Princess Twilight Sparkle - part 2
I'm not going to say that I was rocking out on top of the flaming reentry vehicle as it plunged and burned through the atmosphere, but I'm not going to say that I wasn't, either.
Little pieces of fireproof insulation flew by as the air got thicker, leaving a cometlike trail behind the capsule. The trajectory had stabilized and it dropped like a bullet towards the planet below.
The splashdown point was the lake outside Ponyville. When the capsule struck the surface of the water, the heat instantly flashed a lot of it to steam. I was able to walk on dry land up to the shore.
I swung my electric guitar around my shoulders and adjusted my sunglasses just as the space vehicle exploded in a spectacular fireball behind me. By then, the flash-evaporated water had taken a second to flash-condense into clouds and was already soaking the lake with a downpour, refilling it and covering all the evidence up.
Also, there was a reanimated T-Rex skeleton trotting along behind me. But despite everything else that had happened, that was fairly normal and part of the plan.
“Oh my gosh, dad!” Trixie was first on the scene and wrapped me in a tight hug. With four of her eight legs, I noticed. That raised my eyebrows a little, but it was nothing I hadn’t seen before.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, eyes closed.
I touched her mane. “Right back at you, Trix.”
Her eyes opened and for a moment we just stared at each other. I smiled. It was damn nice to be back.
“What have you been up to?” I asked.
“You know, the usual. I did recently take up lockpicking.”
I nodded in approval. Trixie’s gaze drifted to the side. “Hey Rexy!” She pulled away to give the T-Rex a pat on its bony skull.
I turned to look at the rest of the ponies who had come out to meet me: the Elements of Harmony. “‘Sup?”
“We thought you were dead,” said Rainbow.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Now, now,” said Rarity diplomatically. “You were gone for a rather long time, Valiant.”
“This is a country where the Princesses are several thousand years old, and you call that a long time?” I shook my head.
“No, seriously,” said Twilight. “We ran the calculations. Even with the potential supplies you could have packed, there’s no way you could have survived. How is this possible?”
“Is there something you aren’t telling us?” Pinkie asked suspiciously.
“Why is Twilight an alicorn?” I asked, ignoring both questions.
“We had to do that in order to defeat an evil star-destroying alien, named appropriately enough, Starburst,” Trixie explained. “Actually, when I talked to her earlier in her rampage, she said she’d met you at some point out in space?”
“Oh yeah.” I nodded. “What a bitch. You got rid of her? That’s great.”
“But there’s still so many things I need to ask you,” said Twilight, levitating a notepad in front of her. She looked around for something to write with. I gave her a pen.
She scratched a few notes. “Now, first thing-”
“Wait,” interrupted Rainbow. “Where did you get that pen from?”
“He probably carried a lot of pens with him into space,” Rarity suggested.
“That’s not what I mean! What I wanted to know was where did he get that pen from the second before he gave it to Twilight?”
I did a little pirouette and grinned at Rainbow. “Obviously I’m not wearing any pockets. Nothing up my sleeves.”
“Ooh! A guessing game!” Pinkie cheered.
“Now wait just a gol-danged minute,” Applejack broke in. “I didn’t see where he got that pen from either, and I think there’s a whole lot of questions Valiant needs to answer, but at the moment doesn’t everypony think that savin’ the Princesses is more important?”
“Yep,” I said. There was a long pause. I made a go on gesture. “Uh, isn’t this the part where you tell me what kind of crisis you’re in? That was kind of implied from my sudden entrance in the middle of it.”
“The Princesses are missing and we’re headed to the old castle in the forest to look for them,” Twilight explained.
“Oh. That will probably be hard with the Everfree growing out of control,” I pointed out.
Rainbow zoomed upwards to take a look from altitude. “He’s right! But how did he know?”
“I saw it on my way in,” I replied.
“Okay, if the forest is growing out of control, we need to get going as quickly as possible,” said Twilight. She looked at me.
I looked around to see if she was perhaps looking at somepony else nearby. “What?”
“Aren’t you going to drive or fly us there in one of your crazy machines?” Twilight asked.
“Well, I guess I could. To the library!” We all took off for the center of town. Upon arrival, however, something was definitely wrong. “I could have sworn that I left everything right here…”
“I moved it all to my place,” Trixie explained.
“Your place? You moved out so soon?” I asked.
“Dad…” Trixie bit her lip, clearly not happy about breaking this news. “Do you know how long you’ve been gone? It’s been months.”
“Say whaaaaat?” I looked around at the rest of them. “For real?”
“It’s been quite long,” Twilight agreed.
Just then, the door of the library opened to reveal a yellow unicorn mare with red highlights in her mane. She jerked in surprise.
“Yo.” I trotted past her and into the building but pulled up short. It was different than I remembered.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“A lot can happen in a few months,” Twilight said. “I moved out and Sunset Shimmer here is the new librarian.”
“Huh.” I shrugged and put my guitar down in the corner. “Whatever. I’ll deal with this later. Now Trixie, where did you stash all my stuff?”
“It’s safe at my place,” Trixie replied. “But none of it has been started since you left and I don’t know what will and won’t work. I’m sorry, I didn’t think-”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll deal. Guess we’ll just have to do this old school.”
That involved a brisk canter into the forest. I was kind of regretting it before we got there, even with the newly expanded borders of the Everfree.
Also, the moon started rising into the sky. It was kind of strange, not only from the stellar impossibility of it, but the fact that the half of the sky with the moon in it was darker than the sun side.
Twilight gasped. “This is an effect of the Princesses’ disappearance! I tried to hold it off as long as I could, but now the sun and moon are starting to do their own thing!”
As we ran, black spikey vines were sprouting everywhere. Also, black spikey clouds had started to spread across the sky.
“The weeds and the weather are invading! Everything’s going wrong for earth ponies and pegasi!” Applejack stuttered.
Just then, Rarity’s horn lit up in a slightly unusual way and started throwing off random magic. She shrieked. “Unicorns too!”
“All right, everypony calm down,” said a voice. It was a voice I hadn’t heard in a very long time.
I slowly turned my head to where Discord was poking his nose out of Twilight’s feathers. Even more slowly, I said, “Where did you come from?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Twilight said. “And before any of you get any funny ideas, I summoned Discord already and he isn’t responsible for this chaos.”
There was no way I was willing to just start trusting like that. Especially since I was very much not a fan of things I had killed not staying dead. I was just about to express my displeasure, when Zecora came stumbling out of the forest.
The zebra carried a few things with her. She gasped when she saw Twilight and quickly dug through her things for a bottle. It was small and ornate, filled with a purple liquid. “You can turn can turn the potion from purple to white. You can see why the sky is both day and night.”
Twilight concentrated and a beam of magic hit the bottle. I noticed that the magic was blackish purple and green. My mouth opened. “Is that-”
Twilight picked up the bottle and took a giant slug of it. She went rigid for a few seconds. When she came out of it, a very uncomfortable look was on her face. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“Well, the sobbing was a little strange,” I said.
“Everypony, I know what happened. I saw Princess Luna turn into Nightmare Moon in the past. Also, I saw Discord’s original defeat.”
“That was quite a show,” Discord said in reminiscence.
“Actually, the battle between the Princesses was a lot cooler,” Twilight replied.
“Regardless,” I cut her off. “The ass that we end up kicking is…?”
Twilight shook her head. “No. We have to go into the Everfree Forest and find the Tree of Harmony.”
“Well, that’s still a quest!” said Spike. He jumped on Twilight’s back and fastened a seatbelt. “Time to power pony up!”
“What?” I said flatly. “Spike, are you still having superhero fantasies?”
“Not important!” he said, pumping his fist. “Let’s go!”
And so we went. Admittedly, there were still a whole bunch of questions that needed to be answered, but honestly this wasn’t the time, being in the middle of the narrative and all. Plus, I was avoiding that as much as I could. It’s fun being the narrator with the tape recorder.
As we traveled deep into the forest, I talked with Trixie. Apparently I had missed a lot of stuff. Even the Summer Sun Celebration had been a few months ago.
We had some adventures and stuff along the way with strange creatures and whatnot. I looked around, seeing that Zecora and Discord had disappeared at some point. It was kind of strange for Zecora to have appeared just long enough to give us a MacGuffin, but whatevs.
We did have an argument about Twilight not going on the quest. A lot of her friends wanted to turn her away because Equestria didn’t need to risk losing another Princess.
So of course, I had to get involved. Not only would losing another Princess help pave the road to setting up an Equestrian democracy, but a warrior Princess is cool by anyone’s definition of cool.
Not that I thought Twilight herself was cool, but any super leader on the battlefield was always interesting. It reminded me of that old war movie, Twelve O’clock High, with the commanding General flying bombers over Germany.
“Hang on now, I think Twilight should be with us.”
“I’m glad you think so, Valiant,” said Rarity. “I mean, how much sense would it make to send our most powerful asset in this conflict away?”
And with that settled, Twilight came with us. Why had we even argued? Yes, I’m openly criticizing everyone. Deal with it.
And so we continued on until we reached the old castle in the Everfree. I was getting a little bored of walking at that point, but fortunately this wasn’t The Lord of the Rings, so we didn’t have much more of that to do.
There was the problem of the gas-spewing spider vine claws. We solved it. With fire.
“And where did you get that stuff?” Rainbow demanded.
“What, the matches and gasoline?” I asked. “Where did you think I got them?”
“That’s just it – I didn’t see!” Rainbow said. “I know that’s impossible! I know you couldn’t have actually been carrying that stuff! It’s just like the pen you took out earlier that appeared from nowhere!”
I shook my head and chuckled. “You know I’m only doing this to keep you guessing. Trollololol.”
I do love being infuriating, especially to Rainbow.
We went back to our quest. During the fight with the vines, I noticed Applejack really stepping up and getting some good one-liners in. If I had to guess, she might make a pretty decent leader if we didn’t have me. Or Twilight, I guess.
We did eventually arrive in a cavern beneath the old castle where the so-called Tree of Harmony was getting the shit choked out of it by the vines.
“We need to save it,” Twiligth said. “It’s dying. I think I know what we need to do. We need to give it the Elements of Harmony.”
“Just…give it?” I asked.
“Some problems have a simple solution,” Twilight said. “Even Discord with such chaos was pretty simpleminded.”
“So…give it the D?”
Everyone stared at me. I shook my head. “Nevermind.”
Anyway, Twilight gave it the Elements and all the vines disappeared. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were revealed and everything seemed to be cool.
Then a pink blossom grew from the tree and popped open to reveal a treasure chest with six locks.
“What the hell does this have to do with anything?” I asked. “This wasn’t part of the lore. I thought you were a researcher, Twilight.”
“All I had to work with was a mind-altering potion,” she grumbled.
I shrugged. “Fair. Anyway, what’s with the chest?”
“What could be inside?” Twilight wondered.
Trixie stepped up and whipped out her lock picking kit. “I got this.”
I smiled. “That’s my girl.”
We all returned to Ponyville while Trixie worked on the locks. Discord was there to greet us as we came out of the forest and explain what had gone down. It was all his fault, basically.
But they forgave him. For some reason. I think it was friendship-related. I wasn’t really paying attention, because at that moment Trixie got the chest open.
I was standing right next to her when the final lock clicked. “Hey everyone, it’s open!”
They all crowded around to see what was inside. Trixie showed them the locks and opened lid. The inside was completely empty.
Surprised gasps and noises of consternation filled the air. The usual with this crowd, basically.
“Anyway,” I said. “Back to business as usual.”
“No it isn’t!” Twilight insisted. “This is the most important thing that has happened in possibly ever and you just brush it off like it’s nothing? And don’t you have a lot of questions to answer about your disappearance, return, and general behavior? I would say that you're so different, but honestly it's like you're the same just...stranger.”
“Twilight, have you ever considered that maybe I know something that you don’t?” I put on my best trollface.
She paused. “Often. But then I remember it’s you, Valiant.”
“Ouch.” I shrugged. “Anyway, see you all later. I’m going to go take a nap. This whole space travel thing is kind of tiring even without the weekly nationwide ancient conspiracy that popped up just as soon as I got back. And oh by the way, Cadance is pregnant.”
Despite the stutters of incredulity that went up at my last statement, I turned and walked away, returning to the library. There was a lot that I had left to do, but that could wait. I wasn’t in any hurry. Ironically enough, after getting back from such a long vacation, all I wanted to do was relax.
Walking into the library, I settled down on the couch. It was just like I remembered. I had time for a moment of quiet reflection and a tired smile. “Oh yeah. It’s good to be back.”
“Um, do I know you?” asked Sunset Shimmer.
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Pfffft, Valiant is gonna have to speechify at Twilight about Sunset Shimmer sometime soon.
"And after a hard days work, it's always a good time to relax on a bitchin couch."
"Eyup."
Lol this keeps getting weirder and weirder.
Goddamn, how fast do you write?
3527925 correction. It keeps getting better and better.
3528099 This was posted twenty seven minutes after the episode aired. That's far from my record, though.
3528100 think you replied to the wrong person
3528155 Uh, yeah. Oops.
I found it hard to concentrate on the episode once the commercial clip with the super ponies aired. I mean, c'mon. SUPER PONIES!
It seems that Valiant has learned Pinkie Pie's ability to pull random crap out of his flank, or he just has gasoline and matches stashed all over Equestria in case of kill it with fire emergencies.
A question, does Trixie have a sizable collection of Lawn Gnomes?
3529200
No, he's learned P-21's storage method of “Shove it in your ass.”
True that.
Poor Sunset, nobody deserves to have to live with Valiant.
Twilight: Valiant, seriously, how are you doing that?
Valiant: Twilight, Twilight, Twilight. I've learned to tap into the forces that created your world, allowing me to rewrite your reality to my whims.
Twilight: What.
Valiant: Come on, it's not that farfetched. We already know your world was created by my girlfriends. It's not that far of a stretch to believe that any ex-human could tinker with things.
This story is the dumbest and most brilliant thing I've ever read. I love you.
Vallient is like an American version of the Doctor. Always knows what's going on, always knows how to fix it, and is mad as hell. All he needs now is the ability to regenerate and he'd be the actual thing!
Also... I'm shipping Vallient and Sunset
3537247 Cargo Helicopter Overzealously Parading Ponified Atom-cannons.
Hazar.
This complete mess of a story run entirely on the rule of cool is back...
And I'm loving every second of it.
Really? Almost 2 weeks later and no one has commented on this?
3600670 it's not important and has nothing to do with valiant so nobody cares :3
3535470 Hey, he's already come back from death once.
Wait, did Valiant get more awesome and less stupid up in space? That was probably the coolest entrance I've seen in the whole story.
Also, huh? the box is empty? Also, Isn't it magically locked? It seems like lock picking wouldn't work on it. I have a feeling Valiant had something to do with the box being empty. Or something. I guess we'll see. Also, it looks like Valiant may or may not have gotten his hooves on chaos magic.
3704726 oh, just wait till the equestria games.
So another earth pony has access to the Ways Between.
Ah shit, he's gone Pinkie.
He should've turned around to watch the explosion. Django proved that you can do that and still be a total bada$$.