Kingdom Heart next generation: Friendship is Omniversal

by Starry Eyed

Chapter 5: Laughter and Jollyness

Pinkie Pie had made her way back to Ponyville. Pinkie Pie knew everyone in Ponyville and thus, everyone in Ponyville knew Pinkie Pie. That’s why everyone knew that Pinkie had returned early. Rose, Lily, and Daisy made their way up to Pinkie and Lily asked, “Welcome back Pinkie, aren’t you home early?”

Pinkie Pie rushed up, hugged all three in superfast succession and landed back in front of them with wide eyes, a wide smile, and arms wide open to hug anyone else that came by. “You’re right. I am home early. I was planning on staying away another week, but my Pinkie senses told me that something was going to fall, and that there was going to be another doozy. And there was a BOOM, and I found this guy.”

Pinkie turned around and pointed at a human that she had brought back with her from where she found him on the rock farm. The three ponies named for flowers and several other bystander ponies all deadpanned at this strange new creature. He would easily have been twice Pinkie's height, but he was old and slouched by age a bit. They probably would have been outright terrified of him if he hadn’t seemed as happy as Pinkie Pie. The old man clearly was just as happy as Pinkie but was not energetic like Pinkie. Whether it was his nature to be that way or whether age had worn him out and made him mellow was anypony's guess.

The human spoke in a voice of a sweet and gentle old man, “Pleased to meet you, my name is Santo. It’s so good to get to meet all of Pinkies friends. She’s been telling me all about you all and your town. I know I must look strange to you, but I will bring you no ill will.”

The mayor had stepped out front by now and was trying to figure out what to do next about all this. Pinkie zipped up to the mayor and stated, “Don’t worry; my Pinkie senses told me that he is a nice old man. We can trust him.” The mayor wanted more answers, but knew the first thing she had to do was calm down the other ponies. If she made a scene it could cause a village-wide panic. She said the only thing she could think of that would make everypony return to their regular business, "It’s just one of Pinkie’s. Well, this is just one of those Pinkie Pie things.” Everypony sighed or exclaimed, “OH!” knowingly and returned to their normal business.

The mayor turned back to face the human. He had a head of white hair and a Santa-like white beard that was not very long and the whole thing looked as puffy and white as a cloud. He wore a white monk’s robe that was equally plush. Santo had a warm smile, friendly eyes, and exuded a gentleness that really can’t be found in someone who is not a kind old man.

Pinkie zipped over to the mayor and spoke, “I’m going to take him to see Twilight! Santo is looking for his crew. I wanted to find them and bring them back here. Gotta' catch 'em all! And then,” the mayor interrupted, “Pinkie Pie, calm down. Twilight is not in town at the moment. She left out yesterday without saying a word to anyone but Spike. If you must speak with her you should go see him.” As the mayor began to think about it, this was actually working out very well. Pinkie had managed to get the alien under control. Telling Spike meant telling Twilight, which meant telling Celestia! Which meant all there problems would be solved! The mayor mentally patted herself on the back for coming up with such a great plan.

As the mayor looked up, she noticed that the pair of oddities had already gone. “Curses, how did I miss something like an alien and Pinkie Pie slip by me?”

~~~~~~~~~~

Humans likely would have strayed away from a strange new beast, but thankfully ponies were generally more excepting. Already some of the younger ponies as well as the braver one, as well as those who just knew Pinkie Pie that well, began to circle the strange new creature and ask it waves of questions. Santo treated them like a kind old man treated little children, with tenderness, love, and acceptance. Santo may have been old, but his voice wasn’t hoarse or worn. It was sweet and had a jolliness to it that sounded like anything he enunciated could have turned into a warm laugh at any second.

Everypony could see how he would have made fast friends with Pinkie Pie so easily.

Pinkie suddenly gasped and sprung into the air, waving a hoof straight ahead, “Oh look Mr. Santo, LOOK. We are here! This is Twilight’s Library house! “You ...” Santo did something that might have been impossible: he mellowed Pinkie Pie! Santo just put his hand on Pinkie’s shoulder and gave a gentle grin. She stopped bouncing and giggled.

EVERYPONY in Ponyville got as wide eyed as possible. They didn’t know what this monster was, but to be able to pacify Pinkie Pie! Impossible! They just stared on as the two made their way up to the Library and knocked on the door. The other ponies stayed behind. No way were they going to miss out on seeing this.

“Sorry, Library’s closed until further notice, please come back late …” was as far as Spike managed to get before he got the door open and noticed Pinkie Pie, an alien, and all of Ponyville in the not too far distance. “Err,” Spike finished before looking around at the multiple anomalies. Spike leaned out and addressed the town, “Pinkie Pie thing?” Everypony nodded. “Come inside and make yourselves comfortable then.”

Santo was pleasantly surprised to see that ponies had furniture just like humans. It was going to make the stay so much more comfortable. Spike turned to them, “Make yourselves comfortable.” Santo took a seat on the couch and got comfortable, making ready for all the questions that were no doubt on their way. Spike may have seemed inpassive, but he knew that he would need to report to Twilight soon. Thankfully, Twilight was with Celestia, so sending a letter would take care of two problems at once. Pinkie zipped up to Santo, “Ow, ow, ow! can I tell him, O please Santo!” Santo looked over and noticed the town ponies were eavesdropping, “As long as you make sure to speak up so our guests can hear.” There was a sound of someone falling over like they had been leaning against something for support and had lost balance from shock. Santo turned to Pinkie, “Go ahead.”

Pinkie gave the speech about what was going on but spoke so fast that she skipped the important parts. All that Spike and the eavesdroppers really found out was that the human crew were dimensional travelers that had standardized magic (whatever that was), and were fighting some bad guys called Enforcers. They did not learn anything about the Omniverse or the purging of powerful beings or really anything more than the aforementioned material. Pinkie paused and asked Santo, “How was that?”

Santo thought. It wasn’t good to tell the common people that there were more than two or three universes, or about the extinction of super-powerful magic, or about the now ancient keyblade wars. Santo answered, “That will do.” Pinkie smiled and continued, “and Santo here already beat back a whole lot of those Enforcer guys right after he arrived. And once the danger was over back there I told him we should head on and find Twilight because she would know what to do. And then we came here and I started telling you this great story about ...”

Spike didn’t want to hear the same story all over again, so he interrupted, “We know Pinkie, we know what happened after that.” Spike then turned to Santo, “So you crashed a while back huh? How long ago?”

Santo looked up at the clock, “It has been nearly a full day since we arrived in this world now.”
Spike finished scribbling something and wrapped up the scroll before sending it to Celestia, "Well, that’s all we need to know I guess.”

At this point Spike let his curiosity get the better of him. Spike knew he shouldn’t have let his guard down around this guy, this alien, but Twilight had worn off on him. The idea that there was a whole different system of magic, totally different from unicorn magic, intrigued him. Spike asked, “So what is the standardized system of magic anyway?”

Santo leaned back like an old man about to tell little children gathered around a story (which was the case to him), “Long ago, the alliance got together and decided that no one world had an ideal system of magic, so they set out to build one. The standardized system does not have anything original. It’s just the best bits of multiple systems combined together. All magic systems draw on natural energy in the air around the user. In other words, every user of magic is subject to restrictions and entitled to bonuses from the natural energy of the world they are in.

But hearts are fickle and prone to instability. The hearts of entire worlds are not an exception. Magicians are at the mercy of the nature of the world they live in. Unicorn magic works fine in this world because that’s what this world is wired for. In other worlds, magics that would be considered rare or even impossible here are common because that is what those worlds are wired for.”

Santo leaned forward and pointed towards himself, “But standardized magic users filter out the particular world they are in and draw the pure, natural energy of the Omniverse. And, there are seven tiers in the standardized system: elasticity, durability, spiritual resistance, armament, speed, spiritual pressure, and strength.

Elasticity refers to the property of anything to return to its original shape should it become distorted. This gives our skin properties like rubber or gum, and means that physical force will be negated rather than absorbed. In short, it’s physical resistance.

Durability refers to how hard something is. The word hard is defined as the ability to cut something and not be cut yourself. This gives our body steel-like properties and makes us resistant to damage from things like blades or arrows.

Spiritual resistance refers to one’s resistance to magic, force, or energy. We emit a spiritual field that dilutes such things other than our own.

Armament is the offensive side of durability and refers to the ability to sharpen the body. When we Karate chop an Enforcer into two pieces, it’s not because of strength, it's because of sharpness. The real benefit of this is that the blade is sharpened with magic, and thus is able to cut magic. That is why we can cut the Logia Enforcers. We sever the bonds of magic in them and they cannot stitch themselves back together.

Speed is the ability to move quickly obviously, but it’s a bit more complicated. We can use the bio-electric energy in our bodies to speed ourselves and our reaction times up, potentially to the speed of Lightning. You move faster the stronger your “speed magic” total is, and to move as fast as lightning without using a technique would require your power level to be hundreds of times higher than the limit. Because having electricity run through you can hurt, this magic is limited by how rubbery (rubber doesn’t conduct electricity) you are, so this power is limited by one’s elasticity.

Spiritual pressure is the strength of your magic power. It is also what determines what spells you can use. You cannot WIELD anything bigger than what you can HOLD. This power is limited by how much spiritual resistance you have, or your own power would break you.

Strength finally is all aspects of the body: stamina, lift, etc. combined.

Suddenly Rainbow Dash burst in, “Twilight we have a situation!”

Everyone stopped what they were doing and took notice of the prismic pony. Spike responded, “Twilight isn’t here right now, and we kinda have an alien in here.” Rainbow Dash motioned back towards the doorway, “We have an alien right here, and a hurt one at that!” The Wonderbolts had a flying transport similar to the one Twilight came to Ponyville in, but less regal and more practical; able to transport more ponies, or in this case humans. Musica lay on the transport; his hair grayed, his body comatose. Pinkie Pie put her hoof to her mouth in worry. Spike spoke up, “We should get him to the hospital”. “No” said Santo, “We have such high natural healing speed that it would be a waste of time, but we need calories and all types of nutrition to do so. We need food.”

Pinkie smiled, “That wouldn’t be a problem!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Cakes were generally more excepting than most even by pony standards. Soup was not their specialty, but it’s the best thing to feed someone who wasn’t conscious. Mrs. Cake asked Santo, “Do you need anything else?” Pinkie Pie spasmed and Santo spoke the same words at the same time that she did, “You should probably make enough for one more. Someone else just got here”. Mr. Cake raised an eyebrow, “How could you possibly …?” Pinkie answered, “I know because the Pinkie sense told me so, and Santo knows 'cause he can sense life forces.

Santo had run out already to intercept the other approaching life forces. When he made it to the street, his eyes locked with the gaze of an earth pony wearing a Stetson, pulling a cart with a human girl in it. Both of them knew that the other was the one they were looking for. Applejack spoke, “Is this girl one of your crew?” Santo walked around and picked Dea up like she was as delicate as a soap bubble, “She is my daughter.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With the two humans now fed and coming to so that they could feed themselves, Pinkie spoke, “Both of them are going to be fine, but are tired, and need solid nourishment. We gave them some multivitamins, and now I can only clean and wrap their wounds and wait.” She turned to Santo, “Is there anything else that we can do for them? We still don’t know much about humans.”

Santo shook his head, “No, you did quite well. All any of us can do is wait now.”

Redheart had been called in to bandage the wounds, and finally spoke, “Fine then, but now you should let us treat you. I know you’re hurt too and trying not to show it. It’s my special talent. Don’t try to deny it.”

Santo frowned, “I’m not as badly hurt as they are. They wouldn’t have gotten hurt over measly little Enforcers' droppships either, if they hadn’t been fighting AND guarding ponies at the same time, right after their fall might I add.”

Rainbow Dash and Applejack hung their heads. Their new friends were hurt because they risked themselves for their sakes. They took notice that they both felt this way. Some “best athletic ponies in Equestria” they had turned out to be.

Santo looked at them like he had read their hearts, “It's not your fault. Even if you were strong enough to pluck a mountain out of the ground and toss it like a baseball, you couldn’t leave a paper cut on one without armament.” The Wonderbolts that had pulled the transport were still present and looking over the weakened humans. Soarin’ asked, “We tried to hit them with lightning from Santos and it did nothing to them. But then Musica hit 'em with it and they incinerated. Was that Armament too?”

Santo nodded, “They are Logia and they have no human component to dilute its full effect. No matter how they are destroyed, their magic will force them to resume their original forms. Armament severs this magic and because Logia is not part of standardized magic, it cannot ever be recovered. The moral of this story is that it doesn’t matter how strong you are. A spark of armament is worth more than a sun of might against those things.”

Spitfire looked afraid and calculating, “So you’re saying that you guys are the only ones that can do anything about those things?”

Santo said nothing, and his silence answered them. It was the Wonderbolt academy fight all over again. The Enforcers may as well have already won. It was just a matter of time before they won. Face it, even if you outnumber the enemy a million to one if it was IMPOSSIBLE to EVER damage them at all. They would eventually win. Seven super-humans might be able to mop the floor with them, but there were only seven, and no matter how strong they were, they could only be in seven places at a time, and the Enforcers could be everywhere.

Santo held out a hand as if he was handing out hope itself, “But there is one way we can win!”

All ponies looked up wide eyed. It didn’t matter if they were Pegasus, bakers, or friends. The fate of Equestria was on whatever Santo was going to say next.

Santo answered, “The keyhole of the world’s heart.

Every world has a heart, and every world’s heart has a keyhole somewhere in that world.

Whoever gets the keyhole can lock it with a keyblade, and that person becomes the keeper of that world.

If we can get to the world’s keyhole and lock it, we can become the keepers of the world. The keeper has the power to banish all beings from that world that were not native to that world. If we become the keeper, we can ban the Enforcers from this world and they will never bother Ponykind again.”

All the ponies got bright eyed and smiled ear to ear. There was a mini celebration. Spitfire walked up to Santo and whispered so that the other ponies couldn’t hear, “Is that what the Enforcers are after too?”

Santo nodded, he didn’t want to worry everypony else either.

Spitfire put two and two together. No wonder the Enforcers were not attacking capital cities. They didn’t need to enslave anypony. They just needed to find one thing and they could control everything! Spitfire didn’t want to lose morale, but she had to do something. The fate of Equestria hung in the balance. She turned, “Let it be known that the Wonderbolts will be putting aside EVERYTHING other than helping these humans for now! And that will not change unless Celestia herself says otherwise!”

“It looks like we’ve made some good friends.” All turned to see that Dea and Musica had made their way to a proper table and were now chowing down. Santo spoke, “You're right Dea. We have. We should rebulk and rendezvous to the ship.” Pinkie and Applejack exchanged a look and spoke together, “If you need more grub, we can handle that.” They could barely handle that. These humans ate enough to feed 7-9 people. To be fair, fighting like that would have to expend a few days’ worth of calories, so they really needed that much more just to avoid starving. Once they were done, they decided to head for the library to plan their trip to Twilight and the ship.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even though they made their way straight to the Library, it was hard to avoid forming a crowd when you’re a friendly alien. All was going well and the humans conversed with those gathering even if they did not stop. Only Musica didn’t speak and that was because his throat hurt from “singing” too much yesterday; but he could have if he wanted to.

Suddenly all three humans stopped. Stopped walking, stopped talking, stopped moving. Pinkie at this time was spasming with “the doozy”.

Spitfire asked, “What’s wrong? Enforcers?”

Pinkie was the one to answer, “No, too strong for one of them. But it’s bad, really bad!”

The humans looked up, and the ponies followed suit. There above Ponyville were two Enforcers. One was standing on the back of the other Enforcer that was shaped like a kite, but was otherwise a black dragon with silver lines along its “frame”. The Enforcer riding it looked a lot like the muscular structure of a human, but was made of a black version of the stuff normal Enforcers were made of and had seams of silver. It had no face except its eyes, which were shinning pure red with only a black pupil.

Pinkie found herself short on breath. Her Pinkie senses had just fathomed how strong this one was. Applejack turned to her and couldn’t help but ask, “Pinkie, calm down. How many dragons would it take to amount to one of him?” Pinkie’s lower lip trembled before she burst out, “It’s over nine thousand! “ “What? Nine thousand! There’s no way that can be right!” cried Applejack.

Dea spoke, but did not let her eyes leave the intruder, “He is an Ambassador Class Enforcer and the one he's riding is a Swordbearer Class Enforcer. The Swordbearer is literally just a puppet he controls, but is just as strong as he himself: level 100 standardized system.”

The Ambassador had its legs spaced out past its shoulder’s length and had its arms crossed. Along with the eternal poker face all Enforcers donned, it turned its gaze down toward the humans, but caught the whole town in its peripheral vision.

Think about those guns with laser pointers. You know that when that little red dot moves over you, you’re doomed. As the Ambassador looked down, the metaphorical red dot was felt by everyone. It was as if the sunlight itself was its red dot. It was flaunting its Conquerors Haki so that even those who couldn’t sense power levels could feel the threat it represented. If this was chess, just having this piece of the board would count as a checkmate. All ponies froze and the three humans put up their guard, sweating bullets.

The Ambassador spoke in a pure machine voice, “Where is the keyhole?”

Santo spoke, “Even if we knew, we would never help you!”

The Ambassador spoke, “With just the three of you, the probability of defeat is only 2% and the probability of village destruction is 100%.”

Santo flaunted his conquerors Haki back to the Enforcer, “What’s the probability of your defeat when I promise you I will sacrifice my life to destroy you if you hurt anything in this village?!”

The ambassador calculated, “Probability of defeat against finally burst and two calculated rebels, 6%, statistically significant, but irrelevant. If you do not have the Keyhole, fighting you would be jeopardizing the mission. You live for now.”

Spitfire said nothing, but wondered to herself why this thing was going to let them go when it had such good chances of killing all of them.

The Ambassador couldn’t read minds, but it could read hearts, “Only the mission is important Wonderbolt. Killing you will not gain me the keyhole. And you are no threat in the long run.

HOPE IS DEAD. YOU CANNOT WIN PONY. DEALING WITH YOU IS A WASTE OF TIME BECASE YOU CAN DO NOTHING.”

With that, the Ambassador’s ride flew of at twice the speed sound instantly.

The humans fell to the ground. Musica spoke, “Curses! Even if we were at 100% that wouldn’t have gone well! Where’s that stupid doctor of ours when somebody actually needs him?!

At that very moment, the human doctor had just finished healing a patient of his, “You’re better now, so I need you to lead me to my friends. Lead on Chrysalis.”

Comments

[The Keybrony Master]

Just a thought, but the enforcers sound like the Nobodies from kingdom hearts combined with the Liquid Metal Terminator. While on meth.
and steroids. scary... You have put up an interesting story line though, and for that I'm now going follow this to read the next part when it comes out. (also just a friendly suggestion, but you should review your chs. I noticed quite a few typos in your story.)