Episode 12 - Wrap Up W
The sun shone down on yet another winter day in Equestria. At least one pony was happy with this, though it was quite unexpected as the great Winter Wrap Up should have been completed the day before. Now, an army of volunteers were struggling to sweep away snow, break ice, make new homes for migratory birds, wake the hibernating animals, and help the land catch up with the already warm sun.
The previous day’s progress had been delayed by overzealous bureaucrats, an incompetent novice nest maker, an obsessive team leader, a too-young skating dragon, a panicking nest of snakes, a couple of chance oversights, and even some springtime warm air. Today, the teams were organised and everything was going well.
At a couple of long benches on the edge of the woods, the nest making team was still hard at work. Rarity had insisted in being in charge of this group all the way through, because only she had the necessary attention to detail and artistic sensibilities to make a nest that a returning bird could be proud of. Her perfectionism had started to show, however, and proved that it wasn’t always good to be the best. She’d spent most of the previous day trying to fix one nest to her satisfaction, and had replaced every twig a dozen times already and it still wasn’t good enough. The other members of the team were making more nests, but they didn’t have her skill or precision.
Rarity finally looked up from her work when the gemstones on her collar glowed with a brilliant pink light. They flashed once, and then again a moment later. She debated running to help her friends, but she knew she still had work to do here. If the team was slowed down again then they might not finish in time for the end of today either. The decision was made for her when Applejack and Rainbow Dash hurtled through the clearing, whipping leaves through the air in their wake. All it took was one carelessly placed hoof, and it was clear that no amount of hard work would put that nest together again. Rarity could have complained, but even her dedication to making beautiful things wasn’t as important as her friends. She hurried after them in the direction of the Everfree Forest.
“KINDNESSᏔJOKER!” the Driver boomed over the quiet murmurs of hiding animals. Twilight Sparkle was the first to reach the Everfree, of course, having the benefit of teleportation magic. The animals that weren’t already attempting to burrow into the frozen ground gasped in awe at the light show, a phenomenon the Champions of Harmony had seen so often that they barely thought it worth mentioning now. Twilight’s body glowed brilliantly, and by the time it was possible to look at her again the armour had materialised around her.
Applejack was quick to look around, and saw Fluttershy’s body frozen rigid. She pulled her out of the clearing and stashed her safely under a bush until whatever the threat was could be dealt with. A deafening roar came from the darkness of the woods, and everypony who wasn’t currently wearing magical armour did their best to find something sturdy to hide behind.
(“At last, a dopant attacking in the woods so we don’t have to lure it out of town to avoid collateral damage!” Twilight commented)
(“I don’t think it’s the dopant. It’s a gojirus.”)
(“A… what?”)
(“Gojirus. Kind of like a hydra, but bigger and angrier. They hibernate almost the whole year and only wake up on the hottest day of summer. Then the male spends a week hunting for enough food to last them through the winter while his mate lays her eggs, before they go back to sleep again. It’s so romantic!”)
(“I think I heard of them,” Twilight mused as they got closer to the source of the noise, “But why would they be awake now?”)
(“I don’t know, I’m sure Spike wasn’t that loud. And they don’t even get woken up by earthquakes usually.”)
(“Not to mention most hydra are thermoxypnic. Only heat wakes them from their sleep cycle, because moving at colder temperatures is painful for them.”)
(“That explains why he’s so grouchy, then. Can you think of a way to get him back to sleep? Is there something in the library?”)
Twilight paused for a second, wondering what you could use as a lullaby for a many-headed lizard. Nothing she had with her, at any rate. A reptilian head thrust out of the sylvan shadows, fast as a stone from a slingshot. Fluttertwi rolled to one side to dodge it, levitation magic enhancing the power of her wings to make high-speed maneuvering effortless. A second head lunged past them a moment later, striking a tree and sending piles of snow cascading to the forest floor.
(“I don’t want to hurt him!” Fluttershy gasped in the privacy of their mind, “Don’t even think about that! I just want to coax him back to sleep, but I tried everything I could think of, and he won’t stay still long enough! The cold’s hurting him, and that’s keeping him awake!”)
Again and again they dodged enraged strikes from the massive creature. Both tried to think of a way to get it to stay still, but even with the enhanced power of the Driver, Twilight didn’t have enough magical strength to hold more than one head at a time.
“Maybe we can ask the others for help?” Twilight looked down at her friends as their pattern of dodging brought them back within sight, “Could any of them do something we can’t?” In her mind’s eye, it was easy to see what Rainbow Dash would do in this situation: dodge and weave as fast as possible, just like they were already doing. Dash would probably be a lot flashier about it, but that didn’t seem like it would help. They thought about Applejack, whose response would probably be a mighty kick to bring the gojirus down, and Fluttershy was completely against that idea.
(“Rarity’s good at nest building,” Fluttershy pondered in the middle of a high speed sequence of loops, “Maybe she could tidy up the gojirus nest so that he’s more comfortable going back to sleep. But he’s not even going back to his nest. What would Pinkie do?”)
(“Something completely ridiculous,” Twilight responded, and in that moment the perfect plan appeared in both their minds at once, “And that’s just the right thing to do.”)
They soared between the trees, effortlessly avoiding any collision. As soon as they came close to the gojirus, it lunged at them again. It wasn’t hostile, just angry. It was in pain and didn’t know why, and had never even imagined that something like snow could exist, so it attacked every movement it could see instead of following its normal methodical hunting method. In a way, they were lucky that Fluttershy had been nearby, because otherwise the rampaging beast might have destroyed half the forest before they even realised it was awake.
This time, they didn’t try to avoid the huge beast. They flew straight towards it until it seemed a head-on collision was inevitable, and then peeled away at the last moment. The head twisted to follow them, but wasn’t quite so maneuverable in the air. The next time they approached in a different direction, and came even closer before avoiding its eager fangs. Again and again they charged straight at the beast only to pass by as close as they dared. And then, with two heads coming at them from opposite directions, they dived down and flew so low that their hooves trailed in the tightly packed snow on the path. The heads followed, but the creature only just avoided banging two of its own heads together. And then they knew they had it right. They dived between the gojirus’s legs and emerged behind it, praying that it wouldn’t react quickly enough to try sitting on them.
It almost managed to trip itself with its necks, heads stretching out backwards, but proved it wasn’t as simple minded as an ordinary hydra. It stopped and withdrew those heads, and then shuffled its gigantic feet to turn around. And then, it finally realised it couldn’t move when its many necks pulled taut. Fluttertwi had flown such a complex series of loops under the creature’s noses that its serpentine necks were now knotted around a few sturdy trees. It tried to move them by brute force, but the ancient gnarled willows of the Everfree Forest weren’t so easily moved. Every tug pulled the knotted muscles tighter, and before long it was completely immobile.
As soon as she was sure, Fluttertwi flew in closer and landed on the gojirus’s muzzle, staring straight into its eyes. It tried to shake her off, but she was expecting that.
“Stop causing such trouble!” she barked angrily, and Twilight was amazed to find that all the power behind those words was coming from her soft-spoken friend. Fluttershy cared for all the forest creatures, and tried to nurture them as much as she was able. But her love was a mother’s love, and that meant it had to be strict at times. She could talk down to this massive creature and overcome all of her fear because she knew it was for his own good. Sometimes you just had to be firm to be fair, and somehow her motherly instincts were transmitted through the air where their eyes met until even the giant gojirus couldn’t disobey. “Calm down and go to sleep. It will hurt less in the summer, I promise.”
And just like that the lizard’s eyes started to close, one head at a time.
“The crashing stopped!” Applejack called out as the other ponies rushed into the clearing, “Are you okay? We–” she cut herself off on seeing the slowly swaying lizard heads, and continued in a whisper: “We were worried about you. Did you beat it?”
“No,” Fluttershy answered sternly, “We just helped him calm down enough to sleep. And you don’t have to whisper, once he’s started sleeping his ears just switch off. He can’t hear a thing until the warmth of summer starts his heart pounding again.”
“So what woke him up this time?” Rarity asked.
“I’m thinking dopant magic,” Twilight suggested, “There’s been too many delays we can’t explain in this year’s Winter Wrap-Up. I would have sensed it if it was unicorn magic of any kind, and even the pegasus weather arts leave a trail in the air that can be picked up by a suitably complicated and difficult spell. There’s only one thing I can think of that could change so many different things without anypony being able to pinpoint the source.”
“I just hope that our Resonance Meter shows more results. We need to be able to find the dopant before they can cause any more trouble.”
“We need to help this big guy get back into his nest, as well,” Twilight pointed out, “Cold air burns them, and it’ll take a lot of work to untie these knots. Rarity, will you be able to help fix up his nest around him once we got him in?”
“Oh no! I’ve got nests to make!” Rarity looked like she was going to panic and head straight back to her squad, but she stayed around long enough for the group to make a plan. They could cover the beast in leaves and branches for now, and a squad of strong ponies would have to be sent out when there was more time. For now, the most important thing was to make sure that they could wrap winter up, and get spring started on time.
Rarity was distraught when she returned to her desk and found that nothing remained of the nest she had spent more than a day trying to repair. But once she had given up on the impossible project, it took only minutes for her to craft a new and perfect nest from scratch. Applejack and Twilight Sparkle smiled to see their friend doing the work she needed to do as they headed back to the town square.
Rubber Stamp, it seemed, had talents beyond the simple accumulation of paperwork. In preparation for the Winter Wrap-Up, he had produced a map of Ponyville and the surrounding area divided up into numbered areas to which different squads could be assigned. Now, the map had been annotated with the location of every unforeseen setback over the weekend.
“I thought this might help,” he said as he unrolled the huge paper, “There’s twenty different delays, but I think some of them are just accidents, or mistakes that somepony doesn’t want to take the blame for. But if there’s a monster behind some of them, maybe we can work out where it will strike next.”
“There was definitely one when I was out skating,” Twilight pointed at one of the coloured stars stuck onto the map, “Or at least, Pinkie was pretty sure about it.”
“If her Pinkie Sense says there was a dopant, she’s probably right,” Rainbow Dash shrugged, “We all stopped doubting her a long time ago.”
They looked at the map again. Out of all the incidents that Rubber Stamp had mentioned, there were some that were almost certainly a mistake on somepony else’s part, and some that seemed to have some supernatural involvement. The awakening of a gojirus almost certainly fell in the latter category. Twilight and the two administrators debated the other incidents, with Rainbow Dash and Applejack chipping in an opinion until they both had to head away to deal with their assigned tasks. That left a dozen suspicious incidents, mostly arranged in a rough circle around the town. It didn’t give them an immediate clue, but they were confident that with the quality of the mapping, it would make it easy to rule out some ponies once they had a list of suspects to start narrowing down.
“So did you see any auras through the Gaia Resonance Meter?” Twilight asked, inspecting her latest invention to make sure the crystal lenses hadn’t degraded at all after being left active the whole morning.
“A few,” Pencil Pusher produced a clipboard, with a list of names on top of it, “There was yourself and Rarity, of course, and your friend Pinkie Pie too. Is it safe to assume those are all because of your Harmony powers, even though you seemed to be illuminated in different colours?” Twilight nodded her agreement, and they started to go through the rest of the list. The two administrators might have a problem with knowing what was a sensible amount of paperwork, but once they knew what they needed to do, they were both exceptionally talented at following proper procedure to the letter.
Spike had an aura when viewed through the Meter, which surprised Twilight as much as anyone. She’d not tried looking at him through it because she’d never thought he could have one. The question of whether dopant magic was related to dragon magic was added to a rapidly growing mental checklist. They spent a few minutes watching the coils of silver-white energy like mist around his body, extending to show where his neck and tail would be if both were considerably longer. Twilight could have studied the shape all day, and formulated new and innovative theories about the growth of dragons, but right now they’d been looking for something specific.
After eliminating six Champions of Harmony, one baby dragon, and two former Gaia Memory users whose bodies apparently showed some trace of that energy, they were left with a small list of four earth ponies who had seemed to shimmer in a different colour when Pencil Pusher looked at them through the tube, and nineteen ponies who hadn’t passed through the administration desk as part of their duties that morning.
“Right. We’ll check out those four first,” Twilight proposed, with a lot more confidence than she was feeling, “If they all turn out to be false positives, then we’ll have to go and try the meter on the others.” She couldn’t help worrying, though, that the names on their list were all earth ponies. The dopants they’d fought so far had been an equal mix of the three tribes. Could it be that her invention was merely picking up earth pony magic, too often ignored by unicorn scholars?
If that was the case, she tried to comfort herself as Pencil Pusher rummaged on her clipboard searching for the list of names and addresses, then she would likely receive some awards in any case. The three field theory, after all, was still conjecture with no way to finally prove it. But a technology capable of even detecting magic and converting magical potential from one field to another would be a marvel with many uses. Right now, though, she didn’t care about being remembered as a scientist. She cared about protecting her friends –and under that term she included every resident of Ponyville – from attack by monsters.
“Here you go!” Pencil Pusher handed over a single slip of paper bearing four names, descriptions, and addresses. Even though it was only one page, she had thought to include both the home addresses of the four ponies and the location they were currently assigned to on the map. It was a concise reference that Twilight herself would have been proud of. She beamed, ready to praise the skill that had gone into it, until she caught sight of the first name on the list.
“Big McIntosh?” She gasped, confused.
“He’s not one of the Champions of Harmony, is he?” Rubber Stamp backed away nervously, unsure whether Twilight had some reason to be angry at their data collection now, “I mean,I know he’s Applejack’s brother. But we just wrote down what we saw. If there’s some mistake…”
“No, no, it’s nothing you’ve done. It’s just…” Twilight found she didn’t know how to explain, “Well, we checked him out once already, I’m pretty sure he’s too smart to be taken in by those things. Better safe than sorry, though?”
Big Mac, of course, was working to free plows from a sheet of ice that covered several fields. It was a tough job even for him and Applejack.
“We don’t need magic,” Applejack grunted as soon as Twilight pulled the Resonance Meter out of her saddlebag, “We got this.”
“I’m not here to help with your ice problem,” Twilight reassured them, “I haven’t got the muscles for that kind of work. But I’ve got a list here of ponies who might be the dopant, and I’m going to find them all and check them out.”
“Asking to see everypony’s cutie marks?” Applejack shrugged, “Hope it’s not a long list, or you’ll spend the whole day explaining what you’re doing.”
“Not that long,” Twilight shrugged, “And I’ve got this now. It’s called a Gaia Resonance Meter, and it should light up if I point it at a dopant.”
“Wow, you’ll be done in a flash then!”
“–or if you point it at some other ponies, too,” Twilight bowed her head, disappointed still. “I think sometimes it might light up for certain kinds of earth pony magic. Or maybe it’s detecting anypony who was nearby when the dopant used its power, I can’t tell. So I’ll still have to ask to see a few cutie marks.”
“Well, it’s better’n asking everypony,” Applejack admitted, “Just let me know if you need me when you find the monster. Hey, are you pointing that thing at my brother? Whatever happened to trusting family?”
“I do trust him. But if this thing’s giving false positives, I need to try to work out why. And that means I need to double-check the whole list. Take a look,” and she passed the technology-encrusted tube to Applejack.
Big Mac did indeed look like she was staring through a cracked piece of red glass, and glittering sparkles traced a pattern in the air around his neck. It was strange to see her brother like that, wondering if he might have become a monster since they last checked. She couldn’t bring herself to suspect him, though. Then she turned the device on Twilight, and saw a similar kind of sparks clustering closer together to make the shape of the Driver instantly recognisable.
“You’ve not turned into a monster since we checked, have you Big Mac?” she asked, hoping it would be clear there wasn’t any real suspicion.
“Nope!” He shook his head, then stepped away from the plow he was pulling on for a moment to show off both of his flanks.
“Thanks,” Twilight smiled, “Now I need to work out what’s causing that aura, if it isn’t a Gaia Memory, and check up on the others. Hopefully one of these will be the pony we’re after. Next up, I need to speak to a stallion called Honest Joe.”
As she walked away, Applejack came up to offer a few last words of encouragement. Then she leaned in to whisper to Twilight: “Don’t worry about that glow, it’s obvious he’s not a monster, you saw his marks for yourself.”
“Yes. But that just makes me wonder what it could be. I don’t know any other form of power that would form a shape like that around a pony’s neck, it doesn’t seem like something that would naturally come from earth pony magic.”
“No. But it looks an awful lot like your Driver, with those magic sparks. And it made me think, I know Big Mac’s heard me talk about how much stronger the Elements make us. And I’ve had the Driver here with me a few times, when you were busy and we didn’t want you to always be the first pony out in an emergency. Who’s to say he wasn’t tempted to try it on?”
“But the Elements didn’t choose him! That could be…”
“So he can’t use them. But the Driver is an Element too, didn’t Celestia and Nightmare both say that? It doesn’t do anything on its own, but it might leave some kind of trace.”
“Could be,” Twilight avoided a little giggle as her treacherous mind presented images of Big Mac wearing some of Applejack’s other clothes. Her friend didn’t go in for clothes often but she had a few, like the outfit Rarity had made her for the upcoming Gala. And visualising Big Mac in that outfit, with those galoshes, was enough to make her wish she didn’t have such a good imagination.
They both looked back at Big Mac as Twilight went off to find the next possible dopant, but neither said anything more on that subject.
“Honest Joe?” Twilight asked. The stallion shook his head. She waited, hoping that a further answer would be forthcoming.
“He’s out today,” he eventually seemed to understand that she wanted an answer, “Doing the Winter Wrap-Up. I’d be out there too, shovelling snow and letting all the ladies get an eyeful of these muscles. But somepony’s got to keep the shop running, you know?”
“Right,” she nodded, wondering if his body somehow looked so much more impressive when he was shovelling snow. She couldn’t imagine anypony she knew being particularly impressed with what she saw now, but many stallions she’d met were over-eager to show off their muscles, and had something of a high opinion of themselves. “So, where is he? The ice breaking squad said he signed off an hour ago.”
“He’s not come back here. Maybe he went to the farms? He said he’d heard one of them always gives hot cider to everypony when they finish, so maybe he’d hang around on the edges until they start giving something out. He’s earned it, after all.”
Twilight just nodded. This pony had the muscles of a full grown stallion, but still the selfish mind of a foal. She had no doubt that he’d be right alongside Honest Joe if he didn’t need to keep the store open today, and he resented having to do a job that didn’t involve the prospect of free cider. There was only one farm where she thought that might be a possibility, though.
Twilight nodded to the staff at Honest Joe’s store, muttered her thanks, and then headed off in precisely the direction she’d come from. She didn’t have to walk all the way back to Sweet Apple Acres, though. A little way outside town, she came across a pony who had the store’s logo emblazoned across a heavy winter jacket. Knowing the type of ego that led a stallion to wear something like that, she wouldn’t have been surprised if it was his cutie mark as well.
“Honest Joe?” She panted as she drew level with him, “I think we need to talk a little.” She couldn’t check his cutie marks, as he was draped in a heavy cloak to keep him from getting too muddy when he reached the farm. But if he was innocent, it wouldn’t take too long to persuade him to let her see.
“What can I do you for?” he brayed, confirming every stereotype her mind had managed to form. This was the kind of pony who’d say it was a beautiful day and then try to charge you for it, “I was just checking out to see if any of the snow clearing teams could use any help. There’s so much work, you know, and I always put my –”
The rest of his speech was drowned out by what could only be described as the noise of a large mechanical engine. Twilight had never heard of an engine so loud or so large before, but she couldn’t think of anything else it could have been. And then the source of the sound appeared; a horse shaped machine crafted of metal and wood, every surface gleaming red in the afternoon sun. It was hard to tell if this was a dopant that looked like a machine, an engine of some kind with amazingly lifelike movements, or somepony in a bulky suit.
After their last encounter, the Champions of Harmony had found nothing they could use to track down this creature, and Twilight was determined the same wouldn’t happen again. She raised the Gaia Resonance Meter, and saw a brilliant aura, and lines of corruscating red fire flowing through the armour from a point on the shoulder. There could be no doubt that a Gaia Memory was powering this, whatever it was.
“Honest Joe!” a voice like metal grating on metal roared, “You are the icy dopant?”
There was a look of terror in Joe’s eyes as he shook his head, backing away and stumbling erratically in fear. He couldn’t even speak as the red figure towered over him.
“Every evil or selfish act you perpetrate using the power of the Gaia Memory taints all of us, and this will not be permitted. These are supposed to be the gateway to the next evolution of ponykind, not a trinket you can use for your own ends.” With his judgement pronounced, the red warrior reared up and produced a Gaia Memory, but to Twilight’s surprise it was clear, not the same red glow as the aura she’d seen through her meter. The mechanical stallion adjusted some kind of dial on the back of the Memory, before holding it up and squeezing the switch.
“ENGINE!” The voice was just like a roar of engines, coming from both the strange Memory and the armour. But rather than place the crystal back into his body, the dopant produced his sword from somewhere and pushed the memory into its hilt.
“Stop!” Twilight called, “We just need to talk!”
“No,” the red monster growled, “There’s no time for talking. I can’t let a criminal dopant get away, especially not this one.” He popped the Memory out of the sword’s guard again with a gesture so subtle that Twilight couldn’t see how he did it, caught the falling crystal with his other hoof, and slammed it firmly into a slot in the back edge of the blade.
“STEAM: MAXIMUM DRIVE!” Clouds of vapour suddenly boiled off the blade along its entire length, and held together in the air to make a gaseous sword more than double the length of the metal one at its heart. The red warrior raised it high above his head, not seeming to care at all that Honest Joe might not be the dopant, or that even if he was he wouldn’t survive a strike like that without transforming.
“No!” Twilight screamed, her magic manipulating the Element of Joker as quickly as she ever had.
“LAUGHTERᏔJOKER!” For once luck was on their side, and Twinkie’s forehooves came together just in time to catch the massive insubstantial blade in the air, a half inch from Honest Joe’s mane.
“Thanks, Pinkie,” Twilight gasped, not thinking for a moment if it would be better to say that internally, “You got here just in time.” As she spoke the red figure – horse or living cart, or whatever it was – pulled back its sword and swung again. Twinkie parried the blow expertly with the back of her hoof, but even with the enhanced strength the Driver gave them there was enough power there to knock them down, and the sword was hot enough to burn unprotected skin.
“You can’t be protecting a dopant?” the red creature roared, “You’re Champions, like me! We’re supposed to punish them, all the ones who can’t control the power. He isn’t even a G4, he’s using a G3 Memory that escaped obsolescence by evolving into a G3.5, so unreliable that their mere existence makes the system less stable! You can’t defend that!” There was clear disgust in his voice, and a sideways glance made it clear that Honest Joe didn’t know what he was talking about any more than Twilight did.
“What’s a–” she started to ask, but Pinkie took over their shared mouth to interrupt.
“We haven’t got time for questions! There’s a dopant interfering with the ice on the other side of town, we need to defeat this one and hurry over there. I was just about to call you when you–”
“It’s not him?” their enemy sounded genuinely surprised, as far as they could tell through the sound of roaring wheels and crunching gears, even though that was what Twilight had already said. He took one more swing with the massive sword, forcing them to duck to avoid it, and then roared off into the distance. When he abandoned the bipedal stance he seemed to favour for fighting, the red champion could make the wheels on his legs spin on their own, racing along the road without needing to move a muscle. It was so different from any power the Champions had ever seen before, but he made it look natural.
“Did he say… Champion?” Pinkie was immediately confused, “Does that mean he’s like us, not a dopant?”
“Or she, remember,” Twilight corrected, “And we thought it might be possible there’s another Element out there. But what kind of Element is Engine?”
“What was…” Honest Joe was still sitting in a huddle by the roadside, coat stained with mud where he’d fallen. He looked at them as if he didn’t know whether to expect another attack.
“Don’t worry about it,” Twilight tried to calm the terrified swindler as quickly as she could, “He thought you were going to turn into a monster, but he was clearly wrong. Go and get some of that cider, I hear it’s good this year.” Then there was a sparkle of pink and blue magic, and the armoured Champion of Harmony teleported away. Honest Joe stared at the space where they had been for a few moments, half expecting them to reappear, then shrugged and continued along the road to Sweet Apple Acres. Some good home-made cider wouldn’t help him to understand any of this, but he was pretty sure that by the bottom of the mug it wouldn’t seem so important anyhow.
“Help!” Jade Palace and Level Clear called from the middle of the lake. They skidded back and forth on a tiny slab of ice, that rocked alarmingly in the water. They had decided between them that as this was one of the largest lakes around Ponyville that scoring the untouched ice would be a perfect way to show the world that the Winter Wrap-Up was going to proceed on schedule. But then the ice had split, a circle all around them melting in an instant. There was no way that could be natural.
“Help!” They both screamed, again and again though there was nopony close enough to hear. Pinkie Pie had been watching over their group, but had already reprimanded the two for taking unnecessary risks. They’d wanted to show her that they could do the right thing on the ice even if they weren’t as over-the-top exuberant as her. And then when she’d heard their screams of panic, she had taken one look at the ice and then fallen asleep on her feet, toppling neatly against the closest snowbank.
Now they just screamed, and tried to get over their terror enough to stay still. But the tiniest movement made their ice-floe haven tip alarmingly, and sent them skittering toward the edges. Jade knew she shouldn’t have come out here. She shouldn’t even have been on the ice, except that she’d been too proud to admit she couldn’t swim, and Clear said it was the same for her.
Shivering was all it took. The ice beneath them tilted, and hooves found no purchase on the slick surface. What friction the ice would have provided was negated by a thin layer of water where Level Clear tried to grip on, and in seconds she was in the ice-cold water. She flailed madly, and just about managed to keep her head above the surface, but Jade could only watch helplessly as she drifted out of reach. If Level Clear didn’t drown, the chill of the water would start to sap her energy very quickly.
Pinkie Pie appeared in a flash of magic, this time dressed up in gleaming plates of metal and crystal. Jade did an immediate double-take, and saw that Pinkie was still exactly where she had fallen asleep a minute before on the other bank of the lake. Then the newcomer turned to face them, and it was clear to see the Champion of Harmony, a unicorn with one half of her body in Pinkie’s distinct bright coat and mane, while the left half had Twilight Sparkle’s much more sedate lavender colouring.
A tendril of unicorn magic, a pink and blue spiral, reached out to pluck Level Clear from the freezing waters and transport her safely to the bank. Once they were sure she hadn’t swallowed too much water, and wasn’t injured beyond the panic, the grasping magic stretched out again to pick up Jade, together with the platform she was standing on. It must have weighed as much again as she did, but Twilight/Pinkie could lift it without a second’s thought.
“You can stop screaming now,” Pinkie smirked, her voice surprisingly normal given that she seemed to have only half a mouth. Jade found it a bit strange, but at least she had seen the Champion close enough to understand the stories she’d heard from friends about two ponies becoming one. She stopped screaming, which had somehow become almost automatic, and tried to think of something meaningful to say. She would happily have settled for a way to thank them without seeming like a sycophant or a fool.
“Did you see the dopant?” Twilight’s voice came from the same mouth that Pinkie had spoken from a moment before. It was no threat, but somehow it was even more disconcerting than the suddenly melting ice.
“The what now?” Jade hoped as soon as the words were out of her mouth that they hadn’t sounded as ditzy as she thought.
“The monster,” Twilight explained, “There’s something been going around trying to sabotage the Winter Wrap-Up, nopony’s managed to get a good look at it yet, and stunts like this make me think it’s getting more desperate. If you saw it, that would make it easy for us to work out what we’re dealing with.”
“I didn’t see,” Jade shook her head, wondering how close she’d come to actually being able to help the town’s heroes. She never seemed to be in the right place at the right time, but long experience didn’t make disappointment in herself any easier to bear. “We were skating, trying to break the lake because nobody had done it yesterday, they said it was a low priority, and Stardust said that the sun hadn’t heated as much as it was supposed to, so we thought we could manage. But then suddenly the ice was melting, in a big circle, and I couldn’t look away because I can’t swim, I was scared, and I just kept thinking I might drown if I didn’t keep looking at where was water and where was ice.”
“Shh,” Twilight took the slightest step closer, and urged her into silence, “Shh, calm down. You don’t need to get overexcited, you and your friend are safe now. And I promise you, we will find that monster and stop it before things like this can happen to anypony else. Now, I think you should go home and rest. The Wrap-Up is nearly done now, and you’ve worked as hard as anypony.”
Jade nodded, and pulled herself to her feet. There was almost a crowd around them now, everypony who had some kind of medical training on this side of Ponyville had gathered to make sure they were okay. Somepony put a warm blanket around Jade’s shoulders, protecting her from the chill air. Level had already got one, replacing the soaked silks that had flown out so dramatically when they’d been skating. She couldn’t say for sure, but she didn’t think she’d be able to wear that particular outfit again without bringing back all the wrong memories.
“So what do we do now?” Pinkie Pie trotted back over to where Twilight was waiting on the crest of a hill, as soon as she was back in her own body. “No clues where the dopant went, no idea where he’s going to strike next. Is that red guy really out to stop dopants like us?”
“I hope so,” Twilight stared down at her hooves, looking for anything to keep her attention on that might suppress certain mental images, “I mean, he stopped that stallion, Castle Tail. But then we never saw him again. If he thinks it’s okay to kill a dopant, then… he’s not like us at all. And I have to say, if that’s true then we have to stop him.”
“We have to stop winter first, though. Can’t have some icy dopant slowing things down any more.”
“Right,” and they headed back to the town square. When they arrived, they found that Rubber Stamp had drawn up an even larger map, and unrolled it across the steps of the town hall so that they could easily see the whole thing. Every incident was recorded here, together with times and descriptions. And also, a complex spider web of coloured lines that almost drowned out the shapes of the buildings.
“What’s this?” Rarity was just arriving from the south, bearing a checklist of all the nests created and laid in the trees.
“A graph of everypony’s movements, an advanced time and motion study!” Rubber Stamp declared proudly, “We know that if a pony’s jobs have been done, then they were in the place they were supposed to be for at least part of the allotted time. Taking this line, for example, we know that yesterday afternoon, Spoiled Rich was assigned to the nest making team, and completed eleven nests. Based on the typical complexity, which I’m sure you can double check, this means that between coming here for her assignment and coming to report completion, she would have spent a maximum of forty-seven minutes doing things other than making nests. It would have taken sixteen of those minutes to walk to the tables and back, therefore she could not have gone to any place more than sixteen minutes’ walk away from the nest making tables, or detoured slightly farther from the expected route along the way. Therefore we know that between those two times, Spoiled Rich didn’t set a hoof outside this yellow outline.”
“So you know she couldn’t have been responsible for the flooding at the farm,” Twilight pointed to a flag sticking in the other side of the map, “It’s brilliant. I would never have thought of tracing time and place on the same map like that.”
“So what do we do now?” Pinkie peered at the map, just a little confused.
“We look at each dopant incident in turn,” Twilight said, “We make a list of everypony who could possibly have got there at the right time. And then we compare them to find out who is on all the lists.”
“Wow! It’s like that index thing in the library, but on a map.”
“One problem,” Pencil Pusher was the only downcast face at that point, “We already cross-referenced the lists, and there’s nopony who could have done it.”
There was an uncomfortable silence that lasted several seconds. Then, everypony offered their suggestions at once.
“What if there’s more than one monster?”
“You must have made a mistake!”
“It could be an outsider?”
“It’s a spirit of winter, not somepony here at all.”
“Dopants can move faster than a normal pony,” Twilight pointed out the details the more outlandish speculations might have missed, “And there’s nothing to say that the time we discovered the problem is the same time it actually happened. Like when I got stuck on the ice, the dopant might have left some kind of spell or trap there hours before.”
“Oh,” Rubber Stamp looked dejected, “I thought I had something…”
“Don’t mope,” Pinkie immediately moved in at the sight of a sad face, “We try lots of different things until we find one that works, that’s what everypony does. You had a really great idea, but we need to try something else. Twilight’s Gaia Meter didn’t find the dopant either, but we’re not giving up.”
“It didn’t?”
“Too many false positives,” Twilight shrugged, “I think it’s picking up earth pony magic somehow, but that’s an interesting discovery in itself. I just need more chance to test it in all circumstances before it will help with something like this. I might even need–” and suddenly she stopped, staring up at Pinkie Pie on the steps.
“Twilight?”
“I can’t believe we didn’t think of it. We should check the library!”
All the bystanders’ heads turned towards the doors of the Golden Oak Library. Pencil Pusher was the one to say what many were thinking: “You’ve got books about monsters now?”
“No, not that…” Twilight trailed off, with no idea how she was going to complete that sentence. The other Champions of Harmony knew what she meant, though, and that was good enough. “Come on, Pinkie,” she settled for, “Let’s look up a dopant!”
The crowd watched them go, just a little confused as they trooped into the library.
“I don’t get it,” Pinkie muttered in confusion, a feeling she was more used to inspiring in others than feeling herself, “We did a Look-up this morning, and got nowhere. Did you think of a new keyword?”
“We tried everything we could think of. Ice, frost, snow. Details of the incidents. But we’ve been looking it from the wrong side. If a dopant could control snow, they’d be able to make it snow any time, and ignore what the weather factory tries. They wouldn’t need to stop the Wrap-Up.”
“So what’s the other side?” Rarity asked, though she was sure Twilight was ready to give them the whole answer in any case, just waiting for the obvious questions out of politeness.
“We were having loads of trouble clearing snow on the farms yesterday. I needed to put cleats on my hooves just to move. Applejack will probably tell you that there isn’t normally a problem with mud when you’re plowing snow. Right?”
“Of course!” Applejack called from the door, arriving just in time to hear her name, “The ground’s rock hard, you can push against every ridge. But–”
“But the ground was really soft this morning. It was like it was twice the work it needed to be, because most of your effort was going into churning up the ground. That’s why I couldn’t move the plow at all.”
“Right! And I didn’t even notice, I’m so used to stomping through mud. No wonder I was sweating so much, but why would the ground not be frozen if there’s snow on top of it? And it couldn’t be the whole place, because some of those carts were moving faster than ever, like it was magic.” And with the last word she had enough self-consciousness to blush and look away.
“Or like they were skidding on ice. Like a thin layer of the snowdrift had melted and then refrozen, making a chute that lets the plow move along with almost no resistance, just to make sure you can’t figure out what’s going on.”
“They’re extending winter by melting the snow!” Pinkie Pie gasped, “That’s kind of backwards, but it makes sense.”
“They melted the ice on that lake, and almost drowned two mares. And they woke a gojirus, a creature that can’t feel anything until summer heat causes a change in its heart.”
“I think I know what we’re looking up, then!” Pinkie grinned, and just a few minutes later she was walking between the shelves of the giant library that filled her dream space. The books here followed the shape of the shelves around her sleeping body in the Golden Oak Library, but there were no shelves to support them and she could see row upon row of books beyond the closest ones. Here, she could find every detail she’d ever heard about the entire population of Ponyville, and lately she had to assume that Luna had been adding books as well, because there were volumes detailing the strengths and weaknesses of many of the Gaia Memories they’d so far encountered. The only problem, with so much information around her, was finding the relevant book.
“Keyword: Melt,” Twilight’s voice came as if from nowhere, and gave Pinkie the focus she needed to operate the index. Most of the books vanished, whirled away into the far reaches of the library by some unseen force, leaving only a few thousand hanging in the air around Pinkie. As she watched, they organised themselves into neater rows, and formed a circle as if arrayed on invisible shelves around her.
“Keyword: Thermoxypnia,” Twilight added, and at once most of the books were whisked away.”
“Two hundred and seventeen results!” Pinkie cheered, sure that the friends gathered around her body would be able to hear her outside her dream.
“They said that the air temperature is rising more slowly than usual,” she heard Rainbow Dash’s voice chip in, “They can’t understand it, the sun is as bright as ever and we’ve kept the sky cloud free.”
“I got it,” Twilight answered, “The sun’s heat isn’t heating the air because it’s spread over a wider area, and concentrated on parts of the countryside that we don’t monitor so closely. Keyword: Refraction!” Pinkie didn’t quite follow that, but she’d always been more concerned with the way ponies reacted to the weather than the atmospheric phenomena that caused it. She thought about the word, and the books flew away until she was facing a single row of different-coloured volumes.
“Twenty-five results!” she called back, “Nearly there!”
“Don’t forget the migrating birds,” Fluttershy offered, “Gusts of wind that none of the weather ponies had caused. Cold gusts, but that’s just because the air was still cold. Right?”
“Keyword: Turbulence.” Rainbow Dash said decisively.
“Four results!” Pinkie called, “I can check all of them I think.”
“No need,” Twilight’s voice answered, “Because there’s one answer standing out, we can make a pretty good guess how the dopant’s doing this using our knowledge of science. All we need to know is why anypony would be so desperate for winter to continue. When’s the time you want a little cool air more than ever?” The others ummed and ahhed for a few moments, not spotting the connection, so Twilight decided to answer her own question.
“Keyword: Fever.”
“One result,” Pinkie answered, as a book with four letters on the cover drifted towards her waiting hooves, “The ‘Warm’ Memory gives its user the power to add warmth to something, melting ice on a pond for example, and then taking that heat away again so the ice freezes solid to trap your skates. By heating the air, they can create gusts of wind to upset tired migrating birds, or change the air density so that it acts like a lens to spread out the sun’s heat. Warmth can obviously melt a pond, even melt a huge snowbank to cause a flood and then let it freeze as solid ice once their power is withdrawn. And the Memory makes the pony using it feel overheated, like the air around them is just too hot for comfort, so of course they’d want winter to carry on.”
“You got the name of the Memory user?” Twilight asked as Pinkie’s eyes flickered open.
“Only one pony complaining it’s too warm lately. Maybe she didn’t realise it was the Gaia Memory at first. Level Clear.”
“Let’s get this Memory wrapped up, then,” Applejack declared, “Then our families can wrap up winter.”
They found Level Clear on the edge of Ponyville, bathing in a pool that still had chunks of ice floating on the surface with every sign of enjoyment.
“She just wants to be comfortable,” Fluttershy mumbled, “I’d feel bad–”
“Don’t,” Twilight was firm, “No second thoughts. The gojirus just wanted to be comfortable, too. She nearly drowned her best friend. That’s why Gaia Memories are so dangerous, it stops you seeing the difference between right and wrong. We have to stop her.” Before anypony could have any more second thoughts, she walked out from behind the bush and approached Level Clear.
“What’s up?” the Memory user didn’t seem too concerned, even though the water around her flanks was gently steaming.
“Warmth,” Twilight laid the word down decisively, like a hand full of aces.
“It wasn’t me!” Level Clear scrambled to get out of the water, but she didn’t have a dress to hide her flank this time. Four wavy lines formed a scar in the shape of a letter W over the top of her cutie mark, and there was no doubt now that she was a dopant. “It’s a mistaken identity, you’ve got to believe me!”
“We can see the mark,” Twilight pointed, “But we won’t blame you. We know Gaia Memories make you do things you wouldn’t normally do. It’s making you feel so hot all the time, if you just hand over the Memory that will stop, and you won’t have reason to hurt anypony. Please, just trust us.”
“I’ve tried! I left it at home, and it just gets hotter, it burns me!”
“We can destroy it. You aren’t the first one this has happened to, you just need to–”
“Stop wasting time, your enemy’s right there!” a red cart leapt over the nearest ridge, and quickly unfolded in the air until it took the shape of a horse again. He already had the sword out, and ran straight for Level Clear.
“What are you doing?” Applejack yelled, leaping between him and Level Clear while Twilight was still pulling on the Driver. “You can’t –” and then stopped as she realised she was directly in the path of a swinging sword. But the red pony stopped its swing just before it could strike.
“Move!” he barked angrily, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“But it’s okay to hurt innocent ponies? You can’t blame her for what that Memory made her do, and nopony’s really been hurt except her.”
“You haven’t seen what she did to my family,” and there was real venom in his voice now, “I’m the Champion of Justice, and you won’t stop me taking my revenge.”
“You’ll have to go through me then,” Applejack reared up to her full height, almost looking the armoured pony in the eye. Twilight grimaced, wishing for once that her friend wasn’t so stubborn. She didn’t want to see Applejack hurt, but she knew that standing up to the bully was the right thing to do. He even seemed to be less sure of himself now, so maybe he did have good intentions behind the armour.
“Anypony else, I’d wait until you’re not here. But I can’t let the icy dopant escape justice again.” He drew back the sword as the other Champions of Harmony gathered behind Applejack, and there was a Gaia Memory in his other hoof. Twilight had time to see that this one had an extra switch on, with multiple positions, and it seemed to have less crystal and more technological components than any they’d seen before.
“ENGINE!” the Memory called out as he depressed the lever, and then he adjusted the switch on the back and slammed it into a socket on his flank, “TYPE: JET!”
Applejack braced herself for an attack, wondering if a pony without magical armour could even survive a blow from that sword. But instead of striking, the self proclaimed Champion of Justice leapt vertically into the air and soared over their heads towards the path Level Clear had fled down.
“No you don’t, buster!” Applejack snatched the Driver as soon as Twilight held it out, and swung it around her neck while already running.
“LAUGHTERᏔHONESTY!” The ground shook as Apple Pie’s hooves landed, and they felt as if their body was made of rock. They could move as fast as ever, but there was so much weight, so much power in every muscle. They were a massive, unstoppable force with speed that only made them more dangerous, like a train or a meteor. As the magical glow around them faded, the others could see that their coat ranged from orange to pink, but with a dappled pattern between that looked almost like flames, rather than the clear silver and gold line of most of their forms.
“Two earth ponies,” Twilight muttered to herself as she watched the change, “I hadn’t realised, I’ve not seen those two transforming together before.” On impulse she pointed the Gaia Resonance Meter at her friends as they began to fight, and was almost blinded by the brightness of the colours. A crimson silhouette of a mechanical pony, and rushing up to meet him twin suns of blue and gold, with streamers of rainbow light trailing behind them. It was beautiful, and Twilight did her best to remember how the scene looked before lowering the device to watch the actual fight.
“Stop right there!” Apple Pie yelled, two voices in harmony. They swung a kick that knocked the Champion of Justice off his feet, hurling him through the air. But whatever powers his Element commanded, it seemed he could maneuver in mid air even without wings. In just a second he was charging forward again, and Apple Pie turned to hit him full in the flank with both hooves. It was a buck anypony would have been proud of, and he didn’t have time to decelerate before he was embedded a dozen yards into the nearest rocky outcrop.
For a moment they stared at the pony-shaped hole, worrying that they could have seriously injured another champion with their unexpected strength. He came out as confident as ever, though, only staggering slightly.
“I said, step aside!” he growled, “The third generation Gaia Memories are extremely dangerous and difficult to control. They should all have been destroyed a thousand years ago, but some of them remained hidden, dormant, all over Equestria, and now they’ve managed to escape obsolescence by evolving into G3.5.”
Apple Pie just glared, keeping her eyes on his forehooves. He wasn’t attacking right now, maybe he thought that if he explained himself they would somehow come to agree with him. They kept listening, knowing Twilight would admonish them later if they missed a chance to find out more about the Gaia Memories, but neither could believe there was a justification for hurting Level Clear.
“You need to understand, the chaos is just going to get worse until we can take out the ponies who are hunting down and distributing these half-evolved Memories. And I’ve been watching for the dopant with control of ice since I returned to Ponyville. Nopony will stop me. Not even you, A.J.”
Applejack was momentarily caught off guard that this monster knew her name, and that was all the time he needed to get a quick slash in with that sword. Pinkie wasn’t so surprised, and managed to knock the blow aside. The blade hit her hard in the shoulder, but the magical armour absorbed most of the force. She slammed the Champion of Justice back again, but straight away he came in for another try. She could knock the sword aside, but she was tiring fast and a couple of times it was only the armour that saved them. When there was just a second in between blows, they backed away slightly and tried to catch their breath.
““JET: MAXIMUM DRIVE!” Apple Pie didn’t have time to dodge, and the sword connected with more force than either of them would have thought possible. It was like a hammerblow to every part of their body, and though the armour didn’t break they were thrown back through the air just like their enemy had been a few minutes earlier.
Pinkie blinked and sat up, surprised to find any pain from the impact vanishing as she found herself back in her own body. In the distance, she could see Applejack struggling to stand while the red champion strode confidently past her. There was no sign of Level Clear now, so perhaps the mare had got away. It wasn’t clear right now if that was a good thing or not.
“You let her get away,” the red Champion growled, and it wasn’t quite clear if he was more angry or disappointed. “You need to start –”
“WARM!” Level Clear reappeared from behind a boulder, barely recognisable. If you squinted, you could imagine that she looked like a pony on fire. But in reality, she looked more like an artist’s impression of a roaring fire carved out of wax and brought to life. Red, gold, and even blue flame shapes decorated her body, but they bent and distorted as she moved rather than flickering like a real fire.
“You tricked me!” she yelled, “You said you were trying to help, and you were just looking for an opportunity to turn me over to that monster. Well, I won’t give you another chance to make a fool out of me!”
She leapt towards where Applejack was lying prone on the ground, but the Champion of Justice swung out with his sword to intercept the stroke. They might have different views, but it was clear that he was still more concerned about defeating the dopant. Hooves clashed against sword again and again, and it wasn’t clear to any of the observers who was hurt the most by each exchange. It drew the enemies’ attention away long enough, though, and Rainbow Dash swooped down so that Applejack could pass her the driver.
“LAUGHTERᏔLOYALTY!” They didn’t waste any time debating with the dopant, or trying to persuade her to give up the Memory voluntarily. As long as there were two enemies here, and attempt at conversation would be almost an invitation for somepony to stab them in the back.
Rainbow Pie produced a party cannon without even thinking about using lesser attacks. She quickly loaded it with balloons, streamers, and party games; the right symbols to remind Level Clear of why she loved Pinkie’s parties so much.
(“Can we do this?” Rainbow Dash muttered inside their mind, showing a little less bravado than usual, “We normally have to fight a bit until they’re stunned.”)
(“Don’t worry, we got this!”)
In the past they’d normally fought a dopant for longer before unleashing one of their most powerful techniques, it was true. But that had been as much to tap into the emotions that made them Champions, to reach the desire to protect that seemed to give them their power. But they knew that if they didn’t end this battle quickly, Level Clear could be facing something a lot more serious than a Memory Break. That desperation stimulated Pinkie’s memories of every good time they’d spent together, few as they were. It would have to be good enough.
“Maximum drive!” they yelled, and Rainbow Dash felt the familiar sense of double vision as she was both hoisting a cannon onto her shoulder and being loaded into the barrel ready to achieve a speed that was otherwise beyond even her. “Party rainboom cannon!”
Level Clear’s mind was filled with images of a whole weekend of gaming, with the friends she cared about most. She’d thought at the time that she’d never seen so many balloons in one place, and she’d run out of ways to keep hold of them all once Pinkie decided to give them out as prizes for every game she won. She remembered finally trading them in for ice cream, as well, though she hadn’t known where it came from. Ever since that one party, Level Clear had the same images in her mind every time she was surrounded by balloons, especially right now.
Then suddenly, there was a cool breeze on her face. The wind rushing past, as if it was trying to get out of the way of the rainbow-haired pegasus. A circle of many-coloured light spread out from the point of impact, and the shockwave made the ground underfoot tremble. Level Clear reclined on the icy surface, while the Warm Gaia Memory slid out of her haunch and cracked like an icicle, falling on a warm spring day. She could have lain there all afternoon, savouring the feel of ice against her side, but there was still a giant red horse standing over her, ready to bring that giant sword crashing down.
“Don’t!” Twilight Sparkle’s voice was as cold as ice, “You’re supposed to be a Champion of Justice, isn’t that what you said? But you’re fighting for revenge now, on the pony with a Gaia Memory that controls ice. You must have felt how hot her body was when you were fighting, you know that isn’t an ice power. Look at the broken Gaia Memory if you don’t believe me, that was ‘Warm’. She hasn’t hurt you, and she hasn’t hurt anypony. As soon as that Memory was broken, justice was done here.” The other Champion looked across the clearing and met her gaze, with eyes like mechanical lamps that somehow still managed to convey an emotion. His metallic head turned back and forth, looking from Twilight to Level Clear, and to Rainbow Pie, and Applejack where she still lay on the ground.
“You can’t stop me,” he rumbled at last, adjusting the switch on his strange Memory and then lifting his hoof ready to put it back into the sword.
“LAUGHTERLOYALTY: Maximum Drive!” This time it was the Driver’s melodious voice calling the name of the attack. Rainbow Pie didn’t know who the other Champion was, let alone what kind of party decorations would best suit him. They couldn’t reach into their hearts and produce any sympathy or compassion, any desire to save him from the revenge that now consumed him, because all they saw was a stallion in a suit. But they could still press down hard on both the Elements in the Driver, and unlock the basic power of their maximum drive without any aspect of redemption.
They could point a cannon as large as he was at the interloper, while he stood with his sword raised over an innocent pony. And the look in their eyes told him that every one of the Champions of Harmony would be willing to take him on if he continued fighting this battle today. That was not a fight he wanted to continue with.
“You’re right,” he muttered, and sheathed the sword along the back of his armour. Then he dropped back down to rest the four wheels of his suit on the ground, looking more like a horse-shaped cart then a mechanical stallion warrior. “But this isn’t over. We still need to destroy the unlicensed Gaia Memories, and that won’t be an easy task if you insist on saving every pony foolish enough to use them.” His wheels spun, and the noise of the engine drowned out any attempt to reply as he sped off into the sunset.
Level Clear looked in the direction he’d gone for a few minutes, and then finally broke the silence.
“I don’t know about you, but I think I’d be more comfortable without all the frost under me.”
“Yeah,” Twilight laughed, trying to push all the curiosities and worries out of her mind for the moment, “Maybe you’d like to help us Wrap Up Winter? There’s still an hour left before Ponyville is officially late into spring.”
In the end, winter was wrapped up and spring was sprung with minutes to spare. Without strange refractions in the air, the sun was quite capable of cutting through the last of the snow. The gojirus didn’t wake again, the birds returned home just in time to find a beautiful and fashionable nest waiting for every family, and the frosty ground was soft enough to plant the first seeds of the new season within days.
For a change, the report Twilight typed up about the dopant wasn’t immediately handed to Spike once the fifth or sixth draft seemed good enough. Instead, she carefully wrapped the parchment and handed it to Mayor Mare, who was tasked with reporting to Princess Celestia that the seasons had been successfully changed. It was a little more elegant, Twilight thought, for the Princess to receive all the reports on the event at once; from the three team leaders, from the organisational team (with a lot less papers than last year, but a little more useful information), from the mayor, and from the Champions of Harmony.
The report included questions again, but she wasn’t really expecting any answers. The Princesses didn’t want anyone else to find out about the Gaia Memories, so some details were too sensitive to send through the dragon post. On Spike’s advice, Twilight decided not to ask whether Princess Luna was settling in well at Canterlot again. She hadn’t heard any kind of public announcement that there were two princesses in the castle, so she assumed that must be a secret for now, as well. She couldn’t wait to get some answers, and to look through the giant book that was in Celestia’s Museum.
But it looked like, for now, waiting was the only option. With the start of spring, that meant the Grand Galloping Gala was only ninety seven days away, and some of her friends were already counting off the days on their calendars. Rarity had made dresses for them all, perfect on the third attempt, and it seemed like nothing could stop them now. It was just a matter of waiting.
Back in their basement laboratory, Twilight Sparkle and Rarity put the Gaia Resonance Meter project on hold for a while, unable to understand why so many earth ponies should give them a false positive reading. As much as they wanted to test it, they agreed that they couldn’t risk leading the Champion of Justice to attack any more innocents. So when they had spare moments, they resumed working on the collars, trying to tap into the links between the Elements of Harmony so they could send messages more complex than one flash or two.
There were mysteries still to be solved, and many enemies to defeat. But with birdsong the only distraction and golden warmth in the sunlight that woke her, Twilight found she could be quietly confident that the new Champion would come to understand them, and together they would destroy every last Gaia Memory. The future seemed bright for a change.
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All I'll say about my guess as to the mystery Champion is thus; "Hen... SHIN!" ;)
<ACCEL!>
I wasn't gonna post until I had created a review for this, but....I gotta take part in the mystery. So spoilers here we go!
Honestly, my main suspect for the Accel analogue is Big Mac. And it seems that was intentional. Though with how Skull is often mentioned by the Princesses, I'm beginning to suspect that the Apple Family has more connection with Gaia Memories than just Applejack. Their heritage DOES go back for quite a few generations.
My main suspect for The Museum's analogue is the Pie Family, and I'm pretty sure a renamed Pie Sister or even Cloudy could be Eternal.
Also, I'm surprised that you didn't use Weather for this duo. I was sure it would have been Weather. But nope. It's a new Memory called Warm. Good on ya for keeping W Vets in suspense.
8515292
Great to see someone else's thoughts :) One thing I'm never good at is working out if hints are too vague, or too obvious.
Good fake out, I seriously thought it was going to be a Winter memory.
8617468
Thanks :) It's always tough to know if I hit the mark or not with those. When I'm putting a few hints in the story, I try to pitch it so there's about a 50% chance I'd see it coming, but it's hard to imagine what I'd notice, and I think I put more effort into working out what's coming next than most people do.
Good to have feedback. This could so easily have felt like an ass-pull, or slipped into "Why did it take them so long to get it?" territory.
I figured that replacing Accel's hunt for the man with the W Memory into that red pony's hatred for the pony with an ice-themed Memory has a kind of symmetry; and should help to keep the plot a little more fresh for people who already know the twists.
To my mind, the first arc is explaining to the reader how the universes fit together (and bringing readers who haven't seen W up to speed); the second arc is getting close to the kind of other-series-transplanted-to-Equestria setup that seems to be common in crossovers; the third quarter (and the movie) has some original plots that kind of grew out of the way I'd set up the characters; and the fourth is more MLP-with-alien-technology. Though the length of the Keys of Harmony arc means there has to be a bit more overlap between the last two quarters.