Bigger Macintosh

Part 4: Hero

Later-

“And this entity you encountered said nothing of her name?” Celestia asked. “Or why this Yigrox creature had awakened?”

Big Mac, once more his normal size (thanks to some assistance from the Princesses) and just having finished recounting what happened, shook his head. “Eenope. She was reluctant enough to tell me what she did. Seemed real sorry about it all, though.”

They were currently in the hospital wing of Canterlot Castle, where a flurry of doctors and mages kept coming and going to look over Big Mac. Apparently Discord had saw fit to broadcast the fight all across the sky, and just about every pony in Equestria had seen it. The princesses had had to bring Big Mac to the palace just so he wouldn’t be mobbed by journalists, and he was now in a private hospital room filling them in on what’d happened.

“An eight-pointed star with elongated north and south arrows...” Celestia scratched her chin. “I’m not familiar with that symbol. What about you, Lulu?”

Luna, who had been fussing over Big Mac since his return and was now sitting next to him with her hoof on his arm, shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing comes to mind. T’was likely associated with this now-destroyed planet.”

Big Mac put a hoof behind his head. “Ah… yeah. Sorry ‘bout that. I kinda got carried away.”

“No, I don’t think you did,” Celestia said gravely. “You were barely able to defeat it with the considerable force you used. Perhaps there might’ve been another way that didn’t involve the planet’s destruction, but all things considered, I think you did pretty well.”

“Indeed.” Luna leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Better you let a dead world be destroyed than a living one.”’

Big Mac nuzzled her. He couldn’t argue with that logic, although part of him wanted to for some reason.

Celestia turned to Twilight, who was on the other side of the bed and had been running a scan on Big Mac. “Have you found anything, Twilight?”

Twilight ceased her scanning and turned to Celestia with a scrunched-up frown. “There’s a spell matrix at work here unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s completely different from the magic of ponies or anything else that’s been documented.”

“Really?” Big Mac asked. “How’d the three o’ya figure out to reverse it, then?”

Twilight shifted on her hooves. “We’re not exactly strangers to power suppression. It’s a pretty universal concept across the board, to be honest,  but ahat doesn’t mean we understand whatever’s going on with you. Assuming it’s not inimitable, I’m going to need some time to reverse-engineer it to make sure that you’re not any danger.”

Big Mac shrugged. “Didn’t feel like it was hurtin’ me none, and I feel fine right now. Why would ya think I would be?”

“Big Mac, your soul has been transmuted into some kind of magic generator, and your body’s been altered to be able to adapt to as much as it can put out,” Twilight said flatly. “I’m not sure if either one has a limit or not, but considering that you grew to almost twenty million times your original size, I’d consider it a non-issue. What’s more pressing is the question whether you even qualify as an earth pony or not anymore, as while you’re still a living, thinking being, your internal makeup is immensely changed. You swam in lava, shrugged off necrotic energy, endured enough kinetic force to destroy a planet, and survived out in the vacuum of space. Who knows what else you can do?”

Big Mac felt a chill. He hadn’t really thought about all of it like that. But when it all got laid out for him in such a manner, he suddenly wondered just what on earth he’d agreed to.

He cleared his throat with a cough. “Uh, well… i-ff you’re lookin’ for a place to start, ya’ll might wanna have a word with Discord. He sounded like he knew a thing or two about the planet, as well as the Yigrox. He might be able to tell ya a bit on how this magic works, too.”

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear...

All the ponies looked. A tear ripped open in one of the walls to reveal a polka-dotted void beyond, and through it stepped a brown unicorn stallion with red-on-yellow eyes. His mane was black and gray with a neatly-trimmed beard of the same coloration, and his cutie mark was an eight-pointed star. He smirked slyly at them all as he polished a pair of spectacles and closed the rift behind him with a flash of yellow magic.

“I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about little old me,” Discord said, waggling his eyebrows at the group. “And here I thought that we were friends!”

There was a brief stunned silence at his appearance, but Twilight was the one to recover first. “We didn’t want to bother you, as we figured you’d be too busy selling limited edition collector’s plates of the fight.”

Discord’s eyes lit up. “Oho! There may be hope for you yet, Sparkle. By the way, like my new look? Fluttershy suggested I dress down a bit, so I’m giving this a try. I call it, ‘Incognito Mode’.”

“Discord,” Celestia said in an even tone. “What do you know of all this?”

“Hmm, a little of this, a little of that,” he said, winking at her. “I might be inclined to even tell you, if I could get a little bit gratitude for my unsolicited assistance.”

Celestia lowered her chin. “I’m not in the mood for your--”

“Thank you, Discord.”

Everyone looked at Luna in surprise, who continued without pause. “It’s because of you that we were able to quickly locate Mac and were not left wondering about his fate. You also brought him back without any fuss, and I don’t know how we would have gotten him back otherwise. You did us all a service today, so for that, you have my thanks.”

“Yeah. I owe ya one,” Big Mac chimed in. “You told me what I needed to know to win, and ya even got me back here in one piece. Prolly would still be floatin’ out there if it weren’t for you. Maybe you’re not as bad as I thought you were.”

There was another silence. Discord seemed just as thrown-off as the rest of them, and didn’t have a witty remark for once. Celestia and Twilight exchanged a shared look of reluctance, but finally with pursed lips, they relented and muttered their thanks, as well.

Discord coughed and looked away, his cheeks tinged a slight pink. “Well… t-that’s, um… well. I-It’s about time, is all I have to say! Yeah! Here I’ve been on my best behavior these past few years, and it’s only now you begin to appreciate me! Yeesh, better late than never, I suppose, but really now.”

Luna chuckled. She rested a hoof on her enormously-swollen stomach and gestured for him to go on. “You said you knew something about this incident. Mayhap could you tell us?”

“As you wish, oh gravid one.” Discord horn glowed again, and the wall he’d come through vanished to portray an image of the monument that Big Mac had seen and spoken to in his dream, sans the spectral chains.

“I’m assuming this is what you saw?” Discord asked him.

Big Mac nodded. “Eeyup.”

Discord sat on his haunches. “I’d guess then that you met Araus, former Goddess of Destiny and Queen of the Arachni. She went mad with power awhile back and created the Yigrox to try and conquer other worlds. Not a bad plan, truth be told, but she couldn’t control it and it killed her along with the entire planet. I’d heard that her trial was coming up, but it must’ve been moved up if she met with you.”

Big Mac was quiet. He was recalling the dream more vividly now, and there had been a mentioning of a punishment being decided. He wasn’t sure exactly what that punishment was, mind you, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Why meet with Big Mac, though?” Twilight asked. “Why not meet with one of the Prin--er, one of us?”

Discord examined his hoof. “You wanna answer that one, Red?”

Big Mac leaned back in his bed. “Said it was gonna happen too fast to get out a proper warnin’. Also said she thought I had potential, and that I reminded her of how she used to be.”

Luna wore a smug grin. “A mare’s intuition is never wrong.”

He smiled despite himself. “Never said that it was.”

Why would the Yigox come here, though?” Twilight cut in. “What do we have in Equestria that would attract a monster like that?”

“Twilight, Twilight, Twilight,” Discord said, clucking his tongue. “And here I thought you’d been to an alternate reality before! Don’t you know anything about how the multiverse works?”

Twilight gave him a deadpan stare. ”Why don’t you enlighten us, Professor Chaos?”

“Gladly!” Discord waved his hoof, and instant later he was wearing a tweed jacket and bowtie. His horn flared to life, and a grilled cheese sandwich appeared in front of all of them in his yellow magic.

“Consider this information for you as well, Red,” Discord said. “Imagine that the top slice of bread is our reality, and the bottom one is a different one. We coexist side by side separately, but we’re also stuck together by an adhesive of sorts. In essence, our planet and the now-destroyed Arachni homeworld exist in the same space, along with countless other alien worlds. The only thing that separates is us all is dimension gunk, and if you have a device, spell, ability, or whatever that can make a hole in it somehow, it’s a simple matter of simply stepping through.”

“And I’m guessing that the Arachni dimension is located close to ours,” Twilight said. “Right?”

“That it is,” Discord said. “What more than likely happened was that the Yigrox was merely following its programming, whatever that was, and went for what it perceived to be the next-closest target. In other words, us.”

Celestia exhaled out her nose. “The ruins suggested that their initial calamity happened quite a long time ago. Why would the Yigrox come here now?”

“See, that’s what I can’t figure out,” Discord said. He took a bite of the sandwich and continued. “I don’t think that even Arachni even had interdimensional travelling capabilities, because if they did, the Yigrox would’ve come here centuries ago when they all kicked the bucket. Something must’ve woke it up, but as to what, I couldn’t say. Quite the head scratcher, wouldn’t you say?”

“A worrisome head scratcher,” Luna said darkly.

There was a murmur of approval at that.

“I’ll admit it’s not my first choice for a brain teaser,” Discord admitted. “Wouldn’t have wanted to move to another reality, either. I just picked out the curtains for my living room.”

D’ya think it had anything to do with Araus gettin’ sent to jail or whatever?” Big Mac asked. “Maybe she knew somethin’ was gonna happen the moment they put her in, and so this was her way of tryin’ to fix things.”

Discord tilted his head from side to side. “It wouldn’t surprise me; Araus always was the paranoid type. She might’ve had failsafes built into the Yigrox to protect her somehow. Maybe it was trying to cross dimensions in an effort to get to her.”

Twilight shuddered. “If that’s true, then that means that it might’ve done damage to multiple dimensions, not just ours.” She turned to Mac. “Your efforts might have just saved multiple realities.”

Big Mac blinked several times. “Ya really think so?”

Twilight smiled. “You’re definitely a hero, Big Mac. You deserve a medal and a ceremony for all this, at the very least.”

He looked over at Luna, who was also beaming at him. “A medal sounds nice. I don’t gotta dress up or nothin’, do I?”

Luna snickered. “I think you’re entitled to wear whatever you like.”

He breathed out a sigh of relief. “Good. I hate tryin’ to find suits that fit, and that Rarity gal always fusses on how I should do somethin’ with my mane.”

Discord burst out laughing. “Red, do all of existence a favor and go into deadpan comedy. You’ll make a killing at it.”

Celestia stepped forward. “I recommend we hold the ceremony here at the castle so that your farm doesn’t get further disturbed by any commotion. Oh, and speaking of which, I can put in a few words with the Canterlot Arboretum to repair the damages to your crops.”

“Big Mac bowed his head. “Thank ya kindly, Princess.”

“I do need to ask one thing, though,” Celestia said, her tone turning serious. “What do you want to do with this power? The whole country saw what you can do, and I fear that you’ll find it difficult returning to your old life right now. We can help maintain your privacy here in the castle, and Ponyville won’t be disturbed by as many nosy journalists poking around for a story.”

“Not to contradict you, dear sister, but there were already plenty of those thanks to me visiting regularly these past few months.” Luna idly traced her hoof up and down Big Mac’s leg, noting the size difference between them. The Mages Guild had cast their growth spell on her to keep her from becoming immobile, and now she was bigger than even Celestia. “I tend to stand out these days.”

“You’d stand out regardless,” Big Mac said, putting a hoof on her giant womb and rubbing it gently. “That’s what happens when you’re gorgeous.”

Luna tittered and put a wing around him. “On second thought, maybe you should stay here after all. We can hire some ponies to watch over the farm, and I can help you learn how to use that power of yours.” She leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “And once that’s all sorted, maybe I won’t have to be the big spoon.”

Big Mac’s eyes widened. “You know what? Stayin’ here sounds like a good idea! I’m prolly gonna need help me out with all this, and ya’ll can figure out how best I can help in the future. Sounds good to me.”

Celestia looked between the two of them with an unreadable expression. After a long pause, she finally spoke in a cautious tone. “Yes… that does sound… logical. I’m sure that that would be best. Are you certain you wish to volunteer your services so quickly, though? You’re not under any obligation to.”

“And it’s not exactly easy,” Twilight added. “Take it from somepony who’s got experience.”

“I wanna help protect my home,” Big Mac said simply. “That’s what I’ve wanted to do for years, and now that I can, I’m gonna take full advantage of it. Just tell me what to do, Princess, and I’ll do it.”

Celestia considered that for a moment. She looked to Luna and Twilight for their opinions, but neither of them offered any protest. Luna was, however, giving her a look that spoke volumes, and it was this more than anything else that ultimately made up her mind.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Mac.” She smiled warmly at him, happy that her sister had managed to find such a good partner. “There aren’t any issues right now that I’m aware of, but if anything comes up, I’ll certainly let you know.”

Big Mac nodded. “Eeyup. I’ll be here.”

End