True Story

by Eyeswirl the Weirded

Chapter 7: The Pilot Is Supposed To Be Shining Armor

Humming a cheery tune as she closed the door, Sweetie Belle trotted in the direction of her room, pausing to see her sister staring off into space, exactly where she'd been standing that morning. This drew a concerned frown and a raised eyebrow. "Sis? Have you been doing that since I left?" She had to poke her a few times to get an answer.

"No, Sweetie," she replied while glancing at the flyer she'd finally managed to put down on a nearby table, "this is a completely separate grown-up space-staring session."

Sweetie Belle smiled. "Oh, okay then. I'm gonna go clean the big spoons and bowls, see you later!"

Rarity managed a little smile. "That, that would be appreciated, Sweetie, thank you." She didn't tell her little sister why she was staring into space, and counted herself lucky that it hadn't been asked, because the culprit this time had quite possibly been Ponyville's favorite pony, and such a sentiment heard from an innocent foal may have started entirely new rumors to plague her. It was really more a matter of disappointment anyway, of having her heart steadily rise as she read what was undeniably Pinkie's hoofiwork, then crash into the ground again when she read the last line.

So close. So close, Pinkie Pie, but no cigar.

Well, it might not have worked anyway, but there was no hope at all now. Rarity needed to do something, but what? All her usual avenues (bar crying) were exhausted and the only way she knew to truly stop the rumors was to answer the question; to tell them what really transpired between her and him, and there were things a lady preferred to keep to herself!

Somepony may have guessed it by now, but not on my life will I grant him the victory of confirming it if they-...

"Wait..."

Something was wrong here. There were precisely two ponies in the wide, wide world of Equestria that knew what took place between them that day, and both lived here. In Ponyville. Where the rumors about that very incident now engulfed the town. Why had Blueblood not stepped forward to brag about his little game? Why had Rarity not actually heard anypony talking along the lines of what happened? Did he just want her to stew longer, or did it not end exactly as he'd hoped? She might not have wanted the truth to go public, but why would he restrain himself? Her eyes narrowed.

"That scoundrel is up to something," she muttered as she picked out another fashionable hat and matching spectacles, "and it's time I found out what."

It was time to go find Blueblood.

---

"Alright," announced Blueblood to the rest as he closed the library door, "from the marketplace to Sweet Apple Acres, the scrying stares and intrusive questions alone tell me that this thing isn't going away on its own any time soon. Any ideas?"

Thunderlane shrugged. "Why not just make something up? True or not, anything heard from the source is bound to pour a lotta sand on the wick, right?"

"Egad," gasped Doctor, who remained smiling through his delivery, "our own Element of Honesty promotes the spread of lies?!"

Thunderlane rolled his eyes. "Yeah, because getting a magical gem means I'm forbidden to so much as crack a joke that strays away from the truth, Shining can't ever make new friends because he has to stay loyal to us, Soarin now has to wear a clown suit to keep everypony around him smiling all the time, Big Mac has to-"

"Okay, sheesh, we get it!"

"That said, I'm not very good at it, so I'm leaving this to you."

Blueblood stroked his chin in thought. "Actually, that might not be a bad idea."

Shining blinked twice. "Come again?"

"He has a point; either they'll accept what I tell them and it'll simmer down with that, or they'll build on the new story for a while before they run out of steam for it, having little reason to keep speculating. However, there is one problem."

Doctor left no room for suspense. "Rarity not liking your story, coming out with her own, and confusing matters further?"

"Correct, and since it would seem that she had the same idea of hoping this would blow over, she may be just as content to let the embers burn out as well. We'll have to come up with something she won't take offense to, so does anypony here know her well enough to help with that?"

Soarin tilted his head. "This was back when you were a total jerk, right? Couldn't you just say you were harassing her or something? Bet she'd go along with that in a heartbeat."

Big Mac frowned. "Ah don' know if Ah like the implication that it's always gotta be the buck's fault. Plus, if Blue were the only one that did wrong, him holdin' a grudge all this time too wouldn't make a whole lotta sense."

"True," added Thunderlane, "but I know from experience that saying everything is your fault is a great way to calm a mare down."

"Weren't that part of an extremely unhealthy relationship?"

"Well, yea, but Blue isn't actually hoping to mend fences with her, right?" There was an uncertain pause. "Anyway, if none of us know Rarity, we could probably get an idea of her personality through her friends. I mean, unless she's willing to work with us on this." And another one. He shrugged. "It'd at least be worth a try if someone other than Blue were to talk to her, y'know?"

Blueblood nodded. "Keep an eye out for her, I suppose, but I'll be headed to Mayor Mare's office. As it happens," he said with a faint, but smug smirk, "the situation here in town gives me the perfect alibi with which to ask about why she picked Rarity for the decorations in the first place, traits of her character, that sort of thing."

"Alright," summed up Shining, "so... split up, see what we can learn, meet back here later?"

There were nods and murmurs of assent before the group set out, ready to begin phase 1 of the plan.

---

Pronking more happily than she had all day, Pinkie made her merry way to the school building with a cake on her back. She really liked the time of day when school ended, because that was when the foals were happy, the teachers were happy, everyone went home to spend time with family and friends, and it was like a big, smiley chain-reaction! To make matters better, Pinkie was bringing Cheerilee a cake, both to celebrate the end of the rumors and as part of the on-going thank-you for letting her use the presses without supervision! And then she heard it.

"My, goodness, I wouldn't think Rarity would do a thing like that!"

Pinkie stopped just outside the door. She recognized that voice as Golden Harvest, one of the ponies that sometimes came to hang out with Cheerilee while she graded the day's papers. Her heart was sinking even before the other regular, Lilac Links, spoke up.

"If it were a wealthy, unmarried Canterlot unicorn? I wouldn't put it past her. Or me!"

Cheerilee chuckled even as she scratched lines on the next paper in red pen. "You're awful, but I really don't think Rarity would do that."

"Oh, definitely not," added Golden, "even she doesn't have that many pillows!"

There was a pause, with only the sounds of pen on paper to be heard.

Lilac raised an eyebrow. "Still 'staying on the sidelines,' Cheers?"

"I told you, I have no idea what went on between those two, and I couldn't even make an educated guess!" Though she was informed enough to know that there could be consequences somewhere down the line if either party heard that she'd joined in the gossip-fest about them, but that kind of went without saying, didn't it? If anything, she was surprised that that didn't bother the rest of Ponyville.

"What about just a wild guess? I mean, if they're never gonna tell anypony, we might as well have some fun makin' stuff up, right? C'mon, something totally out there, just for fun!"

Golden smiled. "I've been pretty curious about what you'd come up with too!"

Cheerilee chewed the tip of her pen for a second. "Wellll..." If it was understood that she was just speculating a completely nonsensical scenario, that she DID NOT mean to say that it or anything like it had actually happened, that wasn't quite the same thing, right? Even if they heard, Rarity and Blueblood would forgive her for that, right? "I might have had this weird daydream after watching too many old movies..."

---

More theme music!
[youtube=cOFcWGN55R8]
Imagining the scene in monochrome is not required, but advised.

The door to city hall scraped open, scratching more lines on an already tired, over-used floor. The stallion responsible shuffled in, not giving the worn ground on which he tread a second glance. Floors were floors, didn't matter how they looked at the end of the day, same as his battered trenchcoat and tattered trilby, which did little to keep his messy mane out of his face. He brushed it aside with a hoof, dragging it down the side of his snout to brush against his five-o-clock shadow.

He didn't know why he'd even come in here, but looking around, he saw the decorations, the ribbons, the curtains, all signs that somepony still cared. He saw that somepony; also wearing a trenchcoat and trilby, on the other side of the room, busying herself with the effort of sprucing up the place for later. He didn't bother introducing himself.

"It's all for nothing, you know," he grumbled, his voice low and gravelly like an avalanche of pebbles, "and not just for the usual bleak apathy of the universe."

The mare did little more than look over her shoulder at him, which revealed her own five-o-clock shadow and a dull luster in her eyes that spoke of countless hours spent toiling, toiling for nothing, and still burned with the dim embers of a will to keep going.

"Maybe," she grumbled back, "what's it to you, stranger?"

"Been busy, and the lead I've been following tells me none of this is gonna matter when the sun goes down."

The mare nodded slowly, as though her head were weighed down with a lifetime of disappointments. And toil. "I know that. Don't ask me how, but I know that. I feel it in my bones. Think everypony does, really, but we all carry on regardless, just like we always have. Is it all in vain? Is it all just rainwater trickling down an old gutter? Perhaps, but that's life; not the trials or the triumphs, but the struggles they drag us through, and all the grime and broken glass are just the souvenirs we pick up through the gift shop of that tortured tourist-trap, whether we want them or not."

The stallion grabbed her in his hooves to whirl her around and hold her face close to his. "Dammit, you crazy broad, can't you see you're throwing away what little life you've got?! If you just stick through this, you'll regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon!"

And then the helicopter crashed through the window, laying to waste all of the mare's efforts as it quickly came to a perfect landing in the center of the room. The stallion at the cockpit, a white, blue-maned unicorn, took a puff on his cigar as he waggled his thick, bushy eyebrows and moustache, looking at the two through large spectacles. "Well, fancy meetin' you here!"

The pair hadn't moved a muscle as the stallion gazed into the mare's eyes. "Come with me, leave all of this behind and live whatever you've got left with the peace of mind that at least this time, it was your own call!"

In the cacophony of helicopter blades and the thrashing of their coats and manes in the gusts they kicked up, she uttered her reply in a tearful whisper.

"I can't..."

They held one another a moment longer, but the stallion knew he had to go, gently releasing the mare to fall to the floor and walking away. She laid there even as the helicopter took off, motionless and staring at the remains of the ceiling as a pool of red liquid slowly spread over the floor by her side.

---

Cheerilee looked back at her gaping friends with a raised eyebrow. "...What?"

Lilac's eye twitched. "Did... d-did he murder her?!"

"What? No, no, she spilled red dye." More staring. "It was in her coat! He caught her in the middle of decorating, so I figure she'd just have pocketed it before they started talking. Things don't just appear out of nowh-HOW LONG HAS THIS CAKE BEEN HERE?!"

The three of them now stared at a cake sitting on Cheerilee's desk, with 'Thanks for letting me use the presses!' written on it in icing. Connecting the dots, they looked at each other and asked in unison.

"When did Pinkie come in?"

---

Having a bibliophile for a little sister came with certain responsibilities. Well, kind of. That was the reason Shining wanted to think he'd stayed to watch the library while the others went out to get an idea of Rarity's personality, something he himself probably wouldn't be much help in.

"Hey," he muttered aloud to a hypothetical friend of Rarity's in the otherwise empty library, "don't mind that I'm a friend of someone she absolutely hates, what can you tell me about Rarity?"

The others were probably finding better ways to phrase it, but that required a certain measure of dishonesty. Shining Armor was not an accomplished liar, something Twilight's friends had pointed out a few times before.

Where did Sunset learn to do it so well?

Not that he wanted such an unsavory skill himself, but a brother worried about what might rub off on his LSBFF. He shook his head. Twily was a good filly, that was why she liked books as much as she did; learning for its own sake, freedom of information for all! A filly like that would be upset if her local library wasn't open when it should be, and Shining didn't want to discourage the Twilight Sparkles of the world. Or of Ponyville. Really just that second one, as the rest of the libraries were beyond his power.

And so he sat by the front desk of Golden Oaks Library, studying a spell tome while waiting for the others to get back. To his surprise, the bell over the door rang only about twenty minutes after everyone had left.

"Back alrea-" Looking up, he did not see any of his friends, he saw a pony that made his blood run very, very cold as she calmly approached the desk. Even in her tasteful hat and sunglasses.

"Good day," Rarity began cordially, though without a smile, "might Prince Blueblood be available? I wish to speak with him." The way he stared back at her did few favors for her nerves, but she got the distinct impression that her own gaze was considerably more unsettling for him. She knew who he was, and that he was the one responsible for the situation in town now, but he wasn't the one she wanted to talk to right now. "...Well?"

"WELL," Shining unintentionally shouted back, startling the mare in front of him, "A SHAFT SUNK INTO THE GROUND TO OBTAIN WATER, OIL, OR GAS!!"

Rarity blinked very slowly, weighing the pros and cons of backing out of the building. "Y-yes, I suppose that... that..." She cleared her throat. "Is Blueblood here?"

Eyes wide and pupils shrunk to pinpricks, Shining stared back Rarity, who had very good reason to be annoyed with him. Sweat trickled down his face as he tried to decide what to do first; apologize for the whole thing, explain that he was the only one here for now, ask if she was interested in checking out a book, or blurting out all three at once and escaping through the wind-

Rarity sighed. "Alright. Look. While I may be annoyed... frustrated... irritated... humiliated... and otherwise very displeased about the entire town gossiping about me, I am not considerably upset with you in particular. Alright?" She got a cautious nod back, which drew a hopeful smile. "Splendid. Now, would you please bring him out here?"

"He's not here."

"WHAT?!" Distantly, Rarity chided herself for using an outdoor voice in a library.

What little composure Shining had managed to regain a moment ago was rapidly slipping away, along with his breath. "HEACTUALLYWENTTOCITYHALLIFYOUHURRYHEMIGHTSTILLBETHERE!" In the silence that followed as Rarity worked out what he'd blurted at her, Shining internally screamed.

I just told her where he is! And I don't know if that's good or bad right now!!

"City hall," Rarity said to herself, "of course he'd go there." That was where this began, wasn't it? Fitting, and if Blueblood had stationed Mr. Armor here for exactly this purpose, then she gave him full points for the dramatic symmetry of the thing, if nothing else. As she turned to leave, the colt behind the counter started shouting again.

"W-w-wait," he said with a badly-forced smile, "c-can I recommend you a good book? My sister sends me recommendations all the time, how about Pony Party Planning by Pleasant Surprise? Hiding Places and You; Anywhere You Can Fit by Withered Violets? Plot Progression by Geddon Widdit? What abou-"

"Mr. Armor," Rarity said sternly, "I can appreciate that you mean well, and that you wish to do right by your friend, but frankly? This whole fiasco has gone on long enough and I am well within my rights to seek an end to it by consulting the only other pony in town whom it truly concerns. Do you understand?"

Shining's ears folded back. "Yes'm." As Rarity again turned to leave, he called out one more time. "Wait!" She stopped, which he took as a good sign. "I'm not sure what you've gone through since this started, but I'm sorry, and whatever you may think of me, Blueblood, or any of my friends, none of us meant you any kind of harm in any of this."

Chuckling, she looked back at him over her shoulder with a genuine little smile. "I see. I'll try to bear that in mind, thank you."

As she trotted out, Shining smiled, pretty sure that for maybe the first time since this caper began, things were starting to look up.

...Provided that Rarity didn't find Blueblood, argue with him a bunch, tell him Shining told her where he was, make it sound like he'd betrayed his friend and boss without a second tho-

Shining immediately went hunting for another book in his sister's list of recommendations, this one apparently having been picked out for her by her friends; Shut Up, Calm Down, and Stop Catastrophizing, by Cool Head. It was very enlightening.

Author's Note:

I've never even seen a Noir movie, but I know I read the dialogue in Rorschach's voice.

Golden Harvest and Lilac Links are two randoms I found specifically for this scene.

On that note, Golden Harvest is apparently the official name for Carrot Top, a pony that appeared previously in the Stallionverse and wound up dating Caramel when last we saw her. Here, they're two different ponies that happen to look a lot alike, Pinkie Pie often telling ponies that there's a very subtle difference in their cutie marks. The more you know!

Comments

[howard035]

The only way to settle this is for Rarity and Prince to go on a hot date. I'm sure that will nicely quell the rumor mill.

[D48]

7322904 Oh please, that'll just make it even worse as everyone tries to figure out how to tack that onto the end of their crazy stories.

[howard035]

7323403 At first, yes. But when Trixie shows up to challenge Rarity to a duel for Prince's hoof, everyone else in Ponyville will forget about what started the whole thing.

[D48]

7323913 ...And then the stories will grow even more. Honestly, given how out of control the speculation has gotten and the fact that ponies like Cheerelee are throwing out crazy stories for fun, I am getting the feeling that coming up with wild stories about Blueblood and Rarity is going to become a permanent town tradition no matter what happens in this story.

[howard035]

7324007 You're right. Now I hope it ends with Rarara and Blueie trying to tell the rest of Ponyville the truth, only for everyone else to insist they don't want to know, as it would ruin the magic of the new tradition.

[D48]

7324036 Yeah, same here. The reactions from the two of them should be absolutely hilarious, especially once their friends join in. They had just better hope it remains a Ponyville-only thing because I can totally see Celestia getting involved for fun if she finds out, and if that happens it will become a national pastime weather they like it or not.

[Emperor]

I see neuroses run in Shining Armor's family.

This should be good [PopcornEmoticon]

[Hooked on Sliding]

Its going to be something completely inane. (no, not insane. inane. Look it up)

Both of them are over the top dramatic and easily offended.
50 Bits on that.

[KittyrinnAiko]

The Rorschach's voice is a characature of Sam Spade, Private Eye.