Epilogue
Hannah Hawes, Shop Assistant
Epilogue
Admiral Biscuit
Daring doesn't bring the airship to ground until you're well clear of the ravine and any pursuers. Even then, she stops short of actually landing, but she is kind enough to throw out a rope ladder from the cockpit.
By then, you've broken off the arrow just flush with your calf and wrapped it with the hem of your shirt—not great, as bandages go, but serviceable. The Orrery is safe in your backpack, still in its burlap sack. There probably isn't a curse on anyone who touches it directly, but it doesn't pay to take chances like that.
You're faced with a short sprint across the ground and then you catch on to the rope ladder and climb your way up to the cockpit.
•••
Daring is a decent airship pilot, and gets you out of the forest before dumping all the helium that's left in the undamaged bladders. Whether by luck or skill, she times the landing decently well, and while it's technically a crashlanding, the airship is probably repairable. Without having a proper docking facility or anypony to attend to the mooring lines, that's really the best that could be hoped for.
“Any landing you can walk away from,” you tell her as you limp away from the crashed airship. The stunned crew is slowly making their way out of the wreckage—you'd untied them just before the final descent. It was too late for them to do anything to prevent you from carrying out your plan, and now that Dr. Caballeron wasn't there to order them around, they were plenty happy to just walk away. They had little interest in pursuing you.
“I can't believe you jumped off the temple,” Daring says. “I knew you humans were crazy, but I didn't think you were that crazy.”
“I saw it done in a movie,” you tell her. “And it worked out alright there. How long do you think we have until Dr. Caballeron gets out of the forest?”
“I don't know.” She glances back at the trees. “I'd like to think a couple days, but I also think it would be stupid to underestimate him.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” you say. “So probably finding the nicest hotel and getting a proper meal and spending a few hours at the spa are out.”
“I'd say so, yeah.”
“Instead, we're going to camp out by the railroad tracks and hop the next train out of town.”
“That's the smartest plan.” She looks at you thoughtfully. “If it was just me, I'd take off my pith helmet and put on a cloak and then nopony would know who I was, but you kind of stand out.”
“Like a sore thumb,” you say. “I know. Let's hope the first train by is a passenger train and that we can convince the conductor to let us on.”
“Not much chance of that,” she says.
“Well, then let's hope that the first train by has a nice, cozy box car carrying a load of feather pillows.”
•••
Of course, it isn't.
It's a boxcar, and it's carrying mostly nails, and it's leaky. And it starts to rain almost as soon as you climb aboard.
You get as comfortable as you can, which, truth be told, isn’t actually all that comfortable. After making sure that the doors are both wedged shut and both of you are as safe as it’s possible to be in a moving train car, Daring finds the driest spot on the floor and stretches out. She yawns and tucks her head under her wing like a bird.
You’re not so lucky when it comes to finding a comfortable position, but you’ve got a couple of tricks up your sleeve, as well. You find a crate of nails that at least hasn’t got splinters and lean up against that, then pull your pant leg up to reveal a small flask of brandy strapped to your leg. It’s your emergency supply, and luckily the henchponies didn’t find that, either, when they patted you down.
A shower would be nice—a proper shower, and not the cold rain that’s sluicing through gaps in the roof. That was really an oversight by whoever loaded this particular box car; somebody’s going to wind up with a load of rusty nails.
Your bed’s also beckoning you. Your bed which is soft and cushy and not a hard edge of wood that’s trying to work its way between two vertebrae. You glance down at Daring and consider asking her if she’d mind being used as a pillow, but decide that you probably shouldn’t, tempting though it is.
•••
Monday morning comes all too soon. Between trains and debriefing, you wind up getting limited medical attention. Strangely, pony medicine is easily able to cure all sorts of weird curses and magical maladies, but is apparently nearly useless for mundane arrow wounds and bruises. For that, the best they seem to have to offer is bandages and antibacterial spells.
You didn't even get any proper spa time, just a quick shower on the train back to Manehattan. By the time you finally get back to your apartment you’re so exhausted that you just collapse into bed. So you have to rush in the morning to get showered and make yourself as presentable as possible.
It could be worse—your pants hide one arrow-wound, and your work shirt mostly covers the bandages on your arm. There's not much you can do about the scrape on your cheek, or the black eye that you somehow got. You don't actually remember how that happened.
Jim Jam, of course, is bright and cheery, but his smile falters a little bit as he notices you.
“I tripped over a rug,” you say. “In my apartment. This weekend.”
“Oh.” He considers this for a minute. “You know, I've been thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe instead of coming to the gym for strength training, you should come for acrobatics practice. This is what, the fourth time this year you’ve tripped in your apartment?”
“I dunno.” You tie on your shop apron and push back all the memories of the weekend. It’s easier to lie to ponies; they believe that your bipedal stance and lack of tail make you naturally clumsy. “I'm just not really into that kind of thing. I prefer relaxing on my days off.”
“You don't know what you're missing,” he says, turning the sign on the door to Open. “It'd do you a lot of good.”
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8895287
It's a breed of pony from Turkey.
A fast trip because they only have 20 minutes of an episode instead of an hour an half of movie?
I thought Whistle stop would be after it because of the Rings Things Pyramid?
Defnitely go in for acrobatics. And Parkour.
And try and get some unicorns learning Mend?
I'm always a sucker for a good Daring do. Neat, fast paced and interesting.
Good enough to make me forget that dumb 2nd person heresy in fact.
8895294
The first thing that popped up in google was a Turkish touring agency.
Disposable minions make the job of trap detection much easier. And it cuts down on retirement benefits.
8895340
Acrobatics and parkour are skills that any adventurer needs.
In Pathfinder, one of my best characters ever (in terms of durability) was a monk with high ranks in acrobatics and tumble. We once cleared a dungeon by having my character go through, activate the traps, and then just jump out of the way . . . it was faster and had a better success rate than our rogue finding them.
He also had the feat 'throw anything,' which was a lot of fun in combat. I once tossed a halfling in that campaign . . . as a weapon.
8895356
Well, I kinda had to do that for the contest. Even though first person was allowed, when it was first announced, it was second person or go home, and I figured that I ought to stick with that. At least prove that it can be done well if one tries.
8895401
i.imgflip.com/uxyg5.jpg
This was a fun little weekend adventure.
8895586
You need the feats Cut From The Air, Smash From The Air?
First one lets you deflect Arrows, the second, unlicked by getting the first, lest you deflect Magic Missile? But its level limited I think to Maud, L16 or something.
8895575
Is that how you call them? In french they're called "Fou" (crazy). Not much better.
A change in both tense and narrator? Whoops.
Actually, this brings up something that bugs me about this fic, consistently, and it comes in the form of a question.
Why was this told in the 2nd person?
A fun, fast-paced adventure. Indeed, the jump cuts to ever more absurd temple defenses were some of my favorite parts. Thank you for a delightful read, and best of luck in the contest.
Pony pillow is best pillow
Hey, some practice in that couldn't hurt, considering how much you end up doing it
Remarks and Corrections:
> “I saw it done in a movie,” You tell her.
Shouldn't have a capital letter on "you".
> somebody’d going to wind up with a load of rusty nails.
I think that should be "somebody’[s] going to"
8896534
That was part of the prompt he wrote this for,
8895955
I think I did have Catch Arrows. Which meant that if someone fired an arrow at me, I could grab it from the air and then throw it back at them.
8896534
Dammit. Correction made, thank you!
Because that was the harder version of the contest. The expert level, if you will. It started out being only 2nd person FiE, but the judges relaxed the rules a bit. The main factors, though, were difficult and rare.
I like doing things that other people don't do (I'm pretty sure I've got the only clopfic starring Hayseed Turnip Truck as half the tango), so I decided to take the more difficult route and see if I could make it work as a second-person story.
8896572
Absurd temple defenses are the best part of writing a story like this.
You're welcome! And thanks!
8896742
Agreed. Although boobs are good pillows, too . . . maybe Daring and Hannah should have taken turns dozing on each other.
I'm just imagining it now. Jim Jam manages to get her enrolled in some ropes course or acrobatics course or something like that and the first time she goes out there she sets a new course record.
Corrections made, thank you!
8897162
Wouldnt a really difficult one be The Story Of Hex,
Magic in 0x 0F, Zeroth, Fouth person viewpoints?
Or how the computer was born in Equestria?
Had bad results with Anthills Inside though. I was brought up with what current users would consider to be OASIS.
8897171
Pretty much what I was thinking too, heh.
8897183
I feel like someone has tried fourth person before. Not sure how you'd do zeroth person; that might just be what artists would call a still life.
Did read a really good first person story once where the narrator was killed in the beginning and his dead body narrated the rest of the story.
It's one of Skinner's pigeon boxes.
Basic, DoS 2.0 and 3.0. Plus I learned a little bit of some generic programming language that was used in the mid 90s, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was.
8897232
Or maybe something insane like this:
8897440
Ive noticed that current machines run the old interpreted scripting languages almost as fast as the machine code native hardware machines did that those languages were first run on. And youve seen the fun games and programs that were possible then. And I dont mean just text interfaces. I mean multimedia machines.
8896193
Well, they are crazy.
8897504
I remember back when clock speeds were going up faster than games could handle . . . tried to play some of my Apple ][e games on a friend's Apple GS--they were completely unplayable.;
I have an old Compaq that lets you set the clock speed so that doesn't happen. It normally runs at 12mHz, but you can turn it down all the way to 4 if 12 is too fast.
8897131
Now you've mentioned it that way you've got to work that into a story.
8897486
Had to look it up since the video isn't available in my region, but... daaayum. That girl's got some moves!
8898133
I've actually been considering that for years. Just never found the right story.
petdiys.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Bra-Horse-Fly-Mask.jpg
Sam would potentially do it if needed, but she hasn't got any bras.
8899293
I know, right?
I can unreservedly say that this is the most fun I've had with a second-person fic.
The fact that it's also the only second-person fic I've read through is irrelevant.
I finally had a chance to read this today, and fun was had. Thank you, sir!
8895401 Ah, the Corporate America approach to employee management.
8912815
Thanks!
There's probably some other ones out there. A lot of people liked my filly anon stories, and those three are all second person.
8917703
I would totally use Daring Do as a pillow.
8941456
Unfortunately, I cannot read or write at work because mine hands and eyes are busy doing workstuff.
8941731
Depending on the day, I might have a fair bit of downtime. I could go through a list of my stories and figure out which ones were written some or entirely at work, although that might take a bit of doing. I can say that the Fancy Pants/Fleur/Blueblood scene in the latest chapter of OPP was written at work, Applejack Rents a Bobcat was entirely written at work, No Time For Caution was done at work, Spring Comes to Snow Hill (partially), The Trouble with Unicorns IV, Random Horse Fact . . . the list goes on. Lots of Silver Glow's Journal was written in places other than my writing desk, as well. . . .
A famous explorer once said: 'the extraordinay isn't in who we are but in what we do.'
Having just finished my second playthrough of Rise of the Tomb Raider yesterday, this was a satisfying read. Fast paced second person present tense works very well for a setting like this.
9042970
Good words to live by, I think. Even if what we do is just write ponyfic.
Thanks! I had a lot of fun with this one.
You can sequel this. Like, a bunch.
9098219
I totally could.
The only thing I’d have to decide is if to do it in second person or some other POV.