//------------------------------// // Act II, Scene 4: Damage Assessment // Story: Summer Sun, Dawning Chaos // by CTVulpin //------------------------------// Twilight tossed and turned in her sleep that night, plagued by a twinge in her spine that refused to go away no matter how she adjusted, and her dreams were haunted by disturbing images. She was running, ever running through a dark place that was either a cave or a forest, pursued by red eyes that would appear suddenly from the gloom, accompanied by malicious laughter and gnashing teeth. She was reliving the worst moments of the conflict with Discord, as her friends minds were warped into jerks, liars, and tormentors. She was facing Nightmare Moon again, but one by one her friends were twisted into inequine shapes and faded from sight until she stood alone. She was falling, tumbling through space as the faces of Discord, the Nightmare, Tau’rin, Celestia under the control of a Z’Nai, Zecora as an evil enchantress, Ashen Blaze with his eyes aflame with fury and others flew past and spun around her laughing mockingly. Abruptly, the laughter was replaced with them calling out her name, their voices merging into one tomboyish tone, “Twilight. Twiliiight. Twi- Ugh… WAKE UP!” “Wha-ha-huh?” Twilight jerked into sudden wakefulness and saw a pair of big rose-magenta pony eyes framed by white cloud matter hovering above her face. “Whagh!” she yelped in fright and fell out of her bed to a strangely painful landing on her side. “Geez Rainbow,” she said as she picked herself up, “what’s the big idea? Why’d you drag a cloud into my bedroom?” “I had no choice,” Rainbow said dryly, “I am a cloud.” The complete lack of humor in the pegasus’s voice as she spoke the absurdity made Twilight double-take and rub her eyes before taking a closer look at her friend. Hovering above her bed was a pony-shaped white cloud with eyes and a pair of cyan wings that were spread but flapping too slowly to keep a pony of Dash’s size aloft. Twilight opened her mouth to protest the impossibility, but then closed it and jumped onto her bed to poke Rainbow’s chest with a hoof to prove her point instead. Her leg went into the white mass up to her elbow and all she felt was a cool wetness condensing on her fetlock. “This… this is impossible,” she said as she pulled her hoof back and looked at it in horror. “Yeah, I beg to differ,” Rainbow said flatly, “I woke up merged with my bed, and that after a whole night of nightmares.” One of her eyes raised up slightly as she looked past Twilight’s face and added, “and it looks like I’m not the only pony who had a weird night.” “Huh?” Twilight said in confusion as she looked over her right shoulder, and then gasped and looked over her left to double-check. On her sides were two small, scraggly-looking wings coated in feathers that matched her coat exactly. “Oh no oh no oh no!” she said as she jumped off her bed and ran over to her mirror in a panic. She looked at her reflection and brushed her mane away from her forehead and then heaved a sigh of relief as she saw her horn right where it should be and as healthy as ever. Calming slightly, she picked up her hairbrush in her magic and made short work of her bed-mane, and then noticed that her left wing was unfurled and waving at the mirror. She tried to tuck it back, but all it did was stiffen for a second and then flop down limply. “Any idea what’s happened?” Rainbow asked, floating over. “Not a clue,” the suddenly winged unicorn said, “but I’ll be surprised if you and I are the only ones to…” she trailed off as she turned away from the mirror and her eyes fell on Spike’s basket-bed. The baby dragon appeared to gone through a growth spurt during the night, as he was now nearly twice the length of the basket even before taking his tail into account, and that was presently curled completely around the basket. Oddly, his arms and legs hadn’t seemed to have grown with the rest of his body, and he was sporting a thick green handlebar mustache. Twilight and Rainbow shared a nonplussed glance, and then Twilight levitated her sleeping assistant and checked in and around his bed for anything that didn’t belong. “This isn’t greed-growth,” she concluded in confusion. “Maybe he’s got what we’ve got,” the cloud-pony suggested. “That would be a logical hypothesis,” Twilight said as she set Spike down on the floor, “but if it affects ponies and dragons, I’m scared to find out what it is.” “Uhhn,” Spike moaned, waking up, “Keep it down Twi. S’too early…” He blinked in bleary confusion as he discovered his arms were now too short to reach up and rub his eyes. He attempted to sit up and only managed to flop onto his back. “What’s going on?” he exclaimed, looking around, “Why do you have wings Twilight? Why is Rainbow Dash wearing a cloud? And do I have a mustache?” He rolled onto his front and crawled over to look at himself in the mirror. “Hm,” he said appraisingly, “Green. That doesn’t look half-bad actually. Kinda wish my arms and legs had gotten the memo; I look like a snake.” “I’d say you look more like that sea serpent with the mustache we met while trying to stop Nightmare Moon,” Rainbow Dash said, “You’d still need longer arms though…” Spike turned his head to shoot back a reply, but then his face screwed up in pain and his body stretched out another few inches and his snout elongated. “Are you ok?” Twilight asked worriedly. “I’ll live, I think,” the dragon replied. Any further conversation was cut off by a hard pounding on the front door. Twilight headed for the stairs and missed the third step when her wings suddenly decided to try and lift her, sending her somersaulting down to the ground floor instead. Ignoring the laughter from Rainbow Dash, she picked herself up, shook herself out, and trotted to the door, which was still being insistently knocked upon. Twilight magiced the door open and gave an involuntary cry of fright when she saw what was on her doorstep: a creature that looked like a cross between an oversized white rabbit and a short gorilla, standing half her height with long, thick-muscled arms that ended in bunny paws and relatively shorter rear legs. On a second glance, Twilight recognized the creature’s face. “Angel Bunny?” “Whoa,” Dash said as she floated up behind Twilight. The rabbit paid no mind to the cloud-pony and began gesticulating ponderously with his oversized arms, waving one in the direction of Fluttershy’s home. “Is Fluttershy in trouble?” Twilight asked. Angel nodded vigorously, looking pleased that his message had gotten through so quickly, and then grabbed the lavender unicorn by the leg and started dragging her off. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” Twilight assured, pulling her hoof free. “Spike,” she called over her shoulder, “hold down the fort and try not to outgrow the place.” Up in the bedroom, Spike rolled his eyes and muttered, “Yeah, yeah. Not like I can go anywhere with legs like these…” As Twilight galloped through town in Angel’s wake and Rainbow flew behind her, Ponyville was beginning to awaken and discover that business as usual was not on the agenda for the day. The pegasus-turned-winged-cloud began to waver as screams of panic and confusion were raised in what seemed to be every third or fourth house as the inhabitants discovered changes, additions, subtractions, and Celestia-knows what else about themselves in the mirror. She kept herself focused on following the buffed-up bunny, concerned about Fluttershy and telling herself that she enough troubles at the moment without learning about every single transformation that had taken place during the night. This is almost like poison joak, she thought to herself, except I know I never touched any yesterday, and turning me into a cloud is way beyond- “Bonaaanzaaaa!” Rainbow looked in the direction of the sudden shout to see a grey and blonde pegasus approaching through the air at high speeds and barely in control of her own flight path. “Derpy!” Rainbow cried in alarm and frustration. After taking a second to consider, she threw herself into the pegasus’s way, using her cloud body to bring her to a quick but cushioned stop and then brought her down to the ground. “Are you ok Ditzy?” Twilight asked, stopping to check on the mail-mare despite Angel’s impatient protests. “Muffins,” Ditzy Doo said dizzily, her bright yellow eyes rolling around in her head, “I saucer barren, twinkle.” She shook her head and tried to get to her feet, wobbling unsteadily. Her eyes were still spinning as she looked pleadingly at Twilight and said, “Kumquat, winky platen balance juice!” “What?” Rainbow said, confused, “Talk normal.” “Yo toph bell minimal,” the grey pegasus said insistently, eyes still spinning like mad, “Winky no muffin!” “Ditzy,” Twilight said calmly, “We don’t understand a word you’re saying.” She flinched as Angel gave her a none-to-gentle poke in the side, shot a glance at the muscled rabbit, and then looked back to Ditzy and said, “Sorry, but we’ve got to go. Why don’t you go just go home and hunker down until we figure out what’s going on.” Ditzy brightened up and nodded, starting to spread her wings until Rainbow tried to press them closed, her cloudy legs bending eerily around the feathers. “Agh, not cool,” Rainbow said, pulling away, “Anyway, you might wanna just walk, and maybe see the doctor about those eyes…” She didn’t notice when Twilight tried to give her a disapproving jab in the side and just ended up with a slightly damp leg. “Gulag mono froze pinchy,” Ditzy said as she staggered off. Twilight prepared to lecture Rainbow about the eye comment, but was cut off when Angel, finally fed up with waiting, wrapped one thick arm around the unicorn’s neck and started dragging her down the street. “All right, all right, I’m coming,” Twilight groused, freeing her head from Angel’s grip, “Fluttershy’s not the only pony with problems today you know.” Angel just gave her a flat stare and continued loping along. “Oh, I hate to think what could have happened to her to make her unable to come to us herself,” Twilight said with a shudder as she followed Angel. Her wings continued to quiver long after she stopped and then suddenly flared out stiffly to either side. “It might not be so bad,” Rainbow said, trying to sound casual, “She might just be too occupied with accounting for all her animals. Or something. Let’s pick up the pace.” She flapped her wings faster, finding it strangely harder to accelerate now that she was mostly water vapor, but soon pulled ahead of Twilight and Angel, the latter of which seemed to have already reached his top speed. After getting a couple blocks ahead, Rainbow pulled up short as she caught a flash of magenta and bubblegum pink out of the corner of her eye accompanied by the sound of Pinkie Pie calling her name. She looked around, eyes narrowed in confusion as she failed to catch sight of the speaker. “Something wrong?” Twilight asked as she and Angel caught up. “I just thought I heard Pinkie,” the cloud-pony said, shaking her head, “It was probably just my imagination though. I hope. Come on.” She aimed her nose toward Fluttershy’s cottage and started regaining her forward momentum. They soon reached the cottage, and even without Angel’s anxious pointing and hopping it was immediately obvious that something very strange had happened. Rabbits, squirrels, songbirds, and badgers with disproportionately long or thick limbs were hard at work tearing a hole in the cottage’ sod roof. Other animals of more normal proportion were moving between the diggers to pull what looked like long pink willow fronds out of the hole and lay them across roof. Angel allowed for a few seconds for Twilight to take in the scene before giving her a light push that sent her stumbling toward the door. As she regained her balance, her tiny wings decided to try and fly again, buzzing like a hummingbird’s as they forcibly arched her back. After trying to take a few steps like this, Twilight got fed up and conjured up a rope to tie the autonomous appendages against her side. The wings fought back, slapping at the rope ends and wiggling out from under the bindings before Twilight could pull them tight. She ultimately had to have Angel pin the wings to her side with his oversized paws until she could get enough snug loops around herself to finish the job. Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash had drifted to the front door and looked inside. The main room was a mess of broken critter houses and furniture and four thick yellow roots poked down through the ceiling to the left of the doorway, ending just above Dash’s head and covered with hair-thin rootlets that reached almost to the floor. “This better not mean what I think it does,” she said in a low tone. “What do you… oh,” Twilight said as she came over and looked inside for herself. She gave the roots a confused frown and then entered the cottage, heading straight for the stairs. “Fluttershy! Are you ok?” she called out as she crossed the room. There was no answer; the only sounds were her hooves on the floor and the scraping of the animals digging out the roof. With Rainbow Dash on her tail, Twilight ran upstairs and burst into Fluttershy’s bedroom and then came to a sudden, gasping halt. “F-fluttershy…” she stammered weakly, “she…” “She’s a tree!” Rainbow exclaimed, “I knew it! This is crazy!” Standing beside Fluttershy’s bed was a butter-yellow willow tree about one and half pony-heights tall with pink branches and leaves, several of which were now reaching up and out of the hole being torn out of the roof above it. The base of the trunk was shaped like four pony legs held together, and at head height facing the window was a head-sized knob of wood, and as Twilight and Rainbow walked around to look at, they saw Fluttershy’s fear-filled teal eyes staring out from it. “Fluttershy, can you hear me?” Twilight asked, laying a hoof gently on the trunk. The eyes widened and looked down slightly, focusing on the lavender unicorn. “That’s right, I’m here,” Twilight said soothingly, “everything’s going to be ok. I just need time to figure out what happened. Can you tell me anything about last night?” “Twilight, she’s a tree,” Rainbow said flatly, “trees can’t talk.” “Well you’re a cloud, and you can talk just fine,” the unicorn shot back, “and without a discernable mouth at that.” “That’s…” the cloud pony paused in thought and then threw up her front legs in defeat, saying, “Forget it. This is making my brain hurt. Or whatever’s passing for my brain at the moment… gah!” “Don’t hurt yourself Rainbow,” Twilight said dryly and then turned her attention back to Fluttershy, who was looking at the frustrated winged cloud with astonishment. “Fluttershy,” Twilight said, “can you blink or something to let me know you can hear me?” The teal eyes blinked and Twilight gave a relieved sigh. “Ok, that makes things easier,” she said, “blink once for yes and twice for no, ok?” Fluttershy blinked. “Do you have any idea whatsoever about how this happened?” Two blinks. “Did you wake up like this?” Two blinks. “Curious… Did you feel strange when you woke up?” Blink. “Ok, then would I be right in guessing you suddenly erupted into growth once your hooves touched the floor?” There was a long pause, and then a single blink. “Close enough then,” Twilight said with a dismissive wave. She looked up at the roof for a moment and then asked, “Your friends are trying to make sure you get enough sunlight, aren’t they?” Blink. “Ok, that’s good, but it might be better to get you into some real soil so your roots don’t dehydrate.” “How are we going to do that?” Rainbow asked, her confusion also reflected in Fluttershy’s eyes. “Well,” Twilight said, looking out the window, “the fact that I have tiny wings with minds of their own doesn’t seem to have affected my magic any. I should be able to levitate Fluttershy and plant her out in the yard. But then there’s the problem of actually getting her outside…” She bit her lip as she looked around and thought, and then finally sighed and gave the yellow tree-pony an apologetic look. “I’ll pay for the repairs,” she said, and then looked up at the roof and shouted, “Everypony clear the area! The roof is coming down!” Several rodent faces peered down the hole curiously as Twilight’s horn began to glow, and then promptly scattered as a spider web of magenta-glowing cracks began to spread from the hole and across the roof and outer wall of the bedroom. Rainbow stuck around for a few moments longer, but when the ominous cracking of wood and plaster began she decided to take shelter downstairs. With a cry of effort from Twilight, the wall and roof exploded outward, the detritus hanging suspended in her magic for a few moments before trickling down into a pile by the side of the house. Cutting off the magic for a second, Twilight caught her breath and then teleported down into the yard. Wrapping Flutter-tree in a sheath of telekinetic magic, she broke the section of floor the tree was rooted in away from the rest and floated her out of the ruined bedroom and down toward the ground. As she did so, Twilight diverted some of her magic to digging a hole in the dirt and then settled Flutter-tree into it, carefully spreading her roots out as she gradually returned the dirt to the hole, adding some water from the nearby stream. While it wasn’t nearly as taxing as soothing an upset Ursa Minor back to sleep, by the time she was finished Twilight felt quite light-headed. “How does that feel?” she asked, “Do you think you’ll be ok for a while?” Fluttershy’s eyes slowly rolled left and right for a moment as she thought, and then she focused on Twilight and blinked once. Her eyes were brimming with grateful, and literally sappy, tears. Twilight smiled, gave the tree an encouraging pat, and then started to walk around her to go find Rainbow Dash, only to be startled by a voice behind her. “Well, doesn’t that just beat all.”