Radish Root and Barrel Roller sat at a table of an outdoor café opposite the Ponyville library. Barrel Roller was squinting at it. Radish was taking notes.
“Well, Root. What do you think?”
“I think Twilight should relocate to Canterlot where she can be secured.”
“That’s retreating. You fancy yourself a security whiz, secure her here, where she lives.”
“She lives in the public library,” Radish said. “Anyone is literally allowed to walk into her home during most of the day. She’s never really mentioned having library staff. Does she work as the sole librarian?”
“Sort of. The library is mostly on the honor system. But Ponyvillians aren’t big readers, anyway.”
“And she doesn’t want guards here?”
“She says it’s ‘disruptive to the adventure of reading’.”
Radish sighed. “Dammit, Twilight. Okay, then, we need to have her home monitored, without her knowing.”
“Which means inserting our own ponies into the neighborhood.”
“Yes, but we should start within her home. We need to get Spike and Owlowiscious trained on spotting suspicious behavior, and repelling intruders if need be.”
“Oh, they are,” said Pinkie Pie. “We all are.”
Radish and Barrel Roller turned to see her sitting at their table, eating a sundae.
“Pinkie Pie?” said Radish, incredulously.
“Come on, this is Ponyville,” she said, mouth full. “Everyone loves Twilight. The whole town is pitching in to watch her back. Nopony’s going to lay a hoof on her.”
She swallowed her mouthful.
“Pinkie, we have our orders,” said Radish.
“Celestia’s being silly. Tell her I said we got this.”
“You hear that, Root? The town’s party planner says she’s got security covered,” said Barrel Roller.
“Hmm, don’t I outrank you?” pondered Pinkie Pie out loud. “Being the Element of Laughter and all, I’m kind of like a noble lady of the royal court, right?”
“That’s never been made official,” said the captain. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re a consultant for highly specific situations.”
“Look, the palace may be full of holes and moles, but there’s no place safer for Twilight than Ponyville.”
“This town has been attacked several times. You’re on the outskirts of a monster-riddled forest, and frankly, no one in this town is qualified to protect a princess.”
Pinkie Pie giggled. “What’s the Royal Guard’s track record on that, again?”
Barrel Roller bristled. “Look here, missy! We are-”
“Duck!” yelled Pinkie Pie. She grabbed Radish and Barrel Roller and dragged them under the table.
“What are you-” started Radish.
“Shh! It’s Twilight!”
They looked from under the table. Twilight was leaving the library.
“Now watch. Watch, like guards,” Pinkie said.
Radish looked at Twilight, then let his focus extend to the world around her. He saw what Pinkie Pie was getting at. Ponies greeted her as she passed, but took an extra glance before moving on. A unicorn on a park bench was pretending to talk to her friend, but was actually keeping an eye on Twilight. A window washer was doing his job, but was keeping her in view through the window’s reflection. Store clerks watched her from inside their shops while arranging window displays.
Radish looked up. A weather pony was dispelling clouds, but was following a route that shadowed Twilight’s. The local school teacher walked along with Twilight, chatting with her, while surreptitiously scanning around them. She said goodbye to Twilight, but then doubled back to examine an alleyway.
“Captain…”
“I see it too, Root. The whole town really is watching over her.”
“Mmm-hmm,” said Pinkie Pie, still eating the sundae.
“But what if someone actually tries something? What could they do about it?” Radish asked.
“The same thing we did to that dragon. Ask them nicely to be better.”
“Ugh, this town,” grumbled Barrel Roller. “Okay, Pie. The rest of you Elements can be in charge of Twilight’s safety in Ponyville, but only if you send me weekly reports on everything even remotely suspicious or threatening. And if I still don’t feel she’s safe enough, I’m putting a garrison here- I don't care how much it disrupts 'the adventure of reading'.”
Pinkie Pie finished her ice cream.
“You got yourself a deal. Can you stay for lunch?”
Radish and Barrel Roller stood on the platform of the Ponyville train station. Barrel Roller read over a poster advertising the upcoming Princess Summit in the Crystal Empire. Radish was staring at a large map of Ponyville tacked to the wall featuring various tourism highlights.
“You know, ma’am, we could still get guards close to Twilight. If the palace were to conduct long-term studies of the Everfree Forest, we could turn this old lake camp into a research outpost,” Radish said, pointing to the map. “Twilight would be delighted to have a bunch of scientists near Ponyville. But in a place like the Everfree, the researchers would need guards. And if the guards were given lots of free time, they’d spend it in town.”
“You like doing things the sneaky way, don’t you, Root? That’s an interesting idea. I’ll talk to the research department.”
“I want to be one of those guards, ma’am.”
“You want to transfer? Don’t you have a girl in Canterlot?”
“She’d want me to be here, keeping Twilight safe.”
“You’ve got a lot to learn about mares, Root. And it’s best that Twilight Sparkle has guards who can remain objective when protecting her.”
“Well, who doesn’t love Twilight?”
“Now that’s the million-bit question. I think that-”
She was interrupted by the sound of a ticket clerk cursing out a visitor. He shooed the girl away, then went to the trash bin and dumped a pile of leaflets into it.
“What was that?” asked Radish.
“She was trying to sneak in her own fliers with the rest of the tourist guides," the clerk said. "Dumb nonsense. Not even worth looking at.”
He wrapped up the garbage bag and headed off to the dumpster. Barrel Roller produced one of the flyers from her wing.
Radish looked at it in surprise. “How did you-”
“He dropped one, I snatched it up. These wings do all kinds of tricks.”
She read the flier. She cursed. She looked to see where the pony who brought them had gone.
“What, ma’am?”
Barrel Roller gave it to him. Radish read it and cursed. The flier read:
DON’T FALL FOR TWILIGHT SPARKLE’S LIES
FAKE WINGS!
PHONY ALICORN!
FALSE PRINCESS!
JOIN THE CAMPAIGN FOR ALICORN AUTHENTICITY
“Ma’am? What do we do about this?”
“You know anything about politics, Root?”
“No, ma’am.”
“It’s the most reliable means by which any pony, no matter who they are or where they came from, can ruin your day.”
“We should show this to Twilight.”
“Show what to Twilight?” she said, seizing and crumpling the flier into a ball. She stuffed it in her pocket.
“Good thinking, ma’am. Crisis averted.”
“Our train’s here. Get onboard, Root.”
Nice
Do these idiots really think anypony, much less Twilight 'neurosis-incarnate' Sparkle could pull one over on Celestia? Wait, or is this a front for something more sinister?
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It has to be. Seriously.
Just say "JOIN THE CAMPAIGN FOR ALICORN AUTHENTICITY" out loud. See how stupid you feel.
It's not the dumbest-sounding thing I ever heard, but it's definitely up there. Then again... Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. Hmm....
And here's the proof that everypony is in on keeping the fake alicorn conspiracy away from Twilight. First Shining, now Barrel Roller and all of Ponyville. It'll be interesting to see if this is the point the story starts to really diverge from canon. As much as I love Starlight Glimmer it does kinda feel like Plunder Vines or Tirek would be the best point to more fully diverge from canon. Not ignore canon, mind you, but sticking too closely to canon for too long will just hurt the story. Plunder Vines and Tirek are the best big problems the show has for some big juicy interactions with Celestia and Radish, while the most Glimmer feels like she would offer is a rehash of the shaved Cutie Mark inccident... although, that might be interesting if he's now so comfortable with his mark that forcibly removing it hurts him. There's honestly more interesting options though, and we're getting enough characters and world building that to me, at least, somewhere in season 4 is the best point to break away and let the story either naturally end or naturally evolve into something distinct from the show.
Can’t wait to see if Twilight will ever find out about that.
Hey, look at Root giving his captain the business. It's nice to see he has a superior he can actually banter with. I doubt he would have been able to do that with Shining.
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I call it paranoid because the story goes and calls out that all his suggestions not only sound like he's 'watched too many spy movies' but that it was only because he filed the complaint that other ponies were able to exploit these holes. It's impossible and unreasonable to expect every hole in security to be covered, and trying to account for everything would make the Princesses little more than caged birds--something Radish routinely fails to realize that Celestia doesn't want when she asks him about this stuff.
The reason Barrel labeled his observations low priority fixes is because security is a matter of cost evaluation, and the majority of threats out there do not have the background that lets Radish see these things as threats. The best way I have to describe it is that if I were Radish, I would have potentially voiced these observations but not filed the reports if it was clear top brass thought they were low priority because filing the complaints is what let other everyday ponies spot and exploit them in the first place. In other words, the things he found were potential threats, but so few ponies would notice or exploit them that pretending they didn't exist is the more cautious and prudent option since it frees resources to adress bigger problems.
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And thus, those two are going to make one heck of a team.
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On a side note, I was thinking about how you said you see Shining as a White Knight, and it's funny, because I'm much more inclined to call Radish the 'White Knight' because Radish has said to Celestia's face he thinks her favorite courtyard with the balencia orange tree should have bars over it in case of invasion, and when she literally asked what difference there was between that and a cage, Radish just blew past and ignored the subtext to say that it's not a cage if the bars look pretty and tasteful enough.
And that? I find that to be a fantastic character flaw for Radish, and I love it because it makes him that much more real for me the same way everything the story does with Shining makes both Shining and Radish feel more real to me. As you said, in real life there is no Kharma and sometimes people are just dicks, but many people are rarely dicks without a reason. The question then becomes what is Shinings reason for being a dick to Radish, and I feel he has several good reasons to because Shining doesn't have the same perspective of Radish we do as readers. If you dislike Shining in this story because you see him as a White Knight trying to protect ponies in ways they don't want or need, don't you think his dislike of Radish would be completely valid if he saw Radish as the same? The realness of all the characters in this story is arguably it's greatest strength, but that realness extends beyond just Radish and Celestia.
Just as Celestia is a pony at heart in this story and not a princess, so too is Radish just a pony and not 'The Hero'. Analyzing and trying to figure out the deeper motives of why any antagonists don't like him is one of my favorite parts of reading the story, because a lot of that information is rarely given explicitly, but the story is well written enough to make me think its there and dig for it. A lot of stories don't keep me doing that. I read enough and have enough genre saviness, that I often figure out way too much ahead of time, but this story is so layered that I'm constantly digging at it to find new little things with all of it's characters, original or not.
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The thing is, the pony who read the file had access to the most of the place. While some of the stuff, like the vent, would have been unlikely to be found. Sneaking, by way of the kitchen with a uniform, is a real big hole that you don't need a inside guy to think of. If he did not put it in the paper report and something happed, then a pony like Shining could use it to hurt Radish: CYA. Always put down everything, and get in writing what they don't want you to write.
Radish may feel silly that they used his report to try to get in, but he won't be pushed for that; not writing that stuff in the report would have got him punished (at lest if Shining was around).
I can see it now: Light trying to talk in Twilight, and Starlight (just to have a 'light' family) for a 4 way date. Maybe even Sunset flirting with Radish. Just to see how Celesta reacts ("You too, my child. You to steal him from me!?")
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To be clear, I don’t want him punished. I’m just saying that one of Radish’s biggest strengths and weaknesses as a character is how he thinks like a ranger and continues to do so despite no longer being a ranger. It provides good and fresh perspective, but at the same time I don’t think he realizes that ranger thinking works best on the fly. The success of the security measures at the coronation and the changeling invasion came in part from the defenses being improvised the way a ranger would have to observe and improvise those things on the fly in the middle of nowhere.
Filing reports to shore up those holes isn’t actually good as a long term solution, because, well… shoring them up might introduce new and different problems or in covering every problem ahead of time you get the caged bird problem I keep talking of. If the defenses of Luna’s tower had been there and built in ahead of time, I don’t expect they would have been nearly as effective, because the changelings would have taken steps to plan around them.
It’s also interesting to consider that ponies might have listened to him about the door if he didn’t also bring up the vents. He doesn’t have a good sense of how big a threat each of the holes he noticed was, he just sees them and kinda linked them all together to assume the worst. It’s like the chapter he got paranoid and went out to the mountain when he heard Discord was gonna be set free, and I love him for that flaw, but having to deal with it every day as his boss, is a good reason for them to either stop listening after a while or get very annoyed at it constantly being a thing until he was proved right. I’ve had the same thing happen to me before on programming projects, and though I still struggle with it—see all my longwinded comments on this story as exhibit A that I still struggle with this—a part of me knows that sometimes it’s better to say nothing so the folks in charge will listen to you when you really need them to.
While the town keeping an eye on Twilight is a lovely sentiment, the fact that she is completely ignorant of that fact is not entirely reassuring in a ruler-to-be. Celestia should give her some pointers on situational awareness.
Honestly, the whole thing could have been neatly sidestepped if Ponyville already had a garrison, as it really ought to have had, given the close proximity of yon monster-infested forest. Then the Sparkle detail could have been neatly folded into their duties.
In either case, outside of Ponyville Twilight Sparkle needs to have at least one guard when she's traveling, dignity of the office and all that. Comportment is important in a leader, that fake-alicorn muckery will only be helped along if Twilight is perceived to be disrespecting her title.
I LOVE the idea of Radish moving to Ponyville. Not only is it great to get him out of range of Shining's BS, it is great on both Radish and Celestia's mental health. It's also always great to see Radish's perspective on the town and whole world, this is where the story REALLY shines and this looks like it's going to be a welcome change of pace after a frustrating few chapters.
Also, it will be great to really see the 6 and Spike in the aftermath of Celestia's blowup, since the seven of them seem to have been ignoring it entirely. (And I'm still unsure how much Twilight knows about how much of a dick Shining is to Radish)
why do i think it something trixie would do
You tell ‘em Miss Pie !!
Have I mentioned yet that conspiracy theorists are the worst?
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oh no. i got betrayed several chapters in. the author tricked me into believing the main character had a chance....they don't...even several chapters later it's just a "bash the protagonist" story.
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