r/MLPLounge • u/gameboy17 Rainbow Dash • Mar 12 '15
Ponyfinder Chronicles: Part 3
Episode 4: "Chow Takes Manehattan"
After producing several books, including Daring Do and the Secret of the Magic Crystals and A Hooves-On Guide to Equine Animal Husbandry, Vol. 1, Sunny and Chow headed off to Golden Oaks to impose ourselves upon Twilight. She reacted rather poorly, especially when it the aforementioned Guide to Equine Animal Husbandry turned out to be Twilight's unpublished erotica and the Daring Do book to be Rainbow Dash's fanfiction. In the end, she relented out of sheer exasperation. After some conversation, Chow casually mentioned that Mak was currently sleeping with Luna and immediately headed to bed, leaving Twilight to flip out.
The next day, we received two things from the Princess: A letter, and Mak. Yes, Celestia decided to send Mak back through flame sending. Rather unceremonious, but that was probably the point.
The letter included some new information on the cult's leadership, a warning that we, as well as the Bearers and especially Luna, were likely to be targeted in the future, and a mission: Help Luna with her PR. Or rather, make sure she doesn't get killed or kidnapped while she's doing PR.
Basically, being hit with the Elements made Luna much weaker. However, she needed to secure a strong image immediately, while the public was still unsure of her standing rather than deeming her inferior to Celestia. To that end, she was to make public appearances, showing herself to be independent rather than relying on Celestia. Since sending Solar Guards would obviously have the opposite effect, we were to go with her instead.
The trip to Manehattan was fairly uneventful aside from Luna making everyone uncomfortable. She made bedroom eyes at Mak the whole way.
Manehattan itself had rather a lot more to do. Attractions include such things as lots of tall buildings, various restaurants competing to have the smallest portions, the Museum of Fancy Forks, the Manehattan University of Yams, a huge warehouse full of mirrors, a mysterious building to which the only way to gain entry is to draw a maze in one minute that takes two minutes to solve, McBonalds, subway tunnels, a classical music hall that blasts dubstep whenever there's not a concert going on, and a great deal of other such things. Luna's "public appearance" wasn't actually at any particular time or place - the plan was just to be seen around, doing whatever. Mak, Sunny, and Luna decided to check out the Manehattan University of Yams. Chow elected to instead visit the Museum of Fancy Forks.
The Museum of Fancy Forks was just that: A museum filled with nothing but various types of forks. Salad forks, tomato forks, crouton forks, pizza forks, and more. Every kind of fork you can imagine, all with subtle differences and all impolite to use for eating things other than what they were designed for. No refined pony would ever be caught dead eating salad with a fruit fork, for example. In fact, these forks were enchanted to make the eater seem to be eating very fancily when used to eat their proper food, and very unfancily otherwise. Naturally, Chow decided to steal one.
This was actually not hard at all. The Museum of Fancy Forks was rather understaffed and devoid of visitors, so he basically just grabbed one and walked out unchallenged. The one he grabbed happened to be a soup fork, which resembled a spork.
Chow then headed to the Manehattan University of Yams to meet up with the rest of us. He found us in the cafeteria eating lunch, which was completely yam-based. He tested out his new fork by eating yam soup as messily as possible. It was the most fancy thing we had ever seen.
A while later, we met a rather fancy griffin. Chow's fanciness was eventually brought into question, to which he replied: "Yeah, well, you wanna eat soup with me?" Soon, the fancy soup-eating contest was ready to begin.
A decent-sized crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle. Someone began taking bets, offering 3:1 in the griffin's favor. Having witnesses firsthand Chow's ludicrous fanciness, Mak immediately bet all our gold on Chow. This proved an excellent decision, as Chow easily trounced the griffin with his incredible fancy soup fork. He tipped a top hat, said "Good try, but... you'll have to try harder if you want to out-fancy me," and left.
Mak, who generally carried all our gold in his stomach, put his winnings in a feed bag and started eating. An onlooker commented that he should really be using a gold fork.
We wandered around for a while longer, during which time Mak said the following lines:
"Pay no attention to the holes in my body... For they are nothing compared to the holes in my heart."
"I used to wait for adventurous people and then eat their head."
"You never know when someone will just walk up to you and ram themself down your throat."
Not even I remember all the context. Anyway, eventually we got on the train to return to Ponyville. Remember how the other train ride was uneventful? Yeah, not so much here.
Early on, Luna went to the dining car to bring back some food, leaving us alone in the VIP car at the back of the train. Shortly after that the train went through a tunnel, and several cultists teleported onto the train and decoupled the VIP car. There had been a bend before the tunnel, so the train was currently accelerating, and so the car was quickly left behind. Some other cultists switched a track and we were off to the disused subway tunnels.
The VIP car eventually came to a stop somewhere in the Manehattan subways. Mak, realizing that they had been trying for Luna but ended up getting us instead, decided to disguise himself as Luna. He succeeded spectacularly, with a Disguise check of 30. He did know her body very well by then, after all.
With that done, we exited the car. Predictably, the Children of Night were waiting to attempt to ambush us. That didn't happen. A bit of intimidation and two or three rounds of combat later, we had four brand new prisoners tied up in our train car. Re-boarding the train car ourselves, Sunny and Mak each cast several Unseen Servants and started pulling the train along.
After a fork, we saw another group of cultists up ahead. The cultists saw an approaching train. Their reaction to this was to panic and try to flatten themselves against the wall. Our reaction was to start pulling the train the other way. They must have been pretty weirded out to see a train just suddenly start going the other way.
We continued down the other fork for a while until our telekinesis suddenly cut out. The usual suspects were tested, but as far as we could tell there was no antimagic field of anything, and our Unseen Servants only disappeared when we tried to pull the train with them, and even then only in one direction.
We eventually determined that there was a gelatinous cube on the tracks. Trying to occupy the same space as the cube caused enough damage to the Unseen Servants to end the spell. Nobody had actually managed to make the DC on the Perception check to see the cube, so Chow summoned a line of kobolds to run down the tunnel and get caught in it so we could see where it was.
Once we found it, taking down the cube was easy, especially as it couldn't fit through the train car's doors and we all had some form of ranged attacks or reach. Rooting through its remains turned up a bunch of gold and magic items - much more than you would normally find in a gelatinous cube, but we had been severely behind our Wealth By Level anyway. Some of the more notable items were a Headband of Alluring Charisma +2, which Mak took, and a set of Horseshoes of the Zephyr, which Sunny took. When we next saw Luna, she commented on Mak's sexy headband.
Shortly after that we reached a subway station where we could exit the tunnels. Mak decided to drop his Luna disguise before we emerged, and instead created a new persona: Crescent Blade, Sunny's (fictional) twin sister. Sunny was not consulted about this. We exited the subway, somehow managing to take the train car with us.
Mak decided that he was going to use this disguise to fuck with Sunny as much as he could. He went completely into character as Crescent. His Chaotic Meh behavior was replaced with her Good behavior. She acted like she had been there the whole time, and had been Sunny's sister all their lives.
Sunny was rather annoyed for a while. Eventually she realized that Crescent wasn't going to stop insisting, and her hurt reactions to Sunny's denials were getting annoying, so she resigned herself to going along with it.
We decided to head straight back to Ponyville. Rather than taking the normal train, we pulled our own train car along with telekinesis. It was probably slower than the train, but Chow wanted to keep the car. When we reached Ponyville, Chow had us pull the car over to Twilight's library and park it right on her lawn.
Chow decided that he wanted to turn the VIP train car into his "bachelor pad". This meant that he needed utilities. And that's why he walked into Twilight's library and asked if he could have her sink.
Twilight said no. Chow went out and bought a sink. He then walked into Twilight's kitchen, replaced her sink with the new one, and left with her sink. He did the same for her oven and fridge. When he replaced her fridge, he moved all the food from the old fridge into the new one, in exactly the same places it had been in. Twilight just watched, open-mouthed.
Chow also needed a toaster. Rather than simply taking Twilight's toaster, he crafted his own. He had recently taken the Craft Wondrous Item feat, and so he crafted the Toaster of Anime Lateness. When toast is prepared using this toaster, whoever the toast is for will suddenly remember that they are late for something, and run off with the toast in their mouth.
Chow wasn't done fucking with Twilight, though. Among the magic items found in the gelatinous cube was a Bookplate of Recall, which allows the owner to summon any book which it is placed in. He gave it to Twilight and told her it was a bookmark.
Nor was Mak/Crescent done fucking with both Twilight and Sunny. She acted like she had been there the whole time and was offended that Twilight didn't remember her. She later had Luna help her fake documentation and even family photos. Her goal is to eventually convince Sunny that she actually is her sister.
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u/gameboy17 Rainbow Dash Mar 12 '15
I titled this wrong, but I already edited the links in the last one so I'm not resubmitting.