> The Earthbound Crossover > by The_Patriarch > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > The Big Announcement > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER 1-THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT As a crimson sun descended below the recesses of the town of Onett, a boy and his three friends were sitting in a upstairs bedroom in a lonely house on the outskirts of the town. "Friends," the boy, Ness, proclaimed with a rather dorky expression. He was smiling so wide it seemed his face would fall off. He was clearly excited. "I have an announcement to make," he continued. He thought could feel the anticipation in his friends hearts as the moment was drawing closer to reveal his announcement. "We're going on vacation!" The anticipation turned to monotonous sigh, as he was met with a very unenthusiastic "yay". "Yay," moaned his three other friends, Jeff, Poo, and Paula as they recalled their last vacation with Ness. It was a long, arduous trek across a barren, bleak hellhole called Ikana Canyon. "But where?" Poo interjected, who, despite his initial rejection of the idea, was growing quite interested. Ness, with the look of a great philosopher, said, "Da real question is, where?" As Ness expected, the group was confused by the "intelligent" question to a question, that also happened to be the same question. Soon they would find out. > On the Road > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER 2-ON THE ROAD Ness lead his friends outside of the small house and into a random bus that was parked there randomly. Ness walked inside, kicked the driver out in front of the house, and stepped on the gas. Hard. As soon as he did, a large black hole opened up, and the bus plummeted inside. Stephen Hawking was clearly wrong, because instead of being torn to shreds on the event horizon, Ness instead found that the fabric of space-time had paved for him an invisible, inter dimensional highway of sorts. Ness continued to drive through the wormhole, however, since he was too small to see over the dashboard, he just steered aimlessly. He was, however, big enough to see the eye-level fuel gauge, which read that the bus was out of fuel. The bus broke down, and with it, the wormhole collapsed. Leaving Ness, his friends, and the bus, floating in dark night sky. As soon as the stable ground below it was gone, the bus and its passengers were sent careening down to the small planet. Ness kept his same dorky smile in the driver's seat, but his friends were screaming their heads off. The bus caught fire as it fell; and it resembled the appearance of a shooting star, which caught some attention to a stargazer in the nearby town. A young purple unicorn, named Twilight, who was dwelling in Ponyville, was looking through her telescope that night Ness and his friends were plummeting to their certain doom. Twilight could barely take her eye off the telescope as the flaming object made its way down to the planet. "Look, girls!" she squealed, "A shooting star!" Her observation was noticed by her friends, who were having a sleepover. (They finally succumbed to it after her 1,657th invitation.) "Y'now what that means, Twilight," Apple Jack stated, "That means you get to make a wish!" "A wish, huh?" Twilight said, with a hint of whimsy in her voice. She pondered what she wanted to use her wish for. She DID come to Ponyville to make new friends, so she said the first thing that popped into her head. "I wish for more friends!" Twilight cheered. The second after, a huge crash was heard far in the distance. > (Friendship is) Magic: The Gathering > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER 3-(Friendship is) Magic: The Gathering The next morning, on the outskirts of town, Ness and the gang, surprisingly, were mostly unharmed. They arose from the burning wreckage that used to be a bus. "Ness, you've done it this time!" Paula screamed, still shaking, "I thought you said we were going to Saffron City!" "Rather quite, chum. This location does not resemble Saffron City in the slightest." Jeff added. "Relax guys! That was just a diversion! This is our real vacation spot," Ness said, leading them to the top of the hill, "Feast your face!" As he said this, Ness gestured to the small town in front of them. It looked...alright. The group, with no other options, decided to explore the town. "This place is truly remarkable," Jeff mused, as they were walking down a crowded street, "It is almost as vivid as our world. It also is inhabited by a strange equestrian species of organisms." As Jeff said this, he stopped to observe one of the local inhabitants with awe. Poo, however, was not amused. He slumped with his arms crossed at the back of the party. "I think it's stupid," he commented. "I think it's cute!" Paula responded, "And look! They even have a neat treehouse!" "A treehouse! Let's go explore!" Ness said. The party approached the tree. Ness tried to open the door, but it was locked. Ness became agitated at the door. "Ya wanna fight, tough guy?" Ness shouted to the door. As he spoke, he pulled out his trusty baseball bat. He took aim at the door. One strong swing sent the red door flying off its hinges. "Ness?! What are you doing? This isn't our house!" Paula inquired, with a bit of scorn in her voice. "It is now," Ness replied, with his same dorky smile. Inside the house, the majority of the inhabitants were asleep on the second story. Ness came in and made himself at home; he plopped his fat behind onto a delicate chair in the library. A small purple baby dragon took notice, and made it his duty to rouse and inform his master. "Twilight! Twilight!" The dragon, Spike, called. Twilight arose, still groggy with sleep. "What is it, Spike?" she inquired. "Who is the obese, yet handsome boy, who just plopped into one of your reading chairs?" Spike replied. Ness teleported right behind them. "Right back at you, buddy!" he said. He then turned to his friends. "Kick it!" Jeff recognized the command, and pulled a sound stone out of his pants. He set the tune to the most loud, obnoxious, ear-bleedingly cool techno-hip-hop-rap beat the likes of Equestria have ever heard. As it started playing, Ness and his friends started dancing erratically like clumsy robotic monkeys with black antoids in their pantoids. Ness, however, was the most clumsy of them all, and he tripped. He then rolled into a bookshelf, collapsing it on top of him. Even though the odiously funky beat failed to wake them, the crash from the bookshelf managed to arise Twilight's other guests: Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, Apple Jack, and Pinkie Pie. Twilight's eye twitched as she watched the carnage these strange intruders relentlessly brought onto her home. In an attempt to help Ness, Paula used PK Fire on the bookshelf Ness was trapped under, and it burst into flames. It was enough to free Ness from the book mountain, but it set his hat on fire. Remember that day in school where you were taught to stop, drop, and roll if you caught fire? Ness fell asleep in the toy box that day. Ness scrambled around the room, knocking over furniture, frightening guests, and lighting any and all fabric and paper on fire. Twilight had completely lost it now. Her whole body was twitching and shaking as she tried to control her impulses. In a burst of fury, she used her magic to extinguish the fires. She kicked Ness out the open window, and he fell to the ground like a rock. As soon as Ness hit the ground, the music stopped. All was silent for a few seconds. The fall did not phase Ness at all. Ness ran back into the house and tried to dance again until he noticed there was no music. "Hey? Who turned off the dope beats?" Ness exclaimed. "GET OUT, OR I'LL KICK YOU SO HARD EVEN YOUR FAT WON'T PROTECT YOU!" Twilight asserted. "Um...Twilight..." a small yellow pegasus pony, Fluttershy, said, "...Remember how the Princess said to deal with conflict..." "I DON'T CARE! LOOK WHAT THEY DID!" Twilight screeched. The sudden conflagration from her friend caused Fluttershy to squeal and hide under the ashes of burnt books. Paula, Poo, and Jeff, slowly backed out of the house, dragging a whining Ness with them. > Another Friend? > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER 4- ANOTHER FRIEND? It was late evening when the group had arrived back to their temporary camp. Paula, Poo, and Jeff dragged Ness shamefully to the outskirts of town where their bus crashed. Jeff pulled out the Time-Out-Chair out of his pants, and promptly set it up. Ness was still whining and pouting; lamenting over the fact that they had to leave the party early. "We've had it up to HERE with your shenanigans, chum," Jeff scolded, as he raised his hand above his head just to show exactly how much Ness was annoying them. With help from Poo, Jeff hoisted Ness onto the Time-Out-Chair, and tied Ness to it to ensure that he wouldn't escape. They lugged him to the edge of the hill facing towards the town, and made sure they gave him a perfect view of the column of smoke billowing from the tree-shaped house. "Now think about what you've done," Poo said to Ness. He then ushered the rest of the group back onto the center of the top of the hill, where they sat down. "I feel terrible," Paula said, with a great sadness present in her voice, "We destroyed many priceless books and furniture, and for what?" "We had to dance though," Poo retorted, and gesturing to Ness, said, "You know how HE gets when we don't listen to him," "We had better be prudent with our word choice," Jeff added, "Ness is listening," As Jeff said this, the three turned around to see Ness peering devilishly over his shoulder from the Time-Out-Chair; clearly he was sour about his punishment. He huffily turned around as he met his friends' gazes. They shuddered, and scooted farther away to the center of the hill. "We must find a way to reconcile ourselves with that that purple unicorn," Jeff stated. "BUT HOW?!" Poo shouted, for no apparent reason. Sometimes Poo shouted just to show his dominance as the oldest one on the team. "Maybe we could make them a gift basket," Paula suggested, "And we could throw some money in there to help pay back for the damaged stuff! I know Ness has plenty of cash in his ATM account!" Ness hissed and writhed when he heard that his precious money could be jeopardized. The group scooted even farther away. "I think it is a splendid idea! Good thinking, Paula, old chap!" Jeff commended. By the time evening fell, Poo, Paula, and Jeff had completely planned out the basket, and had wrote a list of supplies to procure in town the following day. Poo glanced back over at Ness. He wasn't squirming anymore, so Poo concluded that he was probably asleep. Satisfied with the gift, and with Ness' good behavior, the three settled down to sleep. Ness wasn't really asleep. After hours of expending all of his energy trying to escape the rope, he had finally given up. He stared down at his blue shorts in despair. His friends had outsmarted him this time. There was no way he could escape his bonds. "Pssst! Hey dumb-butt! You do know you have PSI powers, right?" Ness raised his head quickly to the voice that was coming from a silhouetted figure in the distance. He looked familiar. He stepped closer. As the sliver of the light of the crescent moon hit its round, deviously smiling face, the realization hit Ness like a Big Bottle Rocket to the face. "Pokey?" Ness stated in awe as he saw his former friend. He had not seen him since their last encounter. "You're a bad guy! Get outta here, you no-good... Hey friends! Look who came to party! Lets tussle! Right now!" Only Poo stirred. "Go back to sleep, Ness," he implored. Pokey only chuckled. "Now, now, now! You can't be judging me by that liiiitle misadventure back with Giygas, right? C'mon, buddy, let's be friends again! I promise to be good! Besides, we all know who the REAL enemy is here." Pokey sure knew how to manipulate Ness. Ness wasn't the smartest kid ever. Of course not, that was Jeff's job. He glided through school with B's and C's. He did, however, have a big heart. A big, innocent, forgiving, heart. "Ok, let's be friends!" Ness replied. He then remembered Pokey had said something about an enemy. "Oh boy!" Ness thought, "A new enemy means I get to smash things!" "You're probably wondering who the enemy is," Pokey lead on. Ness' thought algorithm was all but unpredictable. "Remember that purple unicorn you met back in Ponyville?" Ness looked up in thought. Purple unicorn? Oh! Of course Ness remembered! The stick-in-the-mud who hates dancing and flaming objects! The one who kicked him out a window! As Ness recalled this, he shook his head up and down vigorously. "Well, she's evil! And she wants to take over this poor little kingdom!" Pokey continued. He could see he was convincing Ness. Not that that took an overwhelming amount of effort. "Well we gotta go stop her!" Ness yelled, and he tried to rise to his feet. He could not, as he was still tied to the time out chair. "But darn it! I'm not going anywhere tonight!" Ness slumped back in the chair and pouted. "PSI, remember?" Pokey sighed, "I know you have telekinesis or something, just use that to loosen the ropes." THIS was the boy hero that defeated Giygas? "Yeah! Good idea!" Ness said. He then focused his mind and used it to untie the simple knot Jeff had tied. Jeff was never very good at knots. Pokey grinned devilishly. Now Ness was his for the taking! With such a destructive powerhouse on his side, the chaos he could cause was untold. "You go on right ahead to the evil unicorn's house, and wait for me there. I'll catch up!" Pokey shouted to Ness, who was already running to Twilight's. Once Ness had run down the hill and disappeared into the streets, Pokey turned around and laughed maniacally, rubbing his hands together while flashing his big, white teeth. He reached into his large pocket and pulled out a glass jar. Inside the jar there was a swirling red substance of what appeared to be a gas. It seemed sentient, with the red swirl forming small, fist-like appendages that banged on the walls of its translucent prison. "Don't worry, my master," Pokey whispered to the gas within the jar, "Having recruited Ness, our plan is well under way." Pokey paused, not only for dramatic effect, but also to give him the chance to glance back at the rest of Ness' group. They were still sleeping. "Soon you will get stronger as I use Ness to perform our deeds. Yes! Your strength will come from the hate and chaos they will spawn. Soon, my master, soon." The red gas now seemed satisfied as it stopped attacking the jar's wall and settled. Pokey returned the jar to his pocket and laughed maniacally once more as he turned to walk down the hill.