Judgement and Comics
The crowd in front of the podium had barely moved in the thirty minutes Arca, Razzle, and Celestia had been gone. The only major difference was that Emerald Essence was being glared at by royal guards to make sure she didn't leave. Not that she planned to run away, though. She had to minimize the damages and head for the best outcome for her. She was working on a plan when without warning, an orange meteor shot down from the mountains and crashed into the back of Alchemiracles. Razzle swooped down to help, and Celestia landed on the stage with one of her classic 'I am not angry, just disappointed' faces. Showtime.
"Your majesty, I-"
"Silence. Not one word until Arcane gets here."
Luna rolled her eyes at Celestia. "Thou art still sticking to the rules of a fair trial, sister? Dost thou really think he will sit still for any amount of time?"
That earned her a wink and a smile from the solar alicorn. "I have my ways."
Meanwhile, the door to Alchemirackes opened and Arca trotted out in a new lab coat and goggles, seemong pleased with himself. Juniper was the first to rush over and trot alongside him. "Boss! What happened? How long have you-"
"So... I kinda forgot how to land. It happens, Juniper! I'm more worried that the town won't accept me now, but I trust Celestia." He paused for a second, then added, "If… if you don't wanna be around me because of what you saw, I won't blame you…"
"Are you kidding, boss? This changes nothing! You're still the same pony. It just means you have a few new ways to wreck the town every other week, and we're used to that! Geez, I can practically hear Silver adding to the lists already…" Juniper glaned away from her mentor, and noticed they had wandered somewhere other than the main stage where Celestia was still waiting. "Um… Boss?"
"Yeah, Juniper?"
"Why are we in Razzle's yard? Princess Celestia is over there."
"I know. Unlike most ponies, I have my priorities in order." He glanced around the various tables Razzle had set up for the exchange, and seemed to be growing worried. "Wait, where did it go?!"
From across the crowd, Celestia held up a certain comic book. "Looking for this, Arcane?" And with those words, Arca galloped off towards the stage, leaving behind an apprentice who wasn't sure whether to groan or facehoof. Deciding to avoid squeezing his way through the crowd and the guards, he simply teleported, appearing in a flash of light at Celestia's hooves, sitting politely while his tail wagged like a dog being told it was time for a walk.
"I love you. You are best princess. Whatever you want me to say, just gimmie the comic!" His expression fell as Celestia shook her head. "Pleeeeeease? I need it!"
"Behave, and answer my questions, Arca, and it's yours. Deal?"
"Ugh, fine. I'll go stand over by Luna…" Slowly, he moped over, clearly upset he'd not be reading anytime soon. He shuffled over to the pair of thrones the princesses were supposed to sit in, hopped onto Celestia's seat without a second thought, and summoned up a bottle of apple juice. With a crazy straw. Sluuuuuurrrrrrp.
Celestia shook her head. Some things never change, she thought to herself. "Ignoring my close friend's… eccentricities, which I'm sure most of this town is quite skilled at," she began, "I must ask why you hit Arcane. He may have his…" She glanced back. Sluuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrp. "...quirks, but he's a wonderful pony and the town wouldn't have the same energy it does if he wasn't here. If you had just moved here and didn't know, that I'd gladly excuse as long as you apologized, but thanks to the file you provided, I can see you've been here long enough to know that-" Sluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrr- "ARCANE! Will you please stop making noise with your apple juice?! I am trying to be a leader here!"
Arca blinked a few times, looked down at his nearly empty bottle of juice, and then back at the princess. "Sorry, Celestia," he responded with genuine regret. "Would you prefer grape juice instead? Or maybe orange juice?"
"Put it away, Arca. Now then, as I was saying, unless you've been actively avoiding him, you should know that he's ageless like I am, extremely wealthy, a founding member of the town, and not about to do whatever noisy thing he was about to do…" Celestia glared back at Arca, who had somehow acquired a bowl of nachos and was moments from biting down on one. He sheepishly grinned and shoved the bowl over to Luna, chomping down on the chip with a loud CRUNCH. "...regardless, most of your claims about his 'lies' are actually truth. So why, pray tell, are you after him? As princess of Equestria, I don't take too kindly to the alicorn of Innovation being hurt."
"Does that mean I'm in trouble for crashing earlier?"
"You hurting yourself accidentally doesn't count."
Emerald took a step forward. "Princess, in all due respect, I don't think anypony in town knew he was an alicorn. Does… does that make him a prince?"
"No, he is not a prince. He's my personal alchemist, though."
Emerald sighed. She really, really, really didn't want to do this, but to minimize damages it had to be done. She took a few reluctant steps forward and looked at the pony who had caused her so much stress. "You don't even remember my name, do you?"
Arca set down his bag of pretzels and shrugged. "Sounds like we don't really know each other. Although… now that I get a good look at you, I swear I've sensed your magical signature before. Hmmm… maybe I'm overthinking it. I'm Arcane Catalyst, but most folks call me Arca! If I haven't told you before, I'm cursed to forget folks who don't buy from my shop, so if you want something not too expensive for one bit so I can remember you, just let me know! It's a one-time deal."
"Really? A curse? I suppose… that almost makes sense." Emerald took another look at Arca. Maybe, she thought, she didn't know him as well as she thought. Maybe he'd be a good business partner, or an ally. Maybe-
Suddenly, Arca looked up from his nachos he had reclaimed from Luna. "Oh yeah, now I remember! You're the pony who barged into my lab and tried casting the forbidden spell Dominion on me to get me to sell my shop! That was it! Hey, where'd you learn dark magic? Do you know any dark potion recipes? I never learned any of those, and I bet they're super dangerous and probably illegal but I bet Celestia would let me try anyway and hey where'd she go?" He noticed some guards dragging off an infuriated Emerald Essence, a flicker of dark power in her eyes held at bay by the suppression ring affixed to her horn. "Hey, wait! I have so many questions! And I don't even know your name! Come baaaack!"
Celestia, who was glaring at Emerald alongside the guard escort, noticed Arca galloping towards them and pulled her trump card to buy enough time to get Emerald away: she tossed the comic book. She spared one last glance at her scatterbrained friend doing a happy dance over the rare find, and then looked back at Emerald. "Miss Essence, I'm going to go over all the business deals you company has made that seem to favor you, and investigate them all for dark magic interference. After that, you are going to jail for a long, long time."
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Priorities!
Ah, both fun and satisfying. A fitting conclusion.
"Alicorn of Innovation," huh? A fitting title for the mad lad.
Heh, fun.
Y'know, I forget Emerald did that. She hasn't really been the least bit threatening at all since trying to cast dark magic
I knew this was the outcome as soon as she said she will "sic the princess" after Arca.
To the slimy scrap of equine excrement that calls itself Emerald Essence:
All of my hate,
Eroraf
P.S.: Go floof yourself with a sharp rock.
In this case, I think you did yourself a disservice by writing in your typically minimalist fashion. A trial's usually a fairly tense moment, but a completely standard level of brevity and levity was experienced. Fleshing out the character's responses and interpretations to the events around them, without even necessarily touching how Arcane Catalyst responded to the whole thing, would have made this particular moment, which has been building up for some time, much more satisfying with respect to its narrative heft.
And thus, Emerald Essence's business empire was destroyed and many formerly wealthy ponies made poor suddenly found themselves wealthy again.
I think you meant seeming.
9622686
Make that a rabid cacturion
That's actually pretty impressive. Getting a curse to stick to him, for any amount of time let alone centuries, is a remarkable feat. I wonder who it was?
Oh. That explains things.
Wait... Has Nick ever bought something from Arca?
She is screwed. No matter how much money she has, she's boned.
9622718
Knowing my characters the way I do, there aren't many options. Barring any sudden new canon characters, i think the available options are:
-Celestia
-Luna/NMM
-Discord
-Sombra, maybe
-Whatever laid the love curse on Razzle
-Arca himself
Also, while they were not around in the time period Arca had that curse applied, I'd wager Twilight and Grogar are powerful enough to have pulled it off, too.
9622718
My guess would be Discord or Sombra, the former due to sheer power, the latter being an obvious dark magic user. Though I suppose it could have been Jezebels father? I don’t remember who put that love curse on her.
Though this is a pretty weird curse so it had to have come from someone that knew about him.
You know, I’ll miss Emerald Essence she was the Squidward to Arca’s Spongebob. Plus I found great joy when she was used as a butt monkey.
I think a fitting punishment would be to force her to work at Archemiracles with a magic suppression ring.
9622840
This. This right here is pure genius.
9622863
I might do this, with the added bonus of 'Celestia forgot to tell Arca about it'.
9622901
Please do!
Dude's got it right. The comic book first, then the lady's dark magic.
I have a question, two actually, how did Archa managed to resist her Subjugation spell and did he ever dabbled in summoning things from other worlds?
9623303
Answers:
Unlike Juniper, who fell instantly to the spell, Arca's learned Dark Magic, and has far too much magic for a normal pony to overwhelm. In order for that particular spell to work, the caster MUST have more magic power than the victim.
Arca has, canonically, summoned a shoggoth and claimed "they are really friendly once you ignore the whole 'physically impossible body' thing they have going on."
The 3D printed mini came in the mail today! Painting it up now, and will be back with a picture of it when its done
9622901
I have a feeling that arca will then try to create a magic suppression potion
And now Emerald is watching a cutscene reminding her of her choices earlier in the game (of life) and is quite mad that she didn't keep any savegames from before then.
You know, I think this is being a bit harsh on Emerald. She us too much of a good foil to Arca to go to jail! We all love it when she gets the kickback from her bad acts!
And the next chapter should have a moment where she learns about TRUE Fear.
And so, Emerald joins the Legion of Doom with Grogar, Tirek, Chrysalis, Cozy Glow and... Megatron!
Because we need at least one threatening villain in that bunch of tarts.
So, now that I finally caught up with this, I gotta say... This is one of my most favorite stories on here... period.
Though, now that I think of it... I must ask. Has Arca ever considered going on a vacation when things get too boring in Rainbow Falls? And if he does, would Juniper need to send a
warningmemo on things that he should not do while on holiday? I’m kind of curious9633820
Well, first off, thank you! I appreciate the compliment, but I'd argue there's better stories.
Anyhoo, Arca's gone globetrotting for ingredients, but he isn't the same walking disaster he is in town. He puts extra effort into behaving, so he usually leaves other towns with only a few hundred dollars in damages.
Except for the time he blew up downtown Trottingham. But he still claims that wasn't his fault.
9634862
That... just makes me wonder if there's a list of towns he's banned from going too because of incidents like those. Because I'm pretty sure Trottingham would be at the top of that list since you brought that up.
...The moment you found out he was An Ageless Alicorn, a founding member of the town, wealthy, AND Celestia's PERSONAL alchemist, plus her CLOSE friend? Yeaaaaah. At that point she should have done the smart thing by getting down on her knees, and BEGGING for mercy. Like, I don't know how you could POSSIBLY think that you could sway Celestia, much less the town, and equestria as a whole with that. In almost any circumstance hearing THAT much favor and personal interaction with Princess Celestia, much less ANY royalty in general, would put her in some deep shit.
I just...how could she POSSIBLY think to get away with that, after finding out just how IMPORTANT he was to one of the RULERS OF YOUR COUNTRY!!! Like...there's foolish...and then there's "Please lock me up in a dungeon and possibly execute me."
9634862
I really want this to be a flashback chapter in the near future
9645915
Arca is one of less than ten ponies in existance who can say "Leave me alone, I'm reading" to Celestia's face, and not only get away with it, but also have Celestia comply.
Similarly, he can also get away with "5 more minutes, ease" and "I raided your fridge."
i.imgur.com/0kvtMLE.gif?noredirect
Update?
*claps*
Emerald deserves it!
I'm actually kinda sad to see Emerald go, but I'll get over it
Dang strait priorities
Woohoo! Fuck you Essence!
Finally!!