The Best of All Worlds

by NerfedFalcon

Things to Do in Ponyville When You’re Dead (Part 1)

Twilight woke up just as the sun rose over the train, which still hadn’t arrived at Ponyville yet. I was starting to wonder just what kind of era these ponies lived in, or how big Equestria was, that a train could run all day without stopping. I was about to ask Applejack, since she’d probably come in on the train to Appleloosa before, but Twilight woke up first, and our attention was drawn to her. “You feel any better?” I asked, pointlessly.

“Don’t go botherin’ folks just as they’re wakin’ up, sugarcube,” Applejack chided me.

“No, it’s alright, Applejack,” Twilight said, yawning. “I feel fine. Perfectly fine, actually. I’m surprised that sleeping helped me recover from the injuries Kazuya gave me...”

“I’m not,” I replied. As the two girls stared at me, I told them, “It’d take too long to explain in terms you’d understand. For now, it’s just worth noting that a good night’s sleep is a cure-all, at least for humans like us.”

“So it’s a human thing?” Twilight asked.

“I think it’s actually to do with this world specifically. Like I said, it’d take too long to explain, and why question something useful?” I brushed my fringe out of my face before continuing. “That reminds me. Do you remember anything new?”

Twilight opened her mouth, but Applejack spoke first. “Actually, it’s the strangest thing... I know I never met Twilight before in my life, but while I was sleepin’, I dreamed that I knew her. I dreamed of adventures we’d gone on together, even though I know I’ve never been into the heart of the Everfree Forest even once. And...” She paused, adjusting her hat and blinking a few times as she thought of how to say it. “The strangest part was, they felt real. And not like a normal dream feels real until ya wake up. It feels real even now.”

There was silence in the cabin. “I don’t believe in reincarnation,” I said finally. “But something’s definitely going on here, something that goes beyond just magic.” Twilight hummed slightly, and I couldn’t tell if it was assent or just thinking. “Well, I suppose we’ll find out eventually. We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing.”

“And just what are we doing?” Applejack asked.

“I figured we’d figure it out once we got to Ponyville.” She raised an eyebrow, and I continued, “Well, if Kazuya reappears, we’ll all have to be a lot stronger, right? If monsters are attacking ponies more often, maybe we can do some mercenary work. Get paid, get experience, learn a few new skills, and maybe even get commissioned on some major quest or another. And I’ve gotta avoid colonising Equestria by accident. To that end, Twilight, you’ll have to keep me updated on anything or anyone else you remember, so I know who’s important enough to bring into the Game.”

She just nodded. Applejack spoke next. “Soren, there's something I gotta do once we get to town. I wanna talk to my family. They’ve got a right to know what’s happened to me, and that I’m not likely to see ‘em again for a while once we’ve moved on.”

“Do you think I should be there?”

“Not likely. You’d probably get an earful from Granny Smith,” I suppressed a smirk, but Applejack didn’t notice, “and more than that from my brother. I’ll explain it to ‘em first, and I’ll make sure that they know you’ve already gotten what you deserve for it from me. Might even be cheaper than trying to find an inn.”

“Alright, you do that,” I replied. “Twilight, you’re with me for the morning, then. We’ll look around the town for information, maybe lodging if it doesn’t work out with your family, though finding a stable for Karin is gonna be a nightmare, considering. There any good taverns around Ponyville?”

“Berry Punch’s place on the main street is pretty popular,” Applejack said. “And she probably won’t even notice you two aren’t ponies.”

“Works for me. Meet us there whenever you’re done dealing with your family. It’s not likely we’re gonna go that far from it, right, Twilight?” Once again, Twilight didn’t respond. “Twilight?” She was staring at a point on the wall behind me, and I suspected that she wasn’t actually seeing the wall, and furthermore that she hadn’t heard a word that Applejack and I had just said.

“What’s up with Twilight?” Applejack asked.

“Probably lost in a memory,” I guessed. “It’d explain why she isn’t paying any attention to us...”

The train let out a loud whistle and began to slow down. A conductor walked past, shouting, “Ponyville Station! Ponyville Station!” Twilight didn’t tune back into reality until the train came to a complete stop. As soon as it had, she stepped out of her bunk and started walking forward quickly, as if in a trance. I tried to hold her back, but she just pushed past me and out the door.

“Twilight!” I called out, running into the corridor after her. She was already stepping off the train, and I had to sprint to catch up to her, pushing past a couple of ponies on the platform to grab her wrist before she got too far away. She finally seemed to snap out of her trance, turning around to face me with a surprised expression. “Twilight, where the hell were you going? You can’t just run off like that!” A few ponies were turning to stare at us, but I didn’t care.

“Soren?” she asked. “...How did I get out here?”

“You walked straight off the train. And you probably missed everything that Applejack and I were saying. How much do you remember?”

“I’ve been to Ponyville before,” she replied. “In fact... I think I used to live here. I remember a large tree, with a door in the front... and I remember that it feels like home. I wanted to go there, to see if it was still there.”

“Well, you can’t just go wandering off without telling anyone,” I replied. “And that’s not what I meant, anyway.”

“Oh, right,” she said, blushing. After a pause, she admitted, “I don’t remember much of what you two said. I know you were talking, but...”

I groaned loudly and walked Twilight over to a bench, waving Applejack over as well. “Applejack’s going to explain to her family what’s happened to her. I was going to take you around the town to gather information. Right, AJ?”

“That’s what he said, sugarcube,” Applejack said.

“But...” Twilight tried to protest, but couldn’t find the words for a few seconds. “What if it’s something important?”

I looked at Applejack for a moment, and she nodded. “Fine,” I said. “We’ll investigate the tree house first. We’re still going to meet AJ at the tavern, though. Around noon, I guess? I’m not good at judging the time just by the sun’s position.”

“Clock tower above Town Hall,” Applejack replied. “Use that. Well, this situation isn’t going to be made any better by waiting around.” She walked off, and I stood up, telling Twilight to stay sitting. The ponies in the guard’s van were more than happy to return Karin to my care, and as soon as I’d retrieved her, fed her and caught up to her satisfaction, I let Twilight know I was ready. Neither of us said any more as she started walking again. I followed a few paces behind, trusting her memory’s sense of direction.

As we left the train station, I saw that one of the ponies who had been staring at us before, a mint-green Unicorn, was walking over towards the bench. Another pony was lying down flat on it, and I assumed that was how ponies normally sat if they could. Strangely, though, the green pony was shifting herself to sit like I had. It wasn’t working very well, as her tail and general body shape kept getting in the way, but I didn’t see if she ever succeeded or not, because Twilight called out to me and I realised I’d fallen behind.

With me leading Karin by the reins, we walked through the main street of the town, heading towards the clock tower above the Town Hall. I made a mental note as we passed a building with a sign hanging out the front with some berries, assuming that it was ‘Berry Punch’s tavern. Seeing it reminded me of something I’d been meaning to ask for a while. “Hey, Twilight?” I asked. She didn’t stop walking, but turned her head back towards me slightly. “What’s up with those tattoos on ponies’...?”

I didn’t want to say ‘asses’, but she seemed to understand. “They’re not tattoos,” she replied. “They’re called Cutie Marks. They’re an expression of who a pony is; their special talent, or their purpose in life. Foals aren’t born with them; they receive them at a certain moment in their lives that shows them what their talent is. And I think the word you want is ‘flank’.”

“So what you’re saying is that ponies don’t have free will? They’re a slave to the tattoos on their flanks for their whole lives after childhood?”

“No, it’s not like that!” She stopped and turned to face me properly. “When a pony finds out what they want to do in their life, that’s when their Cutie Mark appears!”

“So a mark on their flank tells them what they’re going to enjoy for the rest of their life. Point still stands.”

“You’ve got it the wrong way around! A Cutie Mark doesn’t tell a pony what they’re good at or what they want to do; it’s based on what they discover for themselves!”

“So what happens if your perspective changes?”

Twilight didn’t respond for a while, and tilted her head slightly. I decided to elaborate, “What happens if something happens to a pony that leads them to decide that the thing that gave them their Cutie Mark is no longer what they want to do?” Ponies were staring at us again, but I didn’t care. I had a point to make, and nothing would stop me.

“That’s preposterous, Soren!”

“Really? Is it really unthinkable that a pony whose life was dedicated to, let’s say, writing plays would no longer find it fulfilling? That he would give up writing, despite it being his Cutie Mark? What if a pony whose talent was weightlifting suffered an injury that meant he could never lift again? Can you honestly tell me that it’s never happened before?”

Twilight didn’t have an answer to that, and actually looked sad, turning away from me. I stammered for a minute, trying to figure out what to say. “Look, maybe I was being a little harsh,” I offered. “C’mon, we’re losing time. We’ve gotta find out what that tree house is.” She nodded, and started walking again. I noticed a few ponies that had been staring at us were now looking at their own flanks thoughtfully. “Don’t worry about it, it doesn’t happen often to humans either,” I offered, and at least one pony nodded.

Twilight’s tree house was only another minute’s walk away. It didn’t look like I’d thought; I was expecting a house built in the shape of a tree. It was actually a proper, growing oak tree, with leaves blowing in the wind and birds nesting in its branches, with a door at the bottom, some windows and a balcony. “Huh,” was all I could say. “Magic, am I right?”

Twilight didn’t respond. She’d already opened the door and stepped inside, and her gasp led me to fall in behind her. Inside the tree was a large circular room, and around the entire ring, stacked almost entirely haphazardly, were books of all shapes and sizes. Most of them were covered in dust, a thick layer covered the entire floor except for a few prints of hooves and Twilight’s boots, and a statue of a pony’s head in the middle of the room was similarly impossible to make out the true colour of. “The Golden Oaks Library,” Twilight said. “But... it didn’t have a librarian, all this time?”

“What do you mean, all this time? Or, let me guess, you still don’t fully remember?”

“I remember that I used to be the librarian here. It was after I left Canterlot, under Princess Celestia’s orders. I was worried that Nightmare Moon was about to return, but she wasn’t listening, or so I thought at the time...”

I held up both hands. “Slow down. Who’s Nightmare Moon?”

“The Mare in the Moon. Also known as Nightmare Moon. A dark spirit, trapped within the moon, to be released on the thousandth year, when the stars will aid in her escape...” She dropped out of the trance and started looking over the shelves, searching for a book. I was about to offer to help when I realised that I couldn’t read Common Equis script, and by that point she’d already found it anyway. “It’s all right here.”

The book had a picture that spread through both pages, and words underneath it that I couldn’t make out. “Okay, so, I still can’t read this,” I said. “Gonna need a translation...”

And so I heard the tale of Nightmare Moon, her fall from grace, her imprisonment for the crime of resentment, and the power of a set of mysterious artefacts that Twilight called the Elements of Harmony. It wasn’t a long story, but Twilight kept pausing in it, as though there was something more she wanted to add at each turn. Before I could ask, though, she moved on, and gradually I began to pick out symbols in the text.

As far as I could tell, the script of Common Equis was strictly phonetic, each symbol representing the same sound wherever it appeared. None of the swirls resembled any English sound, and the way they connected to each other made them difficult to make out, but I could see that there was method in the madness of their written language. Then again, English wasn’t so different, with a letter or a set of letters meaning any number of sounds depending on context, and rules so easily broken that they might as well not have existed.

“So, the Mare in the Moon...” I started. “That’s really a dark spirit who used to be a princess, then?”

Twilight nodded. “I was there on the day that she was released. By finding the Elements of Harmony again, I and a few other ponies were able to do what Celestia couldn’t, and restore Nightmare Moon to her original form. But... If the Mare in the Moon is still here in this Equestria, then it can only be a matter of time before she is released once again.”

“So what are we waiting for? We’d better find the Elements of Harmony. Do you remember where they were?”

Another nod, but at the same time she shook her head. “Not where. Who.”

“That doesn't make any sense. What are you on about?”

“The physical forms of the Elements of Harmony are merely a focus for their power. Their true power comes from their bearers. I didn’t know that at first, but I remember learning it just before the final battle. There were five other ponies, representing five of the six Elements: honesty, kindness, laughter, generosity and loyalty.”

“And the sixth?”

She placed a hand on her own breast.

I facepalmed. “Should've seen that one coming.”

“The Elements of Harmony chose me as their cornerstone, the bearer of the Element of Magic. Perhaps it’s why I’ve always had a talent for magic as most understand it...” She looked off to the side for a moment. “But once I started to reach out to other ponies, I learned that I was skilled at organising groups and keeping them together, no matter what threatened to split us apart.”

I thought about it for a moment before turning back to Twilight. “Remember anything else about the Elements? They sound pretty important. If the ponies wielding them are the most important part, do you remember who they were?”

“Not at the moment,” she said sadly. “But I’m sure it’ll come back to me. Maybe seeing one of them will remind me of who they were.”

“I don’t like to bank on maybes,” I replied. “Guess we don’t have much choice, though.” I looked through the window towards the town hall, and saw that it was getting close to noon. “We’d better make for the tavern. Maybe you should take AJ back here after we’ve met up.”

“What would you do, then?”

“As much as I enjoy reading, I enjoy it a lot more when I can understand it. I’ll probably see to finding someplace to keep Karin.” At the sound of her name, the Chocobo let out a cry from outside, and I laughed. “Steady on, girl,” I called out. “I’ll be right out. C’mon, Twilight,” I said to the girl, and she nodded and stood up, replacing the book.

The walk to the tavern was entirely uneventful, compared to the walk to the library. Hitching Karin’s reins to a post outside the tavern as I had in Appleloosa, I took Twilight inside. Like the saloon in Appleloosa, the tavern was almost entirely deserted, but I chalked that up more to it being yet early in the day rather than a town gripped with fear. There was a pink mare standing behind the counter, who smiled at us as we entered. “Didn’t expect to see anypony come in so early,” she said, confirming my suspicions and Applejack’s. “What can I do you for?”

I ordered a cider; Twilight didn’t want anything. We sat down at a table together, and my drink arrived just as the door swung open. “Just a minute!” the owner, who I assumed was Berry Punch, called out as she set our drinks down and rushed back behind the bar. The entrant was Applejack, and there were two ponies behind her. One of them was quite small, wearing a bow and lacking a Cutie Mark. The other was the biggest pony I’d seen in all of four days of contact with the species, wearing a yoke and a Cutie Mark of half an apple.

The little one seemed almost worried, and kept glancing between me and Applejack. The large one was wearing a stern expression, and walked straight up to me without changing focus. I took a drink from the mug that had been placed in front of me before turning to face his intense stare. “Uh, hi—

~~

The sound of Macintosh headbutting Soren was loud enough to echo slightly in the bar. Berry Punch let out a startled noise and ducked down behind the bar as I ran forward, hoping to stop a fight from breaking out between the two. If a fight had started, though, it was already over; Soren collapsed to the floor, and I was only just in time to catch him. His drink fell off the table as well as Twilight stood up quickly. “What—?”

“What’s the big idea, Mac?!” I shouted. “I already told you, I already gave Soren as much of a beating as he needed!”

“For her,” he said, nodding to Twilight. He turned to Soren, then to me, adding, “For you.”

“Well, now you’ve avenged me,” I said angrily. “And now you can help me drag him into your bed until he’s recovered!” Mac was still frowning, as he had been after he left the house as soon as I’d told him about Soren. “I get that you’re angry about what happened to me,” I said.

“When you didn’t get off the train, we thought you were dead, and now it turns out that you’re just a... what did you call it?” Apple Bloom said meekly. “But we thought you were dead!”

“C’mon, a little trip to Appleloosa wouldn’t kill me, you silly filly,” I said, ruffling her mane with one hand as I’d done with a hoof many times, back when I still had hooves. “And it’s not like I’m any different in here,” I placed the same hand over my chest, where I assumed my heart was. “I’m still Applejack, I’m just...”

Apple Bloom smiled at that. “Really? Alright, I trust ya, sis.” She looked at Macintosh, widening her eyes as far as she could, and eventually he relented as well, nodding slightly and picking up Soren on his back. “You comin’ too?” she asked Twilight. “If you’re a friend of Applejack’s, you’re a friend of the whole Apple Clan. I’m sure we could at least invite you ‘round for brunch...”

She started using the puppy eyes again, but Twilight didn’t even let it start before she laughed and said, “Of course. That’s...” She trailed off, staring into the distance before quickly snapping out of it. “I’m sorry, I was just remembering the last time I had brunch with the Apple Clan. It was...” she grimaced, “...quite an experience.”

Strangely, I found myself laughing as well, remembering a purple pony from out of town arriving during the Apple Family Reunion. She hadn’t wanted to stay, but after relenting, she could barely walk a few hours later once the meal had ended. Outsiders, all the same. Small stomachs.

...

I paused at the entrance to the bar.

Where had that memory come from?

Author's Note:

Relatively uneventful chapter this time, but the next one should make up for it. More Mane 6, more Displaced humans, and more monster hunting. But still not the end of the quest...

Edited one of Soren's statements in which he based a decision on something he shouldn't have known.