//------------------------------// // For Your Convenience // Story: LanternFall // by leonidas701 //------------------------------//         Rarity was the first one to speak. “Pinkie, take that thing off! You don’t know where it’s been.”         “I know exactly where it’s been!” Pinkie said with glee. “First it was in the sky, then it was in the ground, and now it’s on my hoof! Oh, that reminds me!” Pinkie jumped down into the crater.         “Pinkie!” The six mares all rushed over the craters, but when they got within a few feet of them they were all overcome by a sort of daze. Each one of them walked over to a crater and stood in front of it.         From each hole came a ring, each glowing radiantly, each a different color. They settled down on the hooves of their chosen mare’s.         A red ring for Rainbow Dash, a bright orange for A.J. A ring yellow as the stars went to Trixie, followed closely by one blue as the sky for Twilight. A deep indigo went to Rarity, and the final ring, this one a harsh violet, settled down upon the flinching Fluttershy.         “Whoa,” Rainbow Dash said. “What was that?”         “Ah don’t know,” said a dazed Applejack, her eyes focused on her newly gained accessory.         “Got it!” a cheerful Pinkie Pie said. She lept out of the hole, biting on the handle of a bright green lantern, in the same design as the one decorating her ring. She put the lantern on the forest floor.         “Where could these have possibly come from?” Twilight asked.         “Weren’t you watching? They came from the sky, silly!”         “But from where?” Twilight and her friends all looked towards the sky, and silence fell over the group as they contemplated the possibilities.         “I think it was aliens!” Pinkie Pie said, shattering the silence and drawing everypony’s attention to herself.         “What?” Trixie asked skeptically. “Aliens? Really?”         Pinkie ignored her skepticism and began waving her hoofs wildly over her head, “I bet they’re really tall, and have triangles for heads, and-”         “Uh, Pinkie?” Applejack asked.         “-And they have really tiny eyes, but really big ears-”         “Darling, I think you should--” Rarity said as she pointed behind the chattering earth pony, who just kept on talking.         “-And they have eight, no, no, seven, and they have seven legs in front, along with-”         “Pinkie Pie, look behind you!” Rainbow Dash yelled. As she yelled, something strange happened. A thin red beam shot out of the ring clasped firmly around Rainbow’s hoof. The beam reached Pinkie, where it suddenly spread out and became a rectangle, pushing on the side of Pinkie’s body and head so hard that it forced her to turn a full hundred-eighty degrees.         Any shock Pinkie may have felt at that was diminished when she saw a twenty foot tall triangle headed being, with tiny little eyes and really big ears along with having seven legs sticking out of it’s front, made entirely out of bright green light. Bright green light, that seemed to be coming out of her ring.         Pinkie gaped at the construct, along with all the other ponies. “Am I doing that?” she said in a disbelieving whisper. She furrowed her brow, concentrating with all her might, and slowly the construct began to move. It rose up and up into the air, then one of its legs started shaking.         “That… IS SO COOOOL!” Rainbow Dash yelled, snapping the mares out of their reverie. “Let me try!” Rainbow Dash concentrated on copying the image the was before her, causing red light to come out of her ring, forming into a somewhat amorphous blob beside Pinkie’s creation. “Aw, come on!” Rainbow Dash grumbled. “Work!” The amorphous blob took on a form far closer to that of the green monster. “There we go!”         “How are y’all doing that?” Applejack asked.         “I don’t know!” Pinkie cheerfully stated. “Try it!”         “Try what?” Twilight asked. “What are you doing?”         While Twilight was talking, Trixie had noticed the thin strand of light that led from each construct to the rings of the same color. “I think the rings are doing it,” she said. “Let me try something.” Suddenly, a large yellow stick topped with a yellow star materialized out of thin air. “Twilight, it’s just like magic. You just have to focus on the ring.”         “Okay, I’ll try.” Twilight concentrated, and concentrated, and… nothing happened. “It’s not working.”         “Really? I wonder why,” Trixie said. “Hey, Applejack. Could you try?”         “Well shure.” Applejack closed her eyes briefly and a barn sprang up right in front of her, almost offensive in how bright of an orange it was. “That was ea-” A giant red hoof suddenly smashed into the side of it, destroying the construct.         “Ha-ha!” Rainbow Dash laughed as she flew around her friend.         “What was that for?!” Applejack yelled indignantly.         “Oh come on, A.J. You said it yourself, this is easy. Look.” A bright red barn appeared in the same place the orange barn was occupying.         “I must admit, this is quite simple, darling,” Rarity said as she gazed upon an indigo dress. “I do wish there was more than one color though.”         “Yeah, red can get a little boring after awhile,” Rainbow Dash said. “What do you think Fluttershy? Fluttershy?” Rainbow Dash came back to the ground and started calling for her friend, a note of worry in her voice “Fluttershy? Where are you?”         A quiet voice came from behind a tree near the edge of the clearing “I’m right here,” it said. Rainbow Dash rushed over to the tree and checked behind it, finding nothing.         “Where?” she called out.         “Here.” A ripple of violet cascaded in the air, followed by a yellow pegasus suddenly appearing right in front of Rainbow Dash. “I’m sorry,” she said in a soft voice. “When I saw the monster I tried to hide. Sorry I was so hard to find.”         “You can turn invisible? Awesome!” Rainbow Dash said.         “I wish Angel were here,” Fluttershy whispered. The second she said that, a small purple bunny appeared in front of her.         “Oh cool, you can do that too.”         “Yeah, I guess that makes it everypony except for Twilight,” Trixie said, turning to her friend. “I guess yours is just broken.”         “Maybe,” Twilight said doubtfully.         “WHEE!!!” Pinkie cried, as she figured out that she could make trampolines pop up everywhere and so set herself rocketing around, bouncing at strange angles and always getting faster.         “Pinkie Pie, be careful!” Rarity cried out as the mare nearly crashed into her.         “Don’t worry, I am!” Pinkie called back. She was so caught up in her fun, that she didn’t notice when her ring suddenly lost its glow. She was zooming over to where Twilight and Trixie were huddled up, discussing the possible ways this could be happening. Trixie had her back to the flying mare, and so it was Twilight who happened to see the pink blur rushing at them.         “Duck!” Twilight yelled as she hit the floor, but she could see that Trixie wasn’t reacting fast enough to avoid being hit. Right before Pinkie slammed into Trixie a light blue force field sprang up around her, stopping Pinkie cold and keeping Trixie from being hurt.         Well, it’s not broken. The snarky part of Twilight’s brain thought, while the rest of her rushed over to the pink pile on the ground, along with all the other mares. “Ohmigosh! Pinkie are you okay?”         “No, keep going, no such thing as too much cupcake,” The dazed Pinkie said, before shaking her head vigorously in an attempt to clear it. “I’m okie-dokie. But this isn’t.” Pinkie held up her ring. No longer radiating a bright green light, it was now so dark it was almost black.         “How did that happen?” Trixie asked.         Pinkie shrugged. “Maybe it’s out of battery.” Pinkie moved herself to a sitting position and began to think. “Hmmmmm. Oh!” Pinkie stood up and walked to the edge of the crater.         “Oh? Oh what?” Twilight asked.         Pinkie touched her ring to the lantern she pulled out of the crater. Slowly but surely, the light started to come back to her ring.         “How did you know it would do that?” Rainbow Dash asked.         “Well, sometimes when I’m shopping for decorations for my parties, I get these little glow in the dark stickers, and for those to work you need to leave them out in the light or else they go dark,” Pinkie said as though this explained everything.         The others, by now used to Pinkie’s explanations not making any sense, shrugged this one off. “Wait, these doodads can run down?” Applejack asked.         “Evidently, as Pinkie’s just did,” Rarity responded.         “Well, how in tarnation are we gonna fill ‘em back up?”         “Didn’t you see?” Pinkie asked. “At the bottom of each hole, there’s one of these pretty little lanterns.”         The group rushed over to check and, sure enough, in each hole, underneath piles of upturned dirt, lay some very bright lanterns.         “Well that explains why the holes were so big,” Twilight mumbled as the mare’s collected their new decorations. The reminder of the holes brought back into the mare’s mind the reason she came out here in the first place.         “Hey, we should probably get back to town. They might need help.”         “Yeah, the town is pretty wrecked,” Trixie said.         “Well, it’s a good thing we have these!” Rainbow Dash pointed out. “These will make it so much easier.”         “Absolutely, much less sweaty this way,” Rarity agreed.         “I don’t know, we still don’t know anything about these,” Twilight said doubtfully. “They might be dangerous to use in town.”         “Oh lighten up Twi,” Rainbow Dash said. “If they start causing problems, we’ll stop using them.”         “Besides,” Applejack chimed in, “These durn thangs made the mess, they should help clean it up.”         “Good point,” Twilight said. “Still, I think I should send a letter to Princess Celestia, see what she thinks of all this.”         “Whatever makes you feel better,” Rarity said.         “Come on, the town’s not getting any less broken!” Pinkie yelled out, picking up her lantern in her mouth, “Lesh goo!”         After a brief chuckle at their friend’s over-enthusiasm, each mare grabbed her lantern and followed the pink hyperball out of the forest.