Gilda slowly walked through the streets of Griffonstone, eager to see the progress of the small town’s library restoration.
She sighed as she reflected on the day that everything had changed for the better, no matter how small that change may have been. She was truly thankful to Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie for their help in getting her to see the benefits of friendship even after she had been so mean to them. Perhaps, she thought, they weren’t as lame as they had seemed during her visit to their small town.
As she began to near the once-decrepit library, she looked away from the path ahead to observe her surroundings, and marvelled at the progress of Griffonstone’s reconstruction and the restorative efforts of some of the citizens of the small settlement. It had been a slow, painful, arduous process to convince the others of the benefits of friendship, but eventually she had won a few of them over with her persistence and (for some) her awkwardness. They had certainly not been eager to forsake the noble hoarding and greed that had fuelled generations of long-forgotten griffon individuals, many of whom were probably heroes.
Note the use of the word probably: none of the griffons could actually remember any names from the past besides that of their once-great king and their own relatives, but being a proud race they naturally assumed that in the thousands of hobos, thieves, con-griffons, extortionists, murderers, arsonists, jerks, etcetera before them there were some heroes; some wheat among a sea of chaff. In a world of tares. Existing in a universe of scraps.
However, now that Gilda was slightly more honest with herself she had to admit that it seemed quite preposterous to think that any hero could ever be driven by greed or selfishness. Her whole race had once been those traits personified, yet they had been far less heroic than the many other sapient species of Equestria.
She stopped moving when she noticed Greta walking on a road tangential to hers. At least, she assumed that straight lines could exist as tangents to each other; financial calculations had never necessitated learning Euclidean geometry in detail - or at all.
Gilda began to feel a now-familiar warm feeling spreading through her chest just above her sternum, not unlike the feeling that one gets after a swift hit to the gut, but more pleasant and not likely to necessitate a trip to the hospital. The first time that she had felt this way was in Cloudsdale, during the time of her friendship with Rainbow Dash. Gilda had rediscovered it after reuniting with her all those years later, before they realized how much they had changed and what that meant for the odds of being able to be around each other. She had finally reacquired the old feeling of friendship from all of those years ago once Greta and herself had realized just how much they both had in common: they were both griffons, they both knew how to be insufferable jerks to anything that moved and they both believed that when it came down to it, they would esteem a higher value to money than they did to anything else.
Gilda was glad that she now had a few friends among her own kind, which would have been impossible before her outlook had been changed. She kept watching Greta and resolved to talk to her for a bit before she visited the library; after all, there would always be time for that later.
Funny. She could’ve sworn that she had felt something pleasant a few seconds ago. Oh well, it probably wasn’t important. She advanced towards Greta, wondering why she had never noticed before just how annoying she was.
“Alright, we’re all here now, Twilight. What was it that ya wanted ta discuss?” Applejack asked as Rarity finally entered the throne room housing the Cutie Map. For some reason, being in the castle made her feel slightly uneasy. As this was not her usual mood, and seeing as her friends did not deserve an uncomfortable friend, she chose instead to focus on Rarity, who was trotting quite proudly through the room. She sighed quietly as the fashionista made her way to her seat, seemingly unconcerned about her tardiness except for a brief look of polite apology directed at the alicorn seated on her throne.
No doubt this was her idea of “fashionably late”, a concept completely alien to the farm-raised mare. All fancy ponies seemed to act as if being slightly late to important meetings was in style, yet they came late so often that it should have been going out of style. Unfortunately it never did, freeing them up to use the expression “fashionably late” to justify all manner of laziness and irresponsibility with an appeal to the customs of the haughty ponies of wealth and high social standing who decided what was “in” or “out” at that moment in time, and by extension who was worth the time or effort for aspiring career ponies to socialize with in order to impress those in positions deemed more important than their own.
Just then, this surprisingly intelligent train of thought running along the tracks of Applejack’s mind was derailed by a confusing locomotive made up of old bicycle parts and impossible colours sent screaming in the opposite direction.
“Ooh ooh! My turn! Obviously Princess Celestia is being systematically seduced by a Mary Sue-ish alicorn OC who is revealed to be her long-lost sister Princess Cosmo, a secretly malevolent individual who wishes to manipulate Celestia into becoming Nightmare Sol in order to bring about The Day That Never Ends.”
That one was all Pinkie Pie. As always, she had projectile vomited whatever was bouncing around inside of her head out into the real world, forcing it into the unsuspecting ears of any innocent ponies unfortunate enough to be within earshot of her loud voice. And yes, her friends had indeed heard the last five words of her sentence as capital letters, yet none questioned it, for it was just “Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie.”
“Darling, wherever do you get these strange ideas?” asked Rarity. “I’m quite sure that Princess Celestia would never allow herself to be corrupted or manipulated by so vile an individual, sister or not. And what in Equestria is an oh-see?”
Pinkie popped up from beneath the Map next to Rarity, obtaining a startled look from the marshmallow coloured mare. Her voice took on a sagely tone as her eyes relaxed to become half-lidded and her smile disappeared entirely, leaving behind an expression that seemed to be one of intense concentration and sadness; not unlike a mage who has lived far too long and seen horrors the likes of which would drive weaker minds to the brink of insanity out of the need to survive the sight.
“Well, you see, my child,” Pinkie said slowly and deliberately, “an ‘OC’ is a form of wish fulfillment on the part of an author of a borrowed universe, or an unofficial individual that serves to create tension from elements that had not existed prior to that moment in an established fictional work. They are artificial beings inserted into the narrative as a sort of catalyst for future events or just for the fun of it. I believe that you will have seen many of the worst before this story is over.”
It was then that Applejack decided to interrupt the conversation between the prissy pony and her hyperactive friend, if only to prevent Rarity from taking up more valuable apple bucking time with questions regarding Pinkie’s perception of reality and/or sanity.
“Listen ya’ll: as interestin’ as all o’ this here talk is, I’m havin’ a hard time understandin’ why we were all called here. So, Twilight, would ya kindly explain the reason for us bein’ here?”
“Thank you, Applejack,” Twilight replied. “Now that I have your attention, I would like to address the reason for your presence at the Frindship Castle today. Recently, I have been in correspondence with Princesses Celestia and Luna regarding a matter of great importance. I will tell you about the nature of this matter shortly, just as soon as you all swear that you will not tell anypony outside of our circle of friends.”
Just then, Rainbow Dash decided to speak up.
“Hang on for just a second there, Twilight. What about Spike? Or Starlight?”
“What about them?” Twilight asked, not understanding the reason for the interruption.
“I mean, what about them secret-wise? You can’t seriously tell us that you mean for us to keep this a secret from them. Come on, they’re as much your friends as we are.”
Twilight looked perplexed for a moment, as if her ears had taken in what Rainbow was saying but her mind had yet to arrange the sequence of sounds into words that she could understand. Then, her face shifted to an expression of realization, as if this were the first time that such a problem had crossed her mind.
“Yes… I probably should tell them too, shouldn’t I.”
A few hours later, Twilight arrived with Starlight and Spike in tow, the two attempting to recount to her the events of an impossible adventure to which they had been privy. Spike was the one talking at the moment.
“Twilight, I swear that we’re not lying, Dragons’ Honour! We really did travel diagonally through space time!”
“Spike, somehow I feel that you may be exaggerating the events of this morning just a tiny bit.”
Starlight took her turn next.
“Twilight, Spike’s really telling the truth! Those three fillies that are always running around here, the… erm, the CMC?”
“Cutie Mark Crusaders.”
“Right, them. They said that a brown stallion with an hourglass cutie mark had told them about a colt who had yet to obtain his cutie mark.”
“You mean Time Turner?”
“Oh. I thought his name was Doctor Hooves.”
“He prefers to be referred to simply as The Doctor, for whatever reason.”
“Well, we listened to them and thought that it would be fun to help them out, so we followed all four into some sort of blue box -”
“You mean that you were avoiding another friendship lesson.”
“Can you blame me? You tried to turn bathtime into a friendship lesson last week, and as a fully grown mare I am still offended by the fact that you believe I need help.”
“It was after your bath, and you were making a mess of your mane. I was just trying to provide an object lesson in helpfulness.”
At that, Spike decided that convincing Twilight of the truthfulness of their incredible story was not worth the possibility of psychological trauma, so he ran ahead of the two ponies into the throne room and left them to argue over Twilight’s status as a mane style professional in the hallway.
A few minutes later the two similarly coloured individuals appeared in the doorway, their expressions unreadable. Spike resolved to leave Twilight alone for the day.
“Right, now that we’re all here, all of us, gathered in one room, under one roof, very secure, very private, magical harmony-based crystalline walls and all of that wonderful stuff, let’s discuss my reason for requesting this meeting.”
Now that everyone was taking the time to look, they noticed that Twilight and Starlight seemed to have been awake for days, with the classic combination of bags, puffy eyelids and perpetually dissatisfied expressions that made them look like they had taken a bit too hard to the salt lick and had been dragged away on separate stretchers to a hospital situated in an industrial complex that specialized in manufacturing foghorns. This caused for them to wonder exactly which project Twilight had forced herself into finishing as a result of her unwavering loyalty to her old mentor, Princess Celestia.
“Here is the news: I have been working on a new teleportation spell.”
Almost all of the faces around the table dropped slightly at hearing this announcement; in fact, only Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie kept smiling: Fluttershy because she was very happy for her friend and Pinkie because she was listening to me narrate the story with my great sense of humour. Or she thought I was stupid. I can’t tell.
“Twilight,” Rarity said, “we are truly very happy for you, and we understand how important magic is to an alicorn of your abilities, but there is one small problem: don’t you already have a teleport spell?”
“Yes, but there are two small problems with the one that I use: range and number of passengers. I can only travel so far in one go, and multiple jumps exhaust me quickly; more so if I happen to be transporting ponies or objects other than myself. Thus, I have been hard at work on a new spell that alleviates those two issues.”
Applejack was suddenly very interested in the conversation. After all, if they could find a way to build a machine capable of replicating the spell like Twilight did with Tank’s harness, then the Apples may just be looking at an efficient apple transport and delivery system. Although she stuck steadfastly to tradition, she realized that with a pair of trouble makers like the Flim Flam brothers around it paid to be ahead. So, being curious, she naturally asked, “Well, how does this here spell work, sugarcube?” and instantly regretted it.
Out of thin air a massive sheet of paper appeared, covered in runic symbols, notes in sloppy hornwriting and poems made to look like crosses between sonnets, limericks and free verse styles of alternating rhyme. Starlight reacted within seconds.
“Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that the work I’ve lost five nights’ worth of good sleep over was a new teleportation spell? You insisted that it was a friendship lesson!”
Twilight nervously chuckled out a response.
“Eh-heh. Well, did you manage to figure out what we were working on?”
“No, you never let me see the full diagram!”
“Sorry. Sworn to secrecy between the princesses and myself,” Twilight hesitantly replied. Starlight took a step back to fume in silence. Twilight took this as her opportunity to enter into one of her trademark lectures on the science of magic.
“So, anyway, here are the plans. The spell works differently from the popular version in several ways, the most important of which is this: it bypasses both space and time. While the one that I normally use breaks a pony up into their component particles and then magically sends those off at faster-than-light speeds to the target destination for reconstruction, it is still affected by the amount of space between the target and current destinations. The greater the distance between the two, the more magic it exhausts to start up. This amount is multiplied by the quantity of matter accompanying the traveller, as that matter takes up additional space that requires more energy to provide space for on the other side by creating a momentary vacuum directly inside of the target zone; you know, to ensure that you don’t arrive on the other side made up partly of air or dust. While the new spell still has the restraint on quantity of matter, it is severely downplayed by the fact that it requires a constant amount of magic to start up: it doesn’t matter whether you wish to move two hooves or two hundred miles, the amount of magic required to do so will change only based on how much stuff you’re transporting, not how far you’re going.”
Twilight stopped to take a look around the table, observing the faces around her. Surprisingly, they weren’t as blank as she had expected; spending time with her must have been good for something.
The first to speak was Fluttershy, who had one very important question to ask: “So… um… h-how dangerous is it?”
Twilight started explaining immediately.
“We don’t know. It behaves unusually, unlike any other that I’ve seen before. It refuses to be cast by normal unicorns; this isn’t due to complexity, as far as I can tell. It just doesn’t respond to unicorn magic. However, introduce an earth pony to the mix and the spell starts to work gradually. Have them touch and it works exactly as intended, yet neither myself nor the princesses can figure out why it needs an earth pony in order to function. Alicorns, being part earth pony, can cast it just fine.”
Twilight paused to take a breath, then continued. “Another unique trait of this spell is the dangerous bit: it takes time to charge up, yet it affects the target object even as it is prepared, forcing it into a state between material and immaterial that becomes more distinct as it comes closer to completion. The danger here is what could happen if this charging process were to be interrupted before teleportation. Obviously these are all hypotheses, as neither the princesses nor myself are willing to put anypony in that kind of danger.”
Twilight uncaringly continued her relentless verbal assault against her five friends. The worst affected was Rainbow Dash, who seemed to be fading away before their very eyes.
“There are three foreseeable possibilities: the target object, creature or pony will be permanently stuck in the transition phase, unable to interact with the physical world ordinarily, if at all. Second: the target will become fully immaterial permanently and be stuck in some sort of “limbo”. Thirdly: the target will be deconstructed atom by atom and spread out across all of space time and the immaterial plane, killing them instantly. A third restraint is that although the spell bypasses time as well as space, it cannot be used by living beings to travel through time; I already tried. My hypothesis is that the perception of the target affects the capabilities of the spell: ponies, perceiving time as passing at one second per second, are unable to change that constant. However, objects, having no perception of time, can be sent to any time one wishes. I gave myself an extra quill two minutes in the past at one point.”
Rainbow Dash was dead, or as close as she could be while still breathing.
Fluttershy, on the other hoof, looked ready to respond again.
“Um… if you don’t mind me asking, what are -”
At that moment, the six friends felt a peculiar sensation coursing through their flanks.
I swear that doesn’t mean anything weird.
They looked down to see their cutie marks pulsating in rhythm, faint colours rippling off into the solid expanse of their pastel coats. Translucent copies of their marks detached from their flanks, heading towards a central position on the Cutie Map just above a holographic image of their Friendship Castle. As soon as their marks found each other, they began to arrange themselves so that the five non-alicorn marks were orbiting the large pink and purple magical sparkle situated precisely above the castle. All five marks then began to move in tandem, seeking out the destination of the next friendship problem.
They took a meandering path out over the town of Ponyville, a detour at Manehattan, took their own sweet time to pass over the city of Canterlot, sniffed out and explored literally every single crack and crevice on the table, returned to the centre of the Map just to tick me off and eventually came to rest over Fluttershy’s cottage.
I swear...
No, wait. They’re on the move again. Oh, thank goodness.
Okay, here we go.
They took a roundabout journey designed to irritate me over to the once-kingdom of Griffonstone.
The friends were puzzled; only once before had the land of Equestria ever had need of all of their talents simultaneously for a friendship problem, and that trip had become a living nightmare of brainwashing and indoctrination that should certainly never be seen on a TV show rated for children of all ages.
Regardless, as they stared at the six cutie marks floating over the small village of Griffonstone, Rainbow Dash came to life, realizing that as there were five cutie marks on the Map, this was to be the start of another epic adventure that she would be able to experience with her friends and share with her fans once it had reached its conclusion. She sat up, then shot into the air, all the while performing all manner of complex aerial maneuvers in the enclosed space as she celebrated the prospective excitement of the next few days.
“Aw yeah! This is gonna be totally awesome! Hey, Twilight, do you think that we’ll be able to stop another evil dictator this time? Or maybe meet another draconequus that we can beat the stuffing out of? Or maybe liberate the griffons from a new communist regime?”
As Rainbow rambled on about potential adventures and her expectations for the trip to the tired alicorn, no one around the table cast their gaze to Applejack, for good reason. After all, at the moment she was being as unobtrusive and quiet as their meek friend Fluttershy. She was seated completely ordinarily, if slightly hunched over. Her hat was in pristine condition, her coat had just the right ratio of orange to apple stains, and her face was adorned with a polite smile.
If anyone were to look towards her right then, the back wall would have seemed infinitely more interesting than the mare seated on her blue crystalline throne. That said, her mind at the moment was a rather interesting place. Overall, her thoughts were placid, sensible and determined, as was usual for the mature pony. However, in one corner of her mind there existed a tiny disturbance in the tranquility that had been bothering her since the meeting had been called, a ripple in the calm environment of her subconscious. She was attempting to ignore it, and it showed; this small discrepancy was being heavily suppressed, but it continued to withstand the onslaught of denial.
No matter how hard she attempted to remain positive, some unexpressed fear continued to linger in the back of her mind. She couldn't understand why; yes, she had approached other friendship assignments rather tentatively at first - that much could not be denied. However, during those times she'd always had a reason that could be succintly and rationally explained. Now, however, she only felt a confusing sense of dread that could not be understood. It was puzzling to her. She had no reason to worry, and as such her current feelings were completely out of place.
Why did she feel this way?