Chapter Five: Overtime
“Wow!” exclaimed Vinyl Scratch. “I can’t believe how unbelievable the way we got out of that death-trap was!”
“Yes, it certainly was a fine escape,” said Octavia, agreeing warmly. “A very ingenious plan of ours, to do that particular thing which led to us escaping not only the ropes and The Vat, but also the Marefia!”
“Why thank you, beautiful mare,” said Vinyl, grinning. “I still can’t believe how simple what I had to do was!”
“You can’t?” Octavia asked, frowning slightly. “Here, let me go over it for you again…”
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So. This is it. The big finish. The end of all things. The final game.
It was funny. I knew when I got into this business that it was a nasty one – there’d be roughing ponies up at times, and trouble would come knocking at my door whether I wanted it or not. But could I honestly say I expected to go out this way? With the Marefia throwing me into a vat of toxins, to prevent the truth of “The Bootleg Alcohol” case spilling out onto the streets? Of course not. If it was up to me, it would just be me and a –
“Vinyl!” interrupted Octavia, her back still tied to Vinyl’s. “Stop your silly noir detective narration! I’ve had an idea!”
“How did you know I was narrating? That was all in my head.” Vinyl wished she could turn her head to look Octavia in the eyes as she spoke to her – Octavia had such beautiful eyes – but as it was, the best she could do was wriggle vaguely in Octavia’s direction.
“How long has it been since you cast the time travel spell?” asked Octavia, ignoring Vinyl’s question.
Vinyl thought for a moment. Then another one. Finding excuses not to look at the ominous vat of toxins and impending doom wasn’t exactly hard. “Well, what, we arrived in Canterlot at around three-ish, right? And by now it’d be…ten? Eleven-ish? Hang on a second, that’d mean -”
“- you should be able to cast the spell once more!” Octavia finished. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
“Between ‘staying in the nice vat full of deadly poison’ and ‘not staying in the nice vat full of deadly poison’, I definitely choose the latter, yes,” agreed Vinyl. Her horn started to glow, magical energies gathering within it. She had successfully cast the spell four times already, and by now she was used to both the energy requirements of it and the particular feel of the spell.
“Hey, boss!” said one of the Marefia mooks, far down below on the warehouse floor. “Looks like the unicorn’s trying something! Should we do something about it?” He lifted his crossbow up slightly to emphasise his point.
“Of course, nyeh,” said Big Cheese. “Increase the speed they’re being lowered at! There’s no way they’ll be able to do whatever they’re planning!”
The Marefia grunt frowned. He opened his mouth to issue the command – rather silly, that he literally was just going to call out and repeat what Big Cheese had said, rather than Big Cheese himself simply giving the order – then closed it. “I – why don’t you just shoot them?” he suggested.
“What?” Big Cheese asked, stunned.
“You know, what if we just – you know, ignored the elaborate murder method? Just aimed our crossbows at them and shot?” the Marefia member continued. “Sure, it’s not as fancy or dramatic as lowering them into The Vat, but it’s efficient, see?”
“…You’re a genius,” said Big Cheese, the simplicity of the suggestion dawning upon his face. “Alright, everyone, this is gonna be how it goes down, see? Aim your crossbows at the mares, and whoever takes them down gets a bonus of five hundred big ones!”
With that, the warehouse was filled with bolts, flying through the air in an attempt to hit their targets. Octavia flinched whenever a bolt whizzed past her, expecting to feel the solid punch of a bolt hitting her once more. She hadn’t liked it the last time that had happened, and didn’t want a repeat performance of it.
“ETA on the spell, Vinyl?” asked Octavia, tensing as a bolt nipped her ear. “They are shooting bolts at us, you know.”
“Try to look on the bright side,” grunted Vinyl, focusing most of her attention and magical energies on the spell. Her horn was glowing fairly brightly by now – hopefully it wouldn’t be long until she cast the spell and they escaped. “If they hit us, we get an extra bolt in our inventory.”
“In addition to internal bleeding and severe shock, possibly followed shortly afterwards by imminent death,” added Octavia bitterly.
“See? I knew you could do it!” said Vinyl. A moment later, she released the pent-up magic stored in her horn. As with the previous times, the energies of the spell hacked a rip into space-time, just the way Vinyl had commanded them to. The portal appeared below Vinyl and Octavia, and thanks to the lowering rope, they passed through it – and through time – only moments later.
“Wow!” exclaimed Vinyl Scratch, not even bothering to look to see when she and Octavia were once they had travelled through the portal. “I can’t believe how unbelievable the way we got out of that death-trap was!”
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“And then I said-” Octavia began.
“I don’t care what you said, because there’s no way it’s as important as what I’m about to say: Shotgun!” interrupted Vinyl excitedly.
“…What’s a shotgun?” asked Octavia, slightly confused.
“I dunno,” admitted Vinyl, shrugging slightly. “But it’s what you say when you want to go next to the driver of a cart, and I mean, look – we’re on a train!”
Octavia had been so caught up in recalling and recapping the past few minutes that she hadn’t even noticed, but she and Vinyl had landed neatly in two train seats. The carriage they were in seemed moderately packed with other ponies, whose attire suggested that Vinyl and Octavia had landed in a time period approximately one or two hundred years before their own. Outside the window, the train was passing by a mostly featureless desert, the sun beating down heavily upon the sand.
“…Wait, you’re saying that you want to go sit by the train driver?” Octavia asked, a moment after processing everything. For now, everything seemed calm – certainly more calm than five minutes ago, relatively speaking – and so she was starting to relax.
“It’s a train, Octavia!” Vinyl said excitedly. “We never get to go on trains! How cool would the driver’s carriage be? I bet it’s got levers, and buttons, and, and, switches for when the train needs to expl-”
“We can go on trains whenever we want back in our own time, Vinyl,” pointed out Octavia.
“No we can’t! We never go on trains in the course of our wacky adventures!” Vinyl complained. By this point, she had moved closer to the window, and was looking out of it excitedly, as though the train’s driver would appear in the reflection and invite her to his carriage.
“We took a train to and from the Amarezon Jungle,” Octavia said bluntly.
“The what now?” Vinyl asked, turning from the window to look at Octavia.
“The Amarezon Jungle.” Octavia was met with a blank stare. “Where we first met?”
“…Trains are fun!” said Vinyl, excitedly going back to the window after a moment of silence.
“Of course they are, Vinyl; of course they are,” said Octavia, used to this behaviour by now. For a few moments, the two mares silently stared out of the window, Octavia looking from afar over Vinyl’s shoulder. “So, when do you think we are? And where, for that matter?” Octavia asked, quickly bored from having seen several million grains of sand too many.
Vinyl shrugged, turning away from the window once more. “We’re obviously passing through a desert, so I’d say we’re somewhere in the south of Equestria. It’s possible that we’re in another country or even continent I’m not so familiar with, but the spell hasn’t taken us that far – space-wise – with any of the other castings of it, and the amount of ponies in this carriage suggest that we’re still in Equestria.”
“I concur,” said Octavia, seeing no immediate flaw in Vinyl’s logic. “What cities are there to the south of Equestria? The only one I can think of from the top of my head is Appleloosa.”
Vinyl’s eyes suddenly seemed to sparkle. “Oh, Celestia,” sighed Octavia, “what have I said this time?”
“Appleloosa…?” Vinyl said, her voice in awe. “If we’re headed there – or from there, whatever – then we might be in…the Wild West!”
“Wild South,” corrected Octavia.
“Who knows what sort of cool adventure we’ll have in this time!” said Vinyl, still sounding a bit breathless. “We might end up heading down a mine, or trapped in a ghost town, or…what’s another cliché from this era?”
Before Octavia could answer, there was a burst of static from somewhere above Vinyl and Octavia. Looking up to see an antiquated speaker, a voice came out from it, crackly and loudly.
“A-attention to all passengers aboard the train: we regret to inform you that we need to request that all of you give up any valuables you currently have,” the speaker droned. Whoever was on the other end of it sounded shaky, nervous, as though he was afraid of saying the wrong thing. “We are currently being robbed.”
“How about a train job?” Octavia asked Vinyl drily.
“Yee-haw!” replied Vinyl excitedly, grinning from ear-to-ear. She spat a wad of saliva to the floor.
“Eww! Vinyl, we’re on a train!” complained Octavia.
“See, now you’re getting it!” said Vinyl. “We do need to go on trains more often!”
“Rather than worrying about that, how about we address the problem of the train being robbed?” Octavia asked. “We don’t have any valuables on us, and I don’t fancy being thrown out of the train because the robbers got angry at us for not having enough loot.”
Vinyl shrugged. “Way I see it, the robbers ask us for valuables, we don’t have any so they rob the rest of the train, we reach town after the robbery and kill time until I can cast the spell again. It’s basically a holiday!”
“That’s what last time period could have been, and we ended up working for the Marefia,” commented Octavia.
“Oh, I don’t think there’ll be any reason to work for the robbers,” said Vinyl quite seriously. “There’s no prohibition in effect, so we don’t need to steal booze.”
“But we-” Octavia stammered, before recomposing herself. “Well, either way, what are we going to do with regards to the robbers?”
“I’m guessing you won’t let us work with them, yes?” asked Vinyl. Octavia frowned. “…I’m guessing you won’t let me work with them?” The frown deepened into a scowl. “Okay then, since you’re no fun, here’s what we do – when they come around and ask us for our loot, we’ll jump them and give them the old one-two! You do that spinning kick thing that looks awesome, and I’ll make with the magic missiles! How’s that sound?”
“We attack our captors as they are presumably aiming crossbows or some sort of weapon at us?” Octavia asked, sceptical. “Oh well, I suppose that I have heard worse plans from you.”
“Worse plans?” Vinyl scoffed, folding her front legs. “I’m not sure whether I’m more offended or hurt!”
“How does saying that this plan isn’t your worst offend you?” Octavia asked, frowning. “As far as your plans go, this is relatively...clever? Yes, let’s go with clever,” she said thoughtfully.
“It’s offensive because all of my plans are brilliant and flawless!” Vinyl said enthusiastically. A moment later, she put a hoof to her mouth in thought. “…Except for my plan to escape from the Marefia with the time travel spell. We probably should have just stayed back then and spent the rest of our days working for them, yes.”
Octavia opened her mouth to speak. “But-”
“T-to all passengers: I have another announcement from the bandits regarding the robbery this train is currently undergoing,” blared the speaker above Vinyl and Octavia, drowning out whatever Octavia had been about to say. “They -they say that everypony has to come to the driver’s cabin, either one at a time or, or in pairs, and give up whatever valuables they have. If not, they will…will kill me, which will cause the train to crash and kill everypony on board.”
There was a pause, before the pony on the other end of the speakers continued. “So, um, if everypony could come up to the front carriage, then that would be appreciated.” There was a short crackle from the speaker as the intercom was presumably shut off.
“Well then, that solves the problem of how we find where the bandits are!” said Vinyl Scratch, rubbing her hooves together. Around them, other ponies were muttering nervously, or looking as though they wanted to go to the carriage and get the robbery out of the way before some madpony refused to comply and got everypony killed. “Any idea how far up the train we are?” Vinyl asked Octavia, lying down casually on her seat.
“We’re in the first carriage,” said Octavia, craning her neck to look through the window.
“We what?” asked Vinyl, jolting upwards slightly.
“First carriage,” said Octavia, pointing out the window. The train had just started turning a corner, and from the angle and number of visible carriages it was readily apparent that there was only one before the carriage that Vinyl and Octavia were in.
“You mean we-?”
“Yes, I think we had best head up now,” said Octavia, “the other passengers are looking at us strangely, and if we can enact your plan then we should theoretically be able to save them some bits.”
“Cool!” said Vinyl, jumping from her seat and starting the walk to the next carriage. “Hey, do you think they’ll be grateful enough to give us stuff?”
“Perhaps?” said Octavia as she opened the door from the carriage they were in. “What did you want from them?” She had to shout the last part, as the train was, naturally, quite noisy outside.
“A train!” shouted Vinyl back. As she spoke, her horn lit up and she opened the door to the driver’s carriage.
“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that,” said Octavia once they were inside the driver’s carriage. There was a door leading to the cabin in which the driver – and the bandits – would be, in addition to the train’s engine, the coals in it burning warmly. There was no sign of the coal shoveler, although Octavia supposed that he probably would have been knocked out and taken to the driver’s carriage during the initial attack on the train.
“I said I want a train!” Vinyl said, almost immediately causing Octavia to react by sighing and putting a hoof to her eyes. “Oh, come on, Octavia. They’re so cool!”
“Let’s just get this over with quickly, and hopefully nopony dies,” said Octavia quietly, putting a hoof on the handle to the driver’s cabin. “I’m doing some sort of spinning kick you believe that I can apparently do, you’re going to use your telekinesis to stop the bandits?” Vinyl nodded and crept in closer to the door, her body tensed below Octavia’s outstretched leg. ”Ready…now!” said Octavia.
Octavia thrust open the door, ready to leap in and attack the first pony she saw. Tensed up below her, Vinyl, too, seemed ready for an assault. But as the door opened and the two ponies saw who was in the cabin, all thoughts of attacking were lost, to be replaced with the raw emotion of shock.
“Vinyl Scratch?”
“Octavius!”
“Octavia?”
“Bass Drop?”
“Octavia?!”
“…Vinyl, I don’t know why you’re surprised to see me. I’ve been travelling with you this whole time, remember?” Octavia said dully to her companion who had, until a few seconds ago, been ready to leap out and attack what appeared to be the male version of herself in the driver’s cabin.
“Oh yeah! Right, why was I surprised?” Vinyl asked, grinning at her marefriend. Turning her head to face the driver’s cabin, she frowned and added, “Better question: what are Octavius and Bass Drop doing in the driver’s cabin? And with the driver tied up beside them?”
“It is a question all right, given that last time we saw them they had commanded those ninjas – or is it ninja? – to murder us,” Octavia said. Aside from their brief reaction to her and Vinyl’s presence as they entered, so far neither Octavius nor Bass Drop had made any hostile move. Octavia was being cautious, however – whilst the last time they had met their male counterparts they had parted on relatively positive terms, Bass Drop had a crossbow aimed at the bound train driver, and didn’t seem in a hurry to move it away.
“Wait! I’ve got it!” said Vinyl. “They got here before we did, and took out the bandits!”
“…I think they’re the bandits, Vinyl,” said Octavia bluntly.
“What, these two friendly guys? As if!” scoffed Vinyl. “Hey Bass Drop, Octavius: are you guys robbing this train, or did you two stop the actual robbers? Be honest with me here.”
“Yeah, we’re robbing the train,” said Octavius, nodding enthusiastically.
“Definitely. Good fun,” added Bass Drop. “You should try it sometime!”
“But guys, robbing trains is bad!” Vinyl whined. “You shouldn’t do bad things! Unless it’s to get a badass train, in which case it’s totally okay. Hey, can I have a carriage or two?”
“Vinyl raises a good point,” Octavia said, cautiously stepping fully into the cabin. As she had guessed, a pony who was wearing the uniform and cap of one in charge of the engine was tied up, just as the driver of the train was. Both of them were gagged. “Why are you two robbing a train?”
“And how did you two even get here?” Vinyl spurted out over the last few of Octavia’s words. “The Wild South ain’t exactly easy to get to.”
“How about we begin by answering the latter question first, darling?” said Octavius to Bass Drop. Whilst his jaw and overall build were, naturally, more masculine than Octavia’s, it still surprised her, as it had the previous time she had met him, how similar he was to her. The accent, the body posture, the verbal patterns…if Octavia had been in his position, she knew that she’d be doing exactly the same things that he was doing.
“Sure thing!” said Bass Drop, his telekinetic grip on his crossbow absentmindedly relaxing. He cleared his throat. “It was a dark and stormy night,” he began, “and two ponies had just been sent through a portal to another Equestria. A strange Equestria, where males were females and females were male!”
“…Maybe begin the story a little later than that?” suggested Octavius.
“Oh, right!” said Bass Drop. “It was a dark and stormy night, and two ponies had just taken over a ninja clan! They needed to-”
“They’ve heard that part already; we told them the first time we met them,” interrupted Octavius. “Are you going to tell them the relevant parts, or do I have to tell the story?”
“Baby, you end up taking over this story and I’ll just have to force my tongue down your throat until you let me to get back to it!” said Bass Drop, grinning. Turning back to Octavia and Vinyl, he began once again with, “It was a dark and stormy night, and two ponies had just been convinced by their weird female counterparts not to send ninjas – or was it ninja? – after them anymore.”
“Hey, I remember that night! It wasn’t stormy at all!” argued Vinyl. “And I don’t even think it was that dark, come to think of it.”
“I like stories that start with a dark and stormy night, okay?” Bass Drop argued back. “It makes for a mysterious and ominous setting, where anything could happen!”
“It’s a bit of a cliché though, isn’t it?” added Octavia. “I recall that night, and it wasn’t us trapped in a spooky mansion or anything similar to that, so I see no need for such a…dramatic opening to the story.”
“Spooky mansion?!” Vinyl asked excitedly. “Oh man, Octavia, I’ve totally found out what our next adventure is going to be!”
“Well fine, if you two are going to be boring,” said Bass Drop, rolling his eyes, “you guys had left the warehouse where we had kidnapped you to, and after we had some…fun, we ended up discussing how we could get back to our own, much cooler universe.”
“We decided that if we could travel back in time to before we got sent to this one,” continued Octavius, “then we could prevent ourselves from ever being sent here using our future knowledge.” To his side, the coal shoveler wriggled slightly in his ropes, but Octavius put a hoof on him, a subtle warning.
“Which, y’know, would probably rewrite the history of your universe, or cause it to explode or something, but hey, not our problem!” commented Bass Drop enthusiastically.
“Anyway, after around a month, we were able to find a fairly complex ritual which would supposedly work to send us back,” Octavius said. He absentmindedly ran a hoof through his hair as he talked, straightening out the few curly or messy locks. “We attempted to cast it, but something went wrong, and not only did it send us back through this Equestria’s timeline, but the amount of time it sent us back by was off by a few hundred years.”
“And…the train robbery?” Octavia asked, taking a few hesitant steps forwards. She was within range to attack Octavius now if things came to the worst, although with the knowledge that the robbers were her and Vinyl’s – well, not so much allies, but certainly acquaintances, it wouldn’t hurt to hear out the entire situation. And besides, Octavius had a bit more bulk than her; Octavia actually felt slightly nervous at the thought of fighting him. The last time they had encountered each other, Octavius would have easily killed Vinyl if it hadn’t been for a stroke of luck, and whilst Octavia was certainly more competent at fighting since then, between her COBRA training and some other adventures, that didn’t guarantee a victory.
“When we originally arrived in this universe, neither Bass Drop nor I had any sort of identification or funds upon our person,” Octavius said, his voice as smooth as silk. “Being sent back to a time you were entirely unprepared for can naturally only make things worse, and so until we acquire the items needed for the ritual once more, we have been forced to take up banditry.”
“Or as I like to call us, banditos!” exclaimed Bass Drop. “It sounds cooler, and feels appropriate to the setting, y’know?”
“So, now that we have answered your two primary questions, we have one for you,” said Octavius softly. “Simply put: what do you intend to do now?”
“I-” Octavia started, her voice faltering as she realised that she didn’t know what to say. Octavius and Bass Drop were certainly in a bad situation, and whilst the passengers and employees of the railway would suffer as a result of their actions, weren’t they just trying to make the best of a bad situation? What would she do in their position?
“Here’s my suggestion,” Vinyl began. Octavia winced, ready for an embarrassing, ridiculous, or more likely, both, suggestion. “As you can guess, we’ve used a spell ourselves to travel to this time – accidentally, like you.”
Here it comes, thought Octavia.
“How about you stop the robbery, and the four of us can work together?” Vinyl suggested. “I can teach Bass Drop the spell we’ve been using, and we can work out a way out of this without anypony getting hurt. Or robbed.”
“That’s a…surprisingly good idea, actually,” commented Octavia. “Nopony has actually been robbed yet, so if you two were to free the driver and anypony else captured, they would presumably be grateful enough to you for halting the robbery that they would be happy to allow us all off at the next stop.”
“Whaddya think, sexy?” Bass Drop asked Octavius. “Think Vinyl’s idea’s a good one?”
Octavius gave a small shrug. “I suppose that we cannot prepare the ritual any slower than we currently are, and if you are able to cast the spell Vinyl has been using for their journey, it may work more accurately than the ritual was supposed to.” He gave a nod, and a small smile, before turning to Octavia and Vinyl Scratch. “We have an agreement, Octavia and Vinyl.”
“Excellent,” said Octavia, stepping further into the driver’s cabin, confident for the first time since she had entered. “In that case, let’s get to untying the-”
THWACK!
Knocked back, Octavia’s momentum was large enough to send her flying into the ceiling of the carriage, hitting it heavily and then slamming down heavily into the floor. What…what in Equestria hit me? Octavia thought, dazed from both the surprise of being attacked and the actual impact. She had landed heavily on her back, resulting in her being winded, and she coughed slightly as she struggled to sit up.
As Octavia pulled herself up, she saw a scene of chaos. How it had been done, she couldn’t guess, but it appeared that the driver, a large Earth pony, had somehow managed to loosen his bonds during the conversation, and had sucker punched her when she got closer to him. At least, that was the only explanation Octavia could think of that accounted for both what had happened to her and explained why the driver was standing up, free of the ropes which had restricted him. He was currently fighting Vinyl, Octavius, and Bass Drop, all at the same time and with no apparent exertion.
Octavia being knocked off balance – both figuratively and literally – had thrown her for a loop, but as she coughed a bit more and started to regain her breath, she caught the latter half of an order from Octavius: “-him, Bass Drop, you were supposed to have it pointed at him in case he tried anything like this!”
Octavia was helpless to do anything but watch as Bass Drop aimed his crossbow at the driver, but even as it was rotated for the task, another, different magical aura surrounded the crossbow and started to pull it back. Octavia attempted to wheeze out a warning, but Bass Drop had already seen – the coal shoveler, a unicorn, had started to use his magic to help where he could, even tied up as he was.
Why…why are they fighting us? Octavia wondered, reaching around with a hoof and attempting to thump herself on the back. Didn’t they hear…? We can stop all of this- Even as Octavia attempted to splutter out something, anything, as long as it would stop the fighting, her voice faltered and she merely found herself coughing once more.
And then Octavia was able to hit herself on the back, and the tightness in her chest disappeared. She coughed one more, final time, but it wasn’t necessary by now, she had managed to get the wind back into herself and was in top fighting condition again.
“All right then,” said Octavia, half to herself and half to the rest of the ponies in the room, “let’s see how you like me-”
THWACK!
Once again, Octavia was dazed by a heavy impact, although this time it felt as though something had been thrown at her. Unable to brace herself, she was immediately thrown back by the full velocity of the object, and into a wall – no, not a wall, train carriages didn’t shatter that easily…Octavia was dimly aware of hitting something soft and skidding along the ground, right before everything went black.
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“So…any idea where we are?” Vinyl Scratch asked, lifting the bag that had been placed over her head off telekinetically as soon as she heard the door slam. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness yet, but she could feel something rough and crumbly below her hooves. She wanted to investigate further, but her front legs had been restrained with some cable ties, and movement would be difficult.
“No idea, I’m afraid,” came a posh voice to her side. “But whatever we’re lying on, it’s hurting my back.”
“Urgh, I know, right?” Vinyl said. “Wherever they chose to throw us, it makes a good prison.” She looked around, squinting into the darkness as best as she could. “Hay, do you think we’re being shipped again?”
“I- what? No, the mere idea is preposterous, Vinyl,” came a voice from the darkness.
“Oh yeah, we’d need to be on a ship for that, wouldn’t we?” asked Vinyl. “Heh, stupid me. Anyway, we-” Vinyl’s voice trailed off as her eyes adjusted to the darkness slightly, and she saw something she should have thought of immediately. “Oh crap, I forgot about your bag. Your hooves are tied too, aren’t they? Gimme a sec and I’ll get that off you.” Vinyl’s horn glowed softly, and a magical field began to surround her partner’s bag, before she stopped.
“What’s the matter?”
“…Don’t you think that it’s odd that Octavius and Bass Drop weren’t taken here either?” Vinyl asked, suddenly feeling nervous. She inched closer to her partner. “They – I have no idea what happened while we were knocked out.” As she spoke, Vinyl looked around in the darkness in the hopes of seeing one of her or Octavia’s male counterparts, but it appeared that it was just her and the grey Earth pony by her side.
“Vinyl, I think-”
“Do you think that they cut a deal with the train staff? Told them that they were planning to rebel against us all along, and that everything they saw was staged for their benefit?”
“No, Vinyl, I-”
“Of course,” said Vinyl, very close to her partner now, “I’m not complaining now that we’ve been left alone.” She breathed heavily outwards with her mouth, letting the pony beside her feel her soft breath. “Maybe… maybe this could be a good opportunity for us; you know what I mean, babe?”
“Right now might not be the best-”
Vinyl leaned forwards further and kissed her companion’s chest, then slowly worked her way up to where the bag was. “How about seeing that cute face of yours, sexy?” she whispered, ignoring the suggestion. Closing her eyes, Vinyl telekinetically removed the bag and leaned into the strong pony before her, unaware of said pony leaning back slightly as the kiss began.
“And that’s only the begin- ARGH!” Vinyl shouted, leaping backwards into the air, in spite of her front hooves still being tied together. “OCTAVIUS??!! WHAT THE HELL??!!”
“Don’t say that I didn’t try to stop you,” said Octavius, avoiding her gaze. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but he appeared to be blushing.
“I – but you – where’s Octavia?!” Vinyl stammered. “Oh, and Bass Drop too, I guess.”
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The first thing Octavia did when she regained consciousness was let out a low groan, almost involuntarily. She didn’t need to get up to know that it was necessary; she didn’t need to open her eyes to know that it summed up her emotions perfectly. It perfectly encapsulated everything that made up her entire world at that precise moment.
The next thing Octavia noticed was the heat. The fur on her back – she was lying face down on something – felt somewhat warmer than usual, as though Octavia had been basking in Celestia’s sun for a while. After focusing on the sensation for a few moments, too exhausted to do anything more, Octavia realised that the source of the heat was due to the sun. Between that and the slight wind that brushed against her fur every few seconds, it appeared that Octavia was outside.
Outside…what do I need to worry about in this timeline? wondered Octavia. It’s not the dinosaurs or the future, and I recall jumping from the timeline where Vinyl was the queen…what was next? Something with…Canterlot? No, wait, we went from there to…the Wild South. Although Octavia’s eyes were already closed, she scrunched them up further as she recalled what had happened since she and Vinyl had arrived in this time.
Sighing, Octavia exerted a small amount of effort and picked herself up. Her muscles were quite sore and although she did not strain herself, they nevertheless ached further as she pulled herself up. As she opened her eyes, Octavia almost immediately squinted from the harsh sunlight. From the looks of things, she had somehow been thrown out of the train and into the desert through which it passed. Or had the train stopped and she had been taken out whilst unconscious? Octavia briefly considered the possibility and wondered why Vinyl –and Bass Drop and Octavius, for that matter – hadn’t been dropped off with her, before noticing the pattern of sand around her.
I suppose I hit the ground and skidded some distance, mused Octavia, idly skimming her hoof over the sand. It’s a good thing that this sand is fairly soft, or I –wait a moment. She examined the desert closer, noticing something she hadn’t earlier. Are those…hoofprints? On closer inspection, whilst they weren’t very deep or noticeable in the sand, there were definitely hoofprints in the sand, originating around where Octavia had landed, and leading off in the direction of the train tracks.
“Vinyl?!” called out Octavia as she started to canter in the direction the hoofprints lead. Her throat was dry from the hot air, and it didn’t carry far at all. “Vinyl, are you -?” Her voice faltered as she saw a white pony with a blue mane just a short distance over the next dune. She was wondering why Vinyl looked so stocky and her mane had somehow changed style whilst she was knocked out, before logic and simple problem solving told her that it was Bass Drop.
“Hello,” said Octavia simply as she approached him.
“Hey Octavia,” he said, grinning at her. “Sorry to leave you lying there – I thought I’d have a quick look around, and I guess I ended up wandering a little, huh?”
“It’s fine,” said Octavia, waving a hoof dismissively. “I doubt there’s much that you could have done for me, after I…was thrown out of a window of a moving train?” she asked. Bass Drop nodded enthusiastically.
“I got telekinetically thrown at you, because I’m so badass that I was giving the unicorn problems!” he explained. “I’ve always liked percussion music, and now I got to try it out!”
Octavia laughed at that. She couldn’t help it; being lost in the middle of the desert with nothing but a pair of train tracks to show signs of civilisation existed was something of a daunting prospect, and humour certainly helped to lighten the mood. “Are you alright?” she asked as her chuckling died down.
“Yeah, I’ve got a really hard head. At least, Octavius always tells me so!” explained Bass Drop. “And I guess your body and the sand helped to cushion a lot of the impact? Not to sound like a perv, but your body seems really well-toned…reminds me a bit of Octavius’ when he agrees to put on the -”
“I believe that’s enough information right there, thank you,” said Octavia, failing to suppress the smile Bass Drop’s anecdote had triggered. “What exactly were you looking for?”
“I was having a look around to see whether I could see any signs around here- preferably one giving the distance to the nearest town – but I can’t see nada. Guess they don’t bother putting signs in deserts where nopony will see them, huh?”
“No, I suppose that they don’t,” commented Octavia. “What are you currently thinking with regards to exiting the desert?” Octavia hadn’t exactly been dwelling on it so far, but she and Bass Drop were probably miles from the nearest town and wouldn’t reach it before the end of the day even if they galloped at full speed. Octavia had never been in a desert before – there was an adventure Vinyl would likely enjoy, she mused – but she knew of how deadly they could be both during the day and night.
Although Vinyl Scratch often acted silly and irrational, Octavia had seen her marefriend’s keen mind in action more than once, and was often surprised at the ideas Vinyl would come up with from time to time. If Vinyl could have fantastic ideas that were true examples of thinking outside the box, who was to say that her male counterpart couldn’t as well? With his initiative in surveying the area, Octavia was confident that Bass Drop was about to suggest a brilliant idea that would fix their current problem.
“See that space there?” Bass Drop asked, pointing a hoof. Octavia nodded. “Put the audience there –” he moved his hoof and pointed to a spot opposite it “- put the stage there, speakers to either side of it, and you could have a kickass concert here, y’know what I’m saying? No need to worry about sound pollution, no need to worry about limited space – it’s the perfect idea!”
“That’s a very…interesting idea,” said Octavia, nodding once or twice. “Um…I don’t suppose you’ve had any ideas about how we’ll meet up with Vinyl and Octavius? As far as I know they’re still on the train.”
“We take over the train and drive it to them?” Bass Drop suggested.
“…That would require us reaching the train first, negating the problem,” Octavia commented.
Bass Drop thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “Oh yeah. Um, then we could follow the train tracks to the next town and work it out from there?”
“Do I look like a workhorse?” Octavia asked, cringing. Her muscles had already taken a beating – literally – and she doubted that she would have appreciated a lengthy journey by hoof even in the best of health.
“Got any better ideas?” Bass Drop asked. Octavia shook her head after a brief moment of contemplation. “Then let’s get going! Don’t worry, Girl Tavi – I’m sure Tavi and Vinyl will work out something and we’ll be fine!”
“I hate being called Tavi,” grumbled Octavia as she and her companion took the first hoofsteps of their long, long, journey.
===============================
“So, you see?” asked Octavius to Vinyl.
“See what?”
“See that I have no idea where they are,” Octavius said simply.
“Oh, yeah, good point,” said Vinyl. “So…if they’re not locked up here with us, where are they then?”
“I was conscious the entire time we were taken here – the train has not stopped at any point,” said Octavius. As he spoke, he appeared to be straining to break the cable ties holding his hooves together. “Therefore, assuming the two of them are not somewhere else on this train, they must have somehow…been thrown out of the train? Or fallen out, perhaps; I was too busy during the fight to see what happened to them.”
“Fallen out of the train?” Vinyl gasped. “No! Not Octavia! Her dense and powerful Earth pony body is too weak and fragile to survive a fall from the train onto the soft, absorbent sand!”
“Because that makes me feel better about Bass Drop,” said Octavius drily. “As it is, once I can get out of these – out of these damn bonds,” he said, straining to break the cable ties holding his hooves together, “then we can execute my plan.”
“Screw that, my plan’s better!” said Vinyl.
“…I haven’t even said what my plan is yet,” said Octavius, temporarily stopping his escape attempt.
“…Oh yeah,” agreed Vinyl. “Well, still, my plan’s better!”
“Why?” asked Octavius. “What makes you so certain that your plan is inherently better than mine, without any prior knowledge of what mine may be, and that we should by default go with your idea? You could at least hear me out.”
“Why?” asked Vinyl, perhaps ten times more dramatically than she needed to. “Why, Octavius? Because my plan has a component that yours doesn’t! My plan is fuelled by passion, longing, and raw emotion! My passion was created from the heart of my…heart? Yes, my heart of hearts!
“For you see, what my plan has that yours doesn’t is something both simple and yet complex at the same time. It’s something that some ponies would kill for; something some ponies would die for. It’s something that I couldn’t live without, and that I pay tribute to every moment I breathe. What does my plan contain? The most elusive and desired of components: my plan contains love!!
“Because you see, my plan-”
“My plan ‘contains love’ as well, Vinyl,” interrupted Octavius.
“It what now?”
“Do you think that I do not love Bass Drop, after all of the years in which we’ve spent together?” Octavius began, a loud SNAP! accompanying his words as he finally broke the cable ties. “Do you think that just because it is two stallions which share in this love, that that somehow makes it less authentic, as though some higher authority declared it so? Neigh, for I-”
“Yeah, bored now,” said Vinyl. “What is your plan, anyway?”
Octavius scowled. “I break the cable ties holding your front two hooves together, and we storm the train. If we find Bass Drop and Octavia, we get off the train as soon as possible and discuss what to do from there. If they are not on the train, then we find out what’s happened to them and head there as soon as possible.”
“Hey! That’s my plan!” exclaimed Vinyl. “You stole it from me!”
“No, I-” Octavius sighed and put a hoof to his head in brief exasperation. “Are we in agreement with the plan then?”
“Sure, but you’re going out the door first,” Vinyl said simply.
“What? Why me?” Octavius asked. His hooves had been placed on Vinyl’s, ready to snap the cable tie holding her hooves together, but he paused the action as he spoke.
“You’re an Earth pony, yes?” asked Vinyl. “If they’ve got crossbows, or, or swords or whatever, then you can take the hits better than I can.”
“What, while you hang back here and throw small spells at them every few seconds?” asked Octavius, incredulous. “I’ll have you know, I’ll not be your meatshield.”
“But…Meatshield is cooler than…” Vinyl shook her head, ending that train of thought. “Look, do you know Spinning Tiger Style?”
“What?”
“You know, the martial art tree?” Vinyl elaborated. “Or style, whatever. Do you know Spinning Tiger Style?”
“I have never heard of it in my life,” said Octavius. “Is this one of those strange things your universe has that mine doesn’t?”
“Do you know Rising Dragon?” Vinyl asked, ignoring Octavius’ question.
“No,” said Octavius, deadpan.
“Lunar Phase?” Vinyl continued. “Real Impact? Super Kick 13?”
“I think you know the answer to all of those,” Octavius said coldly. “May I enquire as to why you are asking?
“Oh, okay, no biggie,” said Vinyl. “Anyway, Octavia doesn’t know any of them either, but if she did, and we were in this situation, I’d totally ask her to use one of them against whoever’s in the next carriage.”
“Are those even real techniques?” asked Octavius, scowling at Vinyl once more.
“I dunno, probably,” said Vinyl, shrugging. “As long as it sounds foreign, right?”
Octavius groaned. “Look, let’s just get out of here and find our partners, alright?” he said, angrily grabbing Vinyl’s hooves and using his impressive Earth pony strength to snap her cable ties.
“Oww!” complained Vinyl. “That really…was a good job. Thanks!”
“It was the least that I could do,” grumbled Octavius. “Look, you just telekinetically open the door, and we’ll rush through to the next carriage together, okay?”
“Sure!” said Vinyl. Her magical aura surrounded the handle of the door. “Ready?”
“On three,” said Octavius, getting closer to the door. “One…two…three!” On three, Octavius leapt forwards…and promptly slammed face-first into the door.
“The door’s locked,” said Vinyl simply, shaking the door slightly with her telekinesis to confirm it.
“Oh, for f-”
===============================
“Nope, think harder,” said Bass Drop. He and Octavia had been walking for around ten minutes, although if you had told Octavia that they’d been walking for ten hours she would have believed it. Swear poured from each pore of her body, drenching her coat and sapping her energy. Ponies weren’t made to live in arid environments; it was a miracle that towns such as Appleloosa had been established where it was and stayed there for as long as it had.
“Um…is it…something wet? Or that can be wet?” Octavia asked, looking up briefly to the sky as she did spoke. Unfortunately for her, the skies were as clear as they had been thirty seconds ago.
“Nope!” said Bass Drop. “One more to go, so if you don’t get it on this question I win!”
“Is it a…” Octavia paused midsentence to think. It was hard to do so with the throbbing of her head, but she tried nevertheless. “A…giant red scissor blade?” Octavia finally said, it being the first physical object her mind could think of.
“Wrong, Octavia!” said Bass Drop happily. How he could ignore the heat so easily – Octavia could see him sweating just as much as her – was a mystery unto itself, and with every second that passed, Octavia resisted the opportunity to throttle him until he told her all of his secrets. Some part at the back of Octavia’s mind reminded her that that wasn’t a very responsible way to behave, but another, smarter, part of her countered that thought with the knowledge that the heat was almost literally murder.
“So, do I get to hear what this mystery object is?” Octavia asked, realising that Bass Drop wasn’t saying anything else – perhaps he had been waiting for the prompt. “I have spent the last twenty questions attempting to discover it, you know.”
“Oh yeah!” said Bass Drop. “So, you started out asking whether it was a pony, then whether it was a living thing, then whether it was food, then whether –” Octavia waved a hoof, gesturing for him to hurry up “-and then, after twenty questions, you guessed that it was a giant pair of purple and red scissors!” Octavia sighed, not even questioning how he mutated her poor guess into…that. “And you were way off!” continued Bass Drop. “The thing I was thinking of? Sand!”
“What?” asked Octavia, deadpan and blunt.
“Yeah! It’s not a pony, it’s not living, it’s not food, it’s not blue, it-”
“Yes, I can see how it fits the criteria,” said Octavia, pausing briefly in her step to wipe a patch of sweat from her forehead. “But can we…I don’t know…if we’re going to be playing games to kill the time, can we at least not focus on the dizzying heat? The overwhelming temperature? The crushing weather? The Celestia-damned desert which is the cause of most of our problems at present? This heat is…is… how can some ponies like this climate?”
“Sorry, Octavia!” said Bass Drop. “How about we try a different game?”
Octavia hesitated for a moment, before making a decision. The walk through the desert was both tedious and lengthy, and whatever could help to distract from the heat would be an effective help. And who knows? Perhaps the next game they played would help to get her to understand Bass Drop better.
“Certainly,” said Octavia. “Would you like to start?”
“Sure!” said Bass Drop. “I spy with my little eye…” He turned his head around once or twice, his distinctive glasses masking wherever his eyes may have been focused. “…Something beginning with…S!”
“…Sand?” asked Octavia, her expression unamused.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Octavia!” said Bass Drop. “You didn’t want me to talk about the desert, so I won’t!” He had been leading the two ponies alongside the railway tracks, but as he finished speaking he turned around and lowered his glasses slightly. “Do I look like a pony who’d screw up like that?”
“Okay, okay, that is a fair enough point,” agreed Octavia. “Is it…um, storm?”
“None that I can see.”
“Snake?!” Octavia asked, looking around the ground.
“Nope!”
“Scratch? As in, Vinyl Scratch?” Octavia asked, feeling slightly hopeful.
“Heh, you would have heard me shout out if I’d seen her.”
Octavia looked around the two ponies for about a minute, but soon came to the conclusion that there wasn’t anything else visible beginning with S.
“I give up,” she finally admitted. “What did you see?”
“Well, you said you didn’t want to think about the desert or the heat, yeah?” asked Bass Drop. “So I looked upwards: Sun!”
Octavia smacked a hoof into her face, wondering whether she could murder Bass Drop and get away with it. She soon began backing away from that train of thought, realising that being in an isolated place with very few ponies wishing to visit it was the perfect murder location, and that in spite of some personal feelings at the moment it probably wasn’t best for her to kill her only current companion.
“Can I go again?” asked Bass Drop. He was like a little colt, wishing only to play games and not risk being serious for a single moment.
“Sure,” sighed Octavia, accepting it as inevitable.
“I spy with my little eye, something beginning with…T!”
“Train?” asked Octavia amusedly.
“Yeah! Good going, Octavia, you got it on the first try!”
===============================
The door to the carriage was pushed down, hesitantly at first, then more confidently. An Earth pony entered, squinting at the darkness for a moment before remembering that he had brought a torch. He promptly turned it on.
“Blazing Flame?” he called out into the carriage. “What’s taking you so long to get the- oh, crap,” he said as he saw two discarded bags on the floor. “Blazing Flame? Are you in here? Do you know what’s happened to the prisoners?”
The Earth pony heard a hoofstep behind him, but as he began to turn around, he felt something touch the back of his head softly.
“Please, don’t turn your head, or for that matter, your body,” came a quiet, refined voice. “I would hate to snap your neck because you attempted to find out more than you know.”
“Would you really do that, or are you just-” began another voice, before being interrupted.
“Silence!” hissed the refined voice. “Now, answer a few questions of ours, and we shall see what we can do about letting you out of here.”
“Why should I?”
“My associate here is a unicorn with the most powerful magical potential since Star Swirl the Bearded,” answered the refined voice. “She can teleport the protons out of your atoms, or cancel the effects of gravity upon you, leaving you floating in space away from the rotating planet very swiftly. She can hyperaccelerate you so fast that you catch fire in the brief moments before liquefying. All of this she can do, and more.
“As for myself? ‘He’s just an Earth pony’, you may think. Yes, I am just an Earth pony – an Earth pony who has mastered the ancient art of… of Super Kick 13. I can crush your bones to powder with one well-placed kick, and not even a strong one at that. I can punch you so fast that you die before you feel the pain, or so your internal organs rupture from the excessive force and your last few minutes are spent lying on the ground vomiting up blood. And what is more, I can do it with extraordinary ease.
“So please, for your own sake, try not to do anything rash.”
“You two…you’re the prisoners, aren’t you?” asked the Earth pony.
“Yep!” answered Vinyl before Octavius could deny her the opportunity.
“…Really, Vinyl?” Octavius asked. “I’m going for an air of mystery here, something to maybe confuse our quarry and get him to question whether or not we’ve truly escaped or whether there’s a greater threat, and you just tell him who we are?”
“Well, it’s rude to not answer somepony’s question,” said Vinyl, shrugging.
“Can I just talk to you two normally?” the Earth pony asked. Vinyl looked to Octavius for advice.
“…Fine,” he said, sighing, “but I reserve the right to snap his neck if he tries anything.” Octavius failed to notice the concerned look Vinyl gave him.
“Alright, what do you want to know?” the Earth pony asked, seeming to relax a little.
“Well, for a start, why has the train stopped?” Octavius asked. “Why are you not in the front carriage, still driving it?”
“I would be, but we ran out of coal,” answered the Earth pony, the train driver. “At least, that’s what I assume happened; the train stopped, and Blazing Flame, the coal shoveler, wasn’t where he should have been, so I headed down here to see whether he was gathering more coal for the engine.” The driver paused. “Was he here? Did you two already attack him?”
“He’s still alive,” answered Octavius quietly. “For now. Next question: why did you and the coal shoveler fight us and our other two companions? You heard us in the cabin; we would have been content with stopping the robbery and simply getting off at the next station.”
The driver chewed his lip, apparently internally debating something. After a few moments, he said, “Well, I suppose it’s not like anypony would believe you…Blazing Flame and I made a deal with some smugglers to transport some goods for them along this route.”
“Smugglers!” Vinyl interrupted. “This…the crumbly stuff in this carriage! It’s heroin!”
“…No, it’s coal,” said the driver, unamused. “Anyway, you ponies had already announced the robbery to the rest of the train; if we simply let you go free then there would be an investigation, and the smuggling would have inevitably been discovered. But if we managed to stop you, and wrap everything up nicely? That makes us heroes, and less likely to be investigated.”
“Hmm. That’s not actually a bad scheme,” commented Octavius. “Still, as it is, you’re a threat to us and our two companions…Vinyl, shall I?”
“Oh, just stick to knocking him out,” Vinyl said. “The way this is going, the guards will end up investigating him either way.”
Octavius clicked his tongue in annoyance, but nevertheless drew back his hoof to punch out the driver. As he swung it, however, the train driver swung his hoof upwards, deflecting the blow. “Please,” he said, “do you ponies think that I’m just going to stand here and let myself be knocked out?” He swung a hoof at Octavius, knocking him to the ground with one punch. “Do you think that I want to be caught?” He kicked Octavius in the ribs, eliciting a gasp of pain from the grey Earth pony. “Do you think that I fell for that crap about you two being more magical and strong than other ponies?” He put a hoof above Octavius’ head and raised it slightly, anticipating crushing the other pony’s skull.
“Yes?” asked Vinyl, moments before surrounding the driver with her telekinetic field. She then flipped – no, she tried to flip the driver onto his back, but his mass was too great. As it was, he floated into the air slightly and started to rotate, before Vinyl’s magic gave out and he simply dropped to the floor of the carriage again. “Damn!” said Vinyl, rubbing her horn with a hoof. “I guess the time travel spell was still too recent…”
“Dunno what you’re talking about, but don’t think that it’ll stop me from hurting you too!” said the driver. He had turned around to face her as he spoke, and now that he was facing her, he delivered an uppercut which sent her flying through the air and into a wall.
What’s that pony on? wondered Vinyl, her head dizzy as the driver approached her. Steroids? Actually, that would explain- Her train of thought stopped as the driver delivered a right hook to her face, immediately causing copious amounts of blood to spray from her nose. Before Vinyl could even think about moving out of the way or retaliating, another hoof, this one from her right, hit her heavily, sending her sprawling to the floor.
Vinyl couldn’t do anything but look up at her impending doom from below. As he had been about to with Octavius, the driver had raised a hoof above her head, and was about to crush her skull, killing her immediately. Vinyl made a weak attempt to light up her horn and do something, anything, but all that she got out of it was a few sparks. Was this the end for her?
SLAM!
“Vinyl, are you in- Hey! Get away from my marefriend!”
“Also my stallionfriend, yo.”
Nah, of course not.
“Huh, I thought you’d been killed when you fell through the window…or at least more injured,” said the driver in response to the sudden arrival of Octavia and Bass Drop.
“If I had every bone in my body broken and was dragged through the gates of Tartarus itself, I would still force myself to gallop out of there and to wherever Vinyl was,” Octavia growled, snorting slightly once she finished. “There’s only one pony allowed to decide when she dies, and that’s me!”
“Thanks?” asked Vinyl weakly. “Octavia, what are you doing here? Wh-how did you even get here?”
“Deus ex m- I mean, no time to explain!” Octavia said. Rather than wasting any more energy on words, she leapt upwards onto her back legs, then jumped forwards with a hoof outstretched, aiming herself directly at the train driver. She hit him directly in the face, causing him to stumble backwards a few steps.
“Octavius! Quick!” said Octavia. Vinyl rolled slightly to her side, where she saw Bass Drop helping Octavius to his hooves, albeit shakily. “Help me stop him!”
Without so much as a word of confirmation of his participation in Octavia’s plan, if you could call it that, Octavius swept his back hooves towards the driver’s back hooves, knocking him off balance and sending him falling onto his back. Octavia quickly leapt upon the opportunity presented, and punched him heavily in the face. And then again when he made a movement to get up. And again. And a fourth time, with Octavius helping her this time.
“And stay down!” Octavia growled to the driver.
“N-no,” he stammered, his face heavily bruised and bleeding, “not so long as I-”
WHACK!
“Is that it then?” asked Octavia after a moment. She was breathing heavily from the concentrated portion of exercise she had just performed.
“I believe so,” said Octavius, similarly exhausted. He glanced at the seemingly unconscious driver, who gave no visible sign that he was still conscious. “A good thing, too; that was starting to feel like a bad recurring joke.”
“So then,” began Bass Drop, “we have a carriage full of coal, a train full of passengers who are probably wondering why the train’s still stopped, and two unconscious ponies.
“What do we do now?”
===============================
“-and so then the patient said, ‘But doctor, I can’t afford my hospital bill!’” said Bass Drop. Around her, Octavia, Octavius, and Bass Drop all burst into laughter at the joke.
“Wait a minute, that’s not hilarious, that’s tragic!” exclaimed Octavia suddenly.
“So sue me,” said Bass Drop, grinning. The four ponies were out in the desert, having decided that with Vinyl’s time travel spell being a reliable enough vector for exiting, they could simply leave the train to go on its way. A good twenty minutes after they had headed over some dunes, where they would be invisible to the train, they had seen it take off again, the engine presumably refilled with coal. As it was, they had now been out in the desert for several hours, waiting for Vinyl to be ready to cast the spell. Dusk had fallen a short while ago, and the stars were out.
“Well, whatever,” replied Octavia. “Vinyl, do you think that you shall be able to cast the spell by now?”
“You don’t want to hang out with Octavius and Bass Drop any more, baby?” asked Vinyl.
Octavia shook her head. “I hope that this next jump just gets us to where we need to go,” she said. “I’m over time.”
“You’re over a measure of events which can be order from past to present to future, which may be classified as the fourth dimension and which we are all inevitably stuck in?” Octavius asked, confused.
“Did I say I was over time? I meant to say that I was over time travel,” said Octavia, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, I suppose it’ll be good to get back home, see Serpent Superior and the whole gang,” said Vinyl, grinning. “Maybe we’ll be lucky and Destroyer will forget that I owe him several million bits!”
“What in Equestria have you two been up to since we last saw you?” asked Octavius, frowning in confusion.
Vinyl shrugged. “Bass Drop, you reckon you can cast the spell using my instructions, yeah?”
He gave her a mock salute. “Aye aye, captain!”
“Cool!” said Vinyl. “Just remember, we’re not sure how exactly it determines when to send ponies, so it could end up being worse for you than if you hadn’t cast it!”
“Pfft. What’s life without a little danger anyway?” asked Bass Drop.
“Well then, I suppose that this is goodbye,” said Octavia as Vinyl’s horn began to light up. “Best of luck to the both of you whenever you go, and I hope that you two end up getting back to your home dimension.”
“There’s too many mares in this one,” shuddered Bass Drop, wrapping a hoof around Octavius’ shoulder as he did so.
“Best of luck to you two, too,” said Octavius politely. “I hope we never meet again – if you know what I mean – but if we do, I am sure that it will be the best of circumstances.”
“We’re gonna get so drunk!” said Bass Drop.
And then, that was that. Vinyl’s had finished casting the spell, and for the umpteenth time, she and Octavia were sucked into the swirling chronal vortex. Around them, everything was replaced in less than a second – no longer were they in the cooling desert, but standing inside what appeared to be a small apartment. Octavia walked over to a sliding glass door, which lead to a balcony, and looked outside.
“So, any clue when we are?” Vinyl asked. “If we have to live through that Celestia-damned decade when vuvuzelas were the hot musical genre…”
“Vinyl, I…I think we’re home,” said Octavia quietly.
“We what now?”
“Come out here and tell me that we’re not in Manehattan,” Octavia said. “Our Manehattan, Vinyl.” She looked around. “In fact…I think that this is our apartment.”
“That…that’s good news, Octavia, but I have some bad news to go along with it,” said Vinyl. “According to this newspaper, this isn’t our time.”
“Where did that even come from?” Octavia wondered aloud as she entered the apartment again, closing the door behind her. “When are we, then? It all looks so similar…”
“Well, according to the date on this, we’ve arrived one week since the raid on the library. You know, where we got the time travel scroll from?” Vinyl asked. She grimaced as she held up the newspaper. “As soon as my magic’s ready again…we’ve gotta jump.”
“…You do that and I’ll get a horn implant solely so that I can learn the time travel spell, travel back to right now, and stop you from making such a dumb decision,” Octavia growled. “Now come on! We’ve spent the last few hours sitting around with Octavius and Bass Drop; we have to go see Serpent Superior to explain where we’ve been the last week.”
“But wait,” exclaimed Vinyl as her marefriend dragged her out of the apartment, “I haven’t gotten Destroyer his three million bits yet!”
As the Octavia closed the door to the apartment behind them, neither pony saw the note which fell out of the newspaper and drift slowly to the ground. It would remain there until they returned later that evening, at which point Octavia would throw it in the recycling bin alongside the newspaper, with neither pony aware of its presence. It read:
To Vinyl, and her very good friend(?) Octavia,
I am not sure where the two of you are at present, and my other attempts to contact you have failed thus far. Nevertheless, if you find this note, I have good news for you.
I am unaware of what the two of you are currently doing for employment, or how you managed to escape The Fort, but having recently discovered the crimes you supposedly committed which landed the two of you in jail, I have investigated them of my own accord. It didn’t take long for me to discover that you had both been framed, and whilst my superiors wouldn’t be happy with it if they knew, I have wiped your criminal records. Obviously there’s nothing I can do about ponies’ memories, but if you wish to return to Canterlot and your old lives, there is nothing the law can do to stop you.
Keep safe, and I hope that the two of you are well. If you wish, you may write to me at the address on the back of this note – Vinyl, I would love to see you again, and to meet your friend Octavia. There are some things I need to say.
A Friend.
===============================
“Not that I didn’t enjoy seeing my past self, but home is quite nice when it’s just the two of us, isn’t it?” asked Future Octavia, twenty-five years later. She swiped her keycard in the slot by her and Future Vinyl’s door, opening it up.
“Yeah, ain’t nothing like spending time with my special somepony!” said Future Vinyl, jumping onto her back and kissing her cheek. Future Octavia was startled for a moment by the unexpected weight, but soon adjusted, and smiled at Future Vinyl.
“Seeing as how we have the apartment to ourselves again, how about we head into the bedroom?” Future Octavia asked Future Vinyl softly. “If you know what I-”
She stopped mid-sentence, as a swirling blue vortex appeared in the middle of their apartment. Her eyes widened in fear and surprise – this shouldn’t be happening. She had no recollection of travelling to the future twice, so it could only be another pony – or ponies - time travelling. But if so, why were the two ponies appearing from the vortex a white unicorn and a dark-coated Earth pony?
“Urgh…man, you’d have thought that Vinyl would have told me about how much of a drain that spell is,” said Bass Drop, putting a hoof to his head for a moment. “Just gimme a minute to lie down, babe, and we’ll-” He opened his eyes, immediately seeing Future Vinyl and Future Octavia. “Oh, um, hi!” he greeted.
“Oh, Cyber-Celestia damn it all,” groaned Future Vinyl. “Not again.”
THE END
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I jut want to say: THAT WAS AWESOME! I really love your work and think it was worth the wait. Thank you for such an awesome story.
6821956
Thank you! As I said, whilst some of it was some personal stuff I was going through, there was also definitely a degree of laziness to this, which I've got no real excuse for. I'll try and get the next story up soon!
It's alive. It's alive. IT'S ALIVE!
Sorry, had to get that out of my system.
Don't tell me you're going to...
Oh good.
Between that or dying, yes.
A smart mook. I don't belive this.
I just hope they have stormtrooper aim.
Wow, theyo.
She's right. Granted, not necessarily if hit doesn't hit a vital organ, but if it DOES, yeah you're dead.
Of course.
Either way, you're getting closer to the present, since trains are now a thing.
I doubt that. EIther way, for your own sake, stay out of trouble. She's not going to is she?
... Yes.
*sigh*
What?
Fair enough.
I doubt it.
This feels like a simultanous parody of Gurren Lagen and Kingdom Hearts.
Kill la Kill reference.
Um...
The bullshit is strong in you. And it's also a BADASS BULLSHIT! So yes, this is amazing.
Apparently yes.
Daaw!
Aye.
Ah dunno.
Title drop and roll credits! Only thing I noticed, I remember Future Vinyl, I think, had an artificial leg, which means she's gonna lose it at some point. Oh dear...
A lot.
Probably the present, or close anyway.
When are you then?
Phew.
Hm, I wonder....
Cyber-Celestia? What happened to the original one?
6822439 Your comments are one of my favorite things to read after the story. It just makes everything that much funnier. Thank you!
oh mah gawd a deux ex reference
7051975
You wouldn't mind explaining, would you?
I've seen quite a lot of them and I still fail to understand them
7058345 in the game CRAZY shart happens download it on xbox to get the jist k
7060818
Is it on PS3?
Also, I’m never said I’d get drunk
Swear poured from each pore of her body
1. I.
2. Sweat.