The Answers Hide Behind a Wall
Detrot, like most of Equestria's citizens know, is one of the most boring, soul-sucking places anypony could ever live. It's like pre-restoration Crystal Empire on steroids, steriods that increase sucky-ness. This alone justified Sophie Osmo's descision to take a vacation. Recent events involving the fourth wall, osmosis dreams, and an exploding head had prompted her to choose Ponyville as her vacation destination. Aside from getting away from the geographical armpit she called her home, Sophie also had questions involving the short story that had induced her strange dream. She had no idea who had put it there, but she supposed that it had something to do with the pink mare's mentioning of somepony important wanting her alive, right after Sophie had "died" from being forced to absorb a journal about the fourth wall, written by the same mare. Her one anxiety was that all of the people from the dream were not real, and this pink mare would be nonexistent, reducing her options and hopes of unravelling this mind bucking enigma.
The train station of Ponyville was much more gaudy than Sophie had expected, and completely inaccurate to what she had seen of it when blazing into the city as a demonic comet in the dream. Pulling up, she wondered for a brief second if the events in her dream had actually happened. It looked like the town was being repaired in the wake of a disaster. However, it didn't seem to be the fiery disaster she had caused. This reaffirmed her to the fact that her becoming a demon had only been a dream. Upon walking to the town's center, she was met with the sight of a disgruntled alicorn directing the cleanup of what seemed to be slabs of gold and a myriad over-the-top flambouyant materials. Sophie immediately recognized her as the alicorn from her dream. Perhaps she had some answers. However, the disgruntled princess shrugged her off with a grunt and continued to chip away at what apeared to have been a solid gold street. What in Equestria happened here?
Anyways, the next thing she would need to do was find a place to stay. And by stay, of course, she meant pitch her tent. As far as she had been able to find out from absorbing a pamphlet on the place, there was no hotel, motel, nothing for guests. It was expected of them to stay with the people they were visiting. Sophie, however, knew no one, except maybe those from the dream, but she was almost entirely sure that they knew her. The princess had just grunted her off, meaning that Sophie was the only one who recalled nearly burning this place to the ground.
OOMPH!!!
"Oh, it's you!" A pink pony exclaimed after picking Sophie up from her collision. Upon further inspection, it was the mare who had caused her head to explode.
"You recognize me?"
"Well duh! Of course I remember you! I see that you are still alive. That somepony sure is clever."
"You know! I came looking for someone to help me figure this out!" Sophie pulled the fanfic from her saddlebag.
"Ah yes. That somepony found a cool way to preserve you," Pinkie gestured to the pages Sophie held. "You know, part of the reason I bumped into you was so you wouldn't end up seeking help from Zecora. That somepony hates writing her dialogue, with all the weird rhyming."
"What?"
"Just come with me."
Seeing that Pinkie, as Sophie was reminded her name was, seemed to know about the dream, Sophie obeyed and went with her. She was led to Sugarcabe Corner, knowing its name from the pamphlet, and led inside and up the stairs to Pinkie's room. Pinkie reached under her bed and pulled out the very journal that had brought about her demise. Sophie jumped back at seeing it, and Pinkie clearly understood why.
"Your guide to the fourth wall..." Sophie half-muttered, half-gasped.
"Yep."
"But I don't want my head to explode for real!"
"I don't think it will if I just read it to you."
"I don't learn things well unless I absorb them."
"I know, but I don't want your head to explode either"
Sophie was amazed at how much Pinkie knew. It must have something to do with the fourth wall. This thought made Sophie a bit less nervous and a bit more excited about the coming dissertation.
"You know how Celestia and Luna control the sun and moon?"
Sophie nodded.
"Imagine a bunch of ponies who control everything else, anything they want."
Sophie was already having her mind blown, not literally, mind you.
"They hide behind a wall. The fourth wall."
"Where is this wall?"
"That is the funny thing. The wall is everywhere! You can't see it, hear it, touch it, but you can acknowledge it, and when you acknowledge it, the ponies behind the wall let you do fun things!"
"Like what?"
"Well, doing this makes a story a bit eta, but I will show you this m that I pulled out of a word I said earlier."
Sophie was extremely flabbergasted.
"With that said," Pinkie continued as she threw the letter back from where she got it, effectively missing its target due to the story having progressed, the m tumbling down to rest above a line break, "the one who put that on your head was a pony from behind the wall, the one I said wanted you alive."
"Woah... These ponies behind the wall sound like omniscient gods."
"Yep, pretty much. They still make mistakes though."
"What do you mean?"
"Like, in the dream, Spike mentioned you by name once. How could he have known that?"
Looking through the papers, Sophie saw that she was right.
"Y'know what? This is absolutely wonderful! I have my answers, but I don't think I will remember it all. I have a headache just trying to. Maybe you could just write it on a paper so I don't have to absorb the whole notebook?"
A look of unsurety developed on Pinkie's face. "I don't know. This fourth wall stuff is really hard to handle, as is evident by your headache from just comprehending it. You reacted much better than I expected, though. I expected you to go half insane."
"That sounds good for my case. Please? I really don't think my head will explode if I have already learned about it."
"Well I guess you are still wanted alive by somepony behind the wall, so why not?"
Sophie waited apprehensively as Pinkie quickly abridged her explanation onto a spare sheet of paper. She placed it on Sophie's head, and Sophie slowed her breathing in an effort to fall asleep. Eventually, she succeeded, and after an hour the veil of sleep was lifted and Sophie opened her eyes, only to painfully succumb to a much harder blackness than her sleep had presented.
m
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Sophie awoke in a white room, head still feeling horrid. Pinkie stood over her, along with a few doctors.
"Oooh.... My head blew up, didn't it?"
Pinkie giggled. One of the doctors spoke up. "You had a minor stroke. You have been out for two days."
Sophie groaned.
"However, there was little to no damage, and you should be able to leave today, or maybe tomorrow, depending on how you feel."
"I think I am going to be staying here. I am still feeling a bit depleted."
"Fine by us," replied the doctor, who departed with the rest of the staff. Only Pinkie remained.
"See, that somepony wants you alive.... Do you remember anything from that paper?"
Racking her brain, Sophie found that what little, yet potent information the paper had contained was solidly glued to her memory.
"Yeah."
"Well goody! Although, the only money on hand to pay your medical bill was your vacation and travel funds. Sorry..."
Normally, this would have upset Sophie, but two things were keeping her from feeling so. First, with her newly acquired information, she could acknowledge that perhaps this was supposed to have happened, for some reason. The other thing was the mere fact that Detrot was a hell hole, and she wouldn't mind an extended stay, especially if it meant avoiding her home.
"Okay then. How am I going to earn back all of my funds?"
Pinkie rummaged through the stack of magazines in the room and pulled out a newspaper. Flipping through the crinkley pages, she found what she was looking for, and handed the newsprint to Sophie, who read the top of the page out loud.
"Job listings."
Author's Note
BWAHAHAHAH!!!
Sophie is back! The antics have only begun!
TO BE CONTINUED......
The Answer, I Think it Likes to Mess With You
"Well, here ya go!" Ponyville's local sewer repair pony, hmmmm...., said...
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Pinkie, knowing how to read text behind the wall, was informed of the lack of a canon sewer repair pony.
"I don't think Ponyville has a sewer repair pony, Somepony... or Arthur, whatever you said your name was," she replied, seemingly to nothing in particular.
The AUTHOR, not Arthur, once again found a genius way to tell the pink pony that it didn't matter, and that he only needed a name. He simply expressed his words as actions in the story, and Pinkie would read it through the fourth wall and reply. He had no need to use dialogue, as he wasn't actually talking, just typing. The author took a moment to admire his creativity, and wondered if anyone on the fanfiction site would understand....
"Oh, sorry Author. How about Cloggy Pipe?"
The author then expressed the fact that it would do, and continued the story.
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"Well, here ya go!" Ponyville's local sewer repair pony, Cloggy Pipe, said as he handed Sophie the basic equipment needed to repair and replace segments of sewer pipe. "Depending on how well you work, you get anywhere from 10 to 15 bits an hour, got it?"
"Yes sir," Sophie replied.
"Good. Today we've got a huge dilemma on our hands. One of the main pipes over by the library is slowly deteriorating. You are going over there with a few other workers to patch it up, so to speak. Oh, and wear this," Cloggy said, tossing a waterproof suit in Sophie's direction. "Did I forget to mention you will be knee-deep in sewage and waste?"
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Meanwhile, in the bathroom of the library, Spike grunted in pain as he found out why it is a bad idea to swallow magical books.
Yes, it is highly improbable to be able to poop out a book, but it is important to the story, so Spike was able to do so, albeit painfully. I mean, it's a book, after all. As he did so, a magical shockwave accompanied the dump and traveled down the pipes.
Then, purely to support a case of dramatic irony, Spike said, "Well, good thing that that's going to the sewers."
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Sophie and the other two workers slogged through the waste. While Sophie tried not to imagine what horrors were not tainting her legs due only to a layer of material, the other two were used to their job, and knew very well the disgusting things that they were walking through.
The other two alerted Sophie that they had arrived at the site, and started applying reinforcements to the pipe. Sophie followed suit, fusing plates to the walls and floor of the pipe with her magic.
Suddenly, a wave of extreme shock hit Sophie. There was a bucking GOD on the other side of an invisible wall that controlled everyone's lives, and Sophie had just taken it all in, albeit shocked, but not nearly as much as she should have been. It seemed that such knowledge had a delayed effect, or struck twice. Was it the stroke? Sophie would have lain down to cure a forming headache, had she not been in a sewer.
Then of course, the wave of sewage and poop, fueled by Spike's powerdump and following the wave of shock, came rushing towards them. Sophie wasn't sure which had a more profound effect on her: sudden realization, or sudden poop wave. The other two looked at it in horror. Sophie suddenly had the profound thought that the author, or whatever its name was, was just screwing with her. She scowled as the wave hit and proceeded to knock them up and down the pipe.
Of course, the story wouldn't be able to progress, nor would the title make sense, if the book that Spike had discharged didn't come to coincidently perch on Sophie's head after all had settled.
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Sophie woke up, once again. She was doing a lot of waking up, wasn't she? Well, her purpose as a character kind of revolved around sleeping, so therefore, she had to do a lot of waking up.
Sophie grimaced at the fecal matter covering the suit's visor. She wished that it wasn't there.
It wasn't there.
It wasn't there? How? It just... wasn't.
Sophie stood up and wished for all of the sewage to be gone, and it became so. She took off her now purposeless protective helmet and wished for... a sandwich... with hay and cheese!
A hay and cheese sandwich appeared. It was only then that Sophie noticed the book on the rounded floor of the newly clean pipe. "Inspiration Manifestation" the title read. Upon finishing her sandwich, she picked up and opened the book and read a few lines off of the slightly... eaten-looking pages. Sure enough, all of the knowledge within the book was within her as well. The thing must have landed on her head after she had been thrashed by advancing feces.
She looked up. "I don't get this. Why did you give me this power?"
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First of all, the author was not above Sophie, but around her. It wasn't like he was a god, so why was she looking up? Second, the author admitted that he hadn't exactly thought this entirely through, and that he had done this because of a writing prompt involving the spellbook. He decided that the reason was because he had said so, and that she should just screw around with her new power until he came up with a resolution. Also, he congratulated her on successfully reading text behind the wall.
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Sophie replied to seemingly nothing in particular, "Alright then... I never thought of you as short sighted. If I just goof off with the power for a bit, you will make things progress, right?... Oh, and thank you."
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The author told her that that was correct... more or less, and that Sophie was welcome. He then grumbled at the automatic indent function... Sophie did not need to worry about that last statement.
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Sophie spent a brief moment wondering how an automatic indent function would work... like, how does your magic automatically make indents in your text... even when you don't want them? She then returned to dinking, as she had been instructed to do. She then knew what the author would want her to do. She willed up a giant pile of money. She could have sworn that she could feel the author smiling at his cleverness regarding plot resolution.
She then turned a few buildings into giant rabbits and dug a bunch of glass-walled holes. She returned to the sewer for a game of bowling... 4-dimesional bowling!!!! She gave the hospital all of the money, and willed up an extra floor just to be nice.
It was then that Pinkie ran up to Sophie and yelled, "The author knows what to do now!"
Sophie landed, and Pinkie leaned in to whisper in her ear. Suddenly, Pinkie's tail twitched, and everything went black.
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Pinkie was instructed to lay pages 4, 7, 15, and 28 on Sophie's head, as was the brand new genius plan, which would then be followed with an older plan that had needed to be connected before it was presented, and the new plan would do just that. Oh, and Pinkie would need to put a special piece of blank paper on Sophie's head too, which the author would provide. It was placed just below.
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Pinkie reached through and grabbed this special paper, and the author sewed up the tear her hoof had left with some pluses, because they looked like stitches. It was an aesthetic thing.
Author's Note
Well... here it is... about a year later.
Now is everything starting to make sense?
Is it?
My apologies for making you wait.
"Who are ya talking to?" Pinkie inquired.
The author was startled. He told Pinkie that she wasn't supposed to be down here.
She listened, and went back to the next chapter, where she belonged.
