Gordon Rich
“So, what kind of pony do you think this Gordon is?” Haywood asked, mostly talking as a way to stay awake.
“We will see soon,” she replied, while sitting in an employee lounge chair inside the cave. “You should have accepted their hospitality when they asked us if we needed anything.” She took another sip from her cup. “This coffee brew is most pleasing.”
“I didn’t expect it to take this long,” he sighed. “Are you certain that Air Service didn’t just go ahead to warn Gordon that we’re coming? I have a feeling he is currently boarding a boat heading for Saddle Arabia.”
“You worry too much. I would have known if Air Service was planning something,” she said, and changed the subject. “This cave is certainly nicer than I expected. Looks almost like the inside of an office building.”
“I still have trouble believing anyone would chose to live here,” Haywood said. “It’s very clean and well lit despite lacking windows, but all the rooms besides this lobby are just boring storage.”
Nutmeg, who guarded the lobby entrance with his two companions decided to join their conversation. “Gordon’s living quarters are past the cargo area; but he lives here because he values his privacy."
“Then why doesn’t he just buy an estate far out on the countryside?” Haywood asked. “Ponies need fresh air and sunlight to stay healthy.”
“Hmpf, ponies can stay perfectly healthy in my moonlight,” she mumbled, low enough not be heard by the rest.
“You’ll understand when you meet him,” Nutmeg replied. He exchanged glances with his fellow guards. The stallion's hesitation wasn’t lost on her.
“I’m so tired, I almost don’t care anymore,” Haywood complained, the old stallion usually never blabbered—so she saw her chance.
“Like the time when you were new to the palace and drunkenly kissed my sister at the gala?” she said, in her most innocent voice.
“Exactly,” he confirmed, then his face turned red as he realized what he had just said.
Huzzah! She knew there was some truth behind those rumors.
“Gordon will see you now,” Air Service said, as she entered the room. “Is there something wrong with Mr. Haywood?”
“Not at all.”
—
The door that led to Gordon had a simple ‘Employees Only’ sign on it. What she saw on the other side was less mundane.
The first shock was the sheer size of the room, large enough to fit in an entire city district. The ceiling was domed inward, which allowed it to carry the weight above without the use of support-columns.
The next impressive things were what lined the walls of the room. Everywhere she looked were display cases stock filled with bits, metal bars, or a plethora of luxury goods. In front of each display was a podium with a large ledger.
What mainly drew her attention, however, was what lay down at the center on an enormous mattress: the largest dragon she had ever seen. It was in the same shape as the one that had nested near Ponyville some time ago, though this one was cerulean blue and several times larger.
When the great drake saw them, it raised itself up on its hind legs and gave her a deep bow.
"Princess Luna, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. My name is Gordon Rich, please take a seat,” the dragon said, with a softer voice than expected, then gestured to the open space in front of its bed where a variety of furniture was placed.
Judging by the reactions of their small group, the guards and Air Service already knew that he was a giant dragon, and by Haywood’s gaping, he had never seen one before. Everyone awaited her response, but instead of answering, she turned away from the group and walked alongside the wall.
She ignored the room-sized displays with precious metals and jewelry, only taking note of how meticulously clean the glass windows were. Only one thing interested her, and she stopped at the ledger of the ones that contained house-high stacks of Equestrian bits. The book detailed every transaction to and from this specific vault, and she read aloud from the most recent dates.
“Two-hundred and fifty thousand bits withdrawn from the Royal Bank of Equestria six months ago,” she read, voice amplified so it would be loud enough for both the group and dragon to hear. “Four thousand withdrawn as a special dividend from Discount Joe’s Cotton Emporium.”
The list continued on and on with hundreds of withdrawals made from a variety of businesses and banks during the last year. No one said anything, as she moved on to the next display of bits, and read from its ledger. If the sum total in the ledger could be believed, they each contained roughly twelve million coins, and by her estimates, there were nearly forty of these displays present in the cave. If all ledgers here had the same rate of withdrawals, then it was safe to assume she had found the place where much of the country's currency had ended up.
“Gordon Rich,” she asked, with a hint of venom in her amplified voice. “I suggest you answer me honestly. Are you responsible for Equestria’s current economic turmoil?”
The dragon sat on his haunches and looked at her with a neutral expression. “And what if I am?” he replied, while small amounts of black smoke puffed from his nostrils.
An outlying boulder roughly the size of the dragon’s head detached itself from the mountain and flew towards him at the speed of an arrow. The dragon saw it and yelped, as far as a dragon the size of a large mansion can actually do so, throwing himself down unto his feathered mattress to avoid the impact. The boulder then swung around in the air, and landed softly in an empty space next to him.
“Does that answer your question? Now please answer mine,” she said, then found herself surrounded by the three guard stallions.
“Princess, stop now or we’ll be forced to take you in for attempted assault,” Nutmeg said, with a surprising chill in his voice.
She looked at him with an impassive face, one eyebrow raised in her signature oh really position. The stallion hesitated under her stare, as she moved in closer while looking down at him. She gave her mane a slight increase in the speed at which it flowed, and Nutmeg’s will broke completely, as her gaze alone forced him to hunker down until his stomach finally touched the floor. The two other guards backed away slowly.
“Nutmeg, Potato Salad, and Snow Skies,” Gordon said. “Go and guard the entrance and refrain from interfering. It was obvious to me that she only meant to showcase how serious she is.”
That was true; had he not dodged she would have stopped it mid-air before it impacted. She needed answers—not an oversized, unconscious dragon.
While the stallions obeyed, the dragon gestured to the rest of the party to settle down in the furnished area in front of him. They silently accepted the invitation, and trotted the longer than expected distance.
The mentioned area was like a wall-less room, with a marble tiled floor in a chessboard pattern. The furniture was sorted much like a normal living room, with a couch and table on one side and several chairs and pillows placed haphazardly.
She sat down on a pillow directly opposite the dragon, a single fang of whose was probably twice her size. But the boulder she’d parked next to him clearly indicated who was in charge of the situation. Air Service sat down on a chair further away, while Haywood took the couch.
“So, before we start, I would like to clarify a few things,” Gordon began, while laying down back on the giant mattress. “A little disclaimer, you could call it.” He took a deep breath. “I, Gordon Rich, am a legal citizen of Equestria. I have never broken any laws, and you or your staff are welcome at any time to check our financial records.” Lifting a single claw in the air, he continued. “I imagine you have plenty of questions, so let’s agree that you ask and I answer.”
“Very well, let us start at the beginning,” she said. “I’ve only heard of one dragon before who became an Equestrian citizen. How and when did you become one?”
“It all started two-hundred years ago, when I came across a ship along the coast,” he began, with a melancholic tone. “I was not much larger than a pony, and I was curious, so I simply landed on the boat. Long story short, I met Not-So Rich, and we made an arrangement, where I helped them with charting the coast in return for becoming his business partner. We were successful, and I followed him back to Equestria. We worked together, and he later adopted me into his family, giving me legal residence here.”
"There had always been rumors of a dragon living in these parts, but with so many ponies working here for you, how did you manage to stay hidden from us?”
“Hmm, I think Air Service can best answer that question,” Gordon said, and gave a fanged smile to the pegasus. “Thank you again for working so late, Air, you can take the tomorrow off.”
“Oh, thank you,” Air Service said, surprised to be a part of the conversation, then switched to address the princess. “I was hired by an agent of Gordon's, when I still worked directly for the WPTC.” The mare’s expression became sad as she reminisced. “My husband and I had issues with conceiving a foal, and no doctor knew how to help us, but the agent said if I worked for Gordon, he would help us find a way. I accepted, then we were contacted by a unicorn specialist, and two years later, I was blessed with two wonderful colts.”
A tear formed in the pegasus's eye as she spoke of her foals. She wasn't surprised, having glimpsed in the dreamworld how much the mare cared for her children.
She noted how utterly open the middle-aged pegasus mother behaved in the presence of this great wyrm. This was not a mare intimidated to obedience, it was something else. This was respect. Earned respect.
“I think I understand,” she said, and switched to address the dragon. “The same goes for all your employees, I assume, like Nutmeg?”
“Yes, that stallion also had problems before I hired him,” Gordon said, one blue claw scratching his chin. ”Or should I say, his brother did. He lost his job and took to drinking cider all day. Nutmeg worked as a Royal Guard at the time and didn't have the time or the money to help.”
“But you did,” she said, uncertain about how she should feel about his recruitment strategy. It was good that he helped ponies through a tough spot in their lives, but it could also be putting them in a debt they’d never be able to fully pay.
“Yes, I told Nutmeg that if he would work for me instead, I would ensure his brother a place at the top rehabilitation facility in Equestria,” the dragon mused. “That was five years ago, and I do believe his brother now has his life back on track.”
“I doubt all ponies you ‘recruited’ stayed loyal, hence the rumours.”
“Indeed,” he sighed, and made a large puff of black smoke into the air. She noticed how the smoke cloud quickly dispersed itself, due to a large amount of spinning fans all over the roof. “Luckily, those ponies were never believed when they tried to tell the public. I would like for you to understand that my fortune is closely tied to that of your ponies. The wealthier and more successful ponykind becomes, the more I can increase my own hoard. It’s a symbiotic relationship”
Parasitic, more likely, if his actions with our currency are any indication.
“Very well, that answers my first question,” she said, looking at Air Service, who gave her an approving nod, then back to Gordon. “Now, you claim that your actions are legal, but I have my doubts.” The boulder lifted and circled lazily in the air. Gordon looked at it and gulped.
“Haywood, tell me what laws he may have broken so far.”
Silence.
“Haywood?” She searched for the old stallion, only to find found him snoring on the couch. He laid on his side with his head propped up on the armrest, thoroughly asleep.
“Long day?” Gordon asked, when all eyes were on the stallion.
“Hmpf, the stamina of stallions this age is so disappointing,” she said, but decided to let Haywood continue his slumber. “Even if these transactions are all legal, there is another issue that’s been bothering me.”
“I will answer if you drop the rock,” Gordon said, and pointed a claw at the flying boulder.
“Fine,” she agreed, letting the rock drop to the ground. “I assume you keep up with the company's events. Please tell me about this new earth pony colony the WPTC found in the Badlands.”
“Oh, that one,” he grumbled, more smoke pouring from his nostrils. “What about it?
“Surely you must have suspected that there was something amiss with that settlement,” she asked, daring him to lie.
“Ah, you mean the fact that they were all changelings?” he replied, as if that was common knowledge.
“I hope then you have a good explanation for why you are trading with an enemy,” she said, with an edge to her tone. The changelings were still a sore spot ever since her sister forbade her to intervene at the wedding. While her sister’s vision guided her to the safest path to neutralize a foe, it often led to a less satisfying outcome. She also wished that her sister would have allowed her to beat up Tirek, but alas, that path would have left to much collateral damage to the countryside.
“Hmm, they are certainly hostile, but not really enemies,” he said, looking smug. “But, I should explain what happened.” He coughed into one claw. “You see, when we found the settlement, we suspected from the start that they were changelings, but the ones we talked to did seem genuinely interested in trading, and they were in dire need of supplies. So we sent the caravan, and traded it for their adhesive mixture.
“Now, we knew the risks involved,” he continued, before she could interject. “So when the caravan returned to Dodge City, we separated each guard and trader, and placed them in one of our guard stations so we could question them individually. We soon found out that one of each had been replaced.”
“This does not please me,” she growled, furious at him for knowingly putting the safety of her ponies under such risk. Air Service looked horrified, so it was safe to assume the pegasus knew nothing of this.
“Let me finish,” he said. “We locked up the shapeshifters and sent a messenger back to the settlement, where we demanded our employees back in a prisoner exchange. We offered to continue trading so long as they never attempted such a thing again. And it worked, since they needed us much more than we needed them.”
“You are still helping an enemy of the crown,” she noted.
“Actually, it's fully legal,” he said. “Celestia never declared war on the changelings, and there are no laws against commerce with foreign races.” He inspected one of his claws nonchalantly. “In fact, it was speculated by the board of directors that Celestia would approve of our efforts, if we decided to inform her.”
It was in all likelihood true, since her sister always choose the diplomatic route when possible. The WPTC also had special permission to treat with foreign powers, so long as the deals followed Equestria's peaceful ideology.
She knew things would come to a head soon, and wondered if she should wake Haywood, as the old stallion was twitching with one leg and snored ever louder. She assumed, quite safely, that his dream involved him being chased across Equestria by coffee mugs, or perhaps his wife.
She was about to send one of her ethereal tendrils to enter his dreamscape.
“So, should I tell you about the coin crisis then?” Gordon asked, suddenly.
She canceled her magic, and instead focused on the dragon. “Proceed.”
“Yes, it’s true, I helped cause this crisis by stealthily taking out coins from every bank and businesses I own, and indirectly encouraged the WPTC to do the same,” he said, pointing with a single claw up into the air to emphasis his point. “The reason is I also have the solution to the problem, and that is introducing a new paper-currency to the economy, to in part replace the heavy dependence on cumbersome physical coins, which is limited by a country's mining and minting output.”
“I remember now, that such a resolution was denied three times by my sister during my absence,” she said, tilting her head. “We do not take kindly to having our hoof forced.”
“It is inevitable, the economy is outpacing the production of coins. Something else is needed to replace it.” The subject was obviously upsetting Gordon. “You Alicorns, you are too afraid of change, so much so that you are hindering progress, all the while risking a meltdown due to your backwards thinking! This crisis would have happened sooner rather than later, with or without my interference. My actions simply hastened the process.”
“I suggest you hold your tongue, whelp.” She never took it well when someone insulted her sister. “You claim to be lawful and acting in Equestria's best interest, but all I see is a greedy dragon hoarding treasure.”
“That ‘dragon greed’ as you called it has helped improve the lives of thousand of your ponies!” he shot back. Air Service was now cowering in her seat, while Haywood continued to snore. “Don't you get it? Greed already drives ponies! Greed for life! Greed for love! Greed for knowledge! Greed—for lack of a better word—is good!”
“I have seen your greed before! It never truly creates happiness nor harmony!”
“Your sister's ideas of harmony is a stupid fantasy tha–”
A boulder impacted him straight in the face.
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I wish in real life the government threw boulders to the face of those who deliberately had a hand in the economical crisis.
7786991
Hey, Twilight.
Yes?
Take this recording device to Dragon Lord Ember.
Okay, why?
Record her saying—'I command you to donate all your money to the royal treasury!'
Well, that could have gone better. She really should get that temper under control. Lawsuits can put a bit of a damper on your day. Ah well. He does raise a good point. Besides, it's less "forcing their hooves" as it is proving his point. If they are unwilling to look over and discuss his theory, then he had little choice then to move onto an experiment to test his hypothesis. After all, he has just as much, if not more interesting in keeping Equestia's economy from crashing. Better to prove your point in a controlled manner than to let it spiral out of control on its own, right?
7787009
She's busy at the moment....
Something about a stoned dragon on the lose
You two!
only one slaves don't count... 
He's perfectly happy too 
Can has more?
7787413 That is true, though I doubt his plans are to simply start printing it at will. One of the things that must be considered with whatever is backing the money is whether it is rare enough to be of value, yet common enough to be useful for amall transactions. For example, in our world, diamonds would be a poor backing, as their percieved value is too high to be used in small exchanges, such as buying a soda. Plus, this makes the currency just as prone to changing from supply and demand as the comodities it is traded for.
It is also helpful if the thing backing it isn't inheritly useful. Kind of like how gold use to be, and likely still is for Equestria. It's shiney, but until electronics came along, there wasn't a lot of uses for it as a consumable.
Paper money in and of itself is a bit of a double edged sword, as it's value is soley based upon a general agreement that it has one. If course, the downside, which can lead to what you described, is the supply of it, and therefor its value, are highly dependant on the person or persons responsible for it's creation and destruction to be wise with the supply.
Of course, this trouble can befall gold as well. If memory serves, Rome caused the very same problem by trying to create more gold by shaving the edges off the existing coins to make more. Hence why many modern coins have the marking on the wdges of them. Or you could just do what America did, and change couns from a solid peice of valuable metal to a less valuable metal coated in the original. 'Course, you'll also have to make melting down the old coins illegal, since they are now more valuable as scrap than money.
From the sounds of this story, Equestria is already in trouble, as it would seem there are more notes floating around than there are coins to back them. Might be better if those notes were official.
7787373
Tune in for next week's episode.
7787110
HIgh amounts of caffeine can do that to a mare.
Yup, that's definitely one reason, though I won't go to any details in the story, since it's a comedy and monetary-babble can be dull and confusing. Was a bit of a challenge to try make the interview funny, but I hoped it worked out well in the end.
I hoped someone would find out which movie this is loosely based on. But since I did some blatant line-ripping I think I should point it out.
Very interesting story! It has a fun, funny voice to it, as well as tackling some topics with some actual meat behind them. Great stuff. It's always fascinating to see the diversity of what fanfiction can bring forth as far as what they look into.
In terms of suggestions: There was a line that you italicized, which I personally tend to read as denoting the thoughts of the viewpoint character. But the line goes "Huzzah! She knew there was some truth behind those rumors." which doesn't really fit if it's Luna thinking... unless Celestia is the "she" and Celestia was too drunk to realize who kissed her? Anyway, I'd expect either "I" instead of "She". Or alternatively, not having it all be a thought, but rather something like "Huzzah! she thought. She'd been certain there was some truth behind those rumors." Either direction would have made it less jarring for me, personally speaking.
Also, I don't know if this was intentional or not, but to my personal feeling, Luna's aggressiveness (which, granted, has been there all along) pretty much crossed a line somewhere in this chapter (for me personally) between "amusing" to "unsettling", with a notable leaning toward "unsympathetic". I don't know if you meant it to come across that way, but the story just... hasn't really cultivated the level of slapstick necessary to make her smashing one of her subjects in the face with a boulder as a response to heated argument come across in a good way, and even when she was just threatening him with it earlier it had more "bullying" connotations than I normally associate with Luna.
This isn't a criticism, exactly, since like I said, it may well be your exact aim to shift sympathies more toward Gordon and away from your version of Luna, and aim to make us want to see her taken down a peg. If so, then I think the scenes work pretty well to build things in that direction. Either way, that was the emotional response I got out of it, just for what it's worth.
At any rate, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more of this, and how everything develops! Thanks very much for sharing this!
7793286
Thanks! I think no matter what the genre there should to be something interesting going on in the background. The Changelings for instance may not have any real impact (who knows?) on the main story, but just having them there adds an extra dose of spiciness.
I will need to go back and think things through when I'm done with the story, because I'm not certain myself how well things fit together. I've written this so far as a sort of third-person limited to Luna's perspective, whose point of view is also the narrator's. That's why there never is any "Luna said" in the story, but always "she said", because she wouldn't refer to herself as "Luna" in her head. When another female is talking it's always "Air Service said" to try and avoid any confusion. Now this maybe is weird, pointless and needlessly confusing. But it's the way so far I've written everything, and I try to make it work as best I can. I'm not even sure why I like having it this way.
Yup, I see nothing wrong with being unsympathetic. With the information so far, her lashing out like that was wrong. Gordon might be entirely innocent (well, maybe not ethnically). Some people probably just thinks he got what he deserved, with the 'rich assholes had it coming' mentality. But, it's usually these gray areas that have the most delicious food for thought.
This was great feedback. Period. I know some authors have problems with criticism, which makes people scared to leave feedback that seem negative, but in my case—have at it. I always see it as food for thought, and even if someone goes total bananas there is usually a inkling of truth behind what they say.
Charting = mapping.
Chartering
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/chartering
IMO, you mean "Charting"
9258464
Yup, that was a typo. Well spotted!