Fred Walsh returns to Equestria after he is forcibly bounced back through his return wormhole.
The wormhole intended to bring Fred Walsh back home instead bounces him back to Equestria some time after the year 796. Injured and confused, he attempts to return to civilization.
Rated teen for Latin outbursts. Starts off light but may be a little dark midway through. No deaths.
Written in The Queen's English, including ambigous locales, except for proper nouns.
Fred Walsh: Diverted By Baguettedood Chapter 1: Ejected
The Everfree Forest, as always, lived free of civilisation, save the occasional pony passing through. On this day, only the fauna and a few birds happened to be present. The various birds chirped in an unknown musical conversation. The sun shone brightly, its light having formed an intricate shadow on the forest floor. The day was calm...
...Until a growing rumble fractured the peace. The birds flapped their wings to escape the source as soon as possible. Strangely, the rumbling didn't seem to originate from anything. It came from a random point a few metres above the forest.
The rumbling grew. A small glow formed in the focus, right before an ear-splitting crack sounded throughout the forest. The crack brought the company of a red, swirling, spatial anomaly. The exit point of a wormhole. Lightning shot out of the hole in space-time; its stability lost before it even opened.
Something shot out of the deteriorating singularity before it collapsed into nothingness. The blur was made up of a head, torso, two arms and two legs. It flew, very quickly, straight down into the forest. The human somehow managed to avoid being impaled on any unfortunately pointed tree branches and hit the ground on a downward slope. The body rolled down the hill. At the bottom, it continued to roll for a few seconds before it impacted a tree trunk.
The human was a 22-year-old male. He has blue eyes and dark brown fairly short hair. At the front to the left slightly, it curves in the rough shape of a tornado. His clothes are a plain blue T-shirt and pants.
He groans from the impact, before he managed to work himself into an approximate sitting position. Painfully, he put his left arm on his lap so he could use his right hand to interact with a device on his wrist.
*Video footage from a wrist-mounted computer*
“You have got to be kidding me. Not only did the scientists say they'd bring me home with that wormhole, they said it'd be safer. Instead, I get hit with some kind of wall, bounced back into ominous red, and ejected out to wherever I am.
“To recap what's happened lately: My name is Frederick Brian Walsh. I came home from a LAN party on new year's day 2012 and then was sucked through a blue wormhole to Equestria. Odd, considering I thought it was a fictional TV show. After some misunderstandings and careful treading around words with Princess Celestia to prevent an existential crisis, I lived in the castle for a few days before some cult tried to kill her. I helped defend and we discovered they were summoning a demon to destroy the country. We stopped it. Then a yellow wormhole from Midgård – Earth, but to prevent confusion as Equestria is also situated on Earth - showed up and the scientists were bringing me home. Instead, this happened. I have no clue where I am and this really hurts.
“Better orient myself and get somewhere safer than this tree I hit. I don't like forests. Too empty, along with almost killing me.”
Fred Walsh stopped recording video on the device – which, from his last adventure, he had named the Scavenger Watch due to its construction from spare parts – and slowly rose. Holding onto the tree, he balanced himself as he stood upright.
No longer on the ground, Fred checked himself for injuries. He slammed into the tree on his left side, leaving a painful souvenir on his torso, though he wasn't aware of the extent of the damage. The impact left the watch's screen cracked, though that was trivial compared to everything else.
Having recovered enough to stand without support, Fred set off without a sense of direction – that hadn't returned yet - hoping he could find a reference point of sorts. He only knew he was in a forest, making distance between him and a tree that almost killed him.
'Am I still in Equestria?' he thought as he observed the surroundings while walking. 'It'd make sense to be in Everfree; nopony goes through unless they have to, but I won't know until I find something familiar.'
Fred didn't really have much faith in being rescued, otherwise he may have stayed in one place. Wormholes aren't particularly common anywhere as far as he knew and it was doubtful that somebody/pony would be looking for him anyway.
Some time later, after finding some edible raspberries, the sun began to set. Fred took notice of its position – The sun rises in the East and sets in the West, approximately. He'd been travelling East. Fred stopped to think when he noticed a chasm nearby. He looked across its length and spotted a rope bridge. On the other side was a dilapidated castle that hadn't been maintained for centuries. He would recognise that castle anywhere: It was the Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters, formerly known as Everfree Castle. 'Guess that answers my question. Also, that'd be decent shelter. Might as well chill in there for the night.' The human crossed the bridge carefully and went inside the main chamber
'So I know where I am, but when am I? The bridge is intact, that gives a clue.' Everfree Castle sat in a clearing, which gave Fred Walsh decent line of sight upward. He peeked out of what was once a window. Unlike the last time he looked upon the moon, no image of the Mare in the Moon happened to be present. In the main chamber, the pedestal which held the Elements of Harmony for one thousand years had no orbs attached. With the state of the castle, the forest and the moon, he began piecing together a temporal reference point.
Needing time to recover from his injuries, Fred searched the old castle ruins for somewhere to sleep. The stone ground was available, but obviously preferred to not be even considered – it's a cold floor, why would you want to sleep on it?
The night progressively became darker, to the point where Fred could no longer see ahead of him. To rectify this, he activated the backlight of the Scavenger Watch, awkwardly using that as a torch. Being a device on his wrist, the injured human found it difficult to find a decent location to rest it and provide light simultaneously. Eventually, he settled on resting his arm in an L shape, his left hand sitting under his right forearm.
After some searching, Fred found himself inside a crumbled tower with a barely visible sun insignia on the remains of the door, lying at his feet. The room was circular, same as the tower, and empty, apart from some overgrowth. Giving up, Fred dragged some of the flora into the centre of the room to create some makeshift insulation against the ice-cold stone, allowing him rest. The biped lowered himself to the impromptu bed.
*Fred is illuminated by the display on his watch, amongst a dark night sky*
"Why do all my first nights end up sleeping on some kind of plant? I slept on either hay or straw last time. I swear I'm creating tradition now. If we're making tradition, I'll just find it hilarious, yet unsurprising, if I get arrested. The trickier part will be predicting why I end up detained.
"This place had better not collapse on me tonight, assuming there is even anything left to fall. This place is a mess! Gee, if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that's because the place was abandoned. Yeah, that'd do it.
"Well, after falling through space and time, I have some idea where I've landed: Some place in the Everfree forest, at the very least a few days after the Summer Sun Celebration where Nightmare Moon returned. At most, I haven't a clue. As always, it's more important to know when I am, along with where I am. Ponyville can't be too far off, I'll head there in the morning."
Rays of the sun poked through holes in the old castle. Enough of them converged on top of Fred Walsh to awaken him from his slumber.
'What kind of bed is this? Wait...' He bolted up, then immediately regretted it. The bruises and other injuries from yesterday began to take their toll. Most of the pain resided around his left torso, where he hit the tree. The human daintily prodded the afflicted areas, feeling for the worst damage, flinching at each touch. Fred still couldn’t be certain about its extent, but it was concentrated around the left midsection of his ribcage. 'I really hope I haven't broken anything.' Fortunately, his legs were intact, so he stood up from the leaf mattress and exited the tower he slept in. Painfully of course.
The man traversed the obstacle course that was Everfree Castle as he left to, hopefully, make his way to some form of civilisation. He looked at the sky as he stood at the bridge. 'Well, the sun rises in the East, which is toward those mountains. I'd guess that'd lead to Canterlot, so Ponyville would probably be this way.' He crossed the bridge and headed forwards, occasionally checking to ensure he remained in a straight path.
'I think I preferred my last arrival here. Although I ended up incarcerated, it still beats wilderness survival,' Fred thought as he travelled the Everfree Forest. As he walked, he heard the snap of a twig. He stopped and his ears wiggled the few millimetres they could. 'That definitely wasn't me. Am I being stalked? And by what?' The human observed his vicinity until a white patch caught his eyes, accompanied by a low growl. A wolf.
As soon as he identified the creature, it began moving closer. 'Yeah, I'm going to run.' Fred turned back toward his previous destination and sprinted, difficult with his injuries. He had to be careful not to hit his ribs, it hurt enough as it is. The canine followed. After some evasion, the wolf remained close behind. He saw a river nearby and with the animal still right behind him, he dashed toward it, simultaneously unstrapping the Scavenger Watch.
The 22-year-old reached the river and leapt. He waited until reaching the apogee and threw the watch ahead, hoping it would reach the other bank. 'In retrospect, I should've waterproofed this thing, I'm not having it destroyed; I'll need it to make sure the scientists don't kill me with the same wormhole next time,' he thought in an instant as he landed with a splash of water. He turned back to face the wolf, which halted and looked down at the bank before walking off dejectedly.
Fred felt himself being tugged long the stream, so he swam toward the far bank and held on. Once he re-oriented himself, he pushed up onto Terra Firma. He lay on the ground for a few minutes, simultaneously letting the sun dry him, and letting him recover from the run, then stood up and re-acquired the Scavenger Watch, which landed safely. He leaned next to a tree as he regained his breath while going through some of the functions of the almost-smartphone.
Most of the features were rather pointless in Equestria. Nevertheless, useful ones include the camera he recorded his adventures with, some communications hardware – Wi-Fi and an accidentally uncoded walkie-talkie, the former carefully managing to communicate with Midgård when he realised the latter failed to function – and his favourite new toy, a receptor from a neuroheadset. With it, the human had managed to read extreme panic in the form of spikes in the 20-40 Hz range, but so far only on Princess Celestia. He decided he would code a short script to 'ping' the receptor every few minutes and collect information and alert him if it registered huge spikes. He didn't have much faith in the program, though.
'I'll have to get around to it, but I'll fix the radio later.' Fred Walsh, no longer dripping, locked the watch and prepared to continue onward when unorthodox water flow caught his ears. Following the sound with his sight, he noticed a purple dot nearby. Intrigued, he moved to investigate. The dot grew in the human's vision to become a snake-like form with purple scales, splashing in the river.
He cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”
The sea serpent turned to face Fred. “Greetings! I don't see many passers-by. Nice to meet you!” From this angle, the human could admire the gentleserpent's mane and facial hair. His moustache bore a small few amethyst-coloured hairs, slowly disappearing.
“Pleasure to meet you too, good sir.” 'Woah, that was formal,' “Do you know the way to Ponyville, by any chance?”
“I'm afraid I'm unsure, sorry. Although, I occasionally see ponies walking from that way,” he gestured Northwest.
“Good a place as any, thank you sir.” Fred waved and journeyed in the direction the sea serpent pointed.
Eventually, the biped found a dirt path that lead out of the Everfree Forest to Ponyville. He emerged from the forest. He could see town not far off and made the decision to approach. 'Now, to find out how smoothly this will go.'
"I didn't expect myself to act so formal around the sea serpent. Does he radiate some kind of gentlemanly aura or something? Although, I think everyone back on Midgård could definitely learn something from him. I I quite like the guy... Okay, now I'm envisioning a future where everyone speaks in that extremely formal tone.
"So I'm about to enter Ponyville. As I'm a human I have no clue how this is going to turn out and I feel that anything I say here might jinx it. Well, what better way to discover than to go in there? As long as I don't get killed, which I doubt would happen, I should be fine.
"...Damn it."
Fred Walsh, after making his way out of the Everfree Forest, continued onward to the small town of Ponyville. The walk didn't take very long as it wasn't that far between the two locations. 'From a tactical standpoint, the town's placement makes a good bunch of sense. It's well situated as a good economic midpoint; travelling salesponies could rest here and continue to or from Canterlot. Also, its proximity to Everfree made it useful for the return of Night-'
Fred had to shake himself out of admiring Princess Celestia's excellent placement of the town long enough to realise that he had already arrived within... and nopony noticed him. Everypony continued about their day without so much as batting an eyelid.
Fred paused and looked from side to side. 'Okay then, why in Equestria is nopony noticing a six foot tall bipedal hairless ape semi-casually wandering the streets of Ponyville?' he questioned himself. 'I sincerely doubt that humans can be common here, I only ended up in this universe because of a messed-up cult summoning. Regardless, I need to know my way around.' He moved to intercept a nearby mint-green unicorn.
"Excuse me, do you know where I can find a map of Ponyville?" Fred asked her.
"I think there's one near the town hall," the pony he knew as Lyra replied and pointed, using her right hoof, to a large building in the centre of the town.
"Thank you." He nodded and followed her directions. 'Okay I still don't- OH!' The human remembered why he wasn't being noticed by anypony, 'Some unicorn scientists last week – personal timeline - cast a perception filter to avoid freak-outs. Good call, I say.' He continued his trek to the town hall.
The town hall stood in the centre of Ponyville. It was a primarily cylindrical building that ended in a cone, with some circular balconies radiating on each story. Fred ascended the very small staircase and found a wooden frame, roughly two metres by one metre, encasing just what he was searching for: a two-dimensional diagram of the growing neighbourhood. The centre of the map showed the town hall, with 'YOU ARE HERE' printed in large white lettering on a red arrow.
'Gee, I would never have guessed that's where I am,' Fred mentally commented as he continued to skim over the map. He noted the locations of various places, including destinations he knew from the show, such as Sugarcube Corner, Carousel Boutique and Twilight's library, the latter being where he was headed next. After briefly memorising key points, he set his destination to the magically grown tree-house. It seemed the most logical way to contact Princess Celestia, and they had over two-hundred years, or a few days, depending on frame of reference, of catching up to do.
Approximately halfway to his destination, a tingling sensation spread through Fred's body, starting from his chest and radiating outwards. It felt as if some kind of energy departed his presence. In conjunction with the feeling, everypony in his vicinity screamed and ran indoors. He twisted his head around a bit before looking at himself, then at the ponies looking at him, both inside and at a distance. Fred mentally cursed as he realised what just transpired: The perception filter he only recently remembered he had chose that time to wear off.
Slightly shaken, but not deterred, the now-undisguised human continued his way to the library, as onlookers kept their distance.
“This makes me feel really self-conscious,” he muttered out loud to himself with a small frown as he noticed all the stares directed towards him.
Twilight Sparkle and Spike riding horseback exited Carousel Boutique after she dropped off a dress that required adjustments by Rarity. The lavender mare turned the final corner between her origin and her home, the treehouse-library and froze. Some kind of tall creature she had never seen before seemed to be waiting at the door. It only stood on its hind legs. Its right front leg held onto its torso while the other dangled.
“What in Celestia's name is that?” Twilight inquired.
“I dunno, but it sort of walks like me,” Spike responded. “It's a bit taller though, and differently coloured.”
The thing used one of its front legs to knock on Twilight's door. There was no answer as the only occupants hid around the corner. It looked at some kind of rectangular box on its left forehoof, then knocked again.
“Where's everypony else?” The baby dragon looked around at the empty streets.
“Hiding, I think. So are we, now that you mention it. The only other events that cause everypony to head straight indoors was Zecora's old visits, and that incident with Applebloom.”
Still without a response from inside, the creature shook its head and left the unicorn's house alone, heading in the general direction of Canterlot. The mare and dragon slowly crept to the library and ducked indoors. The two approached the window to observe the bipedal thing leave.
“I've never seen one of those before, but wasn't it a little alienating to just hide? Surely everypony had a reason.” The unicorn made some observations. “Do you think this is related to that explosion we all heard yesterday?”
A pink blob whizzed past the library, not escaping the duo's vision. The object seemed to be following the new arrival.
Chapter 4 – Chaos Theory "Well, that trip through Ponyville didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, though it does remind me that I'm an intruder to this universe, even though I may not be here by my own accord. At least I got the time from the town's clock tower.
"I'm still winging it, but it'd be useful to reunite with Princess Celestia. Of course, since the locals obviously want to avoid me, meaning that any easy way I have is off the table. I have to to to Canterlot to meet the Princess on foot. This walk will surely be fun.
*A blur of pink whizzes past the video*
"HELLO!"
"Quod irrumabo!"
"Where did you come from‽" Fred attempted to recover after an eccentric colourful mass interrupted his Vlog. He picked himself up from the ground.
"Hi! I'm Pinkie Pie, and I've been following you since you passed through Ponyville,” the pink thing blurted out.
"That's not stalker-ish at all," the sane human replied slowly. “Nice to meet you, Pinkie Pie. I'm Fred Walsh.” He tried to remain calm. He examined the path ahead of him, and Canterlot atop the mountain.
Fred managed to take one step forward before the eccentric pony halted him. “Where are you going? I haven't given you your party yet!”
'And here I thought that prophet from a while ago loved to exclaim things.' “If you didn't notice from the locals hiding as if I was Potens Daemonium reincarnated, I don't think you'll realise that a party is probably not a good idea.”
“Awwwww.” She frowned.
“Sorry, but I have to get to Canterlot,” he tried to explain.
“Can I come?”
“I have no clue on whether or not that's a wise plan, but I doubt it's physically possible to stop you. Fine.” Fred reluctantly agreed.
“Yayyyy!” The party pony jumped.
'Now, to count how many seconds until I regret this.' With Pinkie no longer obstructing the human's feet, the party began its journey to Equestria's capital.
The two walked, or bounced as if the ground was a trampoline, for a few minutes when Fred realised something. “Wait, every single other pony in Ponyville hid as soon as my perception filter wore off. Why didn't you?”
“I saw everypony running from you and thought, 'Ugh, rude!' I already learned to not judge others after I did that with Zecora a few years back,” she replied in a single breath.
“What is today's date anyway? If I'm being flung through time and space, crashing into trees,” he massaged his torso, “I should keep a tight rein on the date.” He opened up the date/time settings on the Scavenger Watch.
“It's May 24th, Silly! Just last month there were all these changelings and they were like whoosh and before that everypony ate a cake I was delivering. There was also-” Fred cut Pinkie off before her motor-mouth could continue.
“Pinkie Pie, you are like the embodiment of chaos theory. Also, I need the year.”
“Year one thousand and two. Thanks, but Discord would be the embodiment of chaos theory.”
A bug in the watch caused it to be unable to handle dates before the Unix Epoch – January 1st 1970 – properly, so the human opted to use a year with the same calendar, instead of haphazardly choosing the date as he did last time. After a few minutes of maths in his head, he set the date to the 24th of May 2009.
“Are we friends yet?” The pink pony broke the silence.
“Well, so far nothing's actively running from me and no demons have shown up. Sure, I guess.”
Pinkie Pie and Fred Walsh spent the rest of the day conversing and traversing the path to Canterlot. The hyperactive pony somehow managed to summon some sweets to eat as lunch and dinner along the way. By the time they made it to the capital, the sun had set and night taken its place instead.
“Why did we go to Canterlot again?” Somehow, Pinkie neglected to ask before following Fred all the way. For the first time he saw, the exhaustion had caused her to stop bouncing, instead resorting to a normal walk.
“Catching up on two hundred and six years of history... Or two days, depending on who you ask.”
“Okay!” With nothing more, she spontaneously regained her energy and bounced off, leaving Fred on his own. He pressed on toward Canterlot Castle.
The darkness prevented most ponies in Canterlot from seeing the human, causing a pleasing lack of citywide panic outbreaks, primarily because they were busy sleeping.
Of course, there were some ponies awake. Small shrieks came from them as he passed through.
“Halt!” a masculine voice called out as Fred approached the castle walls, at the entry gates.
“Halt... That's medieval for stop.” He complied. “Great, now I want to see ye olde hammertime.” 'That'd be aweseome. MC Hammer doing a medieval form of Hammertime.'
The voice was accompanied with a body. The pony moved forward. He revealed himself as a unicorn stallion with a blue mane and tail. He wore purple armour with a six-point star crest. “Identify yourself!”
'He looks familiar somehow...' “I'm Fred Walsh of the planet Midgård, nice to be interrogated by you.”
“You're trespassing on royal territory, and have disturbed the peace. Please leave or you will be arrested,” the uniquely-armoured unicorn demanded.
“Wait, since when did the royal guard start doing things? Last time I saw them, it took sixty just to open a door.” 'Granted, the door was being held shut via a unicorn wearing a magic stealing gem, but still.'
The guard stayed silent this time, instead making some kind of gesture. Two more unicorn guards emerged from behind the wall, quickly rushing to Fred. Using their magic, they each grabbed a single arm to drag him down to the dungeons.
"Ha! I totally called it! So, I managed to get arrested again, by disturbing the peace and insulting the royal guard. At least it was mostly my fault this time. I suppose I'll wait this out, some good will have to come out of being flung into a tree, wandering for a few days and getting thrown inside a dungeon. Well, I get a bed... of sorts, that's nice.
"I learned that Pinkie Pie can talk a LOT over the course of the whole day of travel. No clue where she bounced off to after we made it to Canterlot though. It's even weirder that she arbitrarily chose to follow me; surely somepony's going to notice this back in Ponyville.
"Oh dear, I just noticed something. Those weird gems back in seven-ninety-six were formed from the use of the Elements of Harmony long ago, they just took time to be discovered. With the Elements being used twice lately – Nightmare Moon and Discord – there's more harmonic gemstones than ever.
“I think enough happened today, I'm going to bed.”
“Princess Celestia!” A young stallion flagged down the alicorn as she made her way to the throne room. She paused.
“Shining Armor, what is it?” The princess turned her head toward the captain of the royal guard.
“You were busy last night, but I'm letting you know now that last night there was an intruder to the grounds,” Shining informed.
“What kind of intruder?” she inquired.
“I've never seen him or his kind before. He – I think it's a he – disturbed the peace and... insulted the guard.” The captain found it difficult to admit the last part.
Celestia looked quizzically. “We should speak with this creature. Come with me,” she requested. Shining Armor nodded and followed her to the dungeons.
The alicorn ruler and unicorn guard trekked through the castle to the dungeons, where the recently-arrested Fred Walsh had been held overnight. When they arrived at the appropriate cell, the human was calmly asleep on a bed of straw. The Princess looked upon him with an air of familiarity.
“Shining Armor, I believe I've met him before,” she whispered, “a long time ago.”
The prisoner cracked an eye open that went unnoticed.
“What is he?” Shining Armor asked.
“A human, as I recall. Did he say his name?”
“I think he said Fred Walsh of the planet Midgård,” He answered. “What happened when you two last met?”
Fred interrupted. “We Fought Potens Daemonium. That week was just messed up. Violent cultists, summonings and a demon invasion,” he explained in his half-awake state.
“How long ago was this?” The guard was confused.
“In the year 796, he fell into Equestria through a wormhole and helped defend this country from a cult. It's a difficult story,” Celestia attempted to explain as she unlocked the cell.
“By the way, travelling through that wormhole felt like walking naked directly into a tornado,” Fred inputted before he forgot the last conversation they had. He rubbed his ribs. “So, how have you been the last two hundred and six or so years, or in my case, two days?” He began as the three left the dungeon.
“Shortly after you departed to Midgård, we formed the Solar Task Force to counter future potential attacks,” Celestia recounted.
“Princess, is it such a wise idea to tell him about the STF?” Shining Armor objected.
“Minus the end bit, I was there most of the way, dude,” Fred reassured.
“Fred Walsh's assistance was vital to the formation of the guild,” the alicorn agreed. “What did you mean by two days?”
“I never made it home. For lack of a better word, I bounced. It launched me back to Equestria and into a tree, hence the injury.”
Celestia looked at his left torso, but couldn't see much through his shirt. “Do you need any medical help?”
“Might as well. It'll give me something to do while Midgård's scientists try and open a wormhole that will actually work,” the human responded. The three changed course to another point in the castle.
Fred Walsh sat on a bed while a unicorn examined his left torso, as he continued his conversation with Princess Celestia. Shining Armor had returned to his post as captain of the royal guard.
“What else happened after I left?” The human pressed for information on his last adventure.
“As I recall, little remained of the Cult of Potens Daemonium. The cultists served their varied times and the STF kept watch afterward,” Celestia responded.
“What about the harmonic gemstones?”
The princess paused in contemplation. “We've found various gems over the centuries. Oh dear,” she realised the same thing Fred had last night. “The Elements of Harmony have been used twice in the last few years.”
Fred finished off. “And since the elements create the harmonic gemstones, they're aplenty.”
The doctor took some bandages to wrap around the injury. “I'd advise against running while that heals.”
The bandaged human paused momentarily. “That sounds more serious than just a bruise.”
“Your wounds included internal bleeding and a broken rib,” the unicorn clarified.
Fred stood up. “I'll keep that in mind, then. No fighting any demons.”
Celestia began to exit the room. She motioned for him to follow.
“Well, it's after the year one thousand, so how did your sister fare?”
She smiled. “My days have been more blissful ever since Luna was returned to me.”
“How much work did that take?” As Fred recalled, the alicorn would've needed overwhelming amounts of preparation for Nightmare Moon's return, including the placement of Ponyville and arranging the bearers of the Elements of Harmony to all be present.
“All throughout the time between your departure and her corrupted form's arrival, planning was essential. It took many years to ensure Luna could come back safe.” Just thinking about it made her stance improve.
The man lagged behind slightly as he adjusted himself into the new bandages. At a four-way junction in the corridors, Celestia stopped, but not to wait. Her face displayed a look of surprise, which she quickly attempted to control.
“Twilight, nice to see you. What brings you to Canterlot?”
'Wait, what's Twilight doing here?' Fred leaned around the corner.
“Princess Celestia, there was this creature that passed through Ponyville and I think Pinkie Pie followed it,” the lavender unicorn explained.
He came out of hiding. “Hi, that was-” Twilight jumped at the sudden appearance of the creature she just mentioned. “That was me. Pinkie traveled along for some reason.”
“Where is she now?” She asked as she calmed herself.
“Non scire, when we made it all the way to Canterlot, she asked why I came here and then bounced o-”
“Hi again!” Pinkie reappeared even more strangely than the way she left.
“Right on cue.” Fred avoided screaming Latin phrases in shock this time, instead simply flinching his head back a few centimetres.
After a brief pause, Princess Celestia suggested, “Perhaps we should discuss recent events over breakfast.”
Chapter 6 - Wariness "Twilight's startled jump when I came out of the corner reminded me of this friend I had back in school. Somehow, I was able to repeatedly sneak up on him, despite walking completely normally, and when he'd realise I'm there, he'd freak out.
"I understand that it's a bad idea to tell strangers about potentially sensitive information, but the way that guard – Shining Armor, I believe – reacted to Celestia wrapping up the Potens Daemonium incident was suspiciously odd. I think he knows about the STF too. Which raises the question: Is Shining Armor a member of the Solar Task Force? More importantly: Why am I asking this to a vlog I'm probably not publishing?"
Fred Walsh, Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie and Princess Celestia were all seated around a table for a bite to eat. The lavender mare, oddly, remained rather silent around the human.
“Twilight, is everything alright?” The alicorn observed the strange behaviour.
“Huh? Everything's fine. Nothing's wrong,” Twilight told an obvious lie.
“I think she's afraid of me,” Fred commented. 'Fair enough, I guess.'
“Don't be scared, Twilight!” Pinkie exclaimed with a pause in eating the confectionery she somehow brought along. “Freddy here won't hurt you.”
The human turned his head toward the party pony, intending to question the sudden nickname, but instead remained silent. He took a bite from an apple, then addressed the scholarly unicorn. “I think you have every right to be afraid of me. I'm a six foot tall bipedal hairless ape that appeared through a crack in the space-time continuum.”
Celestia spoke up in attempt to calm the unicorn, along with dismiss Fred's counter-attempt at reassurance. “Fred Walsh and I met nearly two hundred and six years ago. He assisted in preventing a demon and its associated cult from destroying Equestria.”
“Are you really going to keep recounting that?” Fred then realised something. “Wait, Pinkie and I spent a whole day walking here. How did you manage it so fast?”
Twilight mustered up some courage. “The morning after you passed through, Spike and I realised Pinkie Pie disappeared,” she answered as she paused eating her daffodil and daisy sandwich.
"Of course! I'm not going to leave anypony all alone with no friends, even if it isn't a pony," Pinkie interrupted the pause in between sentences.
Twilight continued, "So, I teleported here."
"What? In one jump?"
"No no no, of course not," she attempted to clarify. "I spaced them out throughout the morning.”
“Ah.” He nodded and took another bite out of his apple. He then once again checked the Scavenger Watch. The time was 8:47 AM.
“Oh, right,” Princess Celestia realised they hadn't been formally introduced. “My Protégé Twilight Sparkle here, along with her friends, wielded the Elements of Harmony to defeat Nightmare Moon some years ago. Also more recently, Discord, the spirit of chaos,” she explained.
“I fought Potens Daemonium recently. We'd make great demon hunters.” Fred nodded, impressed, even though he already knew of their exploits.
“How come I've never heard of humans before, Princess?” The unicorn went through her mental history of all the books she'd read and never come across humans before.
“The only human I've known of is Fred Walsh. No other humans have ever been known,” the alicorn explained.
“I also wore a perception filter to avoid freakouts like the one in Ponyville yesterday. Speaking of, can I get another of those?”
“Unfortunately, they only work for those who haven't witnessed your true form.” she informed.
“Alright then.” 'True form sounds slightly weird, like I'm some evil overlord in disguise or something.'
“How come you two know each other?” Pinkie asked, oblivious to the recent conversation. “You don't look hundreds of years old.”
“I don't even know who that was directed at. Anyway, Celestia explained it just before.” Fred stood up, facing away from the group. “This cult attempted to summon the demon known as Potens Daemonium, but they messed up. Instead, they received something much, much worse...” 'Dramatic speech for the win.'
“What did they get?” Twilight questioned, slightly worried.
The human turned around slowly. “...Me.” It wasn't long before he lost his straight face and cracked into laughter. He sat back down. “That's the short version.”
“Okay!” Pinkie seemed nonchalant about the statement.
The man spent a few moments in throught. “If the bearers are excellent at defending Equestria, why aren't they in the STF?”
“Princess, what's the STF?” Twilght felt a little behind.
“Wait, so you manipulate ponies for centuries, ensuring that you can keep Equestria defended, but neglect to tell your own student any of this?”
Celestia was taken aback, offended and scared at the accusation. The Scavenger Watch beeped twice rapidly. The alicorn tried to control herself. “Twilight, I'd like Fred Walsh to accompany you back to Ponyville.”
'Wow. Everypony here gets offended really easily.'
Fred Walsh, Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle sat on a bench at a train station, waiting for the next transport to Ponyville. Princess Celestia remained absent, as did anypony else. It was likely the platform was cleared intentionally beforehand.
Twilight looked ahead, confused at the recent events. Pinkie didn't seem to care.
“Well, Celestia no longer likes me. Also, worst attempt at hiding emotions ever.” Now that he had time, Fred unlocked the Scavenger Watch to determine the program that beeped. After some skimming through menus and lists on the cracked display, it turned out the beeping was caused by the program he wrote a few days ago: The neuroheadset auto-ping. Judging from the time of the notification, it read Princess Celestia's emotions again. He guessed anger, and the device registered a spike in the 13-40Hz range.
A loud whistle sounded in the distance, accompanied by a chugging noise.
“I thought I'd have some time to catch up with Cadance while I was at the castle; I wasn't planning on leaving right away,” Twilight reflected on events.
The sound grew closer, owned by a locomotive. It slowed to a halt as it reached the platform. The two ponies and human stood up and boarded. The small crew on the engine either didn't notice, or weren't fazed by, the new passengers.
Once all were aboard, the iron horse gained speed and departed the station.
"I find that I'm not upset about the fact that I offended Celestia than I am on how she handed it. I get that she didn't want to speak to me for a while, but there was no subtlety in her reaction whatsoever. Anyway, looks like calling the sun princess out on her manipulation is a bad idea. I wonder who else noticed her doing this. I don't know why she ended up so offended though.
“Now that I think about it, this sort of happened before. Though in that instance, Celestia avoided me when I tried to ask about Luna. Maybe not entirely, but they mirror each other in some fashion.
“Ah well, gotta live with it. Time to see what this train ride has in store.”
The locomotive rolled along the tracks, with a distinctive click as the metallic wheels passed across each section as it rolled toward Ponyville.
Inside one particular carriage were two ponies – Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie - along with Fred Walsh riding along. The three sat on the moving vehicle, accepting being jostled around by the train. The pink earth pony looked excitedly out the window while the human and unicorn seated themselves facing each other.
“I had a good point though,” he began. “About Celestia's careful control over everything.”
“What do you mean by that?” Twilight asked skeptically.
“Unless you thought it a complete coincidence that all six bearers of the Elements of Harmony just happened to be in the same place, at the same time, right as they were needed,” he replied, implying Nightmare Moon's defeat at the 1000th Summer Sun celebration.
“Wait, how do you know about the mare in the moon?” she noticed a hole in his logic.
'Stercore, I haven't actually been told that. Umm...' “Back in 796, Celestia and I were involved in the first part of the prophecy of her return. Damned if I didn't get closure on that when I showed up now.” 'I really want to stop returning to these events.'
“I guess that makes some sense.”
All remained quiet for a few minutes, until the unicorn voiced her thoughts. “I wish we could've stayed in Canterlot a little longer. I didn't even manage to see my brother.”
“By any chance is he that Shining Armor bloke who arrested me?” 'Woah, I said bloke.'
“Yeah. He's my BBBFF.” The mare smiled.
“Well, there's one mystery solved; I noticed your cutie marks bear a resemblance.” 'And I'm really behind on recent episodes.' “Apart from Nightmare Moon, what else has happened over the years?”
Twilight spent a moment in thought. “Well, Discord – the spirit of chaos – broke out of his stone prison last year to turn Equestria into his personal plaything.”
“He made it rain chocolate milk!” Pinkie butted in.
“Fortunately, we took care of that. More recently, my brother and Princess Cadance wed each other while a swarm of changelings tried to invade and steal all of Equesria's love.”
“Love being the very foundation of this country.” Fred noticed the implications if they were to have succeeded. 'Hold on, something about this recollection reminds me of something.' He fiddled with the Scavenger Watch.
“The changelings, including their queen, were defeated by my brother and foalsitter's love,” she finished.
Always the inquisitive one, the unicorn only spent a few moments listening to the song, instead focusing on the device used to play it. “What is that thing?”
With the jazz still playing, Fred mentally prepared an explanation. “I call it the Scavenger Watch. It's essentially a really advanced calculator made from other pieces of discarded technology. I'm assuming you know about the calculator's discovery. Note I said discovery, not invention.”
“I remember hearing that calculators began replacing the abacus around the year 803,” she went through some history. “Discovered? You brought it here?”
“Not by intention. The blue wormhole that sent me to 796 has gravity.” 'This would be a good time for a yo mama joke, but I prefer to keep my privates intact.'
The unicorn examined the display. “Is it supposed to look like a spider web on the front part?”
“Not normally... I hit it against a tree as I landed in this time.”
“I might be able to repair it...” Twilight's horn began to glow, accompanied by an identical glow on the watch.
“So, Cadance is your foalsitter, and you said earlier she was a princess?” The human struck another conversation as the cracks gradually faded away.
“She always has been until I stopped being a filly. Even before I discovered my cutie mark.”
'Wait a second...' “Would that be before or after you became Celestia's student?”
“Before, why?” She looked up after all the cracks had disappeared.
“So you were foalsat by royalty, long before they had any reason to notice you?”
The lavender unicorn paused momentarily. “Now I really need to speak to Cadance.”
The train's whistle blowed, and the occupants peeked out the window. Their destination loomed, only a few minutes away.
“Okay, your device is fixed. I think I also charged the battery. I've examined calculators before, and you're right – It's similar but much more advanced.”
“Thanks,” he smiled. “Lastly, since a bunch of revelations are being dropped,” the human began the final topic of the train ride, “harmonic gemstones.”
“Harmonic gemstones?” Twilight hadn't heard the term previously. “What are they?”
“You know the Elements of Harmony,” He answered as a statement. “In short, the Elements output an exotic form of energy that gets absorbed by normal gemstones, empowering them with certain magical properties.” 'Before being kicked out, I should've asked Celestia what she's learnt of them.'
“What exactly do they do?”
“I've only witnessed emeralds and amethysts. Your mentor probably knows more. The harmonic emeralds are capable of stealing magic – flight, some cases of physical strength, and unicorn powers. A cult used them and almost killed Princess Celestia once,” he educated.
The unicorn's eyes widened. “Why would somepony ever do that‽ “
“Demonic influence, I think. Also, it was a cult. The leaders are often excellent at words. I've heard of dozens of cults back on Midgård that manage to convince the followers to do just about anything.”
“Like what?”
Fred contemplated telling her, yet decided against the matter. “I don't really want to taint your world image. Trust me, you really would be better off not knowing.”
“Why haven't I heard about these attacks?”
“Two reasons: One, it was a long time ago. Two, If everypony knew how fragile the system was, there wouldn't be a system. Anyway, the harmonic amethysts.”
“The Princess' jewellery is amethyst, does that have something to do with it?”
“Bingo.” He pointed his finger as a punctuation. “They defend against most forms of magical attack.”
“But they didn't work against Chrysalis during the changeling attack,” she pointed out.
“What happened in that battle?” Being behind on Friendship is Magic, Fred had no idea about the events after Hearth's Warming.
“They both shot beams at each other, but the changeling queen overpowered Celestia.”
“Overpowered? I think she just got downgraded to demigod status. I'm not an expert on the gems, but there's got to be some limit to its protection,” he finished as the train's brakes activated, slowly bringing the locomotive to a halt. “There's also rubies. The last one I saw linked to other universes.”
The two ponies and human opened the carriage door and stepped outside.
Pinkie bounced ahead. “Gotta go! The Cakes are missing me!”
“We should ask Rarity if she knows anything about these gemstones,” the lavender mare directed.
All the ponies in their vicinity besides Pinkie and Twilight froze at the sight of Fred Walsh.
"Yeah, I kind of forgot that the locals in Ponyville don't exactly dance in joy to my presence. They can deal with it, I'm sure. Twilight and Pinkie – wherever she went – may be able to help calm the residents down a little, but it's not going to fix anything instantly.
"Interesting history lesson there, for both Twilight and I. From the sounds of everything, Celestia played it careful to keep the Potens Daemonium incident under wraps. Also, that changeling invasion sounded bad. Does Equestria have some sort of aura emanating from it that induces likelihood of attack or something? Seriously, this happens way too often.”
“At least they're not running in terror this time,” Fred Walsh mentioned.
“Not to worry, everypony. He's safe,” Twilight attempted to reassure the townsfolk, without success.
“What you lot need to do,” he tried once more, “is to grow a pair. I have a few you can borrow.” Still no reaction. “Screw it, let's go.” With nothing else to say, they moved on.
The lavender unicorn led the way to Carousel Boutique, with the human in tow. The train station and dressmaker's shop/house were on other sides of the town, so onlookers were unavoidable. Far off, Fred thought he could see something glowing watching them, more than simply staring in shock.
Ignoring the locals, The duo made it to the Boutique. Twilight knocked on the door.
“So the weather report today says incoming shitstorm,” Fred commented.
“Huh?” she failed to understand what he meant.
After a few seconds, a voice sang from inside. “Come i-in!” They passed through the wooden portal. Once indoors, the human looked at his watch and made a motion with his free hand every second. “Welcome to Carousel Boutique, where every garment is chic, unique and-” she turned to face the two and jumped back slightly. “What is that?”
Fred turned to Twilight. “It's slightly more insulting when done to my face.” He faced Rarity. “Six seconds, slower than average.”
The scholar spoke up. “This is Fred Walsh.”
'I need a bible, just so the two of us can look like Jehovah's Witnesses. Hello, have you found Jesus?' he thought. “I'm suddenly very interested in archaeology.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” the dressmaker questioned.
Twilight continued. “We're going on a gem hunt. The gems of Princess Celestia's jewellery, among others, contain magical enhancements from the Elements of Harmony, and I think it'd be interesting if we found some of our own.”
“The harmonic gemstones are the bane of my recent existence in this universe, and I'm also slightly worried that they might fall into the wrong hands again.”
“Hmm, Twilight, are you sure we can trust him?” Rarity still felt uneasy in Fred's presence. It had only been a few minutes after all.
“Of course. Princess Celestia trusts him, and he hasn't done anything wrong yet,” the librarian reassured.
“The key word in that sentence was 'yet,'” he stated in passing.
“Well, I am running low on gems – Sapphire Shores loves gem-laden dresses – so I suppose you can help look for some more. We might even find some of your harmonic gemstones.”
'I'd probably laugh if Sapphire Shores turned out to be a comic book supervillian.'
“Spike would enjoy helping out; I'll go get him. Fred, wait here,” Twilight commanded as she turned out the door.
“I'll get some equipment.” The other unicorn walked into another room, leaving Fred still at the entrance. As he waited, he sat down cross-legged against the nearby wall and fiddled with the Scavenger Watch.
The door to Golden Oaks Library swung open, with the tell-tale ruby-lavender glow of magic able to determine the pony responsible. The librarian's assistant hopped down from the ladder he was dusting books on to greet the entrant.
“Twilight, you're back already? Weren't you going to stay in Canterlot for longer?”
“Change of plans, Spike. But it works in your favour, Come on, let's go to Rarity's,” she knew the baby dragon wouldn't resist some time with his crush, plus he would be helpful in mining some gemstones as he has before.
Rarity looked in a storage room for some saddlebags, which she then stuffed with hygiene products. Since the incident with the Diamond Dogs, she knows to take extra precaution against dirt when mining for gems. The dressmaker also equips some boots to avoid getting her hooves dirty. Overall, very little defensive equipment is selected.
Satisfied with her preparations, the unicorn returned to the main room.
“I heard everypony running a few minutes ago, is that creature here?” Spike asked.
“He is a human, and see for yourself.” Twilight opened the door to Rarity's boutique. The alabaster unicorn returned from the storage room, while Fred Walsh remained next to the door. The baby dragon immediately moved toward his crush, failing to notice the new object sitting cross-legged at the door.
The aforementioned object finished his quick task on the watch and locked it. He turned to Spike and cheered, “Hello.” He waved.
The dragon just took notice that the thing next to the door was alive, as opposed to what he believed it was – a new decoration that he ignored. “So you're a human, from what Twilight told me. Who are you?”
Fred stood up. While everypony had previously gathered various items, he spent a few moments during his waiting attempting to create a quick virtual ID card to place on the lock screen. He turned on the screen and raised his arm. “Fred Walsh: Demon hunter vigilante.” He spent a few seconds looking with his arm in place, then realised something. “What in Inferno am I doing, black power?” He decided not to display the virtual ID card that way again. “I'm not even black,” he reminded himself.
“Are we all ready?” Rarity broke the awkward situation.
A few seconds of agreement passed before the four left Carousel Boutique and headed North to a nearby area full of gems the dressmaker often visited.
"I'm actually surprised Rarity didn't lambaste me about my choice of attire, knowing her personality – or whatever the Equestrian equivalent of that word is. So, either her extreme fashion sense didn't kick in, or my look isn't bad by her standards. In either case, I think I prefer it this way.
"I do like the idea of the virtual ID card, even if it only looks spiffy. Now, I have to make certain that I don't do the black power gesture again. Hmm, I suppose holding it sideways would work better.
“Alright then, for the glory of... glowing gemstones?”
Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, Spike and Fred Walsh all proceeded North to a nearby patch of land the dressmaker found aplenty with gemstones of all sorts. Fortunately, the group succeeded in avoiding anypony who would be uneasy around the human's presence.
Rarity began using her gem finding spell, and slowly walked in intricate patterns through the dirt field, protected by her boots. Twilight utilised the same spell, though with a more direct approach.
Every so often, one of the two mares detected a cache of gems, in which Spike then came to their aid in extracting the coloured, translucent stones. The items became engulfed in coloured magic and deposited in a medium-sized wooden cart – The same kind that the Diamond Dogs once used, though slightly modified, pulled by Fred as he was capable of moving larger objects than the small red wagon the librarian's assistant could carry. The gemstones were also inspected for Harmonic properties.
Every time Fred pulled the cart, odd thoughts popped into his mind. 'We must push little kart!' Especially odd considering the Russian accent, and the fact that he was pulling it.
Rarity found another collection of gems via her horn. “Spike! There's another batch of jewels right there!” The faithful dragon dug a hole with his claws. Moments later, they were exposed, glowing from the reflected sunlight, which formed a rather unpleasing vision as the colours mixed together. The alabaster unicorn took the shiny items in her telekinetic hold and lifted them to place in the oncoming cart.
“Any Harmonics in this batch?” Fred dropped the handle to inspect the new arrivals. He pinched a ruby from the mare's telekinetic grip and watched it closely for any magical response. No such thing happened. He tossed the gem into the cart as Rarity carefully placed them inside.
The man looked around the area. The place was fairly barren, apart from a tree line and the occasional rock. He could see Twilight ahead gesturing for him and Spike to help. The two bipeds moved to investigate.
“There's another good few over here,” she noted. Instead of having Spike dig, she ignited her horn with magic and moved the dirt apart, revealing the gems.
'So that's how Moses parted the Red Sea.' Spike and Fred carried the jewels to the cart. The baby dragon had to be lifted by the human to reach the cart to place the items inside.
“I still don't get how these come so grouped together and pre-cut.”
“It's how Equestria's always been, Fred,” the unicorn replied.
“Still nothing interesting?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, no.” She sighed. “I had planned all this time to be in Canterlot, but now I don't know what to do.”
“All your plans have been blown out of the water,” he agreed.
“Until I can come up with another time to plan, I have to do something.”
“Well, that's the deal with the best laid schemes of mice and men,” Fred semi-quoted from the poem, To a Mouse.
Rarity joined the other three. “I know I may regret this, but what about in there?” She pointed past the tree line into a cave mouth.
“The Diamond Dogs' hideout? Rarity, do you really think that's a good idea?” Twilight remembered the last time they entered that place.
“No, but we're not getting anything done up here,” the dressmaker replied.
“Don't worry, Rarity. I'll protect you!” Spike took his crush's side.
“Okay then, creepy cave time.” Fred worked himself into the appropriate mindset. Once he achieved it, the four marched into the cave mouth. The cart remained behind, as the terrain would be too difficult to move it across.
“Wow, this place is abandoned,” the scholar said as she examined the hideout while they descended. They continued in, taking the occasional gem to place in their pockets as they moved along. The cave became illuminated in blue and purple lights from the mares' horns.
Eventually, Spike, Twilight, Rarity and Fred reached a large opening. It looked to be the central room for the cave.
“Ah yes, this place.” Rarity shuddered.
“You've been here before?” Fred asked her.
“Yes, and that experience was completely unpleasant-” Her horn ignited with more ferocity. “Wait a second, this happened last time!” The others moved into a defensive position while she followed the gentle telekinetic tug. It ended in the centre of the room. “I've seen this last time as well.”
The human took a look at what she referenced. “It's a collar with a topaz attached.” He picked it up by the strap. “Well, that's certainly peculiar.” He pocketed the gem.
With no ambushes, so Rarity's surprise, the group left the cave.
Shortly afterward, they exited back into sunlight. Fred took the collar out of his pocket and examined it closer. “Hold on, is this glowing?” Everypony and dragon looked closer.
“What's this?” Twilight questioned, horn glowing as she walked past them.
“I think we may have found a harmonic gemstone.” He smiled and nodded.
“But I've seen this before...” the dressmaker pointed out.
“What do you mean?”
Spike answered for Rarity. “It was on one of the Diamond Dogs.”
“So you mean to tell me that you've directly seen a Harmonic Topaz, long before you knew what they were?” Fred continued to smile. “That's brilliant!”
Rarity, Spike and Fred returned to the cart, just they way they left it. The human picked up the cart handle. “Well, I doubt we're going to find any more harmonic gems, so let's drop these off back at your shop while-” Fred was interrupted by beeping on the Scavenger Watch – Two rapid beeps and a short pause before it continued. In a swift motion, he dropped the handle and unlocked it. It was the neuro-receptor again, picking up a huge spike In the 20-40 Hz range. “...Where's Twilight?”
*This chapter is dark, but this should be the most extreme it gets.*
"Wow. We really dropped the ball on noticing when Twilight disappeared. She was there when we exited the cave then suddenly... not. No clue on how she disappeared like that, and the time it took for us to notice was ridiculous. Damn entrancing topaz.
"I've said it before, I'll say it again. Alarms are almost always a bad sign. Especially this kind. At least the program works, though. That's good news. It's still scary watching that graph shoot up, knowing that someone powerful – the neuro-receptor doesn't work on weaker beings for some reason as I've learned – is in danger."
"Where is she‽ She was here a minute ago," Spike yelped in panic.
As the Scavenger Watch continued blaring, the remaining three scrambled to find some trace of Twilight's whereabouts.
"Okay, think," Fred stopped himself from acting fearful and tried to take control of the situation. "We exited the cave," he traced the route with his fingers, "then we became enthralled by the glowing topaz. That's when Twilight disappeared."
Rarity closely examined the path the four took. "Hoofprints lead astray from us..." She looked into the trees. "She went this way!"
"Let's go!" The three sprinted in the direction of the indentations, Spike riding on the unicorn's back. Fred ran slightly ahead due to his longer legs.
A pinkish-red glow lowered Twilight into a freshly dug pit. The scholar, no matter how hard she tried, could no longer use magic and her legs were bound, leaving her helpless at her captor's mercy. She twisted her head in attempt to take a look at who or what foalnapped her.
What took Twilight was certainly the correct question to ask. She recognised the body as that of an azure coated unicorn mare with silver-blue hair, yet everything else was... eerily off. The thing's eyes glowed a powerful demonic red colour. Whoever that body belonged to is long gone.
"SO, THIS IS HOW THE PROTEGE FALLS." A screeching voice emanated from the creature.
"Wh- What do you want?” she asked, full of fear relating to her current predicament.
"I HAVE WAITED HUNDREDS OF YEARS TO DESTROY THIS COUNTRY. YOU WILL BE ITS FIRST VICTIM," it continued to say.
The thing telekinetically picked up a shovel, when a repeated pattern of two rapid beeps, then a pause, gained in volume. It whirled to face the noise.
Fred Walsh halted nearby the glowing pony. “What are you?” he demanded to know. 'And you look familiar...'
"AH, THE DESTROYER RETURNS. YOU WILL NOT DEFEAT ME THIS TIME."
The human realised who it was. “Oh, stercore...”
The possessed pony charged its horn and cast something toward Fred, who dodged just in time behind a tree. The spell missed, instead blasting some nearby Earth.
Rarity and Spike charged in, and what the human knew to be another demon began to focus its attention on them instead. Fred ducked out from the tree in attempt to reach the pit Twilight was in. He reached about halfway before the demon noticed him. It charged another blast, this one managing to hit the ground near his feet, which sent him flying into the ditch.
As the battle continued on the surface, with spells being thrown from either party, Fred landed on Twilight, nearly two metres below the ground. “Ow!” she screamed.
“Sorry,” he mentioned as he tried to find some less-damaging footing. “Okay, by now you would've tried to get out of here with your magic,” he began to think out loud, “and obviously that failed.” Another explosion formed above. “I didn't spot an emerald on that thing so...” He quickly looked for anything out of the ordinary on the unicorn. He found two things: Rope and a sapphire horn ring, neither of which were present last time they spoke.
“Harmonic Sapphire. It has to be.” Fred yanked the ring off of Twilight's horn. The moment he did so, a burst of colurful magic sent him flying out of the grave, through the air a bit, and landed him right beside the demon pony.
Close up, the human was able to take a good look at the azure unicorn. Along with the colours and demonic eyes, its cutie mark depicted a crescent moon overlaid with a magic wand. 'I don't even know what gender to assign this.'
Before it could manage, Fred rolled around, dodging more precise attacks. With a pause in the blasts, he swiftly arose and hid against another tree. 'That's a mare's body, but I seem to have neglected to check for genitalia on the last demon I fought.'
Rarity and Spike were a few metres nearby, also hiding from further attacks. A short, bright flash teleported Twilight into the fight, between the three others, and she looked mad. With no pause, the scholar erected a purple shield surrounding the newly reunited group, which bounced an incoming blast back toward a tree. It hit and collapsed the foliage, which separated the two factions when it hit the ground.
On the offensive now, Rarity, untrained in combat for obvious reasons, sent some telekinetic blasts toward the attacker, while Spike blew fire.
Plan foiled, the possessed pony gave up and fleed the area. The others failed to give chase. The scavenger watch ceased its beeping as Twilight calmed down.
“Who was that?” Rarity asked.
“It looked like Trixie from years back, but... Not,” Twilight answered to the best of her ability.
“That might've been her body, though I know who's controlling it. We've met before.” Fred stared ahead of him.
“She-It called you The Destroyer,” the student mentioned.
“Yeah, the demon's just butthurt. It's Potens Daemonium. The same demon I fought last time.”
“And how did you dodge all of those spells?” Spike questioned.
He shrugged. “Touhou.”
A/N: I wanted to use Zalgo Text on the demon's lines, but Fimfiction doesn't render it properly.
"This is only my second wormhole adventure, and I think I'm already tired of attacks occurring in my vicinity. Last week – or over two hundred years ago, depending on how you look at it – Princess Celestia was almost killed by a cult, and now the demon they worshipped, which we killed, is back and at it again. It's getting tiring, and this time I can't even be reassured by the predestination paradox.
"So then DemonTrixie almost killed Twilight. Also, does that have some kind of fascination with destruction along with people and ponies close to Celestia? This reeks of déjà vu. Potens Daemonium certainly has a few new skills – Messed up reincarnation, destructive spells.. oh, and the ability to talk, despite how horrible it does so.
“Okay, From now on, I'm going to refer to Potens Daemonium and DemonTrixie as males for simplicity instead of tripping over pronouns.”
Fred Walsh returned to the grave he had recently been blasted out of, crinkling his nose at the strong ozone smell from the recent teleport, and picked up a small blue gem on a ring. He twirled it on his finger.
“I think we got a slight bit more than we bargained for,” he stated warily.
“What did you just pick up?” Twilight asked him.
“What other than a harmonic sapphire?” He turned around. “Well, a new harmonic gem for the record.”
“All this running is wreaking havoc on my hooves, and it's getting rather late. Can we go back to Ponyville?” Rarity, back to normal, requested demandingly.
“Don't forget the gems, Rarity,” Spike reminded.
Fred, Spike, Twilight and Rarity followed their foot/hoofsteps back into the clearing they rushed out of earlier. The human picked up the cart and followed the others back to town with it in tow.
The sun was beginning to set, so few were out at this time. Fred dropped the gem cart off at Carousel Boutique. Rarity opened the door and took it the rest of the way inside.
“Thanks so much, all of you,” the dressmaker displayed her gratitude. “Too bad it went sour, but you're okay now and you have two of those gems. Stay safe.”
“See you, Rarity.” Spike, the lovedragon, waved as she carried the cart inside and closed the door. He hopped on the scholar's back.
“I never understood the name Potens Daemonium.” Fred made conversation as Twilight led him to her library. “It's just Latin for Powerful Demon. I almost can't imagine his childhood.” Almost being the key word has he daydreamed about the demon's growing up. 'No wonder he's so destructive...'
Fred was broken out of his imagination as the shrinking party stopped at the tree-house's wooden front door.
“Princess Celestia gave custody of you to me, so you can live here. I have to write a letter, I'll be right back. Spike, follow me.” The human realised Twilight had ceased her apprehension against him, which only began earlier that day. She and the dragon headed upstairs to report to the Princess, leaving the tall biped standing in the main room.
Fred took the harmonic sapphire and topaz (by the collar) out from his pocket and placed them on a table in the middle of the room. He stared at the two items for a few minutes, still intrigued by the topaz. Eventually, he cleared his head enough to look away and do something else.
While he waited for Twilight to return, the human took a walk around the room, admiring her book collection. He spotted something familiar. He went over to a shelf and pulled out the book he had his eye on.
'Oh hey,' The blue book, with two golden sections of binding, read 'Predictions and Prophecies' on the front cover. He opened the first page to the publishing and print information.
First published in 800
This edition printed in 998.
Copyright Prophet Tempus.
Accompanied with the note was a colour image of a familiar pony in a brown cloak, wielding a staff with a small red gem on the top.
'Didn't notice that ruby before. It has to be harmonic. The last ruby connected a few other universes together. This one might be time. Displacement gems, possibly?' Fred flipped though the pages. He passed information on various prophecies, both correctly predicted and yet-to-happen.
Dear Princess Celestia,
After hearing about the unusual Harmonic Gemstones, Fred Walsh, Rarity, Spike and I all ventured to acquire some. We found two, but a demon attacked me and... came close to ending me.
There is a long pause in between lines, along with hesitant splotches of ink.
I need your help.
Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle
“Send it now,” the unicorn stated. The adrenaline that had kept her composure ran out. She left her room as a bright green flame illuminated everything, sending the letter across the country.
Twilight descended the stairs back to the main room, quieter than before. She sat down at the central table. Fred looked up from the Scavenger Watch – he was updating his vlog - and walked over, sitting on the other side.
“Twilight?” he cautiously asked. Silence for a few seconds.
“I never knew the world was like this,” she sighed.
“From what I've seen of your universe, it isn't normally.” 'Great, PTSD is settling in. I wonder why it hasn't hit me yet.'
“I was almost buried alive today, how can things possibly go back to normal?”
“With time. Don't let it affect you,” Fred consoled. He peered down at the gems he sat in front of. “These gems may just be more trouble than they're worth.”
Twilight stood up to examine the harmonic crystals as well. “Is the topaz glowing brighter?”
The human looked at it. Before, it emitted a soft glow, but at at that point it was emitting a noticeably more intense yellow.
“So it is. Still don't know what it does either.” Fred stared some more at it. “Hmm...” Instead of taking the crystal by the attached collar, he reached for it directly to examine it closer.
The moment his fingers contacted the topaz, a huge bust of some kind of golden energy erupted from it. Not even a second afterward, the energy faded and Fred was knocked out, leaving Twilight and Spike watching from their viewpoints, shocked at what had just transpired.
“Today, or rather yesterday, in nonsensical things: I touched a freaking topaz and suddenly I'm blasted into unconsciousness. Last I checked, the laws of physics say this can't happen, but then again, I'm in Equestria. The laws of physics don't exactly apply. I'm burning my physics books when I get home.
“In other news, I remember speaking to this prophet back in 796. Well, more of a soothsayer from the way he acted, but he was right, not that he was taken seriously very often. Apparently, he took my advice and wrote the predictions into a book. Good call.”
“Morning,” Spike and Twilight mumbled to each other as they both climbed down the stairs. Fred Walsh remained passed out on the floor, with an added pillow for comfort.
“It's been all night and he's still asleep,” Spike complained.
“It's not a natural phenomenon to be knocked out like that, Spike,” the lavender unicorn replied. She ignited her horn and moved it subtly around her. “He's still stable, so we don't have to worry. He's the same as last night. There's some kind of strange energy in him, but that's probably normal for humans.”
The dragon's stomach rumbled. “Can we get some breakfast?”
“I'll make us some pancakes,” she answered. Twilight stepped into the kitchen and took various ingredients and kitchenware out of their cabinets.
A few minutes passed until Fred's eyes opened as he slowly sat upright.
Spike came over. “Are you okay?”
The human looked from side to side. “I feel completely fine, somehow. Regrettably, I don't know enough Latin phrases to exclaim my befuddlement at what just happened. Then again, that might be a good thing. Seriously, what the hell happened?”
Twilight exited the kitchen with three plates of pancakes in her telekinetic grip. “You touched that topaz and were knocked unconscious.”
“As I thought. That... still makes absolutely no more sense than before,” he said slowly.
“Spike, has Princess Celestia sent anything yet?”
“Nothing,” the baby dragon answered.
Fred looked around. “Also, where is the harmonic topaz? It was right next to the sapphire before.”
“It's gone, somehow.” The unicorn also attempted to find the gemstone. She set down the plates.
“Anyway, pancakes.”
They all ate in silence for a few more minutes, until the door knocked sharply.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Twilight finished off the current pancake and went to greet the visitor. She opened the wooden door of the treehouse library.
Earlier, last night
A parchment scroll materialises beside Princess Celestia's bedside. The alicorn is awoken by its appearance. She takes hold of the scroll with her golden aura and unseals it to read.
Within moments, she finished reading the short letter, shot up in alarm, and left her bedroom.
At all times of day and night, castle staff are always at hoof. Celestia sprinted to a lower point in the castle, which housed the barracks and flying chariot bay. She flagged down two awake guards and gave them instructions.
The door opened. In front of Twilight were two pegasus royal guards with their stoic expressions. Everyone in the room knew why they were here.
“Now that's a response.” Fred nodded his head in approval and pointed his fork just after he and Spike finished their pancakes.
“Twilight Sparkle,” the one on the mare's left began.
“We've come to escort you and the human to Canterlot,” the other one continued.
Twilight took a sharp intake of breath. “Princess Celestia must be worried, we'd better go. Spike, clean up and then go to Rarity's.”
“Sure thing!”
Fred stood up and took the magic-blocking sapphire. “You want to hold this?” The unicorn's face gave him the answer, especially knowing her last experience with it. He pocketed the gem.
The guards parted as the student and human left Golden Oaks Libary. Fred tried to check the time on his watch, but it wouldn't respond, strangely. Instead, he opted to check the clock tower: 7:49 AM.
The two armoured pegasi pointed their hooves at the chariot that had landed just outside. Twilight hopped on, while Fred stopped just before, noticing a shimmer in a bubble. He poked the area and it rippled. Afterward, he tried to hit it harder, where it blocked his fist, this time the clear, transparent barrier became more obvious.
“Hm, shielding.” He slowly walked into the shield and it let him through. Before climbing on, he took a good look at the vehicle. It was definitely a chariot, but very different to any others he'd seen. Its colours were white and gold, but it seemed armoured in a sense. He climbed onto the carriage as the two guards hooked themselves on the front. With a spread of their wings and a gallop, the entire carriage took to the skies toward Equestria's capital city.
Fred continued to activate the Scavenger Watch, without luck. In a last attempt, he pressed the reset button and it began to reboot. 'Okay, did that topaz blast an EMP as well‽ It's amazing this didn't fry to a crisp,' he mentally exclaimed as the watch started.
One would expect wind on the flying chariot, but thanks to the shield, very little passed through. As the pegasi flew in silence except for the beat of their wings, Twilight tried to analyse Celestia's response.
During takeoff, various onlookers watched Twilght and Fred depart Ponyville again, caring less about the creature's appearance and more about why they are leaving when they only returned the day before.
Invisible to those in the air, and concealed in the Everfree Forest to those on the ground, a unicorn with glowing red eyes watched a pagasus-flown chariot head toward Canterlot.
“After being knocked out by an exploding gemstone, I'm remarkably fine,” 'and I really need to stop thinking about past events repeatedly.'
“This wasn't really the way I imagined going back to Canterlot, for protection instead of my own reasons,” Twilight thought out loud.
“Well, you'll get to Speak to Cadance as you wanted to, at least,” Fred reassured her.
The remainder of the flight passed in relative silence, and they approached Canterlot Castle within an hour of departure. The barracks of the castle contained a landing area, and they set down there moments later. Twilight stepped out from the back of the cart, while Fred vaulted out the side, being careful not to impact the shield. Both passed through without issues. Task completed, the field collapsed in a short white flash.
At the front of the room, Princess Celestia stood. Her student ran over to the alicorn and they embraced each other. Not the best of reunions, but then again, possibly an important one.
Chapter 13 – Next Step "So I'm Back in Canterlot again. You know, it seems like just yesterday I was- Oh... wait. Although, going between Ponyville and Canterlot repeatedly rather changes your perspective slightly. Let's see. I first arrived here via a wormhole, then after being diverted, I walked here from Everfree, then Twilight teleport bounced her way here... Telebounced? After that, we took the train to Ponyville, and just before, a chariot back here, yet even after all this travelling, we've hardly gone anywhere.
"As said just before, Twilight and I are in Canterlot now, for protection against DemonTrixie. Said demon seems to be after Twilight and has his own harmonic gemstones. Not a clue on how Potens Daemonium possessed Trixie, but it can't be good. Though, the strangest thing is that he's only shown up just as I return. Could be coincidental timing or some weird link, I dunno."
“I was so worried about you.” Princess Celestia breathed a sigh of relief that her protégé remained unharmed after the incident yesterday. 'Shipping' briefly crossed Fred's mind before he discarded the thought as they embraced each other. “What happened? You were brief in your letter.”
Twilight returned her mind to the events of last night. She shuddered before recounting the events to her mentor as them, Fred and some guards walked through the castle. “After it fled, we took the gems and went straight back to Ponyville and I sent the letter.”
“If it's Potens Daemonium as I think it is – He, I guess, did address me as The Destroyer,” the human mentioned, “then that demon isn't going to give up.” 'Now, unless I'm a time traveller, I haven't destroyed anything else. Wait, how can I be profiling a demon I've only seen once?'
“Indeed, it is very likely that another attack may happen again,” Celestia began as they approached a double-door. “But you needn't worry,” her horn lit the colour of the sun, an identical glow engulfing the door as it opened, “the best protection will be put into keeping you safe, my student.”
Fred knew the contents of the room mere seconds before he could see inside. “Totally called it.” Princess Cadance and Shining Armor stood in the centre of the chamber. “Also, great dramatic entrance.”
Twilight stopped, as if in contemplation about who she wanted to talk to first. After a few moments, she selected her foalsitter to converse with. As she trotted to Cadance, Fred went to speak with Shining Armor.
“So, STF, then,” 'that was certainly insanely obvious,' the human spoke and thought.
“Yes, both myself and Cadance.” He smiled at his wife. “What happened to my sister?” His tone became a lot more serious.
Fred explained what happened as Twilight did just before to Celestia. “Since you're here, you know why she is.”
“You're right, I'm not going to let anything happen to Twily.”
“How'd you get into the Solar Task Force anyway?” Since the past few days seemed to relate to the guild, he thought to ask about some history.
“It's a long story, but back when I was simply a regular guard, I assisted in investigating some phenomena some years ago. Cadance was involved, too. I think she put in a good word for me,” he explained the short version.
As the two males conversed, Twilight and her former foalsitter did the same.
“How long have you been in the STF?”
"It's more of an honorary position; I've been part of them since I came here from the Crystal Empire,” Cadance began.
“But I've known you since you were my foalsitter...” The unicorn still didn't understand.
“I'll state this directly. Your mentor knew you would bear the Element of Magic long before you did, even before your entrance exam,” she explained.
“But if she knew, then...”
“I'll give you a hint.” the alicorn smiled. “We're doing the same thing right now.”
“You watched over me so I could become Magic? Celestia's been planning this for decades,” Twilight realised as she thought back on all her life's events. As she did so, she and Fred swapped conversation partners. The human switched to talk to Cadance while the scholar spoke to her brother.
“So, you're Princess Cadance,” she was the only one he hadn't met yet, “and from what I overheard, of the Solar Task Force.”
“And Princess to the Crystal Empire,” she added.
“Mental note: I really need to learn some geography. It seems that I must have missed that the last few times I was in a library.”
Cadance felt something. “Hold on, something's not right.” The pink alicorn's horn ignited blue for a few seconds. “Where did you get that topaz?”
“Oh, how is this my fault‽” he exclaimed. “I touch a glowing gem, big explosion, I wake up later and it's gone.” He walked off and looped around the room until everypony finished their conversations. Once they had, Princess Celestia and the STF faced Twilight and Fred, who had his arms crossed.
“Well then, what now?” the unicorn pondered out loud to everypony in the room.
The solar princess replied, “The best we can do is to ensure you, my student, remain protected if this happens again.”
“So we're staying here until DemonTrixie comes for us.” Fred sighed. “I'll try to help exorcise this thing when we get to it.”
“I don't want it to go near me again.” Twilight shivered as she recalled the events once more. She buries the thought again so she could think straight.
“Until then, accommodation is in order.” She gestured for Fred to follow her, while the STF directed the lavender mare.
“I'm sure you recognise where you'll be staying, if it's only been a week for you,” Celestia said as she and the human approached a door in the castle. With a click and golden glow, the door unlocked, revealing a cylindrical blue bedroom room.
“Oh hey, the blue guest room. Looks exactly the same as it did last time.” He was right. The guest room remained virtually untouched. Carpet was clean, bed made, everything. The solar alicorn walked off to leave Fred alone.
Chapter 14 – Contemplations "My reaction to Cadance asking about the topaz was a bit over the top; I'm suspecting that I might be the issue here when things are offensive, rather than them. I suppose that makes some semblance of sense, I don't exactly belong in this universe after all.
"Though, even if I could go home right now, I wouldn't. It'd probably be better for Equestria once I leave, but I have some things to finish beforehand. First and foremost, taking care of DemonTrixie. Only then will I let myself leave. Well, that is assuming that Midgård is actually able to reform another wormhole."
Fred Walsh looked up from the Scavenger Watch after a session of updating his vlog. 'There's no practical reason for recording this beside slowing my gradual loss of sanity,' he thought. He paced the room, almost on a nostalgia trip, but it wasn't exactly long enough to call it that. 'I wonder where the headphone cable generator went.'
The blue guest room was shaped in a circle, and as per its name, very blue-oriented and oddly enough, it matched his attire 'It's like I can just camouflage in here.' The carpets, walls and bedding were all various shades of the colour. The human noticed all of this as he walked in circles, tangent to the wall.
Fred returned to his thought process about himself being the problem of offensiveness. In contemplation, the human circled the guest room a few more times before he went outside into the corridors to go on a walk.
Elsewhere in Canterlot Castle, Princess Cadance and Shining Armor escorted Twilight Sparkle to her accommodation within. This guest room's colour matched that of the unicorn's coat: Lavender. As with the blue guest room, this one had everything colour shifted. The floors, walls and bedding all the same.
“You can rest here, Twily,” the colt assured, though it was only 11 AM.
“Thanks, brother.”
“Anytime, sis.”
“As much as I don't want to think about it, I need to know anything I can about this demon,” Twilight said. She left the room as it was, taking Cadance with her to the castle's library. They both still had much to discuss as well. Shining Armor remained behind, so for the time being, he returned to his post as captain of the royal guard.
Feeling slightly depressed at his current revelation, Fred continued to traverse the castle's corridors. 'Okay, I definitely overreacted. I'll fix it when I next see Cadance.'
With his reaction taken care of, he next opted to finish some things from his last adventure. 'I know I promised myself I wouldn't keep thinking about it, but I really want to know where those cables went off to.' To begin his next goal of finding the remains of the earphone graveyard and the rest of the first wormhole's ejections, he set off for the main chamber. The castle's lab wasn't far off from there, as he remembered. He also wanted to check on calculator developments. He knew that the basic arithmetic calculator was already common but not so much on scientific and graphing ones.
“There's nothing in here!” Twilight exclaimed to Cadance. The castle's semi-public library had no information on demons, though they don't exactly show up often.
“It was unlikely you'd find something here, Twilight. History might have something on Potens Daemonium though, but his body was destroyed,” the Crystal Empire princess advised.
The unicorn magicked some books over from the history section and began skimming through the titles. Most of them contained unrelated information, but after scrolling many books past her, one book looked relevant: 'daemonium impetum'. Translated, it read 'Demon Attack'. She read the blurb.
'Read the story behind the demon attack of 796, the cultist plotters and those who saved our country.'
“I think I found something!” she excitedly stated. Twilight began reading the volume to find out whatever she could about the thing that has been hunting her. Know your enemy, after all.
Fred entered Canterlot Castle's science lab, the same one he frequented last time. On his current entrance, everything was neat, clean and empty. 'Well, it was a long shot after all. At least they made use of the calculator.' He checked the time on the watch: 12:23 PM. He opted to look around the room a little more before heading back.
Packed up were various items of research and development, including more practical types of calculator, such as scientific and graphing calculators. He took one out to test.
The calculator he selected had many buttons. Since it seems the ponies mastered the basic calculator, it continued with the convention of basic arithmetic and on/off. It appeared much bulkier, and the display was about twice the size. He pressed the on button. The scientific device switched on, with only a black flashing vertical bar able to determine its state. The human pressed a few buttons to check square roots.
'Beginning with perfect square roots... root nine equals three... yep, that works. Root mean square, aka square root of two... aaaand it crashed. That was fast.' Fred reset it, made sure it worked as before, and put it back away before he left the lab.
Twilight finished reading Daemonium Impetum only an hour after beginning. The book contained drawn accounts of Potens Daemonium's appearance, along with anecdotes of those who witnessed him. Very little was actually written about the demon itself – the ponies knew nothing of it except it was big, red and wanted to destroy Canterlot before the original STF put a stop to that.
The book didn't actually mention the Solar Task Force either, just that a spontaneous team, even including Princess Celestia herself, quickly formed together and took the demon down from the inside.
The history book provided some interesting information to Twilight, but nothing that could be useful to her current situation. She spent a few moments replacing the books to their original locations before she and Cadance left the castle's library.
"All in all, I learned almost entirely nothing from that endeavour. Except that the ponies fail at programming scientific calculators. But then again, they're rather advanced from reverse-engineering the one I brought along. Midgård had to begin from a giant room to perform basic arithmetic. Which reminds me, I still have that radio to code.
"Okay, I've settled on a decision. I was a bit of a dick earlier this morning. I'll apologise to Cadance when I next get the chance to. Wait, more important than that: Not only did she know it was a harmonic topaz, she knew I – wait, wait, wait. I don't have the topaz anymore. It disappeared when I touched it. Okay, apologise for reaction, then attempt to understand how the hell she even knew.”
Very little happened for the remainder of the day, and certainly nothing relevant. Nobody/nopony really paid any attention during both lunch and dinner, and the remaining hours eventually passed onward as the sun descended across the sky.
Because it was not too far from the summer season, the sun set rather late – around 9 PM. Fred Walsh sat on one of Canterlot Castle's western balconies – The same one he and the first spontaneous STF stood on during Potens Daemonium's attack and initial death in 796 – to watch the sunset.
The sun dipped near the horizon. Consequently, the sky's colours shifted from the typical daylight blue to a pinkish-red.
Some footsteps sounded from behind him, shortly thereafter accompanied by a voice. “This used to be one of my favourite places in the castle.” Fred turned to the voice and saw Twilight Sparkle standing in the archway, with Princess Cadance in the corridor on watch.
“I can definitely can see why. You've got a great view of the western side of Equestria, including towns and the sunset, obviously, and actually, the first Solar Task Force watched Potens Daemonium fall on this very spot,” he agreed, punctuating the end of that sentence by pointing toward the ground.. 'Damnare, I'm never going to stop thinking about the past... It was last week, why am I so worked up about it?'
The glowing yellow-orange orb continued to descend further down the horizon.
“I used to be an avid lover of science, just last week actually,” Fred lamented.
“What happened?” she took notice of the word 'used.'
He took a breath. “Ever since I bounced back into Equestria, I've begun losing faith in it. Maybe my joy will come back, but for now I have to wait until the scientists on Midgård make another wormhole that won't try to destroy everything.”
“I understand. Everything's different since that demon attacked me.”
“You must still enjoy the sunset though,” he pointed outward, “or you wouldn't be sitting here,” he reassured.
“At least that's one thing that remains constant.” She nodded.
Instead of continuing the conversation, Fred and Twilight sat and watched the sun continue to fall below the horizon. The night began to take hold as the colours changed again, now at an indigo-violet hue, matching the unicorn's features.
“So that's why you like watching the sun go down,” the human commented as he compared her coat and mane colour with the sky. Also, her full name seemed relevant.
Twilight knew what he was getting at. “That, too.”
They sat, watching the skies change for a few more minutes. Fred then stood up, stretched his back and walked over to Princess Cadance. He had something important to do. The pink alicorn was dividing her attention between the lack of events in the castle's hallways, and the talk previously happening on the balcony. Fred moved over to her.
“Princess Cadance,” he addressed.
“Fred.”
He inhaled before making his apology. “Sorry about how I overreacted earlier today.”
She spent a second pondering the statement. “I guess I can see why you did so,” she accepted. “So how did you find the harmonic topaz?” She re-asked the question from earlier.
“Yesterday, Twilight, Rarity and I all went to find some harmonic gems after I mentioned about them. We set off, found the topaz on a collar, then Twilight was attacked. After we dealt with that, we retrieved another gem as well,” Fred took the harmonic sapphire out of his pocket.
“I haven't actually seen one of these before...”
“It's a magic blocker. I'm not going to test it,” he stated.
“I can accept that.”
“Although, how did you even know I had the harmonic topaz? I didn't bring it along; it disappeared,” he dug straight to the point.
Princess Cadance held back on her reply. 'He doesn't know yet...' “I'm good at finding the gemstones. I was born into the Crystal Empire after all.” She smiled.
Fred responded with a quizzical facial expression. 'But not the sapphires... Also she's withholding something...' “But you acted as if I still had it. I don't, it disappeared when I touched it.”
“Really? Well, I'm sure you know what I meant,” she responded in a tone as if saying 'Ha, I know more, but you can't prove anything.'
Unable to get a metaphorical foothold on the conversation, he sat back down on the balcony. “Filius a canis,” he muttered quietly.
“What was that?” Twilight heard him say something, but she was unsure what.
“Nothing,” he quickly replied, avoiding a confrontation.
Everyone remained seated for the remainder of the sunset, until the twilight sky shifted once more to a dark blue, almost black, and the half-phase moon rose upward. Now that the sunset had ended, Twilight, Fred and Princess Cadance left the balcony behind to return to their earlier-assigned rooms.
Instead of going directly to his room, Fred decided to take a detour to the castle's infirmary. He had something to say quickly.
He peered in the archway to a room containing beds and medical supplies. Inside was also a pony, the same doctor who bandaged his injury the day before.
“Oh, by the way. It turns out I am fighting a demon. Sorry.” He took off before the doctor could formulate some kind of reply.
Chapter 16 – Nightfall "You know, or well, I guess technically I know, I never get the chance to watch many sunsets... Though that's mainly because I don't go outside very often. I should see the sun go down more; it was quite a beautiful view. Colours everywhere and more things make sense.
"Great, so Princess Cadance and I are playing some messed up game of knowledge hiding. Is there a correct term for that? Dramatic irony? No, that would imply I'm in a stage production or something fictitious. I have no clue, but she's definitely hiding something about the topaz. The question is... What does she know? And I sound like I'm in a soap opera. The only thing needed now is dramatic music."
Fred opened the door to the blue guest room after traversing the corridors. Many of which are filled with guards, looking a little bit more alert than usual. 'I guess they're on the lookout for unusual activity.. Like, you know... A demon attack. Yeah, that'd do it.'
The human closed the door to his room, took off his shoes and lay in the bed in attempt to sleep. Minutes passed, with no change in consciousness. Fred continued to lie under the covers, but to no avail. He tried manually inducing sleep paralysis and even trying meditation along with the regular method of going to sleep. Nothing helped. At least two hours passed, with no success.
'Ugh, I can't get to sleep! I don't even feel tired!' he exclaimed in his mind. Instead of lying on the bed, staying awake the for the whole night, he decided he should walk for a bit to clear his head. He sat upright, twisted out from under the covers and left the bed. He put on his shoes once more and exited the room shortly afterward.
Elsewhere in the palace, Twilight Sparkle also couldn't get to sleep. She contemplated why. The unicorn had left Ponyville and her friends without warning, for herself or her friends, and felt slightly guilty for doing that. She was inside the royal castle under protection from a demon, by her foalsitter and brother, both in an organisation previously unknown to her, to ensure Equestria remains safe, as it should be. Plus, she was almost killed by a demon possessing a pony.
Twilight continued to attempt to get some rest, not that it would help. She lay in her temporary room's bed as the night continued, yet she couldn't stop thinking about all that had recently transpired.
Fred walked quietly down the castle's corridors, which would be entirely silent if it weren't for his footsteps – In this level of noise, the quietest step resonated loudly. In the moonlight beaming through the windows, the human could make out the occasional night-shift guard posted. The guards composed of both the standard royal guards and Princess Luna's bat-guards, which he admitted looked cool.
As Fred recognised the second set of guards, he decided to visit someone he should've met quite some time ago. The pony in question ruled over the night and was saved from herself by the Elements of Harmony roughly two years ago. Her escape was predicted through an unusual prophet, and slowly carried out over the last thousand years.
He first tried Canterlot's throne room as the first logical place to look, and bingo, there she was. Princess Luna. The midnight blue alicorn sat on the throne, her indigo-starlight mane floating amongst the air as if it was suspended in some sort of liquid, like water.
“Hello,” the human popped in with a broad wave as he made himself visible from the entrance double-door.
“Frederick Walsh, I presume?” She tilted her head at the sight of the human.
“I only said I was Frederick once; I, and most others I know, just call me Fred,” he corrected.
“Very well.” The lunar alicorn paused before her next sentence. “My sister has spoken of you, of how you assisted in fulfilling a part of the prophecy of my return.”
Fred moved further into the throne room. He looked around and realised something. 'There are no other chairs in here.' “Yeah, last week was strange. I'm getting a little tired of thinking it over, though.”
“What brings you here?” she questioned.
“You've heard about what happened to Twilight last evening?”
“My regards go out to Celestia's student. It is a sad time when our subjects are assaulted.” She looked down, recalling what she'd been told earlier.
Fred looked down, too. 'Even if that is an understatement.' “Basically, I can't sleep, and I doubt she can either, so I'm using the time for aimless contemplation and exploration.”
“As ruler of the night, I could sedate you if you'd like,” she offered.
“No, thanks,” he declined with a wave of his hand. 'Hm, the last time I was up this late would've been that miserably failed LAN party where the power kept going out. Screw that night.'
Luna seemed a little bit livelier at him declining.
“So, how've you been?” Fred asked.
“Re-integration into modern society has proven difficult, though much less such with Twilight Sparkle's assistance. It is a tragedy to learn of her predicament.”
'Ha, modern.' “Well, that's why she's here.”
Luna nodded. “How have your days fared?”
The human quickly looked back over his last week and a half. “I think I might have an incoming rant,” he warned. “In a very short time frame, I've been flung through not one, but two wormholes, into one gigantic phantasmagoria of a universe. The traditional laws of physics don't apply here for some unknown reason, and I swear I'm slowly losing my sanity. I'm amazed it's kept going for this long.”
He rolled from his standing position onto the carpet and lay down, with a large breath. “I also swear that Celestia's attitude toward me is some sort of wavefunction. It began with dungeon, to neutrality, to avoidance, to neutrality again, then after we fulfull prophecy part one she loves me, then hates me when I question her practices, now I have no clue. Okay, I think that's all,” he finished. “Sorry you had to listen to that.” He sat up, cross-legged. 'Now, to see if she tries to one-up me by talking about the moon.'
“You have had quite the adventure, although-” Before the alicorn could continue, the castle trembled. Everyone nearby shook slightly. Fred and Luna stood up in alarm, and the nearby guards also stood, alerted.
A scream echoed across the castle. Their heads darted toward the source.
*I may or may not have lied about chapter 10. This chapter's dark as well.*
"Well, that was certainly a bit of a rant, and I truthfully meant everything I said. Sometimes, I swear that being here is slowly making my life ever worse. But maybe I'm just one of those guys who prefer blissful ignorance over adventures. Primarily, I'm sick of demon attacks happening every week.
"Speaking of which, DemonTrixie's back. Great. It's a little odd, though. If it weren't for the sudden insomnia, then I would've been asleep during the attack. This has to be one of the only situations where having insomnia is considered a positive thing.
“I wonder what kind of wavefunction that my relationship with Celestia is.”
Most who hear screaming would at the very least try to identify the origin, and in the case of most of those still awake in Canterlot Castle, they would rush to offer assistance.
Immediately after the castle shook and a scream sounded, guards left and right ran as fast as they could to defend those in danger, and there was no doubt that it was Twilight's voice who yelled for help. Also joining the guards were Luna and Fred. Both of them barrelled out of the control room towards the student's quarters.
The castle quaked again.
They were mere turns from providing help, but only a few corridors remaining, they and everypony else encountered an issue.
Fred was running full speed, he darted to the next corridor. He continued to sprint forward. Suddenly...
“Argh!” he screamed as he fell backwards onto the ground, a red shimmer appeared at his feet before fading back into invisibility. Quick as he could, he stood up to investigate. Luna and some of the guards ran into the shield as well, all of them prevented from continuing. Fred mumbled incomprehensible Latin curse words as he bashed his right arm against it, causing it to shimmer again.
Meanwhile, Twilight dodged another blast from the demon-possessed Trixie. She wailed again. Somehow, her magic was gone similar to before, but this time she wasn't wearing any harmonically-enhanced jewellery. She hid behind an open door to block another charging attack.
The demon didn't finish the next spell; Princess Cadance kicked Trixie in the right side, disrupting the blast. It stumbled left.
Once the pony recovered, it threw a few more blasts outward. Without magic to defend, the others could only hide and hope they aren't hit.
Surrounding the perimeter of the shield, everypony, including the guards, Luna and Fred, pushed against it, causing it to glow bright red, yet it refused to falter. Fred stopped muttering Latin expletives; he had already ran out of them long ago.
Even worse, all their magic seemed drained too. Thanks to the human's previous experience with the harmonic gemstones, he knew that DemonTrixie wielded a harmonic emerald. 'But my arm wrestling analogy fails now. We have way more pushing against this but nothing's happening!'
Awoken from the trembling, Princess Celestia emerged from a hallway, still wearing her jewellery. Fred looked over at her tiara containing an amethyst core as he remembered its origin. 'Okay, this might be one of the worst ideas I've ever had, but it's not like there's anything better.'
“What's going on?” the solar alicorn loudly demanded to know.
He stopped pushing and moved over to her. “Princess Celestia?” He braced himself for what he was about to do.
She acknowledged his presence, awaiting an explanation. She looked to the shield, in attempt to understand.
“Twilight's in there with DemonTrixie, and I need this.” He jumped up and grabbed the crown. The jewel on the headwear was a harmonic amethyst, capable of defending against magical attack. It also allowed him to pass through the demon-red barrier effortlessly. The princess followed through via her secondary chistpiece, also amethyst, both alarmed and confused.
Princess Cadance lay against a wall, after being hit by a blast. She shakily stood up as her husband defended. Both them and Twilight had no way of knowing why absolutely nopony else were showing up to help them defend.
Shining Armor dodged a few magical attacks and closed the distance between him and DemonTrixie. He managed a few hits, but the last one was countered and he tripped over.
The demon, with both defenders incapacitated, made its way over to Twilight.
Fred sprinted with Celestia's tiara in hand, with the princess following close behind. As he ran, he failed to notice a small glow across his body and some sort of sparks emanating from his feet – He was too determined, after all.
They turned the final corner. “Hey, Stupidus!” the human called out to grab DemonTrixie's attention. It looked around, slightly confused at how they passed its shielding. The demon moved away from Twilight to stop Fred and Celestia first. It charged up a beam attack this time and released.
The human shielded his face with his arms, but the attack never came – instead absorbed by the amethyst. He released a breath he didn't know he held and hotfooted over to the lavender unicorn.
“Here, wear this.” He placed the tiara upon her head. Just after he finished, a blast struck him, causing him to fly backward. He impacted the wall and fell onto the floor.
Twilight saw him get struck, but had something to do first. Enraged at what the demon had done to her friends and family, her horn glowed brighter and brighter. Shortly afterward, she erupted in flame, similar to one time when she was furious at Pinkie Pie. She cast off a constant stream of whatever offensive spells she knew. Fred, barely conscious, could only think the Japanese word 'Danmaku.'
DemonTrixie couldn't dodge or block most of the onslaught and took some hits. Celestia just watched, wide-eyed at everything. The demon charged a spell, which the princess recognised. Unable to stop the impending teleport escape, she quickly cast a tracking spell, so they could find her later. She applied the spell just in time as it teleported into nothingness.
Twilight ceased her revenge attacks. She floated, with her coat white and mane on fire for a few more seconds before she drifted to the ground as she returned to normal. Exhausted from everything, she passed out. Fred, Cadance and Shining joined her on the stone floor as well.
At last, the castle guards arrived, now that the shield had stopped being maintained.
“Help them,” Princess Celestia ordered. She levitated her protégé as the guards lifted the other three and took them to Canterlot Castle's hospital area for recovery.
Chapter 18 – Recovery “Well, that's certainly one way to get to sleep, passing out after a demon attack. I mean, deus damnare, that was ridiculous. DemonTrixie learned some new skills since last time, including that harmonic emerald. He really beat the hell out of us. Cadance and Shining took a few hits and I was blasted into a wall. It really hurts, did you know?
“It might've been a stupid idea, but I will forever think that it's hilarious that I nicked Celestia's crown. Well, it did work, so it couldn't have been that bad of a plan.. I'm amazed that I actually got away with it, though the Princess could probably see why.”
Fred's eyes opened. Motionless and using only his eyes and what he could feel, he began to survey his surroundings. He felt like he lay on something comfortable, overlaid with a sheet for warmth. He heard a constant beeping nearby, roughly once a second.
'Okay, arms, legs, fingers, toes, check. Torso and head seem alright.' The human turned his head to his right and found the origin of the beeping: A heart rate monitor. He also observed an analogue clock ticking away and his Scavenger Watch on a table. On the left side of him, he saw a similar set-up for Twilight, Cadance and Shining Armor, also beginning to awaken.
“Now that must've been some party,” he stated with a smile as the others stirred.
“...A party?” Twilight asked suspiciously.
“How else do you explain passing out and waking up in a hospital?”
“That demon attacking again,” she replied.
“Yeah, that works too.” He tried to sit upright, but he encountered pain in his back. “Ow.” He lay back down. 'Oh right, DemonTrixie threw me into a wall.'
Next to speak was Princess Cadance. “Well, you made it retreat, the demon's on the run now," she said to Twilight.
“But what happened to you after Fred put Celestia's crown on you, Twily?” Shining Armor asked.
“I don't know, when I saw what it did to all of you, I couldn't control myself. I just couldn't stop.” Twilight failed to explain.
“Combine that with the amethysts' ability to provide a sudden return of magical energy and there's your burst.” Fred referenced he previous times he saw magic being drained or blocked, then suddenly regained. 'Also, what she said sounds like some kind of movie cliché.'
The clinic's door opened with a light squeak. In walked Princess Celestia – Her crown and chestpiece worn by her once again - and one of the unicorn doctors. With his horn lit, the doctor quickly examined the patients. “Well, the good news is that magic heals you quickly, so you all should be able to go soon.”
“Too bad humans don't have magic, then. Though we do have science – hold on,” Fred grabbed his watch from the table. “This should've beeped last night.”
“Like it did the first time?” Twilight responded.
“Yeah. I mean, I didn't have much faith in the script anyway, but still.” He unlocked the device and checked the input of the neuroheadset fragment. Even when there was no emergency, he should've been receiving a few low-level signals, but there was nothing. “Crap. Okay, the fear detector's broken, probably from that EMP or whatever happened two nights ago.” 'On the other hand, it was cheating anyway.'
The doctor broke in. “You said that humans recover slowly, but you're almost fully healed.”
“How bad were my injuries?” 'Now that I think of it, a few bruises doesn't really make sense to being thrown into a wall.'
“When you arrived, you had at least two broken ribs, but they have almost finished repairing,” he explained.
“That can't be right. A cut takes a few days to heal, I'm not even sure if ribs grow back.” 'The creepy medic from over half a year ago gave me mixed messages.' Fred confusedly looked around the room and saw Princess Cadance's smug expression from last night again. “I'm burning my physics books when I get home. Everything I know is wrong.”
“At least in Equestria, we heal quickly, except for magical appendages such as horns and wings,” Twilight added. “Maybe it's affected you somehow.”
“Then how come I didn't heal when I hit a tree after being diverted?” he questioned, a little exasperated.
“I'm not sure,” she said. “Although, I swear that I saw you glowing when you held Celestia's crown.”
“Glowing? What am I, radioactive?” he dismissed the idea.
The sun princess confirmed. “I observed you with a faint luminescence as you sprinted toward Twilight.”
'Why couldn't she just say light instead of luminescence?' He tried to rise again, already slightly less difficult. He sat up. “I think I know who can explain this....” 'My last plan may have been a terrible idea, but this will be a much, much more insane gamble. Suits my current mind state, I guess.' “Hey, Cadance? Can you come over here for a bit?”
The pink alicorn rolled out of the hospital bed and moved over to the human. “Yes?” she asked, still with that look on her face.
“I know you know something,” he stated firmly as the doctor left.
“What do you mean?”
“Okay then.” 'I really hope I don't end up doing this.' He took a breath. “Humans may not have magic, but some of us possess a skill, able to turn others insane quite easily.” He unlocked the scavenger watch, navigated to some files he encrypted for safety reasons: His cache of MLP songs, and decrypted them.
“What's that supposed to mean?” At this point, she became worried at his tone.
“Twilight, you can help too.” He selected Winter Wrap Up, ready to play. 'Surrounded by her friends and family; this had better work without me doing this or we're all totally screwed.' “Tell me if you've heard this before.”
“Alright!” Cadance screamed.
He retreated his finger from the play button. 'Phew.' “Oh?”
“You said the topaz vanished in an explosion, but it didn't. You absorbed it,” she explained.
Fred re-encrypted the files and closed the music player. “So a little gemstone is chilling inside my body.”
“You have magic now, of some description.”
“That would explain the glow, then. What else can I do with it?” he asked.
“I've never seen a being without magic encounter a harmonic topaz before; I'm uncertain,” she replied.
Twilight interrupted. “Fred, would you really have done that? Turn ponies insane?”
“Actually, I lied,” he answered. “Humans can't do that.”
*Note: In most English countries, Practise is a verb and Practice is a noun.*
"Sometimes, I need to step back and examine my perspective. For example, did I really threaten Cadance by almost causing her and everyone in the general vicinity an existential crisis? I hope to never come that close to doing anything of the sort again.
"Although, I was right; Cadance kept something from me. Apparently, I'm magical now because of the topaz, however that's even supposed to work. I really don't even know what my reaction should be these days. Might as well find some use for this. Learning this'll be fun."
After final recovery and check-ups, Fred, Twilight, Shining and Cadance were discharged from Canterlot Castle's hospital with a clean bill of health.
Fred returned to his room to go over recent events, and record some additional entries to the vlog, while still unsure if he'll ever publish the videos. He considered the ideas that he'd either attract unwanted attention, or be dismissed as fake. For the meantime, he continued to record them for himself, as a way of keeping some sort of rhythm in his confusing life.
Once he had taken a few minutes to get everything up-to-date, he sat on the unmade blue bed to think everything over.
The human sighed. 'Why Princess Cadance decided to play games with me, I have no clue. Okay, how do I use this magic?' He raised his right arm, to place his hand in his full view, then he focused without a goal, unsure of what to do. 'Go magic!' Nothing happened.
'How do unicorns use magic? Also, is this safe? They channel energy through their horn... I don't have a horn, or any other magical appendages,' he criticised in his mind.
'Hmm, how did I feel when I supposedly glowed?' he pondered. He remembered clutching Princess Celestia's gold-amethyst crown in his right hand as he sprinted, slightly fearful of what he was getting into, yet determined to help.
Still without luck, Fred stood up and paced back and forth around the circular room. “Okay,” he vocalised. “Emotions don't exactly make sense because they're just chemical reactions in the mind, meaning Hulk is inaccurate,” he began to think out loud. “But, said reactions can induce electrical impulses throughout the body- Ha!” he realised something, slightly unrelated to his original goal. “There's my love for science! I've been wondering where that went!”
In possession of a new plan, and his renewed appreciation of all things scientific, he bounced back down onto the bed and tried again. He raised his arm in view more confidently and tensed his muscles. 'Wait, am I actually trying, or just flexing?' He stood up again and mimicked himself running, with both his arms in a frozen snapshot of the action. After a few more attempts, he finally managed his arm to emit a faint yellow glow, accompanied by a low hum. He smiled, proud of his achievement.
Twilight looked around, examining the room she and her sister-in-law, Princess Cadance, along with her brother, found themselves in.
“Twilight,” the alicorn began.
“What room is this?” She hadn't been here before. She could see assorted mannequins, spread across an expansive area. The ground looked well-trodden, with some occasional scorch marks in various places. Against a wall were some targets with a bullseye on each of them.
“This is the royal guards' training room,” Shining Armor continued from his wife. “We're teaching you some magical defence.”
“I grabbed some spellbooks earlier.” Cadance levitated three books from her saddlebags, colour coded to the 'difficulty' of each. Twilight took the green one to begin with. She flipped through the pages of primarily defence-based spells, such as the shield she already knew, though some of the chapters contained some interesting techniques she hadn't considered.
“Mind if I try some of these?” She closed the book with an idea of the spell she wanted to try in her mind.
“Not on us,” Shining Armor chuckled. He stepped aside to give his sister some room to practise on the dummies.
The unicorn mare ignited her horn with her typical purplish-ruby glow. Although she hadn't used offensive magic before, sans the uncontrollable incident last night, she had a clear view of the results. She released, and one of the training dummies flew back a metre, toppling over at the end. A basic spell, but it didn't take much to cast, and could make a big difference.
Over time, she gradually attempted more attacks, while Cadance and Shining joined in knocking over other training dummies, having fun as well.
Many more hours later, Princess Celestia, Fred Walsh, Twilight Sparkle, Shining Armor and Princess Cadance all gathered in the castle's conference room, the subject at hand needing no introduction. Fred toyed with his newfound magic, toggling it on and off.
“Considering what happened to Twily last last night, I think we need a new plan,” the guard captain stated.
Fred stopped and looked up. “...Why am I here, anyway?” he questioned something that had lay in the back of his mind since last time he sat in this room.
Princess Celestia responded. “With your assistance during our last encounter with Potens Daemonium in 796, along with your assistance in the recent battle, I deemed it necessary for you to be involved.”
“Fair enough.” 'Well, she's no longer cross at me, and apparently that one time I fought the demon makes me an expert.' “Wait, being thrown into a wall warrants combat readiness?”
“I think we should go on the offensive,” Cadance interrupted Fred and finished her husband's idea.
“I doubt Potens Daemonium will have a change of heart, so I have to concur,” Twilight responded.
“Agreed. Fortunately, before it escaped, I placed a tracking spell.” Celestia levitated a nearby map of Equestria and enchanted it. A red glowing dot appeared deep within the Everfree Forest.
“Figures he'd be there,” the human mumbled. “So, what's our plan?”
Shining Armor formulated his idea. “We'll have to go here,” he pointed at the dot, “and take Potens Daemonium out.”
“You couldn't take him out with a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates.” Fred laughed. However, the joke was lost on the others. “You lot are terrible at humour. Just saying.” 'Either that or I have a bad sense of humour. Or, both.'
“How are we supposed to fight it? That demon's becoming more difficult every time!” the unicorn mare asked.
The human pulled a sapphire horn ring out of his pocket that'd been lying in there for some time. “Well, I still have this. Can we use it for anything?” Twilight looked a bit wary of the jewellery, courtesy of the last time she saw it.
The pink alicorn looked at the ring. “We could try getting it onto its horn somehow. It's still possessing a body, and that has to count for something.”
Over the next few minutes, the five continued their planning, improving upon it and taking into account any upcoming issues. Later, once the planning had been completed, they all went to their beds so they can be rested for the upcoming fight.
Chapter 20 – Final Prep "Okay then, it's settled: We're going to fight DemonTrixie. We have a plan ready and we're all rather pissed off in various fashions, thanks to these attacks. I'm unsure if that's a good combination, but we're going to try anyway. You know, I'm surprised that, in the last two fights we've had with DemonTrixie, I haven't seen his head spin around yet. I really did expect to see that happen at least once.
"I'm a bit relieved that Cadance doesn't seem to hold any kind of grudge against me after I threatened to destroy her sanity. I mean, yes, it was extremely rude to make the threat, but this was something I should've known earlier. Also, didn't I just apologise the night before about getting mad at her? I think I miss the internet, it used to help me keep my harboured aggressions in check."
A few hours after the next sunrise, everypony mentally prepared themselves for the upcoming battle against DemonTrixie in the Everfree Forest. As much as Equestria prefers to encourage friendship in opposition to violence, occasionally some things have to be done to keep the peace in the country.
Twilight Sparkle opened the door to the blue guest room, where Fred Walsh was failing at practising the magic he discovered the day before. He had his back turned to the entrance door, as he made an effort to 'flick,' to some respect, the glow away from him as some sort of effort to produce an offensive attack, but to no avail.
“Are you ready to go?” the mare made herself noticed with a question. The human, not paying attention to the door, jumped slightly, and some of the energy escaped his fingers, swirled around a bit and left a black mark on the carpet, all in the space of a few milliseconds.
“Whoops. Well, there we go.” 'I pity the room's cleaner.' He turned around. “Just about. I do have a quick question, though.” He re-energised his right hand again. “I don't know, do you think yellow and blue go well together?” he asked, comparing his magic to the sleeve of his T-shirt.
“You'd have to ask Rarity,” she replied. “She'd know.”
Fred cancelled his magic before returning to his typical stance. “Fair enough.” 'I was probably channelling her personalty to think about that and ask that question anyway.' The two exited the door to be joined by the unicorn's brother waiting for them, already in his lavender-crested armour. The three made their way to the castle's briefing room.
“I'm a bit tense about this,” she started a conversation en route.
“Don't be, Twily,” the guard responded reassuringly to her worry.
“I would be, we're about to go up against a demon-possessed pony which we've barely prevented from kicking our asses twice.” The biped, on the other hand, broke the attempt at calming her down as he did a few days ago.
“I'm simply saying that I believe she's justified,” he defended himself. “I had this friend back home. Nice guy, and funny, but he always seemed depressed. I had this constant worry about him every time we conversed,” he confessed.
“Do you encourage being worrisome? You've done this before.” Twilight looked upon the time they conversed at breakfast some days previous.
“It builds character, like in a drama play or something,” he shrugged. “It can also be a healthy thing in some situations.”
“Let's just get down there,” the captain sighed as they moved on through the castle corridors.
When Fred, Twilight and Shining reached the briefing room, Princesses Celestia and Cadance were already waiting for them through the open door. The three new arrivals quickly walked inside the narrow doorway and sat down around the central table for a last check-over of the plan they were to enact later that day.
“Let us go through this one last time before you leave for the mission,” the sun princess stated at the head of the table. “You are to carefully head into the Everfree Forest, find the demon possessing my subjects, and bring it here, using whatever means you deem necessary.”
On the table lay the available equipment they could use for the approaching task. In Equestria's typical fashion, little of it could even be used in direct combat, as the country prefers diplomacy over conflict, yet it was still useful in their special ways. To share between the team, they had two amethyst horn rings to prevent magical attack, the harmonic sapphire, also attached to jewellery, capable of blocking magic, and an enchanted map of the forest they were about to journey into, with DemonTrixie's position highlighted in red, enchanted to track its position thanks to the tracking spell placed during the last attack.
“Unfortunately, I am unable to join you,” she said with some regret that she couldn't assist in protecting her subjects directly. “I need to continue here.”
Fred tossed an amethyst to Twilight, and the other to Cadance. He took the sapphire and Shining Armor took the map. 'I really hope that two magic shields can be enough,' the human thought about the number of amethysts.
“We can do it,” Princess Cadance supportively agreed. “Don't worry.”
“There is a chariot waiting for you to take you to the forest,” Celestia finished. The others nodded in agreement and respect before leaving the conference room.
They walked together down a few sets of stairs to the chariot bay residing inside the barracks. Hooked up to a golden-white flying carriage were two guards, ready for them to get on, and looking more trained for agility and speed over combat. Although not official, Cadance, Twilight, Shining and Fred partially considered themselves a brand new team of the Solar Task Force. The unofficial STF jumped onto the waiting vehicle. Shortly afterward, the two pilots spread their wings and took off, flying ever closer South to the forest untouchable by magic ever since a dark incident many years ago.
Princess Celestia observed their departure from Canterlot, praying strongly in her mind that they would all be able to enjoy a safe return back.
Chapter 21 – Search "It does make me wonder slightly: Does my presence in Equestria bring about the murder in others or something? Both times I've showed up, so has something trying to kill everything in sight. If this continues when and/or if I get back to Midgård, I will be thoroughly disappointed. Or insane, possibly both. I'm close enough to insanity as is now.
“I still think the Everfree forest is funny. Everypony is scared to all Inferno about what is completely normal to me. Ah, society.
"I once thought I could dual-boot this watch with Windows 8 if I get back around the time it comes out. I didn't really make it clear last time, but that was a joke."
The golden chariot descended from its journey all the way from Canterlot, and set down at the entrance to the Everfree Forest. The transport couldn't carry them inside due to the still-mostly uncharted terrain and since only one of the occupants could fly, Princess Cadance had to walk alongside her flight-impaired accomplices.
Princess Cadance, Twilight Sparkle, Shining Armor and Fred Walsh hopped off the landed carriage. The vehicle and its two pegasus drivers remained on the ground to return the team back to Canterlot later, yet they themselves didn't accompany the team inside.
“Back here again... I never really thought I would have to return to the Everfree Forest once more,” the human sighed and shook his head.
Shining Armor unrolled the map from his saddlebag. “We must be here,” he pointed to a new blue dot on the Northern edge of the parchment, with their target highlighted in red around the centre. The others noted their location in relation to a red dot elsewhere. The group set forth, vigilant for signs of trouble, in a loose formation. Fred was at the leftmost side, with Twilight next to him. To her right walked her brother and Cadance next to her husband.
With whatever time remaining, Fred continued to practise his magic as they searched the forest. He performed some narration while he did so. “The great Everfree Forest. Only beasts and demons lurk on the dirt of the wild. Not a single equine form in sight.”
“We're here, so that doesn't really work,” Twilight commented on the issue in his storytelling.
“We don't count,” he looked at her and replied. He returned to his topaz magic. After some attempts, the human managed to throw some magic out of his hand as he did in fright earlier. Once again, the yellow glow flew in an intricate pattern and descended toward the ground. Unlike the previous time, instead of simply leaving a scorch mark, it struck a nearby stick and set it alight.
“Oh, cacas,” Fred panicked. He quickly descended on the wood fragment and padded it with his arms before the flame could grow. The fire extinguished after a few hits. “I probably should stop now,” he laughed the event off with a smile. He picked up the stick to examine the scorch left, then left it in his right hand as he and the others continued on after some of their own laughter.
Some time later, the four halted to take their position with the map again. Since the last time they checked, DemonTrixie had moved a far way East, a bit closer to Ponyville, while they had been moving South. Shining Armor took the lead and had the team readjust their course to match.
Twilight needed to know something. “Why is this demon even after me?” she asked. “I haven't done anything to it.”
Fred searched his last two weeks' worth of experiences with the demon for an answer. “The cultists in 796 were after Celestia so Potens Daemonium could be enabled to take over Equestria.” Even though the others didn't use a gender-specific pronoun, he did. “Maybe he's after you as a way of getting to her. That's my best guess,” he replied.
“But then, why does it want Princess Celestia?” she poked for more answers.
“Other than world domination, I haven't got a clue. A better question to ask would be why are there malicious people and ponies, along with whatever other lifeforms?”
The unicorn mare pondered this question for a few moments. “That's a bit philosophical, don't you think?”
“Exactly why we can never find out,” he finished. 'Screw philosophy, it makes things so unnecessarily difficult.' “You two, any inputs?” he chose to open the question to the other two.
“We've only faced Potens Daemonium that last time two nights ago,” Shining Armor replied.
“Great, so that makes me the expert.” He didn't agree with the title 'expert'. He only fought the demon alongside the original STF the night it was summoned, and that was stealthily inside the ear.
Princess Cadance shifted her position in the search-and-apprehension party to speak with Fred about the morning after the last attack.
The human spoke first before she could get a chance to. “Sorry about threatening the insanity against you yesterday morning. Also, I lied. Not only do humans not have that kind of power, I would never have done such a thing even if we had,” he apologised.
“I shouldn't have kept knowledge of the topaz hidden from you in the first place. I'm sorry too,” she did the same.
The both of them nodded and moved back to their makeshift formation to contemplate the conversation. While Fred did so, he failed to notice himself chewing on the burnt end of the stick he picked up.
Twilight felt she should bring this to attention: “Why are you chewing on that stick?”
The human removed the charred end from his mouth. 'That's what she said,' “Hm, somehow didn't notice...” He paused and examined the wood. “Tastes like Jack Daniels, now that I think about it” He said and tossed the charred item to his left. The stick landed quietly on the grass.
“How's our progress going?” Princess Cadance looked toward Shining Armor. The unicorn took out the map again.
“That isn't good.” He looked up from the map. A red glowing entity in the form of a unicorn stepped noisily on the ground as it made its way toward them and Shining Armor's magic fizzled out. He noticed a green glow amidst all of the red. Everypony quickly took their fighting stances. They knew what was about to happen.
Chapter 22 – Confrontation "Okay, we're rather terrible at navigation, and also awareness of our surroundings. Somehow, DemonTrixie managed to get right in front of us without any of us noticing. We need some minimaps, that'd make our lives much easier. Then again, that'd never happen. For one, life would never make itself that easy. Second, it's rather impossible as far as current technology goes. Hopefully I can go home after this is all done.”
“My vlogs are normally longer than this, but I really don't know what more to say right now. I've already said that we're off to fight DemonTrixie. Another reason that I need to get home. Eventually, one runs out of things to say.”
“WE MEET ONCE AGAIN,” the possessed pony screeched. Fred tensed up and closed his eyes to survive the voice.
The human looked at Twilight and remembered their conversation earlier. “Who better to ask?” he muttered to himself. “What's the deal with all this?” He asked Potens Daemonium. Meanwhile, the unicorn mare was looking around worriedly, anticipating something to happen.
“THE RIDICULE OF THIS WORLD MUST BE PURGED,” he shouted back.
'And he dodges the question. He'd be a great politician.' “Why?”
“BECAUSE IT MUST. THIS WORLD WILL FALL UNDER MY RULE.”
Shining Armor interrupted. “We're not going to let you try anything!” he yelled angrily.
“YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO INTERFERE,” the demon commanded. In rage, he threw a large, red, sparkling energy ball at the team. Twilight had been preparing and immediately deflected the attack with a purple shield. Some of the energy became absorbed by the bubble, though the rest bounced to the left and hit the ground. The dirt erupted nearly a foot in the air.
DemonTrixie's eyes widened slightly. He still wore the harmonic emerald, supposedly able to block magic. Then, he saw his mistake, that purple unicorn and the pink alicorn both wore amethysts to counter his own jewellery's effects.
Twilight continued to sustain the shield. Said barrier had a dual purpose: Protecting against offensive magic, and preventing unwanted parties from escaping via teleport, so their enemy could not escape. Meanwhile, Cadance took the offensive position and attacked with her own magic. She cast a few offensive spells, but she never had formal training and didn't know them as well as she could. The princess knew that if she tried to give it to her husband, she would fail thanks to the magic blocker.
“Give the amethyst to Shining!” she called out to Fred. The human ran behind the rest of the team, still inside the shield, to Cadance. He took the ring off her horn and as he pivoted around, he threw some of his magic outward. By some miracle, the inaccurate blast struck the demon. Immediately after he attempted his spell, he equipped the gem on Shining Armor and ducked back to his previous position.
The attacker continued to fight, despite the shield blocking his attempts. Twilight seemed to struggle a bit from keeping the barrier raised, with the force of the attacks against it.
The unicorn stallion sent a few blasts on the offensive. Although DemonTrixie couldn't produce a full dome shield like how Twilight and Shining both proven they could before, he still managed to bounce attacks using precise counter-attacks.
Fred quickly ran through an inventory check. He used his index finger to draw imaginary diagrams in a small area of about two centimetres as he remembered the items they brought and where they were. He recalled he brought along a magic-blocking sapphire and took it out of his pocket.
“We need to use this!” he shouted. Twilight looked at the jewellery and nodded. She whispered some words to her brother before lending the human her amethyst. As he took it, Shining Armor took control of the shield. Armed with two harmonic gems, Fred jumped out of the shield to stick the sapphire on the demon.
The strategy lasted all of three seconds, at which point a blast struck the ground, causing a large explosion and throwing him back into the shield. The harmonic amethyst could only block direct attacks, unfortunately. That plan failed, he stood back up and slid the amethyst back on the unicorn mare.
DemonTrixie continued to barrage the shield as it was sustained by Shining Armor. Both he and Twilight shot out some blasts when they could. Nothing much happened as the two factions reached a stalemate without any new plans.
The lavender mare thought it a good idea to try a new strategy. Her horn ignited brightly as she poured energy into it. A smaller bubble encompassed her and Fred, in order to negate the regular shield's nullifiers, and they vanished in a flash.
They re-materialised on the other side of the battleground, behind Potens Daemonium. Along with a strong ozone smell, Fred witnessed a small object that looked to be some sort of spacial tear quickly seal itself after a few seconds. He guessed it to be a scar from their teleport. He returned his attention to the current task.
It seemed they weren't noticed teleporting over. The demon stayed focused on Princess Cadance and Shining Armor. Twilight erected a shield, just in case he did.
Fred took the sapphire out of his pocket again with his right hand, raised his left to his chest and muttered a prayer in Latin to no god in particular. “Precor me superesse hoc,” he pleaded quietly. Translated, he said, “I pray that I survive this.”
The human took a deep breath. He then sprinted out of the purple bubble towards DemonTrixie. His footsteps, thanks to his speed, echoed to the demon's ear and he turned to investigate. He saw the two-legged creature that called itself a human moving quickly towards him. Potens Daemonium intended to make short work of the biped by throwing a blast. Just as he charged the attack and released it, Fred dove, dodging above the spell and getting in reach of the horn. With his free hand, he managed to slide the emerald straight off.
He landed on his front and tried to reorient himself to make some use of the momentum from the jump. He rolled to the other shield.
Twilight showed up on the same side with another teleport flash. Now that magic was no longer being drained, the three ponies went on the offensive. Fred stood up and joined in with whatever he had learned over the last day and a bit, using all the power he could.
With nothing to inhibit, the team quickly managed to subdue DemonTrixie. He fell on his side and the four moved in closer. Fred attached the harmonic sapphire on the horn.
“I've said it before, I'll say it again. This universe is protected,” he restated from what felt to be a long time ago.
Twilight cast another spell. “Sleep,” she commanded verbally as her target fell unconscious.
“Well, thought would be the better term,” he clarified to himself. “Also, what are you? A stage hypnotist?” he asked Twilight.
Chapter 23 – Aftermath "Well, that was all manners of weird. Magic fighting is much more complex than I would've thought. I'm amazed that I helped as well. Also, I'm not going to forget that ozone smell from the teleports. It stays in your nose for ages, I don't even know if I can stop smelling it. So, I'll just ignore it for now.
"Anyway, we finally caught DemonTrixie. Now Twilight can rest easier since she doesn't have to worry about being attacked in her sleep anymore. I'd still quite like to know how this happened in the first place, but I doubt I can find out now. Even in movies, it doesn't just 'happen.' There's always some form of progression that must somehow lead into it first."
Princess Cadance and Shining Armor did the heavy lifting as they co-operated and used their telekinesis to levitate the unconscious yet still-possessed Trixie. They lifted the sleeping unicorn and began to move it back to the chariot.
Fred stumbled a few steps. He felt a little nauseous. He shook his head and wiped some sweat off his forehead.
“Do any of you have water?” he panted in between breaths, with only the saddening reply of shaking heads. The human listened to nature for a second. “Be right back, there's a river nearby.” He wandered off, trying to stay upright.
“I'd better make sure he's alright,” Twilight said worriedly before following behind him.
As Fred walked, he used nearby trees as a balance. One caught his eye. Even though he felt unwell, he could identify it by the mark left many days prior. “Huh, did I really impact that hard?” he verbally asked himself before continuing to the flowing water stream.
'How did I not notice the river was this close when I was here before?' Fred went prone on the riverbed and extended his arms under. He occasionally cupped his hands together to take a sip. 'I hope this doesn't have any bacteria.'
The scholarly unicorn arrived and sat beside the human. “Are you alright?” she looked him over.
He looked at her. “Yes, I'm fine and dandy,” he replied with a strange mix between sarcasm and delirium before taking another drink.
Twilight felt concerned, so she opted to scan him the same way she did when he fell unconscious after first acquiring the topaz.
The scan took a few seconds, but apart from that one other result, she didn't have any decent reference points. With a lack of other data, she compared the only ones she had. There were numerous differences between the two data points.
“Uh... What's the normal body temperature of humans?” she asked.
“It's typically at a core temperature of thirty-seven degrees Celsius, give or take half a degree for the circadian rhythm,” he answered. “Wait, why?” he became alarmed.
“You were at that level the last time I checked, but now you're about thirty-eight.” After she finished, a brief silence ensued. The only sound was the river.
“How, exactly, did this suddenly just happen?” Fred questioned.
“You were using your magic, right?” the unicorn responded.
“Yeah.” He used a lot, even though he could barely utilise it in the first place.
“I don't get it. Your body should've just dissipated the heat.”
“What do you mean 'dissipated the heat'?” Fred became confused.
“At least, when unicorns use magic, the energy leaks out into other forms, primarily light and heat,” she explained, “but it's supposed to just dissipated through the focus, in our case, our horns.”
“But I don't have a horn,” he pointed out. “Or wings, for that matter, if they count.”
“Oh, right,” she realised. “Without a focus, then the heat would have nowhere to go, so I'm guessing it stayed within you.”
Fred sighed. He had cooled down a bit and began to feel better. “How fun. I possess an unstable energy manipulator that can kill me if I'm not extremely careful.”
“You'd have to find some other way of removing excess heat when you use your magic,” she notified.
“Well, how am I doing now?” he prompted her to scan his temperature again, in which she complied.
“You're nominal, thirty-seven point four degrees Celsius.” she smiled that he was alright.
“Excellent.” He nodded and stood back up. “At least my body's heat regulation isn't totally screwed over.”
Once Fred dusted himself off – he was lying on the dirt ground just before, after all, - he and Twilight returned to the other half of the group. Princess Cadance and Shinng Armor, who were still waiting for them to come back, looked over.
“Don't worry, you two, I wasn't possessed,” the human reassured. “Now that would be something to be worried about,” he joked and pointed outward in dramatic punctuation.
“That's a relief. What happened?” Shining Armor inquired.
“Hyperthermia caused by an unnatural increase of body heat through stimulated emission of magical energies,” Fred became excited by his words. He smiled. “Hell yes, science!” He fist pumped. “Which is weird because my very existence here should be disproving it. Oh well. Let's head back.”
The unofficial Solar Task Force spent a few minutes returning to the chariot with DemonTrixie, after the unicorn guard retrieved the dropped map, which didn't fare well in the earlier combat.
When they exited the tree line of the Everfree Forest, the transport, plus its two drivers, still waited there for them. The two weightlifters placed their sleeping cargo on the front of the flying vehicle before they themselves climbed on board. Twilight and Fred followed suit.
With wordless agreement, the two pilots took off, with the occupants magically held in place to prevent inertia from causing them to fall out of the open carriage.
Princess Celestia had been watching her windows for signs of the team's return. When she noticed the chariot flying back, she ducked down to the landing bay in the barracks. By the time she arrived, they had only just landed.
All four climbed out, accompanied by the levitating Trixie. The two pilots returned the vehicle to the others and unhooked themselves.
“We certainly kicked some flank,” Fred commented as they lined up in front of the sun princess.
“We should try and cleanse this demon,” Cadance suggested.
“Agreed. Take it to the isolated medical bay,” the other alicorn agreed.
Chapter 24 – Exorcism "Now, I guess technically, it wasn't really hyperthermia. That would have to imply that my thermoregulation actually failed, but it didn't. I merely overcame its maximum workload under normal human conditions. The main problem being I'm not exactly a normal human anymore. I should probably figure out a way to manually get rid of heat, for future reference.
"I'm proud I get to use larger words these days, but I'm not sure if it's a symptom of my spiralling sanity or if I'm happier with life again.. Still, there's a few things left to do. Then, I can go home. The scientists back on Midgård hopefully can still make the return wormhole, hopefully one that won't bounce me around this time."
Shortly after they exited the chariot, the unofficial STF already began to take Trixie to Canterlot Castle's medical isolation chamber. Three sets of pony hoofsteps, along with a set of human footsteps, echoed along the route, going up various sets of stairs.
“I just realised,” Fred began while paying attention to the staircase and its lack of alternative routes, “this place isn't exactly wheelchair accessible. The castle would totally fail a building inspection if this were Midgård.” He also looked around other parts of the castle while staying in the group.
Without regard to inapplicable building code, they continued until they reached the isolation room. Shining Armor and Princess Cadance carefully placed their prisoner on a bed in the centre.
“We need to figure out how Trixie became possessed,” Twilight advised on what they should do.
“I can scan her to see if I can find anything,” Cadance concurred that notion.
“The Exorcist failed to provide me with any real-life useful exorcism tips. That movie is a lie,” Fred complained about his lack of knowledge.
“Do any demons truly show up in your world?” the princess asked.
“No, and I would prefer to keep it that way,” he answered.
The pink alicorn found something interesting. “Hmm,” she mused on what she found.
“What is it?” Shining Armor asked a question on the discovery.
“It's a-” she was interrupted from finishing her sentence. The sapphire keeping Trixie's magic blocked suddenly shot off, and large red bursts of magic started pouring out. Fred jumped out of the way of the ring. Two eyes opened.
Before the demon-possessed pony could muster a change to try anything, the demon became quickly subdued by the surrounding ponies and human. Twilight quickly re-cast the sleep spell and her target returned to a catatonic state.
“What happened there?” the human inquired, reeling down from a panic. “It didn't just fall off, the sapphire full-on... impaled itself into a wall,” he looked at where the jewellery ended up.
“I think I have an explanation,” Princess Cadance tried to continue on from where she became cut off. “Trixie's body somehow acquired a harmonic topaz.”
“You mean, as in the thing I absorbed-type of harmonic topaz?” he became worried, and not the healthy kind that he usually enforces.
“Yes and no. The one you have was inactive before you interfered, but something activated this one before its bearer found it,” she consoled by providing a reassuring explanation.
“Potens Daemonium, I bet,” he guessed. “Not sure how, though. I'm still adamant he was killed.”
“His body, at least.”
“I get that you're part of the crystal empire, but I really don't understand how you know all this,” the human said.
“Lots of time,” she replied firmly.
“Is there a book or something?”
“No, actually.”
“There needs to be one,” he finished.
“Can you get the topaz out?” Shining Armor returned the two to reality by requesting to remove the gem from Trixie.
“I should be able to. Hold on.” Her horn lit up a light blue again, as did a piece of the unconscious mare's body. The area slowly shrunk until it went inside. She concentrated for a few more seconds, until suddenly, with a flash, a gemstone materialised on a small tray nearby. Cadance exhaled. “That's it!” She smiled.
The recently-removed topaz glowed a bright red on the tray. Its light made it difficult to tell it even was that gem. In comparison, the one Fred found might as well have been an old wax candle. Those in its presence shielded their eyes. Twilight found a nearby opaque cup and placed it over the jewel for the time being, having the effect of blocking its blinding light.
“Was that really the whole exorcism?” The human felt disappointed.
“Yes,” the local exorcist alicorn stated.
Trixie's eyes fluttered open. The others watched intently for signs of possession. Her eyes didn't glow. Instead they reflected their normal colours: The whites showed their typical tone, the pupils were black and without abnormal dilation, and her irises displayed her typical purple hue.
The azure unicorn sat up. “Where am I?”
Fred considered spontaneously making something up, as he used to when new players couldn't comprehend a game server connected to a chat channel, but decided against it. Instead he inquisitively asked, “How did you get the topaz?” making sure to not sound like he was interrogating her, lest he scare her and prevent anypony from learning anything.
“The what?” Trixie looked back on what had happened, but she found some parts difficult. “I remember finding a glowing gemstone in the Everfree forest, but I can't remember when.”
Shining Armor decided to recap what happened. “And after you found it, you absorbed it. Then, you tried to kill my sister. Twice.”
“What‽” She tried to recall. “Oh my Celestia.” She looked around frantically. Before another had a chance to say anything, the unicorn charged up a spell and vanished.
“She teleported, and the tracking spell's already worn off,” the other unicorn mare sighed.
“I was trying to avoid startling her like that, being fearful this time isn't a good idea,” Fred explined. “Now what?”
“We still have to get rid of the topaz,” Cadance declared.
Princess Cadance, Twilight Sparkle, Shining Armor and Fred Walsh sat around a table once again, presided over by Princess Celestia. The solar alicorn listened to the others during the debriefing.
“Unfortunately, Trixie teleported away and we don't know where, so we can't get her back for more information,” Twilight finished informing her mentor up to the current point.
“What are we doing about Potens Daemonium's soul topaz?” Fred felt a little bit uneasy with the demon's very presence anywhere in the castle.
“He is being taken care of as we speak,” she assured.
“Oh, also,” he began another sentence.
“Yes?” She waited for him to continue.
“I think I figured out why I was brought along,” he said, grinning. The princess turned her head. Fred raised his arms up into the air, giving thumbs-up gestures on both. “Opposable thumbs!” 'bitches.' He thought it best not to mention the extra word. He clapped his hands together with a satisfying noise and returned them to his lap.
With no more left to say, they left the briefing room.
Chapter 25 – Cooldown "Although it was Princess Cadance that did the exorcism of Potens Daemonium, it's still a learning experience for me. I know who I'm gonna call, if possible, in case I need help with an exorcism, or I can try to carry the knowledge into Midgård and do it myself. That is, if demons ever show up. So, probably not.
"Anyway, it's nice to know that yet another mission – is that really the right term here? – is finally over. Now I can rest until the scientists can pull themselves together and keep trying with that wormhole. Wait, am I a test subject? They said last time they had never sent anything through. I think I know why."
Fred, Cadance, Twilight and Shining lingered outside the briefing room, calming down after their experiences over the last few days, including the recent counterattack.
“Well, we're becoming quite the demon hunters,” Fred spoke out as he realised his statement. “Which is weird, considering I'm terrible at fighting,” he criticised.
“You took part in the attack of 796, didn't you?” Twilight responded.
“Yeah, and I couldn't fight back then either.”
“Twily,” Shining Armor began, “since you're no longer in danger, you can return to Ponyville if you'd like,” he said.
“I really should go back,” she sighed. “I didn't really get a chance to properly say goodbye before I left.”
“We can take you to the train station if you're ready,” Cadance advised.
“Is it crowded around this time?” The human still had aversions against civilian ponies seeing a six-foot-tall bipedal hairless ape walking around the city.
“Commonly, transport is only used by travelling salesponies. On occasion, others do go along. It's unlikely that anypony else is there,” she replied.
The four reached the train station, acting casual. As expected, the only pony there happened to be the train driver, waiting for passengers. The bearded stallion looked forward, paying light attention to the four blobs in his peripheral vision, but not paying any mind to their actual structure.
“I hope my friends are okay.” Twilight hoped for the best as she boarded the train.
“Goodbye.” Fred waved to her with his watch hand.
“We'll see you again,” Cadance said.
“I probably won't, though,” he pointed out.
Before the train departed, two earth ponies – one mare, the other stallion – approached the platform and spotted the human.
Fred lazily turned around to face the newcomers. He turned back. “You lied,” he stated to the alicorn before looking at the two ponies again. He unlocked the Scavenger Watch and opened the virtual ID card again. Instead of displaying it vertically and accidentally performing the Black Power gesture, he rested it against his chest. “Fred Walsh: demon hunter vigilante, keeping Equestria safe from... well, demons..”
Surprisingly, the two earth ponies accepted the explanation and stepped onto the vehicle. The train departed once the driver realised no new passengers would come onboard.
“I find it strange how quickly we're disbanding after the job is done,” Fred noted out loud.
“There's no longer a reason for us to protect Twilight,” Shining Armor replied. “We can still see her another time, but we should allow her some breathing room.”
“Suppose so,” the human nodded. He checked the time on his watch. It read 6:02 PM. “Doesn't seem as if it should be this late already.”
“You'd be surprised how time flies,” Cadance mentioned.
“If time's flying, wouldn't that mean I was having fun? I really am insane if I enjoy fighting demons.” He closed his eyes and exhaled deeply.
“Not always, but none of us have had downtime lately, you're exhausted,” she advised.
“Yeah, you're right. I'm just going to go lie down for now.” 'I also want to calculate Pi on their scientific calculators, but I don't know the dimensions of a perfect circle.'
“Before you do, Fred,” Princess Celestia stepped out of the nearby corner. The others thought he could see some green smoke rising upward. “I'd like to show you something.”
'Isn't this how horror movies start? Then again, so do pornos so I'm discarding this thought.' “What is it?” he asked.
“I'm sure you recall the harmonic rubies used to bring you and Potens Daemonium here some time ago,” she began as she motioned for him to follow.
“The displacement gems,” he added. “I saw a picture of the prophet with one on his staff.”
“Indeed. That would explain his knowledge.”
Fred hadn't travelled around this area before. They went down a few sets of stairs to a lower point in Canterlot Castle.
“I thought it best to put them somewhere with high strength,” she continued as she led him into a room with a medium-sized door.
Inside he saw a mostly-white room, a few metres in either direction, with many fragments of a ruby around the ends. Approximately nine in total, each piece measured about one cubic centimetre. Each was supported by a small piece of wire holding them in place a little bit out of the wall. White light came from the ceiling, despite there being no windows, and they reflected onto the gemstones, causing the room to shimmer a faint red.
“You kept these?” He became a little amazed at how well the harmonic rubies were stored.
“There was also an energy surge nearly a week ago, when you returned,” she remembered.
“So these throw a bunch of energy all over the place when a wormhole opens?” he asked to clarify.
“Only the one linked to the universe it originates.” She did so. The alicorn moved to one of the rubies, opposite the door. “This one.” She pointed to it.
“That's Midgård?”
“I believe so.”
“Also, you said a while ago that both our planets are called Earth, but I don't think you should be the one who gets the name while I use Midgård. From now on, you can be Terra Fabula – That is, Land of Myths.”
“Very well,” she accepted.
“Do you hear something?” Fred took notice of a buzzing noise increasing in volume, before it became accompanied by the structure shaking. The ruby opposite the door also began to glow brightly. “Of course...” he muttered and rolled his eyes.
An ear-piercing BANG sounded in front of the two. Fred charged his right hand with magic in reflex, disoriented by the sound. After he and Celestia were done tending to their ears, a yellow oval-shaped object could be seen. Nearby guards rushed to find the source of the explosion noise. It was a wormhole.
Chapter 26 – Take Two Somewhat surprisingly, the yellow-white wormhole remained stable. It gave a gentle tug on everything in the room, yet not enough to actually pull anything through. The ponies and Fred felt the pull, though.
“Is that always going to open so ridiculously loud?,” Fred Walsh muttered. “I guess I'm not getting my rest for now,” he sighed. He released the energy stored in his hand, letting it flow back into him.
Meanwhile, Princess Celestia tried to calm down the guards. “Stand down,” she ordered. “It's alright.”
Princess Cadance and Shining Armor arrived on the scene. The married couple peered inside.
“Okay, wormhole,” Fred started a mixture of talking to himself, and whispering to the anomaly. “You're probably created again by Midgård's scientists, at a guess.” He unlocked the Scavenger Watch, intending to use the radio he soldered on there at one point. “...Wow. I can't believe I forgot. I never programmed it.” He shook his head. “Okay, plan B it is. Oh hey, it's already connected.” Even through the wormhole, he could still detect the wireless network 'BC-N-Sci-Guest', the same one he found and connected to before. The name made as little sense to him as ever.
“Do you need any help?” Princess Cadance asked.
“I am a little worried that I'll bounce off the walls of the universe again, or whatever happened last time.” He thought back to the day he got thrown out of the last one and hit a tree.
“Celestia, do you think we can shield him?” she suggested.
“Possibly.”
The human opened his browser and looked through the internet history for the voice communication site he visited last time. His only other option at this point was to broadcast packets in the network and hope the crazy monitoring sysadmin watched again.
To his relief, there were two people waiting for him. 'And that's why you use private browsing for suspicious activities instead of repeatedly deleting your browsing history, or else lose something important.'
A female voice spoke first. “You owe me five bucks, Gordon.”
“Damn, you win this time, Maria,” the male voice sounded disappointed. They both sounded Canadian.
Fred recognised the people as the same ones he spoke to last time. “About that wormhole...”
“We had some technical difficulties, but nothing to worry about,” Gordon assured.
“That's the understatement of the last two point zero six centuries,” the human in Equestria said into the microphone as he rolled his eyes.
He heard Maria mutter aside, “That doesn't even make sense,” before she spoke directly and replied, “We've fixed the issue. You're free to come through now.”
Unconvinced, he muted his microphone to speak to the ponies. “Anypony have something I can throw in?” In response, two rubber balls bounced toward him. One red, the other blue. “That works.” He picked up the blue one, bounced it a few times before overarm throwing it in. He unmuted and grabbed the red one. “Are you sure it's working?”
“Did you throw something through?” Gordon asked after he heard something on his end.
“Yes. Mind telling me what it is?”
“Dust?”
Through the voice program, palm hitting face could be heard. Fred muted again.
“Perhaps I could be of assistance,” Princess Celestia offered. She levitated the second rubber ball out of the human's hand. She cast something on it, causing a transparent yellow sphere around it to appear. She pushed it through.
“How about now?” he re-activated the microphone and questioned.
“A red rubber ball. I thought I saw something around it, but it must've been the reflection,” the male scientist responded.
“Good enough for me. Be there shortly.” Fred disconnected. “Can I have some of that?”
The solar alicorn placed the same shield spell around him, but she seemed a bit strained. “You'll have to sustain the shield yourself,” she told him.
“Sure thing.” Fred nodded in thanks. He energised his hands.
"Right then, take two it is. I'm still less-than amused that the last one supposedly there to take me home almost killed me in the process, along with ejecting me into a tree. If all goes well, I can actually get back to Midgård through this one. Here's to hoping it works, and that science remains cool.
"Throughout all of the last two weeks, I've helped to fight demons and keep Equestria safe, all at the same time doubting my very own sanity. Along with the previous hope, I also pray that I don't wake up in a mental hospital that I've been in the whole time."
“In I go.”
*The video ends as Fred turns toward the wormhole.*
Twilight Sparkle trotted back to her regular home in Ponyville: Golden Oaks Library. She magically unlocked the door and pushed it open with her hoof. It was dark inside.
“Spike?” she called out. No response. The unicorn flipped the light switch.
“SURPRISE!” A noise bombarded her from the whole library and she stumbled over. When she stood back up and her eyes adjusted, she saw all her friends, gathered around the main room.
“It's so great great to see you all again!” Twilight exclaimed. “But how did you know I was coming?”
In response, Spike pointed at some parchment on the table. “It came only an hour ago. I had to hurry to get them here,” he explained.
“It's a relief to see you're alright,” Rarity said.
“Now you can have a 'Yay! Twilight's back' party!” Pinkie yelled in her outdoor voice, despite her being inside. “I baked you a cake!”
Twilight looked again at the table. Next to the letter was a rather large chocolate cake. She wasn't sure how Pinkie managed to bake it so quickly, but it looked delicious. It had purple icing and 'Welcome back Twilight' written in pink. The colours complimented her mane. She smiled at her friends.
“Woohoo! Let's party like it's 999!” the pink pony screamed with her boundless energy.
Knowing that expending too much magic would end badly, Fred Walsh utilised the minimum amount of magical energy he could to sustain the shield Princess Celestia had cast for him.
As before, he 'floated' in a yellow-white tube of sorts, and the wormhole seemed to take its sweet time ferrying him to the other side. Fred bobbed up and down, left and right, as the lengthy tunnel twisted. 'It's still a mystery as to how I can breathe in here, but I'm not complaining.'
Finally, he began to approach the barrier he interacted with last time. 'Wait, I bounced last time. Did he say the ball disintegrated?' He braced himself. He hit the wall and slowed down slightly. He felt something pop and he increased velocity. He noticed the shield had vanished too, so he stopped trying to keep it up.
At long last, he could see the end. As he flew closer to the exit, he could make out things: Computer equipment, the layout of the room, and eventually people doing various tasks.
'Am I going to slow down at all?' Fred asked himself, moments before he lost any sense of direction as he entered his home universe. He tumbled down a ramp. In an effort to protect himself, he shielded his head with his arms. After some time, he stopped.
He opened his eyes. He stood up and looked around.
“Fred Walsh, you made it.” A man walked up to him, and it sounded like the one he spoke to on the Scavenger Watch.
“Thanks, I guess,” he replied slowly. “Okay, I have some requests. One: Where am I? Two: When am I? And three: I'd like to meet the sysadmin who obsessively monitors the network.”
“That'd be me,” a woman, Maria, from her voice, answered. “You're in a science facility a little bit outside Vancouver, and it's July 19, 2020.”
“...” Fred maintained a serious expression before taking a deep breath. “I'm in Canada. Without a passport. In the future.”
“Yes,” the network administrator confirmed.
He sighed with his excess breath. “Beats a mental asylum.”
Fred Walsh: Adventures in Equestria and Fred Walsh: Diverted written by Baguettedood Because it wouldn't leave my head.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic owned by Hasbro and produced by DHX Media/Studio B and Lauren Faust. As if you didn't already know.
Fred Walsh owned by I have no clue. He was made up as an in-joke in music class one day. Thanks to Ryan and Shane for inspiring the name in Year 8 music. As a fun fact, Frederick Brian Walsh, according to Babynames.com and Wikipedia, means Peace Ruler, Noble, Foreigner (In that order).
Most of the music used under Creative Commons and produced by JT Bruce Except for Power of Love, which was produced by Huey Lewis and the News.
Various references owned by their respective owners That doesn't even make sense.
These credits are too short so here, have a completely fake extra scene.
Fred Walsh sat in a room, lent to him by some friends in an internet community who still remembered him. He powered up the Scavenger Watch, now a relic in this time, for one final vlog about what he went through.
“I've occasionally been comparing what happened to me in that other universe to various forms of media, such as movies, soap operas, or video games in the case of the final fight against DemonTrixie. But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced I was close to the truth. Thanks to copyright, and the fact that a movie would never let me get away with so many pop culture references, that only leaves one explanation.
In the video, Fred's face couldn't be more serious.
“I'm in a fanfic.”
And now for an impromptu scene containing some lines I didn't get to use. This also isn't part of the story.
Fred Walsh walked underneath a wooden archway labelled “Sweet Apple Acres.” Within, he looked around and saw an orange-coated earth pony mare. She cantered between nearby apple trees and kicked each one in succession. She cleverly picked up some baskets, freshly filled with apples, and took them to a red barn. The human made his way to the building.
Shortly before he could enter, Applejack, along with her brother, Big Macintosh, stepped out of the barn. Both froze.
“Brother, what in tarnation is that?” the mare asked, without taking her eyes off the arrival.
“That's racist,” Fred responded first.
Ineffective segue
“Us Apples take care of this here orchard!” Applejack exclaimed in her typical Southern accent.
“You say you take care of the orchard,” Fred began, “Yet you kick the shit out of the trees.”
