Sweetie Bot X: Cutie Mark Crusaders Maverick Hunters!

by Zytharros

Homeland Lost

Homeland Lost

---

Everypony usually heard about Twilight Sparkle’s magical experiments within mere seconds of their occurrences. She was usually the one to try and learn as many new spells as she could. In fact, over her life, the violet unicorn likely forgot more spells than any three unicorns could ever hope to remember together. She was the Element of Magic, after all, and with those astonishing reservoirs at her disposal she could learn as much as she wanted. When she decided it was time to learn something new, which was usually at least once every week, she would often cast a new spell on Spike, her small, young dragon assistant, herself or another willing, or sometimes unwilling, participant, and usually would end up with wildly mixed results. The spell would occasionally succeed, and there would be much rejoicing. However, for every one spell that came out a success the first time, there were about five that did not, and these often resulted in not only humorous, but a tiny bit creepy results. Sometimes, interventions by the pastel-decorated, pearl-white Princess Celestia herself would be required, and occasionally the midnight-blue Princess Luna or the other Elements of Harmony would help. Even Discord had to stop her once.

These experiences made her a very good teacher of her craft.

On this particularly fine late afternoon, she was in a park, teaching a friend the joys of the teleportation spell she had so often utilized during her adventures, extolling the virtues of getting from A to B in the blink of an eye to her fellow unicorn. This unicorn had tried her hardest to learn how to complete even a short-distance instantaneous leap, but over the past week had failed time and time again to execute the spell. Her occasional successes would be cause for celebration, but the fashionista was growing increasingly impatient with her expedience of learning. She was nowhere near as proficient as her friend Twilight Sparkle, and until this point had never deigned to learn the spell that had saved their lives so many times before. However, now that she had set upon that path, there would be no stopping her until she had succeeded in that goal.

So, it was with a completely unladylike ferocity in the form of a loud half-groan half-scream that she failed her four-hundred thirty-seventh attempt at the spell that month, followed with an incredibly dramatized…

“This Celestia-forsaken spell is going to be mine to use even if I have to die doing it!”

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, Rarity,” Twilight Sparkle said, trying to cool her friend down from a level of rage matched only when she was interrupted doing some highly detailed lace work. “No need to get all bent out of shape over a little teleport spell.”

“Ha!” Rarity snapped. “This, coming from a unicorn who can teleport between Canterlot and back without so little as a… flick of the fetlock…” she said, with the accompanying twitch to match. “Of course it would be a snap for you!”

Twilight flinched. Upon seeing that look, Rarity realized her anger was getting the better of her and sighed, attempting to calm herself down.

“I am sorry, Twilight, but I must retire before I embarrass myself further.” The fury was still present in her semi-regal voice as she turned tail and headed for Carousel Boutique. “I doubt I will try to use that magic spell again, but if I do wind up possessed by some spawn of Tartarus–” the last three words were punctured with razor-sharp undertones “–and wish to try once more, I shall let you know.”

“Okay,” Twilight said. “See you later!”

Rarity walked home, grumbling to herself as Twilight closed up her library for the night. She had been at it all day and, coupled with the mental exhaustion of failing, she was in no mood to host the promised gathering of the Cutie Mark Crusaders that evening.

I am sorry, Sweetie Belle, she thought, planning an apology. We will have to schedule some other time. I have had a very stressful day and–

WHOMP

Out of nowhere, her forward motion ceased to be. Her orientation spun a full three-hundred seventy-two point oh-five-hundred degrees, and she found herself staring very closely at an orange hoof.

“What in tarnation…? Rarity! Watch where you’re goin’!”

Rarity pulled back, startled, to see her palomino farmer pony friend Applejack giving her an annoyed glare.
“Oh, I’m… sorry, Applejack, I… I was just lost in thought…”

Applejack’s face twisted into a look of curiosity. “Wanna talk about it?”

Rarity brightened at the thought. “Well, I was over at Twilight’s library practicing a new spell I thought would help boost my production efficiency, and, well… things did not quite go as planned. I did not learn the spell as I would have liked, and now I’m so… so agitated I don’t think I could take the Cutie Mark Crusaders at my place tonight.”

Everypony in Ponyville knew those three rascals. Individually, they were Applejack’s butter-yellow, ruby-haired little sister Apple Bloom, Rarity’s sister, the pink and purple mane and tail alabaster-coated Sweetie Belle, and Rainbow Dash’s spunky little ochre-and-purple follower Scootaloo.

“Oh. Well, you could always send them over to the farm,” Applejack suggested. “Celestia knows how much they love spendin’ time at their clubhouse. I don’t know how many sleepovers’ve happened there since I gave ‘em the ol’ shack.”

“Oh would you mind, dear?” Rarity asked. “I would be ever so grateful.”

“Think nothin’ of it, sugar cube,” Applejack replied.

So after a few hours of arduous and further-frustrating searching, Applejack and Rarity found the girls just outside of town; they were waist-deep in tree sap, pine needles, unmentionable pig leavings, paperclips, chunks of wood, and tangled up in Princess Luna’s mane. After getting them untangled from the Royal Mane with some help from Luna’s sister Celestia, who happened to be taking a stroll through that particular part of Equestria that day with her sister, they endured a fairly lengthy explanation. It involved a trireme of catapult-firing catapults and something about lemon juice and melted peppercorn chocolate Twizzlers that no pony there fully understood, even the storytellers themselves, though at that instant Rarity, Applejack, Celestia and Luna knew that a certain two-toned pink party pony was to blame for the whole ordeal, they made it back to Ponyville just in time to head to bed. Rarity and Applejack retired to their respective homes, and the Crusaders to their tree fort deep in Sweet Apple Acres.

That night would mark the last night the Cutie Mark Crusaders would see Ponyville for a very long time.

That night would be the first time Rarity would use the teleport spell correctly.

That night would see a group of ponies transported to a world of steel… and another, singular mare wake up with her face in the mud.

And it would all start with a nightmare.

Rarity awoke in a black void, which slowly revealed its contents as her eyes opened. She looked left. She looked right. Rows and rows of mannequins stood at attention, perfectly still, waiting to be dolled up in reams upon reams of glorious fabric. For this was the day Rarity had dreamed of – the day when she would begin assembling the latest line for her biggest, most prominent guest. She would make these dresses stunning! Spectacular! Without comparison in any way, shape, or form! She would surely make her name here, in the Royal Dressmakers’ room. She would be a goddess of design! Royalty among dressmakers! Oh, the thought of her success was sending shivers up and down her spine! She shivered wildly in anticipation and burst into a loud foalish squeal at the thought.

Without a second synapse snap in her fashion-conscious mind, she floated excitedly between the rows to a set of double doors at the end of the stream of mannequins, where instinct told her she would find the materials with which she would craft her eternal legacy. She cracked it open. Her jaw hit the floor, and her heart, mind, and dreams exploded within her body when she saw the utter fashion atrocity committed within.

Every last roll of fabric was a horrendous, gaudy, and completely obscene shade of green! Every last one!

She didn’t understand how this was possible! She should’ve been able to find complementing colours, shades that would’ve fit the Princesses perfectly. Instead, she had been greeted with this swath of pure fashion disaster, enwoven in the worst possible fabric to grace Equestria! How could Princess Celestia gift her such an amazing opportunity without also granting her the resources she needed to complete her vision? She had no less than twelve different carefully planned designs for the Royal Form, each with stunning shades of blue, pink, yellow, and even one especially daring blood-red ensemble that was sure to floor Her Royal Highness… but no. She had been given green. Only green. Ugly, disgusting, pinch-your-muzzle-and-run green.

“What is the meaning of this!?” she exclaimed in absolute fury. “Nopony can make that shade of green appealing! It is just impossible!”

A gentle laugh echoed throughout the hall. “If anypony can do it, you can, Rarity.”

Rarity pulled an instant one-hundred-eighty degree turn and stared, bug-eyed, at the glorious Princess Celestia… backed by the hundreds of mannequins that had once stood at attention. She noted a slight red glow in the eyes of the still figures, and swallowed nervously.

“O-oh! Princess, I’m-I’m so sorry… It’s lovely! I-if this is what you… you want me t-to work with…” Rarity stuttered. With a nervous chuckle, she pulled a roll of the fabric out and began working.

When she touched it, she couldn’t believe her own hooves – the Princess actually wanted her to work with fake turf! She recognized the feel from under her hooves when her friends would go mini-golfing… the rough, uneven cut of the plastic-y grass, the checked rubber backing, the unbelievable heaviness… it began wearing her down as she manufactured a dress that resembled one of her designs. However, before she got through with even the basic underlay of the dress, the mannequin she was working on promptly turned its head and ate the creation!

“Wh-wha!?” Rarity asked herself. “Did it just…?”

Celestia glared at her. “Work.”

Rarity cowered and set to work. Every time she completed a piece here, a stitch there, or even in a couple cases just cleaving the “cloth” from its brethren using wildly oversized gardening shears, the mannequins ate the work. Repeatedly this happened over and over again until finally Rarity snapped.

“Princess Celestia, could you please control these mannequins?” she shouted. “I cannot even get an ounce of work done while they’re so ravenously hungry!”

Of course, being in a dream, Rarity’s mind had briefly suspended logic for its own twisted purposes, so the sleeping white unicorn paid no mind to the fact that mannequins were living. Nor did she notice the ball and chain that had unceremoniously strapped itself to her ankle, and then to the table where she was working, which was built seamlessly into the wall.

Celestia was not amused. “Work, slave. Make a dress fitting for… a changeling!”

Rarity screamed in horror as every pony in the dreamscape suddenly acquired a vicious, fang-filled smile and transformed into an army of changelings. Red as rich as blood oozed down her vision as her sudden benefactors-turned-assailants closed in for the kill. Closer they got, and slowly she backed away, ignoring the fact she backed right through the spot where her desk was supposed to be. Now, there was only void, only empty space populated by herself and thousands, no – millions of changelings! The wall they formed was impossibly tall, easily clearing ten thousand hooves in height, without space between like they had suddenly become gelatin and fused together. Trillions of beady, compound eyes stared at her with nothing but malice and hatred.

She was going to die.

A cold sweat enveloped the helpless unicorn. Rarity quickly found herself pushed into a corner of her mind. Frantically, she dug into the recesses of her thought space and found a spell to get her out of any situation fast.

---

Little did she know! She was casting the spell in the real world as well. Her horn radiated luminescent blue, set to go off in whichever way she decided it should go. At that instant, when she completed its ritual, she disappeared from her room and simultaneously fired a beam of the magic towards a mirror.

As if by some cruel fate directed only by Discord himself, every single one of the seven hundred ninety-four mirrors in Ponyville happened to point to a perfect yet wildly Rube Goldbergian path that led the beam right into the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ base, to the place where they now lay, sleeping and completely unaware of the danger flying at them at over three thousand hooves a minute. So, as the beam ricocheted haphazardly throughout the town, bouncing around from house to house, through windows and against weathervanes, around a windmill and in and out of the ear of a midnight-blue Ursa Minor bear that had made a wrong turn and stumbled across the sleeping village before leaving, it seemed that the Crusaders were going to share the same fate as Sweetie Belle’s sister – that of waking up in the morning caked in mud and filth just outside Fluttershy’s house in one of the many streams that wound its way around her property on the edge of the Everfree… in other words, par for the course for trying to get their sleepwalking cutie marks, which they had planned that night to attempt.

But, as Fate would have it, they did not.

In fact, they weren’t even going to wake up in the same world.

Just before the beam entered their window, they were whisked away by a triple teleport from sources unknown. Just a fifth of a second after they shot off into space on the wings of electricity and light, Rarity’s beam connected with the floor where they lay, dissolving into nothing.

---

Scootaloo’s ear twitched as the sound of wind ruffled her mane and a mechanical roar whizzed past. She yawned and turned over. “Five more minutes, Auntie…” she mumbled before slipping back into a coma.

Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were both in similar catatonic states. However, since Apple Bloom was used to waking up at dawn with her sister, as soon as the dank, purple skylight and bright street lamps hit her eyes she stirred and opened her eyes.

Just in time to see two cars fly past them!

“Sweet Horlestiapples!” she screeched, mixing her curses up in her shock.

This startled her two friends awake.

“Geez, Apple Bloom,” Scootaloo said, groggy from the sudden jolt. “You didn’t have to scare us like that!”

Apple Bloom was near to hyperventilation, eyes darting left and right as she took in the scene around her. Beneath and around her was a city on a scale she had only read of, never having been to Manehattan herself. Above her, the sky was purple and thick with pollution. A large pathway of some kind cleaved the air space into two halves. Below her, the roadway was green and gray, clearly made of some kind of metal and stretching for miles into the distance. A couple of odd-looking creations were floating lazily back and forth in the distance – a globular, green, shiny thing with a dangerous, steel spiked ball beneath it. Underneath it, a tall blue robot shot electric charges along the ground and missiles in a straight line. When the farm pony looked back, the highway seemed to stretch into the same forever the road in front of her – and its accompanying city – extended to. The whole scale of where she and her friends were hit her. It utterly terrified the farm pony. Her friends were slowly coming to the same realization she did. Slowly, they wrapped their forelegs around each other, squeezing tightly to try and hold onto the last shreds of familiarity they recognized. A couple more cars flew off behind them as the Crusaders whimpered in absolute fear.

“G-guys…”

After a brief swallow of nervousness, Sweetie Belle put into words what they were all thinking.

“I-I don’t think we’re in Equestria anymuh-more…”

With that, they dissolved into whimpering in fear once again. What they would’ve given in that instant, to wind up as Rarity had, was immeasurable.

Comments

[The Redbeard]

Hooollly shheeeeet.
This. This is actually quite good. You, author, have this guy's attention.
And so far, no massive grammatical errors found. Well written story, pacing, and comedy. Also, I liked how you more or less kept on reminding the reader of the impending fate of the Crusaders.
Simply.
Beautiful.
Beginning.

LET THE SCIENCE-FICTION COMMENCE!!