Okay, so the rocks are magic, but still.
Scientists say that the universe, for the most part, makes sense.
They're not entirely wrong, but most of the time people don't get what they mean. The whole fundamental thought process behind science is quite simply making sense out of the universe, forming models and calculations that fit the data. Whenever something happens that doesn't fit their models, they'll break down the old one and rebuild until they can get the new thing to fit. Science, in essence, is the willingness to admit that the knowledge base being used is not only not universal, it might very well be wrong.... which is why they need to constantly be improved and updated!
To be entirely fair, Maud Pie did not consider herself a scientist in the professional sense. True, she was working toward her Rocktorate--actually a multi-discipline doctorate covering geology, mineralogy, earth pony magic, and pottery (one of the most ancient and terrifying art forms known to ponykind)--but she wasn't a doctor of anything yet, and science wasn't the why behind her studies. But she did, in her own way, accept that things could happen that didn't fit into her sense of reality. She was related to one of those things, after all; her youngest and most energetic sister had long ago forced the stoic pony to form an independent predictive model specifically for her, one that operated quite logically and remained internally self consistent while operating perpendicular to most known laws of physics.
So when a wave of seawater appeared out of nowhere and drenched her while she was standing in her family's north field, she merely blinked and turned her gaze toward the apparent source. Which was an odd, centaur-like greenish creature with hands for hooves and an extra pair of eyes. She didn't even flinch; random monstrosities appearing out of nowhere to threaten the world were a bi-annual occurrence these days, there was absolutely no need in any way for any explanation whatsoever on where this creature had come from.
(The centaur thing had been wandering the bottom of the ocean on another world and stepped in a drowned temple, crushing hundreds of magical time machine prototypes and causing a dimensional rift which had brought it and a fair amount of seawater to the rock field. This didn't really matter, because it would not have changed Maud's reaction in the slightest had she known.)
"WRAAAAAAAUAUAUAUAUAAUGHAAAGAAAAA!" the creature shouted at the sky, stretching its arms dramatically. "AAAAAAAAUUUGH!" it added as an afterthought. "AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhaha!" it laughed, tears streaming from one pair of eyes.
Maud's gaze remained flat. But she did shift her legs a bit, widening her stance.
"I'm.... I'm free!" The creature clutched at the moist dirt. "I'm free! Hahahaha!"
After a moment, it stood. "This... where is this?" The head looked around, frowning. "This isn't anywhere near the ocean. No matter!" The creature's mouth morphed into a maniac grin. "All I need to do is find the Crystal Gems, and destroy them all!"
At around this point, the creature finally noticed Maud. It frowned for a moment, as if in deep thought. Then it smiled. "Ah, right, one of those earth creatures... I guess the humans must be keeping you as some sort of pet." It chuckled, rose a fist, and pounded the ground Maud had been standing on half a second ago.
Maud glanced at the fist next to her. It was about her size and half that again... which wasn't surprising, considering how tall the creature itself was. She took a moment to examine the small impact crater, calculating the amount of force it would take for an object that size to have formed such an indentation.
"What the--?" The creature slid its fist toward her, snarling as she spun under its arm. "Let me crush you, little thing!"
Maud glanced up, seeing the other arm swing at her. Perhaps it wasn't the smartest thing to assume that the arm had the same amount of strength as the other one, but despite her tendency toward logical thinking Maud did have some emotions, and being called a thing had set her teeth just slightly on edge behind her closed lips. So instead of dodging, she reared up and pounded the incoming appendage with both her forehooves.
"GAAAAAARUGH!" The centaur's arm reeled back, the creature half wincing as it shook its hand. "What--?! I am MALACHITE!" it screamed. "I will not be bested by some pathetic beast!" With an ironically bestial roar, it lifted its two fists and slammed them both down at Maud.
Who caught them in one forehoof each, her rear legs spread wide as she braced herself.
"...WHAT."
Maud tensed as the fists she was holding pushed down into her hooves, feeling her whole body burn with effort as the creature--Malachite, apparently--tried to push her into the ground. She felt her rear hooves sliding into the dirt as she was slowly shoved backward, digging a pair of small trenches into the ground. For many ponies, this would have been the end. For her, it was only the beginning.
With the faintest of smiles, the tiny gray pony in a simple dress re-aligned herself and shoved the giant fists back.
Malachite was pushed off a few paces, shock clear on its face as its hands hit the ground. Two of its four eyes narrowed, glaring at the pony suspiciously.
Maud stepped out of the trenches her rear hoofs had pushed, pulled a helmet from the secret place her sister had shown her how to access, and strapped it on her head.
The creature's eyes widened for a moment. Then a flash of white engulfed its head, fading to reveal a helmet of its own, with a hammer-like protrusion above its forehead and a pair of wings sculpted in sharp relief on either side. From the maniac grin on its face, Malachite expected some sort of shocked reaction.
Unfortunately for it, Maud merely let her eyelids droop half an inch more than usual.
"...No fear at all. Hmm.... I can respect that!" The four eyed abomination pushed itself back up. "Unfortunately, respect doesn't mean you get to live." With the power of a freight train, the strange beaked helmet swung down, crashing into the earth. It only took a moment for the creature to register that there was a distinctive lack of a squish, and it lifted its head to swing its gaze around. "Where are you, you little--?"
It was at about this time that Maud Pie demonstrated the capabilities of a mare who had spent her life lifting, moving, and breaking objects several times her weight from an early age on the wrist joint of one of the creatures foot-hands. These capabilities primarily consisted of projecting a significant amount of force at high speed centered around an area as small as a pony's hoof in a rapidly repeating motion.
"GRAAAAAAGAUGAAAGH!" Malachite almost collapsed, pulling the broken wrist under its body as it swiped with the opposite leg/arm at the tiny assailant. "You impudent whelp! I WAS AROUND BEFORE YOUR ANCESTORS GREW FUR!" It laughed maniacly as it managed to make contact, watching Maud fly into a boulder with an audible crack.
The pony let out the tiniest of moans, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment as she forced the world to stop whirling. When she opened them, she was confronted with the sight of Malachite charging helmet first and only just managed to leap away before the boulder she was resting on shattered completely.
This continued for a minute or two, the strange creature acting like some sick hybrid of ant and pigeon as it smashed boulder after boulder in a futile attempt to squish the tiny gray creature that was busily jumping between them. Perhaps the scene might have been considered epic, with appropriate background music and lighting, but in all honesty the two actors were entirely miscast; the charging beast was overselling its part far too much, and the pony simply wasn't emoting enough. Thus, the end result was probably best set to a more comedic beat, maybe something involving a saxophone.
Of course, all good things must come to an end. As well as all bad things. And all things that really didn't go either way. Entropy was a very jealous and spiteful sort of cosmic force, all things considered, even things that had come to an end already.
The last of the boulders shattered, and Malachite cackled. "Now, you animal, you have NOWHERE TO RUN!" It swung a meaty hand at the tiny pony, intent on grabbing the creature so it could be squished into so much greyish red paste.
It should be noted at this point that Maud Pie was, for a good portion of her life, a rock farmer. It should also be noted that she was an Earth Pony. Not a pony from Earth, in which case this entire sequence of events would have played out far differently, but a member of the magical quadrupeds native to this world that had a specific connection with the soil and the plants that grew in it. These two particular distinctions intersected in the entirety of Maud Pie's being, powering each other up exponentially for a set of unique capabilities that she, to be fair, did not usually demonstrate. And to be entirely honest, Malachite was nowhere near where it thought it was and could not have been expected to anticipate this unique set of capabilities.
Still, given how frustrating the battle had been thus far, it really shouldn't have been so shocked when a spur of rock suddenly jutted up and slammed it on the chin.
"...WHAT?!?!"
Malachite smashed the rock out of its vision, catching sight of the strange creature strapping pads to its leg joints. "YOU DARE TO DEFY ME, LITTLE THING?!" With a wave of its arms, the centaur-ish entity gathered the seawater that had splashed upon its arrival into a massive ropy tentacle thing that swerved out. "I WILL DROWN YOU IN WATERY DEATH YOU... DUMB... STUPID THING!"
Maud was barely able to get up another jutting cliff of stone before the tentacle smashed through it, wrapping around her and swiping her high into the air. She pushed against the constricting current, desperately trying to swim out of her physically improbable prison before her lungs decided to turn in their resignation and run away to have a bizarre lung baby together. Or perhaps that would only happen with her sister's lungs, now that she thought about it. Actually, having such strange hallucinatory considerations while fighting for her life was rather unusual for her, although to be fair fighting for her life was also an unusual circumstance in the first place...
Malachite laughed a laugh that could perhaps be described as evil, triumphant, and maniacal, if id didn't sound like an elephant choking on a blender. "PRAY TO WHATEVER PRIMITIVE HOOF GODS YOU WORSHIP, HUMAN PET! FOR TODAY YOU--!"
This was the point where Maud decided to give up on subtlety and just reached out for one of the rock fragments floating nearby her. As soon as she had a firm grip, she concentrated her will on warping its shape around her foreleg. The rock brushed against another fragment and absorbed it, stretching out again and again until the pony was encased in solid stone.
Malachite only had a second to stare in shock before the stone suddenly squeezed, launching Maud up out of the water like a cannonball.
It screamed in fury as the pony arced toward its face, hoof forward.
There was going to be a suitably epic declaration of frustration, but Maud interrupted with a jack-hammer-hoofstrike to the helmet's visor, smashing repeatedly at the upper pair of eyes behind them. Malachite tried to smash its fist into the pony, but Maud kicked herself off just before the fist made contact with the cracked visor and shattered it completely. The creature was too busy roaring in pain and anger to realize that Maud had landed on the back of its hand; by the time it had relocated her, she had already galloped up to its shoulder and was pummeling it hard. "ARAARGAUH! GET OFF, YOU PATHETIC SPECK!" It swiped at her again, but she dodged and slid down its back, coming to rest at the bend between its upper and lower body.
She took up a position, bucked as hard as she could, and was rewarded with a scream of pure pain.
Malachite twisted its upper body round, snarling as it spotted her. "So that's your game, is it?! YOU WILL PERISH!" It jumped up and spun, slamming its back into the ground. "Ha! Your power did you credit, little beast, but now this battle is over!"
For a moment, there was no sound but the creature's laughter.
Then the earth itself jutted up, wrapping each arm in thick manacles and binding the body in two tight arcs.
"WHAT?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!"
With a rumble, Maud Pie shot out of the ground, somersaulting through the air thrice before landing on Malachite's chest. Her breath was slightly ragged, a bit slow, but when she looked up the creature could see her expression was as frustratingly flat and uncaring as ever. As Malachite struggled against its bonds, the pony began to walk ever so slowly up the creature's neck, pulling herself onto the face of the monstrosity. One pair of eyes narrowed at her.
The other, though, widened. "Welp, I'm out."
Without any further warning, the body of Malachite began to waver before suddenly becoming enveloped in white light. Maud found herself falling to the ground as the form beneath her suddenly reduced to two much smaller shapes, one of which was running away on two legs. "Just so you know," the retreating figure shouted, "I was forced into this against my will, it's really all her fault--!"
With a roll of her eyes and a stomp of her hoof, Maud rose a chamber of rock around the blue figure, deriving some private amusement at the gulp of terror that she heard.
Unfortunately, this distracted her enough that a pair of orange hands were able to pin her forelegs against her dress and lift her into the air. The creature holding her was only twice her height, in comparison to the strange centaur-like entity she had been battling before, but she could recognize the now wingless shattered helmet and the fiery rage in the two eyes behind it. "You! You are a sick joke! You bested a fusion! You bested ME! ME! What manner of creature are you?!"
The pony gave her captor a very calm, collected glare. "My name... is Maud Pie."
The orange creature snorted. "Well, Maud Pie, I saw how you manipulated the rock; you can't do anything if you're not in contact with it." She squeezed the pony's ribcage. "And now that I have you in my grip, you can't use any of that impressive strength against me!" With a grim chuckle, the creature pulled her face close. "I want you to know, now more than ever, your efforts were futile! There is nothing you can do. I am--"
"Jasper."
The creature frowned. "...yes, that's my name--"
Maud sniffed. "Silica, impure, trace amounts of iron, formed in sediment. Breaks with a smooth surface. Generally orbicular."
"....what are you talking ab--?"
The pony snapped her jaws forward, biting down on the creature's hard nose.
"AUUGH! WHAT ARE YOU--?!"
There was an audible crack.
Jasper's eyes widened. "No! GET OFF OF ME!" Her body visibly warped as she released her grip on Maud, but the pony remained latched on. "No, you maniac! Don't you dare, don't you--" Another cracking sound, and suddenly Jasper's legs were gone. "You can't do this to me! You can't just--" She attempted to punch at her assailant, but her fist glitched into a shower of confetti. "ecno at siht potS! potS!"
And then, just like that, her entire body vanished in a flash of white, leaving the hard stone that was her nose in the jaws of her opponent.
Maud shrugged and, after a moment, brought the stone into her mouth. The blue figure watched in horror as she chewed, swallowed, raised her head to the sky to release beams of white light from her eyes and mouth, and finally let out a final, fiery burp.
"...Hmm. Spicy."
The pony turned to the other figure, who crouched and held up her hands. "I surrender, please don't eat me!"
Maud considered her for a long while.
"...You can work to pay off the damages to the farm."
"What?"
The grey pony gestured to the destruction around her. "The rock farm. It was seriously damaged during the fight."
"O-Oh. Yes! Right! I'll do that!" The blue figure nodded with a desperate grin. "I... I don't know how I'll do that, but whatever you want me to do I'll do, okay? Just tell me what I, I need to do and I'll do it."
Maud shrugged, turning away. "Come with me. We need to talk to my parents about this."
Author's Note
So I saw this show recently, it seemed pretty good, there was some story about magic rocks or something and this boy who smiled a lot.
