Matt's First Time (A Hearth's Warming Eve Adventure By Christ Chan) (Adventures in Love and Romance and Heroism)

by cearse

Chapter 3

Fleeing from Canterlot, Matt and the ponies barely escaped capture by the Changeling swarm, as Nightmare Moon’s unchallenged control of the night brought darkness to the land. The once normal nocturnal guards had become her Nightmare Guards, spreading throughout the lands from Canterlot. They couldn’t have followed the days through the permanent night, but it soon became Hearth’s Warming Eve.

Both enemies seem somehow stronger than before. Nightmare Moon’s influence affected even the ground. Chrysalis seemed to suck more and more love and happiness out the once-jubilant ponies than ever before, leaving them transformed as gloomy, fear-seeking remnants of their formerly cheerful selves.

It was apparent that something, or someone, was powering the old enemies to become truly unstoppable. From his perch, something was watching, plotting even in the process of his victory to stop anything that could interfere…

---

Rainbow Dash flapped back down to earth. She had flown over to see what could have happened in Ponyville they might need to avoid. Even in the darkness, she looked pale.

“Uh, you guys, I wouldn’t go to Ponyville right now,” she said. “Everything’s kinda weird there. Not, like, destroyed or anything, but it just doesn’t seem right. It’s like something made it all spooky over there, ‘cause it’s super dark, and all the buildings are kinda… disproportioned?”

Everypony shifted around, anxious to get to the Everfree. “I think we should just go around it,” Rarity suggested. “We can just avoid it altogether.”

Applejack stopped her, saying, “Well, ah think, ‘cause Ponyville is mighty spread out, it’d be darn hard ta do that. We could prob’ly just avoid the heart’a town, but we definitely need ta go through Ponyville some.”

Everypony agreed that avoiding the town altogether would just take too long. So they headed through the outskirts of Ponyville.

As they made their way through the streets, the illumination provided by the light posts were scant at best, and even with Twilight’s magical light leading them, it was too dark to properly see anything. As such, everything in the deeply shadowed alleys they passed seemed to be a creature, sneaking up to spook them.

Every building they passed was distorted in some way. Some had very tall and thin windows and doors, others were as wacky as could be, built as if they were supposed to topple over at any minute. As the ponies neared the other side of town, where the Everfree loomed in the distance, they began to notice convincingly grotesque features that occurred more and more frequently.

Soon, they were at the edge of town. They emerged from a row of buildings to find themselves on the fairground. It had become a fog-covered graveyard, packed full of enough tombstones and grave markers for all of silent Ponyville’s victims. Where the tents had once stood were now mausoleums and crypts, some dilapidated and others collapsed entirely. A thin, crowded path wound its way through the graveyard, leading to the Everfree in the distance, while the expanse of tombstones covered as far as the ponies could see.

Innately fearing even dark corners, Rarity and Fluttershy both clasped onto each other at the sight of the graves, while everypony else stopped to consider the sight before them.

“Wow,” Rainbow Dash said. “I didn’t see this when I flew over.”

Everypony, hesitating to continue, waited until one of them spoke up to move forward. “Okay, everypony,” Twilight said to the group. “This is fine, it’s just some graveyard. It’s probably not even really a graveyard! I bet these just magically showed up, right?”

The rest nodded in agreement, and moved to the path. Rarity took shaky steps, while Fluttershy had to be carried by Rainbow Dash.

Walking down the graveyard trail, towards the Everfree, everypony in the group, paranoid of the mysterious place, tried their best to keep spirits high. Rainbow Dash commented on as many graves as she could, calling out names she thought were strange or silly. Pinkie Pie ran from one marker to the next, giving eyes to the crosses and putting a hat on them, while she wrapped scarves around the slabs sticking out of the ground. She tossed entire loaves of bread behind them, to mark the trail, according to Pinkie.

Despite being on an entirely new path, the trail through the graveyard seemed to shift around the ponies. The fog obscured the ways forwards and back, and the sea of burial markers remained unfamiliar at every step, but the ponies swore things were changing around them. The most distant, barely visible tombstones seemed to shift, rise and fall, at the edge of their vision.

Eventually, after almost too long, the ponies made it to the Everfree’s edge. The sheer darkness ahead lent itself to blindly traversing forward, as now instead of graves, trees packed in against the ponies. With a dense ceiling trapping them in, they now felt entombed in the forest, wandering forwards. The ground was coated with autumn leaves, that decayed more and more as they pushed deeper and deeper into the warped reality dictated by the grim-minded creature waiting for them…

---

After an exhausting trek, physically and psychologically, through the Everfree’s densest and more foreboding wood, the sky almost suddenly opened above them. The grey light from the night clouds was barely enough to light the path ahead of them, and silhouetted an imposing shape against the sky. It was the point from which

As the ponies marched their way towards the mountain, a blast of frozen wind met them. It pushed harder and harder against them as they made their way to the craggy base of the mountain. They found a ravine through two huge rock formations, with a sharp bend ahead. It was colder there than it had been before the mountain, but at least the wind no longer buffeted them.

Matt and the other ponies stopped in the thin mountain pass. They caught their breath from the fight against the wind,

As they rounded the bend that had obscured what lay ahead, the lead pony, Twilight, gasped, as everypony found themselves at the top of a mountain pass, in the Crystal Mountains of the Frozen North.

“Wh… How did we get here?” Matt asked, “I thought we were looking for something in the Everfree… How did we even get here?”

Twilight replied, “It’s probably some kind of magic that brought us here, but I don’t understand how the mountain was in the Everfree!” She ran back the way the group had come, and saw only the rocky path leading up to the high point of the mountainous path.

Twilight returned and looked ahead to where the path lead, just as Rainbow Dash said, “Hey, look! I think there’s a cave or something up there!”

Everypony began at a trot up the path, still higher up the crystal mountainside to where their destination lay. Harsh mountain winds bit at their skin through their coats, the dry tundra air stinging their eyes.

As they made it farther up the path, the cave came clear into sight. It was rocky and dark, the light from outside barely enough to illuminate the entrance. It sloped upwards, to the peak of the evil crystal mountain.

Twilight continued to hold her magical light steady. It felt as if she had to fight against the darkness itself to see ahead. The cave kept wide enough for her to comfortably stand tall, and wide enough for two ponies to walk with each other. The ponies continued their ascent for much longer than they expected they would need to reach the peak.

Twilight and Spike led the group, followed by Matt and Applejack. Fluttershy and Rarity walked with each other, firmly in the middle of the pack, while Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie brought up the rear. Pinkie kept diligent watch over the empty space the ponies left behind them as they cut their way through the damp darkness.

After some time, Matt and Applejack, the latter of which was certainly the widest pony of the group, found they couldn’t comfortable walk next to each other, even though they were leaning into each other before. They looked at each other, and made the awkward decision of who would walk behind the other. Applejack took up that position, as Spike fell behind Twilight and the other ponies formed a line.

The cave seemed to close in around them. The ceiling lowered almost on top of them, and the walls felt like they squeezed against the ponies. They struggled to make their way through the jutting stones in the wall as the passage became steeper and steeper, the slick stone not helping. A twist up ahead provided a widening area up ahead, as the darkness thinned.

Eventually, the ponies found themselves at the peak of the crystal mountain. They were in a gouge in the face of the mountain, one side open to the air, and the other a huge mirror-like crystal sheet. The ground was smooth and level, and there was an arched opening on the other side whose door led to a normal-looking living room.

The door opened. Before anypony could question what was happening, Julius crawled his way through the doorway, almost too small for his now bulky form. He pulled himself through on four purple tentacles, and made his way to the wide platform. “Hello there, ponies come to interfere. I see you’ve found your way here.”

Skirting around the edge of the platform, near the opening, he approached the ponies, who had all made their way into the room. They faced Julius as they spread out around the perimeter of the room.

The six ponies surrounded Julius, most of them preparing to do anything to stop him, while Fluttershy was more of a moral support than anything, and Matt and Spike retreated back into the cave to watch, knowing they could only watch if a battle broke out.

Julius rose up on his tentacles spreading his arms, as Twilight called out, “Julius, we’re here to stop you. Put Equestria back the way it was, or we’ll use the Elements to do force you!”

“I see you think you can stop me, and put an end to my magic. Well, there’s something you’ll see, and I hope that it sticks. Oh, my little ponies, I hope I’ve put you at unease! That’s my goal, don’t you know, to do what I please!”

"Oh, buck off!" Applejack shouted, lunging at Julius.

Julius lashed out, his tentacles extending surprisingly quickly for how thick they were. He struck at Twilight, who used her magic to turn them aside as they struck the crystal wall behind her. As she shot magic at the purple creature, he sent his own in return. The evil wave easily overpowered Twilight and sent her flying against the wall, as a sudden darkness overtook each pony’s vision.

Each of the colored ponies found themselves experiencing their worst fears: Rainbow Dash was isolated in a dense fog, her wings seeming not to work as she saw fleeting images of her loved ones walking away (mysteriously, it involved a jar); Fluttershy of an overwhelming cacophony of noise, a spotlight focused on her as she saw animals she knew she couldn’t help; Rarity encountered fashion nightmares without even a chance to help fix it, and a giant crab that tried to fight her; Applejack’s body grew weak and helpless as she was shown situations of complete dependence on those around her; Pinkie Pie of concrete, rational concepts, completely at odds with her abstract nature; and Twilight of losing her magic, her friends, and her books, to have it all replaced by quesadillas and spiderses…

Matt dashed out from the cave opening. Spike tried to call out after him to stop him, but Matt was intent on snapping the Elements out of their stupors so they could put an end to the threat to his life in Equestria.

Stumbling into the dimly lit cave, he groped around, trying to find anypony he could. He bumped into Applejack, his most current loving girlfriend, and heard her calling out about not needing to be spoon-fed, that she could eat solid foods. He leaned in and kissed her hard on the lips. Her vision lost its glaze as she focused on him.

“Uhh, wh… Huh?” She looked around, disoriented. “Matt? What’s happenin’?”

He leaned in to kiss her again, and told her, “We need to stop Julius! He’s trying to stop you with fear!”

Nodding, Applejack ran off to awaken the other ponies. Both she and Matt began passionately kissing their former girlfriends and wives, snapping them out of their fearful illusions. The gloom in the room lifted as each pony regained their wits, focusing on the creature in the room.

Julius dragged himself to the focal point of the array of crystals. “If you poor ponies can’t succumb to my terror, you’ll see I’ll thrive in this world forever!

Baring his inner self to the flow of magic focused by the crystal room, Julius overflowed his body with the power of millions of terrified ponies. He disregarded any consequences it would have, intent on executing his final phase, even in the face of the renowned Equestrian “heroes.”

Gathering together, the Mane Six activated their own magical sources. The Elements of Harmony connected them, creating a single source of magic powered by the six’s love for each other and the heart everypony had.

Taking to the air, as the Elements let them do for some reason, the six ponies released intense blast of rainbow power at the reflective wall of the room. Julius, instead of absorbing the energy of Equestria, was torrented by the influx of magic. Overwhelmingly positive, it seared its way into the center of Julius’ mind, breaking through the barriers his negative psyche had constructed to form his internal world. Everything was inverted in his mind, the love and compassion filling grooves and holes in Julius’ heart where once it had lived, that had separated from him and left him devoid of love or compassion.

The magic caused a blinding light to wash over the Frozen North, reflected by the mirrors over the whole of Equestria. Eternal night was burned away, the season was restored, ponies were spared and returned to their normal selves, out of the magic of friendship.

As the light faded, the Elements came back to the ground, and everypony in the room saw two figures where Julius once stood.

The round, purple-furred creature sat on the ground, staring at his feet. A tall, white one stood next to him, looking at the ponies gathering around them.

“Wow, you really did it,” he said to them. “That was pretty neat.”

“You created me from your desire for companionship so long ago,” Ding Dong told Julius. “I became the only place compassion could exist in you mind, and you transformed because you had lost it all.”

Sitting down next to him, he continued. “Hey, I’m real now, though. They replaced me up there, I got tossed out here into the real world. I’m real now!” He started laughing softly, which made Julius smile a little.

The ponies around the two creatures came in closer. Twilight stood next to Julius, still wary of his tiny shape. “Well, Julius? Have you given in to the good side?”

Julius looked up, a sad smile on his face. “I think I’ve had a change of heart. My sense of compassion and my impulses are no longer apart. Sincere happiness is something you can’t fake. And talking in rhymes is a habit that’s hard to break.” He laughed, and got up from the floor.

“Well, if you’re reformed, then we’ve got a holiday to celebrate!” Matt said.

Everyone agreed heartily as they made their way inside, Julius inviting them to stay for a little while, the dog yapping at their entrance.

---

Back in Ponyville, Matt was considered a hero. Everypony praised him for his heroic effort to help end the horrible threat to Equestria and treated him almost like he was living in a fantasy.

Julius had retained his magical power, now using it to the benefit of everypony he could help. It was mostly unconventional, sometimes joking help, but he used it nonetheless. He had magicked his entire crystal mountain home into the crystal structure of Twilight’s palace, and lived among the ponies just to see what he was missing after despising them for so many years. Julius and Ding Dong spent a happy Hearth’s Warming with each other, no longer dedicated solely to one single task.

The town was peaceful again, Jehoova's Witnesses going door to door. Everypony was inside, spending their precious time with each other.

That Hearth’s Warming night was one of the best Matt had ever had during his time in Equestria. With all six of the ponies he had adventured with, he spent the night with them, content with his six girlfriends and him all sharing their warmth on the first cold night in weeks. Spaghetti and Mozzarella were close by, playing with each other and eating nachos and pizza.

Matt thought back to his life on Earth. There was no way it could ever have been better than this one. He, Matt Hoofus, was one lucky guy.

“You either die for something or live... Live long enough to see what you became in the very end. Have merry muthua fuckin Christmas in Canada and to a good night and a very happy fuckin new year.”

Author's Note:

The bonus chapter has fun things to look at :o

now i want to read books and fanfic more, for real. maybe even write my own. i mean, it doesn't have to be perfect the first time... - cearse