Room for Improvement, Methinks

by Impossible Numbers

Nostalgic Utopia

Sunrise on Speaker’s Corner—Central Park, Manehattan—and ex-Captain Throwback eagerly placed his crate and hopped on top. He only winced at the arthritis needling his knees.

“There is an Equestria where no villains survive. A pony wouldn’t wake up to find their neighbours replaced by changelings. Alleys could be safely walked down without having one’s magic sucked out of one’s face. You should attend weddings full of pure laughter and free from terrified screams.”

As Throwback spoke, he saw the crowds around him, fifty years ago. Many nodding, many saying “hear hear”, many drinking in his words with their wide eyes.

“Oh, there’d be conflict. Daily life's too full of challenges and misunderstandings for no conflict. We'd struggle to raise our shops, make birthdays that didn’t involve smashing the cake, and balance the tastes of the elite with the pleasures of farmhoofs. Oh, rest assured this isn’t pie-in-the-sky.

“But these villains are contaminants. To a mare looking after animals or breaking airspeed records, the apocalypse outranks even the most soul-shattering of knocks. The villains can’t be allowed to live.

“Imagine our world: the villains wouldn’t merely have been foiled at the finish. They would never have raced. They would never even see the starting line, thousands of years ago, when the world was a wild garden and needed the secateurs rather than the spade.”

As he spoke, he looked around hopefully. Ponies walked by—and more donkeys and minotaurs and griffons than he’d ever remembered—laughing at each other or chatting eagerly. One or two old-timers walked their dogs and waved at him. Disappointed, he waved back.

“Think on it, my fellow ponies, think on it! Why did Discord survive in stone? Why was Nightmare Moon merely banished, and a thousand years left to prove she had no future? Whence Tirek lasted unto the present, and changelings allowed to fester in the wilds? Security delayed is security destroyed.

“Let me tell you:

“The horn that cast the friendship magic and the hoof that held an Element of Harmony—it’s no different than the horn that casts shield spells instead of an annihilator hex, the hoof that wields a baton and not a blade. The magic is only as good as its master.”

As he spoke, the sun peaked. Vendors, trays, and carts set up along the path and on the grass. He had to fight against the smells and sizzles. Never on his fruitless vigil had he succumbed to so much as a carrot-in-a-bun.

“What I have to say may shock and offend many, but I speak only from pragmatism, not malice:

“Princess Celestia is soft.

“She only incapacitates, as meagrely as possible. The result: chaos ruled, love sucked dry, our magic turned against us by a demon. Over and over, we almost perish. Over and over, we’re pushed towards the cliff and expected to thank our stars we don’t go over. What would it take for us to see the stupidity behind this so-called good luck?”

As he spoke, his knees and the sunlight weakened. The two or so ponies who actually stood and listened to him were now shaking their heads. They were younguns, he noticed disapprovingly. One of them heckled him, shouting, but Throwback's speech was an old steam train with no brakes.

“Here is my regiment’s solution. All magical artefacts—the Elements, the Rainbow Power, the alicorns if necessary—must be registered to an independent authority. Preferably a military one, well-versed in security measures and qualified to handle such power. Who have proven their loyalty over and over. Ideally, the right to wield such power should be as rigorously screened as the right to perform surgery on a patient. It is, after all, the peacekeepers who remove cancers and diseases from a healthy society.

“We urge you to consider this proposal in the spirit it is given: as an aid to safeguard our fair realm. And not to dismiss it as the ravings of deviants. History needs to deviate when the status quo is no longer keeping the demons away from our hearts and minds… and bodies… and… souls…”

Finally, he stopped speaking. Night lights burned the city peacefully. His corner of the park became a black pit.

Ex-Captain Throwback wanted to die protecting his country. Not once had he ever thought—laughing with buddies who’d all passed away before him—that he’d die failing it.

He was alone.

Sighing, he took his crate and shuffled off to find the soup kitchen. He wasn't even sure he believed his own speech anymore.