The end of the beginning!
Heartstrings’Warming Sleeves
by Tartdefiance
My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic © Hasbro
Google Documents Version
Warning: Writing this caused an emotional breakdown. Viewer discretion is advised.
Still here? Well, let’s relive some of the authors suffering just for you then.
It’s three in the morning. I have to get up early, that is to say, soon.
I have been writing this story for the last ten hours straight while listening to music in my head.
And now there are only three questions on my mind.
-Why???
-OH NO, PLEASE NO, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?!?!
-I am getting murdered for this, aren’t I?
The author pretty much felt like this, but edited the creation anyway for reasons unknown. You can read it below, at your own risk. I won’t stop you. I totally could if I wanted to. The author lets you know that very persuasive mental voices were heavily involved, so they are to blame. Or it was their physical manifestation, what a ludicrous thought. Everyp… body knows dimension hopping isn’t real. Oh, let me give you one last quote from the author:
I am so very, very sorry.
Chapter 1: Pointless Prologue
(Skip if you want to not lose your sanity all at once, but in smaller, bigger steps. Derp.)
A Quill paused in midair.
However, it was futile to delay the inevitable any longer. This had to be written down.
The truth was no longer willing to be ignored.
What was the worst that could happen?
A good yawn was had, then a continuous scratching was the only audible sound for a while.
Twas the night. Long story short, or in this very specific case, short story short, after Pinkamina Diane Pie broke the 6th wall in one or several of the multiverses, one (or several?) of the resulting time and space collapses spawned a nice little connection from Equestria to a reality in which basically some weird monkeys ruled over a planet and the universe in addition, in their common opinion, or something. It was totally not Pinkie Pie’s fault, too.
This “connection”, as scary as it sounds, was nothing else than “TEH INTERNETZ”. At least, according to the Equestrian Government’s first “on the line” random encounter and answered question, “WHAT IS THIS?!?!?!”. They created the message by using magic key combinations and the powerful “CAPSLOCK!!!” enhancement, with the help of their “on the line” device.
If you are wondering, it was in the first package from another dimension and it looked like some kind of glass mirror with the alphabet and numbers of the so called “humans” on top, probably also printed in magic. Cryptic.
Soon, an image of an angry, shouting, bearded, half dressed “man” appeared on the machine, which forced the top pony scientists analyzing “TEH INTERNETZ” to take another look in the enclosed “Users guide 4 Ponies”, containing colorful photography, a full translation of the human language (apparently called “13375p33k”), some of their history and, quite disturbingly, a picture of Derpy Hooves face. The adhering note “lol this should be so much fun” didn’t make much sense at the time, and, later on, even less.
The research turned out to be pointless though, because the next day everypony knew all the background they needed for, were influenced by, and had some sort of device to connect themselves with „TEH INTERNETZ“. Almost as if one of the still occurring reality warps behaved really impatiently and changed the ponies regular thought patterns for convenience.
There also happened to be some reverse black holes creating other random items too, but Pinkie Pie hoarded all of them in her landlords’ basement, so nopony had to worry about them. Except for Mr. and Mrs. Cake, who now had to sleep over a twisted and still twisting dimension medley.
Sadly, or luckily, or both, this ruined Pinkie’s following, obligatory “Cupcakes” prank for Rainbow Dash, because decorations including medical equipment and deformed, stuffed ponyoids are no longer scary when working toy railroad lines somehow lead up the walls and some weird singing and dancing Discord doll plays unfitting music. Besides, Rainbow already knew about the story (also she had gotten a second chance to look at what she ate for lunch the day she read into it), so it all ended with Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash having strange sex (nope) offender lists with pinkies name written on them, they exploded out of one of the reality defying vortexes for some reason.
„TEH INTERNETZ“ was generally considered a bad horror show and used with fascinated consternation. But those “fun times” ended with a more frequent use. It didn’t take long before the first urban “flame wars” started. The ponies were perturbed badly by their own heavy consumption of “on the line” material, especially if it implied you were more than just friends with your neighbor, what caused a lot of mixed feelings. Paranoia destroyed friendships and families. Hatred spread with an enormous amount of insulting and accusing. But in the end, only reality loss induced confusion and mild insanity remained, so everypony agreed to deny everything and to ignore each other, to peacefully space out into their own little worlds. Unreality increased. It was a really crazy holiday season and probably the end of pony, but nobody cared, because „TEH INTERNETZ“.
Only Princess Celestia seemed concerned by the fact that reality was drastically changed and rapidly declining, as could be interpreted in her official statement “I am disappoint.” and the following acts of “Royal Canterlot Epic Trolling”. However, nopony wanted to hear about Bananas and Pinkie lost her new spacecannon in one of the many pseudo rooms in her basement, which were of course all the same room at once, so Celestia didn’t bother looking for it. She instead knocked at a door, ran away, and called it a day.
That just rhymed. At least, the last part. Kind of. Whatever!
Then, in a final attempt to stop this whole madness before it was too late, or perhaps because she just wanted to disgruntle everypony, she anonymously installed an interfering transmitterfor „TEH INTERNETZ” on the moon, right next to Princess Luna’s new country club. Celestia told her it was modern art, and Luna didn’t understand „TEH INTERNETZ“ anyway, because she literally had been living on the moon for the last thousand years and this made about as much sense as anything else. No sense at all. And it should probably be ignored.
Just like that Princess Celestia had found the transmitter in her favorite bathroom.
Anywayhow, „TEH INTERNETZ“ refused to work, and so the ponies were compelled to remember the existence of everypony else and that it was Hearth’s Warming Eve.
That is today. Good thing somepony keeps track of everything important and everything else.
So, after this recap, it is finally possible to focus on the events ahead and to take notes like you normally do in a normal notepad. Only pony meme related content from now on, if that wasn’t bad enough.
The one mint green unicorn that had it all figured out put her notebook down and looked at what she had written so far. It stared back. She shuddered in disgust and threw the thing into the fireplace.
Great.
This hadn’t even started yet, and she already had enough of it.
Worst thing was, it was only the end of the beginning.
Chapter 2: The Actual Story Part 1
Ponyville was bored. All the ponies had lost connection to their reality some time ago, but now they had lost so much more. Without “on the line” access, and like shadows of their former selves, they lurked about the snowy streets, in the hope of remembering what they used to do for fun.Six certain ponies, and a baby dragon, had given up hope early in the evening and because of general laziness were now forced to “hang out” at a friend’s place.
Well, not so much friend, more like… to ignore most of the time, but somehow being able to remember her name. Part of the name, at least.
“So, Heartstrings…” An alabaster unicorn with a purple mane failed to make conversation.
She was interrupted by the name bearer and homeowner.
“That’s my last name, call me Lyra. It’s kind of annoying, really, like I would call you… ah… well, you know, if you had a last name. Oh hey, we’re out of potato chips.”
An empty chips bag hit the floor.
Some old phonograph was playing almost euthanizing music. The anonymous white unicorn now finally stopped trying to get a connection with her elite “hoof and magic recognition” mobile device, sighed dramatically, and levitated it over to the corner to the rest of the recently redundant machines.
At least the seating area was comfy. Six of the seven guests, who were not yet named, with the exception of Pinkamina Diane Pie, who now was named and currently drooling in her sleep, had nothing better to do as to lounge around the fireplace and stare into the flames.
Getting your whole reality crushed was one thing, but running out of chips…Running out of chips was an immediate problem. So the best thing to deal with it, was to ignore it.
But then Lyra Heartstring’s girlfriend and roommate, let’s call her Bonbon to avoid describing her looks, raised her head from the couch and frowned. She was definitely not lying in Lyra’s lap before, but it was close, because this stubborn pony had refused to learn how to sit properly on furniture that seemed to be made for other races anyway. Lyra, emotionally shaken by Bonbons despair, instantly took matters into her own hooves.
“I said we’re out of chips,” she repeated monotonously.
Rainbow Dash, one of the mysterious and now a little bit more accurately defined guests, activated her by laziness occupied brain to make a grunt like sound. By the way, the guests were none other than the local celebrities, “The Elements of Harmony”, or mane 6. And Spike. Big surprise.
Spike was absent examining the house’s bed and the rest was absentminded at least, except for the newly awake Rainbow Dash, Bonbon, Lyra and the irrelevantly still not named alabaster unicorn.
“That better be an affirmative grunt, albeit I would have preferred an actual response to the clearly not enough worded but intended question,” the unicorn criticized almost everypony listening. This awakened some more parts of Rainbow’s brain, parts which better should have left slumbering. As if the phonograph had intercepted her brainwaves, it abruptly began to play another holiday theme song.
“Oh sure. I’ll DASH out to get us 20% more chips in a ten second flat from the end of the RAINBOW. Heh. It’s funny because we have no chips at all, so 20% more is still-” She started to annoy all the ponies who bothered to listen, but was interrupted by a pillow to the face.
“OK, who threw that?” The pegasus was almost instantly standing and ready for combat.
No response.
Twilight Sparkle, the voice of reason, rose to speak her words of wisdom.
“Meh.”
Dash would have none of it. Ignoring Twilight’s explicit warning, she stomped a hoof on the ground in anger, not willing to let the crime against her go unpunished.
She would get this treacherous coward.
“Well then,” she started to explain her master plan “I guess nopony would mind if I talked like some pink pony who just saw a RAINBOW, DASH my puns and references some more…”
Silence was the answer, after all, ignoring problems still was hoped to work for some reason. The rainbow pony started circulating her prey with an evil grin.
“That’s what you get for your DASHED expectations. Sorry to DASH your hopes, but your tries to silence me DASH against a rock. A dumb one, that is, heh.”
Rarity, who now finally had a name, rolled her eyes. The rest of the group except for the sleeping Pinkie Pie was irritated, too, but Rainbow Dash wasn’t satisfied yet. Applejack was clenching her teeth in barely restrained rage, but her hat was covering part of her face, so Dash overlooked this. She would have continued anyways.
“Gee, I sure could DASH down some chocolate milk, in a DASH of sadness. RAINBOW… DASH it! This. is. THE. WORST. POSSIBLE. THING!” She gleefully mimicked a more and more resentful attendant.
“It looks like my puns are all out of RAINBOW. DASH alone will have to do then. Can you believe it? In ten seconds flat, faster than SONIC, and talking like the RAIN, BOOM, I’m all out of RAINBOW. DA-“
“Enough is enough! No. More. PUNS!”
Applejack’s hat hit the ceiling, propelled upwards by yet another enigmatic force, this time emitting from AJ’s ears and nostrils. She upped and glared at the defiant nuisance, mentally preparing a suitable screed.
“I’ve had bout’ enough with ya! Y’all think Ahm not bored? This here are damned hard times, ya know?!”
“Martial Law,” Fluttershy added and nodded with a serious look on her face.
“Say what now?” AJ was caught off guard by the fact that her usually quietest friend just interrupted her with unexpected and unknown vocabulary. She turned around and made eye contact with Fluttershy for a second. However, that was enough for the jumpy yellow pegasus to make a squeaking sound and hid her head under a cushion.
Twilight would normally be the one who did the explaining part all too gladly, but she was too busy being an inspiring example for Fluttershy by squeezing pillows against her ears.
The remaining ponies enjoyed the brief moment of confused, relative silence, accompanied by unfitting music, before Applejack would continue yelling. And soon Rainbow Dash would join in, but they didn’t even want to think about that. Pinkie Pie continued sleeping.
“Ah mean, Ahm sick of y’all actin’ like a foal! Grow up! Liva ain’t no party!”
Contrary to expectations, relative silence returned with full awkwardness. Rainbow Dash was boiling with rage. AJ realized that she, against all odds, at least kind of, had made an allusion. Unluckily, she was a pony who tended to say what she was thinking out loud.
“Uh… Live is a party?”
Chapter 3: The thrilling conclusion to… I have no Idea.More references? Get angry!
“HEY!” Rainbow Dash shouted.
“NOT cool,” Dash said in unison with Pinkie Pie, who had suddenly appeared out of some pillows next to where Dash was standing and was fully awake.
They exchanged glances and nodded in agreement. Applejack was a bit uncomfortable with the turning of recent events.
“Ahm… Ahm awful sorry, I didn’t mean-“ she stammered.
Unfortunately, she by far wasn’t the pony who was currently the most displeased.
“Oh whats the matter, you want an APPLE, DASH?” this particular pony who couldn’t handle her own annoyance scoffed.
Unfortunately again, this pony was Rarity. She did not only own a cat, but she could be very cattish, too, when angered. You then also could compare her to a female dog, but doing so would drastically worsen the situation in any case.
“AH BEG YA PARDON?!” Applejack was shouting again.
The rainbow pegasus got it about a second later. “I beg your pardon?!”
In addition, Pinkie Pie was giggling. “Ooh, how evil and clever. I mean, I beg yarr pardon?!”
The pink mare continued snickering. This didn’t help Rainbow Dash’s temper very much.
“Stop laughing, we agreed to never talk about this… stupid stuff!” she yelled.
AJ continued to glare at Rarity. “Sneaky, backstabbin’…”
“So, I assume you’d prefer APPLEPIE then, dear?” Rarity asked venomously with a sugar-sweet voice.
Now Rainbow Dash laughed dryly. But the mood had turned very, very bad. The phonograph’s rather mocking music didn’t help at all. Things were about to get loud.
“What are you laughing at?!” the naturally cheerful pink pony bawled at the cyan blue pegasus who used to be on her side.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe at your weirdo mood changes and the fact that you just quoted yourself?” The former ally escalated the conflict.
“HEY, I AM NOT A WEIRDO!!!”
But that wasn’t the only front this immature war was going to be fought out.
“Ahm just sayin’, ya sure are bitter and sour for a MARSHMALLOW.” AJ made sure to be heard by a certain marshmallow white unicorn.
“YOU TAKE THAT BACK YOU FILTHY EARTH PONY!!!” the white mare whined and opened fire with nearby pillows.
“Girls, please, stop fighting...” A yellow pegasus tried to convince the general public.
“…please? Plea-“ a cushion which missed its original target interrupted and incapacitated her. She could only reel and try to get her eyes to stop spinning. Twilight Sparkle came to the rescue and dragged her out of the war zone and behind the couch, where Bonbon and Lyra had taken cover.
“Listen, I need you to be more assertive, this fight is getting out of control… really, really bad. Listen to me Fluttershy! Focus your inner strength, just think that you’re an immovable tree and… Huh. Weird. I actually wanted to say Tom… what the… boulder?”
In the background, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie were face to face.
“So, still wondering why it’s called a hacksaw you crazy psycho?” The cyan pegasus provoked her pink opponent.
“You want me to get one and find out?!” The Pink-y Pie shot back.
“Try and see what happens!” Came the immediate answer.
Twilight shuddered, and Fluttershy was shivering violently. Also, the yellow mares left eye twitched a little, but the purple unicorn continued to talk insistently to her.
“You have to get over yourself, and stop being so… heh…” And, with unawareness of dangerous situations suddenly attacking, she made the mistake to follow her own train of thoughts, which would shortly collide with a rampaging buffalo and forfeit the last chance to defuse the situation.
And just about then things started to get really ridiculous.
“…stop being so FLUTTERSHY. Funny, all this time, it never really occurred to me that your name-”
Nothing tells you to shut up more clearly than being hit with a couch and flung into a conveniently placed mountain of pillows.
Chapter 4: Puns, Memes and References destroy Homes, Lives and Realities
(Also, I added too many explosives to the active volcano soup and now it tastes unreal.)
“I’LL GIVE YOU FLUTTERSHY!!!” the kind, shy pegasus with red glowing eyes roared at the top of her lungs.
Lyra and Bonbon, who suddenly had lost their cover, followed voluntary into the pillow fort Twilight had disappeared in. The yellow demon then unleashed a tornado of cushions in all directions, but Rarity and AJ were experienced enough fighters to dodge this extra crossfire without discontinuing insulting each other with… stupid stuff.
A pillow flew right into the stare battle of the other two combatants and was immediately vaporized into flames. An evil aura seemed to spread from the duel.
“I will do gruesome things to you. I will eat you. Then I will send you to a parallel dimension where you will be reborn and dumped in a cardboard box. Then I will eat you again. Alive. You will taste great. Beautiful eyes by the way,” a pink nightmare said, smiling serenely, to her crazy grimacing blue adversary, whose iris had adopted a more suiting blood-red color.
Dash only grinned threateningly in response.
Of course, a very well-known trio of carol singers had just opened the door moments ago. Scootaloo had accompanied her fellow Crusaders to practice singing and maybe get a holiday card from Rainbow Dash, she even had one with her, just in case. The orange pegasus filly was about to throw her young life away by talking to her idol, but with a sudden, live saving realization the scooter enthusiast decided that she preferred to literally devour all the carol lyrics with her card as side dish anyway. Maybe she was a stress eater. Applebloom was horrified by the havoc inside, too, but Sweetie Belle remained admirably oblivious.
“Hey!” She attempted to joke. “Chickens don’t eat paper!”
Scootaloo blinked repeatedly. One eye shut and opened more slowly than the other one. Then she lay down on the floor and began awkwardly crawling forward using only her hind legs as propulsion.
Sweetie Belle smiled.
The door tried to snap shut, but a petrified Applebloom blocked the threshold.
Sweetie Belle sat down on a close pillow.
Scootaloo let herself fall back on her haunches and crossed her eyes.
Fluttershy threw an already pretty much wrecked sofa through the nearest window.
Scootaloo began to emit a weird, throaty sound.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…”
Sweetie Belle smiled.
Apple Bloom started to drool and slowly tilted forward.
Suddenly Sweetie Belle finally understood Scootaloos allusions.
“Hey,” she said, mildly annoyed.
Meanwhile, Rarity was trying to drown Applejack in a maelstrom of pillows. Twilight’s mane began to look really disheveled, as she danced around babbling to herself.
“… it makes no sense! Why is this phonograph still repeating the same song over and over again? It has been crushed and buried under pillows!! Why would there even be that many pillows!? Where do they keep coming from!?!? This is absurd!!!“
She would have continued to sputter, but was unsurprisingly silenced by a pillow avalanche powered by pure Applejack.
A real, snowy avalanche came crashing down one side of the building, as the personification of all things chaos and yellow used a cupboard to tear down some walls. Ironically, a bag of chips fell out. It had been hidden behind some half empty breakfast cereal boxes.
The pegasus ignored it and decided to rather pick on Twilight.
“Everything is illogical, BOO HOO, you are tugging at my heartstrings,” she sneered down from where she was hovering in the assumption that somewhere under these many, many cushions Twilight might be alive and listening.
Fluttershy didn’t notice the mint green hoof that had been raised from a pillow mountain in the distance and should probably somehow display disapproval of her unintended pun.
“What are you doing?” Bonbon asked her girlfriend, bewilderment in her voice.
“Lyra needs fingers reference, duh!” the girlfriend responded rolling her eyes expertly.
Bonbon facehoofed. Now she accepted her fate. Recent events were an excellent excuse to adopt a cynical perspective and watch the world go down with a hint of apathy.
“If we are going to die here, you could at least be more romantic about it,” she complained in a dry, sarcastic tone.
Lyra grinned wryly and let herself sink back into the pillows.
“I want a bonbon. Kiss me,” she whispered.
Her girlfriend facehoofed again.
“Sure, whatever, let’s just hope we don’t get interrupted by Derpy.”
Lyra’s grin froze.
“Foal. I AM Derpy.”
With that, she removed her lifelike Lyra facemask and contact lenses from the rest of her disguise and smiled triumphantly.
Bonbon was unimpressed.
Derpy grinned sheepishly and avoided her gaze by looking in two different directions at once.
Bonbon was beginning to feel slight impatience.
Derpy swallowed and started to sweat in her costume.
“I didn’t know about that one last bag of chips in the cupboard because I was Derpy all along? Also, I threw the first pillow at Rainbow Dash and impersonated Lyra and her voice because I was Derpy all along? And hoping you would mention my name later? Makes sense? Muffins?” she asked the earth pony that was apparently no longer her girlfriend.
“As much sense as the next best thing,” Bonbon groaned, contemplating what the next best thing would be in her situation. It would be very hard to find, she concluded.
Derpy produced a Banana Muffin out of thin air and began to munch happily. The ground-level was filled with a cushion and snow ocean where a unicorn in a bathtub was pillow fighting an earth pony surfing an ironing board. The Sea split around a burning crater of pitch-black energy that indicated an ongoing stare battle supreme, not far from where the front door used to be. Looking directly into the surrounding sinister aura even caused visual interferences and hallucinations of impending doom.
And there was still that formerly nice and quiet flying demon screaming gibberish in a high and low pitch at once. Luckily, the Cutie Mark Crusaders had ponied up and were fighting it with holy weaponry, including part of a rocking chair, a fishing pole and an ice block containing the real Lyra Heartstrings, who must have been unfortunate enough to be blown inside through one of the many breaches in the walls.
Why was she frozen anyway? Was that the next best thing? And where was…
“Twilight?!” a shocked baby dragon exclaimed as he wondered why the stairs were frozen and leading down into pillows. Twilight was more or less stranded there, face down on a step.
“Blblbl,” she greeted her number one assistant.
“Uh, Twilight, I got a letter from Princess Celestia…” he mentioned a name that resulted in an instantaneous shock reaction in the purple unicorn. She was literally electrified, jumped upwards and glanced around hysterically. As if her mane wasn’t already enough of a mess.
“Please tell me it doesn’t involve bananas. Also, Spike, take a letter. HELP!!! Got that? And no, I don’t think you should turn into your giant monster form, Spikezilla Kong. I considered this option at first, but now there are ghosts everywhere and those are immune to giants,” she quacked frantically.
Spike was honestly scared. Regardless, he decided to keep it together and ignore the ghosts in Twilight’s mind for now.
“She… she didn’t finish the letter, after the part where she warns you and your friends not to fight, the writing changes to unreadable scribble… What…” He never finished his sentence as he stared into the abyss that was the ground-floor and was overwhelmed by insanity in its purest form. Some of the snow had even started to burn. Twilight didn’t respond either.
Nopony or Spike even perceived the immoderately repetitive music the long lost phonograph was playing from somewhere anymore. But it stopped for dramatic effect nevertheless.
Chapter 5: Deus ex Discord
(You have no idea what that means, but you would totally buy a video game with this name.)
The snow didn’t burn for a long time.
“Would you look at that DISCORD ” A loud, mischievous voice suddenly could be heard from all directions at the same time. The draconequus appeared next to where the Cutie Mark Crusaders were trying to exorcise Fluttershy.
“Cutie Mark Crusaders Exorcists, YAY!” they shouted happily while holding down a fury.
Discord then elegantly dodged some pillows, snowballs and grimdark aftershock from where Pinkie and Rainbow Dash had vanished in a dimensional implosion. None of the projectiles were intentionally aimed at him, though.
“Please, aren’t you going to welcome me properly? I don’t even hear somepony shouting my name,” he complained formally.
Sadly, nopony did really care. Derpy would, but she was busy helping Bonbon to break the ice, quite literally. Maybe there existed more opportunities of describing how the situation was with Lyra, but that would lead to making endless puns about ice and the like.
And not going anywhere.
So Discord levitated over to Twilight Sparkle, because she seemed awake to some degree, unlike Spike, whose mind had given him the good advice to pass out. Besides, Twilight’s gaze only barely missed Discord’s on its way into space, which was close enough.
“Listen closely, this is important. Heh. Funny things, these recorded episodes. I guess thanks to your extremely unrealistic and disharmonic behavior…” He tilted his head a bit while he spoke, so that the lightning beam fired off Fluttershy’s left eye could burst through a frozen hole in the wall instead,
“…I was freed and had plenty of time enjoying the internet, thanks to some time manipulation. Seriously, you should check your sources before calling it “TEH INTERNETZ”. Oh well. I guess I’m a Brony now. I watched all the episodes, even the ones from the future. I could make references you wouldn’t even understand yet! Isn’t that hilarious?” he called out and squeezed his face.
Twilight didn’t nod her head in agreement.
“Aaanyway, in the first Hearth’s Warming episode, there was some rambling about Windigoes that freeze everything if you argue idiotically enough, and if you bothered to look outside, you would see that everything has been frozen. What a coincidence.” He continued his dialogue with the well listening Twilight Sparkle.
“So, would you mind to stop… doing whatever you are doing at the moment? Equestria is freezing over and the imbecile energy you somehow create is even too much for me. I can’t even find my sunglasses. I’m afraid this reality is about to be torn apart.” He finished his detailed explanation.
Twilight seemed to ponder the situation without moving or blinking. Then she finally took action and stopped breathing. Fair enough. They were doomed anyways. Or were they?
“OK, Ah give up, this here nonsense lasted far too long,” an Applejack that was somehow sticking to a relatively intact wall mumbled to the fabulous captain Rarity of the tub.
“HaHAH! TRIUMPH! …wait, what was this all about?” The captain immediately stopped her victory dance.
“So, um, girls, you can stop exorcising me now, I mean, if you wouldn’t mind… I mean, I think you were really good at it, even if it didn’t visibly help and, um, maybe it wasn’t you but this new reality breach over there that absorbed my demonic essence, so, um, if you don’t mind, would you please OH MY GOODNESS A REALITY BREACH!” Fluttershy tried to warn the Crusaders without avail.
Even in a worst case scenario, like reality collapsing right in front of your eyes, every good Cutie Mark Crusader had priorities and an unchangeable main concern.
“But… we didn’t get our Cutie Maaarks…” Applebloom chimed in the first time in this entire turmoil.
She and the other Crusaders stopped splattering the ex-demon with holy water from a holy bottle they had found in the holy fridge that was currently stuck in one of the lesser demolished walls. Coincidentally, after they stopped, Fluttershy slowly lost grip of her newly restored sanity again and spaced out.
Scootaloo remembered she hadn’t actually talked, too.
“Ohmygosh, Rainbow Dash, you made it!” she yelled and ran over to where she had glimpsed her idol through a mysterious swirling mist. And yet another dramatic comeback was ruined.
Sweetie Belle, the last Crusader, was feeling negative peer pressure. Both her friends recently took action as individuals. So she went and comforted her sister, who suddenly didn’t understand life anymore, next to Applejack, who had managed to vertically pass out against the wall. Applebloom concluded that she had to dive into the depths of Lake Cushion to look for a spatula she could use in this tricky situation.
But still, nopony was paying attention to Discord, what was probably for the best.
And to be fair, the duo of Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie wearing sunglasses while stepping out of a circular, pulsating, collapsing mess of dark energy and a lot of other bad stuff was a hard to beat eye catcher. Of course, the portal also vanished into an inferno of white light and thunder mere moments after they reached the ground, or at least, a stable set of pillows.
“Yeah, no worries, this whole mayhem we created is over,” the pegasus reassured the general public.
“And it absolutely wasn’t our fault. Sorry,” added her pink partner cheerfully.
It turned out they were only talking to Derpy Hooves, because Bonbon was still trying to revive Lyra and Scootaloo just stood there mouth agape in serene happiness, while the rest of her Crusader friends had to help their sisters.
“Oh, that’s great, now I finally can go home and sleep easy,” Derpy sighed in relief, her wings bursting through her Lyra costume. After considering various options, she chose a hole in the wall and took off. The real Lyra fortunately awoke without seeing Derpy disguised as her.
“The freezing of the world… it has stopped! We won!” Lyra Heartstrings rejoiced.
With tears of joy in her eyes, Lyra whispered “I love you,” to her savior she then hugged tightly. It was her most precious treasure in the whole, wide world.
It was the jacket Heartstrings was wearing, with wonderfully long, warming sleeves which doubtfully would have saved her from freezing to death.
Bonbon, who just had saved her from freezing to death, didn’t experience the same warm, fuzzy feelings as her girlfriend.
“We are SO over.”
Meanwhile, Fluttershy was lying on her back with her eyes closed. Her feeble cheering followed a rhythm in her head. The cadence was irregular.
Rainbow Dash, the most reliable and loyal pony in Equestria, couldn’t let something like this happen to a friend. She decided that she would help her right after losing conscience.
Ironically in her case, Rainbow Dash was less than 20% chaos, the lower limit for dimension travel that wasn’t downright exhausting. A fact that would have been quite an annoyance for her. Good thing that not remembering any facts is basically a synonym for amnesia.
“Yeah, nice safe and everything, but you totally missed me applying CPR to Twilight. I’m keeping this photography though. By the way, your reality got better, this will be over in a few moments. And thanks for finding my sunglasses.” Discord mentioned to nopony in particular and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Twilight stumbled to her legs, while Spike was still beginning to regain consciousness.
“What… what happened?” she asked the world.
“I have no idea!” Pinkamina Diane Pie answered merrily, now without sunglasses.
Chapter 6: Lazy Epilogue
Equestria awakened out of its frozen slumber. The Royal sisters continued to raise the sun and the moon, on which one who knew where to look could now see the shape of a country club nopony remembered.
Besides, Celestia sensed an uncommon desire for bananas for a few days and couldn’t evoke where she had put the statue of Discord. In general, everypony agreed that this year’s hearths warming eve must have been followed by a wild, chilly and exceptionally odd night where things must have gotten a bit off hoof.
Maybe something magical did happen, maybe it had to do with parties and bad decisions, nopony knew how they somehow couldn’t really remember what they did during the entire holiday season.
At least, it was really soothing that no unusual proceedings like devastated houses had been recorded, though some ponies from Ponyville complained about a minor confusion and a major headache.
But this wasn’t actually very unsettling, and soon normal life returned to them.
Blessedly, nopony missed certain “on the line” devices or “TEH INTERNETZ”.
Two Ponyville residents in love reported a missing article of clothing though.
And Pinkie Pie found an odd note written by herself that told her to never let anypony go into Sugarcube Corner’s basement. It advised her not to break any walls, too. But she wasn’t even trained in deconstruction! And there was nothing wrong in her basement, just the stuff she collected from several dimensions.
In the end, after the eve of Hearth’s Warming, harmony truly had returned. Discord seemed to have completely vanished from Equestria over the holidays and… he’s behind me, isn’t he?
