Chapter 7 - The Six Dollar Car
Blue Beetle sat there in a grey void, staring forwards at himself as he slowly rusted away.
It was funny, he thought to himself. He’d never had to think about it before, but there was a strange sort of immortality to his old life. Parts could be replaced, rust could be cleaned away, a hammer and wrench would fix him rather than make the problem worse.
His gaze fell away from the half-buried carcass of metal and oil to blearily focus on the muddy ground, scraps of iron and chips of paint that had flaked off of his old body being slowly swallowed by rain and dirt. Would his new body have that same sort of immortality? Could he simply replace his new doors, or hood, or engine if they got damaged? If that was possible why didn’t The Knight ever do that? If anypony had ever deserved that sort of kindness it was him.
Grey mist pressed in against him, shadows of the last time he’d seen The Knight threatened to take over his dream. Memories of his owner’s helplessness and worry pushed at his thoughts before he squashed them. There was supposed to be an order to his dreams.
Dreams, heh. He’d never had to dream before. All he had had to do was wait for his owner to tell him when and where to go and he’d go.
“So, what kind of car are you looking for, Mr…?” The rough voice carried into the grey mist, waves of sound brushing away the fog from the edges of scrap mountains to reveal them in all their terrible inevitability. The rotting carcasses of vehicle and appliance alike as great a testament to death, decay, and entropy as any graveyard or mausoleum, before they faded back into grey mist.
“Dresden, Harry Dresden.” The second voice rolled over the scrap yard despite how quiet it was, and Blue Beetle twisted his head to look in the direction it had come from. The now visible garage building was barely large enough to house two trucks side by side, a rolling door dwarfed by the towers of old tires and empty chassis surrounding it. “Something cheap, reliable, old, and easy to fix.”
Blue Beetle continued to stare at the building, even as the rolling door eased itself to the side. The heavy steel slab grinded to the side on rusted wheels, only to clang open with the finality of an iron bell. A pair of ponies he swore he recognised exited the building.
Slowly the building behind the two started to melt away into grey mist as the two picked their way across the scrapyard, although only the brown maned unicorn whose horn seemed to scrape the sky from this angle was struggling to not lose his footing on the muddy ground. Blue Beetle could feel tears pooling at the the corner of his eyes as he watched his old owner struggle to not faceplant into the mud, bone white fur stained brown where it splattered against the parts of his fetlocks that the long canvas coat didn’t cover.
He could feel his breath picking up as memories sprang unbidden into his mind, the silhouettes of days long gone by playing against the grey mist; images of the times spent idling by the side of the road just waiting and watching, of mornings with the young monster learning magic by proxy, of driving away from the monsters and demons that sought to tear him and his master wheel from limb, of afternoons spent in the weak Chicago sun while his owner—stripped down to shirt sleeves—cleaned and polished and cared for him. Thoughts of every time he’d broken down only for his owner to have him fixed and made roadworthy again, to give him a purpose again, a purpose he was glad to fulfil no matter how much it took from him.
Wiping the tears from his eyes, Blue Beetle turned to look away from his owner, staring instead at the much shorter pegasus who had started talking again, this time without the need to breathe apparently. The dappled gray mechanic was almost flying through the dismal little yard, ignoring the frictionless mud underhoof.
“It’s a little bit further back but I should have something that fits all your needs.” Burnt umber eyes tracked the duo as they continued ever deeper into the metallic necropolis, both of them eventually coming to a halt in front of the midden of rust and that held his old body.
“Found this when I was looking for a couple of spare parts,” Mike placed a hoof against the hood of Blue Beetle’s old body before wiping it across, scraping away a thin trail of dirt and rust to reveal the mostly intact paint job. The baby blue paint cutting through the rust and grime made it look as if storm clouds had parted to show the summer sky. “Old Volkswagen Beetle, model ‘56 by the looks of it. The fact it's been at the base of the pile seems to have kept most of the weather off. The original upholstery and panneling’s been ruined, but the actual innards are still in good working order or easy enough to repair or replace.” Falling back to his hooves, Mike looked up at the tower of scrap that seemed to loom less and less with each passing moment. “Shouldn’t take too long to pull it out either.” The pegasus muttered to himself before turning to face Harry.
“You won’t look pretty, and you won’t be fast, but you’ll get to where you want to go with a minimum of fuss and if it breaks down I could fix it with my eyes closed and my hooves tied behind my back.” The pegasus finished as he started to hover besides the gaunt unicorn, pride and anticipation mixing on his face. Harry continued to stare at the metal carcass while rain fell across his back and dying metal groaned around him.
“Is that the original paint job?” The quiet voice cut through the groaning noise of the scrapyard around the two ponies. Mike paused for a moment before replying.
“As far as I can tell.”
“How much more to touch it up?”
Blue Beetle let the noises of the conversation drift away as he smiled, gazing at his old body. The sounds of the two pony's conversation fading away, before a new sound echoed out over the expanses of discarded machinery. The whinnying cries of a foal tugging his lips upwards as he muttered one of the few things he could halfway remember The Knight saying to himself, before he cradled his newborn self against his barrel; the dream fading away around him as he drifted into wakefulness.
“A time to die, and a time to be born.”
Something about the fractures in Blue Beetle’s mind had kept Luna from truly entering his dream, leaving her to watch as the strange images unfolded before her. Her inability to gain entry leaving her with only more questions.
Who were those ponies? Where was the location she had just seen? What kind of thing had her newest nephew been? What were those shadows she had seen surrounding him? Why had his dream seemed so unformed when even a foal could dream a world into existence?
Snorting in frustration, she didn’t bother trying to hold the dream together as Blue Beetle faded from her dreamscape. The moon called to her to be set, and she couldn’t leave Celestia to do the task alone.
Answers would have to wait.
CHAPTER END
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Hm, very nice work. I wasn't sure how you would approach his dreams since he's obviously far from normal, but this felt right on the money to me.
Also, I'm glad to see your update rate is picking up at least a little even if this was obviously a shorter chapter.
Well this raises a few questions.
8757888
8758082
The one I’m wondering the most is does this blue come from canon?
I’d like to think so but with them appearing as ponies in his memory/dream there’s only two options I can see.
1. Comes from a noncanon world that’s almost exactly the same except ponies.
2. He comes from canon but his past is being filtered through his new perception of the world (it’s not like he had eyes to see harry before, what with being a car and all.)
8758482
Ooh, very good, the answer is 2. Now if you would like to try and explain why you think this is and please use the spoiler tag.
8758561
because he didn’t have traditional senses and consciousness as a vehicle? So as a car he couldn’t really SEE harry. He might know some stuff like “tall, light, clumsy, but other than that nothing. He said in chapter that he’s learned some stuff so at the very least he has some sensation that least mimics hearing so that’s probably how he filled in coloration. Maybe through hearing harry snark or people complain. But as for how he obtained this mind.... it could be a result of exposure to harry’s Magic for so long. But the possibility also exists that the consciousness was always there and is true for all vehicles. Though I doubt it or there’d be more frankenponies running around equestria.
8758799
Those are all very well reasoned out, and you've got some points right, and others wrong, but I want to keep some of the mystery, so I'm not going to tell you which. MUHUHAHAHAHAHA.
Otherwise, I'm glad you're enjoying this enough to think these things through and logically put things together.
8758845
Hey I don’t know if you’d be interested in this but I was just at books a million and they have official Dresden files comics. There’s even a little bit of the covers that says they’re canon!
8759452
Yeah, I got the first three ("Welcome to the Jungle", "War Cry", and "Ghoul, Goblin") the art work is really good, if a little goofy at times.
Should probably mention I've also got the RPG books, but not the Co-op card game.
good story so far
8759486
Thanks man.
8759463
Rpg books? Card game? Please tell me more.
8759627
There are three RPG books that use the FATE engine "Your Story" (Core Rulesbook), Our World (Which is almost a bestiary/world building book), and the Paranet Papers which I don't have, and is ridiculously expensive (£90). There's also an accelerated book that condenses the rules to make play much quicker.
I'm not too sure about the card game, I know it exists, but I never got a chance to play it, but it should be out there somewhere.
A fascinating story, didn't really expect it. Well, I had no idea what to expect, but it surprised me anyway.
You certainly have a great world-building and you added some fantastic details. Consider me hooked and keep up with the splendid job you are doing
8763118
Thank you very much.
Item, the First: I'm going to want to get my grubby primary appendages on some of those TTRPGs for Dresden, and probably a few issues of those comics you and Cauc mentioned.
Item, the Second: If we're discussing potential reasons for how the dream played out like it did, I can only presume a number of things, based on the information available to me.
1) While the description mentions the Powers That Be as Blue Beetles reason for survival, and it would be assumed that such a thing is mere idiom, I shall be operating under the presumption of a Double Bluff, with some form of intelligence being behind his travel to Equestria.
2) I believe it is reasonable to assume that, seeing as all that magic was being used around him at the time, and the sear power behind that Lightning Strike during the (possibly pseudo) Centennial Storm, that the Blue Beetle had, at the very least, some kind of Protosoul. We already have reason to believe that souls exist in the Dresden Files universe, seeing as how there is Soulfire.
3) I think I agree with the conclusions reached by Celestia on his arrival, but it's almost obvious that it cannot be the full story.
For now, I am content to wait for the answer.
Item, the Third: once again, an incredible amount of fun; I'm barely containing my excitement for the next chapter!
8819616
Yeah they're a great game, I've not had much luck running one, but that's because several members of the group were just going along for the fun of it, and weren't invested in the world at all.
Second, I want to explain, I really do, some of these answers are really good, and damned near close. I will however maintain that the whims of fate and rhythm are hardly 'intelligent', and maybe point you towards Japanese folklore. Your choice
.
Third, I'm glad you're enjoying this. It's a blast to write, and I'm halfway through chapter 8 at the moment.
8820674
To further clarify what I meant by "intelligence", I was partially referring to some quasi-fundamental force, one that simply noticed a issue, and automatically corrected it, the best way it could. So, intelligent in the same way volcanoes or storms had old gods inside, or that there is a god in everything.
8757452
Yes, well the update rate just fell out of the sky and plunged through at least a good three hundred miles of solid rock in the depths of Tartarus himself, who promptly spat it into his sister, Nyx, who deemed it worthy enough to appear randomly in the Doctor’s Tardis as he left our reality and dimension.
Great story! I do hope it gets updated again.
I'm not certain if this joke has been made, but I keep thinking that this story should instead be called "My Brother the Car".
If the main OCs in this story were voiced, what would they sound like?
9760175
Well Blueblood is already voiced in Season 1, so just go there, and Beetle? Imagine Blueblood's voice run through a faint german accent (The Volkswagon Beetle was originally a german car), and a lifetime chain smoking habit (for an example Look up "Iggy Pop Confidential").