Akemi Homura Arrives in Equesteria
At first, there was darkness.
And then there was light. To be precise, sunlight.
The warmth of an evening sun gradually shines on the figure of an unconscious girl, as her surrounding solidifies from an ethereal state into reality.
"..."
There is a hum resonating softly from a device on her left hand, a soft purple glow following it. A few seconds afterward, a pair of shining purple eyes start to open up.
"..."
The girl is currently lying down in a bed, her bedsheet tucked in perfectly. The mattress feels different, and everything about it feels off. The purple glow of her iris gradually fades away, leaving a pair of matte purple eyes in place.
"...where am I?"
The first thing she does upon waking up, the same thing she does every time, is to check for her necklace's integrity. A passing visual check reveals nothing of concern, and the charge level is still perfectly full. Though, as she activates her necklace into some sort of clockwork device, something else caught her interest.
Everything directly above her had somehow changed. Not even the air feels the same anymore. The usual black splotches on a yellowed ceiling is replaced with a photo-perfect plaster ceiling with a gray finish. Definitely different from the usual. The light fixtures doesn't even look as sanitized as it's supposed to be.
"I don't recognize this place."
The intonation of her inner voice was flat and scientific. This place looks nothing like the place she was supposed to be. Did she screw up? That is a probability, but it doesn't look like a good explanation to rely on.
"Perfect timing, you're awake~!"
A soft voice disrupts her train of thought.
Another abnormality. She was always alone at the very beginning of every single iteration in the past. Her hospital room was almost always empty apart from herself, save for the occasional visit from an old nurse. But the owner of this voice sounds like she's in the 30s.
Yes. Something is definitely wrong here.
First order of business: Find out everything about this timeline.
"Where am I?"
"The Ponyville Hospital, of course!"
[Homura's In-Brain Fact Checker, online.]
[Checking facts, updating with new document and rule.....]
[MODE: INPUT]
[Data interpretation commencing......]
[1. This voice sounds eerily cheerful.]
[2. What kind of a name is Ponyville Hospital? Is it a hospital for kids?]
"I'm not dreaming, am I?"
Akemi Homura pinches her own arm just to make sure.
"Ow."
She immediately gets up from her bed to face the source of this cheerful voice.
"Oh dear, you mustn't get up! You're still sick!"
"...what in the name of..."
[3. There's a talking technicolour pony standing in front of her with a floating medical clipboard right beside it.]
There is only one answer to this situation that she knew of right now. And she knows precisely what to do to apply the solution provided by the answer.
Akemi Homura pulls out a gun from a timeslip space under her time disc as quickly as possible. With a trained hand, she points it at the clueless pony standing before her. This place is definitely nothing but trouble.
"Familiar."
*blam*
"SURPRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE~!"
There is a confetti explosion right as she enters the door, and a few dozen ponies are waving at her almost as if it was on cue. Akemi Homura is startled at the sudden confetti shower and warm welcome, even more so coming from the sea of oddly-colored ponies in front of her. She can think of nothing but familiars and witches when confronting strange, otherworldly creatures before this, but these ponies are obviously different. Even so, if that incident from earlier unfolded as it should've been, every single living thing in a seven mile radius would have been completely decimated by now. That move was a reflex honed over time for her own survival, but when she woke up in this strange place, this reflex proved to be more than a slight embarrassment towards herself...
....................
"Familiar."
*BLAM*
...
...
...
There was no recoil.
The muzzle flash and reverberating gunshot sound was evident enough to Akemi Homura on the perfect working condition of her gun. Yet, nothing came out of the other side of the barrel. No spent cartridge, no bullet, nothing at all.
When she looked back up from her gun, the nurse pony was already hiding behind another patient's bed, while the occupant of said bed was equally shocked at the sudden noise of the gun.
"Meep....."
Akemi Homura took no heed of the nurse pony and aimed for a second time, now at a lamp right above her head.
*BLAM*
Again, nothing happened other than the ear-splitting gunshot sound.
"Impossible."
Homura unclipped the magazine from her Glock and inspected one of the bullets within it. No change. The bullet is a normal, familiar-busting 10mm with no tampering visible to her eyes.
She then reloaded the gun and fired again, now aiming at the floor of the general ward. Again, nothing.
"Useless gun."
The sound of a pony trotting can be heard outside of the ward as Homura threw the gun aside.
"Loooooooud noises!"
The trotting noise suddenly stopped, then turned into a deafening gallop as a pink-coloured pony suddenly ran into the room, pushing a small cannon in front of her. Despite its tiny size and cartoonish appearance, the cannon appeared to be functional and apparently well-used.
"I hear loud noises! Where did it come from? Is it a confetti cannon? Ooooooh wait, this looks like a party! A party with weird creatures and nurses, perfect for me! Good thing I brought my party cannon, because it's party time!!!"
[4. Who the hell allowed an armed, obviously deranged and dangerous pony with a freaking cannon, no matter how small its form factor is, into a hospital for kids!?]
Everybody looked on at Pinkie Pie in confusion (some of them in excitement) as she fusses with the cannon.
"But how does anypony smell a party? Is it because of the food? Water? Ponies? Cat? Sarsaparilla? Hey, that word sounds so happy! I have a new favourite word now! Sarsaparilla sarsaparilla sarsaparilla sarsaparilla sarsaparilla!!!!"
Is she thinking of firing that thing in a hospital of all places, a place where sick and hurt people go to get medical attention? Somebody (or somepony) needs to remind this crazed pony on the meaning of modesty.
"IT'S PARTY TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME! PARTY CANNON AT THE READY, COMMANDAR SARSAPARILLA! THANK YOU SOLDIER SARSAPARILLA! SARSAPARILLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!"
Cannon fuse, meet fire. Fire, meet cannon fuse. Be nice now.
*KA-BLAAAAAM*
And then everything went dark.
....................
Bizarre.
That word won't be adequate to describe the scene around Akemi Homura at this time. Or at least not by Earth standards. There are no humans in this place at all. Instead, there are ponies everywhere. From one glance alone, she can make out different types of ponies based on their appearance. There are flying ponies (pegasi?), unicorns (which aren't exactly ponies, but they're the same size as one here), ponies (self-explanatory), mules (again, not ponies), and even a zebra (ditto) or two. And everyone's (everypony's?) hide is coloured in pastel 8-bit colours as if they just climbed out of a bad American cartoon. In addition to that, the party is being held in a public library which is situated inside a hollowed-out tree. She even recalls passing by a literal candy house on her way here. Save for the egg-based baked goods on one side, every other food is more or less vegetarian.
No, not vegetarian. There is a better, more straight to the point phrase to describe the grub.
Refined horsefeed.
A few metres to her left, one green-coloured pony is apparently fawning over Akemi Homura.
"Oh my god, are my eyes deceiving me?"
Another pony, this one cream-coloured with a pink-striped navy blue mane, is visibly shaking her head.
"Pull your ponies, fanfoal. Respect our guest."
Irritating voices #3 and #4, check.
"It's a human, Bonny! A real deal, bona-fide, top-notch, super duper awesome human! How am I supposed to stay silent when a fabled human is standing in front of me!?"
"By sitting down instead of standing up, calming the hay down and being civilised, Lyra Heartstrings. And I am not a bo-"
"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA~!!!!!!"
'Bonny' facepalmed. Facehoofed, rather.
"Not again."
[5. Annoying personalities that doesn't seem at all natural are pretty much everywhere.]
The place is getting more and more on her nerves, and she's planning to time-stop the hell out of there. She is afraid of using her power for such petty matters, but innocent pony lives are at stake here. As much as she fears the draining effect it has on her Soul Gem and the fact that it might not even work here at all, strangling innocent ponies just to find some peace in a place with enough ponies to flatten her in a stampede isn't exactly the smartest thing to do.
A small voice deep within her tells her that this is a bad idea, but she thought little of it.
*click*
Within a few seconds, the entire world grinds to a halt. Fortunately for her, maintaining a time stasis takes very little effort and Soul Gem drain compared to when it was induced, so she took her sweet time to walk out of the library and onto the balcony one level above her while weaving carefully in between the ponies. She sits down on the floor of the verandah and sighs.
Despite the strangeness of her new surrounding, she hasn't lost her sight on her one true goal. Nobody, and absolutely nobody can stop her from changing Madoka's ultimate fate and ending her painful journey. The month have been repeated over and over for so long, she had long since lost count of the number of iterations she had been through.
Akemi Homura will definitely break through this hiccup in her plan and continue her endless mission, no matter how long it takes. It's her raison d'être.
"Madoka, I'll definitely rescue you. Definitely."
A lavendar-coloured unicorn creeps up silently behind the stoic-faced magical girl and suddenly speaks up.
"Madoka? Who's that?"
This time, Akemi Homura is truly surprised. What kind of creature is capable of breaking free of her current control on time? If not for the strange dimension's no-guns-allowed rule, the unicorn behind her would be Swiss cheese by now.
"How did you-!?"
"A sizable temporal displacement activity which encompasses the entire space-time continuum from dimension 1, 2 and all the way to 6 in a spherical region 350 thousand miles in diametre with the Ponyville Library as its almost exact centre was detected by my Advanced 14-Moon Triplet-Aperture Monothaumic Global Ley Line Disturbance Sensor Array detection system that triggers a shield response from the library of size 10000 centimetre in spherical radius around the said library to find the source of the temporal displacement inducer, which was found by the system in 10 seconds and was revealed to be to be a Homo Sapiens of gender female with height estimated at 165 cm and weight--"
"You lost me."
"Oh sorry. This is my time-freeze-cancelling magic. I investigated and traced the source of the time freeze back to you."
[6. Magic explains everything.]
"...and that is all I know."
Twilight Sparkle listens very closely to the details in Akemi Homura's story, mentally taking apart, analyzing and painstakingly reassembling every detail that is being told to her. She is wearing a very serious expression on her face right now, trying to make sense of everything despite none of it being sensible at all. It was the Pinkie Sense case all over again.
On the other hand, Homura wasn't the type to casually somebody else for help. Or somepony, in this case. She prefers solving her own problem alone as opposed to seeking help from somewhere. But she's smart enough to know that this particular problem is beyond her own capability, not to mention knowledge, to sort out.
"..."
Homura doesn't mind Twilight's silence one bit. In fact, she embraces the tranquility with a sincere feeling of thankfulness. It helps her mind to relax and refocus. Looking at the time-frozen grey-coloured skyline beyond Ponyville, regardless of how sombre it looks at the moment, helps settle down her anxious heart. She is still very much a timid girl at heart.
A matte grey shade envelopes the entire city that is Ponyville, replacing its once vibrant colours with an equalising hue accentuated by the outline of building and people...ponies frozen in time. The landscape beyond, as well as a river that borders the town's outskirts, is being enveloped by the same shade of grey. Beyond the time-frozen landscape of Ponyville, Akemi Homura can see a city among the mountains. Something tells her that this particular city is the administrative centre of, at the very least, the entire immediate region surrounding it. To her immediate right, the outline of a modern city can be seen. Compared to the mountain city before this, this particular modern-looking city is located right at the edge of the horizon, seemingly unreachable from Ponyville. A massive mountain range spanning an entire horizon of her vision blocks her view beyond the city.
Can the answer to my predicament be found in any one of the distant cities? Akemi Homura asks herself.
Her inner voice says yes.
. . .
Twilight speaks up again after half an hour of unbroken silence.
"Unfortunately, I have found no conclusion to your current quandary."
Akemi Homura is shaken out of her dream world.
"Pardon?"
"I said I haven't figured out the cause of your arrival in Equesteria."
So, this country (or the entire dimension) is called Equesteria.
[7. Meaningful name is meaningful.]
"At the very least, I don't think I have done anything to induce such an event. There is always that Next Tuesday Paranoia time loop event from a few months ago, but the stable time loop created from such an event couldn't possibly influence anything beyond its timeframe of effect."
It takes Homura quite a while to comprehend what Twilight is talking about, but apparently her arrival here wasn't Twilight's fault. A conclusion which leaves Homura with a conundrum of sorts. If the cause of the event isn't known, then how will she get back? Assuming that time flows at the same speed here as it does on Earth, she only have 29 and half a day to figure it out.
Then again, she could probably rewind time to restart everything at the end of the month. There's no telling what would happen if she does so in this dimension, though. It's going to be risky, but it's worth a shot.
This is a very worrying development, and Akemi Homura's forehead is starting to throb from the stress.
"Hello? Miss Akemi Homura?"
"..."
"Is something wrong?"
"..."
"Is. SOMETHING. Wrong?"
"...oh no, nothing is wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me being stuck in a totally different dimension from where I'm originally from while having no visible hope of returning to my own timeline when I have my own mission to complete in which time is of the utmost importance. You got that?"
Now it's Twilight's turn to be completely silent. She had apparently struck Akemi Homura's nerve by being a bit too impatient, and she realized it far too late.
This spells nothing but trouble.
"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
Homura walks past Twilight, interrupting the pony before she can finish her sentence with a sudden request. Her words at this point is pretty much dripping with imaginary venom.
"I'm sure you wouldn't mind me borrowing a branch to sleep on, right? Good."
Akemi Homura vanishes from sight and time resumes its usual flow as soon as Twilight turns around.
"Wait, I have an extra b-
...
...
...
"AUGH, WHERE DID SHE GO!?"
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