//------------------------------// // Tumble // Story: Up to Fate // by Onomonopia //------------------------------// Pinkie whistled her familiar tune as she hammered away at the crystals, not letting the stares from other ponies nor the dark clouds overhead get her spirits down. She even pretended not to notice that the guards were all looking up at the sky, looks of concern on their faces as they gazed at the stone grey clouds. But try as she might, she couldn’t shake the feeling that every other being in the area was feeling. Something about this was unnatural. Well, nothing about the clouds was natural since pegasi moved them, something Tirek allowed them to still do. No, these clouds were even beyond their usual unnaturalness. This was…something else. But once more Pinkie continued to sing, her voice carrying over the concern and fear to bring a little bit of order to the quarry. If Pinkie was still singing, then things must not be that bad. That feeling quickly vanished when the ponies noticed that Scur was walking over to Pinkie. The boss didn’t come down unless it was something important. Good or bad. “Pinkie, is it?” Scur asked. Pinkie stopped her singing and looked back at Scur, her eternal smile still on her face. “Pinkie, I have been meaning to talk with you for a while.” “Well I don’t know why you haven’t already. It’s not like I’m anywhere else at this time of day,” Pinkie giggled. Scur allowed a small smile to crease his lips before he returned to his regular blank expression. “I am just curious about you pony, that is all,” Scur said. “You are the only pony who, well, the only pony who still acts like the ponies I remember.” “Go on.” “What I mean is, you sing, you dance and you always have a smile on your face. Much like how the ponies acted before Tirek’s rise to power. Now I’m not saying that I regret my master coming to power, but I admit that I do miss the color that Equestria used to have. You remind me of those days and I’m just wondering how. How do you hold onto your smile when everypony else…well, look around.” Pinkie knew what he was talking about. She set down her pickaxe and rested her hooves under her chin, thinking about it for a moment before she smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve got my family, I’ve got friends and I’m alive. Honestly, why wouldn’t I be smiling?” Scur thought about her words for a moment before he chuckled, gaining him some looks from the ponies that were listening in. “You are an odd one, Pinkie. Not in a bad way. Just…you are definitely not like any other pony I have met.” “Thank you,” Pinkie giggled. “You are welcome. Now I have a question about-“ COME. Pinkie blinked twice and shook her head, looking around for a second before focusing her eyes back on Scur. Scur gave her a look for a second. “Did…did you hear somepony else speak right then? Like an ancient and powerful voice, one that is way older than the dirt we’re mining?” “Uh, no?” “Oh. Okay then. It must have been my imagination,” Pinkie said with a smile. “Sometimes that happens when I hear things that aren’t really there and-“ And then the quarry exploded. --===---===--- Pinkie let out a groan as her consciousness returned to her, the ringing in her ears letting her know that she was still alive. When she could feel her hooves again, she shakily rose onto them, aware of how her whole body was shaking. She shook her head to clear out the cobwebs, before she looked around her. All around her was dust and debris, along with tons of crystals, a few mine carts and the…bodies of a couple of the guards. She averted her gaze from them quickly. Pinkie then quickly looked over herself to find, to her amazement, that there wasn’t a single scratch on her body. That surprised her. But when her eyes adjusted to the dark and she saw where she was, there were a hundred different things that surprised her even more. Standing before her was a massive temple, one that looked like a pyramid and had the strange markings on the side that added to the look. Obelisks were surrounding the front of the pyramid, which Pinkie now noticed seemed to have been buried deep beneath the quarry where she had been digging. She wondered if there had been a cave in. She wondered if she had caused it. COME. Pinkie winced as the voice echoed in her head again. “Okay Mr. Erious, you want to meet me? Okey Dokey Loki! But I hope you’re ready! Because when I find you, and I will find you, I am going to friend you!” Pinkie then hopped into the pyramid, looking around with her smile still on her face. All around her were all of the things that an ancient pyramid was supposed to have. Hieroglyphs on the walls, sarcophagus stalked on the walls and numerous scarabs crawling around under hoof. But there was something else. Something else that Pinkie could sense. Something that she hadn’t sensed since she had been a little filly all those years ago. Since the day she had seen that rainboom that had opened her eyes to who she wanted to be. To a pony who sought to bring others joy. And nothing, not even Tirek’s reign, had changed that about her. “Hmm, I don’t know why, but I have the feeling that I am supposed to go this way,” Pinkie said to herself, looking down a hallway. She skipped inside and almost instantly spikes shot out of the walls, which crashed together to impale her. Yet when the walls collided, Pinkie was already out of the way, watching with awe as they slammed together. “Cool! It’s just not a pyramid without death traps! This place is so authentic!” she laughed. Pinkie continued on, watching as the floors opened up and shot columns of fire out at her. Her reply was to whip out all of the marshmallows she kept in her mane and quick toast as many of them as she could. Spears shot out of the walls with the sole intent of impaling her upon them, but Pinkie snatched a few out of the air and instead impaled her now perfectly toasted marshmallows on the end of them. “Hey, ancient and deadly pyramid! If your next trap could shoot out chocolate bars and graham crackers, I would really appreciate it!” she sang. The walls didn’t reply and Pinkie shrugged, before nibbling on a marshmallow as she headed deeper in. The next room caught her completely off guard. It was filled, wall to wall, with gold, jewels and gems. She did some quick math in her head and decided that there was a lot of money in there. “It’s so shiny! Kinda hard to see, actually,” Pinkie said. She walked into the room, looking around. A large ruby caught her eye and she walked over to it, looking it over before shrugging. “Eh, I don’t need it.” She then eyed a large pile of gold. “Hmm, nice, but honestly that would attract too much trouble.” Finally, she eyed the jewels that sparkled like stars. “Ugh, way too tacky for my tastes. Besides, I don’t need any of these. I already know Cheesy find me beautiful already. Why ruin what works?” She giggled to herself before she hopped out of the room. A chill ran down her back and she glanced behind her, noticing the room had changed. The jewels, gems and gold were still all there, but now there were also the bodies of other ponies. Ponies who were made of gold, entombed in crystal or trapped within rubies and sapphires. And all of them had the same look of dismay on their faces. Pinkie shuddered, realizing the fate she had just avoided. One last room awaited her. And she knew it was the last one from the presence she could feel. It was definitely magical in nature. She knew that much. What she didn’t know was what in Equestria could give off such an overwhelming magical aura as whatever was on the other side of the room. The room itself was nothing special. Four stone walls. A floor. And plenty of skeletons of all sorts of species. Pinkie recognized pony skeletons, a couple of minotaurs, and even, to her surprise, an alicorn skeleton. That caused her smile to fall slightly. Then she looked up to the only other object in the room. A single image on the wall. It looked kinda like a cross, but the top part was an oval instead of, well, the top of a cross. A symbol she had never seen before. ‘WHAT IS IT YOU SEEK?’ “Oh, you talk! Sorry, I’m not used to walls talking. At least they’re not supposed to. Hi, I’m Pinkie Pie! Nice to meet you, wall!” she greeted. For a moment the wall was silent, before it repeated its question. ‘WHAT IS IT YOU SEEK?’ “What I seek? Well, I fell down here, got some sweet toasted marshmallows, saw a bunch of shiny things and got to talk to a wall! Honestly, today’s already a win in my book!” Pinkie exclaimed. Once again the wall went silent. ‘WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH INFINITE POWER?’ “Infinite power? Hmm…nothing, I guess?” Pinkie said. ‘NOTHING?’ “Nothing,” Pinkie repeated. ‘YOU DO NOT SEEK POWER?’ “Nope. What would I even do with power?” Pinkie asked. “I’ve got my husband, my son and all the laughter I could want. What more do I need than that? I suppose if I really had to do something, I would use that power to bring smiles to all the ponies of the world! To help them all to laugh!” ‘LAUGH?’ “Yup. Help them laugh.” The wall didn’t respond. Instead, it sent out a ray of light that surrounded Pinkie, looking into the very depths of her soul. Pinkie giggled, as the light tickled, before it came to a stop and truly looked at the pink pony in a new light. ‘PINKIE PIE…I DEEM YOU WORTHY!’ “Worthy of what?” The wall answered by exploding into thousands of shards, getting Pinkie to question why so much stuff was blowing up today. But all of that was forgotten about when Pinkie saw what had been hiding behind the wall. There, in a chamber filled with a light that was brighter than even the sun, rested a single helmet. The helmet was golden, had two slits for the eyes and had a fin sticking out of the top of it. And despite being down there for who knows how long, there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust on the helmet. It glowed with a bright intensity that very little could match. This was where Pinkie felt she needed to draw the line. She had kept her composure during the temple. She had managed to avoid all of the traps. She had even kept her smile on her face upon seeing the ponies trapped by their greed or consumed by the questions. She had handled all of that. But this…every single one of her cells was screaming at her to run. Her Pinkie Sense was twitching like crazy. That this was something she should not get involved with. There was a power coming from this helmet, a power that made her Pinkie sense go into overdrive. Whatever this helmet was…it held a power that, once unleashed, would be unstoppable. And, perhaps, it should never be unleashed. Then the helmet started floating and talking. ‘PINKIE PIE, I HAVE SEARCHED YOUR SOUL. I HAVE SEEN YOUR THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS. AND YOU, OUT OF EVERY PONY IN THIS WORLD THAT SHOULD NOT BE, ARE THE ONLY ONE I FIND WORTHY. WORTHY OF ME.’ “Um, glad to hear that, always nice to be chosen, but…um…who are you, exactly?” Pinkie asked with a nervous smile. ‘WHO AM I? I WAS HERE WHEN THE STARS FIRST BLINKED TO LIFE. I WAS HERE WHEN THE PRESENCE FIRST SHAPED THE DARKNESS. I AM A LORD OF ORDER.’ ‘I AM NABU. AND WE, PINKIE, ARE BOUND BY FATE.’