//------------------------------// // The Stopwatch Starts // Story: The Game of Shadows // by Zytharros //------------------------------// The Stopwatch Starts I awoke suddenly to a loud crash! Bolting out of bed, I saw Derpy had managed to crash through her bed, the mattress popping a couple springs. She looked at me wide-eyed and blushed. I sighed out of relief. “I thought something bad had happened to you.” “No, just me being… well, me,” she said, a little saddened. “I just don’t know what went wrong.” I chuckled, slowly slipping into a morning fog of tiredness. “I guess you’re passionate about your bouncing.” “I love the fun it gives me,” she said, subconsciously flapping her wings and smiling. She steadily began to gain air, then gained speed. “Derpy, watch your head,” I warned… just as Derpy whacked the back of her head on the ceiling. She collapsed back onto the broken bed, rubbing the top of her head and wincing. I didn’t know whether to smirk or feel sorry for her, so instead I simply helped her out of the wreckage of bed without a word. We sauntered down to the dining hall where we ate breakfast. Derpy made a complete mess of her side of the table, going through two plates of food and dropping half of everything onto the ground. I finished my plate with only a couple things dropping onto the table. Derpy spilled three different drinks. I finished two full glasses of milk. Yup… definitely a catastrophic klutz, I thought as we ate. She truly, honestly tries, though. After breakfast, Derpy and I decided to get an early start on research. I asked her to get a couple books down from the shelf, getting her to look for anything relating to Crystal Fist, Tangerine Hopes, or dimensional travel. The library at Canterlot had a lot on Tangerine, but very little on Crystal. This library seemed to have a lot on dimensional travel and its effects on a pony, but nothing specific on either of our foes from my last excursion. I dug into those books while Derpy kept searching for more, spilling two entire shelves of books in the process. At around noon, our lunch was brought to us by the cook, who came and took the plates away once we were done. It was nice to just read and eat without thinking about going to get lunch for myself. Derpy and I bantered over the contents of the books we had read to that point, holding a conversation that, while not as engaging as ones with Twilight, was sufficient enough to engross me and keep me tied up. A couple hours after lunch, I settled back, finishing my skim-through of a particularly large tome by Starswirl the Bearded about nanoparticles and magic’s ability to assemble random objects in thin air, and rubbed my eyes. I would have to bring this home to Ponyvlle and show Twilight when we had saved her, but for now I thought it would be good to take a break. “Hey! What about this one?” Derpy called from an obscure corner of the stuffy library. Flying over, she held a simple, brown-covered book with a generic black Earth pony silhouette on it. We cracked open the book to the title page… “Crystal Fist: The Being Between Dimensions, by Tangerine Hopes,” Derpy read. “Celestia didn’t have this book in Canterlot,” I recalled. I decided one more before a break wouldn’t hurt. We flipped open the book. The first chapter was obviously written from before her descent into madness. It detailed Tangerine’s tales into a village of Dimensians, a race given the extraordinary task of keeping the fabric of dimensions properly spaced. It suggested a measurement of less than two-thirds of a nanometer each for the Five Walls separating completely disconnected worlds, and even smaller to absent measurements for specific walls within those that were media-connected. The second chapter detailed her first meeting with the Dimensian princess Crystal Fist, the perfect duplicate to Princess Celestia between the dimensions, albeit with a few more psychotic tendencies like a desire to force takeover of others’ bodies. She swapped forms twice during her visit, but called it a “psychological disorder” and convinced Tangerine she was of no threat. The third chapter dealt with the physiology of Dimensians, differentiating them from Changelings, but with the realization that they were at one point a singular race with both powers that had optimized itself over time into two. The evidence was in the absence of a horn for Dimensians. The next several chapters detailed in Twilight-esque great lengths how Tangerine’s psychology was slowly, delicately, and carefully disassembled by her host, even as she was enthralled with the spectacle and grandeur of the Princess. All the while, Tangerine kept her denial of the events up, though, by the timeline given by her other books, she also continued to chronicle all her other adventures. She attended several festivals, documenting three Equestrian years in the village by marking each birth date with a party in her honour, but passing over hundreds of thousands of years of world history in about ten thousand words. The tenth chapter was blank, except for four lines. “She’s in my brain… The life inside is breaking up…” A gnawing at the back of my mind left me unable to focus enough to read the last two. Derpy looked at me, concerned. “Are you okay, Zytharros?” she asked. I walked in circles for a little bit, collecting my temporarily-shattered mind. The headache passed. I gave a concerned glance at the soft, gray mare, frowning in thought. “I… I don’t know for sure… I think I’m fine… for now…” Derpy nodded nervously. “Okay. Remember, I’m here to help.” She may be the only thing to keep you sane, a voice suddenly spoke, erupting into my head. It faded away into oblivion. My eyes registered shock. Derpy shied back a little at the sudden change in demeanor. She was in my mind. Her seed was sown. I needed to know something, and it was a need to know now, not later. I frowned and looked at Derpy. “Will you stand by me and even kill me if it is to save Equestria?” “I-” she started. She was stunned. “I need an answer,” I demanded, slight panic showing in my voice. “I’m sorry to put this on you, but if I lose it, I don’t want you knowing me as your enemy… ever. Will you kill me if I lose my mind?” I shed a couple tears as I felt… something… creeping around in my mind. I knew I would not make it sanely… this time… without Derpy, though to which end of insanity I would go was still up in the air. She still hesitated, absolutely refusing to believe what she was hearing. I sighed. “Derpy, just now, Crystal Fist came to me in my mind. She left behind a shard of herself that will slowly deteriorate my control. I need your help to rescue our friends, but I also need to know if you can carry the burden alone if necessary. One of those burdens, as morbid as it may be, may be finishing me off.” Derpy swallowed. She scrunched her mouth, trying to decide whether to run or not. I could see her wavering as a front hoof steadily rose up, her one good eye racing around, trying to make a decision she had never made before. Eventually, though, she settled her hoof on the ground. She acknowledged her fear. “I don’t want to lose you like that…” she said solemnly. “But if I have to, I will.” I pointed a hoof at her. “Pinkie promise.” Derpy swallowed again. She tried to raise a hoof to complete the promise, but slowly lowered the hoof to the earth in shame. “I… I can’t do it…” Derpy admitted quietly, a tear leaking from her bad eye. “I won’t. I won’t kill.” I snorted in disappointment, then, seeing her shamed self in clear agony, sighed. “Derpy…” I approached her, holding her shoulders with my wings. We stared at each other for a bit before embracing in a hug. “I understand,” I said. “I value life like you do, almost exclusively to anything else. Believe me when I say I don’t ask that question without a heavy heart of my own… I would rather not place that kind of burden on anyone, but unfortunately our enemy has placed that… that nasty decision before us.” I felt Derpy sob. She spoke very softly: “I’m sorry… I’m not sure if I’m reliable enough to do this.” My heart melted again. “It’s okay… Our answer will come in time.” As we continued hugging, a second song came to my head, a silent prayer to my Hero, in the words of Skillet, one of my favourite bands… modified slightly to suit the situation Save us from our rage and our humanity!! We’re more nothing than being… is this our legacy?? Feel it eating us away... I shed a tear onto that blonde mane as she wrapped her forelegs around me, hugging me tightly as she quivered in fear…