THE MAGIC ORRERY

An MLP Fanfic

Friendship is a strange phenomenon. Growing up I always believed that friends were people who looked out for each other, who supported each other in times of hardship, and generally enjoyed each other's company. In my life, however, friendship has only ever had the opposite effect.

I didn't have any friends growing up- I made do with toys and stuffed animals, and I spent a lot of time daydreaming about magic adventures and other worlds. I guess part of me just wanted to feel like I had a purpose, a role to play in the massive, endless narrative of life. But in order to do that I needed to be driven towards a goal, I had to be confident in my actions, and most important of all, I had to be fearless in social situations. And I've never been capable of any of that.

I've always been shy, scared of interacting with others and unwilling to force my voice above the rest of the crowd. When I was younger, I always told myself it was because I was being considerate, but as I grew older that reasoning only became harder to believe. I've never known what I wanted to do with my life, and I've never trusted myself to make the right decisions when it really counted. I can only assume that my own relentless refusal to commit is what led to me breaking into an antiques store in the dead of night with three of the most obnoxious people I've ever met.

I grimace as I hear a heavy body ram into the wooden door behind me. Even after being warned beforehand it scared the bejeezus out of me- you'd think our plan to secretly infiltrate private property would involved a more clandestine method of getting inside. I say our plan, but I wasn't exactly involved. The others told me they'd devised a plan to break into the antique store near campus just this morning- they said they had it all figured out, and only needed me to come along as emergency back-up. I had every reason to believe that my role as "emergency back-up" primarily involved being used as a distraction for the police in case they had to ditch the scene of the crime, but they'd put me in worse situations before and I had always managed to escape unscathed. I was pretty sure I'd be ok, and I had just as much of a reason to turn them down as I did to accept.

But for the moment, as I'm crouching against a cold stone wall and leaning around the corner, frantically searching for any unwelcome activity in the vast darkness of the nearby parking lot, I have to wonder for a moment why I bother with any of these people. I cringe again as Kyle brings the full weight of his body against the door again, the force of the impact causing a flimsy nearby streetlight to quiver against the starless sky. I'm not a vindictive person and I've never held any ill will towards any of my friends, but I had every reason to. My party of four was infamous on my small college campus for being rude, contemptuous pricks- I was an outlier, but by affiliating with them their reputation had bled onto me as well, a fate I feel I've earned for myself. Kyle is the classic douche- constantly loud and annoying, always making jokes at the expense of others, visibly apathetic towards his appearance. Everything is funny to him, especially if it isn't funny to anyone else. His short brown hair is spiked up in the front- he's wearing khaki shorts and a blue t-shirt bearing the name of some sports team I can't be bothered to recognize.

"Good idea Kyle, if we can lure the police here they can break this door down for us," Jackie mutters under her breath. She's the least amiable person on campus, maybe even in the city, and she's definitely the most aggravating person I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Attempting to converse with her usually only leads to a steady stream of insults and pointed irritation- something she does of her own volition anyway if you try to simply leave her alone. She's leaning against the wall of the store with her arms crossed, staring out into the darkness behind the building, and clad in her iconic dusty black leather jacket.

One final collision with the door and it bursts open beneath Kyle's weight, cracking against an adjacent interior wall. "Alright, everybody get inside. The model should be in the basement," my third friend, Henry, quietly instructs from behind me. I turn around to see them all entering the store, and I follow behind them, closing the door behind me as I enter. Henry's wearing a black hoodie and black sweatpants like this is some sort of bank heist. It's a strange departure form his usual neutral sweaters and dress shirts.

Henry likes to think of himself as the leader of the group. He was valedictorian in high school and had a long history of good grades before that. Once he got to college his pride and sense of invincibility apparently got the best of him, and he descended into petty debauchery for fun, sometimes to get things that he wanted. The reason for tonight's escapade is even dumber than usual: the store had recently acquired a small model of a famous building from an anonymous source, and some historian had discovered that it was actually an original concept model built by the architect, making it worth millions of dollars. As a result, reporters had flooded the area, and our community college was doing its best to leech off of the attention. Henry tried to explain to me how the stealing of the model was supposed to bring him some sort of financial leverage, but frankly I couldn't care less, and zoned out for most of his explanation.

We slowly feel our way in the dark through row upon row of fold-out tables covered in the unidentifiable silhouettes of miscellany, the light of the moon piercing through the cracks in the old blinds and partially illuminating our path in cold light. Henry leads us all to the stairs behind the cash register desk, where we pass through another door at the bottom and into the basement storage area. This part of the store is normally inaccessible to customers, so we don't have any idea what to expect once we get inside. As Henry peers through the doorway he freezes, then visibly slumps in annoyance. "Oh for fucks... of course." He grimaces as he continues inside, Kyle and Jackie following suit. It isn't until I see the room for myself that I understand what got Henry so miffed.

The clutter of the above room is nothing in comparison to this mess. Object upon object upon object is piled high up to the ceiling against all four of the room's walls, leaving a circular cleared space in the center of the room. At least I assume they're piled against the walls- I can't actually see the walls behind all this mess. Kyle laughs and kicks a pile of old books across the floor towards Henry. "Nice plan, dipshit. How are we supposed to find a tiny model in all this?"

Henry scowls and glares at Kyle like an angry pet owner glares at a disobedient dog. "We'll find it when you pull your hands out of your ass and start looking for it. Jackie, Nathan, you too. We already went to the trouble of breaking in so get to work."

I roll my eyes and move to the opposite side of the room from the door. Normally we weren't this openly harsh towards each other, but seeing as this particular stunt could get us into trouble with the cops, tensions were running much higher than usual. Playing to my nature, I decide not to add my own fuel to the fire- I know I'll only burn up myself if I do. And to tell the truth, I don't want to fight any of them. They might be unusually abrasive people, but I always felt like they could be real, genuine friends if they gave themselves the chance, and on rare occasion I could see a potential break at friendship shine through. It never really lasted though, and at least for tonight, I'd prefer to leave them be rather than try anything that might have serious consequences.

To my left, Kyle appears to be picking items up one by one and sliding them across the floor behind him whenever they aren't a certain highly valuable scale model of a building. On my right, Jackie is sitting on the pile and toying with what looks to be a cross between a wine opener and a sextant. From the look on her face, she doesn't have any better idea of what it's supposed to be than I do.

"What even is that thing...?" I mumble to myself more than to her.

She doesn't even look up when she calmly responds, "How the hell would I know. Aren't you supposed to be looking for a house?" She looks in Kyle's direction with a hint of extra irritability in her voice, "Kyle, stop throwing your shit in my direction. It's just gonna end up back in the pile." Kyle responds by shoving his next discarded item in my direction instead. I chuckle and turn back around to my end of the pile.

As I take my first close look at its contents, I realize that the majority of the items were things I didn't even remotely recognize. Crystals suspended in bronze cages, little glass vials full of shimmering dust, wooden containers of all shapes and sizes with various foreign symbols carved into them. It was like sifting through a props bin at a fantasy ren faire. One particular item stands out to me though- it's seated on top of a tall, thin wooden table, butted up against the wall, the only item which hadn't been tossed into the pile with everything else.

It's like a small bronze orrery, about the size of a dinner plate. Its base looks like a flat bronze plate with a series of intertwining rings carved into its surface, and jutting up from the surface of the disc are 2 rods, each connected to a solar body at the end. At the end of one rod is a classical depiction of the sun, wavy triangular flames jutting out from it in all directions. At the end of the other rod is a full moon. If those are the only two bodies present, then this probably isn't a model of a solar system, unless the other planets all broke off at some point. I doubt that's the case, not only because the sun and moon are the same size, but because they're big enough to take up most of the room above the disc. Something about the contraption seems off... it's got a strange sheen to it that I can't seem to place.

"Wait a minute... what?" I turn around to see Henry holding a black binder full of spreadsheets in one hand. He's staring at the contents of one page, and the longer he stares the angrier he seems to get. "Kyle, this ledger says that the model was sold to somebody at 10:00 PM earlier tonight. That was 5 hours ago! We broke in to steal the fucking thing and it's not even here!!"

It only takes a moment for Kyle to crank up his own rage level to match Henry's own. "How is that my fault? You told me to keep my eye on the model all day and I did! By 10:00 PM the store had already closed!"

Henry clenches his fists and bites his lower lip. It's clear to me that regardless of how angry he sounds right now, it pales in comparison to the sheer amount of frustrated rage that he's managing to hold back. "It was your job to make sure it was still here! Because of you we just broke into a fucking antique store and dug through garbage for nothing!!"

"My job?" Kyle's voice is beginning to creep towards shouting volume. "Jackie was there too, she just as easily could've done something about it!"

Jackie throws herself up from the pile and points an accusing finger at Kyle. "Don't even try to pin this one on me, Kyle, you dumbass. It was obviously your job to make sure nobody bought that thing." She whips her head towards Henry with murder in her eyes, "But it was Henry's stupid plan that fell apart! Hell, it was his stupid idea in the first place! The only reason we're in this shithole in the middle of the night is so your selfish ass could get some worthless blackmail material!!"

Henry's control over his anger is starting to slip. "And my plan would've worked out fine if I wasn't forced to work with a couple of idiots like you two!"

I butt in before I lose the opportunity forever. "Hey, guys, I know that we're all under a lot of stress right now, but don't you think that rather than argue we should probably lea- WEE-OOH!"

My sentence is cut off by the short burst of a siren outside, followed by a calm voice through a megaphone: "Alright, step outside the building with your hands up."

Before I can even react, Kyle pushes past me and grabs the tall table holding the brass orrery. He rips it away from the wall and I manage to catch the device before it hits the ground, as he plants the table between the doorknob and the floor. I look back down at the device in my hands and I realize what about it looked so off to me: the image of my own hands aren't being reflected off the surface of the brass like they normally would. Instead, the brass is reflecting various shades of green, blue, and white. It's doesn't appear to be reacting to the actual light in the room at all. What on Earth am I looking at?

"Kyle, what the hell are you doing??" My attention is brought back to the more immediately pressing issue at hand by Jackie's voice as she passes by me to grab Kyle's shoulder. "Why would we barricade ourselves in here? There aren't any other exits!!"

"What else are we supposed to do?" Kyle stammers. I can't help but feel a little bad for him once I hear the fear in his voice, but that feeling fades when his tones transitions to yet more anger rather than panic. "I'm not getting arrested over a fucking model house! And if we go back up there we'll be in handcuffs immediately! Why do I ever listen to any of you, you're more trouble than you're worth!" As he says this, I feel the device in my hands begin to stir. I look down to see that the marks on the surface of the disc aren't just carvings- they're individual rings. They slowly begin to rise out of the base and around the two heavenly bodies.

"I'm more trouble than I'm worth??" Henry spits, "I'm not the frat house meat head or the fake punk lowlife! Why can't you two act a little less like grunts for once?"

Jackie is starting to get far angrier than I've ever seen her before. "Why can't you act a little less like a rich kid genius for a change? Why can't you just be fucking normal like the rest of us? You always need to act like you've got somewhere to be, yet you're going to school at a small town community college! Wake up!"

"Don't make me repeat myself. Step outside, with your hands up, now." I can sense the officer outside losing his patience, but it's nothing compared to what's going down in here. As the arguing escalates I feel the largest remaining disc in my hand start to get warm. The rings of the device are spinning around the sun and moon in various directions, and picking up speed, as the two bodies begin spiraling towards the center. I might just be seeing things, but... I think this thing is starting to glow.

"I'm the asshole, Jackie? You're the one who doesn't seem to understand how to stop being a massive dick all the time!"

"Oh, shut the fuck up, Kyle, nobody wants to hear what the meathead jock has to say. Why don't you gain a personality trait other than 'likes football'?"

Ok, yeah, this thing is definitely glowing. And spinning, very fast.

"What does any of this matter if neither of you know how to act like normal fucking human- NATHAN WILL YOU TURN OFF THAT FUCKING FLASH-" Henry and the rest of the room go quiet as everyone turns to look at me. Or at least, it would go quiet, if not for the increasingly loud whirring of whatever the hell I'm holding in my hands right now. "I... Nathan what is that?"

At this point I'm only half paying attention to everything else going on in the room. The machine in my hands has started to spin so fast that the rings are becoming blurs around the spheres in the center. The spheres in question, which at first were very slowly spiraling around each other towards the center, were quickly beginning to pick up speed. And the whole thing is glowing so brightly it's getting hard to look at it anymore. "Nathan... Nathan, Jesus Christ, dude, drop that thing. Drop it!"

"Alright, that's it, I'm coming inside!" I think I hear the distant noise of someone barging through a door, but I only barely notice. My hands let go of the large outside ring, and as it's released it immediately accelerates to match the other rings. It doesn’t appear to be very fond of physics, seeing as it also refuses to fall even an inch from where I let go of it, instead remaining frozen in space above the floor. It continues to glow brighter until all that remains visible are the sun, the moon, a blinding light, and the shadows of my friends on the pile of junk behind them. As the two bodies reach the center of their orbit, they do something that practically breaks my mind: like magnets snapping into each other, the two brass spheres pass through each other and merge, and in their place leave a tiny solar eclipse- a peach-sized blind spot in a sea of white. In the blink of an eye, a chromatic corona bursts forth from the void sphere, flooding everything in the room with rainbow light and forcing it out of existence. I can only barely hear the beginnings of screams from my friends, and the sound of footsteps running down stairs, as the very world around me is torn asunder.

It's as if I'm flying at breakneck speeds in all directions at once. I can still feel my body, my muscle, bone, and flesh, but it twists and turns against the onslaught of color in exaggerated, meaningless ways that I cannot see. In the distance, however, I can see a figure- an elongated, horizontal shade, almost like a ghost or a glare off a window. I can't parse its exact shape or size, but parts of it appear to be flowing outward from its center mass like hair in the wind, and an enormous spike protrudes from what I think might be a head. As I stare at the only thing left remaining in my personal world, I almost feel like I can sense it staring back. And then, as if to confirm my feelings, the shade opens its two blinding white eyes, bathing my consciousness in light and completely tearing it apart.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading! This is essentially the prologue chapter, but as it's my first story I'm going to publish it anyway just to make sure I don't accidentally lose all the progress. More will be coming soon, I assure you!