Triumvirate 5
In the throne room of the Canterlot palace a lone dark alicorn’s horn glows as she performs the impossible task of lowering the moon and making way for her sister’s sun. Her sister approached from behind her ready to raise the sun.
“Tia,” Luna asked her sister when she walked into the throne room for the day. “I-I visited the changeling.”
“Is something wrong Luna?” Celestia asked smiling warmly.
“He was crying the entire time.” She said hanging her head. “In agony.”
“Luna, tell me what happened.” Her sister asked concerned.
“I walked into the cell and it started off as you said it would, he was…”
“Disrespectful, smart-assed, annoying.” She said with a warm smile trying to coax her sister along.
“Yes,” Luna answered smiling slightly. “But when we approached him he started to cry, at first we thought it was fear, but as we got closer he kept getting worse. Than when we were going cast a spell to calm him, he lashed out at us.”
Celestia’s eye opened slightly more upon hearing this. “He attacked you?”
“Yes, it was a weak blow it wouldn’t have hurt a foal.” She said showing her sister where he had hit, even though you couldn’t prove it.
“Than what happened?”
“He begged us to leave.”
“You are not looking so well,” Discord blatantly pointed out from the reflection of the bubble. Ancro imagined he wasn’t looking well, since it felt like he had a spiked clamp around his temples. The migraines had been getting progressively worse each time somepony stepped where he could detect them. He was genuinely surprised that Discord’s voice or presence didn’t do anything to make it worse. “If you want, I can get you a glass of water.”
“Really?” He asked, turning his head, cringing as he felt the shield pulse. He had never been this weak before, not to the point where he couldn't put up a block against spells. He laughed on the inside when he realized that it was his own damn fault for burning out in the library. Otherwise, he would’ve been fine.
“…No,” he answered, taking a drink of a glass while the contents remained still. “I’m impressed though, you took a swing at Luna last night. Wasn’t expecting that.”
“I was getting desperate,” he chuckled weakly. He winced as he felt a presence enter his area, each step closer was another drum beat on his head. Discord vanished with a flash as the door opened. In zipped a very skinny pegasus with a camera. He tasted a cocktail of fear, excitement, and anxiety as the pegasus colt buzzed around, snapping pictures like he was on drugs or something. He just did what he would typically do in this situation. Well, not typically, since he had a migraine. Vomiting from a bright light flashing in his face was not on his repertoire. He did, however, manage to strike a pose for a few seconds, much the camera pony's shock and glee. There was nothing better to him than a child’s joy.
“HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?!” Just when Ancro thought his head had hit precipice pain, Shining Armor made his grand entrance. Wow, was it loud... He summoned two additional guards, who escorted the pony outside after taking his camera. Shiny was mad. He could feel the rage directed at him, which only made his migraine worse.
“Thanks Shiny, I owe you one,” Ancro said, in a voice that would’ve made Fluttershy seem loud. He felt the magic charging for his shield. “Please, don’t...” The unicorn didn’t listen and charged the shield anyway. Ancro let out an agonized wail as his pain doubled.
“Nopony’s buying it, changeling, so you can cut the act,” was all Shining Armor said as he walked out of the cell.
“Not an act,” Ancro mumbled from the ground.
“That looked extremely painful,” Discord said from behind him. “I mean, even I’m taking aspirin after watching that.”
“Shut up.” Even though Discord’s voice didn’t cause him any pain, it was still agitating and he was doing everything he could to try to keep his blood pressure down.
“Why would I do something silly like that, human?” He asked, floating around the walls. Ancro closed his eyes again.
“Because if you were suffering, I’d leave you alone?” Ancro pleaded.
“Well, without proper proof, I’m afraid I cannot oblige.” He couldn’t see his face, but knew Discord was grinning wickedly. Ancro cringed as another presence approached the hallway to his cell; it had painful levels of confidence and some satisfaction. Discord vanished just as the door opened.
“Wow, someone’s seen better days,” said a layered voice.
The party was going as well as an ice cream party in a hospital will go. There were balloons, dancing, ice cream, streamers, ice cream, confetti, and ice cream. It wasn’t long until the rest of the mane six showed up, excluding Rainbow Dash. Stigandr was left hanging when it came to meeting the fastest pegasus in Equestria. He was somewhat disappointed.
“Here ya go,” the familiar voice of Twilight Sparkle said, walking over to Stigandr, two bowls of ice cream levitating behind her. “What happened to you? If you don’t mind me asking, that is?”
“I fell,” Stigandr answered, picking up the spoon with his magic and eating some ice cream.
“From what, the bell tower?”
“No, a friend dropped me when we were flying over Everfree. I would’ve been a goner had Fluttershy not found me,” he said, pointing his horn to the yellow pegasus.
“It was nothing really,” she mumbled, staring at the floor and crossing her hooves, looking so adorable.
“Nothing! You saved his life, Fluttershy!” Rarity encouraged.
“Yeah, thank you,” Stigandr said warmly, trying to do everything in his power to keep the painfully adorable pony from running off. Granted, it wasn’t a lot, but still.
“This calls for a party!” Pinkie Pie declared, firing her party cannon, doubling the decorations.
“What were yah doing out in the Everfree that late anyway, Fluttershy?” Applejack inquired.
“Oh, well you see... I was out giving the chickens a midnight snack and one of them, Elizabeak, got out and I went looking for her.” She spoke barely audibly over the background noise of a light breeze. “So I was out there looking for her, when I heard a lot of shouting and some other things, then you came crashing down from the sky. At first I was going to run, but then thought, 'what if it’s somepony that needs my help?' So I walked towards the sounds, and found you there.”
Pinkie Pie kept watching Stigandr throughout the whole party, only taking her eyes off him to serve ice cream, then she immediately turned back to him like she half expected him to be gone. Even with his walker, she’d be on him before he left. Hell, not even Rainbow Dash could outrun her. She was Pinkie Pie, and she was everywhere. Including in his face, violating every possible personal boundary as she kept staring at him.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you need help with?” He asked for the umpteenth time.
“Yep. You wouldn’t by chance know that Jerky McCrazyPants Scott would you?”
“Griffin?”
“Mmmhhmm.”
“Freaked out by clouds?”
“Yep.”
“Demanding, with a bit of a short temper?”
“That’s the one,” she said cheerfully.
“Yeah, I know him. Do you know where he is?” He felt like being unnecessarily thorough, to drag out conversation with Pinkie Pie.
“With Rainbow Dash in the Everfree forest, looking for somepony,” she said plainly.
“Ummm... Pinkie Pie.”
“Yes, Stiggy?” She asked, cocking her head to the side with a wide grin.
“How did y-...Never mind, I’m the one their looking for.”
“Oh yeah, I know that, silly. That’s why my hoof is burning. It was burning when I was taking him to see Rainbow Dash.”
“Burning hoof?”
“Yes, not quite sure what it means though. Just happens around you and Scott,” she said, looking a tad confused, then her face lit up.
“So, you’ve never had this happen before?” Twilight came over and asked, looking like she was about to take notes. Then she magic’d herself a notepad and pencil. It appeared she still hadn’t given up entirely on the Pinkie Sense yet. “Can you describe it?”
“It’s kind of a... Tingly-wingly, burny-werny feeling around the joint,” she said, poking it as Twilight eagerly began to magic it. “It never happened before yesterday.”
“And you don’t know what this one means?”
“Nope,” she squeaked, and bounced off to eat an impossible amount of ice cream.
“And ...That doesn’t bother you?”
“Let your dear old aunty Pinkie Pie tell you something,” she said, wrapping a foreleg around her friend. “When I had my first combo, or first Pinkie sense, I had no idea what it was. Then a safe fell on my head.”
“A safe…”
“Yep! So the next time my tail twitched, I avoided the anvil.”
“Anvil?”
“Yeah, somepony was doing a horrible job as a mover...” She said, rubbing her head. There was a long awkward pause.
“So…where are they?” Stigandr asked, hoping that they had given up. There was a pause as they all looked at each other, and a collective ‘Oh crap’ of realization went off in their heads.
“Oh, well I guess they’re still in the Everfree forest,” she said plainly to the shock of everypony. “Oops... That’s bad...”
‘Well, here I am; blind, deaf, numb, paralyzed, and a statue.’ Scott thought. ‘No fanon my ass, there is no way they’d let something like this happen in a little girls' show. What was that, anyway? It must’ve been some chimera-type critter.’
‘Be careful, or I may take offense to that,’ chuckled another voice.
‘well, it’s official, I’m going insane. I have voices in my head. I’m worse off than Ancro.’
‘Oh, you mean your friend, the changeling?’
‘Yeah, what kind of voice in my head are you if you don’t even know my friends?’ He thought. ‘Hope he’s doing alright. But it’s okay, he knows the rules for prison: beat the unholy piss out of the biggest thing there, and no one bothers you.’
‘The kind that technically aren’t in your head,’ the other voice said flatly, ‘and he’s not doing that well. Horrible migraine.’
‘Okay, how would a voice in my head know that?’
‘I’m not in your head.’
‘Then where are you?’ He thought of making a sarcastic gesture of looking around, but failed. ‘I don’t see any other place you could be hiding.’
‘I said technically.’ The voice answered with a disappointed sigh, ‘of all the ones I make contact with, it’s the dense one. At least Ancro makes quips and tries to punch royalty.’
‘How do you know what’s going on with Ancro, anyway?’
‘Well, I’ve already been to visit him, and gotten nowhere, so I figured you’re a better bet than the misguided changeling.’
‘What do you mean, been to visit him?’
‘I get around. Anyway, he was relatively tight-lipped about how he knew of…certain things, and it has been a while since I visited your... Plane, dimension, whatever; and was hoping you could enlighten me.’
‘Sure, what do you want to know?’
‘Well first of all, how do you all know that sort of stuff? I’d peek back to earth if I could, but I don’t have the power right now.’
‘Do you honestly want to know?’ Scott said, mentally raising an eyebrow.
‘Yes, and don’t worry you can tell me.’ Scott could tell there was a smile in the blackness. ‘The rules are, you can only tell someone who knows.’
‘Okay, well you see….’ Scott went on into the long explanation of how his friends knew so much.
‘So…my universe is watched from yours as a show for little girls.’ There was a mental nod from Scott, ‘which is viewed by a large group of adult men who call themselves bronies, and make up fictions about it...’ another nod, ‘and your friends are part of the brony community?’
‘Exactly,’ Scott said, glad to have someone besides his friends that he could talk to about it. He was a bit put down as a pause filled the blackness. ‘Umm, hello?’
Then laughter, hysterical laughter, filled the void of sensory deprivation. ‘This is just, this is just too much... The last time I was there, it was all about this Hannibal guy who had Rome by the throat. How’d that turn out, by the way?’
‘Rome won.’
‘Wow, wasn’t seeing that coming,’ the voice said. Scott pictured the voice rubbing its chin in thought.
‘Yeah, went on to kick ass all over Europe and conquer a good bit of the world.’ Scott chuckled, ‘Don’t remind Ancro though, he hates it when people talk about them.’
‘Why is that, they kill his family or something?’ The voice asked.
‘Wha-...No, no, no, it’s just that he sees them as a bunch of copy cats who never made anything original, all their ideas were stolen from someone they conquered, blah blah. He can really go into it.’
‘Well, that’s interesting, but look at the time…Sorry you can’t, but believe me, I need to be going. Things are going to be getting fairly chaotic in a Canterlot prison in a few days.’
‘What do you mean?’ Scott asked. There was silence, then he remembered Ancor was in a Canterlot prison and became pissed. ‘What do you mean!’
A larger cockatrice stood behind a smaller one, as the smaller one undid its spell on the griffin and Rainbow Dash. The larger one did not look happy. In fact, it looked downright pissed as its eyes burrowed into the head of the smaller one.
Behind the larger one stood six ponies, three unicorns, two earth ponies and one worried looking pegasus.
“Applejack, could explain to me what’s going on?” Rarity asked.
“Ah have no idea, Rarity.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Pinkie Pie popped up between the two of them. “Fluttershy got the cockatrice’s mother.”
“Don’t be ridiculous Pinkie Pie, there’s no way that’s what she did.” She looked over at Fluttershy, smiling warmly. “Right Fluttershy?”
“Umm... Actually Twilight, that’s what I did,” she said, showing a slight bit of confidence, but still hiding adorably behind her hair.
“…Oh,” was all the lavender unicorn was able to get out.
Stigandr stood there trying to contain his excitement, because he was about to meet all of the mane six, all of them, and there was Scott frozen in on the ground in stone, his mouth open in a perpetual scream.
“Psst, Pinkie Pie,” Stigandr said, leaning over to the only pony who might fulfill his unusual request.
“What’s up, Stiggy?”
“Do you have any ear plugs?”
“Yeah, I have stashes of earplugs all over Ponyville, and in some parts of the Everfree, in case of earplug emergency,” She reached into a bush and pulled out a box of earplugs, “why?”
“Just a hunch,” he said as he levitated them to everypony. “Scott can be a bit loud.”
“I know that silly, but how loud could he be?”
“Trust me.”
“Okaaay,” she said, putting them in, as the rest of the group skeptically followed suit as the stone broke. Scott had been frozen mid-scream, and was screaming and swearing when he was being unpetrified. The earplugs were a good bet. Still louder than hell, though.
(Good news got the job at the factory and with the way it’s scheduled I should still have time to write just not as much which is okay because I’m honestly able to get these chapters done in just a few hours. As long as I avoid typing my way into a corner that is. Credits for editing and cover art go to my wonderful friend Sara to contact her for commissions email he at shaya.laperro@gmail.com. I’m going to thank my friends who inspired the characters of this story for not taking any sort of offense to me casting them in this setting. Criticism and comments as always are enjoyed, if you fav it please like it.)