8. Permission Letter
The Last Nightguard
Permission Letter
“Travel for all guardmembers must be approved two weeks in advance by a commanding officer and the travel office of the respective branch. Advance disbursements of pay may be permitted for miscellaneous personal expenses, not to exceed two weeks pay or one hundred bits. Per diam rates during official travel may be found in the following table, depending on the destination…”
—Manual of the Royal Guard, Volume Four
It took some time, but all of the preparations were finalized. The patient was going to the most exclusive hospital on the east coast of Equestria by way of an express train and a special car staffed and equipped for the journey. Doctor Hurwitz was looking forward to the project, and the most certainly unique paper that was going to result. Physicians for centuries would be referencing his work on rehabilitating damaged organs, even if his patient eventually passed away. Honestly, he had not expected the withered stallion to last nearly this long, and he probably would not survive a week in Manehattan now that he had stopped eating totally.
Normally, Doctor Hurwitz would have organized the transport in the middle of the night, but Princess Luna had an unexpected tendency to wander the palace in the shadows. Dawn had been determined to be the best time for the first stage of the transfer, and two husky orderlies had already begun preparations, or at least that’s what the doctor expected when he arrived.
“Princess Luna!” he managed rather than an alarmed scream. The former Nightmare Moon still frightened him, although he had managed to conceal it from the rest of his staff who thought she was the most amazing creature in Canterlot. The two orderlies seemed to be on her ‘worshiping’ team with the degree of awed respect they were paying the restored Princess of the Moon. Luna was not returning the admiration in the slightest.
“Doctor Hurwitz,” she began with a voice as cold as the arctic winds. “What do you think you are doing with my Guard?” Without even pausing for a response, she sharply continued, “Your servants claim that We are not permitted to see him. As your Princess of the Night, We have no need for their presence, and they are permitted to depart. Now.”
They went. Fast, and without a backward glance.
“Your Highness—” managed Hurwitz before those cold teal eyes shifted to his face, and his words instantly froze in his mouth.
“Exactly,” said Luna. “I am your Dire Sovereign. My word is law. To defy me is death.”
“Dea—?” The worst punishment that Princess Celestia had ever inflicted on somepony who obstructed her will was a stern lecture. Then again, he had read the secret reports on the Royal Sisters and their final fight. Nightmare Moon had slain so many in her last minutes a thousand years ago… It was unthinkable for his modern mind.
He was certainly thinking of it now, right down to the nervous muscles controlling his sphincters.
“You will remove yourself from my presence,” continued Princess Luna. “You will visit my Guard once per day for whatever treatments he may need. We shall be responsible for his nightly care. You will report to Us when you visit. You will use plain, simple words. You shall not deceive me by commission or omission again. Do you understand?”
“Y-Yes, Your Highness.” Doctor Hurwitz had very little interest in adding any more words, but he had to ask, “And the patient’s transfer?”
“Is no longer needed. You are dismissed until tomorrow evening.”
The doctor’s hooves had carried him halfway down the corridor before he could stop himself and ask, “Will my nurses—”
“They are not needed,” stated Luna flatly.
Without another word, the moon princess turned and walked into the patient’s room.
Eb was prepared to die. He did not belong in this strange world filled with terrible things. They could not make him live if he did not eat. All the fel magic racing through his veins would not sustain him if he starved to death. Everything familiar and welcome to him was dead anyway, and to greet his wife and children on the Great Plain of the Shadowlands would be a reunion long delayed. No other creature knew what it was like to be plucked from their world and returned when everypony had been turned to dust by the ages several times over. No monstrous children, no doctors, no pony in Equestria was going to stop him.
The door to his room creaked open, then closed again. There had been some sort of muffling spell out in the hallway that kept him from hearing what was being discussed, but not by who.
“Nightmare,” he growled.
“Once,” said Princess Luna as she emerged into a pool of sunlight cast by the small window in his cell. “Perhaps once again. If so, I will need…”
The meek princess was so different than the confident, brash Luna of his experience. All of the gloss and false fronts seemed to be stripped away, and the resulting princess was far more naked to his eyes than if she had been as hairless as himself.
“They all love me,” she whispered. “Those who don’t, fear me. Even my own sister quakes in terror at what I could become again, but she loves me so much I can feel it clog my pores like some loathesome disease! I nearly destroyed all of Equestria with my petty tantrums, I murdered our Nightguard, and slayed many, many others. I made monsters out of those who loved me, and drew their life away in a futile attempt to save my own. They are all dead now, dead and gone to where even history cannot find them.”
“Not all,” growled Eb despite himself.
“No.” Luna took a short breath while looking at the cold tile floor of the hospital room. “Celestia cannot find it in her heart to hate me as I deserve. She thinks I can be forgiven for my terrible crimes, and the servants echo her hope as the moon doth reflect the sun. There is only one pony in this entire star-forsaken world who hates me, despises me to the depths of their heart, and that’s you.”
“Die!” managed Eb through the gritting of emerging teeth which had cut their way through his tender gums.
“Exactly.” Luna smiled in a way that did not reach her cold teal eyes, and once again, a princess stood tall in the room. “As long as you live, there is one who hates me for what I have done. Somepony who will not forget, who holds my crimes as unforgivable. One stable point in my new life, who will always tell the truth about my unworthiness. Somepony who understands what monstrous acts I have committed, and will not grant me mercy.”
“You should leave me here to rot,” he rasped. “I would be dead, and your precious feelings would not be injured.”
“I would rather hear you say you will not rest until you have torn my throat out and my body is a feast for the birds,” said Luna slowly. She moved from where she had been standing, placed her neck across his mouth, and whispered into his ear, “Do it. Slay me. You said it yourself. I do not deserve to live. Strike, and wreak vengeance upon me for the honor of your dead.”
As much as he wanted to close his jaws and tear out the warm vessels he could feel pulsing beneath his tender gums, Eb turned his head and licked away the coppery taste of his own blood. “It is not the right time.”
“As I surmised,” said Luna as she returned to her previous position. “You are weak, far moreso than I was when the Elements returned me to this mortal coil. If you do not eat as the doctors commanded, you will perish, and who will the spirits of the slain task to exact their revenge upon me then?”
“I’ll kill you when I recover,” rasped Eb. “I shall get out of this bed and paint the walls with your blood.”
“My blood will make poor paint,” said Luna. She lit up her horn, picked up the spoon, and moved it in front of his nose. “As for the painter, he can scarcely feed himself or clean up his messes. This I will do, in order to show the foolishness of your premature actions. Now, eat. Your Princess commands it.”
“You know I’ll kill you in the end,” rasped Eb, heaving himself over onto his side. “I’ll get my hooves around your neck and…” Words failed him as his dry throat collapsed, leaving him gasping over the bedrail until a glass of water was thrust against his face.
“Drink,” commanded Luna. “Drink and live, Nightguard. I am ordering you not to die until I give you leave. You will eat the food from this house of healing, drink their disgusting potions, and consume their vile pills. You will rise from your bed to stand by my side in this strange world. Then and only then, when the time comes for you to complete your final task, We shall grant you permission. Now, drink!”
He drank, with additional glares at his unusual nurse until the glass was empty.
Morning in a hospital is an uncomfortable time. The goal of the staff—at least from the patient’s point of view—seems to be keeping any of their patients from getting any kind of rest. There are pills to be given and temperatures to be taken, brief visits by unknown physicians that show up as hundreds of bits on the bill weeks later, and the inevitable hospital food, delivered cold.
Marigold was the lowest of nurses in the hospital wing, having barely worked there over a month, and rotated in from Canterlot General on what was generally called the Boredom Brigade. Since the palace medical facility only handled the local staff and occasional discreet VIP visit from a diplomat who did not want to be seen having something embarrassing removed, there were normally more staff than patients by a substantial margin.
Then Princess Luna had returned to Canterlot.
Immediately, the palace position became sought-after, and Marigold had been offered quite a stack of bits to transfer out. The thing was she liked the palace, and thought it would be a good way to meet Equestria’s newest princess in an informal setting, like when she got her immunizations or physical exam. And maybe an autograph. Or two, so she could give one to her mother.
Weaving her way down the corridor between patrolling guards did not set Marigold’s heart at ease. Neither did coming to the door and pushing her cart between the two bulky earth pony guards, or the relative darkness of the room beyond. If they were going to keep Princess Luna’s newest nocturne pegasus in some dark cave, they should have gotten one of the nocturne nurses to serve breakfast. Still, it was Princess Luna’s decision, and Marigold was just so overjoyed that Princess Celestia’s sister had been rescued from the moon that anything she wanted to do was just fine.
“Princess Luna?” put forward Marigold into the darkness. “I brought Mister Ebon Tide’s breakfast. And I’ve got some paperwork we need to complete. Hello?”
Two sets of eyes appeared out of the darkness, one cold teal and one golden as a pair of bits.
“Eeek! I mean, Your Highness,” managed Marigold as her eyes adjusted to the relative gloom. “I’ll just open up the curtains and get Ebon Tide’s breakfast started.”
A gentle touch of magic stopped Marigold on her way to the window pullstrings, and she turned to face Princess Luna’s scowl.
“I shall feed my Guard,” she announced. “As for the parchment, send it to the Royal Clerks.”
“But…” Marigold grabbed for the papers and a pencil. “We need to know your immunization history, so we can set up your shots.”
“Shots?” said Princess Luna. “Immunizations?”
“Of course,” said Marigold, then pausing. “Oh. Thousand years. Yes. I suppose we should set you up for the whole series. And your Guard. That certainly simplifies the paperwork.”
“If there is nothing else?” said Luna.
It did not seem like a very opportune time to get the autograph she wanted, so Marigold bobbed her head and backed out of the room.
“What are immunizations?” asked Luna once the two of them were alone again.
“How should I know?” growled Eb. “You’re the know-it-all Princess of Darkness.”
“Shut up,” growled Luna. She grabbed the bowl of oatmeal in her magic and dipped in a spoon. “Now, open up.”
Reluctantly, Eb opened his mouth and let the first spoonful inside. He chewed silently, but remained with mouth stubbornly closed when the second spoon approached.
“It is my order,” said Luna. “Open up and eat.”
“I’d rather die,” growled Eb from between clenched gums. “One more of those will kill me.”
“Child.” Luna popped the spoon inside her own mouth and chewed, rapidly at first, then slowing until she spat out the messy glob on the paperwork still placed on the breakfast cart. “Is that perchance glue of some sort?” she mused, giving the remainder of the bowl a reluctant prod.
“I’ve had worse,” admitted Eb through the sticky remains of his mouthful. “Barracks chow. Two… no, three years before. Eggs had turned. Entire cohort was vomiting when we left on patrol.”
“We were not informed,” said Luna, who had turned to using the spoon to scrape her tongue. “Those responsible should be—”
“Dead,” said Ebon Tide, which stopped Luna’s tongue scraping cold. She silently stood up and pushed the breakfast cart out into the hallway. Ebon Tide occupied his time by rolling back on his side and turning his back to the quiet alicorn. He remained there for a while, trying to ignore everything, including the memories that floated up despite his best efforts. He could still see their faces, and expected at any moment to have his old commander stomp into the room with bellowed demands that he get up and go back to work.
There was just one problem.
He rolled over and looked at the bedside table, which had two glasses of something on it. One was white and one orange, and both were being eyed rather suspiciously by Princess Luna, who had returned while he was brooding.
“This world doth vex me,” she muttered. “Divers fruits and nuts previously unknown to ponykind doth abound upon the Royal Table, and there are no end of sauces and dips for the few we still know. And the fluids hath become so wild and strange. One of the servants asked if I would like a Manehattan yesterday. When I asked why I would wish a drink named after that muddy little river fort, he laughed.” She sniffed at the two glasses, then passed him the white one. “Drink. Your Princess of the Night requires it.”
Since the remainder of the gluey oatmeal had set up like plaster in the back of his throat, he could not speak up to object. Still, it only took a short sip before he spat it out and coughed. “Milk!”
“Milk?” echoed Princess Luna. She gave the glass an additional sniff and a tiny sip of her own. “Verily, it is. Are my injured Guards babes now, to be fed from the teats of new mothers? Here.” She floated over the glass of orange juice and waited for him to take a sip.
It irked Eb to be used as a food taster, and the sweetness of the beverage made it easy for him to drink it down until he reached the very bottom of the glass. “Oranges,” he said vindictively after taking a gasping breath.
“They would fain give you that vile substance disguised as oatmeal, and yet add a precious glass of our squezen oranges.” Luna stuck her nose into the glass and sniffed. “They even removed the pulp and seeds. The Royal Table had to contend with both during our time.”
Ebon shuddered, partially from the huge amount of rare orange squeezings he had swallowed into his shrunken stomach, but more for the memories that flooded in. His wife had at least gone to the Shadowlands long before his spectacular failure, so she did not witness it, but their children…
His mind kept drifting back to the three monstrous children who had visited his bed. They appeared too innocent to be real monsters, but children were often more monstrous than adults realized. The paper Peanut had brought rustled against his head, and he stuffed it further under his pillow before Princess Luna noticed. If he opened it and saw his name, this place would become real, and there would be no chance he was simply having some sort of terrible nightmare.
Unfortunately, there was something important that fairly proved he was not having a nightmare of any type.
“Princess Luna,” growled Ebon Tide. “Leave and send in the nurse.”
“No.”
Eb ground the stubs of his growing teeth. “Please.”
“Is there something about this simple word which perplexes Our Guard?”
Rolling over onto his back, Eb locked eyes with the moon princess. “I need a bedpan. Please leave and send for a nurse.”
“Beds have a pan?” asked Luna with a curious expression. “Why would you need— Oh! Another new word for this blasted new era. What is it?”
“It is a pan,” said Eb flatly, “which is placed under my fundament, so that I may piss into it.”
The look on Princess Luna’s face was indescribable, but Eb planned on remembering it for as long as he lived. “A pan,” she repeated.
A faint cool breeze blew across Eb’s exposed belly, which had no fur to protect it from the chill or Princess Luna’s gaze. He flopped over on his belly with one swift motion far faster than he had thought possible, and tucked the stub of his hairless tail against his bare buns.
“That would be a more comfortable way for a stallion to urinate than dragging yourself across the floor to these new modern jakes,” mused Princess Luna. There was a familiar clatter of metal from a nearby cabinet, and she continued to mutter, “What strange vessels these be. This is far too small, and this… We presume it is for soaking a sore rear. Hm… So one of the odd tubes that I removed on my first visit took care of removing thy piss? Was it not uncomfortable?”
His first instinct was to snap a cross and quite obscene response, but despite being evil, Princess Luna was still his princess, so Ebon Tide modified his answer to a growled, “Yes, Your Highness. I could scarcely tell through my medications, but what I could sense was anything but pleasurable.”
Biding one’s time before killing an unspeakably evil foe was easier when one was not hairless, with your foe rummaging through a collection of waste-collection crockery. Eb would have rather died before allowing a princess to slide the cold bedpan under his bare belly, and could not go through with the next step, no matter how much he needed the relief.
“Do We need to make that an order?” asked Princess Luna after an embarrassing wait. “And here We thought Our Guards were able to do great feats merely out of their sense of loyalty. We shall await your accomplishment in the room’s jakes, for the need is mutual.”
Some time later, she emerged, with a more suitable solemnity to her words. “Miracles upon miracles lie in these strange times. Lift, please. To have a water closet was the mark of royalty in our times, and now every room seems to have one, scented with rose petals and scrubbed clean enough to sparkle.” The Princess of the Pot vanished back into the bathroom, as the nurses had called it, only to return again.
“Wash,” he growled. “Every pestilent time the churgeons visit, they insist on a proper ablution, with soap. If my hair had not fallen out already, they would have scrubbed me naked within hours of flinging me in this hellish pit. If they must—”
“—then so must I,” finished Luna, turning back to the small room. “Certes, it doth make the air easier to breathe, although the expenses for soap must be gigantic. The water, not so much, as Canterlot hath a wild abundance.”
“Canterlot?” growled Eb with the feeling of yet another supporting timber of his mind being gnawed away. “What of the Castle of the Two Sisters? Are we at war, and forced to retreat to the mountain fastness? How can they have such finery prepared for us in a time of siege?”
“We are at peace,” said Princess Luna very quietly as she put the cleaned pot away. “As all who I have asked have been more than overjoyed to state. All of the races of Equestria who hungered for pony blood have become allies, and the worst threats remain locked away forever.”
“Discord?” asked Eb in wonderment. “The Demon-King Sombra who swore to return? The mysterious Pony of Shadows which Starswirl would opine upon for hours if given the opportunity? The Sirens and Changelings?” He gave out a mirthless huff of breath. “How it must burn beneath your breast to learn that your hated sister accomplished so much without you at her side. It must call out to the Nightmare within you.”
“Quite to the contrary,” stated Princess Luna. “I rejoice that the foals of Equestria no longer need fear the sound of wings in the darkness. I am overjoyed that the griffons which I have met in the halls of this vast gilded palace are overfed and placid, not the razor-edged foes of our time.”
Ebon regarded Princess Luna for a time before curling up away from her. “Liar,” he muttered.
He had not intended to sleep, but with an empty bladder and a belly full of orange juice, his intentions had no impact on reality. The faint bump of another cart at his hospital room door brought Eb out of his drowsy state, although not exactly to alertness.
“I’m sorry!” squeaked the chubby nurse. “I didn’t know it would take this long, but the Grand Chef put together the same breakfast assortment as Princess Celestia gets every morning.” Her reddish eyes flickered sideways to Ebon Tide, and the nurse took another breath. “I can stay here and feed the patient, Your Highness, if you want—”
“No,” said Princess Luna, and by the time the small word had finished being said, the nurse had already darted out of the door in a blur of orange, leaving the overstuffed cart behind.
“This is what Princess Celestia eats for breakfast?” asked Eb. “I know why she’s so large now.”
“Restrain yourself,” said Princess Luna flatly. “Sarcastic humor about my sister’s immense rear end tis my bailiwick. Still…” A fork grasped in Luna’s teal magic wandered over the collection of breakfast items, making halfhearted jabs at various pastries or fruit items. Eb wanted to say something suitably acerbic about her decision-making process, or lack thereof, but he likewise was at a total loss at where to begin, or what most of it was.
“Apple slices,” he said finally, pointing his hoof. “Without teeth, they must be for you.”
“Were they the only thing here, I would chew them for you,” said Princess Luna. “As it is… they are all I recognize.”
There was a vindictive joy in seeing Nightmare Moon brought to this level of frustration by a simple breakfast, matched by a sucking chasm in his own heart at being so cast away from his life that even food had become a stranger. The balance was tipped by a growling under his ribs, indicating that a single glass of squozen oranges in the past was not sufficient to fuel his recovery in the present.
“You are the Princess of the Night,” he growled. “Call forth to thy servants and force them to return, so they may enlighten us to the contents of this modern breakfast.”
“Speak not to your Princess of the Night in that casual fashion, and know your place,” snapped Luna right back.
“Beg pardon, Your Highness,” responded Eb. He was trying to bite back his sharp response, but his gums ached, and he was getting hungry, in the same way a wolf sought the warm neck of a defenseless creature. Teeth would be useful in that regard, but without them, he could still use the same sharp mind that had served him well in the Guard.
“I require a sheet, Your Highness,” said Eb.
Crupper was used to receiving despairing looks from Lieutenant Shining Armor, while Captain Ramparts barely acknowledged his existence. Most of the other guards had started calling him Bear because he was constantly ‘barely’ passing whatever tasks were assigned to him, including scholastic tests. With Shining Armor and Ramparts both out of the palace, Crupper was comfortably relaxing into his old ways, and there was no better place to be schluffing off than with his rump up against the wall in the dark, next to a door that most probably would not be opened until—
“Command Officer!” snapped out a rough but still decisive voice. “Report, at once!”
Crupper’s mind froze. There was no such thing as a ‘Command Officer’ in the Royal Guard, but Princess Luna was in the hospital room, so he had to do something other than remaining stationary. He burst into the dark room and snapped a sharp wing salute, looking around for—
Two sets of glowering eyes met his, and Crupper’s body promptly froze up just as solidly as his mind. ‘Princess’ in his experience had always been associated with tall and airy beauties who never looked at him, while the Night Guards were always insular and stuck to their own kind. This nocturnal pegasus looked like a nightmarish parody of a pony, almost completely hairless on his head with the rest of his body wrapped in a hospital sheet. His golden eyes glowed with unrestrained power, and thin lips curled back in the reddish snarl of a hungry carnivore.
“So, you’re what passes for a Royal Guard now,” it sneered. “What is your name?”
“Specialist Crupper, First House Regiment,” managed Crupper, still frozen with one wing against his helmet.
“Ebon Tide, Warleader of the Third Cohort of the Nightguard,” snarled the terrifying guard. “Armor unshined, unpreened, mane cut far too long, slouching while at attention. Did you even verify the identity of the nurse who brought this?” he added with a wave at the overstuffed breakfast cart.
“She’s my second cousin,” blurted out Crupper. “I’ve known her since we were foals.”
The monstrosity smiled with bare hints of white amidst his blood-red gums, and somehow that made it far worse. “One tiny point of competence among endless failures. Did you inspect the contents of this device? Do you even know what they are, or if they’ve been tampered with? Your Princess of the Night is right here! How do you know this...” He trailed off with one dark hoof pointed at a bowl of pudding.
“Tapioca!” blurted out Crupper. “It’s poisonous if uncooked, but—”
“Let’s see you try it,” snarled Ebon Tide. He watched carefully as Crupper fumbled for a spoon, then took a small bite.
“It’s got more cinnamon in it than I like,” he admitted, “but Chef Absolum has a heavy hoof on the spice rack.”
“And this,” stated Ebon Tide, moving his hoof to point at the next dish.
“Vanilla pudding,” he said after a quick sampling.
“Chocolate fudge,” he reported on the next.
To be honest, food taster was Crupper’s dream job: being paid to eat. That dream was rapidly becoming a nightmare under the keen eyes of both a silent princess and a Royal Guard who outranked him by seniority on everything. Sweat had begun to trickle down his wingpits by the time he reached the last dish, and was absolutely positive he had screwed up the identity of at least half of them.
“Acceptable,” said the devilish monster. He sagged back onto the bed and waved one hoof at the door. “Twelve demerits, one month extra duty in the kitchens learning how to recognize adulterations to any foodstuffs, and I expect to speak with your commander regarding your abject lack of discipline and personal hygiene. Dismissed!”
“Thank you, sir!” managed Crupper with as sharp of a salute as he was able while scrambling backwards to get out of the room, almost taking wing out in the corridor despite the narrow space.
* * *
“That disgusting blob was supposed to be a soldier.” Ebon Tide flopped down on his sinfully soft bed and closed his eyes. “It’s no wonder we’re at peace. All the other races must have conquered us already.”
After a period of time with no answer, he opened one eye, only to find Princess Luna licking the bottom of one of the breakfast bowls in a frightful violation of Royal etiquette. “C’ocolate,” she explained after licking the bowl to immaculate cleanliness.
“How can you eat that without your hair catching on fire?” mused Eb.
“No peppers.” A very long princess-tongue explored for any leftover drips and Luna continued when she was done, “Sugar. Possibly milk.”
He grunted in response, since Eb had run out of energy to complain. His objection did not rise to keeping his mouth closed when a spoonful of pudding bumped up against his lips, or to half-chew/half-swallow the resulting substance.
“Sweet Peas?” he managed around a third spoon.
“Tapioca,” said Luna cheerfully. “The lumps are portions of the poisonous root, which Speculus Crupper seems to think were rendered harmless by cooking. We would appreciate your opinion in this matter.”
Several bites later as Luna scraped the bottom of the bowl for one last spoonful, Eb had to admit, “If I am killed by a breakfast food after spending a thousand years imprisoned in the moon, I do not deserve to live. Still, I find it pleasurable, and not completely unfathomable why the ponies of this modern age might risk their lives for this food.”
After that significant effort, it just seemed easier to put his head down and allow sleep to claim him.
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Sweet dreams, filled with chocolate.
We feed this substance to our foals to see which of four responses we recive.
They refuse, they accept or they eat it eagerly.
And the fourth?
July noted vehemence.
We'll be seeing more of Crupper won't we?
Wait 'till this guy hears about the Pillars. Or the entire Crystal Empire. Or, um, Luna.
This is more of an anachronistic quip than anything. Please don't mistake it for an actual attempt at analysis. :P
Loved the longer chapter.
Heh, this was a nice chapter. Shared dumbfoundness is a nice bridge between those two.
11400314 Alondro resurrects, AGAIN, 10,000 years from now. "Huh. Well this sucks. I don't even know what anime is coming up now!"
Weebs, I tell ya...
I wonder if you can be hanged if you obey the orders of one Princess and in the process disobey the orders of the other Princess.
Depends on which princess is which, I gather, but knowing how these tropes go I see these two become friends.
11400294 He's fun to write.
11400314 Yep, that irony was the intent. He's blind to the obvious. Besides, the Crystal Empire and the Pillars happen several years in the future from this point.
11400322 Chapter length is pacing, for this purpose.
11400337 Yep, he's Spike for the purposes of conversations. (i.e. if Twilight talked to herself a lot, viewers of the cartoon would be worried about her mental state, so they gave her a verbal foil.)
11400456
Yep, that quip was indeed completely anachronistic. Just thought the isolated line was kinda ironic in light of the rest of FiM's "getting blasted into the future" instances.
Never thought I'd see Luna as a nursemaid. I have to say, at least in this context, it works. Bonus points for fish-out-of-time-water humor.
11400394
Even simpler. Volumetric Displacement.
Archimedes?
Irrelevant "doctor", if you can so be called. Unlike the physicians of the past, who can be excused because of their ignorance and culture and the fact the dealt with festering sores and easily treated maladies made fatal by the fact they handled them by hitting their charges with stick to adjust their humors, you are in as grim a position as any General: that of the care of patients.
Come Hell, High Water, or on the rag fucking Celestia on a pogo stick with fucking hemerroids your concern is first and foremost the patient under your care. You have failed in your duty and are worse then a coward.
Argr.
And you... oh lauded and praised Lady... this is what you seek? Not to see built or build yourself a monument to those lost, to those killed, to not see held hallow and carved into the very annals of history those lost to your pique, but a security blanket of loathing. To wallow in your our misery like a filly then seeking actual redemption.
háðung
"Yak milk best for ponies. Except maybe zebra, but they out of season."
-Nurse Edna, newly transferred from Yakyakistan and ardent proponent of their ways being utilized in Equestrian medicine.
A slight chuckle echoed through a certain garden at the mention of a certain someone and a chill ran through the spine of every insurance company owner through out the land.
Off being incredibly impotent in whatever magical null box Sealed evil in a can he was stuffed into after the Sisters dropped kicked his raggedy flea bitten arse across the breadth of Ponyhood. Too bad he literally dragged an entire sub tribe of cuddle horse with him for the ride, huh ladies
Off being the not swole salty center of totally not Tantabus
Well, who do you think is actually responsible for maintaining the wealth that allows for your dopey subjects prosperity. Hey, Georg, make gryphons Equestrias ferengi!
And of course missing the most crucial part of ones military service
There's a reason we of modern times get fat so easily, lol.
I’ve been busy reading contest entries, but I’m very happy to see so much waiting for me now that I’m through the slate. Fascinating stuff from Ebon and both sisters. Great study of flawed characters trying to do what they think is best… and all of whom could really stand to actually talk to some neutral third party.
For now, looking forward to more. Especially when Luna finally learns about the other nocturne.
11400512 Look, the Royal Baths flooding every time Celestia gets in the tub is a complete coincidence. If you don't understand, you can join the rest of the wise-cracking plumbers (wherever they are).
11400550 I've got pictures of my relatives from back in the 50s and 60s out on the farm. In modern terms, they look like they're starving to death, but these guys were able to heft 50 pound bales of hay over their heads and throw them up on the wagon all day. Farming in that era burned calories like a forest fire.
11400648 Would I be so cruel as to spring something like that on her unprepared?
Oh, wait. Don't answer that.
11400653
It takes a bit of sideways genius to design a cross between an infinity pool, and an infinity bath, when you want a continous tiled floor, especially anti slip and heated?
11400714
Or she could get in the bath then put water in
11400653
Anyone who knows your writing knows the answer is yes, yes and oh Celestia yes.
11400737
Yes, but for some reason this made me start urgently working on a design for a bath that can handle a Saturn V taking off. thermal power equivalent, for when Celestia really needs a nice relaxing bath, NOW.
11400755
And that made me think of her standing there in a robe with ducky and towel watching as her ponies freaked.
"... Its just a bath you lot. Stop spitting your bits and go do something useful instead."
Twas something of a missed opportunity that the show didn't do more with Luna's being out of her element beyond THE ROYAL VOICE and 1000 years being a suitable stand-in for "history". There was a quip in one of the comics where Spike notes that if all the bad things that supposedly happened 1000 years actually did it must have been one heck of a year.
As to Ebon his grumble about the softness of modern pones reminds me of something I saw floating around Facebook a/o Twitter that said something to the effect of:
Good Times breed soft men
Soft men breed bad times
Bad times breed strong men
Strong men breed good times.
I'm not sure if I entirely agree with that but from the perspective of a warrior from a bygone Era I can definitely see his point, if you tried dropping me into a past war I'd likely panic and end up dead. it's also a very common sentiment that the guards in mlp are more decorative than functional.
11400975 Imagine dropping a Roman legionary into a modern Marine boot camp.
11400755 Estee made a beautiful treatment of the Royal Sisters' bathing arrangements. I could never top it for drama, but I did top it for scale in Royal Exam where their baths are a huge cavern below Canterlot with a volcano at one end and a glacier at the other for your temperature preference.
11400743 Hey! At least I wouldn't make it a cliffhanger, right?
11401000
This chapter, no
In general? See my above response.
Okay, I ship them.