AAG: Kind Hearts & Coronets

 

This is "Kind Hearts & Coronets", a prequel to AAG. Judging from the cover art, it features Rarity and Silversteel (DJ's dad).

 

The intro starts with Silver drowning his sorrows at some bar:

Yeah, we all know how this fic ends, so I'm calling it now. Not three pages in, and we already have a good old fashioned

(I think that's some kind of record!)

 

Next up: why did Derpy dump this guy?

He's in the guard, and she can't bear the thought of losing him, so she broke up with him and didn't even tell him why. Awesome.

 

Other random stuff happens. The M6 meet Silver's mom, Lady Sandalwood (apparently DJ was named after her grandmother). Then we get a scene in which Silver, having just finished vomiting profusely (he's wasted, remember), looks up, and…

Then, at the play:

And at the ball:

 

Not even a week since his breakup with Derpy (who he fully intended to marry, remember), and he's suddenly madly in love with Squiggletail instead. Of course, this is great news for Rarity, who was on the verge of going full /r9k/, since RD and Flutters are both getting laid while she's still >tfw no cf.

 

And finally, Silver's sister gets hold of a letter from Derpy, in which Derpy admits she's made a terrible mistake and wants Silver back. Naturally, she destroys the letter without showing it to him.

 

Seems like this fic's off to a great start!

 

 

 

 

Shining and Cadance set up Rarity on a blind date with Silver. She recognizes him as "that drunk stallion who was harrassing Ms. Golden Sun", and flips the fuck out. Someone explains that Golden Sun is his sister who was dragging his drunk ass home from the bar, so Rarity calms down and they have a nice date.

 

Rarity meets with her friends, who have somehow divined that she's met a guy. She mentions Silversteel's name, and Twilight says she's pretty sure he's married to Derpy and the father of her two children (not true, but they were together for a long time and he cares a lot about her adopted kids). Rarity flips out again, not bothering to wonder why "the romance alicorn" would send her on a date with a married stallion. I thought she was going to pull the whole self-sacrifice, "He Needs To Be With His Family" thing, but instead she just asks him to explain, gets a straight answer, and life is good. (How weird is that?)

 

And finally:

 

A love triangle with only three ponies? BORING! Meet Tiger Lily:

 

 

So now we have our antagonist. She doesn't know about Rarity yet, but I'm sure that will change soon.

 

 

 

 

God damn, it's good getting back into AAG again. 7DSJ just doesn't have quite the same kind of crazy.

 

In this chapter: Derpy's in the hospital! Silversteel rushes down to Ponyville to visit her. Rarity of course drops everything and comes along, and for some reason so do the rest of Knights Elemental, Shining Armor, and Cadance. It seems like Derpy counts as Family, but I'm not sure why - obviously she's connected to Silversteel by virtue of being his ex-fiance and the (adoptive) mother of his sort-of children, but Rarity and Silversteel have only been dating for a month, which doesn't seem like the kind of connection that merits such a massive response.

 

Putting Rarity, Silversteel, and Derpy in the same room for a while means they get to work out their side of the love tetrahedron. This goes rather smoothly - luckily, Derpy has completely forgotten about the impassioned letter she sent to Silversteel begging him to come back to her, so there's no reason for him to feel conflicted or to wonder why he never received this letter in the first place (answer: because his crazy sister burned it undelivered).

 

So, why is Derpy in the hospital? It's because a mysterious pegasus broke into the post office and beat her within an inch of her life. Since Derpy is (apparently) Family, Twilight, Rarity, and Shining Armor all agree to abuse their authority as much as possible to track the attacker. This turns out to be easy, because he's already in jail. Tiger Lily had hired him to beat up Derpy, but refused to pay because he left too much evidence at the scene. They fought, she won, then she ran to the police to tell them about this random stallion who just dragged her into a dark alley. Hence, jail.

 

Finally, Golden Sun (Silversteel's sister) knows about the beating, but apparently still thinks it's best for Silversteel to be with this psycho, rather than go back to Derpy or stay with Rarity. Should be fun to see how that gets explained.

 

 

 

It's now four months since Rarity and Silversteel started dating.

 

Tiger Lily has known for three months that Silversteel is "looking at another mare", but somehow still hasn't figured out who it is. This means neither has Silversteel's sister Golden Sun (I guess they don't talk that much?), and it also means that for some reason, Tiger Lily hasn't tried putting the moves on him yet (obviously he would refuse and tell her he's already seeing someone).

 

Anyway, Tiger Lily finally finds out about Rarity in this chapter, and promptly hires a delightful fellow by the name of Galahad Gutslasher (a gryphon) to maim and/or kill her. Unfortunately, there are several ponies named Rarity living in Equestria, and neither Tiger Lily nor Mr. Gutslasher are bright enough to realize that, since Silversteel hasn't been taking any long trips lately, he must be dating the one who lives in Canterlot. So Mr. Gutslasher sends one guy after a schoolteacher in the middle of nowhere, sends another guy after a seamstress in Ponyville, and rounds up four more to go with him after the Knight Elemental who lives in Canterlot. (I'm not sure if the M6's origins are not well known, or if this guy is just unusually clueless.)

 

Meanwhile, Rarity and Silversteel are having a relaxing vacation on a hippie commune. They're about to have sex for the first time, but Rarity's insecurities get the better of her:

Silversteel convinces her everything will be fine, and they're about to start going at it, when Mr. Gutslasher and his friends kick down the door. Rarity summons her Element, and the chapter ends with this truly epic line:

 

 

 

Expo dump: Toward the end of Discord's reign, the pony king Jasper ran a secret forced-breeding program to create pony supersoldiers, called Monoliths (E), Adepts (U), and Redsprites (P). The goal was to have "everyday stallions and mares with a trigger in their mind, and just like flicking a switch, they’d become unstoppable monsters." The program never managed to produce a Redsprite, but in modern times its legacy is still visible in the Star Swirls, Clovers (Twilight), Lulamoons, Apples (Big Mac), and Mithrils (Silversteel).

 

Now, about that fight scene... Oh wait, it's already over. Rarity zapped some guys with magic, Silversteel punched some guys with freaky Monolith strength, and Celestia teleported in 30 seconds later (Twilight sensed Rarity using her Element). All right, show's over, time for sex.

Oh, and Silversteel got a promotion.

 

Afterward: The one mercenary who escaped meets with Tiger Lily to collect payment and gives her a scroll. She's working for the Weather Underground, some kind of general-purpose badguy conspiracy, to recruit Tiger Lily to their cause.

 

Golden Sun visits Tiger Lily, who has suddenly gone totally and inexplicably crazy. When Goldie tries to explain that Tiger Lily is not, in fact, already married to Silversteel, Tiger Lily flips out and fries her with a lightning bolt. Shining Armor finds out, and (after swearing to dedicate absurd amounts of Royal Guard resources to catch the mare who attacked his sister's friend's boyfriend's sister) he realizes:

 

 

 

 

Not much going on in this one.

 

Shining Armor sends some outrageous fraction of the Equestrian military to hunt down and capture Tiger Lily (presumably because She Attacked His Family, and no character in this story understands the idea of separating personal and professional concerns when making decisions). This turns out to be a good idea, since Tiger Lily can apparently singlehandedly destroy entire squadrons of Wonderbolts with her Redsprite weather magic, despite having no practice with or even knowledge of those powers until three hours ago, and also she's still totally nuts. She eventually crashes somewhere in the Badlands, but just as the Wonderbolts are closing in, 500 pegasi and gryphons in red berets show up from nowhere, run them off, and rescue Tiger Lily.

 

The red beret guys turn out to be the soldiers of the Weather Underground, led by Pony Che ("Chaff Guarana"). They're working in secret toward the violent overthrow of the Equestrian government, in order to establish better equality between the species or some such thing. Tiger Lily agrees to join them, since they promise to help her "rescue" her "husband" from the "so-called 'Royal Family'". To confirm her dedication to the cause, she has to change her name:

 

Ordinary love triangles are boring. Let's have a love triangle where one of the participants is a deranged, superpowered pegasus with 500 revolutionaries at her back!

 

 

 

 

Revanche has been training with Chaff Guarana and the Weather Underground for the past four months. Apparently it will be at least another year before they're ready to take on the establishment. Fortunately this fic has been good about timeskipping over boring parts, so this shouldn't drag on for too terribly long (unlike 7DSJ Book 4).

 

Elsewhere, the Knights Elemental and their Sisters Royal are all preparing for the Grand Galloping Gala. Everyone has a date but Twilight, so her friends help out:

Given this is the only one who's not an established character, it seems clear he's a Weatherpony here to cause mayhem.

Definitely a Weatherpony - otherwise why would he agree to this?

At the gala itself:

Silversteel being dragged away from Rarity? Perfect opportunity for Weatherpony shenanigans.

LITERALLY

NOTHING

HAPPENED

 

Seriously, I spent the whole chapter expecting the shit to hit the fan, and fuck-all happens (aside from Twi getting plastered because her date isn't really interested). Total waste of time.

 

 

 

 

Another slice-of-lifey chapter, in which almost nothing happens. Silversteel visits a Weatherpony-allied town, and Golden Sun is recovering from being barbequed. As for the rest of the chapter…

 

It's almost Harvesttide (pony Thanksgiving, apparently), and Rarity invites everybody under the sun for dinner: her parents; his parents; Sweetie Belle; Uncle Topaz, Aunt Periwinkle, and their son Persian Onion; her mentor and her mentor's son; and Derpy's kids (but not Derpy herself). She has some trouble figuring out what to cook:

…for about 30 seconds, before her and Silversteel come up with a plan.

 

The only real conflict goes like this:

They go on like this for a little while [spoiler]by which I mean five fucking pages[/spoiler], then go off to play pool and continue this bullshit, and finally Silversteel's dad joins the fray:

 

I think about 25% of the chapter is spent on this stupidly over-the-top version of the standard "overly protective father" trope. I hope the Weatherponies get it together soon.

 

 

 

Strap in, folks. You're on Mr. Shinzakura's Wild Ride!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAY SAVED

 

 

 

 

Finally, a chapter that at least tries to pretend to be advancing the plot in some way.

 

 

 

 

She literally shows up at his house with a boombox. What the fuck am I reading.

 

 

 

Finally, the plot is going somewhere again. Too bad this chapter is kind of boring.

 

And that's literally the main conflict of the entire chapter. Not "am I ready", not "will she say no", just trying to come up with a sufficiently impressive way to go about asking.

 

Eventually he decides on a date at this hidden grotto that Luna's been preparing as a retreat for the "family". (She started this immediately after her return, so apparently it's taken 5+ years for some reason.) The most notable thing about this place (aside from how beautiful, romantic, etc it is) is that Trixie is living with the grotto's caretaker because of whothefuckknows.

 

I hope those Weather Underground guys get their shit together soon. As far as I can tell they've been doing fuck-all for about 18 months (and 5 chapters). There was a bit in here about the M6 being assigned guards due to some unspecified threat, but two pages later it was resolved: some crazy guy was sending threatening letters to the Crown because he thought the windigo incident was actually Discord's doing and the government was hiding the facts.

 

 

 

 

Time for wedding planning. Venue, dresses, the works. This is an even bigger deal than Cadance's wedding - it's Rarity we're talking about, Knight Elemental and Duchess of Lipizzan, not just some boring old superpowered immortal alicorn princess!

 

The Weatherponies (oops, that's racist - I mean the Undergrounders) have finally gotten their shit together and are planning to attack the wedding. Turns out Chaff Guarana himself isn't real big on the idea of flying right up to the "Sun Tyrant, Moon Dictator, and Lustbringer", but Silversteel's psycho stalker (Revanche) and her new boyfriend Candlewick get everyone to go along with them anyway.

 

By pure luck, Twilight's friends set her up with "Parrafin Wax" so she'll have a date for the wedding (several months from now). Parrafin Wax is, of course, Candlewick, Revanche's boyfriend. Twilight falls madly in love with him, and as a result he's able to gain access to all the magical defenses set up for the wedding. [spoiler]This part's actually kind of sad. As I recall, in AAG proper Twilight is foreveralone and occasionally gets angsty about >tfw no cf.[/spoiler]

 

At the wedding, Candlewick and friends blow up all the defenses, allowing the Undergrounders to attack from the air. Revanche goes straight for Silversteel, knocks him out, and tries to drag him away. Celestia moves to stop them, but they blow up a warehouse and threaten to set off other bombs elsewhere in the city. The Undergrounders fly off, pegasi and gryphons carrying everyone else, and they set off the rest of the bombs because fuck you. They already jumped Rainbow Dash, and apparently no other pegasus could possibly catch up to them, so they escape unhindered.

 

 

 

 

Last full chapter before the epilogue. Revanche has "rescued" Silversteel from Rarity's evil clutches, and threatened to kill him unless Rarity comes to fight her, alone. She plans to kill Rarity in the fight, thus guaranteeing Silversteel will be free to marry whoever he chooses. (Also, she's keeping him nice and drugged, so he can't object too strongly to this whole plan.)

 

Revanche's husband Candlewick was captured at the wedding, and out of guilt for the way he treated Twilight, he quickly gives up Revanche's location. Though obviously it's a terrible idea to send Rarity out there alone, without even some guards to back her up.

 

Celestia sends Rarity out there alone, and delays the guards' response so they won't be there to back her up. This is clearly the right thing to do, if only you had Celestia's wisdom and experience.

 

Rarity takes a train to the middle of nowhere, finds Revanche, and the fight begins. Revanche has been training for two years nonstop with her superpowered Redsprite pegasus magic, but Rarity had a few days' practice with some Royal Guards a while back, and she brought her enchanted battlescarf, so the fight is pretty much even. (Rarity doesn't even use her Element, because she is dumb.)

 

Rarity wins, of course, but at the very end she gets blown off a cliff and is headed toward certain death. Fortunately, Celestia picks exactly the right time to randomly change her mind and teleport Derpy into the air a mile above the battlefield. Derpy does a supersonic dive to catch Rarity, exactly like in Sonic Rainboom (but with less colors, I assume). Then everyone else teleports in to congratulate Rarity and help out Silversteel.

 

Then they do the wedding thing again, and it actually works this time. The end.

 

 

 

 

The epilogue.

 

After the Weather Underground's rather successful attack on the wedding, the organization lies in ruins. Most non-pony members have left, and Chaff Guarana gives up control to Spinnaker (Candlewick's sister) and flees with his wife. Spinnaker and the remaining ponies plan to rebuild:

So somehow in the next 35 years, this organization turns from hippies who are all about species equality, to unicorn-supremacist neo-Nazis. Hope you're not expecting an explanation for that one.

 

Candlewick manages rescues Revanche/Tiger Lily before she dies, though both her wings need to be amputated. They flee together to Pony China, where they have a baby, who they name Twilight Lily. Soon afterward, Tiger Lily dies due to complications of foaling.

 

Even now, two years after the wedding, Twilight is broken-hearted over Candlewick, and wishes he would come back.

 

The chapter ends, of course, with the birth of Rarity's first child:

That's right, let's just drop LITERALLY EVERYTHING and ignore all governmental duties for a while - this is clearly more important than anything else that might be going on today.

 

And, of course, the final lines of the chapter: