XIII - Implosion
"No emotion," Implode said, spiking three ponies' skulls with a single chrome spike, "that's a lie." She walked through the blood, the redness soaking into her hooves and tail. "I embraced it. I still feel something."
The ponies of Truth knew they couldn't fight her, so they all ran. It was of no use - even without her wings to control the inflection, the power was just too strong for them. They were crushed, cut, and stabbed with her various constructs with little effort on her part.
"...A contentment. A fulfillment. I can do what always needed to be done. What I wanted to do. A feeling of... Liberation. No constraints."
She leapt into the air, landing on a mare. Implode transmutated the poor pony's head into cheese. "You feel it too. In you. The self-preservation. The freedom. Life." She stood tall, face impassive as she cut off a nearby stallion's head with a razor sharp steel disc. "I can see why you choose to be this way. Why you see it as better. No inhibitions. No illogical blockades to fulfill your desires." She drove a stallion into a wall, crushing all his bones with a series of harrowing cracks. "Then again, you may be reconsidering right now. After all, you've obviously never run into somepony like me."
She walked through the bloody hallway, eyes lazy, face still straight. "Still. I wonder why you scream. The pain means nothing to you or me."
She stamped her hoof, blowing a hole in the side of the Nexus. She created a staircase along the outside of the rectangular prism. As she walked along her creation, the steps receded behind her, returning the wall to a flat state. The ponies harvesting the garden on top looked up at her quizzically - those with the Inflection of Truth bolting the moment they saw her. None of them bothered to warn their companions.
"Do you deserve to die?" Implode asked. "A legitimate question I've been asked many times in many different ways. By pure logic, the answer is no. All of you were just born into this, by no choice of your own." She lit a nearby mare on fire, setting the rest of the garden ablaze by proximity. "But, in the end, what does anypony deserve? Nothing. We are all failures. We have all 'wronged' others." She looked up at the giant tree, her eyes widening to take it all in. "Deserving something is just an illusion. There are only wants." She set the great tree ablaze, purposefully spreading the fire to the rest of the garden.
"So I'll do what I want. And I've wanted to do this for quite some time."
A pink diamond floated up to her, blinking softly. The voice of a mare came from the diamond, presumably the pony who had taken Diamond's place. "You are correct. Welcome to Truth."
"If I was in any state besides this, that would sound horrible," Implode observed, blasting some ponies on the green plane below with a targeted explosion.
"It is horrible. But anything in existence is horrible. The world fails to meet with the emotional expectations."
"Strange. I still find it odd that you aren't angry or upset at me destroying your lives. You just run and scream - but you don't get angry. You don't blame."
"How could we? We satisfy our wants as well. Knowledge. Truth. In some cases this also includes physical pleasures that mean nothing, but we are still driven to do. You are not the first to do this as you believe. Merely the first to be here with an Inflection of Power. The others were stopped."
"So you'll try to kill me then?"
"Pointless. You are too strong. We will just flee to another location. This is not the only garden we have. It would be foolish to put everything we had here."
"I should be livid that I am not destroying you," Implode noted. "Instead... Nothing has changed. Odd."
"Acclimation to the Truth takes time. Cognitive dissonance will eventually be ironed out."
"I won't be around long enough for that."
"Suicide is wasteful."
"Life is wasteful."
"Perhaps. After all, meaning is but an illusion brought on by lies. There is no good, no evil. No matter how hard we search the Truth, we cannot find them."
Implode stood still for a moment. "Why do you insist on living?"
"We cannot break from the other Realms so easily. Life and Dreams still influence us, even after so long. Otherwise, we would be just like the shapes."
"I thought you said the cognitive dissonance would go away?"
"It does. You treat every moment knowing it doesn't matter and that the only think keeping you running are biological imperatives. You just don't care."
Implode nodded. "Where are you right now?"
"I do not have to tell you that."
"Thought there were no secrets here?"
"You do not have the Inflection of Truth. There can be secrets kept from you. Not from me."
Implode leapt down off the Nexus, turning the plane into an elastic material so the fall wouldn't crush her. With her landing, she impaled a handful of fleeing ponies with spikes. "You are the strongest Inflection of Truth remaining in this place. Don't you think it would extend your knowledge to see if you could fight me?"
"Perhaps. But chances are high I would die."
"Life is pointless. Be in control of your biological imperatives. I know I am."
A tall amethyst colored unicorn with a snow-white mane walked out of a nearby prism. Her eyes locked with Implode's. Implode swore she could feel the unicorn analyzing every aspect of the world around her, thinking of every possible outcome.
Implode did no such thing, stamping her hoof on the ground, creating a sphere of intense gravity behind the mare. The new Diamond leapt into the air, using the gravity of the sphere to curve herself backwards. She launched a burst of energy from her horn which Implode maneuvered away from with ease. The mare landed right behind Implode. The ex-pegasus created a knife and threw it at the mare - only for her to catch it mid-flight.
Implode felt the knife slice through her side. She cried out in pain, but she didn't care. She kicked out with her hoof, the new Diamond limboing under the attack. Implode put her hoof in the air, generating a fireball barrage. The new Diamond dodged every last sphere of burning gas. With a jump, the mare launched past Implode, cutting her once again.
Implode twitched involuntarily, stamping her hooves and turning the area around her into lava - realizing that the lava just fell through due to the plane's infinite thinness. She looked under the plane, noticing that very few shapes were below it. An idea came to her. She began to remove areas of the plane under the new Diamond, attempting to doom her to an eternal fall. She continually managed to leap out of the way just before the ground vanished, milliseconds to spare each time.
The new Diamond saw an opening - and took it. She leapt into the air, arcing in a graceful curve. She drove the knife right into Implode's chest before she could do anything about it. She leapt back, letting Implode fall to the ground. Blood pooled around her.
Then Implode thought of something.
The reason the Power wasn't used on flesh was because it wasn't specific enough, and would rarely work for a long period of time, not to mention cause unforeseen complications and extreme pain. But Implode didn't care anymore. Implode stamped her hoof and screamed, generating raw flesh over her cuts, little more than fleshy tumors. She stood up, eyes closed tightly - she wasn't done. She roared again, two stubs beginning to form on her back, extending outward slowly. The bony protrusions drew blood of their own, bringing with them more pulsating tumors.
The new Diamond kicked Implode into one of the holes she had created. Implode fell, still screaming from her pain as she continued downward. The new Diamond didn't believe for a single moment that it was over. Less than a minute later, Implode flew up out of the hole, screaming from the constant pain her new, horribly disfigured wings were giving her. There were too many bones in one, both looked malnourished and flat, and both flung blood each time they flapped. But at least they were able to channel magic and fly.
She flapped. The Power-infused wind tossed the new Diamond into the hole. She was unable to do anything - doomed to an eternal drop...
Or she would have, had a certain unicorn not levitated her out with blue magic.
"S... Starlight..." Implode managed to get out through her body's intense pain, "w..wonder...ed... when.. you'd... sh.... show up..."
Starlight didn't bother responding. She lit her horn, a thick black aura surrounding it. She unleashed a death blast. Implode dodged the red and black beam with a painful swoop."Gah... T...This is different..." She stared at Starlight, face indicating unimaginable pain. "I... Oh I see... D...Death... Distasteful...? Hah..."
"What happened to you!?" Applejack demanded from below. "You were makin' progress! And now you're worse!"
"The... The Realm of T... Truth. I... T..." She dodged another one of Starlight's death beams. "Re...moves emotions... But... You knew this..."
She let out a pained yell as she adjusted her wings - only to create more fractures in them. "I... I wanted... to kill... Now... no... inhibitions..."
Applejack's eyes widened. "She's completely serious Starlight."
"Kill her! Now!" Starlight yelled, tossing dozens of magic crystal bolts at the mutilated pegasus. Implode screeched and turned them all into bouncy balls. She kicked them back with her hooves, transforming them into bolts of lightning directed at Starlight.
"Son of a-" Starlight managed to say before she was tossed away by electrical discharge. Applejack sent a volley of spheres at Implode, but she was sorely outmatched by Implode's mastery over the Power- her wings may have been painful, but they were powerful.
The sphere of energy Implode sent back at Applejack was at least ten times more powerful than anything the earth pony could have come up with - though using the Truth Applejack managed to dodge the tremendous attack with three well timed acrobatic leaps.
"H... How can... Y... You use the Truth... and... not see it?" Implode grunted.
Applejack frowned. "The Truth can't tell you how you feel or why."
"T... That's because it doesn't... Exist! Ill... Illusion!"
"That's where the Truth is wrong. Calling it the Truth is bad - it doesn't tell you everything, and it most certainly isn't right all the time. It's too strict. It's not really what everypony here seems to think it is. It's just information. The real truth can't be found by analyzing. You have to feel, to experience, to live."
Implode shook her head. "D... Delusional." She raised a wing and sent a flurry of bullets at Applejack, who managed to dodge them all almost effortlessly.
Starlight came to her senses at this point, moving to encase implode in a crystal spell. Implode completely shattered the attempt at a prison, allowing her to dodge the death spell follow-up. In retaliation, Implode created several dozen explosives around Starlight, which the unicorn barely managed to deflect with her shield spell.
Applejack tried to attack again, but all her constructs were simply deflected by a flick of Implode's wing. Applejack noticed with some annoyance that she was basically being ignored in favor of focusing on Starlight. The powerful unicorn was put on the defensive as spheres exploded around her several times every second, not giving her any chance to retaliate.
Applejack gritted her teeth. They were losing. This wasn't going to work... Unless... "Starlight!" she called out. "Try some stuff! We're losing!"
Starlight bit her lip, but nodded. Suddenly there were seven Starlights in existence. After a split second of confusion, they all charged a death beam at once. Implode's movements slowed down to a sluggish crawl, although she still managed to create rock shields in defense, nullifying the beams.
The Starlights surged forward as one, dropping the death beam in favor of rapid-fire crystal bolts. They all had cocky grins on their faces, their full attention focused on Implode. They failed to notice a knife form to the side of the leftmost version of themselves, stabbing that Starlight in the gut. Wounds opened up in half the Starlights, the ones who weren't gasping in pain gasping in fear.
In an instant, there was only one Starlight, and she slumped to the ground, a pool of blood slowly appearing beneath her.
"Starlight!" Applejack yelled. She quickly tried to calculate a way out of this difficult situation, but found none. With Starlight down and out, there was a 0% chance of dodging the incoming pegasus's attack...
Sperion appeared, a fifth limb shooting out of his body and pointing at Implode. Implode was tossed to the side by a silvery magical aura, falling on one of her wings. She howled at the doubling of the already harrowing pain.
Discord, Twilight, Fluttershy, and Pinkie appeared seconds after this.
"This," Sperion said, pointing at Implode and Starlight with different limbs, "this is a small taste of what contamination leads to."
"Starlight!" Fluttershy shouted. She and Discord ran over to her prone form. Fluttershy acted quickly, scooping the unicorn up in her hooves and healing the knife wound.
Twilight took a step back from everything, her ears pressed back against her head. This... They had just left that horrible distorted Realm, and had ended up here to see this. Starlight and Applejack were here... But Rainbow Dash wasn't... And there was a mutilated pegasus mare over there... Twilight closed her eyes and whimpered. "Wh..."
"You see it. That thing over there," Sperion said, making a gesture with all of his arms towards Implode. "She is suffering from this Realm removing her emotions. It turned her into a monster. When followed to the end, there will always be a monster. A monster greater than anything you could ever perceive." He managed to glare at Twilight despite lacking an eye. "This is the problem."
"It.... It can't be that simple."
Sperion made a singing sound. "And that... Is why you can't be told more. You know so much. She would have me kill you for it. But I won't." He turned as if he was looking at Fluttershy. "...I'm weak that way."
Implode slowly opened an eye - they weren't watching her closely anymore. She could still do this. But there were too many right now. She couldn't get them all. Only one. She focused on her tail, turning it into an explosive compound. Then she waited for a back to turn... And then she leaped towards Applejack, lighting her fuse.
In a burst of rainbow colors, a certain blue pegasus placed herself between Implode and Applejack. Rainbow Dash was bruised, battered, and looked barely awake - but she stood firm.
Implode's eyes widened. She reacted without thinking, causing a minor explosion to push herself back from Rainbow Dash. Then the rest of her exploded, her very molecules torn apart, her entire being vaporized.
"Implode!" Rainbow Dash yelled, holding out her hoof. "I... ...Why would you do that!? Implode!" Her plot hit the plane, her eyes staring unblinking at the place in the air where Implode had exploded.
Fluttershy let out a scream - she couldn't fix that, even if she tried the... bad thing. There was nothing left!
"Maybe you should have let her be executed back home," Sperion said, "look what your interference has done."
"No," Starlight said, standing up, "that would have been wrong."
Sperion paused. "...Excuse me?"
"I saw beautiful things from her. Powerful change. She was becoming a better pony! I..." Starlight looked down at the ground, guilty. "I just didn't realize it until right now. She... She spared Rainbow Dash." Starlight closed her eyes, nodding to herself. "I'm going to fix this. Fluttershy, think you can help me?"
Fluttershy nodded. "I... I can try."
Starlight focused, reaching deep within to the Echo within herself. She focused on where Implode had been mere seconds before... And rewound time. The particles that had made up Implode were slowly brought back together. Her form was changed, horrid wings forming once again. She whimpered in pain - a broken pegasus, unwilling to even try to move. Fluttershy touched her with her yellow wing, healing all the cuts, bruises, and tumors in the correct way. She even restored the wings to the way they were supposed to be.
Implode blinked, face alternating between straight and pained. "I... What have I..."
"Sh..." Starlight said, "we'll fix it." Starlight and Fluttershy returned to the slaughter Implode had caused, rewinding and healing everypony. Implode watched, her face straight, eyes darting back and forth, taking it all in. She made no move to attack, or even take any action at all. Rainbow Dash sat herself down next to her. "You better?"
"No," Implode said. "The Realm still has its hold. I. I think differently than I was. But it is not undone." She continued staring at the healing Starlight and Applejack did. "I felt horrible there in that instant I saw you. I regretted everything. I saw that I was wrong." She looked Rainbow Dash in the eyes. "I don't feel that anymore. I'm not sure if I can hold onto that feeling..."
"Don't worry, they'll fix you, they're fixing everypony else."
Implode shook her head. "I... Don't think they can heal my mind. It's been molded. I think she'd have to rewind me - including my memories - back to stop it. And I don't want to forget this. I thought I had it figured out. But Applejack is right. Without emotions, something is missing. It feels - no, seems - odd, trying to hold onto something irrational with all your energy while most of you tells you to drop it just because it's worthless."
"Cognitive dissonance," Sperion said, "you need some irrational things in your mind to live well. But here, in the Realm of Truth, it isn't allowed. So you are going to have to fight it. I don't envy you - none have managed to hold it back for long."
"We'll just leave," Twilight said, "Exit this Realm."
"I'm not taking you," Sperion said, floating upwards. "Goodbye. I... I'm done. Fluttershy, I'm sorry." He floated further away, hesitating no more.
"...Bye," Fluttershy said.
Applejack let out a sharp breath of air. "Well, this is some reunion, ain't it?"
"Yeah..." Twilight rushed Applejack into a hug. "But at least we found you. When I saw Starlight like that I... I..."
Applejack returned the hug, tears flowing down Twilight's face onto her friend's back.
Then something exploded above them. Everypony looked up to see a cloud of orange dust above them.
"The Archive!" Applejack yelled.
The smoke cleared, revealing Sperion, just floating where the Archive had been. All he could do at this point was hope they hadn't already found something in there. He couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to him before that the Archive was dangerous...
He flexed his new, fifth arm. He focused on Starlight for a second, thinking. Then he floated away.
Discord raised his hand, ready to follow Sperion. Twilight held up a hoof. "No... Let him go. He made his choice. Let's respect it," she sighed. "We haven't done that enough."
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Huh, so Starlight didn't intend to use her time powers in the first place? I thought she was like, "Kill her! Murder her dead! That's the only way she can stand still long enough for me to rewind her!" It's a tad more compassionate that Starlight was only doing it because she thought Implode was beyond help, but it'd have been awesome in a very Starlightly sociopathic way if Starlight intended to murder Implode just because she was going to be rewound anyway.
This is an absolutely sadistically fascinating look at the problems that come with extremes. It's neat how Meadowbrook's team was the last 7 to suffer this fate, and they're still around sort of, trying to stop it from happening again, yet in doing so actually causing it to happen again, because they're too messed up to do anything besides hurt things. Scary that just a few seconds of exposure was sufficient to awaken Rarity's ability to... robot... things. Yes. She can robot things.
Sperion seems to be a massive hypocrite, determined to make everything as terrible as he can through his inaction.
8096439
Okay, wow, you're amazing. I haven't read or fixed all the issues in all your comments, but let me say before I get into that THANK YOU. I'll respond as I go through it. Thanks for taking the time to critique this work - and apparently like it so much. :D
-GM, master of DISCS!
8096859
No problem! If I'm reading it my brain is going to spaz out on all the typoes anyway, so it's easy to just enumerate them.
8096871
Pinkie Pie is best "pony"
8096877
"Oh look I've created a race of ant people who uncontrollably fart bugspray! Isn't that just hilarious? Wow, what's this slider for? Haha look how big I can make their toes!"
8096826
No, that was not Starlight's plan from the start, she still feared creating a paradox or something. Though now that she knows that won't happen, well, she may come up with a plan like that in the future.
I'm not going to comment on Meadowbrooke, because spoilers.
I will say this - notice how Rarity is still the only one to have not gone to a Realm to 'activate' her power. She's the last one. Chew on that.
-GM, master of hisssssssssss.
8096852
He's not as much of a hypocrite as you might think. He admitted he probably should kill the Mane 7 remember? But he doesn't. This is what we call INNER CONFLICT.
-GM, master of mice.
8096908
So there are... actually 8 ponies, and Rarity is the Element of Central?
8096914 Well, he's basically left them in a state where they're probably the most likely to cause the thing he wants to avoid: knowing just enough to be dangerous.
8096934
Nah, nice try though. I can safely tell you Rarity is the Inflection of Dreams. But her power was not supposed to activate until she entered the Realm of Dreams. Chew on that.
-GM, master of hints.
It is so unfair that I can only like this story once!
8096940
In the next chapter, the story will conclude when Minty wakes up in Paradise Estate, and tells everypony about the dream she had about these six weird ponies!