Accelerando
Chapter 4: Promontory, Utah
Vinyl looked out the window of Twilight Sparkle’s house. Seeing Pinkie Pie walking by, she caught her attention with a wave. She let the pink pony in, then turned to face the others. “Well, everypony appears to have gotten back to their regular business,” she commented. “I guess we’re not going to get a follow-up attack from our mystery villain.”
“I think she’s done quite enough already!” Twilight exclaimed with a hoof-wave at her now-useless books, her voice quite a bit louder than she intended.
Vinyl cringed. “Well, if I’m in, um, charge, then I think we should take the fight to her...or him...or it. Where do villains in comic books usually hang out?”
“You know who would totally be able to answer that question?” asked Pinkie. “Spi—”
“Oh, comic book villains are always in their evil lairs,” said a familiar voice. “My favorites are the repossessed castles hidden in the calderas of about-to-explode volcanos.”
“Spike!” Twilight exclaimed in sudden joy. She turned towards the voice, forehooves open for a hug.
A nervous Spike held back. “Uh, hello...Twilight Sparkle,” he said. Carefully, he edged his way around her, until he got a good look at her cutie mark. Then he sighed dramatically, wiping some imaginary sweat from his brow. “Ah...glad to meet you!” he exclaimed, holding out a claw.
Twilight shook hooves with him, a very confused look on her face.
Vinyl meanwhile was grinning like an idiot.
Spike started walking around the room, arching his head up to take in the high ceiling. “It’s the same tree,” he said in a tone of wonder. Racing up to the window, he took in the sight. “And the sun’s out!”
“Yup!” Vinyl said with that same grin. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
Twilight walked over to Pinkie. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?” she asked.
“Now where’s the fun in that?” Pinkie replied. Then she turned her attention to trying to open a box of Cracker Jacks she just happened to have on her.
It’s not a very easy thing to do without thumbs.
Oh by the way, I had completely given up on trying to follow the conversation by this point. They go on with this craziness for another couple of minutes, so skip ahead if you want to get to something that makes any sense.
“So who was it?” asked Spike.
Who was what? See, craziness!
“Twilight,” answered Vinyl.
“It’s like we’ve wandered into the last act of a mystery,” Twilight whispered to Pinkie, “and I have no idea who...wait, did she just say ‘Twilight’?”
“Twilight Sparkle?” Spike asked incredulously. “But...how could...how’d you wake her up?”
“Wake...me...” Twilight’s eyes boggled. “But that would mean...but that’s...you’re the Spike from two dreams ago? You were just a character I made up, based on the Spike I knew, to be Vinyl’s sidekick. How did you develop free will? How did you figure out the dream business before anypony else? And how can you possibly be here, in this dream?”
Vinyl closed one eye as she tried to remember the answer to Spike’s question. “I...think I drop-kicked her down a well or something.”
“Awesome!” exclaimed Spike, also ignoring Twilight. He then gestured to Vinyl to bend her head down close to his. “So,” he asked quietly, “is she still, well...” He then made the gesture for “she’s crazy” next to his head.
“Hey!” exclaimed Twilight. “You can’t use that on me! I taught you that gesture!”
“You taught me?” asked Spike. “Nu-uh! It was...” His claw, which was pointing at Vinyl, suddenly dropped. “Wait, that part was true?” He turned to face Twilight. “I’m really supposed to be your dragon?” A light of realization dawned in his eyes. “No, Real Spike is your dragon. I’m...your creation!”
Twilight stepped back in shock, only to be stopped by Pinkie’s hoof around her shoulder.
“Wow!” Pinkie exclaimed. “Pinkamena totally didn’t think you had it in you! You see, Dashie and Pinkamena had a bet. Dashie thought you had an imaginary friend as a foal, while Pinkamena—well, I know you’re all smart and magical and stuff—but she not only said you didn’t have one, but that you’d never have one, because you didn’t have the right personality or imagination to make one! But you sure proved us wrong!”
“Um, what about Smarty Pants?” asked Fluttershy.
“Um,” Pinkie said nervously, “I thought we promised Princess Celestia never to mention Smarty Pants again. You know, to keep Twilight sane and all?”
Twilight sputtered, looking back and forth between Pinkie Pie and Spike. “I...you...but...where was he between then and now?”
Spike got an empty look in his eyes for a second. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said in a small voice. He quickly got excited again, though, as he thought about why he was currently here. “Now that I’m here, though, I can be your comic book expert! Nopony other than Rainbow Dash knows more about comic books than I do!” He looked up at the other ponies for a few seconds. “Where is she, by the way?”
Without a word, a sardonic Vinyl Scratch pointed up at the ceiling.
The dragon’s eyes slowly followed the hoof up, then dwelled on the wood grain for a few seconds. “Oh!” he finally exclaimed. “This is going to be fun!”
“No it’s not,” whimpered Fluttershy. “What if Umber takes you over?”
“‘Umber’?” asked Twilight.
“I’ll tell you later,” said Vinyl.
“Is Umber the Dragon Emperor?” asked Spike. “Oh no!” he suddenly exclaimed. “He can take over dragons!”
“No, Umber is not the Dragon Emperor,” corrected the DJ mare. “Although, he can take over dragons.”
“Do you know what this means?” asked Spike, as he began to race around in circles.
“Calm down, Spike!” exclaimed Twilight. She used her magic to lift him up in the air.
“But you don’t get it!” Spike pleaded with her. “I’m a plot device! He’s going to take me over at the worst possible moment! I don’t want to lose my free will!!” By this point, he had grabbed Twilight by her imaginary lapels and started shaking her.
“It’s okay, Spike,” Pinkie Pie said, sticking her head between Spike’s and Twilight’s. “All you have to do is roast your own eyeb—”
Twilight quickly put a hoof up to Pinkie’s mouth. “We are not putting my Spike through that, if we can at all help it.” She shuddered on remembering how Waking Terror freed herself from draconic possession in Pinkie’s dream.
“Maybe you can do something to protect me, Pinkie!” exclaimed Spike.
“Hmm...” Pinkie pondered. “Yeah, I think there is something I can do, or rather...you can do!”
“Me?” asked Spike.
“Yeah, we’ll cast the Dragon Mind Shield spell!”
Before she had even finished speaking the sentence, and without breaking eye contact with Spike, one of Pinkie’s hooves shot out to keep a startled Twilight from opening her mouth.
“That’s a great idea!” Spike exclaimed. “Do you think it’s in Bigby’s Book of Non-Unicorn Magic?”
Pinkie glanced back at the petrified bookcase. “Yeah, but I remember the important parts.”
“Don’t worry about it!” exclaimed Spike. “That book’s upstairs. Let me go get it for you.” He walked swiftly over to the bottom of the long dark staircase, and the gulped. “Ah...would somepony mind going up there with me? I, um...well...I don’t want to go up there alone.”
“That’s alright,” said Vinyl, “I’ll go up with you.”
~ ~ ~
“There’s no such thing as a Dragon Mind Shield spell,” Twilight said quietly as soon as the dragon was out of earshot. She then turned to the pony beside her, and started slightly to see that it was Pinkamena.
“No such thing as a Real Dragon Mind Shield spell,” Pinkamena said with an eye roll. “The imaginary kind works on completely different principles. As long as you don’t give him reason to doubt it, Pinkie’s ‘spell’ should do well enough.”
The two of them stared up at the stairwell, waiting for Spike and Vinyl to come back down.
A full minute passed.
“They’re sure taking a while,” Twilight said.
“Yup,” said Pinkamena.
Another minute passed.
“Wait a minute,” Twilight said, “in my dream you were Pinkamena, not Pinkie. If this Spike only remembers the life I created for him in my dream, how did he know who Pinkie was?”
Pinkamena rolled her eyes again. “‘Everypony knows Pinkie,’” she said, making air quotes with her hooves.
“But that doesn’t explain anything!”
“Don’t blame me,” said Pinkamena. “It’s somebody’s idea of a running joke.” And she gestured at a different part of the ceiling.
[Heh.]
“You know, I’m beginning to suspect that Pinkie’s primary reason for letting you out is for eye rolling,” Twilight joked.
“Well I have had a lot of practice,” Pinkamena replied with a smirk.
~ ~ ~
Finally, Vinyl Scratch and Spike descended the staircase. “...And everything else you think you remember about me, just substitute Twilight instead,” the DJ said.
“OK,” said Spike. “Wait, do you mean the time with the ‘hen demon’ and the cold omelet balanced above Princess Celestia’s bedroom door was—”
“Oh, we don’t have time for those sorts of memories now!” Twilight quickly interrupted. “Do we...Pinkie?”
She had only looked away for a second, but in place of Pinkamena was now Pinkie Pie, struggling to put on a grass skirt. “Twilight Sparkle!” she said in a disapproving tone. “You turned your head too fast! I’m not a magic worker, you know!” She had managed to get one hoof stuck under the waistband, and her ear stuck between a couple of fronds. “Now let’s try that again.”
With a collective sigh, the other ponies and dragon obediently looked away for two seconds and looked back, to see Pinkie in a complete witch doctor costume: grass skirt in place, her face covered by a fierce wooden mask of Zecora’s (big enough to reach from high above her head all the way down to the ground), and an adorable little pink plastic spear hooked under one upraised hoof. “I’d like to see Standards and Practices say something bad about this!” she bragged.
“Why are you dressed like that?” asked Spike.
“To cast the spell, of course! Give me the book.”
The dragon handed it over.
Pinkie tried to grab the book, her little tongue poking out of the mask’s mouth in frustration, but it was no use—the thing was just too wide for her to reach her hooves around. With an exasperated whinny, she quickly swung her head first up and then down, to embed the pointed chin of the mask in the floor, then walked out to claim Bigby’s tome. Flopping down to her stomach, she started flipping through the pages, her legs kicking idly behind her.
Squiggles and blurs were all she could see on the paper, proof—if she needed it—that she was in a dream. After stopping at a random spot, she sprung back up.
As she popped the mask back out of the floor and put it on, the lights in the room dimmed themselves.
“Oo, ee, oo-ah-ah!” she intoned, hopping on alternate hooves in a circle around Spike.
Vinyl Scratch resisted the urge to sigh. The witch doctor getup really should have made it obvious.
Spike on the other hand had his eyes wide, and his claws held up to his mouth in excitement.
Pinkie remained frozen on one hoof, thinking.
“Ting. Tang. Walla-walla. Bing-bang,” Vinyl prompted dully.
“Oh yeah! Ting, tang walla-walla bing-bang!” And, reaching the end of her spell, she slapped a tinfoil hat on Spike’s head—never mind the fact that she shouldn’t have been able to reach him around the mask—before singing the words “Dragon...mind...shield...spell!” with her front legs flung to either side.
“That’s perfect!” exclaimed Spike, before running forward to hug the befronded pony. “Thanks, Pinkie!”
“Aw, he’s cute,” Pinkie joked. “Can we keep him?”