//------------------------------// // Chapter 1- Something More Dire Than Weekends // Story: Of Arms, Legs, and Hooves // by TheHouseholdWarrior //------------------------------// Knock knock knock Dammit. Knock knock Dammit. Knock Well, glad that's over. I quickly snuggle back into my blankets, my eyes forced shut as I try to drown away the little voice in my head beckoning me to open the door. I successfully do so, and quickly drift back into slumber. it's been a very tiring day, and I've really been looking forward to- BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBA- "WHAT?" I asked, jumping out of bed and opening the door in a fit of anger as I look for the person that dared disturb my beauty sleep. "Hey, Hisao!" said a girly, high-pitched voice. I breathe out a sigh of relief. At least it's not Kenji. I have to force myself not to shiver visibly at the thought. "Dammit, Emi..." I said, rubbing my eyes as I begin to calm down. I try my best to look as tired as possible, because I don't want to do anything other than sleep at the moment. Then again, I don't think there's any need to try. "Don't you know what time it is?" "It's half past seven, Hisao." said Emi, narrowing her eyes as she looked up at my face. Well, that totally backfired. "Never mind." said Hisao. "So, what's up?" "I'd tell you, but you should at least put on a shirt first." said Emi, trying hard to suppress a giggle. "And some pants. It's not polite to show off your body like that, especially to a girl." Dammit. I completely forgot that I was virtually naked. In fact, all I had on other than my underwear was the blanket that I had unconsciously wrapped around myself. "Come on, you've seen me naked before. Cut me some slack." I said, walking back into my room. Emi, without invitation, quickly follows me inside the room and closes the door behind her. I shift my feet a bit- she might be my girlfriend, but I'm still very self-conscious about my body. Throwing away all my inhibitions, though, I throw my blanket back to the bed and pick up a shirt, tie, and some pants. "Please, come in." I said. Emi ignores my sarcastic comment, and I hear her jump on my bed and lie there.I decide to do nothing about it, though. She's like that at times, and I've had plenty of time to learn to deal with it. "I've never been in your room before." said Emi, looking up at the ceiling. "It's so plain..." "Yeah, I never bother with decorating my room." I said, picking up my belt from the table. "Even back at the city, my room kinda looked something like this. Well, except the desk. My desk was always full of stuff." Hearing me say that, I sense Emi's eyes shift from the ceiling to my desk. There's not much there now, only a few papers, a desk lamp... My medicine. I discretely try to hide it from sight by moving in between Emi and the pills, but Emi was quick. She was able to move past me easily and sit on my desk chair, her eyes staring at the many bottle of pills. "W-Wow..." said Emi, sounding distracted as she stared intently at the bottles. Knowing her, she's probably counting how many there are. "There's so many..." "Well, yeah." I said, trying not to sound too disheartened about the fact that she found out about my meds. "I don't like to admit it, but I'm pretty dependent on them." "Okay." said Emi, possibly sensing the gradually lowering mood and deciding to end the discussion there. She turns to stare at me, and I immediately realize that I haven't put on a shirt yet. I quickly move to do so. "Anyway, you still haven't told me why you came." I said, starting to button up my shirt. "Why?" asked Emi, widening her eyes in the attempt of making herself look absolutely adorable. It's working. "Can't I come just 'cause I miss you?" "We just ran together three hours ago." I said, trying to point out the obvious. "And knowing you, there's probably a reason for you." I straighten up my tie, and Emi jumps off the desk chair. Her expression quickly turns to one of worry, and she lowers her head. She still looks adorable, though. "It's Rin." said Emi, starting to pace around the room. For a girl with no legs, she certainly seems to walk around much. Much more than the usual person. Maybe even more than me. But while Emi is the type of person who had the tendency to become restless and pace around while deep in thought, I'm the type that would much rather be lying down while thinking. Although that changed a bit as I spend more and more time with her (turns out you can think better while running. Who knew? Well, I think there was a book on that somewhere...), I still tend to think while lying down. Or maybe I just like to lie down a lot. 'What about her?" I asked, sitting down on the desk chair while my eyes followed her around. "I can't find her!" said Emi, plopping down on the side of my bed. "I mean, I looked everywhere! Her room, class, the art room, the library, the school grounds... Hell, I even went all the way to town!" You gotta give Emi credit for her dedication. I mean, when she wants to do something, she'll not stop until she does it. I suddenly remember the time we shared in that shed... Hopefully my shivering isn't too noticeable from the outside. "How long's she been gone?" I asked. I didn't realize it until very recently (as in a few seconds ago), but Rin sort of grew on me. Her messy hair and uniform, her carefree nature, her... 'quirkiness', I don't think there was a day when I didn't see Rin get all worked up over nothing or not get worked up over everything. "She's always back by dinner time." said Emi. "So she's been gone for, like... only an hour and a half?" I asked, rather sarcastically. Emi doesn't seem to take it that way, though. "Not only an hour and a half, but already an hour and a half!" she said. I stare at her. Mostly because of her terrible grammar, but at how ridiculous she sounds as well. Immediately, she began to blush. My stare can be awesome at the best of times. "Fine, it's only been an hour and a half." said Emi, throwing herself on to the bed at full force. She then begins to mumble as she lies face down on my bed. "Bfut she'sh awlwaysh bfack bfy djinner." I let out a long sigh before standing up and walking over to Emi. I sit at the end of the bed, Emi's legs right next to me. I chuckle a little bit as I consider the fact that despite Emi being one year older than him, she's really not quite my level in maturity in more ways than one. Then again, she acts really motherly towards Rin, taking care of her every need. In fact, Emi's so protective of Rin that Rin actually told him a few days ago when he was helping her pack about how Emi fusses a lot over nothing. Then again, these are words coming from a girl who actually came up with a theory about how the reason I came to Yamaku is 'in my pants'. Turning my head to look at Emi's face-down, unsuspecting body on my bed, my face slowly cracks into a wild grin. I quickly jump as high as my legs could take me, lying down on the side of the bed right next to Emi. Of course, the impact of my landing makes my bed jump, and Emi flies a bit in the air and crashes into the floor. I start laughing madly as I see Emi pick herself up from off the ground with a enraged look on her face. "Why, you little-" said Emi, picking up a pillow and starting to beat me to death with it. Soon enough, I find her sitting on top of my waist, swinging the pillow wildly from side to side. I try to fight back, but she keeps attacking me with unrelenting force. She's also beginning to laugh as heartily as I am, her worries about Rin quickly disappearing into the happy atmosphere. It seems as if her energy was not going to die down for a long time too. I feel my chest begin to throb painfully from my laughter and her attacks, so I decide that its best to stop our activities here. At least for the time being. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Everypony knows that a malfunctioning spell is every unicorn's worst nightmare, because nopony ever knows how badly they've managed to screw up the spell. Well, 'worst nightmare's got no shit on this. She should've known better. She should've thought about it at least a little bit. How could she be so stupid? Come on, Twilight, get it together! This is no time to be blaming yourself! Eventhoughthewholethingwasreallyyourfaultinthefirstplace. Twilight let out a long, resigned sigh. The voice in her head (her conscience, whom she calls 'Tiny Twilight') was right. Never mind how horrible, stupid, irreparable the problem was, the thing she should think about is the solution! Oh god, I feel so stupid. She brought her head back and banged it with full force against the wall. "Stupid... stupid... stupid..." she said, earning one head bang with every 'stupid' that comes out of the mouth. "Uh... Twilight?" "Stupid... stupid... stupid..." "Twilight..." "Stupid... stupid... stupid..." "TWILIGHT!" Twilight immediately stopped, dropping to the ground with a bump as large as an orange on her forehead. "Come on, Twilight!" said a high-pitched male voice from across the room. "The girls are all ready downstairs. We better get going." "All right, Spike..." said Twilight, her head still spinning. "Just gimme a minute, willya?" And with that, Twilight laid her head on the ground. Her little assistant sighed and left the room, the pitter-patter of his scaly footsteps beaing heard clearly as he walked down the stairs. Owowoww... My head hurts... Why did I bang my head against the wall like that...? "Stupid... stupid... stupid..." said Twilight, although she doesn't quite bang her head this time. The whole event played through in Twilight head once again. It's already been much longer than half a day, but it feels as if it had just happened. She should never have let Pinkie help with the experiment. That was the stupidest mistake in her whole life. Out of all her friends which were just there, simply watching, she HAD to pick Pinkie Pie, the craziest, most spontaneous, sugar-rushiest pony in all of Equestria. It would be a surprise if everything DID go well. If only this thought had occurred to her then... Now Pinkie's gone, and it's all because of her. And that's not even the worst part! The WORST part is that there was absolutely NO KNOWN WAY to get her back. The aptly named Superspecialawesomehappyfuntimeoneuseonlytimetravelling Portal Machine (temp) was purely theoretical until recently, and that was the very first experiment. It was still in it's alpha stage, and she knew that she should've started on a smaller scale first, but that was next to impossible considering what she was trying to pull. She had spent YEARS researching wormholes and their application for time-travelling (at the side, of course), and it had finally reached its peak. Taking a break from Celestia's tutelage for a while, she started to pull all-nighters trying to find a way to 'create' a wormhole. And she did. She found a way to do it. But everything went far too wrong far too quickly. She had put a yellow tape on the floor that shouldn't have been crossed in the first place, for Celestia's sake! Why did she have to cross the damn tape! NONE OF THIS WOULD'VE HAPPENED IF SHE HAD NOT CROSSED THE TAPE! Twilight found herself breathing heavily- in both anger and despair. She was standing on all four hooves, her mane and coat glistening with sweat. Finding inner peace all of a sudden, she shook her body once, sending beads of sweat flying around the room, and began to trot down the stairs to where everyone else was. Hopefully they weren't worrying about her too much. I'm so sorry, Pinkie... As she reached the base of the steps, she felt five heads turn towards her all of a sudden. "Heya, Twi..." said the familiar soothing voice of her farmpony friend. "You alright?" "Yeah, I'm splendid." said Twilight, immediately regretting her sarcastic comment. "I'm sorry, AJ, I didn't mean that... I-" "It's fine, Twilight." said Applejack, an honest smile on her face. "We'll find Pinkie Pie. Ah'm darn sure of it." "Thanks, Applejack." replied Twilight, giving her a bashful smile. Awkward silence. "Soo..." said Spike. "What are we supposed to do now?" asked the rainbow-maned pegasus flying in loops near the ceiling. "How're we supposed to find Pinkie?" If there was one good thing that could've come out of that experiment, it was that it worked. The Superspecialawesomehappyfuntimeoneuseonlytimetravelling Portal Machine (temp) worked. If it didn't work, then the failsafe that she installed would've stopped anything from happening. But something DID happen, and Twilight had proved that time travel was indeed possible. However... "Well, one thing I know for SURE is that we sent Pinkie somewhere back in time." said Twilight. "Not to the future, as we hoped, but to the past. To tell you the truth, however, the mere fact that we're still standing here at this moment actually proves the many-worlds theory. But that same fact works against us as well- it would be near impossible to locate where Pinkie Pie stands in spacetime, and we don't know which of the infinite worlds she's in. But the thing I hate the most, and i can't stress this enough, is the fact that WE DON'T KNOW HOW FAR BACK WE SENT HER TO THE PAST!" The rest of the assembled group couldn't do anything except blink and tilt their head. They all did it in such unison that it would've been comedic if the situation weren't so dire. Twilight sighed, always herself to recompose before trying to explain the whole thing again. "You see, the universe in the past and the present has a constant mass. If we all live in a linear timeline, then the fact that Pinkie's mass had been subtracted from the present and added to the past's total mass would create a temporal anomaly." She saw a four hooves and a claw being raised into the air. Twilight sighed again. "Life would not exist as we know it." she said, this time with a more frustrated tone to her voice. "You guys really need to read more. Now, the fact that we are still living right now means that the time does not exist in a linear timeline (in Equestria, at least), proving the many-worlds theory, which states that there are an infinite number of possible worlds. So our lives are not threatened at the moment." Spike rose a claw. "If sending things back to the past was so dangerous, why'd you want to do it in the first place." he asked, genuinely confused as to why Twilight would do such a stupid thing. "I told you before, Spike..." said Twilight, pressing her hoof against her temple. The longer they take here, the farther Pinkie goes in her universe, wherever it is. "I meant to send the damned banana to the future! I never meant to send it to the past, and I put a failsafe there to prevent such a thing from happening!" "Then why-" "I made a small miscalculation, alright?" said Twilight angrily. "The machine absorbed so much of my power that I couldn't provide enough to the failsafe." "Um, Twilight?" called Fluttershy. "Yes, Fluttershy?" "I'm sorry to ask, but... does Princess Celestia know about this? She might have a way to fix the problem." "No no no!" said Twilight panickedly. Fluttershy jumped back in shock. "Princess Celestia mustn't know about this! Not just yet. If she finds out I made a time machine without telling her..." Twilight suddenly gave a loud yelp and fell to the floor, cradling her tail in a fetal position. Her friends wanted to come closer, but they daren't. Twilight was acting especially creepy at the moment. Twilight, however, wasn't going to stop there. "Okay, now all we have to do is to rebuild the machine again." said Twilight, still in her fetal position but managing to look straight at her friends. It was like her body was divided into two- her head was calm, collected, and always thinking, while the lower part was simply bat-crap crazy. "Do any of you know how to use any tools or instruments?" Rainbow Dash raised a hoof into the air. "No, Rainbow Dash, ponyradish is not an instrument." sighed Twilight. "We have to start construction as quickly as possible, so-" BANG! The entire library shook. There was a sudden bright flash of purple light, and everything seemed to have been silenced. No one could make a move, and all feeling disappeared into thin air. For a few moments, there was nothing. And then it all came rushing back. Twilight found herself on the floor next to one of her bookshelves, with books hopelessly strewn all around the floor. Slowly and dazedly opening her eyes, Twilight coughed began to call out for her friends in a shaky voice. "Girls? Spike? A-are you alright?" "I'm okay, Twilight." said Rainbow Dash, who quickly flew back up to the ceiling. However, she suddenly pressed her hoof to her neck, wincing badly in pain as she did so. "O-ow... That crash must've hit me hard..." "We're fine here too, Twi!" called out Applejack, who was carrying a shivering, wide-eyed Fluttershy on her back. Fluttershy didn't make a sound. "I'm here too." said Spike, not looking at all affected by the sudden... blast? Blast seems appropriate. "What about Rarity?" asked Rainbow Dash. "Where's Rarity?" "Oh no..." said Fluttershy. "What if she's hurt? Or worse... what if she passed out?" "Everyone, quickly dig into the piles of books and try to find Rarity! We need to-" "EWWW!" Well, she's conscious alright. "I've got book dust all over my coat!" complained Rarity. "Twilight, darling, you owe me a shower." "Whatever happened just now, it came from outside. Let's go check it out!" said Rainbow Dash. "Rainbow, wai-" started Applejack, but Rainbow Dash had already flown out the library door to the open night sky. "Consarn it, Rainbow Dash! C'mon girls, let's make sure that hotheaded friend of ours don't get hurt." "I'm not a girl..." mumbled Spike in a low, inaudible voice as he reluctantly stepped outside to join the group. Strangely, nopony else in Ponyville seemed to be affected by the blast. In fact, everything looked perfectly normal. Looking back at the library from the outside, Twilight found that it was still perfectly straight as well. How strange... "Nothing seems wrong here." said Rainbow Dash, stopping for once to take a good look around. "What was that?" "I don't know, but i have a good feeling that we won't be getting any answers here." said Twilight. "Let's go check out the Everfree Forest. The blast seemed to have come from that direction." "T-the Everfree Forest?" repeated Fluttershy, scared out of her wits. "If you don't mind, I'd like to stay back as well." said Rarity, standing next to Fluttershy. "After what just happened, I don't think that it would be... advisable to come close to its origin." "Come on." said Rainbow Dash, flying behind Fluttershy and beginning to push. Fluttershy tried to stop herself from moving forward, but she couldn't. And after the blast, her wings didn't seem to respond to her. Rarity sighed and hesitantly followed the girls. While walking towards the entrance to the forest, Twilight had some time to think. What was that blast? What caused it? What's going to happen because of it? But the most important question, of course, was... "Was it because of what happened earlier?" asked Twilight to herself, looking up at the sky. I'm sorry, Pinkie. Do you think we'll ever get to meet each other again? "Twilight." said Applejack, stopping right in front of her. The rest of the group stopped as well, confused as to what's going on. Rainbow Dash stopped pushing Fluttershy (who wasn't trying to move anyways) and flew to see what's happening. Suddenly, however, Twilight noticed Applejack shivering. She quickly stepped to Appplejack's side. "Applejack, what's wro-" She didn't need to answer that question, as Twilight was looking at the answer herself. There was a shadowy figure right in front of them, limping slightly to the side, and it was walking towards them. "Wh-what is that, Twilight?" asked Spike, hiding behind Twilight's hooves. Twilight couldn't answer that... because she didn't know herself. The shadow began to creep closer to them, and Twilight knew that the whole group were ready to hightail it out of there anytime. But they were scared to. The shadow came even closer to them, and Twilight noticed that it was standing on two hooves. Two, very long hind hooves. And it also had two very short forehooves. Or was it the other way 'round? Twilight was never good at identifying monsters. "F-Fluttershy, do you know what that is?" asked Twilight. Fluttershy didn't answer, nor did she boldly go to meet and care for this creature. That either meant that this was NOT an animal, or it was a dragon. It probably isn't a dragon. As it came closer, Twilight could see even more distinguishing features- there was a tuft of hair around the shadow's head, and the shadow seemed to have some kind of mutation, with its hind hooves ending in a flat surface that was wider than the hoof itself, and that its forehooves seemed to shrink in the middle. All this just proved to make the monster look even more horrifying. The shadow was so close now. "No such thing as ghosts, no such thing as monsters, no such thing as zombie ponies..." Twilight found herself reciting. 'G-g-g-g-ghost?" yelped Fluttershy. "Z-z-zombie pony?" gasped Spike. Twilight wanted to run. She wanted to run and not stop. She wanted to run all the way to Stalliongrad and have tea with the Pzar. But she couldn't. She was rooted into place, unable to move even a muscle. At some point while she was waiting, she might've even forgotten to breathe, but she didn't care about that. All she wanted to do was run. And then the monster came into view, the shadow melting away from it. It had dark, messy red hair, a white body and forehooves, green hind hooves, and a rather round, beige face. It didn't seem to have a muzzle. As it came closer, Twilight discovered that the monster was barely taller than she was. But that didn't stop Twilight from being terrified- the monster was staring her directly at her face. It had murky green eyes... the eyes belonging to the likes of a swamp monster. Twilight finally managed to look away, but she still wasn't able to move. Being at the front of the pack when she stepped in front of Applejack earlier, Twilight found the monster going for her first. The monster was now right in front of her face, studying Twilight's face intently... possibly trying to figure out if she's edible or not. Twilight managed to let out a high-pitched 'eep!' rivaling Fluttershy's as the monster got even closer to her, tilting her head as she looked at Twilight's terrified face. This is it. It's over. It's done. The monster then opened her mouth, and quickly shut it again, releasing a sound which sounded vaguely like the Equestrian language. Twilight managed to open one of her eyes. "I said hello."