The Crystal Empire - part 2
I was headed towards Doctor Whooves. I hadn’t seen him around for a while and wanted to speak with him. He’d been acting kind of strangely lately. I was going to get in his face and make a scene. I didn’t have anything against him personally, but I thought it might help me assert my dominance towards the Black Twins so they would stop annoying me. It wasn’t a very good plan, but that was okay because I was interrupted by Trixie falling out of the sky.
After being mutated by residual radiation, she had eight legs. She was also at the helm of a similarly eight-legged combat robot that cratered the street where it fell. The underside was glowing hot. I assumed that had been caused by reentry, since the last I knew Trixie had been banished to the moon by Luna for being a nuisance.
“Ha ha! Cower before a pony that has mastery of the heavens!” she called. “You tried to send Trixie away, but she came back!”
I glared at her. “I’m going to have a chat with Luna about the effectiveness of her banishments. In the meantime, why don’t you use that so-called mastery of the heavens and go back to the moon?”
“Why should Trixie?” the blue unicorn harrumphed. “She takes orders from nopony.”
“Actually, that was a dare,” I said. “I bet you can’t.”
Trixie narrowed her eyes. “There are more important things—”
“Chicken! Bwok bwok bwok.”
“Such foalish attempts will not work on Trixie!”
I shrugged. “Okay.” I turned and walked in my original direction, heading for Doc.
“Get back here!” called Trixie. I threw up a hoof in a dismissive gesture. If I’d had fingers, I would have punctuated it with the middle one.
Ponies began crowding around the robot and mare in the middle of the street. “Wow, what a freak,” one of them said.
Trixie’s eye twitched. She got the robot going and skittered out of town. While I had just passed over a prime opportunity to kill her, I thought it was kind of funny to see her suffering. Also, I hadn’t had a robot of my own to fight her with. I’d promised myself that when the time came, that’s how it would go down.
The problem of how she had gotten a robot still grated on my mind, but I would find out eventually. I stopped suddenly and facehoofed. Back when Trixie was terrorizing Ponyville with hordes of spiders, she had been mentioned in association with the Crystal King. Twilight had just said something about the Crystal Empire. While I would have thought that an Empire would be ruled by an Emperor or something, I should have seen the connection sooner.
Oh well, I was sure Trixie would appear again later. I kept walking. “Hey Doctor Whooves, what’s up?”
The brown stallion looked around. “Huh? Who are you talking to?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You aren’t Doctor Whooves?”
“No, I’m Time Turner. Why?”
“You look exactly like him.”
He shrugged. I also noticed that he wasn’t speaking with the same accent or manner as Doc. Strange. Anyway, with that task accomplished, I figured that I had better go after Twilight and friends. Maybe I could save the Crystal Empire with democracy before it was too late.
I went up to the castle to borrow a robot. After the deal with the Changelings, the idea of mecha soldiers had really taken off. I was still stalling for time in providing that. As I had decided, I liked being the only one with robots.
There were still a few testing models around. It took a little while to get an audience with the Princesses, but after I held a guard at knifepoint, he agreed to let me in.
I let go of him and put away my switchblade. Celestia looked at me. I said, “Hi, I’m here to borrow a robot to travel to the Crystal Empire.”
She laughed. “Oh, this just gets better. I sent Twilight there to have a little fun.”
“Trolling?” I asked. “What did you do?”
“Well, King Sombra is the bad guy here. He shouldn’t be too hard to defeat, though. We won’t even need the Elements of Harmony for this. I’m hoping that one day she will finally get wise and stop being so gullible. In the meantime, watching Twilight jump through hoops is entertaining. ”
We both chuckled at that. Luna came in, hearing the laughter. “Are you giggling about Twilight?”
“Yep,” I confirmed. Luna smiled. “I acted cold and aloof to her while she was here, just to confuse her more.”
“Luna had a good teacher,” said Celestia. We all laughed again.
“Okay,” I said. “I should probably be going. Lend me a robot.”
“Sorry,” said Celestia, “We, er, accidentally broke them all.”
“Sucks to be you,” I said. “I’ll just a buy a train ticket.”
I was halfway to the station before I thought to wonder whether she was trolling me, too.
The north of Equestria was frozen and cold. I half expected ponies to be talking with Canadian accents, like Snails back in Ponyville. Through the blowing snow, I saw a giant dome. Inside was nice and sunny, despite the clouds that covered the area outside the dome. I shook my head. I will never understand the weather in Equestria.
As I approached the dome/non-dome border, I noticed a black cloud with a face. Such apparitions were rarely a good thing. Actually, I would say that they’re never a good thing. When was the last time you saw a friendly dark mist?
I scooted around the other side and went through the dome, which let me pass easily. I paused for a moment to take in my surroundings.
The city—it was a very small empire, I guess—was arranged around a crystal palace-like thing in the center. There seemed to be some kind of fair going on. Ponies who looked kind of dull were periodically popping into brighter colors. I noticed the crowd from Ponyville among them, providing entertainment. Pinkie had an unusual combination of a jester’s outfit, a double-barreled flugelhorn, and night vision goggles. Rarity was making baskets. Rainbow and Fluttershy were jousting. Applejack was guarding something beneath a fabric shroud, and I didn’t see Spike or Twilight.
Sir Win had come with them, and I walked over to him. “What’s going on?”
He took a break from his entertainment show—which included him effortlessly eating fire—to talk to me. “Oh, something about stopping an ancient evil from a thousand years ago from coming back. The usual.”
I nodded. “Gee, a thousand years ago must have been a really busy year. I can think of a couple of things that happened then and came back to bite us now.”
I went looking for Twilight. She was with her brother and Cadance. The Pony of Loooove as I had begun to refer to her when she annoyed me, looked kind of tired. She wore a bunch of Princes Celestia-style gold jewelry. Carrying that heavy stuff around could make a pony tired, I supposed.
Shining Armor explained that his wife had been keeping the dome in place over the Empire for a while now. It took a lot of power, and she was exhausted. I was a little distracted when he was talking to me by little black things on his horn.
“What are those?” I asked. “You know, I think they make medication if you have weird growths on your protuberance. Of course, I’m pretty sure those aren’t genital warts. If they are, your sex life must be really weird.”
Cadance gave me an unpleasant look, and the dome wavered for just a moment. King Sombra tried to get in, but she got it back up in time to prevent that. Spike stared out at the scene. “I think the tip of his horn got sliced off.”
“Is that how they circumcise ponies around here?” I asked.
“Just…go away, Valiant,” said Twilight.
“Okay.” I wandered back down to the fair. They were passing out free flugelhorns, but I didn’t take one. I’ve never been very good with music.
Applejack was still guarding the thing that was covered. I heard her offer a pony something called Crystal Empire Nectar to get him to go away.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“We have to raise the spirits of all them crystal ponies,” she said. “Once we find this thing called the Crystal Heart, we can stop hiding this here fake Crystal Heart, and the Crystal Empire will be safe.”
I nodded. “So what’s this Crystal Empire Nectar?”
She shrugged. I turned, about to go try some, but the mare AJ had sent away seemed to like the stuff and had carried away the barrel. I decided to check at the palace to see if there was any more. Along the way, I stumbled into the throne room and found Twilight and Spike staring at a hole in the floor that hadn’t been there before.
“I guess we have to check it out,” said Twilight. I shrugged and went with her down the spiral staircase on the inside. Spike stayed on top.
The hole was very deep and dark. Twilight dropped a piece of crystal. Several seconds passed before the noise of hitting bottom reached us. She frowned. “Spike, can you see outside?”
“It’s not good,” he called. “Cadance’s magic must be fading faster than before.”
“We have to get down there!” cried Twilight.
“Why not just teleport?” I suggested. She liked the idea, but didn’t take the time to tell me before flashing us to the bottom. I hate unexpected teleports. It was balanced by the fact that it was funny watching her search for the Crystal Heart, because the Princesses had withheld the information about where to find it.
There was a door at the bottom of the hole. When Twilight tried to open it, however, it moved away. After a couple of attempts, she finally got it to stay still.
Her eyes went all weird as she stared at what lay behind it. Considering that it looked like a blank stone wall to me, I figured she must be under some kind of spell. I sighed. Typical.
“What, where am I supposed to go, Princess?” she asked. “How could I have failed the test? I don’t understand!”
Just then, Spike ran up. His voice snapped her out of it.
“It’s King Sombra’s dark magic,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s a doorway that leads to your worst fears.”
“Ooh! Do me!” I said, stepping up. While facing my worst fears would probably be pants-shittingly terrifying, at least I would know what they were. I hoped they were not literally that scary, because I wasn’t actually wearing pants.
I found myself in Ponyville. In front of me were the Black Twins. I glanced around. “This is it?”
“Your subconscious is wiser than you,” said Woody.
“A lot wiser,” added Beauty.
“So…I’m supposed to be afraid of you?”
They nodded in unison.
“That’s bullshit. Why? I can’t be scared if I don’t have a reason.”
“You will,” they chorused.
I flashed back to the bottom of the pit. Twilight and Spike were looking at me expectantly. I shrugged. “That was weird.”
“Anyway.” Twilight cast a spell and the door popped open to reveal another set of stairs, these led upward. We went through and began climbing.
“What if—” Spike puffed, “these stairs go on forever?”
“I can get us there faster,” said Twilight. She cast a quick spell and it felt like gravity reversed. We fell upwards, ending up sliding on the smooth underside of the spiral staircase all the way to the top.
“Sick grind!” I exclaimed. It made me wish I actually had a skateboard. I made a mental note to build one.
Once we got to the end, Twilight restored gravity to normal and we stepped out into a room at the top of the tower. A crystal shaped like a heart floated inside a circle on the floor.
As soon as Twilight stepped into the circle, big black spikes rose up and trapped her inside. She managed to knock the Crystal Heart away, but she was trapped. I was about to suggest the obvious move of teleporting out, but she beat me to it.
There was a flash of green and purple and Twilight ended up right back in the circle. Spike and I took a few steps back as little black crystals began to emerge from the floor.
“You have to get out of there, Twilight!” called Spike. “You have to be the one to take the Crystal Heart to Cadance! If you don’t, you fail Princess Celestia’s test!”
A few seconds passed. I thought I heard Twilight muttering to herself. After a moment, she said, “You have to be the one to bring the Crystal Heart to the fair!”
“Me?” I said. “Okay.”
“I was talking to Spike!” she shouted.
“We’ll team up!” I told her. Spike grabbed the Heart and climbed onto my back. I checked out the window. Black crystals were popping up everywhere. The stairwell we had come up was becoming blocked off.
I edged out the window, walking carefully to stay on the crystals growing everywhere. I saw the dome drop, and King Sombra came through. He spotted Spike and I and came towards us. I suspected that regaining control of the Crystal Empire was making him stronger, which was why he seemed to be getting more and more solid.
“I have a plan, Spike!”
He mumbled something in reply, I wasn’t sure what. It sounded like his mouth was full. I told him to hang on, and then I jumped.
Sombra came rushing up to meet us. He was now completely solid. Between my initial jump, gravity, and his closing speed, our relative velocities were quite high. I popped open my switchblade and extended it out in front of me like the nosecone on a missile.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Shining Armor throw his wife at us. Cadance came speeding through the air and snatched Spike off my back. His stomach was distended, and I later found out that he was a nervous eater and had swallowed the Crystal Heart.
This was a serious problem, because now the Crystal Ponies had nothing but Spike’s belly to focus their energies on. Luckily, they no longer needed a magic dome to protect themselves because King Sombra wouldn’t be troubling them anymore.
The aforementioned high closing speed amplified the effect of my small knife. As I struck him, Sombra’s chest split open like Moses parting the sea and my hoof followed through all the way out the other side. It was like I had punched him in half. Lengthwise.
Unfortunately, physics decided to screw me and hold my body to the “equal and opposite” law. All the bones in the foreleg I had extended pretty much shattered. That slowed me down enough, however, so that I didn’t die on impact with the ground. I slid for a couple of yards, building up a little pile of dirt in front of me before coming to a halt.
To their credit, the ponies did come out to get me. I was sort of able to walk on three legs and wobbled back to the palace, still spitting out mouthfuls of soil. I figured I must still be riding an adrenalin high and it wouldn’t begin to really hurt for a while.
Twilight used an ipecac spell to induce vomiting on Spike. Cadance picked up the Crystal Heart gingerly and shook off the dragon saliva. She held it up and all the crystal ponies poured their love and affection into it, which looked even more gay than it sounds, especially since after that, everything was crystal.
I mean, I would have been okay with monochrome or even going plaid, but this shit was ridiculous. I glanced down at my sparkly body and sighed. I think it made me hate the Twilight series even more now that I know what being a Cullen felt like. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
“You’ve got to stop saving my rump, Twily,” said Shining. “It’s embarrassing.”
I was about to correct him on who exactly had just punchsploded a bad guy, but Fluttershy pulled me away to begin setting my leg. While she did that, I consulted with Sir Win. He confirmed that this crystal business was in fact, “pretty gay.”
All of us left the Empire after the party had wound down and headed for the nearby train station. Rarity complained that she wished the crystalness was permanent. I had been very pleased to discover that it wasn’t. Twilight was freaking out about failing the test.
I enjoyed her torment all the way back to Canterlot. Celestia let her off easy, I thought, merely telling her student that she had in fact passed. Also, there was a new stained glass window featuring Spike saving the day. I waited until the others were gone before asking Celestia about it.
She gave me a grin and shoved me out the door. I thought about going back in and showing her what rage looked like, but managed to hold back. Must not feed the troll…
Luna passed by holding a strange book with a dark cover. I glanced at it, curious, but decided that going home was more important to me.
I got on the train back to Ponyville with everyone. After that, I said goodbye and flew back to Las Pegasus. There was something bothering me. I wanted to see if I could actually pull a Scrooge McDuck like I had told the Black Twins.
So I went to the bank. And found out that I had no money.
“Yeah, it’s the strangest thing,” said the clerk. “We were robbed.”
I pointed to the sign out front. “Aren’t you insured by the government?”
“We just put that out there to make ponies feel safe putting their money here,” he told me. “Now that you’ve exposed our fraud, what are you going to do—ask for money?”
I laid my forleg in a cast on the counter between us. “See this? I broke my leg punching a pony so hard that my hoof came out his ass. Want that to be you?”
He backed up nervously. “It won’t help. I still don’t have any money.” The clerk stopped and thought for a moment. “Wait, you’re Valiant, right? The robbers came back later to leave something for you.”
“Wait, they robbed the place, and then made a special trip just to give you something in return?” I asked.
He shrugged and showed me a photograph. The Black Twins stood in front of a pile of burning money. They looked bored.
My hooves began to tremble. All that money gone. I had no idea what use burning gold coins was, but it certainly made the photo look more dramatic.
Also, I was poor again. They were going to pay for this. At least they had money to do it with.
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I loved that part where Sir Win confirmed that yes, the crystal business was in fact 'Pretty gay'.
Keep up the good work, sir.
You so punny
what is wrong with the doctor
1593480 The Doctor has gone to better places. Equestria is left with his lookalike, Time Turner.
Dat cover pic.
1593330 as good a reason as any to have a silly internet battle in someone's comment section.
Harold Lott has joined the fight! +45% dosh for entire party when Harold is alive!
Harold Lott bought a crossbow and executioner handcannons from the trader!
Reverend Alberts uses chainsaw! -455 health to Mac!
DJ Skully is loading M32 grenade launcher!
I was half expecting the Black Twins to leave behind a jar of Gak. Damn that commercial really jacked up our bronydom.
1593553 I was watching a special stream and didn't get any commercials. I undestand Gak, but what caused it to go nuts with the community?
Luna carries a book... FORESHADOWING??!!!?!!??!??!?? Or not. Who am I to say one or the other?
Anyway, this was funny. Especially how Valiant took "pay for it" in the literal sense.
You are a mad genius sir.
I mean my story takes place during the events of the show too, but right now I'm waiting for someone to post them on Youtube so I can copy some dialog. It feels like it's taking forever.
1593553 I might use that as a joke in my story now or at least a mentioning of gak.
Well, isn't this a nice update.
Shit just got real though. Slay the twins!
Sparkling ponies and Twilight. How did I not think of that earlier!
1593493 Mac has died! Robo stands in, ready to fight! Lucca and Marle use Antipodes 2! 2037 damage to DJ Skully! 1954 damage to Harold! 1973 damage to Reverend Alberts! Robo cannot attack this turn!
Geez, the only character I have in reserve is Kayla. She doesn't even have a cool weapon; she just punches and kicks. I'm not relishing having to use her, lol
1593599 The cause was the fact the damn commercial was played over and over and over again. At least 3 Gak commercials during the breaks. We adults are not used to that much advertising unlike kids are since their attention spans are short. The result is brony's going nuts with Gak fever.
1593599 A special stream, you say?
Also nice work on the chapter. Kind of struck me as odd that Sombra chose to physically manifest, being incorporeal has so many advantages.
1594028 Yeah, you can't punchsplode smoke.
1593599
Hub kept showing commercials. As a result, Gak is swiftly approaching Meme status.
1593599 There were just a ridiculous amount of Gak commercials. At one point there were 4 back-to-back.
I see we're back to the way you used to write these. Having Valiant do his own thing without really affecting the canon storyline in any big way.
Huh...Not that I'm complaining. This is still hilarious.
Bwah hah! XD
Actually, besides money and jewlery, and limited application in electronics connectors: gold has absolutley no function whatsoever. (and on that note: if not for DeBeers' monopoly and "Love"/Valentine-esque propaganda, diamonds would only be 1/10th of the current market cost)
Now that's how the real season 3 pilot should be like. Thank you very much, this chapter helped wash away all the lame that oozed from the first 2 season 3 episodes.
1600180
What I mean is that they don't interact with the Mane 6. It seems that practically every HiE out there has them interacting wth the characters durring some of the actual shows. Like fighting alongside them in canterlot, or standing in place for a canon character. I sometimes wish that they would be facing their OWN problems instead of the problems of the Mane 6. You know what I mean? Like them being in an entirely different part of Equestria, or just have the Mane 6 be background characters that ocasionally apear.
Oh dear god, must...resist...urge...to...make...crystal...valiant...
1593485
And all of Equestria is worse for it
1593935 Okay, what in the name of Malcom X's belly-button is Gak? I've heard about it nonstop in the fandom, and I have no idea what it is. Whatever it is, it sounds grotty.
1623115 why ask me when you have the power of the internet?
fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/331/a/b/to_the_crystal_empire_by_mrbastoff-d5l4dlr.png
"Everything burns"
-Joker
You burned his money, now you will burn lol
It looks like the Black Twins literally had money to burn. Unfortunately, it was Valiant's. He may have to go back to sleeping on Twilight's couch.
This is why we don't have good things.
1623115 Gak is a squishy substance almost like playdoh that some company made up.
Oh, you mean Gordon? Yeah he's chill. Gave me a sick new guitar. I mean all it cost me was my soul, but it isn't like I was using it.
6647400 Gordon?! Yeah He gave me a sweet new Harley chopper, same price tho, but meh I didn't need it. I didn't know you met him too!
See Valiant NOT ALL DARK MISTS ARE BAD!!
Yeah I figured something like this would happen to reset the status quo. ... Actually y'know for how rediculously talented Valiant is at MacGuyvering death machines, you'd think he'd have a contingency around for if he *really* wanted someone dead, as opposed to a slow burn 'kill Trixie' kind of want dead.