//------------------------------// // Chapter 24 // Story: Ponystuck // by confoundtheseponies //------------------------------// "Now, let's finish what I started," Mild said, drawing several knives out of his sylladex. Golden and Silver took a few cautious steps backwards, drawing their own weapons in preparation. Silver spun her axe around her a few times, testing its weight, reminding herself how it felt. It had been quite a while since the last time she had used it. Glancing to Golden, Silver saw that he was making similar preparations with his... uh. "Golden? I mean this as politely as possible, but what the fuck is that?" Silver asked, not needing to gesture at the umbrella that Golden was weilding threateningly. "It's an umbrella," Golden replied. And that, apparently, was that. There certainly wasn't time to debate his choice of weapon at that exact moment. "Enough!" Mild snapped, reaching outwards with his powers and seizing control of Golden's mind. "I don't care what you use as a weapon. If it can kill your friend then it's good enough for me!" Silver slowly turned to face Golden, just in time to duck as his umbrella was violently jabbed towards her. Quickly rolling to her hooves, she turned again in time to parry his next attack. "Golden, what are you-" Turning her axe sharply, Silver wrenched the umbrella out of his control and threw it to one side. "-doing!?" Almost as soon as she had finished the question, Golden's vacant expression faded into one of confusion. "What? What's going on?" Another fraction of a second, and Mild's attention was focused on Silver instead. Golden barely managed to leap out of the way as Silver's axe missed him by mere inches. "Silver! Stop it!" Attempting to make his way towards his umbrella, Golden was forced backwards as Silver quickly cut him off. He turned to Mild, who was simply watching Silver intently. "What are you doing?" "You'll thank me later," Mild said, as Golden barely ducked in time to keep his head. "I'm just tying up some loose ends." Before Golden could get to his hooves, Silver was above him, her axe about to swing down onto him. And then, suddenly, she was herself again, stumbling backwards as she dropped her axe in surprise. "Wha- what did I... agh, my head..." As Silver stumbled around in her confusion, and Golden quickly stood up and helped her, Mild angrily tried to determine what had gone wrong. This had never happened before, so what was different? Luckily he didn't need to wonder for long, as the answer soon identified itself. "It doesn't seem like tying up loose ends is your strong point," said the pony behind him. "Still, third time lucky, eh?" Turning angrily, Mild was both shocked and outraged to see the sight before him. "Then again, that assumes you live long enough to try again," Luna said. A dark blue hood was draped over her head, but her horn could still be seen, revealing her for the horned pegasus that she had become. A black symbol on her dark blue cloak taunted Mild, who cursed his own carelessness. How had he let this happen? Angrily seizing control of both Golden and Silver, Mild sent both ponies charging towards Luna with their weapons drawn. And then, slowly, calmly, Luna did her Voidy thing, and the two ponies halted with bemused expressions. Realisation dawned on Mild, as a shiver ran down the back of his spine. This was not good. "So, whoever you are..." Luna said, drawing her bow. "Are you feeling lucky?" If Mild had an answer to that question, it was lost beneath the sound of thirty arrows being fired in half as many seconds, followed by a confused mixture of expletives as Mild escaped into the Medium. *** The first thing that Star Swirl noticed as he arrived in the Land of Warmth and Frogs was that it was really, really uncomfortable. The second thing he noticed was that he couldn't see a thing in the glare reflected from the large lakes around Celestia's home. And then he noticed that he was being messaged by somepony he didn't recognise. [fractalAbomination began pestering amniomorphicWizard] FA: hey swirls FA: i assume everything's going pretty much according to plan, yeah? AW: Who are you? FA: oh right, yeah FA: time shit, forgot. ok, let me start again FA: i'm from the future, relatively speaking. or at least, i assume i am FA: the inverse could also be true FA: the basic point is, your session is kind of screwed, and it's sort of my fault FA: sorry about that AW: You're not making an awful lot of sense, here. AW: Why are we in trouble? FA: i think you've already met him AW: Ah. FA: so yeah, his name is mild, and he's technically my responsibility FA: but here's how this goes down. pretty soon we're all going to be all friendly and stuff FA: and we'll be talking a lot, and making important progress and everything FA: but before then, i need you to do something for me AW: Do something for you. AW: You, who is apparently the reason why my group is going to lose? FA: well, not something for me FA: something for the universe in general. both universes FA: which is basically the same thing FA: you're doing this for the good of the timeline AW: ... fine. AW: What is it? FA: i need you to send me a message. Over the next few minutes, the unknown pony gave rather detailed instruction to Star Swirl, until finally he prepared to leave. FA: and that should be it AW: I see. Very well. AW: I will trust you for now. FA: good. i'll speak to you later, but for now just continue succeeding for the time being AW: It might be a little late for that. Luna has already died. FA: yeah, but she ascended, didn't she? AW: I believe so. FA: then that was actually one of the best things that could have happened AW: Oh? Then maybe this Mild character isn't so bad after all. FA: oh no, he's a complete bastard FA: he's just very incompetent FA: anyway, just remember, no matter what past me says FA: don't tell me anything about what's going on, on account of the fact that past me is even more of a bitch than future me FA: future me is still a bitch, but the difference is that past me is dumber AW: :D FA: in fact, if past me asks if this is future me's doing, by which i mean my doing, which it is FA: tell him that it isn't FA: anyway, i have stuff to take care of, so yeah FA: cya AW: OK. [fractalAbomination ceased pestering amniomorphicWizard] Waiting for a few minutes as instructed, Star Swirl began a new conversation. [amniomorphicWizard began pestering fractalAbomination] AW: Hello, my good man. AW: I've got a message from your future self, you said to pass it on. He then proceeded to have a conversation which we have already seen, and which no one would gain anything from repeating. *** "Wait, so you're from the when?" Golden asked, tilting his head quizzically. Comet rolled his eyes, not for the first time in the conversation, and certainly not for the last. "The future, relative to you, relative to me. I'm also from the past, relative to me, relative to you. And very soon, I will be from the present, relative to both you and my past self. Past, that is, relative to me." One of the advantages to being a Page of Time was that all the tedious relations between time periods made perfect sense. The downside was that it was still very hard to explain to somepony who didn't have the initial advantage, and that was very frustrating. "The point is that I'm here, and I need your complete cooperation for the good of the timeline." A basilisk half heartedly attempted to ambush him, only to be killed before it could begin its battle cry. Although his fighting ability was both impressive and appreciated, Silver was starting to wonder about this unicorn, who had suddenly appeared not long after Luna had left Golden's planet. Who was he? "OK, so let's say we believe everything you've told us about Mild, and how your group has basically gotten everything wrong," Silver said, making an attempt to cooperate. "And that by the end of this, you lot will be pretty much depending on us for your own survival." Comet nodded. "Should you really be telling us? Doesn't that break a law of time or something?" "Time doesn't have laws," Comet said. "It doesn't need them. Everything will happen the way it happens, regardless of what the assorted idiots of paradox space may try to derail destiny with. I used to think that I wouldn't need to say anything, but it turns out that I have to be here to get you guys to talk to us. If I left you to figure things out by your own devices, the time frames involved just wouldn't add up. It's as simple as that." "So you want me to talk to this Mild guy and help him? After he tried to kill us?" Golden asked incredulously, with Silver nodding in agreement. "That doesn't seem like a good idea." Again, Comet rolled his eyes. "A lot of things that we do aren't good ideas," Comet reasoned. "Among the worst ideas are those that conflict with what has already been observed to happen. Speaking of which, take this." Ten seconds of hurried calculations later, and the unicorn retrieved a small CD from his sylladex. Golden took it cautiously. "It's something of an upgrade, not entirely my own work. Still, it's hardly for commercial use, so whatever." "What does it do?" Silver asked, as Golden retrieved his laptop. Comet just shrugged. "Find out. Anyway, I'd love to stay, but I have at least 5 more conversations to trigger before the end of the day. Later." And with that, he strode off into the hills of the Land of Gardens and Statues. "Do you have any idea what that was about?" Golden asked, to which Silver shook her head. "Not a clue. I don't think he's lying, though. Or at least, he doesn't think he's lying. Which is hopefully the same thing." She gestured to the CD that Golden was hovering in front of him. "Are you going to try that out?" "I might do. Not right now, though. I'm in no hurry to save the future, or protect the past, or whatever it is that we're supposed to be doing." Calmly placing the CD into his Solitaire modus, Golden pointed a hoof in the general direction of what appeared to be civilisation. "In any case, shall we?" "Yeah," Silver nodded, and the two ponies began walking along the path, flanked on either side by hedges. "OK." *** Travelling through the transportaliser that she, Golden, and Silver had found, Luna had emerged into a completely different area of the incipisphere. She was clearly not on any of the planets, or on Skaia, instead finding herself in some kind of laboratory surrouned on all sides by the pitch black darkness of the Medium. Interesting. What was somewhat more interesting was the array of machinery which Luna had found. Several large pieces of equipment - a group of monitors arranged in a house shape; a large appearifier flanked by computer banks supporting large glass jars; and a large circular platform; were laid out around a large, otherwise empty room. Approaching the monitors, Luna could now see the control panel beneath them, with a series of increasingly esoteric buttons. The most prominent to her seemed to be the four green buttons, which looked like they might correspond to the four monitors. Testing one, she found this hypothesis to be correct as the related monitor lit up. It displayed a green filly, who was currently using her laptop. Strange. Deciding to turn her attention to more important matters, specifically the untested buttons, Luna pressed the large blue button in the centre of the control panel. A sudden outbreak of beeping and whirring drew her attention to the appearifier, which seemed fairly alarmed by her attempts to operate it. A few seconds of thinking later, and the machine deposited a solid green unicorn-shaped pile of sludge, which rapidly deformed into a solid green pile-shaped pile of sludge. Gravity was a bitch like that. Still, the brief glimpse of the unicorn had told Luna what the machine was doing - attempting to appearify the young filly displayed by the monitor. Another whirring sound alerted her to the rapidly flashing computer bank next to the sludge, and she watched as a small pipe collected the puddle of ectoslime and stored it in one of the glass jars. There were four jars, and four monitors. Luna could see where this was going. Luna then switched to the remaining screens. The next one showed a red pegasus, who appeared to be dealing some serious damage with a very fancy sword. Duly pressing the button again, a green model of a pegasus with a very fancy sword appeared, which then promptly became a slightly less fancy puddle. The machine collected the slime all the same, just as it did for the grey earth pony who was also shown using his laptop. Activating the next monitor, Luna was struck not by the subject of the image, but by the surroundings. In the image was a thoroughly distraught teal unicorn she had never seen before, but she did recognise the pony he was talking to - Silver. Why was he talking to Silver, and where were they? Their surroundings seemed like a massive chessboard, except there were mountains in the distance. Hm. Shrugging away the peculiar circumstances in which the teal unicorn was currently in, Luna went ahead and pressed the button anyway. *** "There... you are..." Star Swirl managed, before collapsing from exhaustion. Celestia simply rolled her eyes. It wasn't THAT hot. "Why is your... your planet just so... terrible?" "It's not terrible," Celestia replied, walking away slowly. Hurriedly picking himself up and trotting after her, Star Swirl gave her a look which suggested that he was not in the mood to be fucked around with. "It's the Land of Warmth and Frogs, I'll have you know." "Warmth? This is warm? By the six, what does this game think is hot?" To his credit, Star Swirl had managed to find Celestia amidst the tangled web of tunnels. She supposed that was kind of impressive, although that was offset by his incessant whining. "And for that matter, why is it that both you and Luna have planets with stupid temperatures?" "Doesn't matter," Celestia said dismissively. "Now come on, let's get going. We've got a volcano to erupt." "Uh. OK..." Star Swirl said, unsure of how to take this news. "Not really the solution to the high temperature that I was hoping for, but I suppose we can work with that for now." "Oh shush." *** As he and Silver Edge hovered above the Battlefield, Mild tested the weight of the sceptre. Ten white orbs glistened back. The trade had been completed, although there was still one small matter to take care of. "Well then, I'd say we've let them struggle in vain for long enough," Mild said. "Let's go and accelerate their doom a little, shall we?" He passed the sceptre to Silver to captchalogue. His own specibus was a little too haphazard to trust with something as important as this. "Sure," Silver agreed, only half listening to her supposed partner. Mild frowned. Since they had entered this incipisphere from their native session, Silver had seemed preoccupied. Or, more specifically, since they had taken Golden from his dream room. "Hey, Silver, uh. Are you feeling OK?" Mild asked, attemting to break through to her. "I just-" "Don't," Silver interrupted. "Don't try and havea a heart to heart with me. Just don't." Shaking her head, she retrieved her axe and began flying down towards the White King below. "If you want to help make me feel better, save the kill for me." "Noted." *** After finishing various shenanigans with the ectobiology equipment, most of which is either too repetitive or too important to describe, Luna stepped back and inspected her handiwork. Seven foals stared back at her, some with expressions of confusion, and some with thoughtful expressions that suggested they were already terrifyingly aware of what was going on. The one thing they all had in common was that they were adorable and it was taking all of Luna's self control to not hug all of them. D'aw. One foal in particular had captured her attention. It looked almost exactly like a baby version of Silver. And, through the course of her shenanigans, Luna had come to realise that the foal could very well be exactly that. She didn't entirely understand why that was, or how it worked, but if that was the case... If that was the case, then what about the six unidentified fillies who were staring up at her expectantly? Luna wasn't so sure about them, although she certainly had an idea. Most of her evidence was circumstantial, but she doubted that it was a coincidence that she had created a purple unicorn, a yellow pegasus, a pink earth pony, a white unicorn, an orange earth pony, and a cyan pegasus with a rainbow mane. Probably not a coincidence. [midnightEclipse began pestering amniomorphicWizard] ME: Hey Swirly. AW: Luna! AW: How are you doing? ME: I'm fine. Thanks for checking up on me to see how I'm feeling after being brutally murdered. AW: But, uh. I didn't. You contacted me... ME: I know. AW: ... sorry about that. ME: Heh, don't worry! Who even cares? That's in the past. ME: This is the present! And me, in the present, has just stumbled across the most adorable little foals you will ever see. ME: I cannot tell you how much I need to hug them. They are just... so... cute... ME: :) AW: Hm. It can't be good to leave children lying around here. AW: This game, ironically enough, is no place for foals. ME: Oh, nothing's going to happen to them. ME: Because I am staying right here and looking after them forever. AW: :/ ME: Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!! AW: What? ME: Little Fluttershy just sneezed! ME: You have no idea how cute that was. Oh gog, I nearly died. ME: I seriously need to hug something. Right now. AW: I'll be right over. ME: xD AW: Eheh. But seriously, did you say little Fluttershy? ME: Oh yeah, I should probably have mentioned that. These fillies just so happen to be the six founders of Equestria. ME: Only with less historical significance and way more cute. AW: ... right. ME: So as it turns out, if we hadn't played this game, I would never have found this place and the founders of Equestria would have never existed. AW: Blimey. ME: Blimey is right! Of course, the natural extension of this is that the game will send them back in time. AW: How is that natural? And, for that matter, why is it so impossible that you've just made clones of the founders? Instead of actually having literally created the founders, who will then be sent back in time to live their lives? AW: You're making a lot of assumptions that just don't seem logical. ME: Well, I could explain my logic, but part of my logic tells me that I shouldn't. ME: Sorry. AW: I suppose I can live with that. So what are you going to do now? ME: I'm going to wait here until they get sent back in time, and then I'll head off to finish my planet. AW: Jolly good. I'll head over to my world once I'm done here. ME: And where is 'here'? AW: Celestia's planet. ME: Ah, OK. Well, I'll let you know when I'm heading back to LOCAD. Cya! AW: Eheheh, OK. ME: :D [midnightEclipse ceased pestering amniomorphicWizard] Turning off her laptop for the time being, Luna went back to focusing on more important matters. Specifically, how very, very, very cute the fillies were. She watched, with an ever-increasing smile, as Pinkie Pie attempted to chase after Rainbow Dash, only to trip over her disproportionately large tail and land in a messy pile of adorable. So. Cute. *** "And there's another one," Star Swirl commented, stashing the latest in a series of multicoloured amphibians into his sylladex. "Twelve down, only... uh..." He paused, pretending to think. "Hey Celestia, what's infinity minus twelve?" "Ten to the power of shut the fuck up," Celestia replied dryly, brushing past the unicorn as she headed towards the relative shade of the mountains. Over the course of the last few frogs, the planet had slowly led them back onto the surface of the planet. Presumably that meant they were nearing the Forge. "Well, we have that many left to go. Are you not finding these quests boring?" "Actually, I find the premise very interesting," Celestia said, pausing next to a completely regular boulder. Taking her staff out of her strife deck, she jabbed it forwards with enough force to... well, enough force to split a boulder. Accordingly, the boulder split open, revealing a large purple frog within. "First of all, holy fuck," Star Swirl said, which Celestia decided to take as a complement as she placed the frog into her sylladex. "And second of all, what premise?" "The premise that there is a link between the fabric of space-time, and amphibians," Celestia explained patiently. "Really, this should interest you just as much as me." "No it shouldn't," Star Swirl pointed out. "There are three dimensions of space, and only one of time. You should be three times as interested as me. Assuming there is any link whatsoever between our aspect and our interests, which I doubt. I don't go around collecting clocks, do I?" "True. But you do mess around with time experiments," Celestia said. "And you're the only one out of all of us who's actually travelled through time, so far." "That's not true. You're travelling through time right now," Star Swirl said. Aside from this rather silly way of winning the argument, Celestia happened to be completely wrong in her assessment of her own time travelling history. Not that that could be held against her, since she was rather young at the time. "But I take your point." They continued in silence for a few minutes, before something occurred to him. "Hey, what happened to that crocodile who was following you around?" "You mean Lector?" Celestia asked, receiving a bemused look from Star Swirl. "What? They have names, you know!" Then again, Celestia wondered exactly why she was defending the crocodile. He hadn't been particularly friendly, just very respectful of her - respect which was partly out of fear. Still, he had been quite endearing in his own way. Or maybe she was confusing the word 'endearing' for 'surreal'. "Well, Lector went on ahead a while ago, to decipher the puzzle which we're apparently going to find at the Forge." "I see. Do we have any idea how long these quests are going to take, out of interest?" Star Swirl asked. He was vaguely aware that Sburb had a time limit, although he had been led to believe that a typical session could last several days or more. His own quests weren't going to finish themselves. "Yeah, in total it should take about ten minutes," Celestia said. "Plus an hour for every time you complain. By my calculations, we should be done within the month." Apparently Star Swirl took the hint, as he decided to let that pass by without comment. "Honestly, sometimes I wonder what Luna sees in..." Celestia paused, as she suddenly remembered what she wasn't meant to be talking about. "Uh... what she sees in... clouds?" "Clouds?" Star Swirl raised an eyebrow questioningly. "Yeah, I mean, she's always going on about how great clouds are. Sure, I guess they look really comfortable, and it's pretty cool that pegasi can stand on them and everything, but are they that great? I mean, they're just condensed water, so I would imagine that they're quite damp. I wouldn't want to go to sleep on a cloud." Whew, Celestia thought to herself. Nice save. "Uhuh," Star Swirl said, nodding slowly. "Right." "Shut up." *** As a side effect of their meddling, Silver and Mild had found the White King to be somewhat more challenging than expected. But finally, after far too many fraymotifs and not nearly enough chocolate, the White King lay defeated. The Black King would soon begin the Reckoning, and then the countdown would begin. And then they could progress to stage 3 of the plan. But for now, all Silver could think about was how much she didn't want to do things which weren't resting. "Come on, get up." Whether he had an unfair advantage due to being a God or not, Mild seemed unfazed by the colossal battle which had just taken place. That fact bothered Silver almost as much as his unnecessarily irritating ideas. "No." "Yes. We have a deadline to work to," Mild reminded her. "If we're going to get them off of their planets within 24 hours, we'll need to provide a helping hand. And that means you have a lot of work to do." "There wasn't a single thing you just said which didn't make me want to hurt you," Silver mumbled. "Why do we need them off the planet?" "We've been over this. This next stage of the plan has very specific circumstances, and if we don't meet those requirements then none of this will work. Besides," Mild pointed out, "I would have thought you'd jump at the chance to spend some time getting to know all of her... I mean, all of your friends." "If I could be bothered to get up, I would hurt you so much," Silver said wearily. "But never mind. Where am I going?" In response, Mild retrieved the Gate from his sylladex. The Gate, just to be clear, is something that should be treated as highly mysterious and intriguing, and should be accompanied by suitable feelings of awe and wonder as Mild retrieves it from his sylladex. Considering the item, and making a few quick calculations, Mild answered. "The Land of Cold and Dark, I think. Luna should head back there after she's finished with her ectobiolobabysitting, so you should be able to intercept her there." He held out the Gate, which Silver reluctantly took as she got to her feet. "You may as well hold onto it, since you need it more than I do." "Fine. And what are you going to be doing?" Mild paused as he considered the question. "I may as well take care of our hostage before he wakes up," Mild said. "And then I think I'm going to have a nice long chat with our past-ally from the future, in the past." Just because neither of them were heroes of Time didn't mean they couldn't use the terminology. They just weren't very good at it, and any self respecting Page who happened to be listening would have had a very hard time keeping himself from interjecting. Because really, was it so hard to call someone a 'retrofuture pre-alliance future friend, beforehand'? Fortunately, there wasn't a Page in sight, and any suggestion that there ever would be was simply ridiculous. *** Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and Luna was thoroughly saddened to see all seven fillies transportalised away from the laboratory by some unseen mechanism. The laboratory, Luna had determined, was in the Veil, a ring of meteors arranged along the outermost rim of the incipisphere. Each foal was taken and deposited on their own individual meteors, which would soon join the assault against Skaia. And then, they would be sent backwards in time, to become the founders of Equestria. And also Silver. Silver would go back in time to be Silver. If she was being honest, Luna was confused about exactly why Silver was included among the fillies she had created. If Silver was there, then where was Luna, or any of the rest of her group? On a more pressing note, Luna realised, the fact that the babies would soon be sent back in time meant that the final battle for Skaia was already beginning. And if the Reckoning had started, then the White King was already dead. Which meant he had been right... damn it. Absently, Luna wondered if that meant the rest of the predictions she had received were also true. Was there really nothing they could do to stop all of this? Wasn't there any hope for their session? "Well, I told you so," the other pony in the room commented. "And I'm not going to insult your intelligence by pretending I don't love saying that." "I know you told me," Luna said, not quite in the mood for another argument about causality. "Do you have anything useful to tell me, or are you just going to restate my assured defeat?" "Now, that's hardly fair," the pony protested. "I'm giving you hints about the future. I can't help it if your future sucks." Her visitor almost sounded hurt. "Well, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to cheer me up," Luna said, striding over to the transportaliser that she had used to enter the laboratory in the first place. "But some of us have work to do, regardless of whether we'll succeed." "Very noble," the pony noted. "Which is good, that'll serve you well in the future." Glancing around the empty laboratory, he nodded to himself. "Good luck and all that." "Thanks," Luna said, smiling as she stepped onto the transportaliser. "You too." And with that, she was gone.