"Teleporter complete," Gary finally intoned.
"Dammit!" Church snapped irritably as he slipped out of sleep mode. "And I was so close to actually completing Skyrim!"(1)
"Slightly ahead of schedule," Gary offered apologetically.
"Whatever, Maud's more important anyway," Church grunted as he shut down the games. "Do you have the coordinates to send me to Blood Gulch?"
"Yes," Gary confirmed. "Do you have a plan yet?"
"Yeah, I was running simulations concurrently while playing games and enjoying reliving time with Maud and Texas," Church responded easily, rolling his eyes.
"And?"
"First things first, keep Captain Flowers from dying and hide him away somewhere so he can help me once we catch up to important events, while also leaving behind a fake body to prevent anyone from realizing what's happened," Church explained readily. "I've already checked, and the matter generators Drunk Simmons built into this body can generate a dead duplicate of a person with ease. ...I don't know whether to be surprised or not that there are matter generators."
"You do not wish to prevent yourself from dying?" Gary asked in surprise.
"If I did that, Texas would never get called to Blood Gulch," Church answered readily. "Since my death didn't upset Maud, I'm not about to risk upsetting her by making her never meet her Mom."
Gary was silent for a time. "You believe S.C. is capable of perceiving events outside the flow of time?"
"I wouldn't put it past her," Church confirmed. "Anyway, if I succeed in preventing Captain Flowers' death, then we'll sneak out to this facility and hide out in one of the out of the way corners until after I hear the recorded message playing, then figure out what to do from there."
"Why wait until the recorded message plays?" Gary inquired curiously. "Could you not interfere before then?"
"Narrative causality says that if I recorded a message for Maud, she's already heard it in her own timeline, and I don't want to give her a headache from a paradox," Church countered flatly.
Gary was silent for a time. "That does not compute."
"Hang around with Maud long enough, and Caboose starts to make sense," Church explained readily.
"That does not help."
"Don't worry about it," Church reassured him. "Send me out Gary. See you in a few hundred years."
"Goodbye," Gary offered as Church vanished in a flash of light.
Church blinked as he warped into Blood Gulch, finding himself staring at Red Base. "Okay, time to figure out when I am..." Turning, he rushed towards Blue Base. Before long, he reached the Base, and saw himself and Maud heading towards the kitchen. "Okay, Captain Flowers normally took care of everything in the kitchen, and after he died Maud took care of making sure everyone ate. So the only time I went into the kitchen with Maud...was her birthday! I'm just in time!" He quickly rushed into the base.
He got there just in time to see Captain Flowers looking at the cake. "Mmm, that does look good," he murmured thoughtfully. "I hope Private Church won't mind if I try some-"
"Captain, stop!" Church insisted quietly as he got to him.
"Private!" Flowers gasped out in surprise. "You startled me. I thought you were in the kitchen with..." His voice trailed off as he turned and saw Church and Maud in the kitchen. "...there are two of you. Why are there two of you?"
"I'm from the future," Church explained readily. "It's a long story, but-"
"You came all the way from the future to stop me from eating your cake?" Flowers asked in shock. "Well, if it's that important to you I'll leave it for you, but I'll need to teach you about sharing-"
"It's not about the cake!" Church insisted intensely. "Well, it is, but not about you eating it! Well, it is that, but I don't mind you having some. You just need to take this injection first! Otherwise you'll die of a massive heart attack from how sweet it is!" Church held out the medical dispenser.
Flowers stared at Church for a time. "Private, you know it's not actually medically possible to have a heart attack from too much sugar, right? That's completely different symptoms."
Church blinked for a time. "...huh. You know, given Doc still hadn't figured out why his med scanner turns pink when he points it at Maud, I really should have questioned his diagnosis-"
"In fact," Flowers continued, "the only thing that would have caused a heart attack was if someone had given me a medical injection to prevent one that happened to contain aspirin." Seeing Church's confused stare, he elaborated, "I'm deathly allergic to aspirin."
Church stared down at the injector he was holding. "...wow. Really dodged a bullet on that one. Still, to preserve the timeline, we need to get going."
"If the timeline has me dying-" Flowers began.
"When Simmons gets drunk, he makes super tech," Church explained readily. "Including this robot body I'm currently using since I died and came back as a ghost. It can turn into a pony and it has matter generators. I'll just make a dead copy of you to leave here while we book it." He turned to the spot he remembered Flowers' body lying.
"Private, I'm beginning to question your sanity-" Flowers voice cut off when he saw energy gathering to take the shape an exact duplicate of him, right down to the Freelancer armor. "...well blow me down..." he murmured in awe.
"Yeah," Church agreed smugly. "Tex was really impressed by it, too."
"Wait, Agent Texas comes to Blood Gulch?" Flowers asked in surprise.
"Yeah," Church confirmed ruefully. "Tucker calls her in after I die, since Maud sees her as Mom."
"And...how does Texas take that?" Flowers asked curiously, using eye blinks to deactivate the transponders in his armor so he wouldn't give off any signals to the Freelancer program.
"She's actually a surprisingly good mother, and agrees to it rather readily," Church answered easily.
"...any chance we could stick around long enough to see that?" Flowers asked hopefully as he turned to follow Church out.
"We can come back-oh!" Church ducked back and grabbed the slice of cake. "Almost forgot! Besides, I never got to finish it."
"Nice attention to detail, Private," Flowers praised warmly as the pair rushed off. "So we'll have quite some time before we catch up to everyone else?"
"Oh yeah," Church confirmed. "A long while."
"Good," Flowers agreed. "Because I have a lot to tell you, and I'm not certain how you'll take it..."
Just as they exited the chamber, Doc stepped in. Seeing the dead body, he gasped in dismay. "This is terrible!" he screamed out, immediately drawing attention.
Church then ducked in behind himself and Maud as everyone looked. "Always did wonder how one went missing," he murmured softly as he snagged one of the muffins he and Maud had been baking. "Thought I'd miscounted." With that, he dashed off with Captain Flowers.
(1) Thanks, Des_Shinta, I just had to use this.
The detouring shenanigans begins!
No matter what Church says, we all know it was Derpy that actually took that muffin.
UPDATE! And always, it is glorious.
You're Welcome, happy to use my snarking powers for good.
LETS DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
And here I never got past the first part of Whirlwind Sprint.
Weirder shit has happened.
Oh wow.
Indeed.
Remove down or replace it by up and that sentence becomes a lot funnier.
The plot tickens.
It would appear that Twilight has started a craze of fucking with the laws of causality and now Church wants in on it.
(sits in a corner all by himself well a bet table is set up with a note on it)
8950670
Yeah, that sums it up. :D
Time travel is fun.
Oh my God best chapter ever
8950670
That be a reference to Popeye the Sailor Man for the "well blow me down". Now I wonder where Olive Oil is...
Good thing ⛪ didn't become an Aspirin doctor, he's terrible at it.
Aw, no ironic causing of one's own death...
Church was surprisingly well-informed about the time travel and paradox. Is this one of the lesson for the Freelancers?
By the way, why you named this chapter like this? Everyone know this story is all about insanity from the time they finished the first chapter.
8950786
I was about to ask about Pinkie, then remembered she came afterwards...
Err, she DID come afterwards right?
8951181
I frequently make patterns of chapter titles, often based on song lyrics.
8951198
Don't tell me all these chapters' name were from one song's lyric? What song was that? I'm not that knowledgable in songs.
8951205
Next chapter will tell you.
8951192
Who knows, they fucked with causality
8951205 8951245
You're going to make him wait a week? Wow, how utterly cruel.
Maybe he'll figure out a way to warp time himself to avoid the torment.
Nobody completes Skyrim, well except the Completionist. And he has to re-complete it, at the time of posting this. Hell I had to break the game into three runs, just to finish everything.
Good chapter by the way, nice to see all that early stuff for Flowers, wasn't just to kill him off like in canon RvB.
8951205
If it helps any, the current set of references started with a jump to the left. Just Googling "a jump to the left" may be enough (for me, autocomplete suggests the step to the right, and the entire first page of results are right) but Google's search results are based on more than just your search text, so it might take a bit more to narrow it down.
On the other hand, it's hard to see why anyone would be Googling a jump to the left and not looking for this particular song.
Here's hoping Agent Florida doesn't become a problem...
8950786 I now really want drunk/sober Simmons and PWNY Twilight to discuss physics
8951372
For me, I only know one song that has lyric 'A Jump to the Left' and 'Hands on Hips' but I don't think it contains the others. Rather than Googling it, I would wait for Tatsurou-sensei's answer in the next chapter - since he promised it.
Woot, new territory with Flowers apparently defecting from the Director's plans! I guess Maud won him over big time!
8951628
Oh ya that would be the Ratchet and Clank inhanced Twilight for a second I was thinking the tumblr AsilumTwilight
8951328
Even in canon he came back for one or two episodes and gets killed by Sarg( or Washington (or someplan of omaly))
8951710
Fair enough.
I've no idea what other song (if any) you might be thinking of, but I'm guessing next chapter will have a 6 word title (though there's a reasonable chance it'll just be two words instead).
That reminds me; I need to finish Skyrim, too.
8951430
Sure, the original Tex has succeeded in missions, but every time she tried to save Alpha, she failed.
Huh. I guess the infusion of genre-savviness means these time travel shenanigans are going to work out far better than they did in canon.
8952173
at times they are.
Ok I just finished reading this and I got to say...damn this was an enjoyable read. No seriously you took the already craziness of RvB and upon throwing in just one pony(Maud) managed to not only take this to a new level of crazy but also made it more enjoyable than the original series. The references and the abilities given to the characters, the sheer enjoyable randomness of it all has really made this story wonderful to read. I'm honestly interested in seeing how this will continue to play out and even more so what stuff you have planned for future chapters to screw with the rest of the universe as the crew of Blood Gulch, Maud and Agent Texas deal with the stuff they bring to the table. Which if DRUNK SCIENCE Simmons has anything to say about it might include a black hole gun.
I never thought Church was one to leave an unconscious body.
Bow Chicka Bow Wow.
Wait, I thought they hadn't actually travelled through time. Did Maud actually change things so much that time travel happened?
8952317
She tried once and actually got to him. But he was broken then. She could have forced him to come. Epsilon Tex failed because that's how Epilson's memory of her is while Beta Tex is a more accurate copy of Alison.
Huh, Flowers is alive. That's going to throw quite a wrench into things. I'm definitely looking forwards to seeing where this divergence goes.
let's do the time warp again!!
8951205
oh i can remember doing this Time Warp before...LETS DO IT AGAIN!
This is scenario is both accurate and acceptable, always wondered why Flowers never said he was allergic to aspirin when Church - in the RVB series - told him to take one, probably because he needed to hide his true identity and purpose in Blood Gulch... even in death