Being Trapped in Stone is DULL!

by Jioplip

The Dull Pox

Hello everypony! I must say, regular communication has done wonders for my mood! I of course refer to my CORRESPONDENCE!

Starting off today is our royal correspondent, the_Changeling_Prince_2.

Firstly I must ask you a question, are the other universe's versions of me as suave and debonair as my own self?

And moving on to your question about this Screwball pony...

Well, I am embarrassed to say that I didn't know who you were talking about at first. Well, I was embarrassed since she's kind of the result of a minor mistake of mine.

And by minor, I mean that I am royally Screwballed if I can't find a way to neutralize this mare.

You see, I've been checking over the Temporal Records, and I've been able to confirm what exactly went wrong, you see, Screwball was just a regular filly until I rose back to power, and then it seems I accidentally kickstarted her cutie mark.

In Chaos.

This is of course, a very bad situation for me, since if she realizes her power she could draw directly on my Chaos Magic, which in turn would prevent me from using it to it's full potential.

But perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself, to fully illustrate why another being drawing on my Chaos Magic would be so bad, I should first explain what it is in the first place.

Now, as you may remember from my earlier rambling, each species of pony has access to magic in a different way, and I, as the Spirit of Chaos, also have a unique magical ability.

My Chaos Magic functions under separate principles from other types of magic, for while pony magic is based on order and balance, my magic is steeped in the aversion of the natural laws, essentially ignoring them outright.

But Chaos Magic has it's own limitations, just not logical ones. You see, my Chaos Magic has an upward power limit that it can't exceed, and attempting to do so results in... let's call it backlash.

And so we get to the main point of explaining Chaos Magic in the first place: If another being starts draining my Chaos Magic, my power could be as much as halfed at any time.

But getting back to Screwball, from the looks of things she was just walking down the road, minding her own business, when my infamous big storm of Chaos hit Equestria.

What happened next is strange even to me, first she looks at the mayhem with what seemed to be horror, a typical reaction, but what I now believe to have been shock and awe, since right afterwards she gets a huge grin on her face, and her cutie mark... sort of bleeds into existence, like paint dripping, then her eyes go nuts and she starts acting crazier than Pinkie Pie on her birthday, bouncing around, teleporting without magic, and even flying via a hat-based propulsion system.

My only break in all of this is that Chaos being her special talent worked in my favour after I was blasted by the Friendship Express back to Stonesville, as her own memories of the even were wiped clean.

So were her memories of before the event, and I think some degree of her intelligence as well, she's about as observant as Sweetie Belle with head trauma, in fact I'm watching her in real-time right now and she hasn't even noticed the stallion behind her holding... that... glowing rod?

But... it can't be, that was over a thousand years ago.

But there's no mistaking it, he's the same, that same pony, that same device and...

The same blue box.

But how could it be? There's no way an ordinary Earth Pony could have survived since my reign.

I still remember that day...

---

So far the day was going gloriously, I had everything prepared perfectly for the sealing of the Capricorns, hedging my bets on dear Tydal's reluctance to bring our younger sisters into a fight that didn't concern them had paid off in full. And what's more, he even had all of the Capricorns that weren't already in the capital return to it, so if I hurried I knew I could take him and his people out of the equation for good.

And that's when I saw it.

That mysterious blue box, and the even stranger brown stallion running around it nervously.

But it wasn't the surface appearance that caught my attention, it was the spellwork on the box.

I alighted next to the box, barely noticing as the stallion stoppedand stared at me.

It was the strangest thing, this box, bigger on the inside, a horribly difficult spell, charmed to look inconspicuous, even if it was broken, and it positively reeked of something unnatural, this would have been enough to catch my attention, but to top it all off, the entirety of the box's spells were formed from a kind of magic I'd never seen before. Ordered, yet chaotic, natural, yet artificial, right, but oh so wrong.

"Discord?" I looked toward the stallion as he spoke, finally taking in his bewildered expression and the strange device tucked behind one ear, a grey stick with a blue tip, some kind of multipurpose tool by the magic.

It was then that my own face took on an expression similar to his, I had yet to make an appearance in front of Celestia's little ponies, and yet here was one who apparently knew who I was?

Unfortunately, I had prior commitments, and an entire kingdom to topple, and Tydal was nothing if not efficient.

Well, I suppose he'd still be brutal, cruel, and more than a little unstable, but that all runs in the family.

"Your perception filter is broken, whoever you are." I elected to say, instead of the many boiling questions I didn't have time for.

As I prepared to hoof it to the Capricorn Kingdom, I noticed his cutie mark, an hourglass.

What sort of talent is that? I wondered idly, Timing things? Keeping Time? Maybe he makes the damn things for all I know.

"I'm the Doctor."

Apparently he took my earlier statement as a question, and also apparently he decided to answer circumspectly, but I didn't have the time to question him about it as I sped away towards my inevitable victory, but I did wonder.

Doctor who?

---

That's right, the Doctor he called himself.

But how is he here? Why is he still alive? What's he doing around Screwball? And just who is he?

Hmph, it seems he's not too happy about what his scan of Screwball turned up, he's heading back to his box now and...

It vanished.

It just... faded away.

This Doctor is just full of surprises, and so is his magic box, that wasn't any teleportation magic I know of, it was too subtle, too slow, and too noisy.

So what was it?

But, this tangent has gone on too long already, getting back to your royal bugness, I hope I was able to answer your question about Screwball, as I'm pretty sure I said it somewhere within that tangential spiel.

Moving on to our old friend SilverAlchemist, who asks a startlingly insightful question:

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a parasprite?

The answer may surprise you, as well as the surprising nature of parasprites as a whole.

You see, parasprites are actually self-replicating supersour candy, mouth-wateringly bitter and liable to eat your entire town's supply of food, a brilliant combination.

As for how many licks it takes to the center, it's about fifty or so. Then they explode.

A parasprite a day keeps the sanity away! Or somesuch.

Which leads us to our next question.

Questions.

rannu182 asked several questions, which I shall now answer:

Parasprites were made from some fuzzy things my mother left lying around our old house and my own supersour candy recipe.

My mother is currently working on a new dimension featuring personified planetary bodies.

I have no idea what 'marryd' means, but I have no interest in being married to fruit.

And finally, I have never been 'in love.'

Gag!

Well, that was quite the correspondence session, and I hope I was able to answer all of your questions satisfactorily.

As for my day?

Apple Bloom, who you should know is Applejack's little sister, decided to cheat to get her cutie mark early.

The catch? It worked.

Somehow, this little filly was able to create a potion that replicated the effects of my Cutie Pox experiment from the Paleopony Period.

And in a way, she improved upon my original Pox.

My Cutie Pox experiment was more for fun than anything, but it still only lasted eight to sixteen hours before the Pox wore off and the pony who had contracted it became immune.

And while Apple Bloom's Cutie Pox couldn't be contracted without drinking her potion, it didn't wear off over time, and in fact, it accelerated the pace at which her cutie marks appeared as time went on, and had to be cured directly with a counter-agent.

Honestly, I'm torn between pride and indignation that a mere child managed to one-up me so badly, truly the Cutie Mark Crusaders have some vast untapped potential for causing chaos.

But alas, I must go think about the dinner I'm not having, so to you all I say: Chicken and taters.

Author's Note:

Whoo. Now that was intense! Now before I go eat, here are some special thanks!

Firstly, and most importantly, we have defender2222, who created Tydal and the affiliated Capricorn race, if you haven't checked him out, please do, because he's a hell of a lot better at this stuff than I am.

Second is to his royal majesty, the_Changeling_Prince_2, who has once more inspired me to write the greater part of a chapter, I recommend checking him out, in addition to being royalty, he's also quite the talented writer.

Thirdly is the asker of the most philosophically intense question ever seen in this fic: SilverAlchemist, so please go tell him that he's awesome.

Finally we have rannu182 whose questions I included at the very last minute, as I was about to write the author's note when I looked at the comment, so feel special!

Comments

[Prince_Staghorn]

To answer YOUR two questions.
1) You are yet another constant, and your suaveness seems to bleed to all other versions of you throughout the multiverse.
2) the Doctor... admittedly an odd pony, if we're referring to the same Doctor. it's confusing here, as there is a whole family of ponies named Whooves, and the Doctor, while looking similar, has no relation to them. he sort of just appeared. he has a weird heartbeat too. it's like he has two hearts or something...

anyway... there is one major thing that bothers us Changelings more than anything else... FLUTTERPONIES. unfortunately, they exist in my reality, and are a constant source of annoyment for my species, and not just because we have the same diet. have you ever had to deal with those insufferable flitter-brains? or bushwoolies?

[truthaura]

2563188
To bounce of his vague comment of the doctor the doctor is a TIME LORD, an alien race that have the ability to travel through time and space. the "Blue Box" is a T.A.R.D.I.S., it stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. he knew who you were because he had already met you you will in the future. you will meet him later and he will know nothing about you. As for the reason that the T.A.R.D.I.S. was a blue box is that his cloaking mechanism is broken so it is stuck looking like a police call box. If you want to know what that is then ask next time. Allons-y!

[Prince_Staghorn]

2563309 Ah, that would explain it.

[Hekate Sketch]

the doctor huh? I have seen him aroud here and there, and, being a tenno, I have bee around since the beginning of time, so I can tell you, that is the same doctor you saw way back when. He is now 1000 years old, and, if you piss him off, the most dangeous man. er... pony in the multiverse.