Chapter 19: The Cruel Tutelage of High Spirits
Starlight Over Detrot Chapter 19: The Cruel Tutelage of High Spirits
The schoolhouses of Luna’s return, by most accounts, actually were colorfully painted places where bright-eyed fillies and colts went to learn, and the worst that an educator might have been expected to deal with was bullying, the odd timberwolf attack, and overzealous students performing the occasional act of journalistic malfeasance and causing a political scandal.
Over the decades since, though, the same dying hopes that led many in the inner cities to turn to Ace for escape appear to have affected their youth. Apathy and violence plagued classrooms. More and more cutie marks carried disturbing connotations and spelled out dark destinies. The good educators either moved to affluent areas, or burned out and got different jobs and/or alcoholism.
While Detrot’s inner-city schools were hardly the only thing to have seen decline, there is no place where the true price of Detrot's poverty was more apparent. It is one thing, after all, to look at a forty-year-old drug addict and petty thief and dismiss her for the moral failings that led to her state; It is much more difficult to look at a middle school colt who believes that beating another student bloody with the classroom stapler is an appropriate response to the wrong look, and not brood momentarily upon the dark place from whence that impetus arose.
In some cases, however, the mention of a “dark place” isn’t a metaphor for problems at home. This is still the enchanted land of Equestria, after all, and some of these schools had problems more appropriate to an exorcist than a social counselor.
-The Scholar
Standard Equestrian police tactics are designed, from the ground up, to operate in the widest variety of situations possible. Some of the more specific ones might sound esoteric or even a bit religious, but when facing down a city rife with all forms of life, magical, malicious, and sometimes just ridiculous, it’s wise to make sure you’re both mentally and physically prepared.
All officers disregard a few of these regulations and apply others selectively. It’s impossible not to. One can’t cart around a bucket of catnip soaked in pickle brine and lightly shredded cheese at all times, even though one caught in the wrong situation without those things, can find themselves paddling up a particularly smelly creek, sans paddle.
What we do then, as officers of the law, is build ourselves a series of checklists for going into unknown situations we are likely to encounter. Is my gun loaded? Yes. Are my fellow officers healthy and of sound mind? Mostly. Did I check all four corners before I entered a room? Yes.
Did I remember that ‘magical contamination’ can mean damn near anything it wants to?
No, no, I did not.
****
“Keep your head down!” I shouted at Swift, who was just peering over Bake’s shoulder. She ducked as a dodgeball determined to snap her little neck instead bounced harmlessly off the big stallion’s side, rebounding off into the locker room showers.
A hoofball was careening towards me at such speed that I barely had time to throw myself up against the end of the lockers before it sped past and crashed into the spot Zeta had just occupied for a half second. For some reason I’d attracted the vengeful attention of a single paper clip that was trying to ferociously tear individual hairs out of my tail. I swatted it away, then turned back to catch a blast of shredded paper in the face, blinding me just long enough for one of the dodgeballs to find its mark on the back of my head, leaving my ears ringing. I pulled myself behind a locker door, stomping the paperclip for good measure as I did.
The attack had come so suddenly that before we knew what was happening, the masses of animated school supplies had corralled us in one corner of the locker room. They floated of their own volition, swooping and diving over our heads to peck at every vulnerable part of our bodies. Pencils, pens, old tests from who knows when, and innumerable other bits of detritus came for us with a vengeance. .
To make matters worse, every time someone, even Zeta, tried to get close enough to kick open the exit door so we could escape, the assault became even more vicious. Taxi was down in the first five seconds to a softball in the noggin. Bake and Boil had barely had time to cast their protection spell and set themselves nose to nose, providing cover for my partner, driver, and the sack full of the somehow still-snoozing Edina.
Spell or not, trickles of blood dripped onto the tiles under them from dozens of nasty little paper cuts and the attacks of an especially determined hole punch. That would have been disturbing enough if they weren’t both visibly enjoying themselves, moaning at every fresh attack.
Swift kept trying to find things to shoot, but finally resorted to using her wings to bat away anything that got past the twins while she attended Taxi, who was clutching her bruised nose in both legs. I’d long since lost sight of Zeta except for the occasional glimpse of her dashing over the tops of the lockers. Even the most determined sorties by the floating storm of academic miscellania weren’t coming anywhere near tagging her.
She might have been fine, but somepony was in definite danger of losing an eye and we couldn’t keep up our defense forever.
Covering my head with my coat, I poked it around the edge of the locker’s door. On the far side of the room there was a second doorway. The nameplate said ‘Boiler.’ Whether that was the name of the pony whose office it was or what was behind it, I didn’t know, but it couldn’t be any worse than a hail of attacking pens.
“Everypony! Boiler room leads inside! Go!” I yelled over the clatter of a golf ball beating itself to bits on Boil’s forehead.
Smacking away an abacus cruise missile, I leapt over the bench in the middle of the room and dashed as hard and fast as I could, praying none of the sharper objects would decide to see if I was an easier target than the twins. Slipping on the polished tiles, I caught myself just in time for an orange blast of fur and wind to careen into me with a traffic cone attached to her head.
“Sir! Help!”
I grabbed the plastic cone in my teeth and tore it off of her face. She inhaled a fresh breath of air, then snatched at the doorknob. It seemed to fight her briefly, but while the objects were plentiful, none of them seemed especially strong or quick, and the knob was no exception. Ripping the door open, she dove through into the darkness beyond, then turned back to help defend our exit. Bake and Boil were crowded on either side of Taxi, guiding her towards the door with Edina’s bag held between them as a herd of basketballs crashed into their sides and flanks.
Hitting an enchanted pencil box with her wing, Swift made room for Bake and Boil. I ducked through after them and rear-hoofed the door, slamming it shut behind us.
There were a few rattling thumps against the other side, followed by a low rustling sound. The space was pitch black, but I felt along the walls until I could brace my hip against the door. The noise slowly dropped to an occasional jiggle or clatter, before ceasing entirely.
As silence fell, I had an unpleasant realization. “Wait - we left Zeta!”
The zebra’s voice indicated otherwise from somewhere near my left ear. “I am here, Detective.”
I exhaled a relieved breath, “Glad to hear it. Taxi, light?”
“Gibbe a secomb.” My driver replied, unsnapping her saddle-bag’s buckle. She sifted through its contents for a bit, until her efforts were rendered unnecessary by a soft green glow suffusing the space.
It was Bake’s horn, glimmering. “Flashlight is good,” he murmured.
His brother patted his shoulder in a chummy sort of way. “Horn is better.”
“Thanks, gents,” I murmured, taking in our surroundings at a glance. We were in some type of maintenance shaft. Thick pipes ran down the walls on one side while the other was undecorated concrete. The humidity in the enclosed corridor immediately set my sinuses to dripping. “Well, that was... unpleasant. I guess that’s our ‘magical contamination’.”
“Sir, I almost felt like-”
“Bwe bwere bweing herded.” Taxi finished, still holding her nose.
I frowned and stepped in front of her, lifting her face in my chin. “Lemme see that, Sweets.”
“I’m fin’d!” She started to push me off but I gave her a stern eye.
“You’re fine when I say you’re fine!” I snapped, giving her a poke in the nose. She yelped in pain, then lowered her ears.
“I’m gonna smag you laber.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re gonna smack me anyway.” I replied, grabbing Bake’s hoofball helmet and dragging him closer. “Now shut up and let me make sure that fight didn’t ruin that pretty face, or Stella’s pet minotaur is going to be pissed.”
Raising her head into the light of Bake’s horn, I examined the injury. Her muzzle didn’t seem to be broken and the stream of blood from her nose was slowing, but her face was going to have quite the swell.
“That softball did a number, Sweets.” I gave her a light pet on the cheek. “But I don’t think your aspirations for modeling are over.”
It was then that I noticed Swift sitting there, looking at Taxi’s wound... almost wistfully, which seemed a strange reaction. She seemed to snap out of it when she noticed I was looking at her, pretending to have been gazing in another direction.
“Swift?” I asked.
“...Sir?”
“What’s up? And I don’t want to hear any variation on the words ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.’”
“I don’t...” My diminutive partner paused. “It was... just... I was thinking about Grapeshot, sir.”
“Grapeshot?” Memory looked up an address. “You mean... Lieutenant Grapeshot? That PACT name on your recommendation letter?”
“Yes, sir. Back in junior flight school he helped stop my muzzle from bleeding after I’d... broken it crashing into my instructor’s rear end. That was more or less how we met.”
The glowing recommendation suddenly made a little more sense.
“So, what, every time you see someone trying to stop a nosebleed you get nostalgic?”
“...N-not normally, sir, but...” She hesitated as if wrestling with an uncomfortable decision before sighing in resignation. “I was reminded of him, and... and this has been a tough third day on the job, sir, and I... just needed a happy place for a bit.”
I shrugged. That was fair. And if the thought of her old friend managed to push the last twenty harrowing minutes out of her head momentarily, I wasn’t going to begrudge her that. I decided instead to pursue another, more relevant line of questioning.
“Sweets, what did you mean when you said we were being herded?”
“Whad I said!” She used her hip to encourage Swift. “Go aheab! Tell’em!”
Swift tugged the bottom of her tactical vest, straightening it. “I... it might be nothing, sir but... didn’t you notice the attacks seemed to be less nasty when we were headed this way?”
Now she mentioned it, as we’d crossed the locker room even that persistent paperclip had backed off. That didn’t bode well; we did need to leave at some point.
“We knew this place was magically contaminated, but those guards we saw didn’t look like they’d been pecked half to death by pencils. They’ve got some method of dealing with whatever is here.”
I gave a cursory glance at the steamy hallway stretching into the pitchy shadows until it was lost to sight. The plink plink of liquid hitting the ground, however, brought me around to peer at Bake and Boil. Both of them were cheerfully smiling even as blood spilled in thin streams from punctures, lacerations, and cuts covering half their bodies. “What about you two? We’ve only got so many bandages, I’m afraid. If you need to back off, feel free.”
Bake shot me an amused look then spat something at my hooves along with a mouthful of saliva and hemoglobin. It was a thumbtack.
Rising off the ground, the tack flew back at him, poking itself into the big hoofballer’s upper lip again and again. He let it have a few free strikes before slapping it to the floor and stomping it into a thousand pieces under one hoof. His brother replied, “We have never been happier. We wish we could have our apartment contaminated like this!”
Zeta replied before I could, grabbing both of their helmeted heads and banging them together. “You two are disgusting! We are in peril and you fools are enjoying yourselves!”
“But Miss Zee! No better time to enjoy selves!” Boil quipped.
She threw her hooves in the air, disgusted, and set off at a brisk trot down the hallway. “I wish my speciality were causing pain so I could teach you two some respect.”
Bake wiggled his back, dumping Edina’s bag to one side and catching it in his mouth before it could hit the ground.
“That’s why we bring little screecher here along! If no good pain from bullets, good pain from pissy griffin!”
****
The air was getting closer and sweatier the further we moved down the maintenance tunnel. Up ahead, the shifting rumble of machinery heralded us towards the boiler room itself. Swift flipped her wings, slinging moisture off onto my face and neck before murmuring an apology.
A distant light was penetrating the stifling blackness. It lit the inky dark in stark blues, reminding me of an old movie.
In my pocket, the heart in a box began to thud harder against the sides. I’d almost forgotten it was there; the creepy thing was mimicking my heartbeat so tightly it barely registered as a separate entity.
Now, something was making it nervous. Relying on a magically animated organ for intel didn’t sit well with me, but Taxi was there to break my contemplation before it could get too deep into the reasons I was ascribing emotional states to a chunk of meat.
“Hardy...do you hear that?”
“I just hear what I’m hoping is the boiler.”
“Listen.”
I turned one ear forward. At first, all I could make out was the boiler sound, a low thrumming that steadily became all-encompassing. As I filtered out the clipclopping of five sets of hooves - Zeta still being as silent as ever - I began to catch what Taxi was on about.
Music. There was music coming from somewhere ahead. It was a tinny sort of tune that put me in mind of something you might play a group of children during a game of musical chairs. On a sunny day, in a park somewhere, it would have been worth a wistful smile and a twinge of nostalgia, but stuck underground in an enchanted school, it gave me a vicious case of goose bumps.
The light was growing steadily with every step down the narrow hallway, though we couldn’t see the source. The shadows it cast seemed to move and shift in a way that was starting to make me feel a little nauseous.
I became aware of somepony breathing quite hard behind me and peered over my shoulder. Swift was limping along on three hooves, using the fourth to cover her mouth. Behind her, our other companions, with the exception of Zeta, were looking a bit ill themselves.
“You alright, kid?” I asked Swift.
“I ran out of ginger drops, sir,” she answered, a little embarrassed.
“Don’t worry about it. Whatever is up there is getting to me too. My belly feels like I’d tossed back a full meal of excited butterflies and a chaser of caffeine-loaded maggots.”
The Detrot detective is allowed a bit of verbal license, but there’s a time and a place, and this might not have been it; Swift let out an unsettling little ‘hork’ as I finished my sentence. I shut up and moved on.
The hallway ended at an abrupt left turn. From the far end, the wall was blanketed in the sharp illumination which danced and sparkled over the moist piping. Taxi eased up to the corner with me close behind; she stuck her ear around, flicked her eyes back and forth, then stepped back.
“Nopony in there.” Taxi gestured with her gun’s sight. “Looks like there’s a cot or something against the far wall and what I’m guessing is the boiler. Doesn’t look like any boiler I’ve ever seen, though.”
“Wait here. I’ll check it out.” I directed, then moved around her.
The heart in my pocket began to thump so hard it was rocking in my coat. I put my hoof on the box, petting the wooden surface, and the heart quieted somewhat. Not for the first time, I wondered why I wasn’t more disturbed by its presence. Simply having it on me felt perfectly natural. I had a growing suspicion that if somepony attempted to separate me from it, we might have a problem. Briefly, I wondered if the heart had a similar effect on King Cosmo.
Following the pipes sideways around the wall, I edged into the room and did my best to take everything in. My stomach wouldn’t stop trying to take up residence in my throat.
Directly across from the door, squatting in the moldy underground cave, a mechanical monster sat below a knot of piping so dense and complex it seemed to have been woven out of the metal.
Its essential design was familiar; a wide mouth to shovel fuel into, with a series of valves for pumping water into a holding tank above which was heated by the first, and then both air and water distributed throughout the building. There was a similar setup in my apartment’s basement laundry room.
There, the similarities ended. Where there ought to have been a roaring blaze, a sickening blue light spilled from a grate, giving the impression of a many-toothed animal eating a mouthful of gems. The valves were labeled in arcane scripts and something in the shape of the interleaved piping seemed wrong, as though it shouldn’t be possible in three dimensions. Just staring at it was upsetting to my gastronomy.
The music bounced along in the background, played on an instrument that sounded somewhere between a trumpet and a kazoo. It was too cheery for the surroundings and sat just at the edge of hearing; Try as I might, I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
That left the cot and a small, wooden writing desk jammed against the wall beside yet another door, which presumably led deeper into the school. So far, the tunnels had followed the blueprints, but I wasn’t going to bet on that being the case everywhere. That boiler definitely wasn’t in the blueprints.
A book lay on the desk along with a feather pen and a jar containing a single bit coin, arranged with the care of a museum display. The cover was simple and unmarked. A diary, if less ornate than the one in my breast pocket. All of it was coated in a thick layer of dust.
I called back to my companions waiting around the corner. “I think we’re fine down here. Everything’s clear.”
My cadre variously stomped, flapped, and kitten-footed in, spreading out to look around.
Swift halted in the door, wings flying open, eyes locked on the space above the boiler.
“S-s-sir?”
“What’s up, kid?”
“I-i-it’s moving!”
The fear in her voice got my attention right quick.
“What do you mean ‘moving’? Kid, it’s pipes.”
“I k-k-know! It’s moving!” she insisted.
I moved around to stand behind her, following her eyes up to the interlocking shape of the boiler’s distribution system. It took a force of will to push my gaze up into the mess of piping dangling from the ceiling. I couldn’t verify Swift’s claim of motion, but something about their shape refused to settle into a sane pattern. Taking the methodical approach, I followed a joint down to a bend, then the bend up through several other junctions and back around, against all logic, into the same joint. Flicking my eyes up, I tried to find where the particular bend met the rest of the system but somehow, I lost the shape entirely. Scanning over the mesh of piping, I couldn’t find anything even similar upon second inspection.
“That’s...severely odd,” I murmured, which was a terrible understatement; in truth, the whole thing was putting me off my dinner. It didn’t seem much more than mild nausea, but I got the feeling I was going to need more than one beer to get my head on straight. I put a hoof over my partner’s eyes and lowered her head. “Just don’t look at it. I’m pretty sure that thing is something for the magic division, and well above our salary grade. How’s your stomach?”
Swift gave a weak nod and replied softly, “It’s not good, sir.”
“We’ll be out of here as quick as we can. I want to check this out, first.” I dipped my nose, motioning at the desk. “Might give us some information we can use.”
Taxi was there ahead of me. I raised my head so I could see over my driver's shoulder at the book spread open on the table.
“What is it?” I asked.
My driver read a few more lines of a page marked ‘54 L.R.’ across the top then bit the inside of her cheek. “Somepony was living down here. It looks like right before the school closed, too.”
I flipped back and read the name on the front page. “Vice Principal High Spirits?”
“He’s awfully cheery for somepony living in a basement.” Taxi said as she fiddled with the feather pen. “Incidentally, why isn’t this thing attacking us? It seemed like everything out there was.”
With perfect timing, the golden bit in the bottom of the jar rose into the air and began slamming itself against the side of the entrapping glass, making it ring like a bell. After several failed attempts it settled back to the bottom and lay there, again quiescent.
“So, the feather pen is fine but that’s not?” Swift poked the jar and the bit wiggled back and forth, then smacked at the spot her toe had just touched.
Laying open the first entry of the journal, I read aloud.
****
Good morning students!
I can’t wait to say that. Vice Principal! Who’d have thought? Me! A vice principal!
It’s been a crazy one and a half years since I graduated from Fillydelphia University and finished my time teaching at Bitford Elementary.
That sounds like I’m writing a story. Well, why shouldn’t I? I hope somepony will find it entertaining. I’m on the bus to my new posting today and decided to get in a few words on my new journal. My mum gave it to me today as I left Filly, and told me to write down everything that happened in Detrot. I suppose I should make sure you know a few things about me before I start rambling.
I’ve always wanted to be part of teaching foals about the world, and I’ve heard there’s no place that needs teachers more than Detrot. My cutie-mark is a flying kite, after all. My talent is making sure everypony knows that life is worth living.
That said, I was picky finding this new assignment. I hunted up my new posting from among hundreds. It has a paid apartment on the school grounds and I even get to teach Arcane Sciences to the unicorn students three times a week! I’m quite looking forward to that. The placement pony at the Department of Education did give me an odd look when I requested this location, but then, Detrot is a long way from Filly.
I’ll be working with ponies who need my help more than any others. Sunny Days Juvenile Foster Care is a place for the foals and teens of ponies lost in the war. Let’s hope this works out. I’m not going back to Filly without making a difference!
****
I wondered for some seconds at the naive character of the unicorn whose diary I was reading. He was obviously a unicorn; teaching Arcane Sciences would be tough without a horn. The school’s present condition was a sad testament to the success of his dreams. Turning over a few pages, I continued to read.
****
Well, I knew things weren’t going to be easy, but this!
That ‘paid apartment’ turned out to be a bed... nay, a soldier’s cot... stuffed in the gym’s basement. The boiler room is cozy enough, but it still isn’t what I would have called ‘comfortable’. Principal Pander was apologetic when I went to her and while the school is in questionable repair, the facility does seem to at least be functioning.
The same cannot be said for my apparent position in the school. I wish to teach, first and foremost, and organize the student body, but I have been railroaded into a position as a disciplinarian. I did not sign up for that, even if it seems to be largely a matter of monitoring halls and making sure students are in their proper place at the proper time. I am displeased I wasn’t informed of that part of the job, but I will do it to the best of my ability, regardless.
Aside my minor gripes, there is a leak in the boiler which I will do my best to repair, if I can find it. I mention this largely because it is dripping at night and keeping me awake. Fortunately, my father taught me the ins and outs of the plumbing trade before I turned to magical science and foal rearing.
It may give me an opportunity with the janitor as well. She is a very pretty, if terribly overworked young mare by the name of Calliope. She does as much as she can, but I fear that plumbing is beyond her.
I would chance to ask her out one of these nights, were our schedules not mutually exclusive.
****
I seated myself on the short chair next to the desk, realizing at some point my companions had gathered around to listen. I turned a few more pages into High Spirits’ past.
****
Oh happy day! I know it’s a tiny thing but after school, before I retreated to my rest, Calliope and I spent an hour talking. We were both exhausted, her from soon awakening and myself from long consciousness, so there was not much beyond a pleasant conversation, but it was wonderful all the same.
I may speak to Principal Pander and see about getting the girl a proper raise.
The one blot on this day is, perhaps, that it is the first I have taught a class. I was... unaware... that there would be earth ponies and pegasi in my Arcane Sciences class. It was more than a little embarrassing having created a curriculum built around magic users only to realize the class was meant to teach the fundamentals of hybridizing mechanical engineering and enchantment together.
There is one student in my class who was quite late and several at the back appeared to be gambling over candy with dice of some sort. When asked to pay attention, they were... well, disrespectful. I tossed the lot of them into detention and class proceeded apace. I must keep it in my mind that these are not children of the well-endowed, as I did find tacks on various surfaces once the class was over.
Back again, in my grotto, I think I have made some headway in finding the leak. I’m certain it is coming from the distribution system, but I have replaced several of the pipes to no effect. The drip persists.
****
It’s been a week since that first class. Oh how slow doth my days pass when under the weight of perdition?
No, High Spirits! No, you had a harder time in college.
I would be fine, if only I could sleep! The damn drip has gone from a minor nuisance to a genuine menace. I am starting to hear it now when I’m not down here.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It really is intolerable, though a pair of earplugs does seem to be helping, slightly.
Miss Calliope offered to let me stay with her, but I refused to drive her out of her own bed.
I had two students late to class this morning and as a result, was ten minutes late getting out. Some of the other teachers make fun, but I refuse to be hurried. I will teach what I must teach and the students will sit until such time as they’ve learned it.
The other side of my professional endeavor goes well, though I cannot say I enjoy it. Punishing students daily, students whose crimes seem largely petty, is draining to the spirit. I sat one young mare down today and asked her why she punched the colt in her class and she told me it was because he gave her a look she didn’t like. I asked what sort of look that might be and she said ‘He looked like he wanted to fuck me like my pappy.’
Needless to say, I was shocked. Working with the students is difficult enough without their personal histories making each one a potential minefield.
Horrid lives aside, it is no excuse for being late to class. Her future may be no different than her past if she fails to educate herself. I console myself with the knowledge that, while I can’t fix what happened to her, I can at least change what will happen.
I told Miss Calliope about this and she decided to make me feel better by playing me a tune on one of the instruments in the school’s music room. It was a beautiful device, much like her, with an elegant design. It put me, somehow, in mind of the boiler and gave me a few new ideas for hunting down my itinerant leaky pipe.
I have found myself humming the tune all day long.
****
I pulled my head up from the book and caught sight of Zeta out of the corner of one eye inspecting the boiler. She was pressing her nose against the grate, trying to get a glimpse of its contents. For some reason this struck me as ridiculously dangerous, but after a moment she retreated, crawling up onto the cot.
My stomach had calmed somewhat, though my partner was still huffing and puffing as she fought to keep hers in line.
Taxi gave me a bat with her hoof across the back of the head. “Well? Keep going! We’re inside the school and it’s safe enough. I’ll be damned if I’m going to walk out of here or die without hearing the end of this.”
“Fine, fine! I’m just wondering a little about that bit coin.” I waved my hoof at the glass jar and its prisoner.
“What about it?”
“There was dust on everything when we came in, including that jar. The only pony down here since the school closed was probably High Spirits.”
****
Fully a third of my class was late today. Several aren’t even bothering to show up, now.
Was I too harsh? Too many detentions? I am following the guide book I’ve been given, but most of these are truly troubled kids.
I brought it up to Principal Pander and her response was less than gratifying. ‘There are too many for us to save every one. We just deal with them until we can get them into jobs or prison.’
Just deal with them.
To my eternal shame, I almost bucked her in the face. My disrupted sleep leaves me on edge, to be sure, but to give such a retort to my justified concerns! She seemed to think I couldn’t have had a job anywhere else!
It has been difficult talking to my fellow teachers these past weeks. I try, but they all seem to be of the opinion that I will be gone soon. This is wholly foreign to me. I committed to this job, didn’t I? I signed the paperwork and took my oath to work at least two years in this position, didn’t I?
Why so little faith?
I will now lay myself down and try to rest.
I have ordered several special sections of pipe from a local plumbing catalogue, along with a leak detection spell. It is only guaranteed to work within about five yards, so I must pray I discover a method of narrowing it down.
What I wouldn’t give for a full night’s sleep.
****
“Insomnia has a most curious effect on the minds of equines,” Zeta commented, folding her hooves under her chest.
“Yes, yes it does,” I affirmed, smoothing out a corner of the diary. “I find beer usually cures it, though.”
“Whyfor would you wish to cure it? A portion of my training involved being awake for nearly six days,” the zebra told us. “ My father kept me awake. I wept and begged him to let me rest. On the sixth day, I fell into a trance and saw myself far distant from my own body and the pain. I asked him, calm as I have ever been, if I might rest then. He held me, kissed my forehead, and let me sleep in his legs.”
“Fond memory?” I asked.
“Very much,” she said with a nod. “My father was a loving stallion, even if he did not express it in ways you would understand.”
Swift looked more than a touch disturbed. “I...you’ll have to excuse me for saying this but...Miss Zeta, that sounds awful!”
Zeta wiggled her rear legs out behind her flat, sitting in a position that looked impossible for equid anatomy. “I think you ponies would say ‘It is a zebra thing’. Pay it no mind.”
****
I am a new stallion. I don’t even care, today, that students were late to class. There were seven, incidentally, but you know what? It doesn’t matter!
Miss Calliope spent the night with me last night.
No, you dirty mind! There were no untoward activities. We sat together, listening to music on a phonograph she brought down with her. I feel myself slowly growing attached to her as something more than friend. This last month has not been easy.
By day, I fight to bring some semblance of sanity back to this school bereft of it and by night, I tinker with the boiler and strive to sleep. It has become a challenge to find the source of that insufferable dripping.
It feels as though I am floating through my life. This is not what I wanted nor what I was prepared for.
There remains a single, bright, shining beacon of light in my day. I feel as though I’ve slept a month!
Calliope and I spent a few hours after she’d woken up and I’d finished grading papers sitting, talking with one another. I told her about my progress with the boiler, the kids, and the administration. She told me about work, the messes that get left, and some of her dreams. She wants to have kids one day, despite cleaning up after them constantly. I must say, while my own enthusiasm for children is somewhat dimmed of late, I can only think foals she would have could only be beautiful and well behaved.
As she made to leave, she put her legs around my neck and gave me a squeeze!
It occurred to me that I hadn’t had a real hug since I left Fillydelphia. A pony forgets how rejuvenating they can be.
****
Rejoice! Two weeks of blissful silence where I can dedicate myself to my burgeoning relationship with Miss Calliope!
The students are gone home for winter break and I am ready, let me just say. I’ve taken to having to chase them down to drag them to my class. That is not the most fun a pony can have, let me just say. Without the students, my time is largely unoccupied. I still cannot sleep.
You know what? I don’t care. I am in love! Miss Calliope has said she has a special gift for me for Hearths Warming Eve. She says I must go out for a few hours, then return and she’ll be ready.
I do hope it is a kiss!
****
“Awww! That’s so sweet!” Taxi simpered, reading that line over again.
“Yeah, but this is sounding less like clues and more like we just wandered into someone’s romance.” I set the book back, making to get up from my seat. There was a collective disgruntled noise. “What? What do you want me to do? I can’t sit here and read this whole thing tonight! We’ve got an insane cartel tyrant to shut down and a neighborhood to stabilize!”
“Sir, just a few more pages?” Swift begged. “Pleeease?”
The mooning doe-eyes she gave me could have elicited pity from quarry eels.
“...Oh, fine...”
I picked a page that seemed to have a bookmark in it. Immediately, I could tell a difference in the writing. The letters were spattered with droplets of liquid and ink ran down the page, leaving the words only barely legible. Several times the quill had punched through the paper as tension in the writer’s body left him unable to control his magic properly.
****
I have been sitting here for some time.
My memory is sparse. I will try to piece this together, as best I can.
I am in the emergency room.
The doctor said they found me holding my journal inside the principal’s office under his desk. I don’t remember how I got there, though it makes sense. It is the only office in the school with a working exterior telephone.
I left the school at six o'clock precisely, as per Miss Calliope’s instructions, with intent to return three hours later. I found, in my excitement, I’d forgotten my comb, and I dashed back to my room to get it.
Had I not, Miss Calliope would be dead.
Perhaps it would have been better if she had been.
Her gift to me was to attempt to fix that damn drip in the boiler. Magical plumbing is so fiddly. It is why mechanical pumps are being used in so many places these days! I’d made modifications to the system, trying to get pressure even across the whole of it in hopes that could stop the drip.
She didn’t have the right set of diagrams. Hers were the old ones, rather than the new ones I’d made. I intended to lodge them with the school, but nopony is ever down here but me! I never got around to it.
Miss Calliope unscrewed a still pressurized three thirty five high pressure steam valve. I’d disconnected the primary gauge and re-routed it through a second, more precise one. I wish I’d bothered to learn that leak finding spell. I might have averted this disaster. It was so time consuming, though!
I found my love laying below the boiler. Her face was burnt. Badly. So badly.
The doctors say she will live, but she may be blind. One of her ears was burned clean away. Worse, she has slipped into a coma. The doctors say it could be days or maybe years before she wakes.
They don’t know.
It should come as no surprise that she did not manage to fix the drip before suffering her wound.
****
I held up my legs in surrender, starting to slide back from my seat. “That’s plenty for me, thanks. Let’s get-”
“What? No! You can’t just leave it there, Sir!” Swift complained.
A flash of magic surrounded my left ear, then another caught my right. I found my head forcefully turned back to the book. Taxi planted her hoof on the back of my neck and pressed it over the book.
“Hey! Come on! We’ve got other stuff to do! Important stuff! And why do I have to read all of this?!” I yelped, as my driver held me in a reading position.
Bake rumbled, unsettlingly close to my head. “You have pretty voice.”
****
It has been three weeks since Hearth’s Warming Eve.
Calliope’s condition remains the same. I sit beside her bed, now, listening to her breathing and the various beeps and hums of the machines keeping her alive. A nurse I haven’t seen before stops in the door, looking at my love’s destroyed face with horror, then at me, with pity.
I don’t need her pity.
I need Miss Calliope back.
I was going to tell her the truth about how I felt, that night. No more bandying about as friends any longer! I wanted her to know I loved her.
An idea has sprung to mind while I’ve sat here, wreathed in the dawning realization that I must soon resume my life. The students will soon return from their break. Those staying with foster families will come back to us and those living in the dormitories up the street will return. It will be time to teach, again.
My idea is thusly: I, High Spirits, will repair the boiler for Miss Calliope. No more fannying with it in my spare time! It will become my overriding mission and when she wakes, I’ll show it to her and give her a wedding ring.
That nittering louse in the principal’s office thinks I’m too hard on the kids who don’t show up? They have not seen strict! Each moment I must chase them down and cart them back to my classroom is another moment taken from my work with the boiler that scarred my love. I intend to have it fully operational and better than it has ever been when I put my ring on Miss Calliope’s hoof.
This coming week, I will use my spell to hunt down the leak and get a solid bearing on it. The special parts I ordered have come in and I am seeing a few more orders in the near future.
****
The hornwriting in the next section was a little harder to understand, and while it started readable, it slowly degraded into an ink-spattered wreck.
****
Again, I am awake.
I have not slept in four days. I spent two hours by Miss Calliope’s bedside tonight, then returned to work on this little ‘project’.
The mirror is unkind. My visage fails, again, to please the eye, but I suppose that, down in my hole, it matters little. My horn’s light shows me the way as I pore over these blueprints again and again.
In a period of days, I’ve replaced two thirds of the pipes with better and more efficient designs which have made the school’s plumbing system work in ways it hasn’t since it was installed. For a first generation magical boiler, it is of a spectacularly complex design and whoever was previously maintaining it did a lot of jury-rigging just to maintain continued functionality.
I have been unable to find records of its original installers except an oblique reference to having ‘gone bust’ after some involvement with a criminal syndicate.
As to my leak hunting spell, it proved only useful insofar as it pointed me at the boiler itself. Therein lies the leak. I dare not crack the shell until such time as I am prepared to re-cast the enchantments on it.
****
Late! Late! Late!
Those urchins had me dashing around all morning rounding them up so I could teach my class. I made them all stay an hour after everypony else had gone home, cleaning the classroom. I wouldn’t have bothered, but it is the principle of the thing. When one of them tossed a bit of gum into my mane, I had to resist the urge to toss her through a window.
The little bitch does not understand what she obstructs!
Would that there was a way of automatically ensuring they were in the right place? I must consider this. Yes, consider it heavily!
I need to make a list. I will need more coffee and some fresh lengths of pipe. Two more classes for today and then I must grade some papers. Why bother? I know their scores by now. I could assign them randomly and there’s nopony who would dispute them. Half of those little ingrates would be grateful if I was simply tossing them random numbers!
****
I feel myself slipping. Today, I snatched a student by his hoodie with my magic after he called me an especially nasty name while we were passing in the hall.
Crazy Spirits. He called me ‘Crazy Spirits’. Perhaps it wasn’t so nasty, but it was a struggle not to choke the life out of the vicious blighter. He looked like he expected me to.
They’re calling me the ghost of the boiler room in the teacher’s lounge. I admit, I haven’t been going out of my way to socialize recently but that is no excuse for ugly gossip and namecalling! Besides, don’t they have things to be doing? I know I do! Once the drip is fixed, I’ll be able to sleep.
I could rest in one of the spare classrooms, maybe, but I would be away from my work and Miss Calliope is counting on me! I must finish soon. Sooner rather than later! Soon is best!
****
The horn-writing was barely words at this point. I kept stumbling and stuttering, but I read on as my companions sat, entranced. They didn’t seem to mind and while I was counting seconds, trying to gauge how long we’d been down there, I became aware that my nausea was gone.
It may have been my imagination but the music seemed to bounce along to the words, reaching peaks and crescendos on particular sentences. I read on, wondering at the tricks my own mind was playing on itself, and hoping that’s all it was.
****
A revelation!
I must have passed out while my spell was still being cast. The hours run together so badly these days. Nights. Time spans. I really must find another word for the periods during which I work.
Principal Pander came to see me today. Some ridiculousness about having me fired if I didn’t ‘shape up’. I showed her my fine work and she was less than impressed, so I told her to get out. She should be impressed. They should all be.
What I dreamt was nothing short of visionary.
Within my vision, a crystalline form seemed to flow and twist within the very ether. It was a mind, mechanical and glittering, yet cold and built of a rarified logic. The shape! The shape was wrought in space that was not space!
I see so much, now! Tonight! I stalled for weeks and now, I see it all! I must write what I have seen. I must! It will solve all of my problems. All of Calliope’s problems! I will write it down!
Oh, I am, truly, in high spirits for the first time since I can remember...
****
I flipped the next page over and it was covered in nothing but a thickly written arcane scrawl. They weren’t words so much as scratchings in alchemical arithmetic language. As Taxi often gave me crap for, I hadn’t paid attention in those courses at the Academy; I don’t own a horn, so I never saw much point in learning the fundamentals of magic.
But even I could tell that what was written there seemed much more than anything that could be called ‘fundamental.’
“Huh...Sweets? Don’t suppose you could tell me what this means?”
My driver ran her hoof over the symbols then shook her head. “Not a clue. It looks like a mechanical plan written by somepony stoned out of their mind on Beam.”
Boil blew a thin stream of air across my neck from his nose, making me jerk sideways. “Part of it is theorem for development of multi-planar spell-form suspended in four dimensions. Do not know the rest.”
The big hoofballer found himself with everyone staring at him, in the same manner one might stare at a badger that had suddenly started reciting classical poetry. The sole exception was his brother, who was doing his best to look anywhere else. Boil sniffed, disdainfully. “What? You think we got onto Detrot Manticores without going to college?”
This elicited a collective shrug, though I suspect I wasn’t the only one biting back a comment about the inanimate object that must have tried to teach them grammar.
I turned another page. There was even more of the equation. A few more pages revealed that every single one looked the same; a mixture of tiny notes, plumbing diagrams, and alchemy.
“Huh... What was he trying to do?” I wondered out loud.
“Seems like he did it. Listen.” Taxi held up her hoof. Except for the far off music, there was nothing but the breathing of my little group.
“...You're right," I realized. "There's no dripping. He fixed the leak."
"Exactly. I finally recognized that music, too.”
“Really? What is it?”
My driver made the motions of playing a piano. “It’s calliope music.”
It felt as though a rodent with especially cold toes chose that moment to run up my back.
Bake lifted the book off the table with his horn, scanning the tight rows of equations. “This pony was loco in headbox.” His lips peeled back in revulsion. “These enchantments give an object... ugh... purpose.”
I knotted my tie closer to my throat. “Understanding that most things have a purpose in a general sense of the word, I’m going to just assume you’re referring to something that’s going to distress me and, by proxy, my cardiologist?”
The hoofballer rubbed the side of his helmet, scratching at one of his fresher looking scars as he tried to think how to explain. “Usually, pencil has whatever purpose you give it. You make it write. You make it erase. You use it for popsicle stick. Point is, pencil doesn’t understand any of that. To pencil, is just wood, metal, and rubber.” He turned the book around, displaying a diagram of the bit coin sitting in its jar. “These spells teach pencil... purpose.”
There, again, was one of those instances where it’s best to take the word of a unicorn, nod your head, and smile.
“Alright, I’m not going to try to make sense of that. What’s the rest of it?”
Bake turned the book sideways, then upside down before finally dumping it on the desk. “Don’t know. Rest of it is crazy. Looks like he was trying to make magic using plumbing diagram.”
As one, all of us sat up then slowly turned our heads towards the boiler. The music continued in the background, tittering along merrily as a worrying realization set in.
“Sir?” Swift whispered, warily. “You... don’t think he’s actually responsible for...”
“Kid, I think we were just attacked by school supplies in a locker-room. I think that thing is so magical it’s giving me indigestion just being in here. I think the pony who wrote this diary spent months down here with nothing but a heart full of pain and a head full of insomnia.” I put the book back in place on the desk and laid the feather across its front. “That’s all I’m prepared to think, right now. What I know is that we have something to do.”
As I made to get up, I bumped the book. It fell open, passed the section we’d been reading, and the diagrams, to the last several pages.
In jagged, slashing strokes of the pen, there was a single word written again and again across every inch of the paper and on both sides. It packed the corners and was circled dozens of times.
Late! Late! LATE!
I hesitated before easing the book shut again with one toe.
“In fact, If nopony has any objections, I also know I’d like to leave this place right now.”
****
The relief of moving away from the boiler was producing an effervescent feeling in my lower intestine. Swift and Taxi were looking better with every step. Zeta, Bake, and Boil were typically unflappable, though the psychoses behind their variously unflapped characters were the kind of thing I studiously avoided examining for the sake of my own sanity.
The corridor behind High Spirit’s room was a simple access hall, lit sparsely by a number of wall clinging lamps. It stretched in a slow arc off to the left. Our hoofsteps echoed off the walls, bouncing back to my ears. I was finding the quiet pleasantly therapeutic. Hence, per the rules of the universe, it had to end.
“Sir, do you mind if I ask something?” Swift pulled up alongside me, half-beating her wings against herself and making a lovely breeze that chilled the sweat off my sides.
“Whether I mind or not is probably immaterial, so hit me with it.”
She paused for a second, then plowed on, “Do you think High Spirits is okay, somewhere?”
Once again, Swift’s obsession with narrative was rearing its ugly head. So much of the job comes down to assembling the stories of ponies who’ve died that many officers forget that the ending is always the same; they died and were buried. Even if they don’t die at the point where we come into their tale, eventually every participant passes into death and if they’re lucky, they get a nice obit to wrap everything up. Most aren’t so lucky. Most die and their story just ends, a cliffhanger with no follow up.
I blew a breath out of one corner of my muzzle.
“If you want to find out, you can always send up to Telly for whatever the File Cloud has on him and this school.” I turned one ear towards Swift. “Can I make a recommendation, though?”
“Of course, sir.”
I stopped, faced her, and put my hooves on her shoulders, looking at her in the ghostly green half-light coming off of Bake’s horn.
“Just let it be. He’s not your case. Let him be a story whose ending you never found out. Write your own ending for him.”
Swift twisted her head around to look back at the boiler room. “But... sir, shouldn’t we find out? Isn’t our job to find out about things like that? This whole school was closed! I mean, what if somepony died before they evacuated? What if he was really responsible for their death? That would make him a murderer!”
I noticed Taxi had dropped back from the main group and was maintaining a careful ‘within ear-shot’ distance. Holding private conversations in her presence is folly, so I opted for a quick end.
“Kid, do you want to know? Really?”
“We should-” Swift stalled mid-sentence, then her rear end slowly dropped onto the concrete floor. She looked down, scratching her front fetlock on the back of her other knee. “You...ugh...you’re right.” She snorted irritably, kicking a stray nail laying on the walkway behind her and against the wall. “This all feels so wrong, sir. I keep hearing Lieutenant Grapeshot’s voice in my head, telling me I shouldn’t be sneaking around like a... like a criminal.”
“Don’t worry. Live long enough and you get a nice selection of voices in your head.”
“That...That’s not making me feel any better, sir.”
“If you want to feel better, find a job that doesn’t involve helping ponies.” I replied, cutting off the conversation before it could get any more depressing. “Come on, I think I see the end of the tunnel.”
I cantered ahead to find Taxi and Zeta standing on a set of stairs leading up to a trap door. My driver had her head pressed against the door, listening for anything on the other side.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Nada. Nothing.” She grabbed the latch in her teeth and jiggled it. “It’s not locked.” Slowly lifting the trap-door, she peered over the edge. “Too dark to see anything. I think we’re fine, though.”
Opening her saddle-bag, I pulled out the blueprints and unfolded them on the steps.
“This should be classroom one-oh-three.” I informed my companions. “Straight down the hall from the auditorium. Bake? Boil? Turn your spell on and go first.”
We made a hole and the brothers pressed their horns together, their shields coalescing over their skins then sinking in. Taxi grabbed the door handle, twisted and shoved the linoleum panel to one side.
The two stallions charged up at full speed, crashing over the lip into the room. My driver was fast behind them, with Zeta taking the stairs six at a time. Swift and I stepped out together, searching out the corners.
Stark illumination from the unicorn’s horns played over several rows of desks. We’d come up at the back of the classroom, facing a long blackboard with a smiling chicken drawn across one side and a series of simple equations on the other. The walls were covered, top to bottom, in dozens of painted pictures.
There was nopony to be seen and yet, for some reason, my hackles were trying to climb onto my ears.
“Hardy...” Taxi whispered. “I’m having many bad feelings about this. Very many bad feelings.”
Bake and Boil were poking their noses into desks, but I waved for them to stop and stand. They stilled and we waited, guns in our teeth and safeties off.
After several seconds, I became aware of a very low scraping sound. Grabbing Boil’s head in my hoof, I pointed his horn towards the front of the room.
In the dim light, I picked out a tiny motion that, at first, I took for a bug crawling across the blackboard. It was the wrong color and leaving a thin trail behind it; chalk. A piece of chalk, moving on its own, sweeping over the board with a sound that seemed built to shred nerves. I realized it was spelling something out.
Swift sounded out each letter, “Y...y-o...you...You! A-r...are? You are! You are what?”
I knew what it was going to spell out before it had started the final word. “Take cover!”
I threw myself at Bake and Boil, yanking Taxi onto the floor beside me and pulling one of the desks sideways to create a barricade.
The last word formed and every other piece of chalk, lined up neatly on the blackboard, launched itself into the air.
LATE!
Stats
Page generated in 0.058 seconds
Total duration
1,045 users online
1,760,941 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Dat cliffhanger.
Clearly, once High Spirits fixed the leak, he was finally able to get some rest, after which he won the lottery and moved to the Bahaymas, where he met a nice pegasus mare named Coconut Colada who made him forget all about Calliope. Yes, that is exactly what happened.
So, Detective Hard Boiled and a group of pleasure ponies stumble across an eldritch nth-dimensional structure accompanied by a notebook with feverish scrawlings? Looks like a real...
H.B. & Lovecraft situation.
2417156
I want to smack you, but I want to kiss you.
CONFOUND THESE PONY PUNS, THEY DRIVE ME TO EMOTIONAL CONFLICT
That was awesome.
The stationary equipment attacking them, the random story about the teacher and his obsession with a boiler of all things. Brilliant!
Was this chapter inspired by Edgar Allan Poe? I felt a serious Gothic vibe from this one.
2417174
No regrets!
I say the last part of Spirit's spell made him bind himself to the school. A ghost that has lost its marbles is even worse than a vengeful one. The vengeful one can be counted on to act a sertain way, the crazy one can do anything and everything nasty.
2416940 Loves me a cliffhanger!
2417665 Poor High Spirits. That's worse than anything I could have come up with.
2417355 Good eye. Tell Tale Heart has been a big inspiration for me for years and remains one of my favorite horror stories of all time.
2417340 Thanks, R.B. I was worried the story might be a little sudden, but it came out better than I thought it would. Glad you enjoyed it.
2417030 If you wanna write a story with him, I'd love to read it. The poor guy had it rough.
-Chessie
Shoggoth infestations. Friggin' literal nightmares to clean out.
<3
2418101 That really all counts on one thing, will Calliope ever come to visit? I'm pretty sure that could break the bonds, let him rest.
Poor guy, I also feel bad for Calliope, she was just trying to help.
Detrot claims another ponys' sanity. Is it just me or is Detrot sounding more and more like a place that needs to be nuked with a megaspell? After you get Swift our of there of course. 
2418671 That Scootaloo emoticon looks WAY too much like Swift.
Yeah, Detrot's a horrible place, but that's kind of the point. Keep reading. I promise it's not all darkness.
-Chessie
2418694 Yeah you're right. Isn't Swift just a little angel.
There are a thousand stories in the naked, hooved city.
Chessie and Kasen tell ALL of them
Just plan ahead, guys—go as dark as you want, I trust you, as long as it leads toward a purpose. I notice Hardy's bonding with the heart—definite HMMM there. 'Even then' he suspected?
Still a wonder, and I'm still hanging on every word
2419215 We've actually only told a fraction of the ones we've come up with. If we were to really try to tell EVERY tale that we've had an idea for, we'd be out of our minds by now.
Keep in mind, you guys know next to nothing about the main characters as yet and we still haven't introduced the fourth one.
-Chessie
2419252 So when are we going to see this new main character?
2420453 Oh, very soon. Eventually. Maybe. In a little while. Very quickly.
-Chessie
Excellent I like it is funny we start and end same way its funny.
I am just a first couple pages in, but it looks great and hilarious already. A main character in a noir tale named SWIFT CUDDLES? That's just about priceless
Ok, back to Detrot now...
2430408
Juxtapositions like that were the driving impetus that led us to think combining film noir and colorful magic ponies was an even remotely good idea.
2439973
The first person was chosen largely because the self-narrating hard boiled detective with the excessive use of metaphor is something of a common trope in noir; we felt it fit better with the theme. That said, we do have ways of expanding our scope as needed. By all means keep reading!
--CEO Kasen
2452747 Heh, you know, Gypsy was actually an incidental thing? We needed a character to help us world-build things as they happened to ponies besides Hardy. I didn't realize how much like Homage from Fallout Equestria she sounded until after I'd written her and gone back to read F:E again.
I'm going to give her another segment in an upcoming chapter, just to make sure nobody forgets about her.
-Chessie
2442937
Forget I said that. I just had to get used to reading first person (or should I say pony!?!) again.
Also,
Needs a space.
2474945 Those first couple chapters were written long, long ago. We were kinda 'meh' back then. Kasen has since gone through and re-worked them and my writing has improved considerably since then. I'm not 'great', but I do feel like I've gotten better.
-Chessie
2488354 That was Kasen's joke. He loves his puns with a bloody minded passion.
-Chessie
nice chapter here, one of the twins (i can't remember the other's name, only boil) reciting sciency jargon reminded me of Oleg from saints row 3, va bene mi amici.
i have a bad feeling about that heart
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZeOjZuxaV-s]
That was just creepy. But good.
Holy cow! that went from an intense action scene to a horror one! I am thoroughly impressed and am using an excess number of exclamation marks!
troll.me/images/yao-ming/well-i-didnt-need-to-sleep-tonight-anyways-thumb.jpg
Damn...I had a massive mishmash of chills and feels when everything came together with the boiler and the callioupe music...
It looks like you're being attached by a vengeful poltergeist spirit.
Would you like help?
☑ Slam random doors
☑ Flicker the lights
☑ Launch high velocity projectiles at your body
☐ Make the walls bleed
☐ Play the sound of foals laughing, slowed down and dropped an octave.
Probably not what you had in mind, but this song/tune came to my mind when I read this.
(Kevin Macleod - Netherworld Shanty)
That klein bottle piping and tesseract firebox can be a proper bitch to seal and maintain. And that is before you even factor in union rules and regulations regarding higher, non-integer dimensions and non-Euclidean geometries.
Howard Philip Lovecraft has a younger stepbrother named Graeme who was a boiler engineer. Inspired by his older brother's stories, Graeme wrote a few horror novels of his own:
- The Plumbing of Madness
- The Call of the Boiler
- The Firebox Out of Space
Needless to say they were not very popular and were quickly forgotten.
Never be afraid to share your dreams with the world, because there's nothing the world loves more than the taste of really sweet dreams.
Madness does not always howl. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day asking, "Hey, is there room in your head for one more?"
derpicdn.net/img/view/2014/1/10/520185.gif
2417355
I thought the heart made it bleeding (ha!) obvious...
Chapter 19: "The Cruel Tutelage of High Spirits" - well "The Cruel Tutelage of" can refer to a few things that also include things from kill bill.
And I'm still waiting on finding out who the father of that egg is!
So this is the chapter that finally makes me favourite this god forsaken (quite literally in this chapter) fanficiton? Appears so, god I love this too much
How delightfully macabre, master Chessie.
The elementary school I attended when I wert but a boy (situated but a wee distance from the old house) had a teacher whose favorite phrase included the words 'high spirits'.
Hence, this chapter is particularly choice.
I started feeling uncomfortable around the third or fourth journal entry, and it just devolved from there.
Also, I find that while ‘whyfor’ and ‘wherefor’ mean the same thing, the latter sounds better in a sentence. I’m sorry I didn’t think to quote the section when I found it, I was preoccupied with the journal.
I have no words to describe what my heart did when I read that one word. I applaud your writing.
2419252
Damn
9758410 Heh, keep going. Things get WAAAY crazier.
-Chessie
Man, you just LOVE stomping out the ideals of sunshine and rainbows, don’t’cha?
Ominous realization completely undercut by silly word fun. Buy your inopportune comedy now!
When this cat-bird wakes up all hell is going to break loose.
This totally didn’t stop being a thing that existed. Right.
Nice. Covering your bases, I see.
This is how monstrous enchanted boilers get their start.
PONY WILL READ STORY
Man this city just destroys optimism. I feel concerned for our mutual friend Officer Cuddles.
YEP. CREEPY. DUNNO WHAT I WAS EXPECTING.
Well this was just depressing.
-GM, master of haunt.
10070142 Yeeeah, that was one of the rougher chapters to write early in the story. Not to say I didn't enjoy writing it, mind you.
-Chessie
I really like this bit, though I cant put into words why I do. I wish for more info on this lovely zebra!
This chapter has a lot of the same feel as a Stable chapter from Fallout Equestria, very similar tone of days-gone-by mixed with the erosion of the pillars of society due to mad tinkering.
Youch.... going from some fun in a "Fun if it happens to you and not me" ponygeist activity, to a.... really damn tragic interlude, because mid break in of a mob drug lab is the perfect time to stop and read a story. Though, given it's the story of what the buck is up with this place and might give them insight in how to deal with it.... just chalk it up to them giving the guards time to fan out and get bored after the bosses little hissy fit.
Still just.... damn that is well done tragic horror.....
Chimera? And also this is why you don't cart those things around at all times, you just have them stashed strategically all over town in case of emergency. But yeah, the list of possible issues you could run into in Equestria is so large you will never be able to have the right stuff for everyone on hoof at all times.
Much like the fun of never being sure if the name plate on a door is telling you what is in it, or just an office for a very aptly named pony.
Also very much loved the twins showing that they aren't just dumb muscle, it's just that usually they prefer to devote all mental resources to savoring the pain.
Would it though? For one, he is clearly non compos mentis at this point and thus outside most legal systems definition of able to form the mental state needed for the crime of murder. For another, even if one could beat down the insanity defense, would somepony dying from what he's doing actually constitute 'murder'? Seems more like if there is any charge that could be levied it would be more in the line of ponyslaughter then murder, since any deaths would have been tragic but unforeseen and unintended side effects of what he was doing.
Still just... amazing little side trip into tragic horror story.