A Stranger In Ponyville (OR, A Genre Shift in Three Acts)

I’m not sure how much time had passed between the beginning and end of my slumber, as we were still in that underground cell when I awoke. Mine was the kind of wakening that is slow, achy, and leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth—the kind that makes one wish they remained asleep.

Spike’s head still rested on my neck, and he was snoring softly. Groggy, I decided it was more prudent to try resuming sleep, until a rapping came at the barred door. I looked up, careful not to wake Spike, and saw the scarred Caramel from before. Blossomforth and the Doctor accompanied him.

“Get up,” he commanded.

I did so carefully, leaving Spike to sleep. Blossomforth unlocked the cell door and slid it to the side. The three parted and let me walk out.

Behind them was my brother, Shining Armor. I wanted to run to him, hold him, cry in his chest, but seeing the state he was in was, like the state of all my other friends, heartbreaking.

His blue mane was overgrown and shaggy, and his jaw sported a rogue’s worth of stubble. His blue eyes were bloodshot, bags beneath them, with a visible scar over his right eye. His uniform was much different now, more of a black jacket with silver padding here and there; it was ripped and battered. From the looks and smell of him, I’d say he hadn’t bathed in a while either.

The most saddening part, for some reason, was that, even in his current shape, he still wore his marriage ring proudly on his horn.

He and I shared an awkward stare, the silence almost suffocating. Shining Armor made the first move. “Twily?” he whispered, coming closer. He looked me in the face, then up and down. His voice was gruffer and more haunted than I’d thought it would be.

I wanted to say something, but for some reason, I couldn’t. I smiled instead, tears forming in my eyes. His face became long, and his eyes wide, as if he were seeing a ghost.

“I told you already,” said the Doctor, slowly. “We’re… we’re from another timeline. Another possibility, a whole new reality. This Twilight is…”

He sighed heavily and lowered his head. “Not… my sister.”

I walked up to him and held him, Shining Armor’s tears falling on my head. I felt him shudder, as if he wanted to just throw me off, throw me away, hit me, rage at me why I couldn’t have been there for him. His emotions were in a wreck, not at all a good fit for a leader his caliber.

“It’s OK, Shining Armor,” I told him. “We…” My mind searched for the right words. Even though his size dwarfed me considerably, he still felt so vulnerable. I had to know the right thing to say to him. “No matter what timeline or dimension it is… no matter what happens to either one of us…” I looked him in the eye, wiping away a tear from his face as it crumpled with his emotions. “I’ll always be your sister.”

We held each other for what I’m sure was only a minute, but felt like longer. My memories of our childhood, the Shining Armor from my dimension, my home, again flooded my mind, all our dreams and secrets we shared. I wondered how our childhood here was, under the constant watch of the stranger’s one-eye-greener-than-the-other.

My mind then came across a train of thought I wished I hadn’t found: I wondered if he was present for my execution. I wondered how Shining Armor felt about Fluttershy being the one who was forced to pull the switch. I wondered if his wife Cadance were still here with him. I wondered if our parents were still alive in this dimension. I wondered if he had anypony left to live for, if this guerilla effort against the stranger was the only thing he really had left.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted suddenly, burying my face in his chest. All my pent-up frustration and terror and despair had finally caught up with me and began to crash forth like rapids. I tried telling him all that had happened so far, at a stumbling and hasty pace, my words quickly becoming near-meaningless, incomprehensible blathering, a blob of apologies and tears.

I felt him stroking my mane, shushing me the way he did when we were young. Specifically, for some reason, it reminded me of the time he’d sent away some bullies who had pushed me into a puddle and caused me to cry. It felt like that now, as if he were merely sending away all these bullying bad feelings, these crushing emotions. I shook, my shuddering sobs muffled in his battered uniform. I felt his kiss on my head.

“It’s OK, Twily, it’s OK. If you’ll always be my sister no matter what, then I’ll always be your brother, no matter what.”

A clearing of a throat is what brought us back to the present situation. I looked to our friends, the Doctor straightening his bowtie, Caramel standing erect, and Blossomforth sniffling back happy tears. Shining Armor let go of me and stood back in his leaderly pose. (I almost giggled aloud, as that pose was the one that he used when practicing in front of the mirror when he was young—for the day he’d be leader of the royal guard, he’d say.)

“Doctor, I have no reason to doubt your story. I have seen you regenerate before with my own eyes, and the fact you still know everything about our past adventures leads me to believe that you are the Doctor Whooves I’ve come to know—at least, the alternate you the you… told us... about.” His eyes seemed to lose focus on the last sentence.

I raised an eyebrow. “Did I miss something?”

The Doctor smiled. “Turns out that big plan the Mare-Do-Well mentioned earlier was one the Doctor living in this timeline helped to plan.” He leaned in on me and whispered, “For the sake of clarity let’s call him the Alterna-Doctor.” Standing back upright, he looked as though he were about to laugh out loud. “Anyway, it turns out you and I were apart of the Alterna-Doctor’s plans!”

“We’re… how?”

“You see, a Time Lord is able to see events in the future—and every moment is a stepping stone to a possible future.” He held me by the shoulders. “Alterna-Doctor saw us coming. For some reason, it seems as though we’re an important part in his plan!”

This was a lot to take in. “So when you claimed to those gang members that you could read their minds…”

“I was reading their possible futures in which they had their way with us, yes. I did that specifically to change the future so that didn’t happen.”

I scowled. “So explain why Dr. Chuckles was a better option?”

His face lost color as he looked away. “The alternative was even worse. I’d rather not think about it, thank you.” He suddenly came back to me. “Oh! By the way, before I forget…” He reached into his coat pocket and removed the horn-bomb the Mare-Do-Well had placed on Snails. “I nicked this before the colt came to.”

Shining Armor, Blossomforth, and Caramel gasped. “What are you doing with that!” Shining Armor demanded.

The Doctor chuckled. “Shining Armor, you of all ponies should know this horn-bomb is totally useless unless activated. I’ve turned it off. Perfectly safe.”

Blossomforth trembled. “It’s a bomb! It’s anything BUT perfectly safe! What are you doing with a bomb?”

The Doctor dropped it. It clattered on the stone floor like it was a plastic toy, and Blossomforth squealed in fear. “It’s not dangerous until it’s activated,” he repeated. “I just gave you a weapon, the least you can do is thank me!” He picked it up again and placed it in his coat pocket.

Blossomforth growled and walked away. “That wasn’t funny, Doctor!”

Caramel chuckled. “You’ll have to forgive her. She’s… kinda sensitive.”

Shining Armor and his teammates led us to a fairly large room. I supposed it was meant as a security room for the subway system, but because of the mish-mash nature of proportions, it could have been anything else—even a bathroom. There were some undetailed chairs and vague tables, one of which bore a rather large map. Across the back wall was a flag that bore the acronym PVCC (Or “Ponies Versus Christian Chandler”).

“What the ‘Alterna-Doctor' and I had planned,” continued Shining Armor, “was to have him infiltrate the Mayor’s fortress and turn off the magic shield.”

My mind, like a never-ending library of memory files, plucked one from recently: Dr. Chuckles had mentioned a similar shield. It was why his unicorn henchmen were useless unless he knew how to deactivate it. I nodded; this infiltration was a good plan. “But he was caught and executed, wasn’t he?” I asked.

The Doctor chuckled. “What happens when I die, Twilight?”

I felt very stupid for having asked the question in the first place. But the fact that only the Doctor’s close friends and acquaintances knew this about him, meant that the stranger lacked this knowledge. If he tried to execute him, the Doctor would merely regenerate his body good as new.

“How long does it usually take to regenerate, Doctor?” I asked.

“Usually not that long. But I can delay it. I regenerated right away when Dr. Chuckles shot me in order to freak him out; I imagine Alterna-Doctor probably delayed his regeneration until his ‘body’ was put into the fortress’ morgue for later burial.”

  I then turned to my brother. “OK, and the Alterna-Doctor told the Mare-Do-Well to rescue us earlier this evening. We were told you were on a mission I’m assuming he sent you on. What did he ask you to do?”

Shining Armor looked like he was thinking over how to answer the question. Finally, he said, “He sent me to mend some fences.”

I looked at him curiously, then narrowed my eyes. “If you want me IN on this operation, you need to keep me in the know. What do you mean by mending fences?”

“He means he has allied himself with me.”

I turned around at this deep voice, and was met by a unicorn stallion dressed in red armor and a dark purple cape. His round red helmet seemed iconic somehow, like one of Rainbow Dash’s favorite comic book superheroes. He walked over to me, took my hoof and kissed it. I, naturally, blushed at his gentlecoltly advance.

“I am Magneighto, Master of Magnet,” he introduced.

I pursed my lips. “Don’t you mean, ‘Master of magnetism’?”

“No, Magnet.” He looked at me earnestly. “It’s a place. I’m its master. Hence, Master of Magnet.”

I nodded, somewhat perplexed by his response. I then looked around: the Doctor, Shining Armor, Caramel, Blossomforth… it felt like somepony was missing. “Where’s the Mare-Do-Well?”

Shining Armor smirked. “She’s already played her part for now. All she would probably do is make it hard for Magneighto to work with us.” The look in his eyes as he said this implied there was quite a bit of bad blood between the Mare and Magneighto, so I decided it would be more prudent to not ask about it.

Instead, I asked how on earth Shining Armor managed to convince Magneighto to ally himself with the PVCC. “To make a long story short, it took a bit of a trade to do,” Shining Armor said.

Magneighto seemed angered by Shining Armor’s choice of words. “Trade?” he asked. “She is no trade.”

Shining Armor bowed his head and apologized quickly for his choice in words. He had only gained this ally recently, better to not offend him. I raised an eyebrow at this exchange. “Are you holding somepony hostage?! Please tell me you’re not holding somepony hostage?!”

“I’m being held hostage now?” asked Derpy Hooves, who jumped up from under the table. “Cool!” She looked about the same as she does in our timeline, but she wore an oversized army helmet on her head, which only emphasized her googly eyes and made her look even cuter. I fought the urge to squeal. (I wish I’d taken pictures to show you, you’d have loved to see it.)

“No!” said Magneighto. “No, you’re not being held hostage, and it isn’t cool to be held hostage.”

She merely took in what Magneighto told her and smiled at him. “OK! I’m not a hostage! But is it OK if I'm their friend instead?”

Magneighto couldn’t help but smile back and stifle a chuckle. "Yes," he grinned. "Yes, it's OK for you to be friends." Derpy let out a cheer. Different timeline, same old Derpy.

Shining Armor fought the urge to laugh, but the smile in his eyes gave him away. “All right, that just leaves us waiting for—”

Suddenly, a colt leapt down from the ceiling and onto the planning table. He was covered head to hoof in a costume that was red and blue, very “arachnid” in its theme—the black lines drawn over it were reminiscent of spiderwebs. His eyes were covered in the same glass eyes the Mare-Do-Well had, but his were a bright and friendly blue. He stood up in grand bravado. “The Spectacular Spider-Colt!”

Everypony stared at him as if he were an alien. Shining Armor sighed. “You waited up on the ceiling for hours to do that, didn’t you?”

“Totally worth it,” he said, and jumped off the table, clinging to the wall. I kept my eyes on this one, as he was wiry and constantly moving about on the wall as everypony else spoke.

Shining Armor looked around. “Well, in addition to the few of us in this room, there are maybe about twelve others.”

Against the stranger’s forces? Dr. Chuckles had said there were so many guards he and his goons couldn’t even get in. “A blitzkrieg is out of the question, then,” I mused. “Would this be an infiltration job? What exactly is our goal here?”

“I’m assuming the Doctor wants us to lead an attack on the fortress. He’s already doing the infiltration part to bring down the shields.”

I blinked. “He… he didn’t tell you what he wanted you guys to do when the shield went down? You’re assuming you’re going to just…”

Magneighto chuckled. “That’s where I come in. Do you see my cutie mark?”

It was a magnet emitting waves. “I am a talented unicorn sorcerer, my dear. My greatest talent however is the manipulation of magnetism.”

I put two and two together. “So… you’re going to break their weapons and armor?”

“Leaving them completely defenseless, yes.”

“You can do that?”

“Easily.”

I smirked. “So why not rip out the entire fortress and shake it until the Mayor surrenders?”

Shining Armor spoke up. “It has come to our attention that the Mayor is in possession of a dark secret—the reason he hasn’t gone out in public for years. If we just destroy his fortress, we won’t find out what this secret is, and there’d be no way to convince this city that he was evil.”

I could probably hazard a guess as to what this secret was, and decided I should break it to them right there. However, the Doctor looked at me as I opened my mouth—looking at me in such a way that if I had told of the stranger’s secret, our own credibility might come into question.

Now that I have the time to think it over, I know the Doctor was right: if I’d admitted that the stranger were not a pony, but a being from a whole different universe, that would bring the question of where he had come from, and how he had become so powerful. The first question’s answer would be vague at best, while the second would probably have cost us the PVCC’s trust.

Instead of blurting the stranger’s secret, I nodded at Shining Armor knowingly. “So the magic shield goes down. Magneighto disrupts all weapons and armor.”

Shining Armor nodded. “Yes. Then, I’ll direct my forces from one direction, while Caramel will bring our other troops from the other side; pincering them while they’re helpless.” He turned to Spider-Colt. “Did you bring your camera?”

Spider-Colt held it up.

“OK. While the battle is going on outside, I want you to infiltrate the inside of the place, find the stranger’s secret, and give us photographic evidence.”

Spider-Colt nodded. “You can leave it to me, Shiny!”

I chuckled a bit. “Shiny” was Shining Armor’s least-favorite nickname, and it seemed Spider-Colt knew this already. Shining Armor merely sighed in exasperation, then looked to the Doctor and me. “The Doctor told me the two of you specifically needed to confront the Mayor himself. He didn’t say why, but knowing what I know about him, he has ideas.”

That meant the only things I really had to do were plot out how the Doctor and I could infiltrate the place. We were told this operation would go down later tonight—plenty of time to rest for this battle.

In closing, Shining Armor looked at everypony in attendance. He nodded. “This is it,” he said, “This is our last stand against the Mayor. It’s do or die. I want each of you to know that you’re all fine ponies, and I’m honored to fight alongside each of you.”

His eyes fell on me for a second, and it seemed he didn’t know whether to smile or to cry. Instead, he did neither, hiding his emotions even though his eyes betrayed them. He swallowed, sighed, and finished, “And I am honored to fight FOR each of you.”

Derpy had poured some glasses full of wine and passed them around. We toasted. “To Celestia, and to those who have fallen,” Shining Armor said.

We drank to the toast. To your memory, and to those who had fallen.