//------------------------------// // Now What? // Story: Iponi's World // by Palm Palette //------------------------------// “Perhaps we can help thee with thine quandary!” A booming voice echoed throughout the damaged restroom. Those gathered around the contrived plot device twisted and saw Princess Luna in her full dark regalia hovering in the air. The door creaked open, and Cadance and Celestia walked in as well. Applejack, Apple Bloom, and Lyra fell prone while Twilight perked up and unconsciously wagged her slightly frazzled, silky alicorn tail. “Luna! Celestia! Cadance! It's good to see you, but, what are you all doing here?” Celestia's golden hoof plates clacked against the tiled floor. She had a warm smile on her face as she walked past the various machines, gateways and portals cluttering the bathroom. “Why hello there, Twilight. Apple Bloom told me that she may have infected the human world when she returned to wash her hooves. If we really are responsible for an interdimensional incident, which it sounds like, I thought it prudent to gather the full Equestrian council to best determine our response.” “Yes, sorry.” Twilight hung her fuzzy, ear-drooping head. “Pony fever has completely overtaken their world. There isn't a single human being left.” Cadance paused to stare at her humanized reflection in the purple-rimed mirror. For some reason, her human form had buck teeth and zits on her face. She frowned, then trotted over to join the others by the toilet. Lyra jerked her head up. She glanced around the room and shuddered nervously as royal guards poured in from the hall to take up posts along the walls. Many of them stood proudly at attention between the urinals and sinks. “Psst, Twilight, do they have to be here?” Lyra whispered. She waved a hoof at the stoic, indomitable line of royal potty guards. “But of course! They art royal guards. 'Tis only proper for them to join us.” Luna folded her wings and thudded between them. Apple Bloom, being the closest to the ground, got another lungful of plaster dust thanks to that awful lunar landing. “You okay, sugarcube?” Applejack asked as her sister coughed and hacked. Apple Bloom sniffled and nodded, then ran over and huddled against her sister. They stepped back as the large alicorns gathered around, crowding the small space in the stall. Applejack flashed her sister a furtive smile. Reaching down, she wrapped a hoof around her sister and the warmth of the small filly's life seeped through their fuzzy hides and into her own body. It was hard to believe that such human-ending mayhem could from such a cute, little pony. “Luna, why are you talking like that?” Twilight asked. “I thought you stopped with that old-timey dialect a long time ago.” “Alas! 'Tis Luna talks like Luna day! We must speaketh in ye old butchertude 'till our moon circuits the sky and breaks in the 'morrow's light.” She dramatically covered her forehead with a cold, black-clad hoof. “Oh. That makes sense... I guess.” Twilgiht blinked and swiveled her fuzzy, lavender ears forward. “Wait. No it doesn—” “Twilight, we are not here to argue semantics. The former humans are in a dire situation, we must do what we can to ease their quandary.” Celestia nodded towards the toilet. “Right! Of course.” Twilight dropped the subject and jiggled the potty's handle. She stuck her cute, moist tongue out of the corner of her mouth as she worked. Her tender horsey muscles tensed up and her horn sparked and sizzled. An image of a pony-infested mall rippled into focus. While Celestia and Luna remained somber, Cadance gasped at the scene of sneezing, shambling, snot-encrusted equines wandering in the halls of the marble-pillared building. Static blared from the loudspeakers, and could be heard bubbling from the interdimensional bowl of potty water. The three alicorns activated their magic and joined Twilight in maintaining the connection, who visibly relaxed. Twilight was the first one to speak. “Um, since we're all here, Lyra mentioned the possibility of turning them back into humans. I already told her the problems with attempting that manually, but if we were to develop some kind of counter-plague, a 'human pox' if you will—” “Absolutely not!” Applejack stomped her hoof on the ground. “Twilight, Ah know ya mean well, but if that ever got loose in Equestria...” Shudders abounded around the room. Apple Bloom shook the most. The thought of eating her own medicine, so to speak, was a chilling one. “W-well, if we can't turn them back into humans...” Twilight's voice trailed off and her ears slowly drooped. She didn't want to finish that sentence, and nopony else did either. Outside, the occasional Manehatten suburbanite would stop and gander at the peculiar hole in the visitor center's wall and the gathering of royal ponies inside staring at a toilet. Manehatten is no place for slouchers, though, and the city dwellers would just shake their self-important heads before moving on with the hustle of their daily lives. “It's not all bad, right? I mean, when we visit, we can still be humans while we're there, right?” Lyra asked. Applejack raised her signature eyebrow, and she was surrounded by numerous other ponies who wore similar expressions. Lyra's goofy grin went flat, packed up, and left for a tropical vacation. “Oh. You're right. That would be pretty dumb. They'd be kinda resentful if we played tourist and flaunted what they'd lost. And besides, I'm not sure I'd want to be the only human present in a world full of ponies. The more I think about it, the stupider that sounds.” Twilight took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “You're right, Lyra. We'll have to close the place to tourism for good.” Her head slunk down and tears welled in her eyes. She winced and bit her lip to avoid crying out. Cadance stepped over and wrapped a feathery, pink wing around Twilight in a soft, rustling, ticklish embrace. “Twilight, I'm sorry that your pet research project got ruined. I know how much work you—” “What? No! It's not that!” Twilight jerked up and pushed Cadance aside with her own wing. “It's... well...” She sighed and hung her head again. “Okay, so it is that, but I should be feeling sorry for the humans instead. They're the ones who are really suffering from this.” “ 'Tis true, but there art no reason for thee to abandon thy research. Yonder humans might be ended, but their works still persist. In fact, they now conformeth to the equine form. Thus, future adaptations of their shiny doohickeys shall conformeth to us as well.” “Perhaps, but that assumes they'll even be able to do that much. Everything I've seen so far shows that their technology is heavily dependent on having, well, hands.” Twilight shifted the image towards a wall lined with movie posters. The humans captured by the camera held things like chainsaws, guns, and cell phones in their steel-knuckled grips. The red-eyed, drooling pony lumps groaning on the floor looked pathetic compared to the oiled, muscular movie actors. “The loss of hands isn't much of an obstacle to a unicorn, though,” Cadance said. “Except that there aren't any! In all the places I've looked, I've yet to see a single unicorn or pegasus,” Twilight said. “Wait, so you're saying that all of the Earth ponies are earth ponies?” Lyra asked. The others snickered. “Uh, I meant to say—” “We know what you meant, dear,” Princess Celestia said, “and it does pose a unique problem for their world. However, it is one that we can solve. With a sizable contingent of the unicorn and pegasus royal guard, I could go their world and—” “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it right there, Princess.” Applejack held up a hoof and shook her head. “It's bad enough that we've gone and turned them all into ponies, but now ya wanna bring an army too? Don't ya think they'd get the wrong impression? From their viewpoint, it'd look like we'd be kinda-sorta conquerin' them.” “What? No! we'd only mean to help. Surely they'd understand our intentions.” “Yeah, help by tinkerin' with magic and controlin' all the weather. Ya know, things they can't do as earth ponies.” Applejack rolled her eyes. Apple Bloom nodded since the others were looking in their direction. “Applejack maketh a fine point. Even with intentions as whole as thine, simply providing such services would resulteth in an unfortunate monopoly of power. Humans were never magical to begin with, so talents such as those would feel alien and imposing upon their world. Mayhaps we should rethink interfering at all.” “Do nothing!?” Cadance frowned while staring into the toilet. “But look how miserable they are! Even if we can't help them overtly there has to be something we can do.” Apple Bloom walked over and tried to find an open spot to look into the toilet, but the available space was occupied. She wound up ducking between Cadance's legs and popping up in front of her. The pink princess giggled at the soft brush of fur against her sensitive, fuzzy underside. “Are you thinking of just sending a few ponies?” Twilight asked. “What good would that do?” “Twilight, you and your friends have accomplished many great deeds. Plus Spike—” A sharp crack shook the foundation of the lavatory. Everypony tensed up. Many colored eyes scanned the room. Several devices beeped and buzzed, whirring with an ethereal hum. Despite having a hole in the wall through which the sun was shining, shadows grew longer, grasping at their hosts and damaging the colors in the room. “What the hay is goin' on!?” Applejack lifted a hoof, and her fuzzy orange tint detached and hung free in the air. Her limb was nearly devoid of the sensation color; it looked like a glass wind chime sounded. It hurt the brain to gaze upon. “Over there!” Twilight pointed a scratch-and-sniff, lemon-scented hoof at the stone arches. The portal in the center of the stone hedgerow took on a life of its own. It stretched and twisted, reforming itself from an ovular tear in reality to hand-shaped tear in reality complete with huge, sharp, talons. Everything the starry claws touched got shredded and mangled into individual components of sight, touch, smell, taste, and sound. Swirls of confused sensations addled the brain. The mere presence of the beast had similar but lesser impact on the rest of the room. Twilight's eyes grew lavender. “It's a porterghast! It must be attracted to our dimensional magic. Don't let it touch you or the effect will be permanent!” “Ah don't plan on it!” Applejack reached under her hat to grab her rope, but what she got was the taste of squirming spaghetti. Around the room, the royal guards sprung into action. The princesses were in danger! Long, grueling months of training, weeks of intense physical workouts, days of pure torture, practicing the same moves again and again and again, it all came down to this one moment. Hours of professional posturing, hours of boredom, hours of vigilance had been broken in this single instant. These stallions were Equestria's finest, and they would do whatever they must to keep their kingdom safe. With a fate worse than death looming before them, they resigned themselves to their duty. Heads held high, they thought not of the danger, but of their training. The actual presence of a monster made no difference. Before they could even think, decades of muscle memory drilled into their hides pulled them into action. In perfect synchronized motion, these proud, professional, elite, highly-trained, royal guards did what only ponies of their sheer caliber were capable of. In the blink of an eye, each and every single one of them dropped his weapon and hid behind Twilight Sparkle. Truly, no kingdom was in better hooves. “What are you—nevermind. Get down!” Twilight's husky fuzziness yellowed. Her sticky, honey-scented magic formed a spherical buzz around the intradimensional being. Black rage frothed in the boundary, as sharp oblivion talons scraped against the magical prison. A magenta glow outlined the beast which thrashed against the bubble. Twilight grit and bared her pearly white teeth. Her horn roared with the festive flair of a Roamhoof candle, bathing the area in sparkling magenta streaks. The other ponies breathed a collective sigh of relief as normalcy returned to the bathroom. With the monster trapped in her magic, Twilight pulled it towards her. Her spherical glowing prison seemingly shrunk as it came towards her, refusing to adjust its apparent size in relation to distance. She plopped the writhing bead of lemon-papered chaos into the toilet and pulled the handle. The rush of water broke the image on the surface, and the beast pressed at its cage, pounding in daisies as it swirled around and finally gurgled out of sight down the plumbing. “Uh...” Applejack raised a hoof, but shut her mouth and set it back down. Twilight turned her attention to the scars left behind by the beast's rampage. The stone circle had been broken by what could only be described as a mass of living headache. Twilight's powerful magic scraped away the shredded fabric of the universe, and she flushed that down the toilet too. “Did you just send all that stuff to the human world?” Lyra asked. “Well... sort of?” Twilight examined the room and nodded to herself once she was satisfied that the integrity of the universe had been restored. “Since our dimensions aren't in alignment, anything sent there can't manifest fully. It'll be stuck behind the veil, forever doomed to lurk in dark, shadowy whispers, just beyond the realm of perception by sane minds, along with all the other crap we send there during the off season.” Lyra shuffled uneasily on her mint, fuzzy legs. “Well, I guess that sound okay... Wait a minute! What other crap?” “Well, it is a toilet.” Twilight pointed at the plot device, but her eyes caught sight of a huge, haphazard pile of royal guardponies bravely cluttering up the floor. Her left eye twitched and a tic appeared on her warm, silky cheek. “You guys! What the hay was that!?” With extreme discipline, the guardsponies simultaneously averted their eyes and whistled nonchalantly. Princess Cadance poked the pile with a stick. It shifted, revealing a very distinctive smooth, flowing, silky pastel mane. “Celestia! What are you doing hiding in there?” Twilight asked. Celestia looked up with a sheepish grin on her soft, pony face. “Well, somepony has to lead the guards.” This was followed by a hollow thud, as Twilight planted a hoof on her face. Applejack rubbed her once-again orange leg. Her fur was frazzled but otherwise intact. “Twilight, if ya don't mind my askin', what was that thing?” “I'm sorry, Applejack, but your guess is as good as mine. All we really know about the porterghast is that they're attracted to prolonged use of powerful magic and tend to possess dimensional gateways. Everything else you saw for yourself.” Luna walked around the bathroom, inspecting the scars gouged in the floor by the beast and Twilight's magic. That damage was minor compared to the smoking, smouldering remains of the other devices in the room. They reacted poorly to the presence of the monster and most melted down. “Thou hast conquered the beast but thou payest the price with the loss of thine other research projects. 'Tis a shame.” “At least it's not my fault this time,” Apple Bloom said. “All in favor of blaming this on Apple Bloom?” Twilight asked. She raised a hoof over her head. Everypony else did as well. “Hey!” The little filly scrunched up her face and snorted. After lowering her hoof, Lyra edged closer to the toilet. Without any magic powering the bowl it looked just like any other hairy potty in the colt's room. She gave a wary glance at the guards who were slowly disentangling themselves, retrieving their weapons, and resuming their guard-like stances by the urinals. “I'm glad that monster's gone, but we still haven't figured out what to do about the former human world.” “We were talking about sending Twilight and her friends,” Cadance said. “Well, I could go, but apparently the Equestrian military is completely useless. Their only strategy appears to be letting me do all the work! If I take my friends and leave for thirty moons, the whole country could be smouldering ruins by the time we got back!” Twilight flew around and glared at the royal urinal guards, who bravely stood there acting guard-like. “Please don't bother the guards, Twilight,” Celestia said. “To be fair, it is an effective strategy.” “One that requires me to be here at all times! Do you have any sort of backup plan if some monster invades and my tail isn't available to hide behind?” Princess Cadance set down a long, warped pole that she'd been rubbing her fuzzy pink back with. “Well, Shiny and I do have a giant Twilight plushie we could let them hide behind instead. Actually, it's something that we personally like to get behind on a frequent basis, if you know what I mean.” With a half-lidded smile, she winked at Twilight, who's own eyes widened. “It even vibrates when we rut—” “Gah!” Twilight's fuzzy face flamed from within and she buried her head under her wings. Luna firmly clacked a hoof on the floor. “Dearest Cadance, dost thou thinkest that now 'tis not the proper time to traumatize thy sister-in-law with tales of thine sex life?” Apple Bloom brushed up against her sister's leg. The little filly had wide, orange eyes. They held specks of reflected light that shimmered in mirror with her fuzzy, little curiosity. “Sis, what are they talkin' about?” “Nothing! They're talkin' about nothing!” Applejack flattened her ears against her head and slammed the bathroom tiles with the fury of a fuzzy sledgehammer. Everypony jumped back from her outburst. “Y'all ought to ashamed of yerselves talkin' about that in front of an impressionable young filly! We're here to talk about the humans or have y'all forgotten about that!?” Other ponies' soft, tender ears drooped from the stinging reprisal. Lyra sniffled, then her ears perked up. “Hey, I just thought of something. What if their pony transformation is just temporary? Maybe they'll revert back once the fever dies down.” Twilight folded her wings back up and took a deep breath. “Well, that is a thought, but the problem with that is that we're inherently magical. Even without a magic fever, the average pony can easily sustain a transformation that's already established. It's as natural as breathing! The only way they'd revert back would be if they're not real ponies, just look-alikes.” “Y'all think that's worth checking?” Applejack asked. She sniffed the air and snorted at the lingering odor of plaster dust, toilet moisture, and the open streets of Manehatten. The overhead lights flickered, sputtered and went out, plunging much of the restroom into deep shadow. The only light came from glints off of metal scraps, pipes, and the guards' golden uniforms. Lyra bumped against something in the darkness and let out a girly shriek. Applejack winced and scrunched up her fuzzy face. She straightened her hat back out once her fuzzy ears stopped ringing. “Ah mean, that monster sure did a number on this place.” The alicorns and Lyra lit their spiral horns with magic, giving off shimmering multi-hued glows that danced on the walls. Celestia stepped towards the open hole in the wall and adjusted the sun so that they'd have better light. Twilight walked back to the toilet—giving Cadance a wide berth—and jiggled the handle. “After the destruction of the rest of my equipment, we shouldn't have any more problems with porterghasts, I think. Luna, can you watch our backs?” “There is no need for that, Twilight. Should our professional guardsponies pileth behind yonder backside, thou should knoweth that a problem hast arisen.” “Gee, I feel so much safer with them here.” Twilight rolled her large equine eyes. “Well, it's a good thing that I bookmarked Apple Bloom's landing point. Once we power the toilet back up, all we'll have to do is find a pony.” “—or human,” Lyra added. She had a huge, toothy grin. Her fuzzy, mint flanks were heaving and her eyes darted around. She kept looking behind her at the guardsponies by the sinks and urinals and the large, dancing shadows they cast in the ephemeral magic light. “Ah sure hope we'll find a human. That would mean I hadn't extinctified them, after all.” Apple Bloom ran over to the potty and poked her fuzzy nose over the rim. Twilight grunted and flared her magic. She levitated her slightly dusty towlette and touched it to the surface of the water. An image of the human world poured out into the water. The abandoned schoolhouse returned, and with the help of the other alicorns she pulled the picture back out to the empty, dirt road. The image was quite dark in the night, and the poor light in the bathroom didn't help any. “I think I see tracks. Something skinny was dragged through the dirt out the door.” Lyra frowned, then pointed at the potty water. “Can you follow the road up?” “I can, but let me zoom out to get a better view.” Even with help from the others, Twilight still struggled with the magic. Tiny beads of horsey sweat were once again rolling down her weary, fuzzy hide. The image lurched and tilted at a slight angle before pulling back. Once zoomed out, Twilight stopped to pant before guiding it north. All of the ponies huddled around the plot device, hoping to catch some sign of life outside of the dying grass and chirping crickets. Apple Bloom reared up, with her forelegs on the potty's dirty seat. She bumped against Celestia who stood over her. After a startled glance, she pointed into the toilet. “Over there, on the side of that hill to the left, I think I see somepony.” Twilight nodded and zoomed in. Apple Bloom's face and bow wilted as the figure started to come into focus. “And it is a pony.” Sure enough, a peachy pony with bluish hair sat amongst the dry grasses. She was wearing a reddish bow and it was difficult to see in the dim light, but she also had some kind of rectangular image on her flank. “She's wearing my missing bow! And she has a cutie mark!” “A cutie mark? That's proof of magic right there. Sorry, Apple Bloom, but it looks like they are real ponies, after all,” Twilight said. The Equestrian ponies generally frowned and averted their eyes. They didn't want to look at each other. Lyra sniffled and curled up on the floor to cry softly. This elicited a warm nuzzle and a feathery wing-hug from Celestia. “So... now what?” Cadance asked. “We're right back where we started, and still don't have any idea what we should do.” “Actually, we came up with several ideas. They could all potentially help, but it wouldn't do any good if the locals responded poorly. I mean, do the former humans even want our help?” Twilight looked up at a splintered ceiling tile and sighed. “I just wish we had some sort of sign.” “Twilight, you might get yer wish. It looks like the former human wants to say something,” Applejack said. Sure enough, the peachy pony got up. She walked to the top the hill, and stared straight at them through the toilet, but had stars reflected in her big, glossy eyes. She took a deep breath, and everypony eagerly awaited her message.