Chapter 48 (Logistics and Answers)
Chapter 48
Penny sighed as she leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Glancing up at the clock on the wall, she saw that it was well past eleven at night, and was actually closer to midnight. However, even though she was tired, she felt a sense of accomplishment when she looked over the numbers laid out before her.
Even with His Grace’s cut, we turned a very nice profit, thought Penny as she began organizing things in preparation to go to bed.
Putting the last of the papers away, she recalled how Filthy Rich hadn’t been happy when she relayed Allen’s reply last night to him. However, she’d managed to get him to see things from Allen’s point of view and after that, they’d been able to work things out. Filthy, in addition to his own two hay wagons, along with several of his stronger employees, had called in some favors and contracted several professional teamsters to help out. Allen had offered to let them use his wagons, as they were bigger, to help deliver the round bales from the field to Filthy’s store in town.
However, the teamsters had declined as they had their own and while their wagons couldn’t fit as many bales as one of Allen’s, they held more than Filthy’s. Moreover, the various enchantments placed on their wagons made their jobs easier, as the wagons were lighter to pull, plus they would automatically tie down whatever they were carrying and would untie the load when they reached their destination. Moreover, they were paid by the load rather than by the ton, so by using Allen’s wagons, they would make less money overall. Allen for his part couldn’t fault their logic, and since he wasn’t paying them, he didn’t really care. Though he was interested in the enchantments on the teamster’s wagons, and when he looked at Penny he said, “I want those features on my wagons, I don’t care how much it costs.”
Penny had simply nodded and said, “I’ll look into it and see what I can come up with. I’m not sure if your wagons will be compatible as the enchantments are usually placed on the wagon while it’s being built, but it never hurts to ask.”
With that out of the way, things had gone smoothly, with each team making several trips to town and back. While Filthy’s wagons could each only hold two bales safely, the teamster’s wagons could hold eight each. This meant that between the four wagons, they were able to move twenty bales total per trip. Which wasn’t bad, however, Allen’s bale counter had recorded two hundred and twenty-two bales made, which meant a long day of back and forth for the ponies.
It also meant that Filthy had to quickly find places to store all of the hay that was coming in, as his store's stockroom didn’t have enough space for all of that hay, and neither did his warehouse down the street. By the time they had delivered half of the round bales, Filthy’s buildings were full to bursting, and even though his customers were taking away thousands of pounds of hay per hour, even they weren’t able to keep up.
“Penny, I don’t think I can take delivery of all of this hay today,” lamented Filthy sadly as they stood behind Barnyard Bargains and watched the unloading.
“But I thought you said you’d have enough space for it all?” she asked, an exasperated expression on her face.
“I thought so too, but I didn’t take into account the fact that these bales would be so big and heavy! We’re having a hard time stacking them more than two high in the warehouse right now. Plus it’s hard to maneuver them around all of the other stuff I have inside there. We’re going to have to move things to better accommodate the loading and unloading of these bales.”
“I thought you had a hay unloading system already?”
“We do, but it’s designed for loose hay, not for bales that weigh nearly a thousand pounds!” he replied. “We’re going to have to tear that out and rebuild the overhead crane system so that it can take the added weight. Once we do that, we should be able to stack those bales all the way to the ceiling,” he paused as a thought popped into his head, “on second thought, we might need to do more than that.”
Penny cocked her head to one side and asked, “What do you mean?”
Filthy sighed. “Well, it’s like this. Right now we’re only stacking the bales two high because that’s all we can manage with ramps and the few unicorns that I have to lighten the load while my earth ponies push the bales up to the second layer. But if we start stacking them all the way to the ceiling, all that extra weight is going to squish the bottom layer of hay downwards, and that might cause the bottom layer to spread out, which means we run the risk of the stack pushing out the walls of the building if we don’t reinforce them.”
“Is that a big risk?” she asked.
Filthy shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve never worked with hay like this before. But with the loose hay, we had to make sure the walls were sturdy enough that the pressure from the weight of the hay wouldn’t damage them. As far as these round bales go, I don’t know if they’ll push the bottom layer outwards if you stack too many of them on top of one another, and frankly, I’d rather not take the risk of my warehouse collapsing on my employees... or me. Besides, I’ve been meaning to upgrade and expand it for a while anyways, so this just gives me a good excuse to do so.”
“Is business that good?” asked Penny as she and Filthy watched another wagon unload its cargo.
“It’s picking up. Ponyville is expanding slowly, but steadily, and I don’t like reacting to changes, I’ve found it’s better to be ahead of the curve than behind it. As a consequence, I’ve always been more proactive when it comes to business decisions.”
Penny gave a single nod as she watched as a worker kicked a round bale off the back of a wagon, the bale making a heavy thump as it landed.
“So what do you want me to tell Allen then?” she finally asked.
Filthy sighed. “You won’t need to tell him anything, other than to keep them coming if he asks. I’ll find the room for them. Worst case scenario is that I have my employees stack them outside and throw a tarp over them. The weather team hasn’t scheduled any rain for the rest of the week, so I should have enough time to get the remainder undercover.”
“Alright, works for me,” she paused as she glanced up at the sun and said, “Unless you need me for anything else, I need to go, Mr. Rich.”
Filthy shook his head and replied, “Go ahead, I think we’ve got things well enough in hoof here, tell Allen I said hello.”
Giving him a smile, Penny waved goodbye and said, “I will, have a good evening, Mr. Rich.”
Filthy gave her a wave in return before turning and trotting over to better supervise the unloading.
After leaving Barnyard Bargains behind, Penny had made a beeline for Golden Oaks, as she wanted to see if Twilight had made any progress in figuring out what she and the workers had seen yesterday on their way back to town.
Nearing the treebrary, Penny spotted Twilight’s little brother/assistant, Spike watering some flowers out front with a watering can. Approaching, she smiled and said, “Hello, Spike!”
Pausing his task, Spike turned and returned Penny’s smile with one of his own. “Oh hey, Penny, how’s it going?”
“Pretty well, how about yourself?” she replied.
He shrugged. “Busy, since Twilight and Lyra started their project, I’ve been pretty much running the library for her.”
Cocking her head to one side, Penny asked, “She’s having you run the whole library by yourself?”
“For the most part. She helps out when she can, but this sort of stuff takes priority. Besides, it’s not like I haven’t been doing this since we moved here. The only difference now is that I get to make the decisions about where stuff goes and what I need to prioritize doing for the day,” he paused and looked around, before motioning Penny to come closer. Doing so, she bent down and cocked an ear as Spike raised a claw and whispered, “Between you and me, I prefer things this way. Twilight was always hoarding the new books to read that came in and even though she is a fast reader, it could take her a few days to a week or more to read through them all, even longer if she decided to read them again. Of course, this usually meant that the books didn’t get put on the new releases shelf until she was done reading all of them.”
Penny giggled. “I bet that irritated a few townsponies.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “You have no idea. Now that she is so busy, ponies don’t have to wait for her to read them first. So I can just put the books on the new releases shelf and everypony is happy.”
Shaking her head with a smile at the antics of the local librarian, Penny asked, “Well, if you’re happy with how things are going, then I’m happy. Now,” she paused and looked up at the treebrary, “is Twilight in right now?”
Spike nodded. “Yep, she should be down in the basement working on stuff. Just be careful and ring the bell by the door when you go down so that you don’t startle her. She gets kind of irritated if you surprise her and ruin one of her experiments... ask me how I know.”
“Thanks for the heads-up Spike,” replied Penny with a giggle as she opened the door and trotted inside.
Shutting the door behind her, she looked around the ground floor of the library. The late afternoon sun bathed the room in a warm yellow glow, perfect for curling up on a reading pillow and enjoying a good book. Quietly walking past a couple of late afternoon patrons, Penny quickly found the entrance to the basement of the treebrary, a sign on the door warning ponies not to enter, which she promptly ignored.
Carefully opening the door after finding it unlocked, Penny stepped into the dim stairway and spotted the small bell hanging next to the door. Gripping the pull chord in her magic, she gave it three tugs and waited a second before softly descending the stairs.
Reaching the bottom, Penny stepped out of the dim stairwell and into a well-lit earthen chamber, the occasional exposed root hanging from the ceiling or poking out of a wall. Looking around, she took in the various books, boxes, lab equipment, and chalkboards, along with a pair of unicorns on the opposite side of the chamber from her.
“I hope I’m not interrupting anything important,” she said when she saw Twilight and Lyra turn around from working on a nearby chalkboard.
“Not really,” replied Lyra dismissively, “Twilight and I were just running a few calculations.”
“Are these about the ghost chicken?” asked Penny as she trotted over and looked over the board filled with equations that she had no hope of understanding.
“Partly,” replied Twilight as she turned back to the board, “but we’re also seeing if some formulas Lyra found while researching might help us work out a better model.”
“Model? What kind of model?” she asked confused.
Lyra smiled and replied, “We’re trying to create a model that can predict when and where chaotic events will happen. That way we can be prepared ahead of time. Unfortunately, we need a lot more data points in order to properly set it up so that it’s accurate. However, with this latest incident that you brought to Twilight’s attention, we’ve made a little progress. Plus thanks to some of these old theorems and formulas that I’ve managed to dig up in various archives, we might be able to have a semi-working prediction model in a couple of months.”
“You can do that? I thought chaos was by its definition unpredictable,” asked Penny confused.
Twilight nodded. “In a manner of speaking. True chaos is unpredictable, however, in our case we are dealing with a spell, which is orderly in its nature. Though this spell is badly broken, whether that is because it wasn’t properly cast or seemingly completed, we can’t tell. All we do know is that the spell or its effects have not ended at this time.”
“So you’re trying to predict when the spell will fire again and where the effect will occur?” guessed Penny.
Smiling proudly, like a teacher whose student had managed to complete a difficult problem, Twilight nodded happily, “Exactly, while we don’t know what kind of effect the spell will have, we might be able to guess when and the general where that effect will take place. Thus, we will be able to better prepare for whatever may come our way,” she paused as her smile turned into a frown and she turned her attention back to the board in front of her, “However, we just don’t have enough data to start putting our model together yet, and it is unlikely that we will for the foreseeable future. What’s worse is that there isn’t really any previous research into something like this to build upon, so we are sort of trotting through the wilderness without a clue as to where we are going right now.”
“On the positive side,” pipped up Lyra, “this is really helping me get my doctorate.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “You would have had your doctorate done by now if you hadn’t goofed off and changed your mind every couple of semesters.”
“Oh, I’m sorry ‘Ms. I have a full-ride scholarship because I’m the princess’s student’, some of us have to occasionally work in order to afford the classes we need to take in order to get our degrees you know,” snarked Lyra.
“There are plenty of scholarships out there that you could have applied for and gotten, and you know it, you just didn’t want to put in the academic work needed to obtain them,” Twilight shot back.
Penny had a feeling that this was an old argument between the two mares and decided to stop it before it could go any further.
“So... getting back on track here, do you have any more information about this chicken or not?”
Turning her attention away from her fellow egghead, Twilight sadly shook her head. “We’ve combed through all the material that we have here in Ponyville on chickens, and we’ve found nothing on singing ghost chickens riding tricycles. However, we did find a couple of interesting references to other things that we’ve been looking into, but they’re locked away in some restricted vaults in Manehatten.”
“So you can’t read them?” asked Penny, a disappointed look on her face.
“I never said that,” replied Twilight with a shake of her head. “Now that Princess Celestia has granted me unfettered access to every library and knowledge repository in Equestria, as well as some that are outside the country, Lyra and I should be able to access those records. In fact, she and I were planning on heading to Manehatten next Saturday to find those books that we need.”
“That’s good news?” said Penny, an unsure look on her face.
“It’s a start anyways,” replied Twilight, “now that my record has been cleared and I am allowed access to these restricted areas, it should make our research task much easier as I won’t have to fully rely on Lyra to find what I need.”
“Plus I won’t have to lug around all of those heavy books and stacks of notes anymore for you either!” interjected Lyra happily.
“Anyways,” said Twilight, ignoring Lyra’s remark, “for the time being, we don’t really have any further news to give you on the matter, sorry.”
Penny sighed in disappointment. “Well, it was worth a shot, thanks.”
Twilight gave her a reassuring smile. “Any time, was there anything else that you needed from us?”
Penny shook her head. “No, I just wanted to know if you’d found out anything regarding that chicken from yesterday, and since I was in the area, I’d thought I’d drop by on my way to see Allen.”
“Okay, well, when you see him, tell him we said hello,” replied Twilight before she turned her attention back to the board.
Sensing that the conversation was over, Penny said, “I will, have a good evening.”
“See ya,” waved Lyra before she too turned and resumed her work.
Turning around, Penny slowly ascended the stairs, disappointment weighing heavily on her mind as she was hoping that Twilight would have some kind of answer that would sate her curiosity. Leaving the treebrary behind, Penny waved goodbye to Spike as she left, who returned her wave with one of his own before he went back to his current task, and set her course for Allen’s place.
Taking it slow, as it was a nice day and she figured that Allen would still be busy when she got there, she arrived about an hour later and found that Allen was loading the last round bale onto a wagon. She’d seen three of the four wagons pass her on the way out of town, and apparently, this was to be the last one of the evening.
It is getting a tad late, she thought as she looked up at the sun as it hung low in the western sky. I won’t have a lot of time to waste if I want to get home before it gets dark out, she thought as she approached Allen’s tractor.
Allen, seeing her approach, shut off his tractor and climbed down. Stretching, he grunted out a greeting, “Hey Penny, ugh, how’s it going?”
“Fairly well,” she replied coming to a stop next to him, “how are things going out here?”
Rubbing his back with a hand, Allen replied, “We’re done, just finished loading the last bale as you walked up.”
“That’s wonderful, I just came from speaking with Mr. Rich.”
“Oh yeah, and what did he say?” asked Allen curiously.
Penny chuckled. “He’s having a hard time finding places to store all of this hay. It seems as though you made too much for him to handle at one time.”
Allen laughed. “Well, that sounds like a personal problem to me.”
Still smiling Penny nodded. “Oh yes, but don’t worry, he told me to tell you to ‘keep them coming’, and he’d find a place to store them all.”
“Well that’s good, I’d hate for that hay to go to waste because he couldn’t find a suitable place to store it before it got rained on,” commented Allen.
“I checked the weather schedule, and the local weather team isn’t planning on having any rain until Thursday. Though from my understanding they’re planning on letting it rain for a couple of days as there was a mix-up during the last scheduled rain shower and the rain clouds meant for Ponyville ended up going to Bales instead. So this time we’re getting the rain that was supposed to go to Bales this week as compensation.”
Allen shook his head. “It still boggles my mind that you guys can control the weather like that.”
“And it boggles my mind that you humans can’t control it at all,” replied Penny with a cheeky smile.
“Well if you were to listen to some of the conspiracy theorists back home, we can, but just not for the betterment of mankind.”
“Conspiracy theorists? What are those?” asked Penny curiously.
Allen laughed. “Strange people with a lot of time on their hands,” he shrugged, “but that’s not important right now. So what brings you out this way this late in the afternoon?”
“Well, I just wanted to stop by and see how things were going on your end, as well as tell you about something that happened to me and the others on our way home last night. Oh, and Lyra and Twilight say ‘hi’, by the way” she added, remembering Lyra’s request at the last minute.
“Okay, well what did you want to tell me then?”
Taking a deep breath, Penny told Allen about her encounter with the strange ghost chicken. As she spoke she watched as Allen’s eyebrows at first went up in skepticism, before knitting together in thought. By the time she finished, Allen was idly rubbing his chin and had a thoughtful frown on his face.
After thinking quietly to himself, he asked, “Do you think you could recognize the chicken and song if you heard and saw them again?”
Penny nodded. “I’m pretty sure I could, why?”
“Meet me at the house, I think I might be able to shed some light on what you saw last night,” he replied as he turned and climbed back up on his tractor. Penny wanted to ask him what he knew, but the deep rumble of the engine turning over prevented her from asking.
Sighing to herself, she turned and did as Allen instructed and trotted after the human and his tractor.
Reaching the porch, she turned and waited for Allen to put his equipment away and join her. A few minutes later and the two were inside and Allen was rummaging around in one of the cabinets next to the TV.
“What are you looking for Allen?” she asked.
“A movie,” he replied, giving no further information.
Feeling a tad frustrated at being left in the dark, Penny was about to speak when Allen let out a soft, ‘ah ha’ and pulled out a shiny rectangular box. Opening it up, he pulled out a smaller black rectangle and strode over to the TV. Popping it into a slot on the console where he had put the DVD movie in when they had watched Porcco Rosso together, Allen stepped back and turned on the TV. Grabbing the nearby remote, he hit a button on it and the screen changed from black to some kind of warning that Penny didn’t get a chance to read as Allen hit the fast-forward button and the movie player started whining as he skipped through the movie.
Penny wasn’t really able to make out much of what was happening, it seemed to be a story about clay-looking chickens in some kind of prison. She wasn’t sure as fuzzy bars of static would dance across the screen distorting the picture and making it hard to see what was going on. However, after a bit, Allen had apparently found what he was looking for and hit the play button. Immediately, Penny’s ears perked up as she heard the song from before started playing, and she nearly lept at the TV screen when she saw that same rooster come around the corner in the road pedaling his little tricycle and singing along to the song.
“That’s it!” she exclaimed, pointing a shaky hoof at the screen, “that’s the chicken we saw last night!” turning to Allen she asked, “how did you know?”
“Because your description of the chicken was a dead ringer to him,” he pointed at the rooster on the screen and said, “That’s Rocky, he’s a character in this movie called Chicken Run,” he hit the pause button, freezing Rocky at the point where he was looking up at a large billboard with a smiling woman on it holding a pie with a chicken in it. “It’s basically about a bunch of chickens trying to escape from a farm because they don’t want to be turned into pies.”
Penny was gobsmacked. Her brain was trying, and failing to comprehend what she was seeing before her. How is it possible that we saw a fictional character from a movie in the real world last night? That makes no logical sense!
“This makes no sense,” she finally stated out loud, the beginnings of a headache forming.
“In what way?” asked Allen curiously as he sat down on the couch.
“Because that rooster should not exist!” retorted Penny as she threw her forelegs up in the air in exasperation. “He’s a work of fiction! Why would he exist in our world, even as a phantom, if he’s fictional?!”
Allen shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine Penny. Maybe Discord’s spell created Rocky from my memories, partially lifted him from the movie to mess with us and cause additional chaos, or tried to pull him from another world where he does exist, but didn’t have the energy to do so at the time. I mean, isn’t that what Twilight was talking about when she told us about her theory?”
“Ugh, this is making my head hurt,” groaned Penny as she slumped down on the floor.
Allen shrugged again. “Either way, we should probably let Twilight know.”
“I already told her about him last night,” moaned Penny from her position on the floor, her hooves laid over her eyes to block out the light in an attempt to lessen her growing headache, which was only partially successful.
“But have you told her about what you learned just now?” queried Allen.
Penny just groaned again.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” said Allen as he turned off the TV and VCR player and stood up. Bending over, he grabbed Penny’s foreleg and pulled her suddenly up off the floor.
Letting out a squeak of surprise at being unexpectedly hauled to her hooves, she shot Allen an annoyed look and asked, “What was that for?”
“To get you up off the floor so we can go and get Twilight,” replied Allen evenly as he made his way to the front door, turning the lights off as he went.
Trotting quickly to catch up with him and not be left behind in the darkening house, Penny asked, “But it’s getting late, and by the time we get her and bring her back, it’ll be dark out.”
“Then I’ll bring a flashlight so that we can see in the dark, problem solved,” replied Allen as he walked into the kitchen and grabbed the aforementioned flashlight from off the top of the fridge. Clicking it on to make sure it worked and giving a satisfied nod when he saw it light up he looked over at Penny and asked, “Unless you just want to wait until tomorrow to get her.”
Penny shook her head in resignation. “No, it’d be better to get this out of the way now, while everything is still relatively fresh in our minds.”
“Alright then, let’s get going,” said Allen as he headed for the front door, Penny quickly falling in behind him.
Shutting the door behind him and locking it, both he and Penny started walking toward town. They reached Golden Oaks as the sun was beginning its final descent in the west. Striding up to the door, Penny found it to still be unlocked and stepped inside after a moment's hesitation.
“Twilight, Lyra? Are either of you still here?” she called out.
“Hey Penny,” greeted Twilight as she descended the stairs from the upper floor, a surprised expression on her face. “What are you doing back here? I thought you were going to Allen’s?”
Penny nodded her head and replied, “I did, but I discovered something that I thought you and Lyra would want to know about.”
“Is it another chaos event?” she asked perplexed.
“Not exactly,” piped up Allen as he stepped inside, taking a moment to look around at the cozy interior of the library. “More along the lines of finding out some new information on her recent encounter with that ghost chicken.”
“Oh, she told you about it?” asked Twilight.
Allen nodded. “Yeah, and the description she gave reminded me of something I’d watched as a kid. So I showed it to her and it turns out that the two matched.”
Penny nodded. “And so that’s why we’re here, I wanted to come and get you and Lyra if possible to come and see it for yourself.”
“Well Lyra already left for the evening, but if you’ll give me a minute, I’ll go and grab my saddlebags, along with some supplies, and come with you,” replied Twilight as she turned and trotted back upstairs.
“Okay, we’ll wait for you outside then,” said Penny as she and Allen turned to go and wait out front.
A few minutes later and Twilight appeared with her saddlebag. “Okay, I’ll be back in a little bit Spike, so make sure you finish your chores for the evening before you start reading your Power Ponies comic,” she called back into the library.
“Okay, Twilight,” came the muffled reply from inside, “see you later.”
“Bye,” replied Twilight with a small smile and nod before she shut the door behind her. “Okay, I’m ready to go, so lead on.”
Giving a nod, Allen turned and wordlessly started walking, both Penny and Twilight falling in behind the lone human who had turned on his flashlight to combat the gathering darkness as the trio made their way out of town over the north stone bridge.
By the time they arrived at Allen’s house, it was fully dark outside as well as inside. However, a quick flick of a light switch and the darkness inside was banished by the warm glow of electric lights.
Standing aside, Allen ushered his guests inside before shutting the door behind them and guiding them to the living room.
Setting the flashlight down on the counter, he pointed to the couch and said, “Go ahead and have a seat while I start up the TV real quick and we’ll show you what we’ve been talking about.”
Twilight nodded and hopped up on the couch. By this point, her curiosity had been thoroughly piqued as Penny and Allen had tried to explain to her what they had discovered on their way over. However, Twilight figured that it would be best to see it firsthoof before she jumped to any conclusions one way or the other.
With that thought in mind, she patiently waited for Allen to start up the TV and to find the correct spot in the movie. After a minute or so of fiddling with it, he turned to her and said, “Okay, are you ready?” When she nodded, he hit the play button and Twilight silently watched the scene play out before her on the TV.
Even though she had a basic understanding of how the TV worked in principle, thanks in large part to Allen lending her an old book that explained how a lot of human technologies worked in basic principles, she was still fascinated by this marvel of human technology. In Equestria, motion pictures were still a relatively new invention, and they had no sound nor did they display color. Additionally, the projection equipment required to play movies was both expensive and big, which meant that only the very rich or purpose-built businesses could afford to operate them. Ponyville currently didn’t have a movie theater, though, from her occasional conversations with Mayor Mare, there was apparent interest in having one built, but so far nopony had been willing to front the considerable amount of bits needed to have it built yet.
And yet, here Allen has his own private movie theater in his home, she marveled to herself as she watched the scene unfold before her.
After a few minutes, the scene ended and Allen paused the movie. Turning to Twilight he said, “Well, that’s it.”
“That’s what you wanted to show me?” asked Twilight.
Penny nodded. “Yep, that’s the rooster that I saw, he’s a perfect match, right down to the song playing on his little radio.”
“Can we watch it again, please? I’d like to take some notes,” asked Twilight as she pulled some paper and a quill, and ink out of her saddlebags.
“Sure, let me just rewind it real quick,” replied Allen as he hit the rewind button on his remote.
The VCR player dutifully rewound the movie to just before the scene started and Allen hit the play button. This time, the quiet scratching of a quill on paper could be heard underneath the sounds emanating from the TV speakers. When the scene finished again, Twilight had Allen rewind it once more, and then resumed her note-taking. This process repeated itself several times until finally with a nod she looked up and said, “I think I’ve got everything that I need right now, thank you, Allen.”
Hitting the rewind button for the final time, Allen replied, “No problem, happy to help.”
“So...” began Penny hesitantly, “what can you tell us?”
Twilight took a deep breath and replied, “Well, my initial thought is that Discord’s spell might have attempted to duplicate the scene in the real world as a means of creating more chaos magic. Then again, the other option was that the spell attempted to pull Rocky here from his world into our world.”
“Like what happened to me?” asked Allen as he ejected the VHS tape and put it back in its box before putting it back on the shelf where he got it from.
Twilight nodded. “Possibly. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to get to the spot where the incident happened, there wasn’t much, if any, magic left for me to analyze. What makes this even harder is that I can’t even use your arrival as a baseline because the Elements of Harmony had essentially destroyed whatever spellwork Discord used to bring you here when they were activated. Moreover, by the time your place was discovered and we were able to safely inspect everything, whatever might have been left over had decayed into little more than background magical energy.”
“Meaning it was useless,” supplied Allen with a sigh.
Twilight nodded sadly. “I’m afraid so.”
“But what about that sunflower?” asked Penny suddenly.
Twilight shook her head. “I found about the same amount of magical energy and spell signature as when I analyzed the area around where the chicken appeared. Chaos magic by its nature breaks down very quickly. So any spells that use it tend to not leave much of a signature behind after a short period of time.”
“How short of a period are we talking here?” asked Allen curiously.
Twilight shrugged. “We don’t know, it could be seconds or hours, nopony really knows, as chaos magic isn’t very well understood because almost no ponies are able to successfully or safely cast it for study. The only entity that can do so in a consistent manner is Discord, and for obvious reasons, we can’t ask him for help.”
“So what, are we just screwed then, with no way to figure out what’s going on?” asked Allen, a tad exasperated at the lack of apparent progress.
Twilight shook her head. “Not necessarily,” she began, “if I can just be there when an event happens, or even a few minutes later, then I might be able to conduct some scans and get some solid data. But until that happens, we’re kind of just trotting in the dark here and making educated guesses at best based on what we already know, or more likely, what we suspect that we know. At this point, our best guess is that either the Elements didn’t purge all of Discord’s magic when they turned him to stone or he had some kind of failsafe waiting in case he was defeated. Since we don’t know precisely when your farm arrived in Equestria Allen, then we can’t figure out if it was before or after Discord was defeated.”
“Would that matter?” asked Penny.
Twilight nodded. “If Allen was brought here before Discord was turned back to stone, then we are more likely dealing with the after-effects of the spell that brought him here. Which means that the Elements were not fully successful in ridding the area of the chaos corruption, probably due to the nearby Everfree Forest, and we are dealing with the remnants of his broken spell. However, if he arrived after Discord was defeated, that means that Discord left a trap behind that would activate only after he was defeated, which means that said spell is probably still active.”
“Both of those options don’t sound good,” remarked Penny, a nervous look on her face.
“They aren’t,” agreed Twilight, “but of the two, I would prefer it to be the first one, rather than the second.”
“Why’s that?” asked Allen curiously.
“Because a failing spell, while dangerous, isn’t as bad as one that still is trying to accomplish whatever its caster created it for. In the case of the first one, while we don’t know what the side effects of this failing spell might be, they should, in theory, be minor as time goes on and the spell degrades into nothingness. Thus, so long as nothing comes along and renews said spell, it should eventually run out of energy and collapse on itself. If however, its the second option, then things become a bit more concerning as until we learn what the spell is trying to accomplish, we won’t know how to counter it. In addition, we won’t know if the spell is getting weaker or stronger as we can’t know for sure what the caster set the spell to feed off of to power itself. Though with Discord I have a pretty good idea of what he might have set it to use to power itself.”
“Chaos?” ventured Penny.
Twilight gave a nod. “Most likely, it would fit his MO, and would make the spell very dangerous as the more chaos it causes, the stronger it gets, which allows it to create more chaos and so on.”
“A positive feedback loop,” said Allen.
“Correct,” replied Twilight, “which is what I had partly guessed previously before Lyra brought some additional information to my attention. In any case, as of right now, we don’t really have enough information to go on, and I’m hesitant now to state one way or the other which scenario is currently happening.”
Both Allen and Penny looked at each other for a moment, before then turning back to Twilight, and Allen asked, “So what can we do?”
Twilight shrugged helplessly. “Nothing really except report any unusual events that happen as quickly as possible and hope for the best. With these low-level events, any evidence of what’s going on will be too badly degraded to properly analyze after an hour or less. However, if the events start getting bigger and more powerful, they should leave behind evidence for a much longer period of time. Though who is to say what other effects they will leave behind.”
“Yeah, I’d rather deal with random sunflowers popping up and ghost characters from movies running around,” replied Allen with a nod, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Same here,” replied Twilight, “but as I said until we have more information, we won’t know what exactly we are dealing with here, which means we need to stay alert in case this spell manages to gain enough energy to throw something big our way.”
“Well, I guess until that happens, we’ll just keep moving forward then,” said Allen as he looked up at the clock on the wall and saw it was a little past nine in the evening, “In the meantime, unless anyone has anything else that they want to share, we’d best be getting you two home as it’s getting late.”
Looking at the clock herself, Twilight nodded in agreement and replied, “Agreed, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ll be sure to fill Lyra in the next time I see her.”
“You’re welcome,” replied Allen as he and the two unicorns headed for the front door.
As Allen moved to grab the flashlight from where he’d put it down on the kitchen counter, Twilight looked at him and said with a grateful smile, “Oh, you don’t need to escort us back to town Allen, we’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure? Penny made it sound like you’d have a problem getting home in the dark,” asked Allen.
“I’m not very good with holding light spells for a long time, so I generally don’t like walking long distances in the dark,” replied Penny quietly.
Twilight smiled and lit up her horn, a bright yellow orb forming a couple of inches above the tip. “Don’t worry, I’ve got us covered.”
“Are you sure you can hold it all the way back to town?”
“Positive,” replied Twilight with a nod, the little orb bobbing as she moved her horn, “I used to read books at night under my covers when I was a little filly, so I’ve gotten good and holding the spell for long periods of time without getting tired.”
Penny frowned. “You really shouldn’t read by horn light at night like that, it’s not good for your eyes.”
“There is no scientific study that proves that is the case,” rebutted Twilight, “that’s just something that unicorn parents tell their foals so that they don’t stay up late reading when they should be sleeping.”
Allen chuckled. “Yeah, well you probably should have been sleeping instead of reading. Kids need their sleep if they want to grow up healthy and strong.”
Twilight stuck her nose up in their air and ‘harrumphed’. “Well I did it, and I turned out fine.”
Both Penny and Allen gave each other a sideways glance but decided not to say anything to the somewhat neurotic mare.
“Whatever you say Twilight,” said Allen instead.
Choosing to ignore the slightly sarcastic comment, Twilight instead just shook her head and said, “Well, anyways, goodnight Allen, we’ll see you later,” and turned and trotted off, her little yellow orb following dutifully along above her head.
“See you later Allen,” added Penny as she turned and hurried after Twilight.
Waving goodbye, Allen watched the two mares go for a moment before heading back inside, his stomach reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since lunch and that it wanted food.
Meanwhile, both Penny and Twilight walked back to Ponyville occasionally making small talk as they went. Eventually, the glow of the house lights and streetlights pierced the deepening night and both Penny and Twilight parted ways at the river bridges. Twilight taking the north bridge and Penny the east.
Now that she was closer to home, Penny lit up her own horn, and a smaller yellow ball of magical light formed above her horn as she quickly trotted towards home. Reaching her home/office, she unlocked her door and stepped inside, hitting a light switch on the wall next to the door and extinguishing her horn light at the same time.
Shutting the door behind her, Penny noticed that there was some mail waiting for her in the little mail basket attached to the door just under the mail slot. Pulling the letters out, she rapidly sorted them as she trotted over to her desk, and after glancing at the clock on the wall, she decided she wasn’t tired enough to go to bed yet and sat down to get some late-night work done before bed.
As the clock ticked closer to midnight, Penny sighed and got up from behind her desk. Shaking her head, she wearily trotted towards the stairs, turning the downstairs light off as she went.
Lighting up her horn again, she ascended the stairs and tiredly stumbled into her upstairs apartment. Fighting back a yawn, she thought, Today and yesterday have certainly been interesting, to say the least.
Deciding to forgo dinner, she instead opened the door to her bedroom and pulled back the cover of her bed. Turning off the light, she slipped under the covers and closed her eyes. As she slipped into slumber, her last thought of the day was, Hopefully things will settle down for a bit after today.
And with that final thought, sleep took her fully and all that could be heard was the gentle snoring.
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well this is a vary interesting puzzle.
i can't believe i did not remember Rocky name.
Starvation is losing ground
Merry Christmas!
Dude, in a few months this is going to be a decade old. I think we can handle it.
Another nice chapter, as usual.:D
11459705
Yeah I know, but I still don't like it when it takes me so long to update. Though it is kinda crazy to think I've been plugging away at this story for so long.
Thank you for a wonderful story… and for not giving up on it.
I wish everybody a wonderful Boxing Day!
Better hope that the spell isnt being fed by creative information, as that video collection has enough to keep the CMC busy for years.
Good chapter!