2. Orion
You can hear the shouting hundreds of yards away, but I am already well-prepared for it by the time the voices even reach my ears. I am like a dog coursing overland, and my quarry is a bright knot of negativity that I can smell a mile off. Lieutenant Armor does not question my guidance as we wind our way upward from the Acropolis to the massive public market facing the Bahamoot, the gargantuan moored airship stuck into the clouds like a creative shipwreck. Accidental, however, it was not. The Bahamoot was dry docked here at the conclusion of Duchess Portolan's adventures, when she smoothly transitioned from her role as famed explorer to her equally famed role as Chairmare of the Cloudsdale Weather Corporation. Duchess Portolan is the rain. She is undoubtedly the most powerful unicorn in this pegasus city. She may be one of the most powerful unicorns, full stop. Duchess Portolan Blueblood is also, apparently, young Windrose's mom.
The Bahamoot itself is no mere museum piece. Shortly after its permanent docking, the CWC moved in, relocating their entire offices and production facilities to the immense vessel. Shortly thereafter, the weather conduits began to snake from the ship’s smooth oaken sides. The ship itself is the nexus through which all water flows before being diverted to the aqueducts that feed the entire city of Cloudsdale, and then, via cloudsmithing, to all Equestria. It is the very heart of the weather in the entire known world.
It is currently on fire.
It’s not a big fire. Nothing that would possibly constitute a national emergency. It would take more than an unruly crowd to bring down the Bahamoot. But that in no way diminishes my shock, or my outrage.
"Lieutenant! They're trying to burn it!"
Lieutenant Armor is all business. His eyes are steel. "It doesn't look intentional. That's not how you'd burn it if you were trying to."
"You know this how?"
"Did a tour as a 12M Incendiary Control Specialist for the Legion," Lt. Armor says. "Firetight barrier specialist. This isn't arson. This is a demonstration that's getting out of hoof."
"We're in agreement, then." I stride forward.
"Ma'am!" Lt. Armor snags the back of my breastcollar with his aura.
"Lieutenant.” I fix him with a look. "I'll accept that you know your way around a physical conflagration. Let me handle the emotional ones. I've done, like, twenty tours as an Angle Bracket Three Emotional Turmoil Control Specialist in the Royal Court."
"That's not really a thing."
"I am a Princess of Equestria and I hereby decree that it is a thing and am also declaring that I retroactively earn that distinction. Checkmate."
Lt. Armor's lip is a hard line. "Well played, ma'am."
"It rather was, wasn’t it?" I say, and I walk forward into a wall of voices.
Lt. Armor is taller than most stallions, and I am an alicorn. We are each of us half a head higher than anypony here present, and we cut cleanly through the shouting, angry throng like hydrofoils. Occasionally we bank smoothly around a raised sign, hoof-lettered, with poor kerning and erratic margins. "FIX WHAT YOU BROKE!!!" reads one. "QUIT POISONING OUR KIDS!" blares another, with a somewhat more restrained single exclamation point. I hold my head high, all my practice with the bearing rein paying off in spades. I do not feel anywhere as confident as my posture makes me seem. This crowd is furious. Normally, tuning in to the emotional landscape is a voluntary choice, but at this point I simply cannot shut it out. It is salt and mustard, spotlights in my eyes, a sword in my gullet. I try to control my shivering and sweating, drawing strength from Lt. Armor's nearness and precise impassivity.
The target of our search is easy to spot. A frayed-looking orange pegasus sits beneath a pall of smoke, close to the hull of the great airship. True to the Lieutenant's suspicion, the little pony seems to be trying to extinguish the fire, which licks ineffectually against the impermeable wooden hull of the Bahamoot. "Shoo!" she tells the flames at her hooves, as though they are a pesky critter in need of driving off. "Stop it!"
I look at the scene. Fireworks! The mare is lighting off fireworks, presumably to dramatically punctuate whatever it is she's asserting. Something's clearly gone wrong with her pyrotechnic display, however.
"Ma'am." Lt. Armor moves up ahead of me and speaks to the pegasus. "Perhaps we can be of assistance?"
She looks up at the lieutenant, her eyes big and watery and panicked. "Sir, I wasn't—I'm not trying to—"
"I know you aren't," says Shining Armor. He closes his eyes for a moment, and encases a small parcel of cloud-stuff and misbegotten fireworks in a magenta bubble. The bubble rises from the cumulus mass surrounding the immense airship. Gently but firmly, Shining reduces the size of his field, squeezing the fire out of existence and compressing the smoke into a tidy little ball. Just like that, the fire is contained. The Lieutenant apparently did not overstate his credentials. He douses the ashy remnants in a stray bit of slush and deposits them in a nearby bin. "What's your name, ma'am?"
"Fever, sir. I stuck the stupid bottle rockets in the cloudbank there," she grouses. "I didn't expect it to catch fire, clouds and all. I can't explain why that happened."
"I'll tell you what I can't explain." I make my way up to the two of them. "I can't explain why you're lighting off fireworks next to critical civic infrastructure."
Fever is caught off-guard by my sudden appearance. "P—Princess! Princess Cadance! Your Highness! I—I knew you were in the city, the Acta keeps talking about it. Look, I swear to you, the fireworks must have been past their best-by date, I didn't mean to—"
"Be at peace, Miss Fever," I lift her out of her bow with one delicate, gold-shod forehoof. I speak demurely and regally, desperately concealing my reaction to the unpleasant prickling feeling that I’m getting here in the heart of the upset. "Perhaps you can tell me, though, what your fireworks were about in the first place. What is all this?" I look around at the crowd. "What is any of this?"
"We're trying to get their attention," says Fever. "The water's gone bad."
"Gone bad? How?"
"It's just gone bad!" Fever repeats unhelpfully.
"I'm sorry, I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about. You're talking about the water? The Weather Corporation's water? The stuff they use to make the rain?"
"The same!"
"The rain isn't poison. Equestrian farmers would know if the rain was poison. We'd know about it." Aunty Celestia would know about it, I add to myself.
Fever shakes her head, still unable to meet my gaze. "It's ... it's not quite poison, Your Highness. Maybe some of these protest signs are a little much. But it gets into your blood! It makes good pegasus families throw earth pony foals!"
I try to keep the chill out of my voice. I think of Posey. I think of her little earth pony bathhouse in the Stratus Quarter, New Veneighzia, a place of most welcome sanctuary to me on one of my worst nights in this city, not so long ago. "And that's a terrible thing, is it?"
Fever's eyes go wide. She anxiously plays with a hank of hair. "No! I mean—sorry, Your Princessness. It's not terrible at all! Earth ponies are fine ponies. It just seems like there are lots of them, lately! Too many!"
"There are 'too many' of these fine ponies?"
Fever is rapidly losing what little cool she had. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, Princess! This is all coming out wrong! I'm not a good speaker!"
"Relax, Fever. So, you're suspicious of the Weather Corporation's handling of the water."
Fever's relief is palpable. "Yes. Yes, ma'am. That's it. We've got suspicions.They keep saying they're running the tests on it, and they keep saying the science turns out fine, but it doesn't feel right! When you drink it! On your coat! Anything! We think something's gone wrong with the Pegasus Device!"
"The what now?"
"The Pegasus Device! The thing that makes the weather!"
"Weather is made by dedicated craftsponies. They use water shipped up from the surface and create all the weather you experience. There's not a single 'device' that makes, say, rainbows."
"If everything's fine, and you can just make more rainbows," reasons Fever, "then why aren't there more rainbows to go around? Why do you never get rainbows in the poorer quarters of the city?"
"Maybe because it's resource-intensive?"
"Or because something's wrong with the water! You can help us with all this!"
"Help? How?"
"You're a Princess of Equestria! You're Celestia's daughter!"
"Niece. Not even that, really."
"But you're close! You've got her ear! Cloudsdale is on an approach circuit to Canterlot! I figured you'd be wanting to visit her!"
"I ... might," I say distantly. "You want me to tell my Aunt Celestia to, help me out here, what? Meet personally with the Weather Corporation?"
Fever's open face turns to a shocking glower on the edge of a knife. "We want her to get rid of it. Tear it up. Base to cap."
I stare at her. "I don't understand. Who would manage the weather?"
"Equestria! Equestria can govern the weather! We can reopen the old Weather Factory! Bring Cloudsdale into the Hegemony!"
I barely notice myself stepping back. "But ... it's a city-state. Cloudsdale is an independent, self-governing—"
"It doesn't have to be! It could be part of Equestria! The weather doesn't have to be a company! We could nationalize—"
"You're talking about putting the entirety of Cloudsdale under Equestria's control? Under Celestia's control?"
"Yes! If the Tiara could run weather as a utility, with total transparency, rather than as a private service, then—"
"This isn't her city," I say quietly.
"Your Highness," Lt. Armor suggests, "perhaps this isn't the—"
I wheel about. "This isn't her city!" I exclaim to the Lieutenant's face. It's too loud. I'm talking too loudly. I can't help it; I'm trying to make myself heard over the salt-sour-jagged-tangle-roar in my head. The raw emotional output of the demonstration tears at my coat and makes my eyes water. I turn back to Fever. "Fever, you don't understand. The Hegemony takes special things and, and, it changes them!"
"Begging your pardon, ma'am," says Fever. She averts her eyes as though expecting a blow. "Maybe some things around here need changing."
"No!" There's something welling up inside of me. It feels immense. It feels like me on the Festival of Venus. That time I exploded an entire room with the power of frustrated love. "Fever, no! You don't understand what you're asking!" A warm wind whips up in the drydock plaza, throwing manes askew. One by one, the demonstrators' voices fall silent, turning heads and craning necks to see what in Tartarus is going on.
The warm wind graduates to a hot gale. I feel my eyes glowing from the inside. My horn ignites without my conscious will. The magic I am shedding resonates with the asterite pendant I wear around my neck, creating sympathetic resonances that feel like the interplay between audience and storyteller that I experienced not long ago. But it's more. It's much, much more.
"Ponies of Cloudsdale!" I intone. "Why this pain? Why this anger? Do you not have affection for this city you call home?"
The floodgates open.
"Do you not LOVE it?"
And you know what? They do. Each and every one of them loves this city. I know this, in an instant. I can feel it in all of them. Gleaming, clear notes of loyalty with the power to drown out the horrid dissonance of their anger. If only they could recall the love they have. If only they could remember.
I make them remember.
The stultifying, cloying, negativity crystallizes out of the atmosphere and crashes to the clouds below us as I shepherd the entire crowd of demonstrators back to the light. I cause them to recall, with heartbreaking clarity, all the beautiful, breathtaking things about their home. The gleaming, pristine beauty of the architecture. The fizzing excitement of race day at the Cirrus Maximus. The cold glory of a winter sunrise from thousands of yards in the air. The crowds. The baths. The feasts. All of it. All at once.
"Why would you want any of this to go away?" I ask simultaneously of each of their hearts.
The demonstration evaporates, its members' eyes wet and their jaws trembling. Ponies excuse themselves, headed for the comforts of home, of family. They go to reconnect with the things they love most. Fever hurries off to a suitor she left behind, a suitor whose attention she spurned in favor of attending this protest. I watch them all following the threads of their love, bright lines stretching from their hearts to the objects of their affection. In thirty seconds flat, Shining Armor and I stand alone in the plaza, surrounded by discarded signs and spent fireworks, in the shadow of the great airship.
The hot gale dwindles to a breeze again, and then to nothing. The rancor of the crowd is gone. In its place, a sweet peace. My pendant gleams placidly at my breast.
"Well!" I say. "That feels better."
"Definitely enough job-searching for today," says Lt. Armor. He grabs me by the collar. I feel dizzy, light as a feather, as he hauls me away with his magic. "Back home with us."
"Home." My voice is dreamy.
"Yes, home. The Resident Minister's."
"Home, for just a short time more."
"Probably even shorter now."
He leads me with businesslike efficiency through the city streets, back to the house where my bed is. I do not even mind the photographers along the way.
Evening. The public parlor of the Resident Minister's abode. I am drinking homemade orange juice to recover from the day. It is awful. Whatever convinced me that I was capable of making orange juice? "I should just buy orange juice. That's what Fever would want, right? For us to buy everything we drink? From a store?"
"We didn't exactly get a chance to ask."
"I bet she'd want us to buy water, too! In bottles! Do you know how wasteful bottles are, Shining Armor? Isn't it better to get your water from the tap?"
He grunts, unwilling to commit. I press onward. "Do you know who bottles and exports the most water? In all Equestria?"
"It's Canterlot, isn't it."
"It's Canterlot!" I say. "High-class ponies with their snoots in the air drinking water out of bottles taken straight from the Canter River. That's the future they want for Cloudsdale, Shining Armor! Imported Canterlot water! And since you’re about a thousand miles away from the bottling plant, who’s going to bother returning them for the deposit? Just throw it over the side of the cloud! Who cares, right? Well, I'll tell you something, Lieutenant. I care. I. Care."
"Yes, ma'am. This is self-evident."
"I'm starving," I moan. I lean against an ottoman.
"Magic takes energy. You just bombed an entire square."
"I did not 'bomb' anything, Lieutenant. I just ... exploded on them. So that is a bomb, I suppose."
"I'll fetch you something from the kitchen."
"No. I don't like the way the servants look at me. I don't like how they just barely tolerate me."
"Bread from the charity distribution centers?"
"Absolutely not. Never again." I slump. "Maybe I should just be hungry. Maybe it's all I deserve. Maybe I'm just a bad pony."
"You're an alicorn. Comparing you to other ponies is pointless." Lt. Armor holds up one of the rinds I've squeezed for my juice, and also an apple from somewhere. "Apples to oranges."
"Is that an apple?"
"Yes, the metaphor—"
"Give." I do not wait for him to give. I seize it with my aura and crunch down the whole thing, core and all. It helps, microscopically.
"At least I got the metaphor out first," he says. "My point is, comparing you to anypony else is sort of a foal's errand. Maybe it's possible to compare you to H.R.H. Celestia. That's about it."
"Aunty Celestia!" I snort. "She's the high-class Canterlot pony to end all high-class Canterlot ponies. Aunty Celestia will not get her wings all over this city, Lieutenant. Cloudsdale's ... Cloudsdale is..."
"Yours?"
I open and shut my mouth a few times. "Spiritually, it's mine. I know it's not mine, but it feels like it's mine. Am I making sense at all?"
"Yes."
"Good. So, you understand why I acted the way I did this afternoon."
"Yes." His tone is dour.
I press. "And it makes sense to you, right? We're simpatico?"
"Yes. Always."
"Lieutenant! The truth."
Shining Armor sucks in a breath through his teeth. "You made those ponies very happy today.”
"Yes. Yes, I did."
He shakes his head. "No. You made them happy. They weren't happy, and you made them happy. By force."
"I made them remember the love they have for their beautiful city."
"Overwhelming whatever worries they might have had."
"It's nothing I wouldn't do for anypony else. A squabbling couple, for instance."
"Ma'am, I've been in a couple relationships outside the Legion. There have definitely been times when I've been in a stupid argument, about something stupid, with somepony I should have been treating a lot better. In those times, yeah. It would have been valuable to have somepony there to remind me how much I loved the other pony in question, to restore my perspective. There are times, though, that ponies need to get angry."
"I don't think you know anger like I do, Lieutenant. I don't think you can feel it the same way. Anger is destructive. Toxic. It's awful."
"Of course." The shutters close on his earnestness.
There is a moment of embarrassed silence. "Are you saying those ponies out there had a legitimate concern?"
"It sounded kind of fringey. We have our share of nutcases in the Guard who talk a similar line. Something about the water taking frogs and making them gay, or something."
"If there were an overabundance of gay frogs, I assure you I would be one of the first to know about it. And if there's anything wrong with the water, Canterlot's ambassador plenipotentiary has it well in hoof."
"Right. The mare holding the job you originally came here to do."
"I'm not going to speculate on H.E. Smiles's career trajectory. Aunty trusts her. And you know what? I don't even care. I don't even want that job anymore. Why would I want to constrain myself to being Princess Celestia's agent in this city? Why be a little piece of Canterlot in Cloudsdale when I could just be Cloudsdale instead? I will let H.E. Smiles and Duchess Portolan deal with the weird conspiracy theorists. If the protestors have legitimate grievances, they can take it up through proper channels."
"Via Ambassador Smiles, for example."
"Exactly."
"And how much luck have you had dealing with Ambassador Smiles? How much luck have you had even getting a single face-to-face meeting with her?"
I give him a sidelong look. "Lieutenant, are you certain we are simpatico? Because sometimes I feel the simpatico and then I stop feeling the simpatico."
"We are simpatico, ma'am."
"Good," I say.
A silent moment passes. "So,” he says. “Career search was sort of a bust.”
"Yes," I admit. "But, I'm happy. Under the circumstances, I guess today could have gone much worse."
As though on cue, there is a loud commotion at the door. Lt. Armor leaps to his hooves, shifting into action with impossible speed, before I can even fully process what's happening. He stands ready to throw several megathaums of telekinetic energy, and if that fails, his entire body, between me and whatever's going on outside the door to the parlor.
A matter of seconds later, Sabre and Spurs burst in, talking over each other in their haste.
"Your Highness!" Sabre blurts out.
Spurs cuts in. "Stallions at the door—"
"Lictors!" adds Sabre.
"They want in! We said you weren't to be disturbed—"
"—But, begging your pardon, they aren't taking no for an answer!"
Lieutenant Armor scowls. "This is the dwelling of a Princess of Equestria, gentlecolts. They will take no for an answer. Equestria mandates that they take no for an answer."
"But sir," says Sabre, "they're the lictors of the Duchess!"
"Duchess Portolan?" My ears go forward.
"I don't care whose private enforcers they are," replies the Lieutenant. "The Resident Minister's residence counts as Equestrian soil. Cloud. Whatever. It is not appropriate to allow them inside."
"Problem with that idea, soldier," says a smooth voice from the doorway. A pair of sleek, snow-white pegasi dressed in cloaks of deepest crimson loom up behind the hapless guardsponies. Each carries a reed-hafted axe of bronze. The burnished metal of the weapons glints in the lamplight of the parlor. "We're already inside."
Shining Armor snarls. His horn glows a shocking magenta.
"Princess Mi Amore Cadenza," says the second of the two lictors. "We request that you come with us."
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It is a precious blend of everyday worries and interactions, character work, and decisively more fantastical concepts and problems. Magnificent
You know, kinda like in the show!
11792554
Hey, thanks!
I'm a relative latecomer to the fandom, so this is the first Cadance of Cloudsdale piece I'm reading as it's published; I wasn't expecting how much it made me look forward to Saturdays.
I was going to wonder why Equestria has emoticons when it doesn't have texting or internet, but it turns out emoticons predate both those things, potentially by several centuries depending on what you count.
Missed this detail on first read-through, but it sticks out a lot more in the context of what Cadance is about to do. It's not just an impulsive decision - she's got to be considering something along those lines, at least subconsciously, from the beginning.
Master of deescalation, Cady is not.
We know from "Mi Amore Influenza" that there's at least some automation of the process (Champagne has a job keeping a pipe from jamming, which requires little active effort); I get the sense Cadance has an outdated/idealized view of how it works, even if there's no Pegasus Device per se.
We know from "A Lot to Think About" that this basically ends up happening, so clearly Fever is a well-informed source with a good understanding of local politics, and her explanation of the water problem is perfectly trustworthy.
I really like this depiction of Cadance's power - it makes sense both why she thinks it's a reasonable thing to do (she's just reminding them of feelings they already have), and why it's still pretty horrifying from an outside perspective (at the end of the day, she's still brute force shutting down the protest with mind-control magic).
Great use of double meanings here.
Kind of a devastating line; Shining's been a big proponent of the 'princesses are ponies too' line of thought, so this has to represent just a tremendous loss of trust in Cadance's character by those standards.
Another great double meaning, this one presumably not intended by Cadance.
A lack of simpatico was just established a few lines ago; Cadance really has trouble with disapproval.
Looking forward to seeing how this meeting goes - at least for the moment, Portolan and Cadance seem pretty aligned, given their shared desire to limit Celestia's influence, even if in a broader sense they're in competition. I bet she's pretty happy to have somepony suppressing dissent for her in a way that she can honestly disclaim all responsibility for.
Hold up.
Oh. Oh.
<3
And now I believe I understand the "make her into a monster" part of the description. And why the Poison Joke will be going for dracomorphosis. (One wonders what it would do to Celestia...)
The thought occurs that Celestia did not think through all of the implications of sending a young alicorn to a semi-independent city-state.
Indeed, the thought occurs that Celestia has left much unconsidered on the topic of Cloudsdale. I'm still not sure whether or not H. E. Smiles actually exists. (There's also the question of just what manner of growing pains Twilight will have to deal with down the line...)
In any case, time to see just what ripples that love bomb caused. I can't imagine this will be pleasant in the near future. I only hope it will help teach Cadance that unpleasantness is, in fact, sometimes necessary.
Such a shame defenestration probably won't work in Cloudsdale. It would be the appropriate response for barging into sovereign territory.
Also, even in proper historical context, fasces are a somewhat loaded symbol. Even if they're on the Lincoln Memorial, and the congressional Sergeant at Arms carries one.
11792834
It is my hope that by merely describing them and not referring to them by name that I can sidestep some of the more symbolically anvilicious elements of this particular historical artifact.
11792600
Thanks! Glad to have you along, and I appreciate your readership!
11792615
I was wondering when people would start catching that.
11792615
I kinda of get what Celestia is doing. She could smother Cadence, or let her spread her wings. She is currently close enough and has enough back ups for Cadance that if she falls any issues can be caught and fixed in her wake.
Well, most things. Cadence is immature and her thinking small, which I think this story will help illustrate soon enough.
Should have tried more fire on the Bahamoot. XD
11793584
That sounds like criminal talk. You're not a criminal, are you?
I am if I need to be.
11792877
Even short of the modern context, fasces are literal expressions of state officials' monopoly of violence. Either to beat with the rods, or decapitate with the axe. And invading ambassadorial territory with lictors seems damn close to a tacit declaration of hostilities.
""It's Canterlot!" say."
""It's Canterlot!" I say."?
"I assure you I would be the one of the first"
"I assure you I would be one of the first"?
Well, some interesting plot developments to go withe character stuff here! :)
I am currently pretty tired (in the low-on-sleep sense, not a bored-with-this-story sense, to be clear), but I enjoyed this anyway; thanks for writing. :)
11797485
Thanks for the notes. We can't squash all of the buglets, though we try.
Cadance starting to find her place in things, although her methods are a little overwhelming. Gotta agree with Shining on this.
Did you know, Mi Amore -- the fluoridation of drinking water is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Cloudsdale Weather Corpration plot we have ever had to face.