Chapter 3: Mindscapers
Over half of Ponyville had gathered around the giant drill on the outskirts of town. They didn’t venture very close to it, and were murmuring nervously to one another when Twilight, her friends, and their newest addition arrived. When they finally got to the drill, they gasped and saw why.
Slowly, the earth around the drill was turning grey. The grass and flowers were wilting and disintegrating. The ground was also starting to crack closest to the drill’s point of impact, and a faint pink glow could be seen within. So far, the radius of the decay was small, maybe only a few feet in diameter, but it was slowly growing.
“I guess that’s what she meant when she said she was going to kill us,” Applejack muttered with a gulp. Fluttershy covered her mouth in horror.
“This got way worse,” Twilight said, turning to her friends. “Fluttershy, go get Zecora. Whatever this stuff is, it’s some sort of poison, so we need an antidote as soon as possible.” The yellow pegasus nodded and flew off without another word. “Applejack, Rarity, get these ponies back to town. It’s too dangerous here.”
“On it,” Rarity said. She and Applejack turned and started ushering the crowd back to town. It didn’t take much convincing.
“What do we do about her?” Rainbow asked, pointing at the pony Spinel, who was gazing up at the drill in awe.
Twilight frowned in thought for a moment, looking at Spinel. She didn’t seem to remember the drill, so her initial plan was bust. “Go get Princess Luna. She works with dreams, so maybe she has some other way we can get Spinel's memories back.” Rainbow nodded and flew off with a rainbow streak trailing behind her.
Spinel finally seemed to notice the others were missing, and looked somewhat scared. “Where’d everyone else go?” she asked.
“Off to get help to stop this,” Twilight said. “Are you sure you don’t remember this drill at all?”
Spinel shook her head and took a step back. She looked frantically at Pinkie. “You won’t leave me, will you?”
“Of course not!” Pinkie said, wrapping one front leg around Spinel, who looked relieved at the thought. Twilight watched her carefully -- there was something there, some flash in Spinel’s mind at the thought of being abandoned. It wasn’t about the drill, but it was progress.
“That’s a relief,” Spinel sighed.
“You seriously don’t remember this drill? About fighting us? Nothing?” Spinel shook her head. “Well, I have something that could help.”
“What’s that?” Twilight asked.
Pinkie reached into her mane and produced an accordion. She started playing it while doing a jig on her hind legs, dancing around Spinel and singing, “Familiar, doesn’t this seem familiar? Familiar, like something you recently did. Familiar, throwing Rainbow in a tree. Familiar, like swinging your cool scythe at me?”
Spinel sat back and applauded. “Nope, sorry. This isn’t ringing any bells.”
“How about this?” Pinkie replaced the accordion with a cow bell and rang it. Spinel giggled and clapped again while Twilight smacked her forehead.
“Pinkie, I don’t think this is going to work,” Twilight said. “We’ll have to wait for Princess Luna…and hope that she can help.”
They only had to wait a few more minutes before Rainbow Dash returned with the princess of the moon herself in a flash of pale blue light. Luna gawked up at the drill.
“So this is what the strange being arrived on?” she asked Twilight, who nodded.
“She’s right here,” Twilight said, gesturing to Spinel. Luna raised an eyebrow at the strange looking pony, who simply waved to her.
“You can change back,” Pinkie whispered.
“Phew, thank goodness,” Spinel remarked. She glowed pink and reverted back to normal, startling Luna. “I can only hold a form for so long.”
“I poofed her and she reformed from that gemstone,” Twilight explained, pointing to Spinel’s heart-shaped spinel. “But she doesn’t remember anything, and as you can see.” She gestured to the ground around the drill. “We need her to shut it off.”
“I see. I could try venturing inside her mind to recover the memories, but it’s a little harder to get into someone’s mind than it is someone’s dreams, especially a creature not from Equestria,” Luna said.
“I’m a Gem,” Spinel said cheerfully.
“Right…well, I don’t know if I can get in a Gem’s mind. I can try.” Luna turned to Spinel. “I’m going to need you to clear your head of thought. Shut your eyes, and focus on nothingness.”
“Okie dokie pokie,” Spinel said, plopping down on her rear and shutting her eyes.
“Everypony, stand back.”
The other ponies took several steps back from Luna and Spinel. The dark allicorn’s horn glowed brilliantly with a light blue aura. It expanded out until the princess was enveloped in a bubble of magic. She shut her eyes, and a transparent version of herself floated out of her and toward Spinel’s head. However, before she could touch the Gem, she was sucked into Spinel’s gemstone.
Spinel’s “mind” was a very light pink void, nearly white. There were several Spinel’s dancing around and doing various tricks for pink holograms of Pinkie Pie. Luna watched them curiously, wondering why the Gem was so fixated on the pink pony.
She walked over and tapped one of the Spinels on the shoulder. The Gem turned to her, and the illusion of Pinkie vanished away. “Apologies for the interruption,” Luna said. “But where are the memories located?”
“Over there,” the Spinel said, pointing at a pedestal shaped like the front of Spinel’s gemstone. It was coated in a bright pink electrical energy.
“Thank you very much.” Luna turned from the Spinel and approached the pedestal. The Spinel resumed her antics, and the hologram she was entertaining reformed and applauded her.
The energy surrounding the pedestal crackled angrily at Luna. Underneath, each facet seemed to glow as if there were a screen within. Luna hummed in thought as she walked around the pedestal, trying to figure the best angle to approach the memory storage. In the end, she decided to try and touch it with one of her hooves.
“Ouch!” she exclaimed, retracting her numb hoof and shaking some feeling back into it. Growling, her horn glowed bright blue and she shot magic at the energy. The energy field shrugged it off as it had her.
Luna grumbled as she thought of something else she could do. Her thoughts were interrupted when someone tapped her on the back. She turned around, expecting one of Spinel’s representations, but was shocked to see Discord.
“Discord?” she exclaimed.
“The one and only,” Discord replied with a bow. “I was looking for you in Canterlot to see if you were interested in a game of checkers, but I heard you were on official business.”
“You can enter minds as well?” Luna asked.
“Oh please, Luna - I live in a chaos dimension. Entering somepony's mind is child's play.” Discord looked past her at the energy-covered pedestal. “So where are we?”
“We’re inside the mind of something known as a Gem. She came to Equestria, threatening to kill Twilight and her friends, and brought a drill that’s injecting some sort of poison into the ground. She was beating them until Twilight somehow…poofed her, as she put it. When she reformed, she couldn’t remember anything. We need her to remember so we can stop it and-“
Discord held up a hand to stop her, an angry glow in his eyes. “This…Gem, tried to hurt Fluttershy?” he growled.
“Well, she tried to hurt them all, but-“
“That tears it!” An oversized mallet appeared in Discord’s hands and he grinned at it. “Or, in this case, smashes it.” He charged the pedestal with it. “Anyone who hurts Fluttershy is getting the full fury of the lord of chaos!”
“Discord! Wait!”
Discord swung the mallet at the pedestal, but it was stopped by the energy field, which electrocuted him to the point of showing his bones like an x-ray. The mallet disintegrated into ash and he stumbled away from pedestal, singed and disheveled, and coughed out a puff of smoke.
“Okay, full fury can wait,” he said dizzily.
“Those are her memories,” Luna explained. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get to them. If we don’t help her remember, a far worse fate awaits Fluttershy and all of Equestria.”
Discord shook himself back to normalcy. “Well, I can do that,” he said. “Now that I know what the energy tastes like.”
“’Tastes like?’” Luna said with a slightly disgusted grimace.
“Yes, all energy has its flavors,” Discord said casually, strolling over to the pedestal. “This one tastes like strawberries!” He produced a pair of shears with blades that glowed pink. He snipped at the energy and created a square hole above the top of the pedestal and stuck his head inside.
“What do you see?” Luna called.
Before Discord could reply, the energy shut on him, nearly trapping his head. Luna moved to help him, but he pulled himself free, his head the shape of a rectangular prism. He shook it back to normal.
“All I could see in her memories were plants,” he said.
“Plants?” Luna frowned. “What kind of plants?”
“Well, there wasn’t that much variety: grass, some flowers, and those shrubs like you and Cay-Cay have at Canterlot.” Discord listed off on his fingers, which turned into the items in question.
“You mean topiaries? Manicured topiaries?” Luna rubbed her chin in thought.
“Whatever you wish to call them.” He waved his hand back to normal and looked back at the pedestal. “I don’t think I can remove the energy field, it just fixes itself back again.”
“You’ve done more than enough, Discord. Thank you for your help,” Luna said with a grateful smile.
“My pleasure. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if Celestia is up for a game of checkers.” With that, Discord snapped his fingers and vanished in a flash.
Luna shut her eyes and slowly faded from existence.
Luna gasped awake back in the real world to find Applejack and Rarity and rejoined the group in her absence. The Gem blinked her eyes open, but didn’t seem any different.
“Well?” Twilight asked urgently.
“I couldn’t get her memories free -- they’re blocked by some sort of energy,” Luna said. “With some help, however, I was able to see some of the images in her memories.”
“Like what?” Pinkie asked.
“Plants. For some reason, the most visible images inside her memories were flowers, grass, and topiaries.”
“Flowers and topiaries? That sounds like some sort of garden,” Rarity remarked. At the word, Spinel seemed to perk up, and the others took notice.
“Garden?” she asked, slightly in a daze. “It…sounds familiar.”
“Well, you’re in luck -- I know just the place to take her.”
“I’ll go with you,” Luna said. “Starswirl gave me a spell that should help with her memories once she starts remembering. And it'll help us get some understanding of why she’s here.”
“Alright. Rarity, Princess Luna, and I will take Spinel to the garden,” Twilight said.
“Hey, I’m coming too,” Pinkie said defensively, wrapping her front leg back around Spinel. “I told her I’m not abandoning her and I mean it.” Spinel gave a huge grin.
“Fine, you can come too.” Twilight turned to Applejack and Rainbow Dash. “You two wait for Fluttershy and Zecora. See if they need any help.”
“Will do,” Applejack said with a nod. Rainbow Dash saluted.
Twilight turned back to Rarity. “So, what did you have in mind?”
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Oh lord you're trying to kill me🤣🤣🤣🤣
... Which begs the question of why they don't just say "Hey, Discord. This thing's injecting a poison that will kill Fluttershy's house. Could you turn it into peanut brittle?"
Yes, he doesn't want ponies to grow dependent on him, but acknolwedging the draconequus in the room would be nice.
I actually think I have the comic those events take place in.
I'd have to check tho.