The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville

by McPoodle

Chapter 13: Burn, Baby, Burn

Vinyl would have preferred a quiet and mournful walk to wherever they were going to go to regroup. It was only fair.

But Nightmare Moon wasn’t fair. She wasn’t fair at all.

It had been a fighting retreat. Rainbow Dash’s remaining guard was picked off, followed by Graphite. Big Mac became separated from the others—it was impossible to say if he had survived or not. Fluttershy had attempted to rouse the animals of the forest to help her, in so doing earning a new cutie mark of three rearing snakes. Unfortunately, as Applejack had predicted, her new power was not enough to really protect them.

Vinyl needed some time to think, some time to examine Spike’s messages and hope against hope that he had figured out something that could help them. For that she needed to bring the group somewhere safe.

She headed to the only safe place in the forest that she knew.

Twilight Sparkle, Traitor, waited outside the door of her tree house. “Welcome back,” she said in a bored voice. “I saw you coming. Oh, and that pink one owes me five bits for peeking into the pit.”

Vinyl raised her head when she heard Twilight’s second sentence, and she poured as much of her magic as her weakened frame could bear into a detailed examination of Twilight Sparkle. She saw that the unicorn was surrounded by an extremely powerful illusion. Unlike a normal illusion, this one was designed to fool its wearer even more than any ponies who looked upon it. Under the illusion, Twilight Sparkle wasn’t bruised, her cutie mark wasn’t branded, her horn wasn’t broken, and she wasn’t blind. But in her own mind she was all of these things.

This was very powerful magic. Celestia-level. Or, perhaps, Dragon Emperor-level. But solving that mystery would have to wait.

As soon as they were all inside, Twilight moved the desk over to barricade the door—it was the only furniture to be found in the entire house. Vinyl used her magic to reinforce it and the walls and ceiling.

She knew it wouldn’t last long.

She settled herself down next to the door and started poring over the scrolls and scraps of paper that Spike had used to distract Nightmare Moon. Soon she became so completely absorbed that she stopped paying attention to anything else.

The walls of the tree house started shaking from all of Nightmare Moon’s ground ponies bucking it and pegasi dive bombing it and unicorns generally using their telekinesis to throw things at it.

Then Nightmare Moon arrived. She was still not over the whole “thinking she was going to choke to death every five minutes” thing.

“That dragon was yours, wasn’t it?” she demanded.

Vinyl Scratch was too engrossed (in a lightly satirical version of Goodnight Moon that Spike had written as one of his messages) to reply.

“BURN THE TREE TO THE GROUND!” Nightmare Moon screamed.

“She sure likes screaming,” observed Applejack, desperately trying to hold back the panic in her voice.

“Can’t be good f..for her throat,” said Rainbow Dash, trying to match her tone.

“What about the forest?!” Fluttershy pleaded through the walls.

“How touching!” replied Nightmare Moon. “It will burn too, of course. Look on the bright side! You ponies are so desperate for light. Now you’re going to get it!”

This was followed by the obligatory evil laugh.

Pinkamena huddled against the wall not far from Vinyl Scratch, shivering despite the increasing heat, and rocking back and forth. “Not the fire! Not the fire!” she said to herself over and over again.

Twilight had given up her neckerchief for use as a bandage to finally stop the bleeding from the wound on Pinkamena’s forehead. This meant that now everypony was pretending that they couldn’t see Twilight, which didn’t make her happy. “You just ran?” she asked. “You could have at least split up! Here, let me draw up a diagram of at least seven different ways to pull victory out of a running retreat.”

Finally Vinyl’s protection over the tree house gave out and the thatched roof started burning.

Pinkamena’s eyes opened wide as she stared at the fire. Then her gaze wandered down to the black hole in the center of the room.

“It’s the only way,” she told herself, before making a break for the barriers at the center of the room.

Seeing this, Rainbow Dash and Applejack converged on her from both sides, wrestling her to the ground.

“No!” she screamed, madness evident in her eyes. “It’s the only way! Only Pinkie Pie can save us now!”

“You’re...wrong, Sugarcube!” Applejack grunted as the three ponies struggled at the edge of the pit. “Vinyl’s gonna...think of somethin’!” She allowed her eyes to be pulled into the abyss below her for a moment, before forcing herself to look away. “It’s...what...” she said, trying to comprehend just one of the impossible things she saw in that one second. “How can it be a cat...and a breakfast pastry...at the same time?”

The sound of a small musical ensemble started playing from Vinyl Scratch’s horn, causing everypony to look at her (and away from the other side of the tree house, which was now catching fire). Soggy and completely illegible pages torn from The Pop-Up Book of the Pony Mind and Bigby’s Book of Non-Unicorn Mental Magic were at her hooves. Before her was a bound set of sheet music that Spike had sent, addressed “From one plot device to another,” a set that had been nearly destroyed by Nightmare Moon’s fury. After the musical introduction of the piece, she began to sing in a warbling alto:

She put down the sheet music, unable to continue. “Oh, Spike!” she said softly. “Clever, clever Spike!”

She used a hoof to wipe the tears from her eyes, and then composed herself as she looked around her at the burning building.

It was time for her to unleash the most powerful weapon in her arsenal. Pinkamena had an atrocious outfit, but Vinyl had something far more devastating: the voice of The Critic. She opened her mouth and allowed her to speak.

“It appears that this story has reached its conclusion,” Vinyl said, in an odd voice that was at the same time hers and not hers. “It’s now time to evaluate this dream and see how we did.”

“This what?” Pinkamena demanded. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were still holding her down. “Get off of me!” she demanded. “I’m alright now.”

After exchanging a glance, the other two reluctantly agreed, helping Pinkamena up, but then herding her back towards the wall.

“What are you talking about, Vinyl?” asked Pinkamena.

“This whole scenario,” answered Vinyl Scratch. “It’s all a dream, of course.” The whole time, she was keeping her eyes on Twilight Sparkle. “A proof of the concept that making the Elements of Harmony more powerful would in fact diminish their effectiveness, to the point where defeating Nightmare Moon becomes completely impossible.”

Twilight looked around. “Is she talking to me? She’s talking to me, isn’t she?”

“After the concept,” continued Vinyl in her cold merciless voice, “we have the characters. Nightmare Moon was good—I liked how you managed to recycle some of her lines. Rainbow I could buy. Fluttershy, although a minor part, worked well enough under the circumstances. Rarity was a complete triumph—she alone would make this a dream worth remembering when the dreamer awakens.

“Pinkamena is...a very good character. I have no idea if she represents some deeper aspect of Pinkie Pie I know nothing about, or is just some theory cooked up by the dreamer. In any case, well done.

“Vinyl Scratch, to speak of my character in the third person, was a little too...‘all things to all ponies’, if you get my drift. Instantly accepted everywhere she went. Is that what life’s like for you, Twilight?”

Well, I mean that’s a bit unfair, don’t you...I mean to say, Twilight shook her head in utter confusion.

“Spike...Spike was a real surprise, I think even more for you than anypony else. An honest-to-goodness character arc there, ending in a heart-breaking scene of self-sacrifice that still remained true to character. Good job there, Twilight, good job!”

What...what are you talking about?

“Ah,” continued Vinyl, completely ignoring her victim’s outburst, “but Spike is where you started to go astray. To keep him from derailing the plot, you brought in the Dragon Emperor. Big mistake, there. The dramatic contrast of a peaceful village attacked without provocation by the Queen of the Night loses its effect if the town is geared up for war. You brought in the Emperor, but you forgot about the war! To pick just one of several questions this raises: how is it that everypony accepted a dragon as my assistant without hesitation? Not one pony questioning his loyalties? Have you so completely forgotten how badly the real Spike was treated during the war?”

Now that’s just unfair!

“This now brings us to the most flawed performance by far in this dream,” said Vinyl, “the secondary antagonist after the end of the first act, Twilight Sparkle.” Vinyl began carefully herding me towards the center of the room as she continued her relentless verbal drilling. “This performance was a mess. First and most importantly: blindness as a character motivation. Do you honestly believe that it is that horrible? That the only two possible outcomes are me and ‘the Traitor, Twilight Sparkle?’ Because I’m going to be really disappointed in you if that is the case. There’s only one way that I can let you off the hook, and that’s if this part was improvised at the last minute. After all, the Dragon Emperor expected you to bring Spike, so when his dream trap chain spell gave your sleeping mind the parameters of the dream, there was no role for me to fill. At the last possible moment, I must have been shoved into your role, and you were forced to pull this role out of thin air.”

Vinyl looked hopefully around her. Outside of the six Elements and herself, the rest of the world was fading out of existence, leaving a featureless gray plain in its place.

A dream trap chain?

“Oh yes,” confirmed Vinyl. “Surely you remember. The Emperor’s chief magician tried to use a regular dream trap spell against both you and Princess Celestia a week before this all started, and you only just barely managed to escape, trapping the magician inside his own mind.

“After that defeat, the Emperor must have somehow succeeded in perfecting the chain version of the spell, and tricked us into stepping right into his trap. And that’s where we are, right now, until you wake up.”

“Me?” I asked, my rear legs up against the barrier.

“Yes, you. With your love of scenarios and war games, this is right up your alley! Do you need any more proof that this is a dream and not reality? Where’s the rest of your furniture, Twilight? Are you honestly telling me that you sleep on the ground? Not even as a hardened traitor would a pampered Canterlot unicorn like yourself put herself through that. Where’s your larder? Do you go out into the woods every time you need to eat? There were a couple of bits on your rotten fruit basket. If Fluttershy never lets anypony in, then where did they come from?”

“Oh, I can answer that one!” I replied with relief. “I put them there. I’ve got a book that says that a little money in the pot ‘primes the pump’ and makes strangers more likely to donate.”

“How did you read the book, Twilight?”

...horsefeathers.

“This blindness is a sham! You can see us all, admit it! You even said you could see us coming when we were retreating towards your house. The spell to make you seem blind has your signature on it!”

OK, that was a bluff, Vinyl commented from the sidelines of her own mind. I don’t know how to identify a spell’s signature, and neither did the Vinyl of this world.

Ah, but Twilight doesn’t know that, does she? The Critic replied slyly.

But you only speak the truth! Vinyl mentally exclaimed.

...and that was always her biggest lie, Pon-3 commented sadly.

My signature...could it be? No, no, I have to take command of this situation! I cannot allow the scenario to be aborted before Nightmare Moon achieves her final victory and I have a chance to tally the death toll! Focus...focus...

“It’s a trick!” Twilight proclaimed. “I don’t know how you’re doing this, but this is all a trick of some kind!”

Instantly the dream world snapped back into focus.

Vinyl sighed deeply as she resumed personal control of herself once more.

“Then I’m afraid you leave me no choice,” Vinyl said sadly. And with that she reared up and shoved Twilight over the railing and into the hole.

What have you done?!

The other ponies rushed forward to save me as they had saved every other pony to have nearly toppled, but found themselves just this once to be too late.

Vinyl winced as she saw me bounce off of a magical Liopleurodon and slam my hip hard against the side of the hole on the way down. The magical Liopleurodon responded to the impact by describing all the wonders of the number 9.

“Let me get this straight,” Pinkamena addressed Vinyl calmly. “This is a dream, and you just tossed the dreamer who controls the nature of this reality into the U-shaped tube of infinite madness. Have you lost your mind?!”

Vinyl continued to peer down the hole. “Wait for it...” she said.

I am falling, right? Falling...forever?