Gatecrasher
A strange chill rent the air in Berry’s Bar, and brought with it the scent of cinnamon, fresh carpet, and brake fluid. This was highly unusual. Berry’s Bar rarely smelled of anything but vomit, desperation, and potato vodka.
The bar was closed, its windows dark and shuttered, chairs stacked on tables and bottles locked away, the last of the clientele having left hours ago. A space had been cleared in the middle of the bar-room, tables shifted to make room for dribbly candles and ritual circle drawn in caster sugar. Two figures stood in the candlelit gloom.
The first was a young mare by the name of Pinkie Pie. She had a bubblegum-pink coat and a hot-pink mane that flopped frizzily down her neck and withers, reminiscent of a week-old helium balloon. Her cutie-mark was a cocktail glass filled with blue liquid and topped with a yellow umbrella. She was the lone barmare while Mr and Mrs Cake, the owners, travelled to Manehattan to carry out various items of illegitimate business on behalf of the Apple clan, and while Berry Punch, the renter, worked as a seasonal fermentation consultant at Sweet Apple Acres. Presently, Pinkie Pie peered at the other figure in the bar.
The second figure was far stranger. He was not a pony, certainly. He had a long, lithe and muscular body as if a serpent, the middle part coated in a lush brown coat, the tail red and scaled like a dragon’s with a fluffy pomf at the tip, and his upper body grey-furred and sleek. He had a dragon’s leg, a goat hoof, an eagle’s talon, and a lion’s paw, and no matter how Pinkie squinted in the dull light, she could never quite make out which limb was placed where. He bore a pair of wings, one pegasine and the other batesque. On his head were two eyes, yellow with red pupils, two horns, one of a deer the other of an antelope, and a muzzle that wasn’t quite equine.
Pinkie Pie’s brow furrowed. She tilted her head and blinked. “Huh,” she said, “you’re not cupcakes.”
The creature lifted his head to look at her. He replied with a deep voice as rich and strange as absinthe and truffle-shavings. “Are you sure? Appearances can be deceiving, after all. Can you really say I’m not cupcakes without having tasted me?” He grasped his lion arm with his eagle claw, pulled the limb free of its socket with a pop, and then ate the detached limb in two bites. He chewed it over for a moment, contemplating. From his empty socket, another lion’s paw grew out like a balloon inflating, until the limb was restored entirely. He shook his head. “No, it’s more like tofu. You’re right, I’m not cupcakes.”
Pinkie did not appear shocked or disturbed, but thoughtful. She then asked, “How did you get here? I mean, I’ve seen ponies come into this bar through the front door, through the back door, through the window, out the window if the bouncer is a grumpy-pants, but you came in through a cake tin.” She gestured at the tin in the center of the ritual circle, which the creature had his dragon leg stuck inside. “I’ve never seen anypony come in through a cake tin.”
“Well, I felt someone—or something, at least—inviting me to a party,” replied the beast. “Okay, perhaps not inviting me, per se. Perhaps even saying that I was decidedly not invited, and that the event to which I was expressly uninvited was at absolute maximum capacity, no entrance allowed. Perhaps they even posted several bouncers at the doors, which were closed and locked and deadbolted. But the party seemed so very interesting, so I simply made myself a door.”
“You’re not a door,” said Pinkie Pie.
The creature turned himself into a door. “I am so a door,” he said, opening and shutting as he spoke.
“You’re not a door, you’re ajar.”
“I’m not a jar, jars are for jam. There’s no jam here, ergo I’m not a jar.”
“There is so jam!”
“Rubbish! What jam?”
“Door jamb.”
“I believe you’re looking at the question through the wrong frame. Regardless, in response to your previous allegation, I am a door.”
“Hmmph,” said Pinkie Pie. “You weren’t a door...”
The creature shifted back to his original form and feigned innocence. “I might have been a door. Anyway, there was something about a once-a-century contest to change the course of reality itself... Have you heard anything about some Grail War?”
Pinkie Pie shook her head. “Nope. My dad was in a war once, I think. He came back without any legs,” she said. “I don’t really like wars. I was just trying to make cupcakes.”
“Yes, it didn’t really seem interesting enough to bother with.” The creature looked around at the ritual circle, noting candles, arcane runes, several sweet potatoes, and no sign of any conventional cupcake creation contraptions. “You were trying to make cupcakes, you say?”
“Yeah, I didn’t have an oven so I used candles instead.”
“I see. And the effigy made from sweet potatoes?”
“The recipe needed flour but we don’t have any flour. Mrs Cake says we haven’t had any flour since I was a little foal, and I was too small to make cupcakes then. We have lots of sweet potatoes, though! Ponyville is the sweet potato capital of Equestria!”
“...And the arcane ritual circle?”
“There’s no vanilla flavoring so I used that instead.”
The beast nodded respectfully. “A strange cupcake recipe indeed. Wherever did you find it, little one?”
Pinkie Pie picked up a thick tome and presented it to him. “Here!”
The creature looked at the book. “Granny Pie’s Grimoire of Eldritch Knowledge and Home Cooking...” He put a pawtip to the ritual circle, dabbed at the sugar, put the digit in his mouth and tasted it. “It tastes like sichuan pepper and chaos. Why, that’s my favorite! This is delightful magic indeed.”
“You can taste magic?”
“Why, I can taste, touch, smell, see and even hear magic! Mind you, I usually hear magic when it explodes, and at that stage I rarely advise touching or tasting it. I can smell magic all around us, for instance,” he slunk from the circle to a chair by the bar, “on this chair, a pony lost a bet last week!”
“That was Thunderlane! He bet he could drink twelve shots without being sick!”
The creature skittered around the room, sniffing until he found another spot. “Here, a pony lost three fights.”
“Yup! Carrot Top lost a fight with the bouncer, with gravity, and with her bladder all in one!”
“And on this table over here, a stallion fathered a child!” He sniffed again. “Actually, that might be my regular sense of smell...”
“Ooh! Ooh! Do me!”
The creature crawled up to Pinkie Pie and snuffled her. He snuffled her mane and said, “Your birthday is the third of May,” snuffled her snout and said, “You like parties and hot sauce and sweet things and jokes,” snuffled her withers and said, “You dislike greyness and boredom and broken promises,” snuffled her cutie mark and said, “Your name is Pinkie Pie, and you smell strongly indeed of magic,” snuffled her right forehoof until a curious look came over his face and continued to snuffle until he had almost snorted the hoof inside his nostril. He sneezed the hoof out, grasped it, and looked at the dark-red sigils drawn across it.
“Magic letters!” he exclaimed. “Magic letters written on your hoof!”
She looked down at them. “Weird. They weren’t there this morning.”
“Pinkie Pie, I recognise these sigils! This means something!”
“What?” she said, wide-eyed. “What does it mean?”
“It means we’re supposed to be friends!”
Pinkie Pie gasped. “Gasp! This is brilliant! I love friends!”
“We can do stuff together!”
Her eyes lit up. “Do you know how to make cupcakes?”
He leaned back, a smug grin on his face. “Do I know how to make cupcakes? Why yes, I do,” he said. “But why would I make a cupcake? There’s a perfectly good cupcake right in your mane yoink!” His lion’s paw shot out and sunk into Pinkie’s ruffle of hair. He pulled back out just as quickly, bearing a cupcake with bright pink frosting.
Pinkie Pie stared at it, her jaw hanging open. “A real cupcake...”
The beast presented it. “Go ahead. It’s yours.”
She took the cupcake. She sniffed at it, first tentatively and then deeply, sighing with pleasure. She licked it, then nibbled it, and then gobbled the entire thing down in a frenzy of bites, moaning softly as she did so.
“Mmfff...” Little flecks of crumb and icing fell from her lips. “Icing so sweet... such fluffy cake, the vanilla, the faintest hint of pomegranate and citrus, it’s all so overwhelming, it’s so...” She swallowed, slumped, and sobbed, tears falling from her eyes.
The creature curled in close. “Why do you cry, Pinkie Pie?”
“I cry,” said Pinkie, “for I know that I shall never taste another thing so good as long as I live.”
“Is that so?” The creature snapped his claws, and a second cupcake appeared.
Pinkie looked at the cupcake. She looked to the creature, then back to the cupcake, then back to the creature. The creature nodded. She took the cupcake.
This one she ate slowly. She nibbled at the edges. She turned it over and bit the base, savoring the contrast between the outer crust and the inner cake. She sunk her teeth into the thick, zesty icing, letting it coat her tongue and the roof of her mouth. She even chewed slowly, determined to make this morsel last as long as mortally possible.
After swallowing the last mouthful, she looked up at the creature. She was panting, her face flushed, her eyes unfocused and filled with need. The creature smiled, and conjured a pint of milk and a box of miniature cupcakes.
Pinkie Pie looked at him in awe. “You are so cool.”
“I’ve often said so myself.”
“We need to throw a party,” she said. “A ‘Pinkie Pie’s Awesome Friend Is Awesome’ party.”
“Ponies still have parties?” asked the beast, his eyebrows raised. “Why yes, we should have a party. With punch, and music, and artillery!”
“And after the party, we can do even more stuff! Or before the party! Or even during the party!”
“Oho, like what?”
“Like, um, snowmobile racing! Bake-offs! Ghost-baiting!”
“Yes indeed! We’ll do all that and more, why, there’s so many things I’d like to do here. Whisky benders, mass weddings, vandalism!”
“Reverse streaking, prank-o-thons and grand-theft-zeppelin!”
“Competitive hugging! Sardine riding!”
“Paint huffing! Flash orgies!”
“A lynching but with candy instead of criminals!”
“That’s called a pinata!”
“I’ll have three!”
The pair of them were practically dancing around the room, both vibrating with excitement. The beast said, “Tell me, little one, where is this place exactly?”
“We’re in Berry’s Bar, in Ponyville, in Equestria.”
“Equestria! Ah, I thought I smelled its dulcet pong! It’s been so long since I’ve seen this place. You must give me a tour.”
Pinkie Pie bounced on her hooves. “I’d love to! Oh mare, we’ve sure got a lot of stuff to do. I kinda wanna do everything first, y’know? Should we make a list?”
The creature laughed gently. “Oh ho ho, no Pinkie, lists are for squares! I’ve got something better than a list. I’ve got a chariot!”
He snapped his fingers, and in the space of the bar a thing appeared which could loosely be termed a ‘chariot.’ A golden carriage floated a foot off the ground, with two golden doors shaped like apples and a soft top of gold lamé. Reins led from the carriage to a pair of creatures identical to the one in front of Pinkie. Both of these creatures were themselves attached to two more identical creatures, half the size of the originals. These smaller creatures were each led by another, smaller pair, which were led by another smaller pair, until the creatures at the very front of the reins were almost too small to see.
“Nice chariot! It looks like magic.”
The creature nodded. “In a manner of speaking. Have you ever heard of Tortuga’s paradox?”
“Hmmm. Is that the one where you run towards a thing, get halfway there in ten seconds, then halfway again in five, then halfway again in two and a half but you never reach the end because math?”
“That’s roughly it, yes. You can never move anywhere in this paradox because there will always be a smaller possible movement that you haven’t yet made. My chariot solves this by taking an infinite number of ever-tinier steps.”
“Huh, that’s pretty smart.” The door to the carriage swung open, and Pinkie Pie hopped inside to land on a beanbag. The beast followed her inside and took the reins. “Say, you know my name but I don’t know yours. What should I call you?”
“My name?” The beast grinned, and giggled. “I have had many names, little one. I have been called Havoc, The Dragon In The Stone, Eris, Discord, The Ever-Changing One, Mayhem, Ahriman, Uridimmu, Strife, Neheb Ka” —he spoke faster, his voice trilling with excitement— “Ladon, The August Star of Heaven, Chuckles the Dancing Revenant, Apophis, The Font of Strange and Exciting Events...” He paused and giggled once more. Pinkie looked at him expectantly. He looked back at her.
“But for some reason,” he continued, “none of those names feel like my name. For some reason, I feel like my name is... Rider.”
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Q. Why would a pony Grail War have a Rider? Ponies don't ride.
A. Who said he was a pony?
Magnificent chapter, from the patter to the cupcake recipe to the fractal chariot. I love seeing these two together, and in a world as dark as this one, they'll add some desperately needed levity. And pastry. It just isn't Equestria without cake. Of course, in an Equestria like this one, they're not going to be all punch and skittles. These two are going to shake things up in a number of ways, some less delightful than others. Eagerly looking forward to more.
Well Pinkie being a Master you already spoiled in your blog post, so that's no surprise. Discord being a servant is a surprise though I really should've expected it. Him being Rider I didn't expect though it makes sense given Berserker is supposed to be driven to insanity and Discord was insane (or is he?) from the start. Oh, the fun these two shall have together! I expect these two shall give no shits about the Grail War much the same way Ryuunosuke and Caster did in Fate/Zero but with hopefully less child murdering.
Updated servant list:
Saber - Castellan, Polaris
Archer - Celestia, Twilight
Lancer - Luna/Nightmare Moon, Trixie
Assassin - Changelings/Chrysalis, Applejack
Caster - Star Swirl the Bearded, Sunset Shimmer
Rider- Discord, Pinkie Pie
Berserker- unknown, Gilda(?)
Is one of them the next Master?
Not sure how to feel...
And Discord's here, because.... Reasons?
Sweet Heavens!
My heart has been warmed.
"One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong, Can you tell which thing is not like the others by the time I finish my song?"
Er, I'm sorry, but that was kind-of jarring. Again, I'm sorry, but swearing just doesn't seem very... Discord, for lack of a better word.
Well, that's very Discor... Wait. That means...
... Meep.
5662704 Well, Discord's madness is rather different than Berserker's kind of madness, so it makes sense it wouldn't fit.
Alright, let's count them up!
~Team Wormy Apples
•Applejack: ASSASSIN("Sour Apples"/Queen Chrysalis)
~Team Blue Moon
•Trixie: LANCER[?](Princess Luna[?])
~Team Mirror Portal
•Sunset: CASTER(Starswirl the Bearded)
•Twilight: ARCHER(Princess Celestia)
~Team Royal Marshmallow
•Prince Polaris: SABER("Castellan"/Princess Platinum I[?])
~Team Kookie Khaos
•Pinkie Pie: RIDER(Discord[God have mercy upon our souls])
5662888 Exactly, if I recall the description from Stay Night, Berserker's couldn't really think a conscious thought because of all the rage suppressing his mind. Meanwhile Discord is a sort of whimsical, 'can't tell if he's truly insane or a genius who doesn't give a shit', intelligent sort of madness. Makes me wonder who our Berserker will be, if not Nightmare Moon.
Commence read.
Typo catch.
Glad to see Pinkie getting some of her cupcake on. See how some cotton candy clouds go, if they appear.
Interesting take on Rider's Chariot.
5662953
Time for a bit of exposition! (Remember, this may or may not apply to the rules of The Fading World).
Berserker as a class is a very... weird thing in the Fate/universe. A Servant summoned into it is stripped of their ability to reason and is supposed to act only in accordance with the Master's wishes and smash things, though this isn't always the case (For example, Fate/Zero Berserker had the intense desire to punch Saber always and forever). It's actually supposed to be a weaker class, but Fate's always gotten around that by putting really bizarrely strong Servants into it and explaining how they can keep their fighting prowess without their sanity.
That's not to say, however, that being stripped of reason to begin with keeps you out of the Berserker class. Strange/Fake is of dubious canonicity but it's an official manga now so I'm treating it as canon-adjacent, and it confirmed that in the weird case of the false Jack the Ripper Berserker, Jack was summoned with sanity intact- in fact, better than intact, because the insanity that would have caused Berserker to murder people was nulled by the Mad Enhancement.
So... typically, yes, a Berserker is a Servant summoned without their reason so you can have a giant, (hopefully) obedient bruiser with increased parameters. But they don't have to be.
....Discord is Rider.
I don't know if I should be afraid or think about how freaking awesome that is.
Why can't I hold all these wildcards...
There was sooooo much dialog to stop and point to as exceptionally good here. I love this. usually, ironically enough, Discord and Pinkie are really predictable and uninteresting together. Maye it's just low-hanging fruit for most people? Anyway, I loved this.