Before I tell you how I reacted to the whole wall exploding deal-e-oh, I need to remind you of a few things. I am the person who went through a bottomless pit in the ground and traveled to the best dimension known to any living soul that is filled with the characters I love. Needless to say, a wall exploding is not that weird in comparison.
So when I tell you that I calmly glanced at what used be something other than air and wondered what caused it, you should be able to understand that something so small no longer surprises me.
Twilight, while able to conquer the shock of absorbing my brain, was still in a shaken state. A wall exploding probably would have scared her before the little incident. A bedpost became a crocodile because of her magic that day. It was a bronze statue, mind you, but a crocodile nonetheless.
It would have been nice if the magical beam that causes a random but potent effect had hit the golem dragon head looking at us with as pissed off a face stone can manage.
"Your time time is up, human. Now you must be punished."
With way more speed than should be, uh... golemly possible, the thing grabbed me with a single hand and lifted me into the air. If there was anything I could do to it before, being surrounded by an almost litteral cacoon of stone and bronze gears tends to inhibit one's ability to, shall we say... do jack shizzle. Dawg.
It seemed to be thinking about what to do. Since I'm assuming it's a machine, it must be running slowly. That's what you get when you still use Windows Vista. Hiyo~!
Just as it was about to say something, the previously mentioned bronze crocodile smacked into its face. Not only did it create a satisfying smack sound, but it also produced a very soothing note. Current situation taken into account, I was not very soothed.
Twilight's horn unlit as her foe turned to face her. "You dare to challenge an ancient being such as me in combat?" Well gee, when you put it that way, it just seems like a silly idea. In all likelihood, it will be done anyways.
Twilight smirked. Ridiculous line in 3... 2... 1... "Indubitably." Confound this giant hand around me! I could applaud her expert usage of that word if it wasn't for my stones binds!
"It shall be your inevitable downfall." Oh, no need to be such a downer all the time, immortal piece of crap! To live life happily, you only need to do a few things, like these. You gotta share~! You gotta care~!
With the helpless sack of meat that is me still in tow, it and Twilight charged towards each other. Nope, that's a lie. It charged towards Twilight as Twilight launched a fireball into its face. I think I like the second turn of events better. Or I would if it didn't light my mane on fire.
"My mane's on fire! AHH! AHH!" Now that I have fully played the part of annoying helpless pony, can I go home? That would just be wonderful. Then we could all be happy agai- No? Well screw you too, monster thing.
With an extremely casual burst of magic, my precious hair was saved from the onslaught of fire. I quickly dived to the side of the room to allow Twilight more room to eliminate the opposition. Hopefully my selected corner will not be bathed in more flame or some sort of poison.
A 30 second time frame passed where all that happened was Twilight dodging the dragon's claw swipes. Then the dragon remembered that it had time controlling powers. Twilight was not casting any more spells for a little while.
The dragin turned to me. "Finally, I can punish you without any more annoyan-" I am not sorry to say that he was interrupted by a very angry and somewhat rabid-looking pink blur that I assume hell sent to destroy whatever it pleased. In simpler terms, it was angry Pinkie Pie.
"NO ONE HURTS MY FRIENDS!" before the dragon was allowed any time to reply, his face was immediately introduced to Pinkie's face in as violent a manner as was possible. I dare say that he wasn't doing very well in the whole 'punish you for your crimes against the alien queen of mars.' Something like that, at least.
While still dazed, all the other Elements of Harmony came up the stairs. They immediately halted as they took in the scene in front of them; me hiding in the corner, Twilight frozen in time, and Pinkie standing over a dazed mechanical dragon with a very pissed off face. It took them a moment to sort everything out.
I smiled at the wonderful sight of them. "Thank goodness you guys are here! Now we can handle this problem right-" My sentence was not meant to live it seems, for it was pushed aside by the very loud guttural roar that was coming from Pinkie's opponent.
Everypony was flung against a wall as a huge gut of wind billowed from the dragon. It stood back up, suddenly no worse for wear than it was before all the fire balls and face smashing it went through. To quote a great man: "We're totally screwed, aren't we? Yeah, thought so."
Without pausing to give some sort of villainous monologue about being invincible or something, it charged straight at my corner. Specifically the part of it that contained me. That basically means all of it, but whatever. Don't muddle the issue with your fancy logic!
Once again getting forcefully lifted into the air by stone claws, I could somehow see the fury inside the jeweled eyes of our attacker. The fact that a machine manged to look angry probably means that they would burn the world with the biggest flamethrower in existence just to get at what they hate. Fortunately for me, he has no beef with me. At all. Trust me on this one.
"I have decided on your punishment. Receive it with misery." I was going to say something stupid and lower the chances of making it out alive, but I felt a horrible sensation building in my throat.
It was like any air that I tried to put into saying anything was stopped by a brick wall. I could breath fine, but doing anything else constricted my throat and sent pain down my entire body. My mind couldn't really make sense of what was going on; it probably thought I was choking, and reflexively sent me into a panic as I was dropped to the floor.
Pinkie's expression will forever haunt me. There was such an incredible level of raw, uncontrolled terror in it that I got even more panicked than before. I started writhing on the floor, trying to speak, or make a noise at least, as Pinkie and Rainbow Dash attacked with incredible sped.
I hate time powers.
Their bodies both froze in midair, yet somehow left their heads able to move. They squirmed around, trying to do anything, and ultimately failed. The mechanical dragon approached, laughing a deep, raw, and horrible laugh. "Any last words, mortal fools?"
Dash said nothing, intensely focused on trying to escape. Pinkie turned right towards me, as tears started forming in her eyes. It sunk in at last that we had lost. We were going to die. There was no hope, no way to escape. Everything slowed down as I looked at the others, and saw that they were "timed out" as well.
"A-Actually, yes," She stammered out. "I-I just want to say... I love you, Sunny."
My brain just quit, right then and there. It decided that the entire world had been flipped upside down. Pigs were flying, cows could talk, and Waldo had been found. The utter confusion that was forcing its way into my head caused an emergency shutdown, and I stopped flopping and went still.
That was an idiot move right there, something only a truly genius person could pull off. I assume I looked pretty dead, considering I let my tongue just hang out on the floor. Pinkie started wailing madly, renewing her efforts to escape. They didn't succeed.
This is it, I guess. I can't say anything stupidly witty, or just plain stupid. Everyone is at the hands of whatever whimsy a very powerful time controlling dragon things wills, and it currently wants us all dead. When I die, please put my cremated remains in an oatmeal jar. It's what I've always wanted.
Then everything froze. What is this, the third time stuff has stopped moving? It stopped scaring me as soon as I accepted my fate, which happened shocking;y fast now that I think about it. Weird.
Either way, a sphere of light formed in the middle of the room, while none of us moved, due to reason you really should be able to guess. It burst, leaving a very shiny Princess Celestia behind. She took one look at the mechanical dragon and frowned, before teleporting the thing away to somewhere that wasn't here. Then everything returned to normal.
Pinkie and Rainbow fell to the ground, and everypony else stumbled a little as they readjusted to gravity and moving. Before a second passed, Pinkie was at my side, eyes filled to the brim with tears. She cracked a smile when she saw I was still breathing.
I smiled too, and tried to say: "All you have to do is giggle at the ghosties." It didn't work. My body was still refusing to produce any sort of language that I could speak. Her face grew panicked again as she saw my mouth forming words, but making no words.
"Twilight, something's wrong with Sunny!" She sounded on the brink of letting loose the waterworks again. Needless to say, Twilight came over quickly, her horn flaring to life as she did what I presume to be a magic scan of some sort.
She became more and more worried as time went on. It was doing no favors to Pinkie's level of zen and calm, if you can really claim Pinkie has zen with anything close to a straight face. I know I can, since I should never be used in the same sentence as the word 'normal.'
Dispelling her spell, Twilight sighed. "It looks like some sort of silencing spell was put on Sunny, but it doesn't feel right. It's as if Sunny was never able to use her voice at all, ever." That worried me. He put a spell on me that stops my insane blathering? This cannot do. It must be Fixed!
I could tell I was recovering remarkably well from the very frightening experience because I tried explaining in detail how important it was that I needed to spread nonsense in order for the world to remain in balance. The physics of it are to complex to explain, trust me. It involves many googleplexes.
"You mean he can't talk!?" Pinkie seemed to understand the level of dastardliness that spell was, and gasped. Then she hugged me as tight as possible, crying into my chest. I couldn't complain, though I wouldn't have if I could. Everypony needs somepony else to cry to from time to time.
I suddenly remembered to whole love topic that got brought up. I traced a heart shape with my hooves, then pointed at her and me. She blushed, and nodded. Well, I guess that's one thing off the ole' agenda. Wait. Hold on a minute.
I spasmed around a bit, before rapidly gesturing between me and her. She nodded again. My body shoved my mind out of the way and pulled Pinkie into a hug with my wings, presumably with some help from those blasted hormone things. My mind then decided that this wasn't cool enough, and went to go play some poker with my spleen.
As Pinkie beamed and huddled up right next to me, burying her face into my fuzzy fuzzy coat, Twilight's ears perked up as she glanced around. "Where did Celestia go?"
Shocked I hadn't noticed the extreme lack of divine goddess in the building, I looked around. As Twilight has already noticed, she was gone. It was a classic 'Oh hi, let me kill this monster for you. I have to go cook shrimp now. Keep the change. Hi doggy. Bye~!' situation. I'm sure you've all had one of those at some point.
Everypony gathered up around the corner that I had manged to not leave during the entire fight, and stood around trying to figure what exactly had just happened. I don't even know myslef. All I know is that a pink mare is snuggling me, and my body refuses to do anything about it. I'm not even sure I want to do anything about it.
Rainbow Dash was the first to speak. "So uh.. what now?" It was the hardest question to answer. At least, if you have common sense. Me? I tried yelling out random breakfast foods as soon as the question was asked. In a shocking turn of events, it failed.
"I think we should send a letter to Celestia," Twilight answered, trotting towards the somehow intact stairs of the ruined Apple Family residence. Everypony followed her, since a better plan had failed to present itself. Or maybe I just ate it. The world may never know.
We started towards Fluttershy's cottage, after she mentioned that she had some spare letter taking supplies laying around. I'll be honest; I don't think the effects of the mechanical dragon have been felt yet. At some point in the future, there will be many melt downs.
For now, I just have a mare nuzzling me as I walk.
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A/N: Well, I finally got another chapter done, and finally made all the shit go down. Hope you liked it, since there was less humor put into this one. More serious stuff. Also snuggling.