Natural Light: A SolarPunk Story

by The Hat Man

5. No Rain

“All clear here. Searchlight?”

“No sign of… hold on.”

Fleet Phalanx froze, his hoof at the communication pearl his ear as he looked to his partner, a mare named Reverie. They both waited for their pegasus partner in the air to speak again.

“Got some earther on the corner of Maplecrest and 12th. He’s… yelling about something, I think?”

“Who’s he yelling at?” Reverie asked.

“Uh… no one. He’s just rambling.”

Phalanx smirked. “I think I know what this is. C’mon, Rookie, you’ll get a kick out of this.” Touching his ear he said, “On our way, Searchlight. Hold and monitor.”

“Understood.”

They made their way to the corner, glancing up to see the pegasus legionnaire hovering above them. As they approached the corner, they spotted an earth pony in a ratty coat and scraggly beard with the image of a cracked pot for a cutie mark. He was muttering to himself as he paced back and forth under the gaslight street lantern on the corner.

“A fool’s prayer! A fool’s prayer!” he shouted suddenly, stomping his hooves loudly.

Reverie narrowed her eyes. “Just some hobo. Let’s chase him off. Arrest him if he makes trouble.”

“Hope he does,” Searchlight said over their com pearls. “Wouldn’t mind practicing my divebomb on the sorry son of a—”

“At ease, Legionnaire,” Phalanx said with a grin. “You too, Reverie. I’ve got this one.”

As he approached, the earth pony whirled around, his eyes wide and staring.

“Oh, my lord and lady! Praise be to Her Majesty! I’ve seen him, I’ve seen him!”

“Seen who, Blind Melon?” Phalanx asked.

“Grogar!” he spat. “The monster Grogar! Oh, with his big pointy horns and his evil red eyes!” He fell to the ground, trembling. “Mi’lord! Mi’lady! Please help me! Use your magic spells to guard me! He said he’d have me blood! An’ then the rest o’ me fluids! He said he’d lock me up in Tambelon! Oh, what a beast was he!”

“Grogar?” Reverie asked. “This loony believes Grogar is real?”

“Oh, real he is, mi’lady!” Blind Melon said, glancing over his shoulder. “As real as the dragon what keeps settin’ me bum on fire! As real as the talkin’ cat what nicked me pie last month!”

Phalanx barely contained his laughter as he elbowed Reverie, who seemed far less amused with Melon’s rantings.

“Ugh, let’s just move on, sir,” Reverie said. “This is a waste of our time.”

“Oh come on, where’s your sense of—”

“Did ye catch him?” Blind Melon asked, his wild eyes suddenly locked onto Phalanx.

“Catch… who?”

“The cat what nicked me pie! You said you'd catch him!”

“Er… yeah! Yeah, sure, we caught him for ya, Melon.”

“Oh good, oh goody good, mi’lord,” he said, calming down slightly. “Did ya take ‘em?”

“Take? Take what?”

“His balls!” Melon shouted. “He’s a naughty cat, he is! Surely you took him to the vet then, like any naughty cat, an’ had ‘im noodled!”

At last, Reverie let a laugh escape her lips.

“Well, sir… did you - pfft - have the talking cat ‘noodled?’”

“Oh, sure, we noodled him good!” Fleet Phalanx laughed.

“Ha ha! Ha ha!” Blind Melon laughed and began to do a celebratory jig right there on the street corner. “Take that, ye mangy beast! You took me pie, so’s the Guard took your balls!”

“Uh, look, this is fun and all, but shouldn’t we keep up our patrol?”

Phalanx and Reverie quickly got control over themselves. “You pegasi are a real drag, you know,” Phalanx said. “But fine, we’ll get back to patrol.”

“See you later, looney tunes,” Reverie said, shaking her head as she and Phalanx turned to go.

“Oh no, mi’lady, Looney Tunes is me cousin! Got kicked in the head as a boy an’ had a mule for a son fifteen year ago!”

As the two guards began to walk away, he suddenly darted in front of them.

“But the spell!” he cried, seizing them both by the shoulder. “Guards, guards, ye must protect me! Grogar’s still after me!”

“Hands off, earther!” Reverie shouted with sudden ferocity, shoving him back. Her horn glowed and she drew out a club with her magic and swatted him on the shoulder.

Blind Melon cried out in pain and staggered back when Searchlight dove down and tackled him to the ground, pressing his face to the cobblestone street.

“You’re under arrest for assaulting Her Majesty’s Guard!” he shouted.

“Oh my lords, my lady, forgive me!” he wailed. “Forgive me, forgive me!”

“For the love of… both of you calm down!” Phalanx bellowed. “Searchlight, let him up! Reverie, put that club away!”

His two subordinates did as he commanded while Blind Melon slowly got to his feet.

“Thank you, thank you, mi’lord,” he wheezed. “I knew you were good an’ true, you were. I said as much to those ponies what were saying all those horrible things about ‘Imps’ and whatnot.”

“Wait, what was that?” Reverie asked.

“A whole gaggle of ‘em!” Blind Melon cried, waving his hooves in the air. “Had these little glowy sticks with ‘em! Saw ‘em twenty minutes ago down on 8th street, I did! Called me a smelly old geezer and shoved me off the sidewalk!”

“Glowy sticks?” Reverie repeated, eyeing the other two.

“Finally!” Searchlight shouted, pulling out his spear and taking to the skies. “I’ll scout ahead!”

Reverie and Phalanx took off after him.

Phalanx looked over his shoulder and tossed a single coin to the half-crazed earth pony. “Thanks for your help, Melon. Stay out of trouble... and no sleeping in the park again!”

“Aye, aye, mi’lord!” Blind Melon called, eagerly snatching up the coin. “Bless you all! Bless Her Majesty’s Guard!”

He watched them go before turning and trotting a bit further up the street in the opposite direction. Once he turned into an alleyway, his uneven gait vanished and he raised his head, his eyes growing calm. A bit further in, he clicked his tongue three times and a group of ponies emerged from the shadows. One of them pulled a covered cart. Another stepped forward to greet him.

“We heard you call out 'guards,'” he said, running his hoof through his mane. “You okay, Jack?”

“A bit banged up, but no worse for wear, Hob,” Jackanapes answered as he removed the ratty old coat. “Nothing a bit o’ ice and a bit o’ the old Tee Ell Cee wouldn’t cure, at least.”

Spook stepped up as well. “We delivered nine new heaters!” she said eagerly. “Nine!”

“But ze tenth famille, zey told us to leave and not return,” said a yellow mare gesturing toward the last heater that was on the cart.

“Toilette’s right,” Spook said. “I don’t understand why…”

“They don’t want to risk getting caught using a solaether heater,” Hob replied. “They know what the Imps will do if they catch them with it.”

“Incroyable!” Toilette groaned. “Zey have no courage!”

“Don’t be too harsh,” Hob said, gesturing to the others to follow him. “Paying a chunk of the pittance they give us to live on just to afford coal or firewood to barely avoid freezing to death in these hovels is awful… but it’s preferable to the noose if the Imps think you’re associated with the Shiners.”

They stepped into the backroom of their nearby safehouse and swiftly began to change out of their disguises. Each one donned a jacket and a pair of goggles.

“Bloody hell this beard itches,” Jack said, scratching at his fake beard furiously. “What’s it made of, anyway? Fur off a yak’s arse?”

“Half right,” Hob replied with a smirk. “It wasn’t a yak.”

Jackanapes gagged and wiped off the fake cutie mark on his flank as the others chuckled in the darkness.

“Should we find somepony else to take the heater?” Spook asked, lifting it from the cart.

“Non,” Toilette said. “It is best we try again ze next time. If ze rumors about ze coal barons are true, zere will be many more ponies in need of ze heaters, and we cannot waste it on ponies who have no need of it.”

They all nodded. More and more earth ponies in town were making use of solaether to secretly heat their homes. The Shiners had taken to building heaters and donating them for free, even giving them enough solaether to last through the remainder of winter and through the early spring. It was among the biggest boosts to their reputation, of course, but it had led to an unexpected backlash:

The local coal merchant, a unicorn who owned the mines, had noticed that the number of earthers purchasing coal for their stoves was down by a third since last year. And so, with some generous spending on the local weather teams, the pegasi had delayed the spring rains to mark the end of winter and even diverted more cold winds and snowstorms to the city… but only over earth pony neighborhoods.

Ponies in draftier buildings woke up shivering every morning, and the least fortunate among them, the ponies who lived on the streets, were being found frozen stiff in alleys and under piles of snow-dusted garbage each morning.

Had Blind Melon been real, Jackanapes mused, he would probably be dead by now.

They stepped out into the darkness once again.

“There!”

They froze at the shout that pierced the night. Following the sound, they spotted a trio of legionnaires armed with spears above them an instant before they dove down at them.

Jackanapes and Hob leaped back from their assailants, but Toilette caught the sharp end of the spear through her shoulder and was forced to the ground.

Jackanapes pulled something from his jacket as the pegasi reared back for another attack. He tossed it into the air and shouted “EYES!”

They each pulled down their tinted goggles as the device he’d tossed burst with a dull sound and the alley was instantly blasted with light as bright as the sun itself.

The goggles shielded their eyes - thanks to the Octopus's latest improvements - but the blinded pegasi staggered around in a panic, and one took to the air.

Hobnail grappled with the pegasus who’d attacked him, wrestling the spear from him and kicking him back as he reached around blindly. Then, with a quick dodge to the side, Hob drove the blade up into his neck, just below the chin.

Jackanapes, meanwhile, took aim at the pegasus trying to flee and aimed one of his goggles’ optic blasts at him. The first missed, but he took aim with the other and caught him in the wing, snapping it and causing him to plummet to the ground. As he struggled to get to his hooves, Jackanapes rushed at him, delivering a kick to his head that knocked him out cold and sent his teeth flying.

Spook stood there, frozen to the spot, until she heard Toilette scream again as the pegasus who’d attacked her, still blinded, drove his spear deeper into her shoulder.

“Spook, help!” she shouted.

As if waking from a trance, she gave a furious cry and launched herself at the pegasus, knocking him off his hooves and slamming him into the wall of the building next door.

Then she stepped back, marveling at what she’d done. And then froze once she saw the legionnaire’s eyes focus on her blearily.

The legionnaire reached for her, but there was a flash of light and his head suddenly jerked back and his helmet flew off, revealing a smoking hole in his forehead.

Spook stared on as the legionnaire’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed to the ground. She then glanced down to see that it was Toilette who'd fired the blast from her goggles.

Hob and Jack began gathering up their supplies.

“Oi, Spook, give us a hoof with Toilette!” Jack hissed. When she remained frozen to the spot, he seized her face and forced her to look at him. “Spook! Now! We made enough noise to bring every pointy an’ wing-ding in the damned county! Move!”

She seemed to snap back to reality and breathless helped Jackanapes with Toilette as Hob grabbed the last solaether heater, and they all took off running into the night as the sound of flapping wings filled the air behind them.

Comments

[Clowreed48]

Ok this is an interesting premises. And the writing isnt too shabby either. im looking forward to this series and how the writer explains the ignorance of the crown.

The chapters being brief snip-its is a touch annoying but it makes sense.

[Kek lel]

Damn, this story is charming. Looking forward to more of it :)

[KingChaos]

I'm definitely enjoying this. I love a good revolution.

[Reclusive]

incredibly bold take

[-newt-]

Lovin this so far. Viva la solaether!

[Turbotune]

This is cool! Too bad it's not yet finished, so it's only "in spirit" of the sci-fi contest…
still eager to see what's next.

[Sylica telca]

I'm in

[Geeknerd]

Looking forward to more. Solarpunk needs more content.