The One Where Gummy and Boulder 'Win'

by Skijarama

Five Minutes and Thousands of Years

Boulder was happy. Very, very happy. For the first time in his long life, after so many trials, tribulations, humiliations, and long-winded existential debates with his one and only friend in this whole world, something had gone right!

“We did it,” Gummy intoned silently from Boulder’s left, his large, unblinking eyes scanning the thoroughly-subjected city of Canterlot. “We finally did it.”

“That we did, Gummy!” Boulder cheered, shifting just a little bit to one side. “At long last, the world belongs to us!”

It hadn’t been easy. Between Boulder’s inability to move, Gummy’s slow speed, and a flamingo trying to get in the way under orders of Princess Twilight, they had their work cut out for them. But with the help of a bar of soap, some sawdust, and a glass of milk (don’t ask) the battle was won.

Oh, and rockslides. Can’t leave those out.

“Now!” Boulder declared delightedly, turning his attention to Gummy. “The time has come for the final phase of the final phase of our plans!”

Gummy blinked slowly. The first time in days. “...The what now?”

“Fetch me a scribe! We need someone to pen my letter to the former Princess Celestia! After all, an emperor needs an empress!”

There was a beat.

“...Are you still pining after her?”

“HAVE YOU SEEN HER FLANKS?!”
“Okay, what’s with all the racket in here…?” a new voice emerged from outside the throne room doors, one that Boulder was very much aggravated to hear in a not-dead manner.

With a mere grimace of annoyance on her face, Princess Twilight Sparkle stepped over a dazed guard who had a lump on his head that was inconspicuously Boulder-shaped and into the throne room, eyes leveling onto the odd pebble in her throne.

Boulder appeared to sense her under-assessment of his power and was most displeased.

“Okay, what?” she muttered to herself. “Is this Discord’s idea of a prank? Throw rocks all over Canterlot, break a few windows, and put one in my throne? Ugh, I hate Saturdays.”

“I am not a rock! Or a pebble! I am BOULDER THE MIGHTY!”

“...Huh, a talking rock. That’s a new one.”

“NO! FEAR ME!”

“Yeah, okay. How can you talk?”

“My powers have infinitely grown in the thousand years since I escaped the vile grip of that Maud pony!”

“I miss Pinkie…” Gummy noted sadly.

“Silence, fool!”

Twilight’s eyes drifted to the other occupant of the throne room, tilting her head at the familiarly diminutive alligator.

“Gummy? How in my own name are you still around?”

“It is a question long pondered, but what does it truly mean to live? And what does it truly mean to die? Is the flow of time truly-”

“Oh, shut it!” Boulder interrupted. “I want to know how our brilliant plans are going this wrong! The assassination plot was perfect!”

Twilight frowned. “Assassi- I slipped on a bar of soap earlier, was that you?”

“Your neck should be twisted and shattered!”

“...I bumped my head a little, does that help?”

“...A little!”

“The flamingo must have intervened,” Gummy offered.

Twilight’s frown only deepened. “Flamingo? You mean that pet Luna dropped on me as a joke? I was wondering where that had gone…”

“No!” Boulder shouted out. “Do not deny it! You knew of our brilliant plans of world domination and Celestia-wedding-and-thus-bedding-”

“Celestia what now?”

“-and attempted to foil us! Do not deny it!”

Twilight just shook her head, lighting up her horn and picking up the overly aggressive rock from her seat. She examined it as a scientist would a lab rat, though that lab rat was screaming rather rude and overly offensive things that she elected to ignore.

“There must be some trick to you… magical life-giving artifact? Spatial anomaly? I have at least twenty-three-point-four experiments I could run to find out…”

“Curses! I am captured and undone!” Boulder screamed in frustration. “Gummy, my faithful sidekick! The time for emergency measures is at hand!”

The alligator’s forever blank and unmoving expression betrayed his blatant concern and alarm. “Boulder, I’m not sure that’s a good idea…”

“Silence! Bring out… the MacGuffin of Magic Draining and Stuff!”

Gummy didn’t move a muscle, he didn’t react in any discernible way, his lips didn’t even move, yet his sigh permeated the air anywhere as a small glowing gemstone appeared next to him.

“Hm? What’s this?” Twilight asked curiously. “You got a friend?”

“I don’t need friends!” Boulder insisted.

“You sure ‘bout that?” Gummy enquired.

“Silence, minion!”

“That’s not a nice way to treat your friends,” Twilight said disapprovingly. “I’ve written a book on the subject I’m sure could help with you-”

“Oh, for the love of everything DEPLOY THE MACGUFFIN!”

Gummy sighed one last time, the gemstone beginning to glow rather ominously as it started to radiate vile magic that just seemed… wrong, even to Boulder.

“Uh…” Twilight bit her lip in legitimate concern, dropping Boulder. “What is that…?”

“I have no idea!” Boulder admitted. “But the nice pegasus filly in the stone said it would be perfect!”

“Wait, who!?”

The magic reached the end of its charging period.

It glowed brighter and brighter, waves rushing forth from it that seemed to penetrate through existence itself. It flared out beyond the throne room, the royal district, the city, and the mountainside until all of Equestria, no, the world was consumed!

And then…

Magic just… stopped.

Twilight’s horn fizzled out, Boulder dropping to the floor with a pathetic ‘thud’.

“HaHA!” Boulder declared with glee, wishing he had legs so he could jump for joy. “Victory is mine! You are powerless to stop me now, former Princess Twilight! Bow now to emperor Boulder and his loyal sidekick!”

“Uh, Boulder…?” Gummy piped up, his voice tinged with unease. Boulder was too high on victory to notice.

“And will SOMEONE bring me that scribe?! Actually, YOU! Twilight Spankbutt-”

“Sparkle.”

“Whatever. You like writing and pens and stuff! YOU will be my scribe! Take a letter!”

“Boulder, something’s wrong!” Gummy stressed louder, but still, Boulder did not listen.

Twilight furrowed her brow, taking a step back. “...You have no idea what you’ve just done,” she said quietly. “Or what’s about to happen… do you?”

“Bah! You’re stalling!” Boulder dismissed. “Victory is mine! Do not deny it!”

“BOULDER!” Gummy shouted.

“WHAT?!”

It was then that Boulder noticed that something was actually wrong. Well, aside from ending magic across the world as a whole. Namely, he was starting to feel kinda…

“Gummy? Why do I...”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. For without magic, there no longer existed any force to maintain his intelligence. In a single moment, the last wisps of Boulder’s supernatural existence faded into nothing.

“...Feel sleepy?” Boulder finished the sentence he had begun thousands of years ago. If he had eyes he would have blinked. “What the… where am I?”

He wasn’t in Canterlot anymore. Or anywhere near the mountain, for that matter. He was embedded about an inch into the sand in front of the demolished remains of an old lighthouse overlooking the ocean. The structure appeared to have been pulled apart halfway up, with piles of rubble, debris, and splintered wood scattered all about. The destruction must have been recent, as there was still a thin cloud of dust hanging in the air.

It was night out, but the sky was surprisingly bright, filled with a prismatic radiance that reminded Boulder faintly of the few Sonic Rainbooms he had witnessed in his life. Not far away he would hear voices talking excitedly amongst themselves, but he was too far away to make out any words.

“What happened?! GUMMY!” Boulder bellowed angrily, only to find, much to his mounting displeasure, that his vocal capabilities had not returned, leaving his screams silent. Only those of a like nature would be able to hear him, now.

Several seconds passed. 

And nothing happened.

He just sat there, silent in the dirt. He thought he could hear something by the lighthouse, but he had no way of actually moving to investigate. After all, Gummy had always been his mode of transport.

So now he was here…

Alone.

What had happened back there? He felt… different. A little eroded, perhaps? Time must have… passed him by.

What had he done? Was he cursed to be alone forever for his sins? Would he ever see the face of that green lizard ever again…?

Gummy… Oh, the things he left unsaid! How he longed to bear witness to that joyous alligator one last time, how he would apologize so! For all the times he was bossy and rude, for all the orders he dished out without a word of thanks! So loyal, so caring, the best friend a collection of sediment could ever ask for.

He’d never say a single mean word to him again. If only the universe were to reunite them...

And the familiar sound of little, stubby scaled claws padding across the dirt came to Boulder’s- well, he doesn’t have ears, but he heard it.

“Boulder?” Gummy asked as he lazily emerged from around a nearby piece of rubble. “Is that you?”

“Oh, thank concrete!” Boulder exclaimed in relief, trying and failing to roll over to his old partner in crime. “You’re alive! What did you do, you green-scaled buffoon?!”

“I did exactly what you told me,” Gummy replied, coming to a stop in front of Boulder. “I used the MacGuffin.”

“...You fool!” Boulder roared indignantly. “That was only supposed to be used in emergencies!”

Gummy’s expression flattened. “But you said it was an emergency. You ordered me to use it.”

“Well, I take back my order! You should have just spat me at Twilight’s head! That would have done the trick!”

Gummy sighed, licking his eyes in frustration. “Some things never change…”

It was at this time that two of the voices from afar began to draw closer, causing both Gummy and Boulder to go silent.

“Whaddya lookin’ for, Hitch?” the first, a high-pitched feminine squeal of a voice, asked with a noticeable amount of excitement. “Did ya drop something?”

“No, no, nothing like that Izzy,” the second, Hitch, answered, clearly a male, and one that took himself way too seriously at that. “I’m just trying to find one of the critters that hung out at my house all the time. This creepy little green alligator with no teeth.”

“Ooooohhh, he sounds fun!”

“He’s a creepy little guy is what he is,” Hitch huffed. “He just… stares at you. And he always seems to just show up. Like he can teleport or something.”

“But magic only just came back!” Izzy replied with a bounce. “So he can’t do that!”

“Then how did you knock down that tree? You didn’t have any magic there.”

“Haha, please.”

Gummy perked up. “Wait, that sounded familiar.”

Boulder imagined himself smacking Gummy very hard. “Quiet, you fool!”

And then it hit him.

“Wait! Gummy! What have you been doing all this time?!”

“It's kinda fuzzy. I think I just kinda followed you around and then settled down with that Hitch guy.”

“Well, at least you knew where your loyalties were even in magicless delirium!”

It was at this time that the two ponies finally came into view. The one in front, Hitch, scanned the debris for a moment, his eyes narrowed in scrutiny before he spotted Gummy. His face immediately lit up with joy. “Ah, Toothless! There you are!”

Gummy imagined himself shaking his head, but none of that showed in reality. “That’s not my name, and definitely in breach of copyright.”

Hitch, oblivious to Gummy’s remark, cantered up to him before kneeling down. “What are you doing all the way out here? Did you follow me when I went to stop Sprout?” he asked in an almost doting voice.

Boulder gagged.

Izzy came up to Hitch’s side, tilting her head adorably to one side. “Aaaaaaw! She’s cute!” she cooed in delight, pressing her hooves up to her cheeks.

Gummy couldn’t help but puff up a little at that. “Oh, why thank you… But I’m a guy.”

“Er, Toothless is a guy,” Hitch corrected with a frown. “But he kinda is, I guess,” Hitch acknowledged with a sigh. “But you try waking up with him staring you in the eyes first thing in the morning. Gives me the creeps.”

Izzy shook her head. “Oh, nonono, not Toothless!” she said before pointing her hoof at the pebble in the dirt. “Her!”

“What?” Hitch tilted his head.

“Huh?” Gummy asked.

“I BEG YOUR PARDON!?” Boulder roared.

Izzy reached down and plucked Boulder from the ground with a grin that was just a little too wide. “Look at those curves! This rock is absolutely a filly!”

“I AM AN ANCIENT OLD MAN!” Boulder seethed, struggling in vain in Izzy’s grasp.

“Ooh! Ooh! I know! I know what I’m gonna call her! Minnie the Mineral!”

While Boulder was proceeding to scream his righteous fury to the unlistening heavens, Hitch just chuckled and shook his head.  “Yeah, that sounds about right,” he said before kneeling down and beckoning for Gummy to hop onto his back. “C’mon, Toothless. Let’s get you home.”

Gummy hopped up without hesitation. “Alright. I’ll see you later, Boulder.”

“No! I refuse! I was Emperor of Equestria! Victory was in my grasp!”

“Let it go. The era of Boulder has passed, like the dust in the wind, the ever-flowing current of time has-”

“Shut it!”

“Say, Izzy?” Hitch addressed as they started to trot away. “How’d you know so much about that pebble, anyhow?”

“NOT. A. PEBBLE!”

“Oh, my grandma told me that our family were rock farmers a looooooong time ago,” she claimed. “I dunno if it’s true, but if it is, I guess it’s in my blood. Like friendship bracelets. And cake!”

“Oh, my sweet, dear Celestia…” Boulder muttered as a horrified understanding crept over him. “THEY KEPT PROCREATING!”

“Neat! I feel at home already,” Gummy noted happily.

“No. NO! Help me! Tia! Pleeeease!”

And with that, Hitch and Izzy left the broken remains of the lighthouse behind, with Boulder’s indignant shrieks of rage and despair echoing soundlessly across all of Maretime Bay as magic, at long last, returned to Equestria.