#it's tiny and has basically no storage which is sometimes fine and sometimes drives me crazy

[violetclarity]

How do people find hosing that is a good fit for them? How do you make your space feel permanent and safe and long term, even/especially if you're renting?

All of this is said with the caveat that I'm very fortunate to be able to rent an apartment by myself in the city I want to live in, but I feel like I've spent the last 10 years of my life moving - from dorm to dorm in college, and then after college, moving into places only to realize I don't want to stay there long-term, which makes it very hard to feel settled. My current apartment is the best of the places I have recently lived - I like the location, it has a cool vibe and I've put a lot more effort into decorating it and organizing in a way that makes it pleasant and functional - but it still has many small issues and downsides which are really multiplying lately. My dream is to own my own place (for stability/space/ability to change things and DIY reasons), but that's not a realistic goal for the near future, so I'm torn on moving (again) or trying to make this place work for longer??

Basically I can't decide if this is a ME problem or a genuine issue...like, if I found an apartment where the pros outweighed the cons, would I feel good settling in and be able to live there long-term? If I bought a place, would I get fed up with it and want something different in a few years too? I hate moving, and when I moved into this place I really thought I would be here until I made a major change (eg until I bought a house or moved in with a partner) - it seemed like it would be a great fit and I hoped to be here for at least a few years, to be able to make the space mine. Now I'm 1.5 years in and I feel like I'm gonna end up moving again in 2024 because I can't see being here a whole other year, but I also don't want to move again!

Is this a me problem? Or do I just need to feel more stable/settled in my living space than the average person (probable) and I'm reacting to the combined stress of 10+ years of lots of moving and a serious mice infestation??

[ghostpeblewrite]

Paradoxical - Chapter 7

~~~~~~

Toast is sitting in the living room, spacing out, when he feels the shift. The air in the room seems to get thicker with impending doom, the unsettling dread hitting him like an oncoming train. He sits up straighter, looking around.

He’s home alone. Spooker and Colon left a bit ago, and are yet to return. He hasn’t seen Ghost since yesterday, the thought of that alone wringing his heart out with sandpaper. The feeling doesn’t go away though, the dread.

A sound from the other room spurs him into motion. He walks slowly, grabbing his gun from the coffee table on his way. He doesn’t remember setting it there, but that’s where he found it.

He moves towards the room. Some part of his brain finds it unsettling, walking like he does on the job where there could be a dangerous entity around any corner, but in his own home, where he’s supposed to be safe. He brushes it off, approaching the door to the room quietly. He gets into position outside, hand on the handle. He counts himself down.

3…

2…

No time for 1, he turns the handle, bursting into the room with his gun up.

There’s no one there. The sound persists.

He takes a deep breath, slowly wandering further in, keeping his guard up. He knows better than to relax when you hear odd sounds. He quietly tracks down the source of the sound, tense the entire time.

Eventually, after poking around several things, he finds it. Buried in the corner with the other outdated equipment, is the wigglegraph. Toast stares in confusion, watching the little arm dance up and down, recording readings that should be impossible in this day and age. He doesn’t understand it.

He hears a noise outside the window. His head snaps in that direction, and he walks over.

What he sees is something that makes him question his sanity. That makes that sense of dread grip him tighter, preventing his breathing for a moment.

Outside his house, slowly shambling their way towards him, is a horde of undeads. It’s not a small one, either. There’s an impossible number of them out there, all shambling towards him. Slow and easy to pick off in small groups, but a large crowd like this can be devastating.

Toast panics. He can’t deal with this number of undeads on his own. So he does the only thing he knows will help him.

He runs for the control panel of the Emergency Security Systems, aptly named by Johnny Ghost. A few years ago, when Ghost was dealing with a lot of paranoia after a particularly bad job, he insisted that he and Toast put in a security system on the house. It took forever to set up, and later on Colon helped enchant it a bit more, but eventually it was made. It’s basically a giant forcefield that goes around the house, preventing any sort of paranormal entity from getting in. It’s the only thing Toast knows will help.

He rushes a bit in his panic to get to it, nearly falling on his ass as he turns a corner, but he does manage to get there in one piece. He fumbles with the controls, his palms already beginning to sweat. The many hours of Ghost forcing him to repeat the steps until he could do it perfectly several times over escape him for a brief moment. Muscle memory takes over, guiding his shaking hands through the steps.

The sound of the system coming to life, the green lights blaring, seem so distant. So far away. The sound is muffled as he falls to the floor, his hands pulling at his hair.

He has no idea how long it will hold, if it will at all.

He does know that if it fails, he’s dead. Toast is thankful for the umpteenth time in his life for Ghost. Sure, he can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes. He’s too stubborn for his own good, and sometimes he gets right on Toast’s nerves and makes Toast feel like pulling his own hair out, but he can also be genuinely wonderful at times.

Sometimes.

Those moments are rare, sure, but that just means they’re more special. They stick out more in Toast’s memory. He remembers fondly that time he and Ghost were younger, and Toast was walking across a room in an old second story when the floor gave out. Ghost freaked out so much, he didn’t stop to think what he was doing. Toast just remembers Ghost yelling his name and then both of them were lying on the splintered remains of the first story floor they just crashed through, the dust settling around them. Ghost had meant to pull Toast up, but had moved too quickly on the already weak wood, sending them both through it. Ghost started genuinely laughing at how absurd it all was, and the sound was one of the most beautiful ones Toast has ever heard. He rarely hears Ghost genuinely laugh, especially these days. Toast had laughed too, too caught up in Ghost’s laugh to worry about their wellbeing for a moment.

Toast flinches a bit as he hears the cries of the undead outside the barrier, upset they can’t get in. He covers his ears with his hands.

Another thing he appreciates Ghost for- His ability to distract Toast, even in the most painful or terrifying moments. Toast isn’t exactly the boldest of men. He finds it hard to talk to people, which is why he and Ghost work so well together. Ghost does all the talking.

Toast remembers one time when they were young adults, just starting out in the business, when he had broken his arm. It was his own fault, really, he wasn’t quite looking at where he was stepping in a particularly rickety house. Fell down a rather large hole that he later felt really stupid about missing. The pain was searing, but he can barely remember it now. All he remembers is Ghost running over to him, his face white with panic. As the two made their way back to Ghost’s old truck, Ghost would not stop talking. Not that Toast ever wanted him to.

He talked about anything and everything. Told Toast stories from his childhood- Though, Toast knew most of them already- and from the time they spent apart. Talked about people he’d met. Stupid things he’d done. He talked the whole way home, never running out of things to say. It helped Toast to forget the pain.

It’s one thing of many Ghost is good at. Talking endlessly, to the point that you could even forget your own pain, just clinging to every word he says.

Toast thinks it’s less about the subject of the stories, and more the way Ghost speaks. He speaks with a sort of importance, demanding your attention. He has a way of sounding like he knows exactly what he’s doing even when he hasn’t the slightest clue. He’s so sure of himself at all times. Toast wishes he knew how he did it. Especially when telling stories, the demand of attention always manages to have Toast holding onto every word he says, unable to tear his eyes away. Ghost could tell Toast the sky was green and Toast would just smile and nod along, unable to disagree simply because it was Ghost, and Ghost just knows how to talk.

Toast wishes Ghost were here right now, to talk to him. Help distract him from the horror outside. Not even Spooker and Colon are here.

He’s alone.

Endlessly alone.

~~~

“Well, that sucked,” Spooker sighs as they walk back to the car.

“It always works in cop shows!” Colon frowns, bummed out.

“Maybe we couldn’t see the records because we’re not cops?” Spooker suggests.

“Maybe, but still, I’m sure it’s gotta be a storage unit. A house just doesn’t sound right to me,” Colon says as he unlocks the car for them both, getting in.

“Maybe we should come back in cop uniforms?” Spooker shrugs, getting in as well.

“That’s illegal, Spooks,” Colon says with a smile, starting the car.

“It’s only illegal if you get caught,” Spooker reminds him, also smiling.

“True,” Colon nods, starting to drive.

The two continue to talk about nonsense on their way back to the house, only stopping when Colon doesn’t respond to Spooker’s last quip.

“Colon-?” Spooker asks as the car comes to a sudden halt.

“Spooks, look,” Colon says quietly, staring dead ahead. Spooker looks, his eyes widening in fear.

All down the road are undead. All around the HQ, too. They’re everywhere.

It’s an impossible number. The few closest to them turn towards the car lazily. Colon throws it in reverse.

“Colon- Wait!” Spooker yells as Colon turns, starting to get the fuck out of there. “What about Toast?!”

“Oh- Dang!” Colon puts the brakes on again, now a lot further. “Call him??”

Spooker nods, pulling his phone out, dialing up Toast.

Toast jumps at the sound of his phone ringing, yanking him out of his pleasant memories. He fishes it out of his pocket quietly. Upon seeing the name SPOOKER displayed, he picks up.

“Spooker?! Where are you, are you okay??” Toast asks. Without Ghost around, all Toast’s worry is being directed at other people.

“Yeah, I’m fine!” Spooker’s voice answers. “What about you??? There are… So many zombies!!”

“Yes, I’m aware,” Toast says, trying to put his calm persona back on. It’s hard though, considering the situation he’s in.

“They’re all down the street- It's terrifying!” Spooker re-emphasizes.

Toast sighs. “Spooker, please- Just- Get as far away as possible, okay? Go find help.”

“Help? We don’t need help, we’re PIE!” Spooker says proudly.

Toast wishes he had the same confidence. “Spooker, please. Go. Get. Help. Do you understand me?”

“Of course, Toast!” Spooker says.

“Great! Please do hurry though, I don’t know how long this will hold,” Toast says, allowing a tiny bit of worry to slip through.

“We will!” Spooker says, hanging up. He looks at Colon.

“So, what did he say?”

“Doesn’t matter, I have an idea on how to get in there,” Spooker says, smiling.

“What’s the plan?” Colon asks.

“Well- You know how in all those movies they act like zombies?” Spooker says.

The first part of the plan was pretty unpleasant. They had to smother themselves in unscenely things. To mask their ‘human smell’, Spooker said. ‘They always do it in the movies!’

Now smelling like literal garbage, they rough themselves up a bit in dirt and mud before slowly approaching the crowd. The undeads barely acknowledge them.

They continue moving through the crowd painfully slowly, doing their best not to disturb the undeads around them. One of them actually turns to look at them as they approach, but they just stop in their tracks until it turns back around.

It’s kind of eerie, all these undead just stood calmly around the HQ. Part of Spooker thinks they should be doing something at least, but he’s glad they’re not.

Eventually the pair make it to the barrier. They went around back, in case anyone was watching the front. They can be smart sometimes.

They reach the door, opening it and rushing inside. Once the door is closed behind them, they allow themselves to celebrate quietly. The house is dark.

Their celebration is cut short by the sound of someone cocking a shotgun.

“Turn around,” a very angry brit sounds. “Slowly.”

Spooker and Colon turn ever so slowly, shaken with fear.

When Toast sees their faces, his anger dissipates. It’s replaced with utter disbelief.

“Spooker?? Colon?” Toast says, pointing the shotgun down.

“Hi,” Spooker says quietly.

Toast is suddenly full of anger again. “Oh- God da- Can’t you two listen for ONCE in your lives?!?!? I told you to go get help!! Why do you NEVER listen?!!” He yells, his calm persona cracking a bit under the pressure.

Spooker shrinks a bit out of fear. Colon takes a step back. Toast never yells, unless it’s to be heard across a large distance.

“I… I thought we’d be stronger together…” Spooker says quietly, trying a small smile, “Y’know… PIE…” “Spooker-!” Toast yells, but then stops himself. He closes his eyes, balling his free hand into a tight fist. The anger seems to melt away, and he takes a deep breath. “Spooker. That’s… Sweet, honestly, it is, but I told you to get help. Now we’re just all stuck in here.”

“Oh…” Spooker says quietly. “I uhm… Didn’t think this through.”

“I didn’t think you did,” Toast mutters, turning away. “Go shower, you two smell horrid.”

Spooker looks at Colon, the two scampering off to the bathroom. ~~~ this is probably bad but ooh welll

[shima-draws]

Shima Shima Shima please tell us all about your Wonderland AU for Tododeku!!!

Oohhh! Ooohh I would love to okay let’s see

Honestly it would probably just be easier for me to explain the original movie’s plot rather than just. Trying to make sense of what you don’t know with Izuku and everybody else’s involvement so.

Note that all of this is purely from memory having seen the movie once like, a couple weeks ago in theaters LMAO so there’s definitely gonna be some things I’m hazy on. But! The movie’s online now so after I watch it again I’ll update this post with a better summary!

Under the cut for MAJOR spoilers and also bc it got really long!

So! The Wonderland! It’s about a girl named Akane who isn’t terribly self-assured. She has friends and has a good life but she’s sort of…timid, so she doesn’t put herself out there when she should. This causes issues within her group of friends and even with her own mother, who Akane is sort of distanced from.

The day before her birthday, Akane’s mother sends her to meet up with her older friend Chii to receive a birthday gift. Akane does NOT want to go because Chii’s very…overbearing, and excited, and very very outgoing, completely opposite to her. Chii travels all around the world gathering antiques for her shop (mostly light fixtures tho) and is a pro at haggling trades and prices. Akane calls her a witch bc she rips people off sometimes lmao

Akane arrives at the shop and finds a strange slab with an indented handprint. Akane fits her hand into the indent and finds that it fits perfectly!! This causes a reaction which calls upon a resident from Wonderland, an alchemist named Hippocrates, to arrive from Chii’s basement (which is basically just a little storage hole). Chii immediately gets a broom and starts hitting him with it, calling him a creep and an intruder LMAO

Hippocrates explains that Akane is the Goddess of the Green Wind, and that Wonderland needs her help. Next to Akane, on the table, a little doll springs to life, who’s revealed to be a tiny little chibi character named Pipo who works as Hippocrates’ apprentice. (He’d been hiding there all morning, I guess to scope out the person whose hand would fit into the indentation.) Akane’s hand is still stuck in the little slab by the way and she keeps freaking out. She says she absolutely does not want to go to Wonderland to help them, so Hippocrates gifts her with an item called the momentum anchor. Essentially it’s an item that forces a person to keep moving forward and looking ahead when they try to go back. (Basically it’s an item that forces character development which is pretty wild lol) After Akane gets her hand free, the momentum anchor forces her to accompany Hippocrates and Pipo to Wonderland. Chii decides fuck it she’s going on a magical adventure too, and tags along with them!

When they arrive in Wonderland, they end up at the top of a large sort of watchtower/nest for a huge ass bird. Chii befriends the bird, who is protecting her eggs. As they make their way to the nearest town, they run into a man and his mother, whose ride/carriage cart thing was destroyed by an enormous machine that Hippocrates calls the “armored mouse” (because it kinda looks like a mouse). The armored mouse attacks the cart and essentially swallows it, including the sweater that the old lady had made. Inside the armored mouse, the Main Antagonist ™ of Wonderland greets the newcomers. His name is Zan Gu, and he’s intimidating as all hell. He’s not openly cruel, just quiet, and isn’t afraid to assert his villainly dominance. Most of his face is hidden, but he seems to have a skeletal, sort of robotic body. His cohort, a little cat person named Doropo, teases them. Doropo’s basically a mischievous troublemaker who enjoys making fun of others and getting in people’s way.

Zan Gu and Doropo continue on in the machine, and they head straight for the watchtower. The armored mouse starts to tear up the iron staircase, disrupting the tower. Chii rushes over and manages to save one of the bird’s eggs. Hippocrates calls upon the sheep from the nearby town to come help (and they’re HUGE and FLUFFY and adorable). The sheep crowd in on the armored mouse, and Zan Gu is forced to retreat.

The man who they had saved introduces himself as the mayor of the nearest town. The group walks over to the town, surrounded by hundreds of sheep. Hippocrates explains on the way that the land is dying because there’s a lack of water, which is one of the reasons why he brought Akane there. Akane’s like “How the hell am I supposed to help you get your water back”. They pass a gorgeous flower field which slowly gets worse and more dried out.

The villagers are relieved to see Hippocrates there, who is pretty famous in this world bc of his status as an alchemist. They also jump on Akane, super excited that the Green Goddess of the Wind is here to help them! Night falls and Akane freaks out, because she’d obviously wanted to go home like hours ago, and her mother is probably worried. Chii, on the other hand, is super nonchalant about everything that just happened, and is like “Well we’re already here and it’s late so we should stay, it’ll be fine!”

The group has dinner with the mayor while his mother starts to knit a new sweater to replace the one she lost to Zan Gu. Here we get a bit more into Wonderland’s history–the mayor explains that the flowers and sheep are what they use to make these sweaters and other clothing, but they aren’t selling as well as they used to anymore bc of the water crisis. He’d originally been on his way to a place called Sakasatongara Market with his mother to enter her sweater into a contest. Hippocrates takes over and discusses the water crisis in more detail. The original Green Goddess of the Wind had come over 600 years ago, and had saved Wonderland when they were in a similar crisis. Apparently, there’s a ceremony that is performed every year called the drop mist ceremony, which properly distributes water to the whole land. This ceremony is supposed to be performed by the prince, who supposedly has a lot of magical power, coming from a generation of royalty who can control water. According to Hippocrates the prince has been gravely ill over the past year, and this is because his parents had died, leaving him to grieve and become very sick as a result. Hippocrates believes that Akane, being the new Goddess, has the power to heal the prince and allow him to perform the ceremony. Akane again denies that she has any sort of power like that. During all this Chii keeps pointing out contradicitons in Hippocrates’ story and it’s hilarious because it makes him very angry and flustered LMAO and Akane’s like “Chii-chan, you’re being super rude right now”. I can’t remember if it’s here or not, but Akane sees a picture on the wall of the previous Green Goddess, and she looks really familiar…kind of like her mother…?

The next day, the group of four (Hippocrates, Pipo, Akane and Chii) decide they’re going to travel to Sakasatongara Market in order to deliver the mayor’s mother’s sweater to be entered into the contest. The market is on the way to Timeless Rain Castle, where the prince resides. The sweater is placed into Akane’s care, who promises she will deliver it. They’re given a car, which will help greatly with the journey, and then they set off!

Akane and Chii admire the scenery of Wonderland as they travel, but are saddened when they begin to see areas that have a clear lack of water and have died out from neglect. Meanwhile, in a grungy, dark city, Zan Gu approaches a man and brings him more metal. Apparently the armored mouse had been going around collecting metal, which we find out later that it’s so the armored mouse can be upgraded and reinforced even more to wreak more havoc (along with one other essential upgrade, which I’ll get to later). The man says he needs more metal if he wants to make something out of what they have. Zan Gu does his whole “threaten the victim” schtick, and guarantees he’ll bring more, as long as the job gets done. (I might be remembering these sections out of order but it all happens within the same timeframe, more or less.)

Back to Akane and co., they’re driving in the desert and they head right into the biggest fucking dust storm in the world. They take shelter under a large rock, hiding out there until the storm blows over. They were given huge fluffy suits (bascially fursuits) that were made from the sheep. They’re pink and comfy but horribly embarrassing for Hippocrates in particular to wear LMAO but they’re a great shelter for the storm. After the storm subsides, Hippocrates attempts to fix the car, but finds it’s getting late and that they’ll have to wait until the morning to do so. In the middle of the night, Akane wakes up to see Chii standing outside, looking at the stars. It’s absolutely gorgeous and beautiful.

The next morning, Hippocrates fixes the car! Hooray! With that they drive further north and arrive in a very snowy little village. Akane hears more stories about how things were when water was plentiful, and they’re exposed firsthand to how the shortage has caused people to become greedy. Zan Gu shows up while Hippocrates is out refueling and Doropo threatens the inn owner into giving up food and water. Zan Gu has an intense staredown with Akane but doesn’t do anything more before leaving.

Hippocrates sees the armored mouse on the move and follows them. At this point the mouse has been upgraded and looks more terrifying than ever, and can bulldoze and tear things apart much easier. Zan Gu goes to receive new materials, which are revealed to be missiles for a cannon. Hippocrates intervenes, but Doropo uses his magic to turn the alchemist into a fly.

Akane and Chii worry about Hippocrates’ whereabouts, but with some prodding, decide to head to Sakasatongara Market without him since they’re on a bit of a time crunch, seeing as the drop mist ceremony has to be performed the next day. They pass by Hippocrates’ house (but Pipo informs them nobody is there) and Pipo’s childhood home in the trees, where tons of other little chibi sprites hang about. The girls travel through a steep mountain range as Hippocrates tries to guide them–but being a fly, he keeps getting ignored and brushed off, even by Pipo, who can’t tell it’s him. Eventually they have to drive over a rickety wooden bridge, and Chii teases Akane about her nonexistent love life at school in an attempt to keep things lighthearted and distract them from the terrifying ride over the bridge. Akane pokes back and makes fun of Chii for her failed conquests of men. One of the planks breaks and Chii steps on it, and they’re both screaming as they cross the rest of the bridge LOL

At some point during all this we cut to Timeless Rain Castle, where everyone is preparing for the drop mist ceremony. The prince’s closest advisers decide to go up and visit, and it’s revealed that the prince isn’t ill at all–he’s trapped within a little metal doll’s body, a curse placed upon him by Hippocrates’ “rival”. (He’s a good guy tho too, apparently.) This rival has been asleep for a long time, and is nearly impossible to wake because of how hectic his magic is. (We later see a scene in which several guards attempt to rouse him. His house is literally sitting on the edge of a cliff on one corner, the rest of it floating in the air, and he’s sleeping. No wonder they’re cautious about waking him up LMAO) Because this other magical user has been asleep, the prince has been trapped in this form for nearly a year. They scramble to find out a way to revert him to normal before the ceremony the next day.

After that it seems to be easy going for the girls. Pipo warns them nanoseconds before they drive off another bridge–and land in a giant lily pad! They’re on a huge pond now, with koi fish the size of whales. Pipo douses himself with magic dew that lets him breathe underwater and makes sure his clothes don’t get wet. Chii happily jumps in after, and Akane, after hesitating, also joins them. They ride the giant fish, who push the lily pad with their car across the pond. Akane picks up some sea shells at the bottom of the pond and puts them in her pocket to save for later.

Akane, Chii, and Pipo (and Hippocrates, still a fly) finally arrive at Sakasatongara Market!! First they have to go through customs, in which they’re judged by a group of talking cats (which Chii finds HILARIOUS). Akane is declared as a guilty party bc a few days before, she’d pulled her cat’s tail for sitting on her face. Her cat is revealed to be the leader of the group. She’s briefly given a cat tail herself, which is pulled on, so she understands how much it hurts LOL while Chii teases the rest with catnip and treats. They’re allowed entrance into the city. From the distance, they can see the prince arriving as well, presumably in the royal carriage. They have no idea he’s still in doll form.

In the prince’s tent, Hippocrates’ rival finally arrives. (Guess they managed to wake him up lol) The others beg for him to turn the prince back to normal. The wizard points out that the doll they’ve been guarding so carefully all this time is, in fact, not the prince at all. He uses his magic to transform it–revealing that it had just been a stuffed toy, acting as a decoy. Everyone panics, wondering where the actual prince has gone.

Akane and Chii gaze on as Pipo points out the well where the drop mist ceremony takes place. Sitting in the center of the city (which is p much set up like a giant stadium, with steps leading down to the middle), the well is a huge symbol of peace for the land! And it’s a central part of the ceremony, as well. Chii rushes off to bargain and barter while Akane and Pipo go to enter the old lady’s sweater into the contest.

As they’re walking around, they catch sight of Doropo, who just stole goods from a nearby shop. Pipo orders Akane to chase after him, which she does. As they follow him to the outskirts of the city, Pipo realizes that Doropo might be one of his friends from school, another chibi sprite named Ron. Ron had gone on to apprentice with the wizard, and Pipo with Hippocrates, so Ron had always viewed them as rivals.

On the outskirts of the city, Akane and Pipo see that the armored mouse is there. Moved by her own determination, Akane sneaks into the machine to see what Doropo and Zan Gu’s plans are. Hippocrates follows them in.

They catch a conversation between Doropo and Zan Gu. Zan Gu seems to be getting increasingly frustrated and hasty, and Doropo keeps blowing him off. Zan Gu eventually snaps at him, and the truth comes out. Apparently they plan to destroy the well before the ceremony can take place. If this happens, no water will come to Wonderland ever again, essentially dooming everybody. Zan Gu had gathered the missiles and upgraded the machine with a cannon to achieve this. Zan Gu blames Doropo for everything that happened to him, saying that while Doropo is obviously hesitating, he had been the one to transform him into a monster in the first place. Doropo sadly admits that he just didn’t want the prince to hate him…and this is the part that hit me HARD because we realize that Zan Gu has been the prince this whole time!! We get a flashback to when the prince was actually trapped inside the doll. He angrily says to Ron that if he could allow him to speak, he could turn him back, right? Ron makes an attempt, but he’s not that experienced with magic, so it ends up in a total disaster, transforming the prince into a basic corpse.

It’s at this point where things are set into motion. Akane eventually reveals herself. Pipo calls out Doropo on his disguise, and he transforms back into Ron. Zan Gu prepares to bust through the city walls and destroy the well. The wizard releases all of the magic Doropo had caused, making Hippocrates transform back into his regular self. Zan Gu busts into the city, and Hippocrates tries to stop him. Right as he’s lining up to take the shot at the well, Akane grabs onto him and starts her Grand Heroine Speech. She points out that Zan Gu–the prince–was scared, and that’s why he was doing this, because he was trying to run away from his responsibility. The prince explains his story in detail.

The drop mist ceremony, being a very important one among their family for generations, had been successfully performed by his father and grandfather. However, pressure from his parents, peers and all of Wonderland was too much for the prince to handle, so he started to reject any practices of the ceremony. After his parents passed, that pressure became even worse, because he was the only one left able to perform the ceremony properly. He got angry and scared and started to push everyone away and lash out at those who tried to help. Eventually it got so bad that the wizard had to come in and use his magic to transform the prince into the metal doll, essentially trapping him there as punishment and as a way to reflect on his mistakes. This obviously angered the prince, being trapped in a body that couldn’t move or speak, which eventually led to Ron’s involvement and his transformation. The prince wants to destroy it all, either out of revenge or maybe because he just has little to no empathy in this form and is only full of negative emotions, who can say…

Akane goes on to encourage him again despite all this, and tells him he’s not alone, that she promises she’ll be there to help him. She tells him how inspired she’s become traveling through Wonderland, getting to meet all of the wonderful people, and seeing how beautiful it is. She says she wants to save it, and that she wants to help the prince. Her words, and her change, break the curse on the prince, transforming him back into his adorable princely self. The prince agrees to perform the ceremony. Chii meets up with the group and apologizes to Akane for leaving her alone to deal with everything. Akane asks Hippocrates if they can make another momentum anchor for the prince, because the one she has helped her a lot along her journey and pushed her in the right direction, and she feels like that’s what the prince needs, too. Akane promises to return the next morning before the ceremony to be there for the prince.

Hippocrates, Akane, Chii and Pipo travel back to the alchemist’s house. Together they spend the night making a new momentum anchor, which requires a lot of magic. Akane gives it her all to help! They successfully make a new one, and hurry back to Sakasatongara Market. It’s morning now. Akane rushes to greet the prince, and gifts him with the anchor. She says that they match now, both having anchors. (The prince gets all soft and blushy and it’s very cute.) The prince talks with his adviser, who warns him what will happen if the ceremony fails. The prince knows it’s a huge price to pay, but says he’s ready to do it.

Akane is dressed up in Green Goddess robes, similar to the ones her mother wore. She and the prince cross the bridge which hangs over the well, which is so deep that you can’t even see the bottom. With Akane’s encouragement, the prince performs the ceremony. Nothing happens. The prince knows what has to be done–he strides up to the edge and prepares to throw himself in. Akane understandably freaks out and tries to stop him. The prince explains that if the ceremony fails the performer has to offer their body as a sacrifice to make water flow again. Akane’s like I’m NOT letting you do that, and the two of them start to struggle. The prince manages to make it to the edge–and Akane topples over with him. Both of them fall into the well.

Before they hit the bottom and inevitably die, they’re saved by the wizard. He explains that it was basically a sort of test–the prince had to show he was willing enough to make a sacrifice that big. He says that Akane is special, and that the prince should thank her properly for all her help. They’re sent back up to the bridge! The ceremony begins, and the prince rushes to get into position. The well erupts with water, straight up into the sky, an enormous geyser for all the world to see. The prince takes out his sword and starts to slice the water with it, which turns them into water birds. The water birds fly all over Wonderland and rain down on the land, restoring its vitality. He turns to face Akane to see that she is crying in joy, as is Chii.

After the ceremony ends, Akane and Chii go with Hippocrates and Pipo to return to their world. Akane frets over how much time has passed since they left. Hippocrates explains that, while three days have passed in Wonderland, only three hours have passed in their world. Akane and Chii realize that if they were ever to return, everyone they met probably wouldn’t be there anymore. Apparently the original slab with the hand print Akane’s mother had made was repaired–and Akane stumbles right into the wet plaster, printing her hand there for the next generation. She attempts to give the momentum anchor back to Hippocrates, but he tells her that it had vanished a long time ago, and that Akane had been moving forward by her own momentum and decisions. Akane and Chii kiss Pipo goodbye, and they say their farewells. Hippocrates gifts Akane with a little textile with a sword on it. They head back…and emerge from the basement of Chii’s shop. When they look back at it again, it’s just the storage compartment, and nothing else. Their adventure is over.

Chii goes to take a long nap. Akane rushes home to see her mother. By now she’s made the connection that her mother was the original Green Goddess of the Wind, who saved Wonderland over 25 years ago. Her mother notices the textile and compares it to the same one Akane has in her room. Akane thinks that she feels a lot closer to her mother now. And that’s where the movie ends!

Ofc there’s tons of extra stuff that I missed LMAO but that is the basic plot of the whole thing. Now, as for the AU…Izuku is Akane, obviously, but instead of having her reluctance to go on an adventure, he’s willing, but doesn’t think he’s worthy of being a hero to anyone, and is constantly stopped because of his own fear.

Ochako is Chii–she fits perfectly with her personality lol. Iida is Hippocrates, both being super punctual and easy to fluster. Kirishima is Pipo, and Bakugou is Ron/Doropo–good fits with their characters, and also. Kiribaku moments? *eyes emoji* Todoroki is obviously the prince/Zan Gu! In the AU I’m probably going to extend things a bit further, so Izuku and Ochako stay in Wonderland a bit longer, and Todoroki falls in love with Izuku >:’D As for the smaller roles, I haven’t really decided those yet. Toshi is probably going to be the mayor, and Nana as the old lady. I’ve gotta rewatch the movie again to help me decide on the rest :’D

Buuut yeah! I’m gonna take a lot of liberties with the AU and expand on the movie waaay more, and try to fill in all the plot holes. A lot of the narration felt really abrupt so I’m gonna have fun weaving it all together so it flows! And tons of Tododeku moments because uh YEAH

That’s all for now!! If you’ve got more questions hmu, I’m super down to chat about this more!

[ask-de-writer]

HICCUPS!  : MLP Fan Fiction : A Grumpy Goat >tail<

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HICCUPS!

A Grumpy Goat >tail<

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

Cover art by @wind-the-mama-cat​

16440 words

© 2019 by Glen Ten-Eyck

Writing begun 11/30/18

All rights reserved.  This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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Characters:

Grumpy Goat and usual cast

Thomas/and/or/Dashie Writer – remote controlled T82

Wind, the Mama Cat

Victor Mordenheim  - Mad Doctor

Krystal Dragoness “KD” Wingless dragon - artist

Fume Hood Unicorn, a bit small-Forensic Chemist

Jinni and Sassy vampire and succubus

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

It was being a quiet day out on the ledge in front of my cave.  We were sitting on a bench, out in the sun, rereading Daring Do and the Secret of the Appleoosa Cave.  The stout iron sheeting that blocked the entrance to my cave was warm behind us.

The lovely Coalsmoke, a pony of perfect glossy black except for her cutie mark, was leaning over where my shoulder would be, if I still had a body, or for that matter was even technically alive.  She was admiring one of the illustrations in the book.

“I especially like these illustrations signed KD, Grumpy.  They capture the mood and action really well.”

Sitting on my other side was the finely polished skeleton of an alicorn.  He was the Litch King, Lord of the Dead, the being responsible for my present condition and now one of my few true friends.

He agreed, “Look at how well the artist has made the cave entrance look menacing.  Whoever did this is very good.”

We were distracted from our pleasant reading by a flare of flame down on the trail leading up to my cave.  Looking down the way, I was more or less expecting it to be the torches of another anti goat mob or, more specifically anti Grumpy Goat mob.  

Due to my business, I am less than popular with some ponies.  I have a thriving practice in Non Equine Magic.  Mostly, it does not appear to do anything.  Somehow, the desired, contracted for and paid in advance results just seem to happen by perfectly natural, if often bizarre means.  Most of the time, those results are the advantage over, injury, death or ruin of some pony, paid for as mentioned, IN ADVANCE, by some other pony.

This time, it was not a mob.  There was a wingless blue dragon toiling up the stony path to my cave.  The next time that she flared, we could hear it.  It sounded like she was suffering from a case of hiccups! Possibly not the best ailment for a dragon to have, since she was burping a smallish fire blast with each hiccup!

When she gained the ledge, she considerately turned her head out away from us. Good thing, too!  She had two hiccups in quick succession!

She offered, “My name is Krystal Dragoness, KD for short.  I've come to you about these hiccups.  They are like to ruin me.  I am at my wit's end.  See, I am an artist.  I draw and paint.  I get going on a piece and these hiccups start up!  One of them is sure to hit my work, and, well, paper, paints, canvas and frames are all pretty flammable! I've even burned up brushes!

“Can you help me to end these hiccups?”

I nodded, making my skull, apparently floating on nothing, with its everburning candle between the horns, glowing snake like eyes and fangs bob.  “I could do that, yes.  It would not cure the basic problem, though. Hiccups usually have a natural cause from tummy and lungs not coordinating right.  If I fix this case, it could easily happen again.

“Let's dig into how this started and whether there is some underlaying cause that we can fix.”

Somewhat disappointed, Krystal nodded.  “That makes sense.  My first case of the hiccups like this happened at my one dragon show in the Sunrise Gallery in Manehatten.  You know how those things are, lots of nobs that you need to chat with and lots of small snacks and drinks.  The show itself was a pretty important one.  

“I landed a contract to illustrate the next Daring Do book.  There was some serious competition for that contract, let me tell you.  It nearly went to Drawin Pitcher.  She wasn't too happy about me getting to do the art for another Daring Do book.  This one will be my fourth.

“I had only just signed the contract when the hiccups started. The first one nearly incinerated my new contract! I was able to get out of the gallery safely when they began.  I was lucky that I didn't hurt anypony or any of my art.”  

She absently pulled a sparkly topped muffin out of a bag and began munching it.  Looking up, a bit embarrassed, she pointed out, “I really can't share dragon muffins with you.  They are topped with crushed gems and have gold or silver dust in the muffin part.  I'm afraid that they are pretty toxic to non dragons.”

Coalsmoke asked curiously, “Where did you get them?  No place in Ponyville makes them at all.  Sometimes the kitchen in Princess Twilight's castle makes up some for Spike but they never sell them.”

Krystal knit her brows in puzzlement.  “I get them out of this bag.  I always like have them when I am a little tense, like when I am concentrating on my art.  Nibbling helps me to focus.”

Just then, she let out another small belch of fire.

Whistling softly, I thought carefully about what I had heard.  “Tell me, Krystal, at the art show, did you have muffins like these?”

“Well, yes.  Any well equipped bakery can make them.  They just have to clean up carefully afterwards.  They always serve them if I am going to be showing any of my works.”

I nodded and looked over at the lovely Coalsmoke, who is always a treat for the ol' eyeballs and asked, “And where have you bought them since that art show in Manehatten?”

She paused, thinking.  “I haven't had to.  This bag always has some in it.”

The eyes that I don't really have widened just a bit.  “It always has some of those muffins in it for you?  When did you get that bag?”

She scratched behind the spines along the back of her jaw as she sorted it out.  “I first noticed it just after I left the gallery at the show where I got those first hiccups.  It's always there when I am tense.”

I glamored my invisible spirit body to look like the handsome tan, black and brown goat that I was before the tiny mistake that killed me and destroyed my original body.  Holding out a hoof, I said, “Just give me the bag, please.  I am going to try something simple with it.”

Nodding affably, Krystal handed me the bag.  I took it inside my cave and shut the iron door.  That door and my cave front were designed by a good firm of military engineers to withstand an Equestrian standard military battering ram.  

It only takes one anti-goat mob burning your house, your library, years of study, hopes for a degree and dreams of well paying work to make one take a few simple precautions.  Add the mob trying to stone your burned and battered body to death to drive home the lesson in how how to hate most ponies.  That trivial incident also motivated my simple and sensible precautions against a repeat of the problem.  Like living in a cave.  With a military fortress grade steel and iron entrance.

I turned about from sealing the door and asked Krystal if she was still feeling tense.  Digging into the bag for a muffin, she replied, “Yes, a little.  Why?”

The Litch King pointed with a foreleg of bone.  “That is why.  He just shut that bag inside his cave and it looks like you have it back.”

He turned his skeletal head to me and stated, “Grumpy, if you can, we NEED to help KD.  Her illustrations really make a Daring Do book!  Plus, we know now that a new one is in the works!  We can't let anything interfere with THAT!”

I shrugged and opened the door.  I was not even surprised that the bag was not there inside my cave any longer.  Krystal munched her muffin and shortly hiccuped another tongue of flame.

I pointed out, “That bag was behind six centimeters of forged iron.  In spite of that, it homed in on you without seeming effort.  Moments after you nibbled that muffin, you hiccuped another flame.  I suspect that there is a direct connection.  To be sure, we need to go back down into Ponyville.  I know someone in the forensic chemistry lab at the police department.  In the meantime, try not to nibble another muffin and let us see if that helps to control or stop the problem.”

On the trail back down to Ponyville, Coalsmoke and I tried to simply hold the bag instead of letting Krystal carry it.  This wise measure proved impossible.  The bag kept sneakily returning to her claws. After what happened up on the ledge in front of my cave, that was pretty much what was expected.

I have to admit that I was pleased by the simple fact that Krystal did keep her claws out of the bag.  We got down the trail and into Ponyville without incident as a result.

Instead of my usual turning towards the town hall and the Hall of Records, to record a new contract, I trotted right on, with a right turn, headed towards the Ponyville Waste Treatment Plant and Falmire Marsh, which is fenced and actually the final stage of the waste water treatment, before it goes into the river.

Coalsmoke was most interested in why we were going where we were going.  Soon enough, we came to a modest stone building close by to the treatment plant.  The sign said,

Ponyville Police Department

Forensics Laboratory

Chemistry, Physical Evidence Analysis,

Forensic Autopsy

As I pushed open the front door, I explained, “I know most of the staff here. Sometimes they will consult with me, when a case is being a pain.”

Coalsmoke chuckled, “How often is one of their nasty cases the result of one of your contracts, Grumpy?”

A smallish unicorn looked up from where he was working at a desk, apparently compiling a report.  “Not really all that often, Miss Coalsmoke. Even when it is, there is no actual evidence that can link the contract to the results.  Grumpy is often a big help in sorting out how something that we are investigating happened.  We pay him a proper consultation fee, of course.”

I introduced, “Coalsmoke, KD, I would like you to meet Fume Hood, one of the best forensic chemists in the whole kingdom.  We are lucky to have him here in Ponyville.”

KD offered, “You have some unusual friends, Grumpy.”

I chortled, “If they aren't unusual in some way, the aren't worth having as friends.”

Turning my attention to Fume Hood, I explained what our situation was in a few words and ended with, “Think that you could do us a rough analysis of one of KD's dragon muffins?”

He thought for a moment, tapping quietly on his desk top before nodding, “You say that the flame is mostly pale blue? Nearly transparent but pretty hot?”

KD shook her head in agreement.  “Right.  That is, unless I eat something with salt in it.  Then the flame is yellow.  Is that significant?”

Fume Hood said, “It MAY be.  I would like to see both your normal flame and one from your hiccups.  Please step over there.  Dragon flame can be pretty handy for some chemistry tests, so we have a small indoor flame range.”

KD stepped over to the flame range's head rest.  Fume Hood lowered the room lights and suggested, “Whenever you are ready, Miss KD.  Just give us a small shot of your regular flame.”

KD's fire blast was impressively different from a hiccup flame.  It was a bright yellow with some red to the center and flame tips that went to a bluish hue.

Fume Hood almost danced pleasure at seeing it!  Perfect!   Normal dragon fire. Now, let's see what we get with one of those muffins.  Go ahead and take one from the bag and eat it.”

He was watching the bag very closely as KD extracted the muffin. “Fascinating.  There is only one muffin in the bag until you take it out.  Then a new muffin forms almost immediately afterwards.”

KD contentedly munched her muffin.  Within moments, she stuck her head into the flame range headrest and belched a nearly pure, pale blue flame.

Fume Hood smiled in chemistly joy.  “Timing and color nail it!  You were right, Grumpy.  There is a direct connection between the muffins and KD's hiccups of flame.  The only reason that she flames at all with them is that, being a dragon, she has a natural ignition spark every time she exhales or belches.  Whatever this vapor she is belching is, it is highly flammable.”

KD's shoulders slumped.  “Does that mean that I can't have Dragon Muffins anymore?”

Fume Hood chuckled as he replied, “I suspect that you can have all that you want.  Just not these, from this bag.”

He went to pull one out.  Looking perplexed, he tried again.  “Humm . . . I can't seem get that muffin out of the bag.  KD, will you get it please?  I need to analyze it.”

Without any problem, KD extracted the muffin.  Fume Hood took it and sliced it in half.  One half he put into a beaker with a lye solution.  It began to dissolve at once.  Soon there was only some slightly coarse granules mixed with loose sparkly fragments of gemstones in the bottom of the beaker.

Fume Hood filtered out the solid residue and rinsed it with water.  Stirring it with a glass rod, he explained, “The lye took away everything but the gems in the topping and the metal dusts in the body of the muffin.  Now, lets see what happens next . . .”

He dripped some acid onto the residue.  “Gems, gold, and silver won't dissolve in this mild acid.”  

In spite of that, something was happening!  It bubbled and fumed something fierce!  Happily touching it off with a sparking wand used to light his lab burners, Fume Hood pointed dramatically!

“There! You see?  Pale blue flame!  See the white residue?  Zinc oxide.  Your muffins are adulterated with zinc!  It reacts with your stomach acids to make hydrogen and that is what, along with a bit of moisture and such that it picks up as you burp is what makes your so called hiccups!  Just don't eat any muffins from that bag and you should be fine.”

He turned to me and snickered, “OK, Grumpy.  We are even now.”

I turned to the perplexed KD and Coalsmoke.  “They needed an autopsy done last year.  The cadaver was over a week old, in August.  I glamored up a form with no sense of smell and did it for them.  Death was from blunt force trauma to the back of the skull.  Clubbed, to be crude about it.”

KD brightened up and commented, “If they get that sort of thing to deal with, it is no wonder that this place is beside the waste treatment plant!”

I agreed, “Right!  Now all that we need to do is sort out how you got a bag that can do what this one does.”

KD put a finger to her cheek as she thought.  “I do know where I got it.  It was at that Manehatten art show that I told you about.  The Dragon Treats that they serve at those things are always kept separate from the pony treats by putting them in bags.  Somepony gave me this bag with a muffin in it, just before I signed that Daring Do contract.”

Fume Hood tapped me on my nonexistent shoulder and pointed to the bottom of the bag.  There was a small trade mark in the form of a silhouette. There was a small bit of advertising too.

KD read, “Redline Party Supplies – For a party to remember for the rest of your life – If you survive!”  She also pointed out, “That silhouette looks like a laughing wolf's head.”

Fume Hood agreed, “It does look like that, doesn't it?  I know of someone who uses a silhouette like that on their business cards.  Here.”  He hoofed over a card.

The card read:

Doctor Mordenheim,

General Surgery and Prosthesis.

Everfree Edge Clinic

Practice inspected and approved by Princess Luna

I was delighted!  “I know where that is!  It was a small old castle that was supposedly built by a -” I made my voice low and shivery while making Hoof Quotes, “- 'Mad Doctor' long before Ponyville was established.  It was in ruins when the Apples came and founded the town.”

Coalsmoke smiled and said, “Right, Grumpy.  I know where it is too.  I send my workers there for general health workups and surgery when it is needed.  Doctor Mordenheim really is very good.  It is not far from here, either.  Let's go see if he can shed any light on this business.”

We left, taking the Falmire Causeway that crossed the marsh, going out towards the southeast side of the Everfree forest.  We paused by a street vendor's cart to watch the antics of her trained alligator.

Have to admit that Pinkie has done a great job of training Gummy!  I mean, he is two and a half meters of fun!  Rumor has it that she has broken him to saddle, but she was not offering rides today.

“Gator Chow, gator chow! / The gators below are hungry now! / Feed the gators down below / It is really quite a show!”

A chuckling Coalsmoke hoofed over coins and got a big bag filled with large chunks.  It said “Certified Gator Chow” on the label.  She shared the chunks around and we spent a few happy minutes tossing them to the many alligators gathered hopefully under the bridge.

There were splashes and chomping a-plenty as the gators lunged about for each new chunk of the chow.  We heard a munching from behind us.

KD, swallowing, asked Pinkie, “Where can I get some more of this stuff? It is pretty good!”

At our stares, she retorted, “What?  Dragon here, remember?  I don't eat grass!”

We left Pinkie to her vending and went on across.  It was not long before we saw the sign pointing to the forest beyond.  It said, Everfree Edge Clinic, General Medicine and Prosthetics.

Only a little way up the designated path of yellow cobbles, we came to a small but well restored castle.  I had to give this Doctor Mordenheim credit for showmanship.  This was one classy clinic.  The sign over an open door read Welcome to Everfree Edge Clinic.

Coalsmoke rang a bell labeled Ring for Service that sat on a beautiful mahogany desk in the lobby/waiting room.

We did not even get to try out the assorted seating and laying cushions.  A large, near horse sized zebra with an eye patch came out of the back. His professional smile turned to a genuine one as he laid eye on Coalsmoke.

“My dear Coalsmoke!  What may I do for you, or is it for one of your friends?”

Suddenly stopping like he'd hit one of his stone castle walls, he gave me a careful and most knowing look.  “I do fear that the goat is beyond any help of mine.”

Coalsmoke smirked just a little as she replied, “You are correct.  This is Grumpy Goat, my long standing friend, of whom I am sure that you have heard.  We are not here for him.

“This is Krystal Dragoness.  She prefers to be called KD.  Our problem is sort of related to her, but it is not medical.”

Resting his chin on one forehoof, as he sat behind the desk, Doctor Mordenheim inquired, “If the problem is not medical, then what is it?”

I held out a hoof, “KD, may I have the bag please?”

I showed him the bottom.  “Somepony named Redline is using your cutie mark on his things.  It has some interesting properties.”

Mordenheim put his face in his hooves.  “I know.  I see that KD has it.  She can't lose it either.  Whatever is in it, seems like an endless supply.  I made it, years ago.  How it got here to this world, I have no idea.”

He was sort of surprised when we all simply found seating and Coalsmoke asked casually, “So, how did you get here?  More to the point, when you arrived, did you meet an elderly blue unicorn with a white mane, tail, and beard?”

Mordenheim looked blank.  “What?  No, I never met anypony like that.”

He got a seriously uncomfortable expression as he elaborated, “I would really prefer not to go into why I wound up here.  Princess Luna knows in detail.  Suffice it to say that the events led me to wandering in the Everfree Forest.  I have no idea at all how it happened, since the Everfree is not all that big, but I was in there for over a week.  Perhaps more, I am not at all sure.  What I am sure of is that the path that I was on did not seem to double back on itself or any thing like that.  Between sun breaks in the forest canopy and the scenery, I am sure that I was not going in circles.

“I happened on the ruin of this old castle.  I might have simply passed it by but it had a small cobbled road leading to it from outside of the forest.  I followed that road and it led me to Ponyville.”  He shook his head in wonder, “It was a very different Ponyville than the one that I left.  By good fortune, I met Caramel Treat, Fangrin and Reverend Smallflower.  The rest all came from meeting them.”

I pointed out, “Fascinating as that is, it completely dodges the question of that bag and its neverending supply of adulterated Dragon Muffins.”

One of Doctor Mordenheim's ears cocked up in fascination.  “Adulterated? How?”

Coalsmoke filled in, “With lots of zinc metal dust, that's how.”

Doctor Mordenheim winced,  “Ouch!  That would make mountains of hydrogen gas!  That could cause a serious problem for a dragon!”

KD confirmed, “It sure does!  The hiccups that it causes have been near the ruin of my art.”

Suddenly you could see things clicking together in Doctor Mordenheim's mind! “KD?  Art?  Did you do the covers and illustrations for Daring Do and the Secret of the Apploosa Cave?  The Adventure of the Singing Sands?  The Nippony Diamond?”

KD nodded, clearly pleased.  “All three!  Why?”

Acting like a foal as he was going to his book shelf, Mordenheim snagged all three books and returned to his desk.  “I love your art, KD, would you please autograph these for me?”

With an impishly evil grin, displaying her big dragon chompers, KD replied, “Sure!”  She was reaching into the bag.  “Just as soon as I snack on this muffin!  Or, you make this bag harmless!”

Grinning right back, and revealing a set of fangs that would not have been out of place in a tiger shark, Mordenheim replied, hoof over heart, “You wound me!  I was going to do that anyway.  You did not need blackmail me.  It did make it more fun, though!”

KD chuckled as she said, “I would not really have done it, Doc.  It was just too much fun to pass up the chance.  So, tell us, why did you make a bag like this?”

Reassured that we did not hold his apparent past against him, he sat back comfortably and half smiled at the memory.  “Revenge.  Count Sourbottom was being a problem, objecting to some of my experi . . . projects.   He had a whole herd of foals of all ages.  One of the youngsters had a birthday party coming up.  I set up one of these for each of them!  Loaded them with the finest, sweetest candies that I could locate.  It was a near perfect revenge.”

Always interested in more ways to get back at ponykind for their mistreatment of me in the past, I asked, “How was giving his foals candy any sort of revenge?”

Suddenly, Coalsmoke put a hoof to her lips to suppress giggles.  “Don't you see it, Grumpy?  He couldn't take them away for discipline because the bags will go right back to the foals.  Worse, the endless supply of sweets could cause all sorts of health and mouth problems that the Count would have to pay for!”

Mordenheim nodded happy agreement.  “Last that I heard, Count Sourbottom was headed for bankruptcy on dental bills alone!”

Going more serious, he offered, “KD, we may be able to save the gem topping of your muffins if we are lucky.  Would you like that?”

KD replied seriously, “That would be great, if we can do it.  I really like their flavor, especially the crushed rubies.  How can we do it?”

Doctor Mordenheim picked up the bag and headed for the outside door.  Over his shoulder, he invited, “Come outside for a simple little experiment.  We can save the gems themselves for sure.  Question is whether we can save the topping that they are in or not.”

He pointed down the yellow cobble road leading to his door.  “Now, my dear, take a muffin out of the bag but don't eat it.”

Mystified, she hoofed over the muffin.  “I understand why I have to get it out, but why not eat it?  What are we going to do with it?”

With total assurance, Doctor Mordenheim replied, “You are going to eat it but in parts.  Here, let me scrape off the topping.”  Carefully he removed the topping, taking none of the muffin itself.  “Just eat the topping.  I will hold the muffin for now.”

With obvious relish, KD did.  Licking it off her claws, she asked, “What now?  I like this test!”

“We wait a bit to see if you get gas.  If you don't, the zinc is only in the muffin part.”

KD cocked her head, brow wrinkled in concentration.  “I don't feel any gas coming on.  That usually happens pretty quick when it does.”

“I see. To finish the test, eat the rest of the muffin now.”

She did. And was soon hiccuping blasts of flame.

Nodding in confirmation, he said, “Just in the muffin then.  We can definitely save the topping for you.  Would you like just this topping or would you prefer it on something?”

“As it happens, I do have something that it might go good on.”

Back inside, she produced a bag.  We all saw Mordenheim's nose dilate as he caught the scent.  His ears shot forward in interest.  Drool leaked out of the corner of his mouth!

“What is that lovely smelling stuff, KD?”

“Gator Chow.  I got it from Pinkie Pie over on the bridge.  She told me that it is made from smoked and flaked meat pressed into bite sized chunks.”

Both Coalsmoke and I were rolling on the floor, laughing!  Getting myself somewhat under control, I commented, “Those teeth of yours are real, aren't they, Doc?”

“Yes, they are.  Is it a problem?”

Coalsmoke, composing herself comfortably on a large cushion, replied, “Not for us.  It was just unexpected.  Looks like Pinkie is going to have to stock in more Gator Chow, is all.  

“This explains why Caramel has mentioned you eating there a lot but I haven't seen you, and I eat there too.  You eat in the back, in her carnivore plaza.”

“Right. Now, KD, those Gator Chow chunks are just about muffin sized.  That is about as big as the bag can handle.  It is time to disarm the bag from those bad muffins.”

He got a large, heavy book from the shelf.  Instead of consulting it, he held it at the ready.

“Now, KD, take the muffin out and move your paws away from the bag swiftly.”

As she did, he slammed the book down on top of the bag!  He held it down for around a whole minute.  Relaxing, he pronounced, the spell is reset. It can now be reloaded and set to anyone.  Just a sec.”

He went into the back and returned with salad tongs and a spreading knife. Selecting one of KD's chow chunks, he carefully and neatly spread the gem topping onto it.  Taking the tongs, he used them to insert the topped chow chunk into the bag.

“Now, KD, just reach into the bag and take out the snack.  That will reset the bag to you with a safe treat.  You also now know how to change treats any time that you want.”

Saying, “Thanks, Doc!”  KD fished out the treat and nibbled it down with gusto!

I was watching the whole thing with narrowed eyes that I don't really have. Thinking it over, I pointed out, “KD, whoever set you up was at the show in Manehatten.  The way it works, that spell didn't lock onto you until you took out that first muffin.

“It may be time for a contract or a bit of detective work in Manehatten. Perhaps both.”

Thoughtfully she suggested, “There is another big art show in Manehatten in a few days.  I do have a studio there with some finished pieces that I could enter if I could get there in time.  That would give us the cover that we need for detective work if we can arrive in time.”

I suggested, “If time is a problem, I could try setting up a portal between here and the Manehatten fairgrounds.  It has been a while since I studied that but it is really pretty simple magic.”

We all trooped outside and I began the really pretty basic preparations for opening a portal spell.  I did add a whole lot of “stage dressing” rituals, circles and other misdirection.  I always do.  Better showmanship and it hides what makes it work from prying eyes, even if they are watching.

A glowing circle appeared in the air, just in front of us and barely touching the ground.  Suddenly it began to grow, becoming a huge oval. Something enormous, making a steady pulsing roar and clanking like metal was coming toward us!

First, pretty high up, came a sort of short crossways tube with a hole in it on the side facing us.  The thing continued to advance.  That funny bit was attached to a long metal tube!  Down lower, some big metal plates appeared and then between them  an enormous bridge of metal. Huge wheels of steel supported endless linked plates of more steel!

As the contraption came on out, it was revealed to be a gigantic machine of some sort!  It had sloped sides up to a heavy device on top that the long tube came out of.  That had sloped sides too, as if this thing were made to bounce catapult shots off of it!  There were some serious dents and obvious repairs that made it seem that those slopes were strictly functional!

Sticking her head up out of a hatch in the top was a pony who looked for all the world like Rainbow Dash!  Reinforcing that idea was a brown pegasus with a black mane and tail clinging to the rear of the machine and calling out loudly enough to be heard over the machine's roar!

“Dashie! Stop!  You going to smash through garden wall again!  You crush Jade's herb garden again!  You so grounded!”

Dashie retorted, “I not hit wall, dad!  Big blue hole show up.  I drive through that!  Besides, last time I drive through Jade's herb garden, I fix it better than before.  She ask me to squash it again!”

“And one more thing!  Dashie, you make me good hot tea or you so grounded you need dig up for thousand year to see daylight!”

Innocently she shot back, “If I that grounded, I make you nice tea that De Writer send for me to get you!  It his idea to get it with remote control T82 Main Battle Tank!  If I NOT grounded, I MIGHT be able to find you nice green tea that he never touch!”

The brown pegasus sat hard.  “De Writer ask you to use Remote Control T82 IN CANTERLOT for that tea?  You not so grounded as I thought.”

The one identified as Dashie noticed us from her vantage point, high up in the top part of the T82.  She picked up a small boxy thing with buttons and levers and pushed one of the buttons.  The T82's loud grumbling fell quiet.

“Um, Dad, we come through portal, I think.  You not teach me that magic yet. There ponies here and a dragon.  Come around T82 and you see.  There small castle here too.”

The brown pegasus stepped around the metal monster and courteously introduced, “I Thomas the Writer.  Miscreant who drive T82 through your portal my daughter Dashie Writer.  T82 is educational toy give her by De Writer.”

Mordenheim looked up at the behemoth of steel and remarked, “Where you are from has different ideas about educational toys than any place I have ever been.”

Dashie replied, “It crazy where we from too, but what you expect from powerful wizard like De Writer?  Something safe?  He good to have on your side when trouble come, though.”

She turned about and exclaimed, “The portal gone!”

It was true.  Standing where it had been was a familiar cat otter hybrid with red hair.  She was wearing a well worn cloak of dark green and light seeming chain mail.  Mithril by the look of it.  Her left arm was a prosthesis, a mechanical arm of metal that moved in an utterly natural way.  Under the cloak was the scabbard of a large sword.  In her mechanical hand was a parchment that looked like a map of some sort.

She tucked away the map in a pouch at her waist and looked about, her gaze missing nothing.  Smiling, she waived!  “Hi, Grumpy!  It's me, Wind!  We met at Ponyville Fair, remember?  I am part of Marchhare's band of Rom.   I was going to meet them at Haymarket fair, up north, but this out of control portal got in the way.  I took the liberty of closing it.”

Thomas gave Wind a strangely puzzled look.  “This world with Marchhare in it?”

She shrugged, “I wouldn't be going to meet him and his band if it wasn't!  Why?”

Speaking to Dashie, Thomas said, “This important lesson, Dashie.  How many worlds in multiverse?”

She replied, “Infinite.  Everyone and thing have infinite copies, each a little different.”  Raising her eyebrows in thought, she added, “This a trick question, isn't it, Dad?”

“Sort of. You very quick.  Every rule have exception, right?”

Putting hoof to chin, she thought and then went wide eyed with realization! “Every rule have exception, even that rule!”

Thomas lifted his wings in pleasure.  “Right!  This ONLY world in whole multiverse that have Marchhare!  That is secret to navigation when go between worlds.”

Dashie blinked.  “What happen when he dies?”

“Nothing, Dashie.  Marchhare already dead.  Not die twice.”

We were all listening in amazement.  It was newcomer Wind who said, “That is sort of a relief.  That there is only one of my foster dad, I mean. I have met some of myself and it was not the best of experiences!”

She put her jaw in her metal hand and examined the whole situation carefully. Turning to me she asked, “Did you cast the portal, Grumpy?”

Scraping the grass where I was standing with one nonexistent forehoof and looking down, I muttered, “Afraid so.  Portals are not really my specialty.  I guess that I really messed this one up.”

Wind stepped over and lifted my glamor's head to look me in the eye.  “I am an expert with portals.  That one was really well done.  It would have worked perfectly if you had not cast it here.  The Everfree's Hidden Ways are what messed you up.

“Now, where were you trying to go?”

KD interjected, “We were aiming for the fairgrounds at Manehatten by the Sea.”

Wind nodded in a very take charge sort of way.  “I see.  That is about 6 or 7 hundred kilometers from here.”

Leaning casually up against the iron monster called T82, Wind asked, “Does this thing have personnel and cargo railings and how fast is it, uh, Dashie?”

Dashie brightened up as she replied, “It sure does have safety railings! I use them when I give Mia and Becky rides.  It can go as far as you want.  Out in the open, it can hit 100 kilometers an hour!  How did you know about that?”

Wind gave a delicate shudder, “I have adventured on a few worlds where similar machines were used.  I saw the passenger railings on some of them.”

Wind smiled ingratiatingly at Thomas.  “Would you be willing to let Dashie take us all on an Adventure to Manehatten by the Sea?  It will get these nice beings where they need to go and be fun for us all.  From there, I can easily send you both back home.”

Dashie had hopped out of the top of the T82 and began releasing catches and lifting up metal railings.  They clicked as they locked into place. When she was done, she lowered a set of steep metal stairs to climb up onto the back of her “educational toy.”

Thomas watched with a skeptical lift to his right eyebrow.  “I not say we go, Dashie.”

She looked him straight back in the eye as she retorted, in front of us all, “Right.  All that you have to do is tell our hosts that you won't do something simple and fun to help them.”

“That blackmail, Dashie!”

“Right. Between you and our De Writer, I learn from the best!”

He chuckled, “OK.  We do it.”

Wind swung easily up the boarding stair and called, “All aboard for the Manehatten Express!”

KD swarmed up, found the engine vents, and curled up with a “Dibs on the warm spot!”

Coalsmoke gently pushed me toward the enormous device with, “I would love to go too, Grumpy, but I have serious business to talk over with Victor. The Princesses want to set up a program for helping wounded veterans of their armies.”

Dashie started the T82 and made a big turn.  Wind guiding her, we set out for Adventure!  And Manehatten.

Technically, we took Doctor Mordenheim's path down to the Falmire cutoff and turned south towards the junction with Royal Road 315.  For some reason, the busy traffic of Ponyville's industrial district gave way before us, even when it had the right of way!  Couldn't imagine why! Surely it had nothing to do with fifty or more tonnes of steel monstrosity charging along at a “mere” twenty kilometers per hour.

We reached the Royal Road toll booth without incident.  Almost had an incident there.  The poor booth keepers were going nuts trying to sort out the proper toll.

Pages were fluttering back and forth in their toll manuals, “It ain't a cart or wagon from any section!  Darn thing is made out of iron like a fool locomotive on the railroad!”

“I know, Jeb!  Can't even classify it by team size or set up!  It runs itself!”

Wind was sitting on the edge of the turret, which Dashie had taught us was the name for that upper part with the long pipe sticking out of it, and giggling at the small uproar.  

“When Marchhare hears about this, he will split his harness, he will laugh so hard!”

One of the toll collectors looked up at her and got a beatific smile.  “You are Wind, from Marchhare's band of Rom, right?  I saw you at our fair a couple of times.”

She nodded acknowledgment, “Yes, Sir.  I am.”

He turned to his buddy and pushed the manuals shut.  “Just write Rom from Marchhare's band, toll free by Crowns Law.”

Jeb did write, though he was still trying to protest.  His superior shut him down with, “Jeb, like enough you are right.  Still, it solves OUR problem.”  He tripped the gate mechanism and the flimsy red and white painted wooden bar lifted up out of our way.

We pulled onto the Royal Road.  Besides less traffic, it was wider and better maintained than the Ponyville road we had come from.  Dashie began to open up the speed once we had clear road ahead of us.  I must say, I was impressed.  Dashie was not kidding about hitting a hundred kilometers an hour!

The T82 was fast and high enough that we had to duck shade tree branches!  A delighted KD had her sketchbook out and was rapidly drawing things from her high perspective!

Chortling, she explained, “Even as roughs, some of these will adapt to pictures for my book contract!  This is great!”

Wind steered us into one of the many waysides, making Dashie slow down and drive gently as we parked for the evening.  With assurance, she showed us where the free water and firewood were.

With a fond smile, Wind recalled, “I have camped here before, while traveling with Dad's band.  There is a small stream over in the bushes that we can get fresh fish and crawdads out of for a nice dinner.”

KD had out an easel and was busily drawing with colors.  She was doing the T82 framed by a sunset of riotous clouds and glowing light.  

She asked politely, “Wind, would you be so good as to pose there, just below the turret?  I want your metal arm just casually holding something and your sword out in your right hand, ready but not on a guard.”

Wind did pose.  It really did not take KD long at all to capture the feeling of the scene.  The way that Wind was posing, it looked for all the world like she OWNED the metal monster behind her!

Done posing, Wind stretched and began doing limbering up exercises.  With an expression of delight, and without even thinking about it, Wind began to dance and sing in a language strange to all of us.  I did recognize it from my times at the Ponyville fair, serving mainly as security for Caramel Treat's excellent food booth.  The language was Gyptian, the sort of private and held secret, nearly melodious tongue of the Rom.  I did recognize the dance.

She was treating us to the Shehan Ja Rom, their story of how the Rom came to be.  I gather that it is the oldest dance and song of the Rom.  As her dance and song finished, I remembered that the Rom did not clap for applause.  I leaned my head back and gave the loud trill that the Rom use.

Wind looked sort of startled as the others followed suit.  Embarrassed, she mumbled, “Sorry.  It was just the joy of being on the road again.”

It was KD who said it, “Don't be sorry.  It was lovely.  Is there an Equestrian translation?”

I put in, “I know that there is.  That was the famous Shehan Ja Rom.  The Rom traditionally dance and sing it in an Equestrian version to open fairs.  What I am curious about is how Wind, who is nothing like any horse or pony, came to be a Rom and of Marchhare's band at that.”

Wind sat near the fire and absently began to assemble vegetable skewers for Dashie, Thomas and I.  “I made a little mistake while adventuring. I survived it, obviously.  Mama Dragon fixed me up and sent me here, to this Equestria to finish healing and recuperate.  De Writer met me and steered me to Marchhare's band.

“Good thing, too.  One of my wounds developed a small inflammation that could have killed me.  Black Lotus, Marchhare and Hoof Dancer, his wife at the time, healed me.  Mama Dragon was wise in sending me to them for a month.  I had more than physical wounds to heal.  I joined them and learned to read, write and speak Gyptian.  Having a real caring and extended family provided the rest of the healing that I needed.  Now, I have my Freedom and I can come and go as I wish, but my Rom family is always there for me.”

I could tell that there was a lot left out but Wind cut her tale off without harming her tail by asking, “Grumpy, will you tend these skewers for me while I go catch some fish, crawdads and a bunny or two for dinner to share with KD?”

I realized at once that besides being an adventurer, Wind was quite diplomatic. She had just reminded the lot of us that KD had not eaten all day, except for snacks, and that both she and Wind were carnivores. Possibly hungry carnivores.

Dashie took off too, calling, “Wind!  Wait up!  I want see how you hunt and fish without fancy gear.”

Wind looked back, nodded and then beckoned with a finger curl.  As soon as Dashie was up to her, Wind slid into the brush without a sound.  Dashie, trying to follow was pretty quiet.

Coming to the creek bank, Wind laid flat and wriggled forward on her stomach. Carefully parting the small thin wands of the bank willows, she slid her right arm into the water, reaching back, under the cut bank.  Her face screwed up with concentration, she eased her hand up, feeling for a fish.  Smiling, she slid her hand further up and grabbed!

Rolling back and lifting, Wind flipped the good sized trout out onto the bank!  She caught the flopping creature and bent its head back to break its neck.  She snipped off a thin bank willow strand with her knife and laced it through the fish's gills and out the mouth. Loosely knotting the ends, she hung the fish up and repeated the trick three more times!

Dashie was watching with awe.  “I never even hear of fishing that way!  How you do it?”

Wind picked up her willow loop with fish and replied, “It takes practice to tickle trout but it is not really hard.  You need to be careful and gentle.  When you feel the fish with your fingers, you need to work your way up until you feel the pectoral fins, those just behind the gills.  Snap your fingers into the gills and lift it out quickly.

“Now for a nice brace of bunnies and dinner will ready to cook.”

Dashie, keeping her voice down, asked, “I see warren right over there.  How you catch them?  Some kind of trap?”

Wind, following Dashie's pointing hoof, shook her head.  “I could, and if we were going to be here longer, I would set some snares.  Since it is only dinner and breakfast, I will just pounce them.  It is easier and quicker.”

Dashie watched Wind ghost her way through the brush toward the warren. Choosing her place, she waited, a bunched spring of living huntress. Nothing moved except for the tip of her tail twitching slightly.  It was only a few minutes before a bunny hopped lazily toward one of the main holes of the warren.  Wind's pounce included a fast chop with her metal hand!  The bunny only twitched once before going still.

Wind quietly picked a different spot and soon had a second bunny!

Bearing her prey, Wind and Dashie returned to camp.  On their way, Wind asked, “Why did you want to see how I got fish and bunnies?  Most ponies really don't want to see that.”

Face flaming a little with embarrassment, Dashie replied, “I am sort of, like half dragon.  I turn into one if I need to or want to.  Thing is, I not very good at getting meat to eat!  I have to turn back to a pony and graze up dinner!  There are times that really inconvenient!”

Wind chuckled.  “I can see that!  We have one more stop before Manehatten by the Sea.  I will take you out hunting there too, OK?”

Back at camp, Wind considerately went to the other side of the T82 to clean and prepare her catch.  A lightly drooling KD went to help!  They both returned to the camp, licking their lips and smiling.  They were finishing up with some of KD's endless supply of Gator Chow.  Wind had carefully cleaned off the gem topping from hers and used it to enhance KD's snack.

As we were settling about the fire, Dashie asked, “Um, Wind, did Rom hold you prisoner some way?  You say you have your freedom.”

Wind chuckled at the misunderstanding.  “No, Dashie.  The Rom Freedom is a thing that they wear.  Here, I have mine in my bag.”

She reached into her bag at her waist and her arm seemed to go in further than was possible.  She saw us staring and snorted her amusement.  “It is called a bag of holding.  It is sort of like Marchhare's caravan. It is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  Here it it is!”

Stopping her rummaging, she pulled out a sort of headstall thing of richly tooled and dyed leather with rings and buckles that looked to be gold.  She strapped it on.

“This is a Freedom of the Rom.  They grant them only to beings that they have fully accepted as one of their own.”

“Why is call a Freedom?” Dashie wondered.

Wind lifted her chin with pride.  “The original cast off slaves that were the first Rom wore a headstall with a bit and lead ring.  They had them all their lives and were not comfortable without something on their heads.  They re made them into the Freedom by taking away anything by which they could be made to serve another.  No bit or lead ring has ruled any Rom from that day to this.”  Very carefully, Wind removed her Freedom and put it away.

KD had curled into an amazingly hard to see coil of dragon to sleep until dawn.  The rest of us were spreading blankets to sleep under the stars.

A wagon full of road repair tools and an accompanying work gang of ponies pulled into the rest area.  A couple of them strode arrogantly to our camp and demanded, “We are hungry!  What ever food you got, hoof it over now!  You don't, we gonna take sledgehammers to that there tin thingy!”

I gently prodded the almost sleeping dragon in our midst.  KD had been paying attention!  Her head rose up, eyes alight.  A curl of flame showing at each nostril and outlining her barely opened jaws completed the picture!

She serenely asked, “What?  More dinner?  I'm not sure that I could hold another whole pony.  Mind if we just sort of pack along the leftovers for lunch?”

Dashie had lifted a fully draconic head.  In the late evening's light we could not make out her color but we could easily make out the totally paling ponies!

“What! They got TWO DRAGONS!”

Dashie corrected, “No.  Two HUNGRY dragons!”

Dashie was giggling at the frantic retreat of the two jerks!  Got to admit to some chuckles of my own.  KD's sides were heaving as she re coiled herself.

Dashie got up onto all fours.  In the dying firelight, she could be seen to be a light blue color.  She flexed her wings a couple of times and strolled over to where the road crew ponies were carelessly re packing to leave.  In terror but not so terrified that they were willing to have to pay for abandoned gear!

One thoughtlessly yelled, “Road camp privacy!  Stay away, that is kingdom law!”

Wind, who was almost unnoticed at Dashie's right front leg, calmly pointed out, “You have just admitted that you knew that you were breaking kingdom law when you tried to hijack our dinner.  In your haste to correct your error, you dropped your sledgehammers.  Here!”

Wind revealed a hidden strength by casually giving the heavy hammers an underhand toss.  Both hammers overshot the wagon and hit the turf on the other side of it.

That got the attention of the road crew ponies!  One noticed, “How come you only got one arm?”

Smiling angelically, which showed off her fangs nicely, Wind reached up with her metal left arm and scritched at the base of Dashie's left dragon horn as she replied, “What, this?” Campfire light glinting from her metal arm, she said casually, “Kitten here, and I got to roughhousing last week!  She was a little too enthusiastic, that's all.”

Dashie, catching on to the game, bent her head around and gave Wind a lick at the shoulder and said contritely, “I said that I was sorry!  We just need to find a Phoenix potion so that you can regrow it. Again.”

They strolled back to our camp, Wind taking the time to re hang her cloak to sort of hide her metal arm.  Thomas, Dashie, now turned back to a pegasus, and I nibbled up Wind's excellent fruit and vegetable skewers.

Wind toasted the last of the bunnies and trout over KD's flame and shared that extra bit dinner with her.  Dashie “sneaked” over and turned back to a dragon to beg a few bites.  Grinning, they let her have some.

Sleeping out in the open, I did not have my usual nightmares of a Celestian Church mob burning my home, studies, and, failing to trap me in the house, attempting to stone me to death.  Perhaps my feelings of safety came of sleeping beside a big blue dragon?  One that liked me? Very likely.

It could not last.  For one thing, dawn comes far too soon for a cave dwelling goat like me.  The other was a light blue bundle of enthusiasm with rainbow mane and tail!  Dashie was bounding into camp!  She was waiving a forked stick with three big fat trout on it!  It was laced through their gills and out their mouths, with the forked branch acting as a stop to keep them from sliding off.

“I did it, Wind!  I tickle trout just like you show me how!”

Wind looked up from laying the morning cook fire.  Her grin showed her usually hidden fangs as she replied, “Just like I showed you?   Not sure how to point this out diplomatically but you don't have any fingers to do it with.”

Totally disingenuous, Dashie replied, “I just use my magic like you show with hand.  It not hard.  Real trick was find where fish hide.  You show me that.  They too quick to catch if just grab.  Gentle tickle is trick.”

Both KD and I were listening with rapt attention.  It was clear that Thomas and Dashie's Equestria was very different from this one.  As they talked, that became more and more apparent.

“Does your magic come from being a weredragon?”

“Only a little.  Most I learn from Dad.  He one of two most powerful beings in our Equestria.  Be honest, I think De Writer worst.  Super strong magic and wicked sense of humor.  And bored.  He three thousand years old.  Raise Princesses.”

“I see. Do other pegassi use magic where you come from?”

“Not really.  Dad figure out that there more magic in world than Earth, Pegassi, and Unicorn.  It come from his mom, Aurora, the Demon Queen.”

We all looked askance at the innocent appearing brown pegasus.  This was getting more and more interesting all the time.

Wind just nodded, took the fish and efficiently set about preparing them.  She also pulled some fresh looking apples and peaches out of the bag at her waist.  She expertly split them into proper chunks and dropped them into a pot.  She added a little fresh water and, reaching into her bag of holding, pulled out a box with many drawers and bottles, a jar with a sealed top and a small flour bag.

I was sort of amazed, watching the sheer skill with which Wind organized breakfast.  She even had water on heating in a biggish pot.  She added some from the sealed bottle.  The camp filled with the heavenly aroma of Rom black tea!

Satisfied with the progress of the fruits in the pot, she added sugar, cinnamon from one of the drawers of the box and stirred in the flour to thicken it.

It smelled heavenly, not like regular flour at all.  Wind closed the bag and returned box, bag and jar to her bag of holding.  She saw my calculating look as I watched it all happening.  

Wrinkling her nose in amusement, she explained, “Ka'chek flour.  A Rom without it?  Unheard of!”

Breakfast lived up to the lovely scents, and then some.

Wind, KD and Dashie went to the other side of the T82 to fix and eat the trout.  Coming back, Dashie and KD were finishing up gem topped Gator Chows and Wind was nibbling at one with the topping removed.

While they were eating, the rest of us cleaned up all the cookware and put out the fire.  We especially cleaned out the fruit stew pot!  Nearly came to blows over who got to lick it out!  Good sense prevailed and we took turns licking parts of it.  Then, we washed it.  We did have one thing unwashed.

We saved Wind the last mug of Rom black tea.  Smiling at our courtesy, Wind drained it and saw to proper washing of the mug.  She then caused us all a small croggle of the mind by causally putting all of the clean cookware and dishes into her bag of holding!

We all piled onto the remote controlled T82 and Dashie got us on the road again!

I noticed that Wind was wearing her Freedom and had put on a harness.  It was as richly tooled and dyed as her freedom.  They were clearly a matched set.

While KD was busy with her art, making fast sketches of the lands that we were passing through, I made bold to ask, “Why the Rom outfit?  This is not exactly a caravan.”

Wind giggled at some joke that I did not understand as she replied, “Actually, it is.  You just have to understand what caravan means. It is a loan word from the desert Kingdoms that was already in use by the time that the first Rom came here.  In their language of Gyptian, it means something slightly different from how it is used in Equestrian.

“It is just that there is a road section toll gate coming up in a little. Me being dressed this way should get us through the gate for free.”

Nodding acceptance for her reason, I turned my attention to Thomas, who was trying hard to act like an adult pegasus, rather than a colt having the time of his life.

I guessed, “You have not ridden on Dashie's T82 before, have you Thomas?”

With a twinkle in his eye, he admitted, “Never before this.  I think that she get to play with it more but need daddy supervision!”

I was chuckling at that when we all felt the iron monster slowing down. Wind, pointing ahead, made clear exactly why.  There was the toll booth with its light weight red and white bar across the road.  There was a substantial cabin in back of it for use of the toll collectors when off duty and out here, kilometers from any town.  A sign said, WELCOME TO THE MANEHATTEN ROYAL ROAD SECTION.

Wind hopped off the top of the huge left tread guard of the T82 and greeted the toll takers, “Hi!  What do you think of my new act?  Just doing a shake down run to IRON out any problems!  We are promised entertainment for the big art show.”

The utterly bemused light yellow toll collector turned to his lavender buddy and shook his head.  Pushing the toll manual shut he said, “Rom.  No accounting for 'em.  Just write Rom, toll free by Crowns Law.”

He tripped the mechanism and the toll gate rose up out of our way.  

As the mechanical behemoth passed through the gate, Wind trotted after and swung up the steel boarding stair and resumed her place on top of the turret, next to Dashie.

We had passed two of the Waysides when Wind guided Dashie into one that seemed empty.  It was nowhere near noon, yet.

“Thanks, Dashie!  There is a friend here that I want to talk to.  It would have been rude to just go by and not say Hi.”

With that, she bounced off the turret, grabbed what we had learned was called the Main Gun, and swung, letting go and landing lightly.  She sprinted over to the edge of the woods.

Sitting suddenly, she quietly reached out and laid a sparkling pebble among many others in that spot.  She said, “Hanar Na Kili.”  We could not make out the rest.  It was all in Gyptian.  It contained pauses as if she was listening to what another was saying.  The conversation was soon over.

Wind got up, smiling serenely, and returned to us.  Dashie had turned to a dragon so that she and KD could share a couple of KD's gator chows.

Wind suggested, “We could get going, now.  The Loved Dead are always with us.  Hanar and I had a nice chat.”

It was slowly percolating through the brain that I don't really have, just how different Rom are.  And I have known them, shared food with them and talked with them for years.  They have even been guests in my cave.  I have heard that expression, the Loved Dead are always with us hundreds of times.  I have heard about Laying the Stones goodness only knows how many times.  This was the first time that I had seen it.

Seeing how Wind treated it, both casually and with absolute assurance, as if the horse in that grave that the Rom call a Gateway to the Lake of Paradise, or Lake for short, was really there, made it hit me like a gut punch.

I knew, like everybeing in Equestria that the ONE THING THAT YOU DO NOT DO is desecrate any Wayside burial.  Ponies who die more than two days travel from their homes are entitled to a Wayside burial.  It is a Royal Benefice.  The graves are marked and tended as part of Wayside maintenance.

All Rom who die get a Wayside burial, that they call a Lake or going to the Lake. They lay small, inexpensive, but pretty pebbles on them to mark them.  

Desecration of a Rom Lake will bring the Princesses in person to investigate. The criminals WILL get caught.  Penalties are HARSH.  They range from twenty years at hard labor on the Royal Roads up to life.  The worst offenders, who have actually exhumed Rom remains get a punishment worse than simple death.  

They get life in the Twins Mine, digging mercury ore.  The fumes destroy the mind and wrack the body.  After the first few such grave robberies, centuries ago, no pony in their right mind will risk that.

Wind looked so quietly happy that I had to wonder whether there was any truth to the Rom belief in the Lake of Paradise.

Dashie finished her snack and changed back to a pegasus.  We all piled back onto the T82 educational toy and hit the road again.  It was not long before we came to a bridge across a stream.

It was a nice, well built and solid bridge.  It was clear that it was not made to take the sheer mass of the T82.

Dashie, following Wind's suggestions and pointing, reversed the T82 for about fifty or sixty meters.  There, she eased off the road and headed toward the stream.  She stopped short, while Wind scouted ahead, dropping down the stream bank and checking the bottom to be sure that it would hold up the tank.

Returning, she suggested to the others, “I think that you should get off and use the bridge on foot.  This will be a wild ride!”

KD pointed to the line of ten to fifteen centimeter diameter trees that lined both sides of the stream skeptically.  “Um, not to cast doubt or anything, but how do you plan to get this thing past those?”

Wind replied quietly, “I have seen machines like this, doing what they were designed to do.  I don't think that it will be a difficult problem.”

KD and Thomas both looked into Wind's eyes and saw reflected experiences that they did not want to share.  Neither did I.  Thomas just said, “T82 break trees in orchard before this.  I take Wind's advice.”

Nodding, KD followed him, saying, “Let me get to the center of the bridge and get my sketchbook out!  I don't want to miss this!”

Figuring that the center of the bridge would have the best view of the proceedings. I joined them.

That was when I noticed something completely uncanny.  As big and heavy as the T82 was, there was no sign of its driving across the grass and brush to get to the stream.  Looking back, I saw that the road was in perfect condition, too.

I pointed it out to the one here who might know something about it.  Thomas snickered happily, “Yes, know already.  You not say anything to Dashie but she very good with magic of rock and stone.  Also with magic of plants.  She fix what educational toy do as it happen most time.”

Just then, it started.  The T82 let out a loud roar and charged the treeline! There was a splintering set of crashing sounds as it struck the innocent vegetation!  The trees did not stand a chance!  They swayed, cracked and buckled, falling down into the stream as the “toy” crunched over them, tipping down steeply as it plunged into the stream!   With a huge splash, followed by the churning up of rock, gravels and white water, the machine charged the opposite bank!

As it hit, I began to appreciate the ingenuity of the linked steel belts that the T82 ran on.  There was a slope at the front before the treads hit the ground.  Now, that slope let the machine claw its way up the bank, tilting back steeply as its momentum and driving tracks forced it up, pushing the trees aside and down while it topped the bank!

Dashie drove her “toy” up to the road's edge and parked it.  She bailed out and took wing to the other side of the stream.  Landing in the water, she transformed into her dragon self!

She called, “Dad!  KD!  Will you help please!?”

She was lifting the fallen trees back into their places, on the stumps that they had broken off from.  While she was at it, I could see her magic going into the stems and branches, binding together cracks and breaks.

KD loped down and joined her.  “What can I do, Dashie?  I don't know anything about this kind of magic.”

“Just hold trunk up while I fix break and roots.”

Thomas strolled down and waded into the stream.  He started repairing cracks and breaks in the wood of the fallen trees to speed things along.

Wind and I sat on the bridge rail and watched them work.  She commented, “Ah, hard work!  I can sit and watch it for simply hours!”

It really did not take all that long for the party to restore all the trees and larger brush, leaving almost no sign that the massive T82 had charged through there.

KD said it for all of us, as we climbed back aboard the T82, “I never even heard of magic like that before!”

As she was settling into the turret and picking up the remote control, Dashie shrugged.  “All world each a little different.  Some thing go from world to world, some not.  Magic dad teach me, it work.”

Not too much later, we pulled into a Wayside to fix lunch.  Some heavy freight dray ponies were already camped there, so Dashie parked us at a site well away from them, to give them camp privacy.

They stomped over to us just as Wind was setting a large pot of water to heat.

“Whatever you gots to eat gotta be better than our road ration oats!  Hoof it over!  We even got you a bag of oats to make it a fair trade!”

Dashie quelled Wind before she could say anything.  She gestured for KD to stay hidden behind the T82.  Pretending to quail some, she replied, “We just stop for ordinary tea before go on.  Got special box tea need to be deliver.”

Thomas, sounding indignant, demanded, “No!  Dashie, that tea special!  Got to go to Castle . . .”

“They meaner than us, Dad!  I give them one packet.  Only make them a couple of gallon.”

She ducked down into the T82's interior and returned with a modest package wrapped in gold colored foil.

She made a point of securing the oats before giving them the package.  “We going be in much trouble for this.  Oats is least you can do.”

As they retreated, I noticed that Thomas had a diabolical grin.  Dashie, on the other hoof, simply hopped up on the T82 and tripped something on her control box.

The turret turned and the main gun lowered some.  It pointed the big main gun directly at the drover's camp.

All that Thomas would say was, “It De Writer tea.  Never know what happen. Best be safe!”

Wind's ears perked up!  Almost too casually, she asked, “Is that thing loaded?”

Dashie sort of shrank a bit as she replied, “Yes.  Have five case ammo.  Two explosive, three solid shot.  Five round in each case.  De Writer give them to me when I get tea.  Dad not like me have it.”

“OOPS! No time talk now!  They getting water boiling!”

KD sidled up to Wind, “You seem to know a lot about this thing.  Just how dangerous is it?”

Wind put an arm over KD's neck as she replied, “That depends on which kind of round Dashie has in the gun.  A solid shot will rip a crater about two or three meters across.  The flying dirt and stone from the fire place will make a deadly spray.

“If it is an explosive round, it will blast a hole about five or six meters across.  It will scatter fragments of the shell and any loose stone or dirt too.

“Yes, the T82 could wreck any ordinary fortress in Equestria.”

KD was chortling, “I hope that the tea is worth a shot!  Not only would I like to see that, I did not like those ponies at all.”

Thomas overheard and replied, “They not get hurt.  De Writer not crazy. Have spell on T82 it not hurt any pony or intelligent being.  Can do much property damage.  That educational part of toy.  Dashie get to fix up damage.  Study hard her magics since she get it from De Writer!”

The wayside ponies added the tea to the water boiling in their big kettle.

As they did, Thomas asked urgently, “What De Writer say about brew tea?”

Dashie's brow wrinkled, “He say make in ceramic pot only a little at a time. It good for cold morning!”

Just then the flames began in the drover's big kettle of boiling water!  They burst up in a great gout of blue and yellow fire!  We could feel the heat from where we were!  The sides of the big iron pot glowed red, then yellow!  They began to melt!

In only seconds, the sides gave way and the tea gushed out, drowning the campfire, not that it was much help!  The wood instantly went to ash! The tea soaked into the bottom of the fire place and the flames slowly subsided.

The heat had driven the drovers away from camp and wagon.  The whole side of the wagon that had been facing the tea was charred.  There were small wisps of smoke arising from it here and there.

Thomas was sitting on his rump laughing.  “Now know why fix in ceramic pot and only little at a time!  Definitely good for cold morning!”

While the drovers were frantically hitching up and hauling out of there, Thomas was thoughtfully heating water in an iron pot.  He called up, “Dashie!  Packet tea.  Small measure.  Ceramic pot I know you got in there!”

She popped up out of the hatch and gave Thomas the things that he had asked for. KD, who could breathe fire, quietly backed up.

Dashie saw it and reasured her, “With De Writer tea, follow direction important.  We see what NOT do.”

Thomas added boiling water to the small, indeed tiny, measure of tea in the pot.  Flame poured out the spout and leaked around the lid.  It soon died.  Thomas poured a small cup and smelled it.

“Have good nose.”  He sipped.  Eyes wide, he exclaimed, “This one of De Writer's best teas yet!  Try some, Dashie!”

She promptly poured a cup for herself.  “It good dad!  Thanks!”

Wind added vegetables to her pot of boiling water and soon the savory scent of vegetable stew filled the camp area.

While it was cooking, she took Dashie and they entered the woods.  It was not long before they returned with a couple of squirrels and a few bunnies.  This time, it was Dashie, turned dragon, who toasted the carnivore lunch.

After everything was cleaned up and put away, Dashie strolled over to the camp that the drovers had used.  While we watched, she actually pushed a few heat broken stones of the fireplace back to position. Somehow, they stuck.  What really got me though was her casually picking up the hardened iron from the melted pot and the original fire grilles and sort of pushed, pulled and squeezed on them to make a good, substantial grill for supporting cook pots.  It went into its place.  She carefully scouted the camp, leaving bright green grass where it had been fire browned.

A grinning KD got several quick sketches!

Wind reminded us all, “The Manehatten fairgrounds turn off is only about another hour down the road.  Shall we be gone?”

It did not actually take us an hour to get there.  We all disembarked from the T82 and did stretches.

Among the assorted goodbyes, I heard Wind ask KD, “I am not on a schedule. Mind if I tag along to see your art show?”

I personally, after wishing Thomas and Dashie well, inquired, “Would it be possible for me to get some of that De Writer tea?”

He practically pounced on me!  “How much you want?  He send a crate of it!  Got lots!”

“I could use several packages.  Say, five?”

“Dashie! Get Grumpy five packets De Writer tea!”

Her voice muffled by being inside her machine, she retorted, “FIVE?  What he want to do?  Melt T82?”

As I took the packages of potentially deadly tea, Thomas pointed out, “You know Grumpy do magic.  Pony here seem mostly think only unicorn do magic.  Grumpy use much ritual and misdirection to keep them from catch on.  I bet tea become part of that.”

My already high respect for Thomas went up another big notch.  I nodded, “Right, Thomas.  Also, once the fire burns off, it makes a really good tea. Right up there with Rom black.”

Wind told the group, “Well, I promised to send you back from here.  Is it time to go?”

Though Dashie looked a little downcast, Thomas nodded, “It been fun here, but yes.  It time to go home.”

Wind reached into her bag of holding and fished out a thing that looked like a map.  She traced out what looked like a route on it with a delicate touch of one claw.

The pale blue oval of a portal big enough to drive a T82 main battle tank through appeared.  Thomas climbed the passenger steps, up onto the back of the iron monster and our friends drove through.  The portal silently vanished.

I turned to KD.  “Which way to the Art Show?”

She nibbled a gator chow treat and pointed.  “My studio first!  Then off to the show!”

KD snickered, “You two are little!  Hop on my back and we will make better time!”

As Wind boosted me up and then leaped up herself, she said, “I could get used to this.  Traveling places without having to walk, I mean. First, the T82!  That was fun!  Now I get to ride dragonback again!”

I looked back, trying not to miss the sight of Manehatten's famously tall buildings.  Many of them were over five levels tall!  Some, in the downtown area looked to be way taller!

I commented, “Again?  You have ridden dragons before?”

“Just one, Grumpy.  My daughter Aurixa.”

That gave me real pause.  I ventured, “Adopted?”

Sort of.  I found her egg out in the wilderness not that far from Mama Dragon's cottage.  I was there when Aurixa hatched.  She imprinted on me as her mother.

“When she grew up some, we used to play together a lot, including riding her. I love flying on dragonback!

“Anyway, she grew up to where she was too big for that.  Last I saw her, Aurixa was bigger than a house.  I need to go home to Mama Dragon's and visit her.  I miss them.”

We came to a nice two level house in the outskirts of town.  The only odd thing about it from the outside was that the door was bigger than usual. KD got out a key and let us in.

The inside WAS unusual!  The whole second level floor had been knocked out, leaving  a sort of rim around the single large room.  It was just the right height to serve as shelves for KD!  There were a few scorch marks on the walls, souvenirs of her hiccups!

There were paintings and drawings in profusion!  All was neatly organized. Drawings were in X-frames and paintings were racked or stood against the walls.

KD selected a number of drawings, including some from her sketchbooks filled up on the trip here.  Truly professional, she framed the drawings and sketches behind glass.  She had frames at the ready for her paintings.  It took her about an hour and a half for her to be ready.

She put on a harness designed to carry framed work and suggested, “Load me up! The Manehatten Art Show is only about a kilometer from here!

We trudged through some pretty fancy streets and up a hill to a small estate.  I giggled when I saw the iron scroll work lettering over the gate.

Wind nudged me and whispered, “Pretty up front about it, aren't they, Grumpy?”

The letters said, “Snob Hill Estate.”  Under it was a banner proclaiming, “Snob Hill Art Festival!  Opening soon!”

The pony watching the gate seemed both pleased and surprised to see KD. “Krystal!  I was told that you would not be able to make this show! Let me announce you to the committee!”

She held him gently back.  “Please don't, Edward.  I am most curious as to who is saying that I would not come to this show.”

He sort of scraped the pave with a forehoof and looked down as he said, “I am not supposed to gossip about our patrons.”

KD grinned as she flipped him a silver bit.  “You said nothing!”

Expertly fielding the coin, he said, “Of course it could not possibly be Drawin Pitcher spreading rumors about you.”

KD grinned, with many teeth, as she replied, “Of course not.  Why would a fine artist like Drawin say anything negative about me?

“Oh, Edward, these fine beings are guests of mine.”

We went on in, following KD.  She went straight for the main entrance to Snob Hall.

Even before we entered, we heard, “You know, I am really sorry to say that KD not only won't be making this show, it looks like she will have to give up the Daring Do contract.”

As she was about to charge in and confront the speaker, I gave her leg a tug. “Not quite yet, KD.  Now, it is contract time.  I suspect that this one can be really simple and oral, witnessed by Wind, here.”

I don't think that I have ever seen as many teeth as showed in KD's grin. “What sort of contract do you have in mind, Grumpy?  I don't have a hundred gold on me.”

I pointed inside, “I overheard that.  I will take one golden bit, ownership of that painting of Wind by the T82, and an autographed copy of the new book when it comes out.  Thanks to the one bit, the magic will work.

“You can still enter the painting in the show as an original, on loan from the owner.

My refund terms will be one gold, one silver plus return to your ownership of the other items.

“What will happen is that not only the one who sabotaged you, but any accomplices will reveal their parts in such a way that they will receive the maximum of embarrassment.  Attempts to extricate themselves will only dig them deeper.”

KD nodded slowly.  “That sound pretty good.  Can we include some career help for her, IF AND ONLY IF, she stays on the straight and narrow?”

I nodded, sucking in the cheeks that I don't really have.  “I will include that.  But only if it will still embarrass her.”

KD's tail wagged in delight, threatening several ornamental plantings! “Done!  Here is the bit!.”

There was a brief flash of yellow in the sunlight.  I put it in my saddlebag.  “Wind, did you witness the contract and it's terms?”

If Wind's feral grin was not answer enough, her, “I did.  You have a contract,” was.

KD breezed in through the big ornate doors.  Cheerfully she called out, “Sorry to be late but I see that I am still in time for entering my latest works!”

The yellow mare with the green mane and tail that exclaimed, “It's KD! We have to get her out of here!” had to be Drawin Pitcher!

That was confirmed in mere seconds.  KD said amiably, “I don't know what you are on about, Drawin!  Oh, I see that you have some neat things up already!  Let me get a closer look!”

As the blue dragon approached the hanging works, she absently pulled one of her crushed gem topped snacks from the bag.  She was holding it so that all that could be seen was the topping.  She started to munch it down as she got up close to the drawings and paintings of her rival.

Drawin Pitcher frantically charged KD and pushed her head aside, away from her art.  “Please!  Don't incinerate my art!”

KD turned her snout to aim directly at Drawin and asked in a mild voice, “Whatever to you mean, Pitcher?  Why would I incinerate anypony's art?”

Drawin dodged behind a portly pony who was watching the scene unfold with interest.  His cutie mark was a stack of books.  He turned to her and, greatly puzzled, asked, “Why are you afraid of KD, Drawin? She has participated in many shows around the kingdom and never any incident like you seem to fear.  

“True, last show she got a minor case of hiccups but controlled them and caused no harm at all.  Why are you afraid now?”

There was a mumbled reply.

“What? That made no sense at all!  What do you mean, it's the muffins?”

KD offered, “You were in industrial chemistry before you became a publisher, right, Mister Hazard?”

“I was.”

“Read this.  It will explain most of the problem with the dragon muffins from this bag.”  She fished in one of her bags and gave him a folded paper.  “It is the Ponyville Police Department's Forensic Chemistry Laboratory report on the dragon muffins from this bag.”

His eyebrows rose sharply at what he read.  “Zinc metal?  That much in each muffin?  No wonder you were having fire blast hiccups! Obviously, that little bag can't have held many of them.  Why is she afraid of you now?”

For an answer, KD took a treat out of the bag and gave the bag to Mister Hazard.  As she munched the treat, she pointed out, “I just emptied the bag.  Notice how it has another treat in it now?”  She pointed to a large painting on one wall, “Is that a Clyden Dale?”  As he looked, she held up the bag.  It had returned.

“See, Mister Hazard, the bag is enchanted by a form of non Equine magic. It always has another treat and it always comes back to me.  That is why Drawin is afraid of me. She expects me to erupt in flame at any moment.  It won't happen though.”

A despairing Drawin Pitcher hung her head.  “It has to.  Once the bag is set, you can't change it.”

KD grinned.  “Want to bet, Ms. Pitcher?  Thanks to Grumpy, here, we not only sorted out your little scheme to end my art career, we met a Zebra (not Zecora, Ponyville has TWO zebras now) who was familiar with the spell.  He showed us how to re set it.  These treats are harmless.  Really tasty, too.”

Mister Hazard suggested, “Now that is taken care of, let's get your things entered and hung.  We were saving you a panel for your work.  Thanks to Ms. Pitcher, we almost put your panel away.  That is it, over there.”

KD smiled properly for a collection of important ponies and began setting her selections out along the bottom of the display panel.  As an aside to us, she commented, “The Show's Committee will have the final call about what is hung and what is not.”

She looked about and zeroed in on Drawin Pitcher.  “Drawin, if you will do it, I have a little actual paying work for you!”

The yellow mare looked up from where she was about to fill out some papers at the art show's main desk.  “What can you possibly want from me, KD?  After everypony finding out about my trick, I was going to withdraw from the show.”

KD agreed, “It was a pretty dirty trick, Drawin.  Only the ponies here right now know about it, though.  That does not change the fact that your work is first rate.  Stay in the show.  We can cover this up really easily.  My pieces will need labels.  As far as I know, you are the best calligrapher in Manehatten.

“Any pony claiming bad blood between us will have to explain how YOUR distinctive calligraphy is on my labels.”

“Why are you trying to help me, after what I did?”

KD sat and scratched at her jaw spines with her big left hind claws before answering, “Critical thinking, Drawin.  There are two parts to you. One is more than a bit mean and underhoofed.  The other makes works like the ones over there on the wall.  That last part is too valuable to lose.  The first part should be lost, if you can.

“I am trying to save that valuable second part.”

Sourly the green maned yellow mare said, “I see.  Actually, thanks.  I need sales from this show or money from somewhere else or I could lose my studio.”

Laying a big claw gently over the withers of Drawin, KD said, “I do understand.  Before I got established, I was there more than once. Here is my list of titles.  What will you charge me?”

“After this?  I may need money but I don't need it that badly.  I will get right on these.”

“Fair enough, Drawin.  When you finish these up, go talk to Mister Hazard. He has a commission, no committees or the like.  I had to let it go, due to time constraints.  It might be just right for you.”

Watching in fascination, wondering where the embarrassment would come from, I felt a really sort of creepy sensation.  I was not sure, but it seemed to involve the two strange ponies standing outside the door.

I saw Drawn Pitcher hard at work, her pen producing truly excellent calligraphic labels for KD's art.

I hated to interrupt, but there could be a life or more in the balance.  I really did not care one way or the other about the yellow mare's life, but KD DID.  That tipped the scales, as it were.

I strolled over to her.  “May I interrupt you briefly, Ms. Pitcher?”

She looked up with a glare, paused and made an obvious effort to compose herself.  “Um, you are the goat that KD brought here, aren't you?”

“Correct. My card.”  

I proffered my business card.  It was embossed stock with raised lettering in black and gold gilt.  It said:

GRUMPETER “GRUMPY” GOAT

Licensed Practitioner of Non Equine Magic

All work by publicly registered contracts.

Refund of 110% if contract terms are not met.

A ROYALLY CHARTERED BUSINESS

“Impressive. How can a goat even have a Royally Chartered business?”

I sort of sucked in my nonexistent cheeks a little and retorted, “By being VERY good at what I do.  I wanted to ask you about how you got that bag.  I know that it was not made on this world. Either you summoned it, or you summoned a being that brought you the bag.

“Since you knew how to load it and trick KD into taking it, my money is on the second choice.”

She sort of hung her head and absently scraped at the floor with a hind hoof as she replied, “You are right.  I did summon something.  It was like a cloud of ugly dark smoke with eyes floating in it.  I told it what I wanted to do.  I mean make KD so that she would lose the contract, but not be actually hurt.

“It brought me the bag and told me how to set it.”

I nodded as parts started falling into place.  “I see.  Two more questions. Which book did you use and did your summoning go right on the first try?”

“Umm, I was afraid to try the Necronomipony.  It has such a dangerous reputation.  I used the Black Pullet as printed by Non Equine University Press.

“And no.  I had to try twice for the summons to work.  Is that important?”

Urgently, I asked, “Did you clean everything up after the failed try, or did you re use the same pentacles?”

“I re used them.  Getting everything right was a LOT of work.”

I chuckled.  “I do know about that!  Non Equine magic is way harder than just waiving a wand around!

“Thing is, I believe that your first summoning may have worked.  That is why I was checking on what you did.”

“What! Nothing happened.  That is why I tried a second time.”

“I do understand, Drawin.  I was just clearing something up.  I will let you get back to your lettering.  Beautiful work, by the way.”

Now sure of what happened, I sauntered over to the door.  I gave the ponies waiting there my best, fang filled grin.  “I see that you noticed that until the show opens tomorrow, that this is a private residence. Vamponies here in Equestria need to be invited into homes.  The succubus should be able to enter without a problem.  That means that she is tied to you, ma'am.”

I covered up my glamored in fangs as I bowed to them.  “My name is Grumpeter Goat.  Grumpy for short.  As you have likely already noticed, I am dead.  Not a zombie or anything like that, but totally deceased.  Let us retire over to that bench under the shade tree in the garden while we talk.  If that talk goes well, I will invite you in myself.”

The vampony nodded.  “That makes sense, sort of.  My name is Jinni and this is Sassy to her friends.  Not sure what sort of power real names have here, but for now, I am not taking the chance.  Getting out of the sun is a good idea.”

As we seated ourselves comfortably out in the garden, Sassy ventured, “What do you want to talk about?  I don't think that we have done anything wrong.”

I raised a hoof in agreement.  “Not yet, you haven't.  You have already noticed that this world runs on slightly different rules than where you came from.  I saw you try to enter through that open door.  I am sure that nopony saw it.  That is a rule that is different from your home.  You can freely enter any public space, the door of a store, for instance.  Private homes, not without an invitation.

“Daylight leaves you no stronger than an ordinary pony.  Night will let you be about twenty times that strong.  It will increase your ability to control your prey as well.

Jinni nodded slowly, “We have noticed some of that.  Why are you trying to help us?”

I curled a lip and my eyes slitted.  “I don't like most ponies very much, at all.

“Now, you need to understand some basic rules.  This world is well aware of vamponies.  They have tried and true methods of hunting down and destroying supernatural beings.  So, the best way to manage, is to not draw attention to yourselves by leaving a trail of dead, dying and wounded ponies behind.  Use your talents at prey control to take only small amounts at any one time.  

“Let them think that they had a pleasant interlude with you, except for Sassy, there.  They will feel like they had a fun INTERLEWD with her.”

They both had the courtesy to wince at my pun.

Jinni offered, “We came here because we sort of felt drawn to this place. We aren't sure why.  Do you know that, Grumpy?”

“As a matter of fact, Jinni, I do.  You were summoned here by a spell strong enough to warp you both into ponies.  I don't know what you looked like before and don't care.  Your natures have been preserved. There is a connection between summoner and summoned and that is what brought you here.  The pony that summoned you is inside that place. She was trying to cut a rival out of a lucrative book illustration contract.  She has failed.”

Sassy paused to think carefully.  “What should we do and why would you let us into that house?”

I grinned again.  Gave them a great show of phony fangs.  “As I pointed out, the path of safety lies in moderation.  If you agree to it, I can let you in to play fanpony to our guilty party.  You know, autographs and the whole nine yards.  Her name is Drawin Pitcher. She is yellow with a green mane and tail.  Because she summoned you, SHE can't keep you out of HER home or any private space of hers.

“She can do one thing for you that will make the rest worthwhile, unless you REALLY LIKE being ponies with unusual diets.  She has the spell book and knows the spell that will send you back where you came from.”

Both responded at once, “WE DON'T!”  Jinni added with a smile that showed her fangs, “It IS fun for a nice visit.  Say, a week or two. Shall we go in?”

“I shall precede you, ladies, and introduce you to the nice young mare who invited you to this world.”  Reaching the door, I stepped in and bowed, “Jinni and Sassy, would you please come in?  The artist that you are looking for is over at that desk.”

Jinni's eyes were glued to KD.  “That is a dragon!”

“No kidding.  That is KD, the artist who Drawin was trying to muscle out of the contract.”

That got them both to focus.  They squealed fairly quietly as they descended on Drawin Pitcher!  “It's really her!  Oh, Ms. Pitcher!  It is so great to actually meet you!”

At first, she tried futilely to fend off the duo.  I noticed that her really good calligraphy was now labeling all of KD's works, hanging on both sides of her panel.  I realized that the two were interfering with Drawin Pitcher's signing something for Mr. Hazard of Haphazard House Publishing.

We found out what it was very quickly.  Jinni squealed in delight, “Your first book of art!  They will be the luckiest foals in the kingdom that get to color your drawings!  Can I get a copy with your autograph on it?”

Drawin Pitcher looked like she was ready to sink through the floor with her face aflame.

I cheerfully leaned up against KD and questioned, “What do you think of Drawin's cheering section.  They will be fanponying  her for the next few weeks!”

KD watched with amusement.  She offered, “You really did not get much for all of your trouble, Grumpy.  If you wanted to, you could make a killing off the painting of Wind by the T82.  Not only do the critics think that it is a great piece of fantasy realism, Wind has agreed to stay for the show and pose by the painting so ponies can see her genuine metal arm and sword.  The show has not opened yet and there have been three bids.  The last one was for over a thousand gold bits.”

I agreed, “Monetarily, this contract was a bust.  At least I did not have to give out a refund.  I am going to keep the picture.  It is a better treasure to me than gold.”

KD chuckled, “Are you feeling all right?  I thought that I just heard you say that something was worth more than gold!

“Drawin will be both taken care of by that contract and embarrassed to death. It is an open ended one to draw foal's coloring books.  The money is really pretty good but even with her good work doing well at shows, she will always be remembered as the mare that draws those foal's books.

“Our contract is fulfilled, Grumpy.  You will get the autographed Daring Do book when it is ready for distribution but before it hits the stores.”

~THE END~

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to MLP Fan Fiction

Return to The Annals of Grumpy Goat

[seldo]

Databases: how they work, and a brief history

My twitter-friend Simon had a simple question that contained much complexity: how do databases work?

Ok, so databases really confuse me, like how do databases even work?

— Simon Legg (@simonleggsays) November 18, 2019

I don't have a job at the moment, and I really love databases and also teaching things to web developers, so this was a perfect storm for me:

To what level of detail would you like an answer? I love databases.

— Laurie Voss (@seldo) November 18, 2019

The result was an absurdly long thread of 70+ tweets, in which I expounded on the workings and history of databases as used by modern web developers, and Simon chimed in on each tweet with further questions and requests for clarification. The result of this collaboration was a super fun tiny explanation of databases which many people said they liked, so here it is, lightly edited for clarity.

What is a database?

Let's start at the very most basic thing, the words we're using: a "database" literally just means "a structured collection of data". Almost anything meets this definition – an object in memory, an XML file, a list in HTML. It's super broad, so we call some radically different things "databases".

The thing people use all the time is, formally, a Database Management System, abbreviated to DBMS. This is a piece of software that handles access to the pile of data. Technically one DBMS can manage multiple databases (MySQL and postgres both do this) but often a DBMS will have just one database in it.

Because it's so frequent that the DBMS has one DB in it we often call a DBMS a "database". So part of the confusion around databases for people new to them is because we call so many things the same word! But it doesn't really matter, you can call an DBMS a "database" and everyone will know what you mean. MySQL, Redis, Postgres, RedShift, Oracle etc. are all DBMS.

So now we have a mental model of a "database", really a DBMS: it is a piece of software that manages access to a pile of structured data for you. DBMSes are often written in C or C++, but it can be any programming language; there are databases written in Erlang and JavaScript. One of the key differences between DBMSes is how they structure the data.

Relational databases

Relational databases, also called RDBMS, model data as a table, like you'd see in a spreadsheet. On disk this can be as simple as comma-separated values: one row per line, commas between columns, e.g. a classic example is a table of fruits:

apple,10,5.00 orange,5,6.50

The DBMS knows the first column is the name, the second is the number of fruits, the third is the price. Sometimes it will store that information in a different database! Sometimes the metadata about what the columns are will be in the database file itself. Because it knows about the columns, it can handle niceties for you: for example, the first column is a string, the second is an integer, the third is dollar values. It can use that to make sure it returns those columns to you correctly formatted, and it can also store numbers more efficiently than just strings of digits.

In reality a modern database is doing a whole bunch of far more clever optimizations than just comma separated values but it's a mental model of what's going on that works fine. The data all lives on disk, often as one big file, and the DBMS caches parts of it in memory for speed. Sometimes it has different files for the data and the metadata, or for indexes that make it easier to find things quickly, but we can safely ignore those details.

RDBMS are older, so they date from a time when memory was really expensive, so they usually optimize for keeping most things on disk and only put some stuff in memory. But they don't have to: some RDBMS keep everything in memory and never write to disk. That makes them much faster!

Is it still a database if all the structured data stays in memory? Sure. It's a pile of structured data. Nothing in that definition says a disk needs to be involved.

So what does the "relational" part of RDBMS mean? RDBMS have multiple tables of data, and they can relate different tables to each other. For instance, imagine a new table called "Farmers":

IDName 1bob 2susan

and we modify the Fruits table:

Farmer IDFruitQuantityPrice 1apple105.00 1orange56.50 2apple206.00 2orange14.75

.dbTable { border: 1px solid black; } .dbTable thead td { background-color: #eee; } .dbTable td { padding: 0.3em; }

The Farmers table gives each farmer a name and an ID. The Fruits table now has a column that gives the Farmer ID, so you can see which farmer has which fruit at which price.

Why's that helpful? Two reasons: space and time. Space because it reduces data duplication. Remember, these were invented when disks were expensive and slow! Storing the data this way lets you only list "susan" once no matter how many fruits she has. If she had a hundred kinds of fruit you'd be saving quite a lot of storage by not repeating her name over and over. The time reason comes in if you want to change Susan's name. If you repeated her name hundreds of times you would have to do a write to disk for each one (and writes were very slow at the time this was all designed). That would take a long time, plus there's a chance you could miss one somewhere and suddenly Susan would have two names and things would be confusing.

Relational databases make it easy to do certain kinds of queries. For instance, it's very efficient to find out how many fruits there are in total: you just add up all the numbers in the Quantity column in Fruits, and you never need to look at Farmers at all. It's efficient and because the DBMS knows where the data is you can say "give me the sum of the quantity colum" pretty simply in SQL, something like SELECT SUM(Quantity) FROM Fruits. The DBMS will do all the work.

NoSQL databases

So now let's look at the NoSQL databases. These were a much more recent invention, and the economics of computer hardware had changed: memory was a lot cheaper, disk space was absurdly cheap, processors were a lot faster, and programmers were very expensive. The designers of newer databases could make different trade-offs than the designers of RDBMS.

The first difference of NoSQL databases is that they mostly don't store things on disk, or do so only once in a while as a backup. This can be dangerous – if you lose power you can lose all your data – but often a backup from a few minutes or seconds ago is fine and the speed of memory is worth it. A database like Redis writes everything to disk every 200ms or so, which is hardly any time at all, while doing all the real work in memory.

A lot of the perceived performance advantages of "noSQL" databases is just because they keep everything in memory and memory is very fast and disks, even modern solid-state drives, are agonizingly slow by comparison. It's nothing to do with whether the database is relational or not-relational, and nothing at all to do with SQL.

But the other thing NoSQL database designers did was they abandoned the "relational" part of databases. Instead of the model of tables, they tended to model data as objects with keys. A good mental model of this is just JSON:

[ {"name":"bob"} {"name":"susan","age":55} ]

Again, just as a modern RDBMS is not really writing CSV files to disk but is doing wildly optimized stuff, a NoSQL database is not storing everything as a single giant JSON array in memory or disk, but you can mentally model it that way and you won't go far wrong. If I want the record for Bob I ask for ID 0, Susan is ID 1, etc..

One advantage here is that I don't need to plan in advance what I put in each record, I can just throw anything in there. It can be just a name, or a name and an age, or a gigantic object. With a relational DB you have to plan out columns in advance, and changing them later can be tricky and time-consuming.

Another advantage is that if I want to know everything about a farmer, it's all going to be there in one record: their name, their fruits, the prices, everything. In a relational DB that would be more complicated, because you'd have to query the farmers and fruits tables at the same time, a process called "joining" the tables. The SQL "JOIN" keyword is one way to do this.

One disadvantage of storing records as objects like this, formally called an "object store", is that if I want to know how many fruits there are in total, that's easy in an RDBMS but harder here. To sum the quantity of fruits, I have to retrieve each record, find the key for fruits, find all the fruits, find the key for quantity, and add these to a variable. The DBMS for the object store may have an API to do this for me if I've been consistent and made all the objects I stored look the same. But I don't have to do that, so there's a chance the quantities are stored in different places in different objects, making it quite annoying to get right. You often have to write code to do it.

But sometimes that's okay! Sometimes your app doesn't need to relate things across multiple records, it just wants all the data about a single key as fast as possible. Relational databases are best for the former, object stores the best for the latter, but both types can answer both types of questions.

Some of the optimizations I mentioned both types of DBMS use are to allow them to answer the kinds of questions they're otherwise bad at. RDBMS have "object" columns these days that let you store object-type things without adding and removing columns. Object stores frequently have "indexes" that you can set up to be able to find all the keys in a particular place so you can sum up things like Quantity or search for a specific Fruit name fast.

So what's the difference between an "object store" and a "noSQL" database? The first is a formal name for anything that stores structured data as objects (not tables). The second is... well, basically a marketing term. Let's digress into some tech history!

The self-defeating triumph of MySQL

Back in 1995, when the web boomed out of nowhere and suddenly everybody needed a database, databases were mostly commercial software, and expensive. To the rescue came MySQL, invented 1995, and Postgres, invented 1996. They were free! This was a radical idea and everybody adopted them, partly because nobody had any money back then – the whole idea of making money from websites was new and un-tested, there was no such thing as a multi-million dollar seed round. It was free or nothing.

The primary difference between PostgreSQL and MySQL was that Postgres was very good and had lots of features but was very hard to install on Windows (then, as now, the overwhelmingly most common development platform for web devs). MySQL did almost nothing but came with a super-easy installer for Windows. The result was MySQL completely ate Postgres' lunch for years in terms of market share.

Lots of database folks will dispute my assertion that the Windows installer is why MySQL won, or that MySQL won at all. But MySQL absolutely won, and it was because of the installer. MySQL became so popular it became synonymous with "database". You started any new web app by installing MySQL. Web hosting plans came with a MySQL database for free by default, and often no other databases were even available on cheaper hosts, which further accelerated MySQL's rise: defaults are powerful.

The result was people using mySQL for every fucking thing, even for things it was really bad at. For instance, because web devs move fast and change things they had to add new columns to tables all the time, and as I mentioned RDBMS are bad at that. People used MySQL to store uploaded image files, gigantic blobs of binary data that have no place in a DBMS of any kind.

People also ran into a lot of problems with RDBMS and MySQL in particular being optimized for saving memory and storing everything on disk. It made huge databases really slow, and meanwhile memory had got a lot cheaper. Putting tons of data in memory had become practical.

The rise of in-memory databases

The first software to really make use of how cheap memory had become was Memcache, released in 2003. You could run your ordinary RDBMS queries and just throw the results of frequent queries into Memcache, which stored them in memory so they were way, WAY faster to retrieve the second time. It was a revolution in performance, and it was an easy optimization to throw into your existing, RDBMS-based application.

By 2009 somebody realized that if you're just throwing everything in a cache anyway, why even bother having an RDBMS in the first place? Enter MongoDB and Redis, both released in 2009. To contrast themselves with the dominant "MySQL" they called themselves "NoSQL".

What's the difference between an in-memory cache like Memcache and an in-memory database like Redis or MongoDB? The answer is: basically nothing. Redis and Memcache are fundamentally almost identical, Redis just has much better mechanisms for retrieving and accessing the data in memory. A cache is a kind of DB, Memcache is a DBMS, it's just not as easy to do complex things with it as Redis.

Part of the reason Mongo and Redis called themselves NoSQL is because, well, they didn't support SQL. Relational databases let you use SQL to ask questions about relations across tables. Object stores just look up objects by their key most of the time, so the expressiveness of SQL is overkill. You can just make an API call like get(1) to get the record you want.

But this is where marketing became a problem. The NoSQL stores (being in memory) were a lot faster than the relational DBMS (which still mostly used disk). So people got the idea that SQL was the problem, that SQL was why RDBMS were slow. The name "NoSQL" didn't help! It sounded like getting rid of SQL was the point, rather than a side effect. But what most people liked about the NoSQL databases was the performance, and that was just because memory is faster than disk!

Of course, some people genuinely do hate SQL, and not having to use SQL was attractive to them. But if you've built applications of reasonable complexity on both an RDBMS and an object store you'll know that complicated queries are complicated whether you're using SQL or not. I have a lot of love for SQL.

If putting everything in memory makes your database faster, why can't you build an RDBMS that stores everything in memory? You can, and they exist! VoltDB is one example. They're nice! Also, MySQL and Postgres have kind of caught up to the idea that machines have lots more RAM now, so you can configure them to keep things mostly in memory too, so their default performance is a lot better and their performance after being tuned by an expert can be phenomenal.

So anything that's not a relational database is technically a "NoSQL" database. Most NoSQL databases are object stores but that's really just kind of a historical accident.

How does my app talk to a database?

Now we understand how a database works: it's software, running on a machine, managing data for you. How does your app talk to the database over a network and get answers to queries? Are all databases just a single machine?

The answer is: every DBMS, whether relational or object store, is a piece of software that runs on machine(s) that hold the data. There's massive variation: some run on 1 machine, some on clusters of 5-10, some run across thousands of separate machines all at once.

The DBMS software does the management of the data, in memory or on disk, and it presents an API that can be accessed locally, and also more importantly over the network. Sometimes this is a web API like you're used to, literally making GET and POST calls over HTTP to the database. For other databases, especially the older ones, it's a custom protocol.

Either way, you run a piece of software in your app, usually called a Client. That client knows the protocol for talking to the database, whether it's HTTP or WhateverDBProtocol. You tell it where the database server is on the network, it sends queries over and gets responses. Sometimes the queries are literally strings of text, like "SELECT * FROM Fruits", sometimes they are JSON payloads describing records, and any number of other variations.

As a starting point, you can think of the client running on your machine talking over the network to a database running on another machine. Sometimes your app is on dozens of machines, and the database is a single IP address with thousands of machines pretending to be one machine. But it works pretty much the same either way.

The way you tell your client "where" the DB is is your connection credentials, often expressed as a string like "http://username:password@mydb.com:1234" or "mongodb://...". But this is just a convenient shorthand. All your client really needs to talk to a database is the DNS name (like mydb.com) or an IP address (like 205.195.134.39), plus a port (1234). This tells the network which machine to send the query to, and what "door" to knock on when it gets there.

A little about ports: machines listen on specific ports for things, so if you send something to port 80, the machine knows the query is for your web server, but if you send it to port 1234, it knows the query is for your database. Who picks 1234 (In the case of Postgres, it's literally 5432)? There's no rhyme or reason to it. The developers pick a number that's easy to remember between 1 and 65,535 (the highest port number available) and hope that no other popular piece of software is already using it.

Usually you'll also have a username and password to connect to the database, because otherwise anybody who found your machine could connect to your database and get all the data in it. Forgetting that this is true is a really common source of security breaches!

There are bad people on the internet who literally just try every single IP in the world and send data to the default port for common databases and try to connect without a username or password to see if they can. If it works, they take all the data and then ransom it off. Yikes! Always make sure your database has a password.

Of course, sometimes you don't talk to your database over a network. Sometimes your app and your database live on the same machine. This is common in desktop software but very rare in web apps. If you've ever heard of a "database driver", the "driver" is the equivalent of the "client", but for talking to a local database instead of over a network.

Replication and scaling

Remember I said some databases run on just 1 machine, and some run on thousands of machines? That's known as replication. If you have more than one copy of a piece of data, you have a "replica" of that data, hence the name.

Back in the old days hardware was expensive so it was unusual to have replicas of your data running at the same time. It was expensive. Instead you'd back up your data to tape or something, and if the database went down because the hardware wore out or something, then you'd buy new hardware and (hopefully) reinstall your DBMS and restore the data in a few hours.

Web apps radically changed people's demands of databases. Before web apps, most databases weren't being continuously queried by the public, just a few experts inside normal working hours, and they would wait patiently if the database broke. With a web app you can't have minutes of downtime, far less hours, so replication went from being a rare feature of expensive databases to pretty much table stakes for every database. The initial form of replication was a "hot spare".

If you ran a hot spare, you'd have your main DBMS machine, which handled all queries, and a replica DBMS machine that would copy every single change that happened on the primary to itself. Primary was called m****r and the replica s***e because the latter did whatever the former told it to do, and at the time nobody considered how horrifying that analogy was. These days we call those things "primary/secondary" or "primary/replica" or for more complicated arrangements things like "root/branch/leaf".

Sometimes, people would think having a hot spare meant they didn't need a backup. This is a huge mistake! Remember, the replica copies every change in the main database. So if you accidentally run a command that deletes all the data in your primary database, it will automatically delete all the data in the replica too. Replicas are not backups, as the bookmarking site Magnolia famously learned.

People soon realized having a whole replica machine sitting around doing nothing was a waste, so to be more efficient they changed where traffic went: all the writes would go to the primary, which would copy everything to the replicas, and all the reads would go to the replicas. This was great for scale!

Instead of having 1 machine worth of performance (and you could swap to the hot spare if it failed, and still have 1 machine of performance with no downtime) suddenly you had X machines of performance, where X could be dozens or even hundreds. Very helpful!

But primary/secondary replication of this kind has two drawbacks. First, if a write has arrived at the primary database but not yet replicated to all the secondary machines (which can take half a second if the machines are far apart or overloaded) then somebody reading from the replica can get an answer that's out of date. This is known as a "consistency" failure, and we'll talk about it more later.

The second flaw with primary/second replication is if the primary fails, suddenly you can no longer write to your database. To restore the ability to do writes, you have to take one of the replicas and "promote" it to primary, and change all the other replicas to point at this new primary box. It's time-consuming and notoriously error-prone.

So newer databases invented different ways of arranging the machines, formally called "network topology". If you think of the way machines connect to each other as a diagram, the topology is the shape of that diagram. Primary/secondary looks like a star. Root/branch/leaf looks like a tree. But you can have a ring structure, or a mesh structure, or lots of others. A mesh structure is a lot of fun and very popular, so let's talk about more about them.

Mesh replication databases

In a mesh structure, every machine is talking to every other machine and they all have some portion of the data. You can send a write to any machine and it will either store it, or figure out what machine should store it and send it to that machine. Likewise, you can query any machine in the mesh, and it will give you the answer if it has the data, or forward your request to a machine that does. There's no "primary" machine to fail. Neat!

Because each machine can get away with storing only some of the data and not all of it, a mesh database can store much, much more data than a single machine could store. If 1 machine could store X data, then N machines could theoretically store N*X data. You can almost scale infinitely that way! It's very cool.

Of course, if each record only existed on one machine, then if that machine failed you'd lose those records. So usually in a mesh network more than one machine will have a copy of any individual record. That means you can lose machines without losing data or experiencing downtime; there are other copies lying around. In some mesh databases can also add a new machine to the mesh and the others will notice it and "rebalance" data, increasing the capacity of the database without any downtime. Super cool.

So a mesh topology is a lot more complicated but more resilient, and you can scale it without having to take the database down (usually). This is very nice, but can go horribly wrong if, for instance, there's a network error and suddenly half the machines can't see the other half of the machines in the mesh. This is called a "network partition" and it's a super common failure in large networks. Usually a partition will last only a couple of seconds but that's more than enough to fuck up a database. We'll talk about network partitions shortly.

One important question about a mesh DB is: how do you connect to it? Your client needs to know an IP address to connect to a database. Does it need to know the IP addresses of every machine in the mesh? And what happens when you add and remove machines from the mesh? Sounds messy.

Different Mesh DBs do it differently, but usually you get a load balancer, another machine that accepts all the incoming connections and works out which machine in the mesh should get the question and hands it off. Of course, this means the load balancer can fail, hosing your DB. So usually you'll do some kind of DNS/IP trickery where there are a handful of load balancers all responding on the same domain name or IP address.

The end result is your client magically just needs to know only one name or IP, and that IP always responds because the load balancer always sends you to a working machine.

CAP theory

This brings us neatly to a computer science term often used to talk about databases which is Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance, aka CAP or "CAP theory". The basic rule of CAP theory is: you can't have all 3 of Consistency, Availability and Partition Tolerance at the same time. Not because we're not smart enough to build a database that good, but because doing so violates physics.

Consistency means, formally: every query gets the correct, most up-to-date answer (or an error response saying you can't have it).

Availability means: every query gets an answer (but it's not guaranteed to be the correct one).

Partition Tolerance means: if the network craps out, the database will continue to work.

You can already see how these conflict! If you're 100% Available it means by definition you'll never give an error response, so sometimes the data will be out of date, i.e. not Consistent. If your database is Partition Tolerant, on the other hand, it keeps working even if machine A can't talk to machine B, and machine A might have a more recent write than B, so machine B will give stale (i.e. not Consistent) responses to keep working.

So let's think about how CAP theorem applies across the topologies we already talked about.

A single DB on a single machine is definitely Consistent (there's only one copy of the data) and Partition Tolerant (there's no network inside of it to crap out) but not Available because the machine itself can fail, e.g. the hardware could literally break or power could go out.

A primary DB with several replicas is Available (if one replica fails you can ask another) and Partition Tolerant (the replicas will respond even if they're not receiving writes from the primary) but not Consistent (because as mentioned earlier, the replicas might not have every primary write yet).

A mesh DB is extremely Available (all the nodes always answer) and Partition Tolerant (just try to knock it over! It's delightfully robust!) but can be extremely inconsistent because two different machines on the mesh could get a write to the same record at the same time and fight about which one is "correct".

This is the big disadvantage to mesh DBs, which otherwise are wonderful. Sometimes it's impossible to know which of two simultaneous writes is the "winner". There's no single authority, and Very Very Complicated Algorithms are deployed trying to prevent fights breaking out between machines in the mesh about this, with highly variable levels of success and gigantic levels of pain when they inevitably fail. You can't get all three of CAP and Consistency is what mesh networks lose.

In all databases, CAP isn't a set of switches where you are or aren't Consistent, Available, or Partition Tolerant. It's more like a set of sliders. Sliding up the Partition Tolerance generally slides down Consistency, sliding down Availability will give you more Consistency, etc etc.. Every DBMS picks some combination of CAP and picking the right database is often a matter of choosing what CAP combination is appropriate for your application.

Other topologies

Some other terms you frequently hear in the world of databases are "partitions" (which are different from the network partitions of CAP theorem) and "shards". These are both additional topologies available to somebody designing a database. Let's talk about shards first.

Imagine a primary with multiple replicas, but instead of each replica having all the data, each replica has a slice (or shard) of the data. You can slice the data lots of ways. If the database was people, you could have 26 shards, one with all names starting with A, one with all the names starting with B, etc..

Sharding can be helpful if the data is too big to all fit on one disk at a time. This is less of a problem than it used to be because virtual machines these days can effectively have infinity-sized hard drives.

The disadvantage of sharding is it's less Available: if you lose a shard, you lose everybody who starts with that letter! (Of course, your shards can also have replicas...) Plus your software needs to know where all the shards are and which one to ask a question. It's fiddly. Many of the problems of sharded databases are solved by using mesh topologies instead.

Partitions are another way of splitting up a database, but instead of splitting it across many machines, it splits the database across many files in a single machine. This is an old pattern that was useful when you had really powerful hardware and really slow disks, because you could install multiple disks into a single machine and put different partitions on each one, speeding up your achingly slow, disk-based database. These days there's not a lot of reason to use partitions of this kind.

Fin

That concludes this impromptu Databases 101 seminar! I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more about this fantastically fun and critically important genre of software. from Seldo.Com Feed https://ift.tt/32XwZth

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

Baby Daddy - Chapter 9

You can read it here on AO3 or find the Tumblr Chapter Index here. 

“Did you hear about this?” Dad asks, shaking out the newspaper as Stiles makes breakfast.

“What?” Stiles asks. “Also, who even reads newspapers anymore? Don’t you have a phone like regular people?”

Dad ignores that. “The Hales are back in town. They’re rebuilding the house.”

“Oh.” Stiles feels a jolt. Right. The Hales. Who he has somehow forgotten to mention to his dad that he knows. And that he is also playing an integral part in producing a new one. Those Hales. “Um, yeah. I knew they were back in town. I didn’t know about the house though.”

Dad peers at him over the frames of his reading glasses. “You knew they were back in town?”

“Yeah. My friend Laura? From the diner? It’s Laura Hale.”

His Dad frowns. “You didn’t mention this when I told you I was checking out the Hale file again.”

“What’s to mention?” Stiles asks, smacking the side of the coffee maker to get it to start working. They really need to get a new one of those at some point. “It’s not like we sit around and talk about that time most of her family got incinerated.”

“I guess not,” Dad says. “It’s just the three of them left, isn’t it?”

Three and a bit, Stiles thinks, and feels his face flooding with warmth.

“I think so? Laura doesn’t talk about her family much, and I don’t really blame her.” He gives the coffee maker another smack. “I met her brother last night though.”

Her incredibly hot and weird brother. And Stiles didn’t exactly meet him, did he? He stood there while the guy glared at him and then turned around and ran like Stiles was the devil or something. Definitely hot, but definitely weird. And Laura was weird as well. Whatever Hale family weirdness Stiles had stepped into there, he has no idea, only that there was sudden tension in the air thick enough to choke on. It had felt like Stiles had wandered on stage in the middle of some dramatic moment but nobody had given him a script. Definitely some heavy stuff going on, and it had been awkward as hell, but Stiles figures he’s already jerked off into a jar for Laura Hale, and whatever was going on last night can’t even come close to that, right? What’s a little more awkwardness thrown in?

“Those poor kids,” Dad says, and Stiles feels an odd moment of disconnect thinking of Laura and Derek that way, but of course they were only teenagers back then and that's how Dad remembers them. Laura must’ve been barely eighteen.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and thinks of Derek Hale. It’s probably unfair to think of him as weird, right? He works nights, which explains his zombification—Stiles once saw his dad get back from a night shift, carefully peel an orange, toss the segments in the trash and then just stare at the peel in his hand like he was knew something had gone wrong but couldn’t quite figure it out. Sleep deprivation is a bitch. And is it any surprise that Derek’s not a Chatty Cathy? The Hales have been through hell. It’s probably a miracle any of them are functioning at all.

Stiles isn’t sure he would be, in their shoes.

Dad sets the newspaper aside and rolls his shoulders. “How’s the Jeep running?”

Stiles gives him a genuine smile. “Really good. It starts like clockwork every time!”

“Well, that’s what a starter motor does, son,” Dad says.

“My old one didn’t.”

Dad huffs out a laugh. “The tutoring is still going well, then?”

“Yeah. It’s doing better than I thought.” Stiles is getting stupidly good at lying about this. And while it works for little things like groceries and the electric bill and the Jeep’s starter motor, he’s not sure yet how he’s going to explain that the hospital bill has been paid. He’s hoping to intercept all the mail until he figures out a way around it. “And it’s awesome to have the Jeep on the road again.”

“I’ll bet it is,” Dad says with a fond smile. “So, how about we celebrate that by going for a drive?”

“Um.” Stiles blinks, and shrugs. “Sure. Where are we going?”

He figures out halfway there, and tells himself he probably should have known.

***

Once upon a time, the private road that snaked through the Preserve ended at a three-storey house with a wraparound porch, bay windows, and a Dutch gable. Stiles has seen the photographs. Now there’s nothing left except the front façade of the house, charred and blackened, and the towering chimney that leans at an ominous angle.

Stiles pulls the Jeep up behind what looks like a contractor’s truck, and goes around to help Dad out the passenger side. They do an awkward little dance while Dad gets his crutches situated, and then they approach the remains of the house.

The contractor turns out to be a surveyor, and some guy that dad knows from town.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be a big job,” he says. “Gonna have to shore up the cellar and all the tunnels before we even bring in the bulldozers to clear the site.”

“Never did figure out what those tunnels were about,” Dad says, gazing at the charred remains of the house.

The surveyor shrugs. “A leftover from bootlegging days, maybe? A bunch of old families made their money that way around here. This once place up in Elk Creek, I had the lady try to tell me it was from the Underground Railroad.” He shakes his head. “In California? In a house built in the twenties? Place was still full of empty whisky barrels.”

Dad laughs at that.

Stiles looks at the house, and at the lay of the land, and tries to remember where the three tunnels came out. He’s seen the plans, and they make no sense. How would a narrow tunnel that connects the house basement to a root cellar be of any use to bootleggers? And the other two didn't lead anywhere at all except few hundred feet into the Preserve.

Dad and the surveyor chat for a few more minutes, and then the surveyor leaves to go back into town.

Dad leans on his crutches and stares at the house, like he’s waiting for it to tell him all its secrets.

Stiles stands with him.

“You just…” Dad exhales heavily. “When your house is burning down, you don’t lock yourself in the fucking cellar.”

“Okay, but the fire investigator said it was an electrical fault, right?” Stiles asks. “I don’t know, maybe they were having a slumber party down there or something?”

“It was a regular concrete cellar, Stiles,” Dad says. “It was storage space. There were no bedrooms down there. Not even a couch and a TV. So what the hell were eight people doing down there that night? It doesn’t make any sense, unless…”

Stiles feels a prickling of unease down his spine. “Unless what?”

“Unless it wasn’t just the fire they were trying to get away from,” Dad says, his expression hard. “Unless there was some reason they couldn’t run out the front door, so they tried for the tunnels instead.”

Stiles shivers. “Like what reason?”

Dad gazes around the Preserve. “I don’t know, kid. I really don’t know.”

“You think someone targeted them,” Stiles says, and the realisation is like being doused in cold water. “You think they couldn’t use the doors because whoever set the fire was waiting to pick them off as they came outside. So they tried the tunnels, except they were blocked off somehow too.”

Dad smiles grimly. “Crazy theory, right?”

“Yeah!” Stiles rubs his forehead. “I mean, it’s insane, but it’s also the only thing that fits.”

He understands now why his dad wanted to come out here. It’s been eight years since the fire. There’s no physical evidence left out here. But sometimes it’s important to look at a crime scene to get a sense of the distances, the spaces, even the way the light falls. And sometimes it’s an important reminder that it’s real, that it didn’t just happen on paper and in photographs, and that actual people died here.

Stiles watches as Dad leans heavily on his crutches and looks around the clearing. There’s an old sorrow in his gaze, the weight of what the place is, what it had been once, and of the night itself. Stiles remembers the morning that Dad came home smelling of smoke and ash. He remembers the way his hands shook when washed them in the sink, over and over again, even though they were already clean.

He’s never asked what his dad saw that night, but he knows it was bad.

This isn’t just a puzzle to his dad. This is about his duty to the Hales who lost their lives that night, and the Hales who didn’t.

And, even if Dad doesn’t know it yet, to a tiny Hale who has yet to be born.

***

On the way back to town, down that twisting road through the trees, they pass a black SUV with heavily tinted windows.

It could be a contractor. It could be a sightseer from town. It could be anyone for any reason, but Stiles sees that his dad notes the licence plate number down.

***

Stiles’s stomach tells him that it’s lunchtime when they get home. He pulls the Jeep into the driveway, parking beside the cruiser already there. Deputy Jordan Parrish is leaning on the side of it, and he lifts a hand in greeting.

“Hey, it’s your work son!” Stiles says, waving back at Parrish.

Dad gives him a look. “Where the hell do you even come up with this stuff?”

“Oh, please. You love him. It’s adorable.” Stiles climbs out of the Jeep and heads around to the passenger side to help Dad out, only to find Parrish already there. “Hey, dude.”

“Hey, Stiles. How’s college?”

“Not bad. How’s fighting crime in the vast metropolis of Beacon Hills?”

Parrish makes a so-so gesture with his hand. “I gave out two fines for jay walking last week.”

“Good for you! Jay walkers, man. A scourge on decent society!” He gets ahead of Dad and Parrish so he can get the front door. “Are you staying for lunch, Jordan?”

“Uh, I guess? If I’m not intruding?”

“As if. Dad likes you more than me! I’m making sandwiches.”

“Sounds great.”

Stiles leaves Parrish to get Dad settled in the living room, and heads into the kitchen to rustle up some sandwiches and coffee. He decides on some basic turkey and mayo, with extra lettuce and bean sprouts on Dad’s. When he takes them into the living room, it’s to catch the tail end of Jordan giving Dad the weekly recap of what’s been going on down at the station: current investigations, crime stats, and the continuing saga of the scrub jays that have built a nest overlooking the parking lot and now try to attack anyone walking from the station to their cruiser.

“They’re birds, Parrish,” Dad says, rolling his eyes. “I can’t believe they’re holding the entire station hostage like that.”

“I called the park ranger’s office to see what we should do,” Parrish says. “He laughed at me.”

“Because they’re birds,” Dad repeats, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Anyhow, Stiles and I went out to the old Hale house this morning to take a look around. We saw an SUV on the way back. Can I get you to run the plate for me?”

“Sure thing, Sheriff,” Parrish says, and takes the piece of notepaper Dad hands him. “I can do it now if you want?”

“Eat your lunch first."

Parrish nods, and tucks the paper into his shirt pocket. “The Hales were pretty well known, weren’t they?”

Parrish hasn’t been in Beacon Hills for long enough to remember the Hales, or the house, back when they were whole.

“They were an old family,” Dad says. “Well liked.”

Stiles exchanges a look with him. If they were so well liked, then why the hell was someone targeting them?

“Do you think that now they’re back in town, there’s going to be trouble?” Parrish asks frankly, and this is why Dad likes him. Parrish gets straight to the point, just like Dad.

“I think that’s a possibility we ought to consider,” Dad says. “I think there’s more to the fire than what you’ll find in those files, that’s for sure.”

“You think it was arson,” Parrish says, raising his eyebrows.

“I think it was murder,” Dad tells him. “The fire investigator was adamant it was an electrical fault, but when your house is burning down around you, you don’t shelter in the goddamn basement. You don’t try and get out that way either, not when you’ve got perfectly good doors and windows on the ground floor. Damned if anyone could tell me why they’d do that.”

Stiles feels a rush of excitement. “Dad!”

“Hmm?”

“Dad, eight years ago nobody could tell you, because Laura and Derek weren’t there, right?”

“Right.”

“But Peter Hale was,” Stiles says. “He was in the house. And didn’t the paper say he was the one that applied for the planning permission? He’s awake now, so why not ask him?”

Dad blinks at him for a moment. “Shit, kid. Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”

Stiles knows.

For eight years his dad has gone around and around in circles with the Hale fire, and he’s so used to treading those same paths that he didn’t even realise that something new had shaken loose that might change the entire picture. Hasn’t Dad always said that the thing any old case needs most of all is a fresh set of eyes? Someone to look at things in a different way? And Stiles has always been good for that.

“You’re friends with Laura, you said?” Dad claps him on the shoulder. “Can you get me her uncle’s number?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “I can do that.”

Because Laura is his friend, and he wants to keep her safe.

Her, and the newest Hale that she’s trying to bring into the world.

***

Parrish heads out to his cruiser after lunch and Stiles trails along with him. He watches as he inputs the licence plate into the cruiser’s onboard computer.

“Who the hell is Gerard Argent?” Parrish asks, and writes the information down for Dad. Argent has an Arizona address.

Stiles shrugs and takes the notepaper back. “No idea, man. Probably some lost tourist.”

“Probably,” Parrish agrees.

[asleepinawell]

Neon and Dust: Chapter 2

The continuation that no one asked for of the Shoot Space Western that no on asked for.

I have a chapter 3 written but I decided I need to trash it and completely rewrite it, which is why I’ve been stalled on writing this for so long. 

I did some minor updates to Chapter 1. Mostly world-building stuff. I’m still not completely committed to writing the full fic yet…would be a lot of time and effort and I don’t know how much interest there’d be. I feel like this chapter isn’t quite as fun as the last one due to world-building info dump, but eh.

Still rated pg-13 at this point though I’m strongly leaning towards the rating going up at some point.

(Chapter 1 |Chapter 2)

Shaw had taken one look at the unnecessarily large feline that Bear had attempted to corner in one of the storage compartments and decided that Reese could deal with the damn thing. She did wait around long enough to encourage Bear to stick up for himself, but the big dog was only interested in following the cat around with a sad look in his eyes, hurt that his new friend wanted nothing to do with him.

It figured that Root’s cat would be a jerk to her dog.

Mortimer, as Root had called him, was the size of a small dog himself, and while nowhere near as large as Bear, the regal long-haired black and white menace carried himself like a king.

“What the hell is that thing?” Reese asked, standing behind her as if afraid the cat would attack without warning.

“Looks an awful lot like your problem,” Shaw said and ducked past him into the narrow hallway, ignoring his indignant grumbling. Neither of them was really in command per se; they were equal partners in the transport business. Most differences of opinion were settled by coin flips, squabbling, or someone getting ‘accidentally’ locked in their room for a few hours (Shaw had never been the someone). Reese didn’t follow her down the hall, so she claimed that as a victory.

And besides, her task was equally unpleasant.

Despite her claims to the contrary, Root had been nowhere in the vicinity of her monstrous pet, and Shaw needed to know where they were supposed to be hauling her to. And, more importantly, sorting out the question of payment.

None of the unused crew cabins had any sign of her presence and the galley, engine room, cargo bay, infirmary, and bridge were all empty.

There was only one thing on the Indigo Five (besides Mortimer) that belonged to Root, and Shaw headed up to the tiny hanger at the top of the ship.

While a small ship could attach itself to the outside dock of the Indigo Five, the entire dock could also lower into the hanger and be sealed inside to protect the smaller vessel from the stress of blinking. Root had found the control panel on her own and lowered Paradox down into the hanger. The heavy doors in the ceiling were shut and sealed now and Root was lying on top of her ship on her stomach, dangling most of her upper body into the cockpit as she rummaged around.

“What the hell type of animal did you bring on my ship?” Shaw asked by way of greeting. “If he scratches Bear he’s getting airlocked.”

Root looked up. “Mortimer is a sweetheart,” she protested. “A total softie. He wouldn’t harm a soul.”

Mortimer’s paws had been enormous, way too large for any domestic cat Shaw had ever seen. He looked like a predator.

“Well,” Root amended, “he might have ripped a man’s throat out once. But he was only trying to protect me. He’s very loyal.”

Shaw gave Reese even odds against the hell beast.

“He’s going to cost you extra. Excessive shedding. Speaking of which, how do you plan to pay for this little trip? Double our rates, remember?”

Root hopped down from the side of Paradox, using Shaw’s shoulders to steady herself. When she didn’t immediately remove her hands, Shaw brushed them away and retreated to a safe distance. She wouldn’t put it past Root to try and knock her and Reese out and attempt to fly the Indigo Five herself. Probably right into a mountain.

Root pulled a small credit chip drive out of her pocket and held it out. “No tricks this time, Shaw. All of this is on the level.”

“With you I’m going to assume that’s bullshit until proven otherwise.”

She stalked over to the computer terminal set in the wall and inserted the credit drive. Most people used their implant chips for things like money transfers, but larger amounts and shady deals still relied heavily on the little credit drives. Also she wasn’t sure if Root could use an implant chip what with being on Samaritan’s most wanted list and all.

The amount on the drive was absurdly high, but the transfer account appeared legitimate. Shaw pocketed the drive and turned around to find Root hovering in her personal space.

“These funds clean? They better not come back to bite me in the ass.”

“The credits definitely won’t be the thing to bite you in the ass, Shaw.”

She never let up, did she?

“Fine. Let’s say I believe that this isn’t going to get Galactic Enforcement on my tail. Where are we taking you? Amount in the drive is enough to get you all the way to the Hub Planets and then some.”

Which was a bit ridiculous. Melior, the so-called capital planet of the Interplanetary Republic was five terminals away. Part of the reason they were on this godforsaken planet was because of its distance from anywhere developed.

And now that she thought about it, Root obviously wanted to go to Melior. She’d probably wanted a ride with the Indigo Five specifically because they were just as eager to stay off the radar as she was, but could also dock at Genesis, the capital city, without attracting attention and with Paradox safely hidden.

“Melior? Really, Root? Your boss put you up to this? Or is this your own dumbass idea?”

“I wouldn’t be going if it wasn’t important.” The slight edge in Root’s voice told Shaw she wasn’t lying through her teeth for once.

“It’s a bit of a long haul. Take a few days and we’ll have to stop and refuel at least once.”

The Ore Colonies were just far enough away from the Central Systems to be fairly lax in security, but close enough that most inhabitants were Interplanetary Republic citizens and things considered civilized amenities (like fuel stations that took credits) were readily available. Any of the Central Systems would be dangerous for a wanted fugitive like Root, but the Hub Planets, the six most developed planets right in the middle that made up the beating heart of the Republic, were by far the most heavily surveilled.

“That’s fine.”

It didn’t sound like it was fine, but Root wasn’t going to find a better ship out this far.

The Indigo Five was built to be fast and maneuverable, but she couldn’t hold up to extensive terminal travel the way larger, more armored vessels did, so Shaw always paused between blinks to run a basic diagnostic, make sure she hadn’t been damaged. It drove Reese nuts because he’d rather blow right through multiple terminals and worry about the consequences later, but she was Shaw’s ship now and Shaw was very firm on this rule.

“I’ll get us off this rock and headed to the terminal then,” Shaw said, turning away. Root’s smile wasn’t quite as confident as Shaw was used to seeing and it was setting off alarm bells in her head. This whole situation reeked of trouble. “You know where the bunks are at?”

“Why? Are you inviting me back to yours?” Root trailed along behind her.

“No. In fact, you get the one furthest away from me.” She paused by Paradox again, annoyed as always that Root hadn’t named it ‘the Paradox’. Not having an article in front of the name made it sound like she thought of it as a pet or something, which maybe she did. She was a bit weird like that.

“I get a bunk?”

Shaw looked back to catch a confused expression on Root’s face that quickly vanished.

“You’re a paying passenger even if I’m not crazy about it. Where did you think you’d sleep? In that heap?” She gestured at Root’s ship with her thumb.

Root shrugged. “Guess I didn’t really think about that.”

Shaw could hear the lie. Root had actually expected she’d be sleeping in her tiny ship. Shaw might not have been a gracious host, but they had to maintain the ship’s reputation.

Did Root live in that thing?

“Well, I won’t stop you, but the bunks are probably more comfortable.”

Root hesitated and then brushed past her to climb back up on Paradox. She vanished into the cockpit and there were some muffled thumping noises before a small, battered bag came sailing out of the ship. Shaw caught it out of instinct, surprised by how light it was.

“Wanna go for a ride?” Root had reappeared from within the cockpit and was sitting on the side of Paradox, her feet kicking in space, and one eyebrow raised suggestively.

The thing was, Root was really damn hot, and the sex had been great (even if she’d been tasered and robbed after the first time but whatever these things happened sometimes), but that was one thing at some cheap hostel; this was Shaw’s ship. Banging Root on her ship sounded like it could get complicated, and Shaw was very much against complications.

“This all you got?” Shaw asked, hefting the small bag and ignoring the question. Come to think of it, even though Root’s itemized list had been fairly long it had all been small items or stuff that shouldn’t have been counted anyway.

Root slid down to the floor. “I travel light.” She took the bag back immediately as if to cut off any more questions.

Well, it was her business, Shaw figured, and it wasn’t like she had a lot of material possessions herself anyway.

“Let’s go then.”

She showed Root into the first empty crew cabin they came to (conveniently all the way at the other end of the hall from hers) and left her sitting on her bunk, staring around her temporary room like it was an alien planet.

“Melior? Is that a good idea?”

Shaw didn’t bother to roll her eyes at what had to have been the dumbest question Reese had asked all day.

“Of course it isn’t. When has anything involving Root ever been a good idea?” She reached under the console to unlock the controls and flipped on the main engine power. The Indigo Five woke up under her feet, humming to life.

“She say why she wanted to go to the one place in the universe it’d be easiest for Galactic Enforcement to hunt her down?”

“No. Probably more worried about the ISA hunting her down than Enforcement, but really what we’re talking about here is Samaritan. And that thing has eyes and ears all over Melior.”

As the private armed force of the Interplanetary Council, the Interplanetary Security Activity were supposed to be in charge of Samaritan, but Shaw was fairly certain the AI was the one actually pulling the strings these days. Back when she’d worked for the ISA, they’d had a different AI feeding them the dirty little secrets of the galaxy, a supposedly less megalomaniacal one. The Machine was hiding as much as the rest of them were these days, though, maybe more. Shaw wasn’t sure why it’d want to send its little pet hacker into certain danger, but then she’d never been completely sure why it did half the things it did.

“What about us?” Reese asked, playing with a switch on the console. “Thought we were trying to avoid trouble.”

Shaw leaned over and smacked his hand away. Reese could fly pretty well (even if he did have a tendency to smash into other ships), but she was the pilot here and there were rules on her bridge. The most important rule was no touching the damn controls.

“Eh, I mean Samaritan doesn’t know who we are, so as long as we don’t do anything spectacularly dumb we should be fine for a short trip.” And she really could use a night in a luxury hotel. Maybe order in some gourmet food, have a long, hot bath, find a quick hook-up from a nearby bar, sleep in a real bed. It’d be like a vacation.

“Her credit check out?” Reese asked as Shaw took the Indigo Five up off the dock, slow and easy. The landing gear retracted with a few dull thuds as they gained some height.

“Seems to. Guess robbing a bank will do that.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as weird that the Machine would have her pull some stunt that brings all this attention on her and then send her right into enemy territory while everyone’s on high alert?”

“Is there anything about Root and the Machine that isn’t weird?” There was no baseline for normal in this scenario.

“Just wondering what it’s thinking.” Reese looked up at the monitor near the top of the wall. The screen showed nothing but static.

“No way we’re finding out. Even before all this mess it was never exactly chatty.”

They were high above the planet’s surface now, headed up on a path to break through the atmosphere and out into space. They hadn’t ventured out from the main planet in this system so they were only about an hour away from the terminal. Shaw dialed in a blink request and waited for authorization.

“Not too bad. Only a twenty minute wait from when we get to the terminal.” Back in the Central Systems a wait time of several hours wasn’t unusual unless you could pay an exorbitant fee to upgrade your priority.

“What’d you end up doing with that monster cat?” Shaw asked, sitting back in the pilot chair and enjoying the rumbling of the ship around her. She’d punched in a pretty direct route for them and, while she couldn’t just leave the bridge, she didn’t need her hands on the controls at all times.

“Oh. About that.” Reese winced. “It, uh, sort of vanished.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and it escaped onto the planet.” Root would no doubt insist they go back for it if that were the case. Damn thing was probably the only companion she had other than the Machine’s voice in her head.

“Where’s its owner wandered off to?” Reese looked back over his shoulder as if expecting Root to appear from the shadows with a stun gun at any second.

“Gave her a cabin, though she’s probably up to no good somewhere else by now.” She’d like to think that the Machine would keep Root in check on their ship since they technically worked for it, too, but she wasn’t betting on it. “You volunteering to go keep an eye on her?”

“It’s my turn to make dinner,” Reese said, hurriedly. “I think that takes priority.”

“Wuss.”

“Hey, you’re the one who let her on board.”

“Let? I’m not sure let is the right word here. And you were all ‘oh no we can’t throw her out an airlock because money’.”

The Indigo Five pulled clear of the planet’s atmosphere and sailed out into open space. Shaw momentarily forgot her annoyance as the quiet of the universe wrapped around their little ship. Even with all the internal whirrings and hums of the ship she could feel the silence outside pressing in on them. She’d never get tired of being out here.

“Fine, go make food. I’ll hunt her down after we hit the terminal.”

Reese escaped gratefully and left Shaw alone to enjoy the view out the front window as the ship headed towards the terminal. A few minutes later, Bear wandered in and flopped down on the floor next to her with a heavy doggy sigh. Apparently he wasn’t comfortable with their new guests either.

“Know how you feel, buddy.” She scratched him behind the ears. “At least we’re off that garbage heap of a planet.”

She folded her arms behind her head and leaned back to enjoy the ride.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

Root turned around at the sound of Shaw’s voice, almost dropping the roll of medical tape she’d been holding. The medical bay was dark around her, lit only by emergency lights since she hadn’t been able to figure out where the light controls were.

“I thought you were a medic, Shaw. Should be pretty obvious what I’m doing.” She turned back to taping the gauze over the gash on her arm. She’d cut it on a sharp rock when the Local Enforcement agents had slammed her into the ground during her arrest, and even though it’d stopped bleeding ages ago her shirt kept rubbing against it.

At least the cut had been on her right arm and therefore hadn’t interfered with the black circuits tattooed up and down her left. The tattoo had started out as a fairly small design, a solid band around her forearm just below the elbow with a few circuits branching off. She’d added to it over the years until the circuits stretched down to her wrist and up to her shoulder.

“You disinfect that?” Shaw’s voice was closer now and Root glanced up to see her peering at the mostly-covered cut.

She smiled a little. “Worried about me, Shaw?” If she’d known Shaw was going to drop in on her she’d have taken her shirt off rather than rolled up the sleeve.

Regrettably, Shaw was also still wearing a shirt, but she’d taken off her heavy duster jacket and was only wearing a tank top now. Root took a moment to appreciate the extra bare skin of Shaw’s shoulders and neck. She could vividly remember what it felt like to bite down on Shaw’s neck, scrape her teeth along her throat. Was it the right time to try and pick up where they’d left off in the jail cell?

Shaw ignored her and opened a drawer in one of the cabinets near the sink. She tossed a metal tube of some type of medical gel down on the table next to Root. “Should clean the whole area, too, but suit yourself. Don’t blame me if your arm rots off.”

Root peeled away the mess she’d been making of the bandages and went over to the sink to wash the dirt off her arm. A lot of it had gotten into the cut, so maybe Shaw had a point.

“Then I’d get a cool arm like yours. We could match.”

Shaw scowled. “Didn’t have my arm cut off for fun like all these rich kids do these days.”

It was more than Root had ever heard her say about the matter. She knew, due to being nosy and reading Shaw’s files from her time working for the ISA, that Shaw’s arm had gotten crushed during a military operation–an operation that had claimed the lives of everyone else on her team–and that she’d finished the mission by herself despite her mangled limb. The ISA had paid for her first biometal arm replacement, and then she’d gotten a significant upgrade from her new employer.

It hadn’t occurred to her that Shaw would have a strong opinion on how bionic prostheses were being sold as status symbols and amusements now, their prices ratcheted up high above what most people who actually needed them could afford. It didn’t sound like something Shaw would care about one way or the other, but then she had trained to be a medic at one time. Perhaps that was why.

Root didn’t comment, and instead concentrated on cleaning her arm, making a face at how dirty the water was that ran off. It’d been too long since she’d been able to take care of any cleaning beyond basic hygiene.

When she went back to get the tube of antibiotic gel, Shaw picked it up before she could.

“Sit.” Shaw gestured at a chair.

“What’d I do to merit special treatment?”

“Paid me a small fortune. If you die from an infection it’ll give me a bad rep.”

Shaw uncapped the tube and pulled a box of cotton swabs from a drawer. She tsked a little when she examined the cut and then dabbed at it with a gel-covered swab.

“Maybe I should get myself a personal field medic,” Root said, trying to cover her wince. The damn gel was cold and stung like hell. “Looking for a new gig, Sameen? The pay is crap, but the benefits….”

She smirked and Shaw rolled her eyes like she’d known she would

“What do you usually do when you get all banged up out in the field?” Shaw asked as she sorted through the bandage material Root had left strewn across the table.

“Sometimes there’s not much I can do.” The Machine had found her help in a few more critical situations. It wasn’t that she didn’t know any basic first aid, but there often wasn’t time for it and unless it was life-threatening she’d forget to take care of it without the Machine reminding her. And that hadn’t been an option lately.

“Should look into getting a med kit to carry around. Might save your life one day.” Shaw finished taping the bandage in place and started tidying away the supplies.

Root chose to remain silent, watching as Shaw cleaned up and washed her hands. She’d like to think Shaw would spare a thought for her if she turned up dead. After all, Shaw had taken care of her that night she’d shown up at her hostel door, but there was a lot about that incident that she couldn’t remember.

“Reese is making dinner. Should be ready soon, but, uh, we’re docked at the terminal and scheduled to blink in about an hour. You get blink sick?”

“Not exactly.” She hated blinking.

“Well, try to not exactly throw up on my ship, okay?”

Root had scoped out the ship’s layout already but hadn’t had time for more than a passing glance at anything yet. It wasn’t the first time she’d been on the Indigo Five, but last time she hadn’t exactly been in a position to explore the ship.

But now she had time to take in her surroundings while she followed Shaw through the corridors. The halls themselves were all roughly hexagonal with metal grated walkways for floors under which ran wires and pipes. There were small lights near the top and bottom of the halls that illuminated the walkways just enough to prevent tripping but not much more. Most rooms off the halls had heavy doors which could be used to seal off sections of the ship in case of a fire or breach or other disaster.

They could also be used to seal a person in somewhere against their will, as Root well knew. She’d once spent a day locked in a small storage bay while Reese and Shaw had renovated the little cell in the stern of the ship. She wondered if the cell was still functional these days.

She tried to get a sense of where everything was as she walked. The medical bay was at the top of the ship near the back, not too far from the hanger where Paradox was currently staying, and the crew cabins were down a metal flight of stairs and all the way down the corridor to the front of the ship. About halfway to the cabins, Shaw took a left through a door that led to the galley.

John Reese eyed her with the pained expression of someone who’d been on the wrong end of her taser and was wondering when they were going to end up there again. He was hovering over some sort of pot on the electric stove panel that was billowing steam up into a vent.

“I thought you were making dinner.” Shaw grabbed the long-handled spoon John had been stirring the pot with and poked at the contents with distaste. “This is hot water, not dinner.”

“Well, gee, Shaw, maybe if we actually had anything in the way of food supplies left I could make something more substantial. Unless you’d rather cook tonight?”

“Ugh. We can restock a bit on the way to Melior. Then get the good stuff once we’re back on the Hub.” She stopped tormenting John and took a seat at the table. “You gonna stand there all day?”

Root had been hovering in the doorway, debating if she should sneak out to explore the ship more or stay and watch the weirdly sibling-like squabble unfolding before her, but now that Shaw’s attention was back on her it’d be hard to vanish. She settled herself on a chair across the table from Shaw, making sure to bump her leg a few times in the process.

“So, Root,” John started, unaware of the death glares Shaw was directing at her. “What’s back on Melior that’s so important you’d risk having the ISA find you?”

That was a great question, one that Root wished she knew the answer to. She trusted the Machine, of course, without question, but the idea of falling into the ISA’s hands again was…unsettling. Especially since Samaritan guided their movements now. She didn’t think she’d be able to escape a second time and she knew she couldn’t survive that kind of damage again.

“She has some errands for me to run.”

“What sort of errands?” Shaw was holding a spoon delicately between the fingers of her left hand, which Root found a bit odd since she knew Shaw was right-handed. She ran her eyes over the length of Shaw’s biometal arm, wondering how often Shaw forced herself to do things like this with it as practice. The cheap spoons in the galley would easily bend if she applied even a fraction of the force she was capable of and yet she twirled it between her fingers with ease.

“Oh, nothing worth worrying about.”

Shaw bristled, but her grip on the spoon didn’t tighten even a fraction. “Really wasn’t worried.”

The contents of the pot John had been hovering over turned out to be some type of broth that had just enough flavor to disqualify it as water, but not much more than that. It was hot, though, and no one was trying to kill her while she ate it which made it one of the better meals she’d had in awhile.

Shaw may have complained loudly about the quality of the food, but she still put away several helpings of it, while John ate much more slowly and did a poor job attempting to be subtle about keeping an eye on her.

If the two of them stayed this suspicious, it was going to be a long week.

“What do you kids do for fun around here?” she asked to break the slightly awkward silence.

John opened his mouth to answer but Shaw cut him off. “We don’t.”

Root made sure Shaw was looking at her before she batted her eyelashes. “What? No fun at all? Not even a little?” She ran her foot up the inside of Shaw’s calf, making her twitch in her seat. “Well, I’m sure we can find something…fun to pass the time.”

John choked on his soup a bit and had to turn to the side to have a coughing fit. Shaw fumed visibly and Root’s eyes travelled back to the spoon she still held loosely in her left hand. Even with Root riling her up she hadn’t tightened her grip even a tiny bit. Bionics were damn hard to adjust to and the fact Shaw had that degree of control was impressive…and a bit hot.

Shaw followed her gaze to the spoon and set it down on the table with a frown before turning back to her food.

Root let the meal lapse back into silence after that, unsure how much she could push them without running the risk of getting dumped on the next planet they came across. She was content to wait for a more opportune moment to try and get Shaw to pick up where they’d left off on the jail cell. She still got a little thrill every time she remembered how Shaw’s left hand had felt on her skin, digging into her ribcage only just short of doing real damage. The bruise she’d left there earlier ached pleasantly whenever Root brushed it.

She’d been serious when she’d told Shaw she didn’t have a bionics kink. It wasn’t Shaw’s arm that she found so damn enticing (well, not only her arm), it was the fact that Sameen Shaw could break her in half with only the slightest of efforts but chose not to. There was something intoxicating about putting herself at Shaw’s mercy, knowing that she could kill her, and then, later, walking away with the knowledge that she hadn’t.

Root had just reached the bottom of her bowl when a loud beeping sounded over the ship’s intercom.

“That’s us,” Shaw said, getting up. “We’re next through the terminal.” She hurried out of the room, no doubt headed back to the bridge.

“Where does this go?” Root motioned at her empty dish. She was still starving and definitely could have gone for a second helping, but if they were about to blink she needed to leave.

“Just leave it,” Reese said absentmindedly. He had a network tablet next to his bowl and was scrolling idly through some news channel on it.

Root took him at his word and left as quickly as she could without being too obvious in her haste. She thought about going back to the tiny cabin that Shaw had insisted she take, but being on Paradox sounded more appealing right now.

When she dropped into the cockpit, she found that Mortimer had returned on his own and was curled up in the small crawlspace behind the seats in the nest of blankets she slept in. The little monitor on the wall next to him was playing a video of some birds hopping around chirping at each other and Mortimer was watching in rapt fascination.

The whole scene made Root feel a little better. The Machine might not be able to talk much lately, but She still looked out for all of them in tiny ways. Even if that was just putting on a video for her cat.

Mortimer glared indignantly when she rearranged the blankets so she could lie down, and then let out a resigned sigh and curled up back next to her.

“Back to civilization at last,” Shaw said when Reese joined her on the bridge. She was beyond ready to get out of this corner of the galaxy.

“How long do you think we can risk staying this time?” He took the co-pilot seat and looked at the small display on the console that was running through all the pre-blink checks.

“Long enough for a night on the town at least.” Hopefully the Machine didn’t send them a damn number on Melior this time. That never ended well. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to have to give Root a lift off that place when she’s done with…whatever it is.”

“What? Why?”

“We’ve got her ship parked in our hanger. I mean I guess she could be planning to fly it in herself after we clear the terminal, but that would defeat the purpose of using our ship as camouflage.”

The Indigo Five was hovering in front of the terminal now: three enormous metal anchors connected by wispy energy beams to form a triangular opening. It looked like if they just flew forward through the terminal they’d come right out the other side, but of course that wasn’t how it worked.

“You knew we’d have to wait for her and you didn’t pitch a fit?” Reese grimaced. “You’re getting soft.”

Shaw couldn’t find anything unimportant enough to throw at him so she fixed him with a cold stare instead. “The Machine would rope us into it somehow.”

“Guess so.”

The Indigo Five was almost in the terminal now and Shaw flipped the switch on the console to do the last minute preps. The front window of the ship became noticeably more opaque and the humming from below grew louder as the x-ray shielding came online.

“Time to get out of here.” Shaw punched the button to release control of the ship to the terminal.

She wasn’t sure how to describe what blinking felt like. There was definitely the weird distortion of the bridge around them for a second, as if everything was getting larger but simultaneously moving away, and the swoop in her stomach, and then everything felt…different. She didn’t have words for it.

Out the front window the vastness of space had transformed into a soft white glow

in front of them. They couldn’t see stars or anything else while travelling between terminals and other than the stressed rumblings of the ship suddenly having to put up with an incredible amount of pressure there was no way to tell they were actually moving. A lot of people refused to look outside while ships were in blink because the illusion of standing still while actually moving unbelievably fast was disconcerting. Shaw rather enjoyed it.

“Suppose we should get some shut eye while we can,” Reese said after a few minutes of silently contemplating the soft glow.

“Better lock your door tonight,” Shaw warned as they got up and stretched. “Wouldn’t put it past her to try and smother us in our sleep.”

“Don’t think I’m the one whose door she’ll be knocking on tonight.”

Shaw did hit him then, but it was only with her right arm.

More possibly coming? Who knows? Not me.

[moredickpics-blog]

Women can barely remember what your dicks look like

Hey Guys, Women Can Barely Remember What Your Dicks Look Like

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she reflects on her boyfriends and lovers past and realizes the good, the bad and the curious fact that she can barely remember their dicks. It happened to me. I’m not that old, but I realized recently that I guess I’ve hit the age or life stage where I actually can’t remember all my boyfriend’s dicks. Or even most. There weren’t that many — not that it matters — but I can scarcely conjure their members any more than I can remember the movie I saw last week. Is this just me? Do other women not remember their boyfriends’ dicks either? And if so, why not?

I decided to find out.

First off, I remember a couple of dicks. There was a botched circumcision that stands out. There was the guy in college who had a really big one, maybe the biggest I’d ever seen, but it never got all the way hard. It was soft and malleable, as if it were made of clay. (I later realized he was a big-time drinker and had chronic whiskey dick.) I can remember the dicks of my two major relationships for sure — at least how they felt. I can remember the smallest dick, too, because it was pencil-thin but very long, as if it could fold up and be put away afterward for efficient storage. But even searching my brain for individual sexual experiences I remember, I’ve got nothing on the dick. Why?

Men would have you believe women remember every dick as if it were permanently etched into their vaginal psyche. They seem inordinately concerned about what women think of their dicks in the first place. If they are big enough, if they are satisfying enough — and, if the internet counts as solid, peer-reviewed journal-level research — whether their dick moves are constantly being ranked like Katy Perry did with her exes, or compared to the all the other dicks the woman they’re with has ever seen or experienced.

In 2007, someone identifying as a 41-year-old man asked the OKCupid forum, “Do women remember the size of their former lover’s penis?” The impetus was that he’d been so bombarded with dick-increasing spam emails with subject lines that burrowed into his paranoid brain that he had to crowdsource it:

Your girlfriend remembers her past lover’s size, how do you compare? Make her forget all about them with MegaDik.

While men on the forum tended to recall anecdotes about women discussing the members of previous lovers in “amazing detail,” and confirmed that women absolutely remember past dicks, the women who responded cast a bit of doubt on that assertion as truth.

“Basically, we don’t remember all of them, but certain shapes and sizes that hit us in the right spots are definitely remembered,” one woman said.

Another woman reader confirmed my experience: “The biggest guy I have been with was 9 inches and white Dutch, oh yes it does make a difference it’s not just motion in the ocean,” she wrote. “The smallest was from Ghana and black, coming in at 5 inches erect, which proves sometimes stereotypes are not accurate, well in this case anyway.

One female reader admitted she remembered all of her past five partners. But I wondered, was she the exception, or maybe it was because she only had five?

So I asked my friends, including women years younger than me, and who have had a wide range of partners numbering from just one or two to dozens, if they remembered any of their boyfriends’ dicks. Surely their more nimble brains could perform instant dick recall.

“Oh no,” said one. “Absolutely not.”

Others remembered some, but not others, and none of them remembered all of them in any real detail, with a few exceptions. There was the uncircumcised one that a friend remembered — a rare standout in the South. Another remembered one that was long and thin. And another said, “In a glory-hole situation, you could poke in every dick I’ve ever seen and there’s zero percent chance I could get any of them correct.”

I asked more women. “Kind of,” another woman messaged. “No specifics. The Irish guy was uncut and on the large side. The bartender had a tiny dick and didn’t make any effort to compensate for it. The housemate I banged a couple of times had a dick the size of my arm and ALSO didn’t try to compensate for it.”

We tried to piece together why this was so. At first, we weren’t exactly sure. Maybe it’s because women really truly don’t care that much about shape or size. But then we saw the clear penis pattern: Most of us only remembered the standout dicks—the ones that were really big, really small, really weird, or just right. All the unremarkable ones in between were by and large forgotten.

The exactly right ones actually stood out more than the really big or really small. Undoubtedly, these are the dicks women fantasize about, or possibly even pine for. The internet seems to bear this out: There are pieces detailing women’s recollection of the “best” dick they’ve ever had, and the ones that make the cut are the most memorable because they’re big or perfect, but perfect not necessarily meaning big. Others stand out because of the novelty alone — the shade, the shape, the grooming, the cleanliness, the smell, the hang, the frightening size it balloons to when aroused, or whether it’s a grower or a shower.

But clearly, it’s only the more notorious ones that really stick in the mind, because most dicks, we realized, are just too ordinary to remember.

“I just did some quick math,” one woman offered. “Just under 7 percent of the dicks I’ve seen would qualify as large. Those two, I might be able to match up. Only one was small enough to be notable. But most men, in my experience, have perfectly ordinary dicks that, to be honest, I never really think that much about. I’d be willing to bet that any man who’s spent a lot of time in a locker room around the same dudes would be far better at dick-to-person matching than any straight woman.”

Another woman who works in the medical industry with clinical dick experience agreed. “They usually look like what you’d expect,” she wrote. “Like legs. Some are longer, or fatter, but all legs basically look the same to me.”

Or feet. I realized as I tried to reconstruct the dicks I’d seen, that I would think I landed on the correct dick image to match the man. Then I realized what I was doing — for some crazy reason I was actually picturing the head of the dick to match something like the man’s big toe. Kind of like that Honda commercial where the person’s face looks exactly like the car they drive.

Another interesting find: While a boyfriend dick is actually considered to be a great relationship dick, it turns out to be less great in the rearview mirror, and not necessarily the dick that ends up in the hall of fame.

“I think most of them had boyfriend dicks, to be honest,” one woman said. “Not too large, or too small, nothing special going on. One had VERY weird balls.”

Fine, so we can’t remember your dick. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. If anything, that should at least give men a bit of reassurance on the dick size paranoia front.

But this all left one other question: Surely women can all remember the dicks of their current partners? The one they maybe even just slept with this morning? Of course they could reconstruct it out of clay, blind in the night, so intimately do they know it?

“Absolutely not,” a friend said.

I asked another.

“Could you pick out your current partner’s dick from a lineup?”

“Ummmm,” one thought. “I could probably pick it out of a lineup? But if the lineup were all ‘cut white dicks on the generous side of average’ then no. It’s just a dick.”

“More penises need freckles,” another replied. “Freckles always help.”

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/women-can-barely-remember-what-your-dicks-look-like

[dropswisdom]

T07 review unit was sent to me courtesy of MeeGoPad, so my gratitude to Elaine, for the help and support!

MeeGoPad has been around since 2011, engaged at first in ODM and OEM service for desktops, notebooks and so on, and in 2014 moved on to branded tablets, followed by the introduction (at the end of 2014) of the world’s first PC on a stick (dongle).

The T07 Cherry Trail Stick PC is the newest Mini PC by MeeGoPad. What sets it apart is not its hardware, but the fact that its production was accompanied with a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo

What’s in the box?

As can be seen both in the unboxing video, and in the photo below, the included item list is short: Micro-USB power cable + power plug, short HDMI 1.4 extension cable, a quick guide leaflet, and a warranty card.

T07 Looks and design

The T07 looks like a fat USB thumb drive. It includes active cooling via a tiny fan embedded inside, and both active and passive cooling are assisted with the vents that cover the plastic-rubber enclosure from all sides but one (the HDMI connector side). It is a smart design, but the device still gets pretty hot. As for noise level – it is hardly noticeable and does not pose an issue.

Specifications

OS Windows 10 Home(See product listing for activation status) CPU Intel© Atom™ x5-Z8300 CPU Frequency 1.44Ghz Turbo Frequency 1.84Ghz Cores 4 GPU Intel© HD Graphics 12EU Gen8LP RAM LPDDR3 2/4GB Storage 32GB on-board WiFi 802.11b/g/n, 2.4GHz Bluetooth 4.0 Expandable Storage MicroSD up-to 64GB USB Data 2x USB 2.0 Display HDMI 1.4 Audio 3.5mm Power In MicroUSB 5v 2A Power Keys On/Off

Benchmarks and Testing

All benchmarks have been repeated 3 times and results have been averaged to give a more accurate reading:

Novabench

Novabench offers a mix of tests ranging between CPU and memory to GPU abilities.The T07 gets a respectable middle position in the three Atom Z8300 devices I’ve tested so far.

PC Mark 8

PC Mark 8 Basic tests go for 20-45 minutes in GPU-accelerated or standard mode and they test regular office tasks as well as memory and video performance. The test was done with Open CL acceleration, and still took last place – although not too far from the Mele PCG03 Plus that precedes it. I did have some issues running the PC Mark benchmark as it crashed a few times, and after updating became unusable to a  degree that I had to uninstall it and do a system clean in order to get it back to working order.

3D Mark

3D Mark does what the name says – it tests a device’s ability to handle 3d animation and simulation. Performance is quite poor, which put the T07 in last place, and I suspect that it has to do with some CPU/GPU throttling to avoid overheating issues which plague dongle devices.

Video Playback testing (Using KODI)

Resolution Video Format Local Playback Network (WiFi) Playback 720p (1280*720) AVC (High@L4.1)  Okay * Occasional Buffering 1080P (1920*1080) AVC (High@L4)  Okay * Occasional Buffering 4K/UHD (4096*2304) AVC (High@L5.1)  Okay ** Sometimes Buffering, Stutter, Audio loss 2160P (3840*2160) HEVC (H.265)  Okay  Okay 4K TS HEVC files HEVC (H.265) 10Bit Artifacts, audio loss, stutter Artifacts, audio loss, stutter

* Buffering occurs, but only in some of the files. It may have to do with less than perfect encodings, coupled with poor/mediocre WiFi performance.

** Some of the test files performed fine, while others (may be heavier in nature) buffered a few times.

Issues and bugs

At first boot, no picture appeared on my LG TV. Only after hooking the dongle to a Samsung TV, I was able to boot correctly. Afterwards, I shut down and reconnected it to my LG TV and it worked fine.

Network performance was not great, and since there is only WiFi – what you see is what you get.

Buffering at the beginning and also through WiFi video playback (720p video and up) is an infrequent issue. It is not consistent as some video files may play through without a hitch, while others will make the viewing experience a frustrating one. I am not sure if it is the WiFi chip’s fault, weak built-in antenna, or something else – but it is a real issue.

Network performance

Network performance has been tested using Speedtest.net Internet speed measuring website, in Wireless mode. My Internet connection is 200 Mbit Symmetric Fibre connection:

The wireless network speed is quite limiting. When most high resolution videos change in bandwidth requirement through playback, this creates a bottleneck for network playback. However, the T07 may perform better under more optimal conditions (same room as router, or even a WiFi repeater may improve performance).

Gaming performance

Two games were tested. Both were installed from Microsoft’s app store:

Asphalt 8 AirborneThe game was jerky at best, with frame rate between 10-15 frames per second.

World of Tanks BlitzWOT plays quite smoothly with no evident slow down or jerkiness.

  Conclusions

Did I like it? Yes, but it could do better without throttling and a better heat dissipation solution. It may also be a good idea to include a USB hub, and maybe add a USB to LAN optional adapter.

Would I recommend it? Yes. Keep in mind that the fact that this is a dongle and not a set-top box, creates some possible issues (mostly with heat dissipation). But also that it means that the device is more portable and still offers full windows 10 experience in the palm of your hand.

So you’d like to buy this box? You can get the 4GB version for 135.59 USD (including windows 10) directly from Meegopad here: Meegopad T07 4GB/32GB Intel Cherry Trail X5-Z8300 Win 10 with Fan Intel Quad-Core HDMI Compute stick

Or the 2GB version I reviewed, also from Meegopad for 119 USD here: Meegopad T07 Official Licensed Cherry Trail Win10 with Smart Quiet Fan Z8300 2GB/32GB Intel Quad-Core HDMI Compute stick

Be aware that these sale pages will offer a special promotion starting tomorrow (Friday, March 18th).

Review | MeeGoPad T07 Atom Z8300 PC Dongle T07 review unit was sent to me courtesy of MeeGoPad, so my gratitude to Elaine, for the help and support!

[fancycollectionfury-blog1]

Are dental hygienists offered group health insurance or do they always have to get their own?

"Are dental hygienists offered group health insurance or do they always have to get their own?

Are dental hygienists responsible for their own health insurance or is it common place to have the employer (aka dentist) offer group plans? With some past medical history I am finding it hard to find individual plans without denial or outrageous premiums (planning to go through DH school and need insurance for that)     Anyone?

BEST ANSWER:  Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://salecarinsurance.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr 

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Does the insurance company ( the other guys' fault) pay for rental car insurance?

I got swiped in the week. He is culpable and using his insurance Farmers. I get a rental while my car is in the shop. Farmers- do they pay for my rental insurance, if I am not covered to drive another car but my own? I have legal insurance- liability but not collision. THe guy who swiped me was extremely nice, giving me humbers and taking photos and so on- he was decent. But to pay extra for collision ( Enterprize mentioned this) it'll be 15-18 bucks a day. At this point, I'm fed up with having to drive around getting appraisals and do NOT think I should pay a dam thing. If I get a tiny scratch on the rental, they may ask me to pay for that, or will they? Please what are my options? The rental will take MY credit card for godsake ( I understand--I could just go sell it etc), but I do not see why I should be liable for even a tiny scratch, if I don't have that coverage for my own car and am happy to keep driving my own car that way- I will not be able ot drive my car a week or so while it's in the shop. Any advice- is Farmers right on this? Or did the customer service rep get it wrong? I'm confused right now. If I have to pay that collision ( god knows Enterprize could charge for a hailstone dent) then they guy who swiped me- he should pay them directly right? Please advise. I am willing to put a call into that guy to ask him to just pay the collision for each day I have the rental ( bear in mind I DO have legal liability insurance already, just not collision). TIA> foc""

Electrical job expense cost average?

For my hw, I am doing take off for a 1 story 28325 sq ft building. I have to account for the costs for the total job expense. The problem is I don't have experience in the industry. Can you give some average total cost for electrical distribution, branch, and lighting job. Per month - SITE OFFICE (per Month) SITE STORAGE (per Month) CONSUMABLES SMALL TOOLS COURIER TEMPORARY LIGHTING TEMPORARY POWER SAFETY SPECIALTY INSURANCE USL&H INSURANCE SCAFFOLD RENTAL SCISSOR LIFT RENTAL ELECT 25' BUCKET TRUCK RENTAL BOOM TRUCK RENTAL SITE VECHICLES FOREMAN/GF TRUCK PARKING (per vechicle) LABELING FIRESTOPPING SEISMIC ENG. CALC. FORKLIFT GAS 15' BOOM LIFT 40' BUCKET TRUCK FENCING HEATING EQUIPMENT RENT COPY PLAN & PRINTS OFFICE SUPPLIES DUMPSTER If I also account for permit cost of 1 %, would I be multipling to the total labor and material cost, subtotal all costs, or profit???""

I got a ticket for expired insurance in california?

but i did have insurance i just didnt have the card with me. the police officer said all i have to do is get the new card to the police station and have it signed off. am i going to still have to pay a fine?

Which life insurance is the best one to get and the most affordable and reasonable? Is it the whole life

insurance? or premium life insurance? or term life insurance?

I applied for Car Insurance and...?

They asked me if there any other drivers in the house. I told them my parents and my older sister have insurance.. I am 24 and they said thanks for telling us? The question is does that mean they can once in a while borrow my car and they are covered?

Anyone own more than one car and buy comprehensive insurance for all?

does anyone own more than one car and buy them all comprehensive insurance by yourself? I found it's so expensive and considering to buy third party insurance only. anyone advise pls

Insurance on 2010 Camaro?

what could i expect to pay in insurance for the 2010 Camaro?

What is the cost of the insurance for the car i want ?

I want a Suzuki Ignis 1.5 sport im just about to start driving wants the insurance going to cost ?

Washington state car insurance law for drivers and cars?

I currently dont have insurance and i was forced to move back to my parents house and theyre badgering me to get car insurance but i cant afford it right now. if they put insurance on my car under their name, can i drive my car legally? or do they have to put my name on their policy also? im trying to find the cheapest way of getting basic legal insurance since my car is not worth more than 1000 dollars""

At fault driver had no insurance?

Me and my Daughter was riding my custom built harley sat. and a car made an illegal u turn in front of us and we hit his car on the side. He does not have insurance but I do. Can I use my auto insurance which is a different company form my bike insurance to cover the cost of my bike and other injuries that we suffered.? Should I hold off on getting a lawyer? I really do not want them to get my money that we are due..

Can you cancel your car insurance?

I will be selling my car, and still have 4months left on a 6 month insurance..they have my bank account""

Why do people expect medical insurance to pay for everything?

Auto insurance doesn't pay for oil changes. Homeowners insurance doesn't pay for remodeling.

Which of these cars in cheapest in insurance?

Out of these 6 cars, can you list in number order from most to least expensive in car insurance? 1. Ford Mustang 2. Infiniti G35 3. Dodge Charger 4. Nissan 350Z 5. Cadillac CTS 6. BMW 3 series""

Can I get life insurance on a family member without their consent?

I'm interested in getting a life insurance policy on my mother because unfortunately she will not be around forever and I want to make sure my sister and I are able to take care of financial obligations that would have to be resolved including funeral expenses. Obviously this is a very difficult situation, no one wants to have to plan for a loved one's passing. Anyone know if this is possible? thanks.""

I need cheap auto insurance below $150?

I'm 18 just got my drivers license got a honda civic lx 2010 and i need auto insurance i have a suckish job and i'm currently not in college but i will be attending after this next semester. i'm just looking for auto insurance, why is it so complicated?""

How to get cheaper car insurance for 2nd year? haggle 17 18 year old driver car insurance renewal price No NCB?

ok so i am 18 now, me and my brother have shared a policy insured for 10 months with Admiral as a named driver and it cost us 1450. My brother is the main driver and uses the car 95% of the time, i only use it now and then. The 10 months have passed and they have sent him a renewal price of 1200, is there anyway i can help him get it cheaper than this? could he haggle with admiral or go to another company and show them that the renewal price is 1200? also, my car is a 1.0L 2002 seat arosa, would we be able to swap it for a 1998 1.4L seat arosa (they are like 600 less) or would the insurance go up? please help! thanks guys""

Car Insurance for a 16 year old?

I will be driving a 1982 Dodge Ram in the next few months. I will be dropping a V8 440 into the truck. The truck will be painted black. So what will the average monthly insurance bill be on it?

How do you get affordable Health Insurance at age 64?

I moved from AZ to CA and I am retired but very little income. How can I afford to pay for health insurance? Are there any organizations that can suggest places to contact.

Car accident with no insurance?

I'm 19, and the car I was driving was constantly breaking down. When it was completely broken for two months, I stopped paying my insurance and instead saved back money to get the car fixed. My insurance canceled during that time. When I got it fixed on Friday, I was planning on renewing my insurance Tuesday, a day I had off work. Unfortunately, Saturday morning I got into a car accident. I was turning out of my apartment entrance to get to a middle lane where I could then get onto another road, and somehow didn't see a car close enough to hit me. He t boned me in the drivers side. Somehow neither of us got hurt. My car is pretty much done and his car, while not as bad as mine, did get some split open damage. The ticket says the damage is worth 3,000. Since I had no insurance at the time, how will this get payed??? I have a court date on the 9th to discuss the fact of my no insurance...I'll have coverage by then of course, but I'd like to know what I should expect...""

Help European health insurance card?

my health insurance card has expired and i fly tomorrow? is this card important? if i get ill will they still treat me? and will my insurance company cover me still?

Car insurance?

there are 5 people in our family and we all have vehicles of our own and pay for separate insurance but somtimes we might need to use each others cars/vans for what ever reason is there an insurance that we could get that would allow us to drive each others cars.

Are dental hygienists offered group health insurance or do they always have to get their own?

Are dental hygienists responsible for their own health insurance or is it common place to have the employer (aka dentist) offer group plans? With some past medical history I am finding it hard to find individual plans without denial or outrageous premiums (planning to go through DH school and need insurance for that)     Anyone?

Life insurance for seniors?

does anybody know any good life insurance for seniors? i need to try and help my parents some life insurance

Cheap car insurance im 19 male 1yr no claims any ideas or websites?

i need my insurance to be as cheap as possible any help ? ideas ? any thing lol any websites or anything to help thank you i know im in the same boat as everyone but this is worth a try lol

What companies has cheap car insurance for college students?

Im a college student and wants to get off my my parents car insurance its currently 97.00 a month she said thats the cheapest it would be because I would have to pay 500 or 800 in advance or something like that. But i want to be independent and just pay it myself under my own plan ...any suggested car insurance companies?

Inexpensive car insurance for person driving MUCH less than 2000 miles a year?

My brother is on disability income and has about $600 a month to live on. He really needs to have a car because he lives in a rural area and there is no public transportation whatsoever.He doesn't have much money for gas, but the insurance is really the killer, it's about $150 a month at state farm (and he insures his home with that company also). does anyone know any good options for him to save money? Is it legal if he just ditches the car and the insurance and drives one of my cars some of the time, or is that fraud? He does not drive to work or school, only to get groceries/prescriptions etc. The county workers just roll their eyes and sigh and say transportation is a problem.And they don't help. Can I add him to my policy? He's in the same zip code, about 8 miles away. He already doesn't have collision or comprehensive, it's an old car.And he has great credit and no accidents/moving violations. Thanks for any help you can give!""

Where can I find affordable Homeowners Insurance in South Florida?Mine filed for bankruptcy.Someone reputable?

Looking to find a reputable and affordable Homeowners Insurance Policy in South Florida. I dont have any claims pending and it seems that nobody is offering Homeowners in South Florida due to the hurricanes.I am covered until Dec 2006,then I need to find a new company as mine filed for bankruptcy.Thanks!!""

Car insurance recommendations?

hi im 16 and trying very hard to get emancipated i havent told my mom yet though because it seems like a great idea not to get kicked out first, but anyways i have locked in a steady job at a clothing store but i am only working part time for now. What would your recommendation be for cheap car insurance i have no idea where to even start but if i can get cheap insurance than i will be able to spend more on an appartment or trailer. plz give me your recommendations and any advice on how to accomplish my goal. and please no bad comments i just want advice.""

Can I apply for Health insurance and how?

Im only 17 years old and i no longer want to be under my mom's health insurance because im pregnant. So i was wondering what are my options for health insurance? i have no idea where to begin.

Where is the best place to purchase product liability insurance?

Need product liability insurance for imported hardwood flooring.

Cooperative young drivers insurance car modification?

Hi, I am looking forward to install a tuning box/chip tuning into my car, it is a under the hood performance modification and doesnt show anything on the exterior. Thanks!""

What insurance company is everyone with?

Im looking to get home insurance but every companys reviews i look up are really bad! Does anyone know of a good one to go with?

The best Car insurance for a 19 year old.?

What Car holds the cheapest car insurance rating for a 19 year old ( first car ) Living in the southport area ?

What is an insurance quote?

how do I check what insurance is the best?

My auto insurance covers anybody who drives my car...is my teen covered? I cannot afford to list him....?

Me and my teen have a car. I have both cars listed on my insurance with full coverage. If he is not covered is there an insurance company that will cover a driver of his age without ...show more

What's the best car insurance?

I'm about to get a car, it will be my first car, and I know the insurance will be more expensive because I just turned 19, but how much should I expect to pay and what is the best insurance I should get? I live in Southern California (Redondo Beach) and I have a 2006 red toyota yaris. Thanks.""

Can the Insurance company charge me 20% of repair?

I'm in California, I have full coverage, my insurance company is telling me they can charge me 20% in addition to the deductible if I don't use one of their shops, can they do that?""

How do insurance companies verify the adress you use for your car insurance is your actual adress?

I want to get my car insurance in a different state see how do car insurance companies know that the address and provide is where I live. And if I get caught what is the penalty

How much does Invisalign Teen cost to get without insurance?

Im looking into Invisalign Teen because i really dont want braces and since Invisalign is just as effective i want to try to get it. our insurance wont cover it though, how much would it cost for me to pay for it out of pocket?""

Average cost of insurance for mother and two children?

Right now I am a single mom and a cashier. Both of my kids are on medicaid bc we are low income. Within the next month I will be starting a new job as a CNA and will no longer be eligible. I cannot get my companies insurance until after 90 days. any suggestions on what to do 4 my kids in the 90 days, and how much does insurance normally run. We are all healthy no health problems in the past and non smokers children ages 15 months and 2 months. Thank u!""

I have a question about car insurance?

i just got a car out and i dont know anything about insurance i live a california and i want to know of a good car insurance and cheap ?? do they ask for down payment?

What kind of car would be cheapest to insure for a teenage driver?

Im 17 yrs old, and about to move out.. My mother is not to happy with this so she is keeping my car. Now I have to buy my own car and pay the insurance as well, what kind of cars should I start looking at? Used of course, but what types of cars would be cheapest to insure?""

Can you get business insurance online?

I'm taking over my dads tree care business and need to get business insurance but would rather do it online than have to go in somewhere. Can I do this?

""What is the cheapest automatic car, for a new driver?

also cheap for insurance

Car insurance question?

Would my car insurance be any higher if i got a ford escape rather than a car? My parents wont let me get a Chevy Tahoe for my graduation because they said SUVs make the car insurance go up really high, so would my insurance go up alot if i got a Ford Escape, since its not as big as a Tahoe.""

Car insurance rates for a honda civic lx?

hello, trying to get my own car, and i found a 2005 honda civic, im 19 (male) in NC and have been driving for over 3 years now, i dont have any points or spending tickets on my record, its completely clean can anybody tell me an estimate on insurance rates for this car? or the cheapest way to insure this car for me any help would be great""

Average insurance cost for teen drivers in Ohio?

Can anyone give me an estimate by any chance? I know the best way is to just get a quote but right now I'm trying to get some figures up there before I convince my mom into getting a quote.

Are dental hygienists offered group health insurance or do they always have to get their own?

Are dental hygienists responsible for their own health insurance or is it common place to have the employer (aka dentist) offer group plans? With some past medical history I am finding it hard to find individual plans without denial or outrageous premiums (planning to go through DH school and need insurance for that)     Anyone?

Is this considered Expensive Health Insurance????

This is my firsft full time job with insurance out of college now. I was wondering if you thought it was expensive since I am new to this. It is 186 a month and I make 2200 a month. It does seem pretty good though, is this decent insurance?... No deductible. Doctors visits: 100% paid after a $30 dollar co-pay for physicians and $45 for a specialist 100% paid rehab services (phys. therapy, chiropractic visits) after 30 dollar co-pay, for a max of 60 visits a year 1 eye exam every 2 years, 100% paid after a 30 dollar co pay Dental: no deductible or co-pay, 100% paid for preventative services (exam, xrays, fluoride). 90% paid for basic services (filiings). The max they pay per year is 1,000""

Have you ever gotten a car insurance quote online in Illinois?

how easy was it to get the quote? was the process confusing at all? Did the site explain what coverages you needed and why you needed them?

What happens if you get caught without auto in card in Texas in an accident in an insured car?

What happens if you get caught without auto in card in Texas in an accident in an insured car?

How much does your car insurance increase when you have two traffic violations in a year?

I was pulled over again for turning right on a no turn on red . The first time the insurance company said they wouldn't increase the premium. How much would it increase? $200 for the year? more?

How can I afford a car and insurance?

I am going into my second year of college and would like a car. I don't have a job. I have applied many places, but no luck. I don't have time during the year to work since I am a full time student, so I thought this summer I could save money if I had a job. My parents can not afford to buy me a car and provide insurance. I just want that independence.""

What are some cons of medical doctors not taking insurance?

What are some cons of medical doctors not taking insurance?

How much would insurance cost for my moped?

So I'm going to be 16 soon and I'm going to get a 50cc moped. Could someone tell me what the average cost of insurance would cost please? Thanks

Does getting married change your insurance?

I am currently covered by my parents health and dental insurance plan, but if I were to be wedded, would I no longer be able to use their insurance? I've been told that it changes, but I've also been told It is no longer like that anymore since Obamacare.""

Car insurance?

i live in northern ireland , just got a really good quote for car insurance from a company called endsleigh, i have never heard of them does anyone know if this is a good reliable company""

Question on car insurance?

My grandmother passed away, and on her car insurance, my uncle was the primary driver. Since my grandmother died and my uncle was on the policy as the primary driver, would it be ok to leave her name on the policy? We want to leave her name on it cause its the last thing that she got in her name, kind of a sentimental thing. But would it be ok to leave her name on the policy since my uncle is the primary driver? i have State Farm insurance if you need to know.""

Is Sumner Insurance a good company for auto?

I received a quote through AIS or some other multi-serve insurance quote gatherer for a good rate if I choose to pay lump sum. I don't know if Sumner Insurance is a good company and I am sort of nervous to get a policy with them. AAA for me would be 941 yr and this company is about 680 a year or 1020 if I pay in installments. It seems too good to be true, but if it were, I'd be very happy. If you know somebody who has insurance through them or have insurance through them, please let me know what you think and if they're decent.""

Auto Insurance??

I was just wondering what people thought is a good price to pay monthly for auto insurance? I went to Progressive.com and saw they have different plans available...I went with one that looked like it had a bunch of things and was around 94ish dollars a month...couple of questions though What is the average you think I should pay? (No traffic violations in the last x amt of years, not since 98, fyi) Also, do you think its worth it for more fuller coverage if I'm going to actually own the car outright and not make payments? Is it worth it to select the rental insurance as one of the options? I don't know anything about what I should get, any help is appareciated!""

Legal question about car insurance?

I bought a car off of my coworker a few months back, and everything is in my name. I had paid for insurance but I was going through a rough patch and it lapsed. My mother, whom is living with me, decided to be nice and pay for a month of insurance, through a new company. This is a new policy, as my old one had lapsed. Recently though, my mother and myself have had a falling out. She's holding my car over my head. She says since she paid for a month of insurance she has free reign over using my car. The car is in my name, and as far as I'm aware based on documents the insurance is as well. The only difference is she paid for that one month of insurance for me. And that month she paid for is still active. So like I said, she is holding the car over my head. I left my house the other night with my car key so she couldn't use it - This is after everyone I asked that I knew told me to take the keys. She is also living with me, I am renting the home. She is making threats through text messages saying that if I don't return the car key she will cancel my policy. Is that possible for her to do? She just paid for a month of insurance, and I believe I'm completely in control of my policy. I don't believe it can be cancelled through her calling. Is that possible? Anyone know? So not only do I own the car, I also rent the house. Legally I don't believe she can hold my own car over my head. Also, to add... After taking my keys, I left my home and went to a my girlfriends to get away for a while. Since I have taken my car keys, she has taken and hid my car battery to insure that I am unable to remove my car from my property. She refuses to give it back because she paid for my one month of insurance to start my policy again... So my questions... 1. Is it possible for her to cancel my insurance is the car is in my name, and if the policy, I believe, is also in my name? 2. Legally, can I call the local police department and have her surrender both my car, as well as it's car battery to me? I don't have my registration information on me, she removed that from the car as well. But a quick look up on my license, as well as my car insurance card that I have should be enough to validate it is indeed my car, correct?""

Does anyone know a good insurance company that will insure a young driver on a sports car?

i'm buying a convertible with a 1.8 engine i'm having trouble finding quotes below 4000, if anyone could suggest some cheap insurance companies that would be great!""

Audi a4 2003 insurance cost?

i have a 2005 honda civic lx, and im planning to buy a audi a4. currently im paying 110 for insurance, how much more expensive would my insurance be if i decide to buy an audi""

First car?? very cheap budget wear and what should i be looking to purchase?

ok im in uk got a budget of around 500 max im 17 so insurance will be bowt 1k third party what ever car i get i need simple ideas on a how to get a small cheap first car if you know anything about insurance then i want it cheap and yes i am short of cash as u may have gatherd also what good sound systems should i look to get once ive paid for everything thats what ill be saving for next....

What happens if you get in a accident with no insurance?

I got in an accident today. It wasn't my car it was my moms, I gave the cop my license, registration, and insurance. However, I didn't know that the insurance was lapsed. It hadn't been paid. There wasn't any damage to the lady's car, and minimal damage to mine. Me and the women were getting ready to take off, but a cop came up, and said that because it was a main road, that we needed to fill out an accident report. She isn't gonna call her insurance company, but if she does, and they find out there wasn't insurance, are there fines to pay, do they take the car? I know I'll have to pay for whatever damages she may have on her car out of my pocket.""

How can i get affordable car insurance for myself?

i have really struggled to find my own car insurance, i am 18 years old, i have taken pass plus, at the moment i am on my mums insurance, i do have a part time job, do you have any suggestions or ideas for affordable car insurance for someone of my age?""

How much would my car insurance cost?

If i were to leave my parents insurance plan, how much would it cost me for insurance per year or month? I am 18 years old with no accident records, no criminal records, and a drivers ed discount. My car is a 1997 Plymouth Breeze with 150k miles and its red. I still live at home. If someone is in the same kind of situation can I just get an estimate...I think this covers everything that effects car insurance for college students, and I don't have a good grade discount. Oh yeah, I am on Liberty Mutual insurance under my fathers plan.""

""Will my insurance rate in NY go up, if I get a ticket in NJ? Will pts occur on my ny license?""

I got a tixs for speeding and reckless driving (at the same time). And if my rates go up, is there a way I can get the chrages reduced to careless driving? How would I go about doing that sort of thing? Any info on this will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!""

""Got a cell phone ticket driving my friends car, will it raise her insurance rates?""

I was pulled over today by a cop. He gave me a yellow violation slip for using my cell phone. I was just checking traffic at a stop light! Ugh. Anyways, I was driving my friends car. And i'm trying to figure out if, my insurance rates will go up or will hers? Please help!!""

Anyone here have car insurance with a company called 'Ladybird'?

How much insurance do you pay and on what car?

Farm Bureau Car Insurance question?

Hi, I am wanting to go and get my full license, I'm suppose to be added to my dad's car insurance before hand though, if he has to pay $70.00 more a month, will he have to pay 70 at the exact moment that im added ? Or is that charged when I am on the insurance a complete month.""

Will my car insurance go up if this happens?

In NY, if you are under 18 and drive past 9pm you can have your license revoked for 90 days. If you are under 18 and drive past 9pm, get your license revoked, will it drive up the cost of insurance? I have State Farm insurance.""

How much does car insurance cost for a 17 year old male? Just liability not collision?

I live in Baton Rouge Louisiana

Are dental hygienists offered group health insurance or do they always have to get their own?

Are dental hygienists responsible for their own health insurance or is it common place to have the employer (aka dentist) offer group plans? With some past medical history I am finding it hard to find individual plans without denial or outrageous premiums (planning to go through DH school and need insurance for that)     Anyone?

Motorcycle Insurance in Ontario(re asked)?

Hello, I am a 20 year old female looking for motorcycle insurance for a Honda CBR 250r with an M2. I have never owned a bike before and have a clean driving record. Like most people my age it is nearly impossible to get insurance that is affordable if you are under the age of 25. If anyone knows of an insurance company/brokerage that would give a quote below 2.5k a year please give me any way I can contact them. I live in the Ottawa area if that is any help as well.""

How much is car insurance for a 16 year old?

I am a male and I will drive a 91 crx si . none of my parents have caused an accident.

Motorbike insurance question (UK)?

ok i am planning on building my own motorbike from scratch. i did a little bit of research into insurance costs and i can't seem to find any company that offers insurance for home built bikes. they all ask what make and model it is but how could i tell them that if i built it myself? also any suggestions of companies that would insure a home build would be help full. thanks guys & gals

Student: Buy car with years free insurance?

I'm looking to buy a new car, and I have heard that you can get special deals where you get a years free insurance. I'm 18 and have one years ncb. Does anyone now of a deal like this currently on offer? Cheers :D""

How much would car insurance be on a 2004 mustang?

i just recently bought a red 2004 Mustang V-6 convertible and i was wondering how much insurance would cost ? im pretty sure its over 100 but how much ? im 16 and its my first car , no rude comments please.""

How much would insurance cost for a 2006 V6 Tiburon 5 speed?

17 and 1/2 years old. No tickets or run ins with the cops for the past year and a half ive had my license. How much would full coverage cost for me on a v6 tiburon?

Poll: how much do you pay for car insurance?

Poll: how much do you pay for car insurance?

Insurance for a camaro...engine types?

Well I've been looking into getting a camaro but insurance may be too much. I just have a few simple questions for anyone who knows. Does the insurance company charge more for an Iroc / Z28? Would they know if you bought a camaro with a (for ex.) 377 stroker and charge more? I was looking at a camaro with an LG4 hoping the insurance would be lower but how would they know what motor it has? Also...for the winter can you temporarily take the camaro off, to put a winter car on? I don't want to be paying for insurance when its being stored. Thanks!""

Scratched a person's car? Will insurance go up?

So, I'm 17 and just got my insurance for driving a day ago. Today, as I was going home from school, I U-turned and didn't make a big enough turn and hit a person's car. I was able to make the turn after the hitting the car, but it left scratch marks and one little part of the car was hanging out slightly from the car. I left a note saying to call me. My question is, will my insurance go up for this? I just got it and all. I plan on not driving again to school...and how much does it cost to repair a person's car with scratches? (just the back corner of the car that was scratched) PLEASE HELP! :(""

Will my insurance agent report to my car bank that car is not covered no more.?

I'm with state farm. I been playing 190 monthly. Now they want me to pay 450 dollars. I just paid yesterday and my agent said my next due payment is due on 7th this month for 450 dollars. He said it was to be paid when I first got with state farm but I switched agents and now I am expected to pay next week. This is unfair and without fair notice. My insurance is going a cancle if not paid in weeks from now. What do I do. Is my car bank gonna find out car insurance got canceled. I was told it was 190 per month. I thought deposit was high but why 400 ?

Do i need to get car insurance or licsence plate?

So me nd my fiance live in phoenix az and we're planning to move back to bakersfield ca! Were driving a uhaul back and pulling our car, and our car doesn't have no car insurance or plates, do I need to get those things even tho were pulling our car? Its not that iam to lazy to get those things, it will jus save us money!""

""Which car for a 18yrs old driver, for cheap car insurance?""

Hi, I'm a 18yrs old french girl, who have my full english driving license since January. I would like to buy a car, but I would like to know which one have cheap car insurance. I already know that the car shouldnt be higher than 1.6L. I have some idea for my car like Fiat 500, Nissan Micra, but the insurance is expensive. Thank You""

How much more will my insurance charge me?

I'm about to get my license at age 18 and I want to buy a really nice turbo charged car...how much more will it be vs a non turbo car

Insurance on Mitsubishi Eclipse RS?

Right now Im a 17 year old male. I just got my stage 2 license so I can finally drive alone=D Now I'm looking to get a car. Right now I have my eyes set on a Mitsubishi Eclipse RS for the nice look, but not having too much power that would boost my insurance. I was suppose to get a mustang GT form my step dad but thats WAY too steep for me. The Mitsubishi RS has 140 HP w/ a 4cyclinder 2.0 lit engine. Would this be a good car to start with on insurance rates/would being in the national guard reduce my rates?""

Will my car insurance monthly payments increase AFTER i rent a vehicle (READ BELOW)?

I already own a 4-door sedan, which I cover with monthly insurance for a reasonable value. Although recently, I had to rent a pick-up truck from Enterprise Rent-A-Car to move some furniture from a friend's house to my place. Upon sigining of the necessary rental documents, the rental car agent and I came across the section about insuring the rented vehicle; as Enterprise Rent-a-Car will always offer their own insurance services, I mentioned to them that I already have car insurance of my own, of which I can look forward to saving the additional $39 which Enterprise Rent-a-Car originally offers. I encouraged Enterprise Rent-a-Car to contact my insurance provider so that both of us can be sure that my car insurance provider will cover the pick-up truck I am about to borrow from them. (Full coverage that is) Everything went smoothly and Enterprise Rent-a-Car agreed to insure their truck under my own car insurance. My car insurance provider also approved of my intention to borrow the truck and cover the said truck using my insurance. Two weeks later came the insurance bill, and to my wondering, I saw that my following monthly insurance payments all jacked-up their prices to one dollar addtional per month! Huh?!?!?! What could have caused this? Could it be the fact that I have had the rented pick-up truck and the request to insure the said truck under my own car insurance resulting to a somewhat considerable claim of some sort? Any opinions or personal experience you may have had? Thanks Alot YaHoO Readers/Responders! A vote comes to the most sensible and brainstormed answer!""

Is pregnancy considered a pre-existing condition in florida?

IM PREGNANT!!!! I am 7 weeks along and just found out! The problem is I start a new job next week and will not be eligible for insurance until after 90 days.. By then I will be over four months along and I'm not quite sure if they will accept me or if they will say that it is a pre-existing condition? So, my dilemma is either: pay out of pocket until my 90 days are up and hope they accept me OR apply for medicaid and use the health department? If it changes anything the insurance I would be applying for is Florida Hospital private owned insurance.""

""Help, I need suggestions for health insurance. Please and thank you. Any ideas?""

My mom got laid off last year and I was on her health insurance. I'm 18 and I attend college. I'm looking for a low cost plan that will cover vision, dental, and regular check ups. Though something without vision is good also. I have no idea where to look. I don't want medicaid. Female, 18, single, no children, no disabilities or medication. Please help.""

""Car Insurance Question, 16 year old male, looking for first car...?""

I live in NH, I am 16 years old and i want to buy a car. My parents are uneasy about having to pay for the insurance, i will buy the car, not anything crazy maybe a 2000 dodge neon of 2000 ford ranger. I don't get exceptional grades,(b- range.) What is the cheapest way to insure a car this way? Should my parents switch auto insurers? My parents already own two cars, what is the difference of adding a third? THANKS!""

My Insurance auto accident settlement?

I was recently in a car accident where a Nissan truck ran into the back of another car that then ran into the back of me causing $2000 worth of damage to the rear of my infiniti. I received moderate whiplash to my neck and had to be taken to the hospital. I checked out without any broken bones and was prescribed medication. I went to see a chiropractor and he has been working on my neck for a couple days which makes it feel a better. Im 100% not at fault and the insurance company has taken care of my car repair, rental, and medical bills. They ask me How much do I think I want for this accident for pain and suffering. I believe I am entitled to at least $3500-5000 for my suffering I live in NC. I believe $5000 is a reasonable consider the circumstances. I could have lost my life, broke my neck and been paralyzed for life. Thank the lord that I received only a whiplash. The stress that I am undergoing, the constant pain in my neck is a reminder of the accident, which I feel fearful of driving. The time I spent recovering could have been spent enjoying my life. Besides getting behind in my school work, I am absent from my student organization at school which I am a key figure ( president AGC). I don't enjoy waking up with cramps and headaches nor do I like to take prescription pills, and therapy. I don't want to be compensation a insufficient amount that wont even cover pain and suffering I went though. It seems like you people are on the side of the insurance company and not the victims in this situation. I wonder if any of you have ever been in an automobile accident and if you have must share some sort of empathy of what I am reiterating.""

How soon until my fiances Insurance covers me getting married next week URGENT?

I just got diagnosed with Breast cancer and I don't have insurance my fianc has great insurance though his work and we are getting married next weekend. He has group insurance will it cover me and how soon.. Pre existing condition?

Cheap/Affordable Car insurance for a 20 year old Driver?

Hey guys, I've had my license for a couple of months (Just turned 20) and I was wondering where or how I'd be able to get the cheapest possible insurance. Also, is there any ways around it? like putting it under my Dads name lool? Thanks!!""

What insurance policies are available for an online real estate business?

How does insurance helps to secure any online business ? What are the prime areas of concern that need to be addressed?

How do i fight GAP insurance?

hello.... so i purchased a vehicle in 2006..... didn't like it too much so i took it back to dealership and traded it for a different vehicle and bought full warranty on it. dealership said the warranty was good for 50000 miles or 4 years. the vehicle was totaled just recently and i owed about 7500 dollars on it. my insurance paid 6100 dollars for it and i was thinking ok no problem the gap will cover the rest , but the gap insurance is only paying 212 dollars on it. they said there was some left over loan on my old car which they will not cover... i don't know much this insurance crap but its really breaking my balls that i will have to paying almost a 1000 dollars out of my own pocket. is there any i can fight gap insurance and have them pay the entire left over loan??""

New driver car insurance?

How exactly do you get/where can you find cheaper car insurance for new drivers?

Insurance for a motorcycle 125cc in ireland?

I am 19 and I would like to find out how much insurance would be for a motorcycle 125cc. What about a Honda CBR 125 insurance. I would be a beginner. From dublin ireland If anyone could recommend a 125cc that would have cheap insurance? Thanks

Are dental hygienists offered group health insurance or do they always have to get their own?

Are dental hygienists responsible for their own health insurance or is it common place to have the employer (aka dentist) offer group plans? With some past medical history I am finding it hard to find individual plans without denial or outrageous premiums (planning to go through DH school and need insurance for that)     Anyone?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/affordable-health-insurance-sean-james/"

[lightandmatter]

Backup or a Laptop Alternative?

At first glance, it appears to be just another portable hard-drive, but Gnarbox promotes their device as an alternative to carrying a laptop while traveling in the back-country. It contains a quad-core processor and 256GB of solid-state storage, and apps that allows you to control it through your smart phone or tablet. But it’s not cheap. The Western Digital MyPassport Wireless Pro also contains a CPU, a dual-core Realtek RTD1195PN, which helps allow the device to run apps like Plex Server and simultaneously stream multiple videos to several connected devices, it costs half as much as the Gnarbox, and the version that I tested contains a 2TB hard-drive. Which one makes more sense for a working photographer to carry? Let’s take a look. Note: Gnarbox provided me an early unit for testing.[9. Gnarbox provided me with a review unit for free, but I did not receive and will not receive in the future any financial compensation for referrals, purchases, clicks or anything else from the company. I purchased the WD unit myself, and also have no ongoing relationship with the company. I try to remain as objective as possible in my reviews, but as with anything you read on the internet, take this with a grain of salt.]

  [/media-credit] Resting on a thick bed of moss, the Western Digital MyPassport Wireless Pro (left) and the Gnarbox 256GB (right) are both portable, but the Gnarbox is more compact.

Build

The Gnarbox was designed for back-country use, and it shows. Its rugged, rubberized case has two weather sealed doors protecting the card-reader slots and cable ports, and just as importantly, the inner workings of the box contain no moving parts (it uses solid-state memory rather than a spinning hard-drive), making it much more shock resistant. If you’re hiking through snowy conditions or rafting to your next destination, you can be pretty sure that your data will be safe in the Gnarbox. It’s not tiny like a plain external SSD, but it is still nice and compact: 5.25 inches by 3.4, and about one inch thick.

[media-credit id=1 align=”aligncenter” width=”740″][/media-credit]

If ease of access is more important to you, then the Passport Wireless’s ports and slots are not hidden behind stiff doors that sometimes need to be pried open with a coin[1. My Gnarbox is new, and perhaps will loosen up with age, but for now it’s a pain to open the side doors without a tool or gloves.], so they’re easy to get to. The body of the drive is a square (about 5 x 5 inches, and 7/8ths inch thick) of normal drive-enclosure plastic, and a bit bigger than the Gnarbox, though not as thick. It’s not especially grippy, and I almost immediately dropped mine on some rocks and dinged up a corner (visible in the photo at the top of the page), but it still works for the moment.

Takeaway: If you work around town, then the Passport’s build and accessibility make it great for backing up data while on the go, but if you need something to count on in rough conditions, the Gnarbox is much more likely to protect your data.

Functionality

Connections & Speed

Let’s start with Wi-Fi. Both devices provide the option to connect directly to the drive’s WiFi hot-spot, at which point the drive can be controlled by an app (we’ll get to the apps in more detail later). Additionally, though, the WD Passport can be connected directly to an existing WiFi network so that it can be accessed as a network drive. Not only can the drive then be shared by a team that’s working on a project together (the Gnarbox supports multiple direct connections), it also means that you can continue using your WiFi internet at the same time… not currently possible with the Gnarbox[2. Tim at Gnarbox assures me that this will be possible in the future with their v2.0 OS.]. This is great if you’re in a hotel room and are working with the drive while also streaming music or pulling video clips from a remote drive, for example.

When it comes to hard connections, the Gnarbox offers more flexibility. While the WD has an SD card slot, the Gnarbox has full-size and micro-SD card slots, and though the WD has a full-size USB 3.0 port, the Gnarbox has full size USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, and they both have one of those weird-shaped USB 3.0-sized ports that can accept a micro-USB plug in the right half (see photo below if you’re confused).

[/media-credit] The Gnarbox’s card slots and USB ports. Note the far-right USB port, which is marked with “micro” in fine print below. This will accept a micro-USB cable.

For Backup

On the Gnarbox, you can backup images (or simply transfer images from one drive to another) by connecting the drive/card, selecting the files in the Gnarbox app, and pressing the “Copy” button. This prompts you to select a copy location, either on the Gnarbox or another connected device. It’s not as streamlined or intuitive as it could be[4. Initially, I was hesitant to press the “Copy” button because I didn’t know whether that was going to copy the images to my phone or transfer them to the Gnarbox or what. “Transfer”  or “Import” would probably be a better label, there.], perhaps, but the added flexibility of attaching external drives is great, especially considering the fact that the internal storage is only 256GB.

These days, 256GB doesn’t go as far as you might think. It’s not uncommon for me to shoot 64GB at a basketball tournament in a single day on a Canon 5D Mark III, and if I’m shooting wildlife and landscape work, I prefer to shoot with the 5DS R, and shooting a couple thousand shots with that sensor (not uncommon when I’m shooting birds) can quickly balloon to 128GB. If you’re shooting DSLR video, your drive space will disappear even more quickly. With the Gnarbox, you can easily connect a second portable drive like a $100 WD MyPassport (4TB) (or a smaller, faster external SSD), but it also makes the Gnarbox a less compact, elegant storage solution.

[/media-credit] The MyPassport’s ports are all visible here: a USB 3 charging port, another full-size USB port to connect devices, and on the adjoining face, a full-size SD card slot.

On the WD MyPassport Wireless Pro, you start with quite a bit more storage space at 2TB (or more, depending on the model). For simple operation, you have the option of setting the drive so that any time an SD card is inserted into the slot, it automatically imports all of the files to the drive. Alternately, you can open the WD MyCloud App on your phone and (if the app doesn’t crash, as it often does for me), you can press the MyPassport “settings” icon, then “SD Card Import”, and then “Import” from the card. Why this common function is hidden under the “settings” menu I can’t begin fathom, but it works simply enough once you know where it is. There is a similar option for importing from connected USB devices (including card-readers), but there’s no option to transfer files from one external drive to another, though that’s not much of a concern with so much storage space to begin with.

Takeaway: If you’re just looking for a quick backup and storage solution between shoots in town, the WD MyPassport is cheaper, simpler, and offers more storage, though you’ll need an SD Card adapter for your micro-SD cards. The Gnarbox is also fast and efficient for the job, but if you just use it for backup, you’d be wasting its processing power rugged build (and your money). If you’ll be spending more than a few days in the field, you may want to consider an external SSD to attach to the Gnarbox.

For Image & Video Editing

Before anything else, let me make it clear that the both devices have differing functionality on Apple and Android devices. With both devices on iOS, you can mount the drive and use it as a connected network drive, and browse and edit photos in Lightroom, for example. This is not possible on Android, currently.

I tested them both on Android.

On the Gnarbox, using the Gnarbox app, you get quite a bit of functionality. Once you’ve imported your images and video, you can browse them all (arranged by date) from the app. Photos (JPG and RAW) can also be edited for posting to the web, though the Gnarbox app’s editing capabilities are not as sophisticated as something like Lightroom. Editing is non-destructive and adjustments include the expected (cropping, exposure, shadows, highlights, contrast, black point, white point, midpoint, temperature, tint, saturation) and also a couple of sliders that are a bit baffling to an Adobe user (punch, intensity) which must be combinations of contrast, saturation and other tonal adjustments, though exactly what they do is still not clear to me. Still, the basics are covered.

It can also be used for video editing, making use of the Gnarbox’s CPU to keep things smooth and fast. Individual clips can be edited with the same basic adjustments as still images, and you can drag the beginning and endpoints in to trim clip length. Additionally, each clip can be added to the work-space called the “highlight reel”, where you can order and arrange the clips into a longer video, and also add music. It’s remarkably quick and easy to use, though it doesn’t have the power of a workstation video editor (and there are no tools for text overlays, different transitions, audio editing, etc). You’re not going to produce a feature film with it, but even for a high-quality YouTube video, it could be enough. The nice thing is that you can work with large HD or 4K files while only dealing with smaller, proxy files on your phone, which keeps things quick and smooth.

The basic video clip editing options on the Gnarbox. Adjustment controls are the same as those available for still images.

The Highlight Reel view has an audio mixer (clip sounds vs music) and a hit-point marker for the video.

In the music editor section, the sole control is the “hit point”, which you can sync with a moment of intense action in the video.

Problems? The audio functionality is pretty lame[6. This is unfortunately true of most mobile apps, not just the Gnarbox. The only app that I’ve found with decent audio editing for Android is PowerDirector, so far.]. You can add a single music track, but that’s it… no voice-over, no sound effects, no combining of multiple recorded files. This pretty much means that, unless you want to follow the same audio formula with all of your videos, you’re going to have to use some work-around. The easiest may be to produce the video portion using the Gnarbox, then export it (potentially as a small, SD file) and move it to your phone, then open it in a separate audio/video editor (like PowerDirector on Android or LumaFusion on iOS) to work with the audio. If you decide to use an SD video file for this purpose, you can then arrange the audio in your audio editor, export it as an audio file, import it into the Gnarbox app instead of a music file, and re-export it as a high-definition file. Yes, that seems like a bit of a mess.

Alternately, you could produce the audio portion on your phone/tablet first… assuming that you can do it without a video file for reference… and then simply load that as the music track in the Gnarbox, and create the video around it.

Using the WD My Cloud App, you get basic file-browser functionality. It’s not exactly beautiful, but it’s familiar and easy to use.

By selecting the “Photo” tab, you can browse thumbnails of your JPGs, but not RAW files.

Third-party apps like Photo Mate R3, pictured here, allow you to browse RAW files from the drive, but as you can see, rating is not supported over the network connection.

Similarly, any attempt to open network files in the develop module results in an error message. Photos can be moved to the phone for editing, however.

On the WD MyPassport Wireless Pro, there are no built-in photo or video editing options. You can browse thumbnails of JPGs, but not RAW files[8. The new WD My Passport Wireless SSD claims to have support for RAW files, but since it uses the same app as a browser, it’s unclear what that means.]. Rather than using the WD MyCloud App, you can directly play videos with Android apps like VLC, which is nice[3. There’s plenty of room on the drive for storing movies, if you want to tote them along to watch on the plane or in your tent/hotel room.] However, after exhaustive search, I could not find any Android apps that would allow me to connect to the MyPassport via the network connection and edit photos or videos. Photo Mate R3 came the closest: it allows you to browse network drives, and it has support for RAW files, and even PSD files, but you still can’t edit them. If you have sufficient storage space on your phone, you could import the clips/images that you want to work with, and then save the results to the WD drive again, but you won’t get the speed advantages of the Gnarbox’s CPU… you essentially reduce the Passport’s role to that of an oversized MicroSD card (perhaps that alone would be worth it, if your phone doesn’t have a MicroSD card slot).

Problems? The big one is the complete lack of editing capabilities of photos and videos on the drive. But even the WD My Cloud app is much less stable than I’d expect for such a big company, with the app frequently crashing for me. When it’s stable, the thumbnails for images often go blank, as though the cache has been lost and refreshing does not help matters.

Takeaway: If you’re an Android user and want to edit photos and videos using the power of your backup drive, the Gnarbox is the clear winner.

For General Use

It’s worth mentioning that both units can be used as powerbanks to recharge your phone or tablet, if necessary. That’s pretty handy. The Gnarbox battery is only a 4000mAh, about the size of a phone battery, so it’s best for emergency use, but the WD is a bit bigger at 6400mAh.

The Gnarbox is ultimately a great tool for specialized use: photo/video editing and mobile backup. If you want to use it for other purposes, though, it’s not as flexible. It’s not easy to just use it as a wireless network drive for your desktop computer at home, for example. And currently, it doesn’t support media streaming apps like Plex or Twonky servers. In an interview with Gnarbox CEO Tim Feess at PhotoPlus in October of 2017, I was told that in the future, Gnarbox may become an open platform and support a variety of different apps, but that time has not yet arrived.

A playlist in PLEX on the WD My Passport

Movie details in the Plex interface from the WD My Passport.

On the other hand, the WD MyPassport is exactly a general purpose device. It’s easy to connect it to a home or office WiFi network to be shared by multiple users. There’s no easy to way to install new apps on it (to run from the unit’s processor), but it does come with built-in support for Plex and Twonky, so streaming music and videos from it is simple from anywhere. You can even use it in your car, if you want to avoid streaming from your phone’s data plan. But of course, these don’t solve the problems of a working photographer.

Conclusion & Recommendations

If you are legitimately working in remote, harsh locations, then the Gnarbox is really the best option there is, especially if you can use it in conjunction with a tablet or phone to eliminate the need for a laptop and its weight. The Gnarbox’s build will keep your data safe through rainstorms and bumps along the trail, and it will allow you to get some of your basic photo editing and video production accomplished as you go. That said, if you shoot a lot of video or have a high megapixel sensor, you may need to supplement it with an external SSD or hard drive. Most people will probably only need the internal storage of the Gnarbox 256GB, though. The extra cost will be worth the security and functionality when you really need it.

If you’re a photographer who spends most of your time in the city, or even traveling between cities and primarily needs quick backup space rather than processing power, the WD MyPassport Pro Wireless (2TB) has about as much storage space as 8 Gnarboxes, and is better suited to casual use, like streaming music and videos during your downtime. And of course, it costs significantly less. If you’re an Android user, it won’t be much help for image editing, but iOS users may get more use out of it.

Either way, if you shoot with a Canon 5D series camera or a similar body that uses CF cards rather than SD, make sure that you get a fast, USB 3.0 card-reader to connect to your device for fast data dumps.

[/media-credit] The Gnarbox connected to a CF card reader and external hard drive through it’s two full-size USB ports.

And finally, as I was preparing this review for publication, Western Digital announced a new version of their MyPassport Wireless Pro at CES 2018. It appears to be identical except for an orange stripe and the inclusion of solid-state drives (500GB, 1TB, 2TB) rather than spinning plates, and of course, there’s the expected increase in price to go along with them ($350, $600, $900). After a cursory examination of these new models, my recommendations remain the same.

Price and Availability

The Gnarbox 256GB model costs $399, and a 128GB is still available for $299, and they’re available at Amazon, B&H, and Adorama. The WD My Passport Wireless Pro 2TB costs $149, with larger a larger 4TB version costing $229. These are also available at Amazon, but can typically be found at your local Best Buy or other consumer electronics stores as well. The new SSD models can be found online now, and will probably be available in stores soon.

GNARBOX 256 vs WD My Passport Wireless Pro : Which is Best for Backup & Mobile Editing? Backup or a Laptop Alternative? At first glance, it appears to be just another portable hard-drive, but Gnarbox promotes their device as an alternative to carrying a laptop while traveling in the back-country.

[geekade]

The Wild World of USB-C

Disclaimer: As of the publication of this article, the information within is likely either partially or completely dated. Such is the nature of consumer electronics.

Introduction

As a computer/technology enthusiast with a massively swinging love/hate relationship with electronics, I often find myself looking forward to what’s just around the corner. Certainly, as technology has (quite arguably) improved our lives, it must continue to do so with new developments and innovations, right? Well, sort of. I’m looking forward right now to USB-C, and by USB-C, I pretty much mean Thunderbolt 3, but don’t let me confuse you (which is probably what I’m about to do), because those terms are not interchangeable.

Recently, I was setting up one of my many (unnecessarily numerous) computers in my office, struggling with reaching under desks and behind PC towers and dropping lines behind immovable furniture and I was just sort of wistfully daydreaming of all of the existing technologies I wish had come to proper fruition. After that massive unnecessary hassle was wrapped up and I consoled myself with a toasted cheese sandwich, I thought along the lines of “How would I like this to be? What new thing is on its way that’s going to make this all better?” and most of it can be boiled down to USB-C and Thunderbolt 3. The good news is, it’s here! The bad news is, it’s nuts.

As it is now, we can all mostly wrap our minds around the status quo. Our computers and power bricks have USB ports and we can plug pretty much everything into those. We have to deal with different ports for different devices (phones, televisions, headphones, etc.), but again, there is usually at least some level of standardization. (I’m looking at you, Apple). We have these ports surrounding us all the time in our everyday lives and they’re fine. They’re fine!

But “What if… What if,” says the industry at large, “what if we could make ONE port that would do EVERYTHING?”

Okay. I’m listening.

“Yes,” says the industry, “USB-C will be the port to end all ports! We will have a transition period which we will handle through adapters...”

“...and then we’ll be home free in a future where anything plugs into anything and it will work!”

Not so fast. It’s understandable. Not everything can be USB-C-ready immediately. Ideally, we’d see new devices coming out like PCs and laptops with old ports and USB-C together to tide us over until most things we plug in also switch to USB-C. At least the rest of the manufacturers are taking a bit more of a paced approach with the recommended blending of old ports and new USB-C ports. Windows users can look forward to their next computer likely having USB, HDMI, and USB-C ports and they’ll be fine as long as the computer itself works. USB-C ports are showing up. New Samsung phones have them. New Google phones have them. New PCs have them. New Apple laptops have them. And they can do so much!

What Can USB-C Do For You?

USB-C isn’t just for charging your phone. You’ll be able to charge your whole laptop over USB-C too! Apple’s already doing that, so is Samsung. You can also move data over USB-C, of course, and faster than ever. But that’s not all! Eventually, you’ll be able to plug in monitors and TVs, even in 4K, with USB-C, and you can right now with the appropriate dongles (insert eyeroll emoji). What’s more, you can expect to get higher quality audio than ever before in your speakers and your headphones with USB-C, also, for now, with dongles. More dongles. And through the magic of dongles, USB-C will be compatible with anything USB-A as well. PLUS, I almost forgot to mention, it’s reversible! Upside down, right side up, doesn’t matter. The damn cable will just plug in, instead of having to flip it three times because it didn’t work that way, but it doesn’t work this way either, but it suddenly works the first way even though it didn’t the first time.

When you find yourself a USB-C port, you can rest almost 100% assured it will handle data at USB 3.0 speeds of 5 Gb/s (Gigabits per second) at least and that’s plenty fast for all common uses today like external hard drives. That USB-C port will also put out enough to charge your phone in a few hours, maybe faster. If you plug in your upcoming USB-C headphones (or your USB-C to headphone dongle), odds are, you’ll get sound. This is fine. We can deal with this. So that about wraps it up. Let’s get going toward this utopian future of a single cable and connector for everything! Not so fast there, bucko. Not all USB-C ports are created equal.

The Darkest Timeline

Sometimes, that port will look physically the same, but it will carry data at a ridiculously slower speed of USB 2.0. I have never seen this in the wild, but the same people who tell you there are monsters under your bed promise that this backward technology exists and I hate those people for the message they carry.

Sometimes, that port will look physically the same, but it will carry data at twice the speed (USB 3.1 - 10 Gb/s). It will most likely handle all of the other things the same. And in the not too distant future, that physically identical port could be carrying data four times faster than USB 3.0, when they get around to implementing USB 3.2 which works at 20 Gb/s AND does phone charging AND does audio. So what’s the big deal?

Some of those USB-C ports, like some of the ones found on some laptops, like Apple’s, will let you charge the laptop through that port IF the other end of the cable is plugged into a suitable source, like something heftier than your regular phone charging brick. But some will not. And if you’re very, very lucky, the port will be labeled in a way that will indicate whether this is possible or not. But it probably won’t be.

Some of those USB-C ports, again, like some of the ones found on some laptops like Apple’s, will support display outputs (sigh, yes, with dongles). But some won’t. And again, the manufacturers are incredibly bad at labeling things and it is more likely than not that they won’t. Like, the one on my very own computer tower here. No label. Doesn’t support laptop charging OR displays, only data.

So if you don’t care about having the fastest speeds, or plugging in external displays, or charging your laptop (which is the trickiest to not care about), you’re golden. Just find any old USB-C port and plug in. But my point, the whole point of this tedious article, is that we have been promised the world, and we’ve been let down by too many possibilities deemed optional by manufacturers and most egregiously, a decided lack of proper labeling and documentation. How are we to know that our do-anything ports can do anything or not? As if from the heavens themselves, our cries are answered. Look for a tiny lightning bolt.

The Blade of Computer Ports

Remember that Thunderbolt 3 thing I mentioned at the top? Thunderbolt 3 is another layer of technology that exists on top of USB-C and adds even more functionality. It gives you up to four times the speed of USB-C, depending on which version of USB it’s based on, at 40 Gb/s. It also allows direct PCI Express bus transfers for absurdly fast solid state storage and crazy things like high end external graphics cards. It’s compatible with any rare thing out there that is Thunderbolt 2 or 1 based as well. But maybe most importantly of all? It will support all of the features USB-C could possibly do, from fast data transfer to audio to displays to charging whatever. It does it all and then some. Nice.

Obviously this added bonus of doing everything requires more internal technology and therefore commands a higher price therefore being less common than just finding some kind of USB-C port. But if you DO get yourself a Thunderbolt 3 port, you can rest assured you’re not missing out on anything. (Aside from that whole let’s sweep this under the rug thing where the ports on the right side of the 2017 Apple MacBook Pros only work at half speed for uncertain reasons but hey who can afford those things anyway?)

As a severe sufferer of FOMO, Thunderbolt 3 is the port for me. All of the features, none of the drawbacks. It’s basically the Blade of computer ports. But until that great and glorious day when, after winning a lottery and paying off my bills, I can buy all the new computer kit I can dream of, I will continue to plug away (no pun intended) at my aging workstation with its tangled rat’s nest of myriad cables dreaming of better futures of daisy chained displays and single cable/port solutions running everything at ludicrous speeds. My only hope is that in this rambling rant produced of a sleep-deprived mind, a warning about the caveats of new technologies in transitional periods might have gotten across and given you a reasonably entertaining heads-up at what might turn up missing in your next PC.

Will you be desperately badly off if your ports are only USB 3.1 and not USB 3.2? No, probably not. Does it matter if the USB-C on my desktop computer can’t charge my new laptop directly? No, probably not. But the whole point is that we’ve been shown a giant feature set, and manufacturers are cherry-picking whatever capabilities they feel like selecting and then just tossing them in and touting the virtues of just “having USB-C.” If there is a particular feature you are looking forward to, you’ll have to dig around in specifications or reviews to find out if that is, in fact, included.

[ask-de-writer]

HICCUPS!  : MLP Fan Fiction : A Work In Progress

As usual for works in progress, new parts and changes to older ones are done in Boldface type.

HICCUPS!

A Grumpy Goat <tail>

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

10601 words so far, this is a WORK IN PROGRESS

© 2019 by Glen Ten-Eyck

Writing begun 11/30/18

All rights reserved.  This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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Characters:

Grumpy Goat and usual cast

Thomas/and/or/Dashie Writer – remote controlled T82

Wind, the Mama Cat

Victor Mordenheim  - Mad Doctor

Krystal Dragoness “KD” Wingless dragon - artist

Fume Hood Unicorn, a bit small-Forensic Chemist

Jinni and Sassy vampire and succubus

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

It was being a quiet day out on the ledge in front of my cave.  We were sitting on a bench, out in the sun, rereading Daring Do and the Secret of the Appleoosa Cave.  The stout iron sheeting that blocked the entrance to my cave was warm behind us.

The lovely Coalsmoke, a pony of perfect glossy black except for her cutie mark, was leaning over where my shoulder would be, if I still had a body, or for that matter was even technically alive.  She was admiring one of the illustrations in the book.

“I especially like these illustrations signed KD, Grumpy.  They capture the mood and action really well.”

Sitting on my other side was the finely polished skeleton of an alicorn.  He was the Litch King, Lord of the Dead, the being responsible for my present condition and now one of my few true friends.

He agreed, “Look at how well the artist has made the cave entrance look menacing.  Whoever did this is very good.”

We were distracted from our pleasant reading by a flare of flame down on the trail leading up to my cave.  Looking down the way, I was more or less expecting it to be the torches of another anti goat mob or, more specifically anti Grumpy Goat mob.  

Due to my business, I am less than popular with some ponies.  I have a thriving practice in Non Equine Magic.  Mostly, it does not appear to do anything.  Somehow, the desired, contracted for and paid in advance results just seem to happen by perfectly natural, if often bizarre means.

This time, it was not a mob.  There was a wingless blue dragon toiling up the stony path to my cave.  The next time that she flared, we could hear it.  It sounded like she was suffering from a case of hiccups! Possibly not the best ailment for a dragon to have, since she was burping a smallish fire blast with each hiccup!

When she gained the ledge, she considerately turned her head out away from us. Good thing, too!  She had two hiccups in quick succession!

She offered, “My name is Krystal Dragoness, KD for short.  I've come to you about these hiccups.  They are like to ruin me.  I am at my wit's end.  See, I am an artist.  I draw and paint.  I get going on a piece and these hiccups start up!  One of them is sure to hit my work, and, well, paper, paints, canvas and frames are all pretty flammable! I've even burned up brushes!

“Can you help me to end these hiccups?”

I nodded, making my skull, apparently floating on nothing, with its everburning candle between the horns, glowing snake like eyes and fangs bob.  “I could do that, yes.  It would not cure the basic problem, though. Hiccups usually have a natural cause from tummy and lungs not coordinating right.  If I fix this case, it could easily happen again.

“Let's dig into how this started and whether there is some underlaying cause that we can fix.”

Somewhat disappointed, Krystal nodded.  “That makes sense.  My first case of the hiccups like this happened at my one dragon show in the Sunrise Gallery in Manehatten.  You know how those things are, lots of nobs that you need to chat with and lots of small snacks and drinks.  The show itself was a pretty important one.  

“I landed a contract to illustrate the next Daring Do book.  There was some serious competition for that contract, let me tell you.  It nearly went to Drawin Pitcher.  She wasn't too happy about me getting to do the art for another Daring Do book.  This one will be my fourth.

“I had only just signed the contract when the hiccups started. The first one nearly incinerated my new contract! I was able to get out of the gallery safely when they began.  I was lucky that I didn't hurt anypony or any of my art.”  

She absently pulled a sparkly topped muffin out of a bag and began munching it.  Looking up, a bit embarrassed, she pointed out, “I really can't share dragon muffins with you.  They are topped with crushed gems and have gold or silver dust in the muffin part.  I'm afraid that they are pretty toxic to non dragons.”

Coalsmoke asked curiously, “Where did you get them?  No place in Ponyville makes them at all.  Sometimes the kitchen in Princess Twilight's castle makes up some for Spike but they never sell them.”

Krystal knit her brows in puzzlement.  “I get them out of this bag.  I always like have them when I am a little tense, like when I am concentrating on my art.  Nibbling helps me to focus.”

Just then, she let out another small belch of fire.

Whistling softly, I thought carefully about what I had heard.  “Tell me, Krystal, at the art show, did you have muffins like these?”

“Well, yes.  Any well equipped bakery can make them.  They just have to clean up carefully afterwards.  They always serve them if I am going to be showing any of my works.”

I nodded and looked over at the lovely Coalsmoke, who is always a treat for the ol' eyeballs and asked, “And where have you bought them since that art show in Manehatten?”

She paused, thinking.  “I haven't had to.  This bag always has some in it.”

The eyes that I don't really have widened just a bit.  “It always has some of those muffins in it for you?  When did you get that bag?”

She scratched behind the spines along the back of her jaw as she sorted it out.  “I first noticed it just after I left the gallery at the show where I got those first hiccups.  It's always there when I am tense.”

I glamored my invisible spirit body to look like the handsome tan, black and brown goat that I was before the tiny mistake that killed me and destroyed my original body.  Holding out a hoof, I said, “Just give me the bag, please.  I am going to try something simple with it.”

Nodding affably, Krystal handed me the bag.  I took it inside my cave and shut the iron door.  That door and my cave front were designed by a good firm of military engineers to withstand an Equestrian standard military battering ram.  

It only takes one anti-goat mob burning your house, your library, years of study, hopes for a degree and dreams of well paying work to make one take a few simple precautions.  Add the mob trying to stone your burned and battered body to death to drive home the lesson in how how to hate most ponies.  That trivial incident also motivated my simple and sensible precautions against a repeat of the problem.  Like living in a cave.  With a military fortress grade steel and iron entrance.

I turned about from sealing the door and asked Krystal if she was still feeling tense.  Digging into the bag for a muffin, she replied, “Yes, a little.  Why?”

The Litch King pointed with a foreleg of bone.  “That is why.  He just shut that bag inside his cave and it looks like you have it back.”

He turned his skeletal head to me and stated, “Grumpy, if you can, we NEED to help KD.  Her illustrations really make a Daring Do book!  Plus, we know now that a new one is in the works!  We can't let anything interfere with THAT!”

I shrugged and opened the door.  I was not even surprised that the bag was not there inside my cave any longer.  Krystal munched her muffin and shortly hiccuped another tongue of flame.

I pointed out, “That bag was behind six centimeters of forged iron.  In spite of that, it homed in on you without seeming effort.  Moments after you nibbled that muffin, you hiccuped another flame.  I suspect that there is a direct connection.  To be sure, we need to go back down into Ponyville.  I know someone in the forensic chemistry lab at the police department.  In the meantime, try not to nibble another muffin and let us see if that helps to control or stop the problem.”

On the trail back down to Ponyville, Coalsmoke and I tried to simply hold the bag instead of letting Krystal carry it.  This wise measure proved impossible.  The bag kept sneakily returning to her claws. After what happened up on the ledge in front of my cave, that was pretty much what was expected.

I have to admit that I was pleased by the simple fact that Krystal did keep her claws out of the bag.  We got down the trail and into Ponyville without incident as a result.

Instead of my usual turning towards the town hall and the Hall of Records, to record a new contract, I trotted right on, with a right turn, headed towards the Ponyville Waste Treatment Plant and Falmire Marsh, which is fenced and actually the final stage of the waste water treatment, before it goes into the river.

Coalsmoke was most interested in why we were going where we were going.  Soon enough, we came to a modest stone building close by to the treatment plant.  The sign said,

Ponyville Police Department

Forensics Laboratory

Chemistry, Physical Evidence Analysis,

Forensic Autopsy

As I pushed open the front door, I explained, “I know most of the staff here. Sometimes they will consult with me, when a case is being a pain.”

Coalsmoke chuckled, “How often is one of their nasty cases the result of one of your contracts, Grumpy?”

A smallish unicorn looked up from where he was working at a desk, apparently compiling a report.  “Not really all that often, Miss Coalsmoke. Even when it is, there is no actual evidence that can link the contract to the results.  Grumpy is often a big help in sorting out how something that we are investigating happened.  We pay him a proper consultation fee, of course.”

I introduced, “Coalsmoke, KD, I would like you to meet Fume Hood, one of the best forensic chemists in the whole kingdom.  We are lucky to have him here in Ponyville.”

KD offered, “You have some unusual friends, Grumpy.”

I chortled, “If they aren't unusual in some way, the aren't worth having as friends.”

Turning my attention to Fume Hood, I explained what our situation was in a few words and ended with, “Think that you could do us a rough analysis of one of KD's dragon muffins?”

He thought for a moment, tapping quietly on his desk top before nodding, “You say that the flame is mostly pale blue? Nearly transparent but pretty hot?”

KD shook her head in agreement.  “Right.  That is, unless I eat something with salt in it.  Then the flame is yellow.  Is that significant?”

Fume Hood said, “It MAY be.  I would like to see both your normal flame and one from your hiccups.  Please step over there.  Dragon flame can be pretty handy for some chemistry tests, so we have a small indoor flame range.”

KD stepped over to the flame range's head rest.  Fume Hood lowered the room lights and suggested, “Whenever you are ready, Miss KD.  Just give us a small shot of your regular flame.”

KD's fire blast was impressively different from a hiccup flame.  It was a bright yellow with some red to the center and flame tips that went to a bluish hue.

Fume Hood almost danced pleasure at seeing it!  Perfect!   Normal dragon fire. Now, let's see what we get with one of those muffins.  Go ahead and take one from the bag and eat it.”

He was watching the bag very closely as KD extracted the muffin. “Fascinating.  There is only one muffin in the bag until you take it out.  Then a new muffin forms almost immediately afterwards.”

KD contentedly munched her muffin.  Within moments, she stuck her head into the flame range headrest and belched a nearly pure, pale blue flame.

Fume Hood smiled in chemistly joy.  “Timing and color nail it!  You were right, Grumpy.  There is a direct connection between the muffins and KD's hiccups of flame.  The only reason that she flames at all with them is that, being a dragon, she has a natural ignition spark every time she exhales or belches.  Whatever this vapor she is belching is, it is highly flammable.”

KD's shoulders slumped.  “Does that mean that I can't have Dragon Muffins anymore?”

Fume Hood chuckled as he replied, “I suspect that you can have all that you want.  Just not these, from this bag.”

He went to pull one out.  Looking perplexed, he tried again.  “Humm . . . I can't seem get that muffin out of the bag.  KD, will you get it please?  I need to analyze it.”

Without any problem, KD extracted the muffin.  Fume Hood took it and sliced it in half.  One half he put into a beaker with a lye solution.  It began to dissolve at once.  Soon there was only some slightly coarse granules mixed with loose sparkly fragments of gemstones in the bottom of the beaker.

Fume Hood filtered out the solid residue and rinsed it with water.  Stirring it with a glass rod, he explained, “The lye took away everything but the gems in the topping and the metal dusts in the body of the muffin.  Now, lets see what happens next . . .”

He dripped some acid onto the residue.  “Gems, gold, and silver won't dissolve in this mild acid.”  

In spite of that, something was happening!  It bubbled and fumed something fierce!  Happily touching it off with a sparking wand used to light his lab burners, Fume Hood pointed dramatically!

“There! You see?  Pale blue flame!  See the white residue?  Zinc oxide.  Your muffins are adulterated with zinc!  It reacts with your stomach acids to make hydrogen and that is what, along with a bit of moisture and such that it picks up as you burp is what makes your so called hiccups!  Just don't eat any muffins from that bag and you should be fine.”

He turned to me and snickered, “OK, Grumpy.  We are even now.”

I turned to the perplexed KD and Coalsmoke.  “They needed an autopsy done last year.  The cadaver was over a week old, in August.  I glamored up a form with no sense of smell and did it for them.  Death was from blunt force trauma to the back of the skull.  Clubbed, to be crude about it.”

KD brightened up and commented, “If they get that sort of thing to deal with, it is no wonder that this place is beside the waste treatment plant!”

I agreed, “Right!  Now all that we need to do is sort out how you got a bag that can do what this one does.”

KD put a finger to her cheek as she thought.  “I do know where I got it.  It was at that Manehatten art show that I told you about.  The Dragon Treats that they serve at those things are always kept separate from the pony treats by putting them in bags.  Somepony gave me this bag with a muffin in it, just before I signed that Daring Do contract.”

Fume Hood tapped me on my nonexistent shoulder and pointed to the bottom of the bag.  There was a small trade mark in the form of a silhouette. There was a small bit of advertising too.

KD read, “Redline Party Supplies – For a party to remember for the rest of your life – If you survive!”  She also pointed out, “That silhouette looks like a laughing wolf's head.”

Fume Hood agreed, “It does look like that, doesn't it?  I know of someone who uses a silhouette like that on their business cards.  Here.”  He hoofed over a card.

The card read:

Doctor Mordenheim,

General Surgery and Prosthesis.

Everfree Edge Clinic

Practice inspected and approved by Princess Luna

I was delighted!  “I know where that is!  It was a small old castle that was supposedly built by a -” I made my voice low and shivery while making Hoof Quotes, “- 'Mad Doctor' long before Ponyville was established.  It was in ruins when the Apples came and founded the town.”

Coalsmoke smiled and said, “Right, Grumpy.  I know where it is too.  I send my workers there for general health workups and surgery when it is needed.  Doctor Mordenheim really is very good.  It is not far from here, either.  Let's go see if he can shed any light on this business.”

We left, taking the Falmire Causeway that crossed the marsh, going out towards the southeast side of the Everfree forest.  We paused by a street vendor's cart to watch the antics of her trained alligator.

Have to admit that Pinkie has done a great job of training Gummy!  I mean, he is two and a half meters of fun!  Rumor has it that she has broken him to saddle, but she was not offering rides today.

“Gator Chow, gator chow! / The gators below are hungry now! / Feed the gators down below / It is really quite a show!”

A chuckling Coalsmoke hoofed over coins and got a big bag filled with large chunks.  It said “Certified Gator Chow” on the label.  She shared the chunks around and we spent a few happy minutes tossing them to the many alligators gathered hopefully under the bridge.

There were splashes and chomping a-plenty as the gators lunged about for each new chunk of the chow.  We heard a munching from behind us.

KD, swallowing, asked Pinkie, “Where can I get some more of this stuff? It is pretty good!”

At our stares, she retorted, “What?  Dragon here, remember?  I don't eat grass!”

We left Pinkie to her vending and went on across.  It was not long before we saw the sign pointing to the forest beyond.  It said, Everfree Edge Clinic, General Medicine and Prosthetics.

Only a little way up the designated path of yellow cobbles, we came to a small but well restored castle.  I had to give this Doctor Mordenheim credit for showmanship.  This was one classy clinic.  The sign over an open door read Welcome to Everfree Edge Clinic.

Coalsmoke rang a bell labeled Ring for Service that sat on a beautiful mahogany desk in the lobby/waiting room.

We did not even get to try out the assorted seating and laying cushions.  A large, near horse sized zebra with an eye patch came out of the back. His professional smile turned to a genuine one as he laid eye on Coalsmoke.

“My dear Coalsmoke!  What may I do for you, or is it for one of your friends?”

Suddenly stopping like he'd hit one of his stone castle walls, he gave me a careful and most knowing look.  “I do fear that the goat is beyond any help of mine.”

Coalsmoke smirked just a little as she replied, “You are correct.  This is Grumpy Goat, my long standing friend, of whom I am sure that you have heard.  We are not here for him.

“This is Krystal Dragoness.  She prefers to be called KD.  Our problem is sort of related to her, but it is not medical.”

Resting his chin on one forehoof, as he sat behind the desk, Doctor Mordenheim inquired, “If the problem is not medical, then what is it?”

I held out a hoof, “KD, may I have the bag please?”

I showed him the bottom.  “Somepony named Redline is using your cutie mark on his things.  It has some interesting properties.”

Mordenheim put his face in his hooves.  “I know.  I see that KD has it.  She can't lose it either.  Whatever is in it, seems like an endless supply.  I made it, years ago.  How it got here to this world, I have no idea.”

He was sort of surprised when we all simply found seating and Coalsmoke asked casually, “So, how did you get here?  More to the point, when you arrived, did you meet an elderly blue unicorn with a white mane, tail, and beard?”

Mordenheim looked blank.  “What?  No, I never met anypony like that.”

He got a seriously uncomfortable expression as he elaborated, “I would really prefer not to go into why I wound up here.  Princess Luna knows in detail.  Suffice it to say that the events led me to wandering in the Everfree Forest.  I have no idea at all how it happened, since the Everfree is not all that big, but I was in there for over a week.  Perhaps more, I am not at all sure.  What I am sure of is that the path that I was on did not seem to double back on itself or any thing like that.  Between sun breaks in the forest canopy and the scenery, I am sure that I was not going in circles.

“I happened on the ruin of this old castle.  I might have simply passed it by but it had a small cobbled road leading to it from outside of the forest.  I followed that road and it led me to Ponyville.”  He shook his head in wonder, “It was a very different Ponyville than the one that I left.  By good fortune, I met Caramel Treat, Fangrin and Reverend Smallflower.  The rest all came from meeting them.”

I pointed out, “Fascinating as that is, it completely dodges the question of that bag and its neverending supply of adulterated Dragon Muffins.”

One of Doctor Mordenheim's ears cocked up in fascination.  “Adulterated? How?”

Coalsmoke filled in, “With lots of zinc metal dust, that's how.”

Doctor Mordenheim winced,  “Ouch!  That would make mountains of hydrogen gas!  That could cause a serious problem for a dragon!”

KD confirmed, “It sure does!  The hiccups that it causes have been near the ruin of my art.”

Suddenly you could see things clicking together in Doctor Mordenheim's mind! “KD?  Art?  Did you do the covers and illustrations for Daring Do and the Secret of the Apploosa Cave?  The Adventure of the Singing Sands?  The Nippony Diamond?”

KD nodded, clearly pleased.  “All three!  Why?”

Acting like a foal as he was going to his book shelf, Mordenheim snagged all three books and returned to his desk.  “I love your art, KD, would you please autograph these for me?”

With an impishly evil grin, displaying her big dragon chompers, KD replied, “Sure!”  She was reaching into the bag.  “Just as soon as I snack on this muffin!  Or, you make this bag harmless!”

Grinning right back, and revealing a set of fangs that would not have been out of place in a tiger shark, Mordenheim replied, hoof over heart, “You wound me!  I was going to do that anyway.  You did not need blackmail me.  It did make it more fun, though!”

KD chuckled as she said, “I would not really have done it, Doc.  It was just too much fun to pass up the chance.  So, tell us, why did you make a bag like this?”

Reassured that we did not hold his apparent past against him, he sat back comfortably and half smiled at the memory.  “Revenge.  Count Sourbottom was being a problem, objecting to some of my experi . . . projects.   He had a whole herd of foals of all ages.  One of the youngsters had a birthday party coming up.  I set up one of these for each of them!  Loaded them with the finest, sweetest candies that I could locate.  It was a near perfect revenge.”

Always interested in more ways to get back at ponykind for their mistreatment of me in the past, I asked, “How was giving his foals candy any sort of revenge?”

Suddenly, Coalsmoke put a hoof to her lips to suppress giggles.  “Don't you see it, Grumpy?  He couldn't take them away for discipline because the bags will go right back to the foals.  Worse, the endless supply of sweets could cause all sorts of health and mouth problems that the Count would have to pay for!”

Mordenheim nodded happy agreement.  “Last that I heard, Count Sourbottom was headed for bankruptcy on dental bills alone!”

Going more serious, he offered, “KD, we may be able to save the gem topping of your muffins if we are lucky.  Would you like that?”

KD replied seriously, “That would be great, if we can do it.  I really like their flavor, especially the crushed rubies.  How can we do it?”

Doctor Mordenheim picked up the bag and headed for the outside door.  Over his shoulder, he invited, “Come outside for a simple little experiment.  We can save the gems themselves for sure.  Question is whether we can save the topping that they are in or not.”

He pointed down the yellow cobble road leading to his door.  “Now, my dear, take a muffin out of the bag but don't eat it.”

Mystified, she hoofed over the muffin.  “I understand why I have to get it out, but why not eat it?  What are we going to do with it?”

With total assurance, Doctor Mordenheim replied, “You are going to eat it but in parts.  Here, let me scrape off the topping.”  Carefully he removed the topping, taking none of the muffin itself.  “Just eat the topping.  I will hold the muffin for now.”

With obvious relish, KD did.  Licking it off her claws, she asked, “What now?  I like this test!”

“We wait a bit to see if you get gas.  If you don't, the zinc is only in the muffin part.”

KD cocked her head, brow wrinkled in concentration.  “I don't feel any gas coming on.  That usually happens pretty quick when it does.”

“I see. To finish the test, eat the rest of the muffin now.”

She did. And was soon hiccuping blasts of flame.

Nodding in confirmation, he said, “Just in the muffin then.  We can definitely save the topping for you.  Would you like just this topping or would you prefer it on something?”

“As it happens, I do have something that it might go good on.”

Back inside, she produced a bag.  We all saw Mordenheim's nose dilate as he caught the scent.  His ears shot forward in interest.  Drool leaked out of the corner of his mouth!

“What is that lovely smelling stuff, KD?”

“Gator Chow.  I got it from Pinkie Pie over on the bridge.  She told me that it is made from smoked and flaked meat pressed into bite sized chunks.”

Both Coalsmoke and I were rolling on the floor, laughing!  Getting myself somewhat under control, I commented, “Those teeth of yours are real, aren't they, Doc?”

“Yes, they are.  Is it a problem?”

Coalsmoke, composing herself comfortably on a large cushion, replied, “Not for us.  It was just unexpected.  Looks like Pinkie is going to have to stock in more Gator Chow, is all.  

“This explains why Caramel has mentioned you eating there a lot but I haven't seen you, and I eat there too.  You eat in the back, in her carnivore plaza.”

“Right. Now, KD, those Gator Chow chunks are just about muffin sized.  That is about as big as the bag can handle.  It is time to disarm the bag from those bad muffins.”

He got a large, heavy book from the shelf.  Instead of consulting it, he held it at the ready.

“Now, KD, take the muffin out and move your paws away from the bag swiftly.”

As she did, he slammed the book down on top of the bag!  He held it down for around a whole minute.  Relaxing, he pronounced, the spell is reset. It can now be reloaded and set to anyone.  Just a sec.”

He went into the back and returned with salad tongs and a spreading knife. Selecting one of KD's chow chunks, he carefully and neatly spread the gem topping onto it.  Taking the tongs, he used them to insert the topped chow chunk into the bag.

“Now, KD, just reach into the bag and take out the snack.  That will reset the bag to you with a safe treat.  You also now know how to change treats any time that you want.”

Saying, “Thanks, Doc!”  KD fished out the treat and nibbled it down with gusto!

I was watching the whole thing with narrowed eyes that I don't really have. Thinking it over, I pointed out, “KD, whoever set you up was at the show in Manehatten.  The way it works, that spell didn't lock onto you until you took out that first muffin.

“It may be time for a contract or a bit of detective work in Manehatten. Perhaps both.”

Thoughtfully she suggested, “There is another big art show in Manehatten in a few days.  I do have a studio there with some finished pieces that I could enter if I could get there in time.  That would give us the cover that we need for detective work if we can arrive in time.”

I suggested, “If time is a problem, I could try setting up a portal between here and the Manehatten fairgrounds.  It has been a while since I studied that but it is really pretty simple magic.”

We all trooped outside and I began the really pretty basic preparations for opening a portal spell.  I did add a whole lot of “stage dressing” rituals, circles and other misdirection.  I always do.  Better showmanship and it hides what makes it work from prying eyes, even if they are watching.

A glowing circle appeared in the air, just in front of us and barely touching the ground.  Suddenly it began to grow, becoming a huge oval. Something enormous, making a steady pulsing roar and clanking like metal was coming toward us!

First, pretty high up, came a sort of short crossways tube with a hole in it on the side facing us.  The thing continued to advance.  That funny bit was attached to a long metal tube!  Down lower, some big metal plates appeared and then between them  an enormous bridge of metal. Huge wheels of steel supported endless linked plates of more steel!

As the contraption came on out, it was revealed to be a gigantic machine of some sort!  It had sloped sides up to a heavy device on top that the long tube came out of.  That had sloped sides too, as if this thing were made to bounce catapult shots off of it!  There were some serious dents and obvious repairs that made it seem that those slopes were strictly functional!

Sticking her head up out of a hatch in the top was a pony who looked for all the world like Rainbow Dash!  Reinforcing that idea was a brown pegasus with a black mane and tail clinging to the rear of the machine and calling out loudly enough to be heard over the machine's roar!

“Dashie! Stop!  You going to smash through garden wall again!  You crush Jade's herb garden again!  You so grounded!”

Dashie retorted, “I not hit wall, dad!  Big blue hole show up.  I drive through that!  Besides, last time I drive through Jade's herb garden, I fix it better than before.  She ask me to squash it again!”

“And one more thing!  Dashie, you make me good hot tea or you so grounded you need dig up for thousand year to see daylight!”

Innocently she shot back, “If I that grounded, I make you nice tea that De Writer send for me to get you!  It his idea to get it with remote control T82 Main Battle Tank!  If I NOT grounded, I MIGHT be able to find you nice green tea that he never touch!”

The brown pegasus sat hard.  “De Writer ask you to use Remote Control T82 IN CANTERLOT for that tea?  You not so grounded as I thought.”

The one identified as Dashie noticed us from her vantage point, high up in the top part of the T82.  She picked up a small boxy thing with buttons and levers and pushed one of the buttons.  The T82's loud grumbling fell quiet.

“Um, Dad, we come through portal, I think.  You not teach me that magic yet. There ponies here and a dragon.  Come around T82 and you see.  There small castle here too.”

The brown pegasus stepped around the metal monster and courteously introduced, “I Thomas the Writer.  Miscreant who drive T82 through your portal my daughter Dashie Writer.  T82 is educational toy give her by De Writer.”

Mordenheim looked up at the behemoth of steel and remarked, “Where you are from has different ideas about educational toys than any place I have ever been.”

Dashie replied, “It crazy where we from too, but what you expect from powerful wizard like De Writer?  Something safe?  He good to have on your side when trouble come, though.”

She turned about and exclaimed, “The portal gone!”

It was true.  Standing where it had been was a familiar cat otter hybrid with red hair.  She was wearing a well worn cloak of dark green and light seeming chain mail.  Mithril by the look of it.  Her left arm was a prosthesis, a mechanical arm of metal that moved in an utterly natural way.  Under the cloak was the scabbard of a large sword.  In her mechanical hand was a parchment that looked like a map of some sort.

She tucked away the map in a pouch at her waist and looked about, her gaze missing nothing.  Smiling, she waived!  “Hi, Grumpy!  It's me, Wind!  We met at Ponyville Fair, remember?  I am part of Marchhare's band of Rom.   I was going to meet them at Haymarket fair, up north, but this out of control portal got in the way.  I took the liberty of closing it.”

Thomas gave Wind a strangely puzzled look.  “This world with Marchhare in it?”

She shrugged, “I wouldn't be going to meet him and his band if it wasn't!  Why?”

Speaking to Dashie, Thomas said, “This important lesson, Dashie.  How many worlds in multiverse?”

She replied, “Infinite.  Everyone and thing have infinite copies, each a little different.”  Raising her eyebrows in thought, she added, “This a trick question, isn't it, Dad?”

“Sort of. You very quick.  Every rule have exception, right?”

Putting hoof to chin, she thought and then went wide eyed with realization! “Every rule have exception, even that rule!”

Thomas lifted his wings in pleasure.  “Right!  This ONLY world in whole multiverse that have Marchhare!  That is secret to navigation when go between worlds.”

Dashie blinked.  “What happen when he dies?”

“Nothing, Dashie.  Marchhare already dead.  Not die twice.”

We were all listening in amazement.  It was newcomer Wind who said, “That is sort of a relief.  That there is only one of my foster dad, I mean. I have met some of myself and it was not the best of experiences!”

She put her jaw in her metal hand and examined the whole situation carefully. Turning to me she asked, “Did you cast the portal, Grumpy?”

Scraping the grass where I was standing with one nonexistent forehoof and looking down, I muttered, “Afraid so.  Portals are not really my specialty.  I guess that I really messed this one up.”

Wind stepped over and lifted my glamor's head to look me in the eye.  “I am an expert with portals.  That one was really well done.  It would have worked perfectly if you had not cast it here.  The Everfree's Hidden Ways are what messed you up.

“Now, where were you trying to go?”

KD interjected, “We were aiming for the fairgrounds at Manehatten by the Sea.”

Wind nodded in a very take charge sort of way.  “I see.  That is about 6 or 7 hundred kilometers from here.”

Leaning casually up against the iron monster called T82, Wind asked, “Does this thing have personnel and cargo railings and how fast is it, uh, Dashie?”

Dashie brightened up as she replied, “It sure does have safety railings! I use them when I give Mia and Becky rides.  It can go as far as you want.  Out in the open, it can hit 100 kilometers an hour!  How did you know about that?”

Wind gave a delicate shudder, “I have adventured on a few worlds where similar machines were used.  I saw the passenger railings on some of them.”

Wind smiled ingratiatingly at Thomas.  “Would you be willing to let Dashie take us all on an Adventure to Manehatten by the Sea?  It will get these nice beings where they need to go and be fun for us all.  From there, I can easily send you both back home.”

Dashie had hopped out of the top of the T82 and began releasing catches and lifting up metal railings.  They clicked as they locked into place. When she was done, she lowered a set of steep metal stairs to climb up onto the back of her “educational toy.”

Thomas watched with a skeptical lift to his right eyebrow.  “I not say we go, Dashie.”

She looked him straight back in the eye as she retorted, in front of us all, “Right.  All that you have to do is tell our hosts that you won't do something simple and fun to help them.”

“That blackmail, Dashie!”

“Right. Between you and our De Writer, I learn from the best!”

He chuckled, “OK.  We do it.”

Wind swung easily up the boarding stair and called, “All aboard for the Manehatten Express!”

KD swarmed up, found the engine vents, and curled up with a “Dibs on the warm spot!”

Coalsmoke gently pushed me toward the enormous device with, “I would love to go too, Grumpy, but I have serious business to talk over with Victor. The Princesses want to set up a program for helping wounded veterans of their armies.”

Dashie started the T82 and made a big turn.  Wind guiding her, we set out for Adventure!  And Manehatten.

Technically, we took Doctor Mordenheim's path down to the Falmire cutoff and turned south towards the junction with Royal Road 315.  For some reason, the busy traffic of Ponyville's industrial district gave way before us, even when it had the right of way!  Couldn't imagine why! Surely it had nothing to do with fifty or more tonnes of steel monstrosity charging along at a “mere” twenty kilometers per hour.

We reached the Royal Road toll booth without incident.  Almost had an incident there.  The poor booth keepers were going nuts trying to sort out the proper toll.

Pages were fluttering back and forth in their toll manuals, “It ain't a cart or wagon from any section!  Darn thing is made out of iron like a fool locomotive on the railroad!”

“I know, Jeb!  Can't even classify it by team size or set up!  It runs itself!”

Wind was sitting on the edge of the turret, which Dashie had taught us was the name for that upper part with the long pipe sticking out of it, and giggling at the small uproar.  

“When Marchhare hears about this, he will split his harness, he will laugh so hard!”

One of the toll collectors looked up at her and got a beatific smile.  “You are Wind, from Marchhare's band of Rom, right?  I saw you at our fair a couple of times.”

She nodded acknowledgment, “Yes, Sir.  I am.”

He turned to his buddy and pushed the manuals shut.  “Just write Rom from Marchhare's band, toll free by Crowns Law.”

Jeb did write, though he was still trying to protest.  His superior shut him down with, “Jeb, like enough you are right.  Still, it solves OUR problem.”  He tripped the gate mechanism and the flimsy red and white painted wooden bar lifted up out of our way.

We pulled onto the Royal Road.  Besides less traffic, it was wider and better maintained than the Ponyville road we had come from.  Dashie began to open up the speed once we had clear road ahead of us.  I must say, I was impressed.  Dashie was not kidding about hitting a hundred kilometers an hour!

The T82 was fast and high enough that we had to duck shade tree branches!  A delighted KD had her sketchbook out and was rapidly drawing things from her high perspective!

Chortling, she explained, “Even as roughs, some of these will adapt to pictures for my book contract!  This is great!”

Wind steered us into one of the many waysides, making Dashie slow down and drive gently as we parked for the evening.  With assurance, she showed us where the free water and firewood were.

With a fond smile, Wind recalled, “I have camped here before, while traveling with Dad's band.  There is a small stream over in the bushes that we can get fresh fish and crawdads out of for a nice dinner.”

KD had out an easel and was busily drawing with colors.  She was doing the T82 framed by a sunset of riotous clouds and glowing light.  

She asked politely, “Wind, would you be so good as to pose there, just below the turret?  I want your metal arm just casually holding something and your sword out in your right hand, ready but not on a guard.”

Wind did pose.  It really did not take KD long at all to capture the feeling of the scene.  The way that Wind was posing, it looked for all the world like she OWNED the metal monster behind her!

Done posing, Wind stretched and began doing limbering up exercises.  With an expression of delight, and without even thinking about it, Wind began to dance and sing in a language strange to all of us.  I did recognize it from my times at the Ponyville fair, serving mainly as security for Caramel Treat's excellent food booth.  The language was Gyptian, the sort of private and held secret, nearly melodious tongue of the Rom.  I did recognize the dance.

She was treating us to the Shehan Ja Rom, their story of how the Rom came to be.  I gather that it is the oldest dance and song of the Rom.  As her dance and song finished, I remembered that the Rom did not clap for applause.  I leaned my head back and gave the loud trill that the Rom use.

Wind looked sort of startled as the others followed suit.  Embarrassed, she mumbled, “Sorry.  It was just the joy of being on the road again.”

It was KD who said it, “Don't be sorry.  It was lovely.  Is there an Equestrian translation?”

I put in, “I know that there is.  That was the famous Shehan Ja Rom.  The Rom traditionally dance and sing it in an Equestrian version to open fairs.  What I am curious about is how Wind, who is nothing like any horse or pony, came to be a Rom and of Marchhare's band at that.”

Wind sat near the fire and absently began to assemble vegetable skewers for Dashie, Thomas and I.  “I made a little mistake while adventuring. I survived it, obviously.  Mama Dragon fixed me up and sent me here, to this Equestria to finish healing and recuperate.  De Writer met me and steered me to Marchhare's band.

“Good thing, too.  One of my wounds developed a small inflammation that could have killed me.  Black Lotus, Marchhare and Hoof Dancer, his wife at the time, healed me.  Mama Dragon was wise in sending me to them for a month.  I had more than physical wounds to heal.  I joined them and learned to read, write and speak Gyptian.  Having a real caring and extended family provided the rest of the healing that I needed.  Now, I have my Freedom and I can come and go as I wish, but my Rom family is always there for me.”

I could tell that there was a lot left out but Wind cut her tale off without harming her tail by asking, “Grumpy, will you tend these skewers for me while I go catch some fish, crawdads and a bunny or two for dinner to share with KD?”

I realized at once that besides being an adventurer, Wind was quite diplomatic. She had just reminded the lot of us that KD had not eaten all day, except for snacks, and that both she and Wind were carnivores. Possibly hungry carnivores.

Dashie took off too, calling, “Wind!  Wait up!  I want see how you hunt and fish without fancy gear.”

Wind looked back, nodded and then beckoned with a finger curl.  As soon as Dashie was up to her, Wind slid into the brush without a sound.  Dashie, trying to follow was pretty quiet.

Coming to the creek bank, Wind laid flat and wriggled forward on her stomach. Carefully parting the small thin wands of the bank willows, she slid her right arm into the water, reaching back, under the cut bank.  Her face screwed up with concentration, she eased her hand up, feeling for a fish.  Smiling, she slid her hand further up and grabbed!

Rolling back and lifting, Wind flipped the good sized trout out onto the bank!  She caught the flopping creature and bent its head back to break its neck.  She snipped off a thin bank willow strand with her knife and laced it through the fish's gills and out the mouth. Loosely knotting the ends, she hung the fish up and repeated the trick three more times!

Dashie was watching with awe.  “I never even hear of fishing that way!  How you do it?”

Wind picked up her willow loop with fish and replied, “It takes practice to tickle trout but it is not really hard.  You need to be careful and gentle.  When you feel the fish with your fingers, you need to work your way up until you feel the pectoral fins, those just behind the gills.  Snap your fingers into the gills and lift it out quickly.

“Now for a nice brace of bunnies and dinner will ready to cook.”

Dashie, keeping her voice down, asked, “I see warren right over there.  How you catch them?  Some kind of trap?”

Wind, following Dashie's pointing hoof, shook her head.  “I could, and if we were going to be here longer, I would set some snares.  Since it is only dinner and breakfast, I will just pounce them.  It is easier and quicker.”

Dashie watched Wind ghost her way through the brush toward the warren. Choosing her place, she waited, a bunched spring of living huntress. Nothing moved except for the tip of her tail twitching slightly.  It was only a few minutes before a bunny hopped lazily toward one of the main holes of the warren.  Wind's pounce included a fast chop with her metal hand!  The bunny only twitched once before going still.

Wind quietly picked a different spot and soon had a second bunny!

Bearing her prey, Wind and Dashie returned to camp.  On their way, Wind asked, “Why did you want to see how I got fish and bunnies?  Most ponies really don't want to see that.”

Face flaming a little with embarrassment, Dashie replied, “I am sort of, like half dragon.  I turn into one if I need to or want to.  Thing is, I not very good at getting meat to eat!  I have to turn back to a pony and graze up dinner!  There are times that really inconvenient!”

Wind chuckled.  “I can see that!  We have one more stop before Manehatten by the Sea.  I will take you out hunting there too, OK?”

Back at camp, Wind considerately went to the other side of the T82 to clean and prepare her catch.  A lightly drooling KD went to help!  They both returned to the camp, licking their lips and smiling.  They were finishing up with some of KD's endless supply of Gator Chow.  Wind had carefully cleaned off the gem topping from hers and used it to enhance KD's snack.

As we were settling about the fire, Dashie asked, “Um, Wind, did Rom hold you prisoner some way?  You say you have your freedom.”

Wind chuckled at the misunderstanding.  “No, Dashie.  The Rom Freedom is a thing that they wear.  Here, I have mine in my bag.”

She reached into her bag at her waist and her arm seemed to go in further than was possible.  She saw us staring and snorted her amusement.  “It is called a bag of holding.  It is sort of like Marchhare's caravan. It is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  Here it it is!”

Stopping her rummaging, she pulled out a sort of headstall thing of richly tooled and dyed leather with rings and buckles that looked to be gold.  She strapped it on.

“This is a Freedom of the Rom.  They grant them only to beings that they have fully accepted as one of their own.”

“Why is call a Freedom?” Dashie wondered.

Wind lifted her chin with pride.  “The original cast off slaves that were the first Rom wore a headstall with a bit and lead ring.  They had them all their lives and were not comfortable without something on their heads.  They re made them into the Freedom by taking away anything by which they could be made to serve another.  No bit or lead ring has ruled any Rom from that day to this.”  Very carefully, Wind removed her Freedom and put it away.

KD had curled into an amazingly hard to see coil of dragon to sleep until dawn.  The rest of us were spreading blankets to sleep under the stars.

A wagon full of road repair tools and an accompanying work gang of ponies pulled into the rest area.  A couple of them strode arrogantly to our camp and demanded, “We are hungry!  What ever food you got, hoof it over now!  You don't, we gonna take sledgehammers to that there tin thingy!”

I gently prodded the almost sleeping dragon in our midst.  KD had been paying attention!  Her head rose up, eyes alight.  A curl of flame showing at each nostril and outlining her barely opened jaws completed the picture!

She serenely asked, “What?  More dinner?  I'm not sure that I could hold another whole pony.  Mind if we just sort of pack along the leftovers for lunch?”

Dashie had lifted a fully draconic head.  In the late evening's light we could not make out her color but we could easily make out the totally paling ponies!

“What! They got TWO DRAGONS!”

Dashie corrected, “No.  Two HUNGRY dragons!”

Dashie was giggling at the frantic retreat of the two jerks!  Got to admit to some chuckles of my own.  KD's sides were heaving as she re coiled herself.

Dashie got up onto all fours.  In the dying firelight, she could be seen to be a light blue color.  She flexed her wings a couple of times and strolled over to where the road crew ponies were carelessly re packing to leave.  In terror but not so terrified that they were willing to have to pay for abandoned gear!

One thoughtlessly yelled, “Road camp privacy!  Stay away, that is kingdom law!”

Wind, who was almost unnoticed at Dashie's right front leg, calmly pointed out, “You have just admitted that you knew that you were breaking kingdom law when you tried to hijack our dinner.  In your haste to correct your error, you dropped your sledgehammers.  Here!”

Wind revealed a hidden strength by casually giving the heavy hammers an underhand toss.  Both hammers overshot the wagon and hit the turf on the other side of it.

That got the attention of the road crew ponies!  One noticed, “How come you only got one arm?”

Smiling angelically, which showed off her fangs nicely, Wind reached up with her metal left arm and scritched at the base of Dashie's left dragon horn as she replied, “What, this?” Campfire light glinting from her metal arm, she said casually, “Kitten here, and I got to roughhousing last week!  She was a little too enthusiastic, that's all.”

Dashie, catching on to the game, bent her head around and gave Wind a lick at the shoulder and said contritely, “I said that I was sorry!  We just need to find a Phoenix potion so that you can regrow it. Again.”

They strolled back to our camp, Wind taking the time to re hang her cloak to sort of hide her metal arm.  Thomas, Dashie, now turned back to a pegasus, and I nibbled up Wind's excellent fruit and vegetable skewers.

Wind toasted the last of the bunnies and trout over KD's flame and shared that extra bit dinner with her.  Dashie “sneaked” over and turned back to a dragon to beg a few bites.  Grinning, they let her have some.

Sleeping out in the open, I did not have my usual nightmares of a Celestian Church mob burning my home, studies, and, failing to trap me in the house, attempting to stone me to death.  Perhaps my feelings of safety came of sleeping beside a big blue dragon?  One that liked me? Very likely.

It could not last.  For one thing, dawn comes far too soon for a cave dwelling goat like me.  The other was a light blue bundle of enthusiasm with rainbow mane and tail!  Dashie was bounding into camp!  She was waiving a forked stick with three big fat trout on it!  It was laced through their gills and out their mouths, with the forked branch acting as a stop to keep them from sliding off.

“I did it, Wind!  I tickle trout just like you show me how!”

Wind looked up from laying the morning cook fire.  Her grin showed her usually hidden fangs as she replied, “Just like I showed you?   Not sure how to point this out diplomatically but you don't have any fingers to do it with.”

Totally disingenuous, Dashie replied, “I just use my magic like you show with hand.  It not hard.  Real trick was find where fish hide.  You show me that.  They too quick to catch if just grab.  Gentle tickle is trick.”

Both KD and I were listening with rapt attention.  It was clear that Thomas and Dashie's Equestria was very different from this one.  As they talked, that became more and more apparent.

“Does your magic come from being a weredragon?”

“Only a little.  Most I learn from Dad.  He one of two most powerful beings in our Equestria.  Be honest, I think De Writer worst.  Super strong magic and wicked sense of humor.  And bored.  He three thousand years old.  Raise Princesses.”

“I see. Do other pegassi use magic where you come from?”

“Not really.  Dad figure out that there more magic in world than Earth, Pegassi, and Unicorn.  It come from his mom, Aurora, the Demon Queen.”

We all looked askance at the innocent appearing brown pegasus.  This was getting more and more interesting all the time.

Wind just nodded, took the fish and efficiently set about preparing them.  She also pulled some fresh looking apples and peaches out of the bag at her waist.  She expertly split them into proper chunks and dropped them into a pot.  She added a little fresh water and, reaching into her bag of holding, pulled out a box with many drawers and bottles, a jar with a sealed top and a small flour bag.

I was sort of amazed, watching the sheer skill with which Wind organized breakfast.  She even had water on heating in a biggish pot.  She added some from the sealed bottle.  The camp filled with the heavenly aroma of Rom black tea!

Satisfied with the progress of the fruits in the pot, she added sugar, cinnamon from one of the drawers of the box and stirred in the flour to thicken it.

It smelled heavenly, not like regular flour at all.  Wind closed the bag and returned box, bag and jar to her bag of holding.  She saw my calculating look as I watched it all happening.  

Wrinkling her nose in amusement, she explained, “Ka'chek flour.  A Rom without it?  Unheard of!”

Breakfast lived up to the lovely scents, and then some.

Wind, KD and Dashie went to the other side of the T82 to fix and eat the trout.  Coming back, Dashie and KD were finishing up gem topped Gator Chows and Wind was nibbling at one with the topping removed.

While they were eating, the rest of us cleaned up all the cookware and put out the fire.  We especially cleaned out the fruit stew pot!  Nearly came to blows over who got to lick it out!  Good sense prevailed and we took turns licking parts of it.  Then, we washed it.  We did have one thing unwashed.

We saved Wind the last mug of Rom black tea.  Smiling at our courtesy, Wind drained it and saw to proper washing of the mug.  She then caused us all a small croggle of the mind by causally putting all of the clean cookware and dishes into her bag of holding!

We all piled onto the remote controlled T82 and Dashie got us on the road again!

I noticed that Wind was wearing her Freedom and had put on a harness. It was as richly tooled and dyed as her freedom.  They were clearly a matched set.

While KD was busy with her art, making fast sketches of the lands that we were passing through, I made bold to ask, “Why the Rom outfit?  This is not exactly a caravan.”

Wind giggled at some joke that I did not understand as she replied, “Actually, it is.  You just have to understand what caravan means. It is a loan word from the desert Kingdoms that was already in use by the time that the first Rom came here.  In their language of Gyptian, it means something slightly different from how it is used in Equestrian.

“It is just that there is a road section toll gate coming up in a little. Me being dressed this way should get us through the gate for free.”

Nodding acceptance for her reason, I turned my attention to Thomas, who was trying hard to act like an adult pegasus, rather than a colt having the time of his life.

I guessed, “You have not ridden on Dashie's T82 before, have you Thomas?”

With a twinkle in his eye, he admitted, “Never before this.  I think that she get to play with it more but need daddy supervision!”

I was chuckling at that when we all felt the iron monster slowing down. Wind, pointing ahead, made clear exactly why.  There was the toll booth with its light weight red and white bar across the road.  There was a substantial cabin in back of it for use of the toll collectors when off duty and out here, kilometers from any town.  A sign said, WELCOME TO THE MANEHATTEN ROYAL ROAD SECTION.

Wind hopped off the top of the huge left tread guard of the T82 and greeted the toll takers, “Hi!  What do you think of my new act? Just doing a shake down run to IRON out any problems!  We are promised entertainment for the big art show.”

The utterly bemused light yellow toll collector turned to his lavender buddy and shook his head.  Pushing the toll manual shut he said, “Rom.  No accounting for 'em.  Just write Rom, toll free by Crowns Law.”

He tripped the mechanism and the toll gate rose up out of our way.  

As the mechanical behemoth passed through the gate, Wind trotted after and swung up the steel boarding stair and resumed her place on top of the turret, next to Dashie.

We had passed two of the Waysides when Wind guided Dashie into one that seemed empty.  It was nowhere near noon, yet.

“Thanks, Dashie!  There is a friend here that I want to talk to.  It would have been rude to just go by and not say Hi.”

With that, she bounced off the turret, grabbed what we had learned was called the Main Gun, and swung, letting go and landing lightly.  She sprinted over to the edge of the woods.

Sitting suddenly, she quietly reached out and laid a sparkling pebble among many others in that spot.  She said, “Hannara Na Kili.”  We could not make out the rest.  It was all in Gyptian.  It contained pauses as if she was listening to what another was saying.  The conversation was soon over.

Wind got up, smiling serenely, and returned to us.  Dashie had turned to a dragon so that she and KD could share a couple of KD's gator chows.

Wind suggested, “We could get going, now.  The Loved Dead are always with us.  Hannara and I had a nice chat.”

It was slowly percolating through the brain that I don't really have, just how different Rom are.  And I have known them, shared food with them and talked with them for years.  They have even been guests in my cave.  I have heard that expression, the Loved Dead are always with us hundreds of times.  I have heard about Laying the Stones goodness only knows how many times.  This was the first time that I had seen it.

Seeing how Wind treated it, both casually and with absolute assurance, as if the horse in that grave that the Rom call a Gateway to the Lake of Paradise, or Lake for short, was really there, made it hit me like a gut punch.

I knew, like everybeing in Equestria that the ONE THING THAT YOU DO NOT DO is desecrate any Wayside burial.  Ponies who die more than two days travel from their homes are entitled to a Wayside burial.  It is a Royal Benefice.  The graves are marked and tended as part of Wayside maintenance.

All Rom get a Wayside burial, that they call a Lake or going to the Lake. They lay small, inexpensive, but pretty pebbles on them to mark them.

Desecration of a Rom Lake will bring the Princesses in person to investigate. The criminals WILL get caught.  Penalties are HARSH.  They range from twenty years at hard labor on the Royal Roads up to life.  The worst offenders, who have actually exhumed Rom remains get a punishment worse than simple death.  

They get life in the Twins Mine, digging mercury ore.  The fumes destroy the mind and wrack the body.  After the first few such grave robberies, centuries ago, no pony in their right mind will risk that.

Wind looked so quietly happy that I had to wonder whether there was any truth to the Rom belief in the Lake of Paradise.

Dashie finished her snack and changed back to a pegasus.  We all piled back onto the T82 educational toy and hit the road again.  It was not long before we came to a bridge across a stream.

It was a nice, well built and solid bridge.  It was clear that it was not made to take the sheer mass of the T82.

[ask-de-writer]

HICCUPS!  : MLP Fan Fiction : A Work In Progress

As usual for Works In Progress all new work and changes to older parts are done in BOLDFACE type.

HICCUPS!

A Grumpy Goat <tail>

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

13391 words so far, this is a WORK IN PROGRESS

© 2019 by Glen Ten-Eyck

Writing begun 11/30/18

All rights reserved.  This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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Characters:

Grumpy Goat and usual cast

Thomas/and/or/Dashie Writer – remote controlled T82

Wind, the Mama Cat

Victor Mordenheim  - Mad Doctor

Krystal Dragoness “KD” Wingless dragon - artist

Fume Hood Unicorn, a bit small-Forensic Chemist

Jinni and Sassy vampire and succubus

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

It was being a quiet day out on the ledge in front of my cave. ��We were sitting on a bench, out in the sun, rereading Daring Do and the Secret of the Appleoosa Cave.  The stout iron sheeting that blocked the entrance to my cave was warm behind us.

The lovely Coalsmoke, a pony of perfect glossy black except for her cutie mark, was leaning over where my shoulder would be, if I still had a body, or for that matter was even technically alive.  She was admiring one of the illustrations in the book.

“I especially like these illustrations signed KD, Grumpy.  They capture the mood and action really well.”

Sitting on my other side was the finely polished skeleton of an alicorn.  He was the Litch King, Lord of the Dead, the being responsible for my present condition and now one of my few true friends.

He agreed, “Look at how well the artist has made the cave entrance look menacing.  Whoever did this is very good.”

We were distracted from our pleasant reading by a flare of flame down on the trail leading up to my cave.  Looking down the way, I was more or less expecting it to be the torches of another anti goat mob or, more specifically anti Grumpy Goat mob.  

Due to my business, I am less than popular with some ponies.  I have a thriving practice in Non Equine Magic.  Mostly, it does not appear to do anything.  Somehow, the desired, contracted for and paid in advance results just seem to happen by perfectly natural, if often bizarre means.  Most of the time, those results are the advantage over, injury, death or ruin of some pony, paid for as mentioned, IN ADVANCE, by some other pony.

This time, it was not a mob.  There was a wingless blue dragon toiling up the stony path to my cave.  The next time that she flared, we could hear it.  It sounded like she was suffering from a case of hiccups! Possibly not the best ailment for a dragon to have, since she was burping a smallish fire blast with each hiccup!

When she gained the ledge, she considerately turned her head out away from us. Good thing, too!  She had two hiccups in quick succession!

She offered, “My name is Krystal Dragoness, KD for short.  I've come to you about these hiccups.  They are like to ruin me.  I am at my wit's end.  See, I am an artist.  I draw and paint.  I get going on a piece and these hiccups start up!  One of them is sure to hit my work, and, well, paper, paints, canvas and frames are all pretty flammable! I've even burned up brushes!

“Can you help me to end these hiccups?”

I nodded, making my skull, apparently floating on nothing, with its everburning candle between the horns, glowing snake like eyes and fangs bob.  “I could do that, yes.  It would not cure the basic problem, though. Hiccups usually have a natural cause from tummy and lungs not coordinating right.  If I fix this case, it could easily happen again.

“Let's dig into how this started and whether there is some underlaying cause that we can fix.”

Somewhat disappointed, Krystal nodded.  “That makes sense.  My first case of the hiccups like this happened at my one dragon show in the Sunrise Gallery in Manehatten.  You know how those things are, lots of nobs that you need to chat with and lots of small snacks and drinks.  The show itself was a pretty important one.  

“I landed a contract to illustrate the next Daring Do book.  There was some serious competition for that contract, let me tell you.  It nearly went to Drawin Pitcher.  She wasn't too happy about me getting to do the art for another Daring Do book.  This one will be my fourth.

“I had only just signed the contract when the hiccups started. The first one nearly incinerated my new contract! I was able to get out of the gallery safely when they began.  I was lucky that I didn't hurt anypony or any of my art.”  

She absently pulled a sparkly topped muffin out of a bag and began munching it.  Looking up, a bit embarrassed, she pointed out, “I really can't share dragon muffins with you.  They are topped with crushed gems and have gold or silver dust in the muffin part.  I'm afraid that they are pretty toxic to non dragons.”

Coalsmoke asked curiously, “Where did you get them?  No place in Ponyville makes them at all.  Sometimes the kitchen in Princess Twilight's castle makes up some for Spike but they never sell them.”

Krystal knit her brows in puzzlement.  “I get them out of this bag.  I always like have them when I am a little tense, like when I am concentrating on my art.  Nibbling helps me to focus.”

Just then, she let out another small belch of fire.

Whistling softly, I thought carefully about what I had heard.  “Tell me, Krystal, at the art show, did you have muffins like these?”

“Well, yes.  Any well equipped bakery can make them.  They just have to clean up carefully afterwards.  They always serve them if I am going to be showing any of my works.”

I nodded and looked over at the lovely Coalsmoke, who is always a treat for the ol' eyeballs and asked, “And where have you bought them since that art show in Manehatten?”

She paused, thinking.  “I haven't had to.  This bag always has some in it.”

The eyes that I don't really have widened just a bit.  “It always has some of those muffins in it for you?  When did you get that bag?”

She scratched behind the spines along the back of her jaw as she sorted it out.  “I first noticed it just after I left the gallery at the show where I got those first hiccups.  It's always there when I am tense.”

I glamored my invisible spirit body to look like the handsome tan, black and brown goat that I was before the tiny mistake that killed me and destroyed my original body.  Holding out a hoof, I said, “Just give me the bag, please.  I am going to try something simple with it.”

Nodding affably, Krystal handed me the bag.  I took it inside my cave and shut the iron door.  That door and my cave front were designed by a good firm of military engineers to withstand an Equestrian standard military battering ram.  

It only takes one anti-goat mob burning your house, your library, years of study, hopes for a degree and dreams of well paying work to make one take a few simple precautions.  Add the mob trying to stone your burned and battered body to death to drive home the lesson in how how to hate most ponies.  That trivial incident also motivated my simple and sensible precautions against a repeat of the problem.  Like living in a cave.  With a military fortress grade steel and iron entrance.

I turned about from sealing the door and asked Krystal if she was still feeling tense.  Digging into the bag for a muffin, she replied, “Yes, a little.  Why?”

The Litch King pointed with a foreleg of bone.  “That is why.  He just shut that bag inside his cave and it looks like you have it back.”

He turned his skeletal head to me and stated, “Grumpy, if you can, we NEED to help KD.  Her illustrations really make a Daring Do book!  Plus, we know now that a new one is in the works!  We can't let anything interfere with THAT!”

I shrugged and opened the door.  I was not even surprised that the bag was not there inside my cave any longer.  Krystal munched her muffin and shortly hiccuped another tongue of flame.

I pointed out, “That bag was behind six centimeters of forged iron.  In spite of that, it homed in on you without seeming effort.  Moments after you nibbled that muffin, you hiccuped another flame.  I suspect that there is a direct connection.  To be sure, we need to go back down into Ponyville.  I know someone in the forensic chemistry lab at the police department.  In the meantime, try not to nibble another muffin and let us see if that helps to control or stop the problem.”

On the trail back down to Ponyville, Coalsmoke and I tried to simply hold the bag instead of letting Krystal carry it.  This wise measure proved impossible.  The bag kept sneakily returning to her claws. After what happened up on the ledge in front of my cave, that was pretty much what was expected.

I have to admit that I was pleased by the simple fact that Krystal did keep her claws out of the bag.  We got down the trail and into Ponyville without incident as a result.

Instead of my usual turning towards the town hall and the Hall of Records, to record a new contract, I trotted right on, with a right turn, headed towards the Ponyville Waste Treatment Plant and Falmire Marsh, which is fenced and actually the final stage of the waste water treatment, before it goes into the river.

Coalsmoke was most interested in why we were going where we were going.  Soon enough, we came to a modest stone building close by to the treatment plant.  The sign said,

Ponyville Police Department

Forensics Laboratory

Chemistry, Physical Evidence Analysis,

Forensic Autopsy

As I pushed open the front door, I explained, “I know most of the staff here. Sometimes they will consult with me, when a case is being a pain.”

Coalsmoke chuckled, “How often is one of their nasty cases the result of one of your contracts, Grumpy?”

A smallish unicorn looked up from where he was working at a desk, apparently compiling a report.  “Not really all that often, Miss Coalsmoke. Even when it is, there is no actual evidence that can link the contract to the results.  Grumpy is often a big help in sorting out how something that we are investigating happened.  We pay him a proper consultation fee, of course.”

I introduced, “Coalsmoke, KD, I would like you to meet Fume Hood, one of the best forensic chemists in the whole kingdom.  We are lucky to have him here in Ponyville.”

KD offered, “You have some unusual friends, Grumpy.”

I chortled, “If they aren't unusual in some way, the aren't worth having as friends.”

Turning my attention to Fume Hood, I explained what our situation was in a few words and ended with, “Think that you could do us a rough analysis of one of KD's dragon muffins?”

He thought for a moment, tapping quietly on his desk top before nodding, “You say that the flame is mostly pale blue? Nearly transparent but pretty hot?”

KD shook her head in agreement.  “Right.  That is, unless I eat something with salt in it.  Then the flame is yellow.  Is that significant?”

Fume Hood said, “It MAY be.  I would like to see both your normal flame and one from your hiccups.  Please step over there.  Dragon flame can be pretty handy for some chemistry tests, so we have a small indoor flame range.”

KD stepped over to the flame range's head rest.  Fume Hood lowered the room lights and suggested, “Whenever you are ready, Miss KD.  Just give us a small shot of your regular flame.”

KD's fire blast was impressively different from a hiccup flame.  It was a bright yellow with some red to the center and flame tips that went to a bluish hue.

Fume Hood almost danced pleasure at seeing it!  Perfect!   Normal dragon fire. Now, let's see what we get with one of those muffins.  Go ahead and take one from the bag and eat it.”

He was watching the bag very closely as KD extracted the muffin. “Fascinating.  There is only one muffin in the bag until you take it out.  Then a new muffin forms almost immediately afterwards.”

KD contentedly munched her muffin.  Within moments, she stuck her head into the flame range headrest and belched a nearly pure, pale blue flame.

Fume Hood smiled in chemistly joy.  “Timing and color nail it!  You were right, Grumpy.  There is a direct connection between the muffins and KD's hiccups of flame.  The only reason that she flames at all with them is that, being a dragon, she has a natural ignition spark every time she exhales or belches.  Whatever this vapor she is belching is, it is highly flammable.”

KD's shoulders slumped.  “Does that mean that I can't have Dragon Muffins anymore?”

Fume Hood chuckled as he replied, “I suspect that you can have all that you want.  Just not these, from this bag.”

He went to pull one out.  Looking perplexed, he tried again.  “Humm . . . I can't seem get that muffin out of the bag.  KD, will you get it please?  I need to analyze it.”

Without any problem, KD extracted the muffin.  Fume Hood took it and sliced it in half.  One half he put into a beaker with a lye solution.  It began to dissolve at once.  Soon there was only some slightly coarse granules mixed with loose sparkly fragments of gemstones in the bottom of the beaker.

Fume Hood filtered out the solid residue and rinsed it with water.  Stirring it with a glass rod, he explained, “The lye took away everything but the gems in the topping and the metal dusts in the body of the muffin.  Now, lets see what happens next . . .”

He dripped some acid onto the residue.  “Gems, gold, and silver won't dissolve in this mild acid.”  

In spite of that, something was happening!  It bubbled and fumed something fierce!  Happily touching it off with a sparking wand used to light his lab burners, Fume Hood pointed dramatically!

“There! You see?  Pale blue flame!  See the white residue?  Zinc oxide.  Your muffins are adulterated with zinc!  It reacts with your stomach acids to make hydrogen and that is what, along with a bit of moisture and such that it picks up as you burp is what makes your so called hiccups!  Just don't eat any muffins from that bag and you should be fine.”

He turned to me and snickered, “OK, Grumpy.  We are even now.”

I turned to the perplexed KD and Coalsmoke.  “They needed an autopsy done last year.  The cadaver was over a week old, in August.  I glamored up a form with no sense of smell and did it for them.  Death was from blunt force trauma to the back of the skull.  Clubbed, to be crude about it.”

KD brightened up and commented, “If they get that sort of thing to deal with, it is no wonder that this place is beside the waste treatment plant!”

I agreed, “Right!  Now all that we need to do is sort out how you got a bag that can do what this one does.”

KD put a finger to her cheek as she thought.  “I do know where I got it.  It was at that Manehatten art show that I told you about.  The Dragon Treats that they serve at those things are always kept separate from the pony treats by putting them in bags.  Somepony gave me this bag with a muffin in it, just before I signed that Daring Do contract.”

Fume Hood tapped me on my nonexistent shoulder and pointed to the bottom of the bag.  There was a small trade mark in the form of a silhouette. There was a small bit of advertising too.

KD read, “Redline Party Supplies – For a party to remember for the rest of your life – If you survive!”  She also pointed out, “That silhouette looks like a laughing wolf's head.”

Fume Hood agreed, “It does look like that, doesn't it?  I know of someone who uses a silhouette like that on their business cards.  Here.”  He hoofed over a card.

The card read:

Doctor Mordenheim,

General Surgery and Prosthesis.

Everfree Edge Clinic

Practice inspected and approved by Princess Luna

I was delighted!  “I know where that is!  It was a small old castle that was supposedly built by a -” I made my voice low and shivery while making Hoof Quotes, “- 'Mad Doctor' long before Ponyville was established.  It was in ruins when the Apples came and founded the town.”

Coalsmoke smiled and said, “Right, Grumpy.  I know where it is too.  I send my workers there for general health workups and surgery when it is needed.  Doctor Mordenheim really is very good.  It is not far from here, either.  Let's go see if he can shed any light on this business.”

We left, taking the Falmire Causeway that crossed the marsh, going out towards the southeast side of the Everfree forest.  We paused by a street vendor's cart to watch the antics of her trained alligator.

Have to admit that Pinkie has done a great job of training Gummy!  I mean, he is two and a half meters of fun!  Rumor has it that she has broken him to saddle, but she was not offering rides today.

“Gator Chow, gator chow! / The gators below are hungry now! / Feed the gators down below / It is really quite a show!”

A chuckling Coalsmoke hoofed over coins and got a big bag filled with large chunks.  It said “Certified Gator Chow” on the label.  She shared the chunks around and we spent a few happy minutes tossing them to the many alligators gathered hopefully under the bridge.

There were splashes and chomping a-plenty as the gators lunged about for each new chunk of the chow.  We heard a munching from behind us.

KD, swallowing, asked Pinkie, “Where can I get some more of this stuff? It is pretty good!”

At our stares, she retorted, “What?  Dragon here, remember?  I don't eat grass!”

We left Pinkie to her vending and went on across.  It was not long before we saw the sign pointing to the forest beyond.  It said, Everfree Edge Clinic, General Medicine and Prosthetics.

Only a little way up the designated path of yellow cobbles, we came to a small but well restored castle.  I had to give this Doctor Mordenheim credit for showmanship.  This was one classy clinic.  The sign over an open door read Welcome to Everfree Edge Clinic.

Coalsmoke rang a bell labeled Ring for Service that sat on a beautiful mahogany desk in the lobby/waiting room.

We did not even get to try out the assorted seating and laying cushions.  A large, near horse sized zebra with an eye patch came out of the back. His professional smile turned to a genuine one as he laid eye on Coalsmoke.

“My dear Coalsmoke!  What may I do for you, or is it for one of your friends?”

Suddenly stopping like he'd hit one of his stone castle walls, he gave me a careful and most knowing look.  “I do fear that the goat is beyond any help of mine.”

Coalsmoke smirked just a little as she replied, “You are correct.  This is Grumpy Goat, my long standing friend, of whom I am sure that you have heard.  We are not here for him.

“This is Krystal Dragoness.  She prefers to be called KD.  Our problem is sort of related to her, but it is not medical.”

Resting his chin on one forehoof, as he sat behind the desk, Doctor Mordenheim inquired, “If the problem is not medical, then what is it?”

I held out a hoof, “KD, may I have the bag please?”

I showed him the bottom.  “Somepony named Redline is using your cutie mark on his things.  It has some interesting properties.”

Mordenheim put his face in his hooves.  “I know.  I see that KD has it.  She can't lose it either.  Whatever is in it, seems like an endless supply.  I made it, years ago.  How it got here to this world, I have no idea.”

He was sort of surprised when we all simply found seating and Coalsmoke asked casually, “So, how did you get here?  More to the point, when you arrived, did you meet an elderly blue unicorn with a white mane, tail, and beard?”

Mordenheim looked blank.  “What?  No, I never met anypony like that.”

He got a seriously uncomfortable expression as he elaborated, “I would really prefer not to go into why I wound up here.  Princess Luna knows in detail.  Suffice it to say that the events led me to wandering in the Everfree Forest.  I have no idea at all how it happened, since the Everfree is not all that big, but I was in there for over a week.  Perhaps more, I am not at all sure.  What I am sure of is that the path that I was on did not seem to double back on itself or any thing like that.  Between sun breaks in the forest canopy and the scenery, I am sure that I was not going in circles.

“I happened on the ruin of this old castle.  I might have simply passed it by but it had a small cobbled road leading to it from outside of the forest.  I followed that road and it led me to Ponyville.”  He shook his head in wonder, “It was a very different Ponyville than the one that I left.  By good fortune, I met Caramel Treat, Fangrin and Reverend Smallflower.  The rest all came from meeting them.”

I pointed out, “Fascinating as that is, it completely dodges the question of that bag and its neverending supply of adulterated Dragon Muffins.”

One of Doctor Mordenheim's ears cocked up in fascination.  “Adulterated? How?”

Coalsmoke filled in, “With lots of zinc metal dust, that's how.”

Doctor Mordenheim winced,  “Ouch!  That would make mountains of hydrogen gas!  That could cause a serious problem for a dragon!”

KD confirmed, “It sure does!  The hiccups that it causes have been near the ruin of my art.”

Suddenly you could see things clicking together in Doctor Mordenheim's mind! “KD?  Art?  Did you do the covers and illustrations for Daring Do and the Secret of the Apploosa Cave?  The Adventure of the Singing Sands?  The Nippony Diamond?”

KD nodded, clearly pleased.  “All three!  Why?”

Acting like a foal as he was going to his book shelf, Mordenheim snagged all three books and returned to his desk.  “I love your art, KD, would you please autograph these for me?”

With an impishly evil grin, displaying her big dragon chompers, KD replied, “Sure!”  She was reaching into the bag.  “Just as soon as I snack on this muffin!  Or, you make this bag harmless!”

Grinning right back, and revealing a set of fangs that would not have been out of place in a tiger shark, Mordenheim replied, hoof over heart, “You wound me!  I was going to do that anyway.  You did not need blackmail me.  It did make it more fun, though!”

KD chuckled as she said, “I would not really have done it, Doc.  It was just too much fun to pass up the chance.  So, tell us, why did you make a bag like this?”

Reassured that we did not hold his apparent past against him, he sat back comfortably and half smiled at the memory.  “Revenge.  Count Sourbottom was being a problem, objecting to some of my experi . . . projects.   He had a whole herd of foals of all ages.  One of the youngsters had a birthday party coming up.  I set up one of these for each of them!  Loaded them with the finest, sweetest candies that I could locate.  It was a near perfect revenge.”

Always interested in more ways to get back at ponykind for their mistreatment of me in the past, I asked, “How was giving his foals candy any sort of revenge?”

Suddenly, Coalsmoke put a hoof to her lips to suppress giggles.  “Don't you see it, Grumpy?  He couldn't take them away for discipline because the bags will go right back to the foals.  Worse, the endless supply of sweets could cause all sorts of health and mouth problems that the Count would have to pay for!”

Mordenheim nodded happy agreement.  “Last that I heard, Count Sourbottom was headed for bankruptcy on dental bills alone!”

Going more serious, he offered, “KD, we may be able to save the gem topping of your muffins if we are lucky.  Would you like that?”

KD replied seriously, “That would be great, if we can do it.  I really like their flavor, especially the crushed rubies.  How can we do it?”

Doctor Mordenheim picked up the bag and headed for the outside door.  Over his shoulder, he invited, “Come outside for a simple little experiment.  We can save the gems themselves for sure.  Question is whether we can save the topping that they are in or not.”

He pointed down the yellow cobble road leading to his door.  “Now, my dear, take a muffin out of the bag but don't eat it.”

Mystified, she hoofed over the muffin.  “I understand why I have to get it out, but why not eat it?  What are we going to do with it?”

With total assurance, Doctor Mordenheim replied, “You are going to eat it but in parts.  Here, let me scrape off the topping.”  Carefully he removed the topping, taking none of the muffin itself.  “Just eat the topping.  I will hold the muffin for now.”

With obvious relish, KD did.  Licking it off her claws, she asked, “What now?  I like this test!”

“We wait a bit to see if you get gas.  If you don't, the zinc is only in the muffin part.”

KD cocked her head, brow wrinkled in concentration.  “I don't feel any gas coming on.  That usually happens pretty quick when it does.”

“I see. To finish the test, eat the rest of the muffin now.”

She did. And was soon hiccuping blasts of flame.

Nodding in confirmation, he said, “Just in the muffin then.  We can definitely save the topping for you.  Would you like just this topping or would you prefer it on something?”

“As it happens, I do have something that it might go good on.”

Back inside, she produced a bag.  We all saw Mordenheim's nose dilate as he caught the scent.  His ears shot forward in interest.  Drool leaked out of the corner of his mouth!

“What is that lovely smelling stuff, KD?”

“Gator Chow.  I got it from Pinkie Pie over on the bridge.  She told me that it is made from smoked and flaked meat pressed into bite sized chunks.”

Both Coalsmoke and I were rolling on the floor, laughing!  Getting myself somewhat under control, I commented, “Those teeth of yours are real, aren't they, Doc?”

“Yes, they are.  Is it a problem?”

Coalsmoke, composing herself comfortably on a large cushion, replied, “Not for us.  It was just unexpected.  Looks like Pinkie is going to have to stock in more Gator Chow, is all.  

“This explains why Caramel has mentioned you eating there a lot but I haven't seen you, and I eat there too.  You eat in the back, in her carnivore plaza.”

“Right. Now, KD, those Gator Chow chunks are just about muffin sized.  That is about as big as the bag can handle.  It is time to disarm the bag from those bad muffins.”

He got a large, heavy book from the shelf.  Instead of consulting it, he held it at the ready.

“Now, KD, take the muffin out and move your paws away from the bag swiftly.”

As she did, he slammed the book down on top of the bag!  He held it down for around a whole minute.  Relaxing, he pronounced, the spell is reset. It can now be reloaded and set to anyone.  Just a sec.”

He went into the back and returned with salad tongs and a spreading knife. Selecting one of KD's chow chunks, he carefully and neatly spread the gem topping onto it.  Taking the tongs, he used them to insert the topped chow chunk into the bag.

“Now, KD, just reach into the bag and take out the snack.  That will reset the bag to you with a safe treat.  You also now know how to change treats any time that you want.”

Saying, “Thanks, Doc!”  KD fished out the treat and nibbled it down with gusto!

I was watching the whole thing with narrowed eyes that I don't really have. Thinking it over, I pointed out, “KD, whoever set you up was at the show in Manehatten.  The way it works, that spell didn't lock onto you until you took out that first muffin.

“It may be time for a contract or a bit of detective work in Manehatten. Perhaps both.”

Thoughtfully she suggested, “There is another big art show in Manehatten in a few days.  I do have a studio there with some finished pieces that I could enter if I could get there in time.  That would give us the cover that we need for detective work if we can arrive in time.”

I suggested, “If time is a problem, I could try setting up a portal between here and the Manehatten fairgrounds.  It has been a while since I studied that but it is really pretty simple magic.”

We all trooped outside and I began the really pretty basic preparations for opening a portal spell.  I did add a whole lot of “stage dressing” rituals, circles and other misdirection.  I always do.  Better showmanship and it hides what makes it work from prying eyes, even if they are watching.

A glowing circle appeared in the air, just in front of us and barely touching the ground.  Suddenly it began to grow, becoming a huge oval. Something enormous, making a steady pulsing roar and clanking like metal was coming toward us!

First, pretty high up, came a sort of short crossways tube with a hole in it on the side facing us.  The thing continued to advance.  That funny bit was attached to a long metal tube!  Down lower, some big metal plates appeared and then between them  an enormous bridge of metal. Huge wheels of steel supported endless linked plates of more steel!

As the contraption came on out, it was revealed to be a gigantic machine of some sort!  It had sloped sides up to a heavy device on top that the long tube came out of.  That had sloped sides too, as if this thing were made to bounce catapult shots off of it!  There were some serious dents and obvious repairs that made it seem that those slopes were strictly functional!

Sticking her head up out of a hatch in the top was a pony who looked for all the world like Rainbow Dash!  Reinforcing that idea was a brown pegasus with a black mane and tail clinging to the rear of the machine and calling out loudly enough to be heard over the machine's roar!

“Dashie! Stop!  You going to smash through garden wall again!  You crush Jade's herb garden again!  You so grounded!”

Dashie retorted, “I not hit wall, dad!  Big blue hole show up.  I drive through that!  Besides, last time I drive through Jade's herb garden, I fix it better than before.  She ask me to squash it again!”

“And one more thing!  Dashie, you make me good hot tea or you so grounded you need dig up for thousand year to see daylight!”

Innocently she shot back, “If I that grounded, I make you nice tea that De Writer send for me to get you!  It his idea to get it with remote control T82 Main Battle Tank!  If I NOT grounded, I MIGHT be able to find you nice green tea that he never touch!”

The brown pegasus sat hard.  “De Writer ask you to use Remote Control T82 IN CANTERLOT for that tea?  You not so grounded as I thought.”

The one identified as Dashie noticed us from her vantage point, high up in the top part of the T82.  She picked up a small boxy thing with buttons and levers and pushed one of the buttons.  The T82's loud grumbling fell quiet.

“Um, Dad, we come through portal, I think.  You not teach me that magic yet. There ponies here and a dragon.  Come around T82 and you see.  There small castle here too.”

The brown pegasus stepped around the metal monster and courteously introduced, “I Thomas the Writer.  Miscreant who drive T82 through your portal my daughter Dashie Writer.  T82 is educational toy give her by De Writer.”

Mordenheim looked up at the behemoth of steel and remarked, “Where you are from has different ideas about educational toys than any place I have ever been.”

Dashie replied, “It crazy where we from too, but what you expect from powerful wizard like De Writer?  Something safe?  He good to have on your side when trouble come, though.”

She turned about and exclaimed, “The portal gone!”

It was true.  Standing where it had been was a familiar cat otter hybrid with red hair.  She was wearing a well worn cloak of dark green and light seeming chain mail.  Mithril by the look of it.  Her left arm was a prosthesis, a mechanical arm of metal that moved in an utterly natural way.  Under the cloak was the scabbard of a large sword.  In her mechanical hand was a parchment that looked like a map of some sort.

She tucked away the map in a pouch at her waist and looked about, her gaze missing nothing.  Smiling, she waived!  “Hi, Grumpy!  It's me, Wind!  We met at Ponyville Fair, remember?  I am part of Marchhare's band of Rom.   I was going to meet them at Haymarket fair, up north, but this out of control portal got in the way.  I took the liberty of closing it.”

Thomas gave Wind a strangely puzzled look.  “This world with Marchhare in it?”

She shrugged, “I wouldn't be going to meet him and his band if it wasn't!  Why?”

Speaking to Dashie, Thomas said, “This important lesson, Dashie.  How many worlds in multiverse?”

She replied, “Infinite.  Everyone and thing have infinite copies, each a little different.”  Raising her eyebrows in thought, she added, “This a trick question, isn't it, Dad?”

“Sort of. You very quick.  Every rule have exception, right?”

Putting hoof to chin, she thought and then went wide eyed with realization! “Every rule have exception, even that rule!”

Thomas lifted his wings in pleasure.  “Right!  This ONLY world in whole multiverse that have Marchhare!  That is secret to navigation when go between worlds.”

Dashie blinked.  “What happen when he dies?”

“Nothing, Dashie.  Marchhare already dead.  Not die twice.”

We were all listening in amazement.  It was newcomer Wind who said, “That is sort of a relief.  That there is only one of my foster dad, I mean. I have met some of myself and it was not the best of experiences!”

She put her jaw in her metal hand and examined the whole situation carefully. Turning to me she asked, “Did you cast the portal, Grumpy?”

Scraping the grass where I was standing with one nonexistent forehoof and looking down, I muttered, “Afraid so.  Portals are not really my specialty.  I guess that I really messed this one up.”

Wind stepped over and lifted my glamor's head to look me in the eye.  “I am an expert with portals.  That one was really well done.  It would have worked perfectly if you had not cast it here.  The Everfree's Hidden Ways are what messed you up.

“Now, where were you trying to go?”

KD interjected, “We were aiming for the fairgrounds at Manehatten by the Sea.”

Wind nodded in a very take charge sort of way.  “I see.  That is about 6 or 7 hundred kilometers from here.”

Leaning casually up against the iron monster called T82, Wind asked, “Does this thing have personnel and cargo railings and how fast is it, uh, Dashie?”

Dashie brightened up as she replied, “It sure does have safety railings! I use them when I give Mia and Becky rides.  It can go as far as you want.  Out in the open, it can hit 100 kilometers an hour!  How did you know about that?”

Wind gave a delicate shudder, “I have adventured on a few worlds where similar machines were used.  I saw the passenger railings on some of them.”

Wind smiled ingratiatingly at Thomas.  “Would you be willing to let Dashie take us all on an Adventure to Manehatten by the Sea?  It will get these nice beings where they need to go and be fun for us all.  From there, I can easily send you both back home.”

Dashie had hopped out of the top of the T82 and began releasing catches and lifting up metal railings.  They clicked as they locked into place. When she was done, she lowered a set of steep metal stairs to climb up onto the back of her “educational toy.”

Thomas watched with a skeptical lift to his right eyebrow.  “I not say we go, Dashie.”

She looked him straight back in the eye as she retorted, in front of us all, “Right.  All that you have to do is tell our hosts that you won't do something simple and fun to help them.”

“That blackmail, Dashie!”

“Right. Between you and our De Writer, I learn from the best!”

He chuckled, “OK.  We do it.”

Wind swung easily up the boarding stair and called, “All aboard for the Manehatten Express!”

KD swarmed up, found the engine vents, and curled up with a “Dibs on the warm spot!”

Coalsmoke gently pushed me toward the enormous device with, “I would love to go too, Grumpy, but I have serious business to talk over with Victor. The Princesses want to set up a program for helping wounded veterans of their armies.”

Dashie started the T82 and made a big turn.  Wind guiding her, we set out for Adventure!  And Manehatten.

Technically, we took Doctor Mordenheim's path down to the Falmire cutoff and turned south towards the junction with Royal Road 315.  For some reason, the busy traffic of Ponyville's industrial district gave way before us, even when it had the right of way!  Couldn't imagine why! Surely it had nothing to do with fifty or more tonnes of steel monstrosity charging along at a “mere” twenty kilometers per hour.

We reached the Royal Road toll booth without incident.  Almost had an incident there.  The poor booth keepers were going nuts trying to sort out the proper toll.

Pages were fluttering back and forth in their toll manuals, “It ain't a cart or wagon from any section!  Darn thing is made out of iron like a fool locomotive on the railroad!”

“I know, Jeb!  Can't even classify it by team size or set up!  It runs itself!”

Wind was sitting on the edge of the turret, which Dashie had taught us was the name for that upper part with the long pipe sticking out of it, and giggling at the small uproar.  

“When Marchhare hears about this, he will split his harness, he will laugh so hard!”

One of the toll collectors looked up at her and got a beatific smile.  “You are Wind, from Marchhare's band of Rom, right?  I saw you at our fair a couple of times.”

She nodded acknowledgment, “Yes, Sir.  I am.”

He turned to his buddy and pushed the manuals shut.  “Just write Rom from Marchhare's band, toll free by Crowns Law.”

Jeb did write, though he was still trying to protest.  His superior shut him down with, “Jeb, like enough you are right.  Still, it solves OUR problem.”  He tripped the gate mechanism and the flimsy red and white painted wooden bar lifted up out of our way.

We pulled onto the Royal Road.  Besides less traffic, it was wider and better maintained than the Ponyville road we had come from.  Dashie began to open up the speed once we had clear road ahead of us.  I must say, I was impressed.  Dashie was not kidding about hitting a hundred kilometers an hour!

The T82 was fast and high enough that we had to duck shade tree branches!  A delighted KD had her sketchbook out and was rapidly drawing things from her high perspective!

Chortling, she explained, “Even as roughs, some of these will adapt to pictures for my book contract!  This is great!”

Wind steered us into one of the many waysides, making Dashie slow down and drive gently as we parked for the evening.  With assurance, she showed us where the free water and firewood were.

With a fond smile, Wind recalled, “I have camped here before, while traveling with Dad's band.  There is a small stream over in the bushes that we can get fresh fish and crawdads out of for a nice dinner.”

KD had out an easel and was busily drawing with colors.  She was doing the T82 framed by a sunset of riotous clouds and glowing light.  

She asked politely, “Wind, would you be so good as to pose there, just below the turret?  I want your metal arm just casually holding something and your sword out in your right hand, ready but not on a guard.”

Wind did pose.  It really did not take KD long at all to capture the feeling of the scene.  The way that Wind was posing, it looked for all the world like she OWNED the metal monster behind her!

Done posing, Wind stretched and began doing limbering up exercises.  With an expression of delight, and without even thinking about it, Wind began to dance and sing in a language strange to all of us.  I did recognize it from my times at the Ponyville fair, serving mainly as security for Caramel Treat's excellent food booth.  The language was Gyptian, the sort of private and held secret, nearly melodious tongue of the Rom.  I did recognize the dance.

She was treating us to the Shehan Ja Rom, their story of how the Rom came to be.  I gather that it is the oldest dance and song of the Rom.  As her dance and song finished, I remembered that the Rom did not clap for applause.  I leaned my head back and gave the loud trill that the Rom use.

Wind looked sort of startled as the others followed suit.  Embarrassed, she mumbled, “Sorry.  It was just the joy of being on the road again.”

It was KD who said it, “Don't be sorry.  It was lovely.  Is there an Equestrian translation?”

I put in, “I know that there is.  That was the famous Shehan Ja Rom.  The Rom traditionally dance and sing it in an Equestrian version to open fairs.  What I am curious about is how Wind, who is nothing like any horse or pony, came to be a Rom and of Marchhare's band at that.”

Wind sat near the fire and absently began to assemble vegetable skewers for Dashie, Thomas and I.  “I made a little mistake while adventuring. I survived it, obviously.  Mama Dragon fixed me up and sent me here, to this Equestria to finish healing and recuperate.  De Writer met me and steered me to Marchhare's band.

“Good thing, too.  One of my wounds developed a small inflammation that could have killed me.  Black Lotus, Marchhare and Hoof Dancer, his wife at the time, healed me.  Mama Dragon was wise in sending me to them for a month.  I had more than physical wounds to heal.  I joined them and learned to read, write and speak Gyptian.  Having a real caring and extended family provided the rest of the healing that I needed.  Now, I have my Freedom and I can come and go as I wish, but my Rom family is always there for me.”

I could tell that there was a lot left out but Wind cut her tale off without harming her tail by asking, “Grumpy, will you tend these skewers for me while I go catch some fish, crawdads and a bunny or two for dinner to share with KD?”

I realized at once that besides being an adventurer, Wind was quite diplomatic. She had just reminded the lot of us that KD had not eaten all day, except for snacks, and that both she and Wind were carnivores. Possibly hungry carnivores.

Dashie took off too, calling, “Wind!  Wait up!  I want see how you hunt and fish without fancy gear.”

Wind looked back, nodded and then beckoned with a finger curl.  As soon as Dashie was up to her, Wind slid into the brush without a sound.  Dashie, trying to follow was pretty quiet.

Coming to the creek bank, Wind laid flat and wriggled forward on her stomach. Carefully parting the small thin wands of the bank willows, she slid her right arm into the water, reaching back, under the cut bank.  Her face screwed up with concentration, she eased her hand up, feeling for a fish.  Smiling, she slid her hand further up and grabbed!

Rolling back and lifting, Wind flipped the good sized trout out onto the bank!  She caught the flopping creature and bent its head back to break its neck.  She snipped off a thin bank willow strand with her knife and laced it through the fish's gills and out the mouth. Loosely knotting the ends, she hung the fish up and repeated the trick three more times!

Dashie was watching with awe.  “I never even hear of fishing that way!  How you do it?”

Wind picked up her willow loop with fish and replied, “It takes practice to tickle trout but it is not really hard.  You need to be careful and gentle.  When you feel the fish with your fingers, you need to work your way up until you feel the pectoral fins, those just behind the gills.  Snap your fingers into the gills and lift it out quickly.

“Now for a nice brace of bunnies and dinner will ready to cook.”

Dashie, keeping her voice down, asked, “I see warren right over there.  How you catch them?  Some kind of trap?”

Wind, following Dashie's pointing hoof, shook her head.  “I could, and if we were going to be here longer, I would set some snares.  Since it is only dinner and breakfast, I will just pounce them.  It is easier and quicker.”

Dashie watched Wind ghost her way through the brush toward the warren. Choosing her place, she waited, a bunched spring of living huntress. Nothing moved except for the tip of her tail twitching slightly.  It was only a few minutes before a bunny hopped lazily toward one of the main holes of the warren.  Wind's pounce included a fast chop with her metal hand!  The bunny only twitched once before going still.

Wind quietly picked a different spot and soon had a second bunny!

Bearing her prey, Wind and Dashie returned to camp.  On their way, Wind asked, “Why did you want to see how I got fish and bunnies?  Most ponies really don't want to see that.”

Face flaming a little with embarrassment, Dashie replied, “I am sort of, like half dragon.  I turn into one if I need to or want to.  Thing is, I not very good at getting meat to eat!  I have to turn back to a pony and graze up dinner!  There are times that really inconvenient!”

Wind chuckled.  “I can see that!  We have one more stop before Manehatten by the Sea.  I will take you out hunting there too, OK?”

Back at camp, Wind considerately went to the other side of the T82 to clean and prepare her catch.  A lightly drooling KD went to help!  They both returned to the camp, licking their lips and smiling.  They were finishing up with some of KD's endless supply of Gator Chow.  Wind had carefully cleaned off the gem topping from hers and used it to enhance KD's snack.

As we were settling about the fire, Dashie asked, “Um, Wind, did Rom hold you prisoner some way?  You say you have your freedom.”

Wind chuckled at the misunderstanding.  “No, Dashie.  The Rom Freedom is a thing that they wear.  Here, I have mine in my bag.”

She reached into her bag at her waist and her arm seemed to go in further than was possible.  She saw us staring and snorted her amusement.  “It is called a bag of holding.  It is sort of like Marchhare's caravan. It is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  Here it it is!”

Stopping her rummaging, she pulled out a sort of headstall thing of richly tooled and dyed leather with rings and buckles that looked to be gold.  She strapped it on.

“This is a Freedom of the Rom.  They grant them only to beings that they have fully accepted as one of their own.”

“Why is call a Freedom?” Dashie wondered.

Wind lifted her chin with pride.  “The original cast off slaves that were the first Rom wore a headstall with a bit and lead ring.  They had them all their lives and were not comfortable without something on their heads.  They re made them into the Freedom by taking away anything by which they could be made to serve another.  No bit or lead ring has ruled any Rom from that day to this.”  Very carefully, Wind removed her Freedom and put it away.

KD had curled into an amazingly hard to see coil of dragon to sleep until dawn.  The rest of us were spreading blankets to sleep under the stars.

A wagon full of road repair tools and an accompanying work gang of ponies pulled into the rest area.  A couple of them strode arrogantly to our camp and demanded, “We are hungry!  What ever food you got, hoof it over now!  You don't, we gonna take sledgehammers to that there tin thingy!”

I gently prodded the almost sleeping dragon in our midst.  KD had been paying attention!  Her head rose up, eyes alight.  A curl of flame showing at each nostril and outlining her barely opened jaws completed the picture!

She serenely asked, “What?  More dinner?  I'm not sure that I could hold another whole pony.  Mind if we just sort of pack along the leftovers for lunch?”

Dashie had lifted a fully draconic head.  In the late evening's light we could not make out her color but we could easily make out the totally paling ponies!

“What! They got TWO DRAGONS!”

Dashie corrected, “No.  Two HUNGRY dragons!”

Dashie was giggling at the frantic retreat of the two jerks!  Got to admit to some chuckles of my own.  KD's sides were heaving as she re coiled herself.

Dashie got up onto all fours.  In the dying firelight, she could be seen to be a light blue color.  She flexed her wings a couple of times and strolled over to where the road crew ponies were carelessly re packing to leave.  In terror but not so terrified that they were willing to have to pay for abandoned gear!

One thoughtlessly yelled, “Road camp privacy!  Stay away, that is kingdom law!”

Wind, who was almost unnoticed at Dashie's right front leg, calmly pointed out, “You have just admitted that you knew that you were breaking kingdom law when you tried to hijack our dinner.  In your haste to correct your error, you dropped your sledgehammers.  Here!”

Wind revealed a hidden strength by casually giving the heavy hammers an underhand toss.  Both hammers overshot the wagon and hit the turf on the other side of it.

That got the attention of the road crew ponies!  One noticed, “How come you only got one arm?”

Smiling angelically, which showed off her fangs nicely, Wind reached up with her metal left arm and scritched at the base of Dashie's left dragon horn as she replied, “What, this?” Campfire light glinting from her metal arm, she said casually, “Kitten here, and I got to roughhousing last week!  She was a little too enthusiastic, that's all.”

Dashie, catching on to the game, bent her head around and gave Wind a lick at the shoulder and said contritely, “I said that I was sorry!  We just need to find a Phoenix potion so that you can regrow it. Again.”

They strolled back to our camp, Wind taking the time to re hang her cloak to sort of hide her metal arm.  Thomas, Dashie, now turned back to a pegasus, and I nibbled up Wind's excellent fruit and vegetable skewers.

Wind toasted the last of the bunnies and trout over KD's flame and shared that extra bit dinner with her.  Dashie “sneaked” over and turned back to a dragon to beg a few bites.  Grinning, they let her have some.

Sleeping out in the open, I did not have my usual nightmares of a Celestian Church mob burning my home, studies, and, failing to trap me in the house, attempting to stone me to death.  Perhaps my feelings of safety came of sleeping beside a big blue dragon?  One that liked me? Very likely.

It could not last.  For one thing, dawn comes far too soon for a cave dwelling goat like me.  The other was a light blue bundle of enthusiasm with rainbow mane and tail!  Dashie was bounding into camp!  She was waiving a forked stick with three big fat trout on it!  It was laced through their gills and out their mouths, with the forked branch acting as a stop to keep them from sliding off.

“I did it, Wind!  I tickle trout just like you show me how!”

Wind looked up from laying the morning cook fire.  Her grin showed her usually hidden fangs as she replied, “Just like I showed you?   Not sure how to point this out diplomatically but you don't have any fingers to do it with.”

Totally disingenuous, Dashie replied, “I just use my magic like you show with hand.  It not hard.  Real trick was find where fish hide.  You show me that.  They too quick to catch if just grab.  Gentle tickle is trick.”

Both KD and I were listening with rapt attention.  It was clear that Thomas and Dashie's Equestria was very different from this one.  As they talked, that became more and more apparent.

“Does your magic come from being a weredragon?”

“Only a little.  Most I learn from Dad.  He one of two most powerful beings in our Equestria.  Be honest, I think De Writer worst.  Super strong magic and wicked sense of humor.  And bored.  He three thousand years old.  Raise Princesses.”

“I see. Do other pegassi use magic where you come from?”

“Not really.  Dad figure out that there more magic in world than Earth, Pegassi, and Unicorn.  It come from his mom, Aurora, the Demon Queen.”

We all looked askance at the innocent appearing brown pegasus.  This was getting more and more interesting all the time.

Wind just nodded, took the fish and efficiently set about preparing them.  She also pulled some fresh looking apples and peaches out of the bag at her waist.  She expertly split them into proper chunks and dropped them into a pot.  She added a little fresh water and, reaching into her bag of holding, pulled out a box with many drawers and bottles, a jar with a sealed top and a small flour bag.

I was sort of amazed, watching the sheer skill with which Wind organized breakfast.  She even had water on heating in a biggish pot.  She added some from the sealed bottle.  The camp filled with the heavenly aroma of Rom black tea!

Satisfied with the progress of the fruits in the pot, she added sugar, cinnamon from one of the drawers of the box and stirred in the flour to thicken it.

It smelled heavenly, not like regular flour at all.  Wind closed the bag and returned box, bag and jar to her bag of holding.  She saw my calculating look as I watched it all happening.  

Wrinkling her nose in amusement, she explained, “Ka'chek flour.  A Rom without it?  Unheard of!”

Breakfast lived up to the lovely scents, and then some.

Wind, KD and Dashie went to the other side of the T82 to fix and eat the trout.  Coming back, Dashie and KD were finishing up gem topped Gator Chows and Wind was nibbling at one with the topping removed.

While they were eating, the rest of us cleaned up all the cookware and put out the fire.  We especially cleaned out the fruit stew pot!  Nearly came to blows over who got to lick it out!  Good sense prevailed and we took turns licking parts of it.  Then, we washed it.  We did have one thing unwashed.

We saved Wind the last mug of Rom black tea.  Smiling at our courtesy, Wind drained it and saw to proper washing of the mug.  She then caused us all a small croggle of the mind by causally putting all of the clean cookware and dishes into her bag of holding!

We all piled onto the remote controlled T82 and Dashie got us on the road again!

I noticed that Wind was wearing her Freedom and had put on a harness.  It was as richly tooled and dyed as her freedom.  They were clearly a matched set.

While KD was busy with her art, making fast sketches of the lands that we were passing through, I made bold to ask, “Why the Rom outfit?  This is not exactly a caravan.”

Wind giggled at some joke that I did not understand as she replied, “Actually, it is.  You just have to understand what caravan means. It is a loan word from the desert Kingdoms that was already in use by the time that the first Rom came here.  In their language of Gyptian, it means something slightly different from how it is used in Equestrian.

“It is just that there is a road section toll gate coming up in a little. Me being dressed this way should get us through the gate for free.”

Nodding acceptance for her reason, I turned my attention to Thomas, who was trying hard to act like an adult pegasus, rather than a colt having the time of his life.

I guessed, “You have not ridden on Dashie's T82 before, have you Thomas?”

With a twinkle in his eye, he admitted, “Never before this.  I think that she get to play with it more but need daddy supervision!”

I was chuckling at that when we all felt the iron monster slowing down. Wind, pointing ahead, made clear exactly why.  There was the toll booth with its light weight red and white bar across the road.  There was a substantial cabin in back of it for use of the toll collectors when off duty and out here, kilometers from any town.  A sign said, WELCOME TO THE MANEHATTEN ROYAL ROAD SECTION.

Wind hopped off the top of the huge left tread guard of the T82 and greeted the toll takers, “Hi!  What do you think of my new act?  Just doing a shake down run to IRON out any problems!  We are promised entertainment for the big art show.”

The utterly bemused light yellow toll collector turned to his lavender buddy and shook his head.  Pushing the toll manual shut he said, “Rom.  No accounting for 'em.  Just write Rom, toll free by Crowns Law.”

He tripped the mechanism and the toll gate rose up out of our way.  

As the mechanical behemoth passed through the gate, Wind trotted after and swung up the steel boarding stair and resumed her place on top of the turret, next to Dashie.

We had passed two of the Waysides when Wind guided Dashie into one that seemed empty.  It was nowhere near noon, yet.

“Thanks, Dashie!  There is a friend here that I want to talk to.  It would have been rude to just go by and not say Hi.”

With that, she bounced off the turret, grabbed what we had learned was called the Main Gun, and swung, letting go and landing lightly.  She sprinted over to the edge of the woods.

Sitting suddenly, she quietly reached out and laid a sparkling pebble among many others in that spot.  She said, “Hannara Na Kili.”  We could not make out the rest.  It was all in Gyptian.  It contained pauses as if she was listening to what another was saying.  The conversation was soon over.

Wind got up, smiling serenely, and returned to us.  Dashie had turned to a dragon so that she and KD could share a couple of KD's gator chows.

Wind suggested, “We could get going, now.  The Loved Dead are always with us.  Hannara and I had a nice chat.”

It was slowly percolating through the brain that I don't really have, just how different Rom are.  And I have known them, shared food with them and talked with them for years.  They have even been guests in my cave.  I have heard that expression, the Loved Dead are always with us hundreds of times.  I have heard about Laying the Stones goodness only knows how many times.  This was the first time that I had seen it.

Seeing how Wind treated it, both casually and with absolute assurance, as if the horse in that grave that the Rom call a Gateway to the Lake of Paradise, or Lake for short, was really there, made it hit me like a gut punch.

I knew, like everybeing in Equestria that the ONE THING THAT YOU DO NOT DO is desecrate any Wayside burial.  Ponies who die more than two days travel from their homes are entitled to a Wayside burial.  It is a Royal Benefice.  The graves are marked and tended as part of Wayside maintenance.

All Rom who die get a Wayside burial, that they call a Lake or going to the Lake. They lay small, inexpensive, but pretty pebbles on them to mark them.  

Desecration of a Rom Lake will bring the Princesses in person to investigate. The criminals WILL get caught.  Penalties are HARSH.  They range from twenty years at hard labor on the Royal Roads up to life.  The worst offenders, who have actually exhumed Rom remains get a punishment worse than simple death.  

They get life in the Twins Mine, digging mercury ore.  The fumes destroy the mind and wrack the body.  After the first few such grave robberies, centuries ago, no pony in their right mind will risk that.

Wind looked so quietly happy that I had to wonder whether there was any truth to the Rom belief in the Lake of Paradise.

Dashie finished her snack and changed back to a pegasus.  We all piled back onto the T82 educational toy and hit the road again.  It was not long before we came to a bridge across a stream.

It was a nice, well built and solid bridge.  It was clear that it was not made to take the sheer mass of the T82.

Dashie, following Wind's suggestions and pointing, reversed the T82 for about fifty or sixty meters.  There, she eased off the road and headed toward the stream.  She stopped short, while Wind scouted ahead, dropping down the stream bank and checking the bottom to be sure that it would hold up the tank.

Returning, she suggested to the others, “I think that you should get off and use the bridge on foot.  This will be a wild ride!”

KD pointed to the line of ten to fifteen centimeter diameter trees that lined both sides of the stream skeptically.  “Um, not to cast doubt or anything, but how do you plan to get this thing past those?”

Wind replied quietly, “I have seen machines like this, doing what they were designed to do.  I don't think that it will be a difficult problem.”

KD and Thomas both looked into Wind's eyes and saw reflected experiences that they did not want to share.  Neither did I.  Thomas just said, “T82 break trees in orchard before this.  I take Wind's advice.”

Nodding, KD followed him, saying, “Let me get to the center of the bridge and get my sketchbook out!  I don't want to miss this!”

Figuring that the center of the bridge would have the best view of the proceedings. I joined them.

That was when I noticed something completely uncanny.  As big and heavy as the T82 was, there was no sign of its driving across the grass and brush to get to the stream.  Looking back, I saw that the road was in perfect condition, too.

I pointed it out to the one here who might know something about it.  Thomas snickered happily, “Yes, know already.  You not say anything to Dashie but she very good with magic of rock and stone.  Also with magic of plants.  She fix what educational toy do as it happen most time.”

Just then, it started.  The T82 let out a loud roar and charged the treeline! There was a splintering set of crashing sounds as it struck the innocent vegetation!  The trees did not stand a chance!  They swayed, cracked and buckled, falling down into the stream as the “toy” crunched over them, tipping down steeply as it plunged into the stream!   With a huge splash, followed by the churning up of rock, gravels and white water, the machine charged the opposite bank!

As it hit, I began to appreciate the ingenuity of the linked steel belts that the T82 ran on.  There was a slope at the front before the treads hit the ground.  Now, that slope let the machine claw its way up the bank, tilting back steeply as its momentum and driving tracks forced it up, pushing the trees aside and down while it topped the bank!

Dashie drove her “toy” up to the road's edge and parked it.  She bailed out and took wing to the other side of the stream.  Landing in the water, she transformed into her dragon self!

She called, “Dad!  KD!  Will you help please!?”

She was lifting the fallen trees back into their places, on the stumps that they had broken off from.  While she was at it, I could see her magic going into the stems and branches, binding together cracks and breaks.

KD loped down and joined her.  “What can I do, Dashie?  I don't know anything about this kind of magic.”

“Just hold trunk up while I fix break and roots.”

Thomas strolled down and waded into the stream.  He started repairing cracks and breaks in the wood of the fallen trees to speed things along.

Wind and I sat on the bridge rail and watched them work.  She commented, “Ah, hard work!  I can sit and watch it for simply hours!”

It really did not take all that long for the party to restore all the trees and larger brush, leaving almost no sign that the massive T82 had charged through there.

KD said it for all of us, as we climbed back aboard the T82, “I never even heard of magic like that before!”

As she was settling into the turret and picking up the remote control, Dashie shrugged.  “All world each a little different.  Some thing go from world to world, some not.  Magic dad teach me, it work.”

Not too much later, we pulled into a Wayside to fix lunch.  Some heavy freight dray ponies were already camped there, so Dashie parked us at a site well away from them, to give them camp privacy.

They stomped over to us just as Wind was setting a large pot of water to heat.

“Whatever you gots to eat gotta be better than our road ration oats!  Hoof it over!  We even got you a bag of oats to make it a fair trade!”

Dashie quelled Wind before she could say anything.  She gestured for KD to stay hidden behind the T82.  Pretending to quail some, she replied, “We just stop for ordinary tea before go on.  Got special box tea need to be deliver.”

Thomas, sounding indignant, demanded, “No!  Dashie, that tea special!  Got to go to Castle . . .”

“They meaner than us, Dad!  I give them one packet.  Only make them a couple of gallon.”

She ducked down into the T82's interior and returned with a modest package wrapped in gold colored foil.

She made a point of securing the oats before giving them the package.  “We going be in much trouble for this.  Oats is least you can do.”

As they retreated, I noticed that Thomas had a diabolical grin.  Dashie, on the other hoof, simply hopped up on the T82 and tripped something on her control box.

The turret turned and the main gun lowered some.  It pointed the big main gun directly at the drover's camp.

All that Thomas would say was, “It De Writer tea.  Never know what happen. Best be safe!”

Wind's ears perked up!  Almost too casually, she asked, “Is that thing loaded?”

Dashie sort of shrank a bit as she replied, “Yes.  Have five case ammo.  Two explosive, three solid shot.  Five round in each case.  De Writer give them to me when I get tea.  Dad not like me have it.”

“OOPS! No time talk now!  They getting water boiling!”

KD sidled up to Wind, “You seem to know a lot about this thing.  Just how dangerous is it?”

Wind put an arm over KD's neck as she replied, “That depends on which kind of round Dashie has in the gun.  A solid shot will rip a crater about two or three meters across.  The flying dirt and stone from the fire place will make a deadly spray.

“If it is an explosive round, it will blast a hole about five or six meters across.  It will scatter fragments of the shell and any loose stone or dirt too.

“Yes, the T82 could wreck any ordinary fortress in Equestria.”

KD was chortling, “I hope that the tea is worth a shot!  Not only would I like to see that, I did not like those ponies at all.”

Thomas overheard and replied, “They not get hurt.  De Writer not crazy. Have spell on T82 it not hurt any pony or intelligent being.  Can do much property damage.  That educational part of toy.  Dashie get to fix up damage.  Study hard her magics since she get it from De Writer!”

The wayside ponies added the tea to the water boiling in their big kettle.

As they did, Thomas asked urgently, “What De Writer say about brew tea?”

Dashie's brow wrinkled, “He say make in ceramic pot only a little at a time. It good for cold morning!”

Just then the flames began in the drover's big kettle of boiling water!  They burst up in a great gout of blue and yellow fire!  We could feel the heat from where we were!  The sides of the big iron pot glowed red, then yellow!  They began to melt!

In only seconds, the sides gave way and the tea gushed out, drowning the campfire, not that it was much help!  The wood instantly went to ash! The tea soaked into the bottom of the fire place and the flames slowly subsided.

The heat had driven the drovers away from camp and wagon.  The whole side of the wagon that had been facing the tea was charred.  There were small wisps of smoke arising from it here and there.

Thomas was sitting on his rump laughing.  “Now know why fix in ceramic pot and only little at a time!  Definitely good for cold morning!”

While the drovers were frantically hitching up and hauling out of there, Thomas was thoughtfully heating water in an iron pot.  He called up, “Dashie!  Packet tea.  Small measure.  Ceramic pot I know you got in there!”

She popped up out of the hatch and gave Thomas the things that he had asked for. KD, who could breathe fire, quietly backed up.

Dashie saw it and reasured her, “With De Writer tea, follow direction important.  We see what NOT do.”

Thomas added boiling water to the small, indeed tiny, measure of tea in the pot.  Flame poured out the spout and leaked around the lid.  It soon died.  Thomas poured a small cup and smelled it.

“Have good nose.”  He sipped.  Eyes wide, he exclaimed, “This one of De Writer's best teas yet!  Try some, Dashie!”

She promptly poured a cup for herself.  “It good dad!  Thanks!”

Wind added vegetables to her pot of boiling water and soon the savory scent of vegetable stew filled the camp area.

While it was cooking, she took Dashie and they entered the woods.  It was not long before they returned with a couple of squirrels and a few bunnies.  This time, it was Dashie, turned dragon, who toasted the carnivore lunch.

After everything was cleaned up and put away, Dashie strolled over to the camp that the drovers had used.  While we watched, she actually pushed a few heat broken stones of the fireplace back to position. Somehow, they stuck.  What really got me though was her casually picking up the hardened iron from the melted pot and the original fire grilles and sort of pushed, pulled and squeezed on them to make a good, substantial grill for supporting cook pots.  It went into its place.  She carefully scouted the camp, leaving bright green grass where it had been fire browned.

A grinning KD got several quick sketches!

Wind reminded us all, “The Manehatten fairgrounds turn off is only about another hour down the road.  Shall we be gone?”

It did not actually take us an hour to get there.  We all disembarked from the T82 and did stretches.

Among the assorted goodbyes, I heard Wind ask KD, “I am not on a schedule. Mind if I tag along to see your art show?”

I personally, after wishing Thomas and Dashie well, inquired, “Would it be possible for me to get some of that De Writer tea?”

He practically pounced on me!  “How much you want?  He send a crate of it!  Got lots!”

“I could use several packages.  Say, five?”

“Dashie! Get Grumpy five packets De Writer tea!”

Her voice muffled by being inside her machine, she retorted, “FIVE?  What he want to do?  Melt T82?”

As I took the packages of potentially deadly tea, Thomas pointed out, “You know Grumpy do magic.  Pony here seem mostly think only unicorn do magic.  Grumpy use much ritual and misdirection to keep them from catch on.  I bet tea become part of that.”

My already high respect for Thomas went up another big notch.  I nodded, “Right, Thomas.  Also, once the fire burns off, it makes a really good tea. Right up there with Rom black.”

Wind told the group, “Well, I promised to send you back from here.  Is it time to go?”

Though Dashie looked a little downcast, Thomas nodded, “It been fun here, but yes.  It time to go home.”

Wind reached into her bag of holding and fished out a thing that looked like a map.  She traced out what looked like a route on it with a delicate touch of one claw.

The pale blue oval of a portal big enough to drive a T82 main battle tank through appeared.  Thomas climbed the passenger steps, up onto the back of the iron monster and our friends drove through.  The portal silently vanished.

I turned to KD.  “Which way to the Art Show?”

She nibbled a gator chow treat and pointed.  “My studio first!  Then off to the show!”

KD snickered, “You two are little!  Hop on my back and we will make better time!”

As Wind boosted me up and then leaped up herself, she said, “I could get used to this.  Traveling places without having to walk, I mean. First, the T82!  That was fun!  Now I get to ride dragonback again!”

I looked back, trying not to miss the sight of Manehatten's famously tall buildings.  Many of them were over five levels tall!  Some, in the downtown area looked to be way taller!

I commented, “Again?  You have ridden dragons before?”

“Just one, Grumpy.  My daughter Aurixa.”

That gave me real pause.  I ventured, “Adopted?”

Sort of. I found her egg out in the wilderness not that far from Mama Dragon's cottage.  I was there when Aurixa hatched.  She imprinted on me as her mother.

“When she grew up some, we used to play together a lot, including riding her.  I love flying on dragonback!

“Anyway, she grew up to where she was too big for that.  Last I saw her, Aurixa was bigger than a house.  I need to go home to Mama Dragon's and visit her.  I miss them.”

We came to a nice two level house in the outskirts of town.  The only odd thing about it from the outside was that the door was bigger than usual.  KD got out a key and let us in.

The inside WAS unusual!  The whole second level floor had been knocked out, leaving  a sort of rim around the single large room.  It was just the right height to serve as shelves for KD!  There were a few scorch marks on the walls, souvenirs of her hiccups!

There were paintings and drawings in profusion!  All was neatly organized. Drawings were in X-frames and paintings were racked or stood against the walls.

KD selected a number of drawings, including some from her sketchbooks filled up on the trip here.  Truly professional, she framed the drawings and sketches behind glass.  She had frames at the ready for her paintings.  It took her about an hour and a half for her to be ready.

She put on a harness designed to carry framed work and suggested, “Load me up!  The Manehatten Art Show is only about a kilometer from here!

We trudged through some pretty fancy streets and up a hill to a small estate.  I giggled when I saw the iron scroll work lettering over the gate.

Wind nudged me and whispered, “Pretty up front about it, aren't they, Grumpy?”

The letters said, “Snob Hill Estate.”  Under it was a banner proclaiming, “Snob Hill Art Festival!  Opening soon!”

The pony watching the gate seemed both pleased and surprised to see KD. “Krystal!  I was told that you would not be able to make this show! Let me announce you to the committee!”

She held him gently back.  “Please don't, Edward.  I am most curious as to who is saying that I would not come to this show.”

He sort of scraped the pave with a forehoof and looked down as he said, “I am not supposed to gossip about our patrons.”

KD grinned as she flipped him a silver bit.  “You said nothing!”

Expertly fielding the coin, he said, “Of course it could not possibly be Drawin Pitcher spreading rumors about you.”

KD grinned, with many teeth, as she replied, “Of course not.  Why would a fine artist like Drawin say anything negative about me?

“Oh, Edward, these fine beings are guests of mine.”

We went on in, following KD.  She went straight for the main entrance to Snob Hall.

Even before we entered, we heard, “You know, I am really sorry to say that KD not only won't be making this show, it looks like she will have to give up the Daring Do contract.”

[ask-de-writer]

HICCUPS!  : MLP Fan Fiction : A Work In Progress

As usual for works in progress, new parts and changes to older ones are done in Boldface type.

HICCUPS!

A Grumpy Goat <tail>

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

9612 words so far, this is a WORK IN PROGRESS

© 2019 by Glen Ten-Eyck

Writing begun 11/30/18

All rights reserved.  This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.

//////////////

Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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Characters:

Grumpy Goat and usual cast

Thomas/and/or/Dashie Writer – remote controlled T82

Wind, the Mama Cat

Victor Mordenheim  - Mad Doctor

Krystal Dragoness “KD” Wingless dragon - artist

Fume Hood Unicorn, a bit small-Forensic Chemist

Jinni and Sassy vampire and succubus

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

It was being a quiet day out on the ledge in front of my cave.  We were sitting on a bench, out in the sun, rereading Daring Do and the Secret of the Appleoosa Cave.  The stout iron sheeting that blocked the entrance to my cave was warm behind us.

The lovely Coalsmoke, a pony of perfect glossy black except for her cutie mark, was leaning over where my shoulder would be, if I still had a body, or for that matter was even technically alive.  She was admiring one of the illustrations in the book.

“I especially like these illustrations signed KD, Grumpy.  They capture the mood and action really well.”

Sitting on my other side was the finely polished skeleton of an alicorn.  He was the Litch King, Lord of the Dead, the being responsible for my present condition and now one of my few true friends.

He agreed, “Look at how well the artist has made the cave entrance look menacing.  Whoever did this is very good.”

We were distracted from our pleasant reading by a flare of flame down on the trail leading up to my cave.  Looking down the way, I was more or less expecting it to be the torches of another anti goat mob or, more specifically anti Grumpy Goat mob.  

Due to my business, I am less than popular with some ponies.  I have a thriving practice in Non Equine Magic.  Mostly, it does not appear to do anything.  Somehow, the desired, contracted for and paid in advance results just seem to happen by perfectly natural, if often bizarre means.

This time, it was not a mob.  There was a wingless blue dragon toiling up the stony path to my cave.  The next time that she flared, we could hear it.  It sounded like she was suffering from a case of hiccups! Possibly not the best ailment for a dragon to have, since she was burping a smallish fire blast with each hiccup!

When she gained the ledge, she considerately turned her head out away from us. Good thing, too!  She had two hiccups in quick succession!

She offered, “My name is Krystal Dragoness, KD for short.  I've come to you about these hiccups.  They are like to ruin me.  I am at my wit's end.  See, I am an artist.  I draw and paint.  I get going on a piece and these hiccups start up!  One of them is sure to hit my work, and, well, paper, paints, canvas and frames are all pretty flammable! I've even burned up brushes!

“Can you help me to end these hiccups?”

I nodded, making my skull, apparently floating on nothing, with its everburning candle between the horns, glowing snake like eyes and fangs bob.  “I could do that, yes.  It would not cure the basic problem, though. Hiccups usually have a natural cause from tummy and lungs not coordinating right.  If I fix this case, it could easily happen again.

“Let's dig into how this started and whether there is some underlaying cause that we can fix.”

Somewhat disappointed, Krystal nodded.  “That makes sense.  My first case of the hiccups like this happened at my one dragon show in the Sunrise Gallery in Manehatten.  You know how those things are, lots of nobs that you need to chat with and lots of small snacks and drinks.  The show itself was a pretty important one.  

“I landed a contract to illustrate the next Daring Do book.  There was some serious competition for that contract, let me tell you.  It nearly went to Drawin Pitcher.  She wasn't too happy about me getting to do the art for another Daring Do book.  This one will be my fourth.

“I had only just signed the contract when the hiccups started. The first one nearly incinerated my new contract! I was able to get out of the gallery safely when they began.  I was lucky that I didn't hurt anypony or any of my art.”  

She absently pulled a sparkly topped muffin out of a bag and began munching it.  Looking up, a bit embarrassed, she pointed out, “I really can't share dragon muffins with you.  They are topped with crushed gems and have gold or silver dust in the muffin part.  I'm afraid that they are pretty toxic to non dragons.”

Coalsmoke asked curiously, “Where did you get them?  No place in Ponyville makes them at all.  Sometimes the kitchen in Princess Twilight's castle makes up some for Spike but they never sell them.”

Krystal knit her brows in puzzlement.  “I get them out of this bag.  I always like have them when I am a little tense, like when I am concentrating on my art.  Nibbling helps me to focus.”

Just then, she let out another small belch of fire.

Whistling softly, I thought carefully about what I had heard.  “Tell me, Krystal, at the art show, did you have muffins like these?”

“Well, yes.  Any well equipped bakery can make them.  They just have to clean up carefully afterwards.  They always serve them if I am going to be showing any of my works.”

I nodded and looked over at the lovely Coalsmoke, who is always a treat for the ol' eyeballs and asked, “And where have you bought them since that art show in Manehatten?”

She paused, thinking.  “I haven't had to.  This bag always has some in it.”

The eyes that I don't really have widened just a bit.  “It always has some of those muffins in it for you?  When did you get that bag?”

She scratched behind the spines along the back of her jaw as she sorted it out.  “I first noticed it just after I left the gallery at the show where I got those first hiccups.  It's always there when I am tense.”

I glamored my invisible spirit body to look like the handsome tan, black and brown goat that I was before the tiny mistake that killed me and destroyed my original body.  Holding out a hoof, I said, “Just give me the bag, please.  I am going to try something simple with it.”

Nodding affably, Krystal handed me the bag.  I took it inside my cave and shut the iron door.  That door and my cave front were designed by a good firm of military engineers to withstand an Equestrian standard military battering ram.  

It only takes one anti-goat mob burning your house, your library, years of study, hopes for a degree and dreams of well paying work to make one take a few simple precautions.  Add the mob trying to stone your burned and battered body to death to drive home the lesson in how how to hate most ponies.  That trivial incident also motivated my simple and sensible precautions against a repeat of the problem.  Like living in a cave.  With a military fortress grade steel and iron entrance.

I turned about from sealing the door and asked Krystal if she was still feeling tense.  Digging into the bag for a muffin, she replied, “Yes, a little.  Why?”

The Litch King pointed with a foreleg of bone.  “That is why.  He just shut that bag inside his cave and it looks like you have it back.”

He turned his skeletal head to me and stated, “Grumpy, if you can, we NEED to help KD.  Her illustrations really make a Daring Do book!  Plus, we know now that a new one is in the works!  We can't let anything interfere with THAT!”

I shrugged and opened the door.  I was not even surprised that the bag was not there inside my cave any longer.  Krystal munched her muffin and shortly hiccuped another tongue of flame.

I pointed out, “That bag was behind six centimeters of forged iron.  In spite of that, it homed in on you without seeming effort.  Moments after you nibbled that muffin, you hiccuped another flame.  I suspect that there is a direct connection.  To be sure, we need to go back down into Ponyville.  I know someone in the forensic chemistry lab at the police department.  In the meantime, try not to nibble another muffin and let us see if that helps to control or stop the problem.”

On the trail back down to Ponyville, Coalsmoke and I tried to simply hold the bag instead of letting Krystal carry it.  This wise measure proved impossible.  The bag kept sneakily returning to her claws. After what happened up on the ledge in front of my cave, that was pretty much what was expected.

I have to admit that I was pleased by the simple fact that Krystal did keep her claws out of the bag.  We got down the trail and into Ponyville without incident as a result.

Instead of my usual turning towards the town hall and the Hall of Records, to record a new contract, I trotted right on, with a right turn, headed towards the Ponyville Waste Treatment Plant and Falmire Marsh, which is fenced and actually the final stage of the waste water treatment, before it goes into the river.

Coalsmoke was most interested in why we were going where we were going.  Soon enough, we came to a modest stone building close by to the treatment plant.  The sign said,

Ponyville Police Department

Forensics Laboratory

Chemistry, Physical Evidence Analysis,

Forensic Autopsy

As I pushed open the front door, I explained, “I know most of the staff here. Sometimes they will consult with me, when a case is being a pain.”

Coalsmoke chuckled, “How often is one of their nasty cases the result of one of your contracts, Grumpy?”

A smallish unicorn looked up from where he was working at a desk, apparently compiling a report.  “Not really all that often, Miss Coalsmoke. Even when it is, there is no actual evidence that can link the contract to the results.  Grumpy is often a big help in sorting out how something that we are investigating happened.  We pay him a proper consultation fee, of course.”

I introduced, “Coalsmoke, KD, I would like you to meet Fume Hood, one of the best forensic chemists in the whole kingdom.  We are lucky to have him here in Ponyville.”

KD offered, “You have some unusual friends, Grumpy.”

I chortled, “If they aren't unusual in some way, the aren't worth having as friends.”

Turning my attention to Fume Hood, I explained what our situation was in a few words and ended with, “Think that you could do us a rough analysis of one of KD's dragon muffins?”

He thought for a moment, tapping quietly on his desk top before nodding, “You say that the flame is mostly pale blue? Nearly transparent but pretty hot?”

KD shook her head in agreement.  “Right.  That is, unless I eat something with salt in it.  Then the flame is yellow.  Is that significant?”

Fume Hood said, “It MAY be.  I would like to see both your normal flame and one from your hiccups.  Please step over there.  Dragon flame can be pretty handy for some chemistry tests, so we have a small indoor flame range.”

KD stepped over to the flame range's head rest.  Fume Hood lowered the room lights and suggested, “Whenever you are ready, Miss KD.  Just give us a small shot of your regular flame.”

KD's fire blast was impressively different from a hiccup flame.  It was a bright yellow with some red to the center and flame tips that went to a bluish hue.

Fume Hood almost danced pleasure at seeing it!  Perfect!   Normal dragon fire. Now, let's see what we get with one of those muffins.  Go ahead and take one from the bag and eat it.”

He was watching the bag very closely as KD extracted the muffin. “Fascinating.  There is only one muffin in the bag until you take it out.  Then a new muffin forms almost immediately afterwards.”

KD contentedly munched her muffin.  Within moments, she stuck her head into the flame range headrest and belched a nearly pure, pale blue flame.

Fume Hood smiled in chemistly joy.  “Timing and color nail it!  You were right, Grumpy.  There is a direct connection between the muffins and KD's hiccups of flame.  The only reason that she flames at all with them is that, being a dragon, she has a natural ignition spark every time she exhales or belches.  Whatever this vapor she is belching is, it is highly flammable.”

KD's shoulders slumped.  “Does that mean that I can't have Dragon Muffins anymore?”

Fume Hood chuckled as he replied, “I suspect that you can have all that you want.  Just not these, from this bag.”

He went to pull one out.  Looking perplexed, he tried again.  “Humm . . . I can't seem get that muffin out of the bag.  KD, will you get it please?  I need to analyze it.”

Without any problem, KD extracted the muffin.  Fume Hood took it and sliced it in half.  One half he put into a beaker with a lye solution.  It began to dissolve at once.  Soon there was only some slightly coarse granules mixed with loose sparkly fragments of gemstones in the bottom of the beaker.

Fume Hood filtered out the solid residue and rinsed it with water.  Stirring it with a glass rod, he explained, “The lye took away everything but the gems in the topping and the metal dusts in the body of the muffin.  Now, lets see what happens next . . .”

He dripped some acid onto the residue.  “Gems, gold, and silver won't dissolve in this mild acid.”  

In spite of that, something was happening!  It bubbled and fumed something fierce!  Happily touching it off with a sparking wand used to light his lab burners, Fume Hood pointed dramatically!

“There! You see?  Pale blue flame!  See the white residue?  Zinc oxide.  Your muffins are adulterated with zinc!  It reacts with your stomach acids to make hydrogen and that is what, along with a bit of moisture and such that it picks up as you burp is what makes your so called hiccups!  Just don't eat any muffins from that bag and you should be fine.”

He turned to me and snickered, “OK, Grumpy.  We are even now.”

I turned to the perplexed KD and Coalsmoke.  “They needed an autopsy done last year.  The cadaver was over a week old, in August.  I glamored up a form with no sense of smell and did it for them.  Death was from blunt force trauma to the back of the skull.  Clubbed, to be crude about it.”

KD brightened up and commented, “If they get that sort of thing to deal with, it is no wonder that this place is beside the waste treatment plant!”

I agreed, “Right!  Now all that we need to do is sort out how you got a bag that can do what this one does.”

KD put a finger to her cheek as she thought.  “I do know where I got it.  It was at that Manehatten art show that I told you about.  The Dragon Treats that they serve at those things are always kept separate from the pony treats by putting them in bags.  Somepony gave me this bag with a muffin in it, just before I signed that Daring Do contract.”

Fume Hood tapped me on my nonexistent shoulder and pointed to the bottom of the bag.  There was a small trade mark in the form of a silhouette. There was a small bit of advertising too.

KD read, “Redline Party Supplies – For a party to remember for the rest of your life – If you survive!”  She also pointed out, “That silhouette looks like a laughing wolf's head.”

Fume Hood agreed, “It does look like that, doesn't it?  I know of someone who uses a silhouette like that on their business cards.  Here.”  He hoofed over a card.

The card read:

Doctor Mordenheim,

General Surgery and Prosthesis.

Everfree Edge Clinic

Practice inspected and approved by Princess Luna

I was delighted!  “I know where that is!  It was a small old castle that was supposedly built by a -” I made my voice low and shivery while making Hoof Quotes, “- 'Mad Doctor' long before Ponyville was established.  It was in ruins when the Apples came and founded the town.”

Coalsmoke smiled and said, “Right, Grumpy.  I know where it is too.  I send my workers there for general health workups and surgery when it is needed.  Doctor Mordenheim really is very good.  It is not far from here, either.  Let's go see if he can shed any light on this business.”

We left, taking the Falmire Causeway that crossed the marsh, going out towards the southeast side of the Everfree forest.  We paused by a street vendor's cart to watch the antics of her trained alligator.

Have to admit that Pinkie has done a great job of training Gummy!  I mean, he is two and a half meters of fun!  Rumor has it that she has broken him to saddle, but she was not offering rides today.

“Gator Chow, gator chow! / The gators below are hungry now! / Feed the gators down below / It is really quite a show!”

A chuckling Coalsmoke hoofed over coins and got a big bag filled with large chunks.  It said “Certified Gator Chow” on the label.  She shared the chunks around and we spent a few happy minutes tossing them to the many alligators gathered hopefully under the bridge.

There were splashes and chomping a-plenty as the gators lunged about for each new chunk of the chow.  We heard a munching from behind us.

KD, swallowing, asked Pinkie, “Where can I get some more of this stuff? It is pretty good!”

At our stares, she retorted, “What?  Dragon here, remember?  I don't eat grass!”

We left Pinkie to her vending and went on across.  It was not long before we saw the sign pointing to the forest beyond.  It said, Everfree Edge Clinic, General Medicine and Prosthetics.

Only a little way up the designated path of yellow cobbles, we came to a small but well restored castle.  I had to give this Doctor Mordenheim credit for showmanship.  This was one classy clinic.  The sign over an open door read Welcome to Everfree Edge Clinic.

Coalsmoke rang a bell labeled Ring for Service that sat on a beautiful mahogany desk in the lobby/waiting room.

We did not even get to try out the assorted seating and laying cushions.  A large, near horse sized zebra with an eye patch came out of the back. His professional smile turned to a genuine one as he laid eye on Coalsmoke.

“My dear Coalsmoke!  What may I do for you, or is it for one of your friends?”

Suddenly stopping like he'd hit one of his stone castle walls, he gave me a careful and most knowing look.  “I do fear that the goat is beyond any help of mine.”

Coalsmoke smirked just a little as she replied, “You are correct.  This is Grumpy Goat, my long standing friend, of whom I am sure that you have heard.  We are not here for him.

“This is Krystal Dragoness.  She prefers to be called KD.  Our problem is sort of related to her, but it is not medical.”

Resting his chin on one forehoof, as he sat behind the desk, Doctor Mordenheim inquired, “If the problem is not medical, then what is it?”

I held out a hoof, “KD, may I have the bag please?”

I showed him the bottom.  “Somepony named Redline is using your cutie mark on his things.  It has some interesting properties.”

Mordenheim put his face in his hooves.  “I know.  I see that KD has it.  She can't lose it either.  Whatever is in it, seems like an endless supply.  I made it, years ago.  How it got here to this world, I have no idea.”

He was sort of surprised when we all simply found seating and Coalsmoke asked casually, “So, how did you get here?  More to the point, when you arrived, did you meet an elderly blue unicorn with a white mane, tail, and beard?”

Mordenheim looked blank.  “What?  No, I never met anypony like that.”

He got a seriously uncomfortable expression as he elaborated, “I would really prefer not to go into why I wound up here.  Princess Luna knows in detail.  Suffice it to say that the events led me to wandering in the Everfree Forest.  I have no idea at all how it happened, since the Everfree is not all that big, but I was in there for over a week.  Perhaps more, I am not at all sure.  What I am sure of is that the path that I was on did not seem to double back on itself or any thing like that.  Between sun breaks in the forest canopy and the scenery, I am sure that I was not going in circles.

“I happened on the ruin of this old castle.  I might have simply passed it by but it had a small cobbled road leading to it from outside of the forest.  I followed that road and it led me to Ponyville.”  He shook his head in wonder, “It was a very different Ponyville than the one that I left.  By good fortune, I met Caramel Treat, Fangrin and Reverend Smallflower.  The rest all came from meeting them.”

I pointed out, “Fascinating as that is, it completely dodges the question of that bag and its neverending supply of adulterated Dragon Muffins.”

One of Doctor Mordenheim's ears cocked up in fascination.  “Adulterated? How?”

Coalsmoke filled in, “With lots of zinc metal dust, that's how.”

Doctor Mordenheim winced,  “Ouch!  That would make mountains of hydrogen gas!  That could cause a serious problem for a dragon!”

KD confirmed, “It sure does!  The hiccups that it causes have been near the ruin of my art.”

Suddenly you could see things clicking together in Doctor Mordenheim's mind! “KD?  Art?  Did you do the covers and illustrations for Daring Do and the Secret of the Apploosa Cave?  The Adventure of the Singing Sands?  The Nippony Diamond?”

KD nodded, clearly pleased.  “All three!  Why?”

Acting like a foal as he was going to his book shelf, Mordenheim snagged all three books and returned to his desk.  “I love your art, KD, would you please autograph these for me?”

With an impishly evil grin, displaying her big dragon chompers, KD replied, “Sure!”  She was reaching into the bag.  “Just as soon as I snack on this muffin!  Or, you make this bag harmless!”

Grinning right back, and revealing a set of fangs that would not have been out of place in a tiger shark, Mordenheim replied, hoof over heart, “You wound me!  I was going to do that anyway.  You did not need blackmail me.  It did make it more fun, though!”

KD chuckled as she said, “I would not really have done it, Doc.  It was just too much fun to pass up the chance.  So, tell us, why did you make a bag like this?”

Reassured that we did not hold his apparent past against him, he sat back comfortably and half smiled at the memory.  “Revenge.  Count Sourbottom was being a problem, objecting to some of my experi . . . projects.   He had a whole herd of foals of all ages.  One of the youngsters had a birthday party coming up.  I set up one of these for each of them!  Loaded them with the finest, sweetest candies that I could locate.  It was a near perfect revenge.”

Always interested in more ways to get back at ponykind for their mistreatment of me in the past, I asked, “How was giving his foals candy any sort of revenge?”

Suddenly, Coalsmoke put a hoof to her lips to suppress giggles.  “Don't you see it, Grumpy?  He couldn't take them away for discipline because the bags will go right back to the foals.  Worse, the endless supply of sweets could cause all sorts of health and mouth problems that the Count would have to pay for!”

Mordenheim nodded happy agreement.  “Last that I heard, Count Sourbottom was headed for bankruptcy on dental bills alone!”

Going more serious, he offered, “KD, we may be able to save the gem topping of your muffins if we are lucky.  Would you like that?”

KD replied seriously, “That would be great, if we can do it.  I really like their flavor, especially the crushed rubies.  How can we do it?”

Doctor Mordenheim picked up the bag and headed for the outside door.  Over his shoulder, he invited, “Come outside for a simple little experiment.  We can save the gems themselves for sure.  Question is whether we can save the topping that they are in or not.”

He pointed down the yellow cobble road leading to his door.  “Now, my dear, take a muffin out of the bag but don't eat it.”

Mystified, she hoofed over the muffin.  “I understand why I have to get it out, but why not eat it?  What are we going to do with it?”

With total assurance, Doctor Mordenheim replied, “You are going to eat it but in parts.  Here, let me scrape off the topping.”  Carefully he removed the topping, taking none of the muffin itself.  “Just eat the topping.  I will hold the muffin for now.”

With obvious relish, KD did.  Licking it off her claws, she asked, “What now?  I like this test!”

“We wait a bit to see if you get gas.  If you don't, the zinc is only in the muffin part.”

KD cocked her head, brow wrinkled in concentration.  “I don't feel any gas coming on.  That usually happens pretty quick when it does.”

“I see. To finish the test, eat the rest of the muffin now.”

She did. And was soon hiccuping blasts of flame.

Nodding in confirmation, he said, “Just in the muffin then.  We can definitely save the topping for you.  Would you like just this topping or would you prefer it on something?”

“As it happens, I do have something that it might go good on.”

Back inside, she produced a bag.  We all saw Mordenheim's nose dilate as he caught the scent.  His ears shot forward in interest.  Drool leaked out of the corner of his mouth!

“What is that lovely smelling stuff, KD?”

“Gator Chow.  I got it from Pinkie Pie over on the bridge.  She told me that it is made from smoked and flaked meat pressed into bite sized chunks.”

Both Coalsmoke and I were rolling on the floor, laughing!  Getting myself somewhat under control, I commented, “Those teeth of yours are real, aren't they, Doc?”

“Yes, they are.  Is it a problem?”

Coalsmoke, composing herself comfortably on a large cushion, replied, “Not for us.  It was just unexpected.  Looks like Pinkie is going to have to stock in more Gator Chow, is all.  

“This explains why Caramel has mentioned you eating there a lot but I haven't seen you, and I eat there too.  You eat in the back, in her carnivore plaza.”

“Right. Now, KD, those Gator Chow chunks are just about muffin sized.  That is about as big as the bag can handle.  It is time to disarm the bag from those bad muffins.”

He got a large, heavy book from the shelf.  Instead of consulting it, he held it at the ready.

“Now, KD, take the muffin out and move your paws away from the bag swiftly.”

As she did, he slammed the book down on top of the bag!  He held it down for around a whole minute.  Relaxing, he pronounced, the spell is reset. It can now be reloaded and set to anyone.  Just a sec.”

He went into the back and returned with salad tongs and a spreading knife. Selecting one of KD's chow chunks, he carefully and neatly spread the gem topping onto it.  Taking the tongs, he used them to insert the topped chow chunk into the bag.

“Now, KD, just reach into the bag and take out the snack.  That will reset the bag to you with a safe treat.  You also now know how to change treats any time that you want.”

Saying, “Thanks, Doc!”  KD fished out the treat and nibbled it down with gusto!

I was watching the whole thing with narrowed eyes that I don't really have. Thinking it over, I pointed out, “KD, whoever set you up was at the show in Manehatten.  The way it works, that spell didn't lock onto you until you took out that first muffin.

“It may be time for a contract or a bit of detective work in Manehatten. Perhaps both.”

Thoughtfully she suggested, “There is another big art show in Manehatten in a few days.  I do have a studio there with some finished pieces that I could enter if I could get there in time.  That would give us the cover that we need for detective work if we can arrive in time.”

I suggested, “If time is a problem, I could try setting up a portal between here and the Manehatten fairgrounds.  It has been a while since I studied that but it is really pretty simple magic.”

We all trooped outside and I began the really pretty basic preparations for opening a portal spell.  I did add a whole lot of “stage dressing” rituals, circles and other misdirection.  I always do.  Better showmanship and it hides what makes it work from prying eyes, even if they are watching.

A glowing circle appeared in the air, just in front of us and barely touching the ground.  Suddenly it began to grow, becoming a huge oval. Something enormous, making a steady pulsing roar and clanking like metal was coming toward us!

First, pretty high up, came a sort of short crossways tube with a hole in it on the side facing us.  The thing continued to advance.  That funny bit was attached to a long metal tube!  Down lower, some big metal plates appeared and then between them  an enormous bridge of metal. Huge wheels of steel supported endless linked plates of more steel!

As the contraption came on out, it was revealed to be a gigantic machine of some sort!  It had sloped sides up to a heavy device on top that the long tube came out of.  That had sloped sides too, as if this thing were made to bounce catapult shots off of it!  There were some serious dents and obvious repairs that made it seem that those slopes were strictly functional!

Sticking her head up out of a hatch in the top was a pony who looked for all the world like Rainbow Dash!  Reinforcing that idea was a brown pegasus with a black mane and tail clinging to the rear of the machine and calling out loudly enough to be heard over the machine's roar!

“Dashie! Stop!  You going to smash through garden wall again!  You crush Jade's herb garden again!  You so grounded!”

Dashie retorted, “I not hit wall, dad!  Big blue hole show up.  I drive through that!  Besides, last time I drive through Jade's herb garden, I fix it better than before.  She ask me to squash it again!”

“And one more thing!  Dashie, you make me good hot tea or you so grounded you need dig up for thousand year to see daylight!”

Innocently she shot back, “If I that grounded, I make you nice tea that De Writer send for me to get you!  It his idea to get it with remote control T82 Main Battle Tank!  If I NOT grounded, I MIGHT be able to find you nice green tea that he never touch!”

The brown pegasus sat hard.  “De Writer ask you to use Remote Control T82 IN CANTERLOT for that tea?  You not so grounded as I thought.”

The one identified as Dashie noticed us from her vantage point, high up in the top part of the T82.  She picked up a small boxy thing with buttons and levers and pushed one of the buttons.  The T82's loud grumbling fell quiet.

“Um, Dad, we come through portal, I think.  You not teach me that magic yet. There ponies here and a dragon.  Come around T82 and you see.  There small castle here too.”

The brown pegasus stepped around the metal monster and courteously introduced, “I Thomas the Writer.  Miscreant who drive T82 through your portal my daughter Dashie Writer.  T82 is educational toy give her by De Writer.”

Mordenheim looked up at the behemoth of steel and remarked, “Where you are from has different ideas about educational toys than any place I have ever been.”

Dashie replied, “It crazy where we from too, but what you expect from powerful wizard like De Writer?  Something safe?  He good to have on your side when trouble come, though.”

She turned about and exclaimed, “The portal gone!”

It was true.  Standing where it had been was a familiar cat otter hybrid with red hair.  She was wearing a well worn cloak of dark green and light seeming chain mail.  Mithril by the look of it.  Her left arm was a prosthesis, a mechanical arm of metal that moved in an utterly natural way.  Under the cloak was the scabbard of a large sword.  In her mechanical hand was a parchment that looked like a map of some sort.

She tucked away the map in a pouch at her waist and looked about, her gaze missing nothing.  Smiling, she waived!  “Hi, Grumpy!  It's me, Wind!  We met at Ponyville Fair, remember?  I am part of Marchhare's band of Rom.   I was going to meet them at Haymarket fair, up north, but this out of control portal got in the way.  I took the liberty of closing it.”

Thomas gave Wind a strangely puzzled look.  “This world with Marchhare in it?”

She shrugged, “I wouldn't be going to meet him and his band if it wasn't!  Why?”

Speaking to Dashie, Thomas said, “This important lesson, Dashie.  How many worlds in multiverse?”

She replied, “Infinite.  Everyone and thing have infinite copies, each a little different.”  Raising her eyebrows in thought, she added, “This a trick question, isn't it, Dad?”

“Sort of. You very quick.  Every rule have exception, right?”

Putting hoof to chin, she thought and then went wide eyed with realization! “Every rule have exception, even that rule!”

Thomas lifted his wings in pleasure.  “Right!  This ONLY world in whole multiverse that have Marchhare!  That is secret to navigation when go between worlds.”

Dashie blinked.  “What happen when he dies?”

“Nothing, Dashie.  Marchhare already dead.  Not die twice.”

We were all listening in amazement.  It was newcomer Wind who said, “That is sort of a relief.  That there is only one of my foster dad, I mean. I have met some of myself and it was not the best of experiences!”

She put her jaw in her metal hand and examined the whole situation carefully. Turning to me she asked, “Did you cast the portal, Grumpy?”

Scraping the grass where I was standing with one nonexistent forehoof and looking down, I muttered, “Afraid so.  Portals are not really my specialty.  I guess that I really messed this one up.”

Wind stepped over and lifted my glamor's head to look me in the eye.  “I am an expert with portals.  That one was really well done.  It would have worked perfectly if you had not cast it here.  The Everfree's Hidden Ways are what messed you up.

“Now, where were you trying to go?”

KD interjected, “We were aiming for the fairgrounds at Manehatten by the Sea.”

Wind nodded in a very take charge sort of way.  “I see.  That is about 6 or 7 hundred kilometers from here.”

Leaning casually up against the iron monster called T82, Wind asked, “Does this thing have personnel and cargo railings and how fast is it, uh, Dashie?”

Dashie brightened up as she replied, “It sure does have safety railings! I use them when I give Mia and Becky rides.  It can go as far as you want.  Out in the open, it can hit 100 kilometers an hour!  How did you know about that?”

Wind gave a delicate shudder, “I have adventured on a few worlds where similar machines were used.  I saw the passenger railings on them.”

Wind smiled ingratiatingly at Thomas.  “Would you be willing to let Dashie take us all on an Adventure to Manehatten by the Sea?  It will get these nice beings where they need to go and be fun for us all.  From there, I can easily send you both back home.”

Dashie had hopped out of the top of the T82 and began releasing catches and lifting up metal railings.  They clicked as they locked into place. When she was done, she lowered a set of steep metal stairs to climb up onto the back of her “educational toy.”

Thomas watched with a skeptical lift to his right eyebrow.  “I not say we go, Dashie.”

She looked him straight back in the eye as she retorted, in front of us all, “Right.  All that you have to do is tell our hosts that you won't do something simple and fun to help them.”

“That blackmail, Dashie!”

“Right. Between you and our De Writer, I learn from the best!”

He chuckled, “OK.  We do it.”

Wind swung easily up the boarding stair and called, “All aboard for the Manehatten Express!”

KD swarmed up, found the engine vents, and curled up with a “Dibs on the warm spot!”

Coalsmoke gently pushed me toward the enormous device with, “I would love to go too, Grumpy, but I have serious business to talk over with Victor. The Princesses want to set up a program for helping wounded veterans of their armies.”

Dashie started the T82 and made a big turn.  Wind guiding her, we set out for Adventure!  And Manehatten.

Technically, we took Doctor Mordenheim's path down to the Falmire cutoff and turned south towards the junction with Royal Road 315.  For some reason, the busy traffic of Ponyville's industrial district gave way before us, even when it had the right of way!  Couldn't imagine why! Surely it had nothing to do with fifty or more tonnes of steel monstrosity charging along at a “mere” twenty kilometers per hour.

We reached the Royal Road toll booth without incident.  Almost had an incident there.  The poor booth keepers were going nuts trying to sort out the proper toll.

Pages were fluttering back and forth in their toll manuals, “It ain't a cart or wagon from any section!  Darn thing is made out of iron like a fool locomotive on the railroad!”

“I know, Jeb!  Can't even classify it by team size or set up!  It runs itself!”

Wind was sitting on the edge of the turret, which Dashie had taught us was the name for that upper part with the long pipe sticking out of it, and giggling at the small uproar.  

“When Marchhare hears about this, he will split his harness, he will laugh so hard!”

One of the toll collectors looked up at her and got a beatific smile. “You are Wind, from Marchhare's band of Rom, right?  I saw you at our fair a couple of times.”

She nodded acknowledgment, “Yes, Sir.  I am.”

He turned to his buddy and pushed the manuals shut.  “Just write Rom from Marchhare's band, toll free by Crowns Law.”

Jeb did write, though he was still trying to protest.  His superior shut him down with, “Jeb, like enough you are right.  Still, it solves OUR problem.”  He tripped the gate mechanism and the flimsy red and white painted wooden bar lifted up out of our way.

We pulled onto the Royal Road.  Besides less traffic, it was wider and better maintained than the Ponyville road we had come from.  Dashie began to open up the speed once we had clear road ahead of us.  I must say, I was impressed.  Dashie was not kidding about hitting a hundred kilometers an hour!

The T82 was fast and high enough that we had to duck shade tree branches!  A delighted KD had her sketchbook out and was rapidly drawing things from her high perspective!

Chortling, she explained, “Even as roughs, some of these will adapt to pictures for my book contract!  This is great!”

Wind steered us into one of the many waysides, making Dashie slow down and drive gently as we parked for the evening.  With assurance, she showed us where the free water and firewood were.

With a fond smile, Wind recalled, “I have camped here before, while traveling with Dad's band.  There is a small stream over in the bushes that we can get fresh fish and crawdads out of for a nice dinner.”

KD had out an easel and was busily drawing with colors.  She was doing the T82 framed by a sunset of riotous clouds and glowing light.  

She asked politely, “Wind, would you be so good as to pose there, just below the turret?  I want your metal arm just casually holding something and your sword out in your right hand, ready but not on a guard.”

Wind did pose.  It really did not take KD long at all to capture the feeling of the scene.  The way that Wind was posing, it looked for all the world like she OWNED the metal monster behind her!

Done posing, Wind stretched and began doing limbering up exercises.  With an expression of delight, and without even thinking about it, Wind began to dance and sing in a language strange to all of us.  I did recognize it from my times at the Ponyville fair, serving mainly as security for Caramel Treat's excellent food booth.  The language was Gyptian, the sort of private and held secret, nearly melodious tongue of the Rom.  I did recognize the dance.

She was treating us to the Shehan Ja Rom, their story of how the Rom came to be.  I gather that it is the oldest dance and song of the Rom.  As her dance and song finished, I remembered that the Rom did not clap for applause.  I leaned my head back and gave the loud trill that the Rom use.

Wind looked sort of startled as the others followed suit.  Embarrassed, she mumbled, “Sorry.  It was just the joy of being on the road again.”

It was KD who said it, “Don't be sorry.  It was lovely.  Is there an Equestrian translation?”

I put in, “I know that there is.  That was the famous Shehan Ja Rom.  The Rom traditionally dance and sing it in an Equestrian version to open fairs.  What I am curious about is how Wind, who is nothing like any horse or pony, came to be a Rom and of Marchhare's band at that.”

Wind sat near the fire and absently began to assemble vegetable skewers for Dashie, Thomas and I.  “I made a little mistake while adventuring. I survived it, obviously.  Mama Dragon fixed me up and sent me here, to this Equestria to finish healing and recuperate.  De Writer met me and steered me to Marchhare's band.

“Good thing, too.  One of my wounds developed a small inflammation that could have killed me.  Black Lotus, Marchhare and Hoof Dancer, his wife at the time, healed me.  Mama Dragon was wise in sending me to them for a month.  I had more than physical wounds to heal.  I joined them and learned to read, write and speak Gyptian.  Having a real caring and extended family provided the rest of the healing that I needed.  Now, I have my Freedom and I can come and go as I wish, but my Rom family is always there for me.”

I could tell that there was a lot left out but Wind cut her tale off without harming her tail by asking, “Grumpy, will you tend these skewers for me while I go catch some fish, crawdads and a bunny or two for dinner to share with KD?”

I realized at once that besides being an adventurer, Wind was quite diplomatic. She had just reminded the lot of us that KD had not eaten all day, except for snacks, and that both she and Wind were carnivores. Possibly hungry carnivores.

Dashie took off too, calling, “Wind!  Wait up!  I want see how you hunt and fish without fancy gear.”

Wind looked back, nodded and then beckoned with a finger curl.  As soon as Dashie was up to her, Wind slid into the brush without a sound.  Dashie, trying to follow was pretty quiet.

Coming to the creek bank, Wind laid flat and wriggled forward on her stomach. Carefully parting the small thin wands of the bank willows, she slid her right arm into the water, reaching back, under the cut bank.  Her face screwed up with concentration, she eased her hand up, feeling for a fish.  Smiling, she slid her hand further up and grabbed!

Rolling back and lifting, Wind flipped the good sized trout out onto the bank!  She caught the flopping creature and bent its head back to break its neck.  She snipped off a thin bank willow strand with her knife and laced it through the fish's gills and out the mouth. Loosely knotting the ends, she hung the fish up and repeated the trick three more times!

Dashie was watching with awe.  “I never even hear of fishing that way!  How you do it?”

Wind picked up her willow loop with fish and replied, “It takes practice to tickle trout but it is not really hard.  You need to be careful and gentle.  When you feel the fish with your fingers, you need to work your way up until you feel the pectoral fins, those just behind the gills.  Snap your fingers into the gills and lift it out quickly.

“Now for a nice brace of bunnies and dinner will ready to cook.”

Dashie, keeping her voice down, asked, “I see warren right over there.  How you catch them?  Some kind of trap?”

Wind, following Dashie's pointing hoof, shook her head.  “I could, and if we were going to be here longer, I would set some snares.  Since it is only dinner and breakfast, I will just pounce them.  It is easier and quicker.”

Dashie watched Wind ghost her way through the brush toward the warren. Choosing her place, she waited, a bunched spring of living huntress. Nothing moved except for the tip of her tail twitching slightly.  It was only a few minutes before a bunny hopped lazily toward one of the main holes of the warren.  Wind's pounce included a fast chop with her metal hand!  The bunny only twitched once before going still.

Wind quietly picked a different spot and soon had a second bunny!

Bearing her prey, Wind and Dashie returned to camp.  On their way, Wind asked, “Why did you want to see how I got fish and bunnies?  Most ponies really don't want to see that.”

Face flaming a little with embarrassment, Dashie replied, “I am sort of, like half dragon.  I turn into one if I need to or want to.  Thing is, I not very good at getting meat to eat!  I have to turn back to a pony and graze up dinner!  There are times that really inconvenient!”

Wind chuckled.  “I can see that!  We have one more stop before Manehatten by the Sea.  I will take you out hunting there too, OK?”

Back at camp, Wind considerately went to the other side of the T82 to clean and prepare her catch.  A lightly drooling KD went to help!  They both returned to the camp, licking their lips and smiling.  They were finishing up with some of KD's endless supply of Gator Chow.  Wind had carefully cleaned off the gem topping from hers and used it to enhance KD's snack.

As we were settling about the fire, Dashie asked, “Um, Wind, did Rom hold you prisoner some way?  You say you have your freedom.”

Wind chuckled at the misunderstanding.  “No, Dashie.  The Rom Freedom is a thing that they wear.  Here, I have mine in my bag.”

She reached into her bag at her waist and her arm seemed to go in further than was possible.  She saw us staring and snorted her amusement.  “It is called a bag of holding.  It is sort of like Marchhare's caravan. It is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  Here it it is!”

Stopping her rummaging, she pulled out a sort of headstall thing of richly tooled and dyed leather with rings and buckles that looked to be gold.  She strapped it on.

“This is a Freedom of the Rom.  They grant them only to beings that they have fully accepted as one of their own.”

“Why is call a Freedom?” Dashie wondered.

Wind lifted her chin with pride.  “The original cast off slaves that were the first Rom wore a headstall with a bit and lead ring.  They had them all their lives and were not comfortable without something on their heads.  They re made them into the Freedom by taking away anything by which they could be made to serve another.  No bit or lead ring has ruled any Rom from that day to this.”  Very carefully, Wind removed her Freedom and put it away.

KD had curled into an amazingly hard to see coil of dragon to sleep until dawn.  The rest of us were spreading blankets to sleep under the stars.

A wagon full of road repair tools and an accompanying work gang of ponies pulled into the rest area.  A couple of them strode arrogantly to our camp and demanded, “We are hungry!  What ever food you got, hoof it over now!  You don't, we gonna take sledgehammers to that there tin thingy!”

I gently prodded the almost sleeping dragon in our midst.  KD had been paying attention!  Her head rose up, eyes alight.  A curl of flame showing at each nostril and outlining her barely opened jaws completed the picture!

She serenely asked, “What?  More dinner?  I'm not sure that I could hold another whole pony.  Mind if we just sort of pack along the leftovers for lunch?”

Dashie had lifted a fully draconic head.  In the late evening's light we could not make out her color but we could easily make out the totally paling ponies!

“What! They got TWO DRAGONS!”

Dashie corrected, “No.  Two HUNGRY dragons!”

Dashie was giggling at the frantic retreat of the two jerks!  Got to admit to some chuckles of my own.  KD's sides were heaving as she re coiled herself.

Dashie got up onto all fours.  In the dying firelight, she could be seen to be a light blue color.  She flexed her wings a couple of times and strolled over to where the road crew ponies were carelessly re packing to leave.  In terror but not so terrified that they were willing to have to pay for abandoned gear!

One thoughtlessly yelled, “Road camp privacy!  Stay away, that is kingdom law!”

Wind, who was almost unnoticed at Dashie's right front leg, calmly pointed out, “You have just admitted that you knew that you were breaking kingdom law when you tried to hijack our dinner.  In your haste to correct your error, you dropped your sledgehammers.  Here!”

Wind revealed a hidden strength by casually giving the heavy hammers an underhand toss.  Both hammers overshot the wagon and hit the turf on the other side of it.

That got the attention of the road crew ponies!  One noticed, “How come you only got one arm?”

Smiling angelically, which showed off her fangs nicely, Wind reached up with her metal left arm and scritched at the base of Dashie's left dragon horn as she replied, “What, this?” Campfire light glinting from her metal arm she said casually, “Kitten here, and I got to roughhousing last week!  She was a little too enthusiastic, that's all.”

Dashie, catching on to the game, bent her head around and gave Wind a lick at the shoulder and said contritely, “I said that I was sorry!  We just need to find a Phoenix potion so that you can regrow it. Again.”

They strolled back to our camp, Wind taking the time to re hang her cloak to sort of hide her metal arm.  Thomas, Dashie, now turned back to a pegasus, and I nibbled up Wind's excellent fruit and vegetable skewers.

Wind toasted the last of the bunnies and trout over KD's flame and shared that extra bit of dinner with her.  Dashie “sneaked” over and turned back to a dragon to beg a few bites.  Grinning, they let her have some.

Sleeping out in the open, I did not have my usual nightmares of a Celestian Church mob burning my home, studies, and, failing to trap me in the house, attempting to stone me to death.  Perhaps my feelings of safety came of sleeping beside a big blue dragon?  One that liked me?  Very likely.

It could not last.  For one thing, dawn comes far too soon for a cave dwelling goat like me.  The other was a light blue bundle of enthusiasm with rainbow mane and tail!  Dashie was bounding into camp!  She was waiving a forked stick with three big fat trout on it!  It was laced through their gills and out their mouths, with the forked branch acting as a stop to keep them from sliding off.

“I did it, Wind!  I tickle trout just like you show me how!”

Wind looked up from laying the morning cook fire.  Her grin showed her usually hidden fangs as she replied, “Just like I showed you?   Not sure how to point this out diplomatically but you don't have any fingers to do it with.”

Totally disingenuous, Dashie replied, “I just use my magic like you show with hand.  It not hard.  Real trick was find where fish hide.  You show me that. They too quick to catch if just grab.  Gentle tickle is trick.”

Both KD and I were listening with rapt attention.  It was clear that Thomas and Dashie's Equestria was very different from this one.  As they talked, that became more and more apparent.

“Does your magic come from being a weredragon?”

“Only a little.  Most I learn from Dad.  He one of two most powerful beings in our Equestria.  Be honest, I think De Writer worst.  Super strong magic and wicked sense of humor.  And bored.  He three thousand years old.  Raise Princesses.”

“I see.  Do other pegassi use magic where you come from?”

“Not really.  Dad figure out that there more magic in world than Earth, Pegassi, and Unicorn.  It come from his mom, Aurora, the Demon Queen.”

We all looked askance at the innocent appearing brown pegasus.  This was getting more and more interesting all the time.

Wind just nodded, took the fish and efficiently set about preparing them. She also pulled some fresh looking apples and peaches out of the bag at her waist.  She expertly split them into proper chunks and dropped them into a pot.  She added a little fresh water and, reaching into her bag of holding, pulled out a box with many drawers and bottles, a jar with a sealed top and a small flour bag.

I was sort of amazed, watching the sheer skill with which Wind organized breakfast.  She even had water on heating in a biggish pot.  She added some from the sealed bottle.  The camp filled with the heavenly aroma of Rom black tea!

Satisfied with the progress of the fruits in the pot, she added sugar, cinnamon from one of the drawers of the box and stirred in the flour to thicken it.

It smelled heavenly, not like regular flour at all.  Wind closed the bag and returned box, bag and jar to her bag of holding.  She saw my calculating look as I watched it all happening.  

Wrinkling her nose in amusement, she explained, “Ka'chek flour.  A Rom without it?  Unheard of!”

Breakfast lived up to the lovely scents, and then some.

Wind, KD and Dashie went to the other side of the T82 to fix and eat the trout.  Coming back, Dashie and KD were finishing up gem topped Gator Chows and Wind was nibbling at one with the topping removed.

While they were eating, the rest of us cleaned up all the cookware and put out the fire.  We especially cleaned out the fruit stew pot!  Nearly came to blows over who got to lick it out!  Good sense prevailed and we took turns licking parts of it.  Then, we washed it.  We did have one thing unwashed.

We saved Wind the last mug of Rom black tea.  Smiling at our courtesy, Wind drained it and saw to proper washing of the mug.  She then caused us all a small croggle of the mind by causally putting all of the clean cookware and dishes into her bag of holding!

We all piled onto the remote controlled T82 and Dashie got us on the road again!

[ask-de-writer]

HICCUPS!  : MLP Fan Fiction : A Work In Progress

As usual for Works In Progress all new work and changes to older parts are done in BOLDFACE type.

HICCUPS!

A Grumpy Goat <tail>

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

12748 words so far, this is a WORK IN PROGRESS

© 2019 by Glen Ten-Eyck

Writing begun 11/30/18

All rights reserved.  This document may not be copied or distributed on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the express written consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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Characters:

Grumpy Goat and usual cast

Thomas/and/or/Dashie Writer – remote controlled T82

Wind, the Mama Cat

Victor Mordenheim  - Mad Doctor

Krystal Dragoness “KD” Wingless dragon - artist

Fume Hood Unicorn, a bit small-Forensic Chemist

Jinni and Sassy vampire and succubus

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

It was being a quiet day out on the ledge in front of my cave.  We were sitting on a bench, out in the sun, rereading Daring Do and the Secret of the Appleoosa Cave.  The stout iron sheeting that blocked the entrance to my cave was warm behind us.

The lovely Coalsmoke, a pony of perfect glossy black except for her cutie mark, was leaning over where my shoulder would be, if I still had a body, or for that matter was even technically alive.  She was admiring one of the illustrations in the book.

“I especially like these illustrations signed KD, Grumpy.  They capture the mood and action really well.”

Sitting on my other side was the finely polished skeleton of an alicorn.  He was the Litch King, Lord of the Dead, the being responsible for my present condition and now one of my few true friends.

He agreed, “Look at how well the artist has made the cave entrance look menacing.  Whoever did this is very good.”

We were distracted from our pleasant reading by a flare of flame down on the trail leading up to my cave.  Looking down the way, I was more or less expecting it to be the torches of another anti goat mob or, more specifically anti Grumpy Goat mob.  

Due to my business, I am less than popular with some ponies.  I have a thriving practice in Non Equine Magic.  Mostly, it does not appear to do anything.  Somehow, the desired, contracted for and paid in advance results just seem to happen by perfectly natural, if often bizarre means.  Most of the time, those results are the advantage over, injury, death or ruin of some pony, paid for as mentioned, IN ADVANCE, by some other pony.

This time, it was not a mob.  There was a wingless blue dragon toiling up the stony path to my cave.  The next time that she flared, we could hear it.  It sounded like she was suffering from a case of hiccups! Possibly not the best ailment for a dragon to have, since she was burping a smallish fire blast with each hiccup!

When she gained the ledge, she considerately turned her head out away from us. Good thing, too!  She had two hiccups in quick succession!

She offered, “My name is Krystal Dragoness, KD for short.  I've come to you about these hiccups.  They are like to ruin me.  I am at my wit's end.  See, I am an artist.  I draw and paint.  I get going on a piece and these hiccups start up!  One of them is sure to hit my work, and, well, paper, paints, canvas and frames are all pretty flammable! I've even burned up brushes!

“Can you help me to end these hiccups?”

I nodded, making my skull, apparently floating on nothing, with its everburning candle between the horns, glowing snake like eyes and fangs bob.  “I could do that, yes.  It would not cure the basic problem, though. Hiccups usually have a natural cause from tummy and lungs not coordinating right.  If I fix this case, it could easily happen again.

“Let's dig into how this started and whether there is some underlaying cause that we can fix.”

Somewhat disappointed, Krystal nodded.  “That makes sense.  My first case of the hiccups like this happened at my one dragon show in the Sunrise Gallery in Manehatten.  You know how those things are, lots of nobs that you need to chat with and lots of small snacks and drinks.  The show itself was a pretty important one.  

“I landed a contract to illustrate the next Daring Do book.  There was some serious competition for that contract, let me tell you.  It nearly went to Drawin Pitcher.  She wasn't too happy about me getting to do the art for another Daring Do book.  This one will be my fourth.

“I had only just signed the contract when the hiccups started. The first one nearly incinerated my new contract! I was able to get out of the gallery safely when they began.  I was lucky that I didn't hurt anypony or any of my art.”  

She absently pulled a sparkly topped muffin out of a bag and began munching it.  Looking up, a bit embarrassed, she pointed out, “I really can't share dragon muffins with you.  They are topped with crushed gems and have gold or silver dust in the muffin part.  I'm afraid that they are pretty toxic to non dragons.”

Coalsmoke asked curiously, “Where did you get them?  No place in Ponyville makes them at all.  Sometimes the kitchen in Princess Twilight's castle makes up some for Spike but they never sell them.”

Krystal knit her brows in puzzlement.  “I get them out of this bag.  I always like have them when I am a little tense, like when I am concentrating on my art.  Nibbling helps me to focus.”

Just then, she let out another small belch of fire.

Whistling softly, I thought carefully about what I had heard.  “Tell me, Krystal, at the art show, did you have muffins like these?”

“Well, yes.  Any well equipped bakery can make them.  They just have to clean up carefully afterwards.  They always serve them if I am going to be showing any of my works.”

I nodded and looked over at the lovely Coalsmoke, who is always a treat for the ol' eyeballs and asked, “And where have you bought them since that art show in Manehatten?”

She paused, thinking.  “I haven't had to.  This bag always has some in it.”

The eyes that I don't really have widened just a bit.  “It always has some of those muffins in it for you?  When did you get that bag?”

She scratched behind the spines along the back of her jaw as she sorted it out.  “I first noticed it just after I left the gallery at the show where I got those first hiccups.  It's always there when I am tense.”

I glamored my invisible spirit body to look like the handsome tan, black and brown goat that I was before the tiny mistake that killed me and destroyed my original body.  Holding out a hoof, I said, “Just give me the bag, please.  I am going to try something simple with it.”

Nodding affably, Krystal handed me the bag.  I took it inside my cave and shut the iron door.  That door and my cave front were designed by a good firm of military engineers to withstand an Equestrian standard military battering ram.  

It only takes one anti-goat mob burning your house, your library, years of study, hopes for a degree and dreams of well paying work to make one take a few simple precautions.  Add the mob trying to stone your burned and battered body to death to drive home the lesson in how how to hate most ponies.  That trivial incident also motivated my simple and sensible precautions against a repeat of the problem.  Like living in a cave.  With a military fortress grade steel and iron entrance.

I turned about from sealing the door and asked Krystal if she was still feeling tense.  Digging into the bag for a muffin, she replied, “Yes, a little.  Why?”

The Litch King pointed with a foreleg of bone.  “That is why.  He just shut that bag inside his cave and it looks like you have it back.”

He turned his skeletal head to me and stated, “Grumpy, if you can, we NEED to help KD.  Her illustrations really make a Daring Do book!  Plus, we know now that a new one is in the works!  We can't let anything interfere with THAT!”

I shrugged and opened the door.  I was not even surprised that the bag was not there inside my cave any longer.  Krystal munched her muffin and shortly hiccuped another tongue of flame.

I pointed out, “That bag was behind six centimeters of forged iron.  In spite of that, it homed in on you without seeming effort.  Moments after you nibbled that muffin, you hiccuped another flame.  I suspect that there is a direct connection.  To be sure, we need to go back down into Ponyville.  I know someone in the forensic chemistry lab at the police department.  In the meantime, try not to nibble another muffin and let us see if that helps to control or stop the problem.”

On the trail back down to Ponyville, Coalsmoke and I tried to simply hold the bag instead of letting Krystal carry it.  This wise measure proved impossible.  The bag kept sneakily returning to her claws. After what happened up on the ledge in front of my cave, that was pretty much what was expected.

I have to admit that I was pleased by the simple fact that Krystal did keep her claws out of the bag.  We got down the trail and into Ponyville without incident as a result.

Instead of my usual turning towards the town hall and the Hall of Records, to record a new contract, I trotted right on, with a right turn, headed towards the Ponyville Waste Treatment Plant and Falmire Marsh, which is fenced and actually the final stage of the waste water treatment, before it goes into the river.

Coalsmoke was most interested in why we were going where we were going.  Soon enough, we came to a modest stone building close by to the treatment plant.  The sign said,

Ponyville Police Department

Forensics Laboratory

Chemistry, Physical Evidence Analysis,

Forensic Autopsy

As I pushed open the front door, I explained, “I know most of the staff here. Sometimes they will consult with me, when a case is being a pain.”

Coalsmoke chuckled, “How often is one of their nasty cases the result of one of your contracts, Grumpy?”

A smallish unicorn looked up from where he was working at a desk, apparently compiling a report.  “Not really all that often, Miss Coalsmoke. Even when it is, there is no actual evidence that can link the contract to the results.  Grumpy is often a big help in sorting out how something that we are investigating happened.  We pay him a proper consultation fee, of course.”

I introduced, “Coalsmoke, KD, I would like you to meet Fume Hood, one of the best forensic chemists in the whole kingdom.  We are lucky to have him here in Ponyville.”

KD offered, “You have some unusual friends, Grumpy.”

I chortled, “If they aren't unusual in some way, the aren't worth having as friends.”

Turning my attention to Fume Hood, I explained what our situation was in a few words and ended with, “Think that you could do us a rough analysis of one of KD's dragon muffins?”

He thought for a moment, tapping quietly on his desk top before nodding, “You say that the flame is mostly pale blue? Nearly transparent but pretty hot?”

KD shook her head in agreement.  “Right.  That is, unless I eat something with salt in it.  Then the flame is yellow.  Is that significant?”

Fume Hood said, “It MAY be.  I would like to see both your normal flame and one from your hiccups.  Please step over there.  Dragon flame can be pretty handy for some chemistry tests, so we have a small indoor flame range.”

KD stepped over to the flame range's head rest.  Fume Hood lowered the room lights and suggested, “Whenever you are ready, Miss KD.  Just give us a small shot of your regular flame.”

KD's fire blast was impressively different from a hiccup flame.  It was a bright yellow with some red to the center and flame tips that went to a bluish hue.

Fume Hood almost danced pleasure at seeing it!  Perfect!   Normal dragon fire. Now, let's see what we get with one of those muffins.  Go ahead and take one from the bag and eat it.”

He was watching the bag very closely as KD extracted the muffin. “Fascinating.  There is only one muffin in the bag until you take it out.  Then a new muffin forms almost immediately afterwards.”

KD contentedly munched her muffin.  Within moments, she stuck her head into the flame range headrest and belched a nearly pure, pale blue flame.

Fume Hood smiled in chemistly joy.  “Timing and color nail it!  You were right, Grumpy.  There is a direct connection between the muffins and KD's hiccups of flame.  The only reason that she flames at all with them is that, being a dragon, she has a natural ignition spark every time she exhales or belches.  Whatever this vapor she is belching is, it is highly flammable.”

KD's shoulders slumped.  “Does that mean that I can't have Dragon Muffins anymore?”

Fume Hood chuckled as he replied, “I suspect that you can have all that you want.  Just not these, from this bag.”

He went to pull one out.  Looking perplexed, he tried again.  “Humm . . . I can't seem get that muffin out of the bag.  KD, will you get it please?  I need to analyze it.”

Without any problem, KD extracted the muffin.  Fume Hood took it and sliced it in half.  One half he put into a beaker with a lye solution.  It began to dissolve at once.  Soon there was only some slightly coarse granules mixed with loose sparkly fragments of gemstones in the bottom of the beaker.

Fume Hood filtered out the solid residue and rinsed it with water.  Stirring it with a glass rod, he explained, “The lye took away everything but the gems in the topping and the metal dusts in the body of the muffin.  Now, lets see what happens next . . .”

He dripped some acid onto the residue.  “Gems, gold, and silver won't dissolve in this mild acid.”  

In spite of that, something was happening!  It bubbled and fumed something fierce!  Happily touching it off with a sparking wand used to light his lab burners, Fume Hood pointed dramatically!

“There! You see?  Pale blue flame!  See the white residue?  Zinc oxide.  Your muffins are adulterated with zinc!  It reacts with your stomach acids to make hydrogen and that is what, along with a bit of moisture and such that it picks up as you burp is what makes your so called hiccups!  Just don't eat any muffins from that bag and you should be fine.”

He turned to me and snickered, “OK, Grumpy.  We are even now.”

I turned to the perplexed KD and Coalsmoke.  “They needed an autopsy done last year.  The cadaver was over a week old, in August.  I glamored up a form with no sense of smell and did it for them.  Death was from blunt force trauma to the back of the skull.  Clubbed, to be crude about it.”

KD brightened up and commented, “If they get that sort of thing to deal with, it is no wonder that this place is beside the waste treatment plant!”

I agreed, “Right!  Now all that we need to do is sort out how you got a bag that can do what this one does.”

KD put a finger to her cheek as she thought.  “I do know where I got it.  It was at that Manehatten art show that I told you about.  The Dragon Treats that they serve at those things are always kept separate from the pony treats by putting them in bags.  Somepony gave me this bag with a muffin in it, just before I signed that Daring Do contract.”

Fume Hood tapped me on my nonexistent shoulder and pointed to the bottom of the bag.  There was a small trade mark in the form of a silhouette. There was a small bit of advertising too.

KD read, “Redline Party Supplies – For a party to remember for the rest of your life – If you survive!”  She also pointed out, “That silhouette looks like a laughing wolf's head.”

Fume Hood agreed, “It does look like that, doesn't it?  I know of someone who uses a silhouette like that on their business cards.  Here.”  He hoofed over a card.

The card read:

Doctor Mordenheim,

General Surgery and Prosthesis.

Everfree Edge Clinic

Practice inspected and approved by Princess Luna

I was delighted!  “I know where that is!  It was a small old castle that was supposedly built by a -” I made my voice low and shivery while making Hoof Quotes, “- 'Mad Doctor' long before Ponyville was established.  It was in ruins when the Apples came and founded the town.”

Coalsmoke smiled and said, “Right, Grumpy.  I know where it is too.  I send my workers there for general health workups and surgery when it is needed.  Doctor Mordenheim really is very good.  It is not far from here, either.  Let's go see if he can shed any light on this business.”

We left, taking the Falmire Causeway that crossed the marsh, going out towards the southeast side of the Everfree forest.  We paused by a street vendor's cart to watch the antics of her trained alligator.

Have to admit that Pinkie has done a great job of training Gummy!  I mean, he is two and a half meters of fun!  Rumor has it that she has broken him to saddle, but she was not offering rides today.

“Gator Chow, gator chow! / The gators below are hungry now! / Feed the gators down below / It is really quite a show!”

A chuckling Coalsmoke hoofed over coins and got a big bag filled with large chunks.  It said “Certified Gator Chow” on the label.  She shared the chunks around and we spent a few happy minutes tossing them to the many alligators gathered hopefully under the bridge.

There were splashes and chomping a-plenty as the gators lunged about for each new chunk of the chow.  We heard a munching from behind us.

KD, swallowing, asked Pinkie, “Where can I get some more of this stuff? It is pretty good!”

At our stares, she retorted, “What?  Dragon here, remember?  I don't eat grass!”

We left Pinkie to her vending and went on across.  It was not long before we saw the sign pointing to the forest beyond.  It said, Everfree Edge Clinic, General Medicine and Prosthetics.

Only a little way up the designated path of yellow cobbles, we came to a small but well restored castle.  I had to give this Doctor Mordenheim credit for showmanship.  This was one classy clinic.  The sign over an open door read Welcome to Everfree Edge Clinic.

Coalsmoke rang a bell labeled Ring for Service that sat on a beautiful mahogany desk in the lobby/waiting room.

We did not even get to try out the assorted seating and laying cushions.  A large, near horse sized zebra with an eye patch came out of the back. His professional smile turned to a genuine one as he laid eye on Coalsmoke.

“My dear Coalsmoke!  What may I do for you, or is it for one of your friends?”

Suddenly stopping like he'd hit one of his stone castle walls, he gave me a careful and most knowing look.  “I do fear that the goat is beyond any help of mine.”

Coalsmoke smirked just a little as she replied, “You are correct.  This is Grumpy Goat, my long standing friend, of whom I am sure that you have heard.  We are not here for him.

“This is Krystal Dragoness.  She prefers to be called KD.  Our problem is sort of related to her, but it is not medical.”

Resting his chin on one forehoof, as he sat behind the desk, Doctor Mordenheim inquired, “If the problem is not medical, then what is it?”

I held out a hoof, “KD, may I have the bag please?”

I showed him the bottom.  “Somepony named Redline is using your cutie mark on his things.  It has some interesting properties.”

Mordenheim put his face in his hooves.  “I know.  I see that KD has it.  She can't lose it either.  Whatever is in it, seems like an endless supply.  I made it, years ago.  How it got here to this world, I have no idea.”

He was sort of surprised when we all simply found seating and Coalsmoke asked casually, “So, how did you get here?  More to the point, when you arrived, did you meet an elderly blue unicorn with a white mane, tail, and beard?”

Mordenheim looked blank.  “What?  No, I never met anypony like that.”

He got a seriously uncomfortable expression as he elaborated, “I would really prefer not to go into why I wound up here.  Princess Luna knows in detail.  Suffice it to say that the events led me to wandering in the Everfree Forest.  I have no idea at all how it happened, since the Everfree is not all that big, but I was in there for over a week.  Perhaps more, I am not at all sure.  What I am sure of is that the path that I was on did not seem to double back on itself or any thing like that.  Between sun breaks in the forest canopy and the scenery, I am sure that I was not going in circles.

“I happened on the ruin of this old castle.  I might have simply passed it by but it had a small cobbled road leading to it from outside of the forest.  I followed that road and it led me to Ponyville.”  He shook his head in wonder, “It was a very different Ponyville than the one that I left.  By good fortune, I met Caramel Treat, Fangrin and Reverend Smallflower.  The rest all came from meeting them.”

I pointed out, “Fascinating as that is, it completely dodges the question of that bag and its neverending supply of adulterated Dragon Muffins.”

One of Doctor Mordenheim's ears cocked up in fascination.  “Adulterated? How?”

Coalsmoke filled in, “With lots of zinc metal dust, that's how.”

Doctor Mordenheim winced,  “Ouch!  That would make mountains of hydrogen gas!  That could cause a serious problem for a dragon!”

KD confirmed, “It sure does!  The hiccups that it causes have been near the ruin of my art.”

Suddenly you could see things clicking together in Doctor Mordenheim's mind! “KD?  Art?  Did you do the covers and illustrations for Daring Do and the Secret of the Apploosa Cave?  The Adventure of the Singing Sands?  The Nippony Diamond?”

KD nodded, clearly pleased.  “All three!  Why?”

Acting like a foal as he was going to his book shelf, Mordenheim snagged all three books and returned to his desk.  “I love your art, KD, would you please autograph these for me?”

With an impishly evil grin, displaying her big dragon chompers, KD replied, “Sure!”  She was reaching into the bag.  “Just as soon as I snack on this muffin!  Or, you make this bag harmless!”

Grinning right back, and revealing a set of fangs that would not have been out of place in a tiger shark, Mordenheim replied, hoof over heart, “You wound me!  I was going to do that anyway.  You did not need blackmail me.  It did make it more fun, though!”

KD chuckled as she said, “I would not really have done it, Doc.  It was just too much fun to pass up the chance.  So, tell us, why did you make a bag like this?”

Reassured that we did not hold his apparent past against him, he sat back comfortably and half smiled at the memory.  “Revenge.  Count Sourbottom was being a problem, objecting to some of my experi . . . projects.   He had a whole herd of foals of all ages.  One of the youngsters had a birthday party coming up.  I set up one of these for each of them!  Loaded them with the finest, sweetest candies that I could locate.  It was a near perfect revenge.”

Always interested in more ways to get back at ponykind for their mistreatment of me in the past, I asked, “How was giving his foals candy any sort of revenge?”

Suddenly, Coalsmoke put a hoof to her lips to suppress giggles.  “Don't you see it, Grumpy?  He couldn't take them away for discipline because the bags will go right back to the foals.  Worse, the endless supply of sweets could cause all sorts of health and mouth problems that the Count would have to pay for!”

Mordenheim nodded happy agreement.  “Last that I heard, Count Sourbottom was headed for bankruptcy on dental bills alone!”

Going more serious, he offered, “KD, we may be able to save the gem topping of your muffins if we are lucky.  Would you like that?”

KD replied seriously, “That would be great, if we can do it.  I really like their flavor, especially the crushed rubies.  How can we do it?”

Doctor Mordenheim picked up the bag and headed for the outside door.  Over his shoulder, he invited, “Come outside for a simple little experiment.  We can save the gems themselves for sure.  Question is whether we can save the topping that they are in or not.”

He pointed down the yellow cobble road leading to his door.  “Now, my dear, take a muffin out of the bag but don't eat it.”

Mystified, she hoofed over the muffin.  “I understand why I have to get it out, but why not eat it?  What are we going to do with it?”

With total assurance, Doctor Mordenheim replied, “You are going to eat it but in parts.  Here, let me scrape off the topping.”  Carefully he removed the topping, taking none of the muffin itself.  “Just eat the topping.  I will hold the muffin for now.”

With obvious relish, KD did.  Licking it off her claws, she asked, “What now?  I like this test!”

“We wait a bit to see if you get gas.  If you don't, the zinc is only in the muffin part.”

KD cocked her head, brow wrinkled in concentration.  “I don't feel any gas coming on.  That usually happens pretty quick when it does.”

“I see. To finish the test, eat the rest of the muffin now.”

She did. And was soon hiccuping blasts of flame.

Nodding in confirmation, he said, “Just in the muffin then.  We can definitely save the topping for you.  Would you like just this topping or would you prefer it on something?”

“As it happens, I do have something that it might go good on.”

Back inside, she produced a bag.  We all saw Mordenheim's nose dilate as he caught the scent.  His ears shot forward in interest.  Drool leaked out of the corner of his mouth!

“What is that lovely smelling stuff, KD?”

“Gator Chow.  I got it from Pinkie Pie over on the bridge.  She told me that it is made from smoked and flaked meat pressed into bite sized chunks.”

Both Coalsmoke and I were rolling on the floor, laughing!  Getting myself somewhat under control, I commented, “Those teeth of yours are real, aren't they, Doc?”

“Yes, they are.  Is it a problem?”

Coalsmoke, composing herself comfortably on a large cushion, replied, “Not for us.  It was just unexpected.  Looks like Pinkie is going to have to stock in more Gator Chow, is all.  

“This explains why Caramel has mentioned you eating there a lot but I haven't seen you, and I eat there too.  You eat in the back, in her carnivore plaza.”

“Right. Now, KD, those Gator Chow chunks are just about muffin sized.  That is about as big as the bag can handle.  It is time to disarm the bag from those bad muffins.”

He got a large, heavy book from the shelf.  Instead of consulting it, he held it at the ready.

“Now, KD, take the muffin out and move your paws away from the bag swiftly.”

As she did, he slammed the book down on top of the bag!  He held it down for around a whole minute.  Relaxing, he pronounced, the spell is reset. It can now be reloaded and set to anyone.  Just a sec.”

He went into the back and returned with salad tongs and a spreading knife. Selecting one of KD's chow chunks, he carefully and neatly spread the gem topping onto it.  Taking the tongs, he used them to insert the topped chow chunk into the bag.

“Now, KD, just reach into the bag and take out the snack.  That will reset the bag to you with a safe treat.  You also now know how to change treats any time that you want.”

Saying, “Thanks, Doc!”  KD fished out the treat and nibbled it down with gusto!

I was watching the whole thing with narrowed eyes that I don't really have. Thinking it over, I pointed out, “KD, whoever set you up was at the show in Manehatten.  The way it works, that spell didn't lock onto you until you took out that first muffin.

“It may be time for a contract or a bit of detective work in Manehatten. Perhaps both.”

Thoughtfully she suggested, “There is another big art show in Manehatten in a few days.  I do have a studio there with some finished pieces that I could enter if I could get there in time.  That would give us the cover that we need for detective work if we can arrive in time.”

I suggested, “If time is a problem, I could try setting up a portal between here and the Manehatten fairgrounds.  It has been a while since I studied that but it is really pretty simple magic.”

We all trooped outside and I began the really pretty basic preparations for opening a portal spell.  I did add a whole lot of “stage dressing” rituals, circles and other misdirection.  I always do.  Better showmanship and it hides what makes it work from prying eyes, even if they are watching.

A glowing circle appeared in the air, just in front of us and barely touching the ground.  Suddenly it began to grow, becoming a huge oval. Something enormous, making a steady pulsing roar and clanking like metal was coming toward us!

First, pretty high up, came a sort of short crossways tube with a hole in it on the side facing us.  The thing continued to advance.  That funny bit was attached to a long metal tube!  Down lower, some big metal plates appeared and then between them  an enormous bridge of metal. Huge wheels of steel supported endless linked plates of more steel!

As the contraption came on out, it was revealed to be a gigantic machine of some sort!  It had sloped sides up to a heavy device on top that the long tube came out of.  That had sloped sides too, as if this thing were made to bounce catapult shots off of it!  There were some serious dents and obvious repairs that made it seem that those slopes were strictly functional!

Sticking her head up out of a hatch in the top was a pony who looked for all the world like Rainbow Dash!  Reinforcing that idea was a brown pegasus with a black mane and tail clinging to the rear of the machine and calling out loudly enough to be heard over the machine's roar!

“Dashie! Stop!  You going to smash through garden wall again!  You crush Jade's herb garden again!  You so grounded!”

Dashie retorted, “I not hit wall, dad!  Big blue hole show up.  I drive through that!  Besides, last time I drive through Jade's herb garden, I fix it better than before.  She ask me to squash it again!”

“And one more thing!  Dashie, you make me good hot tea or you so grounded you need dig up for thousand year to see daylight!”

Innocently she shot back, “If I that grounded, I make you nice tea that De Writer send for me to get you!  It his idea to get it with remote control T82 Main Battle Tank!  If I NOT grounded, I MIGHT be able to find you nice green tea that he never touch!”

The brown pegasus sat hard.  “De Writer ask you to use Remote Control T82 IN CANTERLOT for that tea?  You not so grounded as I thought.”

The one identified as Dashie noticed us from her vantage point, high up in the top part of the T82.  She picked up a small boxy thing with buttons and levers and pushed one of the buttons.  The T82's loud grumbling fell quiet.

“Um, Dad, we come through portal, I think.  You not teach me that magic yet. There ponies here and a dragon.  Come around T82 and you see.  There small castle here too.”

The brown pegasus stepped around the metal monster and courteously introduced, “I Thomas the Writer.  Miscreant who drive T82 through your portal my daughter Dashie Writer.  T82 is educational toy give her by De Writer.”

Mordenheim looked up at the behemoth of steel and remarked, “Where you are from has different ideas about educational toys than any place I have ever been.”

Dashie replied, “It crazy where we from too, but what you expect from powerful wizard like De Writer?  Something safe?  He good to have on your side when trouble come, though.”

She turned about and exclaimed, “The portal gone!”

It was true.  Standing where it had been was a familiar cat otter hybrid with red hair.  She was wearing a well worn cloak of dark green and light seeming chain mail.  Mithril by the look of it.  Her left arm was a prosthesis, a mechanical arm of metal that moved in an utterly natural way.  Under the cloak was the scabbard of a large sword.  In her mechanical hand was a parchment that looked like a map of some sort.

She tucked away the map in a pouch at her waist and looked about, her gaze missing nothing.  Smiling, she waived!  “Hi, Grumpy!  It's me, Wind!  We met at Ponyville Fair, remember?  I am part of Marchhare's band of Rom.   I was going to meet them at Haymarket fair, up north, but this out of control portal got in the way.  I took the liberty of closing it.”

Thomas gave Wind a strangely puzzled look.  “This world with Marchhare in it?”

She shrugged, “I wouldn't be going to meet him and his band if it wasn't!  Why?”

Speaking to Dashie, Thomas said, “This important lesson, Dashie.  How many worlds in multiverse?”

She replied, “Infinite.  Everyone and thing have infinite copies, each a little different.”  Raising her eyebrows in thought, she added, “This a trick question, isn't it, Dad?”

“Sort of. You very quick.  Every rule have exception, right?”

Putting hoof to chin, she thought and then went wide eyed with realization! “Every rule have exception, even that rule!”

Thomas lifted his wings in pleasure.  “Right!  This ONLY world in whole multiverse that have Marchhare!  That is secret to navigation when go between worlds.”

Dashie blinked.  “What happen when he dies?”

“Nothing, Dashie.  Marchhare already dead.  Not die twice.”

We were all listening in amazement.  It was newcomer Wind who said, “That is sort of a relief.  That there is only one of my foster dad, I mean. I have met some of myself and it was not the best of experiences!”

She put her jaw in her metal hand and examined the whole situation carefully. Turning to me she asked, “Did you cast the portal, Grumpy?”

Scraping the grass where I was standing with one nonexistent forehoof and looking down, I muttered, “Afraid so.  Portals are not really my specialty.  I guess that I really messed this one up.”

Wind stepped over and lifted my glamor's head to look me in the eye.  “I am an expert with portals.  That one was really well done.  It would have worked perfectly if you had not cast it here.  The Everfree's Hidden Ways are what messed you up.

“Now, where were you trying to go?”

KD interjected, “We were aiming for the fairgrounds at Manehatten by the Sea.”

Wind nodded in a very take charge sort of way.  “I see.  That is about 6 or 7 hundred kilometers from here.”

Leaning casually up against the iron monster called T82, Wind asked, “Does this thing have personnel and cargo railings and how fast is it, uh, Dashie?”

Dashie brightened up as she replied, “It sure does have safety railings! I use them when I give Mia and Becky rides.  It can go as far as you want.  Out in the open, it can hit 100 kilometers an hour!  How did you know about that?”

Wind gave a delicate shudder, “I have adventured on a few worlds where similar machines were used.  I saw the passenger railings on some of them.”

Wind smiled ingratiatingly at Thomas.  “Would you be willing to let Dashie take us all on an Adventure to Manehatten by the Sea?  It will get these nice beings where they need to go and be fun for us all.  From there, I can easily send you both back home.”

Dashie had hopped out of the top of the T82 and began releasing catches and lifting up metal railings.  They clicked as they locked into place. When she was done, she lowered a set of steep metal stairs to climb up onto the back of her “educational toy.”

Thomas watched with a skeptical lift to his right eyebrow.  “I not say we go, Dashie.”

She looked him straight back in the eye as she retorted, in front of us all, “Right.  All that you have to do is tell our hosts that you won't do something simple and fun to help them.”

“That blackmail, Dashie!”

“Right. Between you and our De Writer, I learn from the best!”

He chuckled, “OK.  We do it.”

Wind swung easily up the boarding stair and called, “All aboard for the Manehatten Express!”

KD swarmed up, found the engine vents, and curled up with a “Dibs on the warm spot!”

Coalsmoke gently pushed me toward the enormous device with, “I would love to go too, Grumpy, but I have serious business to talk over with Victor. The Princesses want to set up a program for helping wounded veterans of their armies.”

Dashie started the T82 and made a big turn.  Wind guiding her, we set out for Adventure!  And Manehatten.

Technically, we took Doctor Mordenheim's path down to the Falmire cutoff and turned south towards the junction with Royal Road 315.  For some reason, the busy traffic of Ponyville's industrial district gave way before us, even when it had the right of way!  Couldn't imagine why! Surely it had nothing to do with fifty or more tonnes of steel monstrosity charging along at a “mere” twenty kilometers per hour.

We reached the Royal Road toll booth without incident.  Almost had an incident there.  The poor booth keepers were going nuts trying to sort out the proper toll.

Pages were fluttering back and forth in their toll manuals, “It ain't a cart or wagon from any section!  Darn thing is made out of iron like a fool locomotive on the railroad!”

“I know, Jeb!  Can't even classify it by team size or set up!  It runs itself!”

Wind was sitting on the edge of the turret, which Dashie had taught us was the name for that upper part with the long pipe sticking out of it, and giggling at the small uproar.  

“When Marchhare hears about this, he will split his harness, he will laugh so hard!”

One of the toll collectors looked up at her and got a beatific smile.  “You are Wind, from Marchhare's band of Rom, right?  I saw you at our fair a couple of times.”

She nodded acknowledgment, “Yes, Sir.  I am.”

He turned to his buddy and pushed the manuals shut.  “Just write Rom from Marchhare's band, toll free by Crowns Law.”

Jeb did write, though he was still trying to protest.  His superior shut him down with, “Jeb, like enough you are right.  Still, it solves OUR problem.”  He tripped the gate mechanism and the flimsy red and white painted wooden bar lifted up out of our way.

We pulled onto the Royal Road.  Besides less traffic, it was wider and better maintained than the Ponyville road we had come from.  Dashie began to open up the speed once we had clear road ahead of us.  I must say, I was impressed.  Dashie was not kidding about hitting a hundred kilometers an hour!

The T82 was fast and high enough that we had to duck shade tree branches!  A delighted KD had her sketchbook out and was rapidly drawing things from her high perspective!

Chortling, she explained, “Even as roughs, some of these will adapt to pictures for my book contract!  This is great!”

Wind steered us into one of the many waysides, making Dashie slow down and drive gently as we parked for the evening.  With assurance, she showed us where the free water and firewood were.

With a fond smile, Wind recalled, “I have camped here before, while traveling with Dad's band.  There is a small stream over in the bushes that we can get fresh fish and crawdads out of for a nice dinner.”

KD had out an easel and was busily drawing with colors.  She was doing the T82 framed by a sunset of riotous clouds and glowing light.  

She asked politely, “Wind, would you be so good as to pose there, just below the turret?  I want your metal arm just casually holding something and your sword out in your right hand, ready but not on a guard.”

Wind did pose.  It really did not take KD long at all to capture the feeling of the scene.  The way that Wind was posing, it looked for all the world like she OWNED the metal monster behind her!

Done posing, Wind stretched and began doing limbering up exercises.  With an expression of delight, and without even thinking about it, Wind began to dance and sing in a language strange to all of us.  I did recognize it from my times at the Ponyville fair, serving mainly as security for Caramel Treat's excellent food booth.  The language was Gyptian, the sort of private and held secret, nearly melodious tongue of the Rom.  I did recognize the dance.

She was treating us to the Shehan Ja Rom, their story of how the Rom came to be.  I gather that it is the oldest dance and song of the Rom.  As her dance and song finished, I remembered that the Rom did not clap for applause.  I leaned my head back and gave the loud trill that the Rom use.

Wind looked sort of startled as the others followed suit.  Embarrassed, she mumbled, “Sorry.  It was just the joy of being on the road again.”

It was KD who said it, “Don't be sorry.  It was lovely.  Is there an Equestrian translation?”

I put in, “I know that there is.  That was the famous Shehan Ja Rom.  The Rom traditionally dance and sing it in an Equestrian version to open fairs.  What I am curious about is how Wind, who is nothing like any horse or pony, came to be a Rom and of Marchhare's band at that.”

Wind sat near the fire and absently began to assemble vegetable skewers for Dashie, Thomas and I.  “I made a little mistake while adventuring. I survived it, obviously.  Mama Dragon fixed me up and sent me here, to this Equestria to finish healing and recuperate.  De Writer met me and steered me to Marchhare's band.

“Good thing, too.  One of my wounds developed a small inflammation that could have killed me.  Black Lotus, Marchhare and Hoof Dancer, his wife at the time, healed me.  Mama Dragon was wise in sending me to them for a month.  I had more than physical wounds to heal.  I joined them and learned to read, write and speak Gyptian.  Having a real caring and extended family provided the rest of the healing that I needed.  Now, I have my Freedom and I can come and go as I wish, but my Rom family is always there for me.”

I could tell that there was a lot left out but Wind cut her tale off without harming her tail by asking, “Grumpy, will you tend these skewers for me while I go catch some fish, crawdads and a bunny or two for dinner to share with KD?”

I realized at once that besides being an adventurer, Wind was quite diplomatic. She had just reminded the lot of us that KD had not eaten all day, except for snacks, and that both she and Wind were carnivores. Possibly hungry carnivores.

Dashie took off too, calling, “Wind!  Wait up!  I want see how you hunt and fish without fancy gear.”

Wind looked back, nodded and then beckoned with a finger curl.  As soon as Dashie was up to her, Wind slid into the brush without a sound.  Dashie, trying to follow was pretty quiet.

Coming to the creek bank, Wind laid flat and wriggled forward on her stomach. Carefully parting the small thin wands of the bank willows, she slid her right arm into the water, reaching back, under the cut bank.  Her face screwed up with concentration, she eased her hand up, feeling for a fish.  Smiling, she slid her hand further up and grabbed!

Rolling back and lifting, Wind flipped the good sized trout out onto the bank!  She caught the flopping creature and bent its head back to break its neck.  She snipped off a thin bank willow strand with her knife and laced it through the fish's gills and out the mouth. Loosely knotting the ends, she hung the fish up and repeated the trick three more times!

Dashie was watching with awe.  “I never even hear of fishing that way!  How you do it?”

Wind picked up her willow loop with fish and replied, “It takes practice to tickle trout but it is not really hard.  You need to be careful and gentle.  When you feel the fish with your fingers, you need to work your way up until you feel the pectoral fins, those just behind the gills.  Snap your fingers into the gills and lift it out quickly.

“Now for a nice brace of bunnies and dinner will ready to cook.”

Dashie, keeping her voice down, asked, “I see warren right over there.  How you catch them?  Some kind of trap?”

Wind, following Dashie's pointing hoof, shook her head.  “I could, and if we were going to be here longer, I would set some snares.  Since it is only dinner and breakfast, I will just pounce them.  It is easier and quicker.”

Dashie watched Wind ghost her way through the brush toward the warren. Choosing her place, she waited, a bunched spring of living huntress. Nothing moved except for the tip of her tail twitching slightly.  It was only a few minutes before a bunny hopped lazily toward one of the main holes of the warren.  Wind's pounce included a fast chop with her metal hand!  The bunny only twitched once before going still.

Wind quietly picked a different spot and soon had a second bunny!

Bearing her prey, Wind and Dashie returned to camp.  On their way, Wind asked, “Why did you want to see how I got fish and bunnies?  Most ponies really don't want to see that.”

Face flaming a little with embarrassment, Dashie replied, “I am sort of, like half dragon.  I turn into one if I need to or want to.  Thing is, I not very good at getting meat to eat!  I have to turn back to a pony and graze up dinner!  There are times that really inconvenient!”

Wind chuckled.  “I can see that!  We have one more stop before Manehatten by the Sea.  I will take you out hunting there too, OK?”

Back at camp, Wind considerately went to the other side of the T82 to clean and prepare her catch.  A lightly drooling KD went to help!  They both returned to the camp, licking their lips and smiling.  They were finishing up with some of KD's endless supply of Gator Chow.  Wind had carefully cleaned off the gem topping from hers and used it to enhance KD's snack.

As we were settling about the fire, Dashie asked, “Um, Wind, did Rom hold you prisoner some way?  You say you have your freedom.”

Wind chuckled at the misunderstanding.  “No, Dashie.  The Rom Freedom is a thing that they wear.  Here, I have mine in my bag.”

She reached into her bag at her waist and her arm seemed to go in further than was possible.  She saw us staring and snorted her amusement.  “It is called a bag of holding.  It is sort of like Marchhare's caravan. It is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  Here it it is!”

Stopping her rummaging, she pulled out a sort of headstall thing of richly tooled and dyed leather with rings and buckles that looked to be gold.  She strapped it on.

“This is a Freedom of the Rom.  They grant them only to beings that they have fully accepted as one of their own.”

“Why is call a Freedom?” Dashie wondered.

Wind lifted her chin with pride.  “The original cast off slaves that were the first Rom wore a headstall with a bit and lead ring.  They had them all their lives and were not comfortable without something on their heads.  They re made them into the Freedom by taking away anything by which they could be made to serve another.  No bit or lead ring has ruled any Rom from that day to this.”  Very carefully, Wind removed her Freedom and put it away.

KD had curled into an amazingly hard to see coil of dragon to sleep until dawn.  The rest of us were spreading blankets to sleep under the stars.

A wagon full of road repair tools and an accompanying work gang of ponies pulled into the rest area.  A couple of them strode arrogantly to our camp and demanded, “We are hungry!  What ever food you got, hoof it over now!  You don't, we gonna take sledgehammers to that there tin thingy!”

I gently prodded the almost sleeping dragon in our midst.  KD had been paying attention!  Her head rose up, eyes alight.  A curl of flame showing at each nostril and outlining her barely opened jaws completed the picture!

She serenely asked, “What?  More dinner?  I'm not sure that I could hold another whole pony.  Mind if we just sort of pack along the leftovers for lunch?”

Dashie had lifted a fully draconic head.  In the late evening's light we could not make out her color but we could easily make out the totally paling ponies!

“What! They got TWO DRAGONS!”

Dashie corrected, “No.  Two HUNGRY dragons!”

Dashie was giggling at the frantic retreat of the two jerks!  Got to admit to some chuckles of my own.  KD's sides were heaving as she re coiled herself.

Dashie got up onto all fours.  In the dying firelight, she could be seen to be a light blue color.  She flexed her wings a couple of times and strolled over to where the road crew ponies were carelessly re packing to leave.  In terror but not so terrified that they were willing to have to pay for abandoned gear!

One thoughtlessly yelled, “Road camp privacy!  Stay away, that is kingdom law!”

Wind, who was almost unnoticed at Dashie's right front leg, calmly pointed out, “You have just admitted that you knew that you were breaking kingdom law when you tried to hijack our dinner.  In your haste to correct your error, you dropped your sledgehammers.  Here!”

Wind revealed a hidden strength by casually giving the heavy hammers an underhand toss.  Both hammers overshot the wagon and hit the turf on the other side of it.

That got the attention of the road crew ponies!  One noticed, “How come you only got one arm?”

Smiling angelically, which showed off her fangs nicely, Wind reached up with her metal left arm and scritched at the base of Dashie's left dragon horn as she replied, “What, this?” Campfire light glinting from her metal arm, she said casually, “Kitten here, and I got to roughhousing last week!  She was a little too enthusiastic, that's all.”

Dashie, catching on to the game, bent her head around and gave Wind a lick at the shoulder and said contritely, “I said that I was sorry!  We just need to find a Phoenix potion so that you can regrow it. Again.”

They strolled back to our camp, Wind taking the time to re hang her cloak to sort of hide her metal arm.  Thomas, Dashie, now turned back to a pegasus, and I nibbled up Wind's excellent fruit and vegetable skewers.

Wind toasted the last of the bunnies and trout over KD's flame and shared that extra bit dinner with her.  Dashie “sneaked” over and turned back to a dragon to beg a few bites.  Grinning, they let her have some.

Sleeping out in the open, I did not have my usual nightmares of a Celestian Church mob burning my home, studies, and, failing to trap me in the house, attempting to stone me to death.  Perhaps my feelings of safety came of sleeping beside a big blue dragon?  One that liked me? Very likely.

It could not last.  For one thing, dawn comes far too soon for a cave dwelling goat like me.  The other was a light blue bundle of enthusiasm with rainbow mane and tail!  Dashie was bounding into camp!  She was waiving a forked stick with three big fat trout on it!  It was laced through their gills and out their mouths, with the forked branch acting as a stop to keep them from sliding off.

“I did it, Wind!  I tickle trout just like you show me how!”

Wind looked up from laying the morning cook fire.  Her grin showed her usually hidden fangs as she replied, “Just like I showed you?   Not sure how to point this out diplomatically but you don't have any fingers to do it with.”

Totally disingenuous, Dashie replied, “I just use my magic like you show with hand.  It not hard.  Real trick was find where fish hide.  You show me that.  They too quick to catch if just grab.  Gentle tickle is trick.”

Both KD and I were listening with rapt attention.  It was clear that Thomas and Dashie's Equestria was very different from this one.  As they talked, that became more and more apparent.

“Does your magic come from being a weredragon?”

“Only a little.  Most I learn from Dad.  He one of two most powerful beings in our Equestria.  Be honest, I think De Writer worst.  Super strong magic and wicked sense of humor.  And bored.  He three thousand years old.  Raise Princesses.”

“I see. Do other pegassi use magic where you come from?”

“Not really.  Dad figure out that there more magic in world than Earth, Pegassi, and Unicorn.  It come from his mom, Aurora, the Demon Queen.”

We all looked askance at the innocent appearing brown pegasus.  This was getting more and more interesting all the time.

Wind just nodded, took the fish and efficiently set about preparing them.  She also pulled some fresh looking apples and peaches out of the bag at her waist.  She expertly split them into proper chunks and dropped them into a pot.  She added a little fresh water and, reaching into her bag of holding, pulled out a box with many drawers and bottles, a jar with a sealed top and a small flour bag.

I was sort of amazed, watching the sheer skill with which Wind organized breakfast.  She even had water on heating in a biggish pot.  She added some from the sealed bottle.  The camp filled with the heavenly aroma of Rom black tea!

Satisfied with the progress of the fruits in the pot, she added sugar, cinnamon from one of the drawers of the box and stirred in the flour to thicken it.

It smelled heavenly, not like regular flour at all.  Wind closed the bag and returned box, bag and jar to her bag of holding.  She saw my calculating look as I watched it all happening.  

Wrinkling her nose in amusement, she explained, “Ka'chek flour.  A Rom without it?  Unheard of!”

Breakfast lived up to the lovely scents, and then some.

Wind, KD and Dashie went to the other side of the T82 to fix and eat the trout.  Coming back, Dashie and KD were finishing up gem topped Gator Chows and Wind was nibbling at one with the topping removed.

While they were eating, the rest of us cleaned up all the cookware and put out the fire.  We especially cleaned out the fruit stew pot!  Nearly came to blows over who got to lick it out!  Good sense prevailed and we took turns licking parts of it.  Then, we washed it.  We did have one thing unwashed.

We saved Wind the last mug of Rom black tea.  Smiling at our courtesy, Wind drained it and saw to proper washing of the mug.  She then caused us all a small croggle of the mind by causally putting all of the clean cookware and dishes into her bag of holding!

We all piled onto the remote controlled T82 and Dashie got us on the road again!

I noticed that Wind was wearing her Freedom and had put on a harness.  It was as richly tooled and dyed as her freedom.  They were clearly a matched set.

While KD was busy with her art, making fast sketches of the lands that we were passing through, I made bold to ask, “Why the Rom outfit?  This is not exactly a caravan.”

Wind giggled at some joke that I did not understand as she replied, “Actually, it is.  You just have to understand what caravan means. It is a loan word from the desert Kingdoms that was already in use by the time that the first Rom came here.  In their language of Gyptian, it means something slightly different from how it is used in Equestrian.

“It is just that there is a road section toll gate coming up in a little. Me being dressed this way should get us through the gate for free.”

Nodding acceptance for her reason, I turned my attention to Thomas, who was trying hard to act like an adult pegasus, rather than a colt having the time of his life.

I guessed, “You have not ridden on Dashie's T82 before, have you Thomas?”

With a twinkle in his eye, he admitted, “Never before this.  I think that she get to play with it more but need daddy supervision!”

I was chuckling at that when we all felt the iron monster slowing down. Wind, pointing ahead, made clear exactly why.  There was the toll booth with its light weight red and white bar across the road.  There was a substantial cabin in back of it for use of the toll collectors when off duty and out here, kilometers from any town.  A sign said, WELCOME TO THE MANEHATTEN ROYAL ROAD SECTION.

Wind hopped off the top of the huge left tread guard of the T82 and greeted the toll takers, “Hi!  What do you think of my new act?  Just doing a shake down run to IRON out any problems!  We are promised entertainment for the big art show.”

The utterly bemused light yellow toll collector turned to his lavender buddy and shook his head.  Pushing the toll manual shut he said, “Rom.  No accounting for 'em.  Just write Rom, toll free by Crowns Law.”

He tripped the mechanism and the toll gate rose up out of our way.  

As the mechanical behemoth passed through the gate, Wind trotted after and swung up the steel boarding stair and resumed her place on top of the turret, next to Dashie.

We had passed two of the Waysides when Wind guided Dashie into one that seemed empty.  It was nowhere near noon, yet.

“Thanks, Dashie!  There is a friend here that I want to talk to.  It would have been rude to just go by and not say Hi.”

With that, she bounced off the turret, grabbed what we had learned was called the Main Gun, and swung, letting go and landing lightly.  She sprinted over to the edge of the woods.

Sitting suddenly, she quietly reached out and laid a sparkling pebble among many others in that spot.  She said, “Hannara Na Kili.”  We could not make out the rest.  It was all in Gyptian.  It contained pauses as if she was listening to what another was saying.  The conversation was soon over.

Wind got up, smiling serenely, and returned to us.  Dashie had turned to a dragon so that she and KD could share a couple of KD's gator chows.

Wind suggested, “We could get going, now.  The Loved Dead are always with us.  Hannara and I had a nice chat.”

It was slowly percolating through the brain that I don't really have, just how different Rom are.  And I have known them, shared food with them and talked with them for years.  They have even been guests in my cave.  I have heard that expression, the Loved Dead are always with us hundreds of times.  I have heard about Laying the Stones goodness only knows how many times.  This was the first time that I had seen it.

Seeing how Wind treated it, both casually and with absolute assurance, as if the horse in that grave that the Rom call a Gateway to the Lake of Paradise, or Lake for short, was really there, made it hit me like a gut punch.

I knew, like everybeing in Equestria that the ONE THING THAT YOU DO NOT DO is desecrate any Wayside burial.  Ponies who die more than two days travel from their homes are entitled to a Wayside burial.  It is a Royal Benefice.  The graves are marked and tended as part of Wayside maintenance.

All Rom who die get a Wayside burial, that they call a Lake or going to the Lake. They lay small, inexpensive, but pretty pebbles on them to mark them.  

Desecration of a Rom Lake will bring the Princesses in person to investigate. The criminals WILL get caught.  Penalties are HARSH.  They range from twenty years at hard labor on the Royal Roads up to life.  The worst offenders, who have actually exhumed Rom remains get a punishment worse than simple death.  

They get life in the Twins Mine, digging mercury ore.  The fumes destroy the mind and wrack the body.  After the first few such grave robberies, centuries ago, no pony in their right mind will risk that.

Wind looked so quietly happy that I had to wonder whether there was any truth to the Rom belief in the Lake of Paradise.

Dashie finished her snack and changed back to a pegasus.  We all piled back onto the T82 educational toy and hit the road again.  It was not long before we came to a bridge across a stream.

It was a nice, well built and solid bridge.  It was clear that it was not made to take the sheer mass of the T82.

Dashie, following Wind's suggestions and pointing, reversed the T82 for about fifty or sixty meters.  There, she eased off the road and headed toward the stream.  She stopped short, while Wind scouted ahead, dropping down the stream bank and checking the bottom to be sure that it would hold up the tank.

Returning, she suggested to the others, “I think that you should get off and use the bridge on foot.  This will be a wild ride!”

KD pointed to the line of ten to fifteen centimeter diameter trees that lined both sides of the stream skeptically.  “Um, not to cast doubt or anything, but how do you plan to get this thing past those?”

Wind replied quietly, “I have seen machines like this, doing what they were designed to do.  I don't think that it will be a difficult problem.”

KD and Thomas both looked into Wind's eyes and saw reflected experiences that they did not want to share.  Neither did I.  Thomas just said, “T82 break trees in orchard before this.  I take Wind's advice.”

Nodding, KD followed him, saying, “Let me get to the center of the bridge and get my sketchbook out!  I don't want to miss this!”

Figuring that the center of the bridge would have the best view of the proceedings. I joined them.

That was when I noticed something completely uncanny.  As big and heavy as the T82 was, there was no sign of its driving across the grass and brush to get to the stream.  Looking back, I saw that the road was in perfect condition, too.

I pointed it out to the one here who might know something about it.  Thomas snickered happily, “Yes, know already.  You not say anything to Dashie but she very good with magic of rock and stone.  Also with magic of plants.  She fix what educational toy do as it happen most time.”

Just then, it started.  The T82 let out a loud roar and charged the treeline! There was a splintering set of crashing sounds as it struck the innocent vegetation!  The trees did not stand a chance!  They swayed, cracked and buckled, falling down into the stream as the “toy” crunched over them, tipping down steeply as it plunged into the stream!   With a huge splash, followed by the churning up of rock, gravels and white water, the machine charged the opposite bank!

As it hit, I began to appreciate the ingenuity of the linked steel belts that the T82 ran on.  There was a slope at the front before the treads hit the ground.  Now, that slope let the machine claw its way up the bank, tilting back steeply as its momentum and driving tracks forced it up, pushing the trees aside and down while it topped the bank!

Dashie drove her “toy” up to the road's edge and parked it.  She bailed out and took wing to the other side of the stream.  Landing in the water, she transformed into her dragon self!

She called, “Dad!  KD!  Will you help please!?”

She was lifting the fallen trees back into their places, on the stumps that they had broken off from.  While she was at it, I could see her magic going into the stems and branches, binding together cracks and breaks.

KD loped down and joined her.  “What can I do, Dashie?  I don't know anything about this kind of magic.”

“Just hold trunk up while I fix break and roots.”

Thomas strolled down and waded into the stream.  He started repairing cracks and breaks in the wood of the fallen trees to speed things along.

Wind and I sat on the bridge rail and watched them work.  She commented, “Ah, hard work!  I can sit and watch it for simply hours!”

It really did not take all that long for the party to restore all the trees and larger brush, leaving almost no sign that the massive T82 had charged through there.

KD said it for all of us, as we climbed back aboard the T82, “I never even heard of magic like that before!”

As she was settling into the turret and picking up the remote control, Dashie shrugged.  “All world each a little different.  Some thing go from world to world, some not.  Magic dad teach me, it work.”

Not too much later, we pulled into a Wayside to fix lunch.  Some heavy freight dray ponies were already camped there, so Dashie parked us at a site well away from them, to give them camp privacy.

They stomped over to us just as Wind was setting a large pot of water to heat.

“Whatever you gots to eat gotta be better than our road ration oats!  Hoof it over!  We even got you a bag of oats to make it a fair trade!”

Dashie quelled Wind before she could say anything.  She gestured for KD to stay hidden behind the T82.  Pretending to quail some, she replied, “We just stop for ordinary tea before go on.  Got special box tea need to be deliver.”

Thomas, sounding indignant, demanded, “No!  Dashie, that tea special!  Got to go to Castle . . .”

“They meaner than us, Dad!  I give them one packet.  Only make them a couple of gallon.”

She ducked down into the T82's interior and returned with a modest package wrapped in gold colored foil.

She made a point of securing the oats before giving them the package.  “We going be in much trouble for this.  Oats is least you can do.”

As they retreated, I noticed that Thomas had a diabolical grin.  Dashie, on the other hoof, simply hopped up on the T82 and tripped something on her control box.

The turret turned and the main gun lowered some.  It pointed the big main gun directly at the drover's camp.

All that Thomas would say was, “It De Writer tea.  Never know what happen. Best be safe!”

Wind's ears perked up!  Almost too casually, she asked, “Is that thing loaded?”

Dashie sort of shrank a bit as she replied, “Yes.  Have five case ammo. Two explosive, three solid shot.  Five round in each case.  De Writer give them to me when I get tea.  Dad not like me have it.”

“OOPS! No time talk now!  They getting water boiling!”

KD sidled up to Wind, “You seem to know a lot about this thing.  Just how dangerous is it?”

Wind put an arm over KD's neck as she replied, “That depends on which kind of round Dashie has in the gun.  A solid shot will rip a crater about two or three meters across.  The flying dirt and stone from the fire place will make a deadly spray.

“If it is an explosive round, it will blast a hole about five or six meters across.  It will scatter fragments of the shell and any loose stone or dirt too.

“Yes, the T82 could wreck any ordinary fortress in Equestria.”

KD was chortling, “I hope that the tea is worth a shot!  Not only would I like to see that, I did not like those ponies at all.”

Thomas overheard and replied, “They not get hurt.  De Writer not crazy. Have spell on T82 it not hurt any pony or intelligent being.  Can do much property damage.  That educational part of toy.  Dashie get to fix up damage.  Study hard her magics since she get it from De Writer!”

The wayside ponies added the tea to the water boiling in their big kettle.

As they did, Thomas asked urgently, “What De Writer say about brew tea?”

Dashie's brow wrinkled, “He say make in ceramic pot only a little at a time. It good for cold morning!”

Just then the flames began in the drover's big kettle of boiling water! They burst up in a great gout of blue and yellow fire!  We could feel the heat from where we were!  The sides of the big iron pot glowed red, then yellow!  They began to melt!

In only seconds, the sides gave way and the tea gushed out, drowning the campfire, not that it was much help!  The wood instantly went to ash! The tea soaked into the bottom of the fire place and the flames slowly subsided.

The heat had driven the drovers away from camp and wagon.  The whole side of the wagon that had been facing the tea was charred.  There were small wisps of smoke arising from it here and there.

Thomas was sitting on his rump laughing.  “Now know why fix in ceramic pot and only little at a time!  Definitely good for cold morning!”

While the drovers were frantically hitching up and hauling out of there, Thomas was thoughtfully heating water in an iron pot.  He called up, “Dashie!  Packet tea.  Small measure.  Ceramic pot I know you got in there!”

She popped up out of the hatch and gave Thomas the things that he had asked for.  KD, who could breathe fire, quietly backed up.

Dashie saw it and reasured her, “With De Writer tea, follow direction important.  We see what NOT do.”

Thomas added boiling water to the small, indeed tiny, measure of tea in the pot.  Flame poured out the spout and leaked around the lid.  It soon died.  Thomas poured a small cup and smelled it.

“Have good nose.”  He sipped.  Eyes wide, he exclaimed, “This one of De Writer's best teas yet!  Try some, Dashie!”

She promptly poured a cup for herself.  “It good dad!  Thanks!”

Wind added vegetables to her pot of boiling water and soon the savory scent of vegetable stew filled the camp area.

While it was cooking, she took Dashie and they entered the woods.  It was not long before they returned with a couple of squirrels and a few bunnies.  This time, it was Dashie, turned dragon, who toasted the carnivore lunch.

After everything was cleaned up and put away, Dashie strolled over to the camp that the drovers had used.  While we watched, she actually pushed a few heat broken stones of the fireplace back to position. Somehow, they stuck.  What really got me though was her casually picking up the hardened iron from the melted pot and the original fire grilles and sort of pushed, pulled and squeezed on them to make a good, substantial grill for supporting cook pots.  It went into its place.  She carefully scouted the camp, leaving bright green grass where it had been fire browned.

A grinning KD got several quick sketches!

Wind reminded us all, “The Manehatten fairgrounds turn off is only about another hour down the road.  Shall we be gone?”

It did not actually take us an hour to get there.  We all disembarked from the T82 and did stretches.

Among the assorted goodbyes, I heard Wind ask KD, “I am not on a schedule.  Mind if I tag along to see your art show?”

I personally, after wishing Thomas and Dashie well, inquired, “Would it be possible for me to get some of that De Writer tea?”

He practically pounced on me!  “How much you want?  He send a crate of it!  Got lots!”

“I could use several packages.  Say, five?”

“Dashie! Get Grumpy five packets De Writer tea!”

Her voice muffled by being inside her machine, she retorted, “FIVE? What he want to do?  Melt T82?”

As I took the packages of potentially deadly tea, Thomas pointed out, “You know Grumpy do magic.  Pony here seem mostly think only unicorn do magic.  Grumpy use much ritual and misdirection to keep them from catch on.  I bet tea become part of that.”

My already high respect for Thomas went up another big notch.  I nodded, “Right, Thomas.  Also, once the fire burns off, it makes a really good tea.  Right up there with Rom black.”

Wind told the group, “Well, I promised to send you back from here.  Is it time to go?”

Though Dashie looked a little downcast, Thomas nodded, “It been fun here, but yes.  It time to go home.”

Wind reached into her bag of holding and fished out a thing that looked like a map.  She traced out what looked like a route on it with a delicate touch of one claw.

The pale blue oval of a portal big enough to drive a T82 main battle tank through appeared.  Thomas climbed the passenger steps, up onto the back of the iron monster and our friends drove through.  The portal silently vanished.

I turned to KD.  “Which way to the Art Show?”

She nibbled a gator chow treat and pointed.  “My studio first!  Then off to the show!”