The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Dubious Aid

Valey woke up in the practiced manner she had used for her entire life. Step one: play dead. Did her cutie mark say she was in danger? No. Someone who knew about her trigger could still be trying to get her with a non-harmful but incredibly annoying prank. Think further: she had friends now, and her mark wouldn't warn about things happening to them. Her brain put the finishing touches on her train of thought as she prepared to launch it while her faculties automatically took note of the area around her. Quiet? Fairly. Cold? Sort of. Light? Wait, why was there light shining against her eyelids?

She hissed internally, heartbeat rising. One of her favorite tricks was to slip into shadow while appearing to be asleep; it was nearly instantaneous and hard to stop. Pre-emptively shining a giant flickering light on her was a great way to actually do it. Someone had trapped her.

Unfortunately for that someone, she wasn't feeling in a patient mood.

"All right!" In a single, sudden movement, she bolted upright... "What's the big aaargh!" ...and promptly fell on her face, her limbs and body partially ensnared by shroudy wrappings. "Hey!"

"Don't," a lone pegasus mare said, sitting by the light source, which turned out to be a fire. "The longer you leave them on, the more good they'll do you."

"Buh?" Valey's face scrunched in confusion.

The mare sat straighter, stirring a pot over the fire that Valey realized smelled quite good. "Combat medication. The bandages are for all your cuts and scrapes. Designed to get you back on your hooves quickly in a fight, if not actually heal you. It's... the least I could do."

"Wait, what?" Valey narrowed her eyes, quickly taking stock of Starlight's limp form before looking back at the mare. She gnawed her lip, hummed, made eye contact, tried to scratch her mane... and blinked. "Hey, I know you. You used to front the snack bar in the Defense Force lobby before Selma fired you, like, a month ago. I didn't know you were in my new fan club."

"I'm not," the mare sighed. "And it's Varsidelian war technology. They don't export it since they need everything for themselves, so it's not very common in other nations. It's useful, though, if you get into trouble a lot."

"Huh..." Thinking, Valey checked herself over again. She had chalked it up to the nap, but maybe she did feel significantly better than she had before. Hardly perfect, but better. "Okay, that's cool. So what's all this about, then?"

"This is about you sparing my friends when you had no reason to and it put you in danger," the mare muttered, stirring at whatever she was cooking. "I'm... grateful for that. So even though I don't like you, I'm trying to return the favor."

Valey blanched. "Sparing your friends? Hold on, if you mean-"

"Our mercenary company," she finished with a nod, staring into her pot. "I don't know or care how you managed a teleportation spell of that magnitude. It had to have been harder than just killing us. I know for a fact you caught my sister in a hallway, shoved her companions under the floor, disabled her, had her alone... and just left. There weren't that many of us. Taking one out would have made a difference. You didn't." She swallowed, still staring.

"...Huh." Valey frowned. "You know, you dudes kind of inconvenienced me in more ways than one. Are you seriously wanting to help me now? Not that I couldn't use it, but this seems shady."

"Maybe," the mare said, and left it at that.

"Yeah, no, I'm gonna need more than 'maybe' to roll with," Valey announced, picking herself up and starting to pace, mindful of the slightly itchy bandages. "Spill the beans, here. What's going on?"

"You mean why did I track you down, fly you and your friend somewhere safer, and start helping you when I could just have captured or killed you like we were supposed to?" She shook her head and sighed. "I wasn't in that party directly. For... medical reasons. So it wasn't my job. So I don't have to, and can do what I want, because that's the way my mercenary company works. But even if you ran into the ones who do need to fight you, they might not. We were already reluctant. That was one job too far, and it was a miracle that everyone survived. If we were asked to do it again..."

Valey winked. "I'm that scary, huh?"

"You have a reputation," the pegasus deadpanned.

"Yeah, well, seriously..." Valey sighed and flopped back down. "Screw that reputation. The moment I get tired of being the bad guy and try to stick up for someone decent for a change, there's a bajillion elite mooks stomping at my tail and then all my friends get blown up and now the best two are basically comatose, and there's also a cheery griffon and I'm stuck playing therapist for a really angsty unicorn and aaaagh..." She held her head in her hooves, complaining loudly. "Why is it so hard to just bail on Ironridge, already? I want oooout!"

"You tell me," the pegasus said with a shrug. "We would have left hours ago, except someone appears to have stolen our airship from the Sky District. Most of the team is there now, trying to find any clues."

Valey opened her mouth to suggest she might know where Selma put it... but was interrupted by a little voice. "For the record, I'm awake," Starlight grumbled, sounding like she was about to explode from frustration.

"Woah, you're alive!" Valey whirled on her, trailing loose bandages like streamers. "I mean, you better be, but finally! Ironflanks is looking super sad with her paralysis and stuff and could totally use a little cheering... up..." She trailed off, noticing that Starlight wasn't bothering to get up or even open her eyes. "You are okay, aren't you?"

"No!..." Starlight gritted, tensing against the ground. "I can't feel my horn! I can't even feel it if I bang it against the ground. Every other time I use it too much it feels terrible, but now it feels like it's gone! I think it's broken completely..."

"Oh... uh... that ain't good," Valey mumbled, crouching down next to her, her moon glass pendant dangling against the ground. "It isn't, right? Because technically if I had the choice between a super terrible headache and none at all..."

Starlight opened her eyes, staring just far enough off to Valey's side to be disconcerting. "I also can't see."

Valey blinked... twice... and paled, waving a hoof in front of Starlight's face that the filly utterly failed to track. "Oh, bananas, you aren't kidding. Uhhhhhhhhhhh..."

"She was up earlier than you," the pegasus said. "We talked about it. It doesn't seem enviable, but there isn't anything I can do."

"Well... meh." Valey slumped, briefly sharing Starlight's dejection. "Oh well. If it's not lethal, we can probably deal with it later. Just don't turn into an edgehorse about it and you'll survive. Really, I don't need another sad pony to try to cheer up." She patted Starlight's head, then turned to the pegasus. "So, uh, you know we were actually waiting for some other friends, right? I can't help but notice you moved us quite a ways..."

She glanced around for emphasis. They were on a flat rooftop in some western Earth District town, removed from the flooding and with a metal brazier the pegasus was using to safely burn her fire. The dark shadow of Karma Industries provided an outline in the distance, still drawing some light from the sky despite the heaviness of the storm above.

"I left a note," the pegasus said. "Just in case. It said you were taking care of business and would find them again when you were ready."

"Uhh... well, great." Valey slumped, sighing. "And I suppose 'when I'm ready' involves sitting around a while longer while you whip up something to patch me up?"

The pegasus shrugged, lifting her ladle and tasting the pot's contents. "This is food, not medicine. Though if you haven't been eating, I thought it would help too."

Since Valey's plan for reconnecting with Maple and Gerardo had just been reduced to look for an airship, and their primary goal was staying safe, she decided that didn't sound so bad. Sitting down and scootching closer, she licked her lips. "Well... if we're really going to be midnight snack buddies... did I actually get your name?"

The pegasus sniffed. "Bourbon."

"Mmm. Mm. Right. Bar pony. Did you know I'm bad with names?" Valey knocked on the side of her head as if expecting her brain to fall out of her ear. "I totally knew that, by the way. But, so, like... while we're waiting for all that to be done, do you wanna tell me a little more about all this mercenary stuff? Is it really as simple as Herman wanting me smushed?"

Bourbon nodded. "We're a fairly large band, usually between forty and fifty. About half of us are from Yakyakistan, a quarter from Varsidel, and the other quarter from everywhere else. Our leader is a griffon named Kero. I don't know if he has royal blood, but he's from the Griffon Empire and certainly has important connections there. With how many ponies we have, it's rare that all of us are needed at once for a job, so Kero handles all our official contracts and assigns individual jobs to make sure they get carried out. Usually, we don't even know what our friends are working on unless we tell each other directly. Mostly, we figure out for ourselves what's happening inside the company. I think it's a system designed to let us take jobs that require a lot more secrecy without it looking conspicuous when someone tries to hide something. Or it could just be no one wanting to do the work of keeping us filled in." She took another sip from her ladle. "What I'm getting at is that I don't know. Maybe Herman gave us the job. Maybe someone else did. You certainly have a lot of enemies."

"You don't say...?" Valey groaned.

That didn't earn a smile. "You know, my coltfriend was also down there in the Flame District," she said. "You force-fed him a banana peel. He was also present a while ago at the snack bar when you were talking about the undersides of my wings. Thank you for sparing him, but that's how you make enemies. Not a lot of ponies like you, Valey. Even us, and we're only alive because of you."

"Cool..." Irately, Valey tapped the ground. "So anonymous detractor maybe named Herman tells you guys to off me and you try it, just like that."

"Not just any anonymous detractor," Bourbon said with a shake of her head. "Ironridge has worn our group thin. Kero knew we needed to leave, and he knows he has to pay us. He wouldn't accept a job this risky for us unless it would pay very generously." She met Valey's eyes. "But we're not trying to kill you right now. If you'll take my advice on survival, sneak around and worry about bigger things." She sniffed the pot again. "Also, the soup's done."

Comments

[alamais]

Hmm... not so sure I trust dis binch.

[fanreader999999]

9505695

No seriously, you need to explain to me like I'm a child. I've read another 20 or so chapters since my last comment and I honestly have no idea what the trip through the tunnels was supposed to be.

Based on your comment I apparently missed some major plot devices, plot hooks AND character changing events in the past 50 or so chapters ON TOP of the whole "dam blew up, everyone is a god-tier chessmaster, Valey is an anime hero, the city is flooded, and we gotta get the fuck outta here now"-ending.

[Czar_Yoshi]

9506790 Honestly? If you're enjoying things that little, I doubt any amount of explanation will help. It sounds like this just isn't the kind of story you enjoy. And it's probably not safe to bank on it changing, because it's targeted toward a very specific audience and written the way it is on purpose.

No, there probably weren't any missed devices or plot hooks. TOW's overarching plot plays the long game, and things are resolved in hundreds of chapters instead of dozens, with experiences the characters have had or knowledge they've gained gradually becoming relevant instead of immediately tying into something. I can't just drop too many immediate hooks or unanswered questions, because otherwise those hooks will get stale and the questions will stay unanswered for so long with no development people will lose interest. There's nothing in Karma Industries or the power tunnels important in the sense of "Hey, we found something mysterious or wrong, this needs investigating" - it's more like that happens far in the future and is followed with "Hey, that thing we saw way back when is totally related to this!"

The story explains the way things are before turning that into a mystery. The evacuation arc, spending time on White Chocolate's family, a chapter or two that look at where the Spirit base is and how the city's older infrastructure works? That's it looking at the way things are. And while I like to put faith in my ability to come up with cool plot twists, at the end of the day, if you're only in it for the destination, and not the journey itself, it's not going to be worth it.

[failcakes]

Huh, the mercenaries are missing an airship right after Herman said he had an airship brought down for valey to steal.

Seems like something he would do. If the target survives the contract, make it about revenge and slighted honor instead.