Catpone Cerberus

@Blitz Boom Ruby had sometimes wondered what the elements of harmony would do to her if she was hit by them, because from what she had learned, everyone it was used against were highly magical beings, so it raised the question on what would it do to a creature with less magic than average pony. She personally didn't fear getting banished to another world, in fact, she almost liked the idea, because it would be likely she would be sent in a world that's less magical than Equestria, thus she would have grand time becoming the apex creature in that world. "He will most likely gain size eventually, I don't believe his growth will stop, he'll just be smaller than others of his age, not that it will be a problem if he stays here where most creatures are smaller than him before he even hits full maturity." "And no, I won't be forcing him to go back, I will offer him the chance to join me to get revenge, but it will be his choice what he does." Charir did indeed go for more meat, but he only took the raw meat, he didn't touch the cooked or seasoned ones. "Only time will tell if even I end up staying there after I get what I want, I have come to appreciate the peace I have in my cave, something that doesn't exist in the homelands." she most likely wouldn't settle down with ponies either, she would most likely head to the Undiscovered west and settle down somewhere in there ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Yes" Scarecrow confirmed, it wasn't technically even a lie "The forest in general has quite the collection of different creatures, some more unusual than others." "I found Crow injured and alone, and it hasn't left my side since." best lies were the simple ones, more complicated the story got, more it cast doubts with those hearing it "I named it such to fit my own name." he would pass the ball on when it would eventually come to him again. --------------------------------------------------------------- The siblings found Onache's situation bit amusing, but they didn't make it obvious, there was certain level of humor in seeing someone prideful like the changeling queen in such state. "No, we are not dragons, we are kobolds, we look like dragons yes, but that's the only thing we have in common." that and they both liked caves, though the type of caves they liked differed a bit too, in normal situation they would have been bit annoyed about the comparison, but this time they weren't since they knew the pony was truly clueless, and it was curious that it took this long for anybody to make that comparison, back home it was annoying common. "Party pony and Element of Laughter you say? those are titles I can't say I have ever heard of before." Sheska picked up the party horn and examined it "Parties, laughter and candy stores, this place sounds like it's straight from a bedtime story." candy stores didn't really exist in their world, not because candies weren't a thing, they were, selling them just wasn't a profitable enough business for anyone to bother doing so, and candy was mostly just given to kids by those who made them to make their lives bit less miserable. "Lot here does sound like it's too joyful to be true, but it's also weird enough for me to believe it may actually be true."

@Monotonality "I can't comment on what you said too much, I'm not the right pony for that." Frail said "All I can say is what I know, like for example that the moon and the sun being up at the same time is not normal here, they were next to each other and the sky was split between day and night, that hasn't happened before or after that." "It also reminds me of that one time when Twilight controlled the sun and moon instead of the sisters, the sun went up and back down and up and sideways, the sun and moon moved really weirdly that morning." "I didn't think about it much back then, being too busy with my magic having been drained, but I remember it being bit odd, and I learned later it was because of Twilight being in control." Frail was the kind of pony that didn't really like to think about too many things too much, like for example how it was possible for the princesses to control the sun and moon, she knew it happened and that was all she needed, figuring out how it worked was for those who liked to look into things like that. "For nations and continents, there is others besides Equestria, but as I think I mentioned before, I don't know much about that." she may have been ignorant in many things, but it was by choice, and unlike some others, she fully admitted it when she didn't know something, only thing she knew everything about was glass and how to make things out of it. The age guess was ignored as may have been expected, partly because there was no way of telling how right it was since 'middle age' didn't have one exact definition, and partly because Frail didn't feel the exact number was important.

"I see" Frail said, moving Sparkly's mane around to see what could be done to it and to get rid of the original style "So you're a young one, Twilight is older than that, but I don't think the difference is enough to cause trouble for you." a big difference between the age of the body and mind could have caused some questions from ponies, but it didn't like it was a case "And your guess isn't too far off, but that's all I say on that." you should never ask a mare her age and so on "Though I can say that I'm around the age where everypony younger thinks I'm ancient and everypony older thinks I'm a foal." her tone was humorous. "For time, I don't know what orbital period means, or orbit, and I can only guess that Earth is the place you come from." "But here it isn't too different from what you said, but it is slightly different." "A day is 24 hours when things are normal, but year is only 360 days, we don't have months, but we have moons, which are the length of one full cycle of phases of the moon, or about 30 days." "It's currently 3rd day of the second moon of summer, year...no idea honestly, that matters only in history books, and the year resets every time a new era begins. There was the era of heroes, The Reign of Disharmony and Chaos, the Celestial years of peace....I guess we live in the era of friendship at the moment." "Okay, it's quite different" "And since I believe you may ask about it, the reason why I specified 'when things are normal', is because the 24 hours rule doesn't always stay true." "Nightmare moon caused nights longer than that, there was also this one time when both moon and sun were on the sky at the same time, the forest also started spreading but that's beside the point, and I can only imagine what happened during Discord's chaos....the point being, there is times when the usual night and day cycle gets messed up quite badly." she sounded very casual about it, like she was talking about the weather, so these events she was talking about clearly weren't as insane to her as they may have sounded to Sparkly @Monotonality

@Illiad Easle "I understand." Ædriga said in regards of both answers, she was thinking about starting to make it bit more obvious if she understood or not so that others could repeat something if it was important, but she still thought about it, so it wasn't sure if it would happen. She didn't have any further questions, mostly wondering about what kind of cave she wanted and about what ways she could make friends outside Ætheron introducing her, maybe she could save someone at some point, she may have been scared of dragons, but everything else was mostly fine. She nodded to Ætheron pointing at the mountain "Let's go" she didn't know what 'let's' meant, but Ætheron had said 'let's go' so many times at this point that she had learned its general meaning. The speed they would go would be fully up to Ætheron, as Ædriga had no trouble to keep up, especially now that she was all healed up, she was natural in uneven terrain, and that was without the use of her wings.

@Monotonality (my bad, was tired) "Don't worry about it, it's one of those things everypony has gone through." Frail said in rather casual tone "At this point an annoying customer is lot bigger strain on my mind." she had gotten over the events quite well, neither of them being long periods of time, and the latter she didn't really even remember, since mind-control tended to wipe the memory from the time of control. The only effect they really had was the aforementioned dislike of servants. "Sit down and wait here, I'll get what I need and come here." she instructed, before leaving the room to get anything she may need, she smiled at Sparkly's success of keeping balance, but didn't say anything. When she came back and positioned herself behind Sparkly, she asked something "How old are you? or were,? depends on how you look at it" she had hard time pinpointing who she was dealing with age-wise, because some things Sparkly did or said were more foal-like in general context, but many things were also indication of greater maturity, she wasn't judging her, she just wanted to know "Not in numbers, since our years aren't necessarily equally long, but more in the context of what were you considered as? a foal? full grown? something in between?"

"Things have most likely been going on for a while, we just were alerted to it in the last minute" Jenna said "For example, as ineffective as they are, the military has certainly prepared, you can see it from how they do things, they wouldn't have done everything this quickly if this was a total surprise." that and it was pretty clear from their actions before the appearance of the portal that they knew something was coming "In my opinion lot of it does make sense, I just wonder why we got that letter so late, was it because the didn't know about us, or is there some reason to why we couldn't be contacted before?"

"Unfortunately there's no way for such without the general public learning about the whole situation, and as much as I hate Talon, I must agree with them on that not being a good thing." Jenna stated "The Order understands it too, it's a situation similar to the mutually assured destruction thing that's going on between the big countries, if the truth gets out, there's no winners, only chaos and death."

"I'm not that type of rich pony, I find servants...uncomfortable concept, having been both enslaved and mind-controlled in the past, I don't feel right to have someone serve me." Frail said bit awkwardly "But like I said, we'll look into that later when your situation is better." she didn't mind the nickname, it not being too far from her real name. "Why is there such a hurry? Can't we sit down and just chat for a bit? I'd still like to know who you really are, it's hard to teach you things without knowing what needs to be taught." she spoke in calm and friendly manner "I can see what I can do with your mane during that."

@Monotonality "If a publicly available book about it exists, Sunlight has read it, and with Lunar, you don't necessarily need to come with if you don't want, she can come here if she needs to see you to help." "Also the lullaby thing was meant as a joke, Melody is very busy mare and in all honestly, I have no idea where she is at the moment, she's rarely home." "I also feel the need to tell you that those are not their full names, we just prefer to call each other by shorter names." Important not since Sparkly had been calling Frail by her whole name the whole time. "Currently there's nothing you can or need to do, besides behaving yourself of course, but after you get hang of things, we'll speak more on how you can pay your stay in case you are planning it to be more permanent." a guest room was rather useless when you never had guests over, so she could just as well rent it to somepony.

@Lucid_Nightlight "I'm not going back before I get what I want." She was still looking for any non-fironian settlement, fort, or anything else with lot of non-fironians, at this point an on going battle would be good enough, as long as there was enough for her to be satisfied that her message is clear. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Like said, that's why I prefer the silent way, they can't try to kill you if they don't know you're there." Ember pointed out to Sky before addressing the other thing "While I appreciate one less thing to hinder my work, it doesn't really change much for me, I guess it's mostly to save them a bit of paperwork." she shrugged "And I guess now I don't need to hear about politics again."

"There is no good guys in war." Jenna pointed out "History is written by the winners, and they won't write bad stuff about themselves." "In this case it's species supremacists versus religious extremists, one claims to fight for survival, one to destroy evil." "Then there's us, those caught in the crossfire who just want to have a good life."

"There certainly is someone or something behind it." Jenna stated "But if that someone is from earth, that's another question altogether." she shrugged "Or well, our earth, we don't know if the place those things are coming from is also called earth." "The point is, there is strings, but we don't know who's pulling them."

@Blitz Boom Charir warmed the meat up a bit with his smoke before eating it, not enough to cook it, but enough to make it closer to room temperature, it wasn't that cold meat was a real problem in any way, he just preferred it less cold, made it feel more fresh. "Not really" Ruby said with a shrug "Everything is more or less as I expected from a well developed prey species." "If I need to say something that was a slight surprise, it's the magic, or more specifically, how much it's used, it is the reason why I abandoned my plan to attack." "There has been surprising individuals, but as a whole, nothing has given me a reason to rethink my views on things." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Crow's message either didn't reach Scarecrow or it went mostly ignored, regardless it wouldn't have had much effect, since for Scarecrow overthinking was the only thing left, thinking about things was how he killed his endless time and most importantly, he believed it was a way to keep himself sane. He also mentally reminded Crow that no eating in public. To his usual manner, he stayed quiet, kicking the ball again as it came to him, he did kick bit harder, but he also kicked it bit differently, giving it slight air-time, making it go further easier. He did speak after Lyriel was finished though "As you may have noticed, I'm not much of a talker, please know that this is not out of rudeness or anything alike, I'm just not used to having company." ------------------------------------------------------------------ The idea of actually sensing the emotions of others sounded unpleasant to the kobolds, yes, that got their attention more than the idea of feeding on joy. Pinkie was bit too quick and unpredictable even for two battle hardened rebels, but they did manage it bit better than the queen had, as after the dust...or in this case glitter settled, the two were standing back to back with their arms glowing with magic, neither seemingly too confused, quite the opposite actually, they were as aware as ever. Trox was the first one to drop his guard, though before he 'turned off' his magic, he did something that caused the glitter and such slide off his body on the ground, the hat he had to remove with his hand. Sheska did the same soon after. "Thanks to the unseen powers that the sisters didn't have her in their forces." as to be expected from someone with their past, combat was the first thing their minds went to "I don't think even the top of the line sensors could keep up with her. " Sheska looked at the party hat and at a piece of confetti "What is all of this stuff anyway?" "Why did she shoot us with pieces of paper and glittering...whatever that stuff is?"

@Monotonality "Like I told you at the shop, you can have my guest room for now." Frail said with kind tone, one could think that having to repeat oneself was annoying, but when you worked in customer service, you learned to tolerate it quite well. "Can you walk or do you need help?" Sparkly had managed to get out of the cart by herself, but Frail wanted to make sure. She would lead Sparkly into the room either by walking just in front of her or by helping her to walk there, depending on the alicorn's response. Regardless of the exact way of movement, she would speak "For my friends, as I said, none of them have exact experience, but two of them may be able to help." "Sunlight has incredible memory, and she has read almost every book in Equestria, she's basically walking library, so if anypony knows what books you need it's her, she could probably tell exactly what the books say if she wanted to." "She doesn't live in Canterlot though, so I'll have to send her a letter about it, and that'll take anything from day to few days depending on what weather the pegasi will put on and if there's any attacks currently going on." "Then there's her brother but while he too knows everything, he doesn't understand magic at all." The room wasn't far, so they'd arrive there while Frail spoke. "Lunar is the second one that may be able to help, she makes jewelry, but she deals a lot with magical artifacts and enchanted items, she may be able to get her hooves on some kind of illusion necklace or something, but like I mentioned, I need to ask her more about that, she's at the market now and then so asking her is not a problem." "Lastly there's Melody. she's a good singer, but that doesn't help with your situation until you need a good lullaby." there was humor in Frail's tone when she said the last part. She of course knew more ponies, but they weren't quite friends, and she felt that it was better to not get them involved with this, since she didn't really know most of them well enough to know they were trustworthy. The room was rather nice, there was a bed, a small area with a table and chairs, storage in form of a quite sizeable walk-in closet, and a connected bathroom. There was even a small kitchen, it was basically a small apartment inside the house. There was also a window looking into the big backyard with lot of natural plant life. And there was several decorative pieces made of glass of course.

"Not necessarily made up by them, humans have always been good at creating their own nonsense, the Order believes we are demons from hell, but Talon is certainly fueling them and making sure nobody gets too close to the real truth." Jenna explained "And I'm sure the Order does take part in that too, after all, the one and only thing the two sides agree on is that both of them need to stay secret from the general public."

"Maybe they didn't find out, maybe they knew all along." Jenna suggested "I mean, for you it has been in the family for a while, but for me I'm the first one with any type of powers as far as I know." "So what if this isn't natural, what if some of the powers are man-made?" "What if the reason why the military doesn't have unit of super soldiers, is because people like me and that other person are the super soldiers?" these were all just speculation of course "Maybe that's why we haven't been bothered even though we are quite easily spotted."

@Monotonality Again, Sparkly looking like Twilight didn't really do anything, in fact, since Twilight was, unlike the other princesses, the same size as most mares, this was just like a random pegasus mare hugging her, besides the arguably bit unusual actions and words from Sparkly that was. She didn't say anything about it at least yet though, she had kinda expected something like that based on Sparkly's earlier statements, and Frail wanted to give her bit of leeway on things she may have been more unhappy about in any other case due to Sparkly's situation. Though her body language may have revealed a bit of her slight discomfort, as the hair-rub, and the side-pats after the comment caused small jerks in her body. Like was hinted by her earlier comment on the house's size, and the fact that she was a rich, conventionally attractive mare who lived and worked alone, Frail didn't have history in relationships, and thus she wasn't really used to anything besides a quick hug and such. "Like I said, I can style them for you, and for magic that was just a suggestion, as stated, I don't know much about that." "I don't know anypony who knows about this type of things specifically, but one of them can help to find the right information, and one of them may be able to give something to help temporarily but I'll need to ask about that." she could have argued that she actually didn't have her own style, since she just let her mane and tail flow freely as they wished, only making sure they stayed clean and didn't get long enough to be a problem "But everything on its time, I haven't even shown you your room yet."

@Lucid_Nightlight "Freedom means that strong prosper, it means that while you have a freedom to attack me and steal from me, I have the freedom to take revenge on you." Ruby stated "Being unable to do something and not having the freedom to do so are different things." "A pony has the freedom to try and kill me, but they are unable to do so as I have the freedom to stop them." "And it matters not what I want to be, only thing that matters is what I am, I'm a killer and a hunter, someone who got fed up bending to prey's will." ------------------------------- Ember ignored the first statement "I do not enjoy killing, my ideal world is one where I'm not needed." sure it was enjoyable to bring justice to those who didn't get it otherwise, but taking a life was not what she enjoyed about it "That's why I prefer the silent approach, to avoid unnecessary blood, the low-rank goons are better arrested than killed." "But yes, if it isn't apparent from my words, I do appreciate the quiet approach."

"Both." Jenna said "They gave us examples to prove they control everything, mostly on things that no longer matter for reason or another, but my contact has also managed to find things out through various means, they may be able to hide things from humans, but they can't hide them from someone who used to be part of them." "But even with that, when you consider that we are trained to be master liars and infiltrators, and that Talon truly has its claws on anything and everything, you are safe to assume that anything that makes money or gives someone control over something, they are involved somehow." "Wars, they are involved, trade monopolies, they are involved, corruption, they are involved, mining operations, they are involved, they are probably involved with this mall in someway too." she kept a short pause "You know the conspiracy theories about illuminati, new world order and all such nonsense? Like all the things about fictional dragons, they are lies Talon spreads on purpose, or well, truths sold as fiction, the truth about them is public knowledge, it's just sold as fiction, hiding in plain sight as the saying goes."

"If it is them, they clearly don't care to talk." Jenna shrugged "I don't know if there's necessarily any specific reason for the location." "I looked at the locations when the letter came, they seem to be spread around the world pretty evenly, in fact, there wasn't even consideration for population, small towns had equal amount close to them as big cities did." "The order is more significant in my opinion, first a forest in middle of nowhere, then a small to medium sized city, these two are tests to see how we react." as she spoke she continued with the radio "And there's five of us actually, don't forget your parents." "But like I said earlier, it doesn't really matter how many of us there is, if only three shows up."

@Blitz Boom Ruby wasn't much surprised to learn that Leviathan resided near Diamond Dogs, she knew that nurture had its effects after all, for example, if one of her kind was hatched and raised among ponies, while their nature would most likely drive them to prefer solitude, the influence of ponies would most likely make them choose a place nearby a pony settlement. She didn't necessarily think it was a good thing, but truth didn't care about her thoughts, besides, it would have been rather hypocritical for her to critique it, considering she lived among ponies, not that being a hypocrite was beyond her as has been proven before. "I see." was the simple response she gave about that, she had just been curious and had gotten the answer, so there wasn't much else to say. As she had stated, Ruby was not on need for anything to eat, but she told Charir to take what he wished from the fridge, even with her being bit too small in this form to reach things, there was no need to try to figure out what button did what when two of them could fly, and Charir being so small, his wings wouldn't hit anything while he flew. He would pick whatever raw, unseasoned meat, fish or otherwise, happened to be the easiest to grab. As Charir did that. Ruby looked around "The need for food preparation is such a unnecessary part of a species." "How far would have these creatures gotten if they had no need to waste time and resources to prepare their foods." this was not a critique of their ways, and rather a comment on how they had evolved in way that cooking food gave them more than eating it raw. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scarecrow as usual, was silent as the conversation went on, just gesturing his greeting with respectful nod, but he did think about various things. First thing he wondered was related to Crow and his vanity, where did its personality come from? was it mirroring its creator's selfhood, or was it maybe effected by something from him, it was not the judgmental type of wondering as Crow would be able to tell due to the link, and rather it was almost a form of self-reflecting, as the undead wondered about himself and what he is like. His other thoughts were less deep, being mostly things like a mental remark about pony names being bit odd, and slight amusement from Elderbloom calling them younglings, since while it was possible that he was younger, there also was a possibility that he was ancient compared to the old pony. It was also curious how seemingly the only 'weird' thing about the two of them for these ponies seemed to be the rabbit listening to Lyriel, though it was a positive. It was harder for Scarecrow to figure out the right amount of strength for the kick than one may expect, having barely any feeling and not having the normal physical limitations of muscle, but he managed to pass the ball along with acceptable force, in fact there may have been bit too little force. He also signaled Crow to keep sharp in case someone else kicked the ball bit too hard, he didn't want the disguise to break due to Crow getting hit by a ball. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The siblings just nodded to most what Onache said, having no further comments on them, and being focused on getting their surroundings, though there was one thing "While a town map would be useful too, I was thinking more a map of whole Equestria." knowing what's in the town didn't really help getting the picture of where they were since their towns and villages were quite different. And while they seemingly didn't notice the pony staring at them, they both were well aware of her, observing things without being obvious about it was one of those things they had learned during their life. "I can almost feel it too, I haven't seen such expression since Commander Scorch's last attack, one of the ponies in the village snapped after it, never before had I felt so sad from someone's joy." Sheska cut in to stop the conversation going too far into it "I'm sure this one is just genuinely happy." at least she hoped that was the case, though considering how happy everyone around them seemed in general, it was a possibility. They didn't recognize the pink pony, since the six wielders of the elements never became a thing in their world, though that didn't necessarily mean they had never seen her before, same individual just could be very different in different situation, and where they came from, unlimited joy and parties didn't have a place to exist.

@Monotonality "If it turns out that you can disguise your cutie mark, you need to come up with explanation on how you got it" Frail said, giving a small emphasis on 'if'. since like she had said, she didn't know how possible it was, sure it was possible to hide it with makeup, but that was pain to keep up due to how easily it was removed "Ponies, especially younger ones will most likely be asking about it, it's nothing to get weirded out by, it's normal." she finished her tea at this point. "And for the magic, as I shortly mentioned with the illusion magic, after you get hang of magic in general, you can start looking into spells to help you to look like what you want, that's something you have to figure out yourself though, I have absolutely no knowledge on that area." she sounded almost sorry for not being able to help with that. She took Sparkly's cup after she too was done with her tea and took the cups back into the kitchen, she then made true of her promise, and hugged Sparkly.

@Califorum Frail was surprised that Sparkly was so surprised, and felt a bit bad for her, sure she herself wasn't a big hugger, but it was still part of her everyday life to hug her friends or so on, and there was ponies who hugged first and asked for name and such later, what kind of place Sparkly came from where a hug offer caused a reaction like she had just been asked to a date by her childhood crush. She didn't say anything about it though, because she wasn't sure if she wanted to know much more about the place Sparkly came from, it seemed that any new information just made it sound more and more depressing. "For the name, as I said earlier, I'm calling you Sparkly only until a better name comes up, and while I can try to help you to come up with one, I don't know if I'll be much help, I'm not good with such things." calling a Twilight Sparkle clone Sparkly should be evidence enough that she wasn't too creative with names "And I'll see what I can do with the style, though I need to ask somepony who knows more about the colors for bit more information about them, though don't worry, I'll do that on the same trip as when I go buy them." "Maybe there's even a possibility to color your coat in a way that the cutiemark gets hidden, but no promises, I don't know much about these things, haven't had the need to look into them."

@Lucid_Nightlight Ruby didn't understand love, so of course she had little idea what it actually was "If love means to not be allowed to do anything, I'm not interested, I rather die from my own freely made choices than live without freedom." she stated "Only thing love and friendship seem to do is blind everyone from reality and right solutions." "But I bow to no one, no thing, I know what I'm doing, and won't let you or anyone else stop me." she scanned the area under them to see if there was any potential targets besides the ones she was chasing. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ember rolled her eyes and looked outside, in her eyes trust was quite a lot more important than any kind of respect, even sworn enemies could work together if there was trust between them, while respect...it didn't really mean anything these days, it was used with so many different meanings that it no longer had real meaning. And trust, once lost was hard to gain back, and the unfortunate truth was that she did not trust Sky to have her back, because as much as she was filling to work with him....well, there's a reason why it's said that the first impressions are the most important.