Not another Pony in Equestria

Chapters

Liquid Diplomacy
(Formerly) The Shortest Shipfic Ever: or, Why Admiral Biscuit Shouldn't Write Shipfics.
Canonical Mute Vinyl Scratch Breaks Up With Fanon Muteavia
I Wasn't Prepared for This!
The Longest Sentence
Mother
Twilight Sparkle Eats a Potato
Cherry Strudel's New Glasses
Soft Shell, Hard Heart

Liquid Diplomacy

Liquid Diplomacy and Other Stories
Liquid Diplomacy
Admiral Biscuit

Today was a beautiful day in Canterlot. Celestia had raised the sun just so, and her little ponies had worked their tails off through the night to make sure that the gardens would be perfect for visitors. For today, Celestia was going to finally make a treaty with the llamas.

She'd known about them for centuries: one of their explorers had once sailed a wooden ship all the way to Equestria, and claimed it as sovereign llama territory. A few delicate meetings with prospective settlers had cleared that misunderstanding up, and they'd gone back home. From that point on, they were rarely seen, owing to the vast distance between nations.

Over the years, technology had shrunk that distance. Nowadays, a sailing ship could travel there in weeks if the winds were favorable, and the next generation of airships would be able to make it in even less time.

She glanced in her bedroom mirror to make sure that her regalia was all in its proper place, and happily trotted off to the throne room. She hadn't eaten breakfast, and wouldn't. For some reason, even after century upon century of practice, she always got butterflies in her stomach before meeting foreign dignitaries for the first time.

There was a time when she'd greet diplomats wherever was convenient for them, but a rumor had gotten started that she'd slighted the griffons by meeting with them in a cloud pavilion rather than in her throne room. It was a stupid rumor, and that hadn't been her intent at all, but it had provided the catalyst for dozens of conflicting and occasionally incendiary opinion pieces in Equestrian and Griffonese newspapers, as well as the seapony press, which had inexplicably decided to weigh in on the issue. She had no intention of making that mistake again, and met everyone in the throne room.

Which was too bad. It was a beautiful spring day, and she'd rather have been outside.

She nodded politely to the door guards and serenely followed the red carpet to the dais and her throne. Since she was feeling a bit frisky, she actually bowed to her throne guards before taking her place.

Precisely two minutes later—Celestia had been keeping track in her head—the great doors opened again. A page solemnly high-stepped down the carpet, while the llama retinue trailed behind him.

The llamas themselves were fairly plain. One had an off-white coat, one had a gray coat, and the final llama—the one in the lead—had a dun-colored coat. Their accessories, however, brightened them considerably. They were all wearing ponchos across their backs, with broad stripes in cheerful colors and beautiful needlework patterns. The two rear-most llamas wore chullos that closely matched their ponchos; the lead llama had a flamboyant montera on his head.

They paused at the base of the throne and the page cleared his throat unobtrusively. “Presenting King Carlos, principe de las llamas y el portador del sombrero.”

Celestia stepped off her throne and bowed, then descended the steps to the floor to greet them as equals. She bowed again at the base of the stairs. “I am Princess Celestia, protector of Equestria. On behalf of my citizens, I am honored to accept your nations' friendship.”

King Carlos looked her square in the eyes and spit in her face.

Princess Celestia stumbled backwards as the noxious liquid burned into her eyeballs, and began blinking frantically to clear them. She heard the rattling of the throne guards' equipment as they piled onto the diplomats, holding them down as more and more guards rushed from their stations to join the fray.

She used the back of her foreleg to wipe some of the gooey mess off her face, then stared down at King Carlos, who was near the bottom of the heap. “Why would you do that?”

He shrugged. “It is how llamas greet new friends.”

Author's Note

Based on an idea by Scarheart.
The title is courtesy of Estee.

Click through for the story notes.

(Formerly) The Shortest Shipfic Ever: or, Why Admiral Biscuit Shouldn't Write Shipfics.

“Um ... will—”

“Nnnnope.”

Author's Note

Blog

Canonical Mute Vinyl Scratch Breaks Up With Fanon Muteavia

“...”

“...?”

“...”

“...!”

“...”

Author's Note

I don't regret this.

I Wasn't Prepared for This!

I Wasn't Prepared for This!
Admiral Biscuit

It was fall in Ponyville.

It was also fall in the rest of Equestria.

Many ponies considered autumn to be the best season. It really had a lot going for it. The days were still long enough for fillies and colts to tire themselves out playing before the sun set. For adolescent ponies, the cooler evening temperatures improved the quality of snuggling. The final fruits of farmponies' labor were harvested, feasted upon, and stored for the winter. Festivals abounded, from the Harvest Festival to the Running of the Leaves, and culminated in Nightmare Night festivities. The air was crisp and cool, and the prospect of snow was greeted with enthusiasm rather than apprehension.

For a young mare of Twilight's age, the fall brought another blessing: the end of her estrus cycle for a few blessed months. The cycle itself wasn't particularly annoying; rather, throughout the spring and summer, Twilight Velvet would hint in every single letter that perhaps it was time for Twilight to produce a grandfoal. (She had gotten a brief respite when she ascended, but two months later, the pointed hints were back.)

That minor blessing was only slightly offset by yet another biological change which struck all ponies during the fall: the Winter Coat.

When she had lived in Canterlot, the Winter Coat was promptly trimmed to a normal length. Spas and salons kept longer hours, and clothiers stocked their display windows with the latest in hat and scarf fashions. One's appearance, after all, was one of the first things a pony noticed, and being fluffy was a sign of poor hygiene.

Her first winter in Ponyville had posed her with a quandary.

The spa, of course, offered grooming services, and she and Rarity had spent hours there. None of her other friends had; by the time the pegasi had begun the Winter Snow Festival, Twilight came to the realization that A: most ponies in Ponyville didn't trim their winter coats, and B: she was bundled up in a hat, scarf, and padded saddle, while most of her friends wore nothing . . . and she was the one who was cold.

The next winter, despite Rarity's protests, she had let her coat grow naturally.

And now she was on the cusp of making a new discovery, she was sure. It was her understanding that as an alicorn, she embodied the strengths of all three tribes, and thus she could experience for herself how a pegasi felt the cold. True, her data points would be skewed, but any change would be significant.

She'd asked her pegasus friends, but she knew as well as anypony that personal opinions and feelings weren't particularly scientific. There was no way to quantify if the cold felt the same to Rainbow as it did to Applejack. Here, at least, she could observe if there was any difference.

Her left wing twitched, and she tilted her head back. She nibbled gently at the itchy spot, then her eyes widened in shock as a dozen lavender feathers dropped to the ground.

Twilight galloped down the stairs to her washroom and spread her wings in front of her mirror—there was a bald patch on the back of her left wing, and the corresponding feathers were loose on her right.

• • •

"Moulting?"

"Um. . . ." Fluttershy nodded. "It's perfectly natural. Your feathers need to be renewed." She took a sip of her tea. "Lots of birds do it, right after mating season. When food is still plentiful, since it takes a lot of energy to grow new feathers. You must have just come off your last cycle."

Twilight smiled weakly. "I thought I had caught feather flu."

"That's more of a summer disease."

“How long does it last?”

“Well, until all of your feathers have fallen out and you’ve grown new ones.”

“What!?!” Twilight looked back at her wings, where—she swore—another feather had come askew just to mock her. “You mean I’m going to have bald wings?”

“No, no.” Fluttershy reached forward and pet Twilight’s head with her hoof. “If you lost all your feathers at once, you couldn’t fly. You’ll lose them in patches. Some will fall out, and then they’ll grow back, then the next group will fall out, and so on.” She sipped her tea. “It’s not like when a snake sheds its skin.”

“Rragh!” Twilight reached back and grabbed the offending feather in her teeth and yanked it out of her wing. It hurt for a second, and then the pain was replaced with blessed, non-itchy relief. “Ptah.” She spit the feather on the floor. “How long does that take?”

“Oh, it’s usually over by Hearth’s Warming.”

“That’s almost four moons from now.”

Author's Note

Story notes here.

The Longest Sentence

The Longest Sentence
Admiral Biscuit
For Present Perfect

Outside was freedom.

It was not far away, as those things went. A few paces to the cold block wall would put her not more than two hoof-spans from the freedom. More—if she pressed the side of her face against the cold bars of the window, she was even closer to that freedom. She did not know how thick the barrier was, but it could not have been more than inches . . . and yet, it was too far.

Had she foolishly turned her attention from the stern face of her warden, or even been bold enough to giddily trot over to the window, she could have measured the distance, could have taken in a breath of the outside, rather than the stinking institutional malodor which pervaded her prison, but she dared not. Dared not move a hoof in defiance; she would not be the squeaky nail or whatever the metaphor was that stuck up only to be pounded back down.

She kept her eyes downcast, looking at her warden's hooves and the chipped tiles which spread below, worn down by generation after generation of prisoner. They, too, had taken on the air of depression which pervaded the institution.

They were bland tiles.

They were not the tiles which any respectable pony would have in her home, that was certain. Perhaps they had been fashionable once—but she doubted it. No government building was ever fashionable, save the palace. And this was a far cry from the palace. Why, it was rumored among the inmates that even the Princess wouldn't dare set hoof in here, and while that might not have been so, standing here, now, she half-believed it.

She didn't deserve to be here. She was sure of that. It didn't strike her that nopony felt they deserved to be here, rather they all griped bitterly about being caught. Their crimes were naught but foalish pranks, deserving of no more than a few harsh words.

Outside was freedom. Inside, she could almost feel cold iron shackles around her fetlocks. That there were not was perhaps even more cruel, for she could gallop to freedom . . . or attempt to. She would not make it; her warden would make sure of that. So they were not shackles of the flesh, but shackles of the mind, and that was infinitely worse. Flesh healed faster than spirit, she knew that.

Around her, had she dared to look, were other downcast faces. Her fellow prisoners, none of them bold enough to speak out, they just stood there, occasionally shifting on their hooves, each scrape of shoe against tile ringing out like a confession, all of it witnessed in silence by their warden.

The warden cleared her throat.

A simple thing. Outside, it would have passed without significance, for there was no deep meaning to it. A scratchy throat, a little bit of phlegm, perhaps somepony was thirsty or recovering from a cold. In here, it might as well have been the shrill shriek of a whistle.

She rolled her eyes up, ever so slightly.

"Yes, you, Cayenne. Come here."

Reluctantly, she took a step forward. There was no line in the tiles which clearly demarked the division between Us and Them, yet every inmate knew it. Behind the line was some modicum of safety, a unified herd—however temporary and ragged, for one day's alliances were gone in the blink of an eye. Beyond, it was but one pony caught up in the maw of a merciless machine.

She didn't deserve this. Nopony did. Her friends had done worse . . . but they hadn't been caught. They hadn't been seen. They were outside, unpunished.

The indignity gnawed at her, but she could not rat them out. Being a snitch was the worst possible thing; it was better to endure her punishment in stoic silence. That way, she could serve her time and still be respected when she got out. She knew this—they all knew this.

"Ma'am." It was quiet and respectful. You didn't want to be the squeaky nail.

There was no reply, other than a hoof pointing towards an expanse of slate. Her ears drooped—this would be her punishment, then.

She squared her shoulders and made her way to the front of the room. In a way, it was a relief. The uncertainty before the sentence, that was the worst. There was no way of guessing how long she would be imprisoned. Now she knew—now she had a task which she could set herself to, and when it was done . . . it was done.

Cayenne brushed a lock of mane out of her face and picked up the chalk with her brick-red aura. She stood on her hind hooves to reach the ledge of the chalkboard and rolled her eyes up; there, with the shaky uncertain aura of a filly, she began writing:

I will not tell my classmates jalapeño peppers are mini cucumbers.

Author's Note

Visit the thankfully-brief blog post!

Mother

Mother
Admiral Biscuit

"It's time we came clean with you. You're old enough to know."

Pipsqueak jerked his head up, one solitary strand of sauced spaghetti still stretching down to his plate. He hated it when his parents got serious. Usually, unpleasant things were about to happen when they did.

Not unpleasant in a novel sense of unpleasantness, of course. He'd read all sorts of contemporary Bitish novels where the poor hapless colt or filly—usually an orphan—suffered every manner of indignity at the hooves of his or her adoptive parents, or been forced to work in the mines. His parents had never been abusive, nor had they tried to sell him into servitude. His father had even made him a wooden sword for Nightmare Night, and his mother had given him an old scarf and made his pirate jacket.

"Old enough ta know what, mum?"

"You're adopted."

His ears fell. The mines would be coming next.

His father nodded. "We weren't able to bear any foals." What came next was an unfortunate—for such a young colt—insight into the reproductive process, or lack thereof. If he had been dazed by his mother's pronouncement, he was only confused by his father's enthusiastic presentation. Especially when visual aids came into play, largely drawn from what happened to be on the table at the time.

After his mother had finished wiping a bit of stray hoof-made Alfredo sauce off her muzzle, she continued where his father had left off.

"We thought it best at first to take you far away from your birth mother, just in case there was any . . . unpleasantness. One never knows in cases like these. . . . "

"What your mother is trying to say," his father said, oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t really helping the discussion at all, "is that we thought it prudent to put some geographical distance between you and your birth mother."

"Got it," Pipsqueak said through slightly clenched teeth.

"And there was a great job opportunity in Trottingham as well.

"But we decided that we ought to move back to Ponyville at some point. Just in case you wanted to . . . oh, what's the word?"

"Reconnoiter?"

"Reconcile."

"Yes!" His mother smiled. "Reconcile with your mother."

He twitched his tail. "Who is she?"

"Well." His mother leaned across the table. "You know Applejack, right? She found you when you were just a wee little baby."

• • •

"Ah always knew this day'd come." Applejack stepped out on the porch and closed the door tightly behind her. "Best just you an' me do this. Ain't no need to get anypony else involved.

"Awful brave of ya to come on your own," she commented as they walked across the front yard of Sweet Apple Acres.

"It . . . it didn't see right to bring them," he muttered. "Cos. . . ."

"Ah know." She reached down and patted his head gently, then stuck a hoof to her lips and whistled loudly.

A moment later, a brown and white collie came charging around the corner of the yard. As soon as she saw Pipsqueak, she stopped in her tracks, barked once, and then began wagging her tail.

"Well, there ya go. I expect y'all have a lot ta talk about, an' I'll leave ya to it." Applejack tipped her hat and headed back to the farmhouse.

Author's Note

Click HERE for an apology.

Twilight Sparkle Eats a Potato

Twilight Sparkle Eats a Potato
Admiral Biscuit

Twilight examined the object on the plate in front of her with the interest becoming of a scientist. Today, she'd learned from her Equestria Girls friends, was St. Patrick's Day. While Twilight wasn't all that interested in every holiday in Equestria Girls, she admired a man who could rid Ireland of snakes. If he was still alive, she would have tried to get him to swing by Ponyville for a bit.

There were several ways to celebrate the holiday. Sober reflection in church had historically been the preferred celebration, but that had given way to drunken shenanigans and wearing green, as those were a lot more fun than quiet introspection.

Twilight didn't want to wear green. It clashed horribly with her coat color. Green was fine for a pony like Fluttershy or Applejack, or even Rarity, maybe. But not for her.

Getting drunk was not an option, either. While Berry Punch swore by it, Twilight had seen her passed out on the street between the bar and her house on more than one occasion. Sometimes, passing vandals had drawn crude shapes on Berry Punch's fur with pony-Sharpies.

Twilight decided to celebrate St. Patrick's Day somewhere in the middle, by doing something that was traditionally Irish, but not anything too crazy. Since she hadn't had any luck finding a leprechaun, she was only left with eating traditional Irish food.

Here she ran into a bit of a quandary. Beef, corned or not, was out. Cabbage, as well. No method of preparation she was aware of rendered cabbage a palatable food.

That left her with the humble potato. It was a vegetable—properly, a tuber—and it had been the staple of the Irish diet since shortly after they had discovered it.

Strangely, there were none to be had in Ponyville, but she was sure that would change after today.

She'd rinsed all the dirt off it, and it lay glistening like a potato-shaped prize in the center of her plate. It wasn't as appealing a green as fresh alfalfa, but it was surely aspiring to be.

Humans made all sorts of things out of potatoes. They mashed them, baked them, boiled them, sliced them into chips or fries, shredded or cubed them into hash browns, and even made pancakes out of them. She was going to enjoy the potato in its natural state, fresh from the ground.

It was chewy, slightly hard, and a little bit bitter, but not too bad. Sort of like a water chestnut, really. A bitter water chestnut, with a vague aftertaste of dirt.

"Well, Doc, what's the prognosis?"

"She'll make a full recovery," Dr. Stable pushed his glasses up his muzzle. "Lucky you found her when you did."

"I'm just the heroic type." Rainbow puffed her chest out.

"Ah'm the one who found her, and Ah'm the one who brought her here."

"Well, yeah, but if I hadn't seen you and flown ahead to tell the doctor she was coming, he might not have been able to get her in so quickly."

Applejack rolled her eyes.

"So, darling, do tell us how she fell ill."

"Ah, yes." The doctor cleared his throat. "Solanine poisoning."

Three sets of eyes looked at him blankly.

"She ate a potato."

"Oh."

"Poor, silly Twilight." Rarity held her hoof up to her forehead and half-swooned.

"Ah told her to just come out to the farm and git drunk like a normal pony, but she had to go off all half-cocked."

"You're drinking out at the farm and you didn't invite me?"

"You'd turn getting drunk into a race."

"And I'd win that race."

It was Dr. Stable's turn to roll his eyes. Ignoring the increasing boastfulness of Rainbow Dash and Applejack, he turned to Rarity. "There is only one thing that confuses me about this case—the presentation was classic—textbook, really—except for those blotches on her coat. I don't know what to make of them."

"Oh, those." Rarity pushed the Sharpie a bit further into her mane. "I'm sure it's entirely unrelated."

Author's Note

Linky!

Cherry Strudel's New Glasses

Liquid Diplomacy and Other Stories
Cherry Strudel's New Glasses
Admiral Biscuit

Cherry Strudel shifted in the uncomfortable chair while the optometrist leaned over him. He'd never had an eye exam before, even though he knew his eyes were pretty bad, and had been for a long time.

The whole thing had come to a head when his wife, Black Stone, had watched him walk into the back of a stopped wagon which he had mistaken for the saloon. He'd insisted it was an innocent mistake which could have happened to anypony; Stonie informed him if he didn't get glasses, that wasn't all he wouldn't be getting in the near future.

He capitulated immediately.

Luckily, Stonie's job with the railroad provided them with vision insurance, among other things. He'd seen all the paperwork, but the printing was too small for him to read, so he'd just nodded politely and said it was a great deal.

After suffering through the decidedly unscientific process of 'which looks better, this one or that one?' and eye drops which would leave him staggering home blinder than he'd been before, he was dismayed to learn that it would take a week before his new glasses would be shipped in from Canterlot.

But Stonie was happy, and in turn made him happy.

• • •

When the appointed day arrived, Cherry Strudel left work early to go back to the eye doctor's, where the new glasses were carefully fitted to his face. It was an agonizingly long process, made even worse by the brief tantalizing view he got of a perfectly clear, in-focus world, before the optometrist took the glasses back off his muzzle, made an adjustment, and then asked him if it was better than it had been.

Nevertheless, the process was finally complete, and Cherry practically skipped out in the street, admiring all the ponies he’d only known by their blurry outlines. He stopped in the middle of the street to read the signs on all the buildings—he knew they were there, but he'd never known what they said.

Corrected eyesight wasn't without its disadvantages, however. As he got close to home, he noticed that the paint on the picket fence surrounding their patch of dirt was peeling, something he'd never observed before.

A day's worth of work would fix that right up, though. He happily trotted into the kitchen. He could smell chilis cooking; no doubt Stonie was making him his favorite dinner.

He was halfway through the door when Black Stone turned around, greeting him with a broad smile. "I love your new glasses! How does it feel to be able to see the world clearly?"

Cherry blinked at Stonie. "Huh . . . I never knew you were a stallion."

Soft Shell, Hard Heart

Soft Shell, Hard Heart:
Majin Syekoh Makes Love to Soft Shell Tacos

It was a dark and stormy night in Baltimare, where the EquestriaGirlsCon convention was in full swing. Majin Syekoh, the ponified protagonist of our prose, was hungry and tired and possibly drunk because he'd trotted all the way from the Zepplin-port along the outer harbor and to the inner harbor (which is why he was tired); he had not eaten all day long because all the restaurants had long lines (and the city was paved with cement and the weed-control ponies did such a good job that there weren't any weeds to snack on).

Also he may have come across a half empty bottle of tequila and of course the friendly thing to do when one finds litter on the ground is to properly dispose of it, but you can't recycle glass bottles when they're full of liquid and of course it would be wasteful to to just pour it on the ground, so he did what any friendly stallion would do and drained the bottle and then properly disposed of it (the bottle, not the liquor) in a recycle bin.

Then he staggered down to the water taxi, which—as is normal in Baltimare—was a giant swan with a saddle on its back. And a cardboard cutout of Maud for some reason.

The ~~swan boat~~ water taxi paddled sedately across the harbor, until it arrived at bar where writerponies were all gathered. As writers, they had chosen the darkest, dankest, dullest, dive-y-est bar in all of Baltimare and were speaking in hushed whispers over tall tumblers about their latest projects. Maud (the real one, not the cardboard cutout) was standing on a table in one corner softly reciting rock ballads.

Majin stumbled to his seat and sat, planting his forehooves firmly on the table, like a boss.

Before everypony could even finish greeting him properly, a sexy stallion who was cosplaying as Equestria-Girls Sonata leaned over the table and placed his large, firm REDACTED on Majin's shoulder and breathlessly whispered into his furry little ear, "Would you like to taste my taco?"

He didn't know what else to do, so he just nodded meekly and and cracked his pasterns and waited to see what came next.

Not too long after—certainly not more than a few minutes—Sonata Dick tapped him on the brisket and then bent over the table in front of him and revealed his soft taco.

Majin's thought were clouded by the drink and the exhaustion and the hunger and Maud's soft prose and the sweet seductive scent of tacos and so it was inevitable that instead of eating the taco he climbed up onto the table and made sweet, sweet love to the soft, soft taco.

THE END