The Great Multiverse Theory: Repairs and Recordings

Everybody clean up

Shtik sat in front of the camera, his fingers steepled in front of him. A few minutes passed before he opened his mouth.

“Alright, to tell the truth, the next part isn’t very interesting. You probably often enjoy epic tales, of heroes overcoming great obstacles, or just people struggling with day to day life with a funny twist. If I tried to make my day be full of that much awesome, the universe would’ve blown up several times by now, and not from the coolness factor.”

*Shrug* “I’m not really good at direct combat. I already have a few centuries of experience under my belt, and also an apprenticeship under those who have been around for a several millennia. There are many around for several millions, even billions of years. Because of this, we have a strict, zero-tolerance policy.” He leaned forward slightly. “If there is any doubt, anything that you may not have seen before, you get someone else to have a second opinion. With all the ones around that have pretty much seen everything, us repairmen do not tolerate any risks. If something strange happens, you have to be pretty darn sure you can take care of the new variable. Pride and ego have no place here. In fact, with what I often get into, I sometimes wonder why I haven’t been executed or something, especially with my Celestia problem.”

He turned to a chalkboard, with a somewhat crude map of the courtyard. “Our resources have shown us that there is a piece of a clone of the Traveler’s essence within one of the rooms within the castle. Preliminary tests have shown that said essence is clinging tightly to the universe, and any ranged attack harmlessly veers off to the side as if there’s a giant anti-gravity field. Warp space is also a bit unstable there, so we can’t just teleport right beside it. The essence also has a defensive aura around it, and when it detects one of my kind in its vicinity, will start corrupting nearby entities to fight back, like white blood cells.

“Our solution? This...”

A slight shimmer formed to the courtyard of the castle. A moment later, five shadowed beings landed, cracking the stone. Some had wings, some had claws, some had no discernable limbs, and some had more limbs than most. One of them wore a fishing hat, billowing with the same energy as the others beside him.

He grinned, raising a his S-class bullpup Carbine. “Let’s go. Just like old times.”

“Ha. I remember,” A large blob rumbled. “Didn’t you almost die?”

The hatted one laughed. “And what do you think’s gonna happen this time? Did you even pay attention?”

As the group bantered, the ponies in the courtyard began noticing their presence, black smoke swirling out of the ground and around their forms. Their bodies began to flicker, as if a bad movie film started skipping.

“Stay ... awaaayyy...” The ponies growled in unison. A guard closest to their position took a step forward, only to have his head blown off by the hatted one’s rifle.

“Boop, headshot.”

“Heeeyyy...” complained a quadruped blob. “You just shot the people of my homeland. I was supposed to fire the first shot.” She held her gaze to the hatted one for a few seconds, before dissolving into laughter. “Bet I can get more than you.”

The hatted one grinned. “You’re on.” Then they looked up to find the others already gone. “Gah! Wait up!” He dashed forward, lobbing energy bombs to assist in the chaos causing, as a minigun and a missile launcher popped out of the equinoid’s back and started spewing death (or whatever it resembled) into the flickering creatures.

Hundreds of more black flickering ponies crawled out of doorways, behind walls and anything you could hide behind. A massive unicorn shot a blaze of energy towards them. The winged one stepped forward and slammed his wings down, altering not the projectile, but the space it traveled, looping once and smashing back towards its owner’s face. A massive laser from the massive dragon-head shaped blob ate out a column and smashed rubble against a score of charging ponies, and took out a mob of dive bombing pegasi.

A dark light stepped through the towers. A pitch black alicorn, wreathed in scorching flames  She looked down upon the group with hatred and contempt of their being. The hatted one froze, suddenly panicking over whether the others knew about his little situation with the one who probably is calling herself Solar Eclipse. And then a second alicorn mare, ringed in darkness and glowing with a blood red light stepped in beside her.

“Damn, two?” a large, insect like figure muttered while the hatted one sighed silently in relief. No one questioned him as two energy blasts hammered against the winged one’s hastily erected shield, managing to refract the energy into several of the shadows trying to jump them.

“Less gawking, more fighting” the hatted one muttered, trying to change the subject while, firing off another stream of bullets through several heads.

If you aren’t blind, you probably inferred who the guy with the hat was. The other guys who came down with me were my first contact with those of the Outside, and people I like to work with, mostly due to familiarity.

We had destroyed hundreds of shades within several minutes, but there seemed to be a never ending supply of them. My friends eventually were completely drained, and due to the sisters, unwilling to risk opening a portal. They became little figurines, which bounced around in my pocket. Me? I rarely ever used my own energy for something like this, I was never really efficient at it anyways.

*Slash*

“Hope you didn’t need that head, brother!” I cackled, bouncing around waving my katana through their ranks. I flipped out my dagger and jammed the hilts of the two blades together. Did I ever mention that my katana had defensive properties?

The sisters were off the balcony now, slowly stalking over to me. They fired another energy attack, and range, no less. They never learn. I simply crouched behind my blade, conducting their energies into the hilt. Immediately, the claws on the hilt of the dagger spring open, and fired a similar beam of energy, crackling with green from my supercharging, blowing out another group trying to flank me. Unfortunately, all this moving around still drained upon my meager power supply: my bandanna had a few centimeters left. Eh, not really a problem. I glanced casually at my watch. I grinned, spreading my hands into the sky.

“Come and get me, beeeyetch!!” I slammed my hands onto the ground, summoning a massive cannon made of earth and stone. It glowed and fired...several hundred thousand gallons of corn starch. I laughed as the shades were momentarily disoriented and blinded, even as my own body started to freeze up from insufficient energy running through them. “Cause I never really was your target.”

Several hours(?) earlier

Elma walked into the garage of The Loggerhead. Janitor was off doing some important, and since she had the smallest energy signature, this part of the mission would lay on her. She went to the row marked “Standard” and found rows upon rows of the same vehicle Shtik transported them several days ago. She frowned. Too boring. She turned around, looking for something else that she could use, and caught her eye upon another section of the wall, also lined with garages. Above them were signs marked “Classics.” Ooh. This sounds fun. She flipped up the gates.

A tired dude woke up from the ringing of his alarm, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He was about to go reach for his clothes when he heard a mysterious grinding noise outside. He trudged out the window and saw a DeLorean parked outside on the street. A lady wearing a black hoodie stood beside it, reading what appeared to be a glowing map. Huh. Oh well. He was about to turn away when he noticed that the back of the vehicle also had those jets, similar to those from Back to the Future, and antennae attached to corners. The lady stepped into the vehicle and revved the engine before peeling off the street in a cloud of smoke.

No way...she can’t be. This street isn’t long enough.

His eyes widened even more as the vents actually belched flames. A crackle of plasma sparked across its chassis, right before the vehicle burst into pure light and disappeared.

Year: A really long time ago

Wheels made of pseudo-rubber bounced across ashen rock. Something was starting work - excuse me, spoilers. Suffice to say, nothing was worried or caring about the time-and-space traveling vehicle bouncing along towards a specific set of coordinates. The clone definitely haven’t spawned yet, but the further she jumped back, the safer. Elma peered through the dusty windshield into the stormy skies.

Huh. The spire was already here. That makes navigating a lot easier. She pulled the computer on its crane-holder closer, tapping the screen to make sure it was on: this was on every vehicle to make teaching others easier. She upped the friction constant as she went up the side of the mountain, nearly going up a 45 degree slope.

“Let’s see, left a bit, around this hill...ah ha! Found it.” A little hologram appeared in the car’s HUD, pointing out the exact path she needed to take. The little LED display flickered as the time she was to jump to was received. “Perfect,” she said, grinning. She gunned the engine, a nuclear furnace going off in front of her behind sealed walls. Five hundred feet from the jump point, she pressed a button to eject the black rods and sent them back to the ship. No point in leaving any trace that someone from the Outside was jumping in.

Once she was sure the rods were safely out of the universe, she pulled back upon the lever for the time circuits and shot into the future.

Cornstarch. Cornstarch everywhere. It flowed between bushes, over statues, into the dirt, up the stairs, through cracks in the walls and doors, and probably places I rather not talk about. Most importantly, it was deemed such a nuisance that for a few seconds, flowed into a chamber that nothing was supposed to be able to enter so freely. Sparks of electricity jumped across - you know what? I’m not trying to impress anyone with my special effects, nor is safety for others at this particular moment in space time is nowhere within my list of concerns at the moment.

So, hypothetical sparks that would have been erupted from a section of cornstarch a few feet away from the statue as it darkened imperceptibly, right before a few thousand pounds of steel going at one-hundred and ninety six miles per hour popped into existence and connected with the statue. In fact, it was going at enough speed for the car to start splitting as the immovable object stood against the comparatively squishy vehicle.

And that also meant that for the purposes of me, the statue became temporarily part of the vehicle.

Flaming gasoline squirted out of crumbling fuel lines. The driver roared in defiance as glass and metal ripped apart besides her. She grabbed the lever for the time circuits in one hand and a steel hammer in the other. She smashed the Temporal Positioning System at the same time she powered it up. Electricity and plasma burst out of torn wires. The car nearly instantly blasted into the Time Vortex, but without a guidance system, it sent its targets in every which way.

I laughed triumphantly as I watched the core of the universe twist before me through my overused left eye. Without the statue supporting the existence of the shadow creatures, they lost the foundation of their reason to exist. When a tower of cards suddenly realizes that they are missing a floor, they collapse. Quite spectacularly if there’s enough of them. My enhanced vision showed the timeline rippling as a piece was removed, and quickly reverting to the “original” state, for a given definition of normal. I felt pretty good about myself while watching the world warp around me until I noticed a weight on my belt disappearing. My partners have been shoved out of the timeline as the universe was fixing itself. For some reason, I was not. With a quick eye scan, I saw why. I was coated in infinitesimally small particles of this universe, and being bogged down as if I was standing in a super thick swamp. Heck I could at least blast my way out of quicksand, but not this.

I could only stare in horror as the timeline’s ripple effect rushed toward me like a freight train.

What did being deconstructed piece by piece feel like while jammed against the metaphorical wall of the universe because you couldn’t breach it? Like being stuck between a thousands of knives and while being crushed by an invincible mattress. All sense of direction or time was blown away as I watched the arm in front of me burn away down to the bone. Previous battle scars, bad enough to tear my soul apart, got torn away into the vortex. Probably why my right arm disintegrated shortly after trying to maintain a shield of any kind. After the left half of my face, my left leg, chunks of my right knee, bits of my hip, my heart area, and my left shoulder melted away, I could really feel the burn. This wasn’t just signals sent from sensory organs. This was actively eating away at my soul, or what was left of it, anyways. There wasn’t anything protecting it anymore. I could do nothing as the universe went along “fixing” me but stare and my melting fingers through my tunneling vision

Bwoooa

My vision tunneled into a pinprick, then returned in full force, nearly blinding me. I blocked some of the glow with my hands ... wait, hands?

To my surprise, my body was whole again, though how long it took for it to regrow, I didn’t know. I looked around me carefully and noted that I was inside a container resembling the ones for cryo-sleep, and sitting in a mold of my body. I pulled on a latch, pushed the door open, and poked my head out.

I was in one of the many rooms of the Loggerhead. Watching over me was Elma, her bone wings coated in the black substance of the Outside, reclining on a folding chair. We seem to have a lot of those in this ship sometimes. “Wha-?” I asked, gesturing at the gunk.

“These?” she said, waving them. “I had to gather up the matter and stick it in your body manually. We couldn’t risk just sticking you in the atmosphere and exploding from all the wounds you accumulated. Took me a while to get the right amount. Heck, we had to replace Cubi’s shell.” I noted dimly that there was a charred box in the corner. “Took you a few days before ________your brain ________ woke ___ up.”

“Ah, I see. Thanks.”

“No prob. Part of the job, though we appreciate the sentiment.”

“How’d you guys get me out? I don’t remember anything after I got stuck in between the universe.”

She chuckled. “You forgot Janitor? You left him out here in case something went wrong. This was it. Here, let me show you.” She stood up, walked over, and hauled me out of the chamber. She helped support my weight as I stumbled along with my regrown, alien feeling legs. They felt ... dead.

We reached the garage/hangar before I could dwell much upon it. Parked near the airlock was a car that vaguely looked like a futuristic LeMans, though this one was heavily scarred from its trip. Massive twin rudders stood on the back, shielding two jets that looked like naval cannons pointed backwards. It had two pairs of steering wheels, and short treads on the rear. It was a lighter, speed based version of my tank conversion. She reached into the vehicle and pulled out a sheet of paper from the glove compartment, the ink somewhat tearing, and handed it to me.

The SPD-00 sped through the howling currents of the warping universe. It found Elma first, frozen in the epicenter of the retcon wave. It positioned its chassis to allow her body to fit inside the vehicle. Her body reformed with a pop, then a thud as her head impacted the floor. She was still dazed, and her body hung limply from her seat. The car sped off into the whirlwinds once more, its turbofans flaring. By luck, it found ShtikH. M. Conagher squeezed between invisible walls. his body melting away. Its jets roared, then made a spin as it neared, scooping up his body into the cabin. The car’s shell protected him from the clashing energies outside, and broke through the walls of this universe.

I looked up from the sheet. “Huh, so that’s how you guys got me out.” I nodded silently. “Thanks,” I said, after a moment.

She chuckled, patting him on his back. “What did you expect? That’s what we’re here for. Stop having such a low opinion of yourself.” She gazed seriously into his eyes. “We will always have your back.”

I held her gaze for a few seconds, then hugged her. She let me hold on to her for a minute, then pushed me away. “I’m sorry,” she said. She seemed conflicted, regretful. “but you don’t have much time. You need to return to your job as a Reaper. You were only one of the few who successfully completed the ritual.”

My eyes widened. “Cripes. Looks like I still don’t get to have that vacation.” Plates of metal grew out of my skin and covered me. “Back to the fray it is, then,” I sighed unhappily. I trudged to my armory. I pushed down on a lever and collected the blade that fell out like a straw dispenser: a katana and dagger fused end to end, which I draped over a shoulder. I picked up my custom revolver from a steel box and dropped it into a holster. I took one rotary machine gun away from its family. That went over another shoulder. I also collected the Spiral Cannon and my sniper rifle. A blast of black energy vented out of my armor’s joints and floated into the weapon’s barrels. Sparks of energy started dripping from their frames, dark dense gases bubbled out of the barrels like dirty dry ice.

I left my armory. Elma was waiting in the garage. Her abilities were better suited from ambushes, so she volunteered to be the heavy armor. She was coated in purple armor, brown ribs sprouting in various places. Her hair had thickened, resembling insects’ legs sprouting out of her head. Her eyes glowed a light indigo.

She was sitting in another one of my identical cars. When she saw me enter, she reached across the dashboard and flicked a switch. The front wheels slide into the center. The trunk narrowed and pointed up, sprouting a pair of rudders and elevators. Wings snapped out of the roof, swinging forward to pull out the engine. When they snapped into place, props shot out, and started to gain speed. A 100 mm cannon hung right next to the wing joint as miniguns grew in the empty engine space and moved backwards to right below the side windows. Within seconds, RCN-01 completed its transformation into the OSP-04, an Osprey. She flashed me a grin and a thumbs up from within.

Also within the garage was the robots I've constructed to assist me. There was TH-6, a thing-thing inspired robot with physics-gun manipulated limbs and an array of accurate automatic handguns and SMG’s. R-T, a somewhat tall robot with a tiny torso but massive lower arms and legs, had several cannons that he could summon from within. And lastly was IN-4, a 6 foot infiltrator with a 3-inch wide broadsword, a .4 caliber revolver, and a new addition, my gunstaff. We were going to stay Outside most of the time, so I modified the feed to just use the latent energy constantly around us.

Janitor wasn’t here, I soon found out that he was piloting the Loggerhead, moving energy around to focus more heavily on the weapons and thruster systems. He had shut down the automatic hallways, leaving only the armory, respawn chambers, and the bridge easily accessible.

I dual wielded the sniper rifle and my 8-shooter. TH-6 held up a pistol version of the P-90 (I called it the G-90) and a pistol that had the punch of a Desert Eagle and the fire rate of an Uzi. IN-4 chose to hold his sword and my gunstaff. R-T had a 20 mm cannon and a 8 mm heavy machine gun. All of their weapons billowed the same black smoke billowing in the downdraft of the OSP-04 hovering nearby. We sprinted out of the opening airlock, joining in the war that was already several days old.

“ATTACK!”

Bullets, lasers, and missiles flew into the Outside. My symbol, a stick figure within a circle flashed upon my shoulder. The youngest Reaper has joined the fight.