Chapters FOREWORD BY MIKE TEAVEE
Hi, everyone! This is yet another idea from the brain of Southpaw , which he gave me permission to post here for your viewing pleasure! It takes place within the Divided Rainbow universe, at some vague point in time after the events of Chapter Sixteen.
Excluding the epilogue. The epilogue’s an idea I wrote, inspired by an e-mail SpinelStride sent, which I expanded upon. Please enjoy!
Oh, and before I forget: big thanks to WolfeTrax and SpinelStride! And of course, to Nabisco, for making the #1 top-selling cookie in America.
“You know,” Lero said casually as he nibbled on a steak-flavored Oreo, “it’s just KILLED me for the longest time who you reminded me of, and then I FINALLY realized; you’re Q!” He pointed an accusing cookie at Discord, which seemed fitting in immediate retrospect.
The draconequus looked thoughtful for a moment, smacking his lips and looking at his Oreo with severe distaste. “Bah! This is too well-done! I’m not supposed to be bringing chaos to myself! Only to you,” he said, flinging his strange arms wide to encompass the entire world, and tossing several dark cookies for miles in the process.
Miles away, in several directions, the distraction of nearly super-sonic Steak-Flavored Oreo cookies blasted through the air.
One squarely nailed and bent a lamppost next to a young couple who were quietly and nervously making out – the only place they could find to be alone and away from their horrible siblings and nosey parents who only wanted them to clean their rooms and remain Not Pregnant – and blew out the inconvenient streetlight next to them in the process.
After a full 0.5 seconds’ deliberation, biology chose to have them ignore the event and continue on, happy for the increased privacy. The resulting foal would, in much later years, rise to the highest ranks of the government judiciary system in Canterlot, positively affecting the lives of millions of ponies throughout Equestria for decades to come with his humble and dedicated service. He also had a very odd and well-known fixation for cookies and lampposts, for some reason.
Another cookie buried itself two feet deep into a farmer’s prize – and extremely rare and hard to grow – tulip field. While the impact and resulting kinetic energy destroyed half of his rather small crop, he discovered the next year that tulips grown within a 100 foot radius of the impact grew astoundingly beautiful and large and healthy. And they tasted AMAZING in a way that most ponies could not identify.
The farmer – a rather shrewd pony – soon saw the opportunity of a lifetime, and made an absolute killing selling the bulbs from these hardy flowers. While the resulting crops gleaned from the flowers were not as good as the originals, they were still remarkable, and years later the land saw a boom and bust of stock-like trade in tulips that rocked the finances of all Equestria, nearly causing a complete economic collapse of the nation before the Princesses stepped in and restored order from the chaos.
Yet another flew through an open window, thudded into a pillow, and was promptly eaten by a young filly whose cutie mark appeared moments later, an exact perfect picture of an Oreo cookie standing on edge and viewed at an angle.
She would spend the rest of her life searching for that perfect flavor, winning distinguished awards – and a great deal of money – for her works in the field of cookie baking. But ultimately she would never be satisfied.
Until one fateful day in a restaurant, she would be served a cut of steak by complete accident, and being the adventurous sort, she tried it... and the next day, sold her business, trademarks, and the full rights to all of her ideas, and retired to an island, quite wealthy and happily importing various cuts of steaks which she could eat without remorse or the annoying shameful looks from other ponies.
“Anyway, what were you blathering on about, my dear ape?” Discord flipped an Oreo into the air with the claw of his thumb, spinning it into a pale dark sphere with perfect precision into his mouth.
Lero scowled and paused in mid-bite, the taste of succulent beef juice pouring down his throat.
“Yes yes, fine. I know of this ‘Q’,” Discord said, crunching happily on his New York Strip Oreo, “I’ve MET him! Excellent chap, though perhaps a bit less adorably chaotic and handsome than myself.”
A half-eaten filet mignon-flavored cookie fell from Lero’s hand. “You’ve MET him?” The human’s tone and look said it all: You are truly INSANE, and is there a snowball’s chance in Hell for me to run away from an actual demigod fast enough to avoid being turned into a newt?
No. Discord’s own tone and look answered back. Deal with it.
“Q’s a TV character!” Lero protested aloud. “He’s completely fictional!”
“Oh my DEAR monkey! No no no no no no! No no! NO. You must encompass the idea – as much as it may make your monkey head spin – oh DO stop spinning your head like that! Oh, that was me. Sorry. Anyway, THIS Universe, my Dear Sweet Ape, is merely one among many infinite possibilities, ALL of which include every thought, every IDEA ever thought and explored and played with throughout the universes those possibilities represent. So SOMEWHERE out there—”
...And he flung more cookies out into the Great Beyond, thus arbitrarily positively and negatively effecting the lives of millions of gryphons thousands of miles away for generations to come...
“—is a universe or universes inhabited by unfortunate pansy starship captains with an unhealthy fixation for conferences in the middle of emergency situations, as well as quite dashing immortal demigods who – however dashing – have chosen most unfortunately to look like YOU. Personally I don’t see the draw.”
Munch, munch, swallow.
Lero sat stunned, an un-bitten Oreo cookie held in place halfway to his open mouth.
“You going to eat that?” Discord asked, quite seriously.
Lero closed his mouth and handed over the cookie.
EPILOGUE
As much as Lero Michaelides loved his mares, it was refreshing to give himself a bit of ‘me-time,’ unaccompanied by any of his family... an entire hour all to himself! It was all part of the fun... he always enjoyed coming to eat at this particular place wherever he visited Canterlot!
The smell of roasting meat hit Lero’s nose the moment he entered Gia’s Beef Pit. A restaurant that served real burgers, real ribs, and real steak! Few things could make him feel more human again... which was ironic, since Gia’s was a griffon’s restaurant.
He still got stares from griffon customers eating at their booths and tables, as well as the waitstaff, but Lero had long since grown used to not paying it much mind. To feast upon this kind of food was a rare pleasure, indeed! He’d purposefully not eaten breakfast so he could enjoy a full platter.
For ponies, a place like Gia’s was practically an ogre’s den; its smells ghastly, the sight of cow muscle chunks being devoured were nothing short of stomach-turning. The well-circulated knowledge that Lero visited places like this, even once in a blue moon, was what still kept so many ponies in fear of him.
To hell with them all! Today, he’d be getting back in touch with his carnivorous side, his inner caveman, back from a victorious hunt!
He ordered a sixteen-ounce rare steak the moment his waiter came by, and settled back, enjoying his surroundings. And there was an element of fun, watching griffons consume food. Beaks did not allow for chewing, so instead, they used knives to slice their meat up into small-sized pieces, (uncouth griffons would use their claws,) and then gulp them down. A couple griffins even recognized who Lero was, and came over to his table to chat.
At last, Lero’s meal arrived, still sizzling and steaming on its platter. Lero bent over and filled his nostrils with the aroma... ahhh, divine! What a kindness of God Almighty’s design that humans could chew their food... work it over, so that this delightful thing could dance upon his tongue longer than it would upon a griffon's, morsel by morsel. He cut himself a square, and popped it in his mouth.
To his immense bafflement, while the texture of the meal was properly beefy, the flavor his taste buds reported back to his brain was that of a distinctly recognizable sweet creme. Sandwiched between two chocolatey cookies.
And in Lero’s head, unheard by anyone else, laughter rang. Laughter that could’ve just as easily come from the throat of John de Lancie as Discord the draconequus.
FOREWORD BY MIKE TEAVEE
Hey, guys! I honestly wasn't expecting to continue this any further, but Super Big Mac has come out with an all-new recursive fanfic for your viewing pleasure, and I'm happy to host it here on Steakeos! Contains spoilers up to Chapter 19 of Divided Rainbow.
Enjoy!
Discord sipped from a coffee mug, enjoying the taste of chocolate icing (literally) dancing along his tongue. "So, my dear Celestia, how do you like my ideas so far?" Celestia takes a long quaff of her own steaming mug of sweet vanilla cake with strawberry filling.
"I must admit that, while quite a ways away from my usual modus operandi when... meddling with the affairs of my student, the work you have done has been much more effective than anything I could have cooked up."
Discord allowed himself a small fanfare (No, having the Wonderbolts do a fly-over backed by Yellow Submarine did not count as over-doing it), and a manic grin. "Oh my dear Princess, you know as well as I do that even I want to see this fixed! Oh, my poor friends... I can't stand to watch Fluttershy self-destruct like this!" Discord then pulled out a pair of plastic red binoculars and pulled a lever on the side. After gazing through them towards the far wall, he sighed and flicked them over towards Celestia, deftly plucking them back out of the air with an arm that had replaced Celestia's horn before positioning them in front of Celestia's eyes.
The Solar Princess' cheeks flushed as she realized she was staring right into the barrack's shower area, before the binoculars were moved slightly towards the left and the view zoomed past even the edge of Canterlot. "Can you see them, Celly?" Discord asked with an affected moan. "My poor, sweet Fluttershy and the newly lovestruck Rainbow Dash are still trapped in the wrong states of mind! Oh, how I wish I could help, but I know how you want that Sparklebutt of yours to figure it out herself! Oh, but she's got Lero to help her, as well."
Discord's smile returned, his fang giggling ticklishly as he picked at it with a talon. "For a creature even less accustomed to the Harmony of this world than I, he's already figured out some good tactics to use against the spell. Humans," he stated, taking a swig of devil's food cake, "are one of the few creatures who are chaotic enough, at times, to be boring for me. But one human in Equestria? Particularly THIS one? Oh, this has been fun and interesting to watch. While he has none of my power, he still manages to create chaos and sow seeds of discord and creation, invention and destruction-- I cannot wait to see what those three Crusader fillies end up doing with themselves after having a human's brain to pick at!"
Celestia continued watching Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, the former reading furiously from a book of puns and jokes (written by Miss Gnomer), and using a rubber chicken as a punching bag, some music playing in the background, while Dash was lounging in a trailing robe, a white bunny using a large leaf to fan her while a bluejay bobbed up and down in the air above her, a cluster of grapes held within easy reach of the pegasus' mouth.
"It seems that the Elements are taking to their new roles more readily than I would have ever anticipated," the princess mused in amazement as the view switched to one of Applejack and Pinkie Pie, the pseudo-farmer trotting through a field of growing corn, a small filly pointing ahead as the two laughed happily, while the failing fashionista was busy welding some cheese to a wedding train made of toasted breadcrumbs. The view changed once more to show Twilight, Rarity, and Lyra and ate salads and chatting away with Herds Noctis and Resonare, while Spike sat in a room a short ways away, simply waiting for Lero to return from his carnivorous excursion.
Celestia smiled sadly to see how -- though she put on quite the mask -- Twilight was barely paying attention to her tablemates, instead focusing on a point somewhere only she could see. "Despite all that Lero may have accomplished, my student seems just as lost as ever."
"Oh, I wouldn't call her lost, my dear sunbutt, she's simply waiting for the GM to get back to the table!"
"Whatever do you mean, Discord? And please do not call me 'sunbutt.'"
"Of course, miss Solar Thighs, but what I meant is that you have obviously charted where this ride will go. Of course, you've done your best to work the two biggest variables into your scheme as well--myself and our human friend--but not even you can account for everything!" Discord twists around himself, before folding out like a lawn chair, now in the form of a unicorn, his eyes the only feature still the same. "With just a slight rearrangement, Discord becomes Scoddri, and then..." pulling out a wand, the chaotic creature pointed it towards the heavens. "Sun blossom power! Make-up!" With a flash and a twirl, the ponified draconequis settled to the floor once more, striking a pose in a blue cape and mage hat, both bedecked with bells. The wand had grown into a long, knotted staff, his cheeky smile barely hidden by a frizzled, white beard. "Behold, I am Starswirl reborn! A thousand years ago I and my comrades sacrificed our lives for Queen Complacency when she was almost brought low, along with the rest of the Moon Kingdom!"
Celestia's eye twitched, her mouth trembling as Discord's lips continued moving, even though he had stopped speaking. "And what will you do, my little hero, that could put a crack in my cartwheel?"
'Starswirl' grinned again, striking another pose. "Why, I'll take it upon myself to tell young Twilight the answer to my failings all those years ago, for I am the Sailor Senshi, Starswirl!" His words continued on, even though his mouth had come to a stop. "I am only one of a group of studly Mystical Colts, but as the indisputed leader, I'm obviously the best!"
Celestia let out a small chuckle. “I do not understand why you chose to be so... evil, all those decades ago, Discord. Why scare ponies and the other peoples of the world out of their minds when you could pull stunts like this for a laugh that can be shared?”
Discord put on an affected pout, before pulling it off, wiping some grime from the mask, and tossing it onto the table. “It’s maddening, being the first and last of my kind, dear Celestia, but even a creature as lowly as I needed a friendly smile before I could truly see the err of my ways! Why, to be completely honest, other than Fluttershy and Lero, on those few times he hasn’t tried stabbing me with bottles, I’ve never had somepony truly appreciate my presence! Sure, Pinkie enjoyed my pranks, and my chocolate milk rain, but those were mainly one-offs, jokes that are funny the first time or two, but not nearly as much as time wears on. I’ve never met a pair of creatures who could weather my mind-alterings like Fluttershy and Lero, and each in their own ways! The pegasus who feels safe in her own shortcomings, and the human who simply goes with the flow and adapts whenever something changes! Truly as remarkable a pair of friends as any one immortal could have!”
“You know...” Discord slowly fades out of the Starswirl costume and turns back into his regular self. “It’s a funny thing, death. Well, no, not funny in the way I like funny, but more curious, I guess. Death is boring. Death is an end to all the fun you could ever want. It’s so... drastically orderly and dull and I have to say that were I to have the power over life and death, I’d simply stop the clock for any who could call me friend. It’d be much easier than having to live with myself again.” Discord hics as he brings his mug to his mouth once more. “Mmm... rum cake.” He knocked back the rest of his latest mug and shivers slightly. “Yech, now I remember why I don’t drink. I’m too... somber when not sober. Bah, what do you think, my dear? Will Lero help your student through her challenges, or will he end up ruining any chance of success? Or is there, in your grand cosmic role play, a chance that Twilight will succeed without heeding the help or hinderance her herd thrusts upon her?”
Celestia sipped from her own cup, the fruity taste of the fruitcake causing her to frown a bit. “No, I think she can do it, whether or not she takes or receives help. She’s a smart mare, and can run her own life, no matter how I may try to keep her on the “perfect path.”
FOREWORD BY MIKE TEAVEE
Let's hear it for Zontargs! I encouraged him to try his hand at writing one of these, and by Celestia's beard, did he ever come through! With this entry, we now have an official Steakeos trilogy, (two-part duologies always feel like they're missing something, don't they?) Unless other writers would care to pen more Steakeos chapters... which I'm always open to! (If you ARE such a writer, don't hesitate to contact me!)
Contains spoilers up to Chapter 29 of Divided Rainbow. As always, enjoy!
It was a pleasant day in Vanhoover. The breeze was blowing in off the ocean, the birds were singing, and Space Cadet's Speculative Fiction was filled with the scents of the flowers lining the street and the old paper on the shelves. As sole proprietor of my bookstore, I was busy carrying out some important "quality assurance testing" of my stock at the front desk. Passers-by tended to confuse this with "reading during a slow period."
I was being sorely tempted to see how well this particular book could fly when in walked my most eccentric customer. Well, "walked" was a bit of a stretch, truth be told. He was a good three hooves off the floor.
"Discord! Long time no see. Finished off the Haylane you picked up last time?" I asked.
"Ah, Haylane. I'm almost surprised by how many variations on herds one stallion can come up with. It's nice to read somepony who isn't afraid that if he opens his mind, his brain will fall out. But no. Actually, I wanted you to look over something of my own," he said.
If I wasn't so sure that such a thing was impossible, I'd say that Discord looked embarrassed. Then again, this was the Spirit of Chaos. Who knows?
"You, writing speculative fiction? Should I book a rubber room before I hear any more?"
"Oh ha, ha. Actually, it's a collaboration with another pony friend of mine who I'd rather remained anonymous for now. She's not ready to go public with this quite yet, but I'm a bit concerned with the directions some of the characters are taking, and I wanted a second opinion from an open-minded pony, before the story's fully written."
"Well," I said, setting my book down rather more gently than it deserved, "it almost has to be better than this thing. Yours does have a plot to go along with whatever insanity you're trying to sell, yes?"
"Pffft, plot. You know exactly where you can stick that. No, my co-author is in charge of the planning, thank goodness. The short version is this: In a World where stallions outnumber mares, a researcher, Dusk Shine, is given a magical artifact with unknown powers. His ruler, President Solaris, wants him to figure out what it does. Solaris' previous chief researcher, Starpony the Addlepated, had never gotten it to work quite right, but Solaris is quite sure it's important. When Dusk tries it out, however, it scrambles the personalities of several of his friends, which happens to include one of his herd-brothers! Oh, did I mention that one of his mates is an alien? And so the adventure begins..." Discord held out the manuscript with a flourish.
I looked at him incredulously, then remembered that I was dealing with a being who could turn my stock into so much marshmallow fluff. I checked the clock, then reached out gingerly for the rather sizable stack of papers. "Meh, it's nearly closing time anyway. Let's see what you have so far."
* * *
As I put Discord's manuscript down on my counter, I wasn't sure whether to be amazed by the story (what there was of it at this point), or frustrated by the implications. So I went with both.
"Let's get a few things out of the way, before I get to the real problems. First off, most of your characters are rather blatant gender-swapped public figures with the names changed." Discord fixed me with a rather peculiar stare. "Don't look at me like that, I'm not an idiot. You made it work, though. We won't get into the trendy 'swap the gender roles while keeping the biological differences and somehow society turns out the same' nonsense," I said with an eye-roll, "because that sells lately. You still have two big problems."
"Go on," said Discord, sitting back on a floating invisible chair. Or was he just pantomiming?
"Item one: President Solaris' actions currently make no damned sense. I know you're keeping it as some sort of surprise, but his motivations and explanations are currently nonsensical. This damned artifact shuffled his personality around with his brother's, kicked off the bloodiest conflict in recorded history, resulted in a permanent rewiring of his mind, and he doesn't destroy the thing?" I asked, throwing up my hooves in frustration. "Even if Starpony the Addlepated's experiment was meant to solve some mysterious problem in the future, Solaris would be better off getting a team of scientists to start over from the original notes. But no, he gives it to his protégé, with no warning of what he clearly expects will happen, and hopes that poor Dusk can pull his chestnuts out of the fire before they burn. And the rest of poor Herd Thetis? To Tartarus with them, apparently!" At this point I was practically shouting. "No, we'll just make you mind-screw all of your friends and one of your herdmates , without so much as a warning label!"
"Oh, and if you fail? Well, we'll just do what we did last time, and make the change irreversible. It beats the hay out of your best friends going completely homicidal, right? And let's not forget having this self-insert 'Q' re-writing all of reality so that they don't notice that something's wrong. I'm sure you'll get over it. Worst case, we just mind-screw you too, and nobody needs to know what happened. Until next time, obviously, because Solaris clearly doesn't know how to leave well enough alone. Even if he expects to get a fairy-tale utopia full of immortals out of this in the end, he's an ass. If he's aiming lower than that, he's a freaking sociopath. Luna's teats, you'd better address that by the end of the book."
After calming down for a few minutes while Discord muttered something less than complementary-sounding about his co-author, I continued.
"Item two, and we have a serious problem here: you seem to be planning on killing off five major characters at the end of the story."
"Say what? " Discord looked genuinely shocked.
"The Shuffled Five. You're going to kill them to bring back the originals."
"Where in Equestria are you getting this 'killing' bit?"
"Okay, let's back up. Unless you want to open up the can-of-worms argument that an intangible, ineffable 'soul' entirely defines an individual while being completely undetectable and separate from the physical being..."
"Let's not and say we did," Discord diplomatically decided.
"...an individual's 'self' is unquestionably defined by the memories, the personality, and the magic that manifests as a cutie mark. With me so far?"
Discord nodded as if to say: of course. I co-authored this story, after all.
"Right. Now, when Solaris and Artemis were shuffled, it was fairly straightforward. It just mirrored certain traits between the two. Nothing novel. Maybe that's because they were brothers who had lived together for ages. But in this current iteration, in Shuffle Number Two, things are much more complex. The shuffled personalities are combining in ways that produce something more than the sum of the parts, and the memories are entirely new. Even the magic is manifesting in new ways, unless you think either Elusive or Blitz could have come up with the Thundernova on their own?"
"But what about the Original Five?"
"They're still there. Sure, there's two instances of each, due to the Shuffle, but they retain their memories and personalities. We know they're okay, because Thetis spoke with some of them in that Meta-Zone place. But Elusive the Artist, Berry the Salespony, Blitz the Trainer, Applejack the Designer, and Butterscotch the Stand-Up Comedian? Those are new ponies. They have personalities and memories that are far more than simply a mixture of the source materials. They have their own desires and goals that the originals could never have predicted. And if you un-shuffle them, they'll have nowhere to go.
"Solaris may not have realized that this would happen from the beginning, but he knows now. By continuing to push for Dusk to undo the Shuffle, he's... well, I'm not a lawyer, but something between 'conspiracy to commit murder' and 'negligent equicide' times five. And heaven help you if any of the unshuffled herd members figure this out. Particularly Thetis. I mean, she's an alien from a chaotic Tartarus-world run by continuously-warring carnivorous matriarchs, plopped down in this stallion-packed patriarchy of a mirror-Equestria. She's managed to survive torture by demons, wrangle a herd of particularly powerful stallions, handle xenophobes that clearly want to harm her, and adapt fairly well to her love-life and social circle being turned inside-out. If she ever concludes that the President is using her herd, well... I hope his guards' insurance policies are paid up."
Discord let out a weak, uncomfortable-sounding laugh.
"Anyway, Dusk is unstable enough as it is. If he figures out that 'fixing' what he believes is 'his' mistake will result in the deaths of two of his new herdmates, well... I wouldn't want to be on the same continent. And if he realizes that it wasn't his mistake after all, but part of a premeditated plan enacted by Solaris, over Artemis' objections? Now we have an unhinged uber-mage, a previously pacifist master assassin, and an angry alien from a world that weaponized stars. Let's not even get into Dusk's friends and family, or who Artemis might choose to side with, but I wouldn't give you a dried-out horseapple for Solaris' chances. Even if Solaris wins, some version of this mess is going to become public, unless he just has Q brainwash everypony again."
"Well, what about the fail-safe artifact? The one that makes the Shuffle permanent?" Discord asked, sounding hopeful.
"That depends on how exactly it works. We know that it finalizes the link between the new personality and the magic of the cutie mark. But what does it do to the instances of the original personalities? Do they remain just as they are now? I can't see how that would work, especially for the one without the matching cutie mark. But it doesn't simply give over to the other personality, or we'd just have Artemis in Solaris' body now, and vice versa. Does it eliminate the pre-existing personalities as separate entities? Then we've got five or ten deaths, depending on how you want to count the two instances of the originals. It certainly doesn't make things any better , ethically speaking."
I passed the manuscript back to the clearly shaken draconequus.
"Discord, this is beautifully written, but the whole thing makes me want to throw it at the wall out of frustration. Next, you're going to tell me that once Dusk and the rest of the herd somehow pull a solution out of their plots, President Solaris is going to make Dusk, and only Dusk, immortal. Then he'll make up some cockamamie position that gives Dusk more exposure than Artemis, thereby pushing his own brother even further into the background. Which somehow won't make him feel neglected and resentful, even though he was against this whole thing from the start. And of course, Dusk and the rest of his herd are supposed to be just fine with this."
Discord just floated there, looking distinctly green.
"Discord, tell me that's not what you plan to do."
"Well, technically it's my co-author..."
"Get out of my store."
