The Great Multiverse Theory: Repairs and Recordings

Intermission: On the job

The light yellow earth pony stumbled blindly through the dark forest. She nervously brushed her long pink mane to the side, already filled with bits of leaves. She had no idea where she was. She had just opened her eyes to be greeted by this wall of green. She couldn’t even remember her own name. She really wanted to just stay put and hide, but all the noises kept on scaring her into running forward. Now, she was too afraid to stop. The sun has been dropping for the past few hours, and her hooves ached badly. In the end, her exhaustion and hunger forced her to collapse to the floor. With the last of her strength, she managed to crawl beneath the crook of a tree stump. Right before she sucumbed to the darkness of sleep, she heard the gentle thuds of footsteps moving toward her.

The yellow pony slowly lifted out of her comfortable realm of darkness. She didn’t really want to wake up, the bed felt so - wait, a bed? Her eyes flew open and was met with the wooden walls of house. A small fire on the other side of the room get the building warm and comfy. A light grey stallion sat in a chair near the fire, a wide brimmed hat hanging from a hanger behind him. He noticed her awakening and trotted over. He asked about her health. She responded that she was fine, blushing slightly behind her mane at having the stallion drag her all the way here.

The stallion chuckled and waved it off. What kind of pony would he be if he let such a cute girl like her die in the woods. This only served to make the mare blush harder. At the end of their musings, the stallion asked for her name. The yellow pony opened her mouth to reply, but was unable to come up with anything. Paralyzing fear came down upon her, and she wilted underneath the covers. Worried by her change in expression, he immediately went to her side to comfort her.

This went on for a few days, the grey stallion taking care of her until she was healthy enough to move around. On the fourth day, he perked up and asked her about a name that he felt perfectly suited her: Posey. She thought for a bit, and smiled.

By the end of the week, he had to get back to his job. He had told his boss that he was taking care of a sick friend, but he could only take a break for so long. For the next week, they managed to get an acceptable schedule worked out between them. Posey helped out with some chores while the stallion goes out. The stallion offered to help her find out her origins, but for some reason her gut told her to not accept the offer.

At the end of the third week, she began to feel something watching her from beyond the forest. No matter how hard she tried to look into the shadows, she could never make anything out. The only thing she was sure of was that the sensation seemed to be gradually moving in a circle around the town. She thought about telling the stallion about it, but something inside advised her against it. Instead, she feigned illness and hid. She obviously wasn’t very genre savvy.

The silent blanket of night comforted Posey as she tried to fall asleep after waking up to nightmares again. Just as she was reaching the state of blissful unconsciousness, she heard a creak on the floorboards to her room. Her eyes flew open in surprise, but immediately softened at a feeling of kinship flowing through her veins. It appeared to tell her that this presence was a friend, maybe even closer. She rose out of her bed, her blanket covering her. Her soft blue eyes looked at the shadowed entrance.

“Daddy?”

I stood in the doorway, the tools of my trade hanging on my back. I glared at the lump slowly sitting up. My glare was met by one thousand joules of d’aww. It would’ve softened, heck, melted my composure if one, I was alive, and two, I couldn’t see the truth, and it made my dark heart burn. Under the faint green glow of my simmering eye, I raised my revolver, loaded with a bullet made of impure matter. Truly pure matter could become anything, full of potential. This thing has become something. And damned good at what I wanted it to do. The internal hammer dropped, firing the low velocity slug, leaving a hazy trail of flickering text and gibberish. The bullet splashed against Posey’s surprised face, as substantial as smoke. For a moment, nothing appeared to happen. She looked down at her hooves, and saw her face melting off, exposing a black, smoky snout.

My teeth nearly punctured the cloth on my face in anger.“I knew it. You selfish idiot.” She trembled on the bed, locked away memories breaking free, memories she herself had locked away. “DUMMKOPF!” I roared, kicking her bed upward while pulling out my one gauge shotgun over my shoulder. “You know why we can’t live with them!” One pound of buckshot ripped through her slender frame, sending tar like chunks across the walls. Without even bothering to reload manually, I just shoved the gun’s stock through my arm, up to the barrel. I then pulled it out, almost like pumping the entire gun, if my arm was included as part of the gun. My hand reformed around the trigger and blew off her head. Sizzling drops of acid fell from my face and burned through the floor.

I hung the gun over my shoulder. I vaporized the glove on my left hand, and released the suppressed gravity field. I carefully targeted only the black chunks and dragged them into a pile.

“Are .ou al. ght, Pos..?”

I froze partway through my task, holding still as the grey stallion walked into the room. He seemed ... paler, almost ghostlike. If I focused hard enough, I could see through him. If I unfocused ... then I would see him flickering like a laggy video. Tiny lines of text ran through his veins. Each time he took a step with his right fore leg, the leg was briefly replaced by a grid of the word “leg.” I gritted my teeth as the stallion blithely walked past me, his legs phasing through the shattered furniture. He paused at the corner of the room, where the bed used to be. He rested his arms on that invisible surface and calmed the night time terrors of a nonexistent filly. “You see?” I muttered under my breath. “This ... this is why we can never have nice things.” I opened a rift and shoved the silently sobbing blob of tar Outside.

“Some say loving once is better than never experiencing love. For us demons, we can never afford it. You got it through your skull? Look at the mess you made...” I pulled a fat ballpoint pen out of my pocket. It was dark green, with lines of emerald green lining the pen’s body like cracked eggshells. I gave the back section a twissssstt.

I watched the point 120 centimeters away emit colored text smoke. I made a few smoke trails from waving my pen blade around. I’ve seen I guy use a fountain pen, a key. Another guy just used his claws. “Exhibiting Mess A.”

The pen blade’s smoke gathered behind me. The sword’s silent swing accompanied its silent impact. A cloud of text flared from having a massive streak slashed across it, then dissolved. I sighed, wiping of the tar off my face with my left hand. “Let’s see if I can do this right.” I calmed my mind, holding my sword beside my head. A moment later, the pen made an circle of smoke and text. The inky words flarrrreeeddd-

Shtik- I mean, I stood in the courtyard of the city. I noticed that I was now holding the blade in my left hand, and that my hat was on fire. “Dang it, still not very good at scene changing,” I said, tossing the pen blade to my right hand and smothering the flames. “Thanks anyway!” I called into the sky. The only reason I am trying to learn this technique is because its somewhat less energy intensive than portals and really cool looking.

I turned back to the city of flickering text. “Now for Exhibit Mess B.” I switched to an under hand grip and plunged the pen blade point first into the center of the town. Runes I set up a day earlier shone brightly. I stepped back and cupped my hands together. A cloud of atoms swirled between my palms. The cloud coalesced into a distinct clump. “Fission Ball!” I shouted, forcing the clump apart. I thrust my thumbs into the cloud while simultaneously flinging it at the ground. The ball of energy detonated, flinging a explosion of energy. Once it reached the runes, it smashed against a glowing domed barrier. This town was the only thing it affected.

I stood amidst the flames, leaning on my blade. It wasn’t really hot by my standards, though it was enough to flash fry the buildings; this was only a toned down version of the attack I used in combat. Don’t get me wrong, heat based attacks still hurt me, though its less of a burn than the massive difference in temperatures causing convection currents to start up inside me. When your body is pretty much held together by your mind, you don’t want it getting blended from the inside unexpectedly, disrupting your focus.

The flames burned for a few seconds, soon expending all of its energy in the confined space. There were only ashes and cracked stone left; everything within the rune’s dome had been leveled. “In order to create, one must first destroy...” I walked to the edge of the circle, the pen blade over my shoulder, and broke the circle by smudging the runes with my foot. The rest of the runes dissolved along with it. I looked back at the town. Slowly, reality began to reassert itself. Tendrils of energy flowed back into the area, creating ghostly shadows. I estimate that by the end of the day, no one would be any wiser. I sighed. I twisted my pen, returning it to pocket sized and dropped it into my coat pocket.

I shook out my watch and opened a holographic folder, pushing away the events that just transpired. Well, the next assignment seemed easy. I opened a portal in front of me, connecting two points with some effort, and I hopped through.

I stepped into a forest. I jogged down the path until I could see the figure camped out in the distance. This was a simple case of canon/non-canon confusion. I reached out with my ethereal senses, carefully breaking through the veil that protects the world from the Outside. I found the alternate universe and pulled it to me, creating a bubble within a bubble. I threw my hands apart, momentarily replacing this section of universe.

I looked at the caravan rolling toward the forest. A draconequus sat on the roof, lobster claws underneath his bear paws. When the bubbly film evaporated, he twitched in surprise. He looked backwards, locking eyes with me. I grinned and put a finger to my lips. Don’t worry about it, I mouthed. I once helped him pass the time in his prison by playing poker with him. I lost. The freakin’ cheater. I had to leave when the Dog came hurtling by.

The point of this exercise is because the god overseeing this crossover forgot that the Dog who lived in this version didn’t lose his claws. The imported universe would leave once the caravan was about two miles away. After I made sure the universe wouldn’t destabilize, I left for a quick break.

I walked out of the bakery’s basement, closing the trapdoor behind me. I stuck a thumb at it. “Pinks, the basement is cleared out. Got rid of your blood obsessed double and her mutilated friend out.” I slumped down on one of the seats as the occasional reality distortion began fading. Some memes are just too ingrained within the collective’s memory to die. I watched a few of the extra Pinkies waved goodbye to each other as they returned to their own reality as I munched on a muffin. They really tasted pretty good. The one who lived here was about to talk to me when something hurtling through time caught my attention.

“Nope nope nope,” I gasped. The face of my watch popped out, and I slammed my palm against it. Green flames coated my body as I jumped backwards in time, about five minutes. “Gotta go, bye!” I jumped out the window and teleported, and not a moment too soon. A pink pegasus mare appeared inside the bakery.

“Wait up, you sneaky bastard! What are you doing here?” With a few powerful strokes of her wings, she soared after me.

Meanwhile, I was sitting under the shade of a floating building. Yeah, I had to jump through another time portal, a few months into the future. Fortunately, Discord’s magic should be able to cover my tracks before long. I try to avoid leaving the universe in the middle of a operation, to be closer to the problem and all. In the meantime, I relaxed in chaos’s basking glow. This is a real break, I thought, sipping a milkshake. I paused for a moment, then slowly removed my glove. Real, living tissue looked back for the first time in decades. I savored the feeling of a heartbeat sending revived blood cells through my body. I opened my eyes, free of the veils I had clouded myself with. I could think clearly, and remembered everything, in all of its glory...

And all of its horror.