PONYVERSE

by TopWanted

Point of No Return

Point of No Return

===E8DB

Rainbow and Pinkie rematerialized inside the Veloci-Lair. She still hadn’t gotten used to traveling like that even without the speed so it took her a moment to reorient herself. “Okay, how come when I did it I landed outside but you always make it inside.”

Pinkie beamed. “Lots of concentration and practice.”

A siren immediately began to shriek and they both looked around in confusion. They were standing on the main deck and the computer blared a warning. Three words. “Veloci-Source Anomaly Detected.”

Pinkie sped over to the computer and began to tap furiously. “What does that mean?” Rainbow asked.

Pinkie frowned. “I-I don’t know. Nothing like this has happened before.”

The display changed. “Unidentified Speedster Detected in Lair. Run Protocol Speed Trap. Self Destruct Initiated.”

“Did that just say self destruct?!” Rainbow asked a little more forcefully. A counter appeared in the corner of the screens.

“Nononononono!” Pinkie shouted as she typed as furiously as she could, pulling up windows and tabs. “I don’t know how to stop it!”

Rainbow jumped to her side and looked at the clock. Twenty nine seconds. “Let’s just go! They’re not here!”

“But…” She gave a determined look at the computer and typed furiously. She pulled up another window, this one the layout of the multiverse they had been using since before. The white spheres shifted quickly until they landed on one with a red dot. “We can at least find out where Suntrix went. Maybe with her magical help we can find them.” She scanned the information available about the world then turned to Dash. “Alright, let’s go!” Twenty seconds.

“Wow, you think fast too.” Rainbow put a hoof around Pinkie and prepared to shift as her body began to vibrate. But then a harsh noise erupted from the stereos blasting them from all sides. Pinkie’s vibrations stopped and she held her ears. They both shouted in pain. “What’s going on?”

Pinkie closed her eyes and tried to vibrate again but Rainbow saw the sound somehow making her trembling body pulse in strange ways. She stopped and breathed heavily. “What is it?” Rainbow shouted over the noise.

“I don’t know! My phasing isn’t working!”

“Well how do you usually do it?”

“It’s like trying to hum to myself! Urgh! But I can’t find the right tune!”

“Tune?” Something clicked in her head. “The noise! It’s messing with you.” Twelve Seconds.

“But I can’t do anything about it!” Pinkie shouted desperately. “I just can’t get it right!”

Rainbow looked at the blaring lights and stereos. It was too late to smash them all. But there was one thing she was better at than anypony. And that was winning. “We’ve got to beat it!”

“What?!”

She put her hooves on Pinkie’s shoulders. “Listen! Just vibrate as fast as you can and I’ll do it too! With both of us combined we should get somewhere!”

“But who knows where we might end up!”

“Better than here!” Rainbow shouted back. Pinkie frowned but nodded resolutely. Six Seconds.

They put their foreheads together and closed their eyes. “Okay, NOW!”

Both mares began to shake with intensity. Around them the vibrations of their bodies bended and swayed, affected by the sound, but as they increased their forms gradually became more sharp. Three. Two. One.

Rainbow felt a jolt of electricity run through her and out her hooves as she was thrown backward into a void. She shook her head to clear it and saw the fiery shape of the Veloci-Lair burning, pieces of it flying out at intervals and then hanging in the ether as if caught by an invisible hand. The fire seemed to move rapidly then slow down erratically as it licked the structure and tore it apart. Rainbow watched all this silently before she spotted Pinkie floating, or rather standing on whatever she stood on in this void, to the side. She looked at the carnage with wide eyes, her expression unreadable.

Rainbow held out a hoof and wanted to walk over and comfort her but she couldn’t. She simply treaded air. She flapped her wings but they had no traction either. This wasn’t like the last time she was in the Veloci-Source. Then she noticed her hooves. Flakes of them were coming away like they did for Lightning and the Revenant. Her eyes widened in horror.

She tried to shout to Pinkie but her voice only seemed to go a few feet in front of her then died. The flaking was getting stronger. She waved her arms energetically getting Pinkie to look out of the corner of her eye. Her eyes widened. “Oh my gosh!” Pinkie shouted, her voice perfectly fine in the void. She ran as fast as the Veloci-Source would allow her grabbing Rainbow around the chest and then vibrating as fast as she could. Another boom echoed out as they vanished, leaving the flaming wreckage alone to slowly dissolve into the electric ether.

---

Rainbow and Pinkie set down on a red patch of earth and lay flat. Rainbow rolled over on her back and took in a huge breath, just noticing that she hadn’t been breathing. She lifted her hoof to the sky and inspected it, it seemed to all be in order. “I don’t get it,” she breathed. “I could move and do things just fine last time I was there.”

Pinkie lifted her head, herself breathing heavily as she didn’t seem too concerned with Rainbow, instead hugging her legs to her chest. “Why do you think that happened?”

Rainbow had an inkling but she didn’t know if she wanted to voice it. Those sounds from the stereo. That name on the screen, “Speed Trap.” Matterhorn had created a protocol for the fortress to undergo if another Speedster invaded it, at least that’s what she could guess. “I… don’t know.”

“Do you… think she meant it for me?”

Rainbow frowned and lifted her head up to look at her. “No! I mean, well… No, I don’t think so.” Pinkie looked at her expectantly with big eyes. Rainbow rubbed her head trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t paint her friend in a negative light. “I guess… I kind of understand where she was coming from making that. When I first got your powers it felt so amazing. Like I could take on anything! It actually made me realize how you must feel all of the time. Heck, I actually teleported away a giant monster!” Pinkie raised an eyebrow confused. “I’m just guessing she didn’t think she could trust another speedster. But she trusted you.”

Pinkie’s sour expression didn’t leave but she did force a small smile and hugged her. “Thanks. Though when I find Twilight again I’m not letting her off easily for this.”

Rainbow frowned. “You know even if I’m right this doesn’t mean your friend hasn’t gone off the deep end.”

Pinkie shrugged. “I know. But I still have hope.”

Rainbow nodded. “Well, let’s get going anyway. You think they’re here?”

“That’s what the computer said.”

“Alright!” Rainbow took off in a random direction but Pinkie quickly surpassed her stopping a few hooves away. “Huh?”

Rainbow landed on the ground and held up her hoof to concentrate on it. She tried until her head was about to burst. Nothing. Not even a shake. “What’s going on?”

“I… I don’t think I have my powers anymore.”

{[(SxT)]}

Aklopolips has no cities. No towns. No hovels. No roads. All that exists exists for the planet’s dark master. Statues and memorials rise high into the sky. Edifices of dark construction and nightmarish architecture in honor of a demented god. And at the center of the world, a palace made from the blood, sweat and pain of hundreds of years of slavery. Pits of fire surround the keep that scrapes the sky and tears into the ground like a tick, sucking it dry of every natural resource. It is the home of a creature so devoid of love and feeling that his very throne sits outside the palace itself, so he may look out upon the hellscape he commands.

On this open air balcony four figures stand. Two in waiting and one laying recumbent in shadows atop a darkened throne. Suntrix cannot sense the world around her. Manacled in chains she works tirelessly dipping her hoof and tail into the pails of paint and pigment that surround her. Her eyes drift lazily as she goes about her task as if in a dream.

The taller one in magenta robes approached her with a sharp toothed grin from his muzzle being the only thing protruding from his dark hood. “She works quite efficiently, if I do say so myself.” He grabbed Suntrix by the mane and pulled her head back to look at her dead eyes. “My program must be working, unlike yours.” He crooked his head to the other figure in wait, a grotesque toad of a pony with a white mane and green armor.

“Nanny’s Furies have been reprimanded, Detraad,” she replied. “They are more than ready to hunt down those newcomers. In fact, Nanny is just waiting to give the order.” She grinned toward the figure in the shadows, its eyes glowing red.

It stood from its seat and walked down the steps into the infernal light of the balcony. It’s face gradually revealed itself from the darkness, features hard and impenetrable as stone. Blue armor coated his body juxtaposing himself against the bleak red background. He looked into Nanny’s eyes. “Find them, but leave one alive. The masked mare.”

“My lord?” Nanny frowned.

“She interests me.” The dark lord smiled, an action that only came from the thought of unimaginable torture and pain.

Nanny bowed deeply and backed away from the balcony back into the palace. Detraad continued to watch Suntrix work as she painted tirelessly on the side of the palace wall. A mural she had been working on for a week. “I still am confused, my lord,” he said. “What do you hope this will accomplish?”

His master walked over to Suntrix and made her stop, putting his hoof beneath her chin and turning her face to him. “What do you see when you look in these eyes, Detraad?”

The torture master frowned in concentration but shrugged. “I see the eyes of a pony who has lost the will to live.” It gave him a chuckle. “It’s always nice to see those on somepony so young.”

His master cast his gaze on him and Detraad shut his mouth immediately. He returned to Suntrix. “I see eyes that have seen reality laid bare. This mare contains the secrets of eternity, and I will have it.”

Detraad bowed his head. “Of course, my lord. But first we must find out what this mural means.”

They both turned to the painting. It covered almost the entire palace wall of the balcony. Six ponies stood to the left. Six to the right. Above, two glowing figures, one blue and one gray, seemed to wrestle like angels struggling back toward heaven, black rays shooting out from them like lightning bolts. In the center was a flat white table or altar glowing like a sun.

“Do you have an interpretation, my lord?”

The master let Suntrix go and she returned to her work. He placed a hoof on the picture of the altar and narrowed his glowing red eyes. “Perhaps I would, if I were to dream.”

“Lord?”

He pulled his hoof back and began walking back toward the palace. “But dreams are the escape of fools. Continue your work, Detraad.”

He bowed deeply as his master left then turned to Suntrix. She began to add more line of black around it. “This may take longer than anticipated.”

Comments

[Mal Masque]

Please tell me that this leader of Aklopoplis is who I think he is...

[TopWanted]

7677974
Who else would he be?

[Mal Masque]

7678204 I AM THE HAPPY