//------------------------------// // Mostly Boring Talk // Story: Searching for Six Ponies (And Discord if I Feel Like It) // by Coltsguy //------------------------------// "Uh Pinkie, who's this fella ya brought with ya?" I heard Applejack ask. I was finishing rubbing my eyes before seeing what was going on. "Oh silly, it's Seth of course!" "That sure don't look like Seth tah me." "It is me," I answered. As I finally regained my sight, I looked around to see everyone still there. They seemed surprised to see us. I understood why only because I still had the conversation with Pinkie Pie fresh in my mind. The temporal alignment in that world was way off from here. "It's probably only been a few minutes or so here right?" "It has actually been just over twenty minutes since your departure. Was finding her that simple?" asked Celestia. "Not really. The temporal alignment there was way off. She had been there for almost a month." "That's awful," said Fluttershy. "Yeah," I said. "What was worse was that Nightmare Moon was there." "WHAT!?!" yelled everyone but Pinkie Pie. "You have my memories Celestia. Do you remember Rebel Against the Night?" While she was thinking, I was assaulted by questions. "Nightmare Moon is alive?" "Are you okay?" "What in tarnation was she doin' there?" "Do you have any cupcakes?" I was going to answer those questions and conjure a cupcake for Pinkie Pie when the loudest question came. "ARE YOU TELLING US THAT THE FOULEST OF THE FOUL, THE GREATEST MOMENT OF SHAME IN OUR LIFE IS STILL WANDERING THE WORLD OUT THERE?!!!" Holy crap! Was she yelling in Royal Canterlot Voice? That felt almost like a tornado in my face! Damn, my ears are ringing now. I think she was still yelling too. I just couldn't hear it. I guess enhanced durability doesn't cover eardrums. I held up my hands and gave her a time out signal. Unfortunately, I forgot that I still had my illusion active and the point didn't get across. Instead, I got a little creative to stop her rant. In a flashy display, I made a pillar of fire surround the illusion for a few seconds. Then, I dropped the illusion altogether. When I was visible again, I brought my hands up to my ears and covered them up. "Your voice has made me go deaf!!!" I yelled. Or at least I knew I yelled it. I still couldn't hear anything. "For the record, it isn't the same Nightmare Moon as yours!" I continued yelling; determined to get the message through while she had stopped yelling. "There are alternate realities remember?! This is a different Nightmare Moon from a different Princess Luna! It isn't the one that used to be within you!" The ringing was slowly dying down in my ears and I waited for a response to anything. Instead, no one said a thing. I looked around and the only thing I could see was each of them contemplating something on their own. Except, it seemed, for Pinkie Pie who I was willing to bet wanted an answer to her question. My response came in the snap of my fingers and a plate of cupcakes appeared in front of her. As she dug into the cupcakes, I heard Princess Celestia begin to speak. "Ah, I remember now. That work of fiction called Rebel Against the Night. It truly is not a place where I would wish to visit." "Yeah, I was in it." To her credit, Celestia caught on even faster than I did. To further her newfound credit, she simply smiled. "Truly, the multiverse is an interesting place, is it not?" I had no reply to that. The only thing I could think of was that she already had to deal with this kind of thing when she found out about My Little Pony beforehand. I think she may have had the right idea not to overreact like I had done. Ancient wisdom in abundance there folks. "It's times like this that I wonder if I'm just in a malfunctioning version of the Matrix." While everyone was wondering what I had just said, Celestia just smirked. "Does that mean you took the blue pill?" I facepalmed. Then, when I took my hand away to see her with a pair of sunglasses on. "You are the one, Seth." "Shouldn't you be bald?" I countered. The glasses then disappeared to show Celestia rolling her eyes. "Thou darest to ignore me?!" said Luna in normal Royal Canterlot Voice. Still, it was pretty loud. "It is alright dearest sister," Celestia answered first. "We do not have to worry about that Nightmare Moon. It is not the same one that once plagued your soul." "It sure looked like the same Nightmare Moon," said Pinkie Pie. I had honestly expected the Doctor to jump in on this at some point, but he was remaining surprisingly silent. He did seem to be messing with his sonic screwdriver, though. "Think of it this way," I started saying, "for every action you commit, there is an event that happens because of it. However, what if there is more than one action you can take in a situation? You can choose only one action out of them and take it. Despite that, what if you had decided on one of the other actions? An entirely new set of events end up happening instead of the ones that you know. That is one of the basics of multiple timelines. Each of these timelines can become it's own universe. In this instance, when the Elements of Harmony were used on Nightmare Moon by Twilight and her friends, instead of making Nightmare Moon disappear completely leaving only Luna behind, Nightmare Moon was stripped from Luna and yet managed to survive somehow while falling into a different dimension." I was going to continue on about what she did there, but I had the feeling that it would do nothing good for Luna to hear about a part of her doing things like that. "The long and the short of that is that this is in absolutely no way, shape, or form your fault Luna," I finished. From the way she looked, I wasn't sure that she believed me any more than she had before. I got a little frustrated with that and pulled her up close to me with some levitation. "This. Is. Not. Your. Fault." I practically spit out at her. I reached out and placed my hand on the side of her head. "You are good, and that side of you is gone. Don't think otherwise." She put on a smile at that, but I doubt she was convinced. Still, if I pressed the issue I'm willing to bet that the others will say something bad even if they don't think it is. I just decided to ruffle her mane and back off. Pinkie then appeared in front of the Princess with one of the uneaten cupcakes. "Don't worry Princess! Here, have a cupcake!" Before she could respond, Pinkie Pie actually stuffed the cupcake into Luna's mouth. Luna simply chewed it up and swallowed. Somehow, someway, her features brightened up and she looked like she felt better. I just decided to file that under things that had gotten better because of Pinkie Pie and left it alone. "Getting back on track," I started, "I'd like to say that I'm really glad that I'm halfway done, but I need to get another three ponies before I'm done." "And Discord as well," added Celestia. I looked at her dumbfounded. I wasn't the only one. "Now why in the wide world of Equestria would we want tah bring back Discord?" asked Applejack. "Discord may be a dangerous individual, but do you truly think that he should roam free in some other universe without some sort of supervision?" Argh. Celestia had a point. Great. That also meant that I wasn't halfway done now. I needed some good news. "Please, Doctor, tell me that you at least have figured out how to synchronize the temporal alignment of the these rifts." "What? Oh right! Yes, well, I think I can do just that," he answered. "I'm glad to hear that, because I do not want to have the same problem as Pinkie Pie had. I would rather not go into there and find out that one of them has been waiting for years to have someone come and rescue them." "I just need a few things from the TARDIS and a bit of magic and I should have something done up for you in no time at all!" he finished and started galloping towards the area where I remember the TARDIS being. As I waited for him to return, there was an uncomfortable silence that fell over the group. I really didn't have anything to say and I'm not the kind of person to strike up a conversation in a group. I wondered if this was what they were doing while they were waiting for me to bring everyone home. This could get really boring after a while. I ended up just planting my ass on the dirt-covered plains. I had nothing better to do that I could think of anyway. "You could have made a chair to sit on Seth," said Celestia; breaking the silence. "Maybe, but then if I was sitting in a chair when he got back then I probably wouldn't be motivated to get up again because of how comfy I would make the chair." "I think we could have properly motivated you to vacate the chair," said Celestia. I mulled that over and looked up into the sky. There was a cloud here and there, but overall it was mostly sunny. I sighed at that. "Somethin' wrong?" asked Applejack. "Not really a fan of sunny days is all," I answered. "Really? Why's that?" "Well, whenever I'm in the sun for an extended period of time, I usually get sunburned." "Sunburned? What's that?" she asked. "Basically, the longer I'm out in the sun, the worse it gets on my skin. It's a problem we have with the sun back on Earth. If I'm out long enough under the sun my skin turns pink, then red, then if I haven't left by then, I start to get blisters. It's pretty painful. It's basically the same as holding your leg in a fire. The difference being that you know the fire is burning you. With a sunburn, most people don't even realize it until your skin turns pink." "That sounds terrible," said Fluttershy. "It is. It's one of the reasons that I like doing things at night. Nighttime is more my speed. Unlike here in Equestria, only most people sleep during the night. There are, however, lots of people who work or do activities at night. In the country at my grandparents old house I used to take a look at the stars. It was beautiful. Just looking at constellations or checking out the way that the Milky Way splayed out in the night sky was truly amazing." "There's milk out in the sky?" asked a confused Applejack. "No. It's not like that. The Milky Way is the galaxy that we live in. In cosmic terms, we live on the Earth which rotates around the sun along with eight other planets no matter what scientists say about Pluto." "Wait, the Earth revolves around the sun?" asked Shining Armor. I was totally surprised to hear him speak up. He had been saying even less than Fluttershy until then. "Yes, that's right. Where I'm from, the sun is the center of the solar system. There are nine planets that revolve around it. Earth is the third closest planet to the sun." "You said something about Pluto?" asked Pinkie Pie who was uncharacteristically calm and collected. "Yeah. Scientists have basically said that Pluto isn't a planet anymore. I'd like to have them say that to Sailor Pluto's face! We'll see then how long they can make that claim! Ha ha ha ha!" "Uh, you alright there partner?" asked Applejack. "Yeah, I'm fine. Anyway, the area that makes up the sun and the distance at which the planets rotate make up the solar system, also known sometimes as the Sol System." "I hate to sound unenthusiastic about this," said Applejack, "but is there a point to this?" "I'm getting to it," I responded. "The Sol System is about as big as you are compared to an ant. The ant being the Earth and you being the Sol System. Going even further than that, the Sol System is part of the Milky Way galaxy. To compare that, imagine that ant again." "Alright," said Applejack. "This time the ant is the Sol System, and the Milky Way galaxy is not you, but this entire planet." Her jaw dropped upon hearing that. I knew just what she was going through when I imagined that the first time. It really makes you feel tiny. It's a good thing that I know that big things come from small beginnings. It helps me when I think about that. "That there sounds real hard to believe there partner." "It's fine. Some people still think that we faked the moon landing." "Moon landing? You've been to the moon?" asked Pinkie Pie. "Indeed. I haven't personally, but we're able to send people to the moon and back safely. We don't do it anymore, but that doesn't mean we can't." They were all shocked. I didn't blame them. Heck, Luna was banished to the moon. For someone to go there made it seem at least to me less like a banishment and more like a time-out. Well, from their perspective anyway. I knew better. After saying that, it became quiet once again. I wasn't sure how to follow that up, Well, I did think of something like how it was too bad that Twilight was there to hear that. She would have been very interested to hear those facts. She had asked me many questions that first day I had been in her house. However, space had not been one of the topics that came up. It just didn't seem appropriate to say that with Shining Armor there, though. "Oh this is just boring," I said breaking the silence. "Is this what you all are doing while I'm rescuing these girls?" "We have been playing a few games, but thou art correct for the most part," said Luna. "Well, I would suggest rock, paper, scissors, but no one here has hands except me." That made me realize something. "Hey, where is Spike? I would have thought that he would be here waiting for everyone with you." "We asked that he remained in Ponyville. He is maintaining the library in Twilight's absence," said Celestia. "What for? I don't think I've seen any single pony other that the Cutie Mark Crusaders use that library ever." "The fact that they used it is the very basis for keeping it open. Others may want to use it while she is absent." I placed my hand over my forehead in frustration. Technically, she was correct. I still think Spike should be here with us, but that's just selfish I suppose. Out of sheer boredom, I snapped my fingers and a bucket of popcorn appeared in front of everyone. "I guess we might as well have something to snack on while we wait." I looked at my watch. It read 7:39 a.m. At this point, I had no real idea what time that it was and my watch was just there to show me the passage of time. I knew it took us about an hour to get from the TARDIS to the rifts. Oh this was going to be a fun wait.