//------------------------------// // Uprooted // Story: A Dream // by totallynotabrony //------------------------------// Apparently Twilight was hoping I was a fever dream or something and was kind of freaked out when she found me sleeping on her couch the next morning. To be fair, I didn’t even anticipate being surrounded by that many empty bottles. “What did you say this was again?” she said, gingerly inspecting one of them. “Tequila.  Fermented agave juice.” “Fermented, like-” “Ethanol.” Her head jerked up, looking again at the quantity.  “How are you not dead?” “I’m a professional.”  I sat up. “At any rate, I may drink to excess, but not in express.” “Two dozen bottles in eight hours is not-!” I cut her off.  “I remember when you freaked out about Pinkie Pie and not being able to figure out her secrets.  Just trust me on this. I have alcohol tolerance you can only dream about.” Twilight jumped from one topic to the next.  “So that thing with Pinkie happened in your universe, too?” “Yep.”  I had a sudden idea.  “Would you like to hear about other universes?” She grabbed her notebook.  At least I could always count on Twilight being a nerd. A couple hours later, I was still talking.  Twilight paused enough in her notetaking to ask, “So after spreading democracy to another alternate universe, you went to yet another?  How many are there? How does a new universe even get created?” “Well, it all starts with a big wa-” Spike came in just then.  “Hey Twilight, they’re out of everything but orange highlighters at the school.” She immediately started to hyperventilate.  “How will everycreature color-code their notes?!” “I know how to make a hemoglobin-based red dye,” I said.  “Real cheap, too.” Twilight glanced at her notes.  “This wouldn’t happen to be the ‘blood of your enemies’ would it?” “The same.” “Valiant, you can’t just kill people!” “You know, you say that in every universe and you’re wrong each time.” “Valiant, promise me you aren’t going to kill anyone else, not even villains like Sombra.” “Twilight, if I do that, I guarantee it’s going to come back to bite you.” “Because you’ll kill someone?  That’s why I want you to promise me.” I smirked.  “Okay. I promise I won’t kill anyone.”  I made a mental note to mark the time on my tape recorder. Just then, a group of Twilight’s students burst in. “Well, this is a surprise,” said Twilight.  “Why are you all here so early? Did I send out the wrong back-to-school date?!” “We’re back because the Tree of Harmony called us here,” said Sandbar. “Don’t feel bad it didn't reach out to you.  We kinda have a special connection with it after last year,” said Gallus. “What happened last year?” I said.  I glanced at Twilight. “In my universe, I was the principal and the school was taught aboard a submarine.” Twilight fought to internalize that, failed, and instead ignored me and carried on the conversation with the kids.  “But the Tree couldn't have called you. It’s gone! Sombra destroyed it!” “Can we see the Tree ourselves?  Or what's left of it?” Silverstream asked. “As long as you promise to stick together,” Twilight said. “I was just about to leave,” I said, standing up.  “I can give you all a ride.” “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Twilight said. “Hey kids, do you want to ride in an airship?” Of course they did, their cheers drowning out anything Twilight had to say.  We went outside. The - well, at this point I can’t honestly say borrowed anymore - Guard airship was ready to go.  Its placeholder name was Actually a Trenchcoat Hiding Smaller Ships. Sandbar looked at it.  “ATHSS?” “You know Mike Tyson?” I said. “Who?” “Nevermind.” We headed out to the Harmony cave to see the Harmony tree, or what was left of it, anyway.  The kids all started to argue what to do about it, so I left them there. That was a short trip. I headed back to the castle.  The Friendship castle, that is.  It was so weird there being more than one now.  I figured Twilight’s library, whether it was a tree or a castle, was probably going to be my best bet for figuring out how the hell I was going to get back to my preferred universe. To go along with my preferred beverage, preferred language, and my Citi Preferred Rewards Card. What's your preferred pronoun, Valiant? Badass. When I walked into the library, Twilight was busy finishing her notes from the talk we’d had.  She looked up as I approached. “I wanted to get some clarification for a couple of these points.” “Go ahead.” “What exactly do you mean by ‘weird rock’ when you discuss how this all got started?” “Just what I said.  I’m not really as up on geology as I should be.  It was an ugly chunk of basalt, that’s all I know.”  I paused. “Maybe I should go see Maud about this.” Twilight nodded.  “I think she should be around to hang out with Starlight soon.” I twitched.  Twilight noticed. “I also wanted to clarify your relationship with Sunset.  Were you…” She blushed. “...lovers?” “Maybe.” “How do you not know?” “It’s not like you know anything about love,” I said.  “You once wrote a terrible romance novel called Moby Schlick.” “I did not!” she shouted, and quickly changed the subject.  “And at any rate, we really should be focusing on the difference in universes.”   She went over to a chalkboard where she’d drawn all kinds of gibberish.  “From your description, I think I might be able to slightly modify the magic of the friendship table to ‘zoom out’ as it were and possibly show us the connections to other universes instead of just a map of Equestria.” “What’s a friendship table?” “Did your universe not have one?”  She gestured. I followed her into another room. I got serious Doctor Strangelove vibes upon entering.  There was a huge round table, surrounded by chairs.  Twilight touched the flat, stone surface of the table and it lit up with a hologram of Equestria.  “If there’s ever a friendship problem, this shows us where it is and who is best suited to solve it.” “Huh,” I said.  “I take it this was part of the castle.  To answer your question, no, we still had the library in my last universe, so no table.” “How did you solve friendship problems?” “Probably just like you did before the library was destroyed and replaced by a magic castle.” Twilight turned away and started working on the spell she had designed.  I went to find an unopened bottle of tequila and came back. She was almost finished when I returned. “Okay, if I did this right, we’ll be able to change the scale of the map.  I don’t think the alternate universes you described are exactly adjacent to each other, not like galaxies in space, but if I’ve got all my calculations figured, we should still see a pictorial representation of how they all fit together.” Twilight concentrated and the map began to zoom out.  Considering the scale from showing just one country to multiple universes, it had to go pretty far.  I took a couple more sips in the meantime. Finally, she seemed to finish up.  The map now showed a three dimensional field of glowing dots, almost like a star map.  Twilight’s eyes widened in glee and she started scribbling notes. I stepped forward to her side and we studied it together. There might have been dozens, or hundreds of them.  Maybe even more than that, if the view wasn’t all the way zoomed out.  The different points of light seemed to be shaped, sized, and colored differently.  I couldn’t tell which ones were which. It might have been way easier if we could zoom in and see what they contained.  I was just about to ask Twilight to do so when she got distracted. “Huh,” said Twilight, noticing something.  She leaned forward, poking a hoof through the holographic display to indicate a curious, empty gap.  “What’s this?  Everything else is evenly distributed.  It looks like there was supposed to be a universe here, but there isn’t.  It’s as if it somehow got deleted.” I suddenly finished the rest of the bottle in one go.  Pausing for breath at the end, I muttered, “I don’t know what a petard is, but I think I just ran mine up the flagpole.” She glanced at me, looked at the map, and looked back.  “Are you saying you did this?” “No, of course not, that would be ridiculous.  How could a universe even get deleted?” Before she could ask any more questions, the students came back.  They seemed like they were in the middle of an argument or something, but stopped short upon seeing the map. “Whoa,” said Ocellus.  “What is this?” “We’re studying how to get Valiant home,” said Twilight.  “He claims to be from another universe.” There was a general chorus of amazement from the kids.  Twilight went on. “While we were looking at this display of universes, though, something troubling came up.”  She indicated the empty spot again. “There might have been a universe here, but it’s gone now.” “How does that happen?” said Sandbar.  “You’d think a universe would be...kind of hard to get rid of.” Yona shrugged.  “Yaks know things not forever.  That’s why smash and rebuild.” “I appreciate the sentiment,” I said, “But that doesn’t get me home, to the place I belong.” Have you ever had a moment, when you can feel someone reach beyond the grave and shove their ghostly fingers in your ears? Screw you, John Denver.