//------------------------------// // Wish you were here- Crystal Empire // Story: Screw the rules we're on a road trip. // by Ssendam the Masked //------------------------------// Tobi's P.O.V, present day Yoshimitsu turned to me as we drove through the narrow streets at high speeds. "I blame you for this disaster, you know." I glared at him. "MY fault? You were the one who told Saber to, and I quote, 'hit it until it stops doing whatever.' Not me!" "Well, you were the one who summoned her!" I pulled out my camera and snapped a couple of pictures. "I swear, if we manage to get out of this alive, I will send Celestia a letter about this!" I pulled out some pieces of paper. "Right, let's get this on..." Yoshimitsu swore and swerved his car, barely missing some street urchins and instead driving on the walls. The crystal guards behind us seemed to be pretty angry with us. Maybe it was our general lack of morals and stuff? Whatever. I hmmed and tried to write a decent letter. Dear Celestia, wish you were here in the Crystal Empire! It turns out that we, accidentally, by proxy, managed to destroy something called a 'Crystal Heart.' It couldn't have been all that good if we could break it by a proxy. Then again, our 'proxy' was obscenely powerful. Also, she was a woman, which was nice. "GET BACK HERE, YOU CRIMINAL SCUM!" Your niece is nice and well-mannered, by the way. As is your, uh... I turned to Yoshimitsu-sempai. "Sempai, what's the term for when your niece gets married? What would that be in relation to the family?" Yoshimitsu-sempai hmmed neutrally. "Well, uh... nephew-in-law? I don't know!" He pushed his head out to look at some crystal pones. "GET OUT THE WAY!" They complied, needless to say. At the speed we were going and with our huge snowplow on the front, we looked quite intimidating, dashing through the narrow streets of this Crystal Empire. Your nephew in law is really poilte and stuff as well. Also, is he really Purple Smart's brother? That shit be crazy. Anyway, the Crystal Empire's kind of nice- we saved it by proxy like the good Samaritans we are, and we just HAPPENED to destroy this supposedly important thingy. Can't have been all that important if it broke that easily. I turned to Yoshimitsu-sempai eagerly. He had the soapstone chunk that we would have given to Saber and was staring at it intently. "Um, sempai?" Yoshimitsu's P.O.V I stared at the soapstone chunk. What I was about to do was obscenely stupid, even for us, and could possibly kill me. And yet... and yet... and yet, the risks were definitely worth the reward. "Tobi, I have an idea. It's so insane, it has to work." "What is it?" I grinned and held the chunk up. "I'm going to eat this bit of soapstone." Tobi's eye popped a bit. "Why on Earth would you do that?" I explained my rationale. "Well, we have chakra, right? Then we must also be subject to the dreaded... Plot no Jutsu." I absent-mindedly swerved us around a corner and down some stairs. "S-s-s-s-s-s-o-o-o-o-o, I-I-I ttthhhhi-i-i-i-n-n-n-k-k-k th-a-a-a-a-a-t-" We hit the ground and continued unmolested. "So I think that if I eat this, then I will gain soapstone powers." If Madara Mary Sue Uchiha can stitch genetic material from Hashirama into his wounds and gain wood release, then why shouldn't I be able to eat this stone and gain the power? Tobi just stared at me. "That is literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard, sempai." I grinned. "Exactly. It is so stupid that it can't not work." I lifted it to my mouth, paused, then pulled out a bottle of vodka. "To wash it down," I explained. Tobi stared at me. "You're a crazy, crazy man if you think that's going to-" Without further ado, I popped the soapstone in my mouth and got to chewing. "-oh my god, you actually did it. You actually ate it." There was a pause, during which Tobi took the wheel and steered us clear of a rather large wall and through a secret gate. "So, what's it like?" I chewed contemplatively. "It's kind of chewy. And crunchy at the same time. Chewy-crunchy." I swallowed it and took a shot of vodka to aid its downwards descent. Tobi facepalmed. "Sempai, that is really, really stu-" It was aat this point that my genius plan really took ahold. My eyes tingled and then sort of burst into fire, or so I thought. As the lightshow went through my eyes, one thing came to mind: Fucking multiverse, how does it work? And like that, I was shown. For one second, everything the multiverse had to offer flashed through my mind. I winced, my prior insanity cushioning the blow just enough so that it was bearable, and then it was over. I sagged in my seat. "Sempai? Sempai, are you alright?" I looked at Tobi. Good old Tobi, looking after his friend. I looked around. "Where are we?" "Underneath the Crystal Empire. When you sort of went crazy and spazzing out, I pulled us beneath the soil and burrowed towards a storeroom. You've been out of it for a while." I nodded. "I know, the multiverse can do that to a guy." Tobi looked at me. "Wait, hold up. You saw the whole multiverse? As in, you saw it all?" I nodded, and Tobi sighed. "Damn, sempai, that's crazy." He paused, looking at my eyes. "By the way, you seem to have picked up two Byakugan. Probably really stupid, the weakest eyes in Naruto. Can't even do half the cool shit." My hands flew to my eyes, poking them. "Wait, really? Shit. I was hoping for Rinnegan personally." Don't judge, a Rinnegan would have been a tremendous help to us. Tobi waggled a finger at me. "A, I'm the one who is likely to get the Rinnegan, you know. Senju DNA and a Sharingan." That was very true; still, Tobi with a Rinnegan would be freaking terrifying. Still, at least I didn't have a third eye in my forehead. "That's kind of cool though. I have X-ray vision now." I tapped my fingers together and focused. "Byakugan!" I couldn't do it. Tobi winced at that and started explaining to me. "Yeah, about that. You, well, kind of suffered from a bit of chakra exhaustion. Had to get some food down your gullet so that you didn't fall completely asleep." I winced; good thing I wasn't out of it for a week then. "Right, hand me some food so that I can recover my strength. I really want to try this out." With that, I forced myself to stand and accepted a donut.Taking a large bite and savouring its sugary flavour, I walked forwards with Tobi trailing behind. Wherever we were, we were likely to find something that would interest us or at least be worthy of our vague ignorance. It might be a bit medieval for our tastes, but now we could do what we wanted, which was mainly to explore unmolested by the guards or the Princess. Or the Elements of Butthurt. We wandered through, feeling for the magic of the ponies above. We didn't really feel them anywhere near us, so Tobi had really hidden us well. One thing we were sensing though was a faint energy signature. Like, really faint. Barely there, but still noticeable. We homed in on it and we had to go up several levels. We were almost discovered a couple of times, but then we just applied a henge- me being green crystal pony and Tobi going orange. We eventually arrived at a rather large podium, covered in a rather strange, sparkly blue dust. I turned off the Henge and trailed my fingers through the stuff. "I'm guessing that this is the Crystal Heart." Tobi nodded. "Yep, only thing it can be." I paused. "I think that we should try and get this thing repaired." Call me crazy, but I think that might be for the best. Tobi just nodded. "Best plan ever." He pulled out a large sack and a broom and started the tedious task of sweeping the dust in. I guarded the door to the room, but I didn't really need to guard it. Tobi finished sweeping it all up. "Done." He looked at me and grinned. "It really did look a bit like crystal meth, eh?" I rolled my head. "Given that it came from the CRYSTAL Heart, I think it might have just been a drug thing." "A drug thing of crystal meth in the thousand year past? That sounds both terrifying and awesome." I hopped about on one leg. "Indeed! No wonder they thought it was important!" Tobi's soapstone fell out of his pocket. He bent down to pick it up. "Ah, I'll just put this back and-" It was at this point that several rather improbable events happened. The first was that Tobi's mask fell off for the first time in one thousand and fifty years. The second was that a rather large magical explosion occurred on the opposite wall, allowing the alicorn princess to come in. The third was that the soapstone released a small cloud of grit on that explosion, getting into Tobi's unprotected eye. Truly, a combination of unexpected and unfortunate events. The result? Tobi screamed and tried to rub the grain out of his eye while putting his mask back on as quickly as he could, the pink alicorn to look at the sack and the clean room and put two and two together, and me being forced to retaliate. "Wind Release: Cyclone!" I spun around with my sword, creating a large cyclone to sweep the love alicorn up and take her far away from here. As soon as she saw it she tried to get to us. "Oh no you don, Yoshimitsu! Don't you dare cause more destruction than you've already made!" She tried to tackle me, but I sidestepped her and threw her into the cyclone that was still raging. She put up an admirable struggle. "Where do you think you're taking the remains of the Crystal Heart?" She shouted. I looked at her vague direction. "To be repaired, of course." And with that, we'd caused a bit more destruction that we'd cared to make. I looked at Tobi, who was panting on his hands and knees. "Tobi, you alright?" Tobi looked at me. His eye, thankfully, had not transformed into a Rinnegan, just an ordinary Mangekyo Sharingan. ONly this time, it seemed a bit... different. The main design now had an additional, slightly smaller spike on the other side, making it a little bit more complicated. "I'm good, but I think I have the secret figured out." I looked at him cautiously. "What secret?" Tobi grinned maniacally. "Well, you know how soapstone allows one to travel the multiverse?" "Yeah?" Tobi thumbed me up. "I've figured out how to travel with Kamui." I paused. "Dude, that's awesome! So we have a way home then?" Tobi shook his head. "Alas, not really. We don't really have the necessary way back home for something like that. But we can travel to other Equestrias like a pair of absolute ballers now!" I nodded. "Get the car, we're going on an even bigger roadtrip now." ...so, after we did that, we got our car and have now driven off to parts unknown. Wish you were here in the Crystal Empire! Celestia sighed, massaging her forehead. "Oh god. I have such a headache right now."