Chapter 8 — Dogs
Chapter Eight: Dogs
“But apart, all we are is just a pile of mush and some crumbly dry mess...”
Deep?
How deep did the conspiracy run? I thought as I stepped out of the house and into the morning sunlight. From Duke Elkington’s message, I knew it didn’t go to the top. If it did go to the top, he wouldn’t have mentioned a hope that the Princesses would forgive him. It at least ran up to the ducal level in the local area, and if my knowledge of feudal politics was accurate, a duke was second only to the king in terms of actual power—or princess, in this case. Well, that depended on the legal strength of the crown, which usually varied between dukes running their duchies like tiny kingdoms and a state wherein dukes chafed under a proper civil service. I should ask.
“Hey, girls,” I probed. Bags under red, sleepy eyes, Dust grunted at me. “How strong is Princess Celestia’s authority?”
Cards yawned as she closed the farmhouse door. “Whatever she says goes.”
Okay, so from what I asked earlier about democracy in Equestria, I could only assume that Equestria was not a parliamentary monarchy by any means, so that meant no civil service. Still, when the monarch’s word is basically law, that meant that Equestrian crown authority had to be really high, but that it delegated local power to dukes and counts and so forth. Thus, I figured, Celestia was a strong monarch who did not derive her power from her dukes, but rather that her dukes derived their power from the mare herself, so that meant that Equestria was a unitary autocracy.
“This way, lady and gentlecolt,” Cards muttered, ambling down the road. Dust and I followed her, trying to ignore the singing of the birds.
That lead to the question of just what it was the conspiracy was up to. Even members of it swore by Celestia’s name as if she were a goddess, so I highly doubted that it was some elaborate plot to overthrow her. Why does nopony swear by Luna’s name? You’d think they would, but apparently not. On the other hoof, they seemed to have absolutely zero problems with using dark magic, even dark magic by Equestrian standards. That rose a host of questions, such as “Who taught them dark magic?” and “Why would they think using dark magic was a good idea?”
It couldn’t have been that there was a legitimate demonic influence to this, could there? That’d... make almost too much sense, if not for the fact that I was sure no demon could possibly be in this part of the world. I was sure of that because after the genocides during the recent Dark Crusade, demons and their worshippers had firmly and irrevocably been placed on the “endangered species” list. Did Equestria have the concept of an endangered species? I had to ask—
I paused, my thoughts getting a case of whiplash as they tried to keep going alongside the girls. Through the trees that lined the road I spied a clearing, and something black moving within. As Cards lead, Dust followed, and I silently crept through the brush. Well, as silently as possible when you’re in brush.
Now far enough in that I could see clearly into the clearing, I just gawked. Lying dead on the ground, its throat torn out, was a monstrous elk. Judging by eye, it looked to be over a thousand pounds, five feet tall, and its antlers were some of the biggest I’d ever seen. Looking at it, I, a mere pony, felt small and weak. This bull elk had probably caused a fair amount of property damage in its life.
With all of that meat and elk, that wasn’t exactly the animal that truly caught my eye, no. What caught my eye was the fearsome falcon picking at the elk’s neck. Its glorious black feathers rustled only slightly as the giant beast ate. It didn’t take me any time to recognize its species, Falco teutoni, der Teutschfalke. I was so transfixed by its majesty that I didn’t notice the bushes next to me rustling until it was too late.
“What gives?” Dust said quietly, and I had to bite my tongue to stop from yelping.
“Shh!” I hissed, pointing at the bird. “Look at it.”
She squinted her eyes at the bird and its prey. “Is that bird eating an elk? What kind of bird would do that? Seriously, what even is that?”
“Falcon.”
“It’s too big to be a falcon,” she replied, frowning.
I noticed Cards, shaking her head, standing by the road and staring at us. “Well, that species is both the largest species of falcon and one of the (if not the) largest, most powerful bird of prey in the world. If that bird wanted to, it could easily hunt ponies, but never does. Look, it even killed a thousand-pound elk! You will respect that bird, or else offend me on a very basic, patriotic level.” The falcon turned its head to look at me. I knew birds couldn’t smile, and I’d never claim to be able to speak to animals, but it felt like the falcon was smiling deviously at me.
“Huh. Never pegged you for huge fan of nature, GB,” she whistled.
“I’m not. That bird right there is just important and awesome.”
“Why?” she asked.
“That there is the most important species of bird in the world,” I replied, nodding at the falcon. “It’s the Teutschfalke. Back in Teutschland, it’s our national animal, a living symbol of our nation and patriotism, and is featured most prominently on the family crest of House Pendergast. It’s even proudly displayed on our flag, at least some versions of it. If the golden eagle were a pretty cool pony, the Teutschfalke would be that guy smoking cigarettes but never getting smoker’s breath or lung cancer, wearing sunglasses, and single-handedly defeating all the school bullies who picked on the falcon’s uncool friends, all while a swarm of hot girls lustfully chase him. That’s just how cool it is. You make fun of it, you make fun of me.”
I was silent for a moment. “You know, there’s something terribly symbolic about a Teutschfalke ripping out the throat of a monstrous elk and eating it. I think it’s a good omen. The question is, how the hell did a bird native to a continent across the ocean make its way to this part of Equestria? That’s actually really strange.”
The falcon spread its glorious wings and gave a blood-chilling cry. For a second I thought there was a tag on its leg, but quickly dismissed that idea as just me seeing things. In another second it had launched into the air and disappeared with an awing speed. I contemplated skinning the elk and offering its pelt to Duke Elkington, but felt that was a little on the nose, and I was too lazy to actually do it right now.
Cards berated me for wandering off as our trio set off again. Nothing interesting really happened the rest of the trip.
|— ☩ —|
“River Rush River Tours!” the sign on the wooden house declared. The building was painted red, which really made it stand out against the green and browns of the forest around us. In a word, it was safe, cozy, and dull as all hell. Behind the building, bobbing lazily on the river, was a large paddle boat with two decks and a red roof. Really, the place looked so normal that something seedy had to be going on here. Sex slave industry, perhaps? Illegal drugs? Walrus tipping?
Cards knocked on the door, and nopony responded. Hearing shouts from behind the building, we walked around it. Standing on the wooden docks connecting the boat to the building was a graying stallion wearing a white peaked cap. “Do you have to be so slow, you mangy mutt?” he shouted, waving a hoof at the boat.
The unicorn mare attempted to approach him, but I pushed her out of the way and trotted up instead. “Ahoy,” I greeted.
With a smile on his old face, the earth pony turned to me. “Ahoy yourself, stranger!” he replied in a warm tone. “I’m Captain River Rush, and you are?”
“My name is Captain Jericho, and I fight space aliens.”
He gave me a thoughtful look and nodded. “An honorable profession.” River Rush pulled a pipe out from a pocket on his white jacket. I offered him a light, and he grinned at me. “Thanks, Captain Jericho, fighter of space aliens.”
“Please, just call me ‘government boy’, it’s what everyone else around here calls me.”
River Rush turned his head to the boat. “Dog, get out here and say hello to our nice guests!”
A large dog-like head poked out from the boat. Rolling its eyes, it lugged its whole gray body into the open. Standing on two stock legs and with arms reaching down to its knees, it looked like the freak aftermath of a dog meeting an overly ambitious gorilla one night at the bar. An almost annoyed look on its face, it walked like a gorilla down the dock. “What Captain want now?”
“Ah, there you are, boy,” River Rush said happily. “These are our guests, government boy and those two mares keeping their distance over there.”
“Is that... is that a diamond dog?” I asked, pointing at it—at him. I couldn’t help but notice the green vest he wore, the word ‘Songnam Security’ written over it. Then there was the collar around his neck, the tag reading ‘Deeohgee’.
The dog sighed, then said in a deep voice not unlike a gravel road, “What the matter? Never see dog before?”
“Well, no, only read about them in old books. What’s your name?” I asked, but the Captain interrupted.
“Dog,” River Rush scolded, “is that any way to treat a guest.” The dog scoffed but did not say anything else. “Speaking of which, are you folks looking for a ride? Perhaps to Songnam? We were just about to set off that way.”
“Yes, Captain, we were. What are the price for three passengers?”
He laughed. “Well, government boy, just ’cause I like you, say... ten Bits.”
“Per pony?”
“For all of y’all,” he said, taking a puff on his pipe. “Usually, it’s that per pony, but we ain’t goin’ anywhere out of the way.”
I pulled out ten of the Bits I’d looted from Doc Dome’s clinic. “Here you go, Captain.”
“Great!” He looked at the dog. “Dog, help load these ponies’ bags into the bedroom, and then ready the engines.”
“Sir?” the dog asked me, looking at my bags. I politely refused three times before he reluctantly walked over to the girls. They rather willingly parted with their bags, which he lugged off to the boat. I watched as he disappeared around the other half of the two-story boat.
Cards walked up to me, and Dust flew to me. “Okay, girls,” I told them, “I got us passage to Songnam. Any questions? No? Good.”
We followed Captain River Rush to the boat, which I noticed was named ‘S.S. SSSSS’. “What’s with the boat’s name, Captain?” I asked.
He made a sound like hissing air, but I realized he was actually saying the boat’s name. “I named her that because when I bought her and went to paint her a name, the only letter I had an outline-thingy for was an S. Being that I can’t write for diddly, I figured it’d just be easier to name her the S.S. SSSSS.”
Equestrians are weird. Lightning Dust flew up ahead and landed on the boat’s second story balcony. She looked around, then waved at us. Really weird. Dust trotted off and, presumably, explored the boat for herself.
“Around the corner,” River Rush explained as we stepped onto the boat, “is a room marked ‘bedroom’. Dog put your things there, since that’s what I told ’im to do. Any of y’all get tired, feel free to rest it up in there. It won’t be long before we reach Songnam, okay? If you need me, I’ll be upstairs, captaining SSSSS. So just sit tight and enjoy the ride.”
He left Cards and me to our own devices as he trotted up the stairs. I looked down and pawed at the wooden floors. They seemed nice enough. Sturdy enough. I got the distinct impression that River Rush got bored very often around here, and that cleaning his boat was his own relief and doubled as some Freudian phallic thingy, I was sure. Stupid Freud, worst Teutscher ever, setting science back centuries. I wondered if Freud’s teachings had somehow wormed their way into Equestria. If not, Equestria was probably years ahead of us in the field of psychology. Well, at least I couldn’t detect anything in the way of malice to any of the Captain’s actions.
“I think I’m going to take him up on that offer of sleeping,” Cards yawned, and she traipsed off.
“And then there was one,” I muttered darkly, dramatically. Though it was true, I was now alone on the boat. The S.S. SSSSS lurched away from the dock as the paddles spun to life, and soon we were going downriver.
With nothing to do and nowhere to go, I eventually found myself walking in circles around the deck. As I walked, I got to appreciate how big the boat was, and how small this river was compared to it. There was just enough room for it, but none for any other vessels. I hoped that we wouldn’t run into any issues like that. Given the boat’s shape, that damn quack Freud slipped into my mind, telling me the boat was a phallic symbol and the river was clearly a metaphor for River Rush’s mother.
Speaking of the river, the trees that flanked it thinned out a bit here, but we were still in forest country. I think I saw a deer; it was mocking me from the riverside in its strange, silent deer language, I was sure. It was daring me to jump out of the boat and engage it in fisticuffs; but I knew better than the deer, and so stayed put on the boat. The once fearsome beast accepted it had been beaten and fled into the woods like a coward, but not before urinating in defiance of my wit! Save for the constant maliciousness of the common deer, it was the perfect time to—
“Hello?” Dust said, probing my shoulder with a hoof.
—jump out of my skin! Hell’s bells, I only barely kept everything in my bags actually in my bags when I tumbled over. Dust giggled at me, and I glared at her. She only smiled and laughed at me. Dust was sitting, I noted as I stood up, on the boats railing, her legs dangling over the side, a forehoof holding onto one of the pillars attaching the railing to the deck above us.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that!” I scolded, and the mare shrugged her wings. “That’s the second time today, stop being silent.”
She kicked her legs and leaned her head towards me. “Gotcha. So, what were you doing?”
“Well,” I sighed, “I was brooding darkly about stuff. What about you? You vanished for an hour or so.”
Dust looked out at the river. “Dunno, just sort of... thinking, you know?”
“What an insightful answer,” I muttered.
“So. Where’s Cards gone off to?”
“Bed. We were given a bedroom and she used it.” I shrugged. “I probably couldn’t sleep, too worked up.” The boat jostled, shaking Dust. “Have fun up there?” I asked, pointing upwards.
She drooped her ears and sighed. “I guess you can say I did,” Dust said coldly, looking up at the clouds. Where the hell did that come from? “To be honest, this is the longest I’ve even been groundside in my life. I mean, I always thought there was no purpose on the surface. I had to train, train, train up in the clouds if I ever wanted to be a Wonderbolt. But now...” She glanced at me and flashed a small smile. “Least I’ve got friends like you down here.”
“Friends?”
She rubbed the back of her head. “Well, truth be told, GB, you’re the only unicorn stallion I’ve spent more than a minute with. Cards is the first mare in that regard, too. I’ve just spent most of my life with other pegasi, and so...”
“How the hell do you stay so isolated from earthers and unicorns?”
She frowned. “Earther? That’s a weird way of putting it.” I shrugged. “Well, to answer your question, I grew up and was raised in Cloudsdale.”
I tilted my head. “What’s that?”
Dust chuckled. “It’s only the coolest city in all Equestria, and probably the world! It’s a giant metropolis flying through the clouds.” My brain imploded, got launched into another universe, fought daringly against alternate universe monsters, became that universe’s king by defeating an incomprehensible evil, then left, telling them he needed to go save another universe now, and so finally found my skull again. “A city built out of clouds, too. Around fifteen thousand feet in the air, she sits more majestic than Canterlot.” She continued kicking her legs as she watched my reaction.
I gasped, taking a step back. “That’s impossible!” And that was unnecessarily dramatic.
“Hmm?” she hummed, her hooves banging against the railing. I looked into her eyes and I didn’t get the feeling she was lying.
“At fifteen thousand feet, it’d be too cold and windy to survive! There couldn’t possibly be enough oxygen to breathe, and the altitude sickness alone would probably kill you!” She merely tilted her head, a confused look on her face. “Cloudsdale couldn’t possibly exist—you can’t build out of clouds!”
“Are you saying it cloud not exist?” she snickered.
“Tell me you were joking, Dust. Tell me that Equestria doesn’t have flying citadels at heights where a normal pony would die.”
“Well, it’s not impossible. With the help of a little pegasus weather control magic and an innovative thinker, you get a city like Cloudsdale.”
“‘Pegasus weather control magic’? The hell is that?”
She frowned. “Okay, now you’re just making fun of me, aren’t you?” I vigorously shook my head. “Oh, come on, everypony knows pegasi can control the weather. We always have.”
“I swear upon the blood of God that that isn’t true,” I said darkly. “Weather is weather, it controls itself. The only time it doesn’t is in fantasy and science fiction.”
Dust furrowed her brow. “Yeah, you’re making fun of me.”
“No, I am not, Miss Lightning Dust. Ich schwöre, dass das die Wahrheit ist. Pegasi cannot control the weather.” She frowned hard, and then jumped off the boat. “Dust, what are—!” Then I saw her fly up into the air. “Oh, du Miststück...” Dust flew too high for me to see, thanks to the deck above me. Rather than race myself up to the upper deck, I just stood there and waited for... whatever it was that she was doing.
Tick. Tack. Tock.
With Dust still not back, I got to thinking. There were a lot of really impossible things in the world, I’d even told her as much last night. Was it possible to have a city in the clouds? I imagined a massive city of stone built in shallow water, a place where all the streets were made of water. And then the stone dissolved into thick clouds, and the water just became air.
There were two ponies on opposite sides of a street, one coaxing the other one to just jump the gap. The second one jumped for it, missed, and plummeted four-and-a-half kilometers to his death. It was a common occurrence, the first pony reasoned, and then went off to play water polo in a storm cloud. Meanwhile, on the ground below the city was a large farm, whose farmer was a shady earther with a salt-and-pepper beard. When he saw the pony fall and crashland dead in his farm, the farmer nodded sagely, and then marked up a tally on his blackboard. “Twenty-first one this month,” he said to nopony in particular. It was some elaborate scheme to avoid paying taxes—even though the sewage from the city (giant waterfalls of bodily waste) fertilized his fields and made him fabulously rich, he just hated taxes that much. After all, when he was a colt, a pack of wild taxes had come to his house and made him dress like a filly—
I shook my head and realized I needed to see a therapist, even though the word therapist looked suspiciously similar to the rapist. At least the two words were pronounced differently, right? Or had I been wrong the whole time and therapist was pronounced ‘the rapist’? I muttered the two different pronunciations to myself. Come to think, if therapist was pronounced like that, it would go a long, long way towards explaining why every pony in Equestria was crazy—no one wanted to visit a ‘the rapist’.
A head poked up from below the edge of the deck, and two orange eyes peeked out at me. “Psst. Psst! Hey, GB!”
I blinked, glad to be free from the hellhole that was my mind. “What?”
Without warning, a slithering black mass of ash crawled up from Dust’s side. I stared at it as it floated up into the air, Dust hovering next to it. The undulating mass of black ash floated there as Dust frowned at her blackened arms. “Ugh,” she groaned. “Why’d today have to be so cloudless? The only thing I could get was this thing from the boat’s exhaust, and it was hell trying to get it without actually choking on the fumes.”
“Why are your arms all black?” I questioned dumbly.
She frowned. “I don’t have arms, I have forelegs.” I shook my head, though she went on. “But if you’re asking about my forelegs, it’s because I was trying to wrestle this here thing.” She poked the cloud, and it moved a bit to the side. “Nasty thing, burning coal.”
I stared at what was in front of me, trying to process it all. I decided to file it all under the ‘Will Come Back And Haunt Me’ cabinet. “You can actually touch and move clouds?”
She poked and moved the cloud again. “With the proper training, sure. I mean, if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, you’re just gonna tackle on through the cloud. Weather clouds and building clouds aren’t the same thing, you know? Any pegasus can walk on building clouds, but only a trained one can actually do anything with weather clouds. I once tried my hoof at becoming a weather pegasus, but that was boring, so I stopped. Still remember the technique.”
I rubbed my eyes, the bruise above my eye and around my neck aching. “You can actually control weather.” As much as that should have been a question, it came out as a blank statement.
“Mmm-hmm,” she hummed happily, nodding at me. “Ain’t too hard once you get the hang of it.”
“And so a city in the sky...”
“Actually exists, yep. Was born and raised there. I told you that already, right? I mean, pegasi just do that. Heard tale there used to be other cities like Cloudsdale in the past, but now she’s the only flying city in Equestria.” Ikarus would have been proud, and then died because that stupid earth pony did not know how to use wax wings.
“And the world,” I added in a distant tone. “I suppose... suppose I’ve seen worse and more illogical things out there in the wide, wide world.”
With a deft punch to its center of mass, Dust destroyed the cloud. She covered her mouth and backed away from it, letting the particles disperse. A part of me realized that Equestria liked to burn coal, and the sheer idiocy of that almost helped me forget that Equestria also liked defying the laws of physics. Dust winked at me and she flew below the bow again. She came back up, arms and face wet but clean, and crossed her forelegs over the railings. Still flying, she reminded me vaguely of the image of Cupid, if Cupid weren’t a baby who needed to go on a diet and see a ‘the rapist’ about these equicidal urges to shoot people he’s been having lately. Yet, she still kicked her legs aimlessly as she looked at me.
“I’ll have to bring you there, GB,” she said in a giddy voice, “when this is all over and we’ve saved the day.”
I like how she said ‘when’ and not ‘if’, makes me more confident. Wait. What? “It’s possible for a unicorn to go to Cloudsdale? I thought you said that only pegasi can walk on clouds.”
She jostled her head in a kinda-sorta way. “Used to be so, then a few years back, so I heard, some ambitious unicorn found a spell in an old book that changed that. Lets earth ponies and unicorns walk on clouds, and there was this other one that could give a pony these creepy-looking insect wings. There’s this one company that jumped on the idea and now uses the cloudwalking spell to give tours of Cloudsdale to non-pegasi.” Dust glanced up. “You can even get the spell in a nice talisman if you wanted to stay for a while and had the money.”
They did what?! I could handle the idea that Equestrians were more liberal with magic than most sane ponies back east. I could understand why Equestrians could get away with it, the demons so far away and so often dealt with by us Teutschen. Hell, I could even deal with ‘pegasi weather magic’. But to have an entire city made of clouds suspended at likely-lethal heights seemingly (or literally) by magic and with an entire tourism industry built from selling enchanted talismans to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who had the cash was madness!
I admit, perhaps my thoughts were a result of my cultural preconceptions, and perhaps I just really had to accept that Equestria was different than Teutschland. What was wrong to one culture was perfectly normal and acceptable in another cultural, and that was perfectly okay. But when the issue was magic, that’s when things started to get fuzzy. On the one hoof, it was ‘other country, other customs’. On the other hoof, they were dealing with an incredibly dangerous force as though it were no more dangerous than painkillers.
One culture had no right to impose its viewpoints, morals, and practices over another. But when another culture’s viewpoints, morals, or practices could hurt and kill them, such as female genital mutilation, it was the office of Equitologie to step in and educate the people out of harm’s way. I could only speculate as to just how royally screwed Equestria would be if Teutschland wasn’t out there; if we didn’t send our sons and daughters into the killing fields; if the symbol of the falcon wasn’t nearly omnipresent throughout a quarter of the planet; if the Reich didn’t selflessly stand up for the lives of people so they could maintain lifestyles that insulted Teutschland’s very existence.
I closed my eyes, took a breath, then said as cheerily as I could, “Yeah, that’d be awesome. We should really do that. I’ve never been that high up before.” Not intentionally, at least.
“Glad to see this isn’t bothering you or anything,” Dust chirped. “For a moment there, GB, I thought it was.”
More than you could imagine...
|— ☩ —|
I pushed up on my hat and got a good look at the approaching Songnam River. This was the river the SSSSS had been built for, most certainly. Shouting something unintelligible, Captain River Rush steered the boat out of the smaller, nameless river estuary and into the Songnam River proper. I wasn’t sure how long it’d taken us to get here, since I was pretty sure I’d fallen asleep at the bow at some point, and only now the boat’s activity had roused me.
Further out on the river was a barge spewing out a stream of black smoke from its engines. It didn’t look like the kind of happy ship where the mariners (a word which always made me think “marinating in mares”) sang rousing songs just for the hell of it. As it went downriver, I gritted my teeth and fretted for any pegasi who had the misfortune to need to wrangle up stray clouds from that, assuming my limited understanding of Equestrian weather was accurate. Looking around, the waterlogged terraces lining the river caught my interest. Were those rice paddies? They were, weren’t they? Strange. I liked rice, but eating too much of it is bad for you and over the years will make you and your people tiny.
Our ship’s dog barked as the SSSSS banked left, going upriver. Lying down on the deck, I watched through the railing as the hills and rice paddies swept by, as boats rode the river up and down. A thought almost, almost, mused about how easy things had been going today; but I took that thought, hit it repeatedly over the head with shovel, cut up its body into tiny pieces, and attached those tiny pieces to a swarm of messenger pigeons and let them loose as punishment for the thought trying to tempt fate. I tried to suppress any other thoughts like it by focusing on the river and trying to find any more Freudian symbols to think about and then feel sick about.
I heard hoofsteps coming from behind me. Rolling onto my back, I looked over at Cards, her eyes puffy, as she slogged across the deck. It would’ve been nice to think she was just the worst jogger ever, but I unfortunately knew better. Our eyes met, and she swallowed.
“Government boy?” Cards asked. I rolled to my hooves and just looked at her. “You really didn’t read those letters, did you? You don’t know what they were about, right?”
“No, but I imagine you’re going to tell me,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed. Starting to wonder here if it’d be easier to accidentally push her off the boat.
“One of the letters from Boulder’s foals to him, telling him how much they missed and loved him. Two of them were about Boulder having to do things in order to support his kids and hopefully earn enough to help put them through college.” She sniffled. “The last two were about the money White Tongue was sending back home to cover his mother’s expensive hospital bills.” I pretended to check my watch. Only after pretending to check did I realize that I actually wanted to check the time, but Cards spoke up before I could. “That means that when I killed Boulder, I didn’t just kill him, I murdered his family. Boulder only took that job to support his kids, and White Tongue’s mother was too sick to live outside of a hospital. When, when Jeepers said that those two weren’t bad ponies, he wasn’t wrong. They did bad things, but what kind of father wouldn’t hesitate to do bad things if it meant the only way to put food on his family’s table? What kind of son wouldn’t work hard for the mother he loved?”
I smell an oedipus complex! “And this bothers you?”
She clenched her eyes and nodded. “Boulder’s foals were innocent, but with one careless swing, I murdered them, government boy.” I cocked a brow but remained silent. “How can you possibly not be horrified that because of you, government boy, White Tongue’s mother is going to die? Everytime I close my eyes... I see them, the foals from Boulder’s photo. I can almost hear them asking why I took Daddy away from them, see their teary eyes, feel their cries in my very soul. I tried to save my town, but instead I—”
The back of my hoof found a personal friend in Cards’ cheek. She shrieked and stumbled backwards. “You’re absolutely right,” I said in a stern voice, careful not to sound harsh or demeaning. “But think about it: What kind of example was Boulder setting to his kids? That it’s okay to hurt ponies weaker than you for the sake of those you deem worthwhile? And what kind of mother would raise her son to harm the innocent if it meant keeping her alive?” I closed the distance between us, using my height against her for all it was worth. She cowered down in front of me. “So what if their loved ones agonize over it? That’s what happens when you take a life. Most everyone has family, friends, or something. Hell, if you think about just how amazing every part of the equine body is to keep us functioning—every bone, every muscle, every neuron, every cell, every enzyme—it seems like such a waste to kill.”
“And I...” she stammered weakly.
“And you did something that you now regret. You did something that is impossible to change. You can’t change it. You couldn’t control what happened afterwards. At the time, it was either you or him, and you chose to live.” I shook my head. “We do horrible things to survive, and we do horrible things to make sure the people worse than us don’t hurt those better than us. In this world of ours, that’s what a hero is. And depending on whose point of view you’re looking through, history’s greatest heroes double as history’s greatest monsters.”
Cards exclaimed, “I don’t want to be a monster who kills ponies without regret, like—” She froze, eying me.
“Like me?” I suggested, and she refused to respond, not even with body language. “You know what, little girl? You whine and angst a lot. You think you’ve had a hard life, that you’ve seen some horrible things, and now you’ve done a horrible wrong yourself, right?” Her eyes darted around, but she gave a hesitant nod.
I chuckled. “I killed my mother in childbirth and am an only child, my father never quite forgave me for it, and I most certainly have daddy issues; save for my father and I, my whole family is either dead or locked in an insane asylum; don’t get me started on all the mental issues I probably accrued during the Dark Crusade, since seeing the places you grew up defaced by the slaughter of your countrymen does not do you much good; and most mentally scarring of all, my pet turtle was so afraid of me it died!”
After saying all of that aloud, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Really, now that you know, I can’t pretend to be all dark, mysterious, and brooding about it, slowly giving away cryptic clues until we finally get the big, dramatic reveal—which is fine. I hate brooding over things, anyways; could never do it right and just sounded like I was whining. Back on topic, that was all before I left the Reich, and you don’t even want to know the things I’ve seen and done out here in the real world.” I threw my head back and laughed again. “But do you know what? For all of that, I’m not going to whine, spend sleepless nights wondering if I could’ve done better, or let it bother me in the slightest. I haven’t earned the right to be sympathized with, forgiven, or pitied.
“In fact, I’m going to do the exact opposite of what you’re doing; I’m going to feel happy with my lot in life. I’m going to jump around and laugh and sing and dance and tell jokes because that’s just who I am! I will sit down and think that, whatever else could have happened, I must have made the right choice because I’m alive and the world is perhaps better off for what I did. If you let your mistakes, your fears, your regret, and your grief define you, then all you’ll be is a reflection of those horrible emotions. You can’t ever, ever, think of it as ‘I just killed a stallion’, but rather as ‘I just saved a bunch of innocents’.” I smiled. “Worse comes worst, just do what I always do, and laugh it off, knowing you are walking endlessly within the deepest level of Hell, the Wheel of Time. I’m more interesting that way, don’t you think?”
Cards looked distant, as though she were convinced if she looked distantly enough, she’d totally see far enough to prove the world was flat. Then, in a voice so quiet I wasn’t sure if she was thinking aloud or not, she said, “You’re wrong. You are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! I just want to help ponies, not hurt them.”
I nodded, taking a step back. “Cards, we don’t live in a world where you can’t save some people without hurting others. Life has the annoying habit of being so gray.” I put a hoof on her shoulder, and she flinched out of my grasp.
She swallowed hard, daring to look me in the eye. When I looked back, she looked away. “Why are you trying to be a hero?”
“Trying?” I scoffed. “Was, am, and will be.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Cards replied. “I... I don’t believe you when you talk about those virtues your people have. Well, I do, but I don’t believe that you believe them. So, why are you trying to be a hero, government boy?”
I closed my eyes and took a breath. A thought turned to the letter in my pocket, to the words consider this task a personal favor for me. I opened my eyes. “Because I have no choice in the matter.”
She tilted her head. “What does that mean?”
I feigned a cough, then spun around thrice. Cards stared at me as I began humming and swimming my body to an invisible beat. I could see question forming on her lips, and interjected with, “This whole conversation is too damn depressing, so I’m dancing to make everything suddenly fun again.” Of course, I had to sing a jaunty little tune at her.
“What...” she tried as I ended my verse.
“Crappy pop music, my girl!” I exclaimed. “Thank the deity of your choosing that it’s not as popular as other genres. Or maybe in Equestria it is...” My dancing died. “What if pop music is more popular here?” I said in a dark, dark tone.
“Uh...”
“Cards,” I snapped, “go back to bed. Rest. Sleep some more. Think about what I said. And for the sake of God, Celestia, Luna, or whatever deity-thing you worship, stop angsting over nothing, and start worrying over real issues, like however popular pop music may or may not be in this country.”
She hesitated for a long while. I waited in silence for her to move, listening to the boat chug on through the water, and a strange mechanical sound in the distance. Finally, Cards sighed, turned around, and walked away. Just before she was out of sight, she stopped and looked at me. “Do you enjoy my suffering? Honestly?”
I stared at her for a long while, my expression blank. “We Teutsche call it Schadenfreude,” I said in a casual tone.
Cards shook her head and walked out of sight around the boat. I looked back out in front of the boat and groaned. Aaaand boring. That strange mechanical sound, quiet but distinct, played with my imagination. Then there was that diamond dog. I had to see him again and ask him seemingly random questions. Plus, pop music. When we got to Songnam, I was going to have to amble around a record store and marvel at whatever music Equestria produced. Shrugging off my lazy urge to just stay put, I wandered around the deck.
The mechanical sound got louder at the rear of the boat, by the paddles pushing us through the water. That made sense. I couldn’t see if there was much smoke it the air, thanks to the deck above me, but I saw a metal pipe of some sorts running up a wall. Near the pipe was a doorway that looked like it lead into a cellar. I pulled on its handles, and the door opened without much resistance. The sound got rather loud from down there, so it was logically the best, safest place to blindly wander into, especially because it was dark save for an angry red glow. Maybe there I’d find proof of that illegal walrus tipping ring.
As I entered the room below, I was struck by the smell of sweat, wet dog, and coal. Lots of coal. And for that matter, why did dogs smell when they got wet? I needed to ask a scientist about that. At the far side of the room, next to a roaring furnace which bathed the room in red light, was the diamond dog, leaning against the wall. His ear was to something that looked like the horn of a record, his eyes to the floor. With a nod of the head, he stepped away from the horn, grabbed a shovel, and shoveled a single heap of coal into the furnace.
“Hello?” I called out, but over the roar of the furnace and mechanics, he didn’t even look at me. “Dog!” I called louder, and he glanced at me. Frowning hard, he gave me what I thought was a ‘What do you want?’ shrug. I pointed at him, then at my mouth. “Can we talk?” He stared at me. After a second or two, he gave me a shooing gesture with his paws... hands... or whatever they were. “Please? Can we talk?”
He facehoofed with one hand, pointing to an iron door labeled “Deeohgee” on one side of the room. Taking that as a yes, I trotted over to the door, opened it, and stepped through into a dingy, little room. Despite the hammock, the little round table in the middle, and an odd pin-up calendar featuring a mare in a bikini, the room had the odd feel of the kind of place you’d hide your dirty magazines from your wife, not a place where someone actually lived. Somehow, the loud noises from the room behind me were much quieter here.
I wiggled around the claustrophobic space and took a seat at the musty table. A moment later and the diamond dog scuttled into the room, scowling at me as he closed the door behind him. “What pony want?” he demanded.
“To talk.”
He cocked a thick, furry eyebrow. “What ’bout?”
“Tell me about diamond dogs,” I said flatly, “I’m honestly curious.” The dog tilted his head, and I continued, “I’ve never met a diamond dog, and I sort of can’t pass up an opportunity to learn about such a rare species as yourself.” And maybe learn its weaknesses. No response. “Or maybe tell me a little about the boat you’re working on.”
“Welcome to boat. Hope you like black lung disease,” the dog said without any trace of humor.
“Oookay... Do you have a name? Do diamond dogs even have names?”
“Deeohgee,” he muttered, glancing nervously over his shoulder, which must have been hard when he didn’t have any room for his neck in the first place.
“D-o-g? Dog? That’s your name?”
“No, Deeohgee. Spells dog. Pronounced dee-oh-gee.”
I blinked at him. “Huh. That’s clever. Really clever... I like it.”
Deeohgee rolled his eyes. “Pony done? Deeohgee need get back to work.”
“What’s with the strange accent?” I asked. “Do diamond dogs even have a language as I’d understand it? How come you weren’t taught better Equestrian?” Before I could finish talking, Deeohgee growled at me like a dog. I pressed the back of my tongue against my uvula, growling back at him. Well, it wasn’t a growl so much as was just me gutturally rolling my R, not that foreigners could really tell the difference.
Suddenly Deeohgee stopped and laughed. “Pony can growl? Never met pony what could growl like dog.”
Well, that went better than expected. “Never met a dog what could growl like a pony,” I replied, fishing into my bags. I pulled out my bottle of Bucking Bronco. There was still a speck of blood on it from where it’d hit Jeepers. “Say, do you drink?”
Deeohgee smiled at me. His sharp, jagged teeth did not inspire confidence. Nevertheless, he squatted down at the other end of the table and eagerly held out a hand. I obliged him the bottle, and watched as he took it with the one hand, using a single clawed finger to pop the bronco’s head off. His hand reminded me a little too much of that illusion I’d seen in the farmer’s attic. Perhaps the physical image of that illusion spell was of a diamond dog?
He took a deep swig. “What pony’s name?” Deeohgee asked, giving the bottle a contemplating look.
“Jericho.”
“What kind of name that is?”
I gave him a mirthless tone, saying with the utmost seriousness, “It’s a dog’s name.” He affixed me with a strange look. “It’s not the kind of name a father names his son; it’s the kind of name he gives to his golden retriever.” I let out a chuckle. “Funny how these things work, eh, Deeohgee? But just call me—”
“Government boy,” he said. “Good hearing. Heard you tell Captain.” Deeohgee took another pull of the drink. “Government boy... government boy... Hmm. You know, you only good pony I met. Makes two good ponies in this world.” I cocked a brow, and he explained, “Government boy and Duke Elkington.”
“Duke Elkington? Why him?”
“Pony is cruel, evil, mean,” he said in a dark tone. “Pretty Pony Princess not care about us, not make us ‘subjects’, not help us.” Deeohgee shrugged. “Duke Elkington help dog, say all dogs welcome in Songnam, become our packmaster. He feed, shelter, and care for dog. Pretty Pony Princess don’t mind or care; we loyal only to Duke.” He shook his head in a ‘What can I say?’ way. “Can’t say Deeohgee blame Pretty Pony Princess. Some packs today try enslave pony; pony can’t tell difference between good dog and bad dog. Pony not care enough.”
I nodded. So, if Duke Elkington was helping out diamond dogs and gaining their loyalty, a loyalty which they gave to him and him alone, they’d make for good friends on the Duke’s conspiracy. Those claws on Deeohgee alone looked like they could tear me apart in a femtosecond, but I had to imagine an army of him, and that was... not pleasant to contemplate. “Why don’t you say the word ‘I’?”
Deeohgee sighed. “Dog have many kind of bark, like pony have many language. Western barks not have ‘I’ or ‘you’, only third-person. Saying ‘I’ feel wrong to Deeohgee. Go south, Rambling Rock Ridge—only pack with first-person live there. Wait, don’t. That pack bad. Slave labor. Fail at it, but try.”
The more I learned about Equestria, it seemed, the more screwed up it got. I got the feeling that ponies in Equestria didn’t ask a lot of questions. What was next? A metrosexosaurus? Swarms of insects that caused insane property damage? Dragons in general? All the hot girls were secretly gay? I shuddered at the possibilities.
Handing me the empty bottle, Deeohgee smiled at me. “If Deeohgee didn’t like government boy, wouldn’t have told government boy ’bout bad dogs.” He stood up, gesturing for me to follow. “Come, it bad for pony health down here. Deeohgee not want government boy get black lung disease.”
“That’s from inhaling coal dust, right?” I asked, and he nodded. “Then why are you working down here? Isn’t that at all dangerous to your health?”
Deeohgee waggled his brows. “Dog immune to dust-in-lung diseases that pony get.”
|— ☩ —|
“Good morning, Songnam!” an incredibly loud male voice rang out from the ether as I stepped out from the engine room. I looked around, noticing the many boats around the SSSSS, and then spying the city straddling both sides of the river. Strangely enough, I couldn’t see any walls; if the city were attacked, it wouldn’t last a day. With everything evil in Equestria, did the ponies really feel so safe that they thought they didn’t need walls?
“Hey, it works,” the voice cheered. “You can thank our proud sponsor, Voixécrivain. Voixécrivain—makers of the Parleur and the Voixson! Thanks to them, Songnam’s the first city in the whole world to have an integrated system of speakers! I can talk to all my subjects and give announcements from here in my castle!”
As the voice spoke, I walked around the boat. When I got to the bow, I had to pause and rub my eyes. The river around me was wide and filled with boats, most of them docked in various wharves lining the river and in clearly artificial harbors dug out into the side, and many of them unloaded a cargo of ponies into the city. Songnam proudly lined both sides of the eponymous river (or did the river run through the eponymous city?), many of the buildings painted bright colors, waving bright banners of every hue imaginable, balloons flew all over the place, and I got the feeling that Songnam was a city whose success was measured in how many ponies died of alcohol poisoning each day—the more the better, since you can’t have a party without alcoholism and regrets.
All throughout the city rose towers of brick with red-tiled roofs, each tower waving a flag I couldn’t quite make out. In fact, red-tiled roofs seem to be the in-style thing in Songnam. But as far as walls went, it was brick or whitewashed stone all the way here. The side of the city on the southwestern bank of the river seemed to be on a hill, judging by how much higher everything way. Though hard to make out over the buildings, it looked as if the hill was peaked by a white castle, though I couldn’t make out much. Bridges spanned the river, one of them even looked like it was built exclusively for locomotives, but one bridge further down the waterway was the most massive of all; if the huge skeleton of iron and concrete decorated with streamers and balloons was any indication, it was a few years from completion.
But despite all those colorful sights, none of them held my attention more than the giant statue on a small island in the middle of the river. She was standing up tall on her hinds, her arms standing on a large shield. Made of some sort of glistening white stone, her wings extended just enough to look downright angelic, no more, no less—and given what I knew of Equestrian mythology, I couldn’t say whether or not the angelic symbolism was intentional or not. Maybe some creep out here just had a fetish for sculpting wings? Whatever the case, it didn’t change simple white dress she wore, the crown on her head, the subtly friendly, almost motherly look on her face, nor the horn on her head.
My eyes widened. It was a statue of Princess Celestia. A statue of the fallen angel herself built into an artificial island. “La Maîtresse du Soleil” was carved into the shield. The hell was with Equestrians and that language? All around the statue’s base were huge horns, as if somepony had built giant semi-buried record players around Celestia as some sort of incredibly impractical joke. As the stallion continued speaking, I realized that the voice was spreading out across the water from the horns. Sound carried well over water or something, if I was recalling that factoid correctly.
“So, ladies and gentlecolts, Lollapalooza begins in just a few moments. Prepare to enjoy the drinks and delicacies from all corners of the world, the best songs and dancing this side of the world, the Wonderbolts, parades and floats, casinos, games, talks from me, and all the fun your little hearts can handle,” the stallion said proudly. “And whether you’re here for the celebration or just passing through to parts unknown out west, I wish you the best of fortune, the greatest of times, and a fun day. Plus,” he went on in an almost ecstatic, colt-in-a-candy-shop tone, “if you stick around, I hear a very special lady from Canterlot might just show up!” He took a breath and calmed down. “But till then, check out who’s playing for the local mayoral elections. Orchestra’s going strong, but the new kid on block, rock ’n’ roll, is trying its best to drum up some support, and I do so love me an underdog. Stop on by and cast your support in for your favorite musical party.
“So, as a famous philosopher once said: as when the modes of music change, the walls of the city shake. And as a certain Songnam native once said about us: whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on! Yeow! Let Lollapalooza begin, haha!”
I just stood there as the city around me exploded in a cacophony of shouts, cheers, and confetti. Several balloons rose out from the city and into the sky, and I hoped that each and every one of them had been lost by a small child, a child who was now crying and would eventually drive his parents to seek marriage counseling. I wondered why I hoped that, and couldn’t reach a satisfactory answer.
A flock of seagulls flew over the river as the SSSSS turned and headed for a spot along the docks. Meanwhile, I pulled out the gutted record player and looked it over. Indeed, there engraved on the bottom was a logo, “Voixécrivain”, depicting a pony’s ear and soundwaves. While I wasn’t fluent in the language, I thought I knew enough to understand that the company’s name was literally “Voice-Writer”. Though the label mentioned it was a “Voixson”, a “Voice-Sound”. I fiddled with a volume slider and then pressed play. Though the tone and accent was different, the voice recorded was the same as the excited, friendly Duke Elkington I’d just heard. Turning it off and putting it back, I heard somepony walking up from behind me. Scratch that, some ponies.
Cards, eyes wide with awe, stared out at the city, the statue, and everything around her. For the first time since I’d seen her, she didn’t look depressed, and that was good, that meant I didn’t need to throw her off the boat in annoyance.
Dust, walking beside her, gave me an... odd look. “Hear that? The Wonderbolts are gonna be here.” She ran a hoof through her mane. “Cool.”
I don’t want to deal with this right now. I nodded at her. “And this strange, uh, sound system is interesting. I can’t say I know its like anywhere else, so Elkington’s boast about it being the first of its kind might not be so much empty air.”
“Is that so, huh?” she replied, looking out at the city.
I noticed a large billboard pointing on top of a building. There was a large, toned stallion with two models wrapped around his arms. A cocked brow, he held up a glass bottle with a red label in a hoof. The bottle was filled with a peachy-brownish liquid. “Drink Juggernog!” the advertisement demanded. “Clinically proven to take those punches and duke ’em back!*” The asterisked line was explained in tiny, tiny print at the bottom of the billboard. Taking my binoculars out for a moment, I read the fine print. “Results may vary. If you react poorly to magical beverages, do not drink—”
Shaking my head, I stopped reading. Even energy and sports drinks appeared to have an amount of magic in them. Also, how did one “react poorly to magical beverages”? Was it possible to be allergic to magic? How would that even work? Would it be like hives, or a rash, or full-blown anaphylactic shock? What if a unicorn was allergic to magic? By the Machine Spirit, that’d suck. So, so many question, so, so little time.
Dust tapped my shoulder. “You know what we’re doing, right? A plan, yeah?”
“Of course, a master plan,” I said, and she gave me a dubious look. “And that plan is to investigate the Duke of Marcia.” Her look did not change. “Okay, fine—we’re going to do some reconnaissance, scope out the city, and once we get our bearings and an idea of what’s what, we go after the Duke. We’ll buy as many peanuts as we can, throw them at Elkington, and pray to God that he’s allergic.” In a more excited tone, I concluded, “I estimate about a million-to-one chance of it working, which is pretty much a guaranteed promise of success in my book!”
Lightning Dust shot me what was probably her most devastating deadpan stare. “We cannot have a plan that hinges on Duke Elkington first being allergic to peanuts.”
I groaned. “Well, excuse me, pegasus. How about this: we find his room, open his door slightly, prop a bucket of acid over the door, and then knock. Sound like a plan?” Dust and Cards just stared at me.
“How does that help us solve the problem of whatever’s going on in the swamp?” Cards asked.
“Well, while he’s rolling around on the floor, screaming as his flesh melts off the bone, we show him a bottle filled with a liquid that will stop the acid. We’ll only give it to him if he spills the truth, and when he does, it turns out that the bottle was filled with more acid, thus solving the problem for good.” The mares continued to stare at me as if I’d just told that I wasn’t really who I said I was, but was instead a powerful wizard from the near future. If I really was a powerful wizard from next Sunday, I’d bring back milk with an expiration date set twenty years into the future. That’d convince me, so it’d surely work on them.
“The hell?” Cards muttered. “Are you saying we’re going to torture him with acid?”
“Would you rather I tie him to a chair and pretend that he was Jeepers?”
“I thought you said you didn’t torture ponies!” she barked, stamping a hoof.
“It’s not ‘torture’ or an ‘interrogation’, Cards,” I said in a sagely tone. “It’s ‘kinetic information retrieval’.” She just gaped at me. “Look, so I’m not quite sure on an exact plan at the moment. All I know is that we’ve got to do some reconnaissance, and that the plans ends with the line ‘and then stab him a lot’.”
Dust let out a loud groan. “Are you making fun of us now?”
“I think he does that a lot,” Cards commented, kicking a hoof at the railing.
The pegasus shook her head and looked back out at the city. Cards did the same. A moment later and I heard Dust muttering angrily to herself, even gritting her teeth. Subtlety was probably not an art she’d been educated in.
“Is something bothering you, Miss Lightning Dust?” I probed.
“No, nothing’s wrong,” Dust replied curtly. Well, that was a lie. Not even a particularly good one. If she wanted a good one, why not say something like ‘I just found out I’m pregnant with your baby from the future and don’t yet know how to break you the news’. At least that’d be creative.
My expression got harder. “Lightning Dust...” She refused to respond. I sighed. One of these days, I told myself, I’ll meet a mare who didn’t have psychological issues up the wazoo.
That was about when I remembered that I had once had a (state-mandated) therapist. He killed himself. In his suicide note he expressly and in no uncertain terms blamed me and me alone, and then wrote “maybe life isn’t for everyone”, which was exactly what he suggested to me during our final therapy session. As it turned out, when asked why the state ordered you into therapy, the correct response not “I think my oedipus complex is for dogs”.
The SSSSS pulled into a little spot in the wharves behind a waterside building labeled with the name “River Rush River Run”. Was that a different name than the one back in the forest? I was sure it was. Deeohgee came up onto the first floor deck just as Captain River Rush came down. The girls and I watched as they attached the boat to the docks.
“So, here we are!” River Rush announced. Clearly, stating the obvious a few minutes after it became obvious was a favored pastime of his, judging by the proud smile on his mug. He stepped onto the dock, pulled out a key, and opened the double-doors leading into the building. “It’s open! Let’s hop on in for a spell.”
A moment later and we found ourselves standing in the building’s lobby. The lighting was well enough, Cards and Dust had found two comfy-looking chairs over in a corner to sit in, Deeohgee was unloading crates into a backroom, and River Rush was tidying up the front counter. Me? I was just standing in the middle of the room, a blank look on my face as I did absolutely nothing of note. Something told me not to interrupt Dust and Cards’ discussion, another something told me that talking with the dog or stallion would rope me into doing work, and so standing like an idiot was clearly my best option.
I looked outside the glass front doors and spotted a flier pinned to a wooden pole outside. With nothing better to do, I trotted outside and looked at it. “Princess Celestia coming to Songnam this Lollapalooza!” it read. I looked down the dock and spotted a few more fliers like it scattered about, none of them giving any more information.
The weight of what I’d just read hit me. Princess Celestia? Here? “Plus, if you stick around, I hear a very special lady from Canterlot might just show up!” the Duke’s announcement had said. Of course, he must have been talking about Princess Celestia! How the hell hadn’t I realized it when he said it? I knew I’d talked about her a few times, but I’d actually sort of forgotten about Celestia.
Oh, that Princess. She was a part of my bucket list, “Disprove Celestia”. Of course, now that I was actually here in Equestria, the priority of gandering at a living fable had been pushed back. Far back. I needed to deal with the current problem, have some fun, learn a bit more about Equestria, write a dirty novel, figure out what the deal was with Equestria’s lust for magic, and I was having a bit too much fun doing what I was doing now to really care about Celestia.
What does Celestia even do? I wondered as I stood there, little waves hitting the dock below me. I’d heard and read her being addressed as “La Maîtresse du Soleil”, which I was pretty sure meant something to the effect of “The Mistress of the Sun”. That would fit in with Equestrian mythology. The goddess-like tone she was referred to in seemed to confirm that. If her job was to protect her little ponies, she wasn’t doing that good of a job with it. And judging from the proud, matriarchal appearance her statue—which I was occasionally glancing at—had, her duties more-than-likely involved being melancholic, looking motherly but secretly loathing small children, and generally not putting out.
A light breath of wind passed by my cheek. If all weather in Equestria was ordained by the Equestrians themselves, did that mean somewhere there was a pegasus blowing this one bit of wind onto my face? No, that couldn’t be; too much micromanagement. So... did that mean that the pegasi only controlled large-scale weather effects, generally leaving the smaller stuff to behave like how the world should work? honestly, the more I learned about Equestria, the less I actually knew—
“Would you thugs just speak to me?!” a mare cried out, a sound of marching closing in on me.
I turned around and froze. Stomping down the pier were a number of armored stallions lead by two mean-looking diamond dogs, also wearing armor. The foremost dog had an eyepatch and steel talons over his claws, claws which already looked sharp and scary enough. A sour puss on his face, he tried to ignore the pegasus mare flying next to him.
“Look, I know you brutes don’t like to speak, but you’ve gotta talk to me—I’m a reporter!” she protested.
A magical grip on my sword, I wondered just how fast I could cut the dog’s stomach open versus how long it’d take him to repeatedly rape me to death with those claws. The odds weren’t in my favor, if I was carrying the two properly.
He stopped, his puss twisted into a scowl as he turned to face the periwinkle mare. “Fact that you reporter already evidence of flaw in your moral fiber,” he growled. The mare started to say something, but just sputtered out a mess of gibberish. I pulled my hat down and looked to the ground, trying to obscure my face. Taking my grip off the blade, I prayed that the dog wouldn’t notice me. But, really, who was I kidding? He was probably here to find just how many new sex holes he could stab into my body.
The dog continued lugging himself forwards, the troops following behind. Then, as he was just before me, he made a gesture like tipping a hat at me and said, “Sir.” He turned and walked into River Rush’s River Run, the troops marching in after him. I noticed that none of the ponies had swords or the like, only batons.
That reporter mare landed next to me, huffing. “These stupid guards, y’know?” I looked at her but didn’t respond. The mare looked scrawnier in build than Dust, but still a bit taller than Cards. “I swear, these guys made my job go from boring and irritating to anal penetration with a crowbar.”
I stared at the mare. Did... did she just say that? Was that something that actually came out of her mouth?
“Say, you been here long?” the mare asked in a casual tone.
“Came in with River Rush,” I replied, still trying not to think of the crowbar thing. The bad thing about my mind was that it was impossible for it not to picture things. Well, at least I knew what’d be in my nightmares tonight!
Her eyes went wide as she got herself a proper look at me. “Wait, really?! How!?” She shook her head, offering a hoof. “Hi, by the way. I’m-I’m Tab. And you are?”
She blinked as I lifted my hat a bit. “My name is GB,” I replied, giving her hoof a firm shake.
“I bet you are!”
I inclined my head. “What?”
Tab let out a little giggle. “Hi, again! I’m Tab, reporter from the Cloudsdale Post.” The same one Dust worked for? “So, you came up here on the SSSSS? I’d love to talk to you about that, say, over a cup of coffee—”
I felt an arm around my neck pulling me away from Tab. “Yeah—no. See, his schedule’s busy,” Lightning Dust said.
“Wait, who are...” Tab tried, but her face twisted into a baleful glare. “You,” she hissed.
Dust grinned. “Hey there, Tab. Long time no see, hmm?”
“Not long enough.”
“Isn’t that always the case,” Lightning Dust chuckled back, gritting her teeth. Again, one of these days I was sure to meet to a mare who wasn’t psycho, but today was not that day.
Tab put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me towards her. “I saw him first, Dust. He’s my story!”
“Oh, ho, ho!” Dust laughed, pulling me the other way. “I’ve been on this story for over a day.”
“Bullshit, you just got here! And is this why you took a week off? Lollapalooza and stealing my stories?”
Putting her elbows on my back and resting her head in her forehooves, Dust scoffed. “What stories, you hack? And for your information, this colt’s not an Equestrian, and I’m showing him around, getting me a killer story about all sorts of foreign things.”
“Was ist das denn?” I mumbled, looming between the girls.
Tab’s eyes lit up like so many stars. “Foreigner?” she gasped. Dust hummed an affirmative. “Is that true?” she asked me.
I shrugged. “Ja, Frau. Ich bin ein Ausländer.” A gull flew overhead, and I heard ruffling from inside the building. Something was going on in there and a completely avoidable catfight was distracting me from finding out what!
“You’re really a foreigner and everything?”
“Das hab’ ich eben gerade gesagt,” I droned. “Du Fotze.” Bad stallion, bad! Do not call mares ‘Fotzen’. It’s vulgar and sexist of you... but fun because they don’t know what you’re saying.
“What’s a colt such as you doing here with that witch?” Tab asked, glaring at the mare half-slung over my back.
I shook my head and facehoofed. “Mir ist kotzübel... und mir tut der Hals weh.”
“As you can see,” Dust interjected in a tone that was decidedly ‘smug bitch’, “me and him have got stuff to do, the biggest story of the century to break—you know, normal business for me.”
“Oh, come on, Dust!” Tab scoffed, throwing her hooves up. “This here buck, er, story’s the kinda thing worth a humana humana humana, Maybe even a fourth humana! It’s not like you ever wrote anything of note.” She let out a sharp laugh. “C’mon, rookie. Let those trained to write take these stories.” She put a hoof on my chin and turned my head to face her; I had the sudden urge to bite her hoof for all I was worth. “So, coffee and that story?”
“Ihr seid so scheißfreundlich,” I muttered to both of them. Slipping myself forwards, Dust grunted and tumbled to the ground. Tab laughed at her, but I shot the periwinkle mare a scathing look, and she fell silent. “Look, you two, feel free to have your catfight over whatever’s wrong between you two, but leave me out of it.” I paused. “Wait, Miss Tab, what was that story you were trying to get?”
Dust’s jaw dropped as Tab took a proud step towards me. “Duke Elkington’s guards have been up to things recently, and they refuse to say why. This is the third time in as many weeks that I’ve seen Captain River Rush ferry the Duke’s troops.”
My heart sank into my stomach, burned in sulfuric acid, then gloomily returned back whence it came. I looked around and most certainly didn’t see Cards. “Dust, where’s Cards?”
“Back in the... building,” Dust replied, eyes widening. Before either reporter could speak, I spun around and darted into the front lobby of River Rush’s River Run. Inside, the stallions were all milling about without much purpose, talking casually to one another. When I burst in, they all stopped and stared. River Rush stood behind the lobby desk as he chatted with the two armored dogs.
River Rush waved at me. “Welcome back, fighter of space aliens!”
All in the lobby looked around at each other, unsure. Deeohgee walked out of the backroom, rubbing dust off his arms. When he saw he, he smiled and waved. “Welcome back indeed.” At his words, everypony nodded at me before going back to business. Deeohgee limbered over to me. “Thought you leaving.”
“So did I,” I replied, looking about. “What’s with the troopers?”
Deeohgee gave a sad shake of his head. “Town called Sleepy Oaks. Can you keep something on downlow?”
I looked over my shoulder. The two reporters were standing outside the door, staring at me. “Suppose that I could.”
He sighed. “Just got news. Little town ground zero for outbreak. Say it some kinda disease that make pony cruel, paranoid, suspicious, maybe suicidal. Scuttlebut say it ’cause of weird pony magic. Troopers here to quarantine town, keep townpony safe, keep Equestria safe, keep secret to keep pony from all going panic. Don’t think disease contagious, but not sure, and better safe, yeah?”
That was... something. I thought for a moment. The effects he’d described wouldn’t exactly be out of place for Sleepy Oaks, come to think. In fact, it’d make sense. The train that’d brought me into the town certainly didn’t have any trouble getting me there, and you’d think a dark government conspiracy trying to isolate a town would prevent that. Plus, Duke Elkington’s Voixson might make some sense in that context, even. Not to mention the fact that the Duke’s goons had mentioned an infection to me right before the girls and I had killed them back in Sleepy Oaks. Maybe there was a lot more at work here than I’d known.
Or maybe it was just a story. It was far, far too convenient to be real. A disease that caused paranoia that would just so happen to explain away any accusations that Elkington was up to no good? Please. And if some sort of disease were the cause, it wasn’t affecting Cards too terribly. Jeepers and the other two agents from earlier sure hadn’t looked like they were trying to spot an outbreak, and Jeepers was downright insane and evil. Maybe the Duke had just found himself a perfect excuse to lock up Sleepy Oaks without incurring Celestia’s ire. And if it the disease was supposed to be kept under wraps, Deeohgee didn’t have any issues telling me. So what if they wanted the disease rumor to get out, to make it look like that was the real secret, not that they’d been doing shady business in Sleepy Oaks? That made lots of sense.
But what if both stories were true, were intricately related? Maybe the disease was real; Duke Elkington’s shady dealings had caused it, but he was trying to stop it before it got out and possibly exposed him, perhaps. After all, if you mix truth and lies well enough, you can get away with lying by proving what little truth you have. Whatever the case, I could ask Elkington himself soon enough.
I took a deep breath. “And, uh, where is that young girl I was with? The one who looked like a playing card but acted like a mopey zoo lion.”
He chuckled. “Little pony was on docks out back. Wandered around like pegasus did. Stands behind you.”
“What?” I turned my head. Sure enough, there was Cards, standing outside next to Dust and Tab. She offered me a blasé, sarcastic wave before turning her attention to the pegasi. Of course, Dust and Tab seemed to have gotten themselves into a little scuffle, and were now trying to push each other out of the way. Unless they decided they suddenly wanted to engage in a wicked awesome aerial duel to the death, I didn’t care.
The dog with the eyepatch walked up behind Deeohgee, prompting the latter to turn around. Deeohgee, in an almost hushed tone, let out a mix of barks, growls, and more traditional sounds. Eyepatch frowned, so Deeohgee spoke again, these quiet barks, growls, and traditional noises sounding somehow different. A different ‘bark’, so to speak? Eyepatch nodded at that, then made a gesture towards the backdoor. The ponies and armored dogs saluted, then marched out back and into the SSSSS.
Deeohgee looked at me and smiled. “Stay safe, government boy. And,” he added with a wink, “keep Sleepy Oaks on downlow.” The bastard, he wanted me to mention it! He gestured to the door, a firm expression on his face.
With a sigh I walked out the front door. The pegasi were still busy dueling it out—neither of them actually hitting one another—and generally looking childish. When they saw me, they stopped and smiled. “What happened?” they demanded in unison.
I massaged the bridge of my nose. “Tab, you wanted a story?” I asked, and Lighting Dust shot me the most heartbroken, betrayed look I’d ever seen.
Said mare jumped at me. “Heck yeah! So, where d’ya wanna grab the coffee. Well, no, you probably don’t know any places around here, so let’s go to—”
“Sleepy Oaks,” I said firmly, holding up a hoof to silence her. “If you want the story of your life, find Duke Elkington and ask him about a disease at Sleepy Oaks, and about Agent White Tongue and Agent Boulder. Should be something there. Though I warn you—it could be dangerous.”
“R-really?”
“Very. It’s what I was hoping to look into. But if you’re willing to do it, the story is yours, not Dust’s,” I answered in a calm, reasonable tone of voice.
She smiled wide at me. “Gotcha, GB! And thanks for helping a real reporter, and not that two Bit hack Lightning Dust.” Tab turned from me and spread her wings, only to look back at me. “If you’re still in the area after this, don’t suppose we could still grab a coffee, hmm?”
I winked at her. Taking this however she wanted, she thanked me and flew off.
“You bastard!”
“Huh?” I muttered, turning my head to see Lightning Dust punch me in the breast. I grunted and pain, stumbling back from the blow. Could she hit that hard the whole time!?
“You complete bastard!” she screamed at me. “How dare you just-just-just choose her over me!” She swung again, though I ducked out of the way. “I thought we were working together, you thoughtless jerk!” The game of punch and duck refused to end, no matter how much she shouted at me. “Why would you help her?! That-that hussy! I thought we had an agreement or something! You helped her and not me!” Save for her dry, furious eyes, she looked about ready to cry. “Just abandoned me there, you thoughtless, heartless, inconsiderable—” Dust let out a furious growl as she threw a hoof at my face.
With a single, precise motion, I grabbed her, spun her around, and pressed her body against the wall. One of these days, I’m going to meet me a nice, normal mare... “I really, really wish you wouldn’t jump to conclusions,” I said in a cool, hints-of-underlying-threats tone. “I get that you’re angry and ticked off at that one mare, but rushing to conclusions is just plain dumb, Lightning Dust. I’m not angry, I’m disappointed.”
Her expression didn’t change. All she did was struggle in vain against me. Cards just stared at us, biting her lip.
… and when I meet that nice girl, I’m going to realize that normal ponies are boring and come to hate her. I lowered my voice so that Cards would not hear us talking. “See, I suspect I just sent Tab to her death. That, or hopefully the stockades,” I told Dust, and she blinked at me. “We can gauge the Duke’s... willingness to do bad to protect his interests. I simply got rid of a problem; how he treats her is how he’d treat us if we were direct about it. Either way, Dust, I sided with you back there, and am quite irked that you thought otherwise.”
I let her go and stepped back. Dust didn’t move; in fact, she moved so little that she fell to her knees. She had the blank look of somepony who’d just been stabbed through the heart, and hadn’t had the good decency to die yet. Oh, White Tongue, what fun he provided!
Adjusting my hat and duster, I turned to Cards. A rogue cloud of confetti from the party going on up in the city proper hit said mare in the face. She gasped, flailed around, caught herself, and then spat confetti out her mouth. When she saw me looking, she sputtered something about sending an innocent reporter to her death, but I ignored it.
“Cards, let’s go,” I commanded. “We’ve got to scout the town out and establish a base somewhere safe. I’d recommend a nice hotel.” I took my first few steps up the pier and to the shore proper. Strangely, though I could hear the gleeful shouts of a party, this little section of the docks and its shore were empty.
“Wait,” Dust said in a weak voice. Pausing, I looked over to her and cocked a brow. “What about me?”
I was silent just long enough to make her think I wasn’t going to speak. “Are you coming or not? We’ve still got an Equestria to save.” And a Princess’s haunches to leer creepily at.
Dust rubbed her eyes. She stood up on shaky legs. “Really? Y-you’re not just going to abandon me here?”
Do I sense mental issues here? Who wants to join me in not caring? Hey, Cards, I found you a dinner date for your pity party! I shot my best attempt at a sympathetic look. It probably failed, but I was trying and that was as good as she was ever going to get. “Disappointed is not anger, Dust.” I gestured my head at Cards. “Cards, let’s go.” Then I looked at Dust. “And if you really want, you have the option of coming along, just like you have the option to sit here and never see either of us again. I wouldn’t force you to do something you didn’t want to do.”
Just like that, I wandered up the pier and to the stone shore, whether or not Dust followed after me.
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With every new chapter i remember why i love this story so much!
With everything evil in Equestria, did the ponies really feel so safe that they thought they didn’t need walls?
Well, the biggest organized threats are diamond dogs who can dig faster than they can walk, and dragons and griffons and changelings who all fly. Walls aren't much use. Giant magic barriers, now...
Jericho has the best inner monologue ever
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Without them, Jericho'd be too boring, too serious, eh?
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Ah, a very good comment, good sir. I like it; always look me forwards to such comments.
1) Jericho brings this up in chapter 8. As far as the plot goes, it started out as him just—and pardon my French—dicking around. Then he got himself a mission, a videogame-esque quest, if you will. That mission from his angel was far more fun that what he was already doing, so he did that instead. At this point, he's doing whatever he things he should do: namely, try to figure out what's the deal with that conspiracy. Really, he just didn't have anything better to do.
2) Okay with him? Haha—no. She mentions how much she hates him on several occasions. However, as Jericho himself points in his inner monolog out when Dust asks him about it during chapter 5:
That about sums it up right there. She is far ,far from cool with him. Note how she often flinches when he makes quick movements near here, as if he were a bully. She is really scared of him, but, in a cruel twist of fate, he's the only one she sees as being able to help her. To her, she's literally made a deal with the devil, a devil she's terrified of. She asks him things, trying to understand how he can be such a monster, but in the end with not be like him. As shown in chapter 7, Cards is a more classical-style hero (of sorts), whereas Jericho lack much in the way of any moral fiber, as has been already shown.
Hope that explains everything without me having to say anything that isn't already in the story. If you disagree or anything with me, feel free to say so. I love talking things out with people!
You monster!
Given that there usually are not any walruses in Equestria, they could be doing something even more unspeakably depraved: Train Spotting!
Run for your life Sapphire Shores.
Heh heh heh...
Just wait until he discovers Changelings, Timber Wolves, Fruit Bats, Ursas, Hydras, Cockatrices, Crystal Ponies, Discord...
oh come on, I have to post the image?
i.imgur.com/hZx6T.jpg
Oh, Jericho... you are one of the most unpredictable and eccentric characters I have ever read about. I'm just waiting for some more inescapable bloodshed that he's sure to find...
Also, have I been playing too much Zombies if I think this immediately: encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZHq9XVfS-cOgUN4zeQDdtvmbl4Jkdh2ORmPffesBMEOuA3kGJ
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Thanks. I guess I will need to reread these chapters again once the meds stop doing my head in...
Hmm. That reminds me of something...
OH SHIT! IT'S PET SHOP!
images.wikia.com/jjba/images/f/f6/Pet_shop_2.jpg
Fooooreshadowing.
Reads on.
Filler.
Filler filler filler.
I'm sorry, but most of these descriptions and conversations could have been made much shorter. Please condense. Get to the point.
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Err, according to my notes, Jericho will at one point stuff Sapphire Shores into a refrigerator. Oh, and Mister Welch was a changeling, lest thou forget'st
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Hug me! 
You caught that?
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I'm glad you think that of Jericho. And no, that's not bad to think that. The world needs more nutjobs like Jericho running around.
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If you reread and those problems persist, rest assured, I will totally do my best to edit those solutions better in.
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Yeah, I can totally see the resemblance.
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Any and all feedback is great to read. And yes, Jericho himself was made to be like that. In a sense, Jericho is two stories at once: the dark and dramatic story wherein everypony involved is in some way emotionally or physically scarred from, and a dark comedy with a sociopathic Douglas Adams as the narrator. That was the intention. Jericho is the widget between them: his personality lets him turn the darkest of dark into comedy, and that comedy makes it darker yet. It's a personality thing that I've never seen before (it's probably out there, but I don't know of any works with it) and I thought it'd be great fun to write. Thus, Jericho is equal parts complete bastard and the story's main draw.
I wish you the best of luck, and that one day you can return to Jericho, if only to storm off because of the narrator's personality again.
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I'd argue that filler doesn't have much of a purpose. Here, those moments between Jericho and either Dust o/ Deeohgee serve as important frames of worldbuilding. One further contrast Equestria with the East, as well as helps character build Dust; the later worldbuilds diamond dog's role in the world, as well as builds character for Duke Elkington. All of this is related and fairly important to the plot.
I'd like to ask where you think those could have been much shorter, since I was told by my pre-readers that I needed a bit more description (like of the boat and Songnam itself). As with the conversation, had they been any shorter, it was my opinion that they wouldn't have carried any real weight or meaning to them. I'd like to state that you are free to disagree with me here, though I'd appreciate it much if you could point out exactly where it felt too filler-y, rather than me having a breather chapter and filling the time out with jokes, character development, and worldbuilding, which was my intent.
2665376 First of all, I need to apologize. My phrasing was rude, ambiguous, and unhelpful. But I assure you it is bereft of animosity; I really love your story, and I like what you're doing with Jericho, heroic angst, and so on. I was planning to write a story in that mentality as well, but I'm not sour that you beat me to it. However, maybe that's the trouble. I've spent so much time thinking about heroes should handle guilt, remorse, regret, choices, pasts, and trauma, that very few things here come off to me as novel or engaging. As far as I'm concerned, Jericho is stating the obvious to people who are understandably and forgivably mistaken, but mistaken nonetheless.
There's a certain lack of tension in that. They're straw men, in your hands; you beat them too easily. I think you need to make their arguments stronger, more compelling; you need to make them into iron men. Sure, they still are your things, they can't really fight back. But if you make them as tough as you possibly can, you can still make a genuine spectacle out of skewering them.
I'm an avid reader of fiction, especially pony fanfiction, so I'm rather spoiled. Fallout Equestria and Project Horizons, the Immortal Game, Harmony Theory... The kind of gore that Jericho indulges in, and his "doesn't care about that much of anything anymore" mentality don't strike me as shocking, but only as mildly interesting.
It doesn't help that I lost a bit of sympathy for him since, in his mind, he declared that he didn't really care for Dust after so little time knowing her. A bit unfair of me, it was perfectly reasonable of him to feel that way, given his past, but, nevertheless, I've started caring about him and his fate less.
Cards and dust also spent a lot of time being helpless civilians, in that farm house, the sort that cry a lot and panic and are annoying to protect. That doesn't help.
As for Diamond Dogs, well, I've cared about the ones in Project Horizons, a little, but I don't feel especially compelled to care for these; the "we're a diverse, misunderstood, and overlooked category" angle has already been exploited extensively.
But, back to Jericho, there is too much telling about him, and not enough showing. Maybe some proper flashbacks would help us see his perspective more easily, synchronize with him better. As he is, I feel there is just too much of a disconnect.
Also, I was feeling exceptionally lazy when I posted that.
Nevertheless, when your reader can skip entire paragraphs, and come out with the feeling that he didn't miss out on anything vital, it means some tweaks need to be made. Beats me as to which.
2665743
Hmm... interesting thoughts an points. Allow us to discuss than as rational beings, sine you raise good points.
Jericho, in the long run, aims to be a story about such trauma and feelings. Everything, in the end, and everypony (
evenespecially Princess Luna) is going to come out a little worse for wear, mental or physical scars either being made or old ones being reopened and exploited because I'm evil. If I like a character, I show it by making them hurt. Physically or mentally. I give them mental trauma to sort through. I make them manually drill holes into their bones. The thing is, Jericho himself is utterly immune to mental trouble beyond what he was born with; he is physically incapable of feeling guilt, angst, or remorse.They are not straw men so much as Jericho views the issues as stupid. As noted throughout the story, he finds getting angsty over such things a waste of time. So, of course, as the narrator, he would consider the entire argument won before it began. In his mind, the issue is so many straw men. In the minds of other characters, however, this is not so true.
This being said, I really don't mind that you feel unsympathetic to Jericho. In fact, that's part of my goal. It isn't that he "doesn't care about that much of anything anymore", it's that he never cared in the first place. Oh, sure, Jericho will go out of his way to fight evil, but... well, his motives for it all are a bit off. As Jericho himself notes, and I agree with, you should not feel bad for him at any point, especially not for his past; he was born as he was, but made actually better by his past, not worse. He doesn't think like you or I do; to sync with him is to become a sociopath. The best you can do is comprehend his motives. If you want to feel bad for somepony, feel bad for Dust and Cards.
Okay, here I'd like to disagree hardily with. For most of the story, they're pretty proactive. It was only a brief scene where they were like that. Note how they were the ones who saved the day in the Doc's house, and who saved Jericho's life against Jeepers; Cards lead Jericho and Dust around; Dust knocked a deputy out on her own. Damsels don't do dat.
The diamond dog angle I'm working with is more of how they relate to Elkington. Their relation to him is what's important; the other bit is just how I felt diamond dogs were treated by ponies, and the dogs are exactly innocent in all this. There relation to Elkington helps build him as a character without ever meeting him yet.
And as for the last bit, if you don't read something, how can one know it's inconsequential? I have the annoying habit of making those small things matter, even if all that was is a character thinking about it later. Or, otherwise, was just me trying to crack jokes, which itself notable, as Jericho is partially a comedy. (Discussions are still welcome!)
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Glad you find it interesting. Actually, laudanum was a real-life drug, once upon a time.
And yes, I do like those things. Douglas Adams was really important to helping me find my voice as an author; I do quote him a few times, even, as my little way of paying homage. I don't know how you knew I was a fan of Firefly. As for FoE, I swear I stumbled onto the FoE:PH TV Tropes page as I was almost done with chapter 4. Similarities are mostly in that, in the back of my mind, I'm writing Jericho as though it were a crossover with some nonexistant western RPG, so parts of the story are meant to have a slight videogame feel to them.
Oh Jericho, you have no idea how right you are. . . Except about that last bit. Maybe
In all fairness, Equestria is a f***ed up place if you look at it in the context of an outsider.
2669027
Jericho:
Watcher:
Jericho:
Watcher:
Jericho:
Watcher:
Jericho's peptalk in chapter has great similarities to Watcher's speech to Blackjack. That Jericho and Blackjack are card fanatics, have come across some odd dealers, and are frequently beat the hell up are only some of the similarities that gives this a Project Horizons feel. Not a bad thing, mind you, as I'm a big fan of that sort of thing, but it's not going to go unnoticed.
As for Firefly interest, Jericho says:
And Zoe Washburne says:
So yeah, that was kind of obvious.
2669507
Oh, yeah. That Firefly line. I knew there was something about that in there, but I sort of forget about it. I'm dumb like that. but at least I changed the verb tense...
As for Project Horizons... hmm... Yeah, you're right, they are kinda similar. Someone had mentioned it before, but I hadn't exactly realized how odd it was. One major difference, though, is that [name] was being utterly serious, and it's unsure if Jericho was lying and, if so, how much of it was truth and how much was so much overly-idealist hot air. As I said, I stumbled onto PH towards the end of writing that chapter; further to that, I read up into it because I thought it was funny how Cards & Blackjack looked kinda alike. Still nowhere close to finished. When you said, quote, "Jericho and Blackjack are card fanatics, have come across some odd dealers", what does that mean? Odd dealers and card fanatics? Other than that, I show my affection to my characters by making their lives a living hell of agony and emotional trauma. Thus, Cards' life just gets worse and worse; Dust's life gets worse and worse; and Jericho's life is unchanged, no matter if I gouge out his stomach and drown his internal body cavity in sulfuric stomach acids while he's fighting the final boss of Act One.
I wonder me if my editors got them something to do with that feel. They're read/played these things. In fact, TheLordSiffer (editor extraordinaire) pointed out that my portrayal of Duke Elkington in chapter 9 thus far made the Duke sound like a mix of President John Henry Eden and Three-Dog.
All in all, a very interesting comment, and one that makes me want to go and read those early chapters of PH again. And, like FoE stuff, Jericho is written in the spirit of open-world Western RPGs (sort of the Bethesda style) and some fancy D&D, with stats, quests, perks, dice rolls, and everything—doesn't meant I'd ever indicate much any of that, just that it's in my mind when writing. Thanks for writing that comment, and I look forward to any forthcoming thoughts from you. Also, spoiler tags? Does one do them here?
2669578 Yeah, Cards struck a Blackjack chord for me, if only for the name. And the security position. And getting people killed. Looks like I misread Jericho's introduction to the game of Einundzwanzig as being a bit more mystical than it actually was. Blackjack, though, as you may know is constantly haunted by a skeletal card shuffler that she calls The Dealer. Still, the fact that Jericho'd always win by blackjack was something that kept pinging at the similarities.
Bethesda, huh? Incidentally, "Jericho" is pretty much THE first recruitable companion in Fallout 3, and isn't exactly a "nice guy" himself.
Jericho doesn't exactly come across as an uncaring sort, but the morality that he uses is culturally divorced enough from that of those around him that he can seem baffling. Green morality in some cases, as he puts it in Ch7, rather than black and white. He's manipulative of others to the point that they become useful to him, but he's never needlessly cruel or sadistic. He never gets to enforce his "torture/interrogate to death" threats because either 1. in Card's case she was undeserving or 2. in Jeeper's case it would do more harm to his allies (who will be useful to accomplish his goal).
He's shown to be willing to kill if necessary, but otherwise seems himself as a tool to be used. So as far as suffering goes, I'm not really seeing it. A tool that doesn't really care if it breaks in the line of duty, so long as the duty is done. The only thing that a tool would care about would be enduring a useless existence, but since he's a walking repository of healing potions and his coat is made from many discarded Batman utility belts, a long-lasting injury or debilitation seems unlikely.
Dust and Card are also not incredibly successful at being engaging or even sympathetic characters. For the most part they're extremely lacking in the common sense department and once they join Jericho suddenly seem to drop all mojo of their own, leaving them for the most part as obnoxious hangers/damsels in distress who seem to have nothing better to do. Even when Jericho is being hanged they just stand there in the audience and watch. They don't even say sorry for not speaking up, but just start following him again when it's clear that he's going to be breathing for the next few minutes. Putting aside how Jericho would feel for a bit, being the blunt tool of a protagonist and all, how can C and D even travel with him? I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be willing to follow someone who'd not even care if his companions let him be hanged. I mean, I GUESS they can have a little slack given that one is unstable from grieving a lost friend (alcoholic and borderline suicidal) and the other is a sleep-deprived (I know a bit of how sleep deprivation can affect people), bitter academy washout, but they really should know better.
I understand that by being an open-world RPG protagonist Jericho's path is bound to wander, and that as a party/companions Card and Dust will need to tag along, but I really feel you could stand to define their motivations a whole lot more (or reinforce it, in Jericho's case). Jericho's doing it all because of a favour *oooh, mysterious* but we still don't know what his goal is. Dust seems to want to be where the story is, but I don't quite get why it's that important to her. Cards... I don't know, she has nothing better to do but drift in the wake of the larger forces in her life? Either way, those two would benefit by being a bit more independent and showing initiative that doesn't just line up perfectly with Mr. Primary Protagonist.
I wasn't sure about using spoiler tags at first, since the events in my previous comment happen in chapter 3, but I felt that since it was someone ELSE's story I was quoting from I would be remiss if I spoiled it. As for spoiler comments in THIS story, if someone is afraid of them then he or she really shouldn't be reading them, eh?
Speaking of which, Project Horizons is freaking huge, but an incredible pleasure to read. Going back to the first bunch of chapters after getting caught up to the recent ones lets you pick out the IMMENSE amount of foreshadowing that would otherwise be discarded as background info. Enjoy your re-read.
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That was... extremely, extremely insightful. I mean, wow, was that a good comment. 'Twas so damn comprehensive and elegant that I needed to take a breather. So... yeah. It was great. Were all comments even half as brilliant, I'd be able to pick out every flaw in Jericho till the story was near perfect. Now, allow me my turn, shalt thou?
Truth time: That story about Einundzwanzig/blackjack? That was just me taking a story from my life and putting it in here because I thought it was interesting and would tell a bit about young Jericho. Every detail about that story, save for it being a boy who yelled "What are you?!" and not a girl, is true and from my life. Truth is, blackjack is the only real card game I know how to play, hence why it's my favorite card game. (Cards against Humanity, although amazing, doesn't count.)
I do seriously find Cards/Blackjack's physical likenesses strange. Stranger yet once you consider how Cards was born. That is, she was originally a stallion what actually worked for the government. Then I gave him ovaries and he was now she. Then, I decided that she wasn't a real agent for the government. Then, I decided to let her live. What began as a character I was going to torture to death became the emotional wreck and companion character known as Cards (even when she had gonads, s/he had the same name and general color scheme).
Oh, and Jericho's name is for in-universe reasons, reasons relating to a major historical point. And I've ne'er played with F3 Jericho, because I'm such a goody goody two-shoes. (Note, though, that the name is pronounced utterly different in German than it is in English, even though Jericho is giving here so far the English pronunciation: /dʒɛɹɪkoʊ/ is English, /ˈjeːʀɪço/ in German.
As for your analysis of Jericho, I think it's about spot on. As my editor said about him, "Jericho does tread the fine line between enemy and friend, someone you cannot get along with and someone whom you hold most dear." As far as injuries goes, just wait a bit. I mean, I can't cripple anyone, since that'd mess the story up, but I can do the next best things
Ah. Cards and Dust. Hit us right were it hurt, the fear that they weren't good enough. I'd like them not to be damsels, though a major reason they're tagging along is more-or-less because they've stepped into a dark world they didn't know existed, and Jericho seems to know how to live there; they have reasons, but I suppose that I tried to leave too much unsaid (like the long, long awkward moment at the end of chapter 6), but this was clearly too obtuse for my own good. But, my God, you've pointed out a major point. While I saw their lack of help as they just being too scared/surprised to help, it was too far outside their realm of normality to know how to properly deal with, but I clearly failed to convey that to the reader. But now that you've pointed this gaping hole out, it creates a few other shockwave effects. Meaning? Means I'll need to go back and write a new ending to chapter 6, and write it today! Plus, edit a bit in later chapters to show Jericho still has some distrust of the girls. The last thing I want them to be is unsympathetic, since they're the only characters whom the audience is meant to feel for.
However, on this point, could you offer some advice? How could I improve them specifically so they are more sympathetic and engaging? Those two are supposed to me representative of Equestrian mores, and who view Jericho through Equestrian eyes, but are still unique individuals, each with flaws that motivate and destroy them. Yet too are they being manipulated by Jericho. Heck, if I could move just one person to tears over Dust and Cards and what happens to them during Act One, I'll have done better than I'd've ever thought possible.
You've given me a lot to think about, a lot to edit in and fix, and I have but thanks for your time and effort, trying to help a clear noobie to this "writing" game here.
Oh, and you have said how to use spoiler tags on Fimfic, mate!
2670577 Wow, uh, this comment chain is getting beefier by the link, huh? Yeah, I know that Jericho is named after the ancient Canaanite city (or its Equus equivalent, as he mentioned as much early on), but I thought I should just point out the Bethesda angle since you mentioned it (I never got to play with him either, but I'm sure he'd have some interesting dialogue). Since all Pony names are mildy prophetic/ironic (Cards' life folding like a house of cards, Lightning Dust being all show and sparkle with no substance) I imagine that Jericho's going to get some similar treatment. Most often the main thing that people remember about the historical city was that it had walls and it fell after a large group of nomads shouted. If I had to guess based on the name alone I imagine that this means that Jericho is slated to fall at some point.
I seem to remember seeing a history video that described a bit about the city: that it was made of layered blocks(or bricks) and was on a hill to make it difficult to assault directly. Some bridges can be destabilized by marching to a certain rhythm (the reinforced vibrations tear them apart) so it's likely that the same thing happened way back then: he desert refugees (numbering a little over a million if some calculations are correct) destabilized the city by marching around it for a nearly a whole week before giving it a huge sonic blast that caused at least one of the walls to collapse and slide down the hill (after which point they flooded into the breach and killed all families bar the one allied with them, but I'm sure you knew much of this already, being researched as you are).
Anyway, assuming that something similar is going to happen to Jericho, then this means that he's going to be stalwart brick wall through pretty much all the story, not letting anyone in. He will, however, be mystified at the goings-on around him that seem to make no sense, yet they will pick gently away at his foundations until all it will take is a really good shock to cause him to fall.
Gonads, being mammalian gamete generating reproductive organs, can be found in both healthy males (testes) and females (ovaries) so I imagine that Card'd still have them, unless something went horribly, horribly wrong when the universe was twisting reality about. Then again if she doesn't have em', at least she won't have to worry about being dealt the "Mother" card.
You'll have to forgive me for some of my criticism as to the mares, as it was going on 5am in the morning and that's way past the time that my empathy starts shutting off (looking back, Dust DOES express confusion as to "what" is going on, but never really follows up on the "why"s and doesn't even give a "why not"). I can understand that you want to keep some of their character close to the chest to preserve some of the mystery as to their motivations, but I feel they'd really benefit connection-wise if the reader could get an understanding of some of their feelings for tagging along after the fact. I'll admit it was really funny when Jericho tried to be too genre savvy and waited too long for them to save him, but the reader's view follows Jericho's experience. Through him we expect them to rise to his defence (after all, hasn't he done enough for them?) but instead to his (and our) shock they stand there awkwardly. So we need to ask ourselves: why?
Cards might have a reason to see him done in, given that he killed Glasses and White Tongue and helped her kill boulder, but it's not like Cards really seems to want him to die, she's not heaping insults on him or anything. She's shell-shocked (that part is understandable) so she doesn't even act, but it feels weird that she or Dust don't bring it up later (Jericho we can understand his stoicism, as he seems to be an expert in nasty situations). I'm not really sure why Lightning Dust doesn't raise much of a protest when he's being lead away or on the block since she has selfish reasons to want him alive (he's the key to her journalistic success, and she wants a piece of his flank) but that can be excused a little because in addition to trauma she's had horror-terrors visiting her in the night.
As for advice for improving the characters, I'm sure you can look to my expert track record of all of 0 stories published. Writing is really hard, and you have my respect in that, but I digress.
Regardless, this is what I'm seeing: these are broken characters that seem listlessly slumped against Jericho in much the same way Jeeper's puppet slumped against the floor. The puppet can't do much of anything without the master, and neither do these girls do much without their GB to shore up their motivation. People might feel a bit sorry for a puppet with it's strings cut as it's kind of a sad sight, but not many will cry for it. Cards is a major underacheiver with no goals, so unless she finds a real motivation to continue she's going to stay a damsel or meet a messy end (have her ask Jericho to apprentice her in fighting or defence, perhaps?). Dust is a fragile journalist/bitter washout, she has goals and dreams she could acheive and depression she can drown. Either way, she has much more potential to be a free agent and actually go do things on her own (put those investigative techniques to good use?).
Closest sympathetic side character I found was DeeOhGee as he manages to have the wonderful combination of 1: a spine, 2: a soul, 3: the desire not to immediately mangle Jericho. Most of the NPCs lack #3, but have plenty #2 and enough #1 to stay relevant. The mares lack #1, although Cards DID have a #1 before Jericho ripped it out and replaced it with a #3.
*edit* Actually now that I recall, Lyra was a cool NPC, given that she was willing to go out on a limb to help a stranger. Excluding her and
totally-not-LunaSelenan (and maybe Bon-Bon too, but we didn't get much of her), Equestrian mares seem to be getting a bit of a poor rap (though that might just be Jericho's squint). So far the ones that have stood out were the doctor's wife (beaten, and angry/scared for it, turning to random violence), Cards (beaten, and angry/scared for it, turning to random violence and alcoholism), Blackout (beaten, and angry/scared for it, turning to murder), Dust (horny and violent, turning her frustrations outwards).*end edit*Newbie author, hah. Right. Don't sell yourself short.
Reading the story a second time through really cleared up the questions I had. While I am woefully under equipped to provide an in-depth review about characters, motivations, and plot, I can inconvenience a few hundred bytes and share some random thoughts about a few things that piqued my interest in your story.
Reminds me of the story Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross with the Laundry agency tasked with secretly protecting humanity from the horrors from beyond time and space. Sounds like Teuchland is tasked with a similar job... I wonder how Jericho would feel about Trixie, openly flaunting her magic in her shows, or Twilight, the living avatar of magic itself. (Does that make Twilight the Equestrian equivalent of Yog-Sothoth, Opener of the Way?)
Huh. Cutie Mark butt sticker == Mark of Cain.That certainly is an interesting idea. Depending on how closely you follow the original story of Cain, that raises some intriguing questions. Who (or what) is the mark protecting the ponies from? (Cain's mark was one big "Don't taze me bro!" warning to all his vengeful family members). Does that have anything to do with the otherworldly, many-angled nastiness that the Teuchers daily fight? If so, that certainly casts the CMC's antics in a grim and sinister light; they are not merely trying to gain their peer's approval, they are fighting for their lives. (I imagine some Langolier-like horror silently stalking blank-flanked fillies and colts, daily drawing closer and closer...
Somebody should get ShortSkirtsAndExplosions on that; add a filly version of Lyra to the mix and it would be right up his/her alley...)
What flavour of fallen angel is Jericho referring to? Is it the cheesy "did you fall from heaven, 'cause I thing God is missing an angel" pick-up line fallen angel or the sinister "Great Accuser and Adversary" model? Are these even the same people? Does Celestia have some skeletons in her closet that Equestria does not know about. If so, that will make things really awkward if Jericho runs across Celestia and/or Twilight at Lolapalooza...
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Ah, that 2nd "are" ought've been an "any". Lemme fix that... and done. Thanks! I'm currently editing up chapter 6 to have a different ending, so...
Maschinengeist is a word that I connect to my own Latin phrase "Spiritus Machinae", the "Ghost/Spirit of the Machine". In English, I made this into the "Machine Spirit", about whom I'll go into more details at some point. Suffice it to say, it is related to the "Holy Spirit"—Heiliger Geist/Spiritus Sanctus. Because "Maschine" is not an adjective in German, and since the English construction "Machine Spirit" relies on a genitive thing that no other languages proper uses anymore, I just mashed Maschine and Geist into one word. That's not too horrible of me, is it? I liked the look of that word.
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Well, Jericho would not be too fond of Twilight or Cadance or Trixie. Especially sine Cadance, using her magic for "love", would technically count in Jericho's book as mind rape.
I'd say that the Teutsche beliefs on the cutie mark would be more along the lines of it, "Once you have it, a part of your soul is now exposed; hide it well, let only you love see it." Ignoring how Teutsche see it sort of like how European cultures see a woman's breasts, probably...
Waltharius' status will be mentioned later, I tell you. Since I have a few thousands years of backstory to tell, from this universes' version of the Roman Empire to TL's current economic and political landscape, you'll just have to bear with,
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I'll be honest: I've never watched that show, but I've been told many times that it's amazing. I should get to watching it...
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*Pant* *Pant*
Hey, Luminous Lead, guess what?
I spent all of yesterday dwelling on what you said, and all of today working at what you said. I just updated chapter 6. It now has an entirely new ending, starting from after Jericho gets lynched. Plus, Dust protests when Jericho's taken away. This new ending changes the relation of the characters, too! It's 101% better because of you. Please, I'd like you to look at it and tell me if I failed again at making the girls good characters. I hope I did. Plus, the chapter's some 3k words longer than before. (Plus, I edited chapter 7 to reflect this change).
As for Jericho's name... :Grins Evilly: I won't give anything away, but in-universe, Jericho has an entirely different meaning, but that doesn't change its real-world meaning. Heheh... keep being awesome at your thoughts.
Thanks for what you've been helped me with, Sir Lead!
Supernatural is a pretty good show (though I've only seen parts that my housemate isn't too afraid to watch.). Seemed quite a bit like the Hardy Boys meets Grimm, if you've seen that show. The first season is a bit funky as everyone is still trying to get the tone down, but it's still good and really improves as time goes on.
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You say you hope you failed again?
Sorry to disappoint, it's quite improved!
As you mentioned before, the character dynamics have changed. Dust and Cards find a good reason to leave town, and manage to bond while still keeping Jericho as an outsider (they join up for their OWN reasons, not for his). They reinforce their goals and their resolve to see them through (not that they necessarily can, given the level of competence shown so far, but the fact that they will regardless is way more important). Having him rest behind a rock while they recover from their own lynching was a nice touch, since it allowed them to talk it out in a natural fashion (as demonstrated before, there wouldn't be much time to discuss things in the middle of a mob) and more importantly, actually allowed Jericho (and by extension the reader) get the whole story.
Chapter 6:
Then in Chapter 7:
I suppose this scene (originally the striking of the deal, I guess) repurposes as an affirmation of the previous deal. Given that Lightning was freaked I guess she didn't expect it to be put to the test so soon. Though given Jerry's original stance...
Yeah, that's not entirely endearing, Jericho. Still, given that he didn't promise to care about her, but rather to help achieve her goals I can't really fault him for it. Jericho's weird. I mean, he goes out of his way not to tell lies if he can, but if it serves his purposes he'll do it without batting an eye. I can respect that in a way, as it takes a lot of resolve to throw your whole self behind something that won't support you in return. Very goal-like. Very tool-like. Very much something I'd like to learn how to do some day. And for all of how you claim that Jericho is meant to be difficult to sympathise with, I find him very human. His point of view makes sense, even if I don't agree with his methods.
Also, on Lightning's friends' (plural?) story.
Mayhaps disapproved of it? Approving a story and then junking it seemed a bit counter productive the first time I read through, but now it occurs to me that it might have been a typo.
All in all, an improvement like this early will help will enrich the options for character dynamics later on. Good job!
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Ugh. Me no speak-a le English so good, it seems.
I set out to change the dynamics in accordance with your excellent points. Too did I set out to better establish character motivations. Each character the same goal, but with different reasons for it—like how for Jericho's it's a great deal just a reflexive drive to push forwards, for he doesn't really know anything else. I was hoping that'd made the characters all better for it.
Curious just how human Jericho can be. That he makes sense was pivotal to me. He might be a bit of a nut at times and have strange thoughts, but he's end-of-the-day logical.
As for that last line, no, not a spelling error. It could and adverb and a better conjunction there, however.
With regards to me thinking myself a newbie to this whole writing thing, as someone once said, "the first million words are just practice".
Thanks for all the help, Sir Luminous Lead! Seriously, you made Jericho 20% cooler. I hope to see you again around these parts, ya hear?
2679019 Just as a good diet promotes healthy digestion, having diverse character motivations promotes a healthy plot. With various puppeteers trying to control the direction of the story, you might find it going all sorts of places.
Don't you have to be knighted to become a Sir?
Glad I could help, anyway.
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... You would not be wrong at all. But, really, someone had to write a story with the Bardic Knock Spell, eh, you spoony bard?
Oh snap, I almost thought I'd get away with new chapter 6 for a second there. Well, hopefully Lightning doesn't run after Jericho like a scared kitty after the end of chapter 8, but I'm still gonna carry through with this in the name of lolz (one more in the name of lolz). The less people that know what I'm talking about, the more lolz.
Also my typo count has gone over 2 dozen tbh, but don't worry - I've also found 3 typos in the new king james version. They're in acts, jeremiah, and job - all the books no one pays attention to.
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Hmm... since you found some spelling mistakes, would you mind too terribly pointing them out to me so I can fix 'em?
Yeah, see, spell check doesn't always do the job. Most of your typos are duplicate words or a sentence that's missing a word and doesn't make sense. In chapter 8 there's a spot where you said people instead of ponies. It's not like I write down typos whenever I see them.
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When I use mess with pony vs. people, that's not a mistake. The words have different in-universe meanings, especially to the narrator himself. When he says people, he refers to not just ponies. I have a team and editors and yet I still miss things. Grr...
Card look at the ground.
it's in the chapter 6 rewrite, there was another one, but I forgot it already (maybe 2)
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Ah, well. Fix'd them errors. Thanks!
This reminded me of the joke about African and European swallows from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Anyway, another awesome chapter! A word of advice, though: early in the chapter (especially when they've just gotten on the boat and Lightning Dust tells Jericho about Cloudsdale), I feel you're overdoing the whole "wacky internal monologue" thing. When used in moderation, it's funny and adds colour to the story, but in some parts of this chapter there's an outrageous metaphor or other mental derail almost every paragraph. It becomes grating and distracting that way. Fortunately, the rest of the chapter is much more balanced in this respect.
Keep them Kapittel coming!
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I went overboard there because I felt that that part of the story was a bit dull, since they were on a boat. So I felt I needed to spice it up so it wasn't boring. It was at least funny, right?
Oh my goodness! Is that a reference to The Angry Beavers?!
That is so awesome. 
Just out of curiosity, what sort of music is Das Mandala, anyways?
At first, given Teutchland's warlike nature, I thought it was some sort of march, but the name doesn't seem to match up with that.
“Are you coming or not? We’ve still got an Equestria to save.” And a Princess’s haunches to leer creepily at.
If I die of a ruptured lung I will haunt you for the rest of your natural life.
Oh god, I had a good laugh.
A friend of mine did exactly the same in Belgium when a pair of passersby got annoyed by us talking loudly in German... Unfortunatly, some of them understands German pretty well.
I know a few German words, and the general rule for any Swedish person is "Add an 'CH' at the end of every single word."
So, KRIEG KRIEG KRIEG! xD
Reminds me of Megas XLR, even though that's probably not a reference to the show.
Daaang, I haven't seen that in years. Maybe I should try to find it archived somewhere.
Thanks for that.
"And I hoped they each and every one of them..." typo!