Interlude 1-2: PARTY
Interlude 1-2: PARTY
Surprisingly, Dusty was the first to the party. He wouldn’t have been as curious to see he got there before his friends if not for the fact that his PO kept him an extra hour just to spite him. Of course, he wouldn’t have to deal with quite as much grief from her if he hadn’t tagged her car. Before her first date. He might even have gotten off a little easier had he written something more discreet that “Free Rides in Trunk”.
Thus, he showed up at the party only ten minutes before six, strolling up the walkway and knocking politely on the door. It flew open with a flourish as a cheery blue-skinned girl leaped out. “TREB-oh it’s you,” said Sonata, shifting gears as she saw who was actually at the door.
Dusty raised an eyebrow. “Expecting someone else?”
She smiled politely. “Yeah. The not-boring one.”
“Ouch,” he replied with a chuckle. “So who else is here already?” he asked, stepping by Sonata and taking a quick look around the house.
Sunset’s house was, well, quaint. Even if it was a two-story affair, it looked much bigger on the outside. Most of the space was taken up by strangely placed walls and a rather cumbersome staircase leading up. He doubted there was a basement. The décor was relatively simple, mostly small, pretty decorations, a poster here or there. Mainly it looked like someone had walked into a teenager’s room and decided the whole house should look that way. It didn’t help that what little space there was left was taken up by the Rainbooms.
Most of them had already taken up the couch, with Sunset being the polite hostess and standing up when there was no more room. There were a couple of armchairs, one currently seating two Twilights, and the other being hogged by Rainbow ‘Take up as much space as I damn well please’ Dash.
“Them,” Sonata answered, gesturing to the packed house Dusty had walked into. There was a general chorus of welcomes from the girls, as Sonata took a seat on the arm of the couch.
“Don’t worry,” Sunset volunteered, walking up to the kitchen, where it appeared someone had let Pinkie Pie into the pantry again. “We’ll be moving this to the backyard after the rest of the boys get here. Actually, Pinkie, you want to help me set up some tables in the back? I need a place to put all this food where it won’t get stampeded.”
“Yupperooni!” Pinkie cheered. She hopped up from her seat and ran around to the side of the room, where she collected some fold-out tables. She followed Sunset out the back door, who was carrying a few trays of food. Dusty felt himself twitch involuntarily.
Both Twilights seemed to notice. “What was that?” they asked in stereo.
Dusty shook his head. “Sorry, just… words like… ‘yupperooni’,” he had to force himself to say it, “and ‘okie-dokie-loki’ really grate my cheeses.”
There was a beat of half a second before the girls broke out into laughter. “Gr-grate your cheeses?” Rainbow howled. “Seriously?!”
Dusty smirked to himself. “Blame Treble. I don’t know where he gets these weird-ass phrases but they stick with you. If you feel like busting his chops later be my guest.”
“Where are they, anyway?” Sonata asked, following up with a handful of pretzels in her face. Rarity smacked her hand.
“Do try to contain yourself, dear. At least wait until the others arrive,” she scolded.
“Ptbtbhtbhtbth,” Sonata blew a childish raspberry. “Whatever.”
Dusty raised an eyebrow at the exchange, then answered Nata’s earlier question. “Well, I don’t know if you all heard what the doc said about Rubble’s leg.” There was a general murmur as the girls got quiet. “Well, he’s started physical therapy to learn how to walk with the brace. They had to surgically remove the ends of the tendons to prevent toxicity, so his foot’s basically not attached to the rest of his leg, and his calf muscle’s gonna be toast in a few years, apparently. The brace is to make sure his foot doesn’t cave out underneath him when he’s walking.”
Not-Princess Twilight’s eyes went wide. “Wait, I thought you had to be in recovery for like, two to three months for Achilles surgery?”
Dusty rolled his eyes and laughed dryly. “Yeah, if you can afford it. Insurance only covers so much. You’re talking about a family who’s only kid has to work construction to help pay bills.”
Futtershy leaned forward in her chair, a worried look on her face. “Aren’t there support programs for that? Financial support for kids?”
“Not that he qualifies for,” Dusty replied, shaking his head. “He’s almost eighteen. He’s aged out of most of them, and besides, he’s way to proud to ask for help.”
“I thought he was a junior?” Rainbow Dash interjected, confused.
“He got held back a year cause his grades tanked after his dad died,” Dusty explained. “Look, he’s working on it. He doesn’t have a whole lot of options, and he’s in constant danger of tearing his stitches out, the stubborn bastard. Really he should be in a hospital bed for the next month at least while the wound heals up. But again, they can’t afford that, and he’s way to bullheaded to stay at home when there’s shit to do. He’s already looking for other work.”
Applejack sighed. “He sounds like my brother. Mac but his back out bout a year ago, and almost threw it out again tryin’ to go back to work ‘fore he was ready.”
Rainbow winced. “I remember that. He was in a LOT of pain. Like, wow. How’s Rubble’s pain levels?”
Dusty gave her a deadpan stare. “You’re talking about a guy who picks fights with monsters for fun. Literally, fun.”
“Wait a second!” Pinkie shouted, her and Sunset coming back into the living room. “Twilight! I mean, Princess Twilight, not Smart Twilight, I mean you’re both smart, but she’s THIS world smart, and you’re pony-magic-friendship smart, so-”
“WE GET IT,” said both Twilights in stereo.
“Right!” Pinkie continued, “Can’t you just like, take him to Equestria and cast some kind of healing spell on him? Then he’d be all kinds of fine!” Both Twilights, Applejack, and Fluttershy all flinched hard. “What?”
Sunset gave her an uneasy look. “Pinkie, a missing Achilles tendon on a human is bad enough. But on a pony? Even in Equestria that’s like a year’s layup. It’d take longer for him to recover there than it would here.”
“And healing magic in Equestria is iffy at best,” Princess Twilight added. “Rainbow Dash -not you the pony- broke her wing a few years ago and it took her almost a month and a half before she was in the sky again. She was even in the hospital for a few days, and we have unicorn doctors. We are miles away from being able to heal broken bones with magic, let alone regenerate muscle tissue.”
“Not to mention what could happen to him if he went through the portal with an injury like that,” Fluttershy mused solemnly.
“So he’s screwed,” Sonata deadpanned.
Dusty shook his head. “Nah, just slightly used. Trust me, he’ll be fine. Even if he has to punch his way back to health.”
Rarity gave a disapproving cough. “Well, if anyone could do it, it’s certainly that boy,” she scoffed, though she was smiling slightly.
Rainbow gave the fashionista a sly look. “I saw that smile. Don’t tell me you like him like him.”
“Of course not!” Rarity protested loudly. “Although I will admit he has a bit of an… action hero air to him. Unfortunately he’s completely crazy.”
“Yes, yes he is,” Dusty groaned with a sardonic grin. “He’s also here.”
The girls all looked up as they, too, heard the sputter of Rubble’s poor engine pull into the driveway. A few minutes later, the front door swung open, and the rest of the boys strolled inside. Well, Treble strolled, soon to be tackled by Sonata. "TREBBY!"
"NATA!"
Rubble kind of hobbled along, and Spooks came in last, carrying a few bags of food and drink, closing the door behind him. “Oh, no, do come in, please, make yourselves at home,” Sunset said dryly.
There was a wave of giggling at that, and Pinkie shouted, “Alright, everybody, party in the back!” She waved her arm for the group to follow her, and led everyone into the back yard.
Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Does someone wanna explain to her-”
“SHH!” Rainbow and Rubble hushed her in unison. “Don’t ruin it,” Rainbow added, with a sage nod from Rubble.
-----------------------------------
There was much more room in the backyard that in the cramped living room, as several tables had been set up, with snacks, lots of lawn chairs, drinks, and more than one deck of cards. Pinkie had set up music, of course, via a large boombox no one was sure where she had brought it out from. The Twilights and Spooks had taken up a whole table to themselves, talking amicably at such speed, length, and depth as to ward off anyone who might otherwise want to join their intellectual discourse.
Treble had conned Dash, AJ, Sunset and Dusty into into a game of poker, which Rubble had adamantly refused to join, saying something about “Still being in debt from the last time I was that stupid”. He had instead opted to sit down with Fluttershy, who was talking to him about cheap therapy and medical options. She had been elected by the others as the one Rubble was least likely to stubbornly ignore, if only because she could be as stubborn as him when it came to good health.
Pinkie and Sonata, to no-one’s surprise, had taken up half the yard, dancing to their… interesting selection of music.
“HA! Ladies and gent, that’s a full house!” Treble cheered, reaching for the pile of snack food they were using instead of chips.
Sunset smacked his hand. “Bah-ah! Nice try, asshole. Try a four-of-a-kind instead,” she said with a wide smirk.
Treble fumed as the rest of the table cheered Sunset on. Really, it had just become a battle between the two, with the rest hunkering down and trying not to lose too terribly. Even the normally-competitive Rainbow Dash was losing her grip, as her pile grew smaller and smaller. “I don’t get it! How am I so bad at this game?!”
Dusty and AJ traded exasperated looks. “Uh, because you have no poker face?” Dusty replied.
“What? I have a GREAT poker face!” Dash argued.
Treble and Sunset snickered loudly while AJ said soothingly, “Sugar, I love ya, but you couldn’t hide your emotions if you were alone on the moon.”
A few feet away, the gambling-related outbursts were studiously ignored as the Twilights and Spooks talked amicably. “So I’m thinking that magic is like radio waves, right?” Spooks posited. “If we can figure out what wavelengths the magic here works on, and what Equestrian magic works on-”
“Then maybe we can find a way to safely combine the two?” Science-Twilight asked excitedly.
“But wait, don’t we already have a way to make the two resonate?” Princess Twilight interjected. “I mean, we’d need to to make the portal work, right?”
“Not necessarily,” Spooks replied. “I had a theory about that. I think that the mirrors, or the far ends of the tunnel between our worlds, are just like giant batteries to a bridge. It doesn’t matte what kind of magic is used to power them, there just needs to be ENOUGH energy. You said you used a magic journal as the link? I think those books are more like nav coordinates than cornerstones. Besides, the portal itself is just a link through the void between worlds. It’s kind of a blank out there, from what I’ve gathered. I don’t think wavelengths matter that much in the In-Between.”
“So what your saying is it’s more like quantum tunneling than teleportation? That might explain why we change from humans to ponies and back,” Not-Princess mused.
Pony Twilight raised her eyebrows in fascination. “Really?! How?!”
“Well, if Spooky is right, then the portal is actually two different energy sources on either side of a quantum bridge,” Human Twilight explained. “It’s not so much resonating magic as it is creating both an anchor point and a gateway on either side, which would require a huge amount of magic. So when you go from one side of the portal to the other-”
“You would be diving from one magical wavelength straight into the next, and your body would change to adapt?” Bones finished.
“Possibly. I mean, it would take years of experimentation and an understanding of magic far beyond what we have now, but it’s a start,” Human Twilight agreed.
One table away, Rubble and Fluttershy were talking a bit more seriously. “I really think you should be in bed right now,” Fluttershy scolded, her voice full of concern.
Rubble rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you and a handful of ‘medical professionals’ who don’t have to pay my bills. Look, mom and I are trying really hard to hold onto the house right now. Yeah, she got bereavement pay,” the tone of voice and look on his face was all the warning Fluttershy needed not to touch that subject, “But that only goes so far. I mean, being a military widow, we got a housing allowance for the first year, but that’s run out. We may not be broke, but my… ‘side job’ doesn’t exactly come with a health plan. And my mom and I have had the argument before, about me joining the military. She still doesn’t like the fact that I go out and hunt ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties in the night, but at least she has an idea where I am. In her eyes it’s much better than being shipped overseas and only hearing from me with the occasional letter. So long story short I need all the extra cash I can get, especially since I can’t exactly explain how and why I lost my Achilles tendon in the first place. You wouldn’t believe the kind of bullshit we’d get from Child Protective Services if we tried applying for any of those financial assistance programs to pay for this stuff. It’ sjust easier to do out of pocket, which requires having, you know, money in your pocket. And that ain’t happening lying down.”
She sat and listened patiently while he ranted, sensing the need for him to get the steam out. “Well, I can’t tell you what to do, not effectively, anyway,” she scoffed, in a ‘disapproving mom’ tone, “But even so, I can’t condone you galivanting into some haunted house just a week after your surgery!”
“Oh please,” Rubble asked, with a bark of a laugh. “We’re just gonna poke around for a while, probably find like some rats in a grate or something, and chase them out. Even if there ARE ghosts in the house, it’s not like we havent’ done this before. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”
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Famous last words
Oh Rubble. You just challenged the universe to a dare, and it always takes dares to the extreme.
And then everyone else at the party groaned in disgust. And rightly so.
I agree on the likely quantumantic nature of the journals, especially given the spooky action at a distance seen when writing in one carries over to the other. Also, good to see the two groups (and Sonata) get along better... for the most part.
Calling it now-
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/014/744/THE_GODDAMN_CAPTAIN_PLANET_by_Sektor2814.jpg
Welp. Y’all are screwed now.
Invoking Murphy's Law is the worst thing that could happen..
i.stack.imgur.com/jiFfM.jpg
RAINBOW LASER HIM!! That fixes EVERYTHING!!
Or it'll blow a hole through his torso... I give it 50/50 . Good odds!
HA!! The Potterverse could heal him in hours! Broken bones? No bones at all? Just chug some Skelegrow! IN YOUR FACE, SMALL HORSE PEOPLE!!