The Blank Pony

The sun was just starting to come up, and none of the ponies in the Brighthouse had come down for breakfast yet. Save Izzy, who had purposefully woken up as early as possible. She had gone to her craft room and sat down at her craft table, pouring out several lines of glitter on its surface.

She stared at it, then bent down and snorted it.

“Oh yeah,” she moaned. “That’s the stuff...”

Her door slammed open and she sat up straight, her eyes wide and glitter still on her nose.

“I’M NOT ADDICTED I JUST LIKE THE SMELL!”

“Izzy!”

“Oh hi Zipp! Hi. High. That’s not a pun, I’m just saying hello. Totally not a pun.”

Zipp groaned, holding her phone to her ear. “Hey, do you have any extra wire?”

“Braided solid-strand floral bare red green yellow pink charteuse copper steel stainless steel nickle plated surgical-grade new or used?”

“I don’t know, braided copper?”

“Sure.” Izzy produced the wire and levitated it to Zipp, who took it.

“Thanks, Izzy.”

Zipp left the room, coiling the wire around her free hoof as she listened to the phone.

“Mom. MOM. Slow down. Talk into the phone.” Zipp groaned, floating across the room as she held her phone to her ear. “Are you...wait, speak into the other end! No, the other end! Annnnnd now you just sent a text...” She groaned. “Mom, I know you know how to—Mom, there is no operator, stop pressing buttons—MOM! Just give the phone to somepony! Anypony!”

Her pleading appeared to work—until a rapid chain of unintelligible babbling came through the cell phone. For a moment, Zipp believed her mother had given the phone to Cloudpuff. Only for her to quickly realize that she had in fact given it to a far less intelligible source.

“Thunder—Thunder! I can’t understand a thing you’re saying! Ship, mountain—It’s pronounced ‘butte’, if you’ve been saying it like that the whole—never mind, get Zoom. GET ZOOM, Thunder. Yes I know she’s there, she’s always there!” A pause. “No, you can ask her yourself.” Another pause, then a voice on the other line. “Uh-huh. Sure. Makes sense. Thanks, Zoom.”

Zipp hung up the phone.

“Yup,” she said. “It’s aliens.”

Pipp looked up from the couch she was sitting on, attempting to organize her contact list. “Yeah. That tracks. Are Thunder and Zoom finally ever going to get over the whole ‘oh look at us we’re coworkers’ thing and finally get down to business, though?”

“I think the crashed alien ship is more important.”

“Says you.”

“Zoom says they found it up in High Butte—”

“Heh heh butte,” said Izzy, creeping across the floor toward an unattended muffin Pipp had left on the coffee table.

Zipp groaned. “Turns out that thing we saw? It’s a whole thing. Some kind of...I don’t know, Zoom didn’t really know how to describe it. And none of the guards are willing to go back up.”

“Really?” Pipp sat up. “You know, I’ve been meaning to expand my demographic. I’d really like to get some pictures. You know, crashed spaceship and all? My views would go through the roof...” She sighed. “If only my ding-dang phone would work.”

“Pipp, come on, language!” Zipp groaned. She shook her head. “Do you want to know the weird thing?”

“As if a giant weird space craft landing in Zephyr Heights isn’t weird enough?”

“Zoom said there was a survivor.”

Pipp stood up suddenly. “There is? Is he hot?”

“Does he have tentacles?” asked Izzy. “Asking for a friend.” She pointed at Pipp and whispered. “It’s her...”

“Zoom wasn’t clear and Thunder is apparently, I don’t know, broken or something. Something about 3D printing and weird magic and a brain in a jar? I don’t know. But I think ‘he’ is a ‘she’. And she fought an entire squadron of pegaguards and escaped.

“I think I know to where,” said Misty, suddenly inches from Zipp’s shoulder.

Zipp screamed an embarrassingly girlish scream and jumped. “MISTY! Where did you come from?!”

Misty tilted her head. “Well, considering my dad is Alphabittle, he and my mom must have—”

“Let me just stop you right there,” said Pipp, holding up a hoof. Then she slowly sighed. “Aaannnnd I just imagined something I can’t unimaginable. Thanks, Misty.”

“Sorry.”

Izzy’s head poked up from above the table, covered in muffin crumbs and choking down the muffin wrapper. “It gets worse if you replace Izzy’s mom with your mom. Try imagining that one.”

“GAHK!” cried Pipp, as Zipp held back a wave of nausea. “IZZY, NO!”

“Or, hey, do you ever wonder if Misty’s mom is actually Opaline? Alphabittle and—”

Pipp grabbed Izzy’s muzzle and forced it closed. “Izzy. STOP. I...” She whimpered. “And there it goes...I imagined it...” She sighed. “I guess I don’t have to eat today. Or ever again.”

Zipp continued to silently retch, but eventually regained her composure.

“Sorry, Misty, it’s just, your dad is...”

“Kind of hot, maybe?” suggested Izzy, just as Pipp let her go.

“Yeah I know,” admitted Misty. “And your mom is really pretty too. I also don’t think Opaline actually looks that bad either. Even though she’s super evil. And very, very old. Which is what I needed to mention.”

“Don’t tell me Opaline is in on this too now?”

"Don't tell me Opaline is flirting with our mom..."

“Not that I know of to the second question. Not exactly to the first. But she did just get a new employee. And now that you mention it, her description sounds pretty consistent with being from a vast empire of space-ponies.”

“My question still stands,” said Pipp. “Are they hot?”

Misty shook her head. “No, she’s very sick. Something went wrong when she landed. Did your friend say what the pony looked like? The one who got out of that ship?”

“They didn’t get a good look. It was dark. But...very pale. And Thunder said somehow… ‘like an earth-pony but not’?”

Misty nodded knowingly. “Yeah. That’s her. Exactly her. Her name is Blank. She’s working for Opaline now. Sort of.”

“How do you ‘sort of’ work for the most evil villain in all of Equestria?”

“I do it every day.” Misty sighed. “I don’t think she’s evil, Blank I mean, just...I don’t know. She’s panicked. That’s what I came here to tell you. To warn you.”

“That she’s going to help Opaline steal our magic?”

“I don’t think she even cares about Opaline’s plans. She said something about something else. Based on her description—which wasn’t easy to understand, she talks in a weird way, although she’s getting better—their vehicles cross space through a quasi-borderline tesserect across the interchange between superimposed realities.”

“Oh...kay?” asked Zipp.

“Oh! Like how you teleport!” suggested Izzy.

“Wait,” said Pipp. “You can teleport? Since when?”

“Since a few weeks after I got my cutie mark? I don’t know, it’s actually really easy once you learn not to hit things or to stare at the void too long. And get over the existential questions about whether I'm actually me or an exact copy. That's a fun one to sit and panic about. But that’s not important. What is important is that Blank thinks something followed her through.”

“What kind of thing?” asked Pipp. She paused, her face scrunching. “And is this hypothetical monstrous being-out-of the void—”

“Pipp, no...” groaned Zipp.

“What?!”

“She seems to think it’s extremely dangerous,” said Misty, her tone becoming serious. “And that it might try to hurt ponies...or worse.”

“What do you mean ‘or worse’?”

Their conversation was interrupted by the door to the Brighthouse being flung open—and then promptly closed as Hitch collapsed breathlessly to the floor on the other side. Sparky, being confused, jumped off and immediately went to do something else.

“Hitch,” said Izzy. “What’s wrong?” Her eyes narrowed. “Have you been in my glitter?"

Hitch stood up, shaking and wide-eyed, his mane slightly disheveled.

“I—I almost got boned!” he gasped.

Zipp held up a hoof. “As long as it’s not my mom or my sister, I don’t want to know.”

Pipp looked up from her phone. “Um, exCUSE you, Zipp. You don’t own me. I do what I want.” She turned to Hitch. “Although leading with ‘almost’ is kind of pathetic.”

Hitch shook his head, groaning and trying to stand. “The...the Bonestealer...it washed up on...and they poked it with a stick, and I touched it, and...and...and...” He collapsed, and at this point his friends could tell that something was certainly wrong. He was genuinely and truly afraid, and the time for jokes had passed.

“Hitch, Hitch, it’s okay,” said Zipp, putting her hoof on his shoulder. “You’re okay.”

“Yeah,” said Izzy, crawling out from under the coffee table. “And it’s the middle of the day. Nothing scary happens when the sun’s out. It’s a rule, I think.”

“Take all the time you need,” said Pipp.

Hitch took several deep breaths. “Sorry,” he said.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” insisted Pipp. “Heck, if I knew that story would have been too much for you I never would have told it.”

Hitch shook his head and Zipp and Izzy helped him stand up. “It wasn’t your story. I saw it. It looks like...I don’t know, exactly. Kind of like a pony but taller. It’s white and wearing...well, not exactly wearing...something blue-gray. And it...doesn’t have a face.”

Fear became apparent on the faces of all present.

“That sounds consistent with what Blank said,” admitted Misty. “She said it has to take on a form to keep existing here. Until it gets powerful enough to exist on its own.”

“Powerful?” Hitch gulped. “Also, who’s ‘Blank’?”

“I’ll explain later. You said you saw it in town?”

Hitch nodded. “Yeah. It came to my house last night. It knocked on the door and...I think it asked me to let it in.”

“Let it in?”

“Ah.” Izzy nodded knowingly. “We’re dealing with vampire rules. Hold on, I’ve got something for that.” She trotted off to her craft room.

Hitch shivered. “When it spoke...it did it in Seashell’s voice.”

Zipp frowned. “Seashell? The little—”

“My Pippsqueak Seashell?!” cried Pipp, grabbing Hitch by the straps of his saddlebags. “My fan is in danger?! We need to act, NOW! I cannot AFFORD TO LOSE MY MOST ADORABLE SUBSCRIBERS!”

“And you said it’s in town?” asked Zipp, firmly.

Hitch nodded. “I didn’t have time to look. I had to get Sparky here, to the Brighthouse. It’s safe here. And I...I needed your help. All of your help.”

“You already have it. You and me will take the east side, up near the old factory—Pipp and Izzy will take west and by the beaches. Misty and Sunny can cover downtown.” Zipp stopped. “Actually...where is she? Sunny, I mean?”

It did not take them long to find Sunny. She was sitting in, of all places, the sitting room—and staring blankly forward from the center of the couch. Looking thousands upon thousands of yards past the skull centered in the middle of the table before her. She had turned it so that it faced her—and its blank, skeletal eyes seemed to be staring back.

Pipp approached her, feeling her phone vibrate and hiss with static as if in pain when it was brought in proximity to the artifact resting on the table. She was able to see that, for some reason, Sunny had placed a lace doily under it.

“Sunny?”

Sunny did not move, but she did not hesitate. “She looked...so sad...”

“Sunny!”

Sunny looked up. She blinked, and her eyes partially restored their focus. Only then did Pipp realize just how tired her friend looked.

“Sunny, you look ter—I mean, tired.”

“I didn’t sleep so good,” admitted Sunny. “I had...dreams. Weird ones.” She turned back to the skull. “Visions, maybe. I don’t know.”

“We need to get into town right now. There’s—”

“I heard you.” She stood up. “I’ll be there in a second, let me just find my skates...”

“No. You need to stay here.”

Sunny stared at her, then slowly replied. “But I’m the fastest on the ground. I heard Zipp—”

“Zipp gets very focused and forgets logistics. Sparky needs to stay here. And you’re in no condition to go out like this. Especially if Hitch isn’t crazy.”

“I’m not crazy!” cried Hitch from another room.

Pipp sighed. “If you don’t mind dragon-sitting, we can trade off the shift if we need to. And I’ll have my phone on me if we need to get you over fast. Alright?”

“But...I can’t let Misty go alone.”

“It’s fine,” said Misty. “I’m going to go back to Opaline’s castle.”

“To talk to Blank?” asked Pipp. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Misty shook her head. “I don’t know because I don’t know how loyal she is to Opaline. But at the very least I can try to get more information out of her. About how to, I don’t know, catch it. Or stop it. Or what it even is.” She paused. “Or I can stop Opaline from getting it first.”

Pipp nodded. “Just be careful. Sunny, are you okay with that?”

Sunny was back to staring at the skull. “What? Oh. Sure.”

Pipp accepted this, and trotted off to join her friends. Hitch was waiting just outside the door.

“That dang thing creeps me out,” she said, shivering. She turned to Hitch. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Now that I know that Sparky’s safe...I’ll be able to do some real sheriffing.” They started walking together. “Oh! Also, thank you.”

“For what?” asked Pipp, confused.

“For warning me last night. The text you sent.”

Pipp frowned. “I didn’t send you a text. Huh. Must have been a flank-dial. Except my phone hasn’t been working lately.”

Hitch seemed confused. “Oh. That’s weird.”

“We can’t worry about it now,” said Zipp, descending from the upper reaches of the Brighthouse with her visor and scientific equipment. “How many martial arts do you know?”

“The standard non-lethal sheriff training. So, hugs.”

“Hugs are not a martial art.”

“But they can certainly make a pony feel better. What about you?”

“I could pin you down in less than a second in a way you wouldn’t be able to get up from.” Zipp flexed her thin forelegs. “I’m ready! Nobody’s taking my bones!”

“For the last time,” groaned Pipp, “nopony’s stealing bones! Except maybe Izzy...she’s at least thinking about it...”

“Guilty as charged,” admitted Izzy, opening the door for them. They departed, leaving Sunny alone. Misty had already teleported somewhere else, silently departing through a well-traveled network of shadows.

Sunny found herself alone. Except, for some reason, she did not feel alone. She did not feel alone at all.