Golden Grace, Headless Headaches

by Thadius0

Chapter 10 - The storm before the hurricane

The scene Sparkle came back to would probably be remembered by her as one of the more weird things she'd experienced in her life. It was getting to the point where I wouldn't even bat an eye at it, but at the time, it was still slightly uncomfortable for me, too.

I mean, I stopped seeing ponies as animals the moment I realized they were the dominant life form. So treating Measured Thought like she was some sort of oversized cat or dog as she lay on my lap was sort of...well, I felt like it should be degrading to her, and thus, felt like it should be weird for me.

The fact that she let out little moans of enjoyment when I switched up the patting for scratching didn't help alleviate said weirdness.

I looked up from the book I was reading as I idly kept petting Measured to see Sparkle's confused face and Spike barely holding in his laughter. "Well, Miss Sparkle, we meet again."

At that, the drake couldn't hold in his merriment anymore. It took him a few minutes of rolling around on the floor, but eventually he got himself somewhat under control again. The three of us regarded him with slight looks of bemusement before he could finally say why he was laughing so hard.

"You..." He wiped a tear from one eye. "You sounded..." He dusted himself off and managed to look directly at Measured and me and started to chuckle again. "You sounded like a cheesy villain from one of my comics!"

I blinked for a few minutes, then smiled and resumed petting Measured while dropping my voice into a terrible villain's voice. "Zo, agent Spike, you haff come into mah laaaaair? Prepare to pay ze penalty!"

At this, Spike collapsed again, while Twilight let out a slight sigh and rolled her eyes. "Stallions," she muttered. Measured, meanwhile, had this most adorable look of confusion on her face as she glanced from Spike to me, then back to Spike. I closed my book and waggled a finger at Twilight.

"I am proud to say that I am not a stallion. One hundred percent upgraded human."

Twilight rolled her eyes again, but this time, she was clearly aggravated. "Fine. Males, are you happy?"

I nodded and put my book on a nearby table. "Better. Now, do you have time in your busy schedule for a small interview?"

Her horn glowed and from upstairs came a schedule that she quickly perused. "I think so. So long as we keep the amount of questions and the responses to them short, then I can get to my studying without too much delay."

I sighed, typical Sparkle. "One of these days, m'dear, you're going to need to learn how to cut loose and..." Then I grinned. "Y'know, I just had the wildest idea. Spike, c'mere."

Twilight looked a little apprehensive, whereas I could see the spark of mischief in the eyes of the drake. I leaned in and whispered my plan to him, causing Measured to squeak a bit as I essentially near-smothered her. I leaned back up and Spike grinned and nodded at me. "Sounds like an excellent plan," he said.

Twilight looked from me to Spike, then back to me. "What did you two just plan? Should I be worried?"

Spike looked to me and grinned, and I nodded. "Well," he began, "Auric here agrees that you're too wound up and committed to your schedules and plans..."

"So," I picked up, "Unless you take one day each week, say, Saturday or Sunday, and go at it without a schedule, then I won't answer your questions that week, but rather, find Lyra, and we'll have an exclusive Q & A session."

"And," Spike continued as Twilight's eyes shrank to pinpricks, "I'll tell him when he shows up if you did or not, along with any blowouts you may have had because you stuck to your schedule."

Twilight was breathing rapidly, and her eyes were flitting back and forth as she contemplated the plan I had all but forced on her. Stuck between an immovable object and an unstoppable force, she started to panic. I poked Measured, and she hopped off my lap, letting me up so I could begin soothing the rabid Twilight.

"Shh," I whispered to her as I began stroking her neck. "It's okay. It's okay. It's not the end of the world." Then I got a wild, evil idea. One that would persuade her. "After all, the world existed for a good fifteen hundred years before you. If you don't plan out all your days, I'm pretty sure the sun and moon will keep shining."

Twilight's breathing started to normalize and her eyes slowly returned to normal. "You're right," she said. "I hate it, but you're right." She turned to face me full on and gave me her best glare. "Can you answer one question, though?" I nodded, and she continued. "Why do you want me to do this?"

I stared at her for a few minutes, then pointed at the emblem on my clothing. "Uh, hello? Knight of the Eclipse? All about balancing things out? My dear, you're one step away from snapping, constantly. That is not how a healthy pony lives. You're so...ordered! Structured! You need to learn how to let loose once in a while! Have fun! Be spontaneous! I don't see any of your other friends living to such a rigid schedule, and they seem fine!"

There was the sound of a balloon deflating, and with a flash, Discord was standing behind Twilight. "Indeed," he said, "Auric makes a fine point. It was bad enough when you were a unicorn, but now that you're an alicorn, you need to learn how to take days for yourself. Otherwise, the resulting blowout..."

He and I shared a grin while Twilight looked at him with a perplexed expression. "How bad?"

"Put it this way," I interjected, "How fond are you of this side of the planet?"

Twilight's eyes began to shrink down to pinpricks again, so I went for the ears. She sighed and closed her eyes, then began leaning into the scratching. "That feels good," she muttered. "How did you get so good at this?"

Measured let out a small giggle. "I had practice," I deadpanned. "Lots and lots of practice."

Twilight sighed again, then opened her eyes and glanced at both me, then Discord. "So, how do you two know each other?"

"Pfft, that's easy. He was the only one not afraid of me when I showed up."

Discord nodded. "If anything, I was cocky, overconfident, and intrigued." He then pulled a face of disgust. "Of course, that backfired the moment I touched your sword..."

I pulled a faux glare. "Hey! I told you not to! But noooo, the spirit of chaos just haaaad to touch the sword. Hell, I knew it was magical, you just confirmed how bad it was!"

Discord nodded. "True, true. And I think if I could do it all over again, I'd probably do it again." He then smiled slightly. "I never blamed you, you know."

I sighed and stood back up and headed back to the chair. "I sorta suspected not, but it does the mind good to hear it."

I sat down, Measured leaped back into my lap, and I glared at her a little bit. "Seriously?"

She only nodded, and I sighed and resumed petting her. I looked over to Discord and grinned a little bit. "So, I noticed that the drain from keeping Canterlot stable has gone down considerably. You wouldn't happen to know why that is, would you?"

Discord smiled at me then. "Well, apparently there was some sort of crisis, what with the Tree of Harmony getting taken over by Plunder Vines, both Celestial Princesses vanishing, and having to return the Elements of Harmony to where they came from. All that delicious chaos..." Here he hugged himself. "It was invigorating! So I used what I could spare to help you. Half the mountain is stable now."

I blinked a few times at that. "Right. We'll go over the details later. What's important is, more of my power is freed up."

Twilight coughed slightly, and both of us turned towards her. "I, uh, have a few more questions, Auric."

I nodded. "Fire away."

Here she pointed a hoof at the puddle of mare in my lap. "Just who is she?"

"Ah," I said, and picked up the mare like one would a cat, causing her to squeak. "Measured Thought, meet Princess Twilight Sparkle. Twilight, it is my honor to introduce you to Measured Thought, the mare that won't leave me be." Here I put Measured back in my lap, where she merely sat and started to blush a bit.

"Aaaaand why is that?"

I chuckled a bit. "Well, it may have something to do with being freed from the mind control of a truly evil pony, or perhaps showing her that she will not be held accountable for the things she did. Or perhaps my knowledge of the weakness of ponykind."

Here I scratched her behind the ears for a second, which caused her to hum. Twilight blanched at the mention of mind control. "How...bad was it?"

I gave her my sternest glare. "She was a meat puppet, Twilight. None of her actions were her own."

At this, the newly-made alicorn began pacing. "Something like that...would require a medium, a transmitter. An object of great power, both at the location of the subject and the location of the controller..."

I held up a hand, and Twilight turned to face me. "There was an object, a crystal with eight facets, shaped like a D8, implanted just under her skin. Except for numbers, there were runes of power carved into it, and it controlled all her voluntary functions. It's a subtle sort of magic, you don't notice it unless you're really looking for it, but once you do, you can't not see it."

Twilight had pulled out a scroll and quill and sketched out what I had described, and Spike was off to the shelves, looking for a book that would help her in her search. Measured merely looked up at me. "Um," she questioned, "How long have you and Discord known each other?"

He and I laughed at that. "Good golly. Well, we're not exactly the closest of friends, but he and I get on great because we're both creatures of chaos. Though, I do have a bit of sanity to balance me out. It's fleeting, but it's there."

Discord nodded and conjured up a glass of chocolate milk to drink. "Indeed, it's a wonder our friendship survived this past millennium and a half. You didn't write at all!"

At this, Twilight stopped her search and turned, slowly, to face us. I didn't notice, though, and if I had, I would have fled. "Well it's not like I could have done anything, chained up in the basement! Gods, why did they even have chains in their basement? Were they into BDSM?"

Discord and I cringed at the mental imagery I had just conjured, and Discord turned his glass into a toilet brush and began ramming it through his ears. "Must clean the brain, must clean the brain."

Twilight stood in front of me, her wings splayed, her hoof scraping the ground, her hair and fur frizzed, and her eyes alight with some sort of fire behind them. I took notice of this just as she began to speak. "You mean to tell me you and that Dullahan and the Dullahan of today are all connected? All of you are responsible for the actions that he committed?"

I put a hand to my chin, not quite aware of the danger yet. "Well, up until the Golden Sun shone, there was only Dullahan. Afterwards, there was him and me. But I was always the one in control."

"So it was you who broke into the library."

I noticed where she was going with this. "Yeeees..."

"And ponynapped that stallion, and took the generator."

"True, but we returned those."

"And burned down half the Archive."

The air was thick with tension and magic, so I made an executive decision. "Bye!"

Grasping Measured close to myself, she and I teleported away.

-----

We reappeared at the edge of Newvale, to see something quite startling. Namely, Dullahan out and about.

Ah, Auric, I was hoping you'd return.

Then I looked behind him, to see that the town was under a Ward-Guard bubble, and a huge mirror was behind him. "What's with the security? And the mirror?"

Just as I asked that, I heard a magically amplified voice from behind me. "CITIZENS OF NEWVALE, THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING! SURRENDER YOURSELVES TO THE C R A NOW, OR WE WILL TAKE YOU IN BY FORCE!"

A chill went up my spine then, and I turned around to see approximately forty ponies on the road behind me. All of them with glazed-over eyes, except for one at the back. They were about two hundred and fifty feet away from the bubble, but even then, I could tell two things.

One: they could wield Pysnergy. It was getting to the point where I could tell when someone was an Adept or not when I came into range of them. Which leads into number two.

That they should not be capable of it. It felt like someone had twisted a pony into an Adept.

The mirror is here because I heard a Call, one that could help. A female said, 'Residents of the Multiverse, on behalf of Lord Nocturne Overlord of Tartarus I bid you welcome and pledge the support of any who would stand against the stagnant status of the world. For as darkness and shadows may not exist without light, so too can light not exist without shadows. So if you ever have need of a demon to bolster your skills, an ally that will be there whenever you call simply find a reflective surface and call us. We will answer.' And then a male said this rhyme. 'If you ever need help, just remember this phrase. Take a look in a mirror to see a choice made clearer, invite a demon to dinner and become the fight's winner.' As such, I asked for a mirror to take with me, just in case this fight was too much, and then instructed those in the town to protect it.

I looked from the armor, to the mirror, to the ponies down the road, and then back to the mirror.

"My world has all sorts of fables about those that deal with the devil and dance with demons, but I'll take what help I can get. Besides, just because one is a demon, doesn't mean one is evil. I'm willing to give everyone a chance to prove themselves."

I strode up to the mirror and placed my hands on it, then did what I thought would work best.

"Lord Nocturne, this is Auric Fulcrum, Knight of the Eclipse. If you can hear me across the Void Eternal and That Which Fills It, I call on you and yours. Help protect me and mine. No price is too great to help bring back the balance between the light and the dark."

The mirror shimmered a bit at my words, and I only hoped he would hear me.

Author's Note:

Beep, beep! Incoming crossover!
Camlio asked to do one with me from his story of So, I'm supposed to be an overlord now?, and I finally found a way to write him in.
It might take us a while to hammer out the details, but we'll strive to make it worthy of you guys!
(Plus it'll give me time to myself while he gets back to me.)

Comments

[SeventhBrony]

ooh, now this just got MESSY! so the School for Gift Unicorn's research division has had it with a branch of "magic" out of their control huh? so, what are they planning on after they get it? taking over the planet is probably faze one

[Snow Fluff]

I have a feelin things won't be so friendly goin next chapter.

[shinigamisparda]

1. Nice Bond villain imitation.

2. This is immediately what I thought of when I read Twilight panicking:

3. Brain bleach, hilarious.

4. DAMN, DID SHIT JUST HIT THE FAN OR WHAT!?

5. I should be done with the introductory chapters of my story by the end of tonight, so I’ll see whether or not you want me then.

[QPaysTaxes]

Hey, I'm writing a story (Not the one I have on FF) about a dimension-hopping... person. Do you mind overmuch if I use your characters? Since he's mostly an observer, it won't be an active encounter - He jumps into another reality, sees shit going down with the Golden Sun (or something else that happens), and NOPEs the fuck outta there.

Actually, I kinda wanted to have my other character in one of your stories, but it wouldn't fit well. Different circumstances and all that. It got me thinking, though, and I wanted to ask permission before making you pissed.

[Thadius0]

4228446
First, I prefer it if these sorts of things are asked over PM. That way the comment section won't turn into a flood of similar comments.
Second, the scene you've described sounds okay.
Third, drop me a link when it's done?

[Nihatclodra]

What sort of fool tells a DEMON of all things that "No price is too great"? They'll obviously go straight to the highest price possible... or keep you in their debt to have you do their bidding...

[QPaysTaxes]

4228478

First, I prefer it if these sorts of things are asked over PM.

Sorry.

Second, the scene you've described sounds okay.

Yay!

Third, drop me a link when it's done?

I'm not publishing it on here because ponies are too infrequent for this to be considered an MLP fanfiction, and it crosses over with a lot of other things. I can give you the Google Docs link to the relevant chapter if you want, though. I'm not sure how to send you to the whole story besides a fkton of links.

It will take a while though, because this is something I do to kill time. It's not really a hobby or even a side project, just a thing for when I'm bored and can't sleep.

[Mother3Forever]

I forget, what the crap is CRA? other than crap without a p.

[GameHunter]

Thadius, you glorious writer, you.

I exploded. I said I would, and I did. This chapter was AMAZING

[Oxyaction]

Yay the bond villian welcoming was used :D

[Blaze]

Holy crap I forgot you made this, I read the first chapter when it came out and I don't know why I didn't favorite it. I was damn bored for the past three days...

[Lucky424]

1) Best stay clear of Twilight for a few years, Auric.

2) What the fuck is the CRA?

[Hexflame]

4228599
4228978
In answer to both of your questions, if I remember correctly, the CRA would be the Canterlot Research Academy though I may be wrong and someone please correct me if I am.

[Thadius0]

4229219
If I was in the possession of a prize to give, you would have earned it.

[Venatus21]

"Well, Miss Sparkle, we meet again."

GGRRrr
[FFFCCCKKK YEAH!!! You added it JUST for us readers to enjoy!]
GGRRrr
[I hope to see more dawws with Measured Thought later after the awesome butt-kicking commences.]

[TheHoleyCheese]

Frank Fontaine, as in the Fontaine from bioshock? Or is this a coincidence?

[Yasahiro]

I am awaiting moment when the situation gets so bad in one of LoHAV fics that with the Call... We will have this.

[Thadius0]

4230643
It's a complete coincidence. Though I do know of a Fontaine family IRL. Which is why I used DeFontaine.
(That and it sounds cool.)

[TheHoleyCheese]

4230841 I just thought it was weird because I was just replaying bioshock and I fought Frank Fontaine again.

[Camlio]

4228497 Well... if you've played Disgaea then you'll know what a demon asks for. The ability to collect Mana or blank magic, this is usually done through the slaying of another being possessing magic or ripping said magic from them. (None of which is pretty but, it gets the job done and at least the latter let's them live and recover after a week or so in the hospital.)

[rikusorasephiroth]

How many Orbs do I need to throw at you before one makes it into your universe?

[The Shade]

"Put it this way," I interjected, "How fond are you of this side of the planet?"

Is that a reference to Rise of Darth Vulcan?
Yes, yes it is.

[Pon3]

Hah was wondering how long it would take Twilight to add up who Auric is and what he was responsible for.

[no longer on]

It took me this long to realize you created a sequel.

[The Crimson Reaper]

"I poked Measured, and she hopped off my lap, letting me up so I could begin soothing the rabid Twilight."

One does not simply "soothe" The Rabid twilight.

[Brody Deitrick]

"Zo, agent Spike, you haff come into mah laaaaair? Prepare to pay ze penalty!"

that is so hard not to say out loud

[Brother Uriel]

Ok first aww Measured seems happy and adorable now, second. Shhhh *strokes Twilights face with finger then places fish on her muzzle* shhhhhh, third we got an alert! High alert! Enemys surrounding the area! Quick get the V.S's! From E.D.N III, Their not as scary as Space Marines or Dreadnoughts! But just as good!

[Divine Path]

And the hurricane before the cataclysm, I imagine. Hopefully not.
This organisation seems confident in themselves to make such an obvious attack, but hopefully Auric will be cynical enough not to be lulled. Time for more jolly co-operation!

*Righteousness unswayed
A tragic machination
Against our blessed light.*

We shall read on.

[Razzy]

Not the Illinois Nazis.

[Animatorsnake]

Oh... my... deities... CRA... your going to burn for this

[The Faceless Maker]

I looked up from the book I was reading as I idly kept petting Measured to see Sparkle's confused face and Spike barely holding in his laughter. "Well, Miss Sparkle, we meet again."

I've been expecting you...

[Kadigan]

"Well, Miss Sparkle, we meet again."

That should've been "Vell, Mizz Sparkel, ve meet again." :D

nvm, I read the next few lines :D

---

Twilight's eyes began to shrink down to pinpricks again, so I went for the ears. She sighed and closed her eyes, then began leaning into the scratching. "That feels good," she muttered. "How did you get so good at this?"

If my cat could talk that well, I'd probably bang her... Fuck that's sexy.