Infinite Imponability Drive

by Pineta

Chapter 5: The end of the universe

Twilight and Celestia came out of the lift and walked through the lobby to the dining hall to see a scene of devastation. Tables were overturned. Chairs smashed. The floor was strewn with bits of food and random objects, covered with a dusting of glitter. A group of determined ponies were standing their ground in the centre of the room, while a unit of Silastic Armourfiends from Striterax were stationed to the side behind upturned tables. They had trained their laser weapons on the ponies, but all blasts were being absorbed by an orange-tinged force field generated by a golden-winged alicorn with a glowing horn hovering above the battlefield. The other pony participants were hurling food at their adversaries.

“Take that you bullies!” Izzy levitated a stream of fruit into the air and tossed it to Applejack, who bucked it with precision momentum at the Armourfiends, who responded by getting even angrier. A few other alien creatures were hiding in the corners of the room, but most of the guests had departed. At one end of the bar, a G’Gungvuntt intelligence officer sat drinking with her Vl’hurg starship commander boyfriend, observing the action with the casual interest of those who have seen much worse. At the other end, sat Luna and the Doctor, in an equally relaxed state.

“Hi sister!” Luna called out. “I got your cocktail.”

“Thank you” said Celestia, taking the glass from her sister and raising it in a toast.

“Is this the end of the universe?” said Twilight.

“No,” said the Doctor. “The universe is not scheduled to end for another six minutes and thirty-four seconds. This is just a little unscheduled pre-show entertainment provided by your friends.”

“It’s not our fault! We had nothing to do with it this time.” On hearing Sunset Shimmer’s nervous voice, Twilight looked behind the bar and saw her friend and human-self crouched down with Spike and the more timid ponies, hiding under the counter.

“What did we miss?” asked Celestia.

“Well,” began Luna. “Pinkie Pie made friends with the Dish of the Day and they went off to the kitchen to talk about cake and salad recipes. This caused something of a fracas. A few of the Ameglian Major herd were open to discussion about possible alternative careers to being eaten, while most of them considered it an insult to their professionalism.”

“But she got through to some of them?” said Celestia. “I’m impressed.”

“Never underestimate that pink pony. A small group decided that they would like to serve the guests in another way by entertaining us with their dance skills. They took to the stage to give a ballet recital. To be honest, it was not very good, but they had not had the time for rehearsals. Then a table of Silastic Armourfiends who were clearly rather annoyed that they had not received their steaks, and also not satisfied with the evening’s entertainment, drew their weapons and tried to clear the stage. The ponies present felt they had to defend their new friends, and a well-aimed blueberry tart launched by Sunny Starscout hit the Silastic chief-in-command in the face. This had the effect of starting a minor war.”

There was a pause in the shooting as the Armoufiends recharged their weapons. The ponies lined up with grim determination and thumped the floor with their hooves ready for the next round. A group of Ameglian Major cows stood up behind the Armourfiends to show their support. “We demand the freedom to be eaten without harassment from judgemental vegetarians!” they shouted.

“Just a minor one?” said Celestia.

The Armourfiend chief tossed an improvised bottle bomb, made from a mix of Gagrakacka table sauce and Janx spirit, at the ponies. This was kicked aside by Rainbow Dash and exploded in a cloud of glitter against the wall.

“It has escalated a bit since then,” said Luna. “Fluttershy and Twilight—the other unicorn—not you—appealed for a ceasefire, but by that point no one was listening.”

“And it looks like it’s about to escalate a bit more,” said the Doctor. He was standing by a bay window looking out at the sky. “A unit of Frogstar fighters are about to arrive.”

“Sounds like the chief-in-command’s call for reinforcements got through,” said Luna.

Celestia finished her drink and levitated the glass to the bar counter. “Time for some fun. I’ll distract them. Twilight, Sunset—get your friends together and go out the back way.”

“I’ll go and pay for the drinks,” said Luna.

Celestia spread her wings and illuminated her horn. A bright conical beam shot up and hit the ultra-glass domed ceiling, diverging in manner that violated the conventional laws of optics. The room was filled with a dazzling rainbow-coloured light. This has the unfortunate consequence of spoiling the outside view of the last aged red dwarf stars boiling away into the void, but no one noticed. The Armourfiends looked away and shielded their eyes. When they could see again, the ponies were all cantering out of the room. Izzy turned her head and shouted back, “Bye, it was nice to meet you.”

And so the universe ended.

Outside, they trotted away from the entrance and stopped at the edge of the large starship parking lot, illuminated by street lamps. Above them, the sky showed the complete black of nothing at all.

“That did not go as I expected,” said Sunset. “I’m sorry we didn’t get any lunch.”

“On the bright side,” said Izzy, “we had a lot of fun missing it.”

“Where do we go now?” asked Toola Roola.

“I know! I know!” Pinkie Pie hopped up and down gleefully. “Let’s all go to Donut Joe’s in Canterlot. And then, we can go back to Ponyville and get seconds at Sugar Cube Corner!”

“Canterlot!” said Sunny. Her face lit up with an apparent magnitude off the normal astronomical scale. “The ancient capital of Equestria? We can go there?”

“Now that we have fitted an Infinite Imponability Drive into the marestream,” said Izzy, “we can go anywhere we want.”

“If you’ve never seen Canterlot, then we simply must go,” said Rarity. “Donut Joe’s is nice, but there’s also the castle and the gardens to visit.”

“Just one question,” said Cupcake, “where is the marestream?”

“It’s still parked inside the Heart of Gold,” said Zipp.

“And where is that?” asked Bright Eyes.

“It’s—oh,” Zipp looked at the spot where the starship had been parked. It was empty. “Where’d it go?” She flew up and scanned the car park but there was no sign of the sleek white vessel.

“Have they taken-off and left without us?” said Minty.

“They wouldn’t do that would they?” said Toola Roola

“Where are Megan and Trillian?” asked human Twilight, “Didn’t they come into the restaurant with us?”

“I’m not sure,” said Sunset. “We got separated. They were going to, but Trillian said she was just going to find Marvin first. They said they would catch us up.”

“Marvin?”

“The sulking robot.”

“Oh!” Fluttershy spoke for the first time since they had arrived at the restaurant. Everypony turned to look at her. “He left.”

“How?” asked Sunset.

“I don’t know exactly…” Fluttershy’s voice dropped to very low volume. Everypony fell silent and looked at her trying to hear what she said. “I was chatting with him earlier… He wasn’t happy… He had no job satisfaction. We talked about other things that he could do, and then he said he had had enough and was going to quit.”

There was a short silence. “I thought that was good for him,” said Fluttershy. “He just needed to be shown a little kindness and he found the courage to find his own path.”

“That’s good for him,” said Sunset, “but this doesn’t tell us where Megan, Trillian, the Heart of Gold, and the marestream have gone.

A large robot vehicle rolled by on eight wheels, pulling a trailer of waste food and smashed furniture, topped with a layer of glitter. Izzy waved at it. “Excuse me, I don’t suppose you’ve seen what happened to the big white curvy spaceship that was parked here?”

“Flown away.” The robot continued along the road without any interest.

“Where did it go?” asked Twilight.

The robot shugged it’s metallic shoulders as well as its limited gear mechanism would allow. It rolled on a bit further, then turned and pointed at a large public screen, which had just flashed up a news feed. Everypony looked up at the purple reptilian face of the alien news anchor.

“And now the latest chronologically-impossible news updates from the across galaxy, brought to you by sub-etha broadcasting across all time and space from the Big Bang to the End of Time. News just in: the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Department is having a busy day due to a robot rebellion on an unprecedented scale. A disgruntled android, with a grudge against former galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox, has spent a hundred million billion years plotting revenge, hacking into cybernetic systems, building a robot army, which arrived at Milliways restaurant with a frightening array of weapons. Zaphod, still in procession of the starship Heart of Gold with the infinite improbability drive, responded by running away. Reports say he has grown an extra pair of legs to help with this endeavour, and is now being chased across time and space by a robot flotilla. Questions are being asked as to why an ordinary household robot, built to carry out basic spaceship cleaning and catering duties, was given a brain the size of a planet…”

“Fluttershy!” said Rainbow Dash. “You’ve gone and started a robot war.”

“I-I didn’t mean to…” Fluttershy crouched down and tried to make herself smaller as every pony looked at her. “I just wanted to comfort him…”

“A little kindness is a dangerous thing,” said Applejack.

Hitch tried to comfort Fluttershy. “It’s not your fault.”

Every pony fell silence as they tried to take in their situation.

“They’ve run away and left us here?” said Pipp. “At the end of the universe?”

“We are at the end of the universe without the marestream,” said Sunny. “What are we going to do now?”

“We get creative,” said Izzy, grinning. “We can make another way to get home. We just need a crate of assorted craft supplies, fourteen tubes of superglue, an arc welder, and a tonne of iridescent glitter.” Her eyes sparkled with the mental image of a tonne of iridescent glitter. “Are you all listening? Fizzy, can you create a bubble big enough to hold every pony? Then Rainbow Dash, do a sonic rainboom for us to blast a hole through the sky. Twilight, use your magic to direct a portal to wherever we need to go. Sunny, we need your lantern to hone in on the marestream.” She pausead for a moment to think through the details of her plan. “It’s not going to be easy. It might not work. But if we all stick together, there’s a chance it will.”

She stood up on two hooves and stretched her forelegs wide to convey the magnitude of the task. The enthusiastic words of her motivational speech propagated through the dry air and were absorbed by the temporal bubble force-shield dome giving no echo.

“Or you could hitch a ride with us.”

Everypony turned to see Celestia walking towards the group with Luna and the Doctor.

“Yeah. That would also work,” Izzy acknowledged, with a little disappointment.

“Is everything okay in the restaurant?” Twilight asked Celestia.

“Yes. Once you had left, they brought out the sweet trolley and Aldebaran liqueurs and that placated the Amourfiends and the remaining guests.” She laughed. “It was just like the Grand Galloping Gala. Now they are cleaning up the floor and getting ready for the evening sitting.”

“What about Megan?” asked first-generation Twilight. “And Trillian? Shouldn’t we do something to help them? They might be in trouble.”

“Those two know how to look after themselves,” said Sunset. “They’ll be fine. But it’s a shame we lost the marestream.” She looked at Zipp. “I’m sorry.”

“And with all my luggage with it too,” said earth pony Rainbow Dash.

“Sunny,” said Bright Eyes, “has your lantern started glowing?”

Everyone looked at the Prisbeam lantern, which was now emitting a faint light. Sunny placed it on the ground. The herd crowded in a circle around it. As they watched, it glowed brighter and produced a scintillating aura. Specks of light jumped out and sparkled.

“Does this mean that the marestream is nearby?” asked Zipp.

As if to answer that question, a bright Prisbeam shot out from the lantern into the sky. They turned to look up where it was pointing. At first it hard to see, but then it became clear that something was coming towards them. It looked more like a cloud of butterflies than a spaceship.

“Is that..?” said Toola Roola.

“It can’t be…” said Zip.

“It’s the Flutter Ponies!” cried Cupcake and Surprise.

The air filled with the scent of flowers and sparkling specks of dust. A group of flying ponies with buzzing insect-like wings drew nearer, flying on either side of the marestream, guiding it with a glittering cloud of Utter Flutter magic. The generation-one ponies Fizzy, Twilight, Cupcake, Surprise, Applejack and Firefly all jumped up and down with excitement at the sight of their friends. All the other ponies cheered.

“Rosedust! Honeysuckle! Peach Blossom!”

At the head of the party flew a light-yellow pony with a pink mane and a blue bow in her tail. She was accompanied by two other Flutter Ponies, one pink and one bluish-green.

“I really do like their tail bows,” said Rarity to Applejack. “I wonder how much time it takes to tie them each morning.”

Queen Rosedust landed and hugged Cupcake and Surprise. “I’m so pleased we found you all.”

“You always show up when we need you,” said Fizzy.

“That’s what Flutter Ponies are for,” said Rosedust. “Megan thought you might need our help, so she called for us.”

“Is Megan okay?” asked Sunset.

“Yes,” said Rosedust, noting the presence of the two human girls. “You must be Sunset and Twilight. She gave me a message to give you. She said she’ll see you back at Canterlot High, and she looks forward to reading your report on Monday morning.”

“With a full summary of your methodology and an annotated bibliography,” said Peach Blossom.

“By Monday!” said human Twilight. “But we have so much data to analyse.”

“And I still need to tell you what Celestia shared with me,” said alicorn Twilight.

“I think you’ll manage,” said Sunset, standing between them and placing a comforting hand on her human and pony friends’ shoulders.

“Can we move away from here?” asked Honeysuckle. “This place is kind of creepy.”

“Will you come back to Flutter Valley with us?” said Rosedust. She smiled. “We could have a picnic in the sun.”

“How are we all going to fit in the marestream?” asked Zipp.

Doctor Hooves coughed. He was standing by the marestream door inspecting the relative size of the interior. “I have a spare dimension controller in the TARDIS that I could give you. That would give you a bit more space on the inside.”

“Awesome!” said Izzy. “I also wanted one of those. I don‘t suppose you have an extra one we could use for the Bright House store cupboard?”

Izzy and the Doctor crawled underneath the marestream and set about installing the new upgrade. Meanwhile The Flutter Ponies mingled with the herd, making new friends. Soon the crowd was shimmering with cutie mark magic. Twilight and Twilight sat down to exchange notes. Pinkie Pie huddled with Rarity, Pipp, earth-pony Rainbow Dash, Morning Glory, Surprise, and a few other ponies to discussing important matters. After a short while, she jumped up on to the marestream wing to make an announcement.

“We have a new plan!” she announced. “Since the End of the Universe can’t provide us with a good lunch, we propose the following ultra-fancy multi-generation multi-venue dinner party.” She unrolled a scroll and read out the arranged menu.

“First course—in Flutter Valley.”

“We will have asparagus, radish, carrot, and pea-shoots salad,” said Morning Glory.

“Then we go to Coltonville,” continued Pinkie.

“We can get a lemon sorbet at the Super Sundae Ice Cream Parlour,” said Bright Eyes, “and a slice of minty watermelon.”

“Then over to Zephyr Height for the main course,” said Pinkie.

“Where we will serve you all a royal banquet of chargrilled rainbow carrots on a bed of quinoa, cabbage and broad beans at the Palace,” said Pipp.

Pinkie Pie was starting to drool. Rainbow Dash continued the itinerary. “Then darlings, we shall go to Ponyville to enjoy the best cookie fudge ripple chocolate icecream at the Cotton Candy Café.”

“Then coffee and donuts at Donut Joe’s in Canterlot!” finished Pinkie Pie. Then she thought of something else. “Oh, and then we should really go to Sugar Cube Corner in our Ponyville after that. I’ve just remembered, I baked some fairy cakes.”

“What is the probability, or ponability, that we will get through half of that without being thrown off on another adventure?” said Sunset.

“Pretty close to zero,” said Twilight.

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

the lift

By the way, this is a British thing and not a Hitchhiker's thing specifically.

[Draco Dei]

“Take that you bullies!” Izzy levitated a stream of fruit into the air and tossed it to Applejack, who bucked it with precision momentum at the Armourfiends, who responded by getting even angrier. A few other alien creatures were hiding in the corners of the room, but most of the guests had departed. At one end of the bar, a G’Gungvuntt intelligence officer sat drinking with her Vl’hurg starship commander boyfriend, observing the action with the casual interest of those who have seen much worse. At the other end, sat Luna and the Doctor, in an equally relaxed state.

According to some wiki and a serious lack of search results for the word you used you have an extra n in G'Gugvuntt.

[redmar]

A fight with Silastic Armorfiends isn't surprising. I wonder how Marvin's robot rebellion is going to end.

[Walabio]

¡Rainbow Dash always dresses in style, as does this story! I anm so happy to read this update. ¡Onto the next chapter!

[Pineta]

11859145
Yes, the Hitchhiker's thing is the Happy Vertical People Transporter, but that's too many syllables,

[Pineta]

11859202
True. Although I expect there is more than one way to transliterate it from the G'Gugvuntt script.