Story Scraps Part 3

To continue on with AJUO: Apocalyptica, I do have to admit this is where the idea as a whole started to get "fuzzy" if you will. I'd mentally charted out most everything up until this point in time, but when it comes to the middle of my stories everything goes up in the air in terms of what I definitively want. I start strong and end strong with ideas; I know where I am, and where I want to end up, but finding the route in the middle is the hardest part. With that said, let's continue.

In Ponyville, Adam, Lyra, Megan, the Doctor, and the Mane 6 retreat into the Tardis to avoid the zombie horde. Twilight's crystal shard begins to resonate loudly and glow, and the console of the Tardis seems to respond, illuminating the socket where the Doctor's Sonic Screwdrivers are manufactured. Intrinsically understanding what it wants, Twilight inserts the crystal, and the Tardis revs to life, transporting them away from Ponyville, Earth, and the known universes. The Doctor, after seeing that they've managed to make contact with another planet inside another universe, postulates that the crystal is a map, although he's unsure if it's the crystal that's providing the coordinates to the Tardis, or if the Tardis is interpolating the crystal's patterns into a map.

At this point the narrative was to jump through multiple alternate realities, some closer to what we might expect, and others more bizarre. Races not covered by the canon for instance, like cloud dwelling friendly spiders that weave puffs and storms, or haughty deer creatures.

There of course would be alternate universes for funzies, like a gender-bent alternate Equestria set in a Prohibition style time period where the equivalent of the Italian and Irish mobs are run by the legitimate businessponies Elusive and Applejack. Bubble Berry is a down on his luck Private Eye with a drinking problem whose partner, a still female Twilight Sparkle, has gone missing, possibly a victim of a serial killer called the Butterfly Murderer. The Mayor, the Celestia analogue named Solaris, is quite obviously corrupt and taking kickbacks from the mobs, but it's difficult to tell who manipulates who. There's rumors that he even murdered his own brother to keep him from snitching to the authorities. Mild mannered playboy industrialist Rainbow Blitz doesn't seem to care about any of this, but ponies do wonder what he gets up to at night. Perhaps he's in fact the vigilante the Chromatic Blur?

Another idea I entertained was one where instead of Celestia backing down from creating a Solar Empire several hundred years ago after talking to Starswirl the Bearded, she instead went ahead and remained the tyrant she was, and in the present day is the god-empress Sol Invicta of the single nation-state of Equestria, which now encompasses the entire planet. Sunset Shimmer serves as her high priestess, and Twilight is spiritually crushed by seeing a version of her good teacher devolving into a power hungry madpony. This arc was to end with the travelers finding a way to break Sunset Shimmer's faith in Celestia, and inspiring her to start an insurgency, and one day perhaps a full revolution against the god-empress.

In any and all of these segments of the story, the cast members would pick up artifacts that would give them extraordinary powers. Applejack would acquire plant growing, earth shaking powers. Fluttershy could take on characteristics of any creature in the animal kingdom. Rainbow Dash would become continuously enhanced by her suit until she could do local area weather control through thought alone. Pinkie Pie could self-replicate like that one pool from Season 3 (I think that's when that happened.) Rarity can imagine things into reality just like that one dark tome that drove her kinda crazy. Adam would get a tune up on his Dominion Gauntlet from a parallel reality where Sol never rapidly died and thus humanity remained the only sentient power on the planet. Twilight, however, never receives a new power, but is perplexed that in every reality in which they travel there is a version of her; always female, always curious and knowledgeable, dubious about friendship initially. Why is she the commonality in them all?

At last, the crystal brings them back to their Equestria. What's left of it. When the Tardis lands, it's all rock and plateaus. The Tardis' local chronometer measures that they've traveled only ten years into the future, but things look barren, like a world abandoned. Suddenly a massive dragon lich stampedes towards them, and a team of very much alive beings are after it. A giant Diamond Dog shaped mech bursts out of the earth to crawl up it's hide and begins to carve a hole into it's side. A small dragon flies into the depths of the beast, but flies out with a scepter in her clutches. An earth pony sniper tries to keep the behemoth distracted while a pegasus drives a hovercraft straight into it's chest, jumping free as it detonates. With the travelers' help the group manages to put down the dragon lich. Ember the Dragon, having reclaimed the scepter her father swallowed, is now Dragon Lord, and can politically unite the dragons so she can take the fight to the Revenants, or Revs for short. The pegasus, whose face is covered with a helmet, gives Rainbow Dash a massive hug, and begins to quietly sob. Initially of course she's uncomfortable and bewildered, until the pegasus removes her helmet, revealing herself as Scootaloo. The sniper also reveals himself to be Braeburn, while the Diamond Dog mech is piloted by Dinky Doo. After a brief exchange of talk, and promises that all will be told soon, the entire group and Tardis are transported aboard Vanguard via tractor beam.

Almost the entire remaining population of planet Earth is onboard. There are some pockets of survival under the earth, but they're not a resistance, and they're being overcome by the Revs. Sombra and his hordes have exterminated every living thing they can find. There are some survivors of note. The Pie sisters are alive, with Marble so traumatized by her own experiences that she is functionally mute. Pinkie is quickly commandeered into making explosives, as she still has the knowledge from her days on the rock farm at home, and knowledge is a precious commodity. Big Mac survived. Physically, anyway. The Changeling Hive lost all of it's Candidates, and no Royal Jelly was saved to make another one. Since he has the last remaining residual connection to the old regime, the Changelings consider him their Hive Father, and have garbed him in chitinous armor that acts as an adrenal and steroidal enhancement. They've also incorporated him into the Hive Mind partially, and so he's...off compared to regular ponies. As regular as they can be in the world now manifest. Apple Bloom is a junior lab assistant under an aging Bunsen Burner, who has begun upgrading himself with an ocular replacement for his right eye that looks like an eyepatch, which connects him to Vanguard's entire pilot system and data-grid. His mechanoid self is also present, and they despise each other. Sweetie Belle is a performer/singer at a local bar, and Rarity is amazed and proud of how she has grown up in her absence. Spike, older and much wiser than even Twilight would have expected, acts as a peacemaker between the various people groups and the ruling council that governs the waning nations of the world. The council members are both Bunsen Burners, Princess Cadence, the President of a now united Griffonia, the Chancellor of the Canine Republics (the Diamond Dog monarch is missing, presumed dead on the surface), Sunset Shimmer, and other delegates.

In an info dump on the state of the world to Twilight, Adam, and the Doctor, the world can be rebuilt from Vanguard, but the surface must be cleared and retaken. Sombra is still out there with the mechanoid Bunsen Burner's ship, the Morningstar, but is currently boiling away the Pacifica Ocean. If they can get a team onboard, they can override and shutdown the safety protocols on the navigation system, and have it warp into the heart of the sun. It will be tough, and the world won't be like it was for nearly two centuries, but the world will still be theirs. Before the mission takes place, the Doctor hears the situation that happened with both Januses, the older killing the younger. He's greatly worried and perplexed, as this is a classical temporal paradox, yet the universe remains intact.

Further interviews are done, and the mechanoid Bunsen Burner reveals he and the Morningstar are from a time 80 years in the future relative to the day Sombra made planetfall. In the alternate timeline described by Janus in Revival of Chaos, Janus was killed in utero by Queen Chrysalis. Discord was thus never killed by Adam or Lyra either, and due to his unrestrained power corrupted the Earth so badly that life was unsustainable. The Morningstar was built by the remnants of their own races, and launched to head out of the Solar System to worlds which had been previously charted but never settled by humans due to their infighting and abrupt extinction after Discord's birth. The ship encountered an anomaly in space, and Discord boarded the ship, but under the enslavement of Sombra, who quickly began zombifying Bunsen's crew. The mechanoid was able to make his escape, and meant to chart a course back in time to before the events that created his world, but was badly damaged before his jump through space and time, and was off by fifty years. His body, however, was put to use in augmenting technology to give Equestrians half a chance against the hordes, as well as securing the events of the timeline. Sombra, however, followed him somehow, creating this universe's own downfall.

A team is launched to take out the Morningstar. Beyond the Doctor being present, I didn't really nail down who else would be going. The ship has been overtaken with crystal growths, and unnerving wombs that birth shoggoth-like entities from the used up husks of revenants. The Doctor breaks off from the others in the party to do his own investigation, only to find Discord. While the alternate Draconequus is alive, he is merged into a machine called the Ouroboros Drive, which uses his chaotic nature to be able to transport the Morningstar to anywhere at anytime. He has to communicate telepathically because Sombra ripped out his tongue, and made it so that it would never heal. For this alone, Discord is furious and wants him dead in an infinite number of ways. All the same, he is still intrigued by the Time Lord's presence, remarking he's surprised there is another one like him. The Doctor's heart quivers: another Time Lord? One who had escaped the Time War? Discord tells him where to find her, on the condition that he kill Sombra. Creatively. Reluctantly, the Doctor agrees.

Into the bowels of the ship he runs, outmaneuvering tentacled monstrosities as he goes. Finally he comes to a room. Sombra's trophy room. Barbarically removed unicorn horns and wings are placed on the walls. Some are alicorns. Sombra has been to other universes, conquering other realities. He finds Sol Invicta's horn and wings. He's been tracking the Tardis. All this time he was following them. They were bringing worlds to slaughter. How though? A Cloister bell drones. At last the Doctor sees it. The key trophy to the room is a Tardis. Like his, but different. It's disguised as a Chinese linen closet, circa the 1890s. Inside, the Doctor finds an asian woman chained to the console. She's clearly been tortured. The console room has been gutted and savagely reconverted. The Doctor recognizes it as a Paradox Machine. Sombra has had the power to ravage time since his first planetfall, yet with all this power he's done comparatively small acts like conquering planets across realities. What is he waiting for? The woman, not realizing he too is a Time Lord, tries to explain that she was headed to Gallifrey to fight the invading Sontarans when she was blindsided and captured by this vessel. Sombra needs to be stopped, and she has the thing that might just do it. She directs him to a room deep in the Tardis, where he finds a case, with a weapon he recognizes, and a key to match. Solemnly, he takes both, recognizing his duty to time and to the millions, perhaps billions of lives destroyed by the dark alicorn. He ask the woman's name. Though she's at first reluctant to give it, she does reveal it: the Doctor. She then breathes her last. There is no regeneration.

The ship is successfully sabotaged, and the Morningstar is ready to warp into the sun. Discord, however, prevents the Ouroboros drive from activating. He beams a thought to Bunsen Burner, telling him to add the weight of both the Morningstar and Vanguard together. The old pony does. The weight of both ships, missing the lifeboats and passengers, is an exact match for the object that appeared in the sun on the 17th of September, 2268, and started the rapid aging and death of Sol. The reactors of both ships created the exotic matter that did the deed, and which helped to create the force of magic in this universe. Bunsen Burner begins an emergency evacuation of the Vanguard, ejecting personnel flotilla to the Earth's surface. Understanding now that they are securing the past and are part of the temporal chain of events, the Doctor evacuates the Mane 6, Adam, Lyra, and Megan. As the last of them make it aboard, the Vanguard positions itself above the Morningstar, and docks/interlocks with it. Just as Sombra realizes what's going on, Discord activates the Ouroboros Drive, shifting himself, the mad alicorn, and Bunsen Burner into the heart of the sun 1500 years in the past.

The Tardis tries to escape the wavefront of the exotic particles, but is knocked back to Earth, only two weeks into the future. There's nothing left. The planet is iced over. The sun is dead. It doesn't even make sense as too why. A single survivor is found, Trixie Lulamoon. As they carry her back to the Tardis, morale is absolutely destroyed. Everything is gone. Everyone is gone. There's nowhere left to go. Suddenly, a shadow appears on the horizon, a dark cloud with greenish, red eyes. Everyone makes a run for it, but the Doctor stands his ground. Opening the case that his alternate self gave him, he pulls out a rifle looking device, and slots an old iron key into it's side. The Key of Rassilon activates the weapon, and the DeMat gun comes online. Sombra mockingly laughs at him, telling him death will find him, if not here, then on Trenzalore. The Doctor fires the weapon, a cage of sorts materializing around the shadowy beast, before it disappeared in a flash of yellow-orange light.

As he comes inside, the Doctor begins to check his instrumentation silently. With Sombra nullified from the timeline, hopefully things should snap back to a temporal stability. Given everything he did, though, perhaps instead the universe will be torn apart, or just outright broken. Everything seems to be turning out fine, until Trixie mentions she can remember Sombra. Since she hasn't been in the Tardis long enough to gain it's ability for temporal tamper-proof memories, it can only mean one thing. Trixie's body contorts and transforms, bursting into a mass of dark energy and tentacles. Sombra tricked them all. It was Janus, or what was left of him that Sombra could puppet, that was removed from the timeline. The world outside is what happens when he doesn't intervene to change events to make the Elements of Harmony, which recreated the world. Sombra reaches for the crystal in the console, but the Tardis retracts it. A flash of light consumes everyone, and they find themselves in a different control room. The Tardis ejected the primary control room, transforming it into thrust away from Sombra, and transported everyone else into a saved control room.

The last coordinates are locked in, and the Tardis lands in a complete different place. There is snow, but it's warm. Everything feels peaceful. Right. It's more unnerving than it should be, but everyone's spirits are raised. A crystal spire rises in the near distance, and three massive causeways into a great city greet them. Grass more lush than any they've ever seen is present in the parks. Rivers of clearest water flow in fountains and down troughs in the streets, and the streets themselves are solid gold. The city is bigger on the inside, but the technology is different from that of the Time Lords, if it is technology at all. Objects fly overhead that appear to be balls of energy surrounded by rotated metal rings with eyes or perhaps camera lenses on them. A being approaches them, one whose species matches the one who observes it, except the Doctor. It appears as a man to the humans, an alicorn to the ponies, and to the Doctor as a binary yellow dwarf star system, surrounded by crystalline and flesh limbs and helmet. They are expected, apparently, and are ushered towards the spire. Along the way they pass many species, each working, playing, or resting, all of it done joyously and without a shred of putting on an act. They even recognize some individuals in the crowd, all of whom are most definitely dead, not that you'd know it from looking at them. They look more vital and lively than they ever did in real life. What indeed is this place?

The group are ushered into a room not unlike a hospital room. In it is a bed, and in that bed lies what appears to Adam as an old man, so old that only a few wisps of hair are left on his head. The being identifies itself as Veritas. In the beginning, it created all things. Then it had a disagreement with itself. In so doing, it split in two. When they were one, they were omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Now, only Veritas is Omniscient, and it's other half, Permaeus, is Omnipresent. Permaeus is Sombra's master, and has given him agency in the world on his behalf. Permaeus wants to join with Veritas and consume him, so that it can remake the universe as it wants, and only as it wants. The crystal in Twilight's possession acted as both lock and key, requiring they traverse through certain acoustic universes, and as each chord was struck it gave them entry to this, the place before the first universe, outside the universe. The Doctor is naturally incredulous to all this, but Adam is receptive, as is Twilight. Time is short, though. Permaeus is at the gates to the Crystal City, and soon there will be nothing Veritas can do to hold it back. As the others leave, he catches hold of Adam weakly, and tells him that he was the one to keep him alive in the Void between Worlds on his first journey. He needs his help now though to fix everything, and to put things right. However, there is a cost. Adam's conduit to magic in the Dominion Gauntlet will allow Veritas to tap into power throughout the universe, and then he can absorb Permaeus, beating him at his own game. To do this, though, means Adam has to merge with him, sacrificing his life, his individuality, everything.

Adam doesn't take this well, obviously. Thinking back over his life, he can't help but feel like he has been a cosmic chewtoy, and if this Veritas is actually something like God, then it's out and out told him that he's been allowed to ripen, only to now be used. At the same time, balancing it all out, one life to save potentially all of existence is a fair trade. Eventually he makes his decision, and accepts what he has to do. Veritas tells him to go deeper into the spire to find the Heart. Eventually he does find the Crystal Heart, and knowledge pours into him. The worlds are connected together, like Yggdrasil, the aspects of Veritas and Permaeus are connected like Ying and Yang, each part of and separate from the other, and that a sacrifice must be made, to save everyone. His name, Adam, is even part of this metaphysical connection. Man, who dies, and gives life to sons of man. It is time. Adam slams the Dominion Gauntlet into the Crystal Heart, and it begins to disintegrate his arm. The Void has been deferred for so many years now, but the Heart consumes him. With a pulse, it begins to glow, and the city shifts and changes. Veritas' eyes open wide, and a great power courses through them before he too disintegrates.

The city's crystalline shape contorts into legs, a torso, and arms, with at last a head with glowing eyes. A primordial entity made of crystal rises, as a dark force appears on the edge of the horizon. Permaeus has come with Sombra, now joined with him as Adam has joined with Veritas. It comes with multiple corruptions, and with the souls of those it enthralled across all time and space. Veritas and Permaeus do combat at a higher plane of existence, but those left behind do fight, whether human, pony, dog, griffon, or any other species. Personalities and figures from all across time join the fight. Richard the Lionheart and Saladin go into battle at each other's side, each yelling 'God is great.' Dr. Martin Luther King rebukes and forces back nightmares with his empowered words, and Ghandi sits and meditates, obliterating everything evil around him. These are some of the human champions, but there are many more, and of other species. All of them fight back against the dark, keeping a pale light alive. Eventually, Veritas triumphs, and Permaeus is struck down, Sombra with him. As Veritas reintegrates with Permaeus, everything is consumed with light.

Adam stands before what appears to be a bacterium; a bacterium whose cell wall is made of ethereal mathematical equations. It was Veritas and Permaeus. Now? I AM. Together, they restructure the timeline, scrubbing the influence of all negative parties: Discord, Sombra, and Janus. Now there will be no further manipulations. Order, Chaos, Oblivion; none of these shall rule. The philosophy that should rule is obvious: Harmony. Who, however, can be trusted with such force? Adam thinks, and smiles. He knows exactly who.

The spirits of Janus and Discord are called forth by I AM. Twilight Sparkle is in their midst as well, taking it all in, as I AM has already spoken to her. Discord is of course unrepentant in his role for the course of events that causes this universal crash and restructure. Janus is, but blames Discord. In the end, both will do their part in the recreation of all things. They are dissolved, and their essences are transferred into Twilight. Red and Blue meet together, and as one become purple. Everything dissolves to white.

After the whiteness comes color. Adam blurrily awakes in a field outside Ponyville, the one right in front Bon Bon and Lyra's old cottage. His left arm feels different. With a start he realizes it's flesh and blood again. He clenches his fist, and white sparks appear. The others from the Tardis are there as well. They remember everything, but they are back to the same day as when everything started. Three years were spent aboard the Tardis travelling across universes, and it's like nothing happened. Nobody remembers anything of what happened, because it never did for them. Things are different though. So very different. Twilight has her wings. She is the Embodiment of Harmony now. There are humans now as well, thousands of them in the field, resurrected from when Discord killed them, and given a place in the world once more. There are other species as well, like Kirin. The world is old and new once again.

It's a world thought impossible. THE END

Alright. That ends the AJUO Trilogy. I did have one last idea in the works though. A sequel to the trilogy, and a story to throw all the later seasons into. Check in soon if you're interested in that sort of idea!