The Hag, the heroes, and a few other things

by Amaranthine Thought

Finding Happiness 5

I woke when the sun rose, Rose Bush waking with me and we ate breakfast the same as any other day. We got prepared, I made a path through the city to follow and we set off, Rose carrying her bags to her confusion. I had a nagging feeling that we might need them for some reason, and told her to bring them with us.

We met Honest Cloud in the lobby. He claimed coincidence, but I knew better. He had been waiting for us, or more accurately, for Rose. Rose was happy to see him again. I was happy that she was happy, so I did my best to hide my dislike of him.

We all traveled together, the trip soon becoming courting between Rose and Honest. We went to the monuments of the city, the massive structures filling me with awe, far more so than my companions. Honest was… might have been an accurate guide, telling us about the history and meaning of the various statues and points about the city.

We spent all day wandering about the city. I was certain then; no element was in Manehatten.

The sun was setting when Rose overheard the nearby ponies gossiping.

“Hag! I think that the princess is coming to Manehatten!” she had said, delight in her voice. Honest perked up and seemed interested.

I stopped. “The princess?” I asked.

“Princess Celestia might be coming here today, I heard a few ponies talking about it. She was seen with her guard by some Pegasi and they might arrive very soon! We should go see!”

Her mind was entranced by Celestia, Rose having never really seen the pony that ruled over her. To Rose and Honest, Celestia was… a perfect being, a kind ruler, somepony who was an honor to even see, much less meet in person. They were both eager to see her, as would be anypony else.

My mind reminded me of Discord’s stoning. Of the time I spent locked up in that cave, slowly dying. Of the power that could incinerate me in an instant. I did not want to see Celestia and my instincts screamed that if I did it might be my last sight. But how was I going to tell Rose that?

I though hard, trying to think of some excuse.

“If she is coming we can see her more clearly from the woods outside the city.” I claimed after a few tense moments, at least for me. If we could get there I could… escape with Rose and Honest. Hopefully without having to explain anything.

Rose looked unconvinced. “That’s some ways out of Manehatten Hag. Are you sure?”

“There wouldn’t be a crowd. And I would get nervous in a crowd.”

I wasn’t lying, I would grow nervous amongst the vast number of ponies that would flock to her. I would be far more nervous over Celestia seeing me, but that didn’t have to be said.

Rose looked concerned. “If you feel that way Hag, we can. I don’t want you to get displaced again or something.”

So we went, Honest following after us. Fortunately the woods were not too far from the city, and Rose did get to see the tiny figure of the princess riding on her golden chariot drawn by two Pegasi in golden armor. There were lots of ponies in golden armor with her. Far too many for a normal visit. I was then certain she had come for me.

I got to work. Hags can ask the forest for many things, but the hardest gift to ask for or even use is travel. To go from one point to another without needing to walk the intervening space. The channeling would take some time and would be fairly noticeable, but my spell would be easier to explain to Rose than would Celestia’s wrath.

I worked slowly, intent on not getting us trapped somewhere desolate. Rose and Honest spoke with one another, but I wasn’t paying attention. I needed to concentrate on my spell; if I messed up the channeling we could end up anywhere. If I did so badly enough, it would kill us all. The exact nature of the travel was very, very delicate and I had to concentrate very carefully so as to get everything just right.

Rose perked up. “Is that..?”

Honest leaned forward, squinting into the distant city. “Is that Princess Celestia and the elements of harmony rushing this way along with a dozen guards? I… think… so.” He seemed confused.

Rose got flustered, nervously stepping in place, glancing around her. “What? I mean… we, we’re nothing special! I’m just a normal pony!”

“Hag’s kind of special,” Honest teased, looking over to me, “Maybe they all desperately want to meet her.”

He stopped smiling at the sight of me working in a near panic. I didn’t really care about accuracy right then, I wanted to not be there anymore.

Rose looked over. “Hag? What are you doing?”

“Saving my sorry hide.” I said, frantically collecting the power. I was almost done, but they were coming up to us rather fast.

“What do you mea…?”

“No time!” I yelled, striking the earth a few times in a haste born of near panic, completing the ritual.

I heard something from the approaching group, but they were too late. With a great heave I threw Rose, Honest, and I into the spell, one extra being managing to get in before we were gone.

---

Celestia had landed, found the bearers, raided my room, and had discovered my magical signature in only a few minutes, both she and her guard practiced and perfect at directing and controlling the crowd of ponies that neared her, or at least tried to. It had been a whirlwind of activity, but she managed to tell them about her own opinion about me. It wasn’t a good one.

They were running at us at full speed, trying to get to us as fast as possible. They thought I had hostages in Rose and Honest, and they could tell that I was traveling as they saw me.

“Stop!” yelled Twilight, seeing my spell taking form. I was escaping again and she was desperate to stop it, but unable to due to the distance and small time before my group had gone.

“Pinkie!” shouted Rarity as the pink mare abruptly took on a turn of speed normally reserved for arrows.

She had blurred forward to jump within my spell at the very last moment, the others slowing to where we had just been standing, frustrated.

Applejack stomped. “She got away again! An with Pinkie!”

“Pinkie ran after her dear, she was not abducted by Hag. Perhaps she might even capture her.” Rarity said.

“Yeah! Pinkie is a nightmare when she’s chasing somepony!” Rainbow added. “She’ll get Hag and bring her back before Twilight can even track the spell!”

“I do not think she will be returning.” Celestia said, her voice filled with concern. The others turned to her as she turned to Twilight, the purple alicorn’s head lowered and her horn glowing with violet light.

Twilight held a desperate expression, but as time went on she grew more and more worn and depressed. At the last she sat down, head held low as her horn ceased glowing.

The others watched her, growing very worried over Twilight’s sudden depression.

Rainbow approached her nervously. “You can’t track them Twi? Pinkie can find her own way back, don’t worry!”

“Pinkie Pie isn’t coming back.” Twilight said in a dull voice.

“Of course she is darling, Pinkie isn’t the sort to be captured.” Rarity said, laughing nervously while her tail swished behind her.

“She can’t be captured.” Twilight said in the same dull tone.

“Then it is as I feared…” Celestia lowered her head slightly. “Hag… she did not teleport properly, did she Twilight?”

Twilight shook her head, tears beginning to fall from her eyes. “Hag sent them without properly balancing or correcting. They will have had traveled at a great speed over a great distance, probably in pain.”

A chill settled over the other bearers, faces frozen, hoping not to hear what Twilight was going to say.

“And when… And if they managed to exit the space at all they would… they would rematerialize at approximately 200 feet per second.”

“They all would be… Pinkie would be… be…”

Twilight broke down, sobbing. Celestia trotted over to her and laid next to her even as the others found themselves in denial and shock.

They didn’t know magic, and did not fully understand Twilight’s explanation, but they all knew that that speed would not be survivable. Not even under the best of circumstance.

“But… but it’s Pinkie!” shouted Rainbow. “She can do the… thing and save herself! She would be fine! Just fine and she is coming back right now! Right now!” Her voice grew louder even as she grew angry, screaming at the woods beyond.

A gloom settled over the group, most unable to accept the idea that Pinkie had been taken from them so quickly. There was so much that they hadn’t told her, so much that they had planned, so many parties that Pinkie had told them about. It all weighted on them and they responded individually.

Fluttershy had death with death the most, having endless critters as her pets. She was greatly saddened by Pinkie’s apparent passing, but tried to overcome it so that she might help her friends.

Applejack lowered her hat over her eyes, the tough mare unwilling to cry.

Rarity was in shock, thinking about all that Pinkie had done for her, and all the plans that she had made for Pinkie.

Rainbow was in denial. She raged against the idea and refused to accept it.

Twilight mourned, her first experience with the loss of a loved one. Pinkie had been the first mare she had met in Ponyville. The mare that had confused her so many times. The mare that kept her life from ever growing dull and unhappy. The mare that kept everypony smiling wherever she went. Twilight wailed into the air, only marginally comforted by Celestia.

They thought that they had found their answer. Celestia had been adamant that I was evil, and they had been… at least satisfied to finally receive a solid answer as to my alignment. Applebloom, Sweetie belle, and Scootaloo had been left with Spike as they went to deal with me.

I hadn’t been in my room when they checked, the guards spreading out to make sure I didn’t escape. That had turned into a frantic search for me, until Celestia sensed me again, feeling the energy I had been collecting. They had raced to me, eager to bring this to an end. Eager to end my threat, once and for all.

But then I was escaping and they had felt frustrated again. I was, once more, giving them the slip, escaping to continue my plot, whatever that plot might be. Then Twilight had managed to just barely touch my magic with her own, and she had instantly realized the fatal nature of my spell. Just an instant before Pinkie had dashed into it.

And with one simple mistake, their problem was solved. I was dead, or so they thought. But I had taken two unknown ponies with me to my apparent death, as well as Pinkie Pie, and there had been nothing they would not give to change that.

Not that they could change it.

And now they wept, or comforted each other, or grew angrier than they ever had been at any mention of Pinkie’s demise. At least for a while; Rainbow had screamed her worst at Fluttershy before collapsing in greater tears than even Twilight. A dark cloud settled over them, one that was not going to fade for some time.

One that darkened when Rarity remembered all the ponies that Pinkie had befriended and realized that they needed to have a funeral. Without a body to bury.

They laid on that hill overlooking Manehatten for hours until a numb Twilight and a sniffling, exhausted Rainbow would accept being carried away from where Pinkie had left them. Their pain would continue for some time, in several cases, never healing until Pinkie would return to them.

But that wouldn’t happen for a long time.

---

It was green, and we floated as plants seemed to zoom past us, blurry and hard to discern. Rose flailed and Honest was yelling, or at least trying to; normal reactions of first timers. Not that I had done a good job. We were being pulled every which way as we flew uncontrollably through the place.

What we flew through was the forest. In a purely spiritual sense. In here, the forest was… ill-defined and one could travel miles without moving a single step. The exact nature of that travel and how it related to what was truly real was very difficult to discern or define, both of which had to be done so beforehand, which was why the spell took such a long time to cast. Even a small error could cause uncontrollable travel (happening), pain (also happening), and might even expel us at high speed, leaving little more than a large mess of the travelers (I put that at very likely at the time, the chance growing with each past moment).

I was less concerned over our soon to be sudden death and more concerned with the pink mare before me that seemed right at home in that place.

Pinkie Pie had somehow gotten caught in my spell, and based on her determined look had done so on purpose. She swam to me like she was born to that place and looked me in the eye.

“I want to know if you really meant those things.” she said.

“What?” I said, confused over her meaning and why she was here; I had been fairly certain that the approaching group had been too far to get into the spell, but Pinkie was right in front of me. She must have been able to sprint 100 feet in a second to be able to join us.

“What you said back in Ponyville! That I had to find something to make me happy again!”

I stared at her. “And for that you jump into something you didn’t know about? Just so you could ask me that? You might die in here you know.”

She nodded in understanding, her gaze never wavering and I felt my respect for the mare go up. She had thrown herself into the unknown just so she could get me to define something. I just said that she might die and she didn’t even blink. She was more stallion than most males I had known.

“…I did mean that Pinkie." I answered her, fully suspecting we went to our ends and that I should at least try and give her answers. "You need to find something to make you happy to make you… you again.”

“And the CMC, the girls? Do you like them?”

Why was she interrogating me while we were hurtling through a spirit realm? “Yes, I do!” I said, feeling the end growing closer. I could tell that I had messed up and that we would be dead in a few moments. The spell around us was starting to disperse, but our speed was unchanging.

“And you meant it when you said sorry about everything to Rarity and Applejack?” she asked, getting even closer so that her eyes filled my vision.

“Yes! Yes, I did! But I messed this up Pinkie! Speak with your gods because we go to meet them!”

I closed my eyes, very unhappy. I had just killed three ponies. And me, but that wasn’t as important. They didn’t deserve that end. At the time, whether or not I did didn't really come to mind.

I felt the air change as we came back into the physical realms, feeling the speed we traveled at. I expected us to explode in an instant, impacting a tree or a rock like a thrown egg. A hopefully instant and painless death.

Instead, Pinkie did… something, and we hit a squishy substance, slowed down as we passed through, and dropped from the other side, unharmed. Rose and Honest were a bit… shocked. Unmoving and unconscious to be specific. I got up and saw the… cream that we were covered in.

We had hit a massive wall of cream. In the middle of a forest.

I stared at it and Pinkie emerged from it, happily devouring it like she had a bottomless stomach. She hopped from the hole she had just made and stood next to me, smiling.

“I’ve got it!” she said.

“Got it…” I said in a faint voice.

“It needs more eggs!”

“Eggs…”

“And you were right! I did need to find something to make me happy! And I found it! Guess what it is!”

I merely stared, unable to comprehend what had just happened or most of her words.

“You Hag! I found out that you really are a good pony! I just needed to get close to you again but I couldn’t get close to you because you might have been a bad pony but if you were a bad pony then you would be scared of me since I was part of the elements and you wouldn’t have talked to me and then I wouldn’t have known if you were a good pony or a bad pony and everypony thought you were bad except the ones who didn’t but now I know that you are a good pony! And you are trying to fix your mistakes like anypony who messed up would. And helping you is going to make me happy again. Plus I am now totally lost and out of cream, so I’m going to be following you now!”

She spoke like a chipmunk that had devoured a tub of sugar. I barely caught any of her babbling, but I had heard some of it. She had found her happiness: helping me, and she was going to travel with us.

I thought this could not get any weirder. I was wrong of course, as I had reignited Pinkie Pie’s spirit.

I also thought that her friends would worry over her. She had just jumped into a rather unstable travel spell which could have easily killed her if she hadn’t… built a giant wall of cream in an instant to slow us down. Which still sounds stupid and insane to me and I actually saw it happen.

I stood in shock as Pinkie began devouring the wall again, reducing its size at a fast pace. Rose was still out of it, and Honest seemed unconscious.

She was worse than Discord. At least he is a spirit which explains his strangeness, but Pinkie was a normal pony. At least she should have been a normal pony. And she was going to follow us. I wasn’t looking forward to that, but my opinion was colored by the fact that I was going to have to explain why Pinkie was here to Rose and Honest.

After they woke up and I regained the ability to speak or move.

Comments

[everydaygamer]

Oh that was fantastic, I was hoping one of them would end up joining her little group and who better than Pinkie to make life more difficult for her lol.

[Wolfren]

When I saw their was a new chapter. YES YES YES YAAAYAYAAYAYAYAAAAAYAYAYAYYAA! Spasms of joy!
And most certainly deserving that excitment, whoo! One bearer down; five bearers, a dragon, and an angry princess to go.
I love the way you're writing Pinkie Pie here, in all her random awesomeness.

[REDACTED99999]

This is sooo good XD