Chapter 41

8-14-14, 6:07 A.M.

It had been a peaceful six months – well, relatively speaking. Jeremy had finished high school, and gotten his diploma without further incident. After he had returned from his summer job at a camp, Jeremy set about packing for college. Chrysalis had been shocked to learn that he wouldn’t be returning to his house for four years, and pointed out that he could use portals to transit between his dorm and house. Jeremy acknowledged this, but reminded her that it would be hard enough to flit between Equestria and his dorm room undetected without throwing his regular room into the mix as well – as, somewhat unfortunately, he had a roommate. The house’s mortgage was paid off by the FBI, so when Jeremy returned he would still own the house. The portal gun had been disguised to look like a cheap, manufactured, plastic version of itself, so that he could bring it along without arousing suspicion. Finally, once he was all packed, he hugged Luna, Celestia and Chrysalis a temporary good-bye at the airport, each having disguised themselves as humans in order to see him off. He could have simply been teleported there, but the FBI had insisted otherwise, as it would look a bit off if he started lacking a paper trail. Partially, Jeremy thought they just wanted to make sure they knew where he was – within approximation.

His conversations with the Federal Bureau of Investigation had more often than not involved global events, and while they would occasionally slip in a request for his or Equestrian intervention, he always politely declined. Yes, he was aware of the large-scale atrocities happening all around the world. No, he wasn’t going to save the lives of the people involved. It wasn’t an easy decision to come to, and many nights Jeremy lay awake, endlessly cycling his reasoning and trying to rationalize his ideas. His main concern was overpopulation – if he spent his time preventing every major conflict, he was afraid the disparity gap between the Third and Fourth World and the First World countries would become far worse than it already was. Plus, a sudden savior wouldn’t help much in the long run – the more permanent solution would be international intervention. Thinking along these lines during a particularly intense debate over the merits of his presence in the Congo, he had responded “If you want to help so bad, do it yourself.” The issue of his international support had been dropped and never brought up again after that.

Jeremy relaxed during the long plane ride, taking a moment once they had reached cruising altitude to text a status update to Luna and the rest, who had commandeered his parents’ old cellphones with a little help from the FBI. What couldn’t those bureaucrats do? Jeremy wondered as he watched the window, looking away when the bright sunlight hit. They had quickly disposed of Ethan to no one knew where, and while he had been curious, he certainly wasn’t about to ask – it would have been a stressful waste of time to learn of Ethan’s ultimate fate. This reminded him of another conversation…

5-3-14, 12:15 P.M.

“Jeremy, you have an email from Hasbro,” Luna trilled as she prepared lunch, the flurry of knives and measuring cups clattering about the kitchen area as she used her magic to whip up a quick meal.

“What about?” Jeremy asked as he sat down at the kitchen table a few feet away, not daring to enter her vicinity with the flying cutlery.

“The finale. We informed Celestia just a few minutes ago – we had to wake her up, but she too thought it was worth her time,” Luna answered.

A few minutes later, Celestia came downstairs, looking a little sleepy but otherwise as regal as ever. “Morning, Celestia,” Jeremy said, amused. Celestia smirked at him and took a seat, and the discussion began.

“The finale will feature Lord Tirek escaping Tartarus,” Luna informed the group. Celestia clapped a hoof to her mouth, but Chrysalis and Jeremy merely looked at each other in confusion. Seeing their perplexed expressions, Luna explained further. “He is a Greater Demon who has the ability to steal magic from anypony he encounters. With each absorption, he grows stronger and harder to defeat – but we sealed him in Tartarus when he was so weakened he could barely stand…” Jeremy listened attentively, only stopping to take bites of his lunch.

“So, this ‘Tirek’… how strong was he when you fought him?” inquired Chrysalis.

“He was very nearly strong enough to defeat us – if we hadn’t been in possession of the Elements of Harmony, there was no way we could’ve stood against him,” Celestia answered.

Jeremy shrugged. “So… send Twilight and company after him? I think that’s what’s going to be happening anyways.” Celestia uncomfortably nodded.

“My worry is that he will get to us before they do – what happens if he absorbs our alicorn magic?” Jeremy thought.

“That is a problem…” he mused.

“Can’t you just hide your magic somewhere else?” Chrysalis wondered.

Luna was about to shake her head when a thought occurred to her. “Perhaps we cannot hide it… but we may be able to transfer it! Sister, do you remember that spell we learned, ages ago – the one for direct transfer of magical power?”

Celestia, taken by surprise, nodded. “But who would we entrust it to?” Celestia wondered. “Only alicorns could even withstand our abilities, and that leaves only Cadance and Twilight.”

Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Well, Twilight is the Element of Magic… she’s ideally equipped to handle it,” Jeremy replied. “As for Cadance, she should probably meet up with you two to give up her powers as well – wouldn’t want Tirek going for the Crystal Kingdom, after all.” Luna nodded.

“We will inform her as soon as necessary,” Luna mentioned, and Jeremy remembered Cadance had no knowledge of the Fourth Wall – which was probably a good thing, all things considered. “Then it is settled. When the time comes, we will entrust our magic to Princess Twilight, and rely on her to defeat Tirek,” Luna concluded.

“Go team,” Jeremy added, smirking.

They had replied to the email with their plan, and Hasbro had approved it. Given that the finale episode was still a week away, and the Equestria games had been just a day before, they likely had quite a while to wait before Tirek actually made his move. One odd thing Jeremy had discovered was that the episode release dates weren’t always consistent with their Equestrian day counterparts – even though every episode was released on a Saturday, the events described therein could have happened anywhere between the previous Sunday to the Friday before.

The plan had gone without a hitch, as Twilight finally opened the box, acquired Rainbow Powers, and easily blew away Tirek after a protracted stalemate. Jeremy had watched the episode with mock horror. “I hope none of us ever get on Twilight’s bad side,” he mentioned at the moment Tirek had been defeated, with Chrysalis watching on. Both princesses were overseeing affairs after Tirek’s defeat, and were thus unavailable to watch the episode with them – not that it would tell them much.

When Luna finally returned, she collapsed onto the couch at 11 P.M. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Jeremy mentioned, still up and enjoying his Sunday.

“We were working until five minutes ago,” Luna groaned. Jeremy took a seat by her and began stroking her mane, causing Luna to slowly relax.

“Take a rest, princess. After all, we won’t have to worry about anything else until 2015, for Season 5,” Jeremy reminded her. Luna smiled as she went to sleep.

8-14-14, 5:07 P.M.

When Jeremy looked out the window again, it was to find that the empty farmland beneath them had been replaced by the foggy cities of Ohio – they were getting close to their destination. As if on cue, the flight captain messaged over the intercom that they would be landing in just half an hour. Jeremy reluctantly turned off his laptop, and focused on getting ready to exit the plane.

He stayed in a hotel on campus for a few days before moving into his dormitory. His roommate was pleasant enough, and seemed to be very socially outgoing, always having something to do. For the first week, he had Orientation, which was full to bursting of annoyingly peppy events, leaving him barely enough time to pop over to Equestria each night undetected. Although Luna was unhappy about his Equestrian day-only schedule, he promised he’d be able to see her more once classes started, as a few days in his schedule left a lot of free time to him. Meanwhile, Celestia, Luna and Chrysalis had all set up their own online chat accounts to talk to him while he was away, and they exchanged news. The FBI, of course, had known of his college move-in long in advance, and a member of campus security approached him. To his surprise, it was Mary – she had moved houses and jobs to continue watching over him. When asked, she shrugged. “I don’t really have a place to call ‘home’ – I just rent as close to my target as possible.” Accepting this, Jeremy nodded, and thereafter went back to ignoring her, as per protocol.

Case Western Reserve University was easily the oddest college campus Jeremy had encountered. It was huge, easily large enough to outclass the size of some towns he had been to (small towns, that is). Case was so large, in fact, that it had no less than two separate bus routes transporting students and teachers alike all around campus – but Jeremy preferred to walk. To his delight, it also had a prototyping facility where students could invent anything they wished – this would make the continuation of his various hobbies fairly easy, if he ever found the time. His classes were actually fairly easy – they reminded him of their high school counterparts, only with many more students per class. However, his summer spent away from all things calculus had left him especially weak in that area, as he learned when he got back the results of his first exam. A session with a tutor quickly cleared that up, however, and he was beginning to do better.

Life in Equestria was no less boring, to the princesses’ satisfaction. Twilight now had her own castle, and had spent most of her time since the events of the season 4 finale building her public relations with her new subjects. Luna had spent time with Cadance, who was delighted to learn that Jeremy would be marrying, and instantly made herself leader of preparations. Having heard of Chrysalis’ reformed nature, she was significantly less hostile in the changeling queen’s presence, though the two still regarded each other with suspicion – something Jeremy had an inkling would persist for quite some time. He had just turned eighteen only recently, and thus was now legally set to marry whomever he wanted – though in the human world, he had agreed to remain single. His birthday party had been a simple affair, with a home-baked cake and few presents – for what could they give each other? And, of course, Jeremy hadn’t expected the ending. Suffice it to say he wasn’t able to get out of his bed for some time after that, even after Chrysalis had used a spell to keep his energy up.

Jeremy and Twilight Sparkle occasionally exchanged letters, mainly focusing on the many differences between the human and pony worlds – something he was now well versed in due to earlier conversations. She had also recently been back through the mirror to Canterlot High, claiming it had something to do with a rock band. Jeremy had briefly considered visiting that world, but didn’t think anything good would come of it, and thus decided to leave it be.

Over the first few weeks at college, Jeremy had developed an odd, racking cough – he put this down to simply staying long-term in a new area, and resolved to wait it out. It slightly unnerved his marefriends to see him occasionally double over, but he assured them all was most likely well as he went about his business – nobody else seemed to be getting sick, at any rate. The truly strange thing was that the cough persisted, despite his efforts to maintain his health - he put this down to the fall weather and flu season, and continued to not care whatsoever.

His former job as head magical engineer had been expanded to the study of common human objects, to figure out how they worked. Towards this end, he had donated all of his former, broken or outdated electronic devices to the Equestrian labs, which had taken them apart with fascination. In addition, as ambassador to the changelings, he would occasionally handle business between the newly unified changeling hives and Equestria – while the hives weren’t technically a nation due to being mostly underneath other territories, they did act as a unified party under Chrysalis. Mostly, these requests and transactions were of the nature Chrysalis had intended – the radioactive ore underneath their caverns was selling for quite a high price, and changelings were mining the substances with impunity due to having no DNA to corrupt. This had led to Chrysalis becoming quite rich, and she had used her wealth to modernize some of the more outdated aspects of her hive, intending to set the example for the other queens. Speaking of which, the other queens all addressed him very respectfully, often referring to him as “the Savior” when they thought he wasn’t listening – Chrysalis assured him that they meant nothing serious by it.

Jeremy jumped into his bed – for some reason, the beds in the dorms came at two heights: Just high enough that you could only barely jump on, and approximately one foot from the ceiling. Slipping the covers over himself and turning off the lights, he had a brief moment of solitude before remembering he had promised to stop by the castle. Sighing, he flung himself out of bed and pulled his clothes back on, cautiously checking to see if his roommate was around. Satisfied that he wasn’t, Jeremy pulled out the portal gun and shot a portal onto the floor underneath his bed. Awkwardly squeezing himself through the floor-to-wall hole in space, he made sure the entrance on his end was covered by clothes before strolling off into the Equestrian fall morning.

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