The archivists really had to dig deep for this one. A row of pony plushies is pretty innocuous (well, except for the Cinder Glow who’s wearing a lanyard that says “Vore me daddy” and is that an anonfilly?

. . .

MOVING RIGHT ALONG

Among those plushies is a zebra, and if one were to look close, those stripes aren’t just stripes; no, an author who was clearly losing his sanity actually wrote a chapter on a zebra.

Along with an apology note for having done so.

The Wizard of Whitetail Woods II: The Lost Chapters
Interlewd: ZSP
Lt. Col. Biscuit

As KitKat well knew, Zebras can’t fly. They can’t do horn magic either. There are no zebracorns and there are also no zebrasuses (zebrasi? pegazeebs?) and there are certainly absolutely no alibras.

Well, zebras can fly, so long as they’re on some sort of aircraft, but everybody knows that’s not what the phrase means. Even the Wizard knew that.

Most importantly, the zebras knew that, and while most of them were content with their lot in life, and while some of them had founded a successful aircraft manufacturing company and yet another herd operated the second-largest airship delivery service.

They had also gotten into the photocopier market with their Zerox machines, but that’s not particularly germane to this chapter.

Zanthe was a zebra, which was obvious by how her name started with a Z. In zebra tradition, all names start with Z, or if not, they start with an X which is pronounced as Z. Such as Xerus and Xyanthene and of course everybody’s favorite Zebra hero, Xylene.

And let’s not forget Xylene’s daughter, Xylene Xylol.

Some might think that naming convention silly or presumptuous, but some would do well to remember that the noblest of the noble gasses is Xenon.

You didn’t think of that, did you? OF course not, you never think of anyone but yourself.

✈✈✈

Point is, Zanthe really wanted to fly on her own. Like with her own wings. Her parents were supportive, but one can only support what is likely a wishful dream so much. If Zanthe were to fly with her own wings, she’d first have to have wings, and while puberty brought the usual things to the young zebress, it did not bring wings.

During her angsty teenage years, she did consider in some of her darker moments just taking a pegasus’ wings. You know, chop them off, sew them onto herself, and she might have done so (and this story might have earned a GORE tag) except that she was practical enough to pay attention in biology and understand that in order to function, wings required a vast number of supporting structures.

That didn’t make it impossible, but it would require more than just the wings; there were muscles and ligaments and bone structures and nerves and a region of her brain that would need to be programmed for flight.

An exoskeleton that was operated by magical implants was a possibility, and she took a few robotics courses as well as Crystal Lattice Engineering 101.

And if any of that had borne any fruit, there wouldn’t be much of a ztory. A few articles about flappy wingsuits, speculation on how they might be used, and some day a collection of PonyTube videos with non-winged ponies using the things even though it’s way more practical to just buy a ticket on a nice, reliable airship.

Also there would probably be some PreenHub videos, because let’s face it, Rule 34.

That would have been the way the story went, that should have been the way the story went, or maybe the story would be one of those rare knocked-out-of-the-park success stories and flappy wingsuits would become all the rage, like fidget spinners but with a very real possibility of falling to your death.

At some point, the idea of aircraft and the idea of rocket power merges, since the two share some general principles. Rockets are of course ancient technology; if you set a boomy thing out in the open it goes boom, if you put that boomy thing in a tube, it flies. Add some wings, and suddenly it flies predictably; use some rudimentary aerodynamics and it’s steerable. Realize that the faster you make it go the smaller the wings need to be for some kinds of control (and you’ve invented nozzles, so you’ve got that for steering) and pretty soon you’re in an arms race with your neighbors, digging holes to hide your intercontinental ballistic missile farms.

Well, I guess with equines it would be a legs race, because of course they aren’t armaments, they’re legaments. Or wingaments in the case of pegasi. ~~Or hornaments for the unicorns.~~

~~But~~

~~Unicorn horns are made of alicorn, so maybe they’d be alicorniments instead, but to carry this all the way out (to beat a dead horse, so to speak) since we have Princesses to deal with, I think it would be best to separate alicorniments and horniments.~~

And since this thing is tangenting almost as fast as Super Trampoline sometimes does (love you, bro ), we should mention the alicorn artillery. It is legit—100%, hand on heart—a line in a Christmas hymn, ‘And the star rains its fire while the beautiful sing.’

Source

[EDITORS NOTE: This goes even MORE off the rails before it gets back to the plot]

[EDITORS EDITORS NOTE: This has a plot?]

[THE GHOST OF redacted because I didn’t ask his permission: I told you not to write this but did you listen to me?]

[EDITOR’S NOTE: He’s not a ghost, he’s alive and well.]

By conventional standards, Zanthe wasn't a beautiful mare. The stripe she had running between her hind legs was almost as narrow as a zebra stallions, and while that’s a pretty shitty standard of beauty, it’s how zebras do. Never mind that she’s smart and motivated and has a generally friendly personality and good hygiene, every stallion thinking of expanding his harem only considers that stripe, and the other mares are super catty, so even if he was thinking of it, well . . . it’s the same old story, don’t you know.

Just to paint a picture, because in a lot of cases there’s a bunch of history behind what turns out (in hindsight) to be a really stupid idea.

Let’s just winnow this down to the few facts that matter. Rockets work because Newton invented the laws of motion [CONTENTIOUS, CITATION NEEDED]; tubes make rockets go zoom instead of boom (zoom is better for zebras for obvious reasons); faster = smaller wings and by the transitive property, most fastest = no wings required; and it’s not like she was going to use that orifice for anything else anyway.

For reasons lost to time or a lack of interest in a simple google search, model rocket engines are sized by letter, and the bigger the letter, the more the rocket. Based on past NASA projects it’s reasonable to conclude that for rocket propulsion purposes, the alphabet ends at V (much to the chagrin of zebras the world round, since that alphabet lacks their favorite letter and also their second favorite letter, and they have to settle for only N which is a Z that fell over).

As it happened, a size V rocket engine fit perfectly in her zagina and while she voided her birth certificate in the pursuit of her dreams, I can reliably inform the audience at large that the answer to ‘when Zebras fly’ is April 5, 2022.

🚀🚀🚀

The following was written on the hind stripe, and while it is clearly not intended to be a part of the story, is included for the sake of completeness. ‘Doctor’ [abbreviated DR below] is assumed to be a psychologist or psychiatrist or some other kind of zyatrist; AB is you-know-who.
—Archivist

AB: Here’s a dollar. I’ve got an idea.

DR: Oh God.

AB: What if, like Zecora achieved flight by shoving a model rocket engine up her ass?

DR: What the fuck is wrong with you?

AB:

DR: Never write that.

AB:

DR: I’ll kill you.

AB: So I was googling slang for vagina and found ‘wizard sleeve’ which is kind of topical even if it doesn’t start with Z, and—

DR:

It ends there, suddenly.
—Archivist

Author's Note

Legit this isn’t the worst thing I’ve written.

But it’s very much up there.

In the interests of full disclosure, the stripe thing is real (well, according to a casual internet search), and I really did pay someone at a convention to tell me that this was a horrible idea. Not that I needed to be told; I knew the truth the moment I spoke the words.

If I had a lawyer, he’d tell me that I should tell you that you should not, under any circumstances, stick a rocket engine of any size into any bodily orifice.

Seriously, don’t.

Also I’m running on nine hours of sleep this week. Typos are a feature.