• Published 6th Jun 2012
  • 2,744 Views, 117 Comments

Dinky and the Blanks - GrassAndClouds2



Lunaverse Story of the Blanks, starring Dinky and the L6

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Epilogue

“Momma? You’re not mad, are you?”

Ditzy looked over at Dinky. “About what?”

Cherilee had insisted that, as long as they were there and it was still early evening, they take the opportunity to explore Moonville fully. This would ensure that there weren’t any ponies that they’d missed. It would be a problem, Cherilee had pointed out, if some inhabitant had slept through the party that night and missed the chance to be free of the curse.

Trixie was sleeping in the clearing – apparently, the tree illusions she’d been casting were so intricate that she had almost completely exhausted herself. Ditzy had wrapped her in a blanket that she’d brought with and was watching over both her and Dinky while the other four poked around.

“I’m not mad at you for running off, if that’s what you mean,” said Ditzy. “I’m just happy you’re safe.”

“But you look mad.” Dinky paused. “At yourself.”

Ditzy frowned.

“It’s not your fault I got in trouble, Momma.” Dinky crawled over so she could lie down and look right at her mother’s face. “I mean, a lot of ponies said it was my fault that Corona almost hurt you, but—“

“What? How?”

Dinky nodded. “After Corona ran away, I was telling all the other ponies how you helped save us even though Corona was threatening all of us. And then Silver Spoon said that, if you’d gotten hurt, it would have been my fault, since you wouldn’t have helped if I wasn’t there.”

“Dear, that’s not true. I would have gone to help any pony. You’re not at fault at all.”

“I know. I know she’s wrong.” Dinky smiled. “But just like it wasn’t my fault that you were in danger from Corona, it’s not yours that Grey Hoof put me in danger. Cause I wanted to help the ponies here, and it was my choice, and—“ But then Ditzy was hugging her.

“I know,” she said. “And you’re a very brave, very compassionate foal. But your mother will always try to protect you as much as she can.”

“I know.”

“Just… let’s try not to have any more adventures for a while.”

“I’m adventured out,” Dinky agreed. “Can I skip school tomorrow to sleep?”

“I think we can arrange that.”

Raindrops floated down. “So, good news and bad news.”

“Good news first, please,” said Ditzy.

“The curse over the village is definitely broken. Lyra did some sort of magic sensing thing. And it looks like almost every one of the ponies got, uh, cured of the curse.”

“Almost?”

Raindrops sighed. “We don’t know if he’s still got the curse or not, but it looks like Grey Hoof got away.”

Ditzy shot to her hooves. “What? How? Why do you think that?”

“There were two sets of hooves leaving the back end of town. Identical. We know Grey Hoof left once, with Dinky… must have left again once all the others began glowing and vanishing.”

“Did any of the others—“

“No. There’s nopony in town, and there’s no other hoofprints leaving. Every one of them moved on, ‘cept Grey Hoof.”

“Well, that’s… that’s good. I hope they’re all happy together.” Ditzy smiled. “But… what’ll we do about him?”

“Trixie’ll probably have to write Luna. Put out a wanted notice. It shouldn’t be a problem, right? We know what he looks like, in both forms. He’s got no followers, no magic besides being a kelpie, and he probably doesn’t even have two bits to rub together. He’s not the lord of town anymore; he’s a party planner who can turn sticky for half the day.” Raindrops chuckled. “I don’t think we have too much to worry about.”

“I don’t get how he could leave. Wasn’t he stuck in town?”

“Lyra has some theories…”

Dinky smiled. She wasn’t scared of Grey Hoof any more. She had her friends, and her Momma, and that was what mattered.

Trixie murmured in her sleep. “Promotion to Countess? Really? Of course I’ll take it. And my first decree is…”

Dinky crept closer.

“I’m gonna make Ditzy Doo the Postmaster General of Equestria. And she and Dinky get all the muffins they want.” Trixie paused. “Second decree is that I get my own palace.”

Ditzy laughed. “Let’s let Trixie sleep, dear. She worked very hard last night.”

“She’s really cool, Momma.”

“Yes, dear. But, you know that when she talks to you about political things, you should always check with me before believing her.”

Dinky nodded. “Yep! But I should still talk with her ‘cause I’m a good influence!”

“You certainly are.” Ditzy nuzzled her daughter. “Now… if you want, it looks like there’s still a few of the sweets from the party here last night. And I don’t think the sweets themselves are evil. So you may have one—“

Dinky was off towards the tables in a flash.



Two weeks passed.

Life had returned to normal. It was kind of a relief, on one hand, Dinky thought. Dealing with Fluttershy’s chickens was frustrating, but at least they couldn’t glue Dinky’s hooves to them and drag her off to some horrible chicken-determined fate. And she was able to sleep in her own bed again, not hide in a cold wood or a creepy town. But it was a little boring too.

At least until class projects were due.

“What do you mean, you lost my project?” Dinky demanded. “I worked real hard on it!”

“We know!” said Snips. “That’s why we wanted to see it! Because we knew it would be awesome!”

“And it was!” said Snails. “Really awesome! The awesomest!”

“Well… then give it back!”

“We would! But, uh, we put it down somewhere.” Snips shrugged.

“And then we forgot where it was.”

Dinky bonked her head against the wall. “But it’s due in an hour!”

“We’ll let you join our group! We did a cool project too!” said Snips.

“Yeah! We tied twenty worms together into a superworm!”

“…I’ll pass.”

“Wait!” said Snips. “I know! We left it in that really big cave in Whitetail Woods! I remember, cause we put it down to pick up a really big bug!”

“It had, like, three hundred legs!” said Snails. “And when we picked it up, it made this funny sound and started smelling really bad!”

“Uh. Fascinating.”

So Dinky ran to the woods, only to immediately groan. The woods were huge. Sure, they were safer than the Everfree forest, but that didn’t mean it’d be easier for her to find her little class project in their midst.

“Come on! I don’t wanna make Miss Cherilee mad at me!” Dinky was trying to look in every direction at once. “Where is it?”

She saw something out of the corner of her eye.

Puzzled, and having no other leads, Dinky began to run in that direction. “Hello?”

She saw a flash of gray from between the trees.

Dinky ran as quickly as she could, making her way through a maze of trees and trails. And, just as she was starting to consider giving up and turning around, she saw it.

Her project, a big diorama of the Doos’ apartment, with two little figure of herself and her mother, had been set down on the edge of an old wheelbarrow. Fortunately, the other two foals hadn’t hurt it. The project looked completely undamaged and ready to be submitted.

Also in the wheelbarrow was Ruby.

“Ruby!”

“Dinky!” Ruby bounced up and down. “Guess what? Guess what?”

“What?”

“Mommy said that I can play with you a little more!”

“You can?”

“Yeah. I don’t get all the rules, but they told us that, when you render a service to a ghost – that’s me – then the ghost should render a service back to you. So, until you decide what the service is, I can hang around!”

“Course I do! But what about your family!”

“Well, I won’t be around you all day every day. I can go visit them too. They all say thank you for saving them, by the way.” Ruby nodded. “But when I’m here, we can play too!”

“YAY!” Dinky carefully put her project on her back. Then something occurred to her. “How did you find this?” she asked. “I thought it’d be lost forever!”

“Like I said. It’s my talent. I can find almost anything.”

The two began to trot out of the woods.

“So what kinds of things do you like doing?” asked Dinky.

“Well, I want to see what happened in the past two hundred years I was stuck in the forest,” said Ruby. “Like, are there new toys?”

“Yep!”

“New books?”

“Yep!”

“Awesome!”

They began to race back to the school.

“I have school now. I’ll show you all my friends and the others,” said Dinky. “And then I’ll show you around Ponyville. Every bit of it! And I’ll introduce you to the other Elements. Trixie will love getting to meet a real ghost; she’s an illusionist and she does all these cool magic shows! And Lyra plays really beautiful music and I’m sure she’ll play some for you. And…”

The two chatted happily as they exited the woods. It was a bright spring morning, and though Dinky was young, she could tell – it was going to be a happy day.

Comments ( 32 )

Well, at least Dinky had a happy ending. As does Ruby -- reunited with her family wherever ghosts go, and she can still return to play with Dinky. They make a very cute pair.

Too bad Grey Hoof got away, though. Hopefully he won't come back to cause any more trouble. Certainly, in a society run by the Night Court, there are absolutely no places that a wily and charismatic sociopath could go to use his words to obtain power and seek disproportionate revenge on those he feels slighted him. But on the plus side, we've kept the tradition alive of every single villain running away at the end of a Lunaverse story. :-)

I was kind of tempted to do a side chapter about Snips and Snails and their quest for a great class project. I have a feeling that the super-worm wasn't the first thing they tried, but it was the first that didn't die, explode, or try to eat them.

759424: Yep. After Dinky went through so many horrible things, including being run down by Grey Hoof, almost eaten by the Moonville ponies, kidnapped by Grey Hoof, forced to spend the night in creepy land, and all that, I wanted her to get something good out of the adventure. So Dinky is saved and gets a new buddy, who can walk through walls and find things she lost. (I foresee a 'detective' service from Dinky in the future. She'll find your lost wallets and jewels! She charges two cupcakes a case, plus a muffin if her mom is hungry).

And Ditzy and Trixie are awesome. I just love the image of Ditzy flying through the woods, trying like crazy not to crash and to keep up with Grey Hoof, as Trixie -- on her back -- casts a meticulous illusion that will get Grey Hoof turned around. And Ditzy's exhausted, cause Trixie's not exactly lightweight, but it's not like she's going to let GH get away with Dinky. So on they go, and then they win. :-)

Yay for happy ending!

*Grey hoof sits down at huge table with Corona, Zecora, Spike, Twilight and Zizane(sp)* "My dear friends, do you have room for one more?"

759449: I really wish there was fanart of that. It's such a perfect image. :-)

You know, I don't think Gray Hoof is the kind to join up with Corona willingly any more than Twilight is (unwillingly as a result of Zecora's enchantments or some manner of spell is another story), but I could see him joining forces with one or more of the other villains so far introduced.

Kudos on a great tale. I'll give you four L!Elements of Harmony and owe you the other two.

:trixieshiftright:dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Lyra2.png dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Cheerilee.png :derpytongue2:

759512: Grey Hoof would probably join with whoever he could use to get power. He wouldn't want to work for Corona forever, but he might be arrogant enough to think he could manipulate her into some kind of 'Luna vs. Corona, they destroy each other, and I take over' scenario. Granted, this would very likely not end well for him, but he may well be willing to try. (It's also worth noting that he was in Moonville during Corona's return and missed it; he's heard of her in legends, but hasn't seen her brand of crazy up close).

(He'd probably also think that his immortality would be a trump card, and forget that, instead of just killing him, Corona could probably just set him on perpetual fire until he wished he were dead. Or banish him into space.)

759540

My reasoning was that, since he's only two hundred years old, he grew up with the horror stories painting Corona as the devil same as anypony.

The way I've been reading him is that he's fixated on the fact that he is in the right and working with the literal devil kind of undermines that viewpoint. That said, I'll freely admit that Gray Hoof doesn't seem to be firing on all mental cylinders in the first place.

I think the general agreement was that it takes one of three types of individuals to team up with Corona.

1) Solar zealot. (See Zecora)

2) A special kind of crazy.

3) A special kind of stupid.

I guess the only thing to do is determine which of the latter two fits Gray Hoof better if one wants to craft such an alliance.

760524: He certainly believes that he's in the right. It's practically an obsession with him, because he cannot consider that he made a mistake in exiling Ruby. His mind just won't go there.

He doesn't actually desire wholesale slaughter or incineration. But he's so obsessed with proving to the world that he's right, with having the world acknowledge that he's right, that if he thought he could use Corona to obtain power for himself to show his righteousness, he wouldn't object to that. He would justify it in the same way he would have justified using one of the Elements against the others, if he'd been able to persuade any to his side -- sure, they're evil and Wrong, but I'll use whatever I have to in order to prove that I'm Right. I guess that would be closest to 2), crazy, because making that deal would very likely end badly for him... but he'd be arrogant enough and zealous enough to try it.

His overall goal, if he were to articulate it, would be along the lines of "remaking Equestrian society so that it is acknowledged to be good to eliminate undesirable members of a group," since that's basically how he considers his actions against Ruby to be. So he doesn't really care whether Luna or Celestia's on the throne; if he has control of, say, the education system, he's content. Just let him teach foals that it's okay to kick out the under-performers, the cursed, and the generally undesirable in order to further the group, and he's happy as a clam.

(As for tales of Tia being a monster... well, he knows that he's thought of as a monster, so he's inclined to believe those might have been exaggerated. After all, they call him evil, but he's righteous. Maybe the same thing happened to Corona. Besides, he would add, it's not like Luna ever did anything for Moonville...)

760564

Now I'm smelling a possible convert for Corona in those last two paragraphs. They almost mesh a little too well.

760609
Let's not forget that Corona ALSO thinks that she's right and doesn't mind reminding her followers of it; it'd be a match made in the Sun.

Nice ending, but I really kinda expected some final final confrontation with Grey Hoof, instead of him getting away. Oh well, he's still the kind of a villain I like; "morally superior" fanatics are always fun. :twilightsmile:

Also, have now some fanwork for a fanwork: Marked Ones Drown. :pinkiecrazy:

So, let's see...overall, this chapter is invokes this much D'aww:
24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4ts32mY191r0n5y3o1_1280.jpg

Dinky just can't be anything other than adorable, it seems.

I am going to agree with Emeral's original point that it probably would have been better to have Ruby achieve peace and move on, along with all her family, but there's nothing innately wrong with the way it ended up playing out.

761152: Just continuing an L!verse tradition of the bad dude running away. You gotta have a theme, right? :-)
More seriously, I figured that the 'final confrontation' was Dinky and Grey Hoof arguing, with Grey Hoof utterly failing to scare or persuade Dinky, and the Ditzy basically staring him down. After that, with Grey Hoof outnumbered by all the other kelpies and and the Elements, a physical confrontation would have been superfluous.

761823: I bet Dinky would enjoy having a puppy, but the combined cuteness might break something. I still think that being adorable may be her special talent after all. :-)

Such a great ending. Hmm, now in the normal one, just Applebloom needs a happy ending. Still, such well written art!

763396: Thank you!

Most of the fanfics that continue SotB that I've read either start with Apple Bloom as a zombie or having a PTSD breakdown. Which is fair, I suppose, given what she goes through, although I also wish that she'd get a happy ending once in a while. Apple Bloom may be shortsighted sometimes (love potions! Heart's Desire!) but she's a fun character, and it seems mean to always have her start off in some horrible position. That's also why I opted to give Dinky the happy ending (she's saved Moonville and has a new ghost buddy that she can have awesome adventures with!) instead of the 'she's still alive but she's scared to leave her room' ending. That would just be depressing.

Dinky is best pony.

Trixie's mansion was her second desire. She's making progress.
Also, awesomeness overload. Lunaverse Blanks is already a good idea, and you made it better than most other people could/would have.

875940: Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!

when i get home im try to remember makin fanart of this great story!

980962: Out of curiosity, did anything come of this? I think we're trying to get L-verse fanart together for deviantart and stuff, and if you have something it would definitely belong there.

1250261 i was so busy after i said that that i completely forgot about it!ill be working on it right after my friend is gone! (with gone i mean when she has to go home)Thanks for remembering it for me!

1250261 aaaand done http://speedcow12.deviantart.com/#/d5erkjx here it is! all done worked on it long!

1274497: It looks wonderful. I really like how you captured the joy on Dinky's face. :-) Thank you!

1274587 youre welcome can you send me link to dat lunaverse thing?i would love to see it!

1274877: Right here! This link will show a listing of stories in the L-verse, including our canon, tie-ins (canon if referenced elsewhere), and non-canon. There's also links to our tvtropes pages and the messageboard where we hash out future plot ideas.

So what happened to Grey Hoof?

7687847
My guess is that he's still lurking around in the shadowy in-between places of Everfree. I also imagine he's going to stew over that annoying brat that ruined everything, but is too cowardly to actually try anything. Besides, if he ever did leave the forest to try anything well Trixie does have several ideas/contacts to be used in the case of a rogue Kelpie...not to mention that Dinky has (in essence) several adult mares as unofficial "mamas/aunties" and absolutely nothing in nature is more dangerous than an angry mother.

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