Wounds and Weapons

by Zytharros

Blowing Bubbles

Blowing Bubbles

“Okay, so what was that?” Rainbow Dash demanded. “You just started glowing freakily.”

I blushed. “It’s something my grandma taught me.”

“Only unicorns can use magic,” Boomdrop said. “How did you gain the ability?”

A thousand questions of a similar nature were thrown at me. I was getting stressed, unable to think or do anything to respond.

Panic had obviously taken shape in my eyes when Sweetie Belle screamed, “Quiet!!”

Zytharros nodded at the filly, who nodded back. They both turned to me and smiled. I blushed, smiling my thanks in return, and continued.

“It was about ten years ago…”

A little gray-and-blonde filly was blowing bubbles in the backyard, passing time as she waited for her mother to come home from work. She had had a rough day. Once again, her classmates had picked on her for her eye… not to mention she was one of only two blank flanks left in the class – she and her best friend and fierce defender Applejack. She had told Applejack she wouldn’t be able to join the meeting of the Society of the Seekers that day, to which the orange and blonde filly also admitted she wouldn’t be able to attend because of some family business in Manehattan. The third member of their team, a black unicorn with a silver mane striped with green and a cutie mark involving a green tree by the name of Tempo Dreck, seemed disappointed, but they all went their own ways regardless.

Apple Bloom snickered. “My sister was in a secret society, too!”

So there she was: blowing bubbles in the backyard and getting lost in their hovering. Mom wouldn’t be home for a couple hours, and Grandmare was supposed to have arrived sometime today towards early evening to stay for a week. It came as a surprise to the young filly, though, when she heard a voice calling over the fence.

“Are there any bubbles left for me?” the creaky voice called.

The little filly turned her head to look at the newcomer. “Grandmare!” she shouted happily.

“Derpy, my little bubble!” she said. “How have you been?”

I’m not gonna tell them she called me Bright Eyes… it’s too painful a memory…

They embraced in a loving hug, then spent the next three hours blowing bubbles, waiting for the matriarch of the house to return. They talked about a number of things, but soon Grandma’s mood darkened.

“What’s wrong, Grammy?” Derpy asked.

She smiled. “I have a gift for you. Come here.”

They walked out to the middle of the backyard.

“Stand there,” Grandmare said.

So the filly obeyed her grandmother. She stood directly opposite her senior. To her surprise, her grandmother glowed. The young pegasus had yet to have experienced anyone else other than a unicorn without magic. What surprised her even more was she began to glow as well.

Nope… not gonna tell ‘em about Bright Eyes…

In an instant, they were transported to a weird place that made no sense. There were two balls on a plane of crystal. The sky was a vibrant shade of yellow, pierced occasionally with spires of white. Her senses were heightened to a point where they no longer felt her own, that she was controlled by the world around her.

The filly was never so terrified in her life.

Soothing warmth calmed her a little, and she turned to see another filly - no, a full-grown mare - standing before her, eye-to-eye. She vaguely recognized her own grandma, though her hair was no longer gray and her face was not pitted with the wrinkles of time. She was as she had looked as a young mare, so vibrant and full of life, her pale gray hair and deep-yellow body vibrating with highly-excitable energy.

“What you see now is the plane of souls,” she said, speaking in the same voice the wall-eyed filly remembered, minus the scratchiness the years had cut into her vocal cords. “This is the secret of our ancestors.”

Derpy had a confused look in her eyes.

“The secret is the skill to defend the souls of those we care about. It’s a skill passed down through our family tree, exclusive to our line of the Hooves,” her grandma said, walking around and allowing the filly to become accustomed to moving in the environment she was in. “There are two other skills that have passed through our line – the ability to time-travel, which your eccentric uncle, the one who calls himself the ‘Doctor’… you remember him, don’t you? The one with the hourglass on his flank... possesses, and the ability to pass dimensions. The last hasn’t been seen since the fallout two groups of our ancestors had years ago.”

Derpy walked in silence alongside her elder.

“I want you to have this skill, my bright eyed grandchild.”

Horse apples… I told ‘em.

Standing in absolute shock, Derpy panicked. She didn’t know what she was getting into… she didn’t know what was happening… didn’t really care… but…

“It’s okay, child…” her grandmare said, taking the little pegasus under her wing. “I’ll help you understand this ability.”

So, for the next week after school and homework, her grandma trained her in the operations of the skill, taking time off to blow bubbles in between. She grew to value that moment during that time, deeper than any other moment that week. Her classmates picking on her… the fact she didn’t have a cutie mark… the eventual disbandment of the Society of the Seekers and the loss of Tempo Dreck as a friend as the colt moved to Baltimare and Applejack to Manehattan… it all faded when in the presence of her grandmare blowing bubbles with her.

Then, the world came to an unexpected, crashing downfall.

The night before Grandma was supposed to leave, Derpy was awoken to sirens leaving their house. She snuck out of her room, looking at her mother Slipsy Hooves and asked her what went wrong. Without understanding, she knew at once what had happened: something evil was attacking her grandmother’s mind! She had to use her new skill to save her! She fled out the door, running as fast as her little legs would carry her. Eventually, her muscles burned, thighs ached, legs fought against her will, but she refused to cave. That little pony ran as fast and as hard as she could, all the way from her house to the hospital on the other side of Ponyville like a bat out of Tartarus.

Eventually, she made it. She snuck in just as the hospital closed its doors for the night. She made her way, tired, achy and sore, up to the third floor. Scanning the rooms and avoiding the occasional security guard, she eventually found her grandma – and the sight terrified her.

She wasn’t good at counting yet… the slowest in the class, according to the teacher… but she estimated about twenty one-hundreds of pipes, needles, and mechanical devices were strapped to her grandma. She knew there was no time to waste – she activated her family’s bubble technique and dove into her grandma’s mind.

The place was no longer friendly.

A mare floated in a crystal, high above the cracking platform. Another mare, the spirit of her Grandma, was smiling in front of the body. The sky was slowly disintegrating to blackness.

“Grandmare!” Derpy shouted. “Grandmare! I’m here to save you!”

Without a word to her granddaughter, the mare kissed the figure in the crystal and slowly began ascending into the sky. The platform slowly disintegrated. Derpy leapt for the soul, catching on. She began ascending with her into the sky.

“Where are you going? What’s going on? Why are you leaving me?”

The mare began fading. Derpy’s grip began failing… and then failed entirely, her hooves passing through the mare she loved and respected most, sending the filly plummeting to the ground. The crystal faded into black as she landed on the last of the platform standing.

The lone bubble on the only place of light in the now-void mind sobbed. Steadily, she removed herself from her grandma’s mind to be met by three doctors, astonished that a pegasus was using magic… but the young filly, broken by the pain of loss, didn’t speak. She simply walked out, sobbing.

She went home, and ignoring her mother’s scolding, went up to her room, pulled out a small flask of unicorn-infused bubble-making tonic, and began to use it to form bubbles. She robotically used up the entire tonic in minutes. She pulled out a second bottle… used that up, too. She pulled up the first bottle, thinking it was a full third bottle, got frustrated when no bubbles formed and threw it with all her might across the room. It hit a mirror, shattering the glass.

Just like her grandma had shattered her now-fractured heart.

Hearing the shattered glass, Slipsy entered her room at a breakneck speed. At first, she had a flurry of questions, but when she saw her daughter’s state, she forgot them all, walked up and wrapped her in the soothing embrace of a mother’s hug.

“Why did Grandmare have to d-d… d-d-die?” Derpy sobbed into her mother’s chest.

“Derpy…” her mother said softly. “It’s okay. She’s just sleeping.”

Derpy shook her head. “Mom, d-don’t lie to me. She’s dead… I s-saw her leave her b-body.”

“How!?” she said, sure it was just her child’s wild imagination.

All Derpy replied with was “The family technique.”

Her mom went silent. She looked at her daughter. “Did Grandma…”

The shaking, sad filly nodded. “She t-taught me before she…”

Derpy broke down into another wave of crying.

Her mother looked over her daughter, settling her into bed as she did so.

“She taught us so much,” her mother said, tears breaking through the normally-stoic mare’s beautiful, Rarity-esque eyes. “She even gave you your cutie mark as a farewell gift.”

Derpy jolted up. She kicked off the blanket and looked over at her flank. Seven bubbles emanating vertically from her knees filled what was a blank flank not five minutes earlier. Derpy’s face broke into a wild, tear-filled smile. One last, good cry drained her of her energy for the night, after which she settled down for a good sleep.

“Mommy?” Derpy said.

“Yes, dear?” Slipsy asked.

“Let’s go blow some bubbles tomorrow,” Derpy said with a smile, “for Grandmare.”

Slipsy smiled her world-famous model’s smile and replied, “Let’s.”

“For Grandmare…” I repeated to myself, losing my mind in the panels of the ceiling and shedding a small tear down my cheek.

The tale ended there. The room was ghostly silent as I returned to look at my friends. Zytharros moved first. He got up and through a cloud of pain moved to my side to hug me, which I received gratefully. His ability to be compassionate always amazed me.

“I-I had no idea, Derpy…” Rainbow said, taken completely aback in shock. “Bright Eyes… that was the name your grandma called you.”

“And it was turned into…” Cheerilee said, sniffling back tears and realizing what, exactly, that name meant to me. “Oh, princesses… I’m so terribly awfully completely sorry…”

I wiped a tear from my eye with a forehoof as Pinkie also approached for a hug. One by one, each pony present had their turn. Even Razortongue, to my surprise and bewilderment, speechlessly offered one to me when we had finished.

I had made the right decision to tell them.

A few minutes of silence emerged, my story weighing heavily on everyone’s mind. Pinkie looked around, trying to figure out what would make everyone happy, like usual.

“We need a new base,” she said, full of the same excitable energy we were used to. “Let’s move this party to Sugarcube Corner! There’s plenty of room for all of us, we can get Cheerilee’s house repaired, and we can form some strategies for taking down that… that evil knievel meanie-pants!”

There was unanimous approval from all of us. While we walked out the door, she proceeded to walk up the wall, on the roof, and out the hole in the ceiling, leaping down, puffing out her hair, and gliding effortlessly down to the doorway of the sweet shop, all the while giggling to herself about… whatever was normally on Pinkie’s mind.

I smiled. That was one mare who always made anypony feel welcome.

Just like Grandmare.