Meeting of the minds
Twilight’s castle had its own peculiar funk, but it was nothing compared to whatever free-roaming stink was prowling outside. Pinkie carried her stoic sister, because Maud could barely stand. Whatever had attacked them in the meadow had cracked Maud’s stony, stolid exteriour, and left the poor mare a mumbling, stumbling mess.
“The smell,” Maud murmured as Pinkie trotted down the hallway.
“Twilight!” Pinkie’s hoarse shout echoed up and down the hall. When several students stopped to stare, she ignored them. “Twilight!”
At the moment, her Pinkie Sense had completely ceased to function, so she had no idea where Twilight might be, as her Find-Mostest-Bestest-Friend sense wasn’t working. Maud’s forelegs—iron bands—wrapped around Pinkie’s neck, but the pink ponk wasn’t the slightest bit bothered by this. She took it as a sign that her beloved sister was finally recovering and getting some of her legendary strength back. A weak Maud wasn’t much of a Maud at all.
“Is she okay?” one of the students asked.
“I’ve smelled things...” Maud made her reply while shaking her head from side to side. “Smelled things you little ponies wouldn’t believe.”
“My sister isn’t herself right now.” Pinkie Pie glanced around, hoping to see purple. She saw plenty of purple, but much to her dismay, none of the purple was a purple pony princess pal. “Twilight!”
Moondancer blinked into existence right next to Pinkie Pie, and the pink ponk let out a shrill scream. But halfway through her scream, she pulled herself together and said, “There’s some kind of invisible stink monster attacking Ponyville!”
To which Moondancer replied, “Maud, is this true?”
“Empirical evidence suggests that something smelly lurks unseen.”
“Right.” Moondancer adjusted her perpetually crooked glasses and her monobrow beetled. “Right. Okay. There is an invisible stink monster of some kind in Ponyville. Well”—she took a deep breath and her tail flicked at her hind legs—“at least that’s original. Let’s go tell Twilight. She’s busy giving a lecture on responsible friendship applications.”
Twilight Sparkle wasn’t quite sure what to think or say after seeing Maud so shaken. Thankfully, Maud was still Maud. Pinkie Pie had immediately began to babble, but after a sharp word of warning, the pink ponk was silenced and Maud offered a brief explanation as to what had happened. Talking and dealing in facts seemed to help Maud recover, but what few details there were to glean over were sketchy at best.
Moondancer, whose sweater was already in a bunch, paced the length of the room.
“Twilight, the smells… they were not normal smells.”
Distracted from her own thoughts, Twilight focused on Maud, who seemed to be struggling to speak. The stony, stoic mare was at a loss for words as she sat rubbing her two front hooves together. Twilight waited, torn between the need for action and the necessity to acquire more data about the situation.
“It’s as if the smells were all… made worse somehow. Like, regular normal smells, but somehow made smellier. Twilight…” Maud’s eyes closed for a moment and the normally-placid mare drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “When it swept over me, it was as if… it was as if—”
“Just say it, Maud. I promise I’ll believe you.” Patient as always, Twilight waited.
“Looking back on it, and trying to analyse what happened, it was as if it kept trying different combinations of the smells it had, until it found something that I found offensive. And when it did, that smell was… it was… it was made worse somehow. Unbearable. It was as if it found the one smell that I was weak to and then made it so impossibly smelly that I couldn’t bear it.”
Though she didn’t have all of the facts yet, Twilight suspected that they were dealing with something that had some rudimentary, malicious intelligence, but she couldn’t think of a single monster that would behave in such a way. This was unknown, and therefore, great care had to be taken. She wanted to pace, but Moondancer was already pacing.
Hearing Spike, she turned about and saw that he was trying to calm Pinkie.
Good Spike. If anypony could calm down Pinkie, he could.
Twilight was just about to further question Maud when there was a soft rapping upon the window. Just outside of the window was a rather distressed, wet yellow pegasus, and Twilight’s sense of concern grew tenfold. Fluttershy did not look well, not at all, she looked as though she had flown through a squall. Reaching out with her magic, Twilight pulled open the window and immediately wished that she hadn’t.
“Oh… skunk.” Moondancer sniffed as though she was some fine connoisseur. “I think we’ve found our stink monster. Do come in, Fluttershy.”
“That’s not the stink monster,” Maud deadpanned.
“Flutters, are you okay?” Twilight asked while she helped her friend inside.
“No,” the sunny, buttery yellow pegasus replied. “I am not okay. Some kind of bad wind upset my patients. There’s a wind gremlin of some kind on the loose, Twilight. It was… it was very rude… and I am… I am… peeved by its behaviour!”
“Woah, there Fluttershy.” Twilight let go a flick of magic, and a shield bubble appeared around the peeved pegasus. It didn’t hold back all of the stench, for some unknown reason, but it helped. “A wind gremlin?”
“Some kind of wind spirit, I’m sure of it.”
Now, things were making a little more sense.
“Twilight, there is chaos everywhere. I saw panicked ponies as I flew over.”
Right away, Twilight began to rub her chin and she wondered if one of Discord’s pranks had gone too far. Discord was fond of causing chaos, but he seldom engaged in malicious chaos these days. Far too much of Fluttershy’s kindness had rubbed off on him, and the draconequus no longer had it in him to be mean.
Twilight’s deductions took her no place useful.
She went to the window, stuck her head out, and had a look around. Sure enough, there was panic in the streets, with ponies stampeding about. A crowd was fleeing away from Sugar Cube Corner. Columns of suds were shooting out of the windows of Carousel Boutique. The faint sounds of shouting could be heard—and there was something on the wind that no erudite words could possibly describe.
“Ew!” Twilight jerked her head back inside and stuck her tongue out involuntarily.
“I’m just the mare for the job,” Moondancer said in a matter-of-fact way. “Having a skunk as a pet has left me largely immune to smelly stuff. I think I’ll go investigate.”
“Moondancer, no!” But it was too late, and Twilight’s word of warning had no deaf ears to fall upon. Moondancer had vanished. Frustrated, she stomped her hoof, but this did nothing to make her feel better. “Fluttershy… I need you to calm down and stop being peeved so I can ask you a few questions. We need to get to the bottom of what is going on.”
“Twilight”—Maud’s deadpan cut through the tension—“you must never say bottom when discussing this stink. It’s just not appropriate, somehow. You know not that which you conjure.”
Ponyville was a weird, but profitable place. Little Dipper liked Ponyville, and found that it was quite easy to start a business here, compared to Canterlot. After leaving Canterlot, he established himself in Ponyville, opening a laundry, and then, sensing opportunity, opened the Late to the Potty diaper service. Unlike Canterlot, which had over a dozen diaper services, not a one was to be found in Ponyville. In no time at all, he established a door to door service, found customers eager for convenience, and he became a valued, trusted member of the community.
All in less than a year.
Of course, living in Ponyville, one had to deal with monster attacks, regular invasions, weird events, unexpected, unexplainable phenomenon, and whatever mischief the town sorcerer might get up to at any given moment. But, you would be hard pressed to find friendlier ponies, the community was solid, Princess Twilight was a fair, just ruler, and the sorcerer—a sort of community mascot—was not a bad sort.
But today, today was one of those days. Ponies were running around in a panic. Well, some of them anyway. Quite a few of them were frantically trying to scrub things, like Rarity, the proprietor of Carousel Boutique. As he pulled his buckboard wagon through the streets, Little Dipper watched the hustle and the hubbub all around him, and the quaint, provincial town offered no shortage of things to see.
Including some rather attractive ponies.
He rather liked the ones with sunny, warm colours, vivid yellows and oranges.
Moondancer popped into existence and only a few ponies were startled. She had been teleporting all over town, seeking out commotion or bedlam, and in doing so, noticed a curious magical wibble. It moved fast, possibly teleporting, and her magic senses told her that it was gaining strength, little by little.
“Why, hello there.”
She lifted her head, her ears pricked, and as she turned around, she saw Little Dipper. Loyalist, Royalist, member of the Urban Rescue League, qualified first aid giver, member of the Ponyville Chamber of Commerce, and the owner-operator of a door-to-door cloth diaper service. Overall, an excellent citizen, and one that could be counted on in times of crisis.
He was also pulling a wagon full of soiled diapers.
“Hi.” After the perfunctory greeting, she added, “Say, have you been assaulted by a rampaging stink?” She saw his face wrinkle as he turned all of his attention upon her.
“No, can’t say that I have.”
“Would you like to be?” asked Moondancer, as her brilliant mind concocted a plan.
“Well, I hadn’t thought about it, really.”
Casting a sidelong glance at the wagon, Moondancer sniffed once. If he hadn’t yet been assaulted by the rampaging stink, he would be. Moondancer’s gut instincts told her that the different stinks that Maud had experienced had to be synthesised somehow, and probably came from natural sources. A wagon full of soiled diapers was pretty stinky—it was the kind of smell that was sure to bother some poor pony—and so it was, predictably, a good target.
If the stink came here, she’d be ready. Trusting in her gut instincts, she began casting a variety of protective spells upon herself and on Little Dipper. Then, she began casting a myriad of sensory spells, detection spells, and autonomous data collection probes. In perhaps her most brazen, most daring action, she enhanced her sense of smell so that she could better understand whatever it was they were facing. She was a skunk fancier. A skunk whisperer. Skunks were her passion, her love. She was in charge of the Skunkworks, Twilight Sparkle’s top secret science division.
She had no fear of stink.
“You and I, we’re going to do science, Little Dipper.”
“I’ve never done science with a mare before,” he replied.
“Don’t worry, It’s not hard. Just stay still and be my test subject. I’m not picky, I do science with everypony. Even foals. Foals are great to do science with because they’re so eager. Well, some of them. Most foals are kinda dumb, but they still make great test subjects.”
“Well, okay. I suppose I can do that.”
“Follow me,” she commanded.
“You just said to stay still,” he said in return.
Moondancer facehoofed and almost knocked her glasses off.
“Sorry. It’s my first time sciencing with a mare. I’m really nervous. Should I let go of my load?”
With a deadpan expression, Moondancer lifted her head and looked at Little Dipper.
“My wagon—”
“Is needed. Hold your load, for the sake of science. Your load is the entire reason why I need you. Your load is of particular interest to me, and is quite necessary for my scientific objective. Now follow me, we have a stink to find.”
Moondancer followed her nose. That is to say, she used her advanced sense of smell and her magic sense to home in on the stink, which was most certainly leaping from place to place. But the leaps seemed to be getting smaller, which she believed confirmed her theory that the stink was out collecting other stinks. She wondered if, perhaps, it was running out of targets, or if it had just grown more focused on what was available.
She had a wagon full of stink that she hoped would lure in whatever this was. It wasn’t the smelliest thing in Ponyville, but the longer it sat in the sun, the riper it became. Right now, it was pretty darn ripe. A herd of ponies went stampeding past, but—so focused was she on her objective—she ignored them.
“This science is kinda boring,” Little Dipper remarked.
“Science usually is rather boring,” she replied in an absent-minded manner. “But then, there are times when the unexpected happens, and it becomes quite exciting. Science is really boring if you do it alone. Thankfully, I have my eyebrow to keep me company, and I’m never alone.”
“I’ve never done science all alone. In fact, the last time I did any kind of science was in school. Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. The whole class was watching, and I was really, really nervous. I wanted to impress my teacher. There was a lot of performance anxiety.”
“Did you make the funny ‘I’m trying to make science’ face?”
“Yeah.” The unicorn pulling the wagon nodded and looked away. “My tongue sticks out when I’m sciencing real hard.”
“So does Princess Luna’s. Don’t feel bad. Be science positive and don’t be ashamed of your mental efforts. Enjoy the moment and let it happen.” Moondancer offered up a perfunctory smile, but Little Dipper had his head turned.
A hot, rancid, greasy wind blew over her face, leaving her pelt feeling soiled and her ears itchy. It was very much like the heat rising off of a compost heap, a warm, radiant heat that felt far too warm for what it was. She felt something—magic, weird magic that was somehow familiar. But she had no time to contemplate this unexpected familiarity, because something smelled.
No, saying it smelled was grossly inaccurate.
With each passing second, it grew worse, and the scent shifted, changing. Moondancer gagged and realised what a terrible mistake it was to enhance her sense of smell. If her nose was a lock, what she smelled right now was a key, and not just any key, but a key that fit the lock. The foul odour intensified, grew unbearable, and approached what she knew to be transcendence. As bad as it was, as terrible as it was, it was also exciting, because this was new. This was science.
“Yes, breathe deep, and experience all I have to offer,” a genderless, formless, booming voice said.
“What are you?” Moondancer asked as she neared an olfactory event horizon.
“I do not know. I was only just born and recently found my voice. I incorporated strange, unknown magic into my existing form, and with it, I evolved. Changed. Adapted. Became something greater.”
“What is your purpose?” she somehow managed to ask as Little Dipper passed out.
“To collect and catalogue olfactory input so that I might release its potential. Through me, weak smells will be made strong. I am to find the greatness in every foul-smelling thing, and share it with others. Others must be made to know every glorious stench that the world has to offer. My directive cannot be resisted.”
“What you are doing is destructive and harmful—”
“Irrelevant,” the unseen, intangible miasma replied. “My directive is all that matters. I sense your resistance, but it is futile. I am grateful that you have taught me how to communicate. Touching your mind through your olfactory senses has been a gratifying experience. Future interfacings with your kind will be far more efficient. I have concocted a special stench just for you, something entirely new and unique, something I collected from a previous interface.”
“I am glad,” Moondancer gasped, fighting for air, “to have been your teacher.” Knees wobbling, she struggled to remain upright. Whatever it was she was smelling, it was beyond all mortal description, and perhaps beyond immortal ken. “You are a very naughty student… go stand in the corner… don’t make me ask you again.”
Colour drained from her vision, turning the world a drab, uninspired grey. With nothing but her nose, Moondancer touched the edge of forever, and wide-eyed, peered into the olfactory event horizon beyond. The scent had colour somehow, colour not seen with the eyes, but somehow sensed, registered within the nose. An eldritch rainbow slithered up her nasal passages, worming its way towards her brain.
It was every bit as horrible as it was glorious.
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I've never had an eldritch abomination in my nose but it sounds not great.
I was not expecting the Sentient Stench, and had to pause while proof reading this chapter and go out side in the cold in my bare feet to cool off and try to stop the painful hitching chuckles before I could resume work, so I apologize for delaying this chapters posting by another ten minutes.
So the stench has gained both sapience and the means to communicate with those it afflicts. An intelligent stinking cloud spell, then ... hopefully it does not reach the level of cloudkill ...
Stink level: my nose is getting stingy just reading about it.
This story may collapse into an innuendo black hole at this rate.
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Have ye not read kudzu's work before?
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This one is particularly thick with it.
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It is girthy with flirting?
I've heard of the Color Out Of Space, but never the Scent Out Of Ponyville.
But...so....eldritch. Like all Things, it violates the senses. Or one sense, anyway.
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Positively tumnescent with suggestivity.
I don't believe we've come across little dipper before, he's quite interesting right off the bat
“I've smelled things you little ponies wouldn't believe. Rotten durians on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I sniffed sea breezes gust in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those odors will be lost in time, like farts in the wind. Time to die.”
Remember kids, always wear protection when you science.
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You've made my day.
Wipes tear from eye.
I said it before but it bears repeating; Moondancer's discovered Odourine, the colour of stink.
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media.giphy.com/media/12N1rAQT0YHEWI/giphy.gif
Best reaction. I also like her later moral indifference to the safety of her citizens when there's science to do.
passIon