1 - Stonewall Attack
Applejack - 18th of Megan, 17 EoH
Sweet Apple Acres, Ponyville - Equestria
“♪♫ You were made to shine under Luna’s stars, // pure as the mountain rain. // You're the love songs pouring out of this guitar, // sweeter than sugarcane. ♫♪”
My eyes slowly peeled open as the old country song warbled from our clock radio. Exactly six in the morning. On the dot. How the hay Dash had owned this thing for the last sixteen years and managed to be late to everything was beyond me.
I laid in bed for a few moments, enjoying the song and the first few rays of sunlight shining through the window, and my mare snuggled up close to my side hogging half our blankets. This was almost the perfect way to wake up. All I was missing was the smell of dark roasted coffee and cowboy toast from the kitchen.
Dash groaned, twisting in bed for a few moments before reaching out and swatting the top of the clock shutting off the music.
“Ugh… I get to set the station next week,” she moaned, smacking her lips several times after finishing her sentence. “Why is my mouth so dry?”
“Ah told you it was a bad idea to try that fancy hooch before bed,” I giggled, giving Dash’s mane a playful tussle.
“I’m not hungover. It feels like I ate sand,” she groaned as she sat up, stretching her wings slowly. “Did Scoots-”
“She moved out a year ago, sugar,” I reminded sitting up as well. “Nopony’s here to make breakfast.”
“I know, it’s just hard to get over thirteen years of habit. She would always burn everything slightly. Heh,” Dash reminisced.
I couldn’t see it but I knew there was that happy little grin on her face, hiding out behind her mask of smug.
“And you’d always eat it then take her right to flight practice. Did ya’ll ever actually do anything together or did she just watch you?” I asked with a slight frown.
I’d never thought to ask that before.
“Eh… We did ground drills together. You can still learn plenty from the ground. Wing positioning and movements, if you run fast enough you can learn to read air currents while you fly, that kind of thing,” Dash said with a wave of her hoof before standing up. “I mean, I knew she wasn’t going to be flying without some kind of surgery. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.”
“And now she’s fly’n all by herself,” I said proudly.
“Damn straight! Doctor Lily might have been the one to make her wings work but she sure as hay knew how to use them thanks to me!” Dash exclaimed with a proud grin.
“You taught her too well,” I teased. “She beat you in that drag race after all.”
“Heh, yeah, sure, she’s faster over shorter distances… In the air,” Dash said proudly, flicking her tail in what I knew was an expression of pride for both her and Scootaloo’s accomplishments.
I frowned slightly and turned to look Dash in the eyes. There was something we needed to really talk about. “Dash, sugar, when are you gonna tell me how you got to be fast on the ground to? Don’t you think I deserve to know?” I asked pleading with my eyes.
Dash frowned sadly. “I-I… I can’t. You know I promised to keep it a secret. I already told you my uncle showed me a family secret. That’s all I’m allowed to say. I’m sorry. I really am, but a promise is a promise,” Dash explained again, ears falling flat.
“Ah know,” I sighed. “But you know how important family is to an Apple. I want to meet him some day. We could invite him to a family reunion, you know everypony would be happy to meet someone on your side of the family.
“Heck, especially your mom’s side. It’s pretty darn crazy you found him. Ah mean, your dad didn’t even know your mom’s name. Um, it was a one night stand, right?”
Dash nodded slowly. “Yeah. They just hooked up the once. But mom’s not a jerk or anything. I got to talk to her once. It took her a lot of time and effort to get me back to my dad, and she honestly couldn’t hope to raise me herself.”
Ah ha! She was opening up a bit. Maybe I could pry a little bit more out of her!
“Oh really? Well did ya get her name?” I asked curiously.
Dash snickered. “Yeah. It’s Speed.”
“Ponyfeathers,” I snorted rolling my eyes. “Ya’ll expect me to believe that?”
“No, it really is,” Dash giggled. “She really is named Speed.”
I felt a grin part my cheeks as I sensed Dash was telling the truth. Just one perk of being the Element of Honesty post Rainbow Powers.
“Heh, so I reckon your uncle is named Velocity or something?” I asked jokingly.
“Nah,” Dash smirked shaking her head. “His name is Barry.”
“Berry?” I asked with a frown. “Weird, most siblings names are similar.”
“Different culture, different names,” Dash said with a shrug and a grin.
“Yeah, but when you name one kid Speed, and the other after a bit of a plant- Oh! Is he an earth pony? Is that why he’s embarrassed to show his face around these parts? Cuz he’s not a pegasus like everypony else in your family?” I asked, just a bit too probingly.
Dash’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Clever girl! Taking advantage of a sleepy mare like that. Okay, no, he’s not a pegasus. But that’s not why I can’t introduce you. He lives really really really far away,” Dash explained.
I raised one eyebrow as I gave Dash a suspicious look. “You visit him all the time. In fact, I think you’re going to have lunch with him today,” I said accusingly.
Dash rolled her eyes and vanished with a rush of wind, leaving behind a blue streak. She rarely moved at her full speed, I always forgot exactly how fast she was when she didn’t care to take in the scenery or just ‘relax’. Less than a blink later Dash returned, almost seeming to have teleported back as she appeared hovering over my left shoulder holding a to-go cup of coffee.
“Oh yeah, distance is such a problem for me, AJ. Here, have some coffee. Don’t worry I left money on the counter,” Dash teased with a giggle. “No, but really, I can get there if a few minutes if I want to just book it flat out. I mean, I actually AM the fastest mare alive. But anypony else… Yeah, that’s going to take a long while to get there.”
“Fair enough, I reckon,” I said with a sigh as I accepted the coffee. “But you tell him the Apples will pay for an airship ticket if he ever wants to stop being a hermit. He doesn't have to tell everypony your whole speed trick thing.”
Dash frowned slightly. “Well… You are my wife, and You’re not THAT heavy. I could maybe carry you-”
My eyes narrowed in playful anger. “Ya’ll calling me fat?”
“No, I’m calling you a slab of meat!” Dash exclaimed with a grin. “Seriously AJ, if we trimmed your fur back a bit, I think you’d make most stallions jealous with those muscles.”
I laughed. “Yeah, reckon so. Course they could spend thirty years working a farm too.”
Dash’s grin shrank back to a happy smile as the last few flicks of sleep were blinked out of her eyes. Both of us were early risers. Me for the farm, her for morning exercise.
“Sooo… Finishing up the fertilizer today?” Dash asked curiously.
I nodded and took a sip of the honestly disgusting coffee. Ugh, the Hayburger had the worst roasts. You’d think Dash would have just made some in the kitchen instead of running out to town and back. But then she wouldn’t have shown off her speed.
“Yeah, just got about two hundred more trees to go. Then next week we gotta mulch the younger trees and after that, nothing to do but wait and check for critters nibbling on the trees. And spread that earth pony magic around every few days or so,” I said as I nursed the coffee to avoid hurting her feelings.
Dash’s ears perked happily. “Two hundred… So that means you’ll only be about six hours. No, eight, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I got to take care of a few other chores in a few minutes but I should be all done by about two this afternoon. Why? Didja want to set up a date night?” I asked hopefully.
I’d been so busy the last few months that we couldn’t really go out and have any fun. A nice afternoon out would definitely be a welcome change of pace.
“Yeah! I was thinking we could go see a movie. You haven't seen one before, and they just opened a theater in Ponyville last month. It could be fun! It’s like a radio play, only you get to see things too!” Dash said with an excited smile and twitch of her wings.
I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Dash, I know what a movie is. I talk to other ponies, you know. I guess we could try it out. As long as we do something nice afterward, like get a nice dinner. Not the Hayburger, something actually, you know, good,” I said as firmly as I could manage.
Why an athlete like Dash loved fast food so much, and how she kept her figure eating like she did, I’ll never know.
“Awesome! Meet back here at two then?” She asked with an adorably huge grin.
I nodded. “Sure thing, sugar. And I’ll even wash the dust off before you get back. Cuz we both know you’ll still be late. Somehow.”
“Oh,” Dash’s ears drooped with embarrassment. “Well uh, about that… I kinda overestimate my speed and leave a few milliseconds before I’m supposed to be somewhere because I assume I’ll just be able to get there that quick, but um… Usually, it takes a few minutes because I’m too lazy to just go full speed.”
I rolled my eyes then gave Dash a kiss on her nose. “It’s okay, I’m just teas’n,” I chuckled. “See you later.”
“See ya!” Dash exclaimed eagerly, zipping out of our bedroom again, this time with only her usual rainbow colored blur.
One of these days, I had to get Twilight to work out why that blur went from rainbow colored to cyan as she sped up. Not exactly a pressing question, but still a real head scratcher.
I finished the crappy coffee, if only to be properly awake then headed out of our cloud house myself. Dash had been so attached to her home. I didn’t think it was possible to love a lump of random clouds you pushed together so much, but she’d refused to move out, and I’d refused to leave the farm.
I thought we would have to break our relationship off until she pushed her house onto the barn roof and tied it down. It had taken a bit of getting used to, stepping on clouds feels oddly spongy even with a cloudwalking charm on your earring. I’d still prefer a nice hardwood floor, but at least everything stayed nice and clean.
You know, since anything not enchanted properly just falls straight through the house and out the bottom.
Of course, that meant I had to clean out the barn roofs gutters every few weeks… That was chore number one for today.
After getting the hose and spraying down each gutter to be sure that water was still flowing through them, I went about everything else that had to be done first thing. Check on our cows, make sure they had all finished milking and that each one produced their day’s rent, feed the chickens, make sure granny was still alive (and get yelled at for disturbing her apple stew despite that recipe not being bothered none if you bump the pot), all the usual stuff.
I missed Applebloom.
Course I didn’t hate her for moving in with Sweetie Belle or nothing, but there was just a bit more farm work than big Mac and I could do on our own. The third pair of hooves had really done a lot around here. Sure, we hired field hooves to do a lot, but they didn’t live here, and we paid them to tend to the trees. Two ponies can’t manage a hundred and fifty hectares on their own, so I couldn’t justify getting one of them to stop working on their section for a day to weed the garden or paint the barn.
Maybe Dash wouldn’t mind adopting another filly. She’d liked raising Scoots.
Then again, she’s basically already been her mom for years before that became official. I’d have to ask. If it weren't a one-off thing, we could use some more help around here. And I’d rather pay somepony in affection good home cook’n and lasso lessons to take care of the chores than fork over another salary's worth bits to hire a handy stallion.
I managed to finish up the farmyard chores just a bit sooner than I’d estimated and got on to working the orchard. Most ponies don’t appreciate how much work goes into growing good apples. There’s a lot of sitting about and wait'n each year, but then there’s the entire months of hard work to make sure each tree is all good for the growing season.
That was what I was up to today. Pulling around a cart of compost to make a good ring around each and every last tree, and sprinkle just a little fertilizer around them too. None of that science crap, just a little powdered limestone, and saltpeter. Nothing any traditional pony would ever object too.
Of course, the cart only held enough compost for about six or so trees at once. Most of the day’s work was just walking back and forth between a storage shed near the barn and all the way back to the golden delicious grove bordering the rear of the farm, and the Everfree Forest.
Sometimes I thought about trying to clear enough of the Everfree to expand the farm a little. Or maybe just enough to get the zap apple grove free from everything else. If it were safe to be around those trees, I was darn certain we could plant more of them and get them to grow properly. Granny’s superstitions about the trees couldn’t possibly ALL be right and we could definitely use the bits a unique apple product would send our way.
Of course, then we would lose out on having something special for ourselves. A hard call to make.
You’d think a mare who saved the whole Kingdom multiple times would get some kind of living stipend from the Crown. But no.
Ah well, what kind of pony are you if you can’t stand on your own four hooves? Even if help would be nice to have, it’s better to be strong, independent, and skilled. That way if the support you do have topples over one day, you still can manage on your own.
A few hours had passed, and based on my count I was almost half done. If I could just keep this pace up I’d be able to get a good shower in and get dried off before Dash came back. A little sweat never bothered me none, but she liked it when I smelled nice for a date.
Pulling alongside the next tree to care for, I slipped the cart off my back and started to walk around the side to get to shovel’n when Big Mac’s unmistakeable voice reached my ears.
“AJ, back fence got torn up. Could use some help fix’n it,” he said in that blunt monotone of his.
Turning my head in his direction I frowned slightly. “Ya can’t do it yourself? How bad is it?” I asked, worried a timberwolf or something had made off with a half kilometer of the fence again.
“Lotta new fence posts ta dig,” Big Mac explained with a shrug. “Be faster if we both do it.”
“Well, I kinda told Dash we could go out this afternoon. How much work are we talk’n? I’m a bit ahead of schedule,” I said with a weary sigh.
We couldn’t not fix the damn fence. All kinds of critters make their way in without a proper fence up. It’s hard enough dealing with the flying pests that want to eat the whole orchard without also needing to deal with the crawling ones.
“Bout an hour, if ya help. Ah got the chicken wire and posts already. Just a lotta digg’n,” Big Mac grunted.
I frowned suspiciously. Mac didn’t seem quite right. Sure, fixing the fence would get me rather pissed too, but it seemed like he also had something planned for today.
“Uh, you gonna go down to see Miss Cheerly or something later?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Right, I’ll help ya out then,” I decided, giving him a nod. I wasn’t about to saddle my brother with work if it meant he had to miss out on his sweetheart.
He nodded and turned to walk towards the rear of the property. I followed along behind him, the orderly rows of trees forming a nice canopy overhead. I always loved walking through the orchard, it's more relaxing than you’d imagine. Especially when each of the currently living trees was one you raised yourself.
The rows of trees suddenly ended, parting away to reveal the narrow patch of cleared earth between the farm and the Everfree. And the absolutely fine fence.
Huh. Well, maybe this section was okay and it was just broken further up or down the line.
I looked left. Nope.
I looked right. Also fine.
My lips pursed in confusion. What in tarnation?
“Ya’ll planning a surprise party or something?” I asked, turning around to see if the girls had hidden behind some trees to surprise me with a picnic lunch or something.
“Or something,” somepony’s voice mocked.
My head snapped towards the unknown voice. My eyes locked onto Big Mac’s hate filled sneering face. I blinked, shock freezing me in my place as I tried to process that glaring sneer on my brother’s face.
My eyes opened. Big Mac was gone. Another stallion stood in his place.
An Earth Pony, average looking in all respects save for the single shade of black which colored his coat, his short meticulously combed hair, and the straight, short cut tail. The only bit of color on his entire body was his bright red hate filled eyes, and the gleaming white of his sharpened teeth.
My heart sped up, terror and anger mixing in my guts as he glared at me with a predator's smile.
An illusion! But how? He wasn’t a unicorn… He had to have magical items. And he’d replaced Big Mac to get to me!
“You better not have hurt my brother!” I shouted, ears flattening in rage while my eyes narrowed.
I grit my teeth and began to charge forwards, raising a hoof to try and knock the mother bucker out before he could do anything.
His eye’s dilated slightly. My entire body went limp, crashing into the dirt like a rag doll. I tried to stand, but I couldn’t even blink. My lungs began to burn as my body screamed at me to breathe but I couldn’t even inhale.
“I haven’t touched your brother, not since he was a pile of cells at least. Thanks for being such a traditional family, by the way. It’s hard to engage in one of my favorite kinds of passive torment these days. Heh, that will soon be remedied,” the stallion giggled gleefully.
Slow creeping horror overtook me as I realized I was completely paralyzed. The world began to turn gray.
“Oh, that’s right! Mortals need air,” the stallion snickered as if holding back a larger laugh.
Suddenly I could breathe again! I gasped for breath, nearly choking on the first few breaths while color came back to the world.
“There we go. I don’t want you dead. Then that pesky Element of Honesty would go to somepony else,” the stallion said mockingly as he stepped over my still refusing to move body.
Come on, Applejack! Force through this bucking magic and punch that motherbucker right in one of his freakish eyes!
The stallion seemed to notice my efforts and laughed, bending down to look directly into my eyes. “Awww, isn't that precious! You think you can resist me. And that anger? So cute! It’s too bad being adorable won’t save you,” he mocked.
Could I speak? I could breathe, maybe I could… “W-what… do you think… you… can… get away… with?” I gasped, jaw and tongue barely responding to my attempts to make them move.
“Using you as a disguise,” he answered flatly.
The bastard was going to vanish me and replace me. Oh, bucking Celestia I was dealing with a hostile changeling! Wait, that was a good thing.
I couldn’t smile, but I could laugh. “Hah. You… think… Twilight won’t… spot a...changeling? Ya'll stupid!” I managed to gasp.
The stallion sat down, seemingly happy to talk while I tried to do anything at all. He wanted to watch me squirm. Sick bastard.
“Oh, I’m certain she could. If I were a changeling,” he chuckled. “Thing is, I’m not. And you will register by all means mundane and arcane as, well, yourself. Besides, your little friend is not omniscient. She won’t know a damn thing until I want her to. Do you understand the pickle you’re in, you little protozoa you?”
The buck was a protozoa? “Yeah well… Discord… is,” I countered triumphantly.
“Pff!” The stallion snorted, a genuine smile flashing across his face. “Oh please. Nothing is actually omniscient! The entire concept is paradoxical. You can’t know if there is something you don’t know, and so by the very definition of the term, omniscience is impossible. Only something as intellectually inferior as a mortal would even believe such a thing was possible in the first place.
“Discord’s erratic and eclectic knowledge won't help you. Even if I didn’t arrange for him to be, well, we both know he has a history of getting stoned. Heh, get it?”
I did get it. And it was funny. But I didn’t laugh because buck this asshole.
Come on leg! Move! Kick the bucker’s sternum through his spine!
“Just kill me… already,” I spat, wishing I could glare at him.
He slowly shook his head back and forth. “So stupid… I already told you that I’m not going to kill you. Less than a minute ago even. But then again, I chose you out of your friends partly because you’re an idiot.
“Only an idiot would make an enemy of me by befriending Twilight and then live fifteen minutes outside of the safety of a town. Then work in an isolated patch of woods where nopony could ever hear her scream,” he mocked, glaring at me with a hunger that shook me to the core.
Wasn’t going to kill me? Wouldn’t hear me scream? OH, BUCK NO!
MOVE! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE! WHY CAN’T I MOVE?!
“Because I disabled your motor cortex,” the stallion replied.
How the hay had he heard my thoughts!?
“Also, I’m not going to rape you. That’s a very boring thing to do. Though admittedly it IS fun to watch. Now hold still or this will hurt. Oh yes, that’s right. It will hurt anyways. Heh!” He said with a disgusting lick of his upper lip.
He reached out and grabbed my head with a hoof. Immediately burning pain erupted all throughout my body, radiating outwards from where his hoof rested on my head.
No, rested in my head.
OH GOD HE WAS FORCING HIS WAY INTO MY SKULL!
I felt his hoof squish into my brain! My actual literal brain!
My body jerked involuntarily, thrashing in agony. Stars exploded in my eyes, purple flames engulfed everything I could see, the sky, the ground, the back of my eye sockets.
Everything went black. The twisting, bubbling, burning agony was still there. But dulled. Like a headache aspirin couldn’t quite defeat.
“Hmmm…” My voice mused. “It looks like I have access to less of my powers than I hoped.”
But I hadn’t said that.
“Come on, use your brain. You’ll figure it out. I made sure you’re still in there. It’s more fun this way,” my voice laughed.
What was going on!?
“Oh please! I’m not wrapped around this organ too tightly. You really are an idiot. I was only mocking you before but now, honestly…” My voice insulted. “Did I scramble your brains a bit? Or maybe you’ll need to see to remember.”
The blackness vanished like somepony had switched on the lights. I was standing on the edge of the orchard, looking at the Everfree and-
My forelegs were moving of their own accord!
<Get out of my body!> I screamed.
“My body now. Good job working out how to speak in ‘words’. There’s hope for you yet,” the monster which stole my body mocked.
“The name is Dawn,” he replied. <Oh, and I can direct my thoughts at you too. So don’t think you can do anything special. You’re just along for the ride as a tool and a hostage.>
<What are you?> I demanded fearfully.
He moved again, walking in a small circle, seemingly having a little trouble doing something so simple.
“I’m a god,” he replied with a blunt honest truth that I could feel at the very least he completely believed to be true. "As for which one, well… You are aware of serial killers, right? They are my beloved disciples. And it’s time for my plans to move forward. Your friend Twilight has forced my hooves.
“Oh and you’re rather lucky. You’re getting a first-row seat for this armageddon."
<Yeah, right. You’re just a deluded sadist. Twilight will kick your plot until you->
A sudden flood of memories shot through me like they were being blasted from a hose. I saw three entire species births. Their rises. And their falls. All with the monster wearing my body directing each and every moment like a bard writing a play.
I recoiled in horror. Withdrawing as much of myself as I could back into my own mind. I didn’t even know I could do that.
“Now that you’re properly up to speed, I think I need to go tailor my new suit. It’s rather disgusting as is,” Dawn mused aloud, resting a hoof against his chin. “Hmmm… Full creative freedom. I have never had this before.
“See, as long as I’m inside you, my superiors will only see a mortal doing things, not me. They would destroy me in an instant, which means if I want to act, I need a mortal body. We don’t care what you byproducts of planetary formation do. You’re not remotely important.
“Which means inside you, well, I can do anything I like! Almost… Perhaps I can shape your form to permit some of the powers I would like to have. Or at least create functional equivalents.
“Oh! Yes, yes. That will have to wait just a little bit. Would you like to see your friend Discord be taken care of? It’s a pity Tirek is in Tartarus, he’d love to see this.”
He started to walk towards the Everfree forest, my body moving in jerky awkward motions which sent spikes of pain through me with each step.
“We’ll get a good view from above the Everfree,” Dawn said as if we were on some sort of happy nature walk. “Besides, I need to find her anyways. You’re not the only person I’m hijacking today.”
He was going to subject somepony else to this form of Tartarus!? I had to find a way to stop him!
“Good luck with that,” Dawn said, twisting my mouth into a pleased grin. “Do you know how fast you can run? I need to be somewhere in about ten minutes. No? Ah well, I guess we’ll learn. Don’t worry if we rip up your insides while I push you past those silly little biological limits. I’ll patch you up. I don’t like to wear rags.”
Twilight Sparkle - 18th of Snowfall, 15 EoH
Mount Spur - Tartarus
We had only been here for around two days. And yet this wet, shoddily built command center within the old crystal caves atop Mount Spur was already one of the most disgusting places I had ever been.
Wet, cold, dark, and of course I was here because everything had failed, Tartarus had broken loose, and the world was literally falling to pieces outside.
“Celestia, are our future selves secured?” I asked eyes focused intently.
Wow, that was the weirdest thing to say and actually mean it. Then again, we were in Tartarus, and it was the end of the world.
“Yes. They are all asleep and can be easily moved,” Celestia replied with a sad sigh. “I- I hope this is what they were steering us to do all this time.”
Probably not. They had resisted my plan to leave our dying universe. Hence why we had to knock them all out. I wasn’t about to leave anypony to suffer in this world. Not when I could bring them with me.
“I hope your spell will work as you think it will,” Luna groaned. “I can’t keep this shield spell bolstered forever.”
Luna grit her teeth after speaking, hunching over one of the tables set up inside the spacious cave. Her horn sparkled and glittered as her focus wavered.
“Luna! Careful. I don’t have the energy to make another shield,” Shining warned feebly, frowning up at Luna from where he lay on the floor. “It’s holding back… Whatever that spell is. Took everything I had.”
I winced. I did not need my brother to remind me that we were only alive right now because his shield was keeping out whatever spell Grogar was using to literally dissolve the world into nothing…
I cleared my throat and turned to my friends. Thankfully everypony had made it out of the Phoenix alive. I should never have trusted her… We could have avoided so much danger.
“Girls, are you ready?” I asked.
“Everypony’s ready to go when you are, Twilight,” Trixie confirmed, nodding along with everypony else.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. “Alright, girls, rainbow forms. Keep it up as long as you can. It will take me about ten minutes to rip a hole between dimensions. As soon as it opens, Trixie, Dash, Scootaloo, and I will enter and clear the other side. Give us twenty seconds and the follow. Understood?”
“We’re all on the same page, sugarcube,” Applejack said with a grim nod. “We’ve gone over the plan four times now.”
“Yes, but, no sense in not being triple certain,” I laughed bitterly. “Right, three… two… one… GO!”
I felt the Element’s power trickle slowly to me rather than come to me in a rushing wave like it normally did. My fur glittered slightly, but nothing like normal.
“The Tree of Harmony must be within the disintegration spell now,” Celestia said urgently. “You’d better hurry. It won't last more than a few minutes at most.”
I closed my eyes and reached for the artifact’s connection to my friends and I. It was time to build our escape tunnel. Thank the gods I’d found out the closest universe to our own had an oddly thin patch in it. It could be breached. We could survive. We could plan.
We could come back one day, and take revenge upon Grogar and his master, Dawn.
All I needed was ten minutes.
Lyra Heartstrings - October 12th, 2028
Ponyville - Mirror Equestria
My pickup rumbled as I pulled into the parking lot of Greasy Joe’s Diner. It had been years since I’d come back to Ponyville for anything. I imagine every high schooler thinks they will keep in touch with their friends all the time, I sure did. But I didn’t, and I had a better reason to than most.
Pinkie, Rarity, and I had an invitation to the world on the other side of the portal. And we’d never cashed it in. Hell, we had a way of having pen pals with magical fucking creatures and we still never went.
It would have been so easy. The portal was opened permanently by Princess Twilight years ago. We could have gone any time. But nooo… Pinkie had been right. ‘If Princess Twilight sees us there she’ll send us back. She asked us not to follow her, and I’m pretty sure the portal’s other side is in her bedroom.’
Stupid fear… We had let opportunity after opportunity slip by. Then we all grew up.
Pinkie stayed in town, getting a job at a sandwich shop. One of the crappy non-franchise ones that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage.
Rarity’s parents were wealthier than we had even thought and after high school they literally had moved to an estate on a private island in the Bahamas.
At least I’d stayed close to Ponyville. I had spent the last ten years working as a park ranger, hoping that one day I’d get the guts to pony up and go through that portal and tell the super powerful alicorn princess that she can stuff it because I’m checking out the world of my dreams.
But it’s hard to do that without a good push. Last night we had finally got that good push.
I had always wondered why no one accidentally stumbled through the portal. Turns out it had been charmed or something. You had to have WANTED to go through it, or at least known it was there. That charm failed, some kid fell through it while live streaming a vlog.
Everyone thought it was a joke. Clever computer generated graphics and some fancy code to gimmick the live stream. Then some detective’s kid went through an hour after the first video exploded social media, brought back something, and took it to the cops.
And that something managed to be actual proof of aliens. Somehow. The fact that THIS of all things is what finally got the boots on the ground scrambling blew my mind. Roswell has an actual spacecraft crash in the middle of the town, nothing. Some kid brings a police station a thing, SEND IN THE MARINES!
No conspiracy this time. Everyone knew it was real. The police had the portal cordoned off, evacuated everything in a mile radius and according to the news the army was already inbound.
If we were ever going to see our Sunset again, we had to go now. Before the army arrived, evacuated everyone, and walled that portal off. Also, someone needed to warn Princess Twilight to close her end of the portal.
If only so the basic plot of Gate doesn't happen for real.
The three of us had one hell of a hard conversation last night. No matter what else happened, I was going to go. The warning had to be delivered, and I would never have another chance. I was almost thirty and I still wanted to see a land of magic, talking ponies, and adventure. This wasn’t a phase, it was a true calling. I would never be happy here.
According to the radio, I had ten minutes before the army arrived. If my old high school friends were not here and in my pickup in the next minute, I was going alone.
I saw a flash of pink through the diner window. Pinkie’s hair. Unmistakeable. Especially at this ungodly hour in the morning.
Good, that was one. What about-
The diner door opened and Rarity quickly walked out, her white long coat looking like it was more expensive than my goddamn truck. She glanced left and right urgently before her eyes settled on my pickup and she smiled despite her worried eyes. A second later and Pinkie bumped into her from behind. They started to argue, I honked the horn rapidly.
“Come on! Clock’s ticking!” I shouted out the window.
We didn’t have time for this nonsense!
Fortunately, the two got the message and rushed to my truck. The side door opened in an instant as Rarity practically tore the door open and threw herself inside my old N50 Hilux.
“I told daddy I wanted to have one of their milkshakes in case the town's gone by tomorrow! My bodyguard went to pee, go before he think’s you’re kidnapping me!” She hissed urgently.
I closed my eyes tightly. God. Fucking. Damn it.
“Rarity, we’re already going to be ramming a police barricade… Why?” I asked, knowing the answer wouldn’t be forthcoming.
Pinkie looked into the cabin, noticed the space behind the seats was full of my own gear, then threw a duffle bag into the truck bed, then pulled herself inside my truck’s cab and shut the door behind her. “Hihi, Ly! Long time no see! Did you mail all the letter I sent you?” She asked.
“Yeah, every one of them. You should know this. I mailed you all of the replies,” I grunted as I shifted into reverse and backed out of the parking space, narrowly avoiding hitting a Prius.
I almost giggled at the thought of hitting the Prius. This truck was known to eat lesser cars for breakfast. I wasn’t sure if there was anything you could do to actually break a Hilux.
“Oh no! There he is!” Rarity yelped, reaching across the cab to grab me by my old olive jacket’s sleeve. “Drive!”
I didn’t bother looking, I turned the wheel and floored it. We left the parking lot with a screech of rubber, peeling out slightly before the tires bit into the blacktop and we lurched fords.
I didn’t bother looking back to see if her bodyguard was following us. The roads were mostly empty right now, and I had a place to be. I also had a conversation to have.
“Okay, girls,” I began pausing to take a sharp right hand turn to get on the road leading to Canterlot High. “This isn’t your standard camping trip. There is every possibility that once we get through that portal we won't get to come back. But at least one of us has to go and warn Twilight before they decide to drive a tank through that portal.
“I’ll do it. I should have gone years ago. I’m all packed, I have all my things. Now there is a slight chance that we could get to go home one day. But I want you to pretend that there is not. Are you prepared to spend the rest of your life in another universe, as another species? If you are not. I’ll pull over and let you out.”
My two passengers were quiet for a minute. Knight’s engine roared eagerly as we shot down the long straightway, buildings flashing by in an instant.
“I’m pretty sure I can get back on my own… I’ve learned a few tricks,” Pinkie said with a small nod that I caught out of the corner of my eye. “Besides, I’m already here!”
Heh, yeah that was Pinkie. But I’d really said it for Rarity. After all, she was miss ‘I'm going to mail a random old friend diamond encrusted panties for Christmas’. I couldn’t imagine wanting to leave THAT kind of wealth behind.
Or wanting to wear those panties.
“A fresh life is exactly what I need right now, Lyra,” Rarity said sadly, her head hanging and eyes closed. “I know you’re probably jealous of my life, but it’s a prison! I had to promise to go to business school next year, and then sign an actual notarized contract just to be allowed to come out here for one milkshake and even then he made me take a bodyguard… I’m just my father's ‘second life’. It’s no way to live. I’m going.”
“Alright,” I said with a nod. “Then buckle up. Because my plan of entry is going to be bumpy.”
Rarity turned to look at me, frowning with concern. “Darling, you’re going to get out and run through with your bag, right?”
I shook my head, keeping my eyes on the road ahead. I could just now make out the police barricade. Two squad cars blocked the road, and they were setting up sandbags on either side, getting ready for the army, or marines, or whatever you sent for humanity's first confirmed encounter with something supernatural.
“See those cops? They have guns. We’ve seen Twilight take a cart about as wide and tall as my truck through with her. It’s clear that something roughly this size will fit through that portal. I’m driving through it,” I explained with a determined narrowing of my eyes.
“Oh! Um, w-well I guess that does make sense. It was a fairly large cart. Bigger than the statue. I guess you only need to get part of something into the opening and intend for it to move through… Or does someone have to pull it themselves?” Rarity asked worriedly. “Oh, I do hate not knowing the rules of magic!”
Fuck! If I went for the sandbags, I’d be at the wrong angle to make the turn and hit the statue. They’d have time to open fire on us before I could get turned around. I had to ram the cars… Could I pull that off?
Maybe. I used my old girl to move through the park off road. I had a reinforced grill guard that was basically a ram…
Yes! If I hit dead center between the two cars I should be able to use the slight space between the two of them to force the cars aside, then quickly pull into the portal.
“Didn’t you actually have magical powers for about a year?” I asked quizzically.
“Yepperoni! But they wore off before any of us could learn how they worked,” Pinkie lamented with a sad sigh. “Then the old group kind of broke up and- Oh my gosh! Lyra, are you going to ram those cars!?”
Pinkie’s frightened yelp made Rarity turn as white as her jacket.
“Lyra! Don’t! The sandbags, go for the sandbags!” She pleaded.
“No can do. The angle is all wrong. Pushing the cars out of the way will take less time than driving over the sandbags. This isn’t GTA Seven,” I explained.
“Why are you even thinking about traveling through a magical portal in a damaged pickup truck!?” Rarity asked, eyes wide with terror.
I rolled my eyes. “This is a Nineteen-eighty-eight Toyota Hilux N-fifty diesel. I’ve seen one crashed, drowned in the sea, driven through a shed, lit on fire, and then dropped from the top of a high-rise apartment building. She started up and drove off. I bought one immediately and coated every bit of her but the glass parts with Line-X. We’re fine.”
“Lyra, this is not the time for one of your crazy stories!” Rarity panicked.
“This thing’s forty years old!?” Pinkie exclaimed at the same time, a steep frown parting her lips.
“Yeah,” I laughed giving her a reassuring grin. “Not joking. Top Gear. Series Three, Episode Five. Watch it. These trucks are fucking indestructible!
“Brace yourself against the dashboard. Last time I had to ram a downed tree I cut my forehead on the steering wheel.”
I floored the gas pedal. The girls screamed loudly as we barreled down towards the parked cars. Several officers turned to look as the roaring deasil engine bore down on them. Two dove out from behind the squad cars just as we slammed into the parked cars, steel sparking as reinforced grill met armored panels with a sound like a bowling ball slamming into concrete.
A massive jolt shot through the truck, shaking everyone and throwing us forwards. I braced against the steering wheel, managing to keep us moving straight as my truck’s momentum shoved the squad cars aside, not all the way, but enough where a good stomp on the gas pushed us through, metal shrieking as we slid between the two cars bumpers.
A second jolt shook the truck as we popped free. Knight rumbled, her engine sounding almost proud as we lurched forwards, picking up speed as the super loud reports of nine-millimeter shots filled the air. Several thudding against the truck.
“Duck!” I shouted,hunching down as much as I dared.
Line-X coated steel might be able to stop smaller handgun rounds with some luck, but the windows were plain old tempered glass!
I felt my heart try to jump up into my throat. What the fuck was I doing? I was a twenty-eight year old park ranger! Not James motherfucking Bond! I was so gonna die here!
I joined my friends in their screaming as I whipped the wheel around, throwing my pickup into a sharp u-turn, skidding across the grass amid a hail of gunfire as I turned us towards the statue placed in the courtyard.
This was it.
Portal time!
I floored the gas one more time. Hopefully Twilight wouldn't be mad about the property damage once we warned her about the army.
Twilight Sparkle - 18th of Megan, 17 EoH
Ponyville - Equestria
I was enjoying the whole ‘year and a half without a disaster’ trend we had going today. I’m a mare of science, not a mare of action. Not to say I wasn’t happy to help save Equestria, or anywhere else for that matter. I was proud to be a hero.
But I still liked time to enjoy personal projects and well, enjoy life!
So many things had happened in the last two years that I wanted to learn about, and even without disasters left and right there was plenty happening now that I didn’t want to think about. Burying myself in my projects was a great way to forget about that crazy pony who tried to have me assassinated, Flash’s failing health-
“Are you alright?” Fluttershy asked me with a concerned frown and worried eyes.
Well, not quite Fluttershy. An android replica of her from a parallel universe. Wait, what?
I blinked. Yes. I was in my den. Working on a project. Good.
“I uh, well, basically. It’s been a hard year for me,” I admitted to the android.
She nodded sympathetically. “I heard. I’m sorry about your foals… Did you imprison or execute that assassin?”
I raised an eyebrow in concern. “Imprison. Obviously!”
She pursed her lips and nodded. It was amazing just how lifelike her movements were! If you couldn’t see the slight seams between parts of her fur coating, you’d be absolutely certain she was an organic pony with prosthetic eyes.
“You’re different from our Twilight. She would have had him executed. She took treason very seriously,” she noted eyes looking lost in thought.
I frowned. I knew almost nothing about the world she’d came from. Sure, I’d known parallel universes existed, after all, I did visit one myself. Several times in fact. But when Lyra came to me to introduce her long lost sister who had grown up in a completely different universe… Well, I’d needed to know the whole story.
Especially since her sister wasn’t a pony thanks to growing up where she did.
And doubly especially when her sister mentioned she was dating an android version of Fluttershy. I most definitely had to meet and examine that!
So here we were. Two weeks later. I was so happy she didn't mind me inspecting her. So much new science could be discovered in just one afternoon!
Ohhh! Did I build her? That would be amazing!
“I don’t want to sound arrogant, but did your universe's version of me build you?” I asked hopefully.
She smiled and shook her head, giggling a little.
By Celestia, when she moved she looked just like a slightly fat Fluttershy. It’s a good thing she wore that light green hoodie and the leaf green dog collar. Otherwise, anypony would definitely mistake her for the real Fluttershy.
“No, you didn’t make me. Doctor Trigger did. He also made you a new body too,” she explained with a smile. “I thought Ly would have mentioned that during her visit. Our world was devastated by a plague. Sky survived, nothing else did, he was lonely so he remade everypony the only way he could.
“Well, not everypony everypony. Not yet at least. But me, ‘you’, the rest of ‘our’ friends, Luna, and many others are all back.”
“Back?” I asked with a curious ear perk. “You consider yourself the original Fluttershy?”
“I am the original Fluttershy,” she said calmly, blinking away a brief flash of emotional distress. “I um… I don’t know how, but he was able to attach our souls to these bodies. Sort of like necromancy. We're all alive, we’re not programs. We’re just machines now.”
I shook my head slightly. I didn’t know too much about necromancy, my new court Enchanter had only been able to teach me a little bit over the winter. But that sounded… Implausible.
“Humm… I’ll have to ask my expert if you can resurrect a pony for real with necromancy,” I mused. “Do you mind if I inspect your chassis while we talk?”
She shook her head. “No of course not. You can do anything you like except take me apart. Oh um, I will open access panels for you though,” she said with a shy blush.
I winced. She was a bit too lifelike for comfort. At least, for me to be comfortable inspecting her.
I cleared my throat and stepped over to gently pick up her leg and feel the joints and ‘bones’.
“Why the hoodie? Is that just to mark yourself so you’re not confused with our Fluttershy?” I asked while I examined her foreleg.
The mechanics were extremely intricate! While she was soft and felt slightly like flesh and blood, I could also feel hard sections of plates beneath the soft layers and her bones were well, a framework of steel struts that made a mesh-like shape rather than one solid ‘bar’ like real bones. The motors, or actuators, and control systems must be within the center of the steel ‘cage’. A pretty brilliant design!
I yelped as her leg clicked and then hissed open, revealing a mess of electric blue, gelatin-like in appearance, cables which formed her ‘muscles’.
“Here, now you can see everything,” she said happily until she noticed my startled expression. Then her ears fell. “Oh! I’m so sorry! I-I didn’t mean to-”
“No! No, it’s okay,” I said as my heart stopped hammering in my chest and I bent to inspect her leg.
“Um, okay. As for my hoodie, there seems to be a slight difference in heat transfer rates between our two universes. I cool too quickly, and because we are made to replicate everything an organic pony can do, I can get cold. So the hoodie is to trap my waste heat and keep me comfortable. Um, your twenty-four degrees feels like our eighteen degrees,” she explained.
“Huh,” I said furrowing my eyebrows. “That’s odd. I wonder how that works.”
“So do I,” she agreed with a nod.
I nodded and looked around my den for the fifth time today for my pad. Sky Trigger had made me the most useful little pad which I could draw on and store ‘pages’ of data. It saved me so much parchment and had sadly disappeared from my desk this morning.
Bah, I’d just do this the old-fashioned way.
I quickly fetched a quill and sheet of parchment from my desk with my magic and held the page in the air as I sketched out everything I could see of her leg and how it worked.
“Do your hips open? I’d like to see how they articulate. Are you able to stand up on your hind legs or are you strictly quadrupedal?” I asked curiously.
Most ponies could balance on their hind legs, and a good number of us could even manage to learn to walk like that with some training. Naturally that’s an extremely uncomfortable thing to do, but it’s a part of basic military training. Standing like a biped has plenty of advantages.
Fluttershy nodded. “Yes, I can stand up. I also have some slight shape changing capabilities and can transition to a full biped if I like,” she answered. “Oh, and yes my hips do open. All of my skin can open up. I need to be fixed after all, and if I want to deploy my armor it needs to come out of the skin somehow.
“I um, I’m an early model. On most of us, you can’t see the seams between panels.”
I nodded and watched as she closed her foreleg’s panels and opened her hips up. It was frankly a little grotesque to see a pony’s body just, open.
No! Get it together Twilight. She’s an extremely sophisticated machine! That’s it.
I took a deep breath and walked around behind her, bending my forelegs to look at her right hip joint and-
“Uh, wait, you’re a colt!?” I asked as I noticed her plumbing, so to speak.
Why was he so exceptionally large!? Ew! Soo not right!
Looking back up at her face to try and not think about what I just saw, I did my best to hide my blush by coughing into a hoof. “I uh, sorry! I thought you were a mare! That was really inapp-”
“I’m a mare,” she giggled, cheeks parting as she grinned at me. “Sorry about that. I must have forgotten to swap modules again. Ly wanted to be on bottom last night and since I’m modular, um, well, I’m sure you use a spell for that kind of thing.”
“I uh, no. I don’t,” I admitted with an awkward cough.
Why would I!? I’m not Cadence! Oh, well I suppose it would make a little bit of sense with a couple made up of females but still… Ew!
Her ears drooped and her eyes widened in sympathy. “I’m sorry. I’m making you uncomfortable. I can take that off so you can continue. It’s not a big deal.”
Oh wow, I did NOT want to talk about this. I needed to change the subject! Quick!
“Uh, so then your collar…” I asked trailing off towards the end.
Fluttershy blushed and tapped her hooves together in embarrassment. “Um, the particulars of how my marefriend and I enjoy each other’s company and my personal preferences are none of your business,” she said after a few seconds.
I winced. She was really feeling embarrassed! What the buck was I doing!? This was a pony! I couldn’t just demand she present herself for a detailed examination!
No! She couldn’t be a pony! I could see her hip servos and her wiring and-
The den’s large oaken door creaked open enough for my friend Jade to poke her head inside. The young Changeling Queen had been living with me for the last year and a half, and was not only a fun person to be around but one heck of a good language instructor.
“Sorry to interrupt, Twilight,” Jade said with an embarrassed smile. “But I found something you need to s- Ooo! Fluttershy, you taste great! Did you finally get a special somepony?”
I could tell by the way that Jade’s eyes sparkled that she really was tasting a particularly flavorful emotion.
And it was coming from the android!
My eyes widened in honest shock. “J-Jade! Are you saying you can sense her empathically, AND feed on her?” I asked urgently.
Jade nodded. “Of course I can? Fluttershy is a po-” she trailed off, lips pursing as she noticed her open hip hatches. “-uhhhhh… What are you?”
“I’m an equoid, a living mechanical pony with a positronic brain that holds the memories and soul of my former organic self,” she explained with a slightly embarrassed blush. “S-sorry for creeping you out. I normally don’t walk around with my chassis open.”
“She’s from a parallel universe,” I explained with a feeble grin.
“Neat,” Jade said with a satisfied nod.
She never needed any real detailed explanations for things. A trait which had it’s advantages and drawbacks.
“Well, you’re really tasty, ma’am! You’d better be careful around changebugs, we might just glomp you. Um, right! Twi, when you’re free we need to meet in our library. I’m having a problem working something out,” Jade said with a slight nod after the word ‘library’.
Ah, so she’d discovered something in Clover’s old library! Excellent! Secret projects were so much fun. And also it was not this clusterbuck of an idea!
Celestia's mane this had all started so simple...
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I promised as I turned to Fluttershy with my face red from embarrassment. “Miss Shy, I need to apologize. I’ve been treating you like a machine, but you’re definitely a person. I can’t ask you to stand here and let me drool over your parts. That’s wrong, and probably sexual, and I’m married. Sooo um… You can go home if you want to.”
She lifted a foreleg and gently gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Twilight. I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to be inspected. I um, my Travel device works once a month and I just got back. If you really don’t want to take your own notes, Doctor Trigger might be okay with giving me some older blueprints I could share with-”
The air behind Fluttershy exploded with a sound like shattering glass, throwing the both of us flat, and pushing Jade out into the hall, slamming the door shut. The pulse of white light accompanying the noise left huge spots in my eyes.
Squinting around the after images, I saw a hole in the world. It was jagged, like a wound ripped into a pony’s flesh, and rimmed with dim rainbow-hued energy as if the Elements of Harmony were responsible for this hole into-
Into a dimly lit crystal mine where I could see Celestia and Luna struggling to keep a spell going!
They needed help!
“Hold on!” I called, leaping up, wings snapping open to jump through and assist. “I’ll help, just tell me what-”
Then I lept out of the rift. Or rather, a me. She was battered. Burned, and her left eye was hidden under a patch, with bits of silver wire filaments trailing around the socket from behind the patch.
I had just enough time to wonder what horrible disaster I was going to cause for myself by next Tuesday before my counterpart saw me, her eye widening in alarm and her ears standing upright in sudden realization.
“Oh buck!” She swore, much to my shock. “Girls, wait! We’ve tunneled into the-”
The rift sparked, and crackled, rippling unstably as two ponies, and a bipedal creature jumped through the portal. One of the ponies was a sleeker rainbow dash and the other a slightly plumper Great and Powerful Trixie. The biped looked to be some kind of bulky, angular, and boxy red and silver colored diamond dog-like robot.
The Trixie and Dash tackled Fluttershy immediately. I barely had time to throw up a shield spell as the robot reached out to grab me.
What they hay was going on!?
“Room clear!” Rainbow shouted. “We got- Fluttershy?”
Her and Trixie’s face melted into perplexed expressions as they looked at the panicking android pony that had pinned beneath them.
For literally half a second.
Shy stood up, hydraulics audibly whining as she threw both ponies off herself, then jumped backward, a sophisticated sleek and organic looking suit of armor unfolding from beneath her skin and locking into place.
“I don’t want to hurt you, but I can!” Fluttershy warned, spreading her wings aggressively. “We could all just stop and talk this out. That’s an option.”
Her two assailants quickly scrambled up to their hooves, clearly ready to fight! I had to do something before-
A loud mechanical roar filled the room. Glass shattered. Books suddenly flew everywhere. The roar became impossibly loud. A massive black vehicle I recognized as a pickup truck from my time in the mirror world rammed through the rift, the unstable hole between worlds exploding in a shower of prismatic sparks you’d expect to see when a massive amount of zinc is rammed through an active and complex piece of spellcraft.
What I did not expect was the bright greenish-gold shockwave that blasted outwards from the rift as the truck annihilated it in an instant amid it’s terrifying roar and screeching tires.
I had just enough time to wonder how much zinc is used in building human vehicles and if they knew of its disruptive effects on magic before the truck slammed solidly into the far wall, smashing my writing desk and cracking the crystal almost enough to punch a hole in the wall.
I looked back along the path the truck had taken. So did everypony else in the room. All of our faces were expressing some form of terror or alarm. Everypony’s tail was raised in that instinctive ‘i must flee!’ expression of honest blind terror.
Ah. So that’s where it came from. The mirror. Which was now broken. Shards of glass trailed along the entirety of the floor.
The truck, on the other hoof, looked like it had just come out of a car wash and despite the crash, it's engine rumbled contently as if to say, 'This is fine.'
“Well…” The other me said with a grimace plastered on her face. “At least we’re not in our past. I sure as hay don’t remember that…
“You! Other me, we need this rift open again. Our world is ending, and we’re trying to evacuate. We have two minutes before everypony on the other side dies! Help me and I’ll return the favor whenever you like. Girls, secure that vehicle!”
I missed having an uneventful year and a half already.
Apple Jack - 18th of Megan, 17 EoH
The Tree of Harmony - Everfree Forest
Dawn tapped my hoof impatiently against the ground. Ignoring the blood trickling out from my nose and mouth as if he couldn’t feel the blinding pain. Had I ever sprinted all out for ten minutes through that kind of terrain before?
No. Not even a little bit. I was dying. I had to be. I think I could feel my lungs, they were cut up on the inside.
“Humm? Oh. Yes. Right. Can’t have you die,” Dawn said, clearly distracted as his eyes roamed over the purple crystalline tree and the gem-like elements held in each of its branches.
I felt a ripple of energy spread out from my head to my hooves. The agony abated a little, and my lungs felt normal again.
“Come on… That thaumaturgic shockwave should be here any second now,” Dawn muttered anxiously.
<Shockwave?> I asked, curious about what he was doing despite the pain, terror, and horror which almost completely consumed me.
To my utter surprise, I felt Dawn decide to humor me.
“While searching for the right time to start this little plan, I found a day where a mysterious thaumaturgic wave originating in Ponyville. I'm fairly certain Twilight messed up a spell, I didn't get close enough to see for sure, so as not to lock myself out of the timeline. I can potentially use the magic distorting properties of the shock wave to-”
Suddenly a bright greenish-gold wave of energy slammed through the room, lighting the Tree’s cave up as brightly as the noon sun.
“YES!” Dawn exclaimed as he thrust one hoof forwards towards the large white star shaped mark engraved into the tree’s trunk.
A dark black ray of light blazed out from my hoof, striking the tree while the wave washed over it. The Tree flashed bright white, blinding me for an instant while a crystalline humm deafened me. I felt a second energy wave explode outwards, this one coming from the tree and dragging across my mind like a net linked with fishhooks.
Dawn screamed in pain. I screamed silently within my head in pain. I’d rather have ruptured lungs again than this! WHY!? FOR THE LOVE OF CELESTIA WHY!?!
Dawn inhaled sharply. “Ow…” He groaned. “I… Okay… Can’t fuck with the Elements again in your body. Bad, bad idea. Please have worked,” he moaned.
We looked back up at the Tree. I felt a wave of despair as I saw each gem had cracked, and the light they cast light was slowly dimming until each turned into a single piece of cracked gray stone. Dawn smirked. Then frowned as he noticed the cracks.
“Huh…” He trotted forwards to look more closely at the Tree, squinting my eyes to check as thoroughly as I imagine he could.
“Good. Not broken, just damaged. Fully disabled in fact. A neat little bonus! I didn’t think these could be damaged,” he said with an honest smile. “Now then, if my calculations are correct I just reversed one of their last few effects. Guess who's a statue again?”
<That’s impossible!> I scoffed. <You don’t have the right virtues to use the Elements, and we all still hold the keys!>
“That’s probably why they broke,” Dawn said sagely. “One moment, let me test something.”
Dawn reared up and raised my forehooves to my mouth and yelled “OH, DISCORD! I know you’re looking here right now because you had to have sensed that! It’s me, Dawn! I’m meat puppeting this mare you like so I can gather enough power to kill all of you before Dusk revives. Yes! Just like you always suspected.
“You know that yellow mare you like so much? I’m going to take special care in violating her until her tormented soul burns brighter than any star you've ever seen! She’s already so paranoid and mentally broken that I won't even have to try to make her life into the greatest masterpiece I’ve ever created!”
Seconds passed. Then a minute. Nothing happened.
“Yeah, he’d have responded to that out of sheer anger,” Dawn laughed triumphantly as he rested us back on all four hooves. “He’s petrified. We'll find the statue and hide it later on today just to be doubly sure.”
<Or, he just wants you to think that,> I said with a bare twinge of hope.
“You underestimate how much he likes Fluttershy. He’s vowed to make her immortal so they can be best friends forever. Trust me, I know my great grandfather very well. He’s not here because he can’t be here,” Dawn finished.
Great Grandfather?! Oh...
The hope died like a candle thrown into the sea.
“And, broken!” Dawn said before laughing. “Well, that’s no fun. Let’s go someplace we can wait a while for you to start thinking again. This is no fun if you can't be upset and angry with me. Once you're all feisty again, we'll go find Everfree, kick her out, and start growing these woods for our own use.
“I may have taken out one of the obstacles in my way, but there are more. So our little stealthy war to start armageddon off is only just starting. Isn’t that fun?
“Oh, and I still need to tailor your meat for my needs. I love having a fresh canvas and no supervision.”
I honestly couldn’t bring myself to say or even feel anything as Dawn walked out of the cave. Rambling on ecstatically about his plans to bring Tartarus to Equis.
All I could do was pray Twilight could find me and help.
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Shit has now hit the proverbial fan.
And so it begins...
You give me information to remember then come out with a new story? The fuck are you on about?
7779431 Have Meti remember it for you.
7779438
I am. I have much better memory than him. . . Somehow.
A paraplegic.
>> Meep the Changeling What about all hail the queen?
7779487 That's continuing here. I realised that storyline has basically a year and a half of basically nothing as Twilight learns a new language.
7779493
Hmm I think the Betaverse should now be renamed to the CharlieFroxtrotverse
Didnt you say in the comments before that Sweet Apple Acres pay much more in taxes than they need to by law?
Seems wierd that she'd give extra money to the crown and then think about them giving her money.
7779501 Traditionally, their family paid out extra for charities so as to be looked on favorably by Ponyville. AJ could solve all of her money problems in an instant by just reducing the traditional overpayment by half, but she won't. Because she's too rooted in tradition for her own good. (And also her Sibling's good... Big Mac wanted to go to college and learn enchanting, but he can't because farm, and traditions. Applebloom got out only because Equestria's greatest blacksmith literally paid for her 'worth' using the ancient apprenticeship rules since she was certain that AB could actually learn all her tricks of the trade after noticing AB's work in maintaining and making new farm tools at a school fair)
7779512
wow. It's a good thing she only needed to be honest to become an EoH because your AJ is a bad person.
Seriously her own sister had to be brought like property so she could live her own life...
I just hope someone can teach her that slavery is bad before she can adopt her next unpaid worker.
7779556 Even in the show she's not exactly a good person. She's excessively prideful, stubborn to the point where it hurts even herself yet she refuses to change... And let's not forget she once literally ditched her ENTIRE life, family, and town just because she took home second instead of first. She has good qualities, but she also has some serious flaws as an individual.
So when developing her for my AU, given its rules and the likes, I made sure to emphasize her positive and negative traits while developing her. Since the apples follow the old ways to a T, she's locked her entire family into that. Hence why Pattern Steel had to basically buy Applebloom from the farm by compensating them for the lost revenue from her no longer working there. (Twilight called out AJ's bullshit on that one and forced her to pay Pattern back, but it still happened.)
She can also be kind and compassionate, naturally. She supports her little sister's romantic life, catered for their wedding. She does good things. But it's her stubborn nature and traditionalist values which when combined with Granny SMith's own tales of 'the way it's suposta be!' from 300 freaking years ago well... She winds up hurting her family. ESPECIALLY Big Mac, but spoilers there.
As for her being an element, well AJ is honest. She will almost never tell a lie in passing, and absolutely will never tell a lie if she's directly asked a question. She's honest even to the point of being mean or outright insulting. She wont tell a white lie to spare someone's feelings, she will be completely candied. Period. Which is why she's the Element of Honesty. The most valuable lesson she's learned so far in her life is when to just hold her tongue. Unfortunately, she has yet to learn that some traditions need to die and that progress is not to be feared.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
Applebloom, bring the shovel, so I can beat the shit outa Lost!
Days without incident:
1410Still haven't read but... already are you bringing it all to an end? But but but... the cuteness still not told!!!
7779894 That refrence made my day!
Well, everything has literally come crashing down, and into Twilight's house, I do not want to see that repair bill.
SO all your stories are culminating in this one epic tail? You have my undivided attention.
With all your stories coming together now, I have great fears! Please say this won't be the story to end all of your storieses!
Though i am enjoying this so far, a wild ride and our great villain finally making his move. Poor Applejack, what will Dash do when she gets home? SO excited for the next chapter!
7780259
7780414
7780344
Oh it's not over. Trust me, it is definitely not over...
7779894 XD 10/10 best refrence
7780076 "You know what just to be safe..."
0-17780259 AN end? Possibly. If our heroes fail. If not? Well, then it's an adventure type crossover.
7780344
As many as I can make fit, yes.
7780414 If this does end the world, I still have like 256 million years before this point to fill with stories.
7780841
Well that is a relief then! I don't want to have the stories all end! Even if all falls in this one and the new ones are from the past, that would still be better than the end being the end?
7781475 Well I'm not going to stop anytime soon... This is how I eat >>
7781656
True, I must not forget that. :P As long as we keep 'feeding' you, you can continue writing.
I have a feeling this one is going to be one of the most intense and chaotic stories yet.
On a side note; a 99 million year old, feathered dinosaur tail preserved in tree resin has been discovered. You can see the flipen individual feathers! There is no denying it now!
7781924 When did I ever deny it? Avians are descended from dinos. Of course later period dinos had feathers or feather-like coverings. They had to evolve at some point and that shit takes more than a few millions of years.
7781937 Never said you denyed it, just thought it was awsome to have some completly solid proof now. Keeps getting me excited, I'm going to have some trouble trying to sleeping.
/me looks at the disclaimer.
...oh... Damnit, well I guess it's time to go read verse a.
I'll be back, just have a fair bit of unread stuff I haven't gotten to.
7781979 You can entirely skip the Sea of Sky story. And if you really don't want to read them, this will explain enough internally. Also A is unfinished because um... the world ends on the 12th of Snowfall 15 EoH... The last written in chapter of each book >> (Get it? The author stopped so the world ended.)
So... Dash's uncle is Flash. Fitting
Curiously, Dash also has the key to solve this quite easily if she only reveals the secret... That is, once they find out about Dawn. It will be specially funny if he tries to control her. It shall fail most spectacularly
I hope, that is...
Well, nice start. More when?
Edit: also, it's an all in bet for Dawn. If he fails here Discord will annihilate him, no holds barrelled. Considering his eternity is at risk, I do believe he'll pull all stops.
"There are no brakes in the tape train" would be the most fitting analogy. Let's hope equestria can recover from it.
7782764 You're the first person to comment on that. It's almost like everyone forgot I made this earlier this year. Meep even posted it in a blog...
That reminds me, I need to update it for new additions since its creation.
7782764 I thought more people would comment on that slip of her tongue, but no XD More soon.
Poor Applejack...
Hmm. Meep, I'm glad you clarified about
the sexiest characterAlpha Phoenix having exaggerated her literal FLOPS when talking to Princess Purple Smart. Otherwise the very literal entropy demon issue would cause some trouble for the Dawn and Dusk plot by energetically overshadowing both of them.7783057 Unfortunately, she's the most logical target to choose if you're going to ensure the element's can't be used. (ALso, in my AU, Earth Ponies have some useful tricks.)
7783063
media.tenor.co/images/d38837642506643f0b01d327021224fd/raw
I'm not entirely sure what you just said...
7783084 It's probably best if you don't worry about it.
Mildly disappointed by the lack of "next chapter >"
:P
7783396 It's been a day, and it was almost a 12k chapter. Get over it you big baby.
7783424 that's why it's mild
7783454 It's okay. I'm going for an NFire sized 97k next chapter.
7783481 don't tease us like that.
tease us like that all you want
7783481 ohhh boi
that sounds scary D:
popmannn, I know a place you can hide for a bit
I actually stopped reading to watch that episode of top gear. Damn that truck can take some hits!. Respect
Damn now I have a whole lot of reading to catch up on. Because I am very lost. Oh well. Let's talk about this in a few weeks.
Whoops, totally missed this when it was originally posted, thought to go look when I saw the Patreon new year's message.
Man, poor AJ.
Aww, even original universe Phee went bad? I know that I didn't fully approve of some of her actions, but I thought that she was safe enough overall.
Now that's not good.
Well, at least they aren't completely destroyed.
Dayum, I really gotta pay more attention to when you release your stuff. Ah well, at least I have quite a bit to read now.
Mmm, this truck has got to be the best truck ever created. Quite literally the embodiment of "takes a lickin and keeps on ticken".
Quite an explosive chapter, that's for sure, and its looking like there are quite a few more allies arriving upon the horizon. Onwards!
im so sorry meep
i haven't read any of your new storys becuse the tags were diffrent and i didnt think they would be as good but just one one chapter was all i needed to see its sooooooooo good ill be putting this at the top of my very long list cus ur story's that good
(i feel like if twilight just found out her fav book just got a sequal (booklust))
I'm so lost. Like, I understand what's happening, but there is just so many "presumptions about the reader having prior knowledge" that I had to REALLY stretch my ability to read context clues to maintain my tenuous hold on this story as I read JUST chapter one. Fuck. I need to go read whatever you posted before this, but seeing the sheer volume it might be a while. I still need to finish skirt's Austreoh series. I'm like, almost one third done with it. I'll be back here in several months to start again, if all goes well. Ciao.
Bold of you to assume we'll have GTA 7 by 2028. We literally got tree shrimp before GTA 6.
11769691 I'll admit that it seemed more likely to happen soon 8 years ago when I wrote this.