THREE WEEKS AGO
“Hmmm, Zecora said it should be around here somewhere…” mused the Princess, slowly working her way through the woods. She was still relatively close by to Ponyville and the zebra alchemist had explained this thing she’d found was in a safe area free of poison joke or manticore ambushes.
Twilight shuddered at the idea of reliving exposure to the former – having become an alicorn, her horn was slightly longer now and if the plant found it funny to make her become ‘Twilight Flopple’ again, the resulting condition of her horn would have been too phallic to be seen in public with. Or worse, it would affect her horns and wings, which would be an embarrassment she could never live down.
Further thoughts of possible ruination of her life were halted then, as the faint hum of electrical current suddenly made itself known to the princess. Picking up her speed to a trot, she soon found what she was looking for – namely in that it looked absolutely out of place amidst the trees and other untouched parts of nature.
What it actually was defied explanation, though, a fact that intrigued the pony who was virtually a walking dictionary of everything ever. It was some sort of electrically powered machine – though examination of the immediate area showed no sign of a power source, leading her to believe it was internalized. The hum that the machine made was similar to that of one of those new automatic iceboxes that were starting to become popular, and putting a hoof to the machine indicated it was vibrating slightly. Visually, the object was encased in a solid box of black, hard material – except the front.
With the exception of a small strip running vertically down the right side, the entire face was dominated by a backlit image of some strange creature – its upper body and left foreleg colored silver, with a sharp divide running from what Twilight guessed to be its right wither down to where its left hindleg started, everything under that line being a metallic cobalt blue, and in the center just below what the pony guessed was its head sat a circle similar to a yin-yang; red on top of blue and split by a white line. In the figure’s…not-hooves, whatever minotaurs had, the left one held up a can colored similarly to the figure, while the right was positioned at the figure’s waist. The can bore the icon on the figure’s chest as well as white letters in some alien language – the top of the machine right above the figure’s head had the same illegible wording. At the bottom of the image was a cut out hole where a small ramp ended in a tray for something, while the main cavity extended deeper for reasons as of yet unknown.
Then, Twilight looked to what now seemed to be the machine’s controls. At the top was a sticker – yellow with black lettering, indicating that inserting some kind of green rectangle needed to have the proper side facing up. Below that the insertion point for the green rectangles, a flashing series of lights and diodes, a smaller cut-out for inserting something (she guessed that the sticker indicating what went in had fallen off), and then a series of identical buttons that all displayed images of the same can held by the figure.
Curiosity getting the best of her, Twilight pressed the top button, jumping back when the machine reacted with a mechanical rattle, followed by an actual, physical can dropping into the cavity.
“Wh-what the?” stammered Twilight, not sure what to make of the development. She cautiously levitated the can out of the machine, examining it closely. It was ice cold, and something inside of her made her instinctively believe without reason that whatever liquid it held was tasty and refreshing.
“Enh, not thirsty right now, maybe later,” she shrugged, teleporting the can to her own personal automated refrigeration unit back at her crystal tree castle. That was the last interesting thing to happen as further inspection of the machine yielded no results. Pressing any of the buttons did not produce another can, while trying to teleport the entire machine to the castle only proved it was immune to magic somehow. Making a mental note of the existence of this strange machine, Twilight then simply teleported herself away to do more research back home.
PRESENT DAY
Twilight shook her head in disgust. “First the Crystal Empire, then Appaloosa…”
“And now Manehatten,” finished Starlight, looking up to Twilight. The seven friends were gathered around the Cutie Map, looking worse for wear all around, while in front of them the magical centerpiece looked more like a war map. Where the named towns originally sat on it, they now only looked like black spots of mold, festering like parasites on the terrain. And while the capital was surely a future target, Ponyville being such a centralized location standing in front of the capital meant it would fall first.
Such was the way of the Rainbow of Darkness. Not so much an entity as it was a blight, it sucked the joy and happiness out of all ponies, leaving them in a state of eternal depression. Thankfully, in its weakened state from a thousand years of imprisonment, its true horror in being able to turn ponies into vicious dragons blinded by rage could not surface. Yet.
“ I don’t get it,” voiced Rainbow, “how exactly was this thing defeated last time? You said the Elements of Harmony weren’t involved, Twi.”
“Yeah, I know, I just…” the princess sighed. “Give me a minute, this whole situation has left me exhausted.” She then turned to call to Spike in the kitchen who was cleaning the plates from lunch. “Spike, can you grab me something from the fridge?”
“You got it!” replied the baby dragon.
“Wish I had one of those fridge thingies,” groaned Rainbow, “I could store so much cider in those things, except cloud mansions can’t support them for some reason.”
“I’m sure in time they’ll develop the proper spells to provide the technology for cloudhomes,” reassured Twilight, instinctively reaching for the drink Spike was handing her. But she wasn’t paying attention to the drink, nor the fact she unconsciously knew how to open the alien canister by popping the top.
Not one pony nor dragon knew what was happening when the can reacted to being opened by unleashing an all-consuming wave of red, blue, and silver-white. It lasted but a second, yet all present knew something had changed.
For Rainbow, it was more personal than she would have liked. “What the buck?” Inexplicably, her six-color mane had shifted to a three-hue red, white, and blue shade combination, as did her cutie mark’s thunderbolt.
“Oh, maybe that guy can explain?” helpfully pointed out Pinkie, gesturing behind Rainbow. It was then the rest of the group noticed the figure who was neither dragon nor pony. But to Twilight, she somehow instinctively knew who it was despite the name being alien to pony kind.
“Pepsiman!”
At the same time, in the Everfree Forest, a gray coated pegasus with a special eyes – the local mail mare - landed next to the mysterious machine Twilight had found three weeks prior. Despite being exposed to the elements, the machine was still in immaculate condition, a detail the mare didn’t pay much mind as she hooked up a series of jumper cables to a harness. Once done, she then took out a letter that had instructed her to do this, and was instructing her to do more. She didn’t know why she was doing it, but it felt right. Thus, using the improvised harness for the machine, she easily lifted it up and off to a new destination.
Twilight couldn’t believe it, despite seeing this figure on that machine in the forest where she’d gotten the can three weeks prior, there was no way she should have known what its name was. Hell, even with knowing its name, she didn’t know its species or a whole bunch of other things, like how it breathed without a mouth, why opening that can had summoned it here, and why only Rainbow seemed to have changed color.
So of course she opened her mouth to start the deluge of questions, but suddenly the ground violently shook beneath them.
“Oh no!” uttered Fluttershy, “it’s here!”
“But..but the Rainbow can’t move that fast!” panicked Applejack. “Now what are we gonna do?!”
In rationality only known to her, Pinkie calmly turned to the mysterious tall biped as if he was the answer. “So, uh, Mr. Pepsiman person not-pony guy, sorry to bother you but you wouldn’t happen to know how to stop some kind of ancient evil force from making all of us into depressed caricatures of ourselves, like immediately, would you? Can you do something, Pepsiman?”
The figure put one of its not-hooves on what could be presumed to be its chin, as if pondering the question, then crossed its arms and nodded.
Pinkie leaped up in joy. “Don’t worry girls, we’re saved!”
Rarity was unconvinced. “But, he…it is a he, right? Regardless, he didn’t say anything, how did-“ She didn’t get to finish as Pepsiman then spontaneously started jogging off and went out the front door as if hell bent on doing something.
“We probably should follow him to make sure he doesn’t just make things worse!” exclaimed Starlight, and everypony else agreed. They were not prepared for the sight outside the door, however, as all of Ponyville now was transformed in the same vein that Rainbow Dash was now ‘Pepsidash’ – advertisements for the can now appeared all over the place, as if Pepsiman’s arrival had heralded the invasion of corporate sponsorship from another planet. In fact, for whatever reason, the cans themselves had popped up out of thin air and were hovering above the ground – and Pepsiman evidently was running in a path those cans predetermined such that he could collect them.
“How is him running around collecting cans going to stop the Rainbow?” asked Applejack.
Pinkie shrugged. “I dunno, something just tells me he’s a professional and does this a lot, though, so we should have faith in him.” And as completely unfounded and idiotic it was to actually believe that statement, the ponies couldn’t help but agree before as a group setting off behind the silver and blue runner to help if need be.
To that end, they seemed to be the only ponies interested in helping him, as should be expected – once again in the throes of apocalypse how, the general populace of Ponyville was in total anarchy. Inexplicably, many ponies kept throwing themselves in Pepsiman’s way from doorways, windows, side alleys, and mailboxes, but he in turn precisely slid under them or leapt above them as if he knew the movements through rote practice. All the while continuing to follow the cans and by this point possibly having some disembodied voice chant his name over and over – the ponies couldn’t stop to listen to confirm that or not.
Ducking in and out of crosspaths and alleys, Pepsiman and his pony followers nimbly dodged the almost scripted obstacles posed by the scared citizens of the town. At a few instances, ponies pulling carts frantically fled the town, the contents spilling behind them and forcing the carbonated crusader to make split second decisions lest he trip and fall on his face.
“Okay, seriously, what are we doing this for?” whined Pepsidash, not paying attention to where she was going and thus ending up with a banana peel in her face.
“At this point, I think we’ll only know if this works…whatever we’re doing!” replied Starlight.
Suddenly, despite the current road splitting off in opposite directions, Pepsiman lept over a row of bushes and toward several homes. Concerned about this change in direction, the ponies nonetheless followed and ended up chasing after Pepsiman through several homes, before realizing too late that they were on a direct course right into Rarity’s house…which had the door open for some reason.
“Now I know I closed that thing when I left,” observed Rarity.
Having jogged his way through a good number of homes already, Pepsiman made no attempt to avoid this one, even rapidly increasing into a dead sprint right through the doorway…even though it then led to him smashing through the back wall and having inexplicably ended up wearing one of Rarity’s dresses and her eyemask. This strangely made him move erratically as if his concept of left and right was switched but he easily resumed his constant pace, matched by the now equally fancy dressed ponies and dragon in his wake.
“He’s heading for Sugarcube Corner!” exclaimed Applejack.
Indeed, it would appear the mysterious cans led right for the bakery, which to everypony’s surprise somehow currently bore host to the local, muffin-loving mailmare and the strange machine that dispensed the cans in the first place. Without even so much as an acknowledgement, Pepsiman slowed down to a stop in front of the machine and pressed one of the buttons. A can identical to the one he had been summoned from clattered into the tray at the bottom, which he then picked up and somehow drank from without even popping the tab. The fact that he didn’t appear to even have a mouth also raised many unanswered questions.
“Hold on, all this nonsense was so he could get a drink?!” exclaimed Starlight, before the mailmare “helpfully” shoved her letter of instructions into the reformed cutie-mark thief's face.
“I don’t know what that letter could tell you to justify all this” added Rarity, before she –and everypony else – jumped at the sound of Pepsiman punching the machine. Whatever this act triggered, the machine then spat out several cans, each landing precisely in front of each pony and dragon. He then beckoned the group to drink from the cans.
“At this point I’m just going to go with it,” admitted Twilight, who was already forming theories that perhaps this Pepsiman character was in fact an alternate dimension’s version of Pinkie. Reluctantly, the rest of the group followed suit, popping tabs and then downing the contents in one go. For some reason, not only did this immediately reinvigorate their spirits, but they knew to entirely trust Pepsiman as being there to help, and that somehow, everything that had been caused upon his arrival was related to the drink he was associated with – a carbonated soda called Pepsi.
“Wow, that was like, exposition in a can or something,” said Spike.
“You’re telling me,” agreed Twilight. Her ears then perked up at the sound of running, and almost unsurprisingly Pepsiman had already taken off in pursuit of a trail of new cans.
“How rude,” drolled Rarity, “you’d think he’d let us know when he was going to head off again.”
“At least he’s, uh, jogging, I suppose?” suggested Rainbow Pepsi. “For a guy who somehow is going to stop the Rainbow of Darkness, he’s…not done a whole lot other than paint the town –and me – red, white, and blue.”
“Maybe that’s his plan?” suggested Fluttershy, “To fight the darkness with colors?”
“Only one way to find out!” said Twilight, who then galloped after Pepsiman, her compatriots following suit.