The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Three Stooges

Pickle Punch, Randall and Lilac blinked at the sudden presence of a batpony on the stool across from them. Valey's eyes were closed peacefully, until she opened them with a cheery grin. "Heya!"

Slowly, the two more sober ponies' eyes constricted in recognition and fear... and Randall's lit up with something else. "Hey therre..." he slurred, dropping into a lidded smile and extending a thick, shaky forehoof, spilled drink forgotten. "Are you shhingle, hot... hot ponyyy?"

Lilac decked him with a giant punch from across the table, knocking his jaw askew. "Shut up, you idiot!" she hissed, eyes frantic. "Don't you have any idea who that is!?"

"A marre with a hot bod, that'sh whoo..." Randall groaned deliriously, drooling.

Heartened and slightly disappointed by their complete unwillingness to contest her presence at their table, Valey waved a wing, beckoning Maple over. For the three at the table, she held her silence, smiling with just the wrong amount of innocence and betting Pickle Punch would leave first.

"Please don't take him personally!" Lilac begged with a beseeching demeanor that didn't at all fit her looks or earlier behavior. "We do not mean offense or trouble, Ma'am! Really!"

Pickle Punch cowered, holding his forelegs on top of his head. "Ohhh she's come to arrest me for that stupid work with the Spirit and now my last act as a free pony is going to be being laughed at for making a stupid pickle joke and what is wrong with my life that that is what I'm most concerned about?"

"Mehhh." Valey sighed, pouting. "Arrest you for wrongdoing? That would imply that I was fair, which if you know me, you should know I'm not. Besides, the Earth District technically isn't my jurisdiction, so I'd probably just beat you up instead, but you look kinda wimpy and I'm also here for some downtime so maybe I won't do that as long as you're funny. M'kay?"

"Yes! Yes!" Pickle Punch nodded as if his life depended on it, furiously agreeing. "Way too wimpy to lock up here! I'd just do nothing but fill your jails with bad jokes and metaphors and make all the guards depressed and hate themselves because their outside lives couldn't possibly be as fulfilling as laughing at me and I don't wanna get beaten up!"

Valey felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as Maple drew up next to her, both fillies in tow. "Valey?" she asked, blinking. "Who are these?"

"They're... bystanders," Valey replied innocently, stretching and ignoring the table's previous occupants. "Or maybe entertainment. I dunno, really, they're just some random saps unfortunate enough to already be here. Hope for the best, though, you know? It sure would be a shame if anything bad were to happen to them." She jabbed a wing at Randall. "He's drunk, by the way."

"Y-You shay that like... hic! Like it'sh a bad thing!" Randall smiled with a surprisingly intact set of teeth, letting out a puff of breath that smelled of garlic and vinegar.

"Right..." Maple mumbled warily, taking a lone stool between Valey and Lilac, as far from the drunk stallion as possible. There wasn't room on it for the fillies, so Starlight remained on the floor, guarding a still-dazed Redshift.

Pickle Punch sized Maple up, weighing his words carefully. "Uhh... So, you're like her-"

"Hey, idiot!" Lilac jabbed him, hissing out the side of her muzzle. "Tell the Defense Force Commander about that bad run-in with her sworn enemies and build us some favor points!"

"Admiral..." Valey whispered inaudibly, not twitching a muscle.

"Oh! R-Right!" Pickle Punch jumped to attention, slightly too eager to please. "I was... uh... t-telling a story when you showed up, about... the Spirit! And don't get the wrong idea, now, because even though I was trying to help them I'm definitely not now! I've changed my ways, I swear! Go... Go Stone District! Yeah!" He nervously pumped a hoof.

Valey smiled, making sure to show off the sharpness of her teeth.

"So anyway..." Pickle Punch gulped, slightly improving his composure. "I was in Copsewood, okay? The northeastern place? Really close to the, uh..." He hissed aside to Lilac, "Which factory was it, again?"

"The Alpha Factory is on the north bank of the river," Valey helpfully offered. "The Beta and Gamma ones are on the south side, and Gamma is east of Beta."

"Right! Thank you!" Pickle Punch nodded furiously. "So I was just south of Beta! Anyway, as we all kno- err, as the Spirit says and I definitely don't believe because I was only there for the money, the yaks are pure evil and are trying to arm their army to invade and take over the Steel and Earth Districts, so what the job was for was to go in there and rob a delivery cart to stop the weapons from arriving! Easy, right? Right!"

He banged the table, babbling without pause. "So we're there, and we find the cart totally alone and undefended except for Shinespark, who we know won't fight back because she's too honorable or something. Actually an excellent mare, if only the times didn't call for playing dirty."

Valey's brow creased at his praise for Shinespark, and for a second, she bit back a sigh. It no longer mattered when Randall interrupted, loudly belching, "And shhe'sh shhingle, too!"

"Shut up, Randall!" Lilac threw him a glare. "She's like half your age and is a hundred times the pony you'll ever be! Pickle?" She turned to the meeker stallion. "Keep talking."

Valey listened as he continued, smile set in stone and ears still forward, but with teeth clenched together slightly harder and slightly more edge to her gaze than needed.

"Right... uh..." Pickle Punch flailed slightly, getting his groove back. "Anyway. We made it to the cart, it was totally undefended, and we even had all those awesome toys to play with from other raids... and then it was so weird. There was this griffon, and then someone started a fight but we were fighting each other and I honestly was just trying to protect my tail so I hid behind the wagon. But then the griffon charged, and he had this sword, and it was... it was..."

His eyes thinned with recollected shock. "He had this sword. And Braen stole it, because she was there, but not before he had used it. And then after they all left and it was just us in the clearing, it was like..." He swallowed, trembling. "There was no blood. Not from the sword. It didn't leave cuts. It must have been cursed, or something. But you could see the ponies who had been hit by it, and they were..."

A minute passed. "I don't even know what to say," he managed eventually. "They had fallen down. It was like they were asleep, but with their eyes open and they could move their eyes and look at you and nothing else. They were scared. Like they wanted to scream and couldn't use their mouths. They had just as much of an idea what had happened as I did, only it had happened to them. And I couldn't take it. I didn't help drag them back to safety, or see if there was anything that could be done. I just turned around and ran for my life. Didn't expect any pay, not for that. Didn't get any, either."

"And that's why I stay out of stuff like this," Lilac hummed darkly. "Things like this happen all the time. Going looking for them is suicide. I'll take existence, thank you very much."

"Easy for you to say," Pickle Punch answered sadly, hanging his head. "You're not even from Sosa. You've got no loyalty to it. You're just content to ride out your level-three existence and never do anything worth doing for yourself."

"Level four," Lilac corrected with a shade of confidence. "With how many bottom-two refugees they're moving up, I bit the shovel and paid to move up. Dunno why, when I'm back here now with the likes of you two idiots. Besides, you're not a Sosan either, flat-head."

Pickle Punch ran a hoof self-consciously over his bare forehead, brushing aside a chewed lock. "My dad was! It's not his fault my mom was an earth pony, or that he got out before he could be fired!"

Lilac smirked. "Technically, both of those were his fault. And after calling Sosans filthy cheaters, don't be so hard on us earth ponies, now. We might be all that's left you can get."

"Hey!" Pickle Punch shouted in indignation, banging the table. "I would never insult Sosa! And just you watch, some day I'll get a cute unicorn who likes-"

"You were just complaining about how they hired you for a dangerous job and you didn't even get paid," Lilac droned, still cocky.

Valey leaned back, watching. Both of the arguing ponies seemed to have forgotten about her entirely, and while Randall was staring at her unscrupulously, he didn't seem inclined to act on it. It was just as well, as the petty altercation was somewhat amusing and Maple was also left out of it. She slumped tiredly on her stool, which was significantly less comfortable than a bed or couch but hopefully adequate, with Starlight and the still-shocked Redshift under the table. ...On second thought, none of them seemed to be getting much rest. Perhaps it was time to be more proactive in clearing the table for themselves. With a cough, she drew everyone's attention.

"Ah!" Lilac shot bolt-upright, silencing Pickle Punch with a hoof. "You idiot! You were supposed to be complaining about how bad Sosa was for her, not praising it! And, uhh..." She relaxed her brows in what was probably supposed to be a sweet, hopeful expression. "Would you like a drink? Can we buy you anything? To be good hosts? Please?"

"Mmmm..." Valey stretched. "Nah. I don't drink. Need to keep my brain at one hundred percent, all the time. Do keep talking though, this is interesting."

"So as I was saying," Pickle Punch began, "don't you judge my dad for taking a wife from that one place! It was, uhh... I don't remember the name, the place on the river when you're sailing out east? Before you reach the sea?"

"Riverfall!" Randall belched eagerly, the haze of drunkenness lifting slightly from his eyes. "Now that wash a plashe! Shtopped there on every shhingle voyage, both in and... hic! Out! Hah! In an' out... Eheheheh... Urp. A whole... plashe full'a maresh who all treated you like the besht thhhing ever! It wash like the Sheventh Dishtrict, and only we got to shee it! The world ishn't... ishn't like it ushed to be..."

"Hey Pickle Punch..." Lilac slyly poked his foreleg. "I think Randall is saying he wants to be your father..."

"What?" Pickle Punch's eyes screwed up in confusion.

Valey's wings shivered in alarm as she saw Maple's expression cloud with anger. It was time to change the conversation. "So," she interrupted, "enough with the mares. Keep talking about how awesome this place that ripped you off is."

Pickle Punch blushed sheepishly. "Look, Braen and her tactics can go lick a cactus. I just know there's a war coming, and I chose my side, okay? Sosa's still the ones trying to fix this dump Ironridge has turned into, and that's enough to earn my loyalty!"

"I'm sho confushed..." Randall mumbled. "Why wash you attacking your own shide, then?"

"It's... but...!" Pickle Punch sputtered. "Because of the yaks! We have to purge Sosa of this yak influence and make them give up on the contract so the yaks don't get any of our weapons!"

"Why do they have it in the first place if they're so self-righteous and pure?" Lilac quizzed.

"Hey, I never said that!" Pickle Punch pulled his hooves to his chest in protest. "I mean, I just said they weren't, because they gave me that dumb job! But, uhh... they're, like, playing the yaks against themselves by taking all their money and then never delivering! Yeah!"

"Then why are you trying to sabotage them?"

Pickle Punch's eyes constricted. "Uhhhh..."

"Sounds to me like you have no idea what you're actually fighting for," Lilac pressed.

"That's not true!" Pickle Punch gasped. "I do too! I have... I mean..." His eyes met Valey's. "You know what? Never mind! I fight for money. I'm a greedy sellout! Please don't beat me up!"

At that moment, Starlight's voice piped up, and her head appeared above the table, standing on Maple's lap. "What's the Seventh District?" she grumbled, eyes bleary.

The conversation halted. Eventually, Pickle Punch pointed a hoof, mumbling, "You have a filly?"

"Yes," Maple said, still bristling slightly from Randall's remarks earlier. "I do. Is that a problem?"

"What's the Seventh District?" Starlight repeated, insistent. "Ponies are always mentioning it, then always saying there's only six. You're not making sense."

"The Seventh District is a myth," Valey droned.

"What!? No it's not!" Pickle Punch quickly protested. Then, realizing that Valey was still present, he shrank. "I mean, actually, it probably is..."

"The Seventh District is anywhere better than where we're at now, kid," Lilac said with a sigh. "For some ponies, that's moving up the mountain. For others, it's that old Riverfall place Mister Drunken Bozo was talking about. Some think it's wherever you go when you die, others say it's the past, while the most realistic of us don't believe it exists at all." Her head lowered slightly closer to the table. "Would be nice of someone to prove us wrong about that, some day..."

"If you ashk me," Randall interrupted, "the Sheventh Dishtrict ish inshide... inshide Shhineshpark'sh bed..."

"Hey!" Pickle Punche shouted, shooting to his hooves. "I thought we agreed that she was a wonderful mare and you weren't allowed to disgrace-!"

"And I think," Lilac whispered urgently, covering Pickle Punch's mouth and pointing at Valey, "that she just said no more talking about mares!" She turned fully, as apologetic as it was possible for a pony to be. "I'll be getting out of here now, if you don't mind, before I wind up in jail or at the bottom of the Yule!" Whispering loudly, she added, "And I strongly recommend you two idiots do the same!"

Pickle Punch needed no second bidding. "Yeah, I'm out of here!" Nearly slipping on a gross, chunky patch of spilled something, he bolted for the door, vanishing before Lilac had even left the table. She shot a forlorn glance at Randall, then left herself, not looking back.

Alone with Maple, Valey and the fillies, Randall blinked, still processing his friends' departure. "...Sho," he began after a long silence. "You never did shay if you wash shhingle..."

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[whizzball1]

… Stratopolis is a myth!