Gummy Tries to Get Warm

Chapters

The Biological Dilemma
Not in All of Equestria
Multiversal Assistance
A Touch of Pinkie
A Third Planet from a Star

The Biological Dilemma

Gummy - noun - is defined as:
1. A deity.
2. A reptile who hides his existentially philosophical contemplation internally by acting like a simple pet gator externally.

While thinking about the complexity of perception and how it changes individual truths in singular — or collective — realities, a biological reaction occurred. This altering of thought had come from an involuntary shiver running down the top of his spine.

"Curious," he murmured in his mind. "Why must my backside tremble in this manner?"

He dug into the expansive vault of knowledge that was his brain. The information and experiences it retained, if written in words of any language, would yield more books than what already existed in the entire cosmos. Even concepts that none have even come close to considering. Within a fraction of a nanosecond, the answer came to him.

"Cold-blooded reptiles such as I demand heat. How preposterous that even I must conform to trivial biological callings."

Gummy slapped his tongue on both eyes to enhance his sight, then began to move around the house. The search for a method to preserve or generate heat had begun; however, not to Gummy's own pleasure. He would much rather ignore this natural calling and continue staring into endless space within his mind, catching the occasional bug that flew his way.

He recalled that cold-blooded reptiles rest upon a rock, or a hard surface, in the sunlight to warm up. Swallowing his pride and stooping to petty procedures, he waddled out of Sugar Cube Corner and lay on the steps by the door.

After waiting a few minutes, he felt no change in his body temperature, and another pesky shiver took over his spine.

"What more must I do to satisfy this curse?" Gummy said to himself, grunting, pondering other methods in his dissatisfaction.

He visualized a place in Ponyville Park that is struck by sunlight the entire length of the day. While he traveled to the new destination, he wished the journey in the sunny streets would do the trick, but it never worked.

Gummy laid on top of the ledge of the pony fountain that centered the recreational area. He believed the humidity of the nearby water, combined with constant contact with the sun, would cure this shivering. Again, he was met with empty results as there was no change in his temperature.

Suddenly, a new idea formed in his small but expansive head. Rainbow left Tank at Pinkie's place while they hung out for the day. Tank was a fellow cold-blooded reptilian who required warmth. Perhaps the tortoise would have a working method for Gummy to use as well.

As expected, he encountered Tank after arriving back home and began their interaction. To the observer, they would be staring at each other blankly, but this was not the case for them, Gummy could choose who to telepathically speak with. This was how he was able to hide his thoughts from Fluttershy. Gummy appreciated that he never had to telepathically talk to Pinkie. She always understood him without words, a practice that must have come from living with Maud.

Tank nodded his head and slowly walked past him to show how he got warm. Gummy watched as Tank replicated what he already did as his first step. Slightly annoyed with the lack of help from him, Gummy turned around, walked inside, and closed the front door, leaving the unhelpful tortoise outside to his own devices.

Another shiver struck Gummy's back. "Why must I waste my time on this meaningless matter when I could be spending my time doing better, more productive things. Oh right. . . biology. I shall simply sit upon this window sill and ignore it while I resume my previous activities."

Finding himself in the sunshine on the window's ledge, he resumed his earlier thoughts.

"Truth is simply relative to each individual, no matter the situation or subject. Even if similar in belief, the truth is founded, concluded, or used in a way that differs from any other individual. Perspectives that evolve throughout life or are born every day change the truth, the reality, of each individual. Like when—"

He was suddenly interrupted by a shiver. In an attempt to ignore it, he continued his thoughts.

"Like when Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Rarity had their spat over different perspectives. They experienced the same event and still came to differing conclusions due to interpretation from perception. Each thought their own perspective was the correct one, creating a reality based on their own truths, even if they do not know the real truth or if they are correct. Their arguing proves the three of them lived in three different realities. Further proving that perspective creates truth that influences the reality one lives in. I wonder how certain media can use this structure to create misinformation to control the masse—" Gummy shivered yet again.

"—Ugh. I can not focus if this malicious natural reaction continues! This curse of biological mechanics must be cured. Never has an external occurrence annoyed me, but this internal issue is maddening. If it obstructs my thoughts, it needs to be eliminated, just like the multi-dimensional cosmic deity of the mind. Used to always get in the way of my multi-dimensional explorations within the quantized electro-mental meta-realm. I will deal with this shivering as I did with that being: extermination via assimilation."

Not in All of Equestria

"I desire a source of heat to rid this vibrating curse. Where is Pinkie's candle lighter?"

Gummy hopped off the ledge and landed on the floor. Making it to the kitchen, he nuzzled open different drawers in search of the lighter. Eventually being successful in finding the lighter, he sat upright and lit it underneath him for a moment.

"Honestly, I am not surprised."

He set the lighter down after it failed to warm him even the slightest bit. One of his eyes glanced at the microwave.

"It is time to think bigger."

He walked to the microwave and typed in two minutes, then proceeded to walk inside and close the door. He knew the start button was inaccessible, but he didn't need it. Gummy licked the side wall next to him, activating the microwave to start the two minutes.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Gummy clicked open the door and walked out with the warm air.

"This is no longer amusing, not that it ever was to start with. It is futile to stop now and resume the attempts to ignore it. I predict the results will end the same: interrupting my thoughts when it matters most."

Eyeing the oven, Gummy set the heat to its maximum, five hundred fifty degrees. While waiting, he decided to try out the toaster oven, setting it to four hundred fifty degrees and stepping in.

Waiting five minutes did nothing. He could tell the toaster oven was working by being able to smell and feel the difference in the air, but not in heat. He exited and shut the toaster oven door, then immediately made his way to the oven.

Gummy bit the handlebar, flung it open, and jumped inside while his tail closed the windowed door behind him... and he shivered.

"Not even half a thousand degrees can cure this ailment. This calls for emergency measures. I must break my own protocol and interact with others besides my personally chosen companion Pinkie; additionally, I will abandon the fifth protocol, perhaps even as far as to void the forty-second protocol, but it is best it does not come to that."

Gummy shut off all the appliances, closed his eyes, and licked one of his claws. Upon reopening his eyes, he swung his hand into the thin air and tore it. Ripping the fabric of reality as easily as a piece of paper, he glanced through the tear. It was the lava peaks of the dragon lands.

"Good, I can still successfully manipulate quantum locationing through the same universe. It is exactly where I mentally pictured my desired destination." He entered the rip and resealed it behind him.

The hole brought him to the tallest volcano in the dragon lands, one of the most active ones. Licking all four limbs, he voluntarily dropped into the volcano. Gravity carried him all the way down until he was near the lava, where he slowed himself down — something he had learned from Pinkie Pie — before landing on the lava itself.

He stood on the lava as if it were fully solid, thanks to the licking of his limbs.

The hot lava, at two thousand degrees, did nothing to warm Gummy.

"This had better work. My multi-universal transport is a bit rusty." frustrated, he licked his claw and swiped at the thin air, once again ripping it. This time, it was the royal throne room in Canterlot, but not the same Canterlot.

There Gummy was, in the middle of a throne room, a room on fire.

"Daybreaker," he telepathically communicated to the princess of the sun.

Daybreaker jumped out of her inferno throne at the mysterious voice in her head, "Who goes there? How did you get in here?"

Gummy decided to have a little fun and remain hidden behind a pillar at the end of the room.

She stood on top of the stairs to the throne, scanning the room for any lifeforms. After a few minutes of seeing nothing, she sat back down. "It must have been my imagination..." Daybreaker said still curiously thinking about it.

Gummy spoke again, "I am no imagination."

"Stop it! Who dares to mess with the Princess of the Sun?!" she roared once she released a blast of flames that radiated outward from her.

When nothing let out a yelp of pain or revealed itself, she began to believe she was losing her mind. Then the voice spoke again.

"Behind you."

Daybreaker turned around to face her throne, with a green gator sitting upon it. Gummy sat there, blinking asynchronously.

Daybreaker approached Gummy, towering over him. "What is this? Get out of my throne!"

Gummy communicated through the mind again, as he always does. "I am here to end your reign over Equestria."

That was not true. Gummy had a need for something else but still needed to provoke Daybreaker. He wanted her to eventually blast him with the most violent solar blast she could conjure. It did not matter how, but threatening her rule seemed to be the easiest way to accomplish this.

The flaming alicorn laughed, "So, you are the one talking to me in my head. HA, I am NOT insane! You think you can just appear here, play with me, then defeat me?"

"Affirmative," Gummy responded indifferently.

Daybreaker attempted to simply teleport the animal out of the castle but failed. "Huh? Why is my spell not working?"

She tried to teleport him out multiple times, each attempt resulted in a still-present gator.

Gummy took a singular step towards her.

"Back you beast!" she shot a solar beam directly at Gummy, but nothing happened.

"What... you are not incinerated?" Daybreaker was beyond perplexed.

"You leave me no choice." She charged her horn for a violent solar blast.

Gummy did not move in the slightest.

Once Daybreaker fully charged her horn, she did not hesitate to fire at Gummy. "Out!" she shrieked as the blast surrounded the gator. Gummy sat there, unphased, as the throne behind him instantly succumbed to the laser. Except for what of the throne was behind Gummy, which left a Gummy-shaped silhouette.

The biggest blast from Daybreaker was doing nothing to warm him.

Determining that this was a failure, he got on his hindquarters, freeing his hands for use. He put one hand out and froze Daybreaker's spell in place, trapping her in the process.

Daybreaker grunted in her stunned state, "H-How. . ."

Gummy gave a response not in the form of communication, but in action. He swiftly thrust his hand backward, behind his head, now collecting all of Daybreaker's magic. The solar princess shouted in fatigued pain as her power was being depleted. Royal sun guards entered the throne room with reinforcements, but they posed no true threat to Gummy.

He looked at them all with each eye scanning them separately. Every glance from Gummy put unconditional fear in the sun guards as he entered their minds. Then he blinked.

Immediately, they all dropped their weapons and ran out of the throne room as if they were facing an Ursa Major.

While still trapped, Daybreaker shouted at them as they ran. "You fools! You will be executed for this!"

Once all the magic had been sapped from Daybreaker, into a singular yellow orb in Gummy's grasp, he simply vaporized it.

Daybreaker panicked, "What! What did you do to my magic? Fetch it and return it to me at once!"

Gummy only had to jump off the throne to frighten the powerless princess after her empty demand. She jerked backward in fear of what the gator would do next.

He spoke in the safe confines of his mind, “Not even an entity able to produce the most hellish heat in Equestria can make a slight dent in my chills. It is disappointing really, I expected more. Perhaps I must go beyond Equestrian soil; venture through other realities in hopes of finding heat more severe.”

Gummy brought a destination into his mind and licked his claw. Swiping at the air, a new tear through space-time was made. Daybreaker remained on the cold floor as the flames on the pillars of the room faded away — absolutely flabbergasted at what this once seemingly insignificant creature could do.

Without another word to the weak solar princess, he stepped through the rip into a new reality.

Multiversal Assistance

Gummy walked through the tear and began free falling inside a massive volcano. He glimpsed at two beings on the edge of a rock protuberance for a split second, one was dangling off the edge. Then he belly-flopped into the lava below.

"Whoops, wrong universe. I knew I was a little rusty."

In the corner of his eye, he saw a golden ring resting on a cooled piece of magma. It called to Gummy, influencing him to pick it up. So he did, not because he followed a command, but because he wanted a souvenir to remind him of this mistake. That even Gummy is not perfect at all times. Even if he might mess up only once in an eon.

Once the ring was in his grasp, he escaped the volcano into a new universe, one he meant to go to at first.

Do not worry, everything still collapsed since the ring left the universe. Just as good as melting it down, so no one was ever the wiser.

A dark and eerie atmosphere surrounded him. The only luminance came from pools of magma and eternal fires shooting out of a reddened ground, close to resembling the color of blood. Gummy did not see any living organisms but heard screams echo throughout the enormous caverns.

Somehow, this place was warm to Gummy but only enough to notice a difference. He walked around skulls and bones that ranged from fresh to charred in order to reach the closest magma pool.

The lava was actually quite nice and warm. Still not enough to fix the shivers, but it had to be the purest and hottest lava Gummy had ever experienced. So he laid there in comfort while frequencies of the damned loomed over him. This place was one of the most relaxing places he'd ever been to.

He concluded that the fire jacuzzi was not sufficient enough. Even though it was nice, he had to leave to pursue hotter temperatures.

It was one hell of a visit.

After opening another hole in space-time, he appeared in front of a gigantic grey sphere. It looked like a large space station, enormous enough to be classified as a metal moon.

It charged eight separate lasers that collided in the middle of a concave disk, outlining a cone. As they merged, a huge green laser hotter than the explosion of the lunar fusion reactor, struck Gummy and deflected off its predestined path. Instead, it vaporized a desert world in another uninhabited system.

Alderaan was thankful.

Gummy grew warmer, but not warm enough to fully satisfy the pestering cold from within.

Thinking of another time and place, looking evermore for a hotter event, left the presence of the green laser, allowing it to straighten once again and hit its original target.

Alderaan was no longer thankful.

Gummy found himself back on Earth, but in a different universe than he was in before.

A bolt of lightning lit up the dense forest around him. It seemed to have struck a large purple man. A purple man Gummy knew all too well. He watched as a rotating ax struck Thanos' chest cavity, not without attempting to repel it with the golden gauntlet, complete with universal stones.

Thanos groaned in pain while an electric viking pushed the ax deeper into his body. Gummy waited for his opportunity to make his move.

"Y— You— You shoulda. . ." Thanos mumbled through the pain, "You. . . You should have gone for the head."

Now was Gummy's time to interject, "I could not agree more."

Thanos, upon recognizing such a voice, jolted his head in the direction of Gummy.

The viking looked confused at what Thanos suddenly reacted to. Upon looking in the same direction, he to saw a small green gator.

"You!" Thanos roared in slight surprise. "I thought I had found a universe that you did not occupy."

"You know full well that is not possible. I am everywhere even if nowhere. No matter how many times you reset time or use the space stone."

The Norse god took this distraction and removed his ax from Thanos to strike again — to the head this time.

Simultaneously, Thanos raised his gloved hand to snap before anything else could happen, but Gummy knew. Quickly, Gummy propelled his lizard tongue outwards and wrapped around the snapping fingers, seizing the snap. With the other hand, Thanos forcibly grabbed the Stormbreaker ax and struck the Norse man with it, sending him back to Wakanda.

Gummy let go of the glove, retracting his tongue quickly. He and Thanos remain at a stand-off, looking at one another.

"You would have lost anyway, Thanos." Gummy stated as fact, before the fact. "This universe is 'the one' where you fail. So this little interjection ultimately changes nothing for your ending and thus does not matter if it happens sooner."

"So I win all other universes."

"You can believe that, but do those realities really exist? Does it exist as a path not taken, if it exists at all? Or is it a figment of your imagination as a simple possibility of what could have been? Who is to say that time is truly only linear as one experiences it or if it is truly a forever-expanding root system where all avenues are taken, but not experienced by one entity alone? To you, you have lost everything, and you can not say that any other conclusion exists."

"We could rule the corrected universe together, you and I. You, educate the masses with knowledge unknown to most, if not all, while I make sure the cosmos remains balanced and pure. Together, we could truly make the best universe."

"The only thing that could make this universe balanced and pure, is me curing this cursed shivering. Of course, first I must vanquish you, again."

"Again? So you have been here before and failed before."

"I have not, but you have every time. I thought since our last conversation-turned-argument that maybe you would have changed, or at least lessened your radical ways. Though it seems your philosophy has only become more polarized. To rule a "perfect" universe under fear by first slicing its population in half? Pitiful, only those who know they are weak on the inside, resort to fearmongering."

"You presented a philosophy that conflicted with what should be my reality. We differed too much then, and now we have only grown farther apart. It is a shame all of our intellectual conversations of the past we shared are now figments of the past, and weapons of the present. Since we know each other, we know what the other will do to get their way."

"You believe you know so much, even everything, but yet you do not know that you know very little."

Thanos, knowing Gummy, and having had enough of this unchanging banter, lifted up his gilded glove and snapped.

. . . Nothing happened.

Gummy resumed mentally talking to Thanos. "You think I am a fool? After our interactions here and past, I thought you would know better. I suppose it was clear when you showed resistance in the first place. It was always futile."

All of the infinity stones on the glove disappeared in front of Thanos while Gummy's mouth glowed red with the reality stone.

Done in the most smooth and precise way possible, Gummy continued the plan to rid Thanos of the glove.

Using the space stone, Gummy opened a portal next to him that connected to a portal behind Thanos. He threw the power stone through it and temporarily stunned Thanos as it began to eat at him. Then Gummy threw himself through the portal with the mind stone in his claw.

Quicker than anticipated, Thanos grabbed the power stone and reapplied it to the glove. In a quick reaction, Gummy swapped the mind stone with the space stone in his mouth and safely teleported farther away.

Thanos pointed while activating the infinity gauntlet with the power stone charged. Gummy dodged numerous purple blasts from the end of Thanos' finger, but he was getting closer to a hit each time.

Suddenly, it hit him. Not the laser, but an idea. Gummy remembered the first universe he went to and realized what the ring he picked up was. This changed how fast the outcome of the future would become present.

Gummy equipped the ring on his tail, becoming invisible to Thanos, but not without activating the reality stone to create hundreds of fake Gummys around him. The real Gummy got to Thanos and used the mind stone, placing him under his control. . . mostly.

Thanos had a strong mind and will so the stone would not last long forcing Gummy to act quickly.

He made the hundreds of Gummys wrap their tongue around the gauntlet and pull. It was hard due to Thanos' strong mental presence in the moment, despite the mind stone. Gummy's solution was to activate the time stone and cast a time bubble around his head to slow down Thanos' progress at overpowering the mind stone.

The glove soon slipped off, allowing Gummy to put it on himself. The gauntlet fitted itself around his hand while Gummy spat the infinity stones back onto the glove.

As to get the ultimate last laugh, Gummy had more plans up his non-existent sleeves.

Gummy used the reality stone to simulate that Thanos was still wearing a fully-gemmed gauntlet. Then used the time stone to reset time back to when Gummy first appeared.

Time resumed.

"Y— You— You shoulda. . ." Thanos mumbled through the pain, "You. . . You should have gone for the head."

Thanos raised his gloved hand to snap and. . . failed. Even the viking was a little shocked.

The fake projected glove slowly disappeared from Thano's hand.

"Then I won't miss this time," the Norse man rebutted, taking this mysterious chance to take him out.

Having succeeded and taken what he required, Gummy removed the One Ring from his tail and tore a hole in the air to travel to a different universe. He didn't want to alter this universe further.

Entering a new and fresh universe, with that new universe smell, Gummy had a final and ultimate plan to get more than warm: hot.

Remembering that the heat from the lunar fusion base meltdown and the Death Star's laser weapon was slightly sufficient, he needed a way to make multiples of them strike at the same time.

Thus, Gummy moved onto a planetary body void of life and summoned an exact copy of the lunar fusion base with the reality stone. . . and then a few hundred more around the area. Then, he summoned twenty exact copies of the Death Star, right before firing its superlasers, scattered in space with a direct line of sight.

At the exact moment, two hundred thousand megatons of TNT and 7,559,540.33 degrees of superlaser struck Gummy.

He was warmed.

The shivering stopped.

Gummy thought victory was finally his until the lasers stopped firing, and the fusion explosions dissipated. Once they were gone, he became cold once again. So he activated the time stone and reset it back before they went off.

He did this again, and again, and again until he just made it a constant time loop.

Now he was forever warm, free of the curse of shivering.

"This is not right. . ." Gummy said to himself. "I could live like this for the rest of time, but. . . Something inside me demands I do not. That I must return to Equestria once this is resolved. I must try harder."

"I do notice that this method only warms my exterior, leaving my interior in the same cold that creates these shivers. I theorize, that to combat this, I must break the space-time continuum and shatter the quantum realm."

Gummy broke the time loop and reversed time before he summoned the lunar bases.

The reality stone lit up and created a second time stone. With one time stone, Gummy set it to move forward. The second time stone was tasked to move backward. Time suddenly stopped, but was still moving to both the future and past simultaneously. Gummy then placed the power stone in between the two time stones, and connected them. The purple gem ate away at the green, forever keeping time in a corrupted equilibrium. The last thing holding everything together was the space stone. He put it in his mouth, and chomped down on it, breaking it into many pieces.

The universe began to red and blue-shift at the same time, ripping colors apart. Matter and mass of such became relative instead of constant. Everything lost its original shape and time, going backward and forward, ripping everything apart into duplicates. One duplicate advanced normally into the future, and the other duplicate drifted into the past.

Finally, as the final move, Gummy ripped open hundreds of holes in the fabric of space-time, permitting other universes and dimensions to bleed into this one. Having merged plenty of realities, universes, and dimensions, Gummy shattered the reality stone with his gums.

In physics, a constant law rules over everything, that all mass and energy must equal all mass and energy before and after any reaction in any singular universe. Gummy had broken this precious law, creating explosions more severe that even all the heat of every star in a universe combined was but a fraction of the heat being expelled during this merging of everything.

This was the heat-death of the multiverse, and it was still. Not. Satisfactory.

A Touch of Pinkie

"Not just the heat-death of a universe, but not even the heat-death of the multiverse can cure my illness!"

For the first time in eons, Gummy felt helpless and lost. Emotions never felt before, and he never got emotional beyond the brilliance of the seemingly endless boundaries of philosophy.

He recalled his time on Kintimparion 7, ⟟⎎ ⊬⍜⎍ ⎎⍜⎍⋏⎅ ⏁⊑⟟⌇, ☌⍜⍜⎅ ⟊⍜⏚, and Earth. Never had he dealt with this shivering before, nor had to face emotions. Something about Equestria had altered him for the worst: to act illogically and irrationally. Gummy had just destroyed hundreds of realities in a colossal cosmic heat-death way before its time.

"I must reset."

Gummy proceeded to take off the gauntlet, then devour his tail and consume himself out of this existence.

Immediately he loaded into an auto-save of where and when he had previously left, the oven.

He just lay there, shivering. Contemplating why every effort, no matter how grossly and exponentially intense they got, never worked. Recalling the last few hours, he proposed two conclusions for himself. That he is approaching death or the cold in cold-hearted is now becoming a physical reality more than a figurative one. The latter was more believable to him as he knew he was a cold, most often emotionless, and logically inclined philosopher.

For another half-hour, just like accepting the inevitability of the death of all things, he accepted that he might shiver for the rest of his life. Having tried every method possible to warm the self, it was truly inescapable. Perhaps it was the curse of every great being, to possess or develop some sort of unfortunate downfall.

Then, the front door swung open, and hopped in Pinkie, returning from her day out.

"I need to bake a day-after-a-fun-hang-out-day pie for Rainbow! I am sure she will love it tomorrow."

She walked to the oven to preheat it and found it was already on. Curiously, she opened the oven door and discovered Gummy.

"Gummy! What are you doing in there?"

Gummy blinked asynchronously at her and licked his left eye.

"Awwww, did you know today was going to be a blast and knew I was going to make a day-after-a-fun-hang-out-day pie? How sweet of you. You know me so well."

Pinkie nuzzled Gummy and set him down on the counter, then proceeded to gather the necessary ingredients.

Something had happened between hearing Pinkie return home and the recent nuzzling. The chill that lived deep within him, the constant shivering he had been enduring, began to dissipate. A warm feeling began in his chest, then radiated outward throughout the rest of his body. He felt. . . no, it couldn't be.

"What is this? All of a sudden my chilly plague is cured? It could not have conceivably been remaining in the oven for an extended duration of time."

He looked at Pinkie smile and hum to herself as she combined flour and sugar into a mixing bowl. The tune was definitely not from a show that lasted nine seasons and starred equine characters. Nonetheless, it filled him with, non-voidedness. Gummy did not know how to process it. Was this the warmth he was searching for all along? Warmth from... emotions? Gummy nearly got sick from the thought of becoming emotional. Though somehow, it was inevitable that Pinkie Pie made him feel. . . happy and comforted. Most importantly, and hesitant to admit, he felt loved and liked it.

Never had he considered that during most of this philosophical thinking and ethical pondering, he was in the presence of Pinkie. For all this time, he took this partnership with her for granted. Choosing her to live with due to her universe-breaking capabilities was the start. For it to evolve to this stage was unexpected.

Gummy remembered that he still had the ring with him. He made his usual soft gurgle-clicking noise to get Pinkie's attention.

When Pinkie looked over, Gummy stuck out his tongue with the ring resting around it, offering Pinkie the ring that represented his imperfection, as a symbol of renewal. Not to mention the ring that allowed him to easily accelerate the heat-death of the multiverse, but we don't talk about that anymore.

Pinkie squeaked, "Aw! Thank you Gummy! It's so precious! Come help me bake."

Gummy agreed and bit his way to cling to her tail. This is how he liked to share time with Pinkie, by her tail or ear.

Though the gesture of the ring was symbolic to him, to Pinkie, it was a sweet golden ring with special powers. The ring morphed to become bracelet sized to fit around her foreleg because now, Pinkie Pie has the One Ring, the One Ring to rule them all.

For days afterward, Gummy contemplated an alternative solution he could have taken while resting next to Pinkie.

"In retrospect, I wonder if a mere cup of hot cocoa would have remedied my internal shivers all the same. Never did I try something internal the entire time. I suppose it will never be known, but yet, will be known due to an alternative me likely already done or doing or will be doing so. Good luck to me where ever and whenever I am. I do, however, prefer this ending to a story."

A Third Planet from a Star

Gummy found himself next to a body of water riddled with wooden boats and just a few metal ones that spat black smoke into the air. Behind him was a bustling metropolis, for its time, full of noise and bipedal humanoids. The buildings remain low to the ground compared to Canterlot and Twilight’s Castle. These inferior buildings lack beauty and design, they were simply… rectangular.

This planet was his home before Equestria, but not during the time he found himself. He spent his time with Greek and Chinese philosophers, to observe how ancient topics originated and how they were still a work-in-progress for the future. Wether it is to see how those ideas evolved or how the masses of the future never widely followed them. It is also where he learned that the native sapient species here called this planetary body, “dirt”, or Earth. Not to mention having had a little fun during the years of the Roman and Chinese Empires.

This time was different, he had never seen this planet evolve to this technological point. There were ironclads in the water, factories scattered across the urban area, and carriages that had stallions transport humans across town, just like in Manehattan; though they were not the same as stallions in Equestria.

Gummy put together a rather diabolical plan, but one that might finally cure this shaking curse. The bigger the heat source, the better, it seemed logical.

Something less logical was occurring at the same time. Gummy was becoming more emotional and less rational, all because of this indestructible internal shaking. One major influence leading him deeper into emotions was knowing solving this biological reaction was a waste of time. Gummy hated to waste time, but he knew not solving it would be a greater inconvenience, forcing his thoughts to be interrupted and inefficient.

Lamps along the streets lit up as the sun set under the horizon while Gummy traversed the area. He came across a barn facility once he crossed a bridge. A sign read "O'Leary Residence. 137 DeKoven Street" and that the building was closed, but yet lights were on in the adjacent shed.

Gummy phased through the door using simple quantum physics to manipulate the atoms of both himself and the door. Inside, he witnessed four gentlemen playing an illegal card game in the light of a gas lantern.

"Louis M. Cohn," Gummy mentally called out.

Louis M. Cohn worked for the O'Leary family and ran an inside gambling operation, which the other gentlemen were here for.

Upon Louis's name being spoken in a voice that was not his own in his head, he jolted upwards from his cards. "Did one of you just say my name?"

"Nope," one of the other men said.

"Get outta here," Louis demanded at them. "I think we're getting busted."

"Ya sure?" another man asked.

Louis slowly got up from the seat and whispered, "Yea! Now scram!"

The other three men put down their cards, took their money, and left out of the back door.

Gummy walked forward a little bit toward Louis and looked at him. Louis eventually saw the small gator and thought it was adorable.

"Oh, it was just you little fella?" he said relieved. "I thought you were a blue shirt going to bust me."

Louis knelt down before the gator and extended his hand to initiate friendly relations. Gummy saw the gas lantern on the table and formed an idea.

Gummy bit his hand and clung on as tight as the bond between two atoms. The empty space where teeth would have been acted like a suction cup on the man's skin. Louis jumped backward as the gator was stuck on his hand, attempting to shake Gummy off.

To scare the human more, Gummy mentally spoke to him again. "Run."

Louis tripped over the table and toppled over with the cards and gas lantern. Gummy let go afterward and allowed the man to run for his life, then let loose a small smile.

"I wonder if this will be warm enough. With plenty of lumber around me, this should produce a large enough fire to be satisfactory." He watched as the broken gas lantern set fire to the floor below and spread. The fire went under Gummy, who stayed in place hoping to get warm by it or as it grew around him. Eventually, the fire got to the walls, then the roof.

To set fire to the building was not his goal, it was a fraction of it. His plan was to create a conflagration in hopes of finally becoming warm. The fire ate at the shed, then the house next to it, then the neighborhood, block, blocks, and then the district.

The entire time, Gummy was shifting around to the hottest spot while a portion of this city encompassing him was burning. Never did the shiver dissipate. "Oh well," he thought to himself, "I suppose this city will learn not to construct buildings fully made of wood from now on. You are welcome, Chicago."

"What other heat disaster occurred that I can blend into. . ." Gummy thought about his time living on Earth during the days of war and enlightenment; when Earth was his home for a thousand years from 524BC to 476AD. He remembered a volcanic catastrophe that occurred during his stay in 79AD.

He licked his claw with a time and destination in mind and ripped open the air once again, and stepped through.

He appeared atop Mount Vesuvius a few minutes before he remembered the eruption taking place.

"How curious," he pondered to himself. He saw no smoke rising from the volcanic mountain.

Gummy saw no sign of activity when he looked over the edge, just rock. So he laid down and waited an hour. Not even a tremble was made from the ground during his wait. Then, the thought came to him. What if he was the one to cause the eruption in the first place due to this annoying biological reaction to the cold.

He had no time to sit and ponder that his younger self was a few hundred miles away in the city of Rome. Just hours from hearing about the explosion that ended Pompeii. What people will think was a natural disaster.

Gummy had to warm himself up, he must cause the explosion and enter the magma to heat up. He was desperate.

Gummy licked his tail and jumped in tail-first. It acted as a diamond-tipped drill as it pierced the ground like it were melted butter. The impact caused a massive explosion that released tons of gas and pressure from the main vent. Magma deep from below the crust followed the huge cloud of smoke.

He floated in the hot lava, waiting to get warm. It was hotter than the volcano in the dragon lands of Equus, but it still failed to get warm him at all.

"I need something hotter," he said while shivering once again, getting more desperate.

Upon swimming back to the surface, he stood on top of the liquid lava as if it were solid.

Slicing the air one more time, he entered.

Cold tundra and loads of snow surrounded him with no life in sight as he found himself in a valley in between mountains.

A plane flew above him and to the left, it headed right. Gummy licked himself all over to protect from something. It was like he knew what was about to happen, without actually knowing at all. Gummy had seen everything and knew everything, but that did not mean he experienced it firsthand. He was a time-traveling quantum multi-dimensional multiversal biological organism. He had experienced everything and nothing at the same time and no time at all. Confusing? Good. Gummy is not meant to be completely understood.

The plane crossed paths with him vertically, and he waited.

Knowing and not knowing, he counted down to the exact moment the event would occur.

"3. . . 2. . . —" Gummy licked his eyes for the incoming bright light "—1. . . "

The world immediately disappeared from sight as a huge flash replaced it. The world shook as a fireball quickly followed and spread across the valley in nanoseconds.

Gummy embraced it as he felt a little warmth, but not enough to cure this shivering curse.

Once the thermonuclear blast dissipated, a large crater was present, and all snow had disappeared, even off the peaks of the high-top mountains.

"This species only has one instance involving something hotter than this detonation over Novaya Zemlya; the fusion reactor meltdown of 2133 on the lunar surface. This nuclear device only got to one hundred million kelvin, still hotter than the center of the hottest star in the universe, but not as hot as a fusion detonation of four hundred million kelvin."

He created another tear in space-time and entered it.

Inside a lunar fusion reactor, alarms were blaring their warnings as the red-lit facility evacuated. Gummy was next to the solution to the problem — the coolant system override — but it was not meant to be stopped, in this universe's reality, it was mandatory that it detonated.

So he sat there, waiting out the time until it exploded. His protection from the Soviet thermonuclear bomb was still active, so no licking was required.

Similar to the Tsar Bomba test, but with more severity, the lunar base disappeared from sight, replaced by white nothingness full of hellfire. Gummy finally felt some warmth, after all this time. The heat was noticeable, and his shivering paused for only a moment. He fell as the base and ground below him blew out to form a massive crater.

"The power of twenty thousand suns, and still only satisfied my chills for a second. I must leave this universe and temporarily journey to others. Perhaps they will have the means to produce heat beyond this."

Ripping a new tear in space-time, he entered it.