Chapter 5 Part 1 Chaotic Dreams
“We have to do what?!” Twilight blurted.
“Come on, Twily, you know the rules.” said her brother, Shining Armor. The disabled unicorn's eyes begged her to not do this now.
Twilight looked like she was about to submit to the higher authority, but she narrowed her eyes in determination and pressed onward.
“I realize that not every Nightmare Moon in Tenebris Ultra is evil,” Twilight explained. “But that doesn’t exactly make it easier for the Paladins to escort one to her home dimension. Just because she isn’t evil doesn’t mean every single one of the Paladins won’t suffer psychologically in allying ourselves against the double of a pony that was evil in every one of our home worlds.”
“Yes, this Nightmare Moon is certainly evil,” her brother corrected, earning another look of appallment from the lavender unicorn and the rest of the team behind her. “She just knows that there are greater evils than she, and if she doesn’t mind her place in The Order, those evils will wreak more harm than she ever could. Thus, her darker nature shouldn’t hinder your progress... Too much.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Captain,” Braeburn uttered as he trotted forward to join Twilight near the hologram of Captain Shining Armor projecting from a small robot. The little drone had teleported to the location of the Paladins after the team had enjoyed a little rest from their first failure. “But I have to say I agree with Twi here. At least say we’ll be gettin’ authorization for some heavy weapons or tech just in case Nightmare turns on us?”
“This is the Paladin’s first mission,” Armor announced. “There won’t be authorization of any weapons or technology.”
“What?!” the team gasped in unison.
“Then how are we supposed to protect ourselves from Nightmare Moon?” Rainbow demanded.
“She isn’t what you’ll need protecting from,” Shining Armor told them. “There has been a warp storm encircling your destination for twenty cycles.”
Twilight’s eyes, and Twilight’s eyes alone, lit up with fear. The others simply looked confused.
“It’s a relatively low-power cell,” their commander went on, quelling Twilight’s fears, if not completely. “You shouldn’t have any problems besides the odd warpling. To be perfectly honest, this Nightmare Moon is perfectly capable of getting through the storm on her own; The Order is only sending the Paladins to escort her due to regulation. That, and we thought this would be a good chance to give your team some experience in the field. With what I heard in your failed attempt at taking out Discord, you’ll need to work on your teamwork.
“You have your orders, Paladins,” Armor ordered. “Your mission begins now.”
Without giving the Paladins a chance to protest, the captain’s hologram winked out and the robot projector teleported away.
“Okay, Nightmare Moon is bad enough, but what’s a ‘warp storm?’” Rainbow inquired.
“They’re the natural fluctuations of the intercosmic membranes that make up the universal walls separating one world from another,” Twilight explained, turning back to face the group. “If the worlds are like Tenebris Ultra’s organs, the intercosmic membranes are like her skeletal structure. Without them all the worlds would spiral away from each other and fade into oblivion.”
Seeing the group’s blank look, Twilight let out an exasperated sigh and dropped her lecture mode into layman’s terms.
“It’s a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey storm that happens outside the universes,” Twilight explained,again. The group at least looked like they understood now, even if the explanation wasn’t exactly comforting. After all, any pegasi knew that uncontrolled weather could be dangerous, but what would uncontrolled weather that happened outside of universes be like? “They can range from the equivalents of light rain showers to hurricanes and even worse. Thankfully, though, it sounds like we’re headed into one on the more rain-shower-esque side of the scale.”
“Still, what does that mean, exactly?” Slate Bulwark wondered aloud.
“Well--” Twilight started to say.
She was cut off by a burst of purple smoke that swirled violently in the center of the room, coiling up and forming itself into the darkening shape of--
“Nightmare Moon!” Twilight gasped. The others instantly assumed battle stances, wary of the dark alicorn whether or not they had any real means of doing anything against her should she decide to attack.
“Hello, my darling subjects,” Nightmare Moon chuckled. “How art thou tonight?”
“... Um... It’s still daytime, isn’t it?” Scootaloo questioned nervously.
“Not if I have my way,” the dark alicorn laughed. “But that is another plot for another time. Tonight, or today if you insist, we have work that concerns us in other matters.”
“Yes, and the sooner we get this over with, the better,” Twilight muttered.
“Let us be off, then!” Nightmare Moon announced as her smoky mane and tail swirled out to engulf the group, catching them up in a nauseating hurricane of shadow. With the sound of the dark alicorn’s laughter ringing in their ears, the group vanished from The Order of Destiny’s headquarters in a puff of smoke.
******
“Never... Cough... Do that again!” Scootaloo rasped as the group was flung out of the smoky embrace of Nightmare Moon. “Where... Cough... Are we, anyway?”
“A world outpost,” Nightmare Moon answered, trotting over to the window of the small room they had suddenly appeared in. “Look. You can see the warp storm from here.”
The group rushed over to join their charge. Beyond the window was a whirling mass of writhing energy full of colors and textures that lacked any names they could think of. It was like looking into the mind of madness itself. Discord would have been pleased, but many of the Paladins almost vomited at the sight. Mortal minds were not meant to behold such strangeness.
“So that whole world is inside that storm?” Slate inquired. “How will the general populace survive?”
“The storm can’t penetrate the walls separating the universe from the rest of Tenebris Ultra,” Twilight answered. “Even the really big ones can’t get through, and most of the time the storms don’t even run into a world at all. It’s quite unusual for one to completely engulf a world like that.”
“And we’re supposed to go through that thing?” Scootaloo gulped. “I’d really rather not. If ol’ Nighty over here could teleport us all the way out here, why can’t she just take us through the storm too?”
“Nighty?!” Nightmare Moon bellowed.
“The warp storm disrupts everything, including magic,” Twilight told them, ignoring the indignation radiating off the dark alicorn. “If we tried to teleport through that, we’d come out on the other side in bits and pieces.”
“Eww,” cringed Rainbow Dash. “I did not need that mental image!”
“Wait a minute,” Cadance spoke up, having been musing over something. “Why are we taking Nightmare Moon to her home world at all? What good does that do the ponies who live there? Shouldn’t we try to save this Princess Luna from her corruption?”
“Why doth thou speaketh of me as if I were not present?” Nightmare Moon huffed. “I am not Princess Luna, nor have I ever been. And I care not whether or not you see me to my home world--whether or not you worthless whelps fail your first mission or not is no concern of mine. However, I will be returning home, without or without your help. If I don’t, then some dark ruler with far less class and power than myself will claim my throne.”
“So it’s the lesser of two evils?” Cadance sighed. “Why couldn’t we have had a happy mission?”
“It’s happy in my book,” Nightmare Moon smirked. “And my real subjects will be quite pleased too. All of the ponies in my home world are nocturnal.”
“Fine,” Cadance sulked. “Let’s get this over with.”
“That’s the spirit!” Nightmare Moon chuckled.
Twilight trotted over to a control panel at the far end of the room and pressed a button. A loud BEEP screeched through the room, followed by a compartment opening in the opposite wall. Out of the dark space within emerged a rack from which hung about a dozen pony-sized suits.
“We’ll need these if we’re going to survive the warp storm,” Twilight explained, levitating a suit over to herself. “Actually, we need them every time we go out into the space between worlds. It’s not safe for ponies out there without the strongest of magics.”
“I must admit, such magics are beyond even my power,” the dark alicorn agreed, trotting over to the rack and picking out a suit for herself. “Though I do wish The Order would manufacture intersuits that showed a little more regality. With this white, plain thing on, I’ll look just like the rest of you!”
“That’s insulting,” Slate commented as he too picked out a suit and started to put it on. Nightmare Moon smiled, until the earth pony finished his comment. “For us, of course.”
Nightmare Moon scowled.
“Everyone ready?” Twilight spoke through the suits’ communications system once everypony had suited up. The team nodded, and the lavender unicorn trotted over to a door leading outside. “Brace yourselves, then. Even with these suits, the space between worlds can be... Weird.”
Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash both gulped simultaneously.
Twilight opened the door and a fierce force assaulted the Paladins, tugging them towards the outside. This force was somewhat like a wind, but to call it a wind was to call an atom a supernova. The word ‘wind’ just barely scratched the surface of the tip of the iceberg that had recently fallen off of a continent-sized ice shelf on a mostly frozen planet full in a universe full of other frozen planets.
Following Twilight’s lead, the group let the force whisk them outside.
“This way!” Twilight called, pointing with her hoof in the direction of the warp storm. “You can use your suit’s jetpack to propel yourself forward. It’s based on thought command; just think about moving and you’ll move.”
“Really?” Rainbow Dash inquired. “You just have to think and—”
Suddenly the rainbow pegasus’ jetpack fired a stream of energy, rocketing her towards the swirling maelstrom far below.
Whoa! the multicolored mare mentally squealed with glee. This is awesome! If I only had to think about flying with just my wings, I’d never stop!
The rest of the group followed the enthusiastic pegasus, diving headfirst into the cloud with sounds like splashing water, if splashes of water sounded like atomic bomb detonations. Thankfully the suits dampened the sound, but the group’s ears were still ringing for a few moments once inside the storm.
If beholding the warp storm from the outside was strange, then it was downright bizarre on the inside. Swirls and eddies of phantasmic light played off the scintillating reflections of the shadows of one’s own mind. Scootaloo was unpleasantly reminded of her brief experience in the mind of Discord, but at least this time she couldn’t feel what was happening out there, just see it.
“This ain’t so bad,” Braeburn thought aloud. “I thought you was worried about this here warp storm, weren’t ya Twilight?”
“I was,” Twilight affirmed. “But you’re right. It’s strange, to say the least, but I don’t see any dangers.”
“Don’t speak too soon,” Nightmare Moon warned. “Even now, I sense we are being watched.”
“Watched?” Slate inquired. “By what?” I can’t see anything in this weird space but us.”
“A mortal mind is not nearly as perceptive as that of the queen of the night,” the dark alicorn scoffed. “I would actually be surprised if you could sense such things.”
Slate looked more than a little miffed, but if being a Royal Guard had taught him anything, then it was to know how to pick your battles. He may have been one of the toughest Guards in his home dimension, but he knew he couldn’t take in an alicorn in a brawl. What was worse was that Nightmare Moon knew this too.
“So, uh, do we do anything about these ‘watchers?’” Braeburn wanted to know, a touch of nervousness creeping into his voice.
“For the moment they seem content to let us be,” Nightmare Moon observed. “But be on your guard. Warplings are as unpredictable as they are strange.”
“There’s that word again,” Cadance spoke up. “What exactly is a ‘warpling?’”
“Ah, my dear niece,” the dark alicorn chuckled darkly. Then again, if she didn’t chuckle darkly, she wouldn’t chuckle at all. “Did The Order teach you nothing?”
“I paid attention in class!” Cadance announced defiantly before realizing that didn’t exactly answer the question.
“Warplings are sentient folds in the ambient space-time continuum extradimensional membranes,” Twilight explained.
“What?” Scootaloo asked flatly.
“They’re monsters that live between universes,” Twilight sighed, really wishing she had another Twilight to talk to. What was the point of being smart if nopony understood what you were talking about? “Their strength is relative to the warp storm they reside in. Since this is a relatively low-grade warp storm, the warplings in here shouldn’t pose too much of a threat.”
“Shouldn’t?” Scootaloo gulped. She didn’t like ‘shouldn’t.’ She liked certainties, as in, certainly not going to die.
“We’ll be fine, squirt!” Rainbow announced, trying to sound reassuring. Scootaloo only shivered, not looking at the multicolored pegasus.
The group continued on in silence, the only sounds they were able to hear being the breathing of their teammates through the suits’ communications systems.
“Gah!” Scootaloo suddenly gasped.
“What is it?!” Twilight inquired, looking all around. “Did you see one? Did you see a warpling? I must admit I’ve only ever seen pictures of them in books; it would be marvelous if I could study one up close...”
“First of all, you want to study extradimensional creatures that could kill us?!” Scootaloo asked flatly.
“Um... Yes?” Twilight affirmed lamely. Why was everyone always on about the dangers? Shouldn’t the prospect of learning new things be enough to negate that?
“Secondly and thankfully, no, I did not see one of those monsters,” Scootaloo replied. “I only jumped because this little light started blinking at the corner of my helmet.”
“It’s probably just a health alert,” Twilight explained. “What does it say?”
“Imminent danger approaching,” Scootaloo gulped as she read the notification. “Please tell me that’s a malfunction!”
“It doesn’t sound like a malfunction,” Twilight gulped. “But my suit doesn’t register anything like that. Does anypony else’s?”
The group all responded in turn that their visors were free of any such warnings.
“It probably is just a malfunction,” Twilight sighed with relief. “Though that is odd. I thought world outposts were checked daily by Order maintenance. Surely somepony would have noticed a malfunctioning suit and replaced it with a working model.”
“My suit’s malfunctioning?!” Scootaloo blurted, starting to hyperventilate. “I don’t want to have escaped one death just to suffer from another!”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Twilight calmed. “The suit’s computer system is separate from its protective lining. We’d have noticed any tears in the suits when we put them on.”
“Phew,” the orange pegasus breathed a sigh of relief.
“Nevertheless, I’ll have to file a complaint to Maintenance once we get back to HQ,” Twilight mused. “Somepony wasn’t doing their job right.”
“So, just to be clear, there is no imminent danger?” Scootaloo asked. “It’s just a glitchy computer?”
“I don’t know what else it could be,” Twilight replied. “Unless there really was some danger ahead and you’re suit was the only one that wasn’t malfunctioning. That’s the only thing that would explain why none of our computers can sense anything.”
“And that’s really unlikely, right?” Rainbow Dash inquired.
“Of course,” Twilight agreed. “Nopony could make that big of a mistake. Probably.”
An uncomfortable silence endured for a few moments.
Hunger.
“Did somepony say something?” Slate Bulwark questioned, instinctively looking around for the source of the noise even though the team’s radio communication made such an action useless.
“I heard somepony say ‘hunger’,” Cadance noted, nodding. “Is... Somepony hungry?”
“Even if they were, why would they say the word ‘hunger’ rather than simply stating they require sustenance?” Nightmare Moon voiced the group’s unspoken question.
So hungry.
“Okay, that is really creepy,” Rainbow piped up. “Please tell me somepony’s just playing a joke?”
“It doesn’t really sound like any of us,” Twilight commented. “Unless one of us can disguise their voice, I don’t think it is one of us. Why would one of our own team want to scare us like that, anyway?”
Tasty morsels.
“Shut up!” Scootaloo called out to whoever was speaking, looking around her frantically. “Just shut your mouth! Oh great, on top of Mr. Freaky Voice, now my suit’s telling me ‘Surrounded by imminent danger’.”
Food.
“My suit still doesn’t say anything,” Twilight spoke. “Though come to think of it, it should be. If there’s something else out here with us, each of our suits should automatically register it as a threat and alert us to the danger. Oh, no...”
“What?” Cadance asked. “What is it?”
“Maybe Scootaloo’s suit really is the only suit working properly,” Twilight replied, fear in her voice.
Food!
“That doesn’t make sense,” Slate noted. “How could Maintenance miss that many malfunctioning suits?”
“Maybe... Maybe this wasn’t an accident,” Twilight postulated. “Maybe somepony in Maintenance, or rather, somepony pretending to be in Maintenance, sabotaged the suits and somehow just missed Scootaloo’s. This could all be a set up!”
“But what for?” Slate asked. “What purpose could this possibly serve?”
“I don’t know why, but this would be the perfect way to get rid of us and then make it look like an accident,” Twilight responded. “Malfunctioning suits don’t tell us how to avoid whatever’s lurking in this warp storm. We blunder right into it and poof! We’re gone and it looks like we just encountered a few too many warplings than we could handle because of a Maintenance mistake.”
FOOD!!
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to make holes in the suits or set bombs in the world outpost?” Rainbow Dash asked, uneasiness in her own voice as she tried to ignore the increasingly loud alien voice.
“We’d see tears, remember?” Twilight answered. “And bombs would be obvious. This way, the killer can go free without anypony looking into their case.”
“But there are nothing but minor warplings in this warp storm,” Nightmare Moon rationalized. “Surely nothing we can’t handle.”
“We could all handle a few warplings, yes,” Twilight agreed. “But not if the entire swarm of warplings in this storm sought us out. Scootaloo, quick! Check your suit for olfactory readouts!”
“Checking!” Scootaloo complied, relieved that the suit’s computer system was largely self-explanatory. "Nothing!"
"Try thaumatic, motion, thermal, anything!" The rising fear in Twilight's voice was obvious.
Scootaloo struggled with the computerized read out as fast as she could. "I'm trying, I'm trying! There!" The pegasus' eyes widened at fear at what the computer told her. "We're surrounded!"
As the other's cried out in shock, a new voice gripped Scootaloo's heart with an icy fist.
“Young Scootaloo, you have been called upon to serve."
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“Young Scootaloo, you have been called upon to serve.
You're missing an " at the end.
Also, I know I have heard that somewhere before, but I can't remember where exactly.
1835903 Oops. Good catch. As for where you've heard that before, it was in the dream sequence a chapter ago.
I guess this story lost some followers?
1845360 I guess. Wasn't sure if it was because of the move over to me or if people just didn't get notifications of it updating.
1845389
Well that sucks.
Well, I am gonna stick with this story, I like it so far, and can't wait for more!
1845656 Thanks, mate. Glad you're sticking with it!
Oh... My freaking god that is one hell of a story.
2296170 Well as you can guess, they can either stick with their friends or go off on their own. I always figured that Rainbow Dash joined the Rainbolts. Also thanks for the fave, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
This is a fascinating concept. I'm all for it.
2468580 thanks mate. Trying to update a few other things before updating this since I like having the main story chapters on this to be a at least 5k words.
I was dubious about the quality of this story. Then THIS FUCKER 585083 says it's good, so if I ignore it I could never forgive myself. Let us begin.
OK, this is bad, really really bad.
nice Dr. Who reference.