An Artist Among Animals

by Bandy

16: Beat Your Cannons into Q-tips

Noir, shortly before marching off to join the war, promised himself that when a problem raised its pissbeak head, he would keep his chin down and hope it would aim at someone else.

It wasn’t a very honorable promise. Then again, Noir had no honor. Surviving in Equestria for the past few years assured him of it. The world moved too fast for him. Honor didn’t make sense.

When the train sped into the Chicoltgo station to take him away, he ducked between tearful goodbyes and promises of chastity and found a seat. On an impulse, he stuck his head through the window and watched the soldiers disappear into the train cars behind him. As they pulled away from the platform and the goodbyes turned to wails and faded into a rush of steam from the engine, Noir saw his face reflected in the window. The outline of his face slipped out of focus as Equestrian greenery gave way to the jagged rock of the Borderlands.

In the end it all worked out. The ponies slashed and stabbed and shot and firebombed their way through enough villages and strongholds to kill all the griffon defenders. Noir learned quickly that the honor of war came not in fighting better but by winning. Winning meant you got to go home, and home was where the honor was bestowed. In the field, honor went down with the dead. The honorable ponies had their high chins blasted off their faces. The honorable griffons were incinerated. The bombs fell like judgement. Honor from above.

In the end, Noir won, which meant he was the most honorable species on the battlefield by default. This meant none of these things bothered him while he slept. Was Noir less of a scumbag when he returned from the Borderlands? No. But he was more honorable.

He still had nightmares, but more about death than war. War was an opinion. Death was an unshakable tragedy--even to an honorable stallion like him. Seven years of peace could not undo the four of war. He wondered how many more it would take.

“Miss Rarity,” he spoke, twirling a pencil on his hoof, “do you understand the implications of such a promise?”

“I suppose I don’t,” she replied tersely. They were a few paces apart. Noir sat behind his desk, tapping his hoof on the table.

“The implication is other ponies die. One of the more racist billy goats--more racist than me, anyway--one of them lost his whole leg to a sniper when I didn’t pop out of my hole and shoot him. As he was getting carted off he told us, he said when a problem raises its pissbeak head, you have to keep your chin up so you could look it in the eyes.”

Rarity gave him a confused, bitter look. “I wasn’t aware carts could fit on the mountains.”

“It’s an expression. Somepony carried him on his back down the mountain. He still died.”

Between them, atop several half-penned contracts and a crushed piece of cardboard with the Sweet Apple Acres logo stickered to its side, sat a hooffull of bits.

“Your father died in the war, right?” he asked.

“That’s not something you should bring up in polite conversation.”

“But he did, didn’t he?”

“I brought that cider in the hope you would--at the very least not get drunk in front of me while I’m trying to talk business.”

“There is plenty of time to talk business. First I would like you to answer my question.”

“I don’t want to answer your question.”

“Then I don’t want to help you.”

It would feel wonderful to just slap Noir right across his face. Rarity moved closer to the desk until her knees hit the wood. Her hoof went up, then came down atop the bits. “Look at these, Noir. Look at them.” The way he recoiled into his chair as she shoved it into his face felt almost as satisfying as actually hitting him.

“What is so special about them?” Noir asked, yanking the bit out of her hooves and examining it down his nose.

“Look at the issue year.”

“SE 1016.”

“These bits are uncirculated. Brand new.”

“Okay. That’s nice. They look nice.” Noir’s eyes gleamed like the coins in his hoof. “Where did you get these?”

“I’m being commissioned by a high-ranking member of the Equestrian government. I have a way to get cash. I’ll have enough to pay the bank debt off by the end of the month. If I sell off my art at the same rate I am now--along with the private donations I’ve received from my friends, and now these commissions,” she said, “I’ll have enough to cover the whole debt.”

“Do I look like the ENB to you? Do you think I care about your affairs with them?”

“That’s what I’ve been leading up to. With this bank debt out of the way I’ll be able to focus all my efforts to paying you. When the ENB gets off my tail I’ll have all the time in the world to break even.”

“Don’t be that way.” Noir threw his voice up into the air so it sailed down like a parachute flare. “Do you even listen to me?”

“I’ve had my suspicions you’re just like you’re broken records over there collecting dust in the corner, but now I’ve confirmed it.” The pace of her voice quickened. Atonal notes flying up the scale. “I have done nothing but do as you say, time after time after time, I smuggled all your illegal candies and I bought into your ration card robberies and I let you take sixty percent of the goddess damn furs--”

“And now thanks to your blatant thievery, I’ve got the EQUIS breathing down my neck. That is your fault.”

“I can’t--”

“That is your fault.” His mouth flared like a trumpet’s bell. “Your fault. Do you know the EQUIS has sent a team of investigators to Ponyville to catch us? It’s not enough there’s some psycho Bonnie and Clydesdale couple out there shaking down boomertowns and interfering with your work--if that is what happened. Now the EQUIS is here. I can’t fight them with guns.”

“How much is my debt to you?”

Light from the overheads filtered through the smoke and sopped up the sound. The crespicularity hit Noir in the face. Four gleaming copper suns and one stylized moon shimmered like crashing cymbals on the desk.

Noir scooped the coins up and tossed them into the corner so they would stop ringing. “I am almost positive it’s more than five shiny bits.”

“Well?” she insisted. “I certainly can’t remember. I can’t remember how to do anything right now. You seem to be quite good at setting prices.”

“It is whatever I say it is.”

Rarity wailed before she could remember her place. “That is a grossly unfair answer for somepony who has been nothing but accommodating in delivering your riches on her own back.”

“So, do you think I owe you?”

“No, no that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you should take our past dealings into consideration when deciding whether or not to firebomb my house.”

He had the nerve to chuckle. “Miss Rarity, the war taught me a great many things. One of them was how to live in the moment. You might die the next moment,” he hissed, reveling in his calculated punch and the unease it brought her, “so it’s important to get the most out of the present. Wring it dry--you owe it nothing. In a moment it’ll be the past, all dried up and sentimental. The world is not wine. It ages poorly. Right now, in this moment, you are a part of the problem. Now, I don’t go around firebombing all my problems.” He made an “O” with his lips and mimed an explosion.

Copper lumps rose in Rarity’s throat and sealed off her airway. She tasted bits on the back of her tongue and gagged, fighting down the urge to vomit her uncirculated currency all over the table. “Think about what this money could be. It could be--security from the EQUIS. Bribes are a long-term security measure. Burning my house down is hardly a security measure at all,” she spat as memories of her dead father exploded in flashes of red.

“Right now you are a problem to me. Tomorrow, you will also be a problem to me. Money can fix the short term and the long term. That’s why I need it. That’s why I need money. I need money. I need--” he slammed his hoof on the table. “I need money!”

The rimshot left his hoof aching. He reeled backwards into his chair. “You are a problem until you are a solution. That solution is money. You will walk out of this building a part of the solution. I promise you.” He pointed to Rarity and seemed shocked when she didn’t burst into flames. “I need more money. It’s that simple. I need more money. When the EQUIS comes knocking down my door, I will not fend them off with guns."

“What’s my debt?” Rarity asked feebly. “What’s the actual number?”

“If you do one more job for me, we’ll call our debt even.”

“I need assurances, Noir. I need assurances that as soon as this is over you’ll leave me and my house and my family alone.”

Noir threw his hooves up. The pipes clattered in the walls. “You have my word.”

Had they had this same conversation before? Go steal something--no--yes--no--yes--fine. The motions of pleading for her safety left Rarity feeling less scared and more lethargic. It wasn’t sparkling, nor was it on fire. A dangerous and passionate life of artistry spoiled the small everyday necessities involved with staying alive. Noir was the cashier at a grocery store. The thing he wanted stolen was somewhere in aisle 5. Smooth bossa nova jazz with a one-note melody played on the speakers. Was it really her fault she felt bored?

“What is my debt?” she asked again.

Noir placed a folded piece of paper on top of his desk and slid it towards Rarity. “The crystal heart.”

Rarity put her head in her hooves and studied the fine grains in the table. They lined up in uneven rows, like a bad postmodernist artist’s interpretation of a jail cell.

“I can’t.”

“It’ll be in Ponyville in a week’s time--”

“I know where it’ll be. I know why it’ll be there. I’m the ninth or tenth most powerful being in the world. And I’m telling you, I can’t. Nopony can.”

“It’s the perfect crime for a stallion in my position. With the right connections, I could bargain my pardon from the Equestrian government and still make a ransom sum.”

“Listen to yourself. If you somehow got your hooves on the heart, you’ll be pulling the pin out of the biggest grenade in pony history.”

“I’ll have the weight of two governments pushing against Celestia. She can’t become the queen who let the crystal heart disappear under her protection. She’ll listen.”

“She’s a princess, not a queen.”

“Queen sound scarier. They’ll call her a queen in time just like we called Staleighn a communist.”

“They’ll kill us both,” she replied with conviction. “If I don’t die stealing it, I’ll bring it back here and then we’ll both die. They’ll string us up in the Mountain and we’ll rot.”

“Calm down. This is not a discussion.”

“Oh my gods.” Rarity choked on her words. “I can’t do this anymore. You want me to die--I get it. This is how you kill me. You’re not trying to blow up my house, you’re just throwing me right into the path of a celestial meat grinder.” Her head swayed in time to the rhythm of her fragile voice, “I can’t. I really truly can not do it.”

“This is a nasty business,” Noir said. “But it’s business.”

“This is not business.” The music hit a dissonant chord inside her. Before she could flinch she slammed her hoof on the table. Pain shot through her leg, and she wondered if this was how Noir felt all the time.

“I wonder if all those animals whose fur you used thought the same thing right before they died,” Noir pondered. “Probably not--they’re animals.”

The room spun. Rarity remembered that she had sat in the spinny chair. She struck a resentful stare as her ride wound down. Her words felt familiar, like they had already been through this same ride before. There was Rarity in the chair. There was Noir across from her. There were the dim lights. There was the smoke, the shade. There was Ponyville outside. There was the dance. There were the strings. There was the comfort--the promise of more money.

“Miss Rarity,” Noir said, “if every real artist could be dissuaded by a single neighsayer, how many great paintings would not exist? Or books? Or music? Or--dresses?”

The dresses! At the mention of dresses Rarity all but collapsed. She wanted so badly to go home and close the window shades and focus on her sewing machine, put her head to the fabric and watch the needle almost drive through her hooves. Violence and its intimacy with the art of sewing relaxed her. The dresses were great, but the possibility of sewing herself into them on accident kept her excited. When she paused to look out the window she upped the chance of running her hoof into the needle and not even noticing it until she looked back down.

“I’ve got to go home,” she sighed. “I’ve got to go home and make a dress.”

Noir said nothing.

“You supported me for the longest time. You didn’t care about the furs, but you cared about what I did with them. You understand that sometimes, in order for an artist to push themselves, they must push society.”

“And the backlash--”

“The backlash doesn’t matter. All the taboo--it will be gone in a hundred years or so. Taboo today is shocking tomorrow is distasteful the day after and kinky by the week’s end. Right now my furs are confined to the griffon kingdom, but they will one day grace Equestria’s finest stores. I’ll be dead by then, but my name will live on.” Out came a sigh, an implied speech with implied wisdom. “But now I’m done. I need assurances. If I do this, you’ll leave me alone?”

Noir raised his right hoof. Metal-wheeled carriages scraped down the street outside, rattling and groaning. “You have my promise.”

It was then that the immense weight of time emerged from the smoke above and landed on her shoulders. Four years of war and seven of peace. Lifetimes, her lifetimes. The past never really went away, just refocused. A war went by, and she remembered the furs she made and the families she fed. Peace reigned, and she remembered the smell of jellied gasoline and chemicals, the whoosh of flames, the sight of her home as fire consumed it. The family was her own. The fire was the one burning on the western horizon as she stole the Crystal Heart. She remembered the pride of feeding her family through a famine and wondered where it had all gone.

She nodded her head.

“Excellent.” Noir clapped his hooves together. “Shall we toast to it?”

“If I get arrested,” Rarity mumbled, “The Crystal Empire will execute me like they did the griffon who stole it the first time.”

Noir replied, “They don’t use capital punishment anymore.”

Rarity walked to the corner of the room to pick up the bits Noir had thrown there, then weighed her options against them. She imagined fire. Starvation. Four years of war and seven of peace. “This are Crystalites we’re talking about. They’ll execute me on principle. They’ll do it in public.”

“You can risk them, or you can risk me.”

Her face contorted, a second piece of bad news delivered by a man in uniform. How many more until she was through?

Comments

[Alondro]

Dimestore war novel-level writing. Nothing compelling about any of it. Half the conversations and trains of thought are difficult to understand and often jump about, clearly and awkwardly TRYING to appear 'natural' without succeeding.

There's also no trace of 'Equestria' in this story. It's just a random fictional post-war story with ponies instead of people. Is that supposed to make us feel more sympathy for them, simply because they're characters we recognize from the show?

"War and Peace" this ain't. This is not how you structure a darker story off a world populated by pastel ponies and princesses. We must see the actual character as more than a collection of physical traits and tropes. These characters are so alien they might as well be anything other than ponies. Take this line: "The dresses were great, but the possibility of sewing herself into them on accident kept her excited." That is CLEARLY inspired by the LittleMissRarity Tumblr of years past... and has nothing to do with the actual character or how she would develop after experiencing war. Not to mention, even a masochist doesn't get excited about a possibility that is rather remote unless you're TRYING to hurt yourself, in which case it's not a 'risk' in the first place if that's what is being intended. Rarity even thinking that tends to imply she'll do it purposefully. It's a very bizarre phrase and just one example of the strange phrasing everywhere in this story.