XXVII - Marceline Investigates
You are being watched.
It is a fact of life. You are being watched.
Any number of unusual markings and peculiar artifacts can be a portal to let dark forces observe you. There is no point listing them since there is no escape from them.
Even the trees have eyes…
~~~
Marceline liked being invisible about half of the time. Sneaking around and watching was fun and all, but she wanted to be seen, so invisibility was only useful to her insofar as it freaked people out when she revealed herself. She’d snuck up on people so often and scared the living daylights out of them that it had become a habit.
She hadn’t needed to stay invisible for an extended period of time for many decades, so she was out of practice. Fighting the urge to spook every banana guard out of their peels was quite the task. Predatory instincts were hard to work out, even considering the fact that the banana guards didn’t have a hint of red on them.
To this end, she focused intently on the map, not looking up. She started on the ground floor, sweeping the hall where the “X” was, finding nothing of interest. The first and second basements had similar results, though the second one shocked her because she’d had no idea the castle had a room dedicated to the different kinds of coinage that had been produced over the centuries. It was a museum that wasn’t even guarded.
Why would you even make this room, Bonnie?
Shaking her head, she continued to the third basement, finding a well-tended-to aquarium filled with peanut butter and jelly fish. And jellyfish. And peanut butter fish. The three species clearly had no relation to each other.
“Where do you get the resources to maintain these things?” Marceline wondered, examining a plaque in front of the tank that had a relief sculpture of Bonnibel on it. “The Sea of Life Aquarium, Year 413. Do you even remember that you built half these things?”
Seeing as Bonnibel wasn’t here, there was not going to be an answer for Marceline’s curiosity. Though, checking the blueprints, this room was on them, just not labeled—the only hint that it was an aquarium was its attachment to one of the city’s main water lines.
Moving on, she descended deeper and deeper into the basements, passing the dungeon with ease. Sure, there were a ton of monsters down there that moved and cawled, but none of them could see her, so it was no issue.
...Except the creature with the freaky eye. But it didn’t attack, it just stared at her.
Shuffling through the blueprints, Marceline discovered that the room layout no longer matched. “Right. Dungeons. They do that.”
Having heard her speak, the troop of electric rock golems jumped her all at once. With an exasperated sigh she dropped her invisibility and transformed into a hideous bat creature three times her normal size. She clawed them aside with two swipes. They never stood a chance, crumbling to their component rocks with ease.
Returning to her normal form she became invisible again. Right, dungeon. The layout no longer matches, but I need to make sure I’m directly below where I am now when I go deeper…
She leaped onto the remains of the electric rock golems, finding that they were, in fact, magnetic. She could take some with her and use them to figure out where the others were! If she was a floor below there would be an attraction and…
As she was starting to feel rather proud of her ingenious idea, she noticed a hidden trapdoor just to the side of one of the rocks. She drifted over to it, trying to pop it open. She found it was locked, but after transforming into the bat beast again, she was easily able to rip it off its hinges. Below was a tunnel that had been drilled very recently. No doubt this was what she was looking for.
Stifling her grumbles, she grabbed some of the smaller rocks and put them in her pocket, determined to find some use for them. Drifting down the tunnel, she came to a simple cavern that looked natural, though there were a few things of interest. First of all, a crystal platform, no doubt used to teleport to and from the lab where they had chased the King earlier. There was a fridge-sized reinforced safe off to the side, the metal kind covered in glowing multicolored runes designed to keep valuables even from the most magical and devastating of creatures. One of the cavern walls was covered in an ancient cave painting of some kind. It was way too old to make out the details, but the overall shape of a circle with a triangle inside it was clear.
On the ground, though… the ground in the center of the cave was composed of a blue crystal, in the middle of which stood a pedestal that glowed with an eerie yellow aura. Alien markings made with pitch black ink surrounded the pedestal’s base, cycling out toward the edges of the blue crystal, ending with ten dots in a roughly circular shape.
The edges of the pedestal had eyes etched into them.
“Huh, well this is clearly some evil junk,” Marceline said, hands on her hips. Heaving her axe, she continued. “Too bad it had the misfortune of meeting Marceline! Hi-woah!” As the axe was torn out of her hands and thrown into the ceiling, she noticed a previously invisible shimmering barrier of gold magic. “...Drat.”
She drifted to the ceiling and removed her axe, determined to set its blade upon something and pulverize it. She went after the painted designs, the crystal floor, anything that she thought needed to be destroyed. Nothing. Even the teleportation platform was immune to her attacks, though that was not because of any magic shielding.
She drifted to the safe and tried to pick it up. Some enchantment on it kept it rooted to the ground. Knocking on it, she found her sounds were artificially muffled to give her no clues as to what was inside. And, naturally, hitting it with the axe did absolutely nothing.
The magnetic rocks stuck to it, though. Not that that helped. Even lugging one of the big ones down and letting it smash into the safe at high speed did nothing.
Marceline crossed her arms. She was going to need something big and preferably explosive to take care of this clearly evil nonsense. The sooner the better, she felt like the pedestal’s eyes were watching her.
~~~
Pinkie was explaining the idea of a cute-ceañera to a group of gumdrop people when she felt the rumble. She almost didn’t notice it given the music and talking of the festival. “What was that?”
The gumdrops shrugged. “What was what?” one of them asked.
“The rum—”
“PINKIE!” Root Beer Guy shouted. “Sky pie at seven o’clock!”
Pinkie pulled a pie out of her mane and laid it down on a nearby table—but that was only a cover-up for what she was really doing. At her seven o’clock, the King of Ooo was running out of the party hall at a full sprint. He was already halfway through the doorway. Oh no you don’t, mister!
She curled herself into a spring and sailed across the entire hall in a second, landing on the smooth floor just behind the King. “Your highness! Leaving so soon?”
He didn’t stop running. He didn’t even stop to glance behind at her. But he did react to her by increasing his speed. Those spindly wax legs of his hit the ground faster than they should have been able, especially considering the massive royal robes he was wearing.
Luckily, Pinkie didn’t care about the pesky laws of physics either. Her legs moved so fast they became like wheels, moving her more like a car than a pony. She pulled up toward the King, calling after him with a “beep beep!”
The King refused to look at her. Kicking off the floor, he rammed into a wall and sprung over Pinkie’s back, running behind her with a roll that he pushed back into a full run without missing a beat.
Pinkie twirled around like a tetherball and continued pursuit. “There is no way you’re that coordinated!”
No response aside from ducking into a door on the side of the hall. Jumping in after him, Pinkie found… a storage closet with nothing in it.
Pinkie’s jaw dropped. “I… I lost him? How!? That doesn’t even…” She rubbed the side of her head with a hoof. “Okay, okay, think, Pinkie, think. Where is he going? The—the lab! Right!” Her legs became blurred circles once again, rushing her down the castle halls, all the way to the lab’s door in record time. She knocked a few banana guards down on the way, but she would make it up to them later. Right now, she had a King to catch.
It took him a full minute to arrive at her position, having not stopped his run. He came to a halt when he saw her waiting.
Pinkie clapped her front hooves together slowly. “You almost had me there, your highness! Now, mind telling me what’s going on? Why’d you leave the party, I threw it just for you?”
The King glared at her with an expression of hate. For all the King’s shortcomings, Pinkie had never seen something so malevolent cross his features—nor had she seen the next expression, that of a psychotic smile. “Oh, Shooting Star...” the thing that was not the King said with an eerie reverberation to his voice. “You really don’t know how to keep that muzzle of yours in your own business, do you?”
Pinkie noticed for the first time that his eyes were different. Not only were they a brighter yellow than usual, but his pupils had become narrow, vertical slits. Despite this, she continued smiling. “Yeah, I’m a little nosy, huh?” She giggled. “I guess I do it so I can give people the best parties ever! You already know me, I’m Pinkie Pie, but I don’t know who you are!” She extended a hoof to him.
He extended his hand, blue fire erupting from it. “How about we make a deal? I tell you who I am in exchange fo—”
Pinkie retracted her hoof before he could finish. “No deals, buddy.’
An annoying, nasally laugh came from the thing. “You’re smarter than you look! How about a deal without shaking on it?” His smile vanished, returning once more to the harrowing scowl. “You get out of my way and forget this ever happened, and I won’t turn you into a pancake.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a pancake!”
The thing found this amusing. “You have a brilliant mind in there. Were things different, I think we’d get along! But, oh, how tragic! You are in my way.” He reached out a hand…
“Your highness!” A chorus of banana guards shouted, interrupting the scene. Almost immediately, the yellow left the King’s eyes, returning him to normal.
“Wh—what? Where am I? How in—?”
“Your highness!” One of the banana guards flopped onto the ground in a begging position. “Help us! Help us!”
The King rolled his eyes. “Ugh, it’s alway something with you people… what is it?”
“An army of eyeball creatures are standing outside the city walls and demanding our immediate surrender!”
Both Pinkie’s and the King’s jaws dropped. “WHAT!?”
Stats
Page generated in 0.021 seconds
Total duration
668 users online
634,350 hits today, 1,822,946 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Oh shit it's Bill
Pinkie is Shooting Star? Ladies and gentlemen, this just became a lot more complicated.
10489613
Whose shooting star?
HE'S HERE IT'S HIM IT'S THE GUY
but how exactly are Pinkie and Mable related?
10490391
Basically, They have parallels in their life views outlooks.
And yes, it’s Oh, poop!
What, no aquatic trolls? I suppose that would be Year 612.
Somewhere between acid rock and hard rock golems in terms of potential danger.
Well, that's an interesting wrinkle...
Oh, thank goodness.
The plotlines had to reconvene at some point.
10489541
Were the giant golden pyramids not enough of a tipoff?
10494237
No