A Drink Between Friends

With a lull in the conversation, Whiskey took the time to visit the bathroom and investigate if he saw ‘anybody he knew’. A hoofful of stallions and a mare at one table, the inverse at another, a more mixed group, another all male group, and a table of non-pony creatures. With nopony immediately standing out, he found the restroom and made his way to the urinal. As he was finishing his business and moving to the sink to wash his hooves, somepony he knew walked in. The very same guy on the poster from the hallway, a light gray earth pony stallion with a long dark brown mane and tail, the lead singer of Food Fighters, Drum Roll. They made eye contact for a second, Drum Roll nodded, and the interaction passed. In an effort to not make a fool of himself, Whiskey shoved his hooves under the water in the sink and went after the soap, quietly. A lot wanted to spill out of him, and since he’d already done that, he kept to his father’s warning and didn’t say a word.

That is, of course, until Drum Roll asked him a question. “Hey, you’re at the table with that dark unicorn guy, right?”

“Y-yes!” He knew a whole lot more about Drum Roll than Drum Roll knew about him and it was gonna be weird if he brought any of it up. “What about him?”

“Is he, like, famous or something? I feel like I’ve seen him before.”

The Drum Roll is asking him about Discord? And not even the recognizable version of the stallion, but a form Whiskey had never even seen himself? So he was right earlier, but who is he, exactly? Still, this was one of those times a white lie could go a long way.

“Ah don’t think so. Uncle… Havoc is just a stay-at-home dad as far as Ah know.”

The stallion went to put a hoof on his beard, but then stopped right before doing it. “Gross.” He joined Whiskey at the sink and washed his hooves. “Guess I’m mistaken. Thanks, kid.”

Once he was done, Drum Roll left and Whiskey was starstruck. What… do Ah even make of that interaction? I met him, he’s the Drum Roll and… what? He seemed like just a guy. Ponies are just ponies, Ah guess.

By the time he returned to his table, making note of the one Drum Roll was sitting at before taking his seat again, he stared directly at Discord’s face trying to figure out just who he was thinking of. He said his son was ‘Sombra’ but does he really mean the historical figure? It had never really clicked for him how old Discord and the Princesses really were, but now the curiosity had gotten to him. He couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Alright, Mister Discord, ya gotta tell me. Who are ya?”

“Oh, is it my turn?” The dark unicorn stroked his beard. “Well, there was once a city built here that I paid for in another life. I’d even started on a castle before… other possibilities became known to me. Could you guess?”

Whiskey blinked. “Paid fer? What are ya, old unicorn aristocracy?”

He smiled.

The unicorn aristocracy of old Unicornia, a state that fell to pieces on the other side of the world which eventually escaped and resettled in Equestria, existed over two thousand years ago. Of what little is recorded about them, it was common knowledge that they viewed other races as inferior and were known for holding slaves. Even ponies born into families that were the wrong race were considered worthless. The kingdom was eventually consumed by infighting and then infested with wendigos before being frozen over completely.

“Huh,” was all Whiskey could think to say.

“Yes, well, I have quite the storied history, and we certainly don’t have the time tonight to go over all of it. Since this seems to be the theme this evening, I’ll talk about my eldest son instead.”

There was Amity, a female half-breed who was a year younger than Whiskey; Fallacy, a more pony-like male half-breed who also had Discord’s powers and was the same age as Prism; and then Magnanimity, who was almost more like a winged ferret than a pony with how long and bendy she was, the youngest of the three. As far as Whiskey knew, they didn’t have any other siblings.

“Who is that?”

The bearded unicorn smiled fondly, darkly. “We’ll call him ‘Shadow’ for the sake of the other patrons here.”

“Okay.”

“Now, with what you know of my… people back when I originally had this form, Shadow’s mother was not treated very well, either by me or anyone else. Appearances had to be kept and I had a reputation. In a society in which certain cruelties are seen as normal, it is difficult to realize cruelty is even being practiced. Not to say that I wasn’t a cruel stallion back then. I was not a young stallion when Shadow was born, but he was my only heir. By a stroke of luck and perhaps with a theory behind him, Shadow had been born ‘right.’”

His regular fingers and claws broke out of his hooves to bend for air quotes. They disappeared just as fast. “I was no better than my peers, but Shadow’s mother had been good to me, so I’d intended to take care of him until I realized just what he was. The boy was talented in a way I had never seen before, magically capable unlike any before or since. Well, I say that, Twilight was on track before she cursed herself like the rest of us, but that’s a different story.

“Less than a son, I saw Shadow more as a tool to be wielded. Society was breaking, the kingdom was falling apart, and every year, it got just a little bit colder. A frozen wasteland stands where Unicornia once was, and I wanted to rebuild it in a more efficient way. It was difficult to keep rebellious ponies in line, but over time, I realized that by giving them something to work for, they would serve you voluntarily.”

“Ya paid ‘em?”

Discord nodded. “It was a novel concept back then. Affording them any freedoms was more than expected, but it created a more efficient working environment. Crops could be harvested without enforcement, buildings were built in a timely manner, forests were cleared, tools were smithed. The easier I was on them, the better they would perform.”

A shiver ran up Whiskey’s spine. “Ya talk like ya invented corporate structure.”

The unicorn clasped his hooves. “Yes, there were many sins, and that one is likely my most insidious. Now, as the heir to a very old, very wealthy family, I ‘bought’ land that I’d intended to create a city on using this ‘new’ idea. At the time, Equestria didn’t exist and this continent had been recently added to maps of the world, so land here was more about settling than purchasing. As I was collecting ponies to prepare for the new settlement, I encountered Shadow’s mother and my plans deteriorated. At first, it was just her pulling on emotions I’d effectively grown up without, and then it was what to do with the boy. My own parents were mostly uninvolved in my upbringing, and they’d died in their forties. I was a stallion who hardly considered his parents, let alone knew how to be one. So, I didn’t. Like me, he was raised by servants, but thanks to his mother being one, he was also somewhat of a servant himself.

“He was also uniquely suited to magic that was… frowned upon back in the upper circles of Unicornia. Magic I had made my life’s work. This kind of magic is, of course, forbidden these days, but your princesses and I are the only ones who know why that’s a good thing. I didn’t know what it could do at the time, so I used Shadow to figure it out.

“A certain spell allowed me to inhabit a… life-like puppet from the comfort of my own home, and I used it to make the dangerous journey across the great sea to the new world with Shadow and a boat full of my own… personnel and a fool I’d paid to settle there. Over the course of about four months, I took the role of teacher and taught Shadow everything I could. He excelled at it, far beyond my expectations.

“However, he’d developed a relationship with a pair of sisters, a pegasus and an earth pony. He’d grown bold and tried to play a game he didn’t understand with the fool. He’d gone so far as to embarrass the fool, and then the fool did something foolish. He’d earned Shadow's ire, and the boy was, like I said, very powerful.”

Whiskey swallowed. “Wh-what’d he do?”

Discord licked his lips. “The ship he’d taken, the one I’d paid for and loaded with people to fill my new city, was found empty. It had docked and anchored, the sails had been drawn, it was as if it had been crewed the day before it arrived, and depopulated the next. The fool was found dead, horn chopped off and the rest of him dismembered. His was the only body aboard.”

“Yuck.” Of course, Whiskey had seen pictures of something like that since he would help his father with work sometimes. Fin had seen the real deal in person.

“Yes, well, he would go on to do arguably worse things later in life and yet still following my guidance. The ship was merely the first massacre.”

The things he was hearing and the ‘uncle Discord’ he knew just didn’t line up. “Ah honestly find this hard ta believe.”

He motioned to himself. “I was, quite literally, a different pony back then! It was another world, comparatively, and I had been punished not once, but twice for my misdeeds. These days, I simply want to watch the world turn and see what happens next. When my beloved Fluttershy and all the friends I’ve made in this era die, I will surely have been punished yet again. Count your blessings, boy, you were born in an era kind to your station. My little Shadow did not have such a luxury.”

Soarin laughed. “Talk about first world problems.”

Discord detached his foreleg and put it around Soarin’s shoulders. “Ah, my dear drunken pegasus friend, you are incorrigible. In a world filled with such joys as these, what reason is there to despair?”

He’d been quiet most of the night, but Fin drank the last of his own beer and rested his chin on his hoof. “The suffering of others is one that I think about a lot.”

Discord scoffed. “How noble of you.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Cheese nudged Discord.

“I suppose I shouldn’t.” He raised a brow at Fin. “Is this about that thing you want me to solve for you?”

Whiskey’s father tended to keep a lot to himself. His mother was the same way for that matter, but it was always something nasty when he’d refrain. Ponyville had seen a surge in crime with the surge in population over the years, and it hadn’t exactly slowed down its growth just yet. Projections estimate that by the end of the mid 30s, the city will hold around 16 million people from all walks of life. Larger districts are beginning to form more specific rules and coalitions with nearby districts as general law within the city needs to be more and more specific to the residents of each area.

Fin sighed. “Mostly. I mean, I’d be perfectly happy to talk about my eldest son too, but since he’s sitting next to me, I feel like that would be in bad taste.” He turned a sarcastic eye at Whiskey. “You’re old enough to talk about yourself.” Leaning back and taking hold of his own water glass, he swirled it around for a moment, sipped, then set it back down. “Since we drifted to the topic of slavery and all that, it’s made me think about work, so I’m gonna ask you guys some stuff.”

Mac frowned. “Slavery? In this day and age?”

The green stallion shrugged. “It’s harder to enforce, but not impossible to accomplish. We usually call it ‘trafficking,’ though.”

Soarin picked himself off the table. “Is this gonna be icky? I’m not super into ‘icky.’”

He glared at the pegasus. “You sound like your wife.”

“It’s tragic, I know.” Soarin rubbed at his temple. “Alright, take your turn, Fin.”

“Well, speaking of tragedy, there was a girl who disappeared in District 48 not too long ago. She was reported missing when she didn’t come home from school on Monday and we’re still looking for her. We have a little bit to go off of, but this isn’t uncommon in that area, and even if we do manage to rescue her, it’d be a miracle if she ever recovers from what happened.”

The smiley Cheese had gritted his teeth. “You expect that she’s been abused, huh?”

“A nameless fourteen-year-old abducted from a lower-end district? I’d be more amazed if she wasn’t. It’s not as if we got a ransom note or anything. The problem, the real problem, is that the community in 48 is well intertwined.”

Whiskey lowered his brows. “Nopony’s sayin’ anything?”

“Nope. We’re in this district a lot since it’s one of the highest crime areas in ponyville. The residents don’t want the gang, but they can’t get rid of them, and if they talk, the gang finds out. I say gang since that’s what we’re normally up against, but this series of kidnappings has been too organized. The girls, and boys sometimes, disappear never to be seen again, and when we do recover the few we find, they’ve been left to rot in other parts of the country and violated beyond repair.

“A more recent example would be a young mare who disappeared two years ago. Seventeen, ready to graduate soon, gets a call from somebody about a dream job right out of high school. She doesn’t want to jinx her chances, so she doesn’t tell anybody where she’s going or what she’s doing, and she isn’t heard from again.”

Discord lowered his chin. “What is it you want me to do, exactly? While there isn’t much I cannot do, things cannot be undone, Fin.”

The detective shook his head. “I’m not asking you for anything out of the ordinary, just a rescue. It’s not as if we haven’t done the work to approximate where she is. Honestly, I think we could go in and get her, but that would disrupt what little balance we’ve managed to achieve, and worse, I doubt everypony would come out unscathed or even alive. As terrible as it is for me of all people to say, it’s just not worth the risk.

“That mare we found? She was in a crack house in an Applewood suburb. Drugged out of her mind, kept perpetually high for years, and sold around for ‘recreational use’. They’d finally gotten enough force to go in there and smash the operation, and she was not the only missing girl they found, but at least one of the living ones. Some of those kids were so far off the planet that they didn’t even realize they were sleeping next to bodies. Treatment and magic might’ve been able to heal some of her wounds, but nothing could fix the mental scars. When she was finally cognizant enough to see her family again, she couldn’t remember most of the time she was gone. Just vague flashes of things that had been done to her.” He let out a breath. “Without giving too many details, sometimes I wonder if she’d be better off if she’d died.”

A hollow silence fell over the table. While Whiskey would sometimes be asked to help solve a puzzle, he was never included in discussions of Fin’s feelings about work. Being on the internet for years and wandering onto sites that had awful videos of horrible things being done to people made him aware of what could happen out there, but it always seemed so far removed. Malus lives in District 47 with his mother, just a mile away from where this kidnapping took place.

“Pa… does… is this what ya usually deal with?”

Fin eyed his son for a moment, then let his gaze fall on the empty caramel apple glass. “The work of a detective is wide and varied. The job of a soldier is about the use of force. To go from the latter to the former, you have to think differently about things. I’ve had my own bad experiences in life, but I was trained to deal with them. I signed up for it, albeit under your grandad’s orders. There’s only so much I can do for the kids who get caught up in the games people play and that…” he flexed his foreleg. “That is what burns me inside. I don’t like to cheat the game any more than Discord does, but these cases are the ones I’m willing to break rules for.” He leaned back, turning his full attention to Whiskey. “What would you do if that mare had been Gin or Craft?”

If it’d been right at home instead of so far from it. And that was a good question. What would he do? His father is the head detective on the force. One of his mother’s best friends is the princess of the city. Discord is sitting right across from him. If it had been either of his little sisters, they wouldn’t be gone for long, and heaven and earth would be turned upside down before too long had passed. Whiskey likely wouldn’t have to do anything. “Ah… probably go find the princess or Discord, but… Ah think y’all’d probably be on it before Ah even knew about it. Can’t imagine they’d be gone for long.”

“You should…” Discord began, “keep in mind what I said about being blessed. You are well-connected, you were born into a family with very powerful allies. In effect, these things cannot happen to you or your loved ones. You’re a noble prince of old Unicornia. You’re above the afflictions of the lower ponies.”

“To add to that,” Fin added, “imagine if you weren't. If you didn’t have me, Discord, the princesses. If you were just a father out in one of these outer districts trying to make it with what you had, maybe even ignoring your own talent just to feed your family. You’re not the hero in an action movie, you’re not the star of someone else’s story, you’re just a guy like anybody else. And your daughter simply doesn’t come home one day. What next?”

“Ah…” Whiskey struggled for the words. “Ah… Ah’d go ta the authorities first.”

“The cops are dirty. The guys in your area are bought, and rescuing your daughter is a conflict of interest. Powerful people want this kept under wraps, and a nobody like you isn’t going to make any waves.”

“Pa is that really somethin’ y’all should be sayin’?”

Fin put a hoof under his chin. “Do you really think every cop in a city with ten million people is clean?”

And with the answer to that obviously no, what would he do? Would he, of his own power, be able to do anything? All things considered, he was a very big stallion and could likely force his way so far, but with weapons or magic involved, he was just an earth pony. If he had no one to turn to… could he do anything?

“Well, Ah’d do everythin’ within my power but it doesn’t seem like Ah’d have a lot of that. Ah’d either end up a murderer, dead, or both.”

Fin nodded slowly. “I see. You’d do it yourself, take a little vigilante justice in your own hooves, huh?”

Strange as it was, that is exactly where his head went. Normally, Whiskey solved his own problems. With five siblings, he ended up acting as third parent for most of his life, and there was little he wouldn’t do for his family or the farm, going so far as to keep secrets from his parents which was no small task. And still, if it was his family, and no one would help him, he’d do it himself, no matter what it took. “Yessir.”

“Well, in the more recent kidnapping, you were killed trying to get her back. You went to the cops but happened to catch the wrong guys on duty. You went up higher, but up higher was warned to not let you get to me. By the time I found out about you, you’d already gone off guns blazing, only to end up killing one of my plants, a few other members, and leaving this earth without your daughter. Your wife has been left alone and shattered, the little life you had is falling apart around her because of the mess you made, and the ponies who could’ve helped you have been put in a difficult position because of your actions. The chances of her being rescued are effectively zero now, and without the intervention of a higher power, she’s lost.”

“Oh.”

Fin clasped his hooves together on the table. “There are things you can’t do. Not everybody is an action hero. We can relocate the mother and daughter after we get her out, but her father is gone because of all this. And when you consider the position he’d been put into, can you really blame him? He’d lost the most important thing in his life and there was almost no hope of getting it back. The only hope he had, he jumped on, and lost everything for it. The tragedy of it all is my reason for despair. It would be one thing if it was a one-time event that happened once in a blue moon, but this is my every day.”

Whiskey swallowed. “Couldn’t ya—”

“There are seven billion people on the planet, Whiskey. We can’t save the world. We can’t even handle the crime just in this city. And without becoming the villains and enforcing control over everybody’s lives ourselves, which realistically, the normal people among us could not do, there is nothing we really can do.”

Discord rolled his eyes and sat back in his seat. “And what, you’d give up on the hopelessness of it all?”

“No.” Fin set his hooves down. “But I could empathize with somebody who did.”

He scoffed. “A baldfaced lie if I’ve ever heard one.”

Cheese cupped his chin. “Well, I can’t say it’s a mean lie, if it really is one. Things go wrong in life, and if Pinkie hadn’t been there when I found out about my parents, I don’t know that I would’ve made it.”

“About yer parents, Mister Cheese?” Whiskey asked.

He hunched over, covering his mouth. “Well, like I said, they died before you were born. Except, unlike what Fin’s been talking about and the kind of thing he has to deal with here, they weren’t killed by a person or something. It was just a freak accident, just a vent that’d been left closed in the old house. It was built to retain heat, and this was in early April. They didn’t have the windows open and carbon monoxide doesn’t have a smell or a taste or any way to detect it without magic, or more recently, electronics. Old but perfectly healthy, they’d… probably been talking about something, not even realizing anything was wrong when they effectively suffocated to death.” He swallowed, letting his eyes go off into the distant past. “We were going to tell them the wedding plans when we found them. We got dizzy just trying to go in after opening the door. The house had to be fumigated before we could have their bodies retrieved. It was… it was a mess. The worst day of my life. And If I’d been in there with them, I wouldn’t be here today.”

“And there’s Haze, too, ya know,” Soarin added. “Bad people make bad decisions, good people make bad decisions, and mistakes can get people killed. Things just… go wrong sometimes.”

This was in reference to the time that, in spite of everyone’s warnings, Rainbow Dash refused to move to the ground after Haze was born, only to cause an accident that ended up knocking out power completely in Cloudsdale for several days about fourteen years ago. This resulted in the deaths of two in-surgery patients and was effectively covered up by the princess.

Mac nodded. “Ah don’t really think Ah need ta add much ta the subject since ya ought ta know what Ah’ve been through, though Ah might not’ve been far from where yer mother was when she found out about y’all if Ah’d known about Malus. Wasn’t in a good place. It’s pretty easy ta look and see a bleak future.”

Of all the things Whiskey imagined he might hear about on the day he finally got to join ‘guy‘s night,’ death and despair were not the first topics that came to mind. It had to be because of who these particular stallions were, right? All stallions don’t drink and smoke and get sad like this, do they? “Well, what do ya do ta… ta not get so down on everythin’? If… if it really is all that bad…”

All the stallions at the table smirked, creaked and chuckled.

“You find love,” Cheese said.

“Ya get married,” Mac said.

“You give chase until you catch the Rainbow,” Soarin said.

“You relish in the chaos without upsetting order too badly,” Discord said.

“You turn a mistake into a miracle,” Fin said, patting Whiskey on the shoulder.

Discord leaned over the table and put a hoof under his chin. “It is like I said. With joys such as these, for what reason is there to despair? The theories I had believed in as the evil sorcerer in every fairy tale turned out to be only half true. All things are coins, double-sided. When life has become stale and miserable, it’s simply because you haven’t flipped the coin over in a while. One must have the will to find it, which comes down to one’s character, but one may find themselves motivated, positively or negatively, by anything they can think of. Be it a tragedy or the flowers at your feet, there is life to be found everywhere. Being able to turn your perspective is what will bring you joy, and joy is the stuff of life.”

“Amen,” Cheese said. He raised his glass, and the rest of the stallions followed.

Discord refilled them all, and then Fin spoke up. “And when life does get you down, sometimes, all you need to find that joy again is to have a drink between friends.”

“Cheers!”