When Darkness Falls...

by XTech309

The Intrusion: Part Three

Author's Note:

I didn't originally intend for this short series to have a part three, but I ended up getting a little carried away, and felt that it would be wrong to squeeze everything into part 2. We now move into the EQG world, Rob having fallen into the same portal seen during the Spring Breakdown EQG special during the chase in part one. Contrary to how he'd been doing things earlier, he is now being much more careful and methodical in what he does, Twilight and her friends the first ones that had come that close to catching him, and rivaling the power of the remote.

Rob found himself in quite a predicament, holding the remote close to his distorted face as he thought. The Remote, wondrous cursed a device as it was, still had its limits, but they weren’t exactly what you’d expect them to be. Now, for example, he was stranded on what he could only assume was an island in the middle of the ocean. He couldn't go back the way he'd come, for obvious reasons, but he could just press the change channel button again and be instantly transported somewhere else. However, he'd rejected that idea. It was too easy. There had to be something he hadn't tried yet that could get him out of here without jumping worlds, he just had to look.

He had the remote close to his face, analyzing each individual button. 99% of the time he only needed a few, for example Pause, undoubtedly the most useful, the ability to freeze anything as long as he wanted was incredible and one of the most used, because a function like Delete crossed moral boundaries. Even though anything or anyone he erased could be restored just as easily, it still presented him with a moral dilemma, and he still regretted the fact that he'd had to use it on his equestrian pursuers. He pushed the thought away, using his predicament to further familiarize himself with what exactly the Remote was capable of, and went back to figuring out a way off the island.

He quickly came to the Menu button, another one he had yet to use for the first time. When he first pressed it, what could only be described as a hologram appeared a few feet in front of him, one side a small display with many more features listed across it, presumably ones that couldn't fit on the device itself and were not really needed. The other was different-

Menu.

***

After spending the better part of the last 10 minutes scrolling through this new wealth of functions, Rob had finally found his ticket out of the island. He'd lost interest in the Tools side rather quickly, his attention grabbed much more by the Menu portion.

Channel: Discovery Family

Show: My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

Locations:

Canterlot City <

Rob stared at the window in disbelief as he took it in. Ever since he'd discovered the remote and let it open his eyes, he'd had theories living in his head, threatening to destroy his sanity if any of them proved true. It was unbearable, the thought that everything he had seen and would ever see wasn't real, and how hard it would be to come to terms with that. The window that lay in front of him was just one more clue. What’s Discovery Family? What’s My Little Pony? If he had to guess, MLP was the name of the world he was in, but he had no idea what "Discovery Family" was. There was an arrow next to Canterlot City under Locations, blinking to let him know that this was the current selection. He selected it, not knowing what else to do.

He was a bit taken aback, but not too surprised, when a vertical, rectangular portal appeared to the right of the current window. On the other side was a bustling cityscape, with what appeared to be a high school, not too dissimilar to Elmore Junior High, in the center. Rob got to his feet and quickly stepped through the portal and over to the other side. He quickly froze his surroundings, freezing everything but himself to erase the portal and orient himself. Just as the menu that was brought up by the Menu button and his selection had said, he found himself in the city of Canterlot. Well, it was labeled as a city. To Rob it looked more like a suburb, but never mind.

Still frozen, he hid in the nearest place he could see, a bundle of overgrown bushes next to what looked like an upside-down horseshoe statue. He wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do, but he certainly wasn't going to be as careless with the remote as he had been before. He wasn't invincible, far from it. And with the hypothesis that wherever he ended up would probably be similar to where he was before, he was cautious. Maybe he could use this place as a playground if the circumstances allowed it, after all, he had just found a previously undiscovered menu of functions from A to Z. He looked up at the sky through the thorns and leaves and found that it was dawn, almost morning. Not too keen on waiting, he fought the urge to simply fast-forward the sun again. But he didn't, it couldn't be that long anyway. He had learned many things since using the remote, one of the most important being power consumption. Like all remotes, superpowered or not, they depended on batteries. In the case of this particular remote, you had to be careful how you used it sometimes. Functions like pause, play, slow-mo, etc. The smaller ones used a minimal amount of power, and there wasn't a hard limit on how often you could use them, well, except for pause and slow motion. The longer an object/being/surrounding was paused or slowed, the more power was used. Same with using multiple functions at the same time, the more you used at the same time, the more power you used. Strong functions like Delete were the biggest culprits, using them even once could be a big power drain, another reason for Rob to regret having used it. He wasn't sure how much power he had left, so he had to proceed with caution. When the power is exhausted, not only is the device inoperable until the batteries are replaced, but any functions that were previously in use stop until the same requirement is met. This isn't usually a problem in a controlled environment. But it's easy to see how this could be really, really bad, especially in a combat situation.

***

Sunset Shimmer jogged along the sidewalk leading to Canterlot High, spotting her friends hanging out on the staircase leading to the main entrance. She picked up her pace, her jog turning into a run as she hurried to tell her friends what she'd been told the night before.

Finally reaching the small stairs, she bent over, breathing heavily as her arms rested on her knees,

"Woah, you okay Sunset?" Rainbow asked.

Sunset took one last deep breath before she regained her composure.

"We have a problem." She announced.

"Problem? What kind, darling?" Rarity replied.

Rather than take the few minutes it would have taken her to tell her friends by mouth because of her shortness of breath, she simply pulled out the notebook and held it out. Rarity reluctantly took the book.

"The most recent entry," Sunset said, before turning her head to look around for anything out of the ordinary. The first thing she looked at was the sky, to make sure the sun was in its rightful place. Next her eyes went to her surroundings. Was anyone frozen? No. Whew. After a few more seconds of searching for environmental oddities, her attention returned to her friends, all huddled in a circle around her enchanted book. Wanting to be doubly sure that nothing was wrong, she jogged back to the end of the courtyard. She held a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun as she scanned up and down the street in front of her. Her attention then turned to the statue, where she discreetly made sure that it hadn't been tampered with, before she made her way back to her friends.

For a time her friends were silent, their attention glued to the notebook she’d given them, their eyes moving from left to right, rinse and repeat. At one point, Rainbow subconsciously grabbed her right arm and winced slightly, the closest thing she had to a wing.

"Wow," AJ said.

Sunset took the book back once she was certain her friends were finished. They all looked at each other with a mixture of fear or worry, or in Rainbow's case, anger.

***

Rob could hardly believe his eye. Somehow his equine pursuers had followed him to... Whatever this place was supposed to be. Or, if he was to believe the remote- “My Little Pony: Equestria girls.” He grimaced, he wasn't about to stand for this.

For a second, he considered pausing or even deleting them, but was quickly reminded of the power situation he was in. He didn't know how much power he had left, and if he ran out, he would be stranded and thus doomed, at least until he could find new batteries. He couldn't risk exposing himself and causing panic. Now that he thought about it, a group of teenagers just disappearing into thin air would probably set off some alarms like he had before playing with the sun and the moon. No, he was going to have to be more careful and work out of the shadows. Fortunately for him, he knew just how to do just that. Using the fancy new menus, he'd been able to get more information about where he was. If the title of these worlds was any indication, friendship was the driving force here - "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic".

So he decided to do exactly what he'd acquired the remote for in the first place: Vengeance.

Part of him said that he should just leave. Despite being low on power he was confident he had enough left for at least one more jump. It would be so easy, just switch channels again, head to some other world and let all of this be swept under the rug. However, that wasn't what dominated his thoughts.

Whether he realized it or not, he had an almost personal grudge against "main characters." He still had much to learn about the truth of his existence, but he knew one thing for sure- he was a background character. All his life he'd lived in the background, in ignorant bliss while Gumball and Darwin always hogged the spotlight. He hadn't minded this, granted that was because he wasn't aware at the time, but still. That changed once he was swallowed up by the Void. It was a strange experience, that, one moment he was walking along, minding his own business, and the next, he woke up there. He wasn't sure how long he'd rotted there, there wasn't exactly a sun or moon, or anything really, to tell time. The only thing he remembered was crying out, begging the two main characters for help once they came to the Void themselves. Fate seemed to have it out for him, however, because they weren't there for him, no. They were there for Molly. They had left him there to rot, and he would have, had he not been able to grab onto their van at the last second as they left. He looked down at his broken, disfigured body, these thoughts a cruel reminder as to how he'd ended up like this. It ended up being a blessing in disguise, however. He didn't understand it still, but somehow what had happened that day granted him immunity from whatever that Darkness was. He didn't doubt that it would have gotten him had that not happened.

He gave a small chuckle, it was funny how things worked out sometimes, what had initially seemed like a curse had ended up being a blessing in disguise. He wondered how his younger self would react to just what had become of his life, going from an unknown, forgotten background character, to breaking the mold, gaining his own free will, and eventually, becoming trapped in a world filled with human versions of magical horses. It seemed like a fever dream when he thought about it, but unfortunately it was not as such. If he really wanted to, he could do exactly that, go back in time and stand face to face with the younger him. He quickly dismissed the idea, while it was indeed possible given the remotes’ vast capabilities, he hadn’t a clue what the implications of time travel on that scale would be, space time continuum and all that.

His mind snapped back to reality once more. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, and these thoughts had reminded him of his distaste for main characters everywhere. Hogging the spotlight, casting people like him to the side so they could go on grand adventures he could only dream of. What’s worse is that no one like him even knew it, continuing to live in blissful ignorance-

”I wish I could go back...”

His anger rose ever more, not just at his thoughts, but at whoever it was that ran the show, both figuratively and literally. Why him? Why couldn’t he have just continued living his mundane life? Sure there wasn’t anything interesting or exciting about it, but it was his life, and he hadn’t realized until now how much he’d taken it for granted. He quite literally had nothing left of his previous life, not even his body.

His anger peaking, he glared out from the bushes at the outlet for his anger. On top of everything else that had become of his life, he was constantly misjudged and ostracized by everyone, forgotten even by his fellow background characters, and labeled a villain by the main characters. He had only wanted help, someone to listen to him in his darkest moments, when he was little more than a wayward traveler, and the lone survivor of a world-consuming corruption, only to be met with the same distaste and seemingly instinctual hatred. If there was one thing he had learned throughout the past few years, it was that everyone wanted him to be a villain, no matter what he tried. Fine, if that was what he was going to be labeled as, he might as well play the part. But he wouldn’t be just any villain, the kind to only last a few episodes, if that, before being defeated, no. He looked down at the remote with evil glee. If he was going to be a villain, he was going to be the best gosh darned villain there ever was.

He already had a target in mind, the girl with the rainbow colored hair. She was brave, he had to give her that, the only one before her to rush him while wielding the remote had been Gumball himself. Granted, she probably had no idea of the remote, but it was still commendable nonetheless. However, that bravery made her a threat, and he couldn’t have that. He aimed the remote, the function he intended to use already prepared-

Parental Filter: Off..

At first glance, this function didn’t seem that useful, paling in comparison to many others, but there was a devil in the details. Whomever he used this function on lost any semblance of a filter, their language spontaneously losing any and all limits. It had been quite fun the first time he’d used it on Gumball’s parents. He had been too far away to hear exactly what had happened after he used it, but the aftermath had been undeniable. Especially in a world where friendship was in everything, a function that could destroy relationships like the snap of a finger was particularly devious.

***

"That sounds serious." Fluttershy said, "Poor otherworld Rainbow Dash."

"I know you didn't mean it when you wrote that-" Aj said, "But please tell me you have a plan now."

Sunset sighed. "No, I don't, well, not exactly a PLAN, but I have a rough idea of what we should do. More or less, just keep an eye out for anything unusual. There's always the possibility that whoever did this is somewhere else entirely, I mean, there's so much we don't know about these portals and where they lead."

Sunset's eyes drifted over to Rainbow, who seemed much angrier than before.

"Uh, are you okay Rainbow?"

"I WANT TO KICK THIS GUY'S ASS!"

The sudden and very loud outburst shocked and frightened everyone, even students across the courtyard heard it and stared at the group in confusion. It was as if someone had stopped everything for a fleeting moment.

"Rainbow Dash!" Rarity said accusingly, "I can't believe you'd say something like that!" She was the only one who had the nerve to say anything at that moment. Fluttershy had retreated into herself under the gaze of dozens of classmates, and Pinky's hair had briefly deflated.

"Oh, shut up, Rarity, you prissy-"

Before she could finish her sentence, AJ grabbed Rainbow by the collar of her shirt and pinned her against the nearby railing.

"Rainbow! What the hell has gotten into you?"

"AJ, stop!" Sunset yelled, quickly stepping between them. She looked over at Rarity, who was barely holding back tears. When her eyes met Sunset's, she broke down and let out a loud sob before turning and running into the building. Just as she entered the school, Sunset saw both the principal and the vice-principal come out, having heard the commotion.

“Rainbow Dash! My office, NOW!” Principal Celestia bellowed.

Rewind.

“Wha- what?!” Rainbow said meekly. “What happened? Where’s Rarity?!”

“Like heck, you don’t know,” Aj replied, grabbing Rainbow by the hair and dragging her into the building.

“AJ what’s wrong with you?! Let me go!” Rainbow protested as she was being carried off.

“W-wait. Principal Celestia, I can expla-” Sunset started, but was quickly cut off.

“No Sunset, you can’t, I know what I heard.” Principal Celestia said.

“Wait!” Sunset called again, only for the door entering the school to close in her face.

“What just happened?” Pinkie said, her voice losing any joy it might’ve had before.

“It’s him,” Sunset said. “Didn’t you read the book? Rainbow would never say that!”

“What are you talking about Sunset?” Fluttershy said. “Come on Pinkie, I’m worried about Rarity.”

Wordlessly, the two of them stood up, walking solemnly yet quickly into the building, presumably to check on Rarity.

Sunset found herself at a loss for words. Within the span of what couldn’t have been more than 2 minutes, all of her friends had somewhat literally been taken away from her. Her mind swam with thoughts. Could this have been his doing? This didn’t match any of what Twilight had told her he could do. The sun was still in the same place, nothing was moved or seemed out of place. But then again, who knew what he might be able to do? No, there was no way he could outright manipulate someone's personality like that. The only thing that could do that she knew of was some form of magic, and even then she’d have been able to see some kind of indicator, this had just been completely out of the blue. And why did Fluttershy ask her what she was talking about when she tried to remind them? Nothing made any sense, and Sunset sat back on the staircase, bringing her knees to her chest and burying her face in them.

“Sunset! Are you okay?!”

Sunset's head shot up from its former position buried in her legs. None other than Twilight herself stood above her, looking down with a concerned expression on her face. This worlds Twilight, that is, in her frenzy, she’d completely forgotten about her.

“Twilight?”

“Yeah? Don’t tell anyone that I was nearly late being early and-”

Sunset shot up from her sitting position on the stairs, wrapping her only remaining friend in a tight hug. It didn’t last long, though.

“Twilight, we have a big problem,” Sunset said.

“Let me guess,” Twilight said, straightening her glasses. “More rogue Equestrian magic has-”

***

Vengence had gone far better and quicker than Rob had expected. All it took was turning the Rainbow Ones filter off, and things had taken care of themselves. Granted, he couldn’t hear any of it, what with all the other people hustling and bustling around him, but he could see it all. While he recognized the majority of the ones he’d used the remote on, there was one unknown, the amber-colored girl with the fiery hair. Sure he wanted revenge, but he still had some morals, as limited as they may be, and had exempted her from what he’d done to the others, and while that was mainly for humanity's sake, he was also trying to save as much power as possible. he pulled up the menu again to check the power-

Battery Power low, please replace the batteries.

He wore a deadpan expression reading that message, hoping that it would’ve been more specific, an exact percentage would’ve been nice. it was time to leave anyway, so without a second thought, he pressed Change Channel once again-

Nothing.

“What!?” he exclaimed aloud, nearly attracting the attention of a passing student. Nothing had happened. In a panic, he went back to the menu-

The following functions cannot be used due to low power:
Change Channel
Delete

” No no no no no!” He thought frantically. He needed to get out of here, NOW. If there was one thing that the vast majority of worlds had in common, it’s that there were almost always batteries or some other power source available, and if this place were anything like Elmore, and it was, there had to be batteries somewhere. Fortunately, unlike you’d expect, the remote took any old batteries, no unnecessary restrictions or anything like that. Nope, just regular old triple-A batteries.

He held the remote up again, just barely poking outside of the bushes he was in-

Pause

He let out a deep sigh of relief. Thankfully there was still enough power left to pause things, but not for long. He quickly got up, before starting a mad dash across the courtyard. There was a line of houses on the other side of the street, and there HAD to be batteries in one if not all of them. Just get in, change batteries, and get out. Simple, right?

Power level: Critical.

“What the-”

Rob looked to his right in horror at the sound of the voice. It was a boy, yellow, wearing a jacket and jeans, blue hair, with a symbol of a shield with a lightning bolt atop it. But- he was supposed to be frozen!

Rob quickly did a 360, coming to the haunting realization that the batteries had died, and now here he was, caught out in the open.

”Oh no.”

Just to make things worse, when he looked right behind him, he saw her, the girl that he’d been stupid enough to exempt from his effects. Upon making eye contact, their eyes opened wide in horror, before he saw her eyes turn to determination and malice. Pushing aside the still oblivious Twilight, Sunset broke into a sprint-

The chase was on.