Chapter 1: Into YOUR Living Room
The Advertisement
Tinkling half-abstract music plays over a perfectly white room, in which a mare stands. Her coat is pure white, and she has a long, flowing straight black mane with one white streak down one side; her legs are long and her stance proud. She wears a peach-colored scarf and a strange frilly sort of garment about her upper hindquarters, rather like a translucent pair of shorts. She would be beautiful, were she not terribly skinny, but then this is the new fashion for beauty, taken up by a population most of whom have never known real hunger for a day in their lives. Her expression is absolutely emotionless, and she speaks one word as if hypnotized: "Succession."
We switch to a big, muscular stallion. He is entirely orange; his mane has been dyed to match his coat. His face is firm-jawed, beetle-brown, and utterly vacant. He is wearing a blue propellor beanie and, for absolutely no obvious reason, a matching blue tail-bow, as if he were a mare of six thousand years ago. The camera focuses on his face; he has an absolutely-determined and yet incredibly-vacant expression, as if he is very heavily drugged. He says, in a gruff masculine tone: "Succession."
Three Ponies, a rather trim red stallion wearing a formal dinner jacket and two mares, both peach-coated and very slim, wearing very wispy evening gowns through which their whole forms can be discerned, with frilly shorts on underneath and very high, spike-heeled shoes, trot by as a female narrator, speaking in a heavy Prench accent, says "Succession."
The music grows wildly and atonally dramatic, almost painful to hear, and all five Ponies stand atop rectangular objects of different heights, facing in what looks like random directions, with very dramatic and yet vacant expressions. A male narrator, speaking in a Pranco-Germane accent says: "The new fragrance, for new Ponies who dare to be different yet belong to the future. The fragrance that comes forth to take up the torch of change, the new leader ..."
All five say together: "Succession."
Across the bottom of the screen appears a famous logo: an indigo "R," coiled as if it were a mane, with two lovely long-lashed blue eyes peering out from them, gazing directly at the viewer, over the words: "Rarity Enterprises, Ltd."
The Agency
Far away from the interview, there was a conference room located near the top of a tall skyscraper looking down on the gorgeous tracery of light that is midtown Manehattan by night. Despite the lateness of the hour, that conference room was full of Ponies.
The Ponies in the conference room were jubilant.
"And it's launched," said the tall, lanky Pegasus stallion in the suit jacket, blazer and tie. His coat was cream, his mane white-blond, his eyes blue, and his face at once firm-jawed and smiling, as if he was both defiant and satisfied at once. He turns to the others, obviously expectant.
"Great ad, H. C!" said one of his subordinates, a pert-faced orange-maned aqua Earth Pony mare, standing bolt upright from her chair in her enthusiasm. Enthusiastic cries of "Yes!" from the others.
"Fantastic ad, H. C!" chimed in another, her eyes shining in honest enthusiasm.
"The best ad ever!" opined a third, waving a hoof excitedly.
"The ..." the fourth one begans. Everypony else looked at him questioningly. "... the greatest ad in ... the history of advertising?" He was a small Pegasus stallion, gray-coated with curly dark gray hair, wearing glasses held on with an athletic strap. His face is nervous and eminently forgettable.
"Indeed," replied the tall cream Pegasus. "I have today initiated a new age of advertising, one which goes beyond the mere presentation of products in terms of their utility or even desirability. Instead, I shall sell the ad itself to the public, as a work of art which will lead them to herd after it and buy the product so that they can shine in my reflected glory."
His followers gazed at him worshipfully, smiling in awe and in what -- on most of the female and at least one of the male faces -- seemed remarkably like lust.
High Concept beamed benignly down upon them. Just a perfume advertisting campaign, but everypony has to start somewhere. This catapults Conceptual Advertising onto a broader stage. It's just the beginning.
He thought briefly of his real father, who had refused to marry his mother, who failed to see her worth and by implication the worth of his bastard foal. His father, who did not and had never wanted to be more than a small-scale society writer, a mere hanger-on, a cheeful, mindless bon vivant. Who utterly lacked in the true vision High Concept himself possessed.
I'll show you, Dad, he vowed to himself, and not for the first time. I'll show them all.
As much as he can be, High Concept was ... in that moment ... happy.
The Principals
In the parlor of a small mansion near Ponyville, sitting on a very large and overstuffed couch, its framework made of moonsilver, and upholstered with a lush but very tough composite silastic fabric -- resistant to casual penetration even by Dragon claws, which was why the designer chose it -- sat a very unusual couple. She was a white-coated Alicorn, with the long-elaborately styled indigo mane and lovely blue eyes on which was modeled the corporate logo. He was a long-limbed, late-adolescent winged purple Dragon, with green spikes and a yellow-green belly; his eyes were green and intensely intelligent.
They were Rarity Belle and her husband Spike the Dragon, the two principal owners of Rarity Enterprises, Ltd, and their jaws were gaping in utter astonishment. They looked at each other with expressions of dawning horror.
Rarity was, as usual, the first to express herself vocally.
It was not a pleasant sound.
"WHA ... HAAAH!!!" cried the Princess Rarity Heathspike Belle, in a voice very similar to that of a dying hippopotomus, though it was a simile which few pointed out to her face, and fewer still since her coronation. "What was that? That was not the beautiful spot I had planned for the Interview! That was a travesty of our advertisement! A TRAVESTY!" She raised a hoof so that her cannon covered her face, then lay back dramatically, as if collapsing beneath the sheer weight of the injustice.
"Yeah, that pretty much sucked," agreed her husband, both because he had learned from long experience that it was best to agree with his wife on anything but a really bad idea, and because -- as was normally the case regarding Rarity and aesthetic matters, she was completely right. In forty-eight years of association with her, Spike had acquired a fairly-keen aesthetic sense of his own, and that ad had blown chunks big-time.
"Sucked?" asked Rarity rhetorically. "'Sucked' is insufficient to describe it! The models looked as if they had been drugged and forced to perform at bolt-point. Their lines made no sense. And the clothes, Spike, the clothes! Strange little wisps of fabric, shoes that looked like instruments of torture, those horrid little pantalettes -- what mare in her right mind would want something like that on her derriere? And those socks! The socks! Garish, gaudy, mismatched. The socks!
"Terrible," agreed Spike, muting the TV volume and reaching for the phone. He was a veteran of many such tirades, and knew how this would turn out. He was ready to play his part.
"We shall have to flee the country," said Rarity, sitting up to strike another dramatic pose. "To Zebrica, perhaps, or Neigh-pon. Or Antarctica -- I hear some of the shoggoths there have taken to wearing clothes, haven't they? And there's always the Moon, or Mars ..."
"Martial," grunted Spike, by way of affirming his understanding, while his large but still-dextrous claws worked the buttons of the phone, calling up a number he had already stored in speed-dial.
"We could go incognito! cooed Rarity excitedly. "As just ordinary travelers! None shall know our true identities." She clapped her hooves together. "Ooh, Spike, wouldn't that be fun?"
The large, adolescent purple-and-green-and-yellow Dragon looked at his marshmallow Alicorn wife, then off as if to an imaginary audience (a habit he'd picked up long ago from Pinkie Pie) with a very dubious expression on his face. He was well aware that they were one of the most recognizable couples in or out of the Realm. He was also well aware that Rarity knew this as well.
He smiled fondly at her.
"Sure thing, Rarity," he said. "I'd love for us to take a vacation. First let me take care of the problem -- okay, hon?"
Rarity nodded.
Spike pressed the "call" button on his phone.
"Hello," said Spike, in a controlled but somewhat menacing tone. "This is Basil Heathspike Bell, Rarity Enterprises. Put High Concept on -- pronto!" He waited a few minutes.
"Hello, Concept," he said. "Yes, we saw the ad. You'd better put the old version back up, or we're canceling the run." He listened a bit. "Oh, really?" he asked. "Perhaps you should check the terms of that contract. Especially the escrow clause." He held the phone away from his ears, as much loud and angry verbiage ensued.
Rarity's long, delicate ears twitched. At one point, she actually winced, as the verbiage became quite vulgar. Spike noticed that she was smiling, though -- a rather wicked grin, like that of a filly in the midst of doing something rather naughty.
Spike listened calmly until the ranting stopped, then replied:
"Who do I think I am? I think that I am Basil Heathspike Bell, Spike the Dragon, and you are a sorry little smoo (*) who thought that he could pull a fast one on the most brilliant businessmare ever born, the incomparable Princess Rarity, the Alicorn Libera, the greatest Pony of this age. Whom, as you well know, happens to be my wife.
"I am a Dragon, little colt. My teeth are swords, my claws spears, my scales shields, my breath inferno, and my lawyers are legion: they are well-paid and shall bring ruination to your company, unless you immediately cease and desist your transparent attempt to score avante-garde points to the detriment of Rarity Enterprises, and at the expense of my wife's creative reputation.
"Do you," he literally snarled, smoke drifting from his mouth and nostrils, "fully understand me?"
Silence.
"Do you understand me?!!" His voie had gone from its previous snarl to an icy coldness that was infinitely more terrifying.
A sort of gibbering and meeping.
"Very good," replied Spike. "I expect to see the original -- and on the very next spot."
An even more pathetic gibbering and meeping.
"Oh, you can't change it until the next half-hour?" He growled. "Very well. Change it then. You'll forfeit your payment for this half-hour of the campaign, multiplied by the slot value and doubled by the penalty clause. Is there any problem with that?" He almost purred the last part, in a tone that implied 'Go ahead. Have a problem with that. I haven't eaten any Ponies lately -- I'm getting peckish.'
A sort of semi-coherent sobbing.
"Good enough. I have no more time for you." Spike hung up the phone.
Rather too hard. It splintered into several pieces.
"Woops," said Spike, immediately back to his normal tone of voice. He smiled sheepishly at Rarity. "Heh-heh. Sometimes forget my own strength."
"Oh, pay it no mind, darling," Rarity said, waving a hoof dismissively. "We have a closet full of those things. In different colors." She looked about the room speculatively. "I think brilliant orange, next time. It goes better with the rug." Her horn-tip briefly glowed, and the lock clicked shut on the room's door.
"But Spike," she continued, "you were magnificent. The way you dealt with that nasty little colt. You were so bold. So forthright. So ... forceful." Her voice grew ever huskier, and her wings twitched with each compliment. Her voice was positively throaty, and her wings flared to their full extension, when she reached the word 'forceful.'
Spike grinned toothily. Every one of the green spikes along his head and spine quivered to attention. As was the case with many archosaurs, Dragons used their crests for social signaling. After four decades of marriage to Rarity, Spike knew exactly what was implied by her tone and posture. Just as she, of course, knew the significance of what was happening to his crest. One of the really nice things about their marriage was the mutual understanding.
"Why," Rarity said, "you were almost too forceful. Indeed," she sighed and cringed dramatically, "I felt quite afraid that you were about to embark on a positive rampage. You can be so fearsome in your wrath -- it almost makes me faint!" The fellow-veteran of a hundred desperate fights, an undying Alicorn who was one of the few dozen deadliest Ponies in existence, demonstrated the degree of her great fear by fainting, right into his arms. She opened one eye slightly, and smiled into the face of her beloved husband, who had been at her side at most of those battles.
Spike smiled even more broadly. He held Rarity's whole form effortlessly in one long purple arm. With the claws of the other -- claws which could have torn through titanium -- he very, very gently caressed the side of her jaw; ran them down the side of her neck, stroking her in the places a Pony stallion might have nibbled in another posture entirely. A certain scent was rising from him and surrounding them both; the heady perfume of dragonmusk. He snarled low and throatily, a thrilling sound that had in it not aggression, but rather its opposite.
"Oh my," Rarity said. She wriggled, maximizing her body's contact with his claw, and made as if to try to push him away with one hoof. Her technique of pushing him away involved running the soft frog of her hoof very gently down the armor of his yellowish ventral lamellar plates, to as far down as she could reach with her foreleg. She then proceeded to continue the motion with her hind leg, moving it languidly toward a place where the plates had already started to separate, a place which he would have protected with considerable determination under other circumstances.
"I find myself entirely at your mercy, Spike," she explained, dramatically throwing her head back and turning it sideways, making it easier for the Dragon to continue his caresses. "I am but a helpless little maiden in your powerful clutches. My best efforts to escape are of no avail against such a mighty creature as yourself." Her hind hoof reached its target, slid over and around what was emerging.
Spike gasped.
Rarity's horn glowed faintly, in what might have been a defensive effort but was anything but, and that gasp turned to a continuous low rumble as an aura began to play about that emerging object, her telekinesis employed with the same fine precision she used to horn-sew fabrics. The volume and rhythm of that rumble changed in time with subtle alterations of that aura.
His claws clenched slightly ... not enough to pierce her lovely hide and draw blood, but enough that there would have been bruises the next morning, had she not been an Alicorn. She gasped in response to that pressure. He held her and stroked her neck and shoulders, a look in his eyes that was both aggressive and tender, not at all predatory.
"Utterly helpless ..." Rarity continued, her own breath coming a bit threadily. "With no defense should you choose to ravish me ..."
"Oh, yeah," Spike commented, and drew her to him.
Viewed from the back, the couch began to demonstrate motions which amply-justified its sturdy construction, motions despite its great weight which implied alarming things about the strength of its two occupants. Certain sounds became audible: the creaking of the couch-springs, the occasional rising and banging down of its whole frame, and sounds of a different but entirely related nature being emitted by the couple who occupied it.
Fade-Out
Let us withdraw from this scene of mutual marital bliss. They long ago earned and found their happy ending, and are living it. Though nothing ever really ends, as their lives, and the lives of their ki-rin children continue to unfold, into the long bright future.
END.