Chapter 21 — Arm
Chapter 21: Arm
“My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye.”
— Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Robert Browning.
Oz.
That word kept running through my sick mind. Oz! Oz? Oz.
“You know of zhah, right?” C’s voice had said through the blackness, that much I could recall.
Your word for destiny, yes. I thought it was a thought, at least. But I must have said it aloud, for C’s voice replied.
“Yes, destiny,” he said as if it were a lemon covered in hairy-yet-bald ponies. “Well, that was how it was in Demotic Vulgate. Where I was from, they spoke a certain dialect of the Vulgate. In that dialect, we had another word for the chains that bind. It was a word that the hwair of Cabaleth chanted as they marched: it was the word forgotten by all but I when thirty-million wair, kinsmænner of mine, died on the fields of the Manassas Wasteland, muskets and bayonets still so hateful.” C paused. “But it was still my favorite word to describe zhah, for no other word meant it so… straightforwardly. It was Oz. It will be Oz. It is Oz.”
C had laughed mirthlessly. “So then, dear child, pay no attention to the skinwalker… to the mæn behind the curtain.”
More than that I couldn’t remember. Just that the word Oz kept running through my head. I didn’t even know—
“Huh. Well, I sure as rain didn’t see you saunter on up in here, sugah,” said a mare’s voice.
Suddenly, my eye opened, and I was looking into the face of a mare at least ten years beyond having been pretty. I blinked my eye free of disorientation—the left set of eyelids spasmed weirdly under the eyepatch, the stitches keeping the lid shut, the muscles nowhere near strong enough to so much as threaten the stitches.
“Now, I’m no stranger to terrible ideas, sugah,” she said cautiously, “so I’ll dare to ask ya what you’re doing here.”
Likewise, I was no stranger to terrible ideas. There was this one time when I was a colt where I was standing on a beach next to a pile of at least twenty captured stray dogs that I’d tied together. A filly, about my age, came up and asked me why I had tied so many animals together, to which I replied, “Because if I tie enough of them together, I can create a raft and because a sailor! It’s been my lifelong dream since this morning.” She’d just looked at me and said plainly, “That’s a terrible idea, and you’re a terrible pony.”
I rubbed my eyes with my left forehoof. So. Where am I? Looking around, I… Oh, really? Wow. This was the most original thing I’d ever seen, he thought seriously and without any trace of humor. Of course, I was sitting at a bar counter not unlike the one in my fever dream with the Blue-Eyed Mare. Why couldn’t it have been a public book burning or an abattoir? Needed it be another bar? I actually wondered there if some secret part of me was actually a terrible alcoholic, and that was why it was always a bar or a tavern I ended up in.
It was a lively bar, if that made any difference. ’Twas filled with happy young ponies, the only really mature pony being the mare speaking to me, who stood behind the bar counter. Given that she was wearing an apron, I guessed that the pegasus mare was the bartender. Yay. God, I suddenly felt so old.
“I suppose I just ended up where—” Oz. Where Oz took me “—the nice ladies were.” I smiled at her, suppressing the urge to wince at how stupid that had sounded.
Despite the cheesiness of my line, she smiled. “And here I was, thinking there was some monster you were here to fight at noon.”
“Pardon me?”
She made a gesture like tipping a hat. “The way you’re so dressed up, you make me wanna think you’re one a’ them bladeslingers.”
“Blade. Slinger,” I said slowly, the sound of singing, drunken ponies coming behind me.
“Yeah, like them Caroleans try to look like.” She put a drink on the counter. “Since Buffalo Duckbill’s Wild West Show ain’t in town, I can’t figure why you’re here.”
“What does a bladeslinger do?” I asked, and she tilted her head at me like I’d asked her where do babies come from. While on fire. And eating biscuits. “I have never seen one of… Buffalo Duckbill’s Wild West Shows.” That seemed to slightly ease her, I thought.
The bartender mare shrugged her wings. She shot a glare suddenly at somepony behind me, a buck hitting rather aggressively on some dame, then looked back at me. “Funny. The way you look… well… the only thing you’re missing is one a them ten-gallon hats. Even the way you carry your sword—yeah, sugah, hide it all you want, I still can see it—is utterly unlike that of a knight but of a bladeslinger. All in all, it’d look silly on anypony but yaself.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
She smiled curtly. “Oh, you know—the legendary badass drifter strolls into a troubled place, fights the bad guys, and goes off on his own. You look just like the sort.”
I blinked, then reached into my pocket and… oh. Well. That’s new. Or old, rather. New old. Nold! I stared at my right arm, the limb I’d supposed hacked off not… it felt like ten minutes ago. Literally ten minutes ago was I cutting my arm off. But this was the limb attached to my body. Gee. It really managed to take away all the meaning behind cutting a limb off, didn’t it? Hey, kids, if you lose a limb, a random contrived circumstance will give it back!
The problem was, it wasn’t my arm: the color was off, the fur darker than the rest of my body, as if a distant shadow were being cast over it. My mind drew a blank as the voice in my head drew up the cards that the oracle had drawn: The King and The Hanged Stallion. Though I apparently wasn’t the latter, said the lady in my head, both of them had an arm darker than the rest of their bodies.
I pulled up the sleeve to get a better look at the arm. Around the shoulder, in a line was a mutilation that read, “शान्ति शान्ति शान्ति Schantih 
As I looked at it like a beaver looks at the child’s ice cream cone he’s fixing to wear as a hat, I realized that I knew what they meant. I didn’t know how I knew, but I could read the words on my arm. शान्ति was Schantih was Peace. दत्त was Datta was Give. दयध्वम् was Dayadhvam was Sympathise. दम्यत was Damyata was Control.
Peace! Peace! Peace! Give. Sympathize. Control.
This was what they all meant. That I knew this made me sick. Sick enough that I honestly considered trying to get laid just to try to forget. And that was just weird.
Check and mate. This day was officially one of the odder in my life, right up there with that time I tried to make “International Bring a Shit Ton of Bees to Work Day” a thing back when I was volunteering at the hospital. Little foals in the cancer ward loved playing with bees; it made them forget they were dying, because bees. Needless to say that I was banned from all hospitals, and to this day was not allowed to receive medical treatment in the teutschen federal state of Eposz, where the city of Esztergom lay. Why that was weird was because I had never stepped hoof into Eposz at that point in my life, and wouldn’t do so until much later when I was sent to help deal with the Spiegelgestalt, when I’d first seen an invisible pony-like thing get hung. I had begun today in a hospital bed, and now I was in a bar with a weird new arm. Yay.
“Sugah, you alright?” the bartender prodded.
“Bu-huh?”
“Ya look like ya ain’t never seen your foreleg ’afore.”
“Well, I suppose that wouldn’t be too inaccurate,” I replied with a false smile. It felt like it was more of a threatening smile to me, so I quickly hid it beneath my lips.
“Not hoolings,” she said, “I’d think. Sometimes, it’s more arthrotsome to be sober than tipsy, am I right?”
“Here here!” a chorus of not entirely sober ponies replied from behind me.
I gave her a dumb look, the kind of look that asked ‘Is there a sale on lobotomies and finches at the local petshop, mayhap?’ “I… haven’t the foggiest idea what you just said.”
“Ain’t a misfeng a hers,” a buck to my left offered, gesturing his mug at me.
Misfeng? That’s not a word and you know it!
“Can it,” the bartender said with a casualness unbefitting of her words. “It’s just some northern jargon I picked up, really. I feel fancy, and not a mite bit pretentious, when I say it. But it’s spread to many of the ponies ’round here, so by you not kennin’ it, that tells me that you’re not from anywhere around our little shire.”
“I could have told you that myself, “ I replied. Suddenly, I wondered what the bartender’s face would look like buried under twenty pounds of birdseed while surrounded by coatl and laughwolves. If nothing else, all the implied streamers made me feel a little better.
“Yeah, but I like to think of myself as the queen bitch of the seedy underbelly of Hoofington,” she replied with a wink.
“Where now?”
“The Folkdom of Hoofington, its capital here in the bound shire of Hoofington, mostly a college town, but big enough. If only just.” She smiled. “We swear no oath but to the Ladies in Canterlot.”
“All tree a dem,” came a voice from somewhere off.
She scoffed. “’S just the two and ya know it.”
“Oui, says the lady who’s ne’er been to Châteaucéleste, to Canterlot.”
The bartender scoffed. “Margarine, y’ain’t never been there neither.”
“Non, madame, but my cousin, oui, he has.”
“Get back to ya drinking,” she spat. “’S just rumor, is what. Say we get three alicorns up in Canterlot, so they do.”
My blood felt a little colder than blood should be. “What?”
“Aye, the lady of magic, so she is. So good at it that she ascended to royalty,” somepony added. “Apparently, ya don’t need blue blood to be royalty, just a scary enough daughter-of-a bitch, beg pardon.”
“I hear the princess title just an honorific, won’t pass on to any kiddies a hers.”
“Can the royal sister even have kiddies?”
“Nah, mate. They’s too old. A mare gets menopause at, like, fifty, and our Ladies are over a thousand years old at minimum.”
“I heard myself that the new princess and Duke Elkington got into a fight once over something silly.”
“The nature o’ curses, methinks.”
“Curses ain’t real, says she. Duke thinks they is real.”
“Yeah to that, so ’tis. Curses is real, lemme tell y’all. Once had me a cuz up in Hayseed what dun—”
“I once got to see the new princess. She be kinda cute.”
“Bullshit, you old drunkard.”
“Didja ask ’er if she could have kiddies?”
“Nah, ’tweren’t none a my bidness.”
“Make the accents stop!” I shrieked, putting my hooves up to my forehead, falling out of the chair and onto the hardwood floor. The ceiling was a dark oaken color, I saw. “Make them stop, please, you’re killing me!”
“Aw, now ain’t ye just a lil’ babby.”
“I didn’t learn this language properly just so I could hear you destroy it all!” I menaced, panting and gasping for breath.
“Alright, can it, the whole lot of ya,” the bartender growled at the tavern, and the line of chat died away. “Sorry about that. We get a lot of folks ’round these parts. Hoofington might not be the biggest city ’round ’ere, but we gets all sorts of ponies from all over the kingdom, and they get theyselves all sorts of accents. Partly ’cause Hoofington University is so nice to the common folks. Up in Canterlot University, so I hear, the standards get crazy for us lowborn, whereas them nobleponies get in all easy-like.”
“I think I’m going to have a headache,” I groused, standing back. “And probably a brain tumor. No, worse, their accents are so horrible that it somehow prompted a giant alien space beaver to lay its eggs in my esophagus. They’re a wily race, the giant alien space beavers.”
“Oh, and this is for you”—and she pushed up to me a glass full of a brown liquid alongside an envelope.
“An envelope?” I said with a puzzled frown.
“Ayep,” she said. I thanked God it wasn’t aye again. “Strange fellow came by here earlier, really scary-looking chap with a poncho and sombrero. He told me to hand it to a strange buckaroo with an eyepatch. Had a real strange name, that pony. When asked, he told me it was simply Vaquero. Bah-kay-roh,” she said slowly, enunciating each syllable of his name, taking care for the tapped R, unlike the Equestrian R. “Fella tossed me a few bits of silver—a helluva lot more than I’d reckon I had any right to even dream of charging—and told me it was for ‘postage and a glass of scotch for me mate’. I remember ’cause he said that, me mate, not my mate.”
“It’s the mating call of the wild jackass,” I said idly.
She snorted in what I hesitated to think of as a racist species of laughter. Why racist? Didn’t know, but that was the word I felt like using. “Yeah, that’d about sum it up real nice like.” She jerked her head up and snarled, “Fudge Sundae, stop hitting on my waitress! You’re no good at it, and you know it.”
“Hey, don’t be slappin’ my penis!” some buck called back.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know I could slap something so tiny,” she chuckled. “Something so vagine-ish and abstract.”
“Sexism,” I commented under my breath, taking a sip of the scotch. It was okay. “Implying that a lack of penis equals inferiority.”
“Oi! That ain’t nice,” the buck whined.
“Look, why don’tcha try hitting on Princess Celestia; see where that gets ya, hmm? You know, if ya don’t get hurled into the sun for offending her, hmm?”
“Hail, hail, Celestia, Luna!” the stallions all over the bar chanted. Somepony’s version of hail sounded like hyel. One of them, I swear to God, sounded like he said “Heil!” instead, like how it’s pronounced in Teutschland. The thought of that was so funny to me that I snorted.
It reminded me of the events at Bäckershügel, Baker’s Hill, just south of Zentrum. As I recalled the words of King Alphonse at what he believed to be the last stand of the Reich, I took a sip of scotch. The King, so I’d been told, had blown the horn passed down from father to son since the days of Skantarios so many millennia ago, and his ragtag force had charged down the hill into pure suicide just buy a little more time. So they said, he and his soldiers had fought tooth and claw against Niedervolk and demon alike. Heil to the King in Heaven, Heil to the Mare Laurentia, and Heil to the Fatherland indeed, for the Reich stood as it had always and always would, the King and his soldiers lived to see another day.
I blinked. “Wait. Celestia throws ponies into the sun?”
The barmare gave me something that was half a scoff, half a laugh. “Oh, sugah, that’s just a local figure of speech, is all. Now, really, what’s that letter you got say?”
Ah, yes. The envelope. With all the care of a stallion sneaking through a wolf’s den because his privates are covered in honey, I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter within.
“It took a while to fix you up, dear childe. Not many are willing to hack their own arm off, no matter how beneficial. I couldn’t exactly bring the dead limb back to life, so I made a compromise I think you’d find most agreeable. Your new arm is on loan from me: I forged my flesh into one befitting of you, hacked my arm off, and grafted it onto you. It took mere moments for the arm to obey me and attach, but it took two weeks to adjust your body to the arm, lest the arm overpower and kill you.
“Problem is, there was only so much I could do. My flesh is stronger than yours. My flesh attached to you will kill you, given time. There is nothing that can be done about that on such short notice. But your flesh is strong enough to give you ample time to do what need be done in the interim.
“Right now, there are bigger things for me to concern myself with than your arm, really. The Dark Lady lives again, somehow, and her depleted forces mobilize. Those fighting her don’t even know whom they’re fighting, just that there is a new threat to them. This warrants my attention more than you do. May Oz let your days be long and your nights beautiful.
“—C ”
I sat back, staring at my arm as if it had suddenly turned into a really racist duck with a monocle. Only I could get away with a monocle, and this duck refused to acknowledge it! Not my arm, but that of some horrific abomination, of a skinwalker. I moved the arm, even flexed it. Now that I thought about it, it didn’t feel quite right—it was as if I controlled every aspect of how it moved, except that I wasn’t the one moving it, it was. The feeling didn’t exactly make much sense, but it felt distant, like it was numb yet had perfect feeling, like a trip to the dentist, only the dentist was high on Kokain and was convinced that the fireaxe was the next best thing in dentistry. He’d always wanted to be a lumberjack, not a dentist, you see.
“Hey, Clear Glass,” some stallion said to my left, addressing the barmare. “Hit me up with another shot of whiskey.”
The bartender, or Clear Glass, I now believed, rolled her eyes. “You’ve had enough tonight. If you get drunk and start a fight, the Tin Mare won’t take to kindly to you, ya hear?”
“Ah, piss on the Tin Mare; I want me my drinks,” he groused, and slunk away.
I turned my head to look at all the ponies in the tavern, the few waitresses delivering drinks, the mares and stallions enjoying themselves, and the palpable spirit of merriment. “Who’s the…” I went to ask, but when I turned around, the barmare was gone, and there was a young mare sitting next to me who looked like a much younger, prettier version of the barmare.
Something about her eyeliner and lipstick made me distrust her. Didn’t help that she was looking at me funny as she sipped from what looked like a tall glass of tea that probably was anything but tea. She reached a hoof out and poked my arm, giggling.
“Is there a problem, ma’am?” I asked, drawing my arm away from her touch.
“Maybe,” she said in a coy voice, giving her shoulder a little jostle. The mare touched my… C’s?… arm again. “You’ve a strange-looking foreleg. Different color than the rest a ya.”
“Forgive me,” I said sharply, like a wedge of cheese honed to a fine end because the revolution lacked sufficient knives. “It’s what happens when you lop a limb off because of blood poisoning.”
She finished her tea and set the glass aside. “Ya know—”
“Well, I can’t say I do know, ma’am.”
The mare looked at me funny, then giggled. “You’re a right funny one, you are. Don’t see many of you ’round here, just the usual, boring old sods.” She gestured her head to the tavern’s patrons. “Mum says they’re alright, and I guess they are, but they’re all so… mundane, y’know?”
“Yeah, I don’t do mundane,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Mundane and I go together like a frog in an oven. Only the oven is made of moles. The star-nosed kind. Those things scare me. I mean, it’s like—I get it, God, You liked how tentacles looked swimming around in the ocean, so You decided it’d be a pretty neat idea to attach tiny ones onto the faces on small, burrowing rodents. But really?”
She erupted in a fit of little giggles. “That right there’s what I mean. Gets lonely ’round here when everypony’s so B-O-R-I-N-G..”
“And Bingo was his name O,” I replied, taking a sip of my scotch, but that only got more laughs from her.
“You I like,” she said amicably, the kind of smile on her face was the type that wasn’t familiar with the word no. The kind that really needed to have friends with a cheese grater. A few of the stallions in the bar, I noted, were trying not to seem as if they were glaring at me. When I didn’t reply to her, she took the initiative. “A lady like myself often finds herself pining for interestin’ company. And ya seem to me the exotic type, to boot.” She slithered out a hoof to touch the arm that wasn’t mine; she tapped her other forehoof to her tongue and then ran it down her chin, breast, and down to her navel as if she were the world’s worst surgeon.
“Would you not!” I snapped, jerking my arm from her touch.
“Whoa-whoa—” and she tumbled onto the ground, wings splayed out. I wasn’t exactly sure how it’d happened, but it had.
The bar went silent, everypony staring at me. I met each and every one of their glares. Their eyes held the breed of spite like the kind a she-wolf got when you decided to tie all her still-living pups together and make a kite out of them. I should know.
“Was?” I drawled in Teutsch, the kind of voice and accent associated with the mythical Klingenstürmen, sort of the Reich’s version of the what I believed to be the bladeslinger.
“Ow,” the little pegasus barfly moaned as she stood up, accompanied by the murmurs of ponies essentially stating the obvious. Their pointless drivel was already hoary, and I was tired of it. “You… you pushed me,” she said as if I’d just revealed to her that God was actually a squid of some description.
“No, I—”
“He pushed me!” she shrieked.
I looked around as the murmurs got angrier. There was a little stage in the bar where a few ponies had been going up and doing something, some bad poetry or whatnot. The volume on the speakers was mercifully low, so I hadn’t really known. But as I looked at it, I suddenly knew how I was going to get a handle on this situation before I was lynched. Only music could sooth the savage lynch mob.
|— ☩ —|
“On what charges?!” I demanded of the two lawponies, both stallions, sent into the bar.
The one in the lead looked around at the horrified expression on everypony’s face. “Well, besides all the ones we listed, you’re also being charged for what you… ‘sang’ about?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, pushing over the microphone like a perfectly reasonable pony.
The earther looked down at his notepad. “Well, just looking at a single line of the lyrics, I can safely charge you with exactly fifty-four counts of sexual harassment.”
I blinked, and said in a flat voice, “I’m not apologizing.” We stared off at each other.
“Yeah, well, you’re still being charged.”
“You’ll never lock me up, copper!” I shouted, and he remained without expression, the patrons of the tavern all just staring at me.
“Look, just pay the fine, and we’ll be on our way,” he said with a roll of the eyes.
“I refuse to pay you thugs anything, purely out of spite and moral principle.”
The lawpony sighed, rubbing the side of his head. “Then we’re going to lock you in the county jail until the judge comes up with an appropriate amount of community service for you. Shouldn’t take more than a week for the trial to be all set and match.”
A part of me knew that all I’d need to escape such a place was a lockpick and knife. It’d be a little hard without my horn, but doable. Of course, any good officer would strip me of my gear. I turned around and looked at the stallion’s restroom, indicated by a blue pony, as opposed to a sleek pink pony on the door beside it. The fact that both of these ponies were bald didn’t really bother me.
“Er, give me one second, officers,” I said; “I believe I must urinate some blood because I drank the water.”
|— ☩ —|
They never stripsearched me. And according to the bored-looking unicorn mare with the auburn eyes, “There was no such thing as a ‘right to be stripsearched’.” I went into my cell thoroughly unmolested by strangers. An hour later and I was a free pony in dire need of mouthwash.
|— ☩ —|
I thanked God that I still had some mouthwash left. Wasn’t sure if it expired, but if mouthwash ever expired, it had gone bad years ago. Didn’t stop me from using it, though.
So. As it was, the county lockup was actually located within a part of Hoofington University. Since the town and its college were in bed with each other, it seemed. Now all there was to do was get out, but the guardscorps and the administration part of the town and the college were all in the same four-story building.
Trying to hide myself, I exchanged my duster for a black poncho, hefted most over my shoulder, and a deerskin tunic over an off-white shirt. I kept the hat. It made me feel rugged. Of course, like my Wikinger ancestors, whom the Reich conquered and integrated, I had the compulsion to keep myself clean, which is why I could only look so rugged. Nothing screamed “Rugged!” quite like a stallion who smelled chiefly of ass and yeast infection.
And as I finished gurgling water and mouthwash from a sink in what I could only assume was the breakroom, a stallion walked in. He was an older sort with a thick gray mustache that made me think of my father’s surly handlebar ’stache. His thick brows arched as his steely gray eyes locked onto me. I myself looked over the half-naked stallion of silver fur, since he was wearing the top half of a suit at least.
“What in the Sam Hill is going on here?” the old gent asked with an air of ‘I run this shit’ in his voice.
I wiped the water from my muzzle. “Well, it all began about a month ago,” I quickly replied. Scheiße, had I already been in Equestria for a month? Ave Laurentia, it felt like it’d only been a few days. “That was when I first set fire to an orphanage, deflowered a noblemare, lost my virginity to a very fluffy stallion, and learned that my real father was actually that very fluffy stallion.”
Rather than do what was normal and act shocked by what I’d said, the stallion let out a throaty chuckle. “Well now, my boy, that was the most original story I’ve heard in a long time. Credit where credit is due, indeed.” His chuckled died as quickly as an infant whose mother doesn’t like it and so decides to send it right back up where it came in exchange for a newer, better baby. “But why are you in the faculty lounge, boy?”
“Well, I escaped your jail, really,” I said with a shrug.
“What’s your name?” he demanded. “I would hear of it.” He spoke in short, clipped sentences that sounded like they should have been longer.
“Chubby Buggers,” I replied, matching his tone.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Just the way you speak, mate. Where are you from?”
He shot me a smile. “The Pale, place to the far northwest.” He softened his voice to a more conversational one . “Just don’t go spreading that fact around the staff. This far south, the only thing that most folks know of The Pale is that they’re pretty sure that everypony’s favorite pastime up there is fucking reindeer. That is, if their sisters are too fast to catch.”
“Oh gosh,” I chuckled. That bastard—saying absurdly off-color things was my schtick!
“I tend to slip into that terse accent when I’m being authoritative. They seem to go well.” He smiled at me. “So, Chubby Buggers the fugitive, eh?”
“Eh, I prefer the term ‘Mass Murderer’, but that might be… Oh, how would they say it? … Might be gilding the lily, I think. It’s far scarier, and far less accurate.” I went to walk past him “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
As I slid past him, he said, “Not so fast”—and raised a hoof to me.
“Nope,” I spat. In the next moment, he was pinned to the ground beneath me, a stunned look on his face.
“What in the… how did you…?”
“Weird. This totally reminds me of how I met my first girlfriend, except she would’ve been the one to kick my ass and pin me.” My face went blank as I said, “Gooood memories…”
“Blood hell, this is a bit embarrassing,” he told me “Here I was, thinking I’d be a hero and stop you, and now I’m the bitch here.”
“Yes,” I replied, my face still blank, “the one on the ground was the bitch…”
“Hmm,” he hummed. “You know, you remind me of a feller I’ve heard a bit about.”
Some mare gasped as she walked down the hall and saw us. I shot my head up and barked, “Go away, we’re having a father-to-son moment here—nothing gay, your filthy-minded floozy!” The mare scampered off like a doe.
“That was my secretary,” the stallion under me said flatly. “She’s a very skittish thing, you know. It’ll take me a solid week to coax her out from hiding in the broom closet now.”
“Well, she shouldn’t have been writing pervy stories wherein you and I do it sexily—I’ve seen her diary.”
“What?”
“Nevermind, honcho!”
He looked at me for the longest time. “Say, I don’t suppose you’re, say, some sort of bladeslinger, are you? The kind who fights monsters and beasts on the borderlands in exchange for coin?”
“I might. What’s it to you?”
The stallion smiled. “Step off me and into my office. I think I have something for you.”
|— ☩ —|
Dean/Mayor Kitten Whispers, so said the plaque on his desk—seriously, I couldn’t make such stupid names up if I tried—sat in his chair behind his mahogany desk. On the desk, aside from your standard mishmash of important-looking junk, was a worn newspapers about the so-called “Sleepy Oaks Massacre” covered in little notes written in the margins.
He never offered me a seat, so I stood and watched him settle into his chair. “What do you know of Sleepy Oaks?” the mayor asked calmly.
The image of that little filly’s body being torn in half by my sword and the feeling of my balls drawing into my stomach came immediately to mind. It was worse than it should have been because, just like the chant said, I had killed Sleepy Oaks with my heart, not my steel, for I had not forgotten the face of my father. But with the Kodex still only held together with duct tape, did I really remember my father’s face?
“More than anypony should rightly want to know, I reckon,” I said in a Southern drawl that I didn’t mean to speak in.
“Lesser in national implications than the Songnam Slaughter, but more dear to my heart,” Kitten Whispers replied. He telekinected up a cigar and lit it, taking a long puff of the brown phallic-symbol. “Everypony in that town who was there died. The only who survived it were out of town for various reasons, like two of my relatives.”
A part of me wanted to apologize, and another part wanted me to say that the Code would avenge them, but I remained silent. It felt weird to stand on my new arm, almost. In a way, I half-expected it to grow pincers and spawn a throne of termites. Which made me wonder what it’d be like to be a pirate with termites in his pegleg. Could they be weaponized like you could weaponize a milkshake? I tried not to shudder at the image of my ex dressed as a sexy cow. Those were a thing, it seemed.
“I got a small note about some new stranger they had in the lockup, and no-doubt that’s you. See, I have no reason to trust you in the slightest, but two things make me want to think otherwise: my gut for one, and the fact that you seem familiar.”
“Familiar?” I asked, glancing to the shelves full of academic, charity, and business honors.
“Yes.” He took a puff, looking at me. “My grandchild told me a story some time ago about a chap like yourself, a stranger who dressed like a cowpony with lightning-quick reflexes and the eyes of a killer. And like all Equestrians, I know the legend of the Magnificent Seven. Now, you ain’t the buck nor any of them ‘magnificent seven’ bladeslingin’ bucks, not by a longshot, but something about that image combined with my gut instinct makes me want to ask of you something. It doesn’t make sense, I can’t really find base reason for it, and I can’t even trust you, but its like a bad itch that won’t go away, and it just keeps telling me you’re somepony I can’t ignore.”
“What would you ask of me?”
“I want you to find somepony for me. One of the survivors of Sleepy Oaks.” Kitten Whispers tossed an envelope onto his desk. “My son.”
Hesitantly, I took the letter. Its seal looked almost like the letters O, Z. Oz. Somewhere, C was laughing. I remembered Cards saying that there’d been some hundred thirty-two ponies in Sleepy Oaks: she had killed one, I had killed a hundred twenty-nine. Of course, her count was probably only in the general vicinity of correct. Heck, I couldn’t name the exact populations of any of the cities I’d lived. Even if I did, after the Dark Crusade, those numbers would doubtlessly no longer be accurate. Hooray for mass slaughter—so many ponies died that you could have a blood fight with all the gore. It was like a snowball fight, only worse!
Lieutenant Pudge Farks, I distinctly recalled, had mentioned a stallion who ran out of the town of Sleepy Oaks, screaming something about spiders underneath his skin, then he’d vomited up about of pound of cobwebs that he ate and went comatose. I remembered that because Pudge Farks hadn’t saved the cobwebs, and so I couldn’t knit her a nifty scarf out of them. Was Kitten Whispers speaking of that guy? Suddenly, I had the urge to knit and sew something.
“Any idea where I should start looking?” I asked.
He nodded. “I do. I don’t have any idea how he got there or why, but I think I have an idea.”
“Where?”
“The Crystal Empire.”
|— ☩ —|
High above the Hoofington railyard, the moon leered creepily at me. I waved a hoof at it—the moon was a he in my language, because clearly a giant rock in space had a penis, even though Equestrian identify it more with femininity—and said, “Quit it!”
The teller buck just frowned at me as he handed me the train ticket. He told me where to find the train, and I thanked him curtly. My guard-escort made sure I didn’t get off track, because me going off track would have caused my derailed train to plummet into the valley and ruin at least seven families. As I wandered through the railyard and to where my train was docked—a train that would eventually take me far, far to the north, a place called the Crystal Empire—I turned my head to him.
“Hey, I forget to ask,” I said: “who’s the Tin Mare?”
The buck gave a quiet whinny-like noise. “She’s the new girl.”
“And that means?”
“Just…” He looked around, like a child searching for its father in a pile of garbage, because that was where its father belonged. “The Mayor brought her in, distant family or something, and gave her a job. A few nights ago, there was a thing at one of the bars, and the little thing just flips out and goes crazy.” He chuckled. “She’s called ‘Tin Mare’ because it’s slang for a lady guard in most rural counties.” He poked at a badge on his chest. “Because of the tin badges we all wears. If she were a fella, she’d be the Tin Buck, I’d wager.”
“Oh, well, that was less scary that I’d hoped,” I replied. The concrete concourse led up to a parked train, I could see, idling for the night like a hobo waits to be eaten by Wolpertinger, these weird, little bunny-things in the Reich that had fangs, antlers, and wings. “In the tavern, they spoke of her like she was a demon.”
“Mayhap she is, if you’re a drunken sort.” He shot me a smirk, and my response was a grunt.
I looked up at the moon again. “I see—said the blind stallion as he picked up his hammer and saw.” The train sitting in the station continued sitting there. “So. That is the train. It’s an eighty-foot cobra who shall jezume all of us in her udder. And by jezume, I of course mean consume. I suppose that’s where I’m off to, then, to slay the giant snake and then milk it. You know, you can actually milk a snake. I once tried snake milk. I got sick and almost died. It’s not milk. It’s venom! It doesn’t matter if you steal and then wear your girlfriend’s sexy cow outfit with life-like udder and slits for her pegasus wings, venom kills!”
“Yeah, yeah, just don’t sexually harass any more ponies, dig?”
“I will dig holes in all of your beaches, steal any ‘beware of animal’ signs I find, and then bury these signs in those holes,” I hissed, and then walk backwards up to the train, glaring the guard down. I didn’t exactly know why, but I’d been told that teutsche tourists had a reputation in foreign nations for digging abnormally deep holes in random beaches and stealing ‘beware of animal’-type signs. These two things were related somehow, I was sure.
The train’s conductor, an earther with bags under his eyes so deep that he could probably pass himself off as some kind of marsupial, was standing at the edge of the train. He took my ticket before I entered the train, which struck me as odd, since that wasn’t how trains worked in the Reich. Then again, the mere fact that a back-ass-wards nation like Equestira even had trains that so much as vaguely approached the trains we had in the Reich was itself an astonishing feat.
He told me where on the train I was meant to sit, and I shrugged in acceptance. Ugh. Shrugging with my new arm didn’t feel right. C’s words—My flesh attached to you will kill you, given time—hung over my head like a cloud of lice hangs over that one kid who doesn’t freakin’ bathe. How long did I have? How many clowns could I fit inside this suitcase? And just how was I supposed to carry all these limes?
All were questions I didn’t suspect I’d ever get an answer to.
The seat rows were all numbered, like inmates in a nippönischen prison. While Nippön might’ve been a nice country nowadays where most everypony spoke Teutsch as their first language because the Nippöner wanted so desperately to be Teutsche, I’d heard that its prisons were basically giant rape parties. Yet another reason to be glad that the Reich didn’t have prisons, only humiliating public beatings that bordered on hilarious torture. Much more efficient.
I found my seat in short order. And although the train was essentially a wasteland, I got assigned to the row that had another pony in it. Yay me. Of course, I could have just sat anywhere, a weird part of me was compelled to follow all the little rules. As a certain mentor had once taught me, We must obey the little laws and rules so that we can break the big ones. That’s why I might murder you, but I’d never steal from you. That’d be immoral.
The other pony, a grey earther mare with a mane like charcoal, was asleep, her head lolled against the window. I sat down setting a bag under my chair and the other one by my hooves. As I glanced at the sleeping mare and heard her little snores, I wondered what life would be like if I had a more normal mentality. Which was to ask, if I got more hot and bothered by everypony being nude. Somehow, I had the distinct feeling that if the Reich and Equestria ever got into good contact, Equestria would become the Reich’s number one tourist destination, and all the Equestrians would complain about all the weird, scary ponies with funny accents who kept leering creepily at them, insisting that they all do everything “slower”.
There was some amusement in this line of thought, but then it got really creepy and warlike when Equestrians decided enough was enough and no longer allowed tourists from the Reich because they were too creepy, and we fought them over the right to leer at them. I shook thoughts of a Reich-Equestria War Over The Right To Be Perverted away, and instead concentrated on the road ahead. I was apparently on a timer before my new arm killed me, okay. Yet if that little rumor Felicitat had mentioned was true—and all fanciful rumors were true, because that was how the world worked—then the chance to once again be a unicorn with two eyes was there in the Crystal Empire as well.
So, I could hunt for Kitten Whisper’s son whilst I sought after becoming wholesome again. Because those heavenly weapons, damn, I just needed to kill someone with them. And then his words rang out in my mind. Hell of a thing, killing a pony. You take away all he’s got and all he’ll ever be. And let me tell you what, Jericho: Dying isn’t much of a living. Roughly translated, of course. I just let that thought simmer in my mind like a pot full of moldy guinea pigs on fire with cancer.
Somehow that made me wonder what it’d be like to be a color. Like, not the physical embodiment of a color, but to wake up one day and just be a color, no matter where it is, that color is you. Since I realized soon thereafter that I had no idea what I was thinking about, I let the thought just die horribly in a train wreck. Train of thought and all, eh?
Soon the train jostled and inched forwards. The jolt of it made the gray mare’s head bounce back and land, of course, on my shoulders. She made a cozy little smacking sound with her lips, but I really didn’t care to stop her. I was enjoying my thoughts as the train lurched northward.
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“I will dig holes in all of your beaches, steal any ‘beware of animal’ signs I find, and then bury these signs in those holes,”
Wow; there's a reference that I wasn't expecting.
Well, I can add some more things to the TVT page now; Artificial Limbs, and an addition to Your Days Are Numbered.
The Germans might steal our warning for moose triangles, but we will just buy new ones using the money gained from German tourists buying the dried shit of mooses.
Something just occurred to me. Many characters are set up with fleshed out personalities and some backstory yet none of them end up staying very long. Dust and Cards lasted like ten, twelve chapters before they got canned. Same with Felicitat. And I bet the sleeping mare on the train will be another temporary partner as well, before Team Jericho abandons or murders her.
Also, Princess Luna is in the frickin' cover art and we've yet to see hide nor hair of her (Exept for that Selena chick, who I predict IS Luna, or the Angel). I guess I'll just have to be patient.
Huh. This chapter seems...different. You do something with your hair?
3304421
Those are all rather amusing to think about and consider. Your C does sound like quite the interesting one, vocal-wise. :Me trying to imagine your C-voice speaking with Crazy Medic Jericho: :giggles uncontrollably:
3305547 3305763
Well, Teutschland is rather Germany-like, so, of course, Scandinavia and the World had to a find a way into this mess. All the moose shall be Jericho's. No, wait, he hates moose. And elk. And deer. And most wild ungulates.
3305618
Must. Collect. All. The. Tropes. Soon all tropes ages will have links to Jericho! Muhahahaha!
3305954
I seem to have, I think, a knack for little characters. Honestly, when I first created Cards, she was a stallion who's only goal was to die by Jericho's hooves. Then I made her a girl and let her live. Never expected her to get so... hmm. I just feel that Cards has no place in Act 2 (yet?), so there's no reason to force her in.
But I like to think it's just that my characters are fleshed out with or without Jericho, like Jericho is just taking part in a very alive world that was going on and will (hopefully) continuing going on after he mucks about. Though, really, Act 1 was around 200k words: that's longer than a good few books, so chapter-length doesn't exactly do them justice, since they got more screen time than many main characters.
Jericho is good at making "friends" and ruining lives. I have a little plan for this little mare, and we'll see how it plays out, hmm?
As for Luna... the cover reflects the story a bit more as a whole, not just an act or so. When Jericho gets to Canterlot at some point, we can get dangerously close to running into our favorite princesses.
3306002
I don't follow. Was it that this chapter was shorter, or that I more willingly spit it into different sections? Not funny enough?
3306125 nah, man
its like seeing an a friend with a new haircut, ya know? having seen them with it for so long, it takes a bit to realise its changed, then you're like 'Hey. You get a haircut?' they'd grumble a 'Yer' and you'd nod sagely. Tha's all 
. And Still one of the funniest fics on fimfiction, dontcha know. 
Something I've wanted to tell you for a while, but I keep forgetting: Jericho reminds me of the guy from Freeman's mind, except less sane (which is saying a lot).
And if you've never watched Freeman's Mind before... you poor deprived brony/pegasister (whichever term you prefer).
I don't think I want to know what your mind goes through while you're writing Jericho's internal monologues.
I suddenly got the picture of a mother penguin vomiting up in her chick's face...
Go go gadget comment!
Nah, that is standard procedure for all adventurer bars and taverns in Equestira. Part of ISO 9000 compliance. If they do not have worldly, homely waitresses then you can be sure the establishment is a front for something illegal. Possibly involving clowns, drug smuggling, sex trafficking, and weather vanes.
Far better to skin them, sew their hides together into a balloon, and becoming an aeronaut.
You could split the difference by downing a pint or 3 of Jaggernog, going axe-crazy at the book club in the library, and then burning the place to the ground.
Sign-up roster is by the door. Queso and punch will be served afterwards.
Silly Jericho!
Bladeslinging is an extreme blood sport involving griffon jockeying, skydiving, manticore wrestling, flaming bladed weapons, and full-contact origami.
The players also moonlight as mercenaries for hire in the off seasons.
The only problem now is that he is going to be accosted by legions of literary hipster ponies whinging and debating interminably if the correct spelling is "Wasteland" or "Waste Land".
Did he set them loose in the anaphylactic shock ward for maximum irony?
That sounds almost as disastrous as my stonefish petting zoo idea.
"If you want to have a linguistic adventure, go drinking with a Scotsman. Because you can't understand them before..."
Reminds me the the doctor's spider-head in The Thing.
Will Jericho's limb detach screaming and hissing and grow monstrously spiked appendages if he so much as singes the hair on his arm?
The Arm responded to the touch by opening all 7 of its dragon-slitted eyes. My hoof peeled back to reveal a fanged lamprey mouth ringed by inky black barbed tentacles which grabbed the mare's head with terrifying speed. The Arm slowly pulled her closer, heedless of her panicked struggles. Smaller auxiliary mouths appeared on The Arm, whispering unintelligibly in Old Enochian. The tentacles stopped, the mouths fell silent, and all the eyes stared into the mare's, which were wide with terror.
The little mouths opened again and spoke, a chorus of foal-like voices speaking in creepy unison.
"I'm a princess! Are you a princess too?"
Death Metal bands with names like Grave Raper and Bloody Sabbath Necrophilia typically do not make for good karaoke singing.
Ewwww!
Jericho apparently is half way to becoming a marsupial (or one of those stallions in Felicitat's magazines). He should probably invest in some kind of smooth, non-edged capsule toolbox thing so he can store more kit "back there" without worrying about getting perforated (or having to keep liters of industrial strength mouthwash on hoof).
Reminds me of the butler from this.
Respect the 'stache!
Use biscuits, mint-chocolate ones preferably.
Failing that, start a fire in the rubbish bin and smoke her out.
I imagine it would be like a priest accidentally tripping and knocking over the sacraments:
A holy (holey) problem.
Is not this what Duke Elkington said to Jericho in the hospital?
No time like the present to try all those new recipes for blood sausage!
Is somefilly going to have to smack a bitch?
Did C help Cards get employed in Hoofington?
1 if you break all his bones.
4 if you use a hatchet
13 if you use a woodchipper
9 if you shove Cards and a bag of tortilla chips in there as well
The same way you carried the lockpicks and switchblades: steady breathing, Zen-master sphincter control, and liberal amounts of vaseline.
While the Laplandi reindeer glare at you surlily, contemplatively running their hooves over the keen edge of their puukkos...
It may sound like a good idea on paper to the adult entertainment tourist board, but I would give the tourists 3 days before they flee screaming back home (those lucky few that still can flee that is). Jericho himself commented how nasty and vicious Equestria was despite its cute and fluffy pastel exterior.
One morning, when Jericho Faust woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into the horrible colour puce...
3306293
Yes, the members of Team Jericho are huge fan-nerds of Freeman's Mind. ^^
3307087 Really? Cool. That... would actually explain a lot, you know.
Moar Luna`s! And less stupid sidequests.
Yeah....umm.....
Fuck I don't even know anymore.
I've given up trying to make sense of Jericho's bizarre trains of thought. Now I've reached the 'numb acceptance' stage where I blindly acknowledge everything he says as normal......
I hope this never ends.
Siffer: "Write fucking comments, you prick!" *Whipcrack*
Messoria: "But I can talk to the author directly, and—"
Siffer: "You're not supposed to talk back, cunt!" *whipcrack*
Messoria: "Jaja, I'll do it, but please, stop slappin' me with your penis!"
Okay, I'll stop now before it gets strange (yes, that wasn't strange yet). Seriously, why did you give Jericho his leg back? I was hoping that he'd get some kind of pegleg so I could call him Pirat Holzbein.
Finally! He understands my misery!
*Stops reading, goes to youtube, hears the song again, resumes reading*
Jesus.
Maybe the bury these signs because they see the irony in them, they are, by all means, animels themselves. Or they want to test HOW TO PICK UP WOMEN IN 30 DIFFERENT CULTURES. Because, obviously, burying 'Beware of Animal' signs gets them Equestrians hot under their collars.
Perfect defense. That'd surely save your arse before any court.
Tavi!
Wouldn't Cadence be an Empress if she rules over the Crystal Empire?
3307159 Eh.
Overall, Freeman's mind is a great piece of comedic candy, exploiting the silent protagonist of one of the most beloved games ever by giving him a humorous personality. His thought processes are often trivial and petty, but also iconifies what a person should be feeling, except with a nice delivery.
3307211
No.
3307997
Not to worry, I'm certain we'll be back to Jericho being disturbingly uncaring of who he kills in order to make the world a better place soon enough.
3308065
Yet again, the original version of the fic was 700k+ words, and I must stress, it still had yet to accomplish fuckall.
3308549
Write more comments. Rite Nao. Also, thank you for that video. I laughed.
Fun fact, when this chapter was being written, Crushric asked me if "Tavi or Lunie", as to whom Jericho should meet in the train. I welcome your hate, Luna-Lovers. Also no, Cadence won't be an empress, 'cause Crushric is very, very correct about how his world works in certain ways.
Now to hunker down and wait for CardsShipper69 to comment. Only then will we be able to combine our powers and achieve the power of Captain Commentard. Srsly, dough. I luv it.
Wait. Is the mare... Octavia?
...Naw, that's inconceivable.
3310474 lol yes. Why has he not shaved the pony right next to him yet? It sounds like something he would do.
sometimes as German i find myself offended by Jericho and his homeland
3313734
Why exactly? Is it because of the public punishments that border on public torture? Or simply because he speaks ze tongue of ze Fazerland AND is a horrible person?
3312517
Firstly, he almost certainly lacked the tools for the task. Secondly, Jericho seems to have a strict Do-Not-Intrude-Intimate-Spaces policy.
3312517
3314001
I cannot see Jericho just randomly shaving a complete stranger. It just does not seem like his modus operandi even if his sword's edge is keen enough.
However, I can see Jericho sidling up close to Octavia, fixing her with an unbreaking, unblinking stare while contemplatevely running his hoof over the edge of his drawn sword, whispering an unhinged soliloquy:
Continue for hours until they pull into the Crystal Train station.
Points if 'Tavi is hyperventilating by this point.
Bonus points if she runs away screaming.
Extra bonus points if 'Tavi smiles and nods in genuine understanding and partners with Jericho in bogtopi millinery and waffle liberation.
Aw man, I kind of wanted to see Jericho kick ass with only three legs.
While it is true that this chapter may have been slower than the others, it was still entertaining as hell and a fantastic read. Keep 'em comin', yeah?
3304421
3306125
I imagine C sounding like Hermaeus Mora from Skyrim Dragonborn.
I fucking love you.
3304421 I sometimes imagine Jericho sounding like Professor Doofenscmirtz from Phineas and Ferb.
Lot of references to the The Wizard of Oz. Although that explanation as to why the Tin Mare is called the Tin Mare sounds more akin to the SciFi Channel's old miniseries Tin Man.
Monty Python's Lumberjack Song!
Making references to "Magical Mystery Cure" I see.
Is... Is that a helsing abridged reference I see?
I want to have this in a hard cover book once it's done so I can read it in school. Love to see my teachers reactions when they read the lines I laugh at. After all, you can't spell slaughter without laughter.
I read "Silent Hill" and had the weirdest feeling of blood leaving my face.