Scootaloo sighed, then glanced out the window. Her eyes widened because there outside the school were her two friends, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, sitting out there on the green and waving to her, both with cheeky smiles on their faces. They were playing hooky and they didn’t even tell her about it?!
Scootaloo looked up to the teacher, but her gruff math instructor wasn’t doing much more than sitting there grumbling to himself after assigning them more from the workbook. Scootaloo would say he was a bad teacher, if she wasn’t already such a bad student. She honestly was glad that he didn’t go trying to teach them about “The Algebra” as he called it. He could start going on and on, so Scootaloo was glad he was too distracted to do more than give them the next day’s homework assignment to work on. Though she had no idea how to actually work on that homework, it made it easy to sneak out of the classroom.
He didn’t even look up when Scootaloo glided out of her seat as silent as a feather. Some of the other kids looked her way, but she smirked at them and held a hoof up to her mouth in a universal shushing motion. Not even waiting to see if they would rat her out, Scootaloo darted over to the door and fluttered up to the handle, pulling mightily to get the thing open, then squeezing out the crack before the door could close again. Yanked her tail through for good measure. Then Scootaloo fluttered to four solid hooves on the ground.
She smugly checked a wing, and one of the pinions was crooked, so Scootaloo worked at it a bit, nosing it back into place, and also another feather that was just slightly misaligned. And... oh, right. Scootaloo lifted her head from the now-habitual preening, looking around the empty hall. It was not likely to find any hall monitors patrolling this far into the class period. No monitors in sight, Scootaloo made a break for the door outside.
There, Scootaloo found Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle eagerly awaiting her fuzzy orange presence. “Hey girls,” she said amiably strutting up to them. “Skipping out of class without me, huh?”
“Apple Bloom found something amazing!” Sweetie Belle said with a bright smile. “We’re going to show it to you, it’s a—” and Apple Bloom took that moment to stuff her hoof in Sweetie Belle’s mouth, looking to Scootaloo with her own crafty smile saying,
“It’s a surprise. You’ll get a real kick out if it though. I found another school secret, over in the west wing above the offices.”
“How did you find it?” Scootaloo asked incredulously.
Apple Bloom shrugged, primping proudly at her big pink bow. “It weren’t glowing, but I was walkin’ the second floor hall and saw the same hoof symbols up by one of the banner holders. And boy was ah in for a surprise!”
“Eeeehehe it’s pretty cool alright,” the soft white Sweetie Belle squeaked in glee. “I didn’t know our school had so many secret tr—” Apple Bloom stuffed a hoof into her mouth again.
At just the thought of this, Scootaloo was absolutely bubbling with unquenchable excitement! A new secret? Was it going to be a new clubhouse location? Something about that backspace they found the other day? Kicking a hoof out lazily, she rolled her eyes and casually said in a relaxed tone, “Okay fine, I guess I can go check it out.”
“Follow me!” Apple Bloom whispered excitedly, then went trotting over to the west wing. Scootaloo was hot on her heels, the three fillies unable to suppress happy laughter as they scampered across the courtyard.
Still being careful for hall monitors, Apple Bloom led them up to the second floor, where there was... a hallway, with offices. And of course banners on the wall. The school spirit was alive and well in Canterlot High, and the Canterlot Colts were gearing up for the Spring Games. Obviously no banners from the rival school, but the ones proclaiming her school and her team as the best never failed to lift Scootaloo’s heart. Someone put up these banners, who really believed in kids like Rainbow Dash, and Scootaloo could get behind that.
But, as nice as that was, there wasn’t anything special about this part of the school. “I don’t get it,” Scootaloo said, looking around the ordinary looking hallway for what might be a school secret.
“You gotta stand on the spot under the banner,” Apple Bloom replied, pointing her hoof to the floor over by one of the batteries of lockers.
“Over here?” Scootaloo asked, ambling hopefully to where Apple Bloom indicated.
“Little bit to the left,” Apple Bloom said critically, so Scootaloo shifted over. “Bit to the right now,” Bloom said, squinting at Scootaloo with one eye. Scootaloo tried moving a teeny bit right. “Perfect!” Apple Bloom said happily. “Okay, Sweetie Belle, you ready?”
“Ready!” Sweetie reported, from where she came to stand by Scootaloo.
“Alright Sweetie, let ‘er rip!” Apple Bloom cheered triumphantly. Sweetie hopped up beside Scootaloo, and pulled at the... banner hanging on the wall? Scootaloo stared upward as not the banner, but the banner holder way up on top of the wall gave a quiet shunk as it shifted downward.
And then the floor dropped out from under her.
...
Several seconds later, Apple Bloom groaned in frustration,
“Ohh, shoot! That’s right. You’re the flying one!”
Scootaloo had fluttered up into the air as the floor dropped out from under her, and to her astonishment, the floor of the hall had sunk and tilted down into a steep slope, vanishing into a dark tunnel underneath the lockers. There was a faint clanking noise as the panel slid back up closed again, and merged seamlessly with the rest of the floor.
“What the heck is that?” she declared, staring in astonishment.
“It’s a chute!” Apple Bloom declared. “Ah went and fell down the thing, when I pulled on the banner! And it’s like a slide that goes real far!”
“Yeah, yeah, try it!” Sweetie cheered eagerly. “You just jump down and whoosh, you’re sliding! And you wouldn’t believe how far down it goes!”
“Wow, that sounds awesome!” Scootaloo said excitedly to the other two. “You both went and slid down it?”
“I’m gonna go first,” Sweetie announced, climbing up the wall to pull down at the banner again with her teeth. Once again, the panel in the floor sunk down, and this time the unicorn girl didn’t balance on the edge of it, but let herself slip down into the space, vanishing as she swiftly slid beneath the lockers. Her excited squeal didn’t vanish until the panel closed again, sealing the secret in utter silence.
“Okay, you pull it, I’m gonna jump!” Scootaloo said, spreading her wings and crouching like a panther ready to leap. Apple Bloom nodded, and did so, and as soon as the panel sunk beneath the lockers again, Scootaloo just threw caution to the wind and jumped. It was... it must have been metal or something, because it was super smooth, and she found herself in a spiraling tunnel, sliding forward at a steep angle. “Wo—ah!” Scootaloo exclaimed in exuberance, going fast enough, it felt like she was in a dive, before it shallowed off at the very end, and dumped her out into a room with a bunch of... boilers?
“Wow,” Scootaloo declared, looking around as her hooves landed with a clack on the stone floor. “We’re in the basement!”
“Woo hoo!” came Apple Bloom’s voice from behind her, and Scootaloo turned to see Apple Bloom come flying out of a hole in the wall, that immediately slid closed again behind her like a teeter totter. Apple Bloom landed beside Scootaloo and said, “How about that for a school secret!”
“I wanna go again!” Scootaloo replied with an eager smile, looking around for the stairs out of here or wherever.
“Over here,” Sweetie called out from a more brightly lit part of the room. “The stairs here go right out into the hall.”
Once they emerged on the ground floor, Scootaloo looked back curiously, saying, “Isn’t that door usually locked?”
“Not from the inside,” Apple Bloom said smugly.
“Our school has a freaking... escape chute?” Scootaloo said giddily. “That is so Ghostbusters!”
“Ah bet it has a bunch of these things!” Apple Bloom declared, “And we just have to keep an eye out for that special symbol to get a clue where it is.”
“I bet I’ll find the next one,” Scootaloo replied passionately.
“Apple Bloom found both of them so far,” Sweetie Belle said in response. “Maybe it’s her special earth pony magic working!”
“A super sense for finding things?” Scootaloo asked.
Sweetie shook her head saying, “No, a super sense for coincidences. A coincisense!”
The other two gave the self-satisfied smiling filly an odd look.
“Ah don’t got nothing, girls!” Apple Bloom said blushing heavily, “It’s just a matter of keeping your eyes open. An’ I know for a fact that Scootaloo’s eyes are better than mine.”
Scootaloo swished her tail carelessly, saying, “Well, it’s true. I can even get the bottom level on the eye chart.”
“I wonder if your eyes were why you turned into a pegasus,” Sweetie Belle mused, peering her own pale green irises into Scootaloo’s.
“What, why would eyes matter?” Scootaloo asked, backing up a step.
“Well, because—you know, like how hawks have really good eyes,” Sweetie said, curling a hoof and blushing, “Um... but maybe sparrows don’t, so I guess it’s not related.”
“Okay girls we gotta hurry if we want to try it again,” Apple Bloom said, insistently hopping between them. “We don’t wanna get caught if they take roll call before the next bell.”
“I’m pretty safe from that with Mister Doodle,” Scootaloo said relievedly, “But yeah, let’s hurry so you girls don’t get in any trouble.”
Sweetie Belle would go on to find a switch in one of the walls that let you swivel the whole wall around into the neighboring hallway, and that was pretty awesome, if... kind of a mystery as to its exact purpose? Apple Bloom would find the podium passageway, connecting the east and west wing from underneath. They didn’t... tell anybody about their discoveries, keeping it between the three of them. The reason was because... well, the last time they said anything, all that it ended up doing was making it so that they weren’t allowed to play with it anymore. A secret two story tall slide was not something one could give up on so easily.
...and because Scootaloo found the new location of their secret clubhouse.
It was a room you could only get in from the outside, up on the second floor. Scootaloo had flown by it a million times, before noticing that it didn’t seem to lead to an office, or a classroom. It was in the south wing over next to the library, overlooking the central courtyard the school was built around. She flew up to the window, peering inside to darkness, but a strange darkness. She didn’t see any chairs, or desks, or anything in there. So, perching on the windowsill one day after school, Scootaloo glanced around nervously behind herself, then lifted up the window, squeezing her way into the dark room.
It was really dusty in here. Nobody had cleaned in forever, it looked like. Scootaloo sneezed as soon as she landed. It looked like there was... supposed to be some furniture in here, but someone just wrecked everything at some point, and then just left all the parts lying around. There was a knob, like you’d find on a bed or a sofa, and some broken glass that could have been panels or windows to something from the way it was cut. A plain glass cup was just lying around what looked like the crumbling, broken apart remains of a table.
Carefully drifting across the room to the doorway, just an archway really, Scootaloo had to pause, because it looked like there was a doorway here leading straight into a wall. But next to the doorway, there was... a lever, with one of those special glowing hoofprints right beneath it. Scootaloo swallowed nervously, and hooked her hoof over the lever. It felt solid enough, even though it was pretty rusted. Pulling on it caused some more well preserved mechanisms within to shift into motion. The old machinery gave out then with a shudder in the floor, but what Scootaloo saw is that the wall in front of her shifted aside, just a little bit.
Creeping up to the archway and pulling, Scootaloo saw that the wall was divided into two sliding panels, and felt like smooth stone under her hoof pad. She hooked a hoof into the gap, and braced on the ground, pulling until one of the panels had slid aside enough for her to squeeze through. There was an obstacle on the other side, a thick wooden cabinet, but Scootaloo pushed that aside too, and squeezed around it. Light greeted her on the other side, as Scootaloo found herself in the library. The school library. This room was literally hidden behind the wall, behind a bookcase, in the school library. And that’s when Scootaloo knew that this had to be the new meeting place for the Cutie Major Crusaders. It was just too perfect to pass up!
Scootaloo cleaned the place up before showing it to her friends. She swept the dust and debris into a big garbage bag, after carefully removing the larger glass fragments with one of those pot holders that Apple Bloom’s family had thought up, and sweeping up the rest, until the floor was spotless. She kept the cup though, because it was kind of cool. Scootaloo also snuck a battery powered lantern in there, because the window was actually pretty tiny despite its large frame, and didn’t let in much light. On the inside, the window looked like it’d be a big arching window, but for whatever reason, there was just a little square one constructed on the outside, like all the rest in the school beyond it.
With better lighting, Scootaloo could see that the walls were a different construction than the rest of the school! They were made of smooth, bluish grey stone bricks, solidly constructed, but certainly unusual. It had a sort of cool dungeony feel to it. Scootaloo snuck a table-top in, once she’d gotten the floor clean, and a few cushions that would be comfortable for ponies to sit on. She didn’t have a bookcase anymore, but she had a few books on travel and world history that she’d gotten from the old clubhouse, that she piled up beside the table. The rest of their club related literature, the grownups had already all taken... back. It didn’t really matter though. They were like, right next to the library here!
With that in place, Scootaloo got Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle to walk innocently over to that quiet little back area in the library. With a dramatic gesture, Scootaloo said, “I present to you, our new, secret clubhouse!”
Getting her forehead in and shoving hard, Scootaloo slid the stubborn bookcase aside again, and the room behind it was already illuminated by the lantern she’d left in there for demonstration purposes. Her two friends woahed and oohed as they walked in, the transition from green linoleum to smooth granite, noticeable as their hooves clicked on it in soft echoes.
Scootaloo dragged the panel closed again, and said to the rear ends of the other two still looking around, “How’s this for a school secret?”
“How did you find this?” Sweetie Belle squeaked, looking overhead at the smooth blue arching ceiling, barely visible in the lantern’s glow from where it sat on the table.
“It’s a window that doesn’t have a room,” Scootaloo explained, waving a hoof at the square window out to the courtyard. “I just came in the window, and opened the secret door from the other side!”
“This is perfect!” Apple Bloom declared excitedly, “We can get some wiring in here, and have the place lit up, and then we can set up some posters on the walls, and we can plan stuff. I bet the room is soundproof from the thickness of the walls! Maybe we can even make some more videos!”
“Our video didn’t exactly get good reviews on Youtube,” Sweetie said abashedly.
“But it was funny,” Scootaloo pointed out. “We can make the next one even funnier now that we know what people want to watch!”
“Mighta been more well received,” Apple Bloom pondered, “If’n we didn’t accidentally break all the video equipment before we finished it.”
Scootaloo winced, and nodded. That’d been a real mess to clean up.
“Well, now that we’re ponies, we can have pony related meetings here,” Sweetie said, climbing up on the table to look further overhead.
“Like what?” Apple Bloom asked curiously, looking up at her.
“Like um...” Sweetie looked down. “Like what we’re going to do differently at school now that we’re ponies. It’s really different, and I don’t think doing the same thing is working.”
“You said it, Sweetie,” Scootaloo agreed with a sigh. “I think we already missed the bell for next period.”
“Next period!” Sweetie squealed in panic, rushing for the panels. “Open, open,” she chanted, hooking her hooves around and pulling on it like Scootaloo did. Apple Bloom was hot on her heels, helping push the panel open, and she said hastily to Scootaloo,
“Amazing discovery! We can all work on this after school. But we gotta hurry now, okay? Bye!”
The two dashed off, and Scootaloo squeezed out the small opening they’d made herself, pushing it closed behind her with a grinding noise. She backed up, looked up at the ordinary bookcases that she was facing, gave the whole thing a satisfied grin, and went galloping off after her next class.
Dinky tried to use his bag to shield himself from hitting the turf too hard, and it was somewhat effective, but it meant the zipper popped loose and dumped all his books out on the blacktop. He looked up, saying “Sor—” but the kids who pushed him over had already gone inside, not even sparing him a second glance. Honestly, he didn’t blame them.
Obviously Dinky felt guilty. It’s exactly what he should have felt, for doing something like this to someone like... that. Dinky wished Diamond didn’t have to be the one to suffer. But there she was, getting more and more pregnant every day, and all because Dinky couldn’t control himself. She just felt so good he—he could understand why those kids didn’t let him inside the hall.
He didn’t even know who they were, but they clearly knew him. Everybody in the school knew about him and what he did. His roommates hated him for abusing their trust and using their partying habits to find time to meet with Diamond Tiara and... and it really got them in trouble, because they should have noticed, and they should have said something. Well what about Dinky? Shouldn’t he have said anything?
Dinky painfully picked himself up, glad to see he hadn’t ripped his pants this time. He’d have to find a way to fasten his backpack shut though. The kids had accidentally bumped into him, moving out of their way to do so and shoving him to the asphalt outside the school, then just walked away. They couldn’t even stand him long enough to tease him! At least it wasn’t the techies this time. No, Dinky’s former friends mostly just coordinated this stuff, making everyone online aware of just how low he’d sunk.
Dinky wished he wasn’t a guy. He wished he’d never been born a guy, that he could take back what he did to her. She said she wanted it, but she was lying to him and herself. Dinky could see the fear in her eyes. Dinky wanted Diamond to not be pregnant, her belly smooth and slim instead of swollen. He wanted to stop thinking about her in that way. But it was hopeless. He did it to her, and he’d do it to her again, because he was just some stupid guy who couldn’t think outside his pants.
Dinky had never thought of himself as much of a “guy” guy. He wasn’t all that manly or aggressive. He still had a boyish face, and his voice hadn’t gotten very deep yet, and it just hadn’t been something that affected him a lot. But this thing with Diamond had turned it up to eleven, shown Dinky just how much of a man he was, and just how fundamentally different he was from a girl. He couldn’t stop being a man around her. It was just impossible to resist that, to resist her. And the more she reminded him of this, not in words but with actions, the less comfortable Dinky felt about himself.
It’s not like they stopped doing it. Nobody even cared about stopping them anymore, because it’s not like Diamond Tiara was going to get even more pregnant. He wanted to hate it, but it was amazing. Without that constant fear that they would be discovered, the fear that it might not yet be too late to back out, he could just give himself totally to that... activity. He didn’t want to, but it was thrilling when he did, and thrilling that a girl like Diamond Tiara would think of him in that way. He felt so thrilled and confident while they were lost in passion, but after he was done, he’d just start feeling so anxious and full of regret. Another one of those male things, probably. It doesn’t let you feel guilty about it, until you’re done and it’s too late.
Dinky was honestly sick of it, and Diamond Tiara didn’t know how to deal with him. She didn’t understand, and he really didn’t blame her for that. Dinky didn’t really even want her to understand. What good would it do, besides make her afraid of him too? He felt trapped by his urges, forced to think a certain way, and want certain things, things that a girl would never... want. Diamond thought he wanted it, that it was his decision, not a thing that just... went out of control.
A silver hand slammed Dinky’s locker in his face while he was trying to put away his books. Dinky didn’t blame her, especially not her. She’d been Diamond’s friend at one point, and now all Diamond cared about was Dinky. He felt guilty when he was talking with Diamond, and he saw her glaring at him hatefully. He stole her friend, and ruined Diamond’s life, and still Diamond stuck with him. Dinky knew Diamond was just doing it out of desperation that he’d leave, but other people saw them together, and assumed he had her on a leash. He didn’t mean to be such a man that she felt compelled to be with him, but that’s not what Silver saw.
The teacher wouldn’t even call on him in class, not that Dinky tried to volunteer information anymore. The grownups didn’t know how to deal with him any more than did the student body, any more than Dinky knew how to deal with himself.
Dinky wanted to be supportive, and a good father, and help her bear the child, but it just didn’t feel... right. Like most of his life, Dinky had screwed up, passively let things get out of hand, and now he was stuck in a situation he didn’t want to be in. He wanted to feel confident and proud when they sat together and held each other, and Diamond told him what being pregnant was like, of all the changes she’d been going through, but all Dinky felt was... some sort of longing, for something he was missing, but he just didn’t know what it was. Something was going wrong, and he just didn’t know what it was.
He wanted his mommy.
Meanwhile, Diamond Tiara was extremely bored, in stat class. In front of her, Dinky was spacing out as usual. He was really torn up about this whole baby thing, and she honestly didn’t know if it was her he was worried about. It really wasn’t all that bad! She had no idea how she was going to be a kid and raise one too, but all she had to do was like, not leave, and she’d automatically be better than her own parents, so how hard could it be?
Diamond cruised through statistics, and Dinky made sure to give her a warm hug afterwards. They didn’t kiss, because frankly the entire school were already weirded out enough by them, and anyway kissing was lots funner in private it turned out, when it could escalate into doing other things. Things people didn’t want them to do, but hey, now that she was feeling tired and irritable all the time, what more harm was it gonna do? Heck, Diamond owed it to Dinky, for how good he was being about this, because it’d be a total waste if they didn’t do it, while she was still safe from getting... more pregnant.
But except for that, her life was pretty normal actually. Boringly normal. She ate her lunch, a pre-prepared bologna sandwich just like all the other orphanage kids, and also had some toast with peanut butter, because Dinky read about how like, fats were actually really important since the baby needed them, and salt too, and it really helped the cravings to know what they were there for.
Diamond missed sitting with the technies, because actually some of them had really cool things to talk about. They actually knew how cars worked for instance. Diamond thought you just... put the key in and drove them. But it was really complicated, and kind of fascinating how it all came together like one big ensemble, but it actually did something instead of being just clothes. But they were being a bunch of jerks about this especially Silver, so Diamond just blew them off and sat by herself with Dinky.
Diamond went through her days mostly normally. It didn’t even seem like she had a baby sometimes, even though she was like, halfway through. Exponential is what they called growth that all happens near the end, so Diamond wouldn’t even have to be like, fat for very long. Really, it was the best result she could have expected, given what she’d gone and done.
No, it wasn’t until after Diamond Tiara was done with school, and went to see her therapist, that there was... a problem.
“Why’m ah blindfolded again?” Big Macintosh said in confusion.
“Oh there’s a very good reason,” came the sound of that pony lady Cheerilee. “Now, I’m going to put this chainsaw in your hands, after I rev it up.”
“Chainsaw? What?” Big Mac squawed a reply, but his only answer was the sound of a small engine recoil starter, known as a pull cord. It zipped out a number of times, before the machine coughed to life, and the low bbrumble of a power tool greeted his ears. Then the chainsaw was carefully, lovingly placed in his hands, which wrapped around the handle, afraid of dropping it on someone or something.
“Alright, now, I’m going to remove your blindfold,” Cheerilee said enigmatically, “And you’re going to see a tree in front of you. It is of utmost importance that you cut down that tree.”
Big Macintosh had no idea what was going on, but this was the most surreal experience of his life. Standing there, holding onto a chainsaw, with a thick blindfold over his eyes, while ponies moved around him in mysterious ways that he couldn’t observe.
“What?” he asked finally, just completely confused about the current situation, and how his life got so strange. He just wanted to go back to his designs for pony operable machinery and scaled down construction to pony sized stuff. But no, he had to be the big, strong, man and sit here holding a live chainsaw while blindfolded. Yup, that had pretty much nothing to do with manliness, he was pretty sure.
“Just think about the tree,” Cheerilee said soothingly, “You need to cut down the tree.”
Big Macintosh was about to drop the chainsaw and Nope the fuck out of there, but he heard his little sister Apple Bloom then, saying,
“Please, Big Macintosh? Cheerilee is telling the truth. It is important to cut this tree down. It could be hurting everyone here! It hurt my friends, and our family! Ah cain’t tell you why because you won’t re—because you just gotta trust us, bro. Okay? ...please?”
Big Mac sighed, and knew he would regret saying, “Eyup,” but he said it nonetheless. He tensed as the librarian’s mouth came up close to his ear, untying the blindfold in ways that only a pony could. Big Macintosh’s resolve firmed, and he tightened his grip on the chainsaw. He’d never used one of these things before, but if this tree were threatening his family, didn’t matter if he could make sense of the situation, that tree was going down.
The blindfold fell away to reveal a tree just getting ready to bud into spring. Its trunk was solid and thick, and in Big Macintosh’s solid red hands, he held a rumbling machine that was said to cut through trees like butter. Beside him was the maroon librarian in pony form, his little sister, and her two friends, and they all had... cotton balls stuffed in their big conical ears. Go figure. That also explained the headphones they gave Big Macintosh, which would protect his ears from noise, hopefully.
Now, he had used a powered saw before, just not one this heavy duty before. So he knew enough to rev it up before cutting, and to cut a groove before going straight through the trunk. If he hadn’t, Big Macintosh probably would have destroyed his chainsaw, and hurt someone to boot. But though the person to fell this tree was chosen poorly, he wasn’t chosen all that poorly. So while the ponies watched, Big Macintosh got to figure out how to use a chainsaw pretty quickly.
The tree trunk gave a worrying crack when he was almost all the way through it. Nervous about his saw jamming, Big Mac pulled it out, and stopped its spin, then just put a hand on the tree’s firm wood, and tried giving it a shove. It didn’t want to go at first, but then there was a bigger crack as the tree toppled forward. crashing into the bush and flattening everything in its way. The tree would be fine of course. It could put up suckers and be grown as big as new in as little as twenty years straight. So basically it wouldn’t be fine. He hoped he hadn’t flattened any woodland critters on its way down. His sister’s friends and Cheerilee stayed well away while watching him.
“Great!” Apple Bloom said, “That’s perfect! Now cut down this tree!”
She indicated a tree just a few paces further ahead, which had a big red X on it drawn with chalk. And beyond it was another tree with a red X on it, and another, and another.
Big Macintosh sighed. This was gonna be a strange day, he just knew it.
He did... pretty good. Didn’t get anyone killed, always felled trees away from where anyone was standing. He wasn’t sure why they kept telling him to cut these trees down so urgently, because it can’t have been all that important. His saw got stuck more than once, but Cheerilee always managed to dislodge it, and fell the tree to boot, with a good strong kick from her hind legs. Mac didn’t even know why he was here. He sorta figured he shouldn’t be here, and had more important things to do, but the CMC got in his way defiantly, but looking with fear at the chainsaw in his hands. What? When did he get a chainsaw?
“You have to get this tree, Big Mac!” Cheerilee called to him from behind... ish. “Just this last one!” He had trouble finding her at one point, and finally a tree crashed down, and there wasn’t anything beyond it. Was he just cutting it down, or something? He stood there looking at his handiwork where he’d already cut down the trees he hadn’t cut down yet, and he had, so he just got turned around, but he turned around and there was a whole cleared out line of fallen trees behind him. He tried turning around—he—tried turning—
He just kind of started running, dropped the chainsaw and ran.
His heart was hammering, and his breath was coming in short gasps, and when on earth had he gotten this worked up before? He didn’t remember when he started getting terrified! He couldn’t even think about stopping until he’d run into the house and blocked the door behind him. But from what? What was he so afraid of?
Well, it couldn’t be that important. Probably just something to do with school, or classes. He sighed, and decided to go retreat to his room again, before these ponies asked him to pet them more, or got up into his lap. Big Macintosh had homework to do.
Meanwhile, Apple Bloom was staring with disbelief at... herself. She was staring at Sweet Apple Acres in both directions of this cleared out alleyway in the forest. No, not both directions, but like, all sorts of directions. Up, down, left, right, inside out, it was impossible to even look at.
“What the heck is this?” Apple Bloom asked frightfully, as her apparant doubles, and triples, and 4.5pls mimicked her motion with an unpredictable delay.
And then Cheerilee was beside her, just like poof beside her. That was how things... worked out here? “Apple Bloom, there you are!” Cheerilee said in a fright. “We need to get out of here. Big Macintosh ran—and—I don’t know if this phenomenon is safe!”
“Are you seein’ this?” Apple Bloom asked, looking at the distorted reflections of herself and now Cheerilee.
“It’s... some kind of... spatial anomaly?” Cheerilee said in utter confusion, looking at her own duplicates coming to stand beside Apple Bloom’s. “Apple Bloom, I had to go left to go right, to reach you back here. Something is not right about this place. This is... this is that magic, like what those alien girls were speaking of. It’s the only explanation!
Apple Bloom shivered and leaned against Cheerilee, and soon as she moved she was like 20 feet away from her.
“Just keep walking, Apple Bloom!” Cheerilee shouted out encouragingly, vanishing by walking into a mirror of herself, from Apple Bloom’s perspective. “Follow the farm,” her voice came from behind Apple Bloom, “I don’t think we can get closer to this, so just walk!”
So Apple Bloom scrunched up her muzzle, and took a step, and then another step. It seemed so ordinary. She was just walking through a forest. But in this corridor they cleared out, it looked so weird any more than ten feet ahead of her. She stared at the ground, and just walked in a straight line. It wasn’t long at all, before she risked a look, and all that weirdness was gone. She was at the mouth of the forest, with the ranch spread out before her.
“I think we should try to talk to those girls about this,” Cheerilee said afterward, after everypony was safe, inside, with chocolate.
“Maybe they can’t remember it either,” Apple Bloom mumbled morosely as she nibbled at her candy bar.
“We’ll never know if we don’t ask,” Scootaloo replied, with only a smear of chocolate on her muzzle to indicate she ever had one at all.
“Can’t hurt, right?” Sweetie offered.
“Or, it could blow up in our faces,” Apple Bloom replied.
“Apple Bloom, this is very obviously... magical,” Cheerilee said. “If these girls are telling the truth, then it could be vital to whatever they’re trying to do.”
“I suppose we gotta,” Apple Bloom sighed. “But ah’m tired of getting sidetracked by them. They only say what they wanna say, and I just want the truth!”
“Maybe you don’t want the truth,” Sweetie Belle told Apple Bloom worriedly. “They might not be telling you because it’s something bad.”
“Ms. Cheerilee is right though,” Apple Bloom said to Sweetie. “Those girls are our best hope of understanding it, knowing what to do about it, and it could really mess ‘em up if’n they don’t know about it.”
“They have different Equestrian brain waves or something,” Scootaloo offered, “So they’re probably already immune, just like the time loop!”
“Huh, yeah that makes sense...” Apple Bloom pondered.
“Well, you three sit tight, and I’m going to go find those girls,” Cheerilee said nervously. “I’ll try to reason with them, and if they remain obstructionist about it, I think we can take it to the authorities. Perhaps someone else in the city can deal with it.”
“You?” Apple Bloom said surprisedly, periscoping up and looking at Cheerilee, “I thought ah was gonna tell her!”
“You look like you could use a break from all this, Apple Bloom,” Cheerilee said to her warmly. “I know you’ve had a lot of responsibility lately, but don’t forget that you’re still a high school Freshman, and you still have a lot of growing up to do.”
Cheerilee prepared for the inevitable rebuttal, but Apple Bloom just looked away, saying meekly, “Okay, Ms. Cheerilee. That seems sensible.”
“W-well, of course I could use your help,” Cheerilee stated, surprised that she’d have to defend a teenager’s independence. But, now that she thought about it, Apple Bloom was a lot younger than a teenager now. Did she even notice how easy she was, to... influence?
“You know, why don’t we all go together?” Cheerilee asked with a placating smile. “I can talk with the girls, and surely one of those two will have questions for you.”
So Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo all ended up tagging along after Cheerilee, as Cheerilee pony-trotted to the portable building and combined laboratory of Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer. She knocked on the door, and when the yellow and red girl answered, Cheerilee said, “Sunset, we have to talk.”
Inside the building, there were some strange distillation experiments going on, as well as numerous charts, maps and diagrams on the wall, and a chalkboard covered with statistical... stuff. Cheerilee was never all that good at mathematical things. What looked like a photo development booth was sort of... installed on one side. And there was a small side room, more of a cubicle really, with two beds in it on the other side.
Sunset Shimmer was in here, but not Twilight Sparkle, and thankfully the building was sans Professor Discord at the moment. Cheerilee could have used Twilight’s presence, but she, along with the whole school, knew how irritated the professor got when you brought up anything supernatural. So, only Sunset here was fine, if not ideal. When the CMC filed in after Cheerilee, the girl seemed to figure out something serious was going on, Sunset asking,
“What’s this about, Ms. Cheerilee?”
Cheerilee... blanked for a second on just what to say to her. But she recovered quickly, looking up at the girl and saying with concern, “Apple Bloom and... the others found something very strange in the forest outside their property.”
Sunset frowned at that, and asked, “Is this about another dream?” She looked down expectantly at the three foals beside Cheerilee, who looked aside uneasily, trying to think of what to say.
“No, we’re fairly sure this wasn’t a dream,” Cheerilee reported for them. “There’s some kind of... spatial anomaly in the forest outside Apple Bloom’s property. They discovered it when Diamond Tiara apparantly led them to prove that you could walk in a straight line through the forest, and still end up where you started.”
“We left twine!” Sweetie piped up. “She unrolled this big thing of twine, and tied both ends in the same spot, without turning around!”
Sunset’s eyes widened in surprise, and she said in a pleased tone, “Oh, you can remember that?”
Then, her eyes took on that of a cornered animal, and Sunset Shimmer did not clarify her sudden stiffening, or wringing her hands, or nervous smile, with any words to indicate she was being honest with them.
Cheerilee sighed. This wasn’t going to be pretty, she imagined. She didn’t want to know, but... Apple Bloom wasn’t ready for this by herself either, and Cheerilee just hoped she could support them somewhat in dealing with all these crazy things happening.
“There’s a... magical something,” Cheerilee clarified reluctantly. “By chance, with the help of a letter from... erm... Diamond Tiara, Apple Bloom and I were able to break free of it. The... enchantment? We could help other ponies break free, by confronting their amnesia, but humans seem entirely unable to even detect that there is anything going on. We hoped you weren’t affected, and you might... know something about it?”
“At first we couldn’t even think about it!” Scootaloo spoke up with enthusiasm over her worry. “We were total jerks to Diamond Tiara, because she’s the only one who could remember it. And once Diamond figured out it was something weird, she tricked Apple Bloom, by leaving her a note that’d force her to remember it.”
Sunset sat down heavily in a plastic chair. “Wow, that... makes a lot of sense. Of course Diamond would be... well I was going to say too crazy to be affected, but I can’t say there are good words for it.”
They looked at her silently.
“Diamond Tiara has a certain... predisposition for insanity,” Sunset said reluctantly, “And while this does not make her insane, her mind doesn’t work quite the same way that ours do. That could possibly lift the veil for her. Just like with her unusual resistence for time loop resets.”
“Oh, because she remembered about the time that you two...” Apple Bloom trailed off, fussing about the wording for it, “Blew up the gymnasium?” she tried. “With that whole thing about the raging she-demon and—”
“Yes, Diamond seems to have held onto that for... four years,” Sunset said, clenching her teeth. “It was a very traumatizing experience for her... for everyone really, but she... well, she’s a very unique individual.”
“You can say that again,” Scootaloo grumbled.
“So about this veil,” Cheerilee persisted. “Is it related to the spatial anomaly? What’s going on out there?”
Sunset looked out the window at the trees outside, and then at Cheerilee. “You probably won’t like the answer,” Sunset said with a grim visage.
“I think it’s quite important,” Cheerilee replied testily. “If there’s some magic affecting our minds, it could have terrible consequences. Are our thoughts even our own?”
“Funny you should ask that...” Sunset cryptically replied.
Her eyes darted around the room then, and she leaned forward, saying to them, “This isn’t to leave this building. Not that I can stop you, but it’s just a warning that you’ll probably want to keep it low key too. As in, you don’t want a citywide panic, mass insanity, possible deaths on your hands, desperation and despair... you know, that sort of thing.”
Cheerilee didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to know. She did not want to know.
“Alright,” she said tensely.
“There’s nothing outside the forest past the Apple family’s farm,” Sunset stated.
Cheerilee stared at her.
“You’re gonna deny it now?” Apple Bloom squealed, “Ah’m dying of curiosity! What is that anomyaly, and what’s it doing outside mah family’s ranch? What—”
“No, wait, what I meant is—” Sunset grimaced, holding her hands up at the irate filly in the pretty pink bow. “There is nothing outside the forest past your farm. That’s it. There is nothing past it.”
And now they were staring at Sunset for a very different reason.
“Princess Celestia told me a story once,” Sunset Shimmer said with a distant look into her memories. “She told me of when they first discovered this land. We thought it was... fictional.
“Books can be enchanted you see,” Sunset continued, “And any who read them are drawn within the story. It’s a very restricted technique, because well... nopony is really sure of just how alive the characters within this book have become. Is it a mere delusion, or is it a pocket... universe?
“This place appeared fictional, to the ponies at the time,” Sunset clarified. “Remember, this was a very long time ago, before any of you would have been born, when my Equestria came upon your world. The assumption was that ponies cross the mirror, just like getting trapped in a story. You complete the story, and the story... ends. The universe is gone, and everything goes back to reality.”
“Of course we concluded this was not true of your universe,” Sunset said hastily to the alarmed ponies, “It only bears some puzzling signs of a fictional one, but certain things don’t make sense. The time loop, for instance.
“That was the next theory, is that this world was a trap,” Sunset went on, “An enchanted book that deliberately never ends, so that any who tried to read it so to speak, would be trapped within it forever.”
“How many ponies got trapped in here, before they figured it out?” Sweetie Belle asked in shock.
Sunset winced at that. “It was before my time,” she admitted. “We’re talking centuries before. There are certain ways to... erase a pony, that stop them from looping, at least. When the original exploration team had gone irrevocably insane, they were... well, removed. Dead as dead can be. Obviously I’ve been trying to not... have that happen, myself.”
“So y’all thought we were a story?” Apple Bloom asked in confusion. “But we’re not?”
“We’re pretty sure you’re not,” Sunset said with a half smile. “If it wasn’t for the Edge of the—” Sunset cut off abruptly looking at them with sudden worry. But she closed her eyes, and continued calmly.
“The Edge,” Sunset continued, “Is the physical edge of your universe. It’s a point where space becomes infinitely chaotic, beyond which there is no space, no time, nothing determinable but chaos. You can think of your universe as a bubble in a sea of chaos really, except that the sea is dimensionless.”
“How... big is our universe?” Cheerilee asked uneasily. If Applejack’s farm was at the edge, then...
“It extends around your city limits,” Sunset stated, “From Canterlot High, in an oblong ellipse, whose densest edge is just beyond Sweet Apple Acres.”
“But what about people who leave?” Apple Bloom said confusedly.
“Yeah, people leave all the time!” Scootaloo agreed, but paused in confusion, saying, “I think? I can’t remember anyone actually leaving, but...”
“Mah history teacher Ms. Berry leaves all the time,” Apple Bloom stated frankly. “She goes off for the weekend, gets rip roaring drunk, and sort of fails to teach history.”
“Yeah, Cherry Berry has a lot of interaction with the Boundary,” Sunset agreed, “She um... she thinks that she drinks a lot. See, out here at your farm, the edge is dense. You can get total logic failures from one step to the next. Space just starts breaking down. But most ways to leave the city are less confusing than that edge.”
Sunset sort of pantomimed with her hand, saying, “You’ll be driving along, and then” she closed her fist, “You’ll have the amazing story of your trip abroad, as well as any supplies you gathered, just sort of piled into your vehicle, or your bloodstream in Berry’s case.” Then she slid her other hand in the other direction, saying, “And now you’re turned around and are returning to the city. It’s a classic technique by writers of enchanted stories, to utilize chaotic manifestation to limit the needed size of their universe. While beyond is formless chaos, the vacuum pressure of your ordered universe causes any inconsistencies at the boundary to resolve to something logically sound.”
“So you’re saying we cain’t leave the city?” Apple Bloom said perplexed. “That can’t be—why would this chaos boundry even be in place?”
“Because you aren’t fictional,” Sunset offered warily, “But I’m pretty sure the rest of the world is.”
She was sad.
She was sad, and she was tired. So tired. But she couldn’t sleep.
She lit up her horn. That could stop her dreaming sometimes, but it only exchanged dreams for this black nothingness. She didn’t know how to wake up. She hated being alone. She hated being alone.
She wasn’t alone anymore. She was so alone. It was so dark and she didn’t want it to be dark. She wanted it to be bright, and happy, and she wanted to see the sun again. She wanted to see her friends again. She wanted to hear them calling to her, and playing with her, and showing her what things are again. Anything but this nothingness, this cold darkness. But she couldn’t.
She couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t feel. She couldn’t taste. She couldn’t smell. She couldn’t sleep. Because sleep meant hurting. It meant the bad things that didn’t make any sense but just hurt so much that she wanted to forget them forever and ever. She only wanted to forget that, not anything else. She didn’t want to forget who she was again, or forget her friends. She just wanted to forget what she had done.
She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t let herself sleep. She didn’t want to hurt them!
Not again...
She lit up her horn.
She had to stay awake.
She couldn’t stay awake.
She didn’t want to hurt them...
She slept.