• Published 28th Nov 2019
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Quantum Leap Forward - Halira



Cheerilee wakes up twenty years in the future, in the body of Big Mac's daughter. Now she must find out how to get back to her proper time and body.

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Chapter 33: Into the Everfree

One of the most annoying things about the Everfree was that everything kinda looked the same.

"Are we lost?" Cheese asked.

She scrunched up her nose in frustration. "We ain't lost. Ah just have ta find somethin' that looks familiar from when ah was here the first time."

Cheese looked around at the trees and bushes. "What are we looking for then?"

She gazed around her trying to see if any particular tree or bush would jog her memory. "There's a cliff. Ah was runnin' through the trees, and then ah was at the top of a cliff. Then ah fell off."

Her friend stopped and stared at her with wide eyes. "You want us to fall off a cliff?"

"No!" She huffed, then lowered her voice with a hurried look around them. "But we still got ta find it. It was around there ah got zapped by the grain sprite. Keep ya voice down. We can't be loud."

"Why can't I be loud?" Cheese asked in confusion. "We're all by ourselves out here."

She bit her lip, and dug her hoof into the ground. "Um, the reason ah found the cliff was ah was runnin' away from a timberwolf."

"What?!" Cheese squeaked, coming up next to her and cowering low. "You said you could protect us from timberwolves."

She gave him a small nudge away from her. She felt sorry for scaring him, but they still needed to be careful. "Ah can, ah learned a lot since ah got lost out here. That don't mean we should be bein' loud and gettin' them to notice we're here. Just keep ya voice down, and keep close. Help me find the cliff."

Cheese let off a whimper, but nodded. They then went back to moving through the forest. As they did, she thought back to when everything had started.

At this point, she wasn't exactly sure what had gotten into her head that day. She'd been mad, and angry, and hurt, but now it seemed like her actions had been really stupid. Aunt Applejack had been so mad at her, and it had seemed so unfair. She'd taken that silly scarf, bundled it up with some food, and taken off into town. There really hadn't been a plan about where she was going. She had just known she was running away somewhere. When she kept almost running into ponies she knew in town she realized that running away in town just wasn't going to work. Her next plan had been to try to run away on the train, but she couldn't figure out a good way of sneaking aboard it. Then she'd finally settled on the idea that she'd cut through the Everfree Forest to whatever place was past it.

Instead of having gone into the Everfree through the main path, which would have been safer, she went far off the path. She was going to explore, and turn this into an adventure. It would be like her own story of the valiant filly that ran away from her evil aunt to go out into the unknown.

Oh boy, had she been stupid. She saw it now, but back then it had made sense.

After an hour or two she'd lost complete track of which direction she was heading, and was sure she kept circling back around to the same place. When night fell a timberwolf had found her. Thinking that she was far more skilled with magic than she really was, she tried to set the timberwolf on fire; that didn't work out well at all, in fact, it had just made the timberwolf really mad. She ran as fast as she could from the nightmare monster, and when she was running out of breath, and it was about to gobble her up, she'd tripped and fallen right off the side of a cliff she hadn't seen until too late. She came down hard on her face, right into a bunch of blue flowers.

Falling off the cliff had been a good and bad thing. The timberwolf didn't seem to want to jump off the cliff to chase after her, so she got away. The bad thing was she couldn't figure out how to get back where she was so she could turn around and try to make her way home. She had wished there was somepony there who was brave and strong who could help her, but she'd been all alone. Then, when she sat and tried to eat, she'd gotten zapped by her own food. It was hard to remember much after that, because she'd been in panic because she'd lost control of her body. When you suddenly lose control of your own body it is hard to pay attention to details like where you're going or how you got somewhere.

She came to a halt and pulled the loaf of bread out of her bag. "Let's check the bread again. Do ya see a face on it?"

Cheese examined the bread closely, and then shook his head. "No face yet."

She saw no face either. Maybe she should have brought a muffin instead. Maybe the grain sprites preferred muffins to bread. She returned the loaf to her bag and closed it back up. "Let's keep movin'. We gotta find one eventually."


Starlight had gathered all the search parties together at the odd crystal tree house at the end of the path going into the Everfree. There were a lot of ponies and creatures, and the unicorn was just finishing dividing them into groups to fan out from the tree house to search.

"I should be the leader of my group, why is Professor Scootaloo leading it?" Flurry Heart huffed with indignation. Cheerilee hoped that the alicorn wouldn't behave this way the whole time, she was in the same group as Flurry.

Starlight sighed. "Because Scootaloo has a better sense of direction, and a more level head. You're with that group to be the magical muscle, in case your group stumbles upon a dangerous creature. That's where you excel, blowing monsters to bits. I feel sorry for any timberwolf that tries to mess with your group while you're there. Just do what Scootaloo says, and make sure you keep the others safe."

Having her prowess in ability to decimate timberwolves confirmed seemed to soothe Flurry's ego a little, and she relented. Cheerilee let off her own sigh of relief that the problem seemed resolved. She really did feel safer knowing she had an alicorn watching her back, so she wasn't going to complain about being grouped with Flurry Heart, but she didn't want to get stuck in a group where it spent more time arguing about leadership than searching.

Starlight looked around at the assembled parties, which totaled twenty in number. "Alright everycreature, I've got each of your groups sorted so you have creatures in each of your groups who can combat timberwolves if need be, and keep your fellow searchers safe. I need to remind you all that while timberwolves are the most common threat in these woods, they are not the only ones. If you run into something bigger, or more dangerous, don't do anything stupidly heroic. Just get back to the tree house if you run into trouble. It is the safest place in the Everfree. Even an ursa major can't get you here."

The 'tree house' was more a mini crystal palace that fit right in with the castle in town. She vaguely remembered touring the place before, but it was in that period of memory that had been pushed backward and out of order. That gave her a deja vu all over again, but this time it wasn't as severe as it had been over the last few months. The strange feeling was present when she looked at many other members of the search parties.

The party she was assigned had her, Scootaloo, Flurry Heart, Petunia Palio (decked out in a pith hat, goggles, and boots), and the youngest of the group was an earth pony mare named Coral Currents. Only Flurry and Scootaloo could be counted as experienced adventurers among their group, and Flurry Heart pretty much constituted all their magical muscle. Coral Currents she had never met before, but due to her coloration and her 'mellow' disposition she was instantly recognizable as Sandbar's younger sister. The other three parties, each with five members, were being led by Starlight Glimmer, Sweetie Belle, and Silverstream. It was a little surprising that neither Applejack nor Rainbow Dash led their groups, but Starlight apparently felt better having Sweetie Belle and Silverstream in charge. There had been no arguments about those decisions.

"Let's move out team!" Scootaloo instructed. The other team leaders did similarly, and the four teams dispersed into their separate quadrants of the forest.

Her group diverged into a triangle type formation at Scootaloo's orders. Scootaloo and Coral were at one corner, Cheerilee and Petunia were at another, and Flurry Heart walked ahead as the third point. They all stayed just in sight of Flurry Heart. She would lose sight of Scootaloo and Coral on and off in the growth, but always kept Flurry Heart in sight. She assumed that the other two were doing the same a short distance away. Flurry, for her part, didn't wander too far ahead, and regularly checked over both her shoulders to make sure she hadn't lost any of the ponies she was supposed to be protecting. It wasn't normally wise to be making a lot of noise while traveling off the main path of the Everfree, but they all called out in intervals the two lost foals' names, and hoped that if something unwanted answered that Flurry Heart would be able to deal with it. For the first few minutes she could hear the other three groups doing the same, but it quickly reached a point where they were too far away to be heard.

"Candy Apple! Cheese Slice!" Petunia yelled out beside her, then stopped to examine a bush. Cheerilee had to pause as well when Petunia did so. The first few times she had thought Petunia was checking for signs of the foals, but it quickly became apparent that the professor was caught up in scientific curiosity. It was starting to get on her nerves.

She saw Flurry Heart look back at them, and scowl. "Hey! Keep moving. If you keep stopping like that I'm going to lose track of the other two!"

"What's the hold up?" Scootaloo's voice rang out from somewhere off to their side.

Petunia jumped and blushed. "Nothing! Sorry, I just have never been into the Everfree proper, just the area along the path, and the ruins of the old Castle of the Two Sisters. There are so many fascinating things to see out here."

"Take in the sights some other time!" Scootaloo yelled again. "This isn't a sightseeing trip or one of your expeditions. If it isn't signs of the foals you're stopping for, keep moving!"

She was glad that somepony else said something before she had to. Petunia did look like she took her chastisement to heart, and started moving again.

They moved at a little faster, now that Petunia wasn't doing as much checking out of the plant life. However, the other mare did keep checking the ground. It took Cheerilee a few minutes to realize that Petunia was checking for tracks, and then felt embarrassed that she hadn't been doing the same.

"You said that what Candy ran into was a grain sprite?" Petunia asked while they were walking.

"Candy! Cheese!" Cheerilee called out again, before she answered the other mare. "Yes, it apparently makes a home in grains, hence the name."

Petunia nodded, and pointed to a patch of ground off to their side. "See that? That stretch of ground that runs a little higher in a straight line, with depressed ground parallel to it? That's the telltale signs of an old irrigation system, the type that is used in certain types of farming. It's really old and eroded, which is why it isn't obvious if you haven't seen these types of remnants many times elsewhere, the overgrowth masks it as well. I'd love to be able to examine this area further when I get a chance. If I had to make a guess, this used to be zebra farmland, before the forest swallowed it up. I can't confirm that without further study, but I'm willing to bet on it."

That made her stop and look. Now that it had been pointed out, she could see the remains of the old irrigation ditch. "So this might be right where the grain sprite came from?"

Petunia shrugged. "No way of knowing that without actually catching one. I'm not even sure how far these irrigation channels extend; there's too much overgrowth for me to tell without a comprehensive survey of the area. If they're drawn to grains then this might have been somewhere they'd have been attracted to in the past."

They kept moving, but she now started to keep a lookout for signs of the ditches. It didn't take long for her to notice them in force. This particular area had a lot of them, spaced out at intervals of every few pony lengths, making the path very uneven.

"Scootaloo?" She called out.

"What? Did you find something?" Came the pegasus's reply a short distance away. Flurry Heart stopped in her tracks up ahead of them, and turned to look.

She shook her head. "No, but can you find this area again later? Petunia and I think this might be where the grain sprites might be. Candy needs one if we are going to cure her."

"I'll keep that in mind, and will help Starlight find this place later," Scootaloo called back. "Just keep looking for the foals. If this is the area those sprites come from then we might be heading in the right direction to find Candy and Cheese. Keep your eyes open for foal tracks!"

"Will do!" She yelled back. Hopefully they'd find Candy soon. A part of her hoped that if Candy did come this way that the filly had been successful in catching a sprite already, and this could all be resolved for her soon. It was stupid and dangerous for Candy to have run out here, and to have dragged Cheese along with her, but Cheerilee could only imagine the desperation the filly had been feeling to prompt it. A small part of her felt guilty, because she may well have helped feed into that desperation with her worries about keeping Candy in school.

"Hold up!" Flurry suddenly called out, and lifted a hoof up in the air for all to see. The alicorn was focused on something up ahead of them.

"What is it, Flurry?" Scootaloo yelled.

"Something moving in the bushes up ahead, bigger than any rabbit or squirrel," Flurry replied, still focused on whatever she was looking at.

"Everycreature, gather together and move up close behind Flurry! If there's something dangerous, we want to have her between us and whatever it is," Scootaloo instructed. "If it is timberwolves there may be more than one, and they'd be trying to go for the outliers while they have Flurry distracted. We're safer huddled together close to her."

That was all the prompting she and Petunia needed to run up behind the overpowered pony. Scootaloo and Coral reached Flurry Heart at the same time she and Petunia did.

Now that they were all close to the alicorn they could see what she could see. There was indeed something moving in the growth up ahead, shaking the bushes. At first she thought it might be something smaller, but some of those bushes were shaking too much for some small rodent to be running through. The four less powerful ponies huddled close enough together they were all touching, as Flurry Heart slowly advanced on the bushes ahead.

"Candy Apple, Cheese Slice, is that you?" Flurry called out, still walking forward. There was no response, just the continued rustling of the bushes. Flurry lit her horn as she continued walking forward towards the bushes, and the rest of the group held their collective breaths.

Flurry reached the rustling bushes and pushed the branches aside with one of her wings. She stared for a moment at whatever was within the bush.

Then the alicorn turned to stone.

Author's Note:

Sorry for the delay. Dealing with being sick still. Just can't seem to get over it. Didn't do a full editing pass, so if you catch anything let me know.

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