Not All Who Wander
By TDR

Part 6, in which Ryoga experiences High Society Fashion

[Canterlot Castle a week later.]

Princess Celestia tuned out the noble droning on and on about some tax code loophole he claimed to have found which meant that the ERS didn't have the right to fine him for tax evasion.

Celestia knew the loop hole in question and it had been closed the moment her sister had taken a look at the tax codes.

Luna was very good with laws and anything even remotely tactical, or strategic, or combative.... come to think of it Luna was a lot better than her in a lot of things. Why had she felt like she wasn't as good, oh right, she had learned to do all of those things to try and be at least as loved as Celestia way back then.
Celestia was good at politicking and manipulation, but Luna was better at near anything else. She really should take up the other throne as Celestia had offered.

Still Luna was reluctant to restart her Night Court, so Celestia was letting her help in other ways. Which meant letting her do most of the paperwork and go over forms.

Celestia was not impressed at the 'effort' the noble had gone into to find the loophole, Luna had been bored and had corrected a lot of tax law loop holes in her first few days back, the noble had paid a team of lawyers hundreds of bits to find one single loop hole. Which was beyond stupid since it only amounted to about twenty six bits that he owed.

Still better to let him rant so she could shut him down fully when he finished, while he was rambling she could ponder more important things that were happening.

With the capture of Queen Chrysalis, who was still nonsensical when she wasn't going through weird mood swings and manic episodes, the entire Changeling nation pretty much surrendered.

The doctors and empaths Celestia brought in to look at the queen marked that she was suffering from clear depression on a level they had never seen before. The Changelings questioned who had been there when the explosion happened said she had been draining some earth pony they found in the desert pulling a cart of lumber.

The description that was given had excited Luna quite a bit and confused Celestia as evidently it had been Ryoga Hibiki that had been the one to defeat the Changeling Queen.

Celestia wondered how he had gotten all the way out there and what the cart of lumber had to do with anything.

Unfortunately none of the Changelings knew what happened to him after the explosion, the only lead was one claiming he had simply wandered off into the desert.

She had pegasi sweep the entirety badlands and no sign of him had been found, yet again.

It was rather frustrating in truth but it was proof that he was still alive after he had vanished when looking for the bathroom last time he was in Canterlot.

They still hadn't fixed all of the walls.

Then there was Luna, who was even more infatuated now that this mystery pony had defeated an old foe of hers, Celestia however was worried.

Celestia felt that she really needed to find this stallion as he was a walking natural disaster. The Nightmare Moon fight, the chase through Canterlot, now this. She wondered what his deal actually was.

No one could seem to pin down where the stallion was. There was word he was in Apploosa, there was a comment from Fluttershy that he had been in Ponyville, though the mare in question had turned bright red and refused to elaborate.

Fluttershy had muttered something under her breath that Celestia hadn't caught, though Luna evidently had. Her sister had promptly tried to get Fluttershy to join a Herd agreement in pursuit of the stallion so that when they finally found him they wouldn't need to have a trail by combat to see which of them could claim his hoof.

Fluttershy had then promptly fainted.

Celestia needed to have a word with her sister about modern courting. Sure the tax codes were the same after a thousand years, but other laws had changed...

Maybe....

She would need to look into that, Celestia wasn't sure that many laws HAD changed.

Later.

But it wasn't just the mystery stallion that was a issue. There was something going on with the Abyssinians and the surrounding Diamond Dog packs to the far south that had stirred up a hornets nest of problems. It all seemed to stem from a gremlin of some kind stealing underclothing. It was bad enough that Kludge town, and Turtle Toga had formed a massive joint militia to deal with the gremlin, they had also discovered a plot by the Storm King that would cause all sorts of issues.

The groups involved realized that the Storm King was going to cause a war with his building forces, so they jumped him first.

The Hippogryphs were very happy about that as they were being pushed out of their homeland so they joined in as well and now there was a massive conflict going on down there.

And no one had caught the Gremlin that started it all yet.

There was a bang as the door to the side hall was thrown open and a group of Guards strode and rushed over to her taking up positions around her to act as a shield while the last guard , a bat pony that Celestia recalled was in charge of the Garden wing of the castle moved up to speak with her.

The bat pony dipped her head as she approached to speak just loud enough to where only Celestia could hear her.

“Princess Celestia. 'HIS' statue is missing from the garden.”

Celestia let out a string of words after that statement that caused a number of the nobles in the court to faint.

Figuring out where Luna's new paramour was just dropped drastically on the scale of importance.

Ryoga had seen some pretty weird martial arts in his travels, many of them he had incorporated into his own skill set, like the Umbrella Fu taught by that British woman, or Anything Goes Style Gymnastics.

Anything Goes Style Dress Making was a new one.

Still there was no other way to describe it . The white unicorn mare that had pulled him aside when he found himself in that spa changing back from a pig to a horse... pony... whatever he was, had to be at least a third or forth Dan in it.

She was also talking rather fast and not letting him get a word in edge wise as she gushed about some of the 'exotic' materials that made up his gear.

There was also the fact that somehow in the midst of catching him up to what had happened when he went missing and sending her little sister and her friends out to let someone else know to bring his things to him, she had managed to convince him to act as a clothes horse for her.

She took his measurements a few times and he was fairly certain she had been drooling while muttering about his inseam, and then proceeded to go out of her way to put him in at least eight different outfits while he stood there, still trying to figure out what was going on.

He knew most of his clothing was canvas and cotton with some silk and a bit of leather, and her fuss over the bandanna in his hair being nearly infinite silk had started a ridiculous rant from her.

Still at least this was calming and a fair distraction from trying to figure out the bug things, and where he actually was. She was also very talkative and he learned more about nobles than he cared to know, but it did let him know this was a more feudalistic secret island or something.

Still he had only met one Queen, and heard a mention of two Princesses, so he wasn't sure what the royal line was like. Plus this place was a lot bigger than he expected, though this was hardly the first isolated kingdom he had been to, not even the second really.

Still Rarity didn't ask any personal questions, didn't seem to mind his basic ones, and offered him lunch. She seemed a little put out at how much he ate, though she didn't say anything about it aside from wondering if she could enter both him and Pinkie in a eating contest. He did modify his table manners to use the Anything Goes Martial Arts Etiquette he had learned, though he wasn't quite as good as Ranma, or the guy with the big mouth. Since he wasn't in a hurry any where or at risk of some one stealing his meal he could enjoy it, but he still ate fast, old habits and all.

Of course the moment he thought of Ranma and having to fight him off for food back in school dropped him back into the spiral of depression and self reflection.

And that was how he wound up following a line of blue tape down a catwalk, wearing some strange outfit or another while a mess of other ponies stood around and took pictures of him walk? Trotting? Whatever he was doing on this stage.

He only understood snatches of what was going on, some big name Hoity Toity was here for this fashion show and Miss Rarity was trying to use that to help her business. Evidently if this guy approved of her work it would help out her line gain some much needed reputation.

Ryoga didn't understand it, but he knew the value of reputation. But he also remembered some guy coming to Ukyo's place and she went out of her way to make everything perfect for him. He ate a whole bunch of food , bitched about the décor, complained about the slow cooking time and pretty much everything else he could.

She beat the fool out of him after he talked crap about her food and was threatened with a bad rating unless she bribed him, though Ukyo was too pissed to care about that.

He had gone and done much the same to the Cat Cafe and Cologne got a hold of him.

Ryoga was pretty sure that guy's review in the Nerima paper never got updated again after that and neither the Cat Cafe nor Ukyo's was ever mentioned in the paper by any other critics.

As such when the show was over, he had a pretty good idea how to deal with the situation when the guy was just tearing into Rarity and some of the other mares who contributed to the show, talking crap and hinting at ways they could change his mind with a few too many nudges and winks.

So Ryoga punched him.

The pony flew off and hit a wall. The stupid vest and sunglasses he was wearing, along with a pompadour wig did not go flying and instead fell to the group where Ryoga had punched him out of them.

“ARRRGH how dare you!! Do you know who I am!?!?” the bald stallion whined.

“No.” Ryoga admitted getting a shocked look from the prone stallion.

“I really don't care either. I've watched Miss Rarity and these other mares spend all day putting this thing together to impress you, and you come in and do nothing but insult their work and try and get into their pants.... saddles.... whatever. People like you are just worthless. You have no talent of your own so you bitch about others talent to build yourself up. Why any one buys that sort of nonsense I'll never know. You probably don't even know a cross stitch from a hem line.” Ryoga growled at the pony thinking a moment trying to come up with something else to add before just giving up. “Also your hair is stupid.”

That the stallion suddenly broke down crying at that point and ran off after grabbing his wig, confused Ryoga further as he was pretty sure that the guy should have been hurting more from the punch than his insult, which he was pretty sure wasn't even up to Kuno's usual taunts.

He glanced back at Rarity and the other mares with her as they stared on at him in shock, and decided that it might be best if he left before any of them decided to show how mad they were at him.

A few moments after Ryoga left, the gaggle of mares recovered, several of them talking in shocked voices about Hoity Toity, though a few of the others questioned if the stallion who hit him was single.

Rarity interrupted the lot of them by informing them that under no uncertain circumstances that she had in fact, claimed dibs, and thus a argument started that resulted in a small brawl back stage.

Happosai had not had a good start to his day.

Horses.

Why did it have to be horses.

Horses didn't wear any pretties and they weren't fun to oogle. Sure these horses were pastel and kinda cute, but not in the way he needed.

Following that Hibiki boys trail had almost been the death of him, least if he hadn't brought a small bag full of Akane's silky underthings to keep himself energized.

Still it had been looking bleak until he came across a town that had something he hadn't seen in a long time.

Catgirls. Literal catgirls at that not weird partial ones like Shampoo.

And they all wore such pretty things, in new variations too, who knew how much more interesting the precious silky darlings could be when there were modifications for tails.

Then he found the puppy girls and it was so much better they were all rather top heavy and had such wonderful supportive preciousness to help with that. And of course he couldn't leave these exotic silky joys to sit and be uncollected. Oh no, he might never have a chance to find such darlings again.

He had propped himself up atop a roof looking out over the town, digging through his collection and seeing which ones were his favorite, the one with the pink bows from that particularly big Puppy girl leader really had his attention, though the pair of navy blue ones from the lovely little black cat with pink hair was also a contender, that pair was dropped in rank a little as the cat girl had turned into a bug horse to attack him, so some points were deducted, but it was still close.

He was still in the midst of deciding which was his favorite when a taloned hand grabbed him by the head like a bowling ball and lifted him up in the air to be eye to weird mismatched eye, with a snaggle toothed figure that was glaring at him.

Wait...

Happosai recognized this one.

Kuso.

“I believe. I told you when you were younger to not poke your nose into my playground imp.” Discord stated flatly. ”While I certainly do approve of the chaos you cause, I most certainly do not appreciate that you are perverting it..... literally.”

“Oh come on, I didn't know I was here again, everything is so much less candy coated than the last time I went gallivanting like this. “

“You say that like I care about your whining.” Discord sighed, snapping his fingers and causing the bombs Happosai tossed at him to turn into butterflies and I can't believe it's not butterflies. “ See now you are being rude on top trespassing.”

Discord tossed the little man up into the air with a wild spin, making Happosai dizzy and sending unmentionables fling in all directions like a silk shower. The midget recovered, turning in the air to land on his feet though as he started to fall back down he saw the chimeric god dressed in a Boston Red Sox uniform with a rather large bat. A bat that impacted his face at high speed and sent him rocketing into the stratosphere like he had just been exploded by an electric rodent.

“Tsk. What an annoyance.” Discord huffed. “Oh well back to my nap. Need to remember to set the alarm this time.”

The small ball of perverted annoyance finally came crashing down somewhere in Europe. Thankfully for Happosai, it was in a pool of water. Water that turned out to be a hot spring.

This normally would be bad for any one involved not named Happosai.

However as the little pervert gleefully dove into what he thought was the woman's side of the bath, he found that the spring was only a mixed gender spring.

One that was full of burly men in either too tight towels or being rather affectionate with each other.

The tiny pervert reeled dropping to his knees .

“Wha... what's going on?” Happosai whimpered.

“Hmm? Oh hey little dude, are you alright?” One of the men asked, the individual in question having more tattoos than normal skin, and far too much of that showing for Happosai's taste.

“Wha... where are all the pretty ladies.” Happosai trembled.

“Pretty ladies? Nah man , this is the fifth annual bear convention and hot springs trip. We don't need any ladies here, we rented out the whole mountain resort, skiing, hot springs, warm fires for cuddling...... “ The man laughed. “I mean the owner and her daughter are around, they're about your age I think.”

Happosai twitched, his eyes rolling back in his head as he passed out frothing at the mouth.

“Oh crap, Keith, Greg's got his nursing cert right? This old dude here just passed out. I think he's been in the heat too long.”

Ryoga cried out with a sound of anguish and inarticulate rage as he punched a wall he was next to, unfortunately causing part of it to collapse. He hadn't even hit it that hard.

“Where am I NOW!?” Ryoga demanded still wearing the fancy clothes from Rarity's show. This was some town out in the middle of nowhere that looked like it was shoddily constructed with buildings in rows.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU JACKASS!!” a voice demanded.

“Ukyo?” Ryoga asked turning to look only to see a lavender unicorn with a purple and teal mane glaring at him.

Author's Note

not quite dead but holy crap it's been a bit since i updated this.