Meta Gamer in Equestria: Odyssey

by reflective vagrant

Chapter 22. World of Loathing, Part 6.

Fluttershy's eyes had grown watery as she finished reading the letter and explaining the core details.

"So let me get this straight. Because I was found innocent, the officer that insisted on Astral Judgement gets punished for wrongful use of it as a deterrent from it being abused?"

Fluttershy could only nod, not even breaking eye contact from the letter.

"And, as the one she wronged, I get a say in the punishment?"

"You have the right to voice a request on the details, but those details have to be approved by a counsel to ensure they are appropriate."

I looked down at the table, and at the green wrists laying on the table, still with the lingering marks of shackles ill suited for them.

"So what is the normal punishment? If a request isn't made that is."

Fluttershy finally looked away from the page and whispered. "A life sentence of hard labor."

Before I could ask her to speak up, she reared her head towards me, shouting, and I found myself cowering a little. "A life sentence of hard labor!"

With this, the floodgates had opened and there was no closing them. "My newest friend that just started to turn her life around with a commission from the royal sisters now has to spend the rest of her life working herself to the bone from one tiny mistake because of..." Fluttershy's eyes wavered for a moment then closed. She turned her head aside as the tears finally started down her cheeks. "-Because of this stupid war!"

I once watched an anime where a villain used the phrase "Your words cut deeper than any knife." I couldn't help but feel a little like that just then, though with a difference. She tried to hide it and clearly knew better, but I still saw that a part of her wanted to blame me for what happened to Sparkler Berrytwist. The fact that she had the strength to turn that anger away from me and help me all this time only made me want to grab that metaphorical knife and twist it further into myself.

I was the cause of Fluttershy's pain. Incidental or not, I couldn't let that stand.

"Do you have lawyers in this land? Some...pony that can help me make a convincing case with my request to minimize her sentence?"

Fluttershy looked at me with her mouth agape and a glint of hope in her eyes again.

"I mean, it seems like they won't let her off the hook entirely, but maybe I can convince them that she did it for the right reasons and get them to let her do something like community service instead?"

Fluttershy came around the table and smothered me in a tear soaked hug. I found myself stifling a yelp in pain as she squeezed the bruises around my back and stomach. The only reason she didn't let go entirely from this is because I knelt down and drew her back in with a hug in kind.

"Thank you so much!" she exclaimed as she shifted her grip.

---

With that, we promptly went into town the next day, looking into finding a lawyer willing to help. All of the local lawyers simply turned me away, most before even hearing us out.

Ultimately, we had to give up any ideas on normal routes. Fluttershy said she had a contact that knew ponies with a bit more of an open mind, but the contact she had was a pony of significant influence that I wasn't allowed near with the war going on. Even with my declaration of innocence, I was still a foreigner that had no clear explanation of why he was here. I still had to be presumed a potential threat, at least when it came to VIPs. So we had to make some arrangements with the guards.

"Seriously?" I half rhetorically asked as we approached the same castle I was arrested at when I first came to town. "You know the guard we're trying to help, a shape shifting bug king, a spirit of chaos, a shaman hermit, and the local royalty?"

"It's not as strange as it sounds when you know our history."

Fluttershy then turned to the two guards escorting us.

"Thank you again for helping with this, Iron Bastion, Sharp Sentry."

The two guards nodded in kind, and the non crystalline one spoke up. "With how you helped my nephew's pet, I wouldn't feel right not paying back the favor, and old Iron Bastion would do anything short of a crime for Rarity."

We walked only a few more feet towards the stairs before the crystalline guard tugged on my firs.

"Sorry, but this is as close as we can let you get to the castle," Sharp Sentry told me. "Go on in Fluttershy. Spike should be ready for you. We'll make sure nopony gets this guy in trouble like last time."

Fluttershy went up to the large door and barely had to knock before it was opened and a reptilian creature even smaller than they were greeted her.

I felt a bit of a chill come over me, like a strong breeze, yet there wasn't any particular wind that day. I saw a bit of black steam come off of me again. I backed up, fearing the guards thought it might be an attack. Backing up seemed to stop the effect before the guards noticed. Their hooves were at their weapons while their eyes were fixated on the door, worried. They turned towards me and actually seemed relieved that I had stepped back. While they urged me back further, I could see the reptile was arguing with somepony hidden by the door. He pushed his unseen target backwards and Fluttershy followed him in.

The guards were serious about their work on guarding me, both the crystalline and the normal one, but they weren't mean. In fact they didn't mind me striking up a conversation so long as I understood they couldn't answer certain subjects. The subject I picked, however, wasn't a problem at all: Why there were both crystalline and non crystalline ponies.

Apparently, the crystalline guards were actually allies from another land who came in to aid in the war effort. They were kinda sorta their own nation, but at the same time they were so closely tied to Equestria that having citizenship in either nation granted almost all the rights of citizenship in the other too, save for voting and the like. The ruler of the crystalline ponies was even adopted into and partially raised by the Equestrian royal family before she became their governing princess.

The rest of the day was pretty easy. Fluttershy came out about an hour later with an apology for taking so long and a promise that a skilled pony would see us tomorrow. We went home to drop me off so that Fluttershy could do some more searching for a new Senior RRE officer. In the meantime, I did my best to not hurt myself while Angel helped me with the little details of the chores that Fluttershy trusted me enough to do without her supervision.

---

Starlight met us at the cottage the next day with a brightly colored and cloaked stallion called Sunburst in tow.

"Are you sure you don't want to help with this case, Starlight?" the stallion asked her as Fluttershy brought out the tea and sandwiches.

"I'm too close to the case. I fought for his release and it would surely be brought up as a counter argument. Besides, while I'm decent at deciphering foreign spells in spell books and scrolls, I'm not the best at using facts to convince ponies that already have their minds set."

"Then I guess I'll have to see what I can do. How's is the deciphering going?"

"I found the oddest thing. I just got past the wand he had with him and started on the scrolls this week. Once I managed to copy a scroll down, the words on the original scroll disappeared. It's like it was meant to destroy itself after being used."

Starlight looked at me. "And sorry about that. I know you were asked to 'donate' them to research, but I was hoping to return them if we ever built up enough trust."

I could only shake my head and press on my amulet. "The scrolls are meant to be destroyed when copied down or when someone casts the spell from them directly. Knowing you wrote it down means it can't be cast from the scroll anymore, but the notes themselves should be permanent now, just like in the book. At least if they are supposed to behave like the game."

Sunburst had been staring at my amulet while I spoke.

"I see that little bit of advice I sent you on re routing pattern recognition components instead of reversing them managed to pay out."

"In part," Starlight and I both responded, a bit to her surprise.

"It works, but just barely." I finished, then spent a few minutes describing my experiment with speaking with Fluttershy's animals with my Speak with Animals spell. Both of them looked at me intently while occasionally sipping their tea.

"Seriously? You can tap into the Animus Mundi!?" Sunburst said at the end as he fixed his glasses.

"At least that's what that chaos spirit said. Take that for whatever it's worth."

"Discord is known for being hypersensitive to magical fluctuations of all kinds. If he focused, he might been able to discern it from Aether. I'd love to observe your spell casting sometime, provided you are willing of course."

"Maybe after we save Sparkler Berrytwist."

Starlight coughed on her tea and threw me the stink eye. "Why would you call her names like that? I thought you wanted to help her."

I felt uneasy as I responded. "That is her name, isn't it?"

Starlight rolled her eyes back and took a breath. "Riiight... The translation wasn't established yet when she first introduced herself."

She set her tea down, promptly cleaned up her face with a flash of her horn and addressed me. "Her full name is Fizzlepop Berrytwist, but she frequently goes by Tempest for short. Where on Equis did you get the idea she was called Sparkler?"

"Is it a bad thing? like when I accidentally called her a h-"

Starlight quickly interrupted me. "No, nowhere near that bad. It's a nickname given to unicorns that are late bloomers with their horns. It isn't always a bad nickname, but it's never a good one."

A small pause of awkwardness filled the air for a few seconds before I spoke up. "The doctor at the prison is where I heard it."

"Ah," Sunburst chimed in, doing his best to alleviate the mood. "Common slang for any unicorn prisoner that starts trouble. Not something officially condoned, but it's occasional under the radar use does tend to keep the prisoners in line."

The awkwardness still wasn't quite alleviated, though. So after a few more seconds Fluttershy changed the subject. "So what do you think we can do for getting Tempest out?"

Author's Note:

the phrase "Your words cut deeper than any knife," is from the series Naruto, back when they were in the land of the waves fighting the demon of the hidden mist. episode 19 of season 1. It is once again miss quoted. Correctly quoted it would be "Your words cut deep, deeper than any blade."