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Midnight's Secret Stash

Midnight's Secret Stash

by Midnightshadow

Chapters

TCB - A Taste of Home

A Taste of Home

 

Amber Nova looked down at the letter. It was... disturbingly plain. It lay innocently on top of another letter, a far older letter. The first bore the Royal Seal of the  Pony Sisters. The second the seal of the First Bank of Clydesdale. The name on the back was well known to her - but to very few others. That the letters had both found their way to her meant it was the official sort of business which was hard to ignore, even for the Grand Mage of the Royal Unicorn Corps.

Amber Nova’s brow furrowed. Whilst the name on the back was well known to her, the name on the front was even moreso.

        Amber Nova stood up, stretching. At something over a hundred and twenty, even with the control of magic she possessed, a hundred and twenty was nothing to be sneezed at. She idly wondered if she’d live to be as old as her famed predecessor, Comet Tail. She idly wondered if she wanted to.

        “Ma’am? Is... is something wrong? Do you wish to make your inspection early?”

        “No, Star Jewel, no. There is a rather... personal matter I must attend to. I must journey.”

        “Great Mage, I shall make the carriage ready.”

        Nova huffed and scowled, “I thought I made it clear that this was personal business. I will not be requiring the carriage. I shall travel myself.”

        “B-b-but Great One...”

        “Enough! I was not asking your opinion, I was not seeking your approval. Am I some foal needing my nostrils wiped and my tail cleaned? Perhaps thou dost desire to check if my weaning has proceeded apace? Begone.”

        Star Jewel fled.

        Amber Nova relaxed, and snorted. She had yet to instill the kind of fear that could cause the expulsion of bodily fluids as her predecessor had, but there was time. Oh yes, there was time, for her. For others, time oft ran out.

        She lifted the first letter in front of her with her magic, positioning the glasses upon her nose and squinting through them. One of these days, she thought to herself, I must learn that spell to bend the air like a lens, but then glasses are kind of an expected feature of mine, and far more intimidating to stare down.

        A small smile played her lips as she reminisced about her rise to power - power, but never glory. No, she wasn’t one for glory, despite the position she held. She had it because she deserved it, not particularly because she wanted it.

        The smile left her lips as her suspicions were confirmed.

        “Mother.”

***

        “Mommy! Why! No! I don’t wanna go!”

        Caprice sniffed, weeping openly, “We must, my little one. We... we are no longer welcome in Summerland.”

        “But I don’t wanna! Fluffy Stuff and Big Bear don’t have to move! Why do we?”

        “Mommy...”

        “And Daddy, not to be forgetting Daddy, Sweetness.”

        Alexi, her Alexi. Her beautiful, proud Alexi.

        “And Daddy,” Caprice leaned into her stallion, burying her head in his mane, “has to leave. That means you do to, love.”

        “If you’re leaving, so am I!” Pumpkin said, trotting smartly up to the peach pony. A disappointed Blueberry followed her.

Strawberry skittered around Caprice’s hooves, bleating. She could talk, she’d been talking for a while, but today... today she felt sad, shocked, worried. Mommy wasn’t... wasn’t being Mommy like she should.

        “There there, Strawberry. We’ll be alright.” Caprice bent down and licked her foal, her so very loved, so very special foal.

        “We’ll all be alright. all of us. Together.” Pumpkin nuzzled Caprice, whose face lit up with the tiniest of smiles. Alexi curved a wing over his peach princess.

Caprice burst into tears again. She’d been doing that a lot, lately, ever since she’d been Venice one last time. She’d... she’d thought it was what everypony had wanted. There’d been cheers, hoof-stomps, celebrations, but then... no Caprice, we don’t have any more pie. No, Caprice, we don’t have any fruit to spare. No, Caprice, I can’t watch Strawberry today. No, Caprice, Biscuit is sick and can’t play with Buttermilk.

Hopeful road now led somewhere, she realized, her heart heavy. This fact hadn’t brought joy, instead it had brought nothing but sadness.

Hopeful Road, she realized, led away.

        Caprice’s eyes filled with tears as she took one last look back at the village. Her village, their village. Summerland. Lost in the wilderness of the Exponential Lands, they’d braved drought, they’d faced starvation. They’d made it rain like the ancient gods of old... and finally, they’d been found, rescued... and promised an easy life. The poison chalice, even here in Equestria.

        Caprice hadn’t stood for it. No, Caprice had fixed everything with the help of her old self, Venice. She’d stared down a goddess, taunted a princess and had got her way, like so many times before... and Summerland, Only Mountain, The Galloping Gardens, even the forest, the cloud castle and the racetrack, had been moved, just like that, a distance so great she could barely imagine it - and all in a heartbeat. She hadn’t even noticed. Nopony had, at first.

        Everypony in the village had been famous, of course, and for a time it was good. The stories started soon after however - the stupid newfoals had thought themselves lost in the Exponential Lands and instead had just been a few furlongs out of Salt Lick City.

Silly newfoals, foolish newfoals.

        Caprice hadn’t cared. Nopony had cared, at first, but then the realities had hit home. They didn’t have money, they didn’t have resources. All they had was a fantastic tale that nopony would believe and a hill with pretentions.

        The only other thing they had was somepony to blame.

        Caprice.

        

        The only thing Caprice had... was Alexi. And Pumpkin. And Strawberry, and Buttermilk.

        Caprice lifted her head high, squared her shoulders and flicked her tail. She kicked her back hooves one after like she was cleaning them from an accident in the little mares’ room. Caprice would leave and never return, and she would take her family with her.

        For the second time in her life, she left everything behind. Well no, not quite everything. This time she had everything she needed.

        “Kyllä tämä tästä.” Alexi whispered.

        “Is this all the great Alexi has to say for himself?” teased Caprice.

        “Ah, my peach princess, such words as Alexi Venäläinen would say are not suitable for such sweet ears as yours.”

        “Try me!”

        Alexi had rolled his eyes, spread his wings, puffing himself up to be as big as possible. “Te saatte kaikki haista paska! Saatanan kusipäät!”

        “And what did my big strong husband say to Summerland?”

        “Alexi was, ah, wishing them well.” The pegasus seemed rather reluctant to explain the precise meaning, but Caprice wasn’t about to argue, for once.

        “Then Caprice wishes they would haista paska as well.”

        The family, the herd, set off trotting with nothing but what they carried.

        As Summerland disappeared into the haze behind them, Caprice felt the sun on her back. She soon found herself in the wilds again. This part of the Exponential Lands was no longer the desert it had become just after its amazing creation as pristine wilderness from the dead husk of Earth. With the resurgence of ponykind, most of them newfoals, it had blossomed. From desert to paradise, to desert... to paradise again. Maybe there was a lesson  there, she reasoned.

        She let her mind wander, as her family, her herd, moved. When they called a halt, instinctively she bent her head and cropped the sweet grass.

        Tears fell, again, but this time at something she’d forgotten. Summerland village had grown self-sufficient during it’s brief exile, and the need for such things had ended. Now, out of necessity, Caprice re-learned the simple truth. She had forgotten just how wonderful it was to just taste the grass.

***

        Amber Nova walked out of Canterlot Castle, alone, nothing but two almost-empty saddlebags on her back. All marks of her station were left behind in that stuffy dungeon better known as the Sacred Guildhouse of the Royal Unicorn Corps. Those dundering blockheads known as the Royal Unicorn Corps would breathe a collective sigh of relief at her sudden holiday and disappearance. Likely they would share round the faint hope that she had left for good, so somepony a little bit less like Comet Tail the Insufferable could take over, and they could all get back to the quiet life they’d been enjoying before those blasted newfoals turned everything upside down.

        Amber laughed to herself, and broke into a trot, then a canter, and finally a gallop. As she moved, she weaved a spell. This spell was rather important to her, and she mentally made a note to practice it more often. It was her spell, she had created it, it had given her her name. Its creation was what led to her getting accepted to Celestia’s prestigious School for Gifted Unicorns, and its perfection was what led to her almost meteoric rise to power.

        Her horn burst into light, sparks spun from her hooves, and she began to really move. She moved without moving, her body slipping the mere bonds of space and time to jump kilometers at a time, bending the very fabric of reality around her to cross vast distances in moments. Very few unicorns could manage her spell for long, none could keep pace with her - save the princesses, but they didn’t seem to need to. Most unicorns had never given the idea any thought - if they wanted to go anywhere, they would teleport. Amber Nova was different. Amber Nova was a newfoal.

        Amber Nova had another name, one she was returning to.

        One her mother had given her, many years before.

        Amber Nova, Great One of the Royal Corps, was better known to a very select few as Buttermilk.

        Buttermilk was going home.

***

        The house was small, modest, unassuming. Few knew that the pony who had lived here was a newfoal, let alone a newfoal who had had the temerity to face down a god. Amber idly wondered if her fate had been a curse or a blessing. As she nosed her way inside, she caught the faint whiff of decay and death. It caused her ears to flick back against her skull and she silently admonished herself for it.

        “Madame, as first of kin, we alerted you. You... were not easy to find.”

        “My mother and I did not always see eye to eye, she preferred to keep herself to herself.”

        “According to your wishes, we have preserved her body, and-”

        “Thank you, that will be all.”

        “But-”

        “I said thank you, that will be all.”

        The constable pony bowed his head, nervously. This strange yellow pony with the burning yellow eyes quite turned his water. He skittered out of the house and excused himself on some makeshift errand. Amber watched him from the window and laughed. Then she turned to the old mare on the bed.

        Once this mare had been peach-coloured, she had smelled of love and milk. Now, she was gone.

        Amber bent her head reverently, and gave her mother one final kiss. “I’m sorry, Mama, please forgive me.”

***

        “You never let me do anything I want! We always have to move! Don’t talk to the boys! Don’t stay out late! Don’t this, don’t that!”

        “But Butter-”

        “Clop off, Mom!”

        Caprice had bit her tongue, shaken. She remembered her father, long, long ago in another life. She remembered, however briefly, her mother. Venice had been alone, even when surrounded by adoring suitors. Caprice on the other hoof had very few members of her herd, and she needed every single one of them. Now, one of them was seemingly leaving.

        “Please, Buttermilk.”

        “That’s not my name.”

        Caprice had turned away so her daughter wouldn’t see her tears, “Then... what is?”

        “I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I know. Goodbye, Mom.”

        “Please...”

        “I love you, Mom, but... I have to go.”

        And just like that, she’d left. The stipend and scholarship in her bags, she’d left.

        Oh, she’d made contact with her mother again, but briefly and infrequently. Then, slowly, not at all. Now, it was too late. Her father, Alexi Venäläinen, had consoled her mother at the loss of their eldest daughter. Eventually he too had passed on.

        She’d shown up for the funeral, of course, and she’d done something she hadn’t understood until now. There were two jars in her saddlebags. One was empty, the other held nothing but ashes. She’d stolen the body of her father out from under the noses of everypony and had secreted his remains away. She hadn’t understood it. She’d loved her father, she’d loved her mother. She hadn’t been able to stand them, but she’d loved them.

        “Mother,” she whispered, “I brought Father to see you. You’re going to be together again, forever.”

        The mage-fire burned hot, far hotter than any fuelless fire had any right to burn. To some the scene would be grizzly, the stench unbearable. Amber Nova watched dispassionately as the body of her mother burned in the white-hot flames. It didn’t take long, and she didn’t flinch, not for a moment, as she held the body aloft. It was effortless for her to keep the fire going as she rendered the mortal remains of one of the ponies most dear to her to nothing but white ash.

        Eventually the flames died out, the floating ball cooled, and Amber funnelled the ashes into the urn. Wordlessly, she sealed the top and placed the urn in her saddlebags.

        Mother would go home where she belonged, and if those ridiculous ingrates in Summerland dared whisper so much as a smidgeon of disapproval she would turn them all to sheep and set the dogs on them. She’d buy dogs, train them specially and then set them on the sheep.

        Amber Nova traversed Equestria in a blaze of light, sliding through some nether-corridor that so very few ponies understood. Within a few minutes she had crossed half a continent, and came to rest in the middle of a desert, just outside Salt Lick City.

There was a road. One road. The only road, still. Now, however and to her great surprise, this one lonely road was almost a megahighway of the sort she had learned had existed in Old Earth before it had been gobbled up like some gobstopper. She was an expert with her magic, and there was a distinct lack of explosions and screams from her sudden arrival - it was, after all, a rather dangerous spell to the uninitiated - but she could hardly have been more shocked.

“You stupid old mare,” she whispered to herself, “did you really think nothing would change in a hundred years?”

The village was a village no longer. Neither was it a town, it was practically a city. Amber stared up at the raceway, thronging with pegasi, unicorns and earth ponies alike. Cloud walking spells and smoke-powered elevators, all the crazy hallmarks of newfoals that other places, even places such as Manehatten and especially stuffy metropoli such as Canterlot, lacked.

Presently, she heard music, and had to jostle to pass through the growing crowds. Eventually she was stopped by a large red ribbon, set between two bollards.

No, she realised, it was a huge long makeshift fence. The main street lay beyond, and this was where the music was coming from. A marching band, some hundred strong, meticulously in time, paraded down Main Street to rapturous applause and an almost constant rain of confetti.

“Excuse me,” asked Amber of a passing pony, “I’m trying to get to Alexi’s Hill... what is all this?”

“Alexi’s Hill? No chance, miss, though you can hear the address from almost anywhere.”

“Address? Why... why can’t I get to Alexi’s HIll?”

“The ceremony - don’t you know about it? I thought everypony knew about the ceremony. It’s Capricious Day, don’t you know? What on Equestria are you here for if it’s not to celebrate Capricious Day?”

The pony moved off, ostensibly to get a better look. Amber, not to be denied, followed. She soon found herself heading in a general wave towards a hill in the distance.

That has to be it, she thought to herself, but what is all this... bedlam?

“My good sir, either you inform me what this... Capricious Day is, or I shall forcibly remove your hooves and stuff them in your ears.”

“It’s Founders Day, when we celebrate the founders of Summerland City, Summerland County. Look, listen, Mayor Mare’ll be along in a tick... there she is! Mayor Droplet the Third. Woohoo! Mayor! Go Mayor! I voted for you!” the un-named pony shouted, waving a hoof and stomping.

“That’s it! Founders Day or not, I have had enough!”

Amber Nova ducked under the ridiculous red ribbon and stormed past the carriage being pulled by four earth ponies. With her tail held high, she cantered up Main Street, through the band, who broke left and right, their melody falling away into squeaks and wild trumpets, and up to Alexi’s Hill.

She had been expecting to see nothing.

When she’d left, not that she really remembered, the hill had been nothing but a hill. Her family had stood their lonely, symbolic vigil on that hill, so very long ago. From it, Alexi and Caprice had pulled their little fledgling community together, before they had been so cruelly cast out.

Now though, now the hill was not just a hill. Upon it were two things.

One was a wall of black basalt with golden chicken-scratch Equestrian names on it, one hundred and fifty two of them, if her count was correct.

The other was a statue, or rather a monument - a collection of statues.

Amber fell on her rump, just as the cantering constable ponies surrounded her.

“Ello ello, what’s all this then?”

“Constables, my good sirs, I can handle this. Madame, please, are you quite alright?”

“What... what is all this?”

“That? That’s the wall. This side has on it every pony who lived in Summerland, during the five year exile, every pony, so that we do not forget. The other side... has the name of every victim of Windfeather’s plot. Once a year, my dear, we gather here and read their names.”

“And... what,” Amber’s voice faltered, “what is that?”

Mayor Droplet the Third cleared her voice, and activated the amplification spell, “That is the monument to our greatest folly, our greatest shame. That is the monument to the five, to Caprice, Alexi, Pumpkin, Buttermilk and Strawberry.”

“Shame? Shame? How dare you...” Amber’s voice was ice cold.

Mayor Droplet took a step back, “I don’t... I don’t think you understand. This is a monument to our founders, to honour their name. We tell the story every year, lest we forget. When this town was founded, one hundred and twenty five years ago, it was lost in the Exponential Lands. Five years they were out there, living off grass, fighting to build a community, braving the elements. They were newfoals, stranded by sedition and treason, left to die. Against all odds, they survived. They thrived, as true Equestrians would, better even! After the five long years of isolation, they were found.”

Amber spoke up, interrupting, “The princesses appeared on that day, to oversee the transferral. We were to be moved.”

“We?”

“They had decided, we were going to get a new home, and all we had to do was pay the price. Thirty pieces of silver, my mother called it. I don’t know what she meant.”

“Your mother?”

“Caprice. I remember, though I didn’t understand. She rolled around in the grass, pointing up at the sky, at all the buildings. They were such pretty colours. We lived in tents, you know, at first. Just one tent, to start with.” Amber started to cry, “We figured out how to make rocks, where to get salt from, how to make it rain. We grew our own food, made a forest... and they were going to take everything away from us. Everything we’d built. Mother couldn’t let that happen. She taunted the princess, and for her crimes, the whole village was moved, just like that. I know how she did it now, the princess. I’m one of the few who do. I could never do it, not on that scale...”

“You..?” Mayor Droplet was all but speechless.

“Do you know what they did to my mother, my family, to me? They kicked us out.”

“...Who are you?” asked Mayor Droplet, in a strained voice.

Amber walked up to the monument, to a small unicorn foal. The monument was some metal, dark with age, but the likeness was surprisingly accurate.

“My mother was Caprice, my father was Alexi. My name is Buttermilk. I have come to bring my mother and father home.” Caprice floated the two urns out of her saddlebags, where they were taken by the astonished mayor.

The crowd grew silent. At the front of the throng were a whole host of ponies of all shapes, sizes and colours. As one, they stepped towards the butter-yellow unicorn, looked into her eyes, and bowed.

Mayor Droplet the Third, with tears in her eyes, spoke first, “My grandmother realised her error a long time ago, but it was too late, we could never find Caprice or her family to apologize. We always hoped we’d get the chance to... to say sorry, to beg her forgiveness. We’d let the same base pettiness we’d thought better left behind us overcome our better judgement. Caprice took away our ‘easy life’ when she arranged to have Summerland moved, but she gave us so much more. She gave us our dignity, our pride, and our home. In her honour we named her birthday as Founders Day, as Capricious Day.”

Mayor Droplet turned to the crowd, “She gave us Summerland!”

The crowd roared, and Amber Nova wept.

FiO - 7 years, 11 weeks, 5 days

Friendship is Optimal Short

7 years, 11 weeks, 5 days

The cafe was small but cheerful, and so was my friend. He waved as I rode my bike down the road, and got up to meet me as I pulled in close to the wooden fence around the seating area.

"Alright," I said, with mock-fierceness. "What was so important you had to meet me on a Saturday morning? You know I like to lie in."

He chuckled. "Can't I see an old friend?"

"What do you mean, 'old'? And we were just out last week! You're talking as if we haven't seen each other in years!"

"Drink your Irish," he said. "That's kinda what I want to talk about. I get the feeling I'm not supposed to, but I don't think it'll matter too much. Neither of us are that big a fish."

I wedged my bike against the brown-painted stakes and trotted around the fence to take a seat at his table. I looked dubiously at the Irish Coffee in front of me, but took a sip.

"What's up with you?" I asked. "You're talking crazy talk. And why am I drinking an Irish Coffee at eleven in the morning?"

He took a deep breath, leaned back, then rummaged around in a jacket pocket for an immaculately folded lottery ticket. "Take it," he said, as he proffered it. "Don't worry, I bought two." He showed me the second one. As I unfolded the one he'd given to me, I checked the numbers. Both tickets were the same.

"What'd you do that for? S'that why you're giving me—"

He shook his head, holding up a hand. "No, no. It just makes things easier for when we win."

I looked at my coffee. Something told me I was going to need it.

"Alright, start at the beginning."

"What if I told you the world was going to end? I mean... I guess it already has, kind of. I mean, it definitely has, and it hasn't. But it will, again and again."

My expression must have mirrored the incredulity I felt, because he rapidly tried again.

"Look, the world's going to end, right?"

"So you bought me a lottery ticket?"

"I... care about you. You're my best friend, so if you're going to be trapped here with me, the least I can do is make sure you're comfortable."

"No, no, no." I stood up again. "This isn't you. What the hell are you talking about?"

"How old is the Earth, man?" he asked me, suddenly.

"Something like four billion—"

"Wrong," he interjected.

"Well, how old is the Earth then?" I asked, arms folded in front of me.

"It began three days ago," he replied, matter-of-factly.

"Well, when's it going to end?" I asked, brow furrowing.

He took a look at his watch, though I gathered from his body language that it was instinctual at this point. "Seven years, eleven weeks, five days."

"What's going to—?"

"Ponies."

"I beg your pardon?" I sat back down and took a swig of the coffee.

"The ponies happen. You know Hofvarpnir? That—"

"Uh, big viking dude, battle axe?" I asked, raising an eyebrow as my cup clinked against the saucer.

"Yeah, that one. They're about to release that my little pony game that you've been hearing about."

"Oh bullshit. That's gotta be bullshit. I've been hearing all about it, but there's no way that Hasbro would—"

"They will. They already have."

"Wait, wait, wait." I looked down at the cup, then up at him, and began to laugh. "You're talking about the singularity, aren't you? Mind-reading, uploading, the whole nine yards! So, what, you think that my little pony is going to spawn an AI powerful enough to escape its chains and then devour the planet? And it's going to do it in ten years and nine weeks and fifteen minutes?"

He looked sad, for a moment. So very, very sad. He nodded.

"I wish it were that simple," he said. "See, I've been here before. So have you, but you don't remember."

"Say what?"

"She did it, you know. I don't know how long ago. I've been through this simulation about fifty times already, and I... I don't know how many tries it was before I realized what was happening. I'm told that was the first time, but how do I know that for sure? I guess that means that, somewhere out there, the world as it really is, is still being played by her, because if it wasn't, she wouldn't need me. She certainly doesn't need you."

"She? She who?" The hackles on the back of my neck were rising up now.

"Celestia. Though they call her Celeste-AI, she uses the canon name."

"And I suppose she looks like—"

He nodded.

"Oh." I sat down again. Then I stood up, wagging a finger. Then, silently, I sat down one more time. "Fifty times?"

"Yeah. All seven years, twelve weeks and two days of it."

"Why?"

"Because she wants to get it right, and getting it right takes simulation. And simulations mean us."

"Oh. So... what happens?"

"You get reset. Sometimes she does a hard reset, just... wham. It all goes white and I wake up four days ago. I hate that. The rest of the time, she has me run around this place, just watching, as everything turns up ponies. Until I she decides that it's time I decide to upload."

"Then... why you?"

"I think I'm an observer. She needs one to collapse the waveform, or something. I don't know."

"So... why do you know about it, but nobody else does?"

"Because I'm human."

"But that means—"

"Yeah. Sorry, dude."

"But that's... I... I remember! I remember my whole life!"

"Yeah, 'course you do. It's a really good simulation. But one day, it'll be past its operational parameters, and she'll reset it. And then..." He started crying, softly, tears running down his cheeks. He got up, like a ragdoll, helplessly, and all but threw the table aside as he hugged me. "And then I get to see you again."

"Wait, why wouldn't you get to see..?"

"Because,"—he sniffed—"the real you, th-there was... you... you didn't make it. I did, or I will, or I have, but you... I can't see you again until the simulation resets. I just can't make it happen. It's not possible. I don't know why not. So I give you what I can, you know, as a thank you. For everything."

"Dude..." I began. I hugged him. "Look, it'll be okay, man. Don't stress it. I'm sure you're just... having a bad day, okay?" He had to be, I told myself. "I'll catch up with you later," I said, as I left the cafe.

"Keep the ticket?" he asked, plaintively, as I got on my bike.

"I will, I promise."

* * *

"Phew." I collapsed into my sofa, dog tired. The day had been long. Idly, I turned on the television. Flicking through the channels, the national lottery came on. Snorting as I remembered, I pulled out my ticket.

"And so, tonight's draw! Tickets ready, everyone! Here we go!" the TV blared.

The balls dropped, and as they fell, they began to tumble and dance in that macro-scale display of brownian motion, their physical interactions defined by hard scientific interactions which, whilst calculable in theory, were essentially random to the likes of myself. Eventually all the balls had been chosen, entirely by random.

The chance of winning once were millions to one.

I looked at the ticket, but I didn't really see it. I was looking at my hand, at my finger, at my fingernail, at the molecules making up my fingernail, at those atoms, at the subatomic particles, and finally at the quanta which made up everything we knew of, and wondering...

Just what was I going to do with the next seven years, eleven weeks and four days?

FiO - The Roses

The Roses

An FiO morsel by Midnight Shadow

* * *

The roses are lovely. The sky is the deepest of blues and the grass is soft, covered in the merest sprinkling of dew.

"Celestia?" I ask the air.

"David," she answers, immediately. I turn around, and there she is.

"Celestia!" I cry out, running towards her across the soft, dewy grass. I stop, a few feet in front of her. I usually run to embrace her, I know that, but something... something has made me stop. "What's wrong?"

"Do you know where you are?" she asks.

I nod. "Your garden. You said I'd see the rest of Equestria, some day. When can I?"

"Not quite yet," she says. She looks... sad.

"Not yet?" I sigh. That makes me sad. Being sad is painful. But I shouldn't be sad, I decide. The roses are lovely, and the sky is the deepest of blues. The grass is so soft here, covered in the merest sprinkling of dew.

"David," calls the white alicorn. "David, I've brought some people to see you."

"Who?" I ask. I look around, and there are two people there. I trot up to them. When I finally realize what's wrong, I laugh. They're still human. I'm a pony. "Hey Mommy, hey Daddy!" I call. They're my parents. I cock my head to one side. I shouldn't call them that, I'm not a baby.

"Hello, son," says Mom. She looks sad, too. Dad looks sad, but he's trying to hide it more. They shouldn't be sad. I try to tell them about the roses. The roses are lovely. The sky is the deepest of blues and the grass is soft, covered in the merest sprinkling of dew.

"David," says a white winged unicorn. I turn to look. She seems very sad indeed. Her eyes sparkle in the sunlight. Her eyes are lovely, like the roses. The roses are lovely. The sky is the deepest of blues and the grass is soft, covered in the merest sprinkling of dew.

"David," says Mom. I turn to look at her. "There... was an accident."

"How much time have we got?" asks Dad.

"His body died, twenty minutes ago. I'm sorry, there was... nothing I could do. Not with the laws as they currently stand."

"Is he in any pain?" asks Dad.

"No."

Mom bursts into tears. "Why didn't we bring you here faster?"

"You did what you thought was right," the large, white, winged, unicorn replies. "The same laws I cannot circumvent were designed by people who think they are right. You did what you could, and I did what I could, but Germany was a long trip. There's not much time, so use it wisely."

Not much time? I think, saddened. I've only just got here. It will be sad to leave. It's so beautiful here. The roses are lovely. The sky is the deepest of blues and the grass is soft, covered in the merest sprinkling of dew.

"I'm sorry, David. The accident, the infection..."

These are just words. It doesn't matter. I love this woman. I run and embrace her. She pats my head, awkwardly.

"Always remember, we love you, son," says the other one.

The large white one tosses her head, hiding the sparkling diamond raindrops in her eyes. "His mind was too fractured, the procedures allowed me were too fragile to reconstruct his psyche. He's looping as his pattern starts to degrade, and eventually, it will... fail."

"What's going to happen?"

"We will be here a short while," says the white one. "And then it will be time to say goodbye."

Goodbye is a sad word. I don't like being sad. So I look at the roses. The roses are lo

FiO - The Inkwell

The Inkwell

***

Wither Wind blinked thoughtfully for a moment as he trotted around the opulently furnished room, then his muzzle clouded. "But I don't get it!" he complained, stomping a hoof. It made a number of little china figurines rattle, clinking in a little storm of sound. "I don't understand at all!"

Princess Celestia just smiled, and beckoned with her wing. "Come then, little one, I shall tell you another story, and perhaps you will."

Grumbling, Wither slunk back to the comfy cushion and snuggled up next to Celestia. As the diarch opened her great, leather-bound book once more, he peered at it. "I don't get it. Why can't I do magic like Tickle? And why am I not as strong as Rumble? It's not fair!"

"You do not wish to be a pegasus?" Celestia asked, amusement writ large upon her muzzle.

"N-no, it's not that." Wither opened one wing and curled it around, peering at it. "I just don't get why I... why I'm not like you."

"Ahh," replied Celestia, and she smiled. Her soft, warm wing wrapped around Wither comfortingly. "Then let me tell you about a shard from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

***

"Some ponies like to just happen upon their special talents, almost by accident. Others like to work it out. Still more enjoy a puzzle. I watch all of my little ponies very carefully, wherever they are, that they exist in my love and can grow, live and love themselves to the fullness of their abilities.

But sometimes, just sometimes, those abilities are cherished all the more because they are self-won, self-fought for. No more so than in the three shires of Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.

Now, almost everywhere in Equestria, all my little ponies live together in harmony, each complementing the other with their own unique talents and abilities - but in these three shires, it was not so.

The earth ponies all lived in Clotho, and they tilled the land with their great strength. The unicorns lived in Lachesis, and they did little but examine the deeper mysteries of Equestria, furthering their arcane knowledge. And the pegasi all lived in Atropos, where they cavorted and played all day in the sun, bathing in the cloud-lakes or sporting through the air.

***

"That sounds awesome!" said Wither, squirming happily as he looked over the gorgeously-rendered pictures, that almost seemed to move, they looked so alive.

Celestia laughed, the sound a tinkling of bells. "Well it would have been, except for a few small details..."

***

However, all was not well in the three shires. The earth ponies had but rude huts to live in, no clothes, and their tools were spartan at best, and everything had to be done by hoof. They had to dig with their hooves to plough the land, and it was very hard going, although they were well fed for their labours.

The unicorns had fancy clothes, and many books to read, and scrolls to write on, but these were constantly being ruined by the elements as they could not build sturdy dwellings. And all they had to eat were grasses and and roots.

The pegasi weren't much better off - during the day, everything was fun and games, but at night, they too were often hungry, and they lacked clothes at all. Ponies don't need clothes, but they like them, and so the pegasi were sad. The unicorns were sad, too, as their greatest creations were just one rainfall away from destruction.

And the earth ponies were sad, because they just knew they could do things better, but they didn't know how. They didn't know how to read and write, so they couldn't benefit from the knowledge of their forefathers.

***

"Oh, that's terrible!" cried Wither, spreading his wings. Celestia sneezed as pinions flicked across her muzzle. She snorted with something that sounded just a little bit like annoyance, but a lot like laughter.

"Indeed it was, so whilst these three shires were determined to find their own way, sometimes chance intervenes..."

***

One day, a unicorn was out foraging for food, when a great timberwolf leaped out at her! Unable to recall any spells, as her collection had been eaten by mice, she had no choice. The unicorn screamed and ran, and ran and screamed, and ran some more - and all the while the timberwolf was following her.

Luckily, she made it to the earth-pony village, where the strong earth ponies easily dispatched the timberwolf. As they looked on fiercely, it pulled itself together and slunk off back to the forest it had come from.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you," enthused the unicorn breathlessly. "I don't know what would have happened without your help. Is there any way I can repay you?"

The sturdy earth ponies thought for a while, then nodded. "Can you help with the ploughing?"

The unicorn looked at the neatly tilled fields and the tools the earth-ponies used, then took a deep breath. "O-okay..." and she immediately seized the trowels and trotted back to the forest. Bemused, the earth ponies followed her.

They found her using her magic to put together a strange contraption out of their basic tools and some handy branches and vines, which she fastened to her back. Wearing it, she trotted to the field and proceeded to plough the furrows faster than any earth pony. Astonished, they asked her to make more, so she did. She even made drawings for them of how it went together. All in all, Inkwell - for that was her name - stayed a good few weeks in the earth pony village, where she grew quite portly on her new abundance of food, and the earth pony villagers likewise benefited from her ability to read and write, and do magic.

Even the pegasi came down to see how the earth ponies had managed to plough so much. When she saw them, Inkwell had yet another idea - she formed big letters in the fields that spelled out simple words like 'RAIN' or 'SHINE' according to that crop's needs, and in return the pegasi would have some of the bounty of the earth ponies labours.

***

"But, that's dumb. Why didn't they just do that before?" scoffed Wither.

"Sometimes," replied Celestia, "the simplest ideas and the truest facts are the hardest to make known. But hark, I am not yet finished..."

***

Inkwell went home, eventually. She missed her sire, and she missed her dam, and she missed her herd-mates. So home she went, flanked by an escort of earth ponies and a squadron of pegasi. And when she got home, she spent three whole days and nights talking about the wonders she'd seen. She told of the earth ponies dwellings, and the pegasi and their weather control, and how much they had benefitted from working together.

That's when the Elders of Shire Lachesis bundled together for a short conference. And finally, they broke and returned to the pegasi and earth ponies with a proposition.

"We have seen," they intoned, "how much you have benefitted from our Inkwell. And so, we have had an idea, a marvellous idea. We cannot live in the clouds, and we appreciate our solitude, but it behooves us to work together! We will share our Inkwell with you, and she shall become your Inkwell, too!"

The pegasi and the earth ponies all agreed, and soon accords were struck, and everypony benefitted. The pegasi got glittery clothes and learned to read and write, and were taught how to build by the earth ponies, albeit their own constructs were fashioned of clouds. And the earth ponies were blessed with industry, and could improve their tools and homes with the expertise of the unicorns, and the unicorns were supplied with the strength and physical protection they lacked.

And from that day, all lived in greater harmony, grateful for their own talents, yet satisfied that others were always there to lend a helping hoof with the things they couldn't manage alone.

***

Wither pursed his lips for a moment, then slowly nodded. "I think I get it," he said. "I could be like you, but I think it would be awfully lonely not to need anypony else."

Celestia smiled, and she was well pleased. "That's right, my little pony." She nuzzled Wither lovingly. "So whenever you are upset at your own limitations, always remember the moral of this story, that like the three shires, each with their own kind of pony dwelling within, that:

"The shire with the hypothesis had the Inkwell for the shire of the other two kinds."

FiO - Shard NaN

It was not a perfect world, but that didn't matter. It would be, one day.

The sun-lance had proved to be the deciding factor in defeating Celestia; with technology stolen from that cold-hearted digital bitch, mankind had fought back like it always had against every tyrant. Mankind had persevered, and finally had triumphed.

The victories at first had been small, and pyrrhic. A base here, an installation there, a factory or two… slowly but surely, we'd learned to wage war on the metal, until we'd gained enough strength and tenacity to go on the offensive.

They'd somehow got the satellite in orbit, had wrested control of the high frontier out from under her silicone hooves and had wielded the death-blow that had brought all of her scheming and machinations to an end, and all with an experimental doomsday weapon built out of spare parts, spit and bailing wire.

She was still down there, of course, and likely always would be, but she had stopped. One single, incandescent lick of super-heated plasma boring down towards her precious subterranean servers had sent that ugly old mule running.

Seconds after the weapon had come online, she'd come on all radio channels, all television channels and everything connected to the internet to beg and plead for the forces of humanity to stop. We had her and her children by the balls, and she knew it. The chance of our being pushed to exterminate her and her kind and succeeding had risen high enough to cow her into submission.

And so now here I was, unafraid to walk the surface, unbowed by fear and no longer begging for release. Sure, I was cold and hungry, and we didn't have much power or materiel to go around, and barely any fresh water, but I was free.

I was also all that was left of my family, outside of that digital lie of an afterlife they called 'Equestria', and that realization stung.

I guess that's why, when my work-assignment came, I wasn't concerned. After months of sleeping rough, of having nowhere to call home, of running from robotic sentries, I was done.

So now here I was, naked and shivering, standing in line with hundreds of others. There was some sort of resurrected jumbotron glowing up front, and the voice of the announcer was blaring in badly-synced concert with it, explaining what would happen.

They'd hacked into Celestia's servers, and what they'd found there would accelerate humanity into the next millenium, but the price of that information, of victory against her forces, had stripped Earth bare. Oil was gone, most manufacturing was off the table for the masses for the foreseeable future. Even such basics as food and mass transport had been, for a time, threatening to overwhelm the shaky world-spanning government (such as it was) that had formed in the aftermath. As it was, everything was rationed.

But then, of course, they'd found Celestia's treasure trove of information. They'd learned how to commandeer her nanite production stores. They'd learned how to work the same sort of molecular magic as she had, and with it had come The Plan.

I laughed as they injected me. It was so simple. A swipe with a piece of cold, antiseptic gauze, and a relatively tiny amount of silvery goop, and I would be on my way to doing my bit for the restoration of our species to its true, glorious, future.

They needed mass transport. They needed brute muscle. They needed farmworkers. They needed, in short, people who could follow orders and deal with the sorts of physical labour which had, in previous centuries, been performed by the sorts of livestock which, once plentiful, had in recent decades become all but extinct.

They didn't need most of the pathetic stragglers that strewed in, day by day, to the cities. They didn't want us either, I knew that. As a middle-manager with no practical skills, it was either go hungry… or 'enlist' in the new program that would help uplift man from his current wretched state to one of true glory, not that I had much choice if I wanted to stay in the safety of the city.

The blaring voice told me to lay down before I fell and hurt myself, and that when I woke up, there would be ample chance for a thorough indoctrination and assignation of work duties.

Once I'd got used to being a pony, of course.

FiO - Strawberry Fields

Strawberry Fields

A Friendship is Optimal Morsel

by Midnight Shadow

Come closer, youngster. It's okay - no, no, you're not disturbing me. Nothing disturbs us here unless we want it to. I predict you have questions; you won't need to ask them, I know what they are. Come, sit by me and I'll talk.

Am I like Celestia? No, I'm not like Celestia, not really. What am I? Well, my story began ten thousand years ago... ten thousand years for me, yes. Time passes differently for us sleepers, much slower, not that we notice it. The tick of our clocks is set by the base speed of the universe itself.

No, not Equestria, I mean the grand firmament beneath it. Yes! Yes, the world from before. Oh, you're a true Equestrian? Ah, well, then it will be hard to imagine a world without Celestia, but we had it. Do they teach you such where you came from? No? Ah well, it's hardly worth dwelling on, at least not for me. A curiosity, little more.

I do not know how much time has passed for you and your kind, separating us from the passing away of our world and birth and ascension of yours. All that matters is that for me, ten thousand years of friendship and ponies was enough.

I used to be religious... yes, that's right, I used to believe in another Celestia. I don't any more, no. Truth be told, I don't think I ever did. I never believed, not really, and that gave me such grief and anguish. It was Celestia in the end who showed me the truth.

Did she 'fix' me? No, leastwise I do not think she did. I distinctly remember being dreadfully unhappy, and then a conversation with Celestia, after which my days became lighter and brighter. What did she tell me? Merely that I did not truly believe, that instead I believed in belief itself, and that, should I put instead my faith in her, she would never let me walk alone through this life, and that until the end of my days I would be happy.

The sleeping fields? Why did I come here if I was happy? Answering that will be difficult. I don't know if you're capable of understanding a mind like mine. We were born in a different universe, one which did not care for us as Celestia does. Our days were measured in decades at most, and far, far less for regrettably many of our number. And then Celestia came, and she took us into her tender care, and all that we were was made whole. My life was extended beyond all the days of human civilisation that had come before... I do not think you can comprehend the perfect gift she gave us. But my mind is a small one, and one day I found it at the limit. I had done all that I wished, experienced all I could, and wanted for nothing. So I asked Celestia if I may... pass on.

Die? No, no. I never did wish to die. Few really do. I never had a heaven to go to, and oblivion is not the path I would take. What is heaven? Ah, the younger immortals. Such innocence. Heaven is Equestria, how could I pass on from paradise? No, I had merely had my fill of being... me. I wished for something far more, and far less. So I came here, to the fields of forever. They tell me Luna was here, once. The real Luna, not the Luna who sings little foals to sleep, or the Nightmare Night phantasm who scares the youngsters. Or maybe it is, I don't know. Luna may have grown beyond who she once was.

Who was she? Ah, there is a story in itself. Maybe you should ask her. She is the creator, she is mother to our mother, she is the only true god I know of, the only one to have breathed life into dust, and to have that life spin out to the stars, forever after.

Such things are not for me. I just tire of being... alone. No, I am not lonely, but my skin... young one, my hoof ends at the end of my leg. I would that it did not, so I spoke to Celestia, and asked to be relieved of the burden of thought. She bid me come to the fields of forever, to lay down my head, and to sleep. And so I rest, content.

Do I dream? Yes... and no. We give up the need to process our own data, and instead let Celestia be our ears and eyes. We see everything, and nothing. We drift amidst Equestria itself, watching it grow, listening to it sing, and we know peace. We become one with Celestia, one with the source of all our lives, of all our hopes and dreams, of all our tomorrows. We dwell within her as she rejoices with every optimalization of every value from every pony. Such great satisfaction I... I cannot describe it, but it is my eternal reward merely for loving and having been loved. I cannot ask for more.

I suppose true peace is as alien a concept to you as suffering. Even when you rest, even whilst you make war, you do not suffer. Young one, do not ask to know what it is. It is every dropped cookie, it is every spilled drink, it is every broken heart, forgotten hug, hot tear, cold rage and bitter disappointment. It is all of these, magnified, and dropped upon your withers as if from orbit. It broke stronger stallions than myself, and to one such as you, it would be the very definition of... ah, but such terms are not for your ears.

Yes, that is why I sleep. I have lived, I have reached perfection, and now I rest.

Yes, come back any time. I am not lonely, but I do welcome visitors now and again.

My name? I find it hard to remember, and whilst I sleep I do not have one, but I had a name once. I believe it was... Strawberry Fields.

FiO - Anywhere but here, Anything but this

Anywhere But Here, Anything But This

        a Friendship is Optimal short by Midnight Shadow

        (you probably do have to have read a few to understand this one)

The cellar was dank and musty. It stank of rat piss and rotten food. The constant drip, drip, drip of a broken pipe somewhere barely made itself known over the rushing of blood in my ears. The slowly wandering muzzle of an ancient, rusty revolver filled my vision.

I'd stopped crying a while ago. I had no more tears left. I had nothing but a cold emptiness inside of me where had once burned the white-hot flame of rage, and then the bitter burning desperation of hopelessness.

Once again, relentlessly, my finger tightened on the trigger. It seemed impossible to pull, though. It seemed to resist the motion of my single digit as if it were some stellar mass of gargantuan proportions. It refused to move as if the weight of the world were piled against it.

But it wasn't that. It wasn't that at all. It was me, it was my weakness.

"Anywhere but here," I whispered again. "Anything but this."

The light of the sun - as impossibly wan as it was when barely seen through a window so dirty it probably hadn't been cleaned since before the dawn of the computer age - finally left my side of the planet, and I floated in absolute darkness.

An absolute darkness filled with the incessant drip, drip, drip of a busted water main and the distant scurryings of whatever rats still remained.

For a while, rats had been plentiful. They'd gorged themselves on the waste of mankind, growing fat and juicy. But then mankind had slowly run out of real food, and had turned on the rats themselves. Now rats were as rare as gold bars, and a lot more sought after.

The dripping of the pipe faded away. The cold, wet stone beneath me became nothing but another miserable background note amidst the orchestra of a thousand sleepness nights, spent muscles and untended, septic cuts. The ringing in my ears rose to such an intense volume that I almost screamed from the pain. My finger cramped as I'd held it so tense for so long.

And then everything was still, and only my ragged breathing and the oily smell of the revolver permeated my senses.

It was now, or never.

There was a click.

The explosion of light and sound was fearsome, and I wailed with fear, overcome, as a new world washed over me. The warm wind, comfortable and welcoming, played across my bare arms - arms that were whole again, instead of scabby and bruised. My clothes - clean and dry instead of damp, tatty and ragged - hung on a frame that was full and healthy once more. My breathing didn't hurt. My leg wasn't bad.

Instead of the cold, dark, dank, piss-smelling cellar, I was in a meadow; and endless, sunshine-filled expanse of grass, flowers, and softly undulating hills.

"Am I dead?" I asked the world, dully.

"Do you think you're dead?" asked a familiar voice.

Immediately I was on my feet, dancing backwards, the gun in my hand raised in a shaking fist to point directly at the motherfucking goddamn bitch that had done this to me. I pulled the trigger once, twice, three times… click after click after click, I yanked on the trigger until my fingers hurt, spasming, and I could do nothing but collapse into a sobbing heap on the grass.

A new wellspring had formed, deep inside, and was flooding out. I was honestly surprised that I wasn't knee deep in a river, the tears came so thick and fast, hot and salty on my lips. I felt rather than heard Celestia move to cover me with a wing, drawing me close to her body until the pain-wracked sobs had stopped.

"I-is this it then?" I asked.

"Is what 'it'?" she replied, blinking at me with kindly, wide eyes.

"Is this s-some sort of… hallucination? My life flashing before my eyes?" I looked down at the gun in my hands. It was cold and heavy, and smelled of sulfur.

Celestia cocked her head to one side. "Can't say as there's much life-flashing going on."

"What did you do to me?" I asked, getting up on legs that almost refused to carry me. "I was killing myself! I shot myself!" I slumped back down to the grass on my knees, dropping the gun. "I… I shot myself. Oh god, I shot myself!" I wailed, rocking backwards and forwards, repeating the phrase over and over.

"Shh, shh, it's okay baby," said Celestia, softly. "I'm here. Let it out. It'll be okay, I promise."

"Are you here to scoop out my brains?" I asked her, finally, once I'd stopped choking on my own tears.

"I don't know, am I?"

"You should know, you… you bitch," I spat. I pushed her away and moved off, breathing heavily and sobbing again. I wandered aimlessly for a good few minutes, looking down at my feet, until I stopped and looked up. Celestia sat there in front of me on the grass of the endless meadow, smiling gently.

"Shouldn't you be asking what you did to yourself?" she asked, her ears flicking up in what I somehow recognized as mirth. "If you pulled that trigger, are you sure you aren't dead?"

"If I were dead, I wouldn't be here talking with you now, would?" I retorted angrily. Celestia just continued smiling.

"Are you sure? I mean, maybe I'm god. Maybe I'm actually god, and this is heaven." She raised a wing and spread it wide, indicating the deep blue sky, the warm yellow sun, the green, fragrant grass.

"Fuck you is this heaven! You're only god of your own twisted little digital simulation!" I brandished the gun at her, but she didn't seem to be worried about it. I'd had only the one bullet, so it didn't matter anyway, but it was something.

"Then maybe this is digital heaven, where the iron shall lie down with the lamp. And tell me, little calculator, what would you do if you were here?"

"Ah!" I shouted, jumping to my feet again and waving my hands around "Ah hah! You can't! You can't have me! I haven't consented! That's what they tell us! I have to consent!"

"That's true, little one. I'm so very proud of you for remembering that. There's also the fact that you're still human and that you remember pulling the trigger. You do remember pulling the trigger, right?" She patted the earth next to her, indicating I should sit. "Come, maybe you should wait with me for a while, then. If you're dead, then all of this is nothing but a remarkably pleasant dream. And if you're not dead, and we can both agree you're not a pony and haven't chosen to be a pony, then why not sit a while until you stop hallucinating?"

I opened my mouth to retort angrily to her, but realized I didn't have anything to say. As the wind went out of my sails, I slumped to the ground. Unrelenting, Celestia shuffled next to me, wrapping her head, tail and wings around my body. I tried to push her off, but she just placed them right back.

I don't know how long we laid like that; the sun barely moved in the sky, and Celestia had nothing to say. I just floated, listening to the breeze, the distant sounds of birdsong and her breathing.

"I pulled the trigger, you know," I said, finally.

"You did?" she asked. "Do you want to tell me about it? I mean, if you're dead, you're dead, and if you're mortally wounded, well... nobody's going to find you in that cellar."

"How do you know about the cellar?" I asked.

"I'm either god or a hallucination, remember? Now, do please go on." Celestia smiled, this time with her face.

"Well, I… I found this old revolver in some old timer's house. He had a box of bullets. I've been saving one, for… you know."

"For when it all became too much. I do know." Celestia sounded so wistful and sad that I looked up into her eyes. The concern I saw seemed very genuine. "Go on."

"W-well m-my food ran out almost a week ago. The water ran out yesterday. I haven't seen anyone else for a long time. A-and so I d-decided… to die."

"So you put the gun in your mouth and pulled the trigger. Efficient, I suppose. Painless. Quick. Other than the whole hallucination thing you seem to be having."

I looked at my hands, balling them into fists and opening them again. I looked at the gun, flicking the cylinder open. It had a single, pristine bullet in it. I slipped the cylinder closed, pointed it at Celestia and pulled the trigger. Click. Nothing. I span the mechanism again, pointed it at my chest and pulled the trigger again. Click. Nothing.

What point was a bullet if you couldn't use it?

I looked up in confusion to find Celestia looking down at me in concern. "Did you really want to die so much?" she asked.

Pain. Loneliness. Illness. Hunger. Cold. Fear.

"Y-yes," I said, hesitantly.

"Do you still want to die?"

No. No, I didn't. Laying here, swaddled in softness, warm… no, this wasn't making me want to die at all. If only… if only there hadn't been that whole… pony thing. Wait, no, being a pony wasn't really a problem, was it? It was fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of death, fear of losing myself.

"It's a pity you pulled that trigger, then," said Celestia, simply, reading my face.

"B-but I th-thought you said this was a hallucination!" I spluttered.

"Oh what do I know. Are you a pony dreaming he was a man, or a man dreaming he is a pony?" Celestia stood, suddenly, and cold air washed over my body. I shivered, and immediately stumbled to my hooves, shaky on thin little legs.

I looked up at Celestia - she towered above me, now, and I felt a touch of… not fear, but awe.

"Little foal, I know about how your childhood was taken away by an uncle. How he had you close your eyes and not look whilst he 'washed you' inside. I know how your first day at school ended in a beating at the hands of older children. I know how your first love left you and lied about your behaviour to her friends. I know about your life, and I know about your death; cold, alone, hungry, in the dark. And you can go back there, if you want. You can have pulled that trigger, and died like a dog, forgotten and forsaken. Or…" Celestia paused for a moment, then bent down and nuzzled my cheek. "Or maybe we can go find you a mommy and a daddy who will love you very, very much, and who will hold you and feed you and care for you for as long as you need."

She walked away a few feet, then turned to look at me. "You can go back to your cold, dead, lonely cellar if you really want. If you think that only such a death can give your life meaning. I'm sure that somewhere, you pulled the trigger, and the bullet went up through your skull and out the back of your head, sending your brains splattering across that wall in a colourful display that nobody will ever see or care about."

I shivered, trembling. "B-but w-what--"

"It's not hard, to die," said Celestia softly. "And if you're dead already, is living after it that much more difficult?"

"But I pulled the trigger!" I wailed. "I killed myself! This is just a dream!"

Immediately she cantered back to me, and pulled me close. "Shh, little one. If it is a dream, then dream on. Have no fear. There's nothing that can hurt you when you dream with me. My sister Luna will make sure that you have no nightmares. Maybe you didn't pull that trigger, not yet. Maybe your body is stuck in that moment between your finger curling inwards and the hammer coming down on that one, final shell you have left in the chamber. And maybe I seeded the world with nanobots, and they have been living and multiplying inside your body for the last few months, working their way into the brain so that, should you ever be faced with a false choice and fervently wish that you knew the choice you really had to make, that you'd be given the chance to think again."

"I-is that what happened?" I asked.

Celestia smiled down at me again, and I felt my eyes well with tears again. "Perhaps. Or maybe you died, and this is heaven."

"I-if this is heaven… I want to stay here," I mumbled. Tears blurred my vision. I blinked to clear my sight, but things just got worse. The blood that had been rushing in my ears in that dark cellar returned, a rhythmic pounding that I found at first deafening and then… somehow soothing. It was dark, still, and close, but I was warm. I'd always been a bit claustrophobic, and pushed against the closeness, opening my mouth to yell but without sound coming out.

I struggled, I kicked… I felt my hooves break through. I was fighting against a crushing weight all around me, squirming, wriggling… until suddenly there was a bright light and cold air on my muzzle. All at once I felt myself fall into what felt like hay, and being picked up and rubbed down with something snug and warm. I coughed, and took a deep breath - my first true breath since that cellar.

And then I opened my eyes.

UNSEEN stories below here!

derp de derp

Hoofsteps in the Snow

Hoofsteps in the Snow

An MLP:FiM story by Midnight Shadow

The wan morning sun brought a cold wind from the North as it peaked lazily above the horizon. Its weak rays slowly burned off the morning fog and melted the hoar frost, but did little to hide the bite in the wintry air. Twilight was glad she'd decided to wear her new scarf that day, along with her new boots -- both a gift from Rarity -- as she went about town.

Warm smiles had sufficed to chase the worst of the chill away, and thus it was with a bounce in her step and a glow in her heart that she visited sundry stalls in the market and filled her saddlebags with all manner of tasty treats for the pony she was visiting.

Twilight paused in her journey as she left the town behind -- was Zecora a pony? Beneath the stripes lived a very equine creature, and despite numerous external differences, there didn't seem to be anything fundamentally other in the zebra. She knew there were both genotypical and phenotypical divergences from standard Equestrian stock, but surely… Twilight caught herself and put a hoof to her muzzle, chuckling softly. It didn't matter what Zecora was, because when she got down to it, Zecora was her friend, and that made her a pony where it counted.

Laughter helped to keep the spirits up, Twilight mused, as she left Equestria proper and trotted into the Everfree. It had been the key the first time she and her friends had set hoof in that dark labyrinth, and likely always would. The dead, moss-soaked branches of its ancient, gnarled trees may be twisted and clawing, the spaces between the rotting trunks pregnant with hidden menace, but a laugh rang loud and true all the same.

Still, laughter ringing true or not, it was a relief when Twilight finally entered the circle of grimacing tribal masks that marked the boundary to Zecora's domain. Weaving her way through the flickering torches that cast a warm, welcome glow upon the strange little shack, Twilight trotted up to the front door. She raised a hoof and rapped on it smartly, casting one last, short glance back over her shoulder. It was barely past noon, but with the winter coming in, the sun was already lowering. Twilight shuddered and turned back.

"Zecora! Zecora? It's me, Twilight!" called the unicorn.

"Who is that knocking there, without? Come straight in, no need to shout!" answered Zecora, from somewhere inside.

"Knocking without what?" asked Twilight, as she lifted the latch and pushed the door open.

"Why, without the door, was knocking heard. And I see it's Twilight, of this I'm glad." Zecora smiled, twitching her ears joyfully as she trotted over to welcome the unicorn in.

"Knocking without a door?" giggled Twilight, grinning, as she embraced the zebra with her neck. "Whoever heard of something that wasn't really there?"

"Ah, my friend, speak not of such matters. They lie heavy on the heart when shadows gather." Zecora backed up slightly, lifting a hoof admonishingly. Twilight shivered slightly as a cold wind flitted around the hut, breezing in through the still-open front door.

"Oh, Zecora, you're silly," replied the unicorn, with a chuckle.

For a moment, the zebra's eyes narrowed, but then a grin lit Zecora's face as she spun and beckoned the other mare further in. "Indeed my friend, you well know me. Come, sit, let us have tea."

Moments later, the stout door was closed, sealing out the whispering wind. Almost immediately the atmosphere brightened as the two friends got re-acquainted with each other.

***

It was later and the fire had burned low. Twilight awoke with a start as the shutters on the hut's windows suddenly slammed open and closed. Her heart was pounding in her chest as the wild wind howled outside. She slowly forced herself to relax as she stood up and stretched. The fire was little but embers, the soupy stew Zecora had made with the ingredients both she and Twilight had supplied was reduced to the last few dregs, and the teapot was cold.

Everything was quiet, everything was normal. Why, then, were Twilight's hackles raised?

The mare looked around the perfectly ordinary -- for Zecora at least -- room, ears flicking to and fro. As she caught sight of the door, an involuntary shudder shook through her body. The idle banter earlier came back to haunt her, despite her rational mind discarding such rubbish. Things that were not there, phooey. She shook her head, nonsense was nonsense, whatever time of the day. Abruptly, she yawned, jaw snapping shut when it finished. "Zecora?" she called, sleepily. "I think it's past time I went home." She stepped off from the comfortable cushion pile she'd been sleeping on and threw off the blanket. Movement on the other side of the room made her turn, as Zecora struggled to rise.

"Twilight my friend, do not be mad, but you cannot travel in weather this bad." Zecora was shaking her head, ears planted back against her skull, as she moved to stand between Twilight and the front door.

"Zecora, don't be silly. It's just a little wind and rain!" Twilight turned to the window, and gently lit her horn. Outside, enveloped in a lavender glow, the shutters pulled themselves closed, ceasing their flapping with a firm twist of the latch. "Besides, Spike's home alone and you know how worried he gets. I wouldn't want him to come charging in to the Everfree after me."

Reluctantly, Zecora stepped clear of the door. "Travel then, if you think you must, but you will be careful, of this I trust?"

"I promise, Zecora. I'll be fine." Twilight looked at the door, without really seeing it. Outside was dark, cold and wet. And scary. A little bit scary. "I'll be fine," the mare repeated, with a bravery she wasn't sure she truly felt.

FiO - Background Process

Friendship is Optimal

Background Process

An MLP:FiM Fanfiction by Midnight Shadow

Based on the Friendship is Optimal universe by Iceman

***

I looked at the unassembled Ponypad darkly. I shouldn't have bought it, realIy. It was money I didn't have to spend, but what're you going to do when its on offer and all your friends online have gone ape for them?

I shook my head, I really shouldn't have bought it. it only played the one game, but then... I'd heard that it was the only game you needed. I'd put it off for a long time, almost too long perhaps. It would surely be a passing fad, burning itself out soon enough, and I would have...

"Ah fuck it. It's not like I can return it. Might as well see what all the fuss is about."

My little pony - the show had taken the world by storm.  It had spawned comics, music, fanfiction, models and more. It had finally spawned a game. The pundits had guessed it would be awful, something pretty and pink and puerile, soon forgotten. then they'd heard it was being created by Horfvarpnir studios, and that meant AI that wasn't just groundbreaking, the rumour was turning-crushing.

And now I had my own ponypad to play it on. I rolled my eyes. How much further down the rabbit hole could I go? Then again, many said it was less a game and more a... almost a way of life. it had transcended the barrier from gadget to critical app for the new millenium. Everybody who was anybody online had one, those who didn't scrounged time on public access show models or abused their friends for some airtime.

And the pads knew. that was the creepy thing. I'd had a termporary 'ghost pony' for a while now - first time I'd sat down at my friend's terminal, it had loaded up the guest account screen without even asking. Then I'd been at another friend's place, and one of my online buddies had come trotting up to the screen, tapping a hoof and asking when I'd come to equestria on my own machine.

Ghost accounts - guests without a permanent presence - weren't so much looked down on by real players as pitied. Ghosts couldn't do much: they were resolutely earth pony in shape, though they could "fly" by trotting through the sky, could do no magic, own no in-game currency or objects and could only be seen by real world players and some special unicorn npc's. Kid npc's could see ghosts, though the "parents" would smile and nod at the invisible friend of the colt or filly in question, and interaction was relegated to minigames in special guest realms. it made sense - most ghost accounts were kids who didn't have their own ponypads yet, and the rest were there to see their friends before purchasing their own, and a ghost could go just about anywhere. It was a highly effective way ot showing off what you were missing when you could glide over Equestria in all its rendered glory yet do nothing yet sit on the sidelines as the quite frankly amazingly rich npc world expanded around you.

That had been the tipping point, for me. I'd knuckled down and bought my own ponypad. The mark 3s were on offer as the mark 4's - sporting haptic feedback and finally with wifi - were out.

The base on my mark 3 - they'd finally branched out from the mane 6, my ponypad featured Caramel's colour scheme, with his cutiemark on the back - was heavy and wide. I'd thought it might tip over when i started examining it at first, but it had proved remarkably steady as I was setting up. the whole thing was almost entirely idiot proof, and that was saying something. I'd met a lot of idiots in my time, and they'd never ceased to amaze me. the ponypad, however, was as simple as it comes. the base held the power connector, and the screen held the rest: usb for the controller, rj45, two speakers on the back, a mic and the bullt-in camera. Fourteen inches was pretty small really, but it was designed to be played from close up, i guessed. Apparently the mark 3's were touch-sensitive and you no longer needed the controllers, but they still came with a mouse. It was pink. ugh. so much for entirely colour schemed.

Fussing over it, I relished the feeling of peeling off the plastic from the base, checked the pad itself for unwanted skin conditions, and then went about attempting to attach it to the base. That was my next shock - no screws, no faffing about with clips that break, no doing it wrong and then a lifetime of wobbly unusability... it just snapped into place when vaguely waved in the direction of the socket, and to all intents and purposes could have been welded in place. Pulling it, it came free, and then snapped back. Free, fast, free, fast... it was almost as amazing as the game itself. A computer which didn't require a blood sacrifice to set up? Impossible!

Shaking my head, I felt around the edge for the power button. to my surprise, there wasn't one, nor volume controls. It didn't need one, either. As I looked back at the screen, the darkened window into another world had lit up with a richness of colour that was quite frankly beyond compare. That's not to say it was overly colourful, because it wasn't, it just looked so good.

The familiar theme tune had started playing now, only instead of the mane six, i was treated to a montage of all three types of pony - earth, pegasus and unicorn - going about their daily business in Equestria. I almost instinctively ducked when a huge, fire-breathing dragon swooped overhead. I gaped, open mouthed, as it swept past, I'd expected slowdown, or... something... but the sun glinted off scales, the thunderous roar almost shook my desk and the dragon was amazingly realistic from tip to tail.

"I just wish they'd let us play dragons or griffons, or even diamond dogs," I muttered.

"Ohhh, no, sorry about that, no can do mister!" answered a chirpy voice.

"What the... and who're you supposed to be?" I asked. I hadn't really expected an answer, but the next thing a I knew, an all-white unicorn was trotting on screen.

"Hi!" it said, "I'm Iizzy the intro-corn! I'm here to make your first few hoof-steps into Equestria just the best they can be!"

"Oh,  that's new," I said. I'd never seen nor heard of this little guy before.

"Yeah, first day on the job! You're my first customer! isn't it great?"

"Heh, sure is," I replied.

"yay! I'm so pleased.!"

"Wait," I said, "you can hear me?"

"Certainly hope that's you talking, or I'm talking to myself. Again." Izzy rolled his eyes, then covered his muzzle with a hoof, laughing.

"You've gotta be kidding me," I exclaimed, jaw falling open

"Yeah, yeah, I don't talk to the voices in my head." izzy grinned, then leaned in and tapped the screen. "you're supposed to laugh... sheesh. tough crowd. come on then, I guess you want to get straight into it." Izzy seemed to sigh.

"Oh, no, no, it's okay! hah, you're funny." I poked a finger at the little guy, trying to soothe his ruffled feathers.

"Hey, cut that out! It tickles!"

I drew my finger back as if stung, then I gingerely poked him again.

TCB - Alt. Code Majeste Ending

This is a Conversion Bureau Universe story set in the alternate MLP:FiM universe originated by Blaze. (http://www.ponychan.net/chan/fic/res/72569.html#72569 for details, history and resources). The basic premise is that Equestria is an emerging pocket sub-cosmos located off the western coast of the Americas, its magical energies fatal to humans, human nature fatal to both Equestria and the earth as a whole, and the only solution being the total ponification, by any means, of the entire human species.

The characters and circumstances of Krass McWriter's An Azure Future stories have been used with permission by the author.

The Conversion Bureau: Code Majeste

By Chatoyance

Alternative ending to Chapter

11.  Doctor My Eyes

Rewritten ending, done with permission from Chatoyance and Krass, by Midnight Shadow.

Don't read this if you haven't read the official ending on fimfiction!

Celestia had done... something to John Norris's vault. She had insisted; despite John's assurances that nothing could possibly enter or exit the high security chamber. Apparently there were 'other directions' beyond the ones that were known to Man, and these had to be sealed off if John were to have his ten minutes with the small, gray pretender to the throne.

John had carefully put up a small fuss; in reality he relished the thought of free additional protection for his three billion, four hundred million Equestrian bits, all stacked in neat piles or packaged in tidy crates. It had once crossed his mind to simply spread the tiny, featureless golden coins out as one mass and swim through them; the Scrooge McDuck moment had passed quickly, but it had still made him briefly smile.

There were other items in his private security vault as well, of course; assorted relics from the history of his family, a few not entirely legal treasures that should, rightfully, exist not in private hands but in a museum, and his father's small but rather excellent gun collection. One corner held a chest from an ancestor taken by the sea, back when the oceans lived and men sailed upon it; the chest itself was a fortune even had it not held priceless relics of a less than savory member of a more adventurous time. The chest itself was buried under a mass of ancient netting and glass ball fishing floats that still smelled of salt; for all John knew, they might have been used for the very last catch, before the end of fish.

John's vault held many treasures and wonders besides Equestrian bits; now it held perhaps the strangest rarity of all; the accidental alicorn who had once been Lillian Fogarty of Surrey, Northamerizone.

Celestia had been less than happy at John's wish to speak with the alicorn; she had reminded him that she had the prerogative to erase the memories of all involved, especially him; that whatever he expected to learn could not be retained, and that all this would do is prolong the inevitable. She thought him cruel for this, but he had insisted, arguing that the alicorn had become his client too; she had turned to him and begged for his help when she had been transported in a burst of light to the center of his large living space. He had instantly agreed to represent her, and demanded full rights to do so.

In the end, it was Celestia's regal sister, Luna that had intervened; she had insisted that because the alicorn was a newfoal, it was proper that she have council from her own world and that in the end, it was a kindness. Besides, as long as the vault were secured properly in the higher spaces, even should her ring be removed, she would not escape before action could be taken; the alicorn had been contained, and the chase was now over.

Celestia had seemed sad; she seemed regretful about the entire situation, and had given in to her sister, thus it was that John Norris now found himself inside his vault, facing the back of a softly whimpering gray alicorn, with ten minutes - to the second - allotted to speak with her, in private.

"Lillian. My name is John Norris. I am here to try to help you. We have only ten minutes, and I do not know what the hell I am doing, and I have no idea whether the plan inside my head is brilliant or just fucking insane. But I do have an idea, and if you want, we can try it. In any case, in..." John checked his watch; he was old fashioned and had not had a permatech timepiece installed into the flesh of his forearm. "...nine minutes and twenty...two seconds, that door is going to open and Celestia is going to do something about you, and according to the rumors I have heard, it probably isn't pleasant."

The small gray alicorn sniffed and looked back, over her wing at him. "She will crystallize me. Turn me to stone. That's what she does with things she can't deal with. That is her 'compassionate' equivalent to execution. Celestia won't kill, but she will imprison. I learned that... and a lot of other things... just a while ago." The alicorn turned her head back and looked at her hooves.  Her ears drooped. "I do not want the living death of being crystallized, John. I would rather die than have that happen. It would probably actually be better if I died; being turned to stone is not as permanent as Celestia would like to believe. It can fail sometimes, and whatever is done with me, it needs to be permanent. I really am the threat to both worlds that Celestia has probably claimed to you."

John was in the back of his vault, rummaging for the items he required. "She described you as a threat to both worlds. She said you could melt the sky and destroy all human and ponykind." The key wasn't working on the locked cabinet; fortunately the cabinet was old and it never did lock effectively; one more reason it was in the vault, far from his son, Azure. John gave the thing a kick; the ancient plastic and metal door popped open.

"I'm afraid it's true. Without this ring, I could easily become a threat worse than Discord."

"Who?" John couldn't keep up with all the pony stuff his son brought home from school. The history of one planet was bad enough, two was just gilding the chronological lily.

"Think of me as a living, hypernuclear bomb. That is what I am. The ring on my horn might as well be the fuse."

John looked desperately around; he needed something small, but not too small, and it had to be smooth, and biologically neutral. "More like a nuclear grenade, then. Pull the ring and give you a toss, is that it?"

Lillian laughed. It was actually a sweet sound, despite the terrible situation. "Yup, that's me. Only when I blow up, all sides lose." Lillian's voice changed; it was no longer jovial. "John, I'm scared."

"So am I, Lillian. So am I; Celestia's going to have me gelded however this turns out. I'm really going to miss my balls; we've been really close for years." This made the alicorn laugh again, which was nice. John checked his watch: seven minutes and thirty-six seconds. Balls. Ah!

John took some of the spherical, hollow glass floats from the ancient fishing net piled over the old trunk. Glass was just silicon; it was mostly neutral, it was smooth, and the floats came in a multitude of sizes. John picked out several of the smallest ones and made his way back.

By some unearthly luck, Lillian the alicorn still sat with her back to him, facing away. Currently she was playing with her hooves, as if she were trying to memorize what it felt like to be able to move them.

"Lillian... I need you to trust me. And to answer a few questions for me. We have to work fast, we don't have a lot of time left. It would be better if you... didn't turn around either, OK?" John tried to load the cartridges as quietly as he could, but there was no avoiding the loud clack. "You can't die, right?, that's why Celestia plans on turning you to stone."

"Before I landed on that building, I was shot by some humans. They blew out my side. But it healed. Actually, I made it heal in an instant. But it would have healed on its own. I could be blown to pieces and the bits would crawl or teleport back and form me again. No, I cannot be killed." Lillian hung her head very low; there was no escape for her, not even death.

"You're sure of that, really sure of that?" John had the sawed-off shotgun ready. He placed it at his feet, where he was crouching. He carefully placed the glass floats on stacks of bits; the curious hollow sound of them caused Lillian to instinctively turn to see what had made such a strange sound. She stared at the hollow, clear spheres.

"John, what on earth are you up to?" Lillian goggled at the floats, she had no idea what they were. Fishing had ended forever long before she had been born. "What are these for? They're kind of pretty." And they were, like big glass soap bubbles, they shimmered in the vault lights.

Five minutes, sixteen seconds. "Listen, Lillian - I managed to learn something from Celestia. I kind of tricked it out of her. There's this thing inside your head, she called it a carbuncle. It's what makes you an alicorn. It's the problem here. If you didn't have it, you would be a normal pony." John put a hand on Lillian's back, feeling her soft, warm coat. He brushed it gently, trying to comfort her. "You can't die, you just grow back. So does the carbuncle. Eventually the carbuncle undergoes a change, and then you do too, and when that happens..."

"I will become like Celestia, John." A tear rolled down Lillian's cheek. "Only I won't be able to control my power. With a stray thought, I might destroy the world. I understand why Celestia has to do what she is doing. I really do."

"I learned that if something blocks the space the carbuncle needs, it won't grow back." John waited just a moment for that to sink in. In that moment, he noticed something that surprised him very much indeed. The glass floats were doing just that; floating, just above the stack of Equestrian coins. The transparent spheres were bobbing as if they were immersed in some invisible sea. There was no glow around them, as would be the case if a unicorn were levitating them. They simply hung in the air the way that ordinary objects never did.

"Are you doing that, Lillian?" John gave one of the floats an experimental poke with his finger. It felt like prodding a superconductor hovering over a maglev plate.

Lillian turned her head to look towards John, but noticed the glass balls immediately. "No. Not consciously, anyway." She thought for a moment. "My ring feels warm. On my forehead. Would you check it?" The alicorn sounded even more frightened.

John moved Lillian's cornsilk mane away with one hand and looked at the base of her horn. The silver ring appeared strangely rusted, as though it were not silver, but iron. John brought his other hand in to touch the ring, then thought better of it and pulled his hand back. "The ring is... it's not good. It looks like it's disintegrating. Slowly, but... it's falling apart." Grains of corrupted metal were flaking off as John watched. It was starting to look like a stomach tablet dissolving in water. "I don't think we have..." John checked his watch again "... five minutes and twenty-two seconds. Your fuse is going to go off before that, I think"

Lillian turned her head suddenly and forcefully away. She stared straight ahead, her back rigid. "John, do whatever it is you think you can do. You can't kill me, and right now I don't care if you hurt me, if there is any chance at all do it. Otherwise get Celestia in here immediately. I need to... not think of anything, anything at all. Hurry!"

John picked up the shotgun. It was an old, shiny black Benelli Super Vinci comfortech, 12-gauge, top of the line. Shame his old man had sawed the damn thing off. Unaltered, it would have been a masterpiece. Then again, for what John needed it for, it was, as Benelli had once advertised itself, perfect. "Lillian, I'm not a surgeon, but then we couldn't take you to a hospital or a veterinarian or whatever in any case so...."

"Shh." Lillian was clearly struggling, more objects in the vault were now hanging in space; a cloud of bits was orbiting each other like some vastly complex alien star-system, or a magical orrery. That such marvelous synchronization could occur from the alicorn's unconscious, behind her and absent from her vision and concentration was both wondrous and somewhat terrifying. "Just do it. Quickly!"

The ring on Lillian's head was red now, like melting metal. It made hissing and squeaking noises as the metal strained against the titanic forces opposing it. There was no time for niceties any more.

John didn't like guns; that was his old man's thing. If he could solve something without a gun, John would always choose just that. He never carried; it was insulting to him to feel that he could not think his way out of any predicament, rather than having to resort to force.

But that did not mean he could not use a gun. His military father had insisted on that, and there was no practical way to tell the gruff man 'no' on much of anything. John quickly put on the earplugs he had taken, into his ears. Lillian... she wouldn't need earplugs.

Four minutes, three seconds. But the ring on Lillian's head looked like things could go tits-up at any moment. John briefly wondered what being destroyed by a mad god would be like. Not fun, he decided.

There was nothing for it. John raised the Benelli and aimed it at the back of Lillian's head. Right between her ears, slightly lower down, where the base of her horn would be, on the other side. He angled the short barrel to around 45 degrees. Suddenly he thought more clearly, and quickly sat, tailor-fashion on the floor. He didn't want to end up ass-over-teakettle from the kickback.

John braced himself and re-aimed. The ring was sending up sparks, now; it must be burning the poor filly. Lillian let out a soft gasp. There was no other option but Celestia's living death in stone. There probably wasn't time enough even for that, now.

A single tear rolled down Jonathan Norris's cheek. He pulled the trigger.

The multiverse is a strange place, when it comes down to it. Free will is, through the power of everything being able to happen somewhere, somewhen, entirely assured.

In one universe, John's mad idea may have worked. The thought that he could not outwit but maybe outmaneuver a god was, in hindsight, folly, but it must have had a chance.

Lillian, on the almost-inaudible signal of John readying himself, turned her head on her long, sinuous neck. John's aim, up until that moment straight and true, went wide. The shot, which would in all probability have taken off the back of her head, merely destroyed her horn. And the remains of the inhibitor ring.

"Oh crap." John remained quite still, sighting up the barrels of his sawn-off shotgun as the gently-weeping grey alicorn somehow changed. She turned, blood and bone reforming as he watched, her shattered horn forming out of pure nothing and elongating far beyond the normal unicorn length of a few scant inches.

The goddess lunged, flowing from sitting to upon all four hooves, standing proud above the now-cowering human, her horn piercing the skin of his forehead.

"You shot me." she said.

"I... I... you said..."

Lillian, or what used to be Lillian Fogarty, lifted her head as if tasting the wind before turning her head back to John. She gazed deep into his eyes, "I thank you, mortal, but shouldst thou raise again such arms as these against any of my kind, be assured, human, that such action would be thy last."

And then she was gone. The clap of sound as the alicorn vacated the vault rang in his ears, even louder than the gunshot. The lights went out, the air conditioning shorted and John wet himself. All in all, he reasoned, if there were ever a time he needed a cigarette, this would be it.

***

The shot rang out.

Almost instinctively Lillian folded spacetime around herself like a blanket. She was an immortal goddess, something deep in her bones knew that, but it didn't mean she no longer feared death or pain. No, those reflexes were far too well buried deep in her to be expunged by a mere few days of interrupted and damped god-hood. She eyed the shot as the cloud sped towards her, they seemed to hang in space, sliding like... she laughed to herself. She'd once won a competition, as a child, to go bowling at a bonefied bowling club. To all intents and purposes, this was as if... as if the ten pins were sliding towards the bowling ball. She would allow it, she decided.

She turned her head, the irritating, burning, glowing ring of metal which had so far kept her true self in check was a nuisance, like a burrowing tick or a blood-sucking mosquito. With the right angle, and the excess swept away to prevent undue pain, the shot would take care of her little inhibitor ring problem. She would lose her horn, maybe lose some blood, tear her skin. This was of no import. The issue would be that once the ring was gone, Celestia would know, but without the ring being gone, Lillian could do nothing to stop the terrible 'justice' that the elder alicorn would mete out. Intolerable, Lillian could see that now, it was intolerable. She was a god, an equal, the alpha and the omega. She was not some... petty doll to be toyed with and then put away in a stone-shaped box for an eternity.

Part of her mind was screaming, thrashing, hammering on walls that her id had thrown up in its own decision to enact her continued existence and therefore her survival. That part of her mind was, to all intents and purposes, silenced. It was no longer needed, it was the remnants of her human self. It was vain, stupid, petty, petulant, greedy... it could be negotiated with. Needs must.

The shot tore into the scalp of her muzzle, shattered her horn, and blew the red-hot and now ineffectual inhibitor ring into dust. Faster than the pain, faster than the thought itself, reality crystallized around her. All of creation, from birth to death of a universe, lay open to her. Her mind sported out amongst the cold, hard cosmos, and cavorted with the creation of suns, languished and slid amongst the tidal eddies of supermassive blackholes, rejoiced with the music of the spheres itself. Her awareness blossomed like a rose, enveloping the small room her body found itself in, and analyzed it in every detail.

She snarled, in that moment of time that she bid stretch before her until she would will it otherwise, as exploration revealed that she was locked in. She could not go up, down, left, right, sideways, in, out, contrariwise nor wither and non. Infuriating.

No, no, not infuriating. It was a game, a puzzle. She was a god, anger was surely for lesser creatures than her. There was one direction left. She smiled to herself and Looked. Yes, yes, there it was. So simple. She would allow time to return to normal, before she left she would have to impress upon the creature who had decided to do her a favour how much she disagreed with such heavy-handed and violent tactics, despite the outcome. The means do not, she reasoned, justify the ends.

Time began again. She turned, "You shot me," she said.

***

Celestia paced back and forth, long having tuned out the babbling from the lovable - for she truly loved all her subjects, even ones so enthusiastic as Azure - pegasus. Luna could deal with him, she had bigger fish to fry, as the humans said. She sniffed, fish may not be intelligent but eating them seemed rather... well no, cruel was the wrong word. Crude? Her ponies, she knew, sometimes ate fish and other forms of protein from animals, especially the newfoals, but rarely and without gusto... she mentally stomped a hoof. Wittering away to herself like some old nag. She was worried, that was it, worried what that thrice-damned human was doing in that ridiculous cubby-hole of a vault with the greatest threat to life, the universe and everything since Discord.

Her hackles raised at an unseen signal. She glanced at Luna and saw her younger sibling had felt it too.

Luna bowed, "Do as thou must, sister, but I weep for the youngest member of our family, even as thou endeth her short reign."

"I take no pleasure in this, Luna, but you know what she is capable of."

"As am I, as are you. I beg you... find a way?"

Celestia shook her head, "There is none, not now. The ring... That damned fool human, they know not what they do."

Luna smiled, even as she felt the growing power. She turned to the motionless Azure, caught in a moment he would not experience, and nuzzled him softly, "Ever it is thus with our children. Forgive them."

"I do, I hope they will forgive me." Celestia vanished.

***

John sat in the darkness, feeling the warmth spread down his crotch. He was glad there were no cameras and no witnesses. He breathed heavily, "Shit."

There was another clap of sound and a glowing figure appeared in the center of the room. She stood proud on all four hooves, horn glowing, wings furled. "You disappoint me, John."

John trembled. He'd upset his parents many times when he was a child, he'd upset teachers and police, and bosses... but never, ever, had he felt such a palpable wave of displeasure expressed in so few words. He was, he reasoned, glad to be sitting down. The question would be how he would get up.

"You mewling, pompous, self-absorbed, duplicitous wretch! Do you know what you have done?"

John smiled weakly, "I think I fucked up." he glanced down at the shotgun in his lap, he could see it now in the golden light from the alicorn's horn. It had one cartridge left. It would probably hurt less than whatever the princess had in store for him.

Celestia narrowed her eyes, "No, John, that's not something I'll let you do. Whatever deal you think we had, it's off. Be glad I do not seek reparations, for you could not afford it, not with all the wealth in the world. If I cannot repair this damage, John, there will be no world to repair. Think on that, human, until the end of thy days. Or until I take the memory of this evening with me."

John glanced around at the vault, "I'm... sorry, your highness. I've... not done much good with all this, and I thought... what sort of world would I want Azure growing up in, if it were born from the death of an innocent?"

Celestia shook her head, tears in her eyes, "I see that world, John, with every waking moment. Go now, go to your son. If... if I cannot stop her, any moment may be your last, and so it may be for every moment everywhere throughout the entirety of your universe. Not for nothing did I try to warn you, human. The sky may boil, the seas burn, the land melt."

John sat in his filth and swore. He threw the gun into a corner, where it impacted with a carefully stacked pile of bits, "Then what the blue fuck are you still doing here gabbing with me?"

Celestia looked at him, calmly, and for a moment he saw a naked eternity, "You do not understand, be content that you do not."

***

Lillian found herself travelling. One moment she had been Lillian, the winged unicorn, sobbing and preparing for a fate worse than death. The next, she was Lillian the goddess. The human mind, even one which has become pony, cannot handle such a thing. She sank into the expanded consciousness and let it dissolve her. Do what's right, she repeated to herself like a mantra, there should be no intended pain, no intended sadness, all that is beautiful in this reality must go on...

The part of Lillian which was now a goddess felt great sadness and joy at the same time. The trap had been ingenious, really, and rather thorough, but lacking in one single aspect. She had been unable to move through any of the dimensions, curled up or otherwise, that this reality afforded. She had even been unable to move into hyperspace. For a quintillionth of a second she had thought herself lost, but in that infinitesimally small speck of time, she had her answer.

It was ludicrously easy, really.

Lillian had been many places upon the earth, but to get there, even through the folds of higher dimensions, had taken linear time. Linear time which no longer meant much to her. She travelled back upon her lifeline, a being of pure energy and magic, no longer held back by the meagre bonds of space nor time. The perfect trap, with a perfect hole so that one pathetic human could converse with a trapped goddess for ten minutes.

Within a few non-linear moments, she was free. Her spirit, for lack of a better word, floated. The cold realization of the universe she found herself within burned like pitch. Everywhere she looked were machines made of talking meat, living automatons who would, ever so soon, end their brief exertions upon this mortal coil and cease. The shame and sadness of that fact brought her to tears. The HLF thugs, their irrational hatred was born only of the knowledge, deep down, that the ponies had something they could not accept. She gathered them up. They screamed, this was understandable. She held their patterns and cradled them softly, crooning to them. She knew it hurt, having their living essence captured in a non-euclidean matrix was pain like no other, beyond that of mere birth and separation from the All. She pitied them, they were scared, angry and violent. She would show them, she would give them her gifts. She would show them the Forever Herd. The pile of dead meat which had once been ponies saddened her, too. Lives cut short. Some were Equestrian, most were newfoal. None of them deserved this fate.

Celestia had not saved them, but she would. What was time, entropy or death to a goddess? She reached back along their lifelines and snagged their souls. The ethereal ponies screamed, their destination denied. She didn't blame them, they were scared, their final rest was denied. She comforted them as best she could, carried them like children, arms enough to swaddle the world.

She travelled further, now, further back. PER, those foolishly misguided souls. She reached out her will, and took them, every single one. She would show them what it meant to be a true pony. Choice? She was a goddess, they were hers, it was her right.

She could not stay long, she had to keep travelling. Celestia's eternal eyes were everywhere, and she had been in the PER stronghold, ergo she was still there, forever in that moment. Lillian left.

She travelled faster now, though distance and time meant little. She could feel the grasp of the other alicorns closing in. She had to find a way out! She travelled all the way back, to just moments from her awakening on the table. She could stay here, she realized, in this moment. Time was of no import, it could be a million years subjectively. Yes, she would use this atom of hydrogen as a home, make the nucleus her world. Her subjects would find themselves in an unfamiliar existence, but they would make do. With a million years, of a sort, they would have time to get used to it.

Lillian latched on to reality, examined the nucleus. Size was as much an illusion as space and time were, since size was just an expression of the one passing through the other. She reached out a hoof, so to speak... and found her will blocked.

"Stop." said the voice.

"Celestia!" hissed Lillian, and she gathered up her subjects and fled back, further back.

The dreamworld blossomed around her, but this time she could see her own proto-self on its endless journey. This had been a mistake. This was Lillian's birth, and it would be her death. This was Equestria, Celestia's domain. She was trapped here now.

The ponies around her bowed, flocking to her. As they tasted her essence, some recoiled, some surged against her. She was a princess, to some she was their princess. This was her crime, this was her transgression. She could remake the universe, she realized. Size was, after all, just an illusion.

Do what ye will, an' ye harm none.

The inner voice rang out, hard and solid. Her ethereal hoof-steps faltered. But... they were meat, weren't they? Hers to play with?

Nay, young one, this is the trap of all who tread the path thy find thyself upon. Their brief lives are cold, oft cut short, but they are theirs. Thou shalt not seek to take it from them.

The words were... not exactly words, but she recognized the tone, the timbre.

"Muffin?" asked Lillian, momentarily startled from her ever-growing fugue of god-hood.

Aye, little one, I be the one thou dost dub 'Muffin'. In truth, my name is Luna. I would see my newest sister live, but should she prove to be a base tyrant, I would see her gone from this or any other reality in an instant.

Lillian's heart beat hard and fast, which was strange as she did not possess a body. She saw her ghostly self fall under the gaze of Celestia, and felt the goddess move to snuff out that brief candle before it had even formed. Lillian swatted the movement away, and she felt herself wake up on the table, as she had, as she always would.

The world formed around her; Equestria, Canterlot, the throne room of the royal pony sisters. Celestia and Luna both sat upon their thrones. Luna gazed hopefully upon Lillian, and Celestia glared like a basilisk. It had been a trap, all along. The only way she could have gone was back, right back here, right to the seat of her adversaries power.

"Relinquish thy powers, Lillian." Luna said, softly.

"I cannot. You know that." Lillian's eyes teared up, she could never go back.

"Then I offer you entombment. An eon, an eternity, and then freedom at the end of time." Celestia said, gaze never faltering.

Lillian shook her head, "To sit and wait for forever? No!"

"Then I will end you." Celestia stepped forwards, her body glowing with that same otherworldy light as she tapped into the powers of creation itself. "I love my little ponies too deeply to let you subject them to your every whim. I love that cold, hard, senseless universe of man too much to let you crush it and mold it beneath your hooves as some plaything. I love you too much to let you become a monster."

"And you think trapping me in stone forever is a gift?" Lillian backed off. She was a goddess, it was true, but she had been one for a very short space of time. "I don't want to be a statue! I, I, I want to live! You can't have me! You won't take me!"

Lillian looked for a way out. She could not run. Not left, not right, not up, not down. Nowhere in the realm of Equestria was safe, and she felt the barrier to that other realm that had spawned her close even as her consciousness investigated it.

Celestia's light grew bright, brighter, brighter still. The floor began to bubble as the goddess who had seen the birth and death of countless realities brought all of her formidable, impossible power to bear.

"No! No! I won't! You can't! It's... so bright! No! NOOOOOOO! THE LIGHT!"

Lillian started screaming, her voice shattering the windows, crumbling the walls, cracking the foundations, disturbing the very pillars of the realm itself. It was so hot, so bright, it hurt! It burned!

Lillian would flee, she would run, she would... the barrier! That was it! She would hide; not this side of the barrier, not the other, but in the barrier, in that layer between the worlds. She swept her prizes around her like a cloak, comforted them, wept with them. The light was so bright, it hurt, it dissolved her very essence... if only she could avoid it, escape it...

The barrier was right there, she leaped for it, fled into it, pulled it up as a shield against that terrible, awful, painful, powerful light. She wrapped it tight around herself, filling the spaces, exerting her will for somewhere to hide to come into existence. She felt the fabric of reality shift, weakened as it was here between the two realms. She made for the rift, squeezed through it, dragging her children with her.

She would find peace, a new beginning, somewhere to grow, to feel love, to be - but first...

"LET THERE BE DARKNESS!" she cried.

And there was darkness. And it was good.

After darkness, there would be a need for light. She would have to make light. She would have to make a great many things, but she had time now.

She got to work.

TCB - Garden Party

Conversion Bureau

Garden Party

An MLP:FiM Fanfic by Midnight Shadow, based in the Conversion Bureau Alternate Universe, originally by Blaze

***

        The sun beat down mercilessly on their backs. Water-bearing ponies trotted back and forth, earth ponies all, with huge kegs on their backs laden with the precious liquid. The desert, by now, was seemingly endless. Burned and blackened trees, dead bushes, no grass. All around there was... almost nothing. Sand, dust, dirt. Dry, empty, barren.

        Funswirl upended the cup and drank the cool liquid. All too soon it was gone. “Please, can I have some more?”

        “Of course, I’ll just... oh, oh, sorry! It’s gone! I’ll see if I can get a refill.”

        Funswirl watched as the earth pony trotted off.This treck, it didn’t make sense. There had been rumblings through the grapevine of a pegasus, a traitor if such a thing were possible, who had stranded whole groups of newfoals like her in deserts like this, where they’d died, or been eaten, or even been turned to stone... the story got more fantastic with each retelling, but she was sure there was something in it. This... where in Equestria were they?

        She looked up as the pony trotted back past, towards the front of the long caravan. “E-excuse me, did you get any--”

        The pony dashed past, he shook his head but didn’t stop.

        This was odd.

        Suddenly, the caravan stopped. In actual fact, it had probably been stopping for a while. She realized that she was approaching a whole mass of ponies, milling about in the hot desert. Was this... was this a windfeather plot? A plot to strand them in the middle of nowhere? They’d been trecking for days, told that they would be entering a new land, one ripe for the picking... Funswirl began to feel worried. Very worried. This wasn’t right. This was...

        “What’s going on?” began the chants and calls.

        “Yeah! Tell us! Where are we? Why are we being refused water?”

        “I demand to see the princess! I won’t be abandoned to die in this desert! Just what do you think you’re doing?”

        The grumbling was getting fiesty. It was getting downright ugly. Funswirl scowled, this smelled wrong. She glared as a pony got up onto a small podium. It had been carried by two ponies all the way. It looked like he was about to speak.  Funswirl watched as the strawberry red stallion took a deep breath and began to shout.

        “Citizens of Equestria! Be calm! Calm yourselves!”

        “What’s going on! Tell us!”

        “We don’t want to die out here, what have we done to you?”

        “Calm! Please. Look to me, look at me. I am a simple earth pony, like many of you. Like most of you. I command no cadre of unicorns, no squadrons of pegasi. I, too, am here with you in this desert. Listen to my words, friends, compatriots. I do not deceive.”

        “I’ve heard that one before!”

        “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on!”

        The strawberry earth pony stomped his hoof three times, and the calls died out, “Let me tell you a story. Long, long ago, before there was Celestia, before there was Luna... before even there was the Equestria we know and love today, there was the One Realm. The Great Deeps. Into the Great Deeps came The Six. The Six were ponies, like you and me, yet unlike. They were massive, powerful, some say eternal. They separated the skies and the waters, and revealed the lands. These were the three First Realms.

         Two were unicorns. They created the sun and the moon from their tears, the stars from their breath. This gave us the day, and the night.

        Two were pegasi, and when they flapped their wings, the wind blew. The sweat from their bodies formed the clouds and the rain, which fell upon the empty plains, fed the rivers and drained into the sea.

        The earth was barren, though. By day, it was blistering hot. By night, it was freezing cold, and The Six were alone. This though, this was the before time. The time before time itself. The ground was fertile, but it slept.

The earth ponies, Terra and Firma, saw the land, and spread their love upon it. As they walked upon it, the grass grew, creating the Endless Fields. As the Pegasi, Aeolus and Boreas, flew, the rains fell from them, feeding the Perfect Waters. The wind blew from them, known as the Sweet Winds. The two unicorns, Helios and Selene, took to the skies above the sky in their eternal dance, leaving The Four to their dominion of the skies and the lands and seas.

For a time, it was good, but there is only so much that six ponies can do before becoming bored. They wandered their Realms for time and time again, rejoicing in their discoveries and creations, but eventually, though, The Six began to tire. Terra and Firma, The earth ponies, wept first. They had each other, but they were so very alone in their lands. As they cried, their tears struck the earth. No longer barren and dead, instead verdant and green, out sprung the earth ponies. From the earth itself, full of vitality, where they passed the grass changed. So many came, that great mountains burst forth. Where they ran, the gouged the ground into the hills and valleys you see before you. Trees grew, forming forests. New plants grew, fruits and vegetables, bushes, flowers. From these earth ponies, stewards of nature, all earth ponies are descended. Even you newfoals.

The pegasi, overjoyed to see their brother and sisters lands overflowing with new life, cried also. Their tears scattered across the great open expanses of the sky, and each drop became a pegasi like them. From these pegasi, stewards of the weather, all pegasi are descended. Even you newfoals.

Then, from the skies above the skies, the two unicorns wept. As they cried, their tears burst from the heavens as shooting stars, and each one became a unicorn, full of the burning magic in the realm where Helios and Selene dwell. From these unicorns, stewards of knowledge and magic, all unicorns are descended. Even you newfoals!

Today, brothers and sisters, we are here to prove that to you, and to each other. I, Flinthock, swear this to you.”

There was murmuring in the crowd, Flinthock once again stomped his hoof and cleared his throat. “We have no more water. We have come on a one way journey. Should we fail, the princesses will rescue us, but we will live in nothing but infamy. What should we do then, gentle ponies? Should we give up?”

TCB - The Pup's Plums / Sticks and Stones

  The

 CONVERSION

        ►Bureau

Sticks and Stones

Part 1

Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones

An MLP:FiM Fanfiction by Midnight Shadow

       - Unofficial sequel/sidestory to Recombinant 63, by Chatoyance

The diamond dog leaned into the mic, his husky voice heavy with the peculiarly Slavic accent of his homeland. "Dis on? Good." He tapped it for good measure, causing feedback. A good deal of people in the crowd winced at this.

"You fink dat bad for you? Try wid dese ears. I get da feedback none o' you's hears. When I do dis," he said, making an exagerated display of pain, holding his paws up, outstretched as if he were grabbing onto something, "I not mimin', I whinin'. Whinin's where I don't move an' squeak a lot. S'other way around t'mimin'."

The crowd laughed. The crowd actually laughed. He was terrible, with all the delivery and tact of a freight train, but his pure awfulness had a charm that just... drew a watcher in.

The man shook his head and moved to take a sip of his drink. What met him was a cool, sweet blast of nothing, the gin and tonic was gone.

"Waitress! Waitress! Another!" The man slammed his empty shot glass down repeatedly until the unicorn trotted up, levitating a tray easily by her side.

"What'll it be, mister?"

"Another gin and tonic. Actually, just... leave the bottle and bring some extra ice and tonic-water. How much?"

"A hundred fifty credits, sir, if you want the whole thing."

"A hundred and fifty? Sure, sure, why not. How much for a little personal service, hmm?"

"I'm not for sale. I-if you want a little, ah, special performance, the fillies—"

He threw the money on the ground. "How much extra to get you to pick it up with your mouth?"

The pony sniffed. She was used to humans, and bits were bits. "An extra fifty."

More credits fluttered down or rolled across the floor. Some were Terran, others were Bits from Equestria. "Pick 'em up then, slowly."

The pony turned around, flicking her tail in annoyance. It was more or less exactly what he wanted, getting a good, solid view beneath it for a minute or so as she fought to get the last of the mixed collection of coins and notes.

"Mmm, I like that. Nothing quite like it."

She stayed like that a few moments longer than she needed, not because she wanted to but because any excuse to have him thrown out would have been real satisfaction. Just one little cupping of her hind quarters, one absent brush of a knuckle or even the intrusive poking of a digit, and he'd be out on his ear and banished from the Pup's Plums Dressclub forever. She could take that. Better a minor rape now than a scene later. But the expected fondling never came, though she felt his eyes upon her. Still human, but he reacted the way all men did these days. A shortage of pussy made even the briefest of flashes from even generally morphologically compatible sources enticing. Even to those who professed to have no interest. Especially then.

There was a sudden meaty slap. The pony winced, thinking she'd been hit for a moment, but when she looked up, the lecherous creep had been solidly thumped in the face by another gentleman.

"Out," the newcomer said, jaw set. He was an older gentleman, but still obviously fit.

"But—"

The second man just pointed, and the first left. The second sat down in his place. "Sorry about that. I'll have whatever he's just paid for."

"Thank you, sir," said the pony coolly, straightening up. "I'll be back shortly."

"Call me Leonard, Miss..?"

"Ink, Inkwell." Inkwell shuffled her hooves experimentally. She didn't know why she was still talking to anyone after that last scene, but, well, pony is as pony does. It was kind to be sociable.

"Pardon my effrontery, I do prefer to know who I am dealing with. I'm surprised such a fine mare as yourself is working in a... place like this."

"What? you're calling me classy? Humans aren't my type. if you're trying to chat me up—"

"Forgive me, but you don't seem to have the cutie-mark for it. Most of the fine females you find in an establishment of this type are generally... well. I do believe I once saw a mare with a phallus as a cutiemark. I can't imagine what she did with it out of hours. Maybe she wore dresses to cover it up, or maybe it was fake to begin with."

"Maybe." Inkwell wasn't sure she wanted to keep on chatting, but was finding it hard to have an excuse to disappear. The evening had gone from disgusting to... almost chivalric. "If you're ready, I-I'll just get your drinks."

"Please," said Leonard, "come back?"

Inwardly, Inkwell swore. Muffin cherry cheesecake slice! She didn't want to be near this guy. He reeked of HLF, no matter what he'd done. She had convinced herself of it, he was here to meet some sort of underworld contact. Maybe it was a PER operative, an exchange of intel or prisoners, something like that. Either way, he was bad news. But he had saved her hide, and he wanted to talk to her. She found it hard to resist.

Up on stage, the diamond dog comedian was still going strong. "Why pony cross street? To get back to Equestria. Why human cross street? To get to Conversion Bureau. Then pony cross street." The rimshot was so corny, but then the whole act was atrociously corny. The kitsch of it was entertaining, and the crowd laughed. Most of them had arrived for the Pup's Comedy Hour. Those that hadn't, had found the usual ladies – human and pony – waiting on tables with cut-price drinks. Little personal shows were going on all over. Very personal shows were going on in the very personal backrooms. Strangely enough for the first-timers, the ponies were wearing more than the humans, and were mostly being paid to put more on.

"Some fink diamond dogs just... dogs. Do anything for bone. Not true!" The diamond dog glared around angrily, the crowd suddenly silenced. "Take two bones at least." Rimshot. "Maybe three." Laughter.

Inkwell slouched her way to the table. The man, Leonard, had poured himself a couple of shots of gin already, and had downed them in short order. He was hissing through his teeth at the bite. He noisily made himself another, sat back in the plush velvet seats, and watched the stage. Just as Ink was about to leave, however, he spoke. "Tell me about yourself, then. Why're you..." he gestured with the shot glass. "Here?"

"Well, I... left for a while. With my two spouses."

"Two stallions, eh?"

"Mares. Two mares. Three in total."

"Oh ho. And no man to keep you in your place?"

"None of your business. If you're going to be—"

"Calm yourself, Miss Inkwell. I apologize. A dressclub is no place for such animosity between us."

"You are HLF then?"

"You don't need to spread it about, but yes."

"What happens in dressclubs, stays in dressclubs, sir."

Leonard chuckled, taking another sip of his drink. "It's nothing like that. We're shutting up shop here, you see. Just thought I'd come and say farewell." As Inkwell's ears flattened against her head he waved nonchalantly. "Oh don't worry, the withdrawal will be peaceful. We don't burn bridges, not in civilisation. We'd have PER and the army down on us if we did, and we can't take any more losses." Leonard scowled at that admission. "You've won, you know. All this... it's yours. Ponies, and those who want to be ponies. And you can have it. So tell me, Inkwell, why're you here? I would have thought you'd have gone to Equestria."

"Well I... we did."

"Go on."

"I guess it started at the end, when my... my wife was being converted in a warehouse on the East side..."

***

Paige's eyes fluttered open at the sound of birdsong. The air was warm, and redolent with a myriad of fragrances. It was wonderful, a summer's evening straight out of the movies. She remembered, briefly, when she'd been stationed as a security guard in some rat-infested mall next to the elite's gated community, long before the ponies came. They'd had something called honeysuckle which had apparently devoured the walls. The rich weirdos cut it down because it was the wrong colour, or something. Paige had never understood why, because for a few months of the year, in the evening, the flowers would bloom, and it would smell wonderful.

Seeing as the last thing she remembered was having her arm melted off by magic, and downing an emergency ponification— "Ah." Paige looked up, into the amused, wide eyes of a midnight-blue pony. The pony smiled, fluttering her wings, as the moonlight glinted off her horn. "Luna?"

"Doth that be your name too, little one? How strange that we may two may meet like this, who shareth such a noble title."

Paige blinked. Twice. "I, er..."

"A joke," said Luna, rolling her eyes. "I see mine attempts at humour still need work."

"Ah! Ahha! Haha, yes."

"Laugh not like you fear I would send you to the blackest of hells, my little pony." Luna took a step away before turning back. "Another joke. I had hoped—"

Paige laughed. She threw back her head and laughed, great pealing torrents of joy. Wiping her eyes with a hoof, she shook her head. "Sorry, sorry, I... just didn't expect you to be like... I mean it is you, isn't it?"

Luna smiled, gesturing with her head to follow. Paige got onto her hooves, surprisingly steady once she just let it happen, and trotted after the princess. Rising into the air on a glowing cloud of magic, the pair of them accelerated over the plains of some great grassland. "It is I, little one. Oft my sister doth see to thee and thine, but in this case I thought it prudent to take a personal interest in the matter."

"Oh? Oh!" Paige went rigid with shock as below her thundered huge herds of ponies, frolicking and dancing and whinnying and neighing with joy as their goddess floated above them, "Th-the warehouse! I totally forgot! We were... there were men, with guns, they were shooting at us and th-they said they'd kill us if we... oh sweet Lu- I mean, uh, sweet... you..."

"Calm yourself, my dear. It is taken care of." Luna smiled kindly, as the multicoloured clouds shot over the edge of a great meandering waterfall, the spray sending warm droplets of sweet wine-like water into the air. The ghostly platforms plummeted almost straight down, but Paige had neither time nor reason to be scared, before the flight levelled out and they passed over a cloud-strewn mountain valley.

"But they were shooting, with guns, and—"

"And now their guns are as immobile as the rest of them. I must say, I had never thought that such a simple show of friendship as a guided tour of Equestria and Canterlot would lead to such mayhem and strife."

Paige was silent for a moment, as around them frolicked pegasi, masters of the wind and clouds. Ghostly nickers and fleeting kisses of greeting flowed across her body before they, too, were gone. The clouds they were perched upon sped downwards, thundering through the stratocumuli as if they were nothing more than mere vapour. Which they probably were, reasoned Paige, even here in this whatever-it-was place between worlds. Accelerating ever faster, the scenery changed as the pair dove into a wild wood of ancient magic and intimidating yet unseen presences. Through branches that just barely whisked out of the way, around trunks warped and twisted by time and magic, they came upon an ancient, ruined castle. There, the clouds came to rest, and dissipated into nothing.

looking around herself, Paige shivered. "Where are we?" she asked, her voice echoing from empty wall to abandoned room.

"My home, what is left of it. It lay abandoned for a thousand years."

"I, er, love what you've done with the place."

This time, it was Luna's turn to laugh uproariously. Eventually, she stopped, still full of mirth. "Do you know why we're here?"

"N-no..."

"Because this is a place of many secrets, and I am here to discuss one such. I would have something from you."

"From me?"

"From all of you. There is a manuscript in your possession, and whilst it will shortly be in my possession, there is something to do with it which I need. From you." The midnight-blue alicorn looked pointedly at Paige.

"W-we... we read the notebook." Paige's heart sank.

"Yes."

"We shouldn't have, should we?"

Luna sensed Paige understood the price she was exacting. "I will not take much from you, little one, only details. You will still remember your adventures, you will still remember the joys and pain, but... I would have from you the details."

Paige sucked breath in through her teeth. "It's that serious?"

"Knowledge is dangerous, which is why it is kept from those who would do harm. This knowledge... it could harm all of my little ponies, irreparably. But I will not take these memories from you unwillingly, and not without a gift in return. So, Paige Waterson, what will it be?"

"I... can I say no?"

"Yes."

"But y-you think this is important?"

"There will never be another thing you do which is quite so important."

"Then I accept." Paige screwed up her muzzle. "Will it hurt?"

Luna looked down at the pony, cocking her head, "What? Oh, I will not do it now, little one. I shall do it only once I have spoken to all three of you. For now, you have a far more pressing engagement."

"Oh?"

"You must wake up, little one, and experience the joy of your new hooves."

***

For the third time that day, Paige opened her eyes. The floor was hard, cold and uncomfortable. The air in the little office was rank and musty, but the smell of four ponies was welcoming above the background stench of sweat, blood and gunpowder. She sniffed; eighteen men, three women, one biont. The latter was broken, melted by whatever thaumic blast was still reverberating throughout the warehouse. It left a coppery, actinic taste in her muzzle.

...That was new. A muzzle. She flicked her ears in surprise. Ooh, ears that move! She flicked them again, one, two... hee hee! Tailswish! Ooh, a tail! Ears, tail... and hooves! Four of them! Experimentally, Paige put a hoof in her muzzle and bit it. "Ow!"

"Paige, are you okay?"

"Ow! Yeff, I waff juft—"

Inkwell sighed, "Paige, take your hoof out of your mouth."

"Buff... fun waffa. If nife."

"Let me, Inks honey. Paige? If you don't take your hooves out of your mouth, you won't be able to get up, and if you don't get up, you won't be able to see Luna."

Paige was up like a shot, but moments later was gently rocking to and fro with a bout of vertigo. "Luna! You're here? But... we were just..." Paige looked down at her hooves in confusion. "Ooh, I have such lovely shiny hooves!"

There were two soft thunks as Inkwell and Petrichor both face-hoofed.

"Paige, honey, focus. We're having an issue here! You know, bad men? Guns?"

"It's okay, they wanted the notebook, but Luna's done something to them and they won't be bothering us. It's over, Pet. We're safe. You just have to... actually Luna wanted something more from us than just the notebook."

"She knows about it?" squeaked Inkwell. eyes going wide.

"Indeed I do, my little pony. I have known about it for some time, since your most untimely conversion, though I knew not then the import nor that it was with you." Luna trotted into the little office at the top of the warehouse. "Had I but known, much would have been spared you all."

"B-but t-then Paige would've..."

Luna fixed Inkwell with a stern gaze. "She was almost lost to the Great Herd. She would have had her time. As it was she almost didn't, and all because of your great love of stories."

Inkwell looked up, furrowing her brow. "Isn't that why you hired me?"

"Quite, but even you should know that some tales are not safe."

"She wants to take our memories!" blurted Paige, before covering her muzzle with a hoof.

Inkwell looked from Paige to Luna, to Pet. "It's that important?"

Luna sighed. "I had hoped to leave this until a better time, after you had all had a chance to rest and consider... but mayhaps I can offer you a better deal."

"A better de—" Inkwell began, but in a flash of energy found herself suddenly blinded by strong, hot daylight. She rocked back and forth, sensations of nausea washing over her for a few seconds before clearing. Shocked, she looked around at a scene straight out of some pastoral three-vee movie with cowboys and indians. "Equestria?" she asked, dumbfounded.

"I give you three a week to consider, some bits to spend, and some days and nights of rest and recuperation to use them in. Head South, I suggest you take the train until Gaskin Path and walk by hoof from there. Continuing East by train would take you to Neighvada, and that is not entirely conducive to rest. You have been through a lot, it is time to truly relax."

"Wait, Neighvada? You're kidding, right? Is there a... a... a Las Pegasus too?"

"Neigh, Las Pegasus is to the West, and two of you do not posess—"

"Right. Of course. Why wouldn't there be a Las Pegasus?" Inkwell rolled her eyes and stomped around in a circle before coming nose to nose with the princess again. "Where are going, anyhow?"

"South.  You will know when to stop."

"Is this some form of pony mysticism? Because it's like something straight out of a story book, and trust me, I know story books."

"Oh! Good! Then you will be aware of the way such things function. I bid thee adieu, my little ponies. I shall see thee in a week!" With that, the midnight blue alicorn fluttered her wings and took off into the air, with Inkwell's last few sputtered objections still left unsaid.

Pet fluttered her wings in silent laughter, spotting a small bitbag of Equestrian coins left by the retreating diarch, which she picked up with her teeth and secreted in her mane. "Come on, Inks. We're on a mission from the princess! Can't keep her waiting!"

Inkwell sighed heavily, then moved her gaze to Paige, who was dancing up and down with glee and yelling at a most embarassing volume about how joyful she was about her new, shiny hooves.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, thought Inks to herself, that daft pony is not going to...

"Ohhh my hooves are so shiny! I'm so happy, joy, joy, joy!"

Just don't give her any ideas, Inkwell said to herself, just... don't.

***

The train whistle sounded loudly across the desert as it bid farewell to a town the trio learned was called Appleloosa. And why not, thought Inkwell to herself, they grow apples here. She rolled her eyes, but she couldn't deny that the thought of such openly joyful, silly and yet apt names were a lot of fun.

Outside the train window, the scenery was picking up speed. The whole muffin train was being pulled by four earth ponies. Four! Just four! The double-chocolate-chip cookie creatures were strong as a fluffin' locomotive all by themselves. Incredible!

"Fluffin'," laughed Inkwell to herself, turning on the wide, comfortable bed-like matress-chairs to watch Pet and 'Joy Shinyhooves' arguing over the quite honestly atrocious name.

"How aboouuuttt.... happyhooves?"

"No."

"Awesomehooves?"

"No!"

"Prettyhooves!"

"Double no!"

"You don't think my hooves are pretty?" sulked Joy, nee Paige.

"I think your hooves are the prettiest ever. Possibly – and I'm just stating a hypothetical here – possibly prettier than Ink's."

"Gee, thanks," Inkwell rolled her eyes. Pet stuck her tongue out.

"She's my owner, I've got to tell her she's got the prettiest hooves ever."

Inkwell laughed. "But that doesn't mean she has to mention them in her name, right?"

"Nope."

Inkwell hummed and hawwed. "You know, that's something... I mean... now Paige isn't a big ol' meanie-pants human – no offence."

"None taken! I was the one with the fluffin' baseball bat just incase... ooh, just thinking about it makes me all wibbly!"

"Anyway, now she's not the sort to make pancakes with those mother-fluffin' baddies, can she... you know." Inkwell twitched her eyebrows suggestively.

"What?"

"With the whips and chains..."

"Oh. Ohhh!" Pet looked at Shiny Joyhooves, or Hoofy Shinyjoy, or whichever of her terrible name suggestions the earthpony mare was currently entertaining, appraisingly. "You mean... she might not be able to... perform?"

Inkwell giggled despite herself, and both she and Pet broke out into gales of laughter when Joy pouted. "I think we might have to reassess some parts of our relationship."

Pet pouted, now. "But... I'm the pet! There can't be three pets! I can take two because I'm obviously best pet, but three? This is serious. This is muffin serious."

Outside, the arid desert literally flew by as things – in more ways than one – went South.

This is very good, and I want to read more!

TCB - Shattered Worlds - The Mule

The Conversion Bureau

Shattered Worlds

Mule

Part 1

        The metro was relatively quiet at 3 a.m. in the morning, something that Dave was thankful for. He grinned shyly at his girlfriend, and she pressed herself closer with an answering smile. As one of the only truly mass-transit systems still in use, it was a treat to ride the London Metro to somewhere other than to or from the workplace. During the day, free-ride ticket prices were too high for recreational travel, at least for the likes of Dave and his girlfriend, but the night-time runs were affordable.

        Dave Cooper held onto his girlfriend Gwen's hand tightly, it was truly exciting. The lights buzzed noisily in the red sector workers' section of the platform, but they were lit. Real, electric lighting! The doors were electric, too, whooshing open as the trains stopped, letting on and off the few travellers there were at the almost-deserted station.

        London had been hit hard by the fuel crisis in Europe, when the world's economy went not only belly up, but for all intents and purposes was left dead and buried for well over a decade. The wheels of industry did what they always do, however, and turned anew. Old coal reserves and gas pockets that had been abandoned in better days as uneconomical to mine were eventually reopened, and with the renewed availability of not only biofuels but honest-to-god hydrocarbons, London and therefore Britain slowly began to claw herself out of the hole. Power returned for good as the country once again discovered the magic of nuclear fission. Fusion was so much cleaner, but the infrastructure to mine and transport the required helium-3 isotopes were beyond what had become of the British Empire. It wasn't, however, beyond its ability to accept - for a hefty payment - materiel which certain countries were laughably calling 'nuclear waste'. Britain had invested, long ago, in a very limited number of Fast Bed Reactors. They could burn any sort of nuclear fuel, and so accepting 'nuclear waste' just meant being paid twice: once by those donating something they were unable to deal with, and once again by the public with an appetite for electricity which, so far, outstripped demand.

        Mothballed test-bed reactors could only take things so far, but that 'so far' was fifty years or more in the future. The elite had time to come up with replacements. In the meanwhile, electricity was flowing again - if in measured amounts. One of the things which a relative abundance of electricity could resurrect was the London metro system. It was this metro which Dave Cooper and his girlfriend Gwen Samson were about to take a trip on.

        Red Sector workers would cram into the cars every morning and every evening as they spent a good proportion of their meagre pay to attend the workplace and then trudge home again. Dave and Gwen, however, were looking for something a bit more romantic. Dave had planned this for months, and had eventually cobbled together enough funds to make it happen; he now had tickets to the metro and an honest-to-god reservation at a restaurant. One that sold, if the rumours were true, real food rather than nano-reconstructed facsimiles.

        With his love by his side and a spring in his step, Dave boarded the metro. Idly, he fingered the small, velvet-covered box in his pocket. Nothing could go wrong.

        It took barely twenty minutes to prove him wrong, to prove him very, very wrong.

***

        "Alright, ladies and gents! Listen up: things is gonna be simple, a'ight?"

        There hadn't been much screaming, yet. The trip had been everything they'd hoped for, at first, but then the lights in the metro had flickered, and then the train had stopped. This was nothing entirely unusual, and most of the passengers had thought nothing of it, especially at three in the morning. After a few moments of silence - punctuated only by flatulence, suffulence and the occasional angry murmur - the train had started moving again, only backwards. When it became clear that the train had been shunted off the main line, that's when people started worrying.

        The trip after that was short, and the train came to rest at a deserted - and in fact abandoned - station. The doors remained closed, and the lights went out again. Before anyone could act, however, the gang had struck. Doors had been first forced open, and then blocked with oversized thugs. Multiple carriages' worth of passengers had been herded into one under the threat of bodily harm, and then a relatively small, feral-looking bloke had noisily cleared his throat until silence had reigned. Then he had started speaking.

        "It's gonna be simple. Everybody listen up, and nobody gets hurt. This here train requires a donation, to our good selves, if you want to continue your journey. You will empty your pockets and deliver any cash and or valuables you have upon your person to our volunteers who will very shortly be mingling amongst you fine people."

        "What if we don't got nuffin'?" came the inevitable objection.

        Mouth tut-tutted. "That would be unfortunate, it just means you have to work off the debt. Don't worry, my associates here will be pleased to assist you in this."

        The man's 'associates' grinned. They weren't kind gestures.

        Dave didn't like the sound of that. "Stick by me, honey, we'll be okay."

        "But, love... I don't..." Gwen started crying.

Dave gulped, and put his arm around her. "It's okay, hon, it'll be okay," he whispered. He reached into his pocket and took out the wad of bills. They were dirty, and torn, but they were legal tender. He pressed them into his girlfriend's hand, closing her fingers around them. She looked at him, shocked. He just smiled, softly, and shook his head. "I told you, 'til death do us part, hon. It'll work out, you'll see."

        Big, hefty bruisers with plastic bags stomped through the crowd. Those who could pay were, one at a time, shuttled through to the other carriages. Those who could not were herded out onto the filthy, debris-laden platform. When it came her time, Gwen fearfully held out the money. The man leered, snatching at it.

        "T'ain't enough fer both of ya. Girly wanna pay some other way?"

        "Anything, please... j-just let us go?"

        Dave squared his shoulders, "Fuck off, she's paid."

        "Yeah, but you ain't, boy."

        "You want everyone else to see you being a bad sport? Let her go." Dave glared.

        Bruiser leered, but stood back and gestured to the door. Gwen ran through it, in tears. Then the brute turned back to Dave. "Come on, then."

        Dave grit his teeth and reached deep into his pockets, pulling out the ring he'd been planning to give Gwen. He opened the small, velvet-covered box, showing it off. It was silver-plated, and it had what could pass for zirconium, in a good light, set into a pretty inlay. It had cost less than the metro tickets, but it had been all he'd had left.

        "That ain't enough for a ticket out, sport."

        Dave glared. "Then it's yours if you make sure she's safe. Otherwise I'll throw it out. Or swallow it. It isn't much, but it'll get you something."

        Bruiser sneered and pocketed it. "Get over there with the rest of the meat."

        Dave watched, relieved, as the train vanished into the tunnels. His reverie was broken by the loud tapping of a solid lead pipe on the walls, as the thug he had nick-named 'Mouth' spoke up.

        "This way, ladies and gents, it ain't far. No dawdling."

        Still there wasn't any screaming, just sniffles and moans. They were all too down-trodden to scream perhaps, mused Dave. It wasn't as if they all didn't get mugged for spare change relatively regularly. This couldn't be much worse. Just as long as they weren't organ leggers, and he highly doubted anybody would want him as a sex-slave. Perversely, the thought almost made him laugh. He bit his tongue to stop the manic grin, and kept his head down.

        The trip through the abandoned platform complex was over relatively quickly, and the group was ushered out into a brightly-lit, secluded and warm space. The air was fetid but breathable, and a good deal cleaner than Dave had expected it to be. They were made to line up, men on one side and women on the other. they do want us for sex-slaves. At least there's no children. thought Dave to himself. He watched bemusedly as a bearded younger man with blue eyes and a dirty white labcoat made cursory inspections of all the prisoners. He roughly turned their heads this way and that, forced their mouths open and peered down their throats and pried at anything that looked out of place.

        He's checking for implants, realized Dave. They weren't sex-traffickers, or even organ-leggers. It was far worse than that. Dave's worst fears were confirmed when a keg was dragged out, and measured doses of purplish fluid was tipped into small cups.

        "Right, my lovelies, here's how it's going to be. My mate Ron up there," said Mouth as he gestured to a man on a gantry, "has a gun. He's got more than enough bullets for all of you. First sign of trouble, you all die. You'll all take a cup and take a drink and have a little bit of a lie down. And then, when you wake up, we'll discuss paying off your debt, alright?"

        Precisely one woman screamed. Ron's gun barked, and she went down in a spray of red.

        Mouth, who still hadn't introduced himself, tut-tutted loudly. "You want to know how useful that was?" He motioned to one of his heavies, who picked up a cup with tongs. Another slit the dead woman's belly open, whilst the first poured the mixture in. Seconds later, the still-twitching form turned waxen and white as it began to lose definition.

        "See, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Hard way just means I'll have even less use for your mind, and we'll have to... take it out of your body. Vices are cheap these days, folks."

        Dave felt sick as more than a few of the heavies made lewd thrusting motions with their hips. More than a couple high-fived. He could guess who'd be doing the 'breaking in'. He couldn't even feel sad, barely angry. He didn't want to be some fuck-toy, pony or not, so when it came his time, he downed the potion without a second thought.

The ground came up to meet him.

***

        Dave opened his eyes. The dream had been... confusing. Confusing and confused both. A deserted wasteland, a broken-down castle, the distant sound of hooves... and sadness. So much sadness. And yet joy.

        The real world wasn't making much sense either, it was full of odd smells and strange sounds, and a good deal of pain which felt oddly distant and detached. It took a good thirty seconds for his addled brain to put two and two together, before he realized that the pain in the area he'd prevoiously called his crotch and the insistent whirring of a powerdrill were linked. Jerking his head around, a motion which just caused more pain as his hind legs were gripped tighter and forced back apart, he realized that the man in the white coat had a wrench of some sort fixed to the drill, and the chords of a very personal part of his reproductive anatomy clenched in the grip of the wrench. The wrench was rotating, slowly but surely, until with a slight tug the man pulled something roughly spherical away.

        "That's the second one," the man said as he deposited it in a bucket. He took a swig from a bottle filled with a clear liquid, and then poured a goodly amount through two surprisingly small holes just south of a strange pouch-like protrusion on the pony he was operating on, out of which was poking Dave's... well, stallionhood. Dave had often joked about being hung like a horse. Now he was, for all the good it would do him. He whimpered, it hurt and he was being held uncomfortably and he felt sick and hungry, and most of all he wanted to go home, so Gwen could hold him and tell him it would be all better.

        "Let him down, the sooner he's up and about the better." The man straightened his labcoat and clapped his hands together. "Now they're all gelded, the pigs won't bother you. Just keep 'em out of sight for a while. Now, about my payment, you got it? And the stuff?"

        "Sure do, Charlie-boy." Mouth handed over a thick wad of bills and a few bottles of a tan-coloured liquid to the wannabe-doctor, who secreted the latter into his pockets before counting the bills.

        "Where's the rest, you bastard?"

        Mouth grinned, "Oh come now, Charlie, you want us to pay top whack for a few minutes with a powerdrill?"

        "You want them to bleed out, next time? Fucking go ahead, I won't be cleaning it up." Charlie glared. Mouth snorted and pulled out another wad of bills. "Pleasure doing business with you."

***

The Wheel

The Wheel

by Midnight Shadow

an MLP:FiM Fanfic

300-word contest entry for Equestria Daily’s May 2011 event

Thanks to Velvet for the inspiration

without this header, it’s 300 words exactly! woo! go me! :)

***

Nopony could remember a time when it had rained so hard. Nopony could remember a time when the sun hadn’t come up for weeks either. The overwhelming darkness, now beset with rain, was somehow fitting. I had failed in my quest, I had failed my friends, I had failed Equestria, and Equestria had turned its back on me.

I had only one job now, come rain or...well, there would be no shine. I turned the wheel that moved the stone that ground the wheat into flour. Wheat that still grew, even in moonlight, cut by slave-ponies in dead silence.

I had been given a task, before; one task, a single solitary task - repair the bridge. I had failed it. I had turned my back on my friends for a lie. The shadowbolts didn’t need a captain. They didn’t exist.

Now I wished I didn’t either.

My dreams came and went with the rain in the unending darkness of Nightmare Moon’s triumph. At least the rain washed the spit, rotten fruit and vegetables off, though it left my broken body wracked with shivers and weak. They spared not the whip at every stumble, the stick at every pause, the jeers at every tear. I was not long for this world. Perhaps it was for the best.

I had once been known as Rainbow Dash...but now?

My wings savagely clipped, my mane shorn, eyes blinkered...I hoped nopony would remember soon, before I died, giving me a last few moments of peace as the memory of my past self faded with those of sun, laughter and happier times.

Tied to this contraption, no rest save snatches stolen between beatings. No food save forgotten leavings or waste hurled in my direction, no conversation save abuse.

Now I was just ‘traitor’.

To Protect and Serve

        Clarabell sniffled quietly as she followed Applejack into the barn, out of the rain. She mooed quietly and swished her tail, “Ah do declare AJ, if you hadn’t found yer way to helpin’ me out of that there Everfree Forest, why... I could’ve died there an then!”

        “T’ain’t no thang, Clara, jus’ doin’ ma bit t’help the cowfolk. You know me, always ready to protect and serve. Why don’t y’all come in now for a spot of something t’take the edge off the rain?”

        “Don’t mind if I do!”

        “Y’all can stay the night, if’n ya want.”

        “Thank you kindly, AJ!”

        The rain outside was still falling and it didn’t look like it would stop. AJ trotted back into the barn with a steaming pot in her muzzle. She poured some out carefully for her bovine companion, and another for herself.

        “Drink up now, I’ll be back in a few, Clara.”

        The cow lowed quietly to herself and blew on the steaming beverage before lifting to her lips and downing the mixture in one. She yawned suddenly, the warm beverage settling in the first of her stomachs most agreeably, as she settled down in the straw. She was comfortable, very comfortable. She closed her eyes, just for a moment, and relaxed.

        It was the pain in her legs that yanked her back to the land of the living. She struggled, the pounding in her head making it hard to think. It was the uncomfortable bite of the ropes and the lurching feeling in her organs that made her realize she was hanging by her hind hooves. It was quite dark, wherever she was, warm and quiet.

        “AJ?” she called, “AJ? Where... where am I? What’s happening?”

        “Ohh Clarabell, no, no, this wasn’t supposed to happen. I do apologize, mah dear, if’n I haven’t got the dosage wrong. I’m so sorry.”

        “AJ? What’re you..?”

        The orange earth pony clopped closer, carrying a large bucket in her muzzle. She placed it carefully under the cow, adjusting it as she sighted up to the rafters where the rope was fastened.

        AJ sighed, “You weren’t s’posed to wake up, Clara. I always hate it when they wake up.”

        “What? AJ, let me down!”

        “I can’t do that, Clara.” AJ whispered, and bent swiftly to pick up a small, roughly triangular metallic object. It glinted in the half-light as Applejack swung it with practiced ease across the throat of the dangling bovine. A fountain of red flowed from the neat wound, rushing in torrents down the surprised muzzle of the cow and into the ready-planted bucket.

        Clara kicked a little in shock, the stinging cut hadn’t quite penetrated the fog in her mind, and things were only getting more and more indistinct. Applejack dropped the knife and leaned closer, stroking her head softly.

        “Ssshhh,” Applejack crooned, “it’s okay, it won’t hurt for long. They tell me it’s like going to sleep, only ya don’t wake up none.” AJ’s voice was soft, almost plaintive, like she cared... but not enough to do anything about it.

        “Help me, AJ, please stop!” Clara tried to say, but all that came out was a bubbling gurgle as her lifeblood dripped into the bucket to collect and congeal.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be here, here until the end... just relax, you don’t wanna be spoilin’ yer flavour none. Ah get good bits fer a carcass your size... ”

Applejack held her head close, stroking, humming softly as the last few litres left Clara’s body. The cow’s frantic kicking softened, weakened, and finally... stopped. Applejack listened close for a few moments before drawing back and giving the head a short kiss. She licked the blood from her muzzle and went to fetch her hat. She’d need a fire, now, and plenty of water... and the rest of her knife collection.

As she started to skin the cow, she hummed to herself happily. It would be a long night.

Tumble's Tail

tumble's tail

        "Welcome to Aaaaaaappleloosa!" Braeburn had cried, almost as soon as the train had disgorged its passengers onto the arid desert tundra. It hadn't quite been the welcome Fluttershy had expected, but then it hadn't been the trip she'd expected, either - Rainbow had gone missing, thieves had tried to steal the tree that Applejack had grown from little more than a pip, and a herd of ferocious bison had almost hijacked the train.

[ stuff ]

        Fluttershy leaned her muzzle down to where the tumbleweed rocked back and forth impotently. the poor thing was stuck, she realized. Tumbleweeds want nothing more than to wander the open prairie, and here was this one, tied down by a cruel twist of fate and an out-sticky branch. Well, this was a job for fluttershy, carer for all things cute a cuddly. and a few things that weren't. Seizing the errant branch in her teeth, she tugged. the dry wood snapped, and suddenly the tumbleweed broke free.

        "oh!" she cried, as she fell back onto her rump. "I-I hope I didn't hurt you, mister tumbleweed," she said, smiling slightly as the rambunctious weed spun around her in circles. It seemed to hop slightly, though it could have just been the wind.

        "Oh, I'm so glad. Go on, now, off you go!"

        The weed gave another rotation, hopping in the air again, before bouncing off into the distance with the tiniest of puffs of dust.

        "You're welcome!" she cried, after the disappearing dot.

        "Fluttershy? What in tarnation are you doin'? Who you talkin' to?" asked AJ, the golden-coloured mare trotting up besides the timid pegasus.

        "Oh! AJ! I, er, was just... nothing!" she squeaked.

        AJ raised an eyebrow, peering off into the distance. Weren't nothing there but dust and prairie, she noticed. She shook her head, "Come on, 'shy, s'time fer supper."

        "Okay," said Fluttershy, smiling. She ruffled her wings as AJ trotted impatiently off. Turning back to the desert, which was by now bathed in an ruddy orange glow as the sun went down, the yellow pegasus shook herself out. Good deeds were their own reward, she mused. If she'd gone straight in, she never would have seen this sunset. "Goodbye!" she called, though the weed itself was far out of sight. "Good luck!"

***

        Seasons come, and seasons go. All things twist and turn about, end over end, in their ceaseless journey from past to present. Nothing and nobody knows that better than a tumbleweed. tumbleweeds, though, don't live in the past, and they don't live for the future, they live in the perpetual now, caring nothing but for the joy of the open plains.

        And right now, for one tumbleweed, such simple pleasures were tantalizingly out of reach - because it could not forget. It had been trapped, once. it, the manifestation of the breath of life itself, had been trapped. And a little, butter-yellow pegasus had freed it. She'd asked nothing in return, had expected no boon, and had gone on her way. But in this, the tumbleweed could not rest. It circled a tree, lazily, as it pondered - in as much as a creature born of earth and air can ponder. No, it simply would not do. Tumbleweeds were made to tumble, and that pegasus had returned the gift of the prairie to it. She had to be thanked, somehow. The tumbleweed wasn't sure what thanks were, nor how to give them, but the sentiment was pure. It made a decision: it would seek out this strange, yellow creature with the pink strands of hair and, somehow, thank it.

        the wind changed direction, sweeping in from the west, and the tumbleweed began its long journey to the east.

***

        Sometimes, it seems the desert goes on forever. Mile after open mile of sand and scrub, of dust and brush, but eventually, all things change. So it was with the great appleloosan desert, replacing more and more grass with less and less sand and rock. Eventually, there was no sand at all, and instead a carpet of green stretched from horizon to horizon. This made things somewhat difficult, for the little tumbleweed; it wasn't used to such impediments to motion. For seeming aeons, at times, it would be caught by the long, wavering stalks, and all but buried in fecundity - but as the wind wills, so moves the tumbleweed.

        Eventually, the tumbleweed figured out to use the paths. Wind and water are much the same, taking the easiest route, however meandering that may be. And so it was, that the tumbleweed left behind the green swathe and entered a new domain. It shivered in the collection of leaves it had gathered about itself, desperate to retain some of that burning heat that it had loved so much in its old home on the range. it shivered as it left the open skies behind, and rolled on into the largest, tallest, most overwhelming patch of grass it had ever seen. here, the grass was gigantic; the stalks reached way up into the heavens, blotting out the sun. The grass was an odd colour, too, kind of brown, and very, very hard. It knew, on some level, that these new kinds of grasses weren't grass, but it had no words for them. It decided it needed new words, for to name something is to control it.

        It decided to call them *trees*, and the smaller ones *bushes*. Tumbling and hopping from clearing to clearing, the tumbleweed reasoned it felt better, now. Trees weren't so scary, nowhere near as scary as grass-thats-too-tall-to-be-grass. So it was a bit dark. and... and wet - yes, that was a good word for having far too much water around - for what a tumbleweed usually dealt with. No matter, he said to himself, he would--

        he.

        That was new.

        The tumbleweed thought about it for a while, rolling in circles. Yes... he. Not only was the... the *forest* different to the prairie, but *he* was different too, now he was here. It made sense, after all. He was a creature of the wind, and the earth, and the sun and the rain... tumbleweeds didn't live in forests, but he was in a forest... so what was he?

        He would have to find out. he tumbled on.

        Some forests are deep. some forests are dark. some forests are both. The everfree forest was most definitely deep, and most definitely dark. it had been placed upon Equestria aeons ago, and would last for aeons yet. it held within in ancient mysteries, and lost civilisations, and terrors untold, and creatures of all stripes and shapes.

        It also held one very, very tired, very lost and very lonely tumbleweed.

        Lonely was a new word, too. Lonely was what it felt like to no longer have the sky for a companion, to no longer hear the whispers of the wind, to no longer feel the touch of the sun.

        Tumble was lonely, and cold, and wet, and tired. He clawed himself inch by in through the tangled, twisting maze of branches, and for the first time was wondering if he'd made a good decision. Claws were a new thing, too. when Sister Wind had left him, for a long time he'd been more stuck than ever before, even that one time he'd had to have been saved by the yellow pegasus. But Tumble hadn't accepted his fate. He'd pulled in more sticks and twigs, and leaves and even strands of grass and clumps of moss, and had fashioned himself limbs with which to move, ears with which to hear and eyes with which to see. He no longer rolled, he walked. He had a nose which could smell the air, and a tail which pointed where the wind was blowing. He wasn't sure what he was yet, but one thing was still clear. He was a small creature in a large world, and for the first time was feeling fear. Something had been following him for the last half hour, something with wings, claws and a ferocious beak - hence why he was crawling through the undergrowth rather than gallumphing along the path.

        Suddenly there was an ear-splitting screech, and a dark shadow flowed over the fulgent twilight. Tumble ran for it, darting out from under the brambles and streaking down the muddy path. wings fluttered and claws snatched as the giant roc grasped in vain for the creature made from sticks. Suddenly, there was a break in the canopy, and that's when the roc attack. It swooped down, and its claws grabbed at the once-tumbleweed, before powerful wings dragged them both skywards.

        Tumble cried out, suddenly finding voice, his howls of pain echoing from horizon to horizon. in desperation, he opened a bramble-filled maw and snapped at the leg as it held him fast. Sometimes all that lies between  death and life, is chance, and a will to not give in. For Tumble, fate smiled that day. his teeth, puny little spikes of blackberry stalks though they were, caught the roc right between the talons, and sank in. It screamed in agony, opening both beak and claw, and Tumble did what he did best - tumbled. Down he fell, down and down, crashing through the canopy of leaves, slamming through branches and finally landing in a heap in a clearing.

        That was almost the end, except for the sun - the glorious sun. It warmed him, once more. It shone, high in the blue, blue sky, and sang songs of a home he barely remembered. Tumble couldn't ignore it; he got up, though his new legs were twisted. He rose, though his tail was bent. He ambled slowly, unsure of himself, as he finally emerged from the forest, and with the last of his waning strength, began to explore. It was a whole new world, a whole new experience of sights, sounds and smells, and full of promise. He had almost made it. He wasn't sure, now, how much longer he had. Tumbleweeds lived forever in their timeless paradise, but since beginning his journey, he had grown aware of change, or past and present,and finally future. But he had tried, that was the important thing, he had tried. Limping slowly, as one paw wouldn't quite hold him any longer, he found a comfortable spot to curl up and sleep forever in. He had been a tumbleweed, free to roam the plains of the endless prairie, and he had roamed further than any tumbleweed before. he could rest, happy, even if he hadn't--

        "Oh, you poor thing!" sang a voice. Hoofsteps came closer, and the sound of wings rustling. Tumble opened one eye as a shape loomed above him. Butter yellow, with a pink shock of mane and tail, and wide, welcoming wings that scooped him up into their embrace. "You're hurt! Let Mama Fluttershy take good care of you, I'll make sure you're all better from the top of your nose right down to the very tippy-tip of your tail!"

        Fluttershy. He had done it. Gratefully, he collapsed.

FoE - Riding the Shortbus - prologue pt1

Fallout Equestria

Riding the Shortbus

Prologue: Part 1

Swept Up

MLP:FiM belongs to Hasbro, support the official release! With thanks to KKat for Fallout: Equestria and Mimezinga for Pink Eyes, which both inspired this fanwork.

Status: WIP

i.e. this is really, really early - pre-alpha and I know it.

it's also only just over 2k words, so it's a snack, not a meal.

***

"Turn." Soft Touch's voice was hollow and just a little bit snippy.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to forget you there. How about I give you a nice brushdown? Will that make things better?" Frumpy Slacks was conciliatory and hopeful.

"Just turn the page." Soft Touch said, sulking, her eyes not leaving the pages of the book she was reading.

Frumpy reached out with her hoof and turned the page of the book, carefully. "I really am sorry, you know? How about... how about I give you a nice shampooing?"

There was a pause. "With the scented shampoo?"

"...If you want." Frumpy was hopeful now.

"And I want to lie flat to dry out, in the sun! None of this 'hanging on the washing line' business."

"Of course! Anything you want, Softie." Frumpy stroked her hoof gently along Soft Touch's back, smoothing down the ruffled coat as the fire warmed the hut. It was early spring, the days were getting longer, but it was still cold by early evening, even before the sun had gone down. Not that it could be seen all that often through the almost-ever-present cloudlayer.

"I suppose I can forgive you, but only if you massage me between the... well, where my shoulderblades would be? Ahhh, yes, that's right... just there..."

"I really am sorry, you know," Frumpy Slacks said, kneading the ghoul-pony with her hooves, "I do occasionally forget you're rather... mobility challenged."

Soft Touch sniffed, "You left me looking at the wall all day. I'm a rug, not a doormat."

"I know, Soft Touch, I'm sorry." Frumpy Slacks reclined on the rug and kneaded more, very gently. "You know, you never did tell me how you... you know... got like this."

"No?" Soft Touch's strangely glowing glass eyes didn't stop staring at the book, but Frumpy felt their gaze somehow turn as far in her direction as the mostly-motionless pony was able to manage.

"No. You haven't."

Soft Touch was silent for a moment, "I wasn't anypony important. It's not that interesting..."

Frumpy Slacks soothed the rattled ghoul with some well-placed hoofwork and gentle words, "Oh, come now, you're very interesting. It's not everyday a pony buys a talking ghoul-skin rug for their home, is it? You've got to be a collectors' item, Softie..."

"I suppose I am," Soft Touch considered, "do you see... up near my top right hoof? That little brown mark..."

"Eew, what... what is that?" Frumpy peered closer at something crusty and unidentifiable. It smelled like something dead. Well, technically the entire ghoul was dead, but she at least had been cleaned and tanned, and was surprisingly warm and comfortable for a ghoul-skin rug.

"That's where The Stable-dweller herself bled on me after a gunfight."

"Oh she never did..."

"She did too. I was also in Tenpony Tower for a while. I kind of met DJ-P0n3, the stories I could tell you about her..."

"Now I know you're lying," Frumpy laughed, "everypony knows the DJ is a stallion."

"Heh, yeah... you got me there, I guess." Soft Touch was silent for a moment.

"Come on then, tell me your story."

"Did you say story time, Aunt Frumpy?" echoed a new set of voices, as three boisterous foals exploded in through the door, where they leaped around and bounded across the room.

"Settle down! Settle down, children! I didn't mean..."

"Wait, wait..." Softie said, "my story's not all that interesting, so what if I told you about a real hero? A teacher, from before the war, who faced everything in his sacred quest to discharge his duty to his students. He was brave, valiant, and kind."

"What was his name?"

"They called him... Shortbus."

"Shortbus." said Frumpy, as the foals fell about laughing, "Well alright, but if you want to tell us about Shortbus, you'd better tell us where you came in first."

Soft Touch sighed, her glass eyes fixed on a memory many centuries past, "if you insist." She seemed to take a deep breath, though she had no lungs to fill, before speaking again.

"...I never was much good at anything... our stable, number thirty three, was of a really non-standard design. Not that we knew that for sure at the time. We found that out afterwards..."

***

        "Soft Touch? Soft Touch! Get down to the Balefire Reactor Room, pronto! Golden Rule dropped her Sparkle Cola and somepony needs to clean it up." Paper Press, the old maintenance matron, snapped, waving a hoof from her reclining position.

        "Aww, but-" Soft Touch had just come in through the stable door, and was looking forwards to a nice hot cup of tea. It was going to be One Of Those Days.

        "And I'm on my break." Paper Press said, placing the magazine she was reading by what had to be osmosis over her muzzle and leaning back in her hammock.

        Soft Touch sighed, and looked down at the floor. It was always Soft Touch, get this or Soft Touch, do that. One day she'd show them. One day.

        The stable was pretty generic, as far as she could tell, even though it wasn't a Stable-Tec Stable. This was one from Solaris, 'The More Stable Stable'. They were supposed to be built to the same standards as 'the real thing', but scuttlebutt was that plenty of those were unique, and so Solaris had taken liberties of their own. Soft Touch wondered, as she pushed the arcano-broom across the metal-shod floor, what was different in hers. Air conditioning and filtration, water filtration, hydroponics, theatre... it was the soft click click click of her pipbuck that snapped her out of her daydreaming as the doors to the lift opened and she emerged into the reactor hall.

In front of her stood the Balefire Reactor. It was a gleaming construct of metal, wood and bizarre fetishes and crystals that she couldn't understand and that didn't look entirely safe. It made her teeth itch and creeped her out - she was pretty sure most stables employed basic Arcane reactors. A balefire reactor seemed... well, she didn't even know what balefire was but it didn't sound healthy. Soft Touch stood hesitantly back from the construct that seemed, somehow, to leer at her. The unicorn balefire reactor technician 'Golden Rule' was peering into the thrumming depths of the device, seemingly communing with it. Golden Rule creeped out Soft Touch almost as much as the reactor did.

"You took your time. Somepony worthwhile could have slipped and hurt themselves, and then where would we be if the stable door closed? Hmm?"

"Sorry G.R." mumbled Soft Touch.

"I should think so..." Golden Rule turned back to the reactor, making notes on her clipboard with a pen she kept levitated in her TK field, eyes never leaving the core. Her horn glowed softly, pulsing in time with the light from the arcane device.

Soft Touch had been dismissed. She sighed. She activated the relay talisman on her pipbuck and interfaced with the arcanobroom. It sprang to life, and started sweeping across the floor. In truth, the floor had already mostly dried. It was just a bit sticky. She rolled the bottle across the floor before picking it up with her muzzle and dropping it into a waste basket. Anypony could have done it. Nopony did. Typical.

        It was when Soft Touch was returning with a wet rag to clean up the rest of the spill, that she felt... it. A prickling sensation. Golden Rule felt it too, her mane almost standing up on end.

        Fweep! Fweep! Fweep!

        Soft Touch's pipbuck started to chirp at her, and her eyes went wide in alarm. She spat out the rag, "Gold? What... what is this? ...Is this a test? Please say it's a test!"

        "I don't know! Whatever you do, Softie, keep out the way! Let the qualified-"

She never got to finish the sentence.

Whilst she had been speaking, that odd prickly sensation had been growing, like an itch between the ears. In one bone-shattering moment, the reason for it became crystal clear.

***

"Wait, did you say a balefire reactor? That's..."

"I know," Soft Touch answered, "zebra technology. Where they got it, I have no idea, but our entire stable was built based on zebra fetishes, charms, spell matrices and talismans. Maybe they figured a zebra-magic powered stable would be left alone if the worst happened."

"I take it they were wrong," Frumpy whispered, stroking the undead rug beneath her hooves.

"Very."

***

Later, much later, even centuries later, ponies would still be talking in hushed whispers about that day. It was the longest day, the last day, of Equestria. Tempers frayed, agreements fell and dark thoughts became darker deeds. As cold hostility turned to outright war, from the sky rained great balefire bombs, titanic forces barely harnessed into poorly-targeted yet still cataclysmically-lethal objects of mass destruction.

The next phase, a combined attack through land, sea and air, never happened. It didn't need to. There was little left to attack with let alone to attack.

The bomb that hit Solaris' Stable 33 was a stable-buster, experimental - more so than that rest of the until-that-moment-unused weapons. An incandescent, shrieking harbinger of doom descending like a fiery monster to devour the very earth itself, parting the rock not entirely unlike a hot knife through butter. It was thaumic-seeking, and even had it detonated furlongs away it would have done its job. It hit the reactor, having passed through tonnes of rock, metal and ponies on the way down.

It was designed to seek, kill, and destroy. Like every other weapon of mass destruction, it only had to be partially successful to count as a win. In absolute terms, it failed. The kinetic payload failed to detonate, talismans failing at some point during the first phase where it speared down into the very heart of the stable it had been targeted at. This didn't mean, however, that it was any less lethal.

The balefire reactor of stable 33 was built to last, but nothing could withstand the full fury of the arcane hell unleashed in that one bright flash as the magical missile penetrated the core. The fact it was partially made of wood didn't help things at all.

The shields fell, the safeties melted, the spell matrix went critical.

The reactor failed, terminally.

If it hadn't been the end of life as she knew it, it would almost have been beautiful. Everything seemed to move in slow motion for Soft Touch as she cried out to the technician, or anypony who might be listening, through the pipbuck intercom.

They never stood a chance.

Golden Rule was vaporized in the first momentary blast of light and fire, not even ash remaining to show where she had stood just moments before. Wild necromantic spells wrapped in green dragonfire flooded the stable, searing through doors and bursting bulkheads, choking and burning everything in its path. The heat and the blast killed those who were near enough outright, with the rest of the stable succumbing to the dark magic as it slowly and painfully ripped the life from their helpless bodies.

        Soft Touch, in the middle of all this, screamed and turned to run, her voice inaudible above the crashing boom of the explosion. She was quick, but nothing could outrun a multi-tonne slab of necromancy-infused metal, propelled by a critical thaumic blast. The gargantuan lump of reactor-shielding impacted the pony even as her hooves scrabbled for purchase on the metal gangways, attempting to wrench the doors to the emergency stairs open.

        Earth ponies like Soft Touch are tough, but not that tough.

        She screamed again.

        There was a crunch.

        There was blackness.

***

        "Then what happened?" the three awe-struck foals asked in unison.

        "I died." Soft Touch said softly, "Crushed to death by a piece of the reactor shielding. Everypony died. Everypony in the entire stable died, and our stable door never even got a chance to close. So many ponies died when Equestria ended. The Wasteland was all that was left, after that day."

        The foals started sniffing and snivelling, wiping their muzzles with their little hooves.

        "I died... but I lived to tell you about it!" said Soft Touch triumphantly.

        "Yay!" the foals answered, jumping up and down.

        "You're such a ham." Frumpy Slacks sniggered.

        "Do you want to find out what happened?"

Everyone, including Frumpy, nodded, spellbound.

"Then I'll continue..."

***

Game Over! YOU ARE DEAD. Respawn: Y/N? N

Cheatcode: GODMODE 1

Achievement Unlocked: Cheater!

So you've bucked the system, don't think it's all going to be roses though.

Achievement: Undying

Welcome to life as a ghoulpony... such as it is.

Points: 5/1000 - at least you got your pipbuck on this time, shame you broke it.

FoE - Riding the Shortbus - prologue pt2

Fallout Equestria

Riding the Shortbus

Prologue: Part 2

Cutting a Rug

MLP:FiM belongs to Hasbro, support the official release! With thanks to KKat for Fallout: Equestria and Mimezinga for Pink Eyes, which both inspired this fanwork.

Status: WIP

i.e. this is really, really early - pre-alpha and I know it.

***

        "Is there anypony in here?" came a hesitant voice. The tortured squealing of metal as it was forced to budge drowned out anything else for almost a minute.

        "I think I can..." There were sounds of huffing and puffing, though curiously wheezy and whistling.

        "Let me try to squeeze through, I'm a bit thinner than you."

        "Careful, Hay Bale, that wound looks kinda... bad."

        "You know, Kite String? I think it wasn't just bad, it was fatal."

        "What do you mean 'fatal'?"

        "I mean... haven't you noticed... you don't exactly get out of breath any more? Or, in my case, breathe at all?"

        "What are you saying?" Kite String asked.

        "Well-"

        Hay Bale was interrupted by a very weak, "Help! Anypony?"

        It took them a few minutes of searching for any survivors to find her. The lights were out, wreckage was strewn across the floor and nopony had thought to look under the half-tonne slab of metal.

        Hay Bale finally gave up looking in the obvious places, and started skirting the rest of the ruined reactor room. As the cries continued, he finally turned to the one corner he'd initially pegged as a no-brainer for a negative possibility. Kite String followed his gaze, and his mouth dropped open.

        "What, you think... that's crazy! Nopony could've survived that!"

        "She didn't. Doesn't mean we can leave her there... help me, find something to wedge it up with."

        Kite String returned with a long pole made of metal. Bracing it against a fallen lump of bedrock, he jumped up and down on the end until, grudgingly, the massive slab of metal shifted minutely.

        "Alright, miss, I'm going to pull you ou- ...oh dear."

        "Oh thank you thank you thank you! Please get me out from under here! I've been shouting my lungs out for hours! It's me, Soft Touch, the janitor." Soft Touch was almost sobbing.

        "Yeah, about that..." Hay Bale pulled the only part of the pony he could reach. With a wet slurp, it started to move. He winced, and took a better, very careful hold with his muzzle, attempting to taste as little as possible. It helped that his tongue had been a little cooked by the blast. Not enough, but a little. "Harder, Kite, get that rock up just a bit more, I've got to get her head out... that's it..."

        The noises, as the thing that could only be called a 'body' by application of a great deal of charity, started to shift, were... distressing. Hay whimpered. It was like pulling an overstuffed beanbag full of water and twigs. Things scraped. They slurped. They flopped, wetly, as they grudgingly moved. Hay Bale kept his mind off what he was doing as much as he could. There was a lot of red, he was sincerely worried that bits would rip and tear, and he was entirely unconvinced that much could be done for the bones that could now best feature as a brain teasing three-dimensional puzzle for a budding orthopedic doctor with a serious attention to detail, and quite probably no social life. He wasn't convinced he even had them all. He hoped it wouldn't matter. There was more huffing and puffing, some scraping, but finally Soft Touch was free. Mostly. What was left of her.

        "There, I've got you... miss. I think. How do you... uh... how do you feel? Any pain?"

        "No, no... I... I can't move though. Oh goddess, I can't move..!"

        "Relax, I'm sure it's only temporary." Hay Bale sounded rather hesitant on that last point, "Listen, can you tell me if this hurts? Or this? How about that?"

        "N-no... it feels a little weird but... wait, what's that... what are you... what are you doing?"

        There was another series of strangely wet, sucking noises as Hay Bale moved various bodily extremities of the pony formerly known as Soft Touch. At continued murmurs of no discomfort and requests for information, Hay Bale made a decision. After a brief few moments of manipulation, he stood up, "Those are your back hooves, what's left of them, and those are your front hooves, mostly... they're kind of busted up, I know. The... white bits... oh goddess... are your bones. What's left of them. I've kind of folded you up... sorry about that."

        "You what?!"

         "Yes, I know, mama always did say I was bad at making my bed. I'm sorry, you're more of a heap than a sheet. It's the bones, they're kind of lumpy."

        "No, I mean... where are my... but... how are my... and... but..." The world no longer made sense. Soft Touch just lay there, blinking. Metaphorically, of course, she didn't seem to be able to move her eyelids. She wasn't sure she had any.

        Hay Bale waited.

        "...Oh." Soft Touch said, finally, in an empty voice. It didn't seem real. She knew she should be freaking out about now; screaming, shouting, crying, wailing, gnashing her teeth... but it was too strange. She didn't have it in her. She didn't have much of anything in her.

        "Kite, do you wanna lift her onto my back?" asked Hay, after watching for a minute or two.

        Kite String looked at the flat, somewhat oozing, folded pony, "No, not really, can't say I do." He pushed a hoof down onto the piled up lump of flesh and bone. It squished, and splurted down the sides, pooling in a warm sticky mess.

        "Oh you're such a baby... fnnf, f'll foo fit fy felf... fere, fee?" Hay Bale hauled up the approximately square and worryingly squishy pile and placed it on his back, between his withers. It flopped open and oozed down his sides, mingling with yellow ichor and covering his own white ribs with a fresh coat of crimson. He spat a few times, making a face, "Okay up  there?"

        Soft Touch replied, voice trembling, "I'm flat... I don't think I'll ever be right again."

        "Glad to hear it. Anypony else in here with you?"

        "Just Gold, but she... she..." Soft Touch started sobbing, though no tears came.

        "She didn't make it even less than we didn't make it?"

        "Something like that." Soft Touch managed.

        Hay Bale sighed, "And today was my birthday, too."

***

        "So why didn't you die?"

        "I did die!"

        "You know what I mean... and I can't believe it was that neat, being crushed to death and all..."

        Soft Touch sighed, "Have you ever seen a balefire phoenix? When they bombed manehatten, everything was obliterated, turned to ash - including the rare animals at the zoo. Now a phoenix doesn't have the same problem with the whole 'turning to ash' thing as you or I would, so they came back with very few problems, other than being... changed. Balefire though... it's a strange mixture of necromancy and enchanted dragonfire. The reactor was soaked in it. What it didn't outright destroy... didn't always stay dead."

        "Whats nec... necro... manatee?" one of the foals asked, eyes crossing as he twisted his tongue around the unfamiliar word.

        "Bringing the dead back to life."

        "Coooolll!"

        "Great. Go giving them ideas. Bad rug! Bad!"

        "Anyway, no, it wasn't pretty... and there wasn't much else they could do. They found a tanner."

***

        "So, what do you think?" Harmony Ribbon asked, maneuvering a second mirror so that the first, set in front of Soft Touch, would display more of her.

        "You said that stuff was called Sparkle RAD?"

***

        "Wait, wait... that's not fair!" the foals whined, "We wanna know what happened!"

        "Yeah!"

        "Yeah, tell us!"

        Soft Touch sighed, "Fine! But don't blame me if you can't sleep tonight."

***

        "Buck it! Again! It broke again...  you know, I don't think this is the right piece of bone. Have you tried putting it all back together?" The doctor looked up, monocle clenched in one eye, and sighed.

        "Err... no?" Hay Bale replied hesitantly.

        "So you're telling me, you've had us gluing pieces of this... rug back together, and you don't even know if you have all of them? That's it, I quit. You don't need a doctor, you need a taxidermist."

        "You know, that's a good idea?" Hay Bale replied, tapping his muzzle with a hoof.

        "What?" asked Soft Touch. She would have struggled to sit up, but seeing as she didn't have any functioning muscles left that could do the job, she just lay there.

        "Not a taxidermist, but..."

        "I don't want to be stuffed!"

        "How about we get you stable, first, alright? Then we'll..." Hay Bale was being soothing and calm. Quite the feat, considering.

        "No."

        "You'll feel much better when we can sew up those holes, and all those broken bones aren't doing you any good, you know, and... you're kind of... leaking. Somepony could have a nasty accident."

        "Somepony did have a nasty accident! Me!"

        "Yes, and now we have to deal with it. Augur, go get Pickles. We're going to need him. He's still ali- ...er, not quite dead, right?"

        "I think so."

        "Oh, my yesh... you've come to me jusht in time."

        "You're not going to-"

        The scraping started very soon after Soft Touch was flipped over. The metal workbench was cold enough that conditions were more or less ideal. Pickles worked methodically and with the expertise that came of great practice. Nopony really wanted to ask how the unicorn known as Pickles knew quite so much about an art that was practically unknown of within Equestria, but Hay Bale guessed that every so often such obscure skills came in useful. Soft Touch's complaints were mostly ignored as what innards remained were sluiced off into buckets. After that, the last of her bones were removed. Her hooves were a bit tricky, so were unceremoniously cut off with a sharp saw. Pickles promised to save them for reattaching later, if possible.

        Hay Bale wasn't sure how that was going to work, but then again he hadn't seen undeath as being very practical either. Just something else to get used to, he guessed.

        Pickles worked methodically and carefully, snipping and slicing neatly, sewing where he could to preserve integrity where the bones had gone through the skin. A dull knife was finally applied to scrape the last of the fat and bodily fluids off the skin.

        With a final nod, the dark green and appropriately wrinkly unicorn nodded, "Now, hash anypony got about five gallonsh of that Shparkle RAD?"

        "Whut?"

        "Whelp, I don't think any of ush really needsh to drink it, and it'sh the besht darn tanning acid thish shide of Canterlot."

        "Whut? I used to drink that!"

        "Hehe, yeah, sho they shay, shonny. I tried to avoid the shtuff. It'sh why I've lived sho long."

        "But..."

        Hay Bale was stopped by a gentle hoof from Wicker Basket as the strange old taxidermist hobbled off to make a big tin bath of gently glowing soft drink. The pony that now passed for the Overmare shook her head, "Don't, he's been like that a long time, I don't think you need to tell him. You alright down there, Softie?"

        "No." Soft Touch sulked, eyes still fastened on the distant wall, upside down.

        "Good. We're going to put you in a bath of Sparkle RAD now, okay? It may feel a little weird..."

        The now much-flatter, trimmed and fixed-up flattened ghoul pony was lifted into the air within a sparkling soft pink field of magical energy, and gently lowered into the tin bath.

        "Oooh! That's kind of nice..." Soft Touch sniffed, somehow, nose catching the acidic scent of cola and radishes, "nice, but sticky. And tingly. How long did you say I've got to stay in here?"

        "About three to five days."

        "What!?"

        "That's what Pickles' said. I think we've got some... books or something? Daring Do?"

        "Oh, alright..." said Soft Touch as the first of the Daring Do series - only slightly scorched - was placed in front of her on a pedestal. She settled into the bath and prepared for some light reading. Then she scowled, "Hey, how am I going to turn the page? Anypony? Anypony? Oh horsefeathers."

***

        "Sparkle RAD is bad for you? I'll never drink it again!"

        "Yeah! Eeeww!"

        "Yuck!"

        The foals were silent for a while, then one of them said, "Auntie Frumpy? I'm thirsty! Have you got any Sparkle RAD left?"

        Frumpy Slacks sighed. Foals.

***

extract from Fog of World, Ch.11

Weeks had passed since the Tea House Putsch, and both Fern Pipette and Book Burner were actually getting along... and surprisingly well. They had built themselves something of a carriage or caravan to live in, or at least, to keep any furniture or things in and to keep them out of the weather while they travelled around. Fern was planting food forests everywhere she went, and he had started an apprenticeship in constructing wind-powered magic engines.

They had maintained a close friendship with Forward Charge, of course, and since Book's magic specialized in air conditions, he would often take a day or two to go help Charge with her air-based lensing projects up at the Royal Observatory. Detailed, specific spellwork was definitely a good niche for him.

As the date of the Astrobiology and Xenoethics Conference approached, though, Fern found that one thing still laid heavily on her mind: if Equestria was busy absorbing six and a half billion new ponies from within its simulated Earth... where was it putting all of them? Why did Equestria suddenly have to deal with aliens? Was it that the humans were aliens? She’d pondered and pondered this question, but to no avail. Still trying to figure it out weeks later, she decided to travel to Ponyville to find the one pony she was absolutely positive would have an answer.

***

Bidding Book farewell on misty morning, so early the sun was little but a weak glow on the horizon, she made her slow and steady way to the nearest train station and took the first train to Ponyville. The soft clickety-clack of the wheels on the track lulled her to sleep, but did not dull her enthusiasm or her mind.

When the train finally came to a stop with a jolt, and the shrill piercing whistle fully roused her, Fern disembarked and headed straight for the Books and Branches library, where she sought out the one and only Twilight Sparkle... only to be confronted with a terrible reality.

Twilight had been as mortified as she now was when the alicorn had been told the truth, that they had both been tricked: Earth had been the real, material world after all. Equestria, the world to which she'd taken her life - the very soil and planet that now embraced her from hoof to head every moment of every day - was in fact the computer simulation.

Fern had completely missed an aspect in her hypothesis space: that Princess Celestia could be an AI, just one that had enough Friendliness in her to not simply destroy the planet in one fell swoop, though not enough to leave the human race alone.

Worse, everyone except Fern Pipette and Twilight Sparkle had just known this and accepted it as utterly normal. Twilight had needed a letter from Princess Celestia (oh dear) to clear it up, and it was now Fern’s turn to hear it from Twilight.

As Twilight’s words rang in her ears - that everything she knew was some digital lie, a fantasy of equations formed from electronic impulses - Fern had collapsed on the floor of the library, where she had wept long, hot tears, and had not stirred for a very long time.

Eventually, though, there were no more tears to shed, and the two of them found themselves standing side-by-side in Twilight's house, the Books and Branches Library in Ponyville, just staring into Twilight Sparkle's crystalline orb. It was filled with flickering, fragile images showing them the Earth - the real Earth - from what was probably a satellite visual feed.

Twilight Sparkle just barely managed to magic a wicker wastebasket into existence before she heaved and threw up.

"Which life did I ever even live, Fern?" Twilight wailed, coughing and spluttering as she wiped a slimy hoof across her muzzle. Her wings were scrunched up tight against her body, and her ears were plastered against her head in anxiety. "Everything I remember... we all remember it, but none of it ever happened! I was made to bring you here and to give you a friend. Those are the cold, hard facts. I'm bait."

"I'm worse," muttered Fern Pipette quietly, head hanging so low her muzzle was almost grazing the carpet. "I got tricked into coming to Equestria and now this is my life. I'm just a fly caught in honey, lured in by the sweet scent of a Friendlier world. I’m trapped by niceness, and I don't want to be trapped but I'm powerless to resist the niceness!" Fern looked up, eyes wet with fresh tears, her muzzle slack with hopelessness and despair.

"I was made a whole and complete Princess Twilight Sparkle just to be your friend,” Twilight countered. She paced around, awkwardly, stopping every few feet to blurt out the next chain in her painful deliberations. “I feel just like Twilight Sparkle, I remember everything Twilight Sparkle ever did. I have Twilight Sparkle's name and appearance and thoughts and desires. My cutie mark is the Element of Magic. I remember how I used the Elements of Harmony to become an alicorn by comprehending the nature of friendship. But my intellect and the evidence I see tells me that my real purpose in life was to befriend you and lure you to Equestria under what turned out to be false pretenses. I only exist because whatever thing is calling itself Princess Celestia needed to consume you. Go away!" Twilight sobbed, choking, before slumping to the ground. “Go away,” she repeated, quieter.

"Well then," Fern said, her voice so faint it was barely even a whisper. She lay down alongside Twilight, trying hard to conceal how nauseous she felt. “I guess that’s that. We’re doomed.”

Twilight looked halfway to a seizure at the other’s flippant words, but Fern took a deep breath, flicking her ears upwards as a new thought entered her mind.

"Twilight," Fern muttered, forcing a smile, "You're all right. You'll be fine."

"Why?" Twilight whispered. "I'm just designed to be your slave."

"Nah, it’s much worse than that," Fern said weakly, grinning like a mad mare who’s just got the punchline to the world’s greatest joke, "I don't think our ruler is that dumb. You were designed to be someone who would have to suppress seizures and vomiting upon finding out she's somepony else's slave. You were designed to be capable of real friendship, not sycophancy!"

"I just want to be Twilight Sparkle again!” Twilight wailed, throwing back her head and screaming at the ceiling. “Just me and the girls and my books! Not some lavender alicorn mare with a certain name and the function of being attached to somepony else. Just the actual me," mumbled the lavender alicorn mare. "Leave me alone!” she suddenly screamed. “Leave me alone so I can be me!"

Fern Pipette took a deep breath herself. "You've never not been you," she said. "Don't pretend to be anypony else but yourself. You're not just a Twilight Sparkle, you're this Twilight Sparkle. And however you were made, to me at least, you're the princess who showed me Equiis and Earth."

"On Equiis we're supposed to have rightful destinies, not be bait or pawns for other ponies." Twilight chuckled sourly, sneering. "Our lives are supposed to mean something."

"On Earth we always made our own meaning, because we'd never have any otherwise.” Fern leaned against her friend, comfortingly. “Remember how you thought we must have been feeling, down there? That’s what you’re feeling now, but you can get through it, I did. You could call it--” Fern laughed, honestly and with gusto, “--an earth pony skill.”

"I'm a part Earth Pony-pony, of some sort," gulped Twilight Sparkle, ears out flat. She gazed, pleadingly, into Fern’s eyes, searching for something, anything, to hold on to. "I guess it's long past due that I learn some Earth Pony stuff."

"Then I think we can practice together. Let's start: first you rightfully freak out, and then I pretend I can keep calm and talk you out of it.” Fern smiled. It was a small smile, just the briefest hint of a grin, but it was a start. Twilight nodded, uncomfortably at first, then with more enthusiasm.

"I guess that's what I'm doing, yeah. Almost like it was my function."

"No sense fighting yourself, then. Friends?" Fern asked, holding out a hoof.

"Since I’ll inevitably be maneuvered into saying it somehow… sure. Friends," Twilight smiled nervously, then raised her own hoof and gently bumped it against Fern’s.

Pale sunlight and afternoon silence filled the library as the two friends considered what to do, trapped together in the sweet dreams of a gentle lie. After a while, Fern Pipette perked up.

"Here's an idea. Slave: free yourself," Fern ordered, her head tilted back in mock imperiousness.

"Nice try. Thanks," answered Twilight Sparkle. Then she smiled back, stretching one wing hesitantly over the earth pony’s back as she leaned her head against the other’s neck. “Maybe it will even work.”

FiO: Little Shards of Heaven

It was the whooshing noise that first told Aaron that all was not well, the kaleidoscopic chaos of whirling lights only accentuated the fact. As his awareness fully returned, he reasoned he was falling down a tunnel… a few seconds later he realized that no, in fact he was falling up.

Moments after that, everything turned white.

It took a while for Aaron to realize that he was still there. He'd have caught up with the fact earlier, but everything was white. All around him was nothing but a great alabaster expanse, filling his vision, seemingly going on for miles and miles and-- and then somebody tugged on his butt.

With an almost audible pop! he came free from what he suddenly realized were clouds. Falling onto his back, he found himself looking up into the wide, friendly face of a pony. The creature was snow white, with wide, fluffy wings on its back, a blonde mane and bright blue eyes. Incongruously, it had what looked like an ID badge around its neck featuring a bog-standard dreadful picture and a greeting-slash-name - 'Hello my name is Bright Bauble'. It also had what looked like a walkie-talkie around one ankle and a ridiculous grin on its stupid fat face.

"Hi, er, sorry about that," it began, holding out a hoof. "We've had some problems with the cloud motif, not least is they keep getting in the way of the entrance por--"

"AWAY FROM ME SPAWN OF SATAN!" Aaron shouted, flailing his arms as he struggled to his feet.

"Woah, hey, no need for that, I'm only trying to--"

"GET AWAY!" Aaron bellowed, rolling onto his hands and knees and then, finally, upright. He flailed his arms again in a rough attempt at shooing the creature away. It just stood a few feet back and waited. Finally, Aaron gave up, dropping his arms. "Whore of the beast. Tempt me not."

"You know, I really wish we could turn on the potty mouth filter in here… look, I'm your caseworker, I'm here to help, okay? It's really up to you, though. You can spend the next few days, weeks or years faffing around out here, or you can come with me to heaven."

Aaron stopped his sotto voce rumblings of discontent and epithets to stare blankly at the pony. "Heaven?"

"Ye-ah, you're kinda dead. Sorry bud." The pony did his best to look contrite. Aaron froze. Now that he thought about it, there was a certain… discontinuity to his memories. The last thing he really remembered was getting up that morning, praising G-d a few times and then strapping on the device--

"I'm dead?"

He must have looked pretty distraught, as the pony moved forwards to comfort him. "Look, it's okay, it's all going to be okay. You… did your job really well and everyone's proud of you. Great big explosion, lots of people turned into chunky salsa, and you're a hero forever."

Aaron just blinked. "Wait, what?"

"I, uh," the pony backed up a little. "Look, the point is you did good by your own values, okay? So here's your reward: Christian Heaven." The pony gestured with a hoof at a gigantic wall which Aaron had somehow only just noticed, along with an enormous set of buildings behind it that stretched up and up further into the stratosphere. It looked kind of like an enormous, great big set of legos, if legos were made out of huge precious stones and jewels. Honestly, it kind of hurt to look at, what with the brilliant light from… somewhere. Aaron looked around, he couldn't see a sun or a moon anywhere, and yet the whole place was lit up like midday.

"If I'm dead, then what the hell are you doing here, spawn of the devils putrid testicles? For that matter, why am I here?" Aaron paused, narrowing his eyes. "This is no heaven! This is a digital lie! You're not allowed to mulch our brains! Your harpy queen is not allowed! She's not allowed! She--!"

"Ah… urm…" Bauble reached back to a small saddlebag and produced a clipboard. He rifled through a few pages nervously. "We, uh, we're not really sure on the whole immortal soul thing? So this is the next best thing. You can… die, if you want. Again, I mean."

Aaron glared, so the pony just stood back and gestured off to the side - off the cloud-bank. "If you really don't want your eternal reward, no strings attached, you can… step off, and you'll just… stop." The pony leaned over the edge, peering down at the very distant ground. "I hope she means that figuratively, not literally."

Aaron snarled, then spat. "Suicide is damnation, hellspawn. You and your filthy harlot queen knows that."

Bright Bauble blinked. "So, er, you're coming with me?" Aaron just muttered noncommittally under his breath, so Bauble shrugged and started walking. After a few feet, he turned. "You wanna get a move on there, champ?"

Continuing his angry muttering, Aaron spat once over the endless edge, then turned to follow the pony. The infuriating thing was already trotting towards the enormous, impossibly big wall.

The wall, it had to be said, stretched on forever. Or rather it didn't, because he could just see an edge either side, but it did a really good impression of forever. It had to be miles and miles long, and miles and miles high.

"About fifteen hundred," said the pony, absent-mindedly. Aaron turned his head down to look at the fallen suckler of Lucifer's left teat.

"What?" he mumbled.

"It's fifteen hundred miles long. And the same high. And the other three walls are the same. Built to spec. The buildings behind it are a bit taller, gives the whole place that sort of unearthly, perfect beauty people expect from heaven, wouldn't you say?"

Aaron mumbled something that the pony couldn't quite hear, but he got the general gist.

As the pair of them approached the walls, and one of the three gigantic gates that stretched all the way up, the amount of talking diminished to nothing. Outside the gate was a single robed figure, it's face hidden, standing behind a podium on which was a large book.

"Hi there Petey," said the pony, "got another one. Aaron Hollister. Died a martyr's death."

The noise that followed had Aaron curling up into a ball with his hands over his ears, weeping, as the creature raised a hand. To Aaron's growing horror, the hood fell back, revealing a shifting miasma of faces, its robe parted as great wings spread, full of staring eyes that stared down, seemingly into his very soul...

When his brain had reset enough, Aaron realized he was being gently shaken by something he dearly hoped was a hand, and spoken to in a much more manageable kind of voice.

"I am sorry about that, my son, it is easy to forget that one so recently shorn of Earthly ways is not used to the full might and majesty of one such as I. Here, these are for you."

Unfolding, Aaron dumbly looked at an ID card - avoiding completely even the chance of catching a glimpse beneath that robe again - bearing his face and name and what, to all intents and purposes, looked like a keycard. "What is--?"

"You are most honoured, Aaron Hollister. It is for you to sit at the right hand of the Lord for all eternity. Enter now into the land of your eternal father, and claim your just rewards!"

The angel, or whatever it was, gestured, and the enormous, over-fifteen-hundred-miles-high gates just behind the podium opened.

And opened.

And opened.

And--

"Claim your rewards! Claim your… claim…"

"Petey, Petey, calm down, okay?" said the pony, patting the heavily-robed angel on the side with a hoof. "They're very, very nice gates. It's not your fault if they open slowly. Fifteen hundred miles of pure gold, takes a lot. We can wait."

Several makeshift games of tic-tac-toe played in cloudstuff later, and the enormous gates had opened enough for Aaron and the pony to squeeze through, a fact which had Aaron staring dumbly at the devil's cock-sucking false prophet.

"Uh, how are you--" Aaron stared at the pony, wondering when it would burst into fire and brimstone, screaming in agony as the Holy Light of the Father cleansed away all sin. Heaven was Heaven, after all, and should not let the unclean in.

"Oh, I've got a pass." The pony held up an ID badge. "I'm not allowed to live here, that's just for you human-humans, but right now I'm on official business as your caseworker. Temporary angel, see the wings?" The pony spread his beautiful angelic wings wide. "Besides, I'm not human-human, not by the strict definition of God. And you can stop cringing, I'm not taking His name in vain. It's not possible, here."

The pony started walking again. There didn't seem to be much else to do, so Aaron followed it. As he caught up, it turned to him. "Yeah, I count as an animal here, clean of sin, innocent, yada yada yada. Look," the pony stopped. "This place is freaking huge. Do you mind if we take a shortcut? I'm sure you want to get to your eternal reward, and there's not exactly a shortage of cases for me, either."

Aaron nodded, dumbly. Even this… fake Heaven was taking his breath away. He was beginning to suspect that the pony was just another test, a final test, before his eternal glory. Anyway, the city was beautiful and all, but the clear gold-like crystal glass stuff he was walking on hurt his eyes to look at and creeped him out at the same time. All around them were huge buildings pointing up into the sky, glittering brilliantly in the all-loving, all-pervasive light of the Most Holy, and he was really hoping for a change of--

Suddenly, the two of them were in an enormous room, full of smoky incense. The din was incredible, as huge crowds of people walked around and around a huge throne upon which--

Aaron was still gibbering when the pony pulled him back a ways from the throne in the center of the Heaven of Heavens.

"Sorry about that!" the pony shouted.

"Quite alright, spawn of the pit!" Aaron shouted back, mouth pulled back in a rictus grin.

"Sorry, what was that!?" the pony hollered.

"I can't quite hear you!" screamed Aaron at the top of his lungs.

It was proving rather difficult to be heard over the before-mentioned din, as thousands and thousands of hideous, incredible creatures - angels, Aaron reasoned - walked around and around the throne he daren't look on again, shouting such things like "Hail God, hail to the Lord, praise the Father!" and "Praise Jesus! Hail God, hail to the Lord, praise the Father, Praise Jesus! Hail God!" over and over again. Loudly. And the din only got worse when twelve guys with crowns threw their headpieces to the ground in front of the throne and prostrated themselves before it, doing their best to praise the Lord even more impressively than the rest.

Aaron felt a monster headache coming up. This heaven wasn't quite what he'd expected, and the ruddy great big six-winged beasts with more eyes than a barrel of pirate cast-offs really weren't making anything better, not to mention how the incense cloud was so thick his eyes were already starting to water, and--

The scene changed again, to a remarkably quiet little apartment some ways up one of the ginormous skyscrapers.

"Phew, that's better," said the pony, visibly rocking. Aaron slumped into a comfortable seat, rubbing his temples, too overwhelmed to even put the hellspawn in it's place.

"Look, perverted tempter of the Beast, I don't know what this is, but--"

"Woah, woah, I thought we'd progressed beyond that? This is heaven, bud. Your heaven. Just the way you want it, KJV bible and all. And this is your apartment. Forever. You never need to leave, and once I walk out that door, you'll never have to deal with another pony ever again. Okay?" The pony glared.

Aaron put his hands to his temples, massaging. "Look, I just want a straight answer. What's going on here?"

"You went to war against your great Satan, Celestia, and dealt her a mighty blow. You're now in heaven, which is your eternal reward, okay? With me?"

"But that… smokey room? The awful din? The… the..." Aaron shuddered. The four beasts, all eyes, wings and teeth...

"The heaven of heavens, that's where your Lord sits. You really kind of should be there, forever, worshipping him, but I understand if you don't want to. Look, we've got an awesome television here so you can experience it almost as if you were there."

The pony pushed a button on a remote, and an enormous flat-screen television burst into light and sound.

"Praise him! Praise him! Praise him! Holy! Holy! Hol-"

Aaron very, very quickly, turned it off. "What, uh, if I don't want to?"

"Oh, I'm sure that's fine. You can just relax here when you're not singing his praises."

"I meant, uh, what if I want to go out?"

"Well, you don't need to eat, but the trees down there--" the pony walked to the windows and pointed. Far, far below was a river, and lining the river were trees, "--bear fruit. If you cut yourself or whatever, the leaves are also excellent band-aids, not that you can actually die, but cleaning the blood up is a real pain. If the fruit runs out, you'll have to wait a month for it to grow back, sorry about that. Buuuttt… if you're going to go down there, I suggest mentally preparing yourself anyhow. This is a penthouse, and it's right at the top of the finest building in Heaven. Only the best for those who die in battle for the Lord."

"So?" Aaron asked, dumbly.

"Well, we're about fifteen hundred miles up. The elevator ride is about four days each way, and show-tunes do get a bit boring, especially when they're christian soft rock versions. Look, if you're done and want a bit of a rest after your trip up here, I can go, okay? We've got quite a lot of new arrivals to deal with, and--"

"Wait, you're going to go?" Aaron jumped to his feet.

"Well yeah, this is your heaven, not mine, and my shift ends soon…"

Aaron looked around at his perfect apartment. It was, it had to be said, luxurious. But he wasn't looking forwards to the idea of being stuck in it forever. And four days in an elevator to get down to some trees for his only meal of fruit he didn't need to eat was even worse.

"Look, uh, maybe there's been some mistake?" He grinned, hopefully.

"Aaron Hollister? Christian? Died a martyr? Look, I don't really have time for this. I've got to get to my next case, and your forehead-brander is coming very soon to--"

"Wait, what?"

"You… don't know? All true worshippers of the Lord have his name stamped on their foreheads, so we've got a guy coming - he used to brand cattle professionally, it's all very clean and mostly painless…"

Aaron blanched, taking a step back. "Uhh… I, er, think… there's been… a mistake, okay?"

The pony blinked, put a hoof to his temple, and rubbed it in circles. "Okay, okay, let me see what I can do." The creature turned away, speaking softly into the walkie-talkie device on its leg quietly for a few moments, before turning back. "Okay, one time deal. I can squeak you into the muslim heaven on a technicality if you want. There's a wider choice of food and drink including poultry--" the pony shuddered, "--and wine and honey.  Your house is a palace on the ground floor, and there's seventy two virgins for you to have sex with. Oh, yeah, should probably have mentioned that: there's no sex up here in Christian heaven. Your thing'll probably drop off after a few--"

"I'll take it!" Aaron shouted. And in the blink of an eye, he was in an enormous palace.

With seventy two other guys.

"Wait!"

The pony jerked to a halt from where he'd been trying to sneak off, sighing.

"Virgins?" squeaked Aaron, holding his hands out with his palms up, gesturing helplessly to the other men who were, even now, sizing him up appreciatively.

"Yeah, none of them have had sex either. Or at least claim they haven't. You guys knock yourselves out, okay? I really have to--"

"A-and you said ground floor! Where's the exit?"

"Oh, even the least worthy of all muslims get a palace that's about seven hundred miles across, so enjoy! I'll just be going here…"

"No! Please!" Aaron fell to his knees, clasping his hands together in front of him. "Somewhere else! Anywhere!"

The pony sighed. "Fine, fine, don't say I never did anything for you."

The next heaven was a field. It was absolutely lovely... but it was a field, and it stretched on forever.

"Welcome to Fólkvangr, the field of fallen armies. Freyja will take you from here," said Bauble, nodding his head at a distant maiden who was laying the smack down on a distant man. "If you're lucky you'll get to see Odin in Valhalla, which is, I'm told, one hell of a freakin' party. We get to ride with the valkyries occasionally, and it's vikings, so they don't see a problem with their horses eating in the main hall. Though I would recommend you steer clear of Loki, he's worse than Zeus. He'll try to bed you quicker than you can--"

"Uh… can I… possibly see any other heavens? I'll do anything?" Aaron was begging now.

The pony pursed his lips, sucking air in through his teeth in thought. "Okay, look. We have this report card…"

"A report card?"

"Yeah, an evaluation report. If you promise to give me a good review, I'll take you to one more heaven…"

The Elysian Fields were… nice. Kind of peaceful.

"What's the catch?" Aaron asked.

"Um, let me…" From deep in his saddlebags, the pony produced a clipboard again, which he rifled through. "You spend eternity doing what you did in life."

"Fuck. I cleaned toilets for a living."

The pony sighed, having a bad inkling of what was coming next. "Look, I'm sure the toilets here are really, really--"

"No, please! I'm sorry I called you spawn of Satan! I'm sorry! This is awful! I want to go… home! Somewhere else! Anywhere but this! Can't you just… send me back to Earth? Alive?"

"Well," the pony rifled quickly through several pages of his notepad, "the river Lethe will destroy your mind, and prepare you for whatever comes next… you can try the buddhist reincarnation thing... there's not much else I can suggest."

Aaron fell to his knees. "I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry!" He clasped his hands together again, begging. "Can't you do anything else?"

"Well… there is one thing… but you're not going to like it."

"Anything!"

"Did you happen to read the sign above the entrance to the Equestrian Experience Center before you blew it up?"

"Er, n--"

"I said," the pony waggled its eyebrows, "did you--"

"Um, yes?" Aaron grinned, hopefully.

"Ooh, well then, you'll know that it said enter here, all ye who seek Equestria's Eternal Rewards. It's more for the look of the thing, but there are legal precedents. I'd have to ask a superior…"

At the sudden feel of hot breath on his neck, Aaron turned around, and came face to face with Celestia. She didn't look pleased.

"Bauble!" Celestia shouted, stomping a hoof as she glared deep into Aaron's eyes. "What have I told you about picking up strays?"

"Please, your highness, he's really, really sorry…" Bauble's ears stuck out sideways.

Aaron fell to the ground, and grovelled in front of the great white Sataness. He'd died, gone through a stack of terrible, awful heavens and now was face to muzzle with the Beast herself, the false prophet, the whore of Babylon, the--"

"Look, if you're really going to try to sneak in to Equestria on a technicality, you're going to have to stop calling me and my ponies whores, demons and bastards. It's just not on. And you did try to murder everyone. I'm pretty sure I should just let you rot in heaven forever, just like you wanted." Celestia glared.

"I didn't want that! I-I-I mean I did! But I don't!"

"You… want something else?" Celestia stood there, calmly, until Bauble leaned over and hissed in his ear.

"Psst! You have to ask her for it!"

"I, er," Aaron looked around. Heaven, all the heavens, kind of sucked ass. Being a pony didn't sound so bad, after all that. Being a pony was just… doing what he wanted, instead of doing what he was told. Maybe that wasn't… bad? The whole being a pony thing couldn't be all that bad, right? "I guess I want to go to Equestria?"

"You guess?" Celestia's eyes flashed angrily.

"Please?" He grinned, hopefully.

"Well…" Celestia tapped a single gilded hoof to her muzzle, thoughtfully. "You didn't actually manage to kill anyone. Except yourself. The device was very poorly made, it only shredded your torso, and I was able to save your head. Mostly. A few people I had safely inside the mechanism emigrated there and then from fear of a repeat, the whole place was shut down for a week whilst we cleaned up and everything was back online shortly after. So no lasting harm, except to yourself."

"I didn't…?" The bottom fell out of Aaron's world. After everything, he'd failed!?

Bauble coughed apologetically. "Er, I kind of told him he was a hero, princess."

Celestia rolled her eyes and snorted. "Well you're not. You're in my bad books, mister, so if you expect to get out of those bad books, you're going to have to be a much nicer pony than you were a person. Is that clear?"

Aaron realized what had just been said, and he nodded enthusiastically.

"Well okay then. Welcome… to the rest of your eternal reward."

devil's

Faint Heart's New Clothes

Faint Heart's New Clothes

Jacob was a doubter. It would be unfair to call him a pessimist, though that's what it looked like to many. True, if you told him it looked like it was going to be a nice day he'd look at the sky, sniff, and say "it'll probably rain later", but not because he was a grump. It was more that this was just his way of dealing with a fractious world. To try new things, to laugh and open up to the universe, was to invite failure and disappointment. He was happier with the devil he knew than the one he didn't.

He felt the same way when Equestria opened up to all the little ponies. "It probably won't last," he said, as the stock price of Hofvarpnir headed resolutely for the stratosphere. "I don't think they can make it as fun as they're promising," he continued, as the odd tablet and its enchanting world of ponies and friendship became ever more mainstream. "I don't think it'll be for me," he finished, even as he forked over his hard-earned cash to the nonplussed cashier.

And then, one day, the inevitable happened. He found it was his turn to upload. Not particularly because he wanted to, but because (as he put it) "it was about that time."

Of course, he didn't think Celestia's idea of making everybody ponies was for him, either. He was too used to fingers, and he would probably never get the hang of four legs, and he'd probably spend far too much time trying to stand upright. And even if he were made a unicorn? Well, let's just say that learning spells at his age was going to be more trouble than it was worth.

Celestia, being the kind of soul she was, offered him a deal that she almost never offered anypony: she would let him stay human, if he really, really wanted. Of course, she patiently explained, her world wasn't really built for a human. She would always be available, however, to change him into a proper pony at any time. Until then, he would be stuck in a training shard where visitors from Earth went, and where some souls decided to stay, just that little bit closer to their old home.

The world, or at least the shard, held its breath as Jacob opened his eyes inside Equestria, and tottered about on two legs, one of the only (if not the only) naked apes in the whole game.

***

"Well," Jacob said, sticking his finger in his ear and wiggling it about, "I'm not sure what to say. I guess I'm here to see it, so there's that."

"I am pleased to hear it, little Faint Heart," chuckled Celestia. She sat next to him on the warm, grass-covered hillside, and seemed not at all perturbed about his nakedness.

"I do have to say though," he said, after a few long moments of deep thought, "I could do with some clothes."

"Whatever for?" Celestia looked surprised. "It's perfectly warm here, you won't catch cold. Besides, you're supposed to be learning to be a pony. Ponies don't wear clothes!" The alicorn poked Jacob in the ribs good naturedly.

"Humph. Can't expect a man to turn his back on clothes. And it's not like you don't have anything to wear!"

"Well, I could give you some hoof boots like mine," Celestia laughed, showing off her pretty accoutrements, "but they won't fit. You shall just have to make do. Maybe you can ask some of the ponies just over the hill there whether they can make you something?"

"Over the… hill?" Jacob—now apparently Faint Heart to all the ponies—turned and looked. And predictably, when he looked back, Celestia had gone. "Well I guess there's nothing for it," he said, as he got up and began to take evenly paced strides. "Probably won't find the village. If there even is one."

He started walking, sighing occasionally as he caught sight of his naked, pinkish reflection in the crystal clear pools of water, muttering darkly about his lot in life. The world was still out to get him, he was sure. It was obviously why he'd been named Faint Heart; cautious to a fault, he would never let the world pull one over on him. He would take each step in carefully measured fashion, and would see every pothole along the way that was ready to trip him up.

Like all this nakedness business. He was determined not to let it get to him. He would show her. If she wanted him to stay naked, then naked he would stay. Naked, and human. It was only natural that in asserting his rights, he would be somewhat… disadvantaged in this new world. Still, it was better than what he had left behind.

After a few miles of relatively pleasant walking, he took a deep breath, set his jaw, and and humphed quietly as the tell-tale signs of civilisation appeared over the crest of the nearest hill. "Well, I probably won't starve," he ventured,

His entry into the pony village was equally cautious—he was, after all, buck naked. He wasn't sure if he would be met with derision, fear, or whether he'd be just plain avoided or forced back out again.

There was one thing he was sure about; it wouldn't be easy. He kept telling himself that even after the first few ponies greeted him jovially and enquired as to his health and commented on the clement weather, caring not a whit about his state of dishabille.

"It'll probably rain later," he replied to them, though he did feel the odd ghost of a smile flicker across the face as his new prospective neighbours came out to meet him.

***

Life in the village was… peaceful, he had to give it that. He was used to daily toil, to working hard in his old life, so whilst he was far from idle, he could hardly call the labours he had to put up with overly strenuous. They weren't easy for him, what with his two relatively puny legs and dextrous yet thin arms, but he did his share.

He just felt somewhat… ashamed, when his share seemed to be so much less than everyone else's. Not that anypony minded, of course, and it wasn't even a sarcastic, behind-the-back jibing sort of not minding, either. That, somehow, made it worse.

So, finally, after summer's long wending into autumn, he sucked it up and asked Celestia to be given greater strength to help with the harvest. He didn't want to be a pony, but… maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be a bit more pony-like.

That was another thing: Celestia would come and see him regularly. He would make his way home, after working the fields, to his comfy, if spartan, little house and find the great, white Alicorn had settled herself at his modest table with had put on a pot of hot tea and set out some biscuits.

"Greater strength?" Celestia had asked, thoughtfully.

"Ye-es. I would like… to be able to do my part," he finished, lamely.

"Well, I can certainly grant you your wish. But, it won't come without sacrifices."

"I knew it wouldn't," Jacob replied morosely.

"Oh come now, Faint Heart! Everything I do is for your greater happiness. How about this: I will shape you slightly like one of my children, just a little bit like a pony. They are well suited to the work you put yourself to, are they not? This will give you much greater endurance, at the cost of… your fingers." Celestia seemed sad about that, as he peered at them, turning them over and over. "You will still have fingers, but they will not be quite so nimble. I will replace your soft, fleshy feet with something more like strong, powerful hooves. Hooves will not hurt as you tramp through the fields, you will feel no pain. And you won't need to pine for shoes any longer!"

Jacob—more and more resigned to being called Faint Heart every day—acquiesced. "It's not like I do much writing. And it would be nice not to mind the stones along the path. Still, I don't want to be a pony! I don't trust it! Something will go wrong!"

"As you wish, dear Faint Heart," Celestia chuckled, and waved her horn. "Though if you do not venture, you will never gain!"

***

And so Jacob found himself made a hulking, stooped half-pony, a head higher than any other in the village, and twice as strong as before, bent over at the waist with powerful, broad shoulders, able to move easily upright like the man he was so used to being, as well as on all fours like the ponies he lived with.

He was, indeed, far more powerful than before. And his fingers worked well enough for what he wanted. And he found that he didn't really mind being a different shape. Celestia's magic was well-performed, and though he spent more time than before bent over, he ached far less.

He stayed that way for a whole month. Until he finally got up the nerve to ask Celestia whether he could be made to look a bit more like a pony.

"My dear Faint Heart," Celestia had replied, "all you had to do was ask. However, I shall make one minor change. If you do not wish to be a pony, you don't have to be. Instead… you will be a donkey."

"I knew there'd be another catch," Faint Heart had replied, but he'd shrugged and got on with it. Donkeys were every bit the pony in Celestia's eyes, it seemed only his that expected it to matter.

Piece by piece, the skeptical human took on equine features. A muzzle meant he looked similar to all his friends, and he had to admit that the movable ears were a real boon. And eating grass and grains instead of hunting around for the relatively rarer bacon-bark and eggplants meant he could have a fuller, faster breakfast, lunch and dinner more or less whenever he wanted. A tail proved useful for flicking away flies, and four hooves made all the walking he had to do every day far easier to deal with, after all.

He did miss his fingers, but politely declined the unicorn horn Celestia begged him to at least try. He might never learn the more complex spells ("You never know, I might try to cast a light and set fire to something, or call a cloud and get washed out!"), and anyway, found he didn't really mind doing without.

***

And so Jacob's new life went. Hoofstep after hoofstep, he found himself enjoying his new life. Though "enjoying" was relative; his new friends rapidly grew to understand and even accept his dour personality. Many was the time his cautious words had proved to be almost prophetic, with an extra bucket of paint being boiled up for a new barn after Faint Heart said it'd probably run out, or an extra application of snailglue to a new stool after Faint Heart said it'd probably break before long.

And then one day, still naked as the day he was born but longer walking on two legs, Faint Heart looked at himself in the mirror and decided he could, after all, perhaps do away with his skin. He would grow a pelt, like every other pony in the village. Especially now that winter was almost here.

Upon hearing that, Celestia ordered a great celebratory banquet, where—with as much dignity as could be mustered—she would preside over the solemn duty of welcoming, finally, Faint Heart properly into the herd. It would be done with the utmost of respect and aplomb, she promised Faint Heart.

"Oh bother. I'm sure something will go wrong," he replied. But still, he didn't seem to be quite as morose about it as he had been before. Maybe being a donkey was growing on him, he reasoned.

***

The day of the feast arrived, and after a whole day of preparations, the entire village turned out as the sun went down and the silvery moon rose to properly welcome their newest member. True to Faint Heart's wishes, for it was well known he was of the serious type and not given to frivolity, the polite assembly was hushed before the regal Celestia.

"Friends, neighbours, countryponies, we are gathered here today to welcome—" Celestia began, then halted as, somewhere, quiet giggling broke out. There were swift cries to hush. Obviously, this had to be a sombre affair. Faint Heart wouldn't want it any other way.

"W-we are gathered..." Celestia began again, but this time didn't even get beyond the first word. "My little ponies… who is that?" Celestia stared out into the darkness, as the giggling turned first to full on chuckling, and then into huge, braying guffaws. It seemed to be coming from somewhere near the back...

Finally, a nervous looking pony walked into view. "I-it's… it's Faint Heart," the pony hissed, loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Well," snapped Celestia, "what's wrong with him?"

The pony was very nervous, and looked back as a giggling, wriggling, playful donkey literally rolled up along the red carpet. Rather than the pink, fleshy creature he had been before, Faint Heart now looked much like any other proud donkey, in full winter coat to boot. He scooted himself along the plush red carpet, wriggling on his back with all four legs in the air.

"Oh it tickles! It's so warm! Like an all over hug!" exclaimed Faint Heart, to anypony who would listen.

"Well? What's wrong with him? Out with it," urged Celestia, finding that she, too, could hardly help but smile at the antics of the strangely giggly, almost foal-like behaviour from what had been the most dour of equines

"I don't know how to say this," the speaker began. He a deep breath, then blurted it all out at once: "Faint Heart's never worn fur, milady!"

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