//------------------------------// // Distant Rumbles // Story: Dimension Jumper // by redtau //------------------------------// -- TWO HOURS AGO -- Ten minutes had passed since James had viciously ripped Machina's power core out of her chest and walked off. The clearing was quiet, as though all life in the area was being eaten and turned into more and more little monsters. Machina sat back up slowly, her eyes flickering to life. "OK, backup power supply needs to start up before all the battery backups fail." She got up and stepped lightly to where D's bones had been scattered. Many were already crumbling to dust, the last of his power dwindling to nothing. Machina collapsed to her knees, looking like she wanted nothing more than to cry. "Oh D. I could not save you." I'm not dead yet. Machina looked up to see a single finger bone in a dark swirl of smoke, in a three ring circle near Sara's lifeless body. "She saved you?" With her last breath I think "I wish- I wish we could have saved her." Machina looked down at the ground. "I am such a fool. If I had spent a little more time getting powered up with lightning bolts-" "Then it still would have been ripped out of your chest," I said, walking out of the woods, grinning down at my friends. "What? You look like you've seen a ghost." SARAH?! How? I kicked my double, and Nightmare disentangled her illusion magic from the old battered wooden fauna. "Come on, I can understand how he might have fallen for that trick, but you two? We have been jumping between worlds for three years, how are you so bad at this?" "To be fair, we usually ran and hid." The last few times I tried to take things on head on like this, I believe you caught me with a fork. "You'll never live that down by the way. Need a lift?" I've got no body and no power "I am running on limited reserves myself," Machina said, a smile crossing her face. "Any chance I can get a lift too?" I held out my arms, the metal one to Machina and the flesh and blood one to D. "Come on, friends, lets go home." I watched the pair of armored monsters circle the transport pod. The things had no visible eyes, and their flesh, what little there was between bony plates, had an unnatural sheen to it. From where I sat high in a tree, I could see blood on the grass. "I think this is going to pose a bit of trouble." What are those things? I've never seen anything like it in Equestria. They aren't from Equestria. They are spawnlings of a devourer daemon. Sarah, I take back anything I said about your sanity with regards to bonding with Nightmare. "I'm just glad he only left one behind." Um, don't know if you forgot how to count, but there are two of those things. Note the blood. They kill, eat, and then vomit up copies of themselves. Unless they eat a copy, then they just grow bigger and deadlier. So they are effectively giant, armored, vicious, mindless parasprites? "Yeah, that sounds about right." I shifted, judging my options. "Chances are good I could kill both, but that might alert James to my continued existance." Don't look at me, I'm running on almost zero power. Machina and Nightmare are your power houses right now. Power currently at 23.225%. Ideas? At that point, Clockwork and Ditzy stumbled into the clearing. Both of the monsters looked at them and began to growl. "Ah, right." Clockwork stammered, looking nervously at the monster. "Look, any chance you and your friend could see your way to not eat us for a little bit?" The closest began to charge, and Clockwork grabbed Ditzy and pulled her to the side. Just in time for a manticore to come barreling through the clearing and tear right into the spawn. The other turned to aid it's comrade, and a tree fell on it. Well, I say fell... Power now at 18.27%. Please refrain from using the laser cutter unless completely necessary. "Clockwork! Ditzy!" I called to them, stepping away from the singed tree stump. "What are you two doing out here? How did you even find the place?" "Ah, Sarah," the watchmaker said with a smile. He held up a cross between a lunchbox and a reel to reel movie projector. "My timey-whimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff." *Ding!* "If James is packing time manipulation weaponry then we may be completely fucked," I muttered, waking closer to the pod. As I approached, I heard something knocking from inside. "Is somepony in there?" Ditzy asked. Curious, I walked around the pod. The ship had a central conversion and control chamber for the jumper and six smaller chambers for "guests" they wanted to drag along. Two of the smaller pods were occupied, one of which was damaged. "Ditzy, come here!" I called. "Help me with the door!" I disengaged the lock and lifted up. Lyra tumbled out. Her legs and chest were covered in tiny cuts and bites, and her green fur was matted with blood. Her eyes were unfocused, and she kept mouthing words but not making any noise. Clockwork came over to help, and his lunchbox started to ding repeatedly. "What is it?" Ditzy asked. "She's been exposed to the void between worlds," I said. "It looks like some of the smaller, weaker things there tried to pull her out. She's alright aside from a few cuts, but I don't know why she's catatonic." "Some part of her is time-spanned, stretched out over time," Clockwork said. He pulled out a pen light and shone it into her eyes. "Open the other one," he said, waving a hoof at the next pod. Ditzy trotted over and opened it, and a tired and bruised Bon Bon stepped out. "Is she alright?!" Bonie asked, running over to where Lyra lay. "Her physical wounds will heal, but her mental wounds..." Clockwork trailed off, uncertain. "She kept talking, the whole time we were captured she would say these things," Bonnie said. "Right before they happened, she would tell me something was going to happen. She knew the name of the people before they said them. As it got closer to time for us to go, she became more and more worried." "Precognition from temporal echo of her own mind back down the timeline!" Clockwork spoke quickly. "Oh, that's brilliant! She must have been getting more and more echoes the closer she got to the ripple point. Probably why she's catatonic though, near infinite feedback loop." "Will she recover?" I asked. "Ah, yeah. She'll be fine in a month or two," he said, nodding his head. "She won't get memories from her future anymore either." A thought struck me. One that stuck in my mind and wouldn't leave. "That's it?" I asked, stunned. "That's how she knew about humans? She remembered ARCO capturing her in the future? So all of this, everything I went through, there was no way to change or escape it?" I felt my knees go weak. "Is it all just fate?" "No," Ditzy said. "The D- Clockwork explained it to me once. Something like this, it just creates an endpoint. How we get here is our own decision, and how we move on past this point is entirely up to us." "I- I got something for you," Bon Bon said. "What?" "She told me to, told me I would." She held up a small metal washer, the kind of thing we would use as anchors for inter-dimensional guests back when ARCO hadn't gone evil. "I would have thought James would have taken your anchor when you landed." "He did. He told us he couldn't let us out until we handed them over. Then he told us how he was going to go hurt and kill our friends and the princesses. He's a monster." Bon Bon hung her head. "Lyra said I would act like I'd dropped my anchor and ask for another. You can stop him now right? The power is two to one but you might get help from the Element Bearers or the princesses." A second anchor on one carrier will only split the power that carrier has. Instead of James having two anchors worth of power he has one and a half. Still, that half is useful. "It might help," I said taking it. "I'll do what I can to fight him." Fight him? Sarah no offense but you are out of your god damned mind. We are leaving. "What?" My body lurched up, stumbling towards the conversion pod's main door. "What are you doing?!" I asked myself, throwing my arms out to keep myself from climbing in. Getting us the heck outta Dodge! Move your arms Sarah. We are just abandoning everyone? "We have to go back and fight! You saw what he did to you!" Sarah, I, for one, am in no hurry to have that happen to us again. We barely survived thanks to you, but I do not wish to tempt fate. See? Machina agrees with me. Lets get while the gettings good. Then what? You return to your world and try and run? Sarah can go to the leaders of her world and plead her case. They will, in turn, shut ARCO down and stop this kind of thing from happening. We are going to run. We've spent too long as slaves to risk bondage again. Machina and D were beginning to argue their case while trying to gather control of my limbs, while I fought their control. "Sarah, what are you doing?" Ditzy asked. "Fighting her inner daemons from the looks of it," Clockwork said. It was a battle I was slowly losing, and the growing roar of daemonic and electronic thoughts in the back of my head made it hard to focus. "We cannot leave!" I demanded, having locked my joints slightly to hold my two companions off. We always run and hide. We always flee. Why is this time any different? We can't beat him. The odds of our victory are very slim Sarah. Survival is our highest priority. Ponies will die. Gryphons will die! Changelings and canids and zebras and minotaurs and everyone we know! You are telling us to strand a psychopath with a ton of power in this world just to save your own hides. The ponies who banished you? Who mistreated us? We lived among them, we helped them muster what forces they had. They won't last ten minutes, not against James as he is now. If we take his pod he might be forced to conserve power. That is about the best chance they have. "YOU ORGANIZED THEM! YOU POINTED THEM DOWN THE MONSTERS GULLET AND THEY ARE GOING TO CHARGE!" We fought James and fell. They can fight or surrender on their own terms. It is their world, but we have a chance to escape. We have a chance to survive. Reggie and Red Don't start with me you bad dream. Thomas and Zaephir We have recordings of James' activities, in clear violation of the ARCO mission statement. We could release it to the media, get the public turned against them. Pio, Gem, Ini "You know that will take too long to have any effect here and now! We can't just leave them all behind!" Bright Lance, Starlight, Steel Strike You can't just build a ARCO fallout shelter and hide everyone! It's far too late for that. Convince me Sarah.Why not just leave these creatures behind? "They aren't just creatures!" Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom Then WHAT are they to you Sarah? These things have caused you so much trouble and heartache that you were contemplating suicide not that long ago! What are they to you? Twist "THEY!" I was shouting now. "ARE! MY! FRIENDS!" There was the smallest sound, like the breaking of a glass, as the six pointed star on my back turned a brilliant purple, and the seal began to fade away.