Respawn?

The next morning, we headed downstairs, and I mentioned the noises that I had heard to William. He brushed it off, saying, “I set the undead servant to patrol the first floor, so it was likely that.” I nodded, and he went outside.

“Where you goin?” I asked, as he was heading towards the town.

“The library, gonna look into the whole bullshit song magic going on. Maybe make a spell or two that blocks me from hearing it after its cast, and makes it so I won’t be forced to participate.” I nodded, and he teleported off, presumably to the library.

I decided to go to Twilight’s as well, maybe see what she wanted to say, little lady was adorkable, and I felt bad for ditching her yesterday.

As I was walking to the library, I began wondering if there were any good Italian food places around here, as I was craving some ravioli. I was walking around, I bumped into none other than Twilight, and smiled at her, saying, “Hey there, Twi! What’s new in the world of my favorite lavender mare?”

Twilight smiled, blushing slightly, “Oh, nothing! Just headed out to get some stuff from the market.”

I nodded and looked around, wondering why I didn’t see any of her friends aside from Spike. “Hey, where are the others? I thought you all were inseparable.”

“Oh, I think that Rainbow is attempting a world record for bouncing a ball off of her head, or something along those lines. AJ is working at Sweet Apple Acres, Pinkie is watching Rainbow, Rarity is working on an order, and I assume Fluttershy is taking care of her animals.” Twilight listed off her friends.

I nodded as Jack rubbed against me by surprise, “Jeez, boy, you startled me. Twilight, meet my pet, whatever the fuck species he is, Jack. I think I’ll call his species the Yeti-cat.”

Twilight was staring at it in awe, “Th-that’s an arctic lion! They are the most potent warrior companions of the northern wastes! How did you ever tame one?!”

I shrugged, “Beats me, but he’s my buddy!” I scratched him behind the ears as he got a blissed out expression.

Twilight asked a few questions, such as where I got it and stuff like that, and then I mentioned William’s pet. Her eyes widened as I mentioned that he had a dragon wolf thing, and she managed to stutter out, “H-he has a Canis Draconius? I gotta see this, and maybe talk to him about it. I’ll be back later!” At this, she took off running, and then rapidly turned around, “Wait, where do you guys live?” I told her, and she took off again, in the exact opposite direction of where she originally was going.

I yelled after her, “He went to the library, something about music magic, and burning ‘Fifty Shades of Hay’” I assume she didn’t hear me, as she kept running in the same direction, and I shrugged.

I then walked to the local bakery before promptly noping the fuck out when I saw the pink menace. I continued exploring the town, eventually finding a restaurant that serves “Itailian” food. I assumed that the shitty pun was just that, and headed inside to get me some raviolis.

After being stared at for the entirety of my meal, and some fuschia pink furred, dark purple maned bitch started griping about me under her breath, when she called me a glorified monkey, I decided it was time to reap my vengeance. I promptly began to purposely choke on my food, before turning around and falling over onto her right as I died. I then focused my respawn out of the building, a little trick I learned recently, and made my corpse then vomit blood all over her. She started screaming, first in disgust at being vomited on, then in terror on realizing that the vomit was actually blood.

I chuckled slightly at the sight of the mare panicking, and walked in the front door of the restaurant. Upon seeing my corpse, I pulled from my hobby of acting and screamed, “CHAUNCEY! NOOOO! MY ONLY BROTHER!” I pointed at the still panicking mare. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM YOU BITCH?!”

She finally managed to shove the body off of herself, and ran screaming out the door. I took a bow, saying, “This theatrical production was brought to you by James and Co. which consists of my corpse and myself, along with the unwitting bitchy mare that ran screaming.” I turned and left, but not before grabbing the bag of holding left on the corpse’s hip. Polite applause followed me as I left, and I headed over the library to find William and get him to teleport my fresh corpse back to the house, and also to give him the new bag of holding. I pulled the jaw bone club out of both bags and absorbed the bloodstone from the new one into the bloodstone of the old one. The new club dissolved into dust, and a convenient gust of wind blew it away.

I reached the library, found William, and got him to head over to the restaurant to clean up my mess. I followed after him, and he resurrected the body, then teleported it to our house. We started heading back towards the library, and I noticed that it was rather dark out for being ten in the morning. Fluttershy was running around, trying to tell people stuff, but they were ignoring her. I looked up and noticed that the sky was covered in smoke, and it seemed to be originating from a mountain in the distance.

Right then, Twilight ran up and informed the growing crowd that they didn’t need to worry as there was no fire. Noo, instead was a MUCH less significant threat that being a dragon. Seriously, ponies need to get their shit together, at least with threat assessment. A large fire was more dangerous than a creature that could, on its own, set multiple of said fires in less than an hour. I grabbed the letter from Twilight’s hands, and she looked at me in annoyance, as she was going on about how her and her friends would get it to leave. The letter read as such:

James and William,

Your first mission as Agents of the Crown will be to remove the fully grown dragon that has chosen to enter a century long sleep in the mountains above Equestria. I hereby authorize you, in the name of the Equestrian Crown, to take any means necessary to remove its threat from Equestrian borders. If it is not removed, and stays for its one hundred year sleep, it will cover Equestria in smoke and end its threat. This letter is enchanted so that only those that bear the seal of the Crown can read it, though since this letter was sent through Spike, I have created a cover letter informing Twilight of the threat, and telling her to get her friends together to deal with the threat. I would much prefer you two deal with it before they arrive, and the reward for the completion of this mission, along with the dragon’s hoard, will be ten thousand bits individually, and you may keep any remains left over from the dragon, if you choose to kill it. I would like you to at least feign diplomacy first, so that I can explain to Dragon Lord Torch if he inquires as to why a dragon was killed on Equestrian soil.

Her Royal Highness,
Princess Celestia

I showed the letter to William, and he quickly read through it. Twilight ran off to get her group of friends together, and William turned to me. “Wait until they leave, and then teleport straight to the top?” he asked. I nodded, and we headed to the library to use Twilight’s telescope to keep track of them. We ended up hanging out with Spike, who had been tasked with caring for Fluttershy’s animals, and were laughing at his interactions with the misnamed rabbit, Angel.

After Twilight and her friends disappeared beyond the horizon, we looked at each other and nodded before William teleported us straight to a ledge on top of the mountain. We slid down the side of the mountain, landing on a ledge in front of the cave. “Sooo, do we want to straight up kill this thing, or are we going to give an honest shot at diplomacy?” William asked me.

I smiled, “Leave this to me,” I headed into the cave and walked up to the dragon that was sleeping at the back, and snoring rather loudly. “Oi! Oi! HEEEEY! YOU SMELL LIKE A CANDY’S CUNNY! YOU HAVE MORE SAG TO YER SACK THAN AN OLD BABOON! I’VE SEEN SCARIER SHIT IN THE LAB LATRINES!”

…

After five minutes I looked to William, “No go, man, plan B, we smack it in the sack with our weapons. Ain’t nobody sleeping through a cup check.”

“Please, allow me,” William grinned, conjuring up a giant crystal spear. “An unwanted penetration should do the trick,” William levitated the dragon’s tail out of the way and rammed the dark crystal up its ass. The dragon moaned and cracked its eyes open.

The dragon… moaned girlishly… oh my god it’s a GAY dragon! “Mmmm, what can I help you two sweeties with?” At this, it wiggled its back slightly, causing the crystal to go in further. William went pale and vomited, and I frowned at an upcoming awkward situation.

“Umm… we were trying to wake you up, cause, well, we need to talk, I get that you are tired, I get that a nap sounds nice to ya right now, but… You can’t sleep here. There are living things that live at the base of this mountain, and your smoke will kill everything that lives under you. I bet you are a nice guy, but sadly, you gotta get going. If you want, I could help you find a nice uninhabited area to sleep.”

“My old cave back in the Dragon Lands was taken over by Grumble, the biggest asshole you’d ever care to meet… Shame, I found out after trying to get some of his sweet ass. The name’s Smog, by the way. Anyways, Grumble took over my cave, along with my hoard, of which this is a small portion. If you help me get him out of there, you can have what’s here, along with his hoard, my old hoard. I never really cared for the accumulation of this stuff, but it happened anyway, mainly because I was trying to attract somebody.” Smog said.

William dispelled the crystal, and said, “If you’ll fly us over to your old cave, we can permanently get rid of Grumble for you.” Smog nodded, and lowered his head to the ground, which we climbed onto with haste. Just before he could take off, William shouted into his ear, “Let me seal this cave and leave a message for any who come by, and we’ll be on our way.” William raised his staff and blocked off the entire cave with crystals, on which it said, ‘Twilight and co. James and I have negotiated with the dragon, and we’re going to help him get his old cave back. Have fun hiking back down the mountain, instead of teleporting. See ya later.’

Smog flew a straight path to a volcanic area to the north east of Ponyville, probably about a thousand miles from Ponyville. He landed at the base of a heavily forested mountain, with a large opening visible. There was a large waterfall near his cave, but all of the trees in a few hundred yard radius of the cave were scorched, presumably by Grumble’s fire. William teleported us, minus Smog, to the entrance of the cave. We entered, and saw a red orange dragon sitting atop a large pile of gold and jewels. His eyes focused on us, and I said, “Grumble, I presume?”

“Who’s asking?” The dragon said, in a voice fitting his name.

“Nice, anyway, leave or die, and if you choose to leave, you’ll leave your hoard.” William announced. Grumble laughed, and blew fire on us. It simply washed over us, slightly burning our hair, due to the dragon scale armor I was wearing, and the protective enchantments in William’s robes. Speaking of enchantments, runes were visibly glowing on William’s robes, and he grinned. He raised his staff, and purple flames shot out, similar in appearance to Grumble’s flames, but in a different color. As I watched, the runes on his robe dimmed down, and the flames hit Grumble, causing him to stagger back. The scales around where the flames hit were turning gray, and in some cases, falling off and turning to dust.

I smiled then, eager to put my exalted blade to use before I spied a slot in my club that seemed to faze in and out of my vision, and fit the exalted blade handle perfectly, grinning, I took both weapons out and inserted the handle into my club, it alighting with crimson, glowing blood as I leapt straight to the beasts head before letting loose with a hearty swing, sending Grumble sprawling. “Feel free to regret being such an ass to Smog, poor guy just wanted someone to love, and your dumb ass took advantage of that!”

Grumble grunted in a dazed pain, “H-he was… revolting… Dragons… shouldn’t be like that…”

At that, I got pissed, “Oi! He deserves love just as much as anyone else! You… you… You cowardly little lizard!” my crown ignited as I gripped my now blazing club, and I began bashing him repeatedly, letting all my rage out on him, this bastard led someone on, just so he could steal their home and their belongings, and he dares call the victim disgusting?!

As I was beating the overgrown lizard’s head in, William manifested a giant glowing purple crystal spear and rammed it into the now scaleless chest of the dragon. It slid through the scaleless flesh as if through water, and Grumble coughed up a bit of blood before one last powerful hit from me crushed his skull and brain together.

I held my hands up in victory, “Who else wants some?! Who else hurt my friend?!” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a much smaller red dragon sprint out the cave entrance, carrying an armful of treasure. William didn’t seem to notice it, and I didn’t have many ways to attack at range, so he got away. William shot a purple magical flare out of the mouth of the cave, alerting Smog that we had cleared out the dragon.

Smog came in as we were cutting up Grumble’s corpse as William was stripping off the scales. In the minute or so after he had sent the flare out of the he had managed to strip the scales and spines off of the corpse, and I was in the process of skinning it. Smog came in, and on seeing Grumble’s barely recognizable corpse, he shrunk down to a fifth of his original size, which was about twelve feet tall, and scooped us up in a hug. William partially ignored the hug, hugging Smog back, but continuing removing the scales and spines from the body.

I smiled, “So, Smog buddy, you happy I’m assuming?”

Smog nodded happily, “Yes! So, so happy! I thought I’d never see my cave again! My sister was going to visit, and she was going to be so horrified by Grumble! He might of even harmed her little ones!”

He looked around as he began tidying up, “Oh, you simply must visit while she’s here! I’d love her to meet my first actual friends!” He then paused and looked to us “W-we are friends, yeah?”

William, having finished descaling the dragon, smiled at Smog, “Of course, why wouldn’t we be? I mean, originally we were sent to kill you, but after finding out the truth of the situation, and seeing what you were like, you seem pretty chill.” he said. He then ripped all of the bones out of the corpse, slicing off the flesh. Most of the bones fit in the bag, except for the vertebrae. He left those bones with the corpse, and Smog torched it.

I grinned, and held out an engraved onyx with silver runic inlays. “And if you can, send us a message on this little doohickey I made, I call it an echo stone. Let’s you talk to people across long distances.”

Smog smiled like a child on his birthday at this, “Oh, I will! This will be my most precious treasure! Thank you so much!”

William levitated one of the many piles of treasure over into his bag of holding, and Smog looked at him questioningly. Upon noticing his look, William said, “You offered the entire hoard, but we don’t need much more than this and the bit at the other cave. Friends don’t rob each other blind.”

Smog nodded and repeated it to himself a couple times, at his odd behaviour, I looked at him inquisitively this time. To which he smiled sheepishly “I… I’ve never had friends before…”

“Well, we’ll be on our way, call us if you need our help with anything, or you just want to talk.” William said. I also said goodbye, and Smog wished us a good evening. William teleported us back to the ledge outside of the cave, where Twilight was glaring at the message engraved on the crystal pillars.

Her eyes narrowed as she saw our reflections in the crystal and she spun around to yell at us. The rest of her friends also noticed us, though they were all sitting around doing nothing. “Why did you do this!? Celestia wanted me to do it, so why did you do it!?”

I frowned, “Hey, we felt like we’d be crummy friends if we left you high and dry to face a dragon, besides, Smog was nice, he was just kicked outta his actual home by some asshole who led him on. And besides, if he was an actually mean dragon, do you think you’d stand ANY chance in HELL of surviving? We are skilled fighters who CAN. NOT. DIE. Whereas you can die, and this world needs you girls, you bring so much light with you all. But we just bring… us. With all the trouble that brings.” I grinned sadly, “Even if we could die permanently, would anyone miss us? No, we are expendable. We are an acceptable loss, whereas you six? If some big bad comes that we can’t handle, your elements are the LAST. RESORT.”

“He has a point, sugarcube,” Applejack drawled.

“Yeah, they are not as vital as we are, dear,” Rarity said.

Pinkie Pie’s hair deflated as she looked at us oddly “Y-you… you’re right… sweet Faust you are right… I’m worth sacrificing friends for...”

I comforted her, and Twilight demanded that we explain what went down with the dragon, something about her ‘Friendship Reports’.

I grunted, “Yeah, one helluva friend you’re being right now. Your friend here is practically broken, and all you can do is demand you get your shit? Wow, A+ Twilight sparkle, way to get results.”

William noticed that Fluttershy had quivered in fear every time that dragons were mentioned, and comforted her. “So, why did you bring Fluttershy along? She’s clearly terrified of dragons,” At the mention of dragons, Fluttershy *eeped*, and William continued, “See, the poor girl is terrified. Let me guess, you thought her way with animals would translate to enormous, SENTIENT AND SAPIENT beings.” At Twilight’s guilt ridden face, he sighed in disappointment.

I chuckled, “And I thought you were a good person Twilight, but here you are, relegating Spike’s entire race to animals incapable of complex thought.”

At this, Twilight started crying, and Rainbow began looking angry, “Really Twilight, you could have easily figured out that Fluttershy was terrified of dragons, and you ignored it? And what, do you think of Spike as a glorified animal too?”

I crossed my arms, “Now, Rainbow, we can’t think too little of her, she grew up in Canterlot, also known as the national racism capitol.”

Twilight sputtered out a denial, “The ponies in Canterlot aren’t racist!”

I laughed, “Name twenty non-unicorn ponies in High society that are NOT unicorns? Is there a ‘Celestia’s School for Gifted Pegasi’ or a ‘Celestia’s School for gifted Earth Ponies’? Is there even a school of higher learning for Earth ponies?!” my crown started burning at this point. “Can I walk down the god-damned street, without being called a fucking monkey or ‘creature’?! How about when ponies steer their children away from me in the street, and say that I might eat them if they misbehave?! Yeah! I hear that shit! You think it doesn’t hurt?! I have lists of every hateful thing said by every pony I have ever met back home, and I am going to show that to your teacher, including the things I have heard about your ‘Generous’ friend Rarity say about us! Only generous thing I see from her is the shit she’s spewing out of that crapper I call a mouth!”
Twilight broke down crying, Rarity looked shocked that I had heard what she had been saying about us, Applejack, Pinkie, and Rainbow looked righteously indignant at the points I raised about school, though I suspect that Rainbow was only indignant because she couldn’t claim to have gone to ‘Celestia’s School for Gifted Pegasi’, though Applejack and Pinkie were rightfully mad at being only able to go to one level of school.

I wasn’t even done yet, “And what about the other races? The griffons, the minotaurs, god, what about the Diamond Dogs? I haven’t seen any of them walking around Ponyville or Canterlot, what about their housing needs? Do they live in concentration camps or some shit? Ghettoes? Or worse, are they not even allowed to live in Equestria? Or do ponies ensure that they don’t outlive their welcome? I thought at first glance that you guys were better than us, that you had your shit together! But this?! This is the last fucking straw! Next time I feel like saving your sorry hide, Twilight, I’ll leave you to BURN!” At me saying that, I turned to William, “I think you should teleport us home.”

William readied the teleport, and Twilight shouted, “That’s not possible for a non-unicorn to do!”

William grinned wickedly, “Oh Twilight, haven’t you heard? As far as magic goes, each of us is at nearly half of what Celestia is at, by my estimates. Toodles!” He teleported us into the cave, along with everyone but Twilight.

“So, why are we in here, darling?” Rarity asked curiously, seemingly trying to gloss over her sins that were laid bare barely three minutes prior.

I grunted, “Don’t push it, I could leave you to walk home with Twilight. Now I’m going to take MY reward for helping Smog, and then we are all going home, WITHOUT Twilight. She can walk, if she’s so much better than us.” William decided to just levitate the small hill of treasure left in the back of the cave into my bag of holding, and then teleported us back to Ponyville, outside of our house. The rest of the girls fucked off, and William and I went inside, where there were now two undead servants puttering about.

I then walked to the writing desk and began preparing to go to Canterlot. “You wanna come with, William?”

He nodded, “I have some things to bring up with Luna, mainly regarding foreign policy and internal security. You wanna make a show of it, infiltrate the castle, show up their security? Cause I’m ninety nine percent sure I could get into the castle with the simplest of spells.”

I got together a list of the things that I had been called, in order to bring it up with Celestia, and William grabbed a scroll and a pen, probably to record the bad security. “We leave in the morning, though we’re going to teleport to the main gate to the city, in order to make it realistic.” William said, heading upstairs to go to sleep. I finished getting my list together, which was QUITE long, and went up to sleep as well.