• Published 3rd Oct 2012
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Bugsydor's Cryogenic FicFrag Storage - Bugsydor



A miscellaneous pile of fanfic scraps that demanded writing down, but nothing more just yet.

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My OC Slamjam Entry: Let's Get Down to Business

Author's Note:

Anyone remember the OC Slamjam that Obs hosted a while back? Well, it's over now, so I figure it's safe to claim the bit that I wrote for it. I didn't make it past the first round, but I had fun all the same. My OC was Obvious Question, whose name was inspired by Obs's blogpost detailing the rules for OC creation saying something about obvious questions. The other main character, named Rachis Barbule, I do not own. Never figured out who I was up against, but that was just the nature of the contest. I don't own Gillette, either, as she belongs to the same person Rachis does. And I still can't make heads or tails of that name.

Edit: Turns out the owner of Rachis Barbule and Gillette was Cosmic Cowboy, and you can find his half of the entry here. Give it a read! It's good stuff.

Whatever the case, I enjoyed both writing my own story and reading the other guy's work. Ironically, I felt that we each made better use of the other's character.

Without further ado, Let's Get Down to Business.

Obvious Question vs. Rachis Barbule: Let's Get down to Business

"C'mon, Rachis. Today is going to be great! This consultant I hired is going to make our business really take off. My friend Lilly in Ponyville used him when they set up their flower shop, and they're doing really well!"

"I don't see why we need a consultant, Gillette. We can get our business up and running by ourselves. Besides, he'll probably just laugh at us like everypony else," I grumble.

"Rachis Barbule," she says, lifting my downturned muzzle with her wing, "I'm not laughing at you. Hay, you've managed to convince me to get in on this venture with you. That has to count for something, right?"

"I guess you're right," I reply with a soft chuckle as she takes her wing back, and I feel a bit calmer.

"All that said, I've heard this guy is a tough customer. If you can sell this idea to him, you could sell mud to an earth pony. In other words," she says with a wink and a grin, "we'll be ready for business.

"Now go out there, and work your magic!" she says as she flicks my horn with a midnight blue wing.

"He's not here yet."

"Not here yet?" she says incredulously as she rises to the ceiling of my office. "But the meeting was scheduled to start ten minutes ago! Are you sure you haven't been keeping him waiting?"

"Well, nopony has buzzed the doorspell, so I don't think he's here yet. Besides, you know how Canterlot morning hoof traffic is. Didn't you say he was from Ponyville? He probably hasn't seen streets this crowded before."

"Ok. I guess you ground pounders have to have some excuse for never getting anyplace on time," she says as she alights to the side of the door to the storefront. "Even so, you should probably be out there for when he actually does show up. Wouldn't want to give Obvious Question a bad first impression, right?"

"Right." I let out a nervous chuckle as I walk through the door to the front room of what will become my salon. Our salon. "Wish me luck!"

"You won't need it, but good luck anyway!"

I see a flick of her powder blue tail as she closes the door behind me to continue going through paperwork. Nopony ever said getting a business started in Canterlot would be easy. I'm glad to have somepony like her her on my side.


A few minutes later, a gray stallion with a short and shaggy, nearly black mane and bright, neon-green eyes. My eyes linger a little uncomfortably on his sharp little... stub of a horn, and then snap to his cutie mark: one of those question mark exclamation point thingies in a circle in the same eye-searing green as his eyes. I feel a buzz in my horn as he passes through the door, confirming that the doorspell I bought actually works.

'Relax, Rachis. Just be friendly, show him you know your stuff and take his advice to heart, and everything is going to be just fine.'

"Hi, I'm Rachis Barbule! Would you happen to be Obvious Question?"

"Ah yes, the obvious question," he says, giving a quiet chuckle. "I am he. Terribly sorry I'm late. Traffic was—”

"Say no more," I interject. "I know better than a lot of ponies how hard it is to keep a schedule in a strange place."

"Thank you. Now that we're both here, why don't we get down to business? Do you have some sort of office we could meet in?"

"Right this way, sir."

Since Gillette is in my office scaling Mt. Paperwork, bless her soul, I take him to her office instead. We'd only just moved in here to start our business, so it's still bare aside from a standing desk with a photo of Gillette with her parents resting on it.

"So, Mr. Barbule," he says as we take our positions on either side of the desk. "Shall we begin?"


"Sure!" the tan unicorn behind the desk replies. "Where should we start?"

Not a bad question. Heh. Thankfully, I have a ready answer.

"I find, when somepony is setting out to start a business, it helps me to help them if I know who they are and what they want to do. You would be surprised how often ponies forget that part. So, Rachis Barbule, what is your special talent?"

He turns a little to display his flank, saying, "I got my cutie mark for preening pegasus wings. I've even come up with a few spells to help me with caring for feathers. My brother always joked that I should have been born with a pair of wings instead of a horn, but then I wouldn't be nearly as good at caring for those magnificent appendages as I am."

"Ok. Now that I know a little about who you are, what do you want? What is it you're trying to do with this business?"

He thinks for a minute before replying. That's promising: It implies he cares what the answer is. It also implies he's going to give me a philosophical answer, but I can work with that.

"There are a couple of things that I really love: beauty, and pegasi. I love to see beautiful things, and the way a pegasus soars through the skies, the way their wings work... I can't think of a more beautiful thing in the world. If I can enhance a pony's beauty, even my own, then I leap at the chance."

He clearly believes in what he's saying. I mean, he keeps his coat and mane exceptionally shiny and well-coiffed, even for a Canterlot unicorn. The stallion is a walking advertisement for his skills.

"And that is why I'm opening a pegasus beauty salon!"

Ah yes, this is the part of my job that I hate. It's just about the most important part of it, though. If you let a pony keep their head up in the clouds while their hooves are still on the ground, they're going to trip and fall, hard.

And he looks so hopeful, too.

I turn to the nearest window and walk towards it.

"Take a look through this window, Mr. Barbule. It has a wonderful view of Canterlot."

"Ok..." he says as he walks up beside me.

"This is prime real-estate. A view like this can't come cheap."

"We do pay through the nose for this place, but it's got to be a great place to do business. I'm sure our customers will appreciate the location, too."

"About those customers. Tell me, Rachis, how many pegasi do you see out this window?"

"I don't see any out there, but that doesn't mean there aren't any around," he replies, a little nervously. "My partner had to come from somewhere, right?"

I shake my head and ask again. "Have you seen enough winged customers in this city of unicorns to pay for this wonderful view?"

His jaw opens, as if to supply an answer, but instead he deflates like a captive, untied balloon. Idealists always come down the hardest. I feel like I just bucked a puppy in the face. Well, I'd best not let up now...


"I hope you consider my questions, Mr. Barbule. I do want to see your business succeed. See you tomorrow," Obvious Question says as he leaves the building, tripping the doorspell on the way out.

I trudge back into my office to find a softly humming Gillette still hock-deep in paperwork, but a lot more of it is signed and filled-out now.

"Well, at least one of us is having a good day," I grumble.

"Oh. Hey, Rachis! I take it things with the consultant didn't fly so smooth?"

"You could say that, I guess." I plop myself down in a pile of filled-out but still disorganized paperwork. There's just something relaxing about the printed page.

Gillette smirks at me and my antics. "So, he shot you down?"

"Yes, but it's the way he did it. I want to hate him for it, but all he did was just... just..."

"Ask obvious questions?"

"Yeah. The kinds of questions I really should have been asking myself the whole time. Questions like 'How are we going to pay for this place if we only cater to pegasi?' Have you ever realized just how few pegasi live in Canterlot?"

"Idunno," she says while shrugging her wings, "I kinda like being the only one around who can fly."

I facehoof, and continue to wallow in paper.

"But yeah, I'd been kinda wondering about that myself."

"Well, I hadn't, and now I feel very, very dumb for that."

"Y'know, I'm pretty sure that consultant didn't just come here to tear you down and trample your dreams. What else did you two talk about?"

I spend a few minutes going over our conversation with her.

"Remember that question, about how we could make money while serving just pegasi?" she asks, after having digested the conversation for a couple minutes.

"Hard not to. What about it?"

"I think that the answer's in the question."

She looks around for a bit before finding what she's looking for, and waves me over as she walks up to the full-length mirror I keep in my office. What? A stallion has to look good in this business!

"What do you see here?" she asks, pointing at the mirror with a wing.

"It's a mirror," I deadpan.

"Ok, I flew right into that hillside. What do you see in the mirror?"

"The kind of fool who doesn't think plans through very well?"

"No, I'm looking for something a little more superficial. Pretend that stallion in the mirror is somepony else. What does he look like?"

I take a good, honest, evaluating look at that stallion in the mirror, and I like what I see.

"I see a dark tan unicorn with a brown mane streaked with gray. His mane is expertly styled, and his coat is so fine you could polish semi-precious stones on it. I wonder who does his grooming."

"Who indeed," she says with a knowing grin.

"So... The answer's in the question, huh?"

"Yep."

"Gillette, do I tell you often enough how much of a genius you are?"

"Nope."

"Well, you're a genius."


'This really is a lovely part of Canterlot where they have their prospective salon,' I think to myself. 'It's a shame that stallion probably hates me now for crushing his dreams. He definitely was not taking those doses of reality well.

'I do hope he can still benefit from my consultation,' I continue to think as I let myself in to their storefront. 'He clearly has potential. If only I can get him to see it the right way...'

Ok, I'm inside with Rachis Barbule, and he's not looking at me like I ate all of his pudding in front of him. In fact, he's smiling. Is he... happy to see me?"

"Hi, Obvious Question! It took some time, and some nudging from my partner Gillette, but I finally came up with an answer to your question about how we were going to make money while serving just pegasi in a city of unicorns."

This is unexpected. Color me intrigued.

"Really? What is it?"

"It's simple, really: We don't!" he shouts confusingly gleefully.

"Wait, what? So you're just giving up?!"

That isn't the direction I'd hoped things would take at all.

"No no no no no," he says, applying forehoof to face. "What I mean to say is we were setting our sights too narrow before, and were selling ourselves short in the process. We're still going to be serving pegasi, but we'll be serving other ponies, too. Specifically, stallions. There may not be many pegasi here in Canterlot, but there are just as many stallions here as anywhere else. Hay, maybe even a little more than in most places. And if there's something different about Canterlot stallions, it's that they always want to look their best.

"If you hadn't asked me those 'obvious questions,' I might never have figured that out in time. Thanks!"

I'm so glad to hear him say that, to hear that I'd done what I came to do and everything was going to to work out right. I'm so happy, I could just— Aww, why the hay not!

I glomp him hard.

"Hey, Questy, watch the mane. It took me a full ten minutes to make it look this good!"

"Oops, sorry."