Swing of Things
"Ya-ha!" I hopped back on all fours, heart pounding and eyes wide.
"What?" Amethyst looked at me calmly... with her sharp white teeth and big gnashy claws.
"Um," I hesitated, then found a reasonable explanation. "I guess... I'm still used to... being a cow."
"Oh. Should I go inside?"
I found it a tad annoying that Amethyst now seemed to be at least slightly more articulate than I was. "No," I said, "My problem, not yours. ... How are the pups doing?"
"See for yourself," she said, and opened the cabin door wide. Four little balls of fur rocketed out into the hall I was in; and I found myself standing on tip-hoof, tensely trying to raise myself away from them as all four galloped around and under me.
Blanche whispered with my mouth, "You doing okay, there? You're acting like they're porcupines and you're a balloon."
Amethyst raised an eyebrow, and I glanced away from her for a moment, saying, "It's complicated."
She nodded, then, looking down at the much-more-puppy-like pups, said, "In." They galloped back into the cabin, and she closed the door on them. I found myself relaxing back to a more normal stance, and letting out a breath.
On the far end of the hall, I saw a large, unfamiliar male bear walk out of another room. "New crewman?" I asked Amethyst.
"No - Ursula."
I blinked. "Er - wasn't she a... she, before?"
"'It's complicated'," Amethyst repeated back, as the now-masculinized Ursula walked by us. She - he - nodded at us, and I nodded back, blinking a bit as I looked up and down at his body, looking for hints of her previous, muscled-but-feminine shape; and my nostrils flared as the smell of predator in the hall more than doubled. I kept watching as she went down the hall, until the last sight of her tail rounded a corner.
"Hunh," I commented, and Blanche didn't have anything to add to that.
Back in the familiar equipment of the lab, I glanced around, and reached for the nearest notebook... which my hoof completely failed to pick up. "Looks like," I said aloud for Blanche's benefit, "I'm out of magic, and need a recharge." I quickly found some sample crystals, some of which had the interior gleam of being full of magic. I picked some up, and started concentrating on drawing that power into my body, and-
"Ya-ha!" I said in startlement, dropping them to the deck - it felt like they'd burned me! I examined my hoof and leg closely - they looked fine, but...
"Okay," I found myself saying, "This is one of the possibilities we thought might happen. Let me grab one of those light-wands?"
"Are you sure it's safe?" I said back, not yet used to the sensations of speaking both sides of a conversation.
"Do you trust me?"
"Always," I agreed without hesitation, and tried letting one of my forelegs go limp. As if by its own accord, it reached out for a wand - and the hoof was able to pick it up without a problem.
"Lumen," my mouth said, and it lit up. Blanche nodded my head, and explained, "Okay - one of the things we were worried about is that when you had your... magical overload, your meridians... well, 'burned out' isn't the right word - maybe 'constricted' is. It's not a severe or permanent thing; all that you have to do to fix them is spend some time soaking in a steady magical field, like Equestria's. The trouble is, well, we're a good ways away from Equestria. So when we put together the spell that merged me into your body, we kept your meridians and mine as separate as possible, outside of what's needed to keep your brain working."
She paused a moment, so "So," I said, "to sum... for the foreseeable future... I can't use magic... but you can?"
I - she - we nodded. "That's the long and short of it. We might have been able to figure out how to tweak the spell to fix your meridians when we cast it... but, well, we've been taking a lot of shortcuts, and that's just one more. Better to get you thinking as soon as we got you, than to let you wait around as an animal while we fiddled trying to come up with the perfect spell."
"Is that why... you volunteered... to, um, be in me?"
"Well - partly. If this did happen, and it did, then we'd need someone to be part of you, for their meridians to keep magic flowing to your brain. We haven't just been sitting on our hooves while we've been looking for you - we've been doing all sorts of experiments. You're actually not the first cow I've been stuck inside - though you are the smartest."
"Thanks... I think. So... does that mean... you're stuck with me... until we're back... in Equestria?"
"Well... more technically, it means you're stuck with me; it's easy enough to get me out of you, now, but without the magic from my meridians... you'd be back to being an animal before we got near Equestria. If that's a problem... we've extended the maximum duration of the sleep wands - and we could just set things up to keep me unconscious until it's safe to get me back out again."
I blinked a few times. "It's... nice of you to make the offer... but... it seems... counterproductive. I'll try... to make more reasonable... accommodations... for us... to each have... private time." For some reason, the image of he-Ursula's hind end flashed into my mind, and I found myself blushing. "If that sounds... alright."
"Suits me," Blanche agreed.
"I think you're going to want to see this," said Captain Red.
We were flying to the center of Thule, and were currently over a surprisingly extensive stretch of black and barren rock, with a gleam of glaciers far to starboard. Red lifted a hoof to point the other way. "He shouldn't have gotten very far since we passed by him the other way... ah, and there he is."
It took a few moments for enough of what I was seeing to become visible for me to be able to figure out what I saw... and when I did, I raised an eyebrow.
Back near Canterlot, we'd found the nearly intact skeleton of an Ursa Major, one of the Star Beasts of legend; I was now getting my first glimpse of a live one: a Taurus, a semi-transparent bull bigger than the whole Mikoyan. He - and he was very definitely a 'he' - was casually grazing on a field, tearing up a whole mouthful of grass and soil, leaving nothing behind but the underlying, black rocks.
Red commented, "From what we've been able to measure of the wastelands it leaves behind... he's been here for a couple of centuries, and will finish stripping the place bare in another thousand years or so. It's a bit odd - the reference texts about Star Beasts do talk about their appetites... but not about the land staying barren after they eat."
I considered that. I was definitely thinking slower than I had when I'd tested myself as a bird - and less creatively, and with a smaller working memory, and, generally, less mental ability in every quantifiable quantity. I really, really hoped that this was a temporary thing, which would be solved as Blanche's magical life-support system to my brain helped it return to normal. I already knew just how unintelligent I really was, even when I was running on all cylinders, and the idea of losing that much of my self was... well, it wasn't a happy thought. But in the meantime... while I was thinking slower, I was still able to work through some puzzles. Wastelands that had been getting bigger for a couple of centuries - something about that length of time, connected to Thule, tickled my memory - and I managed to grab it. "The storm," I said.
"Hm?"
"The storm... cuts Thule off... from the world. Maybe it cuts off... something important... for replenishment. Magic. Or dust."
"Mm... makes as much sense as anything else."
"If that's so... then the Thule people... may need to... kill it off... the Taurus, I mean... to keep it from eating... every last plant. If so... then we... might try doing well, by doing good... and harvesting... its body, its bones, and so on... for ourselves."
"Mm," Red repeated. "Given you were able to take out a whole fleet of ships, by yourself, with just a small part of the Ursa skeleton... I can see how that might be even more useful than Svalinn, if we can carry enough of it."
"Still," I continued thinking aloud, "before we start... killing Star Beasts... willy-nilly... we might want to... figure out... the long-term... consequences. Maybe we could... find... a less... permanent... way."
"Are you sure you're not being influenced by it being closer to your species than the Ursa Major was?"
I snorted. "I could tap-dance... on one of its horns. ... If I could tap-dance. It's no more my species... than Godzilla is an iguana."
"Still - he is a rather impressive slab of beef."
"... Are you taking this conversation... somewhere in particular... or just trying to give my blush-muscles... a field-test?"
"Well..."
"If you want me to... even consider... going any further... you'll have to get me drunk. I'm brain-damaged, not boorish."
Red managed to get out a chuckle. "Same old Missy," she slapped me on the back.
"Hey, watch it, I'm right there," Blanche muttered in complaint.
When the sun went down, I stretched out on my pallet, freshly pulled out of storage. I had, with some shame, asked for a couple of ponies to spend the night in the room with me to let me sleep, instead of Amethyst and the pups. I wanted to be comfortable with them, but, well, I just wasn't. It didn't help that my udder was completely dry, and I couldn't nurse the pups even if I did want to.
I couldn't fall asleep - I had far, far too much rattling around in my emptier-than-usual skull. But I did need as much rest as I could get; so I went through some meditation-like routines, relaxing each muscle of my body in turn, focusing on my breath without controlling it, and so on.
After some hours of this... I heard the gentle sounds of hooves tip-toeing over. I heard Red's voice, in a near whisper, ask, "You awake?" I was feeling more interested in trying to sort out my own thoughts and feelings than having a conversation; and if it was important, Red would have just woke me up... so I didn't respond, and just kept laying there like a log.
And then my mouth whispered, "I'm pretty sure she's asleep."
If I hadn't been concentrating so hard on not reacting, I probably would have twitched at that.
"Okay," Red whispered. "So... how's she been doing?"
"Fair to middling," Blanche answered. At this point it would be embarrassing all around if I let them know I was listening in, so I kept trying to pretend to be asleep. "I don't hear what she thinks - I just feel what she feels. I'm pretty sure we got all of her memories intact, but... she's not thinking as well as she remembers thinking, and she knows it, and she's frustrated. The dogs scare her... and the bear scares her, but in a more complicated way - I think she may be interested in him."
"But is it her, deep down in her core?"
That was a question I had been worried about, off and on, for some months now, ever since arriving in Equestria; and with who-knows-what being done to my brain lately, it had gotten back near the top of my mental queue. Red asking Blanche something I was, for once, afraid of finding out the answer... was disturbing enough that I couldn't help but twitch. I tried covering it up by grunting and shifting position a bit; both Red and Blanche clammed up as I did. I took a deep breath, and went back to being limp again.
After a minute or so, Blanche said, "Whether or not she is - she's the closest we've got... and I think she's close enough."
The two of them fell silent again, and after a bit, I heard Red walk away.
Now I really had too much to think about to fall asleep.
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Hm, so we're back to the questioning of one's own existence? This shall prove interesting...
Out of curiosity, what happened to the Warden Whistle? Is that out of the story completely or will it be showing up again?
1500845
I do have plans for having it show up again.
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It was almost painful hearing her try to articulate her complex theory, so way to go, I suppoe. That is what you were going for, sympathetic brain-hurt and empathy? Look at me using an abundance of multisyllable words, just to confirm that my mental thesaurus gets enough exercise to avoid atrophy and stave off mimicking Missy's present state.
On a side note, I spent way too much time on those last two sentences. Like, maybe three minutes of pondering.
Oh ho!
Do I taste a neural clone in the narrative?
Hrmmm. Are you insinuating that they made a new Missy out of a normal cow? If so... well.... god you're a meany.
ooohoohoo, never seen an existential crisis outside of television and film, which just don't do it justice. Can't wait to see how it plays out in literature form.
1500877
Excuse me while I wash the d'aww out of my system. Can't just go around having heart attacks willy nilly, you know.\
And, this chapter reminded me of this.images.wikia.com/familyguy/images/6/68/E4cd5177c7e797037a2a10ee0e5c11f9.gif
Sorry for the double post but I just realized something ironic:
Missy is currently worried about whether or not she is the real Missy, or the product of magical experiments performed by her friends, a "clone". The irony of this being that there IS in fact a clone Missy in the Chessverse. Dear God, can you imagine the mindf***ery if they should ever meet while Missy is still going through her identity-crisis? Cloneception wouldn't even begin to cover it!
I didn't peg Missy as the type to worry about something as petty as Cloning Blues. Whether you're a clone or not, you're still a real person.
What chapter was the one where missy played tic-tac-toe with numbers? I want to show it to a friend but yeah... 283,279 words here.
1527592
The answer is... 42. And thank you for allowing me to give that response.
Protip - searching for 'myou've' in quotes almost always has this story at the top of the results.
1528319
... really? 42?
Ok.... TY btw. Off to the friend now.
Author's Note: I think it's safe to say that I'm no longer reaching my original goal of a chapter a day. My schedule has shifted; I no longer have the nice big blocks of uninterrupted time, which I'd been using to plot, compose, and generally think about this story. So I'm making some changes in my writing process, and I have a new goal. I'm not planning on changing my plotted course of events - but I think that I can at least bring the story to a reasonably satisfying climax, after which it will be safe to let the story be on pause for a while without letting all the immediate plot-threads dangle unresolved - sort of like the end of "Empire Strikes Back". And I think I might be able to scrape together enough writing time to get that done before the new season of MLP-FiM starts.
So, that's my goal, and my plan - pull off a decent middle-episode-of-the-trilogy finish, so that once I've got the time to write the last third of the story, I'll be able to do so, and I won't be throttled by my readers for leaving Missy's story where it is now.
1536442
a lot of you authors seemed to have encountered the same problem. I used to be chained to at least 2 or 3 story updates a day. Now, its 1 CGotG update every 3 days. Oh well. At least I finally have time to begin the arderous task of clearing out my favorite/unread box.
You left me to the mercy of my 2^23 word "read later" list! [sarcasm]Shame on you!
[/sarcasm]
now where will I get my pony ‼Science‼?
1645094 Yes, I've just never played text based chess before... Thank you, and might I recommend taking screenshots of an actual chess game maybe? If you are running windows vista or 7, chess titans is a good one, but lacks grid coordinates.
1574033
I hadn't read Blackwing's story at the time so I wasn't 100% full on the details of what dragon blood was supposed to do. I have now so yeh. I get it.
...when I got into a story with 115 chapters I kind of expected it to be complete.
But hey there's more to come! Umm... I daren't delve into all the associated Game quite yet though.
That could occupy a fair sight more of my time than simply reading one long work of fiction.
I'm quite happy with this pick for rationalist!FIMfiction. Has got me exercising my mind on things like whether I could make an outcome pump from the Portal through Time spell (answer: mishap chances and requirements make this difficult at best, but could manage things she actually uses it for) and overall has been quite a gripping read. Once I determine where the follow buttons are here I'll be clicking them.
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I only just registered an account on FIMfiction to begin reading this fic. I've got a few more on my list now but I powered through this whole thing in about a week, which was intense and amazing.
I have enjoyed this as much as Methods (which is the top of my desert island list and beat out everything else on the list combined), and it benefits me personally as I have a long-standing connection to magical cows.
I hope the long hiatus doesn't mean that this fic is dead forever!
2053735 Weird Al is, as Weird Al does.
This was a mindbogglingly good story :) Loved how you showed the path Missy's thoughts took and all the lovely rationality snippets thrown in. Very nearly enjoyed it as much as HP:MoR (which is my #1 book atm). Are you planning on writing any more? I've noticed there's a bit of a hiatus but I saw a comment or two on LessWrong that suggested you would continue. Great job though!
2213542
Looks like Athena to me, though YMMV.
I'm sort of scared reading this... I mean, Griffin the Griffin was the longest fanfic I've read, and that was 100 chapters long! This is 116 chapters and still in progress! I'll try to slog through this mammoth, but I don't know if I'll make it... Wish me luck!
In one chapter, Missy mentioned an equation used to estimate probability based on opportunities for something to happen and the amount of times it has happened. I can't find it, how did it go?
Hey wait, where are the rest of the chapters?
Just because I get confused by this story sometimes, doesn't mean that I wanted you to stop!
I'M SORRY, JUST WRITE MORE, FOR THE LOVE OF THE CHESSIVERSE GODS.
Hey, wait a second, why are my comments the first fifty things you see?
Am I the only one to comment in weeks?
...Well this is embarrassing.
And after I caught up I noticed that it has been on hiatus since late last year.... Disappointing. I hope it gets restarted.
Awww man, i really hope you will keep finish this story.
It is so far the most interesting one in the whole dang chess universe. I simply adore Missy and her peaceful (mostly) battles in the quest to save the world.
I finally figured out how Missy turned to stone in chapter 57: Four of Two. She drank that Cockatrice blood back in chapter 8: Relations.
You're amazing
2960548
Oh My Celestia...
How did I not see that before now!?
I read the whole thing during the last few days. It was fun while it lasted.
Say, DataPacRat, when do you think you might continue it?
Oh man, I finished rereading this and I still like it; it's cruel to leave us hanging like this, it really is.
I hope for the story to continue. It is a weak hope.
Well, was an interesting story, sad that it is cancelled. The writer could easily have it marked "completed" if he would have written a bit less.
But well that aside, thank you for the story author. Was worth to read.
Just thinking about how this story abruptly ends, it's actually in a convenient place for another writer to pick it up, if the original author was inclined to pass the story along, since, while not ideal, any changes in overall personality of the main character have an in-story reason to have occurred.
Finally finished reading this. So sad its cancelled. T_T
>>Yeah. Looking back again it is pretty sad that this sort of thing happens. It could be worse though. As much as we may want a continuance at least we can see the author is still out there, alive, kicking, and I hope having some fun.
Maybe one day the author might even continue it? Who knows for certain? No one could be absolutely certain until it happens.
Even if the universe this was a part of has not died but simply continued and shifted/splintered in form is no good reason to think there isn't a story here still. If anything that is simply more of an argument to think that this simply one of the ripest opportunities to continue.
Author is definitely a lesswronger.
Downloading this to my Kindle on the off-chance that it's good, and worth reading despite being canceled. Wish me luck!
7877305 Definitely worth reading. One piece of advice, though: don't read the last two chapters. Not that they're bad, just...the end of "Accepting Responsibility" would have made a perfectly good ending point for the story. The last two chapters are the start of what would have been an interesting arc, except the story was cancelled.
7915759
Thanks! Good to know there's a satisfactory ending somewhere in there.
Another Chessverse fic cancelled. i must be being punished by divinity for something.
Thanks for the entertainment and the motivation/inspiration!
9211662
Well, consider it from the reverse position. Having all sexual or reproductiove parts of a mare cut off or be given option to be turned to a Stallion? Not to mention mutilation punishments in themselves only would create bitter people who have massive dissociation caused on them. Not a good combination at all and quite dangerous to everyone they come in contact at later date.
9212648
Oh, I see. True.