//------------------------------// // Outward Bound // Story: The Outsiders // by Arania //------------------------------// Twilight sat there, staring blankly at the now-cool blue crystal in the centre of the table, her ears downswept and expression blank. Around her, the members of Team Fifteen, plus Shining Armor, continued to bicker and argue, debating the veracity of Twilight’s report of the crystal’s contents. Since it was allegedly coded only for her receipt, none of the others could use it to confirm or deny her tale, producing divisive opinion. Well, divisive opinion among two of them, at least. Lyra was currently leading the charge in Twilight’s defense, while Walleye, unsurprisingly, was taking advantage of Twilight’s unreactive melancholic state to slander her tale. Rainboom and Pinkie were staying largely silent, and Shining, who had retrieved the five from the Royal Dungeon at Twilight’s behest and brought them all to a disused meeting room at the palace, was content to sit back and observe with a bemused grin, interjecting only when the argument got unacceptably heated or violent. All of this was background noise for Twilight, though. As far as she was concerned, none of this was her concern. The only reason she was even at this ‘meeting’ was because her brother had insisted upon it. “I’m not your messenger,” he had said. “I’ll go get them from the dungeons if you’ll attest to the fact that they’re not a threat, but I’m not relaying your story to them.” If she had had her own way, she would have been in her childhood bedroom, buried under hooflengths of sheeting and blankets, intent on pointedly ignoring the world as her entire inner world self-destructed, torn apart by her steadily-worsening existential crisis. As it was, she was forced to suffer through it in public, not that anyone seemed to be noticing. “Twilight! Pay attention!” She lifted her head, glaring back at Walleye. “What?” she spat. “Don’t you have anything to say?” “About what, exactly?” she asked, lethargically pulling herself into something approximating a sitting posture. “Aren’t you still arguing about if you think i’m full of horseapples or not?” “Actually,” Lyra interrupted, “Walleye here was wondering if Celestia’s message to you gave any indication of where we should start looking, since our options at the moment are either ‘storm the Exterior’...” “Which would be utter suicide,” Rainboom pointed out. “Or we sit on our rumps and wait for an opportunity to quite literally fall onto our backs.” “Well, if you think about it,” Pinkie piped up. “The crystal being sent by Alpha kinda is the opportunity falling onto our backs, ‘cause think about it, beforehand we didn’t know what was going on, what with our beacons being broken, and no idea what was going on on the Exterior, and no way to get home, so Pinks sent us the message as our opportunity since we’d be pretty buck-” “Yes, thank you Pinkie.” If anything, after her injury, Pinkie had become even more of an enthusiastic motormouth, continuing to talk even as Lyra held her mouth shut with magic. “No,” Twilight replied flatly. “There wasn’t anything else. Just that there were ponies aboard the Exterior, killing everypony else, and that I was somehow supposed to find out who they are and stop them before something happens.” “‘Something’?” “It was vague.” “Fantastic!” Walleye shouted, slamming her hoof onto the table. “We have practically nothing to go on here. We don’t know who they are, where they’re from, or why they’re on the Exterior. Without some more details, we’re stuck.” “Well isn’t Twilight’s description of them a clue in itself?” Rainboom asked, weathering Walleye’s answering glare. “No. They’re wearing Outsider combat gear. Which makes no sense. I could buy, say, a Bureau world having one or two incomplete sets of Outsider gear from stuff that we were unable to recover over thousands of years of operations, but not hundreds of full sets. Unless whoever is attacking was also sneaking sets of gear out of our own armory for months before the attack—which would have been noticed, by the way—they are making it themselves, and producing it requires equipment that can’t be found off the Exterior.” “Bureau?” Lyra asked, confused. “What’s a Bureau?” “Worlds with inter-world transport capability,” Twilight answered. “Apparently, most worlds tend to consolidate their research and deployment of such capability into a single agency, thus the name ‘Bureau’.” “Well, it sounds like you’ve got a bit of a civil war on your hands,” Shining said, quite clearly amused. “Outsider-on-Outsider fighting.” “Not that we asked you, Insider, but that doesn’t make any sense either. The only other pony on the Exterior with the influence and ponypower to pull this kind of thing off would be Solaris, and with all due respect for the stallion, he’s not subtle enough for it. If it was him, it would be far more obvious, and more importantly, our beacons would still work.” “So… you have no idea.” “None whatsoever.” “You know, given your history in this Equestria, I’m a bit disappointed. What with all your previous cloak-and-dagger work, I was expecting something more… impressive.” “Oh, shove it, Insider.” “I was expecting more professionalism, too. I’ve had Guard recruits straight out of boot camp who were better-presented than you lot!” “Give me a break! Of the five of us, only two are actually Operations ponies,” she cried, pointing at each of them in turn. “Pinkie is an analyst, Twilight literally only learned about all this a few days ago and has no training whatsoever, and Lyra has spent more of her life off the Exterior than on it.” Her hoof lingered on Lyra, who appeared distracted. “And, to boot, has appropriated the lazy-distracted mantle from Twilight.” “...idea,” Lyra mumbled. “Care to repeat that for the class?” Walleye prompted. “I have an idea,” Lyra obliged. “It just occured to me. Twilight, you said that the attackers were using Outsider gear, right?” “Yes,” Twilight replied. “And that crystal answering-oracle-thing said that they were Outsiders as well?” “Yes.” “What if they are Outsiders, but not our Outsiders?” Everypony stared blankly at her, Twilight included, her previous melancholic state momentarily replaced by utter confusion. “Are you planning on making sense sometime soon?” Walleye sighed, her head flopping forward. “Well, being out in the Ruins for so long, you hear whispers, rumors, ‘specially from ponies really deep in there, like smack-dab in the middle of Detachment Zones and the like. One of the weirder ones I heard, one that I never really put much stock in, is that these were these… ‘Dark Outsiders’ hidden in some base or other in the Ruins.” “‘Dark Outsiders’?” “Their words, not mine. I always thought the ponies who went on about it weren’t the full two bits, really, but it kinda fits with this story if you think about it.” “Really?” “I don’t know, maybe? I don’t know enough about the nitty-gritty of the science of the Ruins to really know for sure.” “Well that’s just lovely. Our only lead is a rumor no better than something a foal would come up with.” “She’s right,” Twilight muttered. “It does make sense, rumor or not.” “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with us any more?” Walleye growled. “I… don’t. Especially not you.” “Twilight,” Lyra cut in, glaring at Walleye. “Explain it to us, please.” “It’s… really complicated.” “Try.” Twilight hesitated for a moment, before igniting her horn, a featureless blue sphere a few hooves across appearing above the table. After a few seconds of concentration, it split in half, revealing an intricate red honeycomb structure. “The simplest way to think of it is like this. What you call the ‘Interior’ is the inside of the ball, billions upon billions of worlds all crammed in together. The Exterior, by contrast, is the surface of the sphere. Understand so far?” Everyone nodded. “Now, the ruins are a bit more complicated, because as far as I’ve read, no-one really knows what makes worlds there more prone to detaching, they just… are. And detachments are violent.” As she spoke, one of the honeycomb cells near the surface of the sphere broke off, flying outwards and scattering dozens of nearby cells with it. “So each time a world in the ruins detaches, it tends takes a bunch of other worlds with it. Now, if it happens enough…” More cells broke away, faster and faster, scattering neighboring cells as they went and forming a scarlet cloud of detached cells, floating gently away from the sphere. By the time it stopped, there was a deep fissure in the side of the sphere, filled with jagged protrusions and thin filaments of barely-connected cells. “Thats what the Ruins are. They’re a giant wound in the side of the multiverse, a hole created by the collateral damage from millennia of detachments. And it’s dangerous because quite a few of these worlds are holding on only by the most tenuous of bonds to the rest of the Interior. They could just break free.” The rest of the illusion faded away, with the Ruins fissure section enlarging to show the detail. “Now, since the Exterior is literally the shell of this entire thing, whenever a world detaches, especially deep in where it takes quite a few worlds with it, bits of the Exterior get torn away with it.” She leaned forwards, pointing out the jagged blue edges of the surface of the sphere. “Thing is, though, the actual fissure of the Ruins is criss-crossed with tendrils of worlds that were either lucky enough or stable enough to survive getting caught in the backlash of other worlds detaching. And if those tendrils and clusters are close enough to the surface, they could have bits of the Exterior still hanging on.” The illusion enlarged again, focussing on a cluster of cells supported by a myriad of filaments, atop which rested a ragged-edged cyan piece of the sphere’s shell. “I’ll admit that it’s all speculation, but if your ‘Dark Outsiders’ actually exist, that’s where they come from.” The illusion slowly vanished as Twilight let the spell lapse, leaving everyone in silence. “Can you get us there?” Walleye asked Lyra after a moment’s contemplation. “You’re the Runner.” “Probably, but-” “Good,” she cut her off, turning to Shining. “We’re going to need supplies.” “Waitaminute, hold up,” Lyra interrupted. “Not five minutes ago you were rubbishing Twilight like your life depended on it, and now you’re suddenly rearing to go with a plan that’s even more tenuous than the story she was telling. No offence, Twi.” “At least we have a plan, now.” “Oh come off it, you were going on and on about how you thought she was bodgy. You cannot expect me to buy that you’re willing to go walkabout in the Ruins after that.” “I don’t think she’s dodgy-” “Bodgy.” “Whatever! Look, it is the best lead we’ve got at this point, Tartarus, it’s the only lead. So we can either sit here on our rumps, or we can go and do something. Personally, I’m going to pick the option that involves me doing something.” “Even if that something could get you killed? The Ruins aren’t a walk in the park, Walleye, They’re bloody dangerous. And what if this entire thing is a trap? There’s no guarantee that that crystal actually came from Alpha.” “For crying out loud! Why are you suddenly against this? I’m taking your side! Let’s go storm the castle!” “Because the Ruins aren’t the place for drongos like you with no patience and even less sense. If we do this, you’re following my orders.” “Fine,” Walleye glared at her. “Can we go now?” “Sure, so long as we can get supplies,” she said, turning to Shining. “We can get supplies, right? It’s gonna be a long trek into the Ruins for where we’ll need to go.” “How much do you need?” Shining replied. “Well, I know of a few places we can get food on the way, but we shouldn’t rely on that. And we could get turned around a few times. Figure three weeks rations for each of us, to be safe. And we’ll need our weapons and gear back.” “That should be doable. I might take some heat from the Princess, but I can handle that, so long as you take care of Twilie.” “Speaking of Twilight, could you give her back that hammer?” Walleye interrupted. “I don’t want to give her a carbine without training, but she seemed pretty skilled with it for a rookie, and we’ll need every force-multiplier we can take.” “No,” Lyra said. “Too heavy. It’ll weigh her down and slow us down.” “We have bags that can fix that,” Shining informed them. “Bigger-on-the-inside type stuff. ‘Hideaway’ is the actual enchantment name, if I recall correctly.” “You lot have Bag of Holding enchantments? And you’re just going to give them to us?” Lyra asked, impressed. “That sort of stuff isn’t cheap where I’m from! Remind me to come back here when we’re done with all this, I’m gonna want a few of those.” “Waitaminute,” Rainboom interrupted. “What about Mac? Are we just going to leave him here?” “He arrived here unconscious and in pretty bad shape,” Shining answered. “Looks like he was on the receiving end of a few high-powered attack spells on the way, too. He’ll recover fine, but it’ll be some time until he wakes up. We can take care of him until you get back.” “I’m not going,” Twilight butted in. “I want no part of this. I’ve given you all Alpha’s message, now leave me alone.” Walleye and Lyra went to respond, only to be cut off as Shining spoke first. “Could I have a minute alone with my sister?” For a moment, Walleye looked as though she was going to argue, only to abruptly stand up and usher everyone out of the room, leaving Shining alone with the sulking Twilight. “I’m not going,” she reiterated. “And what are you planning on doing instead?” “Nothing. I… don’t want to do anything. Not anymore.” “So, you just expect me to sit here on my haunches and watch my little sister waste away?” “Sure. Not like it matters, really.” “By the sounds of it, a few million pony lives hang in the balance. Does that not matter?” “They’ll die with or without me.” “You could save them. Or try, at least.” “No, you don’t get it. Everypony dies in the end, magic or no, that’s how the world works. You can’t dodge entropy. What’s the point of saving a few lives now when they are going to inevitably end, regardless of what I do?” “That’s awfully morbid.” “Doesn’t change the facts, Shining.” “Why are you here, then?” “Because you made me come to this meeting.” “No, not in this room, alive. Why are you here? I’m sure you’ve had plenty of times to just lay down and let the inevitable take you, and yet you’re still here. Why is that?” “Instinct is hard to shake.” “Says the mare who was quite happily using a giant magical hammer to blow the side off a building when her life was on the line.” “I wasn’t defending myself, that was vengeance.” “And what, pray-tell, needed avenging?” “I did.” “You’ve… lost me completely.” “Not me-me, a different me. They made me do something that I would never want to do, and now quite a few ponies are dead as a result. Including a me.” “Confusing.” “You have no idea. Normal pronouns are really insufficient for what I need them to do.” “So what, you killed them?” “I… helped. Indirectly. And you’re right, I could have just laid down and died, there was a perfect opportunity for me to. I very nearly did. I don’t know why I tried to avoid it. I just… got so… angry. I didn’t deserve to die, and I got put in a situation where I was going to, and I just got mad.” “So, what’s changed, really?” “Nothing, I suppose. Nopony really deserves to die.” “Fight it, then. You sound like you were pretty eager to from what you’ve said.” “Oh, don’t be a foal. Do you really think I of all ponies are deluded enough to fight off death?” “Well, the Princess seems to have done a pretty good job of it so far. Not impossible.” For the longest time, Twilight didn’t answer, just sitting there and thinking, her downcast expression twitching slightly as her mind processed. “Oh buck it then. Time to go save the world!”