Top Hats & Metal Wings

Chapters

Flimflam "Improvements" Finest Wares At Work
Garnering Useful Information About One Another
Asking Questions and Receiving Answers
Requisitioning Diane's Assistance
Prolouge: Where to Begin?

Flimflam "Improvements" Finest Wares At Work

Chapter 1: Damn portals…

“It’s all fun and games until somepony gets blasted to another dimension!” –Twilight Sparkle

Michael, Bryan and something else were sailing through the air after they were all ejected from the short portal ride to… wherever this was! There wasn’t really any time at the moment to ask questions about that sort of thing, but there was plenty of time for the two conscious projectiles to scream at the top of their lungs while flying in a wide arc. By some kind of miracle, they crashed into a bouncy castle on the top of a brick and brass-plated rooftop. The third object wasn’t as lucky; it hit the oddly placed bouncy castle, but bounced off and fell to the floor with a loud clang, as if it were struck by some big, heavy object .

“What the hell is this thing doing here?” Bryan shouted over the hiss of the escaping air coming from the rupturedcastle as he attempted to stand up .

“Out of the hundreds of questions to ask, THAT’S the one you picked?” Michael asked angrily while grabbing an extended hand to assist him up.

The two scrambled off the bouncy castle, and got a look of their surroundings. They looked out with amazement as they saw the night scene of a magnificent city. Gas lamps illuminated the undersides of massive docked airships in a bay that the city wrapped around. Buildings not unlike the one they had landed upon were everywhere, farther off, there was massive towers that looked like skyscrapers near the center of the city. Most of the ‘skyscrapers’ were bizzarely shaped, one went straight up until what seemed to be the 40th-ish floor then curved diagonally and tapered to a point. There were massive curved plates of brassy metal covering most of the structure, making the whole thing look vaguely like a giant wing.

Other, equally impressive towers littered the area surrounding the wing building. While Michael just gawked at the city, Bryan looked at the more local surroundings and saw the third projectile that flew with them on the floor, “Oh my god is that some guy!?”

Michael turned around, and his eyes lit up in terror, “I do believe it is! C’mon!”

The boys started to run over to the person, but before they could reach him, the rooftop access door burst open, and a green unicorn, yes you heard right, a freaking unicorn said with a dapper tone,” Now, what’s this, then? My invention! Hold it… whatever you two are. You have some explaining to do!” The unicorn used magic to levitate the boys, who started to scream and shout again. Still screaming, they both slapped each other in the face to snap their selves out of their fit, making them spin in a circle. All Michael could do was point at the unconscious body, which he could see now from the light coming from inside the building that it was another pony, and quickly shout, “Him!!”

“Hmm? Oh!” The unicorn dropped the two boys onto the hard, metal floor and walked over towards the catatonic earth pegasus. Bryan just sat there dumbstruck, while Michael was more in awe of the unicorn than anything. Because unicorns mean magic or mushrooms, but green, big-eyed unicorns wearing brassy, riveted goggles and a big brown coat meant that there was a strong possibility that they could be in… no it looked to different. But there was unicorn right in front of him looking over a lavender pony with a white mane! Wait a second… could it be? No… it can’t be Tellis, this place looked nothing like New Ponyville City. Not that Michael has ever actually seen New Ponyville, but still.

“Oh, I hope I’m not in shock… I’m not in shock, am I, Bryan? Bryan!? Bryyaannnn…” Michael waved a hand in front of his friend’s face, no response. He grabbed Bryan by his Cookie Monster shirt, lifted him up to his feet, then shook him a bit while shouting his name.

“Yeah, we should probably go help or something…” Michael said as he motioned for his friend to follow him. They stepped into the rather fancy bronze metal stairwell, complete with blue carpet floors, elaborate blue on white wallpaper, and lots of paintings and pictures of ponies looking elegant, others had ponies partying in a pub.

Examining the lavender pony, Michael saw that he fit the description of Tellis, long white messy mane, and metal hoof/hand thing. Call Michael a prude, but he really didn’t need to look in the general area of where hiw cutie mark was. Tellis was lying on his back and really needed to wear some pants or something, which Michael pointed out to his best friend, who only chuckled at his prudence.

Michael picked up a table cloth that was on the floor and draped it over Tellis’s lower half, giving him a bit of decency as the green unicorn gave a victory yell after he finally found what he was looking for. he was still behind some shelves, so it was hard to see what exactly it was. It seemed to be some kind of large monitor on a stand with wheels and a small flashlight thing attached to it by a cable that wrapped around the thing for storage purposes. The device seemed to be made out of the bronze-like metal most everything else was made out of, and it gleamed in the white light from the monitors in front of the table Tellis was laying on.

The unicorn pushed Michael and Bryan out of the way with the machine, started plugging a patched up power cable into a nearby socket that shot out several sparks when he did so, and started up a conversation with the two strange creatures in his home, “So, uh, whatever you fellows are… wait, ARE you male?”

“What? Oh, yeah yeah yeah, we are definitely males.”

“I have so many questions!”

“Hey, Michael, I don’t wanna answer a lot of questions, and I’m scared.”

“Bryan, you may have a point. Hey, let’s just tell him some basic stuff right now so we can help this guy with his thing! So, what do you say, mister…”

“It’s Darius Ellistar.” He said proudly as he began to levitate the attachment for the device over Tellis, which seemed to be a scanner thing now that they could see it better, he activated it, emitting a flat beam of green light on Tellis, he pulled the decency sheet Michael put on him with his teeth and then said back to the boys, “Sounds fair enough, continue.”

Michael leaned over to Bryan and quietly said to his comrade, “Holy turtle penis, Bryan, It IS our OCs! This is so awesome!”

“What was that?”

“Oh, it was nothing… were to begin? Uhh, me and my friend are a species of mammals known as ‘humans’. We uh… um… oh. I can’t believe this, I’ve practiced like eight times on what to say if I ever encountered this kind of situation, and now I’m just drawing a blank! Help me out, will ya Bryan?”

“ Really, eight times?”

“Yeah, man, why not? I mean look at where we are, right now.”

“I thought that this was just going to be ‘some basic stuff’, you have barely told me anything! “

"Oh, well I guess I should say some stuff then… how about our names! Yeah! My name is Bryan Foster, and he’s Michael McIntosh.”

“Wait, shut up Bryan, I remember what I was saying now, and if you keep saying things, ill forget again, and we’ll never get anywhere!”

“Fine by me,” Bryan said as he pulled his smart phone out and took a picture of a confused-looking Darius.

“It’s a little camera, you do have cameras here?”

“Why, of course, but a camera can’t be that small.”

“Sure it can,” Bryan said as he took another picture.

“Bryan! You’re taking pictures? Great idea! The guys’ll be so jealous! You know, AFTER we figure out how to get back home… not that I want to anytime soon.”

“I know, right?” Bryan said as he took yet another picture.

“You two idiots have said next to nothing except for your names and your race! Are all hugh-mins as stupid as you?”

“Hey… we aren’t stupid! We are tired, scared, nervous because I’m actually not that confident in my speaking abilities, quite recently got shot out of this giant portal thing like it was a huge cannon along with this guy here, who will probably freak out as soon as he wakes up. More than we did when we first saw you, Darius. I’m serious, just look at him, he looks pretty dangerous, and he’s already moving around. Jeez, this guy’s head must be made out of steel or something! ”

“Or he’s a pegasus! This can’t be… but look here, on the x-ray, his bones seem to be hollow, and see those little nubs near the middle of his back? That’s where his wings should be! This day just keeps getting better and better! I’ve discovered not only a wingless pegasus with bizarre arcane technology on him, but a completely different race with even more technology as well! If this keeps up, I’ll finally beat Twilight Sparkle at her own game!

“Wait, should you be x-raying him, without any protection, and with two others RIGHT NEXT TO HIM!” Bryan raised his voice towards Darius as he stood up from his chair and pointed a finger accusingly at the unicorn.

“Calm down, calm down, we’re perfectly safe. Trust me, I’m a scientist!”

Michael looked at Bryan and smiled, turned back to Darius, and asked with with his best Clint Eastwood voice knowing full well what the answer would be, “What kind of scientist are ya?”

“The best kind! The kind that is better than Twilight Sparkle!” Darius shouted as he turned back around to pour over his data once ds one again and Bryan brohoofed Michael for fulfilling their little inside joke, but they weren’t expecting him to say the second sentence. This guy seemed really obsessed with Twilight, which may cause some problems later on, or an absolutely hilarious situation, only time will tell. It was time to play the ignorance card again, and Michael asked innocently, “Who’s Twilight Sparkle?”

“Why she’s supposed to be my colleague at the Academy of Arcane Sciences, but she is more the like the mare that always overshadows me in everything I do! I build a robot to sweep floors; she builds one that sweeps, mops, buffs, waxes and protects! I enchant a telescope to be able to see a far off star a bit better, she just magics up a holographic model of the star in her back yard! I go to work with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she brings a huge carrot, lettuce, and tomato one!” Darius vented his frustrations as he put the scanner back onto the monitor as he pushed it out of the way.

“She sounds awful!” Michael said to Darius, acting sympathetic to the green unicorn.

“Oh, she’s actually very nice, I don’t think she even realizes that she’s even doing it.”

Suddenly, Tellis bolts up from and screams, “COMET!!!!”

“Whoa!”

“Holy-“

“By the princesses!”

Tellis flailed around, and almost punched Darius in the face while shouting, “Where am I? What are those!? Who are you!? Where’s Comet!? Tell me where she is!!”

“Calm the hell down! We don’t know where she is! Now if we could all stop screaming at all of us and trying to kill me…(clears throat) we can tell you what’s going on.”

A/N Okay, this is a short chapter for me, usually I like to make them 4k or so words, but I want to get the content out there before my slacker tendencies destroy this story, and ive also been really busy, I tried to finish the chapter like three days ago, but I couldnt! I can just make a whole bunch of chapters, I guess. Some terms may sound similar to other universes, but that doesn’t mean I’m stealing anything, because the Ministry of Arcane Science (FoE universe) is completely different from the Academy of Arcane Science, one was for a war effort, the other is for the advancement of technology that improves the lives of all ponykind. Im looking for editors and pre-readers, mainly just editors, because we all know it’s hard to correct your own writing. Please leave a comment

Garnering Useful Information About One Another

“You darn kids! Stop drinkin’ up all my soda!” –Tellis Argonis

“So, what you’re saying is… I’m in an alternate universe?” Tellis asked Darius while rubbing his head with his Omni-hoof’s hand where the pan had hit him.

“Why yes, my strangely named friend, it appears you are, along with these two Snowbell priz- I mean humans.”

Michael and Bryan shared a laugh as Tellis shouted at Darius, “Hey! My mom gave me that name, tubby!” he pointed a metal finger at Darius’s cutie mark, which was two chocolate cupcakes covered in pink frosting.

“Sir, I assure you, I meant no harm when I said that, I was merely observing that you had an unusual name, like myself!” said Darius as raised his hooves in defence.

Tellis put his augmented foreleg back down and said with a wry smile, “Well is that so? What is it?”

“Darius Ellistar,” Darius proudly stated his name once again, dramatically posing while the corners of his overcoat seemed to flutter in some unnatural breeze for a few seconds

“So, alternate universe, huh? I’ve had worse, I remember this time I was sucked into a Daring Do book and—Aw, long story short, I ended up with the golden Pincan treasure and with it I bought my autobuggy!”

“Autobuggy?”

“You’d think it’d be self-explanitory…(sigh) a carriage that you don’t have to pay anypony to pull,”

“Oh! You mean like Twilight’s Arcane Recreational Carriage? ARC for short, it’s powered with self-perpetuating steam engines.” Darius said Twilight’s name with at least enough venom to kill a ‘roid raged rhino.

“Uhh…Yeah, I guess. Only mine runs on Flim Crystals, it’s mostly just quartz mixed with opals, but that somehow turns a little bit electricity into a lllllot. It destroys the minerals in the process. So the price of both minerals skyrocketed! Well, enough talking about our rides…” Tellis turned towards the two humans and said as he extended his robotic hoof-hand out for a ‘handshake’ and said,” So, these are humans… I guess Lyra wasn’t full of it after all!”

Michael said back to the wingless pegasus as he shook his cold, 4 fingered hand, “After all you’ve been through, how could you not believe her?

“I dunno! She just kept talking and talking and talking about humans, we all just tuned her out after a while. But enough chitchat, we need to go find Comet!”

Darius said as he activated a light switch on a nearby post with his magic, “Well, from what you’ve told us about her, she’ll be fine out there on her own for a while, especially if she’s anything like Rainbow!” the lights bathed the surprisingly large room with blue white light from magical orbs inside glass and metal containers with a flame-like aura around them, revealing that they were on a balcony hanging over the rest of Darius’s home, which was just one giant room. His living quarters were downstairs and the ‘rooms’ were seperated by metal walls painted white and had no ceilings, all except for one structure, which may be the bathroom.

“Woah, this place is just getting cooler and cooler by the minute!” Michael walked over to the railing and admired the slightly over-engineered loft while Bryan continued filldling with his ‘smart’ phone, “Dude, quit playing Angry Birds and come look at this!” Bryan groaned as he put his gadget into his pocket and walked over to Michael.

“Wow… is this where you live!?” Bryan asked while looking around with his jaw on the ground

“Yes, my humble abode,the place I hang my hat, see, there it is!” A dark brown bowler hat custom fit for a unicorn hung on a coatrack near the door. Well, there was a hole in it where Darius’s horn went through it when he first put it on, if you want to get technical.

“You guys, her being like Rainbow Dash is what I’m worried about! Shut up and let’s go!” Tellis motioned his good hoof over at the front door as he headed downstairs on the blue carpeted staircase.

“Hey, watch out for the- (Clang!) Pipe…”

“Ah, me face!”

I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I

Comet could barely hear a small, familiar voice as she came to, “Why did you call me here? I’m a mechanic, not a doctor.”

Comet kept her eyes shut tight, which didn’t help the massive headache she had at all, and she hears another familiar voice say to the previous one, “I thought you interned at that hospital for a year?”

“Well, yes, but that was a long time ago. And it was small things, like putting band-aids on little fillies and colts… I fix robots, not ponies…”

Robots? Okay, something freaky was up, the only robots back home that Comet knew about were the ones that made autobuggies, and she certainly didn’t know anypony that worked on them! Deciding to not waste any more time, like her timid old self, she leapt up into the air with a battle cry from her… comfy bed?

“Ah, Rainbow!” Twilight spun around startled to see her friend suddenly shouting and hovering above them in the library tower bedroom with an expression of mixed confusion and anger. Wait, did she just call me…

“Huh?” Comet saw what seemed to be Shining wearing some kind of thick brown coat with a yellow pegasus that looked like Molly without the black highlights and longer hair wearing blue coveralls cowering on the floor, frantically putting together some kind of device out of random bits of metal she grabbed with her hooves and wings.

“Fluttershy! What did I say about building turrets when you’re scared!?” Wait, Fluttershy? What was going on!?

Fluttershy stopped short of jamming an coffee can ‘ammunition drum’ onto her crude gun, looked up and apologized with a sheepish smile and a twinkle in her blue eyes, “Hehe, sorry Twilight.” Twilight!?!?

“Now, Rainbow, I want to kn-“ Alright that tears it!

“Hey, my name isn’t Rainbow! It’s Comet! I know I look exactly like my grandma and everything, but for Celestia’s sake, get my name right!”

“Wha- Grandma?“

“Now, I don’t know what’s going on, but I ain’t stickin around to find out!” Comet attempted to fly away, but was seized by Twilight’s magic, which was far more advanced than her flying skills.

“Hey, lemme go! When I get out of here, you’re gonna be sorry!”

“Not until you calm down!”

Comet let out a defeated sigh and said, “Alright, I surrender…”

I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I

“So, you say you aren’t Rainbow Dash? Because you act and sound almost exactly like her,” Twilight asked Comet as she poured a cup of tea for her and Fluttershy, who was eyeing the exits in quite a sociopathic manner.

“Why are you asking me, smart one? I thought you already knew that! And what’s up with Molly’s grandma wearing blue pants and cobbling together guns on the floor!?” Comet demanded after she chugged her hot tea and slammed the cup back down. One gets slightly irritated after being sucked out of your home in the middle of the night by some kind of big portal thing. Wait a second, Tellis!

“Who’s Molly?”

“That doesn’t matter, I need to find my friend Tellis!”

“Tellis?”

“That sounds a little bit like trellis, like in a garden, heh” Fluttershy quietly joked after she took a sip of her tea.

“Alright, she’s creepin me out. In fact, I think I was less creeped out when she was tryin to make a little gun robot that would have killed me!”

“Don’t worry Comet, I was only using cactus needles as ammunition.”

“Cactus ne- (Exasperated sigh) Fluttershy, I thought I told you to use popcorn kernels whenever you had an episode!”

Twilight began to scold her friend and then asked while opening the altered coffee can filled to the brim with glued together 7 inch long slender desert thorns of pain and suffering, “Besides, where did you get this many cactus needles!?”

“Applejack’s bio dome, obviously,” Fluttershy took another sip of her tea, “She just offered 5 cacti to me one day and I took them off her hooves, I couldn’t find any practical place for them in a machine shop, so I just plucked the needles, made them into doomthorns, and here we are.”

“Im just glad you didn’t use Rarity’s sewing needles this time! That colt almost died, Fluttershy!”

“He didn’t read the signs, the Stare detected a threat, and eliminated it. Simple as that.”

“Well, you need to put more signs out, or use a bigger font, I don’t know!”

“You’re all crazy! I’m getting out of here, for real this time!” Comet backed up quickly, bumped into something hard, making her already terrified face say ‘I’m about to regret my birth, am I?’ and prayed to Luna it was the old rustbucket she knows and loves and not some crazy chainsaw gun Fluttershy cooked up while she was bored.

She turned around to see a baby dragon, no, a robot that looked like a baby dragon. That didn’t stop her from pushing the purple and green metal cherub down as she tried to escape again. Her efforts were in vain for Twilight just sighed and grabbed Comet with her magic again as the robot complained in a vaguely familiar voice as he picked up the tray of cookies that was knocked out of his hands, “Jeez, Twilight, you gotta keep a handle on Rainbow Dash!”

“I'M NOT RAINBOW DASH!” Comet screamed at the robot’s face, his robotic eyes, which were two round indents with a bunch of little green LEDs in each indent that lit up to make the illusion that it had actual eyes, went wide with simulated fear, but then it ‘blinked’ and it’s eyes were stoic as ever

“Well, Notrainbow Dash, I’m glad to meet you!” the robot said as sarcastically as a robot could, which was a lot apparently.

“Spike, be nice to Comet, she doesn’t like it when you call her that,” Twilight set Comet down while simultaneously helping Spike pick up the rest of the spilt cookies. When they were done, she cantered back up to spike, put a foreleg around its neck, and introduced it to Comet, “This is SP-3IKE, or as we call him, Spike! When I was just a little filly, there was this test where students that were applying to Celestia’s school for advanced engineers where they had to create a machine of great power. Spike here was just a pile of scrap on a table, waiting for me to build him in front of the judges and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t make the pieces go together, then suddenly, there was this massive wave of energy, and the judges said that my eyes lit up as brightly as my horn did, and I somehow turned all those peices of of junk into Spike here!"

"Hey!"

"Aww, Spike, you know I say it with love!"

"Yeah yeah..." the little bipedal robot dumped the ruined cookies into a trashcan, his eyes raindrops, then windshield wipers wiped away the 'tears'

“So… Comet,” Twilight began to ask before she took a sip of her tea, “What brings you to Ponyville?”

At least the names are all the same. “Well, my godfather Tellis and I were planning on what to do for the end of spring break, and there was this crystal thing in his leg, you see.”

“In his leg?” Twilight interrupted, curiosity piqued.

“Well, not his actual leg, his hoof-“

“So there was a crystal in his hoof?

“Will you let me finish? He got hurt, I don’t know when, I think a long, long time ago. Tellis lost his hoof and had some doctor replace it with a metal one. It’s more of a hand than anything, and Lyra was all super-jealous of it and stuff.”

“Lyra?”

“I think she means Lyra Heartstrings, you know…” Fluttershy meekly answered while examining part of a strange machine that had no discernable function.

“Oh yeah, doesn’t she always stand in the middle of the market district and scream about ‘hoomin aliens’ all the time?”

The two laugh for a bit, and then they look back to a slightly irritated Comet. These guys are worse than Ruby! And what the heck is a Hoomin? Didn’t our Lyra say something about-

“So, you were saying Comet?”

Comet sighed and continued to tell them about the events that went down back at her house. About how Tellis’s stupid crystal exploded them to some kind of alternate Ponyville! She left out the bit where she passed out in the vortex out of embarrassment. She wasn’’t the best flier in Equestria, but since she looks so much like the one that held that title, much was expected of her. Before she dropped out of flight school because of financial reasons, everypony was always egging her on to do a sonic rainboom. They would say things like ‘C’mon, your grandma could do it when she was a little filly!’ and ‘You can definitely pull it off, just look atcha! It’s in your blood!’

“Hmm, I’m not sure, but it seems that the crystal reacted to the drink your friend had, the caffeine, sugar, and phosphorus(yeah, there’s phosphoric acid in most sodas, yay…) made his natural magic reserves spike and cause the crystal to react in an extremely violent way, you’re lucky that it didn’t just vaporize the both of you!” Twilight explained to Comet, who hardly looked appreciative of that fact.

“Lucky me… wait, magic? I thought only unicorns had magic.”

Twilight took this chance to unleash a tidal wave of information towards an unwitting Comet’s direction, “Unicorns are the only ones that can actively channel their magic through their horns, and that magic is unique to their race. Pegasai magic helps you fly, keeps you warmer at higher altitudes, and makes you really hard to break. And earth pony magic has a deep connection with nature, in which that they have green hooves, so to speak. They can grow pretty much anything with little effort, making them the perfect farmers!”

“Okay, okay! I get it, we all got magic! I didn’t need to hear the entire history of Equestria.” Comet huffed as she pushed her Technicolor bangs out of her eyes with a hoof for the fiftieth time.

“Everypony, get down! It’s the Overwatch!” Spike shouted from a nearby window before bolting underneath the bed.

"Wha... the over-" Comet sputtered before being pushed down by Fluttershy

"Get down!!" Twilight shouted at Comet as they all hid down beside the bed.

suddenly a bright light came and went past the window and curtains as a buck with either a bullhorn or some kind of voice amplification spell bellowed, “THIS AREA IS UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE PONYVILLE ROYAL OVERWATCH DUE TO UNNATURAL ARCANE DISTURBANCES, DO NOT BE ALARMED, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES. ANYPONY DOING OTHERWISE WILL BE CHARGED WITH TREASON AND BROUGHT IN FOR QUESTIONING.” The buck repeated the message as the large black blimp type vehicle loomed over the city, looking for you know who.

A/N You know what, screw it. I'm cutting the chapter off here. No reason to not stop it here, right?

Asking Questions and Receiving Answers

Back at Darius’s lair, after Stopping Tellis, Michael, and Bryan from just blundering outside like a bunch of stooges, he told them why two aliens and a cyberpony running around town at night shouting about comets was a bad idea, which wasn’t hard. He did tell them about the oppressive Overwatch to even further his point about going out being a poor decision.

“He’s got a point, you know, that Overwatch sounds like nasty cheese, Tellis. We might want listen to Darry and lay low until we can find a more inconspicuous way to move around ” Bryan said to a grumpy, magically levitating Tellis who was muttering to himself about how he ‘couldn’t do no nothin in the alternate universe’.

Darius scoffed at Tellis’s constant misuse of proper Equestrian and dropped him to the ground with a sigh.

“Enough with the Tellis dropping already! It’s like it’s the universal pastime of freaking unicorns to violently drop me!” Tellis complained as he soothed his right flank with his good hoof.

“Aw, suck it up, Tellis. I thought pegasai were supposed to be tough!” Michael called out as he walked over towards the living room.

“Wait, what? How’d ya know that I’m a pegasus!?” A very confused Argonis asked the human.

Tellis deadpanned towards the green unicorn ‘scientist’ wearing goggles and a sheepish expression on his face. He chuckled a bit and rubbed the back of his long purple highlighted charcoal mane with his hoof as he said, “Well my good sir, I used a device on you to determine if you had any broken bones and-“

Tellis reared up and screamed at the green bastard, I mean unicorn, “You x-rayed me!? Tell me I had lead barding on or something when you did it! Jumping Luna wearing moon boots!! If I get a tumor, your ass is mine, you hear me!? I’m talking about the full Argonis torture experience! Rainbow-boarding, driving nails into a bat, studding the nails with diamonds, and then beating you with it! Making you listen to a monologue by Trixie- “

“Good goddesses, Mr. Argonis! Such violent actions will not be necessary at all! My machine only gave you enough radiation to make you a little bit warmer! It would have taken weeks, even months of exposure from such a weak source to do any real damage!” Darius moved his goggles away from his eyes, showing that they were a deep midnight blue that contrasted quite beautifully against his bright green coat. They were awfully bloodshot, most likely from staring at monitors for far too long and not getting enough sleep (Ahem, hint hint?)

Bryan took the time to look away from his dying smartphone and said, “It looks like somepony doesn’t take too kindly to being irradiated.”

“Damn straight.” Tellis crossed his forelegs as he leaned up against a large pipe near the exit and huffed.

Darius sighed yet again and headed over to the living room to cash in on the Q and A Michael owed him. When he reached it, he spotted Michael examining his radio that was resting on top . He seemed to be very fascinated by the common device and Darius made a rather poor attempt at humor, “You have tiny cameras where you come from, but no radios?” Darius chuckled somewhat haughtily at his own joke.

Michael’s gaze was torn away from the odd looking radio as he said, “What? Oh, no we got radios, but we don’t have ones that look like this thing here. I can’t even find a way to turn it on…” Michael picked the human-head sized brass colored box up and turned it over in his hands, dials, levers and tubes shining in the light, but no obvious way to activate it revealed itself to him. Michael furrowed his brow, sat down on Darius’s red couch and said without looking at the unicorn, “How do you turn this thing on? Electronics back home had buttons or switches or whatever that were labeled with the word ‘power’ or this little symbol,” Michael drew Earth’s universal symbol for power, a circle with the line through half of it, in the air with his index finger, “I can’t find that, so I’m totally lost. I’m pathetic…”

Darius took the radio from Michael with his magic and explained to him, “Don’t feel bad friend, this is a special radio, one I made myself. Only I can operate it by doing this,” A circle appeared on a previously seamless panel and a cylinder covered in strange markings extended out from the device, Darius turned it clockwise three times, and once counterclockwise. He then pushed the long button back into the radio. It powered on with a soft crackling sound and blue lights lit up all over the device.

Michael asked Darius, who was fiddling with the station dial, “Quick question, why do you have your own personal private no-one-can-turn-it-on-but-me radio?”

“Because it gets this channel,” Darius pulled his head away from the radio and set it on his coffee tableA gruff, commanding voice shouted from inside the radio, “-ind whatever the hay that was, and pronto! I thought the Overwatch was supposed to be watching over the city! If the Boss finds out we couldn’t find this ‘unnatural arcane disturbance’, it’ll be our asses! Now get out there, GO, GO,GO!!!”

“It seems like they’re looking for you fellows. Good thing most of the Overwatch is completely incompetent, or you would have been snatched up while you were still on my roof! By the way, you owe me for destroying my invention.”

“We’ll get to that later, Darius, I promise.”

“Yes, speaking of ‘getting to that later’, I do believe that you said you would answer my questions earlier.”

“Oh yeah…”

Darius proceeded to ask Michael many questions, mainly ones about his homeland and culture. He told the unicorn about how humans were omnivores, it was a fact of life. Darius was a scientist, he could handle it. Besides, there were omnivores and carnivores in Equestria as well. For example Diamond dogs. Michael didn’t go into detail about exactly where he lived, because West Virginia isn’t exactly a shining beacon of kindness and tolerance for all of humanity. He also told him about how the technology from his world wasn’t that much more advanced than what he’s seen so far, in fact some of it might be more advanced in certain areas while magical devices from this dimension trumps some from back home. Darius then asked him about what he and his friend were wearing, and Michael looked at what he currently had on. He had his black “Powered by Redstone” shirt, his hand-me-down desert camo fatigues and his new black Nike Airs.

Michael looked back up and said, “Well, my shirt is a reference to a game played back in my homeland, what it is isn’t important and redstone isn’t a real thing. the pants are for blending into a desert setting so you would be harder to spot by… desert bandits, yeah. They were given to me by my mother to save money when I grew big enough that they fit me, I usually wear them when I mow grass or when I’m tired of wearing denim. For my shoes, human feet are soft and vulnerable unless you condition them by walking on pointy gravel for years or something, so we generally wear some kind of protective covering for them. This particular type of shoe has a lot of rubber ridges that grip the ground for running vast distances without expending much energy. They also look sexy. The white check thing is a brand logo for a sports ware company called Nike.”

“Neigh-key?”

“NIGH-key. I think the name and the brand logo have something to do with one of my world’s ancient civilizations, some kind of speed goddess or some other garbage.”

Michael pulled his left shoe off and then his sock, revealing five toes of varying sizes, to which Darius replied, “Astonishing, if I’m right that makes 20 digits! You’re not hiding wings and a tail underneath those clothes, are you?”

“Hahaha, I wish!”

“Indeed, so about your friend with the glasses… why does he wear clothing with faces on them?”

Michael put his sock and shoe back on and answered, “Oh, him? He really likes cookie monster.”

“What kind of monster?”

“Cookie monster, he’s a character from… children’s tales. I think he teaches numbers or letters or something, I don’t know. But all most people remember him by his obsession with cookies, and Bryan really, really likes him. He has several cookie monster shirts, a cookie monster bag, cookie monster gloves… and that’s just the stuff I’ve seen him wear to school!” Michael explained to the curious unicorn.

(This isn’t an exaggeration at all; he seriously does have all of this)

“So anyways, the white cargo shorts he’s wearing… I guess you can put a lot of small things in them, and they won’t make you too hot in the summer. His shoes, well, I don’t really look at other people’s shoes unless they go ‘hey look at my shoes! I got new shoes’ and even then… so I don’t know what brand they are. But that’s irrelevant, shoes are shoes and they protect your feet.” Michael continued to ramble about what he and Bryan were wearing.

Darius almost couldn’t take it anymore, his scientific curiosity was about to be outweighed by how much Michael was talking, and he was almost half as bad as a certain pink pony! Darius cleared his throat loudly to get Michael’s attention and said, “My, my, you really like to talk, don’t you?”

Michael stood up from the red pony couch and said, “Well, where I live, I don’t really have anyone to talk to except for Bryan and he lives at a completely different town! So it all just builds up! I’ll run out of steam eventually and I won’t want to talk to anyone or pony for a while.”

Please for the love of the princesses, run out of steam soon!

“I don’t see that happening anytime soon, I mean, I’m meeting a sapient race of colorful, magical ponies in a world of fantastic and possibly terrible technology! If only I brought a camera, I’m sure Bryan’s killed his by now so we can’t take any more pictures. Are you done asking me things? Ooh goody! it’s my turn to ask questions! So what’s the name of this city? Is it the capital, or all cities here this huge? Where did all this metal come from? How long did it take-“ Michael continued to assault Dairus with his questions.

Luna baking moon pies, he may actually be as bad as Pinkie Pie! As long as he doesn’t start bounci-SERIOUSLY!?

Michael was channeling Pinkie Pie through all his thoughts and the next logical step was to hop around with joy! Yay for learning! Darius facehooved over and over again and let out the biggest sigh of them all.

I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I

In another part of Darius’s home.

“You’re a pony,” Bryan said matter-of-factly while pointing an index finger at Tellis, who was fooling around with one of Darius’s computers.

“Yeah, I know. You’ve said that like ten times.” Tellis said as he awkwardly typed out commands with one four-fingered hand and a hoof.

“So what are you doing, again?” Bryan asked Tellis as he peered over his shoulder and the lavender earth pegasus pushed him away from his personal space with a metal hand.

“Like I said… I’m trying to learn more about this place. Mainly, find a map of this city so we won’t be hopelessly lost when we eventually get separated from our friendly neighborhood ‘scientist’. I don’t normally plan this far ahead… or at all really. But come hell and high water I’m seeing that Comet is safe, sound, and back home with her friends, family and that one steamed carrot vendor who’s really nice and doesn’t charge that much!”

Tellis tapped on some more keys and a large 3D map of the city appeared on the green computer screen, “Go progress! So where are we…? Ponyville, eh? Luna , this city is huge, bigger than NPC! I don’t remember there being a huge lake being anywhere near here… Oh, you see that little blip on the big hill?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“That’s us, at ‘Ellistar Workshop” huh… is this map dynamic? Because I see at least 8 of those blimp things heading our way, that can’t be good at all.”

“You look like a girl.”

“Ughh…”

I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I

Darius was watching what Tellis was doing from a monitor that was linked to the other computer near the living room wall, and saw the Overwatch blimps going straight for his home. There was no doubt about it, they somehow knew they were thereHe ran a hoof through his charcoal mane and said,” I can’t believe this! They’re never this organized! We have to get out of here, now!”

Michael ripped the last of the duct tape off of his face and shouted, “The PAIN!! I don’t want to be put in jail, and I really don’t want to be dissected by crazy scientist ponies! Tellis, Bryan, pack your bags, we’re leaving!!”

“Okay buddy!”

“We’re way ahead of you, human!”

Darius pulled a saddlebag from underneath his loveseat with his magic and said defensively, “What? You don’t have bags packed full of supplies stashed all over your house in case of an Overwatch raid? Because I do. Come on, let’s go get Tweedle and Deedle, my ARC is waiting outside for us.”

The four meet up at the front door of the workshop and Darius unlocks 8 different locks at once with his magic.

“Jesus, Darry. Got enough locks there? Or do you need more?” Michael sarcastically asked the unicorn.

“And who, pray tell, is this Jesus?” Darius asked as he checked that his saddlebag was secure.

Michael waved his hands in front of his face and quickly said, “More important things. Running away now!”

The group ran outside and Darius points a hoof at a nearby alley next to the workshop. As they approached the ARC, Tellis spotted a terrified-looking homeless pony sitting on her haunches next to several trashcans and decided to mess with her. He gave his best Flint Easthoof scowl and said with a sinister tone while pointing a metal finger at her, “You didn’t see anything…” Tellis opened the door to the vehicle without looking away from the homeless pony and stumbled a bit as he went inside of it.

The Arcane Recreational Carriage looked like, well, a carriage. Except is was slightly smaller than a regular carriage even for pony standards, made completely out of that brassy metal that was everywhere, and had a big engine thing on the back with curved pipes that went out one side and fed back into the other. Darius yelled at Tellis to quit fooling around and the boys climbed in and awkwardly sat down on the seats designed for ponies. They didn’t have nearly enough leg room and the seat belts almost didn’t reach the buckles, but they were in.

Darius was attempting to start the ARC, but it wouldn’t cooperate, “Come on … don’t give up on me now!”

“Well of course it isn’t starting, the whole concept of a perpetual steam engine doesn’t wor-“ Tellis was interrupted by the sound of the ARC’s engine powering up.

"You were saying my fine featherless friend?” Darius said as he put his goggles back over his dark blue eyes and pulled a lever near the steering wheel. The mechanized carriage pulled out of the alley with an initially loud humming from the PSE on the back and quieted down as they drove away from the workshop.

Bryan craned his neck to try and see if they had been spotted yet and said, “I can’t see any of those airship things, can you Michael?”

“Anope”

Darius looked back towards the humans, “Oh, they’re out there, all right. Most likely on the other side of some cloud where we can’t see them, but they are there I assure you.”

“So was driving away in your cart was a good idea?”

“Penelope isn’t a cart!” Darius angrily shouted at the insult-slinging pony, “And of course it was Tellis, this way we are much more mobile. Even though I’ve thought about it, my home cannot fly!”

“That would have been handy, hoofy, whatever it is here.” Michael continued to search the night skies in vain and Darius made a left turn down Changer’s Avenue.

“So, where are we going? I hope we get there soon, because I don’t know if you know this already, but not that inconspicuous even in my own world. We’re gonna get spotted.” Michael asked their driver.

Tellis used the glare from a passing magicical gas lamp to reflect light off his metal appendage at Michael’s face and said, “Least you ain’t part metal.”

“Pardon my Prantic, but are you bucking kidding me, my good sir? There were these monsterponies made out of ninety percent metal that were created by some crazy fool a few months ago running around the sewers! Before the Overwatch was given orders to enact marshal law, they went down there with I think it was thirty something odd soldiers armed to the teeth and only 12 came back out! I don’t think that they even got them all! Oh and to answer your question, Michael, we are going to Benedict’s Soda Parlor."

Tellis’s eyes lit up at the magic word, “Soda? Glorious, bubbly, sweet nectar? By the princesses Darius, floor it!”

“Tellis I will not endanger all our lives for a beverage!”

Bryan was thinking, usually that was somewhat of a bad thing, but not now. His knowledge of American history was dug out of a mental file cabinet in the back of the packed warehouse of his mind and it came to him. With grand amounts of sarcasm, Bryan said, “Wait, Benedict’s? Now that’s a name I could trust if my life depended on it! And it kind of does”

Darius looked back at Bryan, once again endangering them all with his reckless driving practices, and said, “Benny can be trusted, I assure yo-“

“We’re here!! Soooodaaaa!” Tellis jumped out of the ARC before it came to a complete stop and ran inside the soda parlor.

“He just can’t wait for his drink, can he? Come on you two, let’s catch up to him before he gets us all into more trouble than we are in,” Darius said as he exited his vehicle and motioned for the boys to follow him. The three fugitives passed a The Stare Security System poster as they enter the establishment. Inside, Tellis was upside down on the bar with a soda fountain dispensing cold, refreshing enjoyment directly into his gullet and a rather confused changeling barkeep was cleaning a glass with his chaotic magic.

“Darry! This guy with you?” Benny pointed the rag he was cleaning the glass with towards the unicorn and the two humans entered behind him through the double doors, “Woah! Something you cooked up in that lab of yours Darry?”

“I’m an engineer, not a biologist Benny. These are just some friends from a faraway land. And yes he’s with me. I sincerely apologize for his behavior, and will pay for any damages he may have caused.”

The mottled black alicorn-like creature with pupil-less blue eyes, a smooth curved horn, ragged insectoid wings poking out from some kind of dark blue vest, and holes all over his legs said, “Ya don’t need to be sorry about nothing! This guy literally loves his sodie pop, I haven’t felt this kind of boost since my neighbors were havin that affair!”

Tellis stopped shooting the sweet berry-flavored soft drink from the flexible hose the tap was attached to into his mouth and said, “Whoa, Mottled Moe, Too much information!”

Benny brought a holey hoof down near Tellis’s head, leaned up close to him and said with a rather threatening tone, “Right. Since I own this place and are partaking in my product, I can be as raunchy as I want! I hope you got the bits to pay for said product, Tincolt, ‘cause if you don’t-”

Several paper wrapped cylinders of bits fall out of a compartment in Tellis’s metal hoof, “Here you go, this should be more than enough for me and my friends.” Who needs burlap sacks and wallets when you’ve got Time Lord technology at the tips of your hooves?

The changeling’s blue eyes widened slightly at the cash put before him, clearly money was no object to this pony. Tellis waved his now lighter hoof around and said, “I can’t think of a clever one-liner right now, more soda!”

Darius and the boys were sitting at a booth in a far corner of the parlor, planning on what to do from here on to try and keep one step ahead of the Overwatch. “As much as it pains me to say this, we’ll have to go find Pinkie Pie for help. She’s one of the few good ponies in the Overwatch. Actually cares about this city and its people, and does her best to help those in need, like us for instance.”

Michael and Bryan were snacking on some free peanuts, ‘cause free is free. Bryan said with a mouthful of legumes, “She sounds nice.”

“She is, but she’s friends with that insufferable Twilight, and she talks way too much. At least your friend here eventually stops!”

“I resent that.”

“Oh you’ll get over it.”

Darius leaned in a bit closer to the boys and lowered his voice slightly, “But anyways, it’s a good thing that the Overwatch doesn’t have Pinkie lead their search parties. It is literally impossible to escape her if she wants to find you, and word is that it works the other way around.”

Michael said while twiddling a peanut shell between his fingers, “I like the way you think, Darius, but there’s one thing bothering me.”

“What’s that?”

“Tellis’s goddaughter, how are we going to find her? She could be anywhere, and I think Tellis is over there drowning his worries in sugar.”

“Don you worry about that, we’ll find her. Once we get to Pinkie, we can ask her to help us track her down, I’m sure of it.You boys want something to drink? Tellis seems to be paying for all of us.” Darius motioned a hoof over towards where Tellis was and the pile of coins Benny had unwrapped. The flightless bird slammed down a now empty root beer mug and wiped the froth away from his face with a hoof. Where does he put it all?

Michael looked back towards Darius and said, “Strawberry for me, is he’s got it. Bryan, orange? No… grape for you.”

Bryan simply nodded his head in agreement and ate some more peanuts from the seemingly endless reserve in the middle of the table.

Darius went off to order the drinks from Benny, and when he was out of earshot Bryan anxiously said to Michael, “Dude, that Benny freak is totally going to sell us out.”

“I know, but as long as we can see him, we’re safe. As soon as he disappears or something, so will us. It’s probably better if we just tell Tellis as soon as we can, Darry trusts that guy too much to think he’s up to no good.”

“Shh, he’s coming back.”

“Gentlemen, I have returned. Here’s your strawberry, and your grape.” Darius passed out the glasses full of the colored fizzy drinks with his magic and the boys took their respective glass in hand. Darius sat down in the booth while levitating his green bottle of sparkling apple juice up to his mouth. He lowered the bottle to see Michael examining his drink instead of chugging it down like his friend was.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Did I get the wrong drink?”

“What? Oh nothin.” Michael stopped attempting to see if Benny somehow drugged his soda and drank the red potion down. It was a bit different than the corn syrup/phosphoric acid radioactive sludge that he was used to. It tasted lighter somehow, and it didn’t feel like it was dissolving his teeth. He wiped his mouth with a sleeve and looked back over to the bar Tellis was at, he was talking to Benny. Michael really wanted to know what they were talking about and he needed to tell Tellis about his suspicions, so he grabbed the bit Bryan was spinning on the table, stood up and said, “We need some music, I’m goin to the Jukebox.”

Michael walked away from the two confused sapient beings and over to the jukebox, he inserted the coin into the machine and looked at the strange symbols. They vaguely looked like English letters, but they were extremely warped and looked like pony-related items,. The first symbol barely represented an A, so he pushed that. On the other end of the jukebox controls, there was a row of nine buttons, most likely one through nine. He pushed where he assumed the one and seven buttons would be located and a calm song began to play. Even though this was a different universe, somehow they found a way to put their music here, because they can, those magnificent bastards of School of Seven Bells

School of Seven Bells, Prince of Peace begins to play.

Michael could clearly hear what Tellis and Benny were saying now, but found it hard to concentrate while listening to one of his favorite bands who he really didn't care how their music got here.

“And that’s why there are holes in my legs.” Benny proudly displayed his grotesque, mangled forelegs as Michael shuddered.

“Huh, I was wrong…”Tellis attempted to shoot some more soda into his body, but nothing came out of the tap, “Aww, it’s broken.”

“Would you look at that, outta soda water. Lemme get another barrel from the back,” Benny turned about and trotted through a door leading to the back rooms.

Michael was probably just being extremely paranoid, but he ran over to Tellis and vaulted over the bar, because vaulting over things is fun and cool.

“What are you- ohhhh…” Tellis watched Michael lift up the unscrewed end of the hose for the soda tap.

“Wanna bet he ain’t getting that water? I’ll let the others know, you handle our deceptive friend.”

“Why do I gotta do that?”

“Do I look like I can do any kind of damage? I’m a rambler, not a fighter, and you seem like the type that’s won a lot of fights Tellis.”

“Well I’m not one to brag about that sort of thing…”

“Tellis, a little less conversation, a little more action please. We ain’t got the time to waste, go!”

“Right.”

Tellis gets off his stool, walks over to the bar door at the far end of the bar, opens it, and proceeds to the back rooms. Before he got out of earshot, he heard Darius arguing with Michael and demanding an explanation for his behavior. Damn elitists, they’re gonna be the end of the world, like in Comet’s Fallout books. He shouldn’t let her read those types of stories, but she isn’t a little filly. They seem to take her mind off of other things, like her mother… Tellis continued to walk down the dark hallway, and he heard a certain changeling talking on an old Victorian-era phone inside a brightly lit storeroom full of large barrels. Tellis went into full stealth mode and crouched down, keeping as much weight off of his replacement hoof as possible and staying in the dark, “Hey, is this the Overwatch hotline? Yeah, I gots some eh…interestin characters here you might wanna check out. Real freaks, pale, pretty much hairless, and walkin around on two legs! Oh and that Darius Ellistar cat is here too, what’s the bounty on him again? Ooh…”

Yep, he’s definitely turning us in, well at least those three other guys, the greedy bastard.

That would be irrelevant because they would definitely take Tellis away to jail with the others when he beats the living hell out of as many of the fetchers as possible defending his new friends.

“So yeah, I’m at Benedict’s Soda Parlor at Changer’s Avenue, 1274. Yes. Uh huh. So when are you guys getting here sos I know how long to-“

“You’re real greedy, you know that?”

“Wha?”

Tellis gave a right uppercut to Benny’s spleen, but Tellis’s love for soda has toughened Benny up, but not enough to take a nasty metal left hook square in the jaw. A jagged fang flies up in the air with a small spatter of neon green blood as Benny drops to the floor, unconscious. It was so nice not having the Doctor around constantly telling him, “Tellis, you can’t just punch all your problems in the face! Use your words!”

Tellis picks up the phone from the wooden floor and holds it up to his ear.

“Mr. Benedict? Are you there?”

“No, but Mr. Argonis is.” Tellis slammed the phone into its base, breaking it off and tearing the cable connected to it away. He dropped it out of his metal hand and retracted his fingers. He walked out of the storeroom back towards the parlor. He reached the others and wiped the changeling blood off his hoof with the glass cleaning rag.

Darius saw his friend’s blood on the lavender pony’s hoof, “Tellis! Tell me you didn’t…”

“I only punched the bastard out, don’t worry about him. He’ll wake up with a nasty headache and a bunch of pissed off Overwatch asking him all sorts of questions, though.” Tellis stole a bottle of cola from a shelf and said, “Thanks Benny, least you could do.”

“You mean he really betrayed us? Well, Benny was always greedy and not the most loyal creature… I guess I should have expected this, huh?.”

Tellis threw the empty bottle aside and said, “Ya think? Michael, are we ready to go?”

“Yeah. Let’s get out of here before those butthurt Overwatch cat bastards bust in and take us all downtown.”

I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I

Earlier, right about when the boys arrive at the parlor, a loud banging was heard from Twilight’s front door.

“Oh no, they’re here.” Fluttershy was hiding under the living room coffee table, futilely attempting to build a sentry gun out of quills and an inkwell.

“Comet, you should hide. Go to my bathroom, it’s on the way to the kitchen in the hallway. Lock the door and don’t come out until I say so.”

“Okay Twilight,” Comet walked over to the entrance of the hallway, turned her head back towards the others, and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing...” She went over to the bathroom and went inside.

“Fluttershy, get out from under there, I’m going to need you to be calm for this,” She moved the coffee table away from her friend, a small tripod of quills and an inkwell with a plastic straw attached to it was turning back and forth, sweeping the area for hostiles.

“How many of those targeting gems do you have on you? Come on, get up.” whoever was at the door, most likely some Overwatch flunky, sounded like they were trying to beat it down started yelling, “Twilight! I know you’re in there! Open up!”

“Oh please let it be anypony but her,” Twilight opened her front door with a fake yawn, “Rainbow Dash, what are you doing here? its two in the morning.”

The blue pegasus with Technicolor hair who was wearing a midnight black military-like suit and a military officer’s hat pushed her way past her friend, “You know why I’m here, Twilight.”

Twilight was sure she had been made, “I d-do?”

“Yeah! You invited Fluttershy over for your sleepover and not me! What gives?”

“Wait, what do you mean sleepover? I thought you were staying with Pinkie.”

She “Well she had some boring Watch stuff to do with some new recruits. I think their names were Swift Rain and some weird guy. His name started with a T or something, I didn’t stick around to remember Anyways, she mentioned that you invited Fluttershy over to your house for a sleepover.”

“Yes, this is definitely a sleepover! I’m sorry for not inviting you Rainbow, consider this an official invitation.”

“That’s more like it!” She took her hat off and put it on a nearby coat/hat rack.

“So, you’re not here for anything else?”

“No, why would I be? I’m off duty, my shift finally ended like twenty minutes ago. Strange times, eh? Wait a second, Twilight? Are you hiding something from me?”

“Me? Pshaw, never. Why would I do that, Rainbow?” Twilight’s face twisted into an unconvincing smile.

With raised eyebrow and a disbelieving look, Rainbow sarcastically said, “Uh huh, I totally believe you. Fluttershy!”

The golden pegasus jumped up in her seat, “Eep!”

“What’s goin on?”

“N-nothing.”

“Really? Nothing? I doubt that, you better tell what you guys are hiding from me right now.” Rainbow demanded right to Fluttershy’s face.

Fluttershy pointed a shaky hoof towards Twilight’s hallway and muttered, “Th-the bathroom.”

“Fluttershy!” Twilight yelled at her friend for breaking so easily under pressure, especially after attending that assertiveness seminar several weeks ago.

“I’m so sorry Twilight, I hope you’ll forgive me” Fluttershy meekly apologized while looking down at the floor.

Rainbow Dash headed over towards the bathroom, but suddenly stopped, “Hey, put me down Twi! Why don’t you guys want me to see whats in there? Put me down!”

“Rainbow, promise you won’t freak out.”

“Why?”

“Just promise.”

Rainbow Dash sighed and promised she wouldn’t freak out at whatever it was they were about to reveal and Twilight set her friend down on the ground.

“Comet! It’s okay, you can come out now. We’ve got somepony we would like for you to meet.” Twilight called out to Rainbow’s descendant from an alternate timeline.

“Wait, Twilight, who are you- BY CELESTIA’S MANE!!”

Comet didn’t know what to say, so she just waved a hoof and smiled a bit.

“Twilight, please tell me you didn’t clone me or something.”

“Hey, I am not you! I am Comet Jinx Dash, not Rainbow Dash! I didn’t ask to look like you, and I wish I didn’t! It’s caused me a lot of hell over the years and I’m sick of it!”

“Comet, calm down!” Twilight called out as she stepped in front of Rainbow.

The Not-Really-The-Only-Rainbow-Dash moved around Twilight so she could see Comet and apologized, “I’m sorry kid, but you do kinda look like me, a little.”

Comet sighed and said with a much calmer tone, “My mom didn’t, nopony knew why; I guess it’s recessive or something. Everyone was real surprised when I was born, I’ll tell ya. The real problems started when I woke up one day with the exact same cutie mark as my grandma, and then everypony and their mother was pressuring me to do a sonic rainboom! It was always ‘Hey Comet, do a rainboom, do a rainboom! Why can’t ya do a rainboom Comet? Huh? Why not?’ I got sick of it real quick.”

“Wait, grandma!?”

Fluttershy had come over from the couch. Nopony had noticed her, as per usual. So they were all slightly startled when she said, “Don’t worry, Rainbow, she’s from some kind of alternate timeline or universe or something. We aren’t sure”

“So the universe won’t explode or something if I touch her?” Rainbow asked as she pointed a hoof towards Comet.

“No, it won’t, and why would it?” Twilight asked the blue pegasus, clearly somepony hasn’t been reading up on their science fiction.

“I uh… well… shut up!” Rainbow Dash balked at Twilight.

A few minutes later, they were all talking in Twilight’s living room, asking Comet questions about New Ponyville, like, “Why is it ‘new’ Ponyville? What happened to the old one?”

Comet told them about how mercenaries sent by The Lost Ones tracked Tellis down when he was separated from the Doctor for several years then it was the year 1012CR. She told them that It was in the history books that crazy, bloodthirsty marauders with a lot of explosives suddenly and violently destroyed Ponyville, about how a mysterious purple pony rescued a whole bunch of ponies by getting them on a train and escaping. She told them how about four years after that, Ponyville started to rebuild, and not back into a weak little village, no. it was rebuilt into a large city, one that would withstand attacks if anything or anypony dared to. Backed by the royal treasury, big, thick walls rose to protect the young city, and it grew more massive by the year. Most of the NPC universe’s Elements of Harmony moved back home to Ponyville. Except for Fluttershy, who was working at an animal hospital at the time and couldn’t bear to leave all those sick animals, and Applejack, who had responsibilities in Appleoosa. Besides, most of Sweet Apple Acres was destroyed during the sacking of Ponyville, And Granny Smith died during that terrible day, so there wasn’t much to return to. Comet then explain to them who the Doctor was based on her godfather’s fantastic tales of his grand adventures with him and how he fit into the whole story.

Twilight almost started asphyxiating on her tea, “That’s impossible, there’s no such thing as a time machine!”

“Actually, Tellis told me it’s more like a time spaceship.”

“You can’t be serious, Comet. I’m sure he’s just making that all up.” Twilight stubbornly denied.

“I don’t think Tellis would like it if he hears that you’ve been calling him a liar.”

“Well it’s just a little bit hard to believe Comet. I mean traveling through time and space?”

“Believe it or not, it happened. Tellis carries his birth certificate around with him in his jacket to prove he was born in 963 to everypony. He says stuff old-timers say all the time, and he tells these stories about really old places like he was actually there! He doesn’t like talking about the ruins of Jerusaddle, though…”

Twilight pondered for a moment, and then said, “Wasn’t Jerusaddle destroyed in a massive pyroclastic flow?”

“Tellis says that isn’t exactly what happened.”

“Well then what did happen?”

“I said he doesn’t like talking about it, what makes you think I know what really happened if one of the only surviving witnesses won’t speak up?”

“Point taken.”

After seventeen minutes, eleven point forty-six seconds of idle chatter and moments of awkward silence, Comet remembered something Rainbow said earlier, “Wait a second! Swift Rain? Tellis once told me about when he was living in Cloudsdale, he had a friend with that name! Wanna bet that’s the same pony?”

Rainbow Dash shrugged and said “Maybe, I don’t know. Probably.”

“So logically, that pony with the name starting with a T must be…”

“By the princesses, another Tellis, what’r we gonna do!?” Comet looked genuinely worried.

“Wait just a minute, I thought he was born in ‘63? Most new recruits are pretty young. I think I would have noticed if they were both like 50-something years old!”

“Well, this is a different place than where she’s from, Rainbow. They might have been born at some different time for all we know, and they definitely would have had different experiences here from what Comet’s been telling us.” Fluttershy theorized. What? Just because she doesn’t talk much, that doesn’t make her a dummy! Plus she’s an engineer/gunsmith with some medical training for crying out loud!

"You might be right, but wherever your Tellis is, Comet, I pray to the princesses that he's okay"

Requisitioning Diane's Assistance

Chapter 4: Requisitioning Diane’s Assistance

“Keep it together.”

The boys were on their way to the ghettos of Ponyville, right about where the western edge of the Everfree Forest should have been. They are going there because Darius heard that Pinkie Pie was stationed in an old Overwatch office there. As they passed through the narrow city streets in Darius’s magic ‘car’, the buildings started to be in noticeably worse conditions than the rest of the city. The three visitors noticed a familiar phenomenon .The capital’s smog prevented you from seeing any stars, but there were plenty of flying machines fluttering and floating around with flashing lights. Most of which seemed to be scouring the city for the four fugitives.

“My question is,” Michael began to ask, ”Why couldn’t we have gone to some nice seedy bar full of random whatevers that don’t know who you are Darius, I mean, we could have found some kind of dark cloak things and hunched over while we said nothing! But instead we draw attention to ourselves by attacking whatever that guy was.”

“Hey, you told me to take that square out!” Tellis protested from the passenger seat.

“True, but I’m just stating the things that- the facts Tellis, I’m just saying what happened.” Michael’s articulation began to falter, as it usually does when he attempt to correct himself or speak up. He’s normally a bit of a mumbler, and he’s finally running out of steam and going to really suck at talking now and probably say something really stupid or random in a moment because that’s his nature, and he’s just a tad bit autistic.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah… We need some tunes!” Tellis adjusted the ARC’s radio dials with his Omni-hoof until he heard his friend Vinyl’s voice emitting from it.

“-nd I hear those Overwatch a-holes were roughing up some changeling who owns a soda parlor over at the Shift. Look, if you get past their looks and that thing where they feed off of love’s energy somehow, they are decent enough . The Watch can’t just go around beating on innocent civilians like this, we gotta stand up to them! Ya hear me, everypony? And now for my rebels out there, some music from (put link here)Mare(/put link here)! DJ-Pon3 out, and don’t forget to eat those beets, kiddies!”

Tellis and the boys were staring at the radio, and Darius was doing his best not to and focus on driving the Arc with his forehooves and magic.

Tellis pointed a metal finger at the radio and asked, “Umm… What was that about? Was that us?”

“It seems the Overwatch wasn’t too happy when they reached Benny and he didn’t have us, poor sod. I knew we should have brought him with us!”

“I feel kinda bad now, thanks man, I reeealy appreciate it.”

“You’re very welcome, it was the least I could do after you incapacitated my acquaintance and left him to those Watch dogs!”

“You guys! Fightin’ isn’t getting us anywhere! Bryan back me up here. Bryan, wake up!”

Bryan, who’s had a pretty busy day, fell asleep during the song, mumbled with his eyes closed, “Myahh…”

“You see? He agrees! So… umm, ahh… oh yeah! Back to where we are going… you do know how to get there, right?”

“Human please! I know this city like the back of my hoof!” Darius said as he made a left turn and passed a doughnut shop, several check cashing places, a liquor store, and a t least a dozen confused ponies that didn’t seem to care that much about the Overwatch’s warnings and other random species like a diamond dog wearing a black coat and a brown top hat exiting the liquor store with a brown bag in his paw, and bringing it up to his face as he stumbled a bit down the street. An eagle-colored griffon was sitting on a bench, listening to a portable radio looking worried about something and Michael also saw some very rude yet intricate graffiti regarding the Overwatch and all their mothers.

“Damn! Steam Ponyville is home to quite the ‘arteest’.

“Steam Ponyville?” Darius seemed a little bit offended by Tellis calling it that.

“Yeah! This place is all steampunk and crap!”

“Steam…punk? Just what is that, pray tell?”

“Well it’s…” Tellis waved his forelegs around to signify he meant this entire world, “All this stuff everywhere! Pipes with steam and people wearing clothes from the 30s and this buggy thing we’re in and oh look, a flying robot with more steam just blasting out of it!”

“You still haven’t…”Darius craned his neck and saw what Tellis was talking about, a pony-sized black and green insectoid mechanical beast was fluttering about, “Oh, Celestia, it seems the Overwatch has finally grown a brain to use between them and started to send out the Dragonflies!”

“What are Dragonflies?” Michael asked worriedly from the backseat as he fussed around in the small, cramped seating arrangements, “couldja scoot your seat up? just a little?” The purple pony in front of him pulled a bar under his seat with his right hind leg, and used the other to push himself slightly forward, “Thanks.”

Before Darius could answer Michael’s question with a mildly sarcastic remark, Tellis said, “Well, damn. I dunno, but by the looks of things, it sees us!” hiss eyes widened as he unfolded his fingers from the rest of his Omni-hoof and pointed a metal finger at the robot all in one quick motion. The robot swung its head, which was a black camera- type device, towards the ARC and blue and red lights on its wings and back began flashing and glowing. It would have been pretty neat to have been able to just stare at it for hours while it did that, but then is started to pursue the boys.

“It seems were getting to Pinkemena’s a tad later than expected!” Darius stomped on the acceleration pedal while reaching for a handle on the ceiling labeled ‘do not use’ that was covered in yellow and black tape and turned it with his magic. A doomsday switch near the dash was labeled ‘seriously, do not use’ with a red light blinking above it, and the green unicorn flipped open the red cover. With a twinkle in his eye and a mad grin on his face he said, “I’ve always wanted to use this! Hold on!” He flicked the switch with a hoof, and they were all flung back in their seats as Penelope did a wheelie for at least three seconds.

Tellis screamed with a hoof extended out his open window, “TUUUUUURRRRRRRBO!!” The two humans, though, were less enthusiastic. They were frozen, no, petrified with fear for their lives. Was Darius trying to kill them? They thought he was safety conscious! Turns out he just didn’t want to risk it earlier when Tellis was egging him on to get to the parlor faster. The Arc’s front wheels made contact with the ground for what seemed like an eternity and a half for the boys, but was met with an “Aww...” from Tellis and Darius. Were all ponies this insane? They weren’t even going that fast, 80 miles an hour, but on narrow city streets? That’s just outrageous!

“Dude!”

“I know!” Michael looked back behind him through the rear window, and saw the Dragonfly was hot on their asses. Darius made a nasty right turn into an alley while Tellis shouted, “Let’s get dangerous! Whoo!” Darius plowed through wooden crates and narrowly avoided a changeling who was being mugged by a griffon. The bird wasn’t so lucky. It attempted to jump back, but Penelope caught the mugger in the shoulder, sending him flying back to the alley wall, most likely shattering it’s foreleg and several other bones. The Arc exploded out of the alleyway and Darius turned left rather raunchily, he really was the best kind of scientist! Not Gordon Freeman level, but he’s on the way! The Dragonfly wasn’t deterred; it just flew over the buildings and was back on the boys’ asses.

Bryan, who spotted the Dragonfly right behind them again attempting to get a good shot of their faces, shouted, “Tellis! You gotta have something!”

Tellis raised his metal hoof level with his face, and a black, blue crystal edged blade popped up in front of his eye as he answered, “Well, I got this!”

Darius looked upon Tellis’s blade and exclaimed, “A knife!?”

“Comet doesn’t like guns, long story, and she definitely doesn’t know about this, so don’t tell her!” Tellis began to climb out his window and onto the roof of the Arc.

“Tellis, are you insane!?” Darius shouted after the fearless flightless pegasus pony, and a knife blade stabbed through the roof as Tellis hoisted himself onto the roof, “Penelope!!”

On the roof of the Arc, Tellis stood up on two legs, the wind on his back blowing his white tail and mane forward as he aimed his artificial hoof at the Dragonfly while stabilizing that leg with the other. Good thing this street seemed to be really really long, but Tellis didn’t have the time to stand around looking badass, especially when the Arc suddenly ran over a ponyhole that wasn’t all the way secured, sending him flying. Adrenaline and copious amounts of sugar were flowing through Tellis’s veins as he shouted in slow motion, “Knife to meet you!”

He fired his grappling hoof attached to him by a cable at the flying machine and the blade on the end of it dove right into the middle of its back, where its wings were attached. Tellis didn’t want or need a big hunk of metal attached to him, since that was already the case all the time, so he rectracted the blade, whipped his foreleg down, and reeled in his Omni-hoof back home.

For a pony without any wings, Tellis does an awful lot of jumping, falling and crashing through things. He should think of a career as a stuntpony, hell, it’d be safer than his regular life! So anyways, Tellis smashed through the window into the apartment of a pony watching television while eating chips out of a bowl. The apartment’s resident just kept on eating his chips in his recliner as Tellis rolled across the floor, covered in broken glass. He was really regretting not putting clothes on earlier by this point, and he just hoped that he didn’t damage anything vital. There was no time to pull out the shards that were stuck in him, he had to catch up with the others. Most of the shards were only skin deep and sure, it was excruciating, but his current mission of finding his goddaughter carried him on till about he ghost walked across the hall into the open door of an apartment where the walls were lined with newspaper clippings, blurry pictures of bipedal figures similar to Michael and Bryan, and a mint-colored unicorn holding a key ring in her mouth. It looked as if she were about to lock the- wait a second. Is that Lyra? She was wearing a bowler hat with some clear-lens brass goggles over top of the hat’s brim and way more clothes than she normally wears. There was a tan scarf wrapped around her neck and she was wearing some kind of small, light jacket with a whole bunch of other small accessories adorning her clothing. Clearly she was about to go somewhere. But where would you go at one in the morning? A fine question, but Tellis wasn’t really in any kind of condition to do anything but ask her name, collapse, fall unconscious, and bleed on her carpets.

A crème colored mare with a dark purple curly mane with a pink highlight running through came back into the apartment from the hallway, “Lyra! What’s taking so- by the goddesses!”

.o0{{I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I}}0o.

Have you ever had a lucid dream? You know those kinds of dreams where you sense everything and perceive it as reality? Well Tellis was having one of the craziest lucid hallucinations brought on by blood loss and too many blows to the head. He appeared to be in the middle of a party or rave of some kind. At least it wasn’t another falling dream. The bass was pumping while creatures of all types were dancing, having good times, and enjoying themselves. Noticing a strange pony that he couldn’t see clearly on the level above him at some tables, Tellis decided that he needed to get a better look. After failing to see a way up there, he made his way back through the crowd away from the balcony over to the tallest thing he could find, and that was where the DJ was. She was a Diamond Dog wearing some kind of circus ringleader coat complete with a neon-lit top hat, glow stick necklaces, and these blue goggles that looked like the lenses were made out of some kind of smoothed out sapphires they were so beautiful. This place was magical.

He dodged a pair of griffons making out before getting near enough to one of the giant speaker towers that went all the way up to the building’s ceiling, which couldn’t be seen in the dim lighting conditions of the dance floor. It was a good thing there was a conveniently placed ladder on the sides of the towers, and Tellis hoped that he wouldn’t need to be near the deafening speakers for any longer than he had to. Having a hand makes climbing a ladder so much easier. The upper part of his chest near his right shoulder felt weird as he climbed the ladder, like it was being tickled by something. After a moment or two the sensation stopped, but it was weird. No matter, back to finding that pony. Ah, there she I- wait a second. Is that himself he sees? Can’t be, but the stunted wings and Omni-hoof beg to differ! The pony looked like if you took Tellis and switched all his colors with their opposites. And I mean every color, even the whites of his eyes. He stared in disbelief at the light green, black maned, blue-black eyed crippled Pegasus with the white painted Omni-Hoof and yellow arcane lightning bolt Cutie Mark. Big disks of light were his pupils, and it simply terrified the original.

“You took quite a nasty fall,” The purple pony looked around and saw that the pony that sounded and was shaped like him was right next to him, or rather, the other way around. He was sitting next to anti-Tellis at the table where a black bottle and a white bottle were sitting. He couldn’t hear the music anymore, but he could still see the dark figures down below partying on.

“I- wha- who- me?” Tellis could barely sputter out before his doppelganger answered him.

“I’m you. Well, a version of you that your sick, twisted mind cooked up and plopped me here in some far off corner of your psyche. I do wish you weren’t so…incomplete. I find it hard to move around with this brick attached to my leg,” He lifted up his white Omni-hoof and tapped it on the table twice.

“You get used to it. So, I’m in my brain?” Tellis asked… let’s call him Sillet because he was a carbon copy of Tellis except for the fact he was on the opposite end of the spectrum. He felt woozy again and thought he heard sompony say something about blood in the far distance as his focus returned to the rave. He was lying on the floor with Sillet prodding him in the back with a metal finger.

“Hey, get up. Get up. Get up. Get-“

”Will you stop that? I’m back,” He sat up and looked at Sillet, “So what are you?”

“I’m you, dumbass.”

“Really? Could’ve fooled me there. Seriously though, what the hay are you a repressed memory? Brain damage?”

“A little of both. You know every time you had to crack some skulls or extort from some little family store in Cloudsdale?”

“Now that you bring it up, yeah.”

“Goddesses, I hate this music. So yeah, I’m pretty much everything bad you’ve ever done or wanted to do compressed into a manageable package and crammed in the back of your brain.”

“So you’re evil?”

“Hey. ‘Evil’ is a strong word, I’m more… lacking in the morals department. I tend to not think about things like whether or not stealing from Ruby is the right thing to do.”

“Oh, it is,obviously. I’m totally with you on that one.”

“I think a lot of ponies would. I need a better example… Oh yeah. Remember when Molly set your car on fire and you wanted to choke her to death?” he pretended to brush some dust off his shoulder, “This guy.”

“You- What? Why are you telling me this?”

“Well, these assholes aren’t very talkative, the DJ is a complete idiot, and the only one around here that seems to have two brain cells to rub out a spark in here is you.”

“You swear a lot.”

“Oh, Mr. Goody Two-Horseshoes in the house! You know if it actually did something I’d have already cut you for being stupid.”

“Oh, you better not cut me. You might be living here but here is my brain and in my brain you play by my rules.”

“Is that right? Then how come you’re a cat right now?”

A bizzarely colored housecat with a little wooden peg leg was sitting on the table swishing his tail around furiously, “You’re hilarious. Change me back.”

“No. I think you’re better this w- Hold on. You hear that? Yeah, I think it’s time for you to wake up and leave me here to rot. I’m going to see if I can get the DJ to play my…” Sillet’s voice faded away as darkness enveloped him.

He opened his eyes to find himself sprawled over a bed in a small room, with some kind of wrappings around his midsection and was those pants he was wearing? They were severely lacking in the fanciness department and the buttons for the rear was missing but hey, free pants!. He sat up and something tugged on his right foreleg, an IV feeding blood into his body from a bag. What the heck happened to him? He remembered the flying robot, goring himself with a window, and Lyra. She must have brought him here, because there really wasn’t any other way to explain it. This clearly wasn’t an actual hospital because the IV stand was a hat stand, the room looked more like an unused guest room than anything, and there wasn’t a single tongue depressor in sight.

A blue unicorn with a messy light blue mane who was wearing opaque brass rimmed goggles, a white surgical mask, and a doctor’s coat burst into the room arguing with somepony behind her who was followed by a concerned looking Diamond Dog. A Dog’s concerned face looks a lot like their ‘I’m going to eat you’ face but if you don’t panic you can see the difference.

“Hey, he’s awake. You owe me money.”

“Cutter pony! Sorry, that’s pretty much what she says to all ponies,” The larger than average Diamond Dog was wearing simple pony clothes with the sleeves cut off and worn as a vest over a long-sleeved coat that was likely bought at some kind of specialty store for non-ponies and pants that were much better than Tellis’s in terms of wear and tear.

“Call me that again and I will cut you, got it?”

The Diamond Dog knew she wasn’t joking and he pretended to lock his toothy maw and throw away the key. The Pegasus pony wearing a brown jacket with a lot of pockets that came in with the doctor asked Tellis, “What the hay happened to you? You look like you’ve been in some kind of airship crash!”

He looked himself over, other than a few fresh stitches around his midsection and on his right hind leg, he was fine. Oh… yeah. “Though I have done that before it’s not what happened to me.” He pointed at his stumpy, useless nub wings, “Birth defect.” Then he tapped his good hoof on the robotic one, “Explosion. I get blown up a lot. These right here are from a window I kinda fell through.”

“Yeah, you had more glass in you than a church. Pay up.”

“Will you give that a rest Street Smart? He’ll pay you when he leaves.”

` Streets sat in a chair and crossed her forelegs, “He better.” There was something about the way this mare looked that was giving Tellis serious déjà vu. He couldn’t quite place it but he knew he saw her somewhere before. It’ll come to him eventually.

The Dog was giving Tellis a once over of his wounds to make sure Streets didn’t mess them up. His big, terrifying smile said otherwise. He laughed as he patted Tellis on the back, knocking the wind out of him before the dog suggested, “Metal leg pony might want to thank ponies that brought him here.”

“Not before he pays me!”

“Okay, if only to keep you quiet I’ll pay you. You impatient little…” He wiggled a bag of coins stuffed into the dark recesses of his Omni-hoof’s storage out with his teeth and tossed it towards Streets, who caught it with her magic and removed the drawstring. All she cared about was getting paid, the others however balked at the size of the bag compared to his hoof. The dog was moving his paws close together and then further apart while the Pegasus scratched her head with a hoof in confusion.

Guess he better explain it to them, huh? “It’s uh… It’s bigger on the inside.” That didn’t do anything but confuse them even more. Streets couldn’t care less about the Omni-hoof.

“I think I should… thank whoever brought me here, yeah.”

“Yes. Hey, what is metal leg pony’s name? I kinda don’t want to have to call you that.” The dog approached Tellis to help him off the bed.

“Wait, you called-“

“She hates it when I do that.”

“Hehe, got it. But gimmie your name first and then we’ll see about mine.”

“Marty.”

“Good name, mine’s Tellis.”

Marty removed the hypodermic needle embedded in Tellis’s leg so he could move around with him without having to carry the hat stand around like an idiot and beamed, “I like your name! It’s not some crazy pony name like Speedy Rails! Hahaha!”

The light green Pegasus mare pulled down an eyelid while sticking her tongue out at Marty, “Nyah!”

“Hold on, I gotta ask. What’s up with the pants?” He pointed at said pants.

Rails stepped in front of her greedy friend counting out her earnings. “What, you been living under a rock or something? Oh. You really don’t know? It’s that stupid Decency Act where all sentient races of a certain age are required to wear at least two articles of clothing. It’s completely rididculous.”

“Oh. Well I’ll be damned,” He saw the black derby she was wearing. It can’t be. “Wait, Rails?”

“Yeah?”

“Where’d you get that hat you’re wearing?”

“It’s mine. I found it.”

“Look inside it, there should be some initials that read H.R.”

‘Huh, there is.”

“That’s my hat! Give me my hat, now.”

“Whoa, cool your jets, flyboy. Who’s this H.R. fella?”

“Somepony very important to me, give me my hat.”

Street Smarts smacked Rails in the back of the head with a hoof, “Just give him the hat already.”

“Fine, fine. You didn’t have to hit me so hard.” She gave Tellis his special hat back to him and he put it on his head. The flit on the back of his mane made a lot more sense now.

Marty chuckled as he finished tying up the IV drip line on the hat stand and said, “Come on. Let’s go see ponies that bring Tellis here.”

The cyberpony stumbled a bit before he got his land legs and followed Marty out the door into the hall. He heard a nasally voice from a doorway down the hall say, “You know I put up with a lot of your crap Lyra but this? We were supposed to be at a party half an hour ago but no, we had to help the wingless freak that bled all over my carpet! Are you even listening to me?”

“Well what was I supposed to do? Leave him there? Bon Bon Is some stupid late night party that important to you?” There’s the Lyra Tellis knew and loved. Guess he’s going to finally meet that Bon Bon character she always talked about.

“Yes!”

“You are a cold, cold pony,” She shook her head in disappointment at the mare crossing her forelegs next to her on the couch they sat on. Lyra was sitting like she usually did while Bon Bon was sitting more like a pony, which he himself never did. Tellis and Marty caught Lyra’s eye and she turned her head towards them, “Oh hey! It’s that guy!”

Bon Bon scowled, “And that Dog.”

“I don’t like your tone, pony.”

“And I don’t like your face.”

Marty growled slightly before Tellis hit him on the back with his good hoof. “Don’t worry Marty. I like your face!”

“I’m not sure how to respond to that.”

He leaned in closer to Marty and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Positively.” Tellis pulled away before going over to Lyra and thanked her while vigorously shaking her hoof in his prosthetic one and simply giving a thumbs up to Bon Bon before looking back to Marty before either of them could say anything, “Hey Marty? Do you know where the Overwatch outpost thingamajig type deal is? I kinda needed to get there and well… yeah.”

“What? Oh. Why do you want to go there? Pinkie?”

“Pinkie.”

“What kind of trouble you in? You know what? Forget I asked. Sure I’ll take you there. I mean it beats having to deal with Streets!” Marty laughed heartily, unnerving the two mares on the couch while Tellis joined in the Dog’s merriment.

He pretended to wipe away a tear as he exhaled before pointing at the door and shouting, “To the outpost!”

“That’s a closet.”

He turned around and pointed at the other door that was much more likely to be the front door, “To the outpost!”

.o0{{I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I}}0o.

As they walked through the fairly empty city streets under the raised monorail lines, the boys started up a conversation to pass the time until they got to the outpost. It was better than awkward silence and talking to a Diamond Dog that wasn’t a right douche was always fun.

“Really, since birth? Wow, there go half my questions.”

“Yeah, I’m sure they were lame questions anyways.”

“Hey!”

“Hay is for ponies. What I meant was you now have a chance to make newer, better questions.”

“Oh. Wait what’s wrong with my questions?”

“Nothin, nothin at all, forget I said anything,” He noticed a changeling sleeping next to a brick wall with nothing but a piece of cardboard lying on top of it that had a beggar’s message on it as an improvised blanket, “Hey look at that guy. Or gal, I can’t ever tell with changelings.”

“It’s homeless, so what?”

Tellis pulled the last of his money out of his Omni-hoof with his teeth and grabbed it with his robotic hand, “Pretty sure he/she needs this more than I do.” He gently sat the bag of coins on the ground close to it and the homeless shape shifter stirred in its sleep. It could have easily stolen somepony’s life and gotten money that way but that’s probably illegal. Either way, whatever the reason it was in this sorry state seeing this homeless being made Tellis feel bad for it. Their bodies weren’t completely covered in that insect-like carapace and he could see its ribs and concave belly. That money could definitely help this creature for at least a few days. Sometimes that’s all you need to turn your life around.

“Wow. Streets wouldn’t ever do something like that. I don’t think Rails would either. I never thought I’d see anyone be so generous in my life.”

Tellis swore he could hear Sillet laughing at him from the back of his mind, “Yeah, yeah I’m a saint. Let’s get out of here.”

.o0{{I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I}}0o.

The Overwatch outpost looked pretty evil, with its big black plate metal design and the way it towered above the apartment building and the pawn shop on either side of it and the mean looking guards giving Darius the evil eye while the boys stayed in the car. The only non-threatening aspect about the outpost was all the party decorations put there by Pinkie Pie. A camera on the wall above the light green pegasus mare guard on the right side of the door moved slightly closer towards Darius and jolted up as if it were surprised.

Darius prepared himself for the headache that was to come. A speaker by the door activated. *GASP*”Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh! It’s Darry! You big meanie! I’m coming down there!”

Brian, who was being low profile in Darius’s vehicle along with Michael said to his friend, “I’m confused.”

“Dunno, didn’t really put that much into figuring out his back story. Guess we’re gonna learn right here, huh?”

The lavender Pegasus guard on the right wearing a helmet and looked at the green unicorn and asked, “Who are you?” His helmet affected his voice slightly but there was definitely something about it that made Darius curious. This pony’s tail was white as well… hmm.

“I could ask you the same, friend. Your voice sure is familiar.”

“I- I asked you first!”

“Whoa now, calm yourself. There isn’t any need to get antsy. I’m just here to talk with Pinkie Pie.”

The other guard turned to her coworker. “Yeah, keep it together. What’s getting into you?”

“Nothing, it’s just the middle of the night and I’ve been standing here for hours.”

“And I haven’t?”

The guard on the right sighed. “You’re right Swift, I’m sorry. Why does that elevator take so long to get here?”

Eventually, the front door of the outpost opened, revealing a stern-looking, frazzled Pinkie Pie standing on her hind legs, wearing a long sleeved black sweater with the Overwatch symbol on the chest and green sweatpants. She had a steaming mug of cocoa in her hooves which pointed at Darius, “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”

“Not as much trouble as you are with the fashion police Pinkie.” Oh! Two points for Darius and Pinkie Pie, please apply sterile bandage to burn.

Pinkie Pie sprayed out the hot chocolate that was in her mouth as she burst with laughter, “I didn’t know you could say something so funny.”

Darius shrugged nonchalantly, “Eh.”

Inside the buggy, the boys were freaking out as quietly as they could about Pinkie Pie, whispering to each other as the peeked through the tinted windows.

“Oh my god.”

“I know.”

“Er. Mah. Gerd.”

“I know.”

“I can’t believe this it’s actually Pinkie Pie right there in front of us right now.”

“I can’t either, I’m totally freaking out right now.”

Darius opened the door of his vehicle with his magic and the boys fell out onto the hard ground.

Pinkie Pie raised her mug, spilling it slightly, “Hi there!” The two guards had reactions that were not as great.

Swift the guard pointed at the boys with a hoof and shouted, “Ah! What in the name of all that is holy are those?!”

Michael pointed at Swift and said, “You ain’t that great either!”

“Michael…that’s not nice to the ponies.”

“Shut up Bryan. And get off of me, you’re damn heavy.” He pushed Bryan off of him before starting to stand up and when he looked forwards he was face-to-face with Pinkie Pie. He’s been trying to ignore how enormous their eyes were by not directly looking into them but that’s a bit impossible with those huge blue irises boring into the windows of his soul at point-blank range. His skin went white as a sheet and he couldn’t think about anything but how big her eyes were. She was slightly confused, since usually everything is happy to see her except maybe that one donkey and that bartender she owes a great big tab to. This creature before her was clearly in trouble so she did the only logical thing. She hugged him.

An electric shock went up Michael’s spine. He usually doesn’t let anyone touch him, let alone hug him. All part of the Asperger’s issue package, but this was Pinkie Pie, for Celestia’s sake. The color returned to his skin, he didn’t feel like he was having an out-of-body experience or a heart attack anymore, and all was right in the world.

He wished those few short seconds could have lasted a lifetime but he knew they couldn’t. He felt a little sad when she finally pulled away from him and allowed him to fully stand up. The very top of her bouncy pink mane came to his eyes and she looked pretty much as he expected her to actually look in real life. Except for what she was wearing and her mane being a bit messier, but that was probably because of how late it was.

“My name’s Pinkie Pie, what’s yours?” She tried to take a drink out of her empty mug and gave a disappointed look inside the empty metal container covered in wooden slats.

Bryan had his arms crossed and was grumbling about Michael getting a hug from Pinkie Pie as Michael Introduced himself and his friend to everypony. “Uh, if it isn’t too much to ask, I think my friend wants a hug from you. So can-“

“Of course I can! Come here!” Bryan couldn’t get over to Pinkie Pie faster to receive his free hug.

When she pulled away, Bryan put his cracked glasses on and said, “I think it’s safe to say I can die a happy man now.”

The masked guard leaned over to Swift and she turned to him, “Do I look like I know what a man is?”

Pinkie Pie started circling the boys, inspecting their features before she asked, “So what are you guys?”

Darius stepped up, “They tell me they are a race of creatures called ‘humans’ and-“

Pinkie Pie’s tired face lit up before she beamed, “Humans? You mean like from the stories?”

“Stories?”

“Hello? Don’t you read the paper Darry? A few months ago there were a whole bunch of articles on hairless monkey things in Canterlot. There was this mare at Rummy’s Place going off about it and she called them that!”

“That mare’s name wouldn’t be Lyra Heartstrings, would it?” Tellis loudly asked from across the street while Marty stared at the boys, mouth agape, “Oh come on Marty, I thought you said you’d be cool.”

“Wha-what are those things?”

“Bryan, I think that’s a Diamond Dog. Try not to panic.”

“Too late.”

“Bryan. What did I just say?”

“Oh my god, they’re coming over here.”

Pinkie Pie trotted out into the middle of the street “Hey! It’s one of those mean old’ Diamond Dogs that ponynapped Rarity a year ago!”

“That is profiling! I’m not even remotely involved with the Prowlers.”

She narrowed her eyes and said in a threatening tone, “Prove it.”

“Seriously? Uh, how about the fact they hate ponies? I love ponies! Isn’t that right Tellis?” He wrapped a huge foreleg around the purple cyberpony.

“Dude! Can’t…breathe…”

“Oh, sorry pony!” Marty dropped Tellis to the ground and he rubbed his neck with his Omni-hoof.

Darius looked at the boys. “When did he get pants?”

The guard wearing the helmet trotted out to the street with Swift following after him, curious as to what he was doing. “Wait, did he say ‘Tellis’?”

Tellis looked at the masked guard and started doing some addition, “Yeah, what’s it to you what my name is?”

The buck pulled his helmet off to show Tellis well… himself! “That’s my name.”

Everyone was surprised to say the least. Everypony except a certain cyberpony, who was prinking around his doppelganger commenting on his wings and mildly damaging the pavement with his Omni-hoof every time he landed on the ground.

“How- I mean who are you?”

“I’m you obviously!”

“No, he can’t be. There’s only one Tellis, right?”

Tellis pointed a robotic finger in the air, “Wrong! There’s probably hundreds of me’s in a whole bunch of different universes! Like this one, for example. I can’t believe I have wings! Dude, you have to tell me what flying is like.”

“What do you- Oh by Celestia. What happened to your wings? And your leg?”

“You know, I really wish I could just group everyone that’s ever going to ask me that together so I only have to say this once,” He pointed to his wings, “Birth defect.”

Then tapped his good hoof on his Omni-hoof, “Explosion. Any more questions?”

“Yeah. How do we know that you’re actually Tellis?”

“For one, I totally look like him, just a way more badass version though. Sorry but you don’t look like you’ve been in a fight your whole life.”

Swift stepped in front of her friend to defend him, “Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look at him Swift, tell me that’s a pony that takes a lot of risks.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I’m him! You know one of us is going to have to use Flight Strength, right?”

“Wait what? Don’t you mean Strong Flier?”

Tellis was speechless for a moment, going over all the times he’s told ponies what his name meant and realizing that he was wrong every time, “Yes. Yes I do. It isn’t going to be me.”

“Well it isn’t going to be me!”

“Buffalo leg wrestling?”

“Buffalo leg wrestling.”

New Ponyville City’s Tellis won over this world’s Tellis in their petty little contest. Strong Flier called bull, saying that Tellis cheated with his cybernetics when in fact he just sucked at BLW.

Darius had been trying to talk with Pinkie Pie but she wasn’t listening, “Pinkie, you weren’t there.”

“I don’t care. You deserted. That means you don’t care about the Watch or anypony in this city!” she threw her mug aside and crossed her forelegs indignantly while sitting in Darius’s vehicle.

“Dammit girl, just listen! We need shelter, especially those two boys. If the Overwatch’s science teams get their hooves on them-“

“I get it. I’m not doing this for you though. I think I know somepony that could help, but you’re not going to like it.”

“Who?”

“Twilight.”

“No.”

She jabbed him in the chest with a hoof. “I don’t want to hear it Darry! We’re going to Twilight. If anypony knows anything about these humans it’s either Lyra Heartstrings or Twilight Sparkle and I have no idea where Lyra lives.”

“Then we find where Lyra-“

“We’re going to Twilight’s house!”

Darius Ellistar knew when to give up, so he sighed and said, “Alright. You win Pinkie.”

“Yay! We’re going to Twilight’s slumber party after all!”

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“You guys! I’m going with them for a while, think you can watch over for a bit?”

“No way, we’re coming with you and this pony with the metal leg.”

Marty raised two finger-like appendages on his enormous paw and said before yawning, “I think I’m just going to go home. Hope I see you ponies later. And Tellis?”

Both versions of the same pony looked at Marty, “Yeah?”

He pointed at the cyberpony and said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Thanks Marty.”

“Bye, ponies!” Not having to lead anyone around meant he could move as fast as he wanted, and Diamond Dogs can move really fast on all fours. Swift, Flier, and Tellis talked outside while Darius, the boys, and Pinkie went up into the outpost to grab some things.

“Pinkie, I know you say you take it everywhere but seriously?”

The party cannon, along with a lot of other things, sat in a pile as Pinkie Pie worked on another mug of hot chocolate. The brass and steel cannon-shaped potato gun packed with colorful confetti was awe-inspiring with its sleek, simple design, perfectly calibrated barrel, and floral pattern wheels. It was sure to set off any party with a bang.

The pink mare finished off her mug before tossing it aside and rolled her cannon into the open elevator car before putting on her saddlebags full of more candy than anything and waited for the others to follow her inside.

Outside of the outpost, a garage door near the elevator had been opened and a large black vehicle similar to Darius’s was waiting for them, its bizarre propulsion system rattling on the back. Bryan tapped the green unicorn on the shoulder and asked him, “Hey, can we ride in that one? Sorry Darius, but the backseat of your car thing doesn’t really have that much legroom.”

“Fine, fine. Pinkie and I need to do some catching up anyways.”

The boys enter the open door of the larger vehicle and slid it shut as Tellis was telling himself stories about Doctor Whooves.

“Bigger on the inside? Really?”

“Yep.”

“Wow.”

Swift looked back from the driver’s seat. “Oh, look who decided to show up!”

“Nice to see you too. The others are almost ready to go.”

“Gyah. I’m tired of waiting.”

After Darius put Pinkie Pie’s cannon inside Penelope he started her up and began his journey to the Collective Knowledge District with several fugitives including himself and members of the very force after him.

Prolouge: Where to Begin?

???, Unknown date

Tellis was flying through the sky without a care in the world. The wind was blowing his white mane back, his large and powerful wings beating the air as he climbed ever higher above the clouds. He hovered for a bit, letting the sun warm his lavender skin, but something was off… Tellis looked at where his wings should be, but there was nothing there! Sheer terror enveloped his brain as he plummeted back towards Equestria. He tried to land on a cloud, but shot straight through it like an arrow. All he could do now was watch the ground rush straight towards him as he kissed his flank goodbye. Tellis bolted up with a small shout. He was home in his bed, panting in the dark room, still wingless. Lyra Heartstrings stirred in a separate bed with a groan, but didn’t wake up. Nothing short of having a bucket of water dumped on her would do that. Tellis cracked his neck, his semi-hollow bones making a distinctive popping sound. He then looked over at his battered dresser, where his prosthetic Omni-hoof was charging on a stand, building up emergency reserve power. The focus crystal inside that allowed him to perform spells bled a mystical purple aura from inside the bronze and steel casing as it cast a brilliant light all over the wall. Tellis watched the light show for a time while reminiscing about his teenage years, when he first met the Doctor. He rubbed at his stubby hoof with his good one as he let out a solemn sigh.

New Ponyville, Equestria. Saturday night. March 17, 1048CR.

Seven weeks have passed since Tellis took down the drug cartel ruling over New Ponyville, and things have settled down quite nicely. This worried Tellis deeply, because if something crazy didn’t happen about every week, the insanity would build up and unleash unholy amounts of craziness upon his life. Once nothing happened for four weeks and Tellis was knocked out by a flying squid wielding a cricket bat while he was walking through the countryside. Then he woke up inside of a submarine at the bottom of Bowl Lake. The details of his escape are a bit fuzzy; slowly asphyxiating in a small metal coffin does that to a guy. Tellis got out of his bed, hobbled over to his prosthetic hoof, and attached it to his stumpy foreleg. You never really get used to being shocked like that, but he was able to hold in the electrified yelp so he wouldn’t wake up his roommate, the unicorn pony lyrist cryogenically frozen for past forty-five years known as Lyra Heartstrings. After allowing the pain to subside, he grabbed his lucky black hat off the dresser with his teeth and expertly flipped it onto his head of white hair, and then he pressed it down so it wouldn’t just fall off his head when he started walking. The Omni-hoof had just finished activating, small green lights, meters, and other instruments replaced the light that shone from the now dim focus crystal from under an access panel held on with screws. Tellis’s jacket with the sonic screwdriver he received from the Doctor was passed up since he wasn’t going outside. He still didn’t like being completely naked, though.

After flexing his robotic hand’s fingers and then retracting it, Tellis headed downstairs towards the kitchen as quietly as he could with a large hunk of metal connected to his foreleg. Just as he reached the kitchen’s door, he hears hoofsteps inside. A burglar! How dare he/she enter his house, to take what he owned!? Tellis threw open the kitchen door, flipped the light switch to the right of him with his good hoof, and poised to strike the intruder with magic from his other. Tellis didn’t know any real spells, but his prosthetic looked intimidating enough when in magic mode to exaggerate his abilities. Tellis was not met with the burglar he expected to see, instead there was Comet, the granddaughter of Rainbow Dash. She was holding a partially eaten cookie, scared half to death by her crazy godfather suddenly bursting into the kitchen.

Tellis lowered his Omni-hoof and beamed, “Aha! I have caught the great cookie thief of New Ponyville red hoofed at last!

“Tellis, what’s wrong with you!? Are you crazy? Wait, forget that I asked.

”I thought you liked that I was a bit crazy and not just some regular, boring, time traveling, life-saving, princess-meeting, took-you-to-that-conventioning—“

“Shut up! I get it, you’re ‘cool’. Geez, you don’t have to remind me every twenty minutes.” Comet sarcastically interrupted before she finished her cookie.

Tellis went over to the refrigerator, opened it, and pulled out a can of ice cold Flutter Cola, or as he called it, ‘Celestia’s private reserve.’ He opened it, promptly chugged the entire can, his right amber eye contracted while the other dilated, a strange sight to those that didn’t know him. Tellis said with a satisfied smile, “Sweet nectar… (Loud belch).”

“Aw, dude, gross!”

The two start laughing, but then quieted back down, Lyra did NOT like being woken up. Tellis then asked Comet, “So you couldn’t sleep either, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Another one of those dreams?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Me too, we probably need to go see a psychiatrist, like Ruby did.” Tellis chuckled at his little joke.

“Yeah that freaky blue wood all over her room made her a real hayseed! I still can’t believe she tried to have us all killed!”

“Language, language Comet. For shame,” Tellis mock scolded his granddaughter while waggling a finger from an extended

metallic hand.

“Whatever. Hey, what are we gonna do in the morning? Today’s the last day of Spring Break, and I wanna make it special, ya know?”

“I was just going to take us all to Bucky T.’s…”

“Bucky T.’s? That place is for little kids!”

“And that’s why it was a bad idea. What did YOU have in mind, o fun one?”

Comet pondered for a moment, then her face lit up and she shouted, “O’Brennigan’s!”

“Isn’t that place just like Bucky T.’s?”

“But it isn’t for little kids. Besides, it has laser tag!” Ah, laser tag, the sport of champions. Celestia herself enjoys it in her free time; she even converted a room in the castle for “diplomatic purposes” into a big laser tag arena. She plays on separate teams against her sister, with the rest of the teams’ members made up of the royal guard. At the end of every summer, she makes the entire castle a laser battleground, there’s this competition with a prize and everything! Comet, Lyra and Tellis went with the rest of the gang last year, Tellis actually ‘killed’ Luna to cause a big enough distraction for his team, ‘The Harmonious 8’ to make a break for a more defensible position outside of the throne room Celestia was based in. It was amazing, you should have been there.

"Hey, Tellis, what’s up with your hoof? You know, the metal one.”

Tellis, with a puzzled look on his face, examined his prosthetic and saw that the focus crystal inside it was glowing very brightly while also emitting the aroma of burnt toast mixed with motor oil. He shouted to his goddaughter, “Comet! Get me a knife, a big one to pry this thing out, now!” He activated the hoof’s magic mode, exposing the crystal that was glowing ever brighter. Comet dropped a large knife on the center island of the kitchen; Tellis grabbed it with his mouth, and began to jimmy the focus crystal out of his mechanical hoof. It popped out onto the island, but it didn’t stop glowing. The crystal glowed even brighter as Tellis dropped the knife onto the floor, grabbed Comet with his forelegs and said to her terrified face, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna be—“The crystal explodes, creating a large portal in the middle of the kitchen. Purple lightning arced all around the room as the two ponies were sucked inside the vortex, along with the ceiling light and a few pans. The portal disappeared as fast as it appeared and a sleepy Lyra entered the destroyed kitchen and asked, “What the hay is making all that racke— ooh… guys?”

-_/==+;’:]I[|x}|<.>/|{x|]I[:’;+==\_-

Meanwhile, inside the maelstrom of the portal, Tellis was desperately holding onto Comet as they sped through the purple hell. As a novice flier, Comet had passed out from the g-forces. But Tellis, who has fallen from some VERY high places, hung on for about 10 more seconds until a pan smashed into the back of his head. The last thing Tellis saw before he fell unconscious was Comet being flung away from him to Celestia knows where.

--._-=/’:|]|[|:’=-_.--

Gassaway, West Virginia. Two days ago, March 14, 2013AD.

Michael has had a pretty uneventful year if you don’t count his cousin’s wedding and Bronycon. Also, he was at The Cookie Event, Derpy’s Rooms, Joker’s Run, and Chaos Overture LAN parties . Actually, forget what I said, this year’s looking pretty cool now that you think about it. Anyways, he finally convinced his mom to drop him off at the next town over at the house of one of the only people he considers a real friend. Bryan Foster. He’s been looking forward to this moment for a long time. They were going to start a local server on Minecraft and have a marathon session lasting all weekend with some other guys that they have met along the way to have an amazing role-playing adventure with not that much of a plot. It was simply one player would be the tyrannical king with an army of followers and limited Operator powers while a small, ragtag group of players fought against whoever was king. The resistance consisted of the players Bhive86, Boltaction_Bob, Yuriimager123, argonianclaw(Michael), and Death_By_Cupcake(Bryan). Everything had been built, the stage had been set, Bryan was recording, the voicechat was active with two separate channels, and they were ready to go.

“Okay, this place is a hardcore server. If you die you’re dead yada, yada, yada... You know what, read this book, It’ll explain everything,” argonianclaw, who insisted that the other players call him Tellis, set a few signed book and quills on a table in the middle of the war room, “You’re completely safe here in the rebel base unless King Avery89 decides to be stupid and kill us all, then we’ll have to ban him for breaking character.”

“Safe? This place looks like it’s gonna fall down on our heads any second!” Bolt_Actionbob protested to one of the administrators, argonianclaw.

“Well, that’s what time does to things Bob. We don’t have any other choice but to stay here since Avery burned our hometown to the ground, He and everyone who follows him will pay!” Death_By_Cupcake shouted before picking up an iron helmet and putting it on his blue, furry head a googly eye rattling around. Death adjusted his black pinstripe suit and red tie.

“Way to stay in character,” Michael said to Bryan in real life, impressed with his acting.

“Thanks, buddy,” Bryan thanked Michael before briefly tugging on the collar of his shirt with both hands.

Back to their game, Yuri, whose avatar was Creeper hunter Steve and he sharpened an arrowhead while sitting in a stone brick window while Hive. He turned to the lavender pony avatar with a single metal hand fooling around in a chest and asked, “If we’re supposed to be in character, how come he’s a purple, orange-eyed, white hair cybernetic horse wearing clothes and he’s the freaking cookie monster?”

“Because we are! Okay… let’s just say that Equestria is on the other side of the Boundless Sea and in this scenario I’velived here all my life, and he’s an ambassador from a faraway land, alright? Just read the books!”

Hive was being greedy with the leather armor, holding several vests in his arms and refusing to give them up. This earned him a punch in the face from Bob, knocking him to the ground and dropping his multicolored leather vests. Bolt picked up the white one and put it on over his black t-shirt. Argo picked up the green one just to have some protection. Normally he would go without it but the dye-able leather clothing is too sexy not to wear.

Crude stone swords fashioned from sharpened cobblestones attached to sticks were passed out among them by Death while Argo was still feeling around in the chest. Several clicks were heard and a single emerald, the money of the land was pulled out from a secret compartment in the bottom of the chest. Pretty handy to have when you run into a settlement of villagers. When they were all equipped with their gear, they had to find some food. It was a long run from Wyndshire where they were first attacked by Avery. The castle they were staying at was huge and finding the kitchens took a while to do even with prior knowledge of the layout by the people who built it. Once they had their fill of salted pork, dehydrated apples, ice chilled strength-boosting ale brewed from ground blaze powder, water, and Nether wart on high heat from a brewing stand made from a guardian-like construct of the underworld. Some lesser healing potions were there as well as a splash potion of healing II. Nothing but good those things are.

“So what’s the plan? What can we do with a hunter, an everyman, a blacksmith, a pony, and a muppet against Avery’s army? Come on, you must have something!” Michael said into the voicechat while checking if any of the king’s spies were listening in.

“I say we just run right up to his castle and kill him, and then boom, we win!” Yuri suggested.

Argo facehooved and said, “Didn’t you read the book at all? If we simply kill him, someone else will rise to power! We need to get something immensely powerful to restore the Nexus and overthrow him before he can get to it first! Something like...” He held up the old red book with a quill stuffed in its cover and opened it to a page with a picture of something strange was put inside.

“What is that?” Bob asked Argo, who sat the book on the large wooden counter and tapped on the picture with a metal finger.

“This. This is an egg. You guys might know what kind it is. Can you tell me?” he asked the man wearing a white leather vest.

“It’s an Enderdragon Egg!” Death answered for him, “Why do we need it?”

Back in reality, Michael let go of his talk key and asked Bryan, “Wait, why do we need it?”

“I don’t know, I thought you did.”

“Quickly, we gotta stall em! Uhh…”

“Uhh…”

“I- Oh why can’t I remember what it was”

“I got it!”

“What?”

“So we dress you up as Twilight and…”

Michael facepalmed before saying, “This is serious, I’m totally stalling right now… got it!”

He went back to the game and explained to the other players that the egg is what they need to power the Nexus, a complicated Redstone machine full of lamps and other flashing lights. The thing is, they didn’t know where an endgame stronghold was on this world since the sole purpose was to create a web series lasting at least ten episodes and feel really good about it. Well, Bryan, Michael, and Avery did, but where’s the filmmaking magic if they revealed that they totally knew where it was?

“So where is the egg?” Bob asked Argo.

“You know, that is a good question.”

-_/==+;’:]I[|x}|<.>/|{x|]I[:’;+==\_-

New Ponyville, one day ago, March 15, 1048CR.

“So what do you want? Comet? Hey, Comet!” Tellis called out to his goddaughter next to him in the passenger seat, who was looking out the driver side window towards the McPony’s.

“I don’t want anything.”

“Oh come on, I’m sure you want something. Hold on, gimme a second here,” Tellis said to Comet then the box next to his car, the Autobuggy. It’s a silly name for a type of car, I know, but it goes real fast, has excellent fuel efficiency, and the safety ratings were top notch. Flimflam Improvements really do make a decent car, and everything else for that matter. “From clothes to computers, carburetors to cash machines, we make everything!”

They sure do… heh. Oh yeah, Mcpony’s. Tellis ordered a Big Mac with a dandelion fritter happy meal for him and a parfait off the two bit menu for Comet. The young Diamond Dog working there didn’t seem to know what he was doing at the register but he was trying his best to give service with a smile without terrifying the customers, which took a lot of effort on his part. Bits are an ineffective currency in a modern market like this, because they are hard to manage in a situation such as this one if you don’t have magic or hands to move your money. Most places don’t really accept random approximations in burlap sacks anymore and expect you to count out the coins yourself. That’s kind of tough in a fast food drive through.

The sole reason he got the happy meal was for the toy inside. He nearly had every one of the Elements of Harmony toys, and he really wanted to rub it in Molly’s face the next time he saw her. She only had three of them and- aw come on, another Rarity? Dang. He’s got like four already! By this rate they’re gonna stop giving them out before he can get them all! He really is an immature child, pouting about the free toy in the cardboard box from the fast food place. Besides, it’s a bit strange for him to be collecting these things when he knows each of them somewhat personally, even though almost half of them are dead. Cancer got Rainbow, All that speed and she couldn’t out-fly. Pinkie’s heart simply gave up on her during one of the greatest parties in history. *Sigh*, we all knew she would go out doing what she loved… All right, enough of that kind of talk. What’s done is done.

Their final destination was a party at the Costume Castle, Hankinson Demarcus Pie, the son of Lemon Meringue Pie, the owner of the Costume Castle and cosplay enthusiast. His cooking wasn’t the best, so that’s why they hit up McPony’s before they picked up Lyra from the Octavia Memorial Royal Music Hall of New Ponyville. That sure is a mouthful, and OMRMHNP is a stupid acronym that ties tongues, so everypony that cares enough just calls it The Hall. There sure was a lot of lettuce on his Big Mac, but not a whole lot of dandelions… those commercials make it seem like the biggest, baddest sandwich in all the land, but you end up paying about a dozen bits for a pretty lame sandwich that is mostly lettuce that falls out of it anyways. The fried eggs were full of empty calories, and they didn’t really taste any good. The only actually somewhat good part of it is the ‘secret’ sandwich sauce that is somewhat decent and is probably the reason some of the lettuce stays part of the sandwich.

The Hall’s main lobby was a massive, cavernous room with lots of windows. It was almost like a train depot’s lobby, except it was much more regal and clean. They found Lyra asleep on a bench, an electric lyre as her pillow. She’s been here since five in the morning and it’s almost eight now, the waning sun casting warm light on the sleeping mint colored unicorn with the white-streaked pale cyan mane.

“Aw crap, we forgot to get her something,” Tellis whispered to Comet, the clanking of his folded up Omni-hoof on the tile floor was pretty loud, which made him thankful his apartment had carpeting, or he simply needed to wear boots more often.

“Just give her this,” Comet held up her parfait and gave it to Tellis.

“Ah… she hates these things. Oh well, she’s probably starving,” He awkwardly trotted up to Lyra with a berry, granola, and yogurt treat in his metal hand, loudly cleared his throat and that proved to be quite ineffective. If at first you don’t succeed, steal everything. After throwing the parfait in the trash, he carried Lyra on his back while Comet held her futuristic lyre as they went back to his car.

She stirred in her sleep and groggily said, “Bon-Bugh… The run-ngh of…leaves… tomorrow. Gotta sleep…”

“What is she talking about?” Comet asked Tellis while putting the electric lyre in the car.

“You should know by now that it’s common in our house for ponies to talk in their sleep,” Tellis answered as He put the sleeping unicorn mare in the backseat, where she was still sleeping. Goddesses, she was a heavy sleeper.

He adjusted her tail, which got stuck under her when she was sat down, and made his way back over to the driver door. Ponyville was beautiful at this time, but twilight doesn’t last forever. Neither does parties, Tellis better get moving before he’s late for Hank’s party! He switched on the radio and the energetic voice of the reinstated radio DJ Vinyl Scratch filled the air.

“Hello, New Ponyville! Vinyl Scratch here dropping the freshest beats around and giving you crazy ponies the music you deserve! So in the news today, you know that pony running around, stealing from all the rich ponies up in Goldenlight? Personally, I say more power to him, but professionally, I say that WYNK is in Goldenlight and that guy has some buckshot with his name on it if he even thinks about hitting this place. Anyways, there’s a storm scheduled next Friday so don’t forget your umbrellas! It’s time for some music! Hope you like the Hoof Beats, cause I do.”

Comet looked at Tellis uneasily. He’s always had a beef with the ponies that lived in Goldenlight and he’s been sneaking out late at night recently to do Celestia knows what out there in the big city. The lavender pony was focusing on the road, approaching Six Harmonies Bridge that linked Old Town with the Everfree District and Lyra rolled around in the backseat onto her side and woke up.

“Wha- where am I?”

Comet took this moment and decided to say something stupid, “We’re ponynapping you! Ooooooh!” She waved her hooves around in front of the dazed pony’s face.

“What?!” Lyra shouted, still not recognizing that it was Comet. They can both be really stupid sometimes. Lyra’s horn glowed brightly as her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell back down to the seat. The car rapidly accelerated while Tellis desperately tried to regain control of the steeling wheel.

“Lyra, let go of the car! It’s us! Get back in your body, now! Goddesses!” Tellis screamed at the comatose body of an astral possessing Lyra Heartstrings who was now the car, “Now why’d you have to go and do that, Comet?”

“I didn’t know she would freak out and turn into the car!”

Lyra regained consciousness and her back arced as her soul went back into her body. She began to breathe heavily, looks like re-entry takes a lot out of you for that particular spell.

“She didn’t turn into the car, she took control of it. I thought I told you to never do that to my car again!” Tellis turned to Lyra before scolding her, “It’s not like I’m driving or anything! Geez!”

Comet’s ears lie down flat as she lowered her head, her rainbow-colored bangs covering half of her face, “Sorry, Tellis.”

He turned to the young mare next to him and said in a calm tone, “Don’t be, Comet, you weren’t the one that possessed the car. Besides, where were you going with that? I mean, I know you know a bunch of more practical spells than just astral possession! I have seen you Blink like a hundred times around the house. ”

“Well… I-“

“Whatever, think before doing something stupid. You have to be prepared to live with the consequences,” He said gloomily, attention being directed towards his Omni-hoof, “Let’s just get to the party, your little stunt might have made us late, Lyra.”

“Sorry…”

“You should be, and here I was, thinking that I was the irresponsible foal who nailed together all the chairs and tables in his kitchen and called it ‘Fort Kickass’.”

“I said I was sorry, and that was pretty funny now that you think of it,” Lyra apologized before softly chuckling to herself.

With a mad look in his eyes, Tellis shouted, “Nopony likes a pessimist, Lyra!”

The mint mare cocked her head to the side and asked, “What?”

Comet pushed her bangs out of her eyes and said, “Who knows? This family is a bunch of crazies.” A family, she says. Guess you could call it that, even though none of them are even remotely related by blood, they were brought together by random chance, tragic loss, and opportunity. Not necessarily in that order, though.

Well, it wasn’t much farther to Hank’s home/workplace now and Tellis slowed down a bit. Hank has been known to dress up like Batpony and run around at night gruffly shouting “I’m Batpony” or simply “Batpony” but hopefully the party he’s throwing is preventing him from doing that which he loves. Tellis could barely remember what the little cosplayer actually looks like other than a male version of Pinkie Pie. It’s really weird that these two kids look so much like their grandparents, but that isn’t really important right now. What was important was the greeter in front of the Costume Castle dressed as...Tellis. How did he know what… and why? Sure It’s flattering, but what the hay?

After parking his car in the shop’s parking lot, he trotted up to the pink pony with the white wig, brown jacket, blue pants, and asked, “Uhh… Hank?”

Hank, with his best Tellis impression, which was eerily spot on, replied, “Hey! I see you finally made it! What took you so long?”

This was getting creepy, it was as if he were staring into a mirror that made him look less like a mare. Who did he get to do the illusion spell for his coat color? Or maybe it was dye, he couldn’t tell. Let’s just hope that whatever it is that it’s temporary, Lemon would kill him if he inspired her son to do something this insane! Still he had to admit, Hank was pretty darn good at what he does for being just a little colt of twelve years, must be why his Cutie Mark was a mustachioed question mark. The small master of disguise’s Omni-hoof actually had moving fingers!

“We had to get Lyra, and you know how musicians are, right… me?”

Hank looked up at the pony he was emanating and beamed, “Cool beans!”

“That’s exactly what I would have said… I have too many questions,” Tellis whispered to himself, actually to himself. Not the pony in front of him. The others had caught up with Tellis, and Comet had put on her navy blue hoodie that she left in the car a few days ago since it was getting pretty cold outside. Lyra looked at Tellis, then to Hank, then back to Tellis while Comet simply pushed her way past them and into the thumping bass coming from inside the large store.

“Are you serious? You can’t be-“

Both Hank and Tellis turned to Lyra and said simultaneously, “Quit being so uptight Lyra, if I didn’t know any better- will you stop doing that? I’m serious. How are you- Timey-wimey. Successful turnip. Lightning’s bad, m’kay? Jukebox of destiny. Alpac-“

Lyra has had enough of this stupidity. She got up on her hind legs and shouted at the two colts, “Shut up! Do you have any brains between the two of you?”

Tellis was looking right at Lyra’s serious face while the young buck next to him was turning his gaze more southward. He did his doppelganger a solid by using his good hoof to lift Hank’s chin up to avoid a situation that was anymore awkward than it already was.

He leaned in closer to Hank as Lyra was lecturing them about maturity and whispered to him, “I think we should go inside, she’s gonna keep us out here all night being all self-righteous. On three.”

Hankinson got up off his haunches and shouted, “Three!” before bolting inside with Tellis next to him.

The naturally white-maned pony congratulated Hank as Lyra dropped to all fours and angrily yelled at them. When they burst through the wooden double doors, Lyra was waiting for them, her greenish aura radiating off her body.

“Oh yeah…she can do that,” Hank said before Tellis could.

“Hey! I was talking and you g-“

“Quit being a party pooper, Heartstrings!” Lemon Meringue called out from a staircase leading to the second floor where the party was being held. The pale white earth pony with a curly yellow mane asked her son about his day who answered with, “Fine, mom,” and moved past her up the stairs and through the door to his home.

Lemon approached Lyra and gave her a big one-sided hug, and when she pulled away she turned to Tellis and asked him, “So how’s Comet?”

Tellis held up his Omni-hoof and counted out, “Well, she drinks all my soda, she doesn’t have enough hats, she has too many hats of a certain type, and she broods more than batpony. So basically, we’re doing pretty well.”

“That’s good to hear,” Lemon brought here forehooves together and beamed, “Come on, this day-before-day-before-the-end-of¬-spring-break party is just starting!”

-_/==+;’:]I[|x}|<.>/|{x|]I[:’;+==\_-

“So why are you dressed as me?” Tellis asked Hank before taking a sip of punch. The master of disguise was eating a cupcake drenched in Mild West hot sauce spiked with liquefied rainbow, so it really wasn’t safe for equine consumption. He poked at an enchanted contact lens that made his eyes an intense amber hue and adjusted themselves to the size of his irises accordingly. They’re marvelous things, color selector contacts.

“I’m dressed as you cause I’ve already gone as everypony else, remember?”

Tellis put his cup down on the large table, rubbed the back of his head with his good hoof and said, “Not really.”

“Also, you wear like a lot of clothes all the time and that’s easy to go on with a costume. You have no idea how hard it was to recreate Shining’s Cutie Mark! It took me like… three hours.”

“Isn’t her Cutie Mark this crazy, super detailed thingy with a machine and blue lightning bolt junk all over the place?” Tellis asked before picking his cup back up and taking another drink.

“Yeparoonie!” Hank beamed. It sure is a mystery as to why he acts like his grandma all the time, one Tellis or anypony else did not care enough about to solve. Maybe he’s part changeling? Nah. But who cares if he is? Hank is awesome! Lemon was motioning for Tellis to come over to her from the kitchen.

“Sorry to cut this conversation short Hank, but your mom’s calling me,” Tellis apologized to Hank, who was eating another one of those death cupcakes. After dodging dancing party guests and this one drunken mare nopony was really sure why she was there, Tellis was in the kitchen. Lemon was pulling a green bottle out of her refrigerator, which made the other adults in the room take notice, especially CJ, who just turned 21 two months ago. Twilight Sparkle, Lyra, and Applebloom were waiting in anticipation for the contents of the bottle to be poured into glasses set on the kitchen’s center island. It was a well known fact that ponies…love…booze.

“Now whatcha got there?” Molly asked and popped out from behind the refrigerator door.

“Nothing for little fillies, now run along,” Lemon sweetly explained to Molly, who snatched the sealed bottle out of Lemon’s hooves and examined the label.

“Hey! Why you-“

“Hold your horses Lemon, I’m just lookin!” Melinda Shy gave the bottle back to an angry Lemon and said, “Champagne, huh? That’s a good year.” How old is she, thirteen? By the Goddesses. The little yellow Pegasus had the same color scheme as her grandmother, just like Hank and Comet. She had gotten black highlights in her mane and tail, and cut it really short, a lot like a certain Wonderbolt she adored, who gave her the cracked goggles she wore around her neck at all times. She was wearing a grey flight jacket tonight to fight against the city’s night chill, the one with the homemade Wonderbolts pin sewn into the collar.

Fluttershy, Molly’s only legal guardian and grandmother, was nowhere to be found. Not surprising since she slowly developed agoraphobia two years after Ponyville was destroyed so long ago. But even that didn’t stop her from getting some of that flank, because about four or five years after she was diagnosed, internet dating had been born. But enough about Molly’s heritage, there was champagne to consume!

Twilight looked over to Molly and asked, “Molly, why don’t you go see how Comet’s doing? She’s on the roof with Shining.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it. I’ll get outta your manes,” and with that, she left the kitchen to find the roof access.

“Is she really out on the roof?” Cinnamon Jack asked Twilight before adjusting the hat she got from her aunt. The olive green earth pony mare with the brunette mane was an auto mechanic, a strange line of work for one hailing from the Apple clan, but it was what she was good at. Fixing cars has always been her passion, and she’s worked on the Autobuggy dozens of times, fine tuning her and replacing the old stock parts for something with a little more oomph in them. She even worked on his prosthetic several times. Tellis was proud to know such a gifted mechanic, but damn was she a mean drunk! Good thing it was only a bit of champagne and not something stronger, like whiskey or vodka.

It was a little bit hard pouring something out of a bottle into tall glasses without any opposable thumbs or magic to help you, but Lemon was used to how her body works, poured that champagne like a pro and set the bottle in the middle of the ring of five drinks. Everypony took a glass and waited for Lemon to say something. She realized that she was supposed to do that, moved her glass away from her lips and asked, “So what are we drinking to?”

CJ looked at her glass in her hooves longingly and said, “Uh…”

“I thought you knew,” Lyra commented while she bobbed her glass around with her magic.

“I think this would be a great time to quote one of my favorite books written by Starswirl the Bearded himself,” Twilight said before clearing her throat and continuing, ”Ahem, ‘Be that as-“

“I know!” Tellis interjected, “This is perfect, ‘For Life, Love, and Loot!’ “

“Tellis, I wasn’t-“

“Wouldn’t we need rum for that?” CJ asked Tellis.

“Who cares? I’m taking it. I’m making this toast in honor of Life, Love, and Loot!” Lemon Meringue Pie beamed as she raised her glass up to be met with four others.

--._-=/’:|]|[|:’=-_.--

Gemstone Cruises cruise liner, in the Floatin’ Boat. March 15 2013, 9:00 P.M.

Five bottles full of varying spirits imbibed with special qualities were pulled apart from each other before three humans, a blue monster, and a lavender pony shouted, “CHEERS!”

Even though they weren’t really becoming intoxicated, they were acting so for the sake of the web series. Plus it was pretty funny watching Cookie Monster pour hard liquor with regenerative properties into his trashcan mouth. New cast members have been added and Bob had died. It was really emotional, well as emotional as they could make it with Minecraft.

“I miss Bob already,” Stock_LockePurel, the new female player that has taken Bob’s place lamented as she uncorked a bottle of Magma Malt. Magma Malt, when heat’s about, drink this so you won’t cop out!

Tellis lowered his Glistering Melon Healing Cider and drunkenly said, “Wha- yah… you nevah even mert the guh! He was dead… for at leasht a day… before… before we met you, lady!”

“You are one drunk pony, Tellis,” Yuri commented before taking a swig of Cane Punch! Alcoholic Energy Drink, causing him to start twitching slightly. The redstone infused potion crackled with the Aether’s energy on his tongue and it gave the drink a mellower, strawberry-like flavor that made one feel like they were floating on a cloud while the Cane Punch! made them want to ride that cloud through a wind tunnel.

Hive’s drink was apparently Nightowl, A tart beverage with the final ingredient being essence of golden carrot, because his eyes had started glowing and he was avoiding looking directly at the redstone-powered glowstone blue neon lamps hanging around the pub. “I think I’m gonna be seasick… ohh…”

“What? We haven’t even left port yet! We should have by now,” Death observed before taking another drink of his Fireball, a type of vodka made from potatoes, nether warts, water of course, and ghast tears. That stuff made all your problems seem like they weren’t anything to shed any tears about, but despite its name, it felt like you were the drinking ice-cold shattered dreams of a giant jellyfish from hell. Funny, because that was exactly what you were doing.

DBC sat his bottle onto a table before stumbling out of the pub in search of the captain to ask him what’s up with the delays, they needed to leave port a half hour ago! Tellis awkwardly trotted after him, leaving the other three behind to enjoy their bizarre drinks in the large metal cruise’s pub. He looked around the narrow corridor; Death couldn’t have gotten far… Tellis pushed his way past a surprised human avatar wearing a tuxedo and headed up a staircase leading to the upper deck. A voice on the P.A. system alerted all passengers aboard that Gemstone Cruises will be departing as soon as possible.

“Gyood! I’m ti-tired of waitin… anyways,” Tellis slurred to no one in particular. He passed an open room where it looked like a person wearing a smooth metal mask and a fedora was staring into a glass pane ‘mirror ‘on the wall. His vision was really blurry, though, whoever that was could have had a face or not. Who knows? He thought it was best not to get involved, plus that guy was really spooky. What was he doing? Oh yeah, looking for Death. He found it alright, as a skeleton armed with one of its own ribs sharpened to a lethal point burst out of a storage closet and tackled the drunken pony. It took a lot of bucking and smashing its head in with his Omni-hoof, but he emerged victorious with only several major stab wounds.

Michael couldn’t feel how bad it hurt to be argonianclaw right now, but his avatar was in extreme, almost unbearable pain and was leaning up against the wall, bleeding to death. All Michael could see was his avatar standing on all fours in the middle of the hallway with the puff of smoke that was once the skeleton going into the ventilation system. Tellis pulled out his bottle of Healing Cider, finished it, ripped the bone man’s femur off and stuffed it into his pack. Bonemeal is scarce around these parts, you see, and good bones to make it with don’t come by easily. He didn’t want to just leave a skeletal corpse lying around for someone to discover, so he did the only logical thing and took it with him. Now a sober sentient talking pony would have put the skeleton back where it came from… but come on, what did you expect?

As he stumbled through the corridors with his grotesque cargo, Tellis felt it get suddenly lighter as it broke in half and left a pelvis attached to a leg in the middle of the brightly lit carpeted hallway for a janitor to find. Eventually as he wandered through the ship in his search for his friend, the magics binding the skeleton together wore out and all he was holding was the top half of a bleached, cracked skull turning to dust in his metal hand. Letting the skull fall to the ground to crumble, Tellis looked around and saw that he somehow found himself inside the engine room. The body of a maintenance worker lying on the cold steel floor had several green spikes in his back and the heavy pipe wrench clutched in his hand had green blood and chitin-like scales stuck to it. After he searched around for a bit, Tellis saw the corpse of one of those walking green penises, a Creeper, leaning against the wall of some large piston turbine. The spines on its back were the only thing holding the smoldering, deflating monster up, seeing as how its skull had been bashed in with the maintenance worker’s wrench. So that’s why they haven’t left yet, monsters had secretly invaded the ship, but how? Mobs weren’t this smart, and the ship was pretty well lit with not a lot of places to hide. Tellis’s thoughts were interrupted by a nearby soft hissing and small, quiet footsteps. There was no question about it. There was another Creeper around here and Tellis didn’t have a weapon. He’d have a fighting chance if he could just get to that wrench…

In Minecraft, a height advantage is always ideal in a combat situation, but Tellis couldn’t get any kind of hold onto the turbine, especially as inebriated he was. He picked himself off the ground real quick and remembered that he had an almost broken stone sword in his pack! He grabbed the small, crude blade from his bag, and it grew to full size by the time he had it in front of him, ready to strike. He had maybe three or four good strikes left in this thing before it shattered to pieces and he would have a useless pile of nothing on his hooves, so he better make each swing count. He found the four-legged creature leaning over and staring at the dead maintenance worker with its sunken, glowing red eyes, its long tongue probing the corpse for whatever reason. By the goddesses these things were ugly.

“Here goes nothin, CHAAAARGE!!” Tellis screamed before running the Creeper through with his stone sword before it could realize what was going on. Tellis quickly turned about and bucked the monster away from him while it curled over, exposing and raising the spines all along its back, volatile chemicals reacting inside of it, causing the Creeper to rapidly bloat and hiss loudly. His Omni-hoof blocked some of the Creeper flak but Tellis still had several spines lodged inside of him, which he pulled out and dropped to the floor with a hollow clattering. Tellis really needed to eat, heal his wounds and all that. Too bad Creeper meat is completely inedible, but who would want to eat that thing? The only thing he could think of that was nastier were Withers. Those bastards were a huge, tiny head shooting, blood leeching, and impossibly strong cross between Cerberus, a snake, and a freaking tank. Once you tore it up enough, it would stop flying, raise its armor, and become invulnerable to arrows. And to make matters worse, it starts machine-gunning its debilitating leech things at you and anything around it! He’s only met with one of these things while exploring a cave that was right next to a jungle temple and it killed him within a minute! That boss mob made Silverfish seem like playful puppies in comparison.

Picking up the pipe wrench and having much vision much clearer now, Tellis made his way out of the engine room to get back to the pub and hopefully the others.

--._-=/’:|]|[|:’=-_.--

The Floatin’ Boat, Ten Minutes ago

“Hyeayh, DB…wait up!” argonianclaw called out for Death_By_Cupcake as he followed him out of the pub and went the opposite direction he was traveling in his drunken stupor.

“He’s really stupid,” With several bottles of empty Nightowl scattered around on the table he was at, Hive was properly drunk, and recording video. The bartender sure was generous, seeing as how she was a dispenser labeled ‘Mattie the booze machine’ with a sleeping villager in a chair next to her. The Squidward-esque humanoid wearing a white apron over a brown robe with his arms crossed had a pretty nice job. Do nothing and get paid in cold, hard emeralds for it.

A dull thud was heard from below them and the power went out, bathing the room in darkness. Luckily, they all had torches on them to set on the tables before emergency redpower was activated and a soft red glow mixed with the torchlight produced by the three heroes. Hive had drank so much Nightowl that his eyes would be glowing for hours, so he gave his torches to Locke and Yuri for them to use before pulling a fresh iron sword out from his pack that he’s been saving for an occasion like this. A zombie wearing an iron helmet stumbled into the room and snarled at the three humans and panicking Native dispensing Blaze Ale from Mattie and guzzling the strength-boosting potion down. As he grabbed the diamond blade from underneath the bar, a Silverfish jumped onto his head and began gnawing away at it.

“Get it off! Get it off!” the bartender screamed while the huge bug’s razor sharp pincers dug into his skull and a slash from Hive’s blade sliced the insect in two. He had saved the bartender’s life, who was pulling the Silverfish’s remains off his head, but the thing with Silverfish is, there’s never just one and while the others were busy dealing with the zombie by smashing wooden chairs over its head and using the broken pieces as impromptu wooden spears to finish it off, Hive searched around for any more bugs the size of corgis. There were ventilation shafts above them and a loud banging from it alerted Hive as to what was approaching them. If it wasn’t Silverfish, he didn’t know what it was going to be.

Dozens of Wither heads spew out from the ventilation shaft and float towards their next victims. The floating super leeches weren’t that fast or strong, but they sure were terrifying. The Testificate looked like he was having a seizure while Locke used the bartender’s sword to defend herself and the others from the onslaught of demonic creatures pouring in from above.

“Aw, crap! Why is Tellis…” Yuri stuck a smashed open Nightowl bottle into a Wither head floating towards him, “Never around when things hit the fan?!” Hive was putting the Zombie’s helmet on and clearing the doorway for an exit before he shouted to the others, “There’s just too many! We have to get out of here!”

“You don’t say?!” Locke shouted condescendingly at Hive before quickly sticking her sword into her universal sheath and picking up the motionless yet alive barman.

Yuri dispensed as much alcohol from Mattie as he could, stuffed the bottles into his pockets, gave her a hug, picked up a pointy stick broken off a chair, and left the pub following the others to the upper levels where Death had gone.

--._-=/’:|]|[|:’=-_.--

Tellis was slashing, bashing and smashing his way up to the command center where Death had a strong chance of being with a pipe wrench in his teeth and an iron sword off of a zombie in his metal hand. He was on his hind legs now, a bipedal walking expert from years of having nothing to do in Couldsdale as a colt. The only light was coming from small strips of redpower lights along the sides of the corridor’s floor. He had to step over a lot of debris and bodies before he reached an operational elevator. He called the lift, and as if it were somehow scripted, several zombies came out of the darkness aiming to crack his head wide open were dispatched by an adrenaline-fueled flurry of attacks. The wrench broke somehow, just shattered into little pieces as he swung his head at the last Zombie. Freaking iron… Turns out it wasn’t the most durable weapon in the world, but it was a freaking wrench!

He went up the elevator, and was almost to the command center now. But before he could reach it, an explosion from the floor above him caused the ceiling to cave in front of him. Beams of metal, some redstone lamp fragments, gravel, and other materials blocked Tellis from going straight to his objective. The only way there now was to backtrack down the stairs and find some way around the blockage.

There were more explosions, far off ones but rapid. Someone had set off a whole bunch of TNT on the ship! Tellis held onto the maintenance stairwell railing as the entire cruise liner started to turn on it’s side.

“Whoa-ah!” He exclaimed while dropping his sword down the central shaft, which came back up past him as the ship slowly but surely turned completely upside down, “That- did that just happen?! Goddesses I hate TNT!”

Dropping to now where the bottom of the stairs was the top, Tellis retrieved up his weapon as water from all directions knocked away the blocks of thin walls and creating debilitating waterfalls that were hard to swim up.

The ship was sinking rapidly, too rapidly. Tellis hated how things worked in this world and would trade his old life in an instant. He was tired of being hurt, tired of dying only to wake up moments later, feeling like he wasn’t ever in control of his actions. He was so tired of fighting all the time, tired of being set on fire all the time, tired of running everywhere, and just tired of all the insanity.

Back in reality, Michael was drinking a cola that he almost forgot he put in his bag, unaware of his avatar’s plight.

There was so much water everywhere, Tellis almost started to drown a couple times on his way to a different section of the ship. The torches in his pockets were soaked and useless in the dark, flooded corridors, but a destroyed storage crate leaking Nightowl into the water made the only visible light for Tellis to navigate by. Why do people drink it if it freaking glows? The thickly colored golden drink made the water look beautiful, but he really needed to move on before the water pressure at the bottom of the wharf crushed him like a bug. He swam some more and saw a bright light coming in from some kind of tunnel blasted out through the floors of the ship out to the top deck.

He swam through the tunnel and came out the other end a short distance away and had a coughing fit. He thought that was going to throw up a lung full of water the way he felt. Death_By_Cupkacke was unconscious on a nearby stone brick wall.

Crawling to the barely conscious Muppet to try wake him up, Tellis realized that he was in an endgame stronghold! That bright light was a big pile of glowstone in a corner, so mystery solved. He got to his hooves and grabbed DBC by his suit and started to shake him. Who cares if he might have been injured or in shock or his neck was broken, Tellis needed backup.

“Bryan! Bryyann! Bryyn! Byrn! Byyyrrne!” Tellis started to shout at Death’s face, repeating ‘Bryan’ while his speech degraded into a single syllable.

“Wha- What?”

He prodded the suit wearing monster in the shoulder and asked, “You still got some more of that Fireball, man?”

“What I- you… oh! Yeah, you know I do,” He reached into his pockets and pulled out the long, slender bottle full of purple liquid that refused to blend with clear liquid yet swirled even when the bottle was completely motionless. DBC drank most his Fireball and gave the rest Tellis before standing up and filling his bottle with water from a nearby underground stream to wash the Fireball down with. Death gave his liver a surprise before following Tellis over to where the glowstone was. They broke off several pieces of the brittle, luminescent material from the Nether because their torches were soaked and useless. They pass through the abandoned camp set up by King Avery’s troops and pick up the Emestrian military-issue diamond plated steel armor reinforced with varying degrees of magical protections, all in pristine condition.

“Why is there enchanted diamond armor here?” DBC asked Tellis while putting on some Feather-Fall III Protection II boots, He’ll definitely need those where they’re going. Tellis used his sword to pry open a crate containing a chest, which confused him slightly. He got over it and took out the Efficiency III pick and the pair of Eyes of Ender out of the chest, pocketed the glowing endgame keys, and stuck the pick into his pack, where it shrank into a more manageable size.

“Must be the stuff they left behind, I mean, this crap’s heavy. I’m just glad that I’m able to rebuild this armor into something that’ll fit me,” Tellis answered Death.

“Are you wearing a helmet on your ass?”

“Technically, yes,” And two pairs of pants, another helmet on his head and a breast plate strapped to his chest.

“Dude, your armor rating must be through the roof!” Bryan said IRL to Michael when he saw how much diamond armor was on his avatar compared to his. But actually, argonianclaw’s stomach is exposed, so it’s pretty much the same amount.

Though he is slightly bigger than Death_By_Cupcake…

“Naw Bryan, it’s the MLP mod, remember? Makes you see my avatar with the pony model and armor and stuff, remember?”

“Oh yeah… That is so cool.”

Michael simply said, “Mods,” and held out his fist, which Bryan touched with his.

“Yeah mods!”

“Okay, back to ass kick-oh my god, Creeper,” Michael knocked the Creeper off the ledge into the ravine that cut through the stronghold, “God I hate 1.47!”

“I know, I literally looked away for just a second and there he was,” Bryan said as he retrieved some arrows from a barrel and an enchanted Power II Punch I Fire Aspect I bow from the chest next to it.

They cross the wood and string bridge crossing the chasm and connecting the two parts of the stronghold together. It was pretty straightforward from there, and they found the portal room real fast, and the bodies of Avery’s advance team inside. It seems they were such chumps that even with diamond super armor they were eviscerated by silverfish! Holes all over the room from where the giant bugs burst out from the walls, the still active portal and the mob spawner smashed to bits with a pickaxe.

Tellis turned to DBC and asked, “You ready?”

“I’m ready, buddy.”

“Alright, let’s do this.”

They leap into the portal. Not much is known what happened in there but the stories do say that whatever went down was fantastically spectacular.

It was raining experience orbs, the Endermen were cowering in fear, and they were one step closer to saving Emestris, “That was at the very absolute least… 20% cooler than BebopVox’s castle.”

“What? That was cool and everything, but Bebop has an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a rollercoaster, a nuclear reactor, and there was this statue of him fighting a cybernetic polar bear wielding a lightsaber!”

Michael pushed a lock of his messy dark brown mop of a haircut away from a hazel eye, which was poking him in it, and replied to his friend’s “You got me there.”

“ So who’s gonna take the dragon egg?”

“I dunno, rock, paper, scissors to decide who gets it?”

“Dude, my guy has hooves.”

Bryan said in his best trolling voice, “I know, right?”

“Why I ought to… no but seriously, best two out of three wins?”

Michael won the match, and was met by his friend’s big blue puppy eyes behind rimless glasses.

“Dude, I watch a show where all the characters look like that, ALL THE TIME. That has no effect on me whatsoever, besides, we’re gonna put it in the Nexus together when we get back.”

“That sounds like a plan, Stan”

“Uhh, Okay! Moving on…” Michael turned his gaze back towards his laptop and continued to move his avatar towards the exit portal, which was unfortunately on a hard to reach ledge.

Eventually they reach the portal, use a piston to knock the egg into an item they could pick up, and jump down into the exit. The two adventurers go through the deep experience that is the ending of Minecraft. No spoilers, don’t want to ruin any fun now, do I? But before Michael could use his avatar to place the proof of their conquest inside the safe confines of their magnificent castle, he paused his game and said, “Hey, you smell that? It smells like… oil?”

“I smell burnt toast, weird.”

“Not as weird as- what the buck is that!?” A large portal suddenly appears before the two friends. The portal illuminated the dim room, purple light mixing with red light reflected off of empty can of cola and other trash scattered about as purple lightning arced every which way, destroying Michael’s laptop and blowing massive gusts of wind, blowing all the boy’s not yet destroyed gear around while terrifying them to death. They scream at the top of their lungs as the vortex pulled them in to who knows where.

.o0{{I-<][-{[/%/]}-][>-I}}0o.

Ponyville Collective Knowledge District, 1007 CR.

Twilight Sparkle was stargazing with her new telescope she got as a gift from her friend Rarity. It was even bigger than her last one. It was so big, that she put the old on it as the secondary scope! She pulled away from the high-powered device to write something down on a piece of parchment paper with her quill, and as she turned back towards it, she saw a bright purple light in the sky! She could only wonder as to what it was, but only for a swift moment, for the light split into two parts, one significantly larger than the other, and shot off in two directions! The smaller bit was flying directly towards Twilight at amazing speed! She concentrated as hard as she could on slowing whatever it was down, but it wasn’t enough! Twilight turned right to shield herself from the incoming projectile, and to not gore whatever it was on her horn, if it was indeed alive! The object collided with Twilight knocking her down and into the library tower that she lived in, landing shortly inside.

A disoriented Twilight got back up, quickly trotted over to the familiar blue shape lying unconscious on the red carpeted library floor. It was Rainbow Dash! She looked a bit younger and her hair was slightly longer, and styled a bit differently. But it was her! Same cutie mark and everything! Twilight shouted for Spike to come help her immediately.

A/N It IS a bit confusing having an alternate-alternate universe that branches from the New Ponyville City one, but what the hell.