The Art And Zen Of Learning Absolutely Nothing

by Estee

Rating: teen
Tags: Sprout, My Little Pony: A New Generation, Mane 5, Slice of Life, Sex
Length: 9887

Sprout knows that if ponies are afraid of something, the world is a better place. And if he's going to be restored to power, they need to be scared by something new. Hey, didn't Sunny's dumb father say something about an 'Ursa'...?

It's just not fair. He was the only one who truly understood the threat of the other species, the stallion who mobilized Maretime Bay in the battle for ultimate victory, and what did it get him? A criminal record and community service. And now the unicorns and pegasi are just moving around HIS city like they own the place and that's totally unfair. His mother should own the place (through having sold more anti-them stuff) and once she'd stepped aside? It would be Sprout time!

But nopony recognizes how vital he is. They expect him to pick up litter and worse, to do it before Hitch. They don't understand that ponies are meant to be afraid. All the time. Then somepony can be in charge. Like him. (Again.) And if they're not going to be terrified of wings and horns...

...what's an 'Ursa'?

Doesn't matter. He'll just go find out the Sprout way. By WINNING.

(Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.)

Cover art from a mark capture by SproutHooves.

Published 2023-10-22 01:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2023-10-22 01:00:02 UTC

He Didn't Learn Nothin'! He Was Wrong The Whole Time!

He Didn't Learn Nothin'! He Was Wrong The Whole Time!

If there was anything Sprout Cloverleaf knew, it was that ponies were meant to be afraid. Because a herd species was at its best when everypony within it thought and labored as one, and what brought ponies together more easily than fear? And besides, when somepony was frightened -- which of course meant somepony else -- it could become so much harder to think. A truly terrified pony would benefit from having somepony around who could think for them. And that, for the scant period which he still regarded as the best days of his life, had been Sprout.

Ponies were meant to be afraid. A pony just wasn't truly a pony without that baseline fear. And so as the two mares approached the Territory over which he held Absolute Authority, he made sure to pull his lips back from his teeth. An open, naked display of aggression, which was made all the better by the fact that nopony was allowed to cross his Sovereign Border and do anything to him.

...except for the shadows. The shadows crossed all the time, especially when the sun was at the right mid-autumn angle and the blades were rotating at the proper speed. The newest fell across his back and reminded him of how much he still needed to do. It couldn't be allowed to exist --

Both mares stared at him.

Maybe the snarl had lost something from the opening arrangements. He'd needed to release the Jaw Grip Of Justice first, after all.

"What's he doing?" asked the intruder whose presence overturned order, reason, and the sanity of existence: horned version.

"I think he wants us to see if he's got anything stuck in his teeth," declared the native traitor to the universe's most natural course. Blue eyes squinted. "Yeah. Okay. You've got something there." And then she had the sheer nerve to giggle. "Looks like a bit of ribbon. Must be left over from when they forced you to eat the medals..."

The Rightful Emperor Of Ponykind (By Which He Clearly Means Just The Earth Ponies, Because What Are The Other Two Even Supposed To Be?) fumed somewhat, glared across the Sovereign Border, and planned on adding another name to The List. Just as soon as he found out what it was.

"By the way, loser," the earth pony mare added with a flounce of mane and increase of giggle, "you missed a spot. The giant one. Right behind your tail. Not that you would have noticed if it had come down directly on top of you, right? Like a lighthouse..."

He wondered if she would have been laughing if she'd known the true stakes. That her entire species was on the verge of extinction. And he pulled his lips back a little more, because that was the current plan and they all worked eventually. The main requirement for keeping them going was pushing back 'eventually' until something good happened --

She squinted some more.

"Ribbon and foil," she announced. "Plus some brown stain. I guess making the medals out of chocolate coins worked out for you after all, huh? Not that anypony peeled them before they pushed the things into your throat..."

She laughed, because there was no depravity which a traitor wouldn't display. And then she swished her tail, signalling her so-called friend to follow as she trotted away.

One of the deeper shadows swayed across his back. Then it dipped.

"But who is he?" asked the rather confused unicorn mare. (Sprout was now watching her backside. Most of the unicorns were rather large, and their buttocks got upscaled accordingly. And a healthy earth pony stallion shouldn't have been looking at all, but he was right next to The Signal.) "And why does he have that flashing metal band around his front left pastern?"

The Token Of Superiority chose that moment to beep.

"You wouldn't have heard about it," the traitor bemusedly considered. "If he'd won, you never would have heard anything. And after he lost, his precious mommy had just enough influence left to bury the articles a little. Under all the headlines about two whole species coming back." With a light laugh, "Good thing she had you, right? So anyway, the joke back there is --"

He got ready to lunge. Because he could cross the Border if he wanted to, surely the penalty wasn't as severe as he'd been told because nopony would ever actually do that to an Emperor and yes, he planned to pull up well before actually charging into them because he really didn't need any witnesses misreading the situation, but ponies were meant to be afraid and surely a display of total aggression --

-- the shadow's source dipped again, swayed in a cold autumn sea breeze as it darkened Sprout's entire body. It was shaped very much like a leaf, because that was exactly what it was.

Then it broke off the stem and dropped.

He didn't quite see it plummeting in time and the desperate leap forward, which was just a little too late, put his forehooves across the Border.

There were things they didn't tell you about magic. Or maybe they had, except that Sprout hadn't been listening because they'd been talking about magic. Sprout was beginning to understand a few things about magic, starting with the indisputable fact that he would be in a much better position if he was the only one who had it. Everything else was learn-as-you-go, because the traitors were doing everything they could to keep the Rightful Emperor down: accordingly, whatever they told him had to be treated as lies -- but personal experience? That was real. Unless the world itself was lying to you, and Sprout was the only pony in the world who was smart enough to watch out for that.

Take plants which had been grown to extraordinary sizes by earth pony powers. It was just a straight upscale, right? They were still normal plants. They had to be completely and utterly normal despite their giant state, even if there was something called the square-cube law which Sprout didn't really understand. He had been a deputy for a while. When it came to understanding the law, a deputy's job was to point at the sheriff, step aside, and then find a safe place to take notes about what his superior was so obviously doing wrong.

(The City Council probably would have been a lot more impressed by his list if he hadn't tried to pull it out during the trial as People's Exhibit A. Sprout, of course, had been The People. Or The Person, which was much more important and the Council hadn't recognized that either.)

He had been a deputy before ascending to his rightful place, and he'd gotten that position because he'd worked for it. Said work had involved making his eyes really big and moist in front of his mother, because stupid Hitch got all the beautiful pictures and sexy calendars and that had to be a direct byproduct of working in the sheriff's office. So if Sprout worked there, then Sprout would have calendars and pictures and mares falling all over him, which they should have been doing for years because he had been the heir to the Canterlogic fortune and what was more attractive to a mare than telling her 'I'm going to have a lot of money someday, as soon as my mommy says it's okay?' Nothing. Nothing was more attractive, which meant Hitch was nothing because mares fell all over him.

(Sunny had gone out with Hitch a few times. It would be the last thing he forgave his former friend for, just before he brought her to that rightful place by his side.)

(...seriously, Hitch. Instead of Sprout. Well, he'd known that Sunny's father had made her insane...)

So his mommy had gotten him the job. And mares had somehow not fallen all over Sprout, because apparently there was something called a personality and he'd still been looking into the means of faking one. And that was truly a shame because he would have been the world's best partner, since thinking about something was exactly the same as doing it and Sprout thought about sex all the time. He had slept with every mare whom he'd voluntarily brought into his head, and they'd all loved it. Now if he could just find a way to keep the others from shoving themselves in because that was the next threat to Maretime Bay, the truest one, the battle to maintain PURITY --

-- anyway, let's say somepony made an oak tree really, really big. Like the one behind him in what had once been one of Maretime Bay's natural clearings. Say it was about ten times the size it should have been. Well, unless there were earth ponies trying out other kinds of magic on it, then it was going to age normally. It would pass through the seasons and when you began to approach autumn, the leaves would start to change colors. Eventually, they would begin to drop.

And a leaf which was merely ten times larger in all dimensions really shouldn't have possessed the mass required to drive Sprout into the ground, but apparently that was the square-cube law for you. Sprout was hoping to eventually disregard it because if there was a law, then an Emperor was meant to either write it or ignore it: the latter came from sheer force of Authority.

Sprout was also certain that any true Emperor would have been capable of rising to his hooves regardless, but it turned out that the Token's border-crossing penalty shocks were, in fact, exactly that severe.

It was funny how being lightly electrocuted made a stallion think about unicorn butts. (Also pegasus butts, but mostly unicorn. Because those were bigger and therefore, there was more to think about.) The electricity was clearly lowering his resistance to The Signal.

Eventually, he managed to twitch his way back onto safe ground. Got up on the sixth attempt, reestablished the Jaw Grip, and resumed using the Plow Of Justice to shove giant dead leaves into huge piles. Something which the colts and fillies of the Bay would insist upon jumping into, scattering the whole thing and then he'd have to do it all again...

That was the life of an Emperor who'd been unjustly punished with Internal Exile, which the Council had insisted on calling Community Service. The implication had been that he'd only stayed out of prison because of who his mother was, which made perfect sense to Sprout. Also, his attorney had argued that his privileged background meant he wasn't capable of knowing any better, which was clearly stupid because when it came to the important things (and only those), Sprout knew everything.

He'd heard mutters from the gallery at his trial, complaining about 'affluenza'. He hoped they died from it.

He heard giggles from those who passed their former Emperor. Wished an equal fate upon those who laughed, and the world didn't cooperate. A world which needed somepony sensible in charge.

Every day. He had to clean some part of the city every. single. day. That was Hitch's job, because taking care of garbage was the only thing a sheriff was good for. But it was Sprout who pushed giant leaves around, and did so while cold autumn shadows fell across his back and giggling ponies just pushed their way through chill ocean breezes while keeping each company. Or keeping company with freaks, because some of the earth ponies traveled with pegasi and unicorns, there were freaks moving into Maretime Bay because there was finally somewhere they could move to and they just kept showing up day after day after day and that was why there was a new shadow. The one which couldn't be allowed to exist.

The shadows cast by the spires and blades of the wind farm... those had been present for as long as Sprout could remember. Maretime Bay needed electricity and when you had near-constant ocean breezes, the thing to do was use them. The slow rotation of those blades created power, kept homes lit, televisions bright and, most importantly, had allowed Canterlogic to operate at all hours. He had nothing against the wind farm, and had once taken its constant presence as a sign that something was right with the world.

But now he had to deal with the shade cast by giant trees (and worse, ones which hadn't been grown by him, plus he was still expected to clean up after the things). And beyond that, between wind farm and town, was the fresh shadow of the Tower.

The Tower was a product of pegasus technology. The signals created by Maretime Bay phones mostly served to cover the bay itself and if you believed the lies, all the Tower was meant to do was boost the range. The Tower, added to a lot of tinkering to adjust what had turned out to be three completely different ideas for how networks were supposed to operate, allowed Maretime Bay to make phone and computer contact with the pegasus enclave and the unicorn forest prison. It had also allowed the local signal carriers to discover the concept of 'long-distance call' and the City Council was still passing regulations to stop the resulting fees.

Sprout, of course, would have simply razed the Tower, as an Emperor was entitled to do. Because he understood what it was really for.

He'd been having dreams.

There was at least one every night. Some of them had started to show up while he was still awake. And they all focused on unicorn and pegasus mares. Sometimes singly, but the real attacks against his sanity came when the phantom ladies teamed up. And you had those big, snuggly unicorn butts and wings caressed his face and he was sure he hadn't dreamed so much before the Tower had started to go up, which had been shortly after he'd learned what unicorns and pegasi looked like in the first place.

The Tower beamed dreams into your head. It made the freaks into something sexy, something a stallion wanted. Wanted more than the earth pony mares who should have been gazing up adoringly from their place next to his hooves for a lifetime, and THAT was the THREAT. The assault on PURITY. Because if the Tower was doing that to everypony and they all went for plush snuggly butts and soft feathers -- he presumed they were soft, mostly based on some shed specimens found while cleaning, currently tucked under his pillow for Evidence -- then in a few generations...

...there wouldn't be any earth ponies left.

He'd tried to sound the warning on that, because he HAD to. But... it was hard to get anypony to listen. The mares probably weren't getting the dreams, stallions wouldn't admit to having them, and stupid Sunny had just giggled and said something about how her dumb father's notes suggested that earth ponies would eventually start randomly popping up as foals in unicorn and pegasus births. (So now he had to forgive her for that too.) This made no sense whatsoever to anypony who understood biology, or so Sprout presumed because the second Emperorship was going to need a Minister Of Reproduction and a lot of explanatory charts. He just understood sex, and perfectly. Biology was secondary.

If the Tower won... if the assault on PURITY went through, and the result was extinction...

Ponies -- earth ponies: the increasingly-sexy invaders didn't qualify -- weren't afraid any more. Not of outsiders, and part of that had to be the Tower. A pegasus plot. Beam text messages directly to the enclave, while it radiated species-destroying dreams into your head. Dreams of butts.

The dreams told him that he liked big unicorn butts, and that the dreams could not lie. They did.

Canterlogic had told Maretime Bay to fear the Other, and it had. The city had been at its best during those platonic days. Why was he the only one who still understood that? Even Posey had reached the point where the endless glares were equally distributed between all possible targets...

...maybe he was the last one resisting the Tower.
His fear was letting him hang on. Doing so in spite of the dreams.
A testimony to his power as Emperor.
He'd need to have his personal biographer write something about that. (The official reports which Sprout had filed as deputy proved that he didn't consider written words to be all that important.)

Ponies were only truly ponies when they were scared. And if he was going to make them see that they needed to fear the insidious...

...but the Tower's effects were invisible. Nopony talked about them, because who talked about their sexy dreams? Except for Sprout, because he occasionally tried to lead by example and even before he'd become Emperor, he'd told attractive mares about his sex dreams all the time. Especially the ones which involved them. Which mostly went a long way towards proving that nopony else talked about them, and that a few of the mares could have just stopped at telling him to shut up. The direct physical enforcement had been rude.

He used the plow to sweep. Passing foals saw the pile of giant leaves and made him start all over again. He chased them up to the Sovereign Border, and two of them flew away.

Get rid of the wings. The horns. (The older ones would take their butts with them.) How?

The enemy's current attack was invisible.

Pegasi and unicorns had been effectively invisible once. Nopony ever saw them, and yet Canterlogic had been able to tap into the fear. Profitably. But that had been his mother's art, and... she didn't really talk to him any more. She barely looked at him, and rerouted her trots to avoid his workspaces.

How could he bring the fear back?

(Becoming Emperor again would give him his mommy back.)

Ponies needed something to fear. Something which he could rally Maretime Bay around and against. In fact, he could even potentially rally all of it, just to prove he'd 'changed' and get a forehoof in the door: internal discrimination (which he'd already planned to call 'sorting' and 'avoiding artificial species quotas') could start later.

But what was still out there in the world to be afraid of?

Maybe Argyle Starshine knew, especially since that idiot had presumably trotted right into the worst of it while looking for more things to write stupid notes about. And to prove how much he hadn't cared about Sprout, Sunny's moron of a father hadn't even found a way to send the last ones back.

...Argyle...
...all of the dumb stories he'd told them while Sprout had just been trying to play, which mostly meant declaring that he was making his building blocks into a giant mecha which nopony was allowed to defeat or even kick back and Sunny just kept saying that was his answer for everything...
...at least a couple of those stories had been partially true. For starters, the horned freaks were lifting things with glow now. Maybe they were even invisibly making their buttocks bounce. Enticingly.

The town's biggest moron -- hadn't been.

So what else had Argyle said?

The Token Of Superiority could be set to beep at regular intervals, letting ponies know when the Emperor was nearby. It was also capable of detecting set borders, and delivered electric shocks when those lines were crossed. It was reliable.

Of course it was. The Token was a Canterlogic product. It had just been... repurposed.

The original intent had been as a Stage Two defensive weapon. The freaks would have been attacking, and Tokens would get shot at their legs, wings, and horns. Anything which connected would clamp on and stay there -- while doing nothing more. No visible effects at all, and a total lack of visible keyhole to get it off.

But it would be keyed to a preexisting border. And if the attacker gave chase -- then the earth ponies would cross the line, racing for safety and a chance to regroup. The invaders would simply trigger Electric Misery, and continue to do until they retreated.

Sprout, when presented with the original idea, had nodded eagerly and then asked about adding in poisoned needles. Something which automatically stabbed into flesh as soon as the band sealed, because the best thing about poison was that it delivered a kick while keeping the other party from kicking back. (Kicking somepony was always fair. Getting kicked in return wasn't.) And his mommy had looked oddly uncomfortable in the presence of genius, then said that they were trying to keep the freaks from coming after Maretime Bay. Shocks were a deterrent. Poison was a reason to seek revenge --

-- well, there couldn't be any revenge if you poisoned all of them --

-- plus ponies would be working with poison in the factory. Batteries could be tested last. Poison was deadly all the time. And if there were any accidents --

-- he really hadn't understood that. Sprout's relationship with both worker and product safety was a matter of financial practicality: namely, if you had something which was likely to cause injuries or death, then you added up the amount which would potentially be paid out in settlements and compared it to the cost required for fixing the flaw. The lower number clearly won, especially since a User License Agreement which prevented lawsuits could always be hidden in the fine print of the receipt.

But his mommy had said no. And Sprout respected her, so he'd dropped the subject. (You had to respect and love the mare who had raised you, especially when there was presumably still a huge fortune somewhere and you really didn't want the post-funeral reading of the will to lead off with something about cat charities.) But while he'd been Emperor, he had definitively proven that safety standards really just slowed ponies down. Plus he could have a giant mecha for real. And everything which had happened after that was completely unfair, because his kindergarten self had already told Sunny and Hitch that nopony was allowed to defeat it. And having anypony kick back was just the worst thing ever.

...the point (because he sometimes got lost in the brilliance of his own thoughts, especially when he was trying to guide the topic away from the plushness of big unicorn butts) was that if there was anything Sprout understood beyond pony psychology and all of the other important topics to exist, it was Canterlogic products. Things which had been made to stand against enemies whose powers were legendary. In the design stage, this mostly translated to 'theoretical' and so his mother had focused on making items which could stop a relatively normal pony. (It wasn't as if there had been any enemies courteous enough to turn themselves over for testing and if the first lunatic to cross the border had really wanted to be nice, she would have instantly taken up a new career as Test Subject #Only.) The assumption was that underpowered efforts would be pointless, and anything which could disregard ten times the safe maximum was probably found on the research proposal line labeled as It Was Nice Knowing You. There had been very little point in designing for IWNKY, but Canterlogic would have gone down both fighting and while basking in the warm knowledge that if you had to die horribly in the end, then at least there had been a lot of reassuring profit along the way.

But you couldn't draw up blueprints for a real-life mecha if you didn't understand something about engineering. Even if the engineers had claimed that was mostly passing the results off to them while ignoring all screams of 'ARE YOU CRAZY?', he knew how the company's creations worked. It was how an earth pony could trigger a cage meant to contain a unicorn and turn it into a temporary shelter to grant privacy of thought. (This had worked perfectly, because the first thing he'd thought of was to let somepony else deal with it.)

And the Council had placed a Token upon his pastern...

He hadn't tried it before because -- well, bluntly, if he ran, then he had his choice of an entire world to run in and that was the problem. As far as Sprout was concerned, there wasn't supposed to be a whole world out there and if there was, then it certainly shouldn't have been that big. Maretime Bay was enough. Sprout understood everything important, and that was why he fully understood that to leave the shore town permanently would discover an entire planet which was just waiting to kill him.

House arrest was fine, even after they'd moved him out of his commandeered Emperortorium and into the smallest, most pitiful house imaginable: he was certain about that last part because he personally hadn't been able to imagine anything worse than his current paint-free rattletrap. House arrest gave him a base from which he could observe the stages of invasion and plan his comeback. But the Signal was being broadcast constantly, and ponies weren't afraid...

Argyle had suggested there was a potential solution for both problems. And all Sprout had to do was... find it.

Lure it in.

Which would mean leaving Maretime Bay for a time. Possibly multiple agonizing, torturous, soul-grinding hours.

But Sprout loved his home that much.

Now. The Token -- or rather, the repurposed Invisible Golden Fence. How did one go about disabling the locator beacon and internal power supply?

...okay. Now that he was conscious again: how did one go about it without getting anywhere near that diode?

...he was starting to wonder if pegasi had some sort of special relationship with electrical current. Not only did the Tower clearly work, but most of the erotic dreams from the last three sparking collapses had featured pegasi.

...and now that the internal battery had been fully (and brilliantly!) discharged into his body over the course of about a third of the night, then there was nothing left to prevent him from just taking the Token off! Pure genius!

Getting to the edge of town unseen -- that hadn't been a problem. There wasn't all that much of a watch set on Sprout's assigned prison, because nopony had really thought he'd try to leave. (Plus he'd heard the words "No great loss," being kicked around, and recorded a few names for later.) And he knew how to move through shadows. Hanging around the sheriff's office had allowed him to master the art of passage without noise. How else was a deputy supposed to avoid unfairly-assigned work? And litter, because telling ponies to pick that up was Hitch's problem. Hitch, who always looked so authoritative and calendar-worthy whenever he was giving that kind of order...

(Sprout was trying to destroy the Signal. To save earth ponies as a species, whether they deserved it or not. And to start working back towards becoming Emperor again, of course. But he had to admit that getting the older dreams back was going to be a nice side bonus.)

It was... being at the edge of town.

At the border of a barely-road which was now being restored, because it no longer led to nowhere.

Knowing that he was one hoofstep, just one from leaving everything he'd ever known, and becoming...

...lost.

He froze. (He told himself that anypony of sanity would have done the same.) Glanced back towards the nighttime lights of Maretime Bay. The glow of home: something which offered its own kind of magic. Protection. Comfort. Familiarity...

Trying to think about Argyle's stories, searching through relayed, half-remembered madness for the real... it was bringing back too much of what the lunatic stallion had said. Words kept marching through Sprout's brain and if they didn't have the courtesy to displace some of the crowding plush butts, they could have at least made a little more sense.

'Every villain is the hero of his own story.'

That was idiocy --

-- no. It... really wasn't, was it?

Sprout took a slow breath. Thought about those he'd grown up with. The way they'd chosen to betray their own kind. And for the first time, he wondered what kind of stories they were telling themselves. The falsehoods their souls had created to justify the destruction of a species.

It probably had something to do with friendship.

Maybe once he'd saved two of them, they would remember that they'd once been his friends...

The hero nodded to himself. Forced his gaze to turn forward, and stepped across the true border.

He was looking for a cave.

...he was almost certain that he remembered what caves were. There would be a cliff face with a hole in it and if the ocean wasn't rushing into the space, then it was a cave. With sea water was a littoral. He knew that for a fact, because he was a shore town kid in a world where there wasn't supposed to be any other kind. He'd spent so many hours splashing around in half-dark hollows with Sunny and Hitch, before they'd grown old enough to become stupid.

The farther you went from the water, the more likely you were to find a cave. That was just common sense. But he was also trotting through -- forest. The forest started surprisingly close to the ocean and the further you got from the salt in the air, the more the plants changed. The sounds. His snout was filled with the unknown, thistles tore at his fur, ears constantly twisted as they tried to track strange birdcalls, every moon-created shifting shadow was just looking for the chance to attack and it would have been so easy to become disoriented or lost...

...to be -- scared.
But being the Emperor was about remaining the one sane presence of reason in a herd of terror. Giving them a voice. Something to guide, lead...
...save them.

Sprout pushed on.

Afterwards, during the interrogation, he would be asked about how he'd found the thing.

He'd readily admitted that he hadn't planned on staying away from the city for all that long. Sprout had been fully aware that he was going to be checked on in the morning, and he hadn't wanted to miss that check because not being found once was the best way to guarantee that he wouldn't be able to sneak out again. Additionally, missing the check meant also missing breakfast, and that was a horrible thing to keep away from a pony who'd been up all night on behalf of his entire species. And it was autumn and he'd been cold. So he'd basically been looking at that night's hunt --

-- a pony, hunting! Look at what those invaders have brought us to! Also, have any of you been having dreams about --

-- fine. Whatever. They would be sorry for not letting him truly talk. And if it wasn't already too late when that happened, a merciful pony would be willing to hear their apologies. Anyway, he'd fully thought that he would wind up having to go out for several nights in a row, and that excursion was just the first in a series. He'd anticipated having to mark off already-searched areas of forest, and was sure he would have come up with a method on the way out. As it was, however, what was left of his first trail had pretty much marked itself. Broken trees and giant faintly-glowing pawprints did that, right? So he'd done them the courtesy of blazing the newest Do Not Go There road, and that status really needed to include the enclave and prison immediately if the earth pony species was going to --

-- no, it was not just 'blundering around in there'. He'd been looking for a cave. So that meant he was focused on rocks. Tall ones. Cliff size, at least. Or maybe a giant boulder, if it had a hollow you could stand within. Had anypony tried using their magic on boulders? Because you know, earth ponies --

-- it wasn't 'just getting lucky'.
It had been destiny.
Destiny, unlike his interrogators, knew a hero when it saw one.
It was just a matter of dealing with -- everything else...

The cave had been at the base of what, for Sprout, might as well have been a mountain. He'd seen the cliffs which went down to the sea along Maretime Bay's western edge, carefully navigated the wider trails. There were a few changes in elevation within the town itself, and then -- everything else was a long way off. If it rose from the land to a height far greater than his own, then it was a mountain.

The cave was in a mountain, and formed an initial hollow large enough to contain a hill. (Shadows suggested a much, much larger one towards the back.)

The hill was breathing.

He wasn't quite sure it was the right color. There was just enough autumn moonlight getting past the half-canopy of dying leaves and cave mouth to give him the hue, and... it was a deep, deep purple. Something which would have been lost in the night itself, if it hadn't been for the portions of brighter glow along the giant ursine body. Points and spots of stronger light which seemed to exist in patterns. Extended viewing, especially if conducted while steadily forcing oneself to, breath by breath, not run, made it easy to pick out constellations.

He was standing in the presence of a legend made real.

...a legend which was fast asleep.

He wondered how long they slept. How long they lived. If this one had been here since the time which Argyle had been presumed to be totally lying about.

...actually, the more practical question was about how to wake it up.

He twitched at the mere thought. Every part of his being wanted to run. Looking at the fangs, the claws --

-- not yet. He couldn't run yet. Being a hero was clearly about running only when the time was right.

That, and knowing what you were running towards.

Waking it up... what had the story been? A unicorn colt, and a light. The one which came from the horn. That had disturbed it, and the beast had given chase. Sprout understood that. Something bothered you, so you made sure it stopped existing. Monsters could be extremely practical.

Light could do it. But there wasn't enough moonlight getting in to wake the thing, and he hadn't brought a mirror. He had the choice to come back on the following night, but -- what if he couldn't find the cave so easily a second time? In fact, what if the thing moved? And he was sure it wouldn't go towards Maretime Bay on its own, because it had been a long time since the age of the stories -- the exact amount didn't seem to matter -- and nothing like that had ever happened. If it had, then Canterlogic would have created a new product line.

Which was when he realized that he was looking at Opportunity.

Not just to bring the fear back, and turn things normal again. It wasn't only the chance to destroy the Signal. This was fiscal Opportunity. Canterlogic could come surging back. Forget anti-pegasus and counter-unicorn equipment (although of course they'd be making that in a back room, waiting for the right day): this was the age of the Starbear Stopper! Noisemakers were cheap to make! Ammonia could be sold at a 2000% markup, and when it came to electric shocks...

But it all started with giving them something to be afraid of.

He looked down at his trembling forelegs. He was faster than it was. He knew that. Any pony would be. Smaller body, less mass to move, and a species optimized for running. He was going to be fine. Nopony could run away like Sprout. You just had to ask any of those across the years who'd tried to commit the ultimate offense of kicking back.

Sprout stood within the breathing mouth of the cave, staring at the sleeping hill. A hero needed to take action. Action meant waking it up. And then running. A lot. Stay ahead, but not too far. And he didn't have light...

The rock-strewn soil around his hooves began to glow green.

...right! Definitely a plan! Brilliant plan! Remembering that he'd been going through thistles for most of the way in? Maybe there were other ponies who could have done that. But going back for them? Dealing with the burrs in order to deliberately carry a number? It was heroes who took the pain! For the sake of their people!

And carefully kicking a dozen of those thistles up against the monster? Sure, maybe that would have looked dumb to anypony else, comparing those tiny spikes against the beast's bulk. But if you were an earth pony with magic (which was obviously the best magic, and really needed to just be his alone for a while so he could experiment properly) and thought to turn those thistles into giant versions of themselves, where each was larger than his own body and the burrs could really stick...

He'd done it! He'd woken it up, when nopony else probably could have unless they'd had a horn (and who wanted one of those freakish things?) or been a genius! The proof was --

-- the proof was a little too close behind him.

He was a pony. Small, quick, and optimized for speed. He was supposed to be faster. He also had this little problem called 'I need to go around things' and the growling, angry, furious ursine monster was mostly just going through. And not in the intangible sense, although that wouldn't have surprised Sprout because the world was just that unfair. It brought all of that incredible mass to bear against whatever was in its way, and obstacles collapsed accordingly. Broken tree trunks were falling in all directions, birds and animals screeched and screamed as they tried to get out of the way, rocks were breaking under the thing's weight and when it came to raw speed, there was probably something called the square-cube law and as far as Sprout was concerned, the monster was in violation. It needed to be arrested for breaking physics, and Resumed Rightful Emperor Sprout was going to make that one of the first real statutes to be put on the new books.

But he was ahead, because he was an earth pony who'd spent most of his life running from things before they could commit the sin of kicking back. And the beast was roaring and there were sounds which were far too much like a guttural scream, and it would be hours and hours before anypony in the interrogation session asked if he'd ever considered whether it was just trying to jar the giant burrs loose.

He hadn't. This was the time when a hero (who was mostly screaming because he'd heard of echolocation somewhere and knowing where the next tree was in the dark would help) had to stay ahead. And the goal was simple. He would bring the beast into Maretime Bay, because the mad stallion's story had said it would follow him anywhere. Sprout would cut a path through the clearest, most roomy part of the city -- there was no point in creating excessive cleanup or risking damage to his home -- possibly while yelling to any spectators about the upcoming line of Starbear Defense Products. And then...

...all it would take was a single feint. He'd made it look like he'd run into the Tower, then skirt off into the shadows on the left. And the monster -- would attack the Tower. Destroying it, shutting down the Signal. The dreams would stop, and ponies whose nights were no longer filled with plush buttocks would finally realize that their desires had been artificially imposed. The residents of the Bay would talk at last, compare notes, realize who their savior had been...

He probably wouldn't even need an excuse for having slipped out of the Token, once they understood that he'd been trying to save them. The earth ponies would expel the pegasi, because what else could you do with somepony who'd tried to brainwash you? And if they recognized that the unicorns had so clearly been in an alliance with the other enemy the whole time...

That level of fallout required some time to settle. Sprout probably wasn't going to be Emperor again by morning. Three days felt more likely --

-- edge of the forest, the road and there was the Bay, the monster was roaring and lights were coming on all over the city, ponies running to their windows to see what was going on and he galloped past at full speed, the monster was still far too close behind but this was his turf now, an earth pony on his own ground, he knew every last street and bend and turn and all he had to do was stay ahead while luring the beast ever-closer to the Tower --

-- he gasped out the first prototype sales pitch for Ammonia-Off! on the gallop, and was extremely proud of that --

-- there were shouts, somewhere off in the distance. He caught a glimpse of a pegasus passing overhead, freak wings frantically beating while her right forehoof desperately tapped on her phone's screen. Other ponies were leaning out of windows, and their hoof-adhered phones were just filming the whole thing. He didn't mind that, because heroism benefited from an official record. There was no chance to tell them to get his good side (the left, and they would have known that on their own if he'd ever had a calendar), but he was running and it wasn't that much further now, he glanced back to check on the monster's position, his own rotating ears heard what had to be multiple ponies approaching from in front of him and the moment he wasn't watching the road was when his left forehoof caught the divot in it.

Sprout's main thought as his tumbling body skidded across the bruising surface was that there was absolutely not supposed to be a divot there. Once he was in charge again, heads were going to roll. Ideally, one of them would roll into the divot. Problem solved.

He skidded to a stop, bruised and pained and not quite able to get up again. And the monster, which had never slowed for a moment, was just about right on top of him, rearing up on its huge hind legs to become the size of a building, as the giant paw was further elevated, the exposed claws got ready to swipe, and the True Hero Of Maretime Bay (because 'Equestria' could never be allowed to exist) realized that he'd never really had a plan for making sure the beast left --

-- bright pink light, flooded with sparkles, lanced over his head. Surrounded the beast's raised foreleg, and locked it in place. And it roared, it pushed with all of that hideous strength, but the light was concentrated on that one limb...

His head automatically turned, grinding against the road to do so. Trying to see where the light had come from --

-- it was her.

The newest of the invaders. The one who was working with traitors and turncoats. The unicorn mare with the riot of tight curls, which could just suffocate a stallion who had been hypnotized by the Tower into wanting to breathe them in. She had pinkish fur on her belly, a two-tone glowing horn, and the plushiest butt ever.

Sprout, in the madness inflicted by the pegasi upon a stallion who no longer had the strength to resist, considered asking her to turn around. Having her hornglow-lit face as the last thing he ever saw just wasn't going to be the same.

He heard multiple hooves skidding to a stop, wings channeling momentum into a brake-and-hover. Some of that came from behind the unicorn: the rest of Team Traitors catching up. The remainder had been the monster's impromptu film crew, all now choosing places from which to record the rest of it. After all, as long as they were pointing a lens, they were going to be fine.

"I can't keep this up for very long!" the unicorn mare gasped. "I don't know how! But I don't know what else to do, either!"

"Do you know what it is, Misty?" Hitch asked, because of course Hitch had shown up. There was an opportunity to look good in front of plush butts and the egotist was taking it.

"Ursa Minor! Opaline told me!"

"Did she tell you about how to fight it?"

"Yes!"

"What did she say?"

"Don't!"

"Right," the stallion half-growled, and took a single hoofstep forward. "Look, Ursa. I don't know what he did to deserve this, and I'm pretty sure you've got a legitimate complaint to file. But in Maretime Bay, we settle things legally. So if you just want to growl out what happened, I'll be able to understand --"

The roar shattered most of the night. Wind farm blades shivered in their rotation, nearly went backwards.

"-- and I did not understand that," the so-called sheriff stated. A little too calmly, "So now we've got another problem."

The hovering white pegasus shakily raised her right foreleg to the perma-worn visor, and pushed it away from her eyes.

"After extensive analysis," the older 'princess' declared, "I've deduced a definitive reason for why you can't understand it."

"Oh?"

"That," the '''detective''' stated, "is not actually a bear."

"Ursa... Minor..." choked out the concentrating unicorn.

"I heard you the first time," the white pegasus snapped. "I wanted to clarify for Hitch!"

Who wasn't having any of it. "I could use some ideas here, ponies!"

"I know it's not a bear!" the younger '''''royal'''' abruptly shouted. "Because it's a camera hog!" Furious, surprisingly-short forelegs waved in all directions. "Stop filming it, everypony! You're probably just giving it what it wants! For all we know, it absorbs power from being noticed! And you're not even using the right filters!"

Sunny, who was standing somewhat behind Hitch and had brilliant yellow sparks flaring on both flanks and forehead as if they were planning on eventually doing something, took a breath.

"My dad told a story about this!" the activist told the listening world. "A story from the old days, about how it was beaten!"

Sprout tried to remember if he'd heard that part, and then decided it probably wasn't important. Besides, half of being an Emperor was jabbing a forehoof at the right pony and ordering them to think of something. Sunny was up.

"By everypony focusing their cameras on me?" the smaller pegasus hopefully asked. "...look, it's at least half-made of light. Getting it out of the spotlight is reasonable --"

"-- okay," Sunny breathed. "This is simple. First, we need something which we can use as a giant bottle." She frantically looked around, and her gaze quickly wandered up. "That water tower!"

"Okay," agreed the nearby utter lunatic unicorn who had broken the world, and did so while displaying the bright, slightly-worried smile of a serial killer who was wondering if her guest was about to open the cabinet which had the bodies in it. "We can probably bring that down if we get enough unicorns! And what's the next step, Sunny?"

"We take a few dozen cattle," Sunny eagerly told them over the sound of the beast's newest roar, "sort out the cows, then fill the water tower with as much milk as we can get!"

"Okay!" the insane mare repeated. "Sunny, one question?"

"What?"

"...what's a cow?"

Several dozen ponies blinked. The beast momentarily froze. Sprout considered facehoofing, but that would have meant moving too much.

"I figured out that it was related to 'cattle'," the lunatic added. "As a subcategory. But I don't know what those are either and if we're supposed to be sorting, I wanted to ask about the specific."

"...oh," Sunny half-whispered. "Oh. Right. We haven't seen them for centuries either..."

"Getting really hard to hold this thing's limb!" gasped the world's most unfairly sexy unicorn. "Just putting that out there! I can't bear the pressure much longer --"

The ground shuddered. Vibrations came up through Sprout's fur, jostled his mane out of shape.

"It's not a bear!" yelled the older pegasus.

"I know it's not!" said the younger one. "It's a desperate attention whore."

The entire road seemed to jump. Then Sprout realized his body had just been bounced about a hoof-height into the air, and did so just before he crashed down again.

"Um," Hitch said, because the supposed sheriff had a strange way of orienting on the sound of ponies screaming. He moved towards it. And there were a lot of screams starting up, all coming from the edge of town and closing in fast, too fast...

"Takes one to know one --" the white mare decided.

"-- then respect my expertise!"

"Does anypony else see that?" Hitch rather peacefully inquired. "Or have I finally lost my mind?" The stallion took a breath. "Honestly, with everything that's been happening since Izzy showed up, I'll take either answer --"

And then the world was coated in soft blue.

Sprout just barely managed to look up. And all around him, ponies looked up. And up, and up, and UP.

It was a skyscraper which lived and breathed. It was a piece of the sky which had taken on a roughly ursine form, and its glow tinged the world. It was at least three times the size of the Tower, and what Sprout fully expected to be his last thought hoped that it would somehow fall forward. And it was covered in huge, shifting, glowing stars, it moved on its hind legs alone like a true bear could do and its bending over was like watching a mountain lean in...

It picked up the dark purple Ursa Minor, doing so as the bright pink glow winked out around what had been the held limb and an exhausted mare slumped into the street. It cradled the smaller monster. Made a sound to it, something oddly like a coo, and the size of that vocalization meant maternal concern echoed from the world.

Then it looked down at all of Maretime Bay. Red irises exasperatedly rolled across orange orbs. The monster slowly shook its giant head. And the next sound it made required no magic to translate, because anypony who'd ever had a parent understood what it was like to be on the receiving end of a cosmic "WHAT, AGAIN?"

The Ursa Major cradled its child. Slowly turned in place, doing so in a way which caused no additional damage. And then it stomped off into the forest, and the night, and home.

It took a few seconds before anypony risked a breath. Six more until the last of the vibrations from the giant's departure faded, and then Hitch was the first to move because of course he was. The supposed sheriff went directly for Sprout. And it was going to be an arrest and another trial and more humiliation, nopony would listen or understand and the Tower would continue to stand while the community service went on forever --

"I need to hear that you're okay," Hitch gruffly said, and did so while standing far too close. "I don't want to move you until I'm sure, and the medics won't be here for at least a couple of minutes --"

Sprout had an idea.
(Of course he did. He was a genius.)
He kicked Hitch.

It wasn't a very effective kick. He was lying on his side, after all. The impact mostly grazed Hitch's right front pastern, and would have done well just to raise a bruise. But it had been necessary, because Hitch needed kicking and in all the world, there was only Sprout to do it.

That wasn't the genius part.

"Okay," the larger stallion slowly said. "That's not how I wanted to play this. But if you're going to fight --"

The genius part of kicking somepony was arranging matters so they could never kick back.

"-- I'm announcing my campaign for City Council," Sprout declared in front of at least two dozen witnesses.

Hitch was staring down at him. Hitch always stared down. The moron probably didn't even know he was doing it.

"...really." the sheriff said. "And?"

"And you can't arrest me," Sprout proudly declared, "because that takes me off the campaign trail. How can I sway the opinion of the voters when I'm in prison? Or hold a rally if there's a trial in the way? Arresting me is election interference. You wouldn't want to mess up the democratic process!"

Something very much like a smile shifted Hitch's perfect lips. Sprout considered that it made the stallion look even more worthy of a calendar, and perhaps even old dreams. Also that there absolutely should not have been a smile there.

"If you're a convicted felon," Hitch calmly stated, "you can't run for office. That's the law and it'll stay the law whether you knew it or not. And since you've already got a Guilty on your record..."

Sprout froze. And somewhere out of his mostly ground-based sight line, the unicorn madmare laughed.

"Oh, good!" her mirth announced to the night. "I didn't know if you'd all figured that out for yourselves, and I also didn't know how to bring it up! But it's the only real answer, isn't it? And that's why earth ponies came up with it, too! Unless you're a convicted felon, you can't run --"

"If," corrected Sunny.

"...if?"

"Hitch said if you're a convicted felon, you can't run for office. Not 'unless'."

Silence.

"...then where you do get new politicians from?"

Very carefully, "Izzy?"

"Bridlewood only lets convicted felons run for office," the madmare helpfully explained. "That's how we identify their potential. It's community service. Plus you don't want somepony who was too smart to be caught. And honestly, we just figured it saved time."

Hitch snickered.

"So where were we?" the larger stallion asked. "Oh, right --"

His left foreleg went back. Sprout thought fast.

"You can't arrest me! You see that mare over there? She just dropped something! That's littering, Hitch! You're not arresting her, now are you? Unless you apply the law to everypony, all the time, whenever anypony says so, then you can't use it on me first because that would be discrimination --"

"Oh, feather dusting," the white pegasus happily sighed. "That takes me back. Remember when Mom was writing out her first draft on banning whataboutism?"

"...shut up, Zipp," muttered the smallest mare in the group.

"Personally, I still think proposing the death penalty for the initial offense was a little harsh."

"...I totally would have stopped doing it on my own without that..."

"Really?"

"Probably -- look, this isn't about me!"

With utter peace, "Something isn't about you? Since when?"

"...shut up --"

"Anything else to say?" Hitch asked. "I'm still willing to do this peacefully, if you just --"

Sprout kicked him again. It made perfect sense. There were witnesses, the next protest probably needed to be something about police brutality and in any case, it felt like he wouldn't be getting any more chances to kick Hitch for a while. Not even in the special dream way, but that was the Tower.

"-- right," the larger stallion sighed. "So in that case..."

The foreleg went back again. Sprout watched the night's many lights glint off perfect keratin --

"-- wait! You still can't kick me!" And it wasn't going to be the brutality argument, because Sprout had once again thought of something better.

The foreleg paused.

"For the sake of curiosity only," Hitch said. "Why?"

"Because you'll mess up your hooves!" Sprout reminded him. "Your perfect, photoshoot-ready hooves..."

And there was a moment when he felt as if he could see the stallion thinking about it --

"You would not believe how many restorative techniques Pipp knows," Hitch shrugged. "Ask her about them if you ever decide to speak with a pegasus." The handsome features broke into a true grin. "And, of course, after you wake up."

The fur along the white fetlocks rippled, and then the world went dark.

The Tower was still standing. Sprout had a perfect view of it from his current cleaning post, although the exact angle was subject to change. Somepony had decided to ram a stake into the center of his assigned land patch, then run a chain all the way out to the latest Border and attached that to the newest, non-Canterlogic Token. It meant that if he went to the absolute edge of his range and abilities, he could mostly move in a perpetual circle. Trotting forever and never going anywhere at all.

But at least he was in Maretime Bay, and the view wasn't bad. Except for the part where the Tower was still standing. Giving him dreams, and he'd had one about the madmare and the mega-plush. Together. The Tower wanted him to enjoy that, and he'd done everything he could to fight it --

-- but maybe that didn't matter. Earth ponies might just become extinct, because nopony had rallied the citizens or destroyed the cause. PURITY would be lost. And he couldn't protect them, because... ponies weren't scared.

He didn't know what ponies were when they weren't scared, and there were times when that almost frightened him.

There were some ponies watching him at work. (None of them were hauling extra ammonia.) A number giggled, and he was now trying not to take it too personally. It was going to be a long road back, and... a Rightful Emperor needed to understand mercy. Especially when he was prepared to spend his life in trying to save his own species from itself.

That was what a hero did.
And maybe a hero was even somepony whose mother was willing to show up at a trial.
So he needed to be a hero.

He looked at his audience. Glanced towards the Tower, which claimed to be doing nothing more than boosting signals through the power of pegasus technology. Something which had to take a lot of energy.

And wherever you had a lot of energy radiating in all directions --

-- there was something to be afraid of.
Something more solid than dreams.
He was a genius.

Sprout reared up in front of his audience, as much as the chain would allow. Gestured his free foreleg out towards the Tower and because his angle was awkward at best, got most of the wind farm along the way.

"Do you see that?" the future savior of all shouted out to his subjects. "It's giving you cancer!"