Jericho

by Crushric

Chapter 13 — Nuts

Chapter 13: Nuts

“All the ponies in this town are crazy!”

Terror.

Terror is a strange emotion, one related to fear, but so much more interesting. To quote someone smarter than me, fear is being chased by a monster; terror is knowing there is something behind you, feeling its breath on your neck, knowing you will be grabbed, and then turning around to find that there was nothing there. Terror is coming home to find that everything in your house has been replaced with an exact copy. Although, in that case for me, it had something to do with my girlfriend having accidentally summoned an eldritch abomination that destroyed my house and now she was trying desperately to hide that fact.

But terror was tied into the idea of ambiguity and vagueness, something we as a species do not like. When we can’t quite tell if something is off or not, when we’re not sure if it can or cannot hurt us, that is when we ponies get creeped out.

So when faced with blackness and a cold feeling, my last memories having something to do with killing and maiming a bunch of ponies working for an evil duke, there was a very reasonable emotion to feel in the back of my mind.

Of course, that reasonable emotion was about as far from my mind as good ideas were. Good ideas and reasonable emotions were two things that liked to stay as far away from me as possible. But who needs them?

| — |

\☩/

Dark chills, closed eyes. God, I knew it! I was totally going to wake up in a bathtub of ice, missing a kidney. My eyes didn’t want to open, a little feeling in the back of my mind urging me to just fall back to sleep.

Sleep? I’d been sleeping? A bolt of mild annoyance shot up my spine as I remembered everything from creepily leering at Cards while she slept to fighting Elkington. And that bolt was enough for me to will my eyes open, the rest of my senses suddenly bombarding me for all they were worth. Then the feeling of wanting to bake pie came to me.

I was lying down on some sort of bed as I looked up into the concerned-looking expression of a crème-coated unicorn mare with lime-green eyes, her violet mane done up in a ponytail, dressed in every way the epitome of a doctor. The smell of vanilla mixed with stale antiseptics clouded my nose as I glanced to the side, noting the white wall to my left, and thick-looking curtains isolating the little corner my bed was in.

“Hi,” Doctor First Aide said in a weak voice.

I regarded her for the longest time. “Good morning. I see the assassins have failed,” I muttered, letting my head relax on the pillow that was apparently under my head. Taking slow breaths, I lifted my head slightly and looked at my chest, at the bandages over my breast, my sliced arm, and the wound where Bigs had stabbed me. The rest of my body was covered by a light-teal blanket. My eyes found themselves back on the doctor.

She nervously cleared her throat. “So... aren’t you gonna ask any of the usual questions?”

“You mean: Where am I? How’d I get here? How long have I been out? Did I leave the oven on? And, Why is the pretty doctor hovering over me?”

First Aide flashed me a smile. “You’re in a very private wing of a very private hospital, in a very private room, on a very secure floor. To answer your second question, I more-or-less-brought you here. Elkington ordered me to, and I sorta went a few extra miles or so trying to keep you alive.” She held up an Atemschutzmaske in her magical aura. “I still had to return this thingy, after all.”

Trying to adjust my position, I found my wrists bound to the bed. I looked up at First Aide. “Why am I bound to the bed?” I demanded in a calm voice. Wait. No. I just figured it out myself—

The doctor put down the Atemschutzmaske and held up a copy of the Cloudsdale Post, the headline reading ‘The Songnam Slaughter’, apparently written by Lightning Dust. You go, girl! “They’re calling you the ‘Butcher of Songnam’,” she said. “Said you killed and wounded some seventy-two ponies.” First Aide licked her lips, glancing over her shoulder. “You made national headlines. Nothing like this has ever happened in Equestria before. All across Equestria, ponies are locking their doors extra tight, and I hear Manehattan’s even instituted a ten PM curfew, they’re so terrified of you.”

“Afraid of me?” I chuckled. Trying to flex my arms, I strained against my straps. “As you can clearly see, I’m locked up.”

She set the paper down and shrugged. “Official record by Elkington says you escaped after—” she smiled in that sort of way where you didn’t want to smile but couldn’t help yourself “—some heroic young hero fought you off. Me, of course! I even got interviewed ’bout it. Wanna hear about it?”

“Sure,” I said, “I’d love to. If you can make it short. And interesting.”

First Aide frowned, tilting her head to the side. “Fine. I won’t talk about it.” She paused. “Why’d you do it, try to kill Elkington?”

“I ran out of unproductive things to do at work.”

“Wha’?”

I shot her my most devastating deadpan. “I’ll be honest, I love work. It fascinates me. I can sit and stare at it for hours.”

That actually scored a chuckle from her. “You’re weird.”

“I too enjoy stating the obvious. Join me in telling people that the sky is blue.” I shrugged as best I could, being restrained and all. “A sense of humor is the only thing that gets me through the day anymore.” I blinked. “Are you wearing blue lipstick?”

She fluttered her lashes. “Why, yes I am. Thanks for noticing! I’ve been trying a few new things lately. A lady in my line of work doesn’t get as much free time as she’d like. And in the medical field, all the cute young doctors are so far outta my league they’re playing for the other team.” First Aide hesitated, then quickly amended, “Not that I’m some old spinster, only twenty-nine, I swear, but I rarely find the time to ever put any makeup or anything on and, well, sometimes I just like looking pretty.”

A pause.

“I still respect you more for being a doctor than being pretty,” I offered, and she actually blushed. “Anyone can be pretty, really, but it takes something neat and special to be a doctor.” Not to mention all the money medical school costs in most countries.

The doctor rubbed the back of her head, smiling at me like a schoolfilly. “Well, if it’s any consolation... I, uh, think you’re kinda cute yourself.”

Consolation is the wrong word, I’m sure. Is she just using big words randomly? “You know, I’m now known as the Butcher of Songnam, tried to murder a Duke, almost died doing it, and now we’re flirting,” I commented. “Don’t you think there’s something really fishy about this whole shebang?” Shebang is the greatest word in any language. “You don’t seem afraid or bothered by me in the slightest.”

First Aide glanced around. “Should I be afraid?”

“Your nation is.”

“Well, I’m not my nation. I’m a freethinker.” She winked at me. “And if I were afraid of you in the first place, I wouldn’t’ve worked so hard to keep you alive, would I?”

I looked down at my body, again looking at the bandages and—wait. “Did you... undress me at some point?” I glanced at her, and she gave me a nonchalant shrug. “You... saw me naked. That’s kind of a problem where I’m from.” I then explained to her a bit of my culture and some parts relating to our nudity taboo.

She giggled. “Trust me, I’m a doctor—I guarantee you I’ve seen more vaginas up close and personal than you ever will.”

“Oh, don’t be too sure. I’ve been around the block a few times. Mostly because I can’t remember which house is mine and I’m hoping that if I keep circling, I’ll find it, yeah, but the point stands.”

“Doctor First Aide,” a voice from behind the curtain said sharply, and the little mare jumped, “are you quite done flirting with it?”

“Uh, yes, m’lord!” she stammered out as Duke Elkington pulled the curtains, stepped into the little curtain-room, and shut them behind him.

Elkington was wearing what looked like a suit with Songnam Security armor worn over it, and for some reason I found that amusing. He gave the mare a look that could melt the ice cream off children’s popsicles, would would make them cry, and drive their parents into expensive therapy. Then Elkington took out a small flask and took a sip before walking over to my bedside. “What does it have to say?” he asked.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked.

“It,” he growled. “After all it did, it is not a pony, not a person, but an object.”

“You can still use the second-person to speak to inanimate objects. I talk to my sword all the time when I sharpen it. It’s freaky when my sword tries to whisper to me, much like that one nightmare I had where my penis would crawl up to my ear when I was asleep and would whisper into my ear dark secrets the likes of which ponykind was not meant to—”

He smacked me clear across the face. “Rocky Road,” Elkington said in a tone that’d take seven lives from a cat. His hoof bitch-smacked my face the other direction. “Glitterhoof.” Another smack. “Mud Mane.” Another. “Ice Charmer. Any of these names ring a bell?”

“If I said yes, I’d be lying. But lying is, like, ninety-percent of what I do when fighting bad guys, so yes, they all work for—”

Across the face. “Don’t fuck with me!”

“M-m’lord,” First Aide tried, only for Elkington to give her a glare that’d make a foal cry with or without melting its popsicle first.

“Give it the intravenous healing serum,” he commanded. “Chop, chop.”

I watched as she nodded and fiddled around with a little cabinet. “Oh, I get it,” I said. “The straps, the slapping, the witness. Elkington, you’re going to rape me, aren’t you?” He blinked down at me. “And Doctor First Aide just gets off to that sort of thing, doesn’t she? You know, First Aide, if you were really that lonely and desperate, you could have just asked. I mean, at this point, a girl actually asking rather than just assuming and forcing herself on me is a pretty surefire way to at least make me consider it. And trust me,” I singsonged, “my hooves can bring you far more pleasure than your own hooves alone.” The IV now loaded up with a clear bag of pink ichor, the serum slowly made its way down a little clear tube and into an IV attachment in my arm that I hadn’t noticed till now.

“Doctor,” he said.

“M’lord?”

“Leave us. Leave this room. And so help me Princess Celestia, if I found out you were eavesdropping on this...”

“Ooh, ambiguous threat,” I cooed. “It lets you be scarier and use her imagination against her. Like, maybe her interpretation of that is that you’ll shove sand in her eyes, but first you’ll make her go out and buy the sand. And I don’t really know if they grade sand, but if they did, you’d buy it as coarse as could be.”

He slugged me in the nose. “Cattail!” he spat, and I could feel my nose already healing itself from the potion in my veins. He watched her leave the curtained section, and was clearly listening as First Aide opened some door and stepped out of the room. The Duke looked down at me with a spiteful glare that gave me flashbacks of Daddy. “And this is for Sword Dancer!” he screamed, and rammed his hoof into my face

Again. And Again. And again. And sixty-three more times. Each time, the serum in my veins healed my face. I wouldn’t bear any lasting marks, but the current pain was all too real. With every slug, he spat a name in my face. Seventy-two names and not a single hesitation. He must have committed them all to memory.

By the time he was done, he was barely holding back tears. Elkington stumbled into a chair and took a sip from his flask. “The names of all it hurt two days ago,” he muttered.

“I’ve been out for two days?” I asked.

Another sip. “The doctor injected it with Propofol, then we just injected it with sleep drugs for some two days. Anesthesias, mostly.”

“Is that why I’m so cold?”

“It is cold because its blood is such,” he replied, looking down and rubbing his eyes.

“That some annoying way of saying I’m cold-blooded?”

He grunted.

A thought crossed my mind about a certain pegasus reporter I’d met back at the Songnam docks, the one Lightning Dust had rather disliked, and whom I’d sent to Elkington in order to see if he’d kill her. What was her name? Tag? No, no, her name was Tab. When I asked Duke Elkington about her and even explained why I cared to ask, the Duke only sneered.

“I told her to sod off, thank you very much,” he told me. “If you honestly thought I’d kill her, you were so fortunately mistaken.”

“Ah, so you’re saying you that didn’t kill her, but you did anally rape her?” I asked in a jaunty voice.

Elkington grunted harshly. “I hate you with perfect hatred; I count you my enemy second foremost.”

“Ich hasse dich im rechten Ernst,” I said in a mocking tone; “du bist mir zum Feind geworden.” He looked at me, sucking on his lower lip. “All I did was bring forth eternal damnation and suffering as a true hero would against something so evil as you.” Also, you slipped up and called me ‘you’.

“Evil,” he said. “Evil?” he laughed. Elkington laughed so hard he broke into a minor coughing fit, which he settled down by drinking from his little flask. He jumped out from the chair and grabbed me by the neck. “Evil?!”

“Hey, hey, hey—with the touching,” I protested. Then a thought dawned on me. “If your love of socks means that you sexualize hooves, does that mean that you touching me with your hooves is... oh God, you people are sick! And slapping me? You probably had an erection, didn’t you?” I accused. “Didn’t you?!”

He smacked me. “Would it just bring itself back into reality for a second?”

“You say you want me to bring myself back into reality?” I snorted. “You’re assuming I’ve been there before.”

He shook me. “It petrifies a nation with mass murder, and all it’s doing now is making jokes!?”

“Hey!” I protested. “Stop sexually molesting me with your hooves! What’s with you Equestrians and sexually molesting me? By the Prophet, just because I’m a foreigner doesn’t mean that my penis vibrates or something!”

“By Celestia!”

“Well, I’m not saying she’s stupid, but everyone else is.”

He punched me in the stomach. “Do not speak ill of Princess Celestia.”

I struggled against my restraints, only then noticing that so too were my legs held down. “So, she is real, huh?” He glared at me, murder in his eyes. “What about Princess Luna? Is she real, more than just a myth?”

“Why does it ask that?”

“Because I’m a curious colt,” I replied. “Now, does she or does she not exist?”

He grunted. “Princess Luna is very real. A bit elusive, but I’ve seen her before. Not entirely convinced she’s mentally ‘normal’, as it were. A thousand years banished to the moon will do that to girl, I suppose.”

“You don’t sound like you care for her much. In fact, you sound as though you wish you could put her into a tiny box in a museum and then forget about her for years until you come back to find her living off rats, allowing you to just poke her with a stick.”

Elkington sighed and sat down. “Princess Luna is no Princess Celestia. She will never be as loved as her elder sister, I’ll tell it what. Luna is okay, but I think I might have preferred it if the Elements had slain her and not reformed her.”

Going to pretend I understand what that last sentence meant. “And so, what, you’re trying to kill Luna?”

He snorted, then took a drink of his flask. From the frown on his face, I knew his flask must have been empty. “Princess Celestia chose to redeem her little sister, to forgive her, to rule side-by-side with her. If Celestia thinks it wise, I will not question her.”

“So,” I droned. “You won’t question Celestia, yet you’re hurting her citizens—”

“Subjects,” he corrected. “We are her subjects.”

I hesitated. “Ignoring how calling a denizen of a nation a ‘subject’ is about as brutally offensive as it gets where I’m from, it doesn’t change that you’re running a dark government conspiracy against her subjects. That’s why you had to die: for all those your hurt at Sleepy Oaks, and who knows where else.”

He looked as if he were listening to the devil on his right shoulder and the angel on his left arguing over just how quickly he could break a broom handle off in my ass. The Duke sighed and turned his head, pointing to a spot on the side of his neck near his jugular vein, which I noted as an ideal place to slash. I blinked as I noticed something on his whitish fur: a small black brand, almost like the mutilation on my chest. It was a rod encased in an angular figure eight, the center point of the eight where it met the lines was covered with a creepy-looking eye; the eye appeared to be crying three tears, all of which were crimson, not the black like the rest of the mark.

“Do you believe in curses?” he asked, putting a hoof on my mutilation.

“You just called me ‘you’. Also, that’s the bad touch.”

A nod. “Do you?”

I affixed him a hard look. “Of course I do. You’d be an idiot not to.”

He smirked for but an instant. “I once talked with the, uh, one of the foremost magic-users in Equestria, and she merely scoffed at the idea of curses.”

The idea of ‘foremost magic-users’ in Equestria sent a cold chill down my spine. Whoever she was, she probably had tentacles and liked to use them on small children, or to play tennis. Tentacles gave you a lot of options in life that hooves just didn’t bring you. If experience had taught me anything, it was to never trust a being with an inordinate number of tentacles.

“But I’ve seen them with my own eyes.” He tapped the brand on his neck. “I carry with me proof. And you, Special Agent Faust, have one on your chest.”

“You know my name?”

“Found a very lonely, very tired mare in a broken elevator. Interviewed her myself. Told me your name was Special Agent Faust. That’s how I know your name and that you’re not an Equestrian, but that’s where my knowledge of you ends. But see, my problem is—”

“I can do a pretty good impression of someone who cares about your problem,” I interjected.

“And there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’, but there are three in ‘narcissistic’,” he retorted.

“It’s okay, Ellie,” I said, and his eye twitched, “sometimes the first step to forgiveness is realizing the other person is an idiot.”

“Actually, the first step is admitting the other pony is the one with the problem.”

I shrugged. “This reminds me of a saying: why don’t we focus less on Goldilocks and more on why Mama and Papa bear don’t sleep in the same bed anymore.”

He cocked a brow. “Yes, and the problem with the world is that the smart ponies are full of doubts and the idiots are full of confidence.”

“Are you implying I’m stupid?” I asked.

Elkington sighed, rubbing his nose. “Look, would you stop dicking around and get serious?”

I’ll try to find him for you, but no promises. “I suppose you wanted me to ask you about that mark on your neck, and then it somehow ends up with you having a tragic backstory, yeah?” He grunted. “Holy Hell, that’s exactly it, isn’t it? You have some really long sob story that explains why you think it’s okay to experiment with evil magic and hurt good ponies.” I sighed, shaking my head. “You know, one of these days I’m going to fight a guy who is very clearly evil and not at all morally gray, and it will be glorious.”

The Duke stared at me. “You do realize the only reason you’re alive is because of me, right? That I, for all intents and purposes, own you. That I could kill you right now, and nopony would ever know; in fact, they’d laud me as a hero if I did. So you shut your mouth and you listen to me, capiche?”

I nodded. “So long as you can keep your story short and interesting.”

He frowned so hard that I was sure his face was going to pop off and flop all around me. “This brand on my neck was forced upon me the day my family died.”

“Even the dog? Poor Fido,” I commented.

The duke closed his eyes and counted to ten. “When I was a little colt, I begged my father and mother to take me and my baby sister out for a vacation to the lands unclaimed by Equestria. It was to be an adventure.” He licked his teeth. “While hiking and exploring—with a legion of guards, mind you—I managed to wander off and get lost. In those hills and mountains, I found an ancient abandoned series of mines down in the Appaloosan Mountain.”

I groaned. “Look, if you’re going to torture me, could you just stick needles in my nipples, pull my hair, and make me scream already? I don’t want to listen to your story. I’m already bored. Seriously, this is worse than... like... the Bronchitis Double Boner Lick Off.”

Elkington paused and stammered something in confusion. I didn’t say anything, and soon he was back on track.

“In those mines, I found a dark ruin, an ancient vault predating Equestrian civilization.” He affixed me a solemn look. “I wandered through forgotten halls carved out of the old mountain itself until I came across an altar to an unsung diamond dog death god: a dark contraption in a large room. When I entered the room, rusted gears started to churn and magical gems glowed to life.”

“You lost me, Elkington,” I taunted. “Seriously, you’re about as interesting as a knife in my ass.” I thrashed against my restraints, feeling something metallic inside me wriggling. “I demand more symbolism! That would be interesting—because you need it for good literature, says every teacher ever!”

Touching his brand, Elkington gritted his teeth in what I hoped was frustration and wasn’t because he enjoyed the grinding sound so much that it helped him calm down. “The ancient magical machine branded this symbol onto my neck, violating my very soul with its dark magics. See, sentient beings don’t like being slaves—big surprise, I know.

“So in order to deal with slave uprisings, ancient diamond dogs found a way to essentially indoctrinate sentient beings into perfect slaves via magic. But it was weak, its magical gemstones decrepit, and there were no masters for me to obey.” He bit his lip.

“That’s all good and all,” I said, “but I’m bored. Can you fetch me a muffin to eat while you talk and I ignore you?” I rhythmically moved my legs around as if doing some weird walk. The metallic object within my body slithered with a warm feeling. “Look, see? I can dance for you while you wait.”

Elkington a hoof down on the bed’s railing. “Stop speaking! I’m telling an emotional story!”

“So, Equestrians don’t believe that males showing emotion is a bad thing like they do where I’m from?” I asked, jostling my hips. Metal so warm, so close to metaphorical light of day!

“That doesn’t matter,” he hissed, “what matters is that I somehow found my way out of the vault and the mine... and I watched with horror as my flesh moved without me, watched as I became a prisoner behind my own eyes... watched as I took a sword and butchered my family. I had no control over my actions: it was as if I had no mouth, but every fiber of my being was screaming for it to end.”

I thought about something less depressing as I continued moving my legs. Really, his story was another example of what happened whenever you dealt with magic. Of course, the first non-depressing thing I could think of was: What the hell were Cards and Dust doing in the Security HQ? And then I thought, Scheiße, I promised to make the girls dinner! I wanted to make them some sort of stew with a homemade French silk pie for dessert! It would have been delicious, and they would have thought me really awesome for it.

“So,” I said, “it’s not that you have issues, but rather a subscription?”

“What now?”

“Magazine joke,” I replied, still moving around despite being tied down. “But listen, your attempts to make me feel sorry for you are about as effective as a guy who tries so hard to make his date romantic that, rather than romantic, he just comes off as super creepy. That’s you. So—” I looked around the little curtained-off room around the bed I was strapped to and saw a bedpan “—could you just summarize?”

He sighed, grinding his teeth. “To summarize: random circumstances ended up with Princess Celestia herself actually saving my life—I’m not going to explain how, because you hate backstory and explanations—which lead me to the conclusion that, in order to make up for my sins, I must do my best to protect Equestria from the bad things that live outside it.”

“Look, my life is just a big series of ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’s strung together into a dapper choker,” I replied. I moved my hips up and down, the metal almost free. “That said, it seems like a good idea to ask you for a pencil and permission to become your editor. I swear to you, with me at your side, we can write epic novels about a character who is suspiciously like you.”

“No; if I gave you a pencil, you’d just stab me in the eye with it.”

Foiled again! “Okay, yeah,” I admitted, and squirmed even harder, “that may or may not have been my exact plan; but, really, ever considered how cool it’d look to wear an eyepatch?”

“Shut the hell up, butcher!” he ordered.

“Well, I’m a butcher, my confederates are a reporter and a cop, you’re a nut, and—” I smiled “—Celestia’s a liar who doesn’t really control the sun.”

“Enough!” he bellowed, pulling out his shortsword. “I’m sick of your shit, Agent Faust!”

“Well, it’s not my fault your toilets have no running water,” I mumbled, and he put the tip of the blade just before my lips.

“Crack another joke. Go on, I dare ya. Make one more joke! Do it, punk!” he commanded. I dug my head backwards into the pillow, his sword trailing my mouth. “Oh, what’s the matter? Ain’t got anything to say, you sick, murderous freak?”

A smile. “So, a gymnast walks into a bar.” I bared my teeth, grinning even wider. “She gets a two-point deduction and ruins her chances of winning a medal.” With the speed of a zebra who stole something, I lunged my mouth forwards and bit down on the sword, still smiling.

Elkington’s first reaction was to pull the blade away, but I was biting harder than his magical pull. “What are you doing?!” He was just too much business, not enough monkeys.

“Goshya!” I laughed through the sword as its tip stabbed my tongue, drawing blood. Eager as the second mouse who sees his friend killed by a mousetrap and now knows that the cheese is his, I magically grabbed the metal bedpan and smacked Elkington’s head with it. His magical aura faltered for a second, and in that second I grabbed his sword. I moved to telekinetically take the blade from my mouth, only to have Elkington lunge down and grab the blade’s grip in his maw.

I thrashed against my restraints as he and I fought orally over the sword, the metal object almost free. When I said I wanted more symbolism, I didn’t mean it be two grown stallions fighting with their tongues and teeth over a phallic shape! Arching my back like some sort of epileptic worm, I did the only thing I could think of, the thing I just worked for: I pulled out a switchblade with my magic, flicked the blade out, and slashed the Duke’s shoulder.

He screamed in pain, dropping the sword. In the moment, I tossed his blade against the wall and held my knife up against his throat, holding it just so to discourage any movement. “Where the hell did that come from?” he shouted.

“Don’t ask,” I said.

“But we stripped you down of any weapons and gear!” he yelled frantically. “And First Aide certainly wouldn’t have given it to you—”

“Do. Not. Ask. Let’s just say that I am a particularly prepared, possibly paranoid pony, and I took... certain measure in the likelihood that I was captured.”

“But—”

“Don’t,” I hissed, venom leaking from my tone.

His eyes narrowed with terror. “That’s horrifying! And you were kept medically asleep for two whole days!”

“C’est la vie,” I casually retorted. Two days? Ah, dammit, I owe Cards and Dust a lovingly homemade breakfast, lunch, and dinner for this. And each will taste orally orgasmic. I tried to ignore the coppery taste of blood from my perforated tongue, as well as the implications that an oral wound brought with it; the urge to brush my teeth was really strong; the last thing I wanted was an infection of the mouth. “Now then,” I said in a calm voice, pressing the knife against his carotid artery, forcing his head against my breast, “you’re going to do exactly as I say, or I’m going to shove my hooves up your urethra and firmly grasp your bladder from within. Firmly grasp it! Comprends-tu?”

“Fuck you!” he spat. “If you kill me, you’ll be sealing your own death warrant! I’m the only one keeping you alive! You can’t kill me!”

“Oh yeah?” I chuckled. “And who’s going to stop me, Pony McDoesn’tExist?”

“You’re making a huge mistake, you don’t understand that—”

I rolled my eyes. “You need my help to solve some problem of yours, right?”

Elkington blinked. “Yes, that’s exactly what I... but how...?”

“Because I’ve seen this exact scenario hundreds of times in books and comics and plays and stuff,” I said. “Really, I pretty much suspected it the moment I woke up, and knew it as a fact when you told me that you counted me as your enemy second foremost. It’s the only logical explanation to why I’m neither A) dead, or B) being gangraped in the prison showers. Your boring, boring story was an attempt to make me feel sympathy for you—which failed hard—so that I’d be inclined to help you. Knife to my neck, I’d say it involves something dark and evil, right?”

“The Backbone.” Elkington looked into my eyes. “A monster with dark powers living in the swamps to the west, by the little town of Sleepy Oaks. Its... influence has been seeping out in the form of enervation. I’ve done what I can for them, but my best efforts are tyrannical at best, murderous at worst.”

“Alright, I’m in,” I chirped.

He blinked. “I... what?”

“Well, I know how this is going to end. As in, no matter what, I’m going to agree to help you, so why argue over it when I can just say okay now and have you explain it to me on the way, okay? I mean, unless you want to bust out some funky fresh rhymes and try to beat me. Here, lemme start: ‘My dick needs no introduction; your dick doesn’t even function. And my dick... enough said; your dick... looks dead.’ Boom. There. I win by being the most childish and immature, as is the standard of that genre, except when it’s not. So, would you just untie me, give me my gear, and point me in the right direction?”

“As in... I don’t even have to threaten your allies?”

I cocked a brow. “You caught them?”

Elkington frowned, drooping his ears. “Well, no.”

A moment paused as we just stared at each other.

I burst into laughter. And then some more. And a little bit more. “Mein Gott, you suck so bad at your job, Elkington!” I guffawed. “You pretty much have your own private army, absolute authority over your demesne, and a fanatical legion of fangirls—yet you couldn’t capture two little mares?” The laughs exploded into a coughing fit, a hacking sputter that hurt my throat.

“We were so focused on you that we never bothered looking for those other two you came into Songnam with...”

Taking the knife away from his throat, I sawed through the restraints on my arms, the Duke quickly stepping away from me. I kept coughing, my right lung on fire. “Dammit,” I sputtered as I freed my arms. Of course, getting your entire body stabbed through and piercing a lung wouldn’t be a cakewalk to deal with afterwards. I sat up, looking at my bandaged chest. I was going to have breathing issues for the rest of my life, wasn’t I?

Keeping the hospital blanket around my waist, I leaned forwards, found where my hindhooves were bound, and set them free. I tied the blankets around myself like some sort of weird toga before sliding out of the bed and onto the floor. Elkington just stared at me as I asked, “So, mind telling me why it is that you think you can do evil things in the first place? A lot of your direct underlings were up to no good. Like that one guy, Social Grace, who used dark magical earrings to try to kill a confederate of mine.”

I bent down and picked up the Atemschutzmaske from the floor, putting it on my head, though not wearing it. “Not to mention that one zebra conjoined twin who was using dark magic and enervation, who suggested that he was running tests on live animals and had been told they wanted to see what enervation did to a pony. Any thoughts to contribute?”

“Well...” he droned.

“Because, “I said, pointing a hoof at him, “ponies who do that kind of evil warrant being killed in my book.”

Elkington hardened his expression. “Everything I have done I did out of love and good intentions.”

I sneered and replied in a mocking tone, “Was aus Liebe getan wird, geschieht immer Jenseits von Gut und Böse—wie?” He cocked a brow, but I translated it before he could ask: “What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil, eh?”

“I am the sword and the shield of Equestria, of Princess Celestia.”

“Ooh, that rhymed!” I chirped. “Do you want to have another battle of funky fresh rhymes?”

Elkington went on talking as if I hadn’t even spoken. “You’re a product of the outside world; no doubt, you’ve seen the horrors it holds.” I nodded. “But it is different in Equestria. It is the blood-sacrifice of ponies like me who fight to keep it that way. Because as ponies settle westward, they come into contact with the myriad of monsters out there, and so too have they gone against us. Not long ago, Canterlot was attacked by a changeling swarm which came from the far west. An ancient beast of unrepentant chaos rose from an ancient slumber and wreaked havoc on this country. A year before that, a dark prophecy thought by all an old mare’s tale came true, when the stars helped the Mare in the Moon—Nightmare Moon—escape her lunar prison.

“In every case, Equestria survived by the skin of her teeth, saved only by our greatest heroes. Those are only the biggest incidents, the ones that everypony heard about. But the truth is, every day something dark threatens Equestria, and the reason why ponies don’t hear about is because of me.” He pointed to himself as if I didn’t know who this strange ‘me’ bloke was. “Dangerous artifacts with sinister powers, evil tribes of diamond dogs, pony-eating dragons, changelings, strange diseases, and all manner of forgotten beasts—I fight all of them. And sometimes they slip into Equestria, sometimes they prey on the ponies settling out west. It falls unto me and those who would stand alongside to fight them.”

“God, you sure do like to talk, don’t you?” I asked. “And you’re so full of yourself. You failed to explain why any of that lets you do evil yourself.”

“I...”

“You know, we have a saying back in the Reich, where I’m from.” I said in a throaty, all-R’s-rolling voice, “Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.” Dropping back into a normal Equestrian accent and tone, I said, “He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not thereby become a monster. And when you stare long into the abyss, so too does the abyss stare into you.” I shrugged. “Roughly translated.”

The duke stepped backwards, staring at the ground with a distant look in his eyes. I opened up the curtains surrounding my bed and peered out at the rest of the hospital room and at the thick wooden doors. Glancing around, I didn’t see any of my gear. No, that’d be too easy. My clothes and gear were probably locked in some room in some tall, tall tower guarded by Cherry Berry. Downhill—that was how I rolled.

I glanced back at Elkington. “Oh, and that guy whom I’m quoting? Dude was completely nuts. I mean, ‘rolls around in his own waste while screaming racist things’ nuts. Said some cool things, though.” Humming a jaunty tune, I trotted a few steps forwards, stopped, then motioned for the Duke to follow. “Come on, Ellie, I don’t know where I’m going.”

He furrowed his brows. “Don’t you wanna hear about the exact reasons why I kept you alive? As in, the particular why of it?”

I shrugged. “Eh, probably.”

“I...” He frowned, gnawing on his lip. “Are you familiar with the idea of a demon?”

My ears perked up. “Intimately. They taste good.”

He blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Yeah. If you cook them, it turns out they’re surprisingly nutritious.”

Elkington cocked his head to the side. “You’ve eaten demon?”

“Well, yeah. During the Dark Crusade.” I let out a breath as I thought. “Food rations were really low, what with half the Reich under demonic occupation, so the military’s high command decided that in order to prevent civilians from starving, the Mobile Infantry would have to eat the demons we killed. Because of that, no famine.” I chuckled at his horrified expression. “It’s not like demons are people or anything, stop looking at me like that. It was only fair: you invade us, we eat your face. In fact, I once constructed a tiny one-pony fortress out of dismembered demon limbs. It was awesome. I was the king of Fort Awesome! No girls allowed.”

“Right. Just going to assume that was a lie because it sounds stupid,” he said.

“Funny thing was,” I went on, “I didn’t get reprimanded for that. No. As it turns out, the third time you try to build a fort out of body parts is when they start thinking there’s something wrong with you.” I shrugged. “They chastised me and I got all punished for it, since it was apparently very unhealthy of me to do... After that, my body-part fortresses had to let girls in.”

Elkington sighed. “What’s with you and equicide?”

“Well, there are four kinds of equicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy. Pretty sure that after killing and maiming up to seventy-two ponies, it becomes praiseworthy, don’t you think?”

“You killed and maimed them!” he snapped. “They were good ponies, all of them! How dare you make fun of them! How could you, even?!”

I threw my head back and laughed. “Easy! I see no difference between ponies and objects.” He gaped at me. “Kidding! Kidding! Sheesh, I’m kidding.” I smiled. “Took me awhile as a colt, but I learned the difference.”

He rubbed his nose. “Riiight... You laugh, they’re dead. Or maimed.”

“So, Elkington, here’s how it’s going to work,” I interjected, my master plan of awkward feelings working like a charm: “quickly tell me who needs to die, explain why you’re not evil, get me my gear back, and then send me on my way; if you fail the second or third points, I’ll just kill your enemy, then come back here and kill you. Oh, and try not to be boring about it, or I’ll cut your balls off. With a spoon.”

The Duke swallowed, then nodded. With his magic he pulled out a black object, holding it by a metal chain. I instantly recognized what it was: ein Kruzifix. Something about it just reeked of unnecessary symbolism. It probably could’ve been anything else and nothing would have changed, just some cosmic force had a real hard-on for it. On the other hoof, it satisfied my earlier demands for more symbolism.

“It all centers around this strange little object we found,” he said, “and the beast that wants it.”

|— ☩ —|

Rain. Yay. All of my hurras for rain, but only one hip-hip. As I tightened my duster’s collar and adjusted my hat, I stepped down the small stairs and into the rain. Even from here, the hospital just behind me, I could see much of Songnam, and that giant statue of Princess Celestia rising from the river.

I glanced heavenwards and muttered, “C’est l’heure bleue.”

“Hey there,” a créme-coated mare called out, levitating an umbrella above her. She was standing by a lamppost, its light bathing her. I paused in the street, and First Aide ambled up to me. “Seems like we keep bumping into each other. Destiny, perhaps?”

“Destiny’s just a tyrant’s excuse for crimes and a fool’s excuse for failure,” I said. “You were waiting for me, weren’t you?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Is it a crime for a doctor to look after her patient?”

“Well, it is suspicious,” I replied, and First Aide pouted. “Can you blame me? The first time I ever saw a doctor, he grabbed my leg and spanked me so hard I cried. So, forgive me for having a healthy mistrust of doctors.” I smiled, and she chuckled. “I once tried to be a doctor, too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I recall playing it as a little kid,” I said. She cocked a brow. “What I recall most is all the little fillies asking me to send them to a specialist.”

First Aide rolled her eyes with a smile. “Somehow, I just don’t see you as a doctor.” I shrugged, continuing my way down the street. As expected, she followed after me. “Hey, where ya goin’?”

“My hotel, the Ritz.”

“You’re staying there?” First Aide whistled. “I didn’t know you had that kind of money.”

“Yes, I have more than I really know what to do with. But that’s what you get when you rob a dragon. He wasn’t using it, anyhow.” I shrugged, enjoying the sound of rain pelting my duster and her umbrella. “I just wish it weren’t raining.”

“Well, after what you did, Elkington scheduled this storm as a way of... like... commemorating the dead and wounded or something.”‘Scheduled this storm’? Oh, because I’d forgotten: you could do that in Equestria, because screw logic. And screw how weather worked on this planet of ours. “You’ve become a sort of urban legend, a monster tale in only two days, you know.”

“And yet here you are, not afraid of me in the slightest.” I watched the rain streaming from rooftops into gutters, doubtlessly feeding into those absurdly spacious sewers beneath Songnam. All because Elkington was saddened by some dead grunts. Emotion: A prostrating disease caused by the heart speaking through the head. It is sometimes accompanied by a copious discharge of hydrated sodium chloride from the eyes.

“If you wanted to kill me, you could have.” First Aide gave me a soft look as she walked alongside. “Instead, you gave me that mask-thing; you might not be a hero, but I do owe you my life. Spent pretty much two sleepless days with you, since I knew about you and Elkington didn’t want it getting out that you were alive. Thank Celestia that I specialise in dealing with bodily trauma, yeah?”

“Agreed.”

“Only problem is that after two days of nonstop work, pretty sure I smell.” I glanced at her, and she had this ‘Shit, I should not have said that; I am an idiot’ look on her face.

“And you’re following me in the rain?” I chuckled. “What, you suggesting we go to my room and take a bath together?”

She flushed exactly like real people didn’t do, the kind you usually only saw in bad erotic novels. Not that I would ever know. First Aide forced a smile. “Being diplomatic about it, are we?”

“Ah, diplomacy—” I cocked a brow “—the patriotic act of lying for one’s country.” That’s a quote from somewhere, right?

“Well, I guess that’s just cause and effect for politics, right?” The mare shot me a goofy grin. I was sure it wasn’t intended to look goofy. If she had been wearing a clown nose, she’d’ve been enough to make most children cry, what with her blue lipstick.

Turning a corner, I asked, “So why are you really here?”

“Because I want to understand you... Jericho, was it? Or was it ‘Special Agent Faust’?”

“Jericho is my name, Special Agent my job-given title, Faust my surname.”

She blinked. “You’re a noblepony?”

“What?”

“You said you had a surname,” she said. “Doesn’t that mean you’re noble?”

I stopped and just stared at her. “Unless my name was Jericho Pendergast, der Prinz Teutschlands, no, I’m not a noble of any sort.” She cocked her head to the side. “The Reich, where I am from, has no nobles; however, we have a single royal house, Haus Pendergast. Everyone has a last name in the Reich, not just nobles.”

“That’s... weird.” First Aide shook her head. “Only nobles here have surnames. Us commoners just have our names.”

I shrugged. “In any case, I’m Jericho Amadeus Faust, Special Agent of the Reichskriminalamt, RKA. Now then, why are you really following me?” I walked forwards against, First Aide following alongside, the rain still making that lovely noise against her umbrella.

“I thought you a curious pony, Special Agent Faust. Guess I sorta wanted to understand the heart of the beast, to quote some really pretentious poet.”

I laughed. “Ne cherchez plus mon cœur; des monstres l’ont mangé. Je suis juste un cimetière abhorré de la lune.”

“You speak French?” First Aide said, cocking a brow. “I don’t; tried to in school—failed hard.”

“I grew up with it.” A couple of ponies in raincoats passed us by, paying us no heed. “Why do you sound so intrigued by it?”

“Well, I guess I’m only a girl.”

The hell does that even mean? I rolled my eyes, lowing the tone of my voice to teuschen levels: “La jeune fille, ce qu’elle est en réalité. Une petite sotte et une petite salope; la plus grande imbécile unie à la plus grande dépravation.”

“Ooh,” she cooed, “quit trying to sound sexy.”

“I just insulted you,” I said, adjusting my hat. First Aide narrowed her eyes as I continued with, “I was making fun of your inability to speak Französisch, yet you seeming to like it. Promise not to be offended and I’ll translate.” She nodded, and I cleared my throat. “This is what a girl really is. A little fool, a little slut; the greatest idiocy united with the greatest depravity.”

First Aide gasped. “I break my promise!”

I froze, shooting her a murderous look out of the corners of my eyes—so far out of the corners that my eyeballs actually hurt from it. “In the Reich, there’s little more we hate than a liar,” I hissed. Then I smirked. “But that mustn’t be of any concern for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You promised to keep silent. Yet in your office was a Voixson.”

First Aide brushed a strand of her violet mane from her eyes as she stared at me with her lime-green eyes. She blinked, moved her jaw to speak, then shook her head and shut her gob.

“What was that all about, ma’am?”

“Job security,” she said curtly. “I don’t quite trust ponies with more power than me. Plus, what with the... matter at hoof, I felt like I needed that job security. You never know these days.”

“Because the economy is bad? I heard your economy was slumping, even though I’ve yet to see many outwards sign of abject poverty.”

“That’s because this is Songnam,” First Aide replied. “It’s, like, the richest, most powerful city in the South. And Elkington has a hatred for poverty so bad that he often goes way out of his way to make sure no one is in dire straits here.” She shook her head. “But that’s not what I was worried about. I was getting into some pretty serious information, the kind a pony disappears for.”

I paused. “Ponies disappearing? This is... news to me. I wasn’t aware Celestia ran a police state.”

“A police state?” she said with narrowed, confused eyes. “I don’t know what that is, but I don’t think it’s what’s going on. I mean, it’s an urban legend, really, but some that if us commoners know too much, we just sorta... vanish. Or accidents happen to us. Or something. Yeah, there’s never been any proof of it, and the one pony we all know ‘disappeared’ showed up a week later, having simply gotten lost in the woods. But just in case, if those bastards decided to screw me over, I could screw them back. Hard.” First Aide sighed. “Too bad the Voixson burnt up in the fire.”

“No, I have it,” I replied. “Took it because it looked interesting.”

She gasped. “You wha’?”

“Yeah. You didn’t think I’d just leave it there, did you? In fact, it’s probably the thing that inclined me to save your life—a plan to blackmail someone powerful in Songnam’s government automatically puts you on my side. So it saved your life.”

She was silent. “The only reason I’m still alive is because of... that?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much. Funny how the little things save our lives. Without that Voixson, odds are I’d be dead. But because you had an interest in blackmailing some powerful ponies, that put you on my side, so I went out of my way to ensure your safety.”

“A-and if I hadn’t had it? If I’d been with Elkington one hundred percent?”

“Then I wouldn’t have cared to try to keep you alive.” A flash of lightning, the sound rolling in soon after. “So long as you didn’t actively try to kill me, I wouldn’t have killed you, though.”

First Aide looked at the wet ground. “That’s a sobering thought. The only reason I’m alive is because I was bad.” She shifted her weight. “I... kinda like that thought...”

I looked around the streets of Songnam. “Why does it feel like such a ghost town? This time last I was out, there were still ponies aplenty ambling about.” The two-story and three-story houses lining the street felt to me ominous, exactly like the feeling of having to use the restroom, only to go in there and find a gaggle of gorgeous girls sitting there calmly, judging you. And they had to die for it.

“Are you trying to change the topic on me?”

“Yes; the old topic was boring me. So, why is everything so empty-looking?”

“Well, didn’t I explain this earlier?” the mare asked, and I shook my head. “The Butcher of Songnam is still on the loose, Special Agent Faust. The Songnam Slaughter goes unsolved. Ponies the nation over are terrified of, well, of you. Bit of a mess for Lollapalooza, since once the sun starts going down, everypony bolts indoors.”

“Huh. Lookie me, changing the world, one mass murder at a time.” I glanced around. “Yes, are there any confectionery stores still open?” She cocked a brow. “I want to buy the ingredients for a French silk pie, then make one from as close to scratch as I can get without being a farmer.”

The créme-coated mare shrugged. “Dunno personally. I could care less about making cakes from scratch.”

“Couldn’t,” I corrected.

“What?”

“The correct phrasing is ‘I could not care less’. Saying ‘I could care less’ literally means next to nothing. You could honestly be its biggest fan to the point where all your dirtiest dreams involve it, and still describe it as ‘I could care less’. ‘Couldn’t care less’ implies an utter indifference. Comprends-tu?”

Her face was like that of a brick wall realizing that it had the ability to realize things, but still didn’t have a face to express that look with. “What?”

“Oh, nevermind,” I sighed.

“You sound bitter,” she commented, and I rolled my eyes, stepping in close to her. First Aide looked up at me. There were some nifty advantages to being tall. Working together, I bet Cards could use First Aide as a stepping stool to get onto my back. Aw, who was I kidding? If Cards wanted a piggyback ride and begged me with her red, puppy-like eyes, my heart would explode and I’d give her one. Of course, I’d be dead, but it’d be so adorable it’d be totally worth it. Then I realized that she’d be childishly flailing around, screaming with laughter atop my dead body, and then it’d stop being cute and just get creepy, especially because she was an adult.

“Bitter? Ma’am, I just have the odd habit of thinking a lot. Now come on, I feel silly just standing in the road on a rainy day.” And so I walked, only having a vague idea of where I was going. First Aide and I only paused briefly to discuss boring things, like what made her want to become a doctor. Hint: her father was a doctor, and she always liked healing things. It was about as original and inspiring as saying ‘Hey, Daddy never hugged me enough, so I become a world-traveling mass-murdering hero’. At some point, she directed me on a little detour that I obliged her on. This lead to stopping before little two-story house overlooking the river.

“Okay, so...” she droned.

“Why have we stopped?”

First Aide stepped up to the door, then turned to face me. “This is my place, Special Agent Faust.” A moment of silence passed. She cleared her throat, glancing around as if she expected an eagle to swoop in and eat her baby. Not that that she had a baby. At least I was pretty sure she didn’t.

“Are you a single mom?” I asked.

“Wha’?” she stammered. “No. Why?”

“Don’t know. You just had a weird look.”

Awkward silence was the best kind of silence. The rain kept at it, though. Being that the rain was weather, you see, it had no concepts of drama or awkwardness, which gave rain the uncanny ability to just always be a complete dick.

First Aide feigned a cough, jostling her umbrella. “So...”

“Hey,” I said, and her eyes widened, a little smile on her face, “I just realized something.” I pointed to her doctor’s fatigues, to the little name tag on her chest. “Your name’s spelt wrong.”

Her smile turned upside down. “Wha’?”

“First aid is medical treatment. No E after the aid. First Aide with an E after the aid makes no sense.”

She shot me a flat look and said dryly, “A-I-D-E refers to an assistant or helper, sometimes of the confidential variety. My names essentially means ‘the first one to help’.”

“So... your name is a pun?”

First Aide sighed. “Yes, it’s a spelling pun. What of it?”

“Huh.” Equestrian names are stupid. “It’s a clever name, in its own way. I like it. Makes a fun bit of sense.”

She perked up. “Thank you! Dad always was proud of thinking it up.”

Chalk her father up on the list of ponies whom I must stab with fruit. “Okay. I’m just going to head back to my hotel room and plan out something big and world-saving.” I turned to leave.

“Wait,” she said, and I looked at her. “You sure you have to leave now?” I shrugged and nodded. Nothing happened. “Like... you don’t wanna come in, talk some more, double-check your wounds and bandages... cup of, uh, coffee?”

“I don’t like coffee,” I said plainly. “Stains the teeth and is annoyingly addictive. I prefer tea.” I walked away, heading in the direction I was sure the Ritz was.

|— ☩ —|

As it turned out, there was a little Mom ’n’ Pop-type store open along my way home. Because I was getting a break for just once, it sold everything I needed to make a French silk pie. Also, a baguette, because French.

Armed with my brown paper bag, I checked my map to note that the quickest way to the hotel was straight ahead from the store. That was, to cut through a very large train station. Since nopony seemed to be staying out at this hour, I didn’t see any problem with cutting through the “Super Songnam Station” (for added alliterative appeal, Ah’d accept).

What was with Equestrians and marble? Was wood too splinter-ridden? The interior of the station’s floors were so gleamingly polished, and the general emptiness made it feel like a Potemkin village. Here in the large atrium, there was a clearly marked staircase leading to a “skybridge”, and a handy map of the station informed me that this was how you got across the railroad and to the other side of the platform. I knew where I was going.

“What do you mean, ‘private train’?” a mare’s voice scoffed from somewhere. It was hard to tell, the acoustics of this place were weird when it was empty. Maybe they were always weird. I didn’t know. “Why would Elkington reserve this for himself?”

“Well, ma’am, I couldn’t tell ya,” some buck replied, and the mare groaned loudly.

“You’re so useless.”

“I try my best.”

As I crossed the skybridge, I hummed a little tune. The railway station was rather roomy, I had to admit. Plenty of room for a few big trains. It was easy to imagine it being one of the foremost in Equestria. A distinctly magical sound, like some sort of spell, erupted in front of me. I snapped my head forwards and immediately crashed into a girl. The bag fell, only for the girl to catch it in a blue aura of telekinesis.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed. “I wasn’t looking here I was going and almost happened to make you drop your things before I caught them—what a cute meeting, just like in those stories!”

I blinked, taking as step back. “Say wha’?”

The mare put a hoof to her cheek, her cyan eyes glistening. She had, to reference classical mythology, a face that could launch a thousand ships. “Oh my goodness, I recognize you! Jericho, right? How have you been?”

“How do you know my name?”

Her eyes drooped for a second, but she just as quickly perked herself right back up. “It’s me, Selena!” I gave her a look so blank that a child might’ve been tempted to draw on my face. “Remember, the train station from a few nights ago? Back in Ponyville?” She rocked forwards on her hooves. “We talked about the moon and astrological signs?”

“Oh,” I said, taking the bag back from her, “why am I carrying this out in the open?” Her ears drooped so hard that I was pretty sure they were about to fall off. I put the paper bag into one of my own bags, where it fit snugly and out of sight.

“Wait, how did you fit that paper back into your other bag?”

I shrugged. “I’m surprisingly adept at getting big things to fit into tight spaces, ma’am.”

A glint crossed her eyes. “You don’t say?”

“No, I do say,” I deadpanned. “In fact, I just said it. Why do you feel like this is a point of contention and that you must argue?”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” she stammered, “I wasn’t arguing!”

I cocked a brow. “Then what did you mean?”

“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just, uh, you know? Common conversational thing, right?”

“You commonly talk to ponies by instigating arguments with them?”

“No, no, no! It’s like, uh, somepony says something, and you’re supposed to say ‘You don’t say’ because you’re not surprised or anything, you understand? It’s just polite conversation, uh, and stuff, right.” She forced me a large smile.

“No,” I said. “I’ve never heard that ever before in that way or context as you just described. Maybe I’m just unfamiliar with this language of which I speak fluently, but I’ve only seen that phrasing used in sarcastic, condescending tones. I should know.” I cocked a brow and widened the eye beneath it. “I’m often sarcastic because sometimes if you can’t laugh at something, the only alternative is to cry.”

“Um... so...” Selena ran a hoof through her long, soft blue mane, forcing a chuckle. “I was just, uh, walking around, doing stuff. What were you doing?”

“Going to where I was staying to make a French silk pie,” I replied, looking back down at the station platforms. They were actually made of concrete out here, which I found to look better than marble, if only because Equestrians abused marble so much.

Her smile this time wasn’t so forced. “Making a pie? Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

I gave her a look so blank it sucked the very life out of her smile. “No, not at all. Irony is defined by a contrast between what is and what seems to be.” She looked about as relaxed as a coiled rattlesnake as I went on—a simile which itself was ironic. “Irony here would be like... if I tried to make a pie, but ended up destroying all pies forever due to sheer incompetence on my part. That kind of thing.”

“Well, I was, uh...” Selena stammered. “It was ironic that you’re a stallion who’s making food or, uh, something like that.”

“Okay,” I said, pointing upwards for effect, “now that’s stopped being fun and has instead become sexist, with you calling ‘ironic’ things which seem out of place in your worldview.” She sucked in her lips as I laughed. “Of course, the whole reason I learned how to cook well in the first place was because the stereotype of guys being unable to cook always annoyed me, and I hate playing to stereotypes.”

Selena frowned, fidgeting with her mane. “I have a headache. I want to go home and drink a bottle of sangria.”

“I like sangria,” I replied, playing with my hat’s visor. “It comes from an old word that means ‘blood’.” She just looked at me, slowly tilting her head to the side. “Err, the two statements are unrelated to each other.” Selena just kept staring at me. “Quit it.”

The mare blinked—“Huh?”—and shook her head. “Oh, uh, sorry. Fazed out there for a second.” One of her ears perked, the other one hung floppily like a dog. “What were you saying?”

I stepped past her. There was a cake to bake! And... actually, come to think, I had no idea where Cards or Dust would be, and only the barest belief they’d be back in the hotel room.“I have a place to go, a cake to bake.”

“Don’t you mean, a pie?” she asked.

“Yes, yes I did.” I smiled. “That was my voice of evil reason speaking.” Pony, I own you.

Shut up, voice of evil reason.

“Excuse me?”

I shook my head. “Whenever my voice of evil reason speaks, I replace the word ‘pie’ with ‘cake’. It’s very tragic, you see.” Then, in a dramatic voice: “Thousands have lost their lives to this tragic tragedy of tragedies’ tragedy.”

She gave me an utterly bemused chuckle. “You’re weird.”

Frowning, I put a hoof to my chin. “That’s the second time today somepony’s told me that.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she said, her head turning to follow me walking away. “Hey, can I ask what you’re doing in Songnam? You were in Ponyville a few days ago and all.”

“I am but a humble traveler trying to save the world, Miss Selena,” I replied, stopping to look at her. “And you?”

“Oh, um, well... it’s complicated.” Selena looked off to the side, to the train station proper. “Someone asked me to head out to Songnam, but I only just arrived.” She hesitated. “So, are you going to be in Songnam long, what with that terrible tragedy that just happened?”

“Ma’am, when you’re in the business of slaying evil and protecting the weak, you stay and wander as is needed,” I said, wandering down the skybridge.

“Hey, what does that...?” Selena trailed off and sighed hard and dejectedly. Probably not knowing just how the acoustics of this place were when it was otherwise silent, she muttered: “Or, yeah, you can just keep going on your way. You’re so good at talking to ponies, me. Gee, you think? Yes, other me: that’s why you can hold conversations with interesting ponies for hours...”

|— ☩ —|

There were certain things in the world that made a pony want to murder something. One of those things involved climbing up to the fourth floor of a hotel after walking across a whole city—and then finding out there was an elevator in this place. Three, to be exact. But you didn’t know that because they looked nothing like the equivalent machines back home. Which just meant oodles and noodles of happiness and joy.

Then there was walking into your hotel room, closing the door behind you, and getting bashed upside the head and knocked to the ground by a frying pan and its friendly baton.

“GB?! GB! Oh Celestia, GB!” a very familiar pegasus screamed, dropping down to the ground in front of me. “Are you dead?! Oh Celestia, you’re dead!”

“No. Fine,” I moaned.

“Oh Celestia, he’s still breathing!”

Rubbing my face, I stood up. “I’m gone for two days, and this is how you greet me?”

“You’re okay!” Dust exclaimed, jumping at me and wrapping me in her arms. Her face buried in my chest, she said in a slurred voice, “I thought you were dead, and then I thought there was something breaking into the room, so then I thought I should fight them, and then I thought you were dead again, and—and—and—”

I looked down at her. “Lightning Dust, are you drunk?”

She looked up at me in turn, her eyes red and moist. A moment paused. Nothing happened. As the nothingness went wild, she slowly blinked. Dust had the look of a colt who was caught with his/her penis in the cookie jar. “I don’t know.”

“Dust, why are you drunk?”

“It was Cards’ fault,” Dust whined “She wasn’t drinking it! So I thought I should drink her Bucking Bronco, because.”

I looked around for Cards. “Speaking of which, where is she? Cards, that is.”

“She told me she was...” Dust looked at the door. “Was out doing re... re-conn-ai-shansh, but I’m pretty sure that just means she’s buying more booze... I like booze. Takes, like, lethal amounts before I feel anything, though.”

“Err, why?”

She chuckled. “Well, when you used to drink as much as me, you tend to build up a really annoying tolerance.”

“I’m not sure that’s how that works,” I said, narrowing my eyes. The mare rubbed her cheek into my chest, prompting me to push her off. “Dust, you’re a grown mare—stop acting like a little filly, and don’t touch me.” She gasped as she tumbled to the floor, but I was too busy walking into the little kitchen to care. I readied the oven and the stove.

“What are you doing?”

“Baking a pie. It’s literally been the only thing I’ve cared about doing for the last two days. Pie first, then save the world.” I nodded at the oven. “That exact order. Accept no substitutions.”

“A-all you’ve cared about...” she said in a weak voice. As I hummed a tune to myself, I could hear Dust’s breath quickening in tempo, like she was leisurely jogging or fluttering or whatever it was that pegasi did for flying exercise. And for reasons I couldn’t explain, she even gulped in an overly dramatic way that even I could clearly hear. It had better not be alcohol poisoning at work, or else she was in for a stern talking-to.

“I-I’d do anything to make you care,” Dust breathily muttered out of the blue. Well, out the drunken blue, which was probably more like a kaleidoscope.

Going to ignore that weird comment. As I set my paper bag on the counter, I—Scheiße! Okay, tackled to the ground! Or we could do that, yeah. I looked up into the crying eyes of the mare who tackled me onto my back. Her forehooves pinned my shoulders, but her legs didn’t touch me at all. I had to hand it to her—she was stronger than she looked.

“What the—?” I stammered.

“D-daddy always said,” she sobbed with quivering lips, “that this was how girls like me m-made friends...”

I blinked. “Okay, I can see how maybe some friendly horseplay—”

“Whore’s play,” she laughed mirthlessly. Dust swallowed her frown and blinked the tears away. Refusing to look me in the eyes, she gave me the worst faked smile I ever saw. “You know, GB, that ass of yours on my mind is-is-is—” she bit her lip “—is just so damn edible.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” I said slowly, venom coursing through my every syllable.

“That’s what girls like me are for, just like Dad said,” Dust mumbled. “Mom couldn’t do it, that’s why Dad left and came back and left again all the time. But I can do it. For you.” She closed her eyes, puckered her lips, and pressed them to mine.

Or, well, she should’ve pressed them to mine if I hadn’t kneed her in the gut and thrown her to the floor. “The hell is the wrong with you, you drunken Weib!?” I shouted, inching back against the wall.

The pegasus just curled up and sobbed. “You hate me, don’t you?! That’s why you didn’t come back—I ruined it all for you and then you didn’t want to come back! Please don’t leave me, GB!”

“Um...”

“I blew your cover while you were doing whatever you were doing in that Security HQ, didn’t I?! That’s why you’re gonna leave me, because I only cause problems and ruin stuff!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, cocking my head to the side.

She sniffled, rubbing her eyes. “I know how it goes, this kinda shit. I always pull something that drives ponies away.”

I looked around the room. That couch was still there, sitting menacingly. “Would you take a breath and start making sense before I have to smack it into you?”

Dust swallowed, one ear perked up, the other limp. “A-after you left, I got Cards and me to go off to the Security building to get information stuff about the Social Grace case,” she said at a mile-per-minute, “but then we found you, and then you did that thing, and that made them not follow us anymore because they were probably all after you, and then the Songnam Slaughter, and then you were gone for two days! It’s all my fault, isn’t it!?”

“Well,” I said, rubbing my chin, “I suppose things would have gone better if you hadn’t been doing what you’d been doing, forcing me to set everything on fire.”

Dust looked back at me, frowning hard as she wobbly tried to stand. “I knew it! You hate me because of that, don’t you? That’s why you vanished for two days, isn’t it?!”

“I vanished because—”

She lunged at me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “You hate me, admit it! Just tell me the damn truth!”

“Get a hold of yourself, mare!” I snapped.

“No,” she whined, “don’t push me away—they all push me away! All of them! First Dad, then that other colt, and Dad again because he came and went, and then other ones, and now you!”

“The hell are you going on about? How much did you drink?”

The opal-colored mare just burst into tears, burying her face into my chest. “Why do they all leave?! Am I that horrible? All I ever wanted to do was be the best and fastest there ever was! Is that so much to ask for? It’s all I ever, ever wanted.” She swallowed. “But I’ll do anything to keep you around.”

“You’re scaring me, Lightning Dust,” I said calmly. “Stop it.”

“No, no, no! I like you, GB—I don’t wanna be friendless again!” she cried. “The closest thing I ever had to a real friend went missing and now the closest thing I have to a friend in the world hates me! I’m sorry, sorry, sorry... but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do... for her friends...”

Missing friend? Oh! She means that dead girl they found in the swamp, the one that Doctor Dome autopsied. Haha, you have no friends.

Rolling my eyes, I sighed and pushed her off. “Friendship is just a ship big enough for two in fair weather, but only enough for one in foul. I’d go on some incredibly pretentious rant about something or other, but... I’m too lazy and pie-wanting-to-bake-y. I don’t have time for another sob story today. So let me just solve this problem here: I don’t hate you, it wasn’t your fault that Elkington caught me, and your fears are entirely in your own mind.”

“You’re just saying that!” Dust looked at me with her amber eyes, her lips quivering.

A loud groan. “Okay, once you’ve said that, I can’t possibly win.”

“Why do all my relationships end in failure?”

“Because you won’t let me bake this damn pie.”

“You care about the pie more than me, don’t you!” she accused.

“Dust, that’s crazy,” I said in calm tones. “When I call something’s crazy, I mean it. Trust me, I should know; I hear voices.”

I am acknowledged! Haha!

No, you’re just a figment of my boredom! “So shut up and let me make this pie.”

The way she was shaking reminded me of that one hamster I saw that’d just discovered Kokain. “I... I don’t get it,” she mumbled.

“What’s not to get? I want to bake a pie, you’ve gone drunken psycho and refuse to let me bake that pie,” I commented. “Where’s the confusion?”

Dust inched her way across the floor to me like the world’s least graceful caterpillar attempting to perform an interpretive dance rendition of Götterdämmerung while undergoing cataract surgery. She grabbed ahold of me and nuzzled my hooves. “You know, GB, you got really nice legs. I wish I had legs like yours. They’re nice.”

“Touch. Not.” I fancied that my eyes were firing concentrated beams of threat. She didn’t seem to notice all the effort I was putting into it, though.

“And such nice, clean, manicured hooves,” Dust said woozily, rubbing her cheek against my forehoof. “I don’t want to have to do this—” She blinked. “N-not that I don’t want to, that is! It’s just not something that I thought about and—that came out wrong! I mean, I have thought of it, but, y’know, I have those kinda thoughts a lot and that—” I watched her bite down on her tongue. “Sometimes we can’t choose our friends: the universe chooses them for us.”

“Confederates,” I corrected. “We are confederates. Where I’m from, the word friend, Freund, isn’t thrown around as lightly as it is here in Equestria.”

“Not gonna lie here, GB, but I have no idea what the word confederate means.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Pretty sure I never heard it till you used it. You might not call me your friend, but... by my standards, I’d call you my friend.”

“In my language, indicating possession over a friend generally indicates a romantic relationship,” I added helpfully. “We don’t have unique words for boy- or girlfriends, you see. By your standards, you’d say: Du bist ein Freund von mir. Literally, ‘Thou art a friend of me’.”

“Stop that!” she snapped. “That doesn’t matter, and you’re just trying to dance around the issue here.” Lightning Dust put a hoof on my side. “I don’t have many friends, or any, really, s-so...”

Despite my glare, her hoof slowly slid down my side. Well, enough of that Scheiße. I jabbed her in the forehead, and she yelped as she fell onto the hard floor. “Lightning Dust,” I hissed, “keep your hooves off me and my gentlecolt sword.”

Sidenote: I bet a single punch to her throat would kill her.

“But this is what guys want, right?!” she openly wept, covering her forehead with her hooves. “I don’t get it—you’re not supposed to say no!” Cherrypillar, much? Urge to kill slowly rising. “The hell am I supposed to do? That was supposed to work, dammit!”

“Stop drinking, really.” I shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were about to die from alcohol poison or something. Hyperbole aside...” I smacked her across the face. “They say that physical stimulation, specifically pain, helps drunks. Also, I just really wanted to smack you, because I’m not sure if I’m facing a moral dilemma here or not.”

Do you think slapping all these girls is going to have an adverse reaction on your reputation as not being a sexist?

Dust covered her eyes with her hooves as she laid on the floor. “I have to do this, GB, don’t you see? That’s what happens to girls who can’t hold a stable relationship in their lives... they don’t get happy endings, just a whore’s one. B-but if it means keeping a friend...”

“I should just get to making this pie, hoping that this becomes an alcohol-fueled blackout for you come morning.” I licked my gums. There was an odd taste that needed to be washed away with French silk pie.

“It’s what happens to girls like me,” Dust went on, not noticing that I wasn’t really paying attention. “I-I once had what I thought was a real friend—she and I worked so good together in the Wonderbolt Academy. They always told me to keep pushing myself, leave others in my dust, and I could be great. Achieve my dreams. Aim for the stars, y’know? There was no future for me otherwise. But then she—that bitch betrayed me, ruined it all... and she made my very own hero, my living idol, destroy my dreams.” She licked her lips and hesitated. “I’ll do anything to survive, I didn’t want to end up like Mom... unloved, cold, and alone...”

I stepped over her and went back to the pie I was trying to make. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

“Why are you ignoring me?”

“Well, I suppose that’s just going to remain one of life’s unanswered questions, such as ‘what color is a mirror’?”

Dust squinted. “Mirrors are green.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ever make a mirror tunnel, like, having two mirrors mirror each other?” she asked, and I gave a hesitant nod. “Mirrors are green because...” She licked her lips and shook her head. “You can tell they’re green because those infinite mirrors eventually get darker and greener, because that’s how light and colors work.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Holy shit, you’re right... Where did you learn that?”

Dust gave me a look that would have made more sense if she were crosseyed. “I researched it myself back in high school. No one knew the answer, so I did the thingy all by myself. Wrote a paper about it and how... how... the colors and light and reflections made color and... stuff. Got an A.”

“Well then.” I blinked. “Going to be honest here, that is pretty much the last thing I ever expected from you. Especially while you’re drunk.”

“Dad didn’t like the mirrors and the weird way they reflected things,” she sniffled. “I don’t know why—I think he got confused with cameras and how they steal your soul. He wasn’t a very smart stallion, and he was often drunk.” She rubbed her eye. “Doing stuff with mirrors helped keep him away when he was in a hitting-me-and-mommy mood.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s rough.” Too bad I don’t care.

The pegasus got to her hooves. Great, now we were both up. She half-walked, half-skidded towards me like an epileptic cow who thought it could ice skate, which ended about as well as you’d think: the deaths of several small children. The cow, that is, not the mare. “Y’know, I got both a killer body and a... one a them good brains.”

I frowned. “Lightning Dust.”

“Yes?” she purred in a sultry voice.

“You are standing exactly three quarters of a millimeter away from me.” I narrowed my eyes.

“What’s a millimeter?”

“And, you know, because you’re standing that close to me, every Atom in your body is cumulatively being drawn towards every Atom in my body with the exact same gravitational force as the sun is exerting on you right now. My Atome, too. We are literally being drawn together right now.” I frowned. “Stop it.”

She cocked her head to the side. “What’s an... ‘ah-tohm’?”

I blew out a puff of air. “I, uh... um... there may or may not be a minor gap in my Equestria linguistic skills when it comes to the sciences.” I made a circular gesture with a hoof, as if trying to catch the appropriate word out of thin air. “Das Atom... would be, like, a super, super tiny building block of everything that has mass, so small that you could never hope to see one ever, so small that there are billions of them in a single drop of water. What would that be in Equestrian?”

Dust cocked her head in the other direction. “You mean, like, a foremote or an uncleft?”

“What now?”

She stepped away from me, biting her lip. “I dunno, I didn’t have magic class. And I failed chemistry class, too.”

I looked at the pile of pie-making goods on the counter. They were taunting me! “So...” I said, “you failed chemistry class, yet you know all about how light works?”

“Color are just light reflected off objects because that object can absorb every color but the one you see,” she said is if reciting from a memorized speech: “it’s why plants can’t grow if you put them under a green light, they can’t absorb and use that light. So they die. Lightcombining can’t occur.”

“I...” I squinted at her. “And you’re supposed to be drunk and yet you know all of that?” Rather than reply, she made a noise that struggled to exist somewhere between the realms of a gurgle and a moan. “Okay, your ludicrously specific knowledge is kind of freaking me out.”

“Well, I’m sorry I never studied magic or, uh...” She knocked on her forehead. “Urgh, what was it called? That thing about those tiny, tiny thingies... Uncleftish beholding? Yeah, I’m sorry they don’t teach pegasi uncleftish beholding.” Dust made a gesture like violently sweeping all of my pie goods onto the floor.

A very nervous part of me was thinking about all the horrible ways Dust could throw my pie-making stuff to the ground and utterly ruin my night. I took a step towards the counter, trying to put myself between Dust and the pie’s ingredients. “Uncleftish beholding?”

“Yeah, like... that unproven idea that all stuff is made of super tiny unclefts.”

I blinked. “Atomare Theorie?”

“Dammit, GB!” she snapped. “I don’t know things! What kind of egghead do you take me for, the kind that reads Daring Do?”

I don’t know why, but that name sounds very familiar. “Well, this kind of thing lights my fire.”

She groaned. “Can’t we stop doing boring stuff and, like, get to the fun part?”

Cocking a brow, I said, “Not going to lie, you’re drunk, and that wouldn’t be a lot of fun. In fact, I’m not having any fun talking to you, save for that weird science bit. Really, the fun-train has left, it has departed the station, and I’m left standing here in my miniskirt.” Dust gritted her teeth and I went on. “In fact, it’d be less fun than the time I was forced to prove how many five-year-olds I could take on in a fight.” I narrowed my eyes in post-traumatic horror. “The children were merciless and showed no fear... but I did what I had to do...”

“So...?”

“The answer turned out to be ‘many more than common dignity should allow’.” That never happened and you know it.

Shut up, you don’t know that! And this is all part of my plan.

Dust pouted. “Screw them, what about me?”

There was a bottle of some strange brand of soda that I’d bought alongside the pie stuff, simply because I was curious to try out local Equestrian food and beverage. At that exact moment, the only thoughts going through my head concerned that bottle of soda, and whether or not it would have the list of ingredients on the back.

Dust stamped a hoof. “Screw them. What. About. Me?”

I blinked the thoughts of pie and cola away. “Well, no. Never. You’re drunk.”

“So?”

Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I sighed. Why couldn’t Cards randomly show up right now and make this more awkward yet likely help defuse the situation? “According to the laws of my country,” I said plainly, slow enough for her drunken mind to grasp, “sexual intercourse with a pony who is drunk while you are not constitutes a rape offense. That cultural and legal notion is now a part of my morality: to engage in such behavior while you are clearly out of your mind drunk would be an act of rape, in my book. And because rapists are one of the two things I will not tolerable being alive, well, I’d very much like to avoid having to fight myself. I’d kick my ass!”

“Wha’?”

I put a hoof to my chin. “Does your nation have that standard?”

“No,” she moaned.

“Hmm... I should really look into the Equestrian rape laws. I recall this one time in Equitologie class where we, as a class, were going over Teutschland’s rape laws. My teacher, Herr Marsch, he’d-he’d been with the, uh, military police over in a foreign country the Reich has bases in. And he’d related to us once these two rape cases he’d worked on where a teutscher soldier, the same guy, had essentially committed rape and gotten away with it because of a now-illegal argument. It was basically ‘she’s a slut’ for both cases, and it somehow worked in courts: the jurors seemed to be inclined to think the mare was lying.”

I smiled. “I can imagine myself going up to the archives or wherever you keep your laws all recorded, and then walking up to the secretary/librarian or whatever. She’ll just be this little Cards-looking mare, and I’ll go up to her and ask in the scariest voice: ‘I’m looking for the rape laws.’ And she’ll just look at me. Then call security.

“Then the nice security stallions will escort me to where the rape laws are kept, and we’ll talk about how broken they are. They’ll tell me that the little secretary has actually raped them both several times, but no one believes them, and your laws don’t believe mares can commit rape. And it’ll be horrible.”

Turning around, I fished around the paper bag for the glass bottle of soda. And there it was, clear glass filled with a fizzy brown liquid and with a red labeled slapped onto it. Colta-Cola was the labeled brand name. “Hold on a second, love,” I commanded, “I have the strangest craving to figure out what this tastes like.”

“Colta-Cola?” she muttered. “Aren’t you kinda completely off topic... or something?”

That’s the idea. I pulled out a bottle opener, popped off the bottlecap, and took a swig of the fizzy liquid. Swirling it around in my mouth, I frowned and swallowed. “It tastes pretty much exactly like giving oral sex to a sad clown,” I concluded. Dust blinked in what was either confusion or because my face had turned into a bright light source. “It’s like she’s saying: ‘My clown-painted marehood feels nothing but contempt for your pitiful efforts.’ And I’m left there feeling useless. No matter how much I try, I get nowhere!” I sniffled, rubbing my eye. “Why, Mommy, why?! Why can I never please you?! This is why you died, isn’t it! Daddy always said you died because I was unlovable!”

Dust just stared at me.

“So, yeah,” I finished, “that’s how it tastes.”

“It tastes,” Lightning Dust said, narrowing her eyes, “like being unable to orally sex your dead mother to orgasm while she’s dressed as a clown?”

A shrug. “Yeah, pretty much.” If that doesn’t deter you from ever trying to sleep with me ever again, I don’t know what will.

The mare gave me a look like she expected me to explosively decompress in the least spectacular way possible, and her wings twitched. “You know,” she purred, “I wouldn’t have that problem. I... sorta have the opposite problem, in fact.”

I slapped my forehead. “Oh, come on!” I blinked. “Ach, stupid language of yours! Look, Dust, no. And no. No, and some more no. You do not need to try to sexually manipulate me into sticking around with you, and I find the the notion that you think you can do that to me disgusting. I am not mad at you, or at least I wasn’t until you tried to pull this shit today. So go away. There’s a pie to be made. I don’t know how else to tell you this.” I jabbed a hoof at her breast. “You and I and probably Cards if she wants are going to save Equestria from this something-or-other, and then we’re going to go our separate ways. That’s what you wanted, right?”

She took a step back, just staring at me. “I...”

“That’s why you’re working with me, to get those stories that will make your career, of which you’ve already gotten one from me, right?”

“I-I-I...” she stuttered in a shakier voice.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” I said in calm tones. “Tell me that you’re in this for a reason that isn’t utterly selfish, Miss Lightning Dust, Ace Reporter.”

Her breathing got heavier as she looked up at me. Then, with a swallow, she hung her head. “No... you’re not wrong.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Now, go to bed. This little scene of yours has gone on for way too long, and I stopped caring before it began.”

She looked at me like a puppy who’d been kicked by her master, and couldn’t figure out why: the ability to comprehend was simply beyond her. “I...”

“Yes, I is a lovely letter.” ‘I is’ just sounds wrong. “But, seriously, there’s a pie to bake and it’s pretty much the most interesting thing ever right now.”

Her expression did not change. I recalled an experiment I’d once read about puppies and being abused or loved. There had been three groups of puppies: ones who had been constantly shown affection, one group which had been constantly abused, and one that had been abused and loved at random. As it turned out, a puppy who is randomly abused and loved will result in a dog that loves its master more than constantly abused or loved puppies.

The look in her eyes was like that of the third group of puppies. Like an infant being rejected by its mother, which only made the infant cling tighter.

Dust flattened her ears, hung her head, and let her wings go limp. With all the grace of a mare beating her dog with a baby monkey, she took a step towards leaving the kitchen. I faced her, watching to make she she slunk out and left me to my pie.

To the surprise of no one involved, the mare stumbled and fell. With a yelp, she had the nerve to reach out and grab me for balance. Of course, she pulled me down with and on top of her as we tumbled out of the tiny, tiny kitchen.

I glared down at her with an expression that I hoped looked very stern. “Dust.”

She bit her lip. “Oh, no, no, no—I’m sorry, that was an accident! I didn’t want to—sorry, sorry, sorry!”

“What the hell am I looking at?” somepony said from the door, and I looked over to see Cards standing in the doorway, staring at me as she held a bag of some kind.

“I’d give you the old cliché of ‘It’s not what it looks like’,” I said in a calm tone, “but because that never works, I’m going to say ‘It’s exactly what it looks like’ in the hopes of using reverse psychology to make you see the truth and avoid the whacky misunderstanding that the universe seems to want to happen.” I glanced at Dust. “What, even, does this look like?”

“Looks,” Cards said in a hesitant voice, “like it could be a lot of things.”

“Of which it is likely none,” I replied, standing up. “Where’d you even come from, Cards? One moment you were gone, now you’re here. You’re sneaker than a Rôdeur.”

“Roh-what?” Cards muttered. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak fancy.”

I gave a dismissive wave of the hoof. “Eh, Rôdeure are this type of sneaky ship operated by a government organization whose name would be... uh... I’d translate it as the ‘Office of Military Intelligence’.” I shook my head. “Take what I said as a complement, Cards.”

“Um... okay...” Cards tilted her head. “Why were you two...?”

“It was her fault; she tripped and fell to the floor, dragging me alongside.” I shrugged. “She’s sort of been... out of her mind tonight.”

“I can’t help it,” Dust groaned. “I take one sip of booze and I just gotta have it all, y’know?”

Cards stepped into the room proper, shutting the door behind her as she let out a single chuckle. “Yeah, she drank my booze and got sappier than me on my period.” She blinked and swallowed, then stammered out, “I, uh, forget I, uh—”

I looked at Cards. “Back in high school, all the ponies at my lunch table were girls. There was also me and this one gay guy, but that’s beside the point. Anyways, one of the girls mentioned that eating chocolate helped them not cry during menstruation. You should see to that.”

“Can we not talk about this?” Cards snapped. “It’s gross!”

“Why is it gross?” I asked. “I’m filled with blood, and often deal with it externally every day in my occupation. So what? It’s not as if that blood is toxic—in fact, a vampire once told me that menstrual blood was more nutritious than normal blood, because it’s enriched to help support a fetus and—”

“Stop it! Stop it! It’s bad enough trying to buy lady products when the town pharmacist is a stallion—I don’t need a really creepy sex ed class, especially not from a boy while there’s a sobbing pegasus at his hooves!”

“They are nice hooves, y’know. GB, how do you say in such shape?” Dust asked woozily, rubbing her cheek against my forehoof from down on the floor.

“Bones,” I said curtly, then went back to Cards’ topic. “You know, being ashamed of menstruation and thinking that it’s gross is actually a patriarchal idea stemming from this strange notion that said bodily function makes a mare unclean. I know my culture holds similar views, but for the life of me, I could never understand the why of it.” I shrugged. “I, for one, though, find it fascinating to see such similar views and opinions in a culture so different yet related to my own.”

“Okay,” Cards said in a wary tone, “now you’re just freakin’ me out.”

“Yeah, see—I have this problem where I think about everything as if I were an alien, even in my own country. Plus, I woke up tied to a bed today, the only thing saving me was that I totally saw it coming.”

Both mares just stared at me. I sighed. “Lightning Dust, go to bed. Cards, Duke Elkington hired me to go stop some sort of eldritch abomination that’s been giving him nightmares. But none of the details matter to me because I have to make a pie, and if any of you try to stop me from making that pie, I’ll strangle you both with your own fallopian tubes. We clear?”

They seemed to think there was something absurdly fascinating about my face, the way they just stared at me.

“Good!” I chirped. “Now that that’s settled, I have a pie to make for you to enjoy later, Dust has a bed to sob herself to sleep into, and Cards has nothing. Let’s make it happen, ponies!”

“I had a bad day,” Dust added for no real reason.

“I had a bad couple of days, Dust,” Cards sighed, flattening her ears.

“Bitch, I had a knife in my asshole for two days!” I snapped. “Don’t you tell me you had a bad few days compared to that!”

Author's Note:

Footnote: 75% to next level
Companion Perk Added: Dealt Her Hand — Life’s a bitch, and so is Cards! But then, what did you expect when you murdered her only friend, you bastard? With her in the party, you gain +5% damage resistance and +1 Luck. You’ll need it to survive her whining.

Companion Perk Added: Dust to Dust — Blink and you’ll miss her! Even after having her already broken life destroyed and dealing with alcoholism, Lightning Dust is still one of the fastest, best fliers in the world. Just be wary of abandonment issues, those might bite you like a flock of puppies, but you don’t care about that, do you? Good! Her keen eye for telling when her father was in a Hitting-Me-And-Mommy mood gives you a +1 to perception. And though he didn’t hit often, when he did, it hurt. This somehow gives you both +10% critical hit damage. Hooray for child abuse giving you special powers, you bastard! I hope you’re proud of yourself...

[Well, this too far longer to produce than it should have. Lots of rewrites and cuts, split this chapter at one point and moved the other bit to chapter 14. Thanks to those who helped me with this chapter. Now then, my quest to inspire an artist to draw fanart for Jericho continues...

Oh, and a minor retcon: it’s now Reichskriminalamt (RKA), not Bundeskriminalamt (BKA)]

Comments

[spiderkink]

Dat last line.

[Methmadod]

Glorious.

[SIGAWESOME]

fear is being chased by a monster; terror is knowing there is something behind you, feeling its breath on your neck, knowing you will be grabbed, and then turning around to find that there was nothing there. Terror is coming home to find that everything in your house has been replaced with an exact copy.

Capgras syndrome perhaps?
Also Stephen King FTW!

“They’re calling you the ‘Butcher of Songnam’,”

Makes me wonder how reliable of a narrator Jericho is. He claims to be a good guy but:
1. Everyone's beliefs about the Teutscher is at odds from what he has told "us". He believes his nation is a paragon of Righteousness and Virtue and the very fount of Justice. Everyone else sees them as the terrible, insatiable horde that smashes through kingdoms in a violent orgy of death, destruction, fire, and rapine.

2. He is a darkly disturbed sociopath who will not hesitate to lie, scheme, and otherwise manipulate those around him to further his own inscrutable goals. He apparently divides those around him into two groups: Non-Confederates whom he openly manipulates and Confederates whom he subtly manipulates so they will not leave him before they are no longer any use to him.

3. He unquestioningly kills, maims, and destroys at the behest of a mysterious, orgami-folding "angel". He then goes to Elkington for a new list of ponies and creatures to kill and maim.

4. He has committed enough atrocities to match a small sized guerilla army armed with AKs and machetes at a rival tribe's village (or to use Jericho's darkly amusing terms, a medium size troupe of clowns armed with Viagra and Rohypnol at a birthday party...)

With good guys like this, who needs bad guys?

She giggled. “Trust me, I’m a doctor—I guarantee you I’ve seen more vaginas up close and personal than you ever will.”

Challenge accepted!

Whoever she was, she probably had tentacles and liked to use them on small children, or to play tennis.

Or to play tennis with small children...

And there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’

Yeah? Well there's no 'u' in team either. So If I'm not on the team, and you're not on the team, then no one's on the the goddamn team! This team sucks!
(There is a 'u' is 'suck' though )

I sighed, shaking my head. “You know, one of these days I’m going to fight a guy who is very clearly evil and not at all morally gray, and it will be glorious.”

Somebody should get Twilight to transform all the Changelings into Pennywise type clowns. Jericho would have an absolutely orgasmic field day (and possibly need to be treated for priapism afterwards...)

“Do. Not. Ask. Let’s just say that I am a particularly prepared, possibly paranoid pony, and I took... certain measure in the likelihood that I was captured.”

Ewwwww... At least he is a unicorn and does not have to hold it with his mouth.

Three things occur to me:
1. I wonder why that did not show up when First Aide checked him over when he was admitted to the hospital? No x-rays?

2. I really hope that switch blade has a strong safety latch. One solid bump in the wrong place and Jericho will end up perforating things better left unperforated.

3. When is Jericho going to reveal he keeps a set of razorblades secreted between his cheek and gums?

My clothes and gear were probably locked in some room in some tall, tall tower guarded by Cherry Berry. Downhill—that was how I rolled.

No, downhill would be battling up the tower through hordes of mooks and a boss fight or three only to have Cherrypillar say "I'm sorry Jericho, but your clothes are in another tower!"

“I...” He frowned, gnawing on his lip. “Are you familiar with the idea of a demon?”

My ears perked up. “Intimately. They taste good.”
<...>
“Yeah. If you cook them, it turns out they’re surprisingly nutritious.”

Mmmm. Demon chateaubriand seared medium rare over their own brimstone hellfire, topped with sautéd Elder Thing tentacles and covered with a honey truffle sauce. Garnish with oregano and a daffodil. Serves 3.

In fact, I once constructed a tiny one-pony fortress out of dismembered demon limbs. It was awesome. I was the king of Fort Awesome! No girls allowed.”
<...>
“Funny thing was,” I went on, “I didn’t get reprimanded for that. No. As it turns out, the third time you try to build a fort out of body parts is when they start thinking there’s something wrong with you.” I shrugged. “They chastised me and I got all punished for it, since it was apparently very unhealthy of me to do... After that, my body-part fortresses had to let girls in.”

Why do I get the feeling Jericho behaved similarly to Skippy of Skippy's List fame while he was serving in the Teutscher Infantry?

Wait,” she said, and I looked at her. “You sure you have to leave now?” I shrugged and nodded. Nothing happened. “Like... you don’t wanna come in, talk some more, double-check your wounds and bandages... cup of, uh, coffee?”

“I don’t like coffee,” I said plainly. “Stains the teeth and is annoyingly addictive. I prefer tea.” I walked away, heading in the direction I was sure the Ritz was.

So much for "hot coffee".

When I call something’s crazy, I mean it. Trust me, I should know; I hear voices.”

I am acknowledged! Haha!

Madness does not always howl. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "Hey, is there room in your head for one more?"

Footnote: 75% to next level
Companion Perk Added: <...>
Companion Perk Added: <...>

Every time I read the "end level stats", this comes to mind

[Gamaliel]

T last line was just perfect.

[Jason Brony]

Another good chapter!

[Beyond the Horizon]

The Perks were just awesome this time around. I laughed.

[Out of Place]

She nervously cleared your throat.

She did what now?

I shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much. Funny how the little things save our lives. Without that Voixson, odds are I’d be dead. But because you had an interest in blackmailing some powerful ponies, that put you on my side, so I went out of my way to ensure your safety.”

You'd?

Dust had the look of a colt who was caught with his/her penis in the cookie jar.

How does that work?

As a side note: I find this to be the funniest story I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

[SCP Pinkamena]

“Bitch, I had a knife in my asshole for two days!” I snapped. “Don’t you tell me you had a bad few days compared to that!”

i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/550/001/b6b.jpg

[inDerpxar]

“Roh-what?” Cards muttered. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak fancy.”

You, sir, are the king of vague references. And that is awesome. Cards is Robert Downey Jr. now? Seems legit.

[Methbawks]

I have a question, has Jericho ever tried to collect a bag of demon dicks and assault someone with them? Or simply catapult them unto an unsuspecting horde of demons?

[Conree]

Though I doubt it will actually happen, I still look forwards to the chapter where we actually find out exactly how unreliable a narrator Jericho is.
Until then. I'll just keep enjoying the show.

[Alexanderan]

THANK GOD. I've been waiting for my Jericho fix for a long time. Although the "Red Lady" story helped a ton.
Really wished I could find sometime to criticize to help you become even better, but all I can find are grammar mistakes that are VERY few and FAR in between.
The comedy was excellent.
I wait eagerly for the next chapter.

[blazikenking]

Did you get ideas for this chapter from Vsauce?

[ZephyrStrife]

Oh the lolz... so many of them... I love this story.

[that1dude]

“Bitch, I had a knife in my asshole for two days!” I snapped. “Don’t you tell me you had a bad few days compared to that!”

That was one hell of a Brick Joke.

Another fucking great chapter, man. I really hope to see another one soon!

[SliQster]

Spot on, as always.

[PrinceLexmarkThePrinted]

You maginificent bastard. This story just keeps making me sad and giggly at the same time.

I really feel for the ponies in Jerichos life, bot I just can't bring myself to feel for him. That's how much of a dick he is being.

Anyway, well written and interesting, as usual. Keep it up and such.

[Myriad of Failure]

I feel strangely inspired to try and draw fan art for this...
But it'll probably be unrecognisable...

[Jess887cp]

This is brilliant.

Sir, may I have more?

[ShadowlessNight]

Yay! 'Selene' is back!

sortove...

Will we be seeing more of her in the upcoming chapters?

[Crushric]

2989715
Well, be it what it is, I'd still keep in in my pony folder dedicated to the awesome pony art. Why not draw, like, your all-time favorite scene or something? Or something you feel is iconic? That'd be awesome and I'd make all my editors look at it and bask at how far we've come.
2989282
Sympathy and empathy are for losers and normal people
2986426 2985439 2985853 2988101
Never be unprepared with a knife, mates. Never.
2986189
Only that first one was an error. The other two are entirely intentional. But thanks! I always miss the small things...
It does my heart good to know that people find what I write to be hilarious, especially when they tell me I'm their favorite. :Blushes:
2987660
A few scientific facts from them utterly baffled me so much that I mentioned them here, yes. VSauce, go!
2985756
I am only too happy that you consider Jericho as such. It's all part of my evil scheme plan to be the most internally recommended fic on the site (that is, the fic most often displayed on people's "favorites/recommendations" tab thingy).
2987125
Must... destroy... all... grammatical issues... Crush. Kill. Destroy... Swag. Glad to see that I'm still somehow funny.
2985919 2989118 2987881 2985679
I live to serve, write, and make laugh. :Bows:
2986984
Too bad for us that Jericho is so good as wearing his metaphorical mask. You'd be hard-pressed to make him slip up when he's trying to keep it on.
2985741
I love reading your comments, SIGAWESOME. Always so thoughtful and interesting.

Makes me wonder how reliable of a narrator Jericho is. He claims to be a good guy but:

Wait till we get to the part with the Reich and its liberal application of nerve gasses classified by the UN as "WMDs".
Mind you, there's a minor joke here somewhere that Jericho is basically how a person playing a western RPG behaves, buuuut...

Ewwwww... At least he is a unicorn and does not have to hold it with his mouth.

Knives are his best friend...

Why do I get the feeling Jericho behaved similarly to Skippy of Skippy's List fame while he was serving in the Teutscher Infantry?

Dammit, Skippy is boss! Now I gotta make a reference to him in the next chapter...

My joke that Jericho is an RPG just goes on and on. Wee!

[Out of Place]

2990268

I figured the third one was intentional considering all the things Jericho says/thinks/does i wouldn't put it past him.

Hmmmm Jericho in a position of power......dear god-er Celestia help them all.

What about a parental figure?
...Counseling...lots and lot of counseling.

[SIGAWESOME]

2990268

Wait till we get to the part with the Reich and its liberal application of nerve gasses classified by the UN as "WMDs".

That seems like an awfully thick, black and white moral event horizon to cross... I certainly am interested to see how that plays out.
Now I am curious about the intended target and justification.
- Demons during the Demon Crusade total war?
(Totally justified)

- Neighpony cities that needed extra "liberating"?
(Mmmm. The fruity almond smell of freedom...)

- Clowns?
(Understandable)

- Changelings?
(That would be very apropos seeing how nerve agents IRL were developed as offshoots from the pesticide industry...)

- Demon Clowns?
(Fumigate the area, burn it to ash with fire talismans, vitrify it down to bedrock with balefire! It is the only way to be sure...)

Mind you, there's a minor joke here somewhere that Jericho is basically how a person playing a western RPG behaves

I dunno. Jericho is currently acting more like the Quake Marine than an RPG character; He has not nicked nearly enough stuff from other ponies to rate as an RPGer
He does go around collecting audio diaries Voixsons, but I am waiting for Jericho to discover and come down with an insatiable craving for some odd Equestrian confectionery (say lemon-cherry gumdrops), and start looting skips, safes, desks, crates, chests, boxes, ... shelves, drawers, cupboards, houses, offices, bunkers, ruins, and pockets for more of them all the while shouting "DON'T JUDGE ME!" to Cards and Lightning...

That also sheds an interresting new light on Jericho's "angel".

[Crushric]

2991308
At the risk of spoiling something, I had an entire document dedicated to the Navy of the Reich, ship classes and various names. From the description of the destroyer-type ships:

“What those critics forgot was that an SES Zerstörer sported five state-of-the-art cannons, ten torpedoes in twin quintuple centerline mounts, and up to three chemical warheads. Only seven meters longer than a frigate. No single pegasus raider. Almost as heavy as two Fregatten combined mass.”

— Admiral Zacharias Kohl
There is no UN in this world. And there is a reason why all troopers in the Reich have gas masks.

[TheLordSiffer]

2989715

Who's awesome? You're awesome!

What's that? Awesomeness? I know who's awesome! You are! You're awesome and you know why!

Awesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesomeawesome.

[Luminous Lead]

Lots of good humour throughout the chapter, and some plot, which is nice. Finally meet Elkington properly, and get more insight into First Aide.

So we get some more insight into Elkington's plans, but like all the antagonists he's treated with bored disdain. Not much to say, really, other than he seems to be yet another pony stuck playing a power game above his head. He's shocked to see Jerry pull a P-21, but I guess most people who aren't used to capture would skim over a body cavity check.

Nurse First Aide is... pretty much Cherrypillar without the creepy, and Dust without the weepy. I... kind of like her, actually. A bit one-dimensional as to character motivations, but she's obviously intelligent enough to keep from being a victim and as she has a casual "I've seen worse things than you" that infringes on Jericho's standard schtick a little (that whole sociopath thing probably helps a bit too). I could see her taking a love-interest role (if only one sided) or even a villainous stance (if she ever had the motivation I'm pretty sure she could be terrifyingly effective).

We also see the return of Selunalena, who hasn't been around for a while. Looks like she's lost her initial composure and is getting more socially neurotic. Everyone wants a piece of Jericho, but no one wants to share the pie... or even let him bake it.

“Dammit, GB!” she snapped. “I don’t know things! What kind of egghead do you take me for, the kind that reads Daring Do?”

That line is oddly specific, to the point that it seems a forced reference.

“Bitch, I had a knife in my asshole for two days!” I snapped. “Don’t you tell me you had a bad few days compared to that!”

Granted, it was a switchblade, and it was folded in to-boot, so it probably wouldn't be much worse than any other smooth, solid object. Way to cry for sympathy there Jericho, you big baby. At least it wasn't a spiky umbrella.

[SIGAWESOME]

2990268

love reading your comments.

yay
I am pleasantly pleased that my aim to aim to please pleasantly pleased you!

2991377

egghead ship stuff...

I am a sucker for that kind of stuff. So much so that Significant Other gave me a concept-art style drawing of the HMS Dreadnought that he created as a present.

And there is a reason why all troopers in the Reich have gas masks.

Sounds ominous.

2996060
I certainly can identify there. Looking back through my comments, I realise that I had unintentionally echoed a similar sentiment about Jericho every time I posted. (Sorry for sounding like a broken record Crushric!). I certainly did not intend to, but the chapters are spaced far enough apart that I forgot most of my previous comment. I find it interesting that the one thing that I (inadvertently) kept coming back to was his sociopathic and manipulative tendencies.

It seems Jericho's account draft at the Reader Empathy Bank is starting to overdraw into the red...

[Jojo Salatcia]

2989715

You sir, are fucking awesome.

[Crushric]

2990094
I dare that that you may have more... whenever I finish the next chapter.
2990256
:Chuckles: Oh, she'll be back. Mildly neurotic ponies are best ponies.
2997635
Because everypony is crazy in Jericho.

but like all the antagonists he's treated with bored disdain

Jericho doesn't care for your excuses, evil-doers. I find it more fun to just openly mock said excuses.

Doctor First Aide has her bit of crazy. Perhaps she can show up later or something, after I do some horrific things to some important ponies during Act 1's finale, of course. Glad that you like her; she was sort of just meant to be "different crazy" from the other mares, because if you have ovaries and are in Jericho, you've got to have some sort of mental problem. And then Jericho stumbles across your mental nature and all help breaks loose.

Socially awkward and perhaps mildly neurotic ponies are adorable to me. Is that bad of me? I man, Selena originally had her composure, and then Jericho utterly destroyed it by being himself. She tried and failed to keep it. But, c'mon, ya can't tell me she wasn't at least slightly adorable.

That line is oddly specific, to the point that it seems a forced reference.

I just figured Daring Do was something of an all-purpose catch-all term that was well-known in Equestrian pop culture, like Harry Potter, was could be used as something of a blank check for how Dust used it here.
Odd that you didn't have anything to really comment on for that whole Dust scene save for that one line. All in all, this was sort of a Dust chapter, the next one will focus more on Cards.

2997734
Yeah, I spent a whole day or so coming up with ship types and giving them names. The doc is called "Die Armada", and it lists things like "SES In Amberkleid —Jötunheim-class Rôdeur" and "SES Sing Meinen Namen — Jörmungandr-class Schlachtschiff".

2998860
Yep, Jericho has done his job. Jericho is an example of "When bad people happen to [good?] literature". He's not that nice, possibly worse than most all of the villains, and his only "saving grace" is that he's supposed to be funny. Generally, if you don't find that he makes you laugh, it'd be hard to really get any enjoyment out of this.
Still, I suppose I should thank you for thinking me a good enough writer to follow even if you don't find Jericho himself to be all that amusing.

[Myriad of Failure]

2996547
Thank you!
Yeah... just - thanks so much!

[Myriad of Failure]

2997948
Thank you!
I feel all warm and fuzzy now!

[MessoriaAQ]

I liked the chap. I little sad that there was no unnecessary blood spatter, but, hey, you can't have everything in a nice little cup. At least we received reparations in form of Elkington (Is it just me or is he somewhat incompetent?), AND a Switchblade in Jericho's anus. THAT last sentence... The whole world could've come crushing down on his head (in form of a drunken LD), and he would've done his pie (cake?) regardless.

2997948>>2996547
I knew that people would start sprouting large metaphorical erections.

[Kreth]

Ah, I do so enjoy this tale that follows this madpony and his adventures.

I enjoy you characterizations, they are always shall we say 'colorful', mostly red it seems. Your sense of humor or I suppose Jericho's hits me just right and some of the references like the Cloak reference about Social Grace and pushing him out of the window are just grand. Jericho is terribly mad and I love it. Every time I see an update I must plan a time where I can ignore the world around me in order to read it, and maybe stab anyone who dares to interrupt it. The way Jericho describes some things is brilliant I wish I could create such similes, but then I feel I'd be copying your work in some way.

First person is not often a prospective I enjoy in writing but you have changed that. His insanity is endearing in a most interesting way. Since I can understand his 'everything for the greater good' (which is purely subjective as this is first person and we only see it as thus) ideal I find his wanton murder is more acceptable than others might. And the bit about the fort made of demon limbs was glorious. I could actually envision it, now if only he could make the blood run up the walls (points if someone catches the reference).

I can't wait for the next fun filled chapter, I hope there are more lying waffles just to infuriate our beloved protagonist. And I also can't wait to see what you will be doing with 'Selena'. Keep up the good work and don't keep us waiting too long (unless you're making a huge chapter).

[Midnight Rambler]

Jericho's conversation with Elkington is very interesting, because Elkington is the first character with whom he can speak more or less as an equal. They're both crazy, they both know about the horrible stuff going on beyond Equestria's borders, and they both show strong knight-templar tendencies in fighting said horrible stuff. Nicely done.

Also, this is turning into a right proper harem anime. I wonder if and when Jericho will ever give in and have a huge orgy with all the mares who've hit on him so far.

[Jojo Salatcia]

2999641

Bitch, who said anything about them being metaphorical?

[ShadowlessNight]

The fact that he proclaims to be the good guy and then goes and kill a bunch of innocents ticks me off...

[Cloud]

Mm-hmm, nice closing lines.

Reading through the story, I found Jericho interesting at first. Bit quirky, but quite capable of handling himself. ...Then he ended up with far too much free time on the boat ride over, and has become more obviously unhinged ever since. I'm not sure whether to root for him or wait for someone to off him in an appropriately painful manner. Or get fed to the Cherrypillar. Regardless, I'd probably just nod and say, "He deserved it," and announce that Cards was my favorite character anyways.

And I almost forgot about Luna Selena - seems she's just as smitten as First Aide/Cherry/Lightning/Cards/every other mare that crosses paths with the hero. What is it with Equestrian mares falling for homicidal foreigners?

[Luminous Lead]

2999995 How would seeing a rapist help, like, at all? I'm pretty sure you'd want to see a therapist after the rapist "help".

2999308

I just figured Daring Do was something of an all-purpose catch-all term that was well-known in Equestrian pop culture, like Harry Potter, was could be used as something of a blank check for how Dust used it here.

I picked that quote in particular because it felt out out of place among all the rest. As for why?... I dunno, it just seemed like a direct dig at Rainbow Dash specifically, given that "Read it and Weep" came before Wonderbolt academy. Then again, Dash doesn't seem the type to go sharing this info (embarrassing moment and all), so I was surprised that Dust came out and said it as if it was a thing. I guess the two are more similar than they appear.

Odd that you didn't have anything to really comment on for that whole Dust scene save for that one line.

Fiiiiiiiiine... The "Dust scene" was a constantly spinning wheel, with about 4 different spokes that kept turning up.
1: Lightning comes on to Jericho because she's drunk
2: Jericho pushes her away because she's drunk
3: Lightning complains that everyone hates her (throwing in a little backstory good measure)
4: Jericho assures it's not true (throwing in some Teutchland social annecdotes)
5. Number 1 rolls around again...
This repeats, over and over, until Cards comes back.

Dust was beaten often, just like every mare, and lusts after Jericho, just like every mare. She also takes this chapter to try to kill him (again), just like about every other mare he's met. (actually come to think of it, there were Lyra, Selunalena, that sword salesmare, and First Aide who weren't willing to harm him, but that's a minority and only one has shown up again outside her arc)

There's some nice tidbits, like Dust's research on mirrors and Jericho's armed fortress, but otherwise it's a frustrated hungry and sober person dealing with a frustrated horny and drunk person. It works as an character interaction lubricant and a tool to reveal backstory in an otherwise semi-risqué scene, and I must admit it WAS funny, but at some point the joke begins to wear a little thin.

[MessoriaAQ]

2999995
Pff, ponies. Why ponies? I reckon that Jericho and Deadpool would be like bros.
Also, Nyx wouldn't end like you might think considering that Jericho likes children!

[Dick McKickEm]

For some odd reason, I have this sudden urge to try a French Silk Pie.

[YoshiOfADown]

Nice Mickey Avalon reference there. That song had to have been a joke.

[KingOfTheMuffins]

“You know, we have a saying back in the Reich, where I’m from.” I said in a throaty, all-R’s-rolling voice, “Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.” Dropping back into a normal Equestrian accent and tone, I said, “He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not thereby become a monster. And when you stare long into the abyss, so too does the abyss stare into you.” I shrugged. “Roughly translated.”

I saw the Nietzsche quotes and cried manly tears. Why do you do this to me?

[sorenxoras]

That last line has gained one Mr. Burns Excellent: Eeeexcellent.

[EpicSPAR]

DAMN YOU READERS THAT CAME BEFORE ME! See I originally assumed that Selena was in fact Luna but after seeing all these Selunalena bits here and there its pretty much been confirmed! Eh screw it. I've never been one to get pissed at that sort of thing, and besides I heard this was the second version of this story so what the hell?! Maybe something will change, maybe I'll finally complement the author for his awesome story and end this drawn-out sleep-deprived resultant comment. Hey there it goes...

[ChaosDX1]

Clearly I've been reading this story too much as I had a dream about it. Jerico's country went to war with Equestria, and he was an assassin hired to kill the princesses. After slaughtering countless guards, he suddenly learned a valuable life lesson before reaching the Princess... but I woke up right then so I have no idea what that lesson was.

On another note, Jerico seems like the kinda guy I can ask "Hey, there's some bandits hiding out down the road that have been shaking down travelers. Wanna take a few knives and make a fun evening out of it?" I want more friends compatriots like that. I start up video games to do just that by myself too often.

Also that Mirror thing is genuinely interesting and I can happily say I learned something today.

[The Shade]

3743385 Dude, just look at the thumbnail.
JUST LOOK AT THE THUMBNAIL!