A Clockwork Pony

by Elric of Melnipony

Chapter 2

Growing young marechiks such as myself need their sleep, so it was with some dismay that I greeted the knock-knock-knock on my bedroom door in the morning. The opening of said door pleased me even less.

“Twilight? You need to get up, dear. It’s time to get ready for school.”

“Bit of a pain in the zacherle, Mum,” I said, holding a hoof to just below my horn in feigned agony. “I’ll sleep it off and I’m sure I’ll be right as rain by this afternoon, this evening at the latest.”

“Yes, well, I suppose we wouldn’t want you going to school in that condition.” I had trained her well.

With that, my little ponies, I gained some much-needed additional spatchka. What I found when I awoke on my own, however, was even more unwelcome than my earlier wake-up. This veck truly lived up to his name.

“Little Twilight! Missing school again today, are we? I met your mother as she was leaving for work. She gave me the key, yes? Said something about some pain somewhere.”

“A pain in my head, Mr. Pants. Nearly blinded with pain, I was.”

“Yes, I’m quite certain you were. Not, say, blinded by frosting, mmm? I’ve been told there was something of a row last night, yes? A certain Trixie-girl and her friends were pastried rather badly. Your name came up, yes? But you wouldn’t have had anything to do with such a thing, would you?”

“Not at all, Mr. Pants. The shinings have got nothing on me, brother. Sir, I mean.”

“Must you keep calling me ‘Mr. Pants’?”

“It is your name, isn’t it, Mr. Pants?”

“Yes, but it sounds like an insult when you say it. Well, regardless of all your talk about ‘shinings’ and what they may or may not have, know that I’ll be watching you, yes? I feel it’s only a matter of time. I’ll be watching you very closely indeed.”

By then he was uncomfortably close and I sensed that he was no longer govoreeting about my truancy or criminality. Instead, I could tell that this filthy old stallion was talking about getting his glazzies on my megan. I had no intention of letting him viddy my mareish parts, so I showed him my Ding-Dong.

A wrapped snack cake isn’t the same as a bakery-fresh weapon, my little ponies, but he understood the threat well enough; more so when I also showed him my Twinkie. He was soon out of the flat, leaving me at last to my own devices.

---

“What’s it going to be then, eh?” I asked myself.

I made my way to the music shop, as I knew that the Canterlondon Sympony Orchestra had been planning to release some of the works of Marezart, and I was also awaiting some recordings of compositions by Buch and Wagonpüller. None of those had come in, so I dropped some celestias on the counter to purchase a piece by Scootz. A new plan had appeared in my zacherle by then, so I ported to the bookstore.

Oh, the bookstore! Bliss, blessings, books! It was better for the soul than any cathedral; when I was in the bookstore, all was shoo-bee-doo with the world. If I could bottle the smell of books, I would bathe in it.

I saw that I was not the only school-age pony to have taken the day, for there were two smecking colts in one of the more educational sections. I trotted over to the table they shared, and I was able to viddy that they were looking at a text on anatomy before one of them slammed it shut.

“Looking to learn are we, little bratties?” I teased. “Looking to better ourselves, to increase our knowledge?” I could nearly mistake them for apples, so red were their faces, yet when one hesitantly nodded, the other joined in.

“Come with Big Sister Twily, then. Big Sister Twily has the knowing of a great many things, handsome colts, and would love to show them to you. Tell me, little ones -- what do you know about multiplication?”

Some hours later, I grinned fiercely down at the sobbing and sniffling colts after having given them quite an unwanted lesson. “And now you understand the basics of the binomial theorem, don’t you? Should somepony ask you to square the sum of X plus Y you can expand that out properly and calculate it, can’t you?”

“Y-y-yes, miss,” groaned one of the colts as the other put his hooves over his glazzies.

“And this, little bratties, is just the beginning! There are other exponents beyond the second power, oh yes! Would you like to learn more mathematics?”

“Please, miss, our mums will be worrying, miss. Can we go, please?”

I scowled at the clock and saw that it was indeed getting quite late. My own parents would be home soon, and it would not do for them to see that I had had my way with these two. “Very well, Big Sister Twilight declares that class is dismissed. But know that there is always, always more to learn.”

The tearful two galloped to the door, unlocked it, bolted through, and closed it behind themselves harder than they closed the book I caught them with. I knew they would not forget what I had taught them any time soon.

After a good smeck at their misery, I went to my bedroom to dress for the evening. I expected my droogs to be at the cider bar soon, and a good leader does not let her troops wait overlong for her presence.

I left the flat, ignored the broken lift, trotted down the stairs, and found my droogies waiting for me in the very lobby of the building I called home. “To what do I owe this pleasure, my little ponies?”

“You weren’t where you were expected to be when you were expected to be there,” said Pink. “That was unexpected, so we expected you’d be somewhere else.”

“Apologies, my droogs. I was sleeping off a pain in the zacherle and was not awakened when I gave orders for such.” I didn’t mention the two lads who had received a sparkle of education as I knew they wouldn’t understand my urges.

“Maybe been usin’ the ol’ brain a mite too much there, pardner,” said AJ. At this Dash brayed an obnoxious smeck.

“And what means that laugh, Dash? Could it be that you finally got that joke Pink told last week?”

“Ain’t gon’ be no more pickin’ on Dash. That there’s part of the new way.”

“Oh? And what else is in this new way?”

“Pulling a real horse-sized crast,” said Pink. “Making the real celestias. Steve the Magnetic says he can fence anything, so he’ll buy anything.”

“And what,” I asked, “would any of you do with ‘the real celestias’? You have what you want when you want it. Desire a carriage? It’s yours. Want a new hat? Take it. Need a weapon? Bake it. The city belongs to us.”

Dash blathered something about wanting the money anyway just because, but in truth I wasn’t listening. I was troubled. Never had they dared to go against me before. My thoughts raced as we left the flatblock and walked along the canal to reach the cider bar.

I was beginning a “Get My Authority Back” checklist in my mind when I happened to catch the strains of lovely Beethoofen through an open window. It was then that I decided just this once not to overthink matters; instead, I would use the inspiration that had come down upon me like the rays of the sun.

I gave Dash a deft hind-leg hoofchok that shoved her into the canal. As the one back hoof came down to join the other, I reared up with forehooves full of malice. AJ’s weakness was strawberries, so she soon had a faceful of shortcake, the whipped cream getting everywhere. For Pink’s ever-open mouth I had a stack of unsweetened oatmeal raisin cookies.

Dash and AJ writhed around on the ground, both blindly rolling into the canal just as Dash was working her way back to the edge. I held out a hoof as if to help her out of the water, then smacked her in the face with a bit of the old lemon meringue.

---

We sat in the Connemara Cider Bar, three of us with towels about our necks and something warming in our drinks. “So,” I said, “that’s all settled and everything’s back to normal, right-right?”

“Right-right,” muttered my doused droogs.

A good leader knows not only when to discipline her troops, but when to reward initiative as well. “Still, I will confess I am intrigued by this ‘horse-sized crast’. Tell me more,” I said.

“Well, there’s this mare what’s been makin’ a lotta purty dresses an’ gettin’ real popular-like. We figure she’s got a whole mess o’ bits, an’ she lives all alone.”

I downed the last of my cider. “You’ve talked me into it.”