SotS: 154 - Journey, Part 1 (The Depths of Nucleon) · 1:20pm Mar 29th, 2020
I said I was going to publish Journey in parts through blog posts, and I'm keeping to that. Expect one of these every two days until all seven parts come out, at which point all of it will be added to the main story all at once. ...You guys will get an epilogue later, but remember, this movie chapter was the last thing I wrote. For me, these seven parts are my goodbye to them.
154 – Journey
I - The Depths of Nucleon
“Elder! Elder!”
The Elder chuckled in that gleeful, tired way only older people can. “Yes, Pringle?”
The pink and purple pegasus filly bounced to the Elder’s lap. “Tell us more stories of the heroes!”
“That again?” an earth pony named Onion groaned, pulling her white mane back over her creamy coat. “We’ve heard them all already, geez.”
A young woman with purple hair responded, not looking up from her phone. “We do hear a lot about the heroes. It’s kinda annoying.”
“You like the stories more than anyone, Joanne,” the Elder said. “As much as you try to keep your nose buried in that screen, you revel in the story you’re a part of.”
“Won’t be for long,” Joanne commented, still refusing to look up.
“Years seems like a long time to me...” said the last member of the younger friend group, a young man known as Jang, playing with some firebending between his fingers. “We can learn from the mistakes and stories of those who came before us so we can survive what the Tower may throw at us.”
“I just wanna hear the stories again…” Pringle muttered.
“There are other things the Elder can teach us,” Onion scoffed. “We don’t need to hear any of her stories for the umpteenth time.”
“Few people learn things the first time,” Joanne pointed out.
“I thought you were on my side.”
Joanne smirked. “Sides are but an illusion in any conflict.”
“I… Nevermind.”
The Elder let out her distinctive chuckle once more. “Children, children… how can I tell a story when you’re all bickering?”
“That might be Onion’s plan,” Jang pointed out.
“She wishes she were that clever,” Joanne snarked.
Onion grumbled something incoherent.
The Elder sat down, gently stroking Pringle as she settled down on her lap. “Now, we’re going to start a very familiar story a little before we usually do. It starts on the other side of Nucleon, deep beneath the ground…”
~~~
“I’ve got the next room,” Vriska said, drawing her sword, grin slashing across her face like a knife through meat. It was far too eager.
“Sure you will,” Trixie muttered.
“Watch me, dungeons are nothing for the Thief of Light!”
“Let’s make this more interesting,” Discord said, snapping his fingers and placing a large red X over the Light symbol of her robes. “No luck, just pure unfiltered skill.”
Jenny cupped her gloves to her mouth. “OOOOOOOOOOOOOH!”
“I accept,” Vriska said, tapping her chest as if she were an ancient warrior. “Watch and learn…”
“Pretty sure we all know how to run a dungeon already,” Flutterfree pointed out. Eve giggled, only adding to the pile-on.
Vriska put her hands on her hips. “Do you all just spend your days coming up with ways to insult me when the opportunity arises?”
“Yes,” Jenny deadpanned.
Eve forced herself to stop giggling. “Oh, no, Vriska, it isn’t like that…”
“Yeah,” Rina said. “I haven’t said anything yet.”
“Thanks, mini-psycho.” Vriska shot her some finger guns.
“And now I want the monsters in the next room to kick your ass and teach you a thing on hubris and pride. You know. Like the tritons did three rooms up.” She pulled a fish out of her mane and disintegrated it. “The fish spell is quite humiliating.”
“I like it…” Flutterfree said, pulling another fish out of her mane and placing it in a water tank provided by Eve’s magic. “So many new friends.”
“I still think the fish would make better food,” Jenny observed.
“Most of us are herbivores,” Discord pointed out.
“Is there a single person in this room who hasn’t tried meat?” Jenny asked. Getting no negatives, she smirked. “Thought not. We’ll all enjoy that fi—”
“That’s it, tired of waiting,” Vriska declared, kicking in the next door. The dungeon itself couldn’t be considered standard fare, seeing as the walls were made of dark metal and the doors themselves shaped of bronze circuitry, but aside from the bizarre aesthetic the structure had, the active act of dungeon raiding was no different than usual: charge through room after room solving puzzles, setting off traps, and facing an unhealthy amount of monsters.
The room Vriska walked into was home to an entire village of bloodlusted orcs. They stopped fighting each other the moment Vriska kicked the door down, pointing their choppas at the intruder. “WAAAAAGH!”
“No luck, huh?” Vriska drew her sword and held out her free hand, grinning. “This’ll be good.” She met the first orc’s choppa with her sword, proving her blade and her physical strength to far exceed that of the ripped orc. She kicked him between the legs and whirled around to stab another orc in the neck, using her free hand to focus her psychic energy on the third-closest orc. Under her control, the orc swung back, gashing through three of his brethren. Vriska released her control, focusing on the others now; those four orcs would not be disentangling from their combat until all but one was dead.
Vriska twirled around, chopping off a few heads before taking to the air and kicking as many orcs in the forehead as she could before landing, giving out quite a few concussions. Thrusting downward, she drove her blade right through an orc’s head and caused a small tremor to run through the room as she hit the ground.
Waiting a few seconds for the orcs to charge, she unleashed a spinning attack that took out every orc next to her. With a laugh, she took to the air, leaving the remaining orcs to smash their heads into each other at high velocity.
One orc near the back shot a fireball at her.
Vriska threw her sword at him, skewering the monster through the neck. He fell back—but another orc picked up Vriska’s sword. Vriska, not wanting some grimy green monster touching her sword for longer than necessary, flew over the crowd of stupid orcs and engaged the orc in unarmed combat.
The orc swung.
Vriska broke his wrist with a carefully placed kick, claiming her sword back with ease. To add insult to injury, she chopped his hand off before kicking him down.
“Who’s next!?”
Back at the entrance of the room, Discord sighed. “I don’t think she’s going to make a fool of herself.”
“Can I argue that she’s a Mary Sue? Please?” Jenny asked.
“If she is, so are you,” Rina deadpanned.
“…Is the sacrifice worth it…?”
“Never.” Trixie shuddered as if the suggestion were physically painful.
“Well I’m happy that she’s having some fun,” Eve said, smiling brightly.
“That is why we came down here, after all,” Flutterfree pointed out.
“Trixie came down to figure out what the treasure was, not for fun,” Trixie huffed.
“If you wanted treasure you could just go back to the City and get a ticket to any number of artifact planets.” Flutterfree lifted up Trixie’s head with a wingtip. “You want to have fun.”
“…Fine…” Trixie grumbled.
An orc’s skull—just the skull, nothing else—flew and hit Jenny in the head.
“VRISKA!” Jenny shouted, charging into the room in rage.
“Jenny, no, I haven’t cleaned the room y—”
“And all bets are off!” Discord declared. “The terms have been voided!”
“None of us bet any money,” Flutterfree pointed out.
“Exactly!”
~~~
Vriska examined a golden computer chip laced with magic runes she had looted off one of the orcs several rooms back. “I really do wonder what this is.”
“A reminder of Jenny’s hotheadedness?” Rina suggested, blasting a spider-robot into smithereens.
Vriska chuckled as she traced a finger around the shield-shaped edge. “While that’s most definitely what it is, it also has to be something else.” She rolled her fluorite octet and transformed an attacking skeleton into a frog.
“Probably the lost artifact of an ancient civilization,” Trixie said. “Again.”
Vriska shrugged and pocketed it while using her free leg to crack a lamia’s pelvis.
Discord snapped his fingers, transforming every monster in the room into a wind-up duck.
“Discord!” Jenny whined. “I had that one!”
“I was bored,” Discord said, waving his hand dismissively.
“He needs to have his fun too,” Flutterfree pointed out, winking at him.
“That said, Flutterfree and I call the next room,” Eve interjected. “I think it’s time we showed our stuff.”
Flutterfree reared back excitedly, tapping her wing-blades together. “Oh, yes! Can we do the Thing?”
“That’s the idea!”
“Oooh, come on come on come on!”
“Yes. Be excited.” Discord rolled his eyes. “Not like we were just talking about me or anything.”
Flutterfree put a hoof on Discord’s leg gently. “Discord…”
“Oh, all right, fine, it wasn’t important anyway.”
Flutterfree let out a squee. “Eve! Let’s go!”
“Let’s get the timing right. Three… Two… One…”
Both of them kicked the door down at the same time, signaling the start of a funky, energetic beat. The group of monsters within looked up—largely composed of skeleton ninjas with a large white creature in the back made of many papery tendrils. Flutterfree and Eve hoofbumped before completing the charge. Eve sang first.
“We feel it stirring…”
“…Deep down inside our souls.”
Eve created a ramp of ice that Flutterfree skated on, entering a wild whirlwind of blades that shattered several skeleton ninjas. Eve teleported in front of her, encasing those who survived in ice. The two twirled together, moving forward. Flutterfree let her heart out through her words.
“A million moments…”
“…bringing us together.”
Rising onto their hind legs, the two pulled each other into a complex swirling dance of grace and calculated elegance. Every swing, every pulse, every twist came with it a blade, a burst of magic, or a lash of Rage. No matter how well they snuck or attacked, the ninja skeletons fell like dominoes to the complex choreography.
“The beat is taking hold…”
“…it’s more precious than gold.”
Eve slid under a skeleton while Flutterfree flew over the top, the two attacking it from opposite vectors, cutting it in half and sending its components into the others. The pegasus landed gracefully on the alicorn’s back, both striking a dramatic pose.
“We are acting as one…”
“…until our time is done.”
The papery monster was all that remained in their way. Seething, it unleashed its flimsy tendrils toward them. Seraphim activated, bouncing them all away with a shield. Flutterfree sent Lolo forward, tangling up among the papery beast’s assault. With one voice, they pushed forward.
“Sing our lives along
The other right to our side
There’s nothing you can do to us
To separate us from this ride!”
Eve and Flutterfree jumped through the air, swirling like ballerina dancers. Lolo pulled the papery strands of the monster to the side, allowing the two of them to smash the core with Flutterfree’s ice-coated wing blades. It never stood a chance. As it fell, the music died down. The two held each other’s hooves and bowed back at their friends, prompting thunderous applause.
“You two are amazing!” Trixie called. “Almost as good as Trixie!”
“Better,” Rina said.
“Much better,” Jenny agreed.
“Oh so amazingly better, it can’t even be comprehended,” Vriska piled on.
Trixie rolled her eyes. “Har-de-har.”
“Eh,” Discord said, ending his clapping before anyone else. “It’s not that amazing. Just an amazingly choreographed dance between two ponies who are very close. Not surprising, really.”
“It’s still cool, you’re just lame,” Jenny asserted.
“And you have low standards.”
“…I’m the most easily bored out of all of us, and that’s saying something.”
“She says, in a bragging tone,” Vriska snickered.
“Don’t you start!”
Discord turned away, deciding to inspect the featureless wall rather than engage. Trixie narrowed her eyes. Something was up with him. But… there was no way, right? Couldn’t be…
“Hey! Are you coming or not?” Flutterfree called. “New rooms filled with monsters and treasure await!”
“I found an infinite pizza!” Eve added.
“Hey! No jumping ahead, I want the next room’s loot!” Jenny ran after them, waving her hands in a panic. “Come on, let’s get a move on, people!”
Trixie grinned, lighting her horn. “Teleport.”
Trixie appeared embedded in a nearby wall. She sighed. “Help? Anyone?”
“I think I’ll just let you sit there for a few minutes,” Rina said.
“Rina don’t you dare-RINA! GET BACK HERE!”
~~~
Far above the dungeon plunderers, the surface of Nucleon was green. Vibrant moss had spread itself over a wide section of landscape mostly devoid of larger flora and fauna. The only structures visible from the ground were numerous deactivated mecha, all having been there long enough that the moss was growing up their legs.
There had been a war, once, but with the creation of Nucleon that war ended. The mecha were no longer needed, so here they sat, collecting dust and moss. They had seen almost no visitors since the New World had been created.
Today, though, a shadow drifted over them. The form of the Austraeoh V, floating in the sky with its should-be-impossible-but-weren’t magic propellers keeping it aloft. It was similar to the craft that had left the City a few years ago, but it was made out of a purple metal rather than the pristine white ‘orichalcum alloy’ the Merodi knew and loved.
Pinkie stood at the front of the deck, wearing the Element of Laughter as an earring. She whistled a tune to herself as she kept the wheel twisted slightly to the left so the ship would circle until the dungeon-raiders were done having their fun. She was the Captain and she was enjoying it. The wheel was hers, the ship was hers, and the crew was hers. Even if they were doing absolutely stupid things, she still loved them to bits.
Speaking of stupid things, there was a drinking competition going on behind her.
“We’ve got you beat,” Pidge declared, downing some kind of dark red sludge.
“You are a lightweight,” O’Neill retorted. “You are going to pass out in a few minutes. I’m only worried about your buddy Jotaro, here.”
Jotaro wordlessly slammed another drink down his throat, dropping the glass menacingly on the table after he was done.
“Sure we can beat him?” Nanoha asked O’Neill. “He has nerves of steel and a constitution better than some mountain trolls.”
“And I’m General Snark.”
“Are you all just forgetting about me? I’m here too!” Pidge waved her hands.
She got no response.
“Screw you guys.”
“You are all children,” Rev said, passing by. “If I felt the need to indulge, every last one of you would be under the table before I felt even mildly nauseous.”
“Join us, then!” O’Neill called.
Nanoha put a hand over O’Neill’s mouth. “Ignore him, Rev, I know it’s not good for you.”
“I mean…” Rev tapped her chin.
“No, Rev…” Nanoha shook her head. “You’ll just drag yourself into the contest and we know that won’t end well.”
“Yeah!” Mattie called from her beach chair, lifting her sunglasses. “If I can’t have a drink just for fun, neither can you!”
“You’re pregnant,” Rev pointed out. “It’s a little different.”
Mattie gestured at her inflated belly with a corked eyebrow. “It’s just more obvious.”
“Pregnancy and a history of addiction are nowhere close to the same thing.”
“Mate, pregnancy is part of my addiction.” Mattie corked a brow. “I can’t wait for the fun to begin…”
Rev facehooved. “You’re disturbed.”
“I wonder if I’ll be able to tell who the father is…”
Rev tried, and failed miserably, to suppress her look of disdain. Mattie chuckled. “You’ve still got it, Mattie. You’ve still got it.”
Pinkie appeared behind Mattie. “Mattie? Maybe, just maaaaaybe, trying to make Rev as uncomfortable as possible isn’t exactly the nicest thing to do.”
“Balls to her, that’s my job description.” Mattie grinned. “I’m a walking blob of societal rebellion, uncomfortable idioms, and sass!”
“You’re not… walking very well, right now,” Pidge hiccupped.
“And balls to you too, lightweight.”
“I’m not…” Pidge passed out, knocking her glasses off her face.
“Yare yare daze…” Jotaro shook his head, downing another drink.
“This is all very stupid,” Nanoha observed with an amused smile.
“Embrace the stupid!” Mattie called. “Be one with the outrageous and you will discover life!”
Pinkie raised an incredulous eyebrow.
“All right, fine, I’m lying. Smash me with that cartoonish hammer of yours.”
“Hmm… nah. Instead, I order you to relax and rest until we get a new member of the family!”
“For all you know that could be in five minutes.”
“Yep!” She bounced back, grinning. Looking to the sky, she saw their equivalent to a crow’s nest glistening in the sun. “The family keeps growing…”
Her thoughts turned to the two people that spent most of their time in the Crow’s nest. She wondered what they were thinking about.
“I wonder what the optimal rate for cutting a slime creature in half is if you want to end up with the maximum amount of slime,” Corona wondered aloud.
Roland looked up from polishing his gun. “…What?”
“Nevermind, I was just thinking in random places.” She stood up, looking over the edge of the crow’s nest at the green field of abandoned mecha below them. Roland continued to polish his gun in silence, and Corona said nothing about her further musings. She knew Roland preferred silence, and if she was honest that was why she came up here so often. It was a place she could sit and think, occasionally giving Roland the weirdest parts of her mind.
He spent a lot more time up here than she did, though. Corona was still, at heart, a people person who surrounded herself with close friends for good reason. Roland was a loner, and while the other members of the crew had grown to know and respect him, he still kept his distance. In many ways, he represented the heroes of old rather than the recent era the rest of them represented. He was the first.
For all Corona knew, he might end up the last.
Corona was about to vocalize this thought when she felt the air come alive with electric charge. With a flash and a rush of wind, a spaceship appeared right next to them, emblazoned not with a Merodi or City symbol, but rather the cutie mark of a Sunset Shimmer.
Corona’s phone rang before she could deduce who’d just shown up. She answered. “This is Corona.” A pause.
“SHIMMY!?”
~~~
“CHAAAARGE!” Jenny shouted, throwing Vriska like a cannonball at a cannonball-monster.
The irony was not lost on Vriska, though she was still flattened against the beast. “Jenny… fuck you...”
Jenny winked, giving her a thumbs up before casting magic flash on the cannonball.
Rina, charged as well, disintegrating the monster. And then Eve and Flutterfree came in, wiping the floor with the slime monsters in what appeared to be an amazing acrobatic routine.
Trixie and Discord were sitting out this time, Discord because he was usually too powerful, and Trixie because she was keeping an eye on Discord. Watching him. Watching what he was watching. Watching to see if what he was watching was watching him watch it. That sort of thing.
She was pretty sure she knew what was going on in his head now, and boy was it juicy.
“…What are you looking at?” he asked.
Trixie missed the days where she could adjust her business glasses to look more professional, but alas, her current adventuring outfit had no use for such things. She settled on smirking in his direction. “Why don’t we talk about that without any… distractions?” She lit her horn and activated some explosives she’d planted in the floor of the room. Eve, Flutterfree, Rina, Jenny, Vriska, and all the monsters fell through to the floor below.
“That was some impressive explosive placement.”
“Trixie could pass the demolition standards exam if she wanted. Trixie does not have the patience.”
Discord put a thermometer in his mouth and summoned a sick-bed.
“Patience, not patients, idiot.”
He winked, jumping out of bed with a shower of gold coins. “You got the joke!”
“Trixie will not be patronized—or distracted!” She poked Discord in the chest. “Trixie has figured out what your deal is.”
“There isn’t a mortal alive who can understand my deal.” He threw a deck of cards in her face.
“Trixie sees you watching them. Watching Flutterfree.” Trixie smirked, raising her eyebrows repeatedly.
“I don’t know what you’re insinuating, Trixie, th—”
“Oh for the—you’ve fallen for Flutterfree again and you’re trying really really hard to pretend like it’s not an issue. But come on it’s obvious! I’ve seen you stare at her, watch her movements, get all grumpy that she’s happy with Eve, yadda, yadda, yadda.”
Discord stared at her in disbelief, his jaw comically on the floor. “How-”
“Yes, Discord, you are that obvious. And pathetic. Buuuuut that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to help!”
“Help!?” Discord scoffed. “You?”
“Trixie chooses to ignore the insinuation.” Trixie coughed. “Yes. Me. Obviously you need some kind of push, and yours truly can provide.”
Discord waved a claw. “You’re insane. She doesn’t need me right now, I’d just get in the way. She’s got Eve and I would j—”
“Do you hear yourself right now? Have you been paying any attention to how they see each other? Stop being so dense, they’re not together, they’re just really close. They make that blatantly obvious all the time just so the rest of us don’t get confused, and you got confused anyway!”
“Well, I mea—”
“Flutterfree has been accepting your tea party invitations again, lately. I’ve seen you on deck enjoying each other’s company. I think you’ve got a shot!”
“That… doesn’t make sense! You’re being way too optimistic.”
“And that’s exactly what you need, big guy. Come on, all you need is a little flair and pizzaz! She already notices you, you’ve just got to make a move.”
“I’m not sur—”
“DISCORD! You are the lord of chaos!” Trixie lifted up a hoof, casting a thunder-sound spell. “Since when did you become the tentative hesitant one? You rush into danger at high speeds just to see what kind of laughs you can get! The Great and Powerful Trixie should not need to urge you to stir the pot for delightful chaos!”
“You’re right. You’re right!” Discord created a rock and stepped up on it. “I AM DISCORD, SPIRIT OF CHAOS AND DISHARMONY!” He snapped his fingers, creating a superhero outfit. “I should go over to her right now a—”
“Discord, what are you doing?” Flutterfree asked as she flew out of the hole in the ground.
“D-dramatic poses!” Discord said, stuttering. “And a good heart-to-heart with my good friend Trixie here about her place in the world!” He picked her up and pulled her close, squeezing her so hard she couldn’t breathe.
“Sure...” Flutterfree clearly didn’t buy any of this, but she didn’t press the issue. “Did you find anything up here?”
“Nothing at all!” Discord said, tossing Trixie to the side. She hit a previously-camouflaged button on the wall, revealing a little treasure chest.
“…Except this,” Trixie said, trying to make it look like she’d meant to hit the button. “Behold, TREASURE!” She popped the chest open and found… a map.
A map of the dungeon. All the way to the bottom.
“…Neat,” she said.
“Hey, we can use that!” Flutterfree inspected it, and beamed at them. “We could get right to the boss with this! Thanks, you two!”
“Think nothing of it,” Discord said, exaggerating a bow. Trixie facehooved.
~~~
“All right, that sounds all right,” Flutterfree said.
Eve smiled sadly at Flutterfree. “You don’t sound all right.”
“I’m a little nervous. Okay, more than a little nervous, but…”
“Shush, shhhhh, I’ll be there for you.”
“I’m still going to worry.”
“I know, but I’m going to do my best to make you consider that you might not have to.”
“That’s you worrying about me.”
Eve chuckled nervously. “Yeah, we might enable each other in that regard…” She scratched the back of her head.
“But we still call it ‘Twilighting’ and not ‘Fluttershying’.” Flutterfree raised an eyebrow and grinned.
“Shut up,” Eve laughed. “Let me be the stable one, for once.”
“Only if I can be the smart one.”
“Oooh, getting a dumbness potion might be difficult…”
Flutterfree chuckled.
“Hey! Pod people!” Jenny called back. “We found the boss room!”
Using the map Trixie had ‘found’, they had skipped the majority of the dead-end pathways in the dungeon and had made it to the bottom of the buried tower. Before them was a massive amethyst door covered in relief platinum eyeballs, easily large enough to let a full-grown dragon in.
“You think the boss is a dragon?” Trixie asked.
“Nah,” Jenny said, cracking her knuckles. “That’d be too easy. So, how are we doing this?”
“Boss rush,” Vriska said, grinning evilly. “Poor sap won’t know what hit him.”
“Wait, that means…” Trixie’s eyes widened. “I’m not going through first!”
“Yes, you are,” Jenny said, grabbing onto Trixie’s collar. Discord made the door disappear, allowing Jenny to volley Trixie through the opening like an elongated blue baseball. She landed flat on her face, rolling head over hooves a few times before coming to an abrupt stop on the hard metal floor.
The room was cylindrical and absolutely massive. In the center was a pillar of blue light with various technological components orbiting it, no doubt some kind of power conduit or generator. For being at the bottom of an abandoned dungeon, it seemed to be in pretty good shape.
She knew there should be a boss in the room, but she didn’t see one. Did some other adventurers come through and clean this place out already?
“Hello…?” Trixie asked. “Anypony there?”
A hole opened up in the ground before her, lifting a massive humanoid mech out of the ground. It looked a lot like a version of Optimus Prime, though there didn’t appear to be any truck features for transforming: just metal arms and legs for bashing. Not to mention guns, a sword, and feet that were three times taller than Trixie was.
Trixie gulped. “H-hey there! Are you ready for a boss rush?”
Trixie was thrown aside like a fly on the wall, useless against the monstrous automaton.
“I guess I’m next,” Jenny said. “What’re my rules for tapping out?”
“If you have to regenerate your head,” Rina reported, reading it off a list of Rules for Raiding Dungeons, draft.
“Then I’m not letting that happen.” Jenny leaped into the arena, smirking. “Boss number one was a pushover!”
“Trixie wishes she could deny it,” the dazed unicorn muttered.
“But I am the second boss, and you won’t get past me!” Jenny teleported onto the back of the mech the moment it pulled out its gun. She ran into one of the access ports, finding herself within its circuitry where it couldn’t hit her. “I’m in.” She lifted her fist, vibrating it so fast it would cut through metal. “I hope you like indigestion.”
She didn’t care that she was nowhere near the robot’s ‘stomach,’ she punched through walls and wires with gleeful, reckless abandon. Outside, everyone could see the boss start spastically flailing around as numerous motors within its body were triggered left and right.
“Is she really going to beat it that quickly?” Rina asked. “That’ll be disappointing…”
“We never meet a boss that makes it all the way up to my level,” Discord said, shaking his head. “What a shame.”
“That one time you did have to fight…” Trixie began.
“We will never speak of that again.”
The mech managed to point a gun at its chest and fire, burning a hole all the way through it. Jenny popped out the other side, regenerating from near-complete disintegration. “DARNIT! AGH! I almost had him!”
“My turn,” Rina said, teleporting into the ring. She sent a dozen dark swords into the mech’s wound, not at all surprised to find that her petrification didn’t work. After all, it was artificial; the spell tended to work only on organic beings.
So she did the next best thing.
She cast a reflect spell on herself when the mech tried to shoot her. Another hole burned all the way through it, this time through a knee. Taking advantage of the weakness, Rina created a massive cleaver and severed the limb down the middle, bringing the mech closer to her level.
With its free hand, it brought a sword down upon her. She teleported to the top of it, yawning.
It shot her again.
“Idiot.”
Now that she knew how it would reflect, she directed it directly at the mech’s head. Its house-sized skull dropped to the ground with a thud strong enough to register as an earthquake. The rest of the mech dropped like a normal dead body, slumping to the side.
It would have been a triumphal victory had the sound the body made when scraping the wall not been worse than claws on chalkboard.
“Geez,” Discord said, cleaning out his ears with an oversized Q-Tip. “That was unnecessary to the extreme.”
“I win,” Rina said, dissipating her spells. “Take th-”
Something the size and shape of a human launched out of the mech’s body and drove a fist right into Rina’s head. She was knocked all the way to the pile where Trixie lay. “Ow…”
“You’re telling me…” Trixie muttered.
The mech’s “pilot” was just another machine, though its proportions were much more human. Every limb was a dark gray metal that twisted a bit like a double helix, affixed around spherical white pearls instead of relying on standard joints. The chest was replaced with one massive pearl that glowed with a soft white light, seemingly powering the motions of the rest of the machine.
Vriska jumped out, pointing her sword at it. “Oh, I’ve got your number, little robot-man.”
“What number is it?” Discord asked.
“Not every joke has to b—” Vriska was barely able to block the robot’s attack in time, losing her sword in the process. Annoyed at this, she attempted to drain the robot’s luck.
The moment she tried this, the pearl in the center flashed orange, gaining the symbol of Light.
“What i—” she felt it try to steal her luck as she dodged. Naturally, it was unable to, but her luck wouldn’t be of any help anymore either. “Copycat!” She pulled out her dice and threw them. It canceled her manipulation of the roll, making the octet settle on a simple fish-slap spell the robot shrugged off without a problem.
“Shit,” Vriska jumped back and reached for her sword.
To put it mildly, she was not used to making complicated acrobatic maneuvers without luck involved in some way. She managed to get her hand on the sword, but the robot was faster. It kicked her in the stomach, removing the sword from her grip once again and tossing her onto the pile with Trixie and Rina.
“I’m not out!” Vriska shouted, jumping back to her feet. “I’m no—damnit.” She dropped her fists when she saw Flutterfree charging in. “You’re going to lose, Flutters!”
“I won’t,” Flutterfree declared, already surrounding herself with the clouds of Rage. The robot had no higher intelligence to be debilitated by the truth, so she had to resort to pure power. It reached out its hand to reduce her luck. She pointed her blades forward and grinned. Her luck may have been abysmal, but one of these was going to hit.
And that was enough. She skewered the robot’s central pearl with her blade. Normally, this would be little more than a ‘flesh wound’ to the machine. However, her Rage did its magic, surging into the robot and tearing it apart limb from limb. There was a moment where it tried to adapt to the Rage rather than Light, but it couldn’t purge the Light from its body fast enough. It collapsed in a loose heap of pearls and metal connectors.
“WOO-HOO!” Discord shouted. “GO FLUTTERFREE!”
Trixie facehooved. Her face was getting a little sore from doing that so often.
“I win!” Flutterfree said, smiling. Taking a step, she tripped over her hooves and flopped onto the ground. “Ow…”
“You’ll recover quickly,” Vriska muttered, dusting herself off. “I’m sure Rev can break the ‘curse’ or something if it’s really annoying.”
“Good idea... Eve, can you maybe loot this for me? I don’t want a massive static shock.”
“Sure!” Eve teleported to the downed machine and popped open its central pearl. The inner circuitry was intricate, but all fried from Flutterfree’s Rage attack. There was only one thing that seemed independent of the rest of the system: a large red button.
“Huh.” Eve pushed the button.
“EVE!” Discord shouted.
“What? One of us was going to press it eventually.”
“BUT… BUT… Okay, I would have done the same thing…”
“That’s not a good thing,” Jenny muttered.
“…Did it even do anything?” Rina asked.
The column of energy in the center of the room started to turn red.
“That’s bad,” Vriska said.
“On it!” Discord said. He lifted the severed leg of the mech in his magic and threw it at the energy column.
This reaction was decidedly explosive.
~~~
Shimmy, once-goddess of Earth Shimmer, was… well, no longer a goddess. She was still absolutely full of magic energy, but not much more than the average Celestia. Proudly displaying her world’s three most common features—forehead gem, feathered neck, and ridiculously oversized fingernails—she still carried an air of regality about her, even if she didn’t have an entourage with her at the moment.
She had her six closest friends with her—all spared the dusting—but they were still on the ship. None of them really had any reason to visit with the crew of the Austraeoh; Shimmy was the only one who had established much of a rapport with them.
Currently, she was sitting in the Crow’s Nest with Corona, looking down at the world below.
“You’ve done well for yourself,” Shimmy observed.
“I think so,” Corona said, smiling contentedly. “Some would say I’m just drifting, lost, without a purpose. Or that I lost everything.”
“That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”
“You know as well as I do that it wasn’t the loss that I wanted.”
Shimmy nodded in understanding, tapping her fingers on the railing. “I did try to defend you for a while, there. Then you had to go off and start fighting…”
“What would you have done, if you didn’t have your world to protect?”
Shimmy let out a soft sigh. “Fair point. Though I would have fought against you.”
“I know. Wouldn’t have you do anything else.”
“…How did you and Eve even end up in charge, I wonder? You didn’t exemplify the emotion of the war. You were often sad and tired, but nobody ever tried to remove you.”
“Not entirely true. But it was the Tower, probably.”
“Probably.”
There was an awkward silence between the two Sunsets.
“So, you already know my story,” Corona said, turning to Shimmy. “How’d you get here?”
“From what I know, my Prophet cut a deal. I’m not entirely sure on the details, but I’ve talked to a few Pinkies about it. So my planet came out almost completely unharmed, with minimal dusting. It was still enough to cause worldwide panic… especially with the nature of magic changing again and everyone forgetting how to use it… but we were still there. Able to learn, able to grow, and able to build them back up. Considering some of the horror stories I’ve seen out here, we did amazingly well.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
Shimmy forced a smile. “Yeah. Anyway, once it was stabilized, we realized… we weren’t needed anymore. Kind of like what all of you did. So we just… packed up into a ship and left on interplanetary exploration that we never got to do back in the day. Just the seven of us. Sailing into the night…” Her forced smile became genuine as she closed her eyes and remembered. “I can see why you loved it so much. The… freedom to just be. Go wherever you want, doing whatever. It’s…” She sagged, laughing sadly. “It’s a relief. It’s finally over. The world’s not going to explode because I sneeze wrong.”
Corona put a wing around her. “Thanks.”
Shimmy raised an eyebrow. “One good result does not excuse everything.”
“I know, I know.” Absent-mindedly, she looked North; to the City and the Tower. “…But maybe…” She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Right or wrong in the end, I am where I am. I’ll keep doing everything I can, even when it crumbles to dust.”
“I once asked my Tree of Harmony who really called the arbitrary shots in existence,” Shimmy said. “I got a non-answer. I don’t think I realized until the war started that it was better that I not be told.” She looked Corona in the eyes. “Who wants to understand that they’re in a story? What will it drive them to do?”
Corona nodded slowly. “What indeed… what won’t a Sunset give her all for, once she’s made up her mind?”
Shimmy didn’t want to think too hard about that.
“Thanks. Not for the story, but… for caring enough to stop by.” Corona placed a hand on Shimmy’s shoulder. “People may not be trying to kill me out of rage anymore, but there’s a lot of hate going around.”
“There’s a lot of hate for Eve too. …Though there is less.”
“Just… thanks. For dropping by to say hi and talk.”
“Anytime I’m in the neighborhood.”
“Hopefully that’ll be more often, now. Where you headed?”
“We’re going to the City to see the Tower. I’m admittedly a little curious if it’ll let me inside, now that our journey across the cosmos is over.”
“It sure is fun up there.”
“So I’ve been t—”
There was a deep rumbling from the ground below. Corona raised an eyebrow. “What in th—”
A massive laser shot out of the ground, hitting the Austraeoh dead on and vaporizing it instantly.
“AGAIN!?” Pinkie shouted at the top of her lungs the instant Nanoha’s teleport rematerialized them on the surface. “Where did that even come from? Why is my ship gone? WHY WHY WHY!?” She took a hat out of her mane and threw it on the ground, stomping it repeatedly.
Shimmy blinked. “Does this happen… often?”
“Often enough that Nanoha has the evacuate-everyone spell on speed-dial,” Corona said, pointing at the dwindling magical light around the once White Devil.
Monika appeared after everyone else, scribbling a note in a book. “…and in this entry I will convey to you all how our ship is doomed to explode. For seemingly no reason, a laser shot out of the ground and impacted us…”
Pidge groaned. “You really are going to record every little embarrassing event in that history record of yours, aren’t you?”
“Why did you think I started writing it?” Monika peered over her notebook. “All of the nonsense I have to deal with on this trip is going right in these pages and there’s nothing any of you can do about it.”
“Stick it to them, Monika!” Mattie called.
Monika wrote another sentence. “…pregnant unicorn wants to pick fights with a bunch of superhuman heroes…”
“….That’s not fair.”
“Deal with it, greasy-flanks,” Monika snipped, slamming her book shut.
“Oh, I will.” Mattie grinned mischievously.
Monika blinked. “Er…”
“AHEM!” Pinkie called. “First of all, what blew up our ship?”
Discord appeared in a flash with the group, dropping Eve at Pinkie’s hooves.
“Sorry Captain…” Eve said, shakily standing up. “I pushed the big red button.”
Pinkie facehooved. “Gah…”
“We did beat the dungeon, though!” Jenny called.
Pinkie tapped her hoof. “Well, now that we’ve solved that mystery, let’s rebuild the Austraeoh!”
“I can conscript my friends to help,” Shimmy added. “We’ll get you something great!”
“I can just recreate it,” Monika pointed out. “Snap-bam-done.”
“That’s boring,” Pinkie said dismissively. “We will remake the Austraeoh anew every time! Let’s make it out of cheese! Or, oooh, sapphire!”
Mlinx raised a hand. “How about a living ship, this time? Made of magic wood that keeps growing?”
“If you want to garden,” Pidge huffed.
“This is gonna be fun,” Pinkie giggled, all signs of lament at the destruction of her ship gone. However, her eagerness to begin reconstruction was halted when she turned her head to the sky.
Two sky islands floated above them—those definitely hadn’t been there before.
There was an itch at the back of her mind.
Something bigger’s going on here…
Ooh, intriguing framing device. Still years before the Tower's fall, of course. Otherwise we couldn't hear the story.
Point of order: These are clearly orks. The k helps distinguish rampaging space fungus from the forces of Mordor, the Horde of Azeroth, the intellectual footballer of Ankh-Morpork, etc.
Fraymotif: Rage Against the Darkening
The Bacon Horse lives!
(Full disclosure: I've known about this for a while, ever since GM cleared the next Shimmy scene with me. It's been tremendous fun watching people speculate about the fate of Earth Shimmer and its inhabitants.)
Okay, good on Trixie for pursuing that line of inquiry... though now I'm worried this could turn out to be a tragically unrequited romance.
"I wasn't one to begin with."
Fine, spirit of Harmony. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to on a multiversal scale.
"A scale that no longer applies to reality."
Which is why you're no longer a goddess.
"... You are very lucky I can't just will myself to your location anymore."
The "Different Views of Reality" shorts were part of it, to cement their existence in the narrative. So were some select sacrifices, Ditzwalker among them.
I can't help but imagine a sign at the city gates, one with picture of a random background pony the fandom never latched onto and a sign that reads "You Must Be This Unimportant to Enter."
She is a dating sim character. Keeping a log of every interaction is in her nature.
Ooh, Weatherlight style. Nice.
Lovely beginning of the end. Looking forward to future installments.