Glitch/NO DATA

Follows Directly from THIS ONE HERE

Everything Starts Somewhen

To say precisely where she was would be… problematic at best since, technically, it’s not so much a place and time as such, not technically. After all, how do you explain something that is in the middle of everything and also the middle of nowhere at the same time without feeling as if you were being a little convoluted and way too weird?

Let’s leave it as an elevator that was connecting doors to a bigger place, also called a mansion. It wasn’t that strange of an elevator really. It didn’t have any sci-fi features like completely clear walls looking into the multicolored and multifaceted place that is the place beyond the multiverse. It was a simple steel rectangle with fluorescent lights on the ceiling and some catchy jazz music coming from somewhere.

It was a classic design, and Rainbow Dash found it serviceable at best, but even she had to give credit to the man that had build the floating building, the idea of creating something of this magnitude, of this power, of this caliber, most builders would have died at the sheer concept of the emptiness across the multiverse, either that or their heads would have exploded seeing the void outside of the building.

The short woman walked away from the elevator, her heels clicking on the floor as she went now that she had confirmed the Architect's survival after the ordeal of fighting… well, she wasn’t quite sure yet what the being was, beyond the information they had been able to gather.

One Anne Marie LeBeau, codenamed Rogue, a woman capable of absorbing the energy of other living beings by a simple touch, gaining memories and powers of those she touched depending on how long she was in contact with them.

So why was one of the X-Men suddenly transformed into a being from Avernus talking about a Father and how he was behind her current look, just having that information was enough to give her migraines; this was just what they needed, more trouble across the dimensions all around them.

She left the Architect to his business, he had plenty to discuss with the man she had grown to know the last ten years, when he had a hand on rescuing from the end of the world, at least it looked like that when she saw the earth break apart and the massive mushroom shaped cloud rise up into the sky. In a second everything was normal, she was walking outside, talking with her sister about the newest show on the television, how annoying her sister’s job was at the office, when suddenly, alarms began to sound everywhere on the street.

The next second it was complete chaos, with people running everywhere, cars being left behind, it was such the panic that Rainbow was lost, she had been separated from her sister and then… the flash, the rumbling, the end of everything like many have said it would happen, how tensions kept growing, how Canterlot and the Crystal Kingdom were not playing chess against each other, but they were playing dice, and in that precise moment, everyone in the world rolled snake eyes… and the world was no more.

Or at least, that would have been what happened if it weren’t for the simple fact that as the rumbling kept on growing and the noise and sound shook windows and threw people around, everything stopped, as if it was a vinyl record and someone had raised the needle off it, abruptly ending everything. Well, that’s the allegory she had back then, now that she had access to much more powerful technology she would say that it was as if someone had pressed the pause button.

So there she was, one second a young college student suddenly witnessing the end of the world, the next she met the most extraordinary man, pausing the world due to… how he put it? Bizarre amounts of tampering and fate breaking down. It was an emergency situation apparently, something that wasn't supposed to happen, apparently the universe had a contingency against something like that happening, but that was not present on her world.

It was at this moment that the world opened up, no, the whole existence opened up for her, it became something even grander, because apparently, there were other universes out there, hers was not the only Canterlot, hers was not the only iteration, there were dozens, nay, hundreds or thousands, or tens of thousands, worlds so completely different to hers that the mere thought of some of the things happening in them would be too ludicrous to TV directors back home.

So there she was, with her world paused before complete annihilation, with Rainbow apparently the only one unaffected by whatever the man in a suit did, she was an anomaly, or at least something extremely rare amongst the population in her world; nevertheless, the man, now introduced as The Observer, began to work on something alongside some people wearing very stylish suits, they wouldn’t look out of place on her own world.

Whatever they did, the world went back in reverse, it was mind bending to see the explosion move backwards, until the missile was intact and up it went, back from where it came from. Apparently they ha some people taking care of whoever had launched the missiles, later on she would meet the enigmatic Queen of White and Queen of Red, telling her that a cult obsessed about magic and getting information from the other side of a mirror on her old high school had the bright idea of creating a nuclear apocalypse to gain magical powers somehow, who would have known that solving cases like that would become her life.

With the crisis averted and her family saved from an impending doom, she then had a choice, either stay home, with forever knowing what else was out there, or accept the job the man was offering, since after all, she was immune to dimension wide effects, that made her very unique. Suffice to say, getting a better salary and better work conditions were always attractive.

Since that day, her job was to work on logistics, kind of like the main head of information and planning, working with the two men in charge of the station, giving and compiling information from… whatever the Queens did on a daily basis, only god knows what kind of things those women were supposed to be doing or what their mission was.

Sometimes when she was bored, she took time to plan research of the strange objects and artifacts that kept appearing in the House, like the object that to check universes like hers, something so powerful that could stop time and existence itself on the world, an artifact so ancient, so bizarre that not even two ageless beings had a notion of what it was or who made it. She had made her own investigation, but not even the Architect had a clue of what or how the strange red and white monolith had been created. The man who had been commissioned to create their headquarters had simply begun to create the reality defying place, but as it grew bigger and bigger things suddenly started… appearing, whole rooms with strange machinery, like doors working like scrying mirrors, the monolith, a cubic machine that was processing… something. There were too many things and as long as they were not dangerous it was better to leave them alone.

So, her world had been saved from the brink of destruction, she found a job, and as they kept working, more and more people like her kept being directed to the house; after exploring and investigating the different alternate worlds all around them, it was clear that the six women, all coming from extremely different worlds, were still tied by the strong knots of destiny, and speaking of one of them.

Entering one of the many rooms inside the House, Rainbow Dash quickly found the woman she was looking for, who was concentrated on some long string of letters and numbers flying through the CRT monitor. Why the blonde woman liked to use those old VT220 terminals instead of some other way more advanced system was beyond her, they could easily get machines that were so futuristic that could leave many cyberpunk universes out there in the dust.

Rainbow Dash simply sighed, knowing well that the blonde woman in front of her was like that, deciding to use that antiquated machinery, powered by reality bending powers and energy, was a dichotomy, probably one of the main reasons why she used them, eggheads and their ideas. Still, the woman was their esteemed head of research and development.

“Is there something that you need?” There was a slight hint of the usual Southern twang that Rainbow was now more than familiar with different versions of Applejack, but she was sure that if any AJ out there saw their counterpart with a pen behind her ear and working on a calculation lighting fast with the archaic keyboard and computer, well, she would gladly pay to see their reaction, it would be so worthy.

“Just here to see if you had any info about the situation with that Rogue, it is obvious that she is working with the Umbrum energy trail of a couple of years ago,” for all answer, Jacqueline Apple, also known as Goldie by her family, swiftly gave her a folder before going back to her calculations, the unkempt hair on a loose ponytail told Rainbow how long the woman had been at work.

“Anything else?”

“Just to remind you that Twi has her party in two days,” well, day was pretty loose when you were outside universes, but they still followed the 24 hours cycle, and even the gregorian calendar, Rainbow was amazed that all their six universes followed it too; for answer Jacqueline simply snorted.

“Are you nuts? Girl is a sweetheart, besides, it has been quite a while since I’ve been part of a proper shindig, it could be a good change of environment,” well, seems that you could take the girl from the farm, but not the farm from the girl, that was something all AJs had in common, but before they could continue their talk, they all felt it, it was as if existence was wrong, something had happened.

Soon, several terminals around Jacqueline’s lab sprang to life, printing information and compiling data, the blonde woman stood up and began working on seeing exactly what was going on, her furrowed eyebrow and her eyes quickly moving from line to line taking on every piece of information that the machines spewed out.

“Well? Do you have any idea of what that was? We have enough shields in this place that not even a supernova could be felt.”

“This… is impossible, well, not impossible, but this is weird, there was a glitched world!” Well, that was news, usually they had more information about the process of glitching in the different dimensions. Usually a glitch was only present when something went really out of control, heck, not even her own world glitched, not even by strange cultists trying to summon an old one to gain magical powers, so the fact that it was of this magnitude and speed, that must have been an enormous case of glitching.

“Guess we are going to contact one of the Queens then,” while not part of their group, the extremely powerful women known only as Queens were usually responsible of dealing with fully glitched worlds, being able to reset the dimension after dealing with the main root of the problem, but that was only on the extreme cases. Nobody knew how exactly a Queen was born, it was just known that they were usually residents of a world in the process of glitching, and after dying they were reborn as their new form, still, they were useful and had the place on the multiverse, but before she could go and make the call, Jacqueline grabbed her hand.

“There’s something else, there is a survivor from the glitch, the Sunset Shimmer of that dimension,” the words made Rainbow Dash blink twice at what she had heard, that was… basically impossible, a survivor of a glitch? And specifically Sunset Shimmer?!

“I know you don’t kid around or make jokes, but are you absolutely serious about that?”

“Yes, there is no mistake in the information, a Sunset Shimmer survived the glitch! She is trapped inside a glitching world!” Dear lord in whatever heaven it was residing, this was a problem, they had to do something, so she ran out in search of the others in the House, they had someone to rescue.

And with that

The Clock

Ticks

Three Times