Rise of the Furball Chapter 11: “Interludes”
“Oh. So that’s what you were talkin’ about when you mentioned the truck,” said an awestruck Babs, gazing upon the machine before her along with the rest of the crusaders.
“Eeyup, it sure is unique!” proudly replied Apple Bloom, grinning.
“So…why do you guys even have this thing? I remember Applejack sayin’ you three somehow built this.”
Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle all quickly traded nervous looks.
“We, uh…” started Sweetie.
“…sorta, er…” added Scootaloo.
“We got the idea from Sandalwood!” suddenly exclaimed Apple Bloom. In truth, it wasn’t that big a fib since technically the Crusaders had built the vehicle that would become the truck. Figuring Babs wouldn’t know who Sandalwood was, Apple Bloom elaborated. “You wouldn’t know her; she probably just arrived around the time you last visited so she could try to set herself up as an aromatherapist at the town spa.”
Babs seemed to find slight amusement at being informed of Sandalwood’s occupation, raising an eyebrow at her cousin. “I hope you didn’t plan on surprisin’ me with a session with her, then, ‘cause I really am not fond of that kind of thing.”
“Why not?” asked Sweetie, totally ignorant of the undertones of disgust in Babs’s voice. She got a look from the other Crusaders that were more on top of the subtle message.
“I’m not big on doin’ things that belong in spas.” The brown filly replied, eyes narrowing in anger. “My parents were convinced that because I’m a filly that I should inherently like things fillies normally do, like go spend hours in a spa or play house with dolls. They still won’t even have my room be painted a color that isn’t pink for Celestia’s sake!”
Sweetie, ever the supporter of spending hours in the spa and playing house with dolls, didn’t understand. “What’s wrong with any of that stuff?”
“Sweetie, remember what I said back on the camping trip about why I had ‘that’ sleeping bag?” interjected Scootaloo, who understood fully what Babs was talking about.
“Camping trip?”
Apple Bloom face hoofed. “Oh for…Sweetie, you know! The one where Ah accidently ripped up your sleepin’ bag because Ah was…” She luckily caught herself right before revealing the thing Babs didn’t need to know about. “Oh, you know!”
Sweetie still didn’t understand. “But you ripped my sleeping bag because of-“ She started, before realizing how the pieces went together. “Oh, right, that camping trip! Okay, I remember now, Scoot!”
Babs watched the exchange between the three with suspicious curiosity. She made a mental note to ask about what exactly happened on that camping trip, since evidently she was being intentionally left out of the loop despite being a Cutie Mark Crusader. But almost immediately something else caught her attention.
“Hey, girls, why do you have a cardboard cutout of a lavender unicorn in the back of the truck?
Apple Bloom immediately seized upon the opportunity to change the topic back to being about the machine. “You mean ‘Cardlight Sparkle’ back there?”
Scootaloo stared at Apple Bloom in shock. “Wait, you were serious that you had named it that?!”
“You got a better name?” shot back AB, smiling with a slightly smug expression when the pegasus could not suggest one.
Babs, in the meantime, had managed to get back into the truck bed to look at Cardlight Sparkle up close. “Uh, okay, this is sort of creepy. Isn’t this one of the princesses, only without her wings?”
“Yeah, it’s a cardboard cutout of Twilight Sparkle. Applejack found it in the back one day when Sandalwood came by to do some kind of maintenance check and AJ wanted to see if the engine could be put on a float. We don’t know where it came from, but it doesn’t seem to be doin’ anypony any harm so we just left it there.”
“Why would your sister want to remove the engine for a stupid float?” asked Babs, leaping back down to the ground. “Wouldn’t it make more sense just to decorate this thing as a float instead?”
Apple Bloom shrugged. “That’s what Ah said to her, but she doesn’t want us drivin’ it because we, uh, crashed it in a way that seriously inconvenienced her, and she herself doesn’t like drivin’ it, so she just wanted to take the engine out. Don’t matter, anyway, the engine is pretty snugly secured inside that thing so removin’ it is impossible.”
“But you built it,” Babs pointed out. “Doesn’t that mean you can simply un-build it to get the engine out?”
“It would be easier just to buy a new engine at that point. It’s not like the truck has a unique engine, anyway, it’s actually the same one from that golden apple float we booby-trapped.”
“You salvaged that thing? It looked totaled when it hit the river!”
“Nah, the engine was totally fine. Not to say it hasn’t given us any shortage of trouble since, though…”
Babs could only wonder at what Apple Bloom’s seemingly whimsical implications could mean, but was not given the chance to as somepony from the house shouted out “DINNER TIME!”
“Finally!” happily exclaimed Scootaloo, doing a little jump and hovering in joy. “Let’s get this thing locked up, I’m hungry!”
Apple Bloom just rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Scoot, gotta keep your stomach full to explain why ya can’t fly.”
“Hey!”
As the sun’s last vestiges of light faded over the horizon with night taking over the sky, the streets of the Crystal Empire saw the last stragglers of day workers return to their dwellings. But as Shining Armor looked over the domain his wife ruled over, he mused that the signs of modernization were already taking hold. Even from the lofty balcony perched near the upper middle of the Crystal Castle, he could already see the bright lights coming on at the recently opened nightclub, and the growing line of ponies standing outside, even though he was a good mile away from the action.
Just then, one of the maids came through the door. “Dinner is ready, your highnesses…um…Prince Armor, where is the princess?”
Shining Armor turned to face the servant. “Cady is…busy, at the moment. Don’t worry, I’ll go fetch her, just have the table ready for us in a few minutes.”
“Right away, your highness.” The maid curtsied and left. When the door shut behind her, Shining dropped his smile and sighed before teleporting himself to his beloved’s location. In a flash of magenta he went from the bedroom to right outside the last remaining trace of King Sombra. The secret archives that held much of the “research” the king had conducted on the hapless Crystal Ponies would have normally been considered a crime against ponykind merely by existing, with additional counts for every single book that remained in it that detailed things not meant for pony eyes. However, it had been successfully argued that simply destroying the archive would be impossible for Sombra would have certainly put protective spells around it to prevent such a thing, and that because of its depths of information about dark magics it should be exploited as a knowledge base from which better countermeasures to the evil power could be developed. Such arguments were indirectly justified to those who knew of Applejack’s brief period of lycanthropy, as the records of Sombra’s creation of the werewolves had yielded the information necessary to save the apple farmer in time along with paving the way for what Shining and Cadence had been told was “closure” for the apples.
But even with the most trustworthy mages being the only ones allowed to go through the archives, for some reason Princess Cadence had been randomly disappearing during her free time only to be found among the sinister tomes. Why she was doing this was anypony’s guess, as in addition to the spells cast to prevent the destruction of the archives outright, Sombra had also cursed the room to concentrate its utter hatred for the one who would take the throne from him, which for Cadence meant really, really bad migraines if she was only just fully inside the door frame. Shining found her writhing in agony in the middle of the room, which didn’t last long as he hastily pulled her out of it.
“Cadence! What were you doing?!” he yelled at her.
“Unh…yeah, that was probably stupid of me…” she weakly grunted, although now she was out of the archives her head no longer felt like it was going to implode and strength returning to her faculties.
“Stupid? Honey, that doesn’t even begin to describe what I just saw! You know just as well as I do that it’s dangerous for you to simply be inside this doorframe, with what would happen if you went further in being pretty easy to predict!” Shining stopped his tirade, but only because the sudden adrenaline rush was wearing down and he had to catch his breath, continuing once his heart wasn’t beating so fast. “Cady, it looked like you were having a seizure, maybe you actually were for all I know, but if I hadn’t just shown up you could have died!”
“I’ve already had brushes with death at least twice, dear. I was left to starve in the caverns while Chrysalis almost married you in my place, then I almost burnt myself out trying to save this city from Sombra. It would take more than a migraine to take out an alicorn like me.”
“Not that much more, Cadence. You still haven’t fully recovered from the strain you subjected yourself to in defense of the city when Sombra cut off my magic. The fact you keep trying to overstrain yourself worries, me, whatever the reason.” He then suddenly hugged his wife tightly. “I’ve nearly lost you twice, Cady, the fact you nearly made that count go to three by repeatedly going into that room makes me worry to no end that you honestly don’t have any concept of self-preservation. Can you please promise me you’ll stop going into there?”
“I’m sorry, Shiny,” Cadence apologized, who felt stupid that he had to be the one to tell her how she was making him feel. She prided herself on her empathy, so the fact she’d been so blind to him being worried about her was a sign she wasn’t being a good wife. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have been making these trips into Sombra’s archives, but as the ruler of the Crystal Empire I have to be sure I can better handle the worst case scenario of Sombra’s return.”
“Cadence, he’s dead. He blew up! You blew him up!”
“But he’s back.”
Shining broke the embrace and looked incredulously at his wife. “Dear, you can’t be serious.”
Cadence, however, had a grim expression as she looked her husband dead in the eye. “No, I can still sense his magic out there.”
“Hon, you just spent-“
“Yes, I know, I was in the room full of dark magic, but I was only in there to try and build up my endurance to it. Without your magic I couldn’t even keep up the barrier for two days under his assault, and that was only when he was at his weakest. It’s been months since then and if he has come back then he will almost certainly be stronger and attack without warning. But I know there is a pony out there using dark magic similar to his, and as no pony has ever had the kind of powerful darkness he had at his command I don’t see how it can’t be him.”
“Then let’s contact Celestia and Luna, have them send down more guards and mages, set up stronger defenses.”
“NO!” shouted Cadence, her face absolutely livid. Shining took a step back out of pure fear, the last time he’d ever seen his wife that angry was back when she appeared just in time to prevent him from marrying Chrysalis. Cadence, realizing her action, immediately backed down. “Sorry, Shiny, but I can’t allow that, for the sake of the Crystal Ponies. Even though I’ve proven I’m the rightful heir to the Crystal Throne with how my cutie mark reacts in the presence of the Crystal Heart, if they even think for a moment that Sombra is coming back they’re going to lose confidence in me as their leader and everything is going to spiral out of control. Building up a guard presence is exactly the way to do that.”
Shining just nodded, but was glad his wife wasn’t angry at him. “Do the other princesses know?”
“I’ve already sent off letters to Celestia and Luna, I haven’t said anything to Twilight namely because Spike would get it first and with all the self-esteem issues he’s been having due to the new lifestyle Twilight has as a Princess, having him find out that he didn’t pave the way for the defeat of Sombra is only going to make it worse.”
“Good point, but Twilight needs to know somehow and if Canterlot hasn’t told her yet then we are going to need to. But right now I’m starving and I’m not letting you keep me from my dinner.”
“Oh, please, like you need dinner. Truth is you could probably lose a few pounds that somehow have appeared now that you’re out of the guard.”
“Are you saying I’m not as strong as I was back when I threw you at Sombra?” He didn’t even give his wife a chance to respond, as in one swift motion he darted under her, stood up so she was riding his back, and then was running off with her to the dining hall, both of them laughing all the way.
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It was well past ten in the evening when Raspberry Beryl and Heliodor bid farewell to the princess and went back to their room at the hotel.
“They seemed like a good pair, don’t you think so, Spike?” asked Twilight as she closed the door behind her.
“Yeah, when you’re not trying to scare them to death that is,” the dragon who was cleaning up the plateware left from dinner snarked back.
“Oh, come now, Spike, you know that was just a big misunderstanding. Although now that I think about it, Raspberry might be a great research subject. While unicorns whose magic power is weakened from childhood traumas isn’t something new, there’s been very little exploration of the full effects such a thing would have on them.”
“Twilight, I think you’re forgetting that she’s a pony just as much as you, not a test subject.”
Twilight was silent for a moment as Spike’s words sunk in before letting out a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, you’re right Spike, I shouldn’t be thinking like that. I guess it’s just that ever since becoming a princess I haven’t had much time to enjoy researching things and making new discoveries like I used to, not to mention the idea of having weak magic power seems so alien to me as I’ve been around great magic users all my life.”
Having deposited the dishes, Spike walked from the kitchen over to Twilight so he wouldn’t have to yell. “But wasn’t the whole point of you inviting Raspberry over so that you could take notes on her phoenix?”
Upon being reminded of Heliodor, Twilight unconsciously launched herself up into the air and fluttered about, happy as a lark. “Ah! Yes! Such a fascinating creature! I took so many notes!” As it would have turned out, dinner would mostly consist of Twilight asking Raspberry more questions about Heliodor and what it was like to have a phoenix as a pet. Contrary to the reserved nature of his owner, Heliodor seemed the complete opposite as he basked in the adoration being given to him by a princess. Still, pages upon pages of notes had been generated by the time Twilight had actually remembered it was dinner time and finally taken a bite.
“Yeah, sort of interesting in how he’s a bird who associates with fire that’s hanging around a pony who has trouble controlling her magic.” Commented Spike, now putting away the books Raspberry had left lying around.
Twilight raised an eyebrow at her dragon’s words. “I’m not seeing your point, Spike.”
The dragon shelved the last book, then turned to his sister. “Think about it, Twi, Beryl isn’t the first unicorn we’ve run across with magic like hers.”
“It’s not dark magic, Spike.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Of course she isn’t Sombra reincarnated, that would be stupid. But you have to have seen the similarities between her and Sunset Shimmer.”
“You mean how her magic aura looked? I did think it looked similar to what Sunset’s magic was when she was wearing the Element of Magic, but that’s getting into advanced magical theories and the conditions are completely different. Sunset was basically an evil version of me and she went power crazy in thinking an army of young adult…non-ponies could conquer Equestria, while also using excessive amounts of magic in a form not meant to use magic. Raspberry’s horn was permanently damaged during its developmental phase and she has trouble lifting a book via telekinesis. Completely different.”
“But that’s assuming her magic follows conventional magic principles. But what if it isn’t regular unicorn magic? What if it’s some new kind of magic unlike anything we’ve seen, which considering all the different kinds such as Discord’s Chaos Magic, Sombra’s Dark Magic, Chrysalis’s love-powered shapeshifting magic, Nightmare Moon’s…Nightmare Magic, my own dragon magic, and even the highest level unicorn spells even you still can’t do despite not even being a unicorn anymore. I think we need to watch her closely, Twilight, something doesn’t seem right with her.”
Utter silence ruled the bottom floor of Golden Oaks for what seemed like hours before Twilight finally recovered from being struck speechless to ask the most pressing question Spike had now put in her mind;
“Spike, when did you become such an expert at knowing different magic type classifications?”
The dragon laughed. “Oh, come on, Twi, why are you surprised at that? You’ve dragged me along on enough crazy adventures and I doing the same to you occasionally, it’s not out of the question that I’ve learned a thing or two over the years.”
Twilight trotted over to nuzzle the baby reptilian she loved like a brother. “And that, Spike, is why you are my number one assistant.”
“You mean number one royal assistant, that is,” corrected Spike, prompting both of them to laugh.
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“Why do you even have that sleeping bag?” asked Babs as she took Scootaloo’s Iron Mare sleeping bag out of the red wagon attached to Scoot’s Scooter.
“Mom and dad got it for me back when they thought I was going to turn out more like Sweetie Belle instead of Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo lied.
“Hey!” shouted Sweetie Belle from the top of the treehouse ramp, only to find Scootaloo’s heart sleeping bag flying towards her. Without thinking she tried to use her magic to slow it down, but as her magic had only just finally begun to manifest as sparks there was no change in the flying object as it hit her, propelling the tiny unicorn back into the clubhouse proper.
“C’mon, Sweetie, Ah doubt Scoot meant that as an insult,” laughed Apple Bloom who was busy unrolling her sleeping bag, the one Babs would be using still tied into a giant roll in the corner closest to her. To finish celebrating Babs having returned to the CMC fold, the foursome would spend a sleepover in the CMC treehouse with the activity being a “cutie mark acquisition” planning session that would take the Crusaders all the way through to the end of the year.
“Nopony has told me why Sweetie needs to borrow Scootaloo’s sleeping bag,” said Babs, who by now had entered the treehouse and was unpacking the sleeping bag she herself was borrowing from her Apple relatives. Appearance wise it was no different from Apple Bloom’s, which had been the same one she’d taken on the school camping trip.
“My sleeping bag got ripped up, remember?” said the unicorn.
“How did that happen, exactly? You guys said that camping trip was over a month ago and if I remember correctly, isn’t your sister Rarity a seamstress? Couldn’t she just patch up a ripped bag?”
“She said she would, but only when she had a chance. She’s been dealing with a bunch of orders lately, plus all of her free time has been put towards making new Hearth’s Warming costumes for the school.”
Apple Bloom couldn’t help but chuckle. “Of course, since Sweetie is the only unicorn filly in our class, she gets to be Princess Platinum by default, and Rarity is just obsessin’ over making the costume perfect for her.”
“Hey, maybe I’ll just get my cutie mark in acting! After all, making costumes for the class play was how Rarity got her cutie mark!”
“Whoa, hold on girls!” interrupted Scootaloo, “we aren’t ready to start planning how we’re gonna get our cutie marks just yet! This isn’t a real sleep over yet!”
“It isn’t?” inquired Babs, before suddenly receiving a giant, heart-covered pillow blow to the face.
“Not until we have an all-out PILLOW FIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!”
All semblance of organization fell to the wayside as the four fillies quickly started darting all over the room, pillows and feathers (not all of them orange) flying all over the place.
Discord didn’t have much time. He was already in enough trouble with Celestia as she had to have figured out he’d been out of Castle Canterlot all day by now, and earlier in the week he’d been acting far out of his normal habit of tilting every single painting he passed exactly 3.14 degrees clockwise, among other pranks. Instead, he’d actually been spending a lot of time in the library, looking at phoenix migration patterns from a few years ago. He didn’t have an exact location nailed down, nor was he admittedly anywhere near as smart with academics as Twilight (though he’d sooner be turned back to stone than tell her), but if the rough general direction he’d come up with was right then what he was looking for should be close.
Twilight had no idea, but Discord had never placed more importance on anything in his entire life than finding the answer to whether or not the green phoenix that currently lived near Ponyville was in fact a legitimate green phoenix. He’d spent the entire day traveling from town to town in a plethora of disguises and doing his best as to not arouse suspicion, as tracking where the green phoenix had been proved a little too easy. The adventures of ‘Heliodor’ as he’d learned to be the phoenix’s name, as well as his pony counterpart ‘Raspberry Beryl” all seemed disturbingly consistent with what happened around the time they left for another settlement. Of course, he had suspected to be told of such things before even beginning his quest for answers. In fact, since he knew Raspberry Beryl and Heliodor to be in Ponyville, he would have massively preferred to just go and talk to them himself. But, being an infamous chaos spirit who had pissed off every single living thing on the planet during his brief victory over the Elements of Harmony, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. But maybe if he-
“DISCORD!"
The sudden flash of light that revealed a very irate sun princess sent Discord crashing down into the ground, shattering him into a bunch of separated parts as if he’d been a child’s toy based on an anthropomorphic potato.
“Ah, Celestia!” he calmly replied back, while his rear legs inched themselves closer to his lower torso,"I know I’ve sort of been going around Equestria all day, but I swear I’ve been a good boy and-“
“You promised me that you wouldn’t go off doing your own thing without running it by me first. The fact some part of Equestria isn’t defying the laws of physics right now is the only thing keeping me from tightening the metaphorical collar around your neck.”
“As I pledged to you that I was reformed, I have no intention to break that promise. However, my current business is of a different matter of significantly more importance and to somebody above even your station, princess.”
“I am the highest authority in the land, Discord, but if you have allied yourself with a treasonous power who would-“
“Oh for heaven’s sake- I’m carrying out something your mother asked me to do millennia ago!”
Celestia’s normally unbreakable expression of displeasure shattered upon the mentioning that Discord was following orders from Queen Faust herself. “Impossible…” was all she could manage in her shock.
Discord, in turn, laughed, but in a way that implied as if it was a response to a good natured joke and not out of any kind of malice. “I know you still can’t believe your mother and I were ever able to tolerate each other, much less be good friends, but here’s the proof all the same.” Holding his still-detached right arm in his left, he used his now super-extended arm to reach inside his vacant arm slot and pulled out an old scroll, which he held out for Celestia to take in her telekinesis. The instant recognition on her face that clearly was indicative of the familiarity she felt in the magic still in the scroll let Discord relax a bit now that he wasn’t about to spend a few hours on the moon.
“When did she give you this?”
“She wrote it shortly before her passing from this world, Verna was the one who actually delivered it to me on her final flight from Castle Everfree. You see, Celestia, you and Luna have your own little thousand-year chess games with the Elements and Star Swirl’s book and…whatever was going on with the Crystal Empire, I honestly don’t know as I personally thought Sombra wasn’t a legitimate problem back then or when he temporarily came back. Regardless, you’re not the only immortal from that time who has their own long-term plans now seeing the light of day, and while it’s her magic preventing me from sharing my knowledge of this new problem with you, I swear on Queen Faust’s name that I act only in her interest and I ask you for your trust in me on the matter, as insanely idiotic a move as that sounds.”
Celestia thought hard for a few minutes before she gave her answer. “Fine, if the Queen saw fit to place her trust in you on this matter, then I have no ground to do otherwise. Nor does Luna, Cadence, or Twilight. However, I do still want you to let me know of what you are at least doing when you have to leave the castle, starting with where you were going before I showed up.”
“Of course, your highness, and in fact that’s my destination right over there.” Replied the now fully reassembled Discord, pointing towards a large cave opening they happened to be standing in front of. “Let’s take a look inside, shall we?”
And so Celestia, against her better judgement, followed the Dragonequis into the cave. There wasn’t much in the cave, which looked like it had been abandoned for years, but several rafters looked like they’d been damaged if not outright ripped out of their places, and the opening of the cave wasn’t even out of sight before Discord snapped his fingers and something winked out from a crevice that was barely even visible only to appear in his lion paw. It was a tiny green feather, long since faded with the passage of time but still bore enough luster to easily be identifiable as having come from a phoenix.
“So, the green phoenix Twilight was so eager about…it’s the real deal?” asked Celestia.
“As real as you or me, Celestia,”Discord said gravely, “and as real as everything else that phoenix heralds.”
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It was to the sound of rustling that Babs woke to. After a wild session of fierce pillow fighting and the subsequent wild planning session for Crusades to go on for cutie marks, all four fillies had been plum tired by the end of it all and conked out quickly. Or so it had seemed.
“Oh, sorry, cos’, Ah didn’t mean to disturb you.” Said Apple Bloom, who for some reason seemed exhausted, like she’d run several miles. She also appeared to be taking what looked like crackers out of a drawer.
“Did you just go out runnin’ or somethin’?”
“Huh? Oh, uh, no. Ah didn’t go runnin’. Just a bad dream, that’s all. Ah figured maybe if Ah had a small, late night snack it would help.”
“Ah. Mind if I have a midnight snack, too?”
“Uh, yeah su-yawn-rrre, just close up the bag when you’rrre done.”
Babs noticed that Apple Bloom’s “r’s” suddenly had begun to slur, sounding huskier compared to her otherwise normal accent. There was further cause for concern when Babs had gotten up and passed Apple Bloom as the latter went to her sleeping bag, for her swishing tail seemed to have a leaf or two caught in it. For somepony who had only been up at this hour and looking exhausted from a nightmare, why did she have lose foliage in her tail?
But the most damning evidence was in the snack drawer. As Babs fished out some cheese crackers, she noted the bag of dog treats stuffed in the back and mostly obscured by the other packaged food stuffs. Curiosity taking hold, she reached back and pulled it out, but only after hearing Apple Bloom’s rather loud snores.
It was a bag of Happy Puppy brand Dog Biscuits. Bacon Flavor.
And inside the oddly only half-sealed bag were bits of all too familiar yellow fur.
Her heart beginning to race, Babs looked back at the form of her sleeping cousin. Had Apple Bloom really been awake because of a nightmare, or was it in fact Babs that had possibly just walked into one?
“N-no, that’s silly!” whispered Babs to herself, hastily closing the dog biscuit bag and returning it to its hiding spot before she herself went back to sleep. But it was only a light sleep, as suddenly everything that had seemed off about this return to Ponyville started to fit into place and the stories of werewolves having actually existed, as proven by Iron Will’s execution of the last one, made more sense.
But what if that wasn’t the last werewolf thought Babs, what if the last one is my own cousin?