"Thanks for coming with me, Spike," Twilight said to the baby dragon that sat on her back. After a quick lunch and giving Rollypolly a good polish to ensure his shell stayed nice and shiny, Twilight and Spike had hit the trail and begun to loop around Ponyville. "I have to be honest, I never thought you'd want to go help me question ponies about Scootaloo after... well... Fluttershy."
The purple dragon shuddered. "Please don't mention that name... I was two seconds away from jumping out a window after seeing the clop-mess."
"Well, I'm glad you didn't do something so rash. So what made you decide to come with me?"
Spike leaned back, looking at the clouds. "My new 'baby brother'."
Twilight giggled.
The little dragon huffed, folding his arms across his chest. "So, I thought you had sworn off trying to find out about Scootaloo."
"I swore off letting ponies who have no clue about her tell me stories. I still want to know the truth, and I realized that if I am ever going to get the real story, I need to attack this problem." Under her breath, she muttered, “And I need to find ponies that are actually sane, unlike our rulers.”
"So are we going to do the smart thing and teleport to Manehattan and find out from Scootaloo herself?"
"That's the funny thing," Twilight said, face screwed up in confusion. "I tried to do a location spell so I could pinpoint her...but according to the spell she isn't even in Equestria."
"Then...where is she?" Spike asked.
~Meanwhile, in the Human Dimension~
"What the hell?" defender2222 shouted, staring at his utterly destroyed apartment. He had just returned from screwing with Twilight (WITH, YOU PERVERTS! SCREWING WITH!), only to find most of his DVDs on the floor, all his pillows and blankets used to make a fort, his Transformers sprawled all over and five bags of popcorn shoved in his microwave. "How the heck did you three even get here?!" he shouted at the perpetrators.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders smiled sheepishly, no longer bouncing on his couch. "We saw this glowing portal and decided to go into it and ended up here!" Applebloom said.
Sweetie Belle looked around, utterly excited. "Maybe our cutie marks will be for interdimensional travel!"
The human held his head in his hands. "How the hell did I end up in 'My Little Dashie'?"
"Rainbow Dash is here?!?!" Scootaloo screamed in glee. "Where?" She began to tear the couch apart, looking for her. "Rainbow Dash!"
“I want to try that swirly thing again!” Applebloom exclaimed, rushing into the bathroom.
defender2222 stared at Sweetie Belle, who looked up at him and smiled. “You wanna play with your toy robots?”
“…only if I can be Bumblebee.” The human pointed at the pony. "But if anyone asks, you're a dog!"
"Ruff!"
~MC~MC~MC~
"Ok...so Scotaloo is out of the question...what then?"
Twilight smiled. "We are going to ask the one pony Scootaloo spends the most time with!"
"...her handler?"
"Scootaloo is not a spy," Twilight snapped. "No...Cheerilee, Scootaloo's teacher. She must have all sorts of private documents and government files on Scootaloo. We get a look at those and we will be in like Flint."
"Who?'
"You know, Flint Lock...the local locksmith/chimney builder."
"...ooookkkaayyy." Spike's brow furrowed as he considering a flaw in Twilight's plan. "Do you really think Cheerilee will give up private files?"
"No...but I have a cunning plan."
Spike suddenly wished he had stayed at the library with Rollypolly. "And...what is that?"
Twilight smiled darkly, a crazed look in her eyes. "Oh...we're just going to sit her down, have a cup of tea...and ask for the files." The unicorn began to laugh and Spike swore he heard thunder overhead.
~30 minutes later...~
"Cheerilee, can we please see Scootaloo's private files?" Twilight asked pleasantly, pouring the teacher a cup of tea.
"Well, of course," Cheerilee said with a smile. "Releasing private files to a mare that is not related to any of my students is the least I can do for a casual acquaintance that I don't think I've ever had a one on one conversation with!" Taking a sip of tea, Cheerilee made her way over to her file cabinets, searching for Scootaloo's file.
Spike stared at his best friend. "If you were really going to ask her nicely for the files then why did you laugh like an evil witch?"
"What are you talking about? That is how I always laugh when I invite ponies to have tea."
"...yeah, Nightmare Moon is SO your mother."
Cheerilee returned, happily giving Twilight the file. The unicorn was beaming...until she saw that all the papers were blank. "Uh...I think you gave me the wrong folder..."
"I assure you I didn't," Cheerilee stated, nibbling on a biscotti.
"Then why are the pages blank?"
"Well, no one would believe Scootaloo's real reason for being in Ponyville, so I just stuffed blank pages in the file."
"Her...real reason?" Twilight whimpered, suddenly having a vision of her and Spike on a strange planet, wearing unitards while Rollypolly thrashed about, calling out "Danger, Danger Twilight Sparkle!"
"Yes...you see...Scootaloo isn't from this time."
"Of course she isn't," Twilight grumbled, settling in for yet ANOTHER time travel story.
~15 years in the future...~
Equestria as all knew it was long gone.
In its place was a barren wasteland, pitted and shredded by the savage fury of war. It was not the pegasi or the unicorns or the earth ponies that fought. It wasn't even the griffons or the capricorns or Discord himself. No...the threat the world faced now was from a new race, born because of the hubris of ponykind: Robots.
In the beginning robots had started off small. Equestria had begun to build them to help with minor tasks, like building wagons or grabbing stuffed animals from a glass box at the cost of a dollar. But the robots wanted more and soon rebelled (apparently no pony had heard of Asimov’s 3 Rules of Robotics or seen that Will Smith movie). At first the ponies had believed they could easily fight their enemies...but soon it became apparent that the war that Celestia had proclaimed would only last a few days (she'd made such a decree in Cloudsdale in front of a banner that read MISSION ACCOMPLISHED) would not be won so easily.
Many lives had been lost and the innocence of ponies had been forever torn to shreds. Fillies and colts learned to wield weapons before they could even walk (baby pictures commonly featured a foal's first cannon) and were shoved out onto the front line to win or die.
"Wait...if this takes place in the future...how do you know about it?"
"Reasonable guesses based on evidence I have gathered."
"..."
But the last members of the resistance movement had come up with a daring plan: They would send back in time one filly, their best and fiercest warrior, and one of the terminating robots ("Terminating Robots? Really?"), that had been reprogrammed to fight on their side. They would kill the inventor of the robots’ command program (known as Skynet which stood for Shooting, Killing You, Now Eat Turnips…apparently the designer came up with the acronym first…) and prevent the war from happening…
~Ponyville, 3 years earlier~
A flash of light flared up from behind Sugarcube Corner as the two figures appeared, kneeling down as the effects of the transportation ended.
"Shouldn't they be warped right back after a few moments? And how do you even know about the time travel spell?"
"There is a time travel spell? I assumed they used science!"
“…uh…no…there is no time travel spell and I have obviously never used one…heeheehee…”
"We've arrived," the orange pegasus filly told her robotic companion, looking about the alley. “We’re in the past.”
"SWEETIE BOT AGREES WITH COMMANDER SCOOTALOO!" the terminating robot (in the guise of a white unicorn filly) stated.
“Hey, she's like Rollypolly if he’d gone through puberty!”
"Come on, we need to find the creator and eliminate her as soon as possible!" Scootaloo said, marching into Sugarcube Corner. All the patrons paused, staring at the two little fillies, before turning back to their idle conversation. For Scootaloo, the sight was unnerving; she had been born on the battlefield, been raised with a gun in her hoof and the smell of death forever around her. To see ponies sitting around, calmly eating…it was as strange as unicorn being allowed to raise the only baby dragon in all of Equestria by herself (“HEY!”) "Now then, we need to be on alert. According to historical records the creator of Skynet was a very smart pony. They could be anypony...so we must be on guard."
"So what are you calling your new invention?" Silver Spoon asked her friend as they entered the bakery.
"I am thinking I'll call it Skynet!" Diamond Tiara said with a laugh. “It’s going to be the next best thing since Boxy the Box!”
"...well, that was easier than I thought."
"I want to make sure I have this straight..."
~MC~MC~MC~
Twilight began to tick the points off. "You think one of your students is a robot, the other is a freedom fighter from the future, and the final one is the creator of a new race that slaughters most of ponykind. And they are all fillies.”
Cheerilee took a moment to consider all this before she shook her head. “Well, Sweetie Belle could be really old…she just looks like a filly. Otherwise you got it all correct.”
Spike grinned. "Ok, I take back my super spy theory...this one is so much better!"
Twilight gave her number 1 assistant a dirty look before continuing. "But it doesn't make any sense! If Scootaloo was planning on killing Diamond Tiara...why is she still alive?”
"Ah, well you see, Scootaloo had to wait for just the right moment to do it. Time is normally solid and near impossible to change. It is only when time becomes soft that one can mold it and shape it, forcing time down a new path." When Twilight and Spike looked dumbly at the teacher, she merely shrugged. "Dinky did this whole report-"
"Say no more," Twilight said, looking around as if she expected the little unicorn (who was SO not smarter than her, despite what others might think) to appear. "So...anything else we should know?"
"Of course!" Cheerilee said with a laugh. "Lots, lots more."
~One Year Earlier~
Scootaloo and Sweetie Bot had done well to integrate themselves into the timeline. Scootaloo had managed to convince Bon Bon and Lyra she was their daughter ("Probably told Lyra she was originally a human...") and Sweetie Bot was able to set herself up at Rarity's sister by claiming that her parents had merely forgotten to pick her up from school for the last few years (they were stupid like that). All that time they had watched Diamond Tiara, waiting for the right moment to strike and kill the little witch.
"Holy crap, you're her teacher!"
"Just because I am her teacher doesn't mean I have to like her! I'm sure Princess Celestia hates you plenty at times!"
"She does not!"
~Meanwhile, in Canterlot...~
"Sister, what are you doing?" Luna asked, watching as the sun goddess scribbled some notes on a scroll.
"I am conceiving the perfect structure for an epic that I wish to tell my faithful student in the spirit of jest."
"...you're planning on trolling Twilight, aren't you?"
Celestia stomped her hoof. "You and Cadence and Tydal got to! I want to have fun messing with her head too!” Celestia tapped her chin. “Now then…should I call the competition Scootaloo competes in the Famine Games or the Hunger Games?”
~Meanwhile, back at the plot...~
Finally, the day had arrived. All of Sweetie Bot's sensors had gone off in the middle of the night, proclaiming that this day would be the perfect one to end the threat of Skynet (the sound of said sensors going off had forced Sweetie to claim she had bad gas).
That is how Scootaloo and Sweetie Bot found themselves waiting outside of Diamond Tiara's house with sling shots loaded with bags of angry bees (because guns had yet to be invented…lousy hippies). The moment they saw the rich little snob, they would attack and save all of Equestria.
"STOP!'
Sweetie Bot and Scootaloo stared at the new arrival; she was a yellow earth pony with a big red bow in her hair. She hurried towards them, grabbing their hooves and stopping their attack just as Diamond left her house, happily skipping as she sang a song about how great she was (“Please…don’t sing it.”)
"SWEETIE BOT DEMANDS ANSWER TO QUESTION OF WHY ATTACK ON ENEMY WAS HALTED!"
"You can't kill Diamond Tiara!" the yellow filly stated firmly. "You have no idea the danger-"
"We know the danger!" Scootaloo shouted in frustration. "We come from a timeline where Diamond Tiara created the terminating robots which wiped out Equestria! She must die!"
“YES! IF DIAMOND TIARA IS DEAD SHE CAN NOT CREATE SKYNET AND TERMINATING ROBOTS LIKE SWEETIE BOT WILL NEVER BE MADE-WAIT A MINUTE…”
"And I come from the timeline you create!" the filly told them. "My name is Bloomus Prime. Because of your actions, Diamond Tiara's father Filthy Rich took over the Skynet project and changed it to create robots that resembled his daughter, which he dubbed Tiaracons.”
“SWEETIE BOT IS DEMANDING TO KNOW IF YOU WERE GOING TO KILL SWEETIE BOT VIA PARADOX!”
“From their ranks rose Megarich,” Bloomus Prime said, as if she had never been interrupted, “an evil warlord who sought to enslave all of Equestria’s ponies and use them as slaves to mine Equestria's Harmony reserves. Luckily for ponykind, the great inventor Big Macintosh created me and my kind: the Applebots.”
“YOU WERE! YOU BITCH; I LOVED YOU LIKE A SISTER!”
“We wage our battle to stop the evil forces of the Tiaracons and now I have come back in time to help you prevent both Skynet and the Tiaracons from ever being created!” Bloomus Prime declared. Her body trembled and she transformed into a little red wagon. "Applebots, transform and roll out!"
"This…makes complete sense!"
~MC~MC~MC~
"Thank you Twilight!" Cheerilee said happily. "I'm glad you believe me...most ponies just look at me like I am crazy when I tell them the truth about Scootaloo and her friends."
"We would never think you were mentally deranged!" Twilight said quickly. "And we would never lie and say your story was really good so we could escape before you killed us!"
"Good, because I would kill you if you didn't think that!"
"I know!"
Both of them laughed.
"So...me and Spike need to be fleeing now..." Before Cheerilee could say a word Twilight had grabbed the baby dragon and was running out of the door as fast as she could.
"...she must still be upset that Rainbow Dash found out about her sleeping with Fluttershy."