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Prologue: A Train Ride to Everywhere1,988 words
Match 1: Crash and Burn2,128 words

Match 1: Crash and Burn

Author's Note:

Okay, done waiting for editor, gonna post this now. Sorry it took so long, and sorry it's not super long, but I wanted this to be a cut off point for chapter 1. I'm still considering merging the two chapters into one, what do you guys think? Also, seriously, I'm super sorry about how late this is.

Rainbow woke up with a strange lack of feeling, like she wasn’t actually there at all. She tried to open her eyes, but she couldn't tell if it worked. Suddenly, she “felt” something speaking to her, something that felt terribly familiar, “Rainbow? Is that you? Think at me if that’s you.” Rainbow was confused for a moment. Think at something? How would that work? “Just… think, and direct it at me. It's easier if you just do it. Twilight had a hard time coming to terms with that, too."

"Where are we?" The former pegasus "asked" the voice that felt a lot like Rarity.

She was answered by a voice that felt remarkably like Twilight, "Well, it seems you disrupted my storage magics on my bags somehow, and we were ejected from Equestria."

"So we're in a different world? Like when you went to the place with the things to get the Element of Magic?"

"Yes, Rainbow, like the place with the things. Except not. We're not in a different world PER SAY in a similar manner as to how being on the road between towns isn't a new town, it's simply the in between. The main difference here is that there is simply a large amount of nothing in this particular in between. WE don't even exist while here, and it's only through collective force of will that we've even kept in this one spot, which is essential if we're to be rescued."

"Okay, in my defense, I actually TRIED to understand that one, and the best I got was that we need to keep still to get pulled out of here. How can we not exist?"

"It's really interesting, actually, I think we... We're moving!"

Rarity chimed in, feeling considerably less calm, "Moving? How can you tell? Are you sure?" Rainbow hadn't questioned it, she felt like she were made of dust sitting in a pool and someone had just poked a hole in the side, a clear suction going in one "direction." Ugh, she hadn't been doing this for more than a minute, and her head was already hurting from trying to think like this.

"Yes, the currents around the worlds got stronger, or, one specific one did. I think we had been drifting slightly and hadn't noticed, but we are DEFINITELY moving now, no question. More specifically, I think we're being pulled somewhere."

Rainbow's hope soared, "You think we're getting pulled back? I know AJ and them haven't been sittin around, after all. Maybe they found out how to undo it, or maybe Spike got the Princesses to come down!"

"No, it's the wrong way, or, as much as anything can be the wrong way in a place that doesn't exist, and yet is everywhere at once. Either way, I did a scan of the 'place' that we 'were' and I found-" There was a mental shriek as their group felt smaller. "RARITY! Rainbow, she got pulled into a different-" A second mind shattering shriek went off, and Rainbow felt herself alone in a void, teetering on the edge of the unplugged hole in the nothing that drained the lack of everything into it like a reverse black hole. She felt herself slipping in, but without wings to push back, or legs to grab hold, or anything to even grab. She merely hoped and strove to pull away even as she felt herself being pulled further and further in until finally, nonexistence left.

The first thing to come back was the feeling of herself, she could feel her body again. Not feel actual sensations ON it, but she could tell that she had wings again, and they were in the right place. She tried to move them, but succeeded only in ruffling her own feathers. Immediately after the feeling of relief accompanying the return of herself, she felt something less relieving. The feeling of air as it ran down her. FAST. She was falling, and she was also waking from what felt like a coma, this is not the most awesome of combinations. It might, in fact, be one of the least awesome combinations. As she diligently considered less awesome combinations that COULD happen, she struggled to open her eyes, hoping to see which way would be the best way to veer to avoid collisions with things that wouldn't be fun to collide with. As the wind ripped at her eyelids, she forced them apart, despite their holding onto one another like smell on a gym locker room, and found that she, at least, had plenty of time to get things working.

She was looking down on a village, seemingly smaller than Ponyville, and completely surrounded on all sides by a forest. She seemed to be going down directly into said forest. She grimaced through the wind as she struggled to get her sluggish wings to beat, but their being already pinned to her sides by the air pressure wasn't helping the newly reformed muscles to recover any faster. She looked back to the ground to find that she had significantly less time than she thought she had, and quickly added falling too fast and not being able to fly to her list of things to not be cool with.

Her eyes squinted shut as she finally forced her wings off her back, which slowed her momentum a bit, but mostly just succeeded in sending herself careening off to one side. With her keen vision currently picking out panicking... somethings running around on the ground, she knew she was out of time for a smooth landing, but she still put every ounce of energy she could into making it a survivable one. Blue wings strained against the force of the drag pushing them back as the Pegasus put her all into shedding speed. At about fifty feet she began musing over how much more difficult it was to stop an uncontrolled fall than a true dive, but didn’t have the chance to come up with exactly why before she was rudely interrupted by her arch nemesis, the ground. Fortunately, she met her old foe at enough of an angle that the remaining speed would be bled off in a long slide. Unfortunately, Ground had brought friends his leafy henchmen the trees. Those turncoats that were sometimes great nap beds sometimes terrible things to run into full speed.

Her uncontrollable momentum finally met its death at the branches of what tasted like a particularly old oak. Rainbow pulled her face off of it to examine the offender closely, and confirmed that she was correct. Happy in this fact, she promptly fell on her back to watch the sky for a minute, though that was impeded somewhat by the blue fuzzy thing looking down at her with a concerned expression, “Hey, you okay? Took a bit of a hit there.”

She blinked at the blue thing, then squinted, then blinked again, “Yep, and you wouldn’t believe it, but I apparently hit my head so hard that you look like a blue goffer. Crazy, right?”

The blue thing raised an eyebrow, “Ya know, I’d normally get mad at that, but you look like you might have some brain damage, and I make it a point to not beat people for things they won’t remember they did.” It leaned back and put forward its paw. The Pegasus stared at it intently, slowly coming to her senses. It looked an awful lot like Spikes claw, but it was fuzzier. “You gonna get up, or just leave me standin here with my hand out?”

Rainbow shook her head, “Oh, right, thanks.” She put her hoof on his hand and pushed, using it as leverage to pull herself off the ground before he even had a chance to try it himself, “Hey, uh… you look kinda odd. What are you, anyway?”

The blue thing grinned, “I’m a Yordle, and one of the best there is. The name’s Rumble. You must be one of the Ponies that have been popping up. I thought Twilight said there’d be one more.”

Rainbow grinned a bit, “So does that mean you’ve heard of me, then? Not in this world five minutes and I’m already- Wait, you said Twi’s here? Where is she? Is she okay? Is Rarity here? Are they alive?”

Rumble held his hands out, palms down and made a pushing gesture for some reason, “Calm down, they’re here, they’re fine. They’ve been here for months, a little over a year for Rarity, I’ll take you to em.”

“Woah woah woah, back the wagon up, they couldn’t have been here that long, I JUST saw them… er… whatever it is that you do with things in that space that wasn’t really… you know what, that actually makes more sense than the place I just came from, so never mind, we’ll just go with that.”

Rumble gave her a weird look, “Yeah… I’ll be right back…” With that, he walked off between some trees and into a fairly large metal shed. Studying the groove in the ground that she had made, it looked like she had barely managed to miss running headlong into the thing. She looked back at the oak and decided that she was, comparatively, lucky, counting this as one small victory.

Rainbow sighed and stretched, finally fully taking stock of the damage. It appeared that she had come away relatively unscathed, besides the usual cuts, scrapes, and bruises. Feeling the ground, she counted her blessing twinned with the soft, pliable soil she had driven through. It had acted more like a cushion than the normal unforgiving fist. Perhaps Ground’s alternate self was a nicer guy, and they could be friends, but she doubted it. She jumped straight up, to test her wings, and narrowly managed to dodge a blast of light that hit the tree behind her, burning a black circle into the bark.

The Pegasus took off like a shot, her still sore wings pumping to get speed to make herself a difficult target, but she wasn’t getting the air she was used to, barely getting enough to move, much less speed around. She pulled her wings in, allowing her to drop like a rock. She hit the ground at a crouch and took off to one side as another blast of red light turned the circle into an eight, “HEY! Stop hiding and show yourself, coward!”

The shack door blew open and a nightmare emerged. It was a gigantic machine with a spiked ball on one arm, and a spike sticking out of a hole in the other. Smoke billowed out the back like it was powered by an angry dragon, and the noise it made could shatter windows. Riding at the helm stood Rumble, face filled with indignation and fury as he scanned the tree line before firing off the spike like a harpoon that sizzled with lightning as it flew through the air, “Get out, you’re not gonna terrorize Bandle City! NOT ON MY WATCH!” Rainbow was… moderately impressed. She was also not squeeling like a little girl. She knew that because she was very intentionally stopping herself.

There was a commotion in one of the taller bushes and the sound of sparks that could be heard retreating. Rainbow ran to the spot, but Rumble called, “Leave em, someone like that, they’ll be impossible to track in this forest.”

Reluctantly, Rainbow stopped at the bush the coward had been hiding in, and snorted as she looked at the ground. Several pieces of red and black metal littered the forest floor. She scooped up a hooffull and looked at it closely, “Hey, you know what this junk is?”

The Pegasus looked up at the sound of pounding footsteps as the huge machine approached. Rumble climbed down to get a closer look, “Not sure… Looks like it was used in some kind of hextech, but I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I’m sure we can find out something where I’m taking you, though.” With that, he turned and began climbing back into his mech.

Rainbow put a bunch of the pieces away in that special space that most ponies have at least some access to, “And where exactly ARE you taking me?”

Rumble looked down from his perch, “The League of Legends.”

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