• Published 23rd Jun 2017
  • 8,252 Views, 4,585 Comments

The Olden World - Czar_Yoshi



Equestrian culture loves cutie marks. Filly Starlight Glimmer hates them and never wants one. So, she leaves Equestria.

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Neon Nova

With a glare of white-on-black contrast reflecting off the eyes of every pony in the room, a spotlight focused on the no-longer-occupied stage, stealing the attention and breath of the entire bar. A ratty, purple curtain at the back rustled... before parting, a lanky stallion with dark shades, a trench coat, and a greased-back multicolor mane strolling slowly forward. He stopped, aloof, and surveyed the crowd with an upturned chin... before firing off a dazzling gleam simultaneously from his horn and his smile. He flipped up the lenses of his shades with a hoof, revealing a pair of bright yellow eyes. The tavern erupted in applause.

Valey tossed the tankard she had been playing with over her shoulder, giving him a bored expression. "Who's this lemon bag?" she muttered, folding her forelegs across her chest.

"Hello, ponies, one and all!" his voice theatrically blared, magically amplified by a small red megaphone he pulled from his coat, the swish of fabric revealing a fancy white suit beneath. "You should probably already know who I am... but if you're somehow not that fortunate, I'm Neon Nova, your official Blueleaf branch of the Spirit of Sosa! Here to take some names, make some fame, kick some tail and make that awful, awful Sky District totally bail!"

Maple shrunk, ears flat against her skull. "This is completely different from the Spirit I'm familiar with," she whispered during a gap in the talking, trying to make herself heard above the crowd's din. "It's so... showy."

"Eh." Valey shrugged disinterestedly. "He's obviously a propaganda pony. Kind of-"

She was cut off when Neon's voice resumed, bombastic and reverberating. "So here's the scoop, my little ponies: I've just gotten back from the city core, and we're midway through our eighth day straight of no power! That's right, for more than a week now, we've seen nothing but sparks from our wonderful technology! As the crowd would put it: booooo!"

He took a step back, holding his tongue and allowing the bar to boo uproariously. Maple winced again. "I honestly preferred the arguing and vulgarity..."

"This clown is like a bigger Pancake." Valey licked her lips. "I kinda want to lock them in a room together and see what happens."

"Who?" Maple whispered aside.

"Agh, you know...!" Valey fidgeted. "Crazy hair, pegasus, kinda loud... I kicked his rear yesterday at that wall?"

Neon Nova's horn and smile flared in tandem again, recapturing the room's attention. "You're probably all getting tired of me reminding you this, but it does bear repeating, folks: that generator is Sosan tech! Now, our stuff's pretty sturdy, but when it does break, there's nopony like a Sosan to fix it up again! So, quiz time! If the Sky District and their twisted council knew that, why ever would they put that obstructive locked door on your generator? It's a mystery... except the answer's obviooous!"

"I think I know who Redshift spent too much time listening to," Maple muttered to Valey. "If he actually cared about this problem, he'd be trying to fix it, but he's just using it to become popular!" She glanced around. "If she's still in here, I bet she's eating this up."

Popular he was, because the crowd roared back an answer with such ferocity it was completely unintelligible. The cloaked unicorn on stage pretended he had heard it perfectly. "Right you are!" he crowed back, randomly pointing a hoof into the sea of drunk, rowdy ponies. "Is it because they're a bunch of bad ponies who think the Earth District is beneath them? Yes it is!" He cupped a hoof to his mouth, adding in a stage whisper, "It's also because they're totally jealous of our superior Sosan technology! What a scam! What a sham! What a bucket of something not suitable for mention in the presence of ladies!"

"Mrrrmph," Valey pouted, puffing her cheeks and burying them in folded forelegs. "If I went up there and tried to arrest him right now, think of the size of the brawl that would cause! But then he'd be a martyr or something stupid and there'd probably be a billion more fanatics right as a result..."

Neon held a hoof to his chest. "Tragically, there's little we Sosans can do as a result. The Sky District says we're all criminals, guilty of the heinous, truly atrocious crime of telling the truth! But let Neon Nova tell you what's what! Here in Blueleaf, we appreciate the truth! Here in Blueleaf, the Spirit of Sosa will stand by you in spirit, even when all our other hooves are bound and the Sky District says we're heretical to their cult of lies! Well, guess what!?" He jumped to the edge of the stage, legs spread wide. "This citizen of Ironridge is proud to be a heretic! Now let's hear it for the truth!"

As the crowd roared once again, Maple drew Starlight close, the filly's ears just as flat as her own. "Come on," she hissed at Valey, "let's get out of here. This is hurting to listen to."

"You're telling me," Valey grumbled back. "This is the exact opposite of smoothing tensions and keeping things peaceful, and I can't even go take him down without getting these chumps even more fired up! Maybe we can try to abduct him in secret on his way out, or something..."

Starlight said nothing, sticking like glue to her side as they wove their way through the crowd, dodging hooves and spilled drinks and careless revelry. Unfortunately, the route to the door also took them nearer to the stage... a predicament that became far worse when Valey stopped them with a hiss. "He left the stage!" she warned, spreading her wings as a barrier.

"So, who's going to be the lucky pony?" Neon's voice crowed from within the crowd, emphasizing nearly every other syllable with more dramatic flair than reasonably possible. "Will it be you? Or how about you? Show me the fire in your eyes, ponies! Bring it ooooon!"

With too little warning for her to do anything but cringe, the crowd broke... and Maple found herself standing mere paces from the Sosan performer. He looked down at her, then Starlight and Valey, yellow eyes shadowed with something other than enthusiasm.

"Woah, there, little lady," he said, briefly moving the megaphone away from his muzzle. "You look smashed, trashed and way too tuckered out. Do me a favor and chillax some time, okay? Oh, the suspense is just killing me! I can't wait to find out which pony here wants most to tell..."

His voice grew distant, amplified once again as he drew back into the crowd, and Maple let out the longest breath of her... last ten minutes. She groaned; when had her life become so stressful?

"Hey, that was close!" Valey grinned. "You just had a one-sided conversation with a real, live probably-a-con-artist! And now we're here. Let's get some fresh air."


"Silence," Maple gasped, gulping down breath after breath of fresh air, "has never sounded so good! Ahhh, that bar was terrible. I don't feel refreshed at all..."

"You're telling me," Valey groaned, rubbing her muzzle with a grimace. "That speech made my nose hurt. I wonder if that was scheduled, or if he just randomly showed up?"

"If it was planned," Maple said dryly, "that would explain why there were so many ponies."

"Isn't the city overcrowded because they're all having to move up?" Starlight grumpily massaged her ears and forehead. "This doesn't look like a place that would have spare room, in the first place."

Maple stared off down what was visible of the street in the gray light. "You're right... Blueleaf looks like it has an extremely high population density, but wasn't built from the top down with that in mind. And if the bottom was the densest, and they really are trying to move everyone out of there with this failing generator, there might just be so many ponies that the bar is less crowded than anywhere else they could be..."

She strode down the path, its regular inhabitants having returned after being scared away by Valey earlier. Pausing atop the most recent bridge they had crossed on their way there, she allowed her gaze to wander, judging the buildings and wondering just how many ponies they really contained. The canyon it spanned cut all the way to the muddy bottom floor, shadows along the walls deepening as her eyes slid downwards. The houses that formed the walls had windows, mismatched squares at all elevations separated by crossbeams and supports seemingly tacked on for decoration.

Those windows probably constituted prime real estate in a city like this, Maple realized. Craning her neck while staying carefully back from the edge, she peered through a few... empty. Lights off. A counter, possibly for food preparation. A vacant bed. Curtains. A window higher up was open, and a private manalamp flickered against the ceiling.

"...Hey Ironflanks?" Valey called uncertainly from the direction of the bar. "You coming, or what? Because the city core is this way!"

"Oh! Right!" Maple jumped to attention, her stiff, cramped legs instantly reminding her why that was a bad idea. "Ow! I mean, sorry! I'm coming!"


A ragged, purple-and-gray curtain swished, parted, and closed again, blocking out sound in its wake. In the back room behind it, next to a sparse pile of stored musical equipment, Neon Nova stood, brushing off his trench coat and replacing his megaphone, cheers of thanks and demands for an encore still echoing in the shadows of the room.

"You're the best for business, you know that?" said a short mare, standing in the exit to a hallway and wearing a faded, outdated dress with a dangerously short hemline.

Neon winked, then flipped his shades down. "Well, it's not like you can own the Sky District without helping local business owners, is it?"

The mare tittered. "And you never break character, either. Thanks again, Neon. I mean it."

"Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint. It's important work, you know, and they put me here for a reason." Smile morphing back to a slightly serious frown, he stepped toward the door, moving to walk around the mare.

She hesitantly shifted to block him. "You do know, if there's anything we can ever do to repay-"

"Said you and every mare ever!" Neon interrupted with a dazzling smile. "Some stallions too, but I prefer not to let them get their hopes up. Anyhoo, mind if I take a rein check on that eternal gratitude of yours? Spirit duty calls, and I must answer. Literally!"

Blushing furiously, the mare wrapped her tail around her legs and retreated. "O-Of course..."

"Dandy. I'll be sure to drop by again soon!" Neon waved her off, then closed the door in her wake. Kneeling, he pressed an ear against the ground, listening... and after a minute, stood up, seemingly satisfied.

His horn lit with a white aura, digging inside his trench coat, and eventually a large gemstone floated out, about the size of a filly's hoof. It glittered with residual enchanted energy, and he raised his horn, tapping it with a shower of sparks.

The stone lit up, pulsating, a miniature magical vortex spinning inside. Holding it close to his head, Neon said, "Hat trick."

A second later, the stone changed color, its internal vortex flipping to spin the other way. A voice echoed back, confirming the password.

Neon's face lit up. "Yo, boss! First off, just thought I'd let you know that I totally blew off a smokin' mare to make this report! Between you and me, I think she wanted to give me a big old smoocheroo."

The stone flipped again, and the voice sounded back on the other end.

"The point, you ask?" Neon grinned beneath his shades. "You mean aside from how much better than you I am with the ladies? I'm pretty sure I just spotted those two ponies you asked me to keep an eye out for!"

A response, mixed with static.

"Cute little pinkish filly with a horn and a messy purple mane? Check!" Neon grinned into the stone. "Grumpy tan mare with her in her twenties who ain't too much of a looker but is still way out of your league? Double-check! Even spoke to her once. Want me to keep an eye on them until you get here?"

More words.

"Yeah, lilac. That's what I meant to say." Neon's lips pursed. "Nope, no griffon with them."

Another response, long, low and conspiratorial.

Neon frowned, mouth open, shades sliding slightly down his muzzle. He fixed them with a hoof, staring past the enchanted stone. "They what?"

Muffled affirmation.

"Well, I better get on that, then!" Neon levitated the stone away from his head, then gave it one last look. "Anything else? No? In that case, toodles!"

With a pulse of magic, the stone went dim, and he stowed it back in his coat. A slow breath followed, and when Neon Nova swung open the door to the back halls, it was with a whistle and an almost giddy smile. He didn't notice the swish of curtains behind him, or the small red filly disappearing back toward the empty stage.

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