//------------------------------// // Graduation Day -- Canterlot City // Story: Equestria Hurls // by shallow15 //------------------------------// EQUESTRIA HURLS A “My Little Pony: Equestria Girls”/”Daria” crossover By Erin Mills Illustrations by Linnofthewoods CANTERLOT HIGH SCHOOL CANTERLOT CITY, LZ JUNE 10, 2016 “This was NOT how I expected to be spending graduation!” Rarity cried as she threw her hands up, generating a large hexagonal crystal shield in front of her. A multicolored streak of light crashed into the shield, dissipating along the facets. “I don’t think any of us did, Rares!” Rainbow Dash replied, flying by, her wings flapping madly. The athletic teenager dove and swooped around more beams of light that continued to spew from the cracked plinth that stood in front of Canterlot High School.  “Focus, girls!” yelled Sunset Shimmer from where she stood in front of the plinth. “We’ve got to get this under control!”  The redheaded girl scanned the grounds around her. The graduating class of Canterlot High, along with the teachers and spectators that had attended the ceremony were all a safe distance away from the plinth. Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna were doing their best to keep everyone calm.  Well, as calm as anyone could be witnessing a raging geyser of rogue magic spewing into the air and seven teenage girls in sparkly outfits with horse ears (and in three cases, wings as well) using superpowers to deal with it. “Applejack!” Sunset cried to her blonde cowgirl friend. “Grab a tree! See if we can plug it that way!” “Gotcha!” Applejack ran over to the nearest tree, the orange geode necklace around her neck glowing brightly. She slammed her fingers into the tree, embedding the tips deep into the bark. “Sorry, big feller,” she apologized, then, with a grunt of effort, she uprooted the entire thing, turned, and hurled the tree toward the plinth.  The deciduous projectile arced end over end on a dead trajectory for the huge crack in the top of the plinth the magic was spewing from. Unfortunately, as soon as it hit the rampaging geyser, it shattered into a million pieces, which then inexplicably turned into butterflies that immediately flew off at high speed. Sunset groaned. She turned to the purple girl with glasses standing next to her. “Any ideas, Twilight?” Twilight Sparkle fiddled with an odd homemade contraption she held in her hands. She looked up at Sunset. “Whatever we do, we need to do it fast! The readings are going bananas! If we don’t stop this thing soon, the whole city is going to be blasted with magical energy and I don’t know what will happen then!” Sunset groaned again. Today wasn’t supposed to go this way. She and her friends were supposed to sit through a boring graduation ceremony, then go out and celebrate making it through high school unscathed, in spite of the many, many times their lives had been interrupted by dealing with other dimensional magical menaces ever since the Fall Formal of their sophomore year.  But no, Sunset thought. No, the statue base that contains the portal to Equestria just had to explode today of all days. We really should have realized that’s where all the rogue magic we’ve been dealing with over the last couple of years has been coming from this whole time.  While the magical powers Sunset and her friends possessed were helping keep things under control for the moment, they weren’t doing much right now. And Sunset knew why. “Dash!” she yelled upward. “Where the hell are Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy?! Can you see them?” Rainbow Dash dodged another random bolt of magic and looked out at the streets surrounding the high school. “I don’t see… wait a sec!” Rainbow frowned and put a hand over her eyes to shade them. “Oh boy,” she muttered.  She looked down at Sunset. “Promise you won’t get mad?” Sunset frowned. “What did they do?” “This is totally on them, not me, okay?” Rainbow replied, seeing Sunset’s face start to turn red. “What did they DO?!” “I just wanna be sure you understand that this is completely not my fault and is their idea!” “JUST TELL ME WHAT THEY DID, DASH!!!” Rainbow put a hand behind her head, sheepishly. “Um… I think they stole an ice cream truck.” “FLOOR IT, FLUTTERSHY!” screamed Pinkie Pie as she leaned out the side door of the ice cream truck. Beside her, her shy friend winced. “I already am!” she protested. “These things weren’t meant to go that fast, Pinkie!” The truck sped down the street toward Canterlot High, defying things like stop signs, the police who were trying to cordon off the area, and the laws of physics as Pinkie grabbed a handful of popsicles, charged them up[ with her magic, then hurled them under the spinning back tires of the truck. The frozen treats exploded, sending the truck into the air, Fluttershy’s screams of terror dopplering away as they gained altitude. Below them, two stunned police officers watched as the truck sailed off into the sky. “Sarge?” asked one of them, “Did you see that?” “No,” said the Sarge, “And neither did you.” The officer nodded. “There’s a lot of stuff we don’t see, isn’t there, Sarge?” “Shut up, rookie.” Sunset looked up as she heard Fluttershy’s scream and quickly got the hell out of the way as the truck miraculously landed upright in front of the school. Pinkie jumped out and thrust her fists in the air. “THREE POINT LANDING! WOO HOO!” The other girls rushed to the driver’s side, where Fluttershy was staring straight ahead, eyes the size of dinner plates, a grimace of terror on her face, and her fingers were making dents in the steering wheel.  “Fluttershy, darling, are you all right?” Rarity asked. “I am never driving again,” Fluttershy squeaked. Rainbow Dash opened the door and gently pulled the yellow girl out. Being out of the truck seemed to bring Fluttershy back to herself.  Sunset stalked around to the other side of the truck to Pinkie Pie. “What in the hell are you doing?” she asked. Pinkie stared at her, hurt. “I was out of sweets for my magic. I needed to reload,” she explained. "BY STEALING AN ICE CREAM TRUCK?!" Sunset howled. "What do you have to say for yourself?" "Uhhhhhh..." Pinkie Pie blinked. Blindly, she flipped a switch on the dashboard. Pop Goes the Weasel began playing in a bent key. She smiled sheepishly. Sunset closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "We will discuss this... IN DEPTH... later." She gestured for all the girls to gather around her. “Charge up your magic as much as you can. We’re going to try to seal the crack.” Twilight looked at her handheld gizmo again. “That could be dangerous. From what I can tell, if we seal the crack, that might close the portal to Equestria for good!” She looked up at Sunset. “You wouldn’t ever be able to go back.” Sunset looked over at the out of control magical geyser, then down to where the mortarboard she'd been wearing at the graduation ceremony lay on the grass, then at the plinth itself where the portal back to her homeland of magical talking ponies was embedded. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them. “That’s a chance we’ll have to take,” she said. “Sunset!” Twilight gasped. “If we don’t seal the crack, everything on this side of the portal is in danger. I’m not letting my mistakes bring about some kind of magical apocalypse!” Her shoulders drooped. “And if that means I have to say goodbye to Equestria, then so be it.” The other girls looked at each other, concerned for their friend. Then Rainbow Dash stepped forward. “All right, then,” she said, raising a fist. “Let’s go put a stop to this once and for all!” “Yeah!” cheered the other girls. Sunset smiled and they began making their way towards the plinth. As they walked, colorful magical auras began forming around each of them: blue, yellow, pink, white, orange, purple, and red. The magic lifted all seven girls off the ground and they hovered in the air before the raging geyser.  Sunset floated slightly ahead of the other girls. “Light it up!” she called.  Each girl thrust out her hands, sending a colored beam of magic toward Sunset. The magic surrounded her in a swirl of multicolored light. Sunset’s eyes began to glow pure white as she became a conduit for the magical power flowing through her. She thrust out her own hands and a rainbow burst forth, zooming up into the air and crashing down directly on top of the mass of chaotic magic. The two forces collided and the girls let out noises of effort as they felt the raw magic trying to push back against their own. “Give me more!” Sunset yelled over her shoulder. “As much as you can!” “That could kill you!” Twilight shouted back. “Do it!” Sunset ordered in a tone which brooked no argument. The other girls focused their power and pushed as hard as they could, sending everything they had into Sunset. Sunset grit her teeth and forced more magic through her hands. The geyser began to wobble and buckle as the rainbow shoved it back down toward the plinth.  Sunset concentrated and pushed even harder. Every cell in her body was screaming in pain, the magical energy threatening to consume her. Sunset kept pushing through the pain, focused solely on putting a stop to the chaos that she had inadvertently unleashed when she brought the Element of Magic to this world from Equestria.  Sunset let out a scream of pain, exertion, and sheer willpower as she gave the rainbow beam everything she had. The rainbow doubled in size and smashed through the geyser, connecting with the plinth. The crack in the top began to heal itself, becoming smaller and smaller until finally, it disappeared, sealing off the magical energies escaping from it. The girls slowly floated to the ground. When they landed there was a flash of light and they were once again normal teenage girls, clad in the clothes and graduation robes they had been wearing when the portal exploded.  Sunset turned to face her friends. Her hair was frazzled and bits of residual magical energy crackled from the ends. She gave the other girls an exhausted smile… … then her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed on the grass. As Sunset’s friends, Principal Celestia, and Vice Principal Luna rushed forward to make sure Sunset was all right, a purple wisp of magic which had managed to escape before the crack was sealed zipped around in the air, made a loop, then passed through the side of the plinth, which rippled as the magical portal embedded in it activated.  The wisp zipped through the space between worlds, seeking out a new home. It found a way through and emerged out of a large hole behind a dumpster in another world. It floated past the dumpster, its luminescence making the words “Good Times Chinese Restaurant” spray painted on the side visible. The wisp floated upward, seeking a vessel to inhabit so its power could be transferred to someone. The wisp didn’t care. It simply was. Magic needed to be wielded. It was its nature.  Eventually it floated through a small window carelessly left open in the back of a shop. It drifted from the back room into the main area. It was a thrift store. An eclectic mix of items were on shelves and mounted on the walls. The wisp came to a cabinet of old jewelry. It hovered around the front of the case, then found a finger hole in the back of the cabinet, used to open it, slipped through and landed on a battered broken pocket watch. As soon as it made contact, the watch glowed with a purple light, transforming into an ornate silver version of itself with a large amethyst gem in the center of the cover.  The glow faded and the store was once again dark and silent. The watch didn’t move, but if someone was there to observe it, they would have gotten the impression that, somehow, it was waiting.