//------------------------------// // Chapter 6: Of Magic and an Existential Crisis // Story: Hello, My Name is Air Marshal // by CrackedInkWell //------------------------------// About a week after that when the Royal Sisters had left Las Pegasus to the chorus of farewells and getting my own personal security guards, life was more or less back to normal. Not completely of course, but smoother as they scared off Euphoria and his cult to a safe, out of sight distance. I fell back into my usual routine as I returned back to work, this time asking my boss that I wouldn’t have to directly speak to the guests that come and go.         Concerning my security guards, after giving them a list of ponies that weren’t a threat whatsoever to me, I only gave them one rule: Except for picking me up and dropping me off to where I need to go, I didn’t want to see any sign of them unless it’s an emergency that I may be in danger. Right after I told them what I expected of them, I hadn’t seen any of them except when they come to pick me up to go to and from work. Sometimes I might catch some glances here and there like a ducking shadow underneath the clouds, a group of tourists that seemed to just go around the block in a circle, and even spotted a shadow with a crossbow from one of the buildings once – but otherwise, I haven’t seen much of them.         Anyway, about a week after Celestia left and I got back from lunch with my parents, I noticed a mare knocking on my front door as my secret service pulled up the chariot. A unicorn of a light purple coat and darker shade of lavender. Curious, I called out to her. “Unless you’re selling Filly Scout cookies I’m afraid I’m not interested.”         This catches her by surprise. With an awkward laugh, she levitated a piece of paper in front of her. “Just in time, I guess… Are you Air Marshal?”         “If you’re looking for an alicorn that sticks out like a tornado,” I stretched out my wings to illustrate my point, “then yes. Yes, I am. And you are…?”         “Starlight Glimmer.” She trotted up to me, holding up a hoof. “I hear that you are in need to learn some magic with your new horn.”         “Oh yeah,” I shook her hoof, “Celestia mentioned about you.”         “It’s such an honor, really, that they would call up me to help you out.”         “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask, how do you know them?”         “Well… I wouldn’t say that I know them personally apart of a going to a few ceremonies. But anyway, they know me because I was Princess Twilight’s personal student. So don’t worry, you’re pretty much in good hooves.”         “That’s good to know,” I said as I waved a hoof towards the front door. “Would you like to come in?”         She thanked me for that as I unlocked the door and let her in. I asked her if I could get her a drink of something like coffee, milk or ice water. She shook her head and told me as she plopped on the couch. “Oh, I’m fine, I’m just here partly to teach you some basic magic that I think you’ll like to use.”         “And the other?”         “Well, I never been to Las Pegasus before and always wanted to go but couldn’t until now.”         “Ah, I see.” After taking a seat across from her, I asked what she wants to teach me.         “Well first off, have you been able to use your horn at all?”         I shook my head, “No use in using it if I didn’t know how to.”         She gave a concerned look. “Uh… As in, not since your accident?” I again shook my head. “Oh boy…”         “What?”         “Oh it’s nothing, it’s just… well, when a unicorn doesn’t use his magic for a very long time like say… over a week, then all that does is just store up pressure like shaking up a bottle of soda. B-But it’s okay! As long as we take it nice and slow, there shouldn’t be a problem as we don’t want to do something rather extreme all at once.”         In other words, I was a time bomb waiting to go off. Oh yeah, I don’t see this backfiring in any way, shape or form. “What could go wrong,” indeed.         “So how about we start off with something simple?” She suggested as she lit up her horn to pick up a pillow from the armchair. “How about we begin with levitation?”         At first, she explained to me to think of my magic as like having an extra wing or hoof in which all I had to do was use my head to simply reach out and grab it. That the best way to do this is to imagine my hoof reaching out to touch it and let my magic do the rest. A simple concept to grasp at first… until I had to do it.         For a while, nothing much seemed to happen. I thought about grabbing ahold of the pillow in which only sparks came out of my head. So I tried harder in which the only thing that I accomplished was making my new appendage into a lit sparkler.         “Easy there,” Starlight cautioned me, “we don’t wanna overdo things.”         She was right, of course. But I could see how close I was as I could feel a weird… feeling from my horn and the pillow was starting to give off a blue glow. So I applied a little more focus in the hopes that I might be able to feel something. Then… even to this day, I still don’t know how to describe it accurately. As it was if I could feel the pillow as a whole from the fivers to the zipper, and yet, I was nowhere near it.         “Hey,” I said, “I think I got it!”         “Okay, so far so good.” Starlight nodded her head. “Now just imagine you just picking it up. Don’t rush this, just take your time.”         At first, I couldn’t move it at all like how a father would try to lift Mt. Everhoof. But the more I focused, putting my mind into imagining it being lifted, it somehow became lighter and lighter until it was up in the air. Suspended by nothing at all except for my blue aura around it.         “Yes!” I shouted as I stood up, not noticing that my horn was glowing really brightly now. “I did it!” What Starlight had neglected to tell me before hoof was that magic could be fully charged if there was a lot of emotion being felt. So while I was having my moment of victory and having the same excitement as a colt would have with getting the perfect Hearth’s Warming present – my horn exploded like a firecracker and I was falling through another dimension.         Of course, I still don’t know if this is a normal thing for unicorns to experience this, but before I knew what had happened, I was falling through a kaleidoscope tube of bright colors, weird sounds, and having my mouth taste like lemons as I was screaming. My wings were useless as I was being sucked in and my horn wasn’t turning off as it still kept being lit up like a lightbulb.         Then just as quickly as the wormhole appeared to swallow me out, so did it decided to crap me out. The next thing I knew, I fell into a small room with orange walls and onto a bed that I bounced off of it and onto the hardwood floor. After taking a few moments to scrape my face off from the floor, I looked around to figure out where I landed in. I remember that it was in somepony’s bedroom in which the walls were bright orange with a ceiling that looked like something out of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The bed that broke my fall had a comforter of black and gold with dark red pillows. All around me there were objects and knick-knacks that looked like where from all over different parts of the world. A Neighponese tapestry of a samurai here, a couple of marble bust statues of some philosophers there, a few Zebracan masks, a few old world maps hanging on a wall, and books. Nearly much of the room had piles of books that cushioned between the knick-knacks and the black desk that had a typewriter with sacks of paper nearby.         There was a window right over the bed, in which I looked out to see houses and trees of a small town. “Where am I?” Was the first thing to come out of my mouth. Before I could think about that any longer, I heard hoofsteps walking up to the white door behind me in which it opened up to a tired looking earth pony. A young stallion that was dark purple except for his peach muzzle with bronze glasses with golden eyes. I remembered that he had a chocolate mane with some a good lock of blond in the very front. He had on one of those fancy white collars with a yellow bowtie. He had a black bag that hung on the side of him like a sack. And his cutie mark I noticed was a simple, solid black inkwell with a noticeable crack in it.         As he entered and spotted me, we both froze as we looked at each other. I for one felt like I was caught in what looks like I just broke into the guy’s room. While he… the only way I could describe it was that he looked at me as if seeing Saddle Clause was right there in the flesh.         “Uh… This isn’t what it looks like.” I began. “I think I’ve accidentally teleported here.”         He didn’t say anything as he walked right in, closed the door, locked it and took a seat by the desk.         “Really mister,” I said as I got off the bed. “This was an accident. If you just let me through and tell me where I’ve ended up, I’ll be out of your-”         “H-How are you here?” He asked as his face was in permanent amazement.         I blinked. “Well uh… I was learning some magic and I’ve might have overdone it. Look, I really don’t mean any harm, I don’t know where I teleported to.” There was an awkward silence between us. “Uh… Well…” I held up a hoof. “My name is-”         “Air Marshal.”         Now it was my turn to look surprised for a moment before thinking that maybe those newspapers might have spread outside of Las Pegasus. “Yeah. I take it that you’ve heard about me.”         “You have no idea.”         I tilted my head. “Okay…? Anyway, can you at least tell me where am I?”         “Ponyville.”         “Wait, really?” I craned my neck over to the window. “Wow, I didn’t realize that I could do that. But it’s gonna be a really long trip to get back though.” With a frustrated sigh, I went over to the door to turn the little lock on the knob. “Still, sorry for just popping in like this but I really need to start-”         Before I could reach for the doorknob, his hoof got there before mine. “No! You can’t go out there!”         “Says who? I just disappeared from Las Pegasus and I really gotta get back there.”         “I won’t allow it.”         I narrowed my eyes. “Why not? And what’s preventing me? I’m practically twice the size of you, and in case you haven’t noticed, I have both a horn and wings on me.”         “But you don’t know how to use that magic of yours.” He said but quickly put a hoof over his mouth as if he said something that he shouldn’t.         However, this gave me pause. “How do you know that?”         He started to look nervous. “I-I uh…”         “Nopony except the Princesses know that, so how did you know about that?”         Falling back onto his haunches, the stranger rubbed his temples. “Look… This is gonna sound unbelievable. And trust me, even I can’t believe it myself despite seeing you here. I mean… a-actually here! And I know we’ve just met, but I got no reason for lying to you, right? So what I’m gonna say may sound way out there like aliens or humans, but… it’s true.”         “Well spit it out! What is it?”         He took a deep breath, looked at me in the eye and said. “My name is Cracked Inkwell, and I uh… made… you.”         I blinked… and blinked again. And blinked even more. So after a good hour or so, I finally asked, “What?”         “Ugh, I know,” He said as he messed up his mane. “I know you have no reason whatsoever to believe me, but it’s the honest truth. I made you, as a character for a story I’m trying to finish up. But I have proof.” He went over to the desk in which there were files that were stacked underneath it. From it, he pulled out a yellow file that had on it, written in pencil: Hello My Name is Prince Air Marshal.         “It has everything that’s been happening to you so far.” He said. “All five chapters of it, plus one I’m working on. It covers everything from Celestia sneezing you into an alicorn, to that bunny suit convention, the granny that tried to flirt with you, the cult, that lunch you had with Celestia and Luna. Just take a look, it’s all there.”         Of course, this sounded like something out of one of those sci-fi comics in which the main guy falls into an alternate dimension to find out that he’s considered a fictional character there. So, like an idiot, I took my existential crisis into my hooves and flipped the thing open. In there was a typed-out manuscript of a story. It had spelling and grammatical errors that were as plain as the words in this sentence with even several that were scratched out. But… he was right.         As I scanned over, every single detail was accurate. From the owner’s name of the bar to what my parents said before the Cult Cuckoo found us. Everything was there! Everything worth mentioning was there! Everything that should have been left out was crossed out! The words on the page sounded like how I would tell a story, but… this was done by somepony else.         “But…” I began, however, I didn’t know exactly how. “This… These are my words… My thoughts on paper… How…?”         “Don’t panic.” He tells me. “However, I would be lying to say that I’m not as shocked as you are. I mean… You, actually here. My own character actually here!”         “Yeah while you’re being star struck, I’m having a bit of an existential crisis over here.” I deadpanned. “I mean…” I looked at the manuscript. “What does that make me anyway? Am I real or… anything?”         The little guy reached out and poked my side with a hoof. “You feel real. So I can definitely rule out hallucinations. But… Y-You could understand what this is like for me, right? It’s like having your imaginary friend suddenly became real. Something that I thought would never happen to me considering all the stories I’ve written.”         “Stories?” I blinked. “As in more than one?”         He nodded, “Uh yeah.”         There was an awkward silence between us. “So… Do you like… Publish books or something?”         I noticed the guy was blushing with embarrassment. “Well… Not exactly… I mean, my stuff does get published, but not for the reason you think of…”         However, I did. “So what? Like a magazine for fan fiction or some…” I trailed off as he looked more awkward. “Oh dear Celestia, are you kidding me? The guy that wrote me into existence is a fanfic writer!”         “W-What can I say…” he pawed a hoof on the floor. “I do want to be a writer… and at least I have an audience. B-But I swear that I didn’t write anything mature about you!”         “Oh gee, thanks.” I said, flopping onto the poorly made bed. “So I’m in a world that I’m fictional and you…” sitting straight up, I looked at my creator with a glare. “You did this to me!”         “H-Hey, wait-a-minute!” Cracked tried to plead but my emotions were to the point that I unintentionally and instantly used my magic to grab him by the throat, dragging him over so that I could look at him in the eye.         “Do you have ANY idea what I’ve been through in the past couple of weeks! What I had to put up with!”         “I-I-I know!” He cried out. “I wrote you! Look, I’m sorry but-”         “But what?! I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t ask to have someone slap a horn on my head, or to have a religion grow around me overnight, or to be mugged in the streets because I’m an alicorn! I can’t even go back to a normal life because of you! All of this chaos, and for what! Why did you bother to create me for?! Is my stress and near mental breakdowns funny to you!?”         “S-S-S-Satire.” He replied in a scared tone.         I on the other hoof blinked. “Excuse me?”         “S-Satire. I wrote you as a satire.” He explained. “Look, in my world, I’ve noticed that the Princesses have always been seen as these untouchable goddesses, and everypony I’ve talked to, they always think that just because they’re an alicorn, they couldn’t possibly be a pony like everyone else. That if they did become one, they have to become royalty, no exceptions. So… About a month or so ago, I came up with a question: What if somepony was ascended to be an alicorn, but outright refused to be a leader and just try to go on life as normal?”         I loosen my grip on him, letting him free as I let this information sink in. “So basically,” I questioned, “you took me, a normal guy that directs traffic, made me into a god in ponies’ eyes, to do… what? What’s your point in having me go through all of this?”         “It’s it obvious?” He asked, rubbing his throat. “So that it would help ponies see a different point of view. That the ponies we tend to look up to, think that they’re better than everypony, are just like us by making fun of how alicorns like… well… you are treated by seeing how you would react to something like this.”         After getting up from the bed, I looked down at him. “Well, this is all very interesting, finding out that the god of my universe is a… what? Mid-twenty-year-old author of fan fiction writing a satire starring me. But as of right now, I have only three questions for you that I would love if they were answered.”         He gulped. “Considering that you could easily break me in two, I don’t have much of a choice in this, do I?” I shook my head. “Okay… what is it?”         “In your story, how does mine end?”         “Um…”         My jaw dropped. “Don’t tell me you don’t know.” He didn’t. “Are you kidding me!”         “Hey, I only have some vague ideas to work with and I… improvise from that. Heck, that story over there,” he pointed at the folder, “isn’t finished yet. Close to be, but I’m telling you the truth that I’m just as much in the dark as you are. Even I don’t fully know how this is gonna end.”         After giving myself a facehoof, I moved on to my next question. “Okay… And if you do find an ending for me… Will I continue to exist or…” I couldn’t finish my dreaded thought nor say it.         Inkwell paused as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I… I don’t know.”         My eyes went wide as I took him by the shoulders. “What do you mean you don’t know! You’re practically a creator god, aren’t you?”         “Stop calling me that!” He pushed me away. “I’m not a creator god, I’m just a storyteller. A writer that just happens to write stories because I wanted to. In a weird way… I’m kinda like you.”         “How?”         After clearing his throat, he said, “I mean think about it. We’re just both average ponies that suddenly became divine without given much of a choice. Plus, I’m not gonna lie… you calling me a God is just… weird.”         This got a laugh out of me. “No kidding. But still… what happens after…”         He looked right up to me with a sober expression. “I don’t know. I only begin at the beginning, go on until I get to the end then stop. But after…? Maybe… regardless if you’re from my imagination or from an alternative universe where you’re real… perhaps, you continue on to exist in some way, be in from my head, in other’s imaginations, or in your own that you go on as normal without any noticeable change even after I say it’s over. That’s probably the thing about characters you make, once they exist in your head and write them down, they don’t go away that easily.”         “Huh.” I smirked as I patted him on the back. “You’re actually a thoughtful guy, aren’t ya?”         “Well, I don’t have that many ponies to talk to on a daily basis. So… what’s your third question?”         “How do I get back? I sent myself here by accident when Starlight-”         “Was teaching you how to use magic.”         I blinked. “How did you-”         “It was the last thing I wrote last night but stopped as I got stuck.” He shrugged as he picked up the folder. As he looked through the manuscript, he froze as he stared at the last page. “Okay, that’s scary. It… It has our conversation in it, but I haven’t written any of it!”         “Really?” I looked over and sure enough there was our whole conversation in perfect detail. Including the words that were being typed as I read them. Huh… Casserole Carousel Pumpkin… Toy boat! Toy boat! Toy boat! Seashells, seashells by the… Pound Cake. Huh… Now it’s writing out my thoughts. “I guess I might be wrong.” I said, “You might not be the creator after all.”         He on the other hoof put both hooves over his head. “You know what? Before this drives me insane, maybe… If I wrote you back into the story… then you might go back.”         I shrugged. It was the only reasonable plan that this surreal day has to offer. So, he took up the last page and put it into the typewriter in which the words suddenly stopped.         A portal opened up underneath me in which I fell through back into the tunnel of light and sound as I twist and spun in the suction of the vortex. Screaming through the gateway between countless worlds in hopes that I have fallen through my own world. And just as quickly as I was falling, so did I fall through the ceiling and onto my couch.         Looking up after bouncing off of it, Starlight Glimmer was being restrained by my secret police, but all of them froze when they saw me reentered into reality.         “Air Marshal.” One of the guards helped me up. “You disappeared on us for several minutes, we thought she did something to you. What happened? Where did you go?”         I didn’t respond immediately. After telling them that they could let her go, I turned to the kitchen to warm up a glass of milk, I took it into the bedroom with me. “I’m gonna need a nap.”