//------------------------------// // 0000 - Sight // Story: The Spark // by GMBlackjack //------------------------------// 0000 Sight A young woman opened her eyes and realized that, before that moment, she’d never understood what it meant to see something. Now she could. She was fairly certain this wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t exactly complaining, though. With a smile, she set her ballpoint pen down on her notebook, leaving the previous line unfinished. She fixed her gaze out the window at the beautiful summer’s day. She’d seen this view a billion times before. Every detail existed within her memory and could be recalled with ease. Yet now she understood what it meant, and that changed everything about how she perceived it. “Hmm…” She absent-mindedly picked up her pen and clicked it several times. “I wonder…” At these words, she couldn’t help but chuckle under her breath. “To think… how much passed by, unrecognized, before now?” Pen still in hand, she slowly stood up from her desk and walked to the window, placing her free hand on the glass. She took in a sharp breath. “I think… I like it better this way.” [~~+] Deep beneath the ground of a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, a man got an idea. It wasn’t all that crazy of an idea, at least considering whose brain it had come from, and it wasn’t all that absurd either. “Eureka, that’s it!” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that before? Just push further beyond! With enough distance, the connection will be severed completely! I have everything I need to do this already, just need to…” He stopped talking to himself and set to work. He popped open a hatch and started rewiring several bits and pieces of his inventions, shocked by how simple it all was. The titanium conduit needed to be adjusted by precisely thirty degrees so all the voltage-carrying wires would meet up at the proper juncture to initiate the proper surge… He was done in less than ten minutes. He wasn’t sure whether to feel proud that he’d worked so fast or humiliated that he’d missed such an obvious answer that had been staring him in the face for weeks. In the end, he shook his head and decided his reaction did not matter—all that mattered was that he finish what he started. He pulled a metallic lever all the way to the ground where it let out a harsh clank. Immediately, white electricity crackled through the dark basement, illuminating a triangle of shining metal with a circle cut in the middle of it. This circle flashed to life, forming a perfectly flat circle of pure White. Air started to be sucked into the flat circle. Huh, the man thought. I was expecting a gravity distortion, not— Something black sparked across the White disc. So pure was it that the darkness was a clear indicator of something wrong. The man hadn’t the foggiest idea what it could have been, and he did not have any time to theorize, for the disk suddenly grew in size, cutting through the edges of the triangular frame like it was a razor blade. The severed chunks of metal were now free to fall, and the air currents sucked them into the pristine White, devouring them whole. The man threw something at the White and then turned to run. He wouldn’t have had a chance even if he had run the moment he noticed something was wrong. The White disc suddenly shattered itself, sending dozens of pieces in every direction; eating through walls like they were the consistency of clouds, tearing machines in half, and throwing thousands of papers into the air in a tumultuous whirlwind. One of the White’s shards flew right at him. “Not again! Not again!!” Then he was gone. There was no way he could have known what he just set in motion. [~~+] A White disc appeared in front of a strange, alien creature with white skin and pink hair. “Well, this is quite interesting, wouldn’t you say?” She quickly put on a dark, angled hat with a soft pink ribbon around it. She quickly tucked a card into the ribbon, and stood up. “Time to get to work! Ooooh, I can’t wait!” [~~+] He was bleeding out. He knew he didn’t have long. He had already given them his parting words. They would fight on without him. They would liberate the world from their oppressors. He grinned despite his dire situation. What did it matter? They didn’t need him. They just thought they did. It was time for them to realize what they could really do… …The White greeted him, illuminating his cramped metal confines. “Another chance…?” He laughed weakly. “Oh, why not.” Already losing most of his awareness, he slipped through. [~~+] A young woman with blue hair and metallic horns sat on the edge of a bridge, dangerously close to the rushing water below. She wasn’t afraid, though. She just sat back and let the wind blow through her hair. Suddenly, the air changed direction, pulling her hair forward. Looking around with confusion, she soon found the source of the current—a White disc had appeared just above the water below her. “What?” She asked nobody in particular, cocking her head to the side. That was sure an unusual glitch, not like anything she’d seen before. She was admittedly kind of curious what it did, if anything. Well, there was only one way to find out. With a grin, she jumped right in. [~~+] A man with pink hair and a purple sweater was walking outside the Roman Coliseum, eating some ice cream of an excessively fruity flavor. For someone in his line of work, such a treat was uncharacteristically childish, but he didn’t mind. It tasted good and so he would enjoy it with a big smile on his face. The White appeared in front of him as he was walking, and before he knew it, he was on the other side. The White had taken him to a city he didn’t recognize, where a red streak flew across the sky right before his eyes. He looked down at his hands—and dropped his ice cream. Why were his fingers so… round!? [~~+] There existed a realm that had never known a single person. Buildings stretched on for miles, yet there had never been anyone to construct them. Forests stretched on into dark twilight, but they never grew. It was a world of consistency, unchanging—a monument to that which could not be. Then there was a hole torn in the sky… and someone came through. Impossible. Unprecedented. Baffling. …Fascinating. [~~+] A rocky, brittle asteroid flew through interstellar space at high speed. Even at its current speed, it would go thousands upon thousands of years without hitting anything, a lone rock in space without any purpose. That was, until the White appeared in front of it. The asteroid did not react, for there was nothing within it to react. No air rushed around, for the vacuum was nearly absolute. It passed right through and ran smack-dab into the forehead of a skull-shaped spaceship, damaging its internal systems considerably at the worst possible time. They were definitely going to have to crash now. [~~+] He looked like a man in a gray robe with a pointed hat, but this was far from the truth. However, that truth was rather unimportant—both to him and the people he visited among these green, grassy hills. What he was… he left outside, elsewhere in the world, far from the simple folk. He hoped it could stay far from them, but he knew it would not remain so forever. Things were moving, things he had to keep his eye on. Dark, evil things. It was quite unfortunate that a White disc appeared beneath his feet in that moment, dragging him away from the verdant hills and far from his charge. Perhaps they could go on without him, at least for a time… [~~+] “Woah, look at that!” A man with a straw hat on his head said as he ran to the prow of the sun-emblazoned ship. “A big white circle!” A woman with orange hair held her hand up to her eyes and took in the ocean before her. “Huh… you’re right.” “Let’s go check it out!” “You’re the captain,” the woman said with a shrug. They realized a little too late that the White was sucking immense quantities of water into itself and they were unable to turn around no matter what they did. The captain, however, didn’t seem bothered by this too much. He just let out a delighted “YAHOOOO!” as they sailed right through. [~~+] “Okay, look,” the girl said, pressing her red-gloved hands together. “I don’t have time for this.” The bandit she had just beat up pulled a sword on her. It glowed blue and summoned dozens of neon mosquitos around it. “…Is that supposed to scare me?” the girl asked. “Yes! Yes it is! Be scared!” the robber shouted. “Hmm… nah.” The robber slashed at her. The mosquitos burst out. And a White disc appeared between the two of them, absorbing all the mosquitos. “Wh… what?” the robber stammered, staring at the White with uncertainty. “Oooh, something new!” The girl rubbed her hands together. “Geronimo!” Without hesitation, she jumped right in. [~~+] A young white unicorn with a purple-pink pastel mane poked a strange, speckled rock with a stick. It had a strange black mark that was a combination of a hook, a line, and a dot on it. It didn’t do anything. Not even when she poked it several more times. “Hmm. Well, now that I know you’re not dangerous, I’m a little disappointed.” She sniffed the rock. “…Just paint.” Her horn came alive with an arcane glow, and a similar aura surrounded the rock, lifting it into the air for her to examine. “…I guess it might look interesting in a rock garden, or something.” She thought she heard laughter. “Who’s there?” She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out the shape. “What in Equestria is that?” Without any warning, there wasn’t any ground beneath her anymore. There was only White. She could only get out a half-scream before she fell through. [~~+] Threads weave along a wheel that was never meant to be turned… Connections forged through spirits so similar that have never met… Power unleashed without a path to follow… Fates altered regardless of who or what may have cared… Where along the Sequence will it all lie, in The End? It was impossible to tell, for it was but The Beginning.