//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Narrative Convenience // Story: Accelerando // by McPoodle //------------------------------// Accelerando Chapter 2: Narrative Convenience Twilight and Pinkie walked on either side of Vinyl down the main street of Ponyville that afternoon. The conclusion of the competition had been postponed one week while the near-fatal accident was being investigated. None of the three ponies said anything. They just walked around the square, past performing piano players. Lots and lots and lots of performing piano players. And then they walked around...some more. Alright, I was going to hold back on this flashback until they had gone to sleep for the night, but if they’ve decided to move to Boringsville, I’ll just have that scene happen right now! Earlier that day, in the section of the Unicorn Range that was directly under Cloudsdale at the time, a lone figure was contemplating her miserable life... Pinkie Pie looked very carefully around herself before finally stopping and nodding. “OK, we’re definitely not being watched anymore,” she told Twilight and Vinyl. “She must be following somepony else.” Twilight nodded in satisfaction. “See, I told you if we just walked and said nothing for long enough, that Rai—” She was interrupted by a pink hoof to her mouth. “Don’t say her name out loud!” Pinkie stage-whispered. “That will get her attention for sure!” She removed the hoof. “I told you,” Twilight repeated in a quieter tone, “if we were boring for long enough, that...she would switch her attention away from us. Now we can try to figure out what she’s up to.” “Well, she’s telling a story about herself,” Pinkie replied, “only Vinyl is taking her place.” Twilight nodded. “I got that from the Best Young Musicians Competition, Cloudsdale, and the whole ‘Visual Music-boom’ thing.” Pinkie Pie tapped Vinyl’s shoulder sympathetically. “Only, it’s too bad that it’s just for show. Da...that one pony can use it to blow stuff up!” “It’s a lot more than it seems,” confided Vinyl, looking carefully around to make sure that no other ponies were close enough to overhear. “The reason I was able to play as fast as I did was because I was somehow able to mess with the flow of Time. I stopped it, and even reversed it, so that Fluttershy could set up that net that saved you. I just wonder...” “STOP!” ordered a panicked Twilight, freezing in her tracks. The other two obediently stopped walking. “What is it, Twilight?” Vinyl asked with a mischievous grin. Pinkie, on the other hoof, looked like she was approaching Twilight’s degree of apprehension. “Alright, first of all: Fluttershy.” Sitting back, Twilight reached up and grabbed a tiny imaginary pony with her forehooves. She carefully moved that figment off to one side. “I’m putting her here, so that we can come back to her. Don’t let me forget.” The other two ponies looked at her oddly. Obviously, they had never taken Iron Will’s seminar on Organizing Your Thoughts Through Mental Imagery. “Now for the important part: manipulating Time.” She took the time to clear her throat. “ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR APPLE-BUCKING MIND?!?!?” This got the attention of everypony in Ponyville. Then they saw that the outburst had come from Twilight Sparkle. As one, the crowd shrugged and got back to their daily activities. “You don’t mess with Time!” she insisted in a fierce whisper. “Funny you should say that,” Pinkie said with a wink, “because I seem to remember one episode—” “Yes, and that was one time!” Twilight quickly replied. “That’s the important thing. Time spells can only be cast once per lifetime for a reason! Vinyl, how many times did you go back and forth through the three minutes it normally takes to play that piece of music? Twice? Three times?” “Hmm...” pondered Vinyl, “...once...twice...yes. It was three times.” “Good, only three times,” Twilight replied with relief. “That’s the reason the universe survived so we could have this conversation.” “What, seriously?” asked Vinyl. “Yes, seriously. Princess Celestia knows all about Time, and what happens when you mess with it. When I was a filly, and I accompanied her to a demonstration of the first ‘portable’ reel-to-reel tape recorder—seriously, it was bigger than I was—the tape broke after the fifth time it was rewound. I’ll never forget what the Princess said as we left the room: ‘Time is just like that tape, Dear Student. Never forget that.’ And I never did! Sure, I had no idea what she was talking about at the time, but I made sure to memorize it, and right after I had my own run-in with time travel, I finally understood! There’s one rule and one rule only about traveling back and forth over the same spot in time: Don’t. Do. It.” “You sound exactly like Fluttershy,” said Vinyl with a smirk. Twilight’s response to this was to grab the imaginary pony and yank her into position front and center. If she was a real pony, she probably would have sent her chiropractor bill to the unicorn. “OK, now we can talk about Fluttershy. Do you know why her cutie mark is different?” “No, but I can make an educated guess: it’s a musical joke. ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ is a famous fast piece of music. Musicians like playing it slow to emphasize something as being extra slow.” Vinyl then told them what the pale yellow pegasus had done during the time-altered parts of the concert. “So she can alter Time as well?” Twilight asked in exasperation. “Not exactly,” Vinyl replied. “She was always in lockstep with me. I think she just had the ability to follow me around when I slowed and stopped Time, or, rather, her other personality has that ability. But not when I went into reverse—she was affected then the same as everypony else. You know,” she added wistfully, “I’ve wondered sometimes how that one blue pegasus can go as fast as she does—have you ever considered that maybe she can mess with Time, like for real?” With a sigh, Pinkie’s mane deflated, and the sudden darkening of her coat and mane made it look like she had just walked into a nonexistent shadow. “No,” the pony said very seriously. “She can’t mess with Time. Trust me on this.” “Pinkamena?” Vinyl said in shock. “Yes. Pinkamena,” the pony replied with some annoyance. “When you freed Pinkie, you got me, too. We’re a package deal. And sometimes I want to come out and say something. Is that OK with you?” She imbued that last sentence with as much sarcasm as she could muster, which was quite a lot. “It’s OK, it’s OK,” Vinyl insisted, forelimbs raised defensively. “I just didn’t know you looked different as well as sounded different. Speaking of which, can Pinkie—“ “No,” Pinkamena cut her off, “Pinkie doesn’t mess with Time, either. No matter what you might think. Like Twilight said, doing that is very dangerous.” “Well at least this is a dream,” concluded Vinyl, “and I’m betting that the ‘almighty she’ doesn’t know about that ‘destroying the whole of Time’ thing.” Twilight sighed. “No, thanks to you saying that, we will have to deal with precisely that danger.” “What?” asked Vinyl incredulously. “But Pinkie said she isn’t even listening in on this conversation!” “She doesn’t have to,” replied Pinkamena. “Narrative convenience.” Twilight nodded in agreement. The white unicorn looked back and forth between the other two ponies (three if you counted the extra one in Pinkamena’s head). “This is one of those ‘Etheric Trope’ things I don’t get, isn’t it?” Vinyl finally asked. “Yes, it’s important to remember that we are operating under the laws of narrative convenience now,” said Twilight. “Not like in our waking lives, when I could depend on the laws of Physics and Magic to always save the day.” She chose to ignore Pinkamena rolling her eyes at this remark. “Well what now?” Vinyl Scratch asked. “We take stock of where we are,” said Pinkamena. “We are in an adventure story, and this very square will be the location of the climactic battle between Good—that’s you—and Evil—the character she’s probably setting up right now instead of following us around.” “Here? How can you possibly tell?” asked Vinyl. “Take a look around you,” Pinkamena said with a wave of one hoof. “Every restaurant, every shop, every street corner. I even peeked in a couple of houses, and they all have them. The one thing Ponyville has only four of in the waking world.” Vinyl glanced around. “Pianos?” Twilight groaned. “How did I not see them before!” she exclaimed. “A battle between Good and Evil...you don’t suppose...?” “What Twilight?” asked Vinyl. “Well back when Sonic Rainbooms were really hard for her to pull off, I had this question I always wanted to ask, but I didn’t because I thought it would be a little rude to you, Pinkamena.” “It’s alright,” Pinkamena said. “What was the question?” “Well, if her first Sonic Rainboom did all of those incredible things to the five of us, including bringing Pinkie into existence, what did her second one give birth to?” “...Then you accept my bargain?” the sinister floating sphere of blue light asked. “And the consequences?” “Yes!” the desperate figure cried. “I would give everything I have for that kind of power!” “And so you shall!” the sphere intoned, before floating over the figure’s head and contracting itself into her brain. The figure grabbed her head and screamed, a scream that soon split into two separate voices. “Finally!” they cried. “Vengeance shall be ours!”