My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic: Heart of Friendship

by ShadowDurza

Chapter 12: Crashing the Carnival

All the ponies trotted out into the multicolored lights illuminating the way. Pinkie could barely contain herself, so she simply didn’t and started bouncing and dancing all over the place, her eyes glimmering. “Now this seems like my kind of place! These humans sure know how to have fun!”

Twilight turned around to face her friends. “Hopefully, this time we can just have a good time without any trouble!”

Rainbow Dash furrowed her brow as she flew low. “Never say that, Twilight. Like, ever! Everypony knows that’s the best way to get trouble to find you!”

The human that accompanied them stepped forward, straightening her glasses, keeping her encyclopedia gripped close. “That’s just superstition. Trust me, you have nothing to worry about. The Party District is closest to the Grand District, where the Central Forces headquarters is located. The Underworlders never come to this part of the city.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes and drooped her front legs. “Whatever you say, Simone.”

They met Simone Webster on their way to the next district when she ran up to the gondola shouting “Hold the door!”

When they chatted on the way, Twilight took an instant liking to the book elemental. She had light skin with dark blue eyes and sea-green hair styled into a row of curling pigtails draping over her shoulders. She was dressed in a short dark-green gown with a light-green cape draped over it.

Rarity, after marveling at the many lights and the freeform aesthetics of each building, trotted over to Simone. “Pardon me, but since you live in this area, do you know anywhere we can go to spend some time before our meeting with the next Administrator?”

Simone giggled and straightened her glasses again. “A better question would be, is there anywhere that you can’t waste your time? There’s miles of game arcades, carnival rides galore, dance clubs for every theme and genre, theaters for movies and plays new and classic, and of course racetracks and obstacle courses of all kinds. Seems like the only place that almost never gets any traffic is the library I work at!”

Fluttershy decided to speak to Simone for the first time. “Well… what’s here that’s special to you?”

Pushing her glasses back up, Simone got a dreamy look in her eyes. “Well… there is this one thing…”

Pinkie Pie took notice and cartwheeled right in front of Simone, startling both her and Fluttershy. “Whatwhatwhat? Tell me! Tell me now!”

Applejack managed to get her out of their faces with a well-timed pull of the tail. “Whoa there, Pinkie! Sorry ‘bout that. You were sayin’?”

Simone cleared her throat and straightened her glasses once again. “Well, there’s this little variety show they do every night. After they cornered the market in merchandising, all their shows are free.”

Pinkie started revving her engines. “Well, WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?”

Simone started clutching her encyclopedia extra tight. “Um, the theater’s the other way, Pinkie.”

Pinkie’s headlong charge was brought to a screeching halt, and she quickly rewound back into place. Everyone giggled and followed Simone down the way.

***

“The lovers, the dreamers, and you…” The curtain fell on the magically-animated puppets amid the applause of the crowd. Even the ponies showed their admiration by stomping their hooves on the floor.

Rarity turned towards the rest of the group. “I must say, I can hardly tell if it’s so sophisticated it’s hilarious, or if it’s so hilarious it’s sophisticated!”

Rainbow Dash finished her stomping. “I thought puppets were for little fillies, eh Pinkie?” After a moment without a response, Rainbow Dash got a confused look and looked at her friend. “Pinkie?” Rainbow Dash was stunned to find that Pinkie was holding her head low and softly crying into her hooves. “What’s wrong?

Pinkie wiped some snot and tears from her face and opened her eyes. “It’s just so… so… PERFECT! The funniest fun I’ve ever seen! The wordplay, the slapstick, the timing, even the satire was flawless! NOPONY GETS SATIRE RIGHT ANYMORE!”

Rainbow Dash backed off to give Pinkie some space. “Okay! Okay! I guess a party pony like you would be a bit of a fun coni- cona-”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “Connoisseur, my dear.” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes in return, but got a sudden twitch in her eye and used her hoof to rub it.

Applejack took notice and turned towards her. “Don’t tell me you’re getting all emotional too?”

Rainbow Dash raised her head and shook it. “Nah, it’s just that something got in my eye, like a bit of dust or something.”

Fluttershy looked around and noticed that some of the surrounding humans were also rubbing their eyes. “Um… I think-”

Twilight tried to get a better look at Rainbow Dash’s now bloodshot eye. “Don’t just keep rubbing it! You’ve got to blink it out.”

Fluttershy noticed the densely floating sand swirling around overhead and between the rows of seats. “There’s some… Um-”

Applejack trotted next to Rainbow Dash and took a look of her own. “Nah, Granny Smith always said that the best way to get some dirt out of your eye is to hold it open and move your eye all around!”

Fluttershy noticed that all the sand was starting to swirl together near the ceiling of the theater. “I think, um… something’s about to-”

Simone started to lean in. “I could just conjure some eye drops from my book.”

However, the sand from above fell down in a great big flow, leaving a tall pile in the unoccupied front row of seats, startling everyone. Rainbow Dash rose up with a look of surprise. “Whoa! How come nopony saw that coming?” Fluttershy sighed and looked down.

Suddenly, the pile started stirring, as if being disturbed from the inside. From the top arose a humanoid figure. Once the sand cleared up, it showed that he was dressed in Underworld armor painted with a yellow pattern of pyramid-like triangles, each one having a shaded half to add a sense of depth. His face and arms were wrapped up in linen bandages with only his green eyes and sandy blonde hair being exposed. He then hefted his weapon, which loudly buzzed as it rotated.

Twilight’s eyes grew wide at the sight of it. “Is that a circular saw?”

Simone clutched her encyclopedia with both arms. “I’ve seen wanted posters of that Underworlder all over the sector! They call him Mummy, a sand elemental and guardian specialist, he can create magically-animated creatures to fight for and defend him!”

Rainbow Dash rose up and reared back. “I guess we’re in for a big fight then!”

Simone got an anxious look and squished down. “W-w-what?”

Rarity lit up her horn and got a determined look on her face. “Well then, what are we waiting for? We’ve faced the Underworlders before and always came out on top! Tally Ho!”

The Ponies charged the pile of sand. But they stopped as some of the humans drew weapons. The ones in the back escorted the younger or older ones out. The ones in the front charged the large dune. However, Mummy waved his free hand about, spreading glyphs of pale ochre energy spinning around the artificial dune. Soon, a menagerie of creatures burst out big, small, sharp, and pointy.

The frontmost rows of armed humans reached the onslaught of guardians first and unleashed a barrage of shredding gales, fireballs, ice shards, and lightning bolts that pulverized over half the guardians back into sand. However, atop his hill, Mummy made a creepy laugh and waved his free hand once again. The glyphs around the dune spun faster and the fallen guardians re-emerged from the sand in-tact and charged once again. This process repeated several times until the human combatants started growing sluggish, their spells getting smaller. Soon the front line was broken by the army of guardians.

The ponies attempted to group together. When a sword-armed figure charged the group, Applejack raced up to it and sent it flying with a hard buck. When others approached to back it up, Applejack unleashed a series of hard kicks from each hoof at a time on them, reducing them all into nothing but piles of sand.

A giant scorpion approached and brandished its stinger, but Rainbow Dash struck with a well-aimed divebomb and buried its own stinger into its carapace.

A stone colossus slowly advanced and raised a mighty fist, but Rarity zapped a shield of ethereal crystal and deflected it. With a flourish of her horn, she separated it into a hailstorm of small crystal darts and hurled them at the colossus with an elegant thrust, burying them in its torso. With one final spin, the shards all exploded, leaving the colossus to fall apart in a pile.

An urchin-like mass of spikes with a single, giant eye scuttled across the floor towards the downed humans, but Pinkie bounced in front of it and distracted it with a dance. And for her big finish, disappeared in a burst of pepper-filled smoke that turned its big eye bloodshot red, sending it scurrying away.

A pair of wolves with exposed ribs charged towards the downed humans. Seeing this, Fluttershy raced between them at a breakneck pace to perform her stare on them, giving them enough time to pick themselves up and get away.

With the injured safely out of the way, Twilight raised her horn and unfurled her wings. Her eyes and horn ignited with a powerful light and she created an incredibly dense wall of magic, trapping Mummy and his guardians on the other side. Then, she scowled and pushed her horn forward, making the wall curl around them and shrink.

Mummy growled and raised his free hand yet again, making three whip-like blades of sand extend from his pile and rapidly strike against the barrier. The remaining guardians joined him and struck at the barrier with their own deadly appendages. Finally, Mummy himself slid down from his pile and revved his saw before pressing it against the barrier with an extremely loud grinding sound.

At first, Twilight managed to hold her ground and dig her hooves in. But soon, the defeated guardians re-emerged from their spawning place and aided the others in their push against the barrier. Twilight groaned as small cracks began appearing.

The rest of the Ponies gathered around Twilight to cheer her on. This gave her a boost of energy and she managed to push back against the relentless onslaught, but the cracks kept forming one by one.

Simone, who was cowering behind the seats, took notice and slowly approached the Ponies. “Hey, um… I think I can… help…”

Applejack heard her and turned around. “Well, if you’re going to do something hun’ Do it now!”

Simone gulped and opened her encyclopedia in hand. Leafing through it, she came to a stop at a page and pressed her pale-gray glowing finger to one of the words. She drew it out as a wisp and flung it at Twilight’s barrier. The solid word Reinforce appeared stuck against the barrier and the cracks appeared to stop forming. Simone repeated this process with the words Secure, Solid, Sturdy, Fortified, and Reinforced.

Twilight relaxed as she felt absolutely no meaningful resistance to her spell. She was amazed to see the guardians and a very angry Mummy striking at it to no avail.

The ponies turned around to see a blushing and waving Simone with her open encyclopedia. Then, they clamored around her, praising and hugging her, followed by the remaining human combatants in the theater.

Twilight trotted in front of her. “You said that your magic works by taking things out of the infinite world of books, but I didn’t think it could be that powerful! I bet your only real limit is your imagination!”

Simone’s face grew even redder as she pushed her jostled glasses back into place. “Well, I’m not that powerful. I just added on to your already formidable spell.”

Rainbow Dash, eyes bright, started bouncing prancing on her hooves. “Hey, if you can bring things out of books, can you put things in? Cause I’ve always loved diving right into my Daring Do books!”

Simone turned her head towards Rainbow. “Well, I could, but the danger would be real…”

Rarity fluttered her eyelashes. “Well darling, how about a good mystery novel? Who wouldn’t want a conversation with Shadow Spade?”

Simone’s eyes grew wide and she nervously broke eye contact with Rarity. “Well… I suppose I could arrange something…”

While the group was celebrating, Twilight’s shadow extended a tendril upon the ground that slithered away to the back of the theater. Moments later, one of the humans surrounding Simone felt a poking on his back. He ignored it. He felt another poke, but he waved it off. The third time he turned around. “What is i- AUGH!”

An Underworlder grunt was aiming a crossbow loaded with a bolt of solid fire right at his face. The others took notice and quickly raised all of their hands before the large platoon of Underworlders at the back of the hall pointing their weapons at them.

***

The Underworlder raised his fiery hand at twilight’s outstretched hooves, wrapping her body in bands of solid yet pliable flames. Twilight immediately felt her magic becoming strongly suppressed. Following that, the barrier holding Mummy and his guardians came down.

With another sinister laugh, Mummy patted that Underworlder on the back and pulled the bandages around his mouth down to stick his tongue out at her. Twilight followed suit, but was kicked onto the ground by Mummy with another menacing chuckle.

Meanwhile, Simone was struggling against her bonds as an Underworlder was teasing her by pulling her encyclopedia to and away from the flame in his hand. Pinkie scooted up next to Simone. “You want me to drop-kick him for you?”

Simone sighed. “How can you do that when- Hey! How are you free?”

Pinkie silently giggled. “I fooled ‘em by wrapping myself up in a licorice whip. Then all I had to do was eat my way free. So, if I can get your book, you and I can-”

“No! None of us can handle a situation like this! I happen to know a top-class warrior that frequents the library I work at. But he can be a little… difficult.”

“How difficult?”

“Well, he never really reads or checks any books out at the library, I think he just appreciates the peace and quiet.”

“Oh, I totally get that! A little peace and quiet can be really refreshing, especially after dealing with people that just go on and on and on and on and…”

“Okay, I get it! I just need you to sneak out of here and get them to come here. Their name is Alphonse and around this time they should be lurking- uh… hanging around the flower clock due west of here.”

“Rightey-ho buck-a-rino!”

Pinkie Pie saluted and started crawling among the Underworlders’ feet. Miraculously, none of them took notice. Pinkie Pie soon disappeared behind the doors after giving a grinning wave to Simone, mistaking her Cut it out gestures as a salutation.

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[ShadowDurza]

Tomorrow morning, as a late Christmas or early New Years present, I'm going to release all of the remaining chapters all at once, along with a special announcement. This is a special thank you for supporting this story all year long.