Arrival
It was an ordinary coin. So ordinary that most creatures would not even notice the lie stamped in four small characters on the bottom of both faces. Tied with the miniature “F” that marked its provenance, the lie was the coin’s least remarkable feature. Even less so than the ridging pattern on its edge or the yield of the metal under a bite, both very useful tests of authenticity around here.
Capper held the coin in his paw reverse side up, and considered its second-most remarkable feature.
The words “ONE BIT”, stamped in large letters. Words that were understood, even by those who did not speak or read a word of Ponish, from Yakyakistan to Shire Lanka to the Griffish Isles to Saddle Arabia. Even, he imagined, all the way to far-off Farasi and Abyssinia. He tried to think of anything else in the world that had anywhere close to such a reach. He could not come even close.
Capper turned the coin over, to its obverse side, to consider its most remarkable feature.
The face.
The second-most recognizable one in all of Equestria, quickly becoming the first. Undoubtedly already so in the larger world beyond it. The expression so stern underneath that crown, Capper wondered if anything remained at all of that naïve young alicorn he had spotted helping a stranger at the market all those years ago.
He supposed that he would find out soon enough.
He turned the coin over, and over, and over again, but he was no longer really looking at it. It was just an incarnation of the turning of the thoughts in his mind over, and over, and over. He checked the clock on his wall. Five more minutes. More time to stand there, and think, and turn, and get nowhere.
The face.
Was it a message? What else could it be? Why else would she send such an ordinary coin? Sure, the shine of its untouched surface showed that it had passed through very few hooves since its striking at the Fillydelphia Royal Mint, but that was hardly remarkable. These days, the stream of bits that flowed out from Equestria was more like a coursing river, washing away all that was in its wake…
It was getting more and more difficult to find anything else these days, even in a place like Klugetown, the crossroads of the underworld. Accepting only Equestrian bits was becoming more a practical, feasible choice and less a sign of prestige; an indication that one was not desperate enough to accept any and all comers. But that attitude still persisted, marking Capper’s coin collection as a bizarre curiosity that he once hid away in a display case disguised as a thick tome.
He considered it now, out in the open, very much in its place among the “roco-hobo-bohemian hodgepodge” of his little manor. The phrase that had stuck with him ever since she had called it that all those years ago. He smiled at the memory, and others as well. At the memory of those little ponies curiously poking their way through his books and breakables. At the memory of her, studying his little collection of paintings as if trying get a sense of him through them.
He’d done the same thing to her in return, after the party that had celebrated the Storm King’s defeat. An evening at Carousel Boutique. All of those fancy drapes and vintage chaises longues were what he had expected from a peek into that chic and magnifique life, but the display of exotic coins on her shelf very much was not. It was another reminder of just how different things were there, in the land of the solid bit. Every foreign coin told a story. Every story was a triumph. Yet another exotic land that had heard the name and reputation of Rarity the Unicorn.
Here, in Klugetown, Capper told himself a story about his coins as well, despite what the creatures around him thought. That no matter which far-off, forgotten land they had hailed from, no matter whose claws or hooves or paws they had passed through, no matter how strange or unfamiliar their shapes were, every little coin in his little collection had value.
So that is how their tradition began. When they exchanged letters, they sent a coin as well in the same envelope, different every time. A polished cowrie-shell thaler from Seaquestria. A Griffish stone penny that appeared lumpy and misshapen to the untrained eye. A Saddle Arabian dinar in gold fillygree. Each one commenting thematically on the letter they were sent with. Each letter a work of poetry. Neither of their considerable charms were diminished by the move to the written word. Neither was their connection.
Did it ever bother Capper that the letters were all there was? That the letters were all there could ever be? No, because he could never let it become something more for the same reason he could never bring himself to live in Equestria, much less Ponyville. Because Rarity had never referred to Klugetown by name. She had always called it “that horrid town where we were almost sold!” Capper could hear the tone of voice she meant those words in every time he read them. With pouty disgust, as if she were talking about a restaurant that gave her food poisoning, or a spa without a sauna.
Those little ponies didn’t get it. How could they? Places like Klugetown had not existed within the borders of Equestria for centuries. They had no context to understand what was done here. What it meant that the street merchants lusted after their horns and manes and body parts. What it meant that they were wanted for collections.
As long as that was true, Capper could only keep her at arm’s length, tracking the ebb and flow of their connection through the amount of “darlings” and mentions of Applejack in her letters. And ebb and flow it did, until the day he got one with a smaller envelope inside. Black, marked with a seal depicting the sun and moon.
Rarity had made sure that she would be the one to send it to him. An invitation to Princess Twilight Sparkle’s coronation as the ruler of Equestria. Rarity’s letter was effusive, running for several pages, as it always did. The coin was a mid-Celestian Equestrian crown, one of the last struck before the switch to the fiat bit.
He remembered how he felt at the ceremony, standing proud in the top hat and black cloak that Rarity had made for him just for the occasion. The small disasters with the falling crown and misfired fireworks were disarming. A signal that the Sovereign was not perfect, and might need some time to ease into her role, but all would turn out well. But Capper took something else from it, too. That everycreature makes mistakes, and mistakes can be recovered from.
Digesting this, he was almost at ease talking to Rarity in the flesh for the first time since that evening at her boutique. She sounded just like he had remembered. Just like in her letters. A bit more restrained in her irrepressible flirting, with Applejack standing right next to her.
But the last thing she had told him had given him pause, though he was able to cover it up with charm as always. Yet another Rarity complaint, delivered in that fluent woe-is-me. That Twilight’s plan to form a Council of Friendship out of Rarity and her friends to co-rule Equestria with was fine and all, but why did that have to mean that Rarity had to take days out of her schedule for “intelligence briefings”?
He never got another letter after that. At least, not until this last one.
There had been a lot of letters flying between Klugetown and Equestria recently.
Capper looked at the clock. It was time. He walked up to the window and looked upward at the sky. He wondered if she had chosen this time deliberately, knowing that the sun would be visible from his window, high and yellow. But did the time even matter? She could have placed the sun wherever she wanted.
The streets of Klugetown were unusually silent. The right time to panic had been long ago. By the time the Equestrian herald appeared above the center of the main market square, theatrically broke open the seal of the official scroll she held in her aura, and read off its contents in her magic-amplified voice, it had been far too late.
Not that it stopped many from trying to escape. But Klugetown’s position between an open desert and a steep cliff face made that difficult. Between the griffons, hippogriffs, and dragons of the expanded E.U.P., it was made impossible.
All anycreature could do was, like Capper, just wait. Wait for the appointed hour to come, which it did. There was no clock in the town square announcing the time. Such a thing would be far too civic to have a place in the anarchic city-state. She would have to make her own announcement. She did.
A deafening crack of magical energy, radiating in a rumble across the sky. Two wings unfurled wide, blotting out the very sun itself. Princess Twilight Sparkle, Sovereign of Equestria, was here.
From his window, he could see the residents of Klugetown file out of their houses, if they were not in the streets already. Bowing down, supplicating the image descending down above them. Like he had automatically done for years, Capper mentally divided the residents he saw into the credulous and the shrewd. The former were trembling and wailing, as if that would earn them pity. As if they hadn’t been the ones burning their receipts and ledgers for days now. As if such things would matter at all.
The latter were still and calm. They’d known for longer than anycreature, after all, and had had more time to accept their fate. Rumors had been circulating for a long time, now. Husks of caravans found in the desert, burned by dragonfire. Ruins of airships with dozens of ragged gashes on their envelopes. Mysterious black letters among the regular mail delivered by Equestrian postpegasi, who even the most foolhardy Klugetown resident knew not to touch.
Capper, too, was still and calm. After all, he was the shrewdest of them all. At least, that is what he told himself sometimes. That the reason he lived here among the Klugetown masses rather than up in the heights with the richest of its merchants was because of what he had for so long refused to take part in. And that fact, unlike his shrewdness, did matter here.
The image of the Sovereign grew larger and larger as she continued to descend. Descend and descend until she was there, not flying, but floating in the air above his window, looking magnificent in her crown and shoes and peytral. The wall containing said window glowed, and peeled away with sickening crunches and snaps. Capper did not flinch. Building damage was easy to come by around here, and even the windmill blades that were once attached to that side of the building had never been replaced. What was the loss of a wall on top of that?
Save for her height, the way she looked was exactly the same as he remembered from the last time he had seen her. The way she looked at him was not. It was not at all the way one would look at a friend. It was not even the way a ruler would look at her subject. It was the look of somecreature who owed nothing to the looked-at. Not even the slightest of mercies.
After all, the creature who was the almost-seller in Rarity’s charming little anecdote was him.
That almost was doing a lot of work here. That almost had been almost, but not quite, enough by itself to spare him.
As the forced air from her steady wingbeats battered his face, Capper considered the six-pointed star on her flank. The same as the one imprinted on the seal of the second black envelope he had ever received. Like the first, it was inside a letter from Rarity. Like the first, it was accompanied by a coin: the freshly-minted bit he still held in his paw. Unlike the first, it came with only a single page with a single sentence written on it in elegant hornwriting.
Take the deal, darling.
Silent and expressionless, he reached down to open up the hidden trapdoor compartment in his floor. The place where he would have hid Twilight and her friends in years ago, had he truly meant the words that he had sang to them as introduction. Had he truly been the friend they needed.
Verko screamed and wailed as he was levitated out of the pit in a bubble of purple glow, yet nothing was audible through it. He slammed his tiny fists against its walls, and Capper imagined that he was being cursed at with all of the slave trader’s strength. That the naked mole rat was doing so in the wrong direction diminished the effect less than his clear powerlessness in the situation. Capper could not help but feel sympathy. As well as the bitter taste of irony.
Verko had trusted him because Capper was his first friend. Capper had befriended him because Twilight and her friends had taught him the value of friendship.
Not that the Sovereign was showing him any sign of friendship now. Any sign of recognition, even. Neither was she showing any sign of triumph over the now-weeping creature who had once tried to cage her. Any sign of disgust. Verko was just another slaver to be judged and punished. Just like Capper was just another complicit resident. They could not be anything else to Twilight, because Princess Twilight Sparkle was no longer just another Equestrian.
Twilight was Equestria itself.
Capper understood why the street merchants whose wails he could still hear were supplicating outside, because he felt the urge now, too. He just did not bend to it. He knew that it would make no difference. Equestria was not a place that cared about or for such gestures. Instead, he held the coin in his paw up next to the Sovereign’s face in his field of vision.
When those bits first started to circulate in Klugetown, he had wondered why the stern face on the portrait was so different from the gentle, maternal smile of Princess Celestia on the old ones. But seeing the flesh-and-blood Alicorn Princess in front of him, Capper could see that the portrait was trying to tell a truth far deeper than the literal expression portrayed. A truth to outweigh the lie printed in four small characters on the bottom.
5 ATS
The fifth year of the reign of Twilight Sparkle. Well, yes. Technically, she was crowned five years ago. But it was still a lie.
Her reign truly began today.
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Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh
Finally!
In the site at last!
And given that I already read it, and most importantly, liked it, I earned the right to give this a thumbs up.
This really gave sovereign Twilight the justice she deserves.
Already said everything that had to be said about this on the critics, but will repeat it once again: terrific job!
Well. That gave me chills. And while Klugetown does have a number of worrisome implications—I've personally called it the lovechild of Zootopia and Mos Eisley—seeing Twilight this cold as she rides a world-consuming wave of cultural homogenization is sending all kinds of warning signals. Twilight may weep about this in Rarity's forelegs, but right now...
Yeah, this is how you get myths about the vengeful, violet goddess. Excellent work.
Twilight, I think you need a Snickers.
10674481
Thanks, Smokes! I really appreciated your critique writeup.
10674486
Thanks, FoME! And, yep, homogenization indeed. There are a lot of "fun" real-world historical examples to draw on for this and future works, too!
That was something else. I'm trying to decide whose style it reminds me of, but it's not coming to me...
Regardless, wow! This was spectacular.
Reviewing this and reflecting on this for the third time, I can see what you are doing here. I second FoME here with the conclusion regarding the implications, this is really well done. It reminds me a lot of history, and the question would become whether or not in years past, these things will be considered for best or for worst.
Well done.
While I DON'T care for that Slave Trader Mole!
But, I'm more concern with Capper and some of the other Resident's Safety?
Is Twilight becoming dark? And not acting like her "Princess Of Friendship" self??!!
10674486
This kind of Equestrian Pony's Burden thinking - the thinking behind the School of Friendship - would always imply external armed conquest.
... Meh. Yes. Klugetown deserved everything Twilight does to it. Maybe not everyone in it. But anyone with any kind of sense would know it needs to be erased as the shitstain it is.
If you're trying to say more, then you didn't do it enough. Or at least I didn't see it. If this is how Twilight conquers all of Equus. By doing what should have been done a long time ago by Celestia if she'd had any sense at all.
Great. The planet is better off with her in charge anyway. Equestria doesn't need to conquer the world after this. This is Twilight's one and only message to the rest.
"Fuck with My Little Ponies, or me. And it will be the last thing you ever do. Let this be your lesson."
10674608
that's not the way someone who derives their power from friendship and harmony works
Twilight had to put on her "Big Princess" crown for this, got a feeling she'll be mentally exhausted afterward, haveing to be Serious Princess Twilight for a long. As for Capper I don't think he'll be up in prison or anything, he did after all help in the end and even showed up to help fight "Legion of Doom" and he just turned in Verko. Also in the comics he served directly under Luna for an important mission, he gets off by the a decent margin, still Twi must present her most intimidating face to get the message across, which means not ackowlageing Capper during the operation.. The story tells us this is when Twilight really took charge, playing hardball with what amounts to international criminals. I'm sure any unrepentant remnants of the Storm King's army were next.
Why are some people uncomfortable with Twilight's actions here? Klugetown is a slave state. It should have been burned to the ground. Twilight is being shockingly nice here. Everyone of those slave sellers and slave owners deserve to have their heads chopped off. Twilight is doing the RIGHT THING.
Then again, Im a Redwall fan, so maybe im. A little biased.
10674625
People who partake in slavery dont deserve friendship. They deserve death.
10674533
10674565
What the hay is wrong with you. It's slavery! How would like to be a slave? Being constantly whipped until you're bleeding, always starving, possibly sexually abused.
10674625
Nope, but international politics makes many strange bedfellows and sometime the message is just THAT important ...
10674625
Neither is what she's doing here. Twilight isn't being the Princess of Friendship here, She's being the Princess of Equestria. Which means teaching Klugetown a lesson it will never forget. And by extension, the rest of the world.
because this is not the real world and creating a story like this shows a lack of respect for the abilities and characterization of the show
10674889
Twilight is only the Princess of Equestria because she is the Princess of Friendship
10674879
It's not like either Twilight or Equestria has any problem with unfree labor. Spike is Twilight's slave, and Twilight was going to countenance Rainbow's indenture of Fluttershy.
So...is she annexing the slave trading town? Or is she murdering everything in it that supports the trade? Considering her own history of forgiving villains, some of which have done...well not worse but similar crimes to slave trading, it seems out of character not to give them a chance to repent for their own misdeeds.
10674519
Thank you for noticing me, Sock-senpai!
10674533
From you, this really is a high compliment, since I know that you do similar themes well.
10674960
derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/4/6/2004478.gif
The trajectory is already present.
Oooooh-kaaaay. Twilight is scary here.
I love it.
So this is Equestria under Twilight going full Royal Navy West Africa Squadron on Kludgetown. I can see it.
I'm confused... what happened?
This was a well presented idea, in an intriguing setting, marred by an incredibly uncharacteristic portrayal, of a well known character. I think you wanted to present your story, because you knew your story was good, (and indeed it was good), but you forgot to make it fit the setting.
Had the sovereign not been called Twilight Sparkle, and had her country not been named Equestria this would have been a great story. Such as it is, this is a resounding meh.
Hmm. Yeah, this feels more tonally in line with Companion. Nicely told through Capper's eyes. If I may ask, what specifically inspired this take on Twilight's reign? I mean, I could take a guess, but to me, Twilight's arc in season nine more suggested she'd be a disastrously incompetent ruler rather than a coldly efficient one, so I'm wondering what exactly you had in mind when characterising her this way.
10674872
I don't think anyone's saying that Klugetown doesn't deserve a reckoning. It's more the underlying implication from how Twilight is presented here that she's going down a dark path that could potentially escalate to worse further down the line (and indeed, years later in Companion, she's definitely not in a good place emotionally).
It actually reminds me a little of Daenerys Targaryen's arc in Game of Thrones. She started out killing slavers too, and the audience loved her for it. Me, I was always a little concerned by her habit of burning her enemies alive.
10674872
I guess it's because because this Twilight reminds too much to Justice Lord Superman: started killing or lobotomizing villains and doing "what must be done" for the sake of peace and prosperity...and ended taking over the world as a ruthless dictator.
The way Capper ponders about the event and the increasing expansion of Equestria seems to support that vision: he is not "cheering for the good guys", but watching another conqueror making History.
10675154
I don't think she did enough in this story to draw this conclusion. She showed up and delivered an ultimatum in the face of evil -- and we aren't privvy to what was said. We don't know about the buildup, and we don't know about the aftermath. All we know for sure is that something happened that our POV character realized was coming a long time ago.
10674874
Seeing this comment get a downvote really makes me question the reality we live in.
10675215
Yeah this story is quite weird from that perspective. On one hand it's obviously well established in the show, how powerful Arch-princess Twilight can be, moving celestial bodies, having the Elements of Harmony at her disposal, being the element of magic. All that power at he proverbial fingertips.
We also know that Equeastria actively tries to turn every nations ideology into her own. So that part also checks out.
But would she resort to these means? Would she use the combined power of all her subjects and whatever other lackeys she picked up throughout the show to bring any city or state to its knees, just because they don't conform to her ideology? I would say no, and I would dare anyone to bring any counter examples from the show.
This wouldn't be a problem writers regularly bend the rules of the universe to fit their need, but that requires a lot of work. To slowly show the reader the ways in which they changed the rules, and why those changes make sense in the confines of the story. Work that has not been done here, I think. We pretty much agree that this work doesn't work as a story about Twilight as a sort of "Villain"
But as story about the sheer power of Twilight and Equestria looming over anyone who has any reason to fear them? That way this story works perfectly.
I guess that juxtaposition, is why half the people gave my previous answer a thumbs up and half of them gave a thumbs down.
Ayo great job Bike congrats in first place featured!
10675315
couldn't you say the same of a lot of crimes? Like the changelings who would essentially raping ponies. physically or mentally? Or Discord who violates ponies on the deepest level and also pretty much tortures them? Yet the show went with reform over death
Brilliant
10675525
The changelings did what they did because of Chrysalis. Normally the only following orders defense is pretty worthless but given how they reacted to freedom I kind of suspect they were written in such a way as to imply being basically children. Chrysalis meanwhile was imprisoned in stone, presumably forever. Which I can only imagine is either death or the equivalent of solitary confinement forever.
Also with Discord I can only assume it would be near impossible to punish him in a meaningful way that didn’t just involve stone again. If nothing else he was given 1000 years of a punishment that didn’t work so I can see how they may have just assumed they should bear the burden so he didn’t attack future generations.
I don't think that Twilight is going to have any slavers put to death here. Forced labor seems to be the most appropriate karmic punishment, making the slavers perform tasks for the sake of their captors without regard to their own desires.
Of course, she might just use a reforming spell on all of them like she tried to do to Discord in Keep Calm and Flutter On.
So what? Twilight was going Daenerys now?
Oh my I read this and it’s really interesting and very cool and cliffhanger whyyyyy
10675315
As abhorrent and punishment-worthy the practice is, I suppose some downvotes are put off by the uncompromising stance of how to deal with it and how fitting and proportional death as a punishment is. Not to mention practicality. Kludgetown is a small town of degenerates that a ruler can burn down with virtually no consequences. But it might be impractical (for reasons other than her ability) if Twilight tried it on an Equestrian equivalent of the Confederate States of America where generations of children are brought into ignorance and institutionalized acceptance of the practice. There are reasons you don't put every detestable person to the sword after you've won. Not unless you want instability.
10675614
Fair. As well there are many who would say that there are no crimes that would warrant the death penalty.
No mercy from the Princess of "Friendship." I hope Capper wasn't hurt.
10675315
Slopes, my friend.
Uncompeomisingly kill everyone in a town and you'll start to wonder if you should wipe out entire nations next.
Radicalism is never welcome in any space of sense.
10675784
Looking back on it I read it as more that slave traders should die rather than the other interpretation that anyone even vaguely involved. That said I find most uses of the slippery slope argument to be unconvincing at best.
I dont get it. someone explain what happened
I think this story should get an A.U. tag, given that it specifies "5 ATS" which makes it seem not aligned at all with The Last Problem. Though to be fair, regarding how that episode goes, most stories nowadays would need A.U. tag anyway.
Between this and Companion, it shows some potential to be expanded into an intriguing verse. However, there are a lot of big gaps that need to be filled in for the readers to buy the significant transition from the pacifist, friendship oriented Twilight we know to the coldhearted militarist conqueress depicted here, especially given such a short 5-year time gap.
This premise is not new. There have been a few stories exploring these transitions of some innocent characters in the show into their dark alter egos in some alternative futures. This story, however, lacks the most important element. What makes or breaks stories like this is the very explanation of how the characters end up like that. It's what gives feels to the readers, depending on how plausible and "tragic" it is. Most of the other stories, regardless of how long they are, at least try to give some subtle hints or contexts for the readers to infer what happened and bridge between the past and the present. Companion itself has some at least.
This story has nothing. We're basically just shown how magnificent and terrifying Twilight was, and are expected to be awestruck by that. Even the motivation for Capper to refuse "the deal" is also not given any substantial explanation. This would need some serious work to answer the questions, if the author ever plans to expand on this verse. As it is now, it is more raising eyebrow than providing anything meaningful.
10675810
Your personal interpretation is your own, but history itself has proven the idiom to be more than true, opinion has no basis in fact nor does it erase the evidence of atrocities committed in times past.
"as if trying get a sense"
"as if trying to get a sense"?
I found the story interesting and enjoyed it but am currently quite tired and low on time (I accidentally read about fifty-five thousand words of another story earlier, as one does.), so I don't have much else to say at the moment. Thank you for writing, though. :)
Interesting. It suppose one would see it as a good thing for Twi to come in and "fix" Klugetown considering it practices slavery. Though judging by the way Twi is described, along with caravans being burned by dragons and Capper saying there is no escape because of the desert does give the impression that Twilight has come showing no mercy.
Does feel kind strange for Twilight, especially considering this is only 5 years into her rule. Just make you wonder what happened to Twilight to make her become so ruthless. Or the fic is implying that Twilight doesn't care for any form of civilization outside of Equestria, though I can't see that happening unless something major changed her stance.
Like I said, and interesting read and very well written. Nice work
10674608
Its kinda made clear its very hard to leave. I Imagine the poor mixed with the slaveowners and possibly worse can't exactly board a airship out? Not to mention possibly held slaves.
Basically: no you can't nuke it
This was a fun concept to explore, and one I rarely see, great job!
10675848
You do realize an idiom is not a fact it’s an opinion. If it were fact there would be numbers that could be brought up. In a lot of cases just because someone didn’t start with the worst possible action doesn’t mean that they felt emboldened by committing lesser actions. History is filled with instances of one culture committing terrible actions of all levels against other cultures over a span of centuries or even millennia.