Chapter Three: A Space-n-Time
"So, Miss Twilight, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. My name is Echo, how do you do?"
Echo walks over to the dumb-struck Twilight Sparkle. Her mouth hanging in awe. He shakes her hoof, but she's stuck, eyes fixed on the unknown, red being standing in front of her.
"So, your name is Twilight Sparkle, I take it? Pleased to meet you, I am known as Yveltch Tmarv. My friends just call me Yveltch."
The General walks over an kneels down to shake the hoof of the, ever curious, pony. Fluttershy regains consciousness, spots Yveltch and falls back over. Jules walks over to Fluttershy, and places a pillow underneath her head that he created using one of his various powers, same as one of Echo's powers too. Twilight is still incapacitated by what she sees happening.
"Hey? Twilight? You there?"
"Don't startle her, Echo, she might run."
"I suppose I would too, if I saw a strange person, in a room, that I've never seen before, as well as viewed a non-magic pony create something from thin air."
The three of them left the violet pony to her thoughts, assuming she was managing to process what she saw.
" I assume this is our cue to go take out the Time Rift?"
"Yes, according to this, it opened up a few minutes ago, which is probably when she came here."
Fluttershy awakes again, this time managing a squeak, before fainting a third time.
"Looks like Fluttershy is taking this better than Twilight,, she managed to at least make noise this time."
Twilight blinks, then shakes her head. She begins to open and close her jaw, as if she's trying to say something.
"W-w-what are you?"
The trio looks to each other, then to the slightly less baffled Twilight. They managed a unified question.
"Who are you taking to?"
"Any of you? I'd like to know what you are, General Yvalch?"
Yveltch stepped forward from the group.
"It's pronounced Ye-VEL-ti-ch, and I am not of this world. That is all I will say."
"Sorry, I couldn't quite understand your name the first time, you can understand, right?"
"Yes, you are forgiven. I suppose I would have the same problem in your situation."
Yveltch nodded, then stepped back into the small group. Jules then stepped forwards, and nodded.
"How did you make that pillow appear? You're no unicorn, you clearly don't have a horn to conduct magical abilities."
"You can call it, slight of hand. It's one of my various talents."
"That can't be, your hoof was too far away from your body to have just produced it from some sleeve."
Jules bows.
"That's why it's called slight of hand, it's not very noticeable, and it's done purely by hand."
"But you don't have hands?"
"Oh, but don't I?"
Before Twilight can respond, Jules flashes for an instant, and in his place stands a tall, male, human, doing jazz hands. The human looks similar to Jules, besides the fact that the human is caucasian. He is also wearing a suit exactly like Jules', except the lines gather around the upper chest. Echo is visibly angered by this, Twilight is jolted by this.
"H-how did you?"
"JULES! WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT!"
Yveltch smacked Echo upside the head.
"What? What's the problem?"
"You can't just tell me off for almost blowing our cover, then pull this. It's not right!"
Echo, dawning the face of flabbergasted fury, flashed, then in his place stood a new tall human male, looking identical to Jules, except his hair color was dark brown, as apposed to Jules dark hair color. The human walked over to Jules, and hit Jules hard. Jules was dragged down by the fist and made impact with the ground. It caused the ground to crack. When Jules got back up, there wasn't a scratch on him, and the ground had repaired itself, good as new.
"Better?"
"You bet'cha. So, where were we?"
Twilight gave up on figuring out what was happening and left. Fluttershy woke up a fourth time, saw the new human Echo & Jules, and fainted. Echo caught her in his arms, and laid her down onto the pillow.
"We should follow her, Echo. Make sure she doesn't get into trouble."
"Alright, let's go."
The duo looked to Yveltch, he was occupied with Johnson and more statistics.
"You coming with Yveltch?"
Yveltch looked up from the papers, then shook his head.
"Nah, I got work to do. It was nice knowing you were alive at least."
The pair left and chased after Twilight, who had apparently ran out the building, because they couldn't see her close by. They ran out the doors and sprinted to the Tree house. There they saw the mare sitting on the ground looking between a couple of guards, and a large opening in the sky.
"Hello there, again."
Twilight jumped and quickly turned around.
"How did you know I'd be here?"
"Not hard to guess really, if I couldn't go inside my house, even though I might have something that would help, I'd still stand outside it thinking of a plan."
"Oh, right. Can you help me?"
"Sure Twilight, just give me and Echo a second, alright."
Twilight nodded and sat back down, facing the brothers this time. Having attracted the attention of some of the ponies that gave up, they were being watched. They looked to each other then to those around them. They walked back to the guards and requested entrance, no questions asked.
"Come in Twilight, it'll be easier for us to think of a plan in safe quarters."
"Thank you, I might have a book that could help."
The duo looked to each other, being the masters of condescension, they laughed.
"What's so funny? This is a serious matter! We have no idea what this thing is."
"Correction Miss Sparkle, you, have no idea what this thing is."
Twilight tilted her head in wonder.
"You see, do you think we'd be here if we didn't? This has happened before, and it's our job to stop it. Now, sure go ahead, look around. I doubt you'll find something on the matter, though."
Frustrated by their discouragement, she looked for something. The brothers started a telepathic conversation.
"So, how do you wanna solve this problem, Jules?"
"You're the one with the power to stop it, your call."
"I think I'll do it the easy way. it's high enough in the air, shouldn't be too much of a problem."
"Roger that, your skies."
Echo looks around the Tree house. He spies Twilight looking around the bookshelves, most likely looking for a solution to the Time Rift problem.
"You won't find anything Twilight, these things are completely unheard of by anyone out side of the Plumbers, it's useless. Even if you did find something, mortal beings cannot close it permanently like ourselves, only temporarily."
"Fine I give up. I can't find anything here anyways."
Twilight comes down from a ladder she had been using to look for a book on the high shelves. She had a look of exasperation and defeat, Jules gave her a pat on the back.
"It's okay, Twilight, you had no possible way of knowing this would happen. This sector of space never had to deal with such things before."
As Jules cheered Twilight up Echo made his way up to the second story and out the balcony for a better view of the Time Rift. It looked similar to a rift the Doctor's TARDIS had to use to pass through time and space, grey-blue with heavy lightning activity. He smirked, nothing he couldn't handle. Still in his human form he floated up towards the rift. As he approached the rift an orange aura began to surround him. As he entered the rift the aura was layered thickly around him. He disappeared from view into the Time Rift and a loud fiery blast could be heard, and a similarly colored light radiated from the Time Rift. The glow vanished with a fizzle and Echo returned, floating down, back to the balcony. When he touched down, he looked back to where the rift was, it had disappeared, almost as if it had never been there. He walked back inside to see a laughing Twilight and a smug Jules.
"What did I miss?"
"Not much, just a funny story from one of our previous travels."
"Which one? The one with the Scandinavian and the Russian?"
"No, the one with Chuck and the German. You remember that one?"
Echo began to laugh as he remembered the story.
"How could I forget? Do you remember the look on Chuck's face when the German mentioned-"
Echo began to laugh profusely and Jules began to sputter.
"And then- and then when the German asked for another cherry soda. It's just- his face, he was so serious about such a ridiculous thing."
While they shared in the glorious humor they were recollecting from times past, Yveltch, Johnson, & five guards walked into the library.
"Did someone tell a joke and left me out? Shame on you two, I love a good laugh."
Yveltch straightened up and looked to the brothers. They'd finally stopped choking for breath long enough to stand and salute the General.
"I suspect you took care of the rift? It doesn't appear to be plaguing the clouds anymore."
"Yes sir we took care of that. The skies are clear once more."
"Glad to hear that. I suppose I shall take my leave, gentlemen, it's been a pleasure working together once again."
He saluted to the duo then bowed to the violet mare. He pulled out a wrist H.U.D. and activated a teleporting device that beamed the party back to an orbital shuttle, that proceeded to go back to Plumber High-Command HQ. Echo looked to Miss Sparkle.
"Quite the day, you could say?"
"Yes, quite the day. It's almost noon, would you like to stay for lunch, I could invite over my friends and introduce you to them."
Jules and Echo looked to each other and shrugged, then nodded.
"It will be nice to be properly acquainted with the rest of your group."
While they discussed Fluttershy walked into the building. Clearly gripping the brothers different forms better, she walked closer to them. Echo knelled as Fluttershy trotted closer.
"Hello, I don't believe we've been properly introduced."
Echo held his hand out to the timid pony.
"My name is Echo, who might you be?"
Fluttershy looked away, covering her face with her draping hair.
"Oh... I'm..."
Echo couldn't hear, even with his special increased hearing talent, she somehow still managed to speak so quiet, only the atoms directly around her could be witness to her voice.
"Sorry dear, could you speak a little louder. What did you say your name was?"
"My name is Flutter..."
Again, she managed to speak quieter than a fly with a sore throat.
"I'm sorry, Flutter-what?"
Trying to speak gentle as not to scare the fainthearted mare anymore than she already was. She squeaked. Echo giggled a little bit.
"I'm sorry, am I too much? Here, i think I can fix that."
He flashed for an instant, and in his place was now a cute, little, brown mouse.
"Hello, again, my name is Echo, what's your's?"
Echo's voice now sounded of a higher pitch, the kind of voice most people would imagine a mouse would sound like.
"Aw, you're so cute. My name's Fluttershy, it's nice to meet you."
Fluttershy held out a hoof, Echo, still a mouse, used his little mouse paw and shook the hoof. Twilight giggled, and Jules grinned.