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My Little Klay World: Klay is Magic
Chapter One - The Universal Spell Experiment, and the Broken Rock-Cutting Machine That Cuts Rocks For No Reason
Chapter One - The Universal Spell Experiment, and the Broken Rock-Cutting Machine That Cuts Rocks For No Reason
It was a beautiful day as always in the serene kingdom of Equestria.
And as she had been doing all week, Twilight Sparkle, former Faithful Student of Princess Celestia and recently crowned Alicorn Princess, was spending this beautiful day cooped up in her study.
While everypony was enjoying the sunshine, conversing with friends and laughing as they played in the streets and the surrounding fields of the town, Twilight was sitting at her desk, examining the pages of an old and dusty tome she had borrowed from the vast halls of knowledge that was the Canterlot Castle libraries.
There was a reason why she was reading this crusty old book instead of being outside with her friends. A few weeks ago, she had gone to stay with her brother Shining Armour and his wife, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, otherwise known as Cadence, in their castle home within the Crystal Empire. During her stay there, her crown had been stolen by a shady ex-student of Celestia's, named Sunset Shimmer, and she, along with her trusted assistant Spike, embarked upon an amazing adventure through a magical mirror and into another world, where she got to experience life as a human being.
Her time in this other world had fascinated her so much. So much, in fact, that upon her return to Equestria, Twilight wondered about the possibility of other worlds, and other interesting species that existed in them. And so she had decided to explore the matter further, spending a good amount of time studying and researching magicks based around the superstitions and myths of spells capable of opening dimensional portals into alternate worlds and realities, hoping to maybe, just maybe, find a way to contact another universe.
After spending a month researching practically thousands of tomes and books, Twilight believed she had finally found a way to do what many ponies thought was impossible. She had spent this week within her chambers, working non-stop on piecing together what she believed was the spell that she had been looking for. After seven days and nights of work, Twilight's gut was telling her that she was now oh-ever-so close to completion. Just a few tweaks to the spell, and then, she would finally be able to meet and observe intelligent life-forms of another world...
It was a bright day as always in Klay World, although when your sun is actually just a light bulb beneath a rotating fan it's not really much of a surprise that it was always bright. Most of the klaymen were out and about that day, which was rather surprising since any other day only a few klaymen ever showed themselves in public. And usually even fewer ever got to return home in one piece. Or two.
But none of that crap was on Brian's mind. His mind was too busy trying to solve a very complicated problem. His rock-cutting machine had been broken, damaged after a killer rubber ducky had been placed inside of it, and damaged further when a klayman stuck the device on his head, slicing and tearing his entire head into neat piles of blue, bloodied ribbons of clay. Brian still didn't know why the klayman had done that to himself. In fact, he didn't really care why. All he wanted to do was to fix his device, so that he go back to enjoying his favourite past-time - placing rocks into the rock-cutting machine and watching it cut the rocks for no reason whatsoever.
Brian had to be honest with himself. He didn't really know much about repairing these sort of devices. He had simply guessed what kind of tools and equipment he would have needed to fix his rock-cutting machine. He looked at the ground where his recently acquired tools lay - a hacksaw that was, for some strange reason, triangular in shape. A screwdriver with a square-shaped head. A thermo-nuclear bomb with a blast radius of up to seventy square-miles (Brian couldn't even remember just where in the world he even got that from). A Tactical 12-Gauge shotgun. And a pencil sharpener.
Looking at his 'tools', Brian slowly began to wonder whether these are the right items for the job at hand. He had a feeling that the pencil sharpener would come in handy, but he was expressing doubts about the thermo-nuclear bomb. He wasn't sure that he could use that to fix his rock-cutting machine, but when you live on a giant table where strange things happened every day, like klaymen spontaneously combusting, or exploding pancakes littering the ground, or even encounters with the legendary Boogie Monster, which wasn't a monster or a Boogieman but the Boogie Monster, whose terrifying roars sounded like a ringing telephone, and whose three tails had sharp blades at the tips, you pretty much picked up Logic by the scruff of the neck and hurled it right out the window.
Besides, standing around doing nothing was getting...well, nothing done, So Brian decided to try using the thermo-nuclear bomb first to see if it would fix his machine. After spending five minutes trying to pick it up, before realising he wasn't strong enough to do such a task, Brian called out to several klaymen nearby to give him a helping hand. Together, they pushed the destructive weapon over to the broken rock-cutting machine, and in unison, managed to lift it carefully (well, they dropped it a few times, which resulted in one of the klaymen getting crushed underneath) and put it on top of the rock-cutting machine. They waited to see if it had done the trick.
Nothing happened.
Then Brian realized something.
He never bothered to check to see if the machine was actually turned on.
Walking over to the back of the device, he mentally face-slapped himself upon seeing that the switch was in the OFF position. He slowly bent over and began to reach out his hand to the switch to flip it into the ON position, savouring each second he took doing so. With each passing second, Brian's hand moved a few centimetres closer to the switch. Any moment now, he would touch the switch, and then he could turn it on, and get the machine running again. Then he would just have to find some rocks to throw into the device.
He completely forgot about the fact that he had just placed a thermo-nuclear bomb on top of the machine...
The final adjustments to the spell completed, Twilight Sparkle took a deep breath, closed her eyes in concentration, and fired up her horn for the spell. ''Here goes nothing'', the purple alicorn hummed to herself, as the magic began to flow through her horn, the spell taking form and shape within her thoughts.
A bright light flooded the room. Twilight could see it through her closed eyelids. But there was something odd about that light. It felt...hot. Like as if the sun itself had just came into her chamber. It was followed by a rush of wind, which blew straight through her mane, and when Twilight opened her eyes...
Brian's hand finally was touching the switch. ''Now I'm going to turn the rock-cutting machine on!'' he said. Brian flipped the switch from the downward position and into the upward position. But it was only then, at the very last fraction of a second, that he noticed something.
The thermo-nuclear bomb. It was on top of the machine.
And turning on the machine would mean turning on the blades inside the machine. If they struck the thermo-nuclear bomb...
It was too late to do anything. The machine sprung to life. The blades inside screeched as they struck the metal shell of the bomb.
Brian saw only a bright light, felt blazing heat all around him carried by a blast of wind, and soiled his metaphorical pants. When he opened his eyes (and realised that he didn't even have eyes to begin with), he noticed five things.
One - He wasn't dead.
Two - He was...a little bigger than usual?
Three - He was standing in a strange room along with practically every klayman from the table, who were also bigger in size, about the height of the purple horse with a horn and wings and really big eyes.
Four - There really was a purple horse with a horn and wings and big eyes, staring at him and the other klaymen, with her mouth wide open.
And Five...
The thermo-nuclear bomb destroyed his rock-cutting machine. And he also wasn't in Klay World anymore.
My Little Klay World: Klay is Magic
Chapter Two - An Awkward Start To Things.
Chapter Two - An Awkward Start To Things.
In Twilight Sparkle's time, she had witnessed a great many strange things. When she first came to Ponyville, she had met, and later befriended, the hyperactive and bizarre Pinkie Pie, who would soon afterwards become the Element of Laughter. Then, there was the whole crisis with the spirit of chaos, Discord, which was a hectic event indeed. And then of course there was the Changeling invasion of Canterlot, the return of King Sombre and the Crystal Empire, and a month and few weeks ago, the trip to the human world.
Life seemed to have a way of throwing stranger and stranger things at her, and now it had thrown a large group of blue-coloured humanoid figures lacking facial features right into her private study chamber.
The collection of klaymen stood there staring at her - or at least she thought they were staring at her. It was hard to tell when they had no eyes. Twilight Sparkle was unable to speak or bring herself to say anything. She never expected to summon something so...weird-looking. She wasn't expecting whatever living thing she found through her spell to be normal, but neither did she expect anything something so un-normal.
After what seemed like an eternity of silence, a voice broke the awkwardness. ''Hey, guys! We're alive! The bomb didn't kill us!''
Twilight jumped upon hearing the voice, and looked around trying to find the source, but saw nopony. Then she noticed the klaymen turning their...heads?...towards one of their own. Twilight Sparkle quickly managed to piece together what was going on; it was one of the blue creatures that had spoken. She didn't notice at first because they did not have mouths, but at least now she knew that these things - whatever they were - were capable of verbal communication. Perhaps this meant they had some level of intelligence?
One of the other klaymen rose his arm and scratched his head. ''I saw a bright light. Was it Heaven? Or the sun?''
Another klayman, this one holding what looked like some sort of sandwich, turned his head to the one who had scratched his head. ''If this is Heaven, I'm glad my sandwich got up here as well.'' He then started...stroking the sandwich, as though it were a cat. ''I love my sandwich. All I ever think about is my sandwich. It's the best sandwich in the whole wide world!''
''Sandwiches are nice, but I want a hotdog!'' piped in another one of the figures, who raised his arm, and to Twilight's astonishment, a thin 'finger' grew out of it, but disappeared back into the stubby arm when the klayman had finished speaking.
Each one of the klaymen suddenly broke out into conversation with one another, apparently seeming to not even care that they were not in their own world any more. Twilight just stared at each of them. Of all the strange things that had happened in her life, seeing a group of blue figures talking about salads, Nerf Darts (whatever in Equestria that was), and something along the lines of the Funky Chicken. all the while oblivious about the fact that they were someplace else, was without a doubt the weirdest thing she would probably ever see in her life.
''Hey, you're a different coloured klayman!'' Twilight Sparkle snapped out of her deadpanned state and turned her head to the klayman standing in front of her. Although he, like the rest of these strange creatures, had no face she could tell that he was talking to her. The clue was in the fact that he was pointing at her.
''Um...Excuse me?''
''You're a different coloured klayman!'' the figure said again. ''I've never seen a purple klayman before. You must be special!'' The figure turned its head to the others. ''Hey, guys! This guy's different!''
The other klaymen suddenly ceased their conversation and looked in Twilight's direction. They raised their arms to their heads in unison. ''Oh my Gott!'', they gasped together, their voices sounding oddly muffled. ''A different coloured klayma-Bah!''. They removed their arms from their 'mouths' just before they finished their sentences, making a strange sound as they did. A few of the klaymen put their arms back to their 'mouths' just so they could make that sound again.
They all moved a little closer to Twilight, which made her feel nervous. The klayman who had approached her spoke again, this time widening his arms out, as though he was going to give her a hug. ''Are there other purple klaymen like yourself? Where are they? I wanna meet them!''
Twilight stared at the klayman. He still had his arms open wide. She shook her head, and cleared her throat. ''Er...I'm not, um, a 'klayman'. I'm a pony.''
The group of klaymen exchanged looks - was that even possible without a face? - between one another, before one of them spoke, though which one Twilight couldn't tell. ''You're not a pony. Ponies don't have wings or horns. They have saddles and pew-pew guns.''
''I think you mean - cough, cough! - I think you mean laser guns, Marty'', another klayman said, bringing his arm up to his head when he coughed.
Twilight Sparkle had not noticed it beforehoof, having been trying to comprehend what this strange creatures were, but now that she wasn't gawking at them while in a dumbfounded state of mind, she noticed that at first glance each of the 'klaymen', as she recalled hearing them say, only appeared to look exactly the same. A second, closer inspection revealed this was not the case. Each klayman actually had something different about them, such as a slightly larger arm or leg, and more or less patterns on their bodies, which Twilight almost swore looked like slight indentations made by fingers. After her adventures in the human world, Twilight was quite familiar with the concept of fingers, those strange tentacle-like appendages that grew from out of the ends of an arm.
Twilight shook her head as she realised she was going way off the subject at hand. Her spell had both succeeded and failed at the same time - it had succeeded in bringing life-forms from another world into her world, but it had failed to bring life-forms that actually, well, looked more alive than like badly modelled characters out of some popular animation.
''Excuse me, er, klaymen'', Twilight Sparkle said aloud, gaining the attention of all of the klaymen, who ceased their talking and looked her way, ''but I don't think we have, um, really been properly introduced to each other. My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I would like to welcome you all to the land of Equestria!''. She finished her sentence with a smile.
The room was filled with silence. Awkward, quiet, tense silence.
Then one of the klaymen raised his arm. Twilight looked in his direction. ''Er...Yes? Do you...have a question?'' the alicorn asked, awkwardly.
''Er, yeah. My name is Henry, and I was wondering why we're in a room filled with books and stuff?'' the klayman asked.
Twilight fidgeted with her hooves and gave a short nervous chuckle. ''Well, you see. The thing is that, um...'' Twilight realized that she had not prepared a proper speech before casting the spell, aside from the earlier introduction. What with having dozens and dozens of blue creatures in the room with her, all without faces and, now she thought about it, perhaps not so much intelligence as she had initially assumed, the whole thing had pretty much taken her by surprise. ''I kinda casted a spell that, well, brought you all into another world. My world.'' Twilight gestured broadly to the room around them. ''You're all standing in my private study, where I research spell books and conduct experiments. You were all brought here by one of such spells; one I created myself to bring life-forms into this world, so that I could learn more about other universes beyond this one. And that is pretty much why you are all here today.'' Twilight looked to the group, waiting to see how they would react upon hearing they were no longer in their own world.
The next minute was, once more, filled with awkward silence.
Which was broken by the sound of a shotgun going off, and what appeared to be the head of one of the klaymen - albeit stained red with blood - flying across the room, right towards the alicorn princess, smacking her in the face. Somehow, Twilight managed to hold back a scream, but wasn't able to keep herself from expressing a look of horror and confusion as the bloodied klayman head fell from her muzzle.
All the klaymen turned around to look at the klayman holding a shotgun, the smoke rising from out of the barrel from its recent use. Next to him, the headless body of a klayman lay on the floor, the white of his spinal bone visible in the pool of blood that began oozing out of the corpse.
The shotgun-wielding fool looked at the rest of the group, before raising his arm into a shrug.
''What? Why are you looking at me like that?''
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My Little Klay World: Klay is Magic
Chapter Three - The Klaymen Escape (With Very Little Difficulty)
Chapter Three - The Klaymen Escape (With Very Little Difficulty)
Twilight Sparkle sat in her kitchen, her hooves laid out on the table, shaking and shivering. Her horn was glowing with a magenta aura as she telekinetically held a cup of tea in her magical grasp. Her mind was racing with so many thoughts, but the one that kept popping up again and again was of the bloodied klayman head.
The klaymen, speaking of which, were still downstairs in her private study. What they were doing right now, Twilight couldn't say, nor could she have cared about at this moment. What with that single thought repeatedly playing itself over and over like a video tape in her head, she couldn't really think to care about anything else right now.
What she had witnessed was a klayman killing another one of his kind. Whether it was intentional or not, a great sin had been committed right here in her home. A terrible atrocity that would have been punishable in her world with a lifetime in the dungeons of Canterlot Castle, or even banishment, exile from the land of Equestria.
But the rest of the klaymen...They didn't do or say anything. They just stared for a minute, and went on talking about bowling and ice cream! They didn't even care that one of their own had been murdered right there and then. It was as if that sort of thing...
Twilight's pupils shrunk as a new thought entered her mind, and she very nearly dropped her cup.
What if...What if this sort of thing was common where they came from? What if this mad display of violence was a way of life for them? What if this wasn't the worst thing she had witnessed, but just a sample of what was yet to come? She brought her hooves up to her face as a sudden fear came over her, ensnaring her in its cold and terrible grasp.
Had she accidentally brought a violent race into this world? Had she put all of Equestria in great danger? If these klaymen could kill their own kind without so much as showing a tiny hint of regret or guilt, then if they were ever to be exposed to the public, to other ponies...
All she wanted was to meet other species from different worlds. She had casted that spell with such rashness. Such disregard for the possibility that whatever she brought into this world would potentially be harmful and dangerous. She didn't even think of anything else other than to sate her thirst for knowledge and discover new wonders beyond her home.
There was one thing, and only one thing to do.
Twilight Sparkle knew what had to be done. She had to send these things back to their own world. Back to whatever burning, decaying hell from whence they came.
But there was just one problem. One that she hadn't even thought about before in her excitement, until now.
Her spell was designed to bring beings into her world.
But not return them.
Twilight groaned. ''What in the world of Equestria have I done?''
Just then, Twilight heard the front door open and close, followed by a familiar voice. ''Twilight! I'm back from Rarity's!''
Twilight rushed from the kitchen into the main hall, where she was greeted by her trusted aide, the baby dragon known as Spike. He was carrying a small bag filled with an assortment of gems and jewels, no doubt given to him by the Element of Generosity herself. Most likely, the little dragon had been assisting her in hunting for more precious stones to use in her crafting of clothes and fabrics.
The little dragon smiled cheerfully as Twilight ran up to him, the gems in his bag jingling together as he released his grip on it. ''Hey, Twilight! Sorry I took so -''
''OhSpikeIthinkImighthavedonesomethingterribleIusedaspellihadbeenworkingonforalomstamonthnowandithinki'vemadeaterriblemistake!'', were the words that rushed out of her mouth, and it was then Spike noticed the look of panic on her face.
''Wait, what's going on?'' questioned Spike, taken aback by the sudden outburst.
Twilight took a second to calm herself using an old trick that Princess Cadence had taught her, before she spoke again, this time not blurting out her sentence as if it was a whole word. ''Spike, I performed a spell a few hours ago that brought these...creatures, into our world, and I think that it might have been a great mistake.'' The alicorn sighed and hung her head. ''The creatures are downstairs in the private study chamber. I don't know what they're doing, but I don't think they're intelligent enough to devise a plan to escape confinement. So I at least have some time to find a way to send them back to where they came from before things really get out of control.''
When she finished talking, Twilight lifted her head to look at Spike, but saw him looking out of the window, a look of worry on his face, a claw brought beneath his chin. ''Spike? Have you listened to a word I said? This is serious!'' exclaimed the annoyed alicorn.
''Um, Twilight?'' the little dragon began, ''Those creatures you mentioned...Are they big, blue, and look kinda like those humans we met when we went to that other world through the mirror?''
Twilight, surprised by his question, tilted her head to the side. ''Yes, they are! How did you know?''
Spike turned to face the princess, and pointed towards something outside the window. ''Because that's exactly what's crawling out of the basement window right now.''
''WHAT!?''
Twilight shot past Spike, nearly knocking him over, and went straight towards the window, and sure enough, she saw, just as Spike had said, the blue klaymen climbing out of the small window that acted as the only source of natural light during the day, when she wasn't using her machines and scientific equipment for experiments and what-not. hat's more, they had obviously been doing it for a bit, because she could see that some klaymen had already made it into the town itself.
Twilight groaned, her mind cursing herself for not being more cautious, for having thought that these things weren't intelligent. Perhaps they weren't, but they clearly had enough of a brain - if they even had those - to know how to escape through a window that was too high for them to reach.
Wait...Too high for them to...
Twilight bolted for the basement door and flung it open. She galloped down the stairs, Spike soon following her. How did they get through the window if they couldn't reach it by themselves? What could they have used as a make-shift ladder?
She stopped once she saw what they had improvised to use in their escape.
The klaymen had made a rope.
And the rope was made from what appeared to be the intestines of the dead klayman from earlier.
Somehow, and to the alicorn's great puzzlement, the klaymen had managed to find a grappling hook, and tied their deceased companion's organic 'rope' to it, and had used that to reach the window.
These klaymen. They were perhaps smarter than she thought. Of course, their method of escape was, well, unnerving and disgusting, but nevertheless, they were smart.
And that was why they were all the more dangerous to allow to roam free in Ponyville.
Twilight rushed to the stairs and made the ascent upwards, grabbing Spike with her magic as she darted past him, levitating him upon her back as she kept moving.
''H-hey! What's goin' on, Twilight? Where are we going? asked the clearly confused dragon.
''We're going to find those creatures, and solve the problem before it becomes a BIGGER problem, Spike,'' was the response he received from the purple pony.
Spike sighed and face-clawed. ''Why does something always happen when I go over to Rarity's?''