The Societyby Kamineigh
Chapters
Two Worlds, and One Family.
Author's Tips: If you see a YouTube link in the text, it's advisable to click it. Often times there will be a character playing music, or I just want to set the mood. This is a story that will probably have more chapters than I can count on my hands and feet. Now, why don't we get this show on the road?
In the middle of the Everfree, the tree hut of a very familiar zebra was filled with the clatter of wood-on-wood. The strong smell of herbal medicine filled the air as Zecora was hard at work making potions to re-stock her shop. She'd had a spike in customers after the misunderstanding with the citizens of Ponyville had been cleared up. Her train of thought was cut short as she heard a loud roar come from the distance. It was soon followed by a a haunting, otherworldy shriek, soon cut short by the sickening crunch of a manticore digging in flesh. The sounds of the manticore rumbling with contentment filled her hut.
For Zecora, manticores hunting had been no problem, and she usually just shirked them off. But the fact that she had heard it kill something that sounded wrong, for lack of proper words, had left her curious. She knew the manticore by the sounds of it's roars, though given there was only one manticore in her section of the forest, she thought it best to get into contact with the nearest of her friends to help deal with it. For now, she'd have to whip up some manticore repellent, in order to even get close to the kill.
With a sigh, she trotted over to cuboards and quickly produced a large black fruit. It felt like a water balloon, and she carefully held it by the stem, so as not to pop it. She placed it into her cauldron and poured in a thick, green syrup. It smelled incredibly bitter and when it touched the fruit, it seemed to produce a sickeningly sweet smell, like that of vomit after eating ice cream. The next ingredient seemed like the most harmless, it's name being Heart's Desire, but from previous expirience, she had seen what it had done to little Apple Bloom. She tipped it into the bitter-sweet smelling concoction, turning it from a brackish green into a pale brown. She quickly stored it in a specialized pot and made haste for the manticore's kill.
Luckily for her, the manticore was close to her home, so all she needed to do was get within range of the kill. She laid down the pot and stepped back. With a quick twist on her front hooves, she bucked the pot onto the manticore, covering the beast in a thick paste. It got up and walked away, the repellent working it's magic.
Slowly, Zecora made her way to the kill. The forest was rather dark, so it was hard to make out what kind of animal it was exactly. She placed it in a large sack and placed it on her back, carrying the dead animal to her hut. On the way there, she slipped and part of the animal slipped out of the sack. From the light of her hut, she could see that the animal had a thick layering of red fur on it's limb. She put the limb back in the bag and walked into her hut, placed the sack onto an operating table in a corner of her hut. She covered it in heavy amounts of salt and set out for Fluttershy's cottage. She'd know better about what kind of animal it was.
Fluttershy groaned as she answered the door. Her mane was unkept after she had to care for an injured bear the previous night.
"Oh, um, hello Zecora. Good morning." she politely gave. Even if she was irritable from her lack of sleep, she needed to be kind to a friend, even they came knocking at the most in oppurtune of moments.
"Sorry to disturb you, timid Fluttershy, but I have a deceased animal that I need you to identify." Zecora pointed in the general direction of her home.
The words 'deceased animal' hit Fluttershy like brick wall. She fought back tears, imagining the animal to be something small and cute. "Oh my... What killed the poor thing? I hope it didn't suffer too badly."
"A manticore attack, of that, I'm sure is fact."
"Oh, Courage killed it? Why didn't he just go to a river and eat some fish? He'd have to be really hungry to not think to come to me for some food. I should go talk to him about it when I'm done with your corpse."
"Yes, well, we must hurry, before the scavengers begin to scurry."
Off in the distance, an alabaster unicorn trot the path to Fluttershy's cottage, taking careful note that Zecora was at the doorstep.
"Oh hello Fluttershy, Zecora. Sorry to interuppt, but it's about time for our spa appointment. I'd hate to keep Aloe and Lotus waiting."
"Sorry Rarity, but Zecora needs me for something urgent. Could you have the appointment moved back? That is, if you don't mind..."
"Oh don't you worry one bit. I wouldn't mind at all! But tell me Zecora, what do you need her for?"
"It is an animalis incognito, so to explain, it's best to show."
"Oh, but I wouldn't want to be a burden on you two."
"No no, Rarity. It' would be no problem if you came with me."
"If you insist. But please take us through a route that won't leave my coat dirty. I just had a bath.
Zecora laughed at this, getting her a friendly glare from Rarity. Once she had finished, she gestured towards the Everfree, and once Fluttershy had gotten her examination tools, they made haste for Zecora's hut.
Bon-Bon didn't like having to do this to Lyra. She looked into the padded cell, tears running down her cheeks as she watched Lyra sit in the corner with a horrified look an her face, the muzzle they put on her and the glass of the viewing window only muting her screams of terror slightly. She shook her head as she trotted out of the room, to fill out paperwork for the institution of Lyra into the Canterlot Psycheatric Hospital. She had been admited because one morning, Lyra began to scream, and wouldn't stop. When Bon-Bon had asked her, Lyra squealed ''They' really finally did it! 'Those' maniacs! 'THEY' BLEW IT UP! CELESTIA DAMN 'THEM!' CELESTIA DAMN 'THEM' ALL TO HELL!" Bon-Bon immediatly knew something was wrong, but when Lyra began to talk about how the planet was going to be a barren wasteland, she had to finally admit that Lyra had broken. Sure Lyra had weird hobbies, like speculating about worlds where there was no magic, or worlds were weather wasn't controlled, but she just chalked that up to the fun of imagination.
Lyra knew she was right. 'They' were nothing but trouble. 'They' had to be stomped out before that future could come to pass. She didn't care which ones, 'They' all had to be stopped. She screamed in terror as another one of her visions of the future coursed through her skull. In the distance, she could see the massive metal monstrousities that dotted the landscape. They were all that remained of 'Them'. Sure she could wonder just how 'They' had brought the world so far, but she didn't care. In the proccess, 'They' were killing it. Soon the vision ended on a somber note. The metal monstrousities began to creak and groan, no longer able to support their weight. One by one, with a loud metalic screech, the towers toppled. On top of one of the fallen towers was a sign. It said 'Welcome to the Everglades'. Below it were the fossilized remains of an aligator, an anaconda, a pony, and one of 'Them'.
The vison ended there. Lyra's screaming stopped. Once she became fully awared of her surroundings, she broke down into tears, her voice hoarse from all the screaming. She sobbed for all that she had lost because of some stupid visions froma future that might not be real. She'd lost Bon-Bon. She lost her lyre. She lost her sanctity of mind. She'd lost her happiness. And she knew what had to be done.
"'Dey muh prrh. Arh ah 'dem' shhhr knuhh dah hrry wrhth uf Lhrh Hutsdiinhs." Lyra mumbled through her muzzle as her gaze hardened and fire burned in her eyes. She barely registered her cutie mark shifting in shape, from a golden lyre to a skull and cross bones, similar to the fossil skeleton of one of 'Them' that she had seeen in the visions. Her new talent? Wiping out 'Them' before 'They' spread faster than a swarm of parasprites. It'd be simple too. After all, 'They' are just a bunch of damn dirty apes.
By the time Zecora and her visitors had made it back to her hut, there was a racoon digging at the sack on the table. Fluttershy flew foward and shooed it away. Zecora swept away what little of the salt the racoon hadn't scattered. With care, she untied the sack and pulled out the corpse, gently spreading the body out on the table. Rarity sat in a corner, amazed that it didn't smell, but never-the-less turned green at the sight of blood.
Fluttershy made haste with measurements. The animal was as tall as a pony, standing at a little less than two meters tall. It weighed around the same as a big cat. Certainly not something like a lion, but closer to the weight of a male jaguar. The arms were much shorter than the legs, so she ruled out that it was a quadruped, and was dealing with a biped.
She pulled on the limbs, moving them around until she felt resistance. The knee and elbow joints showed a range of movement close to 180 degrees. The feet moved about 90 degrees up and down and about 50 degrees left and right. The paws seemed to have one of the greatest ranges of movement, able to move in a small ellipsis. The hip and shoulder joints seemed to have ball-in-socket joints, judging from the exposed bones on one side of the corpse, but it would hurt to check. Fluttershy looked amazed as she moved the arms and legs as a whole, the limbs moving in alomst 360 degrees in all directions. Moving onto the neck and spine, they too moved in almost all directions.
"Amazing, such a wide range of movement on a bidped. Even birds only really hold their bodies parallel to the ground, like most animals, but this one seems like it held itself perpendicular, like a bear does when it browses the trees for fruit. But how it'd do so without falling is beyond me. The range of movement suggests it lives in the trees, but the size of its legs and the shape of its feet tell me that it would walk on the ground."
Zecora took note of this, looking to Rarity, who was sketching dresses based on the various keepsakes that Zecora had brought with her from home. She rolled her eyes, knowing it futile to stop Rarity when she was inspired.
Fluttershy decided to combine the next joint measurement with the dietary analysis. She opend the jaw and moved it. Small degrees of movement side-to-side, and a little less than 90 degrees up and down. Looking at the teeth, she saw a wide variety. In the front were large, flat incissors, with four large canines next to them. Behind those were four matching bicuspids, and behind those were indescribable molars and pre-molars. They seemed to have features of both herbivores and carninvores. Based on the fact that the front teeth seemed like those a monkey, she assumed the animal filled a similar niche, at least until she could take a look at the stomach contents. For now, she moved onto the outer features.
She looked at the fur on the animal. It was thin, with most of the fur being small hairs that covered the entire body. The exceptions being thick patches of red fur that covered the head, neck, back, torso, genitals, and limbs. On the topic of limbs, the forelimbs seemed rather monkey-like, but the back limbs, which had been established as those of a non-arboreal species when she performed the movement tests. While it could have been a chimera, like a griffon, it was highly unlikely, as the feet still matched the paws, right down to the pale color and sparse red hairs.
"Hmmmm."
That was the most puzzling thing about its exterior. The fact that it had pale skin, yet lacked a thick coat of fur or armour. She chalked it up to mange as she examined the face. It was the same pale white as the rest of the animal, but there was something different. Flecks of light brown covered it, as though melanin seemed to clump in those small spots. The ears seemed mismatched, and didn't move around much, unlike a monkey's. The nose seemed broad and very much confirmed her theory that it was a monkey. She looked into the eyes. They looked back at her with the souless gaze that most wild animals had, though once she looked into it's eyes, she couldn't help but feel like something was very wrong with the fact that those eyes seemed so cold and glazed. Shaking the thought from her head, she looked to the others.
"So far it looks like some sort of monkey."
"A monkey? Like a 'lives in the trees 'ook ook' monkey.'"
"Yes."
"Why would a monkey be in the Everfree? Don't they live in more exotic places?"
"Well normally, yes. But there are some northern ones." Fluttershy clarified, though it was pointless. Rarity had gone off into some fantasy about a cruise in the tropics.
Flipping the corpse over, she took note of one thing, and one thing only. This was no monkey. Though she never saw it during her movement tests, she had assmued it had a tail curled up behind its back. It did not. Rather, all it had were a pair of extremely muscular buttocks. In fact, the entire back seemed like muscle and bone.
"I guess I was wrong. It must be an ape. Not that there's much difference beyond the fact that one is small and has a tail while the other is big and lacks a tail."
There was little else to note about it, so she flipped it back over and began to cut into the exposed stomach. When some fruit popped out, she felt overjoyed that her assumption was correct. Then a chunk of meat forced itself out of the stomach. The most notable thing was that it had a cutie mark on it. It took her a moment to process that information.
An animal with an herbivore's teeth and little to no weapons had somepony's half digested cutie mark in its stomach. She quickly looked to the mouth and noted the incissors, canines, and bicuspids, and strange molars and pre-molars that she had attributed to a frugivore or insectivore. She expanded on the insectivore part and looked at the teeth again. They looked more and more like those of a carnivore, and less like an herbivore. The thought repeated itself, though it was shrunken down as she comprehended it.
An ape ate somepony.
Fluttershy felt chills run down her spine as she realized what this animal's closest living relative would most likely be. The word screeched across her mind, the shrill screams of the ape blazing through her psyche like wild fire. Chimpanzee. The one known ape to prefer meat to fruit. She thought about the various things chimps did during hunts. Swing their arms and throw, be it a rock or a powerful punch. They killed, often without need for food. They killed others in their groups. It was one of the animals she had learned were barely considered intelligent, let alone 'primitive sapient'. She looked into the creature's eyes and once again got the feeling that something was very, very wrong about its death. Chimps were one of the few animals who seemed to have concept similar to what Griffons called 'revenge'. They'd kill what they thought of as a threat or had been established as a threat.
She looked over to the half-digested cutie mark and took a piece of paper and pencil and traced the ragged shape. She promptly colored it in and let the touched up image soak in her brain. It resembled something like a beige, cracked egg encased in dark brown rock. The fur surrounding it was a bone white. She recognised it from somewhere. Then it clicked. She had a distant cousin with this same cutie mark. They had met only once, and they never spoke until they learned that they both had loved animals. Granted, one loved the still living ones, while the other seemed obsessed with long extinct ones. Cousin Shy Bones. Her mind screeched to halt when she remembered chimps tore their prey limb from limb.
*WHUD*
Big Macintosh stood mouth agape. The trees in the field were fine. But almost all of his crop had disappeared overnight. All of his family's hard work, gone. Somepony had pulled an apple heist and snuck almost all of his pride and joy out from under their noses. He could excuse a wild animal or two eating apples that had fallen off of the trees. Critters had to eat too. But the fact that almost all of the farm's crop was gone was not the work of some racoons. It was a damned heist. How did all of this sit with Big Macintosh?
He was right well livid. He stomped his way back to the farm house, in order to get the paperwork to report the grand theft of apples, leaving a trail of smoking craters in his wake. It took a lot to get Big Macintosh angry. His sisters could fly off the handle at almost anything, but whenever something did get the draught horse angry, it got him PISSED. He wouldn't yell or throw a tantrum. He'd direct his rage towards the thing angering him, and get to work on fixing it.
Applejack was at the breakfast table when she heard the door creak open and Big Macintosh stomped in, leaving smoking holes in the floor, so naturally, she knew not to ask until he had calmed down enough to form coherent thoughts.
She collapsed into a heap next to the table. "FLUTTERSHY!" Zecora and Rarity shouted as they dashed over to help the timid pony as well as see what made her faint.
Rarity looked over the soggy paper next to the corpse. It had what looked like a cutie mark on it, but she'd have to ask Fluttershy for full details. Zecora poured a bitter medicine down Fluttershy's throat, reviving her.
"What made you faint Fluttershy? The ghastly fumes from the corpse or something else?" Rarity held her muzzle with a hoof, using a hoof-fan to waft the smell away from herself.
"Fluttershy cares for animals, I doubt she could faint from something so trivial." Zecora held Fluttershy up, carefully setting down the emptied medicine bowl. Fluttershy trembled in her grip, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She gasped for air as she fought them back, though she was failing. "C-c-c-c-cousin Sh-shhhy B-b-b-bones. M-m-m-monster a-ape." Her chest heaved as she broke down into hysterics.
Rarity looked to the drawing of the cutie mark. It did indeed have the words 'Cousin Boneshy' written under it. it the same beatiful mouth-writing that was pressent in the rest of the notes about the animal. She gagged when she saw the chunk of flesh. She, then realizing how rude it was to nearly hurl on the remains of someone's loved one, so she made way for a window to get fresh air. Zecora just comforted the timid pony. From what she could infer about what Fluttershy had said, it involved her cousin and some sort of ape. She knew it must've been the remains of the animal sitting on the counter. Looking over the edge of the table at it, it did indeed look like the chimpanzees from her homeland. She knew them to be animals who lived in the Sombongo Jungle to the southwest of the plains she called home, before the incident happened. She cringed at the thought.
Everyone's thoughts were cut short when they heard wailing coming from outside the hut door. Rarity pulled her head inside, shut all the windows, put out the fire. The only light was the small amount that made it through the forest canopy. The wailing continued. Rarity looked through the shades when she saw a tacky animal fur sitting in a bush. And then she stopped being condescending as soon she saw what was bundled up in that fur.She levitated the bundle over and was met with the reward of the wails stopping. A little face poked out of the bundle, looking at the alabaster unicorn with curious brown eyes. It gave out a sudued grunt as it tried to grasp onto Rarity's horn. It suprised her a little when it nearly grabbed it, and she nearly dropped the bundle, but it had managed to grab onto her horn before she could. She was still very cautious about the small creature. From what she could see of it in the low light, it looked like... the ape sitting over on the operating table.
"Oh my! Zecora, could you relight the fire? This poor thing has been sitting out here for so long! I bet the little thing is scared." She nuzzled it as it held onto her horn. It gurgled with happiness, giving off a feeling that it was very different from the dead beast that sat on the table. As soon as the fire relit, the little ball of flesh laughed as it saw the various masks that Zecora had about the room. As it let go of Rarity's horn, she sat it gently on a cushion.
It stared wide-eyed at the three equines. In fact, as Fluttershy noted, the little creature was probably the juvinille form of the creature sitting on the table. It looked a little different though. For starters, it had a somewhat darker skin tone, rather than a pale white, it looked like the color of wet sand. It had somewhat browner hair, and its eyes seemed entirely different to the souless doll's eyes that the adult had. All was calm in the tree hut as the rooms occupants, ape and equine alike stared at one another.
The calm would not last long, however, because soon the baby had begun crying. No smells filled the room, so it couldn't be that it had soiled itself. Nothing seemed to be bothering it either, so that left 'hungry'.
"Fluttershy, whatever does the little thing eat?" Rarity whispered to Fluttershy while Zecora kept the small thing busy by making silly faces at it.
"Well the adults are omnivores, but considering this is an infant, it probably drinks milk."
"Milk is something I do not have in my home. It looks like we'll have to give it some of our own."
"But none of us has had any foals, how can we feed it milk, much less our milk?" Rarity raised a hoof, rather sheepishly.
Before she could put her hoof down, Zecora had put the little ape near one of her teats. It grabbed on and began to suckle. Rarity's jaw dropped and Fluttershy blushed behind her mane and curled up behind Rarity.
"I had a foal of my own, but then I lost it, back at home. My stay in Equestria was supposed to be brief, and last only as long as my grief. But then you ponies befriended me, and now I live here permanently." Zecora said in a somber tone as she looked down at the little ape. She looked at the sandy color of its flesh. The light brown of its eyes. The woody brown of its hair. "I shall call it 'Tarzan', for the color of the fur on his head, and his soft little hands." she said as she nuzzled the little ape. It gurgled and looked up at her with bright eyes. Too young to know the obvious differences between Zecora and it, on that day, to it, Zecora had become it's mother. It hugged her around her mouth as she nuzzled it.
Rarity and Fluttershy tried, and failed to supress what was on their minds. "Awwwwwwwwwww. So adorable!"
Somewhere far east of the Everfree...
The smell of smoke and fire filled the air. Sitting around a fire were strange apes. Some of them were a dark brown with black fur, while others where pale white with red fur. Suddenly, one of the apes stood, a large brown one, with several piercings in his flesh. He took a small twig and drew in the sand near the fire. The figures resembled two of the apes, with what looked to be a large manticore. He drew lines from the larger ape to the manticores mouth, implying he was eaten. At this, the other apes were outraged. they beat on the logs they were sitting on, sending out haunting percussion that sounded like a wardrum.
A wardrum it was, when the large brown ape drew the manticore being killed by the others. The other apes rejoiced while the large brown onesat down and nodded, a smirk across his face. He placed the stick in the fire and bellowed. The other apes danced as they beat on their primitive instruments.
The manticores shall fall.
From a distance, Discord watched over the bizzare apes. Ever since been 're-imprisoned', for lack of a better word, Discord had kept his work low key. His form was unlike his organic form, instead he looked like the colored glass he had taken over a while ago. He had helped steer a new species onto the road of chaos. And he regreted it. For once in his long, long life, he regreted causing chaos. Most of his pranks were childish and fun, as long as nobody was too badly hurt. But his magic was unpredictable to even himself. So when it disobeyed him and sped up the rise of the apes, he was terrified of the potential he saw in them. They were actually using order to cause chaos, an idea which sickened him. Sure order sowed the seeds of chaos and vice versa, but using one to directly cause the other was unheard of!
"As much as I hate it..." And then Discord got an idea. A wonderful, awful idea.. "No, I can make this work to my advantage. I hope Celestia likes polka dots! Mahahahahahaha! I'll toy with my little pony for a while before I begin buisness." The clink of the metal fram the held his glass form together sounded from the tree which he sat in, replacing him with a bright light as he made way for Canterlot, a city which was about to get a new coating of paint.
After Fluttershy had straighted things out with the manticore and sent in her reports, both on the new species of ape and the death of her cousin, she was content to finally get some sleep. Rarity had headed back to Ponyville to cancel their spa trip, and had gathered her other four friends to share the news. Currently, she was wondering why this was a good idea, as she rubbed her head from the migraine Pinkie was giving her.
"Os what did you wanna tell us? Huh huh huh? I bet it's your birthday isn't it!"
"Pinkie."
"But your birthday isn't for a few months, so that can't be it. OH! I KNOW ! I KNOW! You've got a friend coming to town and you wanted to tell me ahead of time so you could have me prepared the surprise party!"
"Pinkie."
"But if that's the case, then you'd have talked with me when I got my paycheck, and even then you wouldn't need the others, so I bet you must have something even more important to tell us, like say finding a little apey-wapey thingy-wingy in a bush!"
"Pinki-" Rarity's jaw dropped when Pinkie had actually managed to guess correctly on the third try. Before Pinkie could make it any farther on that line of thought, Rarity shoved a hoof into Pinkie's chattering mouth. The pink pony continued to talk under the hoof, resulting a hilarious muffle that left Applejack and Rainbow Dash on the ground, howling with laughter. "Pinkie, to save us all grief, yes, that's what happened." Rarity removed her hoof and wiped it clean with a tissue.
"Oh cool! Is it cute!? Can we see it!? Where is it!? HUH HUH HUH!?"
"An ape? Yah mean like ah monkey?"
"Well, yes. As for where it is, it's at Zecora's. No, we can't see it until she's ready to show the town." She looked at the pink pony, who was already planning the welcome party. "And no parties, Pinkie. It is only a baby after all."
"Awwwwww, no fair."
To the north of Equestria sits a nation. While some ponies live here, the majority of the population is made up of deer and griffons. Currently, one large, green stag was shambling though the mountain paths that seperated the northern country from Equestria. On his back sat a greyish-brown griffon. In one of his vest pockets was a small snake, which was wearing a small hat for some inexplicable reason.
"UGGGHH. When are we gonna get there?" To the surprise of the non-existant audience, it wasn't the passenger complaining about the trip. It was her carrier, the green stag. "Look, you wanna go to some town in Equestria famous for being home to a bunch of ponies that saved that nation, then be my guest. But riding on my back all the time is not an option. You know as well as I do that I'm not the most athlectic stag. And considering the fact that I just shed my antlers and my head is in bandages, I'm in a pretty bad mood. You'll either have to help carry your own weight, or you can hunt while I set up camp." He gestured to the large sack of tents and bed sheet that he was carrying.
"Fine, Kran. I'll go get us some dinner. Not like you have much to hunt with anyway." She gestured to the stag's lack of effective hunting tools. "Sides, you don't look cute when you're too exhausted." She gave him a peck on the cheek, careful not to split his mouth open.
His face drained of blood as she took off to a forest near the path. Sure, he liked Harley, and he knew that Harley liked him, but that was the first time either of them had made any attempt to further the relationship past hugging and nuzzling. He though about the kiss she had given him, if it could be called that. He took careful note that if she had opened her beak to try and perform a traditional cheek kiss, it might've ended with her carrying him to the hostpital, and that would lead to all sorts of awkard situations. Which is one of the things that he hated the most.
Before his train of thought could get any further, he shook it from his head and began work on setting up the tent. It was fairly simple, considering it was more less not a tent and more a small metal shed with insulation. By the time he had finished the bedding, each strip of cloth in the right place, he placed a blanket over it... and jumped in and messed the entire thing up. He was one for both style, and practicality. Thus, it was in his nature to make a bed and then mess it up so it had warm air stored in the sheets.
As he got to his hooves, Harley flew in through the door, with a pair of dead rabbit and a couple field mice. She tossed the mice to the snake in the stag's pocket, which slithered out and swallowed them. As for the stag, he merely started a fire by looking at the fire pit.
"When're you gonna tell how you do that and stop showing off?" Harley asked with mock offense as she placed the rabbits over the fire. "I mean how can a buck that only knows storm magic even use fire?"
"Well fine..." the stag rolled his eyes as he trotted over to sit next to the griffon, not actching onto the tone of Harley's voice. "It's a simple proccess really. See, what I do is I gather water in a thin film over the wood, and send lightning coursing through it. This seperates the water into Hydrogen and Oxygen. Send onther spark within the short window of time, and it ignites the gases. With enough practice, you can make it look like you're starting a fire with a glance and not just using basic chemistry." He pulled his front hooves under him as he lay down on the ground. He looked into the fire and watched the rabbits cook. "How'd the hunt go?"
"Same old, same old." She turned the rabbits around to the other side. "'Cept I saw the wierdest thing. Abandoned campfires, just smoking. Judging by the footprints around them, and how much smoke there was, I'd say they were put out not too long ago."
"So what?"
"The footprints look weird. Like a bear's footprints, but more 'soft'." She drew the shape in the ground. "I thought you'd know."
"Not any footprints I've ever seen. They don't look like something extinct either." He looked to the rabbits again. "But hey, I'd say it's time for some eatin'. After all, we got a long trip ahead of us.":
"Yeah, yeah." She punch him in the shoulder playfully, and they began to engoy their dinner in silence. That night, they had pleasant dreams about various things. For the stag, they were mostly about travelling to the ancient past. For the griffon, they were about setting expeditioning records. The snake dreampt of whatever snakes dreampt of. Little did they know, that was to be their last normal night on the trip to Ponyville.
Author's Note: So yeah, this is going to be fun to write. Don't forget to leave a comment, telling me how I could improve.
The Tale of Two Doctors
Author's Tips: If you see a YouTube link in the text, it's advisable to click it. Often times there will be a character playing music, or I just want to set the mood.
Somewhere in Low Earth Orbit...
Nothing filled this corner of the sky. Not even a comunications satalite. It was clear zone created by Celestia for the soon to begin the ISS project. Unfortunately, this left a big enough hole for the interlopers to pass through. Swinging in low, a group of nine objects snuck through the hole, undetected.
Back on the surface, Canterlot...
"... And that's all for today, folks! Tune in tomorrow, 'cause we've got a special treat for you all. We're gonna host a charity show! For every ten bits you donate, you'll get to come on and select to pie either of us in the face."
"Goodnight everypony!" Octavia anounced with a flourish.
As soon as the show had been wrapped up, the two mares made for the exit, a new pair of ponies entering, one being noticibly drunk, balancing a jug of apple cider on his head.
"Octavia, Vinyl, there's something we need to go over about the broadcast." A grey stallion with a spiky, black mane and black shades stopped the mares in the hallway.
"Yeah, bro?"
"During our broadcast, it was cut off for a short period of time. It couldn't have been the weather, because the weather teams have this area scheduled for clear skies. We think it might be the satallite signal getting blocked by a bunch of spacejunk floating by."
"So what parts got blocked out?"
"The amount of bits needed to pie you two in the face. It's a good thing it's in todays newspaper. Sure it's not front page like the discovery of that new animal, but nothing could really top that. I mean finding a new animal that managed to hide in plain sight! Fascinating."
"Gotcha. Well, Octy and I have someplace to be. See ya tomorrow, bro."
"See ya later, you lovebirds." The stallion trotted into the sound room as the duo left the studio.
The crisp chill of the night air hit Vinyl and Octavia as they stepped out. Octavia put on her scarf as Vinyl levitated some ear muffs on the two of them. They cantered through the city until they had reached a large clearing. The city park. Looking around, they saw their usual spot on a hill was still empty. They made way for their seats and looked into the sky to discuss their day.
"So a new animal, huh? Wonder what it is? I never got to read the paper this morning, considering you were nose deep in it." Vinyl said bluntly as she put a hoof around Octavia's neck.
"It's some sort of ape. I think they're calling it 'man' because they think it used its hands to manipulate tools, moreso than other apes. They say it's because its skeleton is adapted to bipedalism, which frees up the hands to do whatever. They think it walked hunched over and grabbed low branches to keep stable while walking. Of course they're only theorising from a corpse. For all they know it might walk crouched down, standing upright occasionally to reach fruits high up."
"You're really cute when you nerd out, you know that Octy?"
Octavia leaned into Vinyl. "And you're cute when you get all flustered." She looked at Vinyl's face, which had turned bright red. Octavia giggled to herself, remembering the first time she had found out Vinyl was embarassed when held intimately in public. Looking back to the sky she saw a few streaks of light glitter and glow. "I didn't know the Griffon King had organized a meteor shower above Canterlot tonight. Must be a special occasion."
Discord appeared in Canterlot with a bright flash of light. He made way for the castle, slinking around and observing various things the ponies were doing. One of the rooms piqued his interest. A taxedermy room with the skeleton of one of the apes mounted in the middle. He grinned mischeviously, glad he had more ammo against Celestia.
As he made way for the throne room, he made quick note to snap his tiny glass fingers and summon up polka-dotted paint above the city, absolutely drenching it in pink and yellow paint.
The Upper Atmosphere...
The nine objects began to approach the surface. Though mindless, the places they fell would bring together several very different indivuals, for better or worse.
One of them, a bright jade one, turned downward and began to fall into a clearing in the middle of the Everfree, impaling itself into the smallest tree in the forest. The object began to glow and give off a lively green light, causing the small tree to grow around it. The grass, flowers, and vines covering the sapling all gained a more vibrant color. As the tree grew, the object sank further into the tre until it rested at the center of the trunk.
The second of them to fall from orbit was headed directly toward a mountain trail, it sailed over a temporary shed..."
Kranium shot up in a cold sweat. His ears flicked about to figure out where the sound came from as his mind raced at the possiblities. It all narrowed down when the buck looked out the shed door and saw a glowing crater off in the distance. Knowing it was a meteor, he cared very little about it, happy that he hadn't been crushed by space debris. He returned to his dreams of the ancient past, content to beat down on dinosaurs with warhammers.
The meteor glowed and gave off a shimmering light similar to the aurora. The light shifted and movedas it took in its surroundings. It waited for a moment before soaring into the skies, bringing in tow a violet sphere. It headed south, past a few small towns, past rolling hills, and over an ocean until it reached where it wanted to be. A cold, polar desert. It sank into a hole in a glacier, moving to the core of the icy river.
A third object made sharp right and impacted thousands of miles away from Equestria. It sank into the sea and glowed an electric blue as it settled on a fossil skeleton. Bubbles rose to the surface, belying a terror of the deep. The low, screeching roar of an ancient creature echoed through the seas of the world.
Just as the last of objects were about to land, a bright, green light flashed and the remaining six objects were destroyed, their remains sent hurtling off into deep space. In their place was a blue box with a sign on it that read 'Pony Public Call Box'. It began to spark and ripple, along with the atmosphere around it, giving the air a blue glow. The rippling became extremely rapid as the sky was ripped asunder. The box hurtled into the hole in the sky, which closed up as soon as it entered.
The box rocked and shook as it moved around the narrow blue tunnel. It paused for a moment before zooming down a nearly identical red tunnel. It began to shake more violently when it burst into a park, before smashing into a tree and ricocheting to the ground before skidding to a halt in front of two terrified ponies. The doors swung open and a light brown stallion wearing an overcoat and a red tie stepped out. He looked around noticed the two mares sitting on the park bench, ready to flee in panic.
"Oh! Sorry about that, ladies! You know, the whole almost crushing you thing."
Vinyl pointed a hoof at the stallion. "Who are you?"
"I'm the Doctor."
"Doctor who?"
"I love it when they say that..." The Doctor mumbled to himself before directing his gaze to the sky.
"The one and only."
*SPLAT!*
"What?" the Doctor asked, completely exasperated at the massize amount of pink, polka-dotted paint that splattered the ground.
Celestia sat on her throne, tired with all the boredom she'd had for the day. She sighed and looked out the balcony near her throne. Her jaw dropped at the sight. The entire city of Canterlot was covered in pink polka dots. She looked down at the statue gardens. Discord was still there.
*tink tink tink tink tink*
Celestia looked to the entrance of the throne room. Standing there was a small, stained glass model of Discord, with metal holding the planels together. But Celestia knew from the magical signature that this was not just a piece of artwork. It was the real thing.
"Discord!"
"Ah, hello Celestia. Tell me, is that any way to treat a guest?"
"You're no guest in my palace, Discord. How did you escape your containment?"
"Oh, containment schmontainment. You can't ever really get rid of Chaos. It's a fundamental force of the universe!" Celestia glared at the tiny glass god of chaos as it jumped into the air and summoned up a hammock. "After all, without chaos, you ponies would have no concept of 'fun'. But I'm here for far more serious matters. Matters that concern the fate of the entire planet."
"I'm listening."
"Good."
"You know I love chaos, correct?"
"Yes."
"And you know chaos can pressure certain things in an environment, like say time for an example."
"Yes. But what does this have to do with the fate of the planet?"
"Ahbupbup! No interuptions. It's rude."
"Sorry." Celestia sneered.
"Say it like you mean it."
"Sorry."
"Much better. Now as I was saying, chaos can be, well, chaotic. In this case, my magic defied me and sort of broke space-time and trapped me somewhere in northern Zhosa. So I wound up trapped for millions of years in a pocket dimension. And while I was there, my magic seemed to have a most bizzare effect on the world. It gave me a race of horrible creatures to watch evolve during my stay."
"Aaand you were expecting some creatures created by your magic to look nice?"
"It didn't create those creatures. It helped give rise to them." Discord slinked up to Celestia and whispered in her ears. "These animals, their sheer determination and willpower. It horrifies me. They've sent some species to near extinction, and the only species that seem to get away from them are the ones they deem likable. I've already seen them breed their equivalent of cats and dogs while trapped in the time bubble. I've seen how they hunt."
"How exactly do they hunt, Discord?" Celestia asked, not aware of the horrible answer she was about to recieve.
"Let me start with a question. How long do you think a pony could run at top speed constantly before completely tiring out?"
"About seven to eight hours. Why?"
"Because, my little pony, these animals are built for stamina. While trapped in the bubble, I've seen countless innocent lives lost to these animals. They have hunted down antelope, wildebeast, and even elephants that got trapped in the time bubble."
"How? How could these animals kill if you said they run down their prey? You haven't described them as having anything else to take down their prey. Surely you can't expect me to believe the killed an elephant simply by running it down!"
"Oh, but that's the worst part. These animals, they chase their prey to exhaustion. Remember how you said a pony could only run at top speed for about seven hours? These animals can go for days before tiring out, without even using their full strength."
"Absurd."
"I'm not kidding. They've singled out and chased antelope, innocent lives, and snuffed them out by putting them through hell."
"I still say it sounds absurd. How could an animal that relies on stamina hope to capture prey so fast that it'd be long gone before they even get close to it?"
"Because, Celestia. They have possibly one of the worst weapons on them. Imagination. They let their prey get away on purpose. They let it run, and track all the marks and evidence it leaves behind. They put themselves in the minds of their prey."Discord tapped his head for emphasis. "Then, when their quarry stops to rest, because it thinks it's in the clear, they show up, and it's time to run again. In about eight hours from when the chase begins, it's all over. They just waltz right on up to the animal, which is currently dying of exhaustion, and they find the biggest rock they can lift and smash their prey's head in with it."
"I'll give you that they could take down an antelope or wildebeast with that, but I still don't believe the elephant part."
"We'll that happened somewhere toward the middle of my entrapment. I guess I can't say it was an elephant they killed, but it looked related. You see, this time bubble foolows those creatures. Everything within that bubble is ripped out of time and replaced in with an exact copy. So eventually the bubble started to lengthen. Before I had known it, it had branched out and followed some of these creatures to somewhere up north. Fortunately, they never came near any cities."
"What does this have to do with their killing of elephants?"
"I'm getting there." Discord summoned up a glass of chocolate milk and offered it to Celestia. She accepted politely. "Now as I was saying. Because time and space were warped in this bubble, I was trapped for millions of years with my children for lack of a better word. As I've told you before, they're an imaginative bunch. One of the first things they did to the environment was that they noticed all the things they could use fire for. Warmth and protection came first. But then the funniest thing happened! One of them tripped and fell, accidentally dropping some meat and tubers into the flame. When they pulled it out, the klutzy fellow had invented cooking! His tribe was very impressed, so naturally they began to think of ways to use fire, by combining what they knew about it."
"Like?" Celestia inquired as she drank from a glass of seemingly never ending chocolate milk.
"They figured out they could weaponize it. See, by this point, they had figured out how to sharpen sticks and use them as weapons. Can you believe that? A bunch of animals just picking up a stick and thinking 'How can I make this get me food?'. Glorious! This is where it gets dark. Remember how I said the bubble branched out and followed them?" Celestia nodded. "Well somewhere later on, they sort of diverged into three subspecies. One of them died off. I call them the 'Elders', because they were the ones who served as the ancestors of the other two. One of these two groups that came from Elders that had moved north, out of Zhosa. Around this time, say about a few ten thousand years away from the end of my entrapment in the bubble, an Ice Age was in full swing..."
"What!?" The Doctor repeated what he'd said earlier, still completely flabbergasted. Whe he arrived in Canterlot, he didn't exactly plan on being covered in polka dots. "I've seen things less weird than this and I'm the Doctor! 'Weird' is practically my job description!" He looked to the mares who sat on the bench. They just stared at the Doctor like he belonged in an insane asylum. "Well come on then, let's get you two cleaned up." The Doctor lead the two mares into the blue box, and when they got a good look, their eyes nearly popped out of their heads. He trotted off to some other room, leaving the two mares for a moment.
"It's bigger on the inside!"
"How is that possible?"
"It isn't possible." Octavia said as she looked around the room, the very brown interior.
"Well we're here, and it's obviously bigger on the inside. Either we ate some really bad hay, or this is real. Take your pick."
"I think I'll go with the hay, Vinyl."
The Doctor laughed to himself as he tossed a pair of towels to them, already having wiped himself clean. "They always say that. But it actually is bigger on the inside."
"Prove it."
"Alright then, pick a time and place."
Octavia thought long and hard about what the stallion had said. What did this have to do with the box being bigger on the inside? She tapped a hoof on her chin as she thought, when it clicked. "How about you take us somewhere unknown?"
"Brilliant! Nothing better than proving it by going into the unknown, eh?" The stallion tinkered around with levers and switches, which caused the box to shake. "Hold on to something! It's gonna get bumpy!"
Vinyl and Octavia complied, wrapping themselves onto a railing nearby. The box bumped and rocked for a few moments. Thankfuly, the shaking stopped and the stallion led them through the doors. What they saw shocked them.
"An Ice Age? What does this hav-"
"Interupting again." Discord waggled a finger in front of her. "As I said before, this group had moved north, out of the savannah, so naturally, they adapted for the environment. So did some of the other animals. The not-quite-elephants I mentioned before? In the creature's tounge, they described them as 'Mammoths', or 'Giant Ungerground Beasts' for a rough translation. Now, they still hunted like the Elders, but they hunted the Mammoths almost exclusively, because a single mammoth could feed a single family of these creatures for months. But they couldn't take down a mammoth on account of the mammoth's sheer size. They worked with that. They'd chase and pester the desired mammoth, usually with fire and those sharpened sticks, and they'd chase it right off of a cliff before pushing boulder or two onto it to finish the job." Discord teleported in a shadow puppet stage and re-enacted one of these hunts in grusome detail.
*SSPPPPPPHHTTTT!!
Celestia sprayed chocolate milk out of her nose in shock at the grusome hunting method. Discord fell on the floor laughing, his tiny glass fists pounding on the ground with tiny tinks and accidentally smashed one of his hands apart. He wiped a non-existant tear from his eye as he gather the shards of his hand and placed them back into the frame, which pulsed with magic and repaired itself. Celestia glared at the trickster, her face redder than an apple.
"You really should have seen that one coming, Celestia. But back to the story. These northern ones came to call themselves the 'Neander' or 'The People' in their language. They lost some of their imaginative ability in return for greater strength, but they were clever enough to survive. Back down south, their relatives changed very little, just becoming more imaginative, and were not that much different from the Elders. They called themselves the 'Hekima' which is, surprise surprise, 'The People' in their language. But I bet you want to know how I, and they by extension, escaped the time bubble."
Celestia nodded, still furious with the tiny glass god, barely allowing Discord to continue, on the grounds that she now knew these animals were a threat. But she was suspicious of Discord, for when he explained their hunting in the shadow puppet show, he conveniently left out what they looked like, despite showing the mammoths and ladscape in full detail, instead opting to depict the creatures as stick figures.
"They met somewhere in Dromedaria. I would have expected them to fight over their differences, but they just traded stories, food, and goods. Some time later, they decided to fuse into one tribe. This is where it gets strange. The moment they made the tribal fusion official, the edges of the bubble solidified." Discord looked away from Celestia, at seeming nothing but thin air "Don't ask me how this works, guys. I'm not sure myself." Discord waved his lion's paw dismissively before looking back to Celestia.
"I wasn't paying much attention to the bubble during my several million year stay. But just as I had noticed the walls were solid, they too noticed they were in some sort of bubble. That's when they panicked. They hit the walls with sticks and rocks, before eventually calling some sort of meeting."
Discord took a deep breath and rubbed his temples. "The Hekima came up with an idea. They had the tribe create new sets of weapons. Though these were different from the wooden ones from before. They were long wooden shafts with stone heads at the tips, chipped into some fairly sharp points. Somehow, they figured out that they could throw better if they launched the sticks from another, more curved stick, and that they could make the stick spin by carving grooves into the backs of the poles. They took aim at the wall and threw. Almost unsurprisingly, nothing happened..." Discord save for the rock tips getting stuck in the massive wall. Most of them got discouraged until one of them gave a rousing speech about not giving up. The sheer fighting spirit coming from this one seemed to shatter the wall entirely, before fading away completely." Discord clicked his glass tounge in his mouth. "Ka-putt."
"So they just broke through on sheer determination?"
"Yes."
"How is that even possible?"
Discord looked at Celestia blankly. "Ask a real question."
Celestia took note of this before asking the big question on her mind. "And what exactly do they look like? You seemed to leave that little detail out of your puppet show, and that's grounds for me to not believe you, Discord."
In response, Discord snapped his glass fingers together, elliciting a clink sound and a flash of light, teleporting them into the workplace of a very scared taxidermist. Said pony clutched his chest with his hoof and was spawled backward on the floor. Discord laughed as Celestia gave the pony the rest of the night off to make up for the scare. She glared at Discord as the taxidermist ran out of the room. Discord pointed at the nearly finished taxidermy of the new animal and laughed at Celestia's re-action when the look of absolute terror spread across her face.
She put all the things that she'd known about the animal together. From what Discord told her, it was sapient, and apparently walked entirely different from the leading theory, which made it look big and clumsy. But his puppet show clearly diplayed them as walking fully upright, something unheard of in the natural world. She used her magic to re-adjust the figure to how it stood in the puppet show. A perfect match. She remembered who had found the dead animal. They had also sent a report of a deceased relative on the exact same day. She looked at it in abject horror. A creature that could be described as highly imaginative, determined, and a predator, all at the same time. They also seemed to follow the bizzare laws of reality that Discord did, only more loosely.
"They're just outside the Everfree. Right. Now." Discord whispered into Celestia's ear, making her nearly jump out of her skin from the sudden reminder that Discord was in the room.
"This close to our borders!?"
"I wouldn't worry. I've got them under lock and key. They aren't escaping unless I give them the okay. For now, they're stuck having to live near the forest, but they seem to be getting rowdy. That is why I've come for help. And I'm pretty sure you will, considering how close they are to your Prized Student, Twilight Sparkle."
"And what do you want me to do?"
"I know that I couldn't get you to kill them, even if I tried, so I went with something that made sense."
"You? Make sense?"
"It made no sense for me to make sense, mind you."
Celestia's pupils narrowed as her mind tried to figure out the seemingly paradoxical situation Discord presented her. Discord doesn't make sense, so making sense is the least sensible thing for him to do, so it makes sense that he'd make no sense by making sense in the first place- Celestia's train of thought was interuppted by her vision becoming blurred, due to her eyes drifting toward her muzzle. "Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed."
Discord snapped his fingers and his head exploded with a loud bood and a mushroom cloud of cotton cand and confetti before reforming back into the glass form. "Mind blowing, I know."
Celestia was obviously displeased by being covered with scorch marks, and made haste in getting this over with. "What do you want me to do, Discord?"
"Gah, you're no fun. But yes. What I want you to do is cast a spell on them so that they can speak and understand languages other than their current ones of Neander and Hekima. Then maybe you can finally get them to calm down. Seriously, their fighting spirit is something else. And I can't have any children that'll waste my time with regular coups."
Celestia just stared at the little glass Discord like he had grown a second head. Not that she hasn't seen him do it.
"Get to it, pronto." Discord said, snapping his fingers twice, summoning giant sponges to soak up to polka dot paint, as well as sending himself and a bewildered Celestia to the ape tribe, who still sat in the clearing.
Celestia walked into the small village. Most of the apes were asleep, save for two. The big, darker-skinned male with all the piercings from before sat on a log next to a pale, white one. Her hair was long and a darker shade of red. It was kept back by some vines and a carved twig. They looked into the sky, admiring the meteor shower that streaked across the sky. She accidentally stepped on a twig, causing it to snap and alert the two apes to her presence.
The two apes looked at the horse with awe. She was unlike any animal they had seen. She glowed softly in the night, her white coat ilumminating the camp with a warm light that put off a feel of calm and care. Her sides had two enormous wings, while her head had a long, slender horn. Her body was adorned with shiny, yellow stones that glimmered in her light. The male reached out to her and pet her, as if to make sure she was real.
Celestia eyed the ape warily, and let the male stroke her side. She waited until he was done, when he began to speak in a language she couldn't understand. Not for long anyway.
<<"This beast is real. Kana, get over here. It seems friendly enough.">> The darker male gestured for the female to come over, using two finger in a hook shape to signal her. Togther the two looked the beast over, smelling it, feeling it, and waving their hands through the seemingly immaterial tail. <<"It must be a spirit. There's no doubt about it. It's a saviour sent from the gods. An answer to our prayers!">> At this, the two hugged tightly, tears of joy running down their faces.
Celestia was unsure of what the two were saying, and now seemed like a more oppurtune moment than ever to cast the translastion spell. Her horn sparked with light that shot out across the Everfree, where it infiltrated the minds of all the apes in the forest, including one infant who slept next to a zebra in a tree hut, which stirred slightly from the warmth. Celestia cleared her throat to get the two apes' attention. She looked down at them and smiled. "Can you understand me?"
"Yes, great spirit." the pale one spoke, kneeling before Celestia. "What is it that you want with us mortals?"
"I am Princess Celestia. I am not a 'great spirit', as you put it. May I ask your names and status among this tribe?"
"Hopek, elder and shaman. This is my bride, Kana, warrior." The dark-skined one spoke. "Why do you visit us if you are not the great spirit we prayed for, Princess Celestia?"
"I have been asked by your 'creator' to help civilize you." Celestia looked to Discord behind her. "Though he shows little interest in being your caretaker as is his role as your species' father." Celestia sat down on her haunches. "So I propose a treaty. Will you agree to listen to my terms?"
Hopek contemplated this for a while before looking to Kana for confirmation. She nodded, pulling up a log for the two to sit on. "Alright. What do you propose?"
"Firstly, you must avoid eatting these creatures." Celestia levitated a long list of pictures, showing all the sapient races of Equestria. "If you require meat that much, we shall see to it that you can take part in the bison's sky burials as part of a trade off."
"Bison?" Kana asked, looking at all the races.
Celestia pointed a hoof at an image of a thick-furred bovine. "Yes, bison are a very clever race. They created a form of burial for their dead where they bring out a corpse and feed it to the vultures. They live in the desert, so they can't allow any food to go to waste. I can consult with their leader to see if they will allow you to consume some of their dead."
Hopek nodded, taking her words into account. He never noticed how much use there was for a dead body. "I agree to the first term. Continue."
"Secondly, judging from the giant pile of apple cores near your village, it seems you are the ones behind a recently reported crop heist. You will need to repay the rightful owners of the apples with hard work. You will have to send some workers to this location every day for the next year. They will help with the farmers there, and will take orders from these four ponies without question." Celestia illuminated a portion of the map, as well as imprinting the images of the Apple family members. "Do you agree to this, or do you have an alternate solution?"
Hopek looked to Kana, who gestured for him to agree. He nodded.
"Now for our final order of buisness. Your 'creator', for lack of better words, has made it known to me that he wants no part in watching over you. I would like to allow yourselves to be among the select few who can claim to be gods." Celestia's horn shot out a light, into the very heavens, summoning forth two beings made of light. As the light began to wane, she could swear she heard a very distinct 'vworp vworp' sound in the distance. Eventually the light had completely faded, revealing two equines similar in form to Celestia. However, one was smaller and darker, resembling the night sky that surrounded them. The other was taller and had a pale, pink coat, with a long, red mane. Celestia and the darker horse bowed before the taller mare.
"What do you need with us sister?" Luna asked, having finally mastered Modern Pony.
"Discord has accidentally given rise to a new race."
"Discord? Where is that fiend! We must seal him up at once!"
"Now Luna, as I've told your sister, there is no way to completely seal chaos. It is very nescessary, you see." Discord's glass frame leaned on Celestia's leg, drinking chocolate milk from a wine glass. "Otherwise none of you would have free will or any fun at all. Besides, I'm the one who asked for Celestia's help in the first place." Discord looked up at the pale pink alicorn, getting a massive grin plastered onto his face. "Faust! Long time no see!"
"Hello Discord."
"Sister, is this true?"
"Yes."
"Very well then. I'll trust your judgement."
"As I was saying, Discord has accidentally given rise to a new race. He refuses to watch over them, so we must begin the apothesis of the leaders of this tribe."
"What is this new race, sister?"
"Look for yourself."
Luna turned around to see two animals that looked like the body that had been sent to the palace's biology labs. Except they stood fully upright, rather than walking like they were theorised to have done. "Oh, um, hello."
"Hello." the pale white female responded in turn.
"Now mother, if you would do the honors?"
"With pleasure." Faust trotted up to the two humans and looked down at them. "What are your names?"
"Hopek."
"Kana."
"What, is your quest?"
"To take my people to a better place to live."
"The same."
"What are your statuses?"
"Shaman and tribal leader."
"Hunter and warrior."
"Then it has been decided. Hopek and Kana, Leaders of the...?"
Hopek and Kana looked at each other before whispering to one another.
"I say we should combine our two tribe names."
"That is a most wonderful idea, Kana. 'Neankima'? 'Hiknedan'?"
"How about 'Human', dear?"
"That is what I love about you. Good with names." The two 'Humans' swivelled around and gave their answer. Celestia nodded and noted how big of a coincidence it was that the term matched what Fluttershy had called them in her autopsy report.
Faust levitated over a massive bowl full of flowing, golden liquid. "Drink this, and the ceremony shall be completed."
Hopek and Kana looked hesitant.
"Go on, drink. It's just water and a bit of magic, that's all."
The two humans did as comanded and drank. They grew to stand far taller than most humans, at about the same height as Celestia. Their skin glowed and hid their bodies, and when it faded away, the transformation had been comleted. The male's skin gained several red markings, mostly around the ribs and spine, forming the rough shape of a flame, and his hair had been replaced by a black, billowing energy. He smelled of smoke and ash. The female, however, gained iridescent markings that streaked about her torso, resembling the unpredictable nature of lightning, her hair a flowing grey cloud with several areas of glowing blue water.
"The apothesis has been completed." Faust sent the humans back to their hut, though it seemed rather small now. Faust sighed as she cast a growth spell on the hut, causing its size to double.
"Celestia, Luna, may I speak with you two in private?"
"Yes, mother." the two princesses reponded, bowing to their mother before turning around to see if Discord was still there. He was not. In his place was a small note with even smaller writing on it. Celestia levitated it up to her face and pulled out a pair of reading glasses and put them on.
I got bored and left. Don't bother looking for me, because I'm halfway around the world on a tropical cruise. Here's a postcard.
"Let me see it!"
As soon as Luna leaned in to read the note, a giant boxing glove on a spring smashed through the back of the paper and socked Luna in the muzzle with a loud 'thwup'. A postcard with a picture of Discord in a straw hat, giant sunglasses, and a Haywai'ian shirt lying back in a lounge chair of the deck of a boat. Infuriated, Luna shredded what little remained of the note as well as the postcard and incinerated the remains. "Discord."
"Calm down Luna. I have some important things to tell you two. I think now may be a better time than ever..."
*vwoorp vwoorp vworp VWORP VWORP CLUD*
The Doctor and his two new passengers left the TARDIS, trotting into a massive field at the edge of a forest. They looked up into the sky to see a beam of light shoot up into it.
"I'd recognize that energy anywhere!" He looked to the mares, behind him with a massive smirk. "C'mon ladies! ALLONS-Y!"
The two mares complied and dashed off after the Doctor. They got scratched up by a few thickets, and Vinyl had been hit in the face by a branch that had snapped back, but they were otherwise unharmed. When they had finally broken through the underbrush, they were snagged by their tails and pulled back behind a bush.
"What the hay are yo-" Octavia was cut off by a light brown hoof being jammed in her mouth.
"Shhhhh."
"Why?"
"Because you're about to witness an apothesis."
"Apo what now?" Vinyl asked quizzicly.
"Apothesis. You see, when a new species is born and recognized by another species as having some sort of potential, even the slightest, teeny tiny bit of potential, one or two individuals will be chosen to lead that species, forever." The Doctor pointed a hoof off into the distance where three alicorns were gathered around a pair of monkey-like beings. "But those spindley looking things, I can't remember from any point in time, past, future, or present. And I'd say it's right time to cover your eyes, judging from how she's giving them a bowl of liquid aether."
"Why do we need to cover our eyes? I mean, I've got goggles n' all..."
"Ever tried looking at the sun? Well this is like that, only from a few metres away. Now shield 'em unless you like your sclera sunny side up. Don't look back until I give the 'okay'.
The two mares complied and shielded their eyes, able to see a red glow through their flesh, how bright the light was.
"You can look now."
Stand where the monkey things had, was a pair of beings that stood as tall as Celestia. Their hair had been replace with energies that looked incredibly similar to a continous explosion and a great waterfall. Their skin had markings, somewhat akin to cutie marks, though very different in one aspect. Rather than sit on the monkey's thighs, the markings wrapped around their torso and abdomens. They quickly ran of to a hut which soon grew in size to accomadate their new form.
Slowly, the three alicorns turned around. Two of them they already knew to be Celestia and Luna, simply from the colors of their tails. But they couldn't put a finger on the third one.
"Faust. Mother of the Princesses of the Cosmos. I've met her on a few ocassions. Part of the reason why I'm on a list of potential threats to Equestria."
Octavia's face gained a look a horror. Vinyl just grinned madly.
"Oh it's not like I'd hurt anypony on purpose." The Doctor grimmaced. "Ooh, that's gotta hurt. Boxing glove to the face. Not pleasant." The Doctor moved closer within earshot.
"I have some important things to tell you two. I think now may be a better time than ever..."
"Tell us what, mother?"
"Various things you should know about what has happened here today, as well as somethings about Discord." Faust took a deep breath. "First of all, Discord's magic didn't disobey him. I messed with the spell he was trying to cast in order to prevent a war with Zhosa. He'd planned on imitating you two and having the various nations there go to war with one other and Equestria. Although I couldn't stop the spell, I could alter it. So instead of causing a devastating war, he sealed himself in a pocket dimension, locked away for millions of years."
Celestia nodded, remembering Discord's tale of his long journey though time.
"The Humans were a failsafe. There is a reason he doesn't like them. I cast a second spell, a seeker spell, that would select a few different species that had the potential to seal away Discord with his own magic. Like a back-up Elements of Harmony, only more powerful, in order to wark on the given timescale. It hurt me to do this all to Discord, considering what I'm about to tell you two."
"Why would it hurt you to seall away a chaotic twit?"
"Because Luna, he's your chaotic twit. Celestia, Luna; Discord is your older brother. He is not the Lord of Chaos and Disharmony. He is Discord, Spirit of Progress."
Celestia and Luna's minds broke, simply from hearing what they had. Discord, the one who had caused so much trouble for Equestria, wasn't some monster. He was their brother. They imediately thought of him as a traitor, given all the things he'd done to the nation.
"He became corrupted when his magic led to the hyper-evolution of a plant I'm sure you're familar with. Poison Joak. The ancestors of modern Poison Joak, to be exact. These first plants were capable of doing more than causing floppy horns or changing voices. They could ruin a psyche with a single touch. He'd created them on my command for a biological weapon back when we were at war with the Lion and Eagle kingdoms."
"Lion and Eagle kingdoms? But those are just animals! They couldn't possibly be anything more than wild animals."
"It was back before you were born, my daughters. The reason they no longer exist today is because the lions and eagles were the victims of the Poison Joak. The two empires fell under a great prank. The greedy upper class lions, who cared little for the poor and thought them filthy animals, were turned into the wild lions we know today. The poor and working class lions often kept bats and scorpions as pets, imported from their homelands in Zhosa. These were the ones who wound up as the monsters we call manticores. And finally, the soldiers who fought on the field of battle. The Eagles soldiers often fought in units alongside the lions. Their fortresses were called griffons because of their resilience. I think you know what happened to them." Faust looked down, pained by the guilt of having destroyed entire cultures.
"Discord wanted no part in causing any more suffering. He told me he was quitting but I would have none of it. When he tried to force his way around me, I turned around and bucked him, back into the Poison Joak." She looked to her daughters. "What came out of those fronds of blue leaves was not my son that I'd had a little spat with. It was my son, that I'd horribly disfigured. That was when he showed up."
"Who?"
Faust merely looked to a nearby bush and called out. "Doctor, I know you're there."
The Doctor looked to the two mares sitting next to him and shrugged. He leapt over the bush and galloped to the three alicorns. "Need something, my queen?"
"How long have you been here?"
"Ohhhhhhh, um' about ten, maybe twelve minutes. To what do I owe the honor?"
"And how much have you heard?"
"Enough to know you're telling your daughters the story of their brother for the first time, as well as why you're doing all of this."
"Okay, tell me. What am I intending on telling my daughters after I finish my story?" The red-maned alicorn raised an eyebrow quizzicly.
"Well judging from all the things you've been telling. How Discord got all wonky, why you messed with his spell and trapped him, and as to why you've created a dimension and then influenced the evolution of a bunch of apes, I'd say you mean to cure Discord."
"And why do you come to this conclusion?"
"Well considering I was there, you know how to get a sample of old Poison Joak, as well as the fact that you said that you influenced the evolution of those apes, I'd say it was obvious that the Poison Joak replaced his power with it's own, forcing you to absorb his power. Whiiiich, is why you've finally decided to call for a Doctor. Home remedies won't work this time."
"Very clever, Doctor. So what do you say? Care to help?"
"Wellllllll, okay. But on one condition."
"And that is?"
"Once we've cured your son, you are to tell the public the real story."
"Accepted. I'm an old, old mare. It's been a long time since I've told anyone the full truth. It'll be a refreshing change."
The Doctor could vaugely see a shape off in the distance, and it was getting closer.
Far across the clearing stood what looked like one of the apes, but it was considerably different on the inside. Two hearts, for starters. He sat next to a blue, wooden box, watching those equines speak. He wasn't fully shocked when he'd learned that the universe he was in had been amalgamated onto the one he was in now. Only certain features had remained intact. Humans were one. Humans, the great survivors. Then he saw it. A pony as tall as him had leapt out from a bush. It wore clothes almost identical to his. Its mane looked nearly the same as his haircut as well. He stared for a long time, at that single pony with the suit.
"What!?"
The madman with the box got up and dashed off to the clearing. He leapt over bushes, branches and weaved in between huts. He was within' metres of the ponies when the one that looked similar to him looked at him.
"What!?"
"What!?
The madman and the pony were exasperated. Identical voice, identical hair, identical clothes, identical everthing. How could this be? Two Doctors, identical in nearly every way. And here they were, standing face to face with one another, jaws on the ground from the sheer impossiblity of the situation.
"I'm you! And you're me! How the bloody hell is this happening!?" The voice was in stereo.
Faust just covered her face with a hoof. "I knew I should have cast a spell in case any versions of the Doctor were there during the merge. Oh well, I suppose two Doctors is better than one. I hope."
Celestia and Luna just looked at a one another with a worried expression. Tonight was offically the weirdest of nights.
Cancellation
Sorry to all my watchers for taking so long, but while I was reading Blood is Thicker than Friendship, I reallized I had too many plot strings and too little ways to tie them together. In addition, my inspiration for this story has faded with time, with one character literally being stuck in Sugarcube Corner with nowhere to go. So I've decided to cut this down into it's component stories, which will allow me to write more easily. I suggest following me so you can catch all of them, because they explain what would have happened to all the different characters in this story, just cut apart and spread out over separate stories. So here's some stories to watch out for.
Prehistoric Equestria: Fluttershy comes across some bizarre footprints out by Froggy Bottom Bog, and discovers something wonderful. At the same time, Scootaloo gets a strange new pet bird...
Partial Crossover with Jurassic Park, for similarity in scenes in the fan-fiction and the novel.
Gojira v.s. King Ghidorah v.s. Mothra v.s. Rodan v.s. Anguirus v.s. Megaguirus v.s. The Elements of Harmony*: When several reports make the news of the important cities of Tokyoat, Moooskow, Prarie, New Yoke, Melbark, and Trotford getting nearly demolished over the matter of a few nights, the Elements of Harmony find themselves being sent to solve the cities' problems, as a diplomatic measure by the Princesses. But just what has caused the destruction, and will the Elements be enough to stop them?
*Working title and a joke on the over-use of the 'v.s.' in Japanese film. Release title will be The Elements of Harmony v.s. The Kaiju
Obvious crossover with the Toho kaiju movies.
Doctor Whooves: A Cruel Joak: Doctor Whooves had been asked by Queen Faust herself to help her undo a mistake she made long ago. It would have easy work, but fate has other plans, when he runs into a musical pony duo.
The main plot of this fic, slimmed down to allow for elaboration.
Taloneightor: All is calm in Ponyville until reports of ponies suddenly dying from gunshot wounds in various parts of the town, around the same time as a strange hippogriff moving into town forces the Princesses to have the Elements of Harmony solve the problem.
Terminator crossover.
Press X to Dash: After Rainbow Dash suffers from a nearly fatal crash after having Twilight cast a new spell on her newly bought flight armor, results in the pegasus being fused with the flight armor. What's more, her wings are gone, and in their stead a large metal horn is sprouting from her head. Now she has to readjust to life without flight, and along the way, discover the strange new abilities her accident has given her.
I think you can guess what this crosses over with.
Climb the Shatterthorn: A new, massive tree springs up in Everfree Forest, and Celestia tasks the Elements of Harmony with climbing to the tree's peak. Just what oddities await them up there?
Recounting the fate of the tree from last chapter, which was hit by a meteor.
The New Sophonts on the Block: When a Dog scientist comes across a new species of ape, he learns that they seem to have the beginnings of a culture. Written in third person, with first-person notes by the scientist interspersed throughout.
starts of as a Slice of Life, but soon becomes Survival-Horror.
Cutie Mark Crusaders: Operation Buck Up that Buck: When an odd duo moves into Ponyville, a griffon who seems overly enthusiastic about being here, and disgruntled deer who seems to be unable to speak Equestrian, it's up to Scootaloo and the other Crusaders, plus Pinkie Pie, to turn the buck's frown upside-down.
What would've happened with the deer and griffon that were headed to Ponyville last chapter.
Visitors from Planet RSE-386: The South Pole, Antlertica. Scientists are studying and odd field of meteors that have crashed into the ice. Cut to seven years later. Aurora are reported being seen over Ponyville. Nopony says anything until one Winter night when seven bizarre beings descend from the sky. the Princesses order Twilight and Friends to make the visitors at home, which leads to some hilarious intercultural differences.
A crossover, but the crossover is a secret, hinted at only in the title. Also a continuation of what would've happened to the meteor that crashed in the mountains.
Flowers for Angel Bunny: A third person retelling of Flowers for Algernon, focusing on Derpy Hooves. At the end of each chapter there will be a page from Derpy's journal.
Again, sorry if you all wanted to see this story finished, but it works better if it was cut up this way.