A Place for Pinkie

by Chinchillax

Chapter 4

We lost the wall.

Granted, we were jumping absurdly huge distances, punching in higher and higher numbers into our teleportation spell. It would eventually fail when we had reached a corner of the multiverse. But we had gone too far and the wall was gone. We jumped back to our previous relay point, reporting the odd discovery to the rest of the collective.

We halved the amount of our jump and the wall remained with us. We kept teleporting, trying to narrow down the position where the wall ceased.

It took a while, but we eventually found where the wall met with another wall. Instead of enclosing us inside, leaving the multiverse smaller, it jutted outward at a one hundred and twenty degree angle.
---

Galaxia was in the midst of watching a species of twelve legged, spider-like species try to discover how to manipulate atoms. The race had done a fantastic job of creating smaller and smaller machines, but eventually all of their work tapered off due to the size of atoms themselves. The best scientists of the species seemed to be on the cusp of understanding that atoms had been nanomachines themselves all along, just as programmable as any machine they could build themselves. It was a crucial step in all sorts of scientific breakthroughs that would send this species traversing through deep space to discover all the habitable galaxies that she had left as presents for them to discover once they reached this point.

Her concentration on their effort was broken when a reminder floated to her attention to release Luna from Equestria’s moon. She readjusted her thinking and tried to put the plight of those hard working scientists out of her mind in order to concentrate on Luna.

She teleported to Equestria and stopped time, landing in front of Celestia. She could say hello afterwards. Galaxia touched her horn to Celestia’s and gathered all the memories of the last ten years. The great rush of knowledge put her in the right frame of mind for how Equestria worked, as well as gave her good information about how Celestia had nudged those six ponies to Ponyville. She had cut it very close by having Twilight come there the very eve of letting Luna go. But Galaxia did have to give Celestia credit for making the five ponyville ponies be in charge of key aspects of the celebration so that Twilight would have to meet them.

She breathed in and out and then teleported to the moon.

She landed on the desolate rock, the craters littering the landscape, complete silence and darkness enveloping the moon. After casting a soul seeking spell, she discovered a black, menacing wraith lying completely still among the craters.

The strange creature was a far cry from the Luna that Galaxia and Cosmos had nurtured into becoming an immortal Princess and protector of Equestria. Galaxia kept herself invisible to the creature, getting close enough to it to examine her soul.

She read Luna’s memories, but they weren’t nearly as tangible an experience as Galaxia was used to. The last one thousand years had all been subdued, as if Luna herself were in some kind of dream, not entirely experiencing all of her actions.

Every memory felt fuzzy and incomplete. They were the kind of memories that get tossed out during data harvests as outliers and irrelevant due to how messed up the data was. It was like trying to read a book that had some of its original pages ripped out and pages from a completely different book glued back in to replace them.

Galaxia kept her horn on Luna’s, focusing on her memories and looking for the crossing point between perfect memory and the haze. It was somewhere after the start of the diarchy, but before the banishment. When was that threshold?

She kept rifling through the memories until the initial nudge of the haze in memory started to appear.

Luna had been in her throne room at the time, watching the nanoscopic souls float around. But there was something else that she had seen. It took Galaxia a few moments to recognize it for what it was and when she did she had to stop herself from screaming. It was an atom, a simple ordinary atom. An almost perfectly spherical nanomachine like other atoms, with only one harsh difference: it was by far larger than any other atom she had seen in her life.

And it… floated into Luna?

Galaxia stepped away from the wraith, still trying to unravel the situation.

Without warning the creature opened its slitted eyes and blasted Galaxia with a shockwave of midnight magic. She rushed out of the way, but not before her body burned from the foreign spell. She yelped in pain and flew back from it. She landed and picked up some of the rocks on the ground, disintegrating them back to hydrogen, and fusing them into higher elements to place in her own body as needed.

The creature’s eyes followed her.

She uncloaked and recloaked, making sure the invisibility spells were working. The wraith rounded on her, flying into the air and shooting off more of the radiation, sending shockwave after shockwave after her.

“I can still see you,” it said.

Galaxia used her time stop spell, ordering all atoms in this solar system to a complete standstill. Every single one obeyed.

Except for the wraith.

“I don’t have to obey your orders!” it cackled.

Galaxia spun out of the way of more of the magic. What was this thing? It was made of atoms, and atoms obey. And it had a soul, and souls do what they’re told. What was going on? She teleported to the opposite side of the moon to think.

Her eyes widened as she heard the sound of a teleportation spell behind her, the wraith had followed her.

There was no way it could have known how to follow her. Only a soul seeking spell could be used to do that. As Galaxia skirted around it’s attacks she scanned the creature’s horn. It was using a soul seeking spell on her. But Luna could not have used that spell, Galaxia had never taught it to her.

“You’re... not Luna. What are you?” asked Galaxia.

“Me, dear Queen? Since my sun was stolen from me, I suppose I’ll be the moon,” she smiled, fangs appearing menacingly. “Nightmare Moon.”

Nightmare Moon cast a time stop spell on Galaxia, the atoms that made up her current form slowed to a stop. Her eyes widened in panic as another burst of midnight magic was about to engulf her.

She fled out in basic form, a cream colored orb of light about the size of a hoof tearing away from under Galaxia’s body. She landed on the Lunar surface, disintegrating her surroundings back into hydrogen and forming herself back into Galaxia.

She stared up from the crater she had made just in time to see her previous form melt into ash.

“How do you know that spell?” screamed Galaxia.

The wraith smiled. “While you were scanning Luna’s soul for memories, I was scanning yours.”

Galaxia leapt backwards as another blast of the time stop spell almost enclosed around her. What the Nightmare said was impossible, only a King, Queen or Hope itself could read her soul. How much had it read? How many of Galaxia’s own spells did it know?

Galaxia dropped all her defenses and started shooting off her own spells at the Nightmare. Nothing could destroy a soul, so obliterating everything else about this creature wouldn’t be a problem. She just had to do it fast, the more time it had the more it could experiment with the spells in Galaxia’s memory.

One of her hydrogenization spells hit. The Nightmare screamed as part of the elements in it's body broke down to the smallest element. Its ethereal midnight tail severed in half.

The Nightmare used its horn to slash in the air, opening a portal. Before Galaxia had any time to react, it slipped away inside and disappeared.

For a brief moment, everything was calm. Galaxia panicked and cast a soul seeking spell. If it had some of her memories it could be anywhere, any galaxy, any universe. The elements of harmony had cut off Luna’s main method of teleportation for a thousand years, but Galaxia’s own portal spell circumvented that.

Galaxia heard a tear in the fabric of space rip behind her. She jumped out of the way and watched it appear again, enveloping the six elements of harmony in it’s midnight magic.

Galaxia’s eyes widened. Nightmare Moon spun the elements around itself, a rainbow jet of light erupting from her. Galaxia veered out of the way of the rainbow magic, but it chased after her, arcing along and appearing in front of her.

She closed her eyes as the rainbow enveloped her.

A warmth came over Galaxia, not the searing heat of a sun, but the calm warmth of friends. Hope themselves had given her sets of Elements of Harmony to place on worlds. They were designed to right any wrong, and there was no part of her that needed to change.

The Nightmare on the ground cackled menacingly, unaware of Galaxia’s immunity. She teleported down next to the Nightmare, ripping the swirling elements away from it and spinning them around herself.

“What!?” the Nightmare screamed.

Galaxia added extra destruction spells to the mix of rainbow magic as it erupted out of the elements and into the Nightmare, disintegrating each and every piece of it into ash.

Galaxia breathed a sigh of relief. It had almost won. She watched as the dark gray ash hovered in the air before slowly settling down on the lunar surface.

What was that thing?

She shook her head and cast a soul seeking spell, spotting Luna’s soul amidst the ash and quickly reading the memories again. The last thing Luna saw before the haze was that atom with an insanely high atomic number.

She thought about it for a moment and then cast a spell to show locations of all atoms nearby with an atomic number greater than ten thousand.

Her spell found something.

She cast magnification spells and looked at it in surprise. It had all the aspects of the nanomachines known as atoms: protons, neutrons, electrons and the many other quarks all meshed together to form one… supergiant atom. Galaxia lifted it in her magic, careful to prevent it from moving towards her or escaping.

Besides soul, hydrogen was the only thing in existence. Everything else came by adding another full set of protons, electrons and other quarks to reach the higher atomic numbers beyond hydrogen. Every atom she had seen before had an atomic number of less than one hundred thousand. But this one she held tightly in her magic as it squirmed, had an atomic number of exactly one trillion.

No matter how hard Galaxia and the other Kings and Queens she knew had tried to coax the atoms into smashing together into higher and higher atomic numbers, every attempt past one hundred thousand had resulted in failure. This however, shot past former records and laughed them to scorn.

How did this even exist?

She wrapped up the atom in layers upon layers of magical wards and protections, folding it and the Elements of Harmony inside her wings for safe keeping.

Galaxia focused on the navy blue soul close by. She set Luna's soul back down on the surface of the moon, hydrogenizing the landscape immediately surrounding her. And then fusing the hydrogen into carbon, oxygen, and other elements to recreate Luna atom by atom from the memories in her soul.

By the time she was finished, Luna was lying in a heap in a freshly made crater.

Luna opened her eyes and immediately the strange form of Nightmare Moon took over and Luna’s body shimmered from navy into a midnight black. Galaxia stopped time and Nightmare Moon obeyed this time, leaving Galaxia time to inspect her. Luna’s memories were still fuzzy. All she remembered was the Nightmare but not distinctly how she had become it. The residual effects of a thousand years under that external control had left her mind too used to the anger and hatred.

But another blast from the elements (minus the extra destruction spells Galaxia had put in last time), might set her mind straight. She was no longer being influenced by whatever that thing had been. She could be cured.

Galaxia let the elements float in front of her, gazing at each one in turn before she stared at a brilliant blue stone. It matched Pinkie’s eyes perfectly.

She stared at the confused, bitter eyes of Luna below her and teleported her down to the planet.

Nightmare Luna didn’t waste any time. Galaxia watched as she immediately froze Celestia in place and cloaked her.

The Nightmare began to speak to a terrified audience of ponies. Everypony Galaxia had wanted to be there was here, and Pinkie was particularly chipper considering the circumstances. Perhaps Galaxia could simply get rid of this confused Luna alone? It looked like Pinkie was doing fine regardless of whether she was an element bearer or not.

Her mind flashed to a few of the final scenes of Pinkie’s former lives and she shuddered involuntarily. It would be better to put an extra layer of protection to make sure that cycle didn’t continue.

Galaxia watched as the Nightmare escaped as a shadow of darkness. She monitored Nightmare Luna as she made her way to the library where, thankfully, the Element Bearers had gathered.

Nightmare Luna listened and rushed to the old castle to search for the Elements that had destroyed her last time.

Galaxia teleported ahead of it and took some old stones and put various insignia on them. She configured five stones to act as decoys for Nightmare Luna to fight against for a few moments. She unfroze time and watched as the Nightmare cast every spell Luna had ever known onto the stones, attempting to figure out how to wield them herself or, failing that, destroy them.

Galaxia smiled as Nightmare Luna began an earnest endeavor to figure out how the fake elements worked. However, it kept moving back and forth between the castle and the Everfree, trying to slow down the Bearers until it had figured out in detail the secrets behind the stones.

It would be at this for some time. And her Bearers, including Pinkie were becoming better friends because of the occasion. The plan was finally falling into place.

The only thing strange was the real cause of the Nightmare, the atom still folded under her wings. What was it? How had it learned from her so quickly? Was there more than one?

Galaxia froze, staring as Nightmare Luna started casting more and more disintegration spells onto the stones. It would be at that for some time until the Bearer’s arrived.

She weighed the risks in her mind for a few moments before teleporting to the Canterlot Gardens. The statue didn’t take long to spot. If it weren’t for the memories, she wouldn’t be able to believe that this used to be some being of chaos.

He was a mish mash of strange body parts. No creature would ever naturally evolve that way. What genetic advantage would that level of asymmetry even allow for? And what King or Queen would force a species to not evolve better methods for existence.

Discord wasn’t made by Kings, Queens, or even evolution… it was almost as if he made himself randomly as it thought up pieces of existence it liked.

Galaxia closed her eyes and performed an entire, thorough scan on the statue. Every single part of it was made of ordinary granite. And there weren’t any atoms in there with an atomic number above one hundred fifty.

The statue didn’t have a soul inside of it now. Perhaps he reincarnated? What if he had been a normal pony and had changed this way with magic? The possibility was there. There were plenty of spells that were known to unicorns that could explain for most of what Discord had done to himself and did to others.

If that were the case, then one of the souls on this planet would have those memories. But the only way to find that soul would be to read every soul in Equestria. It would take way too long to rewrite that spell. And besides, he had been hit with the Elements of Harmony. They may have erased the memories on his very soul in an attempt to right every wrong committed.

She stared at the statue. Whatever the Elements of Harmony had done to Discord, he was unlikely to come back.

With that resolved, she teleported back to the ancient castle just in time to watch as Nightmare Luna finally succeeded in destroying the fake elements.

She watched Twilight slump into despair. Galaxia had left herself little choice. When Cosmos had implanted those ideas into Pinkie, it may have already disqualified this planet as being a proper experiment. And that was on top of manipulating those six into meeting in the first place. Another set of ideas wouldn’t hurt.

Galaxia cast a few idea spells into her, making sure Twilight made the connections between how her friends behaved and the Elements.

The rest of the bearers trotted in as Galaxia began to work very fast putting the pieces together as Twilight spoke. She moved the shattered stones underneath Nightmare Luna and got an alchemy spell ready to convert the rock to a gold alloy necklace. At the same time she unfolded her wings to work on the true Elements, molding their shapes to look like their bearers mark.

As the final piece came into place, the elements started to resonate like they never had before and a rainbow blast of magic overcame Nightmare Luna. Galaxia paused time and inspected the process. The elements were sharpening Luna’s memories of the time before the atom had invaded her mind, dampening everything after that.

She unfroze time and watched the transformation unfold. It took several moments for her midnight coat to fade into a soft navy, her waving magical mane weakening into a soft blue.

She fetched Celestia and let her talk with the Bearers. This, out of all that Galaxia had done for her, had to be a happy memory for Pinkie to think on.

As Celestia got close to Luna, Galaxia froze time, leaving her daughters exempt from the spell.

Celestia beamed upon seeing her, gratitude filling her eyes.

“Are you okay, Luna?” asked Galaxia, leaning down to her.

Luna’s eyes watered, staring up at Galaxia in despair. “Are you going to make me reincarnate?”

Galaxia dipped down low and laid next to her, reaching out a hoof to stroke her mane. “No Luna, don't worry," she said, smiling serenely. "It wasn't your fault."

Luna's mouth quivered, tightening her eyes as more tears started to stream out. “But I am responsible, I chose to do this! I— I chose—”

"Shh... it's okay," Galaxia said, continuing to stroke Luna's mane. “You had something influencing you.”

Luna opened her eyes as Galaxia brought out the unusual atom, magnifying it for them to see. “Do you remember this?”

A look of recognition flashed on Luna’s muzzle and her tears subsided into shock.

“What… is that?” asked Celestia, squinting at the substance.

Galaxia hesitated. “I’m not sure, I’ll have to consult with Hope about this.”

“Can you tell us what they tell you,” asked Luna, her mouth agape.

Galaxia stood up and stepped back from Luna, shifting her eyes away from them. “Only if they let me.”

“But—” said Luna, reaching out a hoof to Galaxia. “What if something like this happens again in the future?”

Galaxia thought about that, and paused her daughters to think. After some time, she attached a new monitoring spell on their souls. If anything dared alter or access them, she would find out immediately.

She unfroze them and said. “Don’t worry, that won’t happen.” The apprehension on Celestia and Luna’s muzzles slowly melted into reassurance as they looked at Galaxia’s calmness.

“Now go. Enjoy this world for many eons to come.”

She took one last glance at Pinkie Pie, the reason she had come back to this planet in the first place. Pinkie seemed as enthusiastic as when she had left her ten years before. Her end-of-life-interview was guaranteed to be filled with many happy stories. She smiled, knowing that she had found a place for her.

Comments

[Chicago Ted]

It's ethereal midnight tail

The Nightmare used it’s horn

You stole it’s home and it’s purpose.

What do you mean, it’s home?

Darn apostrophes! Shoo! Shoo!

[Leonzilla]

It took a while, but we eventually found where the wall met with another wall. Instead of enclosing us inside, leaving the multiverse smaller, it jutted outward at a one hundred and twenty degree angle.

The wraith smiled. “While you were scanning Luna’s soul for memories, I was scanning yours.”

Alright, now you can panic.

What the Nightmare said was impossible, only a King, Queen or Hope itself could read her soul.

That she know of. But Galaxia has already being stabilised as not being omniscient despite her vast knowledge beyond human comprehension.

Hope themselves had given her sets of Elements of Harmony to place on worlds. They were designed to right any wrong, and there was no part of her that needed to change.

This confirms Hope is definitely a higher power.

I have to say this was undoubtedly the coolest explanation I have ever seen for how the main six got their cutiemarks and how they came together to defeat Nightmare Moon and all it took was someone to zoom out and build up the universe (and multiverse) around where Equestria exist. Then work from there inwards making everything we learned relevant. It's a brand new original perspective, a fresh approach of how to tell the story. This idea could be recycled to be used for other premises with unfathomable results.

I particularity enjoyed the confrontation between the wrath and Galaxia. Up to that point Galaxia seemed capable enough to be infallible, but that turn of events actually was enough to doubt how everything was going to turn out. Delicious tension, I love it!

~Leonzilla