Postscript
Javelin
Epilogue
Seven Months Later
Twilight waited patiently throughout the day, appearing to pay no attention whatsoever to the small box on the table with her address on it; a box with “Equestria Acoustics” as the sender. Finally, after a liberal application of warm milk, Spike went to bed.
When she was sure she was alone (and likely the only pony still awake in Ponyville), she opened the box. There, nestled in a sea of packing peanut shells, lay the Trottman. “Unit Number 2” a label on its side proudly proclaimed. The purple unicorn levitated a slim paper manual out of the box and quickly perused it: as Vinyl had predicted, operation of the device was incredibly simple. There were instructions for using unicorn magic to charge the device, but Twilight saw that Vinyl had thoughtfully done this for her already. Nodding in satisfaction, she dropped the manual into the box, added a rolled-up pile of parchment, a pen and ink, and then floated the lot ahead of her down the stairs and into her laboratory.
This room, little used since the unfortunate affair with Pinkie’s tail, had been extensively reinforced to handle the stray energies that might be expected of both a powerful magician and a budding scientist, and one with perhaps too much curiosity to boot. This had the added side effect of making it completely soundproof. Twilight placed the box she was levitating down next to a comfortable cushion. From a nearby cabinet, she pulled out the pair of headphones which Vinyl had given her as a parting gift, as well as the compact disc and booklet she had found in a cave in the Barrier Peaks that now no longer existed. A second consultation of the manual, and the disc was soon inside the tiny player, spinning itself up to speed. A little more magic was used to plug in the headphones and put them over her ears. Settled on the cushion, the writing supplies carefully arranged, and the individual controls of the device imprinted in her mind, she was ready to begin, and there was absolutely no chance that anybody but her would hear the slightest peep of what she was about to hear. She hoped.
The unicorn took a big breath and she looked unsteadily at the eerie, nearly incomprehensible illustration on the front cover of the CD’s booklet. “Just remember,” she told herself. “This is a work of fiction. A work…of fiction. Nothing you’re about to hear actually happened. This is for translation purposes only. Translation…and a glimpse into the minds of the Ancients. After all, that ‘Javelin’ song was rather nice!”
Having steeled herself, she opened the booklet to the first page of lyrics and gently tapped on the device’s Play button. She was expecting some music, some singing, but instead the male voice that appeared in her ears spoke to her, in a slow, clear voice. It bore an accent she could not place, and a timbre that she had heard only once before. She understood all but three of the words she heard, and although the use of the phrase “no one” was unknown to her, she soon figured out that it was the Ancient equivalent of “no pony”.
And these were the words that she heard:
No one would have believed, in the last years of the Nineteenth Century, that
affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few
even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this
with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.
These words were followed by the theme song of the album, a brooding and driving piece for strings, percussion, synthesizer and electric guitar.
There would be no sleep for Twilight Sparkle on that night.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is copyright Hasbro, with due respects to Laurel Faust for her brilliant re-imagining of the franchise. Most of the characters in the story are borrowed; Miss Addy Minster and Prince Steadfast are my own creations.
Pinkie Pie’s “serious” narration from Chapter 3 is stolen nearly word-for-word from the 1942 Goofy cartoon “The Olympic Champ”. “If–” was of course written by Rudyard Kipling. There’s also another obscure reference in the story, to an episode of a favorite cartoon series of mine from 1997, but I’ll leave it to the readers to find that.
The musical piece "Javelin" was composed by Michael Torke. The best recording of it I have encountered is on the “Summon the Heroes” CD by John Williams.
And the final piece heard was "Eve of War", from Jeff Wayne's Music Version of War of the Worlds. The illustration is based on the original album art by Mike Trim. The YouTube video selected to accompany it is Chris Oakley's imagined reconstruction of the 1978 promo video for the album. I wish to state for the record that I've seen the actual 1978 promo, and Mr. Oakley's reconstruction is much, much better than the original.
This story was inspired by my happening to hear "Javelin" and "Eve on War" on the same day. "Javelin" never fails to make me happy, and "Eve of War" never fails to make me uneasy, so I wondered: what would a creature that knows nothing else of humanity think of us if she heard those two songs?
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If there's only a reference for something, it is not counted as a crossover. I suggest you take off the Crossover tag, as it doesn't fit the story.
I will read later. Sounds promising!
900025
i believe the crossover is in reference to doctor whooves being in chapter one, and as in this context he really is THE doctor, it counts as crossover.
900223 But is he in the whole of the story?
900228
not at all, but it happened, and it should be properly noted. rather like how you could classify most teenage-oriented coming-of-age books/movies/etc as romance. it's unlikely that that's going to be the central aspect of the story, and some parts may even be way off base, but the romance happens, even if it is nothing more than sub-plot.
901025 I'm still unsure about it.
900025
Well personally, the reason I put in the tag and the note is because I've run across some readers who are virulently anti-Doctor Whooves. Thought I might as well save them the trouble of reading a story they are going to thumb down anyway.
903675 You can still have the note, but you don't really need the tag. People do read the description.
great fic and the to the end...Thunderchild is best part
I salute you McPoodle on all of the elements of your story.
Much love for the eve of war reference, love that song.
903675
I didn't thumb down the story, but I LOATHE Doctor Whooves. And it's entirely because I've read far too many stories where people just shoehorn him in where he doesn't belong, just for the sake of him being there, even when it's thematically jarring and completely destroys immersion. People tend to not think about what they're doing when they actually include him as a character in a story that isn't about him at all. Just mentioning other intellectual properties or other meta nonsense isn't so bad, especially if it comes from an established source of this sort of thing such as Pinkie Pie (though sometimes that goes way overboard). But when Doctor Whooves shows up, it establishes that he's ACTUALLY THERE in the story, and that brings a ton of mandatory baggage with it. If he's there, then he has a backstory. And almost every time, due to the nature of the character, that backstory necessarily involves all kinds of elements that don't mesh with the current story, such as aliens and time machines and all the other sci-fi elements he deals with. It tarnishes an otherwise enjoyable story, and seeing a good story ruined by one stupid thing that could be completely removed WITHOUT AFFECTING THE STORY AT ALL tends to really irritate me.
Thankfully this is not one of those stories. I was very glad to make it to the end of a story without having to change my upvote to a downvote for a change. I've found myself doing that a lot recently as the stories I read decline in quality during their progression, so this is something of a welcome relief.
Sorry for rambling. I felt my initial comment of loathing Doctor Whooves needed some explanation, and it kind of snowballed from there.
1348714
Thank you for your honest reply. You probably don't want to read the next three sequels to this story, as they are fairly drowning in Doctor Whooves-ishness. I needed to invent a group of ten or eleven individuals who use time travel and their general feeling of superiority to everyone and everything to ruin the whole of time for Equestria, and hey, guess what? They already exist!
1351456
After I made that post, I went upstairs to get some badly needed sleep. As I lay there, I realized that I had failed to properly explain a few things that would likely result in the creation of impressions I did not intend... but I was attempting to fall asleep at the time so I really didn't have a chance (read: I was too lazy ER I MEAN tired) to go back and correct them. For instance, I failed to clarify at the post's conclusion that I had realized I really don't hate Doctor Whooves, upon analysis I just hate the way authors USE him. This story has time travel, and the Doctor Whooves character, as a plot point. One that is actually woven into the story, rather than something that comes out of nowhere and clashes with everything.
There were a few more points, but I've forgotten what they were and they're not really important so who cares.
Aaanyway, the point is, I like this story. And, for whatever reason, your use of Doctor Whooves in it does not bother me. I have to say, seeing Doctor Whooves in a story and NOT feeling like my brain is being sandpapered is a strange and unexpected experience.
I'M ENJOYING YOUR STORIES AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME! :lunaonadolphinonthemoon.gif:
Excellent story.
1351456
So... that's an interesting interpretation of the Doctor's character(s). Especially considering the overall beneficial effect he has in this story.
Unless you mean the rest of the Time Lords, in which case oh my yes.
This story feels unfocused and unfinished. There are plenty of references to real-life things, and there are events that happen, but there is no real point to them.
1564155
Well, it's a slice of life story--Vinyl meets the Mane Six, giving the reader a chance to see them through her "eyes". If you desire more than that, then one point of this story was to establish my interpretation of Vinyl Scratch, and to foreshadow the developments I planned to unfold in the series that I hoped to write if it was well-received.
Well, it was well-received enough, so I wrote five more stories, and when they were done started on another series consisting of two more stories so far.
Of course if you are dissatisfied with this story, then I suppose it would be useless to ask you to read its sequels.
ARH MEH GURD!!! War of the worlds!
2168014
Not a Pratchett fan, sorry. I was aware that one of his books was called Interesting Times, though.
2168197
!
2897329
Yes, I know--I get that a lot.
On the other hand, at least I like Douglas Adams. I don't think I could possibly live with myself if I didn't like him.
2897862
This was an enjoyable story overall, and the prophecy given to Vinyl had a nice twist to it. I thought the characters worked well together and don't really have any complaints in those regards.
The tech was a little cringy to me just because I know some of how it works. A record (vinyl or otherwise) is the purest form of recording, as it's literally a jagged grove that captures a soundwave. That's why you can tape a sewing needle to a piece of paper, roll that into a cone, and stick it on a spinning record and you can hear what's been recorded. It's a pure wave form, there's no encoding and there's no compression being done. Given that their world still runs primarily analogue it seems, making the leap to working digital is huge. Twilight and Vinyl have to defeat at least 3 layers of encoding (pits and grooves on the CD, binary, compressed wave form. I may be missing a stage or two in there) to get the same thing.
But, whatever, that's my little bitch about it. Story wise, it was quite fine and I do applaud the choice for Music Version of War of the Worlds. I love that musical, despite not believing it was a real thing when I had first heard about it. Anyway, have your Like and carry on!
I don't plan to read this right now, but I Have to know what the capitalism tag is for.
10437607
Hmm...I never answered this.
I realize it is far too late for you, but somebody else might read this comment before reading the story and want an answer.
So, I'll give one: This story is about the founding of the revolutionary corporation known as Equestria Acoustics. The future of this company will be covered in the sequels. That's pretty capitalistic, if you ask me.