That Crazy Unpredictable Music

by Alex Warlorn

Rating: everyone
Tags: Derpy Hooves, Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Starlight Glimmer, Science Fiction, Horror
Length: 2284

Inspired directly by The Colour Out of Space by HP Lovecraft, a meteor lands in Ponyville, except none can agree what it looks like, and soon that isn't all that can't agree on.

Gather around little pony, there is a spine tingling tale inspired directly by The Colour Out of Space by HP Lovecraft, a meteor lands in Ponyville, except none can agree what it looks like, and soon that isn't all that can't agree on. Do you have the guts to read this dive into the unknown and the incomprehensible? Anything can be taken too far, that includes uniqueness!

Cover art by V-K-D https://v-d-k.deviantart.com/art/Derpys-final-showdown-296651442

Published 2018-03-05 15:10:12 UTC
Last updated 2018-03-05 15:10:12 UTC

And Yet It Moved

"Nopony knows where the meteorite came from. After crashing outside of town, scientists came to examine it. But their magic couldn't identify what the meteorite was made out of! Some even suggested that it had come from outside our universe.

"It was not a symmetrical shape, it was uneven, not round, not oval, looking like the torso of a minotaur with its arms stretched out that had melted, other said it was shaped like a snake that had eaten a moose whole, still other said it was like two pony skulls glued together at the back with the teeth removed. None could agree.

"Even the color was hotly debated, some said it was mother of pearl, other said it was obvious rainbow, others said it was obviously dusk colors. None agreed.

"They even argued on it being the size of a bear, others insisting it was the size of a bush.

"What terrified the scientists more than anything, was how their own measurements with their own equipment conflicted with each other!

"Professor Snooty of Canterlot University theorized, 'It is possible, just as a pyramid can appear as a square or a triangle from different angles, it's possible this stone from the stars is in fact not completely within our reality, and thus different ponies see different parts of it.'

"For the scientists: breaking off a piece proved effectively impossible, as a piece would dissolve as soon as it broke off, only for the meteorite itself to regrow the missing piece. It was impossible to quantify yet constant and immutable.

"Ponies came from all around town to examine it, to take pictures of themselves next to it. Scientists were shocked at how fast it cooled! And the impact crater was much smaller than it should have been. The scientists said the only logical explanation was that the meteorite was hollow, but a knocking on the misshapen stone itself suggested nothing of the kind. Or did it?

"Magical scans of the inside showed an irregular pattern within, maybe perhaps, a slew of random, conflicting patterns. The scientist who did the scan actually shrieked at the sight of it! It was a pattern truly devoid of harmony, not even the 'fairness of randomness' as some would dare put it. All conflicting, always clashing, never meshing!

"'The meteorite should be moved, taken to Canterlot where it can be studied more properly,' Professor Snooty demanded.

"The ponies of Ponyville would have none of it!

"'This meteorite landed in our town, and in our town it will stay!'

"Many of the scientists in Canterlot who had seen the pattern of the inside actively agreed with Mayor Mare and the rest. Not because they felt this small town should have this discovery all to themselves, but because they were terrified of letting this thing anywhere closer to where they lived!

"Some ponies began to make regular trips to the 'chaos stone' as some nicknamed it, others called it the 'anarchy gem', others thought the 'dissimilar rock' was a proper name. On the other hoof, stone visited it only once. Other made random visits. Others kept going door to door asking others how they saw the rock. The only thing they had in common is that none were the same in how they viewed the rock or when they came to visit it.

"The meteorite became just another staple of Ponyville. And the rest of Equestria forgot about the meteorite, or rather, wanted to forget about it as soon as possible, Professor Snooty's associates making up any excuse to not visit Ponyville or to examine the thing further!

Shipments out of Ponyville became irregular, requests for imports became similarly nonuniform! Business contracts broke down as import and export became too unpredictable to be trustworthy. Ponies like the Cakes only defended,

"We're doing what's rational to us."

Miscommunications began to rise... ponies would say one thing, and the other pony would hear something completely different, or only nonsense. Vicious and brutal debates would start over the meaning of the most trivial word, and interpretations of the law became as diverse as the ponies.

"'The shop said it was 'closed' so I just teleported in! They didn't say they weren't out of business!'"

"'The signs said for me to vote, they didn't say how many times!'"

"'You said five bits for that apple! You didn't say it had to be paid now!'"

"It was soon like ponies were speaking foreign languages to each other, each other as unique as the next! And... one day... Spike came up to Rarity's house with a bundle of flowers... and came in through her window since the door was closed...

"And Rarity saw the flowers were all random types rather than all roses or the like with no pattern to them she could see. She 'explained' this to Spike, but he thought she meant that the flowers were from across the country. And as Spike told Rarity his feelings... she thought he meant that she was fuzzy and warm and spent her time looking in the mirror.

"Rainbow Dash was suspended from the Wonderbolts as she wouldn't understand what she was being told.

"Linguists were sent by the princesses to help... and they came out of the town the next day sweeting and wide eyed, scared. One saying, 'It's... it's not the same... none of it is the same... '

"Ponyville ponies soon stopped leaving the town all together! The only exception was Derpy Hooves... who other ponies had often had trouble understand anyway. She continued to deliver the mail the best she could... but the addresses made less and less sense to her... and when she asked for explanations, the answers ponies gave made even less sense.

"Business broke down in Ponyville, first custom orders ended as ponies screamed at how what they got wasn't what they described in the least! Let alone the right color or size! Then normal orders broke down, as the menu became gobbledygook to everyone but the pony who wrote it.

"Houses with more than one pony began to resemble Octavia and Vinyl's, split down the middle, or separated into different sections, each with their own style and design. Ponies spent most of their time in their own houses, gathering their own food and making their own things, since they couldn't count on those around them.

"While debates among the ponies about the meteorite remained for the precious times they interacted, more often than not, the ponies agreed the thing seemed to be shrinking.

"Derpy's final mail delivery was to the edge of Equestria, she was gone for days, but it was a delivery, and a delivery she made. It was a box of freshly baked cookies that could barely be called cookies, green with conflicting random shapes and red chocolate chips that seemed to spread through the cookies like veins. Having delivered them to the obscure weather station on the edge of Equestria's border, Derpy returned home.

"Or what had been home. What Derpy found when she returned to Ponyville, or rather what had been Ponyville, was no longer ponies.

"She saw a mass of streaks of rainbow lights that floated in the sky like a frozen picture, giving off a disharmonous singing whine like violins, but moved with intent.

"Princess Twilight's castle now had the face of a familiar nerdy Alicorn upon it, that moved, slowly, precisely, so slowly Derpy could barely see it, but move it did, the eyes looking everywhere, hooves growing out of the side, and hooves within hooves growing, reaching, observing. A digital clicking happening too slow for Derpy to figure out even if she knew how to decode it.

"Skulking about town was a creature made of green flames in the shape of a reptile with a long neck. But its tail, arms, and legs, all ending in identical long necks, with identical heads, the six headed creatures bleaching masses of itself creating masses of smoke in shapes Derpy was sure weren't supposed to exist.

"Derpy would see... PIECES of Pinkie Pie in reflective surfaces, always out of the corner of her eyes, a hoof, an eye, a nose, a mouth, always mute, no sound came, but she'd get a headache when looking the way she'd seen what she'd seen, seeing flashing black and white pictures in her brain that made no sense to her.

"She'd see several Starlights, with no mane, no cutie mark, no face, all walking in lock-step each other other. Or simply standing still. How they lived, how they breathed, how they knew what the others were doing, it was all beyond Derpy. And whenever she blink, they'd be faceless markless Sunbursts instead, or another random pony, like Trixie or Maud, or sometimes a mix of each other, Or Derpy herself! They didn't interact anymore than an arm or a leg would.

"What floated above what used to be Trixie's wagon (now a giant teacup), was an ever changing kaleidoscope of fractured colors, almost hypnotic to look at, every changing, every twisting, drawing attention it to even from far away, Derpy wasn't sure it was an ever mutating mass of living glass, or fractured light bending back on itself.

"Derpy never found what used to be Maud, or she didn't think she did, but she often felt a slight rumbling in the ground, through she never found a single tunnel or rise in the soil.

"The branches of Sweet Apple Acres... Derpy didn't dare get close, the way they swayed, reach out, snatching and pulling in everywhere that got close, digging into the ground, growing upwards higher and higher but never outward. Derpy indeed dared not approach.

"Fluttershy ... the animals Derpy found, acting like ponies, dressing up... TALKING... but in a mishmash of different languages... all under the shadow of a giant tree with blossoms upon it that kept changing ... along with its branches leaves and roots. The animals moved about in their own world, miming out any number of situations with objects that weren't there (or didn't think where there). The animals never wandering far from the shadow of the tree, which, naturally, was larger on the inside than the outside.

"All she found of Discord was a letter with his paw print near the tree, written with symbols Derpy had never seen, covered in tear stains.

"Rarity... Derpy couldn't even REMEMBER what she saw as soon as she looked away... all she could remember... was the dancing, the endless dance... the dance itself a language, the dance itself trying to say something... but Derpy couldn't know what. And Derpy couldn't dance back in the same 'language:' She might not had enough limbs, or maybe too many, or maybe they lacked the dimensions, or had too many.

"And it slowly dawned on Derpy, that just as she couldn't communicate with them, they couldn't communicate with each other. Derpy wondered if they could even comprehend each other's existence! Some bumped into each other like they were invisible!

"And inside Derpy's own home... she found... it... what might have been once her daughter Dinky... or maybe not. Like a hole in existence, it sometimes twisted in the rough shape of a filly unicorn, but other times it shifted into a spider, or a bug in a jar. It moved along walls and floors, it moved past Derpy like she wasn't even there.

"Derpy tried to flee, to get help, to escape... but she couldn't... she could never bring herself too. She knew, it was the meteorite, no, not anymore, it was gone. No, not gone... its influence remained, but it had become something intangible, something not solid, no body, no shape, no form, no central point of existence, to even call it a presence was wrong now. It had served its purpose, if it ever had a purpose. There was no design or plan, no intent or scheme... it simply was.

"Whenever Derpy saw one of the things that had been her fellow ponies wander from where they nested, she saw the world twist and warp to their 'style' their 'nature', until another wandered by and rewrote it. Except for Derpy herself.

"Derpy waited for herself to change... and wait... and wait... and wait... but she never did... days, weeks, months... it finally occurred to her why. She was as alien and incompressible to what was once her friends and family, as they were to her now. She too, was an unknown horror among unknown horrors. Madness did not take her, would not take her, for in a world gone mad... isn't it the only sane pony who is considered mad?"

Starlight Glimmer finished, sitting at the campfire. Her friends looking at her with wide eyes and shaking. Fluttershy had fainted. Rarity hugging herself rocking back and forther. Twilight stared off into nothing, flashing back to the Day of Discord. Pinkie Pie was perfectly calm, frighteningly so.

With a friendly smile Starlight Glimmer said, "I had to modify it a little to keep the same impact it had when I told it at Our Town every year."

"You had Nightmare Night in Our Town?" rainbow Dash asked.

"Yes, everypony had the same costume and gave out the same candy so nopony would be jealous or look down on others for having better costumes or candy or having a bigger haul and would instead just enjoy the holiday. Uh, what happened to the CMC?"

"Is it the scary story over?" Sweetie Belle asked as they hide under a blanket at the tree house.

"Maybe we should keep hidin' a bit more," Apple Bloom said.

"I'm not hiding, I'm keeping you girls company," Scootaloo insisted.