Changing the Things That Came (Part 2)
Second Part of Changing the Things That Came
By A Random Guy
The universe of the compilation is folding against its will...
When the Summoner heard that he was going to Ponyville, he was expecting a wasteland filled to the brim with bones of all sizes. He was expecting to be going to the third most depressing location in the world, right after Detrot. He was expecting to walk through streets paved with ashes and roads filled with lost souls. He was expecting it to be as bleak as heck.
But instead of being filled with the deepest levels of angst and sorrow, he was balking. He was balking at the roads, which had lively, colorful ponies milling about, doing their jobs and minding their own business. He was balking at the streets, which weren’t really made of pavers as much as they were made of compacted dirt. He was balking at a fuzzy feeling he felt inside of him, which he hadn’t felt for a long time.
“Do you think he is alright?” the Paladin asked, waving a hoof in front of her companion’s face, whose wide, bloodshot eyes were locked on to a single distant point beyond reality. “His mouth has been open for such a long time I would think he was renting it out to a nest of birds.”
“Oh, he’s fine,” the Alder Sage reassured her. “I think it’s a time travel symptom, like a buildup of chronotons or temporal indigestion.”
“It will go away, correct?”
“Yeah… I’ll let you think that…”
“This place looks so much better than what the pictures showed me,” the Paladin said as she walked forward through the street, looking around with a sense of awe and forgetting about the stunned Summoner. “It is all so… alive. I mean, just look at that!”
The Alder Sage looked towards the direction that the Paladin indicated, where only a blue pony eating a hayburger stood next to a bench. “Yes, that’s Noteworthy, I think. What about him?”
“He is out in public, not being all gloomy and depressed! I cannot remember the last time I saw a pony that was not gloomy or depressed!”
“Yes… ponies in the past do tend to be… not depressed,” the Alder Sage reminisced as she watched Noteworthy take a bite out of his hayburger from under her hood. Watching the pony chew with his mouth open wasn’t really appealing to her, so she turned her attention to the Summoner, who was still dealing with a theoretical chronoton buildup or a possible temporal indigestion. “Now that I think of it, he may not be alright after all.”
The Summoner’s eyes didn’t waver from their position, but his mouth twitched a bit, producing a low mumble that the Alder Sage’s elder ears could barely hear. “…Colors… so many… colors…”
“Yep, still fine, just getting used to all these colors he’s not used to seeing, that’s all.”
“Is there anything we can do to help him?”
“Not really, just let him adjust to all the pastels,” the Alder Sage replied. She squinted at the point she thought he was staring at, which she thought was an area at the far end of the street. “I can’t blame him. Everything is so… happy. I miss it being happy.” A short-lived smile crept up on her face, which disappeared when she looked back at Noteworthy. “Except him, I don’t miss him being happy.”
“Why? Did he do something to you?”
“Not really, I just have a grudge against him for criticizing a play I wrote, and directed, and performed in.” She scowled at him while he finished up his hayburger, then her face lit up as a thought came to mind. “I’m going to harass him.”
“Er... I do not think that is wise to do that.”
“Paladin, answer me this,” the Alder Sage said as she looked into the disciple’s eyes with a deadpan face, “Are you supposed to question your elder?”
“No, but”-
“Exactly,” Sweetie Belle interrupted, turning to walk towards the bench. “Shut up and help me harass that pony.”
The Paladin stood there for a moment, contemplating weather or not to follow orders. After her brief moment of thought, she nodded as she reluctantly started following her elder, who was wise enough to know what she was doing, or at least that’s what she thought.
The Summoner, however, wasn’t in the right mental condition to be able to follow suit. He could only watch as his companions walked out of his line of vision, not that he noticed it anyway. All he could do was stare off into the distance and mutter the word “colors” occasionally.
It wasn’t long before he felt a tug on his cloak, which broke him out of nonreality. His head jolted back while his eyes blinked several times as his mental facilities returned to him with the force of a train running into the side of a mountain. He left the tug on his cloak again, and looked down to see a young, sky blue filly pulling on the sleeve of his black garment.
“Hello, mister,” said the filly when she noticed she gained the attention of the Summoner. “My name’s Ether and I’m four years old and I’m giving tickets for free.”
“Uh, hello Ether. Sorry, but I can’t legally talk to you without a guardian,” replied the Summoner, taking a couple of steps back, desperately looking around for the filly’s possible parent.
“Can you please buy a ticket, pretty please with a cherry on top?” Ether pleaded with wide watering rose eyes, quivering her lips and hanging her ears. “It’s only five bits.”
“My court order does not allow me to talk to you right now,” he replied as he tried to walk away, only to be trailed by the filly at his feet. “I thought you said the tickets were free.”
“I did, they’re free for five bits,” she said as she ran up in front of the Summoner, pulling out a red ticket from her saddle bags with her mouth and waving it in front of his face with a big smile.
“Uh, what is the ticket for, anyways?” he asked, keeping his face toward the filly but glancing around to see if any police were watching.
“It’s for the Fillyscouts Ball Dance!” she said, letting the ticket go when she opened her mouth. She watched the ticket flutter to the ground, after which she grabbed another ticket from her bag and waved it in front of the Summoner’s face with her smiling mouth.
“Sorry, Ether, but I am not the kind of stallion to associate with balls.” The Summoner looked around, and noticed that his companions weren’t by his side anymore. Turned around in attempt to find them, but only found the filly relentlessly following him.
The Summoner’s answer replaced Ether’s smile with a frustrated scowl. She became even more flustered when he continued to turn away from her. Then she noticed a pocket with gold trimming on the front of his black coat, which put an idea into the filly’s head.
When the Summoner took a moment to stop turning around, Ether took this as an opening and lunged for the cloak pocket, trying to shove the ticket into it. The pocket itself was higher than she was tall, so she jumped up, latching onto the Summoner’s neck to get a good angle of attack.
“AH! Rabid child! Rabid child! Ack! Ack!” the Summoner screamed and choked as he began running around with a blue ball of filly swinging from his neck. Ether repeatedly bashed into him with her head as she tried to aim for the pocket.
Being tackled by a child was a rather new experience for the Summoner, so he had no real way of dealing with the situation at hand. His mind went into panic mode as he flailed about, leaving his logical processes to his reflexes, which told him to deal with the situation like he would with any Bronxican soldier, with cold hard steel.
His hoof instinctively went to grab his twisted sword from under his cloak, but it was blocked by a head-butting filly that was giving his throat a death hug. Without realizing what he was doing, his hoof punched Ether in her side as he went for his blade.
The filly almost let go of the ticket with the force of the punch, but she held on to both the ticket and the Summoner’s neck. She needed to find a better angle for her attack, which she decided would be higher than she was. She swung her back legs up to the side of the Summoner, who flailed in the right direction to have Ether kick him in the area where he kept his blade.
“OW! Mother!” he screamed as the metal bashed him in the side, stinging him from the force. The stress on his neck was beginning to cut of circulation to his head, causing him to see more new colors that he didn’t know existed until that day.
“Ether! Get down right now!” a nearby female voice yelled out. Both Ether and the Summoner turned to see a gray mare standing, holding saddlebags on her back and a furious snarl on her face. “I mean it, Ether. Let go now,” the mare commanded again, stomping a hoof against the ground to emphasize the point.
Ether’s face was overcome by dejecting frown. She loosened her grip from the Summoner’s neck, dropping onto the ground. The Summoner took in a large gasp of air as he rubbed his air-passage with a hoof as it found relief once more. Ether kept her head down and avoided eye contact as she shuffled over to the gray mare.
“What were you thinking?” the mare berated the filly. “You know better than to attack random strangers. We’ve talked about this.”
The blue filly scraped a hoof in the ground. Her head followed the dirt pile that accumulated around the hoof as it moved. “I was just trying to sell a ball ticket.”
“That is not how you sell tickets to anypony. In fact, that is not how you treat anypony, period. Now what are you do you have to say to this gentleman?”
Ether turned towards the Summoner and looked at a speck of dirt to her left as she mumbled an incomprehensible string of words.
“Ether, I want you speak up.”
The filly sighed as she mumbled the string of words again, only to be heard be the Summoner this time, but still looked away from his face. “I’m sorry for attacking you.”
“Ether, I want you to look him in the eyes and say it.”
She slowly turned her head from the ground to the Summoner’s face, meeting his gaze with hers. She squinted as her eyes were turning red. Little beads of water were beading up at the corner of her eyes. Her mouth quivered as she tried to produce her phrase. “I’m sorry.”
She quickly turned to dart off in a random direction away from the adult ponies. “Ether, come back!” the mare yelled as the filly turned a corner behind a building. “Oh, for the love of… I apologize for that. She’s usually really sweet. She just gets carried away sometimes. Are you alright?”
“I am fine. I have taken far worse beatings.”
“Good to know,” she said as she darted off to catch the runaway filly, but stopped to turn back to the Summoner. “Uh, is there anything I can do for you to make up for it?”
“Actually, yes, have you seen two other cloaked ponies walking around? One is a mare and the other is an old hag.”
“Yah, I saw the old one chewing out a pony about not understanding her artistic vision or something. Sorry, I have to go.” The mare turned back around to follow the filly’s tracks. “Ether! You are going to be so grounded once I find you!”
The Summoner watched the gray mare run around the building corner, leaving the sound of her yelling voice behind. He brushed off some dust from his shoulder, acting like nothing had happened. “Darn it, Sweetie Belle, this is not the time to leave the group behind. We have a job to do.”
“Excuse me, how do you know my name?” a squeaky voice behind him asked.
The Summoner turned to find three fillies standing behind him who may have watched the entire debacle unfold. They were at least a couple years older than the previous filly, and probably significantly less aggressive.
“Which one of you asked that?”
“That would be me,” the unicorn in the middle of the trio replied, raising a hoof to indicate her position. The unicorn filly was oddly familiar looking, having a white coat and pink curly mane. The Summoner could have sworn he had seen those green eyes somewhere before, then it hit him.
“Oh, I was not referring to you. I was referring to my grandma.”
“You have a grandma with my name?”
“Actually, my grandma is… you.”
“Uh, that’s a little creepy.”
“I am starting to see why I got the court order in the first place. But do not worry, I am a time traveler. Should that make it less creepy?”
Sweetie Belle looked at both of her friends, who were trading her questioning glances. After a moment of looking back between each other, Sweetie Belle turned back to the Summoner. “If you’re a time traveler, then prove it.”
“And why should I have to do that?”
“Because we just witnessed an assault on a filly, and the police would be happy to receive an eye-witness report of the assailant’s actions.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Cutie marks,” she replied, pointing to a spot on her flank that what the same white as the rest of her. “We’re getting desperate at this point. Doing that may have results, it may not. It’s worth the risk.”
“Good Luna, you are even more devious when you were young.” He scratched his head as he tried to think of a way out of the situation. “Would you mind if I taught you a type of magic from the future instead?”
“Depends. What’s the magic?”
“Summoning. It’s my special talent.”
Celestia stared at the sandwich sitting on a platter before her, though she was hesitant to call it a sandwich. It looked more like a brick covered in toad skin. She poked one of the green lumps baked into the break with a hoof, testing to see if it would move. The sandwich made a squirting sound as she pressed down on it, secreting an oily liquid from underneath.
“Uh, Spike, what is this supposed to be?”
“That’s a sandwich full of olives, Twilight,” Spike replied as he removed a bottle of mustard from a picnic basket and placed it with an arrangement of condiments on top of a checkerboard cloth. “It was the only thing in the fridge.”
“Why was Twilight so obsessed with this stuff?” Celestia asked. She tried to pick up the sandwich, but the olive contents within it ripped a hole through the soggy bread, plopping back onto the platter.
“You’re Twilight, you should know why.”
“For the last time, Spike, I am not Twilight. I’m Princess Celestia. Get it right.”
“Twilight, I’m getting a little concerned about this delusion of yours. You’ve become a lot more hostile ever since you thought you were the sun god.”
Celestia ran a hoof down her face. “Spike, I am- oh never mind. At least tell me you bought something from the deli.”
The little dragon shook his head as he leaned back against the picnic basket. “I couldn’t. Apparently the stallion running the place left to be the princess of deli sandwiches somewhere else.”
“Oh, for Luna’s sake, just because the princess of the land declares everypony a princess doesn’t mean everypony gets to leave their jobs! They still have an economy to run.”
“Actually, I don’t think it had anything to do with that. Rarity told me the guy became the princess of deli sandwiches before the declaration. I tried asking more about it, but she just kept changing the subject.” Spike reached into the basket to pull out a long blue sapphire gem.
“Huh, never heard of that title. Must be for some small group of stallions that like… Oh.” The princess’s eyes went wide as a certain image came to mind. “Oh dear.”
“What?”
“It’s, um, you’ll figure it out when you get a certain age.”
“Really? You’re going with that excuse again?” He took a bite out of the sapphire in is hands. “Honestly, adults are always keeping the good secrets from kids, it’s no wonder you all are always bickering about one thing or another.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know that secret.”
Spike shrugged as he took another chunk out of the sapphire with his teeth. “You wouldn’t happen to know anypony that wears a black cloak, would you?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“No real reason, there’s just a pony wearing a black cloak behind you,” he said, pointing with the chewed up gem behind Celestia.
Out of curiosity, Celestia turned to see the pony Spike was talking about. When she looked over her shoulder, she came face-to-face with a wrinkled white face breathing heavily on her own face. They eyes of the face were hidden by a black hood that cast a shadow on the rest of the face.
Celestia leaned back to remove herself out of the range of the pony’s breathing. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
The pony forced out an agitated puff of air, following up with a creaky voice. “Traitorous swine.”
“Now, that’s not a nice thing to call somepony, especially a young dragon,” Celestia replied, nodding over towards Spike, who remained oblivious as he pulled out an emerald from the picnic basket. “Does that cute little guy look like a traitorous swine to you?”
“I wasn’t referring to the dragon,” the pony replied. Celestia turned her head away to avoid the breath of the pony, who seemed like the kind of mountain dwelling hermit that didn’t know how to brush her teeth. “I was referring to you, Ms. Traitor Sparkle.”
“Alder Sage, I do not think you should be doing this,” a voice from behind the pony. Celestia looked behind the cloaked pony’s head to see another cloaked pony, who was walking up to the conversation. “You already made Noteworthy aware of his faults in his criticisms towards your artistic works. One pony breaking out in tears is enough for one day.”
“That’s different. Any pony can criticize art. It takes a special pony to betray her entire country.” The Alder Sage closed the distance with Celestia, shoving a hoof against the base of her neck. “Isn’t that right, Purple Princess of Betraying the Nation you were Serving?”
“She does not seem like the kind of pony to betray an entire nation.”
“Well, in the old kook’s defense,” Celestia interjected, “betraying Equestria does sound like something I would do.”
“Ha!” the Alder Sage grinned, pointing at the other cloaked pony. “Even the Great Traitorous Twilight Sparkle agrees with me!”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not Twilight Sparkle.”
“Oh.” The smile dropped on the Alder Sage’s face. “Then who are you?”
“I am Princess Celestia. I’ve come under a recent illness that makes me look like Twilight Sparkle.”
“Ah, Princess Celestia. Sorry about that, you’re cool in my book. That must be an awful curse, looking like Twilight all the time.”
“No worries,” Celestia said. She turned her head towards Spike, raising her voice to make she the dragon fledging could hear. “At least there’s someone who understands my predicament.”
“Woop-de-doo, I’m glad there’s somepony that believes you,” the dragon replied, swallowing a chewed up gem. “Your campaign to make you the high mighty princess starts with one lone hobo, who,” he leaned to the side to get a better look at the Alder Sage, “looks like she just came from a cult meeting… Wait a minute, is that you, Rarity?”
“Nope, but you’re close” the Alder Sage said, pulling her hood behind her head with a green aura, revealing a shriveled white face, curly pink and silver mane with a horn sticking out, and a pair of green eyes. “I’m Sweetie Belle, from a far distant war-torn future.” She stuck out her hooves in front of her and waved them up and down. “Wooooo! Spooky future Sweetie!”
“Yeah, that’s, um, that’s interesting. Did you both time travel here, or did you pick her up along the way.”
“Both of us, though we had another guy hanging out with us. No clue what happened to him.”
“You left him alone standing in the middle of a town square,” the other cloaked pony answered.
“Oh yeah. Apparently he couldn’t handle the awesomeness of the past.”
“I feel like I should be worried about this,” Celestia said, “since I am the Princess of the Sun. Yet I am inclined to not care at the same time. It’s a weird feeling.”
“Well, keep on not caring. If he does anything, it’s not going to be anything near as bad as what Twilight Sparkle did.”
“What did she do?”
“If I recall correctly, she abandoned Equestria at the start of the war, leaving millions to suffer at the hooves of the Bronxicans.”
“Heh, that does sound bad,” Celestia said, looking away to try to avoid eye contact. “Definitely something that I, Princess Celestia, will not be doing. So, what do you think your friend is doing, anyways?”
Sweetie Belle shrugged. “No clue. Probably just standing where he was, not making any trouble what-so-ever. I’m sure he’s fine.”
On the other side of Ponyville, were the trees only grow apples and the place of residence is a cottage, under the shady branches of one of the local tree crops, the Summoner oversaw the development of what he could say would be the finest summoning circle he had ever seen made by three fillies. He didn’t make them do much of the demanding work the higher level circles requires, but the girls didn’t disappoint in bringing in the right materials for such a shape.
“Mister Summoner, why did you need us to bring us this stuff?” the white unicorn pony filly asked, referring to a bag of miscellaneous objects.
“Well, it is part of the summoning circle,” the Summoner explained. “You cannot have a summoning circle without the proper materials.”
“I get that. What I’m asking is what are they supposed to do when we activate the circle?”
“Oh, that is a better question than what I thought you asked. Look at the points of the star.” He pointed a hoof at the sigil drawn out in the grass. The lines that made up the figure were made up of a fluffy black material that sparkled with red glitter, the material being laid out in a circle with a ten-point star in the center. “The materials I had you three mix together earlier, the steel wool and the ruby dust, they will separate evenly and spread out to each of the star points, alternating between the common material, the steel wool and the rare material, the ruby dust, between each point. Then they burn up and form a portal to pull the summoned object to the star.”
“Is there a reason the star?” the yellow earth pony asked, putting her face close up to the substance spread out through the grass. “Couldn’t we make a more efficient shape, like a bunch of hexagons?”
“If you can find another shape that focuses the energies of the universe into a single point, then that would be acceptable.” The Summoner began to walk around the sigil, judging the point to ensure nothing was out of place. “The reason for the star points it to provide a location for the focal point to originate. You can call the universe energy to serve you without the star, but without a point of reference, it will only spread out across space and time as useless heat.”
The orange pegasus, who was leaning back against the stump of the tree, let out a long groan. “Oh, for Luna’s sake, this is so boring.”
“Well, I find this fascinating. I love to watch all the materials clump together and light up to”-
The pegasus cut the Summoner off. “The work to make that happen is boring. Can’t we just skip to the cool stuff? The last time we summoned something it was epic and we didn’t have to do anything at all. Why can’t you teach us how to do it without the work?”
The Summoner gave the pegasus a confused look. “You managed a summon without a sigil before? What happened?”
The pegasus shrugged her shoulders and crossed her forelegs. “We were just playing soccer with a magical orb and, out of nowhere, it broke and we summoned a giant octopus demon thing.”
“We’re still grounded for that,” the unicorn added.
“You summoned a giant? You do realize how impossible that is. It may have been the universe going a little crazy.” The Paladin let a little grin pop up on his face. “Though, you three did go a little crazy with the star. Usually, I use a four-point star for my summons, since any more points would be inefficient for my purposes. Though I have no idea what a ten-point star will do in this time period.”
The pegasus perked up a bit hearing this. “So, we’re going to summon another giant?”
“I did not say that. I said that I do not know what will happen. We can only find out if we do the summon. That is, if the three of you are ready to do it.”
All three fillies nodded. The pegasus jumped up from the side of the tree as the Summoner gestured for them all to gather around the sigil. Each of them took a point at a quarter mark, facing inwards towards the center of the star.
“So, what do we do to activate the circle?” the unicorn asked.
“All you need to do is ask the universe.”
“You mean just ask it?” the pegasus asked. “As if we were asking it to pass the salt?”
“Yes, but you have to be a bit specific when you ask. Go into a bit of detail of what you want, and then ask in a polite, but firm, voice. What exactly do you want to summon?”
The fillies looked around as they pondered about the Summoner’s question. The unicorn traced circles as she pondered on the subject. The pegasus scrunched her face as she wondered what would be the most awesome thing she could summon to impress a nonspecific idol. The earth pony’s face, on the other hand, lit up as she almost immediately came up with the perfect idea.
“Universe,” Applebloom, without missing a beat, began speaking in a loud, firm, yet polite voice, “May you bring us a mighty creature from afar to scare the bullies of our school, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, and make them stop being bullies, please.”
Then the magic began.
To be continued…
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Epic.
I'm very sorry this review is so late, life has been a bit hectic for me. I feel like this story shows great promise, but is somewhat hampered by over extension. The first part is a nice introduction to the characters and I enjoyed piecing together things like the fact that the journal they were looking through was Fluttershy's, but I had some serious trouble following your descriptions of how they were traveling through time. I feel like you could have cut it out almost entirely so long as you established that their journey was costly, dangerous and very necessary. If you still wanted to keep it in, don't be afraid to use analogies a la Schrodinger's cat. It may be a large investment for relatively little return though.
As to the second part, the thing that jarred me the most was the sudden tonal shift. The original chapter felt fairly serious and somber whereas the second part felt like it was a bit of Terry Pratchet style comedy. Oh it was really fun and funny, but I wasn't sure the characters in the first section quite matched up with those in the second personality wise. I also had a bit of trouble following the plot as the characters splintered off in different directions and we saw things through a large variety of perspectives. I'm also not sure I can follow everyone's motivations. Why is Summoner helping the CMC to do something so obviously dangerous? I understand it's his special talent and he's used to heavy duty conjuring, but surely he can see that this is going to blow right up in his face. Also why is Celestia in Twilight's body, did I miss some other section of the story?
Overall I had a lot of fun with this story, but I have to say it left me more than a little confused. It is possible to do comedy and tragedy at the same time, but I feel like the character's motivations and what precisely went down in the future could me more clearly established. Either that, or you could consider telling this story from the perspective of the natives of present day ponyville as they try to comprehend their strange new guests.
Good luck writing!
-Chaucer345