Shipshape's World

by WishyWish

2 - Where the Heart is

It could not be called ‘Ponyville’.

It had the grass. It had the trees. It had the streets, the homes, the businesses, and the rolling hills in the distance. It had everything Ponyville should have, but it chilled the bones of the Cutie Mark Crusaders all the same as they attempted to poke at bushes and rocks.

“Mah hoof just goes raight on through it!” Applebloom commented for the third time as she watched her foreleg pass through an empty produce cart. It was right there in front of her, and it was so real – right down to a rusty nail sticking out of a weathered board on one side. But whenever she tried to touch it, she felt nothing – her hoof simply passed through the air, as if there were nothing there to touch in the first place.

“This one too!” Scootaloo called as she stuck her head through the wall of a house. She looked at Sweetie Belle, who was trying in vain to kick a bag of phantasmal oats behind the house, and realized she could still see a hazy, slightly distorted image of her friend right through the walls of the structure.

“Well, ah’ll tell ya what it ain’t,” Applebloom replied, “It ain’t no image of a very special somepony. How did we get outside, an’ all the way in town, just like that? An’ why can’t we touch nothin’? And where is everypony?”

Sweetie Belle felt two pairs of eyes on her coat. She turned to meet them, her brow peaked with worry.

“I…I don’t know! This isn’t what was supposed to happen!” The young unicorn stammered. Desperate for some way to explain everything to her friends, she feigned a derisive snort and started down one of the roads out of town. “Let’s just go back to the farm. We’re probably all just dreaming or something. Maybe when we get back where we’re supposed to be we’ll wake up or something.”

With no better ideas, the remaining crusaders fell in behind their current leader. The three of them trotted down an eerily empty version of their hometown. They were grateful for the bright glow of the moon to see by, but that didn’t make it any less the middle of the night, and didn’t make the incorporeal mockeries of tangible items all around them any more real. Heads darting in every direction, their chorus of chattering teeth and quivering flanks was halted when the line abruptly stopped, and the fillies ended up in a tangled heap of legs and tails in the dirt.

“Hey—whut gives!?” Applebloom yelped and flailed from underneath her companions. “Whut’s goin’ on!? Why’d y’all stop!? Is sumthin’ gonna eat us? Ah know sumthin’s gonna eat us! Ah just know it!”

Sweetie Belle scrambled to her hooves and waved her forelegs dramatically at her companions, who were now hugging one another and squealing with incoherent fright. “No, no! Relax! It’s just this!” With that, she reached out and prodded her hoof at the empty path before them.

It was faint, but something was definitely impeding Sweetie Belle’s progress. The remaining crusaders, curiosity overcoming their fear, stepped up and prodded the empty path out of town as well. When they touched the nothing that was there, the air around their hooves rippled, revealing a very faint, transparent latticework of pale blue energy. Their eyes rolled up and out, following the strange phenomenon. The energy field was in the shape of a dome, and appeared to encompass the entire town.

“What…what is it?” Scootaloo asked nopony in particular, staring at the sky in shocked awe.

“A-ah dunno,” Applebloom whimpered, her ears drooping, “but ah don’t like it one bit. Let’s…let’s try another path.”

A short trip around town confirmed their fearful observations – the baffling ‘wall’ did indeed block all escape from the phantom Ponyville. No attempt to force through or dig under it worked – even standing on one another’s backs and trying to leap up higher resulted in nothing but another collapsed pile of wounded filly pride.

Sweetie Belle, her eyes on the now eerily peaceful night horizon, rubbed her hooves together nervously. She jolted when she felt a sharp pain in her flank, and whirled to find Scootaloo standing there, a bit of her pale grey coat in the winged filly’s teeth.

“What are you doing?”

Scootaloo spat out her friend and shrugged sheepishly. “Pinching you? This is probably a dream, right?”

“Pinch yourself then! You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

Applebloom winced after bapping herself in the cheek several times with a hoof. “Ain’t…ain’t no dream, ah don’t think. Whut…do we do now?”

The three scared Cutie Mark Crusaders huddled in the middle of the street for a time, trying to look in every direction at once. They nearly died of fright when all their ears swiveled towards a crashing noise and a yelping sound outside their field of vision. All three pairs of eyes met.

“It…it sounded like somepony got hurt,” Scootaloo commented. “We should…we should go see what happened.”

“I-it’s not scary,” Sweetie Belle continued the justification, “it wasn’t a roar, just a yell. We…we really should go see.”

None of the fillies moved until Applebloom finally chimed in. “We’re all…Cutie Mark Crusaders. We ain’t afraid of nothing. A-and maybe we’ll even get our cutie marks in…uh…ghostbusting?”

Together, they investigated.

Comments

[Okie Brony]

Cutie Mark Crusader Ghostbusters!! Yaaaay!!!
👻 😱
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