“Doug!” Pinkie Pie shouts as the weary human drags himself onto the School of Friendship’s hoofball field, a beleaguered Applejack just behind. The party pony rides one of her extra long party cannons - no, not just long, massive, with enough space for ten ponies to slot inside tail-to-snout, and wide enough to accommodate the hippogriff or griffon, though the yak would act more like a cork in a wine bottle. He desperately hopes that method of propulsion isn’t Pinkie Pie’s plan, though he can never be completely sure.

Three balloons pulse on each side of the perched pony, a wobbly tricorne atop her head. The eclectic mix of students attending her ‘Conversations with Cannons’ class, including all the foreign students and Sandbar, mill about aimlessly. Now that Doug arrives, though, they watch with bemusement as she waves her forelegs in the air, as if there is any chance of him missing her. “Over here!”

“Hey, Pinkie,” Doug labors out after reaching the pink pony and the odd pile of sheets and mattress next to the cannon. Are they making makeshift nets, like they did a few years ago? While he catches his breath he winks at Applejack. “Beat ya.”

“Only ‘cause Ah bumped yer rump every time ya slowed down,” Applejack returns jovially, a spring in her step as she trots up to trade a quick nuzzle with Pinkie Pie’s hind hoof, the highest she can reach. She takes a long look at Pinkie’s pulsing cutie mark, then back at her own. “Well, how ‘bout that!”

“You were with Doug? Lucky!” Pinkie Pie moans, dragging herself up and down over a glistening section of the cannon. “I was going over the basics of cannon safety when it hit me! Fortunately, I had Long Luger here to keep me company.” She lasciviously traces a hoof along the top of the barrel. “You would not believe how phallic cannons are!”

Doug certainly can, given the comically long and turgid length sprouting from between her legs. She’s only missing a tied-up uniform around her bosom to match an old-time Navy recruitment poster.

“No, we know!” the young dragon, Smolder, shouts. Her forearms cross, clawing clicking against her scales. “You mammals are disgusting.”

“Um, excuse me,” a voice from the sheets protests. They wriggle and squirm until a pink mane and yellow head poke out. “Pardon me.” Fluttershy shakes her head. “No, it’s beautiful.” She strides the rest of the way out, her three butterflies pulsing, and shares a long nuzzle and soft kiss with Doug. She turns back to the students, blushing nearly as brightly as her cutie mark. “See?”

Gallus points a claw down his throat, gagging. Smolder rolls her eyes, shakes her head and sighs. Grubber takes a bite from his cupcake, finishing it off, and pulls out another, far more interested in the sugary sweets. Sandbar ‘dawws’, wiping a tear from his eye and sniffing. Silverstream squees, grinning madly, her claws playing against each other as she eagerly watches. Yona looks around. “Yona confused. That all pony do?”

“Oh, we do far more than that.” A quick flick of yellow wings takes Fluttershy into Doug’s arms. Before she can elaborate, or go much further than a long kiss, Twilight Sparkle arrives with a ‘pop’ of displaced air.

“Alright, I think I’ve got it narrowed down to the Peaks of Peril,” the alicorn says from behind a multicolored wall of maps. She glances over the charts at Doug and Fluttershy, raising an eyebrow but nothing more. “Oh, Applejack! Good to see you. We saw your mark on the map. Did Rainbow Dash find you?”

“Ah didn’t see her, but Ah was a bit distracted.” Applejack shudders. “Whoo wee, this’n is a bad’n. Not that Ah got much to compare to, but Ah really wanna go out there and geet’r done.”

“You’re telling me!” Pinkie Pie can’t seem to sit still on top of the cannon. She stretches her forelegs out wide. “Hey, Doug? Can you do me a hu-” she stretches out even more “-uuu-” she grins, even as she topples backwards and rolls down the length of the cannon, somehow seeming like she meant to do this in order to demonstrate the enormity. “-uuge favor?”

“Yeah, sure.” Doug scratches at the back of his neck; she can’t want anything too bad, right? “What’cha need?”

“You’re the bestest!” Pinkie Pie leaps into Doug’s unoccupied arm, and he’s barely able to stand while carrying the two ponies. Two hooves rummage deep into her mane before extracting a folder brimming with papers. The sight fills him just as full of dread. “Here’s the instruction manual!” She flips it open, planting a hoof on the first page. “Wait, that’s a liability waiver.” She smacks it off. “Oops! Expired warranty.” Another smack. “I don’t even know why I have this.” More and more get discarded until the ground around him is littered with more paper than grass. “Here we go!” She brandishes the last remaining sheet in Doug’s face, a complicated diagram explaining how the spring inside the cannon gets compressed by a winch and released.

“Thanks for watching my class, too.” Fluttershy tenderly strokes her muzzle along the inside of Doug’s neck.

“Hey, Harmony calls.” Doug waddles over to Twilight Sparkle and unceremoniously dumps the two ponies in front of her so he can study the paper. They don’t seem to mind.

“Sooo,” Twilight Sparkle starts, eliciting a certain trepidation from the three ponies with blinking cutie marks. “The Peaks of Peril are located deep inside Arimaspi territory. There are a couple ways we can insert you, but a direct penetration isn’t something they will swallow lightly.”

“Urgh,” Pinkie Pie grunts, squirming against the ground.

“Ah don’t know why, but this’n feels like a bit of a rush,” Applejack says, the others nodding along. “The sooner the better. But even so, Ah don’t feel right teleportatin’ right on their doorstep, ya know?”

“I understand.” Twilight scribbles down something on one of the papers, then sighs to herself, glancing around for her former assistant. “Get to the train bound for Los Pegasus. I’ll contact Princess Luna, she’ll arrange for you to travel to The End of the Line.”

“Ominous,” Applejack states. She, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie trade quick nuzzles goodbye with Doug before trotting off. Around the same time Rainbow Dash lands; she looks put out that she wasted her time flying around just to find the farmer already there. Even so, she stays quiet, curious how Doug will lead the class.

Doug stands up, voice booming, “Alright, everypony! Everycreature! Gather round.” He walks over to Long Luger, tapping it with a hand, while the students form a half-circle. Silverstream’s exuberance comes as no surprise, but Gallus paying attention does: from what he’s heard from the mares, the griffon seems indifferent at best to the majority of their lessons. “So, who can tell me what this is?”

“A cannon!” Silverstream screeches, claws furling and unfurling in anticipation. “That’s right, right? Because the class is called Conversations with Cannons!”

“Correct,” Doug answers with a nod, “...mostly. A true cannon would use gunpowder or another propellant, and the resulting expanding gas would propel the projectile out the muzzle. This is more of a catapult, because the projectile - in this case, one of you,” he points at the crowd of creatures, drawing excited murmurs, “is propelled by a special spring that stops without exiting the bore.”

“Do humans know a lot about cannons?” Gallus asks, the only creature not taking notes. There is a certain gleam in his eye, a fascination that tops even Silverstream.

“Err,” Doug stalls, looking at Twilight. She has engrossed herself in writing a letter, only glancing up at him in a manner that suggests, ‘It’s your class, do what you want.’ He turns back to Gallus. “A fair amount, yes.”

“Because this seems kind of…” Gallus trails off, rolling his claws with a sort of vague disdain. “Bad.” After a moment he elaborates, “Ineffective at cannoning.”

“Well,” Doug starts, tucking Pinkie’s paper into his shorts and going into a more free-form discussion, “I suppose it depends on what you want to do with a cannon.”

“Have a conversation with it?” Silverstream blurts out, to the groans of her classmates.

“That’s one idea,” Doug remarks, latching on. “What sort of conversations would you have with a cannon?”

“Yona confused.” The yak scratches at one of her long braids. “How cannon have conversation?”

“Loudly,” Gallus answers without missing a beat; he and Smolder trade clawbumps when Yona snorts.

“Cannon thayth ‘don’t meth with me’,” Grubber says, returning to Doug’s question. “Who metheth with a guy with a cannon?”

“I’d mess with a guy with a cannon,” Gallus counters. When this draws a few odd looks, especially from Twilight, he adds, “I mean, come on, right? Why’s he got a cannon if he isn’t protecting something with it?”

“Maybe that’th why griffonth are thtuck living in thqualor,” Grubber retorts, his accent only worsened by the cupcake in his mouth.

Gallus scrapes his claws into the loose soil. “And you stormies are any better?”

Rainbow Dash prods Doug, hard enough he stumbles forward, obviously wanting him to intervene. Knowing her experience with griffons, he interjects, “Alright, let’s keep it civil.” Twilight shoots him a raised eyebrow as well. “Also, I should probably add that theft is wrong.”

“Theft?” Gallus squints, and while his curved beak can’t frown his eyes can. “The strong take from the weak. That’s just the way of life. Or are you saying that taking at clawpoint is wrong, but taking at hornpoint is a-o-kay?”

An unruly bit of Twilight’s mane pops out of place. Doug walks over to smooth it out before the alicorn can interrupt, Rainbow Dash following at his heels. He’s quite interested in where the conversation goes, rather than a blanket denial that the other creatures won’t accept.

“Henth the need for cannonth,” Grubber quips, “cauthe we can’t get hornth to thprout from our thkullth.”

“Okay, except I bring my buddy and his cannon, and we beat you anyway. Only now, I’m pissed ‘cause you hurt us, and I’m going to take it out on your defenseless tail.”

“That athumeth you can find a buddy,” Grubber cheekily replies. Gallus does not care for that at all. “And two cannonth. Good luck with that. Altho, your thpoilth aren’t any better, tho you’re worth off regardleth.”

Gallus snorts. “Yeah, well, your cannons suck anyway. ”

“You realithe,” Grubber asserts, “that we got the printhetheth to Kluthetown? If they didn’t rethpect our fortheth, why wouldn’t they jutht do what they want? Obviouthly they thought we had thome chanthe of winning.”

“Well, yeah,” Gallus agrees. “They were probably just worried about maintaining their image. The Equestrian army sucks. If it wasn’t for the alicorns, they’d have nothing.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Rainbow Dash chimes in, not about to let an assertion like that fly. “Have you seen the Wonderbolts?”

“The stunt flyers?” Gallus shrugs dismissively, which only serves to inflame Rainbow Dash even more. “They’re fast, sure, but even pound for pound they don’t stack up against a griffon. And there’s, what, two dozen of you?”

“Three,” Rainbow Dash corrects, but after the word comes out she realizes it doesn’t really help her argument. “And being fast is, like, the most important part of any engagement. I get to pick when I engage, and you don’t.”

“Not when you’re defending a bunch of slow earth ponies,” Gallus argues, though he turns to Sandbar. “No offense.”

“We are pretty slow,” Sandbar admits. “But why fight when I can buy you off with food?”

Gallus ignores the rebuttal to turn back to Rainbow Dash. “You’re outclassed anyway, they’re all losing engagements. You just going to abandon your friends? Where’s your loyalty then?”

“Dude,” Rainbow Dash spits out, getting heated, “the Wonderbolts have beaten dragons. The big ones, the ones that eat fried chicken for breakfast.”

“Oh, no,” Gallus melodramatically wails, running his claws down his face and stretching his eyelids. “Not dragons! Anything but dragons!” He spits, glaring down Rainbow Dash. “Name me a dragon the Wonderbolts have beaten in the last, I don’t know, hundred years. You ponies wouldn’t last five seconds in actual military training, let alone the real thing.”

“Hey, let’s keep it civil,” Doug tries, to no avail.

Rainbow Dash flies forward, landing an inch away from Gallus. Both try to glare the other down, neither budging. “Oh, yeah?”

“Hey!” Doug’s shout draws both their attention, Rainbow Dash’s ears staying defiantly perked even as her stallion physically pushes them apart. “That’s a fascinating topic, but now is not the time. Got it?”

The two retreat back, if grudgingly. Rainbow Dash huffs next to Twilight, who is hard at work scribbling something down. “What’cha doing?” the pegasus asks.

“Something to talk to Luna about,” Twilight deflects. She puts away the paper.

“Now,” Doug says to the class, “where were we?”

“Any conflict makes it worse off for the trading partners,” Sandbar asserts. “You have dead weight in paying for protection, but you also limit or remove any trades that were profitable before needing the guards but not profitable after hiring them.”

“Whoop-di-doo, the rich get richer.” Gallus sits back on his hind legs, defensively crossing his claws across his chest.

“Yona… very confused,” the yak says, looking up from her notes, which mostly consist of tiny comments and loops circling around randomly. “How this relate to cannons?”

“Very tangentially,” Doug admits, standing up. He pulls out Pinkie’s paper. “Now. We can either follow the lesson plan and learn about the history of cannons and their entertainment value, followed by a quiz.” He pauses for a moment, to dead silence. “Or we can keep having this discussion.”

Loud stomps reverberate the ground, Yona only contributing half the shaking. Rainbow Dash snorts, punching Doug on the shoulder. “Dude, is that how voting is supposed to work? I thought you gave two kinda close choices, not fresh cider versus a bag of horse apples.”

“...That you set on fire,” Twilight jests, joining Rainbow Dash in smirking.

Doug rolls his eyes, putting away Pinkie Pie’s paper. “Okay, you got me. Except, now we don’t have to watch Pinkie Pie’s rap video about the history of cannons!”

He cringes at the loud shout from the train station. “I heard that!”

Next Chapter: Ch. 110 - Might in All Forms, Part Three Estimated time remaining: 14 Hours, 36 Minutes