Far from home, small-time journalist Cauliflower Shrew has made it to the cradle of endless death that is the former Arisian League, itself the bloated corpse of what was once Hippogriffia, to report on the violent embers of its civil war. With the services of infamous griffon gun-runner Gerwin, she has all her bases covered for this trip.
But it's not just the news she's been sent here for. She's been given a solution with which to end the bloodshed.
And that gun-running griff may be the key.
~~~
An entry to Science Fiction Contest II.
Belated thanks to UnknownError, The Great Scribbly One, and Kognitive#6856 for initial brainstorming help.
Chapters (6)
Ever the efficient storyteller, you establish a lot in a short opening scene with little dialogue. The visitor (unnamed to reinforce how impersonal the customs agent feels) gets personality clues through their bag’s belongings, including a literal Chekov’s gun. There’s also two separate acknowledgements that war is fought with weapons other than guns. First is the phrase “efficient ways to maim beyond the fracturing of one’s will to live,” and second is “I can broadcast the fallout to the world, if you’d like.”
You’re laying it on thick and heavy before the action even properly begins.
Perhaps I laugh to keep from crying, but seeing a deadly serious fic use the words “butt” and “cheeks” in the same sentence is sophomorically amusing. What isn’t amusing at all though is the hard cut from the cordial banter in the opening scene to the rough undignified holding cell. Our protagonist is being informed early that pony pluckiness doesn’t have much utility this far from her utopian home.
I appreciate the elaboration here, since most fics with firearms ignore the logistics of how hooves pull triggers. Cauliflower having to bring her own Equestrian-tailored pistol makes more sense now, and discussion of said pistol allows her and Gerwin to size each other up. World-building and character-building double duty. Very efficient.
Also, Cauliflower’s last name is “shrew,” a deliberately loaded term.
Here we introduce some cyberpunkian themes of replaceability and cheapness of what once was sacred. This is a war of swift destruction and equally swift rebuilding only for the destruction to come calling again. Material resources like fortifications and ammunition are ostensibly infinite, which leads to the worrisome implication that true victory only comes from extinguishing lives.
Gerwin exposits his plan to make a clean exit from the warzone, including which power players he intends to have killed in the process and in what way. Anyone who has ever read a story before knows that if a character outlines a meticulous gambit in monologue format, said gambit will NOT be successful. The Best Laid Plans of Birds and Barons must be a poem in Gerwin’s world, though he assuredly hasn’t read it.
Slab’s introductory ambush plays with reader expectation in a good way: we have not yet witnessed an action sequence (the bombing took place between scene cuts) so we don’t know how brutal or dangerous this story plans to be. Neither does Cauliflower, so through her POV we experience maximized tension and uncertainty, then relief after Gerwin deescalates the situation. Minor tension is preserved however, as Gerwin’s crash course on marksmareship teases many deadly fighting tools that can (and probably will) be deployed in future combat.
Opulence amid trenches is a common but still effective dissonance. Judging by Cauliflower’s mission, we’ll get similar showcases of the other factions and interviews that illustrate their varying levels of commitment to either glamor or practicality.
Small phrases can leave the biggest impacts. Queen Horizon has converted her trauma into fanatic self-assurance, which makes her an overwhelming first interviewee for Cauliflower to withstand. The subsequent scene of her touching base with a coworker was a good choice. A familiar comedown after a prolonged, alienating interview.
The contrast between our two leads is comically stark. They’ll each grow and adapt as the fic goes on, but for now we have guns primed, preparing to fire.
I can tell you’re having fun flexing your Equestria At War muscles. We’ve already met one bellicose faction leader, and I’m sure more will be interviewed in the later chapters.
Huh. The italicized openers are going to be a motif instead of a one-off. My previous assumption was that the fic opened on Cauliflower being accosted by the Eye Wall and subsequently tossed into a holding cell. Now I’m no longer sure. The visitor’s gender is being deliberately undisclosed, so it cloud be anyone, even a character not formally introduced yet. With no solid leads other than the visitor being on some sort of covert delivery mission, I’ll have to withhold speculation for now.
Back at it with the crackerjack lines. There is indeed an uncomfortable dissonance in one of our protagonists selling guns to what appears to be this setting’s equivalent of Doctors Without Borders.
Only just now did I realize the insta-bunkers are probably a reference to Equestria At War’s game mechanics. All real time strategy games have some sort of mechanic where relevant depots are generated and placed instantly.
A very timely reminder. So timely that it is most likely foreshadowing that Gerwin’s blabberbeak is going to get him in trouble when he says something he wouldn’t want committed to record.
Our first proper action sequence. It’s the literary equivalent of a jumpscare, with the action tags staying terse, clinical, and detached. In an actual war fic, it’d be underwhelming, but this fic has established itself as only using war as a backdrop; our two protagonists are not fighters.
The interlude scene with the propaganda folder is both a needed comedown and an acknowledgement that Cauliflower is not the only news source in the setting. The continued worldbuilding through isolated scenes gives this story an almost slice-of-life feeling of exploring the setting.
There is however, a structure and goal that our heroine is pursuing, and this chapter checks our second faction leader off her interview list. Copperbreeze is, predictably, a force of personality just as strong as Queen Horizon, just channeled into pragmatic cooperation rather than Sound And Fury assertions of authority. It takes a certain psychology to be a faction leader, as Cauliflower is beginning to see.
She’s also beginning to lose her optimistic outlook, it seems. We can only hope Gerwin is softening up at an equivalent pace, given the discount he offered to the sobbing cold call.
The end of this chapter includes the frightening possibility that Cauliflower’s trusty wrist recorder might be broken. Or perhaps just disabled by the EMP from the nearby explosion. Either way, it’s definitely symbolic of her mood. The more she learns, the more discouraged Cauliflower gets. Presently, she is akin to a traveler with a broken compass.
I confess I don’t have insightful comment on the italicized opener. It’s pure mood building, and whatever ominous delivery is in transit, the destination is getting apprehensively closer.
Ponies are indeed prey animals. And in all fairness, this is Gerwin’s modus operandi too. He’s just quieter about it.
I remember this being a contentious line during editing. For what it’s worth, the final version here is vivid and effective. The dodged interview is also a reminder that unspoken reveals can hit just as hard as spoken ones.
Speaking of reveals, the Storm King being dead for decades was a monumental one for me. Perhaps this is old news to more tuned-in Equestria At War fans, but to me it makes the setting so much bleaker. The conquistador responsible for starting this five-way struggle isn’t even part of it anymore. There is no opportunity for the other four factions to unite against the main baddie; the war machine is self-perpetuating now.
Cauliflower is badly worn down, but the meals with Gerwin are increasingly welcome reminders that her gumption hasn’t been quashed completely. Corny as it is to say, pony optimism has increased value outside of their idyllic little homeland.
Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for Gerwin’s lack of allegiance to catch up to him. I’m not surprised though that Cauliflower is the one who caught a bullet to the chest (I think?) for being incidentally near him. Whatever physical injury she has, it is clear she is more upset by Gerwin shooing her out to do some solo soul searching. And soul search she does, alone in the rain with all the delicious melodrama that is needed for an Act Two Low Point. We even get a defiant spoken affirmation at the end, evocative of Scarlet O’Hara.
And so cements our heroine’s certain collision course with the mysterious italicized couriers.
The last chapter’s closer promised a pivot. This chapter’s opening delivers.
I was initially incredulous to learn that the ostensible nice gal Cauliflower has been on an assassination mission this whole time. However, the fic puts in the work needed to make this work. First is the italicized openers, which at this point are confirmed to have been her all along; Eye Wall did indeed toss her in a holding pen for toting a bomb across the border, and that was where Gerwin found her. We also established this fic’s willingness to blow people up with chapter one’s getaway sequence.
That said, willingness to explode a peace conference isn’t the same as the ability to do so. This too, is a critical creative choice, since the grindingly tense scene of arming the explosives has the reader (and likely the protagonists themselves) questioning if these two fairly endearing heroes will actually remotely kill five heads of state, at least three of whom they’ve interacted with personally.
The answer is no, they won’t. They are interrupted by the raiders (another story element established in chapter one) and incapacitated due to delightfully fitting circumstances: Cauliflower left Gerwin’s side so he was unable to watch her back, and Gerwin was too concerned with his friend’s safety to retain his signature caution. Cauliflower does successfully put down several of her ambushers, finally firing her gun and fighting for what she believes in, but in the aftermath Gerwin sees she purposefully stunned and spared them. Our heroes have kept their hands bloodless for now, but they are also injured, running, and deprived while their bomb lays in the clutches of Slab’s unpredictable gang.
Tension is finally at boiling point. The final chapter (and 210 word denouement) looms.
The brevity here really reinforces the bleak state of Gerwin and Cauliflower’s quest. They failed to end the conflict, and the war machine grinds obliviously onward, not even aware of their struggle. There is no disclosure of when exactly Cauliflower dies, because Gerwin refuses to confront that reality until long after it has happened. He’s in psychological safe mode, moving like an automaton and thinking only of reaching the beachhead. When he finally arrives, reality returns and the pace slows down again.
All that is left of Cauliflower are her recordings. Gerwin, who never built anything nor aspired to, is the only one in the world carrying her weight. Even the ostensible rescuers offer no comfort to Gerwin, only harsh yelled commands.
We do not get any insight to Gerwin’s emotional state though any of this. He is a typically stoic griffin, and it’s likely he’s gone fully numb with shell-shock by now.
The denouement up next shows what state he is in after he recovers.
The recording of the birthday party can be interpreted as an indicator that a year has passed since the last chapter. A year of Gerwin continuing to revisit his dead friend’s video diaries. Her watch is his now, as is her aspirations in life. Gerwin enters Kludgetown not as the aimless refugee he was at the story’s start, but as a committed journalist.
There is such a somber yet resolved tone to this last line. Cauliflower was naive. If she had survived the Hippogriffia conflict, she would have been wiser and tougher. “Ready,” as the final line consciously chooses to say. But she didn’t survive. Gerwin did. And he’s doing right by her. This fic was his redemption story, and it was a hard won humble victory.
I've been sittin' here, tryin' to find myself....
I get behind myself, I need to rewind myself.
Lookin' for the payback, listen for the playback...
They say that every man bleeds just like me.
oof that is rough. the local cooking line definitely makes me think of griffons more than hippogriffs
gotta say i am really digging that faction name
yay Silverstream’s in this!
hehe, love this. Horizon Sun’s character is really well-expressed here. i can just feel her desperation and anger and self-deception
aww, propaganda posters are always so fun
oof, the cycle continues
oof, Cauliflower’s really going through it!
aww, but that usually works so well!
oof! for some reason this scene makes me think of Inglorious Basterds, or fictional works based on the Resistance in general
dramatically ironic that they get through now
oof, not how i expected this chapter to end
and oof. a beautiful summation of a life. great placement for dramatic weight
and full circle, with Gerwin taking into him a bit of Cauliflower. what a great way to end it. thank you for writing!