People, Princes And Ponies

Scene 10

Pinkie Pie was Pinkie Pie and Pinkie Pie was in a basement. Not her basement, or technically the Cake’s basement, but in a basement that technically counted as trespassing, breaking and entering if it weren’t for Ponyville’s very relaxed views on public property and personal space.

Mostly though, it was just Pinkie Pie’s relaxed view.

Mugen was the counterpart to Araji, an elf’s elf. He resembled his brother, with thin triangular features, everything about his face was pointy, from his eyes to his chin and especially his ear, but not his hair. His hair was filled with large soft curves, voluminously erupting from his head and cascading down his back..

He regarded the pink pony severely. She regarded the pale human eagerly. Here in the dark depths of the earth, two ancient powerful forces met; the silliness of Pinkie Pie and seriousness of Mugen Water-Count.

The silence stretched on for a moment, both of them waiting for the other to make the first move.

“Ffffffine,” Mugan finally said with exasperation, “Who are you?”

“I’m Pinkie Pie and it’s so nice to meet you because I’ve never seen you before so you must be new because I know everyone in Ponyville and I’m friends with everybody but also I’ve never seen anything like you before but I think heard about you before in a book somewhere that I read in Twilight’s library and have you met Twilight because she’s like super smart and you’re down in here in this dusty old lab so you gotta be super smart too because that’s what super smart people do so I should probably throw you a Welcome To Ponyville party in her library since she’s always pretty cool about that even though you’re supposed to be super quiet in a library so-”

“Fascinating,” Mugan breathed, not taking his eyes off the rapidly talking pink pony while grabbing a nearby notepad on his workbench with his magic and a quill with his hands, taking both in hand. He rapidly scribbled down notes while he watched her, “She seems to actually be sneaking breaths in between each word so she doesn’t have to pause for a bigger breath and break her tempo. The absolute breathing discipline that would require is staggering to consider.”

“-and that’s how I got my cutie mark! What’s your name?”

The elf actually looked disappointed that this anomalous demonstration was coming to an end, but he put his quill and pad down anyway, “I am Mugen Who Would Count The Drops Of Rain In The Ocean, or Mugen Water-Count or just Mugen.”

“Ooooh, how do you pronounce that?”

“What? ‘Mugen’?”

“Yes!”

“Like ‘Mugen’. Like I just said it,” Mugen said, not understanding the question.

“Well, is it ‘mu’ as in a cow’s moo, or ‘mu’ as in a cat’s mew? And is the ‘g’ pronounced with a ‘guh’ sound or a ‘jah’ sound? How much stress is placed on the last vowel?”

Mugen was simply confused while I was feeling distinctly uneasy. He was simply confused, thinking about her question and trying to understand why she needed vocalization spelled out to her. He suspected that it was possible she had some kind of mental handicap, some form of audio dyslexia? But he couldn’t fathom HOW that would work.

“Mmmm, more stress is placed on the first vowel, I suppose. And it’s pronounced as if a cat’s mew. The ‘g’ is with a ‘guh’ sound. An interesting dissection of my name, Pinkie Pie,” He started repeating his name with different pronunciations, “MOO-gen. Mew-GEN. Mew-JEN.”

“Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie!” Pinkie just started singing her name. She didn’t so much as miss the point of the exercise as abandon it in favor of her own agenda. Mohan too had an agenda, getting sucked right in to it as he grabbed a chalkboard and started hurried scribbling on it. He muttered about names and resonance as he mixed letter and number with obscure arcane symbol to create complex equations.

Pinkie Pie, still quietly singing her name to herself, grabbed her own chalk and started playing tic-tac-toe by herself. Mugen seamlessly incorporated the crossed hatch, X’s and O’s into his mathemagical formula. Pinkie Pie got into a draw with herself, and Mohan made that central to proving his theory, “-a name spoken in full and proper pronunciations will resonate with a sentient creature’s essence, allowing near flawless integration of third-party enchantments. Yes. Yes! It all checks out! It all make SENSE! YES!”

Mugen threw back his head and cackled maniacally. Pinkie Pie, always enjoying a good laugh, joined right in.

~

Scene 11

Araji decided he had others things he needed to do. By his estimates, of the three Murder Hobos, he was certainly the least hobo-ish. He was the responsible one, although maintaining enough self-awareness to realize that wasn’t saying quite a lot. He knew one thing though, that the market for trouble stabbers was somewhat small and low in demand in these parts. Things were more idyllic here in Equestria. It was certainly looked down upon if you broke into some creature’s house and did everything upward towards violently dismembering them and nicking their stuff.

There were dragons in these parts, but Princess Celestia was apparently more on top of that than the King ever was. Diamond Dogs sounded familiar but Araji learned that incidents with them were rare. Changelings were once the single greatest threat to Equestria, but they’d been gone for ages. Ponies with a bad combination of treasure, vanity and madness willing to build large booby-trapped tombs filled with all of their stuff and purposefully designed be just as filled with violently territorial monsters were apparently in shorter supply than among humans..

What it all came down to was that Araji needed a job and fortunately he found himself gainfully employed in no time at all.

The bark crunched under his knuckled with a satisfying crack. He twisted his fist just so in the split moment it made contact with the tree, forcing the kinetic energy to run and echo up the tree with an instinctive ease to which elven magic could not compare. It went like a curveball crossed with an uppercut, the energy pushed down before flinging back up. It split neatly in half against the unyielding rock of his flesh, flying up either side of the tree.

There was a resounding number of as two large buckets place to either side of thee were finished filling with delicious juicy apples. He swiped both of them up and turned back to the barn standing in the center where he would deposit the apples.

“Ehm, excuse me, eh, mister? But what are you doing?”

Araji stopped, slowly inclining his head down to regard the orange mare that came up to his waist. He grunted a one word answer, “Working.”

“Ah didn’t know we hired any workers on the farm.”

Araji realized he had forgotten one very important detail; he didn’t tell his prospective employers he was working for them now.

And he was supposed to be the responsible one.

~

“Lookit, it’s real cute ‘n’ all ya wanted to help out ‘n’ all, but, uh, we really don’t need help with the harvest season right now,” Applejack told him.

Araji sat on a pile of lumber in the barn, each of his buckets at his feet. He was surprised how kindly these farmers were treating him, considering he was trespassing. Humans would have beaten him silly, especially the big one standing with her. Big Mac came up to his sternum almost; so much for earth ponies being short like dwarves. Araji showed none of that shock on his face but his face rarely changed from its constantly constipated frown.

“You already have a lot of workers for the harvest?” Araji asked.

“We don’t really need workers for the harvest,” Applejack corrected.

“You… harvest this whole plantation by yourselves?” Incredulity entered Araji voice. He tilted forward and looked out toward the expansive acres of apple trees.

“Well, yes,” Applejack, frowning at the implied insult. Big Mac glanced at her and she at him, a silent exchange crossing between them. Applejack softened, “We might get a little help. But that ain’t the only problem here. For example,” She pointed at the bucket of apples, “Those’re red apples.”

Araji looked down, “Those are green.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, it just ain’t harvesting season right now. I guess people forget that cause we can sell ‘em year round like there fresh.”

“So… you really don’t need any help?” Araji asked, a clear tone of finality ringing there.

“Now hold on there, partner,” Applejack lifted up a hoof to stop him right there, “There’s still the matter of damages. It ain’t much, to be honest, but I tell you what, ya can pay it off and Ah can see how much I like your work ethic.”

Araji didn’t smile, he merely frowned less. He stood up, planted a fist into his palm, and bowed. “Yes, I understand. Thank you.”

~

Scene 12

And now for something completely different.

“So, we are in accord?” Said the earth pony.

The unicorn spoke, “Accord? Accord for what? I just got here.”

“Is it for an accordion?” Asked the pegasus, “Are we having a party?”

“The time is now, brothers,” The earth pony insisted. He nodded to the unicorn, “Your wife has returned and now our cousins’ children are moving in. If there ever was a time, this is that time. Right now.”

“Oh, dear, your wife’s been back for a while,” The pegasus said.

“Now is the time,” The earth pony reiterated.

“Like, have you sent her a single letter?” The pegasus asked.

“Ooooh, man, you’re right!” The unicorn moaned, “She’s gonna kill me!”

“Now-ish,” The earth pony admitted.

“It’s just, I’ve been so busy with… everything, ya know?” The unicorn’s grimace masquerading as a grin marked him.

“With what?” The pegasus admonished, “My dear brother, we’ve been on extended vacation for… how long?”

“Forever,” The earth pony supplied, “Ish.”

“I know… I know,” The unicorn leaned in to the table, resting his face in his hooves, “Sun and stars, I’m horrible.”

“You’re not horrible,” The pegasus assured him, “We’ve all been away.”

“Until now,” The earth pony insisted, “Ish.”

“She’s been locked up for who knows how long and as soon as she gets out, I should have been right there with her instead of screwing off in the flank end of the world.”

The three didn’t look like brothers but then again ponies had a wee bit of a problem with familial appearances. You have a better chance guessing two ponies are related to each other if they have the same accent. Not that these three had the same accent; the unicorn seemed to occasionally slip into a Mareibu accent, the pegasus affected a Canterlot accent and earthy pony talked like he was an actor in a play set in ye olde tymes.

They and their conversation attracted no attention, because they were completely normal looking. Then again, ponies had a wide margin of error for normalcy, so it was an easy mold to fit into.

“Well, do you love her?”

The all-blue unicorn flinched and turned, regarding the mare waitress carrying a plate of food to their side of the table, balancing it all on her back. He regarded her and her question and her lack of any of his food.

“Yes! Ever… ever since I first laid eyes on her. She was…. is…” His eyes got a panicked looked as he struggled to grasp words to describe his feelings.

“She must still love you too, I bet. Just go back to her and she’ll understand,” She told him with a smile, grabbing their plates and setting them down. The brown and green earth pony dug into big bowl of really thick vines. The blue and white pegasus ate an arrangement of particularly sweet flowers, enjoying every dainty bite. They both pretended not to listen while the unicorn gaped at the waitress but also didn’t eat too loud, lest they miss a single word.

She put her carrying plate back on her back, “My special somepony, he sometimes loses track of time too but he makes every moment he does remember special, because he loves me. I wish he were on time more but I don’t ever regret that time we do have.” She looked over the rest of the table, “Will that be all?”

“Yes, dear, thank you very much,” The pegasus said, turning his head toward her fully. She couldn’t see his eyes through the white curls falling over his face like a thick fog. Then he shook that mane, letting her see one brilliant yellow eye. He winked at her, or blinked, she couldn’t tell, “For everything.”

The unicorn realized a couple of things. One, he arrived late so he never got to put in his order. The waitress didn’t have any food to offer him, just sage advice. Two, she was right. Totes right, in fact. He turned away from her to gaze wonderingly into the air, slumping against the back, “Huh…”

The waitress, she nodded, and trotted away to deal with other customers.

The unicorn’s stomach growled. Three, he was hungry.

~

Even the unicorn had his fill eventually, picking off his brothers' plates, therefore guaranteeing his survival if this were a Trottingtino movie.

By the way, yes, that's a thing.

Leaving a hefty tip for Waitress The Wise, really brightening up her day as she picked it up. The unicorn and the earth pony took off, but the pegasus stayed behind to show her even more of his gratitude.

"Thank you very much for your help," He said, all culture and dignity. He was poised just so, his head tilted back, one front hoof lifted, sky blue wings spread just so to give him a regal cloak. The waitress really felt the weight of his words, as well as the blood rapidly running to her cheeks, "You really put my brother at ease, and for that I-"

"Hey, oi, bro, you wanna get some cake?" The unicorn called outside.

The pegasus's entire demeanor changed, his wings unfurling with child-like excitement, yellow eyes popping out as his mane lifted when he jerked his head with a huge smile. His hooves spread far apart and his tail wagged rapidly, "Ooo, yes!" He turned his head and pecked the waitress on the cheek before she knew what was happening, rapidly taking off before she could react.

The mare blushed harder for a brief second, her heart thumping, her face twisted in incredulity and shock. She gathered her wits in a moment when she caught a peek of something light blue on the ground. It was a long primary feather from a pegasus wings, exactly matching that pegasus’s coloration. Not a pegasus herself, she knew keeping shed primaries was supposed to be important to them.

“Hey, wait!” She called out but he was already gone. She frowned and looked back down at the feather, flinching in surprise. The feather wasn’t blue anymore, but as white as the purest cloud, and twice as long as any pegasus feather had any right to be. “Huh?”

~

The pegasus caught up with his brothers in a few minutes, taking the ground route after the other two took off. His eyes glanced imploringly about but all he found was the dark night and the deep shadow of the trees. The three brothers were going on into the Everfree and not a pastry factory. “Where’s the cake?”

“Your wife will have some,” The unicorn said, teasing.

The pegasus rolled his eyes in thought, “Yeah, Celestia always got a cake supply.”

The unicorn quirked incredulous, “She still calls herself that?”

“It’s what everyone’s called her for a thousand years,” The pegasus shrugged.

“Better than Nightmare Moon, at least,” The unicorn added sardonically.

“So, we are in accord?” The earth pony repeated.

“Yeah yeah,” The unicorn rolled his eyes at the earth pony’s language.

“Are there going to be accordions?” The pegasus asked.

The earth pony ignored him, turning to go into the Everfree. As he did, he began to change. Before, he was a pony from the Big Macintosh school of design, large and burly, with hooves distinct from the rest of his body. He was brown coated with a long green mane and tail that hung loosely on him, and green-gray eyes. His cutie mark was a mountain stamped on his flank.

His body creaked and rumbled like shifting stones and falling boulders. His hooves began to turn red as if heating up until they glow like fire. Red vein-like cracks worked their way up his leg, turning the rest of each of his legs black. Reaching his bottom torso, his fur turned as gray as the mountain on his flank. A spike of that gray color grew above his front legs all the way up his neck and touching his cheeks. The red-orange cracks from his back legs grow further through the gray, pushing that strata to join with the mountain mark. It was letting the ‘lava’ seemingly erupt from the top, fusing his cutie mark with the rest of his coat.

He blinked his eyes and his iris became the color of pure jade, the once-white sclera glowing like molten magma. He huffed fire from his nose and the end of his snout became black as soot. Small black stripes ran down his like zebra stripes. With the shake of his head, his green mane snapped into a neat mohawk with a bushy top, like a row of trees. A snap of his tail made it stiffen and sharpen like blades of grass. And he grew, he grew until he was twice the size of one large red farm pony.

His brothers had similar dramatic changes, growing in size as well but not quite as large. The unicorn bubbled and rippled while his blue fur took on several shades, nearly white at the tip of his wave-like hair and slowly darkening to a near black at his hooves. His sclera was blue as well and his horn became a tightly spiraling pillar of ice. His ocean wave cutie mark swirled around itself, grabbing all the different shades of blue and twisting into a whirlpool on his flank that was visibly there but impossible to tell apart from his coat.

The unicorn took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks. His hair sprang to life, really swirling around his head like a cloud attached to his skull. His body remained blue but his wings spread to their true size and cloud white color. His cutie mark, a lightning bolt erupting from the bottom of a cloud, moved over toward his tail. The cloud grow in three dimensions and the white curls became white cloud, covering his bottom with clouds, while the lightning bolt split and grew across his flank further, drawing a jagged path all over the back half of his body.

Three elementals in the shape of ponies, of earth, sea and sky, walked in the place of the mortal Equestrians they just masqueraded as. Casually, the three brothers chatted amicably of what was to come, of lovers they would become reacquainted with. Fearlessly, they cut a path directly through the dangerous wild forest, making a beeline straight for Canterlot.

~

Scene 13

That interlude done and over with, let head back over to Ponyville where actually important things are happening. Take, for example, the Cutie Mark Crusader Clubhouse. Here, the fate of the future of all sentient life forms was decided by three mighty mares.

“We could get our cutie marks in bein’ adventurers!” Applebloom said, the three fillies standing in a circle around each other, head close to each other in discussion.

Scootaloo relished the chance to do something her sort-of crush, sort-of mentor, sort-of big sister figure, sort-of she wasn’t actually emotionally mature enough to quite understand herself would definitely approve of, “It’d be just like Daring-Do!”

The two boys sitting to the side weren’t exactly excluded from the conversation but they weren’t exactly invited in either. This was Equestrian sexism at its worst but that’s something we will explore some other time.

“Alright, then we’re in an accordion!” Sweetie Belle declared.

Applebloom and Scootaloo turned to her in confusion, speaking in stereo, sounding like some awful fusion creature of science. “Huh?” Scootabloom asked.

“It’s a real fancy way way of saying we all agree,” Sweetie Belle explained, “I read it in one of those books Rarity doesn’t want me to read.” She frowned and looked frustrated for a moment, “I still haven’t figured out was ‘ravage’ means yet but I think ya need a colt and his-”

“Well, how about that adventure!?” Spike interrupted before this conversation went farther than it ever, ever needed to. He was a baby dragon, yes, but ‘baby’ for a dragon extended to around fifteen years old. Living with a librarian and literature lover, the little lad picked up a few things.

The girls wordlessly agreed and turned to the nearest closest thing to an expert they had on adventurers. “Freydolf, what do adventurers do?” Applebloom asked.

Freydolf blinked, first a little shocked at being directly addressed. Personally, he wasn’t used to Equestrian female-biased sexism. His application to this conversation was Sapistanii male-biased sexism, wherein a group of females chattering closely together probably wasn’t worth his attention. This is, to be specific, little boy Sapistanii sexism.

Actually, it isn’t that different from small child sexism the world over.

“Adventurers? Mmm, why?”

“We wanna go adventuring! Ya know, for our cutie marks. Weren’t you listening?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Freydolf would look sheepish with embarrassment, but his ego wouldn’t allow it. The little harpy’s wings fidgeted as his pale face burned red with shame and indignity. He almost snapped at them but bit it back. These girls were actually nice to him, they put up with him, they were kind to him and valued his opinion. Yes, they were just girls but damn it someone valued his opinion!

Freydolf looked at the floor and mouthed, ‘For once.’

“Well, are there any… old ruins nearby? Adventurers would go to those to look for treasure.”

“Treasure!?” Sweetiebelle said excitedly, showing who’s sister she was.

“Ooo! Ooo! I know a place! Rainbow Dash has been there!” Scootaloo offered excitedly, “We can try the old alicorn palace!”

“Scootaloo, Applejack and Rarity and all those girls been there too,” Applebloom interrupted.

“Yeah, but they’re not Rainbow Dash.”

“No, no, Ah suppose they’re not.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

“Not that Ah see how it matters.”

Freydolf was sitting down, knees against his chest, leaning back with his wings propping him up on the ground. This made him about equal height to the fillies. So he raised his hand and asks, “So, who’s Rainbow Dash?”

“What!?” Scootaloo screeched and tackled Freydolf. Just straight full bodied tackled the poor guy. She was going to explain to him who Rainbow Dash was. She was going to explain it to him a lot.

~

Scene 14

Saufier hadn’t ever thought to use her magic in this fashion. Her entire body sparked with small arcs of electricity but her ears and her tongue outright glowed with electric power. She felt it charging through her mind, and she wondered how long she could keep it up before she suffered a catastrophic error in judgement.

It was necessary. It was the only way she could keep up with this bloody conversation. She wasn’t a stranger to magical theory, no. She had a fair grasp of the basics and knew quite a bit of stuff that potentially applied to her area of interest. She also hung out with a super smart guy for a long while and some stuff rubbed off. However, holding a five way conversation on topics this advance at this pace simply wasn’t possible.

It started when Mugen found them. Saufier didn’t know how, maybe the pink one lead him here but then she couldn’t figure how she knew they were all there. That pink one, though, was part of the problem apparently. She wasn’t a pony elf, but apparently she just helped Mugen hammer out some mathemagical equation or something and it got him super excited.

So he goes in, trying to explain what he just figured out to his wife. Saufier got to see why they got along, her sister was genuinely interested. She also knew some stuff and he was interested too. They were asking questions, swapping facts and to no one’s surprise the purple pony elf chipped in, rapidly drawing herself into the conversation. Twilight was eager to learn about True Names.

The pink dwarf pony seemed to carry herself through the conversation by sheer determination and the ability to break complicated explanations down into layman terms and silly analogies. This left Saufier dreadfully alone between four rapid firing voices and she just couldn’t handle it. Rather than something sensible, like leave, Saufier decided this was good a time as any as to experiment with pumping her brain with electric steroids.

“-so by thaumaturgical convention of identity-” Mugen went.

“-males are not encouraged to enter into politics but interestingly-” Ivian told.

“-it’s fascinating the parallels I found between pony society and your society in-” Twilight explained.

“-then you just pour the cream over the chocolate chips and set it to bake until it’s all-” Pinkie went into. Cooking can be a rather complex and engrossing subject as magic and comparative civilitatemology.

“That sounds delicious!” Saufier put in. It’s how you make fudge, by the way. Fudge is delicious.

“-with the proper and unique labels of the individual-” Mugen continued.

“-correct, with proper applications that could-” Twilight added.

“-so Equestrian sexism is rather limited by-” Ivian kept going.

“-I called down the thunder! And that-” Saufier regaled.

“Oooo! That sounds super duper spiffy, Saufier! And then what happened?” Pinkie Pie encouraged her to continue.

Twilight didn’t rightfully know what conversation Pinkie Pie and Saufier were having. They seemed to switch between tales of Pinkie Pie’s sweet confectioneries and Saufier’s stories of horrible violence. At least the two seemed to be getting along, although Pinkie Pie could get along with anyone. Twilight supposed she wasn’t much better, holding a conversation about arcane sciences as applied to names at the same as one about opposing gender societal conventions across different cultures.

Having not just one but two scholars to actually speak with was a uncountable good fortune. She envied them actually being a married couple. Twilight loved her friends dearly but they weren’t exactly the right people to have discussions about academia about. Well, not exactly true, each of her friends had very narrow regions of interest they could go on about. Pinkie Pie and baking, for example, which Saufier seemed remarkably adept at keeping up with, even if she apparently needed to supercharge her mouth to do so. And what an interesting application of lightning ma- was that smoke coming out of her ears?

Everybody yelped and jumped as a loud crack and flash emitted from Saufier’s head area. Her hair, already an afro before, was now doubled in sized. Black plumes of smoke trailed from her ears and her wide gaping mouth. He stared blankly into space for a moment before face planting into the hard wooden table.

Pinkie Pie leaned over, frowning.

“Was it something I said?”