//------------------------------// // Recounting // Story: Split Second // by wille179 //------------------------------// Time passed, as it very well tended to do. The two timely sisters fell into a routine of sorts. For Sparkle, little had changed since Twilight's departure, save that she now spent her evenings typing on her new machine rather than spending her Saturday afternoons at Pony Joe's Doughnuts. Twilight inversely found herself quite busy, with her studies, tinkering friends, and the weekly disasters that Ponyville seemed to suffer. After realizing that if they shouted at it, their quantum entangled typewriters would conduct sound across time-space, Twilight refocused her efforts into creating an audio transmitter-receiver that worked under the same principle. However, it was proving to be a task much greater in difficulty than she had anticipated when not using the exact same object in two timelines. The somewhat unexpected clack-clack-clack-ding of the typewriter caught Sparkle's ear. She turned her gaze towards the paper emerging from it. Twi: You'll never guess what I’ve learned. Her horn lit up and depressed the keys in sequence, spelling out her response. Spark: You discovered that Celestia is obsessed with bananas. Twi: What? No. Fluttershy can make dragons cry and my town is full of speciest airheads. Spark: If I didn’t have the paper in front of me, I would have said I miss-heard that first one. Fluttershy? Really? Twi: Yes, apparently. I was there. Spark: Why were you near a crying dragon? Did she hurt Spike? Twi: No, my friends and I had to remove a sleeping red dragon from the mountain cave so we didn’t get buried in smoke. Well, that answered where the smoke cloud in Sparkle's timeline came from. But still... Spark: Why did you all have to go? Why not some Guards? Twi: Because we were close by and quickly contacted. Spark: And untrained civilians with no jobs relating to dragons of the pony-eating size? Twi: Oh... I honestly got too caught up in my task, and when they volunteered to come, I didn’t think anything of it. Spark: The only reason I’m not losing respect for you is because I know you, and I know that’s something I might have done too. My respect for your Celestia has fallen, though. Now what’s with the speciest comment? Twi: There’s a zebra shaman named Zecora who lives in the Everfree Forest. The whole town shut down and the ponies hid when she came in town. Spark: Like ponies still do to me when I go without my makeup? Twi: You’re not that bad. Sparkle didn’t bother to type a reply. It honestly didn’t bother her that much anymore, she told herself. The loneliness was somewhat tiring simply because it was so blatant, but her fearsome reputation had served as a deterrent against... things... to the point that she actively cultivated it at times. If you can’t join ‘em, scare them half to death, she rationalized. Anyway, the girls and I went to investigate and ran afoul with some poison joke. We ended up getting easy treatment from Zecora in the end. Spark: What happened to you? Twi: AJ shrank, RD got her wings inverted, Rarity got too hairy, Fluttershy had a deep stallion’s voice, and I Here, the keys stopped moving. They wiggled, as if Twilight was fiddling with them, but not pressing hard enough on the keys to trigger the movement of the type-bars. After a period of silence, Sparkle typed. What? The response took a minute to come, but when it did... Floppyhorn.Icouldn'tdomagicandIwassoembarrased. Sparkle snickered. Somehow, Twilight had managed to type a rapid mumble of words. It fit right in with Twilight's adorkableness, Sparkle decided. Spark: I'm sorry. She wasn’t sorry at all; floppy horn was hilarious, especially when poison joke was so easily treatable. Sparkle made a note to get some of the weed for her own experiments. Twi: So, what's happening with you? Spark: Oh, Nothing much... "Are you ready to surrender?" the earth stallion asked. She smirked. "Never.“ The events that followed were too horrific to describe, at least for the stallion. To the audience, the mesmerizing illusions simply vanished, but the earth pony combatant's screams were equally satisfying, as were his desperate attempts to buck the brains out of a mare he couldn't find. "Mercy! Mercy!" he eventually called. "I surrender!" Sparkle, nursing a shattered shoulder and fractured rib cage, let the nightmarish visions dissipate. "Winner!" the announcer called. "The mare in orange, mistress of terror, and tonight's underdog, Shimmer, has done it! She's defeated the current champion, Brick." Sparkle, under the pseudonym "Shimmer," limped over to the physically unharmed pony, alias Brick, and stuck out a hoof. "Good match." Still shaky, Brick replied, "Of course, your skull will be mine in our rematch." "Don't count on it, mister." "Your prize," an slightly taller stallion said, stepping up next to Sparkle in the ring. She took the offered bag of bits. Weighing it with her magic, she frowned. "This is less than it should be." "The house took its cut. Is there a problem?" In her state, there would be no way she could take the stallion without blowing her cover or getting this identity expelled permanently from the underground fighting ring if her protests went sour. "No." "Good." "Well, that's interesting." Those words lead many a pony to making discoveries that would change the face of Equestrian life. Almost every major discovery or invention came from happy little accidents. In this case, however, there were no grand inventions, not in the traditional sense anyway. Simply, Sparkle got a pet. A parasprite, to be exact. She knew clearly what they were capable of, since Ponyville was barely standing when she arrived last. Departing with voracious insect in tow, she'd quickly suppressed its appetite and ended up taming it. By lobotomizing it. Without the reproductive drive, the little bug ate only a minuscule portion of what it normally did. It also tended to fly in circles when not going anywhere specific, which Sparkle found odd. What she found interesting were a pair of passages, one from Dread Necroptica: Flesh, the other from Mind. Together, she realized they could be used to create a spell that hijacked the minds of every descendant from the cursed individual. So Sparkle’s very short-lived pet, and all its children, would obey her on an instinctive level, including their sex drive. Not needing to retrain her pet every week would be nice. The ability to make a parasprite swarm on command? Best to keep that a secret.         “BUCKING STAY DEAD ALREADY!” She roared, her magic-encased hoof pounding into the self-repairing skull of a natural zombie. Brain goop splattered across the street, only to collect together and reform into the head of a little filly. These things happened from time to time, and were quite tragic. Abandoned foals that died with hearts empty of all but despair had a chance of coming back. They fed on the pain and misery and loneliness that others exuded, thriving on the very thing that killed them. And pony flesh; they ate a lot of that. Unfortunately, the most sure-fire way of putting them down was to repeatedly smash them while chipping away at the soul magic holding them together. And since very few ponies could recognize what they were compared to your run-of-the-mill zombie, most ponies never survived past the first smashing of the skull. Thus, Sparkle or the Royal Guard had to deal with it. The problem with this was that the foals that were prone to making it, while usually confined to isolated areas, could die anywhere. Including the alleyway next to Sparkle’s building. “What game is this?” The filly asked, for what might have been the hundredth time. “THIS IS ME TRYING TO PUT YOU IN THE GRAVE!” the sweaty, exhausted, aching mare screamed hoarsely. Her barrel spasmed painfully and her shoulder groaned; the magic holding the parts together as they healed strained to accommodate her vigorous zombie-fighting. Meanwhile, the area had been blocked off by the guards, who were busy keeping the civilians away. All but two, that is. “Isn’t that the mare that teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts?” The other, older guard said nothing, though his mouth was moving as if he were. The younger, a lip-reader, saw that he was repeatedly mouthing, “I am not a doll.”         “Sir, you’re freaking me out.”         The senior guard said nothing more, and silently died a little bit on the inside.         After a moment’s thought, and possibly a few internal flashbacks, Sparkle finished typing. Nope. It’s been rather quiet these past few weeks. Twi: Well, that’s good. It doesn’t need to be adventure all the time. Spark: No kidding. Hey, listen. Something’s come up, I’ll talk to you later, ok? Twi: Sure. Tomorrow?         Spark didn’t answer. The incessant pounding at her apartment door was too distracting, and quite odd considering the late hour. “I’m coming, I’m coming. Hold your monkeys.”         She whipped open the door and came face to face with the point of a floating blade, held aloft by the aura of a scarred unicorn who had almost every inch of his head covered in piercings and metal studs. Next to him stood one of the biggest pegasi she had ever seen, with thick muscle coiled under thick, grey fur.  “Uhh... Can I help you, sirs?”         “Necromancer Sparkle, the boss wants to see you.” The serious tone of the muscular thug’s voice told her that nonsense would be met with pain. “Now.”