Pinkamena?

Chapter 8

Meeting Time

Tick-tick-tick-tick-click.

“Huh? What was that noise?” I asked, looking around and trying to find its source. As I tried to get up to search for it, I found where it was. It had been my legs.

Earlier, I noticed that my legs had an assortment of gears and cogs in them. I had dismissed this as a decoration. However, it was now obvious that they had been running on clockwork. And they just ran out of tension.

“Well, this is certainly annoying,” I complained “Now I can’t move my legs!” I looked over at my friends, with a pleading look in my eyes.

Luna nearly tripped trying to get to me as fast as she could. She then picked me up and started examining my legs, searching for a place to wind them back up. I won’t even bother telling you how demeaning it was.

After several minutes of searching, Luna became frustrated. “It’s no use,” she said “there’s no way to wind it!”

I immediately began searching my mind for a way to tighten the clockwork and get it running again. Surely, after being alive as long as I have, I had to fix it at least once? According to my memories, not at all. There was not a single instance where I did.

Wait a minute, they aren’t all here! I thought Why aren’t my memories here!?

“GAH!” I shouted “I can’t remember everything! The only memories I have are the ones that you share with me! I don’t know what happened to me every time I went away!” Oh, and in case I didn’t mention, I was with the princesses at various points in their life. In between those, I would suddenly disappear without a trace.

Apparently, after the first Nightmare Moon incident, it had caused Celestia to become so angry that she tore the tower I had been staying in right off its base. And then she left to live in Canterlot.

Everypony was staring at me. “Uh, sugarcube, are you alright?” Applejack asked, probably deciding to latch on to the first thing that her simple‒ WAIT, not continuing that line of thought.

“No,” I said, sticking out the mechanical equivalent of my tongue “I’m not. I just found out that I’m actually older than the princesses, I’m a robot, I still don’t have all my memories, and I’m a robot!”

Twilight looked at me nervously, “Uh, you said you’re a robot tw‒”

“I know what I said!” I gritted my teeth “I always know what I say! I can’t do anything without knowing exactly what happened!” My eyes were twitching, and I was clearly unstable from all that had happened in, what? The past ten minutes? The last half-hour!?

Anyways, the others were recognizing the blatant signs of insanity that they had noticed in Twilight before. Except I was made out of spell-resistant metal. Don’t ask me how I knew that. I just knew. It was one of my memories, but I don’t know which one. I also don’t know how the illusion was cast on me.

I’ve got to stop doing that. Alright, so the others’ reactions went along something like this:

“Sh, he’s angry.”

“I can see that, dear sister.”

“Are you alright, sugarcube?”

“Are you feeling well, darling?”

“What are you doing?”

“What’s wrong? Are you alright?”

“Why the frownie-face?”

*whimper*

Guess who the last one was. I’ll give you a hint, they’re yellow.

Also, I don’t think the world actually turned red. I’m pretty sure that was just me. Yeah, apparently this body turns my vision red when I’m angry. It might have some benefits, but at the moment it was just annoying.

A pair of rockets popped out of my back and lit, sending me crashing through the ceiling. The hospital slowly trailed away into the distance.

I sighed with relief. Being around those eight… it was just stressful. For me, anyways.

And then i realized something. I was several hundred feet up, I had no idea where I was, and I couldn’t tell when the rockets ran out of fuel.

All of a sudden, that just happened. The nozzles sputtered for a few seconds, then completely stopped and I fell to what was certainly going to be a lot of pain.

I was stopped suddenly when I was several feet away from the dirt below me. Surrounding me was a light grey aura.

Looking around, I spotted a grey unicorn holding me with her magic. She lowered me to the ground slowly.

“Are you alright?” she asked. It seemed a bit of a silly question to me, but still.

“Yeah, thanks to you.” I replied.

“Good, because this is important.” she smirked. I wondered what she meant by that, as this seemed a bit odd, “This world, the one you can see right now, is not yours. You do not belong in it. You should not even be in it.”

“What do‒”

“Ah ah ah! Let me finish. The only reason you are here is because of me. I’m the one who brought you here. I’m the one who allowed you to make friends! And I am the one who brought you to this exact point in time to explain this all to you!” She seemed a bit angry.

I was thoroughly confused by this point. “But what abou‒”

“I said, LET ME FINISH!” she shouted, “You were brought over several times throughout your true life. Did you notice those holes in your memories? They are from your true life. The things you’ve done here are the things you wished you had done back in your world!”

I was nearly in tears by this point.

“And you know what!? I don’t think you even deserved this chance! I think you should just roll over an‒!”

Suddenly, a grey blur smashed into the unicorn. I looked over to where they had landed. Standing above the grey unicorn was an exact replica of her. They glared into each other’s eyes with murderous intent while I stood there confused.

“How dare you! This machine is our only hope! Without him, we cannot survive! He is the only reason this universe even exists! He will be the last guiding light in a universe of shadows!”

“Uh…” I said, wanting to say something.

“WHAT!?” they both shouted in unison.

“I just wanted to say that I have no idea what you’re talking about…” I said in a very quiet voice.

The unicorn that appeared to like me more jumped off her… other self? I don’t know how to describe it.

“Oh, of course you don’t! I never told you!” she ran over to me and hugged me, “My name’s Tempora, but so is hers, so you can call me Tempora Alpha-One and her Tempora Zeta-Thirty!”

“Wait, if you’re the same pony, then how come you two act so different?”

“Because I’m the second and she’s so far down the line that you don’t even have a number for it!” she cheerily exclaimed.

“You’re the… second?” I asked. I had no idea what this crazy mare was talking about.

“Yup! The first doesn’t like any mortals seeing her, as it tends to burn their eyes out with sheer power!” Tempora said.

I blinked at her comment. She clearly had no idea what my question had actually been. “I meant, why are there more than one of you?”

“OOOoooh, why didn’t you just say so? Well, the first likes to oversee the individual universes, but she cannot focus on everything at once, so she split herself into thousands of pieces, one for each universe! I make sure they all work together and don’t do anything stupid!” she answered. Her personality seemed to vary quite a lot.

“So, you’re saying that you are both each a piece of a goddess?” I asked, bemused. They seem to think that they are goddesses!

“Nonononono! The first isn’t a goddess, she’s one of the fundamental laws of everything!” Tempora said, a bit worried, for some odd reason, “She’s Time itself!”

Now, that last part shocked me. Some part of me had believed what Tempora Alpha-One was saying, in order to keep an objective point of view. At that last comment, this small fragment had taken over everything.

“What!? You are part of Time!? I don’t even… How is this even possible!?” I shouted.

“Well, it all started when everyone decided Finitis had too much power. Then he split himself in two, creating the first and leaving himself!” Tempora grinned.

“What.” I didn’t even bother making it sound like a question. It wasn’t. It was my way of expressing disbelief.

“Well, I need you back in your home universe now, so I’ll be taking you back soon.” she grinned and tried to grab me.

“No! I don’t want to leave!” I shouted, “I have a life here! I don’t care what mine was like back there, but I doubt it’s as good as this!”

Tempora looked vaguely confused at this point. “Oh, did I not tell you why you were sent here? It’s because you’ll need these friends at a later point. But, right now, you need to come with me. If you don’t, well, all of reality will collapse!” she flailed her hooves about for emphasis.

“And why would that require me?” I asked. I was quite sure that I wasn’t the most important person, and I was pretty sure that meant I couldn’t destabilize reality itself.

“Because without you, Unit 0 and the rest of his team will collapse thousands of universes, ending reality as we know it!”

“Uh… Unit 0? That sounds familiar…” I muttered.

“That’s because he is less stable than I am and more reality warping than Pinkie Pie.” she explained, “And he’s the reason why you’re the last sane member of your kind.”

I stood there in shock. Being more insane than Tempora? Warping reality more than Pinkie? How could I make a difference!?

Before I could voice my concerns, Tempora interrupted me. “Yes, I know, you don’t seem worthy enough. But, you are, because you are the only one who has met him, and as such the only one who can defeat him! Your memories will be restored when you return home.” she said in a flat monotone.

After a few seconds of thought, I agreed to go. I could only hope that the others would forgive me.

In a bright flash of light, my consciousness fled from my body. The metal shell collapsed on the ground, the blue fading from it.

Author's Note

All right! Well, I'm sad to say this story is coming to an end soon. However, me and my friends are working a sequel, and we will try to get it out after the crossover material is finished. Yes, this is now a crossover.

The material is going to be a webcomic called "DERP". Yes, it is an acronym. Also, I am the head writer of this not-pony-related project (The reason it isn't ponies is because one of my friends hates MLP. He likes Homestuck instead). The project will be up and running if we can get a dedicated artist and after me and my buddies finish our high school classes that we need to make the website.

Anyways, next chapter is going to be very short, I'm sad to say, as there isn't much to say about it.