(Present Chapter 47) Poor Fools
"I'm sorry sir, I'm just... I'm really torn up about this!" Sunburst said, looking around the scarred underground chamber. The blazing hatred that had ravaged Canterlot had run its way into parts of the mountain itself as well as the surface, and with it, so much of Chapter Black's magical knowledge was damaged. or lost.
Black Angel looked tired. "I know, Gatekeeper, but it's not all bad. If there's one thing I've learned, my boy, it's the benefit of keeping backups. Most of this? It can be replaced easily enough, and what we can't replace, we've got a whole country of ponies waiting to help, now."
He puts a hoof on the bright-colored unicorn's shoulder. "We didn't lose the most important thing. That's you, Gatekeeper. You've got a work ethic that puts mine to shame, no matter your spellcasting ability, your theory-work has pushed us so far in this day and age. If you can keep your spirits up, I know we can too. That's why you're our Gatekeeper."
Nervously, the nerdy pony takes several breaths. The amount of data crystals and books that were damaged by fire was great, but...
He slipped free of Black Angel and looked around the room. "Is it here? Oh, oh dear I hope it wasn't damaged..."
"Are you looking for this?" Black Angel asked, stepping aside to reveal a box.
"Oh thank goodness! My project!" Gatekeeper shouted, opening it up and breathing a sigh of relief.
"I didn't keep it here. This is, after all, one of the more important things you've made. I kept it in my personal quarters, and a good thing too," he explained, opening the box.
Inside, several rolls of plain white bandages sat in the middle of it, glowing with magical runes sewn into the cloth.
Gatekeeper nodded with relief. "Those bandages are going to do so much good, once I work out all the bugs. Oh, just think about it! Bandages that disguise themselves as the pony wearing them! Thank you so much for holding on to them, sir," he said gratefully.
Black Angel nodded. "Anytime, kid. That said, I need to give these to an associate of mine for testing. Do you recall our arrangement?"
The unicorn nodded. "Yes. It's awful to think a pony could need bandages like these all over them, but... I'm glad they'll be put to good use. She'll tell you if there are any problems, right? These are good bandages but putting the illusion over an entire pony's body... Well, I'm not sure if they will work perfectly..."
Black Angel shook his head. "Don't worry about it. She's been nothing but forthcoming with me. If they weren't working perfectly, believe me, we would know. Don't be so hard on yourself. We couldn't wrangle these books without you," he repeated.
With that, the dark stallion emitted a sigh. "That said, there is something I lost. Something that that damn draconequis took during his chaotic spree through the city. Something... Important. I'm not sure if you can replace this."
Gatekeeper's eyes widened. "Well, I can try! Which entry was it? I can go through the Grimoire Noir as soon as you please and get started."
"None of them, unfortunately. This was a rarer piece of dark magic than that. Worst of all, it was a Materia. I only have the vaguest information on it for you. That's why I'm concerned. You might have to reinvent the spell from almost scratch. Are you really up to that?"
The unicorn had a determined expression on his face at this. "I won't know if I don't try, sir. If it was rare as you say it was, then... If I don't figure it out, we could lose a piece of magical knowledge forever!"
Black Angel considers this. "Alright. So, here's the spell, it's a variant on a magic used by none other than the Sage of Darkness himself. A clone-creation spell, only, rather than making a shadowy double of the user... It clones a subject of the user's choosing. A Dark Summoning Spell, and it was stored on one of the world's last Black Materia."
Sunburst gasped at this. The Black Materia were enchanted vessels containing some of the rarest and most powerful dark magic of all time, kept strictly in the Shadow Realm deepest and most secure vaults until its end. Ones used only by the sage himself.
He suddenly felt less up to the challenge of recreating the spell theories of one from scratch.
"You get it now, don't you? This won't be like figuring out how Royal Cloth is made. It will be difficult, and you'll likely have to do some actual spellcasting. Theorycrafting won't get you all the way there. You'll have to put it on a Materia as well, so you'll need to be trained in creating those. Are you certain you can do this?"
He swallowed. "I'll try, sir. And hey! Worst comes to worst, we can always just call up the Longma for help!"
Black Angel smiled indulgently. "If worst comes to worst, yes, but I feel like that would be cheating. I wouldn't ask them for help if I were you, not until you've given up on doing it yourself. I know it'll be more challenging that way, Gatekeeper, but I promise, it's a feat worth doing," he mused.
"Once you believe you've figured it out, I'd like you to come to this place, you'll need a red rubber ball, your notes, and of course, the Materia," Black Angel explains, getting out a map and marking a particular place on it. One long since lost to time, provided one doesn't ask an immortal about it.
"The gates of... Tartarus?" Gatekeeper said, looking at the map with a bit of confusion.
If an era of peace had one flaw, it was perhaps that ponies failed to recognizes places they really ought not to go, owing to their disuse in such calm times.
Ever since that awful mishmash whatever-it-was went and got Canterlot destroyed, Blueblood's already minimal wealth not associated with his role as prince had gone utterly out the window. Home? Gone. Gold? Perhaps a splatter or two could be found embedded in the mountain, returned to ore.
None of this, however, could compare to the true misery of his change in fortunes, indeed, being forced to live in a royal hovel, a mere hut by his exacting standards, cohabitation with other critical members of government as if they were commoners without homes of their own, (they were technically without homes, those who lacked estates outside of Canterlot, but that's besides the point) was hardly the worst of it.
No, what had made Prince Blueblood's situation irredeemable was the loss of his beloved pet, which had been missing at the time of the evacuation, and neither whining nor shouting nor obstinate behavior allowed him to stay behind to search for his beloved Bugsly.
Which is why now, of all times, he alone suddenly saw a silver lining in the total destruction and slow reconstruction of Canterlot, where his fellow nobles were still bitter over the wanton loss of material wealth. (As if money were any object to a prince!)
"Gasp! There you are, Bugsly! Oh thank Celestia, oh thank Celestia indeed," Prince Blueblood said with relief, hugging the gigantic beetle tightly. The beetle was draped in a torn and ragged maid's outfit. The beetle was often found in such a state, and despite admonishments passed to Blueblood, which he then passed along to his beetle, the creature was incorrigible in seeking out the uniform and then adorably emulating the maid-staff.
He ran to his drawer, grabbing a special brush that had been saved from the devastation, returning to his pet and brushing its pale cerulean shell.
"Oh, my poor Bugsly, just look at yourself, all covered with soot and dirt, you do not befit your noble stature, no you absolutely do not," the prince fusses, brushing the bug and removing the scraps of maidcloth from its iridescent body.
As he did, tension over the uncertainty inherent in any traumatic event slowly fell from the boorish prince's shoulders. While maids, fine dining, a large home and lavish environs were of course mandatory for the prince to be at his best, it seems that even a pampered noble upbringing failed to fully train the prince to feel agony and anger at the loss of luxuries long since considered normal, provided the relief of a beloved pet returning to him.
After a while of brushing, Blueblood felt better, and his Wannabeetle certainly looked better, freed of the grime and dirt that it must have gotten running around in all the capital 'C' Chaos that had befallen the capital.
The bug squirmed from his grip, and when it failed to dislodge the pony, its feelers began to dance across the prince's hooves, making him laugh and complain.
"Enough! Enough I say, Bugsly, very well, go on your morning constitutional, but do not dare worry me so again!" he huffs, letting the beetle free, whereupon it offers a few final feeler pokes of affection before scuttling out of the room of the regal apartment that had been quickly constructed to house the princesses and other castle staff until a new palace could be constructed.
With a low buggy bow, the beetle vacates the premises and scuttles off to parts unknown.
In a secret basement, buried deep inside of Canterlot's darkest mines, a box is dragged out from a secret alcove between two large tapped veins of crystal, long since mined of any worth that could be found in them.
Inside the box, which seemed too clean to have been merely found there, as some lost remnant of a mining operation, there was a set of bandages, each one glowing with enchanted runes.
Slowly, the bandages were wrapped around the one who took them from the box, and as they did, the bandages began to glow, revealing their purpose. An illusion began to form.
After a while of wrapping, the illusion was complete with a final twist of a knot, and a mare, Mrs. Shelly, was revealed.
She looked upset. Bitter. Angry, even. Despite this, she put on her uniform, and returned to work for a time, until, on one of her breaks, she saw someone sit down on the bench nearby. Nopony else was near it, and it seemed almost as though something was preventing ponies from noticing this one place in particular.
"Are you ready?"
Mrs. Shelly, or rather, Game Master, scowled. "I don't want to do this," she said.
"You will. I've already gotten replacements for your bandages. You'll do this," the dark stallion said plainly.
And indeed, she would.
"This is it. I do this, and we're done," Game Master said with a grimace.
"Alright. One last job. You know where the machine is kept, don't you?"
She grabbed a shoebox off the bench harshly, opening it to reveal the pristine white bandages underneath.
"Yes. I already disguised myself as him long enough to learn its location earlier," she answered.
"Good. Remember, make it violent."
Game Master took the box into a hidden dark place to change them out, and with a flash of enchanted magic, a Weiss Noir walked out of the mines, slipping away towards "Mount Olympus" with bitter resolve and disappointment.
Walking past all of the security checkpoints, which opened to the Weiss without pause, they approached one of the inner chambers of the repurposed palace that once housed the Storm King and their servants. Now, however, after being stolen and teleported to Equestria, it had lain dormant, save for one device in particular. One that would now serve the purposes of Chapter Black.
The Weapon of Light, The Great Sacred Treasure.
The mech sat in chains, it was designed in such a way that only one individual could truly operate it. The jets were too powerful, and the wings were too intricate to be piloted by automatic systems. It would take a truly superb flier in order to make use of the machine for anything but a paperweight.
For Game Master, however, it was as simple as pretending.
The bandages shifted and flashed, and suddenly, it wasn't Game Master at all, but a Rainbow Dash, smirking with a devil-may-care attitude as she slipped into the cockpit of the massive golemic machine, and, inside the vessel, it did what Wannabeetles did.
It pretended to be what it wore.
Chancellor Golden Apple tapped his hoof, nervously, tensely. He was trapped properly now. Forced to make unsavory choices not just for profit, but his own life. That blasted sage might have threatened him, but he wasn't the only one making threats to the earth pony. There were others.
"As soon as she gets here, I'm settling out of court. All you wanted was to get one of them to New Canterlot, that will happen now. If this makes it to court, I'm ruined," he said out loud in the privacy of his own bedroom.
A voice answered, in defiance of the wards placed on his home. So many wards, and the source of the voice didn't even bother to notice them.
"No. My agent needs time. Time you will acquire by dragging this out as long as possible. No settlement. She could leave the day she arrives if you did that."
Chancellor Golden Apple frowned. "What if I want out? I don't want to do this, it isn't worth doing any further. I was only in this for the money, I'm not here for some kind of scheme against the Elements of Harmony. If you're really going to force me to choose between risking financial ruin and prison, I could throw myself on Celestia's mercy today and save myself the trouble. Prison won't have my assets lost if I confess enough."
The voice seemed amused. The emotion radiated into the air.
"You wouldn't make it to prison, Seaman. You wouldn't even make it to Celestia. You'll do your job because of that."
And he was right, of course.
Seaman would do his job, because of that.
He adjusted his coat, piled legal documentation into his briefcase, and left his warded bedroom, as safe without as he was within.
It was something he had noted during his time as one of the inner members of the group. Chapter Black was never strong because of secret plans and clever plotting. It was strong because it had power to throw around. Brute force, like that sufficient to stop one who had had quite enough of the mindgames and unprofitable ventures.
It was a society that at its core tried to preserve the standards and knowledge of a country built from hatred and violence, and that unfortunately meant something to its eldest member.
What wasn't a fight was merely the prelude to one in this dark realm. No matter what. Seaman's only choice would be if he participated in a fight, or if he participated in the prelude leading up to one.
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so many things happening at once, so Blueblood's pet is part of the conspiracy and is going to do something and put the blame on Rainbow Dash? Kind of shame Sunburst is part of the bad guys.. wheres Starlight?
Now are those something you are so desperate about?
Not really, Weiss knows it... not that Black Angel would ever risk letting you get near him
Yup
Ohhhh, Mrs. Shelly is Bygsly and she wants to be a real pony (I think)
Finally caught up! This story has been a wonderful read and I’m excited for what’s in store.
I'm rather shocked to find out that those wannabeetles appear to be somewhat sapient, if not out rightly so. Unless this is because of the illusion of the pony making her sapient, but I get the feeling Bugsly is fully sapient and that the bandages just make her able to properly articulate. Still it's rather sweet to actually see how much Blueblood adores her and how much she seems to love him back.
Seems Black Angel knows the shadow realm wouldn't appreciate chapter black.
10903833
Most animals in MLP appear to be Sophonts/Sapients, intrestingly enough. Canon isn't shy about having any animal react to spoken language with pantomiming and attempts at communication of their own.
As I stated earlier, canon SEEMS to imply that any living thing that doesn't participate in "Society" is considered a "Wild Animal". We see a dragon living alone on a mountain in one episode be outright considered under Fluttershy's purview as a "wild animal", despite having the power of speech, and a society that it COULD go back to.
The only difference between random animals and ponies, then, seems to be their lack of ability to hold together the comforts of civilization without help, and their apparent willingness to participate as part of nature/pet status willingly.
Furthermore, Modern Wannabeetles have apparently been bred like dogs for size and suitability as a pet. That's bound to have done some things.