"What Gives?!"
This had to be a prank. There was no way that this was really happening, the creature reasoned. It was just some practical joke that Tim had decided to play. Or maybe even Chris. Or perhaps both of them were in on the gag. It was just like them to pull something like this. Wasn’t it?
Yet, somehow, the images on the screen were defying the creature’s logic.
“Why am I scared?” the image of Twilight Sparkle asked. Whoever did this voice was really good. It was a dead ringer for Tara Strong. Maybe they got her in on the prank too.
“No, not you, Twilight,” the image of Pinkie Pie responded, with a voice exactly like Andrea Libman’s. The image slipped a hoof out of its strap and pointed right at the screen. “Why are they scared?”
Again, the creature was shocked. The couldn’t-possibly-be-real Pinkie Pie was pointing right at her! Could Pinkie see out of the screen? No, that would be impossible. Wasn’t it?
The Twilight image briefly glanced in the direction the encouraging hoof was pointing. “Who?” the Twilight image asked the Pinkie image.
“Them!” the Pinkie image urged, jabbing its hoof in emphasis.
The Twilight image turned to the screen again, a confused look on its face. It turned back toward the Pinkie image, then back at the screen. As it did, comprehension dawned in its expression.
The creature had to admit that this animation was beautiful. It must have taken weeks to do it. In fact, it looked much too good for a prank video. It was too fluid. Too natural. Too refined. Everything in the scene looked alive, somehow.
“Wait! You mean…” the Twilight image said, turning back toward Pinkie, a hoof lifted in the screen’s direction. The Pinkie image nodded, continuing to point. The Twilight image turned back toward the screen, a look of wonder on its face. Slowly, it started to approach.
The creature seized the featherless pen it had set aside and drew it across the pad on the desktop. On the screen an arrow icon followed her hand’s motion, tracking over the images in the window. It hovered over the image of Twilight and the creature gave a sharp tap with the pen. Nothing happened. The creature tapped again. Still nothing. The Twilight image was still advancing toward her.
This was impossible! Why were the character rigs still not appearing? They hadn’t been since the creature had first opened the project. She checked a bar across the bottom of the window labeled “timeline.” No keyframes, no layers, no soundtrack, no nothing. It was empty and unresponsive. Just as it had been since she had first seen the Pinkie image zip out of the shot on its own accord. Nothing should be in the window, and yet there was. And so far nothing, save the movement of the apparent “camera” in the scene, was responding to her inputs. She had no control!
“Hello?”
The creature froze. Her eyes met that of the inquisitive mare staring out of the screen at her; the eyes of the mare that had just addressed her.
“Umm, is somepony there?”
Spike and Pinkie looked on as Twilight spoke. Spike was confused, yet optimistic. Pinkie was confident and excited. In their own ways, they both hoped that all the worry and preparation of the last few weeks had paid off. Yet it couldn’t be denied that their lavender friend appeared to be addressing the lab wall.
As for Twilight, her thoughts and feelings were wrestling with each other. She genuinely wished to meet whoever these Observers were yet didn’t want to frighten them off. If they were actually there, that is. Twilight’s logical mind told her that she was talking to a wall; a wall that had not changed in the slightest from the many times she’d seen it before. Yet, her gut feeling was that something from someplace beyond her vision was looking back at her.
Determined to make a good impression, Twilight attempted to shut out her doubts and pressed on.
“I, uh… We don’t mean to frighten you, but my friends and I would very much like to meet you,” Twilight ventured. She paused a moment. There was no response. Just a crystal wall accompanied by the whirring and chugging of the monitor.
“My name is Princess Twilight Sparkle and these are my friends, Pinkie Pie and Spike,” she continued, indicating each of her companions as they approached. Again, the Alicorn paused. Again, there was no response.
“Twilight, are you sure somepony’s over here?” Spike asked. By this time, he and Pinkie Pie had joined their friend by the wall and were taking in the complete lack of activity in that corner of the room.
“Well, Pinkie Pie seems to think so,” Twilight said. “You are sure that this is the Observers’ vantage point?” she asked, turning to Pinkie.
“Sure I’m sure,” the pink pony declared. However, her eye betrayed a slight hesitance. “At least, I think so.” As she said this, Pinkie lifted a hoof and reached out to the wall of the lab. Her hoof didn’t reach the wall, however. Instead, with a deep thoom, her hoof made contact with a much different barrier.
Everyone in the room, save Pinkie, jumped in surprise and shock, a multi-voiced yelp sounding forth. However, three pairs of eyes couldn’t tear themselves from the sight before them. There, suspended in the air a few hooves from the wall, was a transparent, roughly 3-hoof-by-2-cannon*, rectangular surface of some kind. Were it not for the distortions that played across it, it would have been completely invisible. It rippled with the force of Pinkie’s contact, the rings spreading out and rebounding off its edges.
“Yep,” Pinkie said with a smile, “I’m sure.”
Twilight gazed in wonder as the ripples in the surface faded. “Is it really possible…” she breathed. She lifted a hoof and placed it gently against the surface. Again, soft ripples appeared as the transparent plane reacted to her touch. She noted, with some unease, the tingle that played across her hoof. Carefully, she ran her foreleg across the surface. It offered no resistance to the lateral motion, yet didn’t yield to the pressure she applied against it. She came to the edge and traced her hoof to the back side of the field. It wasn’t a box. It appeared to have no thickness at all. It seemed to be an infinitely thin slab of pure energy. A force field? A window? She didn’t know. It was a beautiful impossibility.
Twilight wasn’t the only one gawking.
“Wow,” Spike said. “This is an Observer?”
“No, silly Spike,” Pinkie corrected. “This is just what they’re looking through. We can’t see them, but you can bet your tail that they’re on the other side of it.” Pinkie absently shoved Twilight to the side (much to the chagrin of the lavender mare), reared up, placed her front hooves upon the mysterious field, and pressed her face against the barrier. “Isn’t that right?” she said.
Quite suddenly, the surface moved. Not just a slight jitter or recoil, no. It zipped upwards with surprising speed, out of the reach of the pink Earth Pony that had plastered itself against it. The said Earth Pony promptly fell on her face with a loud smack.
“Oh my gosh!” Twilight yelped. “Pinkie, are you OK?” Both she and Spike rushed to help their friend.
With a pop, Pinkie extracted herself from the flooring and gazed up at where the rippling surface mocked her. “Hey! What gives?!” she complained.
“What? What’s wrong?” Twilight asked, pushing her concern for her unharmed friend aside. Pinkie’s resilience was another mystery for another day.
“It’s never done that before,” Pinkie said.
“It’s never moved before?” Twilight asked skeptically.
“Then how could the Observers watch what you were doing if it never moved around,” Spike inquired.
“No, I mean it never moved like that before,” Pinkie clarified as she got to her hooves again.
By this time, the ripples had settled and the strange rectangle was once again invisible, though the three friends continued to stare up at the spot it had moved to. Suddenly, Pinkie jerked her head, as if catching and following the movement of something out of the corner of her eye. She paused a moment, looking over her shoulder across the room, then snapped her head around to face the monitor machine. Again and again her gaze bolted around the room, following an unseen object as Twilight and Spike looked on, perplexed. Finally, the pink pony’s eyes fixed on a spot opposite the lab door, not far to the left of where the ponies and dragon stood.
“This is weird,” Pinkie Pie stated as she untwisted her neck and walked to where her visual chase had stopped. She extended a hoof and, once again, ripples played across the elusive field of energy.
“Says the weird pony,” Spike retorted with a smirk as he and Twilight made to join their friend. Even circumstances like this couldn’t dull the young dragon’s wit.
“Got me there,” Pinkie conceded, “but this is weirder.”
“How so?” Twilight asked. What could be so strange about discovering an invisible, free-floating panel of energy through which god-like beings might be looking and tracking it all over a room without actually seeing it?
“Well,” Pinkie began, “somehow, this feels different. Different from all the other times I’ve felt the warm-and-fuzzy tummy. Always before, it felt like the people were just… there. Not really doing anything, just watching, following along and sharing in the feelings. This…” The eccentric mare paused, trying to find the words. “It’s like they’re more there than usual; more active. They’re moving around more, doing things, and their vibes are a lot clearer. In fact, I’m not even sure it’s a ‘they’ right now. It feels more like just a one.”
“Just a single Observer?” Twilight asked. “How can you tell? It feels that specific?”
“I don’t know, it just feels right,” Pinkie Pie replied. “But that’s what makes it so weird. It’s like...”
At that moment, something happened that not even Pinkie Pie was expecting. Two ponies and a dragon jumped and squeaked in surprise as a white, one-hoof-square box appeared upon the mystical invisible screen before them! It was perfectly formed and completely visible, yet it, like the surface it resided on, seemed to have no thickness. Within it, in the top-right corner of the square, a single vertical black line blinked in and out of sight.
A flood of excitement and anxiety rushed through Twilight Sparkle’s heart. What did it mean? Was the Observer trying to interact with them somehow? Was it going to hurt them?! Was it just trying to talk to them?! What?!
Almost in answer, the black line began to move toward the left of the white box. As it did, it left behind a string of symbols. Symbols that looked very much like letters! The Observer was trying to communicate! Except… the letters were backwards, as if they were reflected in a mirror. Making a slight mental adjustment, Twilight looked again at the single word that had been formed on the white box.
Hello
“That’s new,” Pinkie Pie said.
High above the city of Canterlot, within Canterlot Tower, the Royal Pony Sisters stood facing each other, their eyes closed, their horns crossed and glowing with magic. Their minds were linked together within the ethereal plane, gazing with inner vision upon the very life-fabric of their world. Their expressions mirrored their mutual feeling of uncertainty.
Their search had begun as a hunt for an entity or intelligence roaming free in the unseen world surrounding Ponyville, a presence Celestia reasoned would feel much akin to an Alicorn or elemental spirit. What they did find was a focal point of strange magic within Friendship Castle interacting with the three entities that were Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie and Spike. It was powerful and didn’t coincide with any magical signature they could recognize, so the sisters assumed that it must be the work of the Observers. But after probing it and the surrounding ether, they could find no trace of an actual awareness associated with it.
It was then that Luna had suggested they take a different approach. Princess Twilight had described the Observers as taking interest in individual ponies. Surely the attention of an omniscient being would leave some kind of magical mark. And since Pinkie Pie seemed to have the strongest connection to the Observers, perhaps they would find a lead within her aura.
Almost immediately, Celestia and Luna had found the connection they were looking for. Indeed, what they saw within the Earth Pony’s aura looked to be a connection of some kind, bound to the mare’s very life force, hidden among yet independent of the natural magical ties of life. Were it not for the strange energies within the room disturbing it, the Royal Sisters would not have seen it; it was a very fragile link. In fact, it looked to be the last of a cluster of now severed lines. Further examination revealed that each of the individuals within the room had this partially dissolved connection imbedded within them, though Pinkie’s was the strongest. But what did they connect too? Was this some remnant of marionette string these Observers had left behind? And were they pulling on it again?!
Well, a rope has two ends. It would be a simple matter to trace the ties within their friends back to their source and break them if need be. Taking care to protect themselves from backlash, the two immortal Alicorns ran their magical sight back along the gossamer strands bound to Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle. Farther and farther they went, noting with growing concern the increasing depth of reality these lines seemed to run. And they were not the only ones. Hundreds, then thousands, then millions of fibers joined the two threads as the Solar and Lunar Regents followed them down to the very foundations of their universe.
Finally, they came to the bottom of the well. Though they had known of this place even before taking up their heavenly mantels, neither Celestia nor Luna had dared to dive this far into the ether before. It was only by virtue of their incredible power and disciplined minds that they could survive the cosmic forces at play. Here the two demigods could feel the nearby thrum of the beating heart of the cosmos; the center of the web of life and the source of all magic. But that wellspring and the intricate connections it shared with all things of their world stood separate and distinct from what Celestia and Luna now saw. There, sitting upon the very base of reality, perhaps crossing the dimensional divide itself, was the root of a veritable cable of fibers that conceivably connected to each and every intelligent life. And coursing up and down it was a power identical to the strange focal point they had seen in Friendship Castle.
What do you make of it, my sister? The Lunar Princess’s voice sounded within the vaults of Celestia’s consciousness.
I honestly do not know, Luna, was the Solar Princess’s reply.
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first!!!
Hm, wonder what will happen next? atleast they have established communication between eachother. But, something tells me that Celestia and Luna are somehow going to pull the Observer into their reality, hehe.
1908082 Gotta say, what you had to say there was very informative and relevant to the story. Now, let me just introduce you to this shiny shell here.
images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080920183131/nintendo/en/images/3/33/BlueShell.jpg
I initially didn't get that it was actually an animator of the show that was experiencing this, but not really a big deal.
Good stuff, as usual. We await your next update.
The feces is hitting the rotational wind-production device!
1909830
That was kind of the idea. It's not suppose to be obvious that "the creature" is an MLP animator. I'm happy you figured it out; it lets me know that I'm doing my job and that my readers are smart. But what would an MLP animator be doing, looking in on the ponies like this? And why is this encounter with "The Observers" so different from before? That is the question.