Mother and Child

by AlicornPriest

Chapter 6: The Emerald City

Chapter 6 - The Emerald City

1. No crystal pony (winged or un-winged) shall be outside unattended after sunset.

2. No crystal pony (winged or un-winged) shall speak to a unicorn unless first spoken to.

3. No crystal pony (winged or un-winged) shall overtake the natural talent of a unicorn.

4. No crystal pony (winged or un-winged) shall sire a unicorn or be recognized as having unicorn lineage.

5. No crystal pony (winged or un-winged) shall have luxury or comfort beyond the necessity of life.

6. No crystal pony (winged or un-winged) shall be recognized as equal to a unicorn, for this is an abomination.

~ssw.govern.dp/crystal/065.html

“That doesn't answer the question,” said the green crystal pegasus. “Who are you, and what are you doing in our quarters?”

“I don't know what you're talking about! You're Jade Shine, the Ponyville repair pony, aren't you?”

“You have me confused for somepony else. I am Jade Shine, but I've never heard of a place called Ponyville,” Jade said.

“But if you're Jade Shine, why are you all crystally?”

“Why aren't you?” Jade replied. “You're a crystal pony, aren't you? I don't see a horn on your head.”

“I'm not a crystal pony!” Pinkie said. “I'm so confused. If this isn't Ponyville... where am I?”

“Why, you're in Everfree City, of course! Technological center of the Great Triumvirate!”

“Now you're just making stuff up!” Pinkie said.

“Take a look for yourself!” Jade told her.

Pinkie unhooked the stall gate and made her way to the door where Jade had come in. It was so bright out that Pinkie could hardly see. But once her eyes had acclimated to the noonday glare, she was awestruck by what she saw before her.

She had never seen such a city so incredibly marvelous in all her life. There were massively tall buildings all around, built of what looked like glass and shiny steel. One in particular seemed like it was about to scrape the sky! She could see pegasi weaving between these buildings, but there were also earth ponies and unicorns up there, too! They stood on top of small, metal planks and whizzed around like any pegasi! She looked on the street, and she could see carriages moving without any ponies pulling them! Everywhere she looked seemed almost alien how strange it was. The sidewalks moved on their own; the signs lit up in color and text; and lots of ponies who walked about were wearing a black earpiece that wrapped around to their mouths. And on every light post and every building was a flag she didn't recognize. It was a triangle split into three sections: a green section with yellow stars, a white section with purple swirls, and a black section with red triangles. This could be nothing else but the flag of the Great Triumvirate. Jade Shine wasn't lying at all. This wasn't Ponyville. Something had gone horribly wrong.

Pinkie started to hyperventilate. How would she get home now? Twilight had sent her back here with the expectation that Starswirl could send her back, but if she hadn't come back like she should have, could she ever find a way back? Or was she trapped now in this alternate world she didn't understand?

Pinkie went back into the stable and stood by the stalls. “Jade, do you know anypony who can cast time travel spells?” she asked.

“Sorry, I don't,” she replied. “I'm just a crystal pony.”

“What do you mean, 'just' a crystal pony?”

“I mean just that. I'm not a unicorn. I'm just a slave. I fix mechanical problems, not magical ones.”

“A...A slave?” Pinkie's thoughts began to shoot into double time. Crystal ponies as slaves... it was impossible! Had Sombra never been defeated in this timeline? But the world didn't look like a blighted wasteland. Either Sombra had gone nice, or...

“Look, you can't stay around here,” Jade said. “You probably need to get back to work.” She grabbed a screwdriver in one of the stalls and put it into her worksaddle. “So do I. See you around.”

The mare disappeared into the blinding light outside. Pinkie followed her for a while until Jade stepped onto one of the floating boards and headed off into the sky. Now she would have to find her own path.

As Pinkie walked along down the road, she came upon a building filled with the most amazing devices she had ever seen! She rushed in and stared at the colorful devices as they jumped from picture to picture.

“Interested, ma’am?” came a voice behind her.

“Am I!” she cried out. She turned around and saw an earth pony in a blue uniform in front of her. “I’ve never seen something so amazing! It’s like a movie screen, only all by itself!” she told him.

“…It’s just a television,” he replied. “They’ve been around for centuries.”

“Well, whatever they are, they’re so cool,” she said.

“Are you sure you’re all right? And where is your horn, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh, right!” Pinkie remembered that only unicorns had normal coats. If she wanted to blend in, she’d have to come up with something realistic. “Well, you see, I was working in the lab, and then all of a sudden, blam!”

“Blam?”

“Blam! My horn was just gone!”

“Really.”

“Yup! Thankfully, the rest of me’s okay. I’m all right, at least for now.”

The employee looked at Pinkie with a suddenly weary eye. “Well, if you decide to go get that horn fixed, you should probably go ask the Wizard.”

“The Wizard?” Pinkie took her gaze from the TV screen, now interested.

“Right, the guy up top! His magic is so powerful, they say he can cure anything. If you need magical help, he’s the one to talk to.”

“All right, then I will!” She bounced her way out of the door, only to come right back and ask, “Uh, which way do I need to go to do that?”

“Thattaway,” he said. He pointed towards the tallest building in the skyline with the huge letters EC on the top.

“Right,” she said. She put her hooves to pavement and headed out to the tower in the center of the city.
***

“And so your horn just blew off?”

“Yup, blam! So now I need to see the Wizard to get a horn. Or grow my old one back, however this works.”

“If that’s the case, then you’ll need the hospital wing out back.” The doorkeeper/secretary gestured out to the side, where the ever-present red crossed bars marked her destination. Once she got there and checked in at the front desk, she sat down in one of the little chairs and picked up one of the magazines resting next to it. It was an interesting read, though naturally she hardly understood anything it was talking about. What she did manage to pick up confirmed what Jade had said: Equestria was broken up into three districts, and she was in Everfree City. High Canterlot was kind of like her Canterlot, a snooty magic-based city, while the Dark Paradise was apparently really creepy and nopony lived there if they could help it. Anything else was pretty hard to understand, being as it was significantly more advanced than what she knew from Ponyville. The math section used a method she couldn’t follow, the poetry was all really weird (none of it rhymed!), the etiquette section talked about crystal ponies in such a disturbing way that Pinkie had to turn the page, and the find-it in the back was already colored in. So she tossed that to the side and contented herself with watching the TV up in the corner until somepony called her name.

“Pinkie?”

That somepony being someone she hadn’t expected at all: Starswirl! She jumped up from her seat and looked at who it was. No doubt about it: it had to be Starswirl! She jumped up and was about to say something, but he nodded his head in such a way as if to say, “Careful now.” What he actually said was, “If you’ll come back with me, please, we can get started?”

“R-right.” She kept her cool and followed him back to one of the check-up rooms. She was so nervicited! She had so many questions to ask him, so many things she needed to know about what was going on!

When they got into a room, he placed a spell over the door, then sighed. “There. Now we’re safe from eavesdroppers.” His tone shifted from the neutral doctor tone he had been using to the cheerful grin she was so familiar with. “I’m so happy to see you, Pinkie! Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of time, so our reunion will have to be brief.” He turned to a nearby cabinet and began rummaging through its contents.

“Why didn’t I get back home? Where is this? And, well, how are you—”

“Alive?” He laughed, but it wasn’t a very happy laugh. “I’m afraid that’s a very long and somewhat painful story. As to the others, I’m afraid they’re all tied in with the same question. You see, you didn’t fix the timeline like you were supposed to. Through a long series of events, I’ve been granted immortality, and I run this portion of the world now. I’m Starswirl the Immortal, Lord of Everfree City!” He took a pose, but he quickly deflated. “And now things are flying further and further out of my control. Noble Blood and Sombra are driving Equestria into the ground, and I—”

“Whoa whoa whoa. Noble Blood’s alive, too?” Pinkie asked. “And you’re allied with Sombra? Is that why you’ve enslaved the earth ponies and pegasi?” she added accusingly.

“No, you don’t understand! I’m trying to help them!” Starswirl said. “I don’t know what you’ve seen of the crystal ponies’ plight, but if you go to High Canterlot or, Lords forbid, the Dark Paradise, you’ll see that they’ve got it so much better here! But I can’t do anything too quickly or Sombra and Noble Blood will overrule me.”

“But you can’t just let them stay slaves!” Pinkie cried. “It isn’t right!”

“I know it isn’t. And I’m trying my best. But for now, this is all I can do. I lead Everfree City as best as I can, I give the slaves as much freedom as I dare, and I try to use my magic to make up for my mistakes. Like so.” He showed her a glass ring that pulsed with his magic. “Take this,” he said, “and put it in your mane.” She did so, and in an instant a pink horn jutted out from her forehead where the ring was sitting. “That’ll work for anypony but the other two Lords, so don’t go running into them.”

“What if I need to look like a crystal pony? Can you make me-- Wait!” she said before he answered. “Send me back home! If you send me back again, I can fix everything and make it so this never happens!”

“Can you, though?” Starswirl said. He looked at her sadly. “Hasn’t it happened already? You may turn back time, but will that make this cease to exist?”

“I…”

“In any case, I can’t. Even if we had the time for me to prepare an entire time travel spell of the power we need, I don’t have the components for it.” Starswirl looked warily about. “You’ve got to go. If we stay here any longer, Cold Storage out there will get suspicious, and if she gets suspicious, she’ll report me to the other Lords.”

“Why would she—”

“She’s one of their spies, now go!” Starswirl pushed her out the door and followed her with a broad, fake smile.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Pinkie whispered to him.

“Go to High Canterlot, find my successor,” he whispered back. “She can get you home. But if you want to know why this world is how it is, go to Dark Paradise and right my wrongs. My greatest mistake is in Sombra’s castle on the 27th floor.”

“What does any of that me—hey there!” Pinkie said. She, too, had put on Starswirl’s smile.

“Everything all right?” the secretary asked.

“Just fine, Storage,” Starswirl said. “Got Pinkie’s horn fixed up right as rain!”

“Thanks so much, Mr. Lord Starswirl, sir!” she said.

“It’s what I do,” he replied genially. He turned around, but then he thought of something. “Oh, if that horn feels a little out of balance, use this spell.” He scribbled something onto his prescription pad and passed it to her with his magic. On it was written, “Remember—HC, successor. DP, 27th floor, mistake. Right what is wrong.”

“Gotcha,” Pinkie replied. Cold Storage didn’t seem to know any the wiser. With one final wave, she watched Starswirl head back to the other rooms, perhaps to look at some other case. He was different, but deep down, he was still the same Starswirl, really. He knew what was right, and he wanted it for everypony, unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony alike. But, just like in Unicornia, he was trapped by circumstance, unable to be what he truly wanted. It was pitiable.

But he had set her to a task. If the Dark Paradise housed his “greatest mistake,” then clearly that was where she must go.
***

Hours later, Pinkie sat on a train, watching the country fly by. This train (the conductor had called it a “maglev,” whatever that meant) moved so much faster than the trains at home. The technology was fascinating, but there was no way she could have wrapped her head around it. Now Twilight, she would have the whole thing reverse-engineered quicker than you could say, “For Science!” She was the one who should have been out here, not Pinkie. She pulled the Child out of her bag and held it close. She was just a pastry chef. She couldn’t do… whatever it was Starswirl expected of her. But she had to, she supposed. She was the only one who could.

The light outside cut out in a single instant. Pinkie looked out the window. The greens and yellows of Everfree City had vanished, replaced with black and red. The sky up above was filled with roiling black clouds, and black crystalline spires shot out every which way. This was, without a doubt, the rule of Sombra. This was his Dark Paradise. Pinkie had arrived.

Comments

[AlicornPriest]

6099399
Both Luna and Twilight have their future in this story... as soon as I write it. Sadly, Pinkie's stuck on a train, and I'm a huge procrastinator.