This story is a sequel to An Extended Performance
When you're an invisible fluffy pony eldritch horror the size of an elephant, living in the hills above Dunnich, life can sometimes be boring because you're too big to play the normal Pony games. One night there crashes an injured something which is not altogether a crow, nor a buzzard, nor an ant, nor a decomposed Pony -- but becomes a friend. But when Little Flappy gets better, will Least Noticeable ever see her friend again?
Crossover with the Cthulhu Mythos, as is the Shadow Wars in general, but this focuses a little more on the Mythos aspects of my fanon than most. Takes place around the same time as S1E5 "Griffon the Brush-Off."
Chapters (2)
Byakhee?
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Gesundheit.
Well, yes.
What poor Little Flappy was fighting (and losing to) comes right out of Lovecraft & Derleth, too.
3969007 I've worked Lovecraft's work into my own headcanon a few times. it doesn't show up in my fics, unless you count
NyarlathotepDiscord3969897
The truly hilarious thing is that the version of the Byakhee that I'm going to present in this story comes straight out of a Call of Cthulhu campaign I ran in the early 1980's, around the same time that Megan was slaying Tirek at Midnight Castle. I've always meant to do a story about them, because my concept of them was always truly xenofictional, but I never thught I'd be doing a story about one of them being befriended by a sauropod-sized multi-headed invisible fluffy pony.
3969941 the byakhees I have are more terrestrial, basically relatives of dragons
fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/310/b/a/mlp__byakhee_by_princestaghorn-d6tbtux.jpg
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It's still "xenofiction" if one considers them to be beings in their own right, with their own thoughts and emotions and nature, rather than merely "monsters" who metaphorically-exemplify various human fears. That's the key realization to which science fiction came in the persons of Stanley G. Weinbaum and the (later) H. P. Lovecraft in the 1930's. Unfortunately for the Mythos, Derleth didn't fully-grasp what Lovecraft had done in At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time, by turning his former mere monsters into (true) aliens. Derleth had some major creativity -- the description of the capabilities of both Little Flappy and his enemy both come more out of Derleth than of Lovecraft -- but he was handicapped by the assumption that non-human creatures were just plain evil, an assumption that Lovecraft had begun to shake in his later fiction.
Derleth shook it too, in part. "The Fisherman of Falcon Point" presents the Deep Ones in an almost sympathetic manner. But Derleth was too addicted to writing what amounted to investigative procedurals and more action-oriented rehashes of Lovecraft to exploit the full potential of the creatures of the Mythos as anything other than enemies in a shooting gallery.
Least Noticeable is a good viewpoint character for this because while she's something of an alien herself, her alien-ness is deceptive -- she was sired by something that an alternate Pony world created, and she was raised by Ponies. Her cultural assumptions are very much Equestrian, as you may have noticed in her yearning for love and friendship, and her fairly-conventional sexual morals. But, due to her size, powers (including senses) and innocence, she's not easily frightened by things from which normal Ponies would run in terror. She's both an Outsider herself, because she physically doesn't fit into normal Pony society -- and somepony who's close enough in attitudes to a normal Pony that we can understand her motivations.
*This sentence confused me, but I think that "it" is not supposed to be there.
*town, (with a comma)
It must be rather difficult to have a social life when you're the size of a barn. And invisible. And can't talk. And are supposed to just sort of stand in one place for an undefined period of time before bringing about a world-changing event.
*"Crazy to try this at all" ?
... I notice the romance tag on this story.
Flappy is a "he."
And Claire was just worrying about how she was never going to have a relationship with anyone...
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Indeed. Well, Least Noticeable is only the size of a small barn. And some entities can see her. And she does have communication channels, mostly in the radio spectrum -- a very few Ponies can even understand her words, but her mouths and larynxes have a lot of trouble making anything like normal Pony vocalizations.
Yeah, she pretty much spends her evenings alone
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Indeed he is.
... and I did specify that Claire is very loving.
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I know how Flappy dies
Oh, pleas, please, please tell me that at least one of Least Noticeable's heads has a horn. Please.
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Now that's evil!
Anyway, Byakhee are tough and Claire would be careful around him -- she wouldn't call him George and hug him to death, or worse.
No horns, she's an Earth Pony / Paradise Pony mutant hybrid, not a Unicorn. Nor is she the Beast of Babylon, nor the Scarlet Whore that rides it.
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Damn. No Invisible Pink Unicorns...
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ROFLMAO!!! Now I understand what you meant!
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You made an invisible pony-thing who is also pink...and you didn't think of that?
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Hilariously no -- though as an atheist I am well aware of the Invisible Pink Unicorn reductio ad absurdum argument that demonstrates why unsupported wild claims based on "you must disprove me" are invalid.
As for Claire-Bear, she can prove her existence quite conclusively by licking you.
To be fair, other than sometimes impregnating women in strange hillbilly rituals, I've never seen any evidence that Yog-Sothoth is actively malevolent and they were literally asking for that.
And as the god of time and space, Pinkie being his child is quite in line with her abilities. Of course, at this point I'm left wondering how many of the main cast are actually full ponies in this series, between this and Fluttershy.
Wait... Pinkie's sister. Is pink and fluffy. Moves things with her tongue. Talks in Meeps.
Flufflepuff the Eldritch Abomination?
... Too bad the Byakhee's a he or I'd assume it was Chrysalis.
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Pinkie and Claire are the Daughters of Paradise rather than the Sons of Yog-Sothoth, but I was very much inspired by The Dunwich Horror, so you're essentially-correct. And yes -- my other main inspiration was Ask Fluffle Puff.
Might still be Chrysalis, though, since 'nobody's ever seen a female byahakee' isn't a sound way to determine gender.
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That's a good point.
Claire is best semi-equinoid abomination.
Her twin, of course, is best fully equinoid abomination.
I love settings with cosmic horror Pinkie Pies, and exploring it in greater detail like this is eldritch icing on the oblong cake. Especially since you reversed Yog-Sothoth's polarity and incorporated fluffy ponies, of all things. Eagerly looking forward to more.
...a great congeries of multi-colored party balloons...
You delight me!
This is so funny. That is the most adorable abomination against reality I have ever seen. And such a cute title. Least Noticeable.
I think it is kinda nice to think that there is a nice eldritch abomination out there. In most other stories along these lines the "paradise" would be something terrible, but here I'm at least uncertain.
I'd have expected Pinkie to try to go back once in a while to cheer her up though.
Also the line: "She just kept working on the rock farm and wandering the hills, wondering when her real life would begin." made me think of Claire as the weirdest incarnation of Rapunzel from Tangled ever.
4319096 I agree with everything said here. This is such a joy to read. Not much else to say except I want more.
Did I say that Claire is adorable. Because I will reword it to adorable raised to a power of, well I don't know, but it has to incorporate i, that's for sure. And some large ordinary numbers.
Happy writing.
...huh. I thought Quartz was a middle name; it sounded appropriate for a rock farming family. But Granny's line about being a "Quartz or a Pie" suggests they are separate family bloodlines.
So on the one hand, we have Claire Quartz Pie, who is a lovecraftian entity connected to Paradise and fights the Shadows...and on the other is Prince Crimson Quartz who summoned them.
Coincidence?
Interesting and very funny in chapter 1. Chapter 2 is alright... I can't wait to see what happens next!!!