Fractured Tedium 0

"World's falling apart, man."
"Well the world's probably  been through worse."
"Not as bad as this."

Mumbles all around can be heard from the bar. The bartender cleans a clear mug spiffy clean, awaiting a new customer to order another round or so. There's not much to do around on a late Tuesday evening after all. Weekdays are the busiest of days for anyone who isn't working at a mall or entertainment establishment, and at best a man handling a bar can only hope for a sad sap to thirst for a pint or a jolly fellow needing a celebratory shot. They never do leave with just one measly shot.

"Well, you two seem to be making yourselves comfy." The bartender says to the three fine gentlemen at the counter.
"Ah, just trying to get myself distracted. By tomorrow the insurance company would hopefully be able to get the papers done and pay their worth." The man with the moustache answered.
"Insurance?" Another asked.
"Well I reckon the insurance companies are already readying their graves what with all the destruction going about!" The bartender joked.
"Got a neighbor back home who's been riling up to leave the city and move back somewhere in Griffonstone with his auntie."
"Don't blame him. Had to fight with my insurance company a couple of times before they finally approved to pay for my reconstruction bills." The moustache, slowly taking a sip from his glass of keg beer.

The bartender stretches for a bit, and he nearly overdoes it as he finds himself gazing upon a new customer coming through the door.

"Insurance companies, right?"
"Well thankfully my lawyer managed to twist the contract, saying that 'Attacks from inhuman creatures' counts."
"Wait, which one attacked your store? Was it the hobo man with the football helmet or that new one with the bright neon body?" The other bar mate with a fine blue suit curiously asked.

The man twists his moustache a bit, trying to recall memories of the day a small battle took place in his neighborhood.

"It was the holy monster. Well, at least that's what the religious communities are calling it." Says the man from the door.

This man, walking to a vacant chair startles some of the customers, as well as the bartender. He looks battle-hardened. Wearing a worn-out mountie on his head, a weathered gray coat on his body. A scar on his lip and hands dirty and blacker than charcoal. His sudden interruption caught the ear of each man.

"Oh yeah. Now I remember. How did you know, stranger?" The moustache man politely asks.
"Your daughter's friends with my daughter." he replied. "You're Hondo Flanks, correct?"
"That be correct!"

The concerned father twitches with a hint of anxiety, mostly from how intimidating this other man is. He   hides this by making friendly conversation. Only the bartender notices his behaviour.

"My daughter Pinkamena was there when it all happened. Apparently neither she nor your daughter Rarity was injured during the incident."
"Your daughter's Pinkie?" Hondo asks.

The moustache man makes a thinking gesture. He remembers a slight mental note, something about the man's cheery daughter mentioning her father having a very serious job. A job that explains his hardened appearance.

"Wouldn't that mean that you're-"


His bar mate puts his cup down out of delight.
"OH WOW. Your daughter's Rarity?" Interrupted the man with the green hat. "A lot of people in Canterlot knows about her. She's a great seamstress!" The one with the green cap blurted.
"Oh yeah, I've heard of her. She helped fix my suit up back when I was attacked by a dog. Even gave her my card in case she needed a part time job."
"You sure it wasn't just so you'd hope she'd call you, Davenport?"
"Oh bug off, Hayseed. You're the one hoping for that." he coughed, sweating mildly with guilt.
"I never hit on teenagers!" Hayseed fretted. "...even if I am just twenty years old!"

The conversation breaks when Hondo lays his hands on both their shoulders, acting annoyed with two bar mates talking about his daughter. The two however fears his moustache more than his large arms. While the bartender laughs at the current event, another customer enters the establishment. This time catching the eye of everyone sitting by the counter. The woman looks around the joint, her left eye-lid twitching from the afternoon's worth of stress. She fixes her red luscious hair with one hand, before taking off her sunglasses to sit down with the man in the hat. The three men and the bartender looked passively at her buxom figure and her green eyes. The woman checks her watch (which is a knock-off of an expensive brand) before proceeding to raise her eyebrow at the man. Hayseed proceeds to wonder if they're both having a staring contest, as neither of them would blink. He instead proceeds to compliment her to his mates.

"Now that there's a woman!"
"Out of your league!" Davenport tells him. "You know her, bartender?"
"Not a regular, that's for sure. What about you, Hondo?"

Hondo shakes his head, and avoids thinking what the others are currently thinking like the good married man that he is. However, concerning the man in the hat, he's still curious about him. He puts it aside, ordering one more shot before heading home. Although he stayed quiet at his last drink, he can't help but try to eavesdrop on the two's meeting. They talked in whispers, and at best they try to give anyone glancing at them the evil eye. It was one thing that would keep Hondo awake at his bed.
Around the city is a place no one thought would occur outside of fiction. The smell of burnt wood and engine smoke filled different parts of the city. A small bird flies around the dark autumn night at around 12:00AM. To be a creature that can easily travel from one place to another has its advantages around these parts of town. For one, he can watch all the action happening around Canterlot city. A city that never ceases to amaze, and to many, never ceases to strike fear. The bird however must be careful, for one wing down would mean the end of him, and in the city, there's more to it than just your average regular gang gun fights. Right now the poor wee thing had just escaped havoc from the north caused by what he understands as 'deranged lunatics' and demigods of power. He stops by to rest on a street post, watching whatever happens under his eye. The woman from the bar crosses the street, hand twitching as she embraces an unidentified object as her lips tremble with excitement. She greets the guard of an agriculture facility's gate before entering the premises. The bird eyes whatever she's carrying. A small book, weathered by time and irresponsible handling. The book has the scent of something resembling a decaying corpse to the bird. Uninterested by this, he eyes the woman's fake watch. Another one for the nest, it thought before flying towards the woman to try and snatch it. His carefully thought-out plan is spoiled by a nearby guard, younger than the other one from the gate. The bird is defeated by the swaying hands of justice, and proceeds to fly away, but not before departing ordure onto the guard's show.

"Agh! And I just had this waxed!" The young guard whispered to himself.

The woman makes no notice of the incident. She walks to her office, still trying to conceal her grin like a child guilty of opening his birthday gift a day early. To the woman, she might as well have won jackpot. She struck a deal she never thought she'd get in her lifetime, all thanks to the hardened man at the bar. Beyond her office door lies something that would make a conspiracist feel comfy. An unkempt table and walls plastered with maps and writings. Past her classy looks, her mental wellbeing is up for debate. She walks inside her humble abode and proceeds to eat the left over bagel from two days prior. She puts the book down as she sits in her comfortable chair. Within moments, she lets out a burst of merriment and tears she had been keeping for the past hour, one that would spook the people left in the area.

An eerie laughter coming from the third floor, and the three guards on duty is startled. The facility they're in belongs to the "Cherryish & Prosper" company, which excelled in agriculture, agrotech, importing and exporting, as well as to be credited for the creation of an safe preservative for crops and fruits alike. All that was due to the genius work of its red-haired owner whom tonight is making everyone in her facility nervous. The two guards down the hall were rushing and whispering about their gracious employer and her midnight cachinnation. They both realize there wasn't any threat, and that their boss was just letting off some steam. They take a peek at the open door just as the woman is about to read aloud a page from the book.


"EXERPT FROM SUBJECT FLASH SENTRY'S JOURNAL

Today is well, another day of living I suppose. It's been quite some time since the incident at Everfree. Seems that I have lost quite a few lot hours being unconscious, and being completely beaten up by some elemental monster from the unknown. Me and my brother had been through a lot lately, mostly from experimenting on our crazy fantasies of heroism and glory. Ones that we've always cherished like children. Well, he didn't actually cherish it. I just tried to make him cherish it. Was I the cause of the situation we're in right now? Well, I guess if I had some good sense of humility, I'd take all the blame. Failed papers from the sky, false heresy, dreams. Our sharpener and her utensils are probably worried sick. I don't wish for this night to end, but it would be better if it would.
This hopefully wouldn't be my final entry.

Huoban."

She takes her phone and presses the record button. She has read a lot of documents, notes and even articles about things that mildly interested her. None as cryptic or as unusual as this.
"Subject's journal...five years ago was the time he started to write in the journal." she mutters aloud, checking the dates of the first two entries.
Immersed as she is, she finds a bit of amusement over the thought of a thirty-five year old woman taking an interest in the journal of a teenage boy. However to her and several other people, the owner of this journal has more to hide than just fantasies of obscure fetishes and tales of romantic debauchery. For some time, she had been watching the owner of the book from afar and on some instances,  places she didn't think they would run into each other. He was a curious case, and one she had come to speculate on for some time now. It was from an occasion long before the city had met its demons and demigods that she was saved by a silly looking man wearing only a clean pair of underwear, a black mask that hid the upper part of his head and hair, a football player's t-shirt and a red cape. The public newspapers and internet forums had named him "Commander Nicebutt". A vigilante to many, a marketing scheme or attention hoarder to others. But to the red haired woman studying the vigilante's journal, it wasn't the owner that interested her in the slightest. Rather it was the owner's friend. The partner vigilante. The man with an army helmet. The one the public had dubbed "No Man", based on a story from the Odyssey. The news had depicted the duo fighting crime and saving civilians from danger. While the owner of the journal showed no signs of abnormality on footage, the other one had shown power beyond a human's peak capabilities. He lifted heavy trucks, caught bullets, performed superior athletic feats and fought monsters bigger than him. It captivated everyone.
She flips through every page, finding bits of oil, chocolate and popped pimple residues. There's even a scent of cheap cologne and a taped ticket to a 'first date with *heart* Bonny *heart*' during the two recent years' entries. However a certain page from months ago strokes her curious eyes.

"Wait." She says aloud. "These pages are written...differently..."

She takes note by sticking red strips on the upper-right part of the page as a bookmark. During her investigation, notices that several pages have been ripped from the journal. A  action by its owner, it's owner's friends or possibly from an enemy that has read from the journal. Either way she only has speculations to for this matter. She flips through the pages after it, and what she found was a pattern that very much differed from his previous teenage drama entries. From stories of school venting which ends in pessimism to another where every other page is like a final page to the book about his life. He writes "Huoban" at every end. He mentions no other name by association in his vague self-reports. She theorizes that he's conflicted of writing his tales of adventures concerning him and his "brother".
"Every page that is signed by  a 'Huoban' feels like a final page. All of it mentions the possibility of dying. Subject obviously knew the consequences of his afterschool adventures." The woman remarks, writing down some notes with her left foot. The guards outside are mildly surprised by her dexterity.
The woman spins her pen around her perfectly manicured foot. She finds another anomaly. Between the dates of the more refined pages and his teenage diary parts, there's a skip of eleven months.
"His last entry from the first part was of the second week of September, 2003. The next page after the ripped pages, August, 2004. "

Along with a clear difference of endings. The last September entry was something along the lines of breaking up with a very angry woman, and that women have broken his heart too much, and so on. The other one, the August entry,  ended with the very peculiar 'Huoban' sign, a sign done with the remaining six other entries. She theorized that the man's suffered from an epiphany and started another teenage phase or something similar. That was all she could do. Speculate and theorize whatever made this young teenager go from being normal to being a daredevil.
"Ah. So this one isn't a complete idiot after all."

The woman presses her pen on tiny sticky notes, all while still analysing the teenage boy's journal. She takes note of key words being repeated with most of the entries.

" 'Sharpener', 'Brother', 'Failed Paper(s) From the Sky', 'Schizo Eggplant', 'Going King Tut', 'Green Arrow', 'Heresy'..."

She breathes slowly, smiling like some pooch who's discovered a dinosaur's femur from underground.

"I'm on to you, Flash Sentry. You and your little "brother". Oh I haven't felt this excited since the Equestrian army arrived!"

Near the slightly open door, two guards are both bedazzled and dismayed by their employer's current stat.  However those two aren't strangers to her nightly weirdness. They've seen her do much worse.

"Here's another quiet night." The guard on the right asked in a somewhat sarcastic tone. "Talking to herself while writing notes...."
"I miss the old days when she be brooding like that bat fellow from the funnies."
"What's going on with her now? A midlife crisis?"
"Prob'ly went on a marathon of 'Ancient Aliens' and decided to 'investigate' on the dirtiest journal she could find out there."
"How'd you know it's a journal? It could be any kind of book!" Guard on the right exclaimed.
"Well if it's just any kind of book, she could've just searched about the subject on the internet!"
"You saying books are outdated?"

Guard on the left shrugged.

"World's changing, man. I mean I remember when I had to buy a dictionary the size of two yellow pages just for me thesis."
"How'd that work out for you?"
"You can guess by the fact that I'm working me arse off as a night patrol off some fruit franchise facility." The guard on the right said, taking offense at his partner's words.
"Aight, aight. Don't get pissy...."

A regular Tuesday night for an observer in this facility would just be a couple of bored blokes spewing nonsensical arguments with each other. However, with the last few months that have been ruining their precious city, the subjects that's caught their interest now involves almost the same thing their employer's interested in.
"I heard our gracious employer's been looking up on the town's local inhuman humanoids." The guard on the right said.
"The homeless football bum and his super friends?"
"Yeah." The guard on the right says while showing a newspaper. It featured an artist's rendition of the infamous hobo vigilante in a death metal-style drawing. It had enough skulls and chains to make a little child scared of homeless people.
"Heck, I don't even know if the guy has a proper name like Power-Woman or Mister Marvel. I mean who comes up with the name 'No Man'?"
"Plus, he's pretty small to be a super hero don't you think?"
"I don't think super heroes even have a size requirement. I mean look at the Atom. He can fight crime while being the size of a prayin' mantis!"
"No you idiot, I meant he's like a manlet."
"You got somethin' against manlets? I'll have you know I'm offended by your stature. I have a cousin who's a manlet and she still kicks arse every Christmas." The guard on the left says, disappointed by his co-guard.
"First of all, I don't think women can count as manlets. Second of all, your cousin's not a manlet. She's a little person.
"Good sir. I'm again offended by your words. It's the 21st century, and I think we're in a time where people of all-

The guard on the left is interrupted when another joins the fray.

"I-Is something going on?" whispered a third guard.
"GUARK!" Guard on the left uttered.
"Shining! What did we tell you about sneaking around your seniors?"
"Err, you never told me anything. Sir."

The woman hears the commotion from outside her office, and she proceeds to berate her 'fans'.

"What in the world are you three doing outside the room?" She asked in a displeased tone.
"Sorry miss. We just caught our new intern lurkin' around and thought it was very rude of him to stare at his employer, specially at this hour."
"WHAT? I WAS THE ONE WHO-"
"Wait, do guards even have intern guards?" the one on the right asks.
"Well there's gotta be some sorta trial stage for the new one. Never know whe-"

*SLAM!*

The two guards were startled by the door. Shining was still clueless on what on earth's gotten into them.

"What was that all about?" he asked
"I'm thinkin'...." the guard on the left mulled. "I'm thinkin' she's on menopause."
"What?!"

The guard shakes his head, and along with Shining they proceed to walk away from their employer's room.

The three fellows silently begun to wonder about their employer. They noticed that the woman had always found interest in the personal stories of people who had broken from the norm to try and make a difference. She herself is concerned on what purpose would she bear in her future. In some ironic comedy, the woman loves and hates her perfect life of success. On one hand, she has enough money to last fifty years worth of retirement time. On the other hand, she dreads the idea of idleness and boredom, even during the peak of her life. The guards speculate that the fact that she's putting off hours of sleep to obsess over a dirty smelly book would show that she's desperate for something to give her a reason to be excited for another tomorrow. Unbeknownst to them, she would sometimes suffer exaggeratedly from the horrors of morning decisions like whether or not she'd wear striped or plain socks, panties or boxers, crust or no crust and even whether or not she'd fire her intern for accidentally bringing her milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate one drunken and stressful night. The one thing they do know about her from the years they've worked with her is that she believes there's more to life than what she had reached with her college education and her vocational achievements, and right now the city's current state is giving her ideas. Very dangerous ideas of a hobby of that studies the unknown entities that both haunts and graces her little city.


It has been hours. Two and a half to be precise. The woman yawns aloud and cracks her knuckles to the point that the nearby Shining, tired and sleepy, has his dirty imagination work its magic. The woman decides to continue on later, after she gets her few hours' sleep. She stands up, takes the journal, her bag and her notes. It's three in the morning, and she has a meeting at nine that she has little intention of preparing for. She walks out the building, straightens her glasses and watches by the sidewalk, waiting for something to happen. The smell of smoke was felt near her presence, and in a few seconds, her prayers are shortly answered. One of the fabled monsters of Canterlot zaps through the main road. The monster's bright neon body was like something that came out of a fluorescent lamp and grew human limbs. It's head only had its magenta eyes and dashing 'hair' of cyan to show for. The monster had the figure and the squeeky voice of a woman, though with its static nature, one can never be too sure. She only caught a glimpse of it and its mumbling. Sure enough, it was elegance in its simplest colors, she thought. It was the same monster that the man from the bar before called "The Holy Monster".

"There's the monster." She says with glee.

She expects the party to arrive shortly. True enough, a small squad of cars with red and blue sirens follows through.

"And then the police."

Along with them, a group of SWAT cars follow along with a helicopter.

"And the media."

Finally, a military truck carrying soldiers and scientists rolls out, with a tank as an escort.

"And the army." The woman chuckles, alluding to the tank's slowness in the chase. "All that's left now is..."

The guard named Shining approaches the woman, hoping to get some conversation more decent than his other superiors' babbling.

"Ms. Jubilee! You forgot your coat!" Shining said.
The woman flinches at Shining's voice, ruining her train of thought. "Oh, thank you."

Shining is a tad bit disturbed by the vehicles that had just gone past the road. It wasn't everyday that a complete squad of authorities would come passing by. His wife once told him it might bring about a civil war of sorts. It's the kind of thought that makes him queasy every night.

"Another weird night, huh?" he says, scratching his head while looking at the lights of the distant police cars.
"So it would seem. Despite the military being here, I can't help but be somewhat amused by all this." She says with a snicker.
"Well Ms. Jubilee it does seem a bit dangerous."
"Danger is like a fetish to me. It entices."
"W-weird way to put it. You going home for the night, ma'm?"
"Yes. Though I wouldn't mind following the sirens. Who knows what might be transpiring with them and that monster." she playfully remarks.
"Well, I'm sure we'll find out in the morning news." he assured as he fixes his cap.

Shining and the woman would look at the road. They expect someone else to follow.

"I'd bet a dollar that he would come."
"Yes. Him." she emphasizes.
The sleepy guard waves his hand goodbye. The woman stares at his name tag. It reminds her of someone she met before.

"Mr. Armor." The woman said.
Shining blinked at his employer.
"Ah, yes Ms. Jubilee?"
"You...have a wife at Canterlot High, yes?"
"Why, yes! My beautiful wife's on labour. Probably due in five months. I lost track of time, haha."

The woman rubs her chin for a bit, perplexed by her employee.

"Hmm..."
"Is there...something wrong?"

The woman had once beamed at the idea of finding connections to Canterlot High. So far she's only had one old volunteer from the school. It wouldn't hurt she thought, to think of ways to spy on the owner of the journal.

"Oh. Nothing. Just something that popped in my head."

The woman nodded goodbye, and walked along the path where the police had passed. She chuckles as she looks at her watch. Footsteps not too far from her were heard. A man in a trench coat and football helmet dashes through, running to where the action is.
The woman smiles as she looks on to the infamous being running at 230 miles per hour. A speed not even a cheetah could reach.

"And right on que." She says. "The hero hobo of our town." She says, while looking back. She expects another car to follow, but nothing came.

"No matter."

She walks home with glee, knowing that the mystery of the town's vigilante might soon be discovered, all thanks to his companion's irresponsibleness.