Hero worship
“I see,” Shining Armor responded in a flat voice, and then he went silent. His expression was unreadable, his ears did not twitch, his nostrils remained relaxed, his pattern of blinking remained unchanged, and there was nothing, nothing at all that gave away any sign of what he was feeling.
Chartreuse was baffled, and had never seen a pony so blank. No matter what she did, or how she tried, she could not read him, she could not discern his emotions, his feelings, and if this continued, there would be no way to gage his reactions so she would have a better idea of what to say or his responses to what had been said.
“Chartreuse Le Feu, daughter of Remède, a mare who holds a doctorate in alchemy. Your father, Pasteur Le Feu, is a member of the constabulary, has been a detective most of his working life, and even more interestingly, he holds no official rank. Just ‘Inspector.’ When I asked for a background check, Canterlot Castle told me that I didn’t have the clearance. I’ve never had that happen before. Ever. You must understand that I was quite surprised to have this happen.”
“You did a background check on me?” Chartreuse asked.
“Of course I did… some filly shows up out of the blue and requests to see me. I didn’t even need to ask, Blackbird was already hard at work and had contacted Canterlot.” Shining Armor, his eyes narrowing, leaned over the table. “You are a curious filly, if you don’t mind me saying.”
Turning her head, Chartreuse glanced at Skyla, who was watching everything with keen interest. Raising an eyebrow, she returned her attention to Shining Armor. “Should she be here right now, with all of this being said?”
“Yes.” Shining Armor did nothing else to acknowledge the question, no nodding, no expression. “One day, she will rule. This is a wonderful lesson for her, and no doubt, little Quiet as well.” There was a deep breath, and then he asked, “I am most puzzled by the fact that you attended public school. You clearly have what it takes to gain entrance to Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. There is a lot about you that doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh that…” Chartreuse’s voice trailed off in a tight, pubescent squeak. “My parents didn’t want me going to school with other nobles… something about a self-serving feedback loop… I don’t understand it,” she stammered as she struggled to get the words out. “They demanded that I be aware of what the commoner struggles with, the dangers they face, and how dangerous life is when you aren’t well protected in a fancy school ran by Princess Celestia.”
“I see,” Shining Armor said, revealing nothing.
“My parents want me to be civic minded,” Chartreuse continued, and she felt her voice growing even tighter as she panicked. She never thought that she would have to explain her life or the way her parents lived. “During the holidays, Hearth’s Warming, in order to get presents I had to donate my old things to the needy. Everything we did… everything I did… it was a lesson or a reminder of how to serve others. My parents were quite insistent on this matter.”
“And now, a lot of things make sense.” Shining Armor leaned forwards a little more, his ears pivoted forward to face Chartreuse, and he lifted his glass of chocolate milk. “Concerned parents, preparing their daughter for a lifetime of altruism and service.”
“Maybe?” Chartreuse squeaked. “I just wanted my parents to be proud of me, and as bad as this might sound, I didn’t ask them a lot of questions. I love my parents, I trust them, and I know they want what is good for me. I am fully aware of how naive that might make me sound. I don’t care.” Some of her confidence returned to her voice, and she too, leaned over the table a bit. “My parents are good ponies, and they’ve never given me a reason to mistrust them.”
She watched as Shining Armor took a sip of chocolate milk, and it left behind a faint brown smear on his upper lip. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Skyla was watching her, studying her, staring at her in a way that only an alicorn could. It was as if Skyla was staring into her soul.
“Have you thought about joining the guard?” Shining Armor asked, and then he licked his lips.
“No, I don’t want to join the guard,” Chartreuse replied, shaking her head. “I wish to be a wizard that lives in service to others.”
“And that is the first of our problems.” Shining Armor slumped over a bit, revealing a bit of weariness. “I am busy. I am so very busy. I am a full time father, a full time soldier, a full time emperor, and I have so many duties. I don’t know that I could give you the time that you deserve as my apprentice. If you were in the guard, I could justify having you around as a cadet.”
For the first time, it sunk in that this might not be a sure thing. Chartreuse felt a terrible tightness manifest in her throat, and then it began to work its way downward. Her glass of chocolate milk trembled in her telekinesis, and for some reason, her triangle shaped glasses weren’t working: Shining Armor had gone all blurry and out of focus.
“I’m not saying no,” Shining Armor said, and this time, there was a sincere warmth in his voice, a paternal gentleness. “But I can’t say yes, either. I am going to talk to my advisors, and then, I promise you, I will have a good think about this.” Shining Armor took another drink of milk, and then had this to say: “So, tell me about your magic. Canterlot Central Intelligence tells me you are on an active observation list, and you are potentially a living weapon of mass destruction—”
“I wouldn’t go that far!” Chartreuse cried, and she almost dropped her milk. It sloshed, almost spilling out over the side, and it took all of her effort to put her glass down on the table before an accident happened. “I’m really sorry for interrupting, please don’t think less of me.”
“It’s okay,” Shining Armor replied, and he gave the troubled filly a reassuring nod. “I’m not Emperor Shining Armor while I’m sitting here. Right now, we are discussing our potential master-apprentice relationship.”
“This is why I came to you.” Chartreuse’s vision did not clear, and so she stared down into her glass instead. “I can’t use my magic… my special spell. It’s too dangerous. Now that I am getting older, and with biology doing what it does to little fillies, my magic is getting stronger. You are the most powerful shield caster of our era. I figured that if anypony could help me, it would be you. I thought we’d be a good fit together.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Don’t you already know from checking up on me?”
Nodding, he said, “Yes. Of course I do. But I want to hear you talk about it.”
She didn’t understand this line of reasoning, and with the two smaller fillies, she felt quite self-aware. Bragging or boasting was something that would get her punished, it was on The List, there were things that her parents just didn’t tolerate. Talking about what she did might sound like boasting, or bragging, especially if she revealed the urgency of why she needed help. Downplaying it wasn’t safe, as Shining Armor needed to understand why she had sought him out.
“I have a shield spell that is too dangerous for me to use.” While saying the words, Chartreuse’s vision returned with perfect clarity, and she looked Shining Armor in the eye. “I have a little magic… I’m a little above average, I suppose, but I’m not what you’d call gifted. But my shield spell, it… it is… it’s different.”
“I only got a brief description, do enlighten me,” Shining Armor said.
“My shield acts as a pyrokinetic battery.” Chartreuse’s voice went flat, and for her, it was like a school recital of facts in class. “The bubble is harmless, at first. So long as nothing hits it, everything is okay. But if something does hit, I don’t have to struggle to keep my shield up. It wants to be hit. It absorbs the incoming energy and turns it into heat.”
“Neat.” Skyla took a drink, and then remained silent, even though her father smiled.
“I can take any blow, any impact, and my shield doesn’t fail… it just makes more heat. Eventually, it ignites, it begins to burn the very atmosphere around me, and that is when things get dangerous. My magic begins pulling in oxygen and hydrogen atoms in abundance around me, to make everything hotter, and then, when things hit the shield, it shoots back. I can’t control it. It just starts shooting lances of fire and even fireballs and everything just starts burning.”
“Fascinating.” Shining Armor tipped back his glass, emptied it, and then returned his gaze to Chartreuse. “A shield that converts physical energy into magical energy. That’s one way to get around the magic shortage plaguing us. You say you have no control over it?”
“No control at all. I can’t aim, or control when or where the fire lances go. They just bounce back to the impact’s point of origin.” Chartreuse still couldn’t tell what Shining Armor was feeling, but she saw something in his eyes. “I don’t think it would be safe for me to become a soldier. I’m a risk to everyone, unless they are fire-immune.”
“I don’t know if I could actually help with that,” Shining Armor said while he shook his head. “I know a bit about magic, and I guess you can call me a wizard, sort of—”
“But you are Shining Armor! You helped to liberate the Grittish Isles! You refused to become an alicorn because you wanted to show the entire world that unicorns can make a difference! I believe in that! I hung pictures of you on my bedroom walls, and I cut out your quotes from the newspapers, and I tried to live by your example! You inspired me to be better! To do better! You battled the Lord of Shades! You smote him! You cast a shield spell around him and then created a vacuum so he would suffocate and die, because none of your spells could harm him!” Chartreuse’s vision blurred over once again, and she cursed her spectacles for not working. “You’re my hero…”
“I learned that from Dim, actually.” Shining Armor’s emotion showed now, and he squirmed in his seat. “Like I was about to say, I know magic… I cast spells. What I don’t know is magical theory. I’m not good at it. I lack my sister’s creativity, or Sunburst’s encyclopedic understanding of how and why something works, or Dim’s raw cunning that allows him to take the simplest spells you could imagine and turn them into terrifying war crimes. I am more of a textbook wizard… get idea from textbook, use it, lather, rinse, repeat.”
Chartreuse’s jaw fell open.
“Well, if I was your master, you’d’ve found out about this sooner or later.” Shining Armor shrugged, and poured himself another glass of chocolate milk. “I am a born soldier,” he confessed, and there was pride in his voice that he did nothing to hide. “I use blunt force trauma to wreck face. I’m told that I’m real good at what I do. And if I’m not capable of what needs to be done, I find the right tool for the job and use that instead. I am just not a complicated pony. I am not one for sophisticated violence. Already, my daughter, Flurry, she shows more skill than I do. No… my talent seems to be always knowing which weapon to use, and when. Sunburst is my most valuable weapon, his knowledge is my power, and I keep Dim around as a doomsday device just so my enemies know that I’m not messing around. In this instance, it isn’t so much what Dim can do, but the fear he generates. The sphincters of the world can relax just a little bit knowing that he remains here, in the Crystal Empire, secluded in his tower.”
At this, Quiet Dark began to giggle, and Skyla joined her.
Chartreuse was too flabbergasted to respond.
“If you joined the guard, I could keep you around as one of the weapons I keep ready for war. Then, time spent with you would be time invested in furthering my own interests, and my interests are keeping this nation safe. It would make things easier.”
“But I don’t want to be a weapon,” Chartreuse managed to say in response. “I want to learn how to control my magic. I also want to help ponies… I want to make things better. You battled the crime families of Manehattan, and then you also took over the running of the city. Everything you do here, in this place… I want to be a part of this. I don’t want to end lives, I want to fix lives that are broken, while also becoming the best wizard I can be.” The first tear fell, and she was ashamed of it, as she wasn’t one for crying.
“I respect that, Chartreuse, I really do… and you have truly noble aspirations.” Shining Armor’s face darkened. “But I am a soldier first and foremost. All of my civic duties are lower in my list of priorities. And if you became my apprentice, seeking only to learn magic and civic responsibility from me, you too, would be very low on my list of priorities, and that wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“But I—”
“You came here with the hopes to become a wizard’s apprentice. You had expectations. You saw me as something that I am not. You wanted to become the apprentice to the image that I project, the image that I have carefully cultivated and ensure that the world sees. I am what I am because of good administrators and I surround myself with all of the right ponies for the job. I maintain the chain of command, and little more.”
There was a thump as Skyla put her now empty glass of chocolate milk down on the table. Turning her head, she stared at her father through her rather thick glasses, and Chartreuse, in a strange, unexpected moment of realisation, began to wonder why an alicorn would need glasses if alicorns were creatures of absolute physical perfection.
“Daddy,” Skyla said in a calm, quiet, and one might even say, subdued voice. “You are making a mistake.”
“Am I?” Shining Armor asked, and his tone was a serious one. “Alicorn senses?”
“Yes.” Skyla nodded so hard that her glasses went askew.
“Care to talk about it?” Shining Armor’s eyebrow arched and he stared at his daughter with bright, curious eyes that blazed with a longing for understanding.
“Not in front of her.” Skyla’s mannerisms and response was one of utter, unflappable calm. “Daddy, I cannot let you make this mistake. Can we talk?”
“Of course,” Shining Armor replied, and he turned to look at Chartreuse. “Don’t give up hope just yet. I am going to speak to my advisors—to Skyla as well, it seems—and then after a day or two, I will give you your answer.”
“Thank you.” The intake of breath to replace the air lost saying these words was a shuddering one. “I will respect your decision, no matter what it is, and I will understand that it is final. I will not make this difficult.”
“Daddy, I need to talk to you now.” Skyla pushed her glass away; then snatched up several cookies, a slab of cheese, and a cracker. She gave her father an expectant look, slipped out of her chair, and then stood waiting. “Now.”
“I’m gonna stay with Chartreuse,” Quiet said in a quiet voice. “She has food.”
“I’ll let your parents know where you are,” Shining replied, and then he gave Chartreuse a final nod. “Quiet is the easiest foal to look after, just read her a book and she is no trouble at all. The horror anthology that she likes is around here somewhere. She’s quite fond of the story Tentacles Creeping Along at the Midnight Hour.”
“Yep.” Quiet now looked excited and hopeful.
Chartreuse gulped. Horror? Tentacles? How awful. She looked at Quiet, who seemed overjoyed at the prospect of storytime. “Sure… I can read you a story… how bad could it be?”
“Grandmama Luna writes some scary books…”
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So Luna's career as a author is going well.
Yay Dim!
That was an excellent line to end the chapter with. Just a little bit of levity after the big bomb that dropped on Chartreuse.
8298809
What sort of psychopath reads horror anthologies to a foal?
8298812
Probably because the foal is going to be the pony equivalent of Stephen King.
And yay Grandmama Luna! There's something about that title that just feels right.
8298812
Someone wanna get this kid a mirror?
I now feel like for the lols there should be an international treaty that limits the deployment of dim since he is basically a walking WMD.
8298878
Interesting so Luna daylights as an author along with her other duties.
I do ponder about Skylas glasses. Though Celestia might like them as they point out regardless of image Alicorns aren't prefect
so skyla can feel that if he turns her away it would be a masive catastrophe and its a good thing he listens to her alacorn sense (my guess is that if he dosent take her as an apprentice she goes down the wrong path and ends up in the hands of grogar or actcidently wipeing a major city off the map)
8298918
In his conversation, Shining Armor already mentioned the solution to this issue... what he does.
Little Skyla is quick on the uptake, and she listened to what her father had to say. She heard the solution come out of his mouth.
You know, her shield spell could be a pretty badass defense if applied to city level. Once up it absorbs energy and shoots it back at attackers...if Chrysalis had tried to do to her like she did with Shining for her Canterlot invasion, she'd have ended up with a bunch of fried changelings. Dunno how well it'd work against siege weapons, since most of those fire in an arc, meaning the direction of impact would be different from where the weapon actually is, so the 'return fire' would just fire harmlessly into the air.
I suppose there could be two major flaws though. Depending on how stubborn the enemy is, unless the city is self-sufficient, food supplies would be an issue. Also, since it actively uses the air to generate the fire, there may be a problem with the defender's own air supply running out...
Could Chartreuse eventually produce a stable fusion reaction?
8298953
I don’t know. At that point, the world around her would be evaporating.
Hm this repetition sounds a bit off
8298954
Touche.
8298878
Deploy the Dim!
No, it needs to be approved by the United Equestrian Counsil first. Alicorns assemble!
8298954
What you really want to worry about is two of those shields at once, if something ends up in a feedback loop.
Instant new sun, just add unicorns.
8298812
One of my first memories is my mum reading Watership Down to me :)
8299096
This must become a scene in one story all the alicorns debating the ethics of sending dim to clean up the mess.
A fun little fic with a lot of future info... I like
Aha!
Some of Shining's major achievements, expostioned to us.
Will we ever get to see any of them? Probably not.
just like gosling's ascension
8299198
just the threat would frighten a number of people. I can imagine knowing who her husband is would help make Blackbird safe. Who in thier right mind would want Dim after them for bothering his wife or filly
8298175
H.P. Mooncraft
8299801
H.P. = Horse Princess?
8299839
...Sure, why not?
That's a pretty scary personal talent shield spell, and I can see why she is so fixated on learning from Shining specifically.
Interesting, and just when it seemed like this was working up towards Shining finding a different arrangement for Chartreuse's training.
Can anyone tell me what stories Skyla & Quiet came from? I think I am missing some stories in the Weed Verse since I don't remember them.
8400062
This is their debut.
the story Tentacles Creeping Along at the Midnight Hour.” I love the idea of Luna writing horror stories for youth.
Methinks that Dim’s next foal would be named “Peace” or “Peaceful,” because he needs both peace and quiet to heal.
Shining doesn't have clearance? Damn. That's pretty scary.
I can't tell what kind of pony Quiet is, that said i'm wanting to love her heh heh
8721341
Probably this kind of child.