EXPLOSIONS?
“OH! MY! GOSH! THAT! WAS! AWESOME!” Flurry Heart exploded as she was halfway out the door and queasy as she was, she managed a few halfhearted pronks. “EXPLOSIONS! KERPOW! PIRATES! FULL-BODY EXPLODIFICATION! RAMMING SPEED! BOMBS! ADMIRAL ASSWHUP! BURNING! BEST! HISTORY! PROGRAM! EVER!”
Skyla was next out the door, and she stumbled off to one side, also queasy, but for far different reasons than her sister. She gagged, her tongue lolled out, and her eyes bulged wide in their sockets. Reaching out a wing, Cadance tried to comfort her youngest daughter, who appeared as though she might toss her cookies at any second.
“Well,” Cadance said, almost gasping, “that was most certainly… educational?”
Shining Armor allowed the door to close behind him and he let out a chuckle. “I feel inspired. Like… I want to join the guard and blow stuff up. That was no history film, that was pure, unfiltered propaganda. Oh, and explosions. Wow, that was a lot of explosions for a forty minute film.”
“Not a minute was boring!” Flurry pronked right into her father and almost bowled him over. “Why can’t my lessons at home be like that? It was like somepony made a movie about Dim—”
“Oh no, Flurry! No! Darling, if there ever is a movie about Dim and the Great War, you are not allowed to watch it!”
“AW! MOM!” When Flurry turned around to give her mother what for, she almost knocked her father over again. “I want to be an airship captain! I want to blow stuff to smithereens! Can we visit the museum again tomorrow so I can—”
“Definitely not!” Cadance hefted poor little Skyla up into the air and slung the filly over her back. “Skyla, baby, are you going to be okay?”
“URP!” Panicked, Skyla pressed a hoof over her mouth like a cork and lay sprawled upon her mother’s back, her face a distinct shade of green. She urped again, then again, and then a third time.
“The pegasus dogfighting camera was amazing! Barrel roll! Chattering guns! WHOOSH!”
“It was pretty amazing… now calm down, Flurry.” Reaching out with his foreleg, Shining Armor pulled his oldest daughter close to him. It was a struggle to contain her because Flurry was already stronger than he was by far. Little Flurry was an immense titan of strength already and the little overstimulated filly posed a danger if she didn’t calm down.
“The Firehawks, Dad! Those were amazing! I didn’t know that pegasus ponies could drink alchemical go-go juice that made them immune to fire and then they had those flamethrowers to set pirates on fire and airships too and they went around flying everywhere and WHOOSH! Everything was on fire and exploding! I want a flamethrower!”
“Most certainly not!” Cadance stomped one hoof against the cobblestones.
“The Firehawks are posted here! They call Depot Island home! Can we say hello?”
“Can you stop shouting?” Cadance asked.
“NO!” Flurry strained against her father’s restraint.
“SHUN!”
Shining Armor’s barked command caused the most peculiar calamity on the street around him. Almost everypony went still as a statue. Some ponies almost fell over and some bumped into one another. Wings snapped out in salute, or hooves, for the ground-pounders that had no wings. Flurry went absolutely rigid after snapping clumsily to attention. Everything came to a standstill.
One rather drunken guardspony struggled to remain upright.
“As you were,” Shining Armor barked, but not much happened. “Sorry about that. Little Flurry was getting too excited. You know how it goes. As you were. Stand down.”
“Shiny”—Cadance’s use of her husband’s nickname caused a few brave snickers—“I want to get the girls calmed down and showered. Back to the yacht?”
“Sure thing, Cadance.” Grinning, Shining Armor picked up Flurry, seated her astride his back, and then waved goodbye to the stunned soldiers standing on the street.
It was a blessing that the yacht had climate control, otherwise, Shining Armor feared that it would be an oven. He stood in the shower, pressed against the wall, with very little of him getting wet. Cadance took up most of the room in the shower, but she lacked the space to spread her wings or do much of anything. As cramped as it was, she insisted on taking a shower together, a few precious moments alone while Flurry and Skyla showered.
“Been thinking all day, Shiny,” Cadance said to her husband. “I got a lot of reading done while you had your nap in that hammock.”
“Is that so?” he asked in reply, and then he waited for Cadance to say what was on her mind.
“I was thinking about what you said about biased numbers, and I delved into the reports offered by the Traditionalist Conservative Family Coalition.” Cadance paused for a moment and stuck her face in front of the showerhead so that the cool water could soak her mane, but it ended up going up her nose.
Shining Armor laughed.
Cadance sputtered a bit, shook her head, let out a chuckle, and when she recovered enough to speak, she continued, “I did my very best to see if those numbers had been fudged somehow. What I saw scared me, and I was really hoping that it was somehow wrong. Shiny, I don’t think it is.”
“What did you see?” he asked.
“The population continues to rise, but the number of families continues to fall. Shiny, the numbers are very thorough, and I don’t think that the Traditionalist Conservative Family Coalition created biased statistics. In small towns across Equestria, families remain stable and the numbers remain rather constant. Ponyville stands out for having a high number of families for the population size. The number of herd families seem to be on the rise since the trouble with Mister Mariner—but not in the big cities. I think that there really is a problem, Shiny.”
“So this isn’t just hype and panic?” Shining Armor, cautious, wondered if he was willing to accept this at face value.
“This is a new era for psychology and psychiatry, Shiny,” Cadance said to her husband. “Our understanding of these sciences are minimal, really. A lot of what we thought we knew has since been discounted. Some of my best and brightest minds are suggesting that big overcrowded cities might be breaking the herd structure in some way that we don’t understand.”
“Help me understand this, Cadance.”
“Well, in small tribal groups where there aren’t many ponies, each life matters. The smaller the herd, the more fierce and tight-knit the group is. It is a well-established and accepted observation. The larger a herd gets, the more members it has, the more relaxed it becomes. Riskier behaviours are engaged in. Risk versus reward takes on skewed meaning.”
“Okay.”
“In a big overcrowded city, there are simply too many ponies and individuals become lost in the herd. Parental instincts become dulled. The need to stick together, to stay together, to bond together, it seems to go away. Married couples drift apart. Divorce rates are unfathomably high. And the number of foals dumped into city orphanariums is absolutely staggering. Lives just aren’t as precious when there are so many of them.”
“So… what I am hearing you tell me is, that our own innate herd structure is working against us. What many considered to be our greatest asset for survival in a hostile world has gone awry somehow?” Turning his head, Shining Armor did his best to look his wife in the eye.
“As the Princess of Love, it falls on me to figure this out. Shining Armor, I don’t even know where to begin. This is a monumental undertaking. After what I read this morning, it’s left me shook up all day. I tried to be skeptical about it, but that just made it worse. There’s a problem, Shiny.”
“I’m sorry, Cadance. I wish I hadn’t said what I said. I didn’t know it would make you so upset.”
“Even worse, small town Equestria doesn’t even see this problem. Their families are doing okay. Just fine. Everything appears to be okay. So from the looks of things, they refuse to believe that the problems in our big cities exist. The Traditionalist Conservative Family Coalition is trying very hard to politicise this issue and are being called reactionist crackpots. That’s the thing, Shiny. Everypony seems to respond to this issue with the old idiom, ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics.’ But the trouble is real, I assure you.”
“So where do we start?” he asked.
Her reply, after a moment of hesitation, “I don’t know.”
What comes up must also come down, and Shining Armor could see the signs that his two daughters were crashing. Skyla’s sleep schedule was off; she had slept through most of the morning, pushing her need for a nap to a much later part of the day. However, as late as it was, he worried that if she napped now, she would be up half the night. Flurry too, had her sleep schedule interrupted; she had been up barfing all night, slept for most of the morning, and she had become severely overstimulated at the museum.
Now, the two fillies approached what was sure to be an epic meltdown, should it happen. Ticking timebombs, the both of them. Cadance, now in private, had dropped her cheerful facade and was openly brooding. She lay on the floor of the common room, sprawled on her back, allowing the overhead ceiling fan to blow on her exposed stomach. Skyla was curled up in a chair, still looking disturbed. Flurry Heart seemed to vibrate and she twitched at every sound.
As for himself, Shining Armor wasn’t sure what he was feeling.
Sitting down in a chair, he scooped up Flurry and plopped her down onto the chair beside him. She squirmed for a bit, perhaps she wanted to flee—cuddling with her father was gross after all—but then much to Shining Armor’s surprise, his daughter settled against him. To have her willingly snuggle against him and not try to wiggle away left him in a rather emotional state.
“Why do foals happen?” Flurry asked in a low voice.
It took Shining Armor several seconds to register this question, and to realise that his daughter hadn’t asked how foals were made; no, she wanted to know why they happened. What did she mean by this? What a strange question. What an odd question. Flurry wanted to know why and he wasn’t sure how to respond to her question.
“Well… Flurry… I… well, your mother and I—”
“No talking about special Mommy and Daddy hugs,” Flurry said, rolling her eyes. “So gross. That’s just nasty. Ugh! I just want to know why you made me. Or Skyla for that matter.”
Taken aback, Shining Armor glanced in Cadance’s direction for support, but his wife had her eyes closed, her wings spread across the floor, and was cooling off beneath the fan. Why had he made Flurry? Because Cadance wanted to do so and he had gone along with it, because, why not? It seemed like a good idea at the time. After the suggestion of having a foal was made, they had gone at it with reckless abandon, thoroughly enjoying one another’s company in the most unlikely of places every chance they got.
Was this something that he could tell Flurry?
“I don’t understand,” Flurry said, surprising him. “You and Mom had this wonderful storybook marriage. The Princess of Love had found her Prince after defeating the evil bugs. Happy ending, blah, blah, blah. You and Mom were free to dance, to have fun, do stuff, be all romantic and gross with each other, and doing adult stuff… but then you had me… and let’s face it, I’m gross!”
Shining Armor gave his daughter a squeeze. “Flurry—”
“No, really, I’ve heard the stories. Princess Diaper Dumper. I was a lot of work. You and Mom had each other and you had your duties, and I guess somehow you had just enough time to do both somehow but then I came along and I’m not stupid, okay? I know that the two of you had to give up something. There’s only so many hours in a day and both of you have very demanding jobs. So why did you ruin your lives by having me?”
“Well,” Shining Armor began, “Fluffalump, I wouldn’t say our lives were ruined. Even with you around, we found a way to have Skyla—”
“And you made the problem even worse!” Flurry looked up at her father, baffled and confused. “Why did you do this to yourselves? I don’t understand. Look at me… I’m a mess. I burp, fart, barf, and do all kinds of gross things. Last night was a gross night, for sure. I’m needy and I’m kinda brain dead and I am constantly getting into trouble and causing you headaches and I think it is pretty safe to say that I ruined your lives. If I was you, I’d be disappointed.”
Shining Armor desperately wanted Cadance’s assistance on this, but his wife appeared to be in a coma, leaving him to face this dreadful moment alone. He looked down into Flurry’s eyes, and she looked up at him, and he found himself at a total loss for words. When he glanced over at Skyla, he found his other daughter staring at him with wide, curious eyes, and this made everything worse somehow.
“I wreck everything. I wrecked the Crystal Cotillion. I totally blew it with the ice orcs. Nopony trusts me. I keep getting into trouble and when I try to make things better I only make things worse. I’m pretty certain that I ruined Sumac’s life and future with the whole Crystal Cotillion mess. I spent all of last night barfing and I’m pretty sure that you and Mom wanted to do stuff together last night but I ruined it. So I’d like to come right out and say it, having foals is stupid.”
“Flurry… I don’t know where stuff like this comes from, but it worries me.”
“I was in the arcade today… playing skeeball. And when I zoned out so I could keep making perfects shots over and over, this is what my brain started to think about, and I had to fight to make my brain shut up, and that’s why I kept missing shots. I had trouble zoning out. All I could think about was you holding me last night and helping me barf. That’s a lot to do for a pony.”
“Flurry… I’ll be honest. I didn’t put a lot of thought into making you. It was a fun thing to do.” Shining Armor heard a grunt from Cadance, but feeling brave, he continued onward towards his own destruction. “I didn’t think much of the consequences and your mother and I, we sort of just lived in the moment. We love each other a great deal, and so making you was a natural expression of that. And to be even more honest, after you came along, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with you. How do I put this? You took me by surprise even though we’d planned to have you.”
“Huh?” Flurry pressed her front hooves together and looked up at her father while leaning against him.
“I knew you were coming, but I had no idea what to do with you when you came. You destroyed everything. You were a headache and a hassle. I had to defend the Empire and Equestria from the danger that you posed. But I must confess… I was proud.”
Cadance groaned.
“I was proud, so very proud, because I had made you. And when you started to show a little control and a little personality, I really fell in love with you. I’ll confess, I had to learn how to appreciate you and it took me some time. But you didn’t take anything away from Cadance and I… you gave us something new to do together. You brought us closer together because we had to do so much to care for you.”
“Really?” Flurry’s face was an equal mix of doubt and hope.
“Really,” he replied. “Not to mention moments like this one, where you challenge me and force me to think. You’re my friend, Flurry.”
“That’s not much of an answer,” she said, whispering to her father. “I’m still not sure why you had me. I’ve been having a lot of doubts lately.”
“That’s understandable, Fluffalump.”
“Dad.” Flurry closed her eyes and her ears fell back into her mane. “You really, really need to stop saying that. It’s super-embarrassing and every time you call me that I want to crawl into a hole and die.”
“Okay, I’ve listened to what you’ve said,” was his ambiguous reply, though he committed to nothing and no promises were made. “Look, Flurry… I was so happy about having you that I also made Skyla—”
“But you haven’t made any more since,” Skyla said to her father, and this caused Cadance to start chuckling.
“Two was perfect.” Shining Armor pulled Flurry closer and gave her a hard squeeze. “So, girls, what are we going to do for dinner? What would you like to do? Now don’t say ice cream and make me regret asking you this. Any suggestions, girls?”
Hugging Flurry even tighter, he awaited a reply…
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Hopefully not butter and cucumber sandwiches. Ugh.
Father/Daughter bonding time. Good times.
Given Flurry's taste's I wonder if Equestria or Equestria Girls World has a Sabaton equivalent. That's the sort of thing that would be right up her alley.
Disclaimer: I haven't read this chapter yet.
8915487
I was hoping more along the lines of, "The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try and take over the world!"
8915646
I'm picturing Flurry taking part in this, now, lol.
8915802 That wou;ld have been a much better joke, yes.
But seriously. Who the hell likes butter and cucucmber it just doesn't work
8916299
The British, that's who.
8916336 But... I'm British..! Was my whole life a lie? Did I always like butter and cucumber sandwiches... and never realise it!??
Excuse me just one moment while I go have an existential crisis over butter and cucumber sandwiches.
Does the equestrian military use different traditions than the US/UK militaries? I assume Shiny was calling everyone to attention, which is traditionally pronounced as "Tench-hut!"
Not "Atench-hut," by the way, a lot of people get boot-fucked for adding the extra syallable to the front. Its like a psychology thing, some people just cannot pronounce the phrase correctly until they've been yelled at many times.
8916373
I chose to focus on a different syllable, and fell back on Colonial Era British military stuff. It seemed fitting, I think?
Having lived in both a big city and a small town, I can absolutely attest that living in a city destroys or at least seriously impairs one’s ability to form meaningful bonds with most others.
Curiously, it also seems to impair the drive to want to do things oneself, and instead incentivizes handing the responsibility off to some faceless organization on the grounds that said organization is better equipped to handle such a responsibility and it isn’t the sort of thing an individual should have to worry about.
Sometimes, I wonder if I’m too cynical about some things.
8916705
Possibly.
Shiny's reminding me of one of my favourite songs: You Ruined Everything (In The Nicest Way).
Sounds like a fun museum trip.
This military town may never move again.
One alicorn foal is a surprise, two shows the pattern, a third would just be asking for it.
8916684
I've got friends who live in various places and the ones in the big cities seem to have healthier social circles. The farther out you go, the more effort it is to meet up and hang out with people, basically.
And statistically, you get the most divorces in the most rural states. I didn't find anything breaking it down more than that, though. But as far as I can tell, all the philosophizing here is pony-specific and probably shouldn't be treated as an author treatise on the real world.
I don’t know. Both my parents grew up rural.
My mom hated it, being both the pretty one and the smart one it was hell for her, parenting also was bad.
My dad grew up working for everything. Made friends and was close with family, but was never satisfied with that life.
A city brought them together.
And as for me myself. I love the city. So many people you can meet, general go lucky attitude, always company, places to go and have fun. When I visit family I can’t imagine living there.
In general I find cities happier.