//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: Perspective // Story: A New Life, or an Old Strife? // by Chrome Masquerade //------------------------------// As I walked through the woods, many thoughts swirled around in my mind. Like, “Is this really my destiny?” “How many ponies can this place support?” “Can we truly beat Discord?” “Are the Mane Six here too?” and “What must I do to help everypony?” I was beyond being confused. I was completely clueless as to the answer to any of those. Flummoxed would be closer to the proper term. I was confused to the point of frustration. Why was I the one chosen? What made me so special? Maybe... “Maybe I should ask myself!” I thought aloud. Stepping to the side I sat down on the pony approximation of a meditation state. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Immediately I saw a manifestation of my spirit before me. “Well, hello there. A rather lovely looking she-devil, if I do say so myself. But since you ARE myself, I suppose it's only to be expected.” “(sigh) I thought I'd made peace with this situation. I'll be honest here. I have no idea where to go from here.” The pony before me gave me a deadpan expression. “You know what you must do already.” “Maybe, but I'm not sure if it's something I... SHOULD do, you know?” “Listen. You want to help others, right?” “Well, yeah...” “And you know that other ponies will be out there, lost and alone, right?” “Well yeah, but-” “AND you know that with our natural aura, they’ll be looking up to YOU, right?” “What's your point?!” I snapped. “My point is that we should be ready to welcome them, to accept them. To BE the leader that they need. My point is that we need to be in this together. My point is that instead of being you and I, we need to be... US.” I thought about it for a moment. Did I really want this? "and for that you need to remember. Just look back." I thought about it and i did remember something. that the rhyme Discord used on me was different from the others. Focusing on that, i started to remember. Discord had just sent my friends away. "No! My friends!" i cried out. "Don't worry." the draconequus said. "you'll be with them soon. I have something special planned for you." So saying, he intoned, "For five score, divided by four To see your homeland nevermore. Your memories removed, your body confused For your insolence you shall pay, Cast off to a new land, far away Though power you'll have, 'twill come at cost. Should you live long enough, the familiar lost! Ever growing the range, ever quickening change Within few years more, the magic and chaos shall soar! So i send you off! let's not be a bore! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!" My mind was blown, but i still wasn't sure. “The world is becoming ponified, you know.” my 'guest' said. “WHAT?” “You heard me. A person's body mass can't just... disappear. That's against the laws of conservation of matter. Maybe Discord didn't intend it to be this way, but when a pony transforms their excess body mass becomes pure magical energy that fills- nay, saturates the air with the stuff. Us especially, as you might recall.” “That... sounds bad.” “No kidding. As more and more of the stuff spreads, more and more people will become ponies or other such creatures. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. By the end of all this, we won't be looking at Earth anymore. We'll be looking at Equis 2.” “Is... there any way to stop it?” I queried. The pony before me bowed her head, eyes closed, ears drooping. “Short answer: No. It WILL happen. It's... just a matter of time.” I looked to the side. This was bad. This was terrible! Teotwawki (The End Of The World As We Know It) was happening right before our eyes and there was nothing anypony could do to stop it. In short, the human race as we know it was bucked nine ways from next Tuesday. “You're right. They need a leader.” I said, standing suddenly. The pony looked up. “If I need to be you to do this, then so be it!” the “air” around us filled with the power of the oath I was about to give. “For the whole of this planet and all sentient creatures upon it, I do pledge myself to this cause! I will help others out there! I will lead them myself if I have to!!!” “That's the spirit! You go, girl!” “And with or without Celestia as my witness I will succeed!!!” “Yeah!” “Even if this means I must give myself for the greater good, to quote a phrase, “sister, you got yourself a deal.”” the two of us brohoofed and- ___________________________________________________________________________________ I awoke. No longer Zenith, but Winter Fields, in earnest. I knew who I was. I knew what I had to do. I wasn't just different. I was... reborn. I felt the power beneath me even more, now. And for some reason wherever I stepped flowers sprouted. I was so energized and happy I did something unexpected. I reared back and... whinnied. Not even noticing at the time I galloped back to the house. ---2 minutes later--- “Hey... do you guys hear that sound?” Caramel said. “Hey, yeah!” Crystal responded, noticing the loud noise coming toward them. They looked down the path and saw me galloping toward them, flowers following behind. “The GL is back!” Whisper exclaimed. “Why are there flowers sprouting up behind her?” queried Thunder, cocking his head slightly. I came to a screeching halt before them and said, “BOY do I have a story to tell YOU guys!” ---One explanation later--- “So... let me get this straight:” Kendo started, after I had finished my story, “ponies all over the world are awakening from this Five Score curse.” “Yup” I affirmed “And while they're being ponified a lot of their body mass becomes ambient magical energy.” “That's right.” “And that in turn ponifies more people.” “Uh huh.” “So... even if we beat Discord, humanity as a whole is screwed over.” “That's about the size of it.” “And since you just now had Whisper send a message to any ponies in the area to come here.... we should prepare for an influx of them.” “That is correct.” “How does one prepare for that?” “Aaaaah, and therein lies the genius...” “How so?” “I figure, a few rudimentary houses (look at all this unused land, here!), some crops, build some furniture.... I figure we've got it made.” “Problem: we don't know the first thing about building.” Caramel spoke up, “True, but at leas' one'a us DOES know 'bout Alchemy. Gather the in-gredients ya need and y'can build a house in seconds." Crystal said, "Aw yeah! We're about to get Fullmetal Alchemist up'n here!” “Great idea!” I commented. “But... that's not possible. That only works on TV.” Kendo argued. I gestured to everypony there in general, “And this is? I think that to function with this you need to let go of a lot of your opinions on what's possible and what isn't.” “You... have a point.” Kendo said, giving up the argument. “That said... Listen up! Whisper Wishes, I want you to get on Equestria Daily, Facebok, Twitter, Tumblr, any site you can and put up an ad for a home for revived ponies.” “On it, GL!” she said. “Kendo Rein, you're with me. We'll knock down some trees and bring them to...”, I turned to- “Caramel Cream, when you have the ingredients, you will stack them and transmute them into houses.” “Understood, honoured matriarch.” she said. “Been working on that have you? PLEASE don't call me that.” “S.I.G., Winter!” she amended. I paused. “You used to watch Captain Scarlet too?” “Yup.” “Huh. Anyway, Crystal Charmer, Thunder Roller. I want you two to search for metal deposits and/or semiprecious gems, since that's part of Crystal's talent. Preferably iron or better. Then, Thunder, you bring them AFAP.” “AFAP?” “As Fast...?” “Okay. On it.” “We all set? Any questions?” Whisper said, “I can't type very well with hooves, y'know.” waving her front hooves for emphasis. I rolled my eyes. “You're a buckin' unicorn. If you can't type using your magic, Use a pencil or somethin'.” “Oh.” “Any other questions? No? Good. You all know your duties.” _____________________________________________________________________ I was with Kendo, knocking over trees. In Equestria an earth pony can buck an apple tree and shake off all the apples. On EARTH, however, one can buck a tree and it will snap. “Another one coming up, Kendo!” i shouted as i bucked another tree. “On it, GL!” He caught it in his hooves and rolled it down the path we'd made for the purpose. He was going back and forth at incredible speeds. He'd make Pinkie Pie proud! He was transporting the things nearly as fast as i could buck 'em! After a while we had enough wood to create several houses. “Now we just need to get the other materials from Thunder and Crystal.” Speak of the devils, here they came, rolling along a huge ball of iron. There was a blue flash as Crystal conjured a magical field like a soccer net. “GOAL!” she shouted triumphantly. A smaller, yellow ball followed shortly. “D!” she finished. It took five straight hours of ““cutting””, searching, and transmuting, but after all of that we had ten houses ready. They all had rudimentary pony-friendly amenities. (Until we could find some porcelain, only crude toilets were possible, however.) Our unicorn hooked each house to a pocket dimension for the purpose of water and electricity, bacteria much like that in the water treatment plants would consume wastes. In all, crude but efficient and relatively clean. You know what they say, “There is no affluence without effluence.” “Phew! Good job, everypony.” I said, wiping off my brow. “We accomplished a lot today!” Thunder commented, “I dunno. They... kind of look like plot, to me.” “Perhaps, but it's plot with silver dollar potential. Now all we need to do is see if the adverts Whisper is putting up pay off. Who knows? Maybe if we're lucky we can have a community here in fairly short order.” My friends all nodded in agreement. “Now,” I said, cloppng my hooves together briefly, “Who's up for some FOOD? This is cause for celebration!” In short order we had a full spread set out. Mixed vegetables, chicken, corn on the cob, ham, salad, and many other delicious things, even more so with our enhanced tastebuds. A great time was had by all. While we ate, Whisper explained the situation online. It turned out that the government was cracking down on pony related articles on Facebook and Twitter, but they were up long enough to get the message out. Other sites like Tumblr and YouTube really didn't care as longh as they got their hits. “And now... all we need to do is wait.” she concluded. “A great job, Whisper.” I said, munching on some corn. “I try, I try.” she replied proudly. “Either way, we all deserve a good rest.” “Agreed.” they all said in unison “Guys?” Whisper said nervously, “There's something that you should see, here.” We gathered around the laptop. “What is this, Whisper?” As she zoomed in she said “Enhancing image 75%” It seemed that there was... something going incredibly quickly. “How fast is that going?” “It's hard to get a reading, but I’d say... impossibly fast.” Suddenly, a mach cone formed around it. It accelerated further! “Now it's bone-crunchingly fast. At least mach 4!” The mach cone became more of a triangle, and then... BOOM! “Rainbow Dash...” Thunder Roller said “What?” “Do you know anypo- anyp- p-” he sighed and continued, “Fine. Anypony else who can do that?” We all looked back at the screen, a full spectrum shockwave spreading from the point that we lost the object. “Checking..... Confirmed. The level of magical energy there, within a 50 mile radius has increased tenfold! And ley lines have increased fivefold! If that isn't the Sonic Rainboom, i don't know what is.” “You made an app for tracking magical energy?” i deadpanned at her. “Yeah?” Whisper said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “As it spreads it might be nice to know how much magical energy is where. Raw magic is white, Evil magic shows up as blood red, dark magic as smoky grey, unicorn and earth pony magic showing up as shades of pink or green, respectively. But that's not the point. The point is that the signature we have here is pegasus magic, the teal colour you see. And the ley lines are raw magic. Raw Equestrian magic, the pearlescent purple you perceive. The populace in that position are put in a perilous predicament; they'll be ponified pretty muchpresently.” Nice alliteration! “How long?” Kendo asked Whisper shrugged. “Soon?” The sound of faces meeting hooves was resounding. “Two days, five days, less than a week, certainly. I don't know.” she amended. “What's worse is that these Equestrian ley lines are extending at an alarming rate.” “Quickly?” Caramel queried. “About 50 clicks per hour.” “That's not so fast.” Thunder Roller said. “Says the pegasus. It means that within ten hours it'll have gone 500 miles. 1200 in a day.” “How far do you think it'll go?” i asked. “As far as the Rainboom's shockwave does, i think.” “Did you catch a signature for the sky blue blur?” Thunder asked. “As a matter of fact, yes. She seems to be going to... Iowa? Muscatine, specifically.” “Where?” “Enhancing image 120%... Well, well. It seems that we aren't the only ones with the idea of starting a pony farm.” We all took a closer look at the screen. “The Mane Six are there, as well as Shining Armor, Cadence and Big Macintosh. And the cutie mark crusaders.” “What's the EMS on there?” I asked. “EMS?” “Equestrian Magic Signature?” I clarified. “Oh, okay. Entirely purple. A massive amount of it.” “Massive?” “Remember the Twinkie analogy from Ghostbusters? Say that a regular size one represents an earth pony foal's signature. The size of a desk, perhaps, for a grown unicorn. An alicorn's signature would be about the size of one of our bedrooms. Well... this would be a Twinkie about the size of this house.” We whistled in unison. “That's one BIG twinkie!” “Indeed. Which means that there must be more than just Cadence and Twilight there. For a signature like this, the whole of the Mane Six would have to be alicorns, at least!” Whisper gasped. “Unless...” “Unless what?” Caramel asked “Unless ponies don't STOP producing magical energy when they're done changing, like we thought.” She turned to me. “Hold on, here.” her horn shone with the familiar blue sheen. She scanned me up and down, then put her horn to the headphone port of the computer. A spark briefly arced between the two. “As i thought. You're not only emitting magic, you're practically sweating the stuff! This changes everything!” Whisper tapped away at the keyboard for a moment. “Let's see... cast of ponies for people to change into.... plus constant magical radiation... plus effects of sonic Rainboom... plus environmental transformation.... oh no.” “Whisper Wishes, what do you see?” She turned to us all, then moved from the computer. On the monitor was: Estimated time to pon-pocalypse: < 7 years. Another clip appeared next to me. “Dun dun duuuuuunn!” said Rainbow Dash dramatically.