Hunt for the Mirror Shards
It was a completely normal morning in Ponyville. Ponies wandered the streets, some pulling wooden carts and others setting up market stands. A few fillies and colts ran about about them, enjoying themselves in the early morning sun. It was that time of week again. The day that ponies excitedly waited for...
"Hey Sharp Shooter!"
A tall light brown pegasus mare with a light blonde curly mane and tail sighed as she lowered her glass of milk and looked into it. Her cutie mark was a skinny light red bow with an silver arrow notched on it. "Morning."
"Sharp Shooter, do you know what day it is?"
"Sunday?"
"No,"
"Somepony's birthday? Will Pinkie Pie be throwing another party?"
"Nope!"
"Hum-"
"That is so overused that it isn't funny anymore."
"Okay?" She looked up.
A pale blue Pegasus mare stared back at her. Her brown mane and tail were straight for the most part, but the ends were very curly. The mare's cutie mark was a single large blue droplet of ink on white paper.
"I'll tell you what day it is," she said as she put a piece of toast on her plate. She beamed at Sharp Shooter.
Sharp Shooter sighed. "Ink Droplet, this better be good." She sat up.
"Market day!" Ink Droplet grabbed her plate between her teeth.
Sharp Shooter's head hit the table and knocked over her milk. "You've got to be kidding me. You're hyped for a market?"
Ink laid her plate on the table and sat down next to her. "Sharp?" She waited a moment. "Sharp, are you alright?"
She didn't respond. Only her heavy breathing and strange mumbling told her that she was still alive.
"Okay than." Ink lifted her toast with one hoof and bit into it.
Sunlight warmed Ink Droplet's body as her wings carried her into the skies above Ponyville. There were very few clouds today. She loved mornings like this. It was interesting to see what ponies were up to in the morning. Dozens of wooden huts and cement buildings littered the area around a large blue tree on one side. The rest of it was grassland on the other. As Ink looked over the tree, she saw a large purple castle in its branches. She smiled at it before turning away and spotting a gray and white building.
Twilight Sparkle's going to be a great princess, she thought to herself. I wonder what she's up to right now. She looked down below her, where wooden stands were lined up in the town square. For a moment, she watched as a blue unicorn stallion lifted a wooden box and set it down on his table. Then a yellow earth pony mare trotted over and began to talk to him. Moments later, she placed some bits on the table and he gave her a small sack. I hope there will be some stuff left when I'm done working later. It would be really disappointing to be excited for nothing. Ink went into a glide and let the wind push her away from the scene while she gave the market one last gaze.
"Ink Droplet?"
She swerved around. "Hello?"
In front of her was a two story brick house with black curtains in the top floor's window. An orange earth pony stallion was peering out. His spiky red mane flailed in the wind as his gold eyes, framed by a pair of black glasses, looked to the skies above. She was just coming into his field of view.
Ink flew down to his window and laid her front hooves out on the cement ledge. "Good morning, Oddity! The market's today!"
The stallion, Oddity, smiled. He was a good friend of Ink's. They often hung out together, although he always insisted on wearing a brown cloak over him wherever they went. He was strange like that. Ink figured that he wore a cloak because he was cold, but he would never give her a straight answer.
"Today's the market?" He looked out the window to her right and saw the stalls. "Are you heading there now?"
Ink sighed. She looked over the town once more. "I'm going to have to say no. My boss wants me over at the HQ."
He lowered his head. His ears flattened. "Oh. I was hoping that you would want to go right now. I don't have much to do at the moment."
Ink didn't like to see her friend saddened by that. She put her hoof on his shoulder. "It's alright. If I get through my work fast enough, we can go out by at least noon."
He looked up at her face and smiled again. "That sounds great." He looked behind him. "I just remembered that I actually have to clean my house a bit, so by the time you come over again it should be pretty as these teeth!" He opened his mouth. Two sets of yellow teeth shone back at Ink.
Ink recoiled from them. "Uh, it doesn't look like you've brushed them yet."
Oddity laughed. "I'll get on that too." He rolled his eyes. "Must've been all those old sugar cubes I found last night. I couldn't let them rot away in my kitchen cabinet."
She pulled away from the window. "Well, I'll be going. See you later!" She took off into the air.
He waved. "Bye!"
Oddity shut his window. He wished Ink didn't have to run off all the time. Where she worked, she was required to sit for hours on end writing and editing stories for Ponyville's local newspaper, Something Daily or whatever. Occasionally her boss, Graphite Quill, would let her out on an assignment, but nowadays it was rare to see her outside before noon.
When she wasn't working though, it was hilarious to see Ink obsessing over random things. Oddity recalled a time once where she said she worshipped some stupid old fossil over Celestia. Another time, she had dragged Sharp Shooter and him into the town square to watch some Iron Will guy. Now that she was obsessing over the weekly market, he wanted to know what she would go for next. She seemed to change every few weeks or so. Maybe that was why she was hired for the newspaper? Even when they were younger he knew of her doing this.
Oddity turned around. A bed covered with a dark red blanket laid a few feet away from him. An empty yellow bowl and a green notebook sat on top of it.
"Well, time to clean everything again," he sighed.
He approached the bed and took the bowl between his teeth. Then he headed towards a wooden staircase leading down into darkness.
Hunt for the Mirror Shards
Pittoo! Bring your butt to the main chamber now!
Dark Pit looked up from his red 3DS, crossed his arms, and rolled his eyes. He was lying on a navy blue carpet next to an electrical outlet, curled around a nearly-empty bucket of popcorn. Instead of his usual black tunic, he had on a pair of black pajamas. His normally stylish black hair was a mess. Like he cared though, he couldn't find his hairbrush. Behind him was a pile of open soda cans and empty chip bags.
Viridi, the Goddess of Nature and his patron goddess, wasn't happy with any of it. Normally, she would stomp into his room and scream, "You're cleaning the toilets for the next week and a half!", but today was different. She had been using her telepathy abilities to give him a headache for the past twenty or so minutes.
"For the last time, can't you get Phosphora to do whatever you need right now? I'm busy." He glared down at his 3DS and closed it. So much for trying to fight Majora.
"This is what you've been hiding? First of all you're using electricity when I said to plug your game into-"
"The sun doesn't charge it fast enough."
"Second, you're eating and drinking unhealthy."
He sighed and crossed his arms. "Okay, that's my fault."
"Third, you're out of uniform."
"You don't realize how annoying wearing a tunic gets after awhile."
"Fourth-"
"Okay, okay." He stood up. "I'll be over in a min-" That's when the ground disappeared from his feet. The next thing he knew, his body was soaking wet as he sat in a small well, his black tunic was on him, and two women, one with long green hair and a white dress and the other with blonde hair in a ponytail and a red dress, and his twin brother Pit were laughing at him.
"Viridi, I will kill you," he grumbled.
"There's a little problem with that," Viridi snickered. "I can't exactly die."
"So..." Dark Pit wiped his arm with a towel as everyone watched him.
"Yes Pittoo?" Palutena said.
"Why are you and Pit here?"
"I'm just saying hi." Pit smiled and sat down on the well near him. "Lady Palutena's letting me go on vacation today!"
"Oh really?" Dark Pit rolled his eyes. "Where? Is it some stupid island in the middle of the ocean?"
"Stupid?" Pit threw his hands up at the comment. "It's most definitely not!" He closed in on Dark Pit's face, his own slowly turning red.
"I'm sending him to Hoenn with Arceus' permission," Palutena intervened.
Dark Pit blinked. For a moment, he stared at Palutena. Then at Pit. Then at Palutena again. "What?"
"I'm getting a Treecko!" Pit smirked. "We're going to travel the region together and fight gym leaders and win the Pokémon League and-"
"WHAT?"
"I'm going to name my Treecko Gecko and he'll become an awesome Sceptile and we'll do Pokémon Contests and-"
"WHAT?!" His eye began to twitch.
"I'm going to complete the PokéDex and grow berries and-"
"I've heard enough!" He pushed Pit into the well.
"Sounds like someone's jealous," Viridi laughed. "Being the lazy angel he is though, he can't get any rewards."
"WHHHHAAAAT?" He glared at the little goddess. "I've been doing a lot for your sorry little ass, Viridi. You've made me water the garden, mow the lawn, and hand-pick the thorns that grow on your throne when you get upset. I let you play on my old Wii system. I've been teaching your army how to drive."
She rolled her eyes at his comment. "None of them have yet to pass driver's ed."
"So? We've made progress!" He gestured to Cragalanche, Viridi's giant pet rock monster. "Crag, drive out the front doors to show her what I mean."
Cragalanche bent down in the giant green truck he was sitting in. He started the engine, put his arms on the wheel, and...
There was a giant hole in the stone wall where he had sped off.
"Damn it, Pittoo! You are going to fix that wall later!" She clenched her fist with one hand and hit her forehead with the other. She looked between him and the wall.
"I'm not Pittoo! My name is Dark Pit."
"SHUT UP!"
And he ended up in the well again.
"What exactly do you guys need me to do?" Dark Pit had sat himself on the bottom of the stone staircase leading up to the door out of the temple.
"Oh," Palutena looked over at him from where she was at the well with Viridi, "we didn't tell you yet?"
"You were too busy trying to get me to drink that well's water." He stuck his tounge out. "Bleh."
Palutena looked over at Viridi. "I gave you the coordinates, right?"
"I'm near it," she replied. "Seems like you got it wrong though. I'm staring at the bottom of a pit!"
Pit suddenly began to scream. He jumped off the wall that he had been lying against. "Keep your camera away from my behi-"
"I didn't mean you, turkey brain!" she hissed.
"O-oh..." He stared down at a red and white ball in his hand.
She just threw her hand to her forehead and went back to the well.
"As you were saying, Palutena?" Dark Pit looked over to her.
"Oh yes," she said. "You remember the Mirror of Truth, right? I mean, especially since you were born from it."
"Yeah." He vividly remembered most of his first days of life as Pit's "evil" manifestation. There was that moment after his birth where he punched a goddess, his fights with Pit, times soon afterwards where he had gone hungry because he made the desert his home.... He smirked, just thinking about those memories. "I had a lot of fun back then. Well, it was difficult at times to enjoy my freedom, but still fun. At least until that stupid butler showed up, kidnapped me, nearly got me killed, and started screaming like a little girl when the Lunar Sanctum blew up."
Viridi paused. "Arlon? Arlon of all people screamed like a little girl?"
"I absolutely did not!" a man screamed from the next room over.
"Yep." Arlon was one of the most level-headed people Dark Pit knew, but he never knew breaking him like that would have been so easy.
"Moving on again," Palutena said. Everyone could tell she was trying to keep herself from laughing. "I felt a strange presence enter the Labyrinth of Deceit last night. I couldn't tell what it was or why it was there. I figured it would be best to check on the Mirror of Truth after a few years, but my well is under repair and Pit's heading off on his own soon."
"Okay, I got it. I'll go in, kill whatever's there, and I'll be back to destroy Majora in about ten to fifteen minutes."
She nodded. "By the way, did you get the Fierce Deity's mask? How about the moon? Did you ever let it drop?"
He chuckled. "You've met a terrible fate, havn't you?"
Viridi suddenly grabbed his shoulder and turned him to face her. "You're going to meet a terrible fate if you don't get out of here!"
He broke himself free from her grasp and winced. "You have really sharp nails today. Think about trimming them please." He then darted up the steps and pushed open the doors. "See ya!"
And then he was gone.