[TIME] 144 - The City, Part 1
There were two kinds of people in the New World.
There were people who took the sudden change as an opportunity to redefine their lives and seek out a dramatic new path, foraging into the unknown to get away from what once was.
And then there were the people who clung to the past and did what they always did.
Azula was in the latter category. Ever since she’d arrived in the New World, she’d continued to be the proprietor of the teashop. At this point it was no longer out of some vague sense of obligation to Iroh’s spirit – it had been almost an entire lifetime since he’d left them. There was just something about being the person who provided calming, warm drinks to the community that kept Azula there. Any time she wasn’t surrounded by the aroma of tea, she felt more than a little on edge.
Like she was out of her element. Didn’t belong.
So the moment the City started rebuilding, she demanded a teashop. It wasn’t hard to pull strings to get it built near the start – many people had good memories of the place. At first, they had wanted to replicate the original one in the Hub, but they decided against it. The City wasn’t enclosed; it was open to the twilight sky. It just wouldn’t do to make the teashop a giant gray brick.
Instead, they accessed the ancient culture of the Elemental Nations. They may have willfully lost their cultural identity in Merodi Universalis, but it wasn’t hard to find out what they used to build.
They built what Iroh’s original teashop would have looked like. All the way back in Ba Sing Se…
Naturally, they had to install lighting and storage containers for the more exotic varieties of ‘tea’ Azula would be selling, but otherwise the general homey aesthetic was kept. It really hit Azula, making her realize she had never really felt at home for… most of her life.
She knew from the moment she walked in that this place was her home. And it showed. She had become a good listener during her time in the Hub’s teashop, but she had never been big on smiling all that brightly. People noticed her smile grow as the City was rebuilt and more and more people came to her teashop.
It was as if a switch had been flicked inside her. Suddenly, she was enjoying life much more than she had previously. The burdens of her past had been lifted. She just served tea and talked to people – and she was perfectly fine with that simple life.
Her uncle had really been onto something. It really was a shame he always ended up caught in politics. She supposed she had as well, though the influence of politics on her business here was minimal. The big crisis was over and the City wasn’t important enough to worry about trading entire planets and solar systems for the sake of a multiversal deal.
Everything had become more low-key and Azula wasn’t complaining in the slightest. She would be perfectly content if she could go the rest of her days lazily talking to people and serving tea.
She also found it funny how people came to drown their sorrows despite none of the tea having any alcohol content whatsoever.
“I don’t understand how you do it…” Storm was muttering, face down on the table.
“Do what?” Azula asked as she delivered a platter to a pair of inkling sisters.
Storm pointed at the happy customers. “This. How did you get this?”
Azula leaned forward on the counter and shook her head sadly. “Storm… I stopped trying.”
Storm grunted, somehow sensing what she was about to say.
“When I wanted respect and sought it, I didn’t get it. But when I stopped caring about that… I slowly got it.” She smiled warmly as she crushed some tea leaves between her fingers. “I started paying attention to other people and what they wanted.”
“I-”
“You faked it,” Azula interrupted, her smile faltering. “Tell me you actually cared about your Agents.”
“I did!”
Azula shook her head, turning away. “…No one believes that anymore. Everyone knows what you did at the Hub. You showed your true colors. It’s always about you.” She turned back. “If you want people to respect you… Well, it has to stop being about you.”
Storm nodded slowly.
“And take this as advice from a friend. I know you could probably pull off another fake. Convince everyone you had changed and that you really cared while still putting yourself in a good position. It’s what you’re good at.” She looked him in the eyes. “Don’t. Take this new world and… settle for something lesser. It’ll be a better life for you.”
Storm looked at her closely. Wordlessly, he got up and left. Azula couldn’t tell if she got through to him or not. She hoped she had.
She returned to her work, prepping another platter of steaming tea. She placed it on the counter. Since it all needed to go to various tables far from the ‘bar’, she wouldn’t be passing it out. Seskii jumped up from her position and began bouncing it around, not spilling a single drop.
A pang hit Azula. When the Tower fell, Seskii would lose all those abilities that made her such an effective waiter. Would she still be able to work here?
“…Changes are still coming,” Roland of Gilead said, sitting down in front of Azula.
“The worst is behind us,” Azula responded, checking her stores of dried leaves.
“The worst perhaps. The biggest?”
Azula furrowed her brow, silent for a moment. She had Roland’s special mix pre-prepared since he always showed up at least once a day. The cup of steaming water was in front of him within twenty seconds, though the tea hadn’t fully infused yet. “I can’t say. I never was one of the philosopher types. Like everyone else seemed to be.”
“Thankee-sai,” Roland said in regards to the tea. He tipped up his hat so his eyes would be easier to see. “I asked the Emissary why everyone talked so much.”
“She gave a straight answer?”
“Just ‘that’s the kind of story this is. There are questions without answers. They need to be addressed’.”
“Was this followed by a ‘darling’ or ‘idiot’?”
“The former, though the latter occurred in the next few minutes.” He folded his hands together.
“At least she answered your question.”
“I had many questions…she answered most of them. Or made them unimportant.”
Azula smiled sadly. “Roland… I’m sorry. You spent your entire life searching for answers. You were sent into an endless loop, never being allowed to truly find what you wanted. And then when you got the answers, they didn’t bring you the peace or closure you were sure they would.”
“No.”
“From what I’ve seen, that’s… Well, that’s how it works. Your story can be satisfying, you can reach an end, and then you won’t be satisfied. It’ll feel… over. But it’s not. You’re Roland of Gilead, your story is more p-”
“It’s over,” Roland said, kicking back.
Azula blinked. “…You know?”
Roland nodded with the slightest hint of a grimace.
“How? Did you talk to Twilence?”
“I did. But after I felt it.” He tapped his chest. “The ka. It’s leaving.”
“…Isn’t that a good thing, though? You yourself admitted it was a curse. An endless curse.”
“Don’t even know for sure which of my lives was right,” Roland admitted, falling into a ponderous silence.
“…Even when you lose something horrid, it still feels like a loss,” Azula said for him. “I… I’ve lost my fiery spirit and my passion. There are days I look back and wish I could still muster it up. But I can’t. I’ve gone soft. I’d never say it wasn’t a good thing, but… well, you know.”
Roland took a sip of the tea and furrowed his brow. “One…”
“One what?”
“One role,” Roland said, setting the teacup down. “Twilence said I had one left. Before the end.”
“Stopping a threat?”
“She was vague.”
“…Did she know?”
Roland looked into the distance. “Not fully. But she knew more than she was letting on.”
“Her powers have come back nicely. She probably knows when the Tower falls to the exact second.” Azula furrowed her brow. “…She told me she can hear Flagg sometimes.”
“I went to see him today.”
Azula gawked. “You… You can’t visi-”
“There was no talking,” Roland said, dismissively. “His mask wasn’t removed.”
“Still… nobody’s supposed to have anything to do with him… You know what he did, an-” She shook her head. “Never mind, you know better than anyone. Why would you risk that?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Roland admitted. “Don’t know what I got out of it either.”
“You might not have gotten anything. He’s a horrible man who’s been reduced to an immobile tormented soul who’s never allowed to talk to anyone. It’s… exactly what he deserves, but hard to feel vindicated about.”
“Mlinx suggested we give him another trial after the Tower falls. Many agreed.”
“They’re going to try to rehabilitate him!? What are they thinking? He’s… He’s…” She fell silent. “A force of ka, perpetuated by the Tower. Would he be able to be something else without it?”
Roland looked at her. His features asked her – begged her – to have an answer for him.
“I… I’m sorry, I don’t have an answer for you. I’m not the thinker.”
“That’s why I came to you.”
Azula bit her lip. “…I don’t know. My first instinct is to kill him and get it over with. But my instincts have gotten me in a lot of trouble over the years. I… I think I’d have to see him after the Tower fell to be sure. Run tests. See… see what everyone else thinks. I can’t make that judgment.”
Roland sighed. He slowly stood up and tipped his hat to Azula and left the teashop without another word. He left his unfinished tea behind.
How unlike him.
Azula spent the whole day thinking about what he’d said. The concerns he’d brought to her. She prepared herself for the next time he came in and wanted to talk.
But he didn’t come in the next day. Or the next. Or the day after that.
She eventually asked Seskii to watch the teashop for a few hours while she went to find him. Nala told her exactly where he was – the Memorial. He stood at the foot of the statue, expression unreadable.
Azula walked up to him.
“Does justice exist?” he asked, suddenly.
“I… Uh…”
“He killed so many,” he said, gesturing at the names flying past them. “He’s done more than anyone else who has ever lived.”
“…They decided to try to rehabilitate Flagg, didn’t they?”
Roland didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
“If he was a victim of ka…”
“Every man is a victim of ka. That does not mean we aren’t responsible for our actions.”
Azula nodded slowly. “But is justice really an eye for an eye? Death for death? Aren’t there… other things? Like, uh…” she fumbled. “Mercy?”
“Azula.”
Azula sighed. “…I have nothing for you Roland. Just more questions. …But I can tell you that there isn’t a satisfying answer. I don’t think there is one.”
Roland clenched his jaw in silence. Azula knew what this meant – it was time for her to leave. She silently snuck away and got back to work.
Roland did eventually come back to the teashop a couple weeks later. But he never brought up Flagg again, and Azula didn’t push it.
~~~
Law enforcement. The police. People tasked with keeping the populace safe. In Celestia City, this has primarily been the job of the League of Sweetie Belles, making the actual police nothing more than backup.
In the City, the role was reversed. The League still existed, sure, but they were no longer the primary form of keeping order. They were the backup for the police. Policing was a much simpler job than the past, since technically they only had to worry about the laws of one City, not several thousand different civilizations all mingling together. It was a breath of fresh air.
Somehow, the chief of police ended up being Doctor Strange. He spent most of the day in his office, drinking way too much coffee and using his magic to scan the City for possible crimes before they even happened. He usually did this by sitting back in his absurdly expensive office chair and entering a meditative state.
This was usually interrupted by Lightning running into the office and upsetting the entire setup. “Strange, we’ve got a-”
“Stabbing about to take place on Ricarduro Street,” Strange said with a sigh.
“What a coincidence, that’s exactly what I said,” Sherlock added, poking his head in. “Didn’t even need any fancy magic.”
“Did you know it-”
“-is Spades Slick? Yes. Yes I did.”
Strange put a hand to the bridge of his nose. “I don’t have time to ask why or how… Just go deal with it. Yes, Sherlock, you too. No, I do not care that you technically aren’t an officer, just do it.”
Sherlock shrugged. “I wanted to go anyway. This is going to be quite the ‘I told you so’. All it will take is a-”
Lightning grabbed him by the back of his coat collar and dragged him out of the police station and onto the streets.
“You’re in a hurry. It’s not going to be that soon,” Sherlock muttered. “We’ll need evidence that he had intention or we won’t be able to charge him.”
“I needed to get you out of that room before you entered a battle of wills,” Lightning said, readying her gunblade. “Then we’d be too late.”
“I would have calculated the precise amount of time I coul-”
Lightning dragged him into a teleporter that took them to Ricarduro Street. It looked about the same as the street the police station was on, except it was a little dirtier and the people who lived there weren’t as zealous about trying to look like perfect angels all the time.
The people walking by the police station did get a little tiring to watch after a while. There were only so many times you could see someone nervously walk into a pole before it became boring.
Sherlock sighed. “Fine. From Spades’ interaction yesterday, it’ll happen somewhere along this street at least five minutes from now. Indigo will have changed his walking route to come through here given the recent construction and Spades will jump him. A stabbing is going to take place when the two meet.”
“For certain?”
“Spades has a knife. What else do you expect? It’s his way of saying hello.”
“Been here all of a month and already he’s…” Lightning sighed. “How did the Merodi put up with him?”
“Medical technology, usefulness, and luck,” Sherlock explained. “It takes a lot to live the life of quasi-crime. Good ol’ Olivia set him on the path and he didn’t budge at all. It was only a matter of time until he wanted that back.”
“And we shut him down.”
“Precisely. Today marks the day where he tries to start his little empire on his own. He won’t stand a chance…”
Lightning pushed Sherlock down – someone was coming. It wasn’t anyone they were expecting, just a man whistling and skipping down the street. He entered a nearby building and shut the door with a loud, metallic slam.
“He was happy,” Lightning observed.
“Just got or is about to get a huge paycheck,” Sherlock deduced.
“Mmm…” Lightning said, falling silent. She wasn’t in the mood for another round of ‘deductions with Sherlock’. They tended to get pedantic and irritating much faster than she could ever anticipate.
They waited patiently for a few minutes until they saw a Melnorme walking down the street. Indigo. He was carrying a lot of traded goods in a sack on his back – many of them exceedingly valuable. Lightning would have said he was being stupid to trust the City’s law enforcement to keep his belongings safe, but then she remembered they were watching him and were going to keep him safe, so the point was moot.
They saw Spades Slick himself come out of a building that somehow managed to look old and decrepit despite only being built a week ago. He looked Indigo right in the eye and scowled. “So, you decided t’ show up, did ya?”
“…Er… Yes.” Indigo said. “I did.”
“I sense you havin’ second thoughts…” Spades said, a knife appearing in his hand. “I’m tellin’ ya, this won’t end well, buddy.”
Lightning leaped out from her hiding place and cast Slow on Spades. He moved to stop her, but she kicked the knife out of his hand and pinned him to the ground before he could even curl his hands into a fist.
Sherlock strode out of the hiding place and leaned down to Spades’ face. “I said you would be eating dirt.” He gestured at how Spades’ face was pressed to the ground. “I did mean it.”
Spades grumbled something impossible to understand with the slowed time and dirt in his mouth.
Lightning cuffed him. “You won’t be creating your little ‘gangster paradise’ here. Or even something remotely like it. You do, however, have rights. We haven’t exactly worked out exactly how to read them to you, but we can start with the right to remain sile-”
Indigo stabbed her in the back with a knife. Nothing overly critical was hit, but the knife was laced with a particularly powerful paralytic that would have killed most people. Lightning was experienced enough with poisons to have a tolerance to such things, but she still seized up and fell to the ground like a domino.
Sherlock blinked. “…It seems I may have made a miscalculation.”
Spades spat the dirt out of his mouth. “Ya think!?”
Indigo pointed the knife at Sherlock. “You w-”
“Yes, yes, won’t be going anywhere, clearly this was all some sort of elaborate ploy to get me here to kill me. Who is it, some Melnorme high trader? A version of Moriarty?”
“…You notice much, Sherlock. But not anymore.” Indigo moved to stab him. Sherlock jumped to the side, narrowly dodging the blade.
“You’re a trader who’s been having great success but misses the older times when the Melnorme way was appreciated.” Sherlock ducked to the side, rolling over Lightning’s paralyzed form. “You found yourself a boss who thought he could cheat the system, and convinced you to be the start of the empire. All you have to do is take out some pesky detective who’s always figuring things out before they happen. A wizard too, while you’re at it.” He tripped over Spades’ body, a look of fear crossing his face.
Indigo raised the knife, grinning.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what the plan is to take care of Strange?”
“No.”
“Shame. It’d make things much easier.” He lost the fake fearful expression and held up a small key – the kind that went to handcuffs.
Spades brought out another knife and stabbed Indigo through the eye with it. Several times.
“Let him go,” Sherlock said. “There’s a bigger fish you need to bring here. That building over there, third floor, just behind the window.”
Spades jumped to the third floor and punched the window in, pulling out the man who had been skipping and whistling down the street just moments before. Spades threw him down to the ground, breaking several bones – but Sherlock stopped the carapacian before he could cut the man’s head off.
“H-how did you know!?” the man shouted through his pain.
“Elementary. Well, not really, but something like it. I guessed, you confirmed.”
“W-What!?”
“There was nothing traditionally suspicious about you – except the fact that you stood out. I dismissed you, but thinking back, you wouldn’t have been here if you weren’t important in some way. Ka hasn’t vanished yet, and it betrayed what you were. Now…” he leaned in and raised an eyebrow. “How do I stop you from getting to Strange?”
“I…”
“I’ll gouge your eyes out with a spoon and stick my knives in the holes,” Spades threatened.
“We’ve set a magic feedback loop in his room. The moment he tries to use his powers to see the future and gets a full image, he’ll blow the entire station!”
“…It is really lucky I’ve upset his meditation then, isn’t it? He won’t be able to do that for several hours.” He shrugged, grabbing the cuffs that had been on Spades and slapping them on the poor, broken man. “You are under arrest, mister…”
“M-”
“Actually, you know what, you don’t get a name,” Sherlock decided. “Doesn’t matter who you are. I’ll just cart you off to the police station and they can read you your rights and deal with the paperwork.” He turned to Lightning. “…Should probably take her to the hospital first.”
“Yes… hospital… please…” Lightning wheezed.
“You’ll live. Spades, can you get her to the hospital without stabbing her? Nevermind, dumb question, of course you can’t.” Sherlock sighed. “Have to do everything…” He pulled out his phone and called emergency services. “This is consultant Sherlock Holmes working with our illustrious law enforcement. Officer Lightning has been downed by a paralytic knife. I will be waiting on-scene with an injured criminal as well, though he will be going directly to the station. …You’re required to treat anyone you see who is injured. …Fine.”
“That’s a stupid rule,” Spades muttered.
“You’re the one who wants a gangster paradise,” Sherlock commented. “By definition you have to think all rules are stupid.”
“…No…”
“Yes. By the way, when you do try to stab someone for that, you will eat dirt again.”
“You ain’t perfect.”
“And of course you want to chance that…” He rolled his eyes, calling Strange. “Hey, I hope you’re not meditating!”
“Sherlock I swear t-”
“We’ve uncovered a minor conspiracy that wanted to remove you from power by arming explosives that would trigger when you reached a level of maximum meditation. So just stop. Also, you’re welcome.”
Strange hung up on him.
Sherlock shrugged, putting his phone away. At this point, emergency services arrived in a flash of light with a hover-ambulance. A curly-haired white mage stepped out of the ambulance and was able to heal Lightning’s singular wound without any trouble whatsoever. Indigo was already dead so he had to be loaded for revival spell attempts later.
The woman took one look at the man with all the broken bones and winced. “I need to take him in for that. Did you really have to rough him up so much?”
“I had to use Spades to get to him,” Sherlock said. “So yes.”
She levitated the broken man into the ambulance. “I’ll have him under constant surveillance, don’t worry.”
“I worry.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “There’s now a tracker and teleportation implant embedded into him, happy?”
“Enough.”
“Great! Goodbye. He’ll arrive at the station when discharged.” Emergency services vanished in a puff of white.
Lightning rubbed her head. “…So everyone was taken away except Spades?”
“Yes.”
“…You misread him didn’t you?”
“Not my fault he treats scheduled duels the same as planned murder.”
“And you didn’t even think of that as a possibility.”
“You got stabbed in the back by an orange balloon.”
Lightning twitched. Then she turned to Spades. “You’re off the hook for now, but we’re watching you.”
Spades shrugged. “So nothin’ new? Got it.”
Lightning let out a grunt and dragged Sherlock away.
~~~
Trixie had tried to go back to the life she once had.
Emphasis on ‘tried’.
After she’d gotten herself a place in the City and gotten the mourning out of her system, she booted up the computer and connected to the Internet. Currently, it only connected the City to a few other settlements, making it a very limited place compared to what it once was. It still had all the major sites simply because people had still wanted them, but heavy traffic was just… down.
She’d set out to change that, to once again become an Internet celebrity, to help bring everyone together through her.
One problem.
Nobody seemed to care anymore.
There were a couple diehard fans, sure, but aside from them… it seemed like the life had gone out of the Internet.
“What do you think did it, Discord?” Trixie asked one day. “What happened?”
“The multiverse collapsed.”
“I mean besides the obvious, smartass.”
Discord chuckled. “Well, the Internet only really connects people within the City. And, let’s be honest here, we’ve got teleporters to go visit those people in person right now. Public transport is completely free, easy, and simple. You think the City’s big, but it’s not really. This is a small community.”
“Didn’t stop people before…” Trixie grumbled.
“Well… There was a month there where nobody had Internet. Maybe they used that month to realize it wasn’t as good as they thought it was? Or maybe it’s just really simple – not enough people making content on the Internet to spend all day scrolling through it without thinking.”
“So you’re basically saying ‘lots of things, just deal with it’?”
“Putting words in my mouth again! So arrogant!”
“Gee, I wonder why…” Trixie muttered.
She eventually shut down the Internet business. There wasn’t much feedback, people weren’t talking to her as much, and Discord was right – the world outside the screen seemed more appealing at the moment for some reason she couldn’t quite put her hoof on. So she went to the next best thing.
“Arcade,” she told Discord one day. “We’re making another Arcade.”
“Oh, that sounds positively delightful! A sector for games, just the two of us, entertaining the masses and ripping them off of their coin!”
“…I should say we’ll be running a completely honest business that charges fairly, buuuuut… Oh, screw it, we won’t be able to resist.” She rubbed her hooves together. “Discord, do the snap, crackle, pop.”
He snapped his fingers and one cereal-filled hour later they had an arcade filled with all the best and most amazing games imaginable, ranging from VR to magical reality to simple arcade machines. In the first week, business went great. Sure, Lightning had to drop in one day and tell them to stop being so ‘greedy’, but Trixie and Discord didn’t complain. They didn’t make it unfair for the money; they did it to mess with people.
Trixie really felt like it was going somewhere. That it was, really, a great life. People came to her to have fun. The arcade was almost always filled with sounds of laughter and enjoyment.
That sound. That sound – it was why she had become a magic performer so long ago. It was not the applause, though she had grown to cherish that. It was the laughter, the enjoyment, the surprise… All because of her.
And then, one day, business inexplicably started to slow. The sound dwindled over the course of about four days. At first, they had no idea why it was happening. But then Trixie overheard the word ‘BattleDome’.
“Discord, search,” Trixie demanded, slamming a hoof on the arcade counter with a slam. “What is BattleDome?”
Discord summoned a laptop and a pair of glasses that belonged on an old secretary. “Let’s see here… A virtual reality establishment that opened up last week. The main feature is a BattleDome where you can fight without fear of injury and can be anything… But it also has features for general gaming, recreation, and many other purposes.”
“…Why didn’t we think of this?”
“Holding onto the past?”
Trixie ignored this comment. “Right. Well, clearly we’ll need to negotiate something. Who runs it?”
Discord scrolled down – and his eyes widened. “You are not going to believe this…”
Later that day, they walked into the BattleDome. From the outside, it was a simple white dome the diameter of a football field. People were streaming in and out of the front doors constantly, much more traffic than their arcade ever had. The two trotted in – paying the entry price.
Discord did some quick math. “…They spend slightly more here.”
“Of course they do. But if this was just a matter of better prices, we wouldn’t be here,” Trixie muttered. They entered the full world of the dome – and without even putting on a headset they were suddenly in a world of virtual reality. They walked along a cobblestone path through an excessively green landscape. All around them were other people, almost all of whom just looked like regular people, starkly contrasting against the dramatic neon signs everywhere. Each sign declared the presence of some service or other – VR movies, massive multiplayer games, historical records, something called Jump-Up, and even simulated arcade.
“I’m going to rip his throat out…” Trixie muttered.
The worst part of it? None of the signs had price tags on them. Pay the entry fee and you could do anything you wanted – with the notable exception of the biggest neon sign in the entire virtual space, which had prices for betting – not playing. It was the BattleDome sign itself, asking players to enter and fight.
Just below the sign was a gaudy golden statue of the ‘man’ who ran the BattleDome.
Caliborn.
Knowing Caliborn, Trixie walked right up to his statue and proceeded to flip it off with a magic hologram. “Hey, Cal, we need to talk.”
“Caliborn is currently in a match,” the calm, slightly amused voice of Monika said. “I can take a message if you’d like.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Discord said, scratching his chin. “Monika… You provide all the resources…?”
“Yep!” Monika said with a wink.
“Then Caliborn does nothing. Got it,” Trixie said.
“Well, no…” Monika put a finger to her face. “He’s the one who made the main BattleDome. All by himself. I just came by later to commercialize it.”
“Why?”
“Boredom.”
“Legitimate reason,” Discord admitted.
Monika shrugged. “Anyway, since you insist on waiting…” She snapped her fingers and they were suddenly standing on a clear platform several yards above an arena. “We can watch the match.” She pointed down.
Facing off was a virtual representation of Lord English fighting a giant robot. Both were heavily damaged and scraped.
“Let me guess, Cal’s playing English?” Trixie asked.
“Actually no,” Monika said. “He’s the robot. Some guy named… Isaiah Neuman is playing English.” She looked at her hand, a watch materializing from nothing. “Should be done in a few seconds now…”
The giant robot pushed its hands forwards and unleashed a nuclear explosion. English took the full force of the attack and retaliated with a beam of vaporizing energy – but the robot wasn’t there anymore. It was above him, driving a sword right into his brain.
“Game!” an invisible announcer called out. The arena vanished, only to be replaced with a podium. Caliborn and an ordinary human were standing there, and Caliborn had a gold medal.
“EAT SHIT!” Caliborn shouted, pointing at Isaiah.
Isaiah shrugged. “Good game.”
“You bet your claws it is! FUCK YEAH!” Caliborn let out a roar and did a little dance. “Right! Who’s next?”
“An appointment,” Monika said, descending from the sky.
“Oh. You two losers.” Caliborn rolled his eyes at them. “What wasp’s gotten in your head?”
“You’re running our arcade out of business,” Trixie said. “We’re here to negotiate… a settlement.”
“Talk to the reality bitch over there, I really don’t care.”
“…You let him talk to you like that?” Discord asked Monika.
Monika shrugged. “It’s just a word.”
“You don’t care?” Trixie pointed an accusing hoof at Caliborn. “You’re conquering the market, you should care!”
Caliborn laughed. “And now it’s your turn to be the fucking idiot! I am not doing this for the money. Who needs money? I could go to the Pinkie Emporium every day and live the high life without paying a dime.”
“He did that for several weeks,” Monika added.
“Their fault for being so generous with free samples,” Caliborn retorted. “But I did have to go to Eve’s… sessions… to ‘deal’ with my ‘anger problem’. It was fucking stupid but, to everyone’s surprise, not useless! She was like ‘go play this game it might help’ and the next thing I knew I was tearing apart hoards of demons with my bare hands!”
“Doom. The game was Doom.”
“Who asked you?” Caliborn flung his arms around wildly. “Whatever. Never mind. I decided I needed to experience ALL the games in every way I could! And I wanted bigger games! Better games! I wanted to be able to fight anything as anything! So I created this! And you know the best part?”
“No,” Trixie deadpanned.
“People don’t fucking complain when you beat them up!” He let out a laugh. “None of the ‘be nice’ or ‘you can’t hurt them’ BULLSHIT. It’s all about strength in here… STRENGTH!”
“And I just filled in the holes and added the other stuff,” Monika said. “…Look, if you want, I can remove the simulated arcade. Though that’ll probably upset a lot of people.”
Trixie frowned. “…Why would they come to us? Your games are better and everything in here’s a better deal. We could start our own VR thing, but it wouldn’t be the same.” She grumbled. “Wouldn’t have mister angry and green constantly bettering the game with his ‘spice’. It works better with him as the star of the show.”
Monika pondered this for a moment. “I could just hire you.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Discord said. “We’re here to help us, not you.”
“A deal usually helps both, Discord,” Trixie pointed out.
“…I don’t want to work for anyone.”
Monika shrugged. “Well, sorry, not sure what you want me to do.”
“I don’t know either,” Trixie mutterd.
They closed down the arcade a week later – Trixie just wasn’t feeling it anymore. She went to the BattleDome’s arcade just to see what it would be like – and discovered that it was always personalized. She would just be managing a small amount of customers if she came here, and nobody would think more of her than just some clerk. They’d think she was weird for not being an AI or something.
“…What now?” Trixie asked.
Discord shrugged. “I’ve been hanging out with Flutterfree and tweaking my Chaos Basement to my liking. Been pretty nice, not doing anything.”
Trixie blinked. “…Doing… nothing…” She pulled out her phone. She logged into her bank account. Like most everyone else, most of her money had been lost with the destruction of the multiverse. However, she had amassed a fortune in her life as a ‘celebrity’ and even a small chunk of it would boggle the minds of most ordinary people. “I could certainly afford it. But… I don’t know, Discord, I’ve been…”
Discord shrugged. “You should just try it. See where it takes you. You might be surprised with the retired life.”
“I’m only a hundred and forty-nine,” Trixie said, rolling her eyes.
“…Wasn’t the retirement age a hundred and twenty in Equestria before the immortality serum came out?”
“Shut up.”
Discord rolled his eyes and zipped his mouth shut, knowing Trixie had already decided to listen to him.
Trixie bought the most extravagant mansion she could think of. She got a full waiting staff and spent all her time attending parties and meeting up with friends. At the start it was simply exhilarating. She didn’t have any responsibilities and she could do just about anything she wanted, and nobody was egging her to get a job. They all supported her.
Then she met a stallion living a similar lifestyle. A Prince of a lower Equis who’d gotten money by selling his castle and everything in it the moment he heard of the City. He invited her to a grandiose ball held in a replica of Twilight’s castle.
It took her all of three minutes at that ball of gaudy, rich people to realize something: if she continued like this she was going to end up part of the pseudo-nobility. And she hated the nobility with a burning passion for how they’d always treated performers like her.
So she left, cut ties with everyone at the ball, and sold her mansion.
The day before she was scheduled to hand off the keys, Discord showed up. “Didn’t work?”
“Didn’t like what I was turning into,” Trixie said, flamboyantly throwing a ball gown into the trash. “Ah, that’s… satisfying.”
“You could jus-”
“Nope, not living the lazy life,” Trixie said. “I may be a self-absorbed below-average illusionist, but I’m not a layabout.”
“You’re underselling yourself like a limbo dancer on competition day.”
Trixie rolled her eyes. “Okay, so I’m not below-average at illusions. That’s what I’m banking on.” She walked outside to her wagon – her precious wagon that had been through so much. The precious wagon she had repaired so many times and enchanted to be bigger on the inside – but never replaced. Never, ever, replaced. She’d had it re-painted and finished just a few days ago. “Going back on the road…”
Discord facepalmed. “Trixie, you know why this isn’t going to work…”
Trixie grimaced. “I’m going to try.”
“You tried before the multiverse collapsed. Nobody wants ‘magic’ tricks anymore. Trust me, even my chaos hasn’t been grabbing their attention.”
“THEN WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?” Trixie shouted, stamping her hooves on the ground. “I’ve gone through everything I’m good at and it just. Doesn’t. Work! Nothing has the same… same… UGH!” She rammed her head into a wall. “I’m hopeless…”
Discord blinked. “Uh… Sure there’s nothing else? Like…” He scratched the back of his head, clearly at a loss on what to do. “Something you haven’t tried yet?”
“What? I’ve been a public icon, a magician, and an arcade manager. I give people a show, design clever tricks, and can talk about games. What in the world could I possi-” A lightbulb went off in her head.
“…Trixie?”
“Shush. Trixie is having a moment.”
Discord grinned. “There’s the Trixie we know and love.”
“To the wagon! Trixie needs her idea board!”
Months passed. But, eventually, Trixie trotted up to the BattleDome alone. She wore a pair of square glasses and a blue suit. Her mane had been cut short – nothing long enough to reach her shoulders. She pulled out a phone and put on a snarky smile. “Heeeeeeeey Cal, my favorite snotling! Come outside, I’ve got something special for you!”
It took a few minutes for Cal to get out of his match, but he did exit the building – Monika next to him. “Why are you dressed like a blue penguin?” he asked.
“She wants to look professional,” Monika said. “…You want that job?”
“I have a… different proposition,” Trixie said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small digital cartridge.
“…What the fuck is that?” Caliborn asked.
“It’s a game,” Trixie said, pulling out a business card. “A game I designed.”
Monika examined the card. Trixie Lulamoon, Lulamoon Games. “…You’re a game designer?”
“Yep. You’ll find on that cartridge a copy of Advent Nile, a simple little game where you take the role of a spaceship and shoot enemies. The primary deviating mechanic is a ‘retaliation’ system where certain enemies will attack you with different levels of intensity based on what color enemies you’ve already killed. This is the first game for Lulamoon Games, so it isn’t anything overly ambitious. But it has the potential for a dramatic story rife with consequences from every single gunshot and a multiplayer sensation where each player could control not only a ship, but also a certain color of enemy as well.” She adjusted her glasses. “Trixie’s offering it to you first.”
“An early deal…” Monika said, examining the chip. “Let me guess, expensive?”
“Not at all. You’ll pay just as much as anyone else would pay to get it at home. You just get it early.”
“More people will come to the BattleDome… and your name will get out…” Monika smirked. “Clever.”
“…What?” Caliborn asked, clearly confused about the entire interaction.
“Don’t worry, this is a good plan,” Monika told him. “You have yourself a deal, Trixie. Though, I am curious, how’d you get a team to work on this?”
Trixie grinned evilly. “Trixie is a one pony army. Discord provided the materials. Trixie did everything else. You’d be surprised how easy it is to make a game with modern computers if you just have a good idea and the drive to finish it.” She turned around and confidently strode away.
Two weeks later Advent Nile was the talk of the City and Trixie’s next game was already heavily anticipated.
She leaned back in her chair and smirked. “Trixie’s still got it.”
~~~
Corona’s Public Laboratory.
Everyone called it the workshop.
…Well, anyone who liked the place. There were a few who called it ‘the bitch’s doomsday box’ but they weren’t nearly as vocal nor as prevalent as Corona would have expected. She did occasionally get graffiti on the workshop, though.
Today was one of those days.
She was mildly disappointed it wasn’t anything creative. No artistic or comedic value to this piece of red spray-paint. Just the words ‘doomsday bitch’ in large, hastily scrawled letters.
Corona put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows. “You think if they’d go through all the trouble of not tripping the alarms they’d be a little less skittish. They probably had half an hour before anyone would notice. This is, what, thirty seconds of work? Tops?”
Jenny stood next to her wearing nothing more than an extra long nightshirt and her gloves. She sipped her coffee. “Upset they’re not spending more effort on defaming you?”
“Yes!” Corona realized what she’d just said. “I mean, no. I mean…” Corona facepalmed. “There are a lot of complicated feelings involved.” She absent-mindedly scratched her tracking collar.
“Maybe they knew you’d find something hastily scrawled more of an insult than an extravagant piece of art?” Jenny suggested.
“…There’s no way they could be that smart.”
“Could be anyone in the entire city. You may be in the 99th percentile but there’s more than a hundred people who live here.”
Corona stared at the graffiti with a blank expression. “…Now I don’t know what to think.”
“Then my work here is done.”
Corona blinked. Then she shrugged, waving her hands and making the graffiti disappear with a simple spell. The wall was clean once again. Corona stood, proud of her quick work.
“…Why do I even have this?” Jenny asked, examining her mug. “I hate coffee.”
Corona’s bright expression became one of exasperation in an instant. “…Back to work it is.”
Jenny yawned. “But booooosssss I’m not awake yet!”
“If you were anyone else I’d be baffled as to why they were trying to get me to crack their head open like a walnut. But it’s you, of course that’s what you want.”
Jenny chuckled, dropping the whine in an instant. “Back to work.” They entered the workshop, passing through a ‘hall’ whose walls were composed entirely of giant piles of mechanical bits ranging from I-beams to magic crystals to pieces of wood laying around haphazardly. A few sections within the piles were cleared out for larger machines to make their permanent home.
The most popular of these was Jenny’s duplicator device, which had made a lot of their job much easier as of late. Need a part but can’t find enough? Duplicate! Need to break something to learn how to fix it? Duplicate! Break a tool? Always have duplicates! It didn’t work on everything, to be sure, but it duplicated enough technological things that their workload had been significantly reduced.
They dreaded the day when someone brought in a magic-infused piece of biotech. The duplicator hated those.
Their current project was to make a collapsible rock wall for a rock-climbing enthusiast. It had been a bit of a challenge to get the device to collapse and feel like actual rock, but it was coming along nicely. Corona expected to finish it before lunch.
Jenny and Corona entered the central area of the workshop where the collapsible mountain had stood every day for the last week. It was nowhere to be seen – instead, Roxy was sitting on top of a pillow with a cocky grin on her face.
“…Did you Void it?” Jenny asked, looking around.
“Nope!”
“Sitting on it?” Corona asked.
“Nope!” Roxy held out her index finger. On top of it was a gray box the size of a pea. “Here it is.”
“…So, let me get this straight. You completed it and made it smaller?”
“DING DING DING!” Roxy declared, whooping. “Jenny, tell her what she’s won!”
Jenny blinked. “Did we rehearse a bit or something? Be-”
Roxy held up her free hand which had a Jenny-like sock puppet on it. “Corona’s won the coveted ‘complete every job on the list’ award! Also, a toaster!” Roxy created a toaster and tossed it to Corona. It impaled on her horn. “Warranty not included.”
“Clearly not,” Corona said, prying the appliance off her face. She repaired the simple machine with a wave of her hand. “…Is every job really done?”
Roxy shoved the Jenny puppet into Corona’s face and made it nod. “Not a single thing on the to-do list for today! No customers, no government-mandated projects! You know what this means!?”
Corona smirked. “We could work on whatever we wanted… build anything…”
“Or, you know, just have a party,” Roxy said, lowering the puppet. “I can totally just make there ‘be party’ here. It works!”
“Both. Both is good,” Jenny said, clapping her hands. “It’s a build-anything party.”
“What should we build?” Corona asked. “Mirror transportation? Laser network? Supercooled plasma?”
“That’s not a thing.“
“It could be.”
“Girls, girls, better idea,” Roxy said – completely oblivious to the fact that Ivan had just walked in. “Something stupid and completely, truly, absolutely pointless in every way shape and form you can imagine. Something that will make you go ‘what’ or perhaps ‘NANI!?’” She made a pumpkin appear out of thin air. “Let’s make a pumpkin chucker.”
“…There is absolutely no point to this,” Corona observed. “Count me in.”
“Yes…” Jenny said, rubbing her hands together. “Clearly, we will have to keep the pumpkin in one piece as it’s flying – no explosions or transmuting to light… It must fly freely… And we have to get this done in a day.”
“One day… three girls… a lot of pumpkins…” Roxy giggled. “This is gonna be fun!”
And they set to work. As normal, this started with an entire hour arguing over the basic design. There was a mixture of hologram projections, magic images, models Voided into existence, and a lot of squabbling over the whiteboard. In this, time Ivan had plenty of opportunity to leave, order tea from the teashop, drop by a spaceship manufacturing depot, and return with a shopping bag.
“We need purely magic propulsion!” Corona argued.
“I say we bug the Flowers for some Fate Fronds,” Jenny retorted, shaking her head. “See, they’ll ensure success!”
“Gaming the system is never a good idea,” Roxy said, scribbling out what Jenny had just written. “Instead, we should take Corona’s idea, except throw out half the magic and replace it with guidance systems that fly around the pumpkin. It could go on for eternity…”
“It’ll fail eventually!”
Ivan coughed.
“What?” Jenny asked, annoyed.
The crystalline man held up a grocery bag. “Got something for you.” He set it on the ground and walked away.
The three of them ran to it and peeled it open. Inside was a square made of black, metallic material. There were no designs on it at all, but all three of them knew exactly what it was.
“An inertial dampener…” Corona said, holding it up. “The perfect size for the pumpkin. …I can see it. I can see it now. With this, we can hit the pumpkin as hard as we want. It won’t break.”
“Do these things still work in the New World?” Jenny asked.
Corona slapped Jenny with it as hard as she could. There was no clang – just a muffled whiff despite Jenny being hit hard enough to be knocked to the ground. “I’d say it works.”
Jenny touched her head where she’d been hit – she hadn’t even felt it. The pain had come when she’d hit the ground. “That’s so broken and unrealistic. LET’S USE IT!”
“Simple but over-the-top…” Corona said, snapping her fingers. She picked up a colored marker and started drawing. “So… we just need to hit it really, really, really hard…”
So they set to work. The workshop was filled with the noises of sparks flying, magic spells welding, and buzzsaws being thrown around like nothing. They took a break for lunch – made Ivan a crystal cake to say thanks – and then returned to refining what they were calling the Pumisher.
“That’s the worst pun I’ve ever heard,” Corona said.
“Exactly,” Roxy responded without a hint of humor in her voice.
They fine-tuned. They ran tests with things that weren’t pumpkins – because the pumpkin would have to wait for the moment of truth. Soon, they were chucking things at speeds approaching that of light itself.
The clock said it was mid-afternoon when they took the Pumisher to the workshop roof. The device was simple. Its base was a round piece of metal, in the center of which a pumpkin would be placed. On one side of the circle was a giant metal pole fused to the base with magic welding that glowed ever so slightly. Atop this pole was a giant rotating mechanism covered in runes, sparks, and other pieces of technology that looked about ready to explode at any minute. There was a large tube affixed to this rotation mechanism, the edge of which had a magically-reinforced golf club coated in the inertial dampener material.
Roxy took out a big black marker and drew a big question mark on the pumpkin. Then she set it down in the middle of the platform and ran away to a blast shield the three of them had set up. Despite being behind a blast shield, all three of them were wearing safety goggles. Ivan had opted not to be next to the absurd machine when it was about to go off on a pumpkin.
“…Pre-launch checks complete,” Roxy said, putting down her checklist. “We’re go whenever you’re ready.”
Corona cracked her knuckles. “Okay… Ten… Nine… Eight…”
“Oh for the love of hating lovely things.” Jenny slammed her hand on the button. In an instant the rotation mechanism began spinning so fast the arm was effectively a disc to their eyes. They saw a burst of blue light – indicating the air had been removed from the launch area. Several red and green sparks started flying, indicating the magitech engines had started boosting the arm’s speed even further.
“I think we’re holding,” Roxy said.
“We didn’t put a sensor on it,” Jenny reminded her.
“I did say ‘think’.”
Corona said nothing – she kept her eyes focused on the device. She counted down the stages in her mind as they kept increasing the speed of the arm. As soon as it detected the golf club would extend through a tempora-
Suddenly there wasn’t a pumpkin anymore. Corona blinked – and replayed the footage Raging Sights had stored. The Pumisher had extended the golf club and hit the pumpkin at speeds so high even the device had difficulty determining the precise moment the club actually hit. One thing it could determine – the pumpkin had left traveling at over a million kilometers per second. About a third of a percent the speed of light.
“…That was incredible,” Roxy said. “Just… WHAM. Gone.” She checked her computer. “It’s already out of the system. I… and I’ve just lost it completely.”
“Think that’s a record?” Jenny asked.
“Probably not.”
“Oh.”
“Does it really matter?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Corona beamed and laughed to herself.
She felt so relieved she didn’t have to worry about the fate of existence. The highlight of her life was now throwing a pumpkin into space.
Where had this been all her life?
…When it was morning for Corona and the rest at the workshop, the flying pumpkin finally hit something. A small little planet with a busy farm, known system-wide for its great apples.
Jane, Evermore and farmer, was hit in the face by a pumpkin falling at speeds well above terminal velocity, spared the burning terrors of reentry by preservation spells. It hit Jane so hard her entire face became orange and a small crater appeared just behind her head, destroying a tree. She herself was fine – defensive magics were great – but it still threw her for a loop.
“…What?”
“Pumpkin,” Corea said, grinning mischievously.
Jane blinked, getting the distinct impression she was the punchline in a joke she didn’t understand.
~~~
Eve found Rina kneeling at one of the Church’s altars. She calmly waited for Rina to finish.
Rina finished a couple seconds after Eve arrived, but had decided it would be a great idea to pretend like she wasn’t going to leave anytime soon, hoping Eve would just go away. But, in the end, her knees got too tired. She sighed, turning around to face her other self. “...Hey.”
Eve tried to force a calm smile onto her face, but Rina knew it was fake. “Hey, Rina.”
Rina took in a breath to calm herself. “Eve, stop it.”
“I… I didn’t come here to yell at you, or get angry.”
“But you are angry. So cut the shit and be just a tad bit more honest, hmm? I’m the reason for so much of your suffering. If you want to give me respect at least have the gall to tell me you’re upset to my face.”
“I’m upset. I’m angry. And I’m confused.” Eve tapped her hoof on the ground. “I knew I would never see Brutalight again when the Xeelee took her. That was her resolution. We worked it out, and I moved on. You moved on as well. It’s… It’s why you, Rina, were able to be yourself.”
“...What?” Rina said, blinking. Now she was confused.
“It’s… I don’t know. When Flutterfree first told me about you, I was surprised, but I didn’t feel… as strongly as I probably should have?” She tapped the tips of her wings together. “I never sought you out. I left you alone.”
“You were avoiding me.”
“...Yeah,” Eve admitted. “I was.”
“Scared of what I’d do?”
Eve thought about this for a moment. “I don’t think so. I was… am scared… that I won’t be able to see you for who you are now. When I look at you, I don’t know what to think. I tell myself that you’re an amazing example of redemption at work, and that I should be proud of you. And I am. But I also…”
“Have that gnawing in the back of your head that makes you feel like running away and screaming?”
“Yes. That.”
“What a coincidence, I’m feeling that right now. See, we’re both afraid of the same fucking thing - your judgment. I, frankly, deserve every last ounce of whatever your worst thoughts are telling you to do to me.”
“You d-” Eve stopped herself, remembering for a second the specifics of Flutterfree’s - and by extension Rina’s - belief system. “I don’t have the right to judge you.”
“Nope. But you can. And even if you don’t act on it…”
Eve put a hoof to her face and sighed. “I just… I want you to know… that... “
“Eve, we’re both Twilight. I think I get the idea.”
Eve chuckled sadly. “I guess…” She looked over the altar, expression clouded. “...I’m working on it, Rina. I’ll be able to talk and walk with you as a friend, eventually. Just… Not now.”
“I wasn't asking for us to be all buddy-buddy.”
“You weren't asking for anything.”
“Good point.”
The two of them stared at each other in silence.
“...I’ll probably be back later,” Eve admitted.
“Much later.”
“Yeah.” Eve awkwardly coughed and walked toward the church exit. Rina turned back to the altar, suddenly feeling like she needed to spend a bit more time here right now.
“Hey, Rina?” Eve called from the door.
Rina turned to glare at her. “What!?”
Eve flipped Rina off with her wing, a nervous smile on her face.
Rina took a second to process this. She laughed, returning the gesture. “Right back atcha.”
Eve’s smile warmed - and then she left without another word.
After that, both of them knew that they would find a way forward.
~~~
“And here’s your assignment for th-”
“Hold on!” Pinkie said, interrupting Minna and waving her hooves around. “I need to think a minute!”
Pinkie’s team stared at her with blank expressions. Minna’s office fell silent.
“GOT IT!” Pinkie said, clapping her hooves. “Trixie’s still making her game, the pumpkin hasn’t landed yet, Eve’s timing doesn’t matter, and the criminal conspiracy was stamped out months ago! There, you are all welcome, now you understand the cluster-bomb of conflicting timelines that are these stories! WOO!”
Flutterfree raised an eyebrow. “Pinkie, that doesn’t mean anything to us.”
“Well, you see…” Pinkie blinked. “You know, I’m not in the mood to explain. I can, I just… nah. Camera’s on and everyone already knows, ask me when we’re not about to go exploring. Because hot-diggity-dog the camera’s on so today’s gonna be a goodie!”
“Or a tragedy,” Vriska added.
“Vriska’s just won another pessimism award. Good job!”
Vriska bowed. “Thank you, Captain!”
Minna sighed, handing them a data pad. “Here’s another planet we haven’t set foot on. It looks like a completely normal Earth, which is rare around here, but not all that interesting. However, telescopes have detected a dramatic increase in infrastructure over the last week, so we’re going out of our way to reach it. With the light-transmission laser, you’ll still be out for five hours. Ten hour round trip.”
Pinkie pulled out her phone. “Setting availability to ‘off’. Don’t want Corona thinking we’re dead again because she can’t reach us. Heh.”
Minna nodded. “Anyway, the laser is ready the moment you are. Launch window lasts fifteen more minutes – we’ve been a bit extravagant using the magical guidance systems every time.”
“Already getting budget cuts? Geez,” Pidge rolled her eyes. “Wish I could say that was surprising.”
“Actually our budget increased. We just had to agree to stop wasting it.” Minna smirked. “Fourteen minutes.”
“It hasn’t been a-”
“Rounding.”
Pidge shut up.
Pinkie giggled. “Who cares? Let’s go!” They all went to the roof of the Expeditions Center, where a telescope-like machine sat. But it wasn’t a telescope: although it could function as one, its main function was travel.
Pinkie and her team jumped into a little elevator-like pod at the base of the light-transmission laser. The pod closed – and all five of them were enveloped in light, vanishing. The main barrel of the laser shifted orientation slightly, making sure it was pointing right at where the destination would be in five hours. It charged up for a few seconds and with a burst of light, it fired a magically-guided beam of white light that was all five of Pinkie’s Party.
With a simple magic spell designed to keep the light together and a slightly more complicated one that would reconstitute them upon arrival, they shot through the void of space. Since they were traveling at light speed, they experienced no time whatsoever. To them, it was instant teleportation. But to everyone else in the New World, they took five hours to cross the void, pass through multiple systems, and arrive at the destination Earth.
Their long line of a journey ended in a flash of light that deposited all five of them on top of a very important-looking government building. A half-dozen active guards pointed guns at them.
“…I miss portals,” Flutterfree commented.
Pinkie shrugged. “Hey, if we can’t see where we’re going, we can be surprised more often!” One of them shot her, the bullet bouncing right off her rubbery form. ”HEY! THAT HURT!”
“I think that’s karma, or something,” Vriska observed.
Jotaro let out a sigh. “Yare yare daze…” He turned to the soldiers. “We come in peace. Take us to your leader.”
They took them to their high-security prison.
“Well, you tried, Jojo,” Pidge said, leaning against the cell wall. “So… do we wait, break out, or go home?”
“Wait,” Pinkie said, deciding now would be a good time to ignore gravity and lie on the ceiling. “They won’t be able to resist long.”
“What kind of people are they anyway?” Vriska wondered. “I got ‘human’ and ‘trigger-happy’. Synonyms.”
Jotaro looked at her intently.
“Tell me you aren’t trigger-happy with a straight face.”
“I’m not trigger-happy,” Jotaro said with a straight face.
Pidge snickered. “Someone forgot about the poker grand champion here!”
“Har-de-har,” Vriska muttered, rolling her eyes. “You get my point.”
“I actually got a lot more from them,” Flutterfree said. “This is a standard Earth, yes, but when Corona’s message came here the population was one of those who, for whatever reason, didn’t let their minds push it into the subconscious. It triggered a third world war and right now we’re in one of their new world’s superpowers. Canada.”
“…Canada,” Vriska said. “Now I’ve heard everything.”
Pinkie looked intently at what appeared to be nothing. “Happy now?”
“Oh, wait, don’t tell me, Keywii,” Vriska said.
“…I’m confused,” Flutterfree said, blinking.
“Another…” Pinkie paused. “Well, probably a Prophet. Twilence knows him.”
“Oh.” Flutterfree ruffled her feathers, taking this in stride. “Anyway, yes, Canada. They’ve become heavily militarized and now that the war’s over they’re very scared of the other planets around them. They have found an ally, though, and he’s been helping them learn about all sorts of new technology.” She looked up at the corner of the room that had a hidden camera. “Oh, wait, is that classified and impossible for me to know without the proper clearance?” She smirked.
Pidge rolled her eyes. “Three… Two… One…”
A human man in a very expensive looking business suit with two bodyguards stormed into the room and looked at the five of them through the thick glass. “What kind of joke is this?”
“The kind of joke where we get you to talk and don’t get so bored that we break out,” Pinkie said, dropping from the ceiling. “Ahem. We come from the center of the New World, the base of the Dark Tower. We come in peace. Take us to your leader.”
“How do you know those things?”
Flutterfree made Lolo visible to everyone – including the vines snaking away from their cell and into every corner of the base. She smiled innocently.
The man took a deep breath. “…I can take you to General Ho-”
“There will be no need,” a voice said, coming from seemingly everywhere at once despite there being no loudspeakers around that could create such an effect. “Bring them to me.”
“A-are you sure?”
“Questioning me?” there was silence. “You doubt my ability to handle them. Consider yourself demoted after you deliver them.”
“Y-yes,” the man said, adjusting his collar. “Get the sedati-”
“They will go willingly,” the voice said. “Just get them here quickly.”
The man let out a deep, nearly-panicked breath. Then he pressed a few buttons on the door and opened up the cell for Pinkie’s Party.
“Sounds like you’re in deep shit,” Vriska said, smirking.
The man did not respond to her, he simply led them to a large elevator and hit the button for the top floor. Then, just before they hit it, he made the elevator stop. The elevator doors slid open, revealing a secret floor just beneath the top one. Despite this secret nature, the floor was spacious due to a ‘bigger on the inside’ effect.
The man shoved them out of the elevator and then left – in a hurry.
The room they found themselves in was largely devoid of any decoration. There was a metal floor, a metal ceiling, and metal walls. The back wall was adorned with many black markings of human stick figures. In front of this wall were several skulls and guns, forming a small pile for a silvery throne. In this throne sat a vaguely humanoid machine with two oversized legs, and a couple arms that floated separate from its body. A tail sprouted from its back, the tip of which was a gun, sword, and needle all in one. The machine’s face looked more like a window than an actual head.
And yet, despite this appearance, all of them knew that there was something biological inside. A biology that should not have been able to exist in the new world.
The symbol on the shoulder said it all.
“You’re a Beyonder!?” Pinkie blurted.
The Beyonder stood up. “Yes. My name… is Evuy.”
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I was really wondering if a be yonder is still alive, considering a xelee, them and a celesrialsapien are alive, does that mean a timelord is alive as well?
Anyway, I really thing that emtrapta should have been in that scientist trio, is she still alive?
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I never defined if Entrapta is still around or not. Heck, I don't even know if she survives the events of the League of Sweetie Belles.
-GM, master of inks.
well, i seem to be the only one actually reading these here. this promises to be a very good final arc, and it's very much worth the wait every time.
and also, i wait for the chapters to savor these last few moments, this is too good to speed through!
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I seriously doubt any Time Lords survived, since they were specifically targeted as a race.
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I have just a Question... Classic Beyonderp or Pre Secret war 201X's version (You know, the assholes that wiped the OG Mahvel Universe)?
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I...
What?
No idea what you're talking about.
-GM, master of traps.
The question of Flagg is not an easy one. Technically, everyone can start fresh when the Tower falls... but as Azula demonstrates, not everyone will want to.
Because that approach has never gone poorly. At least this time the precog isn't a trio of kidnapped children in sensory deprivation tanks.
There's an art to it. It helps if Arceus wears the Dread Plate while he's creating the area.
Caliborn found a socially acceptable way to indulge in horrific, cherubic violence! Good for him.
Advent Nile reminds of me the wireframe universe Storm had nuked. I wonder if it served as inspiration.
The tale of the Pumisher is a thing of wonder and beauty. It's so nice to see Corona be able to just relax and enjoy herself.
Wonderful scene between Eve and Rina. They'll figure it out.
I honestly hadn't been that concerned about it, but I do appreciate the reference point.
Wait, unless the Party's bringing a teleprojector with them, how are they beaming back?
Also, a Canadian Beyonder. This should be very interesting indeed.
Likely.
Hm, one question over all others came to my mind during this chapter. For lack of a better way to phrase the question, 'where' or 'what' is the void Roxy is accessing in this world? Given what we have seen of it, there is nowhere that can be really considered absent of anything enough for there to be a void or Void, unless there are still parts of the new world where one cannot breath. Otherwise that implies to me that this collapsed multiverse situation is merely temporary.
Anyways, for the past few chapters I've been constructing a set up of a character of mine, who upon entry to this new world set out to explore and has stumbled upon a cluster of planets made from the vault universes, or at least what's left of them after being just far enough from the blast from saitama's full power punches to survive it, but still close enough to take serious damage. He searches through some of it and finds enough intact prizes to allow him to basically set up shop and starting a business of hiring teams to salvage what they can from the vaults. Of course this idea is likely to lose validity if the what happened to those vaults gets addressed in canon.
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The planets form almost not-empty shells. Outside, between, and inside the shells are largely empty. The atmosphere doesn't quite extend everywhere (though the aether does, but you might consider that the Void.) Furthermore it is possible to create vacuums, and there are some systems where the "shared atmosphere" really is absolutely nothing.
-GM, master of Vs.
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I didn't think Homestuck's "Void" had to be an actual place empty of everything, just the concept is sufficient in most cases, depending on what you're trying to do with it.
You know, your version of storm is one of my favorite characters in songs, and I think this line and entire conversation sums up why pretty well
You know this is something that a lot of people seem to debate about, just how much are the characters actions their own if they're being controlled by some outside force? I don't really have this problem some reason, the answer seems obvious to me.
Every action is their own, along with the tower controlling it, both can be true at the same time, and that is in a way the true horror
It's nice to see these two characters that I never really had an opinion on bond.
Roland appeared too late in the story for me to really get a feel for his character but what little I have seen of him I've liked.
Azula.... I'm not sure what my opinion on her is, I'm I'm going to hand it to you her Reformation is a logical and I do like your interpretation of her, on the other she went from one of my favorite villains in fiction to a character that's just sort of there.
Insert overused "of course!" Meme
You know Sherlock almost feels a little bit like a Gary Stu here, I am unaware of any iteration where he's able to guess the time frames this exactly
Fun section, Sherlock is spot-on character except for what I pointed out above and it takes me most of the scene to remember who lightning is anyway so whatever with her and of course Spades slick is always fun
Oh boy I leave fim mostly alone for a week or two gradually start working on things and suddenly when I come back my perspective has changed and I feel the urge to leave a essay comment
.......In the middle of the night
Yeah I'll continue reading this later cuz I forgot how long songs chapters take to read and decided to quickly read it cuz I didn't feel like going to bed quite yet
..... even though it was already 11
Yeah I'll get back to this later my brain is doing the stupid decisions cuz I'm up way later than I should be saying
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As someone else mentioned this Sherlock is almost certainly based off the BBC Sherlock who often came up with deductions that didn't always make sense. For example one of the first deductions he makes in the show is that this one character is an alcoholic he bases it off the fact that there are scratch marks around the phones charger port indicating his hands were shaking and that a sober man would never have such difficulties. Anyone whose ever owned a phone will tell you that's bullshit but the show generally always assumes that Sherlock is always right regardless.
I feel bad for Corona despite her insisting she be tracked in someway so I hope she can move on. I am glad Evening and Rina talked.