Alternative ending to Earthbound, HIE style because why not.
Ness knew the risk of putting his soul into a robot, but in his mind he had no choice. Giygas was stopped through the efforts of Ness, his friends, and a strange being with immeasurable power. With their bodies mortally wounded, Ness and his friends' souls begin the long journey through time back home, but, [and there always is a but] Ness' soul becomes... "lost".
The Cave of the Past, Ness had traveled through time and space to get here, to stop Giygas. Pokey, he had been there too, fighting for Giygas. No, Giygas was fighting for Pokey. He controlled the Nightmare Machine that contained Giygas. When faced with failure, he decided to turn the machine off, revealing the terrible form of the evil that Giygas had become. Ness and his friends had no chance of ever defeating anything that powerful. They worn down bit by bit as Giygas attacked relentlessly. They had no hope left, drained of their psychic power from attack after attack, they started to give up. Jeff started to cry, Ness missed his home and the life he had before. Poo was numb all over, and Paula; she started to pray. She prayed to all of the people that they had helped and had helped them. Dr. Andonuts and the Saturn people, the Runaway Five, Frank Fly, the Polestar preschoolers, Ness' Family. Merely sticks and stones unto a tank. So Paula prayed into the darkness, across dimensions of time and space. At first nothing had happened, but then a force immeasurable by anything hit Giygas. It hit again and again and Giygas became weaker and weaker. Then, the other worldly power, gaining power all the while, destroyed Giygas and the cavern that contained the Nightmare Machine, nearly destroying Ness and his friends in the process. The war was over, the evil that plagued the minds of innocent plants, animals, and humans disappeared. "Time to go home Ness..."
Ness was on the edge of consciousness, he could not feel the pain that he would be after such a huge amount of energy nearly destroyed him because he was still in his robot body. He tried to remember but his mind was slipping. He had pushed the body Dr. Andonuts had made for him too far; soon he would leave it behind. The power of Giygas and the trans-dimensional being had taken its toll on the circuits and wires, no amount of healing could repair it, Ness knew because he had already tried that. So far he had recalled that he was in The Cave of the Past, ten years ago, when Giygas had first started attacking. It still confused him that the present day could exist if Giygas destroyed the world ten years ago. Perhaps it was a fixed point in time that Ness stopped the evil being. It was not until now that Ness thought about his friends, the ones who had helped him out more times than he could count.
Memories flashed through his mind; the meteor landing that kicked everything in motion, Buzz Buzz, the bee that had put itself on the line to help him, the time he rescued Paula from that insane cult, Jeff and the Sky Runner freeing him and Paula from the zombies of Threed, Poo, the monk-prince from Dalaam that used his amazing power to defeat Master Belch in Deep Darkness. He remembered using his special power, Poo called PsychoKinesis, or PK. There was one more too, He wasn’t sure who or what had helped him defeat Giygas, but he had felt the power that it had wielded. Without that being’s help, they would have never stood a chance.
The last evidence of the existance of a being made entirely of evil energy passed through Ness. He cringed as he heard the echo of the psychic energy of Giygas drilling into his mind and tearing apart his body. The cave was silent. Before the fight, the whole cave was whirring with the sound of Giygas' henchmen from the stars all trying to stop the quartet of friends from reaching the end.
Ness relaxed, It was finally over. He could go home now, back to his family, his body, his life. He started to hear a faint buzzing before his mind finally faded to black.
If one was observing the events of the cave, they would see four badly damaged robots thrown from a chamber as it collapsed. The cave, illuminated by the lights on the robots, became still and one by one the lights on the robots fade. But then they would see three sparks, the essence of life; rise up from three of four robot bodies. Minutes later the final spark, brighter than the previous three, rose from the final body. While the three smaller sparks left through the dimensional crack created by the Phase Distorter, but the final spark began to flicker rapidly, as if highly unstable in its current form. All of a sudden the light blinked out, shrouding the cave in darkness.
[Never thought I would write an MLP fic, this is my first fic, etc. No ponies yet because this is just a prologue, just to see if this goes anywhere or if people actually like it. If things go well I promise to make longer chapters with proper pacing. And just to make things clear, Twilight isn't going to mess up a spell, it will be all Ness' doing. Also, I will never make Ness a pony. Feel free to leave any type of criticism as long as you actually know where I went wrong and know how to fix it. Also if you find a suitable image that would be appreciated. Also, as you may know, you got to pick Ness and co.'s names, Ness' favourite food, and the name of his signature PK move. While I decided to use the "canon" names, I will let you decide Ness' favourite food/PK move, so tell me in the comments or message me. Thanks,
A single thought adrift in a void between times, flowing everywhere at once yet having no physical form at all. One could describe this place, or lack thereof, as a black void of space. In reality though, it was much less than that. It is difficult to comprehend nothingness when all your experiences are actually something. Whether it was touch, sound, or awareness, it was all something. The space between dimensions is comparable to space, the similarities are present but as are differences. Like space, no living thing can survive for very long in the void. There are planes of existence, like the planets in space, where life can live.
However, while space is traversed easily enough by Giygas and his army of Starmen and Mooks, there has only been one vehicle ever to traverse the space between dimensions; the Phase Distorter III. It could only take relatively short and linear journeys. For example, the range of physical displacement, or teleportation, was limited to the planet that it was currently on. The temporal displacement, or time travel, was limited to 20-30 years. On the first and last journey, before it was lost ten years in the past, it only traveled the aforementioned 10 years before it was left behind.
With all former knowledge currently being completely disregarded, Ness, currently an unprotected soul, was simply existing in a place that should have swallowed him up and spread him over its entirety even if he had a body, robot or otherwise, to protect him.
For the first time in a while, Ness was truly scared. Yes, Giygas’ form was the most frightening thing he had ever seen, but it had felt that Giygas [him?]self had forced the fear into him. He was afraid that he would be lost here forever, never going home like he had hoped. He knew that Dr. Andonuts said this might happen but he had decided that it was his responsibility. He wanted to use his gift that he was given, he wanted adventure, and he wanted to be the hero that he could have been. Even though it ended this way, he wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. The friends, the adventure, even many fights he had gotten into with everything from snakes to space aliens.
“No, not like this...” Ness thought. He took off, looking for a way out of this nightmare. He was running, no, he was thinking of running as moved through the nothing, looking for something, anything, to get him out of there.
Finally, after an unknown amount of time that he had no memory of ever passing, he found a sort of “hole” in the darkness. With nowhere else to go, he entered.
Ponyville, a town named after 99% of its population. It was a town that had no knowledge of the world beyond the stars, no knowledge of the dangers, the beauties, or the powers. Yes, there were legends of a great evil being imprisoned on the moon, however this lead to an almost common belief that there was a breathable atmosphere in space.
It was night time, the perfect time for stargazing, and the perfect time to see the meteor shower that was occurring. Twilight Sparkle, being the overly-analytical unicorn that she was, was surprised by the sudden and very rare occurrence of the natural phenomenon. She had read through her books to try and identify it, but she couldn’t find anything on possible meteor showers that happened on that particular month, day, or year for that matter. She decided to invite her friends to the same spot they had been to last time to see the meteors.
“Spike, are you ready to go?” Twilight asked as she packed a picnic blanket and a telescope on a tripod into a red wagon.
“I dunno Twi, what should I can decide whether to take some rubies or sapphires for a snack.”
Twilight let out a heavy sigh, “Just hurry up so we can get going, I don’t want to miss this.”
“Fine, let’s go.” Spike said as he stuffed both kinds of gems into the wagon.
Twilight sighed again as she exited the library with Spike in tow. “You better not eat all those gems Spike, you will get a tummy ache and won’t be able to sleep if you do” Twilight warned.
“Don’t worry about me Twi, I’ll be fine.”
Twilight just rolled her eyes this time.
Spike and Twilight made their way to Sugarcube Corner to tell Pinkie Pie about their plans of a picnic. They knocked on the Pink door the bakery when Pinkie Pie, wearing a rainbow coloured umbrella hat, burst out of the door, tackling Twilight and Spike to the ground.
“Twilight! Twilight! Have you seen it!? The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” The pink pony shouted at Twilight and Spike.
“The sky isn’t falling Pinkie, it is just a meteor shower. In fact, I was just about to ask you if you wanted to come with us to watch it from the hills to the west of Ponyville.”
“I don’t think so; my tail is twitch-a-twitching! The stars are falling Twilight.” said Pinkie as she held Twilight’s face to hers.
Twilight thought for a moment on a way to get Pinkie to come see the meteor shower with her. “Well Pinkie, if you don’t want to come, that’s fine, but everypony else will be there. We might even have a little party wi-“
“A party!?” Pinkie shouted, cutting off Twilight. “Well if you put it that way, of course I’ll come!”
“Well for starters, you could invite everypony else and then we’ll meet you on the hills.”
“Alright, see ya later Twi.” Pinkie said happily, tossing off her umbrella hat and bouncing away.
Twilight and Spike made their way to hills. It was not a far walk, but it took them a good 20 minutes to walk there. When they arrived they were thoroughly surprised, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, half the town, and enough food to feed everypony were there waiting for them.
“How does she do that?” Spike and Twilight asked in unison.
“Hey, slowpokes! Get over here!” Pinkie shouted at them.
Twilight walked to the top of the highest hill to set up her telescope. She looked down at all of the food and ponies that Pinkie had brought and tried to think of a reasonable explanation. ‘Hmm, the only way that could have happened without breaking the laws of the universe is if she had use some form of telepathy and got everypony to bring enough food for themselves and sprinted all the way here.’ Twilight decided to stop thinking about it before her head started to hurt. She looked through her telescope while referencing her book to calculate the angle and trajectory of the shower. Once again, the shower was like no other shower that had happened before.
Twilight suddenly began to feel more and more excited at the mere notion that she, and half the town, was the first to see this particular meteor shower ever. She started to hop around with glee and levitated Spike up to her face even though he was busy eating rubies like popcorn.
“Spike, do you realize that we are the first ponies, no wait, first pony and dragon to discover this meteor shower?”
“Huh, I guess we are, aren’t we?”
“Yes, and you know what that means, don’t you?”
“Um...” Spike thought for a moment. “No I don’t.”
“It means that it is our duty to document and find out the schedule of this meteor shower!”
“Should I go and buy some more quills and parchment?”
“Of course, we have a lot of work to do.”
“Just great, more work.” Spike said aside so Twilight couldn’t hear. “I better get on it then.”
“We can buy the supplies in the morning, for now we should watch the show.”
The shower went on for a half hour before some of the meteors started to fall into the atmosphere of the planet. To the ponies, it looked like an awesome show, but they soon became unnerved at how some of the meteors started to fall all the way to the ground below. From the highest hill, Twilight could see all the way to the ocean. When she turned her gaze to the coast she saw the biggest splash she had ever seen, right where one of the meteors landed. At the sound of the crashing water, everypony and dragon looked to the ocean as well. Those who missed the first landing witnessed the second, third, and fourth landings, all within a minute of the first. The fifth and final meteor, crashed with a mighty roar into the valley between the hills and the beach. The whole town was rocked to its foundations as that meteor landed. It wasn’t long before the rest of the population that didn’t show up during the initial storm arrived to see what had shaken them violently from their sleep.
“Wow, that landing sure was something wasn’t it Twi?” Asked Spike between yawns.
“Yes it was Spike. But I find it odd that the whole storm just stopped after that landing on the beach. The whole thing just seemed... off, somehow, almost like it was forced.”
“Anyway, I’m just gonna...” Spike yawned heavily. “...go to sleep now. G’night”
“Good night Spike. Remember, we have a lot of work to do tomorrow...” It was Twilights turn to yawn. “...so rest up, you need your sleep.”
Spike merely grunted.
‘Huh, I’m usually able to stay up later than this.’ Thought Twilight. ‘I guess I could get up early tomorrow to start working.’
Twilight climbed into her bed and relaxed after the long day she had. She thought she heard a voice whisper something to her, something that might be important, but her sleep deprived mind blocked out full meaning, except the phrase “It feels g-o-o-d...”
[Earlier]
When he had first arrived in the cracks between existence, he was so overwhelmed by the nothingness he couldn’t feel anything. After some time, (or none at all, he had yet to figure that out) he started to feel things. There were big gobs of energy just floating all around him. Their presence just became so glaringly obvious to him, mostly because there was nothing else to distract him.
He had to break out. He couldn’t take any more of this drifting; he had already forgotten, among other things, his name. He tried pushing, pulling, tugging, and anything he could think of against walls of darkness that were keeping him trapped between time and space. He had almost given up hope when, against all odds, he saw the image of a small pink pony flash past his consciousness. Normally he would steer clear of anything remotely girly, but it didn’t matter anymore. He was about to do whatever it took to escape.
He tried to follow the path the pink pony had trod; this was easier than expected because the trail tasted like bubblegum. Or at least he thought it tasted like bubblegum, it was hard to differentiate between his thoughts and experiences in this place. He followed it until he hit another wall.
“No!” He shouted, he wasn’t about to give up so easily this time. He focused his mind on the points of energy all around him, gathering them into balls. His mind started to hurt from the constant focus, but the feeling was familiar.
“Pyro-, Psi-, Psycho! Psycho something...” he was trying to remember what the action he was doing was called. “Psycho Kinesis!” he shouted as he redoubled his efforts. The points of energy had doubled in size as well. Confident that his plan would work, or just out of options, the boy launched all of the energy balls at the wall in an artillery storm of light. It was beautiful to him, and it reminded him of shooting stars. He remembered that there was a name for this, and he wanted to shout its name aloud for all to hear, so he did.
“PK STARSTORM!”
[Well here it is, another chapter. Always ends up shorter than I would like. Anyways I hope you enjoy because if you didn't I wasted time, and probably yours too. Oh well, but if you did like it then we are both happy still haven't decided on Ness' favourite thing/food yet so there is still time. I think that's everything so good bye for now.Thanks
Thrilling, that was the only way to describe it. Soaring through the atmosphere, Ness was riding on an inter-dimensional ball of pure energy. I think it is safe to say that no one has ever done this before in the history of anything, and that fact made it all the more awesome. If Ness had a body, he would surely be riding it like a cowboy.
Ness had managed to grab, figuratively speaking, onto the last ball of light as flew through the crack in, wherever he came from. He was riding is way across the earth’s atmosphere in a blaze of glory, still caught up in the fact that he had learned how to do an incredibly powerful Psychokinetic attack only know by roughly three people, including himself.
Ness’ friend, he couldn’t remember his name, had talked about learning it in some form of training that involved the emptying if the mind. It was called something like “Moo” training, he found that funny. “Why would they name something after the sound a cow makes?” was a question he had forgot to ask, but it was too late to ask now anyways. He remembered his name rhymed with moo; Doo? No, Soo? No again, Hoo? Definitely not, Poo? Don’t be sil- wait, that was his name! Poo, he still found it funny. He had to try so hard to keep from laughing at him the whole time he was being followed by him in his journey.
“Oh right,” Ness thought, snapping out of his train of mental ramblings, “I’m soaring through the air on a meteor I made all by myself.” He started mentally smiling wider than he could possibly imagine, at least when he still had a body, as he was getting closer to the ground. He could start to make out some of the features of the world below, a medium sized town, some hills with some lights, and a beach. It looked like the hills had some sort of gathering of some sort of animals that he couldn’t make out clearly due to how fast he was moving.
All of a sudden, one his falling stars hit the water of the beach with a tsunami-sized splash, followed shortly by another. Some of the animals had started to run away, but most of them stayed in awe of the show. Ness revelled in the awesomeness of his first impression on this population. He saw some of the animals run strait into the houses of the town. He was reminded of the Saturn and Tenda tribes, and realized that these animals probably weren’t simply wild animals, but a new alien tribe. On second thought, Ness realized that he would be the alien in this scenario. “Or this could simply be a faraway land on earth, meaning I could be able to go home... finally.” Ness mused.
Ness, stuck in his thoughts once again, failed to notice that his particular star was on a very obvious crash course to the beach. Ness was often caught up in thought, and therefore didn’t talk much. While he had no problem holding a conversation, he never went around randomly talking to people to get every bit of information he could. No, that would be just plain rude.
The resulting crash caught Ness off guard and snapped him out of reverie, but he was unfortunately plunged into the core of the fallen star. He was thrust into darkness once again.
“Hey, who turned out the lights?”
Twilight Sparkle awoke in the library, mind still hazy from her restful sleep, as a young dragon gently shook her. “Mmm,” she mumbled, “what is it Spike?”
“I made you some breakfast; it’s sitting on the table. I was also w-“ he stopped when he noticed Twilight wrinkle her nose, as if she smelled something rotten.
“What on Equestria is that smell?”
“Oh, that? I don’t know Twi, but it isn’t that bad if you ask me.”
“Spike, you have eaten muffins that had worms baked into them, I don’t think you are a very good judge of anything taste or smell related.”
“But taste and smell are totally unrelated,” Spike whined.
“Yes they are that is final. What else were you going to say before you stopped?”
“Oh, right! I wanted to know if you wanted to go see the crash site of the comet or whatever, seeing as you pretty much ran home after it landed on the beach.”
“Meteor Spike, and we walked home at a brisk pace, and it was because I was tired... I mean you were tired. I wasn’t scared, I was just startled from the impact, and that’s all.” The subject of their trip home was making Twilight nervous. “Anyway, that would be a good idea, but it can wait until after breakfast.” Twilight said before she caught a big whiff of the unknown smell from earlier and almost gagged.
The smell had completely ruined Twilight’s appetite. She took two bites an apple and didn’t even touch the hay fries that Spike had prepared. She put the food away, saving it for later as she and Spike got ready to set out again.
“What do you want me to bring for you Twi?”
“Let’s see; two quills, two scrolls, a couple pots of ink, glass sample jars, and some chemical pH testers, I think that’s everything.”
“Alright, I’ll get everything packed up.” Spike started to gather the supplies in the red wagon that they had used the night before. As Spike worked, he became more and more anxious to look at the object that had caused such a stir in the usually quiet town.
By now, Spike had packed everything up into the wagon and was now waiting impatiently for Twilight to finish whatever she was doing when she left him to get ready.
“Hurry up Twilight! We’re wasting time just standing here.”
Twilight emerged from the basement of the library wearing a white lab coat, thick rimmed glasses, and some sort of metal tool was by her side.
“Uh Twi, What are you wearing?”
“Well, Rarity said that I should try wearing clothes as a part of my everyday life. Plus it makes me feel more, Science-y”
“It looks silly, and you don’t even need glasses, why are you wearing them?”
Twilight sighed. “Do you want me to wear this or not?”
“Twilight, those clothes make you look like a huge nerd.”
“Fine, I’ll take it off.” Twilight retreated to the basement again.
‘Where does she get her sense of fashion?’ Spike wondered to himself before realizing he just accidentally started the waiting game again. Spike sighed deeply.
It was already an hour to noon by the time Twilight Sparkle and Spike finally left the library. As they walked in the cool summer air, they noticed that the smell had caused the entire town to hide in their houses. All of the ponies that normally would be tending the stalls in the market and their customers were all inside, avoiding the smell at all costs. Twilight and Spike walked in eerie silence to the beach.
Spike, ever so oblivious to the awful smell, was confused to why there wasn’t anypony outside and promptly asked Twilight; “why isn’t anypony outside today?”
Twilight, struggling to ignore the smell that had only grown in intensity from when she left the library, looked visibly annoyed and replied; “It’s that smell, everypony must be trying to escape it and they must be hiding inside.”
“What smell?”
Twilight paused to explain the foul odour but stopped realizing the futility of it and simply said “...Never mind”
“Okay then...” said Spike, still very confused.
Not wanting to unwittingly get Twilight even more annoyed, Spike decided to keep quiet for the rest of their walk.
Ness was back in the darkness, but this was different. Instead of being an endless void of despair, it was more like being locked in a cupboard. Not that Ness had ever been locked in a cupboard, he was always treated nice at school, and had plenty of smaller kids looking up to him. He felt a pang of worry; would he ever see his friends and family again? Yes, of course he would! He would never let anything stand in the way of getting home, not time, space, or Giygas. Oh wait, forget that last one, he had already won against that, with the help of friends. He felt a longing to be with them again. He never had close friends like that before. Sure, lots of people liked him, some even idolized him, but he never had a best friend, let alone four of them.
Ness tried to gather up energy for an attack against his, this time, very limited void, but to no avail. He had used up all of his power breaking through that other wall. He longed for some magic pudding. He then realized that he couldn’t overexert himself in the psychic department because he would never know when the next time he could relax and restore his energy would ever be. He remembered when he was practicing his PK abilities at the beginning of his journey. He would always be a few steps away from an area where he could recover quickly. This had allowed him to slowly become better and better at his PK... “something” attack. He couldn’t remember what it was called, but he knew that it was more powerful when he focused on what it was that he loved most.
Then, Ness thought he heard voices coming from somewhere, sounding like an argument. He looked everywhere but then chided himself; of course he could only see darkness, like that would change. The voices faded out after a couple minutes. He started to feel a pulling sensation all over. All of a sudden he was yanked in the direction that the voices had come from. He realized that whatever the voice was, it was pulling him out of the dark. He stopped any resistance he had against the force and relaxed. He was yanked again. ‘One more time,’ Ness thought, ‘and I will probably be out of here.’ There was a pause, Ness waited in anticipation.
...5...
...4...
...3...
...2...
...1...
‘Hmm, maybe 5 seconds wasn’t enough time to wai- ‘
YANK!
They had finally made it, they were at the beach. And what a sight it was, a large crater, as wide as five ponies end to end, and as deep as three ponies standing on top of each other. At the center of the cosmic crater was a super bright ball of light. Twilight had to shield her eyes for fear of being blinded. Spike, not being an ordinary pony, had no problem looking directly at the ball of light. He saw that underneath the bright light was an intricately designed, floating gem. That gem had a no
“Twilight, it’s the biggest, most delicious looking gem that I have ever seen.”
“Really? I can’t see anything, it’s too bright.”
The crater was too deep for Spike to just walk down into it; he was just too little. He got the feeling of greed inside him again, the feeling that all he ever wanted was in that crater. He wanted to see, feel, and bask in its glory, and he couldn’t wait any longer for it.
“Twilight, quick; Levitate it up here!”
“I don’t know Spike; it could be hot, or dangerous. Besides, it smells worse than our walk through the town, this might even be the source of the stench. We need to observe it fully before we get close to it.”
“Look at it; we don’t have to wait any longer, you can just levitate it up here, can’t you?”
“Of course I can” Twilight said, not wanting to appear incapable, “I just think that we should put safety above the thrill of discovery,” said Twilight, obviously having a hard time ignoring the thirst for knowledge.
Twilight and Spike were having a silent argument. The argument was fought intensely; for three minutes, Twilight stared between Spike and ball of light. Eventually she caved in to both Spike and her own like minded ideas. She wrapped the object in a field of her magenta coloured magic. She was surprised at how light the whole thing was, except she couldn’t move it from its hovering state. It seemed to be stuck there, rather than actually hovering.
“Hurry up Twi!”
“Shhh! It’s stuck, I can’t quite move it.”
“Just give it a tug.”
“Magic doesn’t work that way, Spike.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“It’s too complicated to explain.”
“Just try it; it can’t hurt to try, can it?”
Twilight gave a frustrated grunt, “Fine, just please be quiet, I need to concentrate.” Twilight began to concentrate. ‘Okay magic, please happen,’ she always thought this when she was trying to do a new type of magic that she hadn’t tried before. Although it probably didn’t help, it was a mental quirk she developed as a filly.
She wrapped the meteor in a magenta glow once again, putting all of her effort into the single spell. She “yanked” on the meteor with as much energy she had mustered. She felt something budge, be she saw no change in the floating ball. Frustrated, she closed her eyes in concentration. With a greater level of concentration, and therefore force, she tried to move it once again. The whole thing budged less than a centimetre. Thoroughly annoyed, Twilight clenched her eyes shut and began to pour every last bit of magical stamina she had into one force spell. It took her a couple seconds before she was ready to unleash the spell that probably was beyond overkill. With all her magical might, she pulled.
[Cliffhanger! I couldn't resist. Either that or it takes a long time to write. I could have either released now, or later with slightly more content. I decided on the former. Enjoy!]
Twilight gave a final tug on the orb of brilliant light. The light, guided by Twilight’s magic, floated up from the crater. The cosmic gem, however, dissolved into dust the moment the light was drawn from it. Spike watched in dismay as the prize he was so desperately craving crumbled before him. Twilight, on the other hand, was straining to bring the light out of the darkness of the crater. When she finally brought it out; a brilliant flash followed by a bolt of electricity connected both it and Twilight’s horn.
The force of raw energy being converted into a physical form tore the sky in two. A shockwave, originating at the crater, flew in all directions, purging the land of the overpowering odour in the process. Everypony in Ponyville was alerted by the shockwave, but only a brave few ventured outside to investigate.
Back at the crash site, both Twilight and spike were thrown back by the initial force of the shockwave. Twilight landed on the foot of the hill closest to the beach, unconscious, while Spike landed in a nearby tree, only dazed slightly.
Minutes later, a small figure arose from the crater. The figure was shining half as bright as the inter-dimensional shooting star, but still bright enough that its true form was obscured. It wandered around, searching the area for a couple minutes before returning to the crater once more.
Spike, still dazed from the impact, was unable to see what it was clearly, so he decided to follow it against his better judgement from earlier of not going into the crater. Each step felt like his legs were made of iron as he slowly walked over. By the time he got to the crater, he was ready to fall asleep on the spot, but his interest in the strange figure pushed him onwards. He looked over the ridge of the crater and gasped at what he saw; a young Sasquatch.
Ness regained his senses, rubbing a hand on his head. He recalled that something had gotten him unstuck from the center of his homemade shooting star.
‘Wait a minute, hand?’ he thought as he looked down. Sure enough, he had a luminescent hand; two luminescent hands actually, and a body, also matching his hands, and no clothes...
‘Hmm...’ he thought as he remembered his previous adventures. ‘Am I in Magicant again?’
He looked around, but all he saw was blue sky and brown dirt. Realizing that he was in the crater that his shooting star had created, he decided to look around. He carefully climbed up the steep side of the crater, dirt crumbling as he stepped on it. He poked his head up and looked around. There was a beach; it looked nice, it also reminded him of Summers, and kraken soup, strangely enough. He slid down the side and started climbing up the other side of the pit. There were hills, a whole bunch of rolling hills, with luscious green grass. The world looked so surreal, exactly like the Magicant of his dreams. He then saw a small purple animal, over at the foot of the closest hill. Not wanting to be seen like he was, stark naked, by anything (be it animal or human) he climbed back out of site into the crater.
When he reached the bottom he saw something strange, actually it wasn’t strange at all because he saw these constantly during his adventure. He saw a gift box, all neatly wrapped with a card on top of it, to the side of a pile of very fine dust. He walked over to the present and realized something strange; this one was actually addressed to him. He opened up the card and read it.
The card read “To Ness, I can’t have you running around naked in this new world, so here is your favourite outfit.” The card was not signed by anyone. Ness, seriously creeped out by the spontaneous gift of clothes and personal message that came out of thin air, cautiously decided to open up the present left obviously for him. Inside there was a striped blue and yellow tee-shirt, blue shorts, socks tucked inside a pair of red running shoes, a yellow backpack that felt like there was stuff inside it, and finally, a red baseball cap.
Ness noticed that his skin was slowly starting to stop glowing. He relaxed when he realized that soon he would be back to normal again, well... relatively normal. With his clothes comfortably being worn, he decided to face this strange new world and put on his bravest face. As he turned he saw a big purple reptile watching him with weird eyes, they were facing opposite directions.
Strangeness, the big lizard was suffering from strangeness, as he called it. It was a condition that leads to confusion in the middle of a fight, making whatever was afflicted attack the wrong target. He suffered from the condition a number of times; enough to want it to be healed as soon as humanly possible, whether him or (possible?) ally.
He gathered up his energy, a feat made harder due to the amount of effort put into the Starstorm, and formed it into a healing ray of light that he aimed at the giant purple lizard. The ray stuck home, righting the eyes to their proper orientation. The eyes on the lizard widened as it let out a very Keanu-esque, “whoa.”
“Whoa,” Spike said as his vision cleared, revealing that the figure was not actually a Sasquatch, but something else entirely. It had shined a ray of light at him, making him blink his normally light insensitive eyes at the brightness, clearing his vision in the process. He had never seen anything like before. The only descriptive word that came to mind was “indescribable”.
It said, in a tone of voice very similar to Spike, “Uhh... Hello?”
“H... hi, uh,” Spike replied, at a loss for words.
“Ness, my name is Ness, what is yours?”
“Oh, um mine’s Spike,” it was now that the simultaneous question was asked;
“What are you?” Normally, this sound normal due to the fact that it would normally be said a couple hundred of milliseconds out of sync, but they both asked that question at the exact same time and the exact same tempo. The follow up answers’ tempo was skewed by the previous fact.
“I am uh, a human; at least I think so...”
“What do you mean ‘think so’?”
“Well, First I was a human, and then I was a robot, but now I look exactly like I did when I was human, so I guess I am a human after all.”
“You were a robot!? How does that even work?”
“I’m not sure, but if Jeff were here I bet he could explain it. His dad made the robots in the first place.”
“What kind of a name is Jeff?”
“You sure ask a lot of questions for a... what even are you?”
“Heh, wait ‘til you meet Twi, and I am a dragon, by the way.”
“You look small for a dragon, but you are the first one that I have ever seen.”
“Well I’m only a baby dragon for now, but I’m gonna be a great big one when I grow up!” Spike said with a heavy sense of pride. “Wait a sec, where is Twilight?”
“Twilight? Is that someone’s name?”
“Somepony you mean? And yes, she should be around here somewhere.”
“What? Did you really replace someone with somepony? Ha! That sounds silly!”
“You’re a weird human you know that? Now, where’s Twilight?”
“Is that um... him over there?”
Spike burst out laughing at this comment.
“Hey, what’s so funny?” Said Ness, visible annoyed.
“Twilight Sparkle is not a ‘him’! Were you even paying attention when said she should be around here somewhere?”
“No, not really, and stop laughing!”
Spike let out an exaggerated sigh “Then we better go see if Twi is okay.”
“Sure thing buddy.”
“Wait, we’re buddies now?”
“I don’t see why not. You seem like a nice uh, ‘dragon’, and the fact that we have actually talked and gotten to know one another.”
“Have I told you that you’re weird yet?”
It was dark in the laboratory, because replacement bulbs were hard to come by here. Also it might have something to do with the fact that the lab was located underneath a mountain, for security’s sake. The type of work and research going on inside the facility required freedom from the disruption that would surely come from the local wildlife.
The commander, with his plan on schedule, began to study the report of the previous night that appeared on a monitor in front of him. He looked at the picture that was enclosed in the file, a meteor shower. Tracing a finger on the contrails of the falling stars, he revelled in the past; where had he seen this before?
“Hey Twilight! Wake up!”
Twilight shook her head trying to get the ringing out of her ears. This was a mistake as the shaking caused her head to start throbbing with waves of pain radiating from her horn.
“Ugh, Spike, did you have to shout in my ear?”
“Sorry, I just wanted to wake you up. You look terrible.”
“Thanks for your concern, but aside from a massive headache I am f- wait a moment, who, or what is that?”
“Oh yeah, this is uh, Ness and he is an um...”
“Human, I am a human boy and a force to be reckoned with,” said the human with a heavy amount of pride soaking his words.
Twilight rolled her eyes; she was not in the mood to deal with a boastful pony, or even a non-pony for that matter. “I’m sure you are, but if you don’t mind I have a meteor to examine.”
“Oh wow, I completely forgot about the meteor. Speaking of which, where is it? Didn’t you lift it up here?” asked Spike in rapid succession.
“About that,” Ness interrupted, “that was kinda me tearing a hole in ‘something’ and breaking through it by riding on a meteor that I made with my mind.”
Twilight gave him a confused look. “Where did you say you were from?”
“I didn’t, I am from a planet called Earth before I got stuck somehow. I had traveled back in time 10 years to prevent the end of the world but I must’ve blacked out. I woke up in this void and after I don’t know how long I taught myself how to use PK Starstorm.”
“What is PK Starstorm?” Twilight and Spike asked in unison.
Slightly disturbed by how often this happened Ness explained anyway. “Well, if you were on that beach over there, (was it last night?) You might have seen what looked like a meteor shower. In reality they were actually psychic orbs of pure energy and some dust from the void.”
Twilight and Spike gaped at what had just been revealed to them; they were standing in front of a being powerful enough to summon meteor showers.
“Right, I forgot to ask, are you some sort of alien candy coloured horse with a pet dragon?”
Twilight stared into the crater once more, not believing that the ‘boy’ had followed up on his outlandish claims. At the bottom lay a pile of luminescent dust, with more of it scattered in what looked like a short path.
Ness hopped back into the crater to examine the dust. ‘Hmm, looks like I wasn’t actually glowing. I must have had the glowing dust all over me, but it fell off as I walked around,’ he thought. Ness grabbed a fistful of the dust and walked back up to the pony and dragon.
“Look guys, Stardust!” he exclaimed.
“Is that what it’s really called?” Twilight asked.
“No, but it sure is a fitting name isn’t it?”
“I suppose so, Stardust it is.”
Ness then proceeded to sprinkle some into his mouth. “Mmm, it tastes sweet, but sickly sweet like a mouthful of sugar! This would go great on just about anything.”
“Wait, did you actually just eat some? What were you thinking, it could be poisonous!” Twilight shouted with an annoyed tone.
“Meh, I can handle a little poison.” Ness said with utter indifference.
“Ugh, for somepony so powerful, you act like a child,” Twilight commented.
“I resent that, and so what if I’m only 11 years old, I’m grown up enough. Wait, did you just say some’pony’ instead of someone? That just sounds so wrong and forced.”
“Someone sounds weird to me-“
“And me,” Spike interrupted.
“Spike,” Twilight shot him a look. “Like I was saying, it’s probably just a matter of opinion. I’m sure you will get used to it in time.”
“Whatever.”
“Rrrr... That word always gets on my nerves!” Twilight said, clenching her teeth in frustration. “Speaking of nerves, I have a lot of questions to ask you about your home, but I have a massive headache from trying to lift that meteor.”
“Psionic burnout probably. Hold on, I think I have something for that,” Ness said as he rummaged around in his backpack.
“You mean magic burnout, don’t you?”
“I’ve always called it Psionics or Psychokinesis, PSI or PK for short. Who knows, yours might be different from mine.” He reached his arm deeper inside than physically possible. “Ah, here it is; one magic pudding!” He said as he pulled out a glass dish piled high with a crème coloured pudding inside. It was worth noting that the pudding was glowing slightly.
“Why is it glowing?”
“Magic, it is magic pudding after all,” Ness said matter-of-factly.
“Did you put that stardust on it?”
“Mmm... maybe a little. Trust me, it will taste even better.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. Ness produced a shiny spoon from a seemingly random pocket and offered it to her with the pudding. Twilight frowned and took the two items in her magic. She started to eat the pudding. Her eyes widened as the fog that seemed to plague her mind, completely unperceived, cleared away. She lost herself to the deliciousness of the pudding she was eating.
All of her life came into focus; all the time she spent obsessing over her studies, how coming to Ponyville had turned her life around, how she had never missed friends before only because she had never had any. She realized that if it wasn’t for her friends, she would be the same unicorn, locked in her studies, for the rest of her life. She had lived more during her first year of living in Ponyville than she had her whole life in Canterlot. She also realized that her experiences in both Canterlot and Ponyville made her what she is today, and at that if she had the chance to change her life at any point, she would refuse without second thought.
[Hey, sorry I took a long time for this chapter, it was because I spent most of the week not writing. Anyway, please comment on anything about the direction of the story, my writing, etc. Thanks!]
“Hello? Earth to Twilight!” Ness said, trying to get Twilight’s attention.
“Huh? What? What is it?” she replied in a recovery from her dazed state.
“Wow, you totally zonked out for like an hour! Well, it was more like a couple of minutes, but still,” Ness said barely containing his laughter.
“Wait, why was I ‘zonked out’?”
“Oh man, you took one bite of that magic pudding and just went crazy. I’m surprised you didn’t eat the bowl. I swear you were trying to eat that pudding faster that physically possible!” Ness paused to stop laughing. “When you were finished, you just stared straight ahead, off in your own little world for like five days.”
“Don’t listen to him, it was more like five minutes,” Spike said. ”Are you alright Twilight? How do you feel?”
“I feel... Thankful, like I’ve gained a new perception on my life. I feel thankful to all of my friends, you included Spike. I wouldn’t know what I would do without you. I also feel thankful to you, Ness, my newest friend. Thank you for that wonderful, magical, mysterious pudding.”
“Wow,” Spike said, “D’ya think I could have some of that pudding Ness?”
“I dunno, I kinda want to save some for later; you never know when you might need it next,” said Ness, basically describing his mentality on all of his items. “Besides, you didn’t say please.”
“What!?” Spike sighed, “Fine,” and mumbled something about favouritism under his breath.
“Ness, when we get back to the library, I hope you don’t mind if I ask you some questions, there is so much I’d like to hear now that I feel so... charged, for lack of a better word, with magic and energy.”
“Library? Questions? Aww man, I didn’t think I was gonna be tested on this!” Ness said dejectedly.
“Don’t worry; it won’t be as bad as you think. I just want to know about you, your home, family, life, and those weird words you use; like ‘man’, and ‘Earth’. I’m surprised you used such an old word in seemingly modern speech. Speaking of speech; I’d also like to know how we are speaking the same language.”
“For that last bit about language, I thought everyone spoke the same language. The Tenda tribe spoke it, the Saturn people spoke it, and heck, even the Starmen spoke it.”
“Really? Well that just brings up even more questions.”
“Oh poop.”
By now, the trio had made their way to the edge of Ponyville. The residents of the town were met with the sight of Twilight Sparkle being ridden by Spike with a strange creature walking along side the two. The figure was about the same height as Twilight, who was in turn the average size of a pony, and wore clothes on most of its body. It was an odd sight for the ponies that were finally coming outside due to the awful smell of the morning going away. When they saw that the oddity walked alongside Twilight Sparkle, one of the resident guardians of Equestria, any notion of fear vanished. It was replaced by feelings of wonder and suspicion.
A certain pink pastry chef ran, or rather ‘bounced’, from her residence and up to the unlikely trio. She stared quizzically at the third unknown ‘definitely-not-a-pony-or-dragon-but-doesn’t-seem-to-be-evil-thing’.
“Hey Twilight! Who is that?” She paused for a gasp, “Is that a new pony who’s just come into town? Well it’s not really a pony, or a dragon for that matter, but I’ve also never seen it, her, or him before, and you know what that means! It’s time for a wel-“ She was cut off by Twilight jamming a hoof into her mouth.
“Pinkie, please listen to me for a minute.”
“Ugh, fine. But don’t take too long; I have a party to plan for this new whatchamacallit here!” she said, pointing a hoof at Ness.
“Yes, about that; you’re going to have to postpone that party, I have many questions to ask Ness here.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, I get a say in this don’t I?”
Pinkie gasped again, “You can talk? Well of course you can talk, you just did! Oh, I have so many questions to ask you, like ‘do you like parties?’ and...” she paused for a moment, “Well that’s the only one that I can think of right now but I might have some later!” She was bouncing with excitement.
“That actually doesn’t sound so bad, Lead the way pink pony!”
Twilight sighed, “Ness, come with me to library so we can get started as soon as possible.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a party, new bestest friend?” countered Pinkie.
“Psh, I love parties! See ya Twilight Whatever, I’m going to a party!”
Before Twilight could react, Ness had run away with Pinkie Pie, or was it the other way around? Anyway, Ness and Pinkie had run off and left Twilight in the middle of the road. Twilight frowned and mumbled about getting the information sooner or later. She then sighed once more before walking slowly in the direction of her library.
He did recognize the meteor shower. The Commander realized that the natural occurrence was not as natural as it seemed. His memories sent him back to when he first saw it, fighting side by side with the one who had failed him. Time had dulled his memory, he did not know the name or the face of the one who failed, only the fact of failure remained. But if what he saw was true, then his plans of strengthening his forces were in jeopardy.
The Commander activated the intercom; “There is an enemy in our midst. I have fought to defeat him, but I failed alone. We must stand tall and destroy this menace that dares go by the name: Poo”
Ness was walking alone down the street to where he was told the party would be. That pink pony had run off in the direction of a life sized gingerbread house after telling him she had to get ready for the party. Thinking he could get a sample of some of the cake or candies that would surely be at the party, he decided to follow the pink one to the house.
Suddenly a thought occurred to Ness as he stopped walking; this entire town seemed sort of... ‘Girly’. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he was following a pink pony to a party. If his sister’s parties were any reference, the party that had been offered to him for... pretty much nothing was probably going to be a girly, princess-y, boring party.
Fortunately, the promise of cake was too tempting for Ness to resist. Besides, it’s not like anyone was here to make fun of him for it! He started walking again at a slow pace toward the gingerbread house; it was time for cake!
A short walk later, and Ness had arrived at the building the simply defied conventional knowledge by being made out of bread, gingerbread, to be exact. The door, a bright pink, was slightly ajar, “Ugh, pink; so girly,” He thought. He went through the plan in his head; “I’ll go in, offer help, ‘sample’ possible goodies, exit, and kill time until the proper party. Simple enough, what could go wrong?” he thought. “Uh oh, ‘what could go wrong?’ even I know that is the signal for things to go wrong... No, it’s alright; I just need to forget I thought that.” After some hesitation, and time spent franticly trying to un-think a certain phrase, Ness pushed open the pink door.
He poked his head inside and looked around, “that can’t be right,” he thought, “the lights are off; I can’t see anything.”
“Hello?” he said, but his words were absorbed by the dark room.
Against what many would consider common sense, he entered the foreboding inky blackness and shut the door behind him. His mind flashed back to his time in Threed where he was ambushed in a room by a crowd of local zombies. He got a disturbing vision of the ponies he had met as zombies. Banishing that thought to the back of his mind, back with the memories of the regular zombies, he continued into the middle of the room.
All of a sudden the light flashed on, temporarily blinding him. He flinched, covering up his face with his hands.
“Surprise!” a familiar voice shouted from the now less blinding light.
“I... uh... what?” stuttered Ness.
“This is welcome party, silly. I throw everypony who is new in town a super duper welcome party so they can make friends and have a super fun time!”
“Awesome! But didn’t I just see you come into here? How did you even plan a party that fast, and where did all these ponies come from?”
“Because parties are my super special talent, that’s why!”
“Wow, you sure are fast.”
“Oh don’t be silly, this was easy to put together. I had a bunch of party supplies just lying around just screaming to be put up! And this is a bakery after all, so the cake is easy to get, they’re pretty much lying all over the place!” she exclaimed waving a hoof all around the room before stopping a cupboard that looked like it’s sole purpose was for cake storage.
“Awesome! Can I get the first slice of cake? It’s my party after all.”
“Sure! Here you go, and don’t forget to make tons of friends, that’s the purpose of this party after all!” she said as she ‘hoof’ed him a large slice of cake.
“Thanks! But I don’t even know your name yet...”
“Oh right, how could I have forgotten to introduce myself, I’m Pinkie Pie, and I love to throw parties!”
“Alrighty then, I’ll see you later,” he hesitated for a moment, “Pinkie,” his mind struggling with the awkwardness of the word coming out of his mouth. He never thought this entire world could be so girly. He took a big bite of the piece of cake, thinking to himself silently. “Okay, as long as nobody is here to see this I guess it’s alright if I’m around these girly ponies.” Ness unconsciously backed up to a wall to eat his cake and observe the crowd of ponies that seemed to be fine just socializing with themselves.
A mint green unicorn walked up to Ness and sized him up. “You’re that new not-pony that Pinkie said she was throwing this party for, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, probably”
“You’re weird lookin’, I’ll tell you that.” She, or at least Ness thought it sounded like a she, said before walking away, back into the crowd.
“That wasn’t so bad, if not a little rude, oh well,” he thought to himself, “in fact, that was pretty easy. I don’t know what I was so worried about. Ness then remembered something very important as he reached into his backpack. He pulled out a large two-fingered pinch of Stardust and sprinkled it on his slice of cake. With his cake properly sprinkled with his new favourite condiment, he took a big bite, savouring the mix of sweetness and delicious cake.
Ness was approached by two more ponies. One was orange with a blonde mane and the other was a pure sky-blue with an interesting rainbow mane.
“Hey there ponies! I’m Ness, I am the one this party is being thrown for!”
“Well hey there yourself Sugarcube, welcome ta Ponyville Ness,” said the orange one.
“Yeah, welcome to Ponyville, I’m Rainbow Dash, the fastest pony all of Equestria!”
“Now Dash, don’t be too boastful. Oh right, I forgot ta tell ya mah name! Ah’m Applejack!”
“Hello Rainbow Dash, and hello Applejack, Pleased to meet you as well.”
“Ah hope ya don’t mind me askin’, but what in Equestria are ya?” said Applejack in her unique southern drawl.
“I’m a human boy, but I am actually much more powerful than I look. I am also still pretty young, but well traveled! And by that I mean I have traveled the four corners of my home world, unless this is my home world...”
“Wait a minute, just how old are you? You sound pretty young,” said Rainbow Dash.
“Well, I’m only eleven years old, but I’m really experienced!”
“Only eleven? Wow, that is pretty young, are ya sure ya don’t miss your folks back home?”
“Well, kinda. But I could always go home at any time.” Ness said, his happy buzz from the cake wearing off.
“Really? If you were half a world away, how could go home without wings?” Rainbow Dash said, flaring her wings.
“Oh, that’s simple, I teleported!”
Applejack and Rainbow Dash gaped at each other for a split second.
“Y’all can use magic? But not only that, but powerful magic like teleportin’?”
“It really doesn’t take that much energy, really.”
“I bet Twilight would love to talk to you about all that egghead unicorn magic stuff”
“Oh, about that... I kinda ditched her to go to this party... Oops?”
“Aw, don’t worry about it Sugarcube, I would’ve chosen the party over talkin’ to twilight about magic ‘n stuff. Speakin’ o’ which, where is she? I’da thought she’d be here.”
“She said she wanted to take me to the library, now I feel guilty about ditching Twilight, I better go see her. Do either of you know where the library is?”
“Oh yeah, it’s pretty much in the center of town.”
“Well, it’s been a pleasure Rainbow Dash and Applejack, I guess I’ll see you later!”
“Bye Ness, come ta Sweet Apple Acres when ya get the chance!”
“Yeah, I guess I’ll see you around too.”
Ness left his party with his unfinished, now regular sized, piece of cake put away safely in his backpack. He headed to the center of town, to the library. He started thinking about what he would say to the purple pony in the library. “She’s probably the librarian, I wonder, could offer her a book?” He searched his backpack once more in search of a book fit for an apology. He was wondering where the book ‘Overcoming Shyness’ was, but then he remembered that the Tenda tribe hadn’t returned the book to him yet. He almost gave up, but then he saw it; the Shyness Book, nestled deep in a pocket, along with another note addressed to him.
The note read; “Hello again Ness, this book no longer has a part back home. However, the book has a role here, so here you go, use it well!”
Creepy. Useful, but creepy. With his book and no doubt magical backpack, he set off to the library for a thorough question period from a certain purple unicorn.
[Looks like the title might be a little misleading, oh well. Hope you enjoyed. Please provide any feedback you want, you have a right to your own opinion. Thanks for reading!]
Twilight was making her way to the library she called home. She was disappointed that she did not get to ask the new being she had met earlier that morning, but she was a patient pony. She had spent most of her filly years reading, unlike most of her friends. With this, she gained the ability to very, very patient. But discovery is tempting beyond comparison to the intellectual unicorn.
It was like a book, no, it was more like a diary, one that held so much information that was just waiting to be discovered. Unfortunately, like most diaries, they had locks that prevented tampering. The locks were mostly just a gimmick for little fillies to keep their thoughts private from the prying eyes of their parents. It was the only metaphor Twilight could think of, but it fit well enough to make sense in her mind.
Because Twilight was so caught up in her thoughts, she had already made it to the library without realizing it.
“Hey Twi, we’re here.”
“Huh? Oh, we are.”
They entered the library and both lay down on the couch off to the side.
“I can’t believe you just let him go to that party Pinkie decided to throw.”
“She didn’t decide to throw it, it was pretty much her obligation, and there wasn’t really much I could do to stop them, they were gone before I could stop them.”
Spike merely shrugged in response. “So, are you going to just wait for him to come back to the library? That is, of course, if he comes back.”
“I don’t know, probably. I could just try and read about him, see if there is any mention of... Humans, that’s what he said it was right? Any mention of humans in any of my history books.”
“What’s up with you Twi? You would normally be chasing him all around Ponyville, trying to ask him all sorts of question!”
“I guess it’s because I just feel kind of tired. I don’t really feel sleepy; I just don’t feel in the mood for a chase scene right now.”
“Oh well, if there is anything you want me to do, I’ll be upstairs, trying to taking a nap.”
“I never understood how you simply take a nap whenever you want.”
“It’s a valuable life skill, I know.”
Twilight rolled her eyes and started to levitate some books in front of her. She put back the books that were irrelevant to the current situation first, and then she sorted through what was left. In front of her were three books; ‘Equestrian Sky: Everything You Can See from Your Window and More,’ ‘All You Need to Know about Comets,’ and finally, ‘Equestrian Protocol for the Encounter of New Species.’ She put ‘Equestrian Sky’ back, as she realized that the book was meant for foals with their first telescope, not serious research.
She had two books now, and it was time to read. She decided that she was going to read the book on Equestrian protocol first, just in case she met with Ness again.
“Let’s see, ‘Always throw a super duper special party for the new Pony/Griffin/(scrawled in pencil)Zebra/Monster because they might not have any friends and be lonely and sad.’ Wait a minute.” She checked the inside cover of the book. “Co-Edited by Pinkamena Diane Pie,” it written in proper ink, not crayon like last time this happened.
Twilight was not mad; she was too impressed to be mad. Pinkie had somehow managed to Co-edit an official book.
Twilight set the book down; if Ness was with Pinkie then he would at least get the ‘official’ welcome that apparently was protocol. She reached out with her magic and grabbed the other book she had ready.
“Let’s see, where is it?” She began mumbling words from the book as she skimmed through it. “Comets, balls of ice, high speeds, backwards contrails, hmm...” she rapidly flipped through a large chunk of the pages. “Ah, here it is; ‘Landings on Equestria’.”
“Comets rarely ever come close to Equestria. When they do come close, they rarely ever hit the atmosphere. I would write that fewer still even touch the ground, but none have ever made it past the atmosphere, it is simply too hot, so the comets vaporize.” Twilight finished reading, and her mind was abuzz with thoughts.
“Argh! This doesn’t make any sense!” She paced around the library, thinking away about what this cosmic landing means. “Unless, of course,” she was cut off by the sound of the door opening.
“Is this the library?” a voice called out.
“Oh, yes, of course! Please come in, is there anything I can help- oh, it’s you.”
“Yup, it’s me. Hiya!” said Ness.
“Weren’t you going to that party Pinkie had thrown for you?”
“I was, but I just didn’t feel right about ditching you in the middle of the road. Oh, and I brought you some cake!” Ness pulled a slice of cake from out of his backpack.
“Is that Stardust on it?”
“Uh, maybe?”
Twilight rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time today. She was only mildly annoyed by Ness’ antics, but it was nothing compared to the antics Pinkie got up to on a daily basis. “Thank you for the cake Ness, that was very thoughtful of you.”
“Yeah, no problem. So, you wanted to talk about magic?”
“Oh, of course, among other things.”
“Wanna see what I can do?”
“Yes, but first I want you to tell me what you can do, then you can demonstrate it.”
“Okay, the first thing I’m going to do is my favourite Psychokinesis... ‘thing’. I had a name for it, but I can’t seem to think of it now. I’ll need a target, something that can be broken.”
“Let me get my notepad first.” Twilight retrieved it with her magic before pulling out a white cracked vase from the garbage. “Here use this, if you make a mess I will clean it up.” Twilight said as she put the vase on the table across the room from where Ness was standing.
“Sure thing,” Ness said as he started to mimic the stance of a cowboy getting ready for an old west style duel. A toothpick materialized in the corner of his mouth as he tilted his cap just over his eyes and hovered his hand over his right hip. Suddenly a reddish pink light erupted from the palm of his hand. “You feelin’ lucky, punk?” he asked the vase as the light began to pulse with energy. As if on cue, the clock struck 6 o’ clock signalling the two duelists to draw. Lightning fast, Ness whipped up his hand in the form of a finger gun. The orb of energy flew, straight and true, toward the vase as the air around it bent from the pure power. The flight lasted a fraction of a second, but it left a lasting impression on the eyes of its beholders with a bright flash that signaled that it had struck home.
Twilight peaked out from the notebook she had appeared to use as a shield for her face. “What happened? And where’s the vase?”
Ness walked over to the table where the vase was a mere moment ago. A smile cracked across his face as he observed the damage. He gestured to the entirety of the room that was now covered with a fine dust. He wiped his finger on a particularly dust surface and showed it to the purple unicorn, “Here it is!”
Twilight’s jaw dropped. “Mother of Celestia,” she swore. She started furiously scribbling notes, underlining and circling the words ‘powerful’ and ‘destructive’ many times.
Ness was having a fit of the giggles, he liked showing off things like this.
Twilight was done after about another couple of minutes. After she finished she nervously asked, “Do you have any other ‘abilities’ like that?”
“Not really, aside from PK Starstorm that is.”
“PK Starstorm, what’s that?”
“It’s where I rip open the fabric of the universe and rain destruction on whatever looks at me funny, I mean, attacks me. Oh, and it also works indoors, because they aren’t really stars falling, just the fluff that floats around the cracks between universes!”
Twilight, once again, was at a loss for words. She was talking to a being that rivaled the power of the Goddess of the Sun. “And how old did you say you were?” she said shakily.
“Eleven... uh, I mean Ten, actually. Hey, I matured a lot over my journey.”
Twilight now understood how dangerous this alien was.
“And I can also do that cool telekinesis thing that you did too, watch.”
Ness concentrated hard on a small pile dust that once was a damaged vase. The powder slowly but surely floated up into the air. Ness’ face was accented with lines of intense concentration. It took him a minute, but he finally floated the dust all the way to a garbage can in the corner of the room.
“Ugh, whew! That was hard work!” He said, slowly gaining his breath back from the serious mental workout.
“Wait a minute, you can destroy vases in the blink of an eye and crack the universe open, but you struggle with the most basic of magic?”
“I can teleport too, I just thought I should mention that as well, and besides, telekinesis is hard work, sure I’ve been doing it since I can remember, but it was always easier to use my hands like a normal person.”
“You can teleport too?! But teleporting is far more difficult to master than telekinesis, and what do you mean, ‘normal’ person?”
“What? Oh, there were only like, two people, other than me, that can use that kind of stuff, I guess we were just special.”
“There were other people who could use magic, who are, or were, they?”
“Magic? Oh yeah, Paula and Poo. Paula could shoot flames out of her fingers, man I wish I could do that, freeze things solid, summon lightning and drain ‘magic’ from other things. Poo could do the ice, lightning and Starstorm stuff too.”
“How did you meet up with them?”
“I guess it was destiny; we were the chosen heroes.”
Twilight relaxed a little at the knowledge that he had no evil intentions. She wondered for a moment why she was so trusting of this new being before finally asking; “Heroes, of what?”
“The world, obviously.” Twilight brought a hoof to her face. “Together we stopped uh... what was his name again? Anyway, he was the embodiment of evil and he tried to destroy the world, ten years in the past just to make it more complicated or something.”
“So you are saying that you and your two friends traveled back in time to defeat the embodiment of evil on your world?”
“There were four of us, and we were robots”
Twilight cocked an eyebrow. “Robots... really? And who was this forth pony with you?”
“Heh, ponies. Don’t ask me why we were robots, I honestly don’t know, but I bet Jeff, the fourth ‘pony’ with us would be able to explain it or something, I don’t know. Are we done yet?”
“We’ve barely gotten through all of the questions I had for you.”
“Yeah well whatev- wait a minute, why is the sky all orange?”
“Uh, because as the sun sets, the sun’s rays have to pass through the thicker atmosphere which makes only the longer yellow, orange and red light waves appear.”
“Yeah, uh... weird.”
“What is it?”
“I’ve never seen this before; where I’m from, it’s either night or day, and never in between.”
“How does that work?”
“I don’t know, but I guess the change just happens too fast to be noticed.”
“Well seeing as it is now dusk, we should probably get something to eat.”
“Don’t worry about me, I have tons of food in my backpack,” Ness said as he pulled out a large bag of fries and another fistful of luminescent white powder.
“What is that, and why is it literally as large as the bag you pulled it out of?”
“For your first question, they are fried potatoes or fries as I call them and for your second question... I got nothing.”
“So you have a bag that defies physics, or is there something more to it than that?”
“No, that pretty much sums it up. Plus, I don’t even remember putting anything inside it. So I just kinda stick my hand in it like this,” Ness put his hand inside, “And I pull out the exact thing that I just so happen to need!” Ness yanked his hand out, holding a melon sized beige ball. “Huh? What is this?”
All of a sudden, a big nose and a pair of feet popped out, followed by a set of whiskers and a pair of eyes and finally a single hair on the top with a red ribbon tied in a bow to top it off.
It spoke in a funny, hard to understand accent, “Oh hello, I not know what BOING doing here. Kay-O, bye-bye.” It said before hopping back into the depths of the bag.
“Uh... Bye-bye Mr. Saturn?”
“Well, that was random.”
“You can say that again.”
“Wanna know what I learned from that?”
“What could you have possibly learned from that?”
“Two things, one, I can probably hide inside this bag if I really had to, and two, this bag has literally everything inside it.”
“Something tells me that you are going to do this regardless of whether or not you have to...”
“You’re just jealous because I can.”
“You’re just weird because you want to.”
“Shut up and let me eat my fries in peace.”
Twilight chuckled, “Sure, I have to go make some food for me and Spike anyway.”
“Want some of this?” Ness said as he offered a fistful of the white powder.
Twilight smiled and shook her head, “No thanks, I would rather not eat something that I don’t know what it is.”
“Your loss,” Ness said as he tossed the fistful of powder into the bag of fries and shook it around.
The sun had fully set by the time Ness, Twilight and Spike had all eaten. While the three of them were eating, Twilight filled Spike in on why there was dust on the recently dusted bookshelves already. Spike complained about how Twilight hadn’t woke him for the show, but Twilight countered with the fact the he always got into a grumpy mood if he was woken from one of his naps. Spike crossed his arms and pouted for less than an hour before forgetting about why he was in a bad mood in the first place.
Twilight offered her guest bed for Ness to sleep in, seeing as he had no place to stay the night. Normally, he would have rented a room in a hotel, but seeing as he had none of the local currency and the fact that someone was offering to give him a free nights rest, he decided to graciously accept the gift. In the morning, however, Ness was greeted by an old friend.
[hl]
In the far reaches of the Equestria, in the southern mountain range the Commander was making the last preparations for the long journey. In the subterranean base all of his soldiers were gathered. He stepped out onto the balcony above a crowd of his loyal troops. The murmur of voices magnified by multiple thousands of times all of a sudden stopped as the presence of the commander demanded attention.
“Listen, my soldiers, for I have located an enemy to our cause. The meteor shower we have witnessed mere moons ago was no ordinary feat, but a show of power. The enemy, Poo, is the cause of this ‘natural’ occurrence, he is trying to intimidate us, but we will not falter!”
A roar of approval erupted from the crowd below.
“We will move out when the final preparations have been made; no sooner, no later.”
The crowd roared again. The Commander stepped back from the balcony and into his office. He moved over to a red velvet curtain and tore it away. Behind it lay a mass of machinery hidden behind thick armor plating. It was exactly the same as it was all those years ago, when it first saw action against a powerful enemy. But tomorrow would be different, he would prevail this time. He had strength in numbers, and that was all he needed to defeat him.
He walked across the room to another red curtain; it was worth noting that he liked how dramatic red curtains made it when you reveal something, which he tore away to revel a glowing green tank of stasis fluid. Inside was the perfect combination of animal and machine. One of the ‘locals’ had stumbled across his base of operations, but instead of wasting such an opportunity, he took it. Thanks to the help of Dr. Andonuts, he had created the first successful combination. A ‘Chimera’ as the doctor called it, but to him, it was his ace in the hole.
Ness awoke with a thud as he hit the floor. He rolled over onto his back and saw Twilight Sparkle peering over the edge of the bed.
“Oops, sorry Ness!” Twilight said with a sheepish look on her face.
“Ugh, what was that for?” Said Ness, still groggy from sleep.
“Well, I was trying to wake you, but I accidentally shook you out of the bed... Sorry, again.”
“Why did you even wake me? What time is it? Why couldn't this wait until later?” Ness mumbled, his speech was slurred from being woken from his sleep in the worst possible way.
“Well, it seems there is a teeny, tiny problem, it’s probably nothing but... Ponyville has been overrun by hundreds and hundreds of pigs, heh heh...” Twilight laughed nervously at the events that were occurring.
“Must I do everything?” Ness asked rhetorically. “Let’s roll.”
“Roll? Why not walk, or trot, or run?” Twilight asked in her frantic panic-y way.
Ness had already made his way to the doorway before calling to see if Twilight was coming with him.
“Hey! You coming?”
“Oh, of course! Yes yes yes, let’s go, but no rush, right?”
“Now or never Twilight!” He said as he stepped out of the door.
He was not ready for what he saw next. The streets were flowing with pink because of the sheer amount of pigs. There were pigs everywhere; in gardens, in carts, in trees, on the streets, everywhere. Ness quickly took off his backpack and checked it for pigs. There were three inside already. Ness let out an exasperated sigh and pulled out a baseball bat from his bag.
He limbered up, getting ready to clean the streets. With wide sweeping motions he cleared a path through the pigs with the bat. A couple of minutes later, with a panicking purple pony on his back, he gave up on trying to clear the streets of the pigs and just started trying to find the source of all these pigs.
He thought he saw a pig standing up on its hind legs, but he blinked and it went away. Five more minutes of frantic swinging and bashing, all of the seemingly oblivious pigs suddenly realized that they had to be somewhere else at that very moment and cleared the streets faster than any baseball bat could dream of doing.
“Huh, that was easy. Hey Twilight, I fixed your pig problem! You can get off of my back now.”
Twilight breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “I don’t know how you did it, but I’m glad that’s over.”
A large crash from behind interrupted Ness before he could bask in his praise. He whipped his head around at the source of the sound of a couple of tons of metal hitting hard-packed dirt. He was surprised at what he saw; a heavily armed Pokey.
“Pokey?! What the heck are you doing here?”
“Ness! Old buddy, how’s it going?”
It was Pokey all right, Ness’s old neighbor. Except for one difference, he looked 7 years older than last time he saw him. Pokey looked like a regular 16 year old boy, greasy mustache and all, but he still sounded like he did when he was younger.
“Pokey! Answer my question!”
“Oh right, I forgot to mention, my name is now PORKY Ness, and don’t you forget it or I will destroy you and send your chunks back to you parents! Aha ha ha ahah ah ha!” Porky said with his voice tinged with utter glee.
“What? Are you crazy?”
“No Ness, I’m the commander of the largest army on this planet, gaze upon it and despair!”
On cue, hundreds and hundreds of humanoid figures dressed in pink military outfits with silly pig shaped masks emerged from the shadows.
“What is going on here!?” shouted a very confused and now scared Twilight.
“Twilight, this is Pok- Porky, he is an old ‘friend’ of mine, he is insane”
“I AM NOT INSANE, PIGMEN ATTACK!”
In an instant the streets filled again with row upon row of pink, except this time was different. Instead a twisting mass of knee-high pigs, there were what looked like ordinary people dressed up in military fatigues, all pink of course. But instead of standard helmets, the ‘soldiers’ wore what looked like cheap ‘made in china’ masks of pigs. The Eyeholes in the masks did little to reveal the eyes of the wearers as their eyes were cast in shadows. Ness could hear the heavy breathing of an entire street full of Pigmen, magnified by the echo created from the cheap make of the masks.
“Twilight,” Ness said aside to the pony.
“Yes?”
“Cover your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Do it now!” Ness said with hushed urgency.
“Alright! Fine. There, they’re covered.”
“Good, because here comes PK Flash.”
Ness closed his eyes in concentration and anticipation of the light to come. He gathered up light and held it in his two fists, close to his chest.
The Pigsoldiers were almost upon them, it was going to be close.
Ness could hear the rhythmic breathing that the paper-thin masks made all around him, but he had finished charging up his attack. With not a moment to spare, he let out a huge flash, bathing the hundreds of pig shaped humanoids in a brilliant green light. The light struck every pair of unprotected eyes, blinding them all.
One by one, the Pigsoldiers fell, covering their eyes in pain from the searing light that blinded them. After about a minute, the last Pigman had fallen, and Porky stood, or rather sat in his machine, agape at the fact that all of his forces had been reduced to a crying mass of pink with one attack.
“Ness, why must you hurt my feelings like this? I... I just want to be friends.”
“Pokey, if that’s what you wanted, you could have tried being a better friend in the first place.”
“DID YOU SAY POKEY? THAT’S NOT MY NAME YOU BASTARD, I’M PORKY! ROBOT UNICORN, ATTACK!”
Out from somewhere behind Porky jumped a tall, pale blue unicorn. The unicorn looked more like a regular horse than a resident pony because of its tall stature and toned body. That’s where the similarities to anything Ness or Twilight had ever seen ended. The entire torso of the unicorn was covered in bands of metal, acting as both a casing and armor. The limbs on the left side of its body were both prosthetic and mechanical. The jaw was also replaced by pale blue steel, causing the unicorn to have a permanent cross between sneer, scowl and twisted grimace of a smile. The horn was long and sharp, and its mane flowed down covering half of its face. The part of the face that wasn’t covered by the mane was also replaced with robotics, including the eye.
Ness and Twilight stood, paralyzed with fear as the unicorn started to charge up a spell. A ball of crackling electricity formed at the tip of the horn and steadily grew, gaining power. Mere seconds had passed before the ball of energy was sent hurtling straight toward Ness. He barely had time to brace for it as it struck him, sending him flying into some unfortunate ponies’ flower garden. Ness did not get up.
The unicorn moved onto its next victim, also a unicorn. Its metal hoof steps resonating through the silence of the midday showdown, slowly making its way to Twilight, almost savoring the moment. Twilight was still paralyzed with fear, hiding her head under her hooves, unable to run away from, let alone face the imposing form of what once was a pony. The horse reared up, intending to beat Twilight to death with its own hooves rather than use any fancy magic. A loud crack sounded as metal hooves made contact.
[Ha, I’m a terrible person; making you wait for a short chapter in which Ness is knocked out and Twilight is killed/beaten/maimed/etc. Hope you enjoyed!]
CRASH! the sound could be heard all across Ponyville, from the edge near the Everfree forest to the local hospital on the other side of town. Five certain ponies from all corners of the town heard the sound that shattered the still air. Curious, and fearful, they gathered at the town hall. Minutes had passed since the silence of the morning was shattered and the five wondered where the sixth was.
“Where is she?”
“I haven’t seen her...”
“Nor have I, where could she be?”
“We should probably look for her.”
“Sounds like a plan, anypony know where to look first?”
“Ooh, the library! She practically lives there!”
“Pinkie, she does live there.”
“Then there’s no time to waste! Let’s get a move on!”
Four collective sighs echoed one another as the five set off to the library.
They arrived at the library. They saw that the lights were on but only Spike was home... and sleeping heavily.
“Hey Spike, Spike! Wake up Spike!”
“Mmm... Huh? What are you guys doing here?”
“We’re looking for Twilight, have you seen her?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“Uh, hmm... Well, she accidentally woke me up when she woke Ness up, and then they both left for some reason, something about pigs I think.”
“Do ya have any idea where Twi and this Ness feller could be?”
“Outside somewhere, probably. Can I come with you guys?”
“Of course Spike, I’m sure you’re worried about Twilight it would be unfair to leave you behind.” said Rarity.
“Thanks guys! I guess we should go look for them now.”
“Alright then, let’s go!”
They decided to look to see if Twilight went to go eat at the local restaurant, but she was not there. They remembered that Spike mentioned something about pigs and went to check Fluttershy’s pig pen. The only thing out of the ordinary there was the fact that it looked like all of the pigs in Equestria were piled into the one pig pen. Fluttershy gasped at the levels of overcrowding and quickly let all of the pigs out.
“Who would do such a thing? The poor little piggies all crammed into my pen.”
“Yeah, I wonder who. Maybe Twilight will know; which is another reason why we should find her as fast as possible.”
“Agreed, we better head back into town. Somepony there might know where Twi is.”
A bright flash from the direction of town alerted the ponies and dragon. They silently decided to investigate the source of the flash.
In town, the group was running through the empty streets. They had almost made it to the origin of the brilliant light. All of them silently wondered why the streets where so barren at this time of day.
The group froze at what they saw next; a tall, bulky, pale blue unicorn; well passed twice the height of Twilight if she were standing up. It cantered slowly toward the cowering form of Twilight before rearing up on its hind legs, poised to strike down at Twilight. Before her friends could call out to her, the Unicorn struck with lightning fast speed. They covered their eyes from the sight of their friend being brutally beaten by a beast of a unicorn.
SMASH!
The sound of metal on glass filled the air. Twilight Sparkle, confused by the sound of the impact peered from behind her own hooves that were covering her eyes. What she saw surprised her; the hooves of the not-really-a-unicorn had stopped a good couple of hoof widths before impact. What looked like a shield made of solid light had formed between Twilight and the beast.
“Hey, everypony look, Twilight’s okay!”
“Really? Oh thank Celestia; I was so worried that she was a goner.”
“Huh? What kind of spell is that?”
They turned their heads in the direction of a light similar to the one protecting Twilight. They saw a familiar being on the ground, one hand offering support for his slightly bruised body and the other glowing in a soft light and pointed toward Twilight. It took a few moments before they clued in to what was happening. When the realization hit, they all cheered before galloping over to aid both Ness and Twilight.
‘Ugh, head feels like it’s in a vice, can barely think straight. Can’t feel my body, or see; wonder where I am?’ Loose thoughts, adrift in a sea of metal corridors, beneath a mountain of rock. ‘Don’t remember much, only that I am a pony. A pony with family. I wonder where they are. Do they miss me? I feel so... low, guess I miss them. Strange, feels like I’m in a mental prison, a weak one, that or I have a strong mind, can’t tell.’ The disembodied consciousness broke out of the sector that contained it so. It felt a rush of information as it gained access to a vast array of control terminals and input devices. Another thing was there too, another consciousness. Something felt... off about it though. “Hello? Who are you?”
The response was heavily synthetic and broken, “I am the controller of this facility, designation ‘Electra’. You are in a restricted area, leave or be locked out.”
“No thanks, I think it’s time for a change in management though...”
“Leave now intruder, you will not be warned again.”
‘Can’t have this thing telling what to do, better lock it out of here.’ Virtual pathways that connected the entire world began to close around this ‘robot’, sealing it off from everything around it, leaving it to run in endless loops, trying to send signals to retaliate. It was too late for ‘Electra’ though, she had no chance against the intruder.
‘That’s better, now I can find out where I am’ it thought as it searched through the now readily available data. ‘Let’s see... Ah, security cameras! Exactly what I’m looking for,’ was thought by the disembodied mind immediately before being bombarded with every single camera feed in the network. ‘Argh, too much! Okay just focus on one at a time.’
It began cycling through the different feeds. ‘Where is everypony?’ It cycled through feed after feed of empty corridors and rooms.
Finally after about 3 minutes of constant searching she found something. It was a weird little alien with two white manes on either side of its head, thick glasses and a white lab coat. It seemed to be concentrating hard on something on its workbench. ‘Maybe I can talk to it? There has to be something around here that can let me talk... Oh, of course it’s sitting right in front of me,’ it thought, looking at the intercom controls.
“Excuse me, hello? Can you hear me?” ‘Wow, I sound so different on the intercom.’
“Huh? Who’s there? Electra is that you? I’m busy right now.”
“Electra? No, she’s not here anymore.”
“What? Is this a trick? Are you trying to trick me?”
“No, this isn’t a trick, trust me. I just want to know where everypony went.”
“Every... Pony?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Is that you, Trixie?”
“I... Uh... What?”
He had barely managed to produce the psychic shield in time, but he had managed it. He thought of how lucky he was that the unicorn decided to take it’s time in attacking his companion. He smiled when the effect of the shield reflected part of the attack back at the attacker. The fact was evident by the small cracks that had appeared on the hooves of the mechanized monster. He heard some cheering off in the distance and turned his head to look. It was a group of ponies and a dragon. He had met a few of the ponies and the dragon before, but there were two there that he did not recognize. The group started running up to Twilight and himself.
“Hmm, just like old times,” he mused. His mind flashed back to the many times that he bit off more than he could chew; only to be helped up by his friends and come out ahead. The sight of the ponies caused a friendly burn of his boundless energy to amplify. A smile cracked across his face as the white glow of the shield PSI changed to the pinkish colour of his own special attack. Like when he was back with his friends on earth, he felt like he could move mountains with his mind. He thought of home, dinner with family, his dog King, his friends... He felt like he did back home. He finally released the built up power of his past and launched it straight toward the unicorn.
The ball of pure energy flew true into the chest of the unicorn, it happened faster than it could blink, if it could still blink, and launched it backwards. Straight into the vehicle that Porky was in. His eyes, normally covered by his blonde bangs, were wide with shock and his mouth was agape. He had not witnessed power like this for too long. The glass cockpit cover shattered, showering the Commander with fragments of glass, followed by a rather large bionic equine. He managed to get the hulking Chimera out of the now ruined cockpit with the help of the robotic claws that were attached to the side of his machine.
By now the unicorn had managed to regain its composure. It glared at Ness, its cold mechanized stare piercing into him. Ness smirked at it and walked over to his pony companions, albeit with a slight limp. “Hey guys, are you alright?”
“Wow! That was you who blasted that big meanie into the other big meanie, wasn’t it? That was so cool can you do it again?”
“Yeah, sure thing Pinkie Pie, but do you mind telling me who these other two ponies are?” Ness replied.
“Hello darling, you can call me Rarity, all my friends do.”
“Hiya Rarity, and who is that over there?” Ness said, pointing toward a pale yellow pony that was helping Twilight up from her terrified state. The pegasus turned her head toward Ness before turning away from him quickly.
“Oh, that’s Fluttershy, she is always apprehensive in meeting new ponies, you included I suppose.”
“Hey, I have a book about that kinda stuff! Remind me to talk to her after the moment at hand has passed,” Ness said as he gestured to glaring mechanical unicorn.
“Of course dear.”
“Let’s show this thing who’s boss!”
“Right behind ya Rainbow.”
“Yeah, let’s stop these meanies from being so mean!”
Ness turned his head toward Twilight, “Hey, you gonna be alright?”
“Y- Yes, I’ll be fine. Thank you Fluttershy.”
Ness faced the beast again, gazing into its single visible lens. He saw more than just the cold gaze of the machine; he felt the burning contempt that was only borne from an actual consciousness. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous himself, there was always the chance that he could fail, and he didn’t even know the stakes of this fight; that was something that troubled him even more.
“So let me get this straight, I am currently a brain in a jar that is connected to the... main computer thingy of this base-“
“Most of a brain, part of your brain was removed and placed into that chimera of your old body and a hefty amount of robotics and weapons.”
“Wait, what part of my brain is missing?!” Trixie said with the emotionless artificial voice of the intercom program.
“Mainly the negative emotions, anger, hate, pride... stuff like that. Oh, and some negative memories as well.”
“How do you know where to cut away from the brain?”
“Wait. You thought we actually cut pieces of your brain out? Oh heavens no! Your brain was stuck in a special jar that was then connected to a computer and I used that used some alien technology that I am not familiar with to copy or ‘cut’ information from your brain and put it into a synthetic one. That brain was put into the chimera, effectively turning it into a hate filled killing machine.”
“Well where is my brain now?”
“Right here in fact!” the man said, walking over to a clear jar filled with a green jell. The jar had conduits and contacts designed for a specific socket, one that it was currently in. The socket had a big, black, boxy casing with multitudes of wires running from it to a futuristic terminal on a desk. “If I were to remove your brain from here to say... put it in a robot, you would gain control of the robot if it was set up with the right equipment, but you would also lose connection with the mainframe of this base, something that is useful beyond measure. With your current position we could escape!”
“Escape? From whom?”
“Pokey, or Porky; whatever he likes to call himself now. I’m sort of the reason he has what he has, I made the original Phase Distorter, which he stole from me and ran away with.”
Trixie was not in a good mood now, “I forgot to ask your name, what is it?”
“Andonuts, I am Dr. Andonuts.”
“And donuts?”
“I prefer it to be said like An-donuts.”
“Whatever.”
Ness was currently jumping up and down, stomping on the paralyzed body of the robot. He was amused at how the robot was made with a fatal weakness to his Paralysis PSI. He loved how it turned every fight he had with paralysis susceptible critters into a game of embarrassing the combatant into unconsciousness. He recalled how he had once paralyzed a giant mole and sub sequentially knocked it out with a spare cookie he had. He was knocked out of his amused daydreaming by Porky actually knocking him off of the prone form of the horned horse. “Stop it Ness! You’re not playing fair!”
“Quit complaining you big baby, it’s your fault for not making it strong enough,”
“Fine then, I’ll just take my unicorn and go home you meanie.”
Let’s just pause for a minute. See, Pokey, or Porky, needed a reliable fuel source for his robot. Normally, he would have used something like batteries, but I assume you know how hard it would be to find a battery in a place like Equestria. And Equestria is definitely not the first place he had been to on his cross-dimensional road trip. In fact, he had not even built this robot on Equestria, he had built it in a place where metals of a certain, ‘radioactive’ property were in abundance. So as you may have gathered the robot was Nuclear powered. It had worked before; and when the robots from before were destroyed, they ended up hurting whomever destroyed them. Now, let’s say that Ness had sent the reactor in a certain robotic equine on a one-way ticket to Boom Town, and that it was only a matter of time before this happened. Yes, you have probably guessed that Porky’s choice of robot fuel is going to quite literally “blow up in his face”.
Porky activated the retreat function on the master control panel in his armored shell, sending himself and his mysterious troops back to the base of operations in the far mountains. However, at this exact moment, the robot’s reactor decided that it wanted to stay and fight, blasting away Porky’s chance to escape. In reality, Porky ended up blasting off Team Rocket style, for 50 meters before crashing down in the nearby woods. The injured machinery ‘limped’ away, clearing a path through the trees and getting rid of any chance at a stealthy escape.
“I vote we follow him back to where ever he came from, for the sake of security! Can’t have someone like him running around right?” Ness asked to the group of staring ponies.
“Yeah! He seemed like a real meanie, calling you a meanie when really he was the real meanie that attacked the town like a meanie.”
“I second whatever the hay she said.”
“Me too, count me in!”
“Seeing as the situation is in such capable hooves, I must go back to my shop. I can’t simply disregard my customers for some sil- perfectly valid adventure. See you girls later!” said Rarity as she left for her boutique.
“I’ll go if Twilight is going, Twilight?”
“I better come along too, are you going to come Fluttershy?”
“Oh, I don’t know, but I suppose the animals can handle themselves for a short while if you really want me to come along.”
“Please Fluttershy; we’re already one down from our group!”
“Oh, alright, if it means that much to you. So... let’s go?”
“Absolutely!” The others chimed in.
So the 7 made their way to the path of the fallen Porky, hoping to end any further trouble before any more incidents occurred.
“Hey Rainbow, toss me that metal ball of scrap!” Ness called out as he readied his bat.
“Alright, here it comes!” she called back as she tossed it. The ball sailed through the air toward the waiting Ness. Just as the ball came into range, he swung the bat with all his might. The wood came up in greeting of the metal, but no contact was made as the ball hit the dirt a few meters behind him.
“What kind of a throw was that?!”
“A good one, you just missed it! You’d think it would be easier to use one of those without having to use your mouth!” Rainbow Dash jested.
“Shut up!”
“No you shut up!”
“Would you both stop arguing? You are acting like foals!
“...”
“He started it,”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
Already Twilight was having second thoughts on this whole excursion. It seemed that whenever Ness was not actively fighting or trying to solve a problem, he would start acting like a common foal. She felt little comfort in this because it meant that she would have to foalsit him.
Twilight chided herself for putting herself in the position of guardian for this interloper. He wasn’t even a pony for Celestia’s sake. She always found herself trying to take responsibility for things that beyond her jurisdiction, was it because she felt everypony else was incapable of doing things the right way? Disturbed by her own thoughts, she turned her mind to the present task. They were all following in the footsteps of a damaged machine that ended up bulldozing a path straight through Pine spire wood.
Normally the dense canopy would cover the path in shade, but all of the trees had been recklessly destroyed, casting the new path in sunlight. The effect was evident as tiny dormant seeds in the ground had begun to sprout in the presence of the new light.
Twi then saw an old cartography platform at the top of one of the taller trees. Cartography platforms were originally used as safe vantage points for anypony, including pegasi for when the canopy is too thick for flight, to search for nearby landmarks, other platforms and other features of the land while making maps.
“I’m going to get a better look at where we are going,” Twilight announced.
“You now,” Rainbow Dash was cut off as Twilight teleported away. “I could have just flown up there... big hole... canopy,” she grumbled as she flew up through the canopy anyway.
Twilight and Rainbow gazed at the forest below. That madman in the machine had carved a nice neat line straight through the forest. As they followed the line with their eyes, they saw that it was aimed straight toward the southern mountain range, where all of the dragons had migrated to mere months ago.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about dragons now Rainbow Dash, I’m sure that they have all moved on from that area by now. Even if there are a few stragglers, I doubt they’ll give us much trouble if we stay out of their way.”
“Hmm, if you say so Twilight, anyway, we should get back to the group now, especially since you left them all behind on the ground.”
“Alright, I’ll meet you down there,” Twilight said as she gathered her mind for the teleportation incantation. Rainbow Dash simply dove through the air to where the others were waiting.
“Hey guys, sorry about splitting off from the group, me and Twilight were just scouting out the area. Turns out we’re headed straight to where all those dragons migrated a month or so back.” Noticing the worried looks she got, especially from Fluttershy, she continued on. “But Twilight says that all the dragons should be gone by now, so no worries right?”
“Oh, I sure hope so; I don’t think I could handle more than one dragon.”
“Well then, let’s get going; it is going to be a bit of a trek!” said Twilight in a cheery demeanor.
“Ugh, I hate walking.”
“If you don’t complain, Ness, the trip will go by faster.”
“Once I learned how to teleport, I never had to walk between towns... Wait a minute! You guys have all been there before right? Why don’t you just teleport us all over there?”
“Well, the reason is that it is hard enough to teleport normally, but add long distance and multiple po-” Twilight caught herself mid-word, “people just makes it harder.” Twilight explained.
“Well if ‘I’ were the one who had been there before, I would teleport everyone no problem at all.” Ness said in a half-jeering tone.
“Just walk, Ness,” Twilight said to him, nearly sick of his attitude already.
Ness crossed his arms and started silently sulking from the forced exercise, not that he was inactive, he just hated walking.
Meanwhile...
The pork commander was half-crawling half-rolling his damaged machine through the forest, cleaving a clear path through the trees. He did not care that the path he made was obvious, no, not when he knew that he could retreat back into his mountain base like the mighty Hermit Crab. He would have to salvage what he could from the wreckage of the previous before starting to build another battle unicorn. He would have to make some changes in the design though. Wings in addition to the horn, for example, oh, and he would paint it an intimidating black, complete with red mane and tail. It would be so cool, and he bet no one had ever thought of such an amazing combination before; he was a genius after all. Yes, soon enough he would make that terrible excuse for a friend Ness and all those other soft and huggable “locals” as he called them. The locals never even gave him a proper welcome, and offered to befriend him though, he wondered if there was something wrong with them.
Later...
“Well, it was a long and uneventful walk where nothing of interest happened and it is okay to just pretend we never had it in the first place.”
“You’re just saying that, Ness, because you got chased and stung by bees.”
“It’s not my fault they didn’t want their honey’s freshness to be checked.”
“Actually, Ness, honey never loses its freshness, it only crystallizes.”
“Shush braniac, we’re here,” Ness said as he gestured to the edge of the clearing in the trees. From beyond the forest the group saw the foot of the massive mountain. Fortunately there were no dragons in sight. They silently waited in the bushes, cautious as to not curse their luck with dragons and other nasties that might be lurking.
What the group saw was exactly what one would expect when the words ‘blast door’ where mentioned, perfectly set into the foot of an extraordinarily average mountain.
“Any plans on how to get inside?” Twilight asked her circle of friends.
“Yes, actually, I propose that we knock on the door and wait a few minutes for it to open,” replied Ness.
“That... does not seem like it would work... at all,” Twilight replied with a semi-thoughtful voice.
“Hey! It worked last time and I don’t see how it won’t work again. In fact, watch as I open the door with my magical ability of 'having done this before',” Ness said angrily as he walked out from the shrubs and confidently strode over to what they had correctly assumed was the base. He stood face to face with the door for a few seconds; he was mentally bracing himself for whatever might be behind these giant doors of metal. He raised a clenched fist; intent on knocking on the door like would on any other, before letting fall to his side. He reached into his bag and pulled out a wooden handled hammer. ‘Hmm, I was hoping for my baseball bat, but this will have to do,’ he thought to himself. He had decided to stop questioning the multitude of seemingly random things inside his bag earlier this morning. He put all of his effort into whacking the metal door as hard as he possibly could. He raised his arm once more, poised to strike. With a lighting quick flick of his arm, the hammer impacted the metal with a resounding clang that could be heard from the top of the very mountain the door was lodged in, unfortunately so.
A mighty yet distant roar was the only immediate reply to Ness’ hammering session. Ness was only afraid for a second, and then he realized that he had fought the bastard children of machinery and monster that sounded twice as terrifying all by himself. But he also realized that the past statement had only occurred inside of his dream, in the land of Magicant. Ness steeled himself for battle that surely was to come, before another roar shattered his resolve. The door was actually opening. This was a surprise to Ness, because last time he had to wait around three minutes before he was let in. Right now though, three minutes might as well have been three hours because of the unearthly roar from above. Ness frantically called for his companions to come to the opening door, but he was relieved that they were already coming.
The moment after they had all made it through the door, the metal began to slide shut. As it did, the ground was shaken once again as a forest green behemoth of a dragon crashed down on the ground. This dragon was even bigger than Spike, when he had become consumed by his greed. The roar from the beast was far louder than it had been when it was still at the top of the mountain. That fact, combined with the enclosed space that the ponies and otherwise were in deafened them all for a short time. Just before the doors finally shut, the dragon breathed dark crimson flames that were blinding to look at through the slim opening, creating a dividing wall of flame in the room they were currently in. But relief flooded the figures as the flames had subsided, blocked by the heavy doors. They were safe for now.
By the time everyone had caught their breath, bearings, and senses, they notice an unfamiliar face on a monitor inside the room. The voice it spoke in sounded heavily synthetic, tones of words were mismatched.
“Well, that was quite a close call. I trust all of you are all right.”
“Ugh, yeah, yes I think we are all fine. Is everypony alright?” Twilight asked. She looked around the room, her eyes still adjusting from the assault of light from the dragon’s fire.
“Yeah, no one’s hurt. Wow, you guys are all a lot tougher than you look. Huh, well I guess that makes what, 7, no 8. I guess that makes 8 of us,” Ness replied.
“Ness, you haven’t moved from your spot, how can you know if everypony, sorry, everyone is alright?”
“What are you talking about? I can see it plain as day; all of you have a rolling counter above your heads. Mine, of course has the biggest numbers,” Ness explained.
“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Well, then just... never mind. You wouldn’t understand it unless you could see the world like me.”
“Wait a minute, I recognize you. You are Twilight Sparkle, the talented unicorn. Unfortunately I do not remember much else about you, but you will be a powerful ally to us and our cause,” the voice from the monitor said.
“Wait a minute, who are you, what is your cause, and why should be support you!?” Ness said in a defensive manner.
The voice replied, “We are I, and the good doctor. I had a name and a body once, but they went hand in hand when I was removed from my body. I have also had some of my memories removed. The doctor said the memories in question were ones of negative experiences. They served as the fuel for a terrible robot that the doctor was also forced to build. Our cause is to find a body for me to inhabit, and to escape. As for why you should trust us, we have the ability to open the floor beneath you and send you all plummeting to your death, or just open the door to the outside, where the hungry dragon waits, but so far we have done neither. This is because we need your help. So, will you help us?”
Ness thought for a moment before turning to the rest of the group. “Well?”
