I Have Vacation Days?!

“Dammit! Run run run!” Twilight shouted, blasting a path through Ponyville as Flim and Flam trailed her, strange devices on both brothers’ arms crackling with turquoise lightning and leaving a trail behind the three.

Flam panted as he ran, looking at his watch, “We’re not gonna make it at this rate, Twilight!”

Flim kept his head down, idly bounding over a fence as he sprinted in front of Twilight, “Dammit how did we get so caught up in that experiment!?”

“Perhaps you two chucklefucks should have kept an eye on the clock like I told you to!” Twilight reprimanded, pushing both brothers along, “I told you to watch the time while I welded and then you guys somehow got lost in your own welding!”

Flim hissed as the Ponyville clock tower struck twice, indicating their failure. “Fuck! I was certain that this was the correct route!”

Flam sighed and pulled out a map, crossing out the lines of their current route. “Well, nothing we can do but to try again…” Both brothers nodded simultaneously and clamped opposite hands on Twilight’s shoulders, Flam’s left on one side, Flim’s right on the other. And as Flim and Flam clapped their free hands together, everything shone with turquoise green, making them disappear.

Attempt Number: 44

Twilight dodged out of the way of a desperate swipe from Flam, blocking his training sword with negligible ease. She pushed and sent him stumbling back, flipping into the air and bicycle kicking him into the dirt, using her parasol to block Flim’s not-so-sneaky backstab and sweep his feet out from under him. She turned and looked down at him, idly leaning out of the way of Flam’s overhead chop and judo-flipping him over her shoulder and slammed the mustachioed brother down upon the other, driving the wind out of both of their lungs and ending the match.

Click

“Forty four seconds at ten percent effort. After three months of effort.” Twilight looked at her stopwatch and straightened out her vest, casting a disapproving stare at the brothers. “It’s official- whoever taught you your basic combat skills was a fool. What, did you go to Manehattan Public?”

Flim wheezed and pushed Flam off of him, “Fillydelphia Public, actually. It’s why we’re better with machines than magic.”

“Ah yes, Fillydelphia always did put more thought into industry than arcane studies.” Twilight sighed and handed Flim and Flam another pair of water bottles, “Take five, then back to combat magic. I think you’ve had enough of sparring for today.”

“More like you got tired of abusing a pair of barely competent users of basic self-defense with your advanced special forces level of training, my countess,” Alucard said from where he was leaning on the wall with his arms crossed, grinning at the curb-stomped brothers.

Twilight coughed. “Well, that too. Anyways,” she picked up a book on advanced rune magic, “since the two of you are best at using runes, I figure we might as well try and teach you the finer points of combat runes.”

Alucard chuckled rather darkly. “I still vividly remember the day I applied Twilight’s runes to her lovely body.” He shuddered lightly. “Remember, my countess?”

Twilight blushed and looked away, “Ah… ahem… yes… that was an… interesting experience.”

Flim and Flam wisely decided to not comment.

“Right!” Flim started, limping over to the work stations, “how shall we begin, dear teacher of ours?”

Rarity sighed as she lay on her side on her fainting couch, rubbing her swollen belly. “Any day now. Any day now.” She sipped her tea and smiled at Pinkie and Schrodinger. “It was so nice of you two to come visit me.”

Pinkie waved Rarity off with a grin, “No problem, Rarity! You know how much I love seeing my friends! How’s the baby coming along?”

“He’s been rather… restive lately,” Rarity said. “But I imagine little Elusive will be wanting to be born any day now.”

Schrodinger tapped his chin, “Elusive? Is zhat not just a synonym for your name?” Pinkie nudged him under the table with her foot, a tiny jab to his shin that did nothing but cause him to grin.

“I suppose it is,” Rarity conceded. “Why do you ask, Schrodinger?” She arched her eyebrow at him.

Schrodinger shrugged, “Just a random thought, I suppose.” He sipped his tea, “But anyvays, vhat made you choose Elusive?”

“Hm…” Rarity tapped her chin in contemplation. “I suppose it just.... felt right. You know? It just jumped out at me.”

Pinkie nodded sagely, “That’s what Mr. and Mrs. Cake said when they named Pound and Pumpkin Cake. Actually, that’s what a lot of people say when they name their kids…. wow, that’s actually kinda weird….”

“If Pinkie says somesing is veird, it most certainly is veird,” Schrodinger muttered, “Zhe only sing is… is it a good veird or a bad veird?”

Pinkie shrugged, “I dunno, feels like a good thing cuz it keeps people from freaking out over trying to find the right baby name.”

Rarity gasped in pain and grasped her belly. “Oh dear gods! I think I just went into labor!”

Pinkie and Schrodinger flew into a panic, Schrodinger latching onto Rarity’s shoulders and carrying her bridal style in clear disregard for his muscle size while Pinkie pulled the backdrop away into the hospital, shouting, “HEADS UP WE GOT A PREGNANT LADY GOING INTO LABOR HERE!”

Rarity let out a very melodramatic scream of agony as though on cue.

Schrodinger winced at the abuse of his ears, looking aside. “Ever zhe drama queen, even vhen giving birth, nein?”

Rarity pouted, “Well excuse me for trying to force a bowling ball sized living organism through a tube with the approximate radius of a drinking straw!”

“Still… mein ears…” Schrodinger whined as he gently lay her on a gurney that the doctors came running with.

Rarity whined the whole way to her hospital room, her voice audible up until the point where the doctors just soundproofed the door to her room.

“Dammit! Run you fools!” Twilight shouted, blasting a path through Ponyville as Flim and Flam trailed her, strange devices on both brothers’ arms crackling with turquoise lightning and leaving a trail behind the three.

Flam panted as he ran, looking at his watch, “We’re not gonna make it at this rate, Twilight!”

Flim kept his head down, idly bounding over a fence as he sprinted in front of Twilight, “Dammit how did we get so caught up in that experiment!?”

“Perhaps you two dumbasses should have kept an eye on the clock like I told you to!” Twilight reprimanded, pushing both brothers along, “I told you to watch the time while I welded and then you guys somehow got lost in your own welding!”

Flim hissed as the Ponyville clock tower struck twice, indicating their failure. “Fuck! I was certain that this was the correct route!”

Flam sighed and pulled out a map, crossing out the lines of their current route. “Well, nothing we can do but to try again…” Both brothers nodded simultaneously and clamped opposite hands on Twilight’s shoulders, Flam’s left on one side, Flim’s right on the other. And as Flim and Flam clapped their free hands together, everything shone with turquoise green, making them disappear.

Attempt Number: 12

Flim and Flam sighed as they painstakingly recreated their prototype cider squeezer under the watchful eye of Twilight as the noon sun beat down upon them

Flim groaned, “If I had known how hard recreating this thing with better materials was going to be-”

“-I would have just brought the blueprints!” Flam finished.

Twilight chuckled, “Well, that’s why I’m here. Besides, I helped you draw up the revised blueprints six days ago. Now, get back to work.”

“Yes ma’am…” both brothers groaned, turning back to their rune carving.

Alucard clapped appreciatively for Fluttershy as she posed for Photo Finish’s camera, the lingerie barely covering her body making her look especially radiant.

“Excellent! Excellent, dahling! Vork da magicks! Yesss!” Photo Finish shouted, growing more and more energetic with each shot.

Fluttershy shot Alucard a wink as she blew him a kiss while posing, lifting her arms behind her head and arching her back, wings spread behind her.

“Yes! YES! Da magicks! Hold zat pose!” Photo Finish practically drooled on her camera from the sheer, raw sex appeal of Fluttershy.

Twilight checked her watch and looked out at the bright rays of the eight o’clock sun, turning to Flim and Flam and calling out, “Hey! Finish up with those lights quick! Training starts at eight thirty exact or I start beating the weakness out of you in the street!”

Flim and Flam gulped and pieced the lights back together while stealing surreptitious glances at Fluttershy’s barely covered form, shifting their pants uncomfortably and turning the last few screws.

Fluttershy relaxed once she was told she could, slinking over to Alucard. “Enjoy the show, Alucard?” she asked in a low purr as she rubbed against him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Alucard grinned and pressed his crotch against hers, “Immensely, my dear. What say you we have a little show all to ourselves, hmm?”

Fluttershy murred as she felt his bulge. “I’d love to, my sweet,” she purred in his ear as she licked it.

Twilight sighed as she walked out of the boutique, Flim and Flam trailing behind her. “Too bad I’m busy training you two, otherwise I could have gotten some really nice sex…”

“Dammit! Godsdammit run!” Twilight shouted, blasting a path through Ponyville as Flim and Flam trailed her, strange devices on both brothers’ arms crackling with turquoise lightning and leaving a trail behind the three.

Flam panted as he ran, looking at his watch, “We’re not gonna make it at this rate, Twilight!”

Flim kept his head down, idly bounding over a fence as he sprinted in front of Twilight, “Dammit how did we get so caught up in that!?”

“Perhaps you two dunderheads should have kept an eye on the clock like I told you to!” Twilight reprimanded, pushing both brothers along, “I told you to watch the time while I welded and then you guys somehow got lost in your own welding!”

Flim hissed as the Ponyville clock tower struck twice, indicating their failure. “Dammit! I was certain that this was the correct route!”

Flam sighed and pulled out a map, crossing out the lines of their current route. “Well, nothing we can do but to try again…” Both brothers nodded simultaneously and clamped opposite hands on Twilight’s shoulders, Flam’s left on one side, Flim’s right on the other. And as Flim and Flam clapped their free hands together, everything shone with turquoise green, making them disappear.

Attempt Number: 64

Flim and Flam held their breaths as they slotted in the last screw on the device they had spent the last two months working on and watched as it powered up with a bright blue glow of temporal magic, the pure, sky blue bleeding into a calm, powerful turquoise as they fed their magic into it.

With twin manic grins, the pair slotted the strange equipment into the proper places, a tube-like structure across each of their backs, a gauntlet on Flam’s right hand, a matching gauntlet on Flim’s left. Twin battery packs hooked up on a carrying backpack connected the power cells to the chronal rewinders across their lower backs and fed power to the activator switch on their wrists. Flim grinned as they ran outside, taking careful note of the time. Flim timed their run from the lab under Golden Oaks to Sugarcube corner, and as soon as both brothers reached the threshold, they clapped their gauntlet covered hands together and vanished….

And appeared in the basement of Golden Oaks library in a turquoise flash, five minutes and 33.349 seconds in the past.

Flim grinned and spoke up, “Brother mine, I do believe that we-”

“-have just made a discovery of the ages,” Flam finished.

Twilight grinned from where she’d been working on her own project, “Congratulations you two, you made a chronal displacement engine that would have taken me at least twice as long to create and with half the instability of even the most powerful displacers! You two really do deserve the 300 IQ you tested as.” She clapped slowly, standing straight, “Now, problem is, remember twenty minutes ago how I got a call from Pinkie’s Scroll and I told you to watch the clock since we’d leave ten minutes after that call? Yeah. We’re ten minutes late.”

Flim and Flam looked at each other and gulped, “W-well the hospital is only twelve minutes or so from here if we run, right? So shouldn’t we just… run right now?”

Twilight nodded and headed up the stairs at a sprint, “The come on and stop dawdling! Rarity’s gone into labor!”

“Dammit! Godsdammit run!” Twilight shouted, blasting a path through Ponyville as Flim and Flam trailed her, strange devices on both brothers’ arms crackling with turquoise lightning and leaving a trail behind the three. “Elusive is born at exactly two o’clock so we have to make it before then!”

Flam panted as he ran, looking at his watch, “We’re not gonna make it at this rate, Twilight!”

Flim kept his head down, idly bounding over a fence as he sprinted in front of Twilight, “Dammit how did we get so caught up in that experiment!?”

“Maybe you two idiots should have kept an eye on the clock like I told you to!” Twilight reprimanded, pushing both brothers along, “I told you to watch the time while I welded and then you guys somehow got lost in your own work!”

Flim hissed as the Ponyville clock tower struck twice, indicating their failure. “Dammit! I thought this route was shorter!”

Flam sighed and pulled out a map, crossing out the lines of their current route. “Well, nothing we can do but to try again…” Both brothers nodded simultaneously and clamped opposite hands on Twilight’s shoulders, Flam’s left on one side, Flim’s right on the other. And as Flim and Flam clapped their free hands together, everything shone with turquoise green, making them disappear.

Attempt Number: 2

Rarity moaned in pain as she lay in her hospital bed, feeling contractions with ever increasing frequency as the minutes and hours ticked by.

Nearby, her friends waited with baited breath, wondering just where Twilight and the Flim Flam brothers were. They winced every time they heard Rarity’s noises of pain, most of them holding their bellies in sympathetic pain.

“Spike… Could you come here please?” Rarity asked, looking at the dracolich.

Spike shuffled over, gently settling down next to Rarity, “Yes Rarity? What do you need?” He looked worried, casting glances at Rarity’s belly with every movement she made.

“Could you get me some water, darling? I’m feeling rather parched,” Rarity said, giving Spike a small smile.

Spike immediately rushed over to the water cooler in the corner, fetching a cup of water and holding it to Rarity’s lips, letting her sip from it. “Anything for you, Rarity.”

Rarity closed her eyes as she felt the cool water sooth her throat. “Thank you, Spike. You’re a sweetheart.”

“Zhey should have been here by now,” Schrodinger said from where he leaned on Pinkie. “Twilight must be throwing a fit right now over being behind schedule.”

“Fuck! Keep running, dammit!” Twilight shouted, blasting a path through Ponyville as Flim and Flam trailed her, strange devices on both brothers’ arms crackling with turquoise lightning and leaving a trail behind the three. “Go faster go faster go faster!”

Flam panted as he ran, looking at his watch, “We’re not gonna make it at this rate, Twilight!”

Flim kept his head down, idly bounding over a fence as he sprinted in front of Twilight, “Dammit how did we get so caught up in that experiment!?”

“Maybe you two fuckheads should have kept an eye on the clock like I told you to!” Twilight reprimanded, pushing both brothers along, “I told you to watch the time while I welded and then you guys somehow got lost in your own work!”

Flim hissed as the Ponyville clock tower struck twice, indicating their failure. “Dammit! I thought this route was the right one!”

Flam sighed and pulled out a map, crossing out the lines of their current route. “Well, nothing we can do but to try again…” Both brothers nodded simultaneously and clamped opposite hands on Twilight’s shoulders, Flam’s left on one side, Flim’s right on the other. And as Flim and Flam clapped their free hands together, everything shone with turquoise green, making them disappear.

And Time shattered.

Attempt Number: 88

Twilight stared at the brothers as time warped around them, some people moving so slowly as to appear to be in slow motion, others at high speeds, and still others frozen in time. “What did you two do?”

Flim and Flam looked at their wrists and chronal engines, the healthy turquoise of their magic mixed with chronal magic having faded into a bright, angry crimson streaked through with shimmering rainbow and empty blackness. “.... I think….” Flim started, looking around at the strangeness.

“-we may have broken Time,” Flam concluded, poking one of the frozen people and causing them to vanish and reappear a short distance away, now in a sprawled out position.

“Broke time…” Twilight repeated calmly. “BROKE TIME?!” she screeched as she grabbed their heads and smacked them together. “This is all your fault! You didn’t watch the clock and made us late!”

“I think we have more pressing concerns than just having been late,” Flim muttered, rubbing his skull. “For example, if current paradox theory holds true, then due to the Magenfeld-Ernstreich Uncertainty principle and the Diralech-Kovalurka Quantum Breakdown theory, we only have time as the Silchuan-Zirpinsk formula gives us to try to fix this mess- that is, the amount of times repeated by the amount of time per repeat.”

Flam continued, “That leaves us with about fifteen hours since we did eighty eight repeats of about ten minutes each.”

Twilight’s left eye twitched almost uncontrollably. “If I don’t kill you two when this is over, I’ll be amazed,” she muttered.

Flim gulped, “W-well, I’m sure if we pool our resources, we could figure out how to solve this problem…?”

Twilight clapped her hands together. “Right! Fix time now, contemplate killing you two in your sleep later!” she said far too cheerfully.

Flam looked around, noticing the strange arcs of void racing across the horizon and shattering it into fragments, “Well that’s not good- the Langoliers are already at the horizon. If we don’t fix this, we’re going to go through a whole Universal reset to get to where we were before this mess happened, at least, according to Danstroevski’s Theory of Paradox mechanics.”

“Then let’s get to work!” Twilight snapped. “Make every second count!” She put her game face on. “So how do we start?”

Flim tapped his chin, and then clanked his fist into his gauntlet, “The main problem seems to be the chronal displacement engines we built. Something must have gone wrong with the rune matrix. But if we could just figure out what it was….”

“Problem is, changing it now would do nothing. We have to change it when we first made the matrix,” Flam butt in, idly toying around with the button on his gauntlet. “Wait, I have an idea!”

“You don’t mean…?”

“It might work!”

“Speak sense!” Twilight snapped, her fingers twitching irritably as her eye twitched more and more.

Flam held up his gauntlet, “I figure that with time as broken as it is right now, the displacement engines could ignore traditional laws of temporal displacement magic and actually jump around in time both forwards and backwards!”

“Like Schrodinger and his lauded ability to be ‘everywhere and nowhere’?” Twilight asked, tilting her head in curiosity.

“Zhat’s correct, fraulein!” Schrodinger piped up, strolling out from behind Twilight, “Zhe problem is, vhile I know exactly how to make zhe most of zhis situation, you three do not. Since my very nature is paradox, I am unaffected. You, however, vill become more and more… how shall I say… distorted as ‘time’ passes.”

“Define ‘distorted’,” Twilight said, frowning at the ever irritating catman. “And you’re going to help us out. What’s going on with everyone else?”

Schrodinger looked slightly uncomfortable, “Vell, you know ven your Scroll’s screen breaks and starts glitching out all over zhe place? Kind of like zhat, but more…. ‘your head lands here and your body lands zhere’... except all of your molecules get separated slowly as zhey are scattered across different time periods.”

“How do we stop it?” Twilight asked. “Is everybody else okay?” She glanced around at the people around them in worry.

“Everyone else is going about zheir days as normal. However, you, me… and Pinkie… exist in zhe space between and behind seconds, zhe little moments in time zhat are discarded and used and slip between zhe cracks of reality. To put it simply… zhere is no vay to put it simply.” Schrodinger shrugged.

“GET TO HOW WE FIX IT!!!” Twilight screeched, her wires floating around her in a frenzy.

“Just go vith vhat Flam said, fraulein. Use zhe engines to drop you through zhe correct points in time. I can’t help you travel, but I can point you in zhe right direction.” Schrodinger pointed to the left, “Go six meters zhat vay, zhen use zhe engines to push yourselves forward tventy minutes until half past four.”

Twilight sighed and moved herself and the brothers over to the spot Schrodinger indicated. “Here we go.”

“No! Don’t do this! Please! I’m begging you!”

Vinyl tossed and turned, groaning in her sleep, eyes clenched tightly in distress. She gasped unconsciously, sweat beading up on her skin as she tried futilely to block out the terror in her mind.

A dark forest at midnight. A cloudy, moonless sky. Bright flashes of steel against steel, magic flying through the air and clashing against dark, foreboding walls.

“Let me out! Let me out! Don’t do this to me!”

A pained cry hissed out of her throat as she hit a particularly violent memory, phantom aches from wounds long scarred wracking her form.

“No… no! It hurts! Stop it stop it stop it!”

Vinyl’s heart beat so fast it was as if a jackhammer was racing away in her chest, even as she still somehow slept on.

“Don’t worry, pet… by the time we’re through with you… you’ll never have to feel again…”

Vinyl rocketed upright with a deafening scream of pure terror, immediately falling into a choked off gasp as she fell back and latched into Octavia’s now wide awake and comforting arms, hyperventilating and shuddering. Tears flowed freely from Vinyl’s eyes as she sobbed, crying pathetically into Octavia’s shoulder.

“There there, Vinyl… the past is in the past… it’s okay, it’s okay, love… just let it out… let it out…” Octavia hummed a lullaby for Vinyl, gently stroking her wife’s hair until the younger woman calmed down and fell back into a dreamless sleep.

Twilight glanced around at the unfamiliar location. “Schrodinger? Where and when are we?” Her eyes widened as she saw a heavily wounded woman near them with flowing crimson hair, cold blue eyes, and wearing a ragged and bloodied black and red kimono, a katana secured in her sash. “Is… Is that…”

“Ja, zhat is Zhe Joy. Ve are approximately ten years in zhe past. Do not touch anysing zhat isn’t time frozen- zhat will lead to you being scattered across spacetime und I don’t vant zhe universe to reset completely just to fix about ten minutes of varped time.”

“Right. Good to know,” Twilight muttered as she watched another figure sneaking toward The Joy. “Wow… Never thought I’d see one of the most infamous assassins/war criminals in recent memory.”

Across from the little group of paradox fixers, String Theory, aged ten years younger, silently crept up on The Joy with a garrote wire strung between her hands. With a burst of motion, the black clad assassin strung the wire around The Joy’s neck and began pulling, only to feel no resistance.

The Joy turned her cold, dead, icy blue eyes on String Theory and drew her katana, “.... Bad idea…” she deadpanned, her voice coming out as a dead monotone.

“Und like zhat, zhis marks zhe point in time vhen Zhe Joy disappears from history, presumably dead at String Theory’s hands.” Schrodinger turned, warping the space around him as he applied his nature to the paradox, letting its nature invert his, and move them all from one point to another. “Zhat is about zhe most I can move us, Twilight. From here, you vill need to go eight meters straight up zhat tower behind me, jump and time travel just before you hit zhe ground.”

Twilight groaned. “I wanted to watch the fight…” She grabbed Flim and Flam. “But, whatever. Let’s keep moving.” She led them up to the point Schrodinger specified. “Ready to jump?”

Flim and Flam gulped and held their displacement engines up, “Ready as we’ll ever be.”

Twilight nodded and led them in the jump, trusting in their timing so that they wouldn’t hit the ground painfully.

“Fuck! Go go go!” Twilight shouted, blasting a path through Ponyville as Flim and Flam trailed her, strange devices on both brothers’ arms crackling with turquoise lightning and leaving a trail behind the three. “Go faster go faster go faster!”

Flam panted as he ran, looking at his watch, “We’re not gonna make it at this rate, Twilight!”

Flim kept his head down, idly bounding over a fence as he sprinted in front of Twilight, “Dammit how did we get so caught up in that experiment!?”

“Maybe you two dumbasses should have kept an eye on the clock like I told you to!” Twilight reprimanded, pushing both brothers along, “I told you to watch the time while I welded and then you guys somehow got lost in your own work!”

Flim hissed as the Ponyville clock tower struck twice, indicating their failure. “Dammit! I thought this route was the right one!”

Flam sighed and pulled out a map, crossing out the lines of their current route. “Well, nothing we can do but to try again…” Both brothers nodded simultaneously and clamped opposite hands on Twilight’s shoulders, Flam’s left on one side, Flim’s right on the other. And as Flim and Flam clapped their free hands together, everything shone with turquoise green, making them disappear.

Twilight watched as their counterparts disappeared, a ripple of paradox immediately springing forth from where they stepped into this moment, “Alright, this is about twelve minutes after the fact, and from what Pinkie is doing over there….”

Pinkie waved jerkily, glitching out as she skipped closer, almost as if she was a wave of corrupted pixels on a game screen, “H...uys! Wh...up? Weird ti……...ay, isn’t it?” Twilight nodded, still somehow understanding Pinkie.

“Hey Pinkie, can’t stick around, gotta fix the wonky timelines. This section is stable enough, though, so time should work well enough for us to… Flim, Flam? If you would?”

Flim and Flam nodded and activated the engines, plunging the three of them back in time an exact twelve minutes, thirty two seconds.

Crimson deeply inhaled the air around her, exhaling slowly through her mouth as she slung blood off her sword and sheathed it, her entire outfit, combat fatigues and a form fitting camo shirt, well worn boots, and a bandana, were covered in blood. She licked some from near her mouth absentmindedly. “I love this smell... “ She took another deep whiff. “Men being eviscerated, women being cut down as they cower, babies burning to a crisp, the old being lined up and beheaded. The lovely scent of war.” She turned and grinned at her comrades. “Don’t you agree?!”

A man with red eyes stepped forward, chuckling madly, “Indeed, indeed, Joy. The thought of bringing sorrow to the hearts of those that would dare oppose us… mmm… magnificent.” The Sorrow kept chuckling, even as a person covered entirely in a heavy fireproof suit bonked him on the head, the feeling of an eyeroll readily apparent.

“Oh Fury, let Sorrow have his fun~” a woman wearing a mask over her face giggled, a swarm of insects circling around her, “After all, the songs of sweet, sweet pain are just a soothing balm upon our twisted souls, are they not?”

“Oh shut up and let an old man rest,” a deep voice grumbled, its owner being a wizened, old, Zebrican man with a sniper rifle leaning against his frame as he sat in a fork in a tree’s trunk, “I’m already a hundred years old, I need to be at my best.”

“End, you know very well that your wrinkly black ass could still murder the lot of us from what, seven miles away?” a man hanging upside down from the same tree The End sat in remarked, a knife in his hand as he swung by his knees. “N’ besides, you ain’t got much beauty to sleep for, old man!”

The End growled and aimed at the hanging man, “Keep up your remarks, Fear, and your end will soon draw near.”

Crimson’s ears twitched. “Lock it down, all of you!” She started slowly looking around. “I think I heard something.” She slowly drew the knife she had sheathed at the front of her waist. “Nothing mucks up an op like survivors…” She threw the knife into a bush, eliciting a scream of pain from the woman whose leg was pierced by it. “And there she is!” Her telekinesis pulled the would be runaway from the bushes and dangled her by her bleeding leg. “You really thought you could escape us?” Crimson drew her katana as she asked, leveling the blade at their new prisoner’s face.

The woman flinched back and started babbling incoherently, pleading to the unit’s non-existent morals to just please spare her.

Crimson laughed and grinned at her unit. “Hear that? She thinks we have mercy to spare. As if! Pain! You got any mercy for her?”

Pain giggled, the sound turning into a cackle as her insects began buzzing in full force, “What’s mercy?” She stalked forward, placing her hands almost tenderly upon the woman’s face; a parody of a lover’s caress, “Oh, poor dear…. you should have just died like the rest of them….” Her swarm buzzed angrily in response, the veritable plague of insects crawling over the woman’s form and eating away at her flesh, starting with the woman’s nipples, vagina, and anus, crawling into and tearing apart each delicate bundle of nerves as the woman screamed and screamed and screamed her throat into a bloody ruin.

After the insects had torn the woman’s breasts apart and left both vaginal and anal walls a shredded, bloody mess, they retreated, Pain stepping back and letting Fury take her place, the barrel of his flamethrower shimmering from its heat.

Fury’s manic grin was palpable from behind his helmet as he pressed the red hot metal to the woman’s wounds, cauterizing them and searing tracts of flesh as he opened fire in short bursts.

At this point, the woman was nearly catatonic, still flinching from each new torture inflicted upon her, but too lost in the sea of pain to give a properly coherent response.

Crimson frowned and slapped the woman several times. “Hey! No passing out! Fear! Hit her with some adrenaline!”

Fear rolled his eyes and stabbed the woman with a dart, injecting her with enough adrenaline to instantly jolt her back into agonized, screaming wakefulness. “Gods damn she’s loud….” he muttered, pushing Fury to the side and dropping his pants.

End immediately sprung from his tree, smacking Fear with the butt of his rifle, “Wait your turn, you must, Fear. Rape can come when we are done here.” With that said, he took out a knife and started making small incisions in the woman’s flesh, carving out bloody tribal tattoos to match the ones inked into his skin. He lit a cigarette and used it to partially cauterize the cuts as he made them, grinding ash into cuts.

The woman’s voice gave out, a choked off gurgle rattling from her throat in a spray of blood.

“So who’s next?” Crimson asked, sitting on a pile of bodies as she examined her sword, idly sharpening it.

Sorrow stepped forward, eyes glowing brightly as he took in the sight of the woman’s tattered and torn wings, “So, she’s either an aerial or a griffon.” He sneered, pulling out a knife and stabbing it deep into the base of each wing, tearing them from her body and tossing them to the side. Fear stabbed more adrenalin into the woman’s body to keep her awake.

Sorrow stepped back and admired his work, the woman’s blood splashing on the ground in such a way that if one were to drop her in the puddle, it would look almost like a pair of bloody wings.

Crimson whistled at the blood spatter. “That’s art, Sorrow,” She grinned and looked at Fear. “You’re up, Fear. Bet you’re just dying to get off in her, huh?”

Fear grinned and shuffled over to Crimson, bowing theatrically, “I am, but alas, as our dear friend The End has stated, my tastes work best after everyone else has gone. After you, boss lady.”

Crimson slowly walked over to the woman, looking her in the eyes. “You know who I am, don’t you?” she asked, resting her blade over her shoulder. “You know what they call me, right?”

The woman gurgled as tears ran freely from her eyes, unable to move without wishing to die.

Crimson frowned. “Someone fix up her throat a bit. I want to hear her say it.” She shuddered lightly. “I love hearing people say my nicknames in fear.”

End grumbled, “How are we supposed to fix that? With all that blood, it’s like trying to make a clean scat.”

Pain giggled, “Your rhymes keep getting weirder old man!”

“Weird they may be, but true they are as well. So how to fix this, would someone tell?” End looked around, only to be met by continuous shrugs and head shakes. “.... I don’t want to use the pills, since it’d be a waste to cure all of her ills.”

“I’m not looking for a cure all, End,” Crimson said. “I just want to make her able to talk again. I’ll even take quiet rasps.”

End grumbled and cursed, pulling out a small, red pill and crushing it, dumping most of the powder into a small tube at his waist and rubbing the rest of the powder into the wounds at the woman’s neck, allowing her to once more scream, though only at a quiet, agonized rasping.

Crimson grinned. “Thanks, old timer.” She leaned close to the woman. “You know who I am. Say it,” she whispered in her ear.

“D-duet… the Ripper…” the woman choked out, a spray of blood once more flying from her mouth as her vocal chords collapsed once again, letting her begin drowning in her own blood.

“That’s right,” Crimson purred in her ear before stepping back and slicing the woman’s belly open, letting her entrails spill out somewhat before dropping her. “She’s all yours, Fear.” She telekinetically retrieved her knife and cleaned it and her sword off before sheathing them.

Fear grinned and pulled his pants down, cackling madly as he advanced.

Pinkie shuddered, popping up from behind Twilight and the twins with the aid of Schrodinger, “Ugh, I dunno why, but I feel like we just missed something disgusting and we’re all the more sane for it…”

Schrodinger shuddered and went green, “Eugh, believe me, fraulein, you don’t vant to know vhat you missed.”

Twilight blinked and looked at the clock, “Okay, putting that aside, we’re right before we left the first time and we have what, about thirteen hours left? Problem is, we need to go to before we etched in those runes, and we need to figure out the proper rune matrix as well. What now, Schrodinger?”

Schrodinger shrugged and pointed at the floor, which was slowly beginning to fragment into chunks of endless, black void. “Go down into zhe darkness and will yourself to be vhere you vant to be? Zhat’s how I do sings…. more or less.”

“....” Twilight looked doubtfully at the slowly growing patches of void, “.... anything would be better than just sitting around, so…”

Flim and Flam pored over their notes, trying to find the one critical error in their rune matrix as they tried to sketch out new matrices on whatever blank pages they could find, revising and redrawing at a frantic pace, “We need to-”

“Figure out which portion of-”

“-the chronal displacement rune-”

“-schema went wrong, so we-”

“-can figure out how to fix-”

“-everything. Problem is…-”

“..... we have no idea where to start!” Flim and Flam finished at the same time, throwing sheafs of paper aside with a simultaneous defeated huff.

“So what do we do, Schrody?” Pinkie asked, looking at her boyfriend in concern.

Schrodinger shrugged, “I have no idea meine leibe. I vish I could say somesing, but zhis… I’ve never experienced anysing like zhis before. It’s Twilight’s dilemma now… All I can do is try to keep her from dying horribly.”

“No idea at all, Schrody?!” Pinkie asked. “But what’ll happen to Twilight, Flim, and Flam?!” Her hair slowly and audibly deflated as she looked at him with her sad eyes.

“Like I said, zhis is zheir journey. All ve can do is play tour guide and keep zhem from dying horribly.” Schrodinger sighed and turned away, creating a little hole in reality as he did so, “I sink if you valk through zhis hole, you should find your vay back to whenever you need to be. I vish you zhe best of luck, fraulein, Flim, Flam.” He held Pinkie to his chest and waved at the three as they vanished through the hole, blinking from paradox space a moment after the hole closed.

The failed state of Griffonia was a sad sight to see, especially in its current war-torn state. One lone woman sitting in a high altitude jet sought to change that.

“String Theory, this is Commander in Chief Steel Soul. Orders are to get in, take out the leaders of the group known as the ‘Screaming Eagles’ to stop their military coup and to kill the current despot in charge, Granitera Aguilas. You are then to take the leader of the ‘Sunrise Phoenix’ faction and put him on the throne for good. Do you copy?”

“Loud and clear, sir,” String Theory answered as she fidgeted with her suit. Once again, the R&D pervs had failed to provide a sneaking suit that matched her measurements. “Ready for insertion.”

“Good. Mission parameters are as follows: Start in five minutes at 0 hour. You then have two weeks maximum, that is, 336 hours starting in five minutes to finish this mission. Should you fail to make the rendezvous point on time, we will initiate standard procedure. This is your mission. Do you accept?”

“Of course,” String Theory answered. “Two weeks to complete the mission and if I’m late I get nuked off the map along with everyone in the country. That about it, sir?”

“Yes. That’s all. But before I go, your parents wish you the best of luck. And… ahem, they also say to get home in time for your sixteenth birthday.” The projection winked out, leaving String Theory alone save for the two pilots more concerned with keeping the jet stable than with her.

String Theory stood and opened the rear bay door, turning to smirk at the pilots. “Catch you later, gentlemen.” With that, she jumped and curled into a ball to make sure she cleared the jet, going into a nosedive and moving into a belly fall to decelerate a bit before landing in a three point landing.

Once she looked around and deemed the area secure, she moved into some brush and activated her octocamo to blend in before activating her Codec and calling Steel Soul. “This is String Theory. I’m on the ground, no hostiles in sight. As per procedure, I’m completely naked. Just my stun knife and tranquilizer pistol. Will procure additional equipment on site as needed.”

“Roger that, String Theory. Equipment dropships are on standby. Ready to begin the mission?”

“Affirmative,” String Theory responded. “Got any leads for where to find my first target?”

“First target is a man named Gilead Orn. He’s currently holed up somewhere in his private compound to the east of the city.” The relevant data appeared on String Theory’s HUD. “Mission is a go, String Theory. Starting from now, you have 336 hours. Good luck.”

“Roger that. Commencing Operation Phoenix Rising.” String Theory ended the transmission and started heading for the compound.

A young girl walked onstage with a cello that was far too large for her stature. After announcing her name and doing the customary curtsey, she began to play, a haunting beat echoing through the auditorium.

String Theory snuck along in the shadows, taking out her stun knife and checking its battery as she crept along, easily avoiding the few guards in the area. The compound, despite being clearly higher quality than the buildings around them, was quite a mess, with cracked, ivy covered walls, open windows covered in planks of wood and bars, barely any sort of lighting other than candle light and lamps.

It spoke wonders of the state of Griffonia.

The girl continued playing, a calm, serene expression on her face. She showed no emotion other than complete and utter peace as she performed, each note coming out perfectly, each measure a paragon of its kind.

String Theory crept along against the ceiling of the compound, her suit’s specially designed fingers and toes gripping the ceiling with minimal effort. As she moved, she spotted a guard standing outside the only metal door in the entire compound.

She dropped from right above him, jamming the stun knife between his shoulder blades and knocking him out instantly, his limp body collapsing to the ground with barely a clatter as String Theory caught him.

The girl’s playing grew gradually louder and louder until it filled the entire auditorium with nothing but the rich, sweet sounds of her cello. Several people in the audience dabbed at their eyes with handkerchiefs, the girl’s music being beautiful enough to drive them to tears.

String Theory crept along theair ducts in the compound, silently padding though the confusing system of much too large metal corridors and coming to a stop above a grate. As she ran an image check with the figure below her and a picture of her target, she smirked from beneath her mask and pulled away the grate with a barely audible rasp.

Gilead Orn didn’t even notice, so engrossed was he with his map and his sheaf of plans and reports. String Theory thanked her lucky stars that Gilead had also acquired a habit of listening to his ill gotten radio as he worked.

She recognized the current song as being one of Octavia Melody’s– the prodigy cellist– greatest hits.

As Gilead leaned back to stretch out, String Theory dropped from the vent and struck, grasping Gilead’s head and twisting in mid air, cleanly breaking his neck as she landed with barely a tap of rubber on wood, her boots contacting his desk as she slit his throat with the blade on her stun knife and leapt back into the vents, escaping the compound without anyone being the wiser.

The girl finished her song with a quiet flourish, taking a bow and never noticing the flash of light on her hips that heralded the arrival of her cutie mark- that of a soft pink treble clef.

Crimson looked through her binoculars at the perimeter defenses of the village they were sent to. “Hm… Lots of guards, fair number of civilians, ohh! Machine guns. That’ll be so fun…” She licked her lips in anticipation of the slaughter, her sword practically screaming to spill blood.

Fear sighed in the background, “Can we just get a move on already? I’m at half mast here, I need this.”

“Oh you’ll get your fun, Fear. Worry not,” Crimson purred as she put her binoculars away and slowly drew her sword, listening to the song it sung as it left its sheath. “Worry not, my precious Benihime. You’ll soon have your fill…” She slowly, lovingly dragged her tongue along the blade, letting out a small moan.

“..... I’m at full mast now,” Fear muttered, idly stretching his limbs out to impossible degrees, a large bulge evident in his pants.

Crimson giggled. “Imagining me blowing you, Fear? Maybe later, if you can ever get a higher kill count than me.”

“Then you better get ready to suck, boss lady, cuz there ain’t no way I’m turning down that offer!” Fear cackled as Pain huffed and picked up her own binoculars and threw them at Fear’s head, eliciting a pained yelp as they collided with his skull.

“Shut up, Fear. Nobody’s touching that disgusting thing you dare call a penis. Now, boss lady on the other hand… I’d like a piece of that…” She grinned, making lewd and vulgar gestures with her tongue and her hand at Crimson, a swarm of insects buzzing into view behind her as she flashed into a direct copy of Crimson herself and back.

Crimson grinned and reached back, smacking Pain on the ass. “You’re gonna have to earn it, you naughty changeling.” She looked over at the silent End. “You awake, old timer?”

The End snorted and looked up from his scope, grumbling in his native Zebrican, “Of course I am, you youngun. Shall we go before I turn one hundred and one?” He turned back to his scope, “I see five… no, six machine guns and a sniper tower. Be careful- a single bullet from the sniper will turn your head into a bloody flower.” With that said, he waited for a go-ahead from Crimson, already perfectly lined up with the head of the… woman, yes woman in the sniper tower.

Sorrow walked up to Crimson and slung his arm around her shoulders, eyes glowing bright red as his wings flared out, “You look radiant tonight, Crimson. I can see the bloodlust on you… like a beautiful shawl made of the blackest embers… if I wasn’t so enamored with my spirits… I’d fuck the bloodlust right out of your eyes…”

Crimson arched her back and shuddered as she felt her crotch become soaking wet. “Oh Sorrow… You always know just what to say to moisten me up.” She leaned over and dragged her tongue up his neck and cheek before nipping his earlobe.

Sorrow embraced Crimson tightly and grinned, biting down on her earlobe just hard enough to draw a few pinpoints of blood. In the back, Fury gagged in an over exaggerated manner, “Can we please get back to slaughtering these fools?”

Crimson moaned at Sorrow’s bite and pulled away after he let go. “Fine, Fury. Since you’re so impatient.” She grinned at Sorrow. “Later…” she purred in his ear before turning and dashing off toward the village gate, grinning widely as she held Benihime at the ready.

“Such impulse she has, our boss. If karma catches up… it’ll be her loss…” The End raised his rifle and fired twice, the first shot catching the attention of the hapless sniper down in the village and the second shot catching her clean between the eyes, the specially made ammunition detonating on impact and splattering the woman’s brains all over the streets below while the rest of the unit surged forth, Pain making a wave of insects crash down upon the village while Fear did what he did best and jerked into the village, crawling across rooftops and walls with unnatural movements and coming across like a disgusting mix between a spider and a lizard.

Fury rampaged through the streets, setting the village ablaze with reckless abandon as he relished in the screams of the dying and injured around him.

End kept firing, dropping the people of the village with ruthless efficiency, counting them off as if he were just reciting numbers. “Een, twee, drie, vier, vyf, ses, sewe, agt, nege, tien, elf, twaalf, dertien, veertien, vyftien, sestien, sewentien, agtien, negentien, twintig, een en twintig, twee en twintig, drie en twintig twintig vier, vyf en twintig, ses en twintig, sewe en twintig, nege en twintig, dertig….” A small pile of spent shells formed beneath him, the flat black casings smoking in the cool night air.

Sorrow had taken to divebombing the citizens, picking them up, and dropping them while slitting their throats, making artistic splatters of blood on the pavement below and shaping them into bright puddles of bloody wings around each and every corpse.

Crimson herself was laughing as she dashed around slicing people apart, reveling in their screams of terror and agony. “Yes! I’m so fucking wet right now!” She barged into a house and sliced apart the women and children that were trying to hide in it. “Yes…”

Just after she finished slaughtering the family, she noticed the small, black cylinders taped to nearly every single support column, as well as a few others taped here and there seemingly at random.

The explosion was visible from the opposite side of the village, a pillar of smoke and fire reaching high into the night sky.

Crimson coughed up blood as she came to under the rubble. Her runes had allowed her to survive. Beginning to get up, she gasped in pain as she felt a plank impaled through her gut. “Fuck! Haven’t felt pain like this in years.” She giggled and moaned as she felt her crotch get further soaked by an orgasm. “Pain… Feels so good!” She noticed the blood from her victims flowing toward her slowly, seeming to seek her out. “The fuck?”

“You who are wounded… so close to death… would you not cast aside your humanity and join the dark side? Become that which is inhuman to stalk the night forever? To revel in the blood and carnage that you bring for all eternity? Speak but the word, and soar to heights that not even the mightiest of mortals may reach… become immortal, undying, and powerful enough to drag the bleak night over the daytime sun… speak but a single word, and your blood will become our pact… speak but the WORD, and become more than what you were….”

Crimson’s eyes widened. She knew what she was being offered. To be a vampire. To taste life eternal and wage war throughout the centuries. What a perfect existence it would be. But the price… Her eyes narrowed. “Get the fuck away from me!” she snarled, stopping the blood in its tracks, which spread against an unseen barrier made by her will. “My pain, my loves, my life, they belong to me! Sharing my life with another and they with me…” She started rising again. “Losing the borders of myself in a great sanguine sea… To gain by losing, what an irony. The bliss of surrender.” She stumbled briefly and coughed up some more blood. “To Tartarus with you! What’s mine is mine alone! Every hair… every drop of blood…” She drew up to her full height. “I am me. I am me… I. Am. Me! I don’t need you. I can survive on my own terms.” She gripped the plank through her gut. “I’ll survive… and… keep… my… humanity!” She screamed as she pulled the plank from her gut with a spray of blood. “Battle is only fun when the risk of death is there!” She tossed aside the plank and picked up Benihime, ignoring her wounds as she cut her way out of the ruins.

She never noticed String Theory until she instinctively cut apart the garrote wire around her throat. “.... Bad idea…” she muttered, twirling her sword around and facing String Theory.

“So you were going to destroy this village,” String Theory remarked, spinning a pair of knives around in her hands, “Simply fortuitous timing that my orders were to kill you and let the area burn… Shame to let such a valuable fighting force die, though.” She toyed with the blade of one of her knives, examining its sharpness, “When you get to Tartarus, tell them to save a spot for me, will you?”

Crimson laughed as she twirled Benihime. “Well aren’t you the textbook fuckin’ definition of classy? How about you tell them to save a spot for me when I send you there?” She looked at her bloodsoaked blade. “That nickname of mine… Wanna know how I got it? Actually… I think I’d rather show you.” She fell into her favorite stance. “Time for Duet… to let ‘er rip!”

“String Theory here, I’ll snap you like low quality cello strings!” String Theory smirked as she took up her own stance, rushing forward and immediately dropping into a sliding kick, aiming to sweep Crimson’s feet from under her.

Crimson laughed, easily jumping over the kick even in her injured state, only to gasp in surprise and cough up blood when String Theory turned her sweeping kick into a wild upward spin kick, driving the heels of her boots into Crimson’s already injured abdomen in a spray of blood.

Crimson cried out as she flew back, landing awkwardly in a twisted crouch, her left arm and right leg having been broken in the explosion. String Theory scoffed as she made a show of dusting off her hands, “Is that it? What happened to that vaunted berserk rage of yours, hmm? Where are those blindingly fast sword strikes? Don’t tell me you’re so injured that you can’t even put up a good fight!”

“F-fuck you… bitch…” Crimson huffed, a strange, blue glow covering her form as she shot forward at her signature speed, her sword but a blur as she swung at String Theory. String Theory flipped backwards, dodging each strike with barely millimeters to spare as she spun in midair and activated her gauntlets, both of them visibly crackling with electricity.

Both women charged at the same time, Crimson performing at peak physical activity despite her wounds while String Theory kept up her normal blistering pace of attacks, runes glowing all over her form as each missed strike struck the ground and all but exploded, providing momentum for String Theory to keep up a bouncing, spinning, whirling barrage of kicks, punches, elbow strikes and knee strikes.

Crimson gave as good as she got, though, each slash of her katana leaving a bright, bloody trail as it sang through the air and came within millimeters of striking String Theory each time. Time and again they clashed, String Theory batting away Crimson’s slashes with her fists and Crimson parrying String Theory’s strikes with the flat of her blade.

Again and again and again, the two equals clashed while the village burned around them, String Theory lashing out with unparalleled poise and style, matched evenly by Crimson’s deadly ferocity. But, it was not to last. After one final clash, Crimson’s blade finally struck home, slamming deep into String Theory’s abdomen.

String Theory gasped and took a hold of Crimson’s arm, throwing the terrorist over her shoulder and slamming the heavily wounded woman into the dirt, knocking her fully unconscious due to the added damage atop the stress of moving her body. String Theory huffed and pulled the katana from her gut, thankful that her suit managed to stop most of it. After calmly using her gauntlets to cauterize the stab wound shut with barely a single hiss of pain, she looked to Crimson’s crumpled form and then to the katana in her hand.

“Poetic justice, I suppose. How does the saying go? Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword? It’s only further irony that the sword you lived by will be the sword you die by.” String Theory stared impassively at Crimson as she lined Benihime up to Crimson’s neck. “Now, time to take care of a big thorn in my side…”

The blade fell, singing through the air.

Twilight, Flim, and Flam pored over the notes in front of them as they kept track of time. With only six hours left on the clock, the pressure was on, and though they had made progress, it was slow.

“Dammit, nothing is working!” Flam shouted, throwing his sheaf of papers to the side.

“Calm down, Flam!” Twilight snapped. “We have to stay calm about this.” She pored over more notes. “There’s gotta be a way out of this.”

Flim sighed, “We’ve been at this for what? Seven hours now?” He shuffled his papers and blinked, “Hey, is it just me… or is the floor kinda… twisting?”

“What?” Twilight asked, looking at the floor. “Why is it doing that?”

Flam gulped, “D-didn’t Schrodinger say something about the paradoxes getting worse as we went along? I… I’m not certain, but this might be a sign that we’re running out of time…”

Flim broke out into a cold sweat, “Shit! What if it keeps growing and we end up all twisted up into a spiral!?” he stood suddenly, levitating over a blank piece of paper and edging it into the slowly twisting spiral.

…

Nothing happened.

“Whew… seems to be just cosmetic for now,” Flam muttered, “Though things are still going to shit outside, that part is also mostly cosmetic, it seems, other than the fact that different points in time keep getting linked together in strange ways. At least it’s not overtly dangerous.”

Twilight smacked him upside the head. “Why did you say that?! You idiot!”

Flam flinched back and yelped, “The hell was that for!?” The sheet of paper abruptly tore itself to shreds in a violent swirling motion, the floor dropping away into a downward spiral into the infinite black void. “.... Oh. Oh shit.”

“You just had to open your fucking mouth didn’t you?!” Twilight demanded, glaring at him.

Flam had the good grace to not speak up again.

“Ahem…. a-anyway… I think we should move out of here before the effect gets worse aaaaannnnd ohmygodsthere’slangoliersoutsideohshit.” Flim paled dramatically, pointing a shaking finger outside at the disgusting meatball-like creatures eating away portions of reality.

Twilight groaned and rubbed her temples. “When we get out of this, I’m going to get drunk and lock myself, Alucard, and Fluttershy in the bedroom for a week, other obligations be damned.”

Schrodinger nodded, “Ja, zhat sounds like a good plan, fraulein, but ve should focus on zhe here und now, don’t you sink?” He tapped his chin, “Though I cannot aid you beyond pointing you to a safe place to sink, I can tell you zhis: Right now, even vith zhe vorld falling apart around us, you are still sinking too linearly! In zhis vorld, zhe past is zhe future is zhe present is zhe past. Vhat zhat means is zhat no matter vhere you are, so long as you perceive it as such, you are vhenever you need to be!”

Twilight’s eyes slowly widened. “That’s it!”

Flam looked over, still worried about the langoliers edging ever closer. “What’s it? Did you find the solution?”

Twilight nodded vigorously, already scratching out a whole new set of runes on her paper, “See, the main problem we had was with power input and output, since the chronal displacement vectors that we had were misaligned in such a way that, even though there was almost no drain on the user’s mana pool, there was a massive pull on the natural timeflow of the world, which caused a buildup of temporal prana to form in certain places in the time stream, namely the start and end points of our repeated jumps. Add into the fact that the time stream has actually already been damaged several times over the eons due to the pioneers of time travelling and we have a massive ripple effect starting on loop eighty eight!” She pointed out the new section in the matrix, revealing a startlingly simple network of linked mana absorption runes linked to ambient mana converters and several mana absorption runes based on absorbing the user’s mana pool.

“You’ve done it!” Schrodinger happily exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “Now you can fix all zhis and be back in time for Elusive’s birth!”

Twilight immediately handed a set of carving tools to Flim and Flam, motioning for them to dismantle their displacement engines and set them to the side, pulling over the blank past-parts and immediately setting to work, a bright hum of sparks flashing from her tool and etching runes in at frightening speeds, “Come on! No time to waste! We have less than six hours to etch in a seven hour job!”

Flim and Flam set to work, copying the rune matrix that Twilight made and connecting the runes on the blank engines to the appropriate slots and nooks, a light haze of blue settling into each rune as the matrix neared completion.

Outside, the langoliers edged ever closer, large swathes of sky and earth being torn apart as the hundreds of man sized meatball monsters tore through the fabric of reality as if it were nothing but wet tissue paper.

The minutes ticked into hours, with the advance of the langoliers approaching at a constant rate. Little by little, the pressure ramped up.

Schrodinger had disappeared again, leaving the three mages behind with the utmost confidence that they would succeed.

Three hours left on the clock and Flim and Flam had managed to finish carving the runes into their gauntlets, proceeding to work on one of the displacement drives. Twilight kept carving away diligently on her own displacement drive, the runes on it being far more complex than the runes on either of the gauntlets- those were only activator switches and flow regulators.

One hour left.

Flim wiped his brow as he carved, the tools in his hands emanating enough heat to raise the room’s temperature by a few degrees. Twilight huffed as she finished carving in another rune, almost eighty percent done with the engine.

Flim and Flam fared little better at a meager eighty one percent finished.

Half an hour left.

The langoliers were now within several blocks of the library’s lab, the space around the tree having been shredded away into nothing but black void, leaving a portion of space simply to float away in the infinite blackness.

Five minutes left.

Flim, Flam, and Twilight all finished at the same time, dropping their tools in a mad scramble to get the brothers outfitted with the reworked technology before the langoliers came and ate them.

“Come on come on come on! Buckle it faster!” Flim cried, desperately strapping on his gauntlet to his left arm and motioning for Flam to do the same. Twilight helped Flam buckle in, just as a langolier burst through the wall of the lab, carving a trail of blackness in the air and catching Twilight in the leg, disappearing the entire thing below her calf.

“AUGH! SHIT!” she cried, stumbling forward and into a table.

“Twilight!” both brothers cried, finally strapped in and displacement drives humming with energy.

“Come on you nitwits! Get the drivers ready!” Twilight screamed as she held her stump, an inky wall of black marking it as not cut, but erased at that point

“They’re charging!” Flam cried, backing away from the trail the langolier made.

“Charge them faster!”

“Ninety nine! One hundred!” Flim screeched in fear as another langolier came jetting right past him, caving in spacetime right by his head with an audible rush of reality shattering.

“Go go go go go!”

“Oh shit oh shit!”

“Turn it on! Turn it on!”

With a bright flash of turquoise light, Twilight, Flim, and Flam all disappeared right as a langolier rushed through their previous position.

Spacetime disappeared with a wink of blackened paradox and swirled into itself as a rainbow of every color unimaginable by everything alive, condensing into a single point.

That point glowed white and exploded.

Twilight stumbled into the hospital room with Flim and Flam in tow, the town’s clock tower ringing twice just seconds after, heralding the cry of a healthy baby boy.

“We… we made it…” Twilight gasped, her joy at seeing Elusive’s birth dampened by her exhaustion. Her leg twinged in a way it really shouldn’t have, causing her to flinch and sit down to rub at her calf.

“Just in time… just in time…” Flam muttered, his displacement drive flickering off as he removed his gauntlet.

Flim groaned and dropped his gauntlet as well, “Next time… next time we build something for quick transport rather than time travel….”

Rarity blinked, “.... What happened to you three?”

All three time travellers groaned simultaneously, “Don’t ask.”

“It’s a razher long story, Rarity,” Schrodinger said, winking at the time traveling trio.