I need to know something.”
Fizzy leaned down and looked directly into Grubber’s squinting eyes. “Can I trust you?”
“Of course you can trust me,” said the chubby creature, backing up a step. “You’re the boss, my one and only friend. I’d never betray you in the middle of something this important!”
“Good!” Fizzy smiled, and turned to pat Monster gently on the head. “See! I’ve learned something about friendship from you.”
There was a scuttling of claws on the wooden desk, a sharp twang, and a net-wrapped Grubber rolled across the deck, followed by a rope.
“How did you know he was going to make a break for it, ma’am?” asked Commander Ironbound from behind the nearby net launcher. “He almost made it to the cabin door.”
“There’s a spell call inside, so he can warn the Storm King,” said Fizzy. “Grubber’s my friend, but Stormy owns him, body and soul.”
“Fear,” said Monster beneath her breath. “Lies. Uses others.”
She stood and silently watched as Fizzy gave orders to the airship crews and the pony guards, who promptly scurried about on whatever tasks she had assigned. It left her alone for now, next to the fuzzy badger, who had no end of reasons why he needed to be let out of his net-wrapped cocoon. He was a most unusual friend to be so trapped by fear and still care about Fizzy, much like the citizens of Starlight Glimmer’s town feared her and still cared about each other.
Fear was a corrosive poison, corrupting everything it touched. Monster had fought her own battle with fear for years in the forest, and knew what it was to be a slave to the emotion, unable to resist its crushing embrace. Far worse, she had used it like a terrible weapon against others both larger and smaller than herself, and had come horribly close to unleashing it against the ponies who had become her friends, not because they feared her, but because they cared, and that internal confrontation had made her more frightened than facing the worst monsters of the forest. The thought made a pang of sympathetic guilt stab through her chest, because Grubber feared her too, even as he wheedled and begged to be let loose.
“Fizzy… I mean Tempest.” Monster swallowed a prickly lump that insisted on sticking in her throat and scooted closer to the badger-creature so she did not have to talk in more than a whisper. “Your friend could die here.”
“Tempest is tough,” said Grubber. “I’ve seen her fight—”
“No,” said Monster through her teeth as a wave of emotion overwhelmed her defenses. It was terribly unfair that she could not talk normally with her friends, but now the words came cascading out in perfect clarity in front of Fizzy’s friend, every crystal-clear syllable in rapid sequence driven by her own suppressed fear and a dribble of tears starting to trickle down her cheeks.
“She could die here and everypony could die here and they’d all die and I’ll have to turn the mountain into a volcano and the griffons will die too and I’ll be the only one left here again without my friends in the middle of a bunch of charred bodies and I don’t know if I can kill them all again but I’ll have to.”
Grubber’s eyes got very large. “Kill them all again?”
“And I couldn’t make f-friends with Starlight,” she continued through a set of chest-twitches that kept interfering with her voice. “And the Crystal Empire is f-frozen in shadow somewhere and sitter… I mean Cadence is going to die there with her foal and all my friends and I’ll f-fail Discord’s test and all my magic is going to exp-p-plode if—”
“Just a minute,” said Grubber. “Hold on. If you could loosen up the net a little here… and there we go.” One furry hand worked its way free of the entangled nets, holding a smushed piece of cake with smears of pink frosting. “Here. You need this.”
She sat for a moment, just panting quietly while squinting through her tears at the crumbs dribbling off the creature’s sharp claws. You never took candy from a stranger, but Grubber was not really a stranger since he was a friend of a new friend, and cake was not really candy anyway, even if she was unsure just where he had been keeping it until now.
Reaching out a hoof because Monster could not dare trust her magic, she picked up at least most of the cake and took a cautious nibble. It was sweeter than anything Pinkie Pie had ever baked, and went down in three or four slobbering bites, faster at the end until she was licking one hoof and wondering if a second piece of cake were concealed somewhere nearby.
“Better?” asked Grubber.
Monster nodded, then tucked the loose bit of net back around her captive and huddled closer to him.
“Now, as I was saying,” continued Grubber, “Tempest Shadow is as tough as they come. If there’s a Windigo here—”
“At least two,” said Monster quietly. “Wingmaster and son started drinking blood. Could be more.”
“Two?” Grubber wriggled so he could look in both directions, although all he could see was the airships being rearranged in the sky. “Just how do you know there are Windigo in the griffon aerie?”
“Friend there. Trapped. He sent us a letter.”
“Oh, you know a griffon in the aerie?” Grubber gave a sideways look at the approaching mountain. “A bird on the inside, a spy we can use to split the leadership up, play them against each other and beat individually sounds like a scheme just up Tempest’s alley.”
“No.” Monster put her head down and shivered at a chill breeze that crested over the front of the airship as it climbed. “My teacher. Trixie’s husband. He’s a pony.”
“Oh, he’s dead then,” said Grubber. “They’ll kill him first.”
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Grubber is such a good friend and kind soul. And honest to a fault.
One whole mountain of deep-fried, extra crispy chickens coming up.
Not everyone has friends like Grubber. Thank God.
Grubber, Twilighting is not just some neurotic fit.
It's commencing the ignition of a fusion powered bomb. Do NOT trigger smol purple.
Grubber: Friend. Minion. Henchbadger. Idiot.
He is...the most interesting sidekick in the world.
Is Twilight like... glimpsing into possible timelines?
10381566 No, she's looking *back* several chapters where she used a remote-control Changeling drone child and her changeling adoptive father to 'fake out' Starlight Glimmer. Since changelings don't have cutie marks to remove, Tallgrass and Peep Sprout distracted Starlight while the rest of the changelings replaced members of the town, and then Twilight tried to talk her out of her plans, which didn't work, and Starlight tried to attack the little alicorn.
One gooped power-mad unicorn stuffed into a pod later, she's headed for the main changeling hive for storage.
Don't worry. She's fine, and will show up at the very end.
10381489 If nothing else, Grubber has a future in advertising.
10381578
Okay, it had been awhile and I lost track of what was going on. I had forgotten about the changelings' role in the story.
How interesting, by Bionicle OC after defeating the windigoes would then proceed to make an example of the aerie by razing it to the ground with griffons from other aeries watching. Extreme? Yes, but as long as they get the message/his point then he'll take no further action.
10381578
I dunno. I think he's too honest.
Im actually kind of scared of the outcome if Grubber and Pinkie baked together, but I’m sure it would be delicious.
Tempest gets major cool points in this chapter and I can’t wait to see the Griffon reaction to all the airships coming into sight!
Dammit Grubber!! That was not the best thing to say to Monster!!
10382173
Monster would have know if he was lying.
10382530
Not the point. Point being he just should not have mentioned them immediately killing Greenie at all. Hopefully little TwiTwi doesn't snap.
“…and rule with an iron hoof!” said Lord Trottingham.
Wait! How’d he get in here‽
10383233 Lord Trottingham goes wherever he wants. He's unstoppable.
10382777 Q: Subtle. Grubber. A: Name two words that don't go together at all.
10381975 They're going to need a soundtrack:
Waaaitwaitwait. I thought she only borrowed the Princesses' magic to heal Fizzy? She still has it?
Oh really?
Yea, arguing with doctors is usually bad for your health
Well, maybe, but c'mon. She's a kid. She's got a long way to go
Yes, he loves an audience...
But he loves it more to make people who think they can predict his actions look like fools
...did she just casually annex the Storm King's army?
Ow
Gotta love that brutal fatalistic honesty
Remarks and corrections:
> but Trixie needed them far more if the tiny threads of the future she had seen was any indication.
It says "threads", so that should be "[were] any indication".
Wait Luna's pregnant? Tempest got her horn back? Celestia has a pink mane? It's been a while since I last read this story, so I can't remember certain things. If anyone could give me a recap I would be appreciative.
Oh man, Stormy is so screwed.
Monster might even put him in time out!
10419725 I'm not going to spoil it, but he dies, very much like the movie.