Jiggity Jig
Stalliongrad was the same as we'd left it. Micro Scope wasn't sure whether it would be a good idea for anyone but her to see her uncle, Copper Scope, when she gave him back his trunk of maps and papers; but since this time, him getting annoyed wouldn't result in him not helping us right then, and I might be able to persuade him to help us in the medium-term, Micro accepted my rationale, and I accompanied her.
I probably shouldn't have.
Despite my best efforts at finding a common ground on academic matters, he bristled at me from the moment we were in the same room. Maybe it was a fear that I'd be a bull in his china shop and knock over some priceless, millennia-old artifact; maybe it was something less complimentary to him; maybe it was my official suit; maybe I was entirely off-base in my guesses. The upshot was that if I was the sort of person willing to take offense at what others said, I had every opportunity to. He never actually said anything which was unambiguously an insult - but after a few minutes of stiffly smiling as Micro looked more and more strained, I did the best thing I could, and made my escape, with the excuse of having lots of airship paperwork to do.
What I actually did was head to a bar.
I was never a 'bar' sort of person before coming to Equestria, and since then, I'd had a few rather negative experiences in them - avoiding a lethal duel by the skin of my teeth, leaving another one to almost get raped, and picking up a spiked drink in a third - but there didn't seem to be any causal reason that going to a bar would necessarily cause me problems, even if I was in a universe where physics was occasionally bent to suit a song's narrative purpose.
Stalliongrad, unlike Canterlot, seemed to have a lot more non-ponies wandering around the streets; and, unlike Ponyville, had businesses too large to fit into a two-story wattle-and-daub house. The place I ended up at was 'The Hall', which seemed to be at least as popular with the non-equines as anywhere else I could see. It also looked to be a converted theater, with the original seating leveled out to make a main room, though the stage was still there - and still in use, when I entered by a jug band that wasn't taking itself at all seriously.
The bar itself was being run by a stallion as purely red as Big Mac, though not quite so big. "What'll you have?"
"Got anything dairy-safe?" Given the multi-species clientele, it was a fairly safe bet that he'd have something suitable for cows who had to worry about everything they ate ending up in their milk. There was an extremely limited customer base for alcohol-derived milk.
"Coming right up," he said, and efficiently pulled out a glass and a bottle of something. "Two bits."
I hoofed them over, and peered curiously at what he poured. "What is it?"
"Why, 'tis green, of course." An entirely accurate, if not exactly helpful, response. "The local cows swear by it."
I gave a sniff, and a cautious sip. Kinda minty, texture like a shake or a smoothie. "Works for me," I agreed.
"So," he said, "if you don't mind a cliche - what's a pretty cow like you doing airshipping to a town like this?" I raised a brow. "Not too many cows here wear clothes like the cow who came down from the pride of Prince Bluebood do," he explained.
I stalled for a moment by taking a sip of green. "Among other things," I finally said, "I'm looking for places I can give a subsidy to, for building a shelter in their basements."
It appeared that barmen rubbing rags along a bar as they chatted with a customer was a cross-universal phenomenon. "Expecting something to happen 'round here that we'd be needing a shelter?"
"Expect, no. Planning for anyway, yes. Fillydelphia would have been in better shape after the parasprites, if the shelter program had been in place by then."
"'Tis true," he agreed. "And I'm nigh certain that the owner here would be happy for a bit of extra cash, even if it is governmental."
"Perhaps I should take a few moments to meet him before I go."
"Perhaps you should." He wiped his hooves clean, then stuck one over the bar at me. "Bright Red, proprietor and manager of The Hall, at your service, milady."
While Copper Scope had been a bust, I consoled myself that I might have nudged another pony to become a member of the growing Dairy network - even if he didn't yet have any idea that that was what he would be becoming. The only further flaw on the proceedings was a few drunks who assumed that I was taking a break from working next door, a place called 'The Hitching Post', where the only reason that the employees weren't described as earning their money on their backs was due to most local species being quadrupedal, so they charged extra for 'seapony style'.
I restrained myself. They would be perfectly fine, in a few hours, assuming they had enough sense to rinse their eyes out. I told them that, but they seemed a bit distracted.
By the time I got back to the Alicorn, the excuse I'd given to the Scopes turned out to be true after all - Stalliongrad was well within the Dairy's communications network, and was the first place I'd expected to stop on my way back, so all my mail was waiting for me here. Most interesting - the Pillars informed me that they had a text which they believed I would value sufficiently to remove the curse, and they were entirely willing to allow a Princess to confirm they were telling the truth.
While we waited for Micro to finish, Red asked, "Say - mind if we swing by Cloudsdale on the way back? I've still got some stuff in storage there I've been meaning to move, now that I'm living at Canterlot full time. I didn't have any reason to refuse, so I told the crew to adjust our planned course accordingly.
Thus, when we left Stalliongrad, we didn't follow any of the usual airship routes... which meant that we passed over a somewhat unfamiliar section of ground, in the general region between Canterlot and Ponyville. Which led to Amethyst interrupting my newspaper reading by stating, "Smells. Funny."
I was quite willing to accept that other species could sense things I couldn't - and that some of those things could kill me. So I put the paper aside to focus on her, and what she was saying. "Can you tell what direction?" She considered, and pointed ahead, and a bit to starboard. I nodded, stood up, and shouted out: "Yellow alert! Crew to battle stations! Civvies to quarters! Red - you've got good eyes, work with Amethyst!"
Five minutes later, I called off the alert. There didn't seem to be any obvious danger - just a rather confusing sight. At the base of a tree in a petrified forest, at the bottom of a cliff, lay a skeleton. A rather large skeleton - from one end to the other, it seemed to be longer than my grandparents' old ten-story apartment building, half again. The carnivore's skull alone was bigger than a house. And the whole thing was partially transparent, and sparkly.
Something had killed an Ursa Major (or was it 'the' Ursa Major? I'd need to look into that), some weeks ago.
Micro commented, "That's the biggest baculum I've ever seen."
I glanced at her, then back down at the remains. "It - the whole skeleton, I mean - is impressive, I'll give you that. Is it valuable?"
"Are you kidding?" She glanced at me, then relaxed. "Right, the amnesia thing. Well - you know how ponies and cows are made of matter, with some magic running through them?" I nodded. "Star beasts are, as far as I know, made of magic, with just enough matter to let them stomp a village into the ground. The smallest clawtip down there could have enough concentrated essence-of-starbeast to power this whole airship for a year. Of course, there's not much that can kill one of them, so there haven't been many opportunities to study them..."
She was practically drooling. "Alright - so it's valuable. Both power-wise and knowledge-wise. And if it just fell and broke its neck, we might be the only ones who know about it. Or maybe whatever killed it will be back in ten minutes. I don't think we've got a tarp big enough to hide it - but if you want to stay and poke around, I can drop you off with anything we've got you could use, and then send Safe Guard to bring you anything else you need, plus enough guards to protect you, and it, from anything short of anything capable of killing it."
"I'll - we'll - be rich! And famous! Okay, you don't want to be famous, so - I'll be famous! It's a little out of my usual field, but the journal articles alone will ensure my name echoes forever down the halls of science!"
"I'll take that as a 'yes'. I'm going to add the proviso that your first priority is keeping yourself, and the ponies, alive, and that means being ready to bug out if anything that seems like it could be what killed it comes close. After all, it's hard to publish in a scientific journal if you're dead." I considered. "While we pack up a lab and lunch for you - see if you can find the smallest piece you can - a tooth, a clawtip, a shard, whatever - for me to bring with me. I don't know whether to call our mission to the giant tree a success or failure or what... but I can use a piece of a starbeast for all manner of excuses and diversions, if need be."
We didn't spend long in Cloudsdale. Other than sending a quick note to Safe Guard through the Pegasus Express, Red's stuff was already packed into boxes, so we maneuvered the Alicorn as close as the city air regulations would allow, and she got some of her neighbors to help fly her stuff over.
With the spot the flying city was at the time, Ponyville was closer than Canterlot, so we swung over that way first. For entirely good reasons other than my getting to see Cheerilee, though I couldn't really think of any at the time. Amethyst volunteered to be dropped off with the pups, and after talking to the love-potion-dunked trio, I agreed to let them out of their cell for a bit of fresh air on the ground, as long as they behaved themselves - and the threat that if they didn't, they wouldn't be allowed back onto the Alicorn and would likely never see me again. Given their reactions, that seemed to be a sufficient threat to cow even Blanche.
As I approached Cheerilee's, my hooves clip-clopping on the street, I was able to clearly overhear as she sang:
Who's that knockin'? Don't stand outside there, come on in here!
I just had a sort of feeling this morning
something good was gonna happen today.
Now there comes a sound without any warning.
I just know it's good luck coming my way!
Goodness gracious, can it be? Somepony's coming back to me.
Who's that knocking at my door?
I've been waiting oh so long, I'll just die if I'm wrong.
Who's that knocking at my door?
I know it can't be the mailmare, the coal mare, the ice mare, they've been here today.
Can't be the grocer, the butcher, the baker, they don't knock that way.
If my sweetie's there outside, my arms and my heart are open wide.
Who's that knocking at my door?
Me oh my, my oh me, guess I'm having company.
Who's that knocking at my door?
See the time? Eight o'clock. Sounds like a familiar knock.
Who's that knocking at my door?
I know it can't be the milk mare, the gas mare, the bread mare, who always collects.
I hope that it isn't the butter and egg mare, who writes out those checks?
If it's my sweet used-to-be, gonna lock her in, lose the key.
Who's that knocking at my door?
Can't be the plumber, the peddler, the parlor, cause I've paid those bills.
I hope that it isn't the doctor, the dentist, they can't cure my ills.
If it's someone that I've known, gonna make her feel at home.
I said, Who's that knocking at my door?
That's all!
I can't really say whether the song arose because of my approach, or my approach was retroactively induced by the song... since time travel exists and information can be sent to the past, I've been having to do a bit of re-evaluating of my understanding of cause-and-effect.
Still, whether cause preceded effect or vice versa, once Cheerilee opened her door and actually saw me before her... we fell into a duet:
I hate to think what might have been if we had never met.
Why should I suppose that this could be?
The weary days, the lonely nights, are easy to forget,
since I am here, and you are here with me.
Here we are, you and I.
Let the world hurry by.
Even while I waited, somehow, dear, I knew,
you'd find me, I'd find you
Here we are, alone together.
What matter whether we wandered far?
And though we haven't got a bankful,
we can still be thankful
that here, that here we are!
Here we are, you and I.
Let the world just hurry by.
Even while I waited, somehow, dear, I knew,
you'd find me, and I'd find you
Here we are, alone together.
What matter whether we wandered far?
And though we haven't got a bankful,
we can still be thankful
that here we are!
That's all!
I thought, 'Tomorrow I'll be at Canterlot, dealing with nobles engaged in an immoral gem/slave trade, with Princesses who only know what was really going on some of the time, with trying to find a cure for three ponies who rather literally worship me, with trying to come up with yet one more plan to try to stave off Equestria's impending doom at the hands of the other game-pieces... but today, today I'll spend some time with the mare who helps to remind me why all that fuss and effort is worth it on a personal level, as well as the abstract 'it sure would suck if everypony died' rationale.' Even on that totally impersonal level, I knew that people were easily motivated more by a single individual than by a crowd of millions, and that if the horse-apples hit the windmill then I was going to need every advantage I could, including maximizing the effort I could put out by maximizing my emotional connection to at least one pony to protect... but I didn't actually reason things out that way. I wanted to spend some time with Cheerilee; and I could; so I did.
(Author's Note: This chapter is a post-mortem crossover with strangephantasm's story Fudge: A Minotaur's Lament.)
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Yes!
I knew it, the thing with the Ursa Major was a crossover!
Huh, I was wondering what would happen to the Ursa Major's body. Personally I was thinking it would disintegrate and return to the cosmos, there was actually a plan to do just that with the Ursa Major being reborn someplace else. I'm not sure how this would effect that but I think it can be finagled away to work out.
1015461
Most of the body already disintegrated; and as currently written so far, it's entirely possible that the remaining remains are in the process of doing so as well, just more slowly, as they were the part of the star beast's body containing the most physical matter. Would that work for your finagling?
Post-mortem crossover? I approve
Silly Pieces, letting valuable materials just waste away like that, good thing Missy is on the case!
Guess the Janitor was busy.
Lulz, now everyone is paranoid that something horrendously dangerous is roaming around.
Also, I can't wait till something happens that forces MIssy to choose between doing the emotional thing or the smart thing.
Missy: *Darkwing Duck voice* "Let's... get... Irrational."
1016660
He jumped to the future, found out that the skeleton was plot important, and left it there. That's the reason some bodies are left to try out in the air, and others are discreetly brushed away. Also the reason you don't see broken glass from the D-dogs kidnapping all over the place.
1016660
)
Also, I can't wait till something happens that forces MIssy to choose between doing the emotional thing or the smart thing.
It's a bit of a cliche - but knowing that it's a cliche, I've been trying to come up with an interesting approach to it anyway. (And one that's hopefully less deadly to Cheerilee than a simple 'shoot the hostage'.
Missy: *Darkwing Duck voice* "Let's... get... Irrational."
Did you know that the Mare-do-Well costume is based on the same old-time hero that Darkwing Duck's was? And that the Justice League has a secret initiation ceremony for its new members involving the original hat, cape, etc?
1017058
Don't forget that Missy has taken her first steps into using time as a tool herself - and is all too aware of the possibilities of other ponies using it as a tool against her. If the Janitor isn't careful, a Missy who's thirty years older and trickier than the present one might notice the ripple in time and politely but firmly insist that he give an explanation of himself...
1017328
He's at least a few hundred years old. Nearing a thousand. Shtik is about 500 years older than The Janitor and watches worlds like a book. That is, flipping a few pages if he feels like it. And has a hotline to the Janitor's cell phone, and can contact him to tell him where he needs to be or where he needs to avoid.
1017442
"It's not the quantity, it's the quality." <ahem>
That said - I do already have some relevant future-plot plans which might interact with the Janitor, but which I don't want to reveal in these Comments too early; if you're interested, we could discuss it a bit in private messages, to see what we can do to make each others' stories as awesome as possible.
Thank you for introducing me to Ms. Hanshaw. I got my first taste of traditional pop from Fallout 3 and have been tentatively exploring pre-50s music essentially blind and piecemeal ever since. It's nice to find talent that I can put a name to. How did you come to know about her?
1017985
Sita Sings the Blues. Put together by a single person (through certain complications), well worth watching in its own right. Free to watch online, or to download, and you can also buy an authorized DVD or soundtrack CD.
You might also find this list handy to refer to, to search through Youtube for selections from. And the Puppini Sisters are a modern group with a pleasant harmony.
hehe, biggest baculum ever
1098175
Baculum is the carnivore wiener-bone, right?
1225843
Please remember that I'm trying to keep this fic limited to a Teen rating; while I might push the boundaries in the direction of Mature, I'm trying hard not to actually cross them.
That said - both Google and Wikipedia are your friend here.
I know that it's in the original lyrics, but Can't be the grocer, the butcher, the baker, they don't knock that way.
Hmmm, what would be the purpose of a butcher in Ponyville?
Who is this Janitor you speak of?
Is he a game piece? or is he...
something... MORE...
anywho... back to reading
You're missing a quote mark at the end of this dialogue.
1017478 I'm a bit late to your story (isn't that an understatement?) and I don't think I saw it in this chapter and haven't seen it in any other story's so who's the Janitor?