//------------------------------// // Close Encounters of the Chaotic Kind // Story: Whipstitch // by Pennington Inkwell //------------------------------// "Whipstitch?" "Yeah?" "Did anyone ever tell you that unicorns can't fly?" "Yes..." "Then why do you have to prove them wrong?" Lily shouted, throwing her hooves in the air in frustration. She had managed to climb her way up to her friend and lay herself across Whipstitch's back, gaining as secure a grip as she could as they finally leveled out about 15 yards above the tops of most of the buildings in Canterlot. "Look, it's not my fault." Whipstitch was much more calm about the situation than Lily. "It's this stupid lollipop! Eclipse never mentioned that it would make me defy gravity!" "Well, when I meet this 'Eclipse' pony, I'll give him a piece of my mind!" Lily growled, swinging at the air. Whipstitch chuckled as she envisioned the strong-willed unicorn staring down the draconequus in his hospital bed, chiding him like a child. "Well, it will have to wait until after we get down there." Whipstitch whipped her tail around and downwards, pointing at the ground. In a sudden surge, she moved forward, shaking them both and forcing Lily into a death grip around Whipstitch's neck. "What was that?" Lily sounded as if she were on the verge of screaming, barely keeping herself in check. "I don't want to fall off!" "You... don't like... heights... do you?" Whipstitch grunted, trying to loosen Lily's grip. "I- I think... We may have just figured out our ticket out of here! Hold on!" With an adventurous grin, she swung her tail around again, the long hair flying through the breeze. Again, they moved forward. Whipstitch repeated the action, and the reaction followed just as quickly. Lily finally seemed to be catching on. "A... propeller? Really? You're going to use your tail as a propeller?" Whipstitch's grin widened. "Better than just sitting up here and waiting for it to wear off, am I right?" He began to steadily spin her tail, pushing them forwards. "So much for our milkshakes." "Whipstitch, that is the least of my worries..." Lily whispered, still keeping a tight grip on her neck as the wind began to blow, guiding them towards the castle. Time seemed to pass slowly after they both fell silent, being guided on the wind like a balloon, with Whipstitch pushing them forward towards some kind of destination. After about fifteen minutes of tail-propelled flight, it seemed as if the two unicorns had reached "some kind of destination." They were floating above the castle, hovering in place. Somehow, the path that the wind had carried them on had avoided being seen by any kind of guard, and left them hovering some distance above a glass skylight, though the glare from the sun made it impossible to see through. No amount of tail-spinning seemed to be able to free them from the spot, and they had been sitting for a few more minutes after that in total silence. "Well, this is a fine predicament..." Lily groaned, looking down the long drop to the roof. "This is the sort of moment where Pennington would joke about just jumping down, then really do it..." "You're really fixated on Pennington, aren't you?" Whipstitch looked back at her friend with a curious and somewhat suspicious stare. "Anything there I should know about?" "Well, the situation kind of reminds me of something out of one of his books..." She muttered, adjusting herself on Whipstitch's back in an action that looked more like nervous fidgeting. "Besides, he's like a brother to me... Why wouldn't I think about him?" "Just strikes me that when you're in a situation where you're scared to death of falling, you would think of him..." Whipstitch grinned as Lily grew more anxious. Before she could press the subject, however, the skylight below them began to crack open, and she watched with anticipation as a face emerged. "Whipstitch?" A pair of mismatched horns and blue eyes peeked out from under the glass, and Whipstitch breathed a sigh of relief. "Go ahead and float on down! I'm alone in here!" "Eclipse Tumult, how the HECK do I get down?" Whipstitch wiggled her legs helplessly. In response, a lion paw reached out and beckoned her to enter with one finger. In response, her body finally began to slowly descend towards the skylight. "Whipstitch..." Lily whispered. "That's not a pony..." Whipstitch chuckled nervously, trying to ignore her old friend's worries. "He's not going to exactly be thrilled to meet you, either, I suspect..." As they fell through the window in the roof, Whipstitch found herself back in the castle's infirmary, though Eclipse seemed to be better, up and walking around now. Everything that had been around his cot, including the IV bag and other medical devices, was gone now. "Well, I guess that took a bit of a shorter time than I expected... Just one day to finish the lollipop!" As Eclipse turned to face them, he froze. His eyes grew wide and his body paled, and he almost looked like the statue that he was so afraid of becoming. "Po-po-pony... Extra pony..." Lily, on the other hoof, seemed to be having the same reaction. She stepped back from Eclipse, a look of panic contorting her face. "Whipstitch... That's a draconequus..." "Yes, and he happens to be a very nice one..." Whipstitch rolled her eyes, more worried about Eclipse than Lily. "Eclipse, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring her here! She was trying to help me get back down again and wound up getting caught up in the-" She paused as she realized that Eclipse wasn't listening. "Whipstitch, what are you doing with a draconequus?" Lily asked, starting to panic. "Do you have any idea what he's capable of? He could turn Equestria inside out!" She started to hyperventilate as she lost control. "I-I've gotta go tell somepony!" Just as she was about to leave, though, Whipstitch sprung into action, moving quickly with her tail. She snagged Lily's back leg and pulled her back again. She whipped her mane around, looping the hair between two of the cots and tossing Lily inside. After a few more movements with her tail, Lily was trapped in a hammock of hair, which Whipstitch began to calmly rock back and forth in a soothing manner. "Callalily Curl, you are scaring him!" Whipstitch stomped her hoof, trying to call her friend back to her senses. "I happen to be trying to convince him that ponies aren't going to hate him if he came out of hiding!" Lily glared out at Whipstitch from the nest of hair, but remained silent. "So, I will need you to keep him secret." She continued, staring down the unicorn. "Before you say anything, the Princesses are letting him stay here, so they not only know, but they approve!" Seeing Lily still looking unsure, she rolled her eyes. "And... I'll give you some of those special leaves from my willow so that you can make that special shampoo..." Lily finally seemed to relax inside of the hammock, and Whipstitch turned her attention to Eclipse, turning on a dime to look at him. The draconequus was still frozen in stone, and was quickly gathering dust. "I'm sorry, Eclipse. Lily is a worrier, and she tends to panic when she's stressed..." Whipstitch walked up to him slowly, making sure that nothing changed out of his fear. She did notice a group of cotton candy clouds starting to form around his head. "But you can trust her. She keeps a secret better than most ponies. After all, who keeps a secret better than your hairdresser? You can tell them anything!" She thought for a moment, then pulled down one of the clouds with her magic and began to quietly munch on it. Raspberry flavored... It certainly washed away the taste that the lollipop had changed to, something that she could only identify as "doorknob." She finally reached the statue, and she could finally get a closer look at him in his entirety. In the end, his resemblance to Discord was almost uncanny. The only major differences that she could spot were the fact that his eyes were a different color, his overall build looked more as if he had hadn't eaten in years, and where Discord had a goat's leg, Eclipse had a rabbit's. Judging from the look of him, that rabbit's foot isn't for luck... Eclipse finally seemed to thaw out of his petrified revere, his normal colors returning. He gave Whipstitch a suspicious look, then shook his head. "This never would have happened if I had just stayed in the Everfree forest... But Luna asked me to try and trust ponies a little more. So, Callalily Curl... I'll give you a chance." With a snap of his fingers, Whipstitch's hair went slack and fell to the ground, and Lily had disappeared. Whipstitch considered asking where he had sent her, but she quickly wrote it off as irrelevant. "So... I guess that you're here because you finished the lollipop?" Eclipse asked, looking down towards her. "Well, I kind of just floated here, and the lollipop isn't finished..." Whipstitch muttered, trying to pull it out of her mouth once again. "Well, let's just take a look then, shall we?" Eclipse reached down and took a hold of the stick. The moment that he did, Whipstitch felt the candy part melt away. When he pulled it out of her mouth, the stick itself had changed to an old-fashioned thermometer, which Eclipse took a careful glance at before tossing it into his mouth and seemingly swallowing it whole. "Yep, you're just about ready!" "Ready for what, exactly?" Whipstitch asked, watching him with a mix of fascination and hilarity. "Well, the last bit of the change requires a catalyst. A spark. Now this my be the slightly unpleasant part." He shrugged. "Of course, I've never tried to teach a pony like this, but it's only a minute tweak to your magic, so-" "Wait. What do you mean by 'slightly unpleasant?'" Whipstitch narrowed her eyes. "You didn't exactly list 'defying gravity' under the symptoms, either, so I'd like the truth this time..." Eclipse rolled his eyes, and Whipstitch rolled hers in return. Eclipse noticed and rolled his eyes again. Whipstitch, noticing the small game that he was beginning to play, rolled hers again. Eclipse chuckled and continued rolling his eyes, sending them into a semi-hypnotic spin. Whipstitch tried her best to follow suit, but she couldn't keep her eyes rolling for more than a single revolution before having to stop and start again. When she finally stopped trying, she looked back up at him. His eyes were a blue blur by now, and were quietly humming in their sockets. As Eclipse finally began to sway back and forth and put a paw to his head, the scene was simply too ridiculous for Whipstitch to restrain herself. She burst out laughing, her anger washing away. Eclipse finally seemed to grow tired of becoming dizzy and reached up with both hands. Whipstitch watched as he cartoonishly popped his eyeballs out of their sockets. When he tried to hold them, however, they kept spinning in his hands, generating a large amount of smoke and a palpable amount of heat. "Ouch! Ouch! Hot!" Eclipse tossed the orbs into the air, blowing on his hands to try and cool the red-hot skin. His eyeballs, however, seemed to not want to come down, each sprouting a pair of wings and flying away out the window. Eclipse seemed offended at this, and his dark and empty sockets narrowed in frustration. "Fine! Be that way! I don't need you anyway!" With a haughty grunt, he knocked his fist against the back of his own head, and a new pair of eyeballs rolled into place. Whipstitch was rolling on the floor with laughter, now, and her eyes were watering with glee. "Well, I'm glad that one of us enjoyed that..." Eclipse sounded grumpy, but his grin betrayed him. "But, as I was saying it's going to be like laying a second set of train tracks in your brain... So that you can use the two types of magic." He shrugged. "It's a necessary precaution, since trying to run both types of magic along the same 'tracks' would most likely either kill you or drive you totally insane." Whipstitch finally calmed down as his speech grew more serious again. "You know a lot about the technicalities of chaos." "Well, I was always a little more interested in how we did what we did because I was always trying to figure out how to be as strong as my big brother..." Whipstitch's mind came to a screeching halt. "Wait... What did you just say?" "Well, I said that I was always trying to figure out-" Eclipse was cut off as Whipstitch leaped up and grabbed him with all four legs, clinging to him like a cat to a tree and staring him straight in the eyes. "Did you just say that you're Discord's younger brother?" Her face was one of sheer elation, and it almost scared Eclipse more than the idea of her being angry "Umm... Yes?" Eclipse sputtered, taking a nervous step back. This did nothing to aid his situation, of course, and Whipstitch clung to him even more tightly. "And... does that mean that you could help me meet him?" She asked, leaning in closer than most ponies would have even thought possible. "Well, no..." Eclipse looked anxiously towards the door, as if he were hoping that a guard would walk through to free him. "I actually approve of his being trapped, and I couldn't free him if I tried..." Whipstitch's expression sank and she begrudgingly let go of him, sliding back down to the ground. "Oh... And if he were to get free again... What do you suppose a pony would have to do to get his attention?" Eclipse's eyebrows shot up in suspicion as he finally understood her intent. "You do realize that he's about three thousand years older than you, don't you, Whipstitch?" "And?" Whipstitch seemed to have absolutely no problem with this whatsoever. Eclipse let out a long sigh and groaned, "Look, can we stay on the topic at hoof?" "Fine... But I'm going to want some inside info about him later." Whipstitch muttered. Rolling his eyes one last time, Eclipse snapped his fingers, summoning a tiny arc of magical energy between them. Before she could say anything, he had snatched the tip of her horn, running the current through and into her body. What happened next was an experience that Whipstitch would not forget for the rest of her life. The world around her seemed to shatter like glass, with each piece exploding in a blinding burst of rainbow colors and a cacophony of sounds that she couldn't identify. She could feel herself blinking, but the images in front of her refused to go dark. By the time that she finally realized that the images didn't stem from her eyes, she stopped the effort and let them slide shut. The entire world was different and yet exactly the same. Colors had shifted every which way, and never seemed to stay still for more than an instant, causing the reality around her to billow and shudder. Noises were suddenly new and alien, from ringing tones of sheer beauty to the grating sounds of the most unearthly surfaces being rubbed and smashed against one another. The sounds were all light, though, and provided more of a strange form of ambient music for this new world. Everything in the infirmary was still there with a definite shape, but nothing seemed solid or real. More shocking to her, though, was the sight of neon-lighted lines running through the air. While the entirety of reality seemed to be constantly rippling like fabric being pulled across an uneven surface, these lines seemed to billow and roll in some kind of invisible wind. With a curious hoof, she reached out to one of the nearest threads, gently brushing her hoof against it. The moment that she made physical contact with the line, a sensation shot through her body with all of the force of an electric shock, but with none of the pain. Instead, she felt an exhilarating rush as her body was lifted up and off of the ground, and her head was filled with a dizzying sensation. It was just enough to allow her to think clearly without becoming disoriented. Through the thread, she felt a thousand miles of Equestria open up underneath her mind, and she felt as if she could be everywhere at once if she only wished to be there. Her body felt as light as a feather, as if it could have simply been picked up and washed away by those same winds that governed the threads, a sensation that lingered after she had pulled back her hoof. When she looked down at herself, she was surprised to see that she was, indeed, hovering at least a foot above the floor. As she continued to examine herself, she noticed that her own color of pink had been boosted to a near-blinding luminescence. Her hair, which was now floating freely, was composed of a slightly dimmed copy of those same exhilarating paths of light that had fully immersed her in this new world. For the first time, Whipstitch thought to look back to Eclipse. The new vision of the draconequus nearly took her breath away. Where once she had seen a sorry, skin-and-bones creature of mismatched parts, she now saw a pillar of shining blue flames. The inferno seemed to break beyond the borders of his outline, though, flowing outwards into the world like a fog that burned away almost as quickly as it formed. She could see every single line around them magnetizing towards him and flowing straight into his body. They still moved while within the draconequus, but always kept themselves inside of his outline. Wherever a thread touched him, fire raced along its length for a short time, quickly fading back to the shimmering whiteness of its originality. The longer that she stared, the more that she could see into the heart of the fire, where a solitary white flame burned, licking gently and then violently beating itself against the blue, barely contained by the mass of weaker flames. The longer she looked at this being filled to overflowing with the sheer essence of the omnipresent chaos, the more the impression that she had that she was looking upon a creature who was a god in his own right. She moved to touch him the way that she had the thread, but the silhouette finally moved of its own accord, raising what seemed to be his lion's paw in a motion for her to stop. You're immersed in the essence of chaos right now. If we were to touch one who rules it naturally while in this state, you would lose yourself. Eclipse's voice was fuzzy and echoed, barely audible over the ambient noise. Your essence would enter mine, possibly never to return. He sounded as if he were shouting to her while underwater, and she nodded as she recognized the warning. Are you ready to come back? Eclipse's voice was growing clearer now, as if he were drawing closer. All of the pathways have been made clear in your body and mind. By the time that he had finished speaking, his voice was as clear as if they were truly only the distance apart that they seemed to be. "I- I don't know if I ever want to leave..." Whipstitch whispered. "This place is beautiful... Beyond anything that I could have dreamed..." We all have to wake up sometimes, Whipstitch. You need to be careful. Right now, the forces of the universe are being channeled through your body, most significantly your brain. This is something that you'll have to work up to in small doses, or you could hurt yourself. Eclipse's tone held an undercurrent of worry, and Whipstitch could feel that he was right. She took one last longing look around the new world, wishing that she could stay longer. When she finally turned back to Eclipse, he was no longer the tower of flames, but the simple creature that she had met in a hospital bed. He smiled and extended a claw to her, indicating that he was now safe to touch. "Is this... how you always see things?" She asked, hesitating to take the hand for a moment to ask the question. "No, but I can see them this way when I wish." Eclipse's voice no longer held the ethereal tone that had accompanied it before. "These are the winds of chaos... You may know them as the winds of change." He gently fingered at a few of the threads, toying with them as a lazy kitten would with yarn. "These are what carried you and Lily here to me when you were ready." "And they all pass through you?" She asked, stunned at the new revelation. "Oh, heavens no! It would take one of our kind far stronger than Discord or myself to pull them all into one place. It may even be impossible... They stretch across the universe." He turned back to her with a serious expression. "But you have to let this go for now. I'll teach you to tap into it of your own will, but you're going to burn yourself out." He offered the eagle's claw again. "I'll be your teacher in chaos, if you'll be willing to trust me as I trust you..." Whipstitch pondered for a moment, taking a final glance at the world around them. This is the point of no return, I guess... "Eclipse Tumult... It would be my privilege to accept." She extended her hoof forward and took a firm grasp of the claw.