//------------------------------// // Homeward Bound // Story: The Outsiders // by Arania //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle had roughly five seconds left to live. She stared at the glowing red numerals as the concept of mortality was forcefully injected into her thoughts, cold, dark tendrils of panic writhing their way onto the floor of her brain as she was made to contemplate the fact that in a few moments, her conscious awareness would be forcefully terminated, and she would cease to exist. Along with every other pony in the city. Mortality is a concept that many a pony struggles with in their lifetime. Most elect to avoid it or ignore it, unable to reconcile their own existence with the inevitability of non-existence. There exist many personifications of the concept of death throughout history; attempts to rationalise or realise some sort of conceivable being to rail against. Griffons visualise it as an otherworldly, ethereal many-headed snake, perpetually earthbound and waiting to snatch any unsuspecting griffon that strayed too low. Zebras view it as a zebra-esque creature with no skin, blackened bones in place of stripes, sneaking into encampments to snatch them away. Ancient pony cultures typically adopted the archetypical Earth Pony image of a skeletal horse accompanied by a floating scythe, come to harvest the dead and dying like wheat. In more modern times, the being most closely associated with death was the Princess of the Night, Luna, given the connection between darkness and death. If there was any actual connection there, though, she certainly wasn’t telling. Some rare ponies however, come to accept death, dedicating their life to their own pursuits, aware and comfortable in the fact that they had a limited amount of time in which to experience the miracle which we call ‘life.’ Four seconds. Of course, there is an extremely rare subset of ponies, rare beyond reason, who take a different path. Ponies to whom the concept of death is viewed not as an inevitability, but an obstacle, a mere annoyance to be swept aside. Some would perceive such a view to be arrogance of the highest order, to sweep death itself aside into the dark of oblivion. Death is the one true certainty of the world, pervasive and unchanging. But then again, that never stopped the Princesses for living over a thousand years, an age that normal ponies consider completely unattainable. Twilight herself had once wondered how Celestia and Luna had managed such a feat of longevity, living ten times longer than even the oldest living non-alicorn. While her subjects withered with age and were turned to dust, they stood unchanged, as regal and as powerful as the day they first set hoof upon the world. Three seconds. It wasn’t enough time. She couldn’t stop it. She didn’t want to die, but then no rational, healthy pony really wants to end their life, to step into the Reaper’s waiting embrace and the void of oblivion. Anger welled deep inside her, wailing against the injustice. Why? Why her? She didn’t deserve to die, surely! “No,” she whispered. Two seconds. “I am not going to die here!” Solutions half-formed in her brain, each dismissed in turn as her analytical mind found the inevitable problems with each and tore them apart. Her earlier attack had left her energy reserves near-depleted, and the Powerstone mounted atop her horn was entirely empty. She couldn’t teleport far enough to be outside of the range of the blast; it was more than likely that it would take out most of Mount Canter with it. All of her solutions required magic, and she didn’t have any magic left. She looked around, assessing everything in sight for its potential magical capability. Her teammates she dismissed immediately as useless, she doubted they knew the spells required to assist her in a group cast, let alone the energy reserves to pull it off. The bomb she similarly dismissed, she didn’t even know what a ‘Thaumonuclear Implosion Assembly’ was, let alone how to pull enough energy from it to escape in the second-and-a-bit she had left. There was nothing left in the room beyond broken masonwork and a giant hammer. A hammer that, now that she was actually paying attention, was heavily enchanted. She didn’t have enough time to fully unravel the full set of enchantments on the weapon, but it stood to reason that at least one of the enchantments was probably Powerstone, or something equivalent enough that supplied thaumic energy in the same way, especially considering the raw power the former-princess Twilight displayed. Of course, if she was wrong, the hammer would be useless and she wouldn’t have enough time to find something else. One second. Her horn ignited, wrapping the hammer in a lavender glow. Simultaneously, she shot a simple directive into her mind. ‘Get us out of here’ The hammer glowed as it dumped its stored energy into the request, a primitive search-and-execute spell running through Twilight’s capabilities before eventually settling on one that had been recently acquired that fit the parameters. A silver-white event horizon slammed closed as the spell executed, enveloping the entirety of Team Fifteen as Twilight punched a hole into the void. A fraction of a second later, the device initiated. ------ RF? Twilight yelped as the spell’s request lanced into her head, the space around her warping to a near-obscene degree as the spell executed, holding a bubble of existence in place against the oblivion of the Void. Her horn itched almost uncontrollably as the seemingly unbounded energy of the nothing-dimension beyond the bubble’s event horizon seeped through, bathing them in the thaumic shadow of a tangible oblivion. “Great. So this is what death is like,” Lyra groaned, her hooves flailing ineffectually as she attempted to gain purchase on nothingness, seemingly oblivious to Twilight’s extreme discomfort. “Floating in a white bubble with you wankers for the rest of eternity. Could be worse.” “You’re not dead,” Twilight corrected, her voice strained from the effort of keeping the spell in check. “Then where are we?” “Somewhere. I don’t know exactly. I think this is the spell your Luna used when she escaped from my homeworld.” “Looks about right,” Walleye said as she drifted past. “Nice save, rookie.” “Still not talking to you, nag.” “Oh buck up, filly.” “Walleye, really not the best idea right now,” Lyra warned. RF? Twilight yelped as the request repeated, threatening her already-tenuous hold over the spell. “Are you okay?” Lyra asked “The spell keeps asking me something. R-F, whatever that means… I just want to go home…” Confirm 1x45EFBA4C-Slateform? “Take me home!” she shrieked. The spell grounded, the reflective inner surface of the bubble’s event horizon falling away, unceremoniously depositing the five floating ponies inside a cramped dormitory room at the Canterlot Royal Academy with a series of pained thumps. “‘For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble?’” Lyra asked incredulously as she pulled herself to her hooves, echoing Walleye’s words from moments earlier. “That’s the best you could come up with?” “Buck Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Twilight said, shaking the detritus of the spell from her mind. “Those are Sundance’s last words to Buck before they go out to face the Bullivians. I remember seeing it as a filly.” “Well, what do you know,” Walleye remarked, surprised. “Common ground. Here I thought you were just another Insider, but it turns out you can fight, and you have good taste in films!” “I never said I liked it.” “So, what, suddenly she’s in your good books because she’s seen some flick and vaporised another Sparkle?” Lyra asked, flippantly. “So much for that ‘I hate all Insiders’ rhetoric.” The hammer twitched slightly in Twilight’s magic as she was reminded of her split-second murder of her doppelganger. “Or is it because she helped you level an entire city?” Lyra continued, turning to Twilight. “Nice work, by the way. You’re off to a fantastic start. Only two days in and already taking out entire cities.” The hammer twitched again, more violently. “I never said I liked her,” Walleye said. “But I’ll admit, she’s proven herself.” “Proven myself a killer, you mean,” Twilight whispered. “Well… yes.” “You thoughtless, greedy, manipulative cow,” Twilight hissed, punctuating each word with a slight twitch of the hammer. “You just killed an entire city, I just killed an entire city. I helped you kill an entire city of innocent ponies! What have you done to me?” “They deserved it,” Walleye replied, simply and calmly. “I would kill a million Insiders for what that tyrant did to Lunatic. Fair price, I say!” “You… monster…” Twilight whispered. “They’re still ponies! Living, breathing, with hopes, dreams, ambitions!” “Well, not any more…” Lyra quipped off-hoofedly. “No, now they’re all dead because of this mare’s massive superiority complex!” “You’re not going to convince me that they didn’t get what they deserve,” Walleye said. “Oh, so all Insiders are worthless scum, then? What about me? Where do I factor into your campaign of hate and bigotry, Derpy?” “Do not call me that,” Walleye growled, her wings fluttering in irritation. “Or what?” Twilight threatened. “Need I remind you that you’re stuck here? It’s not like you can go running back to your Outsider friends like the spoiled foal you are and have them get you your bottle…” Walleye threw herself at Twilight, wings flared and mouth open in a cry of animalistic fury. She didn’t get far, a lavender glow enveloping her and sapping her momentum mere hooflengths from Twilight’s face. “You have already turned me into a mass-murderer today,” Twilight stated, applying pressure to Walleye’s neck with the field. “Give me a reason I shouldn’t add another single, measly death to that count.” “Twilight, stop,” Lyra said, cautiously holding a hoof out towards the hysterical unicorn. “Why are you defending her?” Twilight hissed. “Just pointing out that you might want to put her down before you get hurt…” “Is that a threat?” “Bloody… no,” Lyra said, rubbing her face with a hoof. “There are three ponies here, excluding you and me. Wallie here is all trussed up, and Pinkie’s unconscious, where is number three?” Twilight reacted a split-second too late, turning her head only to see a cyan hoof as it connected with her muzzle, a solid crack echoing through the room as she was sent flying into a wall, dust and powder from the destroyed masonry flooding the room. “ENOUGH!” Twilight screamed, swinging the still-levitating hammer around in a wide arc, slamming into the side of Rainboom’s head with enough force to propel her bodily through the outer wall of the building and clear into the air outside. She groaned as she pulled herself clear of the wall, gingerly walking towards the jagged hole she had just created. Screams echoed up from the paths below as ponies ran from the falling stonework, guards scrambling towards the building and helping the injured away from the area, while others took the opportunity to gawk and point at her as she stood in the hole, hammer floating at her side. A dull thundercrack in the distance pulled her attention upwards, a thin chromatic contrail trailing from the pegasus she had just violently evicted, a luminous ring of color bracketing the trail close to the earth. As she watched, it looped upwards into the sky, gaining altitude before pulling back and aiming back towards Twilight. “Not a smart move, Rainboom,” she remarked, pulling the hammer up, a wry smirk pulling at her lips. “Could say the same about you,” Lyra said. “For somepony who seems to abhor murder, you seem to be awfully eager to indulge yourself.” “She made me a murderer!” Twilight shouted, pointing at Walleye. “She did this to me!” “She must be a stealth alicorn too, then, because I’m pretty sure that hammer that’s about to smack miss supersonic rainbow missile in the face is floating.” “Rainboom kicked me in the face.” “Because you were choking me,” Walleye croaked, rubbing her throat. “Because you turned me into a mass-murderer!” “Well, I suppose it’s all good then,” Lyra sneered. “You’ve already killed so many ponies already, what’s two more deaths going to change…” “Stop!” “No, go ahead. I’m genuinely curious now. You bash Rainboom’s head in, snap Walleye’s neck, then what? Are you going to kill all the Guards that are coming to stop you? Because as it is, that’s what comes next.” “STOP IT!” “Or what? Are you going to kill me too? Great solution. Walleye might be a single-minded soldier with a superiority complex, and Rainboom is loyal to a fault, but you, little unicorn, need to step back and think for a moment. You’re a bloody Sparkle. Act like one.” Twilight stared, speechless. “Or you could kill us, let Pinkie die, and render Derp-face’s prejudices against Insiders perfectly justified.” “I…” Twilight breathed, unable to articulate her tumultuous thoughts. The door exploded, Royal Guard flooding into the room. Twilight caught the barest glimpse of a blue-maned, purple-armored unicorn guard running towards her, horn ignited, before the world went dark.