If you get the right answer and solve me, I shall be your best friend for all eternity…
Why should something like that be a mystery…
Fluttershy began to think these things as she came to the realization that she was no longer real. As her soul was torn apart from her body by Rarity’s sword...she felt like nothing but a mere illustration of her former self...a mere illustration whose fate was determined by an illusion...an illusion cast by the One Who Knew All the Frames of Her Life.
“Oh yeah, him.” Rarity said with a smirk. “He has served his purpose…”
Fluttershy did not hear her. What Rarity was saying wasn’t real to her anymore. She had slipped away from the real world and had fallen into darkness. A new darkness whose nature would be revealed...with a glimmer of light.
DIE TO EMIT.
The true beginning of…
Lightening Fluttershy’s Dark Sky
The story truly began with Fluttershy lying in bed. This time though, she was thinking differently in a different place surrounded by darkness.
“What happened?” she thought. “Where did it all go wrong? Every time I think about this madness...it just seems to go on and on...Why?”
Fluttershy got out of bed and looked around at her surroundings. The only thing she could see was the bed. Everything else was just all the same...darkness.
“Even though there are no bars…” Fluttershy slumped back in bed as she acknowledged her slump. “I’m in jail…forever...”
Fluttershy began to cry…
…
“Don’t cry…” said someone from behind. “It’s not time for that just yet.”
Fluttershy didn’t listen. She continued to let the faucet run free.
“I’m sorry,” Fluttershy replied, “but it really is over this time. I’ve lost my life, my soul, and now my freedom. I didn’t even have anything to fight for from the start, and now it’s all gone…”
“Exactly.” the someone said, slightly grinning a small smile.
Fluttershy wasn’t even surprised by the sudden and minor change of attitude from the unknown figure. She just sighed.
“If you’re one of Rarity’s henchmen, just come out and say it.” she stated with melancholy. “I’ve experienced more insane twists.”
“Oh, this isn’t an insane twist…” the someone suddenly lit up the place with a mysterious orb with a rotating glow of eeriness swirling on the inside. “...It’s a twisted twist.”
Startled by the lightening, Fluttershy turned her head and saw somebody with a face.
“What…” she said as she recognized the face. “You..”
“That s right.” said someone as Fluttershy’s vision shook, blurred, and got somewhat fuzzy “SO iM Being youR Answer“
Everything went light, and soon, Fluttershy was no longer unconscious. It was time to bring light for a new day.
It was a new day in Fluttershy’s bed. The sun was up, and Fluttershy had gotten out of bed.
“Uh…” Fluttershy groaned while putting her hoof on her face. “What could something that frightening have been?”
Fluttershy looked around and gulped as she found herself in another familiar setting...her bedroom. In fear, she immediately pulled back her covers and gasped. Between her legs, she found...that she had wet the bed...inside a beer bottle.
“How did…” Fluttershy firmly grasped the bottle uncomfortably. “How did this get here? Is there a burglar in the house?”
Just then, there was a knock at the front door, and someone downstairs opened it. Fluttershy looked out the window and froze in fear when she saw a mysterious ghostly white unicorn outside handing an unfamiliar draconequus a huge jar with fifty thousand bits in it. For reality’s sake, that’s five million yen (not USD), fifty thousand dollars in United States currency. After the unicorn had to hand it to the draconequus, she left, and the draconequus entered the house again.
“Ha ha ha, looks like I’ve made the big catch!” the unidentified draconequus said as he pulled out his wallet. An ID card with a name obscured by a blur could be seen in the wallet, as he stuffed the money inside of it like Discord would. He then made a surfboard appear with magic, and caught some waves up to Fluttershy’s room to wake her up. Fluttershy screamed as the door burst open and water flooded the room.
“GAH!” she squirmed like a wet noodle in a hollow banana. “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?! And are you trying to kill me or something?”
“Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooo,” Discord wasted time by stretching that word out and stabbing a clock for fun. “Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean to not be rude,” Fluttershy rued her shouting from earlier, “but you need to tell me who you are. If you’re a burglar who broke into my house, then I need to know so that I can politely ask you to leave.”
There was a long pause of silence before a cricket began chirping. It stopped chirping when Discord picked it up and patted its head.
“Thank you my little friend, I needed that,” Discord said as he then made the cricket he had summoned disappear. “Now then, Fluttershy, let me ask you a question. Do you...remember anything before this morning?”
“Well of course,” Fluttershy put her head down and gave a positive response, “everyone has remembered something before this morning. All I remember though was this dream where I solved a puzzle and got possessed by a weird shadow. Then I was a murderer and Luna took me away on a sleigh. I was torn from my body by a sword and Rarity...thought it was funny.”
Fluttershy looked up and noticed a look of shock on Discord’s face.
“Uh...you’re going to leave me alone now, right?”
“I’m afraid I can not do that,” Discord said as he donned a business suit and showed Fluttershy a contract, “for you need medical attention. It would be negligence on my part if whatever is ailing your mind kills you.”
“Insanity is lethal?” Fluttershy asked as Discord took her hoof and teleported both of them to a strange town with a gas cloud of nontoxic poison. As the poison cloud dissipated, Fluttershy could see the corpses of ponies in the streets.
“D-did you kill these poor ponies?!” Fluttershy exclaimed.
“*sigh* Pay attention, Fluttershy,” Discord pulled a quarter from behind Fluttershy’s ears and showed her the back of a nontoxic poison canister. “It’s not real poison.”
“Why are they just lying in the streets then?” Fluttershy looked over the dead bodies sadly. “Isn’t someone going to bury them?”
“Beats me,” Discord knocked his head with his clenched claw. “Those corpses have been lying there for a year and a half. It’s a mystery if anyone will ever get around to taking care of them.”
“A year and a half?!” Fluttershy replied. “But these ponies look like they’ve only been dead for moments! Wait a minute...could they be…”
Fluttershy had realized that the ponies were wearing white robes, and that each robe had a symbol engraved in it reading “ChrysCo. Department of Human Resources”.
“Chrys...humans…” things began to flash through Fluttershy’s head. She could remember a shadow, she could remember talking about Chrysalis’ murder, she could remember creatures in a factory, she could remember...rhyming and singing in a sleigh.
“That was it, Chrysalis...and there…” Fluttershy investigated further and found piles of rocks close to the bodies with strange carvings in them. “...used to be a tombstone here…”
“Just as I suspected,” Discord thought to himself. “I guess that’s what I’ll have to do then…”
“Is this why you brought me here?” Fluttershy asked as Discord approached her. “Are you trying to help me regain my memories? I think they might have something to do with that dream I had...”
“Maybe…” Discord gave his reply to both the question and the statement. “And on the subject, do you think maybe we could go and see Princess Celestia?”
“Princess Celestia?” a memory of Princess Celestia’s corpse was triggered in Fluttershy’s mind. “Um, okay...”
“Tremendous…” Discord grinned as he teleported himself and Fluttershy to a familiar castle-like fortress. Fluttershy gulped when she recognized the place.
“I knew it.” she thought to herself. “This is the factory with the creatures. It looks a bit different now though...”
Just like in the dream, the castle had four walls, but there were no orbs on the roof, no body parts, and no candy. The only decorations from the dream that were there were the arrows and blood, both of which looked they were shoved in the walls as if somepony was trying to hide them. Also, there was a small hole in the front door now.
“Something ailing you Fluttershy?” Discord took a swig from a bottle of ginger ale he pulled out of nowhere.
“No, it’s...nothing,” Fluttershy suppressed her thoughts as she and Discord went up to the castle gate.
“Knock knock,” said Discord as he smashed the bottle of ginger ale against the door where the hole was. “You know who it is…”
A tongue made its way through the hole and licked the ginger ale.
“Oh, I know…” said a familiar voice as the door opened and a figure who looked exactly like Celestia appeared, levitating a glass of what looked exactly like wine. “Welcome to my castle, Discord and soon-to-be-former stranger.”
“Her name’s Fluttershy,” Discord made Celestia’s description correct. “She wants to talk to you about a dream she had.”
“Hmm, is that all she came here for?” Celestia chuckled. “I was expecting a frail-looking object like her to be more interested in conversing about reality. After all, she has far more reason to fear it than somepony as powerful as I. No matter though...”
Celestia teleported Discord and Fluttershy to her throne room, where she lounged on her chair in spite of it not being a couch.
“Hit me with your best shot…” she said with a smirk.
Fluttershy let everything shoot, unloading the dream on her in full detail. After she was done talking, Celestia’s smirk was wider than ever.
“I know it’s ridiculous, but…” Fluttershy sighed. “...It’s the only thing I can remember.”
“So…” Celestia’s chuckles turned to snickers. “You’re on a quest to find your memories?”
“I guess I may as well be.” Fluttershy replied. “I’m not exactly sure why I exist.”
“We’re in the same boat on that issue.” Celestia mocked Fluttershy again, trying to make her feel like a wet gun clip being docked by a tailor. “And I’m always willing to help those who have the same issues I have, such as wanting to know more about Chrysalis’ murder. That’s right, it’s a real mystery that has never been solved. It has puzzled me and certain investigators for ages...who could be so powerful as to defeat one of my greatest foes?”
“So what are we going to do?” Discord asked his superior like a boss. “Are we going to have to investigate Chrysalis’ murder in order to help Fluttershy, or are we going to have to...go there?”
“Yes, and yes.” Celestia agreed to both of her subordinate’s proposals like a greedy executive. “I believe that it’s time we help Fluttershy and that it’s time to explore...the other worlds.”
“The World of Creation and the World of Evolution…” Discord snickered at the mere uttering of the sentence as he put his lion paw on his face. “Oh boy…”
“Yeah, I know.” Celestia knew what he felt. “I remember what a massive disappointment both of those projects were...It’s too bad that you can’t bury your mistakes, but you can run from them until the day you finally learn from them. And that day is today.”
“Hold on a second…” Fluttershy intruded in on the conversation like a rat trying to climb on an alarm clock inside a library. “Does that mean you two are…”
“Yes…” Discord donned a pair of glasses, a white shirt and tie, and a cup of coffee, all made from his own fur he transformed into said creations. “I am the co-creator of the WoC and WoE, the one who helped Celestia here create them. Impressed?”
“You see,” Celestia prepared to upstage Discord with a more detailed response, “.....you know, I think this will speak for me…”
Celestia clopped her hooves, and all of a sudden, everything faded to black. When some light came back on, the trio was sitting in a movie theater.
“Oh great, this movie…” Discord sulked. “I’ll get the popcorn and soda.”
A projected screen came on a projected screen, projecting the numbers “3, 2, 1, 0, -1” before the movie started. Words appeared on the screen and Celestia began talking in the movie theater, her voice from the movie filling the theater as the words were narrated.
“When the world first began long ago, there was only one known living force in the universe, magic. It was from that magic that this world, The World of Origin was created by a mysterious deity only known as “CrE”. CrE is the one who created us gods as his minions, immortal beings who have mastered both arts of creation, upgrade fusion and downgrade fusion. Everything and everyone in this world was created by Celestia, Discord, all the other gods whose names I don’t remember, and yours truly.
However, there came a time when Celestia and Discord became bored of only creating life, and sought to create something more ambitious, a new world in another dimension. Celestia and Discord wanted this world to be a test to see if their creations could discover the secret of immortality and go on to master the arts of creation. Because this world and its inhabitants were created with the art of upgrade fusion (where two objects are fused to create something), it was called The World of Creation. Unfortunately, the result of the project was a tragic failure. None of the world’s inhabitants achieved true eternal life, and none came close to mastering our creation arts.
You wouldn’t believe it, but Discord and Celestia tried to give the project another chance with The World of Evolution, a world created by the art of downgrade fusion (where two objects are fused to transform something). Despite our attempts to improve the flaws of the first world, the result of the project was a comedy of tragic failures. Discord and Celestia ended up abandoning world creation after this, and now here we all are. Thank you for watching.”
fin
“That was a weird movie…” Fluttershy reviewed it once it was over. “There were no scenes in the movie, it was all dialogue on a screen. And someone kept talking throughout the whole thing…”
“Heh heh, you don’t say…” Celestia hid a megaphone behind her back sheepishly.
“So now what?” Fluttershy didn’t see where all this was going.
“...We go to my secret underground factory and unlock the portals to the other worlds.” Celestia said like Cookie Monster getting constipated while trying to read Sherlock Holmes. “You’re going to travel to them and collect what we need to incriminate Chrysalis’ murderer. That’s right, as of today, you are an official detective working for the IDPD, my most elite police department...”
“Factory...police…” Fluttershy thought. Memories of Luna showing up to her house dressed as a police officer and being in a factory flashed through her mind.
“So, great movie, huh?” Discord said sarcastically as he came back eating popcorn he made from corn he blew up with a stick of dynamite. “Want some soda, anyone?”
“Um, sure.” Fluttershy responded.
Discord made a huge needle appear with magic and used it to extract the soda pop from the popcorn. He then squeezed some of it into a soda cup.
“Do you want to take it through an injection or orally?” Discord asked like a sweetheart.
“.....Orally?” Fluttershy replied with a nervous grin.
“Certainly!” Discord squeezed out what was left in the needle directly onto Fluttershy’s tongue. Startled, Fluttershy ran out of the theater coughing as Discord and Celestia laughed. She collapsed in the middle of Celestia’s throne room and coughed up some of the soda on the floor.
“Talk about sickly sweet…” Fluttershy felt lightheaded as her head fell into the small soda puddle on the carpet gently. “I feel woozy…”
Fluttershy fell asleep yet again, as a shadowy figure walked up behind her. It picked her up and carried her, as Fluttershy began to have a vision in her sleep…
“So...how does it feel to be trapped with nowhere to run?” the voice of a manifestation of Rarity tossing a hypnotist’s watch in the air and catching it could be heard in Fluttershy’s mind. “The roles have been reversed...this time I’ll-”
All of a sudden, Rarity’s words were cut off as Fluttershy slowly opened her eyes. She was in a room that looked like a laboratory of some kind, lying on the seat you sat on during your last check-up at the doctor’s office that wasn’t a chair. Looking ahead of her, she could make out five figures surrounding a giant metallic device wired to two metal doors talking.
“Are you sure we can trust her?” a figure that resembled Rarity wearing a blue uniform with an IDPD symbol on it said. “It seems too good to be true that she’s alive.”
“I’ve proven to you that only the Fluttershys from the other worlds are dead.” a figure that resembled a teenaged Luna dressed in the same uniform as Rarity flashed what looked like a black notebook. “What more do you want?”
“From what we know, “Fluttershy” should be no more!” replied the Rarity figure. “Did everyone just forget about Sombra altogether?”
“”Everyone” didn’t “just” forget.” a figure that looked like Discord made a fourth wall joke. “He didn’t really say or do much besides set traps. It’s been seventeen months, he could be dead perhaps.”
All the other figures appeared to turn to Discord in confusion. One of them appeared so confused that he walked away trying to grasp the situation.
“Wait…” a figure that looked like Celestia with a glass of wine said. “Are you talking about Sombra or Sombra?”
“Neither,” the Discord figure chuckled as he read a comic book while looking at himself in a mirror. “I meant Sombra.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right…” the Celestia figure replied bemusedly. “Thanks to our worlds, there’s three of him too…”
“Hey, are you sleeping with your eyes open or looking at the real world in a dream?” a figure who was clearly a human named Sky dressed in the same uniform as Rarity and Luna stared into Fluttershy’s eyes. “Can you answer my questions while you’re doing things like that?”
“Sky!” Celestia shouted as everyone came over to where Fluttershy laid. “What have I told you about talking to ponies who aren’t strangers to me? It’s funnier when you confuse those I don’t know!”
“Boss…” Discord grinned as he donned his co-creator outfit from before. “I think our little friend is awake.”
“How do you know that?” Fluttershy asked a...peculiar question. “Are you a psychic, because that’s really weird.”
“Beautiful…” Celestia smiled as she knew the reason for this kind of ...peculiar. “I’m terribly sorry Detective Fluttershy, but thanks to you passing out, I wasn’t able to introduce you to the ones who will join you on this mission. Say hello to your fellow officers from the Inter-Dimensional Police Department, Rarity, Sky, and Luna.”
“Hello to Rarity, Sky, and Luna.” Fluttershy said, facing Discord. Discord tried to contain his laughter and turned her around to face the eponymous trio.
“Why is she acting really weird?” Sky asked Rarity and Luna. “That’s really weird.”
“Look at the pot calling the black kettle black…” Rarity said what she said. “Do you mind, Luna?”
“It appears I have no choice but not to mind…” Luna prepared to do what she learned in school. “I’ll tell you the reason why we’re here Fluttershy. You can’t solve this case without our help. That’s why we need to help you. We’re here because we need to come with you to the World of Creation and the World of Evolution and collect six orbs. They will show us the way to bring Chrysalis’ killer to justice.”
“You explained that to me so fast I hardly understand,” Fluttershy replied. “That’s an interesting skill, who taught it to you?”
“HIS NAME MUST NOT BE SPOKEN.” Luna proclaimed demonically with fire in her eyes that died after she finished her sentence. “...Anyways, I think a visual demonstration will provide a better in-depth explanation than spoken dialogue…”
Luna walked over to the metallic device connected to the doors with magic glowing in her horn and fired a blast at it. As a result, a portal materialized in each of the two doorways. The portal on the left doorway appeared in the form of a portrait of Fluttershy kneeling down at a grave, and the portal on the right doorway appeared in the form of a portrait of Fluttershy in a fetal position, surrounded by pure darkness and transforming into a human boy with blue, white-streaked hair.
“What could it possibly mean?” Celestia winked to the audience as she spilled some wine on the floor.
“Like, I don’t know.” the audience, which turned out to be a bunch of Discords seated in a stadium said. “A sign of the Illuminati?”
“Ha ha ha…” Celestia gave the laugh we all know now as Discord made the Discords and stadium disappear together by encasing them in a pyramid of paper that vanished. “What would I do without you Discord?”
“Try to carry out your plans and fail?” Discord playfully taunted.
“Keep pushing your luck you schmuck... “ Celestia continued chuckling. “It amuses me.”
“I could wrap that comment in a blanket and hand it right back to you…” Discord replied as he wrapped something in a black cloth and tied it around a wooden stick. “But unfortunately, I have to get going…”
Discord walked up to the middle of the doorways and made a portal that was in the form of a portrait of Fluttershy sitting on a cloud above a land, staring at the sky with glowing white eyes as pitch-black darkness enshrouded the land below her and radiant light brightened the sky above her.
“See you around Rarity…” Discord said his farewell to the group. As he entered the portal, something fell out of the cloth he was carrying...a ring with a stygian-colored gemstone encased in it. Rarity noticed this, quickly went over to the ring and picked it up.
“Wait, you forgot…” Rarity stopped in mid-sentence, seeing that Discord was too far gone to get his jewelry back. Upon examining the ring, she got a smirk as she slipped it into a pocket in her fur.
“So was that the visual demonstration?” Fluttershy pondered. “All I saw was a bunch of talking.”
“Oh, sorry for being so rude and not interrupting a conversation my superiors were having…” Luna replied in a frustrated tone. “Now then…”
“She’s got you there kid.” Celestia commented as her wine glass magically refilled itself. “I’m the only one who gets to interrupt the conversations of others, and I’m gladly going to interrupt yours by explaining what Luna was going to tell you myself.”
“This never ends…” Luna sighed.
“I think you can already see,” said Celestia as she turned around to face the portals, “where you need to go. I think you can already figure out what you’re going to do. But do you know what to do with the orbs after you’ve done what you’ve done?”
“Oh, I didn’t think about needing to think about that.” Sky responded.
“The orbs,” continued Celestia as she ignored Sky, “need to be brought back here and given to me so I can gather them together. When all of them are together, they’ll combine and form a light that will guide us to our hearts’ desires. When Discord and I created the worlds, we had hopes that one would find the orbs, but of course, that never happened…”
“Uh huh,” Luna could barely hide her feelings on what a drag this was. “Anyways, I have a map of both worlds that will help us find…”
“Just one more question, Celestia.” Fluttershy interrupted a now fuming Luna. “Why am I dressed like this?”
Fluttershy pointed out that she was wearing a frumpy white shirt, black pants and socks, and had her hair groomed back to look like Phoenix Wright’s, only with some of the hair in her eyes.
“It’s a special detective’s outfit I felt would suit you…” Celestia smirked as she spilled some more wine on the floor. “Now then, which world do you all want to venture to first? The World of Creation, or the World of Evolution?”
“The World of Evolution, please.” Fluttershy decided unusually quickly. “The portrait on its portal is a little weirder, and that interests me.”
“Go on ahead then…” Celestia bowed, strangely ignoring what input the other strangely silent police officers may have had to offer. Fluttershy approached the portal, but when she tried to go through it, she only ended up butting against it.
“Huh?” Fluttershy responded in confusion at being denied entrance. “Is this portrait portal a fake? If it is, it’s not a very transparent one since I can’t pass through it and see what’s beyond it…”
“How odd…” Celestia stuck her front left leg arm holding a now full wine glass through the portal just fine. “It isn’t broken, but I’ll try to fix whatever’s wrong with it. Is the World of Creation portal okay?”
Fluttershy went over to the other portal and was able to put her front right hoof through it just alright.
“I guess I know where we’re going first then…” Fluttershy turned and faced the others. “Do you guys want me to go first?”
“Do we care?!” Luna retorted a rhetorical question. “I just want to do something other than standing around and listening to all this!”
“Wait, do you want to know if I care?” Fluttershy mistook herself as part of Luna’s “we”.
“YYYYYAAAAAHHHHH!” Luna yelled as she charged at Fluttershy, causing both of them to go through the portal. Rarity smiled as she and Sky walked over to the portal.
“Looks like we’re going to have some intriguing comic relief on our journey this time, my dear friend.” Rarity remarked as she gave Sky a pat on the back.
“Comic relief? Do comics get tired of people grabbing them and looking at them?” Sky wondered. “If so, that’s really queer.”
Rarity just sighed and kept smiling, having already said what she wanted. As she and Sky entered the portal, Celestia finished all of the wine in her glass with her typical smile and sealed off the portal behind them with her magic.
“This is just too easy…” Celestia proceeded to teleport herself to outside her bedroom door with a simple spell, where familiar singing voices and music could be heard. “Even if they don’t trust me, I can still make them do whatever I want them too…”
When Celestia entered the bedroom, the voices were clear to be those of the Dark Sky band. Dumb-bell, Hoops, Score, Ghost Rainbow Dash, and Derpy were finishing up their rehearsal of their latest song, Boring Stuff You Don’t Understand, with Derpy singing in place of Fluttershy’s absence. It had gone something like this…
Boring Stuff You Don’t Understand
Boring stuff...you don’t understand
Things you truly...can’t stand
Makes you truly...want to get up and stand…
Sitting with a droning lampstand…
The dullest things…you don’t understand
Duller than knowing squat in a...headstand!
Headbands won’t save us...FROM THE BLOW…
...OF A HOT DOG STAND!
So let’s stand...hand and hand and comprehand…
...How to make a stand…
“Greetings, my bodacious bards,” Celestia tried to be cool with the kids and the times.
“Oh, hi Celestia.” Dumb-bell remarked.
“Did you like the song?” Hoops asked. “I wrote the lyrics.”
“I came up with the awesome tune!” Rainbow strummed her air guitar.
“...” Score elaborated on all the things he did silently.
“I yelled in the microphone and made a lot of noise!” Derpy exclaimed.
“It was good…” Celestia twirled a strand of her hair with her magic. “But I doubt it will be as good as the next song you’re going to compose. I have something really interesting to tell all of you. And I think it will inspire you to make a song that will blow everypony’s mind…”
Celestia proceeded to tell the Dark Sky everything that happened the way she liked best. When she had finished talking, the Dark Sky members all had looks of horror engraved on their faces.
“No way…” Dumb-bell said with a gulp.
“She didn’t…” Hoops said as he broke out in a cold sweat.
“She did…” Celestia replied as she teleported them to the laboratory-like room and pointed to the portal. “Now might be your only chance…”
“....!” Score swore silently.
“You better believe shit!” Derpy swore with a proclamation. “We have to follow her!”
“Sorry, but we won’t let this happen Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash declared. “We’re coming for you!”
The Dark Sky members passed through the portal to the World of Evolution. As Celestia sealed the portal behind them, she said one more thing…
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
A Few Enigmatic Words From The Cloud Dragon of the Mist
Now both Fluttershy and her Dark Sky are in another world...which world will you choose to explore when the time comes, hero?