Portals. Portals Everywhere!

by Piece Bot

Chapter 19 - Timing a Hurricane

Author's Note:

Sorry this chapter took so long to get out. Life got in the way and I wrote this in between stuff I had to do so sorry again if this is all over the place.

Leaving the latex suit in her bedroom, Joseph stumbled into his own room and banged his head against the pillow on the floor. Just as he was getting to sleep, the door to his room opened. Moving his head so that his chin rested on the pillow, he found that Twilight had walked in. When she opened her mouth to say something, Joseph raised a hand, sat up and stopped her.

“Listen, Sheila. I’ve had two days without sleep. If you want to say something, then say it before I go troppo.” He groaned, rubbing his bloodshot eyes with his fingers.

“What’s this doing in my room?” She asked, levitating the black latex suit in front of Joseph.

“That is meant to help with time travel. I found it while exploring Aperture. It’s got some electromagnetic properties or something that are meant to help prevent friction while travelling through space-time or something. Now if you’ll excuse me sheila, I really need a sleep. So, good morning.” He gave Twilight a small salute and got comfy under the covers, almost immediately falling asleep.

“Oh. Um, Crikey? Can you come with me?” She asked nicely.

“Oh sure. Since he’s out like a light, you expect me to come with you, sheila? Good luck with that.” Crikey scoffed and merely fell silent as he felt himself be lifted up. “Damn it. You should warn a potato when you levitate them next time.” He protested.

“I would but you have no way of defending yourself over it anyway.” She said and made him follow her with her magic.

“This is true.” He said with a sigh and tried to figure out why she wanted him to even go along with her.

“If you’re wondering where I’m taking you, then I’ll tell you. We-” She got interrupted by robotic laughter. Looking behind her, she found Crikey laughing due to the way his light kept flashing rapidly.

“No need … to tell me, mate. I can read your mind. You’re wanting to go to Aperture so you can take the suit back. No can do. Remember how magic isn’t allowed in the test chambers? At all?” He asked and tried to roll out of the magical grasp, even though he knew it would be no use.

Twilight stopped at that, glaring back at the potato. “Listen here you oversized battery. If I take this suit back, then the future that Other Twilight came from will no longer exist.” She said, turning around fully.

“How do you know though? Time is finnicky like that. If the event is meant to happen, no matter how much you deviate from the path, it will always wind back to that event. Maybe this event the Other Twilipony came from is supposed to happen?” He said sagely, wishing he could nod.

“Time … time … TIME! ALL I NEED IS TIME!” Twilight shouted suddenly, her eyes sparkling at this newfound idea.

“What did I just do?” Crikey wondered, sweat-dropping at the look she gave him.

“That’s it! I’ll just go to the Starswirl the Bearded Archives but instead of going backward, I’ll go FORWARD INSTEAD!” Twilight shouted, giving off a maniacal laugh after doing so.

“Oh bollocks. Pardon my French.” Crikey grumbled.

“Why are you going to do that?” Spike asked, having walked down the stairs at all her shouting. “You do know Joseph is trying to sleep right?” He reminded her with a raised eyebrow. Twilight quit her prancing around to smile at Spike sheepishly.

“Oh, right. You going to try to stop me, seeming he’s asleep?” She asked, inching her way towards the door with Crikey in tow.

“HELP! I’M BEING YAMNAPPED!” Crikey shouted, hoping somepony would hear other than Spike. Twilight froze at the door and slowly turned around when she heard a shout.

“Drop that yam in the name of the fun police!” Pinkie shouted, dressed in a police costume. Twilight’s jaw dropped at the costume and her mind blanked out for a bit as she tried to register what Pinkie was trying to accomplish.

“What’s she doing?” Ember asked, leaning over the banister at the top of the stairs to look outside better.

“She’s apparently yamnapping Crikey.” Spike said in disbelief.

“She’s gone. Completely.” Ember commented with what sounded like a sad sigh.

“Pinkie … what are you doing?” Twilight asked slowly, moving slowly towards her friend.

“I’m here to stop you from going to the Archives!” She answered, proudly putting a hoof up in an effort to stop Twilight. Twilight merely groaned, annoyed at not being able to figure out what her time-travelling future-self was trying to warn her about.

“Why won’t you let me go to the Archives? I have every right to do so and I have no intention of you stopping me!” Twilight shouted at them, causing every single pony around the courtyard to look at her.

“You could always teleport.” A female robotic voice in Twilight’s head suggested. Moving her head from left to right, she tried to figure out who said it.

“Teleport where?” She asked out loud, momentarily forgetting about the Canterlot Archives.

“The Canterlot Archives of course. Once you do, I’ll tell you more. And make sure to bring that potato along with you.” The voice commanded.

“Okaay … this is getting a bit weird.” She mumbled, lighting up her horn, having every intention of teleporting to Canterlot.

“Oh, before you do, make sure to put on that suit. It’ll help with what you need to do in Canterlot.” The voice added before Twilight felt a presence leave her mind.

“Stop her!” Pinkie shouted, blowing into a whistle. Running up to Twilight, Pinkie jumped and managed to tackle Twilight the instant she flashed the latex suit on and teleported, throwing off her aim completely.

---

Rolling into Joseph’s room, Wheatley rolled his optic eye and bashed into his side, trying to wake him up.

“Ow!” Joseph shouted as he clutched his side, curling in on himself instinctively. “What was that for?” He groaned, trying to keep the pain to a minimum. Slowly opening his eyes, his vision was tinged red with how hard he had been hit. What he could see that wasn’t coloured red was blue. A giant, moving blue eye to be exact. He blinked to clear his vision. There was still blue. Shit.

“What are you doing here Wheatley? Actually, a better question. How did you even get here?” He asked, rubbing his eyes and groaning as he moved to sit up, holding his side gingerly. “You really pack a punch mate.”

“I don’t care mate. Listen. Luna sent me here to see if I could help you out. The only thing is, when Luna teleported me here, I saw a couple of your friends as well as that potato teleport somewhere.” He explained, moving his eye around as he did.

Joseph sat up a bit straighter but winced as pain spiked his side. “Describe them. Did they look like sheilas?” He asked.

“Yup. One was pink with poofy hair and a copper costume. The other one was purple and looked like the one that teleported them. The potato was in her magic when she teleported, so I can only assume the poor sad got dragged along with them.” He said, a slightly sad at seeing another fellow robot forced to take part in something.

“Damn those sheilas! I specifically told her NOT to listen to her Other self!” Joseph shouted, thumping his fist against the ground.

“Calm down! We will find them and hopefully everything will be alright mate.” Wheatley said, rolling around the room.

“Sure. Hey, why did Luna think you could help? No offense but you’re not really equipped to handle any threats.” Joseph asked with a raised eyebrow, his eyes following Wheatley as the sphere rolled around the room.

“I just bashed into you, didn’t I mate? That should be good enough.” Wheatley protested, demonstrating by rolling gently into Joseph’s leg.

“That didn’t answer my question. Why did Luna think you could help?” Joseph repeated his question, slowly getting up and walking over to his gun. “I, for one, don’t think I need your help.” He added, picking up his gun and heard the familiar whirr of the gun coming to life.

“Fine mate. Luna thought I could help because I’m a personality core. For one thing, I’m not a moron. Just wanted to make that clear right from the get go. Secondly, I can find out where your friendly yam is.” Wheatley relented, rolling to a stop.

“I don’t believe you mate. The first part, nope. Second part, definitely not. I just can’t see you helping me out.” Joseph said simply, shaking his head and walking out his room.

“Oh come on! Luna did send me here for a reason! I just happened to forget what it was!” Wheatley begged, rolling after the human.

“Then how did you forget it the instant you teleported here, dipstick!” Joseph yelled at him, stomping his way down the stairs.

“I’m not a dipstick or a moron!” Wheatley shouted back, tumbling his way down the stairs, muttering little ‘ows’ as he hit each step.

“No one is calling you that!” Joseph argued. “And quit following me!”

Watching from the balcony on the upper level of the treehouse, a robotic black Alicorn watched on as the human argued with the rolling ball. The small plates of chitin armor lining her muzzle turned down slightly in a frown as she realised that the boy was going to go after his friends. She didn’t want that. Her eyes flashed a bright green and making her wings buzz with electrical power, took off from the balcony and hovered over the arguing duo.

Her eyes flashed green again, along with the jagged metal on top of her head that managed to pass for a horn. Soon as it did, a couple of ponies milling about around the treehouse jerked their heads up and began a slow and steady beeline for him. Satisfied with what she hoped was a success, the Alicorn poured more power into her wings and shot up into the sky, flying to where she had stashed that infernal bookworm. The cake maker and potato were just an added bonus.

“Oi, mate. Look behind you. Don’t glare at me!” Wheatley said as he noticed a couple of ponies with glowing green eyes marching towards them. Joseph turned around and saw the same thing.

“Oh really? Come on!” Joseph said furiously, pointing his gun at them and shooting out blue gel. The gel hit, causing their fur to melt off but they weren’t bouncing around like they were supposed to. “They’re not meant to do that. I think it’s safe to say … RETREAT!” Joseph shouted in a panic, grabbing Wheatley by one of his handles as he ran away. Looking back briefly, he noticed that the metal ponies gave chase, not even caring as they knocked the other citizens out of the way. ‘These ponies are bloody nightmares!’ Joseph thought.

---

On the other side of Ponyville, away from all the noise and mayhem of what was happening at Twilight’s library, Rainbow Dash had gotten practically all of Ponyville’s Pegasi in preparation for being this year’s chosen town to send water up to Cloudsdale.

“Alright, Pegasi! You saw the video I played for you earlier. We are this year’s town to send water up to Cloudsdale to help them bring rainwater across Equestria,” Rainbow explained, currently summing up what went on in an earlier meeting. She brought out a graph from a nearby hollowed out tree and unfurled against a townhouse wall. “See this city?” She asked, tapping one of the two buildings on the graph. The group gave a collective nod.

“This, is Fillydelphia. They broke the wing record by flying with over nine hundred wing speed. We are going to beat that. We are going to beat that record and with Spitfire, the Captain of the Wonderbolts,” She brought another scroll of furled up paper out of the same tree hollow and unfurling it, the group saw that it was a massive poster with Spitfire on the front.

“With Spitfire recording our top tornado speed and seeing if we can get the water out of our reservoir, I KNOW we can do it!” Rainbow said with gusto, pumping a hoof in the air. The various Pegasi gathered gave a whoop along with her, psyched for getting the water up and out towards Cloudsdale.

A bit later in the day, Rainbow encouraged the team to keep at their exercises. Hearing some fiddling going on near the start/finish line, Rainbow looked over and found Spike and Ember fiddling with a wind machine. Flying over there, she took a closer look at the contraption and then looked at the pair of dragons quizzically.

“What’s this for?” Rainbow pointed to the fan.

“This is meant to help with measuring your wing power. Twilight can’t do it, so me and Ember are helping out instead.”

“What’s the matter with Twilight?” Rainbow asked in concern.

“She teleported somewhere along with Pinkie and Crikey. Joseph went to see if he could find them but ended up being chased by a couple of ponies as well as a rolling ball that spoke with a British accent.” Ember piped up, watching Spike intently as he fiddled with the wing power measurer.

“Twilight and Pinkie are missing!? Why didn’t you tell me sooner!?” Rainbow shouted at the pair.

“Because I knew you would act this way. Besides, Joseph’s trying to find them so it’s all good.” Spike said, cringing back a bit at Rainbow’s shout.

“So? If he can’t find them, then what will happen? We just go on living like normal?” Rainbow asked, managing to keep her voice down this time as she noticed the rest of the Pegasi looking in their direction.

“He will find them, Rainbow. For now, just try and focus on getting that water up to Cloudsdale alright?” Spike said, patting Rainbow on the shoulder. She sighed and holding back hot, angry tears, she went on refocusing on the matter at hand and looked towards the gathered ponies.

“Alright ponies. This is meant to measure your wing speed. Spike and Ember will help out by recording the results. Is that clear?” She asked the assembled group. They all nodded collectively and with a bit of shoving and grunting, along with a few ouches and excuse mes, they all lined up and flew past the power reader, Ember calling out the wind speed to Spike as they flew past.

Surprised to see Fluttershy take a part in the trials, the group watched as she slowly flew forward, barely making the fan spin. Narrowing her eyes at the measurement, Ember whispered it to Spike. When he heard it, they both argued for a bit at whether or not they should tell Fluttershy what her wing speed was.

“Fine … I’ll tell her.” Ember sighed, rolling her eyes. “If only to stop our arguing. Fluttershy …” She clasped her claws together in preparation to speak to her but after seeing a very hopeful smile, she faltered a bit, her mouth twitching a bit. “Uuh … your wing power was … haah.” Ember sighed, looking down at the suddenly interesting grass. “Your wing power was 0.5.” She mumbled. Somehow hearing over the chatter, Fluttershy heard her score.

“Fluttershy? You okay?” Rainbow asked, lighting down next to her. “Your score wasn’t that bad. In fact, I believe it’s perfectly normal for you!” She said in what she hoped was helpful manner, draping one of her wings over Fluttershy’s back in a further attempt to comfort her..

Fluttershy couldn’t believe that her score was so low. Compared to all the other Pegasi, she may as well have been walking. Not listening to what Rainbow said, she shrugged the wing off and putting her butterscotch yellow wing in front of her face, ran towards her home, crying hot tears of embarrassment all the while.

“Fluttershy!” Rainbow shouted after her but got no answer back. She turned to the rest of the group and glared at them. “What are you looking at? Get back to training!” She ordered, waving her hoof from side to side at the abandoned training equipment.

---

Hearing some crying from a nearby hill, Joseph looked behind him at the ponies that were still managing to chase him.

“Don’t these buggers ever give up?” Joseph asked, turning around and backpedalling.

“Nope. They’re robots mate. Or did you miss that little detail?” Wheatley asked snarkily.

“Don’t snark at me. Of course I knew they were robots. I just thought they were- ow!” Joseph quit talking when he felt himself banging his back against a tree. Pointing his gun shakily at the approaching robots, Joseph gulped and placed some speed gel between them. Soon as the robots stepped on it, they were sent zooming to the side, immediately smashing into each other and breaking up into a mess full of wires and metal.

“Why didn’t you do that before!?” Wheatley shouted, making Joseph’s ears ring. Placing a his hands against his ears in an attempt to drown out the ringing, he dropped the portal gun which caused Wheatley to roll a bit down the hill, stopping just before the orange gel.

“I didn’t because I was panicking.” Joseph said through gritted teeth, falling down to sit between the roots of the tree. “I couldn’t think so I just ran.” He added, giving Wheatley a glare.

The crying filled the space where they had been arguing as they both held an agreement of silence. Looking behind the tree he was resting against, Joseph found Fluttershy lying on the ground, crying her eyes out over something.

“Fluttershy?” Joseph asked, moving around the tree to be a bit closer to her.

The pony’s shoulders moved up and down but her ears flicked to show she had heard.

“Why are you crying?” Joseph asked, looking at her worriedly. Finally bringing her head up to look at him, Joseph found that tear tracks ran down her face, matting the fur that they went through.

“Oh, hello Joseph. I thought you were looking for Twilight and Pinkie?” Fluttershy asked as she hiccupped through the sentences.

“I was but then I got distracted by a couple of … somethings.” Joseph said, not wishing to tell her it was robot ponies in her current state.

“Oh.” Fluttershy answered, lowering her head again.

“You still haven’t told me why you were crying though Sheila.” Joseph said, looking down at her.

Raising her head up, Fluttershy hiccupped and told Joseph what happened out on the track, how she had gotten a below-average score and how she thought that she couldn’t compare to the others there.

“Oh. That bad huh? How about this. Me and your animal friends could help train you. We can see if you get better at flying. I guarantee that you will get a better score than before.” Joseph said, only happy to help. Sitting down near her, Joseph leaned back on his hands as he looked up at the sky.

“No I won’t. The other ponies will just laugh at me again.” Fluttershy lamented, giving a frown as a few blades of grass fell off her muzzle.

“Even so, at least you’ll be a better flier. Tell me this. Was Rainbow laughing at you?” Joseph asked, not moving his gaze from the sky.

“No … she wasn’t. She was trying to help me but I didn’t listen.” Fluttershy said softly, looking over at Joseph.

“Well there you go. As long as your friends are behind you, you’ll be able to do whatever you want. Nuts to what everyone else says.” Joseph said, sitting back up and looking Fluttershy in the eye.

“You want to help me train?” Fluttershy asked him, not sure if she heard him correctly.

“Yes? You’re animals can help you train more than I can. I don’t even know the first thing about flying.” He said, giving a shrug.

“Flying is about the lift of air catching under the wings mate!” Wheatley called out.

“Nobody asked you Mr. Know It All!” Joseph shouted back, getting up and stomping over to the ball.

Having picked up Wheatley and his gun, Joseph helped out Fluttershy as best he could but mostly, the animals did all of the work with helping Fluttershy train. By the time it was done, judging by the sun’s position, Joseph found that it was almost sunset.

“I think you’re ready sheila. Want to give it another try?” Joseph asked, following Fluttershy back towards the oval. She only gave a nod as all the other ponies watched them move onto the field.

“Hey, Joseph. Where’s Twilight and Pinkie?” Rainbow whispered to him, watching Fluttershy move up to the starting line.

“No idea. I kind of distracted by this nutball,” Joseph said, giving Wheatley a shake.

“I’m not a nutball!” Wheatley protested.

“Anyway, I got distracted by Wheatley, ponies trying to chase me with glowing green eyes as well as trying to help Fluttershy out. How’s your day been?” Joseph asked casually, watching Fluttershy do her best to race towards the speedometer.

“It’s been fine. After Fluttershy had a little blow out earlier, I’ve been training this group to make a tornado so that we can beat the record Fillydelphia set.” Rainbow said. “What do you mean Twilight and Pinkie are still missing?”

“Crikey is missing too and I mean what I mean. Twilight and Pinkie are still missing. Also, Fillydelphia? I thought the Canterlot name was bad enough.” Joseph said.

“2.5! You did a big improvement there Fluttershy.” Ember said happily.

“A 2.5? I thought it would have been higher than that.” Fluttershy said sadly, hiding her face behind her mane.

“If it was higher, I would have been even more impressed. At least you gave it another burl.” Joseph said, clapping.

“Yeah, but it won’t be enough to get the water out of Ponyville.” Fluttershy said.

“You sure about that? Because I think that with the entire group, including you, Fluttershy, we’ll be able to get the water up and out.” Rainbow said confidently flapping her wings to hover in place.

“As long as you’re sure, then I’ll help.” Fluttershy nodded her head and gave her friend a soft smile.

---

Watching the hurricane form from afar, a robotic, black Alicorn magicked the two robots the human had mercilessly destroyed, not knowing it was an accident. Standing upon a hill, her green eyes glowed as she watched the water rise up into the cloud city above. “Those ponies won’t know what hit them.” The alicorn said, a female voice grating out of her mouth as her vocal cords worked. The jagged metal atop her head flashed, teleporting her along with her smashed up robots.

Comments

[Radioactive Dragon]

AND IM THE FIRST TO COMMENT ON THIS PAGE!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MOM GET THE CAMERA!

[Radioactive Dragon]

Author's Note:
Sorry this chapter took so long to get out. Life got in the way and I wrote this in between stuff I had to do so sorry again if this is all over the place.

its alright i mean if i did not focus on life i would be ded not big surprise

[unknowncape7377]

6635184
Same dude my third chapter of my story is about halfway done