In the Not Too Distant Future
Luna’s Academy was closed today as a rampaging hellbeast from the pits of Tartarus stopped in Ponyville as part of his tour to take over Equestria, giving Vinyl and I a lovely chance to catch up after Lyra and Bon-Bon’s wedding (We received a lovely card from them sent from the Crystal Empire). After we had finished boarding up our house, we retreated into Vinyl’s DJ room as it was built to completely block out the outside world and was the safest room in the house.
“Can I fetch you anything?” Woodhoof asked as we finished closing the door and Vinyl cast her protective seal on the room.
“No thank you Woodhoof,” I said, smiling at him as the floor shook below us. “I think it would be best if we just waited in here while the danger passed. Speaking of,” I looked at Vinyl, “Do you think this will wrap up soon?”
“It will,” Vinyl said. “I mean, this can’t be worse than the parasprites, those little pests almost devoured the whole town. At least today’s big baddie doesn’t seem to have any interest in harming buildings.” As she spoke, a mountain visible outside of our window exploded. “Well, that… That could have been an accident.”
The four of us leaned in closer to see beams of light firing at each other. “Oh look,” I said, “it seems somepony is already fighting him. I bet I will still be able to open the academy up in time for night classes.” While I was supposed to just lead the music department, complications arose that made me the temporary acting headmistress. I cannot wait to get back to teaching students as opposed to dealing with administrative and disciplinary issues, at least I can tutor one student though, so I suppose that is a small consolation.
“Come on Tavi,” Vinyl groaned, placing a forehoof on my back. “Can’t you give your students one day off? I mean, Ponyville isn’t destroyed every day.”
“No,” I said as a bright orange mushroom cloud lit up the horizon. “Just every other day.”
“We do not understand,” the fourth member of our party said, one of his his green hooves poking at the ground. “Why do you hide from death when it strengthens us and allows the collective to grow stronger.”
“Well, for most ponies, being completely disintegrated doesn’t allow us to grow stronger, it just kills us,” I said.
“I can think of two exceptions in this room alone,” my fiance said, flashing me a smile before kissing my neck.
“First of all Vinyl, that was a one night only affair, I highly doubt I could survive a hit by any of those death rays flying through the air right now, and second of all, I was trying to teach Moldy a lesson about what is and isn’t appropriate in equine society. You know he wants to properly interact with ponies someday. To answer your question, Moldy, do you remember how you managed to survive your first few purgings? Back when you were still a barely mobile pile of goop.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, joining us in looking out the window at the lightshow. “Some of us were able to hide, resist, or otherwise avoid the death you rained down upon us, and those few survivors prospered and made us stronger.”
“Right, but the individuals tried to preserve themselves when the cleansing came, correct?”
He nodded and for a second I felt as if I was lecturing one of the students a teacher had sent in to be disciplined, “Well, ponies are like those individual cells. If you wish, you can think of Ponyville or Equestria as the collective that we make up, and in times of crisis, we try to ensure our survival so that our collective can endure.”
The sentient mold creature (Note: Go to library Twilight and ask if she can help me in coming up with proper terminology for whatever Moldy is) turned to look at me in thought, his black eyes appraising me carefully. “We believe we understand you. Combining this with the information you gave on pony birth and reproductive rates, the best way for the collective to endure is by carefully guarding the lives of it’s individual members.”
“Exactly,” I said as the fight outside finally seemed to die down. “You prosper by purging your weakest members because it was easy for the strong to replace them. In our… collective, each pony is too valuable to be replaced and so we instead focus on improving them and helping them as opposed to purging.”
Moldy nodded his head once before retreating to the back of the room. “Thank you for your insight Deathbringer, we shall meditate upon your words and the wisdom within them. Also, when we have our next purging, we would appreciate it if you tested our resistance to extreme heat.”
“Of course,” I said, smiling at him before going back to look at the window.
“Okay,” Vinyl said, “if we ever have foals, you are definitely going to be the lecturey not-fun disciplinarian.”
“I expected nothing less,” I said as a blast of magical rainbow-colored energy raced up into the sky.
“It does look like the disturbance is almost over,” Woodhoof said, “Should I go put a pot of tea on?”
“Not yet,” I said, “I’d prefer it if we waited until the sky had stopped glowing orange.”
“Of course, Miss Octavia.”
“So, Tavi, now that you have been living here for almost a year, what has been your favorite calamity that has befallen Ponyville?”
“There are just so many to choose from,” I said, sighing in thought, “Of course, the first one I ever had to deal with still holds a special place in the darkest corner of my mind, but I think the one Rarity caused shortly before the Winter Moon Festival was my favorite.”
“Oh, right,” Vinyl said, “I remember how weird it was when Pinkie told me you were being forced to play for some colt’s birthday party. Of course, it got really weird a few minutes later when half the town was turned to crystal. Good choice, I liked that one too.”
“Thank you,” I said, nodding my head appreciatively as the blast of rainbow energy continued to expand and head towards the town. “Is it odd that we’ve come to view disasters as a rather blase affair? Also, what are the odds of that wall of rainbow energy being bad?
“Pretty much nil,” she said. “It usually happens when things get really bad to bring everything back to normal. Really came in handy after Discord took over Ponyville. Also, I don’t think so, I mean there are so many you eventually just have to get used to it.”
“Do you know what this means then?” I asked, trying to contain my smile.
“That the danger is almost over and we can start unboarding our house?”
“Yes, but more importantly, it means that the Academy can be open for night classes and tutoring sessions.”
“Do you really think anypony is going to show up?” Vinyl asked as the world outside was consumed by the rainbow light.
“Not at all, but it’s important to have standards, dear. If it is at all possible for the school to be open then I will open it, and if none of the students or teachers can make it, then that is on them.”
“You won’t be docking any of the teachers’ pay will you?” Vinyl asked. “Because that did not go over well the last time Ponyville was almost destroyed.”
I groaned, recalling my decision to keep the school open after Ponyville had been temporarily thrown in a pocket dimension. It seems most teachers would rather have a day off than do their jobs, and the resulting dispute led to Ponyville’s first ever labor union, which I suppose is technically an accomplishment, just one I won’t be celebrating it anytime soon. “I suppose I won’t,” I said, “But the academy stays open. It is important that we stick to our schedules, as Luna expects nothing less than the best.”
“Alright,” Vinyl said as the lights from the outside finally cleared up. “But do you want to go out and have lunch before you go back to work? Remember, you really need to relax more, the doctor’s say a mare your age should not be dealing with your amount of stress. Actually, they said that no mare should have to deal with the amount of stress you put on yourself, I think that at your age it’s especially important.”
“Very well,” I said as I trotted over to open the door leading from Vinyl’s DJ room, “The usual place?”
“Can I order hay frites?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Alright,” she said as she followed me out the door. “I suppose I can find something else to try out.”
“Vinyl,” I said as we headed down the stairs, “Every time we eat there, you want hay frites, I select something else for you, and you walk away saying it was better than the hay frites, not to mention most of your meals come with a side of hay frites, so I really don’t see why you keep trying to order nothing but the infernal fries.”
“I guess I really like hay frites,” she said, forcing me to sigh.
After we had taken down all the boards, our planned trip to the cafe was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a castle on the outskirts of town. We followed the herd of ponies moving to investigate the sudden unexpected appearance, where an impromptu musical number broke out, and Celestia help me, I joined in.
Unfortunately, the princesses decided that the salvation of Equestria and Twilight earning her own castle was worthy of a national holiday, meaning that no matter how much I would have liked otherwise, the Academy would stay closed for the day. At the very least, it gave me a free evening to practice my cello playing, so I suppose it’s not all terrible. Just mostly.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Distaff Pope · 225k words · 332 24 · 6.9k views
- Distaff Pope · 76k words · 181 10 · 3.2k views
- Distaff Pope · 11k words · 152 6 · 3.3k views
- Distaff Pope · 25k words · 126 2 · 1.8k views
- Terrasora · 23k words · 563 7 · 5.5k views
- Bunnybooze79 · 156k words · 321 10 · 5.1k views
- generalsnaz · 135k words · 436 12 · 7.1k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.229 seconds
Total duration
923 users online
470,902 hits today, 2,364,530 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
4365615 Almost certainly did. Thankfully, that chapter is up on the editing block next week (The week starting on the 18th). It should be fixed then, and if not, I am the worst editor ever.
4368954 Heh, orchestral puns. Always fun. Apologies for being terse, but I'm under the weather and a little hoarse.
4375769 People becoming their Halloween costumes is a common enough trope that I feel it is less a direct reference as it is a cool idea I wanted to use in my story. I don't think I was consciously thinking of any one particular instance of it when writing the story. If you want though, I can totally say it is a reference.
4376736 If you need to find something with it, the season two Halloween episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer had it. So did one of the Halloweentown movies, but nobody really cares.
4406579 It's funny you mentioned the season two halloween episode of Buffy because while I won't say this was a reference to that, I was inspired by it. I also saw the Halloweentown movies.
4407156 Heh. Like you, I'm sure there's loads of them. Buffy just did it very well.
4413508 To be fair, this wasn't exactly subtle. I might as well have been saying "This is the Penultimate Chapter" in semaphore.
4413546 I don't know how to respond. Thank you? Maybe? I mean, most of those emotes seem happy.
4413548
Lol, the edit kinda clarified it. But yes I was pleased and looking forward to the :sniff: final chapter.
4413546 What sound?
4413599
The sound whose very mention of it was enough to rouse Tavi from the spell.
4415058 The sound she makes? Yeah, Octavia will never be mentioning that in her journal.
4417262 Okay, first of all. Thank you for all the stuff. I actually do know the difference between its and it's intellectually, but when I am typing them up my hands kind of default to it's because it feels like it's should be the possessive form of it because that's how it works with most nouns even though that is very clearly wrong.
Second of all! You were describing homophones, not homonyms. Homonyms are spelled and pronounced the same but have different meanings like fluke (A worm) and fluke (Stroke of luck). Homophones sound the same but have different spellings like they're and there (Although I would argue there are some minor pronunciation issues between the two).
Finally! Holy crap, would you be at all interested in helping me edit my stories in the future?
4417658
Argh -- you're right, "homophones" is what's being referenced in this case. That's what I get for working on two different things at once; I was typing up some notes in another window that were dealing with homonym issues, and obviously failed to switch mental gears at some point.
(It's really not a very nice word to use anyway.)
(...what?)
(They prefer to be called "alternative-lifestyle phones" now.)
(...wait, what?)
(Well, you see, when a phone and another phone love each other very much–)
(PINKIE!)
(...I'll explain it to you later, Twilight.)
(...I don't get it...)
Anyway. The "it's" vs "its" thing trips up a lot of people, and it seems like a lot of people have never even heard of that trick of expanding the contraction and putting it back into the sentence to see which one's right, so I just figured I'd mention it.
(Yay for English spelling rules, where things that look right, aren't right, and things which look wrong are actually correct. 
)
Heh -- I suppose I could be talked into it, as long as you don't need same-day service; I do have a couple other proofreading-and-editing commitments already...
(In the meantime, I need to clean this pony infestation out of my keyboard again, apparently.)
4443330 Thank you for the positive feedback, I always love reading comments. Also, the town tests ponies until they are either assimilated or driven completely mad.
4443677 It's fine her issues aren't completely identical to my own, but mine informed hers.
Good story.
I would like a sequel. Maybe planning for a wedding.
Brilliant story my good author. This demands a continuation.
4447030 It wouldn't be a finale unless a whole lot went wrong for Octavia at once.
4447835 There is a continuation in the works, but Octavia won't be the protagonist for it. Like I said earlier, it's somepony near to my heart and nearer to my username.
4448580 Don't worry, it's a sequel in the sense that it's set in the same universe and features some of the same characters. As much as I LOVE writing for Octavia (It really is fun), I want to do something different, and liked the idea of exploring the Academy from a student's perspective *Cough* Sweetie Belle's *Cough.*
4454971 I don't know how far ahead you are now, but I think things worked out well for those two.
4463733 So, I wrote that chapter over half a year ago, could you remind me exactly of the Ozymandias reference? Obviously, it was totally intentional (I think, it sounds like something I'd do, I just really can't remember it and stopping to read the chapter would take away from time spend writing new horse words.
4464979 Oh come on, if it can handle Pinkie Pie, it can handle a couple of days of Anthro-Con.
4465225 I don't think she even realized that herself at the time.
Thank you!!!!!!!
Even though I'm pretty sure you were trying to kill me with all the heartbreak and pain I still adored your story!!
Now off to finish the Before the Orchestra shorts and then contemplate what the hell I'm going to do with the rest of my life.
4470532 Glad you enjoyed it, a shame I won't have your delightful comments on this story to look forward to anymore.
What a fun story! I love TaviScratch or whatever the ship is called, and this one does the relationship justice. It felt natural, it was fun, and I like the buildup to the final reveal, at which point I clapped my hands like a caffeinated monkey and had to come here to make a comment.
Liked. Favorited. Followed.
4470880
Awwwww thanks!! But don't worry I'll get round to reading the rest of your stories soon and I'll make sure to spam you with compliments!
4474428 They don't have to be compliments, I am quite happy with comments that are generally genial (And some that are mildly critical). I just like hearing people's thoughts on my story.
4475663
I know, but I'm pretty sure most of them will be complements
4485100 Could you point out the area you are referring to, because I know I had things set up as a time loop, and there's a scene where he is reading a book that is heavily implied to be Octavia's journal, I think (I did it before the show did it). Also, I feel like he is the type of chaos god to really get to know his marks before psychologically breaking them.
4499956 I feel like from what we've seen in the show, Celestia's Academy can be viewed as a special case. For most ponies the need isn't there. Five of the Mane 6 never had a higher education, and we see there is no evidence that they ever went past primary school. There seem to be a few basic things all ponies need to know, but after they learn that, they are usually self-guided when it comes to mastering their special talent.
The only times this REALLY becomes problematic is when a pony has a mark that makes it difficult for them to be self taught, like if it relates to the sciences. As Equestria enters the modern era, this becomes more and more common and the need for standardized higher education has risen. Whereas before, Equestria had been on roughly the same technological level for millennium, in the past few years modern technology has started to be invented. The railroad is less than a century old, airships are pretty new, and medicine has moved from consulting a witch doctor to going to a hospital. Science has made leaps and bounds recently, and more ponies are getting a cutie mark that relates to it, regardless of this stories events,a new school would have come along in a few years anyways, and within a decade, there would be another school.
That's my headcanon at least, feel free to disagree with me.,
I'Ll start off by saying the story itself is good. I just had to push myself to read it all the way through. It had gotten significantly better throughout the story, but there was a lot of structural and editing issues and a need for more individuality, but it was good.
4530105 I can't seem to recall him, I... Oh my goodness, I set up that joke a year ago and never fired it. Night Light is Twilight's father. Octavia hated the book and complained about it to Twilight, making several disparaging remarks about the author, Twilight reveals her relation to the writer, and Octavia is promptly humiliated.
4533823 Thanks for the proper spelling. I don't know how that 's' got in there.
4534038 Sorry for not responding to your questions faster. She read backwards because she just kind of naturally flipped to the end of the book, saw the last entry and then started moving backwards in time. I kind of have a habit of doing that with things that are kind of broken up like that.
4623725 Ha, it actually never manifested. I still kick the idea around now and then, but it certainly won't be July when I am making Foal Fever
4627400 It's funny how you can know the rules to something but still forget to perform them. Sorry for the issues, hope they didn't impact enjoyment too terribly much.
4629577 Nope, you're right. Contractions are something I struggled with starting out, and as my editor can attest, I am still working on them, and at times my ability to keep my dialog sounding distinct kind of collapses. I acknowledge both these things are problems and while I have gotten a bit better with them since then, it's not perfect yet.
4629684 You know what, you're right. At least, I think your mostly right. I know Vinyl's eyes are a shade of moderate cerise, I went so far as to look it up on the wiki, much the same as you did. I suppose when I was looking at that color, I found it a shade closer to magenta than pink. That might be my fault as I don't have the most distinguished eye when it comes to color, so to me, when I was making that judgment, moderate cerise what dubbed a very light shade of magenta. I was also tempted not to say that Vinyl's eyes were pink because Tavi's eyes are definitely pink, and to describe Vinyl's eyes as pink would breed confusion to the unfamiliar and make it seem as if they had the same eye color. I could have worked around it by describing it as perhaps a pinkish-magenta, but the idea didn't occur to me until later.
Future stories will fix this problem, but for now, let's handwave the problem by saying Tavi thought of her eyes as magenta and that she has the same problem with colors as I do.
4631075
Okie dokie, sounds like a plan
4643143
I have no idea what i was actually saying, but since i read this and left that comment, i have heard and learned a good deal of that song on guitar.
4646046 I've never been completely obsessed with her like other members of the fandom, but I always preferred the idea to a sympathetic mare with a brash exterior who made a couple of bad choices as opposed to her being a complete and total jerk.
4651352 What do you mean, did you not like the story?
4652462 Glad you enjoyed it. I would prefer not to have the life squeezed out of me so I can keep writing.
4652821 Point taken. Well I liked the story yesterday and my phone died on me (personally i think discord did that since he's not very fond of his role in the story) but I charged it and here is your fav. BEST STORY EVARRRR!!!! (second to foe ... umm if... you don't mind <.< >.>)
4655595 It's fine. I also encourage you to check out some of the sequels. Currently doing a daily challenge with Foal Fever where I try to get out one chapter a day.
Loved it and I'm looking forward to reading more of your work. You earned yourself a follower.
Awesome storie, thanks for sharing, such a beautiful work
i have been curious, what happen to Octavia's parent's afterwards? they got the verbal beatdown of their lifetime sure but any foreword what happen to them before the wedding?