Chapter 56: Reunion
Blah sat down at the table and lifted the lid of his laptop for the first time in over 20 years. The rather ancient computer took several seconds to light back up from sleep mode, and after quickly punching in his password, he was met with a freeze frame of Discord confronting Twilight Sparkle.
He heard a snort from behind him. "He really was watching ponies..." Bob muttered with a short chuckle.
Blah nonchalantly closed the media player and restored the only other running program - the SBURB server application. The viewport showed Hailstorm flying just outside of his cloud house, making target practice out of the various, grounded pinkish imps.
"Man, Edwin must have really liked ponies to be watching two episodes at once," Bob laughed.
"This one isn't a cartoon show," stated Blah. "It's the game of SBURB, showing us what my client player is doing right now. In real life," he added with a touch of hesitation, as he had to remind himself that everything he was experiencing, although far from normal by his standards, was indeed reality.
"Oh, you're right, I remember that one!" Bob exclaimed, glad that he was able to finally recognize something ever since things got complicated. "Uh, what was his name again... 'Winter' something... right?"
"Hailstorm," Blah patiently corrected, double clicking the Pesterchum icon.
"Yeah, I knew that," lied Bob as the chat program popped up.
Blah immediately opened up his session's memo again. Out of the five other video feeds present, only three of them were currently in use.
"...keepin' on, you'll see them again before long!" Beats's unmistakable, optimistic voice was the first thing he heard. Joining him in the chat were Reed, who appeared to be half-asleep, and a face that caused Blah's processor to skip a beat. It was Swift Star, looking a little glum.
"Hey, who's this good-looking brobot?" greeted Beats, noticing the new arrival.
But Blah was too distracted by the appearance of his adoptive father to acknowledge his vegetable friend. "Dad...?" he uttered, leaning in closer to the screen.
Swift perked up upon hearing the syllable, and noticed the robot for himself. He squinted, unsure what exactly he was looking at, but the voice rang just the right bell. "Light?" he responded in disbelief. "Is that you, son?"
The two gazed at each other from opposite sides of the internet. Although neither of them were exactly as the other remembered, they were both certain that this was a reunion long overdue.
Blah nodded. "Yep, it's me..." A tear formed in the ghostly pegasus's eye upon hearing his confirmation. "Dad, I'm so sorry that I left like that without saying anything... At the time, I had no idea what I was getting into..."
"It's ok, Light." Swift looked upon his son with unquestioning pride. "You were just following your destiny. After so many years of finding yourself, who could blame you?" Blah glanced away. "And I already know your true identity. It caught me by surprise, for sure, but... no matter who you were, are, or will become, I'll always be proud to call you my son."
"Jeez, just how much did I miss..." Bob whispered to Sera, stunned at the scene unfolding before him. "What has Blah even been through?"
"Too much," Sera responded. "We have all been through too much."
Bob paused. "That doesn't explain a thing, you know. Why is he a robot who's apparently related to a pony ghost?"
"Charge turned him into a pony foal and sent him back in time 20 years, where he was adopted by this stallion," Sera exasperately explained. "Then Discord turned Blah into a woman. Then, you killed him, and I took in his soul." Bob grimaced. "Then he was Tails for a while, and finally, we acquired a robotic body for him."
This answer didn't satisfy him as much as he thought it would. "...is there anything he hasn't been?" Bob asked.
"Well-rested," Sera finished simply.
"You done?" Blah had turned around in his chair, having been interrupted by the no-longer-quiet chatter behind him. "I'm kinda having a heartfelt moment here."
"Hang on, did I just hear that that human boy killed you?" Swift cried in bewilderment.
"It wasn't his finest hour," Beats remarked.
"Argh, just nevermind," asserted Blah, shaking his head. "The past is the past. All I know is, as soon as I enter the medium, I'm going straight to Moros and finding one of those genetic facilities. Once I've got my old human body back, this game is as good as beat."
"Genetic what?!" yelled Bob. The trainer was about ready to pull out his hair. "As soon as one question is answered, another one's right around the corner! How do you even keep up with all this insanity?!"
"SBURB adventures tend to get pretty complicated," sighed Swift. "Part of the challenge is sorting through all the madness. Speaking of which, even if you could find a way to reach the sixth gate early, I wouldn't go to LOGAS just yet."
"It's Moros, not 'logas'," Blah replied. "And why not? I can fly."
"You might know it as Moros, but according to Skaia, it's the Land of Gods and Subjects," Swift stoically clarified. "Anyway, those gates are up that high for a reason. You're supposed to build up to them gradually, so that by the time you reach them, you're ready for what's on the other side. Like I told you a million times, son, you can't just blindly rush into everything and expect to have a good time."
Blah groaned quietly. It certainly felt like he had this conversation a million times. "Yeah, well, most people who play the game start it at the bottom of their echeladder. I've gone through a lot, remember? I should be halfway up the thing by now." Blah was stricken with realization. "Uh, how do I check my echeladder?"
"Should I even bother asking what an echeladder is?" Bob cut in.
"It's basically a level system for the game," Blah briefly defined. "Except instead of numbers, each level has a unique title tailored to the individual. And I'm kinda curious as to what some of my titles are..."
"Thank you for actually throwing me a bone for once," voiced Bob, somewhat sarcastically.
"There's an application in the SBURB game folder that shows you your echeladder," Swift told Blah. "Take a quick look at it, who knows, maybe you're right. You've grown up so fast, I'm barely getting used to the fact that you're your own stallion now... or, man, or robot, or whatever."
While his dad digressed, Blah navigated to the folder in which SBURB had been installed, almost instantly finding a program labeled " ". Upon launching it, the screen displayed a tall black box that rapidly populated itself with various titles on the right, next to an image of himself as Metal Tails on the left. The size of his echeladder was quite intimidating, especially with the scrollbar shrinking so quickly. Finally, the ladder stopped expanding, coming to rest on what was presumably Blah's current rung: Faux Fox, having just surpassed the rung of Gemiknight.
Blah studied the titles present. They seemed to be indicative of recent events, but the progression of said events was rather fast. Below Gemiknight was Soul Survivor, and below that, Mrs. Dousedfire, with Milky Wayfarer apparently marking the last rung achieved as Light Star. He glanced at the scroll bar, noting that it was positioned about a third of the way from the bottom. He still had a long way to go.
Out of curiosity, he scrolled to the bottom. and was greeted with such rung names as Gel Guzzler, Eater of Snacks, and Punslinger. As much as he liked the idea of a list of titles of increasing awesomeness specifically about him, he would have to look at them later.
"Okay, so I'm actually about one third of the way up," relayed Blah, "but I don't have to do this alone. I'll get about three of the other players to help."
"Me and Broshi will have to focus on getting settled," Sera added. "Reed does not look busy, though."
The fox snapped to attention upon hearing his name. "Uh... yeah, sure! Whatever she said!"
"It'll be a good way for the Page to gain experience, eh?" Blah made his case.
"Just promise me you'll come back alive?" Swift gave in.
Blah nodded happily. "Of course! Quite literally, in fact!" He turned around. "Sera, you and Bob go to your battle stations and connect to me as my server. Give Broshi a lift while you're at it. Let's do this thing!"
"What about Edwin?" Bob brought up. "He's kinda outlived his usefulness, and we can't just leave him here alone."
Blah considered his options. He could kill him, as Discord wanted, but he couldn't shake the feeling that they could still use the cowboy for something. Blah swallowed his pride and turned to the thin mustachioed man sitting quietly in the corner. "Waluigi," he addressed, "look after Edwin, would you? I'll decide what to do with him later."
The demolitionist gave a cheesy salute. "Wah! You can count on me, boss!" He scrambled out the door and made his way to the wooden shack.
"If you say so," shrugged Bob. "I just want to get back to the action."
Broshi entered the room, quizzically glancing back at Waluigi. 'I don't know if putting him in charge of the prisoner is a good idea,' stated Broshi. 'But thanks for relieving me, anyway. He was giving me the evil eye something fierce.'
"Broshi, Bob, please get ready," Sera warned the Yoshi before teleporting onto his back and grabbing Bob's hand. "We are leaving. See you on Pesterchum, Blah."
Although it was a little sudden, Broshi silently accepted, having gotten used to the pace by now. Bob saw Blah off with a light wave as the three of them disappeared. Blah kicked back in his chair, and mere moments later, Sera's face appeared in the memo, in front of a rather run-down wooden wall. Through a window, Blah could make out various leaves and branches, implying that Sera had found a treehouse.
"We are installing SBURB on Bob's computer," informed Sera.
"Good, good," Blah praised as he idly checked the server window. Hailstorm was standing next to his alchemy equipment with his tablet, chatting with someone, as Swift looked over his shoulder. Hail's video feed had disappeared as well. "Who's Hailstorm talking to?" Blah asked.
"Probably Bellia," yawned Reed. "She seems to think Hail's lack of random knick-knacks to alchemize with is a good challenge for her."
"Blah, have you decided when to prototype Pinkie?" Sera cut in.
Blah had given it some thought while he was being upgraded. "I'll go with pre-entry." There was mild astonishment from the chatroom, particularly Beats. "I don't want to risk altering her personality with other prototypes, and I'm sure she'd feel the same way. Also, I like the idea of having her engrained into some of our enemies. Maybe they'll convert to our side, or be less focused at least."
"A sound arguement," Sera agreed. "Alright, SBURB has been installed. Connecting now."
Despite not having a heart, Blah still felt one beating heavily in his chest. Or perhaps that was his internal machinery accelerating to provide extra processing power as an adrenaline analogue. Either way, his anticipation was palpable.
A flash from his computer's taskbar indicated that the connection completed. Sera wasted no time deploying the three devices into the empty space that Blah had reserved back when the house was first built, followed by the pre-punched card directly onto the table. Blah grabbed the card, pulled out his Pwnhammer, and strolled over to the Cruxtruder.
"I trust you know what to do?" Sera asked as Blah pounded on the lid of the device, popping it off with ease. A crimson kernelsprite bounded out of it.
"Hah!" Blah laughed. "Are you kidding? I have been dreaming of this moment!" He turned the wheel and grabbed the cruxite dowel, colored a similar red. His curiosity getting the better of him, he took a few moments to examine the material. It appeared to be a sort of opaque, thick glass.
"I don't like the looks of that timer..." Bob's voice could be heard from the computer, but Blah paid no attention. He inserted the card and the dowel into the Totem Lathe, letting it carve while he approached Pinkie Pie's body.
"Blah, I do not mean to exert any pressure," began Sera, "but you only started with forty-seven s-"
"Yeah yeah, keep your mustache on," Blah interrupted, gently feeding Pinkie to the Kernelsprite. "I got this." Blah gazed into the flashing orb, which now contained Pinkie's face, blinking in and out of obscurity. While her form was not yet fully realized, seeing her face was enough to reignite the fire in his soul. He leaned in closer, quietly uttering a single syllable: "Soon."
"You can make out with your little pony later," Bob shouted urgently. "Thirty seconds, guy!"
Bob's borderline insult aggravated Blah enough to draw his attention to how little time he had left. The timer on the Cruxtruder read 29 seconds. "Holy-!" he exclaimed, not even expending any time on finishing his expletive as he rushed to retrieve his carved totem.
With totem in hand, and 20 seconds to spare, Blah dove at the Alchemiter. He slammed the red object onto the pedestal, activating the scanning arm. Precious seconds ticked away as he waited for the painfully slow laser to run its course.
Ten seconds left. Blah had his hammer at the ready. A shiny red safe appeared atop the platform. Blah's fingers twitched anxiously. The dial spun around once, twice, thrice. Five seconds. The door finally opened, producing a glowing red jewel. Three seconds. Blah leaped at the jewel, his tails spinning. One second. With a resounding crash, the jewel was smashed asunder, enveloping the entirety of Blahtown in a white light. All that remained was a smoking crater where the meteor hit mere moments later.
"I think, therefore I am."
Blah found himself uttering these words aloud into the stone floor upon which he had collapsed. He guessed it was a subroutine inserted by Tails, meant to run on booting up as a failsafe to remind Blah that he was sentient. It worked.
It took him a while to question why he had just rebooted, as well as why he was on the ground. As he recalled the events that had just transpired, he realized the answers to both of those questions were the same. He had cut his entry so close that the meteor had left a partial impact on the house.
But what about the rest of Blahtown? Blah gradually picked himself up and looked out of the window. All four buildings had made the journey mostly intact, but the town had been relocated to a small island in the middle of the ocean, just big enough for all of it. Nothing out of the ordinary for SBURB.
Coming up to the next concern on his list gave Blah a sudden jolt. "Pinkie..."
He turned around. Just as he hoped, the sprite had developed into the ghostly form of Pinkie Pie. Blah stood frozen as he waited for her to say something and confirm that the process was successful. Pinkiesprite stared silently back with an uncharacteristic, blank expression.
"Pinkie...?" Blah attempted, stepping carefully closer. "It's me, Blah... are you okay?"
The sprite continued to stare, unresponsive. She blinked. "Oh, do you mean me?" she asked. "Yes, I'm fine." Her voice was completely unfitting. It sounded like Pinkie's voice, but there was no emotion behind it whatsoever.
"Uh..." Blah tilted his head awkwardly, his spirits diminishing. Unless she was playing some kind of elaborate joke, this was not the Pinkie that Blah knew. "Do you, er, remember anything?"
"I remember... a room," she answered stoically, barely moving. "Then, suddenly, pain. Followed by darkness." She spoke as if recalling something mundane, like a meal.
"Sera...?" Blah called slowly, his confusion manifesting as a series of cloudy, frantic processes trying to decipher what had happened.
"Hmm." The Kadabra, her eyes narrowed, studied the scene intently. "Strange. From what I can tell, prototyping summons the soul originally owned by the chosen body from wherever it is, if one exists, or creates a new one otherwise."
"So you're saying this Pinkie has a brand new soul?" exclaimed the stunned robot. "Her soul didn't exist...?"
"D'ja think that maybe the body you found was a fake?" Beats chimed in.
"Impossible," denied Sera. "I examined the body myself. I can confirm that it was one hundred percent flesh and blood, and the body that Blah retrieved was the same one that we discovered in the first place."
While the two talked, Blah resumed trying to process what went wrong. If it was definitely Pinkie's body, then maybe her memory got erased somehow. Which raised the question of whether or not sprites could lose their memory. He glanced up at Pinkiesprite again, who had not budged an inch since she last spoke.
Blah's thoughts were interrupted by Bob loudly clearing his throat. "Didn't Blah mention something about genetic equipment?" he presented. "If Blah could make himself a new body, just like his original, why not Pinkie?"
Everyone's eyes widened simultaneously. "I think you might just have it..." Blah admitted. He couldn't believe that he hadn't even considered that possibility.
"Exactly!" Bob triumphantly cried. "You really should pay attention to these things, you know!" He smirked, proud that he was able to piece together the details on his own for once.
Blah took a moment to recount the entirety of Pinkie's timeline with this new information. "So Pinkie and Discord went out on the town, at the suggestion of someone disguised as Twilight. They made their way to the garden, where I appeared with the TARDIS. She swiped it while I wasn't looking and took it back to the underworld in the Omega timeline. We did a bunch of stuff and I ended up leaving her with Charge, thinking she belonged in that timeline. Then Charge's goons in this timeline created a clone of her, brought it to Discord's room, and stabbed it under the table, faking her death and framing Discord in order to derail our plans."
He paused to let it all sink in for everyone listening. "What this means is that Charge has control of one of the facilities on Moros, but on the bright side... Pinkie is probably still alive somewhere!"
"Hey, that's great!" Beats celebrated.
Blah's hope had been restored, but at the same time, he couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that his reunion with the real Pinkie would have to wait a bit longer. As for how much longer, there was no way of knowing just yet. Without the TARDIS, he could not travel back to the Omega timeline himself, so he could only pray that Pinkie might find a way back on her own.
"Blah," warned Sera, "the imps have started their assault."
Landing firmly back into the present time, Blah rushed to the window. He could make out a half-dozen small, blue creatures hammering at the doors and windows of the wooden shack. It was likely that the presence of multiple buildings confused them, and they decided to attack the weakest-looking one. Either that or they saw Waluigi and Edwin inside first.
No sooner than Blah opened the door of his house, hammer in hand, than he saw Waluigi kicking open the door to the wooden shack and sending a sunglass-wearing imp to the ground. A crazed look in his eye, Waluigi threateningly brandished a tennis racket which bore his symbol - an upside-down yellow 'L'.
Seeing the purple-clad man out in the open, the other imps charged at him. Wailing a battle cry, Waluigi swatted away the nearest fox-eared imp with his racket, throwing it skyward, then spun around to kick the mustachioed imp to his left. He twirled faster with his racket held out, batting the other three imps into submission with ease.
'Has he always been this competent?' Blah asked himself as Waluigi went berserk and stomped repeatedly on the first downed imp, grinding it into grist. With a shrug, Blah ran after the other imps and dispatched of them quickly with his Pwnhammer. Blah was already far too high on his Echeladder for these starting imps to be a threat.
"You're quite the scrapper," Blah complimented, picking up the handful of dropped build grist and cobalt.
"Wahahah," Waluigi chuckled, "well, someone had to take care of those zombies at night!"
The two of them had little time to talk, however. More imps were already coming up on the horizon, swimming across the ocean. "Ugh," Blah groaned. "We're going to need some kind of town wall at least, or else they'll just keep coming. Waluigi, go tell Sera to build some defenses with my no-doubt ungodly starting reserve of build grist. I'll handle these imps."
"Wah!" Waluigi nodded, heading back for the Demolitionist's house.
Blah stood on the edge of the island, waiting for them to come within range. Despite him being overleveled, the imps seemed determined to try and put a dent in him. One by one, they climbed onto the beach, but none of them lasted more than a second under Blah's mighty hammer.
As Blah picked up the imps' meager grist, he saw the SBURB cursor descend from the sky and begin drawing a square, white wall around the perimeter of Blahtown. At ten feet tall and two feet thick, it was definitely solid. Blah flew up and landed on the wall, looking down. Already, he could see a single imp scratching desperately at it, unable to climb it by a long shot.
Satisfied, Blah jumped down into the town and walked back towards his house. He needed to prepare for his trip to Moros, but as far as he was concerned, he had all the time in the world. He figured he might as well experiment with potential alchemy recipes and set secondary goals.
"Sera, deploy the Punch Designix!" Blah ordered after opening the door. "After that, you can leave me to my own devices and focus on setting up Broshi, so that you can join me in the medium. The chain is almost complete!"
"Understood." The cursor dragged a fourth machine into the room, filling up most of the remaining space. This machine somewhat resembled a piano, with a card slot on the left and a computer keyboard wired to the right. "I will leave Bob in charge of the server if you need anything," Sera announced. "Good luck."
"And to you!" Blah replied as he approached the new device.
Over the next several minutes, Blah went back and forth between machines, working each one as if he had played this game hundreds of times before. He started by retrieving a blank captchalogue card from his backpack, losing one of his inventory slots temporarily, and punched it with its own code: 11111111. He had a lot of punching and combining to do, so he wasn't about to waste all of his cards without gaining the ability to make more. As blank cards required one unit of any variety of grist each to make, Blah practically never had to worry about inventory space again.
Next, he punched the code for his Pwnhammer on a freshly-made card to see how much it was worth. With an idea of how much his current hammer cost, he would know what to expect when upgrading it. Plus, he was curious. Placing a totem carved with the Pwnhammer's code onto the Alchemiter, he checked the computer screen. The Pwnhammer had a grist cost of 500 cobalt, 500 each of two grist types he had not yet encountered, marked with a red question mark, and 1 of another unknown grist. The application told him that he had collected only 47 cobalt so far. "Hmm... upgrading this might have to wait a while," Blah determined.
Waluigi watched Blah's prodecure with dumbfounded awe. "Wah, you can make anything with that?" he questioned.
"Yep," confirmed Blah. "You can also combine two items to make something new. I don't think I'll be able to combine my hammer with anything just yet, though..."
"What about this?" Waluigi placed his tennis racket on the table. "I kinda want something as strong as what you've got..."
"Well, I don't know if we can make anything that strong right now," Blah answered, picking up the racket, "but I don't see the harm in giving you one upgrade. What should we combine with it?"
"Wah." Waluigi set down an unlit Bob-omb.
Blah's admired Waluigi's attitude. "No problem!" he happily obliged, inserting a new card. He punched the racket's code first, then punched the Bob-omb's code onto the same card, combining the two. It was a simple matter of carving the totem and placing it on the Alchemiter. Blah crossed his fingers, hoping whatever it was fell within his current budget.
Much to Blah and Waluigi's surprise, a new racket appeared on the platform with a brief flash of light. Labeled the Aceploder, with a cost of 40 build grist and 45 cobalt, this sleek indigo racket had a larger, rounder head, and on its black strings were two white oval patterns which mimicked the eyes of a Bob-omb.
Excitedly, Waluigi snatched up the Aceploder and sized it up. While it didn't look like the racket itself could explode, it did look the perfect size and shape for launching Bob-ombs long distances, which was the next best thing. "Yeah," he praised, "this'll-"
CRASH! A loud noise from outside caused both of them to jump. Blah rushed outside, followed by Waluigi. They immediately noticed a gaping hole in the wall. Standing amongst the rubble was a blue creature, nearly as tall as the wall itself, with thick arms and two gigantic white tusks protruding from its angry, toothy maw. It sported Mefirst-style sunglasses and a Pinkie-style mane, indicating it was a Skaian underling much like the imps, which piled through the breach.
"Waaaah!" Waluigi screamed, throwing his arms out wide in terror.
"Th-that..." Blah stuttered, equally intimidated, "...would be an ogre."
Working to overcome his initial fear, Blah began to formulate a plan of attack. 'The ogre shouldn't be too difficult for the both of us,' he thought. Something odd caught his attention, however; some of the imps were focused towards their right rather than on them. Following their glares, Blah spotted Edwin, free of his bonds and accompanied by none other than Rochelle.
"So much for a stealthy getaway..." grumbled Edwin, giving Rochelle an incriminating stare.
"Oh come on, like I have any control over these guys," remarked the cybernetic bear. "I swear, bailing you out is getting more and more frustrating every time."
The sight of yet another of Charge's minions in such a secluded location puzzled Blah. "How did you even..." he began, trailing off as Rochelle pointed casually to the red, flame-patterned rocket pack on her back. Blah looked up at the gates. SBURB really didn't seem all that well-equipped to prevent sequence breaking.
Rochelle tossed Edwin a small, silver briefcase. "Well, it was nice seeing you again," she remarked, powering up the rocket pack, "but I really must be going now."
"You're not just leaving me here, are you?" cried Edwin as his partner blasted off.
"Check the briefcase, idiot!" she shouted over the roar of her engines as she headed for the gate.
Blah revved up his tails and took off in pursuit of the bear, but he quickly realized that her rocket pack was much faster at lifting than his unconventional helicopter blades. 'I can't let her get away this time!' Blah chanted, determined to catch up even though it was clearly futile.
Rochelle, already halfway to the first gate, looked back at the slow fox, flashing a mocking salute and a cocky grin. However, the triumph in her eyes quickly turned to panic as she saw a Bob-omb soaring straight for her.
KABOOM! Waluigi scored a direct hit on the rocket pack, blowing it to pieces and causing its owner to plummet. Blah didn't bother attempting to catch her, but to his astonishment, Edwin leaped into the air and did it himself. On his back was a large pair of white, angelic wings.
"I suppose this makes us even?" Edwin mused, setting her onto her feet.
"Not by a longshot," teased Rochelle. She quickly brushed herself off and once again faced Blah, who landed in preparation. "Okay, if it's a fight you want, it's a fight you'll get. Edwin, would you care to show them what else I brought you?"
"With pleasure!" Edwin opened the briefcase, presenting two more objects: a Soulite crystal, which glowed a sinister shade of purple, and a small metallic model head resembling that of the Eater of Worlds. Giving Blah and Waluigi little time to react, Edwin took to the air again, slamming the crystal to the ground and pressing a switch on the model.
Just as the crystal shattered on the ground, freeing the dark light, the whole island began to rumble. Blasting up through the earth was what appeared to be a massive robotic replica of the Eater of Worlds. It absorbed the light and towered above Blahtown, its many vengeful red eyes menacing down upon the two sole heroes.
Blah stumbled backwards, awestruck. Waluigi nearly fainted. The imps fled. Even the ogre seemed frightened.
"GUESS WHO'S BACK?!" boomed the reincarnated boss. "THAT'S RIGHT, PEONS - THE DESTROYER HAS AWOKEN!"