• Published 28th Sep 2020
  • 468 Views, 24 Comments

My World Is Empty Without You - McPoodle



Vinyl Scratch, Twilight Sparkle, and her friends are all trapped by a spell in Fluttershy's dream, a dream turned deadly by Fluttershy's pent-up frustrations.

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Chapter 1B

My World Is Empty Without You

Chapter 1B


“All right!” Angel replied, rubbing his forepaws together with wicked glee. “Tell me all the grisly details.”

Fluttershy sighed. “Well, this has been building up for a long time. Daring has experienced a lot of bad things, and those experiences have made her a pony that no longer remembers what’s important any more. The readers deserve to have a more positive main character. So this story will replace her with somepony who can carry the series forward.”

She started pacing around the living room as she invented the particulars of her latest novel. “The point of view character can’t be Daring, so I think it should be…”

“…Vinyl Scratch.”

“Who?” Angel asked in bewilderment.

Another creature poked up its head at this point, a fuzzy brown creature looking like a cross between a rabbit and a cat, with a red gem permanently embedded in its forehead. “You know…Rarity’s friend! The one who plays the loud music all the time.” This was Ryooki, Fluttershy’s Gift of the Ancients. The creature seemed to have the intelligence of a foal—and the stomach capacity of the Maelstrom—but with a very limited vocabulary. Originally, Fluttershy took its self-identification sound to be “Rooky”, but over time she refined it to “Ryooki”, or perhaps “Ryo-Ohki”. In Fluttershy’s dreams, Ryooki possessed the voice of a pre-teen girl on a permanent sugar high.

“Why’d you pick her?” Angel asked with a tone of suspicion. “She never showed up in any of your earlier books.”

Fluttershy shrugged. “She just felt right. Daring Do is on a mission that needs a DJ. There are a bunch of other ponies there, including the one that will betray her, Ra…Ra…” She put a hoof to her mouth in confusion.

“What’s wrong, does the cabbit have your tongue?” Ryooki joked.

“She would have been the obvious choice considering the setting,” Fluttershy mused. “But my heart is telling me no, so I’ll pick the traitor later.”

“A traitor?” Angel reflected. “Good. Good…

“The story is set in the one location that Daring Do has never faced, a place more treacherous than any jungle or booby-trapped tomb. A place called…Canterlot.”


With a rush, the protestor was subdued by the special police.

The slip of paper fluttered to the ground.

Vinyl Scratch turned her head about rapidly, taking in her very crowded surroundings. There were dozens, if not hundreds of other ponies packed around her, all in an agitated state.

Alright, I’m still blind, she thought. Nice of Fluttershy to remember that.

Somepony was being dragged away by a group of other ponies. Vinyl considered following them, but her ears soon told her that there were now too many bystanders in the way for her to possibly be able to tell what was going on.

Ponies of Equestria!” a voice boomed around her. “Your chancellor regrets to inform you that Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are still missing.” There was a groan from all around the square.

I’m in Canterlot, Vinyl realized, as she matched the acoustics of the crowd sounds to her meticulous memories. The courtyard in front of the palace. In fact...

“But do not worry,” the magically-enhanced voice of the Chancellor continued, “Even as I speak, the instrument of their liberation and our salvation is fast approaching. A weapon against the dragons even more powerful than the Elements of Harmony.

Two revelations hit Vinyl at once. First, the voice of the chancellor did not belong to Professor Stein, Princess Celestia’s long-time confidant, but instead was Oars in Wells, the etheric producer. There was something else important about Mr. Wells besides his occupation, but for the life of her, Vinyl couldn’t recall what it was.

The second revelation was that Vinyl was not just standing in the palace courtyard, but in fact in the exact same spot from which she had observed the anti-dragon mob on the night before war was declared. It had been her last significant moment as a civilian before she joined the Princesses’ secret service, or “Morale Corps”, as it was code-named.

A very short-lived commission: Less than a week later, she and the Bearers walked willingly into the Dragon Emperor’s trap, starting this whole confusing period of spending time in the dreams of each of her friends.

How could Fluttershy know I was in this exact spot? she idly asked herself. Wasn’t she returning with the other Bearers from one of their numerous secret missions at that time?

“Vinyl, there you are!” Twilight Sparkle said as she came up beside her. “We’ve figured out why we’re here!”

This wasn’t really Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy knew—she would never subject any of her friends to the excruciating experience of being a character in one of her books. Rather, this was a character with Twilight’s personality, but a different name and a different past. This was in fact the seventh time she had done this to Twilight Sparkle in the Daring Do books. She didn’t usually bother to correct the name in her manuscripts until the final draft, so that she might more easily keep the characterizations straight.

The bespectacled mare shook her head briefly to free it of frivolous thoughts, then turned to follow the distinctive sound of the unicorn’s hoofsteps out of the plaza.

Return to this square at sunrise tomorrow, ponies, to witness the start of a new chapter in Equestrian history!

The crowd roared its approval.

Vinyl’s first step flipped the slip of paper over, causing her sensitive frog to detect the presence of words indented into the paper. Using her magic, she passed the paper over her lips to reveal its nonsensical text: The persimmons are no longer in season.

The words seared themselves into Vinyl on the level of a childhood memory, meaningless but profound in some way, and she could abruptly taste persimmon, the earthy half-sweet fruit filling her mouth for just a flash, before it was gone and she was following Twilight, her heart racing and hooves shaking just enough for her to notice.

* * *

Vinyl Scratch had joined the group.

Pinkie Pie…no…Pinkamena was pacing around, gazing deeply into the eyes of every pony as they passed. This had the effect of causing everypony to steer clear of the three ponies and one dragon.

“Wait a second, where’s Rai…” Vinyl started to say, before getting a hoof in her mouth courtesy of the unicorn.

“Ask not ‘is where’; that’s why we’re here,” Pinkamena whispered. Oddly, she mis-pronounced "where" as "weir".

“So, are we…?” Vinyl asked, gesturing up the heavens with one hoof.

“No!” the pink pony hissed. “No.” She looked at first one bystander, then whipped her head around to another. “There!” she cried out. She then flipped around to face the opposite direction. “No...there!” Her gaze next went to a passing pegasus. “SHE’S EVERYWHERE!”

Applejack looked about her helplessly. “I really don’t know how the rules of this game work, gals,” she told them.

Twilight Sparkle sighed. “The royal guard just came through here with a captive.” Her eyes glanced upward. “A captive we’re supposed to rescue: Daring Do.”

Vinyl tilted her head. “Isn’t she…?” …Fictional? She stopped and sighed. “No, of course not.”

“And she gave the sign,” the other unicorn added, shaking her hoof in a particular way.

So that means that Rainbow Dash is in Daring Do’s head, thought Vinyl.

Vinyl sat down hard.

And Daring Do is apparently a re-colored version of Rainbow Dash. I’ve never heard of any pony beside those two to have so many shades in their mane.

Wait, is Fluttershy A. K. Yearling?

Vinyl mentally reviewed the physical descriptions of the secondary characters in the novels, novels that had been read to her by her uncle. She had never bothered to pay attention to these parts earlier, but they were clear to her now—perhaps a sort of bleed-through from the dreamer. One thing became abundantly obvious: those descriptions matched up to the appearances of her other friends, appearances that of course she only had now because she had been in dreams where she had been granted the power of sight.

What was also revealed by this train of thought was the fact that the Daring Do series never included a certain white-coated DJ, blind or sighted.

“Alright,” she said, getting up. “I’m clearly out of my depth here, so I’m going to take my lead from the rest of you. I’m...Vinyl Scratch, Canterlot’s local disk jockey.”

The pause was to see if Fluttershy was going to give her another name. She felt relieved that she was being allowed her autonomy...for now.

Then, a gentle feeling of prodding came over her, like Fluttershy was standing right there, a wing over Vinyl’s back, and she could feel the words being provided to her, but not forced to say, as if Fluttershy wanted to make sure that the character’s emotions guided the words to sound right in their mouth.

“I’m just here to get you where you need to go. After all, Daring only paid for a guide.”

Vinyl paused to consider what just happened to her. Compared to some of her other dreamers, Fluttershy by far had the most gentle touch.

Twilight broke the gathering silence by bumping Applejack in the ribs.

“Oh...right,” she said, and pulled out her wartime I.D. “This here says that I’m Cricket Fly.”

“Daring’s most valued assistant,” added the baby dragon.

“I’m Daring’s other, usually-forgotten assistant, Darai,” Pinkamena said dully.

A sort of unspoken conversation took place between Vinyl and Pinkamena:

Isn’t that the pony raised by zebras?

Yes.

And are you any good at rhyming?

Not to save my life.

Then this ought to be good.

What do you mean?

Vinyl heard Darai’s hoof lightly tap and then slowly scratch on the pavement, a signal that she was undergoing an inner struggle. A moment later, the earth pony added another, not entirely voluntary, sentence to her statement.

“Though our adventures have carried us quite distant, I’ve followed her both low and high.”

...Somepony just kill me now.

“I am Daring’s frequent benefactor, Brass Quill,” said Twilight Sparkle. “And this is Spike.”

“I didn’t have anything better to do today,” the dragon drawled.

And then Spike flinched, and added a few words. “And who knows,” he said with a rictus-grin. “Maybe I’ll learn a few things along the way.”

“So, where is Daring Do?” Vinyl asked.

* * *

Rainbow Dash awoke from nothingness to find herself immobilized. She was lying face down on a nearly vertical slab, her hooves and wings stretched taut by chained manacles. She heard a loud “SNAP!” right next to her right ear. With some difficulty, she turned her head to see a pegasus in a black robe and facemask, holding a whip. “Who are you? What’s going on?” she asked.

The whip snapped again, striking her right between the shoulder blades. She bit down the instinct to scream. “What do you want?” she demanded. “I’m not going to—AAH!”

The cry was in response to another lash, this one on her lower back.

Rainbow gritted her teeth. “I’m...not going to tell you anything!”

An earth pony emerged from the shadows, wielding a white-hot poker in one hoof.

“Wha...what are you going to do with that thing?” Rainbow asked fearfully.

The rod was applied to a rear hoof, causing Rainbow to scream out in agony.

“You’re...you’re not doing this right!” she tried to cry out, but her words came out in a mere whisper. “You’re supposed to tell me what you want to know—AAH!—and...and I’m supposed say something clever and then—AAAAAGGH!—and then you hurt me.”

The rod was applied to her other rear hoof. This nearly caused her to pass out.

Why? She thought tearfully. Why are they doing this to me?

And that’s when the pegasus with the clamp emerged from the shadows to begin tearing out her feathers.