Ch. 2 - Newton's Third Law
Chapter 2 - Newton’s Third Law
* * * *
“Ah, hey there, Big Mac. Been lookin’ for you.”
Big McIntosh looked briefly over his shoulder at Applejack but didn’t stop pulling the plow. “Heya, AJ.”
She trotted up beside him and began to match his pace. He was going quite fast, but she hardly noticed.
“So… you’ve heard about my, uh… my new powers, huh?”
“Ee-yup. Chaos magic.” He glanced down at her, smiling. “Not bad. Granny don’t much like the idea, though.”
Applejack nodded. “Yeah… Chaos magic is chaos magic, you know.”
He looked down at her again with mild surprise. “Ee-yup,” he replied. He reached the end of the field and began to tug the plow in a circle, beginning another furrow. “Somethin’ wrong with that?”
Applejack gave him a curious look. “Well… kinda. I ain’t sure I can control this kinda power is all. I ain’t even sure Discord could control it.”
Big McIntosh chuckled. “Yup. Fair ’nough.”
They walked in silence for a moment, Applejack deep in thought, Big McIntosh moving steadily down the furrow.
“Hey, Big Mac?”
“Ee-yup?”
“I was wonderin’…”
Applejack trailed off. Big McIntosh plodded along patiently.
Then, unexpectedly, he slowed to a halt and cocked an ear. “…Is someone callin’ your name?”
“Huh?” Applejack snapped out of her reverie. She listened—or did something a lot like listening, anyway.
“Applejack!”
She zeroed in on the source of the voice near the freshly “painted” chicken coop just in time for it to disappear in a purple flash.
“Applejack!” came the call, this time near the farmhouse.
“Shucks, it’s Twilight. Wonder what she…” Applejack looked over to see her brother several yards away, continuing down the furrow. “Big Mac?”
He glanced up. “Go ahead. Twilight looks like she’s in some kinda hurry.”
“Right…” She turned away and set off at a gallop. “Twilight! Stay still! I’m right here!”
“Applejack?” Twilight called from the barn.
There was another purple flash, and suddenly Applejack was bowling her over.
“Applejack, I… I forgot to tell you something!” said Twilight breathlessly. With yet another purple flash, she was back on her feet. “The Princesses want to see you!” She nudged Applejack. “Get up!”
“All of them?” Applejack tried to recall the complex motions a normal pony went through to stand up after falling over. “Right now?”
“Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, and yes, right now!” Twilight trotted in place anxiously. “Oh, I’m so sorry I forgot to mention it before! And you’re not using your chaos magic! You’re going to be so late!”
“Hold your horses, Twilight. Are we talkin’ ‘right now’ right now, or ‘in a few minutes’ right now?”
“We’re talking ‘the last train to Canterlot leaves in ten minutes, four hours late is better than a whole day’ right now!” Twilight looked towards the sun just over the horizon. “They wanted to see you at sunset, but that’s obviously not going to happen. Oh, this is all my fault! Do you have any idea how busy the Princesses’ schedules are?”
“Busy enough to spend Nightmare Night in Ponyville?”
Twilight groaned. “You’re missing the point, Applejack! Get to the train station! Now!”
“Alright, I’m—”
“Wait! Wait! Bring these!” Using her magic, Twilight hefted a large blue chest which Applejack probably should have noticed earlier. “The Elements. They wanted you to bring them. Princess Celestia said it was important.”
Applejack looked the chest over. Significant parts of it seemed to be made of gold. “That’ll weigh me down.”
“You could probably run with this if you really tried! Just use a little suspension of disbelief. It’ll be fine! Here!” With a possibly justified disregard for safety, she heaved the box in Applejack’s direction.
Applejack knelt slightly as she caught it on her back. It swayed slightly but kept its balance. “I dunno, Twilight,” she said nervously. “I ain’t so sure I want to believe in this.”
“Sorry, Applejack, it’s the only way! Now get a move on!”
“Alright, alright.” Applejack set off at an effortless canter, and Twilight followed anxiously. “You warned ’em I’d be late, right?”
Twilight’s hoof made violent contact with her forehead as she came to a screeching halt. “Augh! What is wrong with me today?! I haven’t been this disorganized about a meeting with royalty since… since…” She shook her head and took a deep breath. “No, no… It’s just a… relatively informal meeting. It could be worse. You get to the train station, and I’ll go tell Spike to send the Princesses a letter.”
Applejack nodded. Twilight turned and darted away with surprising speed.
…Before coming to an even more surprising stop several feet away.
In mid-air.
Just like that. With no warning and for no apparent reason at all, Twilight Sparkle was suspended mid-stride, inches above the ground. There may have been a sound like breaking glass as it happened, but then again, Applejack may have imagined it. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Slowly, Applejack walked up to her and looked her up and down. She seemed quite oblivious to the fact that she was frozen in time.
Applejack let out a defeated sigh. “What did I do this time?”
Twilight didn’t answer.
Applejack looked at the sun. She wasn’t entirely sure, but it didn’t seem to be getting any closer to the horizon.
“Whoa, Nelly…” She turned back to Twilight. “Twilight! Move!” She willed her to move.
Twilight didn’t move. She couldn’t quite imagine what Twilight would look like in motion.
Applejack waved a hoof in front of Twilight’s face. Then she smacked it into Twilight’s face. Twilight didn’t budge.
“Maybe I don’t have to worry about bein’ late to meet the Princesses after all…” she murmured nervously.
She raced off at a gallop anyway.
* * *
It was worse in town.
It was sunset. Ponyville was still active, ponies trotting about to attend to business in their own ways and their own places. Some relaxed on benches, others sat down to eat dinner. It was one of the most active times of day, in fact, but it was beginning to wind down.
It was beginning to wind down very slowly. Imperceptibly slowly. Actually, it probably wasn’t winding down at all.
There wasn’t much to wind down from, at any rate. Everything, everyone, wherever Applejack went, was still as death. No, more than that. Still as if they’d never been alive.
That rare kind of silence filled the air, the kind that makes the world feel vast, open, and empty. When she thought about it, Applejack could hear her own hoofbeats, but that only served to underscore the feeling of being alone.
She wandered up to a mint green unicorn who had been trotting past the fountain. She was vaguely familiar. Her cutie mark was… a lyre. Of course, Lyra Heartstrings, that’s who it was.
Lyra looked like she was having a good day. She was carrying a little paper bag with a purple heart on it, and Applejack thought she could see a bit of a spring in her step.
Applejack raised a hoof and, knowing full well what would happen, gave the bag a solid tap. It didn’t seem to notice.
Concentrating her chaos powers, she tried to pull it from Lyra’s grip. She tried to turn the town hall upside down. She tried to summon a tentacled monstrosity out of thin air.
She was completely and utterly powerless. This did mean that she didn’t have to worry about accidentally destroying the world anymore, but that was hardly reassuring now that the damage seemed to be done anyway.
Actually, she wasn’t completely powerless. She could move her own body, obviously, but there was one other thing she could affect: the chest containing the Elements of Harmony. This may have just been because she was carrying it when time stopped, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if the artifacts that had defeated Discord twice simply weren’t affected by what she assumed to be a bout of accidental chaos magic.
Speaking of things chaos magic had no effect on, Princess Celestia’s anti-Discord ward on the Elements was clearly still working. Applejack couldn’t open that chest for the life of her. It was more responsive than anything else around, just enough for the latches to jiggle infuriatingly, but it was locked tight. She couldn’t open it, blow it up, or transform it into an easier-to-open container. Finding a way to use her own Element of Harmony against herself wasn’t going to work.
Now she was just carrying the thing with her. She’d given up on trying to pretend she was a normal pony who just happened to be able to carry a huge chest like it was nothing and settled for floating it along a few feet behind her.
As she wandered through this particularly lifelike statue garden, alone with the ultimate symbols of safety and unity in Equestria, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were judging her.
You stupid pony, they seemed to say. You thought you could control chaos magic? You don’t even understand it. “If anypony can keep a lid on Discord’s magic, it’s me,” you said. Ha! Maybe you should be the Element of Ego.
“Shut up,” Applejack muttered. “Rainbow Dash would be the Element of Ego, and you know it.”
Well, she can’t be the Element of Ego if she’s frozen in time, can she?
“Ugh,” Applejack grunted. “Why is everything frozen in time? That’s what I wanna know. I didn’t do anything. I don’t think I even thought anything!”
Exactly. You don’t understand chaos magic at all. And yet you tried to—
“I tried to what?” She rounded on the inanimate object. “Honestly, it’s only been a few hours, and I didn’t even do anything. What could I have done better? I’m listenin’.”
You could have… If you hadn’t been so prideful, you would have… Uh…
“Exactly,” she muttered, continuing down the street. “None o’ this is my fault.”
Well, you still feel like it is. So there.
Applejack couldn’t think of a response to that.
After wandering around town a bit longer, she began talking to herself in earnest. She started by stating the obvious.
“Well, all this wanderin’ around town ain’t doin’ anyone any good.”
She wandered around town some more.
Then it hit her. She looked up at Canterlot in the distance.
“The Princesses!” She pulled the chest up beside her. “C’mon! I dunno how, but if anypony can help me…”
She sighed.
“Shucks… I guess they’ll just be frozen in time like everyone else, but…”
Before she could think about it any more, she leaned back on her haunches and kicked off, leaving the ground behind for Canterlot.
* * *
The journey was predictably uneventful. Green hills and occasional wooded patches rolled below her, and a few times she spotted a motionless bird, which would have been amusing under other circumstances. Once she arrived in Canterlot, finding it to be a lot like Ponyville in that, to put it mildly, there wasn’t much going on, and entered the castle, the search for the Princesses proved to be only slightly more interesting. She got lost for a few minutes and came across Prince Blueblood reading a comic book in a particularly out-of-the-way corridor. A special edition of Power Ponies, it seemed, focusing on a character called “Zapp”. He was really engrossed in it; Applejack couldn’t even read over his shoulder with his snout so close to the pages.
The initial shock of finding out that she had seemingly broken the world had worn off some time ago, but there was still a nervous energy nagging at her. She passed a guard, wishing yet again that she could just ask him where the royal sisters were, and stepped through the solid oak of the door he was guarding. She took a look around…
“Yes! There you two are!” She tugged the chest through the door and approached the wide balcony where the Princesses were standing.
The room between the door and the balcony seemed to be a small library of some kind—a personal library, perhaps. The Princesses were facing away from the door, probably not expecting Applejack to come in unannounced.
There was a small table in the center of the room, even more ornate than what one would expect to find in Canterlot Castle and certainly not in the same style. It was round and made of rough, dark stone, with six huge gems of different colors embedded in its surface. Complex, deep-cut engravings filled the space between them. Even in the limbo of stopped time, they seemed to emanate a power as old as the rock they were cut from.
Taking all this in but not paying it much thought, Applejack chucked the Elements of Harmony onto the table.
WHOOOOOSH
A wave of searing white energy exploded from the chest as it sprung open, and the gems in the table came to life, glowing brightly. There was also a colorful glow coming from inside the chest, presumably from the Elements, but Applejack couldn’t see for certain because she’d happened to set it down facing away from her.
The Princesses spun around.
White, shimmering light cloaked the edges of the room, and… wait.
The Princesses spun around?
Applejack started. “You… you moved!”
They glanced at each other. Princess Luna spoke first. “Hmm. This is certainly unexpected.”
“Yes…” Princess Celestia walked up to the table. “Have you been wandering around with time stopped?” she asked with concern. “I’m sorry. We weren’t expecting this for another four hours. I thought this meeting time would be early enough.”
“You… know about that?” Applejack cocked an eyebrow curiously at her. “I reckon I was out there for about an hour. I was worried I’d never get the world started again.”
Princess Luna took up her position by her sister’s side. “Don’t worry, Applejack. It’s a perfectly normal side effect. Outside of this room, the world remains frozen. When you set the chest upon the table, we were brought into the elements’ time stream.” She set a hoof on the stone table, tracing one of the many curves cut into its surface. “You’re lucky you thought to come here so quickly.”
“So… it wasn’t me?”
The Princesses shook their heads. Applejack let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank goodness. I had no idea what it was I did! I thought chaos magic was just more dangerous than I thought.”
“No,” said Princess Celestia firmly. “Chaos magic is very difficult to tame, but it is not a form of magic that will betray you. Chaos keeps no secrets; you will always know why it does what it does, even if it isn’t quite what you wanted.” She looked in the chest. “The truth is, the Elements of Harmony may be more dangerous. They have a mind of their own.” She lifted the blue box in her magic aura and turned it to face Applejack. “This is why they decided to stop time.”
Resting on pink velvet inside the chest were five necklaces and a crown, each set with a powerful magic gem in the shape of its bearer’s cutie mark.
Except for one.
The Element of Honesty lay broken into orange shards, scattered on the surface of the fabric.
“Aw, shoot,” Applejack murmured.
“You cannot control both chaos magic and an Element of Harmony,” said Princess Luna. “But there must always be exactly six Elements. They have brought us to a time outside of time so that you may decide who the next bearer of the Element of Honesty will be.”
“Me? They can’t decide on their own like they did for the six of us?”
Princess Celestia shook her head. “The Elements of Harmony are a form of destiny magic. With their power over both the past and the future, they are meant to pass naturally from one bearer to the next as the millennia go by.”
“But today, destiny was thwarted. You, Applejack, lost control of your Element before it was time. And now, uncertain, they turn to the Element of Honesty’s former bearer for guidance. It is up to you to decide what happens next.” She looked solemnly at Applejack. “It is up to you to decide fate.”
Applejack looked down at the Elements inside the chest. “Well, ain’t this day just full o’ surprises…” she mused.
“Indeed,” Princess Luna agreed. “Today, the future of Equestria is being rewritten. There hasn’t been an upset of magical forces on this scale in so long that… that I was there to see the last one.”
Applejack nodded slowly. “Alright, so…” She waved a hoof in the air. “How do I appoint the new Element of Honesty, then? What do I do once I’ve made my pick?”
Princess Celestia raised her eyebrows. “Do you have someone in mind?”
“No idea. I just wanna be prepared is all.”
The Princess nodded. “Alright. When you have made your decision, we will bring what remains of the Element of Honesty out of this room to the pony you have chosen. If they choose to accept the responsibility, we will put it around their neck. Their destiny will be bound to the Elements and to the other bearers forever.”
“I do not think I need to warn you of this, Applejack, but do not take this decision lightly,” said Princess Luna. “You must choose someone who not only epitomizes honesty, but who will be able to form strong, lasting bonds with the other bearers, who will be able to wield their Element against evil and save Equestria time and time again, as you have.”
“You have all the time in the world to make this decision,” added Princess Celestia.
Applejack nodded. Without really thinking about what she was doing, she lifted the Element of Honesty’s gold necklace from the chest with her magic and began to turn it around.
Who could take her place as the Element’s bearer? Apple Bloom… she was fairly valorous, but she wasn’t exactly the perfect example of an honest pony. The same went for the other Crusaders and for Spike. They were all a bit young anyway.
Big Mac? Someone so quiet would certainly make an unusual choice for Element of Honesty. Maybe there was a certain logic to it… Then again, maybe there wasn’t.
She glanced up at the Princesses… No, that was ridiculous.
She was just going over her options. She had all the time in the world.
She chuckled quietly. As long as she was considering absurd possibilities… She couldn’t help but picture it as she held the necklace aloft.
ZAP.
Applejack’s jaw dropped as a figure appeared in front of her, bathed in a bright white glow, the remaining part of the Element of Honesty suddenly fastened around its neck. One by one, colored spotlights erupted from the remaining Elements, emitting a loud hum and pointing at the empty spot in the necklace’s center.
“Applejack!” yelled Princess Luna over the noise. “What are you doing? How can you have chosen so quickly?!”
Applejack’s jaw flapped up and down wordlessly as she stared wide-eyed at the horrible mistake that was coming into being before her. “NO!” she shouted. “NO NO NO NO NO NO—”
With an earsplitting CRACK, all three of them were thrown back from the newly christened bearer of the Element of Honesty as he sank slowly to the floor, stretching and yawning, wearing the newly reconstituted gem around his neck.
“Ohhhh, yes!” Discord the pony sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Now that’s what I call a wake-up call.” He smiled pleasantly at the gaping figures around him. “Oh, hello. What’s wrong? Something I should know about?”
He looked around. The three most powerful ponies in Equestria stared back at him.
He stretched a hoof in front of him and examined it. “Well, would you look at that…” he remarked, turning it around a few times. “I’m a pony. Okay, you three, seriously. What just happened?” He pointed at Applejack. “And why’s the orange one here and not any of the others?” He reclined on the floor and looked expectantly at the Princesses.
They looked slowly from him to Applejack and back again.
“Zounds,” said Princess Luna.
I used “Applejack - Smiling” by Hawk9mm in the header drawing. Obviously, I modified it a bit. 
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5692430
Whoops. I was reading back through the comments, and now I feel even worse.
6698832
Shtap.
Discord as the new Bearer of Honesty? This I've gotta see.
What do EPUB, AZW3, and MOBI stand for?
6698832 Aww, don't feel bad. As long as the rest come in a timely manner, you're forgiven.
How did that happen?
And I would have chosen Macintosh.
All of my yes. All of it!
This has the potential to be extremely entertaining. I can't wait.
... Well, I can, but I'd rather not. :P
LOL I cannot wait to see the FORMER Discords reaction to the current events at hoof.
It was Lyra's only hope... AJ wasn't insane with obsession for the undead emo alicorn queen... she alone could unbind the poor mare from the power of the elegies and stop the destruction of the world... "Where in tarnation's that creepy voice a-comin' from?" Oh crap, I forgot she can hear me now! *sounds of feet running away*