Manehattan Takes Rarity (Sharp Spark)
The legend about Manehattan is that it was founded by a bunch of earth ponies who had seen Cloudsdale and figured they could do a better job at building a city in the sky. The story was obviously apocryphal, but with the number of skyscrapers threading in between the clouds, it was no wonder ponies believed it.
The Woolworth Building wasn’t the tallest of them all — it seemed like every few years some pony with an obscene amount of bits and a correspondingly large ego tried to outdo all the rest with some new mega-tower. But it was a mainstay of the skyline, popular for its classical style that stood out from the modernist structures surrounding it. It was one of the oldest skyscrapers after all, built and occupied by a conglomerate of sheep brokers until the city purchased it.
Now it housed nearly all of City Services, from City Planning at the very top through Education, Health & Hygiene, Transportation, Finance, Records… all the way down to the Department of Sanitation tucked away in the basement. Almost every important group of ponies that kept the Big Orange spinning were tucked away somewhere in that building.
Almost. The Versebreaker Division was housed in a dilapidated two-story building that used to be a firehouse, three blocks away.
Purple Fugue didn’t really fault the bigwigs in City Government. It wasn’t anything personal; ponies with his particular set of skills tended to unsettle others, given the normal equine harmonization with the cosmic forces of music. And to be honest, he liked the solitude. All things considered, the Versebreaker Division was thriving and well-funded, but they didn’t need much in the way of office space, given that their work was out on the streets. So it just meant him hanging out there, keeping track of everypony’s assignments. Arranging for shift changes in the case of illness or vacation. Dealing with any problems that came up.
He was in his office, snoring gently into a pile of incident reports, when a Problem Came Up.
The door banged open and Purple Fugue nearly fell out of his chair as a pony rushed in. “What?” he yelled out. “Who? ...Pierce?”
Pierced Rhythm was one of the younger members of the Manehattan Versebreakers, but a go-getter with a lot of natural talent. Fugue suspected it wouldn’t take him long to rise up through the ranks, and he looked on the kid with a kind of paternal fondness. That didn’t mean that he didn’t recognize Pierce as being a little too over-excitable though.
“Boss!” Pierce blurted out. “We’ve got an emergency on our hooves!”
“What is it?” Fugue shuffled some papers around on his desk to appear appropriately professional. “Some unicorn billionaire has decided to adopt a curly-haired down-on-her-luck filly? I keep telling Foal Services that they should give us warning about that sort of thing.”
“No. Worse!”
“A unicorn mare has fallen in love with a rough-and-tumble pegasus from the wrong part of town, and now two gangs are planning to have a big rumble right in our streets? That’s the third time this year!”
“No! Worse!”
Fugue paused, his eyes narrowing. “Okay, you better not be telling me another florist has gotten his hooves on a weird plant and it’s grown out of control and started to crave the flesh of ponies, because I still think the first time was some kind of shared mass hallucination.”
“No!” Pierced Rhythm took a big gulp, shaking like a leaf. “There are ponies coming in from the countryside. Tomorrow!”
Fugue let out a breath. “Is that all? We get wannabe stars blowing into town every day. That’s practically our bread and butter, keeping the business district from shutting down every time a rube with a head fulla dreams arrives to make it in the Big Orange.”
“It’s not just anypony. There’s a Princess, and—”
“Come on now, you know us Manehattanites aren’t much for respecting royalty, either. They put their indescribably expensive golden hoof-shoe-thingies on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us.”
Pierce shook his head violently. “Not just any Princess. The Princess from…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Ponyville.”
Purple Fugue felt his blood run cold. That was a name he had heard before. Every Versebreaker had, and knew that Ponyville was a place to avoid at all costs. There were stories about that town that could chill the bone. Just thinking about them started to put a song in his head. And last he had heard, Ponyville also meant—
“She’s bringing her friends, too. And one of them is…” Pierce’s eyes drifted over to a wall, where yellowing posters were tacked up on the board for Manehattan’s Least Wanted. There, posted up right between Baby Voice Nelson and Alto Capone, was a mugshot of a little filly with an outrageous mane and an impossibly wide smile.
There was a reason besides seniority why Fugue was keeping a desk warm instead of being out on a regular beat. The Pink One had put an end to his career, one day fifteen years ago.
It was still a mystery as to why the kid had shown up in the middle of Times Square. It had been a busy day – the city had organized a hushed parade for hometown hero Low Murmur after she had claimed the World Championship of ‘Shh’, plus a diplomatic envoy of silent monks from Neighpon had chosen to see the sights, plus an exhibition of Prench street artists had gathered together to demonstrate their craft. Nopony could have expected the Pink One to start singing. And only Celestia knows why she had decided to start at one million buckets of oats on the wall.
There were a lot of good ponies lost that day. And also some mimes.
Fugue gritted his teeth. “Alright, call everypony in. We’re going to need all the firepower we’ve got if we want to stop this.”
“Wait,” Pierce said shakily. “I might have a solution.”
“I’m listening.”
Pierce nosed through his saddlebags and produced a thick stack of papers. “There’s a Request for Approved Musical Performance.”
“Really?” A grin spread across Fugue’s face. “Maybe this princess is a pony we can reason with. And in that case, it’s simple: we’ll decline based on incomplete paperwork and she won’t have enough time to refile.”
Pierce shifted from one hoof to another. “That’s just the thing, boss. I think the paperwork is complete.”
Fugue snorted and began leafing through the stack, wincing only slightly as he noticed each page was filled out in pink crayon, with loopy mouthwriting and a smiley face in every dot of an ‘i’. Still... “Nopony has complete paperwork. In fact, we plan it that way. The RAMP sub-codicil 26$A references a Form 347B, and the dirty little secret behind everything is that there is no Form—”
He froze, staring down at the page in front of him.
“Uh,” Pierce muttered. “It turns out the princess apparently personally designed and implemented Form 347B last year, under the Bureaucratic Inefficiency Act of 992.”
“I thought that was used to get rid of outdated forms?”
“No, you’re thinking of the Bureaucratic Efficiency Act of 974. I think that one got repealed for revisions due to some procedural issue.”
“How would she even know? What, does she read Equestrian law textbooks before bed each night?”
Pierce shrugged helplessly.
“What’s your solution then?” Fugue said, feeling a headache oncoming.
“Hear me out here.” Pierce bit his lip as he paused. “We let her have her song?”
Fugue cut a sharp glare in his direction. “That’s treading on thin ice. What’s she asking for?”
“One song, solo with up to five supporting roles and incidentals from external participants.”
“She can guarantee it doesn’t extend to a wider audience?” Fugue rubbed a hoof against his chin. “That’s… reasonable. What aren’t you telling me?”
“...And some montaging.”
Fugue groaned.
“And a reprise, as appropriate.”
“You’re killing me, Pierce.”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
Fugue shivered. He knew it to be true. An uncontrolled song with those as the participants? It could turn into a disaster of apocalyptic proportions: unimpeded choral harmonization, synchronized dance mobs, cats and dogs singing together. Mass hysteria!
“Okay,” Fugue said grimly. “It’s our only option. But the reprise is a downtempo solo at most. If I see so much as a single innocent businesspony drawn in as backup vocals, I’m coming down on their heads like a basket of oranges. And I want our ponies doubled — no, tripled — at the Fashion Week venue. The last thing we want is some ambitious model accidentally setting off a chain reaction.”
Pierced Rhythm dipped his head. “I’ll let the others know.” He offered up a tentative grin. “Just another day in the big city, eh boss? Nothing’s ever easy.”
Fugue leaned back in his chair. “You can say that again. All we can do is keep an alert eye open and be ready to come in off key.”
“Of course,” Pierce said. “That’s our motto, after all...”
Fugue finished for him. “C♯ and B♭.”
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Dat motto.
Also, for some reason, I read the entire chapter in Rucks' voice.
Have the Pinkie Pie Lifetime Acheivement Award for Puns That I Made Up On The Spot.
Okay, that was a good motto.
The rest was great too. Love the idea that the Mane 6 are so dreaded by these guys.
The first chapter by AugieDog was lovely by itself, but this one here is what really sold me on the Versebreaker concept. Good job!
I'm in love with the sheer amount of whimsy.
Love the motto. Great way to cap off what was already an entertaining read.
Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Paperwork and unknowingly cutting straight through red tape (but not through Red Tape, poor guy takes enough grief as is).
I love that a line like this can be written with such an obvious unstated answer. Best Princess.
Perfection.
That's really clever.
I'm really starting to like this anthology a lot. I can't wait to get to the Fugue State chapter!
6058074
Coming up soon!
Glad you're enjoying the anthology. I certainly did, putting it together.
(Don't stop after On the Roof! Some of the best contributions are after it.
)
There needs to be more Alto Capone. I just can't decide if it should be a story detailing some of his escapades, or him becoming a Ubiquitous Cross-Fanon Background Detail.
(I will, however, pencil in writing some of his escapades after my current crossover project. You may expect an update on that no more than a year from now.)
...I was trying to think of a word to describe Alto Capone the way "gangster" describes Al Capone [1], and I couldn't think of one which is a pity but I did come up with a curiousity/prompt-thing:
Have versebreakers ever had to deal with a classically-trained pianist? If not, why not?/If so, how'd it go?
[1] That is, the blank in "the notorious ________ Alto Capone" to "gangster" in "the notorious gangster Al Capone".
6660255
I suppose the simple solution is "Songster" (or "Songstress", depending on gender).
Alto Capone is a name that honestly kind of demands to be written about. But I hear you on the project load.
Not quite sure how a pianist would differ in kind (or difficulty) from other classes of musical villains?
6663050
Ah, Songster, of course. That would do it.
I'm not entirely sure how a classical pianist would differ from more typical musical disasters, but I know they would. I mean, the closest thing in this collection to somepony like Octavia is C Clef or maybe Whole Rest. Most of the songs in here seem to tend towards Pop Culture or Musical (or both). How might a grand piano (or for that matter a cello) be involved? I mean in something longer and "cinematic" you might get the piano involved in the Climactic Trap Scene, but other than that....
I think, more than anything else, it's a case of "could we generate interesting ideas by playing in other, less-obvious musical traditions?"
6663811
Hm, okay.
As a first stab at the question, I'm pretty sure we've seen a musical villain wreaking havoc with an organ-based instrumental number. (i.e., Pinkie in Castlemania.) You're right though, there's a lot of creative havoc someone could cause by introducing incidental music to a scene. I recall Heart of Silence and The Badge, among others, at least hinting at that a bit, but nobody hung a full story around it …
>The Versebreaker Division was housed in a dilapidated two-story building that used to be a firehouse
All I could think of at this point was "
GhostVersebusters!"XD
7717822
there's a chapter of that crazy story "MLP time loops" where someone sings "who you gonna call? Verse Busters!" while dealing with the SIrens.