Error's Vanguard

Chapters

@sʇɐɹʇ*ERROR*oɟ&COLLISION>ɐ^BEGINS*lǝƃɐɔʎ[
Breaking the Physics
CaPtUrEd
Talon and Moon
Ordo ab Ovum
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Socialism at large
Mutatis Mutandis
J’en Ai Rien à Foutre

@sʇɐɹʇERRORoɟ&COLLISION>ɐ^BEGINS*lǝƃɐɔʎ[

Throughout the empty sea, the death of silence reigned supreme. No one splashed about, no wave crashed, and no Pokemon sang its name. And into this endlessly soul-crushing expanse stared a young man: a trainer clad solely in green. His eyes having long glazed over from the nothingness, he fell backwards, landing on the Pokemon carrying him – a large, blue and serpentine-like dragon creature: a Gyarados by any other name. His expression as placid as the ocean around him, the trainer dipped his hand into the water, allowing the waves to caress over his skin.

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Mind. Numb. Why is it that the one time that we actually want to find aggressive trainers out here – the one time! – we don’t find any, huh? Ten bucks says that if we didn’t want a fight, we’d be swarming with psycho swimmers in speedos.” Though his comments were technically directed to the Gyarados on which he rode, the massive beast didn’t even acknowledge his master was speaking.

Making a sound that was half a gurgle and half a groaned, the trainer slide a hand into a pocket, pulling out a small, vaguely rectangular red device: his Pokedex. Tapping a series of buttons, he booted up a recent audio log. Clearing his throat, he brought his device close enough so it could hear him speak.

“June 23. Weather: sunny

Decided to go to Cinnabar island. Heard there’s a building with info on a legendary Pokemon. Considering that I‘m the best trainer in the world, I’ve practically gotta catch it! Wonder if it’ll be awesome enough for my team!”

The trainer closed his Pokedex, the device offering him no more entertainment. “Well, that’s all I think of doing.” A pause. “Why are these Kanto routes so long?” he groaned, stomping a foot on his Pokemon's back. The Gyarados raised its head from the water, angling his eyes to his master and shooting him a glare.

“What?” He sighed. “No, no it’s nothing... What...? Stop looking at me... And for the love of God, Mr. Fish, close your mouth! It’s creepy! How many times do I gotta tell you this, huh?” With a grunt, the Gyarados, or Mr. Fish, closed his mouth.

Glancing about, the trainer’s eye was drawn to an anomaly in the water: a whirlpool, the only thing moving on the calm sea. “Mr. Fish, wait up!” Mr. Fish, his head under the water, failed to acknowledge his trainer. “Hey!” The trainer kicked his foot down as hard as he could on Mr. Fish’s back.

Mr. Fish pulled his head out the water, turning his attention to his master, who pointed to the whirlpool. “Lookie look!” Mr. Fish blinked, then turned his head to the focus of his trainer’s attention. “Ten bucks says there something cool in there!” He frowned. “Course, it could be another tentacool – little bastards have overrun this route. Stupid spawning season.” He shook his head. “Mr. Fish! To the whirlpool!”

The Gyarados twisted his serpentine body, snaking through the water and towards the whirlpool. Now well within range of the anomaly, the trainer got himself a much better view of the swirling mass of white waters. Squinting, he swore he could make out something other than water moving about at the bottom of the whirlpool.

“Okay,” the trainer sighed. “Whatever it is, I don’t recognize it from this angle... Hmm... Let's force it out! Mr. Fish, use... Wait.” Slowly, the whirlpool began to peter out of its own accord, yet its silence seemed to suck everything else into the penumbra of quiet.

“Aww, dammit. It’s gone.” Without warning, the vortex exploded back into vitality, the vigorous pool approaching the size of a suburban sedan. Eyes wide and body possessed by the imperceptible trepidations of excitement, he watched as a shape emerged from the water. Then he smile turned into a perturbed grimace.

The “Pokemon” was like nothing he had ever seen before. It didn’t even have a proper body, at least not by human standards. It vaguely resembled a backwards “L” shape, and it was entirely box-like in nature; but its body, if indeed one could call it that, was a swirling mass of blinking and warping particles, each of which was a different shade of black or white and without any sense of pattern or logic.

A single awed breath escaped the trainer’s lips as a chill ran down his spine. With a subtle smile, he pulled out his Pokedex. “What kinda Pokemon are you?” The Pokedex’s screen was utterly blank. “Huh. You know, in hindsight, I totally should have seen this coming. Honestly, what did I expect from a man whose first question to me was: ‘Are you a boy or a girl’? The old geezer apparently thought my hair was too long and logically spiky... And that’s why I always ask for a ‘five’ when I get a haircut now, and why I no longer use hairgel...”

The trainer put on a nonplussed expression. “So either you’re a new, undiscovered species of Pokemon... or that creepy old man gave me this broken device, which would explain why it was free.” He put a hand to his chin. “Screw it! We’re rolling with undiscovered species! Mr. Fish, do you know what this means?”

Mr. Fish, his mouth closed and expression utterly blank, angled his head to his trainer. “That's right! If we catch it, we’ll be, like, famous! They’ll remember me as one of the few people in the modern age to have discovered a new species of Pokemon!” He clasped his hands to his cheeks, his eyes filling with stars. “What if it’s a legendary Pokemon‽ What if we’re the first to discover it, a-and then it turns out to be a legendary Pokemon‽ We’d be so very famous that... words fails to describe! World famous! Universe famous! Years from now, people will tell their grandchildren of how they were once in the same room as me!”

Without warning, the unknown Pokemon emitted a high pitched wail not unlike a broken radio through a megaphone. The trainer clasped his hands to the ears, gritting his teeth as the sound passed through him. His eardrums began to vibrate, stinging in the trainer’s ear as the white noise continued. Mr. Fish, too, shut his eyes as he struggled not to thrash about in the water.

It stopped. Opening his eyes, the trainer saw that the Pokemon was still there. Then it emitted that same static sound again, though it didn’t hurt him this time, just made his stomach contents writhe.

“What kinda sound is that...?” he mumbled, listening to the Pokemon. “What a strange cry...” He smirked. “All the better reason to assume you’re a legendary Pokemon!” He took a breath. “Okay, Mr. Fish, hit it with a hyperbeam!”

Mr. Fish raised his head high into the air as he opened his mouth. In the blink of an eye, an orange ball of energy came to life in Mr. Fish’s mouth. The other Pokemon didn’t even react. Just as quickly as the ball had appeared, it condensed into a solid beam which then barreled at the unknown Pokemon.

Colliding with the odd Pokemon, the hyper beam scattered the thing’s particles to the fourth corners, the Pokemon turning into an amorphous cloud of particles. Mr. Fish’s attack ended, subsequently killing the beam. Without so much as missing a beat, the cloud reformed into that blocky, backwards L shape.

“I, uh, don’t think that did what I wanted it to,” the trainer muttered, his heart hastening its tempo. The pokemon began to convulse and pulse like a man possessed; its particles began to swirling about like a cloud of razors, itself losing any pretext of having shape or form. “This... could be bad.” He blew a puff of air out of his mouth. “Whatever! Mr. Fish is strong enough to withstand any attack!”

Rather than attack, the cloud erupted into series of shrieks: high pitch, low pitch, random white noise, nails on a chalkboard, animalistic shrieks – everything. The trainer fell to his knees, screaming and clutching at his ears.

Then, like a raging storm, the thing exploded at the trainer, reaching him in well within the blink of an eye. It swarmed around him and Mr. Fish, causing the Gyarados to howl in agony. Nearly vomited out his entire stomach, the trainer grabbed a Pokeball, shouting, “Mr. Fish, return!” A transparent beam of red shot forth from the ball, atomizing Mr. Fish and sending him into the null space of the Pokeball.

Without the platform of Mr. Fish to stand on, the trainer fell into the water. Flailing his arms, he tried to swim, only to find his body refusing to move in any direction but down. The light of the sun gave way to the dimness of water. Water utterly consumed his world: it assaulted his ears, the salt gouged his eyes, and the water ran up his nose. Choking for breath against his own will, his lungs found only the cold sting of the water.

Light fading from his vision, though because of unconscious rather than depth, he nearly didn’t see the swarm of particles forming a bubble around him. And, as the water filled his lungs, he certainly didn’t see his flesh peeling away into little particles.

***
“Hey, Twilight!” Spike yelled, running down the wooden staircase. “I got it!” Reaching the end of the stairs, he came across Twilight Sparkle, the lady who doubled as his mistress and has practically raised him. With book in claw, he handed it to Twilight. Spike glanced at his purple, scaly arm. “You have no idea just how hard that was find, or how heavy. This darn thing’s almost as big as me.” He ran a hand through his green frills. “But who’s your number one assistant and all around best dragon ever, huh?”

“Thanks, Spike!” Twilight chuckled, patting a forehoof on his head. Spike, the dragon, smiled at her. “And to think that I’d thought we’d lost it.” Chuckling, she shook her head. “Thank goodness that you found the ‘Encyclopedia Botancia’. Where would I be without it?” Her horn light up like a holiday morning, the field of magic around it then enrapturing the book in Spike’s hands. She promptly put the decidedly heavy tome into her saddlebag.

“You’d be wandering Froggy Bottom Bog without a clue, that's what,” Spike replied.

Pulling up a huge ivory scroll, Twilight nickered. “Yeah... yeah, probably.” She brought up a pen to the scroll. “Let’s see... Find ‘Encyclopedia Botancia’ – check!” Twilight marked off a small box. “Looks like I’m all set.” She adjusted the pair of goggles she had, which were resting upon her forehead but jsut belwo her horn.

Spike shrugged, sauntering off to the kitchen. “I still don’t see why you’d want something called a ‘neversleep potion’. Seems kinda... Well, I’m just gonna say it – it sounds dumb.”

“Because, Spike, if Zecora’s right, which I have no reason to doubt, then we could create a revolutionary new product that will replace caffeine.... And because I might need to write a report soon... and sleeping kinda doesn't help.”

The dragon stopped walking, spun around and stared at Twilight. “So, to sum it up: we’re out of coffee.”

Twilight chuckled. “I’d be lying if I disagreed with that. But you know the conditions over in the tropic, and subsequently why the price of coffee and chocolate is rising.”

Spike’s stared didn’t once let up. “And since when has money ever been a problem? Don’t you, like, get an allowance from Celestia or something...” He put a claw to his chin. “Come to think of it, I don’t know where our money comes from. Does the city pay you for being the librarian, ‘cause I’ve never once seen somepony walking in here and checking something out. And it’s not a big building either; I can walk across it in a few minutes at least. And how the hay does a librarian afford so many giant checklists and pens? It baffles me! I mean, for all I know, you rob trains while I’m asleep to get this kinda cash!”

Twilight put her face in her forehooves, laughing, “What?”

Spike cupped his hands around his mouth, yelling in a hoarse, fake tone, “Twilight Sparkle AKA the Sundance Filly AKA the Lavender-Coated Menace AKA that Innocent Librarian is wanted for train robbery!” He set his hands down, smiling at Twilight.

Struggling not to laugh, Twilight growled, “Curses! How’d ya catch me, lawpony?”

Spike nickered. “Aw, get out of here, Twi’. I know you’ve got stuff to do.”

“Will do,” she chirped. “I’ll be home in no times” A pause. “How else am I gonna find time to rob those trains?” Twilight giggled.

***

“Sons of whores, daughters of... ugh,” the trainer groaned. Opening his eyes, he found himself lying on cool grass beneath a tree. “I swear to God, if that Pokemon used roofies on me...”

He sat up, propping his back up against the tree now behind him, the trainer set his eyes on the swamp before him. “Kay. Unless Cinnabar Island turned into Louisiana, I have no idea where I am.” Running a hand over his jaw, he tried to recall anything past blanking out, coming up empty-handed.

“Great,” he growled. “Note to self: no more Pokebeer. It does... this... No, wait, that was a dream. There’s no such thing as Pokebeer... Worst dream ever.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his Pokedex. Pressing a memorized series of buttons, he brought up the device’s GPS. “Area unknown,” he read aloud. The trainer blew a puff of air out of his mouth. “Starting to think that you’re broken,” he said in a dry tone.

Glancing around, he saw nothing save for trees, a swamp, and shrubs. “Wonder if I could get my Pokemon to fly me out...” He smirked. “Or perhaps.” Putting a hand to his belt, he counted his Pokeballs. “Three ultra balls,” he muttered, “one net ball, four great balls, a luxury ball, and seven standards.” He licked his lips as he stood up. “Wonder if there are any cool Pokemon here... in this swamp... or these trees?”

His hand found itself grasping a particular Pokeball: a pink heal ball. Flicking his wrist, he set the ball free as he said, “Flower Dancer, I chose you.” Hitting the ground, the Pokeball’s interior exploded outwards as a firework of pink – which released a small green creature with two flowers on each side of its head: a female Bellossom.

Tapping a finger to his left temple, he said, “You know, Flower, some trainers think the move ‘Sweet Scent’ is useless.” He smiled, shaking his head. “And perhaps it is... inside of battle. Outside battle, however, is a different... animal... What are you doing?” Flower Dancer had wandered, now swelling a patch of flowers. “What is it with you and flowers? I’m trying to do an apostrophe here.”

The trainer frowned. “Wait, can you do an apostrophe to a Pokemon? I mean, they can hear and understand you, just not talk back.” He shook his head. “Nevermind that. Flower Dancer, cut it out. Stop sniffing those flowers.” Herself frowning, Flower Dancer spun around to face her trainer. “Now... use Sweet Scent!

Giggling, Flower Dancer spun around like a ballerina, her head flowers releasing a ludicrously sugary scent. The trainer grinned at himself. “We are so gonna get something cool.”

***

“Really? Just one left?” Twilight groaned. “And, of course,” she chuckled, “you had to be in the farthest, darkest reaches of the bog.” Hopping across the swamps rocks in an effort to stay out of the muck, she continued to mumble, “And now you’re talking to yourself, Twilight. Well, if anypony asks, you’re practicing your soliloquies.”

She grunted as she nearly slipped off a rock. With a final leap, she landed on dry ground. “Okay, so Zecora said it was on this little patch of forest, correct? Of course she did. And it had to be on an island with trees in the middle of the bog.”

“And the flower can be traced by its aroma, which are imbued in its stroma,” she mocked, quoting Zecora’s earlier line. Taking a breath, she caught a particular scent. It was a powerful, sugary aroma that tickled her sinuses just right, stimulating an almost primal urge to follow it like rats to the Pied Piper. “Well, that’d be my best guess…” she mumbled, her legs walking towards the scent as if by their own will.

Legs practically tripping over themselves, Twilight found herself trotting through bushes and dense underbrush. Still following the scent, she came across a small clearing in the small patch of forest. Bounding into the small clearing, she came face to face with an animal she was utterly unfamiliar with.

The animal was about her height, and it looked like a flower given life: the Bellossom. Twilight stared at the thing, her own eyes utterly uncomprehending. Then she smiled at the thing, and that’s when she saw the other thing in the clearing: a gigantic yet slender-framed hominid, easily over twice her height. With his pale skin and green outfit, he looked positively silly; like somepony had taken a chimpanzee, shaved it, made it taller, and then put it in a wacky outfit. Then there was the strange, red-top and white-bottom ball in his right hand, and the almost evil grin on his face.

Twilight froze, her eyes going wide at the tall creature’s toothy grin and saw its maw was filled with sharp, white teeth. She tried to speak, but all the came came out was a high-pitched squeak.

“Aww, that’s such a cute sound!” the hominid squeed. “Hey, Flower Dancer, do you see how adorable it is? It even comes with saddlebags and goggles! Reminds me of a Delibird.” He put a hand into a pocket, wrapping his five spidery fingers around a small red rectangular device. “Aaaaaand it’s blank. What a surprise,” he grumbled, putting back into his pocket. “Seriously, that creepy old man just gives random shit to passing children, I swear. Eh, I’ll just catch it anyways. It looks cool. Flower, focus up!”

Flower Dancer completely switched her stance, becoming ready for combat and action. Gone was her cute smile and twirls, replaced by a stern stare and a readied stance.

“What are...” Twilight tried, her tone barely above a mutter.

“Petal Dance!” the hominid shouted. Flower Dancer lunged at Twilight, twirling like a spinning top, creating a swirl of pink flower petals from seemingly nowhere. The swirl whipped into Twilight, nearly giving her whiplash as it physically forced her backwards. Coming again at her, Twilight threw herself to the left, ending up on the ground and rolling.

The trainer whistled. “Quick little devil, aren’t you?”

The flowery tornado jerked left, spinning at Twilight, whose horn lit up, flashing her out of the way. She reappeared behind the Bellossom. Try though she did to reason with either other being, her words were killed in their inception as the Bellossom’s change in directions, forcing Twilight to teleport out of harm's way once more.

Without warning, the tornado of petals stopped, but Flower Dancer continued to spin. Trying to take a single step forwards, Flower Dancer fell to the ground. “Goddamn confusion,” the trainer grumbled, pulling out the heal ball. “Flower Dancer, return!” A beam of red shot forth from the ball, consuming Flower Dancer in one fell swoop. He smirked as he placed the ball, now having shrunken its size considerably, on his belt and swapping it for another ball. “We’ve a need for speed.”

“No, wait!” Twilight blurted. Moving to throw the new ball, the hominid stopped dead. “Why are you doing this?”

“You-you can talk?” the trainer stammered, his hands trembling.

“Yes, I can-”

“Sweet God, yes! A talking Pokemon! IT’S LIKE A DREAM COME TRUE! And it’s not of those annoying telepaths, oh no! It’s a Pokemon that speaks with a mouth! Hahahaha! Oh, I am so gonna capture you, put you a ball, and parade you around-” he threw his Pokeball out “-like some clever simile!” From the Pokeball came another odd creature: its black face and paws contrasted with its white coat; a single curved black horn jutted out one side of a face, bearing resemblance to its blade-like tail.

“All right, Blacknight,” the trainer barked, “use Night Slash!” Before Twilight could even open her mouth, Blacknight was upon her, slashing its horn across her leg. Hot drips of pain raced through her, but not where she had been cut; rather, the pain pierced her skull as if she had been stabbed with an icepick. Out of pure instinct, she grabbed at her head with both forehooves, ignoring the fact it sent her face-first into the ground.

As Blacknight jumped back, the trainer ordered, “Now, use False Swipe!”

Blacknight lunged at Twilight, who gritted her teeth in preparation for the worst. Rather than immediately strike her, Blacknight lunged to Twilight’s side, grabbing her still-standing rear legs in his sickle-like horn. With a jerk, Twilight was wholly forced in the ground, her body instinctively trying to pull into a fetal position.

“Perfect! We got her now!” the trainer shouted, prompting Blacknight to leap to the side. Grabbing a Pokeball, the trainer then threw it at Twilight. His aim was true, the ball struck her on the head – and then nothing happened. The trainer’s expression utterly died. “Oh shit.... Um...” He reached into his belt, pulling out Blacknight’s ball. “Blacknight, return.” A red beam short forth from the ball, utterly consuming Blacknight

Putting a hand over his face, the trainer muttered a stream of profanities. He sighed. “Well, now I feel kinda retarded.” Twilight, still on the ground, only coward further. “I mean, I should have seen this; you have goggles on... and I ain’t ever...” Shaking his head, he walked towards Twilight. Upon reaching her, he knelt down, a frown on his face. He reached a hand out to Twilight, over for her to flinch backwards, prompting him to jerk his hand away in kind.

“What's wrong with you?” he said in an annoyed tone.

“I think... I think I broke my ankle,” Twilight whined.

He grunted. “False swipe isn’t supposed to break limbs... Stupid Absol; this is all your damn fault.” He spat at the ground. “What were you even doing out... here... wherever this is... without your trainer? It’s dangerous.”

“I-I-I-I was... picking flowers,” she replied through clenched teeth.

“Flowers?” he deadpanned. Putting a hand in his pocket, he pulled out something which resembled window cleaner, only the bottle was much smaller. Twilight, upon seeing it, flinched back. “Whoa, whoa, easy there.” He held his hand out, slowly, as if trying to catch a snake. Then, with a jerk, he grabbed her wounded ankle, holding it steady despite Twilight’s bout of thrashing, and sprayed the bottle onto the injury.

The pain in her leg began to dissipate, as if by magic. Without warning, the trainer picked Twilight up, throwing her over his shoulder. Twilight yelped, attempting to thrash about. “Oi! Easy up, purple thing. I’m not out for problem? I’mma try to help you find your way back home, to your trainer.”

“Uhh...”

He shrugged. “Besides, a little goodwill goes a long way for helping myself... Oh, and the name’s Lucian.”

***

The early scraps of sunlight bore down upon the verdant fields of Equestria; the sunlight, just peaking over Canterlot mountain, bathed even the darkest nook and cranny with golden sun. It was the very definition of Eden – the very epitome of a normal Equestrian day. There was just problem: it was anything but a normal day.

Upon a seemingly random hill somewhere beneath Canterlot stood a long figure. Its body was a maelstrom of swirling particles, though it was covered by a black trenchcoat; and even then, bits of particles phased through its coat. The one place which was not a fractal of particles was its head, which bore an uncanny resemblance to a human’s; its eyes color scheme, though, we utterly inverted; rather than black pupils and a white eye, its retinae were white and what was usually white was now onyx black.

It simply stared at Canterlot; all it did was stand there and think. And as the pieces of its puzzle finally fell into place, it readied itself for action. Tomorrow would be an interesting day indeed for it.

Breaking the Physics

“Do the walk, do the walk,” he hummed, the pony in his arms staring at up him. “Don’t be fool, go to school. Do not watch, no don’t touch. Do not throw that thing you have.”

“Are... are you singing?” Twilight asked.

The trainer looked down at the tiny mare he held, saying in his most extravagant voice, “I sing the song of my people.”

“You mean, like a... a mating call?” she hesitantly asked, and he replied with a scoff.

“Well, if a chick were to catch what I was singing about, heh, she’s a keeper.”

“You mean, you’re singing a song from your heart?”

Stepping across a pair of large stones to avoid sloshing in the bog, he chuckled. “That certain costumed hero can be my heart any day...” Hardly able to contain a grin, he said, “It’s like that time I was kicked by Sicily. That dude was beating on me with the middle of Italy. Have you ever been mauled by the landmass of an entire country? No? Well, I have.”

“Um...”

Shaking his head, the trainer stepped back on dry (for certain values of that word) land. “Never you mind, just a bit of silliness from a man who was insane.” A pause. “I’m going in the right way, right?”

“Well, you’re not going the left way,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Oh, sarcasm. That’s original,” he responded.

“What do you expect me to say?” she asked. “And for that matter–” Twilight hesitated, causing the trainer to look down at her “–what are you?”

“Gonna have to be more specific,” he chortled, prompting her to huff.

“Okay... so just what is such a thing as a tall, hairless, pink-skinned ape thing.”

“Pink skin,” he laughed. “That’s the most cliche, unoriginal description for humans ever, lady!”

“It is?”

“I’ve only heard it in every boring sci-fi ever.”

“Sci-fi?”

He rolled his eyes. “Never you mind.” Footsteps falling flat, he paused. “Wait.”

“What?”

Looking dead ahead, he said, “You just asked what a human is. You were unable to be caught via Pokeball. You speak my language without much in the way of a foreign accent...”

“I was sort of wondering that last one too...”

The trainer jerked his head forwards, his eyes staring into Twilight’s, as if he were trying to burrow into her brain. “None of these make sense. Particularly points uno y dos.”

Twilight tried to shrink back from his vision, but found herself held too tightly to squirm. Instead, she merely was able to stare upwards into the human’s beady, comparatively lifeless little eyes. “Uh... are you o-okay?”

“Reality check,” he stated, his tone bereft of emotions: “tiny, talking Ponyta-like pokemon thing; no green alien babes; you were unable to be caught, not because of my ineptitude but because of the Pokeball’s flat out refusal to acknowledge you as a Pokemon; and, of course, your legitimate ignorance of–” he swapped to a pointlessly dramatic down, over exaggerating his facial expression to match “–man.”

“You know, I think I can walk home from here,” she muttered, her eyes darting every which way.

He took a depth, long breath. “Thus, as my space alien and emotionally dead companion can confirm, I’m in a number of equally implausible scenarios.”

“No, no, really – my leg is magically better...”

“I present to you each some... evidence hypotheses stuff. First implausible scenario: I’m in Hell, but judging from all the swampiness, and because I read Dante (take that, parents! Trying to make me go outside and become a Pokemon trainer, instead of getting an education! Who’s laughing now‽), I must assume I’d be in the Fifth Circle... which is odd, considering that, only now, as I lay dead, do I realize I’ve spent most of my life making animals fight each other, thus that would make you think I’d be in the Seventh Circle, but no.

“Second thingy thing: I’m hallucinating. But since I passed out underwater (and because Atlantis was explained to be a myth by Plato himself), that’s unlikely. Third terza rima: I broke through reality and am now across the universe. But considering that doing that would sort of violate all science in her tender nether regions, that’s unlikely.”

At the mentioning of “tender nether regions”, Twilight felt the skin beneath her fur coat began to crawl.

“Thing cuatro: I was teleported into a parallel dimension of some sort, one which is some connected to my home-verse via white hole and black hole exchanges sciences. Thus, I am both in my world and not; ergo, I have a limited window to return home before the immediately wormhole brings me home. In short, a bunch of science just happened to me!

“But considering how my own knowledge of how reality works is based mostly off that one time Mr. Fish and I accidentally crashed into an operation of the Cartels and destroyed the whole organization with fire... And all those fumes sort of got to me. Then Mr. Fish and I went to a planetarium and pretty much all of the major museums in that city, as well as bought all the seasons of the Universe and Big Bang Theory and watched those all during a single marathon.... Learned so much during all that. And because–” he gritted his teeth “–mom and dad refused to let me watch educational television, saying how it’ll rot my brain when I should be outside making animals fight each other to the near death...” He blinked, ungritting his teeth. “Er, in short – I have no idea what I’m talking about. I mean, in all likelihood I got the bad end of some crazy psychic Pokemon which probably teleported to me some kind of...” He spun a hand in a circle, as if trying to catch the right words out of thin air. The trainer muttered, “Ah, wossname? I think... probably some kinda preserve or something... maybe on a long-lost continent... Perhaps some billionaire’s playground for his rare/extinct pokemon? That sounds reasonable... other than the fact that it makes no sense.”

“Um, so about that whole ‘letting me go’ buisness,” Twilight intoned, squirming.

“You know, for un pequeño purple pferd-poké, you’re rather heavy – quit squirming.”

“What did you call me?”

“I just let slip a slew of alliterations,” he boasted. “I’m so witty that... something something something. But the point is, lose some weight, chubby thighs.”

“I do not have chubby thighs!” Twilight snapped.

“Hoh hoh,” he chuckled. “Seems like somebody’s been teased for having–” his lips curled into a Cheshire-Cat-like grin “–a certain weight to her step.”

“I am not fat!” she retorted, squirming in his arms. “And this coming from some anorexic ape!”

“Oooh, gettin’ fiesty, are we, love?” he said in an insufferably coy tone, setting Twilight on top of boulder. “But nice alliteration, adds appeal.”

“Hah hah,” she deadpanned.

“Ah, whatsa matta? Is mine miniscule, might-maidened, mädchen making mean a mí?” He snapped his finger at the mare. “See? And I just made them up and ranted on in three different languages. Only one of which I speak... high school was no help.”

“I want to ask, but I don’t.”

“And for the record,” he said, jabbing a finger in Twilight’s direction, “how are you speaking that?”

“Speaking?”

“Language. You seem to lack a knowledge of either me or–” he, again, dropped his tone into way beyond exaggerated “–man.”

“Why do you keep saying that word like that?”

“What word?” He took a deep breath. “Man?”

“Yes, that – why?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. It’s from something, I think, but I forget. Just that, for some reason unbeknownst (is that even a word?) to me, human media tends to portray anything we do to the environment as bad. Environmentalist hippies seems to think that man is Cthulu or something. I, for one, see no problem with enslaving bright, colorful animals and making them fight to the death for my sadistic entertainment. (That’s how they phrase it. Don’t it just sound silly?)”

“That... sounds horrible,” Twilight said, her tone cautious, her head angling a few degrees away from the human.

“Funny thing is, man is actually the masculine and singular term for a member of my species. But due to patriarchal thingies, masculine words include females because... I don’t know – my Spanish teacher didn’t know why some words were girly and other manly.”

“Masculine and feminine words? Like in French?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s la versus lo... Una abuela versus un abuelo... Stop distracting me!”

“I’m not–”

“I’m tired of slogging through the muck,” he opined over Twilight. Frowning, he fished about his waist, checking the six little balls at his side. Pursing his lips to the side, he put a certain capsule into his hands. Then, squeezing it, the ball grew in size until it fit nicely into the palm of his hand.

Twilight blinked. “Woah, woah, woah!”

“What?” he asked, glancing at the swamp.

“That ball, it-it just grew some five times its size!”

“So?”

She threw her forehooves up. “So‽ You just violated Conservation of Energy! That’s not just some idle guideline or helpful suggestion, it’s implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian!”

“And?”

“And‽” Twilight snarled. “Rejecting it destroys unitary and then you get faster-than-light signaling!”

A pause.

“Neeerd!” the human jeered.

“I am not a nerd!” she snapped.

“You’re a nerd who failed physics class.”

“I got an A+ in physics!”

“And I failed chemistry,” he said, offering Twilight a sagely nod.

“That’s not good!”

“Watch and see.” He held the ball up to Twilight. “Pokeball, see?” Flicking his wrist, he threw the ball out into the swamp.

“Why–” Twilight tried, only to have her eyes nearly melt out of her skull.

It appeared with a flash of blinding sun-like light – a serpentine monster rising above the bog like a tower. The beast was gigantic, its head rising to the height of hydra, though the newcomer was infinitely more muscular. Turning around, it eyed Twilight, causing her blood to freeze, her heart refusing to beat. To Twilight, the monster’s expression looked almost bored, as if it had better things to do but was fulfilling some annoying obligation. Then, for no good reason, the serpent let its head fall in a controlled descent, landing its head next to the human.

“Mr. Fish!” the trainer said, opening his arms and embracing a part of the giant's face. “Little pony, this is Mr. Fish, and he’s my friend.”

Twilight’s face was utterly blank, as if someone had gone and flipped the “off” on Twilight’s “capable of having expressions, On/Off” switch. She just sat there, her jaw occasionally moving as if to speak but nothing coming out. Her eyes were locked to Mr. Fish, the Pokemon’s eyes not even acknowledging the mare.

“Um, Mr. Fish, I think we broke her,” Lucian said, poking with a finger Twilight’s chest. “Hmm... Oh well. Hey, Mr. fish, use surf!”

Mr. Fish swiveled his eyes to his trainer, shaking his head.

I... what? Did you just–” his eyes went wide “–disobey me...?”

Twilight babbled something incomprehensible.

“I agree,” the trainer dismissed, waving a hand at the mare. Setting said hand to his chin, he asked, “What’s the problem, Mr. Fish?”

Mr. Fish rolled over onto his back, his eyes still to the human.

“That explains nothing,” Lucian muttered.

“H-h-h-how?” Twilight sputtered.

“How what? How now brown cow?”

“That’s... a giant monster,” she muttered, her eyes so wide as to look they they were about to pop.

“His name is Mr. Fish,” Lucian replied, hugging Mr. Fish’s face, “and I love him.” Pulling away from Mr. Fish, the trainer continued, “Yeah, he was my first Pokemon. Well, I actually got him as a Magikarp. I found him just sort of... flopping in the grass one day.”

“I...”

“Yeah, see, I was just chillin’ at home, playing video games when my mom burst in. She says, ‘Lucian, you’re almost an adult now and you haven’t become a Pokemon trainer! You keep working in school, and your lack of Pokemon shames your father and I!’ So, she and dad sent me out to mow the lawn.”

“Mow... the... lawn?”

“No, no, you don’t get it – wild pokemon live in the tall grass! They were just... out there, rolling about on the lawn. So then, as I’m trying to mow, this guy in a lab coat comes out of nowhere, telling me about how I’m now a Pokemon trainer or some shit. After asking me if I was a girl or boy–” he shivered “–he told me to come select a Pokemon.” The trainer shook his head. “So, I just grabbed the nearest one on the lawn – this red fish thing, about as big as my chest. Guy goes, ‘Are you sure you don't want a better one?’ And I’m like, ‘But we’ve already bonded, see? I named him Mr. Fish and he loves me.’ So then I was formally kicked out of home and branded a Pokemon trainer, thus unable to ever get a steady source of income. But, as it turns out, if you use a fish as a club, soon enough you’ll get really good at Pokemon battles. Then this one day, after I mauled a Totodile with Mr. Fish, Mr. Fish just – poof! – turned into the mighty beast before you. Ever since then, I have ridden him and proclaimed myself the king of everything. I’ve become so good a Pokemon battles that, well, I was able to keep a steady source of income by beating on folks. Cool huh?” Again, he hugged Mr. Fish. “He’s so awesome... if a little derpy.”

“Derpy?” Twilight intoned, cocking a brow.

Patting Mr. Fish, the trainer said, “Yeah, I think it has something to do with the fact that I used him as a blunt object for so long, back when he was just a Magikarp. But that doesn't matter, I still love him.”

“So... a fish, about the size of your chest,” Twilight stated, “turned into that house-sized serpent?”

The trainer frowned, scratching his head. “Yeah, that about covers it. Why, does something not make sense?”

“Not make sense? It’s impossible!” she snapped.

“Cool story, sis,” he dismissed, turning back to Mr. Fish. “So, buddy, why don't you use surf? Are we out of double-P? I mean, you shouldn’t be, you know, since we went to the Pokemon Center before we left for Cinnabar.”

Mr. Fish groaned.

“That’s not very helpful!” the trainer snapped. “I don’t speak your language, Mr. Fish! I mean, help me out here, man.”

From the murky depths of the swamp, rose a giant head. Its eyes swiveled about, its body lurking beneath the surface. Then, for no reason it could discern, a gigantic blue fish tail brushed up against it. The head, still mostly submerged, angled itself to stare at the tail. Again the tail swished against the head, this time the head inched towards the tail, causing the tail to rub it directly.

“Does anybody else see that?” the trainer asked, pointing out into the bog.

“What?” Twilight said, turning her head to follow the trainer’s line of sight. There, camping out in the water, was a huge scaly head.

Mr. Fish, his head towering above the now-disturbed swampwater, stared down at the head, baring his fangs. Growling, he watched as the one head was flanked by three more identical heads. Then the heads, all glistening wet, rose up from the water, sending sizable waves to the shore. All four heads balanced themselves atop long, slender necks, lacking the raw muscle of Mr. Fish; at their max, they each rose to about the height of Mr. Fish.

“Ooh, you’re a big one, ain’t ya?” the trainer whistled, pulling out his Pokedex. Frowning, he slid the device away. “Damn thing don’t know what this thing is, either. Hey, pony girl, you got any idea what Mr. Fourhead (get it? ‘Cause, you know, four heads, forehead.) er, what Mr. Fourhead wants? Or is?”

Twilight, her head aching, uttered, “That’s a hydra.” She slumped her head forwards, saying through gritted teeth, “All I wanted to do was pick an herb, but noooo.”

“How do you think I feel?” Lucian replied, watching Mr. Fish watch the hydra watch him back. “Mr. Fish and I were having a gay old time on our trip to Cinnabar. Next thing I know, I’m here. So, lady, please don’t tell me how bad your life is, especially if I ain’t whining about my own. Okay?”

“I don’t mean to state the obvious here,” she said in a snide yet worried tone, “but perhaps we should, I don’t know... run!”

“Can’t.”

“Why‽”

He rolled his eyes. “Since we’ll just run into another one or so.” He shrugged. “Might as well capture this new one.”

“What‽” Twilight barked.

“Eh, it’s just my luck seems to involve me keep running into these things,” he said with another shrug. “If I catch this weird thing, I'ma... I don’t know, but I want him.”

“Want him‽” she snarled.

“Well, duh – I’m a capture him and stuff.”

“Capture him‽ Are you crazy‽ We need to run!”

“Nah, I got this,” he dismissed, waved a hand at her. Shrugging, he pulled out a pair of black sunglasses from seemingly nowhere. Putting them on, he said, “Mr Fish, it’s time to drop the bass. No... no, wait – we need some electro music from a certain duo of foolish punks.” He thrust a finger in the hydra’s direction. “Now, Mr. Fish, use hyper beam!”

Mr. Fish opened his titanic maw as a colossal sphere of swirling orange energy formed in his mouth. The sphere went from a disconnected storm and then congealed until the sphere was solid yet still swirling. Twilight could only stare as the ball funneled into a pressurized beam that barreled out of Mr. Fish’s mouth. The beam smashed into the hydra’s nearest head, the beam throwing the hydra's head back with so much force that it was sent hurtling backwards, the rest of the heads getting swept up alongside it; Mr. Fish, on the other hoof, was utterly unphased by the kinetic backlash.

“He... he just violated one of Neighton’s laws,” Twilight murmured. “He just broke a law of physics!”

“What now?” the trainer asked, beating his head to an invisible beat.

“That attack... thing... it just knocked the hydra onto its back, and Mr. Fish wasn’t even phased!”

“And?”

“HE JUST VIOLATED NEIGHTON’S THIRD LAW! When two bodies interact with each other, these forces are equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction; thus, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction! You just nearly took the hydra’s head via with sheer brute force, and Mr. Fish wasn’t even phased by the kinetic energy!”

“So?”

“So‽ So‽ You just violated physics, and you aren't even phased‽ What are you‽”

“Man.”

“Stop that!” she snarled.

“I’m just saying that you’re being silly.”

“Being ‘silly’ is not me pointing out your blatant disregard for reality, you uncivilized brute!”

Uttering a deep, throaty growl, the hydra rose itself from the murky brown waters, or at least three of its heads dids. The the middle-left head stayed limp, the head’s crest just floating in the water, its eyes occasionally moving about, but otherwise staying put.

“Wow. Tenacious one, ain’t ya?” the trainer whistled.

“You’re not evening listening to me, are you?” Twilight groaned.

“If I said I was, I’d be lying; and I never lie to girls; with, yes; but to, no.”

The hydra, collecting itself, began to plod through the waters towards Mr. Fish. Then, within sufficient distance as to manually strike, it began to strafe Mr. Fish, keeping two pairs of eyes on the Pokemon, one pair to the trainer, and keeping the final waterlogged pair free. As it strafed, it found itself stepping closer and closer towards the human and pony duo.

“Tough, too,” he remarked. “Odd.”

“I don’t mean to be the voice of reason here,” Twilight said, “but shouldn’t we, you know – get out of here!”

The human shrugged. “What do you expect me to do? Mr. Fish’s gotta recharge, having used a hyper beam and all.”

“What‽”

With the fury of a hurricane, the hydra lunged two heads at Mr. Fish, coming from opposite directions. Jowls wide, they snared Mr. Fish; one by the lower neck, one by the upper neck. Clamping down like extremely taut vices, they pulled down on Mr. Fish, trying to drag him beneath the water.

Still latched to Mr. Fish the hydra began to also walked towards the human, the beast’s third head still targeting the trainer. All the while Lucian just stood there, utterly unfazed, though tapping two fingers to an invisible beat, to his thigh.

“What are you doing?” Twilight hissed. “They’re going to eat Mr. Fish!”

“Shut up,” he growled.

“What?”

“Shut up. You’re interrupting my counting.”

“Counting?”

Lucian didn’t reply, he just kept tapping his fingers, his lips moving but not enough to even tell if he was mouthing words. As the tapping went on, the human bobbed his head in sync. He continued doing so even as the hydra’s foot made landfall, the once waterlogged head skulking out of the water and gliding just above the ground, its eye locked to the unfazed trainer. The head began to hiss, its forked tongue flickering in and out of its mouth.

Without warning, the tapping stopped, the trainer calmly saying, “Ice Fang.”

Mr. Fish bellowed as he twisted his neck, like a crocodile’s death roll, spinning itself free of the hydra’s grasp. With the speed and force of a hurricane, Mr. Fish’s head dove at one of the hydra’s, his larger mouth ensuring it whole. The hydra made a noise that was somewhere in-between a shrill shriek and a strident snort, Mr. Fish’s fangs bearing down on its neck, as the bitten head was consumed and encased in thick sheets of ice.

The hydra thrashed to and fro, pulled and writhing and twisting in an attempt to free its beleaguered head. Yet Mr. Fish’s bite was too strong; no matter what it did, the hydra could only shriek and howl as the bitten head was eaten by ice. Even as the ice grew, a thin layer of steam rose off the ice, the hot sun high above.

“Freeze,” the human said, adjusting his sunglasses. At that moment, Mr. Fish jerked back from the hydra, releasing it. The head, encased in ice, promptly took a dive into the murky waters. “Yeah – you be dropping like stock prices in October of ‘29, bitch.” He put a hand to his chin. “Odd, usually one can tell a Pokemon’s type, but it seems I was wrong; had suspected you the water type, but the ice attack didn’t render you unconscious.”

The hydra began flailing about, trying to free the encased head. No matter what it did, however, the ice remained, the hydra screaming louder and louder until its vocal cords were shot and ruined.

“Well, he seems to be having the time of his life,” the trainer chuckled.

Twilight shook her head at the trainer, her jaw dropped, her expression abhorring of him. “How can you find that... funny?” she spat.

“‘Cause it it.”

The hydra tore at its iced head, its body thrashing. Then, failing utterly, it dove beneath the waters, scurrying off with its tails between its legs. In its wake it sent waves crashing to the the shore, a few of which were strong enough to wash over the trainer’s shoes.

“Oi! Don’t wreck my running shoes! I only got a pair, ya wanker!” He paused as he removed his shades, stashing them in a pocket. “And, apparently, my accent just became a supervillain's. Wacky.” He held out a ball in his hand. “Mr. Fish, return!” A red beam shot out of the ball, impacting Mr. Fish, who turned into a swirling of translucent red energy, which then catapulted towards the ball, being consumed into it. And then Mr. Fish was gone.

“You broke so many rules of physics in the last ten minutes that it hurts. It hurts!” Twilight said.

“Pop an Ibuprofen, lass... Wow, I don't know what my accent is anymore. Wot, wot, chip chip cheerio, eh, amigo?”

“Focus!”

He set Mr. Fish’s Pokeball back to his waist, next to his other Pokeballs. “So, how long till we reach the end of the swamp?”

Twilight blinked. “I-I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“I think... I don’t know, maybe.... twenty minutes?”

He nodded. “Aight. So how ‘bout till we reach civilization.”

She shrugged. “I dunno... a half-hour?”

“Work für moi,” he said. The trainer extended his arms, ensuring Twilight, who only struggled a little as she tossed over his shoulder like a rocket launcher. “Aight, gotcha good,” he grunted.

Still squirming, though more in an effort to find somewhere comfortable than to flee, Twilight groaned, “this is uncomfortable.”

***

“By Azura, by Azura, by Azura,” the trainer panted, staring out the green wasteland (so very green) before him.

“What?” Twilight inquired.

He shook his head. “Never you mind, pony... So, how much longer till we get to the land of houses, candy, and bl...owfish for dinner...?”

“Blowfish for dinner? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t be such a gosh darn bitch.”

“Woah! Don’t swear at me!”

“Forgive me for being an uncouth lout. But at least I didn’t drop you... more than twice. So-so be glad you only sprained a leg from... Yeah, I don’t know where I’m going with that, since I can’t figure out how to word it without it being a threat.” Looking out into the green, his eyes followed a lonely dirt road rolling across the terrain. “Oh, and I don’t mean to call out Freund or anything, but rolling hills are apparently a literary metaphor for female sexaulity. Never understood that. Always found it weird, you know. Was convinced my literature teacher was a liar... or had an Oedipus complex.”

“What?”

He nodded. “Truth be told, my Oedipus complex is for Mr. Fish.”

Twilight blinked. “Wat.”

“Yep. This is why they banned me from therapy. Literally. They banned me for the whole of ever from ever seeing a therapist. Which is okay, since therapist looks an awful lot like ‘the rapist’.”

“I... don’t know if I know any words to use right now to accurately convey just how baffled I am.”

“So, just follow the road to your homestead?”

“I... I live in the library. But yes, this will lead to town.”

He nodded. “Damn, man, I be travelin’ like Adrien Brody today.”

“I... words none do have.”

“What a lovely start, I’d say, to an adventure across... I hate hills.” He picked Twilight off of his shoulder, setting her on the ground, causing the wounded mare to grunt and collapse to the ground.

“Hey!” she barked.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He put his hand to his forehead, as if saluting. “If I had a bigger Pokemon – or if your ass was a bit lighter – I might be able to airlift us to wherever we're going. As it stands, you probably weigh something like thirty-five kilos, and Skywing weighs about 40 or so. Coupled with mine, and Skywing’s grounded.” He glanced down at Twilight as she struggled to sit upright. “Seriously, you weigh a metric tonne. What, do you only eat donuts ‘round these parts?”

Twilight’s face went red. “It’s not my fault! So what if I occasionally compulsively eat when I’m reading‽”

“In le grand Yankee tradition,” he remarked. Then the trainer grinned. “But it looks like I’ve found your Achilles’ heel: thine weight.”

She began to grit her teeth. “Shut up! I am not fat!”

“Never said that you were,” he said, his tone brimming with reasonableness.

“You were thinking it,” she glowered.

He knelt down, giving her a condescending pat on the head. “Aw, is someone the victim of constant bullying, thereupon she figures the only way to emotionally validate herself is by whoring herself out to food and the written word?”

If Twilight had been a less-composed mare, she might have then speculated aloud and at great lengths about the trainer’s parentage, sexual predilections, and eternal destiny; the thought and desire to do so even occurred to Twilight, and she nearly considered it. Thankfully for everypony, Twilight was not such a mare; so instead she just ground her teeth as she glared up at the human.

A pregnant pause (culminating with the conception of metaphorical triplets).

“So, walking it all the way, then?” he asked.

“Yep.”

He sighed. “Well, here goes nothing.”

A pregnant pause.

“You know,” Twilight offered, “I do sort of know a spell that could reduce your weight.”

Slowly, like a rusted clockwork mechanism, he twisted his neck in Twilight’s direction, his eyes utterly bereft of emotion. “You’ve know this spell all along,” he stated.

Twilight swallowed a suddenly-formed lump in her throat. “Um... y-yes.”

“You’ve know this the whole time... and you only know bring it up, after we’ve gone through the most hellish part of our trek.”

“Okay, why don’t we mosey on out of Creepy Voice Town and–”

“This also seems to defy the laws of physics, at least as you put them,” he pointed out, still speaking in an utter monotone.

Twilight blinked. “What? No it doesn’t, it makes perfect... sense.” She went quiet as she stared up at the human, stared into his utterly tranquil eyes.

“This would have been most convenient much earlier,” he said.

Standing there, the trainer looking into Twilight’s eyes, and Twilight into his, the mare realized something: the man was in the placid pond focus where the manner is measured and polite, the voice so steady that it sounded otherworldly, and only a faint trace of spittle moistening the corners of his maw betrays the inner inferno. And when the human’s eye twitched, Twilight’s heart sank into her stomach.

“So,” he continued, “you could have used that earlier.” His eye twitched. “You made me go through the entire swamp, carrying you around with me, all of which could have easily been averted if you’d just. Used. This. One. Simple. Move.”

“I...”

“One. Simple. Move,” he repeated, each word sending out bits of spittle.

She scooted backwards, though didn’t get all too far. “I-it never occurred to me, what with the-” she swallowed “-hydra, the dragon-thing, your... merciless and random attacking of... me.”

“Use it,” the trainer ordered.

“I... it might take a–”

“Now.”

She blinked, then offered an affirmative nod. Her horn lit up with a grayish purple color, bathing her head and the trainer in its glow. In an instant, a storm of transparent pink feathers consumed Twilight, twirling and spinning around her before they dove into her body, going through her body as if it wasn’t there. When all the feathers were gone, Twilight uttered a sigh of relief as she looked upon the human once again, whose face had softened up, taking to it a mildly nonplussed expression to it.

“So, did that move, like, raise your agility or something?” he asked

“My what now?”

He shook his head as he crouched doing, getting eye level with the mare. “So, your kilos are down by how much?”

“Kilos?”

“Kilograms,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Kilograms?”

The trainer blinked. “You know, the international standard.” Twilight just stared at him. “Equivalent to a thousand grams?” No response, thus prompting the trainer to put a hand to his chin. “Err, pounds?”

“Hmm? Those?” She nodded. “Yeah, it reduces my poundage by a factor of... why are you looking at me like that?”

“Am I in the States?”

“Wh–”

“I’m in the States, aren’t I,” he deadpanned.

“Wh–”

He facepalmed, groaning through his hand, “Great. I’m one some kinda magical reserve... maybe a native reserve, which explains a lot of things... If I recall correctly, nearly half of the land in the western States are under supreme Federal control–” he rubbed his chin with the hand “–which means anything and yet nothing to me.”

“Um... hello?” Twilight probed.

The human shook his head. “Nevermind any of that. So, you’re lighter now, yes?”

“I... Yes, I am. Why, do you-” The man grabbed Twilight, hauling her into his arms like a mother cradling an infant.

“Ho-lee sheet, girl, you’re like, what, ten kilos?” he chuckled, bouncing her in his arms.

“Hey! Quite bounce-ing me!” she demanded, her voice constantly interrupted by the bounces.

“Ho-ho, having’ fun, are we?” he laughed. The trainer put Twilight onto a single hand, tossing her up like a baker would pizza dough. “Hey, ma, one hand!” He jerked his right hand out under Twilight, catching her with it. “Oi, now lookie ‘ere, ah caught me a tiny pokemon, ah thinks.” He tossed her up again, swapping whichever hand caught her with each pass.

With another toss, he flipped Twilight end-over-end, prompting her to jerk a hoof in panic, sending it towards the man, slugging him in the jaw, and send Twilight only spin harder. Grunting, the kick sent the man’s legs stumbling. When one of the feet slipped, he toppled to the ground, slamming his back against the dirt. At that precise moment, Twilight landed, her hooves smashing into his stomach, prompting the man to gasp.

Erupting in a coughing fit, the human heaved his stomach, his body being caught in the throes of an almost epileptic fit as he curled into the fetal position, his arms wrapping his body, the whole process forcing Twilight to fall off his body.

Twilight gasped. “A-are you okay‽”

Rather than answer, the human, still curled up in a ball, rolled around on the ground, constantly gasping for breath. The only words Twilight could even make out were from the occasional grunt, like “...bitch...!”

Standing as still as a statue, Twilight muttered, “Sorry... b-but you did sort of... have it coming...”

Panting, the human stopped rolling around. He made a gurgling sound, then a groaning noise, and then he began to wheeze. With a choking sound, he stopped. Just stopped. He didn’t even breath, just sat there, curled up in a ball.

With a hiss of air, the human began to break out chuckling. The chuckles gave way to full-blown laughter. Soon, though still curled up in a ball, the man was cackling like mad. And he just kept howling with laughter, even as his hand began fumbling around his waist.

“Um... are you a-alright?” Twilight prodded, taking a tentative step towards the man.

Continuing his bellowing laughter, he said, “I might have deserved that one!”

“Um...”

“Glad to see you ain’t a total pussy, kicking my ass like so!” he guffawed, rolling onto his stomach and spreading out his limbs. Then, in a single motion, he managed to haul himself to his feet, a big smile on his face.

He grabbed a lone ball from his belt, this one’s color scheme including a blue top half with red crests, and three it out. From the ball exploded forth a wave of energy, energy which transformed into a huge brown bird with a red crest and the occasional golden-yellow feather. The bird flared out his wings, cawing, ”Pidgeot!”

The trainer smiled. “Meet Skywing, little pony; caught him as a mere pidgey, you know, and how he’s all grown up!”

“Wait, you’re not mad at me?” Twilight asked.

“Mad? Ha! Not a chance.” He balled a hand into a fist, then pressed the fist to his left cheek as he said in a lower, throaty voice, “One day, vengeance shall be mine. But today is not that day.” He struck the fist from his face, again smiling. “Alright, Skywing, you ready to fly?”

The giant bird turned his head in the trainer’s direction, giving the human a blank stare.

He gave the bird a thumbs up. “Yeah! That’s the kind of attitude we need: cool and aloof!”

“Am I the only one who has no idea what’s going on?” Twilight said.

“Nope,” he chirped. In a single motion, the trainer bent down and scooped Twilight up.

“Hey! Hey!” she protested as he began walking over to the bird.

“Bwa-ha, you cannot stop me,” the trainer said in an overly silly voice; “I am a master of tetris; fear my movements of left and right!”

“What.”

“Alright, Skywing, get read to use fly!”

The bird began to prune its wings.

“Yeah!” the trainer cooed.

***

“Steel with us, what is that thing‽” shouted a Royal Canterlot Guard pegasus, himself, like his comrades, clad in golden armor.

“I don’t know!” replied another guard, his voice ripe with panic.

“Leftenant, what the hay is that thing‽”

“How the harvest moon should I know!” the Lieutenant, an aged warrior approaching his sixties, shot back.

The creature continued flying, almost as if it was utterly unfettered by the soldiers before it. It wore a black trenchcoat over its hominid body. Upon its face, if one could call it a face, was an utterly blank expression, its eyes hollow and dead. It was held in the sky by a pair of huge insectoid wings which buzzed with a thunderous roar. Yet the one thing that nopony could seem to overlook was its body, visible via its open-zippered coast: everything below part of the neck was not solid; rather, it was a violently swirling mass of black and white particles.

“Do we buckin’ charge it, sir?” one soldier asked.

“Dammit, boys, y’all can guess what we gotta go! It’s OpFor, and we know what we do do OpFors!” the Lieutenant shouted, pulling out a thick rope from. “Lash ‘im, lads! Bring it down to earth!”

“Sir, yes, sir!” the squad of pegasi replied, following their Lieutenant's lead and pulling out ropes of their own.

In a perfectly performed move they’d all practiced countless times before, I soldiers dove at the target, strafing around it in just such a way where it became impossible to keep a single on eye on them all. Rope moving, stretched, winding around and wrapping, and tightening, the ropes found themselves wound around the hominid, wrapping it like a mummy.

And then the ropes just fell down, almost as if there wasn’t a body within them.

With the sound of roaring wings, the Lieutenant alongside everypony else, jerked his head around. There, continuing on its merry little way as if nothing had happened, was the flying hominid.

One of the guard’s shouted, “Nightmare Moon’s c-”

“Cunning bastard,” the Lieutenant gasped. “Lads, back at it! We can’t let it near the castle! Double time it! Move! Move! Move!”

Without warning, the thing just vanished, as if it had never been there in the first place. And then two guards screamed. There behind them was the creature, its forelimbs extended, its palms open. Two identical spheres of water manifested in its palms; within seconds, they exploded out from its hands, still perfectly spherical. Sooner than one could blink, the two guards again yelped, only this time it was the pressured water swatted them out of the sky, setting them plummeting to the earth below.

One guard shouted, “Celestia’s cl-”

“Clip this bastard’s wings!” the Lieutenant ordered. He pointed to two guards. “You two, rescue our comrades! Everypony else, ropes! Again!”

Once more, the remaining wing of guards, only four members down, dove at the creature, ropes flying every which way. In but a matter of seconds, the creature was ensnared in the ropes. The creature just stopped, even its particles froze; it was as if looking at a picture of the monster, rather than its actual body.

“Pull!” the Lieutenant commanded, and at once the guards pulled on their ropes, all tugging in purposefully conflicting directions. Yet nothing happened.

“Sun above!” one of the guards said through highly strained tone. “It’s like trying to please my ex-wife!”

“Koński, will you shut the hay up‽” the Lieutenant barked.

“Sorry, sir!”

In an instant, the creature's part came to life in a storm of newfound ardor, yet in the next second it vanished. Everything went silent.

A pause.

“Did we win, sir?” one of the guards asked.

Without warning, the howling roar of wings erupted from behind the Lieutenant. Jerking his head to the sound, the captain groaned, “Oh, fuuu–” But before he could finish the thought, the creature’s hand, its fingers twisting into the rough likeness of a claw, slammed into his face, the digits pressing into the sides of the stallion’s face. And then, with an almost casual indifference, the creature let go of the stallion and turned away, the Lieutenant plummeting to the ground, and the rest of the guards breaking off combat in favor of saving their fallen officer.

Looking down to the white stone walls of Canterlot Castle, the creature noted that the entirety of the castle proper was encased in a gigantic pink bubble. In an instant, it took off towards the lowered gates to the castle, sensing a weakness in the shield.

It landed with a resounding thud, kicking up dirt and gravel as its wings retracted into his body, utterly disappearing. After brushing itself free of dirt, the creature began an almost casual stroll up to the portcullis gates of the castle, its arms swaying with each step.

From behind the walls on the far side of the shield stepped forth a tall white stallion, his purple steel armor glistening in the midday sun. He put himself in the very center of the gates to Canterlot Castle, his blue eyes betraying nothing but a grim determination to succeed.

“In the name of Her Majesty Princess Celestia of Equestria, I order you to halt!” the Captain of the Guards said, his tone possessing a sort of commanding aura to it. The creature, its expression utterly blank, stepped onto the wooden bridge separating Canterlot City from Canterlot Castle, still strolling with an almost casual indifference to events.

“Very well, then,” the Captain said, doing nothing but watching the thing walkabout.

Now standing at the very edge of the shield, the creature stopped. For a whole minute it just stood there, exchanging a long stare with the Captain. The whole world fell silent, the only sounds being the calm hum of magical energy from the shield, and the Captain’s breathing.

The thing raised its left hand, extending the palm, and then placed it upon the shield barrier. It put a modicum of pressure upon the pink transparent wall, only to get a shock of purple magic rebounding through him.

“I’m afraid this is where your journey ends, my friend,” the Captain said. “I daresay that there’s no way through that shield.”

With the same general mood of casual indifference, it contorted the fingers of hand-like mass of particles into the rough semblance of talons. Then, slowly, it dug its fingers into the pink shield.

To the Captain’s absolute stupefaction, the hand began to warp and buckle the shield. He thrust more magical energy into maintaining the shield, but the hand continued to push, the shield beginning to whine under the pressure. Again, he pushed more force into holding the shield, even the whole of his magical potentials. Yet the hand kept pushing, the shield kept buckling and whining, and the Captain was forced to his knees as he focused everything he had into the shield, even forcing his eyes shut to help concentrate.

And then everything went still, the silence becoming deafening. Panting, the Captain lifted an eyelid, only to find blackness. His heart racing, he flickered open his other eye, forcing himself off his knees. To his absolute horror, he found out that he wasn’t staring into the blackness of the abyss, he was staring point-blank into the creature’s black trench coat.

CaPtUrEd

“Uh, Lucian, are you okay?” Twilight asked. She extended a forehoof out, then poked the human, who was on the floor.

Lucian began to snicker, only to end in near sobs as he curled up tighter into his ball. Himself in the corner, he just kept rocking, the only light shining in coming from the doorway to the library’s front lobby. Frowning, Twilight looked to the room’s dark curtains – which she certainly didn’t remember putting up. Come to think of it, she hadn’t exactly been in this backroom in a long while. Those curtains hadn’t been in here last time. Who put those curtains up, then?

Twilight blinked, forcing her attention back to the cowering human. “Lucian?”

“This’d be a perfect time to have some hero to look up to,” the trainer muttered. “Alas, my life of narcissism has made myself my only hero – and they say you should never meet your heroes in person! They. Were. Right!”

Rubbing an ear, she sighed. “I don’t suppose that it’s the custom of your people to cower in fear when you enter a dwelling for the first time?”

“Only in Harlem – but don’t, ’cause there’s probably piss on the floor!” he squeaked.

“Then what’s going on?”

“Wharrgarbl.”

“That’s not helpful in the least bit.” She glanced over her shoulder, checking to see if or not she closed the front door. To her satisfaction, it was shut. However, to her puzzlement, the curtains were drawn over all of the windows, not just the ones in the backroom.

For that matter, what was with her sudden obsession with curtains? Had she suddenly caught some some of feng shui disease? Was Lucian a carrier of such a disease–

She shook her head. “So, what’s the problem?”

“Nobody saw me enter.”

“Well, I guess. I hardly saw a soul in town. In fact, I don’t think anypony saw us, which is really weird for this time of day.” She paused. “I bet Pinkie Pie's up to something... again.”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

She took a step back. “W-why?”

“Did you not see them?”

“Them?”

“The other people – those like me!”

“No,” she answered hesitantly, “I saw no beings like you. In fact, I never have.”

“Exactly! Not a one! But know what I saw? More animals like you!”

“We are called ponies, thank you very much.”

“That’s my point!” he croaked. “No men, just ponies – and it so many colors, I swear t’insert-deity-of-your-choice-here that y’all were made’a candy!” Lucian paused. “And I suddenly got a Southern Yankee accent. Hell’s wrong with me?”

“Yankee what now?” Twilight asked, narrowing an eye. “If anything, that was sort of a generic country accent.”

“Yankee – from Dutch, possibly meaning ‘John Cheese’.” He snickered. “Sorry, the South ain’t Yankee. They’re Dixie. Dixieland. You know, they had a whole war over that. It was silly, I think. I dunno. I just remember that John Cheese found against a brand of paper plates – least that’s how I anthropomorphize it when I was a child and unable to comprehend mass and wholesale slaughter of young men.” He laughed again.

Twilight took a step back. “What was that last part, the thing about that death?”

He curled a hand into a fist, then stuck it up into the air, his body still curled in the dim corner. “The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists. If you know what famous historical uprising that’s from – that they don’t really teach in history class – I’ll give you a cookie.” He balled back up. “Oh, who am I kidding? I’m using knowledge and facts and phallic symbols to comfort myself!”

“But what’s the problem? You’re just cowering in a corner, but you’re not telling me what’s wrong!” Twilight snapped. “I can put up with a lot – and I mean a lot – but you are. Trying. My. Patience!” Putting a hoof to her head, she took a deep breath, then muttered to herself, “Calm down, girl. Calm down.”

“What’s wrong?” Lucian snickered once. “I’ll tell ya what, girl – walking in here, I ain’t seen another man or woman, just ponies like yourself.”

Twilight cocked a brow. “Why would there be others like you?”

He laughed thrice. “I ask of thee, who is thy master?”

“I... what?”

“Know ye your master? Knowst thou thy master?”

“Why are you talking like that?”

Lucian slammed a hand against the wooden floor. “Whom do you serve?”

“Nopony,” she answered, tilting her head.

“Then thou hast neither master nor mistress.”

“Stop talking like that.”

“Lo! You have no lord, thus you are free!”

“Um–”

“And lo!” He paused. “Yeah, I got nothing. Wait, no, I remember.” He cleared his throat. “You’re not a Pokemon! At least not one I know! It all makes sense, why...” Lucian trailed off.

“What’s a Pokemon?”

He groaned. “Talking to you is like invading Poland.”

“What?”

“Oh, that’s just a standard insult. Seriously, you can compare anything to invading Poland.” He scrunched up, saying in a low-pitch voice, “Dude, dating her is like invading Poland – everyone’s done it, and they all leave unsatisfied.”

Twilight just stared at him.

“Hey, Russia, Austria, care for a rousing gave of Polandball? I, the future Imperii Germanici, shall serve.” He sighed. “I’m going to die here, cold and alone and with only Mr. Fish to keep me company.”

Somewhere in the front room, a door opened and then closed.

“Wow, Pinkie,” came a muffled male voice, “I can’t believe that all happened.”

“What’s not to believe?” the other muffled voice, feminine and as fizzy as cola, giggled. “It’s just an average Monday for me!”

“So, does that mean you learned a lesson?” He cleared his throat. “Hey, Twilight, I’m home – and I brought Pinkie Pie.”

“Who be dat?” Lucian asked. “Also, when did I start speaking Ebonics?”

Twilight looked over her shoulder, at the door to the main room. “That would be Spike, my assistant. And he appears to have brought Pinkie Pie, another one of my friends.”

“Spike? He some kinda pet?”

“He’s a dragon.”

Lucian blinked. “Dragon? You mean, a dragon-type Pokemon?”

“Dragon-type?” Twilight mouthed.

“Twilight?” Spike called out. “Are you here, or are you still out in the swamp?”

A pause.

“Yeah, I’m in here,” Twilight called back.

“What are you doing in there?” Pinkie asked, also yelling.

“So,” Lucian muttered, “there’s Pokemon here too? Damn, it’ll be like Planet of the Aipoms, then? Maybe I’m in the future? If so, I better find a hot mute babe and then find the Statue of Liberty.”

He snickered to himself, extending his legs out. Then he put his palms on the ground. In a swift motion, he managed to stand up, only to stumbled back onto the ground. His back hit the wall, and he found himself just sitting there.

“You okay?” Twilight asked.

“Why would I join ’em when I beat ’em?” he muttered. “My will is alexipharmic to the poison of loss and failure.”

“What are you muttering about?” Twilight asked.

The door to the back room swung up in, and a pink pony with an even pinker curly tail and mane bounced in. “Hiya, Twilight!” she exclaimed, sliding to a halt next to Twilight., Her eyes locked to Lucian. “Ooh, Twilight! What’s this?” She jabbed Twilight with a hoof. “Did you commit a crime? Did you kidnap it? ’Cause you know, I’d be on your side in the court case. Actually, it doesn’t look too alive.”

“Did anyone ever tell ya you were clever?” Lucian asked dryly.

The mare gasped. “It’s alive! Twilight, are you a necromancer?”

“'Cause they’re lying,” he finished. “You’re not clever.”

Pinkie bolted up next to him. “Ooh! And you speak! Are you some kinda demon that Twilight threw together using the severed limbs of shaved monkeys?”

“God, this sucks. Bet it could suck the chrome of doorknobs,” he hissed.

“Hey, Twilight,” a little dragon said calmly, walking into the room and holding a newspaper in his hands. “Hmm, stock prices on apples are up... and I have no idea what the means.” He looked up. “Hey, Twilight, what are stocks? They like socks?” He eyes fell upon Lucian, and he sighed. “Twilight, why did you shave an orangutan? I understand the time you accidentally did that at the Canterlot Zoo – which is why we’re still on their ‘Do Not Let In’ list – but now? And why did you make him wear a silly outfit? Pinkie, is this you’re doing?”

“No,” Pinkie chirped. “Honestly, it’s not me. All Twilight, I swear.”

“What’s an orangutan?” Lucian asked, and Spike froze.

“The monkey just talked.” He gave Twilight a blank look. “Put it back where you found it, and let us never speak of this again, hmm? Or else it’ll end up just like last time you brought a strange animal home, when the parasprites ate the whole town.”

“But only Nixon goes to China,” the trainer countered, then slumped again. “Wharrgarbl.”

Spike sighed, folding the paper under his arm. “Yep, it’s another weird animal.”

“Boy, you kickin’ me while I’m down? Boy, I break yo leg.” He licked his lips. “And now I appear to be a Black rapper from the West. Fantastic.”

“My point stands,” Spike defended.

Twilight glanced between the trainer and Spike. She opened her mouth to speak, but Lucian cut her off.

“Yeah, get this motha’ off stage. God, where’s Kanye when you need him?” He facepalmed. “Yea verily, I’m married to the game, but she broke her vows.”

Pinkie gasped. “That's it! Thanks, monkey thing! You just helped me solve a problem!” She bounced once, then dashed out of the room. There came the sound of the door thrust ajar, then slammed shut.

“What just happened?” Twilight asked, her expression blank.

Spike shrugged. “She was having a problem, now she’s solved it. It was one of the random things that was of message-to-Celestia quality. So, my guess? She’s off to write a Friendship Report. Give her a moment to be back.” He looked over his shoulder. “Any second now.”

A door burst open, then just as quickly was made closed as a pink blur galloped into the back room.

“Hiya, Spike! I learned a moral lesson!” Pinkie chimed, holding out a sealed scroll to Spike. “Mind sending it to the Princess?”

“Sure thing,” Spike happily replied, taking the scroll. “What’s it about, if you don't mind me asking. Anything fancy?”

“Nah, just all about the important life lesson I learned today, of course.”

“Rather simple, huh?”

“You betcha!”

The dragon inhaled, and then he puffed. Out of his maw came a rush of emerald-green flames, whose tendrils ensnared the scroll and devoured it whole. Within seconds, nothing remained, not even ash. Spike smiled at his handiwork.

“There, the letter’s sent,” Spike said.

“Thanks, Spike! Oh, and I also mentioned to Princess Celestia that weird monkey thing, since it helped me solve the problem I had.”

“Ah ain’t no monkey,” Lucian spat. “Ah be some kinda Southern planter aristocrat with a minor hint of Ebonics. God, I need to get my accent straight.” He blinked. “Wait – what’s a Princess Celestia?”

“She’s the all-powerful controller of the sun and ruler of our nation,” Pinkie divulged with a smile.

“And you just told her all about me?”

“Yep.”

Lucian put his face in his hands. “I am so going to be executed, just like how it is in all the sci-fi shows.”

***

“And so that’s that,” Spike said, reading the letter. “Hmm. This seems rather sudden.”

Twilight gave Spike a blank gaze. “Princess Luna is... coming here?”

Spike waved the letter at Twilight. “That’s what the letter read. Odd that I got a letter back, usually that doesn’t ever happen.”

“The Princess? Here?” Twilight stammered. “B-b-but this is so sudden!”

“I think it’s neat!” Pinkie exclaimed bouncing in place. “Splendid, even!”

“Hey, Twilight,” Spike said.

She didn’t reply.

“Twi-light.”

“Hmm? Oh, what?” Twilight replied.

“What’s with the bandages?”

She looked down at her left foreleg, which had a part of it wrapped with mud-stained cloth bandages . “O-oh, that?”

“Yeah?”

Twilight smiled at Spike. “I hurt it while I was out there, that was when Lucian – the monkey thing – found me and helped me get back here.”

Lucian muttered something, and Twilight thought it was “Did you just lie for me?” However, she was unsure.

She focused back on the problem at hoof. “Wait. We still really need to get ready for the Princess!”

Rolling his eyes, Spike waved the letter again. “Princess Celestia specifically told you not to get specially ready, since Princess Luna will be here within minutes of writing, and she doesn’t want to stress you out.”

Twilight froze. “That’s fast.”

“I know.”

“No, no, no, Spike. That’s faster than it should be.” She paused to think. “Luna’s rushing here. Why would she do that?” She cocked a brow, then looked at the bouncing Pinkie Pie. “How much did you mention about Lucian?”

“Oh, him?” she giggled. Then with a smile on her face: “Just an complete evaluation of what he looked like!”

“Huh,” Twilight mouthed. She looked to Lucian, then looked back to Pinkie. “Do you suppose he has something to do with it all.”

“Twilight!” Pinkie commanded. “Don’t call the monkey a he or she, call it an it. If you don’t, you’ll end up getting attached to it, which is why you shouldn’t give it a name.”

Twilight expected Lucian to speak, but when he didn’t she instead said, “He is a sentient being, you know.”

Pinkie waved her hoof. “That doesn’t matter. You’ll have to release him back into the wild, where it can be with its own kind! I know it’s true – I saw it in a movie once!” A dark looked crossed her face as he looked away. “Or worse, it’ll catch rabies and...” She sniffled. “And you’ll have to put him down!”

She shook her head. “Pinkie, you’re looking at this the wrong way. He’s not my pet, just a body willing to help me.”

“I’m kinda on Twi’s side here, Pinkie,” Spike commented, rubbing the back of his head.

“But movies can’t lie!” Pinkie insisted, gritting her teeth. “That’s, like, illegal or something, right?”

Twilight scoffed. “Oh, please. Those nickelodeons will never go anywhere, they’re just a passing phase. I give them a year or so before they fade away.”

“This isn’t about anypony’s favorite media outlet! This is about life or death of Ole Ye– I mean, Lucian!”

Sighing, Twilight shook her head. “Pinkie, there’s a time and a place for that sort of silliness, but it’s not that day.”

“But Twilight,” Pinkie whined. “Look at him? I mean, look at it. The reason it’s sad is because it can be with its own kind!”

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe it’d like a banana,” Spike suggested, shrugging.

“He’s not a monkey,” Twilight snapped. Then she mumbled under her breath, “Monkeys don’t speak, for one thing.”

“What was last part again?” he asked.

Twilight blinked. “Hmm? Oh, nothing.”

Pinkie frowned. “Twilight, I don’t want it to be sad.”

“Stop calling him it.”

“I told you why I’m doing it, so that I don’t get attached when he catches rabies and everything goes horrible.”

Twilight facehoofed. “Pinkie, no more going to the theaters for you, Missy.”

Pinkie’s ears drooped. “You’re not my mother.”

“And I’m neither your father,” Twilight countered. “Your parentage and my status as either parental figure doesn’t matter here. I can–”

“Twilight,” Spike interjected, “you’re worried, aren’t you?”

“Who? Me?” Twilight chuckled. “I’m not worried.”

Spike cocked a brow.

“In all candor, I can safely say that I’m level-headed right now.”

Pinkie and Spike exchanges glances.

“Honest to Celestia,” Twilight insisted, her eyes shifting back and forth between Spike and Pinkie.

“You buyin’ a word of it, Pinkie?” Spike asked.

“Nope,” Pinkie chirped, her ears perking back up.

Twilight let out a heavy groan. “You guys, I am not–”

A thunderous chorus of wings tore the heaven’s asunder as they rushed into earshot. With every second came a loud roar, soon mixing with the sound of approaching armor. It didn’t take Twilight half a nanosecond to guess who it was.

Then, without any warning, the earth shook and the wings stopped. Time froze for what felt like an eternity as everypony just stood there, their eyes all slowly drifting to the front room and the entranceway door.

Nothing continued to happen.

That’s when a rapping sound came from the door.

Spike and the girls all exchanged glances.

“I’ll go get it,” the dragon hesitantly offered.

Twilight shook her head. “N-no, I’ll go do it.”

Pinkie gave Twilight an oblong look. “Why’s everything suddenly so tense: we know it’s the Princess, so what’s the problem?”

After taking a long, hard breath, Twilight rose a leg, moved it forwards, and settle the hoof down. Her heart hastened its tempo as she took a further step. Yet as Pinkie had pointed out, she didn’t really know what; it just was, and that was that. Somehow she found herself standing at the door, and at that moment the rapping came again, only harder.

She took a step back, counted back from ten, then opened the door.

There, with an honest smile on her face, was the very image of Princess Luna. Her long, slender legs lifted her high up, enough so that she could easily look down at the average stallion, but still she was much shorter than her sister. Her furled wings bristled with drops of moisture, no doubt collected from flying through the low cloud layer that dominated the morning sky. Of course, she was also the impossible to miss horn on her head, ringed by a dark tiara, and fitted against the ethereal background of her star-filled and flowing mane.

Far behind Princess Luna were an inordinate amount of muscular stallions, all of them milling about town, all pretending to look in every direction save for Twilight’s.

“Hello, Twilight!” Luna exclaimed. She moved forwards, grabbing Twilight and wrapping her in a hug. “Oh, it's good to see you again!”

“You too, Luna,” Twilight chuckled, trying not to notice that the myriad of stallions were all watching her.

Releasing Twilight, Luna recomposed herself. “I’m glad to see you again.” Her eyes scanned over Twilight, looking into the room. “Ah, Pinkie Pie and Spike too! Good to see you.”

“You rhymed,” Pinkie giggled, cantering up to the door, Spike riding her back.

The princess scanned the house again. “I am glad to see you all.”

“You already said that,” Pinkie added helpfully.

Luna blinked. “Oh, I did? My apologies, then.” She gestured to Twilight. “May I step in?”

“S-sure,” Twilight replied, stepping away from the door, still trying not to see the many stallions now eyeing her like a hawk.

She stepped into the room, looked over her shoulder, then closed the door. Luna looked to Twilight, opened her mouth, then froze.

“Somethin’ wrong, Luna?” Pinkie prodded.

The princess’s eyes flicked all over the house. “No.”

From the back of the main room came a slight tapping sound. Looking over, Twilight saw that the door to the back room had been closed; she certainly didn’t recall a closing sound when Pinkie and Spike came out.

Luna looked back at Twilight. “Twilight, your leg?”

Twilight looked down at her sullen bandages, then offered a forced chuckle. “Oh, I hurt it while I was out today.”

“How?” Luna asked with a tad bit of force, bordering on a demand.

“Jumping on rocks in a bog does not a safe environment make,” Twilight explained in a blank tone.

Spike and Pinkie exchanged glances, then both shrugged.

“Um, okay,” Luna replied in a weak tone of voice. Something jostled in the back room, and Luna looked in its direction. “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight replied quickly.

Again, Pinkie and Spike exchanged glances; their looks served as a tacit agreement.

Luna took a step towards the door. “You would not mind if I looked, would you?”

Twilight’s heart tightened. “S-sure, go ahead.”

After giving Twilight a single nod, the princess set off for the door, her glass-slippered hooves making nary a sound on the library’s wooden floors.

Now standing before the door, Luna took a breath. Then the door opened.

A series of rapid peeps escaped the confines of the room, a little phoenix chick staring up at Luna from the floor of the backroom. This sound was followed by a single hoot as respectably sized barn owl landed behind the chick.

“Bwa–huh?” Luna stammered.

“Ugh! There you two are!” Spike snapped, leaping off Pinkie’s back.

“Who?” went the owl.

“Owloysius, don’t talk back to me!”

“Who?”

“No, Jeeves, the butler,” Spike groaned, pressing past Luna. “You told me you two were only going out for an hour, but it’s been, like, three. You made me worry.”

“Who.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “I know, I know, I’m not your mother.”

Princess Luna looked over her shoulder to Twilight, as if to ask, “Are you serious?”

Twilight nodded at Luna. Then she asked, “Princess, what’s with all of the royal guards?”

Luna momentarily froze. “What royal guards?”

“The myriad of stallions standing outside.”

“What would make you think that?”

“Last time I checked, Ponyville didn’t exactly have so many stallions, nor did the boys we do have tend to meander around my library.”

“By Celestia, what is that thing‽” a male voice shouted from outside.

“It’s like some kinda monkey!” another voice replied.

“Naw, it looks like dat freaky ding dat dun battered de castle!”

“It’s the same thing!”

“Nay, this un’s ain’t gotta overcoat, but ‘e has fleshy skin!”

“Would you all just shut up and capture it!” an authoritative voice commanded.

“Sir!” a chorus of stallions replied.

“Luna?” Twilight asked.

“Where is that thing you were keeping?” Luna demanded, her tone icy.

“W-what thing?”

“The monkey-like one.”

Twilight froze. “The backroom.”

Luna turned her head back in the direction of the aforementioned room. Then she stepped in, careful to avoid the phoenix, the owl, and Spike. After only a second’s delay, Twilight trotted up after Luna, entering the room.

The whole room smelt of old paper and dust; the wooden floor was dotted with scratches caused by the movement of various heavy objects over the years before and since Twilight had moved in; the light, which was sparse, entered the room from the doorway now behind behind and the solitary window, who curtain she had drawn open after Lucian had ran in.

“Twilight,” Luna said, “it’s not here, and the window is open.

“Where’d it go‽” a voice yelled from just outside the window.

“I dinnae kent!” another replied.

“I thinks it went that a’way!

“How can something that big just up ’n’ vanish‽”

“Magic?” somepony offered.

“But it don’t got a horn – it can’t do magic!”

“Wait! That way! I think it went that way!”

“After it, boys!” that same authoritative voice commanded.

“Sir!” they all replied.

Twilight felt all the color draining from her face, even before Luna turned to her.

“Twilight,” Princess Luna said, “I think you’ve made a grave mistake in taking this creature in.”

***

Heart pumping, lungs heaving, sweat dripping, and yet he stood completely still in the dark alley. Each jerk of his heart physically jostled his body, and he could feel each droplet of blood shooting through his beleaguered veins.

“Aw, Celestiadammit!” a pony barked. “We lost it again!”

“How‽”

“I! Don’t! Know!”

Lucian swallowed, trying to quench his dry mouth and throat. “Wings,” he muttered, trying to keep his thoughts together. “They’re flying-types, then, right?” He looked down at his waist. “And I don’t have any electric, ice, or rock-type Pokemon.” Lucian sighed, putting a hand over his heart. “Okay, you’ve seen this before – like the morlocks from The Time Machine or the government from Nineteen-Eighty Four, neither of which I ever read. But if I had to guess, this country is ruled by a totalitarian princess, therefore probably has Big Sister, and... Wait, the pink one said ‘splendid’, and not ‘doubleplusgood’, so maybe it isn’t all like nineteen-Eighty-Four. Crap.”

His hand slide down to his waistline, caressing one of his Pokeballs. “Okay, so they can fly. Only one of my Pokemon has an electric move, and it’d be useless against so many.” Lucian’s hand slide to another one. “So I’ll have to fight fire with fire.” He paused. “That’s a stupid phrase – fire does, like, no damage versus fire, but flying suffers no penalty versus flying.” A sly grin danced across his lips. “Skywing, ready to come out and play?”

He removed the ball from his belt, then tapped it. Without delay, the device expanded its size until it fit nicely in his hand. With but a further tap, the tip of the ball opened up, shooting out a beam of white light and emitted that characteristic pwoosh sound. In the storm of drummed-up particles appeared the huge form of Skywing, who barked out his species’ name: “Pidgeot!”

When the initial fanfare of bringing his Pokemon to bear was over, Skywing just stared at Lucian, both of them uncomfortably close in the little alleyway. He looked Skywing over, smiling. “Okay, so we’ve gotta fly outta here, go back to where I arrived, then do the thingy that brought me here, ’kay?”

“I think that flash of light came from over here,” somepony yelled out.

“After it, colts! Come on, Celestia ain’t payin’ us by the hour!”

“We still get health benefits, right?”

“Konski, shut up!”

“Just checking.”

A swarm of guards erupted out of the sky, and they were all looking at Lucian. In a flash of time, Lucian scanned over all of them. “There are exactly seven of them right now,” he said to no one in particular. Then he flashed the sky a smirk. “They’re just mooks.”

“Get it, boys!”

With a flash judgment, Lucian noted that the wings of the guards were short enough to allow them to get into the alley, but too large to allow actual flight within the alley. Skywing, on the other hand, was aerodynamic enough to take off almost vertical from the ground, hitting them with more speed.

“Capture it, quick!” they yelled, storming down from above at him. “Don’t give in an inch, or it’;; do like the last one did only an hour ago!”

Last one. Those words echoed in Lucian’s mind, but he just as quickly put them in the “figure this shit out later” section of his mind. He jabbed a finger towards the ponies, waiting until they there just close enough to the roofs of the alley.

“Now – use Brave Bird!” he shouted.

Skywing shouted his name as he flared his wings outwards. Then his tan plumage began to glow blue, and in a second he was up in the air. Before they could even react, Skywing rammed through three guards, his precise form only clipping two others.

“Yeah, with the speed of Kenyans,” Lucian nickered.

“Get it, lads!” another pony shouted, and a legion of pegasi bolted out of nowhere, each aiming for Skywing.

In a flurry of shouted, squawking, and ferocious buckings, Pidgeot’s body crumpled. With a final kick, the bird plummeted to the earth, landing just before Lucian.

“Well, hold me sideways and call me Sally,” he murmured. “Skywing, return!” A bolt of red shot out of the Pokeball, and Skywing’s body transported into red energy as it was sucked back into the ball.

“Everypony! Where is everypony‽” the ponies were calling from above. “Who’s hit‽ Who’s good‽ We need to regroup!”

“How the hell did they get Skywing so easily?” Lucian mumbled. They’re just a bunch of mooks, they shouldn’t be able to collectively take on just one Pokemon. What gives?”

“We good?” somepony yelled.

“They got Konski!”

“Got‽”

“He’s alive, but busted something awful.”

“Dammit!”

“Well, don’t just hover there – do something!”

Lucian grabbed a pokeball from his belt, a black one with golden highlights, and tossed it out. Within seconds, the bright tendrils of light manifested into a brown exoskeleton-like husk with a rock-gray underbelly. Its body, despite its jagged and short wings not moving, hovered above the ground, then spun so that it gazed at the pegasi, the little half-moon halo over its head not even moving. None of the guards, however, saw the gaping hole in its back, which Lucian had long-ago covered up with black duct tape.

The guards all froze, staring into the hollow backness of the thing’s eyes, and it merely replied with a throaty, “Shedinja.”

“What the...?” one soul muttered.

“Is that an... an exoskeleton?”

“Looks like an empty shell.”

“It’s a corpse! A reanimated corpse!”

They all gasped.

“By the stars above, that thing, our target, it’s a necromancer!”

“But that doesn’t look like any animal I’ve ever seen!”

“What kind of abomination is this bipedal thing‽”

Lucian merely smirked. “Remnant, use Will-o-Wisp!”

“It’s moving!” a guard whinnied.

Another one chorused, “I wasn’t trained to take down dead things!”

Before Shedinja burst into life a ring of tiny balls composed of blue fire. Without wasting even a second, the fireballs catapulted into the air, spreading out like buckshot. The shot impacted the guards with the force of a freight train, forcing them to tumble backwards through the air, and all the while parts of their bodies erupted with flames. As they began to immolate, howls of bloody murder clawed out of their throats.

Lucian rolled his eyes. “Babies – ain’t like a fire-type move will kill you, and this particular one won’t even hurt you; you’re just burning. So what?”

“By the stars! Boys, half-klick east – a pond! Go!”

The soldiers continued shrieking as they stole themselves away.

“Wow, they are mooks. Defeated by a move that doesn’t even do damage,” he whistled, putting his hands in his pocket. “Wonder if Shedinja leveled up from that? Actually, on second thought, if they were crushed so easily, there probably wasn’t any good XP gained.”

“Oi! Up at ’em, lads!” a pegasus shouted as another wing of pegasi flew into a view.

“Aw, I’m a thrice-damned man, ain’t I?” He shook his head. “Remnant, just spam Will-O-Wisp! Attrition’s on our side!”

In a flurry of action, more guards showed up, and more ponies were set ablaze. The gleams of burning pegasi darting across the sky, Lucian thought, could probably be seen from quite a ways away.

“There he is!” a pony shouted from down the alley. Looking down, Lucian saw a throng of grounded ponies blocking that way out of the alley. “Charge!”

“Shedinja, use Protect! Then keep using it!” Lucian ordered, taking his hands out of pockets and backing away from the guards.

A dome-like barrier of cyan light engulfed both Shedinja and Lucian as the guards came galloping from one direction, dive-bombing from another. From above the pegasi hit, only to smack uselessly against it, most bouncing backwards and barking in agony. Seeing their aerial brothers repulsed, the grounded guards twisted around at the last moment; the ones nearest the dome rose their armored hooves and bucked at it.

“You just don’t give up, do you? Hell’s wrong with y’all?” Glancing behind himself, he couldn’t help but note the lack of guards and a free pass over to the next street. Looking back to the attacking ponies, he bit his lip. “We’re not going to be able to keep spamming protect or Will-O-Wisp, are we?”

He reached his hands for his belt, grasping his other four Pokeballs. Glancing over his shoulder, he sighed. As the storm of hooves rained against the protect shield, he paused. Then, releasing the Pokeballs, he reached out and grabbed Remnant.

“Keep using protect as I run, buddy,” Lucian said. “We ain’t got the time to argue.”

In an instant the cyan dome imploded, the walls receding into tiny circles, like the slow motion popping of a bubble but in reverse. At that moment, Lucian’s leg catapulted away, leaving the guards in his dust.

“Now’s our shot!”

Without delay, another flare of cyan burst into life; in a moment, the cyan bubble was about Lucian, but this time it was moving.

“Sheol’s foals!” someone spat.

“Oh, we are so dead! We are so dead! We’re gonna be seein’ five lights when there are only four! Oh, we’re so dead!” Lucian half huffed and half singsonged, his legs a blur.

“Don’t just flutter there, ladies, after ’im!”

“No, no, no, no, no!” the trainer chanted, still in a singsongy tone.

The shadows of the alley left him, only to be replaced by the endless shadows of winged soldiers above. Halfway across the street, he dug his rubber heels into the ground, skidding for half a second on the loose dirt. In a flurry of barely comprehensible action, he released Remnant, then brought his hands to his waist, only to pause and smile at the guards.

With military precision in every action, the soldiers stormed around the cyan shield until they formed a 360º circle around it. The troops in the air imitated their grounded companion, the only difference being how far away they were from the earth.

“You are surrounded!” one of them called.

“Wow, that’s some impressive deductive reasoning skills you’ve got there! But I suppose that’s why you’re just standing there like that and not currently murdering me,” Lucian said, his smile wide and toothy as his hands grasped the Pokeballs again. Looking down at the ground, he muttered, “Grandpa, you might have been the most gangsta badass ever, but I’m afraid my final act in life will by breaking my promise to you.”

He grabbed a ball and tossed it out. “Flower Dance, I choose you! Be ready with a Magic Leaf!”

Within the shield and from the ball exploded out Flower Dancer. She twirled around her little flower dress, and Lucian thought she looked eager to make up for her earlier embarrassment.

“By the stars above, what is that‽” a guard gasped.

Another ball. “Darknight, let’s pick up the pace and prep a thunderbolt at one of the flyin’ guys! And let’s not do anything stupid this time around!”

“Absol,” Darknight growled, his white form emerging from the Pokeball’s light.

The panicked what’s ran out from the guards, followed by a older male voice bellowing, “Shut up! All of you, shut up and focus on the target!”

He flicked out another pokeball. “Jingles, come out and play! On my mark, use Extrasensory!”

The Pokeball’s light gave way to a little floating ball of light blue with a red streak running horizontal its body. Lucian patted the yellow suction-cup-like thing of the top of Jingles’ head, prompting the Pokemon to sway the flat ribbon-like tail hanging beneath the ball’s body. Jingles made her characteristic jingling noise in response.

“And for my last move,” he muttered, grabbing the last Pokeball. “Alright, Mr. Fish, it’s just like old times with the boys back at that one place. In fact, it’s going to have to be like that; you’ll need to reach your fullest potential again and prove to the world you’re a laser fish.” He nodded at Remnant. “On my mark, you need to drop Protect and lash out with Shadow Claw. The rest of you, sames goes, only using your respective moves, we clear?”

They all said their names, which was as close as could be to an actual affirmation.

Tightening his hat, Lucian crouched down to better face his Pokemon. “It’s too crowded in here as is; if I brought out Mr. Fish, we’d all be crushed to death. So when the shield drops, we’re gonna get the ball rolling as I get Mr. Fish out. Once he’s in the open, he’ll use Hyper Beam to ROFLstomp these nubs, then we’ll ride away to safety. Sound good?”

They repeated their earlier statement.

“Bueno,” Lucian chirped, standing back up.

“What the hay is it doing?” someone asked another as Lucian held up three fingers.

“Three,” he said calmly, lowing a finger.

“I dunno. How about you, Thumper?”

“Two.” Another finger went down,and Lucian’s smiled grew even toothier.

“Is it counting?” a pegasus asked, scratching his head.

That same older voice barked, “Who care’s what it’s doing, boys! Just keep it there until–”

“Mark.”

With the explosive roar of a massive subwoofer going off, all of three things happened in tandem: The dome imploded as a hurricane of attacks pushed outwards, slamming into the guards; Lucian thew Mr. Fish’s Pokeball into the action, and the serpentine behemoth, far bigger than any house in town, began to take form; and a shapeless shroud of blackness, sprinkled with what looked like tiny stars, blocked out the sun.

Howling, the land-locked guards were tossed into the air like ragdolls, and the airborne were smacked to the ground by bolts of thunder or otherwise just collapsed from forces unseen. The great beast took his awful form as he rose his head into the air, his face locked with boredom; in an instant he opened his mouth, revealing a spinning and rapidly growing ball of light as it emitted a sound not unlike the roar of a jet engine.

“Laser fish, go!” Lucian shouted with childlike mirth as the beam of energy charged outwards from Mr. Fish’s maw.

At first it hit a two-story house, and the building wall was literally reduced into a mulch-like shrapnel. Then the beam swept about, destroying the entire airborne guard columns. Wasting no time, the beam turned on the ground, digging trenches out of the earth as it sent the ponies hurling into and through the walls of nearby buildings.

Glancing skyward, Lucian saw the shroud. “Hell if I know what it is,” he said, pointing at the sky, “but blast it, Mr. Fish!”

The mass condensed into a more solid-looking cloud as Lucian realized he has grossly overestimated its distance. It wasn’t a massive object off in the distance; it was a very near and constantly shifting object. Yet even before he could finish grasping his sudden realization, the shadowy mass leapt at him

“Well, now that just ain’t fair,” he muttered right before it rammed his chest.

Prepping for an impact, Lucian nearly tripped when the mass didn’t forcibly drive a wedge between himself and his waist. It was, however, spreading its vapor-like contrails into the air, and he got a good inhale of it before he snapped his hands over his nose.

“Oh, shit,” he muttered as he realized that all of her extremities stopped sending him proper feedback, just a hazy mess of tingles mixed with actual feelings. It was like getting laughing gas at the dentist’s office, only much faster to react and carried with it an aura of dread. There was also the matter that it smelled, oddly enough, like fancy shampoos and not like N₂O

Looking around, he witnessed the contrails flowing into everyone’s nose just as he began to lose even more feeling. “Shit,” he hissed, clumsily fumbling about his waist for his Pokeballs. The shadowy mass began to take a quadrpedic shape as Lucian shouted, “Return, all of you!”

In a blurry moment of vague comprehension, he found all of his Pokemon safely back where they belonged. The shadows before him hasted as they began to form a real body.

“Luna, no!” Twilight’s voice yelled out from somewhere behind him.

His knees snapped limp, and he quickly fell onto them as the shadowy mass contorted into a tall and slender pony with a flowing mane that he could see through. She looked down at him, almost judgmental.

Lucian, body shaking, eyelids heavy, and stomach growling, looked up. “My confidence is leavin’ me on my own.” He flashed a smile, trying his best to stay awake.

“What have you to say for yourself?” she growled, baring her teeth.

Groaning beneath his breath, he tried to raise his neck, only to find that he had no control over his neck muscles.

“What say you now, monster?” the slender pony asked, lowering her head to Lucian.

He flashed her a tooth grin, and groaned. “The... Aristocrats...”

The inky tendril of blackness overwhelmed him, and all light vanished from his reality.

Talon and Moon

“You know, Lucian,” said the old figure driving the car, “I think you’re the best thing that ever indirectly spawned from my seed.”

Lucian, sitting shotgun, looked over to the man. His eye flicked over the man’s salt-and-pepper goatee, to the man’s sunglasses, to his black fedora. “What do you mean, Grandpa?”

His grandfather chuckled as the car switched gears, the wind sweeping in because of the lowered roof. “Well, my wife was a terrible, terrible mother who raised a boring, boring son. That boring, droll son went on to marry a girl who was an utter control freak, and I’m convinced she chopped off his manly bits after you were born, I am. But you?” He shook his head, smiling as he changed lanes. “Well, your father came from me, so therefore you’re a quarter me. So this means that a quarter of my badassery made it to you, and by Jove, am I proud to call you my grandson. Especially since your father’s a pansy.”

Glancing up at the tall buildings on the near edge of the horizon, Lucian asked, “Do you mean that?”

“Damn straight I do, boy.”

Lucian furrowed his brow. “Where are we going?”

“Oh, where are we going?” Grandpa chuckled. “Why, in celebration of you getting kicked out of the house by that harpy mother of yours, I’m going to use my extreme powers to show you a good time.”

“Um...”

“You know, sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, chips, dips, chains, whips. Standard afternoon for me, really.” He pushed his shades up against his nose.

“Oh, God,” Lucian whispered in horror.

“Trust me, I’m the definition of OG. Worst comes worst, I’ve got more guns in the trunk than are legal in this country.”

***

“Ugh, seven kinds of hell...” Lucian groaned, laying on his bac. His eyelids flickered open.

For a solid minute, he just stared up at the stone ceiling, his vision glazing over as he mind ran over its most recent memories. Then he blinked, tearing up his dry eyes. “Ah, shit,” Lucian groaned, rubbing the tears away.

Sitting up, he partially dug his fingers into his temples, messaging them in an attempt to overwhelm the dull hum of pain throbbing in his skull. As he did so, his eyes surveyed his environment. “Okay... I’m on a tiny bed, in a dimly-lit stone room. Oh, hey, look — a barred window. That’s a surefire sign of two things: either I’m in the projects or—” he sighed heavily “—I’m in prison.”

His back touched something, the stone wall. “Yep. Jail.” He glanced down to his waist. “Uh-huh. Just typical. They took my Pokemon.” With a sudden slump forwards, he buried his face in his hands. “Shiiiit. I’m too young for jail. I don’t even know where to get a spoon to dig out. And there’s not nearly enough Morgan Freeman voice overs to give me the energy to even do that. Where am I even gonna get a poster of a lady to hide my tunnel?”

“Ah. You’re awake,” said a male voice.

Looking up, Lucian saw a pony standing on the other side of the room, and who was before the bars that marked the cell proper. The pony eyed Lucian, and Lucian returned the favor, noting the pony’s white lab coat.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d wake up; actually had a pot going on to see how long your species would be affected by that spell,” he continued. “Because of you, I lost twenty bits.”

“Gee, I’m so damn sorry,” Lucian spat. “If you let me out of here, I’m sure I could turn to a life of crime, in order to repay this grand sum you’ve lost on my behalf.”

He chuckled, adjusting his glasses. “So, that’s true; you have a rather dry sense of humor.” After shaking his head, he offered, “My name is Doctor G, but my friends just call me G, and my wife calls me Gigi.” G shook his head. “Anyways, I’m head Royal Equestrian Institute for the Sciences, and a leading board members for the Cerchens.”

Lucian held his tongue, glaring at the Doctor.

“Huh. Silent treatment, eh?” G shrugged. “Rest assured, it won’t do you any good.”

“What do you want? A medal.”

“By the time we’re all done, I’ll probably have a few, yes.”

Lucian put his hands behind his head and leaned against the wall. “So, what’s up your sleeve? Torture? Prison showers? Ya plannin’ on cutting me open without anesthetics, just to see what makes me tick?”

G didn’t reply, and Lucian smirked.

“This is the part where you try to intimidate me, right? You think I’m some sort of hostile aliens come to invade your virgin world, huh? Well, lemme tell you something, Doc G: You can go merrily screw yourself. I’m none of these things that threaten you. So why don’t you just let me go so I can find my way back home.”

The Doctor adjusted his glasses. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’re in there on royal orders.”

“Royal orders?” Lucian scoffed. “Who’s your king?”

“Celestia. And she’s a Princess, mind you.”

The trainer facepalmed. “Great. Just. Great. I’ve ended up in some kind of fairytale girly land, where Princesses actually wield power and have a purpose other than ‘be kidnapped’ and ‘be the hero’s love interest’. Son of a whore.”

“Right. So, what are you called?”

“You’re worst nightmare,” Lucian growled.

“We had her happen a few years ago, actually. From what I hear, she’s actually a very productive member of society nowadays.”

“Say what?”

“I repeat: what are you called?”

“The King of Poland, Archduke of Lithuania, and part-time manager of your local Burger King.”

The Doctor sighed. “Look, just give me your name; you have me at a disadvantage, otherwise.”

The trainer hesitated “My name is Lucian.”

With a faint glow from his horn, the Doctor pulled out a pen and clipboard. He opened his mouth, but the trainer interjected. “L-u-c-i-a-n. Lucian.”

G nodded. “Thanks. That’ll help.”

“Tell me, with I get a nice grave, or be buried in an unmarked grave in the ass-end of nowhere.”

“Not up to me, I’m afraid,” G said with a smirk. “But may I ask you another question?”

“Go to hell. And to answer what you were probably going to ask: I’m human, a species highly evolved to specialize in extreme intelligence, superb dexterity, and an absurdly unending level of endurance. Oh, and I eat meat. And fruit. And chemicals, judging by what they put in food nowadays.”

As G finished writing on his clipboard, he looked up again. “I get the feeling that you’ve been in this situation before.”

“No. I’ve just seen this so many times on TV and shit that my responses are basically just rote.”

“TV?”

Lucian groaned. “Picture your mother, okay?”

G nodded.

“Now, try to pretend that she’s not a filthy whore, and get over your mommies issues. I’m tired of you taking it out on me.”

The pony shot him a puzzled look. “I’m not taking anything out on you.”

“And I mean, are you seriously all your government can afford to interrogate me?”

“No, actually that interrogation hasn’t begun yet. I’m just here to do some basic assessments, find out your name and the like.”

The trainer blinked. “Say what?”

“Yeah, Princess Luna wanted to personally handle this little... endeavor of hers.”

“Wait. What happened to Princess Celestia?”

“Oh, no, we have two. Celestia is the sun, and Luna is the moon.”

“Either your metaphors are really stupid, or you mean to tell me that they are gods.”

“Goddesses, if you want to be dramatic.” He smirked, his glasses gleaming as they caught a stray beam of light. “I don’t recommend pissing her off; I hear that Luna has... something of a tempor.”

“Gee. My day keeps gettin’ better and better. Wonder how many dissections I’ll’ve undergone by tomorrow?”

G shrugged.

Lucian leaned forwards, using his weight to push himself to his feet, head scraping against the ceiling. “What am I accused of? I was attacked; it was self defense.”

“Yeah; I'll admit, any lawyer is going to have one hay of a time trying to count nearly a hundred cases of ‘self defense’ against Royal Guards, huh?”

“This is a witch hunt, you know. Torture me to death all you want, I’m not guilty of anything.”

“A... witch hunt?”

“Yeah. Like Salem. I’ll be John Proctor the farmer, and you can be Senator Joseph McCarthy.”

G shook his head. “Perhaps you should lay back down and rest.”

“Wait — wha’ ’bout food? Can I get any?”

“No, sorry. Explicit orders; we’re not to feed you until after the interrogation.”

Lucian sank back down onto the small bed. “By Babylon’s buxom broads, bad business be boomin’.”

“Can... alliterate,” G muttered, writing down as he spoke.

“Is dat all, Masta? Oh, shucks, Masta. I do be hopin’ de white man ain’t gon’ be gettin’ no issues,” Lucian croaked. “Oh, Lawd a’mussy, I tells you, I ain’t looked at no white woman.”

“Not sure what any of that was, but yes, my work here is done. But worry not; you and I shall be seeing each other real soon. Real soon, indeed.”

Lucian mocked G’s last sentence as the pony crept out of sight. “It’s times like this when I wish that I took Grandpa’s advice, and stored a knife in my ass, in case of situations just like these.”

He continued muttering to himself as he laid back down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

***

“So, you’re the little runt who’s been causing us so much trouble, hmm?” a male voice said.

Lucian opened his eyes, seeing only darkness. “Wha’?”

“If you’re willing to play along, perhaps we can all profit,” a lady’s voice replied.

“No, no, no — that lines comes later.”

“Oh, it does?” she chuckled. “Sorry.”

Lucian glanced around, blinking his eyes. When he tried to move his arms, he found them strapped down, and his legs were no better. Trying to move his chest only revealed the straps that held his back up against something. “Oh, shit, think — I’m tied to a wooden chair, I think, in a very dark room. Wait. Where the hell did they get people chairs from? I didn’t see any of these before.”

A single ray palored moonlight fluttered in from above, right onto the head of another pony standing in the shadows. Lucian couldn’t see her eyes; her whole face was just a silhouette to him, but he felt that this was the lady who had spoken mere seconds ago.

“Hello,” she said in a dark tone of voice. “Who am I is unimportant—”

“Princess Luna,” Lucian said, and the mare blinked.

“M-maybe.”

He squinted his eyes, glaring at the silhouette. “Holy shit, you’re that bitch that knocked me out, aren’t you?”

The shadow stiffened, then sighed. “Yes, I am she.”

He gritted his teeth. “I went through a lotta work trying to earn a name for myself out there as the best. Then this little floozy comes along and cheats her way to victory. Can’t even fight me like you’re pretending you were a man.”

She didn’t reply.

Lucian took a deep breath through his nose. then smiled his widest, bearing all his teeth. “So, what can I do ya for today?”

“Perhaps you should what your tongue around our lady,” the male voice said as a large eagle-like talon crept from out of the corner of Lucian’s vision. He watched it move, without a body attached to it, and how the talon poked at his tied-down hand.”

“Neato.,” Lucian dismissed. “So, who’s the dude, Miss Bitch?” he asked, and he could have sworn that the silhouette’s eye twitched.

“Oh, I’m nopony, really,” the male said from behind him. “Just your friendly neighborhood spirit of chaos, a discordant melody breaking the flow of nature.”

“And I’m Carmen Sandiego. Guess where I am!”

“Your name is Lucian,” Luna said.

“The correct answer was the biggest Polish city of the 19th century: Chicago! Coincidentally, the ‘Chicago Way’ refers to waging a brutal, brutal citywide guerrilla war. I learned that from one of my escapades into tabletop RPGs. We’re talking, like, mutilating bodies of the enemy army and turning their corpses into little shrines of gore.” He shook his head, sighing. “Yeah, I don’t think I was a very healthy child, mentally speaking.”

“You really oughtn’t go off on a tangent like that,” the male said.

“And you should give me a real name, guy who is either invisible or behind me.”

“I am called Discord.”

Lucian chuckled. “Aww, I was hoping you’d be Khorne, the Chaos God of Blood, War, and Murder.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not that kind of spirit.”

“And I’m not that kind of thief,” the trainer groaned.

“Excuse me?” Luna asked.

“So, Discord, you’re basically a god, right?” Lucian asked, ignoring Luna.

“Well, on a dramatic day, I suppose. I mean, it’s a bit more dramatic than I’d like, and rather inaccurate, but I am the physical embodiment of chaos.”

Lucian nodded, noticing that his neck has some limited mobility. “Well, I don’t believe in you.”

“So?”

“So, if you’re a god, I don’t believe in you. Thus, you should dissapear in a puff and logic, and die.”

Discord chuckled. “That’s not how this works—”

“So, Luna, why’ve you been sitting there silent for so long? It’s not like there’s anyone else for me to talk to in here,” Lucian said.

“Hey! I’m still here,” Discord hissed.

The silhouette glanced around. “Tell us, what do you want from us?”

“Well, I usually go to place for only two reason: to kick ass and chew bubblegum. If you’ve got bubblegum, I won’t kick anyone’s ass. Sound fair?”

The moonbeam got strong, revealing more of Luna’s body. “Try again.”

“If you get me a large plasma TV, netflix on it, and all the things to make these things works, I promise you I’ll tell you everything I know. I mean, that amounts to nothing, but at least I can watch Mystery Science Theater 3000.” The straps holding him down tightened. “Oi, what gives?”

“You know, it wasn’t easily trying to invent a new style of chair to suit your kind, xenomorph,” Luna offered, rubbing a hoof over her breast as if shining it. Holding the hoof out and looking over it, the Princess continued: “So, we had to make little... improvisions to hold you.”

“Yeah; this chair does suck,” Lucian replied, wiggling. “Why couldn’t you have spruced for something nicer; you are royalty, after all. Unless, I mean, you were trying to go for the whole Tower of London approach. In that case, I sure as hell ain’t Mary, Queen of Scots. And you’re certainly no virgin queen to be.”

“Please, you should behave yourself in a lady’s presence, welp,” Discord’s voice cooed into Lucian’s ear. “After all, if nothing else, I am the lord of your wooden throne with lace of rope.” The restraints tugged, but did not tighten.

“Video et taceo. Semper eadem,” the trainer spat. “I see, and say nothing. Ever constant.”

Luna sighed. “This is not getting very far. Discord, can you tell me what you’ve figured about his magical aura?”

Silence, interrupted only by Lucian grunts against his restraints.

“Discord, say something,” she said.

“I... I can’t,” Discord stumbled.

“What mean you?”

“He... does not have a magical signature. At all.”

Luna blinked. “But that’s impossible! You know what that one did! Tell you me that he’s not magical?”

“His aura, if you can call it that, does not extend to magic. Not of the unicorn, pegasus, or earth pony type. It’s actually rather amazing. It’s like... a chaotic mess of nothingness, just waiting to be tapped into, to let the nought seep out.”

She didn’t reply, just shifted her weight.

“There might be one explanation, Princess.”

“But could he really be that powerful,” Luna replied, gritting her teeth.

Lucian tilted his head an inch to the side. “Um, mind letting me in what it exactly that explanation is? Or, for that matter, where this Discord guy is?”

The Princess just eyed Lucian, as if staring at him would somehow bring her the key to some ancient riddle.

“Hello? Lady? Disembodied voice? Anyone?”

“I thought you said you didn’t believe in me,” Discord offered.

“Oh, no, you misunderstand. I don’t recognize your divinity,” the trainer replied. “I acknowledge that you are and were a real historical figure, but I refuse to recognize you as being a god. I’m like a Unitarian, but for gods of chaos. Un-Unitarian? Disunitarian? Yeah, I like that one better.”

“Lucian,” Luna commanded, “where from where do you come?”

Her eyes twitched. “I asked first, Lucian.”

“If you knew my name the whole while, why the hell did you start off my asking it? Oh, wait, I know — because you’re bad at your job,” the trainer snided. “Seriously, where do you come from?”

“A place where ponies don’t end their sentences with prepositions.”

“Ah, allow me to fix that. Where ya from, bitch?”

She gritted her teeth. “Look, Lucian, work with us. Because if you don’t, bad things are going to happen. To you, in fact. And because of my associate’s impatience. I don’t want that to happen, so why don’t—”

“No, no, no!” Lucian snapped. “You can’t fall back to that. The interrogation has already failed; you can’t play good cop, invisible cop with me anymore. So, your choices are to attach jumper cables to my nipples and fry me to kingdom come, or give up. That’s what it’s come to.”

“How about candy?” Discord offered.

Luna ran a hoof through her flowing mane. “No, thank you. This really isn’t the time for sweets.”

“Not for you, for him.”

She squinted. “Why?”

“So he’ll cooperate,” Discord said. “How about that: we give you candy, and you cooperate with that.”

The Princess scoffed. “Oh, please. If it were that simple, we would have—”

“I like candy,” Lucian chirped, and Luna did a double take. “What kinda can we talkin’ ’bout here?”

“The good kind,” he purred.

Cocking a brow, the trainer said, “Color me intrigued.”

Luna just stood here, jaw ajar.

“Well, what kind would you like? My chaotic powers give me the ability to create all sorts of candy for you.”

“Do you have an unmarked white van?” the trainer asked.

“I don’t know what that is, so no.”

“Good. Because the image of a disembodied voice with magical candy powers driving around an unmarked van labeled ‘free candy’ was not a nice image. Oh, and can you also destroy this candy after making it?”

“I suppose so. Why?”

“Because after I eat it, I want you destroy it so that I don’t get fat. My society puts a ton of pressure on me to remain skinny, and getting fat is pretty much up there with my biggest fears. Or is it? I don’t know; it’s a cultural thing. So if you could let me have my cake, eat it too, but not have me gain any calories and shit, I’d be most appreciative.”

“Well, it’s a bit odd, but we have a deal,” Discord chirped.

“Killer, mate. So, what do you want to know? No, wait — some candy first, to prove that you’re not bullshiting me. I want one of those giant Hershey’s bars. No, a large Snickers; not as large as the Hershey’s, but a bunch of them to make up for it. Snickers are bitchin’.”

Luna shook her head, using a hoof to manually set her jaw back into place.

“What are those?” Discord asked.

Lucian’s eyes went hollowed, his pupils shrinking to mere dots barely visible against the white of his eyes. “Oh my God, I’m in hell,” he whispered.

The Princess jolted upwards, straightening her back, both of her ears flickering upwards, her wings spreading wide. “Do you feel that? Discord, I think we angered him!”

The chair disintegrated into nothingness, dropping Lucian onto the stone ground. His right cheekbone wrung out in pain from the impact, the cold ground sucking the warmth from his body. Yet he remained still, making no sound, his mind eruption into a hurricane about just how horrible hell was. Out of the corner of his eyes, where the chair had been, there was only something hovering above ground, its scaly red tail dragging on the ground.

“No, Princess,” Discord’s voice said, now coming from above the scaly tail. “Forgive me for jumping to conclusions, but I think it’s the same monster from earlier.”

“What‽”

“Who else would blow a hole in the hole? And it’s not even Sunday yet.”

“What hole‽ There’s no—”

A dark wall erupted into a storm of dust and scattered stones, accompanied by the sound of screeching steel.

“That hole, M’lady.”

As the first particles of debris began to settle, rays of light rained into the room, blinding Lucian. But as his vision adjusted slowly, he couldn’t help but look towards the broken wall, to see the human-like figure standing admits the ruins, its flesh a swirling of particles not unlike the dust it had kicked. And it was glaring at Lucian, making eye contact.

Lucian groaned. “You know, when you break through the wall, you gotta say ‘OH YEAH!’, or else you’re doing it wrong.”

The figure disappeared, as if it had never been there. As it did so, a distance whooshing noise clawed at the air beyond the trainer. Swiveling his eyes to the sound, he saw the thing standing above him, its grey trenchcoat shimmering in an invisible breeze.

“Oh, fancy you to come join us,” Discord said as the red tail slammed into the creature, dispersing it into a cloud made of an incalculable number of grey particles.

Following the tail up, Lucian came face-to-face with an elongated, serpentine body composed of a mismatching amalgam of various beasts, with a claw, a paw, and a pair of wings from two different animals. At the top of the amalgamation was a head, like that of a pony but longer and sleeker, with a single fang poking from one corner of the mouth.

“Well, you’re discordant, alright,” Lucian muttered, feeling as though he should probably be feeling fear, but didn’t.

The swarm of particles took form again, standing on the trainer’s other side. Its right arm forming a long, jagged blade.

“Well, this about ruins my day,” he grumbled as the arm thrust forwards towards Lucian. He didn’t blink, just stared as the weapon sailed through the arm.

With an explosion of light, the entity was hurl backwards, retaining its shape as it landed on the ground and rolled. There, standing before Lucian and likely taller than he was, was a giant and slender pony. Looking at her, he got flashbacks to that one Ponyta he caught and evolved into a Rapidash. And at first glance, this new pony looked like his Rapidash, only taller, whiter, had luxuriously long wings, and wasn’t on fire.

“Sorry for not warning you, sister,” the slender mare before Lucian said, unfurling a wing, as if to shield him from the entity’s sight. “I trust it hasn’t caused you too much trouble.”

Princess Luna gingerly stepped into Lucian’s field of view, taking position next to her sister and staring down the entity, watching it amble to a stand. “Depends on what you by by ‘it’. If the monster, then none. If our guest of honor, then all the world’s trouble has he caused me.”

Discord whistled from above. “I helped, too.” As his talon touched the ceiling, the bricks forming it and the nearby wall hurriedly flew out of place and cobbled together into a huge hand.

The hand balled into a fist, spreading dust and loose pebbles showering down as it tore through the air. Shattering itself into a thousand pieces and knocking the thing back onto the ground, the mass of stone collided with the entity, kicking up yet more dust. But the rocks all began to vibrate as they moved as if by magic towards the entity, forming into a blanket keeping the thing pinned to the ground.

“Well, it looks like the traps has been sprung well, don’t you think?” Discord said, baring his teeth into a cheshire grin.

“Were it so easy,” Luna replied, pointing to the the blanket of stones as a fleet of swarming particles formed into a new body next to them, evaporation the old one.

Lucian pushed his arms at the ground, bringing a knee up to his chest and putting the leg’s foot on the ground. In a single motion, he stood us. Rubbing the back of his neck, he turned towards the hole in the wall, his legs lurching him forwards.

The entity dematerialized into its swarm, hurtling towards Lucian. In an instant it made itself whole again, standing before Lucian, raising and a hand curled into a strangling gesture.

“I am in no goddamn mood!” Lucian bellowed, kicking a foot out, only to jerk it sideways and sweep through the entity’s legs.

A second passed.

“Oh, shit. Only attack I know is kicking you kneecaps, and you ain’t got no legs,” he muttered. “Oh, shit! You don’t got no legs, and you’re gonna kill me!”

As the thing’s hand jerked forwards, as Lucian felt the electric tingle of its fingers beginning to tighten around his neck, it all ended. In the blink of an eye, he was standing on a grassy knoll, blue skies rolling above him, and with a white castle perched precariously upon a nearby mountain.

His legs collapsed, sending him to the ground. For an instant he considered getting back up, but that moment was just that: all thoughts of movement died, instead replaying of loop of memories, memories of what has just happened. All accompanied by chants of just how screwed he was.

“What did Discord do‽” Luna barked.

“He teleported us away, it seems,” Celestia said, her voice utterly calm.

“I could maybe understand for our guest, but for us?”

“Grassy knoll,” Lucian chuckled through a mumbled tone. “My God, it was I, I who killed Kennedy. It all makes sense now.”

Celestia glanced at the human, who was rolling around in the grassy, his arms held over his chest and with hands clutching his shoulders. “It appears our guest has broken down.”

“Um, what’s that?” Luna asked, pointing to a grossly massive butterfly flying towards them, holding a scroll its rolled-up proboscis. As it neared the Princesses, it dropped the scroll and exploded into confetti. Touching the scroll with her magic, the scroll erupted into a puff of black smoke, replaced by a transparent miniature of Discord engaged in some sort of hula dance.

The mares exchanged glances. Celestia moved her mouth to speak, but was cut by my Discord’s voice coming from the miniature.

“Is it on? I said, is it on? Oh, it’s been on.” He cleared his throat. “If you have received this message, then one of two things have happened: either I’ve been affected by a hitherto unknown evil which has corrupted me and I have gone completely off the deep-end evil, or one or both of you Princesses really need to give me some personal space. In any case, you’ve been teleported to some random hills far away from Canterlot, but still in view.

“If it’s because I’ve gone evil, it’s because I may have already accidentally discovered a method to pretty much destroy the whole city and enslave it in a matter of seconds, and moving you here ensures that you’re okay, and proves that this wasn’t because I wanted to go evil. In the later case, Mr. Wiggles the Butterfly of Butter should be along any moment now with two all-expenses paid vacations to some exotic tropical resort. You two need a vacation, and I’ve cobbled this together for you on my meagre salary, so take it.

“Don’t try going back to Canterlot, either; I’ve put a spell on you to keep you out, which can only be dispelled if you attain the extreme levels of relaxation and comfort afforded only by fancy tropical resorts; by a specific counterspell that my giant guinea pig, Manfred, is currently delivering to Twilight, which he’ll only do if I go evil; or by me dispelling it for utterly arbitrary reasons. Toodles!

“Oh, and please don’t try to eat Mr. Wiggles the Butterly of Butter. I know he goes great with toast, but apparently I accidentally gave him feelings and now, well, just don’t try it.

“Ciao!”

***

“Ah, now that that’s taken care of, let us duel like gentlefolk,” Discord said, floating in the air and adjusting his monocle, a dapper top hat perched on his head. “I’ve seen enough of what you can do to gain an insight into just how you work, to know that Celestia and Luna need to be as far away from you as possible,” he continued between sips of tea.

The monster struggled as a huge fist of stone held it tight.

“Fight all you like, you’re not getting out of there. I know how you twist dimensions, how to make the impossible a reality, how you’re fitting all that power into such a tiny form.” He snapped his talons, and the entity was transported into a large bird cage of gold. “Hmm... What’s a better way to phrase what you do? Phase? Do you phase through dimensions? But with that almost electric surge of feeling about you, it’s more like a… a glitch.”

Stirring sugar into his tea, he nodded. “Yes. A glitch. Like a mechanical error. I like that.” He snapped the feathers at the edge of his tail like they were fingers. The gilded cage vanished, and the entity found itself encased a solid block of banana-and-waffle-cone ice cream.

“You seem almost... imperfect, a flaw given shape and cause,” he went on, casually biting a chunk out of his porcelain teacup. “But you’re all wrong. You’re chaos made whole, in a sense. But—” he chuckled “—and here’s the good part, chaos is my business. Ordo ab Chao? Ha. So long as I live, chaos reigns, and I am a jealous lord.”

The block of ice cream vanished, replaced by a large teddy bear costume, with the entity’s head sticking out. It glared at Discord, its eyes practically alight.

“Every time you try to mount an attack against me, I’ll just swap your prison. So, why don’t you just give up already, hmm?” he said, bashing the monster’s skull with his tail, sending it sprawling onto its back. It tried to get up, only for a potted plant to fall from heaven and onto its face, knocking it back down. “Be reasonable and accept defeat. You can’t beat me, you must realize.”

He glanced around the dome-like room he was is in. “See? I’m both stronger than you and have a better taste in fashion? These walls made out of candies, and this ceiling of grass. Hold on. No. Grass is too mainstream.” He snapped his talons, prompting row after of row of giant blue roses to sprout from the ceiling, the biggest of which had it’s center replaced by the entity’s face.

“I told you,” Discord chuckled, his voice echoing off itself, “you’re in my realm, my domain, my kingdom. For when the sisters are away, I shall play. And you, dear friend, shall pay this day, and I care not if they say whether or not I may.”

Turning into a mass of particles, the entity flew to the ground, reforming into its hominid form just as it slammed into the marble floor.

“Oh, what’s this? You’ve stopped trying to break out pf this little pocket dimension? My, this sure is innovation on your part.”

Its mouth moved, but no sound came out. The entity stopped, made motion as jerking motion, then opened its maw again. “I do not forgive the sins of the father passed to his sons.”

“Oh, look at this. You can speak, with with such a lovely voice, like the disharmonious screams of a thousand lost souls all communicating through you at once, in once clear voice. Spooky.”

The monster spread its arms, saying in a totally different voice, “In the name of God, impure souls—” the voice hiccuped “—shall be banished into eternal damnation. Amen.”

“Ah. So you’re stealing the words of others, not making your own, huh? I’ve got to hand it to you, that’s pretty unique.”

With a hiss of static, the entity’s arms exploded outwards, filling the room with its particles, not unlike a fire hydrant and water. As the particles filled up the room’s floor, the thing turned its arm cannons towards Discord. “I can’t help you. I belong to a world where all is death. Your world of choices was not meant for me to interfere with,” it said in the same voice as last time. “I’ve been hungry for so very long, but you’re going to help me change that.”

Raising a pink parasol in his defense, the buzzing particles streamed off, flooding down onto the floor. Then the stream fell silent. When Discord put the parasol away, he grumbled, “Great, and now the dog think’s he’s got spunk. He could at least steal another pony’s words, not just keep quoting the same one.”

The walls began to shake, chippings of paint and candy breaking off and plummeting to the floor. The cage, bear costume, flowers, and all else of Discord’s little creations began to vibrate and morph into cubes of particles.

“If I’m a dog,” the thing said, “then you’re dog food.”

With an explosion of light, the walls shattered, the candy vaporising and the grass ceiling rotting away into oblivion. As the debris rained down, the entity turned itself into a swarm of particles, charging out a broken wall and back into Canterlot proper.

Discord chuckled, smiling to himself. “Oh, I haven’t had this much fun in eons.” He snapped his talons, the dome-like room vanished, replaced by the ruins of the interrogation room. “Run, run, run, as fast as you can. But I’ll catch you. And you will know my name as thy lord when I smite my vengeance upon thee.”

Ordo ab Ovum

“Come on, just a little closer,” Applebloom said through gritted teeth, a playing card held in her maw.

The wooden floorboards the clubhouse creaked, a birdsong peeping through a closed window as she inched her neck forwards, eyes locked upon the house of cards. Each second ticket by as if each were an hour, and Applebloom felt every nanosecond of it in her pounding heart.

A click of the clock, and the card was set. Applebloom held her breath, not even blinking for fear that the air would collapse her creation. With a slow, deliberate movement, she backed away from the cards. Then, a fire raging in her lungs, she gasped, staring down the house.

It stood.

“Yes!” Scootaloo shouted, her little orange wings flapping hard.

“No!” Sweetie Belle hissed, lunging for Scootaloo’s wings. “You’ll knock them over—”

Without a sound, the house of cards collapsed, the whole deck scattering out across the small wooden room. The girls all froze, and for a moment nopony spoke.

“Scootaloo!” Applebloom and Sweetie Belle barked in unison.

Scrunching her wings up, a redness crept upon Scootaloo’s cheeks. “Um. Hehe. Sorry, girls.”

Running a hoof through her red mane, fixing her large red bow, Apple Bloom let out a long sigh. “No, no — I get the feelin’ that setting card houses is another failure.”

“Well, have we checked?” Sweetie Belle asked, looking at her white haunches. “Nothing on me.”

“Ditto,” Scootaloo clucked, poking at her orange flank. Then, scratching her fuschia mane, she said, “Nothing on you, Apple Bloom.”

Slumping against a wall, a hoof to her chin, Apple Bloom replied, “Yeah, I kinda figured.”

“Well, there’s still ‘Interpretive Walrus Taming’ to try today,” Sweetie Belle offered, holding up a notepad.

“But where are going to find cheaply-priced, non-unionised walrus labor on a Sunday?” Scootaloo asked.

“Hmm,” Sweetie Belle hummed. “Double well, the last entry is ‘Cutie Mark Crusaders Strike Breakers’.”

“But where are we going to find a union-organized strike on a Sunday?”

Biting the corner of her lip, Sweetie Belle looked back at her notepad. “Cutie Mark Crusaders Labor Agitators? Pretty sure Apple Bloom’s uncle Gravenstein could help with that.”

“Wait—labor agitator?” Scootaloo asked. “What does that even mean?”

“Cutie Mark Crusaders Dictionary Writers?”

“Now you’re just making things up.”

A pause.

“Cutie Mark Crusaders Trustbusters?”

Appleboom sighed. “But last time we tried to get to talk to Uncle Andrew Apple Ponegie, he told us he’d help us whenever we needed absurd amounts of steel for our cutie mark crusading. Why would we want to bust the Equestrian Steel trust?”

A high-pitched yet earth-rumbling whistle ripped through the air, jerking everypony’s head upwards.

“What was that?” Scootaloo asked, jogging for the window.

Sweetie Belle, standing up slowly, offered, “A whale?”

“Don’t be silly; whales don’t live here,” Apple Bloom scoffed, trotting over to Scootaloo’s window.

“Okay, fair enough,” Sweetie Belle replied, her eyes going wide. “What about giant flying snake whale things?”

Apple Bloom cocked a brow as she reached the window. “Say wha’?” Her eyes reached skywards, and she gasped as the visage.

Not too high in the blue firmament, slithering through the air was a titanic serpent. She watched as it came from the direction of the Everfree Forest, inching nearer and nearer to the ground with every second; and moving fast, slower than it looked like it should be but still respectable, it came in the girls’ direction.

Its time half, Apple Bloom couldn’t help but notice, was a light, aetherial blue, while its bottom was a creamy, cloud-like white. And as the aether-bound titan hurdled by, she saw it’s very center — splitting the serpentine body into forward and aft sections — was a massive sphere of water. Swimming within the massive sphere were two giant koi fish, one of a blood-moon hue of red, the other blacker than onyx; they moved around each other in a perfect circle, swirling in the sphere of water.

As it flew over the clubhouse, the whale-like whistle rang out again, like bells at a funeral. The girls galloped across the wooden building, going to the other window and watched as the titan swam it the direction of Canterlot, the city upon the great and distant mountain. A purple glare streamed from the city, and the serpent hunted towards it.

Moving itself towards, the girls lost sight of the leviathan behind the nearby apple orchard.

Silence.

“Did we just see a giant snake with fish for a belly fly past?” Sweetie Belle asked, her tone without inflection.

“No. No, we did not,” Scootaloo said.

“But—”

“If anypony important says they did, then we did too. Okay?”

“Um... okay.”

“Girls, look!” Apple Bloom gasped, pointing at the center of the clubhouse, where a house of cards stood.

***

“Daisy, Daisy,” Lucian mumbled, singsonging as his arms hung limp beneath him. “Planted one day by a glancing dart... Planted by Daisy Bell.”

He looked down at the distant ground as it sped by, then up to the tethers of magical light which held him aloft, tethers with chords leading to Princess Luna. Her wings flapped as she ascended into the firmaments near Canterlot. Beside her was Princess Celestia.

“There is no magic wall surrounding Canterlot, is there?” Luna asked.

Celestia shook her head. “I presume that message of his wasn’t tailored to this exact situation.”

“After this is all down, can we still go to that tropical resort? I’ve never really been to one, and—”

“Yes, yes, I’m quite aware,” Celestia chuckled. “And of course, little sister; I’d be honored to go to one with you.”

“This would be an appropriate time to say ‘cool’, right? Right? Okay, then, um, cool. That is cool.”

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you,” Lucian continued.

“Do we really have to take him with us, though?” Luna inquired, gesturing to the trainer. “I mean, he’s seemingly harmless, and would have just rolled around on that knoll.”

Looking down as the white city now below, he went on with: “It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.”

Celestia sighed. “We really can’t trust him to be on his own, can we? Yet I’d feel bad about putting him up in a cell.”

“While I understand the reasoning of... that...” Luna trailed off as her eyes fixed themselves to one of Canterlot Castle’s prominent towers.

The once gleaming ivory tower was now pockmarked with holes which billowed out quickly dissipating black smoke. Scattered around and in the tower were large rectangles of compressed rubble, most floating, paying no heed to gravity. Her eyes caught sight of cube-shaped pockets of air where the air itself seemed to just stop and grow stagnant.

Celestia dove ahead and landed through a hole in the tower, Luna following her lead, and Lucian crashing and rolling behind them.

As his body stopped rolling, the trainer mumbled, “Nun, mein Lieber, wie soll es nun weitergeh’n?”

“Hmm?” Luna hummed, looking over her shoulder to him.

“Amadeus,” he groaned. “Come and rock me.”

“Neither head nor tail of Discord,” Celestia commented, and Luna snapped her attention to her.

“Ma’am!” a stallion shouted as he landing behind the mares, saluting them both.

“Ah, Lieutenant Steelwing, right?” Celestia said as they both turned to him.

“Aye, your faithful leftenant, Your Highness. I’ve null to report, I’m sorry to say, Ma’am.”

“What, then, can you tell me?”

“W-well, that thing showed up, faster than before. ’Fore we could act, the bastard—pardon my French, Ma’am—had smashed into the tower. Soon as we could act, a pink bubble thing showed up; whenever one’a the boys touched it, they got teleported to a random location around the castle courtyard.” He took a hard breath. “I saw you coming from outside Canterlot, but I was sure you were inside the bubble, a-a-a-a—”

Celestia rose a hoof, and the guard went silent. “Calm down, Lieutenant.”

“With all due respect, Ma’am, I ain’t done. It’s Discord.”

“What did he do?” Luna asked, her tone making the guard flinch.

“W-well, ’e and that thing burst out of the bubble, destroying it with a great pink flash, and with it huge parts of the tower. The thing moved somewhere fast and vanished; Discord went after it and too vanished. I don’t know where.”

Celestia poked her tongue into her cheek as she mulled everything over. “We know that Discord is fine, at least for the most part, and is in pursuit of that thing. But he and I are going to have a long discussion after this.”

The Lieutenant nodded. “Right, but there’s another matter.”

“What would that be?”

“The city is about to riot, the ponies are so scared, Ma’am. I don’t mean to tell you how to rule, but maybe you could please go out and help us? The boys and I are out of horsepower just trying to hold the streets and keep the ponies in their houses; we could really use the hoof.”

“A good thought, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, Ma’am.” He blinked. “Wait — that other one is getting away too!”

The Princesses looked over to see Lucian perched on top of a pile of rubble, his position like that of a frog. He grabbed an a randomly strewn branch and put it upon his back, then remained motionless.

Luna cocked a brow. “What are you—”

“I am a tree!” he shouted, his voice staying on a single tone, his face without expression.

The ponies just stared.

Pulling out a pen and pad from his pocket, he wrote a little note. Then he put the note on his face, and it stuck to his countenance. “Not a human,” it read.

They continued to stare.

The trainer crept backwards, the mound of rubble beneath him beginning to shake. With another step backwards, the ground beneath the rubble caved in, sending Lucian’s mask and the tree branch flying away as he entered freefall.

It lasted for a second as the rubble hit the floor, the rocks smashing against his ribs but breaking nothing. Lucian wretched from the impact, his empty stomach spewing up nothing but a burning, acidic feeling his throat. Groaning and clutching at himself, he rolled over the rubble, straight through a hole in the wall and re-entered freefall, now with sunlight beating down upon his falling form.

Hardly a second into his fall and something slugged him in the gut, forcing him to gasp for breath. As he looked around, he realized that he was no longer falling, yet was still in the air. He wanted to speak, to curse, to make an annoying remark or an allusion that only he would understand, but instead he just groaned.

“You really should be more careful,” Luna chastised from beside him, her horn alight, her wings aflutter.”

Forcing his lungs to work with his mouth, he groaned. “You again? Hells bells, why it is always you?”

She rose a brow. “Would you rather me let you go?”

He glanced at the far, far, far away ground, and gulped. “Gee, have I ever told that you are a lovely lady, and, and, uh... What do ladies like? Um—you have a nice ass.”

“Never ever say that again, understood?” Luna growled, narrowing her eyes into snake-like slits.

“I like how calling you names doesn’t bug you as much as me giving you a really sexual compliment.”

“Never. Again. Understood?” she said in a more forceful tone.

“Promise not to drop me, and it’s a deal,” he chuckled, then coughed.

She groaned. “Fine.”

***

Lucian felt his legs return as the ground as the Princess landed in the castle’s courtyard. She watched as her sister flew off with the remaining guards, inevitably trying to solve the panic-stricken city’s woes.

Luna sighed, rubbing her forehead. “If you try to run away again, I can’t be held responsible for what I’ll do to you, in order to keep you safe,” she said in a nonchalant tone, and Lucian froze. Sliding her forehooves forwards, she stretched out her wings. “It has been a sort of long day, you see, and I am near to the point where one stops caring altogether.”

“Wit’s end?” Lucian offered, scooting his back against a stone wall.

“Yes, that. That’s the phrase I wanted, I think.”

Lucian looked to his left, then back at Luna. “Pony.”

“What?” she asked, looking out at the castle’s gate, towards the city.

“What would you define as weird?”

“A lot of things, I’d imagine.”

“How quickly can ponies repair extreme destruction, like what happened to this castle?”

“I’m not sure. It depends on how quickly we could get the resources to do it, plus hire an appropriate work team, deal out wages, put up scaffolding—”

“Are giant flying Wailord serpents a fairly standard occurrence?”

“What’s a Wailord?”

“So... that’s a no?”

She rubbed a shoulder. “Yes, I would suppose so. Why?”

“Oh, I was just wondering how, on scale from ‘one’ to ‘all of it’, how much fear should I feel for a giant flying serpent that looks like a certain giant sea Pokemon.”

“What are you talking about?” Luna asked, looking over her shoulder. Her eyes went wide for an instant. “Oh, because there’s one right there.”

Lucian shrugged. “On the plus side, all the damage to the castle is fixing itself.” He pointed to the ruined wall next to him, to the giant whale-like yet serpent head poking through as the wall’s bricks picked themselves up, each returned to where it was before the entity showed up. “So, on that scale I mentioned, how much fear should I be feeling? ’Cause I’m not feeling any, and I’m worried that that’s either because I’m become too numb to it, or that my ability to feel emotions has been compromised, possibly turning me into a sociopath.”

“I wonder how I didn’t see that earlier,” she muttered, staring at the sight.

The serpent angled its massive eyes to Luna. Then, with slow, careful words, it spoke. “Lu–na.”

She nodded hesitantly. “Good to see you again, Remora.”

“How. Have. You. Been?”

Using her wings to articulate the gesture, Luna shrugged. “Better have I been, yet worse too. I suppose that, if anything, I’m... at wit’s ends.”

“I. Am. Most. A–pol–o–get–ic. To. Hear. This.”

“Wow,” Lucian whistled. “Dude talks slow as a mental moron.”

A door to the courtyard slammed open. “Princess, there’s a giant thing!”

All parties turned their heads to the newcomer, to Twilight Sparkle, standing atop a small level of stairs. She panted hard, droplets of sweat on her forehead.

“Oh, hello,” Luna replied. “Yes, by the way, he and I have met.”

“Say what?”

“What are you even doing out here?”

Twilight gulped down breath after breath. “Saw an explosion. Used magic. Canterlot got. Snake-whale fish thing!”

“You came from Ponyville, then?”

“Yes,” Twilight panted, leaning against the doorframe.

“And once you got here, nopony tried to stop you?”

“Nopony. To stop me,” she huffed, trying to catch herself. “No guards. No nothing.”

“That. Makes. Sense,” Remora commented.

“It speaks!” Twilight gasped, hyperventilating all over again.

“I wish Celestia were done with calming down the city,” Luna sighed. “I suspect that she’d be better at explaining this than I. But I have a sneaking suspicion that you want an explanation about him correct?”

Twilight nodded, her breaths hard, unable to get out any proper words.”

“Pity, my lack of popcorn,” Lucian grumbled, laying down on the grass, folding his arms into a pillow.

The Princess ran a hoof through her flowing mane, taking a deep breath. “A very long time ago, before there even was an Equestrian state as you’d know it, I was out near the ocean of a faraway land. Long story short, I found a giant egg. Neither I nor my sister knew what to do with it, nor to whom it belonged.

“Perhaps not quite thinking straight, I decided to try to hatch the egg myself. And no — I used magic; never once did I sit upon it. Anyways, that failed horribly. I actually held it in suspended animation, trying to find conditions where it’d hatch, since I knew it was alive inside. It was like that for some five years, then even I gave up. So, being the rational pony I was, I tossed to back where I found it, even though that whole region was at the time withstanding a major hurricane.

“For reasons that I’m still rather vague on, returning it to the ocean made it explode. Rather than obliterate a huge swath of sea, the titanic explosion actually stopped the storm. I suppose it was as if the explosions wrought order from the chaos. But from this egg came this little serpent thing.

“He had already named himself Remora, calling himself a ‘spirit of calamity’ from the moment he was borne. I thought it was neat, so I brought him to Celestia.” She shook her head. “A-anywho, he sort of raised himself from thereon. But the older the got, oddly, the slower he became, as you see him now. We let him be free, but every once and again he’d show up again, like when we first had problems with Discord. He seems to like showing up during calamities, hence his self-appointed name, I suspect. But other than that, he tends to stay in his oceans, doing whatever he pleases, I imagine.” Luna shrugged. “That’s all, really. I feel that my sister could have done it better, but we get what we get, no?”

Twilight, finally catching all of her breath, let out a sigh. “I feel as though I need to spend another week in the Royal Library, figuring out at least half of that story.”

“You’re the one who showed up at this most inconvenient time. Blame me not for not preparing better.” She turned her head in Remora’s direction. “So, I assume there is a problem.”

“Yes,” he replied. “There. Is. A. Great. Dis-tur-bance. In. The. World.”

The Princess shifted her weight, taking as step to the left. “And that would be?”

“Deep. With-in. The. Ocean. Blue. An. Err-or. Lives.”

“Excuse me?”

“A. Hole. In. The. Fab-ric. Of. Re-al-i-ty. In. The. Mur-ky. Depths. Of. The. Great. Blue. There. Is. This. Hole.”

Lucian rolled in the other directions, listening to Remora drone on about the vague problem in the ocean, and then that he suspected a magic like Discord, only for Remora to doubt that. So, the story went on, the serpent figured the likes of Discord and Celestia might be able to help him sort out the problem, and in kind he’d help them find Discord, whom Remora had felt vanished.

“Okay,” Luna mumbled, nodding slowly. “That’s a bit to take in, but I think we can manage. Know you where we would start?”

“I know where I could start,” Celestia’s voice rang out.

“Princess!” Twilight exclaimed.

“Greeting, Twilight,” she said, landing on the grass. “But I heard enough of Remora to know why Luna and he must do, which leaves me to my own devices, and you to yours.”

“Wait,” Luna probed, “why do I have to go with him? Er, not that I have a problem, but why aren’t you accompanying us?”

Celestia sighed. “You two will search one likely place, and I the other.”

“The... other?”

“The Library of Babel, sister.”

Luna stood a step back. “Y-you can’t possibly mean—”

“But,” Twilight interjected, “Metus is long gone. Without him, it’s just an endless labyrinth. I should know.” Her mind flashed, just for an instant, to a distant journey of hers and Spike’s from a long time ago, and she shuddered.

“I know, Twilight,” Celestia replied. “But if there’s anywhere we can found out more, or even where Discord or the entity might have gone, it would be there. In the meanwhile, Luna, you should listen to him and figure out where to go.”

Luna, gritting her teeth behind her closed mouth, nodded.

“And as for you,” she said, pointing at Lucian.

“Where the Walrein pits?” the trainer groaned, rolling onto his back.

“Can I trust you not to harm any of my little ponies?”

“If you promise me the same protection,” he replied, looking up at the clouds.

“And of your pets?”

“Pokemon?”

“Yes, of them.”

“Well, being that they sort of listen to me, they’re cool. Speaking of which, can I have them back? I get lonely without Mr. Fish.”

Celestia hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, you may have them back, so long as you keep your end of the bargain.”

“Oh, and wherever-to you go, if you find a way to send me home, that’d be dandy.”

“But, Princess,” Twilight said, “what will I do if both you and Luna are gone?”

“Hmm,” Celestia hummed. “A fair point. Would you mind babysitting him for me until I get back?”

“Say what?”

She nodded. “I trust you can handle that, am I wrong?”

“N-no, of course not, Princess. I mean, you’re right. It’s just that I—”

“It’s only for a small while,” Celestia chuckled. “Just make sure he doesn’t cause any trouble until I return to collect him, understood?”

“But what if—”

A door opened, interrupting Twilight as a tall stallion walked out, his blue trenchcoat with white sleeves flowing as he entered. Behind him flanked a unit of armored pony, their faces hidden by blue-painted helmets that Twilight knew the Royal Guards didn’t wear.

“Sorry to interrupt this little meet-and-greet,” the stallion said with a refined upper-class Mare Orleans accents, “but we have and problem on our hooves.”

“Oh, hey, it’s you,” Lucian groaned. “Your accent got heavier, too. What’s up with that?”

Celestia looked over her shoulder to the stallion. “Director G, don’t you think it’s somewhat rude to go barging into other ponies conversations?”

“I thought he was a doctor?” Lucian muttered, scratching his head.

“My sincerest apologies, My Majesty,” the Director replied, bowing his head, “but this isn’t something that can wait.” He glanced to Lucian. “And before you ask, my full title is: Sir Doctor Director G, Duke of Mare Orleans. I’d say I’m quite accomplished, but we Southerners are too humble a lot to brag.”

Luna rolled her eyes, but held her tongue.

“But as it were, my Princess,” he went on, “what has just happened is a matter of national security, and you know how that song and dance goes.”

Lucian elbowed Twilight as she walked to his side. “Yo, purple chick, who are those guys? I get the feeling shadiness is afoot.”

“They are the Cherchen,” Luna answered in Twilight’s stead, cantering up to Lucian’s other side. “They’re an independent organization with incredibly close ties to the government, to the point where they almost are an government organization is all but name. ‘Cherchen’, you see, is Old Equestrian for ‘to search’.”

Sitting up against the wall, he asked, “Then why does ol’ Milky Way there seem like the two of them’ve got a problem?”

The Princess sighed. “It is a long story, but suffice it to say that the only reason they don’t have more power and influence is because Equestria is far from a democracy, and entities like them are the reason for that. They’re big on science, too.” She blinked. “Wait. Milky Way? You... you mean my sister?”

“How dare you call Princess Celestia something like that!” Twilight hissed.

Lucian shrugged. “Well, why not call her that? Her hairs reminds me of an aurora, and she’s white. Auroras got something to do with space and solar particles hitting some layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. And I think Deoxys has something to do with all that, I dunno.”

“I. Like. Milk-y. Way,” Remora remarked.

“Shh!” the trainer snarled. “No one asked the giant floating Magikarp. Maybe you should try to get your head outta that tower, rather than sit here and jerk about.”

Twilight poked Lucian. “Quit.”

Looking up, Lucian noticed Celestia and G were still chatting. But then Celestia stopped and looked over at him. “Where’d Remora go?”

He shrugged. “Outside. Pulled his head outta the wall and everything. Even had the good sense to repair his broken wall.” He looked around. “Come to think of it, all that damage is now all good as new. It’s like magnets were at work.”

Celestia nodded. “Back to what I wanted to say: I’m handing off a good portion of the investigation over to them and the Director, allowing them to hunt for anything left by the entity that we could use. Lucian, you’re getting an observer to watch over you, on top of what I asked of Twilight.”

Lucian slid his back up against the wall as he stood up. “Cool. Another thing to harass me.” He whistled, jerking his head in G’s direction. “Just one thing, mate: use all your science-y shit to help find me a way back home, okay? Otherwise, I’ll find a way to go into your dreams and give you an Oedipus complex.”

***

And endless sea of still blue stretched out in all directions, the twilight raining down across the water. Floating mere feet above the calm surf and in a seemingly random location was a humanoid figure in a trenchcoat, its djinn-like tails of particles playing games of chicken with the lapping water. Arms folded behind its head, it almost looked like it was resting on an invisible hammock.

It moved out one of its hands, the particles contorting into a triangular shape, and the entity leered at the sun through the triangle. Without wanting, a gale erupted from the east, tossing the entity off balance, forcing it to twist in order to stay above the water, but tearing off its trenchcoat, sending it darting off to the west.

Looking down at itself, it saw the gaping hole in its chest, where a wound which dug out into a cavernous crag of oblivion stood. With a furrowed, irate glare eastward, its tail-borne particles formed themselves into a new black coat, all the while the wind kept howling.

Snapping its finger, the entity creating a solid but invisible cube-like barrier around it. It watched as a swirling force of wind and particles sprang from the gale, touching down on the waters not far from. From this touchdown erupted a huge ball of silver particles, radiating light reflected from the day’s ending sunlight.

Then a tiny, round, and blue bird-like creature with fluffy-white wings popped out of the ball. The bird, its flight unsteady, sputtered for flight control, chirping like mad all the while. As its flight steadied, its beady black eyes caught sight of the humanoid entity, and its squealed, darting off to the west, using the wing to propel it.

Ignoring the bird, the entity glared back at the sphere, just as a presence sauntered out. It couldn’t see what it was, but it felt that the thing was there, and the portal crumbled just as soon, scattering to the four corners as dust and misshapen micro-particles.

A flash of red streaked across the entity’s vision, forcing it to close its eyelids. When they opened, the entity was still there, but now a swarm of particles whipped around, forming feet-like shapes above the water. It watched as the particles moved upwards, the presence gaining more and more form until it was completed.

When the particles had settled, the entity gazed out at a figure with its exact same form, a form stolen from itself.

And then both entities disappeared in a flash of light leaving no trace behind.

Far away and upon a cloud lurked a serpent creature. As a little blue bird flew by, he held out a talon, casting a quick spell. The bird landed on the talon as the spell was finished. “Why, hello there, little fellow,” Discord chuckled. “Now, just what chaotic stew spat out a creature like you?”

He glanced over to the two identical creatures now holding a staring match over yonder waters. “The more important question is, do I tell our fair lady Princess about you two, or do I keep silent and let the chaos play out? What do you say, little guy?”

The bird chirped cheerily.

Discord chuckled, crushing his talon into a fist, feeling the chaotic energy being absorbed into his body. “My thoughts exactly.”

Ǝɹɹoɹ}%^qɐqǝl,,:¡)⅋SʇɹıuƃㄥƐㄥ¿:Ⅎɐılnɹǝ⅋Iʇ%qǝƃıus

Celestia let out a long, slow breath, watching her exhale turn into fog in the cold. It was colder than she had been expecting, but now that she was here, there was nothing to do about it. She looked around to the silent, vertical vortex behind her, then to the tough string tied around her waist, which fed into the vortex and attached to a sturdy object on the other side of it.

My only way out, she thought with grim resignation, giving the string a little jerk for good measure.

Looking forwards, she gritted her teeth. Before her were endless upon endless bookshelves, a veritable ocean of ink and paper. She wondered how many forests composed all these books, or even if these books were composed of natural materials. To her chagrin, she didn’t know.

She walked forwards, towards a balcony railing at the end of the nearest lines of bookshelves. Reaching it, she dare to peek over the side, her eyes scanning the millions, perhaps billions of floors that she could make out. Each floor, going in any direction on three-dimensional space, went on so far that Celestia’s eyes couldn’t make them out anymore. So many books. So many floors. She was certainly in the right place.

“Babel,” she muttered. Feeling lightheaded from the endless sight, she rubbed her head and sighed. “How am I ever going to find anything in this place?”

As if answering her question, a light, distant thumping sound caught her attention. Her eyes darted towards a distant shaft of light streaming down from somewhere high above, then followed it down. Over the railing and across the gap, a respectable distance, the light illuminated something black.

Steeling herself, Celestia spread her wings, bounded over the railing, and took to the air. In no time at all, she landed on the other side, a little fear in her head worried her weight would cause the floors to collapse.

Shaking her head of the thought, she looked to where the light had been leading. Before moving forwards, she checked the string around her, making sure it was still there, still leading across to whence she came.

Before her, on an obsidian pedestal that came up to about her breast, was a dusty-looking book with a blank cover. She took a step towards it, curious, only to freeze as a flapping sound rent her attention away.

There, landing on the railing behind her, was a black bird, a raven. “What are you doing here?” she asked, as if it could reply.

The bird only glared at her.

Celestia frowned. “There shouldn’t be anything here, yet here you are.”

Rather than look at her, the bird stuck its beak into its wings, pruning itself.

Still conscious of the bird, the Princess turned her attentions back to the book. “I have a feeling that you’re more than you seem,” she muttered, using her magic to pick the book up. Celestia gasped as she felt an energy surge in her body, forcing her to drop the book, but the tome remained hovering in the air.

With a jerk, the book threw its cover wide open and rapidly flipped through its pages. As she watched, she felt another surge of energy from the book. More pages flipping, she began to see inked symbols on the pages, none in languages which she understood. Page after page jerked and flipped, and then it stopped on a page with letters she understood, but words she did not.

Fütter mich.

“What does that mean?” she asked, narrowing an eye.

The book’s pages jerked. Feed me, read the only words on a new page.

“Feed you?” She paused, mulling over the request. “With magic, correct? You want me to give you more magic?”

Yes.

I can guide. Cannot speak more. Need food.

She did nothing.

Please.

Biting her tongue, she grabbed the book in her magical aura. She felt the pangs of distant headache as the book leached her energy. Before any real pain could set in, she cut off her connection to the book.

Mehr. Ich brauche mehr, um zu leben.

“I don’t speak that language,” she replied in a stern tone.

Please, I need more to live.

“More magic?” she scoffed. “I don’t know what or who you are, and I certainly won’t let such an unknown thing suckle from the teat of my magic.”

You ventured into Babel, the library with neither end nor limit. Every book in every dimension which has been written or might be written are contained within this prison. I am the only thing that can help you, yet I am but a withered husk of all that I could be. You have the power to fix that. Help me help you, with your endless power. In exchange, I will bring you to what you will.

Celestia’s eyes widened fast. “Guide?” A thought dawned on her. “Your... your name is Metus, is it not?”

The book didn’t reply.

“Respond!” she commanded.

I am he.

Her eyes narrowed into slits. “You’re supposed to be gone, my student herself can attest to as much for what you did to her.”

Twilight Sparkle?

“Yes,” she hissed.

Did you know that were was a universe where you were a regular mare, Princess Celestia?

“I see you figured out my name already.”

Do you know what happened to that Celestia, to you if you were born a normal mare?

She held her tongue.

She died.

Celestia remained silent, glaring at the book.

But you are not she, you are immortal. Well, there is no such thing as an immortal freak, as much should I know. And do you know what else? There’s a universe where Twilight was born into your horseshoes. In fact, in the multiverse are there an infinite numbers of yous. And know you what else? I’ve looked into every reality possible, and no matter where I look, there is but one I. I am the only Metus in all reality. You are a factor in this grand game of ours. I am a player. But you find yourself in a unique opportunity. I am helpless, weak and without defense.

The page flipped as Celestia finished reading. So, kill me. Because as vanquished foe can rise again, more powerful, more vengeful. Such a foe am I. Take your power and end me. Now.

Nothing happened.

I command thee, thou gutless harlot! Slay me! Immolate me! Extinguish me from life as only you could! Wield your precious sun to slay me!

After a second or two, nothing continued to happen.

Know'st thou why thou cannot me kill? Because thou hadst not it in thee. For this, my Princess, is why I beseech thee. I cannot be freed of my own will, thy prostitute wench of a student made sure of that, yet neither can I simply be freed. Bind me to thy will. Bound me with chain and torture me with whip, gag my mouth, blindfold my empty eyes, but know that thou! hast power over me this day.

“And if I refuse?” Celestia finally asked.

Without me, thou willst never find what thou look’st for. I only need scraps of power to make myself whole, then will I thy servant be. Make thy choice, Fräulein. Be the Faust to my Mephistopheles. Either way, have I no power, yet hast you everything to gain with me, and all to lose without.

Celestia took a long, hard breath as she looked at the book’s words over and over again. It was tempting. So every tempting. And this book, the spirit of knowledge called Metus, was not exactly lying, yet she felt something sinister in his written words. She knew there was.

But is she played her hand of cards right, she could make a tool, an ally, out of her Mephistopheles, just like she had with Discord.

*** *** ***

“By the stars above, this is a pure travesty! What kind of barbarian would wear that?” the mare yelled.

Lucian rolled his eyes. “This coming from a thing with, like, blue-purple hair. Seriously, how much time do y’all ponies spend on hair dye?”

She stamped her hoof on the ground. “And who are you to suggest that this mane is anything but natural? Or that I would even dare to change anything about myself that would clash with my perfectly silver coat?”

“Silver? You’re, like, white.”

“I am not just white, you ruffian. It’s actually an incredibly acute shade of gray. Not that you would notice, being a boy and all.” She paused. “You are a boy, right?”

“I am,” Lucian groaned, sitting down in a sofa far too small for him. He had rolled his eyes so much that he wondered if he was somehow unwinding some sort of internal clock of his.

“I see you two are getting along well,” Twilight replied, eyes closed as she levitated a cup of tea to her lips.

The trainer’s eyes scanned over the bright room, the light flowing through an winder somewhere up above in the tree-library. Being that he had no real shot of getting home anytime soon, he figured that brooding darkly would be a great way to pass the time and look cool doing it. But with the lights so bright and the random fashionista in the library, that was a fool’s goal. He looked over to see Spike, that little dragon-type thing, sitting on the second floor, leeringly creepy at Rarity in much the same way that bricks didn’t.

“I’m holding up no better than your leg,” he replied. “How’s that doing, by the way?”

“It’s fine now, thank you very much.”

“Well, golly gee,” the trainer sighed.

Someone, or somepony, as Lucian had resigned himself to using, knocked at the door.

Rarity, who had been saying something, paused and looked. “Who could that be?”

“I’ll get it!” Spike chirped, sprinting down the stairs and up to the door. “Oh, hey there, Pinkie Pie! Oh, hey there too, Fluttershy. Didn’t see you there. What can I do you girls for?”

Lucian phased out, staring at his lap. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or a minute or so, he wasn’t really counting, nothing continued to happened. Without much in the way of warning, a light yellow head with a soft pink mane popped into Lucian’s vision.

“U-u-um, hello...?” she prodded, her tone soft and quiet.

He said nothing.

When she tried again and got the same response, she moved out of the trainer’s vision. “Pinkie, I really don’t think he—”

“It, Fluttershy,” Pinkie corrected. “Call it an it, or it’ll start getting clingy and stuff. And then we’ll all be sad in the end.”

“Right,” she replied in an unamused tone. “It doesn’t seem to want to talk to us. And I really don’t want to be here right now, no offense.”

“When I die,” Lucian finally said, making Fluttershy jump, “I know what they’ll put on my death certificate: ‘Drowned in absurdity’.” He looked up. “Name’s Lucian. I capture living animals, put them into tiny balls that apparently break space-time, and they’re still my only friends.” A sinister smirk crept onto his face. “Speaking of whom, I feel as though they could use for a walk. What say you?”

*** *** ***

Stretching out his back, Lucian looked around the plaza at the heart of Ponyville. He recalled having ran by it when those soldiers, or whatever they were, were chasing him. But now that was all behind him; now the ponies were were all staring at him. The attention brought a little smirk to his face as he took a pokeball from his waist. He looked at it, examining it.

“What’s he doing?” Rarity whispered to Twilight, who rolled her eyes.

“Just watch,” Twilight sighed. “I’m going to try to repress everything I knew about the laws of physics.”

With a flourish, Lucian tossed the ball into the air, above an empty lawn of grass. The ball opened, and a wild, formless explosion of silver energy shot out, quickly gaining the form of a gigantic blue serpent. He whistled, and Mr. Fish lowed his head to the ground, allowing him to climb onto the head. Mr. Fish, expression blank, rose his head back into the air.

“A monster! A sea dragon on land!” someone shouted.

“The beast obeys the alien!” another yelled

“Quickly! Everypony stop what you were doing and stare at it!”

Smiling, Lucian looked down at the rapidly growing crowd below. “Yes! Yes! Gaze and tremble at the majesty that is Mr. Fish!”

“Forsooth, there much such a beast to be slain!” a pony in the exclaimed. “It has been a long time since I have seen its equal!”

“In nomine Patris?” Lucian muttered, staring down at the speaker, a melange pony wearing an orange helmet which resembled a dragon’s head. “Who are you?”

“I, sirrah, am the great Lord Wyrmtongue!”

“Oh, so you’re a bad guy?”

“Evil? Nay! I am the great slayer of beasts that childrens’ stories be made off!”

“Mr. Fish, are your ready?” Lucian asked, and the Gyarados nodded. “Eat ’im.”

With Lucian holding on fast, Mr. Fish ducked his head out and picked the pony up with his mouth.

“Wait, wait, wait, no!” Twilight shouted, galloping forwards.

Still in the beast’s mouth, Lord Wyrmtongue shrieked.

“What’s wrong, purple-nurple?” Lucian asked.

“Tell the fish to spit that stallion out!”

“No.”

“Yes, you will!”

“No, I shan’t. I mean, with a name like ‘Wyrmtongue’, he’s clearly a villain.”

“No, he’s not!” Twilight shouted, hooves grounding to a halt before Mr. Fish. “Spit him out, or I’ll get Celestia to take away all your monsters!”

“But he’s clearly evil!” Lucian whined.

“And you had your pet eat him!”

Lucian groaned, crossing his arms. “Fine, mom. Mr. Fish, let him go.”

As ordered, Mr. Fish opened his mouth, and the pony slid out and fell. “By the Princess’s knickers!” he barked. “I am a fifth-generation monster hunter, and you will treat me with respect!”

Twilight groaned. “Sir, I understand you’re of that... uh, infamous clan that runs around and challenges random animals to duels, but this this isn’t an animal.”

“That’s exactly what I mean!” Wyrmtongue barked, shaking the saliva from his body. “It is not a beast but a horror! An atrocity wed with the nightmare eternal, whence it hath come!”

“Look at him,” Lucian groaned. “He even talks all archaic and shit, just like an overly pretentious villain would.”

Stamping his hoof, Wyrmtongue looked up at Lucian. “Mongrel, my blood is blue, and yours in red—”

“So, you’re a sufferer of methemoglobinemia?” the trainer casually asked, observing his nails.

“—and the respect of that blood do I deserve! And who are you but a holder of monsters?”

“Who am I?” Lucin snorted. “I am his grace, Sir Lucian, duke of The People Who Don’t Give a Rat’s Ass, and knight of The Order of Go Screw Yourself.”

The crowd gasped, and Lucian continued.

“The time when social standing automatically meant everybody would just accept your bullshit has come and gone. Or did you not hear about the French Revolution and how that turned out for people who assumed that their great gobs of titles or ancient bloodlines meant everybody had to do whatever they said?”

The crown around Wyrmtongue began to part, leaving him standing alone. “You vulgar, vile beast! I will put you down, like the dog you are!” he shouted, pulling out a large wooden object that looked the bastard cross of crossbow, a box of ammo, and sperm whale carving. Holding the object up in a field of magic, he aimed it at Lucian. “Fiend! Prepare to know the meaning of pain!”

“Mr. Fish,” Lucian said with almost casual indifference, “Hydro Pump.”

The Gyarados opened his mouth, glaring down at Wyrmtongue as an impossible torrent of water rocketed out of the beast’s gaping maw. Within seconds it impacted the pony, hitting so hard that his hooves were lifted off the ground as he was propelled backwards. His body, carried along by the torrent, flew across the plaza, straight through the door of a gingerbread-like house on the far end of the stream.

Lucian waited for a second, wondering if anything would happen. When nothing did, he turned his attention back down to the crowd. “So, anyone up for water polo? I have no idea what that is, but it feels like a topical-enough reference.”

Rarity’s jaw dropped. “You... you...”

“Hmm? You say somethin’, love?”

Twilight stumbled forwards, her eyes wide. “Did you, did you just do what I think you did?”

“What? He was clearly the villain, I don’t care what you say. I wonder how much XP he was worth.”

A heavy wind blew through the town, whipping up the mares’ manes. Rarity’s eyes darted around. “Um, something feels rather off, like when you forget to put the iron back and Sweetie Belle gets ahold of it, tries to help, and ends up incinerating your new dresses, but you’re outside and don’t know, yet have a feeling in your gut that something is horribly, horribly wrong.”

Lucian and Twilight both started at Rarity, who shrugged. “What? It’s a very specific but cause-ambiguous feeling.

Somewhere off in the distance, a crow cawed. Before anypony could even remark upon it, a low-frequency electric hum rumbled through the ground, complete with the distant sound of background static.

“Oh, well ream my ass sideways with a crowbar,” Lucian muttered as he turned his head. There, a dozen feet away from him and hovering at his eye level, was a cloud of swirling particles, formed up into an inverted L-shape. A stream of memories ran through his head.

“What is that?” Fluttershy whispered.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he went on, his tone almost surreal. “You’re the bitch who sent me to this hell.”

The cloud’s particles began to speed up, its colors slightly brightening.

“What do you want from me? You’ve already locked me in the ninth level of the Inferno. What else could you take from me?”

Slowly the entity drifted towards Lucian, the trainer’s eyes locked to the thing. A crossbow’s bolt flew into Lucians vision, barreling at the shape. Before he could even think about it, the bolt hit the entity, only to vaporize, sending waves rippling across the figure’s body.

“Unbegotten horrors, all of them!” a soaking-wet pony cried out as he lurched into the plaza, his strange weapon brandished by his magical aura.

“Oh, not you again,” Lucian groaned, slapping his hand to his face.

“Yes, ’tis I!”

The entity shrunk, plummeting to the ground. With a flash of light it vanished, replaced by a rapidly-assembling, insectoid form. The sunlight glistened off the shiny brown exoskeleton of the new form, its scythe-like claws catching the light just right.

“A Kabutops?” Lucian said. “In nomine Patris, what is that doing there?”

Wyrmtongue shot another bolt, the shot impacting the beast’s knee. With a static hiss, the exoskeleton crumbling into just, leaving nothing but a ghastly but still-standing skeleton in its wake.

“By the old gods of the forest!” shouted Wyrmtongue. “Be this necromancy that I see?”

“Look out!” Twilight called out, but it did nopony any good. With an unreal speed, the Kabutops charged Wyrmtongue, headbutting him hard enough to propel him back a solid yard, breaking his strange weapon.

“Well,” Lucian said, crossing his arms, “thanks for helping me get rid of that bastard. But, see, I now need to torture you for information — Gitmo style!” Before the skeleton could react, Lucian gave a simple command: “Surf!”

The entire crowd of ponies gasped as a torrent of water erupted from the ground, swirling and spinning until it formed a house-sized wave. With a snap of Lucian’s fingers, the wave catapulted forwards, hitting both the skeleton and Wyrmtongue like a ton of bricks at a near-literal break-neck speed. The pony was knocked halfway across the ton, the skeleton only by a yard or so.

With a demented smirk, Lucian held on tight to Mr. Fish, glowering, “Ice fang.”

Faster that any creature its size should logically be, Mr. Fish rocketed towards the Kabutops. The skeleton tried to react, but the Gyarados was faster. His massive teeth sunk into its target with a satisfying crunch, the bones freezing over.

To Lucian’s mild annoyance, the crowd was silent. Rolling his eyes, he slid down Mr. Fish’s back and onto the ground. Crossing his arms behind his back like the bad guys in those old war movies he’d seen, he stomped towards the ensnared skeleton.

“You know about me, don’t you?” he growled. “Why here? What do you want with me?”

No response.

“Answer me!” he demanded, banging a hand on the skelton’s diamond-like head. “May I remind you that I have five other highly-leveled Pokemon, all ready, able, and wanting to kick your ass into the oblivion whence you came?”

Bit by bit, the atoms in the skeleton dissolved into particles. The swarm leaked out of the icy mass and into its original L-shape.

“No, thou prostitute wench of Babylon!” Lucian growled. “You are not fleeing me!”

Freed from its icy prison, the swarm darted skywards. Before Lucian could get out any of his other Pokemon, the entity disappeared over the western horizon.

The trainer cast a dark look over the whole town: to the disorganized mob of ponies, to the property damage the fight had caused, to the distant collapsed form of Wyrmtongue. Gritting his teeth, he tried to breath the fire out of his lungs, to slow his racing pulse, all to no strong effect.

“Twilight,” he said in a distant tone, his eyes made shadow by the sunlight and his hat.

The mare stood silent, likely too shocked to even think.

“We’re going west.”

*** *** ***

“Hmm?” the unicorn mare with a soft-green coat hummed. She adjusted her blue uniform as she looked at the notepad she was levitating.

“Something up?” G asked, glancing at her.

The mare looked up. “Yes, Sir. I was doing tests of radiation because, well, because, and I got some odd readings.” She cleared her throat as many of the ponies around her stopped to listen to her. “These anomalies have been giving off a strange form of radiation. It’s not dangerous, by no means, but it’s notable.”

G looked around at the castle from his vantage point in the gardens. For all the damage the castle had undergone earlier, that Remora-thing had done wonders for repairing the whole place. “Any specific kind of radiation.”

“Well, uh, that’s the thing, Sir. I have no idea. I’ve never really encountered it before. Its frequency is like universal background, but a few other, uh, high-details factors make it not that. Like the way it’s interacting with its environment, for example.”

He nodded.

“Um, permission to speculate aloud, Sir?”

“You have it.”

She took a breath. “This might sound silly, but I think it’s... not exactly from here. That is, not exactly native to our reality.”

“She saying that our dimension is breaking down?” a pony scoffed.

“No, no, no. Well, not as you’re picturing it.”

“She might not be wrong,” an older unicorn mare commented. Everypony turned to her, reading her nametag, “Doctor Strange Sights.” She held up a glowing emerald-colored sphere with her magic. “With all that heady-duty teleporting Discord and that entity were doing, it’s entirely plausible that we’re picking up proof of the existence of wormhole-space. That is, that teleport spells don’t just ‘work by magic’, so to speak.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” a new voice said, and everypony turned their head to the large double-doors leading to the castle’s ballroom. As the doors closed, they all saw the tall, elderly-looking blueish-green stallion. Tied over his shoulders and extending over his whole pact was a heavy cloak decorated with random numerical serials and values, plus an odd cluster of stars.

“Forgive, we don’t seem to have met. I’m Doctor G. What might your name be?” G asked, taking a step towards the newcomer.

The stallion raised his big, bushy eyebrows. “I am called Dipal. At least I think I am. Aren’t many ponies to call me anything nowadays, but, well, what can one do, eh?”

“Dipal, hmm? That doesn’t sound like much of an Equestrian name.”

“Would you prefer something fruity, like Sunny Side Up?” Dipal chuckled, his long white beard jostling.

“Are you even authorized to be here?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does,” G said in a less-friendly tone.

“We’ll see about that, boy.” Dipal made a twitching gesture with one hoof, his horn emitting a harsh white light, accompanied by a sharp tearing sound. “There. Authority enough?”

“What was—”

“Sir!” the mare called out. “Radiation levels just dropped to null! It’s gone, all of it!”

The Doctor blinked, looking between her and Dipal. “What in Celestia’s name...”

Dipal smirked. “I’m something of an expert on dimensional-tomfoolery and temporal anomalies. I just fixed the ones left here by that irresponsible monster. Now, if you don’t mind, I have business with Princess Celestia to deal with.”

“The Princess is out, I’m sorry to say,” G said. “Boys, why don’t we kindly escort out guest to his own room as we wait for her to return. We wouldn’t want such a valuable asset like him getting lost, now would we?”

Socialism at large

Scratching his head, Lucian looked out at the swarm of ponies filling the plaza and carrying all the essential supplies and angry mob needed: anger, pitchforks, and torches. At the far end of the plaza was a very happy, and now very rich, pony, who probably always knew selling only pitchforks and torches would be his ticket to wealth.

“Wow,” he whistled. “You’d think they’d be a bit more forgiving of me for flooding half the town to kill a monster, but no.” Lucian waved at Mr. Fish. “You’d doing a great job holding the mob back, buddy!”

Twilight glared at him.

“So, I’m going west,” he concluded.

“What in Celestia’s name are you doing that for?” she asked, trying to ignore the yells from the crowd.

“You destroyed my store!”

“The bakery is gone!”

“This is what we get for non-socialized healthcare!” At the last remark, the crowd paused, staring at the speaker. “What?” he asked with a shrug. “I missed the actual disaster and just wanted to be part of a riot.”

The crowd turned its attention back to Lucian and Mr. Fish, suddenly remembering that they were still enraged. As if on queue, the roars and shouting resumed in full swing.

Lucian sighed. “Because that thing went west, and so I must follow it.”

Twilight shook her head. “Do you even know where you’re going? You’d be surprised just how uncivilized that land is—just forests and mountains.”

He snapped his fingers with one hand, tugging at his shirt collar with the other. A tiny smirk forced its way onto his face as he looked at her. “Why, my dear Twilight, no hide nor horn nor bullet nor blade could stop me on my quest for vengeance, that most worthless of emotions. To the west will I go; to the west my destiny will I find; to the west... Aw, dammit. I was trying to be poet there.” He kicked at the ground. “By Babylon the Great’s syphilitic knickers.”

Jaw slowly opening, Twilight shook her head. “No. I can’t let you do that.”

“Since when have you been my handler?”

She stamped a hoof. “Since Princess Celestia put me in charge of you.”

“And what kind of matron can’t keep charge of her ward, hmm?” he countered.

Twilight gave Lucian a flat look, deadpanning, “You’re a giant alien who uses impossible fighting monsters in his pocket. You go out there, you’re going to just get yourself killed.”

“Exactly. I’m, like, invincible.” He leant forwards, shoving his face into hers. “I am—you lose, little pony.”

She only gave him an icy glare.

“How adorable,” a sleek, feminine voice commented. Lucian jerked his head in the direction, only to see an azure mare with thick,snow-white braids leaning against the nearby wall. “Oh, did I interrupt?”

“You!” Twilight gasped. “Azure Knowledge? Is that really you?”

“And hey to you, Twilight.” She looked over Lucian. “I zee you made a friend.”

Lucian frowned, quietly asking Twilight, “Does she have a funny accent?”

Twilight elbowed him in the knee, whispering, “It’s a speech impediment, you brute! Don’t make fun of it.”

“Fun, fun.” Lucian looked up at Azure. “You know each other?”

Azure smirked. “It was a while ago, during one of the many crizes that befall this nation.”

“Like the Rhine Crisis of eighteen-forty?” Lucian asked, glancing over his shoulder. “Don’t annex the Rhine Valley! Got it, Mr. Fish?”

Mr. Fish nodded.

“Uh, well, a rather irkzome ztallion tried to create zynthetic antithezes to the Elementz of—” She shook her head. “Never mind that, xenomorph. Just know that I’m from the Cerchens, and that I’m the Commizzar for the Duchy of Whitetail.”

Lucian gave her an oblique look, titling his head. “I’ve seen enough movies and played enough video games to safely assume not to trust you.” Before Azure could reply, he turned to Twilight. “Twilight, is Equestrian an absolute monarchy? I mean, the theocratic, fascist kind? The Sieg Heil kinda place, I’m talkin’ about.”

The mares just stared, exchange glances, then continued staring.

“So, back on topic,” Lucian continued, “I’m goin’ east. You can try to stop me, but I don’t care to make any sort ot clichéd speech right now explaining things.”

“Yez, that iz zort of what I wanted to zpeak about,” Azure offered hesitantly. “Did any of you happen to zee an—”

“Eldritch nightmare from the ninth level of hell, composed of a swarm of malevolent particles?” Lucian offered. “Yeah. It went west, which is where I’m going.” He turned to look at the mob, only to see that the angry ponies had all settled down and were now talking.

“But how does socialized healthcare solve our current problems?”

“See, hospital bills are rather pricey these days. Often ponies gotta got to the ER, and often pones can’t pay. These lost profits are passed onto patients who can pay. In the long run, we’re losing more money without healthcare than without.”

“That’s a load of horse apples! Everypony knows it’s the law to pay for things you buy.”

“Hospitals work differently. You incur a debt with them, and under royal law you cannot be arrested for debt, since it’s a civil matter.”

Lucian called out, “Hey! Aren’t you supposed to an angry mob?”

“Shut up!” they all replied in unison.

Shaking his head and turning back to the mares, he muttered, “Sorry I asked.”

Azure looked mildly bemused. “We were able to track the energy zignals of that monzter you zaw, track it to here.”

“Wait,” Lucian said, holding up hand. “You can track that thing?”

“In a manner of zpeaking, yez. We can track itz former locazation, ztaying one ztep behind it all the way.” He looked over her shoulder. “I would zay it went wezt.”

“Ha! Twilight, I told you it was goin’ there. I’mma go there myself.”

Twilight facehoofed. “Azure, please don’t encourage him.”

The azure mare shifted her weight. “Perhapz it would not be unwize to allow him hiz adventure.”

Jabbing a finger in he direction, the trainer commented, “Her I like. Twilight, make room—she’s replaced you.”

“Actually,” Azure went on, “the Cerchens had noted that these things, whatever they are, zeem to have zome connection to the xenomorph.”

“I have name, you know. It’s Lucian.”

“We believe that Luzian iz a cauze of many of theze attacks. Not of his volition but of hiz mere prezenze. In short, they are following him. And thuz it might be prudent to get him away from any zenters of population.”

“They’re pretty kickass. So, can I go now, Twilight?”

Twilight just glared at Lucian. After a long, long pause, she spoke. “Fine.”

Lucian blinked. “Say wha’?”

“Look, arguing with you is clearly futile, and whether I say no or not, you’re going to do it. So I might as well get my metaphorical leash and keep track of you. And aside from that, if by keeping you were I actually might—” she glanced to the crowd now discussing Equestrian socioeconomics, “—have endangered my friends in Ponyville, then it’s in my interest not to keep you around them.”

“Huh. Just... huh. Did not expect that.” Lucian slumped slightly. “Azure, I’m sorry, but Twilight’s getting her old position back. Better the devil I know then the devil I don’t, yeah?”

Rather than responding immediately, the Commissar looked surveyed the town. “What in Equeztria’s name did you do to thiz plaze?”

“Flooded it by summing a tidal wave out from the ether to destroy that para-dimensional fop,” Lucian said as casually as one discussing the weather. “I ain’t fixin’ it; it’s their fault for not having... whatever it is that that communist out there is arguing for. And because hard labor is for under-paid, under-privileged minorities.”

Azure nodded. “Right. Zo, you two meet me by Lament Hill thiz evening, alright? And pack well. I zuzpect a hardy trip before you.”

*** *** ***

“Twilight is late,” Lucian groaned, staring up at the moon. He shifted his weight, his back up against a tree.

“Tell me about it,” Azure yawed, looking down the grassy hill, to Ponyville. “Wasn’t she supposed to be with you?”

He held up a suitcase. “Girl takes too long to pack up, so I just sorta went here on my own. Truth be told, I don’t think she even realized I’d left.” Lucian gestured this way and that with a hand. Then, in a poor imitation of Twilight’s voice: “We’ll need this thing, and that thing, and tell Celestia what’s going on, defeat the dragon, prove my superiority in a game of chess, pack this, not have any underwear or bras and other girl stuff ‘cause I’m a pony, and funny final thing.”

“Huh.”

“You get the idea.”

“And if she freakz out becauze you left without zaying zo?

He looked over his shoulder, to the other side of the tree, to where Azure was sitting. “More time for me to sit here and assert my further convince myself of the righteousness of my quest, staying as I might in thought, sondering morbidly any thoughts of backing down.”

The mare cocked her head to the side. “Iz that Twilight?”

“Where?”

She pointed down the hill. “Zee the figure there? The one zpieling the hill with all those bags.”

Lucian leaned over, peering to the indicated pony. “Oh, yeah. Probably is.”

“You want to help her?”

He scoffed. “That harlot? I think not.” Lucian paused. “I think I’m getting too poetic; I must have eaten too many Generic-O’s this mornin’, or somethin’. They’re good for the brain and pretentious poetic alike, as I understand.” Looking at the nearer of the mares, he commented, “Did you know that you remind me of the Geheime Staatspolizei?”

“Excuze me?” Azure asked, cocking a brow.

“Means ‘Secret State Police’. You Cerchen bastards have that evil aesthetic about you. So, tell me: is Equestria a police state?”

“What’z a polize ztate?”

“Well, y’all feel like one. I mean, I hear the trains run on time ‘round here.”

“They... do. Why?”

“‘Cause trains running on time is the first sign of a police state.”

Azure stared at Lucian, confused beyond words.

“You!” Twilight half growled, half huffed.

“Howdy, tiny pony female,” Lucian chirped, waving at her.

“You left me with all these suitcases!”

“Yes, I did,” he said so fast that it all sounded like one word. “I can carry everything I need to survive in my pockets. Why would I need suitcases?”

“They were for me, you—!” Twilight stopped herself before she said anything else, resorting to just panting as she reached the top of the hill, half a dozen suitcases floating behind her.

“Why are you so outta breath?”

“I was running all around, looking for you!” She put the bags down by the tree and dropped to the ground. “Should have known you’d be here.”

He grinned. “Twilight, are all those cakes you’ve been eating finally catching up to you?”

The tired mare shot him a glare so fierce Lucian actually flinched. “I. Am. In. No. Mood.”

A heavy flapping sound drew all their attentions skywards, in the direction of the moon. There, at dot at first that was quickly growing in size, was a pony flying down at them. It was traveling faster, faster than any pony should logically be able to, and it was on a direct course to them.

“Oh, look—trouble,” Lucian sighed, fingering his pokeballs. “Who do you think I should summon for it? I”m thinking Blacknight.”

Twilight held a hoof up in his direction, narrowing her eyes at the pony above. “Hold on... I, I think I know who that is?”

He looked at her. “Who?”

Before Twilight could even apply, a massive form slammed down into the ground, knocking one of the bags over and kicking up a small cloud of dirt. Lucian heard a heavy, heavy panting from the cloud, and it sounded masculine. By comparison, Twilight’s pantings were peanuts.

“Hail to y’all, from Her Majesty’s court,” the black pegasus gasped, forcing huge gulps of air down his throat. Lucian, with some amusement, noticed he was wearing hat with the emblem of an envelope, upon which was a large red number six was inscribed.

“Who are you?” Azure asked, stumbling backwards.

Twilight rubbed her eyes, a disbelieving look on her face. Just as Lucian saw it on the first mare’s face, Azure got the same look in her eyes. The human just shrugged it off, looking back at the pegasus.

The stallion smiled. “Crimson Thunder, sixth royal courier for Their Majesty’s Royal Courriel.” He took his hat off for a second, bowing. “I’ve a message from Princess Luna.”

“Speak,” Azure said, forcing the previous look from her face.

“Right, then. Odd things are up in Canterlot, and Princess Luna wanted to keep you up to date, as it were.” He produced a letter from his messenger back, somehow holding it out in his hoof long enough for Lucian to snatch it up. “In short, Cerchens investigating the capital all aged by tens years when some crazy wizard showed up and fixed the... temporal time thingies.”

“What?” Twilight asked.

“I don’t pretend to understand it, but the specifics are in the letter. Princess thinks that wizard might be after the—” he hesitated, looking at Lucian, “—strange alien you’ve been wandering around with. You know, I’ve seen his face on all the papers and magazines.”

“R-really?” Lucian said, eyes going wide with awe.

“Heck yeah, dude. You’re like a dang celebrity—strange alien with unknowable powers shows up, does a thing, and the nation is thrown into chaos. Everypony’s talkin’ ‘bout ya, mate.” He leapt into the air, wings flapping hard. “Auf wiederseh’n, dudes! Princess needs me to give reports to other.”

Lucian, a gleam in his eye, waved him off. “Au revoir!”

Just like that, the courier darted off into the night, out of view almost immediately.

“Problems in Canterlot,” Twilight mouthed slowly. She looked to Lucian. “What’s with that look in your eye?”

He stamped a foot on the ground. “I’m famous somewhere! Yeah! And not for doing criminally dumb things like my mom always said I’d be famous for, but because I’m awesome! Hell yeah!”

The mares facehoofed. And as Twilight was about to ask for the letter, but was interrupted.

Clapping his hands together, Lucian continued. “So, I’m all game for a kickass quest of vengeance now. Y’all good? ‘Cause I am.” He glanced around. “Hey, where’s that dragon-type of yours, Twilight?”

Twilight just stared.

“I just wanted to see him in action, dragon-y and all, you understand. The tyke’s different from you guys.”

“He’s... in the library,” Twilight finally managed, and the trainer frowned.

“Damn, I’m getting bored with you guys.” Lucian spun around. “I mean, you ponies all look like palette swaps of the same one, just with minor differences, like your hair styles. At least the tyke’s got a unique body type. And is it just me, more are most of you ponies girls? Aside from those soldiers, I’ve hardly seen any boys—and the fact that most those guys were soldiers is, like, highly sexist, in my opinion.” He rubbed his chin. “Come to think of it, I think all that snacking’s starting to show on Twilight, so she looks a bit different. Bit heavier. Bit more distinguished.”

The mention mare’s eyelid twitched, but she, to her own amazement, remained silent.

Azure, noticing Twilight’s reaction, said, “If you inzizt on provoking Mizz Twilight Zparkle, then, in the wordz of a zertain philozopher, your remaining exiztence will be nazty, brutish, and short.”

Twilight cocked a brow, but pointedly did not dispute Azure’s claim.

Lucian felt a sigh of wind blow past it, more humid that he’d have thought it’d be at this late hour. “Geez, calm down. I’m just trying to lighten up the mood; you guys looked all dark and brooding after that messenger showed up.”

“Um, hello?” a soft voice piped up from behind Lucian.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw it was Fluttershy, black bags under her eyes and a large bag hefted over her shoulder. With a mild drop of alarm, he saw something in the bag move. He unconsciously shifted his stance, preparing for the worst.

“Fluttershy?” Twilight asked. “What are you doing here? And... why do you look so tired?”

The pink-maned mare chirped an obligatory greeting to Twilight. “I’m glad I managed to find you. I really didn’t know who else to turn to.” She reached into a pocket in her bag, pulling out a note in her teeth and offering it to Twilight, who gingerly took it up in her magic.

“Dear Fluttershy,” Twilight read, using her horn’s magic light illuminate the letter, “I thought this might be of interest to you. Plus, I didn’t know whom else to give this to. Don’t eat it. Seriously, don’t do that. I’ve seen feral oxen do it to other animals; and, in case you somehow went feral, wanted to tell you upfront that eating it would be a major no-no. It was pretty uncomfortable to watch, but then I figured out a way to make a sport of it—but none of that matters, really. Do hold onto this for me.

“Your friend,

—Discord.”

Twilight’s brow furrowed. “Discord? He was at your cottage. When? And what’s this thing he gave you?”

“You should really see for yourself.” Fluttershy took a deep breath as she unzipped her bag.

With a gasp, Lucian saw a small, blue, bird-like creature asleep in the bag. “A Swablu!” he whispered in awe. A hard look on his face, he crouched down and glared into the mare’s eyes. “Where did you find this?”

“Well, I’m not sure I found it, just came across it,” she replied. “The note, tied around the hoof of an unusually angry ox, was thrown at my door something during Lucian’s fight with... whatever it was, I think. A-and this little bird was in the bag I’m carrying now, only that bag was also attached to that furious ox.”

Without warning, Lucian reached into the bag and extracted the bird, cradling it in his arms. “It’s injured,” he noted, his tone more professional that it had even been before. “How long has it been in that bag?” A hand felt into the bag. “The temperature is not squelching hot, so that’s not the problem.”

“I, I found it in the bag like this,” Fluttershy said, her tone more rigid, like a nurse trying to help a doctor. “I tried feeding and helping it, but it, it didn’t seem to be able to eat.”

“Potions?”

“It wouldn’t drink, either.”

He cocked a brow. “Drink? Are you daft, girl? You don’t drink potions.”

“Wha—?” Fluttershy tried, only to he shocked silent as Lucian produced an ice cream cone from the ether.

“How the hay was that in your pocket? And why’s it still frozen?” Twilight demanded, but Lucian ignored her. Instead, he rubbed the ice cream against the Swablu’s beak.

Almost immediately the little bird perked up, its eyes fluttering open. With a sudden rush, the bird gobbled the ice cream. As the treat was finished, Swablu chirped with pleasure.

“And they told me waiting in line for an hour just for twenty cones that cure poke-ailments has wasting my time,” Lucian chuckled. “Shows them. They’re probably dead, too. So, really, I win that way too.”

The Swablu began flailing around, at least until Lucian pulled out a spray bottle and sprayed the bird with it. It immediately fell silent, looking also serene as it stared upwards, still held in Lucian’s arms.

“Now then,” Lucian cooed, “how’d you get here, little guy?”

“Um, excuse me,” Fluttershy said. “What is the animal?”

“A swablu, a native of my world. Question is, the hell’s it doing here? I didn’t bring it, so the only logical conclusion is that—” He froze.

“What iz it?” Azure prodded.

“That means that he must have entered this world from mine. Which means that he was in my world recently, and I know it was recently because of the mechanics behind the sleep condition. Only certain Pokemon moves and, I guess, drugs could inflict a sleep condition like this, so that’s that. What I know of Discord is limited, but if my suspicions are correct, he’s a common thread linking this together, since he clearly found the Swablu.” Lucian bit his thumb, his eyes prowling around as he thought.

“You seem to know a lot of the animals of your world,” Fluttershy commented.

“Gotta be,” Lucian threat, still gnawing at his thumb. “How can I be the very best, in such a way that none before me have ever been, without knowing absolutely everything about Pokemon, eh? Our entire culture is so obsessed with them that even if I didn’t care about Pokemon, which I didn’t up until mom kicked me outta the house, you’d still learn tons about every aspect of them.” He looked up to Fluttershy. “Say, you seem to want to know about them, don’t ya?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Fluttershy nodded.

A toothy smirk slithered across the human’s face. “How would you like to see the west?”

“Wait. Are you asking me to... to come with you?”

He nodded. “I think we could make use of you. I could make use of you indeed.”

Twilight stamped a hoof in protest. But before she could chew up out, a sudden force slugged Lucian in the chest. In an instant his body bounced off the grass, the pain so great he couldn’t inhale.

He eyes staring upwards, he looked up into two beady eyes, eyes much like his own. In fact, he could swear they were his eyes, if only it hadn’t been for the mechanical glow behind them. The more he gazed, the sooner the light went out, becoming normal eyes.

The seconds ticked by like eons as his struggled to put the mental puzzle together. And as his eyes scanned over the rest of the bipedal figure, a thought occurred to him: Lucian was standing over himself, which was impossible, because Lucian was supposed to be on the ground.

With a burst of energy, the mares gasped, almost as if time had been frozen until that very second. As if all on queue, they all asked to the effect of, “Who is she, and why does she look like me?!”

“Not a she,” Lucian choked out. “It’s me!”

The false Lucian simply smiled down at him, saying in Lucian’s own voice, “Hello, my name is Zzazz. And, in mere moments, so shall you all be.”

Mutatis Mutandis

“The number of books here is beyond absurd,” Celestia commented, turning her attention to the spider-like being sharing the room with her. “There must be at least as many as there are stars in the sky.

“I have to disagree with you on that one, Princess,” said the spider-like being, raising a long, slender finger up. “The stars are finite, of that I am sure. Yes, their exact numbers is so high that your language doesn’t yet have a proper word for which to count them, but that changes nothing.” His shoulder flexed as he flipped through the book in hand, his long cape jostling in response. “I have here in my library every book that ever was, is, will be, and, in some cases, could be written. Your language doesn’t have the proper syntax to express the concept, even. A pity. In any case, most of space is empty void, most of my library is books. You do the math.”

“And can I assume you’ve read them all?” Celestia asked, following after him.

Metus scoffed. “The library is nearly infinite, my time is not. But I assure you, what I have read is beyond interesting. And beyond that the library is a nexus of sorts for the multiverse; I’ve seen them, too.”

“Do I want to know about that?”

He paused, turning his head to the Princess. The way his blank orbs of glowing blue—not eyes, actually orbs of a sort—pierced into her made the skin beneath her fur want to crawl. That huge slasher-esque grin that he’d painted onto his otherwise mouthless countenance wasn’t helping, either.

Metus said, “What if I told you that I’ve read your obituary, heard your death knells? That the way they decorated your corpse was downright touching? Now, what if I were to tell you that I’ve seen fair Equestrian burnt to ashes by weapons of a power so vast, so utterly incomprehensible that you’re not even at the level of technology to understand, and most certainly don’t have a word for?”

Celestia unconsciously shifted her express. In that moment, she felt as though Metus were giving her a dark grin, not that she knew why, and nor could his mouthless face express such a look. She said, “Are you speaking of the future, or...”

“Was, was being, is, is being, had been, had been being, will have been, would have, will be, will have been—mutatis mutandis. Your death, it would have had to have had been.” Metus waved a hand. “All irrelevant to me. And who’s to even say the Celestia who died was, is, will be you, hmm? The multiverse is confusing like that, but I’ve managed thus far.”

She inclined her head. “Are you suggesting some sort of prophet?”

He threw his head back and laughed in only the way a being with neither mouth nor nose could have laughed. “Prophet! Metus, the Prophet of Knowledge—ha! I rather like the sound of that. How unnecessarily dramatic, and much better sounding than ‘trans-dimensional peeping tom’, no?”

Celestia frowned. “Are you leading me somewhere in particular, or are you just wandering, to pass the time?”

“I am your timekiller. I make your mind expand. I am like quicksand leaking from the hand,” he said, all jocularity fleeing his voice as he produced a manilla folder, it thick spine held together by steel rings. Holding it up with the spiders fingers of his disturbingly long arm, he spoke two words: “Project Methuzulah.” He offered it to her, and, with some hesitance, Celestia took it up.

“What’s it about?” she asked, not bothering to open it.

“It notes being similar to that which you told me of. I think it will be of interest to you.”

She continued not to open the folder. “You tell me you can see all of these realities, correct?”

Metus glanced over his shoulder. “That would not be a gross inaccuracy.” He held up a finger before Celestia could say anything further. “But before you ask, no, it will not be your salvation. In this little tale of ours, you’ve got to earn your happy ending.” Metus shrugged, like Atlas taking the weight of the world off his shoulders. “In any case, there is a technical difference between ‘reality’ and ‘dimension’, one which is nigh impossible to explain; but were I to try, I’d say they’re interchangeable within nonspecific speech, yet in practice are far from the same thing. I work with only one, not the other—and the other is where you’re thinking I work with, but not so.”

Celestia frowned. “What does that mean?”

“To put it in terms that won’t give you a brain aneurysm, a universe is like a box of chocolate chip cookies, and the cookies inside are realities. Only the box is literally infinite in every incomprehensible sense of the word, and the cookies are endless. Mind you, my library may seem infinite but, in fact, is not. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—the distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. Babel, my library, is anything but infinite, it’s just very, very, very big, so big that it gives the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself. So big that if you got to one of the more open areas here within, the shock of pure vertigo would likely just kill you.

“So, back to the box, it’s so big that it defies the imagination—seduces it and defeats it. You might think that trotting down to the gynecologist’s office is a long ways away, but that’s just peanuts compared to how big this box of cookies is,” Metus said. Celestia suddenly had the odd feeling of being like a mare in the act of adultery who is surprised when the stallion’s wife wanders into the room, searches for and finds her house keys, passes a few idle remarks about the weather, and leaves again. Metus kept talking, though. “And next to the box is another box, but these cookies are, er, oatmeal raisin. Barring some sort of error, there will not be any chocolate chips in the oatmeal raisins, and ditto vice versa.”

Her brow furrowed. “An error? Like what?”

He shook his bulbous head, making a flippant hand gesture. “Doesn’t matter. Read.”

*** *** ***

There were no walls to the room he saw, just endless TV screens piled up on each other like bricks in a wall. The screens were empty, black, hollow. Lucian felt his heart beating irregularly as he stared into a perfect reflection of himself. Only it wasn’t a reflection, it was alive, the reflection was a person exactly like him, yet couldn’t have possibly been him.

“The hell’s going on?” Lucian mumbled. “Where am I?”

“We’re inside your head, Zzazz,” it said.

“Inside... my... head?” He tilted his head. “And what did you call me?”

“Zzazz.”

“That’s not my name.”

“Oh, but it is. See, your name is Zzazz,” it offered in a kindly tone.

“No, no, that can’t be right.”

“Then, dear child, tell me—what is your name?”

He furrowed his brow as static and white noise filled his thoughts. The more he tried to think, the stronger the static and noise got. When her stopped trying to think, they went away. “I... I... No, I think it is Zzazz; how could I forget?” He pointed at it. “Then, who are you?”

“I?” It cocked a brow. “My name is Zzazz.”

A creeping feeling settled across his mind. It was as if a thousand voices were shouting through whispered breathes into his ear—too many to ignore, too many to understand. It was a feeling that destroyed his ability to make witty comparisons and annoying pop culture references, skills he’d honed since childhood. His legs gave out beneath him as he collapsed to the ground, and a wet hotness filled his nose. As if by themselves, his lips began to move.

“My... name... is... Zzazz,” he croaked from the floor, looking up at it.

It gave him the kind of grin that would get most people locked in a room with soft walls. “Yes, yes you are.”

The whispering grew into shouts as an incomprehensible pain tore his head apart. He reached up and clutched his skull, letting out a wail as his legs began to burn and itch. Then he saw that his legs... weren’t. From the feet up, they were distinguishing, being eaten and turning into a particle-like dust. Blood leaked from his nose as he screamed again in agony, watching his leg particles flying towards the standing thing.

“What?!” he managed to gargle out between shrieks.

“Your body is the bread that nourishes me,” it said, voice cracking like an out-of-tune radio. “Your soul, mine. Worry not; soon, Zzazz, you will be a part of me.”

“I... I...”

“No, Zzazz. There is no I.” Its eyes gleamed. “There is only we.”

Heavy silence filled the air as he found himself unable to scream; he wanted to scream, tried in vain to exercise his useless lungs, but all he could do was lay there and burn. The itchy burn in his legs turning into a raging inferno of horror as he watched the stream of disintegration hasten.

A monstrous, grisly light poured in on him.

A hideous light.

A boiling, pestilential light.

A light that would have disfigured hell.

His universe was coming to an end.

“Oh, please,” the distant voice from far above intoned. “This is pathetic, even for you.” One by one, the TV screens shattered into oblivion, peppering both bodies with glass and material he couldn’t identify. It grimaced as the TVs collapsed in on themselves, imploding with the outward force of an atomic bomb. In the heat and power of the blast, Lucian felt his skin turn, cell by cell, to ash, his eyes melt, eardrum burst—

And then Lucian opened his teary eyes to see the night sky above. It felt more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen before, so free and open, an endless expanse of air without pain. He could even breath! The brief euphoria died away as he saw himself—no, it standing above him, not looking at him but at the floating form of Discord.

“Well, that was uneventfully yet depressing,” Discord yawned as it evaporated into the air. He looked down at Lucian. “How close—you almost perished.”

Lucian didn’t reply, just lolled his head back and stared up at the sky, feeling the blood pumping through his legs again.

*** *** ***

“So, are we all clear?” Discord said, adjusting his top hat and monocle. He looked out at the large table before him, the various ponies (and one Lucian) sitting around it with steaming cups of tea before them all.

Twilight rubbed the side of her head, trying to hold back her disheveled mane. “Clear on what? You just woke me and teleported us to a tea party in—” she glanced around “—a featureless white room of indeterminate size... Uh, where are we?”

Discord gave a dismissive wave of his paw. “Irrelevant to the matter at hoof. Maybe you could ask a more pertinent question, eh, everypony plus Lucian?”

The trainer didn’t even acknowledge being named, he just kept peering at a bowl of sugar cubes. With some hesitance he extended his hand to grab one, only for the bowl to snap a set of teeth at him. Lucian quickly jumped back, then tried to grab one again, only for a repeat of last time’s action.

Discord cleared his throat, staring at Lucian, and making his tophat slightly larger. When Lucian again tried and failed to grab some sugar, Discord realized what was going on: the trainer was deliberately and maliciously getting bitten by a sugar bowl at Discord. He just huffed and removed the sugar bowl from existence, and Lucian at one looked both relieved and disheartened.

“Why doez the tea tazte like tomatoez?” Azure asked. “And why iz it blue?”

“And seriously, where are we?” Twilight insisted.

Lucian continued staring longingly at the where the sugar bowl wasn’t. Even with the problem removed, the trainer was still as malicious towards Discord as ever.

“Don’t any of you care about that monster that was literally consuming your very souls?” Discord asked, a slight hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Well, yeah, I guess I do,” Twilight said. “But, I mean, where are we?”

“Wait. Conzume uz?” Azure flashed Discord a look. “What doez that mean?”

He smiled. “Ah, finally somepony’s asking relevant questions! Does that mean we can finally start explaining what just happened?”

“I suppose,” Twilight hesitantly offered.

Discord cracked several more knuckles than could have logically had. “I’ve had my eye on those strange glitches for a while now.”

Twilight cocked a brow. “Glitches?”

Discord waved a talon. “My own personal term for those... things that have been causing such a ruckus around here. I even managed to note that a few of them have names. That last one you fought? Its name was Zzazz, and, accordingly, each different glitch appears to have varying abilities. Fun guys to have at a party, don’t you think?”

Lucian turned his head to Discord, opening and closing his mouth. Giving up, he massaged his legs. He moved a hand to reach for his tea, only for the hand to quickly slap his legs, making sure they were still there. The trainer decided not to grab for the tea.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Why did it... look just like me?”

Fluttershy, speaking for the first time that tea party, piped up. “You? B-but it looked just like me.”

“I thought he looked like me?” Azure said.

Everypony turned their heads expanctly to Lucian, who seemed content to just stare into space. So Discord spoke for him. “And I can guarantee you that Lucian say a reflection of himself. This is, many would say, impossible. If you had any idea how it worked, only might easily claim that it is not merely impossible but clearly insane, which is exactly why it seems to work so well.”

Everypony cocked a brow. Lucian just sort of sat there as if he were trying to spend a year dead for tax purposes.

Discord smiled as he offered them all cookies shaped like his own head. “Near as I can tell, that one tends to sort of... invade other’s minds, capturing them as a spider would a fly. Except spiders don’t tend to then mentally torture you, eat your soul, and parade around while wearing your skin like it’s in season—and if you’re very, very lucky, it appears to do it in that order.” His smile widened, no longer stretching merely from ear to ear, but seeming to extend in some wholly unpleasant way beyond the mere confines of his face. “See, I’ve been watching him for a while, now.”

*** *** ***

Frowning, Luna raised her head from her vanity. Luna’s royal bedroom looked like an explosion had hit a public library, all the books, papers, and unidentifiable mishmash scattered about. Her mane was out of order, her eyes red, and a dull ache in her head asked if she’d been drinking recently. She hadn’t, of course, but that didn’t do anything to fight the feeling of having had her brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped smartly around a gold brick. How the hay did Celestia do it all by herself for a thousand years? And when the hay would she return from her para-reality surfing trip?

It was bad enough returning from a millennium-long banishment on the moon; it was almost as bad being back. Almost. Now, everypony in Equestria ran around pointing out the obvious and making so-called “small talk”. To make it worse, it seemed like everypony was running around with digital watches now, and Luna failed to see why ponies thought they were such a pretty neat idea or had any real advantage over a normal watch.

If not for her sister, Luna was sure, Equestria would have been left at the mercy of Equestria’s various bureaucrats and nobleponies, who, Luna was starting to honestly believe, were all running thing exactly like bunch of schizophrenic maniacs. For example, one of the ponies in Celestia’s court of advisors was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher—or, as Luna saw it, an idiot. Thank goodness for everypony that she was there...

“Would it save you all time if I just went mad now?” she muttered to her reflection in the vanity mirror.

She felt a presence staring at her. Looking right, she saw the giant flying form of Remora hovering outside her bedroom window, leering creepily at her. Luna motioned for him to open the window and speak, but he did nothing. Holding back the tempting urge to swear like a sailor, she magically unlocked the window and swung the French-style thing open.

“Have. You. Seen. Discord?” Remora asked.

“What?” Luna asked as if she’d just been asked for a weasel. “You were supposed to be looking for him!”

“Thought. Maybe. You’d. Have. Better. Luck.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked as if she’d just been asked for a lightly grilled weasel in a bun with chips. If Remora hadn’t been a city-sized flying snake-fish-thing, and if she hadn’t been such a kind, well-tempered lady, Luna would have strangled him them and there.

“He. Keeps. Mov-ing. Can’t. Ever. Find. Him.” Remora looked around. “These. Have. Be-come. His. Fam-il-i-ar. Haunts.”

Luna put her foreknees on the vanity as she rubbed her temples. “Oh, stars preserve me!” she whispered.

Remora quaked, his head arching to the sky. “Feel. That?”

The Princess arched and brow and trotted over to the window. When she looked up at what Remora was gazing at, she tilted her head. It was a mandala in the clouds, a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point, each forming a general T-shape.

“How. Just. Like. Him,” Remora sighed. His eye twitched, and just like that, the air in Luna’s room began to boil away. At first Luna thought she was suddenly seeing all funny, but that thought soon met a terrible fate as she realized her vision was fine, it was just that she was staring at a tent camouflaged unnervingly like her room.

Just as well, the tent exploded into a swarm of pretty butterflies and escaped out Luna’s window. Where it had been was now just a long table with three ponies, a depressed-looking Lucian, and a Discord wearing a tophat.

“Took you long enough to find us,” Discord said, smiling as he munched on a cookie that waved a gingerbread hoof at Luna for him. “Been here for a few hours now. Well, no be exact, we’ve been in a localized time dilation thingy that, to us, made the hours seem like a few moments. But, I mean, look outside, Princess; it’s already morning. I’d thought the mandala in the clouds would have tipped you off sooner. And even though I was here, you had needed that dumb fish to even notice me. Tsk tsk tsk, Princess. Tsk tsk tsk.”

She stamped a hoof. “Are you crazy?!”

Discord smirked. “It’s a possibility I haven’t ruled out yet.”

J’en Ai Rien à Foutre

“And you’re saying some sort of answer is in here?” Celestia asked dubiously, looking down at a manilla folder. The bookshelves all around her seemed just as untouched as ever, yet this room’s wooden floor seemed almost new. “Because if it is, it’s in some sort of code.”

Metus shrugged in a j’en ai rien à foutre sort of way. “Have I to thee lied thus far?”

“No,” Celestia said. “And don’t call me ‘thou’; we are not on informal enough terms to warrant that tone.”

“What the lady wants she gets,” Metus muttered, jostling his head. “But there is a reason why you can’t read that book.” He looked at her in a way that, despite his technical lack of a face, felt pleading. “The Library of Babel and I are intrinsically interconnected, as are its books. Yet, you are not. It rejects you in a way; you’ve been here too long. If you want to read that book, someone who could read it must write you a translation, because Babel has taken a disliking to you.”

“And that someone is you, no doubt,” Celestia scoffed.

“Well, books can’t read books. So long as I am bound to this book into which I was trapped and from which you give the magical power to manifest me, I cannot read or work properly. Analogy: good children will remember bad strangers who offer them candy, and will only calm down for their parents, but so long as the parent is locked in the stranger’s basement, the child will never calm down. I am the parent, Babel and its books are the child, and you are the stranger.

“So long as I am bound to this book—locked in your basement—I cannot offer you a translation.” He paused. “Alternatively, you could take the book out with you, which would sort of mess with a loophole. Remove the book by taking it with you back to your home dimension, which would essentially cut with my connection to the book and instead bind me to the library. This would let Babel settle down, and allow me to work with the document while you are way.”

Celestia stared at Metus, just thinking.

Metus cocked his head to the side. “Tag und Nacht schrei ich mich heiser, weil ich der Krähenkönig bin. Glauben Sie mir, glauben Sie an mich.”

“Would the book you’re bound to be missed?” she finally asked. Metus shook his head. “And in this book is there way to translate the documents in this folder?” Metus hesitantly nodded. “Then I have all that I need.” Celestia grabbed the folder and Metus’ book, putting them in her saddle bags.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Don’t you want me to translate the documents?”

“Frankly, I don’t quite trust you,” she said earnestly.

“Guess I don’t blame you, but...”

“I’d rather work this on my own, meaning I’ll need both your book and the folder.”

Metus held his metaphorical tongue as he watched Celestia turn and leave. The mare followed the long string wrapped around her waist, making her way back to the entrance she’d made into the Library of Babel. In no time at all, the mare was gone, and Metus was all alone. But he felt pangs in his breast, the chains that bound him flailing for reattachment

He felt as if he were smiling as he stretched out a long, spider-like, two-elbowed arm, a huge raven landing upon his outstretched limb. “Well, Nevermore,” he said to the bird, “it appears that everything is on schedule. Wir sind auf Kurs, so let us make for another way to get out of this place. Discord needs to die sooner rather than later!”

***

“What are you even doing here, Discord?” Luna demanded, sounding not unlike a broken record. It was, after all, only the seventh time she’d asked in the last minute alone.

Discord sighed, tiring of giving nonsensical answers. “Well, if you must know, I was saving everypony’s butts from a soul-eating abomination the likes of which your feeble pony mind is powerless to truly comprehend. Basically, what I usually do on Tuesdays.” He threw a venomous set of eyes towards Remora. Remora, hovering outside the window, didn’t flinch as the eyeballs rolled off his nose and fell many stories to the ground. “Was doing fine till you got the stupid fish to snoop me out.”

“I. Am. Not. Stu—”

“Oh, shove a sock in it.” Discord, with a snap of his fingers, opened the bottom drawer of Luna’s dresser and levitated out a pair of blue-with-black-stripes socks.

“Uh—hey!” Luna protested, blushing a furious red as Discord threw her socks at Remora. “I-I-I have no idea how those, uh, got there, I swear!”

Discord cocked a brow at the Princess. “I could care less about the modern pony’s strange fascination with socks, thank you very much.”

Twilight almost fell out of her chair as she attempted to get up. Standing on shaky legs, she stumbled towards the Princess. “I... Princess... we got attacked. Twice. Once in Ponyville, once outside it—both times by different entities.” She held a hoof up to her forehead. Unfortunately, that was exactly one too few hooves, and her shaky legs decided to go on strike. Twilight Sparkle, notorious for her lack of union negotiating skills, promptly fell onto the floor.

“Wait, what?” Luna gasped, hoping her hardest that everypony would forget the socks that totally weren’t hers at all.

Lucian just sat at the table. He thought he should tell them that instead of being attacked, he’d been searching for “101 Poochyenas, directed by Michael Vick”, but he didn’t. They probably wouldn’t know what that was, he reasoned; and even if they did, they’d probably judge him for it. He gave Fluttershy a thoughtful look as the little mare just sort of sat there, clearly unsure of what to do.

“So there are more of those entities than had been thought,” Princess Luna said, “not entirely unexpected, but we’ve hoped otherwise. And I...” She blinked thrice. “Where is Discord?”

“He. Left,” Remora offered.

“I thought you were blocking out his magic!” Luna snapped, stamping a hoof. On all four hooves, Princess Luna wore beautiful, masterly crafted glass slippers. The pair she possessed had been crafted by the last (and only) great glassmith-cobbler in Equestria. He had poured his heart and soul into making the finest pair of slippers for Princess Luna. When he had finished, he had four masterpieces, and then he promptly died of old age. Of course, none of this mattered to Luna at the moment of stamping her hoof, since she stamped so hard her slipper cracked, ruining the final masterpiece of Equestria’s last (and only) great glassmith-cobbler. She just didn’t care anymore.

“Am,” Remora said dryly. Well, as dry as an utter montone-speaking flying serpent-dragon thing can. “He. Walked.”

“And you didn’t bother to, I don’t know, stop him or anything? Maybe tell me, hmm?!”

“Ven-geance. For. Last. Only. Great. Glass-smith. Cobb-le-er,” Remora said, and Luna growled in frustration.

The Princess rubbed her forehead. “Oh, stars above me,” she muttered. “I hate everything. Again.”

Rather than offer anything actually helpful, Lucian thought about magic. If Lucian were a powerful wizard from the future, he would prove that he was such a wizard by bringing back exactly what you’d expect.

Luna sat down and sighed. “So. What do we do now? I... I am hesitant to admit that I do not know.” She rubbed her eyes. “This whole nation has gone to the dogs since my sister went on that little trip of hers. I do not envy my sister’s responsibility. Stars above, how hasn’t she gone insane? I’ve been here for a few hours and already I’m pulling my mane out!” Luna was glad she had a wig in her closet. It was a gift she thought once was strange, but now she knew it was from some crazy pony who had clearly foretold of this day.

“If I may,” Azure said, and everypony looked at her. “I have a theory.” Everypony redoubled their attention. Lucian, not being a pony, tried hard not to pay any attention to anything, which was surprisingly easy. Azure produced a letter from the ether. She opened it, glanced through it, then looked up and spoke. “There were four attacks in total, and nothing zolidly linkz any of them. But for three of them, the unifying factor iz the alien, iz Luzian. Being that he izn’t native of thiz world, doez not it make zenze they are interrelated?”

The whole room suddenly switched their gaze from Azure to the human, as if sizing him up and speculating as to which parts to attack. Lucian shook his head at each of them. He didn’t know how this was going to end, but he knew that it wasn’t going to end with him sipping pony martinis on a tropical beach.

Luna thought for a moment. “You would suggest that, uh, Lucian is not only related but perhaps an integral cause of all this?”

Azure adjusted her glasses. “I am indeed zuggezting. Ztrongly.”

The air turned decidedly against Lucian, not in an openly hostile, “get on the floor and spread your legs” kind of way, more in a “Hey, did anypony notice there was a lion here the whole time? No sudden movements; your fear makes it amorous” sort of way. Lucian couldn’t help but notice it too, and his mind conjured up images of Princess Luna breaking into his mind like the entity had. With what little he’d seen of her power so far, even his cockiest of cocky attitudes right now didn’t think he’d win that fight. Maybe he could quickly run away and join some sort of circus, if not for the fact that clowns gave him nightmares, and the idea of pony clowns didn’t sit too well with him.

“Lucian,” Luna said in her most diplomatic, reasonable tone, “would you mind staying put for a short while? We can guarantee you safety.”

Lucian swallowed, his heart beating irregularly. That probably meant he was going to have some serious issues in thirty years, but right now, he had mind rape to worry about. “What’s the safe word?” he asked in the calmest voice a boy whose life was probably measured in minutes could.

“Safe word?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

“Like a password?” Twilight asked.

He put his hands on the table, crossing his legs. “Well, since we’re about to bust out the gimp suits, we need a safe word.”

Luna thought for a second. Nope, still didn’t make any sense. Then she noticed the sweat on his brow. For some reason, a strange phrase found itself muttered from her lips: “Well, whip my withers. You’re afraid, aren’t you?” She tried to ignore the weird looks she got.

“Apprehensive is a better word.”

“Dare I ask why?”

“Dare I say it’s obvious,” he said, crossing his arms. “Your offer seems about as legit as German tanks on the Polish border trying to convince the border guard they’re just here for a vacation and nothing else.”

“What?” she asked.

“You know, Nazis. Fun bunch. Really whacky. Save for their unrepentant genocide of millions. It’s one of the few things you can’t make jokes about. I mean, you can try, but it fails. ‘Hey, what’s the difference between a black Jew and a white one? The black ones go to the back of the oven.’ See? Now I’m literally Herr Emo Git-ler, and pretty much a villain because of just how unfunny that joke was.” Everypony just stared at him. “Well, just so we’re clear, the war made for great video games and stuff, because Nazis are always evil by default. Point is, I’m not staying with you, I’m... I’m going to do my own thing.”

“No,” Luna replied simply.

“And Grandpa always told me that no means yes.” Lucian didn’t think of the possible rape implications associated with that phrase. Nor that he actually learned it from watching a television show about a children’s card game. “Weee,” he said in the most mellowed, unenthusiastic voice humanly possible as he jumped out of his chair and landed on the hard, unforgiving ground. He had figured he could skitter away, angst for a day, then get back to doing what he was doing, but that idea scoffed at him, beat him with a rubber garden hose, tied him up, and shoved a fork in his eye. He groaned in frustration, not really finding it in him to care enough to stand up.

“Umm, what just happened?” Azure asked, tilting her head to the side.

“Years of skipping gym class have finally come back to haunt me,” Lucian groaned. “But I just really need to do this, to fight the evil, then go back home and play Doom.”

Luna sighed, looking at her hooves and dimly noticing her cracked glass slippers. She just figured she’d buy some new ones. And never once did it dawn on her that this was impossible: she just didn’t care! “I... I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that.”

“Dave,” Lucian added.

“What?”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t let you do that’, otherwise you’re just being dumb.” Lucian sneered in Luna’s general direction, hoping she could somehow feel the expression through the table which separated them. In fact, now that he thought about it, he realized that he wasn’t thinking about it at all, and that instead his eyes were going a bit blurry. Wait, no, not blurry, just that his eyelids were getting heavy, and his eyes simply defocusing.

Eh, what was the harm in just sort of dozing off? The room was oddly quiet. Probably a trap. Really, Lucian realized it was a terrible idea, but couldn’t find it within himself to care. To him, it was one big j’en ai rien à foutre.

***

Lucian’s eyes opened to the familiar sight of a grey concrete ceiling. Princess Luna always took him to the nicest places. Then he looked down. “Oh, great,” he groaned, “I’m naked. I better still have both my kidneys!”

He looked over to the side, where he knew the bars would be. Instead, there was just an empty hallway. “Oh. Well. This isn’t spooky at all.”

“Ah. You’re awake,” the voice from the ether said.

“Ah. This isn’t cliché,” he groaned. “Listen, Saw Guy, just tell me whom to kill and I’ll pretend to angst about it really hard before finding a way out, okay? Okay. Cool.”

“Um, no, that’s—”

“’Cause I’ve had it up to here with all your crap! This world sucks and I hate it and now I’m naked because all of my clothes are probably dirty and filthy and on fire in someone’s barbeque! I really stopped caring a while ago when I realized I was probably going to die here, eaten by a grue or something, but now this cliché? You just crossed the line! Either show yourself, or I’ll just sit here and do nothing until your evil traps kill me!”

“That works for me,” it chuckled, “for—”

“And how did I even get here?” he snapped. “All I recall was being too lazy to do anything and just falling asleep on the floor. And it must imply that you undressed me to take naked pictures of me so you could have a me-themed pin-up boy calendar, isn’t that right?!”

“You know what? Forget it,” the voice said, sounding more and more like a tired old man. “You’ve transcended a dimension, breaking an eternal law of the multiverse, and for that must you die.”

Lucian sighed, crossing his arms. “You should like my ex. Also, this is clearly a diabolus ex machina.” He shook his head and stared down the empty hallway. “I think I would have preferred waking up in an icy bathtub, missing a kidney.”