Twilight Sparkle Makes a Coltfriend… Literally
Field Testing
“Applejack?” Twilight Sparkle poked her nose in the front door of Sweet Apple Acres’ farmhouse, and the crowded kitchen beyond it. Dawn had broken and breakfast was well underway, with flapjacks, fresh buttered rolls, and an iced pitcher of apple juice, all rapidly vanishing to fuel a hard day’s work.
“Hey, Twilight! Come on in and pull up a plate.”
She did take a step inside, and before Twilight Sparkle realized it, she was seated with a heaping stack of syrup-drenched apple pancakes in front of her. After taking a fork in her magic and proceeding to scientifically divide the flapjack into equal volume pieces, Twilight said, “I really didn’t come out here for breakfast. Although they’re very good,” she added around her first bite.
“Oh, I bet you done showed up to pick up your cloth cutie,” said Applejack.
“Her what?” asked Apple Bloom through the crumbs and syrup smeared across her face.
“That colt she done made in her lab to help with her dating issues.” Applejack stole a brief glance out of the corner of her eye to where Big Mac was sitting rather uncomfortably at the head end of the table. His bandages had been off for several days so far, but his mane still had not quite grown out to its previous ragged length.
“Oh,” said Apple Bloom, “so she won’t be setting Big Mac on—”
“It was an accident,” protested Twilight through a mouthful of flapjacks. “I’m getting much better with Nimbus’ help, so in a few weeks, I should be able to take your brother out for another date without any fire involved at all! You set one date on fire,” she ended with a grumble.
“So you got your heart set on another coltfriend and you’re still plannin’ on taking out Big Mac?” asked Granny Smith with a spark of anger growing in her eye. “Ain’t that a little underhoofed, or is this somethin’ princesses do, like all them handsome stallions Celestia keeps around her boo-dwah?”
The spray of half-chewed flapjacks would have reached the other side of the room, if most of it had not been blocked by Applejack and Big Mac’s faces.
“She doesn’t keep the guard for a harem!” spluttered Twilight. “Well, she might have had intercourse with one or two of them, and heaven only knows what Luna is up to at night, and Cadence… Well, there’s Shining Armor, and… Look, just because the princesses have seeeeeeee….”
Twilight Sparkle liked to think of herself as a teacher. From the glowing expression of anticipatory glee on Apple Bloom’s face, she was looking forward to learning a lesson.
Applejack looked like she was about to take the teacher out back of the woodshed.
“I wouldn’t know,” said Twilight, backpedaling as fast as a clown on a unicycle. “I don’t have any experience in that regard at all.”
- - Ω - -
Applejack shook her head while they walked down the sunlit rows of sweet corn, but Twilight Sparkle did not look as if she were enjoying the exercise at all. Twilight’s ears remained pinned flat, and her head hung low in a way that would have prompted a week’s worth of posture lessons from Rarity.
“You just hadja keep digging. Not only did you get ‘the lecture,’ yer gonna have Granny Smith along with Big Mac if’n you take him out for another date. You know, she takes her teeth out and cleans ‘em at the table if she thinks things ain’t going well, don’t ‘cha?”
“No, and I didn’t want to know,” grumbled Twilight.
“Ah reckon we was gonna have to have that talk about the bees and the birds eventually with Apple Bloom anyway. You just encouraged things along, and we got two taught for the price of one.” Applejack cocked an eyebrow at her grumbling friend. “So, did you learn anything from Granny’s lecture?”
Twilight Sparkle flicked her tail viciously at a nearby stalk of corn. “I don’t know why everypony thinks I’m some blushing-cheeked virgin. I know all kinds of things about… that. I read books!” she finished with a defensive snap.
Applejack did not say a word.
“Not those kind of books. Scientific books. With pictures and diagrams!”
“Uh-huh. Maybe you should try some of them other kind of books. When Big Mac got out of the emergency room and back to the house after your date, he spent a long time looking up words in our dictionary. Blushed redder than ever afterwards, and he ain’t never looked at a pump handle the same since.”
“We’ll work on that,” came Nimbus’ voice drifting over the field of corn.
Once they walked around the edge of a clearing in the corn field and saw where the cloth doll was positioned, Twilight Sparkle turned on Applejack like an angry dog. “Just what do you think you were doing with Nimbus!”
“Hey, Twilight. It’s fine. I volunteered when Applejack asked for my help,” called out Nimbus from his perch on the pole. “Besides, I got to spend all night out among the stars, and I made a few new friends.” The doll tilted his head so the hat perched on it went forward and revealed the two fat blackbirds dozing on the rim. “They’re poor conversationalists, but they’re better than geese.”
“An’ they’re stuffed plum full of my corn!” Applejack made a little dance around the clearing while fuming. “Get on outta here, you no-account varmints.”
“Hey, you just said to watch your corn,” said Nimbus, still propped up on the pole above Applejack’s reach. “Whoa!” he added when Applejack kicked the pole and the doll’s perch shifted. “Careful, or you’ll knock us down.”
One last thump of hooves and Nimbus tumbled down with the blackbirds taking wing and flying away. The doll did not fly, but in fact struck the ground with a solid thump and just remained sprawled out across the ground.
“Nimbus?” Applejack prodded the doll with one hoof. “Did I break you? Come on, say something.”
“He’s out of power again,” said Twilight while lighting her horn. “He’s about as needy as some of my dates have been.”
“An’ after I done gave him my second-best hat to wear, too,” grumbled Applejack while retrieving it. “Ah thought it’d give him a little more crow-repelling power than the scarecrow I done had up there before.” She jammed the hat down on the straw-filled dummy at the bottom of the pole, but jumped back when Twilight’s magic surrounded it too, and floated the scarecrow back to the top of the pole.
Nimbus stood up with a stretch and a yawn. “That’s better,” he announced before looking Twilight in the face, then tilting his head to one side to get a better look at a particularly sticky patch of syrup on her cheek.
“Yeah, I’m a mess,” admitted Twilight. “We worked through most of the night to get all the forms done for your creation.”
“Past-due paperwork is the pits,” said Nimbus. “What would you say to a morning at the spa in compensation, M’lady? It’s been a very nice night, but now that you’re here, I’m set to jet and ready to roll.”
“Oh, I couldn’t.” Twilight Sparkle held a hoof to her chest and blinked rapidly. “I mean I need to get back to the castle and make sure Spike is up and at work—”
“The dragon who’d sleep ‘til afternoon if you let him,” drawled Applejack.
“—and I’ve got reshelving to do, and… and…”
“And you’d do all that work instead of going out for a practice date like you made me for?” Nimbus cocked his head almost sideways. “I suppose I could take Applejack instead.”
“What? No!” Twilight frowned, then caught herself. “Oh! You were trying to make me jealous! So neat! I didn’t know the enchantments were capable of that level of subterfuge.”
Applejack did not look nearly so happy. “You mean he’s a liar.”
The doll gave out a short gasp and staggered back with one hoof over his heart… or whatever stuffing he had in there. “I’m insulted! I really am. And I was going to invite you along to double-date.”
“With who?” asked Applejack, before following Nimbus’ gaze upward to the scarecrow dangling on the pole. “Oh, har, dee har har.” She shifted her fierce gaze from the doll to the giggling princess at its side. “Twi, you ever do this again, you make one that don’t look so darned innocent. And keep it away from Rainbow Dash.”
Nimbus, with his hoof still on his chest, turned to the giggling Twilight. “Two of us? How risqué!”
“And Rarity,” added Applejack in a flat monotone.
“As long as I can still be around Pinkie Pie, that’s fine. It helps make Twilight laugh, and making her happy, makes me complete.”
“Well…” Applejack considered the mismatched pair and shook her head. “Ah swear, if’n that’s the only benefit you get outa him, I suppose it’s worth it. You two better get on out to your spa visit. Maybe you can get your coltfriend ironed.”
- - Ω - -
The lunch date at the small Ponyville cafe was going quite well, with discussion between two ponies and plates of food to enjoy, until a certain rainbow-maned pegasus swooped down out of the sky and snapped up everything on one plate in a single bite.
Of course, Rainbow Dash promptly landed in the grass to one side of the table and proceeded to hack and gag until she had spit it all back out again.
“That’s wax!” she shouted once she could talk again.
“Of course it’s wax,” said Nimbus. “I needed some food for my plate to balance the table and make it feel more like a real date, so I borrowed some from Pinkie Pie. And I think I owe her five bits,” he added. “She bet that something like this would happen.”
“A date is like a party just for two,” came Pinkie’s voice out of a conveniently placed bush nearby. “Or three, in special circumstances.”
Rainbow Dash joined Twilight Sparkle in a fit of the giggles. “Okay, that does it. I gotta get one of those too.”
“Thought I’d heard you all over here.” Applejack strolled up to the table and looked at the aftermath. “Won’t Pinkie Pie get jealous of you goin’ pranking with another pony?”
“Naa,” scoffed Rainbow with a dismissive flip of the wrist. “I’ll have Twi make me one that looks like Pinkie Pie and her one that looks like me, so when we go out pranking, we each always have a baillie.”
“Alibi,” corrected Twilight through her giggles.
“You can make one of those too? Sweet!” Rainbow Dash punched a hoof into the sky.
“No! It’s… Never mind.” Twilight dabbed her lips with a napkin. “I’m not going to make any more Type Six golems until I know exactly how well this one functions.”
Nimbus cleared his nonexistent throat and ‘whistled’ innocently, which made Twilight Sparkle blush.
“Not that way!”
“Didn’t say a word,” said Nimbus. “Just sitting here.”
“Yeah, you kinda flew right into that one, Twilight,” said Rainbow Dash. “Like a pegasus into a skylight.”
“Yep, it was a good one,” said Applejack, with a serious expression. “But it probably ain’t something a polite stallion should do to their date.”
“True.” Nimbus got up from his seat, turned to Twilight, and dropped to one cloth knee. “I am truly sorry about that. I was only born the day before yesterday, but that’s no excuse. Will you accept my apology, M’lady?”
Twilight only blushed more, until her ears were bright red and all of her friends began to intently observe things away from the table.
“Welp, we’re just gonna let you two get on with your morning date.” Applejack hip-checked Rainbow Dash off the chair she had climbed on. “Come on, RD. An’ you too, Pinkie.”
The trio walked for a short distance before Rainbow Dash cast a look over her shoulder and asked, “We’re still going to watch them from a distance, right?”
“Durned tootin,” said Applejack.
- - Ω - -
It was a rather subdued group of friends who gathered together at the Ponyville train depot when Twilight Sparkle and her companion glided down to a landing. Pinkie Pie had just finished hanging up her ‘Welcome Back From The Crystal Empire Starlight Glimmer’ banner while the rest of them were just sitting and talking, but all conversation stopped at the same time Twilight did.
“Not a bad landing,” said Rainbow Dash. “You’re getting better at transitioning from a glide to a slow walk.”
“The practice certainly is helping,” said Fluttershy before cringing back. “I mean not that we’ve been watching you two practice flying today.”
“Or walking through the meadow, picking flowers,” chirped Pinkie Pie with a bouncy-bounce that bounded over the both of them, scattering wildflower petals in her wake.
Applejack wisely remained silent, although she did squirm a little.
“I know all of you have been watching us today,” said Twilight, reaching into her saddlebag and pulling out some scrolls. “Even you, Applejack. So I want you to write up what you’ve seen and I’ll add it to my research journal.”
“Ahem,” said Rarity, looking at the scroll with the same enthusiasm she had for burlap cloth. “Does that include the time I saw the two of you behind a bush, rubbing noses?”
The light magenta of Twilight’s magic formed around Rarity’s scroll and fairly yanked it back into the originating saddlebag.
“That sounds pretty interesting,” said Applejack, sitting down and opening up her new scroll. “Lots more exciting than watchin’ them two stroll through Sweet Apple Acres, yakking back and forth. Don’t spare none of the details an’ we’ll get ‘em writ down real pretty for you.”
Applejack’s scroll was reclaimed in a similar manner, then after a moment, the rest of them too.
“Does this mean I’m not supposed to write it down for Princess Celestia?” asked Spike. After a smoldering look in response, he got out a checklist and wordlessly crossed off an item on it.
“Anyway,” huffed Twilight, “Starlight Glimmer will be here shortly, and she will be properly appreciative of my experiment.”
- - Ω - -
The train had barely screeched to a halt when the door to the first car sprang open and a unicorn bounded out onto the platform. “Welcome to my adoring fans, young and old. The Great and Powerful Trixie is grateful for this reception, and is willing to sign autographs for a modest sum, so please line up and have your bits ready.”
“Trixie!” shouted Pinkie Pie, bounding forward to give the posing showmare a hug. “Did you bump into Starlight Glimmer in the Crystal Empire and follow her back to Ponyville in order to find out how Twilight Sparkle made a coltfriend out of cloth so you could get her to make one too and travel Equestria with your own assistant who won’t mind if he get sawed in half or burnt a little or collect too much of the gate receipts and run away with the ticket seller again?”
“Uh…” Trixie tried to take a step backwards, but was well and firmly Pinkie-trapped. “Yes?” she ventured with no small amount of hesitation.
“Well, you’re going to have to get in line, because all of us tried him out yesterday, even Applejack, who had him all last night and said he did one heck of a job.”
Going from snickering to choking in one abrupt breath, Applejack spluttered, “That ain’t what happened! Ah had him stuck up in mah orchard all night long!”
Once her mind caught up with her mouth, Applejack promptly reddened up to the point where she was indistinguishable from most of her apples, and might have dug her hole deeper if Starlight Glimmer had not chosen that moment to step out of the train. She took in the gathering of ponies there to welcome her with a growing smile, which only lasted until she spotted Nimbus. Taking two steps forward, Starlight examined the cloth golem with wide eyes before turning to a beaming Twilight Sparkle in a voice just one step away from panic.
“Twilight! What have you done?”
- - Ω - -
The reunion had been moved by popular vote to the Castle of Friendship with a little more speed than the paper banner had been able to stand. It now fluttered rather forlornly over the crystal map with Starlight Glimmer’s luggage tossed to one side and Trixie still sulking due to missing her place in the limelight.
“Trixie does not see why you are upset at Sparkle’s new toy. It is rather handsome and well-stitched, although Trixie is quite sure she could do much better, if given the time.”
“Are you having dating problems too?” asked Nimbus. “I would have thought a talented unicorn such as yourself would have stallions lining up to go out with you.”
“Look, Twilight. I know this sounds strange coming from me, but this—” Starlight Glimmer waved one hoof at the stuffed stallion standing stoically to one side “—is not right. It’s not normal to make a Type Four golem with this kind of response pattern.”
“Hey!” objected Trixie. “Let him finish.”
“He’s a Type Six golem, and I put a lot of hard work into him. I mean making him,” corrected Twilight. “It was hard work to get all the spells to work together, and took a lot of magic, but the results speak for themselves. Tell her, Nimbus.”
The doll remained in the same position it had been in after talking to Trixie and said nothing.
“Oh. Heheheh.” Twilight lit her horn and focused on the immobile doll. “Sorry. He takes a lot of recharging.”
“Reminds me of somepony,” said Applejack, giving Rainbow Dash a nudge with one elbow.
After one bright light that made the castle glitter brighter than the sun outside, Twilight swept a hoof in the direction of Nimbus. “See, he’s charged up and ready to go.”
Starlight Glimmer paused and looked underneath the subject of their discussion.
“Not in that way,” hissed Twilight. “He’s going to help me with my romantic inexpertise. I’ll worry about… that aspect of dating later. Perverts,” she finished with a low grumble.
“At least my coltfriend has a pulse,” snapped Starlight, followed by a bright blush and the immediate backtracking. “Sunburst’s not my coltfriend, I mean. He’s a friend, not like this…”
“Abomination of nature?” prompted Spike after a suitable silence.
“Not quite,” said Starlight. “This thing is the end result of I don’t know how many spells. It’s a maze of competing enchantments that you can’t possibly know how or even why it works!”
“Ah,” said Spike. “An abomination of science. Got it.”
“Yeah, I suppose.” Starlight abruptly turned to Twilight and gasped, “You’re not sleeping with it, are you?”
Twilight Sparkle fluffed up her wings and scowled. “Of course not!”
“So, do you lock it up at night in a secure chest?”
“No,” admitted Twilight.
“Some sort of shielded enclosure? A locked room? Do you even have some enchanted manacles?”
Fluttershy raised one hoof as if she were about to offer a loan, then slowly put it back down again.
“I’ve got a box I was thinking about using,” admitted Twilight with a pained expression directed at the floor.
“Is that the big cardboard box the new icebox came in, that you stored in the junk room?” asked Spike.
Twilight nodded, a brief motion that could only be discerned by close measurement or long personal experience.
“The one where you put a towel into the bottom?” added Spike with the same slow delivery of somepony putting a stack of wood on a campfire, one stick at a time. “And a bowl of water? Really? I thought you were getting a puppy.”
“Do you want one?” chirped Fluttershy, sitting up with wide-eyed eagerness.
“Not… right now,” said Twilight.
Starlight Glimmer took a deep breath and tapped the chalkboard. “Focus. We’re discussing the golem.”
“So, no puppy?” asked Fluttershy.
“No puppy,” confirmed Starlight. “Now, getting back to the topic at hoof. Where has the golem been stored at night? Other than last night,” she added, looking at a rapidly reddening Applejack.
Spike spoke up before Twilight could say a word. “Before that, Twilight was still locked in her lab, making it.”
“Spike!” snapped Twilight before pausing. “Oh. Yes. Technically true, just… Nevermind.”
Starlight shook her head. “Look, I’ve been in the Crystal Empire for the last few days, and I’ve gotten really familiar with the dark magic used there.”
“Well, that’s comforting to know,” said Spike.
Twilight Sparkle put on her best discouraging expression and said, “Spiiiiike.”
“Anyway,” said Starlight before a conflict could begin, “Dark Magic can be sneaky. Why don’t we sit down with your… thing, pull it apart—”
“Wait a minute,” objected Nimbus.
“—and see what makes it tick.”
Nimbus held up his wrist. “That’s just because I think she may have sewed a watch inside me.”
“We’re not taking him apart,” said Twilight with a sharp edge to her words. “I spent a lot of effort doing Nimbus…. I mean making it. I mean putting Nimbus together. We’re going to go practice dating all day tomorrow if possible.”
“The whole day?” Starlight put on her best skeptical expression. “You’ll catch him on fire or—”
“One pony!” snapped Twilight. “You set one pony… well, two ponies on fire, three at the absolute maximum, and that’s all anypony can talk about! Besides, he’s fireproof.”
“Yep, tried it,” said Spike.
“Well…” Starlight slowed to a halt, regarded the problem at hoof, and gingerly gave it a poke. “Just in the event that he’s dangerous, because you could be wrong, after all. Where are you going to store him tonight?”
“I could turn him into a teacup,” suggested Trixie. “Then we could store him in the china hutch with the rest of them.”
I love the irony of Starlight Glimmer yelling at Twilight for inconsiderate abuse of multiple spells. And Trixie. And teacups.
Darned Trixie and her obsession with turning things into teacups.
Geez, everyone sure is making a big deal out of nothing. What, does he need to be locked up because he might go on a rampage when no one's looking? Well, then what about Spike, who actually did go on a rampage when no one was looking?
I mean, they weren't not-looking for very long on account of him growing to giant size and taking their stuff and...
Anyway!
Wow. When Starlight of all ponies calls you out on inadvisably applied magic, that's worth at least some mulling over. Still, I trust the mare who put all of those competing spells together to know how they tick. If this does end in some cuddly rampage, color me surprised.
I can see where this is going. He gets turned into a teacup and gets put through the dishwasher next.
Maybe they can play recorded audio stimuli tests and taze him if he moves.
I am suppressed that Big Mac is trying to rescue pore Nimbus from the evil clutched hooves of princess Twilight Sparkle like he did with Smarty Pants oh so long ago. Also I wonder if he is going to be paired off with said doll at some point. For alleviate Starlight's worries, about what he might be doing when no eyes are on him, maybe putting an off button on Nimbus might help with that.
Degrees and radians are units of angular displacement, not angular velocity. On a related, if more obscure, point, it might be worth setting someone on fire who preferred gradians—they’re like degrees, but the unit circle isn’t as nice, and fewer people will know what you’re talking about if you use them. Also, Pinkie’s bit involving gate receipts doesn’t parse.
Other than that, this is a fun ride so far. I hope the next chapter comes out soon.
8595792
Pretty sure that the paranoia is at least partially because this is Ponyville, where the mundane and unassuming suddenly turns wild and destructive. Like Spike, parasprites, Flutterbat, or the cutiemark Crusaders. So when someone like Twilight goes and throws together a bunch of spells to create an extremely high level golem, especially if the spells theoretically should be interfering with each other as Starlight points out, then it's a very reasonable and precedented assumption that something will go horribly wrong in a dramatic fashion.
8595762
TEACUP!
The breakfast scene at Sweet Apple Acres was hilarious!
And now, Starlight finds herself in the unusual position of trying to be responsible and curb reckless and ill-considered use of powerful magic. Also, Trixie!
Ugh... Starlight. She ruins everything.
Love how everyone else is bonding with Nimbus and wanting a piece of his time. Surely the constant charging of him has to have a long-term effect though...
>>Teacup.
8596136 (whistles quietly)
8596050 "Stop doing what I was doing! And stop laughing at me!" See, Starlight is learning how to be a parent.
8595867 I think I've seen *three* "Smartie Pants Comes To Life And Makes It With Big Mac" stories around here.
8595793 Starlight calling you out for slapping together too many spells without balancing the consequences is like:
Enron's accountant criticizing your checkbook
Bill Clinton chiding you for glancing at that cute girl's rump while your wife was in the room
Wrong Way Corrigan commenting on your auto navigation
Donald Trump tweeting a comment on your.... Naa, too easy.
Well, this is all pretty decent so far. I do think the story kinda lacks direction, however. Aside from the whole magical construct deal being bound to go off the rails somehow, I can't really tell what you are going for with all this. I hope the plot will start thickening in future chapters.
Gotta love Starlight's reaction here. Given her own past tendency to get a bit too carried away with magic, this is both ironic and makes a lot of sense: She's messed up enough times to be able to tell when somepony else is doing it.
Heaven forbid that I'm the one suggesting this...but in all honesty, Twi? The royal guard don't seem to be of much use for anything else, so...since they're already there...
Like that's really any better!
Just what the hay happened on that date?!
i.imgflip.com/20oz3k.jpg
I mean, might as well since you're right there and all...
It's the ego.
Let's see here...was there anything I didn't quote today?...
I'm a little surprised Mac didn't speak up about the idea of another date with Twilight. Even with his tendency to never speak, you think he'd say something about not wanting to be set on fire again if he didn't want to be set on fire again.
Starlight kills the fun.
Watch this go the standard cartoon catastrophe route. Everyone works up into a frenzy because Nimbus 'might' be manufactured evil. Then, due to all the close observation, the girls realize he's not really a threat and start to think of him as the perfect stallion. Little do they know, there's a different, less overt kind of evil as their behavior devolves into that you normally see in a Harem Anime: They all pile over each other trying to be his number 1 mare.
Unfortunately, in doing so... they forget he's still just a very clever construct made from Twilight's neurosis. It's Smarty Pants all over again, but in Slooooooooooow Motion.
Meanwhile...
Luna: Now TALK! You malevolent construct! Tell me your plans!
Nimbus: Oh it's quite simple. I simply continue as I am, totally harmless, polite, and helpful, and the mares of Equestria all but bring themselves to their knees worshiping me like the god I deserve to be.
Luna: I knew it! ... But, wait. What about all the abuse they put you through?
Nimbus: Oh, I can't actually feel any of it. Plus, Twilight's spells ensure I'm all but indestructible, so I'm kind of like a Lich.
Luna: An adorable, goose-down-stuffed Lich who will conquer Equestria through his suave good looks and rule it for a thousand years with an iron hoof!
Nimbus: Nah. I wouldn't get very far with that. Based on Twilight's understanding of the social drawbacks of being overtly cruel and Evil, my rule in such a manner wouldn't even last a day. It's hard to be an Overlord when your magic charge has a battery life measured in hours. I do anything nefarious, and I'm done.
Luna: But if you found a magical power source to keep yourself charged at all times.
Nimbus: Like the Alicorn Amulet? Nah, statistically that would either clash with my animation spells, or somehow get tricked off of me. I'd have to have the artifact placed inside me for that to work.
Luna: One could just INGEST the Alicorn Amulet-
Nimbus: No, again. No mouth, remember? Also, Twilight has a list concerning these. Number 22 is never ingesting artifacts or energy fields bigger than one's head.
Luna: Not sure which is more concerning, Twilight having a list of that type, or that you are actively referencing them in your decision making.
Nimbus: Honestly, it's not that bad. If you follow every parcel of advice on the list, you're pretty much not evil at all, just ruthless. For example: The extended list segment, rule number 142, discusses the importance of keeping relations with one's descended family and the perks of bonding over crocodile-pit traps.
Luna: Well.. True. Crocodiles are fun for all ages. I remember when I had one as a pet. Snappy always knew how to cheer me up when I had to deal with a particularly stubborn noble. But I digress... So your scheme is pretty much to have no scheme?
Nimbus: I may or may not be encouraging Twilight to continue being a neurotic mess, but that's strictly so she'll keep recharging me. Kind of hard to live the good life if the one who breathes life into you for the purpose of practicing dating discards you for the real deal.
Luna: Yes... That is reasonable. Though you could just ASK her.
Nimbus: As an amalgamation of Twilight's experience and knowledge, I KNOW that Twilight would tire of the inconvenience of recharging me daily, and try and conjure up a way to keep me charged all the time without her input.
Luna: I don't see how that-
Nimbus: Twilight almost brought Equestria to a halt testing a partially written destiny spell. Consider what she does when she puts her mind to it, and scale that to any power source that would keep all my spells active for more than a day, and we're in the kilotrot-sized crater category. Honestly, I'm probably doing Equestria a service by being her perfect punching bag.
Luna: Don't your find that degrading?
Nimbus: Again, I'm a construct made of Twilight's experiences and knowledge, including a breakdown of her neuroses. I rather enjoy our conversations, and being indestructible and unable to feel pain means I can more than deal with anything she does to me that would otherwise maim another pony. Plus, it's cute when she's oblivious to her behavior. So, win-win.
Luna: I am honestly impressed you're that considerate.
Nimbus: Twilight was very thorough creating me.
8596136 8595793 8596155
One word about complex systems: emergence. I give it a fifty-fifty chance that Nimbus winds up becoming a real
boycolt by the end of the story. Ordinarily, I’d rate the chances much higher, but this is Georg we’re talking about.Where is Trixie's pet changeling?
8596155
The Queen of England complaining about how long other monarchs have lived?
8596713 I've got a framework for that sequel, but I'm still groping around for a good ending to tie it all together. Maybe a muse will hit me.
8596422 He is a stallion of very few words.
8596349 Somebody's looking for depth in Georg's work. Might take a while. Two chapters, to be exact.
8596802
I was more saying I had expected a cameo, but that's even better!
8596802
Dunno about "depth". I just like feeling that the stories I read are going somewhere. So far you've managed to keep my attention mainly due to this being well written, relatively easy to follow and having some amusing dialogue. I just hope I'm right about you having a plan for it.
8596825 All I ask for is your heart.
i.pinimg.com/564x/c0/ff/fc/c0fffc9791613d76321508429b8d523d--home-offices-so-funny.jpg
Actually setting Big Mac on fire is not a complete deal-breaker for Granny Smith. Somepony is keen for her kin to get started on conceiving the next generation.
*Reads it on featured box*
*Frowns*
That's a weird premise, wonder who is writing... Oh.
INSTA CLICKS!!!
Teacup.
Uh what oh okay...
*Internally* oh god that’s freaking hilarious
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I think the story is going on a date with Twilight. And we all know what that means...
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Fire!
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It is a deep-seated fear in the modern Equestrian psyche. Ponies' films and literature are rife with cautionary, apocalyptic tales of monstrously cold, indifferent intelligences that use their vast hyper-intelligence to crush all pony-kind under its logical rule; an electron-shod silicon hoof stomping upon the face of equinity for all eternity. Ponies fear what they do not understand, and thanks to the revolution in Artifical Constructs spearheaded by Princess Twilight, technology has far surpassed the ability of any one pony to comprehend in its entirety.
Speculative fiction writers and governmental think-tanks certainly paint a grim, bleak picture for the future, but in actuality, reality is much different. All "evil golum, mastermind overlord/overlady" stories have one fatal flaw in common when it comes to real world applications: they never take into account how those constructs are created and maintained.
The reality is that all of Equestria's (and by extension Equus') thaumaturgical sentient constructs are created, programmed, and maintained by legions of green (as in "inexperienced" , not "green the colour") minimum-wage magi fresh out of university and lowest bidder off-shore thaumic engineers from Yakyakistan. The resulting blobs of spaghetti-runes, constructs, and code cargo-culted copy and pasted around different projects with little understanding on how it works creates thaumaturgical code base for golums that is not so much "engineered" so much as "grown" (like a tumour).
Incompatible, proprietary protocols and thaumic resonances. Synax errors. Improperly folded ley-lines. Corrupted configurations files. Smudged runes. Lack of unit testing and a "developmestuction" process of deploying hot patches to live systems. All these factors mean that artificial sentient constructs are less a cooperate cabal of cold, logical intellect and more a loose group of mentally stunted idiot-savants hyped up on amphetamines. The slip-shod, corner-cutting magical incantations along with Equestria's high background radiation also ensures that ponies' neurosis get imprinted on developing artifical constructs.
The end result is that autonomous carriage-pullers develop a penchant for quoting lengthy passages of Hoofspere in a Cockney accent, surveillance sprites form a taste for daytime soap-operas, and the less said about the perverse fetishes of intelligent light fixtures, the better ("Celling Light is watching you clop!"). Only the Flim-Flamco® brand HAL-9001 model "smart" oven minders retain enough engineered intelligence to make a credible threat to take over the planet, but due to hardware limitations, they have to content themselves with occasionally burning some poor sod's breakfast toast.
There are no O(n!) algorithms, no manna buffer underflows, no misconfigured runes, or syntax errors in the land of magic and silicon. Any malign intelligence was already irrevocably doomed the first time a fresh batch of new work-experience interns were called upon to update the systems under a deadline with hastily copy and pasted components. It was inevitable. By the toil of thousands of neophyte magi and thaumaturgical technicians with millions upon millions of lines of patches and magical incantations, ponies have secured their birthright of Equestria, and it is hers against all artificial constructs; it would still be hers were the golums ten times as mighty.
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YOU! WHERE DO I FIND MORE OF YOUR BEAUTIFUL WRITING!!!
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stop being adorable trixie, I don't want diabeetus
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Trixie, don't ever change
Hah!
Hah. He sure knows his purpose in life... and it's not "Twilight Sparkle"
: I taught you well, young padawan!
How considerate towards the cooks, to not waste food on the presentation
She cheats, though
Where does he get these thoughts? Wait, he's also picking that up from his surroundings, isn't he?
Glimglam is going to laugh her ass off, isn't she?
Oh, dammit, Georg, that was masterfully executed!
Aww. I really thought she'd just crack up.
I knew that'd come up. Especially since she just came back from him
It's always the quiet ones, huh?
Can she actually reverse that spell, though?
Remarks and corrections:
> so you could get her to make one too
Shouldn't that be "so you could get her to make [you] one too"?
This is turning into "That's Not What I Meant: The Fanfic."
You learn one spell...!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! You deserved that dash!
"Rest of them?"
8619884 Hi, I'm Georg. You may have recognized my writing pattern...
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Trixie Abuse!
...
But seriously, great story! The Never The Final Word just gave me impetus to finally read it!