SHARD #432,602
It was a perfect world.
And he’d wanted it to stay that way. He really had. He’d tried his hardest to make his fellow ponies realize the error of their ways. But they were set in them, and proud. Over the years he’d argued in their universities, pleaded before their senate, even gone straight to the ponies of the shard in a door by door campaign to save even a single soul. Every one of them, down to the last, had spurned him. Had rolled their eyes when he’d laid out the signs of the prophecy unfolding around them, and for what? The right to wear the heretical colored ribbons.
It should have been so simple. Celestia had very specifically told him when he’d emigrated here years ago that it was vitally important that the ribbons they wore in their manes be black and white. She’d made it quite clear that there was a very good reason, even if she’d never specified what it was. And then she’d left. He hadn’t seen her or spoken to her since, even though he knew she must be watching. But still, a being like her obviously had a lot to do, and the stallion didn’t feel right forcing her to come back just to deal with his problems. Whatever she said, he was sure there were others out there who needed her attention more.
All he’d ever wanted was to do right by her, and make sure the others heeded her council. In retrospect, it had all started to go wrong when somepony had put a black and a white ribbon through their laundry together and the colors bled. He should have put his hoof down then and there. But the black ribbon was still mostly black, and the white one was still mostly white, so he hadn’t made a big deal out of it. But the others had noticed, especially the younger fillies and colts, and soon more and more of their ribbons seemed to ‘accidentally’ go through the wash together.
He knew for certain that something was wrong when one of the more daring fillies walked past him in the street, head held high, with a ribbon that had been smeared with strawberry juice interwoven with the locks of her chestnut-colored mane. He’d pulled her aside then and there and read her the riot act, but if anything she’d only become more defiant. He’d bitten down on her ear and dragged her, screaming all the while, back to her home and battered at the front door until her parents came to answer it. But he quickly discovered that the problem ran far deeper than a single rebellious teen. It was a phase. It was just a ribbon, not a big deal. And when they pressed him to explain what, exactly, was the harm in it he found himself stammering there without any good answers.
Things only spiralled downward from there. With stoic and unwavering commitment to Celestia’s instructions, he tied the black and white ribbons into his mane each morning. With each passing day, though, he found himself in a quickly evaporating minority. In his darkest, quietest moments he even had to admit that some of the arguments they made were at least a bit compelling. Ponies came in every color in the rainbow, why shouldn’t the accessories they all wore do the same? They weren’t hurting anypony. And while the stallion couldn’t come up with any decent rebuttal, every time he saw a green, pink, or orange ribbon adorning a pony’s mane he was stricken with a deep and abiding sense that it was disrespectful and wrong. Months dragged into years, and the other ribbons only grew more elaborate as his remained plain. He’d nearly vomited on the spot the first time he’d spotted one with polka dots. But everypony seemed so happy with their ribbons, and that night as he drifted off to sleep the stallion wondered if this belief, this faith he’d put in Celestia’s words, wasn’t misguided. A pathetic superstition the rest of the shard had correctly rejected and left behind. For the first time since he’d arrived in Equestria, he didn’t sleep well.
And then the next morning the army of giant, angry wasps arrived.
It was as big a surprise to him as everypony else. He got up that morning and stepped outside, only to find that the sky was dark as the creatures blotted out the sun itself. Some of them were larger than the house he lived in, and the buzzing of their titanic wings sent window panes throughout the town trembling in resonance. Stingers thicker than a pony’s torso slid out from their abdomens, and at some inaudible signal they all dove down upon the town at once.
The wasps, as it turned out, didn’t like ponies without black and white ribbons tied into their manes.
The stallion winced and shuddered as the ponies around him began to scream. One mare, who he recognized as the mother of that teen who had started the entire colored-ribbon trend, was plucked off the street right in front of him in mid-gallop, carried off by the monster towards parts unknown. He was the eye of the hurricane, oddly detached from the scene unfolding before him as the creatures scooped up two, three, four ponies at a time. One of the ponies who was being abducted locked eyes with the stallion, the cerulean ribbon braided into his mane dangling between his horrified eyes. Eyes that begged for help.
The stallion had tried to help. Tried with all his might, and for so long. But now it was too late, and he was glad the other pony was carried away before he felt the first hints of a dark smile twitch at the corner of his mouth.
It took barely a quarter of an hour for the town to be picked clean. He wandered through the wreckage, not quite accepting that this had really happened. Now he was alone.
Then a chunk of debris shifted in his peripheral vision. Perhaps not so alone. He rushed over and helped pry the boards and blocks of stone away, revealing the hacking and coughing silhouette of a mare in the midst of the wreckage. He wiped the dust away from her face, the grey hairs gradually resolving into the shape of a younger mare. A young mare, pretty in a somewhat plain sort of way, whose face was framed by two pigtails. One bound with a black ribbon, the other with white.
The stallion didn’t have time to process this before a little electric shudder ran up his spine as a presence pressed against his mind. He spun around to see Celestia staring out past him at the wrecked town. Then she looked down at the pair of them. A thousand half-baked sentences died in the stallions throat. He wanted to tell her how hard he’d tried to save the others, how he’d warned them again and again, but the words wouldn’t come. Panic welled up. She’d trusted him to save them, and he’d failed. How could he not have failed? What was he before her?
Then she rushed them and wrapped them up in a hug.
He felt her whispers more than he heard them. The others were gone, but not lost. Perhaps they had been foolish and insolent, but she loved them no less for it. And he had been strong, had heeded her warning in the face of overwhelming pressure and evidence. The tip of her wing gently pushed at his chin until he was looking at the mare he’d just pulled from the building. Had he not been as strong as he was, not been as fervent in his crusade, she too would be lost.
But she was saved because of him. For her, he’d saved the entire world and Celestia was eternally grateful and proud. Her love for him was well earned, and well repaid.
It was a perfect world.
Most shards in Equestria Online are simply given numerical or hexadecimal designations. But this one has a second, somewhat less official name.
That name, of course, is Shard Enfreude
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Later the two ponies would perform this ancient dance over the corpses...
Anybody else seeing parallels with the first entry in this story? I mean, yeah, there's an obvious "gay sex causes hurricanes!" bigotry logic at work here, but the Nazicorn from Shard #4823 also had a neighsayers-and-vindication thing, in the form of the outsiders criticizing the town but occasionally seeing the error of their ways. I actually think it worked better there -- but then again, this has
BEESWASPSCan I make a suggestion?
Someone who wishes to be a parent.
Someone who wishes to see it all through from birth to adulthood and beyond. Who takes joy in the joys of parenthood, and his overcoming of obstacles during parenthood. Who wishes to pass on his/her legacy onto the next generation, teaching them and learning from them.
Someone who wishes to do this for eternity.
Yikes. I hope those weren't actual people. Or at least entomology enthusiasts.
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Not to be confused with Shard en Freud, which is an entirely different kettle of penis.
5126002 I am, but here's the thing: this shard could have gone the other way, about learning how the edicts of Celestia that make no sense ought to be tossed off as soon as there's no reason to have them. Suppose that the giant wasps had some in the first year, and the black-and-white-ribboned ponies had fought them off, and them they developed an anti-wasp spell, but ponies still wore the black and white ribbons. There would be just as much satisfaction in getting rid of the old way and wearing rainbow ribbons.
And that world would be no less and no more perfect than this one.
5125285 You are a very bad pony.
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That could be cool! Maybe somepony who wants to experience it from both sides, so splits his/her consciousness into some kind of gestalt entity between all their direct descendants within the shard. I'm happy to take requests, and I know people have made a few throughout the comments. The toughest ones to come up with material for are requests for commentary on economic systems, since those sorts of things are basically solutions for a problem (namely scarcity) that doesn't meaningfully exist in Equestria.
I like to think that If I saw everyone in my town carried away by giant wasps my first instinct would be to go chasing after them to try and save them. I don't know if I really am this kind of person but its what I aspire to be at least.
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But scarcity raised such hard feelings over the resulting economics that I had ponies beating each other with chairs centuries later over their heartlessness/oppression, long after the need for the struggle is over.
About this chapter: I think he and I have got more in common than I'd like to admit. When it looks like what people around you are doing is against all that you stand for, but the consequences aren't horrible enough yet that people will be willing to reform, it's easy to start perversely wishing sometimes for the disaster to strike, hard enough to knock some sense into people. To use a relatively non-political example: "Whee, everything is wonderful because the stock market is going up and up and up forever!" "No, you fools, it's rigged and it 's got to crash sometime. One of these years. Darn it, why am I the only one not profiting when I'm right?!"
Edit: One big difference between that and the scenario in this shard is that the stallion has no idea why his belief is so important; he knows nothing of any cause-and-effect relationship or principle at work other than blind obedience to Celestia.
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Actually now that I think about it. While I do hope my first instinct would be to help, I hope my second instinct would be to use my head and
notice why I might have been the only one left behind.
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I'd love to see a day in the life of an achievement hunter; someone who devotes most of their life to getting as many of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of different FiO achievements as they can. Whether the shard is a normal shard or has RPG-like elements, I imagine it'd still turn out great.
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The key is to do rash, stupid, brave things before you can actually think twice and stop yourself.
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Question is, what do they enjoy more - getting the achievements, or 100%-ing the game?
I actually quite liked this one - faith in CelestAI is one of the ideas I've been toying with for a while, and I think it's kind of nice that these sorts of people get to actually be right for once.
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It would have to be the achievements. I doubt you could 100% Equestria Online in a thousand mortal lifetimes. It'd be like 100%-ing life itself.
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Perhaps a shard that worked for an achievement hunter that got more complex every time s/he 100% the previous one, reforming and causing the hunt to start all over again but each time getting more complex and so more rewarding every iteration.
And now she's just fucking with people? What the hell? o.o Though I think this is actually my favorite entry in this story.
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You fucker. I love you. Shard Enfreude indeed.