Jul 29th, 2029
Mossad Headquarters, Tel Aviv, Isreal
0630
Captain Chabakuk Pereira sat quietly at the side of his bed as he stared blankly at the wall ahead of him. His dark green eyes were bloodshot and baggy after being forced to work overtime due to the increase in Equestrian POWs in the aftermath of a skirmish near St. Petersburg two weeks ago. But, to him, it was just another day as an interrogator in the Aman. "Looks like today's going to be another long day," He said with a sigh as he rubbed his hands through his dark curly hair before closing his eyes, offering a quick prayer. 'Now, all I can do is wait-' He was cut off by a forceful if brief knock at his door. "It's open," he said in English as he opened his eyes and stood up.
Then, a large man dressed in the green of the IDF and wearing a cap opened the door and gave him a sharp salute, a lieutenant by his insignia. "The prisoner is waiting for you, sir," he said as he gestured for Pereira to follow.
Cpt. Pereira nodded as he went into his closet and threw on his jacket. "Good, let's get this over with," he said as he followed the man into the hallway. "Were we able to get anything out of her?"
The Lieutenant shook his head before looking forward. "Negative, sir, she only said that she wanted to speak with the president and the UN," Cpt. Pereira snorted in response. Oh, we'll see about that.
As they continued, there was little more said between them, and the two only stopped when they made it to a long hallway of reinforced steel doors. These were guarded by two soldiers to whom the Captain and Lieutenant flashed their clearance cards as they entered. Then, Cpt. Pereira turned to look at the other man. "So, which door?" He asked as they passed the first set of doors.
"She's in room 215," the Lieutenant responded without looking back. And all was quiet until they reached door 215 and he drew his keycard and slid it through the panel to the left of the door, causing the door to emit an audible "click" as it opened automatically. "Ring the alarm if she causes any trouble. Good luck," he said as he gave a sharp salute and stood aside as Cpt. Pereira nodded and walked inside.
As he did, he heard the door lock behind him as he noted the plain grey concrete walls and the single table that stood in the center of the room. Two plastic chairs stood on either side of it, with the closest being empty. And the one behind, occupied by the rainbow-maned, cyan mystery mare that had gotten him recalled to Isreal. Her appearance seemed off compared to most ponies he had seen and for more than just her mane, tail, or the fact that she was bound. Speaking of her mane and tail, they were messy with stray hairs poking out, splotches of black on her tail, and showing little in terms of care, with her wings in a similar state under their bindings. Her rose, almost magenta eyes, on the other hand, unsettled him as they locked with his own. As, rather than being filled with fear, anger, or any other emotion as he was used to, they seemed to be cold and distant, hiding her thoughts. 'This might be more difficult than I thought. I never even knew a pony could be so...unexpressive.'
Then, once he thought he covered everything, he began walking forward. "So, you're the one that claims to support our cause," he said as he sat down.
"Yes, I am," she stated confidently with a deep raspy voice as she sat back, still keeping her eyes on him.
"Right..." He said as he followed suit. "Your name?"
"Rainbow Dash," she began with a blank tone. "And yours?"
"I am Cpt. Pereira. And I'm the one asking the questions here Miss Dash," he said forcefully as he slammed a fist on the table, though she seemed more amused than threatened. "So how did you get all the way here from the front?"
At this, she chuckled slightly. "I flew all the way from Cloudsdale," she said with a cocky tone as he nearly exploded with laughter.
"How do you expect me to believe that? I've seen and heard many things these past few months sprinkles, but never something like that. How long was the journey?"
She rolled her eyes and looked away in a mock thinking pose. "About...three days? Yeah, I'd say that's how long it took," She replied sarcastically as she looked back at him with her smirk still visible while his incredulous expression was present.
"Right...are you sure you didn't get teleported here?" He asked as he leaned into her until he was only a few inches from her muzzle.
"No, I didn't," as she answered, he locked with her eyes to make sure she wasn't lying. Once he was satisfied, he sat back in his seat.
"How did you make it here without getting caught by either our forces or your own then?"
"I flew as high and fast as I could go at night, and in the day, I rested," she said as he thought it over.
"How did you evade the combat air patrols? I'm sure you had to run across them at some point?"
She began chuckling, which soon erupted into manic laughter. But once she managed to calm down, she looked back at Cpt. Pereira. "Oh, you humans can be so dull sometimes. 'Cause I just flew past them until I found a good hiding spot,"
"Wait, you mean to tell me you can outfly a jet?" He asked as he tried to hold in a sarcastic chuckle. "How is that even a thing?"
In response, Dash merely smirked. "Well, I happen to be the fastest pegasus in the world,"
"Oh, I would like to see that," he said in a sarcastic tone as he crossed his arms.
"Well, maybe one day you will," she replied with a slight grin.
"Alright, with that out of the way, now we can move onto the more important questions," he began as he tried to think of the best way to phrase his question. "What's your reason for siding with us?"
The moment he said this, he felt a sudden chill run up his spine that he hadn't felt for some time. All the while, he kept his eyes on Dash, and he figured out why he had felt so...unsettled earlier. Her expression remained stoic, but her eyes held many strange (for a pony) emotions, ones he was familiar with seeing on a terrorist he had caught a while back. "Well, while I would rather not disclose that particular information. I have what you need to win this war,"
As much as his gut was telling him this pony was not to be trusted and that he should leave, he gave in to her and asked the question. "And what would that be?"
And, for the first time since he met her, she gave him the biggest grin to match her crazy eyes. "Well, I know lots of ponies who really hate Celestia. And all they would need is guns and training,"
"And how would they get here?" He asked as he gave her a cocked brow.
She circled her hoof in the air with a bored expression. "Oh, we pegasi have our ways...but I would like to get something official down first. So, when will my request be met?" she asked as she cocked her brow.
He pondered for a moment as he thought of the best response. 'Look, I know there's something wrong with this pony, but what choice do we have? We have nothing against that barrier. May God have mercy...' And so, at that moment, he made the decision that would seal the fate of Equestria and himself forever. "I will see that it is done. Goodbye, miss Dash," He said as he stood up and walked up to the door before knocking on it.
Once he did, the door slowly opened, and he walked out before it closed behind him. As it did, the Lieutenant who was waiting outside caught a glimpse of Dash smiling widely at him with pinprick eyes as the door shut. Causing the man to quickly scurry off after the Captain.
First my Northern friend.
Well, I said constructive criticism, didn't I? So, can someone tell me why this isn't good?
dam bro you mek e go all ouyt on thiss uone
furrycdn.org/img/2021/3/27/76833/medium.png
10923152
As she should be.
Can someone please explain what's wrong with this story?
awesome chapter mate keep it up cant wait for the next chapter
I think this takes the cake for my most hated story so far...
Edit: Not anymore!
Most of the issues I had with it were/are structural. The blurb is composed of sentence fragments with Unusual capitalization, which predisposed me to read it critically.
At least one misconception that felt like a speed bump every time I hit it was your tendency to capitalize the first word after every line of dialogue, even if the dialogue was non-terminal. Example:
I also chose this particular example because it serves as an example for a few other bits of clumsy writing that made it difficult to get into the story.
First, the correction:
Shoulder boards are generally only present on overornamented uniforms (typically dress uniforms) and are not present on day-to-day IDF uniforms (nor would they be likely to be reintroduced on a war footing). The reason that "He [the lieutenant] said as he [the lieutenant] gestured for him [the Captain] to follow" should be self-explanatory. I also removed the adverb, because there's nothing sudden about someone knocking on your office door and then opening it. "Suddenly, there was a knock at the door", sure. "There was a knock on the door, suddenly it opened and there was someone there", no.
The writing is rife with these kind of errors, and the writing isn't compelling enough to overlook them, as well as quirks of your narrative voice that could do with variation.
Ingenuity? She's made it clear that this is something he'd have to consider her stupid not to consider, and he was using it as a reason to doubt her story. This is another thing that happens a few times in the first chapter, asserting properties of the conversation's participants not borne out by the content of the conversation.
Throughout the conversation, the dynamic also feels incorrect. Her hooves and wings are bound. She is a prisoner. He's an interrogator. He should either be trying to make friends, or grilling her - he is unarguably in the superior position, and yet the conversation puts them on nearly even footing. Now, Dash could be Hannibal Lecter levels of crazy, but nothing in the narration or conversation lends enough credence to that to allow her to ignore the power disparity, and even less justification is given for the Captain to play along with it.
This is why I gave a downvote - hopefully this constructive criticism is helpful when revising your story!
10923195
Well, I think I need a better proofreader...
Honestly I think there is nothing wrong with the story other then maybe pacing. I think the reason you got down votes was due to the original picture you chose.
In this climate many will be negative to an appearance rather then the content. So you have to be careful in what you choose to use.
10923203
Yeah, I figured as much. Though I wished to choose an image that shows what she represents without giving too much away. But, I personally like the current cover better.
10923206
Just stick with it and show your abilities. You may get some down votes, that's normal for here, but keep to the core of what your trying to convey. Just be careful many seem to not like to look beyond the surface.
10923148
but is gud
10923154
furrycdn.org/img/download/2020/10/21/40785.jpg
10923213
Oh, I know that. But the other guy still has a point, it's not something I'm great with.
10923195
Also, thank you. I edited the chapter based on your corrections, I hope you like it!
10923273
I won't be!
Interesting start -- looking forward to next chapter.
I have plenty of experience with people reading my stories (from years ago) and pooping on them, saying I use too many exclamation marks, this and that. Don't worry about it too much, is what I think you should do. Look at the substance of what people are saying, maybe? But it's never personal. None of these people knows you. It's too little to get psyched about, not saying that you are, but if you are, I just want to express a little bit of sympathy. I don't think any of these topics are off-limits for a story (or whatever).
Another thing are the formatting choices you made, which are at least nonstandard. Again, I don't mean anything personal. I want to be positive about it. Doing the fat text for the other language is unliterary, in my opinion, not to speak for anyone else, because it's not evocative of another language. Maybe generically, you want to have the reader do most of the work for you in a story like this. I just found it odd.
The capitalization of words inside dialogue tags is a formatting error, easily fixed! It's just a matter of remembering that dialogue tags belong to the same sentence as the dialogue, right? That's the answer, I think.
I'm not sure if I agree about the text being riddled with sentence fragments, which is what another person said. Where are the sentence fragments? Comma splices, I saw a few of, but sentence fragments? I guess it's because grammar is in part a matter of interpretation. You could say this is a sentence fragment:
Especially, you could say that because the sentence begins with "and," which implies that it belongs the previous sentence, "and" being a link word. I think what cannot be disputed is that this sentence is incorrect, from a traditional grammatical perspective. It's not an imperative clause, and it doesn't have a clear subject, does it? The person that "verb"sss. Sss. Something like that. And the word "that," relative pronoun, doesn't count.
I'm sorry. Criticism has to hurt.
Post scriptum: I saw you edited the chapter. That's good. I'll give an upvote to show good faith.
Actually, the story is only slightly overwritten, probably. It boggles the mind how many stories I've seen that a far and away worse, in terms of grammar and style, and yet somehow earn all the likes, so you can take that however you want, but people don't downvote stories on their own merits. People downvote stories because they don't like it. That's the difference. It's not always based on the quality of your writing.
10923286
Well in this case, I think it is. But thanks for the encouragement.
In fact, thank you all for giving me the hope and strength to not delete this story!
10923273
And thanks for noting that detail! It's not even something I considered, but it just seemed like the logical thing to do in a place like that.
What's "Alt Negotiations"?
10923320
I took some elements from Negotiationsverse, but got rid of others. Which is why is says:
Interesting start, but please, for the love of French toast, STOP BOLDING SPOKEN SENTENCES!!! I know they’re an alternative language, but there has to be a better way to do it
…okay, and there’s a few spoken sentences that need the first letter capitalized that aren’t. Until next time!
What’s wrong with rainbow dash?