Beyond the Skies- Major Explaining
Castle of Friendship
By the time Calvin and Spitfire had returned back to his world from where the Displaced Portal Master named Ace lived, the Skyshifter was still trying to get a grasp of having to go through rifts into different worlds. His head was dizzy, and the boy almost felt like he was going to pass out at the rate that he was going. But eventually, he was able to get his bearings as he stood up and looked around, finding himself in Twilight’s Castle again. But things seemed… different. It was actually pretty quiet, for it being an oversized crystalline castle that Spike could not eat even if he tried… perhaps some would say… too quiet?
“Hey, take it easy, Champ… Going through rifts like that only becomes easier the more times you go through them.” The Fire Skylander tried to advise him as he helped him up. “I’m going to go back to Skylands. I need to talk to Master Eon about those Arkeyan remains that we found in Griffonstone. Let me know if you need me.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure about that part just yet. I’ll probably be taking it easy… or at least, trying to.” Calvin replied, looking around a bit. “I’m going to try and find Twilight. I still owe her an explanation before we… well… left.”
“More like we ditched her,” Spitfire chuckled to himself. But all that did was just confuse Calvin as he turned his head.
“What does that mean?” He then asked, causing Spitfire himself to sigh a little as he looked back at him.
“Like when you have to leave so suddenly that you didn’t get the chance to explain why,” the Fire Skylander simplified. “Case in point, when we left on Twilight before explaining why we had to go so suddenly. Now, speaking of which, I need to run. Call me when you need me.” With that, Spitfire disappeared as he brought out Hot Streak and used his Rift Engine to disappear back into Skylands.
As Calvin turned around though, he soon saw the one pony that he was looking for begin to trot out of her study room, surprised to see him. “C-calvin… You’re back?” She said, holding a small gem that was glowing a little. What the human thought of as a crystalline flashlight. “W-when did you-?”
“Just now…” he replied, sighing deeply as he looked back at Twilight. “Look… I’m sorry for… well… ditching you like that.” Taking a moment to try and think of his words correctly, he then cleared his throat and looked back at her. “I think I still owe you an explanation though, if you want to talk about it.” Even if the Skyshifter’s proposal intrigued the Alicorn a little, there was still one obvious flaw that the youngling accidently overlooked as she looked at the clock along the wall before returning her gaze to the boy and returning his sigh with one of her own.
“Calvin, do you even know what time it is?” Twilight asked, causing the confused child to shake his head in response. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. In a couple hours, Celestia will raise the sun.” That little detail, though, caused something in the youngling’s mind to click a little… Especially when he never knew that the reason why the sun would always rise was because of Twilight’s mentor. The only things he knew about her were from the brief interaction with her at the Gala, along with what Discord said about her beforehand.
“Celestia… can raise the sun?” Calvin asked, looking slackjawed at Twilight in the process. “Did you happen to stutter, or did I hear that right?”
“Well, I must’ve forgot to tell you about it, since everypony else knows. It’s common knowledge that Princess Celestia is responsible for raising the Sun, and Luna is responsible for raising the moon,” the alicorn said, looking at him before thinking of something. “Let’s talk about this in my study though, so we don’t wake up Spike.”
Calvin, upon hearing that, agreed with Twilight’s statement as he silently tiptoed across the hall in an effort to not wake the sleeping dragon. Once both of them were inside, Calvin breathed another sigh of relief as he turned around from the door and walked over to the table that was near the windowsill. “So, both of them can do that… anything else I should be aware of before I give you my explanation?”
“Other than Discord’s magic being Chaos magic… I think we can keep everything else on a need to know basis,” Twilight replied, only to get a puzzled look from the boy. “I mean, when you need to know it, I will tell you.”
“Oh. I see…” Calvin said, looking back at her. “Hey, I don’t want to sound rude, but now that you explained to me about Celestia and Luna a bit, can I give you my explanation now? Fair trade, right?”
Twilight nodded her head, sitting down across from him as the boy took a seat on the floor. “I guess so… Now, from what Spitfire said before you left… you two found something in Griffonstone that was not suppose to be there?”
“Well, we found two things… One thing that enhanced my abilities, which was the reason why you saw Spitfire and Hot Streak before we left… Sorry for running you over on accident, by the way,” he said on the side apologetically. “The second thing that we found was something ancient from Skylands that’s… well, let’s say ‘not good’ so to speak.”
Twilight, in response, raised an eyebrow. “How ‘not good’ is ‘not good’?” She asked, not knowing what kind of answer she would expect.
“Think oversized mechanical soldiers the size of a mountain roaming around and causing a lot of destruction. Back in Skylands, they come from an old race of mechanical beings called Arkeyans, and at one point, they almost took over Skylands, if it wasn’t for Tree Rex and the Giants.” Calvin explained, trying his best to recall the information. “Spitfire and I found an old one that looked to be pretty busted up… but the bad news that we heard was that the Griffons there were trying to find a way to make it… uh… I think the word is ‘operational’?”
“Oh my… did they find anything?” the alicorn asked in response.
“I don’t think so… I think what I found first looked to be the power source they wanted to use to start it up. I don’t think we need to worry about that for a while… but Spitfire is making sure to tell everyone else back in his world, so they can get on top of the situation.”
“I see… and by that, you mean other Skylanders?” She then asked Calvin, leading him to nod his head before responding back to her.
“For the most part… there’s also other people that have helped the Skylanders on their adventures and serve at Skylander Academy… which is a big school for teaching students how to be heroes.” Calvin explained, prompting Twilight to follow up on his comment.
“So, like Celestia’s school for Gifted Unicorns?” she asked, causing Calvin to raise an eyebrow in response. “Just a Skylander version of that?”
“I… guess?” Calvin replied, nervously. “Anyways, I think the main thing you want to get to is why I left you so early after coming back yesterday, right?”
“Pretty much. You were like in the castle for almost five minutes, and then you went out the door again, like Rainbow Dash.” Twilight replied back to him, causing the youngling to sigh once more as he cleared his throat.
“That may be… a bit difficult to explain.” Calvin started off, looking around the room before looking back at Twilight. “Remember when I first came here… when I crashed into Rainbow’s house, with me not knowing how I got there in the first place? Well… it seems like I’m not the only one.”
“Calvin, I don’t understand… Please explain what you mean.” Twilight asked, trying her best to understand him.
“Well, from what I was told, there are others like me. Others who had been taken from their homes, thrown into their own version of this world, and in most cases, acquired powers. I think the term used to describe them is… Displaced.” The boy stopped for a second to look back over what he said, making sure it was right before speaking. “Yeah, that sounds about right. I met one who summoned me using a token that was created for me that looks like a replica of my pendant.”
“So, whoever finds your token can summon you?” She asked for clarification. Upon seeing his head nod, Twilight followed up with one more question. “And who was the Displaced that summoned you?”
“His name was Ace, and he also had a sister that was Displaced named Zinnia,” Calvin replied. “Ace was Displaced as a portal master, while Zinnia was… well, I never really found out what she was, I think. I only saw her for a few minutes before coming back. Ace, though, is a portal master, and in Skylands, portal masters are powerful spellcasters that can call upon the power of skylanders and summon them into battle along with controlling other spells. They are very rare though, and some, like Kaos, are evil portal masters. So, good portal masters are really… well… fading away.”
“Wow… that’s quite a lot to take in.”
“Yeah, it is… speaking of the whole summoning skylanders part, I helped him figure out how to do it while I was there.” Calvin told her, taking a few moments to explain how Ace was able to summon both Spyro and Cynder while in his world, along with Drobot as well. He tried his best to recall everything as he told her piece by piece what had occurred there, along with answering any questions the Alicorn had, including things such as who Master Eon was and also what the Doom Raiders were. By the time he was done and Twilight had the chance to speak though, both of them turned their heads to the window as a small sliver of sunlight began to come from over the horizon, lighting up the castle and the room in the process.
“Wow…” the boy was spellbound by the sun being raised in the distance. “I’ve never seen anything like that before… like, at all.”
“You’ve never seen a sunrise before?” Twilight asked, raising a eyebrow.
“No, actually… I’ve mostly lived with my mother and my grandparents, but there wasn’t a time at all during those years where I was able to see anything like this,” he explained, “It’s just… forgive me if this sounds silly, but… it’s just so… magical.”
“Heh, considering that Equus is a world of magic… that is kind of silly… in a good way though,” Twilight assured him, putting a wing around the youngling for a moment… until she realized what Calvin had said. “Wait, don’t you have a father?”
“I… think so… I’ve never met him though. My father left my mother before I was born,” Calvin told Twilight, who was surprised to hear that. She had never actually met anypony that had that happen to them in their life. For all she knew, most of the ponies that she had a friendship with didn’t have family related issues like this one. “I don’t let that bother me though. I just focus on everything in front of me and don’t let it distract me.”
“That’s great to hear, Calvin,” Twilight smiled, taking a piece of parchment and writing something down as she looked at him. “Hey, if you want… maybe you can show me some of the forms that you were talking about earlier. I was going to write a letter to Fluttershy and let her know you’re here, but maybe you can show me those forms while we wait.” The suggestion caused Calvin to smile a little as he grinned and looked back at her.
“Well, no time like the present I suppose… First up, let me show you… The art of war!”
Skylander Academy
“And that’s what we found while in Griffonstone,” Spitfire explained, finishing with explaining his findings in Griffonstone with Calvin to Master Eon as he made sure to recall everything, down to the last detail. “We were able to make sure that the griffons there weren’t able to use the Arkeyan we found there, but it seems that Calvin had acquired a few new abilities as well, similar to that of the Rift Engine.”
“I… see. This is indeed a concern and just makes me wonder what else could’ve fallen underneath the Skylands…” Eon responded as he scratched his chin. “I’ll ask Hugo for what we know so far on the Arkeyans… Right now though, I believe that you should have a talk with one of your other teammates.”
“What do you mean, Master Eon?” Spitfire asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Earlier, Splat had some trouble sleeping and came to talk to me… She said that she saw dreams of what appeared to be some of Calvin’s previous encounters in which he needed to transform… and in two instances, she saw him transform into both you… and her,” Eon replied, nodding his chin in the direction where the magic skylander was. She was fiddling with her brush as she tried to paint something on a canvas… but nothing seemed to come to mind. “You should go talk to her… She needs to know about this, Spitfire.”
“Yes, Eon,” the flaming gargoyle said as he drifted into the direction of the faun, swallowing any nervousness he had as he tried to casually talk to her. Nearby though, within the grounds of Skylander Academy, two things were going on. One was that Mags was causing a racket with trying to work on one of the devices used to scan magic across the Skylands. The other… was Buzz noticing both Spitfire and Splat talking. Something that he saw… was completely odd.
“Is anybody else seeing what I’m seeing right now?” Buzz asked, trying to use the secret gadget in his crutch that served as a spyglass to narrow in on the two of them.
“Seeing what, Buzz? Sorry, but I was busy trying to be first in line at the Nacho bar in the cafeteria,” a nearby pilot and captain said as he walked beside him with a tray of nachos smothered in nacho cheese with a side bowl of guacamole. “And even if I’m a celebrity around these parts, this place doesn’t exactly have a VIP line.”
“Those two, over there,” the head of security (and secret ninja commando operations) pointed out to Flynn with a spare finger. “Normally when I see them, they’re either training or tuning up each others’ vehicles before going out on missions against Kaos’ minions. Never have I seen them… well… act like that!”
“Aww... come on, Buzz. They’re practically teammates… and with the amount of times that the little twerp is hatching up new plans, they might not get the chance to talk to one another about things other than how Kaos tried taking over some place,” Flynn said as he devoured another handful of chips. “Speaking of which… It’s been a while since he had tried some HUGE devious plan to take over Skylands… do you think he’s taking a break?”
“Flynn, his version of ‘taking a break’ is invading a vacation resort so he could have the place all to himself for a day,” Buzz reminded him, “Also, if I may add, if those two are somehow making plans… then why does Spitfire look so nervous? He’s frantically looking everywhere, like we are spying on him.”
“That’s because you ARE trying to spy on him, Buzz,” another voice spoke up as both of them turned to see another familiar face as she folded her arms and tapped her foot.
“Hey, Cali! Didn’t see you there.”
“Flynn, I’ve been standing here the last few minutes,” she reminded him as another friend named Tessa soon walked up right next to him. “Tessa and I can’t hear our own thoughts over the noise that Mags is making.”
“That’s also the reason I went to the nacho bar… other than the fact I was hungry.”
“Flynn, you’re always hungry,” Cali facepalmed herself in response as she reminded him of that, “Still, you do bring up a good point about Kaos… What is he exactly doing?”
“Beats me…” Buzz sighed, looking back at her. “Most of the sightings of Kaos’ forces involved small raids on local villages, but that was only last week. We haven’t heard of any new activity since.”
Cali did not like the signs of that. “That doesn’t add up. From the many years that we have stopped him over the years, Kaos is never known for instances on a small scale. Every time he’s hatched a plan, he’s gone full scale with raiding entire cities, building contraptions to eat up the skylands and even breaking open Cloudcracker prison! This just… doesn’t really make sense… and I can’t believe we actually trusted him to help with the Doom Raid-”
Just as she was almost finished speaking, a gold bolt that was used to hold in certain mechanical contraptions and worth a lot of gold, landed by Cali’s feet. Turning around, she noticed that the machine that Mags was working on to pick up traces of magic wasn’t quite acting… normally to speak. “What the heck!? It’s never picked up reading like this before!!”
“Mags, what’s going on!?” Cali asked as the inventor looked back at them.
“My sensor machine is going haywire. It’s picking up magic signals that’s going off the scale!! It’s just like… just like…” The mage stuttered as she looked back at them. “Just like when the Core of Light was destroyed!” That alerted all of them… but nothing could be seen around them of this. No signs of any massive magical surges at all. Nothing even above them in the clouds…
Unknowingly though… only two individuals on the island knew where it was coming from… and they too… were concerned about what was happening below them.
Some time earlier… (Equestria)
During the course of the early morning, while waiting on Fluttershy, Calvin was demonstrating to Twilight some of the things that he could do in the form he was using of the magic Skylander named Splat. She was a faun that used her artistic abilities and her brush to combat evil. The Alicorn herself was… in no other way to describe it… blown away by the brief demonstration. Not only was he able to get a hand on how to use the abilities so quickly and effectively in combat, but she was surprised when the Skyshifter showed he actually could conjure minions from the paint that was being used.
As he turned back to normal, he shook up his hair a little, noticing some of the colored paint that was stuck in his hair. “So, what do you think? Pretty amazing, right?”
“Y-yeah. You seemed quite talented with that brush,” Twilight replied, giggling from Calvin trying to get the paint out of his hair. “Have you turned into Splat before?”
“Only a couple other times, but I really like it, because it reminds me of when I used to paint back home in school,” he replied back as the Skyshifter walked back over. “Art was one of my favorite subjects in school. I did well in my other classes, but you don’t get to be as creative in math or history like you can with art.” Turning his head, the boy soon happened to notice a familiar cyan pegasus walking with a smaller orange one in their general direction as he smiled a little. “Hey, look! It’s Rainbow Dash.”
“There’s the rascal!!” Rainbow called out as she dashed towards the two of them while the smaller pegasus simply tried to keep up on her scooter. “Calvin, where have you been? Fluttershy was really worried about you yesterday when you didn’t come back to the cottage.”
“Sorry, Dash. Things… got a little complicated.” The young boy replied apologetically as he scratched the back of his head.
“How complicated?” The smaller pegasus soon asked, causing Twilight and Calvin to look at one another in confusion.
“Very complicated, Scootaloo,” both of them said in unison, only to have them look back at each other awkwardly as Rainbow Dash began to quiver a little in laughter. Calvin shook his head a little. Now that the paint from before was gone, he looked back at the young pegasus, who seemed to be really eager about something.
“Well, whatever it is can wait! I’m really looking forward to see Rainbow Dash with her flying practice today!” Scootaloo gleefully spoke up as she looked at her idol. “In fact, she said that she might even try practicing her favorite move!”
Hearing this just caused Calvin to raise an eyebrow as he looked back at Rainbow. “Favorite move?”
“Oh, it’s just a little something special I like to call the SONIC RAINBOOM OF AWESOMENESS!!!” She declared, quickly taking up a heroic pose in the process that just caused Calvin to facepalm himself. “What? You don’t believe me?”
“Oh, I believe you… Once I see it for myself that is,” he sighed, causing Twilight to chuckle a little as Rainbow Dash shot a menacing glare back at him. “Hey, unlike your friends, I don’t know what kind of things you can do.”
“He does make a valid point, Rainbow…” Twilight sighed. But the pegasus ignored it as she spread her wings and began to hover off of the ground.
“Well then… since you asked so politely…” Before Calvin could answer, Rainbow took off, leaving a dust cloud in his face as she accelerated high into the skies above them. “Allow me to give you a demonstration!!!”
“Oh, goody…” Twilight rolled her eyes in exaggeration. “Here we go again.”
“Has this sort of thing happened before?” Calvin asked her as the Alicorn gave off a heavy sigh.
“More than you would think.”
“Get ready!! The Show’s about to start!!!” Rainbow announced as she began to descend downward at rapid speeds. However, while she was doing so, Calvin felt that something was off and noticed something. The elementanium crystal around his neck was glowing rapidly, giving off the same glare that he not only he saw in Griffonstone, but also matched the glow that he saw around the pegasus.
“Twilight… something’s wrong,” he said, causing the Alicorn to look at him with a puzzled glance, only for the glow to get brighter… and for some reason… show the symbol for the skylanders that represented the Air element as she got closer. However, for Scootaloo, who wasn’t paying attention to Twilight and Calvin, she was excited.
“She’s gonna do it!!” Scootaloo squeaked, only causing Calvin to worry even more. But before Calvin could warn Twilight, Rainbow completed the stunt as the bright colorful explosion went off… But there was something that Calvin saw afterwards that really worried him… and soon made him run after Rainbow.
She was in the sky… and plummeting for the ground. Quickly, Calvin chanted Fuel the Fire to himself and used Spitfire’s speed and summoning Hot Streak. He quickly used it to race off of a nearby ledge in order to catch her while she fell to the ground. Once back on solid ground, Calvin returned to normal and dismissed Hot Streak as Twilight checked on her condition.
“Oh, thank goodness. She’s still breathing…” Twilight breathed a sigh of relief as she looked at Calvin. “Thanks for getting to her when you did… Still, how could something like this happen?” The boy had no response for her, but instead, Scootaloo was the one that spoke up next… but not out of concern… but out of fear.
“T-twilight… W-what is that!?” She said, causing both Twilight and Calvin to look to her… and then look behind them. To the giant gaping crack that was in the sky… and the floating islands that could be seen on the other side.
The floating islands that were the Skylands.
Skylander Academy
The force of the explosion that was felt almost rocked the entire academy as the dust was beginning to settle. Everyone was completely confused, but the one that was the most puzzled was Mags as she began to get back on her feet and brush off the dust on her robes. “Hot Buttered Toast!! What was that!?!”
“What? Are we under attack!? Status report, STATUS REPORT-!”
“I SAID ‘What was that?’, NOT ‘We’re under attack!’ Moron!!” Mags shot back at Buzz as she helped him up, while Cali and Tessa helped out Flynn. “Someone go find Hugo. He was in the archives last I checked, and I’d rather not find him underneath another pile of books, again.”
“I’ll get on Whiskers and see if there’s any damage to the academy,” she told the others as she leapt back onto her pet bird and took off, leaving Mags, Flynn, and Buzz to try and find any Skylanders that were at the academy, along with getting in contact with those who were away on missions. Soon, through one of the communication sets, Mags got a message from one of the farther off islands in the Skylands.
One that was the home of the newly enhanced Cloudcracker Prison. “Hey, can anyone hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Snap Shot,” Buzz replied, seizing the walkie talkie from Mags as he took over on speaking duties. “What happened?”
“Well, Tuff Luck, Wildfire and myself were with a couple of the Sensei’s here when we heard a loud BOOM go off near the academy. We could feel it all the way over here. No damage was sustained to the prison, but Tuff Luck isn’t liking what she’s seeing from the lookout tower here.”
That got Buzz a little suspicious as he clicked the talk button and responded. “What is she seeing?”
“She’s seeing a huge gaping crack, like below the clouds!” the Trap Master replied. “We’ll be there as soon as we can when we finish up with things at the prison. Snap Shot out.” The statement about the crack just left both Buzz and Mags confused… until Tessa quickly landed her bird and ran to the two of them.
“Guys, we got a huge problem!”
“Is it about a crack of sorts?” Buzz replied back, “Snap Shot told us-.”
“No, it’s not just an ordinary crack!” she protested. “When I was younger, the village elder told us a story of how the Skylands was created. Twenty thousand years ago, many islands like ours fell down through the clouds and disappeared, but when Mount Cloudbreak erupted for the first time, it cast out a barrier of magic that spread throughout the skies and kept the islands afloat… Only allowing for certain things to fall from time to time when it erupts annually.”
“Then, what you are saying is…”
“That crack… is a crack through the barrier?”
“Yes… and from the looks of it, while I was on whiskers… There’s a living civilization underneath us.” Tessa told them, showing a technological contraption that was called a “camera” by Mags that had a photograph of the fissure… and the land below.
“Boomsticks!! I never thought that there was anything like this… but like they always say… there’s always a bit of truth to legends,” Buzz said as he scratched his chin. But as he turned his head, he soon noticed something completely off. “Wait a minute… Where are Spitfire and Splat?”
That question was answered by the sounds of two rift engines revving up shortly before taking off as two rift portals closed simultaneously from the far end of the Academy.
Worlds were about to collide… and at this point… no one on either side knew about what could possibly happen next.
End Scroll 8