Flying through space without a spaceship was an amazing experience under normal circumstances. With a traditional Launch Star, it was a pleasant journey with stars whipping by and many sights for curious eyes.
The Chosen of the Light Prognosticus had not been launched out of a traditional Launch Star. The thing Rosalina had stuck them into had been a super-enhanced device that would get them from point A to point B as fast as possible. In maximizing speed, the comfort of the journey was completely ignored.
Twilight felt as though she were being dragged through an ocean made of gravel. Lights flashed past her eyes so fast she wasn’t even sure she saw most of them, and she couldn’t even move. Every attempt to do so drove pain into whatever part of her she was trying to move, making the “gravel” feel more like “glass”. Intellectually, she knew this pain was all in her head and that her limbs weren’t actually being torn into by minuscule bits of broken rock, but that did little to stop her from crying out.
And then it was over. She flopped onto a smooth, glassy surface, sliding a few feet forward. The others fell in behind her, arriving in various states of mind ranging from “everything is agony and I’ll never move again” to “that was a fascinating experience”.
Toph was the first one to speak. “...I’m never going to complain about teleportation again.”
“Thanks,” Twilight managed, focusing the rest of her effort on standing up. After slipping on the glass twice, her third attempt allowed her to get her hooves underneath her. Holding her wings out for stability, she looked up and took in the sights.
It wasn’t what she had been expecting—there were no visible stars, even though the sky was solid black. Thousands of objects filled the space, ranging from spherical planets no larger than buildings to crystalline pillars floating in the midst of the spheres. Chunks of broken stone orbited with orbs of fire mixed with loose asteroids, broken spaceships, and what appeared to be a giant ice cream cone. In the center of this swirling heap of junk was a brilliant sphere that flashed with rainbow light, cycling through colors so fast it would have been seizure-inducing if any of them had been sensitive to that sort of thing.
“I don’t think I need to say where the Pure Heart is,” Tippi said.
“It is pretty clear where we’re supposed to go,” Caspian admitted.
“So much… pain…” Cosmo grunted.
Twilight went to tend to Cosmo—nothing was broken, but she sure seemed sapped of energy. “Do you have any idea what’s wrong?”
“I… no…”
Twilight put a wing around her. “Data, got anything?”
Data was already scanning the new area with his tricorder. “We are in the same universe, but where we are in relation to the Comet Observatory I do not know. All attempts to determine a location have failed. It is reasonable to assume this star will take us back.” He pointed at the blue star floating above them, similar to the one that had launched them here.
“Don’t use it until we’re done,” Twilight said, helping Cosmo onto her back. “We’re getting the Pure Heart on our own.”
Data directed his tricorder downward, cocking his head. “Curious. What we’ve arrived on is decidedly unlike any other piece of debris in this system-like sector.”
Beyond the glass floor they were standing on, the structure was a half-sphere made of metal. Once it had been a full sphere, but the bottom half had apparently been completely seared by something hot enough to blacken it. Twilight found that, as she walked around the edge of the half-sphere, the direction of gravity changed, always directed toward its center. Turning the curved edge, she arrived on the blackened side, treating it as the ground.
In the center, something stirred. Twilight backpedaled when she realized it was a head, made out of an ovoid with technology visible through the glass. The eyes were on the bottom of the head, covered by lenses that glinted in the light of the various flaming spheres in the sky. It was rather unnaturally grafted to the mechanical ground by a silvery gray spine, making it almost like a snake.
“So, someone has finally come…” it spoke with a tired, synthetic voice.
“...Are you an android?” Data asked, crawling over the edge just behind Twilight.
“I am not so lucky. I am…”
“Sir Grodus!” Vivian yelped, cowering behind the lip of the hemisphere like it could protect her from him.
“Vivian…” The metallic spine stretched several times its previous length, allowing the head to glare right at Vivian’s hat. “A double traitor. How are you enjoying life? How about the guilt?”
“Uh… uh… I’m… fine…”
“You’re one of the X-Naut dolts, aren’t you?” Toph asked.
“I was their leader, my girl.” Sir Grodus retracted his head, returning to the center of the hemisphere. “But we are no more. Our society fell to nothing after our defeat. Those of us who remained returned here, hoping to access the secret of the universe itself. With the Shadow Queen gone… it truly was open to us, and not destroyed. But…” He glared at the shimmering rainbow in the sky. “It rejected us.”
“Only those chosen by the Hearts may use them,” Cosmo said, having regained most of her breath. “Such as us.”
“I expected some like you to come…” Grodus let out a dark, ominous chuckle. “Enjoy reaching your prize. When I realized I could not have its power for my own… I determined that none would have it. The last act of the X-Nauts was to surround the secret of the universe in a gauntlet of trials.” He looked up to the rainbow shimmer again. “I am so going to enjoy watching you fail in your vain attempts to reach the center.”
“We won’t let you deter us,” Caspian said.
“Oh, don’t let me stop you! Please, do try, try with all the hope in the world. This is all the entertainment I’m ever going to get these days.”
“...You’ve really hit rock bottom, haven’t you?” Vivian asked, poking her head back over the edge. “No army, no machines, no power, just a head that wants to watch the world burn.”
Grodus retracted himself into the hemisphere.
“That was your big bad guy?” Toph asked, folding her arms. “He seems kinda pathetic.”
“He used to be a lot scarier,” Vivian said. “Now… I have to agree. Just a head desperate to watch others fail.”
“He won’t get the satisfaction.” Twilight set Cosmo on the ground and spread her wings, taking off into the air, flying directly for the center. Somewhere along the way, gravity shifted sharply to the left, dragging her painfully into a metallic cube. The moment she hit it, the cube unfolded to reveal a trap made of several different chainsaws. Twilight attempted to fly away, but the gravity was so strong she was still falling toward the blades.
Data looked around quickly and performed a calculation. He jumped from the starting hemisphere and landed on a “planet” covered in green bushes. Twisting off this one, he sailed through the gravity wells, angling off a drifting waffle cone at the perfect angle to slide into Twilight’s gravity well, grab her, and get caught by the gravity well of a disc-shaped meadow before being cut to pieces.
“Y-you saved me,” Twilight said. “Thanks.”
“It would not have been desirable to lose you.”
Twilight chuckled. “Yes, yes… so.” She glanced at the group still on the original planet. “You all are going to have to make your way over here!”
“Oh geez,” Toph said, grimacing. “I hadn’t realized exactly how nuts this all was. I’m going to have to jump to things I can’t feel?”
“You can at least move like you’re supposed to,” Tippi said, alighting on Caspian’s shoulder. “I don’t think I should be flying through this.”
“I shall lead us!” Caspian said, drawing his sword. “It’s only three hops across these floating miniature worlds to where they are!” He jumped, landing gracefully on a sandy globe. As he prepared to jump again, Twilight shook her head rapidly.
“No, don’t! There’s a gravity well there—a trap that will take you to the cube of death!”
The cube was currently folding back into a cube shape, but Twilight knew another touch would force it open.
Caspian frowned. “You certain?”
“Yes! We can’t assume anything is as it seems here—Grodus will have designed this place as a trap.” Twilight took a moment to contemplate their situation. “I know a thing or two about how things relate to each other… Working together, I’m sure Data and I can ‘plot a course’ through this maze for you.”
“I have already determined the simplest route to our location,” Data said. “The sand ‘planet’ is indeed the first step, but after that you will need to jump to the blue rectangular prism over there and crawl across the vines.”
Cosmo jumped over to the sandy sphere, turning back to Toph. “Just follow my voice!”
“I… don’t like this… at all…” Toph said.
“You managed to jump onto the invisible bridge! You can do this!” Cosmo encouraged. “You’ve already had practice!”
“I know. The ground better be solid this time…” Toph pried a piece of metal off the ground before jumping to Cosmo, Caspian, Tippi. She landed painfully face-first. “Oof…” Tapping the ground with her hand, she started chuckling. “This is nowhere near as bad. Still. Unpleasant.”
“Once you get to me I can carry you!” Twilight called.
“Joy,” Toph muttered. “Vivian, you coming?”
“Oh, uh, yes!” Vivian didn’t jump. She carefully floated off the ground until she touched the sandy world, transferring her shadowy body to it with a simple flip. “Tah-dah!”
“Right,” Toph focused her attention elsewhere. “Caspian, where is the prism she mentioned?”
“Over here!” Caspian jumped, careful to keep a hand around Tippi so she wouldn’t go flying off. “Easy as pie!”
Cosmo and Vivian made their way over easy. Once again, Toph ground her teeth. “I really don’t like jumping blind…”
“Trust us, we’ve got you,” Cosmo called. “Just do it!”
Toph took a breath and jumped. Gravity shifted for her once again, and she twisted herself to direct her feet downward. Her left foot planted squarely on the prism, but the right went off the edge. “Waugh!”
Caspian grabbed her by the wrist. “Gotcha.”
“...Next time, when you tell me to jump, stand somewhere closer to the center of the platform thingy.”
“Forgive me for not doing so before,” Caspian said with a sigh.
“No big. I mean, it is a big deal, but let’s not worry about that until we’re through this fanciful death trap.”
“Now that you’re all here,” Data said, “walk to the other end of the platform.”
Toph shrugged. “Aight, you heard iron boy, let’s walk in a row like good little ducklings.” The motion across the platform was decidedly unorderly and not in a line, but the desired effect was accomplished.
“Good. Now.” Data turned to Twilight. “I believe you can levitate them over.”
“Won’t be too hard.” Twilight lowered her head and grinned. “Everyone hold on.”
“I want everyone to know I hate this plan already,” Toph said.
“Noted,” Data and Twilight said in unison, prompting Twilight to giggle.
Toph facepalmed. “We do not need you t—woah!” Twilight’s aura had surrounded her and all the others—including Tippi—lifting them all up into the air, bringing them slowly to Twilight and Data’s location.
“Almost… there…” Twilight stuck out her tongue to focus on the trip. “Stay still…”
A nearby red star-like orb flashed, summoning a series of cannons around it. They all triggered at once, sending a series of black bullets with faces on them toward the group.
Vivian reacted first, waving one of her hands. A brief burst of magical sparks twirled around her finger activating her signature spell. Fiery bursts consumed every one of the bullets in unison, burning them to cinders before they even got close to the floating group.
“What just happened!?” Toph demanded. “I heard things explode!”
“Vivian… just saved us with her magic,” Caspian said.
Vivian let out a soft giggle. “It’s… called the Fiery Jinx. Very useful against large groups.”
Twilight finished carrying them, setting everyone down next to her and Data gently.
“All right…” Twilight stretched out her neck and wings. “This place is a death trap designed by a bored psycho. We’re going to need to be at our best for this. From now on, nobody rush into it recklessly like I just did. This is going to be taken with slow, methodical calculation.”
“That sounds boring,” Toph pointed out.
“It probably will be, but as those cannons showed, there can be any number of unpleasant surprises along the way.” She turned her head back to the shimmering rainbow of their goal. “To start… Data, analysis. Find the shortest path.”
Data nodded. “Yes, Twilight.”
~~~
“Well, this is… neat.” Cosmo tapped the edge of the glass cube she, Caspian, and Vivian were trapped inside.
“I fail to see the ‘neat’ aspect of being captured,” Caspian said.
“It does give us a nice view of the chaos,” Vivian pointed out.
Outside, Twilight, Data, and Toph were fighting a massive plant—dinosaur creature without eyes. They ran around the planet in a mild panic, unleashing attack after attack on the massive reptile, all to no avail.
“They’ll be fine,” Vivian said, chuckling nervously.
“We should be out there with them,” Caspian breathed. “Not… trapped in here.”
Vivian put her hands on her hips. “And who triggered the trapbox again?”
Caspian shuffled his feet.
“That’s what I thought.”
Outside, Data had discovered that the beast’s club tail was like an elastic rope, making it easy to hit it with its own natural weapon. The battle shifted from a game of chase-around-the-planet to a game of hit-the-tail-without-being-stomped.
“I do wonder…” Cosmo put her hand to her chin. “Why Grodus designed this place to be almost but not quite fully lethal? There’s a path of progression almost everywhere, this trap didn’t instantly kill us…”
“He wanted a game,” Vivian said. “Not something that’d make people turn back and return with a sledgehammer.”
“How would a sledgehammer help?” Caspian asked.
“It’s an expression. In our case, it’d be like… uh…”
“Grabbing the Enterprise and swinging it like a sword?” Cosmo suggested.
Vivian giggled. “It’d be a terrible sword!”
“It’d be all hi-yah!” Cosmo did a terrible karate chop toward the glass walls. She hit an invisible button, releasing them. “...Oh.”
Vivian’s giggles turned into outright laughter. “Oh, that’s just… too good!”
“We are free!” Caspian drew his sword. “Our allies need our assistance!”
Toph drove a pillar of earth into the beast’s tail. That was the last straw—it collapsed, out cold.
“Don’t worry,” Vivian said, patting Caspian on the back. “You’ll get your shot!”
He shrugged her hand off, walking to meet with the others.
Vivian adjusted her hat. “What did I…?”
“I’m not sure,” Cosmo admitted, taking Vivian’s hand in her own. “I’ll ask him about it later.”
“Okay…”
“You’re part of this group, Vivian.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I—ouch!” Cosmo pulled back, waving her finger in the air rapidly to put out the fire she’d gotten from prolonged contact with Vivian’s hands.
“S-sorry!” Vivian stammered. “I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay. I’ll just… be more careful from here on out!” Cosmo winked at her. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Hey! Slowpokes!” Toph called. “We need to keep moving!”
“Coming!” Vivian called, running after them and to the next part of the gauntlet.
~~~
“All right, this is it!” Twilight called, displaying a not-all-that-mentally-stable grin proudly on her face. “We’ve jumped through spinning buzzsaws of death, mazes of invisible gravity, fake planets, stars with angry faces on them, and those stupid monsters made out of spinning green discs!”
“Spinias,” Vivian offered.
“Yes, yes, that’s right, that’s their name!” Twilight chuckled to herself. “But! But! That’s all behind us now! Because we are at the end of our journey!” She gestured to the rainbow swirls that were effectively above them, the glow of the Pure Heart actually visible in the center, identified as dark blue, or indigo. “We only have one more gauntlet to go. One last push, one final series of jumping puzzle nonsense!”
“Platforming,” Data suggested.
“Yep!” Twilight clapped her front hooves together. “Now, you all know your assignments. Cosmo, you’re integral to the plan, remember that.”
“O-okay.” Cosmo shivered slightly. “I won’t let you down!”
“I know you won’t! Now… let’s finally put an end to this. I have no idea how long we’ve been jumping to and fro, but after this, it’ll be over. Over! So let’s get out there and get that Heart!”
Toph raised a hand.
“Yes, Toph?”
“This speech would be a lot more inspiring if we weren’t currently standing on a planet made entirely out of elephant dung.”
Twilight’s left eye twitched. “...Toph…”
“Just kidding. Mostly.” She pressed her fist into her palm. “Let’s do this!”
“Executing plan in three…” Data crouched to the ground. “Two…” He clenched his fists. “One…” Cosmo stepped on top of him. “Go!”
He jumped off the dung-planet, springing Cosmo into the air. Several massive eyes of glass turned to look at him, charging up lasers. He pulled out his phaser and disabled all of them within two seconds, allowing Cosmo to jump off his head and gain a little more distance. Her gravity became oriented to a black vortex that wanted to devour her, but she activated her dress leaves, drifting lazily around it.
Meanwhile, Twilight jumped onto a metallic railing crawling with buzzsaw robots. Toph, sitting on her back, was able to metalbend the tiny little robots away while Twilight focused on running through the railing as fast as possible.
Cosmo grabbed a lazily floating piece of blue metal that drifted by. “One!”
“That’s your cue,” Caspian told Tippi. The butterfly carefully fluttered over to a nearby UFO-shaped object, flying to the other side where one of the laser eyes was hidden. It targeted her, but she easily flew away from the laser, prompting the eye to lock onto her again. It released its burst, hitting a button on the railing Twilight was currently running through. A door opened in response.
Twilight jumped through the door a second before it closed again, entering a cube made entirely out of glass. In the center was a large button, which the combined weight of Twilight and Toph was enough to activate. This triggered a bridge to start forming next to Tippi.
“Two!” Cosmo called, grabbing another metal chunk as she continued to lazily orbit the swirling death ball.
Caspian took the next part of the mission, running along the bridge that corkscrewed around in a double helix. He paid no attention to what was up and what was down—only moving forward. Data, still drifting overhead, covered him by shooting all the eyes that were activating with the bridge.
Meanwhile, Tippi had returned to Vivian. The shadowy woman snapped her fingers, lighting a sphere of wood on fire. Twilight, from within the glass cube, used her telekinesis to drag the fiery sphere across the sky, slamming it through a brick wall that would prevent Caspian’s bridge from fully constructing. Twilight, retaining control of the sphere, brought it back to the glass box she and Toph were in, shattering one of the walls but keeping the button intact.
“Three!” Cosmo had just obtained the third chunk.
Data landed in the glass cube with Twilight and Toph. He stepped on the button, picked Toph up, and threw her. As she drifted through the air, she blindly used her earthbending on everything she could find: this happened to be the sea of brick debris Twilight had created moments before. The Bricks surged forward, embedding themselves in an ice orb, shoving it into one of the orbs of fire. The flaming entity was neutralized, as was its gravity. This changed the arrangement of gravitational wells in the system, but also triggered a series of swinging knife-traps that Caspian had to avoid as he ran across the bridge.
Vivian and Tippi took advantage of the new gravitational fields, jumping to a gravity-less vine that snaked around the area. Tippi hid within Vivian’s hat as the shadow pulled herself through the vines, ignoring the flaming monsters that had appeared around her. She was completely immune to the flames, and Tippi was completely safe within the folds of her hat. Arriving at a glass platform, Vivian quickly used a flaming tornado spell to remove all the slime enemies crawling on it. Toph landed next to her a second later.
“Four!” Cosmo called. “One more!”
“I really hope we timed this correctly…” Twilight lowered her head, allowing Data to get on her back. Don’t think about it, focus. She spread her wings and closed her eyes, jumping to release her hold on the button. The moment she did so, Caspian’s bridge arrived at a black cube, allowing him to pass through the shield surrounding it. The moment he arrived, he plunged his sword into the cube, deactivating its shield.
Vivian, Tippi, and Toph jumped onto a planet made out of earth. Vivian only had to point and Toph knew the exact direction—with a thrust of her arms she moved the entire orb with all of them on it directly to the cube. Vivian shot a few firebolts to take care of some skeleton birds that had appeared to attack them. When they crashed into the cube, Toph was able to sense enough to use her bending to make them earthen boxes that kept them from flying away.
“Five!” Cosmo shouted. “Done!” She looked down at the now uncomfortably close black vortex. “Oh no…”
Data had calculated the perfect flight trajectory for this part of the plan. The only problem was that Twilight couldn’t move her wings in precise enough increments to take the desired path—so Data had to do it for her. He twisted her wings sharply to the left, driving pain into Twilight’s wing socket—but she forced herself to ignore it and remain still. She banked in the direction he indicated, grabbing Cosmo in her hooves and swooping around the remaining debris all the way to the cube, landing perfectly.
Cosmo quickly unloaded all five pieces of metal, fusing them together with a simple shake right on top of the cube. It became a small, spinning blue star of metal. Immediately, it picked all seven of them up and gently tossed them toward the rainbow orb.
Then the cube exploded, pushing them all the rest of the way. They landed unceremoniously on a glass platform rippling with rainbow energies.
“Hah!” Twilight shouted. “Hah! Take that, Grodus! We beat your gauntlet!”
The rest of the team let out cheers of celebration mixed with sighs of relief—not counting Data, of course. Their new location was astounding: a disc-shaped platform of glass in the midst of a sphere of rainbow coalescing around the Pure Heart. Now that they were in it, they could see points of the rainbow energy manifesting into star shapes. These star shapes became golden yellow and vanished, transporting the power of this place to everywhere in the universe.
“That Frankie fellow…” Caspian said, holding out his hand to one of the forming starmans. “He used one of these.”
“A source of cosmic power,” Data reported, scanning the region. “It does not carry the same energy as the Pure Heart. I believe the Pure Heart was drawn here, even through the Shadow Queen’s curse. A sort of center of the universe.”
“The power is… amazing,” Twilight admitted—she could feel her horn buzzing. “But it’s not what we’re here for. That is.”
The indigo Heart floated in the middle of all of it, beckoning for the chosen to grab it. Vivian cautiously approached, extending her hands with an awkward smile on her face. “We did it…”
“I’m afraid not.”
A massive metallic foot stomped on the ground between Vivian and the Pure Heart. Twilight knew who it was immediately. “Dark Oak…”
Dark Oak folded his hands behind his back. “Twilight Sparkle.”
“Do you want a fight? We’ve just had our combat abilities honed and perfected in this gauntlet.” Twilight lit her horn, narrowing her eyes. “You won’t win.”
“The outcome of that encounter is uncertain. And it will remain so. I am not here to fight you. I am here to prevent you from taking the Pure Heart.”
“You can’t touch it,” Cosmo said, taking an uncharacteristically defiant stand. “Only the chosen may wield the heart!”
“You are correct.” As if to prove a point he was making, he attempted to punch the Heart, but it diverted his fist. “It will not permit it. It will never give its power to me. But…”
A large Void portal opened up behind him, depositing several Metarex ships into the gauntlet. The traps of the area started attacking, but the ships paid little mind to them.
“...If I hit it hard enough, it’ll go flying.”
Twilight was expecting a Metarex ship to shoot the Heart, so she raised a shield.
She did not expect the ship to ram the Heart. It pushed right through her shield and hit the Heart directly. Rather than attempt to push the entire Metarex ship back, the Pure Heart moved itself—blinking all the way to the far side of the gauntlet before Twilight knew what was happening.
“You may have the combat advantage,” Dark Oak said. “You may have the skills and powers necessary. But I can keep throwing ships at the Heart, moving it around the moment you get too close. You will never reach it.”
Twilight summoned a magic blade three times her body length and swung it at Dark Oak, but he had already vanished through the Void.
Only then did the Metarex ships start firing on them, not even letting the chosen get a chance to contemplate how bad of a hand they had just been dealt.