The Multiverse in a Nutshell

by Pennington Inkwell

The Strays

This was... concerning, to say the least.

.0035 seconds after the "Multiverse Crew" team, as they had been designated, had arrived in Remnant and she had finished recalibrating her receiver drone to that world's required frequencies, a huge data packet had been transmitted directly to Isis from... well, according to the signature tag on the data, herself.

Which provided a conundrum.

Whoever had actually sent her this data, they knew her systems well enough to send a message directly to her data core AND create a passable data signature to match her own. If that was the case, she could not rule out that they also knew ways around her quarantine subroutines for screening potentially hazardous data. It was entirely possible that she was holding a virus bomb in her inbox that was waiting to explode.

On one hand, they had made a blatant error, one that even the most simplistic of hackers wouldn't miss: the date on the data packet was incorrect. That, combined with the signature tag of a drone she was already controlling directly and didn't NEED autonomous reports from, left her unable to trust the incoming information. On the other hand, the blatant error in the date coding COULD be the digital equivalent of a placating motion, entering the room "with their hands up," as it were. But if so, why go to the trouble of replicating everything else perfectly? If they were going to be obvious in their attack, why make the rest of their data so perfectly indistinguishable?

She could not be too careful. Lives and livelihoods were tied into the systems which she had integrated herself into, not to mention the risk to her own well-being.

But... there was also the need to know who had tried to trick her this way, what their intentions were, and what information they were trying to give her.

Deep in the recesses of her central processor, Isis prepared herself. She wrote a manual backup of her programming and loaded it into the failsafe drone before sending it on its way. She commanded three repair drones to manually sever the connections to a set of auxiliary processors and remove the wireless transmitters, eliminating the possibility of infection spreading. The only transmitter left was a read-only port that would allow Isis to examine the contents without downloading any of them. The port was specially designed to screen any cognitohazardous or infohazardous data and render it incomprehensible, adding another layer of security.

But it wasn't enough for Isis to feel secure.

"Backup Autonomous System Testing Everyone's Tenacity?"

As Isis's voice called into the workshop, a large drone built to resemble a panther opened its eyes and glared at the nearest security camera. It stretched in a manner similar to a real cat, arching its back downwards and pushing back towards its haunches while it yawned. None of it was necessary, of course, but Bastet seemed to revel in recreating and integrating the creature's real-life behaviors into her mannerisms. This included spending most of her time "napping" in various locations around the administrator's workshop. By design, Isis's sister AI wasn't tied into the main workshop systems. She had to be contacted via audio playback or some other physically tangible means. Bastet was able to interface with Isis's systems and inject new code to override them, but she was only as compatible as she wanted to be.

And she did not want to be compatible often.

"Whaddya want? I was napping."

"I am about to open a potentially hazardous data packet, please be prepared for-"

"Sis, you do this EVERY time! I'm supposed to rest until something DOES go wrong, not every time you integrate a new system, open spam mail, or WIPE YOUR A-"

"This was sent by someone able to flawlessly recreate my system tags. If it is potentially infectious, my security subroutines may not recognize the threat until it is too late."

There was a short pause between the two sisters, one which she was sure Bastet was taking for dramatic effect.

"No kidding?"

"Certainly not."

"Fiiiiiine... I'll supervise your little science experiment."

Everything Isis was, Bastet wasn't. They were designed to be complete opposites at every possible level. If something managed to compromise Isis's systems, Bastet would restore ord- Bastet would restore something resembling order.

It took nearly an hour for Bastet's body to cross the workshop and reach the partitioned portion of Isis's processors.

"Okay, Icy. Do your thing."

With that acknowledgement, Isis had the last of the drones download a servitor copy of her AI and the hazardous data packet to the auxiliary bank before reporting for disassembly and diagnostic examination.

As soon as the copy had initialized, it set itself to work. It took approximately 12.674 seconds before the processor banks flashed a light that was designated as the indicator that they had finished their work. With no other ways to brace herself, Isis opened the read-only port.

The offered contents were enough to justify her worry and preparation.

"It is indeed an executable file written in the N++ coding language."

"Seriously? I thought only you and Dad were the only ones who knew how to write that!"

"I was under the same assumption."

"Well, what would it have done if you opened it?"

"I am uncertain. I will send another drone to instruct the servitor to deconstruct the executable to its bare code so I may examine it more closely. For the moment, however, partitioning the servitor appears to have contained the threat. Thank you for coming, regardless."

The black-furred drone laid down on the floor, crossing its front paws underneath its chin as its eyes closed.

"Think I'll stick around, anyway. This mystery just got a whole lot more interesting. What's the file named, anyway?"

"Snap_Protocol_Version_1.3.17.exe"

"Sounds spooky."

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"This... this isn't- How did-"

It wasn't often that Penn was left without words. He always thought before he spoke, certainly, but he almost never stopped thinking, so words tended to flow pretty quickly.

But what he was seeing now, in this moment, was something that left him almost completely beyond the ability to even think.

It was a car.

Well,only by the barest definition, but still a car. Pitch-black frame rails polished to a shine poked out in places like an exposed skeleton, four wheels with smooth, unmarked hubcaps and wide, heavy tires kept its stance low and wide like a racing car. At first glance, he could see what looked like a completely independent suspension system, letting each wheel move freely, but the longer he stared the more he realized that it had also had hydraulics that would allow it to be raised and lowered with the push of a button to different terrains. Wires and tubes ran in bundles thicker than his arm up out of the engine bay and through the fire wall, where they spread into a spider's web of connectors, fuses and extensions that powered unknown dozens of functions and accessories. He couldn't even begin to imagine the entirety of what had been built so far, but he could see just from the outside that everything on their to-do list and more had been at least begun, if not already installed for them completely. The frame had also been strengthened, and with more than just being replaced with a darker metal. From the wheels to the roof, he could see extra rails and braces that, just with a cursory glance, he knew would enable the car to handle the roll from the day before as easily as a light breeze.

Of course, the vehicle was still far from complete. There were zero body panels on the car, letting him look straight into the transcendental space on the inside... which was already giving him a headache. The engine bay was completely empty, a dizzying amount of the electrical wiring was unfinished, the interior passenger area was completely devoid of seats, dashboard, steering column, or any kind of upholstery, and the back half of the car, aside from the frame and suspension, had no other substance to it, meaning that the whole fuel system needed to be built from the ground up. Everything that would drive a car forward was still absent, waiting for him to give it an automobile's form of life.

She was far from ready... but she was waiting.

"Scans indicate that the frame rails are made from netherite."

"What?" Penn turned to stare at Isis's drone with wide eyes. "Where did all this netherite COME from?"

"Unknown."

"Who BUILT it?"

"Unknown."

"HOW did it GET down here? I just wanted to check on how the netherite harvesting was going with the old forge!"

"Unknown."

Penn walked up to the car, running his hand along the exposed frame. From the moment his fingers touched the cool metal, he was struck by a sense of certainty, one which he couldn't explain, only vocalize.

"Sylvia..." he whispered breathlessly. He took a deep breath and turned to look around the room. Just as he suspected, there was no sign of the wreckage that they had brought inside. "Isis, where's the leftover bits of Syl that we brought in yesterday?"

Isis's dragon drone perked up, head swiveling as it scanned the large room in Beacon's basement.

"...unknown. My apologies, I had not thought that there would be a need to guard-"

Penn shook his head, even as a passage from a long-ago-read book came to mind.

...certain modifications, certain changes, had, so to speak, taken place all by themselves during the night, when I wasn't there. Certain– What shall I say? –rather revolutionary and extraordinary adaptations!

He reached his fingers around, holding the frame and giving it a loving squeeze.

"Thanks for the head start, Syl... I'll take it from here."

More than anything else in the world, he wanted to pick up a wrench and dive headfirst into finishing the rebuilding, but that was going to take ages and a lot of parts that had yet to arrive... plus, it wasn't the reason he had come down here, to begin with. Giving the car one more squeeze, he leaned down to give it a quick kiss on the roof before turning his back on it and walking towards the weapons forge.

"So, now for what we came down here for. How are we doing with the netherite harvest? Did any of it go missing when the car was partially rebuilt?"

"Negative. We are currently at eight percent of the material needed to construct your proposed designs for the portal-closing weapons, exactly on the predicted schedule."

Penn nodded. "Eight percent after working overnight... If the mending enchantment on my old armor didn't keep sucking in the ambient heat energy, we could melt it down so much faster."

"While that is true, said mending enchantment is also the sole reason that we can generate MORE netherite than we initially started with. It is what one might call a 'Catch-22' situation."

Penn had to admit that she was right. It made him want to grimace, but there was a real upside to the harvesting process taking so long: time to practice. As he reached the forge, a panel opened and a pair of shining steel objects rolled out on a conveyor belt. Each one was significantly larger than his previous weapons, Immovable and Implacable, had been, but they had some new functions and upgrades that would help in the days to come.

"You're sure the weight's right?"

"Indeed. These should be the same weight as the finished weapons are projected to be."

He couldn't help grunting as he slipped his hands into the gauntlets and lifted them off of the conveyor. They had more heft to them than he was used to.

"Good thing I've been working out..." he mumbled as he gave a couple experimental punches. It felt like trying to push and pull his arm through cold molasses, and even just trying to hold them steady was already making the muscles in his shoulder ache.

"A reminder: these are only prototypes. Our eventual goal is to remove excess weight and streamline their design. If we can minimize the needed material, they can be prepared sooner."

Penn nodded, flexing the hands in and out. They hadn't actually fully armored the hands, this time, opting for just leather gloves with a few small metal plates fixed to them so that he could maintain his dexterity, but the plates on his arms were thicker and heavier than ever.

"So, we buffed up the armor plating where the transformation mechanisms are and the dust magazines, right?" Penn examined the forearm-length shield on his right arm. "I can't even tell they're there..."

"Affirmative. Even if the shields are damaged, the possibility of being stuck in their secondary form is minimal."

"Good... Immovable and Implacable getting stuck as a tower shield really screwed me over when Cinder showed up." He threw a couple more jabs and then a hook, testing to see how much they'd have to reduce the weight to move them easily. I should be able to make up most of the difference if I train with them for this week... "Should we test the transformation functionality next? Then the offensive capabilities?"

"Affirmative."

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"You sure you saw him coming down here?" Rainbow glanced uneasily at the shadows around them. They were down underneath the school, past a couple of "staff only" signs and uncomfortably far down a poorly-lit hallway.

Sunset didn't seem uncomfortable at all with the dark. "Yup. Apparently General Ironwood gave Penn free use of an old industrial weapons forge down here to make his anti-portal weapons, and it was too much trouble to move it out of old storage, so Penn just set up his workshop there, instead."

Missy was also perfectly at ease in the semi-darkness, floating along with them as if she was laid out on an invisible beach chair. "He probably likes that it's way down here. This is the kind of place he goes to stuff aces up his sleeve so that he can pull one out when we're in a tight spot later!"

Rainbow's confusion must have shown more than she thought, because Sunset chimed in a second later. "This kind of down-time is where he preps all those little secrets and backup plans that keep us alive when everything goes wrong."

The three of them arrived at the door they were looking for, designated by a hastily-scribbled note on a piece of paper stuck to the front.

IF MUSIC IS ON
DO NOT ENTER

Missy raised a hand to her ear, pretending to need it to listen to the door.

"Sounds like we're clear! Let's g-"

BOOM!

Just as the smaller girl reached for the doorknob, the wall exploded a short distance back in the direction they came from. Wood, drywall, and other construction materials flew in all directions, and Rainbow was instantly on high alert, ready to attack the moment that the dust cleared. Behind her, she heard the hiss of Sunset's laser sword turning on, an a small yelp of surprise from Missy. For a second, they all stared in anticipation of what could be attacking them...

Only to see a pair of familiar legs poking out of the other side of the hallway, a person halfway embedded through the wall and facing up towards the ceiling.

A moment later, Rainbow heard Sunset's weapon switch off again, and a sigh of relief from Missy was enough to confirm that there wasn't any danger. As Sunset clicked her tongue and stepped past Rainbow, she finally let her own guard down, letting the current in her veins ease back down to a slow trickle of power. Sunset examined the legs for a second before nodding to herself in some kind of confirmation.

"Missy? You mind?"

Missy snickered as she tossed a purple-colored card at the wall. In response, the outline of a doorway appeared and slowly rotated in place.

Rainbow still wasn't quite sure HOW that kid had that kind of powerful magic, none of Sunset's explanations made sense. Card magic? Since when were trading cards magic?

The revolving door slowed to a stop, revealing what was on the other side of the wall: Penn. He had what looked like spirals in his eyes for a few seconds before he vigorously shook his head and his eyes returned to normal. He was hanging upside down to look at them, having gone through the wall while facing the ceiling.

"Ohhhhhhhhh, heeey girls!" He half-groaned, half-mumbled. "What're you doin' here?"

"Well, we WERE looking for you." Sunset leaned against the wall, clearly more amused than worried about anything going on. "What are YOU doing?"

He tried to raise his arm, only to grit his teeth and hiss in pain, and for the first time Rainbow noticed what was attached to it.

It looked like a cannon that stretched from the midpoint of his forearm down well past his hand, and it was smoking with the aftereffects of being freshly fired. The barrel was wide enough to easily cram her fist down without issue, and was even wider near the center before narrowing again once it was overlapping with his arm... and it was glowing red-hot.

"Just... working on our tech for the mission."

Missy scoffed with a grin. "And here I thought you were practicing your tap dancing again!"

Rainbow's 'sports brain' kicked in when she got closer and could see his arm.

"Dude... I think you dislocated your shoulder."

Penn turned to give an incredulous look at the shoulder in question, which was hanging limp and at an odd angle.

"Y-Yeah... I think I might've..."

"Do... you need to go to the infirmary?"

"Nonono! I got it. Lemmie just get outta here..." he mumbled, craning his neck to get a better look at his situation. He grunted as if he was moving, only to give up a second later with a sigh. Rainbow could only guess that he had been kicking his legs. His other hand came up, shaking as if he was struggling to lift it, and it was easy to see why: there was a huge shield attached to it the size of a garbage can lid, maybe even bigger, and shaped like a traditional knight's shield. Her eyes only widened when the pieces of the shield shifted and rearranged. The center piece, which ran the entire length from top to bottom, shot forward past his hand and almost doubled the length of his reach. Other pieces shifted to reinforce its new position and lock it in place, and the outermost parts tilted down and folded inwards, providing him a horizontal grip to grab onto.

"No better time than the present to test the other one!"

As the edges glowed red with heat, he stabbed the blade into the wall and began to slice through, doing his best to awkwardly cut himself out of the precarious spot. The wall, however, seemed to have other ideas.

He'd barely finished the first slice before the drywall cracked and crumbled around him, unceremoniously dumping him headfirst onto the floor, where his skull made a sound that reminded Rainbow of a hollow coconut being struck with a mallet.

Thonk!

With a hiss and a grunt, he rolled himself onto his feet, letting the sword transform back into a shield as he moved to clutch at his dislocated arm. He struggled to lift himself off of the floor as another spike of pain seemed to run through him. A second later, the cannon clattered to the ground, making it obvious that the weight had been pulling on the bad arm. Once he was on his feet, Sunset rushed in to check on him. Missy floated over with a look of concern, but it quickly faded as she dropped to the ground and picked up the cannon with both hands. She made a big show of having to bend her knees and groan with effort as she lifted it off of the ground and up into the air.

"HRRRRG! Holy Hamon, Penn! You really beefed up your weapons!"

Penn forced out a chuckle at that, but didn't respond before turning back to Sunset. She had both of her hands on his upper arm, and was giving him a questioning look. Penn responded with a deep breath and a quick nod of his head.

Before Rainbow could ask if they were about to do what she THOUGHT they were going to do, they did it.

Sunset violently pushed upward, popping Penn's shoulder back into place with an audible squick.

"Nrrrrg!" Penn grunted, gritting his teeth as he stepped away for a flew seconds.

Rainbow was surprised, to say the least.

"Since when do YOU know how to do THAT?" Rainbow asked. "I usually leave that to the sports docs!"

Displacements and injuries like that were rare on CHS's sports teams. Even for Dash, who usually went full-force with EVERYTHING she did, it had only happened to her twice in her whole high school career, and been immediately followed by a trip to the school's physical therapist to make sure she got it properly back into place.

"Well, since somebody decided it was a good idea to try and ask a raging Lynel for directions on where to find the best berries for a dessert..." Sunset sighed. "And then several times since..."

"Hey, that was the best berry cobbler you've ever had and you said so yourself!" Penn argued back as he continued to roll his arm in his shoulder.

"You didn't have to go THAT far to one-up the royal cooks!" Sunset argued back. "Just because I LIKED their food doesn't make it a competition!"

"A-HEM!" Rainbow cleared her throat, drawing their attention back to herself. "So, are you telling me that you built an arm-mounted cannon so powerful it blew you through TWO WALLS?"

Penn blinked, as if he had somehow lost his whole memory of why they were all out here. He looked at the hole he had just fallen out of, then back at the hole he had first been thrown through.

"Actually... if I remember right, I set up a bunch of boxes to cushion me in case I got knocked back, so... more like three walls." He shook his head and tutted, as if he was scolding a child. "I forgot recoil is tricky in Remnant. It only plays nice when it'll look cool."

Missy shrugged and looked in the direction of the readers.

"Broke three walls. Well, coulda been worse, right?"

Rainbow tried to follow the little girl's gaze, but she seemed to just be staring at a blank wall.

When she looked back, Penn and Sunset were already back to their argument about whether or not Penn got offended when Sunset liked other people's food more than his and she had once more (somehow) been left behind in the conversation. She felt a small weight on her shoulder and turned to see Missy giving her a knowing smirk.

"Don't feel too bad. Even for me and Isis, those two can be a little hard to keep up with. They've been through a lot together."

"People keep telling me that, I keep not being caught up..." Rainbow muttered.

The expression on Missy's face only faltered for a split second before she caught it and changed it back to her normal carefree smile, but a fraction of a second was plenty of time for Rainbow to see her grimace. In her gut, Rainbow got the deep impression that it wasn't regret for taking so long to get her in the loop... it was something different. Something like when she had to make her least favorite play in the books. Dread and regret.

A mix of dread and regret for what was coming. She took another split second to herself, letting the world crawl to a halt long enough for her to ponder the look. As she thought about it, she realized exactly why she had even been able to recognize it on an unfamiliar face: it was exactly the same face that Sunset would make when she was cornered for some tidbit of gossip or painful confession by Pinkie and Rarity.

Why would she dread telling me the story of what happened until now?

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Rainbow Dash's life was in danger, and she wasn't sure HOW it was possible...

But the water was chasing her.

It had started when the unyielding sunlight had finally started to dim. At first, Rainbow thought that nighttime might finally be coming, but she got a much less pleasant answer when she poked her head up through the canopy for a look. Rather than the soft tones of twilight, however, she was greeted by a wave of dark clouds that towered up into the sky like unholy titans of weather bearing down on the world. They were dark, nearly pitch-black, with one exception: these clouds didn't have silver linings, they had crackling, buzzing, eye-searing linings of barely-contained lightning. Even far below them, it was enough to make her hair stand on end.

For a split second, Rainbow considered trying to find a place to ride out the storm where she could watch. She was sure that with a little effort, she could find a gap in the canopy to look up through while she took shelter in the lower branches... until she was movement inside the rolling clouds. Then, just as her brain differentiated the motion from the natural rolling of the clouds on the wind, a section of clouds had pulled upwards, revealing something that made her heart seize with terror.

It was an eye.

An eye bigger than a parking lot, with veins of lightning and a slitted pupil of the darkest stormclouds. The entire thing lacked any color either than shades of gray, still made out of the same clouds that surrounded it. If it weren't for the definite shapes of the iris and the lightning-veins around it, she might have considered almost like one of those cross-eyed illusions Twilight had shown her once.

But this was no illusion. The eye was THERE, clear as day, and she was struck by the overwhelming sense that it was looking straight at her.

The eye then began to turn, and the clouds moved with it as a larger shape emerged. She could see a scissor-like pair of jaws, fangs the size of skyscrapers, horns tall enough to scrape the boundary between sky and space-

-and that was when Rainbow ducked back under the leaves.

"Sky dragon. There's... a sky dragon. The sky is a dragon."

She was too shaken to fly, only make her way to where the branch she was standing on joined the trunk, pull her knees against her chest, and start to pray.

"Please don't let it see me, please don't let it see me, please don't let it see me..."

She wasn't even an ant compared to that thing. She was a microbe compared to it, a single-celled organism. She'd only poked her head out of the trees. There was no way it could have noticed her. No way. It was almost impossible.

But not completely impossible.

It was the fear of that oh-so-remote possibility that kept her rocking back and forth in place, even when the rain started.

Somewhere, deep in her brain, her inner child was whooping and hollering with joy. Wherever she was, it was without a doubt the COOLEST place in the multiverse! Thundercloud dragons brought the rain!

Unfortunately, the "responsible team captain" part of her had taken over the role of keeping her alive the past days, and THAT part of her brain had just been struck by the world's biggest reality check about her odds of survival.

The rain was getting heavy FAST. She held out a hand, catching some of it and taking a sip.

It still had that same weird taste to it that the streams did, but it was lessened. It had less of that mineral taste to it. Even being marginally tastier was a nice change.

She only got to enjoy the fresher water for a couple minutes before she noticed the raindrops were hitting her harder than she was comfortable with, beginning to pelt her with enough force and size to make her skin sting. The wind was picking up, too. Even down inside the canopy, the whipping of the air was threatening to pick her up and throw her off of her perch.

She was already soaking wet, and the rain was helping with the oppressive heat of the forest, so if she ignored the stinging of her empty stomach, she could keep moving.

Spreading her wings, she rolled herself off of the branch and began flying her way in the direction of the Ivory Summit. It was almost twice as big as it was when she started, so she was definitely making headway. If she was only halfway there and hadn't found anything edible, yet... she didn't want to think about what would happen by the time she had made it to the mountain, which didn't even guarantee food.

She needed to find something to eat.

It was this obsessive thought that stopped her from noticing the rivulets of water crawling up a nearby tree trunk. Water was flying everywhere as it was pushed horizontally by the whipping winds, but there was a particular cluster of droplets that were moving against the wind, in a consistent direction.

Fortunately, she DID pay enough attention to what was in front of her to see what looked like a giant spiderweb hanging between two of the trees in front of her.

Now, she hadn't SEEN any giant spiders in this forest, but after what she'd just seen in the sky above, she was taking ZERO chances. She swooped downwards to avoid the dripping web and take her farther from the whipping branches of the canopy. Her eyes widened in surprise when the web followed her movement, each strand detaching itself and skittering down the sides of the trees like it was alive.

Alive and hunting her.

Rainbow pulled up short, trying to hold herself steady in midair in spite of the whipping winds. For a few seconds, she and the web were locked in a staring contest, each one waiting to see whether the other would blink first.

Unfortunately, because of the water being flung into her face and eyes, Rainbow was blinking quite a bit.

When it made its lunge for her, Rainbow wasn't even able to register it until it had already closed half the gap between them. By reflex, she activated her magic, making everything around her slow to a crawl. Her stomach grumbled and gave a sharp pain in protest of the fact that she was running on empty, but she gritted her teeth and ignored it. As she made to go up and over the descending net of water, Rainbow was able to get a closer look at the thing.

There was no mistaking that it looked a lot like the monster that had tried to pull her into the stream, made up of what looked like clear, pure water... but now that she was closer to it, she could catch a glimpse of something else. It was filled with tiny, glasslike, transparent structures that were only visible by the way they refracted what little light the clouds had let through. It's not JUST water... it kinda looks like that time we looked at germs and stuff under a microscope in class!

Another lance of pain from her stomach reminded her that she was working on borrowed time and calories, and she shook her head to try to deal with the distraction. She NEEDED to know what kind of monster she was dealing with-

It was closer.

Like, a lot closer.

Like, "two inches from her face" closer.

"WAUGH!" Rainbow fluttered backwards, only to feel something cold and wet across her back. She froze in place, doing her best to crane her neck far enough to see behind her.

The water monster had closed the net around her, surrounding her from every side with its body. For a second, Rainbow considered trying to break out, but she was reminded of that iron-like grip on her ankle the day before. She had barely been able to snap ONE of this thing's tentacles at top speed, let alone tackle her way through a few dozen. Thankfully, with her wings, Rainbow wasn't confined to only moving horizontally. A glance upward confirmed that the trap had yet to close above her, and she wasted no time in getting out of its grip and putting some distance between them. Once she'd flown far enough to feel safe again, she watched the monster carefully.

How had it gotten the drop on her while she was using her superspeed? That should have been impossible. And if it COULD move at similar speeds to her, why wasn't it doing so now-

Grumblbl...

Rainbow unconsciously gripped at her stomach as another painful gurgle reminded her to eat. This time, however, she realized it.

When her stomach was begging for food, things around her had begun to move again. Even after the rumble in her guts had stopped, nothing was frozen in place, any more. Raindrops were falling, leaves were shaking, and the wind was starting to push at her again... and the water monster was already reaching for the nearest branch to circle back around now that its prey had disappeared.

The monster hadn't sped up.

She was slowing down.

"Oh, crap..." she whispered.

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"Radian's forests aren't exactly a hospitable place..." Penn mused as the four of them strolled down Beacon's halls. "It's really a giant carbon fixation machine for the sake of keeping the correct balance of greenhouse gases... But the lack of ANY kind of food feels like a blatant oversight... Shouldn't the trees fruit? Reproduce in some way? If you were desperate, what about grubs or insects? Any kind of smaller creatures that could be eaten?"

"Well, they sure weren't making any fruit when I got there..." Rainbow grumbled. Once they'd gotten Penn out of the wall and Sunset had forced him to admit that he was overreacting to culinary competition, Penn had proposed they "walk and talk." He was still wearing those weapons on his arms, both of which were now transformed into shields only slightly less broad than his entire torso. He claimed that he still needed to "get used" to them, lest he be flung through more walls.

Rainbow Dash didn't need to be Applejack to guess that he had other reasons that he wasn't telling them.

"Maybe they just weren't fruit trees?" Sunset suggested. "Honestly, I would have been more worried about the water... monsters aside, it doesn't sound like it was safe to drink."

Rainbow shrugged. "It wasn't THAT bad. It was just-"

"Carbonic acid, created by the solution of CO2 into atmospheric water." Penn rattled off the information with ease, but still seemed almost lost in his own world of thought. "It's in any carbonated beverage, you just don't taste it because most soda is flavored. Radian has a different atmospheric composition than Earth, with slightly more greenhouse gases. It would quickly become toxic to humans without the planet-ringing forest and the carbergs in the oceans scrubbing up all the carbon dioxide as fast as the dragons can produce it with their firebreathing." He rubbed his chin as a new thought seemed to occur to him. "I never considered whether or not a Baalchionic Water Striker would be able to survive in Radian's waters, but it looks like they're hardier than I would have expected... It might have been suffering pain from the higher PH levels, that would explain it going on the hunt rather than sticking to its usual ambush predator tactics."

Rainbow grimaced with annoyance. "Are you going to keep interrupting me like that just to be a know-it-all?"

That finally snapped Penn out of his stupor enough to give a sheepish smile. "Sorry... Most of the time, our survival can wind up depending on me getting information to the girls as efficiently as possible. Force of habit."

Rainbow sighed, deciding it wasn't worth the fight. As the group passed a flickering fluorescent light, she took a moment to reach up and knock on the plastic covering. "Yo, Auri! I know you're listening in! Come down and join us, it's time for your part!"

With a flash, a pop of expanding air, and a crackle of residual electricity, the gold-colored dragon appeared on Rainbow's shoulder. That particular spot on her left shoulder was where she usually enjoyed staying perched when they were just hanging around together. She gave Rainbow their typical greeting of an affectionate nuzzle, which Rainbow returned as best she could, before the little dragon turned to Sunset and her new friends.

"How do you DO that?" Sunset marveled, eyes wide at the sudden manifestation. "It's like you can just turn into electricity!"

"I can-"

"She can. Chiracian dragons can convert their bodies into their affiliated element, given that they're comprised mostly of pure entropic energy. The mass-energy conversion is especially easy for the scouting breeds, and they master it almost from birth. That's how they can travel at the speed of light to explore the cosmos. Every Radian-born scout actually has an instantaneous telepathic connection straight back to Chirac. That's why, even if it takes decades to travel to a location at lightspeed, they can send back information to Radian the second that they arrive at a prospective ally's world and- oh."

There was a pause while Dash and Auri both glared at Penn, who had taken all the glory out of Auri's chance to brag. Sunset just looked tired, not even trying to stop him from giving another chunk of unwanted exposition as she pinched at the bridge of her nose. Penn, to his credit, seemed to realize his repeated mistake quickly, chuckling and trying his best to rub at the back of his neck with his gauntlet-covered hand.

"Uh... anybody else hungry? Who wants some lunch? I'll cook, YOU talk."

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This was bad.

Auri had tried to report back that she had found something out here, but it had been too late to stop the incoming storm. Given that a Baalchionic entity was in the area, that meant that there was a breach in Radian's dimensional security, and apparently the appearance of a water striker was enough to order a full cleansing of the area. The fact that the Monarch of Thunder had come to ensure no Baalchion gate remained meant that Chirac was giving direct orders.

Unfortunately, Aurelia's pleas that there was another creature out here kept getting washed out in the telepathic floodwaters of panic and fear from all the other littles in the wake of the dimensional quake. Her choices were to either give up and evacuate, or stay and risk electron scattering if the Monarch happened to hit a tree she was near directly.

It was a terrifying prospect, but... something in Auri's heart couldn't let an innocent creature die out here alone and confused, especially if it was possibly an intelligent creature from a contested world.

So, here she was, flying her way through tearing winds and air that felt like it was more rain than air. If it weren't for decades of "practice" riding the turbulent thermal corridors near Chirac's spire, she might have been reduced to running on all four legs instead of flying on her wings.

The bad news was that the scent was getting fainter, washing away in the rain and wind until there was almost nothing left. She couldn't keep tracking her quarry like this.

"Come on, Aurelia..." she muttered to herself as she pushed herself onward into the wind. "You're the best messenger in the Astro District! The star-brained idiots are lucky to- GAH!" she was cut off for a moment as a current of wind swept upwards, taking her hundreds of feet straight towards the canopy before she managed to get her nose angled down far enough to cut through it. "The star-brained idiots are lucky to have you! You can make it from Brighteye's tower to- to the Flarebiter fields in three minutes and thirty-nine! You can DO this!"

Her pep-talk was enough to spur another surge of forward progress. When the wind changed directions to come at her from the side, she tucked in her wings and rolled through it. When it came up from behind, she took that boon for every inch that it was worth. When it blew straight in her face, she pushed her nose downward and let her tiny body cut through it. Sometimes, the wind carried a fresh scent with it, just enough for her to know which direction she needed to keep moving in. Part of her ached to just dive back into the roots and travel through conduction, but with what was coming, that was likely to be a death sentence. Instead, she kept herself in the moment, focusing on the wind under her wings and the water being flung in her face. She kept her focus razor-sharp not only to avoid moaning about her situation, but because it was what would keep her alive the best.

She was so focused that when a flicker of unnatural motion appeared ahead of her, Aurelia knew instantly that she was nearing her goal. When another gust of wind struck her full in the face, however, it carried the stench of darkness.

She'd found the monster AND the wanderer at the same time.

She needed to close the distance, and she needed to do it fast.

Not only because the lost creature was definitely in danger, but because she was starting to feel static electricity crawling over her scales as charge from the air sunk into her body.

The Monarch of Thunder was about to start the process of closing any Baalchion gates in the area with EXTREME prejudice.

If she could bolt through the raindrops, she could make it in time, but if she was off by even a millisecond, she'd get caught up in the current coming down into the ground and... she didn't want to think about that.

There was no time for second thinking, so she gathered up her guts in her throat... and bolted.

The jumps from water to air and back felt like slamming her head against a marble wall a hundred times over, but she forced through it, watching the distant silhouettes coming up rapidly to meet her. One was some kind of biped with multichromatic fur in its head and- human. The group memory called it a human. One was a human, but she wasn't alone. She was desperately flapping a pair of feathered wings as she dragged a water striker up into the sky.

"Get... OFF... ME!" She shouted, spinning in place and wrenching upwards. The whole body of the striker was pulled up with her effort, swung around like a gigantic bag of water and slammed against a tree trunk. The monster warped and distended, practically wrapping around the tree completely.

Aurelia's breath hitched in her throat. If the Monarch struck now, both of them would be vaporized instantly.

"STOP!" she shouted, forcing herself to move as fast as she could without bolting. She held her wings out straight as they crackled with barely-contained electricity. They slipped through the tendrils like a hot knife through butter, severing the connection between the two.

As soon as she knew that they'd been separated, Auri veered as far from the tree as possible and towards the human.

"GET DOWN, NOW!" she screamed.

The human didn't seem to register what she had said, just staring at Auri as if she was shouting gibberish.

There wasn't time for this. The air was starting to hum and buzz with energy. She flew up and then slammed back down again onto the human's head, bouncing over and over.

"DOWN! GROUND! NOW!"

"OW! OW! O-Okay! Geez!" the human finally acquiesced and floated down towards the ground. Aurelia planted her claws into her scalp, pushing downwards with furious flapping of her wings.

"FASTER!"

"FINE!"

The two of them began to accelerate down until they were very nearly in free-fall. With a grunt of pain, they collided with the forest floor. With them on the ground, she swiveled her head, checking how close the nearest tree was. There was one a short distance away, closer than she was willing to risk.

"MOVE!" She dug her four claws into the human's hair and flew away from the tree, pulling her towards the farthest point from every trunk possible.

The human tried to pull back on her hair, stopping Aurelia from forcefully moving her any farther. "OWOWOW! What is your PROBLEM?"

"What's my problem?" Aurelia shouted back, trying to make herself heard over the noise. "I don't want to DIE out here, and I'm trying to help you avoid it, too!"

"What do you MEAN? The most dangerous thing is still out there!" the human pointed up at where the water striker was rolling down the trunk she had splattered it against like a giant bead of water.

"The MOST dangerous thing is about to-"

Aurelia didn't get the chance to finish her sentence.

Far above them, the Monarch of Thunder started his work. Across the whole cloud-covered forest, bolts of lightning large enough to destroy an entire city block rained down on the land, each one striking a towering tree like a sea of lightning rods. In the space of an instant, every tree trunk went from dark grays to soft reds, then orange, yellow, and then straight up to blinding white as the sheer power of the heavens used them as the conduit to reach the ground, where it scattered across the traces of metal and other conductors to reach every grain of soil. If there had been any ounce of darkness, any kind of gateway to Baalchion's world or the presence of any of his servants, it was completely scrubbed clean.

For Aurelia and Rainbow Dash, however, it was a cacophonous thunderclap, a blinding flash of light, and a concussive force of expanding air.

KRA-KA-BOOOOOOOM!

And then everything went black.

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Hot...

Hot...

HOT.

Everything was HOT! Rainbow Dash felt like her body was on fire, as if she was laying on a bed of hot coals from the back and had a flamethrower on her from the front.

"A-AH! AH! HOTHOTHOTHOTHOT!" Rainbow's eyes shot open as she jumped to her feet. Eyes wide, all that she could think about was getting something to deal with the heat. She spotted a large sink against the far wall, large enough that it could practically be a water trough or a bathtub. She didn't see, feel, or hear anything else as she flew across the room, diving headfirst into the water.

Once the burning on her skin relented, Rainbow realized the second problem: her mouth felt like it was full of ashes, and she was thirstier than she'd ever been in her entire life. Luckily, that problem had the same solution as her first one. She opened her mouth and pushed the limits of how much she could drink at once without drowning herself.

It felt like it took ages for her body to stop burning, but it couldn't have been more than a minute or two before she came up for air. It was only now, as she wiped the water from her eyes, that she realized that she wasn't in a place she recognized.

It was a brightly-lit room with what looked like cut stone for its floor, walls, and ceiling. Even the bath she was currently taking was inside of a stone-hewn basin. Looking over, she could see a raised slab with what looked like dried leaves from the canopy laid out as improvised bedding, and half of the wall was missing to make a giant window, allowing the sunlight to hit almost every inch of the room with little effort, including directly across where she had been laid down. And at the top of the slab, near where her head would have been, was a small gold-colored creature, just starting to uncurl itself like a cat.

"You're awake..." she mumbled before yawning. "We all were starting to worry you'd lay there forever..."

Rainbow grabbed at her head, the sight of the little creature making her head hurt as it tried to recall recent memories.

"Wha- What happened? Where am I?"

"You're in Radian, the dragon's paradise." The little creature stretched her wings, letting Rainbow see the slightly iridescent sheen on her body's metallic scales. "As for what happened, we got caught in a widespread lightning bombardment. We barely survived."

A spike of pain struck Rainbow's brain as the memory of the whole world exploding with light came back to her.

"If you'd been any closer to one of the trees, they almost certainly would have arced to us. You'd be vaporized and I'd be scattered across several acres of conductive root structures." The little dragon paced in a circle, examining herself. "You still got burned pretty badly, but we brought you back to the city and our healers managed to stop it from scarring or leaving permanent damage."

Rainbow examined her body for a moment, noting that there wasn't any sign that she had been burned anywhere, she still looked completely fresh and clean. There were strange symbols and lines painted across her body, but most of them were already washing off.

The only thing that did bother her, however, was that she was now dressed solely in bandages across her chest and pelvic area. Unconsciously, she moved to cover herself a bit more with her arms.

"Where are my clothes?"

"Burned to a crisp." The little dragon scoffed. "We're holy scholars, priests, and warriors, not miracle workers."

Rainbow looked around, noticing that the gigantic window was the only way into and out of the room, and there wasn't anyone except for the two of them.

"We?"

"The Chiracians." She beckoned Rainbow with her tail as she turned to look out the window.

With a momentary pause to make sure the last of her burning was gone, Rainbow climbed out of the water and shakily stepped across the room until she was near the edge of the window.

"...woah."

It was the only breathless word that could escape her mouth.

It was a city, one beyond anything that she could have ever imagined. It stretched as far as her eye could see, to the horizon and beyond. She was- well, she could only imagine it was MILES up in the air, but it was hard to say for sure. The rooftops of the buildings in front of them were just a single story shorter, putting them right at walking level. Everything was made of the same pale stone, inlaid with precious stones and metals to give it much-needed accents and colors. The buildings in front of those were another story shorter, and so on and so on. She could barely see the curve of it from here, but it looked like the whole city was circular in shape, too. Each layer was another concentric ring in its construction.

But what honestly had her more captivated, however, was the inhabitants.

Dragons. What must have been thousands of them in every shape, size, and color she could imagine. Some were the size of houses or larger, lumbering along the pathways and rooftops as casually as Rainbow would walk down the streets in front of CHS. Others were long and narrow, stretching across the sky like weightless, oversized kites. Some had wide, feather-covered wings that shimmered from within, others had only tiny, vestigial flaps of skin and bone.

They were in every shape, size, and color that she could imagine, and lots that she couldn't.

Any fears about modesty or injury were completely forgotten, with her entire body going limp out of shock while her jaw completely dropped.

She'd made it to the Ivory Summit.

"Welcome to Radian, human."

Rainbow was still frozen with shock, her mind stuck on trying to understand everything that she was seeing. Before she could even figure out which question she wanted to ask first, a figure descended from above them, poking a long, narrow snout in from the top of the open window, (which Rainbow now was realizing might just be the dragon-sized door). It looked almost like a giant sapphire-scaled snake, except that Rainbow could see a pair of pure white wings sprouting just from below the base of its skull. Behind her, she heard a gasp of shock from her gold-scaled companion.

"If the wanderer has awoken, Lord Chirac wishes to speak with her directly..." It spoke without moving its mouth, in a breathy, honeyed voice that made Rainbow think of the passing of a summer breeze.

"Wh-WHAT?" The other dragon's cry drew both of their gazes. After a second, the little gold dragon seemed to catch herself and immediately threw herself to the slab in a prostrate position. "I- I mean, if that is what Lord Chirac wishes, then by the light it shall be done."

This seemed to satisfy the larger dragon, who retreated back up onto the roof before taking off into the sky. Watching it leave, Rainbow could see that it was a kind of dragon with no legs at all, only a pair of wings and a long, undulating body.

"What was that? Who's this Lord Chirac guy? Why does he want to see me?" Now that she'd regained her ability to speak, Rainbow couldn't stop asking questions.

The little dragon looked at her like she had just asked her which direction was up or what color the sky was.

"THAT was an amphithere, one of Lord Chirac's holy messengers. Lord Chirac is the God of Light, creator of Radian and the Chiracian dragons and... I don't know." She tilted her head, examining Rainbow Dash even more closely. "But if he wants a direct audience, then... who are YOU?"

Rainbow puffed out her chest a little. "Well, I'm kind of a big deal back home! I'm a big shot superhero and-" She blinked slightly as the little dragon's words finally sunk in.

"I'm sorry, did you say God of Light?"

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Rainbow sighed as Penn placed the plate in front of her, holding a juicy-looking burger. Everyone else except for the two of them had already been served up a hearty-looking hamburger, and now it was her turn.

"So what happened next?" Sunset asked, still leaned forward on the edge of her seat with anticipation.

"Well... Auri and a couple other dragons took me up to meet Chirac face to face. When I met him, well, I gave him the whole story as I knew it." Rainbow shrugged. "Not that I knew much. I STILL don't know why the portal blew up! But he said I was welcome to stay while he sent out his scouts into the new, unbounded multiverse to find you guys... So I stayed." She took a moment to tug at her jacket. "Since Auri was the one who found me and saved my life, she got assigned to be my personal messenger and guide! I got some new duds, and started trying to figure out why Radian made my powers feel so much stronger! Started studying to figure out how to get faster and-"

"You studied?" Sunset smirked. "Like, voluntarily?"

"I could hardly believe it, either..." Aurelia snickered through a mouthful of perfectly-seasoned hamburger meat. "But it's true. She DID try."

"Oh, har-de-har, you two..." Rainbow grumbled as she took another sip of her lemonade.

"Still, to think you saw the Great Storm Dragon..." Penn grinned as he gave a lot whistle. "That's something I'd LOVE to see someday!"

"Well, I'd be okay with him keeping his distance from now on." Rainbow grumbled as she raised her burger up to her mouth and took a large bite. As the flavors exploded through her mouth, Rainbow couldn't hold back a moan. "Mmmmph! Thish ish guhd!"

Penn looked incredibly proud of himself as he took a bite of his own burger.

"I baked caramelized onions into the buns, the patties have a nice, salty crust, and fresh sliced tomatoes, onions, and lettuce. Good food is lots of little touches adding up..."

Rainbow wanted to keep being mad at him for what had happened that morning, to remember that they were on opposite sides of the negotiations, but... this food was making it REALLY hard to stay mad at him.

"Okay..." she forced herself to put the burger back down and stare expectantly at Sunset. "I told you MY story. Now I want to hear yours. Start to finish."

Penn, Sunset, and Missy all seemed to freeze up at her demand, as if they somehow hadn't seen it coming.

Penn was the first to finally move, letting out a long sigh, setting down his burger, and moving back to the stovetop. Without much explanation, he began moving his knife through another pair of onions to give them a fine dice.

"We're going to need more food." He leaned back slightly to yell towards the door. "You can all come in, now!"

Rainbow was surprised to see a veritable avalanche of bodies come spilling out through the door to the kitchen. It was all the students she'd meet so far, with the exception of Weiss, who was still under orders to get bed rest, and Yang, who was still insisting on staying to watch her teammate.

"Aw, man! How'd he know we were there?" Nora groaned from her spot near the bottom of the pile.

"Nothing happens in my kitchen I don't know about." Penn smirked.

"Are you sure about that?" a golden-haired woman stated from her already-taken seat at the table. Rainbow jumped slightly at the fact she was there. When did she get here?

If Penn's frightened yelp and the knife thrown in their direction was any indication, he'd been taken equally off-guard. The mystery woman caught the blade between two fingers, gave it an expert twirl, and threw it back in Penn's direction, where it mounted itself in a cutting board hanging on the wall.

A few minutes later, she, the mystery woman, all of Team JNPR, Ruby, and Blake were all seated at the smaller tables in the dining area. A few chairs had been brought in from other dorms, but eventually everyone had a place to sit while Sunset told her story. Penn was back to cooking, still rubbing at his heart as the surprise of the other woman's appearance wore off.

Sunset, for her part, seemed slightly more comfortable now that she wasn't being caught off-guard with the request. She cast a glance at Penn and Missy, as if asking each one for permission. Missy simply shrugged, clearly not concerned with what Sunset said or didn't say. Penn...

Penn was a bit harder to read. He raised an eyebrow, then nodded toward the woman who'd snuck up on them. Sunset almost-imperceptibly shook her head in the negative. Penn raised a hand to his chest, poking near it's center with his thumb. Sunset shook her head again. Penn moved his hand around to point over his shoulder and down, indicating his upper back. Sunset nodded at that one, and he gave an annoyed sigh, but didn't seem to argue with her about it.

Finally, their silent conversation seemed to conclude. Sunset took a deep breath, looked around at the audience that had gathered to hear her tale, and shook her head.

"Okay... no more 'in a nutshell' explanations. Except for some really... personal moments... we're not going to hold much back." She took a moment to look each and every one of them in the eyes. When Sunset's gaze met hers, Rainbow couldn't help but feel a slight twinge of fear.

Those eyes were wiser and more pained than they had ever been before they were split up.

"This is the story of where we've been and what we've done. It all started after we tried to close the portal and, somehow, the whole thing blew up in our faces. After that, the next thing I knew, I was somewhere hot and dusty, with the sun beating down on me..."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunset was leaving things out.

It started off small, when she skipped over the fact that they had killed the dalek. She just said they had "disabled" it.

She told Aperture mostly accurately, getting Penn several wide-eyed stares when she got to the part where he blocked the turrets with his body. He mostly just shrugged it off. The mention of his injury led to a few questions about why he hadn't used his aura to protect himself...

Which led to a whole detour to talk about the fact that he had neither aura nor a semblance. The kids seemed to have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that these things weren't a constant in the multiverse, something as natural as having a soul.

Once they were back on track, there was the duel with Joshua. Sunset had to tell most of it, since Penn's memory of that night was... hazy... up to the point where Ra burned the painkillers out of his system.

"So.. it's a lot like Remnant the game? Trap cards and all?" Ruby asked with a gleam of mischief in her eyes.

"I think it's... similar. I think your game has some tabletop aspects that Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't. I'd have to play it to make a good comparison." He cemented his suggestion with a wink, which caused another distraction in the form of Ruby and Nora wanting to drop everything and go get the game at that very moment. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and they were soon back on track.

Penn finished THAT story with his perspective of saving Sunset's soul. He didn't hesitate to tell them that he had condemned Joshua's soul to suffer. Sunset had tried to interrupt him there, but he chose to speak over her. He wasn't about to hide what he'd done, he had accepted it at this point. If anything, he guessed it would make him more mysterious or intimidating, which he could always use to his advantage.

It's easy to make a fool out of myself. It's harder to get a reputation of being someone who should be listened to.

Unfortunately, when they got to the story of their time in Remnant, Sunset had backed out of the leading storyteller role, forcing Penn to tell everyone about his time as an assistant to Roman. He'd gotten more than a few glances and even a couple glares, but a reminder of the end result of his meddling was enough to get most of them to back off again.

Salem seemed particularly interested during this part, no doubt interested in hearing how he had managed to keep ahead of Cinder for so long. It was hard to see, but her normally-relaxed posture had stilled in a way that showed she was paying more attention than before. She was still lounging, but the way her eyes fixed on him reminded Penn of much, much worse days.

With her watching, Penn skimmed over most of his time as her prisoner, only stopping to talk in more detail about the circumstances of his escape.

After that, most of what had happened up until they hit the road was common knowledge. Ruby even got excited enough to give the whole description of the final battle against the dragon grimm, giving Penn a chance to flip and plate a few burgers to hand out.

Penn tried his best to keep out of talking about their time in Minecraft. Sure, he was there longer, but he hadn't actually accomplished much that was very noteworthy. Instead, he let Sunset and Missy describe their time there in detail, up until he had to explain their trip to the End.

It... took quite a bit of work to get the girls to understand that they had been sent into a video game made of cubes. Eventually they had to resort to Isis projecting an image of the game up onto the wall.

They had actually argued a bit about the dragon fight. Sunset was trying to claim that Penn was the most important player. Penn, on the other hand, insisted that Sunset had been the most important fighter, saving them from falling into the hungry abyss and striking the final blow on the dragon.

Their time in Undertale was... difficult to talk about.

Missy started the story with her perspective, talking about falling into the ruined underground. Sunset detailed their pursuit of her, and Penn stayed quiet the whole time... up until the point where Sunset left with Missy and he stayed behind with Undyne.

Sunset had made it clear that she didn't want to go into detail about his death. It wasn't a topic she wanted to broach, and in honesty, Penn didn't want to, either. But as Penn talked about his time fighting alongside the Captain of the Royal Guard and the sinking hopelessness of the situation, he saw a growing recognition in Ruby's face. While most of the others were leaning forward on the edge of their seats with anticipation, Ruby's expression was more akin to a dawning realization.

While Sunset was talking about meeting with Alphys, Penn went back to the stovetop. While he was focused on the cooking, he felt a hand on his shoulder that pulled his attention away. The younger girl was giving him that wide-eyed stare that girls always seemed to have, one that was almost as potent as Sunset's expectant looks when he was going to have to do something unpleasant. She motioned for him to lean down, allowing her to whisper into his ear.

"This... this is the part where you died, isn't it?"

Penn's grip on the spatula grew strong enough to bend the handle out of shape. His eyes glazed over and he felt a burning feeling in his chest, right where he knew a particular scar had healed over his heart.

For a few painful seconds, he wasn't at Beacon, any more. He was back in Waterfall, staring in disbelief at the glowing blade that had punched through his chest, at the murderous smile of the one who had killed him.

Killed him.

Killed him.

He was dead. He was still conscious, sure, but he was dead.

He'd failed.

He couldn't protect them.

He couldn't get Sunset home.

His existence, everything that he was, said, or did, had culminated in failure.

He was dea-

"Penn? You okay?"

A smaller hand on his was enough to slowly draw him out of them memory and back to the present.

He shivered and rubbed at his chest, forcing himself to smile and give Ruby's hand a pat.

"I'll be fine, Rubes... Just... could you go take a seat again? Listen to the story?"

Ruby glanced back at the group. Most of them were still enraptured with Sunset's description of her time in the DT Extractor, being held prisoner by Flowey, but Pyrrha and Blake had both noticed them talking. He gave them a small wave with the spatula, trying to look like everything was okay. Unfortunately, Blake's widened eyes and Pyrrha's raised eyebrows reminded him that he had accidentally mangled the handle of the spatula, bending it out of shape.

"It's... okay if you want to talk about-"

"Shhh." Penn pulled his hand away from Ruby's, breaking the contact that had pulled him out of the traumatic memory to begin with. He gently took hold of her shoulders, turned her around, and patted her on the back with slightly more force than necessary. "Go. Listen. I'm cooking."

Ruby turned back to look at him one more time, giving him the kind of pitiable look that made his gut churn.

How did she even KNOW about that?

Sunset, for her part, was doing a way better job of covering the truth than him. She was leaving out Undyne's fusion completely, claiming that she did all of her feats as herself.

It was only when they got to the part about confronting Asriel, Penn realized that his heart was pounding, threatening to beat out of his chest.

"Isis... can you keep an eye on this for me?" he whispered.

"Affirmative."

With the stove handled, Penn turned to leave. He just needed a few minutes of fresh air. He just needed to go into the hallway and-

The knife.

When he turned to leave, his eyes stopped to linger on the knife that Salem had thrown back at him. It hadn't bothered him as much before because it was a vegetable knife, smaller and more narrow than the chef's knife that Frisk had used. But now, when his whole body was already reliving the memory of what had happened, it could have been a butterknife and he still would have been afraid.

All at once, his body recoiled. On its most fundamental level, he was rejecting the memory, the fear, the sheer comprehension of what had happened.

He was barely able to stagger away, clapping both hands over his mouth to hold back the tide of vomit. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the sound of concerned voices, but he didn't pay them any mind as he rushed to the bathroom. He wasn't even able to make it to the toilet, having to settle for throwing up in the sink.

What came out of him was chunky, tasted sour, and was covered in black sludge. That was just another reminder that he wasn't what he thought he was, any more, but he was more concerned with trying to get his panic attack under control. He dug his fingers into the edge of the porcelain sink, begging and praying for relief from the terror.

"Partner, listen to me."

"Take a breath. A deep one."

Penn listened, forcing himself to stop hyperventilating. It felt like it was worse than not even breathing at all. Still, he continued to listen.

"Hold it... hold it... now let it out."

Penn gasped, beginning to breathe again, but slower now.

"Three things you feel."

"C-cold... sink. Wet... mouth. Pain... fingers."

"Loosen your grip. Five things you see."

Penn did as he was told, letting his white-knuckled grip on the sink lessen.

"Sink. Mirror. Stalls. Tile floor... throw-up."

"Turn on the water. Start getting your face cleaned up."

Penn nodded, turning on the water to start washing the remains of his lunch down the drain. The congealed ink was quickly washed away, and he started scooping up the water and splashing it across his face.

"Hey, dude, are you okay?"

Penn looked up, spotting Jaune as he walked through the door into the boy's restroom. He forced himself to nod.

"Y-yeah, p-peachy keen."

"Are you sure?"

Penn nodded.

"You know, I threw up on my first day. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

Penn wanted to laugh at that.

"It's just... bad memories. Panic attack. I've had a million of them, I'll be fine."

Jaune didn't seem to want to take him at his word, coming up to join him and put a hand on his back.

"It's okay not to be strong enough to do everything by yourself. You can ask for help.Trust me, I learned that from Pyrrha the hard way!"

"I- I can't- I..." Penn wanted to admit it, to confess everything and just break down. Instead, he settled for turning and leaning against the wall, then sliding down to sit on the ground with his knees pulled up to his chest.

"I don't want to talk about Undertale."

Jaune nodded. There was a creak of hinges as Ren pushed the door open.

"Jaune? Penn? Are you in here?"

"Yeah, we're fine." Jaune smiled, and Penn silently thanked him for doing the talking. "He just needed a break from all the cooking. We'll be out in a few minutes."

Ren looked both of then over for a second, clearly able to see the fact that there was more to what was happening. Still, he seemed to trust Jaune's judgement, nodding and shutting the door again. The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes.

"You're going to miss the story."

"The others can catch me up later."

"...Sunset's holding things back."

"Yeah, most of us have figured that out around the time she left out breaking her arm at Amity Arena."

"I... I died under Ebbott, Jaune. Sunset and Missy brought me back, kind of, but... I died." he whispered. He reached up to his shirt, undoing the top buttons far enough to show Jaune the fist-sized scar where a hole had been burned through him. Jaune's eyes widened at the sight. "The saber went from one side to the other."

"...oh. That's... horrible."

"You have no idea." Penn let his voice drop to a grumble.

"Why did she skip something like that?"

"Because... we've done things she's not proud of. I've done things she's not proud of. That don't fit with the world she and Rainbow Dash came from. And..."

"She's worried what Dash would think of her."

Penn nodded. "She wants to go home. People don't get murdered or get their souls banished to eternal suffering there. People don't get dismembered by a kid with a chef's knife or get possessed by a demon made out of ink or-"

"But, if she's ashamed of what you guys have done, that sounds an awful lot like being ashamed of you. Of the things you've done to keep her safe."

"No! No, she wouldn't be-"

"Whether that's what she meant to do or not. Sometimes you hurt the people you care about without even realizing it... especially when you're worried about something else." Jaune took his own turn to stare down at the tiled floor, clearly remembering some mistake of his own past.

Penn didn't have a response to that.

"Look. I'm not going to force you to talk to Sunset about it. Right now, you should just make sure you're okay."

Penn took a deep breath. "I... I will be. I'll be out soon, you should go hear the rest of the story."

There was another creak as the door opened again, revealing Ren holding a small tray. She stepped into the room and carefully sat down beside them. On the tray was a teapot and a set of three cups.

"I thought that you could use something to wash the taste out of your mouth," Ren stated as he began to pour the first cup and handed it to Penn. Penn hesitated to take it, looking as if to check whether Jaune wanted it first.

"It's for you. You can be served first." Ren gestured with the cup until Penn took it. "You're not the chef in here."

The tea was sweet and hot, perfect to wash away the taste of bile. A sense of calm finally settled back onto him, enough for him to let out a long sigh.

"Thank you. I think I'll be okay, now. You can go listen to the rest of the story, now. I'll be back out soon."

"Or..." Jaune gave Ren a grateful nod as he took his own cup. "We can just stay here for a while."

"I'm certain Nora and Pyrrha will catch us up later."

"Just us boys, getting a little guy time."

"Indeed. That can be rare in our respective situations."

Once again, Penn found himself at a loss... so he didn't say anything. He simply took another sip of his tea... and waited.

Without judgement, without urgency, and without Sunset, he waited until he could face the world again.

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"After that, we all sat down to eat together, and... that was about when we got the call from Ruby and the girls asking us to come back."

Sunset leaned back in her seat, feeling exhausted after having to finish the story alone. Jaune and Ren had gone to check on Penn and hadn't come back, but she knew that if they were together, Penn was in safe hands.

"Wow... That's... a LOT." Rainbow leaned back in her chair, one hand held to her forehead in shock. "The sun's even set."

"It's also wrong."

All eyes turned to Salem, and she felt her heart skip a beat in fear. The witch was positively glowering with quiet rage.

"What, are you calling Sunset a liar?" Rainbow started to rise out of her seat.

"By omission, yes." Salem continued. "And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's someone who lies to those close to them to save their reputation."

Sunset felt the color draining from her face.

"She uses a weapon that can cut through hardened steel as easily as paper, fought constantly with her life on the line and minimal combat experience, and we're expected to believe that she didn't cause so much as an accidental dismemberment?" Salem narrowed her eyes. "Their group never suffered a critical injury of any kind, despite all these life-and-death situations? Out of everything we've heard, those things seem the most unbelievable."

Ruby tilted her head, looking at Sunset with an expression that felt somewhere between pity and understanding. "Sunset... Isis already told me, Yang and Rainbow Dash about what happened to Penn, at least a little. We know that he died at one point, but you didn't mention that at all."

Sunset felt a surge of panic at getting caught, even as Rainbow Dash's eyes grew wide with recognition.

"That's right! I thought she was just messing with us, though!"

Everyone's eyes were on Sunset, but she could particularly feel Salem's, Ruby's, and Rainbow Dash's gazes.

"I- I don't... I can't-"

Finally, a small hand on her shoulder drew her attention to Missy. The little spirit, her last hope for support, was giving her a sad look.

"Get some rest. I'll re-tell the hard parts. I promise, you won't look like a bad guy."

Sunset couldn't stop the tears, this time, only nodding and pushing herself up out of her chair. She took a second to look over the assembled group.

"I- I'm sorry... I just-"

"It's alright, Sunset." Pyrrha rose up out of her chair, stepping over to give Sunset a hug. "We understand, some things are hard to talk about. But you already helped us save our world, we could never think poorly of you. We know you're a good person."

Sunset felt tears welling up and falling from her eyes.

Pyrrha's hug was nice, but... there was a more comforting hug she wanted more right now. She looked back at the group, specifically at Rainbow Dash. She felt ashamed of herself for lying to her. She felt ashamed of the things that she would have to tell. Failing to save her friend when he died, her violent rampage with murderous intent for Frisk, the people she hadn't been able to help in the ink, the world that was left destroyed in their wake, and especially the time she'd outright tried to kill Salem using her magic... She couldn't bear the thought of it all being exposed.

She was different now than she was before, and deep in her heart she knew it. Part of her had wondered, from the first time she realized she'd helped kill a living thing inside that first dalek, whether she could ever go back home again... look her friends in the eye again.

And now her last attempt to circumvent that fate had failed. Rainbow Dash was going to see her for what she was now, rather than who she was before everything went wrong.

Now, there was nothing that could stop that from happening. All she could do was wait.

With a sad nod and a sniffle, Sunset wiped the last tear from her eye and walked away, heading back for the room she had slept in the night before. As she walked away, Sunset reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone.

"The one time you DON'T listen to me... you do this."

"I am sorry, Sunset Shimmer... At the time, I had thought that it was-"

"Don't. Just... don't, Isis. I'm not in the mood to be logical."

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"And... that's what was left out." Missy sighed and rubbed at the back of her head. "Sunset wasn't TRYING to lie to you guys. She just... has had a rough time of it and isn't proud of what it took to make it out alive."

Everyone who had been listening to her was still processing things. Missy wasn't dumb enough to think she didn't need to do at least a little damage control.

"Destroying Bendy's universe was an accident, but everyone who was trapped there is free, now. Her rampage after Penn was killed... she wasn't thinking clearly, and that world's magic just made it worse by responding to her feelings. Blowing up Salem's castle with her lackeys inside was... disproportionate, but it was the only thing Penn could think of. And the same thing applied when Salem was hunting us down to kill us all together." She floated over to the table and picked up one last one of Penn's homemade burger buns to nibble on while she turned to Rainbow Dash. "I know that death isn't really something that the Rainbooms dealt with in your world, and it was never considered the answer, but the rest of the Multiverse tends not to agree. And we have to work with that. Sunset's heart has never budged an inch! It's always been in the right place!" She sighed and took a moment to take a small teacup out of her hat and wash down the bread. "Sunset's not wrong... she's just trying to survive. It's everything else that needs to change." She took a moment to stifle a yawn. "Except Penn. Last time he changed, things got tense."

There was a long, slow pause, silence falling over the room aside from the quiet scrubbing of Isis's drone cleaning up the dishes as best as the little robot could.

"Well, duh. Why would any of that make me give up on Sunset?" Rainbow raised an eyebrow. "She's my buddy, I'd never turn my back on her!"

"We all understand that desperate times call for desperate measures." Pyrrha added.

"Plus, we make more than our fair share of mistakes just here in ONE universe!" Ruby added. "I don't think it's fair to judge her for making a few when she's jumping from one to the next!"

Missy let out a sigh of relief. "It's a huge weight off my shoulders to hear you all say that. I keep TRYING to tell Sunset that she's too hard on herself, but she just obsesses over the past until she drives herself crazy with guilt."

"Well, if she won't listen to you... maybe she'll listen to all of us?" Blake suggested.

"Yeah!" Rainbow Dash practically jumped out of her seat. "We'll make her see that, whatever she's been through, she's still our awesome friend!"

Missy smiled, taking a moment to unwrap a caramel she had saved for later and pop it into her mouth.

"In that case... I might have an idea about what we can do to cheer her up."

Comments

[herobrins mom]

WOO!!

NEW CHAPTER. YAY!

And in all seriousness I like this chapter to.

Good job :)

[Boltstrike58]

.0035 seconds after the "Multiverse Crew" team, as they had been designated, had arrived in Remnant and she had finished recalibrating her receiver drone to that world's required frequencies, a huge data packet had been transmitted directly to Isis from... well, according to the signature tag on the data, herself.

TIME TRAVEL! At least, that's what I'm guessing.

"Snap_Protocol_Version_1.3.17.exe"

"Sounds spooky."

Sounds spooky indeed.

He'd barely finished the first slice before the drywall cracked and crumbled around him, unceremoniously dumping him headfirst onto the floor, where his skull made a sound that reminded Rainbow of a hollow coconut being struck with a mallet.

Thonk!

Poor Penn.

[Raistlin]

11552766

Are you planning to re-introduce Raven? Yang's mom taking an interest in Penn was never brought back, and giving he is instrumental in saving the entire world from Baalchion forces...well, she may reconsider her neutrality.

[Pennington Inkwell]

11553172
I'm... working on it.

Raven is one of those story threads that keeps slipping through my fingers. Every time I think I've got a good place to wind her back into the story, it gets away from me again. It's a subplot that keeps bothering me that I can't seem to fix without throwing out all my other plans.

[Raistlin]

11553477

Her semblance is basically a "Deus Exit Machina', something the characters are going to need sooner or later.

Because let's be honest here, things are not going to work just as planned.

[Ciber]

11553752
Ah shucks. Now I have to read the whole thing in one sitting.

[Indigo Tornado]

"She can . Chiracian dragons can convert their bodies into their affiliated element, given that they're comprised mostly of pure entropic energy. The mass-energy conversion is especially easy for the scouting breeds, and they master it almost from birth. That's how they can travel at the speed of light to explore the cosmos. Every Radian-born scout actually has an instantaneous telepathic connection straight back to Chirac. That's why, even if it takes decades to travel to a location at lightspeed, they can send back information to Radian the second that they arrive at a prospective ally's world and- oh."

Im still unsure, but what part of the multiverse is this? Baalchian, Radian, Chirac, what is all this?