Party with a Pony, Part 2

The next place Marco found himself in was a gigantic cave the size of a football stadium. Dim lighting was provided by clusters of glowing multicolored crystals, some of which were bigger than he was. Instead of a dance floor and furniture like the Bounce Lounge, the Amethyst Arcade was just that: a massive arcade full of children and young adults from all over the Universe. The air was filled with cheerful hollers and video game sound effects. Marco stared mesmerized at the seemingly endless rows of games with drool trickling from the corner of his mouth. In his mind, he'd just died and gone to video game heaven.

"Like what ya see, Marco?" Star asked with a smirk, her annoyance at Ponyhead for dragging her through the portal having dissipated once she saw the look on Marco's face.

"Uh-huh," Marco said and nodded dumbly, still very much starstruck.

"Go figure. This place is full of squares just like him," said Ponyhead, causing several squares with faces to look their way. Marco was shaken out of his trance by the insult and clenched his fists with a growl. Before he could lose his temper, Star was urging him and Ponyhead to play Lance Lance Revolution, a two-player game that was essentially a virtual jousting match between pixelated knights.

Seeing that his charges were distracted and in no foreseeable danger, Bucky took the opportunity to slip away and amuse himself on his own. What most people didn't realize about him was that he had a low social battery and could only be in a crowd for so long before losing his mind. Fortunately, after wandering around for a while he was able to find a game that was practically abandoned, and for good reason: it was nearly impossible to beat. It was called Battle the Bot, and the point of the game was to fight an artificially intelligent robotic knight in a duel to the "death." As far as Bucky knew, nobody had ever actually died, but one or two people had gotten seriously hurt when the game malfunctioned, causing the robot to attack much too hard. It was said that only a Woolette from the warlike dimension of Woolandia had enough fighting skills to be able to beat it, and Bucky wanted to test that theory.

Upon inserting a coin into the slot, the door to the protective cage swung open, closing again as soon as Bucky stepped inside. The inside of the cage was almost totally dark until a spotlight on the ceiling flickered to life, revealing a large red circle painted on the floor. Standing at attention inside the circle was a humanoid gold-and-silver robot vaguely resembling a Roman Gladiator. One clenched metal fist was grasping the handle of a blunt-edged three-foot sword, while a large oval shield was strapped to the opposite arm.

"Choose your weapon!" the robot demanded in a deep, warbling voice, gesturing with its sword to a crate packed with a variety of different weapons, as well as a shield similar to the robot's leaning against the wall. Bucky strapped the shield to his arm and selected a five-foot broad-headed spear for his weapon, then took his position inside the circle opposite the robot. The robot tapped its sword twice against the edge of its shield, and Bucky did likewise with the spear.

The robot attacked first, rushing forward and swinging the sword in a large overhead arc that Bucky easily countered with his shield. The robot's first handful of attacks were just toying with Bucky and testing his reaction time. The pace of the fight increased when Bucky started getting in thrusts and swings of his own. A scoreboard on the wall displayed CHAMPION and CHALLENGER in illuminated letters with digital counters beneath. Each time the robot landed a lucky hit on Bucky's arm or leg, the CHAMPION counter went up by one point. It was likewise for Bucky and the CHALLENGER counter. Hits on more critical areas, like the shoulders, hips, and stomach, were worth more points. An area that was a guaranteed kill, like the chest and neck, awarded the most points of all and determined the victor.

The pace increased little by little until both fighters were a blur of motion. Bucky ducked, dodged, wove, and feinted over and over until the robot began to show signs of fatigue (which it was programmed to do) and began to get sloppy. Bucky scored higher and higher as openings in the robot's defenses opened. Right as Bucky was about to go for the kill, a high-pitched but unquestionably masculine scream filled the air, causing him to bristle with alarm.

"Marco?" he asked, whirling around. He was then sent sprawling when the robot swung its sword into the side of his neck, ending the match and deactivating the game. He staggered to his feet with a growl, rubbing the spot where a bruise was already forming. No wonder the game had been sitting unused for so long; if his Mewman physiology hadn't provided him with an extremely dense bone structure, the robot possibly could have snapped his neck. Brushing off the pain, Bucky flung open the door to the fighting cage and ran off in search of Marco. He didn't have to go very far: smack dab in the middle of the massive cave, three bulky robots had Marco tied to a chair, and the shortest one was questioning him while shining a lamp in his face.

"I keep telling you, I don't know where she is!" Marco was saying, squinting his eyes against the lamp.

"Not talking, eh? Well, what if I do...this?" the robot growled and started flicking the lamp on and off rapidly.

"Stop! That is incredibly annoying!" Marco complained, and Bucky jumped in.

"Hey! Leave my friend alone!" he shouted and swung his fist, making a decent dent in the shortest robot's chest. It was when all three started to fight back that Bucky began to regret expending so much energy on that fighting game.

"HEY, CHUMPS! LOOKING TO RIDE WITH A PONY? THEN COME GET ME!" Everyone froze; about a dozen feet away stood Star and Ponyhead, the former with her Wand held at the ready and the latter zooming off to get the robots to chase her. Which the two bigger ones did, leaving the smaller one with Marco and Bucky.

"CRYSTAL SHARD DAGGER STORM!" Star cried, and the remaining robot collapsed, his brassy exoskeleton pierced by dozens of jagged crystals of various sizes. Bucky drew one of his daggers and cut Marco loose from the chair, after which Star explained that Ponyhead noticed how close the robots were to finding her. She then convinced Star to leave the Amethyst Arcade with her by lying that Bucky and Marco had gone ahead to find a good spot in a mosh pit, then fessed up and came back to rescue them.

"I knew it! I knew she didn't like me!" Marco proclaimed, pounding a fist into his open palm. The three teens then noticed Ponyhead firing energy beams from her horn in an attempt to delay her pursuers, making video games explode and creating general pandemonium. "Eh, water under the bridge. C'mon, let's go help her!" The trio rushed into battle, Star clearing a path with her Narwhal Blast spell. Ponyhead was surprised to see Marco fighting for her after how she treated him, but was grateful nonetheless.

"Time to give it up, Cupcake." That is until a deep, booming voice caught everyone off guard. A second floating unicorn head appeared behind the trio of robots (the short one still with crystal shards protruding from his back), and Marco paled and nearly fainted at the sight of it. It was easily twenty times the size of Ponyhead and was unquestionably male, with blue fur slightly darker than Ponyhead's, a flowing purple mane that danced in an unseen breeze, and a purple goatee. A spiraling horn as thick as a small tree protruded from the middle of a golden jewel-encrusted crown. At the sight of the regal figure, Star and Bucky lowered their respective weapons.

"King Ponyhead?" Bucky asked in confusion.

"Hi, Daddy," Ponyhead grumbled, ashamedly hanging her...well, head.

"Th-th-that's your DAD?!" cried Marco's shrill, incredibly frightened voice.

"Uh, Ponyhead, what's your dad doing here?" asked Star. Ponyhead looked at her with tears in her eyes.

"I lied when I said I was let out on good behavior. This is the end of the line for me, B-Fly! I'm goin' to St. O's!" Star gasped.

"Not St. Olga's Reform School for Wayward Royalty?!" Star exclaimed.

"Yeah, gurl. At least I got in one more night with my bestie before heading to the slammer, though. That counts for something, right?" Star embraced Ponyhead, and they both started bawling their eyes out.

"It's not jail, sweetie, it's reform school. Although admittedly it's a lot like jail," King Ponyhead corrected his crying daughter. Everyone patiently waited for the two girls to calm down, then the shortest robot, who along with his companions was really a guard from the reform school, pried Ponyhead away from Star and forced a set of reigns onto her snout.

"Time to go, Princess," he growled and started leading her to a portal opened by one of the other robots.

"Wait! I wanna say something first!" Ponyhead cried around the bit between her teeth. She turned to the trio of teenagers, specifically Marco. "Marco, I'm sorry for how I treated you all night. You obviously mean a lot to B-Fly, so you need to take care of her for me while I'm gone. It's hard for both of them to find people they can trust, especially Buck-Buck. Promise me you'll do that?" Marco smiled and nodded, causing a look of relief to wash over Ponyhead's features. "Thanks, Earth Tur- I mean, thank you, Marco."

"Goodbye, Ponyhead," Star said sadly with a small wave while Bucky rubbed her back.

"Good luck with princess jail!" Marco said. Ponyhead snorted and broke into a defiant grin.

"Aww, y'all don't have to worry about me! Gimme a week, and I'll be runnin' the joint! NO JAIL CAN HOLD ME FOR LONG! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," she cackled madly as she was dragged through the portal. Her father only sighed.

"Ugh, kids! You have 'em, and then you...wish they weren't around..." he said as he followed the guards through the portal, which then winked out of existence.

"So...what now?" Marco asked.

"I dunno..." Star said, then grinned and held up Ponyhead's Dimensional Scissors. "...but with the Scissors Ponyhead gave me, we can go wherever we want and break as many of Mom's rules as we want without stea- I mean, borrowing Bucky's pair!" Marco looked at Bucky.

"Hey, nothing I say is gonna stop her, so why bother?" the older teen said with a shrug.

"I can handle that. Let's save the adventuring for another time though; I'm bushed!" Marco said. The trio went back to Earth and decided to watch a movie before going to bed. While they were watching the movie, Bucky noticed that Marco was deep in thought.

"Something on your mind?" Bucky asked.

"I'm trying to figure out why I never ran into my parallel self while we were dimension-hopping," Marco confessed. Star and Bucky both started laughing, causing him even more confusion.

Finally, Bucky put a hand on Marco's shoulder and said, "Marco, you are the only version of you that exists in this Universe. There's a huge difference between dimensions and realities. If we happened to travel to a different reality, which now that I think about it is almost impossible, then you would possibly encounter your parallel self. I would have told you that earlier if Ponyhead hadn't interrupted my lecture. Understand?"

"I guess," Marco replied.

Nobody said anything for the rest of the movie, but all three were mentally asking the same question:

What did the future have in store for them?


And that's the end of Party with a Pony, or Episode 1B.

The part where Bucky teaches Marco the correct way to view the Universe was something I came up with myself.

Personality-wise, Bucky is the best of both worlds, the perfect blend of a Johannsen's brute strength and a Butterfly's cunning. A few more of his skill sets will be revealed shortly.

I personally didn't like it when Marco cross-dressed to sneak into St. O's, so I made the school co-ed to solve that problem. Princes will have different classes than Princesses.

Star wasn't the only one who was betrayed in the past...