Reviews:
iOptimumReaper:
Mary:*shifts eyes back and forth* AJ's dick is a little too thick to go up my ass, to be frank.
Buttershoes: I felt kinda the same way, and thanks for being honest.
MLPFan298: Take this damn chapter, ya rabid goat!
RenaTamer: mebbe.
Guest: *long, drawn out sigh as I rub my temple* In all honesty... I have no idea if I want to. The guy I got to do the sequel hasn't made a chapter in like five or six months now, so I'm pretty sure he quit on it. Your question has gotten me thinking, which isn't a good thing because now I have eighty new story ideas banging around in there when I should be working on Driver's Ed.
rainchaserbrony: Yep.
Author's Note: Yes, this contains a spoiler for a future chapter. If you can't spot it, I won't point it out and it'll tell me who's actually paying attention to my story.
Nah, I love you all too much to hate you. But there is a spoiler.
From the personal journal of Shadow Loom (Apple Durnkinscoff)
Like my 'adopted' father, I have been keeping a private journal as a way to remember the more chaotic moments in my young life. If the lifespan of my true lineage is any indication of how long I will live, then I want these memoirs as a way of remembering my time with Mark.
Journal entry #55-A
Three days after Mark disappeared right out of his bed, he reappeared just in time to help Ponyville during a time of crisis. And while few will admit it, what transversed was a crisis. Check log entries #52 through #54 entitled 'Pinkie Swarm' for more details. However, thanks to Mark's quick thinking, the Elements of Harmony were able to round up the swarm and eliminate the threat. It was what happened after, that deserves its own telling.
I swear, sometimes I think MY 'father' forgets I'm a living being and not just a piece of his tactical gear… By which I mean…
Following the dispatching of the pink hoard, Mark found something that set off alarm bells in our link. After, he took some time to explain where he had gone, something about a world where genders were reversed. The whole time he talked I kept getting flashes of his memories, the one of a male Applejack spooning with him in bed made me giggle.
Anyhow, while he conversed with 'mom' and the Elements, I took my usual spot atop his head. I still have not told him that this form of contact allow me better access to his memories and emotions. But that's one of my many secrets…
It was after his explanation of what he called 'Rule 63 land', that he excused himself and made a beeline to the town's clock tower and the odd family of ponies there in. Time Turner, or as Mark's mind calls him, 'The Doctor', was in rare form and became very excited after 'dad' gave him a glove filled with a silver looking powder.
Now I'm not sure who Turner is, but I can tell he is -not- a normal pony. For one, his aura or lifeforce tastes old. Not as old as Celestia mind you. But old… very old and very tired, even when he puts on a brave face or acts jovial. The other are his emotions, outwardly he shows happiness and sadness just like any other pony. Yet inwardly he guards his true emotions, burying them so deep that I doubt Chrysalis could read them.
And while I'm at this, there is his 'daughter' Jenny, a young filly pony named after a female mule… go figure. While Jenny has her father's ability to govern her emotions, she has yet to implement this talent, and so allows her true feeling to show. No, the thing that throws me off is her age. Jenny looks to be the same age as Twilight, yet tastes younger then Apple Bloom…
To top this weird family off, there is Jenny's… coltfriend?
This is one of the things I can't figure out, and yes, there are more oddities to this family.
Joe is a human mind trapped within a 5 foot tall gray colored metal monster. I have seen glimpses of Mark's memories and know the armored casing is called a DALEK. And I know that several of the humans in Ponyville are afraid of the Dalek race. But no one will tell me why. At first, even Time Turner had to swallow a wave of revulsion every time they are left in a room alone. Though I will say that over the last few months, Turner has started to accept Jo as more than what he looks like on the outside.
Whatever the fact, Joe himself is quite an interesting fellow. Unusually calm and collected, he is a lot like Big Mac in the way that he is the tall silent type… in point of fact, the only time Joe seems to show any emotion is around Jenny. I really can't classify what I gleam from him as love, more like complete devotion. When around her, he feels human again… he feels content with just living as long as it's next to her.
In a way, I feel sad for the man trapped within a nightmare.
Lastly we come to the big blue box that sits in the corner of Turner's living room. The blue box that watches you even though it doesn't have eyes. The blue box with a heartbeat. The blue box that loves a pony… I've heard 'dad' call it a TARDIS, but I have also overheard Turner calling it a variety of names, including Sexy. Why a pony would find a box sexy, or vice versa, is beyond me.
But then again, all this is what made the Turner's a very interesting family.
So there we were, Mark had lifted me off his head before sitting in one of the 'La-ze-boy' chairs in Time Turner's living room, while Turner rushed around the room muttering to himself. That was until dad handed the pony the silver dust. "So what's the verdict?" Mark asked as Joe rolled over, holding a tea tray with his plunger.
Oh Joy, the dust, again. With a tired sigh I decided to explore the Turner's home. Although Mark and I had visited their home on several occasions, I had always been on my best behavior and stayed next to 'Dad'. Yet the conversations between Mark and the Doctor were becoming predictable.
"They're Nanites alright," Turner stated after running a scan with his light up screwdriver thingy, not that I cared for I was more interested in a nearby tecky looking archway. Well, well, well, another inanimate object with a heartbeat... where do they find these things? "I don't know what Twilight and her friends plan to do to the pond, but I'm going to take a look," I was only half listening to the adults while scrutinizing the arch.
"Does that mean we are going on a trip, daddy?" Jenny excitedly asked as she stuck her head out from the kitchen.
"Indeed," the male time pony nodded. "Go warm the old girl up."
It was at this point that my -LOVING- father decided to make a discreet exit, leaving me alone with the insane family of time travelers. WHAT. THE. HELL? I had been with Mark on several of his adventures with Turner and now… Momentarily forgetting I had wings, I quickly spun around to race for the door, but instead of finding freedom, I slammed into someone's legs and fell on my little rump.
"Why hello there," Time Turner smiled down at me as Jenny bounded into the now open blue box. "Would you like to join us? We aren't going far."
And there it was, that slight knowing smirk, the curious twinkle in his eyes that made one long to see what might lie on the other side… Damn it! "Sure." I nodded, unable to resist the pull that was The Doctor. So, soon enough I found myself sitting next to Joe while watching Turner and Jenny do their enthusiastic dance around 'Sexy's' control island. And no, I'm not going to comment on how the blue box is bigger on the inside.
At some point after arriving in pony-land, Time Turner went back in time and taught Celestia how to put big things inside smaller things, and she in turn taught that trick to her ponies. I mean, come on… How else do you think Twilight can have a three story library inside a 30 foot tall oak tree? A tree who's trunk is about 10 feet wide on the outside, and yet has a 40 foot wide main floor on the inside…
Once you get over the physical impossibility that is the Golden Oak's Library, Turner's blue box is easier to accept.
Ok, back to what Turner was up to.
After a small argument about whether to leave the parking brake on or not, we were on our way. Luckily we weren't going forward or backward in time, instead we were just popping over to a hidden cave somewhere in the Everfree and it wasn't long before the blue box's wheezing came to an end and Turner had declared the flight a resounding success.
Strangely enough, I kinda like the wheezing sound 'Sexy' makes when the brakes are left on, it's oddly comforting for some reason. But I digress.
"And here we are," Turner called triumphantly as he trotted out onto a dry desert landscape and right into the side of a surprised 60 foot tall armored earthworm. "Let's try that again shall we," he smiled weakly as he quickly jumped back in and slammed the doors shut.
"Arrakis?" Jenny asked without taking her hooves of the automatic door lock.
"Arrakis." Turner nodded as he walked past Joe and I, his ears flat in annoyance.
"I tried to tell you that you imputed the wrong…"
"Now, now, no time for that," he shrugged it off as he retook his place at the controls. "Onwards and upwards I always say."
"I take it this happens a lot," I leaned over and inquired of Joe.
"Affirmative," his monotone electric voice droned.
For the sake of integrity, I will edit out the six separate attempts to fly the blue box, for it took us two weeks to travel one mile southeast of Ponyville. I will instead pick where we actually made it to the hidden magic pond. As for the other attempts, I will endeavor to record them at a later date. Needless to say, by Equestrian time, we made it to the pond 15 minutes after we left the clock tower…
Sooo.
"There we go," Jenny announced as she finished setting up some kind of device that looked like a mishmash of coffee machine parts and a jukebox. Meanwhile, Joe had been put in charge of dispatching any 'Nano-clone' that climbed up out of the pond, while Turner searched for the 'Alpha-Bug' in order to deactivate the… colony?
You know, seeing as how the inherent memories I was given by my birth mother, while needed to run a changeling hive, were lack luster at most. I understood Mark's insistence on an education in order to live properly in the world of ponies. However, standing here as Joe fired his disrupter/gun stick thing at yet another Time Turner as it bounded out of the pool, I've come to realize I probably would have been happier being an ignorant queen of my own little hive, than have to deal with this madness.
*BRevvvvv!* and yet another nanite-clone turns to dust.
"That's seven," I sighed as I placed yet another hash-mark on my mental check board.
"Joe," Jenny piped up from where she was working. I don't even think she looked up. "Do be a dear and get the one climbing out on the other side of the pond."
*Brevvvv!*
"And that's eight…"
"There you are!" Turner suddenly announced as he stood up from the magical mirror lake. He seemed very overjoyed at something he held in his up-turned hoof. "Such an amazing little thing aren't we? Brilliant, simply brilliant," he cooed to… whatever -IT- was before depositing it in Jenny's machine.
"So, mind if I ask…" I tried, but Turner trotted right past me. "Excuse me…" he was now pacing while muttering to himself about reformatting a base code. You, any of you know, how frustrating it is to be ignored, even if it's unintentional. "What in the name of fuck is happening?" My 'father' would probably be proud of my choice of wording.
"Do you want the long version or short," Jenny asked before Turner could give one of his long winded answers.
"Short if you please."
"In simplest terms, Nanites are tiny self-replicating techno-organic machines," Turner moved away from the screen before him and let me see the metallic ant with a fish's tail. "This machine here will allow us to check the Alpha's main programming and maybe, just maybe we can find out their function and why they are… here."
"Nanites are kind of like changelings in that they have a hive mentality," Jenny stated as she gave her father a disappointed look. "What we have here is the colony's queen, or Alpha. She tells the others what to do, what to think, and when to reproduce."
"So you want to find out what she knows, why she is here, and if she is dangerous?"
"On the nose," Turner tapped his snout as he gave me a wink. "What a brilliant girl you are."
With that said and with me feeling a bit better over finally understanding what was going on, Turner flipped on the machine and went to work. For the next ten minutes he worked away while I went back to counting kills for Joe, I was at 23 when Turner and Jenny both made an unusual noise that drew my attention.
The Nanites have the ability to detect the surface thoughts of their victim, which helps them to mimic their target almost flawlessly by imitating their mannerisms and discovering information that only their victim would know. Once this was done, they then slowly take over the victim's life at which point the one cloned is eliminated and the process is repeated.
There had been over a hundred Pinkies clones. Once they truly replaced her, then each would start looking for another pony to… fuck!
Together Jenny and Turner began the task of reprogramming the Alpha-bug and left me to deal with the sudden boredom and realization of just how close Pinkie and Ponyville came to being assimilated.
I was on a kill count of 46 for Joe when there came a deep rumble from somewhere above. "Sounds like thunder," I remarked numbly.
"Oh that wasn't thunder…" Turner corrected me as he worked at reprogramming the machine-bug.
"Then what was it?" I asked.
"That's… the sound of something entering the planet's atmosphere," Jenny tilted her head in wonder before slowly walking past me. "Joe, stay here and watch over dad, Apple, you want to come with me and check this out?"
Having nothing better to do, I followed her up the natural ramp that lead up to the entrance of the hidden grotto. However we quickly discovered that the entrance was sealed by a massive bolder. "Hey Apple," Jenny called me to her side and pointed out a small hole with daylight poking through. "See if you can squeeze through and tell me what you see."
"Gotcha," I nodded and shifted into a mouse. I will say that it is refreshing that somebody remembers I'm a changeling, almost all of the Apple family have forgotten I can change my shape at will. And in that regard, I quickly scurried through the small tunnel and soon found myself out in the Everfree.
"Do you see anything," I could hear her voice through the tunnel.
"No, not that I can…" And that's when the ship thundered by overhead. At first I couldn't think straight, yet very quickly I realized what I was seeing. I've watched Mark play his video games enough to recognize the spaceship as a UNSC Frigate, much like the "Forward Unto Dawn" from HALO 3.
From my point of view the tailing smoke and fire showed the direction the dying ship to be south towards Ghastly Gorge. And in an odd reenactment of H3's opening scene, I watched something detached from the doomed ship and came barreling towards my direction. I narrated all this to Jenny as best as I could, even as the smaller fireball wizzed by and crashed into the forest some 600 yards to my left.
"Apple, Dad and I have to stay and complete the programming," Jenny called back. "It's up to you if you want to take a look or rejoin us down here… either way, please stay safe."
Stay with Turner and risk a return trip back to the clock tower… I don't think so. So soon enough I was hovering over several humans and an impact crater. I guess I should stop being surprised at how fast the humans can respond to things falling out of the sky, considering that's how most of them got here in the first place, but damn these guys were quick.
As I fluttered in, I discovered Blake, Schmidt, and a few others were standing around Doc as he looked over… "Is he alive?" Mark's voice asked from behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I found my 'father' hopping down from Athena.
"How the hell should I know?" Doc snapped back. "I'm a world war two medic, that means that everything I consider state of the art was made in 1942," he then gestured to the almost 8 foot tall armored man lying in a ditch he had made. "I wouldn't even know where to start. I don't even know what the hell he's wearing!"
"He's alive, I can taste it." I stated as I trotted up and glanced at the new comer's face shield. "He's out cold, but alive."
"That's my girl," Mark smiled as he patted my head. Sure he didn't ask how I got there before him, or where I had been… but the praise felt great!
The rest of this log will be concluded in Journal entry #55-B.
However I would like to add that Time Turner, Jenny and Joe were successful in reprogramming the nanite queen and that Mirror Pond is no longer a threat.