She landed in their backyard.
Her entire body looked like it ached. Still bleeding cuts covered her upper legs. Her human clothes came with multiple tears, like she’d been in a hurricane. Lilac never saw her human form before. Her face wasn’t that different from her pony face, if Lilac looked closely.
Her orangish skin was covered in purple bruises. One limb looked broken, from the landing or whichever happened prior. But she wore none of the pain. All of her foggy focus was on Lilac.
“Mommy?” Lilac repeated.
She chuckled– her throat must be raw, so scratchy came her words. “Yes princess?”
Lilac’s bottom lip trembled. Her eyes started to water. “Wha- wha- what is that?”
Morgan scrunched up her face. It made her wince. Morgan reached up to her face, touching a...claw(?) to it.
“Oh!” Morgan pulled it back. “Oh that’s blood. Like in the- the things that get hurt. Like when you scraped your knees.”
“You’re hurt?!” Lilac yelped. “Mommy, you’re hurt?!”
“No! No.” Morgan lied. She was a worse liar as a human. Morgan pushed herself to her knees. Each move made her give suppressed groans. “Just- it’s fine. I’ll be fine.”
“You are hurt!” Lilac rushed to her mother. She hugged the human, holding her tight. Lilac grabbed her hand. “Come- come! We need a bandaid!”
Morgan found herself being dragged into her house. She needed to stop. There wasn’t time for this. She- how long had she been falling? How much time did the ponies have? Dominic could be at her house by now. Morgan had no way of knowing. Her friends could be dying, and she was meandering.
But Lilac looked so worried.
So Morgan let herself be walked.
Inside, Lilac sat Morgan down on the couch.
Lilac rushed into the kitchen. She was well aware of where they kept the first aid kit. Her mom made sure that Lilac never forgot it. Lilac opened the book, spotting bandaids. With all the bruises and blood, her mom would need a lot of bandaids. She grabbed the box of bandaids.
She brought them back to her mom. Morgan sat on their couch. She looked so small on it now, as a person instead of a pony. Lilac held up a smiley face bandaid.
“You need this on there.” Lilac put it down on her arm.
Morgan pulled off the tape, making sure it stuck in place.
Lilac blinked. She’d forgotten about the tape part of the bandaid. She pulled out a big rainbow band aid. Her mom could use smileys and rainbows. “And these there.”
Morgan sat. Her amber eyes stared at Lilac, big and watery. “No, no, not like that.” She heard herself say.
Lilac flinched back.
“You did really good!” Morgan assured. “Just- I need two bandaids there. And- you see those wipes? I need that too.” Morgan peeled off the bandaid, shifting in 90 degrees.
Lilac got the packet. Morgan carefully explained the steps to first aid to Lilac. She showed her how to clean a wound, and the proper way to set a bandage. Lilac nodded, serious. She took it so seriously. Morgan would’ve expected them to ask about cutiemarks. Her daughter only wanted to learn, to help her mom.
To help.
“I need to go back.” Morgan said. Lilac taped the bandaid on the bruise. “Only I can.” Though she would admit, she couldn’t tell if she was saying that to Lilac or to herself.
Lilac looked up. “What?”
“I need to leave. Again.”
Lilac’s eyes widened. “You- you just did! Now you’re back. You won’t go again!”
“I have to, princess.”
“No!” Lilac grabbed her mom. “No! You stay!”
Her mom brushed her hand on Lilac’s head. “Lilac, sweet-”
“NO!” Lilac stomped her foot. “NO! NO! NO!”
Morgan scrunched up her face. She stopped, her mouth twitching in pain. She set it to blankness. Leaning back, she stood upright. “They need me. I’m going to help them. They- I’ll- I’ll be right back.”
“Mommy NO!” Lilac hiccuped, clinging tighter. Her claws dug into her mother’s arm. “STAY!”
Morgan’s chest tightened.
“I’ll be back for you.”
It was a quick movement. Morgan grabbed Lilac’s hand, wrenching it off. She got more scrapes out of it.
A glowing portal appeared beneath Morgan. Watching Lilac, Morgan stepped back into the portal. She vanished from her daughter’s sight.
“MOMMY!” Lilac reached out.
She landed on their couch with a flop. Lilac cried and cried, clinging tightly to the couch. So tightly, she missed the backdoor creeping open.
==DMLE==
Twilight
Twilight
Think about Twilight and the ponies
Think about the Spencer house.
Don’t think about home.
==DMLE==
She landed in the backyard.
Morgan rolled in the grass. The cuts and stings sent sharp pains through her body as the grass touched the broken skin. She bit hard on her lip to keep from screaming.
As her body adjusted, Morgan let herself slack against the dirt.
Sometimes, she hated herself. Lilac’s tearful screams and cries would never leave her mind ever again. Did this make her a bad mother? Morgan believed so.
She started moving up. Her body groaned at the movement. She sat up, her vision going foggy. She blinked her eyes to clear them.
Her mother’s backyard came into clear view. Morgan saw dead flowers and bushes. Brown grass, sharpened to crispness by the cold, dug into her arms. The band aids were still on her arms. She stared at them, heartbroken.
Morgan fell back on the grass. Hot tears fell from her eyes.
She let a few tears fall, fighting them all the while. There was no time for tears. She needed to work.
With a harsh inner push, the tears stopped. Morgan pushed herself to her feet. The tears stopped. Her chest still hurt, the emotions buried inside screaming and begging to be let out. She’d had a rough day, hadn’t she earned a cry?
Morgan ignored them, as she’d done countless times before. What use were tears against a murderer?
She snuck towards the back of the house. The sun was still up, making a steady descent. How long had she been stuck with Dominic? Or in the void? She couldn’t be sure. The day felt the same. It looked the same.
Still only Wednesday, January 16.
What an awful week this has been
Morgan walked into the house. The sun was a lot lower, yeah, but still in range for school. They’d gone to the police station with enough time to spare to get the girls to school. Morgan had no idea where Robert took her, where Dominic interrogated her, so she couldn’t retrace her steps to find it. Nor could she judge based on the times for her spell- which she used twice. She was getting better at it.
All that to say, nobody was home.
Morgan checked her pockets. It was a long shot to hope, yes, but she was clever. At the police station, as soon as she realized what was going on, she’d put her phone away. Yes in her Bag. Yes, the same Bag that was missing.
Morgan had a thing for that.
Many people did not know this. Morgan preferred it that way. Morgan was once given three wishes by a certain blue genie. Though she felt awful, Morgan knew the three things she wanted to wish for. Her first wish was about the Bag on her side- the one thing that stayed by her side.
She wished that she could never lose it. From harm, from distance, thievery, anything. Most genies would’ve been cruel about it. But this Genie saw the pain as she shared her trouble, her loneliness, so he granted her wish exactly the way Morgan wanted it.
Morgan sat herself down on her couch. Her mind flashed back, forcing her to recall Lilac’s tearful face kneeling before her. Morgan took a breath. She forced down the feelings again.
Morgan held up her hand.
As Morgan closed her eyes, a sudden weight made her hand drop.
The teenager grinned. She pulled her Bag close to her chest. There was no time to be sentimental. She opened it, reaching inside for her phone and her emergency medical kit.
The phone said it was 2:30.
She’d been gone for six hours.
No wonder she was hungry.
Morgan called Caroline. She set it to speakerphone. As she waited for an answer, she opened the medkit. Lilac’s medical care, while precious, needed some work.
*click* “Morgan?! Is that really you?!”
“Yeah hey.” Morgan dragged the medical wipe across her cuts. She muscled through the pain. “Where is everyone?”
“Where is- have you lost your mind?!” Caroline snapped.
Morgan hummed. Caroline spoke in a low voice, almost like a whisper. 2:30...probably close to 8th period. Caroline could be in the bathroom, or the nearest empty classroom. “My mental state will be a lot cheerier once I know where the girls are.”
“Forget about that! Where are you? Where did you go?”
Caroline wouldn’t answer her questions. She was too emotionally strung out. Teenagers were terrible when overwrought. Morgan considered the morning.
School didn’t start until 9:00. They were at the police station around 8. Fifteen minutes to complete paperwork, ten minutes collecting the girls. That put things at 8:30, when Morgan left. Six hours- yes she went over that.
Now, perhaps they all believed that Morgan left already. A false assumption, given that the ponies were still around. So if they believed Morgan ran away, they would have called her parents. As neither parent was here, waiting for Morgan to return, Morgan dismissed that possibility.
More likely that the Bellinghams would prefer to be on time for school to keep from worrying Morgan’s parents. The police station wasn’t too far from the school. They would’ve needed a place to keep the girls, as Morgan’s parents met and hadn’t liked them. Anna could’ve dropped them off at home before going to school, yes. That option made the most sense.
Would Dominic know that? Morgan said nothing about the Bellinghams,but what if the officers did? Robert’s coworkers? Morgan tried to remember if they used Caroline’s name.
“Are they at your house, or not?” Morgan asked.
“Where are YOU!?”
Morgan held back a huff. She needed to wrap bandages around her bigger injuries. While it would help to have them there, Morgan needed her injuries clear before moving the ponies. They would complain otherwise.
“My house.” Morgan explained. “But that’s not important, where are the girls?”
“What?! When- how did you get there?”
Morgan grunted. She yanked on the bandages too tight. “Are. They. At. Your. House?”
“We’re coming to get you.” Caroline said.
Morgan’s chest twisted. “No- no don’t do that- Are they at school?”
Morgan panicked. She stood up off the couch, stuffing everything back in her bag.
“CAROLINE NO- CAROLINE! PEOPLE ARE COMING TO KILL THEM! WHERE ARE MY FRIENDS!?”
But Caroline didn’t answer. She’d already hung up.
It just so happened that I reread the fic just yesterday so the old chapter 19 was still somewhat fresh in my memory when I read the new one and I have to say:
You have improved a lot. The new version's Morgan feels a lot more like a character and a lot less ... Mary-Sue-ish, a lot less like a generic self-insert power fantasy.
The whole rewritten parts look really good so I can only encourage you to keep it up. Though it may have been a better choice to just start a new fic as the rewrite since the rewrite and the original have diverted enough that continuing to read at this point without having known the original is basically impossible. Half the info is missing, like Lila never introduced herself to Morgan, Morgan hasn't had time or opportunity to reseach Danielle, so her being murdered is unknown to Morgue and the readers. Stuff like that. Since you are gonna have to keep that in mind you are basically writing half of a new fic at this point but I guess once you are done it'll be a none-issue.
Now for the thing that irks me.
I can usually overlook certain things in fanfiction, in fiction in general actually. One of those things is timings and timelines; however sometimes - when a fic is good enough to keep my mind on it for a long time - I notice inconsistencies especially when they get pointed out in the fic itself. In this case it is "The phone said it was 2:30." and that felt wrong to me. Why? Because when Morgan collects her friends she says the following: "our best bet is to reach the police station before they close. Cops tend to rush stuff near the end of their shift, so long as it means they can leave", which implied to me it was afternoon or evening. Trying to figure out what time it was (basically trying to see if Morgan's "it was morning" could fit) I found myself digging deep into the timeline of the fic:
Spoilers for basically the entire fic till this point ahead. You have been warned.
When Morgan got the m6 out of her house it was morning before school, when the m6 got to school "They had been walking for nearly two hours." Afterwards they hear the scream. Therefore that scream was probably somewhere around lunch. (I am not going into the inconsistencies between ch7 and ch9 right now since I already commented on that under ch9.) Going by ch9 it was even after lunch.
THEN Morgan ends in the hospital and here it gets even more confusing since Morgan herself spend a night over in MLP so I gotta ignore her personal timeline as I am currently interested in the timeline of earth. On earth apparently things progressed a lot slower considering Morgan getting there and AJ/RD getting arrested happened on the same day: since the doctor talked with Morgans parents after the surgery and "soon" afterwards the arrest happened. When Morgan awakes the not-a-nurse tells her "Those kids haven’t left your side through all of this, even when your parents walked out." so either Anna, Caroline and the m6 slept in the hospital room (which I highly doubt) or she woke up the same day. I do not know how to interprete Pinkie Pie's "you slept for almost a whole day"... since it's Pinkie Pie that could mean anything from half an hour to 23h 59m. But as I said evidence suggests that we are looking at still the same day so Pinkie is exaggerating. The doctors saying Morgan "should have woken up by then" however means it's not an insignificant amount of time.
Afterwards Morgan has enough time to read the entire book before Dominic shows up. Then the whole spiel with Morgan getting out of the hospital and being brought to her home happens. After which she immediately drives over to Caroline where that previous quote about the police station happens: "our best bet is to reach the police station before they close. Cops tend to rush stuff near the end of their shift, so long as it means they can leave" Then they go to the car to get going.
Note there hasn't been a night in between there meaning that this is all the same day unless I am missing something.
1. Now at the police station is the first indication that the time may have flipped here as Morgan says: "Wednesday, this early? Flannigan is on shift with Hillary at the front desk." Back then I assumed that meant that it wasn't end of shift yet so it can technically be called too "early" for closing time.
2. Then Robert drives Morgan around and ends up on the parking lot where the following sentence is said when he takes Morgan out of the car: “Tell me you aren’t doing this in broad daylight.” Since it is January one would assume we are already past sundown (we are in the western hemisphere, after all) but the wording could also just be metaphorical which is what I assumed.
3. The conversation between Felicity and Dominic is vague enough to happen at any point in the day but Dominic indicates that it is getting close to closing time when he thinks: "Dominic spent the better part of the week cleaning up her messes. He would much rather have gone home."
The conversation between the technically yet unnamed girl and Morgan gives us no idea of when it happens.
Those three points are all vague enough that they can cause confusion on what time it actually is in the human world.
Now with all that in mind in ch19 we enter MLP for a short while and come back to earth and suddenly it's 2:30, the drive to the police happened at 8 AM before school. And that is the moment where my mind screeched to a halt and told me that this can't be true.
I know I went on a huge tangent here; I just needed to confirm to myself that I hadn't missed a night somewhere along the way. I don't want to take the wind out of your sails or nothing but this just doesn't fit and since you are in the process of rewriting the fic, I believe this is the best time to point it out.
Also I am also still a little salty that we never got to see Morgan tell the m6 about what her powers actually do. The best we got was her telling them that this was another reality and it would kill her to transport all 6 over and she'd pass out with 2. Or the reactions of Morgan's human friends to her telling them about her abilities. Their reactions are referenced later but they never happened, as referenced or otherwise.