Twilight stumbled to her knees as a huge explosion rocked the complex. Dust and debris fell from the cracked ceiling, narrowly missing her. The lights flickered a few times before going out completely, leaving them in total darkness.
“Anyone got a light?” Sulley asked. With a thought, the unicorn set her horn aglow, revealing several dusty ponies and the bigger monster. “Huh, that’s a nice trick,” he commented.
“Eh, any uni-er, monster like me could do that,” Twilight said, quickly correcting herself.
Luckily for her, Sully wasn’t really paying attention. He began calling out, “Mike! Celia!”
“Um, I think they made it out earlier,” Fluttershy spoke up, trying to comfort a scared Boo.
“Good,” the big spotted monster replied as he began walking down the corridor. "Come on, follow me."
Twilight ran up to walk beside him. “You do know where we’re going, right?”
Sulley nodded. “Yeah, there should be an emergency exit just ahead...” he trailed off as they came to a stop in front of a pile of rubble blocking their way. “This’ll take forever to clear!”
“Hah, are you kidding?” Rainbow Dash laughed, running back into the dark hall. “I’ll have this cleared out in ten seconds flat!”
“Uh oh,” Applejack said, her eyes wide as she realized what the crazy pegasus was about to do. “Hit the deck, ya’ll!”
“Huh? Why?” Sulley asked as Twilight pulled him down and enveloped their little group in a magical shield. And just in time, too, as a rainbow meteor streaked down the hallway, smashing through the obstruction. Pebbles and debris pinged off of the shield as the ground shook once more.
Slowly, the dust cleared to reveal daylight peeking in from outside. Rainbow stood in the cleared doorway. “So, how was that, guys?!”
“Never, ever do that again!” Twilight growled as she and the others stepped outside. “You could have brought the whole building down on top of us!”
The pegasus waved off her friend’s concerns. “But I didn’t! Besides, it worked.”
“Ah think the point Twilight’s tryin’ to make is that you need to be more careful.” Applejack dusted her hat off before sticking it back on her head. She looked around as her eyes adjusted to the daylight, her eyes seeming to focus on a group of figures a slight ways away. “Hey, who’re those guys?”
The keyblade wielder looked to where her friend was pointing. Monsters of all shapes and sizes clad in full body yellow plastic suits were sorting through the other monsters they’d rescued from Waternoose and Randall, interviewing them and hosing them down. “Oh no, the CDA!” Sulley exclaimed as he caught sight of them.
“Who’re they?” Twilight asked, watching them warily.
“They’re the Child Detection Agency,” Sulley quickly explained. “They probably think the explosion had something to do with a faulty Door or something. If they find out about Boo, who knows what they’ll do to us!” He quickly took the disguised little girl from Fluttershy. “Come on, if we’re lucky they won’t see us.” The big guy began to walk off, but a shout stopped him in his tracks.
“Hey, you there, hold it!”
Sulley’s shoulders slumped as he turned around. “Uh, hi officer, we were just, uh, going home for the day,” he weakly began before the yellow suited monster cut him off.
“I know you, you’re James P. Sullivan. Several of the others claimed you and a strange group of small quadrupedal monsters were involved in whatever happened today.” Ten more of the yellow suited monsters ran over, brandishing nets and little rods that buzzed with electricity. “Agent 001 wants to talk to you. Come along quietly and no one gets hurt.”
Boo caught sight of the strange yellow clad creatures and cried out in fear. Suddenly, screams of pain filled the air as several of the CDA’s weapons overloaded in their hands. “They have a human child!” The supposed leader exclaimed, “Get them!”
Twilight’s face darkened with anger. She settled into a fighting stance before shouting, “We’re not going anywhere!” Her keyblade flashed beside her, floating in the air, as the others got ready to fight.
But before they could so much as land a single blow, gasps ran through the gathered crowd of CDA agents. One with a small device shouted into it, “Code 000, CODE TRIPLE ZERO!” After listening to the radio for a moment he cleared his throat. “Ju-just stay right there! Number One will be here shortly!”
“What’s goin’ on?” Applejack whispered to Twilight as their foes backed away into a defensive perimeter.
“They look almost... afraid,” the keyblade wielder thought. The mare shook her head. “I don’t know, but they at least they aren’t attacking anymore.”
A few tense moments later, the yellow line parted to reveal an elderly looking slug monster clad in a yellow jacket. “Roz?!” Sulley exclaimed astonished. She ignored him, focusing solely on Twilight.
“Stupid girl, put that keyblade away before you get us all killed!”
“What the hay are you talking about?!” Rainbow Dash shouted, pointing at the old slug-like monster with a hoof. “Twi’d never hurt anyone like that!”
Roz, or was it Agent 001, shook her head impatiently. “Don’t you know the power of that weapon she wields? The keyblade can undo entire worlds in the wrong hands. Not to mention the fact that it attracts those shadow creatures.”
The pegasus seemed to hesitate before turning to her friend. “Twi?”
The keyblade wielder was silent for a few moments. “She’s not wrong,” Twilight finally said, anger, resentment, and finally resignation playing across her face before she finally let her weapon disappear.
“Huh?!”
“The keyblade draws forth the power of the Heart, and that is a great and terrible power, whether for good or evil. The Heartless are attracted to this power, though the light of our Princess keeps them at bay,” Twilight said, as if reciting from a book.
“Well, Ah guess that sorta explains why the Heartless seem to attack us a lot.” Applejack shook her head. “But Ah still don’t get it, how could ya destroy an entire world? Ah know you’re a good fighter and a strong mage, but Ah’ve never seen ya do anything like that.”
The keybearer sighed. “Remember when I told you I could lock or unlock anything with the keyblade?” Her friends nodded. “What if I ‘unlocked’ a dormant volcano beneath a town? Or ‘locked’ a leader’s mind on a path to war? Of course, I’d never do anything like that!” she hastened to add as looks of horror dawned on her friend’s faces.
“But someone else with a keyblade could,” Roz finished for her, a scowl working its way across her face. “And someone else did. Our world was not always like it is now, forcing us to harvest the power of screams from human children. Hundreds of years ago, other wielders of the keyblade fought each other in pointless battles that consumed entire worlds and changed others completely. I do not know why, but one of them did something to our world, linking us to the human one but also leaving us vulnerable to the shadow beasts. It also drained our world’s life and energy.”
“How do you know about all this?” Everyone turned to look at Spike, who squirmed under their collective gaze. “Er, I mean, no one else seems to know anything here.”
“The CDA has stood against threats to our world for generations, in one form or another,” the old monster answered. “As its leader, I have access to information the public has no need for.”
“But, I thought the CDA’s purpose was to make sure humans didn’t cross over into our world because they were dangerous?” Sulley asked, shifting Boo around.
Roz rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, that child you’re holding in your arms looks so threatening. You know as well as I that the humans are no more dangerous than monsters. That is only a front to cover the CDA’s true purpose, safeguarding the Doors and the Scream Factory grounds.” She held up an arm. “And before you ask why, I believe it would be easier to simply to show you.”
“Um, what about me and Boo?” the big monster asked. “I just want to get her home.”
“Yes, yes,” the yellow clad slug said, waving off his concerns. “As soon as we can find her Door in all this mess we’ll get her sent home. But for now, I believe you all will find this... educational.”
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“What is this place?” Twilight wondered, taking in the sight above. Roz had lead them back, deep into the Scream Factory, her CDA agents following. It was slow going, as they had to bypass the more damaged sections, but eventually they emerged into an enormous room. Doors of all shapes and sizes hung from bewildering twists of tracks that looped around before leading to stacks on the walls. “Is each one of these a portal to another world?”
“Uh, yeah, but they’re not active right now,” Sulley explained. “Without power, they’re just hunks of wood.”
“The amount of magic alone to create such a thing would be phenomenal!” The unicorn shook her head, barely able to take it all in. A few beeps broke the mare out of her internal musings. She turned to see Roz tapping some buttons on an inconspicuous console in a corner of the room. A section of the wall suddenly fell away to reveal a dimly lit stairwell leading deep into the earth. Fluttershy let out a fearful squeal and leapt behind the other pegasus, who struggled not to roll her eyes. Looking in, Twilight realized she couldn’t see very far down it all. “What’s down there?” she asked.
Roz snorted. “What indeed?” The slug-like monster began slithering down the steps, flanked by a few of her agents. Sensing that they were meant to follow, the ponies began down the stairs, though Fluttershy required a little encouragement, with Sulley and the last of the CDA agents bringing up the rear. Slowly, the walls and stairs began to change, turning from cement and metal to intricately carved rock. Roz began to speak again as they walked. “Our greatest scientists have studied it for centuries, but all we have been able to create are but small mockeries. I suppose you might call it...” She trailed off as a flickering light came into view. “...the Heart of our world.”
Twilight let out a choked sound. A strange sight greeted them as they finally reached the room at the bottom of the stairs. In the center, a small, weakly pulsing crystalline heart floated. A small keyhole was set in its front, carved into the delicate looking crystal. Runed wires lead away from it into a portal that swirled with darkness. Another crystal heart, glowing with light, was visible on the other side, with the wires leading into it. Motes of... what, exactly? Energy? Magic? Light, maybe? Twilight shook her head. At any rate, they flowed from the heart on the other side of the portal to this one. With each bit of power, the heart on this side shone a little brighter before quickly fading. “This is your world’s Heart?” she eventually asked, amazed. Roz nodded.
“That’s just crazy talk!” Applejack finally exclaimed. She pointed at the crystal heart. “That’s just some shiny rock, it can’t possibly be the Heart of a world!”
“I don’t know...” Twilight trailed off. Celestia had never shown her anything like this, but she'd found evidence in her studies, references to the center of worlds. Plus there was her encounter in Olympus Coliseum... “I think it might be true.” Her eyes settled on the glowing cords. “What are those wires for? They don’t seem natural.”
Roz shrugged expressively. “We’re not sure, but as far as we can tell, they transfer excess energy from the human world’s Heart, to ours.”
A look of understanding suddenly broke over Sulley’s face. “The Doors!” he exclaimed, “You somehow copied this, um,” he struggled over the proper word for the sight before him, “Portal here to make the Doors, right?”
“Yes,” Roz nodded, “Though it took our researchers many years to reach this point. The shadow beasts-”
“They’re called Heartless,” Twilight interrupted, then blushed. “Sorry.”
“Heartless, then,” Roz continued. “The Heartless would appear often in our early experiments with the portal’s energy. It seems to attract them, somehow. Even today, they sometimes appear during the creation of a Door.” The elderly slug monster seemed to realize she was getting off track. “But like I was saying earlier, this apparatus transfers energy from their world’s Heart to ours. At first, it was enough to support our world’s Heart, but soon it worsened, growing dimmer and dimmer as our world decayed. Our most ancient records state that children saved the worlds once, and so, in desperation, children, both monster and human, were brought in to see if they could do anything. Months passed with no progress, until one researcher, in a rage, frightened a human child so that it screamed in the presence of our world’s Heart. It began to glow more brightly than it had in ages, and so we had our solution.”
Silence reigned for a few moments until Fluttershy began to speak in a small but firm voice. “This isn’t right.” The others turned to look at her. The usually timid yellow pegasus had an uncharacteristic serious air about her. “Why should you have to terrify innocent children to survive? Some animals have to eat others to survive, but this isn’t like that. Someone made it like this.” She looked to her friends. “Can’t we do anything?”
Applejack pawed at the ground awkwardly. “Fluttershy, this ain’t some little bird you can nurse back to health,” she began, before Twilight’s keyblade appeared.
“This is why you brought us here, right?” the unicorn stated as her weapon floated beside her. “You wanted me to fix your world’s Heart.”
“However did you guess?” Roz asked, her voice thick with sarcasm. “You’re the first keyblade wielder seen here in centuries. At this rate, the decay will soon progress to the point where our contributions of scream energy will no longer matter.”
“So that’s why we’ve had the scream shortages lately,” Sulley commented. “You’ve been trying to fix the Heart.” Roz nodded.
Twilight let out a breath. “I’ve never done anything like this before.” Her keyblade looped around to point directly at the Heart of the world. “But I’m willing to try.”
A beam of light shot forth from the tip of her keyblade as the world seemed to fade away. “It’s just like before,” the wielder thought. But this time, she didn’t just let instinct guide her. As her weapon’s light made contact with the keyhole, Twilight carefully took control. Playing her magic into the keyhole, she felt the power of the Heart of a world. Even in its weakened state, it was incredible. The keyblade wielder shook herself. She couldn’t get distracted here! Oh so carefully, she started her examination. “There!” A metaphysical ‘hole’ had been torn in the Heart, and it was slowly growing. Twilight readied her magic, then realized that that she had no idea what to do! Nothing in her training had prepared her for something like this. Carefully, the keybearer reexamined the Heart. The energy coming in from the other world slowly trickled in, only to quickly seep out of the wound.
“Huh?”
With the last mote of energy, the edges of the hole had closed slightly before they reopened, a little wider than before. Twilight withdrew slightly and began to think. “Okay, it heals with a little with each mote of energy, but then it just tears itself open again. How do I fix this? Maybe if I...” she trailed off, letting some of her own mana flow into the wound. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but then it began to react... violently. The mana surged back into her, knocking her away, out of her magical trance.
“Twi’, are ya okay?” Applejack shouted, frantically shaking her shoulder.
“Ugh, yeah, I’m fine,” the mare said, getting to her hooves. Calling her keyblade to her she thankfully noted that it was no worse for wear.
“What happened? There was a sound sorta like a door being locked, but that happened last time too. Did you fix it?” Rainbow Dash asked. Twilight shook her head and explained the situation.
“So,” Roz said, summing it up, “The energy of the other world’s Heart isn’t enough to permanently fix the damage, it rejected your ‘mana’, and if the scream energy hasn’t fixed it already, it’s doubtful more will. Now what?”
A moment later, Sulley snapped his fingers. “What about a different kind of energy?”
“Huh? What do you mean?” Twilight asked.
“Remember when Boo laughed?” the furry monster asked. “The lights blew out!”
“Um, yes, I remember,” Fluttershy said, “There was last night at your apartment, and earlier today in the infirmary.”
“Right. Now, I figure that had to happen for a reason. What if Boo’s laugh is another kind of energy, like screams?”
Everyone seemed to think it over. Finally, Roz shrugged. “Well, I can’t see how it would hurt at this point. Go ahead.”
“Wait!” Twilight exclaimed, readying her keyblade. “Let me connect to the Heart again before you make her laugh, I need to see if it works.” After receiving a nod, she raised her weapon as everything seemed to fade away once more. Soon, she had focused upon the Heart’s wound once more. Distantly, she heard childlike laughter as pure white light made its way into the hole. The edges began to glow, slowly healing ever so slightly. Twilight watched closely as the light faded, and the edges didn’t crack, or widen, or anything! Quickly ending her connection, the mare announced, “It worked!”
Roz raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes!” Twilight happily exclaimed, a wide grin settling on her face. “It just needs a steady supply of, um...”
“Laugh energy?” Sulley proposed.
“Yes, that! With enough laugh energy I think the hole should fix itself eventually,” the keyblade wielder announced.
“Wow, you saved an entire world!”
“Yay!”
“Yeah, good goin’!”
“Eh, it could have been a little, you know, cooler!”
“Yes, we’re in your debt, keyblade wielder,” Roz her voice uncharacteristically sincere for once as she bowed slightly, her guards following suit.
Twilight blushed under all the praise. “It wasn’t all me!” she hastily said, waving her hooves in dismay, “Without Sulley and Boo, we’d still be stuck. Really, they did all the work!”
“Oh, I must disagree, my little apprentice.”
The keyblade flashed beside its master as the familiar voice echoed throughout the room. A growl worked its way from the unicorn’s throat as she whirled to face the speaker.
“Nightmare Moon!”