//------------------------------// // Kaiju III - Ramiel - Between Night and Day (part 2) // Story: Sometimes They Call Me Super // by KorenCZ11 //------------------------------// “Well. That could’ve gone better.” Pinkie said as she sat up from the circle. Luna was shaking her head in disapproval, and everypony was stretching their bodies after the sharing spell ended. “Well, yeah. Between Rainbow and I, we could probably pull it together, but we’re not Applejack. I don’t know how she does it.” Goose said. “Truth, man. Like, I get the flow of battle. I understand when and where things need to happen, but to be able to use your ponies and have them in position beforehoof is something else entirely. And she does this shit split second at times. Like, getting everypony ready for a time stop and then executing a few instructions in like, what, four, five seconds at most? Insanity.” “While it is true that she may just have a talent for leading, you simply cannot rely on her being your only leader. Last time, she broke her entire left foreleg. Had Scootaloo not discovered her powers, you would still be without her today, and most certainly on Sunday. If something happens that incapacitates her, perish the thought, then you must be able to regroup and reorganize yourselves at a moment’s notice.” Aunt Luna said. “I suppose we’ll just have to keep trying. It’s not as if we can have her rush back or find a replacement Applejack for two days, so complaining about it isn’t going to do us any good.” Rarity said as she stretched herself out. I felt the sudden need to stretch my wings after laying on them for so long and then an idea came to mind. “Hey, how about this; let’s go over tactics in the morning? The recordings of Sachiel and Israfel were near impossible to remove from the internet after they went up, maybe we can use them to figure out what she was doing?” I said. Everypony paused and thought about it. “Hmm… now that is a good idea. What do you all think?” Rarity asked everypony. “I-It’s worth a shot. W-we don’t really have the coordination that s-she brings to the table, and w-without it… we’re kinda s-screwed.” Fluttershy stated. She’s not wrong… “We were screwed before she left considering the things lined up to fight us, but we’re definitely dead in the water at the moment. But yeah, sure it couldn’t hurt. Maybe one of us could get inside her head enough to figure out what she’s thinking during a fight.” Rainbow stated. Luna nodded. “A fine idea in deed. You’ll all meet here an hour earlier than usual so we can go over the footage. I have an idea of what she thinks, but Celestia would know better than I. We will have to work together to get a grasp on this. You are dismissed until the morrow.” Luna said. Everypony shrugged and then started wandering off to the staircase out, while Luna and I stayed behind. “So…” I started, still looking for the words. “I take it you have an answer for me?” She asked. Maybe? Oh, I don’t know. If anything, I’m even more confused. This morning, I at least had the ability to be mad at her, now I just feel a little bit more of my will being sapped away every time I try to think about what she said. “In the famous words of somepony you may have read about; ‘fuck it. When indecision strikes you, uncertainty becomes your enemy, so you might as well say yes.’” A voice said to me. I immediately looked around, but aside from the two of us, there was nopony anywhere to be found. Where did that even come from? More odd than anything else, that voice was male. It sounded nothing like Goose, and aside from him, I haven’t had contact with a stallion since I was a child. What in the hell? “Is something wrong, Twilight?” Luna asked. My attention finally fell back to her and I shook the thought out of my head. “Uh, no… Um, I think I’d like to see what I’m capable of. Whether or not it’s true, I always feel like I’m not very useful to anypony when we train, and today just made that even more apparent than usual.” I said, still feeling a little sorry for myself. Today didn’t go well. What’s worse than that though, is that nopony knew what to have me do. ‘Target, take point up top, Crow get ready to flank with me, Diamond stand by for a time stop, Blur prepare to pierce the mirror, and Centurio… yeah, go!’ If it wasn’t obvious before, it certainly was now. I didn’t even know what to do with myself. I think Applejack has a better grasp on my powers than I do, so how in the world is anypony else supposed to know what to do with me? Luna clapped her metallic shoes together in excitement. “Perfect, I was quite hoping you would say that! We should get started right away then. I want you to stand over there, and we’re going to run some simple power tests first to see if you can use the magic you absorb.” She more or less pushed me into the position she wanted, then warped herself back to the opposite end of the training room. “I want you to aim your horn at me, and prepare to intercept the magic I will be shooting at it. This should be nothing that could injure you even if you did not absorb it, though it may sting if you do get hit. Are you ready?” She yelled across the room. Probably not, but whatever. “Sure! Go ahead!” I called back. I lowered my horn in place, then waited. A bright blue light started to form at the end of Luna’s horn, and I felt myself swallow in anticipation. “Test one, duration two seconds, one percent power: fire!” The small but bright beam shot forth, and I braced myself for impact when… it never came. I opened my eyes to find that the beam Luna had shot literally broke apart into what looked like glittering magic dust about an inch away from my skin. I moved around, put a hoof in front of it and back, yet even as the distance changed, the magic continued to dissipate. The laser stopped, and suddenly, I felt a little better in general, like I was energized. “Well, how are you? Did it hit you? What happened?” Luna asked. Feeling pretty good, I chuckled to myself and walked over. “It was honestly pretty cool. It was like watching a solar flare, the magic just kind of… trailed off into sparkles into me or something. I feel really good at the moment too, like I could do anything.” I said. Luna took… another device, this one seemed like a tablet of some sort, and started adding notes to it. I never knew she was so studious… then again, if Mother had anything to do with raising her, I’d find it hard to believe she wasn’t. They are sisters after all… “Good… now then, I would like you to make a row of one foot thick slabs with targets engraved on them. After that is done, I want you to try and fire off all that excess magic. If it has one, I would rather not see you experience a negative side effect from this.” Luna said. Fair point. I’ve never really tested this before, and the few times I’ve had Rarity use her magic around me were never this powerful or concentrated. I focused for a moment, visualizing the targets she had in mind and accessed the castle. Within seconds, the castle responded and from where I was standing all the way to the back of the training room, around twenty slabs of crystal targets rose from the floor. “Exactly as I expected. Now then, take aim and fire.” She commanded. I aligned myself with the targets and lowered my horn. I took a deep breath as I searched within me for that new stored magic. Like a ball of foreign light just waiting to be released, I poked a hole in the center of it, and everything inside spilled out with the rush of a waterfall. Without much warning, my horn lit up with a color not my own, then fired a blast much greater than the one I’d taken in. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM! Five of twenty slabs were destroyed by the beam, with the sixth one taking major structural damage, forming what could pass for a crater. The ‘targets’ or really, the edges of what used to be a target stood with their centers missing, the first target falling apart at the very thin arch that remained at the top of the structure. “Unexpected, but not outside of considered possibilities. Reform the targets, and I will refire the initial beam to see how much you changed the output. Based on the data the sensor gathered, whatever it was you fired was a mix of three magic signatures, one mine, one your own, and one foreign. I do not think I have ever seen such a bright color of magic before, but then again, you’re in a league of your own as far as that goes, so who knows.” Luna put her tablet away after making more notes on it, then took my position. I shifted the targets and the ruble from around the room back within the castle, then had it spit more targets out. Luna’s horn started to glow, then that same small magic beam fired at the first target. Unlike my blast, her beam merely pierced the first target, and stopped at the second with very little damage to either. She raised her head once she was done and then started to scratch at her chin. “Hmm… would that make it an exponent, or a multiplier? One is dangerous, the other is destructive, so I wonder… Twilight, repair the target and stand by to intercept another beam of the same duration. I think we’ll keep two seconds as a constant. When you go to discharge the excess this time, I want you to attempt to refine it so you destroy as little as possible.” I did as I was told, then awaited the signal with my horn in line. “Test four, ten percent power: fire!” The column of light, much thicker this time around, shot faster than I could react, and I flinched as it came close. I didn’t feel it in the usual ‘this should kill you’ sense, but there was a strange tingling everywhere that the beam dissipated to. It was like… taking a very cold shower, an assault of odd stinging and freezing pinpricks on my skin, but not so unpleasant that I would call it pain. If anything, it made me feel awake. Extremely awake. Like somepony had just handed me several energy drinks and I managed to down them all in one go. My heart was pounding and my pulse was more rapid than I’d ever felt it. It was like electricity was shooting through my veins in the place of blood. There was so much magic stored away, I was sure I could win a race or fly straight to the heavens right now. Once Luna stopped, I bolted to her side just about vibrating in place waiting for the next command. “Oh… my. Now that is a side effect. Still within considered possibilities though. I’m sure I can tell, but would you describe how you feel at the moment?” She asked. I nodded maybe thirty times in a moment and let my mouth run wild with everything that ran through my mind. Who knows if she managed to hear it all, or even understand what I was saying, but she simply nodded, then set me in line with the clean targets. “Now remember, that energy you are about to access needs to be restrained. Contain it to a pinprick and aim it carefully at the target. I do not want to see any more than the centers of these gone by the time you finish, understood?” Nodding far more than necessary, I took a deep breath and felt agonizing still. In my mind, I envisioned a black void as I floated in front of a new ball of white light, ten times the size of the last. “Very carefully now. If you go too fast you’ll hurt yourself. Don’t want to crack that horn. That’s a headache you’ll regret more than the worst hangover in the world.” Another being was beside me in my void. The very same male voice from earlier said those words, but before I had the time to even process what was happening, he took my hoof and together we carefully poked and even smaller hole in the new ball. He then formed a gesture with his own hooves as if he were about to clap them together, and instinctively, I did the same, forming a sort of diamond shape between us. When I opened my eyes, a controlled version of a more powerful beam shot at the targets in that same bright white light. It was much larger than the single ring in the center, but there was so much power shooting out of me, it was like trying to force a torrent into a water hose just getting it as small as it was. The intense strain at the base of my skull was numbing, and the sheer heat coming from the beam at its furthest reaches was like standing in front of a hair dryer for too long. Finally, the energy was gone, and once the smoke cleared, the damage was immense. Fifteen targets had taken damage, all but five had melted completely, and the last five had descending levels of red hot crystal goo dripping from their edges. “Multiplier, thank the goddess. Now then, how did it feel? It looks as if there was some level of control, even if it was not the level of technicality I would have liked.” Luna asked. “I… It was strange, for sure. My head felt like it it was going to go numb, but at the same time it started to get really hot around my face. Is that normal? Oh yeah, and there was a voice in my head that showed me how to do it. That’s probably not normal.” I said, feeling a little dizzy. Everything was off balance and the room was going a little bit more sideways that I wanted it to. After a moment, balance returned and Luna was giving me a concerned stare. “You being unused to having access to so much power in addition to your inexperience makes what you felt from firing that energy completely within expectations. The voice is most definitely outside of expectations. What did it say?” Then her ears stood up straight and she leaned in very quickly. “It was not your mother’s was it?” She asked frantically. I shook my head. “No, this was most definitely a stallion’s voice. But as for who it belonged to, I couldn’t tell you. It didn’t sound like Goose, and aside from him, I haven’t had contact with a stallion in ten years. Well, at least not enough contact with one to get a voice that clear.” I noted. What did he say? Luna looked away and started mumbling to herself, but of what I could make out she said, “Stallion… third signature… ancient or foreign?” She turned back to me after a while and writing a few more notes down. “I am very interested in this other voice. I think ten percent of my power is nearing the limit of what you’re capable of for now, so I think I will try tacking on another five in the next run. Go ahead and get me a new line of targets, but this time, add an additional ten to the row. If my calculations are correct, you should go through about twenty three if you can keep a controlled beam, and twenty seven if you can not.” She raised one hoof, then her magic lit up along her horn. A ball of light formed above her hoof, then something black with green lights on it appeared in its place. She then took the device and affixed it to my ear. “That should get a better reading than my tablet does, and with any luck, it will be able to separate the muddled magic signatures so we can figure out what this voice is. Now then, get in position.” I started by adding the targets, and once that was done, I stood waiting for the next beam. “Test seven, fifteen percent power: fire!” A new beam, not too much thicker than the last, but definitely bigger started to come at me. It made contact with my horn, and immediately, I felt something different was happening. It hurt. It stung. It felt like my face was burning all over as little pin pricks of the blue magic stabbed into me. It was like being assaulted with hot water from a geyser, every single drop enough to singe hair off my coat, yet at the same time, I was taking no noticeable physical damage. I bit my lip and kept standing and taking the blast. It would be over soon, and it wasn’t so bad that I thought it was going to kill me. When it finally ended, I felt similar to last time, but this time it was more like fire than electricity. It burned. It burned everywhere. The stinging sensation flowed in from every every vein, through my beating heart, in my ears with a throbbing drum of flames dancing along my skin. I quickly ran to her side and prepared to fire. “Can I do it? Can I do it? Ineedtodoitnow! I’mdoingit!” Without so much as waiting for a signal, I went back to my void and started to reach for the new, larger ball of light as quickly as possible before the other being restrained me. “Stop it, calm down! It’s going to hurt a lot worse than it does now if you just let it all go! Breathe!” He commanded. The words processed and outside, I took a very deep breath and let it out slowly. “Good. Now do it just like we did last time. Control. Form the aperture slowly. You don’t want to shatter your horn. It won’t kill you, but it might cause brain damage if the base of your skull pierces your gray matter. Breathe in… Breathe out… let go.” I took a breath in unison with this… unicorn in my head, then we put our hooves together and opened them very slowly. As if drawn to this opening, the magic ball started to spin and from the inside it was pulled toward us. The moment the magic reached our hooves, I opened my eyes to watch a beam of light envelop the targets in front of me. It was bigger, it made me feel more numb, it felt like the hair on my face was starting to singe off, but I felt like I could make the beam smaller. A little push, and the energy started to shrink around the base of my horn, but cause the beam to get brighter as it did. “That’s right, you can go further. Smaller. More control. More condensed.” the voice said. Smaller… more condensed… I felt the muscles in my neck tighten and my knees and elbows locking and I pushed a little harder. The beam gradually became smaller until finally, It reached the size of the center ring in the targets. Just then, the energy fell away, and finally I could breathe again. Sweat was pouring down me from everywhere. Whatever I just did felt like it was more work than any of Applejack’s insane training sessions, and I was about ready to go to sleep right there. My legs slowly started to slide out from under me, and I simply sank to the cool floor while breathing harder than ever before. It felt nice… oh so very nice… “Astounding. I did not think you were capable of adding more power to the blast, but here we are. You managed to pierce all the targets, while stopping at the wall, on top of concentrating the excess heat as the beam continued. And these third signature readings are very, very strange indeed. It was almost as if you accessed somepony else’s magic to perform this feat. Did you hear the voice aga- Ah. I suppose that was as much as she could handle. Sleep well my niece. Tomorrow, we shall resume these tests so see if we can’t push your limits even further.” “Again!” Luna called. “Right!” I responded, as tired as I was. With one percent increases over the past four hours, we’ve managed to get to the point where I’m breaking over forty slabs with precision. While I can’t summon this kind of energy on my own, taking a shot from something like a magic pistol hardly compares to the power I can output with Luna’s ten percent beam. She’s come to describing my power as a ‘counter mirror,’ which was some kind of magic deflection device back from her home realm. At the current moment, my counter mirror works in totally negating and absorbing magic up to the level of a fourteen percent beam from Luna, which is more than I should ever encounter in the wild… but not more than what this thing we’re going to face is likely capable of. Based on the data from Argent, I’m not even close to the energy output Ramiel has, and we haven’t even reached 30% yet, which Ramiel far exceeds. For the last hour, we’ve been stuck at 27% which Luna says ‘requires marginal effort’ to produce, meaning next to none. She’s not even trying and I’m still having trouble not blacking out in the face of the beam. “Test 421, 27% power: fire!” Here it comes! Funnel up! From what we’ve found, some parts of me are better at absorbing magic than others. Specifically, my horn does a better job of taking it in than anywhere else, but that also makes me more vulnerable everywhere else as I concentrate on the magic in front of me. The beam connected with my funnel, and as it did, the magic started to flow into my head like a hammer beating my horn into my brain. The throbbing pain shot in waves that grew faster and faster as cracks in my funnel started to appear. The pain came to an end, and just as quickly, my funnel dissipated. In my state of hyper energized, I moved about half as fast as Pinkie could to Luna and fired off the beam. Not even a second had the chance to pass as Luna’s residual magic still floated in the air when my own blast of bright white wiped it away like water vapor in the face of the sun. Control damn it! Control! The beam was still larger than my targets and after straining every muscle in my body in concentration, it started to shrink in size until I ran out of power. I fell to the ground and gaped desperately for air. All of my muscles ached and burned, and my entire body was trembling. Finally. I finally managed to control the 27%. I rolled over and looked up to Luna, who nodded in assurance. “Congratulations. With more time, we could likely keep going with this until you could handle most of my power. However, we do not have time, and it seems as if your body is starting to degrade in an attempt to store this energy. Has the voice returned?” Luna asked. I felt a stinging in my left eye and wiped at my tear duct, only to sigh st the now red stained hoof. Bleeding again. Damn it! “No. It’s as if he left as soon as I started to manage on my own.” I stated. I wish I could’ve at least gotten his name. “A shame, but alas, we simply do not have the time. It is nearly two in the morning, you must sleep. Whether or not you are prepared, you will have to deal with that thing later today. You will have shields at the very least, so those should protect you in a group, but if this Ramiel character is not what comes to greet you, then you should not have to worry about it. However, I could count on my hooves the number of times Celestia has been surprised in battle, so I will be placing my bet with her intuition. Given who she is, I doubt she will return here without some kind of tool to help you protect yourselves too, thought I would not be able to say what. She is eleven years older than I, so what she knows of our home is considerably more than what I had the chance to learn. I pray that she does not unleash something foolish on this world, but if it means keeping you alive, she would stop at nothing.” Luna offered me a hoof to help me up but I declined in favor of staying on the floor. “No, no. I can just-” I yawned. “I can just sleep here. Getting up is hard anyways.” I said. Luna roller her eyes and tossed me over her back. “You are disgusting. I demand that you bathe before you sleep.” She ordered. I yawned again in a desperate attempt to keep my eyes open. “I don’t know that I can follow through with that. I’ve… got a headache…” I couldn’t keep awake. The gentle sway of her walk, the warmth of her coat, and the smell of home that wafted around her lulled me into the void. When next I looked around, I was standing on what I could only assume was the sun. The bright yellow-orange glow of gravity contained plasma shot arcs of flame around me as I wondered how I was even alive at the moment. On the horizon and blending in with the sea of stars above, a dark figure started to walk forward. This must be dream. She let me sleep yesterday though, why would Luna want to talk to me now? Did something happen? Ignoring the impossibility of the situation, I raced toward the figure, but as I did, I realized that the shape of this figure and the shape of Luna were not one and the same. He stood with his dark snout raised looking down at me, a single hoof stroking a thin pitch black beard. His mane was wild and black, flowing almost like Mother’s and Luna’s, moving as if it were a cloud of shadow. His coat was that of a dark gray and his eyes were a bright green, not too dissimilar to Applejack’s. He was well built, but not very large, and around his head was a silver tiara with a silver disk held in place by two blue spikes. Who is that? “How very interesting. I never thought I would see the day… Tell me girl, what brings you here?” He asked. His voice was deep and commanding, and with every word he spoke, I felt my heart thump a little faster. “What brings me here? This is my dream. Who are you, and why are you in it?” I asked. He sat down and nodded with a thin smile on his face. “Yes, it certainly is, isn’t it. Me? I… am just a shadow. For now, why don’t we say that I’m just a shadow of you? I am here because you wanted somepony to speak with. Come, sit down. There’s no better view than that of the sun, wouldn’t you say?” He asked as he patted the spot next to him with his hoof. I’ve only seen the sun in pictures, this is way too detailed for me to have come up with it. A shadow of me? How would I have come up with this guy? I’m not that creative. Then again… he gives me that… storybook fantasy prince feeling, and he makes me feel… maybe this is a wet dream. I shrugged and went along with it. “The sun huh? The only ‘sun’ I’ve ever been this close to is Mother. Were I ten years younger, I might still call it beautiful, but now a days, I just want her to leave me alone sometimes.” I said. The flames were pretty. In fact, touching and playing with them made the flares sparkle and fly desperately away from the surface like fireflies, only to be drawn back in as the energy starts to fade. “Is that so? A shame. A damn shame! To court the gaze of the sun will either earn you her bounty or her ire. Back in my younger days, I sought the sun so fervently that her ire wasn’t nearly enough to push me away. There were days I even relished in it. The sun is a fiery one, gifted and cursed to outlast the world. I’d made a promise to find a way to outlive the sun, but in the end I merely became the shadow of a star, unable to make my presence known and tied eternally to that which casts me. Never again will I feel the light of the sun, and in truth I wish so badly to feel her warmth again. Relish in the fact that the sun is yours and yours alone, young one. You may one day be separated from her, and that may be the last time you ever receive her light.” He said. He almost spoke as if he were speaking the lyrics to a song. He had a cadence to his voice, and all his words were melodic. I shook my head. “Unlikely. Well, maybe not so unlikely. If I die later today, then yeah, sure. Otherwise though, I’m stuck with her. My biology is already showing signs of slowing. On the day I turn twenty five, I’ll never experience aging again. Of course, this is all provided I make it that far.” I stated, my eyes transfixed on the fire dance in front of me. A sentence in his song then poked out of my head. “‘To court the…’ Court the sun? What do you mean, ‘court the sun?’ Is this dream gonna get weird? I really don’t want that. I’ve been on the internet before, I’ve seen what ponies draw.” I said tentatively. He raised his ears in alarm and gave me a look of confusion, then relaxed and started to laugh. “Oh, good heavens, no. I can assure you, whatever it is that’s running around in that precious little head of yours is not what transpires here. How old are you now? Time stopped passing for me when I arrived in this place.” He asked. I shrugged. “I turned twenty less than a month ago I guess. Compared to them though, I might as well still be a baby. Or… so I thought. I’m not sure how they see me anymore. Previous to yesterday, I thought Luna still hated me, and Mother… trying to read her is like trying to read a manual in a language you don’t recognize. She treats me however she sees fit at the time, and half the time I’m still a child to her.” I said. “Ten years… my, how you’ve grown. I wish I could’ve been there, but I always knew that never would have worked. Ah, well, that’s the past and it’s best left where it lies. She treats you like a child, does she? Are you not one?” He asked. I rolled my eyes. “No! I’m twenty years old damn it, she doesn’t have to tease me in front of my friends, she doesn’t have to take over everything I want to do, and I don’t need her to save me!” I yelled angrily as I fell back against the bouncy surface of the sun. Ugh, the more I try to think about the physics of this, the more I want to turn my brain off. “Oh, I see what’s going on here. Has it ever come across your mind that maybe… deep down in there, you might just enjoy your mother’s presence? Sure, she frustrates you, and if I know her as well as I’d hope, I guarantee she does it on purpose, but… is it really so bad?” he leaned back on one elbow to ask. I turned my head and scowled at those green eyes. “It is when she makes me look like and idiot in front of my friends! I get hurt once, and she makes a damn show about it! The plans I come up with are never good enough, and even worse, she treats Applejack more like her own kid than me! I-” Wait a minute, did I just… “Ooh, now that sounds like a problem. Tell me, what is your name?” He asked. “Twilight.” I responded quickly and quietly. “Ah! How perfect! I should have known, that one was her favorite after all. Twilight, my dear, is it possible, that you, true heir to the kingdom of Lystacr and Equestria’s thrones, are jealous of somepony near you?” He asked. The hell is Lystacr? “I… well, I don’t know, maybe?” I responded meekly. “That sounds more like a yes than a maybe to me. Tell me more about this Applejack character that your mother seems to fawn over more so than you.” He ordered. I sighed and put my hooves under my head. “Applejack is… amazing, really. Her reaction speed is second to none, she’s always calm in the heat of battle, she picks up on subtle queues immediately, she even predicts what ponies are gonna do before they themselves know it. She’s not huge on books, but what she does read she remembers immediately, and once she understands what something does, she already knows how to use it to its maximum potential. She once picked up a prototype grappling hook style arm band that nopony had ever used before, and put it to better use than the Research and Design team had imagined! They went so far as to take her movements from the data they received to design new equipment so other ponies could move the way she does with those bands. She mastered a technique that I can’t even use, and other ponies hurt themselves attempting. She made friends with a murderer and then convinced her to join our side. She’s… she’s… She is… a lot like mother. And I… I’m not. I don’t have the strength, I don’t have the ability, I don’t even have the talent to do what she does. Maybe by the time I’m two hundred years old and I’ve lived through a war or two I’ll understand how she thinks, but now? I can’t even compare! She called everypony a liability, but I know she just meant me. I wasn’t any help, I’ve never been any help! I train, and I train, and when the day comes I just sit in the background hoping that I might be able to do something, but in the end I’m never really useful. ‘Making your friend’s aim true,’ bullshit, that was less than a .02 error to fix, both times I did it. My own magic is worthless, and when we fought Sachiel, I just made everything worse! ‘True heir to the Equestrian throne,’ She would make a better Queen than I would! How could Mother ever look at me the same way she looks at her, when I… I could never be her?” This was it. This is what I’ve been denying, all this time, and I hate it more than anything else. ‘I don’t have to be her, I can just be me,’ I keep lying to myself. But who am I trying to fool other than me? I bet she’s been with Applejack all this time for another round of ‘special one on one training’ just like the time before we fought Knots, leaving me here, hoping that I might step up when in reality we need her more than ever. I couldn’t fill in her gap, the two most experienced fighters on our team couldn’t fill her gap together. She’s the thing that makes us work and I… I’m just dead weight. I felt a cool hoof wipe at the warm sting that was running down either side of my face. Then the hooves brought me to his chest and started stroking my mane. “There, there, young one. Exhaust these feelings of jealousy and anguish, for they shouldn’t be yours. This friend of yours sounds like one special mare to take Celestia’s eye, but always remember that you are her prize. There’s a story you don’t know, one she wouldn’t dare tell you, but one secret I’ll share with you, and then maybe you too, will understand your place as the time between night and day.” The Shadow of a Star A long time ago, there was a stallion who lived at the top. His father and his father before me were the kings of Lystacr. They ruled as kind kings, but ponies with faults that would eventually catch up to them. Being too kind, my grandfather trusted the wrong ponies and was eventually betrayed. To his son he said these last words; ‘Be careful in whom you put your trust. In those you keep close, know that they all may harbor ill will.’ And so, the next king hardened his heart and kept mostly to himself as even the ones he loved were now under his scrutiny. After many decades passed, this king had ruled sternly, but not with an iron hoof. When he passed the throne along to his son, he said to him; ‘Be careful in how hard you allow your heart to grow. To lead is to live alone, but to lead alone is to know only loneliness.’ And so, the next king had decided that he would try to do better than his father and his father before him. A hardened king knows loyalty and solitude, honesty and integrity, but nothing of kindness, or generosity. A kind king knows kindness and optimism, generosity and love, but nothing of honesty or loyalty. A good king must have the strength to rule, and the compassion to appear as a pony, just like everypony else. Without both of these, you either die to a traitor’s hoof, or alone with none to surround you. The next king decided he would look at his father and his grandfather’s failures and learn from them. Be better than them. Rise above them. He believed that it would be in the best interest of his ponies to rotate the king in power every half decade, so that new ideas would rise above old blood. Prosperity belonged to the future, and any true good ruler considers the words of the young and the advice of the old. And so, he promised his ponies that his time as ruler would be one of reform. However, try as he might to change, the old kingdom was being left behind by those around us, and we simply didn’t have the power to compete. How could we, when the last new idea the kingdom had introduced came from outside our lands? The world was changing and Lystacr was slowly fading out of the world as more and more of our ponies sought other lands for better prospects. ‘How could I stop this?’ the young king asked. He searched and he searched, he read and he read, and one day, he came across a peculiar spell hidden away in his grandfather’s tomb. Two ages before, Lystacr was a land regarded above all others, as the king of that age brought in many new things, things the world had never thought of before. How did he do it? How did his father’s father find such strange and interesting technology at the time? The spell, this was it! This spell links our world with another, allowing us to view what it is like if the world hadn’t turned the way it did here! The young king immediately sought to put this spell to use, and put it to use he did. He brought things of the future to Lystacr, things of science and medicine that the world around us would never have known. Under the young king and his strange magic, Lystacr rose above the world again, becoming the top power and wielding his might in the face of his enemies. The king of Lystacr was a young stallion of hardly thirty then. The king of Lystacr was a fool. One of his most trusted aides, one of the ponies he would call friend, decided that he wanted to help the king bring more prosperity to Lystacr, and used the spell himself. When he returned however, the king’s friend brought something the king never thought possible. An agent of medicine known as a virus, could bind itself and change cells to reproduce more of it, something we had yet to discover the true nature of. This virus, this new thing he had found in a land far beyond our own with technology so advanced we would never see it, he presented to his king. He said, ‘My king, I beseech the. On my person, I have a thing that can make our warriors stronger, that can make our ponies tougher, that can make Lystacr greater than he ever was!’ in all fanfare and pomp. As he was the young king’s friend, I decided against questioning where he found this magical thing, and instead allowed him to test it. For the future belonged to the young, the young king decided to put it in the hooves of the young stallion. He was a fool. The virus… it turned the young king’s friend into a beast. Friend of the young king he was no more, a raging monster he had become. Tearing and ripping through his fellow ponies, this monster rampaged through the castle until finally the young king put an end to him. The foolish young king tossed his corpse into a lake in hopes that he would find rest in his watery grave. Unaware that the virus would spread to his ponies in the water, unaware that the virus would soon affect him, the young king did this. In the span of mere weeks, the virus had affected all of Lystacr. Those who retained their sanity gained astounding and amazing powers, and those who had not… were slain by the ones they loved. In a mere ten years from when the spell had first been used, the ponies of Lystacr saw changes that they would have never believed possible ten years prior. And one year beyond that, Lystacr had fallen once again. Monsters roamed the streets, villages were wiped out. Hunters had to be assembled to take care of the problem these beasts caused and in secret, the king sought help from the other worlds in hopes for a cure. With his friend dead, the world this virus originally came from lost with him, the young king scoured realms aimlessly. It was five years later, when the portal opened on it’s own. He had decided to move down the list again today, hoping that maybe he would find the place he was searching for, when the spell had yet to be cast, but the portal opened on it’s own. He stood back and prepared for anything to happen next, but when he saw what walked through, he could not believe his eyes. A mare with flowing mane of the morning sun and a coat white as snow, nearly twice his size walked through it. She wore golden pieces of royal’s armor and carried eyes that shone like amethyst jewels with flecks of gold shining brilliantly along their surface. Never in his life had the young king seen a mare so beautiful, so radiant. He had not even seen the image on her flank and knew that she was to be his sun. She however, did not quite notice him as their heads were not at the same level, and stumbled to the ground on top of him she did. Their eyes met, and whether or not she would admit it, it was love at first sight. Without so much as allowing her to speak, the king asked for her hoof. As one would expect, he was denied without a second thought, and so the newcomer from another world was greeted with utmost hospitality and asked as to why she came. She was a queen by every right, but for her sister’s sake, she called herself a princess so they might be seen as equals. In her own world, she had committed a similar mistake to the young king’s friend, and just like the young king, she was searching for a cure. When our similar circumstances came to light, we decided it would be best to share everything we knew of the subject. Her world was far beyond that of his, and with her she gave Lystacr many, many new things. Electronics, medicine, ways to stave the penalties of cross breeding between races, the combustion engine, automobiles, airplanes, rocket ships, the list was endless. In the span of a single year, Lystacr went from what she would describe as a third world country to what she would describe as similar to her own. The princess would visit on a weekly basis, but as the king was persistent, the princess one day decided to give him a chance. In truth, the princess had harbored feelings for the king since the day she had met him, but wouldn’t allow herself to give into them for she knew what the consequences might bring. But alas… it was love. Once a week turned to twice, then thrice, and soon not a day went by when the king and the princess were not together. When the time seemed right, he believed that he should ask for her hoof once again. Their stations unaware of it, the two were wed in secret. If the king’s occupation found him with a mare, they would feel betrayal in his promises, and for the princess it was just as bad, if not worse! As even her kin would remain unaware of her new beau. However, it seems as though life had other plans. Their love and passions for each other exceeded their will to restrain themselves, and soon, the princess was with the king’s child. However the worst had yet to come, when merely two months later, her sister found the truth. A union of love threatened to destroy the world they had built together, and she was outraged. Confined to be hidden in his home, the princess and the king tried their best to hide the coming foal, but in the end, it was futile. A spy ratted the king out, and just a month before his daughter was to be brought into his world. At first, the news was unbelievable, so the king still maintained order. But more and more spies came and went, and more and more pictures of the king and his pregnant wife spread to the ponies of Lystacr. The king had lied, the king had betrayed their trust! If he had lied now, what about before? Where did the virus really come from? It was the king, he did it, it was he! Mere days before his daughter was to be born, the riot started. Only those who knew the king’s loyalty remained with him, and they laid down their lives so that his princess and his daughter might yet live, but at every turn, life tried to thwart their efforts. The portal spell failed, and the king’s new princess came early into his world, just when he hoped she would never see it. He manage to hold his daughter once before he realized what he must do to save her life. The princess brought with her a version of their portal spell that was foreign to our own. It ran on a magic not made from the energies released by the planet, but the powers of life within one’s self. To let this new life yet live, he sacrificed his own. To his daughter the king whispered these last words; ‘You will become like the time between night and day. As you grow you will learn from the most egregious mistakes that anypony and your parents each made, and you will be stronger because of it. You will be the bridge that closes the gap between worlds, and you will be one that brings ponies together. You will never know your father, but you will make sure that others do not suffer your fate. You will build families where there are none to be had, and you will achieve magic that none have ever seen the likes of before. I’m sorry I can’t see you grow, but this is my final twilight, and yours is simply just below the horizon, readying to see the world.’ With his beating heart, he forced alive his beloved’s portal home just as the last of his loyal friends were slain. As his life was fading in and out of existence, the king remembered something his grandfather had said to him. ‘If you ever see that one day, you will lose your life with your duties undone, recite these words to see your goals complete. By the heart of my soul, you I will watch over. When the sun in the sky rises and the moon at night falls, I will be by your side, until the twilight sets on the horizon and I see my job is done.’ His life frail and weak, nearly ended as his beloved family left his world, so too did his soul tethered to his blood. When she needed him most, he would appear for her in a time of need. His beloved would never know his presence, and he may yet leave his daughter without ever getting the chance to see her, for she may not need him. And so, he remains dormant within her, hoping for when the day comes that she needs him most, and he gets to see her again. The daughter of a King and a Princess I took a big, heavy sniff as he told his story, and finally I realized who it was I was here with. I’d met him before. There was once a time when I was much younger where I was saved by powers I wasn’t supposed to have. ‘If you’re scared, if you want to get back to your mother and leave these bad ponies behind, focus on your horn! Wish all those scary ponies away with all your might, and I’ll do the rest! Focus, focus!’And after I woke up that day, I was in the castle, my own self made prison, where I would live for the foreseeable future. The tears started to flow again, and I buried myself in his chest. “I can’t believe you’ve been here all this time! Why didn’t you say something earlier? She doesn’t know you’re here, nopony would have ever figured that out!” I asked through hysteric crying. He continued to stroke my mane and hold me like a father would. “I don’t have any power over it. Just like my grandfather did for me, I tethered my soul to you with that spell in hopes that I would be there when you needed me most, so here I am.” he said calmly. I eventually managed to calm myself down, and once I wiped my own tears away, I turned and sat in front of him. “So… explain to me that last part about where my name comes from. How am I supposed to ‘bridge gaps between worlds’ and the like? I’m still trapped in my own castle after all…” I asked, still trying to get over the tears and she shock of meeting my dad. “Trapped in a castle huh? Odd that you would be needing to learn the specifics of my powers in your own castle, but I suppose anything can happen in twenty years. You’ll have to forgive me because I know next to nothing about the current state of your world, but I’ll give you a sort of ‘talk’ as it were. Back in my world, before ponies are born, the parents of those ponies receive a ‘premonition’ of sorts that essentially shows us the futures of our children. From there, we pick a name for that child based on the future we see. How far in the future could be any amount of time, and whether or not you reach that future is up to the parents, but for you, I saw something grand. There were creatures of all kinds of races around you, and you were some kind of benevolent leader that brought others together, bearing stars of unity on your flanks and surrounded by many. In sailing, the word ‘twilight’ refers to the time at which stars can best be seen by the naked eye, and it comes twice a day, when the sun is below the horizon. With this future in mind, Celestia and I hoped that we would be able to get you there to see it. We had several names picked out for you such as Dawn, or Starlight, or Sunset, but Twilight seems to be what she went with, and it’s possible that my last words had something to do with it. All the same, I think Celestia likely remembers that future and wants to keep you on track to it. I never wanted you to be a fighter, and I know she didn’t either, so you not being as capable as this Applejack of yours is in that area… doesn’t really surprise me. We wanted you to be a great leader, but not one like that. We wanted you to bring ponies together. We wanted you to mend families, and end disputes. We wanted you to get people to see past the exteriors and create a world where unity is valued over physical attributes. To become the twilight between races. I think that you have the potential to become very powerful, just like your mother. And as time goes by, you will become powerful. But that was never the role we hoped you would fill. It is possible that your Applejack was born to fill that role, and it’s also possible that she grew into filling that role. You on the other hoof… I still don’t want you to do that, and she probably doesn’t either. So she’s making the choice to groom your friend into a fighter so that you might continue on track to becoming a unifier.” He said. I’m supposed to be… a leader, but not a martial one? Then why keep me in a cage? But… then again, when I asked to look for ponies because I wanted to help… she was overjoyed. Maybe… building the team and bringing these ponies together was the first step… Yeah, and then there was the day the living room appeared with those chairs… “Did… something come to mind?” He asked. I nodded slowly. “Yeah… I think you might be on to something here. But… if that’s what she’s always wanted to see me do, why wouldn’t she tell me?” I asked. My father sighed. “My dear Twilight, a cutiemark can be a cruel thing. Fate, destiny, and choice are ideas that all tend to be at odds. If you believe in one, then the other is invalid, and if something is invalidated by the other, how can the other exist? A cutiemark is a physical representation of all three of these things, and if one is told what one should do at an early age, then one may find themselves living a life they hate while still having a cutiemark to prove that that’s what they should do. It is an unwritten rule back in Lystacr that one must never inform the child of their premonition. If you don’t discover what you believe you’re supposed to be doing on your own, then you risk the chance of never being able to discover that, and never truly growing into your own. The reason I told you mine is because that is why I think I’m here, talking to you right now. Because it is what you needed to hear most. If Celestia had the chance to kill me, she would, over this. The rule is identical in your world, and save for her, I took your premonition to my grave, so were it not for my final act, you wouldn’t be hearing these words now, and who knows how long this jealous fit would’ve lasted.” He explained. That… makes even more sense. Oh goddess, poor Applejack. She was told she was going to be an apple farmer all her childhood, and now she lives in the city fighting crime with apples on her flank. A butterfly turned into a killing machine, a diamond that stops the world from turning. Pinkie has balloons on her flank, but she’s been without friend or family for the past eight years, and even Rainbow… Oh goddess, these are all ponies who had their destinies slip through their hooves because life got in the way… how do you live… when you’re branded with a purpose you can’t fulfill? “I think I understand now. Well, at least where it is I fall here anyways. It’s nothing really concrete, but I’m starting to see what I can do to help. My purpose… is to help others find their own purposes, even if fate or destiny, or choice or whatever abandoned them.” I said. He smiled and nodded. “And I think you’re right. Ah, I never thought I would see the day where you’re all grown up. But… I’m just so glad I could be here to help you. I… I finally got to be the dad I wanted to be, and I’m thankful for that.” The sun we stood on started to shake, and the sea of stars above us began to fade into white. “Gah! what’s happening!?” I cried as I clung to him. “Unfortunately, it seems as if you don’t need me anymore, so your dream is ending.” He said, calm and collected. “N-no! You can’t go, I’ve only just gotten to meet you! I… there are so many thing I want to know about you, so many thing I want to know about where I was born! You can’t leave me, I don’t even know your name! Daddy!” The dream started to collapse, and pull him away from my hooves. As he slipped out of my grasp, I desperately tried to hold on, but he kept being pulled further and further away into the white void. “When next you need me, I will see you again. Remember the name of your father, for he was king-” “Holy!” Pinkie yelled as I shot up from my bed. “Sombra!” Echoed in my bedroom. I found myself sitting up straight in my bed, one hoof outstretched like I was reaching for something, and realized I wasn’t on the sun anymore. “Som-what? Are you okay? You’re not having nightmares too are you? Wait hold up, why are you crying?” Pinkie asked. I smiled and swallowed, wiping the tears away. “You were right, the other day. I think… I think I’m over it now though.” I said. Pinkie scrunched up her face and stared at me. “Uh… you’re welcome? Anyways, Luna says your mom and Applejack are on their way over, so you should get up." “Good… if there’s anything I know, it’s that we need her, whether or not somepony else could do the job.” I said, reaffirming what I’d learned over the night. Pinkie sorta leaned back and stopped making eye contact with me. “Sure… you uh… you do that. K bye.” and just like that, she bolted.