Haycartes' Pluperfect Method

by Kris Overstreet

RODENT PRINCESS Chapter 2: New Places, Familiar Faces

“This is a withered heath?” Hornsparker’s voice shouted as the rows on rows of pleasant little thatched-roof cottages- thatched-roof ranch-houses, really- came into view.

“Captain, I don’t even know what a heath is,” Daresden’s voice grumbled. “All I know is, I’m glad we got here.”

“Wild open countryside,” Twilight Sparkle’s voice cut in, “characterized by the growth of rough grasses and shrubs such as heather.” After a pause, she added, “That’s what a heath is.”

“Is it?” Gertrude said. “I never knew either. I thought it was just a weird place-name.”

“Weird is certainly the name for it now,” Hornsparker said pointedly.

Far from being withered or a heath, the shallow valley before them glowed with flowers and well-kept grasses surrounding a large, happy retirement community. Various rodents of various ages walked the streets, waving hello to one another as they passed. Gertrude, of course, waved back, partly because it was polite, and partly because a large number of the locals were fairies, witches, or retired adventurers of one kind or another, and it’s never a good idea to be rude to any of those groups.

Gertrude looked up into the air at the fourth disembodied voice. “Um, did I wave back?” she asked. “I don’t remember-“

“Oh, it’s Princess Gertrude!” an elderly voice called out. “Good morning, young lady! Come to see the Childe, have you?”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Giantstomper!” Gertrude called back, waving cheerfully at the old mouse. “I figured I should, since it’s on the way back home and all!”

“Good to hear it!” Mr. Giantstomper said, waggling his cane at her again. “Hope you have a happy birthday, and good luck with that Long Game fellow!”

“Thank you!” Gertrude replied, giving another wave before continuing her walk down the road into the retirement community.

Three voices remained silent in her head, the silence of people who would be staring if they had their own eyes to stare with.

“What?” Gertrude asked. “Mr. Giantstomper taught me the Fnordican Flick! I used that to disarm Baron Kettlebottom in the joust six months back!” She tapped her chin with one purple paw and added thoughtfully, “I wonder if the trophy has been delivered by now? I asked Mom to expand the trophy case ages ago…”

“Let’s just go see this Childe,” Twilight Sparkle’s voice prodded.

At this point, when the Childe turned out to actually be a child, and furthermore one the voices already knew, nobody was surprised- not even Gertrude, who had learned to take coincidences for granted in the months she’d been adventuring.

“I regret to inform you,” the green Guinea pig pup said between bites of cookie, “that the same restriction which prevented me from telling you anything in my world of origin also holds strong here. And in this world, I no longer have the services of Mr. Thornbush to protect me from the consequences of trying.”

After a pause, Gertrude said, “Twilight Sparkle said that’s all right, Ivy.” She took a bite of her own cookie. “These are really good this time. Where’d you get them?”

“A new bake shop opened up over in the kingdom of Sylvoledia,” said Ivy, the Archive of all pony knowledge (and now also all Guinea pig knowledge, which was more extensive because of the number of Guinea pigs involved in science). “They’re quite nice. I must get the recipe for when I’m old enough to run a stove by myself again.”

“Just so long as you don’t make anything with tofu,” Gertrude said, making a face. “Or kale chips.”

“Yes, I heard about the ogrecats,” Ivy said. “You know, I almost feel sorry for them. You’re my friend in this world, Gertrude, but you are the nine hundred and forty-seventh most stubborn and bloody-minded little brute I can remember, and I can remember all the way back to the beginning of time in two worlds, now.”

“Well, if it gets ogre-cats to stop hunting people and use good manners with their guests,” Gertrude said, “I won’t say I’m sorry.”

Inside her head, the voices chattered. “I have to say, I’ve never seen a cat frightened of a rodent before,” said Twilight.

“You’ve never seen a cat step on one of Her Majesty’s ships for the first time,” Hornsparker said. “But this was the first time I ever saw a cat apologize for anything before.”

“I didn’t think the kale chips were that bad,” Daresden said. “Bit dry and bland, but you know, health food.”

“Well,” Gertrude said, as much to shut up the voices nattering in her head as anything else, “if you can’t break Twilight’s spell, could you at least get her and her friends out of my head? I almost lost one of my matches yesterday because of the screaming!”

“The other gerbil didn’t have a helmet!” Twilight shouted. “You could have killed him!”

“He could have tapped out,” Gertrude said. “Besides, I’ve fought Sir Feedingbowl before, and trust me, if it had been the other way around, he wouldn’t have thought twice.” Refocusing her gaze on Ivy, she continued, “See what I mean?”

Ivy nodded. “Sounds worse than listening to my prior incarnations,” she said. “But that would require a major wish, which is beyond my power. You’d need to find a genie, or an extremely powerful fairy, and I’m afraid there aren’t any nearby.”

“Well, you know everything, right?” Gertrude asked. “Can’t you tell me when I will find a genie or a fairy?” She smiled and added, “Better yet, you could tell me how I’m going to get out of Long Game’s curse! That’d be convenient!”

“We’ve been over this before,” Ivy said, helping herself to another cookie. “I know everything every Guinea pig has ever known, past tense. I don’t know everything every Guinea pig will know. For that you want a seer.” She chewed a moment, swallowed, and added, “I know where one is, but she’s a long way away, and you don’t have that much time to work with before you have to be home.”

“That figures,” Gertrude said. “Why should my life be convenient?”

“You’re a princess who twisted a curse to give herself invulnerability,” Ivy retorted. “Some people would say that’s very convenient indeed.”

“All right, all right,” Gertrude sighed. “Can you at least tell me if anybody’s seen Long Game since I last asked?”

“That I can do,” Ivy nodded. “And the answer is nobody. Absolutely nobody has had even a glimpse of the dark fairy Long Game since your christening.” After swallowing the last bit of her cookie, she added, “I guarantee it.”

“Ask if Long Game is still linked to a Fallen,” Daresden said.

Gertrude relayed the question, and Ivy shook her head. “There are demons in this world, but not fallen angels,” she said. “Long Game had to find other ways to secure his power and immortality. That’s why he sacrificed his tail, you know.”

“Sacrificed his tail?” Twilight Sparkle asked.

“Rats like Long Game normally prize their long tails,” Ivy continued, answering the question she knew would be asked even if she couldn’t hear it. “But rat mages gain a lot of power by sacrificing their tails. So if you see a fairy rat, don’t bother looking for their tail. All you’ll see is a tiny little stub.”

“That sounds kind of weird,” said Gertrude, who was quite proud of her own long, swishy tail with the tuft of fur at the end. She brushed crumbs off her paws and asked, “May I have another cookie?”

“You’ll spoil your lunch if you do,” Ivy said.

“Really? What is lunch, then?” Gertrude asked.

“More cookies,” Ivy said. “And ice cream for dessert.” She smirked at the three stares she knew she was getting and added, “It’s good to be an immortal ten-year-old girl.”

Hubert the riding quail strode across the countryside, paying little attention to his master and her conversations with thin air. Somebody had to watch the road, after all, and besides, he’d known Gertrude was crazy for years now. But she was brave and considerate and kind to quail, so he was happy to put up with a little talking to people who didn’t exist.

“You know, I don’t have to be home for two months,” Gertrude said, ignoring the voice of the narrator. “There’s got to be someone to rescue, or some monster to slay. Preferably about three weeks’ travel away.”

“What are you talking about?” Twilight Sparkle asked. “That’s only two months! We’ve got to start preparing! Making plans, doing research-“

“How do you make a plan against a curse?” Gertrude asked. “Look, it’s magic. The day I turn twelve, some kind of habitrail with splinters is just going to turn up. The curse will make it happen. Nothing I can do about it. If it didn’t work that way, then I wouldn’t be invincible, now would I?”

“Please,” Hornsparker groaned, “do not ask her to prove it. Again.”

“Motion seconded,” Daresden chipped in.

“But… but there’s got to be something we can do!” Twilight insisted.

“Well, yes,” Gertrude nodded. “We can get lectured by my mom and dad about how princesses should behave. We can get put through deportment lessons. We can get bored to tears by social functions with the nobility. We can sit in our rooms and watch the tapestries fray.”

“Qwerk,” chipped in Hubert, which is Quail for, “And we can feed and brush the brave riding quail.”

“Look,” Twilight insisted, “I don’t see any reason why we should just wait around and wait for this curse to happen!”

“Neither do I,” Gertrude said. “That’s what all the jousting and monster-slaying and cliff-diving is for.”

“But that’s not going to stop the curse!” Twilight shouted.

“What makes you say that?” Daresden asked. “A lot of times I’ve had my flank saved because of some skill or knowledge I picked up in some totally unrelated adventure. Who knows? Maybe some dragon has some sort of curse-breaking wand or something in their hoard.”

“Excuse me?” Gertrude asked. “That would be stealing. For all we know the dragon bought it at the supermarket.”

“Dragons buy things?” Hornsparker asked.

“Dragons have supermarkets?” Daresden asked.

“Focus!” Twilight shouted again. “Look, have you even tried to break the curse before?”

“Mom and Dad did,” Gertrude said. “The other fairies at my christening couldn’t do it. Neither could anybody else. Heck, Ivy tried once, and if anybody could do it, it’d be her, wouldn’t you think?” She shrugged and added, “Of course, all that was before Mom and Dad told me about the curse. Since then it hasn’t exactly been a priority.”

“Yeah, because you’d have to give up your invincibility,” Twilight said.

“Well, that might not be such a minor thing,” Daresden said. “What if breaking the curse makes all the injuries you avoided because of the curse happen at once?”

Gertrude reined Hubert to a stop. “Run that by me again?” she asked.

“Well,” Daresden said, “the curse has to get you to twelve years old in fit condition to pick up a splinter, right? Which, by the way,” she added, “is absolutely not how curses work in my world. Maybe you’d live to be twelve, but the curse wouldn’t care how healthy you were when you got there, do you get my drift?”

“With you so far,” Gertrude nodded. “Go on.”

“So the thing is, your curse is, I dunno,” Daresden muttered, searching for words, “it’s rewriting your destiny. It’s making sure you pick up a splinter on a habitrail on your twelfth birthday, and so it cancels out anything which otherwise would prevent you getting there. Right?”

“Right.”

“But suppose the curse goes away. Bam. You’re no longer destined to get that splinter. Your destiny becomes unwritten. Which means there’s no longer any reason- and my point is, there never was any reason- for all that bad stuff to be prevented.”

“Oh!” Twilight Sparkle said brightly. “You mean the inverse of a predestination paradox!” Pause. “I don’t think that would actually work, though. I don’t see a mechanism that would undo protection in the past just because the future gets changed.”

“Maybe there isn’t,” Daresden said. “But we don’t know, do we? And so long as it’s a possibility, I say we shouldn’t risk it.”

“I still think I could figure out something,” Twilight grumbled. “If I still had my magic, anyway. And if I could get my hooves on some local spell books.”

“And if the story will allow-“

“Hey, you want to see books?” Gertrude asked, interrupting Hornsparker. “There’s not much in the royal library except etiquette books and genealogies. I read all the history and tactics books before I turned eight. But there’s a magic library on the other side of the mountains I went to once. It’s only two weeks each way!”

“Magic library?” Twilight Sparkle’s voice rang with hope and eagerness.

“Magic library, huh?” Daresden grunted. “I bet it’s guarded. How tough is it to get inside?”

“That depends,” Gertrude said. “How good are you with riddles? The last time I went, the sphinxes made a rule that, 'What have I got in my purse?' doesn’t count as a riddle.”

Author's Note:

This chapter mainly exists to get the "Twilight looks for an escape" out of the way so we can get on with the main part of the story.

The next chapter exists in rough-draft form as of tonight, and will likely get posted next week.

Comments

[A.P.O.N.I.]

Always happy to see more of this.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Heh. Good on Twilight for trying to help someone, but Gertrude’s quite happy in her current circumstances.

Also, the character bleedover is getting a little ridiculous, though I’m sure I haven’t seen anything yet. Looking forward to more, especially how a sphinx in a children’s novel handles three adults who are often too clever for their own good.

[Eroraf86]

“That depends,” Gertrude said. “How good are you with riddles? The last time I went, the sphinxes made a rule that, 'What have I got in my purse?' doesn’t count as a riddle.”

Dang it, now I actually want to know what was in her purse. It wasn't handses, knife, or string, was it?

[Kichi]

Do you have a list of books that Twilight is going to visit? Or can people suggest books for you to check?

[Kris Overstreet]

11378786 When I first began this project I got suggestions from the readers. I had a list of twenty books. Then, once the project took a couple of twists and the true scale became apparent to me, I decided to trim it back.

The books for the series are:

BEAT TO QUARTERS / THE HAPPY RETURN by C. S. Forster
DEATH MASKS by Jim Butcher
HAMSTER PRINCESS #1 and #2 (Harriet the Invincible and Of Mice and Magic) by Ursula Vernon
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH by Jules Verne
RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA by Arthur C. Clarke

[Kichi]

11378932
While there are a couple that I was thinking to suggest, I guess it's full and those that I have in mind are more like Dresden Files, also I can guess that if you accept all suggestion this story could reach the million of words and your muse don't reach for that much... I wish you luck

[Zubric]

11378932
It’s probably a good thing that you scaled back because nothing is more saddening than an author being burnt out. It is better to finish than to never see the end

[Kichi]

Well, after I managed to reach the current chapter, I currently have a ask... Could the Discord inside the dresden books do anything about the Haycartes or the joined minds? Or is he doing anything against the villains? And how much Luna, Celestia and Cadence know about everything?

Also, while you decided the novels, can we suggest some novels for you to take a look and say if you like them or not? Even if you don't make a part 2 or a similar story

[Kris Overstreet]

11380504 You may suggest, but there's zero guarantee I'll find time to read them.

And a sequel? NO WAY. This backfired as hugely as possible, this idea, and I'm going to be moving on from it.

[Kris Overstreet]

11380504 Also, remember the entire experience Twilight is having, down to the voices of her alternate selves, are generated by a malfunctioning alicorn-level spell. The Discord, Luna, etc. in the stories are NOT connected to those in Twilight's real world.

And the spell is determined to prevent Twilight from getting off the ride early.

[Kichi]

11380554
True, but the spell create a world (more or less) or so is what I get, and the characters in those worlds have more or less the power they have in the books, and while Twilight can't get easy, they still exist and do something just like the villains and the alicorns, even if they can't take her out the spell they do something in the world, maybe they can't get her out of the spell but maybe they could manipulate, after all Discord is the overpowered god of chaos that manipulate reality, is like Aladdin Genie, if Twilight was in there the Genie should have the power to make a wish, and 'The Archiver' even mentioned the Genie in the third arc something that surprise me because if the spell is around Twilight, why is that she can know things and not affected by the spell?

11380550
The novels I wanted to suggest are mainly a couple of Trilogy for youngsters, so they are more or less easy to read, you can read a little when you have time (Maybe try to search it online) and see if you like it or not.

Is mainly three trilogy

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

Heresy by Anselm Audley

The Named by Marianne Curley

Maybe you like them, maybe not, but I read those novels long time ago, and well, decided to suggest them, I know the chances are zero, but I post them here to give them a chance, not sure why I decided it. You can even check the synopsys in Wikipedia.

[River Babble]

Sweet! I wasnt sure how the action would work with twilight unable to ohysically act, but Gertrude is great and seein the three disembodied adults’ reactions is hilarious XD Also nice to see Ivy again, apparently living her best life!

[A.P.O.N.I.]

11380795
Thanks for posting those. I can't swear I'll get to them either, but it's always nice to see some suggestions that have passed through at least one layer of vetting.

[Kichi]

11407353
A layer of vetting is good but you should check first if the books are something you could like or not, everyone have their tastes after all, so my tastes may be similar or could be nothing like yours. Even so, those are books that I read a long time and liked, and the reason why I suggested them.

[Oreng Pingvin]

wait

[Efadd]

Well, just caught up.
I hope the other 2.5 books get written, but I saw your other comment Kris and I understand that that's unlikely.