The Quiet Kid: Sicut Vult

by aegishailstorm

An Aquatic Aphorism

"We found it." William repeated to himself. "We... Found it, crap!"

"Everyone back behind me!" Crimson Starwatcher and Nighshine either didn't hear him, or were too preoccupied with the dozens of sharkponies with spears and tridents. He grabbed them both by their wetsuit collars and yanked them backwards. Greytail uncomfortably swam back and forth, trying to conceal his three companions.

"Damnit Grey! Care to explain the welcome party?" The sharkpony looked back at the confused William, and then turned back to greet the approaching aquatic equines.

"What do they want?" Nightshine shouted, her voice muffled by both her respirator and the water. William shrugged, and drew his suppressed water rated sidearm.

"Grey! Order them back, or so help me Celestia, Luna, and The Almighty himself I will turn this ocean blood red!"

"The sharkponies with spears halted a few yards ahead of William, swimming circles around the trio and eyeing them with what seemed more like cautious curiosity rather than blind contempt. They didn't utter a single word as they approached.

"Hey- Hey!" William keep his gun low, kicking his fins back and forth with just enough force to keep himself from sinking deeper. Greytail waved his hoof.

"It's alright, they're here with me, they're... Emissaries!" The swarm of sharkponies didn't look all that convinced by his rushed statement. A few of them waved their weapons at Crimson Starwatcher, which elicited a low growl from the wolf pony, her fangs showing under her mask as little bubbles of air drifted up and away. Strangely enough, none of the Sharks seemed the least bit interested in William. In spite of the fact that he was the only one among them armed with an actual weapon, and wearing armor. Though, it was still obviously that they wouldn't have singled him out as a threat instantaneously, firearms didn't exist in Equestria, let alone underwater. And as for his armor, it probably just looked like strange bulky dive gear. Which, given their first encounter with Greytail, they understood in of itself.

"Halt!" William shouted, "Halt! Back!" He raised his hands, and gestured for them to stay back. To his surprise, they actually listened to him. They stopped trying to swim closer.

"Greytail- To they speak? Or is this some weird sort of pheromone thing? Apologies, I don't know sharks all that well."

"It's... No problem." Greytail replied. Finally, after a few more laps around the trio, the sharks stopped circling, and one of them swam forward. William heard a series of chirps and... 'Movements' in the water around him.

"Sonar?" He thought to himself as he watched this strange performance unfold.

"Grey, can you explain? You're a sharkpony after all."

"Yeah, tell us! Or I'll swim over there and pry it out of you!" Crimson shouted, her voice still heavily muffled and distorted. Finally, one of the sharkponies darted over towards William, stopping just out of arms reach.

"Hello? Can you understand me?" William waved his non occupied webbed right hand. The creature swam right up to him, and dove right under his hand, resting it right on it's own head as The Quiet Kid looked down in confusion. Unsure of what he should do.

"What are you doing?" The creature snarled softly and shifted closer. "Umm... Greytail? What's going on?" The sharkpony stifled back a laugh.

"I think she likes you!" William looked down at the sharkpony, and then back at greytail.

"This thing is a female? How can you tell? You all look the same!"

"We don't!" Both the sharkpony by William and Greytail snarled. William swam backwards and up towards Crimson. "You do." William replied. "You absolutely, positively, without a single shadow of a doubt, do." William found himself dogpiled from all angels by more uncomfortably friendly sharkponies. "What do I... Do?" He asked his friends. "They- Um... They clearly aren't interested in eating me, but... I wasn't really expecting this."

Nightshine swam up, and the sharkponies instantly shifted their focus away from William, and turned to the confused bat pony. Her expression went dead, but was reduced to giggles in mere moments.

"Are we going to anywhere?" Crimson shouted over at William. "Down!" William called back.

"Down!" Greytail resonated.

"What!?" Crimson cried out. William and Nightshine were already gone, Greytail with them. " William!" She sputtered out, coughing as she suddenly recalled that she couldn't breath water. The wolfpony uttered a groan of frustration, and followed William. As they descended deeper and deeper, and the ringing and pain in her ears grew progressively worse, the sharkpony city came into full view.

"Quite a nice establishment y'all have got yourselves here... It's very..." William floated in place, looking around him. He was a good hundred or so feet off the ocean floor, surrounding him was a veritable Manhattan underwater made from stone spires. Below him, an uncountable amount of half pony- half shark hybrids darted in and out of sigh along glowing highways lined with kelp the same way a surface road would be lined by trees. Beyond the cities'... Skyline? Oceanline?

"Hey! Nighshine!" William called out, turning a few sharkpony heads in the process as the batpony bolted out from their grasp and swam up to William. "What!?" She shouted, just a few inches from his ear.

"City skyline or city oceanline? What should I call it?"

"That! That would be oceanline!" A sharkpony in the crowd called back in almost perfect English. "Oh, now you decide to talk?" William questioned, holstering his pistol and crossing his arms.

"Yes?" The shark replied. The voice seemed male. " I... Just got here!" He replied. William facepalmed. The armored sharkponies still remained with them. But with the crowd had come an array of garb and dress that would've made Rarity spontaneously combust, or... Just dissolve- Considering they were underwater. Dresses and suits made from woven kelp and adored in all kinds of shiny fish scales and shells, with little bits here and there that glowed faintly against the deep blue currents around them. William took another look down.

"This satisfy you Nightshine? It's like flying! Except you're constantly falling!" The batpony shook her head in amusement, William couldn't hear her chuckle, but he could tell based off her muzzles movements that she thought highly of it. The trio looked out across the massive aquaitc construct, beyond it lay massive rocky crags lined with colorful globules William took to be coral, alongside vast meadows of seaweed and seagrass.

"It's moments like this that make me recall why I love Equestria so much." William told Nightshine and Crimson. It took a moment to filter through, but they both understood it, and swarmed around William.

"Just wish Joey was here! He'd love this." The Quiet Kid flapped his webbed gloves and spun around to face one of the armored sharkponies.

"Hey! Can you take us to your leader!? I'd love to see your city but- I've got a quota to meet!" Crimson pawed William on the back. "Quota? Since when did this become a job for you? I don't recall you getting paid for you just acting like-"

"I get stipends from Celestia every now and then! Little thank you of hers to me for my saving Equestria." Nightshine rolled her nocturnal eyes, now glowing softly behind her goggles in the poorly illuminated ocean. All either light either came from the little bit of sun that managed to poke through the water, or the glow of the magical lanterns and other such forms of illumination.

"Oh of course you do!" Crimson sneered. "That would make you... What? A mercenary?" William laughed as he swam along, haphazardly rolling his eyes below his mask and smiled.

"Crimson, Nightshine, I'll have the both of you know that I prefer, 'Private Military Contractor.' Contractor sounds cooler. Just wish I had the beard and dope ass sunglasses to go along with it." Crimson stopped and shook her head.

"You? With a beard? Hah! You're more the pencil mustache kind." William chuckled. "Sure... I'm not in the mood to do an Italian accent right now, I'm part Scottish, don't ya know?" Both mare's looked at each other with mutual understanding that William wasn't making any sense.

"Y'all might wanna check your depth gauges and dive clocks." William changed the subject as they approached one solitary spire towards the center of the city. It was at that moment that he noticed something odd. They were going along much faster than usual now that they had gotten down to the level of the other sharkpoines in transit. It was then that Greytail swam up and bumped shoulders with William, causing him to bolt around and just barely miss the opportunity to take a swing at him with a closed webbed fist. The sharkpony snared at him.

"Enjoying it?"

"Enjoying what? Why are we moving so fast!? Ocean currents?"

"Yep! We use them as fast and easy transit. You barely even have to move your fins in the process." William nodded, and relaxed his legs.

"Are there different variations of sharkpony? What exactly are you all descended from? What's your system of government?" William was asking questions just about as fast as Twilight Sparkle at this point, though, most were barely legible underwater.

"Save your questions for later! You've got plenty of time, I'm sure!"

"Yeah, just a few more hours..." William grumbled. The crowd fell away from them, until it was just Greytail, a few armored sharkponies, and the surface trio. The guards guided them into the large monolithic outcropping, where they soon found themselves surrounded by pumice rock tunnels some 20 odd feet in diameter and glowing aquatic growths that lined the walls like underwater braziers. They flushed and contracted whenever he poked at them. And he decidedly came to the conclusion that they were filled with bioluminescent algae. It was all spectacular to be sure, but nothing he hadn't witnessed in the Kingdom of the Hypogriffs a summer ago. A Kingdom which he had promptly been kicked out for erroneously deciding to help Twilight try and steal a magical sphere that contained some of the most powerful transformation magic he had ever seen. Even Chrysalis and her changelings hadn't quite come to match it. Ever since it had been shattered, the Quiet Kid wished that he would be able to find himself one, figuring that it would make a cool placement on his wall. But, he wouldn't even know where to begin looking.

"Where are you taking us?" William asked the sharkponies, "I specified, 'your leader' but who- or what is that?"

"Oh why, you're going to meet them in a moment!"

"Delightful-" The Quiet Kid rolled out of the way of a trident tossed his way, it's golden tips impaled themselves in the pumice wall behind him with a dull crackle and a flurry of bubbles. "What the-" He glared around the room, his helmet lamps casting shadows across it. At it's end, was a set of stone seats wrapped in kelp. In stark contrast to the massive, wide open throne room of the seaponies and Hypogriffs, this throne room. If it even was that, was comparatively modest. Greek stone columns held up an otherwise natural cave, with the wall off to William's immediate right completely open to the outside ocean. He glanced around, and saw no one.

"William," Crimson swam up and tapped him on the shoulder. "Look up." The Quiet Kid set his hand on his gun and glanced upwards. Circling about 10 yards above them, was a trio of 3 more sharks. These ones looked just like the rest, with the exception of one. This one bore a strange growth on his head. Upon closer inspection, William realized that he was looking at a horn.

"A... Unicorn sharkpony? Now you're just playing.. 'how many hybrids can you stick in one body?' Cool, but... Obscene at the same time? How did this even come about? Your physiology must be a mess!" Nightshine laughed at him. "Now you really are starting to sound like Twilight!" William rubbed his temples and shook his head.

"Yeah, I suppose I do."

"Who threw that trident at me!?" William demanded, shaking his fist up at the ceiling and turning his attention from one shark to the next.

"Who are you?" They asked him, swimming downwards until they were eye to eye. "William. That is Crimson Starwatcher, and that is Nightshine. Are you some form of ruling council? Your dominion is amazing!"

"Are you spies?" William blinked. "No... What'd lead you to think that?" A flash of light out of the corner of his vision caught his attention.

"What was that?"

"Seapony attack." The lead sharkpony eyed them suspiciously, glaring at Crimson in particular. Greytail just shrugged and awkwardly swam over to the corner of the room. "Look, tell it to me from the beginning, what's your quarrel with the seaponies and hippogriffs? Fishing grounds? Magical artifact? Perhaps a difference of Opinion? One of those damn friendship problems?" The council of aquatic equines looked at one another and snarked, grunting and snarling among themselves before finally turning to William, and then instantly going back to bickering among themselves. William facepalmed, wondering if this was worth interjecting himself into.

"Oh what the hell?" He thought to himself. "I'm... Not exactly on the best standing with Novo anyhow. Still, maybe I could one up Twilight and fix this myself! I'm not good with politics damnit!" William kicked his fins and floated lazily back and forth as he spoke to himself, so much so that he once more drew the attention of the shark council ahead of him.

"Creature?" One of them asked, "What are you doing?"

"Thinking." William replied.

"About what?" Nightshine asked him. William shrugged, and held himself upright. "How to fix this... Issue of theirs. It'd be fun to see how far I can get. Plus... Twilight's ruler of Equestria now."

"Who?" The council members asked. William's gaze shifted around. "You haven't been up to the surface in a long time, have you?" This elicited the closest thing William believed he could get to a laugh from these creatures. "Explain it to me on the way- No, no, no. Is there any way you could get a delegation here? I know a few of them. Including some members of the... Ugh, 'royal family.' I'd be more than happy to help you out just... Make it quick?" William groaned as they laughed again.

"William..." Crimson tapped her dive gauge. "It's in the yellow now." He nodded. "I wanna go check on Joey." He turned back to the sharkponies, "You can either come with us or wait right here."

"The surface, are you- Are you serious!?" They swam out of the room, growling and snarking amongst one another, talking as though they couldn't believe what he had just told them.

"It's no matter." He responded. "They can go on and do whatever they want. Hey, Greytail. I've got just a little tiny favor to ask of you, if you're up for it."

"What?"

"Find me a seapony named 'Silverstream'. If you can- Actually, scratch that- Can you just wait for us to return? And... Maybe try to translate all their laughing and snarking and growling for us?" Greytail squinted his eyes at them and bared his fangs in a strange sign of affirmation.

"Absolutely. They just don't want a strange foreign surfacer getting involved in internal affairs'." William shook his head. "I have nothing better to do. I don't care what happens, but- I am intrigued by your species."

"What do you mean he's gone!?" Frosty Fields almost doubled back from her seat on a set of cushions in Grogar's Cave.

"Gone, t-that's exactly what I said. He's missing from Ponyville! The Quiet Kid is gone!" If Grogar had any corporeal form, he would have been shaking his head and laughing madly.

"No... I don't believe it! No... Keep looking, he must be there somewhere! This is a trick, I am sure of it!" The talking bell beamed with magical energy. Throwing shadows across the cavern walls. Frosty sighed and shook her head.

"Fine. I'll go back to looking for him."

"William? William! You're back!" Joey pulled his friend back on board, rocking the boat as William slumped over the edge, with Nightshine and Crimson in tow.

"Well??" The alicorns voice rang with eager curiosity. "Did you find it? The sharkpony city?"

"That'd... Be an understatement." William answered him nonchalantly as he removed his helmet.

"We've got a lot of stuff to work out. Yes, yes, I know... We're technically supposed to be on vacation! And that... Is exactly what this is! I'd appreciate it if you joined us." Joey shook his head. "William, I-I just can't."

"Oh, don't stutter! We're on vacation!" His alicorn friend lowered his head and sulked. William waddled over and rustled his blue mane.

"Get yourself a sunburn yet?"

"No... But would you mind leaving an umbrella up here next time?" William laughed, and Joey laughed back.

"Good idea."

Comments

[aegishailstorm]

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It keeps happening! I'm not inept, I just don't pay close enough attention!