Where's the Rum?
"Ba da da da da daaaaaaaa-Because the world ends todaaaaaaaaay when the hoards have their waaaaaaaaaaaaaay..." Josho sang. Eagle Eye sang... and danced. There were four bottles between them, two empty, two sloshing around in the crooks of separate hooves. "So the Queen's crewwwwwwwwww must go marching onnnnnnnnn—Ba da da da dum dum dum!"
"De dum!" Josho insisted.
"De dum dum!" Eagle Eye retunred with a pirouette.
"De dum dum dum, you dum dum!" Josho growled.
"Snkkkkt—Eee hee hee hee hee!" Josho's spin went out of control. He collided with Josho, and soon both bound stallions were slumped with their backs against the metal husk of the managlider. The air tasted of fermented burps and rust while they allowed their inebriated chuckles to carry them into bleary-eyed tranquility.
"Whewwwww..." Josho swirled his whiskey and took another sip. "Mmmm... Nice ballerina spins there, kiddo."
"Thanks—HIC!" Eagle Eye teetered left and right, his beautiful mane a tangled mess. "I-I used to practice at—HIC—home when my dad thought I was fixing the farming equipment."
"I always thought you'd rotate..." Josho fought a wave of vomit, swallowed it down, and pointed. "...but only when you were sitting in somepony's lap."
"HA!" Eagle Eye heaved, leaning forward and giggling with euphoria. "Eee-hee-hee-hee-hee!"
Josho's eyes blinked heavily. "Anypony ever told you that you sound like a donkey that's sucked on a heapin' load of helium?"
"Anypony ever told you that you're—HIC—ugly as sin?"
"Everyday. Hell, even my ex-wife did."
"Oh really? HIC! Why'd you stay with her so long?"
"Because I AM so long!"
"HA!" Eagle Eye tried shoving Josho's shoulder but slumped over in the grass instead. His next few giggles were muffled. He lifted a dirty muzzle in time to slur, "You've yet to prove it!"
"Not in front of you, k-kid!" Josho grinned wickedly. "I'd rather be eviscerated by a Xonan death squad!"
"While set on fire!"
"That's a damn fine way to go!" Josho sipped again and leaned back, sighing. "Unnngh... you know, when I first woke up with you coupled to me, I thought you were gay."
"Now there's a word I haven't heard in a while..."
"What, 'gay?'"
Eagle Eye hiccuped. "'Coupled!'"
"Heh! Yeah, don't I know it." Josho turned and smirked at the lavender unicorn. "But, seriously, kid. You are really, really, really, really gay."
"That's four 'really's.'" Eagle Eye said pointing with all four hooves. He nearly dropped the whiskey bottle, but saved it with a beam of telekinesis. "You'd better get yourself checked!"
"Ungh! Why?! I'm an honorable old soldier! You wouldn't take advantage of me, would ya, ya drunken fruit dispenser?!"
"I'm not drunk..." Eagle Eye stumbled up, teetering, and lurched back towards his seat besides the managlider. "Nor a disentangler of fru-fru-fru-fruit!"
"Snkkkt! You sure sound like you're both!"
"You know what I am?" Eagle Eye grinned with rosy cheeks, sitting down next to Josho again. "I'm homeless, that's what I am."
"No no no no no... You're not homeless!" Josho took another sip, then chuckle. "However, you did get the first syllable right. Eh heh heh heh—"
"No, for real!" Eagle Eye slurred, staring into his whiskey bottle. "Homeless means I don't have a home. It means I don't have a family. At least... not the—HIC—family I thought I had. So what if I'm me? I can't not be me, y'know?"
"Err..."
"My dad gets sick of seeing me be me... so he'd rather see me go away... see me get killed in some stupid war..." Eagle Eye's grin melted into something more exhausted, more bitter. "Is that what it means to be a father?" He gulped. "To make sure your kids meet an end that's way more spectacular than yours?"
"I wouldn't know, kid..." Josho sighed, gazing up at the clear blue sky. "My dad died before I was old enough to carry a manarifle."
"The war?"
"Mmmm... next best thing..." Josho's eyes were thin, steely. "Xonan incursion."
"So... that... explains it..."
"Explains what?" Josho smirked aside at the once-dainty pony. "An unruly is an unruly animal, and needs to be put down. I don't care what Xonans may have done or plan to do. They're the enemy. It's as simple as that..."
"Heh..." Eagle Eye toasted with his bottle held high. "Is that why you love doing this so much?"
"Doing what?"
"Getting sloshed, you big fat idiot!" Eagle Eye took a mighty sip. He shuddered as soon as the gulps ended and slumped even further into the soil. "Mmmmmmfff... now I know why Crimson always told us not to get—HIC—hammered. This is nice and all... but it's the pits all the same..."
Josho blinked at him. He looked at the stallion's disheveled mane, then back at his face. "You were gonna stab me, weren't you?"
"Hmmm..." Eagle Eye glanced tiredly over. He frowned. "Don't you be coming onto me, old horse..."
"No, I mean earlier on the train..." Josho pointed towards the air. "With the foxes and the boxes and the cars... the foxes in box cars..."
"Ehhhh..." Eagle Eye shrugged, cradling his bottle in two frail hooves. "I dunno..."
"You were, weren't ya?" Josho smiled. "It's alright! I probably would have considered the same thing if you were falling through the train and I was standing on top of you instead."
"I couldn't do it..."
"Why not? Maybe if one of us died, the manacles would turn off and crud!"
"No no no no no..." Eagle Eye sighed. "I... just don't like killing..."
"Pfft! Bite your tongue! You do it all the time!"
"Because I have to..."
"So? You joined the army—"
"Doesn't mean I have to like it!" Eagle Eye suddenly growled with draconian resolve. It even made Josho shudder. Looking over, the petite unicorn frowned venomously. "I became a fighting member of the Blades Guild because I thought I could prove something! Instead, all that happened was me falling apart. And it didn't take all that nonsense at Foxtaur to do it, y'know. Those Xonans? The ones you seem to not care about? They might be savage animals, but their screams sound a lot like yours and mine, don't you think?"
Josho stopped teetering long enough to blink back and say, "I never gave it much mind—"
"No, you didn't, did you?!" Eagle Eye frowned, though he was growling into the shadows between them. "You only thought of yourself! Of proving something! Of getting away from the past! Of becoming something your... nnngh... your f-father never was!" He flung the bottle down into the ground. It didn't shatter. Eagle Eye stared blankly at it, then switched gears completely with a high-pitched giggle. "Heeheeheeheeheee..." He pointed at the intact bottle. "Look at that! I can't even smash bottles when I want to!"
Josho's nostrils flared. He shrugged. "Face it, kid. You were never built for this kind of stuff. Drinking and killing—"
"What, and you were?!" Eagle Eye's giggles gradually morphed into painful hyperventilation. "Did it... d-did it ever occur to you th-that a stallion's worth is not measure in the number of bodies he kills... but the number of souls he saves?"
Josho opened his mouth, but found nothing coming out. He glanced with a sudden stupor at the half-empty bottle in his grasp.
By this time, tears had welled up in the younger unicorn's eyes. Eagle hugged himself and started to tremble. "All I've been making since the get-go have been mistakes... and what's the price for discovering h-how pathetic I am?" He gulped, sniffled, and stammered, "Ponies have died. Left and right. Ponies I didn't even know. And for what? I have no home here. I have no home anywhere. All I have for myself is a hole built out of shame and regret. So much killing... and not a single bit of saving..." He covered his face and wept. "Crimson is gone. Phoenix... Zenith... so many lonely families... so many lost children..."
"Look, kid, I know it sucks," Josho grumbled. "But you gotta pull it together. I mean..." He placed the bottle down with a shaky hoof and smiled awkwardly in the stallion's direction. "You'll live through this. You'll be a better stallion than your dad ever was..."
"And just what will I-I become...?" Eagle Eye gazed up at him, his face streaming with tears. "Wh-what have you become?" He gulped. "And are you happy with it? Proud, even?"
Once more, Josho was silent. A pale sheen had fallen over his unshaven features. He realized that his hoof was still trembling.
Eagle Eye grimaced, then avoided the older pony's gaze by covering his face with his hooves once more. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. I just... I-I just want a place to be safe... to be clean... to be happy..." He gulped. "I want a place where there's a pony for me to come home to... and t-talk of all the joys of the day... and none of this ugly nonsense... it's just so very ugly..."
Josho sighed. He didn't realize he was doing it until he felt the trembling weight of Eagle Eye against him, but he had stretched a forelimb over to engulf the tender pony in a side-hug. "You'll find that home, kid. You're not like me, ya hear? You're... you're the kind of pony who deserves the good stuff."
Eagle's sobs were quiet salvos of tears, muffled in the coarse coat of Josho's shoulder. His weeping carried him into fitful slumber. All the while, Josho gazed heavenward. With each deep breath he took, the sky above him became foggier and foggier, though there wasn't a cloud to be seen.
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DAMN DRUNK PHILOSOPHER PONIES!
a whole chapter of drunken blabbering. Great job, but DAMN that was hard to read through.
honeytiger is so freaking confused right now.
Cheesy as hell.
The "souls" line made me groan.
Very nice. Some meaningful bonding, perfectly Executed.
Aaaaaaaaaw...that was cute.
Now, I bet there is an adults only version of this scene somewhere.
Heh heh, yeah....no. Still, these two are so cute together.
Who would've thunk? The drunk and the manestylist.
IN B4 Rainbow and Roarke fly overhead and spot them.
Aww...now I have some feels...
I love seeing backstory and good character development. If somebody had told me a few months ago that these two would be this close, I would've called them crazy.
They won't remember anything the next morning. calling it now.
Drunken philosophy is the bestest kind.
Those two are as drunk as a skunk and a monk in a bunk locked in a trunk full of junk.
Drunk or not; still unexpected.
DAWWWWWWWWWW JOSHO AND EE ARE FRIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEENDS
Okay I'm done.
Also, looks like some more characterization time! Gotta love when a messed-up character was left fatherless soon after birth. Or when a slightly less messed-up character gets pushed out by their father quite a while after birth. I swear, everybody here has daddy problems.
It should be "returned," but that's not why I posted this.
I posted this because IT'S SO GODDAMN FUNNY.
Definitely a finding a home motif going on here.
Roarke, Imre and Kera have the same thing going on, though I think IC might have a tough time making that explicit.
I think there is a mandate that everything in this story that can fly and isn't Dash must catch fire and crash. Axan and the Steel Wing only survived their earlier encounters due to their status as first-disc superbosses. They won't survive the next round. Roarke probably won't be keeping her ship much longer unless she splits ways with Dash's party, because that would be far too convenient.
Good thing Whitemane's wings are vestigial, eh?
2610895
Holy drunk philosopher ponies, Batman!
This is Australia...
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-
Went from laughs, to feels, to character development, with some though-provocation along the way, and all in the course of a single chapter. Well done, IC. This is exactly the kind of delicious narrative whiplash I've come to expect from this monster.
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This was an excellent pair of chapters.
Of course, Eagle Eye/Josho is my favourite group right now...
Seriously though, good show.
you're going to kill him off, arent you?
Damn, EE seems to be having some hardcore PTSD while drunk. If he doesn't get that in check soon, there will be problems
Talking philosophy whilst drunk is a one-way trip to feels, depression and an ungodly hangover.
Love it when you intermingle the slapstick and the heavy stuff, IC. Bloody love it,
EE really needs to find a less traumatizing line of work. As much as he wants to prove himself, it isn't worth much if it destroys him along the way. Given that he's a side character in the Austraeoh series, death is a fairly likely outcome, so it would be in his best interest to get genre-savvy in a hurry and find a different, less scarring job.
2614404
2613301
Do tell, throughout these 482 chapters, how many have died? How many of those have names? How many of those were good guys? I hereby declare this entire thing to be its very own genre! Those of the genre-savvy would do well do be on the Rainbow side.
Josho's spin went out of control. He collided with Josho, and soon both bound stallions were slumped
... ?
Oh for suns sake, they're bonding.
Well what would you know. They are going to get along after all.
2611135
Rainbow would never let them live this down.
This chapter just goes to show how they all keep running away from the truth about themselves.
I get the feeling that Josho is actually trying to push him into that direction. You know, just a tiny little bit. Is he hitting on him? OH HELL YESH.
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500.000 citizens of King's Landing approve this message.
Ceterum censeo Searinem delendam esse. Why is the rum gone?
...huh, that wasn't exactly what i was expecting, lol.
IIIIIt's Dashie's evaluation time!
Who would've thought that it would take but a few bottles of rum to get EE and Josho to share their feelings? We already knew all of that stuff about EE, but now that Josho's figured it all out, I think that he sees EE in a different light. And hopefully it's gotten him thinking about himself as a pony as well. Perhaps he drinks so much because he unconsciously wants to drown what he's become...that's pretty deep. These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
Aw! I swear if you pull a George R. R. Martin and kill EE there will be words. Very inventive words that'll make Josho and Floydien seem sane and coherent.
I suppose that goes for any character that gets any amount of development in this series, really. Curse my easily impressionable mind! 
But yeah, all that drama aside, this was great. I like that these two are becoming closer, even if it took a bit of friendship lubricant to get them there. Well - off to the next chappie - onward!
Eagle Eye does a pirouette and Josho runs into Josho. Interesting.
2612303 I miss whitemane, because she wasn't an ass like most rulers we've seen, and actually gave us solid world building backstory.
So it takes drunkenness for Josho and EE to really open up.
-Spirit
Y'know, considering Josho and EE were both completely hammered, they were very articulate. Hmm... Maybe unicorns are permanently intelligent or something. Curious...
This explains a lot. EE, I love you.
And Josho, you're a pretty cool guy.
4272834 my thoughts exactly.
Josho and EE: Drunken best pals
And josho finally realizes how much the two of em have in common.
Huh. Going into this I expected a purely comedy chapter. I'm glad I was wrong about that, its good to see Josho and EE get some more understanding of each other. Even if they may not remember it haha
Amazing how being so drunk you cannot see straight gives one so much clarity.
They hate each other sober, but are best pals drunk. Still, EE is going to regret it tomorrow.
Smashed it is!
Ooooo, and drunken introspection, too.
And then some character development, too too!
I can't decide if this chapter is funny or sad...
Even though we haven't read any (or much) of the actual fighting agaisnt the Xonans, the war is still made very real by the character's words, actions, and memories. It's an incredible underlying aspect of the story.
Just a thought, but I highly doubt that Josho has learned a cloning spell.
But why's the rum gone?
Wow. That was a really good chapter!
-Solar Shift