//------------------------------// // Chapter 6B // Story: My World Is Empty Without You // by McPoodle //------------------------------// The powerless alicorn Oars in Wells fell out of the sky and landed on the floor of the Royal Plaza. And then He turned to stone. “Did you do that?” Applejack asked Twilight. “No,” Twilight replied, before she noticed cracks spreading along the surface of Stone Oars. “Oh, no…” she whispered in recognition. The stone shell exploded, and from the rubble emerged Draconoquus Oars in Wells. “I’d like to see you try and stop this form!” He boasted. He snapped His claw, and the surface of the plaza was covered with soapy water. Each building turned a different color. One of them turned into gelatin, and another floated gently into the sky. With a wicked grin, He stared at the ponies opposing Him, and His eyes became spinning spirals. “Not again!” Applejack cried out, fighting a rising compulsion to give up on honesty. Twilight buried her snout in her hooves as she tried to dismiss the false memory that all of her friends had turned on her. Pinkamena was given a new compulsion, that Pinkie Pie had abandoned her for being too boring. She began to laugh, and found that she couldn’t stop. Mauve Shadow had an utterly panicked expression on her face for a moment, and then she popped out of existence. A phantom Rarity then popped into existence, floating above them. “You have to resist, everypony!” she insisted. “You know in your heart what is true, and what is false. Listen to me!” Spike emerged from the rubble, and began shaking Twilight. “She’s right, Twilight. Snap out of it!” Oars tried to send one of the fallen rocks through Rarity’s illusion, but it reared wildly off course and embedded itself into the gelatin building. “You’re a creature of chaos now, Mr. Wells,” Rarity chided. “Stopping me won’t be as simple as that!” Oars lifted into the air and tried to swipe at Phantom Rarity with a claw, but she easily eluded His grasp. He then started throwing everything He could find at her, as she hopped and skipped merrily around the Plaza. & & & “Cloudsdale!” Rainbow Dash cried out feebly, reaching out to something only she could see. “No!” Fluttershy shouted, grabbing Rainbow’s head and shaking it. “We don’t have time for that! He’s not looking, Dash. He’s not looking!” And apparently, with all his research into the Bearers, he had failed to uncover the fact that Discord had failed in his attempt to corrupt Fluttershy from within, leaving her unaffected this time as well. “What?” Rainbow asked, looking at Fluttershy with unfocused eyes. “He’s not?” She closed her eyes, and with an extreme effort, dismissed the illusion. She looked to Fluttershy with determination. “OK, then. I need you to repeat after me, real softly.” “I can do that,” Fluttershy said with a warm smile. “O Pinkie Pie, mighty and merciful goddess, I, Fire Boom the Fifth, aka Rainbow Miriam Dash Fluffykins—” (the last word said with a giant grin) “—hereby consecrate myself as your follower.” “O Pinkie Pie, mighty and merciful goddess, I, Fluttershy Parula Fluffykins Dash—” (fully matching Rainbow’s grin) “—hereby consecrate myself as your follower.” “As I am bonded to you, so you are bonded to me.” “As I am bonded to you, so you are bonded to me.” & & & Vinyl Scratch sat quietly in the soapy water, feeling a small amount of contempt for Draconequus Oars in Wells. Once again, somepony had tried to put the whammy on her using a spell that only works on ponies that can see. Discord at least was smarter than that. “3.141592653597…” she began to recite, a musical drone building behind her. A second voice, a somewhat older copy of her own, chimed in with the same verse. This was joined by a third, younger voice, forming a fugue. A bubble of order began to grow around her, turning the Plaza back to normal. Oars turned to see it, and backed away in fear. Then He produced a trumpet out of nowhere and played a deafening brown note. Vinyl flipped her glasses off of her snout right before they shattered, revealing the giant empty sockets where her eyes should have been. She cried out in pain and terror as the nightmare of being overwhelmed by her other personalities overwhelmed her. Oars turned on Rarity, and the awful note disintegrated her image. The light in the plaza shimmered as everypony’s nightmares became visible. Each of them pulled into fetal positions to try and escape. Oars reached out at random and plucked Spike out of the air by his tail. He blew a puff of flame at the dragon, and he burnt away like he was made of paper. Oars stood there quietly, taking in His triumph. And then He heard the faint sound of chanting coming from the rubble of the third floor of the University of Canterlot Annex. He inflated himself to the size of a giant so that He could lift the entire building up with a claw. He saw Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, side by side, their snouts pressed against the ground, praying... probably to Princess Celestia. “She can’t hear you, you know,” He said contemptuously. When they didn’t stop, He leaned forward to hear what they were saying. “No more shall you be the grim Judge of Fate,” they chanted in unison. “By our command, you are now transformed into Pinkie Pie, Goddess of Dreams!” Oars leaned back in terror. Then He grabbed onto the broken building with both paw and claw and prepared to slam it down upon their heads. “LEAVE MY FOLLOWERS ALONE!” (Editor’s note: In this one instance, the use of the color pink does not mean that words so colored are invisible to the dreamer. Rather, the spoken words were, in fact, pink in color.) The sky... no, the very fabric of reality ripped open, and out of the blinding white substance behind the universe emerged an amorphous bipedal being, pink in color and five stories tall. A limb extended outwards, becoming a hand that grabbed up the draconequus, distorting perspective to shrink Him down against His will. She then used Her other hand to strip an invisible something off of Him, rendering Him a “he” once more. “No!” he bellowed, trying in vain to twist his way out of Her grip. Rocks flew through the air with a snap of his claw, but they just passed through her. “I’ll destroy you! I’ll destroy anything that gets in my way!” He twisted and reformed himself yet again, into a form that was supposed to be known only to the Sisters in the current era: a red centaur, the spot between his horns a black hole for magical energy. “I’ll destroy everything!” he bellowed. The goddess lifted Oars in Wells up, giving off a wave of distaste, and then She dropped him into Her mouth, swallowing him whole. The fuzzy pink mountain shrank and focused, becoming a pink alicorn with a mane made up of braids that tangled and untangled by themselves. Her face, though, was obviously Pinkie Pie. “So,” she said brightly. “Did you miss me?” All the other ponies rushed forward for a big group hug. Pinkamena took the opportunity to point out the alicorn’s somewhat creepy manestyle, and Pinkie turned it back into its usual static poofiness. Once that was done, Twilight backed up to get a good look at her. “I’ve got to say, from the bottom of my heart: thank you.” “For saving you all?” Pinkie asked. “Well, yes,” Twilight replied. “But mostly for validating my faith in a rational universe. I mean, of course a goddess would be able to do all the crazy things that you do on a daily basis!” Pinkie furrowed her brow in confusion. “Well actually, those are all things that any pony—” She was interrupted by a hoof put over her mouth by Pinkamena, who frowned and shook her head as a warning not to complete that particular thought. After a moment, she removed her hoof and asked Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, “I do have a question though: how were you two able to complete that chant together? I can’t think of any time when you would have been able to rehearse it without Oars in Wells noticing.” Pinkie Pie decided to answer before the other two had a chance. “I think it’s the same sort of thing as when a pony starts singing a new song, and suddenly everypony else knows the words. Or, or maybe it’s true love! Like when an old couple can complete each other’s thoughts! You two just short-circuited the whole process because of the Elements of Harmony, or plugging your spirits into my reality pool. And speaking of which…” In an instant, she had teleported the extremely-short distance to be between the two pegasi. “You two need to totally do a do-over! How could you pour out your hearts to each other without me sitting between you to make you both feel really awkward! First free moment we get, I’m throwing you a Roameo and Jeweliette party, only without the icky ending part.” “Only if you call me Mom,” Fluttershy demurred with pink cheeks and a smile. Unnoticed by the others, Pinkie Pie reconstituted Vinyl’s glasses, and levitated them over to her. Vinyl could somehow sense that Pinkie was looking right at her, looking right at her as she really was and was smiling kindly, not flinching. Maybe that was one of her new dream powers. Vinyl nodded in thanks as she put back on her shield against the world. “You two are getting together?” Applejack asked the pegasus pair. “It’s about time!” The others were about to get in on the congratulations of the new couple, when the voice of Rarity rang out around them: “There’s no time for that! Oars is getting away in the waking world, and he’s planning something awful!” Twilight floated involuntarily up into the air, and at the apex of her arc suddenly disappeared. Spike disappeared at the same instant. “Well, see you on the other side,” Vinyl quipped, before she too was literally yanked out of the dream. Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy quickly followed. Pinkamena was beginning to float up when Pinkie Pie stopped her with a hoof. “Can we have a moment?” she asked the unseen Rarity. Pinkamena was floated back down in response. Pinkie Pie put a hoof on Pinkamena’s chest and looked her straight in the eyes. “I’m going to have to stay here, Pinks,” she said. “To get used to my new job.” Pinkamena gestured to Pinkie’s alicorn body with a grin. “Not to mention keep from having your divine cover blown right open.” “You’re... not going to have a problem running the old body solo for a while?” Pinkamena’s smile became warmer. “Promise me I’ll still have your shoulder to cry on every night if I need it?” Pinkie nodded. “It’s a deal.” “Okay, you can pull me out!” she yelled at the sky. A moment later, Pinkie Pie was alone in the plaza. With a deep sigh, she set to work repairing the damage with her magic.