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Peachy and Cobalt's Excellent Adventure, Part 1

Midnight’s Tail
Bonus Chapters

Peachy and Cobalt’s Excellent Adventure
Part 1

The alarm went off, loudly, startling the dark blue unicorn awake. A hoof snaked out from under the covers to slam into the device. The first swat missed. The second missed. The third technically missed, but it knocked the clock off the dresser. It clattered to the floor and faded away into silence.

The hoof retreated under the covers and the lump it belonged to groaned and shifted as Midnight Shadow turned over. Presently, snoring could be heard.

***

The school bell was loud, sonorous, musical. Accompanying it was the excited yelling and shouting of foals bustling in to class. Slowly, the cacophany subsided as the schoolhouse was filled and the streets emptied.

Amidst the lull before the squares and marketplaces started to fill up with the business traffic of the day, a lone dark blue unicorn with a sunset-hued mane and tail thundered down alleyways and past shop doors and windows, cursing and cussing as he went. He screeched to a halt outside the schoolhouse, tip-toeing as close as possible. He stretched up and peered in wearily.

“Midnight Shadow.” said a fuscia-coloured earth pony from inside the classroom. She didn’t even look up. Midnight lowered his head, ears splayed out sideways.

“Don’t even think about it, Midnight. Speak up. I know you’re there.”

“Sorry miss Cheerilee.” Midnight whimpered through the window.

“You’re tardy, Mister Midnight.”

“I overslept!” he squeaked, blushing as the foals in the classroom tittered at their teacher’s words.

“You’re also demoted from assistant teacher to student. Again. Get in here.”

Midnight trudged up the steps to the schoolhouse and slunk in the door. He sighed softly as he clip-clopped his way to the back of the class where his desk still stood.

“What’s your excuse this time, Midnight?” asked Cheerilee, almost softly.

“I’m sorry miss, I’ve been working on something... something important.” replied Midnight as he sat down at his desk.

The squeaking of chalk on the blackboard ceased and the fuscia pony turned around, “Is it perhaps important enough to share with the whole class?”

“I... could show you, I guess.”

“I bet you’ve packed it in your saddlebags, haven’t you?”

Midnight nodded, “I was going to work on it during lunch...”

“Like your homework?” Cheerilee’s ears flicked up in a pony laugh. She chuckled as Midnight blushed again. “Ah, another late entry, I see. Well, I’ll give you extra credit if you present to the whole class your findings. Maybe I’ll let you off.”

“I’m going to need an assistant or two, Miss.” Midnight said, getting up and levitating a strange bundle of things out of his bags.

“An assistant for what? What is this? Some rocks? String?”

“Not just any string,” replied Midnight with a nod, “this is string directly from Earth. It is inherently different to string from Equestria.”

“Howso?” the teacher-pony was interested now, “It looks almost exactly like normal string.”

Midnight winked at his buddies Snips and Snails, making them giggle, “To the untrained eye, it does, however I’ve devised an experiment to prove otherwise.”

“And this experiment involves rocks?”

“Not just any rocks...”

“Don’t tell me,” said Cheerilee in a deadpan tone, “these rocks are from Earth too?”

Midnight nodded, levitating three of them into a triangular pattern and snaking a length of twine between them, wrapping it tight around each rock several times before tying the ends in a knot and setting them down on the floor at the back of the classroom. “This experiment measures Equestrian string with Terran rocks. It was my first test of an intriguing theory. The second was the reverse, Equestrian rocks with Terran string. The third... involve these two.”

Midnight levitated a fourth and fifth rock out of his saddlebags, around each was wrapped a great expanse of string, “The blue string is from Earth, common twine. The yellow string is from Equestria. In each case, the rock which forms the core is from an alternate dimension.”

“And what does this have to do with us?”

“I need several assistants! Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle; you three place a hoof on one of each rock back there. Pull the string tight, as tight as you can, and then just keep the rocks steady. I’ve enchanted the string - as long as it remains close enough to the same tension, if you pluck it, it will ring.”

There was a bustling in the classroom as every foal strained to see. When the initial experiment was set up, Midnight plucked at the string with his hoof. It rang out in an off-key note audible to everypony present. “This may take a while, it’s sensitive but not that sensitive. Too sensitive and anything would throw it off. Not sensitive enough and we’d be here all day. That’s... kind of why I’m so tired.”

The dark blue stallion yawned again and shook his head before continuing, “As you may know, on Earth the shield is expanding. It is slowly changing Earth into Equestria, and nopony knows when it will stop.” he was silent for a moment, the foals knew he was a ‘newfoal’ but may not have understood the magnitude of what he’d just said.

Cheerilee at least blanched, “Could it eventually cover..?”

Midnight nodded, “Yes, hence ponification. But, there’s more! Equestria isn’t exactly a planet, I don’t know what it is yet, but I know what it isn’t. All that land which is being taken from Earth... well,” he paused, “it’s not exactly just land. It’s space-time, and it’s being added to Equestria at some almost-exponential rate.”

“Midniiiiggghhttt,” whined Sweetie Belle, “my hoof’s getting tired!”

“Just a minute longer, Sweetie! Let me say this, then you’ll understand, I promise.” Midnight turned back to Cheerilee, though he was addressing the entire classroom, “The shape of the topological distortion is beyond me, but what I can tell you is Equestria is getting bigger.”

Cheerilee rolled her eyes, “I know that! We all do, new lands beyond our old borders are appearing and being claimed by the Princesses all the time!”

Midnight shook his head, “More than that. Equestria, in Equestria, is getting bigger! Manehatten, Trottingham, Neighsby, Coltronto - they’re all getting further away. It’s being distributed in an odd pattern, the further from Canterlot you get the bigger the issue. We’re all getting very, very slightly further apart, even the buildings and ourselves, minutely. Every newfoal, everything which has been somehow converted by magic into the stuff of this universe is seemingly unaffected, but that is because everything is affected. The land, however, is what’s mostly being affected. This string is from Equestria, so it will be getting bigger. The rocks, however, are from Earth. They will appear to get smaller, their relative location will appear to get closer to each other, and the string's tension will change. Correspondingly, at an exponential rate the further you get from Canterlot, Equestria’s borders are expanding at all places at once!”

“And so... oh my gosh!”

“Exactly. How much bigger will Equestria-as-we-know-it get? If the princesses aren’t alerted, our far-flung towns and cities will have to become fully-fledged colonies. If it’s far enough apart...” Midnight paused, both he and Cheerilee looked in horror at the string tied around the rocks as the tone ceased, “they could be lost to the geographical expanses currently unknown to Ponykind!”

***

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