Destinies

by Sharp Quill

Side Story: Back to Reality

Author's Note:

This side story was an April Fools’ update. None of the events below are canon.

A bright beam sliced something in front of Meg, her attention now focused on the magenta glow that was suffusing the greenish… Her eyes shot wide open. What the hell was going on?! The beam finished its long arc. Goop sluggishly spilled out from the opening, revealing… it was hard to tell… everything was blurred by the goop clinging to her face.

Violent, hacking coughing began. More of that goop was expelled from her lungs. She desperately struggled to inhale air.

“Everything’s going to be okay.”

That was Twilight’s voice. Maybe. That goop was in her ears too.

A towel wiped her face, removing most of that goop.

Finally she could see. Twilight was standing in front of her. Behind the princess was a hospital bed. Ponyville’s hospital? She looked around her. She was inside a… pod?

An imploring look got her the answer she sought.

“You were captured by changelings,” Twilight said. “You’ve been in this pod for months, most likely.”

Months? That didn’t make any sense. She was only just…

“What do you last remember?”

What did she last remember? Not being captured by changelings, that’s for sure. “I… I’m not sure.”

“Take your time.”

Meg squeezed shut her eyes, trying to recall recent memories. “I think I was watching a My Little Pony cartoon marathon with my niece, Susie.”

There was silence. Meg opened her eyes. Twilight was staring at her, studying her. “What?”

“You don’t have a niece,” she replied. “Your sister has yet to start a family.”

Sister? Meg had a brother, not a sister.

“And,” Twilight continued, “I don’t know what you mean by a ‘My Little Pony cartoon marathon.’”

Meg was stunned silent. She focused her attention once more on her immediate surroundings. Perhaps if she got out of this pod, things might begin to make more sense. She got up on her hooves—of course hooves, changelings couldn’t have captured her on Earth—and slowly, unsteadily stepped out, dripping green goop onto the sterile hospital floor.

Twilight levitated additional towels and began wiping off the rest of her.

Nopony else was in the room. “Where’s Steve?” she abruptly asked. He must have been worried sick these—months, wasn’t it? Why wouldn’t he be here?

Twilight stopped wiping. “Steve? Who’s Steve?”

Her jaw was hanging open. She closed it. “My husband?” she tentatively asked, afraid of the answer.

Far worse than any words Twilight could have uttered was the look of concern on her face. “You’re not married.”

She struggled to find her voice. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight admitted. “It’s rare to recover somepony after having been cocooned for so long, but the side effects…” Her eyes suddenly radiated determination. “I assure you we shall do everything in our power to heal you, Common Ground.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Common Ground,” Twilight repeated. “Who do you think you are?”

Meg wasn’t sure anymore. She turned her head to look at her flank. Wings, orchid coat, and a cutie mark consisting of two intersecting circles with a star inside the intersecting area. Exactly as it all should be.

The pegasus looked back at Twilight. “I only heard you use that name once before, when you introduced me to Special Agent Holmes of the FBI.” Before Twilight could open her mouth, she added, “He’s a human?”

Twilight frowned. “Human.”

“You know what humans are, right?” Like the one you turned into a pony and is standing right in front of you.

The frown deepened. “Only because Lyra won’t stop ranting about them.”

Wait, what? Wasn’t that a brony meme that had no basis in reality? “So… humans don’t exist?”

“Nope, not a shred of evidence.”

“You didn’t go through a mirror to reclaim your crown and Element from a human-like realm?”

“Odd. Not even Lyra has come up with nonsense like that.” Quickly, she regretted what she’d said. “Look, it’s not your fault. We will undo what was done to you. I promise.”

The bottom fell out from under her. They thought she was crazy. There was no way she was being released, not before she was “cured.” But what if she was crazy? What if months in that pod really had done a number of her mind?

Unless… There was still a slim thread of hope, and desperately she clung to it. It’d be in bad taste, inexcusably so, if it were true, but the alternative… “Please tell me today is April first?”

Twilight gave her that look. “What’s an ‘April?’”

---

An orchid pegasus stared out the panoramic windows at distant Cloudsdale, the city that she now remembered was her birthplace and childhood home, where her parents and sister and her husband still lived, all thanks to a memory spell that Twilight had known about.

Unfortunately, that spell had not removed those other memories, the ones formed during her time in the pod, memories that continued to plague her.

It had been enough, nonetheless, to keep her out of an institution. Once more she was living in her Canterlot apartment. It had been looked after during her long absence; no layer of dust had awaited her return.

Would it be enough to let her resume her job? She was about to find out.

Princess Celestia entered. “You’ve made a remarkable recovery, Common Ground.”

She waited until her employer took her seat at the mahogany table before replying. “I’m still not quite sure who I am.”

“Not surprising, given the reports I’ve read,” the princess said in sympathy, adding tea leaves to the flash-heated kettle. “I assure you there’s no rush. Take as much time as you need.”

“It just seemed so real,” she said, barely louder than a whisper.

“We believe it to be a defense mechanism, one that allowed you to retain your sanity.” She readied two cups. “Curious, though, that it involved humans. I was not aware you knew of the beliefs of Lyra Heartstrings.”

“I had read her book just before being captured. It’d seemed harmless enough entertainment at the time.” She gave a wry smile. “Maybe I should’ve read something else.”

Celestia poured two cups of tea. “At least you have identified the source material for the illusion you had lived. That must have been most helpful.”

“That’s what my analyst tells me, anyway.”

The princess thoughtfully sipped her tea. “You know what I find most fascinating?”

The pegasus shook her head.

“How your real life had intruded into the illusion.”

“Yes,” she said, staring into her tea cup. “Our reality had become a fictional world, one that I was a huge fan of—and then suddenly it wasn’t fictional at all, and I had the chance to go to Equestria and become a pony… I even became a royal advisor to you. It all seems so… I don’t know how to phrase it.”

Celestia smiled. “Like I said, your real life was intruding.”

“I guess so. I wonder where it would’ve gone if I had remained in that pod.”

“Fortunately, that no longer matters.”

“I guess so. At least I now know how it was possible for a human cartoon to accurately portray Equestria. It was driving me crazy—Twilight, too.”

“I imagine it would drive my former pupil crazy, if indeed she had found herself in that predicament.”

“Not that it was all that accurate, really. I never personally witnessed much of what was portrayed, or knew of it by other means, so apparently my mind just made it up. Much like a dream, I suppose; it only seemed accurate at the time.”

That caught Celestia’s attention. “Perhaps it was like a dream. Would you mind if Luna were to investigate that angle? It would help us understand changeling magic.”

“Sure, why not? In fact, she already visited my dream while I was in that pod. Or… maybe that was part of the illusion?”

“Luna had searched the dreamscape for your presence, without success.”

“Right. If it really had been her, she would have told me I’d been captured by changelings.”

“Naturally.” Celestia returned her cup to the table. “Like I said, there’s no rush, but if you should feel up to an assignment…”

---

Ambassador Karpos held out a hand, as was the way of minotaurs (and humans). “It is so good to see you again, Common Ground. I must admit to being a little surprised at seeing you so soon, considering what you’ve been through.”

She lifted herself off the ground just high enough to put her hoof into the proffered hand. “I can’t stay home and contemplate my navel forever,” she said. “And it’s not like we’re on the brink of war.”

“No,” the ambassador sighed, “nothing like that.” Never being much for protocol, even if he wore the full regalia of his position, he sat on a chair that was not behind his ornate desk. “But it is proving to be—how shall I put it?—an irritant.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said, now back on the ground. It was odd seeing him sitting in the chair, after having experienced it herself as a “human” so many times. How it had been possible for her to experience something that, prior to her capture, she could never have imagined doing—never mind the whole “hands” thing—nopony had been able to explain, not even Princess Luna.

“The book by Lyra Heartstrings,” he flatly stated. “The one about so-called ‘humans.’ It’s proving to be offensive to a certain segment of my people.”

“I do happen to be aware of that book,” she said carefully.

“Then you see the problem,” he said with a smile.

Indeed she did. No minotaurs were in that book, but that would only add fuel to the conspiracy theories. Obviously, Lyra was making fun of minotaurs, claiming plausible deniability via ape-ification of her target—an insult in and of itself. Having read the book, she knew that interpretation was quite a stretch, to put it mildly. But it was what it was.

Oddly enough, that resonated with one of her experiences in that pod, the one where she had discovered ancient humans in minotaur territory with the assistance of Daring Do. Amazing how she hadn’t questioned that—Daring Do was a fictional character, after all—yet that was how dreams worked.

It was reassuring, in a way. Once again, she had found herself where two opposing sides overlapped. It was her special talent after all, her actual talent, not that silly thing she’d known in that pod. It’s what made her the princesses’ best negotiator. One could say it was even her destiny. Perhaps she had been destined to spend time in a changeling pod—destiny sometimes sucked—not that she could ever know one way or the other.

But that would be absurd overkill—unless that book could cause far more damage to international relations than seemed plausible at the moment. It was fortunate she was back on the job.

Common Ground returned a smile of her own. “How shall we solve it?”

Comments

[Voltaje]

Mmm... because this is a side story, that means it takes please in another reality, because it can't be cannon, unless you wanted to close this story completely, so nobody will expect anything else.

[The REAL Mister Pkmn]

Please tell me that this isn't cannon since it was released on April Fool's Day...

[Eruantalon]

8065787 Check the date.

I hope that tomorrow this'll be up as a completely separate story? It's too good to just vanish into the Internet Archive!

[Sharp Quill]

8065787
8065839
8065883
Yes, this is an April Fools’ chapter. It is not canon to the story. Though it might make for an interesting story in and of itself, sort of like how the TDverse goes off on all those different directions.

8065968
I've got 40K words written so far of the sequel. In the chapter I just ended, Meg could only wish this was nothing but a changeling pod induced dream. I'm still not sure when I'll be able to start publishing it.

Aside from never having done an April Fools’ chapter before—and I couldn't resist once I had the idea—I needed a break after writing that cliffhanger.

[Eruantalon]

8066716 Do - I'd recommend taking this last chapter off and publishing it as a separate story; it's good in itself, but in the future it might be confusing for people to read through all of Destinies only to get to this at the end.

[Sharp Quill]

8066962 There'll be one last side story simultaneous with the sequel and I'll add an author's note to this chapter to avoid confusion. It doesn't stand alone as a story as it doesn't make any sense out of context. I could've posted all the other side stories as independent stories, too, and I decided not to take that path.

[Eruantalon]

8066984 Sounds good. But frankly, I think all the side stories could be independent too if you wanted - a lot of other authors post things just like that as separate stories tagged as being in a series.

[Sharp Quill]

8067001 By doing it this way, I can ensure that anyone who reads Destinies has probably read all of the side stories. They are material to the sequel, so that's important. Side stories published independently usually get a fraction of the views.