> What is Madness? > by Broniesrponies2 > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This is Equestria! Right? > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The sound that woke Equestria was a strange giggling, unlike that of a normal pony. It sounded like giggling, that little light -hearted "heeheehee" that is usually associated with the word. The problem was that this sounded just a little bit off. Midnight and Octavia were walking down Mane street towards the palace when they heard it. It was coming from the direction that they were going in, so, what was there to do but investigate? Midnight conjured a paper plane and flew it to Princess Luna's balcony just to be sure. Silently, he hoped that the noise wasn't his princess herself. She could be rather strange when she was drunk. They turned the corner to find a strange being wandering around in circles. It stood on two legs, had fur on its head only, and was quite likely to fall over in a few seconds. Over it went. The strange giggling sound didn't stop. Instead, it seemed to intensify as the creature started trying to get to its feet. "It looks kind of like a human, doesn't it?" asked Octavia, shrinking a little behind Midnight. Midnight looked at his companion, then turned back to the thing that was flopping like a dead fish all over the palace steps. He pictured Lyra when she had been turned into a human. Then tried to superimpose the image. It was different. This one was covered in what he assumed to be clothes, except they were a plain black and clearly not meant for decoration. It also had a short brown mane and, unlike Lyra, it had fur on its face, but nowhere else in sight. "Yees," said Midnight, rubbing his chin with his hoof. Perhaps they should take it inside. It was a lot thinner than Lyra had been as well. Midnight cast a levitation spell on the thing and lifted it above the steps, Octavia ran ahead to the palace doors, where two guards were nervously waiting. "Open the gates!" called midnight from where he was carrying the still ethereally giggling human thing up the stairs. The two guards snapped to attention and pushed the gates open, saluting Midnight as he carried the creature through. They walked to the infirmary where they found Princess Luna, Vinyl and one of Luna's new guards. The guard was holding a bucket for Vinyl to throw up into. Luna was sitting on a bed nearby, watching the spectacle. She looked up as the trio came in, preceded by a rise in the volume of the giggles. "Midnight!" called Luna, teleporting over and embracing her recently returned friend. Octavia looked a little miffed at the length of the hug, but let it slide this time. Instead, she coughed politely and pointed to the giggling creature that was literally hanging over their heads. Luna's eyes widened as she saw it, then she tried to cast the spell to turn it back into a pony. Her eyes widened further when it didn't work. "Midnight, this isn't a pony." she said gravely. "I can see that," said Midnight, looking up at the gently turning figure. "No, I mean that it never was a pony. I don't think that its from this universe even." "But isn't that impossible?" asked Octavia. The giggling stopped. "Oh absolutely. There are millions of universes all stacked up together like pies in a shop. Sometimes, the components of the pie, the atoms and stuff, build a catapult. That catapult launched me across into your pie and now I'm hungry." said the probable human, then it giggled again. "What?" asked Midnight. He looked at Luna who shrugged. Vinyl looked up from her bucket. "There wash a random shpace-time event that ripped a hole in hish univershe and shent him through the void to our univershe. I would gueshshsh that he'sh alive becauje he let his mind take the damage inshhhtead of his body, but ash it is, he still wasted away quite a lot. He also wants lemon meringue pie." The rest of the room, except from the human, now gently turning in the air, stared at Vinyl. "What?" asked the white unicorn. Her face turned green and dipped back into the bucket. "How did you understand that?" asked Luna, dumbfounded. "Drunksh know how to communicate wif each other." replied Vinyl between heaves. She looked up again. "I'm shurprised that nun of you understood it." The giggling paused again. "I'm not drunk. I'm perfectly sober. I just got pulled through a very small, wide, round, squishy, squibbly, jellyy..." he continued to make up adjectives as Midnight looked at Luna and Octavia. Luna's newer guard spoke up. "Perhaps you could look into his mind, Luna. That might give us a clue about what he's talking about." He suggested. Luna looked at him and then shook her head. "I wouldn't know where to begin. I'm not even sure I could. Its just-" she was cut off by the figure sharply changing the subject of his ramblings to another relevancy. "Can't have that. Someone get me a piece of paper." He looked down at the ponies below him. "Come ooooon. Do it." The guard handed Octavia the bucket and then walked over to the nurse's office. By the time he got back, the bucket had been passed to Midnight, to Luna and then to Vinyl, who had promptly knocked it over. The guard sighed as he held the paper up to the figure. Then he pulled out a pencil and passed it up as well. "Right," said the human, now upside down. "'Then, suddenly Luna could read the mind of the human, no matter the difficulty.' There ya go now, go and have some fun. Bring back some fish. I like fish." the human dictated, then dropped the paper and pencil. The effect was instant. Luna felt like she was hit by a bolt of lightning. Her eyes locked onto the figure above and she dove and swam through his mind. She saw it all, the flying fish, the chunk of ice coming towards her, the trip through the void. She looked over to Midnight, who was watching the figure in shock. "So," he said numbly, "Whatever he writes happens." "It appears so. Perhaps there are limitations," said Luna. "Judging from his state of mind, we should keep him away from writing materials." said Octavia. Everyone else looked at her and nodded, then looked back up at the human, now resuming his mysterious giggling. > A Midsummer Night's Reality > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Midnight tossed and turned on the bed next to Octavia. He couldn't stay asleep. The giggling sound of the human was permanently ingrained in his head. He could close his eyes, even drifting off, but the strange sound persisted. It even stopped when Luna had deliberately tried to keep it out. Eventually, he sighed and stretched out his legs, pulling himself out of bed slowly. Octavia was fast asleep somehow. Midnight replaced the cover over her and walked to the door. He followed the giggling sound, sure that Luna would still be at the other end of it. She was. The human, Luna and Vinyl were back up on Luna's balcony where at least two out of three belonged. Only Celestia knew where the human belonged, but if Vinyl was to be believed, raging drunk or not, he belonged in another universe. He knocked on the door and was allowed out into the open air above Canterlot. Vinyl had left her bucket back down in the infirmary, apparently. The conspicuous absence of vomit lending thought to the conclusion that she no longer required it. As things were, it could almost be just like old times, except normally, their wouldn't be a giggling human above their heads. That was the strange thing. Now, there was no magical aura surrounding it, but it still levitated, slowly rotating. The figure gave a sharp little giggle and then spoke. "See, told you. Now, ask him why he's here." "Shouldn't you know?" asked Luna. "Nope. Just wrote that he comes onto the balcony. He his own reason." it said. "I am here because that infernal giggling is even in my dreams." said Midnight. The human giggled again. "But isn't this just so funny? Look at your world. Doesn't it make you want to laugh? The twists, the turns, can't you see all of the wavy lines. What about the storms? Please tell me you can feel the storms. They tickle so much. I love it!" "What is he talking about?" asked Midnight to Vinyl. She still seemed to be the only pony following the gibberish. "Well, the way that he got here was he was whisked consciously through the nothingness between dimensions. As a result, his mind began to fracture and split. His brain tried to use 5 senses to make sense of things going on in multiple dimensions. We are used to 4. The first is what we call the x-axis, and is length. Next is the y-axis of width and third comes the z-axis of height or depth. Finally, we perceive the fourth dimension, time as a constant unmeasurable focal point of our existence. We don't actually perceive time because time is what we perceive the other 3 dimensions in. "What happened to him is that he was pulled forcefully from his universe and sent through a plane of existence that exists in more than 4 dimensions. You literally can't imagine how somepony might perceive it because we don't have the senses, the mind or the simple cranial capacity to comprehend what we are seeing without going mad. He went mad, but before he did, he learned to perceive several of the dimensions before his mind imploded. Now he can see, hear and feel things that we can only dream of. And I'm not sure that we want to dream of them. Some of the things he's mentioned..." Vinyl shuddered. "So, what were you talking about when I arrived?" asked Midnight, hiding from the insane lecture by changing the subject. Vinyl could make you want to do that. Sometimes it seemed that she was wasted on dubstep and alcohol. "I asked him if he could make you appear instantly." said Luna, "Well, you showed up about a second later. The question is, how?" " 'Can you make anypony appear instantly?' asked Luna. There was a knock on the door and Midnight walked through. A short conversation later, the human held out a hand and a pencil appeared. Then he began to write on thin air with pure light." dictated the human as the glowing letters appeared in the air. "What the fuck just happened?" asked Midnight slowly. "I am the author. You are the main characters. Nice to meet you all. My name is Josh."