• Published 6th Dec 2014
  • 10,567 Views, 453 Comments

Destinies - Sharp Quill



Magic is bleeding out of Equestria and into another realm, a realm where magic does not exist. Twilight must stop the flow of magic before disaster strikes. Can the natives of this realm be of help? What's this about a cartoon?

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Side Story: Winter Wrap-Up

Rainbow Dash marched down the line of trainees, six in all, none of whom had previously participated in Winter Wrap-Up. Four of the pegasi were until this year too young. One had recently moved to Ponyville. One had spent nearly her entire life as a human—she would require extra attention.

And one was late. Where’s Twilight?

She couldn’t believe it. Years ago, she had to point out to the then unicorn that she needed wings to move the clouds. Well, now she had wings, and she was nowhere to be found. Quickly she flew to the edge of the cloud and, scowling, looked down on the castle. There still was no sign of her.

It looked like she’d have to go down there and drag her away from whatever book her muzzle was buried in—or, if she was lucky, help her fellow Element Bearer save Equestria once again.

She yelled back to Cloud Kicker. “Start without me. I’ll go get Twilight.”

“Will do,” came the reply.

Wasting no more time, Rainbow Dash launched off the cloud and rocketed to the castle. Over snow-covered Ponyville she flew and, barely slowing down, entered through an open window, blasting off loose snow from the balcony, zoomed down the corridors, and came to a sudden halt in Twilight’s personal library. As she had suspected, there she was… panicking?

“No no no no no!” Twilight yelled from in front of one of those human-made computers. “There must be some way of reversing this!”

Dash didn’t know what to make of it. “Uh, Twilight?”

The alicorn jerked around. “Rainbow Dash?” Sudden realization hit her, her mane becoming more frazzled by the second. “It’s now, isn’t it? The training session.”

Perhaps it was her lucky day after all. Cloud Kicker can handle the new recruits just fine without her. “What are we up against?” she asked. “Should I get the girls?”

“Up against… huh?”

That… wasn’t quite what Dash had expected. She tried again, asking, “What needs reversing?”

Twilight stepped aside from the computer, letting her see the screen. “This.”

Dash did not move any closer. “You expect me to make sense of that?” Whatever it was, she suspected it could wait until after the training session. So many times she had seen Twilight freak out over nothing…

“All my planning for the upcoming Winter Wrap-Up…” She threw up her hooves. “Gone! Unless I pay one bit coin. Then they’ll give me a decryption key.”

Rainbow Dash looked askance at her frazzled friend. A problem that could be solved for a measly bit? No need to bother the others with this one. “So just pay it?”

How?!” she screamed. “The instructions don’t make any sense. I’m supposed to send the bit to this address but how am I supposed to mail a bit to that! That’s not an address in either our realm or theirs. How do they even know I’m Equestrian?!”

As if she would know the answers to questions like that—but maybe she knew where to find somepony who did. “This is computer stuff, right?”

Whatever else you could say about Twilight, she usually catches on pretty quick. “Meg. She’s up there, at the training.” A faint glimmer of hope in her eyes. “Get her. Now.”

Now that was something she could do. “You don’t hafta ask twice!”

Seconds later, she was back at the staging cloud for the training session. The trainees were nowhere to be seen. She addressed her subordinate. “Cloud Kicker, where is everypony?”

The mare looked up from the book she was reading. “Huh? Didn’t you bring Twilight with you?”

“Does it look like it? Where’s everypony?”

“Fluttershy came early with the birds, so they’re practicing that right now.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. Of all the times for her to be early. So Meg was out there, somewhere, learning how to guide bird migrations. They didn’t have time to have gone very far. “Did you see which direction they went?”

Cloud Kicker pointed north. “That way.”

The fastest pegasus in Equestria shot off like a cannonball. As she’d thought, they hadn’t gotten very far. There was Fluttershy up ahead, and beneath her were three pairs of pegasi, each guiding their own mini-flock of birds. She angled her wings and descended towards the pair with an orchid-coated mare.

“Meg!” Dash shouted.

The pegasus in question looked up and behind her, breaking formation. “Rainbow Dash?” The flock she was helping to guide broke up. Her partner started flailing about, trying his best to round them all up. Meg looked back and forth between Dash and the dispersing birds, and chased after a particularly wayward bird.

As much as Meg’s flying had improved in the past year, thanks to Dash’s training of course, she had no trouble catching up to her. “Twilight needs your help like right now. Some sort of computer problem.”

“Can’t it wait?” The bird suddenly turned left and Meg did likewise. “Kinda busy here.”

“I dunno, but you know Twilight.” Dash effortlessly matched Meg’s wild course changes. “Until she figures out how to mail a bit to some weird address so she can get her computer stuff back…”

Meg groaned. “Can you at least help me guide this bird back to the flock?” Matching the bird’s speed wasn’t a problem, but every time she tried to get it to go one way, it went another.

“Yeah… birds aren’t really my thing.”

Fluttershy drifted in from above. “I’ll take care of this confused bird,” she said to Meg. “You go help Twilight.”

Meg gave up on the bird. The other birds had already been re-flocked, almost certainly with Fluttershy’s help, and were again following her partner.

Ex-partner.

“Come on, let’s go see Twilight,” she said in resignation. She took one last look at the bird. Fluttershy had already got it heading back to its flock. “The sooner we solve her problem, the sooner I can get back to the training.”

“She’s in her castle.” Dash started flying, slowly. For all her improvement, Meg would not win any races. She wouldn’t come in second or third either. Not that there was anything wrong with that; not every pegasus could be as awesome at flying as the one and only Rainbow Dash.

She arrived at the castle with Meg, having resisted the urge to fly on ahead. Maybe she should’ve given into to that urge. Twilight was a mess. She was pacing back and forth; her mane would have given Rarity nightmares.

Meg flew up to the computer and landed. It didn’t take her long to figure it out. “You clicked on something you shouldn’t have, didn’t you?” she said, not really asking.

Twilight stopped her pacing and turned to Meg. “I suppose? What was I supposed to do? My computer got sick somehow and somepony offered to cure it!”

Meg sighed. “You were supposed to ignore it. They conned you. They’re the ones who did this.”

“What?!” Twilight’s mouth hung open.

Dash didn’t care for what she was hearing. “So humans are now scamming ponies with the help of those things?” she said, pointing a hoof at the computer.

“They try to scam everyone,” Meg explained, keeping her voice level. “They didn’t know this computer is in Equestria and being used by a pony.”

“Then why are they demanding Equestrian currency?” Twilight asked.

“They’re not asking for Equestrian bits, they’re asking for a bitcoin—one word, no space, see?” She pointed at the word in the ransom notice.

Twilight came closer and inspected more closely the notice. “I thought it was another misspelling. There’s enough of them, never mind the grammar errors.” She looked at Meg. “How can your schools get away with this?”

“Let’s not change the subject,” Meg said. “A bitcoin is a digital currency. It doesn’t exist as a physical object. You’d be fascinated by the math behind it, if it wasn’t ruining your life right now.”

“So how do I acquire one of these bitcoins?”

Why anypony would want money that didn’t exist was a mystery to Dash.

“Did you make backups, like I told you?”

Twilight cringed. “Last week?”

“Okay,” Meg said, shaking her head. “You buy a bitcoin with human money. I don’t know what it costs right now—it’s highly variable—but it’s anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand U.S. dollars.”

Twilight started to relax. “Well, that’s not too bad. How long will it take to get the decryption key?” Her head lowered. “Assuming they actually give it like they promised.”

“They’ll probably send it. It’s bad for business if word gets out they don’t. Doesn’t mean they won’t leave other viruses and stuff on your computer as a parting gift.”

Dash couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re going to let them get away with this?!”

“There aren’t many other options, Dash. Maybe they screwed up and used the same encryption key for everyone, but that’s unlikely. The only other real option is to wipe the computer clean and reinstall everything from scratch. Quite honestly, that should be done regardless.”

Dash hovered in Meg’s face. “How about we go to that address and deal with them in person.” She threw up her hooves. “Why hasn’t anypony else done that!”

Meg pushed her back. “Because that address is not a physical location. It’ll be nearly impossible to track them down.”

“And you make it so easy for these crooks why?”

Meg sighed. “Unintended consequences. No one planned for crap like this to happen.”

Twilight sat on her haunches. “So let me get this straight: even if I paid and got my stuff back, my machine may still be compromised.”

“I’m afraid so. In theory, they could have access to everything, including personal and classified stuff.”

He eyes went wide. “You mean, like right now?”

Meg shrugged. “It’s not impossible. They don’t know it’s your computer, so there’s that in your favor, but I’d pull the network cable just to be safe.”

A glow surrounded one end of an ethernet cable and pulled it out of the computer. “I guess I’ll go back to paper and quill for now.”

“Bring it along when you take me home and I’ll start reinstalling everything tonight.”

It seemed to Dash that the hydra in the room was being ignored. “So, let me get this straight. If everypony had one of these computers, what’s to keep this from happening all across Equestria?”

Twilight also looked at Meg, awaiting an answer.

“We can’t keep it from happening to ourselves,” she said. “I guess keeping an Equestrian internet separate from the human internet would help a lot, but it wouldn’t stop bad ponies from eventually doing it too.”

Dash couldn’t understand what the problem was. It was so obvious. “Then don’t do it at all. We’re doing just fine without it.”

“But I have access to so much information,” Twilight pleaded. “Everypony could have that. There has to be some way to keep the good while excluding the bad!”

“If you figure out how to do that, could you let us know?” Meg lifted off the floor and made for the exit. “Come on, Dash. Let’s get back to the training.”

Rainbow Dash did not move. “That includes you, Twilight. Sounds like there’s nothing more you can do here.”

“I can’t, Dash.” She moved that mouse thingy with her magic. “I have to redo all the planning for Winter Wrap-Up, this time the old-fashioned way.”

Dash couldn’t really argue with that. It was coming up fast. “There isn’t some spell you can use to solve the computer problem?”

“Not that I know of.” The machine shut off. “I’m not sure it’s even theoretically possible.”

With a heavy sigh, Twilight walked over to another desk, where a pad of paper and a quill in an ink jar patiently waited for her. Along the way, she retrieved from a shelf a pile of paperwork she had received from the Town Hall. As she started skimming through it, taking notes, she muttered, “Maybe next year.”

Rainbow Dash watched with growing indignation. Not only was it not fair, but it was also stupid. “Twilight, for such a smart pony, sometimes you can be as blind as a bat.”

Twilight jerked her head around, seemingly surprised Dash was still there. “Huh? What does intelligence have to do with visual acuity? And bats aren’t blind.”

She wasn’t going to let her egghead babbling distract her. “You don’t have to do it all by yourself. Other ponies had organized Winter Wrap-Up before you came to Ponyville.”

“And it was never completed on time.”

Ouch. Hard to argue with that. “Well, I’m not saying you should do nothing, just… spread the work around.”

Twilight considered that. “I suppose… Effective delegating is part of being a princess.”

“There you go.” She wrapped a wing around Twilight. “So come to the training, get your mind off this for an hour or two, and you’ll be ready to tackle this dele-whatever.”

Twilight couldn’t help but smile just a bit. “Okay. I’ll give ‘dele-whatever’ a try. I’ll look up Amethyst Star afterwards. I’ve heard she used to do a lot of organizing before I came here.”

“Awesome.” Dash leaped into the air and waited for Twilight to do likewise.

Twilight looked back at the mound of paperwork.

Not this time. “Remember your first Winter Wrap-Up in Ponyville? You wanted to help clear out the clouds, but you didn’t have wings?”

Twilight unfurled her wings and examined them. “And now I do.”

“Right. So what’re ya waiting for?”

She stared at them for a few more seconds. “You’re right.” She took off and hovered by Dash’s side. “Lead the way.”

As the two ponies flew up to the clouds to join the others, Rainbow Dash felt hope for her friend. One of these days, you’ll stop overthinking everything.

Author's Note:

The sequel is now up!

TInevitabilities
Nearly a year has passed since the events that had brought two realms together. Each had kept the other a secret until now, two worlds separated by a certain cartoon. Finally, both are ready to deal with the inevitable complications.
Sharp Quill · 179k words  ·  331  15 · 3.7k views
Comments ( 30 )

Seriously? They let ponies like Twilight navigating the net without giving them a training course first?

........ I can almost guarantee there wasn't one shred of decent security on that machine if that happened

Took me almost a whole day to finish this. Well done sir. I loved how you convincingly mixed the two worlds and your explanation for magic was great. Loved Discord's role as well. Loved what you did with the whole EQG pocketverse not even being real. Twilight's reactions seemed so much more grounded in reality with this ≌ her finding out about the show.

Bravo sir. Upvoted and favorited. :twilightsmile:

Yeah, when they figure out a way to stop scamming and viruses they'll be worshiping equestria! LOLOL :rainbowlaugh:

Actually, if Twi has a spell that can factor the products of two large primes, this is a problem that can be fixed with magic.

Wow, now twilight will have to learn the blockchain, XD a bitcoin now is 7000 dollars and going to 8400 un the middle of november, then will probably crash until 5000 though, and up again but miro steadely, that is a lot of money, but twilight may have a lot, so not sweat.

8534996
Realistically you could probably, depending on how long your computer components last under pressure, produce bitcoin at a steady, if minor, rate of income, possibly with wider margins once parts go up in capability and down in price.

8536710
I was talking about the price of a bitcoin now, its above 7000$, and will reach 8000 o 8400 before it crashes again, bitcoin is almost impossible to mine now with any pc, or CPU, or an entire farm of them, you can only mine it with ASIC machines, without them you will literally lose against the big farms that have them, Not even if you get into a pool, not without ASIC.

Wonderful story. Just finished every chapter. The interactions were lovely, and it was nice seeing Twilight use general relativity to help solve her problems. Some of the pacing felt a bit off, for example, the two transitions chapters, but was otherwise well done.

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8553535
I don't understand, forgive me if I misinterpret.
There's a difference between observing phenomena, and reliably cause such observations. Detecting 'small' waves is still in the realm of fiction, even if theory asserts their existence.
This is a list of detected waves. As you can see, we can barely get a feel of those event's massiveness.

8554141
The whole purpose of my advice was to keep you from spending time in jail. But don't take my word for it. Listen to these guys --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

This was simply AMAZING! There is just, so much I could say but, yeah this was all around amazing!

Not a huge fan of the whole 'destiny' thing as some grand, inevitable force dictating what you will do, and that's never really been the case. Even in MLP, anytime they use the term, it pretty much means either "The logical, Causal result of the choices you've made that led to you being in this position at this moment." Or "What I want to have happen to me in the future, and will claim is 'my destiny' so as to make myself all the more confident it MUST happen like I want." Even Cutie Marks aren't really a 'Destiny' as all they are is an metaphorical representation of who a pony is. And since the choices they make and how they act are part of who they are, and in turn what create the choices for the first option of 'causal result of choice', they can sem to imply destiny.

Even with the humans, it's hard to call it 'destiny' with the implication that there is some other, not Destiny, but otherwise active power at work, Given who's spell anchored the tear where it was. As to the show, much the same thing. Though would be interesting to see Luna and Celestia's reaction to Fausticorn, see if maybe that really is close to what their mother looked like.

But yeah, for a thinly veiled 'Brony in Equestria' story, this was really damn good. Then again I have little against that genre if done well and this really was. About the only outright complaint would be not having the Map Table. Not only for all it means, all it connects to, and all it does, but also because...the throne room just looks way to empty and weird without it. They need to to make the throne ring actually make sense. It throws off the whole balance of that room.

Still, eager to get into the sequel and see where things go from here.

Question before i start to read this story,
Does the Mlp Cartoon exist in the human world i.e. do the humans in this story know about Friendship is Magic?

8638974
Yes, and that fact is actually relevant to the story.

8639048
Thank you, i usually don't like these kinds of stories, i prefer it when the show does not exist, but i will give this one a shot :twilightsmile:

If the main OCs in this story were voiced, what would they sound like?

8866933
Eh, these things happen. I know from experience just how good typos can be at hiding...

Hey, Sharp Quill. I'm thinking about trying to make a reading of this story, what would you think would be fitting background music?

8893465
Achievement Unlocked: someone wants to do a reading of a story of mine. :pinkiehappy:

Honestly, though, I haven't a clue what kind of background music to suggest.

8892678
Fixed.

Well, your story certainly inspired me to read the sequel, although the level of detail and quality has left me a bit stumped. Therefore, instead of trying to figure out how to choose between my Masterworks Library and the more standard Favorites Library, I will be creating a library in between the two for the stories that are a cut above the norm, but don't quite make it to the gold standard that defines the Masterworks. This new library, known as the Silver Standard, will host your book as well as any future stories that I deem are worthy of the title. Take pride in knowing your hard work and dedication facilitated this new library, and understand that yours will always be remembered as the inspiration behind its creation.

I look forward to the sequel, and I'll see you next chapter,
Shadow Quill, Messenger of the Moon.

9215003
...That look on her face before pouring it. Classic!

Agent Fowler is a nod to Transformers Prime isn't he?

I super love this story and the fact you use actual science and GRAVITY makes it one of my favs.

This holds up fairly well for a story that started almost 6 years ago. A major plot device flies in the face of established canon. That's not unexpected given that age of the fic. It's hard to tell if this difference was by choice or because said plot device hadn't been refined canonically yet. Either way it made for an interesting reveal and more interesting story mechanics later on. The story proved to be an enjoyable ride and one I'm glad I stumbled upon.

8529578
You try getting twilight sparkle to practice restraint in the face of infinite books! lol

11609184
I didn’t say destroyed the anchor- I said move it (which they can do, as established), to Equestria. It’s basically a black hole; they just need the exit to be in Equestria instead of on earth.

11612212
Again, removing the anchor does not destroy or remove the hole. Moving the anchor to Equestria counts as removing it. In fact, there is even the risk that teleportation counts as removing it. That is why the anchor is never teleported. This is mentioned multiple times during the story, including when the anchor is first discovered.

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