Chapter 51
“Bat rat!”
Confused, Piper felt Flicker explode out of her embrace and she fell backwards with a cry. Hennessy fell over as well, squishing her, kneeing her right in the teats, and then he rolled off. She grunted, squeaked, and recovered, then sat up in time to watch Flicker take a flying leap from the edge of the roof. Her heart squirted up into her throat and she wondered if he would make the ten foot plus leap to the next roof over.
“We’re ten stories up,” she murmured.
Wicked took off, shouting, “Bats aren’t rats, you silly cuss!” And then, making it look effortless, Wicked lept. Where Flicker had taken a running leap, Wicked went over to the edge of the roof at a rather casual looking stroll, bunched up like a cat, and then launched himself from the edge of the roof.
Piper squeaked again and felt her throat close as the pony with three normal legs and one wooden leg made the terrifying jump. He landed, coming down easy, and didn’t even wobble. His pegleg made a fantastic tattoo as he ran over the roof of the building next door, following after Flicker, who lept again. The filly felt her nethers clench as she wondered, Will I be able to do this someday?
As fantastic as Flicker was, he was nothing compared to Wicked, who caught up with the colt in no time at all. Wicked was faster, could jump further, and could land with far more grace. The chase ended and the two ponies began their rooftop to rooftop return, with Flicker holding something in his magic.
“It’s like watching the Power Ponies in real life,” Piper breathed.
Doctor Sterling walked over the edge of the roof and his eyebrow arched as Flicker landed. With an “Oof!” Wicked landed beside him and then gave the colt an affectionate kick in the backside as the doctor began to examine what Flicker held in his telekinesis.
“That’s not a bat,” Piper remarked.
“It’s not a rat, either,” Doctor Sterling said.
“It’s got four legs and bat wings.” Wicked snatched the squeaking, thrashing creature out of Flicker’s telekinesis and had himself a better look. “It’s like a pegasus pony, but a rat. What in Celestia’s green earth is going on ‘ere?”
“So we have a ratasus, what’s next? A raticorn?” Hennessy moseyed closer and had himself a better look. “No sir, I don’t like it.” The colt’s lips pressed together into a straight line and he pulled his head back from the thrashing creature. “What do we do with it?”
“We study it, of course,” Doctor Sterling responded. “That will go into a specimen bay in the lab. Nice work, Mister Nicker.”
Piper, hesitant and just a little scared, had herself a better look once she was close enough to do so. The rat was big, but not too big, the body was maybe seven inches or so without the tail. It had bat-like wings sprouting from its back in very much the same manner as a pegasus pony, and its tail was just a little bit different too. It was flattened at the tip, and wide, almost leaf shaped.
“What a peculiar creature,” Piper said as she continued her observation. “How do you suppose this happened? Did a rat and a bat breed together to make a crossbreed? Magic? Was this intentional?”
“All good questions.” Flicker drew in a deep breath and then let it out in a slow, measured huff. “I’m inclined to ask why though. Why would this be made and what purpose would it serve?” Flicker began to rub his chin in a manner almost identical to Doctor Sterling and his eyes narrowed. “Aerial surveillance? A means to send in orders?”
“This along with the sabotage we saw today gives me the willies,” Wicked said as his face contorted into a wrinkled, contorted scowl. “Sterling, ye think the Rainbow of Darkness did this?”
“I don’t know, Wicked.”
“The what?” Piper asked.
“Never you mind!” Wicked bellowed and then he gave Piper a gentle, good-natured pat upon the neck. “Come, Sterling. Ye and I are going to secure yon wee beastie in the lab and have ourselves a private chat. Let’s go.”
Piper, burning with a desire to know more, watched them leave.
Flicker, now in his room, began to pace a little. There wasn’t much room to pace now, not with the beds, the trunks, and the table. Just a narrow space between the beds. His room, his sanctuary, his sanctum, had become crowded. Spud was wedged into the window and sitting on the sill. Hennessy and Piper were at the table, and Flicker couldn’t help but feel a little peeved with them, as they were laughing and having fun.
Today was far too serious of a day to have fun.
“So, what are you writing?” Hennessy asked.
Hesitating, Piper lifted her head and looked over at the earth pony sitting beside her. Reaching out a foreleg, she placed her fetlock over Hennessy’s and gave him a squeeze. “Don’t laugh,” she whispered, “but I’m writing fanfiction. Saucy fanfiction.”
“Whassat?” Hennessy leaned in a little closer and tried to look at Piper’s paper.
“You know, there are better things we could be doing, like studying… or… studying,” Flicker suggested.
“You know, you could join us. Maybe try something new. Something creative. Like you were assigned to do.” Piper gave Flicker a bold look and gestured for him to come over. Her ears drooped when his stern glare focused upon her with burning intensity. “You’re not being very fun.”
“Very well, we shall try your frivolity.”
“Very well, we shall try your frivolity,” Piper said, mimicking Flicker’s lugubrious deadpan. Feeling bold again, her ears perked and she stared Flicker right in the eye as he glared at her. “You know, Hennessy, Flicker Nicker is the sort of pony that little rats dare one another to say his name in the mirror three times.”
Covering his muzzle with his fetlock, Hennessy began chortling and Flicker did not get the joke. Flicker came over to the table, sat down, and then focused his dull, blank stare upon Piper. Piper rolled her eyes, shook her head, and pulled her foreleg away from where it rested on Hennessy’s.
“Fanfiction,” she began as she lifted up a pencil and gave it a twirl, “is when a fan writes a story in an established universe. Like right now, I am trying to start a story about the twin son and daughter from the Masked Matterhorn, but I am having some trouble coming up with the background stuff, like who their father is, who the Masked Matterhorn finally married, and how the twins came to be... and it’s causing me a lot of trouble.”
Flicker’s ears splayed out to the side and he let out a half groan, half sigh.
“I see.” Hennessy nodded.
“All of that needs to be sorted out somehow,” Piper continued, “and it needs to be done in way that makes sense, or effectively glosses over it in a way that the reader won’t care.” The filly twirled her pencil some more and then began tapping the eraser end of the pencil against her snoot. “Like, I am thinking of shipping them off to some sort of boarding school, like a school for gifted ponies or something, just so I can get the parents, home, and all of that complication out of the way, that way I can isolate them. Or, I suppose I could just kill their parents off, but that smacks of lazy writing and only a hack would do that.”
Hennessy, his eyes almost glowing with eager anticipation, nodded his head. “This sounds like fun and I wanna help!” Reaching out a foreleg, the over-enthusiastic colt grabbed Flicker and pulled him closer, ignoring Flicker’s tenebrous, terrifying scowl. It was the sort of expression that would make a manticore hesitate and reconsider its life choices that brought it to the point of meeting Flicker.
“Anyhow, this brother and sister, they have a magical talent that they share together that allows them to combine with one another and become an unstoppable alicorn, a secret that they’ve hidden from the rest of the world. They’re poised to become superheroes one day, and they have an excellent secret identity.”
“Ugh.”
“Don’t go ‘ugh,’ Flicker, you dress up in a suit, wear a mask, and do insane things like swan diving off of exploding airships.” Piper reached over the table and gave Flicker’s cheek a tender pat with her hoof. “Say, that gives me an idea…”
“About alicorns,” Flicker began as he shook his head from side to side. “Everything I do, I do through hard work. I don’t have much in the way of magic. I need a wand to cast even the most basic of spells. For the past year, I’ve been remaking myself in the gym and working every day. If I am impressive at all, and you seem to think so, it is because I work to be that way, and that is what makes me special. An alicorn, they have superiour physicality, speed, intelligence, and magic. Now, I could be wrong, but it seems to me that they don’t have to work very hard at something to be good at it. I don’t have much of anything compared to them. I’m fast, but I am nowhere near as fast as Doctor Sterling. I’m strong, but Wicked is stronger by a longshot. I’ve watched Wicked outwrestle earth ponies. I’m smart, but Doctor Sterling and Mister Balister are a whole lot smarter than I am. The only thing that I think really makes me remarkable is that I don’t give up.”
Piper sucked in a lungful of air to reply, but then sputtered when no words came.
“In short, it takes a lot of work to be Lord Death of Murder Mountain. Entire days and sometimes even nights spent in the gym, having Mister Balister beat my sorry ass if I didn’t give him what he was owed, which was my one hundred and ten percent. Days spent in the classroom with my nose in a book trying to improve myself. It’s almost insulting to hear somepony just so casually mention how two twins can merge together and form the perfect alicorn body. It feels like it cheapens everything I’ve worked for.”
The filly let out an exasperated lip-flapping sigh and stared down at her paper while she continued to tap on her snoot with her pencil eraser. Looking rather pouty, she muttered, “It’s just escapism and fantasy. It’s nothing equinal against you.”
“Flicker, you’re kind of a wet blanket,” Hennessy said to his friend, “a wet blanket with fart stank. You just sucked the fun right out of this.”
“But he’s right,” Piper responded as she slumped over the table.
“Okay, fine, so he’s a wet blanket with fart stank and he’s right.” Hennessy ignored Flicker’s water-curdling, bowel emptying stare. “So let’s keep going and we’ll just make more realistic heroes that have to work hard at what they do.”
“Someponies to rival the Power Ponies? But in a good way?” Piper, blinking, looked eager. “We’ll call one of them The Creep. He doesn’t blink as much as normal ponies and he stares a lot. He never laughs, he has no sense of humour, and he speaks in a deadpan most of the time. In battle, he acts like he has no fronks left to give and his friends constantly have to humour him.”
“I like this guy,” Hennessy remarked. “Is he cute?”
“Doesn’t seem like much of a hero.” Flicker’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “I don’t get it, what would be so appealing about him? I don’t understand. Does he have a superpower? ”
Piper looked into Hennessy’s eyes and the pair of them began to laugh, a loud boisterous laugh that got on Flicker’s nerves right away. Clutching her sides, Piper fell over onto the stone floor, her hoof clopping on the table’s edge as she went down, and then she rolled on the floor, laughing. Hennessy fell over onto Flicker, who did nothing to catch him, and then the earth pony colt plopped onto the floor, his laughter paused.
After a moment, he began laughing again, grabbed Flicker’s now regrown tail, and began hugging it to his cheek. Piper began gasping, struggling to breathe, and Flicker rolled his eyes, not at all understanding what was so funny.
“I’m going to study for my candle exam, the two of you are impossible to understand,” Flicker announced as he got up. “Good luck with your writing, but this just isn’t my cup of tea. I just don’t understand it. Have fun, both of you. I’ll be in my bunk, reading.”
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I agree with Piper, the Doctors' chat does seem like an interesting one to listen in to. Still, I'm sure we'll get all the details in due course.
The Rainbow of Darkness turns ponies to dragons, phoenixes to harpies, and maybe rats to batrats? Oh dear.
Poor Flicker, he tries, and all he gets is (admittedly good-natured) mockery.
Was that a Firefly reference?
The Creep seems like a good character to make a fic about, I would like to read about him... Wait...
Good job as usual!
7808223
I dunno, he's just gonna be in his bunk.
Oh my, that fanfiction scene...so meta and hilarious. Thanks kudzu, this made my day.
So, a question: how sensitive in case of being struck are a mare or a filly's teats, exactly?
As in, being in the region they are, where there is perhaps a higher concentration of nerves and the like, are we talking something akin to being kneed in the balls for a guy? Somewhat less so? Or is it just like getting hit anywhere else: potentially sore, but not ridiculously so?
For that matter, what's it like for a human lady to be hit in the breasts?
...why the fuck am I asking this?
7808255
Also, I realised that in my attempt to eviscerate Disney, I also destroyed Harry Potter. Magical boarding school and dead parents. That escaped me while I was writing it.
7808262
Well, one could say that a sign of a good author is to take a cliché and make it good anyway. But that's the boring answer.
7807672
Flicker knicker..
.
sorry for low quality vid... Not my fault...
Ever read character sheets for role play characters? Ugh... So many dead parents...
7808351 Already used that one last chapter
With the bat like wings as well, it almost sounds dragonish? A Dragat, Ratgon?
The Legend of Bloody Mare?
On the funnier side...
Flickers powers include ignorance of the mocking of peers.
Um did this chapter just give us an unintended spoiler for School for Fantastic Foals or did I miss Groger actually getting his hooves on the Rainbow of Darkness as the conversation between Sterling and Wicked seems to indicate?
7808466
How do you think harpies are being made?
7808469
I had just assumed that there was some population of them that had preserved from ancient times in isolated regions in the far south and wastelands and is just now getting proper leadership and organization to be a threat.
7808518
The drawstring would make them mindless, obeying slaves.
7808518
Harpies are Infertile. Having children would be impossible as their eggs are actually explosive even if they weren't incapable of having chicks.
I have decided on a name for these new Rats... BRATS! It combines both Bat and Rat perfectly.
Also, how long until we see more of Hennesy's Family Drama? I wanna see his father and brothers, as well as other townponies who let these things happen facing justice.
So, I've had this scene playing in my head for the last couple of hours. Hennessy looks questioningly at Flicker and asks, "Why do you like me for, anyways?" and Flicker just shrugs and deadpans, "Your pelt is soft. And cute." Then Hennessy jumps in the air and cries, "He said I'm cute! Lord Death of Murder Mountain said I'm cuuuuuuuute!!"
...I've been watching too may Christmas specials. I dunno what's wrong with me.
Chase onward, you crazy sumbitch *insert rainbow dash saluting emote we so desperately need*
Yon title hast been acknowledged.
Quick, someone get him a name tag. Or a rubber stamp. Yea, rubber stamp works. Flickers gets to location, kills all the little vermin, starts cleanup. As he finishes with each room he stamps it: Lord Death of Murder Mountain was here. For anything like a mulching: crop circles
7808449 on that second video: YEEEEAAAAAH!
7808449
Could be the Candyman.
7808766 Thought of that, his name is said 5 times.
7808262 also mocked Batman.
7808260 I'm assuming it would be similar to a human woman's breast being hit which can hurt quite alot with the extra nerve endings. No where near as bad as a smack to the boys from what Ive seen but still ouchy.
Glorious~!
*looks at Sumac* So good buddy, what happened to the lantern?
7808260
I'll leave the first portion alone, but a solid hit to the breast is a smidgen worse than a solid hit to the butt; it's a sharper pain that lingers longer, but nowhere near the oh-Faust-why pain of you gentlemen. Sustained pressure, on the other hand, is a pain that slowly increases to "shut finger in car door" levels and then doesn't go away until it's good and ready to. Any hits after that--or having anything touch them, really--and THEN we get to oh-Faust-why pain.
At least, this is my experience.
7808940 7809004 Thank you for taking the time to address the strange neural pathways my brain follows
Holy moly
Double word. Just doing my part to tidy up <3
7809509
The nobles, quite a few of them, have been shown in a positive light.
7809276
Tarnish's mark grew more poison joke flowers over time, I think.
Are they certain that they did not just catch a bat pony foal? Well, Sterling was there, he at least should have known if that it what it was.
Now that has unpleasant implications for future events in related stories.
That seems likely. We have recent confirmation that they know him by name and everything.
Saucy fanfiction? About brother and sister twins? Sounds very saucy!
Man, Flicker really doesn't get frivolity.
7809866
Flicker's rat-sense would know the difference.
Quite an excellent story you got here. I am surprised of how it came out. It resembles me to a harry potter with a warhammer 40k inquisitors theme and some discworld touches here and there.
The fears and conflicts of the characters are very approachable. And the descriptions are quite rich. Also the sense of humor and action here and there are quite entertaining ^^
Very enjoyable to read, so much that i have devoured it in a week :)
The only thing i could feel a bit off is the time. I would feel it more right if Flicker training would have taken more years and if there were days, weeks or month between each event/chapter
7809922
It's been a year since he started his training... this is a sequel.
duna duna duna duna, duna duna duna duna, BAT RAT!!!
7809922 where you get Inquisitors from? Those assholes have quite the personalities...
Twins with the ability to become an alicorn? Someone's been reading Dan vs. the magic of friendship!
7947082
WONDERTWINS COMBINE, FORM OF MARY SUE. :p
The only thing better than fan fiction? Saucy fanfiction!