Chapter 1. Collision
Dimension C-137. Galactic Federation space, military outpost AMO-42. Rick Sanchez
Rick Sanchez was not a stupid man. In fact, many regarded him as a genius. Being his humble self, he evaluated his intelligence as somewhat between ‘grandiose’ and ‘ridiculous, no-one is that smart’. So than, why was he regularly finding himself in situations no smart person should ever be found?
— “There he is, pin him down!” - a scream and, surely enough, accompanying shots of his pursues’ laser guns came from not far behind.
“It must be all the booze,” — mused Rick while diving for cover. “This stuff is getting to me. How else I could keep getting stuck in these kind of situations with my portal gun down?”. He reached out and took several shots from his (not actually ‘his’, but rather recently ‘liberated’) plasma pistol at the pursuing squads of Galactic Militia. Several gromflomites came down, but there were always more.
Loud beeps from his wrist indicated that the recharge cycle of his emergency teleport translocator was complete. He hit the button, disappearing and reappearing several levels below. Fortunately, this time it was not in the midst of yet another patrol, but in the quiet of the engineering deck.
— “I probably should take a break from all this. Maybe find how's my daughter doing? Haven't seen her in years...” — Rick's mumbling died down as he scrambled to find something useful to fix his portal gun.
Dimension ????. Equus, Equestria, Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle
Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic, hero of the Equestria, Ponyville's resident alicorn and magical progressor extraordinae was excited. Or maybe even super-excited! Or even, as Pinkie would put it, ‘super-duper positively over-excited!’. Yeah.
But nevertheless, she was on the finishing stages of an experiment, that if is proven working and feasible to reproduce, could revolutionize the way their world worked. Or, rather, moved.
— “Spiiike! Are you ready? We are going to start soon, come down to the lab! Oh, and remember to tell Starlight put the wards up, we don't want any interference today!”
If there was one thing that made Twilight somewhat tolerate the loss of Golden Oaks Library due to the Tirek’s rampage, it was her new laboratory, down between the roots of the crystal tree. Easily ten times its previous size, lab was packed with scientific and magical equipment alike and had allowed her experiments to reach a new level. Crystal walls were also much more durable than wood, so she had no need to rebuild as often…
Twilight took a look around her lab whilst waiting for her dragon assistant. In the middle of it stood a pinnacle of her research, a device that (when finished) should enable for much easier transportation for all over Equestria! Her favorite spell, reborn through science and her (admitted by everyone but herself) genius, should enable easy and mana-efficient teleportation for goods and ponies alike. And unlike older designs, there were no need to build an exit gate! In fact, it could be even possible to avoid stationary in-gate, she would only need…
At that point, Twilight was scribbling furiously in her notebook. She was still continuing her calculations, completely unaware of the world around, when Spike came in five minutes later.
— “Umm… Twilight?” — the tentative call rouse no reaction from the mare deep in thought. Spike shrugged and moved closer, knowing full well that yelling at this point would not affect his caregiver. Sharp dragon claws though...
Twilight jumped quite high, and looked at her assistant indignantly. Little dragon made his best attempt at looking innocent.
— “Not cutting it, young mister. I've seen Cutie Mark Crusaders do it in triplicate. So not cutting.”
— “So… experiment?” — he chuckled nervously.
— ”Right. Spike, take a note” — Twilight put away her own notes and put her attention to the machine in the middle of the room — “Experimental run number one of the stationary gate-to-point teleport translocator…”
— “That's real mouthful there Twi. We should name it something shorter, like… Sparkle Gate!”
— ”We are not naming it that Spike! Please, continue writing. Ahem. Experiment number one: teleportation of non-living inorganic matter. Distance: ten metres. Test subject: granite sphere, weighing one hundred kilograms. Proceeding…”
Her horn lit up, and device whirled to life. Bright lavender twister was swirling in the circle of crystals in the middle of it. Matching it, another one appeared in thin air exactly ten metres behind. Purple glow surrounded granite ball and moved it into the portal…
Dimension C-137. Galactic Federation space, military outpost AMO-42. Rick Sanchez
Rick was breathing heavily. Makeshift bomb he cobbled together from some spare parts and batteries in the engineering took out the squad pursuing him, but without doubt altered others to his location. Feds were nothing if not persistent. And the base went into the lockdown. Which was bad, because now his movement was slowed down by the door cutting. And occasional wall cutting.
But the main issue still was his portal gun. Or rather, the broken flux capacitor in the mentioned gun. And so far he was unable to make a replacement.
Which led to his current plan: vandalize his emergency teleport translocator and portal gun, induce the temporal frequency resonance via shifting the charge through the null-space and just teleport home - that would be good next ‘random’ destination. Sure, it was by far more risky without the gate. But his subdermal armor was almost down, and regenerator was down completely. He’d rather risk dying teleporting then die surely from the hands of the Feds.
Without further hesitation, Rick got to work. Portal gun and wrist teleporter were torn down and recombined together in the true scientific nightmare that no sane person would dare to ever approach. Portal fluid held aloft between two micro black holes created via quickly cannibalized self-destruct nodes and the null-field sparking around it as the temporal resonance reached its peak, Rick had only enough time to check his math once.
— “Well, everything should be all-rightey as long as no interference happens on this frequency. Here we go, wubba lubba dub dub!" — he pressed the button and disappeared just in time to avoid five squads coming for him.
Coincidentally, the removal of temporal field and subsequent detonation of remaining parts of the ‘event horizon assisted temporal flux driven teleport device’ caused complete matter annihilation in the small radius of eight light-minutes…
Dimension ????. Equus, Equestria, Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle
— “Okay, Spike, time for the final experiment for today. Experiment number seventeen, teleportation of live subject, sapient specimen. Distance: ten meters. Test subject: alicorn, Twilight Sparkle.”
— “Whoa, Twi, are you sure? You look kinda tried, and this thing is…”
— “Nonsense, Spike, I'm fine! See?” — her happy grin has not put his worries to rest — “Besides, everything went without a hitch today, I would be fine!”
— “Well, if you're sure… alicorn, Twilight Sparkle. Check!”
— “Good!” — her horn lit up once more, and portal gate sprung to life again. Twilight Sparkle trotted into it confidently.
The same moment portal came up, temporal resonator was excited from another dimension and thus their temporal flows become synchronized. The moment teleportation begun, the other one took place
Everything would’ve been been fine, if not a small thing forgotten. In her excitement with her new theory, Twilight forgot to double-check with her assistant if he asked her pupil to set up the wards…
Nowhere. Everywhere. Null-space.
Null-space. More conceptual place then real, it could hardly even be called that - place. The concept of space is invalid there, as it is by definition is all space compacted in one point. It is often utilised for calculations for the teleport equations, as no movement is required there to move from one point to another - as they all are one. Time is still existing factor there, and is one of the main differentiators for the objects that ‘move’ there.
Two objects entered null space at the exact same moment - their time was synchronized. And, as there’s nothing between them, they collided. One with the higher energy density - the alicorn - remained intact, and made out from the null-space but a moment later…
Dimension ????. Equus, Equestria, Ponyville. Twilight Sparkle?
Twilight stepped on a floor and promptly collapsed with a pained “Omf..”. Her head was swimming, her body was in pain.
— “Twilight! Are you okay?!” — Spike run to her, worried.
— “Urgh…” — she grunted, her eyes lingering on the dragon for a second — “I need a drink.” — and passed out.