Pistons and Ponies

by LucidTech

Chapter Eight

Inventor meandered down the street, his feet clicking lightly against the cobblestone as he kept his hands behind his back. An unreadable look was splayed across his face, but none saw it. His lunar outfit shone brightly in the afternoon sun, drawing the attention of all passersby away from his face. Derpy seemed to be the only one who had caught him with it, having noticed it on his face the day after the events in the Everfree two days ago. Luna would have as well, but she had been turning away from the man more and more as she grew closer to her sister once again. Some unknown thought ran through his mind and he slowly looked at his right hand, its true nature hidden beneath the glove covering it.

With a sad gasp inward, his eyes began to sparkle as light danced over the tears starting to find their way down his face. The source? A memory had been torturing him from the forefront of his mind since those few days ago.

“Excuse me, mister?” The voice was familiar, but Inventor ignored it, letting his steps take him away. Unfortunately, it followed. “Luna’s bodyguard, sir? May I speak with you?” The man inhaled silently through his nose, drawing in both courage and air alike, and wiped his face quickly before turning to face the mare to whom the voice belonged.

Not trusting his voice quite yet, Inventor waited for the pony in front of him to talk. The white unicorn paused, not sure how to start, then began. “I never got the chance to thank you back in Ponyville, for what you did.” The man didn’t respond and a tense moment of unsurety passed for the mare. “My name is Rarity, in case you forgot,” she added, clearly having expected the man to respond, meaning she was out of things to say. But she wasn’t ready to end the conversation just yet, so she had spouted whatever had come to mind.

“Is that all?” Nonchalant and deadpanned, he looked back at her with eyes deader than a corpse.

“Excuse me?”

“Is that all? Are you done? Are you going to continue to drag this out? Am I free to go? May we part? Would you like me to continue?” Annoyance made itself known as it began to build behind his voice, increasing with every alternate question he asked.

“I- I guess?”

“Good. Goodbye, that is,” he stated and began to walk away. Rarity followed in a huff; she wasn’t going to take being spoken to like that.

“That was quite rude.”

“Good, that’s what I was going for,” Inventor hissed over his shoulder to the pony. “Because I was hoping that it would make you GO AWAY!” He turned back to the road and continued walking, more annoyed than before at the pony, though the reason for his anger was unknown by the mare or himself.

“Well, I am not leaving until you apologize,” Rarity announced stubbornly, a hurt tone in her voice. Inventor stopped suddenly and Rarity pulled up alongside him, thinking he was going to do burst out in ‘sorry’s. That didn’t happen. Rather, she looked into his face and followed his gaze to the group of ponies in front of them. A crowd of some sort that had gathered around some spectacle neither of the two beings could see from where they were.

“What’s going on, do you think?” Rarity asked, forgetting her small anger in the face of this oddity.

If Inventor had been in a better mood, he might have sidled up alongside one of the ponies and questioned them as to what they were viewing. As it stood, however, he was not in a good mood. Reaching into a pocket, he pulled a small metallic L-shaped device and opened a panel on the side. From another hole, the man retrieved a small object that easily fit in the palm of his hand. With a smooth, practiced action, the object slid into the device without a fuss and Inventor pointed it skyward. Without pause, he pulled the trigger, an explosion echoing through the crowd, silencing them as they all turned to face him, looks of fear covering most faces.

Placing the device back into his coat, Inventor pushed his way through the stoic crowd and toward the middle, Rarity following the bothered man hesitantly. As they got to the middle, Inventor was greeted by the sight of a blue pegasus who appeared to have had a rough landing, some of her fur and feathers scattered about her from her collision with the ground. Her mane and tail were multichromatic and splayed about her body in a chaotic fashion, disheveled.

Rarity made a move toward her instinctively, but Inventor held her back as he knelt at the pegasus’s side. First, he placed his hand against her chest to check for a rhythm. When he had found one, he glanced to the unicorn by his side. “Go get some medical pony. I’m no doctor.” She nodded and hurried off for the nearest hospital. In the meantime, Inventor’s gaze moved over the mare’s body.

Noticing an anomaly, he leaned forward and lightly moved his finger to a specific wound on her wing. Pulling it away, he looked down at the dust that had accumulated on his glove and sniffed it lightly, then touched it to his tongue. With a skewed up face, the man realized it tasted and smelt familiar. Inventor glanced around his surroundings and spotted a shine of light reflecting off something in the distance. As he stood from the crowd, they closed around the body once again, chatting amongst themselves about the man behind his back.

Busy as they were talking about him, no one paid heed to Inventor as he approached the side of a nearby building and pulled an iron spike embedded in the cobblestone. Tossing it slightly into the air and catching it with his right hand, the man realized it had the same weight to it as the one that had gone through his throat a few days after his life had been secured. Turning around, Inventor looked at the nearby rooftops and found the only one that could shoot toward this alley also shot down the street, in the direction he had come from.

Putting it together in his head, Inventor deftly pocketed the iron spike and moved back to the road, waiting for the transport that would take the blue pegasus back to the hospital. After it had arrived, Inventor left the job to them and set off towards the castle.

He had something he needed to confront.

How dare he?! Inventor thought to himself as he trekked through the streets with footfalls smashing against the unyielding stone beneath him. Then, Inventor promised himself one thing: if the dirt bag behind this hurt someone else, he would wish he hadn’t lived in the first place.

---

His fists were clenched tightly as he moved through the castle. With anger coursing through his veins, he counted the doors until he arrived at the room he was seeking out, smashing the entryway with a powerful kick. The gray stallion within turned to face him, fear replaced by smugness as he realized who it was.

“Hello, mister bodyguard,” he declared in a tone of casual greeting while he concealed his pomposity behind a composed face. Inventor didn’t pay heed to the strange act, unfortunately.

“Hello, Scumbag,” came the retort, followed by the spike as it dug deeply into the wall next to the stallion’s head. “You forgot something.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The stallion had fear in his tone, worry flooding through it, though it seemed to hold some degree of artificial feeling to it. “I’ve never touched something so—”

“Then whoever you hired forgot something.” Inventor closed the distance quickly, his vision focused on the stallion, and leaned forward, curling his hand around the stallion’s neck. “When you tried to have me killed in the dungeons, I didn’t care. This time though, you hurt an innocent. An innocent whose interference probably saved me today, since I suspect your assassin had someway to ensure I didn’t recover this time. And so, if an attack on me goes awry again and hurts an innocent, I will personally tan your hide so black that everyone will think I lit you on fire and poured hot tar over you. Am I understood? If you plan on continuing, you should make sure they don’t miss.”

Slowly, the stallion smiled. It was a soft smile, barely visible in fact. “I told you, Your Highness, he’s a loose cannon.” His tone had taken on an inflection of fear, mixed with subservience.

Inventor turned quickly. An alicorn looked back at him, her coat light pink and her mane three tone —white, pink, and, purple— that merged into a muddied crimson towards the end of their length. Her eyes were cold, gazing at the man. “Get out of the castle.”

“What? No, you don’t understand; he...” Inventor stumbled over his words, silently cursing himself for not checking for other ponies in the room before brazenly charging ahead.

“I will provide witness and testimony of what occurred here to my aunts. From there, we will decide what is to be done. Normally, you would be allowed to stay in the castle under such circumstances. However, as you have claimed such a preposterous thing as Head Counselor hiring an- an- an assassin of some kind— a profession unheard of in Canterlot, I might add.” Her eyes were judgmental, and rightfully so. Inventor had assumed hitmen, or hitponies as it might be, were as common here as they were where he came from, a flawed logical jump in and of itself. “—you are hereby removed from the castle, so as to ensure his health.”

Resigned, Inventor pulled the spike from the wall easily and left. He could feel the pair of eyes following him, but was spared from seeing the prideful sneer of the head counselor that held on his face until Cadence turned to look at him. Inventor closed the door behind him, not looking back, and moved down the hall from which he had approached. A few of the other council members had come out of their rooms when they heard the commotion, but upon seeing the man walking by, they quickly closed the doors and left the man to his shamed shamble. He reached the door to the building and couldn’t restrain himself any longer. With a fierce swing, his mechanical fist collided with the wall and stayed there for a moment before he pulled it away, leaving a web of cracks on the stone as the only sign it had connected.

The man took the silver outfit from his shoulders and dropped it on the ground just inside the door in a heap. Then, in his sleeveless rags, he left. The last thing on his mind as he faded from the view of the castle was a simple, selfless one: a wish that Derpy would be able to keep her job in his absence. That way, not everything he had done would be unraveled in a moment of stupidity and rage. So it was with heavy steps, he vanished from view around a corner.

((A/N: I meant to make this longer, I really did, but my mind jammed randomly and I decided you guys wouldn't mind a shorter chapter given the circumstances.))

Comments

[Grado]

This thing lives?!

[IgnoreMETILLLATER]

i.chzbgr.com/completestore/2012/3/7/4fc8ac14-3640-4ca7-8c4f-87873f7cb290.png

[Stormy Sunrise]

I swear I woulda drove the spie through that Gus thraot.. But I could wait to do something worse.

[Mister Cider]

I have no idea where this story is at. Guess I need to read it all again.

[Zacob96]

THIS UPDATED!?!?!?!!
I had forgotten about this story.
Glad its back though.

[LucidTech]

1704537

I promised someone a chapter...

[Zacob96]

1704619 Well then, promise me another.... and another.... and another and another and another and another

[LucidTech]

1704785

How's tomorrow for ya? My mind is back on the rusty track that is writing for this story.

[BioChemicalWolfGear]

1704619
And we ask for more. We always ask for more until its over.

So may I request more? or are you finished with it?

[Zacob96]

1704799 Tomorrow is good, then I can read it during class when im supposed to be doing stuff

[CDR]

The stallion is as good as dead. Not actually dead, but fired, and ridiculed at the least.

P.S. Who the hell is said stallion?

[Total Eclipse]

then out of the blue came this update.

[LucidTech]

1705126

Mate, this didn't come from the blue.

This came from the black, the pool of ink that congeals from forgotten words. It emerged from those, a literary phoenix from the scraps of it's demise.

[LucidTech]

1705017

The grey stallion from the council who convinced Celestia to declare Inventor's demise in the first ( or was it the second?) chapter.

[SkyStream]

OMFG, this story is not dead???

[Total Eclipse]

1705145

That's what blue looks like to me. When i'm not wearing glasses or contact's.

I'd rather dive head first into a 50ft pool of ink, than stare at a dark blue wall.

[commander672]

And then we learned these mysterious spikes were the long-term result of Derpy's short-lived job as a railroad repairpony.

[LucidTech]

1705466

Directed by M. Night Shamalamadingdong

[munomana]

You, my sir, have created a story that is relevant to my interests. Please continue your story in a similar matter.

For now, accept my favorite and thumb.

[LucidTech]

1711982

Can't tell ya that mate. Spoilers.

[TheEnemyCube]

When can we expect some more?

[Tome Turner]

the object slid into the device without a fuss and Inventor pointed it skyward. Without pause, he pulled the trigger, an explosion echoing through the crowd

"Then a thud was heard that came from a dead pegasus that had fallen out of the sky and slammed into the dirt"