//------------------------------// // 020 - Spacepone // Story: Songs of the Spheres // by GMBlackjack //------------------------------// General Sunset, Toph, Fef, Lieshy, and Vivian stood in front of a set of double doors disguised to look like a sheer rock face on the side of a mountain. Toph turned to Sunset, folding her arms. “You have to promise not to lose your head when we go in. Got it?” “I won’t kill anypony if that’s what you’re worried about.” “No crippling their arcs either,” Toph emphasized. Sunset grumbled to herself. “If you insist. Whatever you thought about that Arcei at the temple, and the others you’ve seen, this is an organized Arcei cell we’ve found. They actively destroy large runes that provide the livelihood of ponies everywhere. You’re about to get a wake up call.” Lieshy raised an eyebrow. “Maybe. I suspect it’s more of a case of both sides being absolute jerks and destroying the world they care about so much by refusing to see past each other.” Sunset opened her mouth to object but quickly shut it. “Wow. Profound,” Fef commented. Lieshy shrugged. “Bright bulbs do serve a purpose.” “What?” “Oh come on, that was obvious. Connotations of intelligence as well as illumination? I thought you’d be able to figure that one out, actually. Not sure if I should feel sorry or annoyed.” Fef folded her arms. “Can we just go in already?” Vivian knocked on the door. “Helloooooo! Anypony home?” A very purple Arcei-unicorn opened the door and glared at them. “You here to kill us?” “Much as I would love to put an end to your little rampage, no,” Sunset said, sneering. “We received a tip that the individual known as ‘the Pinkie Sage’ was told you existed and went right to you. We’re just here for information.” “And after you’re done with that you’ll just summon the army on us.” Toph pointed at Sunset. “You better not be thinking about doing that.” Sunset said nothing, simply looking away form Toph. Toph facepalmed. “Okay, look, purple Arcei-“ “Name’s Sparkler.” “Right, Sparkler. You probably know we’re from another world, right?” Sparkler furrowed her brow. “So the rumors are true.” “Yeah, they are. We can get your entire society off this world and onto a place they’d not be hunted. Keep you away from this maniac here.” Sparkler nodded slowly. “Are there runes in these other worlds?” “I… Well there probably are, but none that I know about.” Sparkler shook her head. “We’ll have to decline then. We need runes to grow our people.” “And there it is!” Sunset blurted. “The ‘need’ to grow. There’s no way in the Goddess’s name that’s a real ‘need’.” Sparkler sighed. “Look, I can let you in, I doubt I could stop you even if I wanted to, but I don’t guarantee they won’t try to kill you on sight.” Vivian glanced to Sunset. “Maybe you should stay outside.” “No,” Sunset growled. “I want to see this.” Sparkler shrugged, opening the doors the rest of the way, revealing a slick, black metal interior hallway. “Welcome to Elestar. Largest Arcei settlement in Lai. Big enough that we’re not going anywhere.” “There’s no way you’re big enough not to be-“ Sunset’s jaw dropped when they entered the actual cavern that held Elestar. It was a city composed of black metal, many of them glowing with artificial rune imitations. She saw thousands of Arcei walking, flying, and floating around their city. Their signature hard-light flashed on and off everywhere in the city, creating roads for Arcei to walk on and signs for ponies to read. “…I’m impressed,” Lieshy admitted. “This is a pretty well kept secret.” “See, this is why I went ‘woah’ five minutes ago,” Toph commented. Sunset shook her head. “How have we not found this place!? How is there not a war going on right now!?” “We’re good at keeping secrets,” Sparkler said. “We never raid any runes ourselves, only get the harvested material secondhand from other tribes that know not of our existence. Though we also have a large mining operation. There’s a decent amount of runes beneath the ground – not enough, but some.” She activated her arcs, creating a bridge of light down towards the city itself. “You’ll probably want to talk to the Tzar.” “Tzar?” Fef asked. “Boss. Head Honcho. Monarch. Ruler.” “Oh. AWESOME title!” “If you say so.” They walked down to a larger hard-light street. There were dozens of Arcei walking alongside them. More than a few shot them dirty looks, clearly considering fighting them, but the presence of Sparkler and the alien nature of most of them gave the ponies pause. Vivian waved at them, trying to be sociable. One of the pegasus-Arcei just flipped her off with her wing. She gasped. “Rude!” “They think you’re with the outside world, which does nothing but hunt and condemn them,” Sparkler commented. “Personally, I think those of you who aren’t the General are just normal crazy.” “You’re not wrong,” Lieshy admitted. “I do wonder though… There are some Arcei down here with features, but the vast majority don’t have any.” “Something about the Arcei process makes our children less and less likely to have any features at all, not even Earth Pony features,” Sparkler said. “Most of the featured Arcei you see had a parent who wasn’t an Arcei when the featured Arcei was conceived.” Toph blinked. “Why do you guys always get the cool mixing thing? In my world it’s air, earth, fire, or water, no combos. Unless you’re the chosen hero of the entire world, in which case you get them all.” She tapped her foot on the floor. “I would have loved some fire…” Sparkler didn’t bother to respond. They walked on in silence a moment on top of a green-blue light bridge, several other bridges both above and below them at this point. This close, the buildings could be seen to be relatively simple constructions. The black metal and artificial rune-lights made them look advanced, but really they were just easy to construct in cubic and rectangular shapes with regular divisions within. The few they could see into held scenes much like any regular Lai home – families sitting around on chairs, reading, perhaps talking. There were fireplaces, and fillies running around laughing or restless. “None of the fillies have arcs,” Lieshy noted. “They’re not added until they get older,” Sparkler responded. “They wouldn’t grow correctly.” She pointed ahead at one of the few round buildings. “The Tzar’s in there.” She gestured towards the door. “You’re not coming in?” Lieshy asked. “Armonia, no!” Sparkler laughed. “You get to fumble in there alone. Have fun!” She gestured towards the door again. Toph shrugged, kicking the door open and marching in. “Hey. Here to see the Tzar.” The interior of the round building was a single throne room. Decoration was minimal, though there was a throne with a single full rune obelisk behind it, glowing with a dark gray color. In the throne sat an orange-peach Arcei mare with deep, wise eyes. “That would be me.” Vivian moved to the front of the group. “Tzar, I am Vivian, and these are my friends, Lieshy, Fef, Toph, and Sunset. We come not to hurt you, but to seek information.” The Tzar narrowed her eyes. “I am Tzar Somnabula, ruler of Elestar. Were this any other day I’d just kill you on the spot.” “…But?” “But I’ve heard about what you’re trying to do, and who you’re hunting. Pinkie the Sage.” Vivian nodded. “Yes. We believe she passed through here, and we’d like to know if you have anything on her.” “I do not. She arrived and vanished within a night, taking an unidentified book with her, allowing only a scant few Arcei to see her.” Sunset twitched. “Then what good are you?” Toph stomped and sent a small pillar of earth into Sunset’s jaw to shut her up. Somnabula pointed at Sunset. “You are the reason we don’t trust the outside.” Lieshy raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you attack their towns to destroy their runes?” “We don’t have to explain ourselves to you.” “Maybe you should,” Toph said. “We try to protect you while she’s on a crazy rampage. The Arcei I’ve met seem decent, but even I have to admit the attacks seem a bit much.” Somnabula sighed. “Fair enough. Most Arcei fight simply because they feel as if they have to, because they always have, because the world won’t accept them and it's one against all. If this were truly the case, I think you could agree that it was just an example of both sides refusing to sit down and talk.” “There’s more to it than that.” Fef pushed. “Much more. Most Arcei don’t know this, but if their children don’t receive arcs by the time they reach maturity they will slowly approach a brain-dead state.” Vivian put a hand to her mouth. “That’s horrible!” “It’s a flaw in our Mother’s design,” Somnabula said. “She failed to take into account the genetic alterations she made to herself would be passed on to her descendants, but that the arcs would not. Every arc must be created from new material. Mining for runes is very difficult, and almost every rune in the wild has been claimed. Not to mention the golems each one has defending it. It is a difficult existence.” “…I see a problem,” Lieshy said. “The runes are a limited resource.” “Yeah, that’s it. I can see you’ve tried creating artificial runes, but am I right in assuming they aren’t working?” “They are not,” the Tzar admitted. “Every time we try to create an Arcei with our false runes, the result is gruesome. It is looking like they cannot be replicated.” Toph clapped her hands. “We can help with that! We’ve got mages and scientists and a lot of other ‘genius’ types that we can put on the problem, bring in stuff from the outside.” Somnabula’s scowl lessened for the first time in the conversation. “I was expecting a positive conversation. I was not expecting an offer.” Toph shrugged, glancing at Liehsy. “It’s kinda what the whole multiverse community is built on. Everyone helps reinforce everyone else.” “Unless you’re Senator Pearse,” Fef said. “Then you try to screw everyone over and suffer the wrath of public shaming!” Somnabula nodded slowly. “I will consider this. However, it still is not why you’re here.” Toph shrugged. “You already said you didn’t have anything. That’s fine, it’s just like all the other places we visit.” “Move on to the next…” Lieshy said. “Find nothing, go again, find nothing. It is getting tiring.” Somnabula shook her head. “Just because I have nothing doesn’t mean I don’t have a way to get what you need.” She tapped the true rune behind her. “This rune is kept intact because it has a very special effect infused within it.” “What?” Toph asked. Somnabula tapped it. The rune’s dark gray color flared slightly, creating a spherical golem on top of it. The spherical golem exploded into dust, the particulates fusing together in front of Somnabula’s throne. A brilliant sparkling essence appeared within the room. The Spectacularium was now present, fully, within the throne room, its all-encompassing magical essence focused on a single point. This summoning of its attention did not surprise it, merely annoyed it. It let it be known to all around that it was done answering the questions of the world, that it had already given its last decree. It wanted to live. That said, it also knew they were so close to uncovering what the Pinkie Sage had done – the piece of the puzzle was here, it was just that nopony knew what it was. It debated how exactly to go about this with itself. At this point it was a question of if the Spectacularium wanted to act. To interfere. It considered what it knew about Sage Pinkie – everything. Mostly. It knew what she was going to do, how she was going to do it, and what its consequences would be. It also knew that it was actually rather powerless to interact with the Sage’s plan on its own. It had already tried to interfere with the Mechanism and the Sage had just moved it to another universe for the time being. The Spectacularium thought this was obvious and was annoyed that some of those present found this to be useful information. The Spectacularium thought more, considering. It supposed the actions the Sage were about to take were, in the end, neutral to its magical desires. But did it really want to be a distant presence? It wasn’t entirely sure. Plus if the Sage just got to do what she wanted it would be rather boring. The Spectacularium wanted a bit of a show, something interesting. It’d probably drag more of the other universe people here as well, which would be absolutely fascinating. More interaction… The Spectacularium decided it was okay to reveal that the title of the book was The Study of Spirit Ellipses and Foci written by a somewhat crazy Arcei determined to quantify spirits and holy energy. There was currently a copy in the Elestar library. The Spectacularium decided this was enough information, and if they couldn’t figure anything out from that then these ponies were hopeless. The Spectacularium left. Toph blinked. “That was freaky.” “The Study of Spirit Ellipses and Foci,” Lieshy reiterated. “Somnabula, where’s the library?” Somnabula narrowed her eyes. “You will not be allowed in the library. I will order the book, and it will arrive here within a few minutes. You are free to stay until then.” “What do you think the book is going to tell us?” Vivian wondered aloud. “Anything is better than nothing,” Sunset muttered. “Maybe it’ll make this trip not a complete waste of time. Maybe.” ~~~ O’Neill sat in the Captain’s chair of the Apollo, tapping his fingers impatiently on the armrest. The faint thud thud thud thud of his digits slowly bore its way into the minds of the bridge crew, moving them to a special form of insanity. They all knew that, should they say anything to O’Neill, the outrageous tapping would stop – but none of them felt like speaking up. It was as if part of their brains wanted the constant, unending rhythm of fingers tapping. Their irritation levels rose, but so did their inability to speak up, to do anything. It would approach a breaking point in about an hour. O’Neill, of course, was perfectly aware of the psychological warfare he was engaging in. He would feign ignorance in the small chance there was anyone with enough guts to call him out on it, an easy feat seeing that finger tapping would not be considered remarkable by any sane person who heard about it after the fact. It was the perfect crime. No, not a crime… O’Neill thought. Perfectly legal… I need a new word. Hrm… Link walked onto the bridge, boots thudding on the floor. O’Neill stopped the finger tapping to look at Link, pleased to hear the crew let out sighs of relief. “Link?” “General. Why are we still out here?” He gestured at the empty field of stars. “Nothing’s happening.” “We’ve got another hour.” “I’m telling you, that ‘tip’ was just Ba’al wanting to keep us occupied for a while! Who knows what he’s doing elsewhere right now?” “And I’m telling you that the Starfinder can take care of anything that goes wrong. Which, by my estimates and amazing old man reckoning powers, is probably nothing.” Link folded his arms. “If the tip wasn’t from Ba’al or relating to him- nevermind. I guess I’ll just wait an hour.” “That you will,” O’Neill remarked. “Why not have a seat? Enjoy the view. Dimension 47J-something has a lot to offer. Namely lots of stars against a black backdrop.” “Just like every other dimension.” “Not true! That forest has no stars. Then there’s the Static. That was fun to fly through.” Link shrugged. “Most every other dimension. The stars are the most common feature of most skies at night.” “Common doesn’t make it any less beautiful.” And then, just like that, something bright and sparkling zipped onto their screen. A few soft alarms went off as the streaking pink-purple structure halted right in front of them, a streak of light receding from it – a telltale sign of something moving faster than light. The thing was an ovoid shaped crystal that was translucent, but refractive enough that it was difficult to see exactly what was inside. The crystal had already begun to deteriorate now that it was no longer traveling at superluminal speeds, shattering by way of flakes until the crystal shape deteriorated into nothing, leaving only the ship inside visible. It was composed mostly of a pearly-white alloy marked with the occasional pink-purple line of glowing power. The shape was that of three pointed semicircles sprouting off a central round section, as if protecting it. After the crystal dust had dissipated a fair way, two wings were projected out of the ship, taking the shape of leaf blades physically separated from the ship. They were blue, translucent, and shimmered with unusual energies. The wings flapped ever so slightly, turning the ship to look directly at the Apollo. O’Neill looked to Link. “See? Something happened. Send out the first-contact hail.” The communications officer pressed a button, sending out a signal on every frequency the Apollo was able. Usually alien ships were able to pick up at least one, so if they didn’t answer it would be a safe bet they were ignoring the call or didn’t have a communication system. They did answer, though. An image appeared on-screen of a pegasus – green coat with a purple and grey mane. She looked at them with a curious expression, momentarily distracted by their appearance. She quickly regained her composer and cleared her throat. “Greetings. I am Captain Shockwave of the EQS Counselor. We are not aggressive.” “I’m General O’Neill of the USS Apollo. We’re only aggressive when we haven’t gotten enough sleep, and I had a nap a few hours ago.” Shockwave let out a sigh of relief. “At least you’re talking. That’s good. We have not had good … Hold on, is that a unicorn on your bridge?” O’Neill glanced behind him. “Oh, yeah. That’s Mauve. He’s our magic consultant. Say hi Mauve.” The large, bearded stallion waved. “Hi.” “How did you get one of our ponies on your ship?” O’Neill folded his hands together and stared right at Shockwave. “Would you believe me if I told you he’s from an alternate dimension?” “Not without evidence.” “Spin up the dimensional drive,” O’Neill ordered. “The forest should prove the point. Don’t go through, we don’t want more trees in the bays.” The Apollo tore a hole through spacetime through which a forest could easily be seen. It closed a moment afterward. O’Neill let the smallest hint of a smile crawl up his face. “That good enough for you?” Shockwave nodded slowly. “Certainly.” “Now, allow me to be surprised,” O’Neill said, sitting back. “You’re the first ponies we’ve met with a space force. Actually, you’re the first FTL capable species we’ve met outside our home cluster of universes. Not to mention that I have no idea what that crystal thing was.” “Ah, the shell drive,” Shockwave said, thinking over exactly how to explain that. “We have a magical icosahedron in our core that draws vis from the aether. The faster you move, the more vis can be drawn because larger areas are swept out. At a certain speed it becomes possible to form a shell of pure vis around the ship that solidifies at certain conditions, allowing vis to automatically be converted into faster and faster speed. There are also enchantments to keep time from dilating and the ship from being converted into energy, but that’s the basics.” O’Neill looked to Link and shrugged. “Ours punches a hole in reality and travels fast through a bunch of crazy moving colors. We punch out and we’re light years away. We call it hyperspace.” “Oh. You’re not a science vessel,” Shockwave deduced from O’Neill’s comparably simplistic explanation. “No. We’re a flagship. Did you think something this big was a science vessel?” “Usually scouts or science vessels are the ones doing the exploring.” O’Neill shrugged. “Things get different when you’re traveling the multiverse. And when you don’t have all that many ships.” “You’ll probably want to head further into our territory. We can give you directions to the current location of the Homeworld, where you could meet the Princess. It’ll be a several day journey…” O’Neill leaned in. “We can cross the galaxy in a matter of hours.” Shockwave blinked. “We cannot, and if you arrived without us-“ “We can tow you.” Shockwave struggled to keep her face straight. “In that case, it would be best to get you there as soon as possible. Coordinates are being sent over.” “Thank you!” O’Neill smiled. The feed was cut. “So, clearly she’s not a diplomat, and probably just wanted to scan stars all her life.” Link shrugged. “Nothing to be ashamed of.” “No, but it does mean we might not get a great report written about us. We’re probably annoying.” “Ah. This is going to delay us, isn’t it?” “Considerably!” ~~~ Twilight turned to her friends. “All right, so, who’s ready to go exploring!” “Me!” Flutterfree shouted. “I can’t wait to go back to the mushroom world! I bet they’ll be glad to see us!” Rarity threw back her mane. “I wonder if they’ve appreciated any of my designs since last time I was there…” Nova blinked. “Well I have no reason to feel pumped about going but I’m excited anyway. It just feels like today is going to be a good day!” Pinkie laughed. “We’re not going to the mushroom world today!” Twilight turned to her. “…We’re not?” “Nope!” She took out a pocket watch and looked at it with a mock sophisticated expression. “Three… Two… One... Zero!” A portal opened up, depositing Lieshy in front of them. “Whatever esoteric antics you were about to get up to, stop. The bell rings, calling you to duty.” Flutterfree looked at her. “Did you find something?” “The bear’s earlobes, yes we did. We’ve got a book.” Twilight’s smile widened. “A book? What about?” “It was written by a crackpot knucklehead breadstuffer who just so happened to record surges of spiritual energy meticulously. He created a table of accurate future predictions of when and where on Lai such a surge would take place. He says it calls the ‘Goddess’ or whatever down to that location for a short moment. We are now fairly certain – certain as hedgehogs – that the Pinkie Sage is going to enact her plan at one of these times and locations.” “Next one’s very very soon, isn’t it?” Rarity said. “We have six hours. After that there won’t be another surge for three Lai years, so it’s safe to assume if this IS what the Sage is going to act on, she’s going to do it now, exploding egg timer.” Nova blinked. “…You calling me an exploding egg timer?” “No, no, that referred to the short timeframe. We’re gathering everyone we can on short notice and preparing for a stakeout. I hope you like sitting in one place for six hours!” Pinkie produced a beach chair and leaned back on it, grinning. “Why wouldn’t I? Everypony loves sitting!” “You were the one I expected to like it the least.” “Give her five minutes,” Flutterfree said. “She’ll get really, really antsy.” “Let’s get all the backup we can…” Twilight said. “Flutterfree, go grab Discord, if you can.” “Oh! Um… I think he’s in another world right now,” Flutterfree said. “…I have no idea when he’ll be back or how to find him.” Pinkie put on a pair of sunglasses and lowered them. “He’d make it too easy.” “I’ll see if Celestia can spare anything,” Twilight said. “The Apollo as well, wherever it is. Have to check with the Tau’ri… Oh! Corona as well!” Lieshy nodded. “We need to get moving. General Sunset’s already at-location, setting the trap. We don’t need an army, but any help will be welcome.” “Question,” Nova said, raising a hoof. “What exactly is the Sage’s plan? What’s her ‘Mechanism’ do once it’s there? …She does have a Mechanism, right? I’m not remembering wrong?” “You’re right,” Lieshy said. “And we have no idea. It has something to do with the Goddess, a Mechanism, and the Sage hating the ‘reason’ behind things. Nobody has a clue what the Goddess can do to help her with that, or why she needs a Mechanism to get help, or even what the Goddess thinks of all this. All we know is that the Sage is up to something and that we’re going to stop her.” “Fair enough,” Rarity said. “We’ll gather whoever we can.” “Same here.” Lieshy opened another portal. “Remember, six hours, Lai time. Be there.” The portal closed. Twilight turned to Pinkie. “What is she planning?” “I have no idea!” Pinkie said, standing up straight. “I saw the mechanism, but I can’t tell you what it does. I can tell you that mask she wears is extremely important, that she thinks what she’s doing is good, and that she’s very careful about what she’s doing. She’s got plans to the moon. She’s even taken me into account, trying to do things in such a way so I won’t know anything!” “And she has your knowledge as well…” Nova commented. “Yep! And oculus vision! She’s like Pinkie 2.0 – except more serious party pooper edition!” “So it’s safe to assume she knows this conversation is happening.” Pinkie shrugged. “It’s possible, likely even, but she might not.” “But she’ll know there’s a trap.” “Ohooooo yes!” Flutterfree frowned. “That… Is pretty annoying.” “Now you know why I’m so effective!” Pinkie winked. “Can you do to her what you did to Melinda?” Twilight asked. Pinkie shook her head. “Melinda was something completely different. She had no idea what she was. We Pinkies more-or-less do. Trying to get the Sage to realize that will do nothing, and I kinda already tried to talk her out of what she was doing. Sorta. I don’t think she’ll give me the time to talk anyway.” “We need to come up with some kind of plan to go over the other plan,” Twilight said. “A trap trap, of sorts. Any ideas?” “Coming up with a trap trap would require knowing precisely what the Sunset’s plan to face the Sage is,” Rarity said. Pinkie pulled out a military issue map. She pointed at a completely random location that had no bearing on reality. “Surround the place in a circle! Draw weapons! Attack and subdue!” “…That’s her plan?” “Well, basically?” Pinkie said. “She’s the kind of pony who’ll add details later. Every person will have a role to play and we’ll have some people in orbit and... Yeah. I have noooo idea what kind of trap trap we could even make!” Twilight frowned. “True… We have no idea where she’s coming from until she comes, and no idea where she’ll escape to, and have no leverage on her at all. She’ll arrive with her plan and expect to succeed. So…” “The monolith chunk!” Nova shouted. “I’ve got it! We can keep her from escaping that way – all dimensional devices that aren’t the giant arches Corona invented run on magic. If we can repurpose the anti-magic materials of the monolith, we’ve got her for sure!” “And we could throw it on the Mechanism!” Twilight grinned. “Nova, that’s a great idea!” “I’ll get on that.” She teleported away. Pinkie rubbed her hooves together. “I have a distinct feeling that nobody’s going to expect what’s about to happen but I’m pumped anyway! Let’s do this thing! Let’s catch a Sage!” ~~~ A couple hours later, O’Neill and Link walked into the central room of the Hub to find a rather large gathering around the Mirror Portal. Twilight and her four friends were there, preparing for a conflict along with Spike, who was busy trying to keep track of everyone present. General Sunset, Toph, and their group was there as well – with the addition of a few other ponies from Lai, including Lady Rarity hefting her hammer and Starcei of all ponies walking out in the open. Apparently there were too many witnesses for Sunset to take the Arcei Mother out. Corona, Tempest, and the rest of the team were there, cleaning their guns. Bon Bon was suiting up next to Aang and Iroh, watching the two of them trade fiery training blows curiously. There was even an Tau’ri team sent over for the mission, readying their zat guns to stun. A smile came to O’Neill’s face. “This… This is good. Look at this! I don’t even know what we’re doing and I feel like we’re ready to kick some ass!” “Oh!” Twilight said, flying over to them. “You’re back! Good, having the Apollo in orbit would be great! You could just teleport the Sage off the ground!” “I’d need a tracker on her, but yeah.” The Tau’ri team leader nodded to O’Neill and prepared a tracker for that exact purpose. “When’s the op?” O’Neill asked. “Two hours. There’ll be a ‘spirit surge’ on Lai that Sage Pinkie needs to use. We’re probably going in with a lot of overkill here, but this Sage definitely knows we’re going to be there.” “So since we can afford the overkill, go ahead and use it. I like your style,” O’Neill said. He turned to Link. “Ground support?” Link drew the master sword and looked at his own reflection in its blade. “I will be honored to provide aid for once.” “Good.” O’Neill adjusted his uniform. “Twi, you got a minute?” “Hm? Yes, why?” “We found a very interesting universe and have some people we want you to meet.” “Oh? Who?” A truly gigantic purple pony – taller than Celestia – dropped the invisibility spell she had on. Her hair swirled with the majesty of fading light and distant stars, her eyes were deep intelligent pupils ringed by mystical irises, and her horn was pointed as if ready to tear through space itself. She was wearing a complex set of regalia on her chest made of a pearly white alloy and a few glowing veins of purple power surrounding a central blue crystal. Her cutie mark was that of a six pointed magical star with five smaller points around it. Twilight looked up. “…Wow. You’re impressive. Twilight, I take it?” The majestic being smiled. “Yes. I am Princess Twilight Sparkle of Equis. An Equis almost exactly like your own, from what I have read, save two thousand years into the future.” Twilight gasped. “Oh. My. That’s… That’s so interesting! You could tell us what’s about to happen before it happens like we’ve been telling some of the other worlds, and we could learn what our fates are – of course, only in the short term since this whole multiverse thing is a little jarring and will definitely spiral out of control…” The other Twilight smiled. “You’re just like me all those years ago. Sometimes I wish I still had your level of energy.” “Talk to Nova. She’s got energy drinks.” “…Nova?” “Oh, right. Starlight. Changed her name to differentiate from the other Starlights. There’s Starcei over there, and I think I’ve seen Starbeat around somewhere. Don’t think she’s part of the operation though…” “Oh, right, names. It must be confusing for you all to have so many. You’re still Twilight, right?” “For now. I’ll probably change eventually.” Twilight shrugged. “I can be Cosmo, then,” Cosmo said. “At least for now.” “Wow you are a lot more decisive than I am.” “You stop making such a big fuss over things at about year three hundred.” Twilight chuckled. “So Celestia tells me. Anyway, was there anyone else O’Neill? You said ‘people’.” Cosmo smirked, tapping the crystal on her chest. “I’ve far outlived the vast majority of all ponies you’d know… All but this one. Say hello.” The crystal flared. “Hello.” Twilight leaned in. “…Starlight?” “She’s passed the intelligence test, ‘Cosmo’. Her powers of deduction are beyond compare.” Twilight looked up at Cosmo, raising an eyebrow. “…She seems sarcastic.” The crystal beeped. “When you live your life as a digital intelligence you tend to get very sarcastic. By the way, can I access the computer network here? The constant wireless signals keep prodding me.” “Sure,” Twilight said, shrugging. “Be warned we do have a hacker around here, Sombra, who’s… Pretty good at getting into everything.” “I’ll be fine,” Starlight said, falling quiet – presumably to surf the Hub Internet. “So, what’s the story behind that?” Twilight asked. “Actually, how did your world even come to be? What happened in those two thousand years?” “Well, it’s a long story, but I’ll try to cut it short,“ Cosmo cleared her throat. “The six of us lived as friends for a very, very long time, well into our adulthood. It was beautiful. I never married or had any foals, but all the others eventually did, even Starlight.” Starlight beeped indignantly. “You say that like it’s surprising.” “It was. The point is most of us had families, and all of us were apart of everypony else’s families. It was a great time. I had no foals of my own, so I became sort of a built-in aunt of sorts for everyone, the binding glue, the princess everyone knew. I began to champion technology research because it seemed like a good idea, and we eventually developed our ships. Took about fifty years, but that wasn’t much of a problem. I was surrounded by a huge family and had begun to unite the many races of Equis together in harmony.” “Then we found the aliens,” Starlight added. Cosmo nodded. “There was a war across the Stars - who, if you haven’t figured out already, aren’t big on interfering. We almost never saw the aliens’ faces until the end, only saw their ships and swarms of death impending upon us all. We fought valiantly, but they did eventually make it to Equis. More than a few of my family perished in that war, and it looked like we might actually lose. Celestia and Luna had fallen as well… “When it was clear we could not win, even with Discord’s assistance, I went to the Tree of Harmony. It let me drain its entire essence into myself and purge the entire planet of alien life. With the power of the entire Tree inside of me, I utterly destroyed their fleet, and wiped the entire world clean. I tried many times after this to talk to the now losing attackers, but they refused. They would not stop until they were utterly exterminated. “After this… We discovered that there was a sacrifice. The Tree of Harmony was the reason, the life-force of most races in our world. It was possible for them to survive without it, but what I had done was not normal. The non-pony races began to die out, losing the will to live, because I had used that will. Soon there were nothing but ponies on Equis, and I was the only remaining princess.” Twilight put her hoof to her mouth. “I’m sorry… That’s horrible. You’ve been through so much.” “That was a long, long time ago. Eventually, all my friends and close family grew old. Pinkie was the last one to go - no surprise there at all. She was laughing until the end. Starlight transformed herself into this crystal. And I moved around the cosmos, looking for anyone. All the signs of civilization we found were destroyed by the aliens. Had I not used the Tree of Harmony, we would have fallen like the rest. We never discovered why the aliens were so genocidal, we never found out why they were so driven, we just knew we had finally been the thing to stop them. So we expanded. The galaxy is a huge place and we haven’t explored all of it, but it’s getting clearer and clearer that we were extremely lucky. You are actually the first aliens we’ve found since then.” “...I wonder if those aliens exist in our world,” Twilight wondered. “If they do, I still have the Tree’s power within me,” Cosmo said. “We will offer our aid.” “Thank you. I guess I should have exp-” “ATTENTION EVERYPONY, EVERYHUMAN, AND EVERYONE ELSE!” General Sunset yelled, standing on top of the main Mirror Portal desk and messing up Bon Bon’s carefully arranged paperwork. “We are going to capture the Pinkie Sage today. Yes, that’s right, capture. While lethal force is allowed, we’d like to have her answer some questions about what exactly she is doing first. But before that, we have to make sure we destroy the Mechanism by any means necessary. We believe she’s going to drop it in using a dimensional portal, and our job is to destroy it before it can do what it does. We will use every power at our disposal to rip that thing to shreds. That is what we are doing. “We will go to Lai now, and set up a circular perimeter around the area of incident. The Starfinder - and hopefully Apollo – will be in orbit, ready to offer assistance from far above. We are fairly certain she knows we’re coming, so expect her to expect whatever you throw at her. We do not know exactly what she’s trying to do, and there will be a high concentration of ‘spiritual energy’ in the area that may summon the being known as the Goddess Armonia to the location. There are a lot of unknowns here. A lot of you probably think this many people on this mission may be overkill for just one pony, but there’s so much in the air I’m willing to take the risk of over-committing. “Some of you may ask why we’re doing this. We have tremendous amounts of evidence that the Pinkie Sage has been manipulating the ponies of Lai for her own selfish reasons, pitting them against each other and inciting rivalries that have killed hundreds. She has raided this very compound. She’s been toying with too many ponies for far too long. Today, we stop her. “It’s time to move out and set up. Let’s go.” She pressed a button, setting the Mirror Portal to Lai. She was the first through. Cosmo smiled. “…I think I’ll come along for this little trip, see what you ponies are doing that’s deviated from the history I know.” Twilight smiled awkwardly. “This… Isn’t really normal. Rarely do we need to do big missions like this.” “All the more reason for me to come along then. It will be interesting – as you’d say – to witness something that doesn’t happen every day.” “Well, come on! We’ve got just over an hour!” ~~~ The Twilight currently known as Cosmo had been on many missions in her time as Princess over the entire pony race. This particular one wasn’t bad, but wasn’t that good either – they were operating on extremely low intel, but to compensate they had gone for extreme overkill. They had an exceedingly odd variety of allies in the conflict, one definite enemy and target, and a neutral presence in the form of whatever the ‘Goddess’ actually was, yet another unknown. The location was a field next to a mountain Cosmo had actually been informed was a gigantic ‘rune’ rather than a geologic feature, the glowing blood red glyphs on it giving it power of a sort. They were well within the ‘range’ of the rune, here, but the rune’s effect was not one that would affect them directly. It apparently made plants bleed. The ‘golem’ guardian of the mountain was a monstrous giant that would only appear if the entire rune was threatened – and if the Sage wanted to do that she was probably suicidal. There was absolutely nothing where the ‘spirit event’ was supposed to happen. It was an empty spot in the field with a medium-sized rock about a meter away from it. One of the Tau’ri walked up to the exact point to set up a scanning machine and an orange flag for all to see. Cosmo found the scanning device interesting – it was a bit large and square for what she was used to, but perhaps it scanned more things than the devices her ponies used. The rest of the group had formed a circle around the area several yards in diameter. There was no attempt to be stealthy at all – they knew their efforts were not secret. Cosmo briefly used a long-distance scan spell and found the pyramid-shaped Starfinder and blocky Apollo directly above them, monitoring the whole situation. She returned her attention to the present moment to find that her Starlight was talking to two other Starlights. “Oh, pardon me, I was elsewhere,” Cosmo said. “So, which of you is which?” The unicorn smiled. “I’m Nova, this is Starcei.” The Arcei bowed respectfully as she was introduced. “What conversation did I miss while I was out?” “Talking about various unusual consistencies and inconsistencies between the three of us,” Starlight called from her crystal. “Nova and I had almost identical lives until we hit the divergent point, which for her was just under two years ago, and for me was two thousand years ago. Her Twilight found a dimensional device, you didn’t.” Cosmo turned to Starcei. “And you?” “Different world, way different time,” Starcei said. “I was born, took it upon myself to be something special, and created an entire race.” She tapped her arcs. “My legacy has been mixed. I never knew my world’s Twilight, nor did I care to. It seems odd to me that so many of us seem connected to her in some way, others more literally.” Starlight flashed indignantly. “I usually have technological means to keep myself occupied. No offense to the Apollo’s network, but it’s lame.” “That’s pretty offensive!” Nova ribbed. Starcei nodded slowly but said nothing. Cosmo pointed at her. “Your never knew your world’s Twilight? What happened to her?” “Killed by Applejack, a ‘hero’ who was actually a terrorist egged on by Sage Pinkie.” Cosmo nodded slowly. “So it comes back to her.” “Yes, it does, as does much. The rest of it comes back to me – or the Goddess, I suppose. Or the ancients, whatever their crazy ideas were.” Cosmo looked at the mountain rune. Curious, she snipped a blade of grass with her magic, and it did indeed ooze red blood. “It does seem to serve no real purpose…” “HEY STARCEI!” The human known as Toph stomped over, pointing at Starcei. “Got a few questions for you!” Starcei raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.” “Why’d you think getting the Arcei offworld was a good idea if their kids need runes or they become vegetables?” “Oh, you found that out.” Starcei looked somewhat surprised. “Most Arcei don’t even know that. It’s a closely guarded secret. You must have gotten Somnabula to spill the ‘beans’ as it were?” “You didn’t answer my question.” Starcei shrugged. “Think of it this way. They were being persecuted. You’ve been moving them for enough months now that the population in your world and others isn’t zero. They’ve probably paired up with some ponies by now, and there’s at least one conceived Arcei offspring, and there will be more soon.” “That’s the problem! Those kids are going to be vegetables!” “Ah, but they’re the citizens of another world now. Those worlds are charged with their wellbeing.” Starcei stared right into Toph’s eyes even though Toph return her gaze, making the menacing gesture rather pointless. “You best find a way to create artificial runes before they grow up then.” Toph pointed at her and tried to say something, didn’t, thought about it for a moment, then scowled. “You conniving little spazwheel.” Starcei nodded. “I look out for my ponies. I am the Mother, after all.” “You’re going to help us… And you are going to come clean with everything you know!” “No promises, but ask away.” Toph grabbed her. “Come on, taking you to someone with more science in their head…” Cosmo glanced at Nova. Nova glanced at Cosmo. “And we just witnessed a mastermind’s plan go exactly as intended,” Starlight beeped. “Can’t really complain, it sounds like she’s in the right place, if taking a bit extreme measures. Can’t really say for sure though, bit low on information.” Nova shrugged. “I… Am not involved in the Arcei dilemma, actually, so I couldn’t say. You could talk to General Sunset about that one. Actually, I think she’s biased against the Arcei in an extreme way, Starcei is angering her just by being here. So… I don’t know who to talk to for an impartial look. …Maybe Vivian?” “Who?” “The shadowy girl with the pink hat,” Nova said, pointing. “She likes just about everyone, though I don’t talk to her often enough to know much about her beyond that.” “Where is she from? She doesn’t look like any of the others here.” Nova opened her mouth, then closed it. She blinked. “I have no idea where she’s from. Huh. Probably should ask.” “There’s a situation on the Apollo,” Starlight said suddenly. “Huh?” Cosmo said, looking down at her regalia. “What’s happening?” “Oh for the – their other enemy, Ba’al, is attacking our fleet. They’re going to intercept, and are preparing to beam us on the bridge now.” The moment the words left Starlight’s crystal, Cosmo was on the bridge of the Apollo. O’Neill coughed. “Engage, helm. Ah, Princess, it appears that we’ve got an idiot who decided to attack you. Don’t know much from the report – it was sent by your people and relayed to us – but any ‘pyramid ship’ is a definite sign of Ba’al. Why he’s attacking you, I have no idea, you have more than enough of a fleet to destroy him. We’re heading over to minimize casualties.” He turned to the helm, checking to make sure they had entered the space pony universe. Cosmo frowned, processing all of this in an instant. “He’s probably doing this to bait you.” “Definitely,” O’Neill said. “But the Starfinder’s still back there, all they’ll be missing will be the specialty weapons on this thing. Probably shouldn’t fire those at a planet anyway with friendlies on the ground. I made a call, we’re going.” Cosmo growled. “Thank you. I assume the Apollo is more than capable to deal with his ship?” “Easily. He may have some clever tricks, but he doesn’t have Ancient Drone Weapons.” “How long until we arrive?” “Three minutes,” O’Neill said. “This is very conveniently timed around the event with the Sage. It’ll take us at least a minute to make sure we got Ba’al, and by then the ‘spirit thing’ will have already happened.” He frowned. “…They might be working together.” “That seems very likely. Do you think your overkill can handle it?” “Ba’al only has one ship as far as we know, and even if he did build another one somehow, the Starfinder is decked out with ‘magitech’. It should be able to hold its own.” He clenched his fist. “But I have the nagging feeling we’re all missing something…” ~~~ Word that Ba’al was involved and had diverted the Apollo away at the worst possible moment spread around the ring of heroes quickly. The reactions were mixed from thinking Ba’al was being stupid to mild concern to anger. Corona herself got a sinking feeling in her stomach, and she didn’t know why. She glanced to Link, noting that he had a look of pure panic across his face. He thought something was going to go down, something big and bad. Corona loaded her gun and prepared to infuse it with fire. Perfecting the art of lighting the bullets on fire when they left the gun and not before had been difficult, but she was more than prepared at this moment. They were all prepared – not all the people here may have liked each other, but they all knew how to work together for the moment. They had a goal, and an enemy, and they planned to use the many connections they had formed to win. Friendship was magic, after all. “Just checking in,” Sombra said, coming through Sunset’s glasses directly into her brain. “Connection stable. That Starlight AI is a pain to avoid in this setting without enough servers, but you’re my safe place.” Corona nodded, not daring speak since Tempest was standing right next to her. “I’ll tell you what I can about the Mechanism the moment I see it – if I can connect to it, I will. It’ll be the fastest hack in the history of ever. A good challenge!” Corona made no motion to respond to this one. It was nerve-wracking enough that things were already starting to go wrong, let alone the fact that she had a wanted criminal in her sunglasses actually helping. The situation was tense and weird. A bit more intense than the other times Corona and Sombra had helped each other recently. “T-MINUS ONE MINUTE!” General Sunset yelled. “Ready yourselves for anything!” Those who hadn’t readied their weapons earlier did so now. Hammers were raised, party cannons were set, spells were prepared, guns were loaded, and eyes were narrowed. Everyone stared at the tiny orange flag in the center of the area. Nobody spoke for the entire minute. Wind blew through the field. A grass blade lost its fight against a beetle, bursting into a small shower of blood. Corona heard a bird chirp. Several timers rang, signifying the end of the wait. Everyone jumped, some even took a step forward, but after that initial lurch there was confusion. They thought nothing was happening. They were wrong – a spark of white energy appeared slightly above the flag, growing in size and rising into the air. It soon filled the sky with its presence, unfolding into a soft, but holy shape. Four arms, two legs, two pairs of wings – one reptilian, one avian. Three small rounded horns crowned a rather featureless face, and a single tail pointed directly into the air. A halo appeared over the head. Even though the Goddess Armonia had no defining eyes, everyone felt like they were being stared at. She spoke with no mouth and no jaw movement, but her voice was not loud, eldritch, or reverberating. She sounded like a woman – a mother. A very displeased and impatient mother. “What has happened to my world? What are all you creatures? Why is the magic different?” The Spectacularium decided to say hello in the only way it knew how. This briefly gave Armonia pause, but she recovered quickly. “I see into all your minds. You have made a mess of my creation in such a short time.” Charter-Princess Twilight Sparkle stepped forward, looking into the Goddess’s face with a determined look. She was scared, clearly, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her. “Goddess of Lai! I am Charter-Princess Twilight Sparkle of the world Equis Vitis, and I speak for all of those here who are new to your world! We apologize if we have trespassed where we were not supposed to tread, and are open to your words on what we have done to cause a mess of your creation, and what we may do to redeem ourselves in your eyes. That said, there is a Sage who is-” “The Sage is meaningless. What you’ve done is not. You’ve ruined my world by interfering. The kingdom was supposed to fall. It has not.” Corona saw General Sunset’s face twist into a conflicted expression of horror and uncertainty. Twilight took the revelation in stride. “How could we have known, Goddess? We arrived here, unaware of your presence, and believed we were helping everypony we could. If you had some greater plan for the betterment of everypony, we apologize. I just a-“ Twilight did not get to complete her thought. A portal opened up a couple meters away from the central flag and dropped an orange rune in the ground. In quick succession, three more portals placed three more runes – teal, salmon, and deep green – in a square pattern around the center. Then a fifth portal dropped a small bomb in the center which was geared to explode before it even hit the ground. The shockwave upset all four runes. The intent was clearly to summon their guardian golems. The hard-light quickly formed an orange saber-toothed cat, a teal humanoid leaning on a cane, a large floating fish with an orb of light in its mouth, and a deep green saw blade. Under the Goddess’ now silent gaze, all hell broke loose. The dozens of guns – both physical and energy-based – went off first, finding that they had little to no effect on the hard-light golems, breaking off only small chunks if there was any effect at all. Corona’s own fiery bullets had a minimal effect at best. A bullet bounced back and hit Mike in the leg, dropping him to the ground. The fish golem was able to shoot back, using the orb of light it held in its jaw to fire lasers of energy. Corona had to duck for cover, only there wasn’t a large enough rock to hide behind. They were all exposed. Lady Rarity met the teal man with her hammer, shattering its head, only for it to grow right back. Her armor deflected the sharp ‘cane’, staggering it so Nova could throw it into the ground. It reformed itself behind Nova, but Pinkie came flying out of nowhere, knocking it to the side. Elsewhere the saw blade and the cat were double teaming, focusing on Twilight Sparkle and General Sunset, who were standing back to back, firing spells, raising shields, and trying their best not to fall to them. Link used his sword to pause time, cutting all the golems at least once, but even the Master Sword couldn’t fell them permanently. Toph plowed a chunk of earth right into the fish’s crystal, shattering it. She then picked up its own salmon rune and tossed it at the fish before it could reform. The fish shattered completely – but reformed just the same as before. “This is not fair!” Pinkie unleashed all her laid party canons, decimating the golem’s forces. The Tau'ri followed up with a volley of grenades while the unicorns and alicorn in the group blasted the golems in a coordinated attack. For an instant, all four golems were vaporized – but they just re-appeared, vicious as ever. “Why do these things even need to protect their runes if nothing can hurt the darn rocks!” Toph said, trying in vain to punch one of the runes in half. “I’m why,” Starcei announced, her arcs glowing with a brilliant color, like any Starlight’s magic, but significantly more saturated. The hard light claws that protruded from her arcs skewered the salmon rune right in the center, cutting it right in half. The rune shook, shuddered, and fell into a powder that floated into Starcei’s arcs through an unseen opening. The fish suddenly became the color of Starcei’s power and began attacking the other golems. Starcei herself ‘teleported’ behind the teal man, slicing at him with a piece of hard light that actively kept him from reforming. “Protect Starcei!” General Sunset ordered. Corona got the message. She leaped into action, encasing the teal man in a wall of fire, giving Starcei an opportunity to go for another rune. “EVERYONE BACK UP!” Pinkie yelled. “THE STARFINDER IS FIRING AT THE RUNES!” Corona flipped backward, kicking the teal man in the face with a flaming boot. Starcei and all the others fell back a fair distance. Those who looked up could see the pink bolt of energy falling from the sky. It hit the ground hard enough to send those who weren’t fast flying several meters, tossing earth into the air and creating a shower of plant blood that splattered over everyone. The pink magic fires dissipated into electric bursts, driving themselves into the runes. Two of the runes had gone dark, leaving only the deep green sawblade, which Starcei currently had the fish occupying. “It’s not over!” Pinkie said, running for the center. She wasn’t fast enough – not this time. A portal opened, dropping a small device composed of gears, runes, and strange unidentified metals onto the patch of dirt that once held an orange flag. The machine lit up brilliantly, casting a complex triple-barrier spell about ten meters in diameter. Another portal opened up, dropping the full glory of the Mechanism onto the freshly exposed earth. Corona wasn’t sure what she was looking at – the closest approximation she could come to was a humungous church organ that had no keys and had cannibalized parts from so many different other organs that the Mechanism couldn’t be considered its own thing anymore. There were a dozen large batteries filled with power that likely came from the green diamond, hundreds of tiny steaming pipes that snaked in an out of the large upright structure, numerous glowing rune fragments that were casting spells on different parts of the Mechanism continually, a few clocks ticking down to midnight, and a single table with a magical inscription on it. Sage Pinkie dropped down from the portal in the air, mask in her hoof. She took one look at her opposition with her blue, shifting, oculus eyes. Everyone with a brain attacked the barrier at once, breaking the outermost layer with the combined might of bullets, fire, hooves, hammers, magic, lasers, and confetti. One layer fell, but two layers remained – and Pinkie had already laid the mask on the Mechanism’s table. “No…” Armonia spoke, able to see into the Sage’s mind for the first time. “No!” She raised her hand, preparing to smite the Sage. The Sage looked directly into the Armonia’s eyes, daring her to try. Corona didn’t know what was going on through the Sage’s mind, but whatever it was startled the Goddess. And that was all the Sage needed. The second layer of barrier broke, but it was a lost cause at this point. The Mechanism activated, bouncing up and down like a motorized jack in the box. Crystals lit up, sparks flew, and clock faces exploded. The mask floated a short ways into the air. A chain made of purely white magic shot out of it. The Sage dropped the barrier so it could go through unhindered. Nobody fired, they knew it was over. Nova acted now that nobody needed to use magic anymore – activating her cobbled together anti-magic device, covering the nearby area in a spell-inhibiting effect. The Mechanism itself lost all magic color at that moment, but the mask did not. The white chain of something that wasn’t quite magic impaled the Goddess in the face. Her entire form shook. She let out a shriek, like that of a woman dying. …In a way, that was exactly what was happening. The white chain pulled, dragging the Goddess down, shrinking her, compressing her – and forcing her into itself. The mask absorbed the Goddess’ entire essence in only a couple of seconds. It fell onto the now defunct Mechanism. The Sage must have read the minds of everyone around her because she pulled a white flag out of her mane. “I SURRENDER!” “…What!?” General Sunset yelled. Corona was aware that there was a back and forth between the General and the Sage, but she didn’t see that. She was suddenly overcome with a feeling of overbearing horror. She turned to look at Fef, and she couldn’t bring herself to look away. She saw Fef press a button on a small metal disc. Demons didn’t carry devices. She was calling someone. Or telling someone something. Corona needed to tell someone about it. Someone. Anyone. “Noooooo you doooooon’t…” Corona froze. No, no no, no. This wasn’t happening… This… “Corona!” Sombra’s voice yelled in her ear. “What is wrong with you? Move! Just move!” Corona couldn’t. She couldn’t. ~~~ “…What!?” General Sunset yelled on one of Sombra’s screens. “I surrender!” the Sage yelled back. “I did what I wanted, you can do whatever you want to me now! Kill me, jail me, whatever!” “What did you do?” “I freed this world from its stupid reason!” the Sage called back. “That’s what I did!” Sombra glanced at her other monitor. Corona was behaving oddly, staring at Fef. Sombra’s eyes widened as she saw Fef press a button. Corona didn’t do anything. “You freed us from the Goddess? How does that even make sense!” General Sunset shouted, though now Sombra was only paying a the slightest bit of attention to that conversation. She grabbed her microphone. “Corona! What is wrong with you? Move! Just move!” Corona did nothing. Sombra knew she heard her, there was no way not to. Sombra took in a breath and cracked her knuckles – time to take matters into her own hands. She began furiously moving her fingers through her various holograms, working her magic. The Sage was talking. “You heard the Goddess. She wanted to destroy your kingdom, make it fall. She’s done a lot more than that! This world is her little game – she created a bunch of ants so she could watch them fight! Peace is boring to her, so she introduces new variables – creating a mutant pony born with no features so Arcei will come to exist, creating prophecies through the previous Spectacularium to drive heroes into existence, and she even wiped out the ancient rune builders so she could start over with some ancient relics around to make things more interesting!” “Sounds like she was bored,” Sombra muttered absent-mindedly. She cropped the video of Fef pressing the button and reduced it to only a second in length, so nobody would be able to tell for sure what individual camera the video came from. Then she sent it directly to the bridge crew of the Starfinder. They, in turn, called everyone on the ground who had a radio. General Sunset was not one of the radio holders. “You… You think you had the right?” “Yes,” the Sage responded. “…I bet you can use her power while it’s in that mask! “Also yes, but I’m not. I’m surrendering it and myself to you. The mask won’t respond to anyone but me now, unless I give it permission, but-“ “FEF!” Lieshy yelled, tearing out her headset. “WHAT DID YOU DO?” “What? Nothing I-“ Lieshy tackled her down, knocking the disc out of the folds of her carapace. “She called someone ever-“ People barely had a change to register that Lieshy had given a warning. With a teleport effect, a single Ba’al appeared on the ground before them. He had no Jaffa, no clones, not even a hand device. It was just him – but something seemed wrong about him. He seemed… dark. He leaped toward the Sage. She put on the mask and pointed at him, a burst of holy energy firing at him. It should have been enough to completely vaporize him thirty times over. He teleported behind her in a flash of sickly, dark purple. It wasn’t magic, but it sure wasn't the transporter technology that had been used to get him here. Sombra couldn’t believe what she was seeing on her screen. She shook her head, trying to find the source of the teleporter that got him here. But she couldn’t find anything… He probably had a ship sitting somewhere in an alternate dimension that had opened a portal, teleported him in, and closed the portal. “Caray! Clever aliens…” The Ba’al grabbed the Sage with some kind of darkness, lifting the mask with his free, bare hand. Lady Rarity charged at him with her hammer, Pinkie right beside her. Some bullets flew. Ba’al raised an eyebrow and a wall of shadowy horrors erected itself between him and his attackers. The hammers impacted the wall with a disgusting squish and the bullets did nothing. For the briefest of moments, Sombra detected a foreign wireless signal. She tried to connect, but the portal opened and closed too fast. Ba’al, the Sage, and the mask were teleported away. The wall of black sludge fell to the ground. Everyone was silent. Nova deactivated the anti-magic field wordlessly. Lieshy broke the silence, lifting Fef into the air. “WHAT. DID. YOU. DO?” “What’s it look like, silly? I called Ba’al! And oo-wee did he have some scary dark mumbo-jumbo going on around him!” “WHY?” Lieshy screamed, tears running down her cheeks. “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!” “That’s the mystery!” Fef shrugged, giggling slightly. “You know what? I don’t even remember anymore! I guess something erased it from my memory so you couldn’t go poking around!” Lieshy threw Fef to the ground. She looked ready to tear the demon apart. She elected to fly off instead. The reactions of Fef’s ‘teammates’ varied from barely contained rage to tears. General Sunset was in the middle, walking up to Fef impassively, face unreadable. As a demon, Fef saw right through it. “Oh, I definitely betrayed you. There’s no way to hide that. Was never on your side. I recall thinking about this moment a few months ago! So, eeeeeeh SORRY-not-sorry!” Sunset’s face clouded over. She turned and walked away, using her dimensional device to go somewhere else. Twilight gulped. “Uh… We’re done, everyone. Anyone who wants to go to the post mission briefing is welcome to return to the Mirror Portal. But… I don’t blame you if you don’t come.” She lifted Fef up in her telekinesis and imprisoned her in a magic box. “We… Will have to decide what to do with her.” Sombra sat back in her chair, shutting her monitors off. She shouldn’t feel upset. She wasn’t involved or invested in this conflict. She just acted for the sake of Corona, her informant. …Why was she so angry though? Why did she feel like she had been bested? Actually, who cared? Ba’al was going down. ~~~ O’Neill had his hands folded and up to his mouth. Behind him there was a video playing – that of Link talking to the Ba’al clone in the cell. It switched to a video of Link and Midna talking in a hallway of the Apollo. Link was sitting across from O’Neill, face as straight as he could manage. “Well, the jig is up!” Midna said, appearing on Link’s shoulder. “Hello General, name’s Midna, and I can tell you’re pissed!” “You bet I am,” O’Neill said, switching to a picture taken of Ba’al raising a wall of shadow. “Do you care to tell me what the hell happened down there?” Link said nothing. Midna sighed. “Okay, so, there’s this thing called Majora-“ Link held up a hand. “Midna…” O’Neill glared. “Spill the beans or I prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law for living on a military vessel under false pretenses for months. Or I can just lock you in the brig for eternity. I can probably do that, out here. Nobody to question me.” Link grit his teeth. “…Knowing about it does things to your head.” “I gathered that much from your little hallway conversations, Link.” “I will not-“ Midna rolled her eyes. “Link! Stop being a hero for once! If he wants to burn his brain, let him. He’s probably doomed already. O’Neill, prepare for eternal nightmares. Prepare never to get a good night’s sleep again. Prepare to stand, frozen, while the force of darkness acts, powerless to do anything because it’s in your head.” O’Neill sat back. “I’m ready. Cameras are disabled, don’t be afraid of anyone else seeing this.” “You better be. There’s this mask known as Majora’s mask. There is a thing inside of it that has the power to destroy everything. And that thing is so far off the deep end insane that it will spread its insanity to everything that even knows about it. And if you see the mask, well, that’s even worse, because then it starts calling to you, demanding that you serve it, demanding that you become a holder of its power. And it will give you power, oh yes, power beyond your wildest imaginable dreams. You begin to think of it as your god, your savior, your everything. And all the while it spreads, spreads, spreads. And then it tries to destroy everything it can. That is the evil of Majora.” “And how do you know this?” “We stopped it,” Link said. “Majora only had a small group of people under its influence when we found it, and it already had enough power to summon terrible natural disasters. All its power was forced back into the mask. But we knew we couldn’t resist the power ourselves, so we gave it to a mysterious being known only as the Happy Mask Salesman, who could.” “So, what, did he fail?” “Ba’al stole it from him,” Midna said. “During the invasion.” “This is why we needed to stop Ba’al sooner,” Link said venomously. “Not do other things.” “You know full well we had no leads,” O’Neill responded. “And we still don’t. All we have is a larger sense of urgency. How long do we have until this Majora starts unleashing complete destruction?” “That’s the thing,” Link said. “It should have already started. I don’t know why it hasn’t yet. It’s clearly given Ba’al the power to initiate such things. It must have some other plan.” O’Neill sat back in his chair. “Well, I’m going to state the obvious. We’ve got an evil entity influencing an enemy we can’t find that’s probably deemed all of us fit to be destroyed. I think we have a problem.” “No, really?” Midna remarked. “He’s also building ships somewhere,” O’Neill said. “What we destroyed for the space ponies was a regular Ha’tak, not his mothership. Given the existence of this Majora, we can’t know if he has enough extra ships to lose that one or was just compelled to use it as a distraction.” He shook his head. “You mentioned Zelda in one of your conversations. You really think she can find it?” Minda shook her head. “I don’t think so anymore. She can see things and understand things with the Triforce of Wisdom. But I don’t think she can see into the other dimensions. Not anymore.” O’Neill shook his head. “…You can stay on the Apollo. I think we need you. And while I’m upset right now, I understand what you were doing. Now get out of my office.” Link didn’t need to be told twice. ~~~ Corona sat down in her dorm, alone. Sugarcoat was out, so it was just her and the television screen. The television screen quickly showed an image of Sombra’s face. “Want to tell me what happened?” “I…” Corona gulped. “I don’t know! I… I saw her press the button, then there was darkness, and… And…” “Something was influencing you,” Sombra said. “No!” Corona yelled. Sombra shook her head sadly. “That was far too fast and angry. Corona, there’s something in your head. What. Is. It?” “The… The…” She racked her brain. Why couldn’t she think? Why couldn’t she say? She knew, but she “SUNSET SHIMMER!” Sombra shouted. “The mask!” Corona shouted. “Oh the mask, it’s definitely the mask, it’s in my head, it’s been in my head so long. In the dream with the blue guy, in the nightmares, it’s been talking to me for weeks but it just won’t let me think about it!” She grabbed her hair and broke down crying. Sombra looked at her for a few seconds, face impassive at first, but quickly melting. “Corona, I-“ “Can you get it out? Hack my brain or something?” Sombra shook her head. “Can’t do that yet.” “What if it makes me hurt someone? What if it takes full control of me? What if it drives me insane?” “I’ll watch you,” Sombra said, taking in a sharp breath. “I’ll watch you closely. I’ll keep you alive, well, and keep you out of danger. And I’ll try to find this mask, whatever it is.” “Th-thanks…” Corona managed. Sombra’s face twisted into a conflicted expression Corona couldn’t read in her current state. Sombra shook her head. “I’d wear the sunglasses as much as possible. And when you go to sleep, try to record what you see when you wake up. Or call me and tell me. I’ll be here.” Corona nodded. “The mask… It… It was with the salesman. The Happy Mask Salesman. Link gave it to him to keep safe. I… I don’t think he’s kept it safe.” “Ba’al has it, doesn’t he?” “That… That would make sense…” She laid down in her bed, staring at the ceiling. “I… I’m going to sleep now. Goodnight, Sombra.” “Goodnight,” Sombra said, preparing to shut off the screen. “…I won’t be able to talk to anyone else about this…” Corona whispered to herself. “It won’t let me…” Sombra closed the screen and shivered. That was terrifying. She had the distinct feeling she might have declared war on a literal god a few hours ago. She decided she was going to sleep as well. Too many thoughts and emotions swirling around her head…