The Great Multiverse Theory: Repairs and Recordings

[2.1] Numb skulls

A kernel of popcorn arched through the air and lands neatly between a row of ivory pillars. Said ivory pillars promptly fell upon the poor kernel and crushed it into little itty-bitty pieces as a weak acid melts them. Elma stuffed her hoof into the bag and grabbed some more popcorn. Janitor stared awkwardly at her feasting.

“Doesn’t it creep you out in any way that that corn was grown from your back?” he asked.

“You know, technically Shtik does that all the time, but his body just so happens to be made of black matter instead cells, but same concept,” she shot back.

Janitor scrunched up his face. “Ew. I need brain bleach for that.” He pulled out a small white jug, poured out a measured cup, and downed it. His face briefly glazed over a few seconds before refocusing. “Let’s never talk about that again.” He turned to a twitching cynogriffon bleeding out beside him. “You want some popcorn?”

“Glubble”

“Suit yourself.”

In the meantime, Avery the camera bot looked up into the sky and watched the battles of old, of the Wardens and the dark forces that had inhabited a time before ponies, griffons, etc. It would’ve looked better if the HD camera was working though. Shtik should be able to spruce the colors up a bit later on.

A dude running around with a flamethrower tossed it and axed the twitching cynogriffon. He raised his mask. Shtik pulled out his normal goggles and slid it over his eyes. “Guys I need your help. There are … things, that followed the rift these dimension jumpers made. I need you two to be on distraction and pining duty on one as I get my attack to full charge.” The two nodded and strode after Shtik, leaving the robot behind.

A few minutes passed, the wind and shockwaves mildly shaking the earth. The robot slowly turned its head toward the dead body of the cynogriffon. It twisted the rest of its body and rolled over, its stomach door flipping open. Tiny arms and their powerful motors within spun to life. It wasn’t a analyzer for nothing.

Elma stared blankly at a unmoving skull. “That’s what you’re so worried about?” she whispered.

“Yes, that ‘little’ thing. You’ll take those words back if it awakes. It’s still getting used to the form it took and draining the magic out of the area,” Shtik said. Sure enough, a small circle of dead grass slowly expanded. “Once it drains all that it can reach will it actually start moving its ass. I could’ve summoned a massive laser and fried the shit out of it, but unfortunately, this is Equestria. Celestia will feel me and abandon everything to come after me.”

“What the heck did you do to make this Princess that angry?” she asked.

“That’s the thing, for some damn reason, one set of her memories seem to implant and overtake the memories of whatever Celestia I’m near, so I have to limit my power as much as possible to slow down the process. This was the primary reason why I rarely come by.”

“You still haven’t told me what it was.”

“...uhhh.”

Janitor groaned. “It happened several centuries ago. Short story, he was in the wrong place and the wrong time, and became irrationally convinced that everything was his fault.”

“Yeah, that,” Shtik mumbled. “Still haven’t figure out how to revert it.” He clenched a fist. “Enough of that, let’s focus on the present. You two pin him down, I’ll start constructing the framework for my attack. It’ll only take fifteen seconds.”

Elma looked back. “If it only takes fifteen seconds, then why do you even need us?”

“Because the moment I start, it will sense my intent and wake up. Plus, trying to aim at an erratically moving target creates the risk of misfire and/or alerting the sun goddess to my presence. Now go!”

I watched Elma and Janitor sneak out of the bushes. Their aura signatures were small enough to avoid detection. My aura feels like his long lost brother and is as loud as a bullhorn. The skull and I were both similar entities, though it was more like a wild spirit unfettered with morals or a job. These buggers form from twisted imaginations, and from the looks of things, may have been created from someone’s bad encounters with the Wardens.

Elma scrawled some runes around the skull and Janitor stood on the side running through his attack options to figure out the best one. I had already figured out my weapons of choice. “Get ready in 3 … 2 … 1 … GO!” Glowing outlines surrounded my arms. Around my right hand, a massive syringe shaped cannon hologram hovered beside me, black matter filling it in. Around my left, a circle of pale white metal encased it with three prongs sticking out around the barrel. With a pop, my hand came through the barrel. Almost immediately, the skull came to life. White hot points of light flared inside its eye sockets. The same dark magic pulled its body out of the floor. Nevermind the whole Warden thing. This reminded me of a spirit of knowledge or something, and a lot of magic powering it.

Elma slammed her hooves against the floor, activating the runes placed earlier. A rush of her cells shot through the ground, boosted by the runes, and wrapped around the skeleton, giving it unwanted and uncontrollable muscle mass.

Janitor raised his broom, a line of alien symbols lighting up on its base. He swung it down over the skeleton. ”Gravidon!” Within a sphere with a diameter of three feet, one universal constant changed, from 6.67 x 10^(-11) to 1. These are some of the perks you get from being a reality editor. The ground cracked and shattered as matter started flowing to a single point. The skeleton rasped in rage, trying to escape. He raised a shaking arm as I pointed the now fully formed Spiral Cannon, shooter of extremely high RPM objects. With a bit of horror, I realized that he was attempting to take over my mind, and slowly succeeding in shoving my aim toward my hapless allied. His eyes flashed once more, and a white cloud of magic that appeared to defy the gravity floated out toward my allies. The modified gravitational constant started to waver, slowly dropping. Elma gritted her teeth in pain as she felt her limbs chill and rot, almost akin to the feeling of zombification.

“What do we do?” Elma rasped in fear.

A tiny smirk formed on the Janitor’s face, even as his limbs felt leaden and numb. “Noob.”

I gasped as grass turned red, the tree trunks became cyan, and then a checkerboard of nonsense colors flashed in my vision. Then, I saw nothing.

A large cube with a claw coming out of an aperture on one of his faces held a smoothie, sitting on a plush office chair. He looked at his master’s (Shtik’s) brain monitor. “Ha, that old trick? That was the first thing I learned how to counter.”

He tapped a joystick. ”Welcome back, C-6” the room, located somewhere within Shtik’s body, rumbled as the manual control system shook out of sleep mode. “Let’s see, trying to override his arms, hmm? Let’s counter that with the old switcheroo.” He stretched a clawed appendage and tapped a rainbow colored button. The room started spinning. The monitor’s glass fractured, then blew out. The controls melted, sliding towards a vortex not unlike a toilet in the center of the room. And through it all, C-6 sat in his floating armchair, chuckling as one by one, the lights blew out.

Then came back on. He raised the claws and resumed direct control. “You tried to use mind control. Should’ve tried to do it on someone who actually has one.”

Shtik spasmed. His normal right eye dilated, then started spinning vertically like a slot machine out of control. A warped, useless soda can stuck out of his stomach. In contrast to his slightly distorted body, his left eye, the one that glowed like molten rock was constantly churning behind it, slowly focused onto the skeleton, its iris changing from its gentle green to a smoldering red.

Janitor and Elma also twitched, their eyes slowly luminescing a weak red light from being taken over by a certain robotic controller. Red electricity jumped from Shtik’s feet and through their limbs. The decaying muscles took up the strength akin to a zombie and curled up tightly, nearly restricting all movement. Sickly mutated flesh bubbled up from the ground, ensnaring the skeleton in a mound of pink slime. The runes on Janitor’s broom flared brightly. A tiny point of light slowly grew brighter as the matter within the sphere compacted tightly, almost becoming a dwarf star.

Shtik gave a toothy grin from underneath the layers of protective bandages. “Bad move,” he said, his voice having a slight electronic echo to his own. His cannon swiveled back at the skeleton. “Thanks for forcing me to shoot you.” A short electronic signal ignited a tiny pebble of Black Matter, sending massive amounts of kinetic energy into the rapidly spinning drill bullet. The energy forced the bullet to run through the barrel of the cannon in an effort to release its energy. The moment it came into contact with the atmosphere, it unleashed a massive whirling backdraft onto Shtik’s body, pushing him back a few inches. A tiny gem engraved with spirals glowed within, stabilizing its flight. The ensuing explosion allowed the bone fragments to reach escape velocity. “Oh, I’m not letting you off that easily,” Shtik growled. His gauntlet encased hand glowed, then shot said hand two seconds back in time to rip a hole in the universe. Instead of flying randomly into the forest, time was partly rewritten to send the fragments Outside. Since he just saw the bullet’s impact point, he was 100% sure where to place the tear.

He looked around, checking for any giblets. Satisfied there were none, he carefully sealed the tear. He glanced to the side and noticed that their eyes were still glowing red. He stood up straight, balanced him- ahem, his master’s body, then slowly relaxed as the borrowed body slowed down. His right eye stopped spinning and stopped, awkwardly rolled into his head. His left eye froze in place as its inner glow died.

“Annnnnnd, reboot. I should send him the video files of the past thirty seconds.”

I blinked, stretching my aching limbs. I stuck my finger into my right eyeball and centered it. Huh. I stared at the smoking barrel of my cannon. As I looked at the smoke emanating from the barrel, a notifications popped out in my peripheral vision, effectively a makeshift HUD created by self induced hallucinations. I opened it and saw...

I deconstructed my weapons as a claw sticking out of my back opened up a portal behind me. “You two can leave if you want, we’re done here. I just need to clean this place up and repair the damages.”

“Woah,” Elma groaned, her head spinning slightly. “That was weird.”

Janitor hefted her over his shoulder and walked to the portal. “You’ll get used to it after a while.” He glanced at her. “What did you see? I thought as was giving someone a massage.”

Elma just flopped limply over his back. “Eck, I don’t want to talk about it. What was that anyway?”

He glanced back at me. “Let’s talk about this after we get back to our place. There’s a guy inside his head that does maintenance. His ‘ulterior’ tasks are blocked from Shtik’s memory. Not many know about his existe-”

I shook at my head when I noticed the two disappear from my vision. Eh, focus on the task at hand first. What worried me slightly was an uneasy feeling that I forgot to do something during the fight. I decided on looking over my shoulder every ten seconds as I restored the lost energy in the area.

Just as I finished rebuilding the last tree, I remembered. “Oh right,” I said, snapping my fingers. “Resisting the attack used up a fair amount of power.” I glanced at my bandanna/power meter. “Damn, a whole inch. Now why was that so bad again?” As I pondered, I felt a sense of warmth, of family. Crap. I forgot about her. My inner demon clawed against the side of its cell, trying to reach its brother, or its equivalent. I spun around, barely catching a furious looking white alicorn, her flowing mane catching fire, and a black growth stretching across her face before I got hit by a solar flare.

I smashed through a line of trees, destroying a portion of my hard (sorta) work. Damn, now I got to fix it all over again-agh! I rubbed my head after bouncing off a rock. The darkening mare stalked over to my landing spot, glaring at me throughout. “Oh you again. Let’s get it over with it. What’s your name this time, Corona Blaze? Daymare Sun?”

My only response was the corrupted alicorn trying to eat me.