Arms of Arceus

The Dean of the Slowking College had requested that the lecture be given in one of their institution’s acclaimed lecture halls. Too tired to argue, the ponies agreed to it despite a strong desire to lie down. They followed Mistress Cloe through the doors of the large, brown building and into a disheveled room. Shades of Orks, Tyranids, and daemons hung in the air just as they did outside. It was an eerie sight, even for Ra and his family as they took their seats among the High Council. A lightly bandaged Slowking limped out to a lectern at the center of the room. He turned slowly, pushing up the tired Shellder that clung to his head as he addressed his students for the evening.

“Greetings, friends. Welcome to the Slowking College! I am Professor Brian, and I will be enlightening you, today.”

“Is it a college if they don’t ever teach anyone, Pat?” said a Slowbro who wandered up behind the professor.

“I don’t think so, Dee,” said a second Slowbro walking beside the first. “I don’t think we’ve taught anyone in ages!”

“Hey Professor, why haven’t we taught anyone in a while? Did everyone get expelled?”

“We’ve been at war, you two. You helped defend the city yourselves! And our last class was a week ago, you’ve just forgotten. Now, hush and let me speak to our esteemed guests.”

“Dee and I haven’t taught anyone in a long time,” Pat said as he slowly rose onto his hind legs. “I think it’s our turn to teach. That’s only fair, afterall.”

“Y-you two? Teach? You can’t even spell your own names properly!”

“We can’t spell ‘properly’ either,” Dee replied as she absently scratched her chin. “But you can, so we should get to teach the class today!”

“You’re logic is deeply flawed, young lady,” Professor Brian said as he crossed his paws behind his back.

“Really? That means it’s improved, doesn’t it?”

“Sadly, yes. At least your fallacy hasn’t sent me into fits again, but alas. That’s not why we’re here.”

“Why are we here?” Pat asked, his eyes widening in amazement. “I might’ve known that once. I think it had to do with living your life a certain way.”

“All I know is it had to do with fish,” Dee said as she licked her lips hungrily.

“Enough ridiculous assumptions! You two, follow along as well as you can and only chime in when you have something productive to say.”

“Ok,” the Slowbro said, before falling silent.

“I might have laughed at that little comedy act had I not been so exhausted,” Pinkie Pie said with a half-hearted smile. “Trust me, I really want to laugh, just for the sake of laughing, if nothing else.”

“We are all exhausted, milady,” Professor Brian said as Maud comforted her sister with a hug. “As you can see, we were busy fighting our own battles here. But I will save that story for another time. For now, allow me to explain what I know of our situation. Admittedly, it isn’t as much as I’d like to know… but alas.”

The Professor paced back and forth behind his lectern, momentarily lost in thought as he considered his words.

“There is a strange symmetry to this place,” the Professor said after a minute of pacing. “Its nature is quite subtle, and we will be discussing it for many years to come. There are two separate universes layered one on top of the other. Or, perhaps they are not layered, but exist side by side. We haven’t had the time to understand this, but we have made many models already. But I digress. The symmetry of this place is made, or has formed, to govern the interaction between the immaterial plane and the material plane. Those creatures born of one should not exist in the other, yet due to this symmetry there are ways for them to cross between universes and interact.”

“You mean like the spells and rituals the cultists were casting?” Twilight Sparkle said, her eagerness to learn shining through her exhaustion.

“Indeed! These spells are psychic in nature, like the plane of existence they draw power from. We believe that there are subtle interactions constantly occurring between the two universes. The material resists the immaterial out of self-preservation, and the spells cast by those who owe allegiance to the immaterial serve to ‘sing the universe to sleep’ if you will.

But we don’t fit with this symmetry, nor do we fit with the normal interactions of the two, separate universes. We were forced into a pattern that had no room for us. Thanks to the blessings of Dialga, Palkia and Giratina the city and its defenders could not be erased. However, our presence created a paradox that this place had no answer for prior to our arrival. During this whole experience, we have been fighting against the after effects of that paradox.”

“The after effects?” Pinkie Pie said as she scratched her head in confusion. “What does that mean? I was only joking about the holograms, but… I mean, I really hoped it was true but I didn’t expect…”

“But you weren’t far from the truth, madam. I’m not quite sure if ‘hologram’ is accurate, or if ‘doppelganger’ is more precise. What I realized, however, is that the universe we were fighting against was a near exact replica of the universe we currently inhabit.”

“So the stuff we fought was real?”

“Yes,” Pat said, before the professor could respond.

“Then why are they all frozen and stuff?”

“Because they aren’t real,” Dee replied, as Brian stuttered in frustration.

“They aren’t real now or they were never real?”

“Both,” the Slowbro said together.

“Were they real when we fought ‘em?” Applejack interjected.

“Yes,” Pat said as the professor placed his paw to his face.

“So they were real, but they weren’t real?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Yes,” the Slowbro said together.

“How do you know?” Rarity asked.

The Slowbro turned to look at the Slowking between them. Professor Brian looked up from his exasperated mutterings, his gaze moving from his assistants to the people in the classroom. He sighed and shrugged.

“When we were young, we saw everything,” he began. “Sadly, now that we’ve evolved its all locked in our memory, somewhere. These two would be happy fishing all day, but as a Slowking, it is my duty to unlock those memories for the good of all. It’s quite a bit harder than it sounds, though.”

“Professor Brian realized that we were locked inside of the paradox our presence had created,” Princess Celestia added sagely. “From the Materium to the Immateriam, the whole of creation within this universe was inadvertently copied and ushered off with us upon our arrival.”

“During our observations in the Dream, my sister and I noticed the strange symmetry of this universe, and the existence of a nearly identical setting beyond,” Princess Luna said. “Though, we didn’t realize the implications of these things until the professor brought us his ideas. It is our belief that this setting was formed to contain and destroy us. As for the diamond pillars, they will, in theory, augment and strengthen the protections on this place. They have already shifted us partially outside of the current symmetry. This is why our enemies are frozen like they are. The next step is to connect the city to the Dream, allowing us to travel somewhere more stable. We can thank Cadance for that idea.”

“I only thought of the pillars,” Cadance said, blushing. “It was Luna and Celestia who designed the runes they’re covered with.”
“Either way, the plan sounds awesome,” Rainbow Dash said. “But Princess Luna said ‘in theory’, which implies they may not work. But all the bad guys are frozen, so they must be working, right?”

“They are working perfectly,” Professor Brian said. “However, it is now up to your group to take us away from here.”

“What of Cadia?” Princess Twilight asked. “We were outside of the protection of the city when we were transported. Our Rainbow Power activated the instant we arrived, before we even realized it was activating, and Kazuo said that there was a deminsional barrier between this world and that one.”

“It is our belief that the symmetry of this universe would have erased you if not for the protection of your Rainbow Power,” Princess Cadance said. “It activated in order to keep you from being wiped from existence, and it wiped out the enemies in your vicinity as an after effect. We don't know if the world you saw was real, or a paradox like this one.”

“That is a debate another time,” Professor Brian said with a tired sigh. “As for me, I had another realization this morning and I would like to go ponder it, if I may?”

Brian bowed apologetically and awaited his dismissal.

“You may,” Princess Celestia said, smiling. “But first, I would like to know what this realization is.”

“Only a name, with a most dangerous feeling behind it,” Professor Brian said as he rubbed the Shellder on his head. “I fell down the stairs again, and Shelly bit down rather hard, as she always does when I fall. Then a name came to me. Victor von Doom. I believe he might be human, but I’m afraid I know nothing else.”

“We will cross that bridge when we come to it, but for now, let us sleep.”

Brian bowed as his assitants waved goodbye to their leaders as they left the room. Princess Celestia led the group from the College, dismissing the High Council to attend to the aftermath of the battle. The ponies walked through the broken city streets to the palace gates, entering through the shattered doors and past the remains of the palace walls. Their rooms had been torn to shreds, but like all things within the city, it could be fixed. They would attend funerals and comfort the grieving Pokémon as they remembered the fallen, but for now they needed to escape. Under the direction of Princess Luna, and the watchful eyes of Maude and Trixie, the four princesses and five champions lay down on the floor of the palace and let their exhaustion take them.

“What are those?” Twilight Sparkle asked as they entered the Dreamscape and looked out upon the universe as one is who was outside of it. From this vantage point it was a dark and blood stained canvas, and from that eerie portrait peered the eyes of gods. The princess felt small under their merciless gaze, but she never looked away.

“They are the rulers of this universe,” Luna replied. “From the Hivemind, to the Chaos Gods, to the one called Emperor… and even the brutal Orkish deities. They are the powers that control the true universe here.”

“But we’ve been trapped in a paradox, right? It’s just that, they seem to be looking right at us…”

“They are. They cannot be copied, as their minions were. They have been watching us from outside of this vanishing realm since the moment we arrived. It’s quite possible they controlled the beings we fought while trapped in this realm, but that is hard to say.”

“It’s a question best left for another time,” Celestia said, gently. “For now, let us leave.”

As one, the ponies drew upon their power, connecting once more through the light of their love and friendship. Princess Celestia focused their strength on the pillars in the land of the waking, and opened the door to their next destination. The paradoxical universe they had inhabited vanished as they left, and the competing gods turned their attention back toward one another. None but they would remember the passing of God’s Breath as the city faded into the Dream.